MackCollier.com

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What happens when you lose your love of blogging?

Last night’s #Blogchat topic was getting inspired again if you’ve lost your love of blogging.  It was a fabulous discussion once again, and here’s the transcript if you missed it.  I wouldn’t say that I no longer love blogging, but over the last few weeks, I am loving it a lot less, and it seems more like ‘work’ than FUN for me.

One of the things I continue to struggle with is how often to post here.  I want to create as much amazing and valuable content for y’all as possible.  But I also know if I only blog when I have something amazing to say, y’all may not hear from me for a few months 😉  So then it becomes a trade-off between posting more often with slightly less valuable posts, versus posting slightly more valuable posts, but less often.  Sometimes I just want to stop blogging and only blog when I have something that truly think is worth sharing.  If that means I only blog once a month, so be it.  But at the same time, this blog isn’t my personal soapbox, it is a business development tool.  So I can’t afford to only post once a month, I need to use this tool to create and increase visibility for myself.

So how do you find the optimal number of posts for your blog?  I would like to shoot for a consistent 2-3 posts a week here.  I’ve talked to other bloggers recently and they are going through the same ‘I don’t want to blog more for the traffic, I want to blog less for my readers’ struggle.  Sure, I know if I write 5 new posts a week, that traffic will skyrocket, and overall post quality will also likely fall.  Is that tradeoff worth it?  I don’t think so.

Another option is to allow guest posts.  Honestly, I don’t like using guest posts, and don’t like reading blogs that allow a lot of guest posts.  A few months ago one of my favorite bloggers turned their blog into a group blog, and I rarely read the blog anymore.  Because the reason why I was reading it (that blogger) never posts there anymore.  So while I may rarely use guest posts in the future, I want to be driving the majority of the content here.

So how did you set your posting schedule?  How did you find a method that works for you?  Think it’s time for me to shake things up here, what’s worked for you?

Pic via Flickr user ptrktn

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What story does your content tell about you?

You can learn a lot about someone and how they use social media by the content they create.  Pick a blog, any blog, and look at the last 10 posts.  Is the content instructional?  Inspirational?  Self-promotional?  Educational?  All of the above?

The same thing applies to companies, and that will be the topic of the LIVE #Blogchat on Tuesday at Content Marketing World (Did I mention it’s at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame?).  We’ll be talking about companies can tell their story via the content they create on their blog.

One company that I think does a fabulous job of telling its story via the content it creates on its blog is Patagonia:

With The Cleanest Line, Patagonia does a fabulous job of creating content that isn’t focused on the company and its products, but rather the ideals and beliefs that are core to it, and its customers.  It’s a wonderful example of focusing on The Bigger Idea.

From The Cleanest Line’s About Page:

Build the best product, do no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.
– Patagonia’s Mission Statement

The goal of The Cleanest Line is to further Patagonia’s mission by encouraging dialogue about the products we build, the sports we love and the environmental issues we’re concerned about. By talking openly about the products we build, Patagonia users can help us achieve ever greater standards of quality and functionality. By spreading the word about specific environmental issues, we can increase awareness and take action as quickly as possible. By sharing field reports, we can inspire one another to keep experiencing the natural wonders of our precious planet. And like any good conversation, there’s always the possibility for pranksters and poets to direct the conversation towards territories lacking any seriousness whatsoever.

Patagonia is clear to let the readers know that the content it creates will be focused on issues larger than simply its products.  In fact, most of the content is focused on environmental and wildlife stories and issues that are important to the company, and its customers.  And by taking this approach, I think it also makes the content being created far more interesting.

Look at your company blog; what story are you telling?  Which company blogs create posts that you actually ENJOY reading?

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If you want to be a great blogger, you have to develop your blogging voice

Last night during #Blogchat I asked my friends what was the ONE thing they believed made a blog great.  The vast majority of the answers were associated with content.  Creating amazingly, great, valuable content.

I disagree.  In my mind if you want to be a successful blogger, here’s the secret: You have to believe that you have a voice worth sharing.

A few weeks ago I went back and read some of the very first blog posts I ever wrote, almost 6 years ago.  I literally cringed at some of the logic I used, the points I was trying to make.  A lot of it was wrong, but the thing about it is, I wrote from a place of conviction.  I believed that I was right, and that I deserved to be heard.  And as a result, people responded to what I wrote.

