Dr. CK Lin | Productivity. Innovation. Entrepreneur Profiles

Managing Your Social Life via Apps

So you have your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Myspace.

Do you check them all every day?

Are there some sites you end up neglecting?

With the help of social aggregators, you can manage your social life more effectively.

The following aggregators have been designed to do just that:
• Atomkeep: designed to sync all your profile information among multiple social networks.
• Digsby: involves instant messaging, e-mail, and social networks. It integrates social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and LinkedIn with a newsfeed and alerts.
• FriendBinder: Works by adding all your social networks on your FriendBinder profile and all updates appear. You can also update your Twitter and Facebook statuses as well.
• FriendFeed: From Netflix to Twitter, this social network site allows you to receive updates from a large number of sites, and also lets you subscribe to other users’ feeds.
The verdict according to CNET? FriendFeed and FriendBinder are the top two social aggregate picks.

The overall concept is great, manage all your social profiles in one spot, communicate better, etc.

However is it too much? Are social networking aggregators too overwhelming?

Some say yes, others swear by them.

Worst case, manually manage your social profiles, however now there are alternative solutions.

Social Media Fears Among Corporate Execs

While social media networking has its obvious perks when it comes to connecting with the masses, spreading your message, and branding, there are potential hindrances that lie below the surface.

These impediments are a cause for concern among bigwigs in the corporate world, especially in regards to losing control over their company’s marketing message according to a recent ZDNet article.

Where does this fear come from? The fact that people listen to what the community has to say, not necessarily the company is what’s scaring employers.

The old saying goes, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” but how true is this statement in today’s social media-ruled world?

Here are CEOs’ top 5 fears regarding social media marketing according to ZDNET:

1) Negative banter: what to do if your company is mentioned negatively on the internet? Listen and respond to your costumers’ needs. If your consumers are complaining, pay attention.

2) Negative online video spoofs: The best response is no response in this case, getting angry only adds more ammo to the fire.

3) Masses of Angry online community members: Listen to their problems, and fix them. If there are that many unhappy consumers, there is an underlying quandary.

4) Loss of control over the work force: Hold your employees accountable, encourage social media usage in the office so that they become online company representatives. Members of the work force have been finding ways to distract themselves for years, whether it be AOL, AIM, MySpace or Facebook. Tale as old as time.

5) Harmful effects on company reputation: create social media guidelines so that employees do not shed negative attention on the company through their individual profiles. Seek to achieve corporate objectives, and protect your image.

While these ideas may seem simple, and merely require some damage control, the fact that these fears have arisen show how much of an impact social media now has in both the corporate world and our personal worlds.

By positively incorporating social media into our daily lives, we can create better images for ourselves, and also for our respective employers.

How to Attract Traffic to Your Blog: The Eternal Question

There really is no question about it, blogging is a learning process for all involved.

With every post, I strive to drive more traffic to the site, capture readers, and up the number of subscribers.

What works, what doesn’t?

From trial and error, here is what I am quickly discovering in regards to successfully bringing in readers:

• This might seem obvious, but blog about what’s interesting, you are not necessarily trying to be the first one to break the news, but simply writing in an engaging manner.

• Blog about articles that are ahead of the curve: your goal is to blog about a problem that people will be looking for answers to.

• Add a unique twist to your blog: query top bloggers, ask questions, add the “so what?” factor to your blog.

The next step is to actually encompass all these main aspects in every blog you post.

I try, but every blogger knows that it is challenging.

It’s also extremely important to have a keen sense of what’s newsworthy, and (if you’re lucky) having some sort of access to an inside source about the latest buzz.

I have attempted to establish where writing sources fall for interest blogging:

• pre-curve:

topics that have begun to be mentioned on Twitter, Digg, Technorati
publications such as Forbes, Top 40 Lists
conferences, real time responses about topics

• peak of curve:

hot topics on Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo Buzz
Google Zeitgeist’s top searches

• post-curve:

topics people are no longer interested in tweeting, facebooking about
“old news”

Finding the topics that readers will search for is nothing short of an art.

Another important aspect of blogging in general: link-backs. While in my experience I can not say that this will surely act as a traffic-generator, you are still recognizing that what you are blogging about came from another source, and then crediting them.

I am more than open to suggestions as well, if there are other key aspects to a successful blog I would love to hear YOUR feedback.

As the reader, your opinion is the more important because if you are not interested, who will be?

Internet self-awareness

We all know that the human brain is able to process information, and then transmit it out.

This is also what the Internet does.

But can we add a sort of consciousness to the Internet that would emulate the mind?

If so, the Internet would constantly strive to be better at what it does, like it would literally have a brain.

What would the difference be on our lives? What is the outlook for humanity?

Francis Heylighen from the Free University of Brussels states that “we probably would not notice a whole lot of a difference, initially,” and that this is dependent on Internet trends.

Moreover, Internet evolution is specifically dependent on social media networking. Where social media networking goes in the future will directly affect how smart the internet becomes.

Thus, at this point it looks like the Internet’s potential abilities rely on the path social media takes.

Will sites like Facebook make the Internet more human?

Sounds like we’ll know some time within the next decade.

Facebook on iPhone by dreamspower

Facebook’s Negative Effects: Why Your GPA Might Plummet

According to a recent study conducted by researchers at Ohio State University, students who use Facebook on a daily basis do worse in school.

Researchers report that grades could drop a whole letter.

These findings will be presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association by Aryn Karpinski.

The study shows that if a person spends more time on Facebook, then they will spend less time studying.

“Every generation has its distractions, but I think Facebook is a unique phenomenon.”

The problem with this argument, however, is that the control group that “did not use Facebook” is arguably not as socially inclined to begin with.

Is this study fair?

More importantly, is GPA really all that important when everything’s all said and done?

Author Daniel Goleman argues no.

In his 1995 book titled “Emotional Intelligence,” he questions the concept of conventional intelligence by stating that it is too narrow, and not a true indicator of a person’s potential for success.

One important aspect of emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and understand other people’s emotions, and then reacting accordingly.

This, Goleman states, is how competence should be measured.

Does Facebook lower your GPA? Does an increase in social activity hinder your academic performance?

It’s possible, however, that perhaps the real argument is whether GPA is a clear indicator of your abilities to begin with.

Shouldn’t someone who is skilled at networking and connecting with others be regarded higher than someone who lacks those skills, but has a higher GPA?

Thus the hole in Ohio State’s hypothesis arises.

And I will continue my daily Facebook status updates without shame.