How do you gather your information? Search Engines or Social Networks?

Mike Hickinbotham on LinkedIn asked an interesting question:

"Will people prefer social networks over search engines to gather information"

Here's my response...

Social networks are taking over from search engines for the less specific questions we have in life.

Google is great at finding specific things. It's like using the card catalogue or computer at the library. You type in a name and find a response.

Social networks are more like wandering through the library just looking and every now and then someone comes along and suggests 'Hey, this one's good'. I follow specific people on Twitter and it's like having a personal news feed of current articles and latest events.

The third element for me is Wikipedia. It's great as a starting point and giving background information. It's like asking the Librarian, 'What do you know about this...' and then they point you on to further info.

What are your thoughts? How do you gather your information about the world?

My Big Social Media Mistake

I’ve been making a big mistake around Social Media.

I’ve been posting a few blog entries. I’ve been doing Facebook. Started on Twitter. Added slideshows and book reviews on LinkedIn. Even said “I like it” on StumbleUpon.

I’ve been playing the social media game but doing it all completely wrong. I realised what I was doing wrong at a breakfast seminar this week. Rob Hartnett of Business Performance International was presenting. And, so was Jasmine Batra of Arrow Internet Marketing.

What was I doing wrong? I was treating all these social media things as separate things to do. No wonder I couldn’t keep up. My To Do List read like a social media nightmare. Update Facebook, add Twitter, post a blog, link to this, add to that…

That’s not building a Web 2.0 campaign, that’s building a brick wall. One brick, then the next one…

The web is about connection. Everything’s linked and joined together. It’s all digital code and that means it’s all synchronized as well. That means you can update many things at once if you just work smart.

So I clicked over to Slideshare where my slideshows are and updated Facebook and Twitter with two clicks. How easy was that?

My lesson: look for connections and short cuts. Automate!

Now let’s see… can I post this blog to Blogger, update Facebook, Linked In and Twitter all at once? I’ll let you know how I get on.

That’s my big Social Media mistake. What’s yours?