Filed under: Blogging
I like you all, but I’ve been avoiding this for weeks. Really.
Facebook, Twitter? Got it covered. Blog? Maybe not. It’s easy to upload a interesting link or short update, but creating something with a little length is easy to put off.
Like you, I’m busy. It seems like there’s not enough time in the day to do what I do, let alone WRITE about what I do. I bet you feel the same way.
The problem with blogging is that to write an effective, engaging blog, one has to take a little time, put a little thought into it. If you’re a small business owner, I’d wager that blogging is the last thing you’d like to spend time on — but in your case, it’s especially important that you do. Why’s that? Glad you asked.
According to a study done by HubSpot, the average company that blogs has:
- 97% more inbound links
- 55% more visitors
- 434% more indexed pages
than a company that does not blog. Basically, blogging drives more free, search-based traffic to your site. Is that something you can get on board with? Thought so.
So try clearing some time in your schedule to write a regular blog. It doesn’t have to be long, eloquent or earth-shattering. Just share something that’d be of interest to your audience. Answer a common question you get asked about your business. Share some exciting news about a project your company’s been working on.
Just stop putting it off (and I’ll start taking my own advice).
Filed under: Blogging, Social Media
Packaging is very important when creating content for social media. Your materials are battling to grab the attention of a reader who is bombarded by lots of messages. Why do some stories take flight while others fail?
Hook- It’s key to find something to draw your audience in. A great title helps with this. Pick a title that does one of these:
- Provides a solution: Ex. Fix Your Bad Credit or Keep That Weight off For Good
- Shocks the reader: Ex. Aliens Found in New Jersey or 98% of All Men Prone to Heart Failure
- Offers value: Ex. Get a Free iPod or Become a Social Media Superstar
- Intrigues the reader: Ex. How Much Does the Average American Pay in Taxes? or Sir Walter Chevrolet Has a Secret
- Quote from your blog/article: Ex. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Franklin Roosevelt or “It’s hard to be humble, when you’re as great as I am.” Muhammad Ali
Audience- Now that you’ve reeled your reader in you want to retain them. This means considering their wants and needs. Their needs will be pressing matters they have to attend to and their wants will be attractive distractions that they choose to indulge.
- Wants: What does your audience want? A busy business executive may want more time with their family. A chef may want a larger kitchen. Think about how your story might satisfy one of these wants for your audience. Tailor your content to their wants and they’ll keep reading.
- Needs: Everyone needs to have a place to live, food to eat and a job. Can your article assist your reader in fulfilling one of these needs? Finding out the needs of your audience can be accomplished by just asking them via a poll or requesting that they comment in your blog.
The “Shiny” Effect- People like things that come in attractive packages. Make your blog entry easy on the eyes.
- Avoid long blocks of text. Break your text up using bullet points, short paragraphs and lists. (Test this by sending it to a friend without warning. Twenty minutes later contact them and ask them if they read it all. If they didn’t ask why.)
- Use a funny picture, relevant video or an interesting graph. Some people are visual learners and will appreciate this.
- People love features similar to what appear in magazines online. These include Top Five Lists, Do’s and Don’ts, Daily Fun Fact, Quote of The Week and many more. Check out www.people.com for great examples of this.
Hope you found something of use here. Got anything to add? Hit up the comments section.
Filed under: Blogging, Tweetup
In order to reward local, hardworking bloggers here in the Triangle we’re offering a free pint glass to anyone who pens an entry on our upcoming event or the video contest we’re sponsoring for the LoneRider Tweetup. Here are the links for anyone who is inclined to take advantage of this offer.
Event Site: http://www.amiando.com/lonerider.html
Video Contest Details: http://www.amiando.com/lonerider.html?page=261696
To get your LoneRider pint glass you can either:
A. Email me a link to your blog entry at nmiller@clickoptimize.com
B. Show me the entry the night of the event.
Filed under: Blogging, Social Media
On October 20, 2008 writer Paul Boutin ruffled feathers all over the Internet by quipping, “Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.” He made this claim in Wired Magazine in an article titled, “Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004.” This left many people wondering what exactly the future of blogging is. I’m inclined to disagree with Boutin’s bleak view and narrow definition of what a blog is.
Shorter
One of the replacements offered by Boutin for blogs is the service known as Twitter. This “micro-blog” offers users the chance to share their thoughts in 140 characters or less or the equivalent of about two sentences. These bits of data can convey headlines from the day’s news, links to interesting articles or sites around the web or broadcast to the world what you’re up to this instant. This seemingly mundane concept has caught on like wildfire and over 2008 Twitter experienced 752% growth in traffic according to www.mashable.com.
