Blog Right or Don’t Blog at All

Right now I have 3 Blogs. I used to have a couple others but there simply was not enough time for me to give each Blog the time it deserved. So I shut them down. I struggle at times to keep the three I have now up to snuff.

Part of my job is to keep tabs, track trends and get a feel for what is going on “out there.” I subscribe to newsletters that keep me in the loop and check in on my favorite Bloggers as often as possible — usually when some code is giving me a hard time and I just need to do something else for awhile to clear my head.

With this approach I probably run into or stop by more Blogs than the average person. Most of the Blogs I run into are, well…. lame. It’s not the the Blogger doesn’t have something to say — they all do. But its choice of design, how they choose to communicate, how often and the uniqueness of their message or personality that can make the difference between a Blog that I run from or subscribe to.

So how do you “Blog Right”? Here are ten “must dos” if you would like to have a successful Blogging experience:

1. Choose a design that not only reflects your business and/or personality but makes your posts easy to read. Black backgrounds with yellow type may look “cool” but they are a real PIA to read. If you must use a dark colored background avoid primary colors for your text. Use the lightest color you can so that your words rise off the page — not blend into it.
2. Choose your post titles and content carefully. Titles are what potential readers see and what draws them in — or not. Content that backs up exactly what the title insinuates, actually gets read.
3. Choose categories that make sense for the purpose of your Blog that also ensure a logical intuitive organization of your posts. Yes, you want to have a purpose — a focus. That’s why Blogs are known by their Titles and Subtitles. Use terms that you know your site visitors will relate to and understand.
4. Choose a Blogging frequency that you can stick to. Posting frequency isn’t as important as consistency so that your readers know what to expect. For my three Blogs I do my best to Blog 4 days a week — Monday through Thursday. Yes, I may skip a day here or there, but those who subscribe know when they’ll be hearing from me.
5. Pepper your content with your own personal experiences or opinions. If you want to have a Blog that folks come back to or subscribe to, it has to be clear that there is a “personality” — you! Your Blog needs to offer a viewpoint, perspective or information on a certain topic or range of related issues that others are interested in.
6. Check for typos and proper grammar so your content is perceived as credible and legit. Don’t underestimate the power of perception when it comes to your skills and ability to communicate with the written word.
7. Be original in your post content. Blogs filled with others articles aren’t unique. Blogs filled with copy-n-pasted stuff from other sites is copyright infringement. Part of Blogging is introducing readers to other sites. What is also a part of Blogging is for the Blogger to explain in a paragraph or two — in their own words, based on their own experiences and perspective why they are bringing that site to their readers attention.
8. Encourage comments by asking for them. Every so often ask your readers what they think — they’ll tell you and you can then begin to meet new folks and create opportunities you otherwise would not have been exposed to.
9. Offer site visitors the ability to subscribe in multiple manners. Be sure to have a social bookmarking plugin so folks can easily add your page to their profiles and “Share.” You want to offer the ability to download your RSS feed and/or subscribe to your feed so readers can have post notices delivered to their inboxes. You can see the various tools I use on this site as examples. The more ways to subscribe; the more subscribers!
10. I recommend your comments be moderated — meaning you approve them before they see the light of day on your site. Read my article Blog CommentSense so you know how to handle comments on your your Blog. To Blog right, you need to approve authentic comments and offer a response in a prompt and friendly manner. This lets site visitors know that “someone is home” and helps to build your community.

I’ve advised more than one client to shut-down their Blog because they couldn’t accomplish the above. It was embarrassing for their business and didn’t display the commitment necessary for the effort being taken seriously or to enhance their online program. Lack of these efforts certainly didn’t promote or spin their business or expertise in a positive light.

If you can’t Blog right by following the tips above, maybe shutdown until you can or reconsider if Blogging is for you.

Your Customers Want to Interact with You!

A new study came out that reflects what I’ve been typing about for some time. Your clients, site visitors and potential customers want to communicate with you. They want to share product information and experiences. The want to have a discussion with you. They want to share their opinions and points of view about how you can better serve them.

This is the type of data, feedback and information that you need to know how to modify or move your business forward. “56% of American consumers feel both a stronger connection with, and better served by, companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.” Talk about a gold mine of potential here!

When Americans were asked about specific types of interactions:

• Companies should use social networks to solve my problems (43%)
• Companies should solicit feedback on their products and services (41%)
• Companies should develop new ways for consumers to interact with their brand (37%)
• Companies should market to consumers (25%)

For more information on this study, visit the Cone Research

Whether it be social media pages like Facebook (32%) or MySpace (27%), your own Blog or message boards, your customers want to have the ability to communicate with you. Give them that option and reap the rewards!

