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Five tips for better tweeting

February 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Twitter headerOf 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.

Filed Under: Microblogging, Online marketing, Social media Tagged With:

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

February 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Microblogging, networking, Online marketing, Personal branding, Social media Tagged With:

12 things to do when you don't feel like blogging

February 5, 2010 By 3 Comments
Cat

Don't resort to cat blogging. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1244985)

This is another one of my occasional posts on what to do when you don’t feel like blogging.

1. Update your bio/about page. If you’ve been doing this for any length of time, chances are it’s out of date. You should also make sure that you’re including everything there that’s going to help reinforce your brand and (if it’s a personal blog) establish your authority and expertise.

2. Develop a list of non-content tweaks to improve your blog. Chances are, you’ve got a widget or a plug-in you’ve been meaning to add to your blog, or a design tweak that you haven’t gotten around to. If you’re not going to create new content (the most important thing you can do), then figure out what else you could do to improve your blog.

3. Make one (or more) of your list of non-content improvements. If you already have a list of potential blog improvements, or you’ve made one, now is the time to start implementing those. Decide which is most important, and implement that.

4. Add more social media sites to your Ping.fm account. Ping.fm is a cool service that allows you to send updates to all sorts of social media, chat and social bookmarking sites at once. That makes it easy, when you publish a new post, to spread it to all sorts of networks. You still have to sign up for individual accounts at these sites, but Ping.fm automates the process of posting to some or all of them at once. Hint: You can also tie Ping.fm into your Hootsuite account, so Hootsuite updates it — if that makes sense for you.

5. Create a notebook with all the important records related to your blog. If you’re not keeping track of all your passwords, business records and other information related to your blogging and social media activity, it’s easy to find yourself hitting that “I’ve forgotten my password” link too often. I use 3×5 cards in a little plastic box (about $2 from an office supply store) to keep track of this information.

6. Brainstorm ideas for the next time you do blog. Sometimes taking the pressure off yourself of actually writing a full blog post can be freeing, and you may find new ideas flowing.

7. Leave smart, relevant comments on other blog posts. If you’re like me, you’re already blogging, keeping up with social media networks and digesting a torrent of incoming email, RSS feeds, ebooks and paper books. Commenting is something you probably don’t do as often as you should. Blogs with CommentLuv installed or that use Do Follow links can be particularly helpful for SEO purposes.

8. Check out other blogs in your niche, and figure out how to get a guest post on one of them. Guest posting can boost your search engine visibility, bring you new readers and give more credibility to your reputation and brand. Step one is to figure out where you’d like to guest post.

9. Look at your blog with a browser you don’t normally use and fix any design problems that show up. If you habitually use one browser (I recommend Firefox), you might be surprised what it looks like in Internet Explorer (various versions), Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome or the Opera browser (all of these, except Internet Explorer, come in versions for both Mac and Windows machines). You might also want to consider making your site better for mobile browsers. Here’s a set of WordPress plug-ins to help you do that.

10. Do something totally different to get inspired. Exercise, visit a museum, play with your children or read a thriller. Sometimes your brain needs a rest or a change of direction.

11. Proofread old posts. You’d be surprised at how many grammar and spelling errors could be hiding in old posts. Go read some of that older content and fix any mistakes. After the Deadline is a WordPress plugin (there’s also a Firefox add-on version) to help you find and correct those errors.

12. Blog anyway. If you’ve committed to posting regularly, don’t let your feelings (which are probably temporary) dictate your actions. If you’re feeling blocked, read my post on eight ways to overcome writer’s block.

What do you do when you just don’t feel like blogging? Leave your tips in the comments.

Filed Under: Blogging, Blogging Basics, Content marketing, Grammar and style, Microblogging, Online marketing, Personal branding, SEO, Social media, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ten corporate blogging mistakes

February 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Wrench

Business blog not working the way you had hoped? You can fix it. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/899403)

If you’ve started a blog for your business, but it’s not taking off the way you wished, you might be making one or more of these mistakes.

1. You use anonymous authors instead of real people as your writers. You can use multiple writers, you can appoint a single chief blogging officer or you can just assign it to the right person in the public relations or marketing department. But posts without a real human face and name behind them probably won’t appeal as much to readers.

