MackCollier.com

by

Brian Solis to Co-Host #Blogchat on Sunday, March 4th!

Brian Solis, Personal Branding, Twitter, #Blogchat, Building InfluenceI’m beyond thrilled to have Brian Solis co-hosting #Blogchat this Sunday.  We’ll be discussing one of Brian’s (many) areas of expertise, how brands and individuals can leverage blogs to earn influence.  Building and defining influence on the personal and brand level has long been a favorite discussion among the #Blogchat community, and Brian is the perfect person to help us find the answers to this topic.

The official topic will be ‘Using Blogging to Earn Long-Form Influence in an Era of Short-Form Engagement‘.  As we usually do when co-hosts join us, we’ll break down the topic into two 30-minute blocks.

1 – From 8:00pm Central to 8:30 Central, we’ll discuss the topic in light of how individuals can leverage blogs as a way to build influence and their personal brands.

2 – From 8:30pm to 9:00pm Central, we’ll discuss how brands can use blogging as a way to build influence.

If you aren’t already, please make sure you are following Brian on Twitter.  You can (and should!) subscribe to Brian’s blog as well.

BTW, you’ll want to attend this #Blogchat live, as Brian is absolutely brilliant.  He’s one of those people that has a knack for catching the salient points that most of us miss and connecting the dots for us.  The transcript post-#Blogchat always is valuable, but you’ll get much more from the next #Blogchat if you’re there to interact with Brian live.

See everyone tomorrow night, and a word of warning, get ready to RT Brian’s tweets early and often 😉

PS: If you’ve never joined #Blogchat, here’s what it’s all about.

UPDATE: Hope you could attend tonight’s #Blogchat (it was AMAZING!) but in case you missed it, here’s the transcript.

by

Stop Chasing the Next Pinterest

Pinterest for business, social media marketing

I have to admit, the so-called ‘thought leaders’ in the Social Media space really do send out some contradictory advice at times.  We tell companies to focus not on the social media tools themselves, but HOW our customers are using them.  We tell companies to let their markets dictate if we should even be using social media, and how we need to approach social media as a whole as just another tool in our marketing belt.

And yet…every few months, another social media site gets ‘discovered’ by the social media bubble, and we hype the tool to the skies.  Now, the same group that’s preached avoiding the Shiny Object Syndrome is telling every company that they MUST be on Pinterest.  It’s too big to ignore, and will only get bigger.

Just like every company needs to be on Plus, and Quora, and Indenti.ca.  The same ‘social media experts’ that were hyping their Quora profiles this time last year, are all over Pinterest doing the same.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I am nothing close to a Pinterest expert.  I’ve only spent a few hours with the site, but I can see where the emphasis on visuals and pinning could definitely benefit SOME businesses.  In fact, I feel like Pinterest has more potential for companies in general than most of the other Socnets Come Lately that the bubble likes to tout.

But as is always the case, as a company you should never let hype drive your social media strategy.  Should Pinterest be a part of your social media strategy?  That’s for you and your customers to decide, not the ‘expert’ that hypes every new social media site as a ‘must-be-on’ site for companies.

And BTW, in case another thinks I am slamming Pinterest, I gave the exact same advice when the hypefest was touting Google Plus as the site that all companies HAD to be on.

For now, my advice is to be aware of what Pinterest’s functionality is, and to monitor how your customers and competitors are using the site.  If you see that your customers and competitors aren’t there, that’s a good sign that maybe its not the best place for you to spend your time.  On the other hand, if your customers are there, it’s a very sharp sign that you probably should be as well.

Remember, don’t focus on the tools, focus on the connections that the tools help facilitate.

by

The Value of Clearing Paths in Marketing

“Oh we’re in constant contact with our customers, we ride with them all the time.” – Harley-Davidson CSO Willie Davidson when asked if HD does market research to better understand their customers.

For years, brands have had it beaten over their heads that ‘The Customer’s in charge now’ and that they need to ‘Give up control and get the hell out of the way!’

Horrible advice, at best.  Customers don’t want to take complete control from brands, they want to love brands that they see themselves in.  We gravitate to brands that are smart enough to understand us, and what we want.

We want companies to make it easier for us to engage in the activities we are already doing.  We want companies to understand where we are headed, and to clear a path to make it easier for us to arrive at our destination.  And we’ll pay good money to the companies that can do this.

