There are tons people in the social media scene who talk a lot about “community”… and there are a quiet few who work hard at building sustainable online communities. Joshua Dorkin is an independent online publisher and community manager in Denver, Colorado – who runs the real estate investing community BiggerPockets.com.

Josh shares tips for building an online community and tells how he grew the site to almost 50,000 members:

Please tell us about yourself and your online community?

“I’m an online publisher and real estate investor in Denver, CO. Five years ago I started out in real estate investing… I and was looking for a great resource to help me find the tools and info I needed to help me with my business. I couldn’t find any site that fit my needs, so I decided to start building my own.

Joshua Dorkin supports his family by running an online social community from home.

I began to build the site while working my full-time job as a teacher. Soon after launching our forum, people began to participate… I immediately realized then that the site could become more than just a hobby site for my own personal needs. I spent all my free time coding the site and expanding the directory of resources, and soon launched our blog. Eventually, I hired my first coder and began to really start building the site into what it is today – a full-featured social network, with tools and applications targeted to real estate investors, professionals, aficionados, and the every day homeowner / renter.”

Did you have experience running online community sites before? How did you learn?

“I learned how to run it though trial and error, and from watching what other forum sites did. There was a lot of experimentation in the early days as to how to run the site, and I made plenty of mistakes and pissed off more than my fair share of people while doing it. Overall, I learned by doing.”

How does your site make money?

“The revenues are primarily from advertising. While Google AdSense is a great driver of ad income, we also do direct sales of banners on our site and newsletter. Additionally, we participate in a select few affiliate programs. Partnerships with other businesses are also very important drivers of revenue, as are our paid membership upgrades, and a little bit of e-commerce.”

Presently your site has over 48,422 members. How did you get such a big crowd?

image: Steven crane

“The most exciting member was number two. It was very exciting to know that someone other than me was on the site . . . I felt a sense of success, and saw the potential for people to start pouring in. The first two years were very shaky. The community hadn’t reached any kind of tipping point, and it seemed that the site could either flourish or fail at any time.”

What were the most successful strategies that helped increase signups and strengthen the community?

“I believe that the strict administration of our site has helped it be so successful. I’ve spent time on other real estate and non-related communities, and I see that the sites that are strongest are those who clamp down and enforce some set of rules or guidelines. It is so easy to be lax, but in the end, that doesn’t work. People are always looking for some angle to exploit for the purpose of marketing, and if you allow a free-for-all, your community will result in chaos.

Other important reasons for our success in growth has been the passion of our core members. Any strong community will always have that core group, and they can easily make or break a site. This group usually consists of influencers, and often times, those influencers are quite powerful. Sadly, in many cases, this power can get to their heads; I’ve had to remove many of these people from the site over the years. Mostly, they always got the idea that they were above the rules and started to take advantage of the site. While the community respects them in general, by allowing these members to stick around, you undermine your entire system. All that said, we’ve learned to keep this type of behavior in check and have come to depend on the core group of members to help other, new members out and promote the site. Their passion is evident and catchy.

Throw all that together with lots of activity, tons of great content, and fantastic membership, and the community simply grows on its own now.

What are the biggest headaches?

“Spam is certainly a problem with any kind of community, but we’ve managed to develop some pretty good processes for identifying and removing it. Actually, one of the best moves we made on that front was to empower the members to report posts and other content on the site. I’ve found that the general membership does not want that crap around, and usually find it before we do. We have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to spam.

Spam and community disagreements can be a major headache. image: jk5854

The last major headache is disagreements between members. We allow members to disagree with one another – these often result in some of the best discussions, but when people begin to get personal and attack one another publicly, we put a stop to it. We try and bring these people together to resolve their issues in private, but you can’t always make that happen. In that case, we simply let these people know to avoid one another. We’ve got many members who were participants on other sites, but decided to leave and join BiggerPockets because they know that we won’t tolerate that public bad-mouthing that goes on elsewhere.”

A lot of times people will join a community and never even upload an avatar, let alone any content. What’s the best way to improve participation?

“I think the best way to improve participation is to have a team that is welcoming and friendly, and to always connect with new members. We make it a policy to welcome new members and to remind them of the benefits of completing their profile and participating. Often times, people just set up an account and plan on coming back later, but forget and move on. The welcome serves to let them know not to forget about us, and to get going for their benefit. Otherwise, having that strong core group of members, who also remind the newbies to get a picture and profile together, definitly helps.”

Say someone was starting an online community today – what are two or three things you’d advise them?

“The first thing I’d advise is to get an understanding of how online communities work before getting started. Jump on other sites and get a feel for them. While I did it through trial and error, you can learn by participating. I’ve seen dozens of sites come and go over the years for this reason alone. I’d also advise making sure you’ve got the time, or that you’ve got people who have the time, to manage and remain active in the community. Countless communities die because there is no one to actively manage them. Doing so is not easy – in any niche, there are only a handful of truly successful communities for this reason alone.

The last bit of advice I’d offer is to do good. When other upstart communities have done bad things to us (steal content/members/etc), in the end, they failed. Karma is a real bitch sometimes.”

What are your professional goals for the future? At what point will you know you’ve ‘made it’?

“Given that I’ve managed to build the site without a real, full-time team of employees or any kind of startup capital, I’d have to say that I’ve already made it. Does that mean that I’m satisfied with what I’ve built? Not even close! I’ll know that BiggerPockets has truly made it… when anyone and everyone who deals with real estate knows that we’re the place to be.”

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Gary Vaynerchuk is ‘the man.’ He’s a 33-year-old, charismatic and slightly over-the-top video blogger who’s managed to grow a multi-million dollar business by mixing his passions for wine and social media marketing. You can join along in his video wine tasting adventures or follow him on Twitter.

What excites you the most about social media?

“Everything has changed in the last 3 years. The fact that you can use social media for your marketing, and not have to pay millions of dollars, has really, really sent this whole game in a different direction.”

Wine 2.0: Gary brings refreshing new-skool energy into the old world of wine.

This week you’re putting out a new book, “Crush It,” about living your passion. What makes it different from other business books?

“First, I’ve really lived what I talk about in my book. I have built up an enormous following and a substantial financial business with social media. I’m a real entrepreneur and business man. A lot of people out there commentate and analyze, but aren’t actually living it. It’s sort of like when athletes are analyzing sports, rather than people who are not experts. The athletes have actually lived it.

Second, I’m not a bullshit artist. It’s 160 pages, straight to the point. I attack it head on. People don’t have to go out and buy it, but for 14 bucks, it’s definitely worth it.”

How important is it compromise and adapt your passion to the marketplace and to social media??

“Not so much. I promise you, dude, that if you went back 7 years ago… and I talked about Ultimate Fighting or MMA (mixed martial arts) – you would have said that “No, that’s too small!“

Attack your passion & single-handedly make it bigger.

If something is your real, real passion… not just because you’re chasing cash.. but because you love it.. no matter how small that niche is, you have to attack it. First of all, you can single-handedly make your niche bigger. Wine isn’t small, but I’ve definitely created wine drinkers because of my passion. So I think perusing your real passion is imperative, it’s the only way do go!”

You’ve got a rockstar level of fans, groupies and requests. How do you stay productive with all the chatter and noise?

“I do the best I can. I do have an assistant, and right hand men and women that help me run different parts of my companies. The sheer volume of communications is overwhelming, but it’s not scary, because that’s exactly what I want. Sure… 1,000 e-mails a day is intimidating… but, hey, I’ve asked for it. So you just put your head down and you grind. See, I’m not scared to do the work, and I think that’s really important.”

