Baher Al Hakim of CloudAppers is always developing really interesting pieces of software, that’s why I am happy to give him some time to talk about his latest release, an entrant in the data portability market, TxtGet. TxtGet allows you to make textual information like blog content embeddable and trackable. I’ll leave it to him to tell the rest.

As far as I know, no one is doing anything of that sort, it seems out of people’s concerns since it’s so basic a process, no one thought it could be made even easier and more automated, based on available technologies that facilitate that.

It first came to me in a flash of inspiration after I read Anil Dash’s post “Embedded Journalism “, especially this piece:

“I want you to place the text of this blog post on your own site. But I don’t want you to do it just by copying and pasting it into your own blogging tool. I think there might be a different way to do it.”

We decided to give it a shot in trying to come up with a “different way to do it”, a way to make copy/paste on the web a lot more easier, something that would take advantage of the automation and linkage abilities made possible by today’s technologies, something that would help spread link and embedded Journalism and maybe create a system that could regulate it “at least ethically” and make it a “more mainstream” and possibly “more official” practice.

Working In Social Media

Working in the social media space is an on-going adventure, which is as much risky as it is rewarding. Some of the most important lessons I learned during my past experience in running CloudAppers:

You’ve gotta accept that you will do lots of evangelizing, and prove it with case studies along the line.

Educate, educate and then educate some more, all people have different ideas on Social Media, some are good but most are misconceptions, you have to accept that you will be doing lots and lots of education before you can get a chance of getting real work from clients, but an educated client will keep coming back to you and probably referring other clients as well.

It takes time, more than you think it would, because it’s a mindset change and that takes lots of evangelizing, education and repetition, but don’t give up because people learn, but rather in a slow, indirect and unexpected manner, point is to keep on going.

You have to manage clients’ expectations, as they tend to be based on the traditional media-buying schemes and they try to apply them to social media. Always explain the difference and make sure they know what’s going to happen and how it’s going to be measured.

Social Media is all about experimentation, which is great and gives room for lots of innovation, but you have to make clients realize that fact and not expect results that are set in stone, it might be the biggest thing ever or it might flop, but they will always learn something very valuable, and it always matter on the long term.

Always contribute, try and do interesting projects and initiatives in the Social media space, and it will guarantee you more visibility and credibility to clients, or how would they expect them to believe you’re an expert in Social media when you hardly did stuff there!

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If you enjoyed that why not find a job or read our guide to working in the 21st century. You can also join our Kiva team or hire me for your project.