People want to read bloggers that are passionate about their ideas, that believe in what they are saying.  For example, one of the common worry issues for bloggers is the idea of blogging about a topic that ‘everyone else has already covered’.  Or blogging about the ‘hot topic of the moment’.

How many times have you read a blogger mention a topic that other bloggers have covered, and just link to those bloggers and add ‘check them out’.  Ummmm…..no.  We don’t want that, we want to hear what YOU have to say about this same topic.  Don’t just point us toward those amazing blog posts, if they are truly amazing, then we’ve probably already read them anyway.  Your job is to tell us what YOU think.

“But what if someone says my post stinks?”

Then you know you are REACHING people.  Not everyone is going to agree with your ideas.  In fact you WANT some people to disagree with your position.  That’s how you learn, by looking at different angles to the same topic.

You have a blogging voice that deserves to be heard.  Even if only one person reads your blog.  We all want to feel good about the content we create on our blogs, and we all want to feel like we are making a difference and connecting with others.  How can you truly connect with anyone if you don’t put yourself and your opinions out there?

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Should Social Media/Marketing Consultants List Their Prices?

I am totally piggybacking on Marcus’ post over at Spin Sucks, but this is a question I have been pondering for a LONG time.

The two most popular posts so far this year (by a mile) are this post on How Much Social Media Costs in 2011, and this one on How Much Social Media Costs in 2010.  Also, three of the top 7 keywords that send search traffic to this blog are associated with the price of social media services.  So I only have to look at my Google Analytics to tell that there is a HUGE interest in the price of social media services.

And yet, most social media and/or marketing consultants don’t list their prices.  Or if they do, this information is usually buried on their site, in doing research for both of the above posts on the price of social media services, I found several ‘name’ consultants that did have prices for their services, but it was like hunting on their site for a needle in a haystack to find the numbers.  It seems that the few consultants that do quote prices are quoting prices that are so far and above what most of their peers charge that it seems to simply draw ridicule from their peers.  Which might be the plan, cause it also draws a lot of attention to their prices!

I did start listing prices for my Social Media Strategy and Blogging Strategy Audits, but that’s really all I have solid prices down for.  And I also offer a Satisfaction guarantee on both, which is something else I am experimenting with.

But really I want to know what y’all think about this issue.  And I can completely see both sides:  I can see why it would be better to list prices, but I can also see why it would be hard/impossible to quote exact prices for some services.  And to further stump me, I have very good friends and business professionals that have told me I should absolutely list my prices, and others that tell me I absolutely should not!

What do you think?  Should every consultant/agency list prices for their services, or nothing?  If you are a consultant or work for an agency, what’s your policy?

Should consultants list what they charge for social media and marketing services on their site?  Yes or no?

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Learn how to improve your blogging and SEO with Topic Buckets

Two of  the biggest issues that most bloggers face is how to come up with ideas for posts, and how to optimize their blog for search engines.  I think most bloggers can solve both these problems (as well as tightening your blog’s focus) with Topic Buckets.

Here’s the way Topic Buckets work: Take your blog, and find 3-5 main topic areas, or Buckets that you like to write about.  For example, on here I have three main Topic Buckets:

1 – How individuals/companies can improve their blogging efforts

2 – How companies can use social media in general

3 – How companies can better understand and connect with its brand advocates.

Occasionally I post something that doesn’t go into those buckets, but most of my posts fit into one of those categories.  Now note that if I only write one post a week for each bucket, I’m up to 3 posts a week!  This helps me structure my blog and its posts.  For example, if I look and see that last week I only wrote posts that would go into Buckets 2 and 3, it tells me that this week I need to write a post from Bucket 1.

So once you create your list of Topic Buckets, your posting schedule can naturally evolve from that.  This is also a way to help you bring clarity to your blog’s focus.  If you write down all of your blog’s Topic Buckets and you have 15, that’s a good hint that you are covering too much ground.  Try trimming the fat down to 5 buckets or less.

