MackCollier.com

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Wait, my blog’s search traffic is down, what happened?

Welcome to another edition of ‘What can we learn about our own blog from watching Mack obsess over his?’

Ok, as most of you know, in January I decided to ramp up my posting schedule.  Since this blog’s launch 2 years ago (BTW Happy Birthday!) up till January of this year, I had kept to a pretty consistent schedule of 1-2 posts a week.  Sometimes I’d have a bit more, sometimes a bit less.

But if mid January, I decided to really boost my posting here.  I went from 1-2 posts a week, to 4-6.  I immediately saw a huge spike in traffic, and along with it, search traffic.  Now to be fair, search traffic here was already increasing at a steady pace, but as soon as I started posting more in mid January, the gain increased.  Here’s a graph of my weekly search traffic over the life of the blog:

The X marks the spot at which I started posting more often in January, and as you can see, the last 6 weeks or so has been sideways.  Also note the slow and steady growth, but it seemed to kick up an extra notch right after the X.

Now this graph bugs me, because I want to understand why search traffic has flattened over the past 6 weeks.  I did some checking and thinking and I’ve come up with two possibilities:

1 – I haven’t been posting as much. Every week since April the 10th, I have posted a consistent 4 posts a week here.  The next week is when search traffic started going sideways.  The three weeks prior to that, I posted 5-6 posts each week.  That’s one possibility.

2 – I haven’t been focusing as much on specific search keywords and phrases.  I honestly think this is it more than posting schedule.  From Jan through March I really tried to focus on specific keywords and phrases not only in my post title, but in the post as well.  And it really worked, I got excellent search rankings usually within a few hours for whatever search keyword/phrase I had targeted.

So here is the (very) inexact method I have come up with to test to see which is the cause of my flatlining search traffic.

This week, I will post 5 posts here.  This one is the second for this week, so there will likely be a new one here on Wednesday through Friday as well.

Next week, I will go back to posting 4 new posts here, but each one will be search optimized with a particular search keyword/phrase in the title and the post.

Then in a couple of weeks, I’ll report back and share the results with you.  My guess is that 4 search-optimized posts will produce more search traffic next week, than 5 non-optimized posts will this week.

And no, this isn’t a perfect test, and it won’t definitively prove anything.  This is more about me wanting to get a better understanding of how my blog works, and what impacts search results.  That way when I am at a conference and someone asks me a question about search traffic, I can give them my own experiences, instead of just regurgitating what some other blogger wrote 😉

If you obsess over your search traffic as well, what have you discovered that impacts it?  Do you think posting more often or spending more time optimizing for search will help me?

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Nettwerk CEO Terry McBride on Customer Co-Creation and Embracing Your Fans

I wanted to share this talk from Nettwerk CEO Terry McBride with you, as it has some pretty interesting branding and marketing takeaways that apply not just to the music industry. Pay close attention to Terry’s thought on how you can’t litigate or legislate customer behavior, but should instead understand it because that’s where the monetization opportunities lie. His example of how Spotify is decreasing peer-to-peer file sharing rates in Europe perfectly illustrates this point.

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Are we headed toward a Social Media snapback?

Let’s say you are presented with a unique and unexpected opportunity.  One that would require a several-month commitment, that would mean significantly shaking your life up, but could ultimately be the best thing that ever happened to you.

You need to ask some friends for advice.  People that know you completely, your life situation, and that you trust to give you good and sound advice.

Now if you needed to make a list of 5 people from your Twitter network to email (not including friends you know outside of Twitter or before you used Twitter), how long would it take you?  I ask because I often find myself in such a situation.  And every time I struggle to find more than 2-3 people that I would really trust to reach out to.  And every time I hear this tiny voice in my head saying ‘why is it that you are following these people?’

Which is a silly question to ask, because I am following everyone on Twitter and Facebook and wherever because I value the connections.  But do we reach a point at which adding more connections stops adding value?  Or worse, can we reach a point where adding more connections lessens the value of our existing connections?

