Social Media

Social media. StumbleUpon. Engagement. Social indicators. Digg. Reddit. Community building. Delicious. YouTube. Voting. Avatars.

I know. It's all you've been hearing for two years and its giving you a headache. But what the hell does it really mean and how can you take advantage of it? Welcome to our social media blog category page. The place that's filled with all social media, all the time, and nothing more.

According to recent studies, social media spend is on the rise this year. Companies have heard the buzzwords and are looking to social media to establish credibility, authority and prominence on the Web through blogging, social networks, social news sites, Twitter, and the whole social realm. But with so many different options and avenues available to you, where do you start?

You start right here.

In this section we'll show you how to set your goals, find the influencers and brand evangelists in your niche, help you enter the conversation, and most importantly, give you the tools you need to set and reach your goals. Because as powerful as social media is, it can only help you if you know how to report and measure it.

Here are our favorite resources on social media while we work to build up Outspoken's own content:

If you just can't wait, contact us today to hear about our social media services and how we can help your company achieve big things right now.

Calling All Bets: Who Will Win The Location Wars?

March 11, 2010

We’re gonna have us a good old-fashioned showdown down in Austin next week! Guns will be drawn, intimidation will set in and only one man will survive to walk away with the glory. And then, of course, there’s that whole SXSW thing going on. But that’s just the backdrop! For many, all [...]

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Personal Branding & Finding Your Naked Superhero

March 9, 2010

The week before we trekked off to SMX West to bring you the best best liveblogging coverage in the land (I’m biased), I had an incredible opportunity to guestblog on Copyblogger about what belly dancing taught me about personal branding. In that post, I listed off a number of things that I feel are [...]

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A Twittervention! What If There Was No Twitter?

February 23, 2010

I love Twitter. And, obviously, lots of other people love Twitter, too.
There was a coincidental Twitter love fest yesterday when both Scott Stratten and DJ Waldow wrote posts about how Twitter has enriched their lives and how it’s caused all this great “stuff” to happen to them. I get it. I feel lucky to [...]

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5 Ways We Could Improve Social Media Together

February 22, 2010

It’s time, folks. It’s time to start demanding more from social media and working toward improving this thing together. Because right now we’re all floating in a boring sea of mediocrity and “look at me!”, and it’s really not pretty.  It’s not also not particularly effective.
Eighteen months ago it was okay to keep on with [...]

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Why You Should Embrace Public Criticism

February 12, 2010

I’ve been watching some Favorites partake in an interesting discussion the past few weeks. It’s all centered around whether there’s too much public criticism on the Web. And while it’s somewhat amusing to listen to people publicly criticize others for publicly criticizing I’d thought I’d hop in to the conversation. Because, to be honest, [...]

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When Does Social ‘Aggregation’ Become ‘Stealing’?

February 9, 2010

[Bear with me. This isn’t really about Google. I promise.]
So, last week I accused Michael Gray of being off his crazy pills when he accused Google of stealing content and hijacking traffic by showing a business’ hour and review information in the SERPs. Michael and I don’t always agree but I typically ‘get’ [...]

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Why I Do Business with Socially-Savvy Companies

February 5, 2010

I received a phone call from a sweet older man a few weeks ago. He called because he was upset about Twitter and wanted to talk about it. I made myself a cup of hot chocolate, plopped on the couch and told him to let me have it. And he did. For almost [...]

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5 Ingredients For Going Viral (Or Catching A Cold)

January 27, 2010

A few weeks back I wrote a post about what to ask a copywriter during the hiring process. That post was aimed at business owners who didn’t have the resources to write their own content and would prefer to outsource it. But not everyone falls into that category. Some businesses prefer to write [...]

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Twitter Debuts Twitter Local Trends

January 22, 2010

Want something sexy for your Friday? How about Twitter Local Trends?

That’s what my Twitter feed look like about half an hour ago. If you’re not seeing it, don’t worry. According to Twitter’s Alex McCauley (@anm), Local Trends is it’s being rolled out to a small subset of users. As I was among the last to [...]

