This weekend I was reminded of how quickly ideas can generate buzz and discussion on social media sites when a blog post I wrote immediately sparked conversation on my blog as well as two other social sites. 

On Saturday I wrote a blog post comparing and contrasting a pair of micro-blogging sites, Plurk and Twitter.  Then, as soon as the post went live, I posted a link to it on both Plurk and Twitter, so that my friends and followers on both sites could check out the post. 

What happened next was pretty interesting.  The blog post had a few comments after 30 mins or so.  But when I posted the link to it on Plurk, a conversation immediately grew there around the points I had raised in my post.   As you can see, the post has currently generated 26 comments from Plurk users.

But when I posted it to Twitter, it was also sent automatically to another social site called Friendfeed.  Friendfeed is a site that aggregates the content you create on other social sites, such as your blog, Twitter, Flickr, and many others.  Friendfeed then creates a 'feed' of all your content that it collects from the sites you choose to let it aggregate, and then other Friendfeed users can 'subscribe' to your feed.

One of my friends, Jennifer Leggio, is subscribed to my Friendfeed feed.  She liked my blog post on Twitter vs Plurk, and she reposted it in her feed on Friendfeed.

And when she did, a completely new discussion about the post erupted on Friendfeed. The new conversation on Friendfeed currently has 35 comments. 

The really interesting part is that as the conversations about this post generated momentum on Plurk and Friendfeed, that helped drive traffic back to the original blog post.  As a result, the post is now up to 21 comments.

Let's do some math here.  There's 21 comments currently to the original blog post, plus an additional 26 comments about the post on Plurk, and another 35 comments about it on Friendfeed.  And as you might expect, the traffic to my blog on Saturday was about double what it normally is.

I think there's a few key points here:

1 - This example proves how quickly ideas can travel through social media sites.  And again, all this happened on a Saturday, which is historically a down day for traffic to social media sites.

2 - None of this would have likely happened if I hadn't also been active on Twitter and Plurk and Friendfeed.  If I was just blogging, the post would have likely sparked a few comments, and that would have been it.  But because I have cultivated a network of friends on both Plurk and Twitter (and to a lesser degree Friendfeed), these friends were interested in reading and responding to my post.  If you are wanting to add social media to your marketing efforts, consider that you may want to create and maintain a presence on other sites besides just your blog.

3 - You can't control where the conversation happens.  Notice that the blog post itself received fewer comments than it did when posted at Plurk and later Friendfeed.  My ego might say that it sure would have looked nice to have all those comments from Friendfeed and Plurk added to the total at my blog, but that's not how it works.  You have to be thankful for any feedback you get at any place online.   This why I say that social media conversations are leaky.  They want to move to where the people are.  You should do everything you can to encourage this flow, not attempt to control it.