For example, note that yesterday’s post on Advocates would obviously go in the #3 Topic Bucket for me, and this post will go in the #1 Topic Bucket.  So if I want to get a post up tomorrow or on Friday, I know that it would be best if it came from the #2 Topic Bucket (How companies can use social media in general).

Now as for SEO; When you create your Topic Buckets, you need to also make a list of the keywords and phrases that would be associated with those Topic Buckets, and you can use those in your title and post.  Look at the title of this post, ‘Learn how to improve your blogging and SEO with Topic Buckets’.  Keywords like ‘Learn’ and ‘Improve’ associated with ‘blogging and SEO’ were chosen on purpose because I want this post to do well in search engines.

I could have just have easily made the title ‘A cool trick I learned that might help you’, but that doesn’t really give you (or search engines) any real idea of the type of content in the post.  Remember that keywords and phrases help  search engines decide what type of content is in your post, and if it will be useful to people that are searching.

So try out Topic Buckets and see if that helps your blogging efforts.  I think you’ll find that it definitely makes getting on a posting schedule easier, and should help you improve your SEO as well.

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#Blogchat LIVE video plus info on my Social Media and Blog Strategy Audits

One of the ‘problems’ I am running into when I talk to event organizers and potential sponsors about doing a LIVE #Blogchat is that it’s sometimes difficult for them to understand what a LIVE version of a Twitter chat would look like.  I try telling them that a buncha smart people get in a room and talk to each other, but somehow that still doesn’t get the point across very well 😉  Thankfully, Chris and his team from Huddle Productions created a short video with footage from the LIVE #Blogchat that Dell sponsored last week prior to the start of its #DellCAP event.  This should give you a better idea of what a LIVE #Blogchat is like (Hint: Smartitude galore!):

If you are interested in learning more information about adding a live #Blogchat to your existing event, or in sponsoring one, click here.

The second area I wanted to point your attention to is an update I am making to my consulting services.  For a couple of years now, I have been offering Social Media Strategy Audits to clients.  This service has proven to be very popular so I’ve decided to begin offering Blog Strategy Audits to clients as well.  For many companies, a blog is the only social media tool they are using, so for these companies, a Blog Strategy Audit makes more sense.  Both of these audits will analyze what the company’s competition is doing, as well as assess how the client is currently using blogging/social media, and give them a blueprint and recommendations on what they should do moving forward.  And perhaps most importantly, both audits will include a section on how to measure the results of your strategy.  So I’m not only going to tell you exactly what your strategy should look like, but I’m also going to show you exactly how to measure your efforts.  This is a key area that’s often missing from most blogging/social media strategies.

Both the Social Media Strategy Audit and the Blog Strategy Audit are two-month projects.  For each, you’ll make three payments: You will be billed for the first payment when you agree to purchase the audit, and I must have this payment before I can begin work on your audit.  At the end of the first month, you will be billed for the second payment, and I must have this payment before I can deliver the finished audit.  At the end of the second month, the finished audit will be delivered, along with a bill for the third and final payment.

The price and billing schedule for each audit is:

Social Media Strategy Audit – Price is $7,500.00.  You will be billed in three equal payments of $2,500.00.

Blog Strategy Audit – Price is $5,000.00.  You will be billed in three payments of $1,600.00, $1,700.00 and $1,700.00.

Now, the big change I am making to these services is that as of now, I am adding a guarantee to both of these audits.  Note that above it states that you will be billed for three payments, and that for each audit, you will receive the finished audit, along with a bill for the final payment.  When you receive the finished audit and if you are not satisfied with the audit, then you do not have to make the third and final payment.  I *only* want you to make that third and final payment if you are thrilled with the audit.

I often ask my close friends to give me advice on my work, and to be honest, when I told them that I was thinking of adding this guarantee to these audits, most of them did not think it was a good idea.  As they correctly pointed out, if the client is under no obligation to make the final payment, then why would they?  But I am ok with that.  Because I want companies to understand that I am willing to take that risk because I believe in the quality of the work I will produce for them.

So if your company is interested in either service, please click here for more information on the Social Media Strategy Audit, and click here for more information on the Blog Strategy Audit.  And if you have any additional questions about either audit, or about Live #Blogchat, please do email me.

PS: If you want your blog to be considered for one of the three review slots for this Sunday’s #Blogchat, please leave a comment on this post!