Apple understood this with iTunes.  They took the concept of Napster (music located in a central place that was accessible to others) and greatly improved on the stability of the service, and we were willing to pay for it as a result.  The popularity of Napster (In its original form circa 2000) proved that we wanted the ability to log into a service and download songs.  But anyone that used Napster in those early days knows that the quality of the songs was often horrible, and you were at the mercy of whoever was online when you were as to what songs you could get.

Apple understood that we would pay 99 cents a song for a stable download, and a high-quality song.  Plus, they also removed the guilt we may have had over downloading music without paying for it.

They took an activity we were already engaging in, and cleared a path for us to more effectively and efficiently get there, and we are quite willing to pay them for offering this service.

There’s a world of difference between trying to push someone in a direction versus clearing the path they are already headed down.  The smart brands understand this, and are winning as a result.

by

Companies and PR Firms: Here’s the Golden Rule of Pitching Bloggers

Your job is to make my job easier.  Do that, and I’ll give you coverage here every single time.

Let me give you an example:  A couple of years ago my friend Kaitlyn (Note the ‘my friend’ part, PR peeps) at Ogilvy pitched me on an idea she had to get some more exposure for one of Ogilvy’s clients, Ford.  She was attending the 2010 Paris Auto Show where Ford CMO Jim Farley would be, and she pitched a small group of bloggers on this idea:  Give me a question you’d like to ask Ford’s CMO, and I’ll get him to answer you on video.  Hello!  Of course I wanted to be a part of that!

So my question to Jim was:  “Are there any areas that Ford can point to where social media has either lowered business costs, or improved existing processes?”

Jim answered the question, and said that social media had resulted in cost savings of up to 90% versus using traditional advertising in some cases (such as with the Fiesta Movement campaign).  This post also led to Scott Monty jumping in the comments and adding another nugget: “We had a higher level of awareness for the subcompact than for vehicles we had in the market for 2-3 years; we collected over 125,000 hand-raisers who indicated they wanted to learn more when the car became available; and the conversion of reservations to sales was 10X higher than our traditional conversion rate.”

I just checked this blog’s stats, and that post has over 9,300 pageviews and going by pageviews is the fourth most popular post ever on this blog.

And it happened because Kaitlyn was smart enough to position the pitch with the blogger’s needs in mind.

When you are pitching bloggers on your story idea, keep these things in mind:

1 – What topics does the blogger write about?  Actually READ the blog, look at the categories used, or if they have a list of their Most Popular Posts, see what those posts are about.

2 – Look at your story idea, does it jive with the topics that the blogger writes about?  If you’re on the fence as to whether or not its relevant to the blogger, think about what topics the blogger writes about, and how your story idea could tie into the areas the blogger focuses on.  For example, if you have a story idea on how Michaels is using Pinterest to build traffic back to its site, I might not be interested.  But if you tailor the pitch to me and point out that Michaels is activating its brand advocates to use Pinterest to drive traffic back to its site, then my interest in the story increases dramatically.  Always think about how you can make your story idea relevant to the blogger you are pitching.

3 – Don’t follow up repeatedly with the ‘Hey Mack, just wanted to check and see if you somehow missed my story idea the first 10 times I emailed you about it?’ email.  If I don’t respond, there’s at least a 95% chance that it was because I wasn’t interested in covering the story you pitched me on.  If you DO want to email me to followup, you should ASSUME that’s why I didn’t answer you.  You could say something like “Hey Mack, I just wanted to circle back with you on the email I sent on Monday about how Company A is Using Social Media Site B.  Is this something that you feel your readers would be interested in learning more about?  If you don’t think that story would be relevant to your readers, are there any particular areas of social media marketing that you are looking to cover?  My firm represents hundreds of companies that are producing successful social media marketing results, and I’m sure that in the future I could find some examples that you feel would be of value to your readers!”

This approach at least gives me the opportunity to spell out to you exactly what areas I am looking for.

4 – Check to see if the blogger has any guidelines on how they want to be pitched.  Many do, including me.  This alone will save you a ton of time and help you do a better job for your clients.

 

But overall, just think about how your pitch will benefit the blogger you are pitching.  Simply doing that will greatly increase your success rate.  If you’re a blogger that’s gotten pitched before, what’s some great examples that you can share?

by

Brad Keselowski Capitalizes on Daytona 500 Delay, Tide Whiffs Badly

Brad Kesolowski, Twitter, Daytona 500, Fire, Tide

Pretty interesting turn of events happened earlier tonight at the Daytona 500.  With 40 laps left, the race went under caution, and as usually happens, trucks were on the track to help clear off the debris.