But What Should I Blog About!?

Whenever I talk to a client who is not yet Blogging, I ask them why they haven’t started yet.  I then suggest that if they aren’t Blogging, that they had better get with it explaining all the pluses and advantages of doing so.  The reaction?  “But What Should I Blog About!?”

To that I respond, “… your experience, market trends that you can comment on, information you can offer to customers to make good decision, tip lists, how tos, topics of concern to your target market — it’s endless the stuff you can write about as an expert in your field!”  All the while suggesting that they be sure to show their unique personality.  If nothing else, Bloggers have personality!

Well, imagine my delight when I found a Blog that actually answers that question in more detail than I could ever think to do!  When I run into posts like this I say to myself  “Self, why didn’t you think of that!”

50 Blog Post Ideas for Business Blogging

So click on that link and bookmark that page so you have this list at your fingertips when you have writer’s block — and we all do at some point or another.  That’s part of Blogging too!

Now you have no excuse to not Blog due to a lack of things to Blog about.  Get Blogging!

You don’t do “Social Media Marketing”, You ARE Social Media Marketing!

It’s what the Internet has always been — social. That’s why the Web has evolved over one short decade to the become the life changing behemoth it is today.

Let’s define social:

so·cial [soh-shuhl] –adjective
1. pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations: a social club.
2. seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; friendly; sociable; gregarious.
3. of, pertaining to, connected with, or suited to polite or fashionable society: a social event.

Note some of the words used to describe social — devoted to, companionship, social club, connected with. These terms tell anyone serious about social marketing how they must think so they can be considered part of social marketing. You don’t do social marketing — you are social marketing!

Social media marketing takes time and focus.  You need to be involved, participate, share and react — or it isn’t “social” media marketing. For me, the Web has had this social aspect from the start. I’ve realized and embraced this advantage every chance I get by making connections, being involved, sharing information and expertise, being available and approachable — being social! Social media being the buzz word du jour, is just a more focused segmented version of where we started in the early 1990s and a natural evolution.

So for those that were not involved before (and continue to convince themselves they can still succeed without being social), this is a critical time for them to realize that how they have chosen to use technology up until now, has simply been an excuse to not embrace the very fiber of what makes the online world tick.

One of the things I see my clients struggle with most is understanding the participation factor that makes or breaks any online program. The majority are simply more comfortable and accepting of the passive “brochureware” mentality where site visitors come by (if they even get found) and fill out a form with their questions.   Some answer these inquiries faster, in more detail and more professionally than others.   But that’s the limit of their involvement. They rely on organic rankings while making no efforts to positively effect those rankings. Again, wanting it all with no involvement and by taking no action.

Few are proactive, very few are truly immersed, and those who solicit their customer’s input or offer a venue to submit commentary, engage in conversations or ask questions publicly are negligible. Rather than being involved — most choose to impersonate a billboard in the middle of a long stretch of deserted highway.

So how do you have to think, today, at this point in time when approaching social media marketing? You have to become your best marketing tool — yes, you! Here are excerpts from an article I recently read that gives a solid train of thought for those who are willing to take their participation in technology to the next level:

1. Be useful. The best advertising is no longer a message that an advertiser wants to “get out there.” The “new” best advertising is something that is useful to the target customers, which ideally also communicates the value of the product or service being advertised.
2. Make a social media commitment. Advertising used to be about campaigns that started and ended. Social media is not a campaign, but a continuous commitment — because it takes time for a community and trust to build.
3. Read and react in real time. For the first time in history, the two-way nature of the mass medium known as “digital” means advertisers not only can, but must, read and react to customers’ feedback or input.

These 3 tips are what marketing online, which at this point is pretty much all social (how social you are can and does effect your organic rankings), is all about.  Here’s the full article: A Different Perspective On Social Media Marketing.

If you have your business online, you need to realize that if your competitors take advantage of technology, are social, are involved, are blogging, are using all the tools available to them to connect with their markets, the less chance you have of being viewed as relevant.

Thankful for the Evolving Web

At this point in time, in history, I am reminded about how excited I was about technology over 13 years ago when I opened the first little Internet Studio in a sleepy town on the Illinois/Wisconsin border.  Much has happened since then. That sleepy town became congested and crazy, technology has evolved at a pace most cannot keep up with and I moved off the grid to a plot of land in Mississippi.  So my life has always been about embracing change.  And thankfully so.

