I am not lying to you when I say that I cannot believe that I have been using Twitter for “10” years as of this point in time. Frankly speaking, I don’t think I have even touched upon the social network here on the website outside of suggesting that our readers follow us in an occasional post. We signed up in 2009 for PiercingMetal and were told that it was “the hot thing to do” at the time. I discussed this move as a part of a series of social networking narratives and you can find the thoughts on this course of action by clicking HERE. The link will bring you to the focused Twitter thoughts of the time and that is way back in early 2010. Below you will find a screen captured JPG of that profile’s very first tweet.
I’m not going to go into too much detail here since I have already discussed Google+ as a part of these narratives about the myriad of Social Networks that are out there and how they are used to help out the PiercingMetal.com site. It was back in May of 2011 that I first signed up for G+ account using an additional email address related to the website because it never hurts to have an alternate to ones main site email. That was great to connect with those musical types that also used Google+ and it gave me another means of posting our content as soon as it went live on the site. While that was great in the beginning it was not something that was accruing “Likes” or in this sense “Followers” like you want to do in the Social Networking dynamic. Now there is the permission to have what are viewed as the Branded Pages and with that being the case there is a companion Official PiercingMetal Page to serve the needs of those readers who have moved on from Facebook for one reason or another. Clicking the logo graphic above will actually take you to the Google+ Page for the website but before you do that let me tell you how it works for the content that you will be seeing on it.
Google+ is based on the idea of “Circles” that you add and remove users from and with this methodology you can also “Add To Followed Circles” certain brands that you enjoy the offerings of. Visitors can click any of the links that are found on this page and be brought to the website to investigate further. Below each posting is the means to give a “+1” which is the equivalent of a Facebook “Like” along with the means to share the item to your own Circles. We love the idea of plus ones and having articles that interest you most being shared but we really hope that you take a moment and add that Official Page to your “Followed Circles”. What this boils down to is the same status of giving a Facebook Page a like and being able to regularly see its offerings in a specific area of your Google+ account. Right now there are not a lot of users following the page but it is very new and since Google+ itself has taken off very slowly the same applies to any branded pages in there. Since I don’t want you to miss a thing with the site I hope you will add it to your followed circles as soon as possible. I don’t think there is a way to connect our Twitter or Instagram to it as a default action but that would be sweet since it would allow me to indulge your senses with maximum PiercingMetal stuffs with a single click.
I’ve noticed in the WordPress Software that we use for the Official Blog for PiercingMetal (aka “PiercingMetal Musings) that there is an option to share to Google+ so that will be happening with every post going forward. If I can get the site redevelopment plan underway when 2013 rolls around I will be making that a default setting for those review posts as well. Of course if you are still not a fan of doing this the Google way, the Official Facebook Page for PiercingMetal can be found HERE and remember that our Official PiercingMetal Twitter is always a busy place too. Thanks as always for listening and your interest in the workings of the PiercingMetal.com website.
Learn more of the finer details about Google + via its Wikipedia entry HERE.
UPDATE 4/3/2019: In December of 2018, Google announced that they would be putting Google+ to bed and yesterday all consumer accounts and their branded pages ceased to be. I will miss using it for PiercingMetal updates and to reach the audience that found value in the network and with its absence encourage those who are interested in our views and content to come and “Like” the Official Facebook Page. I will see you over there. Thank you Google+, you’ll be missed.
I’ve been on the fence about doing a post about this particular medium in the online realm because like some of the others we have briefly discussed, it is NOT a social network per se. What Klout amounts to is a kind of gauge as to what ones social media standings are based on a number of criteria that gets pooled all together from interactions on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and all the rest of them.
According to what I have read about Klout, it ranks you on a 1-100 scale and I imagine that the closer you are to 100 means the more influential in Klout you are perceived to be in terms of online influence. The account I created was set up by using my Official Twitter for PiercingMetal.com because while a personal profile might have been nice, I decided to do one for the brand identity to see how it was reaching the world around it. At the time of this posting, I appear to rank a “57” Klout Score which I guess is not all that influential across its system. To be honest I am not all that concerned about that since it does not affect the way that I do things on the website and blogs that I compose for you all. The tally itself has been one of the main concerns that people have with this medium as many feel that it is not truly representative to ones true social networking impact. Who knows. To me this stuff is all subjective anyway but still fun to see how it all presents itself. Check it out….. Continue reading PiercingMetal & Social Networking: Klout→
For a number of months I have been offering up our readers a veritable cornucopia of Social Networking posts here in our our sites blog and speaking in relation as to how we were using them to better generate attention to the PiercingMetal.com brand identity. Since site launch back in 2005, I’ve seen networks come and go and while some have even remained active all this time, their own reach and considered impact on the larger geography has waned while others took the reigns and rose to new heights. MySpace in particular was one that is no longer deemed relevant by a large faction of Net savvy people. On the other hand, Facebook is now without question one of the most popular, if not THE most popular and powerful Social Network that is currently online. It seems that everyone you encounter in your travels has a Facebook page and while people used to ask for telephone numbers, I now hear “can I add you on Facebook” much more. Not long after I created my own personal account, I learned of being able to create a focused page that could be dedicated to my website and this community page was limited in its quantification and use to the readership. That left me with some serious doubts about its benefit. Our first posting on said page has been embedded for your perusal below.
Hopefully you already know by now how the Fan Pages work out but if you don’t, all you have to do as a user on Facebook is go to the page for the resource you enjoy and click “Like”. As time goes on, the various visitors to the page see how many people “Like” the page and perhaps are encouraged to click that button themselves. I took a snap when our official page reached “2112” because we are Rush fans over here at the PiercingMetal Command HQ, and also because our reaching a Metal “666” happened too fast and was gone before I thought to screen capture the visual. For the longest time I was only using it sparingly and certainly not as much as my Metal Media peers were. I was instead opting to keep my head focused on as much content creation as possible more than tinkering about on these external mediums. Continue reading PiercingMetal & Social Networking: Official Facebook Fan Page→
Continuing with my series of narratives about a number of different social networks and how they are used by PiercingMetal.com comes some insight on the one called “This Is My Jam”. Check it out.
Now this one was a little more up my alley because it dealt with the direct sharing of music that was currently on your mind and plays with how you would normally tell your friends about it so they could indulge in the song or band as well. Welcome to the newest Social Networking medium that they call “This Is My Jam” and I have to thank our stalwart colleague Skeleton Pete for directing me to it. Yes there are a lot of ways to share music out there thanks to the likes of Facebook and Twitter among others but this one seemed a little more unique so I decided to play around with it. Once you are at the site you can either create your account by signing in with Facebook, Twitter or starting from scratch with your email address. I decided to sign in with my Official PiercingMetal Twitter account of @piercingmetal since I am trying to use that particular medium a lot more as a journalist these days. It’s pretty straight forward and I think that it took me about five minutes to get underway. Continue reading PiercingMetal & Social Networking: This Is My Jam→
