I need a multi-network social news/bookmarking site.

My challenge in identifying the best social bookmarking or news site for my purposes is that I want to share different links with a number of networks of people. I would like my colleagues in the DA and I to share political news and useful links. I also want to share useful Web 2.0 links with fellow nomadic marketers – class-mates from two different courses I’ve attended (and perhaps a few other contacts I’ve picked up along the way).

I find myself using different sites or channels to share links with different groups – Muti for Nomadic Marketing graduates; Facebook group and/or Del.icio.us for my FNF Political Communication in the IT Age class-mates; and I’ve just set up a Ning network for DA staff to share ideas and information. It’s not exactly efficient.

DoshDosh my new favourite blog to follow

DoshDosh has definitely become my favourite blog to follow. It’s full of useful tips and interesting information – especially for the rookie blogger or online marketer.

Its author, Maki, tends to favour longer, more detailed posts, which means it takes a bit more effort to follow, but I think it’s worth it.

A particularly worthwhile recent article was “16 effective strategies to expand your blog’s reach in 2008.“

Another interesting post was “47 Social News Websites You Can Use.” I had no idea there were so many social news sites out there, and the list is apparently by no means comprehensive.

The latest post also has a bit of a political angle: it’s on the Art of Propaganda. See if you can identify a South African political example of each of the seven common tactics mentioned.

SA Blog Awards 2008

It’s SA Blog Awards time again, and I am happy to say that some of comments and recommendations a colleague of mine made on Inside Politics last year appear to have been taken on board.

Inside Politics came fifth in the political blogs category last year; but the winning blog – Steve Hofmeyer’s – while picking up on a couple of political issues from time to time, could not really be classified as having a political theme. This year the rules state that nominees have to fit the category in which they are placed. Good move.

Citizen Activism 2.0 – Eskom and the Scorpions

The DA often comes up with ideas for initiatives (not only online) around issues and concerns that are at the forefront of the public’s attention. For example, we launched Victims of Crime at a time when crime was very much in people’s mind’s eye – shortly after some very high profile murders (a concern still very prominent in the public mind).

We don’t always think of those ideas first, though.

This week, trade union Solidarity launched Eskom Stories – a platform for people to share their experience of Eskom’s incapacity, to vent and perhaps offer suggestions about how to ameliorate the situation.

WordPress and search engine terms

WordPress has an almost very useful feature on its Blog Stats page: It gives search engine terms that people have used to find your blog.

But it doesn’t tell you which search engine they were using, how high in the search engine ranking your blog was, or which post/page it referred them to. I picked this up yesterday when I noticed that someone had found my site via the search engine term “Project manager analogies”. Pretty obscure, don’t you think? (I had another one today: “websites that are cell phone easy” – quite specific )

It piqued my curiosity, so I went to my default search engine, and Googled it.

Convergence, changing media and public relations

I’ve been thinking about convergence over the last couple of days – how convergent technologies impact on what we do.

Save for the ANC’s signature desire to control everything, South Africa has an excellent piece of legislation in the Electronic Communication Act to address the fact that broadcasting and other types of electronic communication can no longer be pigeon-holed. They’re converging.