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Home Bases and Outposts - How I use Social Media in My Blogging

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it just feels messy.

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clarity

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the idea of the ‘Home Base’ and that of the ‘Outpost’.

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A home base is a place online that you own, that is your online ‘home’. For me I have two home bases

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using the word ’satellites’ to describe this but I think ‘outposts’ works better.

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for others an outpost could also include forums, other community sites and even the comments sections of other blogs.

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The outposts do drive some traffic back to the home base,

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have more to do with building the brand and influences of my blogs.

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I am somewhat new to social networking/social media (I am on Facebook and Twitter right now) but I can’t believe the success I’ve had in building exactly what you are talking about in this post – a community within a community of sorts. The outposts and home base for me have definitely been a two way stream – people that find me on Facebook and Twitter come to my site and vice versa. People are connecting through connecting through me. It’s an absolutely amazing thing to witness. I suppose because I am such a niche, it works in a different way than a more global blog??

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I’m trying to figure out how a ‘place blog’

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They do need some live chat rooms like the old AOL days

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it was simply too much information and there was simply no way I could follow through on all the tips coming from your blog!

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hindering my productivity.

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With twitter, it seems there’s a lot of shouting back and forth and it’s difficult to follow a stream of comments.

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I have often wondered what the hell I’m doing on some of the social media sites. This post helps me establish perspective and look at goals more closely.

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Social media marketing has a large amount of flexibility and with the increasing amount of niche social media sites soon I believe that every type of blog ones which may not fit in to the Digg market may fit in to their own niche social media market instead.

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Definitely a required tool for successful blogging these days.

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I think social media can be overwhelming as if you want to make friends it takes time.

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Although with Twitter this year I joined strictly as a trial to networking contacts for trying to blog (which is moving more toward article writing only.)

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I use the ‘home base’ idea

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I think a strategy has to be in place for it all to work out and fit.

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I wish I could think of a better way to show that these sites should be inside a strategy, not just links to random profiles.

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the home base and outposts should all be inside a town/city/community.

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for the bigger picture.

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with the WP-plugin my new posts get tweeted automatically.

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I use Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, Myspace, and of course Digg.

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I’ve always seen social media like the “tentacles” that pull in readers and friends from all corners of the net into your central “body”, or whatever you’re trying to promote.

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A lot of small drops will eventually fill a bucket.

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my “outposts” also include forums in my niche

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on message boards.

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my challenge is finding the time for social networking…does anyone have reasonable solution for this?

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add Mixx to the list

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Currently Digg will get you a lot more traffic, like StumbleUpon, than Mixx will. But if you are interested in a community where the conversations are really interesting, unlike Digg, then Mixx is the best place.

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Basically you just have to experiment with social media to find out the best ways to get that traffic to your blog. Trust me, if people from the social media site keep getting pointed back to your blog and they will sooner or later subscribe and become a religious reader of yours.

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squidoo and hubpages

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Web 2.0 is better because it allows you to interact with your readers / visitors, and you can build a strong community relationship with them, while normal feeder sites is to tap into search engine traffic only…

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Social media as a stand-alone activity may be quite time-consuming.

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This is because you are already so famous and your content gets ample exposure.

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A person who doesn’t have such a strong presence, who has other jobs to attend to, would find it extremely difficult to devote quality time to so many social media websites.

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There were blogs, comment sections, and online forums

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I would suggest, first use a definite platform (blogging — content generation and promotion), grow your brand, and as people begin to know you/your content, you start putting in time in other sorts of marketing platforms such as social media marketing. Otherwise, if you can afford, you should hire a social media marketing company or consultant for the job and completely focus on your work.

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I think social networks can be amazing tools, but they take a lot of time to develop and therefore are on the backburner for me right now.

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I really think a lot of the benefits of the various social media apps are over emphasized, with regards to generating website traffic (Blog or otherwise).

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sphere of influence centered around your home base

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One thing we need to remember is that it takes time and p-a-t-i-e-n-c-e when using social media to expand your network.

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Maybe we’ve gotten spoiled by the instant connectivity of all our devices, but actually connecting with people takes time.

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Despite that, I’ve got a pretty good base of people on Twitter. I wasn’t exactly aiming for it–I was using more of the “testing/experimenting/play” intentions. But I committed to it fully, and damned if it didn’t work in spite of me.

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To people just getting started, I’d go heavy on “experiment” and “listen.” Social media sites are different, and they move quickly. It’s like stepping into some crazy, rushing river, or being dropped in the middle of NYC with nothing but your native wit and a crappy map.

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Any thoughts on the best “mix” for investing time & effort into Home vs. Outposts? (particularly from a large brand perspective)? One of the things I struggle with, is recommending whether we spend more time creating content on our home site or more time interacting with others on “outposts” as it is difficult to justify resources (at least at my Big Co) to do both effectively.

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Social Media has one problem for small blogger getting small traffic – To get traffic from these site, the blogger requires a lot of followers that will be worth spending time so that the blogger receives traffic from these sites.

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Basically, it is the small bloggers that requires tips for traffic, so i think social bookmarking sites like digg, delicious, yahoo buzz, etc is a much better friend to small bloggers and sites like facebook, twitter, linkedin, etc are for bigger bloggers.

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Twitter, Digg, stumbleupon, linkedin, writerscafe.org, Facebook

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The submission side of social media takes a lot more work than the browsing side, and my young blog is learning that. Submitting a post to Digg outside peak hours has yielded little response, though I’ve found some success with StumbleUpon and Reddit.

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forums

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the relationships are typically closer there.

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90% of my traffic comes from Digg and Stumble.

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Without social media it would take one a long time to reach the multitude of contacts that one can reach with it.I really like they way you used the homebase,and outpost graph to show how it all works.

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I like the concept you use with the home base and the outpost. It brings to mind that to be successful at this social media you must be strategic and always working your plan

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What do you think about “dofollow” bookmarking sites

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This post reminds me of how disorganized and far behind I am in regards to some social media accounts. I haven’t even fully understood their interfaces yet.

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1. Learning

This could be rephrased as “figuring out what you are doing” and includes everything from learning how to build a website to learning more about your niche itself.

It includes the research that goes into creating a site or online presence of some kind, (starting with keyword research, choosing a domain name, etc) as well as study and research on Blogging, Internet Marketing, and all those millions of things that one can study and learn about (in millions of eBooks, blog posts, courses, etc.)

It includes the study of the technicalities – html, php, different types of software, and the like.

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We are always doing this, but I think in the beginning stages of a marketer’s life (or of the life of a particular niche) there is a lot more time spent on this, than there is later on.

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think you’re right about the eventual payoff of social media, but it sure is hard to see the big picture sometimes.

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I like the Home Base/Outposts line of thinking and it makes sense and will actually help me in terms of restructuring and fine tuning things that I want to do.

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I’ve been shying away from social media, mostly because I can’t shake the thought that I am wasting time that could be invested in writing, researching, reading other relevant blogs, and commenting to share ideas.

Perhaps I need to rethink that belief. Thanks.

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Everyday I learn so much about social media and the rabbit hole its created. I’m baffled by how much there is to experiment with and never run out of more goals to “accomplish” or things “to do” in order to be truly “effective” in this realm. Then I talk with a “real person” who hasn’t bothered to give any of this a second thought. We must really be from the future.

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we’ve been encouraging clients to think of social media properties as “Digital Outposts” so they can protect, fortify and build their brands in the social media sphere. For further reading, here’s a blog post from Niki Fielding which uses Digital Outposts as a framework for understanding social media marketing: http://dbesem.blogspot.com/2007/10/digital-outpostsa-framework-for-web-20.html

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