I think it’s pretty simple.

Hard Work and Dedication

It’s unfair to just write someone off because they use the word expert in their title. I understand there are a lot of people claiming to be experts and they have ultimately tainted the title, but it’s still a fair title. Chris Brogan even wrote a post awhile ago discussing his criteria for a Social Media Expert and why he removed expert from his title on his “about” page.

What Is An Expert?

Being an expert in anything requires proper guidance and a lot of time. Some research by K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and Edward T. Cokely stated:

“.. even the most gifted performers need a minimum of ten years (or 10,000 hours) of intense training before they win international competitions. In some fields the apprenticeship is longer: It now takes most elite musicians 15 to 25 years of steady practice, on average, before they succeed at the international level.” – The Making of an Expert, p4.

Not just that, you also need to maintain a high level of expertise over time and deliver consistent positive results.

Luck also plays a large role as time and proper instruction cost money. Wealthier families are more likely to invest in their child’s schooling therefor logging their needed practice time early on in their lives.

I also think a large part of being an expert at something requires a certain curiosity and drive that not everyone possesses. Most people give up way before they get close to the number of hours needed to master anything.

So Are All These Social Media Gurus and Web Experts The Real Deal?

Well if you’re going to take the 10,000 hour rule literally, it’s very possible. This field is unique in that most of the true experts and pioneers are all somewhat  accessible via the Internet. This eliminates the luck component of the expert formula by creating access to needed information with little to no cost.

I have been making websites since 1999. Even if i had only spent 6 hours a day on my computer tinkering I would have reached my 10,000 hours within 5 years. Granted, some newer areas of interest haven’t even been around for 10 years, but aren’t these technologies mostly just advancements of existing ones. When the game changes the expert should be on top of their game.

So go ahead and call yourself an expert if you think you’ve put in your time. I wont criticize you, just back it up with excellence.

- Photo by akakumo

Facebook seems to be the king of social media for college students. One could easily argue that the demographics of the service support this. So why should they also care about Twitter?

Twitter and Facebook seem to fit the mold of Private vs Public. Facebook is a great means of keeping up with friends and family while sharing links, photos and seemingly random thoughts. The hump most new Twitterers (aka Tweeps) have to get over is

Why should I care about the seemingly random thoughts of complete strangers?

To me, its the same reason why you would go out to a bar over staying home with friends … you are interested in meeting new people. Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media sites out there and is the best medium for conversing with new like minded individuals. This mentality coincides with one of Twitter’s most useful functions. Tapping into the buzz of things that interest us. Twitter’s search capabilities in collaboration with it’s complete simplicity make it the perfect platform for crowd sourcing thoughts, ideas, questions and answers.

For example: If one were interested in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) they could follow the most popular MMA tweeps or even the MMA tweeps with the most interesting things to say. You could also set up a Twitter search for all mentions of MMA so you can jump in on the discussions and get the latest MMA news in REAL TIME.

You see, it’s not about the random thoughts of others but the thoughts of others that are relevant to you.

So what kinds of things should you be Tweeting?

That is completely up to you but the best way to learn is to watch others you enjoy reading. The most resourceful way to use Twitter is to reply and communicate with others. Some people like to use Twitter to show off their own accomplishments (like the completion of a new blog post or the creation of a new piece of art). Others use Twitter to support their business by proving their expertise through helping others in need. I myself use it mostly to talk with others I’ve met through Twitter … simple enough. Here is a list of 25 Twitter tips for college students.

Twitter is whatever you make of it and can be extremely powerful despite its apparent simplicity. The best way to learn about it is to just dive in. It’s always nice to know someone too, so feel free to reach out to me (@jondbishop ) and I’ll do my best to guide you in the right direction to be sure you get the most out of it.

- Photo by tanakawho

We tread the line between opinion and judgment a lot in social media. Some are quick to call out others as being “too judgmental” when their own beliefs or opinions are being challenged. There’s no point in getting all bent out of shape over something as seemingly mundane as text on a screen, especially when we are putting our thoughts out there to be judged in the first place. Yet there is still some question as to how one should present themselves in a way that is both unaggressive and adds to the conversation.

The only difference between a judgment and an opinion is the existence of evidence to support an opinion therefore making it final or absolute. There is nothing wrong with a judgment of this type, however, the problem arises when we judge others in an aggressive tone.

Opinion: You might get more readers if you improved on the quality of your writing.
Judgement: You are not getting a lot of readers because of the quality of your writing.
Aggressive Judgement: Your content sucks so you are not getting any readers.