A lot of people reach out and ask stuff from you. What kind of approaches get your attention?

“I don’t mind people hustling, I don’t mind someone coming at me in a ‘one-way-street’ kinda of way – asking for favors. Of course, if someone offers something that might also help you- it’s gonna be more exciting – because it can help my brand when I’m looking at it from business perspective. The problem is, when someone says ‘Hey, I’m trying to get started, please help me out‘ – it’s not differentiated because I get that 100 times a day. So I wonder, ‘Who do I pick?’ And sometimes you get in a situation where you pick no one, because you don’t want 3 people to get pumped and 97 to get pissed.”

When you’re a ‘nobody’ who’s just starting out, how can you self-promote and get other people to pimp your stuff?

“That’s really easy. I was there, like everybody else: you put out good content. Right? Somebody who is an ‘absolute nobody’ can beat everyone on their first day if they write the greatest article or make the greatest video – put it out there – and go into the communities around that subject matter and interact with people. I went to wine forums and wine blogs, and just became part of the community.”

What are you thoughts on the ego? How can someone be confident and successful without coming off like a narcissist or a dick?

Have good intentions. Don’t be a self-centered dick.

“I think it’s different for everybody. You have to know where you’re coming from and have good intentions. I have really good intentions, and that saves my ass, or else everyone would think I was an egotistical jerk. I’m confident, I have a lot of bravado, and I scream and yell. If you’re coming from a good place and you’re really trying to do good things, it’s going to absolutely collide and then offset your ego and self-confidence. Now if you’re a one way street, and it’s all about you and you’re all ego – it’s gonna be difficult to overcome that..”

How do you plan and make decisions about your business?

“It’s kind of played out how I thought it would go. When I make a decision, I’m in it for the process and not for the results. I’m happy with the process because I’m learning. I don’t make decisions in the beginning like ‘Well, I’m gonna be this: ____.’ I don’t make 3 and 2 and 1 year plans. I just make one big one, like : ‘I wanna buy the NY Jets‘ Everything on the way there is kind of irrelevant.”

You make a lot of money. Does money excite and motivate you much? What really drives you the most?

“Well, I wanna buy the NY Jets.. so I need money, because it’s gonna cost billions of dollars. I also live for the human interaction. When I get an e-mail that says ‘Hey man, I watched one of your keynotes and it changed my life!” – that stuff is beyond priceless. I want to spend time with my family, meet as many people as possible, and buy that football team.”

What’s the most important thing for people to remember as they build their brand on the Web?

Internet marketing is a marathon, not a quick sprint! image: JaHoVil

“The quicker people realize that this is a marathon and not a sprint, the quicker they’re gonna win. Way too many internet marketers want everything to happen in one minute. You don’t build million dollar businesses in a minute. That’s something I wish a lot more people understood.”

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Mani Karthik is an India-based professional blogger and SEO consultant. Mani has an insightful daily SEO blog (in English) with over 5,000 subscribers, a team of overseas employees, and world-class level of search + social media skills that distinguish him as one of the very top international web consultants in Asia. You can follow Mani on Twitter or subscribe to his SEO blog.

Where do you live, what do you do for work and fun?

“I’m from Cochin, India (a tropical city on the southwest coast, in Kerala province). I make a living by helping people sell things online, fine tune their websites to better standards, make them Google friendly and help them build traffic. Basically, I help them sell their stuff, so they can pay me in return. So I’m a SEO/Social Media consultant and I blog, too.

Cochin is famous for yachts, one of the most beautiful coastal towns in India

For fun… I watch a lot of movies, spend time with my lovely family, and travel a lot.”

Tell us a little bit about the social media scene in India?

“Social media scene in India is in the infant stage but it’s growing fast. The number of Internet users in India is huge… but the number of potential “buyers” is comparatively much smaller, so a lot of what’s happening here revolves around brand building and positioning. IT is empowering some people in very remote places to build businesses. There’s this concept in India that social media is just about having an Orkut and Facebook profile. But this idea is rapidly dwindling, and more and more people and companies have started fully using social media (blogging, Twitter, video, etc.) to their advantage.

Orkut is a Google-owned social networking site that is big in South America and parts of Asia.

Many of the smartest potential web users are out there on the most popular channels like Orkut and Facebook. And most of the top players are from the real estate / movie / telecom and IT industries…”

Is the Web affecting the social class (or caste system) in India? How is it changing society?

“There’s a huge gap between the web and traditional social classification systems. On the web, there’s nothing significant to classify you to a particular category, except for your occupation/job. When it comes to social media and companies / brands, he most important “classes” are people’s income and their willingness to spend it. I don’t see any other emerging social classes and caste systems online, yet, but I could be wrong.”

Is it possible to keep up with the important little details in both social media and SEO? How do you stay on the cutting edge?

“I don’t want to call it easy, but keeping myself updated with what’s happening online is something I take pleasure in. And since SEO and social media are my favorite subjects, it’s a natural process. You know when you focus so much on something that you enjoy doing, the stress eases off and it becomes a habit. Its become a habit of mine to be on the edge. And I must be lucky, since I love it. ”

A lot of people think that SEO is inherently shady, fake or black hat? Why do you think they have this perception??

“I think it’s because people focus too much and pressure on results… both SEOs and also people who hire them. You put so much pressure that the process becomes stressful, and SEOs go for shortcuts to results. The problem with shortcuts is that even if you get the results, you haven’t earned them and it often proves fatal. You get kicked off search engines, you get Google penalties and it becomes a major business problem.

“I always make it a point never to give false promises to my clients. If you know your stuff, one must be able to give an idea about what can be achieved and even more importantly what cannot. If the client does not know the rules of SEO and Search Engines, try educating them rather than ripping them off for the money they’d spend on your false promises. Unfortunately, in both SEO and social media consulting, there are people who care more about easy money than having a good reputation.”

Do you have any tips or tools for social media productivity or time management?

image: ChibiJosh

• Learn speed reading. Quick reading comprehension is not about how many stories/articles you can read in a minute, but about how many stories you can pick out as spam /
  worthless and quickly skip. Being a social media enthusiast, good filtering ability is a must!
• Nurture talent and hire imperfect-but-promising talent. I have a team of people working for me from different parts of the world. I often outsource jobs to them with clear instructions on what to do and what not to. With their urge to learn and clear guidelines I provide, it takes the burden off me!
• Don’t stick to a schedule. Schedules and time sheets have not worked for me, even at school. I can’t completely stick to a schedule because I keep finding new things all the time. However, schedules are good for doing mundane things like reports/regular to-do lists etc. Keep a larger part of your time in exploring and finding new things and a very small part scheduled. Try it, it works for me!

What are some “must read” internet marketing blogs?

“I enjoy reading Mashable, Readwriteweb, Problogger, Shoemoney, John Chow, Jeremiah Owyang, Dan Zarrella and Social Media Rockstar.

You’re one of India’s most elite independent consultants and bloggers. What kind of skills, drive and personality does it take to ‘make it’ in this business?

“I think you got to be fun, open minded, hard working and success-craving to keep going. You meet different people from different parts of the world, with different perspectives and ideas, you’ve got to understand each one and be genuinely interested about how you can help them.”

These ancient tidal fishing nets are a prominent visual icon / tourist attraction at Cochin’s habor. image: Jenny M

Do you have tips for making friends and building relationships online?

“Be fun, be helpful and an expert at what you are best at. Do all those things yourself that you want to see in another guy online. And yeah..be ready to work at different time zones – because not everyone is in your part of the world.”
.”

