Mark Tosczak» Personal branding

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.

Why you should stop trying new social media sites

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:17:57 +0000

Google Wave. Google Buzz. Farmville. Foursquare. Gowalla. Yelp.

Don't get lost in the maze of choices social media offers. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1093677)

The list goes on and on. There are more social media sites, social media apps and cool online things that people are talking about than I will ever have time to fully explore. Even though I make my living in part by helping companies use social media, I can’t commit enough time to explore every new thing to come along. Chances are, you don’t have the time either. And that’s OK.

It’s easy to get caught up in trying the latest and “greatest,” easy to worry that you’re going to miss out on the next Facebook or Twitter if you don’t jump on a new site right away. In other words, it’s easy to forget why we’re here in the first place.

We’re here to have conversations, to learn, to market and brand ourselves, our businesses and our causes. Actually doing those things requires work, attention and focus. But the siren song of Google’s latest project or the newest game that all your friends seem to be playing on Facebook can be all too alluring sometimes.

A better strategy might be to focus on just a handful of sites and activities, to spend real time building real relationships, creating real content and establishing a real presence. It’s OK to not be everywhere. Instead, pick your places and really BE there. For me, these days, that means I’m spending a lot of time focusing on this blog (my home base on the web), on Twitter and on Facebook. I spend less time on LinkedIn and a private forum or two.

I have dipped my toe into Google Buzz and Google Wave, am intrigued by FourSquare but not ready yet to focus on it, and I keep an eye on the news, apps and sites that keep social media enthusiasts talking. But that’s all. And that’s OK. It’s better to pick your places, focus and have an impact. Trying to be everywhere is probably a formula for being nowhere.

So I don’t really mean that you should never try a new social media site. It just means that you should do so carefully and with some consideration as to why you’re doing it and how it fits into your overall goals.

What say you? Where do you spend your time online and how do you figure out what’s valuable? Please leave 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.

Why you (or others) should make time for social media

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:11:39 +0000

Don't miss the train on social media. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1106949)

Have you heard these lines?

“There’s so much noise and clutter out there, it seems as though social media hasn’t really matured enough to be a useful tool.”

“Social media’s fine for some industries, but not ours.”

“I just don’t have time for social media.”

Or perhaps the line is some variation on one these. There are still plenty of professionals out there who don’t think social media is that important. If you’re trying to convince someone who says these kinds of things, here are five arguments to help you.

1. Isn’t networking important to you? I would imagine there are very, very few professionals in any field who would say networking with others in their field isn’t important to them. Explain to them that social media sites are a tool to network online, and that you can network more efficiently and with more people through social media than you can with traditional methods. That doesn’t mean you should completely abandon phone calls, luncheon meetings and industry events, but social media can be a powerful tool for your professional advancement.

2. You can do business over these channels. It probably won’t happen the day you first set up your LinkedIn or Facebook account, but you can do business through these social media sites. Particularly as you expand your network, learn to use the tools skillfully and connect with relevant people, you’ll find yourself using these sites to exchange communications that are directly relevant to your professional life. I don’t hesitate to connect through Twitter, Facebook and other channels to set up meetings, develop new business prospects or deal with speaking opportunities.

3. Weak ties might be as valuable, or more so, than close connections. One of the things that social media newbies often struggle with is the idea of being linked to a lot of people you don’t know well, or don’t know at all. However, some experts believe “weak” ties may actually be as valuable or more valuable in accessing audiences and information (such as job opportunities). Most of my job opportunities over the years have not come from my closest friends and colleagues, but rather from people who I had (at least at the time) rather weak relationships with. Social media allows you to develop many more of these potentially valuable weak ties.

4. More and more people are doing it. I don’t mean to say that people should adopt social media tools just because others are doing it. But what reluctant social media users should understand is that a larger and larger percentage of the population (and probably nearly all subpopulations) are using these tools. That means you have more opportunities to interact online with people who are important to you. It’s probably not a good idea to be in a shrinking minority of people not using these sites.

5. Social media can help you improve and influence your Google search results. Frequently, the first place I go when I’m trying to find information out about someone is Google. A quick Google search can pull up profiles on social media sites, articles you’ve written and blogs you’ve authored. Social media, in other words, can help you influence what people find when they search for you online. If you Google yourself now (yeah, it’s egotistical, but go ahead and try it) and you don’t like the results that come up, or if none of the results have anything to do with you, you can change that with social media.

What about you, gentle reader? What do you say to people when they tell you that social media isn’t important for them? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

How to strengthen your relationships

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:30:36 +0000

Have you reached out and touched people in your network lately? (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/616726)

In social media it’s easy to get caught up in mechanical ideas of what building and maintaining relationships is about. Are you pinging your network regularly? Are you sharing content, creating value? Are you thanking people? In marketing, we start quantifying these things: How many tweets, how many retweets, how many followers or subscribers or fans?

