Quite some time ago I wrote an article on Twitter, blogging and Social Media in general and pointed out my e-book “How to Blog with Ease” about these topics.

Social Media platforms tend to constantly change their rules. I gave up on following the changes since my interests are digitalisation, marketing, style and design. Social Media Platforms are merely the tools to share my ideas and the resulting articles.

What I wrote about Hootsuite and Tweepi is no longer correct. Nowadays I find Hootsuite difficult to use and Tweepi shut down its doors some month ago to go live again. The same name with a very different service.

For the same reason the e-book is no longer online since the information about social media is no longer one hundred percent accurate. Still, most of the tools I speak about are still – at least in my mind – worthwhile and I also stick with the power of images.

At this moment I am building an online reference work with the tools I tested and recommend. Of course you will hear as soon as it is completed.

The Evergreens

Despite all these changes there are some “evergreens” to stick with.

Content is King

It has been emphasized many times and I still think it is true: content is king. Despite SEO and social media, if our content is dull or incorrect we will not reach the readers we are targeting. Personally, I write to share my ideas rather than pleasing the social media platforms.; although I use them of course . If I get comments to my articles I am very happy. But I never will write anything just to earn ten thousand likes or about something I do not believe in.

Newsletters

Publishers and bloggers cannot really control their readers. If our audience is fed up with us we might lose readers if we managed to entertain or teach them they might stay with us. Far be it from me to say that we should not at least try to make them stay by analysing why they read our writings and trying to deliver more of it; if we can.

Newsletters and blogs allow us to do so. Social media does not. Social media platforms use their own algorithm to decide what they will communicate to our followers and contacts. This system is constant subject to change. This even created a professions: SEO experts. I am not one of them. But if it is really important for your business you should hire one.

Find the right tone

You know that different subjects – hence a different audience – require different writing styles.

Some days ago I stumbled over an article about Professor Scott E. Fahlman and a computer scientist. He happens to be the inventor of emoticons. Already in 1982 – when pictures were yet to appear – he suggested to a bulletin board using emoticons in order to distinguish jokes from things that were not meant to be funny.

Originally probably invented for nerds, we not only use emoticons but extended them significantly.

Apparently, this is his original text:

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman
I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:
:-)
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use
:-(

Did we go nerdier or did the frequent use “de-nerd” emoticons?