MackCollier.com

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#Blogchat Will Be LIVE During the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas!

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I’m thrilled to announce that #Blogchat will be a part of this year’s Adobe Summit in Las Vegas! A special LIVE version of #Blogchat will be a part of the Summit on Tuesday, March 22nd.  This #Blogchat will be held on Twitter and you can follow along with the #Blogchat and #AdobeSummit hashtags starting at 5pm Pacific, 7pm Central.

The topic of the LIVE #Blogchat will be The Future of Content Marketing.  Here’s the questions we’ll be discussing:

Topic: The Future of Content Marketing

Q1-Q3, The Future of Content Creation:

Q1 – How do you decide what type of content you should create?
Q2 – How do you scale your content creation efforts from a small team to company-wide?
Q3 – Whose job should it be create content in an organization?

Q4-Q6, The Future of Content Distribution:

Q4 – When you distribute/promote new content, how do you increase its organic reach?
Q5 – How do you decide what content is worth putting paid dollars behind?
Q6 – With every brand becoming a publisher, how do you stand out from the noise?

We’ll ask a new question every 10 mins.  Remember, this special #Blogchat begins at 5pm Pacific time on Tuesday, March 22nd! Please follow the #Blogchat and #AdobeSummit hashtags!

Additionally, Adobe will feature a special #GetRealChat from Pam Moore and Jay Baer will bring his Social Pros podcast to the event, you can find all the details here. And if you would like to follow along at home, here’s the link for the Live Stream of the Keynotes and other events from Adobe Summit.

I’ll be participating in the Adobe Summit as part of the Adobe Insider Program, along with Adobe’s other insiders. In addition to the Live #Blogchat on March 22nd, I’ll also be live-tweeting sessions during the Summit on Tuesday and Wednesday. Please follow me on Twitter and follow the #AdobeSummit hashtag.

If you want to add a LIVE #Blogchat to your conference or company event, click here to learn more information.

Disclosure: Adobe is compensating me for my involvement in the Adobe Insider Program as well as having #Blogchat be a part of the Adobe Summit.

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10 Things You Can Do TODAY to Make Your Blog Better

Skiing Towards the Sun

Ready to take your blog to the next level?  Here’s 10 things I have learned about making my blog better over the last 13 years.

Blog Maintenance

1 – Sign up for Google Analytics.  This will give you valuable information about the health of your blog.  I use it every single day to see how traffic is doing here, specifically Real-Time and referral sources.  It’s great to track what content is resonating with your readers.  Plus, if you ever want to bring on ads or sponsors for your blog, they will want to know your blog’s stats tracked via Google Analytics.  Plus it’s free, so get it today.

2 –  Get the right plugins that add functionality for you and you readers.  Here’s three of my favorites and make sure you add Akismet to block spam.  And most importantly, make sure all your plugins and WordPress are updated as soon as available.  Outdated plugins are the first thing hackers look for on your blog, so simply keeping everything updated will make your blog far more secure and if you are vigilant about it, that alone could be enough to keep your blog from ever getting hacked.

Blog Strategy 

3 – Nail down your audience. No more of this ‘I’m just writing to share my voice’.  That’s lazy, figure out WHO you want to share your voice with.  The exact person.  Do that and you can give them the message that’s relevant to them, and you’ll be more likely to earn their attention.

4 – Figure out your reader’s journey.  Mapping the ‘customer’s journey’ is a buzz-term in business right now, similarly, you need to think about the path your reader takes on and off your blog.  Think about the actions they are taking, and the actions you want them to take.

5 – Factor in content placement and blog design.  With the former point, think about the actions you want the reader to take, and organize your blog so it is easier for your readers to take those actions.  For example, my primary audience here is people working in marketing and social media for brands.  The primary actions I want them to take is to sign up for my newsletter, and read my content on brand advocacy.  So notice that my newsletter signup and recent posts on Brand Advocacy are both featured at the top of the blog, where they will be the most visible.

