If you play any active part in Social Media where you live, you are bound to discover what I have discovered in my area. First thing is you will begin to discover is who may be your local Social Media Experts or Social Media Rockstars. Those are the names that always seem to be appearing in your twitter stream and re-tweeting and being re-tweeted. You see their names on Facebook and Foursquare etc., etc.

If you start peeling back a few layers you may also discover that a lot of the local Gurus’s are basically self-established through their own hype. In my area, there are always the usual suspects and the world seems to revolve around a few names. Once you start to peel back the layers, you may find a different story. I will tell you right now that it may leave you scratching your head.

Do a name search on these folks and find their blogs, their Facebook accounts and you may start to see a different picture.

Oh sure, they will proudly exclaim that they are at a lunch meeting with so and so working on a project. They will also tweet and Facebook messages that they will be at Friday night’s local tweet up. You get the idea. You start to think these select individuals are connected to the entire universe and you may begin to think that you are a nobody and have a long uphill battle to make a dent in the local Social Media scene. It’s too easy to be real and honest and to become a real Social Media Player in your city.

Don’t believe this for one second on 99% of these folks. I really like to search these people. I find their blogs, their Facebook, I follow the links they put out on Twitter. What you will most likely find is fluff. I rarely find true players in the game. It’s up to you to seperate these individuals with the true players in your community. Find the players and follow those people. When you discover the real players, follow them and watch what they do and don’t try to re-invent the wheel. Do what they do.

I have discovered that some of my local peeps who have high profiles haven’t updated their blogs in months. These are the same people who tweet SEO links and marketing links. It’s totally laughable. They do not practice what they preach. You will find many who do not have a strong Facebook presence and are almost always not social on their sites. I have also discovered that many work Regular Joe jobs 8 to 5. But they make it sound like they are handling huge client marketing promotions.

It’s easy to be real

If you want to make an impact in your local area in Social Media. Be honest and back up what you say. Be patient, it takes a while. A guy like me will soon discover if you are for real or if you are full of $hit. I’ll research the hell out of until I find out. Don’t think for a minute that if you decide to participate that you will not have people watching you and checking up on you.

Don’t act like you have big clients in one field only to be discovered that you have a full time job in an unrelated field. That basically makes you a liar if you carry on that way. I know damn well you are not heading up an advertising campaign at night while you are working retail in a dress shop by day.

The news partnership is described a little better at this page, Networked Journalism Project. My hyperlocal sites are one of 5 local sites selected by the Charlotte Observer to participate in this year long experiment. To say I was honored, would be an understatement. There are 5 newspapers across the country participating and funded for this joint venture between newspapers and hyperlocal bloggers.

The Charlotte Observer held a Social Media conference this weekend to a sold out audience and I was on the panel speaking about building community websites. It was a lot of fun and the questions from the audience were fast and furious. There is a lot of interest and the audience was quite diversified.

Of course I carried my iPod Nano 5th Generation and shot a clip of our closing session. One of the interesting things I noticed about the event was that I saw several local media celebrities attending and they were even a part of discussions in my workshop. The interest in Social Media at all levels is extremely high. I certainly have my own issues with the way so many people use Social Media and have written about it much to the chagrin of others. Since I have now officially spoken at a Social Media Conference, can I claim that I am a Social Media Guru now? Don’t laugh out loud Allyn & Josh & Griz.

2010 Bloggerlens.com

I like to use my personal Facebook for friends and people I actually know and have some sort of relationship with. I’ve not met everyone that I’m friends with but there is some sort of connection usually. I do not friend everyone who friends me either. On my personal Facebook I may post some photos of my family and Grandson and I don’t want everyone seeing them.

Some people don’t get it. Below is a recent Facebook message sent to me from a supposed friend. Notice I received her sales pitch and an invitation to view her website. She finally asked how I’ve been.

She could care less how I’ve been that’s obvious. I wonder how many of her other friends were pounded with the same message. I will have to un-friend her now and it’s too bad. She is a shallow, uncaring person hawking her products on me. I wouldn’t buy a piece of jewelry from her if she was the last salesperson on the face of the earth.

What would you do? Do you consider this acceptable from your friends on your personal Facebook page?

2010 Bloggerlens.com

My Final Traffic Update

This article and video were written and produced based on my opinion of what I call Social Media Hype. You may have a totally different opinion. I base mine on actual events that happened to me and my blog. Please join in the discussion whatever your viewpoint may be.

I thought I would announce the final results of my recent surge in Social Media traffic and non-Social Media traffic. Guess which one won? Anyone who is familiar with this site knows that I was recently posted over at Chris Brogan. I made a spoof video about all the hype and hoopla that was being made over the release of Chris’s “Trust Agent” book. To my surprise and delight, Chris posted the video. What a cool thing for Chris to do for me.

At the same time, Allyn Hane at BloggerIllustrated.net, Internet Marketing Video Blog made several spoof videos of A-list bloggers also. Allyn was mentioned on Grizzly Brears blog, Make Money Online For Beginners. I also have been receiving some traffic from another up and coming internet marketer, Lis Sowerbutts, Passive Income Online. She made mention of our video spoofs and I have received traffic from her. BTW, if you haven’t read Lis, I would go and check out her blog. I dig chicks with attitude.

Allyn received a huge surge in traffic from a non-Social Media blogger (Griz). I appreciated the fact that Chris posted my video, but my Social Media traffic results were disappointing to say the least when you consider the huge amount of so called social media subscribers Chris has. As someone new to internet marketing, I feel lucky to received such a quick and helpful education that I hope I will carry with me as I continue to work on internet marketing in various forms. After I was mentioned on Griz’s blog, my traffic also surged and has been steady ever since.

There is a huge lesson to be learned here in Social Media marketing. However, I’m not the teacher, only a student. I made a video presentation of my Social Media surge and I hope that you will enjoy it and I also hope that the stats will open your eyes and help you on your journey in internet marketing. Your Social Media strategy may deserve a second look if you are serious about traffic to your blog.

For those who may be interested in the technical aspect of the video, here is how I made the video. Everything is Apple Mac based. I first made the presentation using the Apple Keynote program. All of the slides, transitions and typewriter text was made in Keynote. Keynote is how Apple kicked PowerPoint’s rear end.

To embed the video clips in Keynote, I used a screen capture program for Mac’s called IShowU.

Once I finished the presentation, I exported the presentation as a QuickTime movie. This is a very cool feature of Keynote. You can turn a presentation into a movie.

Once I made the presentation into a QuickTime movie, I imported it into my Mac video editing software, Final Cut Express. In FCE, I tweaked the video and added my music etc. I made this particular video in 4:3 aspect instead of the usual 16:9. The process is not a quick process but it’s very flexible. If you can think it in your mind, there is a good chance you can reproduce it in video form with these applications I mentioned. It’s not hard, it just takes practice like everything else in life we do.

Music by the O’Jays.

2009 BloggerLens.com

The following video is the unfortunate result of too many beers and a silly idea. I should have been a good little soldier and sat at my computer re-tweeting the A-listers. I should have been on Facebook engaging my network. I should have been increasing the number of people I follow on Twitter. Yea right. A lot of good that will do you.

Instead, I sat drinking at my computer with my video editing software begging me to do something useless, trivial and of no value to the human race. Here is the result. I completely understand if anyone asks if I ever rode the short school bus wearing a helmet.

I imagined what it would have been like in the 80’s if we had Social Media back then. Don Johnson would have been the King of Social Media.

2009 BloggerLens.com