Mark Tosczak» Content marketing

Why you should attend ConvergeSouth

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 10:15:16 +0000

Blogs and social media are great, but you can often learn more, meet more people and have a richer experience attending conferences, seminars and other events in person. There’s a big difference between skimming a blog post in your RSS reader and the immersive, interactive experience of a conference.

That’s why, if you’re interested in social media, search engine optimization (SEO) and doing business online, you should attend ConvergeSouth 2010. (Disclaimer: I am one of the volunteers helping to put the conference together. I’m involved because I’ve attended several past ConvergeSouth conferences and I think it’s a great conference.)

So far, this year’s line-up of speakers includes:

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist
Elyse Porterfield, of quitting a job via whiteboard fame, on viral video marketing
Will Carroll, Sports Illustrated’s Fantasy League writer
SEO pro Brent Payne (who’s in charge of SEO for 50+ Tribune Co. websites)

There’s a full schedule over there on the right-hand navigation menu of my blog. Want to learn more? More importantly, want to register? You should. Visit the ConvergeSouth website and sign-up today. It’ll be worth it. I’ll see you there.

Four things readers want

Mark Tosczak — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:29:30 +0000

Publishing news about your niche or topic area is one sure-fire way to attract and retain an audience. (Photo: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/106233)

What do readers want? And not just readers, but viewers, listeners – audiences for all media. If creating content is part of your marketing strategy then you’ve got to figure out what content your audience wants. What kind of blog posts, ebooks, podcasts or videos will attract the most people, get shared most often and keep your brand uppermost in people’s minds?

What they want is likely to boil down to four kinds of content.

How To

How to be wealthier, how to be sexier, how to be slimmer. How to do something — create a great Facebook fan page, sell more life insurance or bake the perfect cake.

Bookstores and libraries are full of how-to books. Magazine covers are scribbled over with how-to headlines – “How to get your guy to ____” screams Cosmo. And the Internet has become a treasure house of how-to content of every type.

People want to know how to do things. They want to know how to do things because they think that being able to do those things will get them something they want — a better sex life, more money, less stress. How to content appeals to a fundamental human desire for empowerment. Help fulfill this desire, and your content will be successful.

Examples: Lifehacker, eHow

News

The conversations around the water cooler used to be about what happened the day before, what was on the news last night and the paper this morning. Now those conversations (which are perhaps more likely to occur on Twitter or Facebook) are about what happened today at lunch time, the announcement made an hour ago, or even the big press conference that’s taking place right now.

People want to know what’s new and different. We’re hardwired to constantly scan our environment (that’s why we’re so easily distractible). In the today’s world scanning our environment means monitoring the news. Providing relevant, up-to-date news can be difficult (I used to make a living doing this), but it can also attract massive audiences and attention.

If you can provide the latest updates in your niche or industry you can quickly establish your content as authoritative and worth revisiting frequently.

Examples: CNN, Mashable

Emotional Experiences

Make them laugh, make them angry, make them cry. Whatever you do, make them feel something. If you provoke emotion in your audience, chances are they will stick around. Emotional experiences are the foundation of all good entertainment, and it can be the foundation of all sorts of compelling online content.

Fundraising appeals, for example, often seek to tap our empathy and inborn desire to help other people. Every funny TV commercial you’ve ever seen uses the same principle — it makes you laugh, giving the company a chance to deliver a sales message to you while you’re paying attention and feeling good.

Examples: Gary Vaynerchuk, Dooce

Secrets

Everybody wants to be part of the in-crowd. Letting your audience in on something that very few people know is a great way to keep them coming back for more. This is more than just a desire to know what’s going on in the world. People like secrets (or what they think are secrets) because knowing someone’s secrets makes them feel special.

If you want to quickly establish powerful ties to an audience, try giving them some secrets. Of course, the problem is that as soon as you tell them the secret, it’s not a secret anymore. So for most of us, this is probably only going to work a few times, at most. That doesn’t stop advertisers form trying to tap into this, however. Over the next few days, notice how many times the word “secrets” appears in ads that you see.

