How I Use SocialTrade Every Day

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In the course of 2013, there have been a number of cool improvements to the blog, but my favorite one of all is the SocialTrade system. (In case you’re not acquainted with it, here are some videos about what it is and how it’s used).

I’ve always been the sort of product person that creates things that I’d like to use myself. It was true of everything on Prophet.net (particularly ProphetCharts), it’s true of the comments system, and it’s certainly true of SocialTrade (as well as its Phone/iPad app). And I find myself jumping into SocialTrade very day of the week, to either view new stuff (almost always on the app) or stack some items of my own.

My stacking “routine” is along these lines: first, I go down to some bookmarks that I’ve said from a few sites that typically have very good stuff for stacking.

Bookmarks

I opened up all those bookmarks, and for any article on a given page that has something enticing, I right-click on the title and click Open link in new tab.

Rightclick

I typically have a dozen or so cool charts I’d like to stack. In a nod to laziness, I’ll swipe the text that describes whatever it is I’m stacking, and I press Ctrl-C to copy the text. I click once more to deselect the text, because otherwise, SocialTrade thinks that I just want to stack what is highlighted instead of the other items on the page.

Copy

Finally, I click the SocialTrade bookmarklet (if you haven’t installed this, just click here), paste the text, and choose whatever appropriate stacks are in the dialog box. Voila! Another chart is in the database!

STack

 

If a chart or article is especially interesting, I might put it on my Facebook page (which, in this case, is the Slope of Hope fan page) or Tweet it.

Share

 

As of this moment, there are precisely 12,000 cool charts and articles stacked by Slope of Hope readers into SocialTrade. If you don’t use it now, I encourage you to give it a try. It’s a habit well worth forming, as I’ve learned a lot from what has been shared in the system, and I almost always get a few new ideas each day from browing what’s new.