Content Creation  

6 – Nail your headlines.  Of all the tips in this list, this is the one that can instantly boost your readership the most.  I’ve written before about the importance of writing a great headline and how to do so.  Don’t think about how your headline will read here on this blog, think about how it will read on Twitter or Facebook.  That’s the test, consider if you glanced at your headline on Twitter for 2 seconds, would the headline alone prompt you to click the link?  If not, then it’s a bad headline.  However if you do click and then the post doesn’t back up the headline, that’s even worse.  So you want to have a headline that instantly grabs attention and makes me want to click the link, but also the content has to back up the claim or statement made by the headline.  Don’t summarize the post, make a specific claim or statement with the headline that grabs my attention.

7 – Create reader-centric content.  Don’t focus on blogging about your business (or the business you want to build) instead blog about ideas and themes that are relevant to your desired audience.  For example, Patagonia has a fabulous blog for their customers.  But at The Cleanest Line, Patagonia doesn’t blog about its clothing, it blogs about ideas and themes that are relevant to its customers.  Such as sustainability, protecting the environment, and being active outdoors.  Patagonia does this because the brand understands that creating reader-centric content means creating more interesting and relevant content for its customers.

8 – Get on a regular posting schedule.  All things being equal, the blog that publishes more content will have a higher readership.  So if you want to create and publish more content, a great way to do this and cultivate your readership is to get on a regular posting pattern.  If possible, start out shooting for at least one new post a week, and pick the same day to publish that post.  Wednesday, Saturday, it doesn’t matter as long as you make it the same day.  Then try to grow from that to 2 posts a week, then maybe 3.  But if you can only write 4 posts a month, I would rather see you spread out those 4 posts as one each Wednesday versus publishing a post the 1st week of the month then none for the next 2 weeks then 3 posts in the final week of the month.  Getting on a regular posting schedule trains your readers to know when to expect new content and helps grow your readership.

9 – Engage your readers.  ‘How do I get more comments?’ is one of the biggest challenges most bloggers have.  The quickest way to get more comments?  Actually REPLY to the ones you get!  Now granted you don’t need to reply to every single comment but if you did, you just doubled the number of comments on your blog.  And your replies will lead to more comments.  More importantly, if your readers know you will reply if they comment, that makes them more likely to comment.

10 – Pay more attention to your audience than the ‘experts’.  Case in point, you’ll hear all day that people hate list posts like this.  The more advanced bloggers will look down their noses at them and tell you to stop writing them that they want content that’s more advanced.  That’s because they are more advanced.  Every one of them LOVED the ‘listicles’ when they started blogging because they needed posts exactly like this.  So if you are writing for more advanced bloggers, then you need to provide them more 201 and 301-level content.  But if you are writing for beginning bloggers, guess what?  You need to give them 101-level content, and don’t listen to the more advanced bloggers that want more advanced content.  Because they aren’t your audience.

 

 

What did I miss?  Add them in the comments, please!

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Long-Form Content or Short Posts; Which Is More Important?

3347658610_bd6daf9b57_zFor years, there’s been a raging debate among both personal and business bloggers over what’s the ideal length for posts.  In general, most bloggers settle in on a post length of a few hundred words, but there are definitely exceptions to the rule.

There’s actually a lot of research that shows that the longer your blog post is, the more social shares, on average, it will get.  In fact, some studies suggest that blog posts can be up to 10,000 words (you read that right) in order to maximize social shares.  The logic is actually sound, as any post with over 2,000 words is likely going to be a deep-dive into a particular topic, and those posts tend to create more value, and as a result, they attract more of those coveted social shares.  I’ve seen this with my own content, as my most shared posts tend to be between 1,500 and 2,000 words.

Here’s the problem: The amount of time it takes to create a post with 1,500 or more words is much more than it does for a shorter post of 500 words or less.  In fact, for the two posts I just linked to (Both of which have between 500 and 1,000 social shares), it took approximately 20 hours total to write both posts.  Think about that for a minute: If you knew that it would take you 10 hours to write a post, how many posts could you write in a month?  1?  2?  None?

So if you commit to writing only long-form content, or posts over 1,500 words, you are also committing to creating far fewer posts.  This creates another problem: It’s harder to build readership if you publish only a few times a month.  Which means your 1 or 2 longer posts you publish a month are going to be seen by fewer people, which means they will gather fewer social shares.

