I’ve been experimenting with the viral power of tools like paper.li
The service’s goal is to present the best links and stories from people you follow on Twitter, or around a #hashtag or search or list.
Gaming the system would never work.. as you really don’t get much out of the few dynamic links… but it’s been fun to see what works, what get’s picked up and what people are looking for using paper.li and other services like it
Here’s on of dozens I was featured in today. GaryFPatton’s S-M-A-R-T Tips
That’s my Healthy Author promotion with a link to my blog and the cover of “Cut Your Health Care Costs Now” by Brandi Funk as the top story on many of the paper.li papers today.
At first, I discounted the importance of this. I get a tweet mention from the person who search included me and asked the founders of paper.li “Does anyone read these?”
I was thinking that some would create the daily paper and not even bother to read their own each day. I was wrong. The one pictured above had be retweeted 50 times when I got their shortly after it was released. I’ve seen others with a tweet number over 100.
I still haven’t cracked the code on what get these “papers” shared.. and frankly am not totally convinced those are live views. I know that far less than 50 will ever click through to my post.
When I asked other users whether anyone read, I got responses from some with local editions, targeted segmentation and loyal followings. My guess is that this is a growing trend. We don’t have time to read everything, so we go to the people who assemble things well.. even though the paper itself is http://bestsellerauthors.com/healthydone by software, someone had to pick who to follow or the keywords searched.
Which brings me to WHAT get included.
1. Photos
2. Links
3. Relevance
I’ve had dozens of links to posts picked up, likely more if you scroll down past the few that make the “first page” shown here. The FEW that get the most traction have had all 3 traits and never when I tried to get included.
How important will paper.li, et al become? We don’t know, but I since sharing relevant content, with photos and links works in every system or site, I will keep finding and sharing the best stuff I can.
Here’s all the slide from a presentation on Facebook integration for a WordPress blog.
Great references for the do-it-yourself user or to share with your tech team.
I’m following @wpbeginner and suggest you do that too
December 31st, 2008
2009 is only hours away. Time to tweet so love to my followers.
I’m giving away some gifts tomorrow, January 1st 2009 via Twitter.
Like most of our Twitter projects, there are no rules when we started this. About a week ago, someone offered me a piece of artwork to give to my 5000th follower.
I had done the milestone follower bit a few times before. Usually without any warning.. I’d grab number 600 or number 2000 from the email notices Twitter sends, and send out some love via Twitter.
Most of the time, there no “gift”.. just tweet from me, comments on blogs, and a bit of promotion to help them gain some new followers.
It was so much fun, I started doing it all the time.. like “who needs a reason?” <grin>
So when the idea came up for the 5000th follower, my first reaction was that I did not want to create a rush of new followers just for the number. Instead, I decided that I’d use the occasion to give away MORE GIFTS.
This morning I tweeted that I needed some gifts. Response has been huge. There are some fabulous books and “real world” items and lots of digital products and even some services.
I’ve been doing give away cross promotions for new best seller books over at ZeroCostPromotions.com for years. I know this works. We’ve seen business deals for tens of thousands of dollars come from the connections made by partners and had dozens of best seller books in the process. Giving stuff away build reciprocity and great relationships.
Next step will be to sort through them and figure out how to give them away. Most likely, you’ll be seeing tweets on January 1st announcing it. Maybe “9 prizes for 2009″ as the theme.
What can we learn from this experience?
- People are willing to give. I didn’t promise to pay, or to make them money. People just like to jump on board then there is a fun promotion
- You can’t plan social media from the top down.. It’s not going the way I envisioned. It’s better and the only limit is how much time I can spend arranging the gifts
- You can connect and build a relationship quick. Tweeps contributed within seconds and you can be sure that I’m not going to forget them soon (nor will the winners)
Subscribe to this blog, follow me on Twitter and watch my twitter stream and the hash tag#Happy09 for more on the Happy New Year Gift giveaway
@WarrenWhitlock
I’ve been experimenting with the viral power of tools like paper.li