What are your long-term goals? At what point will you be really stoked and able to relax, knowing that you’ve “made it”?

“I want to either join a team of similar minded success craving group of guys or find the group myself and make something extra ordinary out of it. I have moving targets and want it to remain that way, rather than work over a final goal. But on a personal note, I’d like to travel around the world.”

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Stuart Foster is a east coast blogger and marketing strategist. A former top Digg user and prolific blogger, his brain is bursting with a never-ending flow of content and ideas. Stuart’s media strategies aren’t “theoretical” – they come after many thousands of hours of experience with the ups and downs of real-life social media. You can follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his blog, The Lost Jacket …

Where do you live, what do you do for work and fun?

“I live in Boston, MA, but I grew up in Maine and went to school there. I work as a Managing Partner at The Lost Jacket and as a Social Media Strategist at Mullen. I also have a wide variety of side projects and consulting work that I do through both entities. When I’m not working, (which is almost never) I’m running, reading, going out to a variety of cool events and getting involved with the entrepreneurial scene in Boston.”

What’s this whole “social media” thing really all about?

“Social media is basically cutting down on the time needed to organize, establish relationships and build communities. It’s a time saver and immediate opening to exploit when building relationships. It’s gotten me access to a variety of people that probably wouldn’t take a call from me (but are more then happy to listen to me online). I look at the internet as being a road. Social media has transformed that road into a four lane highway.”

What does your day or week (honestly) look like?

“I probably end up working 12-16 hour days almost everyday. Sleep is not something that I end up seeing a lot of, for better or worse. I spend about 2 hours on every blog post. 4-6 hours a day responding to comments and adding comments onto other blogs within my network. I’ve cut down on the social bookmarking (I’m only doing outreach now) so only about about 5-10 hours a week on that. Most of my time is now spent doing client work and building the foundation/model for The Lost Jacket. I’m currently working with Stonyfield Farm, Ask.com and Global Post.”

What’s your overall strategy towards being successful at social media?

“Realize that you have to just keep climbing. You’re never at the top. You just keep reaching new level after new level. If you keep this attitude up, you’ll end up pretty high. The key is not looking back and to just keep plugging away. Successes and failures are similar to any type of business. Keeping them in perspective and believing strongly in what you are doing is the best way to be moving forward…”

How is social media adoption affecting human consciousness?

“I think it has to be making people smarter. If I looked at my baseline knowledge a year ago and compared it to today… I’d scare myself. I knew nothing, comparably. But that’s the speed at which you can digest the lessons via blogs, Twitter and from leveraging relationships. You’re at warp speed via social media and you learn just as fast…”

Is social media making us smarter or just getting us high? image: vaXzine

Are there any dark sides to social media / social media culture that people don’t like to talk about?

“I’d say that SEO/social bookmarking is not really understood all that well. I tend to find that anything that isn’t understood usually is perceived as being “black hat” (even if it isn’t). Bury groups and other more subversive techniques are common place on places like Digg but I tend to not pay that much attention to them. They aren’t really worth wasting my time. Are you creating great content and not being a tool? You should be fine.”

What are some of the biggest mistakes or misconceptions that you see novices consistently make?

“Endless self promotion. It’s annoying and makes you look incredibly stupid. Save your bullets for one big push…don’t spam out every blog post or Digg link.

Also…the concept that “social” is free. Nope. If anything, it can end up being more expensive because you are spending more time actually catering to your client/customer’s needs.”

So what’s the “secret” to building social influence?

“There is none. Just be consistent and relentless. Never stop working, learning and creating. Otherwise you will be overtaken by other more hungry individuals. A lot of competition is out there at the moment…just find your niche and own it. The business side of social media is the most important in my eyes. Without money to fire the engine behind innovation? Then you wouldn’t see a lot of the advances that are coming out these days.”

Stuart at a Boston cafe.

Do you think that social media is a bubble, like the .com bubble? Any chance that people’s enthusiasm will wane, or it will pop?

“I think — because it’s a philosophy more than a technique — it won’t die. Techniques become obsolete. Philosophies become integrated into the business psyche. People’s enthusiasm may wane to the bullshit surrounding the medium…but it will eventually be overwhelmed by new shinier stuff..”

Who are some up-and-coming social media geniuses who are worth following?

“David Spinks and Lauren Fernandez are some pretty badass PR/Social media peeps. If you haven’t started listening and learning from them, yet, I’d get on that! Carla Blumenthal who is my partner at The Lost Jacket is crazy smart and will only get better at exploring the ins and outs of business as time goes on. A new wave of people is coming. They’re more relentless and hungry than those that have come before them. These names will be familiar before very long.”

What are some predictions for the future of social media? What are two or three things that you think will happen?

“We’ll stop talking about social media for one. Social solutions will just be integrated into business in general. Models will change and rules will be broken…but social media will eventually go the way of email and just be integrated into everyday aspects of business.

I’m very excited to see the new models and ideas coming out from the likes of Dachis Group and the Altimeter Group. The social business concepts are interesting and exciting. It will be exciting to see who knocks it out of the park first. ”

What are your long-term goals? At what point will you be really stoked and able to relax, knowing that you’ve “made it”?

“I think the answer to that for me is ‘never’! I’m a pretty intense, driven individual. I want to succeed beyond anything that I thought possible. Although, at this point, being the head of an integrated agency would be my biggest dream. That way I could build brands and strategies utilizing a variety of different marketing techniques. It’s definitely a lot of hard work, but something I can definitely see myself conquering in the future..”

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Patrick Parise is the co-host of the Social Blade show, a weekly social media podcast. Patrick was known for being a well-connected, powerful Digg user – who promoted over 625 stories to the home page under several accounts (most recently Jenocide312). He stayed ‘under the radar’ and kept a low public profile until he got banned on Digg for the 3rd time, and recently decided to come out and share his knowledge with others. These days, you can follow him on Twitter…

Tell us a little about yourself?

Patrick podcasting at his dual-monitor workstation.

“I live in Lusby, Maryland, I have 4 boys and I’m recently divorced. I’m a business owner, but it has nothing to do with computers or technology. Digging and social media is a hobby – it’s what I do after work.”

You were actively involved in Digg and you were extremely successful at it. What motivated you so intensely?

“I just really enjoy it. I love finding a great story, and there’s a sense of accomplishment when it gets to the top. It’s fun when you’re friends with people and you can find the good stories first – and they’re like “Damn! How are you catching these already?” I’ve been offered some money (to digg stories) but I always turned it down – because I didn’t feel like it was worth the hassle. I get up and go to work every day and I stress over it – so one of the reasons I do social media is to escape from reality. When I come home, I wanna escape a little bit. Rather than getting drunk or falling asleep in front of a TV – I’d digg.

I had 3 strong accounts that got banned: Crackerpat, Brokebackcasket, Jenocide312. Cracketpat got banned because I was using the ‘Digg Friends Easy’ script (warning: do not use!) – which a lot of other people were using at the time. But once you’re banned on Digg, it’s forever. You can never come back. So my last 3 accounts got banned because they found it it was “me.”

What makes Digg more interesting than the more ‘mainstream’ sites, like Twitter and Facebook?

The home page of Digg.com is one of the most trafficked, competitive spaces in entire the social Web.

“It’s all about the stories. The constant stream of good content. It’s such a good way for me to pick up news from all different angles, whether it be high-tech security, computer industry news, faceplant videos on YouTube, celebrity gossip, or the strangest / wackiest stories you can imagine. And it’s filtered by the community – if I see something on the front page it’s because a lot of other people found it interesting, too.”

