STATUS: Yes, I’m still alive!
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? WHITE FLAG (acoustic version) by Dido
Travesty I know! It’s been more than a month since I blogged. If you are missing me, be sure to check out my Facebook page where I am posting regularly.
Here’s the scoop. We are in the midst of doing a whole website redesign and the plan is to integrate the entire blog into the new site.
I’m a bit excited as it will have all our social media fully integrated into it (Sara’s twitter and FB. My FB and blog and whatever else might come down the pike in the future. I’m not particularly wed to pinterest or tumblr but I definitely have my eye on other things that are catching the public interest.)
So thanks for your patience as we transition. I haven’t been blogging regularly to mitigate the content transfer.
I’ve also being toying with making my FB status updates more like blog posts. I get that there are space limitations but heck, that might be good given my current workload. FB is easier to do on the fly or with just a short window of time available.
If you have an opinion, ideas to suggest, upcoming social media that should be on our radar, I’m open to hearing all of it. Leave me a comment!
Please don’t dump the blog in favor of Facebook. I don’t have and will never have a Facebook account. I’d hate to lose one of my favorite blogs!
>>I’ve also being toying with making my FB status updates more like blog posts.<< Absolutely do not do this. I can go on and on about why that is a really bad idea, but to summarize, you want Facebook to drive content to your website not have your website drive content to Facebook. You may not have thought that is what you were going to do , but that’s the unintended consequence of using Facebook this way in the long term. You want to optimize for SEO and almighty RSS feeds, both of which you severely truncate by using Facebook that way. If you have a beer next time you are visiting Seattle I can give you an hour to Skype explain the underlying workings of these social media options as it relates to audiences. I’ve been meaning to make a blog post on this for months but ginormous editorial letters consume my free time.
Ditto what Anon said. I don’t have any plans to join FB.
I migrated my blog from blogger into my personal website. One of the best things I’ve ever done! I’m sure you’ll it enjoy it after the transition!
Kristin, I’d suggest you post a link on FB directing folks to your website whenever you have a new post, rather than posting it directly to FB. I also tweet the link to new blog posts, and find this sends a lot of traffic my way. Can’t wait to see your new look!
Please do not move your posts to facebook. Like the above comment, I don’t have and never plan on having a FB account. I follow your blog via RSS.
There are many people who are not on facebook and you as the blog author will miss out on interacting with these readers when you move from a blog to facebook as we cannot comment.
So glad you’ll still be blogging. It’s easier for me to find your blog posts here than on Facebook. I don’t get on there as much and with so many friends posting, I think it’d be easy to miss it. Though I think it’d be okay to link the post on Facebook.
Also I hope you’ll continue your Friday vlog series. I really learned a lot from it.
I’ve missed your blogs, but I’d like to add my two cents to the others. I don’t like Facebook and very rarely visit my page. I never go to other’s pages.
I hope you will maintain a blog outside of Facebook. I don’t use Facebook and never will.
I use FB but it’s not blog friendly aside from linking to a blog post. As long as you make the blog on your site RSS friendly, or blogger powered, most people should be happy
Agree with Teagan Marie. Google+ is also a good social medium to consider–FB can be clunky, and Google plays nicely with code.
Good luck with the redesign–we’re doing one at my library too–a lot to consider, and think about!
Looking at these comments makes me warm and fuzzy. Here I thought I was the only one around who had no use for Facebook.
Kristin, it’s great to see a post from you again. Moving the blog to the web site is a wonderful plan, but please do rethink your idea of replacing blog posts with Facebook. Even one blog post a week would be better than “Facebooking” everything. Just my opinion, of course, but it does look like I’m not the only one who feels this way.
Knowing that you’d be intentionally writing status updates as blog posts changes my perspective a litte. But, I have to say, if I happened on an agent using their facebook statuses as blog posts, I’d think that they didn’t quite understand the point of a status update, and that would send up a red flag.
I’ll read your posts wherever they may be : )
Kristen, when I was in high school FaceBook was all the rage. Now, almost no one I know uses FaceBook, and my little sister and brother, who are in high school now, do not use facebook (though they have accounts) and only a few of their friends use it. I’m not sure what the next social media trend will be, but I think facebook is eventually going to fall away like myspace (always exist but not really used).
I think the reason is because it’s so commercial. Everyone is trying to sell you something on facebook now and adds are everywhere! It’s no longer a place to hang out.
It’s still a decent place to post your personal pictures, but that’s about it.
In other words, don’t quit your blog!
Best of luck with your redesign. I would agree with what many others commented. I would post links to your blog occassionally from facebook, but use your facebook more for little updates, thoughts, ideas, resources and conversation with people who join your page. Facebook is a great place for small conversations and polls.
Thank you for the update.
The question becomes how your social media integrates with your new website. If a post to Twitter or Facebook feed into your blogroll then you won’t suffer from an SEO perspective. If it feeds into a widget within your website, then none of that content exists on your website and you lose that SEO exposure. While that won’t necessarily be a loss for twitter, your blog is a major driving force for Nelson Literary being listed as a relevant search result. If your blog posts then stop and are replaced with a non-searchable Facebook feed, you weaken your positioning.
Just want to agree that the Facebook trend is going the way of “marketing” and more businesses are signing up and, as that happens, individuals are stepping away, spending less time there.
Hear! Hear! (or Here! Here! – not sure which is correct) about that ‘no Facebook’ sentiment.
I was appalled when I discovered that Facebook had “filled in” all my personal information (such as where I graduated from school) as I never, ever post that information or blog about that information or anything. I found it disturbing that they would (1) know that information and (2) have the balls to post it without permission.
I think generally I’d rather have my blog somewhere where I have control of it, and not Facebook, who constantly change their privacy policies and terms of use.
I’m not generally against facebook, and a lot of people I know do use it. I think it’s neat as an extra way to stay in touch with the people who want to read your blog and know about your agency. However, when it comes down to it, you have no control over how your content is going to be displayed, and who gets to see it, or where on their page it shows up, etc.
Also, I think Anthony up there makes an excellent point about directing traffic towards facebook and not your own page. I love the blog in a blog format, and if it were integrated into your website, all the better. I don’t think facebook is the way to go…
I have a FB acct I visit once a month or so, mainly to post photos for relatives. However, your work would be totally lost on FB – it is impossible to ‘follow’ a story or discussion thread on FB as the ratio of flotsam to harvest is so overwhelmingly bad.
An RSS feed notifies me of your new blog posts – 100% hit ratio. On FB, the equivalent is so cluttered with crap that you’d quickly vanish from my world.
Agree with many others. I’ve never had a facebook account and don’t want to ever have one. So if that is the way the blog goes then I will miss out on all your wonderful words of wisdom.
I’ve seen a few people doing these bloglike posts on facebook and it’s really annoying. If it’s a short paragraph that’s one thing. But anything longer tends to get clicked as “hide from my feed.”
Looking forward to see how you put it all together.
I hope you keep the blog running. While I do use facebook, I find it more confusing and distracting than reading a blog because of all the other social things that are going on.