MackCollier.com

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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.

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The future of marketing is in FEWER conversations

Yes I actually said something smart in #IMCChat last night, and yes I am proud of it 😉  We had a fabulous discussion last night during #IMCChat about marketing and connecting with customers.  We were discussing how a brand’s marketing improves as it better understands the customer.  The better understanding comes from connecting, which leads to the brand speaking in a language that more closely resembles that of the customer.

And as that happens, the brand’s marketing becomes more effective, and more efficient.  Both the brand and the customer begin to understand the other a bit better, and at some point, that leads to trust.  Which helps move the customer to being an advocate for the brand.

To me, this is huge.  This is what brands should be aspiring to, to better understand their customers through connecting to them directly.  And this also explains why so many people are so excited about social media, because it gives brands online tools to do exactly that.  It’s not that the social media tools themselves are amazing, its the CONNECTIONS that the tools help facilitate.

But when you say ‘If you connect directly with your customers and better understand them, your marketing improves as does your number of advocates’, for a lot of marketers they don’t really ‘get’ why that’s a big deal.  It doesn’t blow their skirt up.

But if you tweak the metaphor and say ‘If your brand is a rockstar, by connecting with them directly and improving your marketing by better understanding them, you can have more of these….

…then the thought resonates more with marketers.  And if you could say that Marketing is the language a brand has to speak because it doesn’t understand the language of its customers, I think you could also say that rockstars have so many fans because they usually speak in the same voice as their fans.  That’s the true power of rockstars and the branding lesson for marketers: Rockstars have the same, or at least a very similar, conversation that their fans are having.  And this is because they are CONNECTED to their fans.  Not only are they connected, but for the most part rockstars seek out and thrive off connecting with their fans.

Now a few brands are able to do this as well.  Think of Harley-Davidson, for example.  Both the brand, and the customers are having the same conversation.  For HD, it’s not about purchasing a motorcycle, it’s about your lifestyle and how you use the motorcycle to connect with others around shared interests, and HD customers feel the same way.  In both cases the internal conversation the brand has about itself, and the external conversation the customers have about the brand, are closely aligned.  This is a big reason why Harley-Davidson has so many passionate advocates, and ironically, is viewed as being a Rockstar brand.

What are your thoughts on improving marketing?  Do you agree that by better connecting with customers that you’ll better understand them and move customers to become more like fans?  Does the Rockstar metaphor as it applies to branding and marketing work for you?

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Live #Blogchat Sponsorship Packages

 

Amy and Victor Canada talking with @Zaneology as C.C. Chapman and Julien Smith look on during meet and greet prior to start of Live #Blogchat at SXSWi

If you would like to learn more about sponsoring a Live #Blogchat, including what’s offered and pricing, please email me.

If you are active on Twitter, then you’ve probably heard of, if not participated in #Blogchat.  #Blogchat is the largest weekly chat on Twitter, happening every Sunday night at 8pm Central.  Every week we discuss a different blogging topic, and #Blogchat attracts as many as 1,000 participants and up to 5,000 tweets in a 60 minute period.

As the popularity of #Blogchat on Twitter grew, it seemed a natural fit to test the waters and try to take #Blogchat offline and do it ‘Live’.  The first Live #Blogchat happened in March at South By Southwest.  You can read my review of the event here, but let me say the response blew me away.  The power of the Live #Blogchat was that it brought people together and let them connect with each other.  This is the one thing that most event organizers miss when they plan events: Attendees usually learn the most when you let them connect with the speakers, and each other.  #Blogchat creates a vehicle that naturally facilitates discussion and interaction, and that what fosters learning.  It’s a huge reason why #Blogchat on Twitter is so popular, and it was also a big reason why the first Live #Blogchat event at SXSW was so successful.

So why should you want to sponsor a Live #Blogchat?  Here’s a few reasons why:

  • Minimum of 2 hours exposure with some of the true leaders in the social media space.  For example, over 60 social media influencers and thought leaders attended the 1st Live #Blogchat at SXSW, including C.C. Chapman, Shannon Paul, Becky McCray,  Jason Falls, Julien Smith, Chris Heuer, Richard Binhammer, Lionel Menchaca, Valeria Maltoni, Connie Reece and many more.
  • I will be promoting the event and your sponsorship on Twitter and my blog leading up to the event.
  • You’ll get a TON of useful advice from some of the smartest minds in social media.  This alone would pay for the sponsorship.
  • Sponsoring the event would bring a good deal of positive exposure to the sponsor.
  • Will work with the sponsor(s) to help them facilitate any blogger/influencer outreach programs with #Blogchat attendees and/or product giveaways or discounts.

