20 Things We Have Learned from Blogging

Ben Barden over at the Top Ten Blog Tips has a genius post about the 10 Things I’ve Learned About Blogging.First off, Ben has a great blog where he posts the top ten reasons for anything pretaining to social media. I wanted to take the 10 things he has learned from actually blogging and add another 10 from my personal list. I have also given my thoughts to some of his top ten. So let’s get this partayyyyy started.

Ben’s Top 10 Things He Has Learned from Blogging

1. You Need to Choose a Topic You Know and Like. (This is number one)

2. You need to enjoy Writing. (You need to enjoy thought promotion and learning. I hated writing before I started blogging. Just believe in what you are writing about)

3. You don’t have to reply to every comment individually. (You should try and comment as much as you can but I agree with not having to do it ALWAYS)

4. You shouldn’t rely too heavily on one traffic source.

5. You shouldn’t worry about a high bounce rate.

6. You don’t usually get links by asking for them.

7. You don’t launch a forum when you have very few readers.(I don’t know why you would even think about a forum haha. )

8. Your posts need to be different

9. You can waste a lot of time on social networking sites.

10. You’ll meet some great people. (Amen)

Great tips and I suggest you go and read, subscribe, and learn from Ben.

My Top 10 Things I Have Learned from Blogging

1. Always Try and email the people who comment on your posts.

2. Do more than the other guy. Hustle. Hustle Hustle
If you need to wake up 30 mins earlier so that you can finish a blog post. Do it. If you need to stay 30 mins after work to finish up a project because you wrote a blog during the day. Do it. If you can’t handle the concept of spending some time on social media. Don’t do it.

3. You should always retweet and share posts you loved!

4. Use Google Alerts for content ideas. It has worked for me numerous times.

5. Use Niche-Geographic based social networks. I use Smaller Indiana. This helps with local. community support.

6. Get out into the community and network offline. It will help build further support

7. You should always put your blog URL on your business card and email signature.

8. Always measure the time you are spending online. If the return is not there… switch up your strategy.

I keep a paper where I measure the time I have spent online. I take that and relate it to sales growth.

9. Do not focus too intently on content. Get the thing written and change it later.

10. Video Blogs spice up a traditional blog. Try one ever so often.

Controlling Word of Mouth Marketing Using Social Media

A good friend of mine, Hazel Walker over at the Networking Strategist has a great post called Word of Mouth is Always Working. If you read my blog pretty regularly you know that I am a huge fan of two things:

1. word of mouth marketing

2. social media marketing.

There is one point I wanted to take out of Hazel’s blog post and relate it to social media and using social media for brand development. From Hazel’s blog:

“WOM is the most dangerous form of marketing, in that you cannot control people. They may carry the wrong message or a negative message.”

As a social media marketing and design company we try to focus on building messages that can be carried or echoed across many different types of people (you know…something that sticks!). The beautiful thing about social media marketing and the Internet is that you CAN control word of mouth marketing to an extent. Let me step you through a scenario. For sake of argument I will use XYZ company as an example.

Let’s say XYZ decided to create a website for a group of people out of state. Let’s say the project didn’t go so well because of a lack of management on both sides of the issue. We all make mistakes right? They finished up the project and the client decides to spread a “virus” across the channels or the Internet and through their friends:

“XYZ company is the worst to work with! They didn’t even hold our hand and pat us on the head because we took time out of our day to deal with them!”

The truth of the matter? Even though XYZ did an excellent job in saving the project and pushing through to try and satisfy the client… they still spread the “virus.”

The beautiful thing? The client’s friends who are INFECTED will get online and search for XYZ… guess what will come up? Everything good. If you are spending time investing into activity on the Internet, you will find that your content, your best clients content, and your use of social media will hit the search engines first (at least that is what we have found).

Social media marketing is very much rooted in the development of BRAND. If you can figure out how to balance your social media use it will be worth it in the long run. Nothing dissapears on the Internet.

Have you searched for what people are saying about your company?

