Money, Blogging, and Social Media

I have to hand it to those today who excel nationally (in the United States) and internationally within money, blogging, and social media. Over 6 years ago, I had faced the prospect of Yahoo! merging Clubs and eGroups in what is known today as Yahoo! Groups. For anyone who kept dibs on Yahoo when they had the Top 10 Clubs page, I held 3 of the top 10 Yahoo! Clubs. In fact, I was a founder of the #1 group, a dating club called Boyfriend and Girlfriend Alley.

Why were they lost? Yahoo told founders and co-founders, which are today now known as moderators and groups owners that larger clubs might be lost because their database pull might be too much. Most clubs over 10K in membership were lost, even Boyfriend and Girlfriend alley which had reached an overwhelming 50K in group membership. Well, when Yahoo! told their users of their move and created a moderators groups to hash out the differences, I joined, under my old ID, Nile1345, which if anyone remembers… in 1999, Yahoo! started to not allow new users to have capital letters in their user ID. I had acquired Boyfriend and Girlfriend alley from an actual Yahoo! employee at that time due to the fact I wanted to create a simple interactive webpage as a supplement to the dating group.

Then, blogging or social media was not a focus or even key to making money. It was about getting the number, keeping it, and implementing activities to retain interest. It is respectable today , but it is disturbing to see those today who are trying to “lead” are failing.

Why are they failing? Well, because they are no longer connecting. Despite making $25 TO $75K more than my own father (who is a Physician Assistant… medical field, family practice), they are not even trying to personally connect with the “little people” or the normal everyday personal that does not have over a ouple thousands followers anymore.

Remember when you went to that sucky doctor (no matter what field) and got that second opinion with an awesome one? Well, that awesome doc or even physcian assistant related to you in a way no one else could.

That connects with social media. How can you connect with a cocky doctor who debuts on Larry King and does not consort with other doctors or even Physician Assistants (and for those who do not know, Physician Assistants make great family practice technicians due to their ability to keep up with new treatments and such…just consort the AAPA Journal Magazine – Journal of American Academy of Physician Assistants)?

Though totally differencet subjects, it is all the ability to get information flowing an actually connect with others on a somewhat equal level. Before the big money and big boy in social media today, the game was ran similarly: Have a product and spread the word by ‘word of mouth.’ This has been a long time practice. Social media extends even before the internet. Before that it was television, and before even that was newspapers. Before newspapers, it was books or even pamphlets or even someone riding on horseback from town to town to spread the news.

The one thing is, even though the big boys in social media are making big dollars, do not forget those who made the effort before.