Opinions usually leave room for error in your thought process therefore leaving the recipient a little more at ease. Sometimes it’s as easy as adding words like might, i think, probably, maybe, etc. It seems kind of silly, but in a space where it’s so hard to express tone, it’s important to express these emotions through words.

So, in my opinion, the line between opinion and judgment is when we use an aggressive, absolute tone while expressing one’s thoughts. I personally don’t have a problem with judgments because I can see them for what they are … opinions expressed as facts. For the rest of the world, accept the fact that you might not know everything and leave some room for doubt. Doubt is ultimately what pushes us to explore further into our minds, and is there anything wrong with that?

- Photo by ★ spunkinator

One of my posts about Facebook privacy was featured on Brazen Careerist and I think it brought forth some interesting discussion. There are those among us who believe my generation is a little out of hand with their Facebook usage. That our party pics and crazy wall post antics could prevent us from getting choice jobs in the future or even affect our status with our current employers. We even hear horror stories of people losing jobs over Facebook and private events being made public. But are these problems directly related to Facebook or could they have been avoided altogether? Yes I do think we should be aware of the content we are making public however I think it is becoming less of a problem than it was in the past.
First you need to look at the status of you work/life balance. Do you live to work or do you work to live. Furthermore are you happy with your life and with your job. Now would you be happy at a job that monitored your Facebook profile for proof that you were on the straight and narrow. I personally would not. I also don’t believe that the way I present myself in a social environment should have any bearing on my professional capabilities.

I think Saad Handoo summed it up quite nicely in a comment to my post on Brazen Careerist. He says:

Are we to assume that our managers cant disassociate our personal lives from the professionalism we keep in the workplace? Any rational being knows that the behavior you put on at a house party will be dramatically different from that of a work setting.

He goes on in a reply saying that, in the near future, Gen-Y will be the ones making the hiring decisions and future generations might have less to worry about.

Something Rebecca Thorman points out in one of her own video posts is that Facebook and other social media sites are a great place to look back and see how you’ve evolved throughout the years. This is one of the main reasons I keep my Facebook the way it is. It’s my ultimate journal of the last 5 years of my life that I am willing, and excited, to share with the rest of the world. Yes I am drinking in some of the pictures and yes some of the conversations are a little out of whack, but it’s part of who I am because it’s part of who I was.

Finally, I want to share a post with you from earlier last year by David Eaves that provides a little more insight on how Gen-Y approaches Facebook based on their history with the platform. We are very aware of who is looking at what we are posting and we might not care us much as you think we should.

It seems like a majority of Gen-Y still doesn’t understand how to maintain their public image. Just because you’ve created a LinkedIn account for your boss to check out, does not mean he’s going to overlook your party pics on Facebook. We’re smarter than this.

So what am I getting at? Well, some people say you should remove all the party pics and immature comments from your social media profiles but I think that’s a bit much. I joined Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family first and foremost. I don’t want to ruin a perfectly good channel for immature communications when I want it.

So learn to control it!

Look into setting up groups and privacy settings so that only the people you want can see the information you want them to see. Think twice about the most appropriate place to complain about how you lost your phone in a toilet last night … then be sure only the right people will see the photos leading up to you losing your phone.

There is no reason why you cant have a normal social life and use Facebook like you did back in college while at the same time maintaining a clean public image. The lines are slowly blurring between personal and business relations but it’s up to you to make sure that line still exists to some degree.

It’s your life, take control.

- Photo by rpongsaj

One problem I see in social media is the lack of transparency behind our thoughts and ideas. It’s completely understandable because we are dealing with small amounts of information of which we need to extrapolate the entire message. You can’t properly gauge the tone of someones voice or even measure their response by any reasonable standard. So instead, we jump to conclusions and get defensive when someone disagrees with us.

We are all guilty of this including myself.

This is why it is extremely important to be receptive to all the information coming at you and try your best to understand it. Some platforms work better than others because of the tone they set and the amount of conversation actually happening. For example; video sites like UStream and Viddler are much more transparent than Twitter because you get a sense of tone and enough time to explain yourself.

Social media is a melting pot of personality!

What one person sees as an aggressive remark could simply be a light-hearted opinion to another. We all come from different background and we all have our own ideas as to what is socially responsible. However, if we are going to be putting ourselves out there we need to just put on a happy face and do our best to follow along. I mean, just by putting ourselves out there we are subjecting ourselves to the random judgments and opinions of others, so is there ever a “wrong answer”? Everything is open for debate in this space, as it should be.

We are all just trying to communicate and there is no wrong way of going about it. So instead of pointing out each others wrongdoings, lets work harder to learn and grow together. That’s why I am in this space and that’s why I am reaching out to you.

