For a while last year it looked like we might lose  Delicious, the King of online bookmarking and my favorite curation tool, as owner Yahoo did some strategic re-arranging.  Delicious was bought by the founders of Youtube and is now rocking on as good as ever.

So what is Delicious?

Think about how you arrange files on your computer:  perhaps that MS Word document is filed in a sub-sub directory of my documents like  C:\….\MyDocuments\business\correspondence\john_smith_ltr.doc.  Delicious allows you to organize Internet content in the same way.   If you find a blog post you want to save, you simply paste the link into delicious, assign one or more keywords and the article is saved to a specific URL – for example:  http://delicious.com/joespake/socialmedia/  will take you to the articles I think are interesting enough to save.  There are lots of possibilities for sharing with this simple format, and as a bonus, Delicious lets you generate an RSS feed for the sub-directory.  Wanna subscribe to my social media saves? just go to http://www.delicious.com/v2/rss/joespake/socialmedia.   Watch this screencast to see how easy Delicious is to use.

And what does curation do for me?

Having significant information at your fingertips is important if you blog, speak, or are in any situation where you would want to share information.  You can use your curated items to archive your great work or the great work of others, and you can use the keywords to drill down to the most specific levels.  If you are selling Xwidgets as part of your inventory, you might have a keyword for Xwidgets where you curate the latest and greatest articles from the Web on that topic.  You could just forward the link (like my link above) to get your customer up to date and establish yourself as an expert.

The old saying “a picture’s worth 1000 words,”  has held true through the ages, yet many small business don’t see the real value of publishing pictures of their products and services.  Whether it’s a cleaning service, custom manufacturer, realtor, or provider of very specialized services, a picture of what you do, make or sell is almost always more appealing and memorable that a paragraph or more of descriptions.

Seeing what happens in a cotton gin is more interesting than reading about it

Flickr is the best online photo management and sharing application; and it’s free.  You can also upload videos and manage them in the same way as your photos.  Google has a long way to go with their photo system to catch up, but that’ a topic for another post.  I will leave it to you to explore Flickr’s simple interface.  You may even want to upgrade to the PRO version as you become a heavy user.  You can even make all your images private, and still use all the great Flickr management tools.

For me, Flickr’s best feature is Sharing.  Not only can you share individual pictures, galleries or slide shows to the major social media platforms but you can post directly to your blog/website, directly from Flickr. Simply link to your favorite blogging platform, Blogger, WordPress, etc. in the options, the locate a photo you want to add, and one click posts on the blog of your choice.  I seldom have to do anything with my Memphis photoblog,  except add keywords.  Posts come straight from Flickr.  Here’s an example  photo post to this blog.

This quick screencast will give you an idea of how easy this process is.

Whether you are a business person or an individual proud of your photography, a photo blog is a very effective way to showcase your work  and get your message out there in a visual medium; and Flickr makes the process a breeze.

Related articles

• Adding A Flickr Slideshow To Your Blog (everything.typepad.com)
• Quick & Easy Flickr Integration For Your WordPress Blog (pressography.com)

So you don’t think social media is such a big deal?  Watch this:

And then check this out from the “Shift Happens” series:

Now what’s that again?  Social media is a fad?  It’s for kids?  It’s a waste of time?

Recently I attended a brainstorming session sponsored by a local business to help the decision maker decide how to move forward with the organization’s implementation of Social Media.  The decision maker had little more that a conversational grasp of Twitter, Facebook, etc, and there he was at the table with the local SM literati. A conversation like that can quickly get esoterically out of hand, especially for those decision makers who are at the “you know something is happening but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?” stage.

This video will first have you ROTFL;  but you will go back and listen to the words and message again. Caution: Strong Language!

It seems that everyone who can figure out how to open a Facebook account or do a few Tweets is a social media expert these days, and if they want to bill at a higher rate, they are gurus.  Almost everyone  seems to be jumping on the bandwagon that’s running down the yellow brick road to a gold mine. It’s easy to jump on the bandwagon, but it takes a little more effort to book passage on the Cluetrain.

I am not criticizing Social Media consulting – I really believe that the Integration of Social Media into PR , Marketing and Advertising is vital to business. The question is which thought leader do you follow? I oftenre-read and  link to Geoff Livingston and Beth Harte’s Top 25 ways to tell if your social media expert is a carpetbagger.

There has been an interesting conversation on the RE.net about the “most influential” social media users in the real estate business. Wow, the “gurus” make lists of top Tweeters. The analysts make lists based on statistical data, and now Inman News is having a popularity contest (Oh please vote for me so my ego won’t be bruised any more than it has already been by not being included on the other lists). The big question is Who Cares?  Are there really no better ways of measuring credibility and competence than inclusion on a list?  If I were hiring a SM guru, or reading his/her posts, or considering buying his/her books, or advising a client on how to make the choice, I would refer back to Livingston and Harte’s 25 ways and other posts along the same theme, like this one from Terry Ellwood or this one I wrote a while back.

Now, write me a check for 5000 Euros and I will say adios.