What feelings and emotions did you feel when you were digging?

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get into it. I’m sure everyone, including top diggers like MrBabyMan and Msaleem, still get a rush and get drawn to the excitement of it, too. However, I find it’s more frustrating when something really good doesn’t make the home page, than it is rewarding when something good does become popular.

There are certain milestones, like when you reach your 100th popular story, or when you pass a certain person. It was pretty cool when my last account got more home page stories than Kevin Rose’s account – which is kind of an honor – but sometimes he doesn’t submit anything for months. The week that I got banned (as BrokebackCasket), I was doing very well – I had 49 home page stories in one week.”

What kind of time do you have to put in to to build a power account?

image: Computer Choppers

“To start, you’re gonna have to spend, maybe, 6 hours a day. It would take a lot of digging people’s stories… but once you get enough of the right people following you and you get some momentum – you can do it it maybe an hour, or so. Nowdays you can only digg 200 stories a day, so you can’t really blind digg (vote on stories without reading them) like you used to. And that’s kind of missing the point me being there, which is to find the most interesting stuff.

It also takes a lot of behind-the-scenes networking. I have over 700 contacts on instant messenger. Probably 120 of them are green lights (active) at any time – all the way down into the red and the orange, I can’t even see them all.”

Do you know anyone who doesn’t spend hours digging friends’ stories that consistently does well on the site?

“No. Even the accounts where you look at ‘em and see that they only dugg 10 or 15 in the last 24 hours… those guys aren’t hitting the home page on a regular basis. They might break through occasionally – but that’s just Digg throwing those guys a bone to keep people’s attention. They can’t give out every single home page to people who submit a lot of good stuff – they have to keep the worker bees interested and involved.”

What percentage of active diggers do you suspect get some kind of financial compensation for endorsing stories?

“I’d say that there’s between 500 and 1500 daily diggers at any given time. Maybe 10% of them – or 50 to 100 of those (could be getting paid by someone) – it’s very possible. And you know, that catches up with you. For the bigger accounts, if they are getting paid, they sure aren’t telling anyone about it – because once you get to a certain level, you start to get haters. And those people would turn ya in. If anyone could prove it just a little, Digg support would have no choice but to ban them for being a ‘hired gun.’”

Does Digg.com arbitrarily ban people for just being “too good”?

“No. Why would they do that? Then MrBabyMan, and Msaleem and MakiMaki would be gone. Guys like LouieBaur would have been gone long ago – because guys like him are so ridiculously good at it. …They banned InsainCain02 they same day they banned my account, BrokebackCasket, because they found out I was a banned digger. And once you’re banned, you’re not allowed to come back.”

What kind of personalities do power users have?

“A lot of the people do it to pass time because it’s an escape from reality. Also… to be popular on Digg, you have to have a strong rapport with people and be friendly. And helpful. You’ve gotta be social and willing to give – help people with stuff, digg stories for people – and build up a good relationship with a lot of different people. You’ve really got to enjoy what you’re submitting or else you won’t be much good at it.”

What tools did you use for finding content and digging? Any tips or tricks?

1. Google Reader. I have all my sites loaded into there and I could go there this second and find 4, 5 or even 6 stories that should be ‘home page material.’ I can pass those out to my friends and 70% of them should hit the home page. Finding the right content just became second nature, for me.
2. Social Blade. Urgo’s site has incredible Digg analytics. You need to know that once you’ve dugg 199 stories, you need to stop. It also shows which sites are the most popular sources for home page stories, which diggers are most active, etc.
3. The Bigg Board by Brainnovate. This is an real-time dashboard for Digg that lets you track your stories, see where they are on the site, whether they break into ‘upcoming,’ etc. Some people digg way too much stuff and aren’t seeing any of the results that I am. So I’ve been helping a lot of new diggers learn how to do it right. And Bigg Board is the best tool to let me see exactly what’s happening with their stories.

What are some of the all-time greatest headlines or stories you remember?

The online Susan Boyle phenomena got a nice boost from one of Patrick’s submissions on digg.com

“I guess the best story I ever had was given to me by MrBabyMan – because some unknown user had just submitted it and it wasn’t gonna make the home page. It was a Susan Boyle video – way before she became popular. The YouTube video had less than 10,000 views when I submitted it. It went viral and the next Monday I got e-mails from The Daily Mail wanting to know how I’d discovered it. Then before ya know, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher are tweeting about it. I didn’t make it go viral, it went viral by itself – but I just happened to be the power digger who ended up submitting it.”

Who are some people you think that have great social media skills or contributions to the community?

“The most influential person, to me, by far, was Diggboss. That guy has done wonderful things for me and for other people as well. He showed me everything – every trick you could possibly use – and he wanted nothing in return!

EmitStop (a 17-year old Web designer) does very, very well. He’s been around a lot longer than I have and he’s great a connecting with people and movies stories along. There’s a relatively unknown guy named Cancerkitty who finds the funniest articles – his stuff is just phenomenal and it just flies to the top. .”

What are your goals? At what point will you feel satisfied or feel like you’ve “made it”?

“ I don’t think I’ll ever be totally satisfied. I’m pretty family-oriented, so whenever all my kids are grown up, and are married and are living successful lives – then I’ll know I’ve done right. Money isn’t the most important thing. My kids are healthy, I’m grateful for what I’ve got, I’ve done well in social media – and I enjoy spreading it all out and helping people do well.

When not at work or doing social media coaching, Patrick coaches football and spends time with his kids.

Recently, I did a show with JD Rucker, Erin, Victor and Urgo- where we we interviewed the singer Josh Charles. All the money he makes from his song ‘Healing Time’ will go to rebuilding New Orleans after the hurricane – and we’re trying to raise a million dollars. It’s been 4 years since Katrina and a lot of people aren’t feeling the love, anymore, so much. So, by helping get the word out about important things like that, it feels pretty good…”

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Tomohiko Kezuka is a Japanese social media marketer who I met on Mixi, Japan’s Facebook-like social networking site. By mashing up a little of my sketchy Japanese and his rather good English, we were able to discuss Japanese social media – and how people and companies there are responding to it.

How old are you, where do you live, and what do you do for work?

“I am 24 years old and I live in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo. I am in a website property manager. For fun, I’m into reading social media blogs, Twitter & FriendFeed.”

What is the speed and cost of internet in Tokyo? How much is mobile phone plan?

“It costs about 70 dollars a month to get 100Mbps (!!!) access. If you sign up through some discount campaigns at some site (ex. kakaku.com), it will be about 30 dollars.

Mobile costs about 70 dollars a month with unlimited data.”

What are the most popular social media sites in Japan?

image: H. Yoshikawa

Social Networking Sites:
Mixi is the most popular social networking site in Japan. GREE and Mobage-town are specialized mobile social networking that draw people in by selling flashy avatars and games.

Blogs:

• Ameba
• FC2
• Livedoor

Ameba offers a blog hosting service, like Wordpress.com or Blogger. By inviting television personalities to blog and participate, Ameba’s traffic is growing rapidly.

Forums:

• 2ch
• Yahoo! Japan

2channel is the largest forum – featuring images and discussions. It’s what the English site 4chan is based on. Yahoo! was one of the first major internet portals to gain mainstream popularity in Japan, and it still has many dedicated users.

New Media / Digital Content:

• Japanese YouTube
• Niconico-douga (Smile Video)
• pixv

Pixiv is a community site where artists can post illustrations. They keep on growing at a fast pace, 1 million users in 655 days, 700 million page views a month!

