Finding Good Social Media Articles: Not Always an Easy Task
Posted by Beth Hrusch on Fri, Jan 08, 2010
As blogs and other forms of social media expand, the number of social media articles has correspondingly increased. Many of these articles are written by people trying to come to grips with these new technologies. And some of them are written by a guy in a basement about his dog's toenail fungus.
Despite its near-ubiquity, though, it can be difficult to find good social media articles. For starters, there are many people out there looking to capitalize on the social media bubble who have pretty much no idea what they are talking about. Fortunately, these individuals often have poor command of basic syntax and grammar, so they can be identified and avoided.
From a statistical distribution standpoint, the sheer volume of articles on social media can also make it difficult to find quality. Usually, 5%-10% of them will be good, and so on down. Sometimes it is tough to wade through all of the junk in order to reach the gems.
Even if one has found good articles, consistency of quality is important. It's possible to stumble on an occasional interesting article but upon returning to the same site, finding that it hasn't been updated in weeks or that content has suffered in the meantime. This seems to be a common problem for many bloggers, who have good ideas once in a while but fail to post well or frequently in between.
Over time, it seems likely that social media articles will increase in quality, as ranking systems improve and become more sophisticated, and writers come to better understand their rapidly changing medium. Of course, the bad articles will remain lurking somewhere in the past like a forgotten angelfire.com webpage. But certainly, the good articles are out there for the tenacious reader.