Confluence Networking Discussion of Business Blogging: Get Out To It!

They Will Remember You in the Bust Not the Boom

Seth Godin has a great post today talking about customer service in the boom and in the bust. It is a short little piece called a Friend In Need. I am going to go ahead and post it in the blog to give you the full experience:

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Networking with Authenticity or Blandly Giving a Presentation?

Gary Vaynerchuk has another brilliant video on his website called Giving a Presentation vs. Working the Room.

In this video Gary talks about brands using social media in terms of giving a presentation versus working the room. When you are giving a presentation you are speaking to a group of people. When you are working the room (as many networking junkies know) you are getting involved in the group, in the community.

There is another facet of working the room and giving a presentation in social media: authenticity.

Authenticity
When you are working a room at a networking event you have to put on an air of personality and authenticity in order to gain any foothold in an individuals mind. If you are not yourself and try to wear a facade…you will not be successful at networking with professionals.

In giving a presentation there is a small amount of personality involved but is not truly involved in the process of giving a presentation. You are relating information to a group. Push. Push. Push and no Pull.

It is truly important to work the room when you are using social media for your business. Work the room at 30 mins a day. Heck! Work at the room at an hour a day online. You get what you put in!

And Gary ends his post by saying something brilliant:

“Their cost is just their time. They just have to care enough to work the room.”

The cost of your social media endeavors is your time. Plain and simple. If you want to gain a foothold in the Web 2.0 community landscape… make the time.

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When Worth-Your-While Isn’t Worth-The-While

Image via Wikipedia

What goals do you have when it comes to your social media use?

I recently had a fellow blogger, Scot Duke of Mr Business Golf, post a comment in regards to a article I had written regarding trying hard to reach your goals and being persistent in social media. His comment to my post:

Good advice, but what if you have been knocked down more times than a bowling pin and gotten up more times than the Energizer Bunny and still are not generating a following large enough to make it worth the while? Changing gears and changing stages are the natural thing to do to keep it going, but what else can be done when all the mapping and consistency is not paying off? There are REAL people who would like to know.

It was interesting to me that Scot used “worth-the-while” to explain the return on investment he was expecting from social media.  Seth Godin responded to this comment by saying that sometime a plan B is the best route. Sometimes plan C, D, E, and F are necessary too to reach your goals in social media.

So what does worth-the-while mean in social media. What happens when everything you do and have done in the past just does not work? Should you reevaluate your goals? Change your tactics for the 200th time? Or just give up?

Well we all know that giving up is never the right option. The truth of the matter could be that your worth-the-while is missing the point and is not aligned with your goals. Scot made it a point to throw his goal out there:

My goal is like everyone else, to make what I do worth-while which I don’t think is a flaw in my goal but maybe the arena I am battling in.

Your strategy being worth-the-while could mean many things. Maybe it is more money in your pocket as a direct result from social media? Maybe it is an increase in search engine rankings? Maybe it is just to gain a little brand recognition in the process of having some fun.

If you find yourself struggling to figure out what is Worth-Your-While you are probably doing something wrong.

Re-adjust. Try again.  Make it a hobby instead of a chore. If it still doesn’t work… try something else. Add it into another strategy plan. If you are not having fun in the social media world you need to try something else.

Life and business life cycles are too short to be doing something you dislike.

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Part 3: Social Media Marketing for Small Business: Attention to Action

We spend a lot of time talking about increased exposure for your company or personal brand in social media. We spend countless hours reading on how to gain attention to our content or service offerings. Personally. I spend quite a bit on Google Reader trying to stay ahead of the curve and consume the next big idea.

Many small business owners concentrate on one aspect of social media: the attention of the users. It is mainly the increased exposure to potential clients that starts the interest wheel turning in many owner’s heads. This is the old marketing strategy of the more you do the more eyes you will hit. We need to take it a bit further than just building brand recognition. It is hard to measure brand recognition in terms of return on investment.

Initially when entering into a social media marketing strategy companies need to think about the attention gaining concepts for the plan. Whether you are doing a contest, spending time in the networks, or launching a new platform it is important to initially focus on the attention aspect of social media.

What is truly important (in a business sense) is the action the user takes to buy and/or become interested in your product. You have all the attention you can muster! How do you turn the user’s attention into action.

4 Ways to Change Attention to Action

1. Free eBook:

Write a short book about your expertise. Are you an accountant? A business coach? Maybe you are a plumber who is just getting involved online? Write a quick page turner on some topics that will be beneficial to your readers. Offer it for a free download and capture their email address. This will allow you to build your database while already zeroing in on interested prospects. Chris Brogan has done an excellent job at this.

2. Blog or Email Subscription

In everything you do in social media it is extremely important to always have a subscription box for users to subscribe to your thoughts and offerings.