Although it doesn’t penetrate the mainstream as much as other social media sites, Twitter is also getting popular.

I’ve noticed Japanese people rarely show their face for their picture / avatar. Why?

I have 8 friends on Mixi, and none of them show their faces in avatars.
Their albums are often collections of “interesting” pics, not pics of themselves or friends.

“Anonymity is a part of the culture here. I think many Japanese people are ashamed and anxious that their ‘internet personality’ will be discovered by real friends or colleagues. Some anonymous power users, using pseudonyms, have a lot of authority in Japanese social media.

On top of that, many believe anonymity helps protect people from crime and harassment, especially in the mobile social media for young people.”

Are there any differences between how Japanese use social media and
how westerners use social media?

“From what I have observed, I think westerners have a far greater tendency to use social media for personal branding.”

Are there a many online narcissists (自分が大好きな人) in Japanese social
media?

“Yeah, there are. You can find them at Mixi, Niconico-douga, 2channel and the rest.”

Japanese has 3 alphabets: katakana, hiragana, and kanji. Do people
try to do SEO and rank for terms using different alphabets?

“Yes. Many people try to do so to cover uncompetitive markets. In addition to 3 Alphabets problem, thinking how we translate certain overseas business idioms is important. For example, SEO is spelled in several different ways, エスイーオー, えすいーおー, SEO, 検索エンジン最適化, サーチエンジン最適化. But since search engines try to standardize each results, it is becoming a much less useful tactic than it was a few years ago.”

Are their any viral campaigns that English-speaking people might understand or think is interesting?

UNIQLOCK – A Dance Music Photo Clock
http://www.uniqlo.jp/uniqlock/
http://www.uniqlo.jp/uniqlock/#world

Who is the top “social media rockstar” in Japan?

“No one really comes to mind.”

(Editor’s note: Maybe because people are more anonymous and less likely to use social media for personal branding.)

Is social media changing Japan’s conservative company culture?

“I think that the conservative industries are changing, though reluctantly and only gradually. They are trying to use blogs, social networking sites and Twitter. I was surprised that some newspapers are starting to use Twitter.”

http://twitter.com/asahi/
http://twitter.com/mainichijpedit

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Dan Zarrella is a Boston-based marketer with strong skills in programming, research and social media marketing. He is known for creating widely-used social media tools and for his scientific approach to marketing. Not satisfied with merely publishing his own opinions and thoughts, Dan is driven to demystify the exciting-but-hazy world of viral marketing with research and provable facts. He also wants to make life easier for future generations of marketers by developing re-usable software tools and process frameworks.

What do you do for work? And for fun?

“I just started a new job at a company in Cambridge called Hubspot. They’re an inbound marketing software company, and I’m a marketing manager there. For fun, I’m really into social media stuff – Twitter, my blog, etc.”

Dan partying in Boston with Alison Driscol @alisond (left) and her friend.

You describe yourself as a ‘viral marketing scientist.’ Which aspects of viral marketing are difficult to research and investigate?

“I think when you start getting into the motivation of what makes people want to spread something, that’s where it get tricky. I can study analytically things like: what sort of content spreads, what times, who spreads it… but to try to get into the ‘why‘ people spread something or their emotional motivations – that’s a little more difficult. I did a survey last year that was sort of a broad ‘content sharing on the web’ kind of thing, and I found that a lot of people don’t know ‘why‘ they do stuff online…”

There’s this mystique about viral marketing – that it’s difficult, dangerous or unreliable. Can an average person, company or agency realistically be successful at it?

“The first thing people have to understand is that you can’t guarantee results with each individual campaign. It’s like a raffle – if you buy ten tickets (or you do ten campaigns) – one of them or a few of them are more likely to go viral. There are some risks associated with it… The trick to avoid the risk is to be very transparent about what you’re doing. Don’t try to hide the fact that you’re marketing – people will find out – and that can cause bigger problems…

Unraveling the mystery of what makes an idea go viral. image: MC =).

The goal of my research is to breakdown ‘what makes things go viral‘ so that marketers can implement that – so they’ll have a framework for working on things. They’ll know what kind of things they can put into their campaigns to make them go viral. Outside of the scientific work that I’m doing – and a couple other people do – viral marketing is this ‘rockstar’ thing where someone comes up with a crazy idea – and I’m trying to break it down into a more viable science.

In addition to my scientific work, I’ve been reading a lot of academic papers and books about pre-Web forms of viral marketing – content that spreads: like gossip, legends and rumors. I’m looking forward to publishing a book at some point.”

How important is an understanding of psychology or sociology?

Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs.

“I don’t have a formal background in either of those two fields – the knowledge I have comes from studying things like how rumors and gossip spread. I do think stuff like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is important to understanding what people need and how you can give them what they need. And from sociology: economic theory and game theory – the ideas behind things like informational cascades and social proof is very important.”

You do a lot of reading. What are the most essential works that influenced your career?

“The book that started me down this path is actually a work of fiction: Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson. The villain in the book constructs a mental ‘mind virus’ that he infects the world with… and the bad guys do nefarious things with it. That book opened my eyes to what viral marketing could be if it were expanded to a science.

For academic stuff, I like JSTOR – which I can use with my Boston Public Library card. Access to that database has been really key for me to understanding very specific things like psychology and sociology… Also, all the work on memetics – not even necessarily The Selfish Gene, which was Richard Dawkins’ book that introduced the concept of the meme – but more like Susan Blackmore’s The Meme Machine – which I think is the seminal work on memetics.”

Seth Godin’s stuff like Unleashing the Idea Virus was pretty influential, as was Malcom Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.”

You’ve made some successful tools (i.e.,Tweetbacks) to extend Twitter’s reach and functionality. What could be improved with Twitter?

“The big architectural issue with Tweetbacks, my platform to integrate Twitter comments into Wordpress blogs and encourage ReTweeting, is that most people are tweeting shortened URLs – and there’s no easy way to expand these shortened URLs into long ones. I’ve had to do some hackish things to make that work.

At a Twitter level, what I wish they’d do is: if a Tweet has a shortened link in it, then expand that out to the full URL – and then publish the full URL in the API. This would really help understand and sort what links people are sharing on Twitter – and it would take the Tweetbacks concept to a new and much more powerful level.”

I was on IRC in the 90s and I thought it was more advanced and useful than Twitter, in some ways. Is Twitter kind of messy or noisy – or do you like it how it is?

“I like Twitter the way it is. The way they built it seems to be: if you want to start filtering it and breaking things down into groups – they give you API access and there’s a lot of things that allow you to do that. I use Tweetdeck, which allows me to have searches and columns. I’m not even following most of the people I talk to on a daily basis – but I have searches set up so that if someone talks about my interests, I’m gonna see it.

I think that as more people get into things like Twitter, the client tools will definitely have to improve. As long as social media sites maintain an open infrastructure, I’m sure there will be developers building solutions for what people need. Everyone doesn’t use these tools the same way – and having the innovation at the client level gives everyone a chance to find something that works the way they want it to.”

How will things change when mainstream society and all the Fortune 500 companies and political movements fully embrace social media?

“I definitely think that more businesses will start to engage in social media – and there is the possibility that some of these agencies or brands will start to do inauthentic and spammy things. The difference is: prior to the web, they used to get away with stuff like that – because people didn’t have a peer-to-peer media to allow them to talk with the same reach that big corporation had. So I think that as corporations try and get into social media, if they do things wrong, they will get caught. The market is always going to be a little bit smarter and faster than you are. Trying to trick it will never work for any long-term period.”

@danzarrella & @alisond at the Shorty Awards ‘09.