A Live #Blogchat will be a 2-hour event.  The first hour is a ‘meet and greet’ where attendees and sponsors can connect with each other.  The hour will conclude with a brief introduction by the sponsors, and then the official #Blogchat will begin in the 2nd hour.

So if you would like to sponsor at Live #Blogchat, here are the available sponsorship packages and what’s included:

Platinum Sponsorship:

  • Naming rights for the Live #Blogchat.  For example: “Live #Blogchat Presented By Your Company”
  • Sponsor will be promoted on Twitter as the Live #Blogchat Platinum sponsor. The sponsor will be promoted on Twitter a minimum of 3 times a week prior to the week of the Live #Blogchat.  The week of the Live #Blogchat the sponsor will be promoted once a day, then twice the day before the Live #Blogchat, followed by three tweets on the day of the sponsor’s #Blogchat.  The Platinum sponsor will receive a minimum of 10 tweets promoting its Platinum sponsorship #Blogchat from the @MackCollier Twitter account, with total impressions from these tweets topping 250,000.
  • A blog post promoting the Live #Blogchat and mentioning all sponsors will appear on MackCollier.com the week of the Live #Blogchat.  MackCollier.com’s current monthly readership is over 100,000.
  • A banner (up to 200X200 pixels) will be placed at the TOP of the further right sidebar on MackCollier.com.  This banner will link to the Platinum sponsor’s website or blog (sponsor’s choice), and will appear from Sunday 12am-Saturday midnight the week of the sponsor’s Live #Blogchat.
  • Sponsor will be given a follow-up 30 minute phone call to discuss that sponsored Live #Blogchat, and/or any social media issues the sponsor would like to address.  This could include advice on social media strategy, implementation, etc.
  • Platinum sponsor will be given a chance to introduce themselves immediately prior to the start of the Live #Blogchat, at approximately 5 mins before it starts.

Gold Sponsorship:

  • Will be identified as the sponsor for the Live #Blogchat Meet and Greet to be held one hour prior to the actual Live #Blogchat.
  • Sponsor will be promoted on Twitter as the Live #Blogchat Gold sponsor. The sponsor will be promoted on Twitter a minimum of 4 times in the week of the Live #Blogchat, and at least once the day of the Live #Blogchat, with total impressions from these tweets topping 100,000.
  • A blog post promoting the Live #Blogchat and mentioning all sponsors will appear on MackCollier.com the week of the Live #Blogchat.  MackCollier.com’s current monthly readership is over 100,000.
  • Sponsor will be given a follow-up 30 minute phone call to discuss that sponsored Live #Blogchat, and/or any social media issues the sponsor would like to address.  This could include advice on social media strategy, implementation, etc.

 

A word to event planners and conference organizers:

If you already have a conference or event planned, adding a Live #Blogchat is a wonderful addition to your agenda.  The format of the Live #Blogchat is a roomwide discussion and interaction for one hour on a chosen blog topic.  This is NOT like your standard conference session where one person speaks and then answers 2-3 questions at the end.  The discussion is led by the ENTIRE room.  Which means everyone is learning and engaged.  What I’ve learned from attending social media and marketing conferences over the past few years is that attendees learn more when they are engaged, and they are more likely to be engaged when they are active.  That’s why sessions billed as ‘Core Conversations’ have become so popular, because the attendees are engaged and interacting from the moment the session starts.  Live #Blogchat is formatted in this exact same way, which is why it’s so popular with those that attend.

If you have an event that you’d like to bring a Live #Blogchat to, please email me so we can discuss how to make that happen.

Also, I am happy to talk to you about creating a custom sponsorship package for a Live #Blogchat event.  Or maybe you are interested in one of the above packages, but want to know if it would be possible to edit or alter some of the parameters of that package.  Please email me and we’ll discuss your options!