So Twitter isn’t a blog killer so much as it is a metamorphosis of the blogging medium. It’s still a text-based form of expression that you can share with others. You can follow other folks and they can follow you. The main differentiating factor between Twitter and a blog created using software like WordPress or Blogger is that the data set is homogenous. This allows software to sort the data generated by millions of people creating text on Twitter easily. They can identify trends and watch a virtual fishbowl that tells you what’s hot on the web right now. Using a website like www.twitscoop.com one can find out what people are talking about in real time. This can be powerful when assessing the public relations damage done by a Hollywood star or when a president is looking to gauge the popularity of an economic stimulus package. You can use Twitter to be nimbler, by blogging shorter.
Faster
When trying to convey a message to your audience online speed is crucial. Social networking sites have taken away the customization options offered by flexible programs like WordPress and Blogger and offered stripped down blogging platforms instead. Facebook’s “Notes” section is just a blog with a different name. The social networking site creation tool Ning also provides a simplistic blogging tool as part of its offering. The advantage is that you can type out your thoughts quickly and have a tidy package to present to your readers.
We’d be remise to omit Twitter when talking about speed. Nothing is faster or more timely. People love the instant gratification it provides. The future of blogging will certainly be tied inextricably to creating entries faster and distributing content instantaneously throughout your network through “one click solutions” offered by widgets like Share This.
Louder
Text is great for blogs but users on the web hunger for audio and video. One needs to look no farther than the success www.youtube.com and www.music.myspace.com to grasp this. New mutated blogs are seizing upon this potential and taking it to the next level. Services like Seesmic offer a video-only answer to Twitter. Seesmic users can upload video directly from their phone to enhance the speed and intimacy of their entries. Their fans can reply with videos of their own and the site goes out of its way to limit the amount of typing their users do. Across the Internet users are getting louder and engaging their audience on a more visceral level.
What does this mean for those firms with a web presence? These changes can be a positive evolution for many companyies who blog.
• Use your micro-blog of choice to share a positive review your company received on a local business site to attain great public relations exposure in seconds.
• Want to stimulate end of the month sales? Create a coupon code and distribute it to your Facebook Fans to see results in hours, if not minutes.
• Show the quality of your products through a live demonstration on a video blogging site. Let your prospects see the benefit of your offering with their own eyes.
Has all the air gone out of the blogosphere? I don’t think so. Blogs are an integral part of what experts term Web 2.0 because they represent the forefront of content creation, sharing and audience interaction. They’ve gotten shorter, faster and louder but at the end of the day they’re still blogs.
Filed under: Blogging
As a small business owner it would be unfair to call you lazy but I bet you’re left without enough hours in the day on a regular basis. So how do you avoid being a day late and a dollar short when it comes to your corporate blog?
AGGREGATE IT
Coming up with ideas to blog about can be difficult. How do you know what sort of info people are looking for? How can you filter out all the junk and just see the best stuff that your customers would want to hear about?
Surf over to http://www.google.com/reader and create a page. This will serve as your home base for subscribing to your favorite stuff from all over the web. Whenever one of the sites you subscribe to adds new info you’ll find out right away. Do a little hunting out there and find some news sites that cover your industry or niche. Look for a button to subscribe to their RSS feed. Copy the link to their RSS feed and plug it into Google Reader.
Now you can pluck out the juiciest stories and comment on them via your blog. You can identify trends that are peaking across the Internet. Use this page to aggregate content so you can use it to inspire original content or comment on existing articles that pertains to your specialty.
DELEGATE IT
The best sort of bloggers are experts. If you think about it all the people you do business with are experts of one stripe or another. Your accountant, your clients and even your employees specialize in a particular area. Get them to write about their passion as it pertains to your business on your blog. Call her/him a “Guest Blogger” and delegate the task. Connecting with clients and asking for their expertise can help strengthen relationships while strategic partners can be rewarded with links and thought-leadership cred.
If your plans for your blog are particularly involved I would encourage you to bring on board a Social Media Intern. This young whippersnapper can manage your Facebook, Twitter and blog. Their innate grasp of this technology will lead to increased efficiency and avoid you siphoning off valuable resources. Just make sure you’re looking over their shoulder to ensure that they’re staying on message and on brand. (As a former intern, I can tell you that they’ll be happy to be doing something other than stuffing envelopes!)
I hope that helps all of you lazy bloggers to realize your goal of keeping an active and informative blog.
Posted on September 18th, 2009 by Hannah
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