MackCollier.com

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#Blogchat topic for 7-3: How to create useful content for your biz blog without ‘giving it all away’

Hey y’all!  Hope everyone is getting ready for a festive Fourth of July!  Since tomorrow is the holiday, and not tonight, we’ll go ahead and have #Blogchat tonight (Sunday) at its regularly scheduled time of 8pm Central.

And our topic will focus on creating content for business blogs, and how ‘helpful’ our content should be.  Someone asked a question during last week’s #Blogchat about how you promote yourself via your blog, especially if you are a consultant or working for yourself.  My quick answer was ‘Give away the WHY, sell the HOW’, but I thought that would be a good topic to expand upon tonight.  I think there are two schools of thought here:

1 – Create content that establishes the need for hiring me (Why), and then use the content to get business (Where you teach the how).

2 – Create content that gives away the How, and hope that the content is so amazingly useful that it leads to positive word of mouth, and that leads to referrals.

I think you also need to consider what type of customer/client you want, when you position your content.  For example, if I wanted someone to hire me to setup their business blog, I would probably create more content devoted to WHY they need a blog to build their business.  On the other hand, if I wanted to connect with clients that are already blogging that need help building engagement, I would probably create more content around the HOW, because I want to establish my expertise in building engagement and community.

I think this will be a very interesting discussion as those of us that use our blogs to drive business often struggle with the proper balance in our content.  How much do we promote, versus teach?

So please do join us tonight for #Blogchat at 8pm Central!

Oh! And I promised a very small surprise, didn’t I?  As many of you remember, we were using WTHashtag to create transcripts after each #Blogchat up till a few months ago, when WTHasthag had to stop offering that functionality due to a change in Twitter’s TOS.  But, before it shut down, I was able to convert over a year’s worth of #Blogchats into PDF transcripts!  I’ll be sharing a few of these every week for the next several weeks, so you can use these as additional study materials.  Here’s this week’s transcripts:

7-26-09 – Topic: How to Get Sales and Business Leads From Your Blog (Co-Hosted by Amy Africa) – #Blogchat07-26-09TranscriptWAmyAfrica

7-12-09 – Topic: Finding the ROI of your Blogging and Social Media Efforts (Co-Hosted by KD Paine) – #Blogchat07-12-09TranscriptWKDPaine

7-19-09 – Topic: How Non-Profits Can Use Social Media (Co-Hosted by the Red Cross’ Wendy Harman) – #Blogchat07-19-09TranscriptWWendyHarman

Just click on the link for each, and then you can view them, and download if you like.  Enjoy!

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#Blogchat LIVE is coming to Content Marketing World!

UPDATE: Thanks to ON24 for being the official sponsor of the Live #Blogchat at Content Marketing World!

That’s right! I have been waiting TWO FREAKING MONTHS to share this news, but in September #Blogchat LIVE will be part of this year’s Content Marketing World!  You read that right, #Blogchat LIVE is coming to THE Content Marketing event of the year and will be kicking off the event on September the 6th!  And have you SEEN the speaker lineup for CMW?!?

David Meerman Scott, Jay Baer, Ann Handley, C.C. Chapman, Brian Clark (CopyBlogger), Jason Falls, Jim Kukral, Lee Odden and Shelley Ryan PLUS Joe Pulizzi, Mike Stelzner, the New York Times’ David Pogue, and Kevin Smith.  Yes, THAT Kevin Smith.  Over 50 of the smartest minds in content marketing.

Now THAT is some heady company! One of the biggest marketing events of the year, an all-star speaker lineup, and guys it’s #Blogchat LIVE during Content Marketing World!  Is there ANY way this could be more amazing?!?

Guys it’s not just #Blogchat LIVE….

It’s not just #Blogchat LIVE during Content Marketing World…..

It’s #Blogchat LIVE during Content Marketing World AT THE FREAKING ROCK N ROLL HALL OF FAME!!!!!