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Cool Or Not Cool: FourSquare Divides The Web

January 19, 2010

I’ve spent the past three days with elevated blood pressure, shaking hands and having nightmares about my friends checking in and out of new locations and cluttering up my Twitter feed. People can’t stop talking about how FourSquare is changing the world and I’m afraid I might hurt myself. All of a sudden [...]

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Fail: Why Hanes Should Fire Their SMO Company

January 12, 2010

You can try and plan for success. You can do your homework, lay the groundwork and do your best to light the spark that will set the whole thing ablaze. However, sometimes beautiful things (and not so beautiful things) just happen. And you can either watch them happen from afar or you can throw [...]

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How Are You Measuring Your Community?

January 4, 2010

It feels like I’ve written this a lot over the past few weeks, but if you weren’t tracking and measuring social media and your community efforts in 2009 – you need to get on that. Because it’s not rainbows and butterflies and sparkles.  Community building is about dollars. More specifically, it’s about putting those [...]

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Why Twitter’s New Retweet Feature Sucks

November 18, 2009

Let’s play a game. On board?
Pretend PubCon never ended (man up, liver!). You’re still in Vegas. You’re having fun. You’re dancing. You’re partaking in some adult beverages. It’s 5 in the morning when you finally decide to stumble back to your hotel room to pass out. Groggy, with a headache, [...]

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Does Your CEO Know What You’re Doing? Does Everyone?

November 16, 2009

You just looked over your shoulder and had a mini panic attack, didn’t you? It’s okay. Your secret’s safe with me. Back to your cubicle porn.
But really, does your CEO know what you’re doing in social media? What about the rest of the organization? Do they get it or would they look at me [...]

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Having “The Talk” with Staff, Social Media Style

October 27, 2009

Listen, it doesn’t matter if your company plans on getting actively involved in social media or if you’re just gonna sit on the sidelines. It doesn’t matter whether you have employees specifically tasked with engaging and listening or if you prefer to stick your head in the sand. It doesn’t matter if you love social [...]

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Twitter Won’t Make You Suck Less. Ask Comcast

October 21, 2009

I giggled when I read TechCrunch this morning. I just couldn’t help it. Here’s why.
There are A LOT of businesses trying to elbow their way into social media right now. We get people contacting us every day asking for social media and ORM strategies to help put out the fires that ignite around them. [...]

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Creating Your Social Media Identity

September 11, 2009

Back in May, I wrote a post about creating your social media plan. And to date, I think it still stands as one of the most useful posts we’ve been able to provide for readers and clients. But I think it’s missing something really important. And I’m sorry for that.
No one will argue that it’s [...]

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What Is Social Media?

September 9, 2009

I was going through my feedreader this morning and found Gwenbell had posted this video over at her blog. I watched it and sat there mesmerized for four minutes and 22 seconds. Now it’s your turn. Give it a watch and try not to let your jaw gape open the whole [...]

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Are You Measuring Your Social Media ROI?

September 1, 2009

Did you know Matt McGee recaps the best search marketing posts of the month on his blog? He does. And they’re awesome. And if wasn’t for his effort, I never would have seen Mack Collier’s post that asks if we’re too worried about finding the ROI of social media. And that would have [...]

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Web Communities, Rainbows & Butterflies

August 31, 2009

There was a great piece written by Mark Schaefer this morning about the monetization of Chris Brogan. Of course, it’s not really about Chris. It’s about people “like” Chris, the bloggy-type people earning a living. The title could have easily been The Monetization of Heather Armstrong. After all, she ‘bullied’ herself a couple of washing [...]

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If There Could Only Be One: Twitter or Facebook?

August 27, 2009

Pop quiz, Hot Shot. There’s a bomb on a bus. You’re a small business and you only have the resources to invest in one social network. Which do you choose: Twitter or Facebook. What do you do? What do you do?
Is it even an option? You flippin’ choose Twitter.
I was reading an interesting [...]

