The following is a report of my personal experience with news distribution on social media in 2009.

My objectives of the distribution of news on social media are essentially:
- to drive traffic to my websites;
- to increase my reputation;
- to monetise through affiliate marketing links in the near future.

For several months in 2009 I worked to create and further develop my presence on Social Media, to create new blogs, to write for E-commerce Developer, to improve my general web presence, on the go live of the Social Network www.blomap.com and finally on the creation of the website for my Web and Social Media Agency www.SwissiteInternational.com.

What I really and generally found very useful was the possibility to distribute news through links to my post on Blomap, to blogs entries and to articles on social networks, micro-blogging platforms and news distributors such as Digg, Twitter, Friend-Feed, Facebook, Posterous etc.

All these websites are actually really helpful to spread the word and to drive traffic to the news.

My idea is to yield to the new trends of social media’s mutual communication in order to create a synergy of networks much more powerful and open to any expansion than a single community can be.

So I investigated and found that tools such as Open ID or Facebook Connect, Share it, Add This, Retweet button, Twitter applications or websites such as Posterous and Delicious can help a lot to quickly distribute news on several social media.

On one hand I decided to shortly implement these very useful tools in Blomap.com, on the other hand I constantly used these tools to distribute news I produced.

So once I published any post on my blogs www.chiarabolognini.com/blog, www.swissiteinternational.com/blog, and on www.blomap.com/Chiara_Bolognini I used the Share This button or simply copied and pasted the URL to share the news on the most important social networks where I have developed good networks.
Some url shorteners such as www.tinyurl.com were very helpful.

In addition to that, it is possible to post and have news instantaneously distributed on various social media through Posterous or Delicious.

Another way I distributed news is by joining and then by posting news on Facebook and Linkedin groups which could be interested in it. A short search for keywords gives me the opportunity to find several groups and make a selection. This allowed me to reach new audiences and leads traffic to the news on my websites.

Fan Pages on Facebook such as the Blomap Fan page and the Swissite International Fan page helped me create specific networks of people to which I constantly distribute my Blomap and Swissite International’s posts.

Finally commenting on some blogs helped me to drive traffic to my news.
Stats in fact demonstrate that most new users came to my posts on Blomap.com from some blogs I commented on and from Facebook.

Finally even distributing news of other online journalists helped me increase my position of influencer and created good expectations and interest in my own news as well.

So I am going to experiment with posting all possible news on topics that can be geo-localised on Blomap.com and try to involve new audiences by distributing the news on other social media.

In addition to that I am going to use some Twitter applications and Google trends to define the hot-topics and keywords. This strategy is essential to make any news distribution properly addressed.

What about you? How are you distributing news on social media and what are your objectives?

I asked to a dear Italian friend of mine and one of my university classmates, whom I know since 15 years, to give me a little help to spread the word about and to add some content in Blomap, the online social network I have just launched.
My friend is a very nice and alive girl, a gifted PR and a journalist working at RAI, the Italian public television.

First issues she met in Italy is the fact that Blomap is in English.

Actually –I answered– Blomap lets users choose the language of each of their posts.
But English seems to be an insurmountable barrier and I could not agree more since the big boom Facebook has had after its localisation and translation in several languages.

So translating the few and basic content of Blomap is becoming a priority.
I hope users would agree that leaving the possibility of browsing the content in several languages could stay as further opportunity to be exploited by the many polyglots in the world.

In addition to that my friend tried to help me by copying and pasting in Blomap a review picked up in another website.
First, she posted it as comment to a post about another restaurant.
Then, after my suggestion to post the information in the right place, she properly posted it as a review.
Fortunately I checked the content because I found it a copy of another review belonging to another website.

So I had to write a new review in her place and ask her to post only real, trusty, original and quality content.

Her answer to my suggestion was: ‘I posted the banner of the website of that restaurant on Blomap by purpose, because it is right and fair to quote it and insert it otherwise we make “hidden” advertising in an international website. Kiss, your friend’.

My reply:“Dear friend, it is not as you said.
A banner is an ad space not a text content itself.
The search engines ban your website, if you copy and past text from a website into another.

In addition to that we just benefit people or companies if we make free advertising for them. Nevertheless I would speak of or make information in a community, instead of ‘advertising’.

Advertisements, which will be posted on Blomap in the future to financially support the website, will be concentrated on real and quality content and facts.

Even if Blomap mainly provides microblogging, those short texts must be useful and trusty for the users.

Then “hidden” advertising is something different from what you said. It occurs when someone pays someone else to concealing advertise a product, when and where advertising is forbidden or when you should have paid someone else. For instance there are many cases of those “hidden” ads in TV movies.

My question is: why do you find ‘hidden’ ads concerning Blomap and think that your copying and pasting of content from a website into another, without any reference to your source, would keep us safe from that?

Apart from that, the Web and specifically the Social Media industry is revolutionising everything.
To be short, since the speech about could be very long, all Media are gradually converging in the Web and in Social Media.

We are moving from the information era to the interaction era.

Do you remember our lecturers at the faculty of Communication Sciences at La Sapienza University in Rome announcing the Information era in the far 1998–2000?

You, my friend, as a young person working in the information industry, could become a spokesperson of all of that, but before doing that you should understand all new processes and dynamics in depth, otherwise you could get confused as it happened when you approched Blomap.’