Yes you read that right.  We are actually going to have a LIVE #Blogchat at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame.  Yes, I am literally giddy to be telling you this 😉

So the BIG question is how can YOU join us?  First, only attendees of Content Marketing World will be allowed to attend the LIVE #Blogchat at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame (yes I love saying that!).  And space will be limited (literally), so the total attendance of the LIVE #Blogchat will be capped, but you MUST register for Content Marketing World to be eligible to attend the Live #Blogchat.  And if you haven’t already checked the agenda, it’s absolutely killer.  And I’ve been told Content Marketing World likely WILL sellout, so please get in as soon as you can in order to be eligible to attend the LIVE #Blogchat! Seriously if you can only attend one event for the rest of the year that focuses on content marketing and social media, this is exactly where you want to be.

To make it easy on you, here’s the complete conference agenda in PDF form.

And guys when you register make sure you use code BLOGCHAT to get an extra $100 off the price!

Now, if you are interested in being a SPONSOR of this LIVE #Blogchat during Content Marketing World at the freaking Rock N Roll Hall of Fame (have I mentioned that part?), then please contact Pam on Twitter, or email Pam or email me.  She’ll be happy to work with you to design a sponsorship package that works for you.  And as you can tell, I am far too excited about LIVE #Blogchat and will have zero problem promoting it and your sponsorship of it 😉

The format of this LIVE #Blogchat will be similar to our past events, in that we’ll have an hour of meetup/tweetup (probably 7pm), then start the actual LIVE #Blogchat at around 8pm.  If you’ve never attended a LIVE #Blogchat, here’s the recap of the one we did at South By Southwest, and here’s the recap of the one held at the Marketing Profs B2B Forum.  Attendees at both LIVE #Blogchat afterward told me it was one of if not THE highlight of their trip.  In Boston at the B2B Forum, attendees were asking me beforehand ‘So what is a LIVE #Blogchat like?’, and I told them ‘Just like the #Blogchats on Twitter!’  Afterward they each told me ‘You were right, it was just like it is on Twitter!’

So now do y’all see why I have been gushing endlessly about this on Twitter? 😉

PS: I can never thank #Blogchat enough for being the amazing community that has grown to the point where we can have a LIVE #Blogchat at the freaking Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. I love y’all and hope to see as many of you as possible there.

Pic via Flickr user jcburns

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So how big is #Blogchat? Here’s the stats…

As those of you that follow #Blogchat and other Twitter chats know, recent changes to Twitter’s Terms of Service have made it more difficult for 3rd party sites/apps to provide the chat transcripts that so many of us rely on.  WTHashtag, a popular site many of us used to create our own transcripts for Twitter chats, was shut down by the move.

So I was looking for a replacement to WTHashtag, and the good people at Hash Tracking reached out to me to let me look at the transcript and statistics service they offer.  What I love about their service is that first, I now have a way to provide transcripts for everyone that follows #Blogchat!  But in addition to offering a transcript, Hash Tracking also gives me some decent stats behind #Blogchat, which is something that I really didn’t get from WTHashtag (other than volume of tweets).

Here’s a screenshot of what the dashboard from last night’s report looks like:

If you’d like to view the report for yourself, you can find it here.

Now if you can’t see that picture clearly, it shows that last night’s #Blogchat had over 3,300 tweets, generated a staggering 15.9 MILLION impressions, had 445 contributors, and reached 1.7 MILLION people.  What I also love about the interface is that it gives me the ability to break down the stats and see who was tweeting the most, who was generating the most impressions, etc. And in case you were wondering, those numbers are actually down a bit from recent weeks.  For example, on May the 29th, the #Blogchat that night generated almost 20 million impressions.  I was able to break down the stats and see that several million impressions were generated by @JessicaNorthey and @ProsperityGal.  The interface also lets me see which users are the most active, so I know I need to make special effort to connect with them and thank them for participating.

Now think about what a company would have to pay to get 16 million online impressions.  Even if we assume a CPM of only one dollar, that would still cost a company $16,000 to buy as many impressions as #Blogchat generated last night.

This is one reason why I am such a big proponent of Twitter chats for companies.  If done correctly, a company could create a robust community that will help them extend and expand its brand awareness.  Just doing some quick math, if a company had a weekly Twitter chat that averaged 10 million impressions a week, that would generate  520 million impressions a year, and again assuming a CPM of $1.00, would save the company $520,000 in online advertising costs!

