Summary: The FM website discusses issues on the frontier of the known. But its delivery remains less-than-cutting-edge. Twitter. Facebook. Others I have heard of but never used, and those that are only strange words to me. Today we ask the mineshaft {aka ask the community, the Gemeinschaft — See Wikipedia} how to better use social media.
Moving slowing into the 21st century:
- In 2007 we migrated to WordPress.
- In July 2010 we began posting announcements of new posts on Twitter and Facebook
- On May 20 I began posting on Twitter links to interesting articles about subjects discussed on the FM website; these are mirrored on Facebook.
What do we do next? Please post suggestions in the comments!
Remember: we have no control over the software of WordPress, Twitter, etc. All we can do is use the existing features.
Dave Winer (RSS, podcasting) is working to make something like Twitter that’s built into the internet rather than being a corporate whim, as are Twitter and Facebook. Maybe other people are too.
You seem to be doing Twitter right (recent follower) but I’d rather there were a way to distinguish links to your site from links otherwhere. Different link shortening methods would waste less of my time.
Gambatte kudasai!
Thanks!
==> Links on Twitter going back to the FM website begin with wp.me/
Depends what you mean by ‘leverage’. The FM website has a Google page rank of 6 which is excellent – well above average – so you must be doing something right.
However, this site does not rank in the first 150 for a search of ‘geopolitics’ on the major search engines which is strange. If you want to boost the search engine rankings, I suggest the following WordPress plugins: Yoast and Google XML Sitemaps. Then submit your site using Fetch at Google Webmaster Tools.
Plus: EZPZ One Click Backup just in case.
Social media: Google+ is being used by Google a lot more to assign search engine positions. “HOW TO: Integrate Google+ Into Your WordPress Site“, Mashable Social Media, 22 July 2011.
And then there is Pinterest but that is more visual.
Thanks for this advice, much of which is over my head. If I understand correctly, WordPress.com does not allow plug-ins (which require self-hosted sites).
I’ll check out Google+ and Pinterest.
On a less-technical note, the FM website was never designed as a mass-market website — but rather an alternative to those. Daily long articles (1000+ words), detailed analysis of complex issues, extensive “for more information” links. Most significant, we discuss the hot issues of tomorrow (for evidence see the past predictions page. Once its hot, with everybody writing about it, there’s seldom more to say — and it drops off the FM website (the Euro-crisis is an interesting exception, as it’s still widely misunderstood).
This is the opposite of the large-audience websites. When websites like this get large audiences, the world will be a different place.
There is not much wrong with the site code: http://www.searchcommander.com/site-review/ but if you had the site hosted on your own web space you would be able to use various plugins.
At the very least, I suggest that you do a backup of the site in case it disappears.
I was actually wondering if I could get the posts delivered by mail. It would be nice to have something to look forward to other then the netflix.
I’ve been enjoying discussions on two platforms: G+ and LinkedIn. Neither seems to elicit large amounts of commentary, but the signal-to-noise ratio is excellent.
Well… If you want to become viral you only need to produce manipulated facts that show how splendid the government is while painting America with a Howard Zinn stroke. However, that will only get you 5 min of attention from lemmings plugged into comedy central.
As a person whom works in online marketing, I would suggest a Facebook page that supports the FM narrative with video than can easily be shared. More of a direct response approach, assisting people with a gut instinct that they are not being told the truth, with thoughtful analysis and factual support.
One of my favorite aspects of the FM site is the commentary. Citizen commentary is the the most impactful and historically significant outcomes in the evolution of the web. Leverage your network and seek out debate where debate exists. Make a claim and build a reputation for honesty and strait forward argument.
This opinion is worth the tax on a pack of gum.
I have sort of a tolerate it – hate it relationship with Facebook, but setting up an FM page is straight forward and is a great way to get your message out. By setting up a Facebook Page for FM, you can create share the articles you generate in WordPress. As folks like your Facebook page, they will get announcements on their own news feeds. Additionally, users can post comments and other articles that the community might find interesting. Finally, you could also post articles you find particularly interesting for the community with a short intro.
I have thought about moving to Google Plus, but nobody is there, and it is difficult to not much fun to manage to social sites, so I personally stick to Facebook.
I second that.
#1) No one uses the other social networks. Don’t waste time on them UNLESS you can find an app that lets you post to all of them at the same time…
#2) Except for reddit.
#3) Interact with your followers more especially on facebook. The more comments / likes a post has the more likely it is to be seen by friends of friends.
#4) Try to get people with more followers than you to retweet your tweets. Especially someone like @youranonnews.
You’ve mentioned in several posts that anger, anger at ourselves is the first stop on the road to reform. I don’t think that you will get anywhere with the baby boomer generation that way. They are too vested in the status quo. The anger is out there, but it is with the younger generations. #2 and #4 is how you reach them.
Thanks, that’s helpful advice!
I must concur with Aesop here. Geopolitical sites and commentators with very high google pagerank tend to pander to the basest prejudices of the mob. For example, dismal fools like David Brooks and Tom Friedman prove tremendously popular — because they act as echo chambers for the follies and self-delusions of people on the right or the left. Read David Brooks and “learn” that the big problem with America’s economy is that Americans have lost their work ethic and just don’t want to keep their noses to the grindstone today…despite the documented fact that Americans work vastly more hours per year and vacation far less than the populations of successful economies like Germany. Read Tom Friedman and “learn” that the solution to our problems is a magic bipartisan pony that will squirt happy faces out its ass and somehow make ferociously Jacobin Republicans sit down to compromise with Democrats.
People read geopolitical sites mainly to confirm their personal prejudices, which research shows get formed by the mid-thirtyish age and tend not to change thereafter.
FM’s site offers inconvenient facts and inappropriate logic. That’s unsuitable for pigeonholing into “commie pinko left” or “fascist jackbooted right” and thus unlikely to scale the Olympian heights of geopolitical blogs. Sites like Red State (“once the knife gets past the jugular [of liberals] it’s easy going cutting off their heads”) and firedoglake (Obama is worse than Bush, America stands at the brink of FEMA-concentration-camp doom) are the popular ones.
Thanks, that’s helpful. So we need to introduce new subjects to the FM website, about hidden dangers facing our nation…
Forget the back helicopters stuff: Smack! Was that a Mosquito You Killed, Or a Drone?, Clean Technica, 7 February 2012. lol :)
.
.