Examples: Post Secret, Penelope Trunk

As you might guess, you don’t have to restrict yourself to just one of these categories. A single blog post or video can combine, for instance, how-to content with secrets. And the content still has to be relevant to your niche. Mashable attracts readers interested in news about the latest in social media, not readers who want to know about the latest news in home improvement.

What category or categories does your content usually fall in? Please share your thoughts in the comments.Four things readers want

30 content ideas for an email newsletter

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:48:45 +0000

One day your boss comes into your office and announces that he wants to publish an email newsletter about your department, company or organization. And then he gives you the job of actually producing it. He gives you a deadline and says “I look forward to seeing a draft of the first edition next week.” What do you do?

I’ve created and managed a few email newsletters over the years. Just as with a blog, an email newsletter is built around content. Here are 30 content ideas for your email newsletter.

1. Links to and excerpts from your recent blog posts.

2. Links to and excerpts from other web sites or blogs that your readers might find useful or interesting.

3. A short essay or letter that’s not published anywhere else.

4. An exclusive tip of the week/month.

5. Links to your company’s social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook fan pages, etc.).

6. News and announcements about what’s going on in your business or organization.

7. Special offers, discounts and coupons.

8. If your employer is a for-profit business, links to the favorite charity encouraging people to donate and explaining why you support the group. (Like I did with this post.) If you work or a nonprofit, links to businesses that support you in a substantial way.

9. Employee profiles (to put a human face on your business or organization).

10. Customer profiles.

11. Customer testimonials.

12. Links to independent reviews of your products or services (such as on Yelp or Amazon).

13. Invitations for readers to review your products or services on your web site or an independent site.

14. Contact information (seems basic, I know, but it’s important).

15. Polls or trivia questions.

16. The results of the last poll or answers to your last trivia question.

17. Photos of your products.

18. Reader-submitted photos of your products being used.

19. A contest.

20. Listings of upcoming events (sales, meet-ups, open houses or whatever’s appropriate for your organization).

21. A tutorial or lesson. You could do a series of these.

22. A guest column by an outside writer, perhaps a well-known blogger in your industry or even a celebrity.

23. Q&A style interview with a key employee in your organization.

24. Emails from readers, answered by you “Dear Abby” style.

25. Inspiring, compelling stories of about customers of yours who are doing great things (climbing mountains, raising money for charity or maybe training for the Olympics).

26. A funny video produced by your employees.

27. Holiday greetings (during the holidays).

28. An invitation to an event or webinar exclusively for your newsletter readers.

29. New job listings. Hire your customers? Why not. If they buy from you, they could be great advocates for your brand.

30. Sneak peeks or previews of new products or services.

What else have you put in email newsletters? What would you put in a newsletter if you were doing one? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Five mistakes newbie bloggers make

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:31:20 +0000

Some blogging mistakes can block your path. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/589399)

I’ve been blogging for about 10 years now. Along the way I’ve learned a lot. I’ve also made a lot of mistakes. A lot.

So, if you’re new to blogging and determined to be successful at it, here are five mistakes to avoid.

Mistake #1: Not sticking with it.

Some bloggers see a lot of success relatively quickly, but there is no such thing as an overnight success. Even those bloggers who brag about how they took a new blog from zero to 10,000 subscribers in three months, or whatever, didn’t really go from zero to hero overnight. Chances are they put in years of work before they ever launched that “overnight success” blog, developing skills and acquiring tools to make a big splash quickly.

Whatever your goals are as a blogger, you’ve got to stick with it to see success. A good rule of thumb would be six months of steady blogging before you begin to see significant traffic, readership or (if it’s a goal) revenue.

Mistake #2: Not focusing on content.

Great design, cool widgets and useful plug-ins are all good things to have on your blog. But you can waste hours on these things without adding the one thing that makes the biggest difference: new content. If you want to fiddle with your design, write a new post first. If you want to add a new plug-in to the back-end of your WordPress admin panel, write a new post first. If you want to add a cool new widget or explore a new social media site, write a new post first.

Readers come to blogs, and come back, for one thing and one thing only: content. Make that the No. 1 focus and you will be much more successful.

Mistake #3: Not being consistent.