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Get your blog reviewed during #Blogchat – July

It’s that time again!  Once a month we review the blogs from 3 participants during #Blogchat, and we’ll be doing it again this Sunday!  The idea is that you get a ‘fresh set of eyes’ to look at your blog and give you some ideas and pointers on what you’re doing.

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.

Again, if you want to have your blog be eligible for being reviewed, please LEAVE A COMMENT to this post and please give us as much information as possible about what we should be looking at on your blog.  Please don’t just say ‘I would like to have my blog reviewed, thanks!”  Give us 2-3 things we should be giving you advice on, and please tell us WHO you are writing your blog for, and what its focus is.

That’s it!  I’ll select the 3 blogs that will be reviewed and have that post up by Saturday.  Good luck!

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Sunday’s #Blogchat topic – How to Respond to Negative Comments

Tonight’s (Sunday) #Blogchat topic will be How to Respond to Negative Comments, and we’ll be joined by TWO special co-hosts!  Helping us learn how to handle negative blog comments will be Bazaarvoice’s Chief Marketing Officer, Erin Nelson plus Bazaarvoice’s Social Media Manager Ian Greenleigh!  Please click the links to follow both of them on Twitter, and click here to follow them on Bazaarvoice’s blog!

As you know when we have co-hosts, we try to have more structure to the topic, and here’s how our discussion will unfold tonight:

1 – 8:00pm Central when #Blogchat starts, discuss what’s the best response to a negative comment.  How should you handle it, what tone to use, what to address, etc.

2 – 8:20pm we’ll discuss WHO should respond to a negative comment.  Should it be the bloggers, or is there circumstances where the blogger should route the complaint to an internal SME, etc?

3 – 8:40pm we’ll close by talking about if there are any situations where a blogging company should NOT address a negative comment?  What if the commenter is a ‘troll’ and purposely attacking the company?

So that’s the structure for our #Blogchat tonight!  And to help you prep for tonight, here’s a link to a post I ran last year where I shared some information that Bazaarvoice has found on the value of negative comments and reviews.  It was one of the most popular posts here last year and has some fascinating revelations!

See everyone at 8pm, Central!

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How to Measure the Success of Your Blogging Strategy

Quick: What’s the goal of your blog?

You can probably answer that pretty quickly.  Maybe you want to build awareness, or establish thought leadership.  Or maybe you want to generate leads or sales.  Or use it as a customer service platform.

Now comes the stumper: How do you measure the success of your blogging strategy?

This is where most blogging companies trip up.  They know WHAT they want to accomplish with their blog (more awareness! more leads!), but they don’t know how to measure if their efforts are successful.

And here’s the ‘bad’ news: It’s not always easy to determine if your blogging efforts are working, but it’s worth making the effort to try to figure it out.

Let’s take a very simple example, a company that’s blogging strategy is to use the blog to build its awareness.  If you ask this company how it judges if its blog is ‘working’, it would probably say that it looks at the number of comments it is getting.

On the surface, this makes sense.  If a blog is getting a lot of comments, a lot of people must be aware of it, right?  But what happens if everyone comes to that blog, leaves a comment, and…..that’s it?  So every new post has a lot of comments, but how will more comments alone raise the awareness of the blog?  To a degree, it will.  Because as people leave more comments, they will generate more visits, and more pageviews, etc.

But while the company wants people to leave comments, they would also love if these people would also share the post with their networks.  Ah-ha….so now we have TWO ways to measure success: Number of comments, and number of times the post is shared. The sharing could be ReTweets, it could be Facebook Shares, Stumbles, etc.

Which then opens another can of worms, WHICH method of sharing is preferred?  Let’s say your company isn’t really active on Facebook or StumbleUpon, but you are on Twitter.  So for your company, you’d prefer RTs over Stumbles or Facebook Shares.

So now we have two ways to measure the success of our strategy to use our blog as an awareness-building tool:  Number of comments, and number of ReTweets.

But wait a minute…you know, it’s great when people comment on your blog, and you love it when they RT your posts.  But it almost seems like a waste to have them do that, and then leave your blog without taking something with them.  What if you offered free white-papers for download?  Those would benefit your readers, PLUS help establish your authority and thought leadership, which would prompt your readers to share the white-paper with their networks, which would boost your awareness!