2. You post mostly press releases and product announcements. I think it’s fine to write a post about what’s happening in your company, or what new products you’re launching. But you’ll have more success if more of your content solves problems, entertains and otherwise engages the interests of your target audience.

3. You post infrequently. A blog post once a month is not often enough. If I can post several times a week here, in my spare time, than most corporate blogs ought to be able to manage regular updates. This can be challenging for small businesses. The key is to develop an editorial calendar, make writing assignments and decide blogging is a priority.

4. You post only one kind of content. I’m a writer, and I love text. But videos, slide shows, photos and podcasts are also good. Mix up the kind of content you post (yes, I need to do that here, too).

5. Your blog doesn’t have any personality. Every company I’ve ever been in has a personality, and has personalities working for it. Show them. Blogs are an intimate, engaging medium, not a place for news release-style writing by committee. If you “personality” is too frivolous for you, then think of this as demonstrating your character or brand.

6.You don’t encourage visitors to subscribe and you don’t capture email addresses. You should make your RSS feed highly visible, and also make it easy for people to subscribe via email. You’ve got a much better chance of getting repeat visitors if you encourage people to sign up to receive notifications of new posts. Self promotional alert: Please subscribe to this blog — the email form is over on the right.

7. You don’t provide clear links to other parts of the corporate web site. That is why you’re doing this, right? Don’t make it hard for me to learn more about your company, your people and your products and services. Make those links clear and prominent.

8. You don’t encourage employees, vendors and other stakeholders to read the blog. Those people are probably not your primary audience, but they can help spread the word to your real audience.

9. You’re not using social media to spread your content. People are not hanging around waiting for your next blog post – they’re too busy. So use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and whatever else makes sense to push your blog content out to the web. Some people who see it at those sites will visit your blog.

10. You don’t have a clear purpose and metrics. I believe in the value of social media and online marketing tools, but I also believe they need to be used strategically. That means you need to have clear goals for your blog, tied to your company goals, and you need to measure those over time.

What other mistakes do you see corporate blogs making? Please share them in the comments below.

Filed Under: Blogging, Content marketing, Marketing & public relations, Online marketing, Social media Tagged With: ,

How to counter 11 common arguments against corporate blogs

February 3, 2010 By 1 Comment
Stop signs

Have you been told to stop the corporate blogging project? (Image by ColinBroug via stock.xchng - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1219058)

At many companies, if you propose a blog you will get a lot of resistance. It may come from older, senior executives who don’t read  — or think they don’t — blogs. It may come from traditional marketers who don’t believe you can demonstrate ROI from a blog. It may come from lawyers who are worried about compliance issues and new risks. It may even come from some completely unexpected source. Here are some common arguments against corporate blogs, and some suggestions for countering those arguments.

“Our target audiences don’t read blogs”

That’s probably only true if you’re target audience isn’t online at all. The estimates vary, but in the U.S. tens of millions of people read blogs, with the estimates ranging from roughly 50 to 75 percent of all Internet users. Blogs are now commonly published on larger web sites for media outlets, universities, companies and other organizations that it’s unlikely that a typical Internet user doesn’t read at least from time to time.

And the numbers may even be higher than the statistics indicate. It is possible, that people read blogs and don’t realize it. Lots of news now gets published first on blogs, but I have heard even web-savvy people identify those blog posts as articles. Your target audience doesn’t read blogs? Only if they’re not online at all.

“We would be subject to comments we can’t control”

Many people in corporate environments associate blogs with unfettered criticism and comments — conversation they don’t want to publicize further. But the truth is the Internet is a bastion of free and unfettered conversation, and offline and online your organization is already subject to comments you can’t control. If you think you’re not, it probably means you’re just not aware of it. If those comments are on your blog, you can monitor what people say about you more closely. You can respond more quickly and more aggressively to correct untrue assertions and make a case for your viewpoint.