Given all this, it seems there IS a role for shorter content, despite what the ‘experts’ will claim.  The bottom line is that while creating good content is important, creating MORE content is as well.  There needs to be a compromise between quality of content, and quantity.  Both are pivotal for building a readership.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been experimenting with a hybrid approach.  I’ve been writing shorter posts, sometimes as short as 200 words, sprinkling in 1 or so longer posts of 1,000 words or more a week.  This strategy has allowed me to significantly increase the number of posts I write here, and has resulted in a sharp increase in Social as well as Referral traffic.  This makes sense, because increasingly, traffic from Social is coming from social shares, and those visitors are likely to either know you already, or engage you on Twitter or Facebook AFTER sharing your post.  And as I talked about in the last post, it creates a nice way for your blog content to help you get noticed by others, then you can expand on that relationship via your newsletter, or during those social interactions that come after the sharing.

So if you’ve been on the fence about how long your posts should be, consider letting yourself off the hook and writing shorter posts.  Shorter posts still can be quite valuable for your readers, and creating more content also helps you build readership.  And more readers means when you do write that longer post, it will be seen (and shared!) by more people.

Pic via Flickr user 10Ch

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How Much Money Should You Spend On Your Business Blog?

BlogMouse-300x225The topic of #Blogchat last Sunday was “If You Could Spend $500 on Making Your Blog Better, What Would You Buy?”  It brought about an interesting discussion and here’s the transcript.  I wanted to add my thoughts because anything related to money and social media is a topic that a lot of companies have questions about.

First, let’s tier purchases that your business could make on improving its blog:

The Essentials These are the items you should invest in from launch.

1 – Dedicated/Upgraded hosting.  If you are running on WordPress, go with the self-hosted version and pick dedicated hosting.  Your experience will be more seamless, your site should run faster, and updates will be done automagically.  Many companies are now offering dedicated WordPress hosting, and you can typically get it for anywhere from $15-$100 a month, with price being mostly a function of number of monthly visitors you will have.  For many blogs, $15-25 a month will get it done.  I use GoDaddy’s dedicated WordPress hosting and its $20 a month and this site gets around 40,000 visitors a month.

2 – Sucuri Security.  They are currently offering complete malware protection and removal, plus firewall for $199 a year.  I went with them in March of 2013 to deal with a malware issue that had all but crippled this blog.  It took a while to get cleaned out but once they did I haven’t had a single problem with security on the blog.  Trust me, the money is worth it just for the piece of mind.

3 – A Premium Blog Theme.  Premium themes give you more flexibility in the design and functionality of your blog.  A custom-built blog can easily cost $5,000-$10,000, so this can be a nice compromise.  This site runs on Thesis, which is great if you are comfortable with coding, CSS and love tinkering with code.  It can be a bear for the novice, though.  There are dozens of premium themes to consider, here’s a nice list.  Most range in price from $50-75 for a one time fee.

So the total price for the Essentials is going to be around $50-75 for the theme, and a monthly fee of $35 or so for the dedicated hosting and Sucuri.  That will give you a nice foundation for your blog and for most businesses, that will be all you’ll ever need on the design/backend.

Now let’s look at the second tier:

Upping Your Content Creation/Strategy Game  

1 – Audio/Video equipment.  As more businesses are moving blog management in-house, it pays to start investing in the equipment that will help you more easily create content.  Specifically, you’re talking a camera for shooting pictures and video, and a microphone for recording audio such as interviews and podcasts.  Now if you aren’t interested in recording video, and just want to shoot pictures, if your bloggers have newer smartphones, the cameras on those will probably be fine for snapping shots as they are out and about that can later be used with posts.  But if you’re wanting to shoot video, it makes sense to invest in a decent camera and then you can not only shoot video, but take better pictures as well.

