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Wow, a lot of good articles this week in my Google Reader feed! It’s been very tough reducing the list to a reasonable length, but I managed it in the end – happy reading!

Is it Time to be Ditching Traditional Marketing? by Karen Skidmore
Karen argues something dear to my heart – that traditional marketing is still a very important part of the mix.

Leverage What You Have and Take Your Blog to the Next Level by Darren Rowse
Mr R. looks at what makes blogs grow.

Building a successful business blog by Jim Connolly
Discusses the often forgotten point that if you try and do everything yourself, the success of your blog will be limited to your expertise in a wide range of specialist areas.

No More Websites. Only Publishers by Mitch Joel
Mitch Joel looks at the need for businesses to rethink the role of their website

Social Media Misconceptions 2 : “I have profiles on all the main sites/networks, so I’m using social media” by Nick Tadd
Does exactly what it says on the tin in the title.

Should a Blog be Your Social Media Hub? by Jay Baer
Jay Baer looks at possible alternatives and ends up answering his question with a “yes”.

What Every Blogger Should Know About Design When Buying a Theme by Seth Godin
Getting a new design for your blog is both time consuming and expensive. Seth Godin looks at the key issues involved.

How to Be a More Relational Blogger [Tips for New and Established Bloggers] by Darren Rowse
More from ProBlogger, this time discussing the idea that a relational approach and community feel are still one central aspect of many successful blogs.

Wake Up! You’re a Blogger Not a Crackhead by Seth Godin
If the article was poor, I’d still have included it for the title. But it’s not. It exposes the danger of being adicted to blogging, and explores 3 areas of potential addiction.

Points of Contact by Chris Brogan
Make a very important point – we can have so many points of contact that we end up neglecting people.

Massive Traffic 101 by Court
There’s so much sense in what Court writes here and it is in the same spirit as Seth Godin’s post on “Crackheads”.

Other posts you might like:
Social Media Superstars’ Greatest Hits – Week 3
Social Media Superstars’ Greatest Hits – Week 2
That was the week in Social Media Blogging

One of the facts that gets quoted every now and then by people advising bloggers on how to write articles is that the top bloggers use the word “you” more often than “me” or “We/Our”. So I thought I’d take a look and see if this is true, or another Social Media Urban Myth.

As a starting point, I took the blogs of 8 of the top Social Media Bloggers and looked at their percentage use of “I”, “We”, “You” and “They”. In each case, I collected at least 5,000 words, which for most equates to between 6 and 8 articles.I know it’s not a very large sample of writers or words, but I wanted to see if any patterns emerged. And they did!

Louis Gray blogs more about developments in SM and emerging technologies, so I had thought that perhaps he would have used “me” more often, as he is often giving his opinion. But he still managed to use “you” more often than “I” and “We” combined

Chris Brogan uses the first person singular a lot in the sample tested but there’s a good reason for it – among the posts that I sampled were several explaining how he uses mind mapping, how he doesn’t use LinkedIn as he feels he should etc.. I’m going to go back and examine his more general articles to see the pattern there.

As can be seen from the table, all of the others use “you” almost twice as often as they use “I”, the exceptions being Seth Godin who uses “you” 3.5 times as often as he uses the word “I” and Karen Skidmore who uses it a whopping 8 times as much!. This is entirely consistent with SM articles being about engaging with other people and drawing them in. With the exception of self -disclosure articles of the type Chris Brogan has been writing recently, most of us would soon get bored with, and probably stop reading, writers who used “I” twice as much as they use “you”.

There’s a lot more I’m going to be analyzing, such as percentage of past, present and future orientated words, the percentage of nouns vs verbs etc

The conclusion? These people are some of the top in their field – anyone wanting to be up there with them needs to be looking at their writing style. The small words matter. You will find another article here that examines the subject in more detail, and announces a new service for writers.

Week 3 in the series – I had decided to try this for a month and see whether people found it useful. Next week is the last in the month – let me know if you enjoy the reviews and find them useful!