On your own blog, you also control if, when and how comments are left on your blog. While it’s not considered good form for most, some high profile bloggers have even shut off comments entirely on their sites. In many cases that’s probably not the best solution for a corporate blog, but if you get libelous, untrue or other problematic content showing up in comments, it’s easy to prevent that from showing up on your site.

“We wouldn’t have control of where the blog content ended up on the Internet”

As with comments, you already don’t have control of where your web content shows up on the Internet. Blogs are no different. The nature of information online is that it spreads. If you are publishing content that you think is worthwhile, important and relevant — why would you want to limit its spread? If you don’t want people to be familiar with your brand, to know what kind of expertise you have and to be exposed to your ideas, then you probably shouldn’t have a blog. But if you don’t want those things, you probably shouldn’t have a business, either.

“We can’t measure the ROI on a blog”

There’s an old joke in advertising: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. Trouble is, I don’t know which half.” Actually, things are a lot better now than when John Wanamaker, an early department store entrepreneur, tossed off that comment. Many big companies measure how effective and efficient their advertising, public relations and other marketing-communications efforts are (small companies should, but are often reluctant to spend a little more on measurement). Blogs are no different than any other marketing-communications tool, and you can measure the ROI on a blog just like anything else.

If you want to measure how many people you reach, track unique visitors to the blog. If you want to measure your influence in the industry, track how many people comment on your posts and share your content on other web sites. If you want to measure how a blog affects your sales, track how many people click through to your e-commerce site or how many customers cite “blog” when asked where they heard of you. If you want to do this formally (a good idea in a big organization), you might start with Katie Delahaye Paine’s excellent social media measurement checklist.

“A blog is not really the most important priority right now for the company”

The blog itself may not be a priority, but like many communications tools, a blog may be able to support whatever the company’s current priorities are. No one should start a blog just for the sake of having a blog, but tying in your blogging (and other communications activities) to overall organizational goals ought to be the first thing you do.

“Blogs are good for B2C marketing, but we’re a B2B company”

Blogs are designed for communicating to other people — period. B2B communications are aimed at real people, and there is little evidence that people buying for businesses make decisions differently than people buying for themselves. In fact, given the existence of services like business class airfare, I’d say there’s an argument that people buying for businesses are sometimes less rational than people buying for themselves. (Note — I’m in favor of business class airfare, but not because it saves anyone money. It makes business travel, which can be unpleasant, a little less arduous, and happy employees are worth a lot.)

“We don’t have the resources to create content for a blog and then spend all that time monitoring comments”

If a blog fits your communication goals, it might actually be less costly than other channels. While it takes time to run a blog, just as it takes time to run an advertising campaign, the primary cost of a blog is time. Other communications channels frequently have additional costs beyond time — advertising spend, printing, postage, etc.

If the concern is only about employee time (which is now, more than ever, in short supply), there are plenty of freelancers, consultants and agencies (like my employer) who would be happy to help.

“No one takes blogs seriously”

Really? Do people still say this? Yes, I suppose some do. Dell didn’t take a blog too seriously, until complaints about its product quality and warranty service became endemic and threatened the company’s reputation. Microsoft hired blogger Robert Scoble a few years ago, and he helped give the not-so-loved software giant a human face and an improved reputation. A few years ago Apple sued bloggers about confidential information they published. Turns out that these very large, very successful companies took bloggers very seriously. You should, too.

“We really need to be putting our efforts into Facebook, Twitter and social media”

Yes, you probably should be putting some effort into the newer social media platforms, which are becoming centers for conversation by your customers about your products and services (if not now, then eventually). But blogs were among the first of the “social media” channels, and still play a central role in many social media strategies. They allow you to publish more content, and have more control over it, than shorter-form sites such as Facebook and Twitter do. If your company is on Twitter or Facebook or other sites (or wants to be), than your company should be considering a blog as part of that strategy.

“IT can’t/won’t support a blog”

No problem. Host the blog on an outside server, with a separate domain if necessary, and hire a consultant who specializes in blogs to support it. Plus, many web hosting companies, including my hosting provider Dreamhost (affiliate link), make it easy even for people with few or no technical skills to set up a blog.