PS: Here’s where you can see more pictures from the first Live #Blogchat at SXSW.

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Your blog should be a passion project

I just saw a new post by someone on Facebook.  My first thought was ‘I need to read this because I haven’t shared any of their posts in a while’.  So I clicked over and read the post, but I quickly saw that the post wasn’t worth sharing.  It was short, and it covered a topic that everyone had blogged about, and brought nothing new to the topic.

The blogger had phoned in this post.

It happens sometimes, I do it as well.  I will think ‘I need to get a blog post up today’, and then looking back I realize that particular post shouldn’t have been published.

I was thinking about this after I read Lisa’s post today about her 1st year of blogging.  Lisa said “I chose the (blogging) path that had my name on it”.  Isn’t that wonderful?  By writing in her voice and being true to herself, Lisa is making her blog a passion project.  And it makes her blog more interesting to her readers, and the writing process more enjoyable for her.  It’s the difference between ‘ugh…I need to write something today’, and having something to write about.

This sage advice dovetails with something that Liz Strauss told me a few weeks ago.  We were talking about self-promotion and using your blog as a tool to promote yourself.  Liz said “There’s a difference between self-promotion, and sharing what you are passionate about”.  The enormity of that hit me right between the eyes.  Because when you are sharing your passion, it’s really NOT promotion.  You are sharing something you love with others.

Think about how this could impact your business blog.  What if changing your focus took your blog from being a place where you promoted your business, to one where you shared what you loved about your business?  Think about if Steve Jobs blogged, do you think he would post boring self-promotional brochureware posts about the next iPad?  Or would he blog ‘The iPad3 is the most amazing device you have ever seen, and here’s why!’

I think passion trumps promotion every time.  What do you think?

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Why setting realistic goals for your blog is so important

Several years ago when Technorati was still the rage, I used this trick to discover interesting new bloggers.  I would do a search by authority (which at the time was the number of links a blog had), and then sort in ascending order, so that the blogs with 0 authority would be shown first.  Normally, these were the bloggers that had just started blogging, and this method really helped me discover bloggers before the they became popular.

One day I found a blog that had really low authority, and it had about 2 months worth of posts.  I noticed for the first couple of weeks, there was a new post almost every day.  All very thoughtful, well-written (and lengthy!) posts.  But I noticed that none of them had comments.  For the next two week’s worth of posts, there was about 2-3 posts a week, then after that the frequency gradually fell to once a week, then once every couple of weeks.  All posts were well-written, interesting and thoughful reads.  And none of them had the first comment.

Then I noticed the newest post on the blog, which was over a month old.  In contrast to the other posts, this one was only one sentence long.  It read “Why doesn’t anyone comment on this blog?!?”

I realized that I had just seen this blog die.

When it comes to having a successful blog, realistic goals are so important.  Because your blog will only grow if you can commit to it, and you probably won’t be able to meet that commitment unless you can see that you are making headway.  And that starts with setting realistic goals that you have a chance of achieving.

If you are considering launching a blog, here’s some tips to make sure you are setting realistic goals for your blog:

1 – Underestimate how much content you can create.  For example, if you *think* you/your team can write 3 new posts a week, start out with 1 or 2 a week, and see if you can work up to 3.  It’s FAR easier to work up than it is to go back down.

2 – Underestimate how much time you can spend with blogging activities.  If you *think* you can spend 2 hours a day, then half that to only spend an hour a day.  And half that again to devote 30 mins a day to activities on the blog (such as writing posts, responding to comments) and 30 mins a day to reading other blogs and commenting on other blogs.  Maybe you can up that commitment over time, but it’s better to start low and go high, than to start out too high and have to back down.

3 – Think months, not weeks when you are timelining your blogging strategy.  Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint.  You have to remember that a lot of the ‘pro bloggers’ that have very successful and vibrant blogs are NOT in the same situation you are.  For many of these people, their blog represents the majority of their sales and promotional efforts.  As such, they can afford to devote the several hours a day that it usually takes to create an extremely popular and productive blog.  You probably cannot, so you shouldn’t compare yourself to these bloggers and look for similar results.  If you can only invest 30 mins a day to your blogging efforts that’s fine, just understand that it will take longer to see that blog gain traction if that’s the case.