What happened next was totally bizarre.  Driver Juan Pablo Montoya was going down the backstretch when suddenly something ‘broke’ and he lost control of his car, sending it flying into one of the trucks on track to clean it.  A massive fire was the result, as 200 gallons of jet fuel ignited from the crash.

The mess took over an hour to clean up.  Luckily, driver Brad Keselowski had his phone with him, and avidly tweeted during the break, including the above photo, which is the first ever from a NASCAR driver from within his vehicle.  Fox said that @Keselowski picked up over 55,000 Twitter followers during the break, and Fox showed him constantly tweeting and the other drivers mentioned it as well.

But while Brad was smart enough to capitalize on the break, Tide literally had the chance of a lifetime fall into their laps, and they missed catching it.

During the process of putting out the massive fire, a ton of material was dumped on the track, creating a huge mess.  So how did NASCAR clean up that mess?  By bringing out box after box of good ole fashioned Tide detergent.  That’s right, Tide got the best product placement in a sporting event since we saw the Nike logo on Tiger Wood’s golf ball just as the ball fell into the cup at the Masters a few years ago.

Unfortunately, @Tide’s Twitter account left it’s last tweet 7 hours prior to its Daytona 500 appearance, and missed a great chance to capitalize on a ton of free exposure that fell in its lap.

Lesson for brands:  Social Media monitoring is NOT a 9-5 job.  As I said on Twitter, most non-NASCAR fans won’t have any idea what happened tonight, but Tide still missed a great chance to leverage the free exposure NASCAR and Fox gave it.

UPDATE: For bloggers, this is also a good lesson in the value of reporting breaking news.  I gained about 120 visitors in 30 mins after publishing this post.  Here’s today’s hourly traffic, note the surge at the end of this picture:

Tide, Brad Keselowski, NASCAR, Daytona 500, Twitter

by

How I Leveraged Twitter to Boost My Blog’s Traffic by 41% Last Week

I’ve blogged before about how you can use Twitter as a tool to drive more attention and exposure to your blog.  I wanted to walk you through how I used Twitter to increase my blog’s traffic last week by 41% over the previous week.

First, I posted 5 times last week, Sunday-Thursday.  On Monday-Thurs, I had a very specific pattern for using Twitter to push traffic back here.

Starting at 8am each morning, I tweeted a link to the previous day’s post here.  Then I went through Google Reader and every 10 mins from 8:10-8:50 I linked to an interesting post or article.  Then at 9:00 am I linked to my new post for that day.  Then starting at 9:10 am I tweeted out a link to another post or article from someone else every 10 mins.  Usually, I stopped at 10 am.

So from 8am-10am, I tweeted a new post or article, every 10 mins.  2 of them were my posts, the rest were posts or articles other people had written.  Then I would again tweet out a link to that day’s post at noon, and again at 3pm.  Also during the day I would RT any interesting links I saw other people sharing.

Here’s what my traffic looked like 2 weeks ago, then last week:

Two weeks ago, I averaged 340 visitors a day here, last week I averaged 479.

Now this strategy works especially well for companies or individuals that are using a blog as a thought leadership tool or to build awareness.  By sharing relevant content on Twitter that’s consistent with the content I create here, there’s several benefits for me:

1 – Sharing valuable content on the same topics as I blog about helps raise my visibility around those topics.

2 – As I am sharing links, more people start paying attention to the links I am sharing, which means more traffic when I share links back here.

3 – As I share links from other bloggers, it increases the chance that they will reciprocate by RTing a link to one of my posts.

 

Now on Friday, I didn’t write a new blog post.  Instead, I RTed a link to the 3 most viewed posts here last week, sending out a tweet to a new post at 9am, noon, and 3pm.  This way, I didn’t have to write a new blog post on either Thurs or Friday, so it freed me up to spend that time working on other projects.

So again, here’s the system I used on Monday-Thursday:

1 – Each day, publish a new post at 8am.

2 – Starting at 8am each day, tweet out a link to a new blog post or article every 10 mins till 10am.  13 links total.

3 – Tweet out the link to the previous day’s post at 8am, the current day’s post at 9am.

4 – Tweet out another link to the current day’s post at noon and again at 3pm.

5 – Throughout the day, RT valuable links that I see others sharing.

 

So if you are looking for a simple way to use Twitter to drive more traffic to your blog and build visibility for yourself, try this simple format.  This is also a good way to take an activity you are already engaging in (reading your feeds in Google Reader) and use that content to build your blog’s traffic as well as your Twitter following.