Next, if you want to do a podcast or create audio (without video), then you need a decent microphone.  The microphone I use for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show is the Rode Podcaster USB mic.  It’s an excellent mic and many of the top podcasters use it, such as Kerry O’Shea Gorgone on the Marketing Smarts Podcast.  Its a dynamic mic, which means it picks up the person talking directly into the mic and tends to not pick up as much background noise as a condenser mic.  A lot of the less expensive mics you’ll find are condenser mics, and these can work fine, if you are recording in a very controlled environment with little background noise.  But if you are going to be recording in an environment where other people will be, go with the dynamic.  Plus, I believe the sound quality is better.  The Rode I purchased came from Amazon as part of a podcasting kit for $350.  If you want to just get the mic, it is usually around $200, plus you’ll need at least a desk stand for it, which you can get for under $20. Plus it has a 10-year warranty!

2 – Attending Conferences/Webinars.  These are a great way to get tips and ideas for content creation and strategy.  Of course, prices vary widely, quality webinars you can view over the internet are typically anywhere from $50-$150, whereas total expenses for a conference trip could top $2,000.00.  The big advantage to attending a conference is that you get to talk to other attendees that are having the same issues you are, so it can really help you improve your own efforts by comparing notes with others.

3 – Blog/Content Marketing Strategy Audit.  A professional Blog/Content Marketing Strategy Audit is a great way to take your blogging and content marketing efforts to the next level.  It gives your blogging efforts clarity and it always helps to bring in an outside source to give a second opinion and to potentially catch opportunities that you may be missing.  It’s definitely an investment but the investment should also help you bring clarity to the effectiveness of your blog and how it benefits your business.

 

All of these options should be viewed as investments in your business blog.  As such, you should consider the expense, and then consider what benefits your business will gain from that expense to decide if the investment is worth the money.

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How Personality Differences Keep 60% of Your Readers From Taking the Action You Want, Sunday’s #Blogchat topic!

TeamRealWorldOn Sunday (July 19, 2015) we’ll be discussing the affect that your personality can have on your blog and writing.  Specifically, our topic will be How Personality Differences Keep 60% of Your Readers From Taking the Action You Want, starting at 8pm Central!

This #Blogchat will be sponsored by Team Real World, please follow them on Twitter.  Additionally, Team Real World has created a custom landing page just for #Blogchat that will have resources for this week’s chat as well as resources from past weeks!

Here’s our schedule:

Topic: How Personality Differences Keep 60% of Your Readers From Taking the Action You Want

Every 20 mins will answer a question related to this topic:

8:00 pm – 8:20 pm: How do personality differences get in the way of success?

8:20 pm – 8:40 pm: What in your personality helps or hinders readers?

8:40 pm – 9:00 pm: What key things to do and not do to connect with readers more?

 

This should be a great discussion and make sure you check out the #Blogchat landing page for resources and perhaps a couple of surprises just for #Blogchat!

See you Sunday night starting at 8:00 pm Central!

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Selling Products On Your Blog, Tonight’s #Blogchat topic!

TeamRealWorld

UPDATE: Here’s the link to the transcript for tonight’s #Blogchat on Selling Products on Your Blog

Tonight (7-12-15) we’ll be discussing How Do you Decide What Products to Sell on Your Blog!  A lot of you are interested in monetizing your blog, and sponsor Team Real World will help us figure out how to do this.

Here’s the questions we’ll tackle tonight:

8:00 pm – 8:35 pm: How to do decide what type of products you want to sell? Digital? Physical? We’ll talk about the strategy behind deciding.

8:35 pm – 9:00 pm: What type of products sell better on a blog vs a website?

Every #Blogchat in July is sponsored by Team Real World.  Please follow them on Twitter.  Also, they have created this great landing page just for #Blogchat that has recaps of key points and concepts covered.

Selling products on your blog can be a very tricky proposition, but tonight’s #Blogchat will help you understand how to think through the process and create a strategy that helps you make money from your blogging!  Be sure to tune in tonight starting at 8:00 pm central!

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Team Real World is #Blogchat’s Sponsor for July!

TeamRealWorld

 

UPDATE: Here’s the transcript to tonight’s #Blogchat

I’m thrilled to announce that Team Real World will be sponsoring #Blogchat for the month of July!  Team Real World helps clients grow and improve their workplace culture and performance by training them how to better work together with effective tools and processes so they can reach their common goals and values.  You can learn more about Team Real World at its website, and also check out their web tv show Winning in the Workplace, which has just launched.

