Ten weapons of a Modern Fanboy
Before the internet embraced social networking sites and Web 2.0 standards, being a fanboy meant finding ways to bring up your obsession during every meal, handing out flyers to promote events, and wearing the same t-shirt every day until there were one too many holes worn into the fabric.
Now that it’s the 21st Century, here are ten fanboy weapons:
Ping.fm – Many of us have a dozen accounts on different social networking sites. To avoid a headache of keeping up on every account, try using web apps such as Ping.fm. By providing your login info to Ping.fm, you’re able to update all of your sites at once. If you’re so inclined, you can update your statuses via email, text messaging, instant messenger, or via the iPhone app. So whenever your favorite band, blog, or object of affection has a new update, you can quickly share it with your large circle of friends by updating one site: Ping.fm.
Post links on Facebook – Facebook provides several ways of posting content to your profile. The most straight forward way is to click “add: link” under the status update bar. Copy and paste the link, and edit the information that it automatically pulls from that link. You can cycle through the image until you find the right image, edit the title of the link by clicking on the title, and edit the description. Add a comment too about the link by writing something in the status box, then click “share”.
Comment threads are the new forum – Since most social networking sites allow you to comment on almost everything, comment threads are becoming the new forum. Post a controversial topic on Facebook and you might have 80 comments by the end of the day (though the longevity of a comment thread doesn’t compare to the old fashioned forum). If you want to promote your obsession, utilize the comment threads.
Ask blogs to write about your obsession – Bloggers are always looking for something to write about. If you have a favorite band that you want to promote, figure out which blogs would be the most likely to help your cause. If you’re helping a band, search Hype Machine for blogs that have covered similar bands. Since each blog typically has thousands of readers, you can raise awareness in a specific niche rather quickly by prompting a handful of blogs.
Twitter is the new distributor - It may take several days before a search engine has crawled a website and added a new post to their database, and taking time for things to appear in a search result. Twitter is instantaneous. By tagging your updates (using # hash tags before a tag), your updates are immediately available on websites such as hashtags.org. Posting a link to an mp3 and tagging it with #music is one way you can help raise awareness.
Remixes and Mashups – More and more people are realizing the importance of remixes and mashups. In a way, it hands the reigns of influencing culture back to the average person. Try creating a remix of a song, or create a mashup with a video and a song. You might be surprised at the number of views it might attract on Youtube.
Wikipedia – Have you noticed how well Wikipedia ranks in a Google search? If your favorite band or blog doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry, create one for them! Otherwise, help out by keeping an entry updated… just be sure to reference everything.
Tumblr – If you enjoy scoping the internet for articles about a certain topic, yet you don’t want to start your own blog, consider creating a Tumblr page. Tumblr aims to help you post content from other websites. You can copy/paste RSS feeds from websites and add them to Tumblr, so every time that website writes a new post, Tumblr automatically adds it to your page. The bookmark link gives you the power to tumble a story with one click.
iPhone and Facebook applications – You may not be a programmer, but chances are you know one. Programmers are always looking for ways to hone their skills, so why not team up and create an app to spread your love? An iPhone app can be as simple as pulling an RSS feed from a page… or a Facebook app could stream the latest posts.
Old methods are still valid – Not everyone is on the web like you are, so please don’t stop taking it to the streets! T-shirts are still walking billboards, and people still enjoy paper flyers. Posting something on Facebook, and then wearing that T-shirt the next day may spark a conversations with your friends that start with, “I saw that post yesterday…”