 

PS: A few minutes ago I got an email offering to ‘sell’ me 10,000 Twitter followers for $5.  As with much in life, real results require real work.

by

Where Have All The Great Thought Leadership Blogs Gone?

I had an interesting back and forth with Adam the other day on Twitter about his perception that ‘social media gurus’ don’t openly disagree or challenge each other’s thoughts.  I wanted to write a post about that, but then I realized that our discussion actually dovetailed a bit into another train of thought I’ve been having lately; Where have all the great thought leadership blogs gone?

2005 and 2006 was a magical time for me.  Not only was I discovering blogging for the first time, but I was also discovering some amazing bloggers and some profoundly provocative writing on the future of marketing.  Blogs like Horse Pig Cow, Gaping Void, Church of the Customer and Creating Passionate Users inspired me on a daily basis and their thoughts got my creative juices flowing and led to some/most of my best writing.

But around 2007 or 2008, the social media/marketing blogging space began to change.  We went from discussions largely around ‘What If…’ to ‘What Is’ when it came to social media and its impact on marketing.  At the time, this change was welcomed, I remember talk around 2007 or so that we ‘needed to stop talking theory, and start sharing real-world results if we want businesses to take social media seriously’.  By 2007 and 2008, a few innovative companies were starting to produce real case studies from their early social media efforts, and almost overnight, it seems as if we all stopped talking theory, and started embracing reality.

Which is good, to a degree.  It’s wonderful that we started incorporating ‘real world’ business examples into our writings.  But in the process, I think we went too far away from what made our writings so incredibly compelling to begin with.

We stopped asking ‘What If…’

The discussion around ‘Social Business’ has been nagging at me for a while now.  Last week, someone ( I wish I could remember where I saw it) said ‘What everyone is calling ‘Social Business’ seems to just be ‘Good Business’.  Exactly.  This was what was irritating me.  There’s nothing revolutionary or ‘bleeding edge’ about ‘Social Business’.  We just took the idea of running a ‘Good’ business and swapped in the ‘Social’ modifier, and it’s as if we slapped it in a Shiny Object wrapper.

Is it vitally important that companies facilitate collaboration between their employees?  That they find ways to better connect with their customers and they with the company?  That they have tighter connections and smarter conversations with their partners/vendors?

Yes, of course, and you betcha.  But all of those things were just as important in 1912 as they are in 2012.

Back to Adam’s point, somewhere along the line, I think we stopped publicly challenging and disagreeing with each other as much as we should.  Disagreeing with someone isn’t a bad thing (unless you are being disagreeable, there’s a BIG difference), and it encourages thought to have your ideas challenged.

I think we aren’t challenging and building on each other’s ideas like we once did.  As a result, I think the entire Social Media/Marketing blogosphere/whatever has become largely stagnant.  We haven’t run out of new ideas because there’s nothing new to talk about, we’ve run out of new ideas because we aren’t pushing each other to FIND those new ideas.

In 2005 and 2006 we had The Porous Membrane to explain why Corporate Blogging worked, we had Pinko Marketing to explain how customers were more empowered than ever and Influence Ripples to explain how ideas spread and bloggers become influential online.

Today we have ‘Why Your Business Should be a Social Business’, ‘How Pinterest is Killing (Insert SM site here)’, and ‘Klout Sucks’.

Seriously?

We need to do better.  Starting today, I promise to start asking ‘What If…’ here more often.  Sure, I may sometimes make a fool out of myself in the process (Because that doesn’t happen already ;)), but I think asking the occasional question is better than acting like you have all the answers.

by

The Five-Year Engagement’s Blog Proves That Trying to Be Really Real Can Be Really Hard

Blogging, entertainment, Five Year Engagement, movie marketing

I found an interesting bit of movie marketing news yesterday on Emily’s blog.  She mentioned that the social media strategy for the April release The Five-Year Engagement includes a character blog!  I’ve blogged about this for literally five years, but I think character blogs can be an amazingly smart vehicle for movies and television shows.  Done right, it can be a completely immersive (did I just make up another word?) experience that extends the movie/show’s plot, and rewards its fans with a much deeper level of connection and engagement with the central characters.  Seriously, it’s low-hanging fruit that too many media companies completely miss.

So when I saw Tom and Violet’s Our Wedding Blog, I was pretty excited.  The blog is set up as a way for the movie’s two main characters to announce and walk their friends and family through their engagement and upcoming wedding.  The blog has a ton of posts up, written by both Tom and Violet, and so far there’s even a video Tom has created.