Here’s the topics we’ll cover for July:

July 5th – Time management skills and making time to write blog posts (especially for a business)

July 12th – Ideas for products you can sell on your blog, thinking through strategy, etc

July 19th – How your personality affects your writing and blog.

July 26th – OPEN MIC!

And here’s the schedule for tonight’s topic: Time Management Skills and Making Time to Write Blog Posts:

8:00 pm – 8:30 pm: What daily habits can you develop to help you get the most done for your blog?
8:30 pm – 9:00 pm:  How can you manage your blog consistently and not neglect the rest of your life or work?

Time management skills are something I know a lot of us struggle with and Team Real World has some tips they use with clients that they will be sharing with us tonight.  Speaking of which, make sure you are following Team Real World on Twitter to see their tweets as they’ll be participating in each #Blogchat this month!  Tonight’s #Blogchat starts at 8 pm Central, and I’ll be posting the transcript here at 9 pm tonight.  See you at #Blogchat!

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How Your Twitter Community Can Help Your Blog, Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic With Jessica Northey!

Update: Here’s the transcript from tonight’s #Blogchat with Jessica Northey!

So let’s talk about Jessica Northey for a second.  She created #CMChat as a country music chat on Twitter, and has literally turned it into an empire.  It has its own website.  It has its own awards event.  She knows some of the biggest country music and rock stars. Blake Shelton. Garth Brooks. Ronnie Dunn. Alabama.  The Oak Ridge Boys.  She also works with some of the biggest global brands.

Jay Baer? Chris Brogan?  Brian Solis?  All rock stars in this space and I think they are brilliant.  But if you look at everything that Jessica has accomplished in the last 3 years in this space, she holds her own with anyone.

Which is why I am thrilled that she’ll be returning to co-host #Blogchat tonight!  We’ll be chatting about how you can leverage your Twitter community to grow your blog.  Here’s what we’ll be chatting about:

8:00 – 8:20 – What’s the best way to build a following on Twitter?  Jessica will tell us what’s worked for her and how you can do the same.

8:20 – 8:40 – How can you use your following on Twitter to help promote your blog content?  

8:40 – 9:00 – Jessica will talk to us about how she grew #CMChat from a Twitter chat into a literal online and offline empire.  REALLY pay attention to this portion because I think Jessica has been brilliant in creating and building the #CMChat brand.

If you are one of the 2 people that aren’t already following Jessica (over half a million followers on Twitter) then follow Jessica here.  We’ll get started tonight at 8pm Central.  If you want to sponsor #Blogchat in July, here’s rates and details.

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How Your Business Can Tell Its Story With Blogging, Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic!

UPDATE: Here’s the Hashtracking transcript from this #Blogchat.

Tonight (5-24-2015) on #Blogchat we’ll be discussing How Your Business Can Tell Its Story With Blogging!  We’ll talk about what businesses should be sharing on their blogs, and what customers want to read.  And if you have some examples of company blogs that you love, please feel free to share those in the comments and during #Blogchat as well!

And don’t forget that this month’s #Blogchat sponsor is the Marketing Writing Bootcamp from MarketingProfs!  The Marketing Writing Bootcamp is a 13-class online course that begins on June 11th.  And if you register via this link and use promo code BLOGCHAT you will receive an additional $200 discount!

Our topic tonight is How Your Business Can Tell Its Story With Blogging.  We’ll cover three main areas:

1 – What information should companies share on its blog.  History?  Background?  What makes for an interesting story to customers?

2 – Should companies focus on their employees on their blog?  Does it make a company more interesting and trustworthy to you if you know more about its employees?

3 – Should companies incorporate their customers into their stories?  Should they focus on individual customers that are their ‘rock stars’?  

#Blogchat will begin at 8pm Central on Sunday, 5-24-2015.

