How I Use Social Media

While working the @CruiseDeals Twitter account looking for new followers I ran across @JanetEngel, Sales Director for Holland America Line. Janet was excited to learn about our depth of involvement in travel social media and invited me to join her new Facebook group, Social Media for Travel Industry Professionals.

Her group is relatively new and I wanted to contribute right away, so I jumped into the discussion forum to answer a question she posed, “How are you using social media currently?” Here’s my answer.

How do I use social media? Yikes…is there enough room here to list it all?

Blogging: I blog professionally, personally and entertainmentally. Yes that’s a word. I just made it up right there. I use both WordPress (http://lyellpetersen.wordpress.com) and Blogger. I blog to create a broad base of content for others to refer to to learn more about me.

Micro-blogging: I have an account at almost every micro-blog out there, but Twitter is the hub. Any place I can cross-post to from Twitter, I will. In fact, Twitter is my central hub for all things social media. (@93octane) I use Tweetdeck for my main account, and Twhirl for the rest. I cannot even begin to overstate the power and value of Twitter to me both personally and professionally, in dollar value and in social capital. Twitter is my pulse.

Sharing: I use Flickr, YouTube, Tumblr and Posterous (http://93octane.posterous.com) to curate a lot of content I find relevant. Posterous is my current obsession as it is so easy to curate with, and it cross-posts to the most places. I cross-post to multiple places because I want to make myself accessible to the broadest audience I can reach. I don’t want to force someone to meet me in MY place if they’re more comfortable in THEIR place. I’ll just go to their place. (There’s a huge lesson in that.)

Professional: LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/lyellpetersen) and Plaxo. I don’t bother with Plaxo much, but I like how Chelle is using it. I am involved in quite a few LinkedIn groups, but I haven’t yet derived tangible value from that. I’m going to put Facebook here too as I use it the same way Chelle does…mashing personal and professional there.

Online Brand Reputation Management, both Personal and Professional: Google never forgets. Use social media to your advantage. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Ask me.

People: Yes, “people.” There’s no better way to derive real value from social media than actually meeting the people you engage with. I get away from the Interwebs as often as I can to meet people in my networks. I attend or conduct “Tweetups” (meetups of Twitter users) on average once a week.

Next on the horizon: Blog commenting. @tdavidson, an exceptionally brilliant individual, introduced me to Backtype (.com). Backtype collects all the comments I make on most blogs. Disqus does this too. It allows me to find and subscribe to other’s comment streams as well. Reading content someone pushes out via blogging is one way to learn about that person. Reading the comments they push back is another good way to learn, plus uncover new blogs.

And I haven’t even got to all the ancillary services like last.fm, digg, delicious, friendfeed, myspace, url shorteners, other image and video platforms, etc., etc., etc.

Seems like I’m a real social media junkie, doesn’t it? Well, I am, and willfully so. Participation builds experience, knowledge and social capital. But more that that, it builds community. And the power and value of community is missed or misunderstood by so many people and companies who are plunging into the social media waters.

Feel free to connect with me at any of the places I talked about. You can find me by my name, my brand: “93octane” or my email address: lyell [at] 93octane [dot] com. I’m looking forward to meeting you.