Is there anything you personally find cliche, annoying or lame about the Twitter / Web 2.0 culture?

“Um, I don’t know if I find things ‘lame’ or ‘cliche.’ Maybe I find that they’re ‘not for me.’ Social media has the tendency to attract certain personalities. There are Paris Hilton types in social media — people who are famous only for being famous. That’s something I’m not a huge, huge fan of.”

Who is a cutting-edge thinker that you follow closely?

“The one big guy who has been very influential to my work on Twitter is Hugh McCloud (@gapingvoid). He has a very different approach, his is much less scientific… but he has a very strong ability to put his finger on things – and be right about them. I really wish I was that creative – I feel like I have more of an analytical mind.

Cartoonist Hugh McCloud @ www.gapingvoid.com

There are a lot of people where I follow some of their work, but maybe not all of their work. I follow 1,000 people on Twitter – but I don’t need followers so I don’t follow people whose content I don’t want.”

What are some of your marketing goals?

“Publishing a book is one of my long-term goals for quite a while now – doing the homework and the research, putting myself in the place where I can write a book. Beyond that, I’d like to have a framework that people who do viral marketing will find useful. Maybe a site where they can have a framework and set of tools that are repeatable and useful – to take some of the “rockstar” and mystique out of viral marketing. But I don’t know if there is a platform-agnostic toolset to do a lot of that stuff (i.e., something that’ll work equally well on Twitter, Digg, etc.)

Also in a more theoretical fashion, like in Design Thinking by David Kelly at Ideo, would be a way of thinking about things: Here’s what I want to spread. Here’s the first thing to do. Here’s the next step.

So a little bit shorter term, a few months out – an actual toolset to help people get retweeted more on Twitter, specifically – is around the corner.

It’s not an easy problem to solve, so I’m working on a lot of different avenues to tackle it: The content of the tweet has to be optimized for re-tweetability, there’s timing concerns, influence – e.g., who needs to tweet it so it’ll get retweeted eventually – but I think it’s a do-able tool.”

Dan polishing off a pint after speaking at PubCon ‘08 – Vegas.

Where can people find you online?

Feel free to follow me on Twitter (“@danzarrella“) or check out my viral marketing blog. Thanks!

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Reg Saddler is the co-host of The Drill Down, a popular social media podcast, along with Andrew Sorcini (Mr. BabyMan), Muhammad Saleem and Lidija Davis. He is well-known for being the #4 Digg user of all time- until he was abruptly and arbitrarily banned last September, along with several other power users. That hardly set him back, as he’s currently rising to the heights of popularity on other hot social sites. These days you can find him on Twitter, Mixx and Facebook …

What do you do for work? And for fun?

“My background is in IT consulting. More recently, I’ve been exploring doing some social media consulting with companies. Now… that doesn’t mean I’m promoting or submitting stuff for people. I’ve seen many people try that and it doesn’t work – for long. Instead, we’re showing them how to make content that will get popular on social media sites: how to make stuff people will want to share.

I’ve got a wife and kids I like to spend time with. So these days, I mostly hang out at home and play with my computers and watch movies and stuff.”

Serious video & sound: Reg’s 73″ home theater system.

Are you an information junkie?

“Yeah, I’m definitely an information addict. But I’ve noticed there’s different kinds of information addiction. For instance, my wife subscribes to thousands of RSS feeds and she is really patient. She goes through all these stories and reads every single one of them from beginning to end. I subscribe to thousands of RSS feeds, too. But me, on the other hand, I just go crazy. Scan through stories and try and find something good enough to submit. Something that might make the home page. I have a much, much faster pace.”

Too much information for one brain to handle! image: Martino!

Do you think social media is evolving our thinking or shifting human consciousness in a new direction?

“Actually, I think it’s dumbing us down. I think people are no longer reading stuff like The Great Gatsby, they’re just searching for quick answers on Google. You don’t have to know how to add, multiply or do any research – it’s all just there floating around on the internet at the push of a button. It makes things too easy.

Reg in his home office.

Here’s an example: I used to be really organized and collect all kinds of media – but now that information is floating around out there everywhere – I just kind of pull it out of a cloud and will download whatever I need to. So in some ways, this isn’t really evolution.”

Do you think social media could be a mainstream influence in the 2012 election?

“Yeah, I could totally see social media being a huge part of the next election. Even now, it has a lot of power. During the election, I submitted a Digg story: “Sarah Palin Wants Harry Potter Banned.” I kind of figured that the story might not be true, but I loved the headline and I submitted it anyways. It hit the front page, and the next day the McCain campaign responded to the story. I got a kick out of that. I’m fairly sure it was because of the Digg story – cause it wasn’t really reported anywhere else, nationally.”

You were a very hardcore Digg user… you dugg over 130,000 stories and had 1,566 submissions hit the home page. What drives someone like you?

image: Computer Choppers

“A lot of people play video games. Xbox. PS3. World of Warcraft. Social media is an outlet like that for me. Not so much as a toy “game” – I take it seriously – but I do take a (video) gaming-like approach. I get a sense of joy. Just like when you’re finishing a level of a game… I love to get on the home page. Not for an ego sense, but I do enjoy getting to share some stories that I think are amazing and have a lot of people see the same content.”

Any metaphors that you use when you think of Digg?

“One thing I think that most people don’t consider that Digg is a business. Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson had a really cool idea, but they set up as a company and it has to make money. It has advertisers and legal policies and stuff like that… ”

What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out on Digg?

“First, look for the sites that top Diggers are submitting content from, and also submit content from there. Then spend some time getting to know the site and understanding how it works socially.

Second. I’d say there, maybe, a pool of 1,000 or maybe 2,000 people who submit content on an active basis. We know them all – we know who is active and who is on vacation. If you get to know maybe just 20 or 30% of these active people by just befriending them and digging their content – only the content you like – they reciprocate. They will notice you. They’ll say: ‘This is a new person, and they like my stuff, let’s see if I like theirs!’

Also, you should have to have a very visual icon. Pick one and stick with it – don’t change.”

Who is one Digger who really impressed you?

MakiMaki hasn’t been on for that long, but he’s really passionate about Digg, he has a popular blog, and he is really incredible at finding good news stories. He’s the best, actually. That guy must not leave his computer. I watch what he’s up to… and I learn a lot from him.

I’ve never seen a picture of Maki or spoken with him. Have you talked with him?

Andy (MrBabyMan) has spoken with him. So has Oboy (JD Rucker). We’ve analyzed him – cause we’re hardcore, die-hard users – and he’s for real. There’s no way that a team of people could be submitting his stuff. It’s not just about finding the content… a lot of it is re-crafting the title to make it hot. He’s a master at that.

You’ve recently had a meteoric rise in popularity on Twitter. What’s your philosophy?

For me Twitter is a lot like Digg – without an algorithm. I can post great content to Twitter, but instead of getting thumbs up or dugg up… I get retweets. I’m not hyper-aggressive, not using some kind of script: I’m manually finding new people. If they like my stuff, they stick. .and if they don’t.. they de-friend me. If you look at some of the top guys like Chris Pirillo, Guy Kawasaki, Jason Calacanis, Kevin Rose or Scoble… they’re posting top content. It’s content – mostly – and you build a great following from your content.

What people like — just like in a newspaper – is diversity of content. I post stuff about space, politics, science – you name it! An easy way to do that would be to go to the front page of Digg, find the best story and tweet it. Right when Obama got inaugurated, I found some really great photos of the event and it was hot on Twitter.