Which becomes an interesting question to ask, when you consider that most social media sites and tools are built around making it easier to connect with more people.  But lately when I am on Twitter, for example, I’m often in Twitter chats.  I’m finding that I’m getting more enjoyment from Twitter chats, because even if the chat is huge like #Blogchat, I can zero in on a small discussion with just a few people, and really connect with them.  It becomes more like having dinner at a conference versus being with 500 people in a session.  I am seeing far more value in these discussions with smaller groups, and I’m finding that I am then starting to connect with them more outside of the chat.

So I have a couple of questions for you:

1 – Do you think in the next couple of years that we will see people begin to become more aggressive about ‘pruning’ their social networks, so that they have a deeper connection with the people they friend/follow versus just following them based on who they are?

And this is the far more interesting question to me…..

2 – If #1 holds true, will we begin to see a shift in the functionality of social media tools so that they encourage and facilitate smaller networks with deeper connections?  And what would that look like?  Simply limiting the number of connections you can have?  Maybe the ability to expand your network has to go through your existing network via an introduction or something similar?  Not sure, but I think the possibilities are endless.

 

What do you think?  Are you facing social media burnout?  Would you rather be loosely connected to 5,000 people, or closely connected with 50?

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How the CDC is Using its Blog to Prepare Us For the Zombie Apocalypse

One of the complaints you often hear from businesses and organizations about blogging is that they aren’t sure what type of content to create to reach their audience.  That they don’t know how a blog can help them build awareness for their particular product.  That it’s ‘too boring’ and that no one wants to read a blog post about….

A recent blog post by the CDC (Center for Disease Control) disproves the notion that there’s just some products and services you can’t blog about.  Let’s say you work for the CDC and your boss tells you to write a blog post that will explain how to build an emergency kit, and that will also raise awareness for the need to do so.  Oh, and you also need to get Twitter buzzing about the post.

Even with the recent horrible tornadoes and storms that have ripped through the South and Missouri, building an emergency kit is not something that is top of mind for most people.  And yet, the CDC has created a blog post that explains how to create an emergency kit that has Twitter buzzing and that currently has over 100 comments.

So how did the CDC take the topic of creating an emergency kit, and make it so interesting to so many people?  They explained that you need to create an emergency kit in order to prepare for the zombie apocalypse.

Genius!  What the CDC did is take a topic that’s not that interesting to a lot of people (building an emergency kit) and wrapped it in an analogy that is (the coming zombie apocalypse).  Check out some of the tips from the post:

  1. Identify the types of emergencies that are possible in your area. Besides a zombie apocalypse, this may include floods, tornadoes, or earthquakes. If you are unsure contact your local Red Cross chapter for more information.
  2. Pick a meeting place for your family to regroup in case zombies invade your home…or your town evacuates because of a hurricane. Pick one place right outside your home for sudden emergencies and one place outside of your neighborhood in case you are unable to return home right away.
  3. Identify your emergency contacts. Make a list of local contacts like the police, fire department, and your local zombie response team. Also identify an out-of-state contact that you can call during an emergency to let the rest of your family know you are ok.
  4. Plan your evacuation route. When zombies are hungry they won’t stop until they get food (i.e., brains), which means you need to get out of town fast! Plan where you would go and multiple routes you would take ahead of time so that the flesh eaters don’t have a chance! This is also helpful when natural disasters strike and you have to take shelter fast.

There’s several things I love about the approach of this post:

1 – It makes the CDC seem ‘more human’. They are showing they have a sense of humor, not to mention a knowledge of pop culture.  This post instantly makes the organization more accessible to more people.  That’s a good thing.

2 – They are spreading the message on terms that appeal to their target audience.  The CDC could have written this exact same post without the zombie references and verbiage, and it would have been far less interesting.  Which means it wouldn’t have been shared by nearly as many people.  But because the post was written focusing on a topic that’s more interesting to others, it will get shared by others.

