Sciencetext Tips & Tricks

Tech talk, social media, blogging, computing tips and tricks

Playing Social Media Tag

September 16th, 2008 · by David Bradley >> 14 Comments

playgroundAri Herzog has tagged me for the social media marketing meme, alongside such distinguished company as Max Gladwell, Jacob Morgan, Gillian Swart, and Kim Woodbridge. I’m honored to be asked, to say the least. Ari’s tip, the point of the meme, as it were, is what he described as best practice and can be distiled to a single word – Pause.

I take that to mean that before you rip forth in any social media context, you should simply reflect on what you’re actually going to say first, maybe hold off hitting the submit button for a moment, an hour, a day. The world will not stop turning if you don’t get “first” in the comments, after all. He might have also chosen Rewind, Shuffle, Fast-Forward, Random, Sample, Hold, but he didn’t he chose…pause. I almost started writing this post the moment Ari tagged me, but I took his advice to heart and held off for a few hours.

But, speaking of tag, seeing that word in this context took me back to the schoolyard and childhood games of tag, in which dozens of us would charge around desperately trying to tag those foolish enough not to be touching a “safe” wall or “safely” hanging from a climbing frame. At that age, there never were any pauses. But, school-age lessons came to mind [this is starting to sound like a sermon, Ed] when I started thinking about how to respond to this meme.

One of those lessons was not linked to any particular subject, mathematics, history, French, or whatever, but a life lesson that some of those rare flaming and trolling bloggers and browsers could do well to learn – Do to others what you’d have done to you. In other words, be nice. There is so much vitriol, extremism, and downright rudeness and bad manners in the real world, that we should each do our best to practice this maxim in the virtual world, in marketing, and all our activities. After all, even trolls and flamethrowers have feelings too.

So, in that spirit, I paused and now I’m repaying Ari’s kindness in tagging me for the social media marketing best practices project. It’s social media marketing best practice, after all.

Now, I have to ask myself, is it a kindness to tag other people to join the game, will they be safe dangling from the climbing frame, and will they pause before responding? So, here’s the call out to SpostareDuro, Wayne Smallman, Erica deWolf, ChemSpiderMan, Martin Brinkmann

14 responses so far ↓

  • Max Gladwell // Sep 17, 2008 at 4:47 am

    David: This is my response to Ari’s call to action: http://www.maxgladwell.com/2008/09/discovery-marketing-one-step-ahead-of-word-of-mouth/

  • David Bradley // Sep 17, 2008 at 7:32 am

    Nice one, thanks for letting us know!

  • Kimberly Bock // Sep 17, 2008 at 10:29 am

    “social media marketing best practices project” leads here http://www.twistimage.com/blog/ not best practices related?

  • David Bradley // Sep 17, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    Thanks for spotting that Kimberley, the link should be – http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/the-best-practices-in-social-media-marketing-writing-project/ – I’ve fixed it now.

  • Kimberly Bock // Sep 17, 2008 at 3:17 pm

    You’re welcome. :-)

    Give me some time, as I’m behind in many things as it is, and I’ll be more than happy to oblige the tag oh great friend of mine.

  • David Bradley // Sep 17, 2008 at 3:58 pm

    We’ll be watching ;-)

  • Kimberly Bock // Sep 17, 2008 at 4:01 pm

    So voyeur of you.

  • David Bradley // Sep 17, 2008 at 4:31 pm

    Every breath you take, every move you make…

  • ChemSpiderMan // Sep 17, 2008 at 4:49 pm

    I’m not only on Pause but on the road and unlikely to contribute…too many other distractions at present I’m afraid and I prefer not to rush, but to pause and contemplate. So..maybe I’ll return to tag later…likely not

  • David Bradley // Sep 17, 2008 at 4:56 pm

    Okay, no problem Tony, I added you cos I know you’d write a great contribution and it would come from a very different direction to those nominally in the SM marketing area per se.

  • Kim Woodbridge // Sep 29, 2008 at 2:24 pm

    Being nice is SO important. That’s why I wrote about reflect and used the example of one time that I didn’t think about the meaning behind someone’s words and ended up not being nice at all. Ultimately, it took up more of my time being annoyed and frustrated then it would have been to simply be nice in the first place.

  • David Bradley // Sep 29, 2008 at 3:29 pm

    Thanks for dropping by Kim. I’ve subscribed to your blog, particularly interested in adding thumbnails to my archive excerpts on various sites…

    …do you know how to add thumbnails to “Related Posts”?

  • Kim Woodbridge // Sep 29, 2008 at 3:40 pm

    Hi,

    Thanks for subscribing!

    I haven’t located a plugin or simple solution to this. I’m not familiar with your WordPress skill level but this could be done by adding thumbnails to custom fields and then adding the code for the thumbnail to the recent posts loop. I located a tutorial here – http://www.tutorial9.net/web-tutorials/add-thumbnails-to-wordpress-with-custom-fields/

    Now I’m intrigued – I’m going to have to try it out and then write about it.

  • David Bradley // Sep 29, 2008 at 4:24 pm

    Hah! I was just reading that very page and saw a link to a paid plugin. I noticed that several of the bigger sites embed dynamic thumbnails in their Related Posts and footer sections, so it’s obviously possible. I guess it wouldn’t be too hard to hack the RP plugin to grab the top graphic and thumbnail it…

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