Yesterday, while on the way to an appointment with an associate, I had an epiphany.  Out of my mouth came “…thank goodness for Web 2.0, 3.0 or whatever version we’re on and for Blogging and social media or I probably wouldn’t be doing this any longer.”  I had never thought that before but out it came. I went on to explain how since Blogging really began kicking in several years ago, I renewed my enthusiasm and excitement for technology all over again.  Once again potential and opportunity was hitting me right between the eyes!

I’ve always loved writing and the communication aspect of interactive technology was what had inspired me.  With that said, having a static HTML site, adding static pages and developing static HTML Web sites had become boring.  Not just boring; I had become disinterested.  And when you are disinterested you don’t do as good of a job as you should.

Technology has moved on beyond the static brochureware gratuitous attempt that having a real Web presence requires.  eCommerce is now so much more than slapping up some fuzzy photos and generic descriptions thinking one is on the path to riches.  This gig has always evolved and thankfully, continues to do so, at what is at times a frightening pace. Unfortunately, many participants are still kicking and fighting to hold on to the past and what used to be exciting that simply no longer is.

With the advent of this latest evolution, I found that more times than not I was being asked to cater backwards instead of helping onliners keep up and move forward.  It was totally cramping my style.  Now, regardless of the presumption “the customer is always right” I’m just not going to play that game and defer to those who want to remain in the past.  Doing so would be an injustice because the more they stay behind and the less they embrace, the more their chances of enjoying any level of ROI decrease exponentially.

So I am firmly planted in the now and am going to take as many onliners with me who are up to the challenge and willing to accept whatever is around the next corner.  Those who remain in the past, well, they may feel I am no longer willing to assist when in fact my “XXXX or get off the pot” speech (a phrase my Father was known for saying) is genuinely, sincerely given with their best interests at heart. 

Now, I find I don’t have enough time in the day to “play” on all the sites I have profiles on – I’m like a kid in a candy store again!  WordPress and Blogging has allowed me to easily manage my passion — writing about what folks need to know and do to succeed online — while tapping into onliners who are interested in the same but we probably would never have crossed paths.  Not that I didn’t write before, but without all the social networking and media tools available today, my writings were just a bunch of articles on one of many HTML sites clogging the search engines.

And, with the added benefit of folks expecting, almost demanding a personality be shown on Blogs — well let’s just say that’s one thing I’ve got more than enough to go around.  But too much “personality” on a business HTML site tended to make you come off as a rebel or someone with an “attitude.”   Now if you can’t write from a point of knowledge and experience with a dash of personality — you don’t stand out — you are a lemming not a leader.

How can anyone online today, not be bursting at the seems over all the potential and opportunity the current environment offers?!

B2B Blogging Tanks?

When I first saw the title of the article in question, I couldn’t believe what I was reading:

Forrester: B2B Blogging Takes Nose Dive

Blogging taking a nose dive? How can that be? Blogging is an excellent way of connecting with your visitors, opening a dialog, using the social media tools available today to create buzz, create branding and loyalty. A new opportunity to have an open and honest conversation with your customers in a way never available before!

Then as I read the article — no surprises.

The primary reason that Blogging took a nose dive in 2007 compared to 2006 was that businesses weren’t “Blogging.” They weren’t showing any personality — they were being all corporate stuffy, and… they were talking AT their Blog visitors not TO them.

“…good blogging style should resemble a coffee shop conversation, not a whitepaper.”

In other words, they were primarily marketing what they felt was important rather than concentrating on the needs of their visitors.

“…most B2B blogs are dull, drab, and don’t stimulate discussion.”

They were not working on or promoting discussions!

Blogging is all about the discussions. When reading posts, site visitors want to know that there is an actual human being behind the screen open to having a conversation with them about what they are interested in; what they feel is important. Interesting and engaging posts that make them want to come back for more of the same — not some corporate robot typing about sales pitchy stuff.

“74% of B2B blogs receive a minimum of commentary or trackbacks because readers fail to find conversations worthy of their involvement.”

So no wonder compared to 1996 Blogs tanked. The work and time that goes into useful and entertaining posts was simply not being planned for, developed or addressed — or even considered.

“Successful blogging, Forrester insists, is not a one-way street, but most corporate bloggers yak away about their companies and products, seemingly oblivious to whether their audience is listening or not.”

Another example of the old school business methodology not embracing current technology to use it for what it is and instead trying to make it something it isn’t.

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