Here’s the problem:  You can’t comment on the blog posts.  If you try, you’re greeted with a ‘ Comments are closed! Please sign our Guest Book!‘  explanation.  What’s worse, the characters in the movie leave cutesy comments back and forth to each other in every post, but fans of the movie aren’t allowed to.

It just breaks your heart.  By not allowing fans to comment on the posts, all Universal has accomplished is to lessen the amount of content that fans would create around this movie.  Yes, opening up comments to the masses is going to create a LOT of extra work for the studio.  They can expect to spend hours pouring through comments and moderating them.

But what happens when Leslie, who can’t wait to see this movie, leaves a comment on the blog telling Tom and Violet that she can’t wait  for the wedding…and then sees it on the blog?  Think that might get her excited?  Think that might GREATLY increase the chance that she’ll blog about the movie, tweet about the movie, and mention it on Facebook?

And what if ‘Tom’ or ‘Violet’ actually RESPONDED to her?!?

Universal has in its hands a great opportunity to engage fans of this movie, and give them a reason to create content that will help the studio by increasing exposure and generating ticket sales.  But they either can’t see the potential of letting ‘regular folk’ comment on the blog, or they do see the potential, and don’t think it’s worth devoting a few hours a week to moderating comments.

So close…

by

What the Hell is a ‘Social Business’ and Why Should You Care?

Social Business, Social Media, Brand advocacy, Mack Collier

If you’ve been following the social media marketing space/blogosphere over the last year or so, you’ve probably heard increasing chatter about the concept of ‘Social Business’.

So what IS a Social Business?  Good question, and it seems one that not even the people chattering about it can agree upon.  For example, The Wikipedia definition states “social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company designed to address a social objective within the highly regulated marketplace of today. It is distinct from a non-profit because the business should seek to generate a modest profit but this will be used to expand the company’s reach, improve the product or service or in other ways to subsidise the social mission.”

Ok…but here’s how @Armano describes it “At it’s core, it’s about connecting stakeholders who are critical to the success of your business. And as I’ve stressed before—it’s about executing initiatives leveraging the “3 P’s”—People, Process & Platforms.”  David also has a nifty drawing that helps explain the process at that link.

And here’s Augie Ray’s definition: “A new form of commerce where consumers, empowered by new social technologies and behaviors, bypass traditional channels and acquire more information, goods and services directly from each other.”

Finally, here’s how the Social Business Forum defines a Social Business: “An organization that has put in place the strategies, technologies and processes to systematically engage all the individuals of its ecosystem (employees, customers, partners, suppliers) to maximize the co-created value”

 

Three things I see from the above and other various definitions I’ve found for the term ‘Social Business’:

1 – We can’t even agree on the definition of the concept.  Which is no biggie, most of us can’t agree on the definition of ‘Social Media’ and it’s been around for 25 years in some form or another.

2 – The name ‘Social Business’ is terrible in that it immediately makes you think ‘Oh I get it, a business that does social media!’  Seriously, we marketers and business types put the ‘social’ modifier on waaaaay too many things.

3 – These definitions (and much of the discussion around the concept) seem to be focused on the companies that ‘get it’ when it comes to…whatever your definition of a ‘social business’ is.  If you’re a business that doesn’t ‘get it’, is talking about how becoming a social business will help you ‘engage with and empower your customers to increase co-created value’ REALLY going to get you excited?  I mean companies have been hearing about the potential of empowering and embracing their customers for at least 5 years now when we all got on a kick about how amazing social media is.  Right?  If that talk didn’t blow their skirts up, changing the name from ‘social media’ to ‘social business’ and trying again probably won’t either.

 

BTW here’s another interesting tidbit, the Wikipedia definition of the term ‘Enterprise 2.0‘: Enterprise 2.0 is the use of “Web 2.0” technologies within an organization to enable or streamline business processes while enhancing collaboration – connecting people through the use of social-media tools. Enterprise 2.0 aims to help employees, customers and suppliers collaborate, share, and organize information. Andrew McAfee describes Enterprise 2.0 as “the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers”.

Ah we marketers do love to mark our territory by slapping labels on everything, don’t we?

But perhaps the biggest problem I have with most of the discussion around the concept of a ‘Social Business’ is that it seemed to be geared toward selling companies on the concept, versus the actual business benefits of integrating/embracing the concept.