3 – Even though the zombie analogy is added, the CDC’s core message still spreads.  This post still raises awareness of the need to create an emergency kit, and now the topic is more front-of-mind for a lot more people.  So the end goal of the CDC in creating this post, is achieved.

And the CDC was even smart enough to create badges you can add to your site/blog.

I love this approach, and I hope it will challenge you to think about how you can make your blog content more interesting to your readers.  BTW thanks to Geno for bringing this post to my attention via his excellent post on what Zombieland taught him about community-building.

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How One Blogger Has $20,000 a Month In Sales on Her EBook

A few weeks ago on a Sunday I was scrambling for topic ideas for that night’s #Blogchat when @SarahMaeWrites suggested we cover How to Create and Sell an EBook that night.  That sounded interesting, and then she DMed me to add that she had just created and sold one, so I thought ‘Perfect!’ and asked her to co-host.

Now what I didn’t realize is that this pretty young lady had unleashed a social media marketing dynamo to promote and create interest in her ebook.  She had a clear strategy, and was leveraging social media and her existing online network to promote the book.  And her strategy was working incredibly well, so well that she has now sold over 8,000 copies of the ebook in less than two months.  At $4.99 a pop.  Do the math kids, she’s making $20K a month JUST off this ebook.

And the reason why is because she created a valuable product and did a fantasmic job of promoting it and building interest in it by not only leveraging her community, but involving them in the entire process.  When I heard Sarah’s story I just knew this would be such a wonderful case study to help show others what really smart social media marketing looks like, so I asked Sarah if I could interview her, and she was gracious enough to accept:

Mack: What made you decide to write an ebook?

Sarah:   A few things…

First of all, I read this: Indie Author is Making Millions by Selling the App Store Way (I have no idea how I came across this article, I wasn’t searching for ebook info or anything like it.) I found the article fascinating and tucked it away in my mind.

The second thing that influenced my decision to write an ebook has to do with my serious procrastination skills (and lack of the ability to write on cue). I had an article due for a site I write for monthly and I had nothin’. I finally decided to go through my archives and I landed on a post from a series I did two years ago on cleaning (which was more about the heart than on the actual mechanics of cleaning). I posted it.

The response was significant; women were relating with what I wrote. I knew the content was something that could help and encourage women, and I wanted to get it out there.

The best part was that I knew I had enough posts to go ahead with the ebook on my time table (I have very limited time being a SAHM to little ones). My cleaning series was 31 days long – I had 30 articles to work with. Timing was also perfect – it was March and spring cleaning was just about in full swing. I knew I needed to put my series into a book and release it in April (time is crucial!).

 

Mack: What goes into the actual creation of an ebook?  And once you create it, how do you distribute it?  Do you put it on your servers and let people download it?

Sarah: For me, it’s mainly the writing I focus on. I hire a designer to do everything else, from turning my document into a PDF (anyone can do this, but I always seem to mess it up!) to having her format it on Kindle and Nook. I use (and highly recommend) Erin from insightblogdesign.com. She is professional, efficient, affordable, has an eye for design, and is an easy personality.

As for distributing it as a PDF download, I heard good things about E-Junkie, so I went with them (this I do myself-they take you step-by-step through the process). So far, so good. They also have an affiliate set-up, the ability to create discounts, video branding, and more.

 

Mack: When did you start promoting, before or after the ebook was released?

Sarah: I started promoting pretty much the minute I decided to put my series into an ebook. I deleted the posts from my site, began to re-work and update them, and let my readers in on the ride. I used social media because it is my platform – I have an audience on it. I had built up my personal blog, started another blog, and was hosting a conference. I am in the social media sphere because that is where my community is (one I am so thankful for, especially as a SAHM).

 

Mack: How did you use social media to promote the book?