- Photo by kcdsTM

I set up my Facebook account in September of 2004. I remember everyone was talking about it. The timing was perfect as it was my first time out on my own and I was desperate to meet people. It instantly became the go to solution to find out who that cute girl in my math class was or which frat house was having the biggest party.

Back then it wasn’t about fan pages, advertisements or Facebook apps …. it was about enabling connections. Facebook will always be sacred in my mind as my “platform for friends”. I never did warm up to Facebook apps or fan pages and continue to use it as I always have.

I guess my point is, social media is about enabling relationships; whether it’s through the sharing of videos and images or the exchange of thoughts through conversations. I probably would have made just as many friends as I did in college without Facebook, I just think Facebook moved the relationships along faster.

Now looking forward, I don’t see the way I use social media changing. Whether I am meeting new people for personal or business reasons, social media will drive the relationships further and faster.

So what are you doing here?

Funny how everyone is all up in arms about Twitter’s most recent changes.

Small Settings Update

We’ve updated the Notices section of Settings to better reflect how folks are using Twitter regarding replies. Based on usage patterns and feedback, we’ve learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow—it’s a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today’s update removes this undesirable and confusing option.

The Importance of Discovery

Spotting new folks in tweets is an interesting way to check out new profiles and find new people to follow. Despite this update, you’ll still see mentions or references linking to people you don’t follow. For example, you’ll continue to see, “Ev meeting with @biz about work stuff” even if you don’t follow @biz. We’ll be introducing better ways to discover and follow interesting accounts as we release more features in this space.

So I’m still trying to figure out what the big deal is. Part of my normal Twitter routine was to scan through my friend stream for original thoughts, ideas and links to which I could reply to. One thing I rarely did was jump in on conversations already happening unless I was following all parties because:

1. I wasn’t seeing the whole conversation in my stream
2. It would take too much effort to track down the entire conversation

So for me this new change is great. It’s easier to find other tweeps to converse with without sorting through all the seemingly one sided conversations.

Furthermore, for all the people complaining about losing their method of finding new tweeps to follow, there are PLENTY of ways to find new followers. Twitter even went so far as to say they would be implementing new methods of finding like minded tweeps in the near future.

We’ll be introducing better ways to discover and follow interesting accounts as we release more features in this space.

So once again, what’s the big deal?

ReTweeting is the act of re-posting someones tweet on Twitter by copying their message and adding the prefix “RT @username“. The idea is that you are passing on a tweet or a link that you like and think your followers would also enjoy. It’s also a great way of letting someone know you liked what they had to say.

I guess my only problem is that, at times, the retweets seem to take over my friend stream. I’m also starting to see a lot of people get lazy with their tweets and retweet other people only to fill up space.

I can’t say I don’t like the idea of retweeting because I do it myself sometimes. I just think we abuse it a bit. This is why I think it would be nice if a mind shift took place where people start sharing information along with their own ideas about it.

This is why I made CommenTwitter. There were plenty of plugins and buttons to help Tweet the title of your post along with a link. In other words, there were plenty of ways to contribute to the noise already building up on Twitter. But why weren’t there any plugins that helped fuel the conversation about your blog outside of their comments. Some of the best ideas and conversations can be found in the comments of a good blog post, so why not bring those discussions to Twitter. This is just one way I think we can bring more value to our tweets when we’re all essentially talking about the same thing.

This is actually something I think Tweetworks does a great job of as well. Rather then take the lazy mans way out and just retweet a good post, you can actually jump into a threaded conversation about that post, ON TWITTER.

So in the end, I won’t be signing any petitions to ask Twitter to add a retweet button to it’s interface. I will also refrain from using retweet buttons when I can. I will however keep mine on my blog because I know it won’t die down any time soon. I will also continue to work on CommenTwitter so that it is more appealing to a larger audience and easier to use.

- Photo by Jon R Bishop

I’ve made this mistake in the past and it may have cost me a few readers. People get trigger happy with their plugins and readers can’t get to the content.

You need to remember that the content is the main reason someone might be reading your blog at any one point in time. If your blog takes 5 minutes to load there is a good chance they are going to bail.

I’ve set up a development blog for the purpose of testing my blogs speed when adding and updating plugins. The goal is to keep the load time down to seconds. This way I know my blog can handle the load when getting a rush of new readers from a social bookmarking site or high profile twitterer.

My basic rule of thumb is if the plugin isn’t beneficial to the reader I don’t use it. I have since removed all back links to blog directories and any traffic boosting programs. I even got rid of sociable because it added a half a second load time to the page.

