SOCIAL media channels continue to both expand and mature. There are ever-more out there – but norms are also developing for the established players, too.

This has got me thinking strategy: I need one!

Here’s my thinking so far: WordPress is my key blog, where my longer, more considered musings go. This is where thoughts developed over several days live; where discussions with car people will be housed – basically, it’s the one I’ll sit down with a pot of tea to work on.

Posterous? This is utter genius for pinging out images, fast. Mine’s lined with Twitter, so I can take an image on the iPhone, email it and have it Tweeted in one seamless 20-second process. It’s genius.

Twitter, of course, is Twitter – it’s where conversations occur, where random snippets go, where people get an idea of what folk are up to and are thinking.

But then what? It’s struck me that I have lots of longer observations that are, to put it simply, too short for WordPress and too long for Twitter! I need another microblog – and am loathe to use Posterous for words as it’s so beautiful for imagery.

Thus, I’m trying out Tumblr. This seems pretty involved and feature-laden at the moment, but I’ve the Bank Holiday to play with it. Unless, that is, you have other tips! If so, do please join in the conversation and help me out.

All good strategists, after all, need guidance…

+ What’s your favourite microblogging platform?

+ Which microblogs do you use for what?

+ How did you develop your social media strategy?

HOW is this motoring journalist finding social media is helping him?

For the past few months, I’ve been religiously following the many, many bibles; it quickly became clear socializing would be no hardship to me.

Hard as it may be to believe, Twitter wasn’t the first to be mastered. But it’s certainly been the most useful. Particularly as I’ve chosen some brilliant people to follow. @jakehumphreyf1, @steverubel, @grandprixcom, @richardpbacon and the genius @PerryBelcher, to name but a few – they’re constantly posting useful Tweets and links.

Indeed, it’s the links that’s really cemented Twitter, rather than the updates. I’m hooked into motor industry experts, so get news far quicker than I ever have. Through Twhirl, my trusty desktop AIR, it’s brilliant.

Google Reader was my first love, though. I discovered RSS, was introduced to this by Brendan Cooper, and nowadays have it a staple of every browser I use. Never, ever before have I been so clued up in the areas that matter – cars, technology, PR, journalism – and there is never a time Reader lacks something of interest. I am never now stuck for something to read. Never. It’s ace. Albeit making a tiny Sony Vaio P Series even more essential…

Reader does take some commitment; as with emails, I don’t like to have unread things sitting there. Which is why I’ve been finding read-it-later resources such as, well, readitlater, very useful. And Xmarks saved me in a million ways, when I had a recent Firefox 101. (Still not working, alas: social media hasn’t quite managed to solve that one.)

Twitter, though, you can’t help but keep coming back to. It’s omnipresent, but a real weapon for me. My editor, @cardealered, uses it to inform of new stories on our site; here, we’ve discovered the power of the retweets to drive traffic. And, outside of work, there’s nothing better than Tweeting the random car thoughts that come into my head…

Hopefully they’re useful to people. The reciprocal insights from those I follow are.

It’s via Twitter, and Reader, that I discovered @bmwblog; here, I’ve been able to promote some road tests I’ve written using Flickr. I was trying to think outside the box; car nuts like images, like detail. And, road tests, you can get very good one from lots of outlets. What I try to do instead is harness the power of the picture with bite-sized snippets for 20 or so images; a road test, well, in pictures.

It seems to have gotten quite a good response, and it’s all down to the genius of Flickr. Fans of the cars in particular have responded in kind, and I’ve met quite a few new folk and groups via this.

Of course, I’m a Facebooker – have been since way back in 2007. Didn’t understand it fully then, but loved the concept. Now see it as a part of my life; just what social media should be.

I haven’t really cracked Last.fm yet – need to give that some time. I can see the potential. I’ve also been foisted off a Mini blog, through stumbling straight into advanced social media techniques, without fully introducing myself to the audience first. Learning curve, that one (and reason why my future car choice has changed…).

LinkedIn, I’m on, and reckon it’s potentially huge, but isn’t quite ticking over fully for me yet. And delicious is just that.

What all this has really ingrained in me, though, is the sheer vitality of the web. The Cloud is the future, permaconnectedness the next crucial element. A few months ago, I longed for the most basic phone out there. Now, I need – NEED, I tell you – an iPhone or BlackBerry.

I want my house networked. I want to stream music onto my hifi. I’m looking at Mir:ror, and blogging on the go, and tidily coding up my own website, and all sorts. It’s changed how I work. It means my goals, aims and desires within motoring journalism are completely different. It’s even changed the relationships I have with PRs and other journalists.

With the socially savvy, I’m closer. There’s more trust. Confidence. We work together better. With my readers and our respective employers the ultimate beneficiaries.

So, what next? Your guess, etc… Reader comes up with something new every day. I’m no longer signing up for them all, but filtering the useful ones. Question is, where do you find the time to experiment? You make it, that’s how. With the Cloud, office hours are fluid. Boundaries no longer exist. Just like any good social media rockstar.

Even writing about it is exciting me. Must dash; Who knows what Reader might have for me…

Social media brings close access to heroes!

bmwblog and UK car dealer agree

First blog