Sarah: Here’s what I did: I held two launch day giveaways on my own two blogs to get things started with a bang (I contacted companies and asked them if they wanted to participate). I then asked many bloggers to review and/or have a giveaway of the book (reviews on blogs are key-the more the better). I did pay a few blogs for advertising. I used Twitter and Facebook to create a community around the book – a hashtag for Twitter and a fan page on FB (both of which I regularly interact with). I created a youtube video where I talk about the book (over 10,000 views) and I started a website for everything related to the book (including freebies). I also used the power of free to get the word spread. For one day only I offered the book for free to anyone who spread the word via social media channels. It was a wonderful success. I gave away over 2000 books, but the reach was just what I was looking for – I wanted to break through my own sphere of influence and reach beyond, and the free day did just that. It even got my book mentioned on two different radio stations in different states. The goal? Be everywhere.

I also put the book on Amazon Kindle. You’ve got to have your book on Kindle (and Nook).

(Mack’s note – Pay attention to where Sarah said she gave away 2,000 copies of the book in one day.  That might seem like she was losing sales, but note how she said that by doing that it greatly EXPANDED the reach of the ebook and pushed it past her network.  Allowing her to get MORE sales!)

 

Mack: What has been the biggest surprise from doing this ebook?

Sarah: The biggest surprise was the amount of ebooks I sold. I honestly was hoping to sell about 50…maybe 100 if I was “lucky.” I had no idea I would sell over 8000 copies in less than two months. Shocking, actually, comes to mind.

 

Mack: Are you thinking about doing additional ebooks now that your first has been so successful?

Sarah: Yes. Although now I’m in this interesting place of deciding if I want to continue with ebooks or go traditional publishing. If your ebook takes off, a publisher may want it. However, just last week Amazon announced that Kindle E-Book sales surpassed printed books for the first times. A sign of the times.

 

Isn’t that just the coolest story ever?  BTW here is another great post recapping Sarah’s process.  And of course, the ebook!  You can go here to learn more about it (and isn’t that site just amazing? ).  And please do check out her blog, Like a Warm Cup of Coffee.

Thanks Sarah!

UPDATE: Here’s some more information on some of the fees associated with selling the ebook, according to Sarah:

Addendum to the interview: I have been extremely blessed with the sales of my ebook, but please remember that I do factor in taxes and tithe, which takes 40% off my gross. On Amazon, I receive 70% royalties (for U.S. sales, 30% for abroad), and then take 40% off of that. Paypal charges about .44/book, and E-Junkie (where I distribute the PDF) charges $5/month.

And here’s the link to the post on Sarah’s site.

BTW some people seem to be a bit upset about the $20,000 figure being mentioned.  That was actually *my* idea, Sarah didn’t really even want to mention it, but I did because it would help get attention to the post because I wanted people to hear the strategy Sarah used as I think that’s the key.  Also, I changed the title as it technically wasn’t correct to say she was ‘making’ $20,000 a month, but again, that was my idea, not Sarah’s.

 

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A huge social media money-making opportunity in Twitter chat transcripts

We just wrapped up another amazing #Blogchat on Twitter.  If you aren’t familiar with #Blogchat, it’s the largest chat on Twitter, and when it gets rolling starting at 8pm Central, there will be over a tweet left every second.  So while there is a TON of great info, it’s impossible to keep up with everything.

And a lot of people won’t even try, and up till a few weeks ago, they would wait till 9pm Central when I would post a transcript for #Blogchat that I had created with a free site called WTHashtag.  But there were some changes to Twitter’s Terms of Service, and apparently WTHashtag.com is down now.

But, I know there are some services that can still create transcripts of Twitter chats, although most of them have difficulty catching all the tweets, and if they do, there’s no organization other than to show them in a stream as they happened.

So there is a HUGE demand for transcripts and transcripts that can easily be organized and searchable.  Because let’s face it, if you are trying to sort through 5,000 #Blogchat tweets, you need a way to organize the information and track the conversations as they happened.