There’s nothing I need to put in my sidebar I can’t create a new page for and its not worth the hassle.

So please use plugins that direct me to your best content and focus on helping me, the reader.

- Photo by Editor B

Looking around the Twittersphere these days begs the question “How much of people’s daily Twittering is done by Robots”?

Well the answer is Too Much.

Why do I not like Auto-DMs/replies?

I like to use Twitter as a means of connecting with other people in real time. When I get a DM or a reply, I hop on my computer and reply back. It takes very little time and shows I care about the person connecting and conversing with me. Now imagine my frustration when I reply to 30+ direct messages and get no responses. What happens is people set these things up and then just ‘let them do all work’.

The whole auto-DM epidemic has actually resulted in me sending less DMs and I scrutinize every incoming tweet to judge its authenticity.

So in the end, if you don’t have time to reply to every new follower, then don’t. I’d rather get to know you through your public tweets than receive an empty welcome.

Why do I not like follow schemes?

You have most likely seen it several times in your public twitter stream

“Joe Shmoe has a crazy idea. 19,530 new twitter followers in 30 days? Check it out …“.

The truth is that this is just a Twitter pyramid scheme that encourages spam. I have spoken with a a lot of other level headed tweeps who agree that this program is spammy.

I personally manually approve every new follower before following back to keep my Twitter stream optimized at all times. I find new tweeps in relevant Twitter directories and via tweeps I am already following. Why would I be interested in a bunch of random new followers.

But that’s just how I tweet. My main quarrel is the spam. Please cut it out and note I will not follow you back if I see tweetergetter in your stream.

- Photo by atp_tyreseus

The other day I was thinking that it would be great if Twitter could be used as a communications platform for discussions around blog posts. I mean we already do this but lack organization. We all know organization isn’t Twitter’s strong suit.

Ultimately I think it would be beneficial if everyone tweeted their blog comments. Currently you’ll see things like:

“Commenting on Jon Bishop’s blog” or “Reading This Awesome New Post”

Every once and awhile someone will actually provide value when Tweeting about one of my posts … but this is rare. I think more people need to start speaking up as it is only through the general consensus of the greater population that we can come to the most logical solution.

So this is where Commentwitter comes in. Ultimately my goal is to give the commenter the option of sending their comment to twitter and allowing people to follow that blogs comments both in the blog and in twitter. The main reason for this is to generate a buzz and encourage commenting on peoples blogs. It will also improve the quality and value of people’s tweets revolving around blog posts.

So here it is, Version 1.0 of Commentwitter.

I think one of the things holding back Twitter from going “mainstream” is the fact that it’s so open and public. I was browsing through some blogs the other day and found a comment that read:

… Twitter is like a crowded room where everyone is yelling over each other …

This seems to be most people’s first impression unless they have someone to sit them down and show them how conversations flow.

For some reason we’ve come to believe that our relationships should spawn from real life introductions. Even after that there is the formality of managing acquaintances, friends and family. Twitter kind of breaks all the rules of traditional friendship. One could jump into any conversation at any time, in real time. We all share a single common bond, an interest in social media.

Once people can change their mindset from “sharing their lives with strangers” to “sharing their lives with new friends”, the barrier will be broken and we move on to our next obstacle.

What is the next obstacle? Complete transparency.

I think this will come in the form of video, geolocal microblog posts or a combination of the two. It’s easy to hide behind an avatar and 140 characters. You can take time to sculpt your tweet, spell check, rewrite, etc. Video brings a whole different level of honesty to the table that can only be described as near complete transparency. Facial expressions, tone and how you articulate yourself transcend static text.

It may be awhile before the masses can communicate at this level via the web …. but why should it be any different than real life?

- Photo by austrini

You hear a lot about how to get new followers and become part of the conversation on Twitter. I want to focus a little on some ways you can go above and beyond your normal tweeting routine.

Here are 3 things you can add to your normal Twitter routine that can help deepen the experience and add more value to your conversations.

1) Reply to replies to let people know they’ve been heard (communicate)

In a perfect world, everyone would reply to everyone else’s tweets. When you think about how Twitter works and the number of followers that are actually online at any one point, you can see how this wouldn’t work.

Now imagine a real life scenario where you make a comment and someone responds however you don’t acknowledge their response. It can be demoralizing. If we can’t improve the quality of the conversation on Twitter overall, we can at least make an effort to make people feel included. At times this might not be possible due to the number of replies or simply that you are away from Twitter when a response is received but it’s the effort that counts.