One of my biggest mistakes as a blogger has been inconsistency. Being consistent means regularly creating and publishing new content. You don’t have to publish a new post every day. And you certainly don’t have to do what the big, commercial blogs such as Mashable and Lifehacker do — publish many, many posts every day. But you do need to publish consistently.

Pick a frequency that you think you can maintain (once a week is probably a minimum for most of us) and start with that. If you want, and can, then increase your frequency down the road. But don’t decrease it. Pick a goal for how often you want to publish and stick to that.

Mistake #4: Not writing for your readers.

The biggest misconception that blogging and social media suffer from among those who are not enthusiasts is the idea that we all sit around and write about what we ate for breakfast or that we’re all writing poorly thought out, uninformed reactions to the news of the day. This isn’t true, of course, but there are some bloggers and social media aficionados who do those things. And that’s fine, but it’s probably not going to get them a ton of readers, bring in torrents of new business or job offers, or result in highly profitable online information businesses.

The key is to write for your readers. What information and content do your readers need and would find helpful? What are they looking for online in your niche or your industry? What would you want to read if you were one of your readers? It’s fine, from time to time, to write about things that may be more meaningful to you than some of your readers (like this post of mine from last week on global poverty and educating girls). But overall, concentrate on content that’s of value to others. Give value, and over time you will receive value in return.

Mistake #5: Not blogging because you’re afraid of failing.

Everyone is afraid of something, and lots of people hesitate to start something (or continue it) because they’re afraid of failure. That little voice inside that warns you that maybe you shouldn’t because you’ll fail, because something bad will happen? That voice was really useful thousands of years ago when human beings had to worry about getting eaten by a prowling sabretooth or a hungry bear. That voice isn’t so useful now, but it still won’t shut up. So ignore it.

Listen, you may fail (however you define that). But even if you don’t achieve what you set out to achieve, even if you fall short of some goal or promise or commitment, it will be OK. Chances are, most people won’t even notice (the Internet is a noisy place, after all; it’s hard to keep track of who’s gone silent). Even if you fail, you will still learn something in the process and you will still be a better human being for having tried it. Don’t let fear stop you.

What other mistakes have you (or other bloggers) made? Don’t keep them a secret. Please share in the comments below.

How to use personas in blogging

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:33:29 +0000

Putting a face on your readers with personas can improve your blog and content marketing efforts. (Source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/499007)

Many marketers use personas to help them better understand their customers and design products and marketing campaigns that will be attractive to those customers. You can use them to improve your blog or other content marketing efforts — podcasts, videos, white papers and so forth.

What is a persona?

A persona is a fictional character used to better understand the desires, goals and motivations of some set of potential customers.

If you’re running a blog about weight loss, you might use personas to understand the differences between a 19-year-old woman and a 47-year-old man when it comes to losing weight. Chances are they have different motivations, different values and different circumstances in their day-to-day lives. Rather than treating those two sets of customers the same, personas allow you to clearly fix in your mind how each group is distinctive and will likely seek different information as they explore weight loss solutions.

Properly constructed personas are built off extensive research, which could include interviews, spending time with people in their day-to-day lives and collecting statistics about a target group of customers. If you have the resources for that sort of research, then you have a huge advantage compared to your competitors. But even if you don’t, you can still use personas to rough out some basic ideas about different audiences.

You can still consider all the people you know in real life who are representative of potential readers. That can help you define personas based on interactions and communication you’ve had with real people.

Also note that you can have multiple personas for a single brand, product or service. Different groups of people may purchase the same product for different reasons. Effective marketing communications will still take into account the needs, aspirations and values of these different personas in creating an overall marketing plan.

Four steps to building blog reader personas

1. Figure out who your readers (or potential readers) are. Or, if you don’t have any readers, figure out who you’d like them to be. Are they male or female, young or old, from your country or from abroad? Just the basics here.

2. Figure out what your readers are looking for. Do they want actionable information (how-to posts), industry news, strategic perspective or insights into the big picture? And take this beyond merely what kind of information they want. Ask yourself why they want that information: What is their root motivation?

3. Decide how knowledgeable your readers are. Are they rank beginners? Jaded experts with decades of experience? Somewhere in between?

