Today I presented to a group of Utah business teachers from the Alpine School District. My presentation was focused on three possible scenarios teachers could use when utilizing social media in the classroom.

The main problem I focused on was how the school district blocks most social media websites on their networks. There are very real and obvious reasons why schools are aggressively not allowing these sites (which I highlighted a few). Yet, it is apparent that the collective “we” is becoming more and more dependent on digital communication and schools are beginning to have discussions on how to safely inject social media into their curriculum.

“It’s all about people.” ~Mike Davidson

Michael Stelzner, the genius behind SocialMediaExaminer.com and other ventures, just announced what he calls the Networking Clubs. The basic idea behind his idea is having an online forum that is honed in on social media.

Before you leave a comment flaming me about how you already belong to 29 social media groups on LinkedIn/Facebook/Google+/DigitalPoint/WarriorForum/WickedFire and so forth, let me share five reasons why I think Social Media Examiner’s Networking Clubs are different and better.

“I am convinced that we are in a terminal process.” ~E. P. Thompson

I found this list on SocialFresh.com which helps you diagnose if you are addicted to Social Media work. Quite enlightening.

A while ago, I wrote a post about how social media itself is more addicting than porn, but I never thought to take into consideration the addictive nature of those who create it. This is most likely because I am among the ranks of these deeply troubled souls!

A fun infographic from breakingcopy.com on deciding exactly what social network you should post to.

Clever thoughts bubble up constantly, but what’s the right venue for all of them? Now you can consult this handy graphic to help make those hard choices among Google+, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Dilemma solved!

The same little blue bird has been Twitter’s mascot for over four years. During that time Twitter has not made any official statement to whether or not their bird has a name. Some people have taken upon themselves to come up with names on their own. Such as David Lanham, of Iconfactory, who named the bird “Ollie.”

However, there is a tweet from the Twitter account which refers to the blue bird’s first name as Larry.  Interestingly enough, Larry quite possibly has a middle and last name as well.

Yes, you might have seen this demotivator before, being that I created it originally for Quora. However, in a mere few weeks Google+ has had astronomical growth, and is expected to hit 20 million users by the end of the weekend. Quora is over two years old and still hasn’t hit a million users. So, when when it comes to the social wars for godhood I believe Quora loses out to the Herculean infant—G+.

P.S. I promise to retire this demotivator and rely on genuine creativity with the uprising of the next social deity Ü

Note: My wife was rather concerned when I showed her the title of this post. I put her at ease by sharing that this article does not focus on anything that would make her, my mother, or the Pope’s grandmother feel uncomfortable.

At the end of this post is an updated video from an older video that has been circulating, in one form or another, around YouTube for the past several years. If you go to the 37th second of the video you will see the statement, “Social Media has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the web.” This statement was provided in the original video (though, with a little variation in wording), but for some reason the importance of it didn’t catch my attention until now.

I decided to do some digging on the validity of this statement and found that the source comes from a September 16, 2008 Reuters article titled, “Porn passed over as Web users become social.” The article shows a study done by Bill Tancer, the general manager of global research at Hitwise (a well respected web tracking company). Tancer analyzed information from over 10 million web users to conclude that indeed the normal Internet user is choosing social media over online pornography.

Back in December, I wrote a post about how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a.k.a. the Mormon Church or LDS Church) knows SEO. At the time, many influential SEO bloggers were showcasing the strength of the Church’s SEO efforts.

Yesterday, the LDS Church did a press release on their social media efforts. It seems that the Mormon Church is also quite proficient in social media. According to their press release, “…six of the Church’s official Facebook pages are ranked among the top 100 in the “Church/Religious Organization” category — including two in the top 25.”

These pages, according to AllFacebook.com, are:

I just realized that I haven’t published my Pubcon South 2011 notes. Due to the ever changing nature of SEO I like attending conferences like this to stay on top of things. However, I found all to often that much of what you can find on the Internet is restated in the conference. My favorite quote from this conference came when talking one-on-one to a conference speakers (who will remain anonymous). He said to me, “How do I teach people just enough without teaching them too much?”

Unfortunately, I do feel that many speakers in most web marketing conference have this same attitude. However, at Pubcon South 2011 I did find some SEO nuggets of knowledge that I will share below. Yet, the best jewel of information I can offer is that you will learn a lot more talking to the speaker face to face, than just sitting listening to their well crafted presentations of “just enough” information =).

PubCon Notes & Thoughts
I am sharing only the best notes from my time at PubCon South. Most of my notes are based around social media, since I was charged with covering this venue, while others in my party covered the SEO aspects of the conference. There are many people who I have left out (including the speaker I quoted above), due to the fact that much of what was shared in their presentation were common knowledge.

When I read Dave Chaffey’s article 14 reasons Why Quora won’t be bigger than Twitter I had to smile. I remember reading the same type of rhetoric concerning Twitter in the beginning of the tweet frenzy. People just couldn’t believe that such a simplistic service could ever be big. Frankly, they were right—for a few years. However, the Twitter boys kept to it and made the service a mainstream way of digital life.

Of course, Dave Chaffey was refuting The Telegraph, which boldly announced Quora Will Be Bigger Than Twitter. The Telegraph’s article was more like a love letter to Quora, or an article that you might see one of the Quora founder’s mothers writing. Truthfully, there are so many variables this early on that it is anyone’s guess on how Quora will fare.

Yet, I own a blog and therefore have an opinion =). This being the case, I am placing my bets on Quora to be the next big player, and here our 14 reasons why. ~Paul W.