This is a guest post from David Spinks. David is the Community Manager for Scribnia.  With a passion for the power of social web communities, he has utilized his knowledge of community building to establish a professional career in the social media field. He authors a blog at www.davidspinks.com and contributes to the Scribnia Blog. Watching Scribnia develop into a strong and loyal community has been very exciting. We’ve enjoyed the loyal activity of some very enthusiastic alpha users who…

Last week, I wrote about why I was moving my #FollowFriday recommendations from Twitter to my blog. I suggested why it should be more than just a name and a link on Twitter. So, here are my recommendations for this week. I hope you check them out – they’re more than worth getting to know. Community. Calvin Lee (@mayhemstudios). I once wrote a post about why the word “community” is a combination of “communication” and “unity”. If that is the…

One of the people I connect with online, and whose blog I read regularly, is communications whiz Arik Hanson. Arik has a very savvy mind on him and has actually guest posted here before. A couple of weeks ago, Arik opened up the first Annual PR Readers Choice Awards for blogs. After the initial nomination round, I’m more than happy (and pleasantly surprised) to say that yours truly is in the running for the Most Thought Provoking Blog. As the…

You are not the story. You never have been. Not even in the “bad old days” before social media were you ever the story. You may have thought so. You may have fooled your clients into thinking they were lucky to have you because everyone listens to you. You may have blinded them with newspaper clippings and media endorsements. But that could just mean you know one good contact at a publication or TV and radio station. Your name very…

Back in November last year, #Journchat was launched by PR maven Sarah Evans. Its aim was simple – use Twitter to bring journalists, PR professionals and bloggers together on Twitter in a weekly chat format. Since then, #Journchat has gone from strength to strength and brought in special guests from CNN as well as regularly topped the Twitter trends every Monday night. Lately, however, it seems to have lost its way and some of its sparkle. That’s not to say…

A few months ago, #FollowFriday was introduced to Twitter. It was a great concept – recommend people you’re connected with to others. It led to new discoveries, new friends, and quickly made #FollowFriday a Twitter mainstay. Lately, though, #FollowFriday seems to have just become an endless amount of names and no more. While the idea of recommending people to others is still worthy, personally I feel it would be more so if there was a reason for your recommendations. Some…

People talk about Twitter and ROI (return on investment) and how there’s no real definable way to measure success or use the tools to your best advantage. At least, not unless you put a whole load of time into it. While that can be true depending on your needs, there are also plenty of ways to use Twitter more effectively as well as offer measurable ROI. Here are three of the tools I use – hopefully they’re as useful to…

I’m a romantic. I think that love is the one constant that we all want to be in. We want to love and be loved; being in love is infinitely more preferable than being alone and unloved. You, as a business, want me to love you. Or you should. You should be wooing me big time. Singing me sonnets, delivering me flowers, buying me dinner, taking me to a movie. I’m a pretty straightforward guy – I know when I’m…

… I was recently interviewed by David Holliday for his Totally Incorrect Media series. It’s an audio interview, and you can either download the mp3 file or catch the recording over at David’s blog. We discuss social media, blogging, 12for12k and a whole load more good stuff. David was a very genial host and I had a blast chatting with him. He’s also a very interesting character with a pretty cool background – check him out. I also spoke with…

It’s been quite a few days for social networking site Twitter. Many users are up in arms about a recent change that Twitter implemented regarding replies to other users. I’ll be the first to admit that, originally, I thought it was a major overreaction on the part of the users who were complaining the loudest. After all, the problem stemmed from something that was never a part of Twitter’s original toolset. So, to take the stance that a lot of…