Conversations are also a huge part of Twitter… I try and reach out to people, ya know, join the conversation. I don’t want to be a Twitterati that doesn’t say anything. If you ask Kevin Rose a question, chances are he won’t get back with you. Ask Scobleizer, and he might – and that’s how he builds his following. I’ve got 23,000 followers, so I try to engage with as many people as possible.

When you have so many followers, how do you possibly keep track of it all?

I use Tweetdeck. I can’t read every single message from the raw flow of my followers, but I do read the @ replies and the direct messages. I also set up groups in Tweetdeck to watch followers whose tweets I want to see… or those I have to, because they’re business partners and colleagues. I also watch certain hash tags.

Tweetdeck rocks!

There’s other good tools like My Tweeple – where you can go in and see who hasn’t been active in a while. SocialToo is amazing. It gives you an automated response when people follow me on Twitter – saying “Thanks! Check out my Facebook profile (or blog)“… and if someone follows you or unfollows you – it can do the same thing back. It makes ‘people management’ soooooo much easier. It can be a real pain to do it all manually.

What’s happening at Mixx?

Mixx is cool because you can make your own customized homepage – where you only see the content you care about. Also, Mixx aggressively listens to their user base. If they hear about a problem, or if people suggest a new feature that might be cool… Mixx is a lot more nimble. There’s only a small number of people who are highly active in social media…. maybe like 2,000 who are on Digg, Mixx, Reddit, Twitter and stay active on every major social domain. Mixx understand this, and rather than ostracizing the power users… they’ve embraced them.

Digg has 28.7 million dollars in funding, but they’re laying off people and they don’t have a direction. But Mixx is Chris McGill and his team – and if you ask them for a feature, they’ll try it out for you. (Mixx) doesn’t send 100k visitors to your story. But CNN understands the value of Mixx, it’s the main social voting icon on their site. And so do their investors. I think they have some groundbreaking ideas that I might not be able to wrap my head around yet.

You do really well at building an audience. What do you want to use your influence in social media for?

During the presidential election, I used my social media capital to push Barack Obama. I’m going to use my position in the future to push worthy causes. I also want to have a successful social media company and be a strong player in the industry. I do want to make a lot of money, but if I can push eyeballs to a story about starving kids, or to help after a disaster like New Orleans – I’ll always do that.

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Ross Borden is the owner and content director at the Matador Network – an online travel magazine that has recently exploded in popularity with well-written, beautifully illustrated travel articles and lists. Matador’s content is very appealing to social media and social news site participants… earning thousands of links from all over the Web. He recently took some time to offer some of his hard-won insights on viral marketing and web publishing to Social Media Rockstar readers.

Tell us about Matador Travel?

“We are the world’s first interactive travel magazine. As a traveler, I didn’t like going through a bunch of travel sites and wading through thousands of reviews written by people who were essentially on vacation there – people who didn’t know a thing about the place. Matador is a place where you can read professionally written content by people who live there, speak the language and know everything about the place – and we have a social networking linking the whole place together. It’s a community where you can reach out to people and ask questions. It’s a really interactive way to get the best travel information on the Web.”

Ross + a friend high above the clouds in Columbia.

How did you get into social media?

“I had been traveling for a year and I came back to San Francisco and got a job in sales at Oracle. I really didn’t like being stuck in a cubicle and making cold calls all day. I had been away from the Web cause I’d been traveling in South America. When I got back, so much had changed and it all really dawned on me. What really inspired me to write the original business plan was that we were entering into an era where the unknown little guys could take on the big guys. Where if you created compelling content and cool applications – you could literally steal market share from the huge companies that had been running things for the past 50 years. That excited me.”

Seth Godin talks about building fresh new organizations that fit the social media culture and vibe. Any thoughts on this?

“Seth is a marketing genius and a visionary – I agree with him on that. The old media giants are getting a lot of things wrong. That’s because they didn’t start from scratch. They’re trying to not only trying to apply a “2009 social media” aspect to what they do, but a lot of times they fight what’s happening on the internet. It goes way back to when Steve Jobs had the infamous meeting with the music executives and they told him to “Go fuck yourself!” – and… just look at iTunes now. And look where the record industry is! I think it’s the same thing with all the big, old media gaints. It’s important to look and see what’s really working on the web – and to build your social media organization (by) harnessing what’s already popular.”

Where do you get your story ideas from?

“I try to expose myself to as much news and media as I can. It’s a crazy world we’re living in, in 2009, and there are certain things that just blow me away. Anything that really makes an impression on me right away is going to make an impression on other people. I go through hundreds of RSS feeds and headlines in social news, and I look for something that catches my eye and really makes a strong impression on me.”

What are some of the essential elements for crafting a great linkbait / social media story?

“The no brainers are stuff like lists, ya know, ‘Top 10 Superlatives.’ Deeper than that, you either want to shock someone or you want to give people value. Teach someone. Give people resources so that it’s not just a time waster or attention grabber… but so they’re getting some insight into something that they care about by reading your article.”

Ross living on the edge @ Yosemite National Park, California, USA.

What quirks do social news site users have?

“All web users have really, really short attention spans. They have they world at their fingertips, but a lot of time they are at work when they are consuming social media. I’d say that social media users have the shortest attention span of any web user. That’s because there’s 100 other popular stories they’re trying to check out. So an important insight for being successful is you really have to grab users of social news sites with something riveting – like a great photo – right in the beginning of the article. You don’t want to lose them right after they get to your site.”

Who you you admire as some of the most successful viral content creators out there?

“I would say that Green Options Media does really well – and so does Weburbanist. Those are two of my favorite sites to visit. Then there’ the classics like Cracked and Holy Taco. Those guys have a really good grip on how to succeed on Digg. That kind of content is not as compelling to me because it’s more of just the shock and entertainment factor, where something like Green Options and Web Urbanist is showing you something you’ve never seen before or providing insight into news. I get more out of those sites.”

Have there any side-effects of having content go popular on a social media site?

“Since we’ve gotten into viral marketing, I’ve been initially surprised by a lot of the super cynical comments that get left. But I guess that’s to be expected when 100,000 people read your article in the same week.

One of our community members, who teaches English in Japan, posted a photo of a hilarious essay that one of his 3rd grade student had written. It was popular, but there were a lot of people who were very critical, saying that it was wrong to post a Student’s essay. I was floored that people couldn’t find humor in that.”

Funny Engrish = Viral Ignition

What were your greatest travel adventures?

“Hitchhiking through East Africa for a number of months. I did a stint working in some African primary schools. It was great working with the kids. The ultimate, all-you-can-handle adventure was hitchhiking by myself through Kenya. I would note that I never felt any danger and I think African people are some of the nicest people I’ve ever encountered.

 

After graduating college, I went with my friend to South America, and we climbed some of the biggest mountains on the continent. That was another great adventure.”

What other amazing travel sites should we check out?

“I set out to make a travel site because I didn’t like a lot of the other travel sites out there. They’re overly monetized – I mean it’s like spam – almost all of it. You’re trying to get pushed into buying a cruise package or getting a flight deal. Elevate Destinations is a great outfitter – they give a lot of money back to the communities and they support conservation. iExplore is another leader. Wend is another great online + print magazine many people don’t know about.”

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Wayne Sutton is a social media professional with a huge passion for both people and technology. He is also a top 100 Twitter user, a podcaster, technology trainer, blogger and a speaker on the national conference circuit (including SXSW).

Tell us a little bit about your current work?

“I’m a social media strategy and technology evangelist. I help companies bring their business online, grow their brand and use social media as a customer support application — finding the right tools they can use to grow their business.

