Shareology can’t be the only one who is more than a tad tired of Winter!!! Time to dip into the archives for a reminder of what Summer and Summer bring to us!
One more from the streets of St. Paul!
![img_3254[1]](http://kayroseland.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/img_32541.jpg)
Ahhhh…..Shareology can feel the warmth of Spring returning already!!!
Kay Roseland @KayLoire
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 12,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 20 years to get that many views.
Shareology began on July 26, 2009: Happy Birthday!!!
What I am most proud of is the sheer diversity of subject matter. Ok, Shareology has tipped heavily towards retail brands. However, you will find posts on social media, marketing and networking sprinkled throughout Shareology. This works out pretty great, in that I hesitated to start a blog when my interests are so very diverse. One of the surprises has been that posts I have considered to be sort of simplistic have resonated with readers. Luckily they can see the wisdom buried in the shallowness that is Shareology. (Hmm…..that might be a new post: Embrace your Shallowness….not in the Kim K shallowness but in the KLR shallowness…like I’ve never met a British mystery I didn’t love….or mysteries about Venice or Paris….or south Florida….)
So: three things I’m proud of:
Readers come back; posts draw new readers, sort of like an annuity. When I am feeling guilty that I have not continued posting twice a week, and can barely manage once a month, I marvel at the continued attraction of years old posts. The St. Paul picture of Peppermint Patty in Rice Park kicking a football remains popular; who knew I’d be walking through that park every morning on the way to work?
I had a few retail scoops in my time…. I beat the Strib by a day announcing the arrival of Louis Vuitton in Galleria. (They were waiting for a quote from the NY office; not Shareology. I saw the signs in Galleria in the midst of a horrific downturn in retail and knew this was huge news.) Thanks to some superb sources, I scooped everyone by months in announcing Microsoft was opening a store in Mall of America, across from Apple.
My photography is a surprise…. One of the bases for Shareology was the thought that a boatload of words tossed on a blog is innately pretty boring. Thus my point-and-shoot Canon became a fixture of Shareology. A definite highlight was when I was contacted by the general contractor of the Louis Vuitton store, asking if he could use a Shareology photo on his website, to advertise his firm’s abilities. He offered a photo credit. I am still glowing from that.
So, where will Shareology go? Beats me. I’ve been converted to a content calendar at work; it’s necessary to manage the posts of 20 some writers. But Shareology? Shareology will continue to report the world as she sees it and experiences it. But not before stopping to thank all those readers who came to read, to laugh, to argue, to comment, and to return. Without you…..Shareology would be a big old room full of echoes.
One final point: Shareology recently went and clicked on those very first seven posts (right hand column, waaaaay at the bottom.) Talk about an out-of-body experience. It really does feel like they were written by someone else. While Shareology tries to come back together as one, click on July, 2009: that Target branding post still holds up, as does the one on Bachmans’ marketing. Enjoy!
Happy 3rd Birthday!!!
Kay Roseland @KayLoire
Shareology would like to….share….a little parable about networking.
Once upon a time, there was a princess who wanted to grow up to be a social media rock star. She wished upon a star, but alas, there was…..nothing. She knocked upon door after door; she met for coffee with every social media person in her land.
In her networking quest, she came upon an event called Product Camp. Off she went, at 7 AM in the morning to knock upon the doors of the castle called St. Thomas. Alas, the castle was locked but another princess was also looking for a way into the castle. “Come with me” Princess Networking said as she led her new friend into the unlocked front door of the building. It turned out that her new friend was speaking twice that day on social media and Princess Networking made sure to be in the audience for each session.
Later that week, Princess Networking connected with her new friend on the magic LinkedIn; she also set up a meeting for them at the castle known as Starbucks.
Still later, Princess Networking got an email from her new friend. “Would you be interested in working for my boss? She’s in need of a Princess such as you….”
One thing led to another and now Princess Networking has a new opportunity in life, because she knocked on one more door, and because she never, never, never gave up.
Thus is the power of positive networking.
Kay Roseland @KayLoire
Just saw something I’d like to share, and what better place than Shareology! Imagine the scent of this:
Happy Holidays from Shareology!!!!
Kay Roseland @KayLoire
Having lunch last week with an author, I discovered yet another person who hasn’t drunk the Facebook Kool-Aid. She’s focusing primarily on LinkedIn, her blog and her website. As you can imagine, when her book came out, there was spirited discussion of whether to produce a Facebook page. Turns out, she didn’t.
Wow: so there is more than one of me. It is really hard to ignore 800,000,000 Facebook members. But I am pretty much doing it.
When gistr.com was launching, as I considered the social media strategy, LinkedIn groups and Twitter were a no-brainer. But, Facebook? When I realized that most folks spend 55 minutes a day on Facebook, I was concerned I would never get them to leave and click on gistr.com. Now the amount of time the average person spends on Facebook is still growing. Five minutes ago, I had yet another Smart Brief article hit my email why we should all get social. (This translates to spend yet more time and marketing energy on…….Facebook!)