Don’t like the DIY solution? Well, why won’t IT support a blog? Chances are your IT staff support email, spreadsheets, smart phones and other applications and services. Chances are the IT staff has the skills to support a blog (whether they want to admit it or not). If IT won’t support your blog, that probably means you haven’t gotten true buy-in from all the executives you need to.

“Blogs are amateurish and embarrassing, and don’t match our brand”

Some blogs are amateurish and embarrassing, but your blog can be whatever you want to make of it. Many blogs are well designed, well written and popular; yours can be, too. All you have to do is make the effort, commit the resources and sit back and reap the rewards.

What arguments have you heard against blogs? How have you responded? Please share in the comments.

Filed Under: Blogging, Content marketing, Marketing & public relations, Online marketing, Social media Tagged With:

Four easy tips for making your business card and email signature more social

January 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Business card

Is your business card social media savvy? (Photo by blary54 at stock.xchng - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1022838)

So you’re a social media maven. You tweet, you blog, you have accounts on all the major social media sites, and a few of the minor ones, too. You know how Digg works, understand URL shorteners and subscribe to a bunch of RSS feeds from social media rock stars like Chris Brogan and probloggers like Darren Rowse.

But, do your business card and email signature reflect these facts? Or are they mired in the ’90s, when a fax number was just as important as an email address?

Here are some ideas to bring these two common identity tools up to date:

1. Add the address for the social media service you use most commonly. For me, that’s Twitter (@marktzk, in case you want to follow me).

2. Instead of a company web address, how about a blog web address? This may not be feasible if you are part of a company and have a business card and email signature that follow a standard, prescribed format. But if you are self-employed, have personal business cards and use a personal email account, why not add the blog address to those?

Tip: You can get free business cards at VistaPrint and Bizcard.com.

3. You may be writing brilliant, useful content on your blog, but are you letting people know? How about adding the three most recent blog posts you’ve written under your email signature? If that seems strange or too narcissistic, it’s certainly not any worse than the quotes and song lyrics I see regularly in email sigs. Firefox add-on WiseStamp can help you do this for your free webmail (i.e. Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) accounts.

4. Are you promoting a free offer on your blog to get people to sign up for your email newsletter? For instance, perhaps your offering a free report or PDF when people join your email list. Consider putting this on the back of your business card or, again, in your email signature. (While we’re at it — is this information included in your major social media profiles? Some people who review these profiles will probbly be interested in your email list.)

I’m sure there are other things you could do with your business card and email signature to make them more social. What are your ideas? Please share them in the comments below.

Filed Under: Blogging, Career, Content marketing, Email, Microblogging, networking, Personal branding, Social media Tagged With: ,

Eight steps to launching a corporate blog

January 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Team shoes photo

Developing the right team is an important step in launching a corporate blog (Photo by alemjusic at stock.xchng - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/693414)

A lot of what I write about here applies to individuals — individual blogs, personal branding and personal use of social media. But businesses, large and small, can also use blogs and social media to strengthen their brand, reach new customers and grow sales. And some kind of corporate or organizational blog is often an important part of the social media strategy.

So, let me suggest a few tips on ways to ensure your corporate blog is effective.

1. Get buy-in.

Make sure your executive leadership, including the corporate counsel and the CFO’s office. At large companies this process could require months. Nonetheless, getting buy-in on the benefits of having a corporate blog (and the risks, and a plan to manage the risks) is a lot easier to get ahead of the time then to ask for later.

Chances are blogging is actually not the riskiest thing your company does — far from it. But to many senior executives it may sound risky, so educating them is important.

2. Develop a strategy.

Identify your audience (investors, employees, current customers, potential customers or maybe all of these?) and get clear about what the goal of the blog is. What are you trying to achieve by having a corporate blog? Are you trying to drive leads to sales? Increase awareness? Foster conversation with key influencers (such as analysts and journalists)? Figure that out.

While you’re at it, develop some metrics to go along with your goals. Is it merely traffic, the level of interaction, or the profit from new customers?