 

Those are some quick tips to get you started setting your blogging goals, for those of you that blog for your company, what has worked for you?

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Where Empire Avenue Succeeds (and Fails) As a Community Site

A little over a week ago I finally caved and joined the Empire Avenue bandwagon.  The site is similar to a stock market, in that the idea is that you ‘invest’ in others by buying and selling shares in them.  As is always the case, I am trying to look at each of the Shiny Objects that the social media fishbowl goes gaga over through the lens of ‘is there any real reason for most businesses to be here?’

In short, there’s not a lot of real business value to be had for the average company on EA.  It’s a game and distraction, no more, no less.  Sure, it’s possible to get some networking value there, but then again you can still get networking value on Identica if you want to bad enough.

But if you accept that EA is little more than a game and competition, it can be fun.  And it was for me.  After a day or so of wondering what in the hell I was supposed to be doing, I noticed that my EA ‘score’ was going up.  People were ‘investing’ in me constantly!  Soon I was at 20 points.  Then 30, then 35, 40, and 50!  I was gaining 5 or so points a day, and I saw that my ‘net wealth’ was up to a few hundred thousand Eaves (the EA ‘currency’).

Then on Saturday, something happened.  My EA score barely moved all day.  Few investments came in.  I shrugged it off, hey it’s just a bad day.  Then Sunday, the same thing.  What the hell was going on?!?  I wasn’t doing anything different (that I could tell), and yet suddenly it was as if someone turned off the faucet.  My score stopped going up, and no one wanted to invest in me anymore, it seemed.

Then yesterday, another flat day.  And that’s when it happened: I realized that Empire Avenue sucked.  Funny how when my score was going up several points every day (even though I never was sure why it was happening), I thought EA was awesome.  Then when my score flatlined, the site sucked and I needed to stop wasting my time on such a silly game.

There’s a really important lesson here if you want to emulate EA and create a competition-based community site.  You need to teach me how to win.  Throughout the last week, I was pretty much on my own in trying to figure out how to ‘win’ at EA, or even figuring out what ‘winning’ looked like.  I got little to no advice from the site, even through searching.  The best advice I got was from a few long-time EA members like @AdrielHampton.

But the bottom line is that my EA score started to suck, and I didn’t know why, so I assume then that Empire Avenue sucks!  (Because I am an irrational human being, remember? ;))

Here’s what should have happened:

1 – Empire Avenue should have made it painfully obvious to me on signup how to ‘win’ and what the object of the game was.

2 – EA should have helped me understand how specific activities are tied to my quest to ‘winning’ the game.  I was able to add my Twitter and YouTube and Facebook accounts to my EA account, but I’m not sure what impact it made.  My Facebook and YouTube scores are still stuck at 1, but I don’t know how to change that.  I should know, and EA should tell me.

3 – When my score started to plateau over the last few days, that should have triggered a way for EA to explain to me what I need to do to get my daily gain back up where it was.  I have no idea why my daily gains started flatlining, but EA should make sure that I do know.

4 – Interaction with other EA members should be a BIG part of ‘winning’.  Or maybe it is and EA never told me about it.

 

The bottom line is that for me, EA is a semi-fun distraction that I am losing interest in because I feel like I still haven’t crossed the Suck Threshold.  If you’ve tried out Empire Avenue, what do you think?  What am I doing wrong?

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Participation is no longer an option

Although he didn’t realize it at the time, this gentleman was actually live-tweeting the raid on Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad a couple of days ago.

Twitter ‘broke’ the news that Bin Laden was dead late last night, before mainstream media did.  As @ReallyVirtual’s tweets show above, the information was actually out there a couple of days earlier.  The lesson for mainstream media is the same as it is for your company: Anyone with access to the proper devices can use social media to create and distribute content faster than you can.

The days of creating and distributing a carefully-crafted message via only the channels you select, are over.  Mainstream media, to its credit, is realizing this, and is using social media to supplement its efforts and improve how it delivers news, and incorporates reactions from others.

Today, your business is no different.  You have to make the choice to begin to participate, or to begin to become irrelevant.  But thankfully, the choice is still yours to make.