4. Craft persona portraits. Once you’ve figured out your readers are, what information they’re looking for and how knowledgeable they are about your subject matter, write short bios for each persona. Here’s an example of a persona profile I wrote last year for this blog:

Media Michelle – A young professional in media, marketing or PR who is just getting into social media and wants to learn more about them. She needs basic information about how to do things better and more efficiently, plus examples of others doing things well, ideas and some basic theory.

I’ve seen personas much more detailed than Media Michelle, so don’t hesitate to pile on the detail if it’s relevant and helps you form a richer picture of who you’re trying to reach.

How to use reader personas

Once you’ve got your reader personas developed, you can start to use them to guide your content development. For each persona you can come up with content ideas (blog posts or whatever) that meet the persona’s needs. You can edit and review content you’re creating with an eye toward how well it works for the target persona. And you can check your persona or personas periodically to make sure that your blog or content marketing efforts aren’t leaving any important audiences out.

Have you ever used personas for a blog or other content marketing efforts? If so, please share your thoughts and ideas in comments.

How to budget time for social media

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:30:27 +0000

You have limited time - use it wisely when it comes to social media. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1068015)

One of the challenges of social media is how to manage the amount of time that you could put into these activities. How much time, and how exactly you spend that time, will end up being a little different for everyone depending on your goals and strategy.

Here’s a framework to help you budget your time. This is especially helpful for personal branding and networking activities, where it’s harder (or seems harder) to just carve hours out of your workday for these activities.

Content creation

Do you blog? Do you write articles or white papers or create presentations that you share on Slideshare? What about podcasting? Creating original content can help you establish a brand and demonstrate your expertise and knowledge. It’s a very powerful strategy, and if you choose to use it you’ll want to set aside some time to focus on it.

How much content do you want to produce each week or month?
How much time do you need to devote to produce that content? How many hours is that each week and each day, on average?
When will you put in that time? During your lunch hour? In the early mornings or late at night? On the weekends? Decide when and put it on your calendar.

In my case I’m probably averaging about 10 hours a week on blogging right now. You don’t have to spend that much time, but consistency is important.

Listening and reading

It’s important to keep up with what’s going on in your industry — reading blogs, articles and books, listening to podcasts, and generally keeping up with new ideas and conversation. How much time you spend on this will vary depending on your industry and goals.

Accountants need to keep up with the latest tax law changes. Doctors have to try to plough through stacks of medical journals. I try to keep up with the flood of books on social media that are being published and the many, many blogs on the subject. Since it’s so easy to become overwhelmed by the amount of information available, it’s a good idea to decide how much time you want to spend on this.

What do you need to keep up with? Books, blogs, professional journals, other sources?
How many hours per week will you devote to this?
When will you keep up with these? At night before you go to sleep? Can you listen to podcasts and audiobooks on your iPod on the way to work?
Do you have a system to bring the most relevant content to your attention? Google alerts? RSS feeds? Some of the tips in this post on finding and sharing great content can help.

Conversation

Of course, social media isn’t very social if you’re not talking. That could include sharing content you find, responding to others in a variety of social media channels (including commenting on blogs), and even reaching out to people via email to connect offline. It also is the tool that allows you to turn mere online connections into actual relationships (whether they’re weak or strong).

1. What social media channels are most important for you? Twitter, Facebook, a specialized social media network on Ning or a forum devoted to your industry?

2. How much time will you spend on these channels? An hour a day? Three hours a week?

3. When will you spend that time? In short 15-minute bursts throughout the day? In a longer, more concentrated period a few times each week?

More tips

All of us have a limited time and energy, but the vast world of social media can suck up an enormous amount of that if we’re not careful. So here are some tips to manage that.

Focus. You probably have limited time, at best a few hours a days, to devote to this. So concentrated on the 20 percent of tools/sites/strategies that are going to yield 80 percent of your results. For me, these days, that means Twitter, writing blog posts and reading blog posts and books get most of my attention.

Be realistic. Don’t sketch out a plan that calls for 30 hours a week (almost a full-time job) of work on this, and then find out a month into it that’s it’s just too much. It’s better to start out with very modest ambitions. As you become more fluent with the tools, you’ll be able to increase your productivity by becoming more efficient and integrating these tools into your life.