A great email tool for wordpress is Subscribe2 or the FeedBurner Email Subscription.

3. Promotional Banners or Links for your Profile

Always have a link present (image or text) that offers a discount on your services. You can also have a link directed to your company website that allows users to invest more time in learning about your services. This is a huge example of way to drive your attention users to your website and sell them on your services.

4. Gain Their Trust

You need to become involved in the communities that potentially may be a revenue source for your company. Take the time to respond to questions, ask questions, invest in writing great content, and helping people out. This is a huge aspect of changeing attention to action. The steps towards the buying pattern of a user has a lot to do with trust in the social media environment. Gain their trust and offer them something to hard to put down.

Gaining the trust of a user is the more important of the four steps listed above. User’s attention is not a bad thing but in order to measure your  ROI  you must take some of them to the action steps.

Always measure and document what you are doing. Time management is key.

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Independent Blogging Compared to Corporate Blogging

I follow the writing of many of the staff at Compendium Blogware, a local company here in Indianapolis offering an extremely trackable and orangic seo based blog software. I was reading through a post by Megan Glover called Is Blogging In Your 2009 Marketing Budget?, and happened across a powerpoint presentation about measuring, tracking, and adjusting your corporate blog. You can view the ppt by clicking here: measure-track-and-adjust-webinar.

In the webinar they had a graphic from Google Analytics that show where the traffic to their blog was originating from  (image below). Of course being a search and keyword driven blogging platform you would

imagine that the majority of the sites traffic would be from search engines. I decided to check out my analytics to see if I was completely opposite, in the middle, or the same.

Below you will see my traffic sources from Google Analytics. Not surprisingly most of my traffic is driven through referring sites. It got me to thinking about the value of blogging and the underlying reason of why I am writing this blog. Without hesitation I can say that the main reason for blogging is my love for social media both here and in Indianapolis. I love the concept of building community on the web. I have met some wonderful people through my dealings   in Friendfeed, Twitter, and Smaller Indiana.

The other reasons can be contributed to my social media marketing and design company and becoming a trusted adviser in the city of Indianapolis. A blog is a great way to build credibility among your peers and collaborate with many individuals on a global scale.

Of course, another big reason for blogging is the organic search engine optimization I gain through posting and linking. I don’t know if I should be worried that my lowest referring center is search engines. I have been contemplating a way to switch that tables and even out my traffic sources. Any ideas on how to do that?

It is interesting to see the sources of traffic of certain blogs both on a personal and professional level. I would gather that the majority of corporate blogs have a higher search engine traffic rate than most independent blogs out there.

Do you find referring sites more valuable or search engine traffic?  Maybe you find direct traffic the most valuable of them all? I guess it is all based on  the goals and aspirations of the blog strategy itself. Any tips on blog strategy can more than likely be found at Chris Brogan, Chris Baggot,  Hutch Carpenter or Louis Gray’s blogs.

3 Reasons Why Search and Authenticity Should Be Important to Corporate America

I was skimming through Chris Brogan’s posts and happened across a post called: A Counterpoint to the Branding Craze. This caught my attention because I am a huge advocate for branding, both personal and professional.

I have tried to use my blog to create a brand identity for myself and my company and it has been successful in more ways than one. In his post Chris talks about the concept of search being involved in the corporate strategy of most companies:

One of the reasons that I advocate content marketing, such as writing a compelling group blog, is that it’s an opportunity to build search equity. Writing about things that people might search for is a great way to find some new people at your door who might want a look at your product.

Content marketing should be in the corporate strategy plans of every business in America. There are a couple of reasons why I am strongly urge clients and businesses to dive into the realm of content marketing:

1. The Search

By blogging and writing about things that “people may search for,” you are creating a website (blog) that will hit the search engines with enthusiasm. When you have a site where content is changing regularly and you are writing about issues/services that people find important, you will find an increase in visitors to your site.

2. Authenticity and Personality

Consumers today want social media authenticity and personality behind a company. If you are a stoned face corporation sitting in a corporate park somewhere and are NOT listening to your customers needs and wants: YOU WILL FAIL. By blogging and creating an area for dialouge you are telling your customers: I trust you. I want to hear what you have to say. This goes for both big business and small business.

3. Brand Identity and Value

People want to connect with brands on a level that has become as personal as a relationships between two people. A blog/content marketing allows you to start the romantic courtship of a consumer. This courtship can turn into a seasoned consumer that will spread your good message across the valleys and streams. Maybe even through their email.

There are a multitude of reasons to start a blog and create a space where content marketing is king. Read more of Chris Brogan’s posts if you get the chance. He is a genius at laying out what it takes to create great, authentic content.

Also, if you are interested in starting a corporate blog I would suggest checking in with Compendium Blogware. They have a blogging tool that allows for AWESOME search results.