3. Decide on the team.

Having a blog team makes it much more likely that your organizational blog will keep going, even during times when other stuff crops up and threatens to take your focus away from your blog (I speak from experience on this). Choose team members with the right skills, an interest in blogging and social media, and the ability to get the job done. Your team might include an editor/team leader, one or two contributing writers, someone from IT to help with the technical side of things and a designer to ensure the blog looks good.

4. Establish an approval process.

The quickest way to slow down posting on a blog is to have an unclear approval process. Or worse yet, no approval process at all. The first time some dumb error slips through the blog will also be the time when the CEO just happens to be reading it. You want an approval process — a system — in place, or else you run the risk of having one imposed on you.

Who on the team writes the draft of a blog post? Who edits it? Does anybody outside the blog team need to review it? If so, who sends it to that person? Do outside reviewers understand your blog deadlines?

5. Brainstorm blog post ideas.

Get your team, get your plan and go hole up in a conference room. Then come up with lots and lots of ideas for blog posts. If you want to prime the pump for this exercise, consider my post yesterday on 10 ways to generate ideas for blog posts.

You may only have to do this once, because often the act of writing a blog post results in more ideas for future posts. However, if you find your bank of blog post ideas getting a little thin, you may want to schedule a new brainstorming session periodically. Also consider the value of bringing others into these sessions — other employees, business partners and vendors, and perhaps even members of your target audience (for example, potential customers).

Once you’ve done your brainstorming session you’ll probably need to go back and winnow the list down, picking out the best, strongest ideas for blog posts. But brainstorm first; it’s easier to pull out strong ideas from a really long list produced by a good brainstorming session.

6. Create an editorial calendar.

Once you have a bunch of blog post topics, schedule them and assign them to members of your team (including yourself). Make sure everyone understands who’s writing what, who’s editing what, and when blog posts are scheduled to be published. Having a clear schedule with blog posts already plugged in ensures that you won’t be scrambling around for a post when you realize the entire blog team is going on vacation at the same time.

It’s OK to add things to the editorial calendar at the last minute, based on new announcements or developments in your company’s business. But in case you don’t have news to fuel the blog, an editorial calendar will help you keep it on track.

7. Train people on the software.

Whatever blogging software you use (I recommend WordPress, but Movable Type is also an option, and there are a host of other robust content management systems available), train your team on it. If there’s only one person on the team who knows how to actually post content, then you’re blog is going to grind to a halt whenever that person is away.

At their heart, blogs and social media are all about empowering people. So empower your team, even the blog virgins who have never used blogging software below and need some training.

8. Decide on a comments policy.

Decide on how you’ll handle comments. And in particular, decide on how you’ll handle negative comments. If your blog is at all successful, you will get negative comments. So will you publish those? If you publish them, will you respond to them? This is the hardest part for most traditional companies to figure out. Businesses are usually just not comfortable with the idea of responding to negative comments in a forum that’s visible to everyone.

But, not allowing negative comments may make your blog appear less transparent and less credible. And not responding to negative comments may allow false perceptions to take hold in your audience. Nonetheless, this is tricky for businesses. As I said in step No. 1, getting buy-in from senior executives is the most important part of this process.

There’s a lot more corporate bloggers can and should do, of course. But if you’re just launching a blog, going through these steps will give you a strong foundation for a successful blog. What are your tips for launching a corporate blog? Please share them in the comments below.

Filed Under: Blogging, Content marketing, Marketing & public relations, Popular, Social media Tagged With: ,

10 ways to generate ideas for blog posts

January 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Ideas

How do you come up with ideas for blog posts? (Illustration by raja4u at stock.xchng - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1156284)

Here’s the problem most bloggers, and anyone doing content marketing, faces: how to come up with ideas for posts.

I’ve got a list of about 30 potential blog post topics for this blog, right now, and I add to that list each day.

There’s lots of ways to come up with ideas. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that if you consistently work out at these techniques below, you’ll soon have more ideas for blog posts than you have time.

1. Wordtracker

SEO software maker Wordtracker’s free keyword questions tool allows you to enter a keyword and see the questions that people have actually typed into search engines related to those keywords. As with many of these online question tools, I always assume that if some people asked these questions online (through a search engine or another forum) than many others are probably also looking for the answer and interested in the topic.