Consider the rest of your life. If you’re going through a really busy period at work, going on vacation or caring for a sick family member, some of these actvities may temporarily take a back seat. That’s OK. Don’t burn yourself out or disregard other priorities just for the sake of keeping up with some ideal social media time budget.

Got ideas or questions on how to budget your time for social media? Please share them in the comments below.

How to figure out your blog's USP

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:45:50 +0000

It takes more than beauty to stand out. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/942854)

There are a lot of blogs out there. You’ve got to wonder — what makes your’s different? Why should anybody read it? If you don’t know the answer to that question, then your readers may have trouble figuring it out as well.

You need a USP — a unique selling proposition. Marketers develop USPs all the time for products and services. The USP helps define precise why a potential customer would choose that product or service over all the others. If you can define the USP for your blog, you’ll do a better job of persuading more people to read it and getting more people to subscribe or give you their email addresses.

Developing a USP is tough, but here are some questions to consider to get you thinking about it.

Your market

The first thing to do is to consider the market that you’re in.

What’s your market niche, topic or industry? What subject area are you focusing on? If you’re not focusing on a particular topic or theme (or at least restricting yourself to handful) it’s going to be a lot harder to define what value your blog delivers to some particular group of people.

What are others in your niche doing? Reading lots of other blogs in your niche and figuring out what they’re doing can be a bit depressing. The first time you do this, you might come to the conclusion that other bloggers are already doing everything that could be done. There may be folks writing about breaking news in your niche, some providing tutorials for beginners, others providing strategic guidance for advance practitioners. But keep looking and thinking. What’s not being done?

You

Once you’ve got a good grip on your market, it’s time to think about you (or, in the case of a company or organizational blog, your organization). You need to figure out what makes you unique, as that will probably figure into your USP.

What experiences — jobs, education, hobbies, attitude, values, experiences, nationality, skills, etc. — are you bringing to your blog? Imagine a group of new bloggers writing about fitness and weight loss. One’s a doctor, and knows how to find and cite the latest scientific evidence. Another is a fire fighter, and can talk about the challenges of eating right and exercising while working a stressful job. And another is a devout Christian, and can write about how fitness, nutrition and weight loss fit in with spiritual values and practices. Different backgrounds, and, I’m sure, different blogs.

What are you really good at? What are the things that you do that people in your life tell you you’re good at? Do any of those apply or relate in any way to your niche? (And if they don’t, do you need to reconsider your niche?) How can you bring that skill to bear on your blog? How can that skill be reflected in the content you create?

What fascinates you? A big part of a successful blog is passion and energy. Bring that to the table, and your writing will shine a little brighter, your posting schedule will be more frequent and the quality of your content will be higher. How can you incorporate what really fascinates you into your blog?

Your USP

Answer all those questions above (and maybe a few more that might occur to you along the way) and you might start to get a clearer idea of what your USP is. Here are a few more thoughts to help you crystallize your USP.

Can you combine two (or more) different elements (perhaps two parts of your background) to create a unique new persona? How about a Buddhist MBA productivity blogger, for example? Though someone probably has that one already tied up.

Is there a certain type of content not being provided (or not provided well) in your niche? Interviews, tutorials, data analysis? What’s not being done that you could do?

Can you bring a particular style or attitude to your blog? If all the other blogs in your niche are sincere and heartfelt, bring some humor to the niche.

Is it unique and will it sell? Finally, once you start to get an idea of what your USP could be, ask yourself: Is it unique and will it sell? You want to be honest with yourself here, though not so hard on yourself that you give up. But if your USP is not unique or it won’t sell, then you don’t have a USP. Back to the drawing board.

Have you successfully created a USP for your blog? If so, how did you go through the process? What tips do you have? Please share them in the comments below.

Five tips for better tweeting

Mark Tosczak — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 11:17:35 +0000

Of all the social networks I’m a part of, Twitter is probably the one that gets most of my attention right now. I arrange meetings and phone calls through it, meet new people and reconnect with old friends, have fielded new business requests and reached out to journalists and other influencers. It is truly a powerful tool.