I think if a company came up with a way to create a killer Twitter chat transcript tool, that they could totally sell transcripts.  I sent the tweet out tonight asking if people would pay say $3 for a great transcripts, and dozens of people said they would.  I didn’t see anyone say they wouldn’t.  When you think that in #Blogchat alone there are 1,000 or so active participants in a good week, and likely at least that many lurkers, you are looking at least a couple of thousand potential customers.  And I could even see where a company could sign an agreement with chats to become the ‘official’ transcript for that chat.  If a great product/transcript was available, it could quickly corner the market and easily generate several thousand dollars a week in sales.

What the transcript would need is:

  • Be searchable.  By keyword, Twitter user, etc.
  • Be portable so I could use it on my iPad, or Kindle, whatever.  Maybe PDF form or something else.
  • Have a ‘conversation view’ or something similar where I could chose to have the tweets organized by conversations.  It is almost impossible to track conversations when tweets are spaced out in a convo every 5 mins, and there’s 300 new tweets a minute.

Those are some ideas.  If someone was going to charge you say $5 for the PERFECT #Blogchat transcript, what would it have to have in order for you to buy it?  What’s missing?

And to clarify, I am NOT looking to sell #Blogchat transcripts.  I have no idea how to even create them.  I am trying to get a discussion started to show companies that there is potential to this idea.  Do you think there is?

 

UPDATE: Great discussion in the comments, but I think Fred may have come up with the perfect solution – “Hey Mack. I think your idea is in the right direction, but as several (like Shannon Whitley @swhitley, Rick Stilwell @RickCaffeinated and Debra Ellis @Debra_Ellis) pointed out, there are some potential legal and “do I want to contribute to a discussion that somebody else monetizes” issues that need to be overcome (ironically, you don’t own your own tweets – twitter does).

Personally, I’d look to solve this problem from a slightly different angle – rather than sell chat transcripts, I’d look to develop an independent app for “personal use only, running on my own personal device” that provided the type of functions you listed for any chat/search/etc.

Think of it as a “twitter-mining” tool. That, to me, would have significant value and possibly avoid the personal and legal pitfalls of an entity trying to sell Twitter content.”

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Congrats to the Four Blogs That Will Be Reviewed at #Blogchat!

Thanks to EVERYONE that submitted their blog to be reviewed Sunday night during #Blogchat!  Since there were so many submissions, I decided that we’d review 4 blogs instead of 3.  Now if your blog was not chosen, please submit it again next month, and I’ll try to give priority to the ones that weren’t selected this time.  Also, if you do submit again, please try to add who you are writing the blog for.  This really helps us, especially if you are asking questions about the type of content you should be creating.

So without further adieu, here are the 4 blogs we’ll be reviewing tomorrow during #Blogchat!

Dave Cutler’s Blog at 8:00PM Central!

Here is Dave’s feedback for us:

I’m relatively new to blogging and also hoping the blog can help with my job search so feedback from the experienced pros could benefit me greatly. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on any or all of the following:

Design/layout: is it clean and visually appealing? Anything specific I should change?

Content: I’m a traditional marketer transitioning more and more into the social media space. I’m trying to demonstrate knowledge and understanding but also cater to the fairly large percentage of my readers who are still quite unfamiliar with most aspects of social media. Am I accomplishing that balance?

Comments: What can I do differently to elicit more comments?

Feels Like Home at 8:15PM Central!

Here’s what Tara want us to look at:

1. Set up – My primary concern is whether I should change things around to make it more like a magazine with channels than a plain old blog. There are a few things I dislike about the design – things don’t always line up just so, the links are either all underlined or all not underlined, and the theme disables threaded comments.

2. Overall design – Is it appealing? Again, thinking about switching themes to Thesis (or something all together different) but a little intimidated by the work it would require.

3. Advertisements – It’s necessary for me to monetize, but I worry that I have too many ads on the page.

4. A landing page – I’m thinking about adding a static landing page. Good idea? Bad idea? I used to have a landing page with snippets of articles, but some readers complained. They wanted a full post on the landing page.