Social Media misconceptions: 1. I don’t have time. by Nick Tadd
English blogger Nick Tadd examines one of the main ‘excuses’ people raise for not getting involved in Social Media

Social Media Gurus – That Old Chestnut by Mitch Joel
Mitch Joel looks at the old cliche “who should own Social Media”; does it fall under the heading of digital marketing, does it ….? I’m not going to steal his thunder

How to tap into your blog visitors need for new information by Marko Saric
Marko’s premise is that you  should always be reminding people that you and your products exist, and you should allow them to spend time with the content and the value that you create.

4 Ways Bloggers Differ From Reporters by Jay Baer
His key premise is that bloggers’ influence is derived from their own ability and moxie, whereas journalists’ influence is in large measure derived via the outlet they represent.

Your Farmer List by Chris Brogan
No, Chris Brogan hasn’t gone agricultural! This post is about what he calls a “farmer list,” meaning the chores you’ve gotta do every day

How does the style of your writing need to differ between your blog, your brochure and your website? by Karen Skidmore
This article is all about considering the different platforms for your writing.  Knowing when to sell and when to give value.  And a blog is place where you will sell more by selling less!

Please stop saying social media marketing is free by Jason Cohen
A plea for a return to sanity and to not be seduced by the free nature of the tools; there is always an opportunity cost for the time involved, if nothing else!

The Key Factors to any Successful Product Launch by Alex of Blogussion
Blogussion e launched their first product recently and this article discusses some of the things they learned a lot from doing it. Some good tips for all of us who sell, or intend to sell, products online.

The Power of Uniqueness [19 Starting Points for Being a Unique Blogger] by Darren Rowse
The title of the article describes its theme – uniqueness, written in Sarren Rowse’s usual flowing style.

How to lose friends and tick off people on FaceBook by Scott Stratten
If I had an ‘Article of the Week’ award, this would be it. It will no doubt ruffle a few feathers and some may find its style edgy but it really does say what many people are thinking. And whilst the article is aimed at Facebook, the points made apply to all networking sites. Great article

In a recent Blog article, Mitch Joel argued that the new range of smart phones are less about being a phone and more about “A computer that is in every person’s hand that connects them to information and everyone else in the world.” This corroborates what Deni Kasrel said to me about a conversation she had had with an Apple Support employee about the iPhone was told “It’s really 10 percent a phone and 90 percent a computer.”

The iPhone, the Palm Pre, the latest HTC, the Nexus One are all, to a greater or lesser extent, powerful micro pcs. And people are racing to adopt, and then vociferously defend, their chosen device. But at what cost? Firstly, you are pretty much buying into a platform for life. For example, spend a few hundred (or more) pounds on Google apps and even if you fancy a change of phone 3 or 4 years later, you are unlikely to want to wave goodbye to all of that money and start again on a new platform. Is it really a great idea to tie yourself into one manufacturer like that?

The race seems to be on to include features on these smart phones that were cutting edge on PCs of only a few years ago:  the ability to multi-task; Google Maps (or something similar); fast processors; lean, stable and fast operating systems etc.. My question is: Do we really need all of this on a mobile phone? I’ve read all of the arguments about mobile communications being so important, and I agree, but don’t netbooks and small format laptops fulfill that function?

I can understand the benefits of push technology and being able to access your emails on a smart phone but once it comes to browsing websites and looking at images, the small screen on a smartphone is really limiting. Add in the problems for anyone who is long-sighted and it can be a recipe for frustration!

I am seriosuly considering going back to a phone that’s a phone, that is based on high quality sound and using my 13″ laptop for mobile computing – I almost always have it with me so why duplicate the technology? It will  avoid all of the synching across 3 machines that I hear people complaining about. It may also prove to be the most efficient way of managing my on-line social networks.

Go on, convince me I’m wrong!

Sometimes we can feel buried under the avalanche of blogs on SM issues. Below, I’ve detailed ten of the best that I’ve found from the last week, and listed them in no particular order – happy reading

Louis Gray on Blogging for Business, Social Media Sales, Strategy
Louis recently published three more short videos, including sales advice in the world of social media, how to launch a high quality business blog that gets traction amidst all the noise and three steps to a robust social media strategy.