After sending more than 2,300 tweets, here are five tips that I think are likely to make your Twitter experience better for you and for the people following you.

1. Shout out. If you’re sharing someone’s blog post, take an extra minute to find the writer’s Twitter ID and then give that person credit in your tweet. The writer will appreciate knowing that you’re sharing his or her post, and you may get an opportunity to start a conversation with someone new.

2. Leave enough room for people to RT. I am still surprised by how few people pay attention to this, but it’s important if you want people to RT you. Don’t use 140 characters, aim for 120 or so.

3. Use a Twitter client. I like Hootsuite, and Tweetdeck for a close second, on a computer. On my Blackberry I’m using Ubertwitter. But you can use whatever you like (there are lots of options listed here). Most Twitter clients simply provide a better, richer experience than Twitter by itself does.

4. Be consistent, at least somewhat. Better to show up, at least for a tweet or two, on most days, than to be absent for days or weeks at a time. A little day-to-day consistency goes a long way in building up real relationships online.

5. List yourself in Twitter directories. There are a number of directories, such as Twibes and Twello, and you have a better chance of finding people with similar interests (and being found by them) if you list yourself in these directories. Search Google for Twitter directories or start with the list here.

Have some other tips? Please share your favorite Twitter tricks, tips and tactics in the comments.

How to get people (or at least me) to follow you back on Twitter

Mark Tosczak — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:42:20 +0000

I’ve recently been bumping up against the follower limits that hit when you start following 2,000 or more people on Twitter. As I understand it, once you’re following 2,000 or more, Twitter limits the maximum number of people you can follow to the number of people who follow you plus roughly 10 percent. So if you’re following 1,999 people and 1,800 people are following you — no problem. But once you’re following 2,000 people, you can’t follow any more because 1,800 plus 10 percent is equal to 1,980. To follow more, you’ve got to have more people following you. I don’t know if that 10 percent figure is precise, but it seems to be in the right place.

What that has meant is that some folks recently followed me that I couldn’t follow back, at least immediately, until my follower numbers were higher. So I started to work through this barrier by identifying Twitter accounts I could unfollow, freeing up spots for new followers. I also have been looking more selectively at the accounts following me before deciding to follow them or not.

I am basically inclined, out of courtesy and to open up the opportunities for meeting new people and having new interactions, to follow back anyone who follows me (I’m @marktzk on Twitter). But I am not following back everyone. Here are some of the reasons I might not be following you back (and if a lot of people are not following you back, chances are this applies to them, too).

1. You don’t tweet in English. Sorry, I’m monolingual. I’m not proud of it, and I would like someday to gain fluency in a second language, but it’s not happening right now. If I can’t understand what you’re saying, there’s not much point in following you.

2. There are a lot of affiliate links or ads in your tweet stream. I don’t mind you occasionally trying to make a buck through Twitter, but please do it occasionally, not frequently, and do it in a way that seems to fit in organically with whoever you are and whatever you tweet about it.

3. All your tweets are links to news and other web items. Sharing is good. Doing nothing but broadcasting stuff — basically hooking your Twitter account up to an RSS feed — is not so good. I’m looking for interaction and real human beings.

4. All your tweets are about you. Doing nothing but promoting your blog posts or nothing but making random comments about your life is just not that interesting. Those are both fine to include as part of your tweet stream, but I am looking for some evidence that if I follow you we might have a chance to interact at some point.

5. You don’t converse. Based on looking at your tweet stream, you never @reply or have conversations, you don’t retweet and you don’t seem to interact with others. All of your tweets are one way. Increasingly, I look to Twitter for interaction, sharing and at least the possibility of new relationships. In other words, if all I see is the behavior in numbers 2, 3 and 4 above.

6. You haven’t tweeted recently, or you only tweet rarely (once a week or less). Again, in my eyes this makes it less likely that we’ll have a chance to interact, so this is not good.

7. You’re account looks like it was set up to spam people. You don’t have a picture in your profile, there’s no link to someplace (a LinkedIn profile, at least?), or you have few or no tweets yet you’re following a lot of people. This makes you look like a spammer in the making, and I won’t go there.