5. What’s missing? I worry that there’s something I’m not doing that I should be doing. I don’t know what it is. Is there something important missing?

New Day New Lesson at 8:30PM Central!

Here is Susie’s areas of concern:

1) Tagline. Right now it is too long. Have some ideas but nothing that I have said wow about.

2) Getting more subscribers. I have been blogging for over a year now. i have about 100 or so subscribers. I would like to up that.

3) Monetization- I have recently thought about monetizing, and put up amazon-though it is not doing anything and am not sure I like the concept. What ideas do you have and would you hold off till I have more subscribers?

4) Design-would love a revamp-can’t afford it right now. Any suggestions? I like the fact that there is the most recent post on top, then favorites and popular and then summaries of other posts underneath.

5) Post titles. Generally I put the “lesson” I have learned as a title. Do you think it would affect the concept of the blog (lesson learned each day) to get creative in the titles?

6) General-what would improve the experience of reading the blog.

7) Length of posts. I do all different lengths. Is that good , bad…doesn’t matter.

Social Butterfly Guy at 8:45PM Central!

Here is DJ’s feedback for us and what areas he has concerns with:

1. Design. It’s a WordPress Thesis Theme. I loved it 2 years ago when my blog launched, but it needs a refresh. I just don’t have the skills to do it myself nor the cash to pay someone as this is a personal blog.

2. SEO Stuff. Again, I’m using WordPress and it has some built-in SEO stuff, but I need help!

3. Content: As my tagline says, “It’s all about people.” My content is – for the most part – about people, but I worry that it’s all over the place.

4. Frequency: I was in a rut awhile ago, but finally got on track again. My last few posts have been some of my most viewed/commented in the past 2 years. But, I’m still struggling with the right balance on frequency.

So there you have it!  Those are the four blogs we will be reviewing Sunday night.  Congrats to DJ, Dave, Tara and Susie, and thanks to ALL of you that submitted blogs, and remember that if your’s wasn’t chosen, please submit it again next month when we do this again!  And if you will be joining #Blogchat on Sunday night at 8pm Central, please do visit these four blogs and make some notes for each of the bloggers so you can share your suggestions.  And this will also be a great way for all of us to get some ideas on how to improve our own blogs in the process!

Now it looks like we all have some homework to do, and some interesting new blogs to discover!

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Live #Blogchat is Coming to the Marketing Profs B2B Forum!

In less than one month, we will have the second LIVE #Blogchat ever!  That’s right, LIVE #Blogchat is coming to the Marketing Profs B2B Forum in Boston next month!  We’ll be joining what is already a stellar agenda and speaker lineup including CK, Ann Handley, KD Paine, Chris Penn and dozens more.

This will be the second LIVE #Blogchat, following its highly-successful debut at South By SouthWest in March.  If you’re familiar with #Blogchat on Twitter, then this will be an offline version of what is the biggest Twitter chat on the planet.  We won’t be on laptops, just a room full of smart people chatting and learning from each other and having interesting discussions.  Following the same format as on Twitter, we will have a one-hour meetup, then the actual #Blogchat will follow immediately after that.  The LIVE #Blogchat will be on June the 14th from 7pm-9pm EST.  The paint is still wet on this announcement, so we make have a few more details and surprises to add and if so, I’ll be happy to update everyone!

Now, how do you participate in LIVE #Blogchat?  The LIVE #Blogchat is only open to B2B Forum attendees, and luckily, Marketing Profs has given us a special discount code we can use to save $100 on admission!  Register via this link and add in coupon code ‘Blogchat’ to get a $100 discount!

So I cannot wait to see everyone in Boston!  If you will be attending the LIVE #Blogchat, leave a comment and also let us know what topic you’d like to discuss!

PS: If you’d like to bring a LIVE #Blogchat to your event, here’s where you can learn more information.

