2007 Year in Review
December 27, 2007 by Kevin
Filed under Social Media
I thought about going through and linking to my favorite posts of the year, but that just seems like a lazy way to get a blog post up for the sake of getting a post up.
Instead I want to talk about a few things that I learned about social networking and social media this year.
1) Twitter- I railed against Twitter pretty bad when I first used it, now I see some sort of value to it but I don’t think it is for everyone nor do I spend more than ten minutes a day on it. I have seen some social media “experts” talk about it incessantly and how important it is to the overall conversation, I think most of those people just like hearing themselves talk.
2) “Social Media Experts” love to talk about concepts but never really seem to apply anything- After getting back from Blog World Expo I began to subscribe to various “experts” blogs. They love to drop words like conversation, space, and other terms that make them sound very important. But they never offer up actionable plans or anything that people really can apply and do.
3) Experts really don’t know that much about MySpace- Hearing different PR people and different social media experts speak about MySpace almost made my head explode at various times this year. Continue to use the site wrong while people that have a clue exploit it for the high promotional value that it brings.
4) There is such a thing as too many sites- I spread myself thin in various promotional efforts and learned a focused push is a much better push.
What were some of the lessons you learned this year?
I don’t like calling myself an ‘expert’ but I have spoken quite a bit on social networking – especially with regard to blogging – in the company environment. Ironically, my writing and discussions are more tactical – how to implement and measure… but I don’t get much face-time with the ‘in’ crowd who likes to just discuss the vague dynamics of the technology.
I also advise some companies not to blog… something unheard of. Better to not blog at all than to blog and fail, though!
I have to say it was a year of learning and then applying for me and has gone from earning nothing to a very good living.
On Twitter I love it but don’t use it enough.
On Social Media Experts I have to agree with you all talk no action!
On Myspace, I think this year they got hit so much by spam and people creating sites for the sake of drawing people in to spam them that it lost a lot of credibility!
On point 4 I decided to abandon 20 projects in July and concentrate on 10 and I have to say that I have seen benefits! By not spreading yourself too thin you get less done, even though it seems like more!
Nice round up!
The most important thing I learned this last year is the value in being able to admit your limitations. Whether in business, family, or whatever, humility is the key to knowledge.