I do find Facebook handy to keep track of nephews: getting pictures from Peru and Afghanistan has been wonderful to keep up as they travel the globe. When Stephan Pastis hit Minneapolis two weekends ago and posed in front of Charles Schultz’ former home in St. Paul and posted it to his Facebook page, I lit up like the 4th of July. Yes, occasionally I do post a new Shareology item to both Google+ and Facebook.
But in general, I think it is very freeing to know you can participate in social media without being on every platform in existence. Yes, even one with 800,000,000 members. In my case, the primary platforms are LinkedIn, Twitter and Shareology. In the case of gistr.com and Shareology, most traffic has been generated by 1. LinkedIn groups and 2. Twitter.
So if never-ending changes and privacy concerns worry you, be assured you can live a fruitful, satisfying life without significant Facebook presence. Heck, you can even drop the electronics for a few days and rediscover the beautiful of falling leaves and walks in the crisp air. But that’s another post.
Kay Roseland @KayLoire
Hard to believe that Shareology started on July 26, 2009! Even harder to believe the great people I’ve met along the way; thank you so much for your readership. Love to look back at milestones? Here are the top 3 Shareology stories in the past 2 years:
So what do YOU want to talk about in the next Shareology post?
Kay Roseland @KayLoire
May 3, 2011, 12:00-1:00pm, International Market Square Conference Room B, FREE
Kay Roseland, social media strategist, will be presenting and leading a discussion on social media with an emphasis on blogging. She is currently a social media strategist and project manager for gistr.com, a marketing, public relations and sales events website for the Twin Cities area. Kay has a blog called Shareology that focuses on social media, retail marketing and networking. Kay has an MBA in Marketing from the University of St. Thomas.
The Lunch Break Series is an, informal roundtable discussion on various In-House related topics sponsored by AIGA. These discussions are free and open for anyone to attend. They are held over the lunch hour at International Market Square.
Kay Roseland @KayLoire
Three years ago, I had never heard of social media. I was focused on finishing my MBA at the University of St. Thomas and not flunking my final course in strategic management. That my final project was on Google was only one of many happinesses.
Fast forward five months and the Recession-Depression hit. Suddenly I was part of the 25% of my online retail company that was laid off. I had a lot of time on my hands to answer the burning question: what the heck is this social media stuff?
Within 48 hours of being laid-off, not one, not two, but three people told me that my 12 connections and no recommendations on LinkedIn was a suitable beginning that needed to amp up quickly. I told that advice to heart; today I have some 600 connections and 17 recommendations on LinkedIn. LinkedIn groups have been one of the strongest sources for traffic to my blog.
Once I began building my LinkedIn presence, I turned to a new thing called Twitter. At first, as for most folks, I spent a lot of time staring at the screen wondering where the fun kids were hanging out. By following tips offered in the media, uncapping the magic of hashtags and following smart people, I began to enjoy and rave about twitter. Meeting people on twitter was actually easier than in person or via LinkedIn. After making the Twitter connection, the next steps were often meeting in person (IRL, in real life) and then connecting on LinkedIn.
Blogging
In retrospect, I had accidentally stumbled on a strategic order of social media growth: first LinkedIn, then Twitter. This led me to my blog Shareology. The super good news was that my LinkedIn and Twitter connections were a strong potential audience for my blog.
For someone who is extremely right-brained, I actually used a left-brained approach to strategy for the blog. What was I interested in? Networking, retail, marketing and social media. Would an audience read something with so many interests? Turns out the answer was Yes! Once I had thought out in my own mind how interconnected the four were, it became obvious how they became the four legs of my Shareology table.
Happy Ending
It turns out that by using WordPress and Twitter, I raised my Google profile. (Something about magical algorithms……) So someone with very little SEO experience was able to be #1 in Google searches. Try searching Kay Roseland or Shareology on Goggle: it all works together. 1 + 1 +1 does not equal 3; it equals about 10!!
Social Media Learning
So what did I learn? Two points seem key:
Most importantly, you’ve just been given a new set of tools to reach out with: above all, have fun!!
Kay Roseland @KayLoire
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 3 fully loaded ships.
In 2010, there were 112 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 167 posts. There were 774 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 1gb. That’s about 2 pictures per day.
The busiest day of the year was June 21st with 189 views. The most popular post that day was Microsoft coming to Mall of America!.
The top referring sites in 2010 were linkedin.com, twitter.com, minnesota.com, facebook.com, and en.wordpress.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for microsoft store mall of america, shareology, shopping center, kay roseland, and apple briefing room.
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
Microsoft coming to Mall of America! June 2010
2 comments
About Kay Roseland July 2009
6 comments
Branding Opportunity or Ugly Concrete Posts? August 2009
5 comments
Apple brings their Briefing Room to Uptown! July 2010
1 comment
Which Twin Cities Shopping Center is this? And this? August 2009
5 comments
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