2. LinkedIn Answers

Go to LinkedIn Answers and you can drill down, by various industry categories, and find questions that people have asked related to that. As above, I am assuming that if someone on LinkedIn asked the question, may more are interested in the answer. I’m not suggesting you should copy the answers, by the way. To produce good content you need to come up with your own original, meaningful, useful way of answering these questions.

3. Yahoo! Answers

Just like LinkedIn, Yahoo! Answers is a compendium of people’s questions, categorized by topic. You can use these just like you use LinkedIn Answers.

4. Ask MeFi

Same as above. There are some really interesting questions, by the way, if you dig into the Ask MetaFilter archives.

5. Everyday Conversations

What do people ask you? What do they wonder about? What conversations do you have that make you think about ideas related to your blog? For example, I had a conversation recently with a personal trainer who’s really trying to grow his business — he’s only got two clients at the moment. He mentioned being on Facebook, but obviously there’s a lot more he could do. Maybe there’s a blog post there, don’t you think?

6. Magazines in Your Niche

Go to a news stand or library and look at the magazines in your niche or industry. What cover blurbs do the latest issues have? What are their stories this month? Could you write your own take on some of these subjects or ideas? I’m not suggesting copying or stealing their stories, I’m saying that chances are, sometimes you’ll have your own ideas that are different from the ones in the magazine. Turn those into a blog posts.

7. Read Other Blogs in Your Niche

Has someone write a post that you have strong feelings about — maybe you think it’s brilliant, maybe you think it’s terrible. Either way, write a post in response. You can even link the original post that prompted the idea. (Although, even if you think the original post is horrible, be polite and diplomatic.)

Also look at the ideas that other bloggers in your niche are using. Could you do your own version of some of these posts? If someone does “10 tips for doing better” in your niche or industry, could you come up with 10 different tips? If so, you’ve got a blog post. I’m a big fan of giving credit where credit is due, so linking to these inspiring posts is a good idea.

9. Ask Your Community

Run a poll on your blog about possible future topics, or just put out a call “What should I write about next?” You can also ask these questions on your social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. If you have an email newsletter (which you should), you can put out a call on that channel, too. This probably won’t work so well for start-up blogs, but if you have a reasonably active community of people tied to your blog and social media presence, this could yield some good ideas.

10. Timed Brainstorming

Set yourself a deadline and simply come up with a certain number of ideas — say 10 in the next hour. The trick to this is to write down anything and everything that comes out, even if a lot of those ideas are not terribly good or original. With all the unusable ideas you get out of brainstorming, you’ll also get some usable ones. I did this recently on a plane trip when I didn’t have anything to read, and I added 10 new ideas in the last hour of the flight.

How do you come up with ideas for blog posts? Please share your tips in the comments below.

Filed Under: Blogging, Content marketing, Creativity, Social media, Writing Tagged With: , ,

Five ways to turn online relationships into offline connections

January 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Meet for coffee

Meeting for coffee is an easy, tried-and-true way to build offline relationships. (Photo by trublueboy @ stock.xchng - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/644967)

So let’s say, hypothetically, that you’ve been really successful in your social media efforts and you are building relationships online. That’s great. But sometimes, to take a business relationship to the next level, you need to take it offline. How do you do that? Here are some simple suggestions:

Professional Meetings and Conferences

Nearly every profession has professional conferences, trade shows and other events where people converge to learn and network together. Reach out to your online contacts in your industry and ask whether any of them of will be at the events that you’re attending. If so, ask to have lunch with them, meet them at breakfast or find some other way to connect.

Local Professional Society Events

Professional societies are also a great way to turn local online relationships into local offline relationships. If you’re a member of a professional group (such as the Public Relations Society of America for PR pros), there is very likely a local chapter that has regular meetings. Offer to meet at one of those events and make a point of connecting in person there.

Tip: If you’re a member of a professional group that doesn’t have a local chapter, consider forming one yourself. Do that and your local (and national) professional opportunities are likely to grow considerably. (This was something I had planned to do in 2009, but then the year got overwhelmingly busy for me. We’ll see if I’m able to carve out some time this year.)