At the end of our conversation I wondered: is it that a repropose of the discussion between mainstream and online journalists and media?
However, I have other anecdotes about the Italian interaction era I will tell you soon about. I am sure you will find them interesting.

Affiliate Marketing is an entire chapter of Online Marketing.

Affilliate marketing systems consist of ads links or banner which are tracked by companies or agencies. The income is based on PPS (pay per sell) and PPC (pay per click). There are other possibilities but PPC and PPS are the most profitable.

Basically there are affiliate marketing agencies which provide affiliate marketing systems everyone can join, such as Zanox and Trade Doubler. Alternately some companies propose affiliate marketing systems anyone can join, Amazon or Ebay for example.

In addition to that there are internal affiliate marketing systems such as the one Facebook uses. Basically each Facebook member can advertise whatever he wants inside the community by clicking on the link “Advertise” and then by quickly and easily selecting some data to cross in order to define the affiliate marketing campaign: typology of people, location, keywords etc.

I used it to advertise the launch of my professional personal website and found it very expensive.

Nevertheless I’ll give it a go again to advertise my brand new social network next year.

Any question?

Disruptive technology delivers products which should not be compulsory technological products but just completely new products, breaking into the scene of new markets, being the turning point of life styles and practices.

Precisely, companies engaging in disruptive technology, are able to investigate these new markets and capture the niche of customers who are expecting and are in need of that disruptive technology. (source: The Innovator’s Dilemma, Christensen, Clayton M.).

From that point on, that technology has great possibilities to succeed in the case that the owner company is able to understand the laws which rule that technology and apply them.

Think about how many attempts at flight human beings made and how many times they died before being able to fly in airplanes transporting people and wares at high speed as is the case nowadays. Actually we had to understand the laws underneath, such as the law of gravity, in order to succeed in that disruptive technology (source: The Innovator’s Dilemma, Christensen, Clayton M.).

In addition to that understanding the kind of processes and practices to apply to the technology is essential. According to that small companies would have many more possibilities to succeed than big companies which would move as clumsily as elephants on disruptive technologies and as lightly as a butterfly on sustaining technologies which are existing products.

The reason for that is that big companies have developed efficient management, processes and practices and know their market of sustaining technologies to such an extent that they can easily measure their R.O.I.

On the other hand all these structured processes and practices do not find any application in disruptive technologies which need flexibility and cannot grow in existing measurable markets but in new explorable markets.

Given that, small companies actually have an intrinsic capability of developing and complying with disruptive technologies, evolving themselves together with the technology and the new markets, adapting to the new customers who are floating in a changeable state for a non determinable time.

Even better, customers’ behavior is going to be ever and ever changing. So technologies which will adapt constantly to the customers who will win.

Social media are that kind of disruptive technologies which are supposed to win more than others because of their complete adherence to customer interests. Actually, social media are made by people, by users.

The tools social media offers to users are meant to meet users’ needs for first hand information, interactivity, engagement, aggregation and further.

Several kinds of businesses are starting to be involved in social media because of that. E-commerce websites themselves are adapting their sales processes by involving users in the sales through web tools which let them discuss and rating products and retailers.

Apart from that, companies are wondering how to measure their investment on social media and are finding often no answers and results which can be comparable to those provided by investments on sustaining technologies.

In fact, social media are filling the gap in markets which have not been investigated so far and that makes Return On Investment far from being measured and analysed in the same ways as it is possible for sustaining technology.

Last but not least Social Media slips out steady rules and measurements because of the interactive nature it is made of which drawns a flexible and chameleon-like shape.

Nevertheless, measurements can be made.

It is all a matter of evolving the standard analysis methods and upgrading them to a flexible level much better at adapting to customers’ fickle behaviors.

Social Media triggers sales and revenue by driving an increase in reputation, notoriety, reciprocity, sense of efficacy, attachment to and need for a group.

After engaging in Social Media, website visits and social mentions multiply and revenues start slightly or considerably being boosted.

These impacts can be measured by crossing web statistics and revenue before and after Social Media campaigns.

Furthermore statistics would collect not only standard web stats but also data such as Twitter and Friendfeed followers, friends and fans on Facebook, Plurk, Diggs, Friendster, connections on Linkedin, Xing, Plaxo, blogs subscriptions, Posterous and Youtube subscription, comments on blog entries, link referrals, trackbacks and so on.

It is crucial to define new analysis methods and Olivier Blanchard by The Brand Builder defines Frequency, Reach and Yield as business metrics to measure Social Media. Watch out the video.
Business-oriented ROI for Social Media: F.R.Y. Metrics explained

Monitoring Social Media 09 will bring together leading brands, Social Media Monitoring experts and suppliers with PR & marketing professionals for a one-day conference in London on 17th November 2009. The first event of its kind in Europe, MSM 09 offers attendees a series of high-value talks, panel sessions and debates, with contributions from leading digital agencies and brands.

http://www.monitoring-social-media.com/

At MSM09 we will explore:

* The ROI of social media monitoring
* Innovations in reputation management
* Who controls social media data
* Free vs paid monitoring services
* Automated vs human sentiment detection
* How to identify and contact influencers
* The future of social media monitoring
* Examples & case studies