Something to think about, and if you or your company want to start your own Twitter chat, here’s how you can get started.

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The Importance of Creating Your Own Blogging Path

It seems that a lot of people are wanting to copy the efforts of popular bloggers.  They want to figure out how to be the next Chris Brogan or Mashable or Jessica Northey.  I wanted to talk about why I think that’s wrong, but first I wanted to tell you about a couple of my favorite bloggers (and people).

The first is Gini Dietrich.  I’m sure most of you know and love Gini and her blog, Spin Sucks.  Gini is sharp as a tack, but what I love about her writing is that its business-oriented, but personal at the same time.  Even when she is talking business, she still writes in a way that makes you think you are listening to your best friend tell you how their weekend was.  Everyone loves her writing and her style, which is exactly why she has such a passionate community of readers.  She posts almost every day, usually TWICE a day if you count guest posts on Spin Sucks, and she averages dozens of comments on her posts.  Gini’s readers love her, and as she clarified in a post here, her readers are driving business to her.

The other person I wanted to point you toward is CK.  In contrast to Gini’s 2 days a day and dozens of comments a post, CK posts about twice a month, and gets about 1-2 comments per post.  But what CK also does is have a laser-sharp focus with the content she creates via her blog, and elsewhere.  Don’t believe me?  Google ‘B2B Mobile Marketing’ and see how many of the results on the 1st page are content that CK has created.

The point here is, both Gini and CK (and you both should know each other, BTW, consider this an introduction!) have created a content strategy that works for them.  Too many of us try to replicate what is already working for someone else.  That’s THEIR strategy.  We all need to come up with our own path and our own voice.  Look at Gini, she has created a wonderful community on her blog, and that community is helping to drive business for her.  On the flipside, CK is breaking one of the biggest ‘rules’ of successful business blogging: She’s only posting once or twice a month.  But it works for her because every post is optimized and helps her expand her online footprint in the B2B marketing space.

Think about this especially if you are a solopreneur.  You are completely responsible for your blogging strategy, so you have to consider what works for YOU more than what works for anyone else.  You can and SHOULD draw inspiration from other bloggers, and you should be aware of what’s working for them.  But you should NEVER attempt to copy someone else’s strategy and approach if it’s not right for you.

Here’s a personal example:  When I started blogging in 2005, everything I read about successful blogging said to blog like Seth Godin does.  Short, quick, to the point.  Write your post as if it’s an executive summary, because no one has the patience or attention span to read more than that.

I want to tell y’all, it took me FOUR DAYS to write my very first blog post.  Because I agonized over that post for 3 days and 23 hours and 30 mins because I had no idea how in the hell I was going to condense my first blog post down to 3 paragraphs.  Finally, I said ‘screw it!’ and wrote the post *I* wanted to write, in 30 mins.  As soon as I accepted that the ‘blogging rule’ about proper post length didn’t work for me, I wrote the post I wanted to write.

And that’s made all the difference.  The beauty of blogging is that it gives us all a way to share our voice.  I told my friends at the Live #Blogchat at the B2B Forum this, but I honestly believe that most people are smarter than they give themselves credit for.  I fear that too many bloggers feel that their posts will only be popular or ‘work’ if they mimic the way a particular blogger writes.  Five years ago when I started blogging there was no David Armano or Beth Harte or Shannon Paul that I could learn from.  And no doubt they were inspired by other bloggers, but they also found their own voice and their own blogging path.

If you are losing your passion and excitement for blogging, if could simply be because you are trying to walk someone else’s path, instead of your own.

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5 Steps to Giving Your Blog Clarity and Focus

One of the most common complaints that struggling bloggers have is ‘I don’t know what the blog’s focus is’.  This is a BIG problem for a lot of bloggers, but it’s one you need to overcome if you want to truly have a successful blog.  Here’s 5 steps to getting you past this roadblock:

1 – Figure out who you are writing for.  It all starts here.  Once you figure out who you are writing for, then your content strategy to reach that audience will fall into place.  For example, I am writing this blog for companies that want to learn more about how they can successfully use social media to connect with their customers.  That’s my primary audience.

