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Archive for the 'Social Media and Blogging' Category

Read Write Web posted some fascinating findings from a survey it conducted recently, in which they asked 20 bloggers and social media consultants how much they make. An intrusive and personal question perhaps, but that’s why half of them agreed to give out that information on an anonymous basis.

Rather than write it all again, I’m going to use my coverage for WPN liberally:

It looks like the average rate on a per-post basis is $25, though some reported to make as little as $10 and as much as $80. “Let’s say these people are half-time pro-bloggers making $25 per post, writing 3 posts per day,” Kirkpatrick [of RRW] says. “That’s $75 per half-day, a little less than $20 per hour, about $1500 to $1750 per month for half time work. Take two of those jobs at once, do it for a year, and you’ll make about $40k.”

You could do worse, but in-house bloggers seem to be doing better. According to Kirkpatrick, respondents reported annual salaries ranging from $45k and $55k with benefits up to $70k, $80k and $90k with bonuses. “We’re tempted to say, based on the anonymously submitted but descriptive replies we got, that the closer to pure journalism our respondents were doing the lower their wages were,” he says. Now that’s interesting. Critics of blogs as news sources (like the one discussed in this article) ought to love that little nugget.

Those in-house bloggers still didn’t make as much as the participating social media consultants who make as little as $150 an hour, and most commonly about $300 an hour. That’s fascinating considering the amount of sponsored content infiltrating social networks. I have to wonder how the pay rates of these consultants reflect their practices in terms of white hat/black hat.

These numbers (while it should be kept in mind that there were only 20 anonymous participants) might make you jealous or provide you with motivation to reach that point (unless you’re already in the same range or are doing better). What do you think?

You may recall my post from a week or two ago when I talked about blogs as credible news sources.  I consider  blogs and social media to be in the same ballpark, because after all, blogs are social and community driven as well.

After posting an article about CareerBuilder gaming Twitter at WebProNews, and talking about how social media legitimacy was deteriorating as a result of social sites not better policing their sites, I got into something of a debate with one of the commenters, who claims that there never has been or ever will be any legitimacy to social media as a news source. Obviously, that is a notion I disagree with.

Of course , seemingly right on cue, someone upset the “Apple” cart today on iReport.com falsely reporting Steve Jobs having a heart attack that temporarily sent Apple’s stock plummeting. I also talked about this at WebProNews.

That story would seem to favor the point of the guy I was debating with, but the community factor is what led to it being disproved, which kind of illustrates my own point.  To quote myself,

Where the legitimacy shines through is in the communities themselves. There are always others to call something out as BS in new media formats where discussion is the key to coming away with useful information.

When all is said and done, it is up to readers to use their heads and think about where they are getting their info. Just as has always been the case, (even long before social media, blogs, and citizen journalism were ever heard of) you shouldn’t believe everything you read. But damning an entire medium because some abuse it is just ridiculous.

Your thoughts?

Big news from StumbleUpon today!

Not only has the social bookmarking site (or “personalized recommendation engine” as they call it) announced a new partnership program that will see sites implement internal stumblability, but they are rolling out a new design that will no longer require users to install the toolbar into their browsers.

What does this mean besides added convenience for users?

It means that many more people are likely to start using it, and that means a whole lot more content. It also means a whole lot more potential fuel for bloggers (as I mentioned, it’s one of my favorite tools for overcoming writer’s block).

I think both of these announcements are going to turn into something really big for StumbleUpon, and they are announcements that are long overdue (particularly the non-toolbar one).

For more about it, I wrote a piece on it for WebProNews this morning.

The BlogWorld Expo has come to an end, and you can see our coverage of it via these articles:

- Using Social Media To Drive Traffic

- Dave Taylor Explains How We Got Here

- How to Seduce Your Tribe and Create Raving Fans

- How to Build You, Inc.

- Advice From a Wine Expert and Video Blogger

- New Media 101

- Keynote Luncheon with Rubel and Kawasaki

- Both Sides Of The Pro Blogging Coin

- State of the Blogosphere Address

- Microjournalism

- The Best Ways To Approach Bloggers

- Putting Social Media Into the Newsroom

I believe there will be a few more articles posted in the near future, but the juicy stuff should surface on the WebProNews Video Blog before long - the exclusive interviews.  Oh yeah, I did sort of a round-up type article for SmallBusinessNewz as well.

Here I go again rehashing something I’ve already written about, but so be it…it’s relevant ;)

As I talked about recently, many blog platforms seem to be making a bigger jump into social media, and today Google (who already owns Blogger by the way) has acquired another blogging platform - TNC. TNC claims that they’ve been doing the social media thing longer than most of the other blogging services.

TNC is out of Korea, and many are speculating that this will be the beginning of Google trying to capture more market share in Asia where it is not nearly as dominant as it is here in the U.S.  This might be the case, but I have to wonder if TNC has some back-end things going on that Google is interested in as well. Perhaps things that it will incorporate with Blogger.

Admittedly, I am not really familiar with TNC’s product(s).  I know they have a social tool called TextCube. Usually when Google makes an acquisition, it is something interesting, so we’ll have to see what becomes of this one.

For more on TNC from the horse’s mouth

Lately there seems to be a lot of efforts being made to make blogging even more social than it already is. I have written several times on sites like WebProNews and SmallBusinessNewz about some of the things different platforms like Movable Type, WordPress, and Blogger are doing to make their services more social, and why blogs are really kind of like social networks anyway.

Rather than rewrite these articles here, I will just provide you with a few links. I don’t intend for posts on this blog to just be collections of links in the future, but since I am new to the blog, maybe it will give you a little taste of where I’m coming from.

- The Social Part of Blogging

- Google’s New Blogger Features

- Movable Type: Blogs Not Social Enough

- Facebook Connect Plugin for Wordpress Glimpsed

Anyhow, I just thought the topic of blogs as social tools seemed like a good topic for me to start with here, so I thought I’d throw these at you.

As far as this blog itself, you can start expecting at least one new post usually about 5 days a week. So those who don’t subscribe to the feed, please come back frequently!

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