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Get your blog reviewed during #Blogchat!

Ok I want to try something different with the next #Blogchat.  I seriously do appreciate all of you that make #Blogchat so amazing each week, so I’m constantly trying to figure out ways that we can leverage the power of #Blogchat so that its regular participants can benefit.

So what I want to try is this:  With the next #Blogchat, I want to have us all review and advise three different people on their blogs.  What we’ll do is each 20 mins we’ll all examine a different blog and give the blogger ideas and advice on how they can improve their efforts.  And ideally, I’d like to start doing this once a month, on the 3rd Sunday of every month.

So if you’ve just launched your blog, and maybe you want some feedback on the visual look of it, we could help you!  Or if you want some advice on the type of content you are creating, etc, let us know!  If you want your blog to be considered for one of the THREE review slots at the next #Blogchat then leave a comment to this post giving us the URL of your blog, and exactly what you are concerned with and the areas you want feedback on.  If you want to know what everyone thinks of the information on your sidebars, let us know that.  If you want to know what you should be writing about, tell us who you are trying to connect with.  If you want feedback on your post titles, let us know.

What I’ll do is pick 5 or so finalists, and set it up so everyone can vote on them this weekend, and the Top 3 will be selected for our #Blogchat review blogs!  How does that sound?  And I’ll have a blog post up on Sunday announcing the winners and reminding everyone of what their blogs are, and how we can help them in our reviews.  Then at next Sunday’s #Blogchat, we’ll review a new blog every 20 mins!

How does that sound to everyone?  I see this as a way for us to harness the power of the #Blogchat community to improve our blogs and make them better 😉

PS: Remember if you want to have your blog be considered, you have to leave a comment to this post telling us the URL for your blog, and what area(s) you need and want advice on!

 

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone that has submitted a blog and since so many of you have, I am going to pick FOUR blogs to review tomorrow, instead of three.  And to address the ‘we need more time to review the chosen blogs’ point, I am going to pick four later today, then announce which ones were picked, so everyone will have a day to review them.  So please make sure you leave a comment if you want to get your blog in the mix!

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Most Social Media Experts aren’t hacks, but a lot of them are misguided

As part of a project I am working on, lately I have been reading (and reading up) on a lot of the books that many ‘social media experts’ have written.  And I honestly find myself cringing at a lot of the advice that they are giving companies.  Basically, they are explaining how they got X0,000 followers on Twitter or X0,000 blog readers, then telling a company how they can do the same thing.

Which is the big elephant in the room: Just because you have 50,000 followers on Twitter does NOT mean you are qualified to advise a company on how it should properly implement social media strategies to connect with customers.  And to be fair, there are successful social media consultants that have more than 50,000 Twitter followers or 100,000 blog readers.  But getting to such benchmarks is not a ‘proof of concept’ that you know how to successful implement social media programs for companies.  Still, many people are trying to leverage the volume of usage on social media sites as a validation for their career choice as a social media consultant.

When I started blogging in 2005, it was a bit different.  Bloggers that were making a name for themselves by creating valuable content and creating a community on their blog, were being hired by companies and promoted at existing ones.  They were often hired to fill ‘Community Evangelist’ or similar roles, or if they already worked at a company or agency, they were promoted to handle some or all of that company’s social media and ‘community outreach’ efforts.  Neither of these solutions were perfect either, but at least then, these people were part of a TEAM and working within organizations where they were getting real-world business experience every day.  And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many of the people that went that route in 2005-2007 are now some of the biggest names in the social media space.

But at this point we need to return to the issue at hand and make a clarification: If you can build a community of 50,000 people following you on Twitter or 50,000 people reading your blog that IS significant.  No, it doesn’t mean you are automagically qualified to sell social media consulting services to companies, but it DOES mean that you have an ability to create content that connects with people.  That is a SKILL, and one that you SHOULD be able to monetize.