Your primary audience could be potential employers, potential clients, or your friends and family.  But whoever it is, YOU need to figure it out, because if you don’t know who you are writing for, you can best bet that your readers won’t.  And you need to pick something more concrete than ‘people that want to read my stuff’.

2 – Pick your title and tagline.  After you’ve decided who you are writing for, then look at your blog’s title and tagline.  You might not be able to do much with the title, but your tagline should explain exactly what your blog is about.  Note that mine is ‘What are you doing?  Helping companies understand the ‘social’ part of social media.’  That tells them exactly what they are getting into.

3 – Use the 3-second rule.  If someone that doesn’t know you arrives on your blog, how long will it take them to figure out what the blog is about?  If it takes longer than 3 seconds, assume they will leave.  This again, is where the tagline can really help you, because when we arrive at a new blog, we immediately look for the blog’s title/tagline, and then any pictures.  If we are confused by the title/tagline, and don’t see any pictures of the blogger, we will probably leave.

4 – Keep your sidebars clean. On a lot of blogs the sidebars are a hot mess.  In fact on some, the fancy widgets etc are actually throwing off the formatting of the entire blog.

When it comes to the sidebars, think about how the content/information/widgets you put there will help you reach your blog’s goals.  You will have a TON of options for adding stuff to the sidebar(s), but that doesn’t mean you should.  Less is often more when it comes to sidebars.  Remember, the content is the star of the blog, don’t make it take a backseat to flashy widgets and such on the sidebar.

5 – Be careful with ads on your blog.  A lot of bloggers think that they aren’t a ‘pro’ blogger until they have ads on their blog.  Or that they won’t be viewed as being a ‘serious’ blogger without ads.  Horse-hockey, ads take up space that could be given to content that could help your readers.  Period, so don’t make that tradeoff unless those ads are worth your time, and that of your readers.  Remember, the purpose of ads on a blog is to ultimately ENHANCE the experience of the blogger AND the reader.  If the ads aren’t making you any money, and aren’t relevant to the reader, then they are a total waste of time.  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have ads on your blog, but I am saying you should only keep them if they make sense for both you and your readers.

So there are 5 quick tips for bringing clarity and focus to your blogging efforts.  If you only follow one, PLEASE pay attention to #1 and decide who you are blogging for.  Everything else will flow from that.

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Turning failure into success

I was standing behind my podium, and I began our presentation.  A minute or two into introductions and laying out the reason for our talk, I lost my train of thought.  A second or two suddenly grew into a very noticeable and pregnant pause.  I glanced across the room at my co-presenter, who was standing behind another podium, hoping he would bail me out.  The look on his face told me I was on my own.  I glanced up at the audience, and the face of my instructor in the back row of the room.  She was looking over her glasses at me with a frown that screamed ‘you aren’t prepared, are you?’

I wasn’t.  I didn’t review my notes prior to the class, thinking it would go better if I ‘just winged it’.

In reality I stopped talking about 2.3 seconds ago, but it felt as if we were in Day Three of Mack’s Great Silence.  I glanced back down at my notes, and for a brief second I seriously considered running from the classroom, even giving the door a few feet from my podium a sideways glance.

Thankfully, I found enough composure to finish the presentation, and I believe I ended up with a B in the Business Communications course.  But I just wanted out of there and left knowing that if I never had to give another presentation in my life, I would be a happy camper.

Fast forward almost exactly 9 years to last week in Boston at the B2B Forum.  As I was talking to other attendees and we were discussing our favorite sessions and especially how good the keynotes were, I caught myself thinking ‘I really wish I was presenting here’.

The lesson I’ve learned from this is that your failures can lead to successes.  I used to hate public speaking, as most introverts do.  Now I love it, because I found a way to learn from my past failures, instead of letting them define my ability to speak in public.  I learned from that horrible experience in undergrad, and now prepare meticulously for every presentation.  I always know the material well enough that I can ‘just talk about it’, and that greatly improves the quality of my presentations.

Nine years ago I was so nervous in front of a room of undergrads that I seriously considered running from the room, now I love speaking, and get paid to do so.  Life can be funny sometimes.

What failures have you used to shape your current successes?