And that’s fine. Except that it’s all just a way of dancing around the real issue: relationships.

I got an email last week from an old acquaintance (which I haven’t returned yet — sorry Jamie, I will). We’re connected via LinkedIn and she wrote to tell me what was going on with her life and to ask what was going on with mine. She said that she was trying to do a better job this year of connecting with her network. Good for her.

All of us should steal that idea and do the same. It’s not numbers of friends, followers or subscribers that are ultimately important, it’s relationships. That’s why it’s called social media, and that’s where its power lies.

This isn’t just a soft and fuzzy “well isn’t that nice” issue either. The strength of your relationships and the strength of trust can have a huge impact on your bottom line. Many sales people understand this instinctively — they’ve always operated on the basis of relationships, trust and communication. Marketers are trying to take old mass media ideas of brand and integrate them with social media concepts around trust, reputation and relationships. It’s still a work in progress.

Dave Navarro published an interesting case study last week looking at short sales letters vs. long sales letters. It’s worth reading. The bottom line there with Laura Roeder‘s webinar is that she has spent a long time building trust and relationships with her community. That includes pushing out content for them (she publishes an email newsletter and a blog), but it also includes lots of interaction (look at her Twitter stream). Interaction is the bedrock of relationships.

So, let’s bring this down to some actionable stuff. Ask yourself these questions. Based on your answers, you should know what to do next to strengthen your relationships with your community.

Do you routinely say happy birthday to people? Facebook makes this easy.
Do you congratulate people in your community when they get promoted, get a job, win an award or achieve something noteworthy?
Look at your list of Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections. Who haven’t you talked to in the last few months? What’s stopping you?
Who do you need to meet for coffee or lunch or a drink?
You just read something interesting. Who in your community could benefit? Instead of sharing it as a status update (maybe in addition to), have you just sent it to that one person via email? Do this for one or two people a day and watch your relationships tighten up.
Are you being human? Are you sharing with your friends and colleagues what’s important in your life? Are you asking about and listening to what’s important in their lives? This might have nothing to do with what you or your friends actually get paid to do every day.

What else? How else can we all do a better job of connecting and reconnecting with people in our communities and networks? Please share your thoughts in the 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.

Changing my approach to Facebook

Mark Tosczak — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:22:31 +0000

Note: As I’ve mentioned previously, I challenged myself to write 30 posts in 30 days. I’ve not been as consistent with my blogging as I would have liked, so I’ve got to get a lot of blog posts published in the last couple of days. So, you’ll see several more posts than normal in the next couple of days. On Feb. 17, I’ll return to a normal schedule of three to five times per week. Please bear with me. Thanks!

Last year, I wrote a post called Why I’m becoming more promiscuous online, which explained my personal approach to social media and networking. Re-reading that, my philosophy and approach to social media hasn’t changed much, but I am making a tweak to it. I’m going to close off my personal Facebook account to people I don’t have some sort of real relationship with. Later this week, I’ll start unfriending people who I don’t know in real life or haven’t had some sort of interaction with. Here’s why.

Lately, I’ve started getting more and more friend invitations on Facebook from people I just don’t know. In some cases, they are friends with someone else I know, so there’s a chance I could run into them in my day-to-day life. In some cases, we don’t have any friends in common. I think some of them come from this blog. I’ve had my Facebook link posted prominently (the icon over on the right) for a while, in the last few weeks readership here has gone up dramatically. Some of those new readers have asked to connect on Facebook (and in some cases, I have).

But something else has happened in the last few months, also. My personal interactions and communications — information about my kids, my family and my connections to them — has increased. More relatives have connected with me online, and a lot of my Facebook activity has become more personal. I’m not feeling as comfortable about having that open to anyone who comes along. So with Facebook I’m altering my “promiscuous” approach and becoming more conservative.

The new MarkTzk.com fan page on Facebook

Still, I know a lot of people I might encounter online will still be interested in opportunities to interact on Facebook. So I’ve set up a Facebook fan page for that. The Facebook icon over in the right-hand column of this blog already points to it. I’m afraid there’s not much there yet, but I’ll start to gradually populate it with content over time, and I hope it becomes another place where we can talk about the topics and issues that this blog covers. I also plan to treat it as a kind of laboratory for experiments with Facebook marketing and Facebook fan page customization.

My LinkedIn and Twitter accounts will remain very open, so I’d still love to connect with you there. And if you know me from someplace other than this blog, there’s a pretty good chance we’ll remain friends on Facebook. See you at the fan page.

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?