Last month when I spoke at Bazaarvoice, I got to spend some time talking to CMO Erin Nelson and I learned more about BV’s offerings and how the companies is helping its clients.  In general, Bazaarvoice is creating products and systems that let clients get more detailed and relevant (read: valuable) product information and feedback, and then helping them ACT on that feedback, both internally and externally, in order to improve existing business processes.

A very simple example:  Erin noted that LL Bean tracked the reviews customers were leaving on their site for a popular sweater, and they noted that customers were asking for it to be produced in the colors green and purple.  So LL Bean started offering the sweater in those colors as well, and sales doubled as a result.  And the great thing about getting and ACTING on customer feedback is that it only encourages your customers to leave MORE feedback, which increases the chance that you can continue to improve existing business functions as a result.

That one small example to me does more to explain the possible reason why a company would want to become more connected  internally and externally because it details a real-world business benefit from doing so.

As a result, I think those of us that are talking about the concept of a ‘Social Business’ need to stop talking about it as if we are selling a concept/product, and start talking about it as if we are selling the BENEFITS of being a Social Business.  Because that’s what you SHOULD be doing, and besides, that’s a far more interesting conversation to be having anyway.

by

Newsflash: We All Have the Attention Spans of a Gnat, So Blog About That Topic Again!

social media training, mack collier, social media consulting, twitter, blogging, facebook, social media strategyI was listening to an interview that Problogger had on his site (I would link to it but it was his ‘thank you’ for signing up for his newsletter), and he was interviewing a blogger about the success he’s had with his blog.  The blogger said that part of his success was due to a popular ebook he had created that he had achieved monthly sales of up to $30,000!  Impressive, but then the blogger told Darren that roughly 85% of the ebook had come straight from his blog posts.

My mouth literally fell open.  Then Darren remarked that he’d had similar success with an ebook, and that about the same percentage of that ebook’s content had come straight from his blog.

Seriously?!?

But then I thought about it, and it made total sense.  A lot of people would likely pay $9.95 or more for an ebook in order to get the convenience of the information all neatly organized and combined for them in one place. I think too many bloggers have the mindset that once they blog about a topic, it’s ‘off limits’ for them to ever discuss again.

In reality, I think it’s much safer to assume that most people MISS our blog posts.  Or really any content created via social media.  I think social media participation has ‘trained’ us to scan and release.  We give all the content a few seconds to catch our attention, then quickly move on.  When I was creating the recent #Blogchat survey that many of y’all took, I assumed at I could get 250 responses within a couple of days, and eventually get 500 after about a week.  I’d tweet it once, maybe twice a day.

Yeah, not really.  It took 10 days to get 315 responses and that was with me tweeting out begging for responses up to 5 times a day!  At one point within a 90-min period, I tweeted the link and then @MarketingProfs, @ChrisBrogan, @Barefoot_Exec, @JessicaNorthey, @JayBaer and @JasonFalls all RTed the link to the survey, as well.  That’s well over half a million Twitter followers, but do you know how many survey responses I got from that flood?  About 20.  Also, what I noticed every time I tweeted a link to the survey was that I would get about 3-5 responses within 3-5 mins, and then nothing.  This really hit home for me that if something isn’t RIGHT IN FRONT OF US on our social media channels, we miss it.  Plus it also suggests that Twitter isn’t the best medium to drive survey responses, but I digress…

Often I have blogged about topics more than once.  Never once have I had someone tell me ‘Yeah Mack, you blogged about this before, why are you covering it again?’

Now that doesn’t mean that you should simply repost an old post.  But it DOES mean that you should dig into your archives and find your ‘old’ popular topics, and resurrect them.  Remember yesterday when I talked about your blog’s analytics and using Pageviews and Search Keywords to help you discover popular posts?  Do that, find the posts that others are enjoying, and see if you can write a new post or two about those same topics.  Just this afternoon, I went through the Archives for the posts I wrote here back in 2009, and found 10 posts I can update and expand and republish as new posts.  If I can do the same for 2010 and 2011, I’ve suddenly created a new 30 or so posts for myself to publish here!

There’s no reason why you can’t do the same.  Dig in your archives and see if you have any buried blogging treasure in there that you can share again (or really for the first time) with your readers.  It will also lighten your blogging workload, and who knows, you may even find enough good stuff to make your own ebook and get your own $30,000 a month income!

PS:  I’ve written about this topic before as well, and I’ll forgive you if you missed it the first time 🙂