 

I’ve launched a new blog called SocialWayne. A lot of blogs talk about social media, but I want to talk about how to actually use the tools. I’ve got WayneSutton.TV where I have a worldwide internet television show.. interviewing people and exploring the industry. Also, TweetShops, or Twitter workshops for everyday people. Everyone is talking about Twitter… I say, if they don’t ruin it with their business model, give it 3 months and there’s gonna be a mainstream Twitter explosion.”

Social media gives us literally thousands of new ways to connect. How is this interconnectedness gonna change the game?

‘Social media is about two things: relationships and conversations. New media just gives us the tools to build these relationships and have these conversations at a whole new level… a world-wide level. For businesspeople, this is an important way to communicate with associates. And it’s a way to get people to talk about your business over the internet!

Especially in the media and news industry – which are really hurting for sales right now – (some) are using social media to re-strategize their business model. And to find new ways to communicate with their community that they never had before. A lot of people in the news industry think ‘Broadcast! Broadcast! Broadcast!‘ Well, now, it’s about the conversation and the community. So you build this community, you have this conversation online and then you broadcast that… and this builds your relationship, with trust, and you bring back your audience when you have your next show or broadcast.

 

(Social media) can have a good return on investment. Dell has made over $1,000,000 in revenue using Twitter. They reached out and listened to what people were saying on Twitter about their brand and their product, and they pitched sales on Twitter, as well. You don’t have to be Dell… you could be a local computer shop in Raleigh, North Carolina. I can post updates about my life, business and sales.. listen to what people are saying about certain keywords and trends… and then easily reach out to those people because they are potential clients and customers of mine. That’s just one example of how social media tools can help businesses…”

You have over 11,000 followers on Twitter. What’s your secret to winning friends and influencing people?

“I was an early adopter: #847 to sign up for Twitter. That was a big advantage. I used to be featured on the Twitter homepage when it first got started.

At first, I used to tweet a whole lot. I asked, ‘What would happen if I were to post 100 Tweets a day?‘ A couple people wrote back and said they’d unfollow me – but the exact opposite happened. The community was so techy, so early and so new… I got a good start. Other people signed up and they’d see my profile and follow me. Soon, I started listening to other people, listening to the conversation… sharing information and building relationships. Twitter is the site for building relationships. I shared information about my life, my marriage, about my favorite team (UNC), about clients and my favorite shows…

“I looooove NASCAR, go-karts and going fast!” says (Lil) Wayne.

But because Twitter was an early tech community, I posted a lot of information about technology. I was always a heavy technology person, ya know… I was blogging before it was called “social media”.. podcasting before YouTube got big. So I became a resource to some people. Some people would tweet ‘Wayne’s a great person to follow if you wanna learn about X or Y…’ And as the technology community grew, then my following grew

Now that I have 11,000 (followers), I have to change my structure. I did a poll recently… and most people want to learn about blogging, Wordpress and getting Twitter followers. So, I listen and try to provide the type of information that they want.”

What’s the most challenging part of having so many connections?

“The first word that comes to my mind is: expectations. Professionally, I help people establish a personal branding line, and I’ve done that for myself, also. But, by building my personal brand… I’ve been put into categories with famous people like Chris Brogan or Problogger – and I just don’t think I’m in the same category with those guys. I have a long way to go. But there’s still expectations.

image: Flickr

I get between 50 to 100 direct messages a day. Some are from people that everybody knows, others are people I’ve never heard of in my life. A lot of conversation happens behind the scenes. I try my best to respond back…

People are like, ‘Oh, you’re an internet celebrity!’ and I’m like, ‘Nah… I’m just a guy who tweets a lot.’ A friend recently made a really good point: if Twitter goes down, how am I gonna stay in contact with all my followers? I just launched a new blog (without all my followers there yet) – so that’s a big challenge! I want the people who follow me on Twitter to read my blog and have the same type of relationship with them. And that’s a challenge.”

What part of the social media lifestyle do you hate the most?

“One of the hardest things is the time. There are moments where I just want to step away. I think about ‘Why am I doing this?,’ and ‘What is this all for?’

Maintaining a social media presence takes lots of time. image: Håkan Dahlström

Not from a business standpoint – I do this because it’s my job… but there are times, on a personal level… where you wonder ‘Is all this really worth it?’ and ‘Where is the retirement in social media?‘

When you think of it in terms of ‘time investment‘ vs. ‘What am I getting out of it?‘ – it can be challenging. Because it takes time. Unless you’re Shaquille O’Neal… who just comes on Twitter and gets 27,000 instant followers. If he wrote a blog post right now, he could easily get 10,000 to 15,000 people to read it.”

What are the biggest etiquette mistakes you see people making on social media?

“On Twitter, I think people try to follow too much and post too much content.. without actually listening to what other people are saying… and without thinking about what their target audience wants. Basically, not engaging in the conversation.

Also people don’t spend enough time setting up their profile, not making it easy for people to know who you are and what you do. It goes back to relationships. There’s so much content online right now… you have to make it easy for people to remember you.

Social media takes real work. A half-baked effort is likely to fail.

Look at what Barack Obama did using social media: he raised a half billion dollars. But the thing is, unless you’re a strong, worldwide brand with lots and lots of money… or a famous celebrity… it’s gonna take work. So just putting something up, posting a few tweets… putting up a Facebook fan page and join MySpace… if you think you can do 1, 2 or 3 things and it’ll all work – you’re setting yourself up to fail. It’s gonna take time to build an effective social media campaign, there’s no simple strategy – it’s gonna take trial and error. And lots of research and listening.”

Which social media producers / publishers / thought leaders do you admire the most? Who is worth paying attention to?

“I could almost break it down into categories. In social media, you’ve got Jason Keath, Chris Brogan and Jeremiah Owyang. In blogging, I’ve got passion for what Pete Cashmore and the Mashable guys are doing. Also Kip Bodnar (on twitter) he’s a really smart guy who I think doesn’t get enough credit for his contribution to the social media world.

I look up to Gary Vaynerchuck of WineLibrary.tv. Also 1938 Media: I’m a fan of his work and his passion to continue with success. I’ve done some video with Robert Scoble and I’m a fan of his work as well. Also Loic from Seesmic.

There’s some up and coming local folks like Jason Keath (jakrose on Twitter), who I mentioned before. I met him at a Wordcamp in Charlotte and we had a great social media conversation last Friday… I think he has potential to become the next Chris Brogan. And Justin Ruckman – I think he’s gonna be the next rockstar designer that the world is gonna know about. I think he recently did some business cards for Guy Kawasaki.

MC Hammer rapping at the San Francisco Digg meetup.

I just spoke with MC Hammer on a podcast with TalkSocialNews.com — and I literally was blown away. Not saying that I didn’t expect him to be techy, ‘cuz I knew he was a smart guy. Look at what he’s accomplished in his life – and despite his bankruptcy, he’s still standing. But I didn’t know he was a super geek. His passion for technology and the music industry blew me away!

And there’s just no way I could leave out Louis Gray. I think Louis is the next Jerimah Owyang or the next Jason Calacanis.”

What point of success will you think “I’ve really made it big time!”

“Wow!… When I’m on the stage, on a panel.. with GaryVee, Michael Arrington and Jeremiah Owyang… talking about online technology… and I’m either pitching my company or talking about something I’ve done online… or I’m up there because of my experience… at that point, I know I’ll have made it.

 

Either that, or… when I can stay home but I have a business that is employing 10+ people and they’re all taken care of financially.. and I know that we’re gonna be in business for a long, long time.”

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