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Playing in the Sandbox

August 24, 2009

The social industry is one that is full of contradiction, opposing advice and best practices that can be obsolete in a month. Thus the best practitioners in this industry should be experimenting, creating, and thinking about better ways to implement the tools that have been created.
An interesting dynamic has developed amongst these practitioners/thought leaders: One [...]

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Wemen Suck at Social Media

August 19, 2009

Lazy Rae Hoffman is goofing off again, this time thousands of miles away in Dublin, Ireland. She took her Lisa with her, and sent Rhea into the hills on a quest to find her family (check her Facebook page for pictures). That leaves me this awesome opportunity to plaster my own message all over the [...]

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It’s Not the Size That Matters, It’s How You Use It

August 17, 2009

Herro folks! I’m Rebecca Kelley, and I’m here to kick-start guest blogging week at Outspoken Media. For those of you who aren’t familiar with me, I’m the Director of Social Media and blog manager for 10e20, the awesomest social media marketing company you can find in that big ol’ Internet playground (we usually hang out [...]

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Ignoring Social Media Makes You Mute, Not Invisible

August 4, 2009

I realized that a lot of yesterday’s post about being provocative really had to do with fear. It was about the actions companies take because they’re afraid of upsetting the status quo, they’re afraid to be different, and most of all, they’re afraid of being called out and attacked. And to lots [...]

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Being Provocative On The Internetz

August 3, 2009

My friend Stuart Foster wrote about the downside of being provocative today. If you haven’t read it, you should. Because as more companies decide to engage in social media and in the blogosphere, the points he brings up become increasingly more important.
If we’re being honest, he mentions a lot of things that I’ve personally been [...]

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When Social Media Becomes A Weapon

July 28, 2009

Let me just get this out of the way now: I totally told you so.
Earlier this month we all met Dave Carroll. Dave was a wannabe musician who felt he was wronged by United Airlines and created a series of videos to tell the world about it. And the videos were a hit. [...]

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Monitoring Social Media Metrics

June 26, 2009
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Lisa’s out of town for Canada Day, so I get the keys to the blog! I also have the keys to her home, so stick around and maybe I’ll post embarrassing pictures from her fridge.
A couple weeks back, Lisa showed us how to make a social media plan and I wanted to dive a [...]

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Creating Your Social Media Plan

May 19, 2009
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If you enter into social media without a plan, you will fail. Period.
All the hours you spent will be wasted, you will receive no traffic bump, there will be no engagement, no one will care and you will learn nothing. Except maybe that you’re an idiot and that you should have listened to me when [...]

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Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, In Life & Social Media

April 6, 2009
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As companies dive deeper into social media, as Community Manager job descriptions are being created and employees are becoming “spokespeople” for the company they work for, we’re being forced to ask a hard, somewhat controversial question: Who owns an employee’s social media connections?
When you hire someone to tweet for your company, to evangelize your brand [...]

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Do You Trust Your Brand to Ghosts?

April 3, 2009
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It really has been a busy few weeks of travel for the girls of Outspoken Media. To be honest, I’m still going through my liveblogging notes from PubCon Austin and SES New York in hopes of digesting the information overload. And with so many different sessions, so many different speakers and so many different [...]

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What Coke Knows About Social Media That You Don’t

March 16, 2009
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I’ll make this quick.
I told myself I wasn’t blogging today. I love you all, but liveblogging PubCon has left me completely swamped. But then I came across an article in AdAge about Coca-Cola and how two brand evangelists (and Coke’s reaction to them) brought Coke a world of attention. And as I read [...]

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How Not To Monetize Twitter

February 24, 2009
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Sweet Jesus. Here we go again. And it’s all Twitter’s fault.
In case you were too busy to notice (or care), Twitter quietly gave us all a ‘gift’ last month called Suggested Users. It was a handy little screen at the end of its registration process that helps newbie Twitters find familiar faces to start following. [...]

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