This has made me think about my social media strategy. The truth is, I don’t really have one. When this blog started in 2009, the strategy was to produce via this medium and draw interest and attention back to this page. Since then, I’ve joined twitter, created a tumble log, joined linked in and various other services.

I’m now forced to think about how I spend my time on these networks and which ones I chose to contribute to the most. The problem is that they all seem worthwhile and enjoyable. So I will have to prioritise. This is how I think I will do it.

My blog – this blog

This blog will be the space most serious to me. As I pay money to keep this domain every year and have the url printed on my business card, I may as well keep this in good order. I haven’t written here consistently. There are two reasons for this. One is that I’ve been distracted with less meaningful social media services. The other reason is that I’d rather have well thought out posts on this blog, which means that I don’t often have interesting material to share here or it takes some time to write and edit everything in a decent manner. This blog will however become my most important internet presence.

Twitter

Twitter has been getting a lot of criticism lately. Poor quality topics, too many spammers, too many rants etc etc. If you reduce your stream and make good use of lists, this shouldn’t really be a problem. One thing I like about twitter is the instant access to it through mobile phones. Whenever there’s a big story, you’re sure to find opinions and links to articles for any important issue. While I enjoy twitter, I will probably tweet less. If I have something important to say, I’ll now have a good think about it and do the issue justice by writing an article for it. It will end up on twitter anyway through an automatic blog post link.

Tumblr

A great idea at the time. “I’ll just use tumblr for all the youtube videos and quotes that don’t necessarily belong on my serious style blog”. Since the emergence of google buzz and now google plus, I think tumblr has less appeal to me. It takes time away from blog writing and lately, I’m short on informal things to publish. Between twitter and google plus, I think I have this type of publishing covered.

Linkedin

Every now and then I log into Linkedin, make a few changes and then log out. I haven’t given up on linkedin, I think it’s a great presence to have but I’m not exactly there everyday and interacting with it. My time on linkedin is very low at this point and I think I will continue with the same level of engagement.

Google Buzz

I think buzz is approaching the end of it’s life cycle. I did like that both my blog and tumble log got published on my google buzz profile and therefore shared among a more tech savvy crowd. However, I think the cheap and lazy re-publishing model is being less favoured with google plus. This of course encourages users to create unique and meaningful content from within google plus rather than just bombard your material into peoples’ streams. I will stop contributing to google buzz except for the odd photo that I just have to share (instead of sharing photos through twitter) and the automatic blog posts that I have set up.

Google plus

This service will only become meaningful for me if all of my friends (yes, all, I don’t have many) start using it in a genuine manner. If this doesn’t occur then it will follow the fate of my twitter stream, full of interesting people I don’t know who sometimes upload really random things.

Conclusion

In summary my social media strategy is this. I will work hard on this blog. I will continue to use twitter for small comments in between blogging and to take in the vibe of my network. I will wait and see how google plus unfolds. If google plus is successful then I will probably spend less time on twitter and this blog to engage with it. I hope to check back in a few months to see exactly how things pan out.

I like the service for 3 reasons:

1) Easy access with little effort

2) Simple to learn and no frills design

3) Adequate compatibility for different publishing mediums (at least in my experience)

The fact that Buzz lives inside your gmail inbox is fantastic. After I’ve checked my emails, Buzz is just one click away. It’s just a matter of opening up the Buzz pane and you can quickly scroll over recent activity. A much simpler task than viewing your RSS reader. And just that one step more convenient than viewing your twitter account.

Another bonus is the simplistic design that Buzz has. No skins, themes, confusing colours. No multiple columns, boxes, side menus either. Now I’m not a facebook user but I have seen the interface, it’s actually part of the reason why I haven’t signed up. Just by looking at the facebook home page it speaks out to you: “EXCESS TIME CONSUMER” or “PROCRASTINATE HERE, YOU WON’T LEAVE IN HOURS”.

Buzz was quite easy to learn, much to do with the fact that it doesn’t do all that much. BUT THAT’S GOOD! Don’t turn it into a Drupal admin page.

The integration with social media publishing tools. I like the fact that youtube links automatically get embedded. I can share a photo from my picasa album, links to websites retrieves images from the site to display. I can send my blog posts and tumblr entries through. Buzz makes it easy to express myself and my interests. I like the fact that you can have “shorter than blog posts, longer than twitter entries”. In this case, it looks a bit like a stripped down version of tumblr, although I think Buzz is more fluid and connected with larger audiences. It’s an interaction rather than a viewing service.

Buzz’s Limitations

• Not so much limitations but things I would like to see.
• The possibility to log in without gmail. I can go to youtube.com and log in without being in gmail. Same goes for picasa, reader and calendar.
• Having the opportunity log in separately would be nice to have.
• Hide replies to a particular Buzz
• Hide people’s twitter streams, without having to block that person entirely. It would be nice to filter this so as to get that person’s more meaningful entries.
• A separate window for viewing a list of your followers. At the moment I have like 60 followers who I don’t know. I am checking there profile one by one but this takes time. Make it easy to view a list in one page and then be able to drop down a list of their recent activity in a fast sort of way.

I can’t think of any more limitations. I know some people are complaining that they don’t use gmail and feel left out. I’m sure they didn’t mind having to fill out forms when they signed onto facebook, myspace, linkedin, youtube etc. Get another email or google account and start exploring. Heaps of google users have more than one google account. Twitter made you sign up to use their service, you need to sign up to Buzz too.

I’m sure google will start to add more things to Buzz. I think they’ve thought this one out. It may seemed rushed to some but I think it came at a good time.

What else do users like about Buzz?