And because the Marketing Writing Bootcamp is sponsoring #Blogchat in May, they will have a very special giveaway just for #Blogchat!  The Marketing Writing Bootcamp is focused on helping you solve your writing problems and becoming a better writer.  To that end, MarketingProfs will be giving away one free pass to the online Marketing Writing Bootcamp.  In order to be eligible to win the pass, all you have to do is write and publish a blog post by 5-31, discussing your biggest writing challenge.  When it comes to writing, what holds you back?  Share what your biggest writing challenge and MarketingProfs will select one post from one blogger at the end of the 5-31 #Blogchat to win a free pass to its online Marketing Writing Bootcamp!

To be eligible to win the free pass to the online Marketing Writing Bootcamp, do these two things:

1 – Make sure in your post that you note that the post is written as your chance to win a pass to the Marketing Writing Bootcamp and please link to the Marketing Writing Bootcamp at URL http://mprofs.com/blogchatmwb

2 – Leave a comment here with a link to the blog post that you write as your entry in this giveaway.  Just leave a comment and share your post.  Something like ‘Hey Mack, here’s my entry, my post on my biggest writing challenge is here – http://www.myawesomeblog.com’  You must leave a comment here to be eligible to win the pass.  This helps Marketing Profs keep up with everyone that’s written a post.

And if you want to save $200 on the Marketing Writing Bootcamp, remember to use promo code BLOGCHAT to register for the Marketing Writing Bootcamp and you will receive a $200 discount off the $595 price!

See y’all Tonight at 8pm Central on Twitter!

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Writing For Social Media, Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic!

UPDATE: Here’s the Hashtracking transcript for tonight’s #Blogchat

Tonight (5-17-2015) on #Blogchat we’ll be discussing Writing For Social Media!  We’ll talk about how and if you need to change your writing for promoting on social media sites, or if engagement on social media sites shapes the type of content you create, IOW do you focus more on including pictures that are pinnable to Pinterest or that can be easily viewed on Twitter, etc.  We want to create content that’s useful to our readers, but we also want to appeal to potential readers that are active on other social media sites as well!

And that’s because this month’s #Blogchat sponsor is the Marketing Writing Bootcamp from MarketingProfs!  The Marketing Writing Bootcamp is a 13-class online course that begins on June 11th.  And if you register via this link and use promo code BLOGCHAT you will receive an additional $200 discount!

Our topic will be Writing For Social Media.  We’ll cover two main areas:

1 – How Can You Write Better Headlines For Your Blog AND Social Media?

2 – What Content Elements (Photos, videos, infographics) Work Best on Other Social Media Sites?

#Blogchat will begin at 8pm Central on Sunday, 5-17-2015.

And because the Marketing Writing Bootcamp is sponsoring #Blogchat in May, they will have a very special giveaway just for #Blogchat!  The Marketing Writing Bootcamp is focused on helping you solve your writing problems and becoming a better writer.  To that end, MarketingProfs will be giving away one free pass to the online Marketing Writing Bootcamp.  In order to be eligible to win the pass, all you have to do is write and publish a blog post by 5-31, discussing your biggest writing challenge.  When it comes to writing, what holds you back?  Share what your biggest writing challenge and MarketingProfs will select one post from one blogger at the end of the 5-31 #Blogchat to win a free pass to its online Marketing Writing Bootcamp!

To be eligible to win the free pass to the online Marketing Writing Bootcamp, do these two things:

1 – Make sure in your post that you note that the post is written as your chance to win a pass to the Marketing Writing Bootcamp and please link to the Marketing Writing Bootcamp at URL http://mprofs.com/blogchatmwb

2 – Leave a comment here with a link to the blog post that you write as your entry in this giveaway.  Just leave a comment and share your post.  Something like ‘Hey Mack, here’s my entry, my post on my biggest writing challenge is here – http://www.myawesomeblog.com’  You must leave a comment here to be eligible to win the pass.  This helps Marketing Profs keep up with everyone that’s written a post.

And if you want to save $200 on the Marketing Writing Bootcamp, remember to use promo code BLOGCHAT to register for the Marketing Writing Bootcamp and you will receive a $200 discount off the $595 price!

See y’all Tonight at 8pm Central on Twitter!