Tweetups and Meetups

There may be informal groups meeting in your area that include people you know online. Check out Tweetups.org and Meetup.com to find local informal gatherings you might join. If there aren’t any already taking place, consider organizing one yourself. Organizing an event yourself is a true power-networker move. Here are some tips from Mashable on organizing successful Tweetups.

Coffee and Food

Beyond group events, the old standby of “let’s have coffee/lunch/drinks sometime” is an easy, low pressure way to turn an online connection into an offline relationship. This usually makes sense once you’ve had some mutually enriching back-and-forth communications with someone and you’ve reached the limits of what you can practically do online. Sometimes, a 30-minute mid-morning coffee can allow for a level and depth of communication that’s difficult online. You can discover professional opportunities (for collaboration, partnerships or even employment), build your Rolodex and simply enjoy meeting someone new.

The same thing works when you’re traveling, too. If you have a trip coming up to another city, consider who you know online there that you might reach out to and meet in person. The worse someone can say is “I don’t have time.” A copywriter I only know online once offered to meet as he was passing through town. I accepted. We ended up canceling it due to an unavoidable conflict that came up on my end, but if he comes through town again I’d be happy to sit down and get to know him in person.

Note: Never put yourself in a situation that could be risky or dangerous with someone you don’t know well. Meet in a public place, pay your own way and arrange your own transportation. Exchange business cards, but not home addresses. ‘Nuff said.

Phone Calls

Finally, if you can’t arrange any of these in-person meetings, a phone call can sometimes work wonders for a relationship. If you’re an introvert (like me), this may strike you as unnatural and unnecessary. However, more often than not, this really works. After some online interaction where you find yourself thinking “what an interesting person” try sending this message: “Hey, I’d like to learn a bit more about you. Any chance you might have a few minutes for a phone call in the next week or two?”

What are your tips for taking networking and interaction from the Web to the offline world? Please share them in the comments below.

Filed Under: Career, networking, Online marketing, Personal branding, Social media Tagged With: , , ,

How bloggers are handling the new FTC affiliate disclosure rules

January 21, 2010 By 5 Comments

It’s been almost two months since the U.S. Federal Trade Commission implemented new rules about how affiliate links can be used (or not) in blogs and social media. The rules went into effect Dec. 1, and since then I’ve been seeing bloggers and online marketers use a variety of strategies for complying. At the same time, the FTC itself is still trying to figure out how it’s going to enforce these rules, especially for bloggers.

For those who may not be familiar with this issue, here’s the basics.

Affiliate links. Affiliate links are hyperlinks, often inserted into blog posts or other social media channels, that pay the writer a commission if someone clicks through that link and makes a purchase. These were originally pioneered by Amazon and other major online retailers, and have become a valuable marketing tool for all sorts of online merchants and publishers, and a major source of income for lots of bloggers.

The FTC rules. The FTC’s new rules [pdf] essentially say that if you are get a free sample, or if have some kind of link to a seller (for example, you’re an employee) or you have an affiliation that could bring you income, you have to disclose it you review, endorse or otherwise give a testimonial. The new rules also put new restrictions on the use of testimonials and endorsements in all kinds of advertisers, but I won’t go into that here — I’m focusing on how bloggers are handling the affiliate disclosure rule.

The reason this has become such a big issue is, to put it bluntly, that a lot of people were inserting affiliate links into reviews and not disclosing that they were getting paid when people purchased through those links. I think a lot of people using affiliate links to make money were concerned that once they began to disclose the relationship, people would stop clicking and they would make less money. It’s a reasonable fear. After all, if someone is being paid when you buy a product through them, aren’t you likely to take their endorsement more skeptically, and also less likely to make that purchase?

I’m not going to go into whether or not the FTC should be regulating this, and I’m not going to go into whether or not bloggers should disclose the relationships in the absence of regulations that force them to. However, suffice it to say that a lot of bloggers are now disclosing these relationships in a variety of ways.

Now, on to some examples.

Jonathan Fields – Awake @ the Wheel

Blogger Jonathan Fields, the original career renegade, is using a very short disclosure next to the affiliate link.