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Congrats to the 3 blogs we’ll be reviewing at #Blogchat

If you remember last month we reviewed 4 blogs during one of our #Blogchats, a new one every 15 mins.  That #Blogchat was very popular with y’all, so I decided to make it a monthly feature!  The 3rd Sunday of every month we will review 3 blogs from #Blogchat participants.  This is a VERY small way I can hopefully repaid you guys for helping to make #Blogchat so successful.  I really do appreciate every one of you!

Now, for how we will handle tonight’s #Blogchat:  Every 20 mins starting at 8:00pm Central, we will review one of the 3 blogs listed below (they will go in the order listed).  Each blogger has given us some feedback on the areas they want us to pay close attention to, but if you see something else that catches your eye, make note of that.  And feel free to be critical of the blogs (we are trying to help each other) but please also offer suggestions for improvement.  For example, if you tell a blogger that ‘your left sidebar is really weak’, explain to them how they can make it stronger.  Just try to make sure that every time you point out that something is broken, you follow up with ‘here’s how you can fix it…’

And without further adieu,  the winnahs are…

Todd Jordan’s The Broad Brush.

Here’s Todd’s feedback for us:

1) Sidebar -> is it relevant/interesting to my blog’s focus

2) Landing pages -> serious help needed here. What can I change/add/delete- HELP!

3) Contact page specifically.

 

The Nerd Connection.

Here is Allison’s feedback for us –

I’d love to have The Nerd Connection [http://allisondduncan.com] looked at for readability. I feel like the sidebar may be too cluttered and the articles may be too indepth to garner much readership.  I’m trying to reach bloggers in general, Nerds/techies as a niche, and wordpress users as a whole.

 

Senior Care Corner.

Here is the feedback Barry gave us (BTW Barry gave INCREDIBLE feedback, if you want to get your blog chosen for one of the future Blog Review #Blogchats, give as much information as Barry did here).

Our blog is written primarily for adults who have elderly family members for whom they are caring and/or about whom they care, often while living some distance apart. The blog is first an outlet for sharing information to help both the family members and the seniors about whom they care, which is an interest of ours from both personal experience and work. We would like to earn revenue by providing attractive products/services that solve problems faced by our audience but realize we need a larger regular audience to make it meaningful financially.

We value the #BlogChat community’s suggestions regarding design changes or feature we should consider to get more repeat visitors. From our stats, the overwhelming majority of our visitors are first-timers and we would like to get more of them to return or at least to follow our content through some means. Are we making it easy enough to get our information? Does the overall visual effect of our site turn off visitors or negatively impact their perception of the information we provide?

Many #BlogChat participants are either part of our target audience or will be at some point so the feedback would be valuable from that standpoint as well as their experience with successful blogs.

 

So those are our 3 blogs that we will be reviewing tonight! Thanks to everyone that submitted their blogs, if yours wasn’t picked, please resubmit it next month!  Please visit these blogs today and make some quick notes on what you would improve about each one, paying close attention to the areas that the bloggers asked for feedback on.  This will be a lot of fun and even if your blog isn’t being reviewed, you can still learn a ton from what others have to share!  See you tonight!

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Review: #Blogchat LIVE at the B2B Forum

“So how does a Live #Blogchat work?”

I bet I heard that question fifty times this week, and my answer was always the same, “The same way #Blogchat works on Twitter”.

And it did. About 60 people showed up to Live #Blogchat, and we capped that number in order to have a smaller and more connected coversation.  What happened was a smart room full of people had a wonderful conversation and bounced ideas off each other and built on the ideas that others was sharing. It really was a perfect mirror to the online #Blogchat experience.  It even got to the point where smaller sub-conversations were developing (just like they do on Twitter), as people were going back to points someone else had made earlier to build on them.

To me, this represents among the best learning that can happen at conferences, when the attendees can connect with each other. As I said at the start of the #Blogchat, I think most people are smarter than they give themselves credit for, and I love that the Live #Blogchat was able to help facilitate these people to share their #smartitude.

