Broadcasting Brain

Catch the Brainwaves is our ongoing series of interviews with a variety of folks participating in blogging and social media. I ask them ten questions and they respond with their brilliant answers and insights! Today’s Q&A features the mastermind behind Nowsourcing and Collective Thoughts - Brian Wallace!

1. Do you have a favorite social media “hangout” these days? If so, why do you prefer it over other places?

Mixx and StumbleUpon have become my 2 most favorite hangouts. Mixx for one has really come into its own for social news aggregation as it allows you to have a personalized site, rather than the same front page for everybody. They recently added some neat messaging features as well.

StumbleUpon has been a favorite of mine for quite some time as well. Their discovery approach to finding content based on your preferences is really awesome. Just to think that a web surfer can find sites they didn’t know about without knowing the direct site or going through a search engine is great.

2. Your group blog “Collective Thoughts” - did you have any particular goals for it? Are they being met?

I wanted to put together an all-star team that exclusively wrote about social media. Not Google (ok, maybe we do a little), and not SEO. Social Media isn’t SEO and needs to be treated as a separate discipline. Wanted to increase awareness and readership, and we are really rocking along for being such a young site!

3. You’ve done some interviewing on our own blog. What’s the hardest thing about being an interviewer?

Interviews both on the giving and receiving end are a lot of fun to do. But you’re right - it isn’t all fun and games. There is research to be done, verifying facts, checking out past interviews that the person may have already done and the like.

(ED: there is ?!??? Ooops…)

So you could say that being prepared is a challenge in and of itself, but I’d say that trying to find the pulse of bringing the right person in at the right time and asking timely and unique questions would probably be a blog interviewers biggest challenge.

4. Has the time come for elections to be held over the Internet?

Sure, why not? You can’t have a hanging chad ;)? In all seriousness, I believe that it’s only a matter of time for this to occur.

5. Do you think that social media should steer clear of politics? Why or why not?

Social media can’t steer clear of politics even if it wanted to. The whole point of social media is to aggregate and promote the most relevant events that matter to the largest number of people, so there is always going to be segment of social that is into politics (as we see heavily on Reddit, political blogs, and even the new Digg politics section).

6. Do you read many blogs outside of your own niche or industry?

It varies, based on the actual amount of time that I have in any given day, but I like reading things outside social media. I’m interested in science, politics, travel, productivity, religion, green stuff, alternative fuels, and logic / theory - which you’ll probably see influences on in posts from time to time.

7. What makes a blog post a good blog post?

That depends on who you’re asking, but since you?re asking me, I guess I should cough up an answer.

Let me say that people have different writing styles. As you mentioned in a recent review of something I wrote about StumbleUpon Compact and informative article changes to review pages. I like to write a dense amount of information and keep down reading time, because I know that the people that I write for are searching among at least hundreds of similar blogs on topic. Plus, I love playing with titlesmithing, so these posts are sure to grab the attention of folks that are just browsing through tons of RSS feeds.

It all comes down to fundamentals. Blog posts need to have the right mix of at least a few of these traits: humor, unique insight, analytical ability, breaking news, and helpfulness. Some try to get the equivalent of their master’s thesis in every post, while others keep it short and sweet. It’s a matter of preference.

8. Do you think that bloggers have become addicted to “social media juice”, i.e. the burst in readership and page views from popular submissions at social media sites?

Absolutely, especially if they were subject to a significant wave. Stats-addicts really take it personally if their traffic goes down, as if it speaks directly to their ability. Sorry people. You’ve got to blog like no one else is watching.

9. Pretend the Internet is destroyed overnight. What do you do the next morning?

How did you get in my head? Vacation time at last.

10. What one piece of knowledge, advice, or wisdom do you have to share with our readers?

If you want to get involved in social media, you really need to get immersed in it. You can start small, perhaps learning just one social media site. But do yourself a favor and know the community. Make friends, watch what works and above all, have fun. On the blogging side of things, find a writing style that works for you and keep up on it. Don’t burn yourself out.

Thanks to Brian for sharing his brainwaves!

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