So now we have THREE ways to measure the success of our strategy to use our blog to build awareness of our company:

1 – Number of comments

2 – Number of RTs

3 – Number of downloads of our white-papers

Now we’re getting somewhere!  The next step is to prioritize these actions.  If you could only have a visitor perform one of the above three actions, what would it be?  You would probably say you’d want your readers to download your white-paper, followed by RT your post, then comment on your post.

So then the most important success indicator for your blog is number of white-paper downloads, followed by number of RTs, and number of comments.  With these goals in mind, you then need to think about how you not only create content that moves readers toward performing these actions, but how you organize your blog as well.  And your calls to action!

But that’s a post for another day, as I don’t want to bog you down with too much.  The point is, when we started, the only way we knew to measure the success of our blogging strategy was to ‘get more comments’.  Now we have THREE different metrics that we can measure, and we have those metrics prioritized.  From this, we can continue to flesh out our measurement process and make it more effective.

So when the boss asks if the blog is working as an awareness-building tool for the company, which answer is better:

1 – “I think so, we get comments on almost every post!”

or….

2 – “Absolutely! Comments are up 23% over the previous quarter, RTs on Twitter are up 37%. Additionally, we had 237 downloads of our white-paper last month on the blog, a 12% conversion rate!”

I know who I would be giving a raise to! 😉  When you are trying to measure the success of your blog, give some thought to the actions that you want readers to take on your blog, then find metrics that tie back to those actions, and measure them.  That will also help you create content and an experience that encourages the type of behavior/actions that you want your readers to engage in.

But it all starts with rolling up your sleeves and putting some actual thought into what a successful blogging strategy is for your company.  It will take a lot of work, a ton of trial and error, but it’s worth it.

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How to Add Google +1 Button to Your WordPress Blog and Track Social Media Engagement With Google Analytics

Now that everyone is rushing to get into Google Plus, you are going to see a lot more sites and blogs adding the +1 button.  I added it here last week, and the process is easy as pie.  It’s done via a plugin, here is the page for the one I used.  You can either go to that page and download the plugin then upload it manually, or go to the Plugins area of your WordPress dashboard, and search for it Google +1 Button and that should bring it up.  Pretty sure this is for WordPress.org only.

Something else that got kinda lost in the shuffle with everyone rushing to get onto Plus was that Google Analytics is now tracking social media engagement levels!  If you are already set up with a Google Analytics account, you’ll need to make sure you are using the New version, look at the top of your screen and there should be a link to Switch to the New Version.  You want to click that, because the new version of GA has some extra functionality, including measuring social media engagement.

When you get in, then click Visitors, and you’ll see a few new options, including Social.  When you click it, then you’ll see options to track Engagement, Action and Pages.  Now if you have installed the Google +1 plugin above, then GA will automagically start showing you how many clicks your Google +1 buttons are getting, how many page views, time spent on site, etc.  When you click on Engagement, it will show you your traffic for the last month, then the amount of traffic that was Not Socially Engaged, and Socially Engaged.  Here’s a screenshot of what mine looks like now:

Yeah I know, nothing to write home about yet 😉  But as I get a lot more data in, I can see how the usage of people that click the Google +1 button compares to other site users.  And the great thing about this report is that it can also track engagement levels with Tweets, Facebook Likes, Facebook Shares, and I believe even when posts are Stumbled!  The bad news is, that can’t be done via a plugin (yet), those can only be added via coding that I do NOT want to touch yet.  If you are adventureous, here’s some tutorials on how you can add this functionality.  I did note that Google is asking plugin developers to start updating their plugins so that it will add tracking functionality automagically, similar to how the Google +1 Button works.  So my guess is that these plugins that we are now using to add ReTweet and Facebook Like buttons to our blogs will soon offer this, so I’m going to wait a bit before I try to add it myself and break my blog 😉

So there you go!  If you were wanting to add Google +1 buttons to your blog, the above plugin will do it for you, then once you have it installed, you can start tracking how many clicks you’re getting and other forms of engagement with the new version of Google Analytics.  Let me know what you think!