What Would Seth Do? Seth Godin and Compendium.

Most of the readers of my blog know that I am a huge Seth Godin fan. I have devoured every single book he has released, as well as, keeping updated on his blog. Whenever there are videos or blog posts about the brilliance of Seth Godin, I try to prop them up or comment. It just so happens that a company here in Indianapolis has started a video series on corporate blogging. It also just so happens that Seth Godin is featured in the first video!

Chris Baggott, Co-Founder and CEO of Compendium, is featured in the video talking about his WWSD way of life: What Would Seth Do?

Check it out. See what you think! I would love to know what everyone loves/hates about Seth Godin.

FastCompany: Myspace Has A Brand New Bag, Baby.

There has been plenty of talk about Myspace the past 4 years. Ever since the launch of the social portal GIANT, there has been conversations centered around Facebook applications being Myspace killers to the terrible design of the site’s personal pages.

I started out in the social media world through Myspace. I loved it when it was first launched. The customizable pages, the photo gallery, and the blog entry (I moved my xanga over to my Myspace page). I remember the friend trains and the thousands of people I didn’t know.

Fast Foward 2 years: Enter Facebook to Anderson University. Everything changed for me when Facebook hit the scene on my campus. The design was simple and quick. The UI of the site was not daunting or cumbersome. It was a hit in my book!

I have since slowly migrated away from Myspace for fear of being glitter blasted through the web space. This all to say, I was browsing through the magazine at the airport yesterday and the new FastCompany caught my eye. There on the cover stood Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, the Myspace cofounders. The title read: Don’t Mess with Myspace: Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe Say Their Business Is More Innovative Than Apple, Google, and Facebook. Could They Be Right?

Needless to say two things happened: I tried not to laugh out loud for fear of being stared at and I was really intrigued. I bought it.

I am intrigued because I know that Myspace has an excellent business model beneath that terribly designed site.

Facebook has been owning Myspace in terms of user/member growth:

From FastCompany:

World wide visitors

Facebook: 123.9 million up 162% from May 2007

Myspace:  114.6 million up 5% from May 2007

Clearly Facebook has been owning Myspace on growth over the past years. The competition from Facebook has pushed the Myspace co-founders to go back to their roots: Music.

From FastCompany:

“Myspace Music is a new site that promises to let people listen to and share streaming songs from a full catalog of music for free, as MySpacers do now with video-but also create playlists and buy ringtones, merchandise, and concert tickets.”

Is Myspace going after the iTunes music share? They have made pacts with major labels in the music industry to offer their content without digital rights management.

It is interesting to see Myspace reinventing itself in the wake of the social media movement. Now dubbing themselves a social media portal instead of a social networking site, Myspace is trying to tell the world. “HEY! We are still here. ZUCKERBURG… You are going down.”

They have the business model that Facebook and other sites have not figured out. They may be a little cumbersome, ugly, and completely stupid to the tech-nerd world. Honestly… who cares.

From FastCompany:

“Murdoch mandated $1 billion revenue target in June, but the unspoken defense is that Myspace alone contributed the vast majority of the $900 million that did come in. That’s three times even the most optimistic estimates of Facebook’s perfomance.”

I may not use Myspace anymore but I say, “Go for it Tom. I would love to see a Battle Royal of social networks.” Zuckerberg vs. Anderson vs Steve Jobs.

Rebellion! Personal Branding and Social Media?

Social Marketing Journal had a post today called, Is Social Media Starting to Rebel. In general the post talks about the deletion of accounts at Facebook and the changing of names at Bebo.

Andy Beal was one of the members who brought the ‘profile changes’ on Bebo to the limelight.

He is quoted saying,
“Let this be a warning. Don’t ever rely 100% on your social networking profile for brand building. Bebo-and perhaps others-can and will change your profile without warning”

The Social Marketing Journal goes on to say that bloggers and social media users should be wary when it comes to using social media as a branding tool. At least not as your major tool.

I don’t completely agree with the stance of the Social Marketing Journal. Just because a website or social media community has the ability to change your information doesn’t mean you should be wary of using social media as one of the staples to your branding strategy.

The truth of the matter is this:

If you are spending time on your networks and investing yourself into the community will you not have a problem with the branding behind your profile. The people who have problems (when their profiles are changed) are the individuals who start profiles just to be ON the site and not INVESTING in the site.

Being on and Investing in a social media community are two completely different concepts. Anyone can sign up for a social platform but not everyone can spend the time and energy it takes to invest in the community of the site.

When you invest in the community you shouldn’t have a problem with the changing of a profile or your brand identity.

This does not go to say that you shouldn’t worry about your profiles online. Whether or not you should be wary of social media for personal branding is up for question.