Overview: Social Media Strategy

"by simply learning from disciplines like urban planning, zoning regulations, crowd control, effective and humane policing, and the simple practices it takes to stage an effective public event, we can come up with a set of principles to prevent the overwhelming majority of the worst behaviors on the Internet... Businesses that run cruise ships …

"... that encourages conversation around stories and can help create community on Digg, instead of farming out that chatter to Twitter or Facebook... This year could be a tipping point in how media companies employ reader comments and conversation...expected to debut this fall. You can sign up to follow the project — and be a beta tester ..." …

If you don’t want comments on your website, that’s fine, don’t have them. But don’t act like comments are some sort of intractable problem that can’t be realistically addressed by mortals. They’re not... you could fix this, but your priorities are elsewhere.... Having threads that close, having moderators that redirect entrenched disagreements,…

Social and mobile have fundamentally altered attention. Platforms for self-expression and communication are the largest and most important media companies of the millennial age, dominating share of attention and engagement for young people. And the behavior of the young is predictive of the future. - May I Have Your Attention, Please? — Medium

We seem to be suckers for a happy ending ... Upworthy and Viral Nova, have become skilled in coming up with headlines that turn a sad tale on its head. Shifting the focus away from sadness changes a story’s emotional footprint, helping it travel further on social networks... While bad news is a mainstay of the media, people tend to avoid passin…

"sometimes organizations get so caught up in showing off their use of social media tools that they forget that those tools have a purpose – strengthening the relationship between an individual and your organization. A healthy social strategy includes both content created to get new folks in the engagement funnel AND to strengthen the “passion-c…

In studies, people report that they feel better after venting. But researchers find they actually become angrier and more aggressive. People who vent anonymously may become the angriest and most aggressive.... We typically sound angrier in print. And when we write down something, we can reread it, over and over, and stew. With e-venting you don…

Let’s hope [Beme] catches on ... and make social media about real people again -  not their carefully edited versions, and certainly not companies, Institutions and all the others choking up my feed with their marketing as they desperately try to appear human.

A decent long read: on @medium, The Optimal Post is 7 Minutes: "Don’t feel constrained by presumed short attention spans. If you put in the effort, so will your audience." - The Optimal Post is 7 Minutes — Data Lab — Medium

"Thoughtful, longform content is king... A young, bare-bones website called Wait But Why is disproving the notion that thoughtful, long-form content and virality are mutually exclusive... monthly averages of 1.6 million uniques and 4.6 million page views... Its newsletter has over 106,000 subscribers... Its most viral article... has well ove…

"at some point, you start to crave something with more substance. Today’s readers want more than listicles and clickbait, and this is driving meaningful change across the digital publishing industry... In the maelstrom of Internet content, we are drawn to articles that make clear promises for what we will get out of them, as well as those that …

social media platforms are ... the main avenue through which we make comparisons with our peers, acquaintances, celebrities ... those comparisons are often what we base our life-expectations on, these platforms can lead to anxiety about our place in the world... Most of the content on social media wasn’t improving my life — in fact, by taking u…

One of the best longreads re: the future of news media I've read in a while: "Websites... have been able to accumulate enormous audiences with incredible speed by harvesting referrals from social networks... Websites plausibly marketed these people as members of their audiences, rather than temporarily diverted members of a platform’s audience.…

What would you say to a young person considering a career in Journalism? I would advise learning programs like Final Cut Express, and thinking about following the example of the Center for Digital Storytelling's model of 2-4 minute videos that tell a tightly-focused story. - Ending a 31-Year Run at The Denver Post | Jason Salzman

Every brand, every company, and every person has a story to tell, and visual storytelling is a very effective way of sharing your brand’s message and engaging with your customers. - The Science of Storytelling Through Facebook Images

"I — and all other Medium users — are... generating content so that someone can make money... in return ... Medium does what? Medium’s sole value is giving me an easy way to write and driving traffic to my writing. Admittedly, it does a good job with that... Medium owns your content. It owns it to the extent that it can copyright it and use…

 "...responses aren’t visible from the stream, it’s not immediately clear why some show up below a post and others don’t…Today we’re rolling out some changes to make things more clear..." - obvious responses — The Story — Medium

An odd mix of sarcasm and good advice: "Just show up early, write an interesting bio, post a flattering picture. Then continue to show up. Contribute. Better, contribute something original, something entertaining. Don’t worry if no one reads it at first, just keep doing it.... Try and meet the founder. Keep talking to them about the platform…

Most are aware that Small Authors complain about the lack of views/reads. I have yet to see a credible explication as to why this really is, though quite a bit of advice as to what to do about it, which usually boils down to keep plugging away and it will come. That’s not exactly encouraging to newbies. So what is the culprit?

"LinkedIn is emailing the 500 people it calls its “Influencers” and asking them for permission to automatically hand their stuff to other sites that want to republish it in full.... Influencers get more distribution for their names and ideas... LinkedIn gets to advertise LinkedIn... letter to Influencers asks for permission to translate their p…

Last week’s edition included 13 links across 3 topics. This week I go the ‘Special Edition’ route and focus on one topic: Medium. 

I think the distinction between platforms and publishers is misunderstood.

IN RESPONSE TO: Thanks for sharing this.  “While this makes sense it would make more sense if Medium existed in a vacuum… most authors are prepared to put up with a second-class authoring tool in return for a shot at a first-class audience. ”

Examples include using the app to cover breaking news, the annual Budget, share data snippets, new perspectives and take viewers behind-the-scenes

So I put together a landing page, sent a few newsletters to myself, then wrote a post on Medium. It featured 75 outstanding pieces of journalism ... my Minimum Viable Product. Naturally, nobody showed up to read the post. Then, somehow, Rand Fishkin (the CEO of Moz.com) found it and spread the word " - The Medium Viable Product — Thoughts on…

Absurdist is a relatively young publication that I’d launched on Medium on December 31st, 2014. At the 6 month mark it had already grown past 10k followers, pulling in anywhere between 50–200k reads a month. It takes a lot of work and collaboration to build and grow a publication. - Building a Publication — Yung Rama — Medium

What separates Medium from everyone else is that responses create this amazing platform for discussion and stories breed their own little ecosystems. So why don't we treat responses and their result with as much respect as we currently do recommendations?... a story that inspires twenty responses is more "successful" in my opinion than one that…

"there’s something missing in terms, I think, of the user experience of linking content to a particular author. - Medium has a small author problem — Medium

While most the activity on LinkedIn occurred within the first 24 hours after posting, Medium was more of a slow burn... led to shares from outside networks. Of the 1,500 views of my article, 500 came from Facebook, 400 from email, and nearly 300 from Twitter... For years, we’ve been warned away from such tactics... in a world in which Facebook …

IN RESPONSE TO: The numbers game can get so depressing. "In order for Medium to be a good place for writers to get feedback, everybody has to lighten up a bit. The platform isn’t helping. The comment feature adds to the social constipation... following the conversation feels like digital spelunking." - In order for Medium to be a good place …