Chris Brogan on How to Reach Out to Bloggers
Timeless advice form the author of ‘Trust Agents’ on how to connect with bloggers and get the word out about your product or service; how to find someone who’s interested in what your company is offering, and then share the pertinent details so that hopefully the blogger will write a decent story about you, maybe even include a few links; and how to get  a better return for your SM efforts.

Chris Brogan on The Soul of A New Business
Chris Brogan asks important questions that few businesses ever ask such as  What is the soul of your business? What resides at the center of all that you’re doing? What is the ecosystem that surrounds your business?

Marko Saric of How to Make my Blog.com – 36 favourite posts from 2009
There were lots of posts like this at the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010 and I like this one more than most, mainly because of the breadth of issues it covers. Well worth a read as is this post, that he wrote, about the  posts from other people  in 2009 that he found to be inspirational.

Darren Rowse of Problogger wrote this answer to those people who say that the only people who make money from blogging are those who sell material on how to make money blogging.
He uses his own experience to show that the statement isn’t true and it’s a well-argued post.

Steve Hodson of Shooting at Bubbles – I get mine back at all those slimy marketers on twitter
Annoyed at getting spam Tweets from “all the marketers and their following me just because I mentioned marketing in a message or a post here”, this post details Steve’s revenge – he set up a website to name and shame these marketers, called Twitter’s Marketing Hell. It will be interesting to see if the idea takes off.

Steve Hodson of Shooting at Bubbles was also responsible for making me laugh out loud with this post – This was almost too painful to read
I won’t spoil the fun, just read it and make sure you’re not drinking coffee at the same time!

Olivier Blanchard of the BrandBuilder Blog – wrote this blog on other Social Media absurdities.
Olivier Blanchard, whose slide show on Social Media ROI I posted earlier this week, was sent an e-mail offering him certification in Social Media! OK, the post is older than the last 7 days but creeps in as it is referred to in Steve Hodson’s post above. It goes to show that people are always inventing new scams.

Mitch Joel – What a website will be and Never Be
Author of one of my two favourite SM books of 2009 (Six Pixels of Separation), wrote this piece advocating the owning of your own online presence, building it and nurturing it and using the SM platforms to promote or extend the brand. Nothing particularly new in it, but it is well written and sums up the issues nicely.

Mitch Joel – The Google Phone
Unsurprisingly, there have been lots of posts on the Google Phone and I like Mitch’s the best, mainly because he takes a differrent line to many other writers. Whilst they are blogging about Google having released a rival to the iPhone, Mitch Joel argues that it’s about “A computer that is in every person’s hand that connects them to information and everyone else in the world.”

I’m sometimes asked to recommend a book on social media and social networking and thought I’d post a few ideas here; these are all books that I’ve read in the last 2 months!

Trust Agents – Chris Brogan, Julien Smith
This is in some ways similar to Penny’s book in that the focus is clearly on creating trust.  Because trust is key to building online reputations, the authors define those who understand the value of, and set out to create, trust as “trust agents.” It’s a mixture of the theoretical and the practical and is well worth a read, if only because it is written by authors with over 10 years of online media experience

That said, the checklist in appendix a is worth the price of the book alone, for those who are new to the topic or who what to make sure that they have covered everything.

It takes on an ambitious task, to unify the concepts of Personal Branding, Digital Marketing and Entrepreneurship, and achieves it in a clear, fun and provocative manner. Full of  case studies to illustrate the points he makes, this book offers a complete set of tools, tactics and insights to empower individuals to reach a global audience and consumer base with a few clicks of the mouse, and almost all of them for free.

Recommendations

So, my recommendations? I enjoyed all four and think people will benefit from reading any or all of them.And recommending books is always difficult as it’s so much a matter of personal preference and each of these books has much to offer.

However, if I had to make a recommendation, it would be to buy Mitch Joel’s book and if you want to add a semi-autobiographical account from a woman who’s been there, read Penny’s too. The get on the internet and watch Gary V’s videocasts and hop over to Chris Brogan’s blog (one of my favourite blogs) for a full set!