I think the problem is (and I’ve been blogging this for 5 years now) that there aren’t a lot of viable options for how content creators can monetize their content-creation skills unless they have massive reach, and even then, it’s usually via ads on their blog.  If you think about it, it’s pretty ironic: Many of us in the social media bubble complained for years that bloggers shouldn’t be trying to make money off their blogs.  So a lot of people didn’t try (to avoid the potential backlash from readers and critics), and decided to become ‘social media experts’ instead and sell their services to companies.  Which meant an influx of unqualified people working with companies, and then many of the same people that complained about bloggers attempting to monetize their content, were then complaining about all the hacks calling themselves ‘social media experts’.

If you are ready to ‘cash in’ on your content-creation and community-building talents, here are some other options besides simply marketing yourself as a ‘social media expert’.

1 – Write an ebook.  Already rolling your eyes?  Stop it.  @SarahMaeWrites wrote an ebook based on a popular blog post series she wrote, and sold it for $4.99.  Big deal, you say?  She launched the ebook on April 11th and as of May the 9th, she had sold over 5,600 copies, meaning she made over $20,000 in her first month.  Can we get a show of hands of all the A-List Social Media Consultants that made even half that last month?  Sarah was smart because she leveraged her community-building skills to keep her readers involved and updated throughout the creation process (leveraging multiple social media channels) so that when the ebook launched, demand for it was at a fever-pitch.

Oh and ironically, which do you think would impress a company more if you were a social media consultant: Saying you had 50,000 Twitter followers, or that you created an ebook that made you $20K in its first month of sales?

2 – Get sponsors for the content you create.  Do you know how I ended up in Austin for SXSW this year doing the first-ever Live #Blogchat with two amazing sponsors?  I asked.  The event was an amazing success, and as a result I’ve had multiple events approach me since then about adding a Live #Blogchat to its program (one has already been announced), and I’m talking to multiple events about a Live #Blogchat to their program.

But you could get sponsors for your blog content.  Approach a company in your space and ask them if they’d like to purchase a 200X200 banner on your blog’s sidebar for a week.  What do you charge?  That’s up to you, personally, I would start very low, like $25 or so a week.  If your blog content is worth monetizing, then you’ll likely get a glowing recommendation from your sponsor, which will mean you can raise your prices PLUS, that recommendation will make it easier for you to sell additional sponsorships.  After a few weeks you could be making a few hundred dollars a month from blog sponsorships.  That’s a car payment, and if you create other forms of content (say, a podcast), then you could have sponsors there as well.

And after a few months of successfully gaining content sponsorships, then you can write an ebook on how to secure sponsorships, and sell it 😉

3 – Offer consulting to individuals versus companies.  If you know how to build up a network of 50,000 people on Twitter that follow and adore you, then think about the type of individuals that might be interested in those skills?  Maybe….politicians?  Athletes?  Maybe you could partner with PR firms that sign on politicians and athletes and work with them?  I think this area has HUGE untapped potential for a lot of the people that are trying to market themselves as social media consultants.

 

But at the end of the day, you have to realize two things:

1 – Simply growing a large following via social media channels does NOT mean you are qualified to offer social media consulting services to companies.  Doesn’t mean you can’t, but also doesn’t mean you’ll have much success.

2 – Being able to grow a large community around the content you create is a skill that you should be able to monetize, if you want.  And being a social media consultant is NOT your only option, and in many cases, it’s not your best one.  Start with the list above, but there are many more options available to you, if you are smart.

 

What do you think?  What are some other smart monetization options for content creators?

PS: I didn’t write this post to bash any ‘social media expert’ that I think is unqualified.  Honestly, the constant sniping back and forth about how so-and-so is a hack is killing the credibility of the ENTIRE space.  The focus of this post is to show that there are other options for making money off social media than diving into consulting.  And often, there are much better options, based on your skillsets.  I’m not trying to name-call, I’m trying to get a discussion started about what the monetization options are for content-creators.