2) Choose a follower and learn something about them (discover)

A lot of people join Twitter with selfish motives and secretly optimize their Twitter “strategy” to drive more traffic to their site. I have no problem with this as long as their strategy includes providing valuable content to the community.

Now what if we all took the time to learn something new about one of our followers every day. It’s the first step to creating real relationships beyond casual conversation. I think sometimes people forget that a big part of social media is it’s relationships.

3) See how your network interacts outside of twitter via Brightkite, Seesmic, FriendFeed, etc. (explore)

I’m becoming a big fan of video posts. There’s a certain level of honesty behind seeing someone’s facial expressions as they share their thoughts and ideas. I can’t guarantee that any one service is going to become big but I can say that all will have an affect on social media as we move forward. Seesmic has been making moves as well as sites like Brighkite and Tweetworks. So if the conversation on Twitter isn’t enough for you, why not enrich the conversation with some video, pictures or even a location.

- Photo by Poldavo (Alex)

I started blogging back in college. Bishport.com was my repository for all things Macromedia Flash related. At the time I was teaching an interactive media class at UMass Amherst. I tried to take what I learned as a teacher to my readers.

Over time I became a regular in forums like Kirupa and Actionscript.org, all the while slowly getting hits to my blog. It was in one of these forums that I began to realize that the world had a bad interpretation of Flash’s potential in the future of the internet. This was largely due to a rising amount of “SEO gurus” putting flash down every chance they got. I decided to write a couple of blog posts addressing the Flash/SEO problems so many people thought they were having. That post is my second most popular post to date.

My most popular blog post is the source code to a cool flame effect I made awhile back. I started to see the benefit of giving things out for free to get attention. At the time I had no actual goals accept that it felt kind of good to get recognition for a lot of my hard work.

Then one day I was approached by a marketing company do to some flash work. The project went without a hitch and discussions of a full time job started coming up. With little to no previous experience in this type of work environment, my application was in jeopardy. However, I was able to land the job on a trial bases because of the portfolio I had created on my blog.

Six months later I had been reading about how social media could be used as another communication channel for businesses. I had always believed this was an obvious progression and eventually shared my excitement with the rest of my company. A couple months and several blog posts later we started my company’s blog and adopted a whole social media strategy. I’ve gone from Flash programmer to Internet Marketing Specialist in under one year.

Then I met the 20 Something Bloggers community, a whole different reason to blog with a whole new bunch of friends. Blogging was hard at first because none of my friends could understand it. Now I’ve got a community of people just like me, the job I always wanted and a roommate who can blog with the best of them.

I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon. I love showing people how blogging can change their life. I’m currently trying to bring my family with me. My father is catching on better than my mom and my sister is old school with her MySpace blogs. If they finally catch on I’ll have the perfect trifecta of communities on the web; family, friends and business.

I wrote about how to use search.twitter.com to find contests and giveaways. Well because of that very post I am half way to winning my very own iPhone 3G and a year supply of chocolate.

I received a phone call from Newtree’s PR department about a week ago informing me that I was one of the finalists for the contest. This totally caught me off guard but I had secretly been hoping my story might stick out. The contest was pretty simple:

Inspired by the popularity of cell phone text novels in Japan, this short story contest required that entries be submitted via cell phone text message. Creative writers with dexterous thumbs were asked to incorporate all 11 NEWTREE Chocolate flavors in a short story of no more than 1,500 words. The judging panel has selected the following top ten finalists in the Gr8 Am. Txt Stry Contest. The grand prize winner will be announced October 13, 2008. – Newtree

Now they have announced a small side contest. The People’s Choice awards. If you think my story is the best (or if you just think I’m really cool) please go vote for me at http://www.newtree.com/contest.php.

So without further adieu… here is my story:

Ten miles to go and I’m falling to my knees. All i want is to stop the crave. I would beg for forgiveness, but I’m not sorry. The pleasure is worth this cocoon life has entrapped me in. Eight more miles and I’m getting week. Six miles and I’m longing for the vigor my last victim provided. Four miles and I’m starting to fade. Two more miles and my mind is lost in the tranquility starvation embodies. One more mile …. will I make it? Suddenly my veins begin to pump as the sexy smell of chocolate causes me to blush. I rejoicein a feast of tiny chocolate men. One meal was all it took to refresh my mind body and soul. Now off to the next “Little Chocolate Men Convention” to help renew me once again.

Isn’t that exciting. It’s obviously about chocolate eating vampires that travel from chocolate men convention to chocolate men convention to stay alive. I thought it was clever at the time of creation and still do.

So please support me on this endeavour and vote for me.