Jonathan Fields discloses an Amazon affiliate link

I like this approach because the minimal (aff link) doesn’t get in the way of the writing. I don’t know, however, if this is enough disclosure to satisfy the FTC’s requirements. Fields is a lawyer by training, so I assume his reading of the FTC guidelines is a bit more rigorous than mine. But, what one lawyer does isn’t legal advice per se.

World’s Strongest Librarian – Josh Hanagarne

Over at World’s Strongest Librarian (a wonderfully written blog, by the way) Josh Hanagarne inserted affiliate links into his review post, and then disclosed them near the end.

Affiliate disclosure near the end of the post

I like this disclosure because it fits in so well with Josh’s writing style and his flow. Does it meet the FTC’s legal requirements? I have no idea. He is clearly trying, though, so that should count for something.

Michael Hyatt

Christian publishing house executive Michael Hyatt has come up with a standard set of disclosures to insert at the end of blog posts (in small gray text), depending on what he needs to disclose (an affiliate link or having received a free review copy, for example).

Michael Hyatt affiliate disclosure

Disclosure text - even when it's not needed

I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure there is no requirement that you disclose that you don’t have any kind of material disclosure. Hyatt does have others (click on the link above to read his post), so I’m not sure if I think the disclosure of no relationship is overkill, or if it’s clever. If readers get used to seeing that small block of gray disclaimer text at the bottom of every post – even when it’s not necessary — after a while they’re likely to start ignoring it. In effect, it becomes invisible — at least to regular readers.

I’m NOT, by the way, saying that’s Hyatt’s intention. His reading of the FTC guidelines (or his lawyer’s) may lead him to believe that’s required, or he may feel that it’s the best thing to do in the spirit of full disclosure for his readers. I don’t know. But I suspect that the effect over time is to cause a sort of “disclosure blindness.”

Other options

There are certainly lots of other disclosure options out there. If you haven’t seen them yet, start looking. I guarantee you’ll start to notice them all over the place. I included an affiliate disclosure in my review of Beyond Blogging last week. I think my disclosure meets the FTC’s guidelines, but I’ll say it again — I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t play one on this blog.

One web site that’s trying to create a standard set of disclosures anyone can use is Cmp.ly. The idea of short links to a compliance statement is tempting. But the badges the site offers to provide disclosure with the blog posts seem, well, ugly. I suppose that’s the point — to make an prominent disclosure, but it’s not very elegant or satisfying.

All of this raises a bunch of questions that, as far as I know, there aren’t really any good answers for. Including:

  • Are any or all of these affiliate disclosure methods adequate for the FTC? I guess we won’t know until the agency goes after someone for a perceived violation. In fairness, FTC officials have said it’s not their intention to be heavy handed with enforcement and go after a lot of individual bloggers.
  • Is just saying “affiliate link” enough? I know we (me and all of my charming, intelligent and well-informed readers) know what an affiliate link is. But does everybody? That’s basically the disclosure the myself and a lot of others are using right now, but I don’t know if those two words by themselves will meet this still-undefined FTC standard.
  • If there are old affiliate links on your blog that were published before the FTC’s rules took effect, do you have to go back and add disclosure to all of those? I am guessing that most lawyers would say yes — erring on the side of caution. But again, I really don’t know.

The bottom line is you should probably disclose something in some fashion. How much and how you disclose seems very much up in the air. There’s an attorney in Texas, Mike Young,  who apparently provides legal services for Internet marketing businesses. He’s got some blog posts and some ebooks on his site that might be worth checking out. In full disclosure – I don’t know much about him so I can’t say if his advice is good or not.

Bonus tip: Businesses considering how to comply with these rules should take a look at these suggestions from my RLF Communications colleague Aleasha Vuncannon. These aren’t legal advice, but they are based on solid, ethical public relations principles.

Are you using affiliate links on your blog? How are you disclosing them? As a reader of blogs, what kinds of disclosures would you like to see? And would those make you more or less likely to trust what a blogger is saying, and click on the link? Please share your thoughts below.

Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing & public relations, Online marketing, Popular, Social media Tagged With: ,
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