And when it ended, I had several attendees tell me “You were right, it was just like it is on Twitter!”  Which was a very good thing 😉

Some of the main points we covered included:

  • Michael Brenner brought up a great point about content strategy in an enterprise environment. Should that strategy extend to govern how content is created no matter the tool?  Or should their be separate ‘rules’ governing content creation via different tools, such as a blog vs trade-show brochures? (Michael please chime in if you want to add to or clarify this point).
  • Bob Knorpp made the point that there is no ‘one size fits all’ rule when it comes to blogging.  He added that he is thinking of stopping his blog because he gets more traction on iTunes for his podcast.  Lou Imbriano countered that he thought every company should have a blog, and he talked about the impact his blog has made on his personal and professional life.
  • Matt Grant talked about how it can be hard to even determine exactly what a blog is, and how the tool is evolving over time.  He’s right, the line between a website and blog is getting blurry, and many people don’t consider it a blog if comments aren’t allowed.  I thought this point tied into Bob’s point about there not being a one-size-fits-all approach to blogging.

I definitely want to thank Marketing Profs for bringing the Live #Blogchat to the B2B Forum, and for Sensei Marketing and The Cooper Group for sponsoring the event.  Also, thanks to Sam Fiorella for co-hosting the Live #Blogchat, and for Brandie McCallum for live-tweeting the Live #Blogchat.  Click here to see the tweets from last night’s Live #Blogchat.  Thanks to everyone that attended the Live #Blogchat, and I wanted to share some of my favorite pictures below.  You can see all the pics in the set here.

 

How cool is this setup?
Meet and Greet before the smartitude starts!

 

Almost ready to get started!
A scholar and a gentleman, Lou Imbriano
It would not be a Marketing Profs event without CB Whittemore and Matt Grant

Seriously thanks to everyone that came, I love you guys!

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Get your blog reviewed during #Blogchat – June

It’s baaaaaaaack! Last month on a whim, I decided to have a #Blogchat where we all reviewed 3 blogs submitted by #Blogchat regulars. It ended up being a HUGE hit with all of you, so we’re going to make it a monthly feature on the 3rd Sunday of every month!

So if you want to submit your blog to be reviewed this coming Sunday (the 19th), please leave a comment to this post with the URL of your blog and exactly what areas you want us to look at.  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.  Please be as specific as possible, if you leave a comment and all you say is ‘I would love to have my blog reviewed, thanks!’, then we have nothing to go on.  The more specific you can be, the better the chance you have of getting your blog picked.

I’ll pick three blogs to be reviewed, and those will be announced on Saturday.  We’ll spend the first 20 mins of the next #Blogchat reviewing one blog, the second 20 mins on the second blog, and the final 20 mins on the third blog.

To give you an idea of what type of information you should include in your comment, here’s the blogs that were chosen last month to be reviewed.  Good luck!

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Heading to Boston for the B2B Forum…

The B2B Forum is this week in Boston, and since its a Marketing Profs event, I know it will be stellar. If you are still wanting to attend, make sure you register via this link and use code BLOGCHAT to get a $100 discount. Remember that you have to attend the B2B Forum to participate in the LIVE #Blogchat on Tuesday the 14th.  Now if you can’t attend and still want to follow the sessions online, you can still register for viewing the B2B Forum online, use this link and register with code BLOGCHAT, that will give you a 30% discount!

I’m really looking forward to this event, and of course the second Live #Blogchat, which will be co-hosted by Sam Fiorella from Sensei Marketing, who is the main sponsor for this Live #Blogchat.  Thanks as well to The Cooper Group, who are also sponsoring this Live #Blogchat. If you cannot attend the Live #Blogchat (Bless your heart!), then please make sure you are following @SenseiMarketing on Twitter, as Brandie will be live-tweeting the Live #Blogchat on Tuesday night, just watch the #Blogchat hashtag!

Also, on July 1st I will have a special announcement of where the NEXT Live #Blogchat will be after B2B Forum. And what till you hear the venue that will be hosting it 😉

This week’s posting schedule will go like this: On Tuesday I will have a recap of my 2-week experiment on raising my search traffic by posting more vs targeting keywords.  We’ll look at the results, what worked and what didn’t.

On Wednesday, I will have a recap of the Live #Blogchat at the B2B Forum. On Thursday, I will have a recap of the B2B Forum. On Friday I will be back home and probably sleeping most of the day 😉

If you will be in Boston this week for the B2B Forum, please let me know! I’d love to connect with you and say hi!