On the other hand, the following things make more more likely to follow you.

1. You converse with people online. I’m looking for @replys, retweets and the like in your tweet stream. If I see them, no matter what else, I am much more likely to follow you back. Obviously, as you can tell from above, this is a big one for me.

2. You are (or could be) a part of my community offline. That might mean you live close to me (in the same state), or you work in the same industry (PR/marketing) or you have something in common with me that’s apparent in your bio or tweet stream (you’re a writer a or you share an alma mater with me, for example). Also, if I already know you in real life, than there’s a very good chance I’ll follow you.

3. You have retweeted or #FF’d me. Hey, I’m a sucker for flattery and attention, just like anybody else. So long as it doesn’t look you’re doing this purely for spammy reasons, I’m much more inclined to follow you if you do this. It’s just plain old reciprocity, one of the fundamental drivers of human social behavior.

4. You’ve replied to something I tweeted. Even if I wasn’t following you, you replied to something I tweeted. Maybe to comment on it, add something helpful or just say ‘thanks for tweeting that link.’ Whatever the case, this kind of personal communication lets me know that you’re into Twitter as a conversation platform, and that there’s a good possibility we’ll be able to interact.

I don’t have hard and fast rules about who I follow or don’t follow. But these are the factors, positive and minus, that usually go into my decision. How do you decide who to follow on Twitter? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

How to blog frequently

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:46:58 +0000

Posting frequently requires discipline and a commitment to that goal. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1122022)

One of the biggest challenges for most part-time bloggers is finding the time and energy to blog consistently. Since Jan. 18, I’ve been engaged in a little challenge here for myself — 30 posts in 30 days.

As it turns out, I probably couldn’t have picked a worse time to try to average a post a day. Work has been crazy, with a lot of travel and an unusual amount of night and weekend hours. A couple of my volunteer commitments have required more time than usual. And just last week snow kept my daughter out of school for four days, which disrupted our household schedule and made it even harder for me to keep up a demanding extracurricular writing schedule. There is more travel on my calendar in the next couple of weeks, so this is not going to get any easier. In fact, I’m going to have to average about 1.5 posts a day to make my goal.

Nonetheless, despite the challenges I’ve learned a lot of good lessons about how to blog frequently. Here are some of the keys that have helped me to write as often as I have the last couple of weeks.

1. Keep a list of blog post ideas some place. Your list could be in a file, on paper or even inside your blogging software. But keep a list of ideas and every time an idea pops into your head, add it. You don’t have to end up writing a post for every idea, but having a bunch of ideas ready to go makes it a lot easier to keep to a writing schedule.

2. Work several days (at least) ahead. In the last three weeks or so I’ve had a couple of times when I had as many as four posts written and scheduled to go. Typically I was able to do that on the weekends, when I could devote more time to writing and when I felt less pressure to publish. This helps because it takes the pressure off to produce something for today or tomorrow and makes you feel less anxious about maintaining a frequent posting schedule.

3. Write partial drafts. Sometimes I don’t have the energy or time to finish a blog post all in one go. But that’s OK, and in fact in someways it’s better. If I start to write a post knowing I don’t have to finish it right now it makes it less intimidating to start. And if I go back to a post I’ve already started with the intent of finishing it, it’s easier because I already have some of it done. Writing partial drafts has been one of the most important keys for my regular posting.

4. Prioritize writing over reading. It’s tempting when you hop on your computer to just check your email, your RSS feeds or Twitter to see what’s going on. Don’t. Write first and write often. If you want to be a frequent blogger, you have to put your priority into creating content. And the way to do that is to simply put in the time.

5. Have a goal. Thirty posts in 30 days was a goal for me, to see if I could post that frequently. It was a private goal at first, and now I’ve made it public. But keeping that goal in mind has helped me keep going at times when I didn’t feel like blogging. Other people can post this frequently, so I should be able to also, right? (Check in on Feb. 16 and we’ll see how well this worked for me.)

These have been the most important things I’ve done in the last few weeks to post frequently, even as I’ve been busier than usual in other parts of my life. How do you keep up a regular blogging schedule?