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Getting Companies to Buy the “Social Idea”

What An Exciting Time! My company Brandswag had it’s 2009 Planning Meeting this weekend at our offices in Indianapolis. It was fun to have everyone together to talk about growing the business. One of the topics of conversation was the process of selling social media marketing to corporate America. Another way to look at it: How do you sell the idea of “viral/echo” marketing to companies between $10-$150 million?

Amazingly Seth Godin had a blog post recently called Selling Ideas to a Big Company. Seth always seems to save the day when I am debating something important like social media marketing to corporate America. In the post Seth talks about two things you HAVE to HAVE in order to sell an idea to BIG business.

1. They have to be in the business of buying ideas.

2. They have to trust you.

If there was one thing I took from the post it was the fact that…“if you have an idea for a company that doesn’t know how to buy it, move on. And if you want to be in the business of selling ideas, find an industry that has experience buying those ideas.”

The top two reasons are not debatable when it comes to selling social media to corporate America. They have to believe in the concept of social media marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy. They also have to trust you as a social media advocate or “trust agent.” (You can hit me later for using coined terms)

You cannot force the idea of adding in social strategy to an overall marketing plan. If you have to CONVINCE someone to use social media….

they will not.

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Become Recession Proof: Think Positively

I’ve been debating a lot about ways to get out of this “economic downturn. My response: Think Positively and Strategically!

Social Media of 2009: Cash Is King Not Content

I love predictions. Plain and Simple.

I find it fascinating when they are dead on and just as fascinating when they miss the target by a mile. Jason Falls wrote a post this morning called Social Media Predictions of 2009. Jason has been asked to be involved in a collaborative effort to try and predict what social media will look like in 2009. He is joined with the likes of Charlene Li, Chris Brogan, Ann Handley, and Jeremiah Owyang. There are two quotes I wanted to touch on and then give my own predictions of 2009.

Chris Brogan: “Doors are going to close all over the social web. Why? Because the money didn’t come the way people thought it would.”

Charlene Li: “The movement is rooted in a desire to have quality, not quantity, as people cocoon in the face of the economic crisis.”

The two quotes above pretty much explain what I believe 2009 will look like to the social media environment. There were a couple of quotes sprinkled in and out of the pdf doc that explained the same concept.

Social Media of 2009: Smaller/Niche and NOT Hemorrhaging Cash

Cash is King Not Content.

I have always been dumbfounded that some social media companies can be valued at billions of dollars and only be hitting a hundred million in revenue. Social Media of 2009 will be forced to figure out a revenue model or close their doors… even IF they have 10-50 million people on the site. Content and community development will always be key but it will not keep salaries paid and servers running. Cash will be king in 2009 not content.

We will see social sites shrink and become more niche based because of the tightening of development funds in the market. Ning developed a brilliant system for niche social networks. I expect them to grow larger in 2009.

I am looking forward to 2009 being a great year in the social media marketing and social media development world. Keep your heads up and push forward. We have a great tool on our hands that is changing the world.

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Being Disease Ridden in Marketing

Seth Godin has another great blog on gimmicks. I didn’t pull much from the actual blog pertaining to gimmicks but he had a great thought at the end:

As you sit down to consider ways to be more remarkable, the challenge is to be worth talking about… at the same time you are adding value for the person who’s talking about you.

I encourage all members in Smaller Indiana to invent your “gimmick” for Smaller Indiana. Does it add value when you are virally spreading? What will it take to create a Smaller Indiana that is worth spreading like an epidemic from city to city? Are we already there?

I will leave you with this:

I was playing Oregon Trail on Facebook and well, I died from a virus (my body was probably eaten by a pack of ravenous wolves but that is beside the point). It made me chuckle and ponder on how a virus spreads and infects.

And much like a small pox outbreak on Oregon Trail, Smaller Indiana is turning into a virus.

Eventually Social Media Will Dissapear. Remember What Matters Most.

Jason Falls has an awesome video over at Social Media Explorer. The post is entitled: When Social Media Doesn’t Matter. Check out the video and then check out my response.

My Video