What is this, Grand Central Station?
How this Colorado company created for itself (and creates for clients) a social media hub using about.me.
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When in a particularly frustrated mood, my mother, red-faced and flustered would shout: "What is this Grand Central Station!?!" Never was there any doubt about the rhetorical nature of these outbursts, and we children took this to mean, roughly: "Get the hell out of this kitchen!!"
Clearly, as a metaphor, Grand Central was, for my mother, associated with hurry and an overwhelming, multi-directional chaos. There's another side to this, if we think a moment about what is entailed by the actual Grand Central Station. Even while it is busy and wild and yes, chaotic even, it is also a hub, a central hub for traffic. In that respect it has tremendous utility. Now, to extend the metaphor, in trying to direct as many people toward your content, or to future sources of your content (the former exemplified by websites, blog posts, even books, the latter exemplified by Twitter accounts, podcasts, etc.), a central hub is crucially important for those using social media for marketing purposes.
Let us turn to the question of techniques for organizeing various profiles into a neat package. The task is fairly easily achieved on one's own website, wherein one can readily include buttons for each of one's social accounts. On the other hand, blogs and even other lesser known platforms such as Quora, Disqus or Medium are a little lesser known and in someways only clumsily included on a website. Enter about.me.
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What I've found particularly useful about this centralizing platform is that it gives one a chance to include nearly every point of contact one has with the Social Mediaverse, while also including a lot of resume-ish detail, as a kind of more aesthetically pleasant version of a LinkedIn or other professionally-oriented platform. This is what is called the "backstory" section, and it is optional to include.
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Nor is this the only benefit of the about.me platform. One enjoys the ability to quickly share the profile with others via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (see above), and edits to the profile pics, color scheme and font (size and style) are really easily executed.
Then there is the fact of a kind of built-in traffic. Whereas one has to direct traffic to one's own site, there is a worldwide audience already present on this site. I have, in fact, treated about.me as a social platform in it's own right, having made a number of professional connections on the site itself. Furthermore, it works as an ideal link for twitter accounts. Nor is this traffic insignificant. From about.me's (very useful, enlightening) stats feature:
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In the above, I have the cursor over the Tuesday, Feb 15th datapoint, revealing that I had 103 views that day. If one pulls the cursor to a neutral point, the week's tally is revealed (in this case, 851 views on the week).
If you have any questions about how to make this platform work for you as it has for me, I would be happy to aid any Colorado-based individual or organization with the basics, and to do so free-of-charge (just keep me in mind as for potential work and/or referrals, please! :) ) I am easily reached:
719.568.5190
or
