MackCollier.com

by

September’s Blogging Recap: The Relaunch

So let’s talk about what happened here in September. I committed to relaunching this blog and boosting my writing schedule for two main reasons:

1 – More of us are going to be spending more time at home, and more time with our desktops and laptops. Covid is changing work schedules, leading to many of working remotely, and for some workers, those changes will be permanent. More time spent with laptops and desktops means, in theory, that we will be reading blogs more.

2 – Distrust in social media sites like Facebook and Twitter continues to grow. I honestly think that both sites will reach a point over the next few years where users will leave in droves. Additionally, both sites could be facing government regulation in the near future as they seem to be shifting from platforms to publishers. I think the migration from these sites will lead to an increase in blog readership.

So around August or so I decided to double-down on blogging. Looking back, I honestly should have made this move in May or so, but live and learn. I discussed this on August 31st when the blog relaunched, but I came back with a commitment to have 6 new posts a week. My only goal for September was to get 6 new posts a week up. A pretty ambitious goal when you consider that I had only published 12 new posts in the first 8 months of the year.

I met that goal, so for October the goal is to keep writing at the same pace, but also focus more on adding visual elements to the posts and work on implementing good SEO practices. Really for September I just wanted to prove to myself that I could meet the new posting schedule. I did, so let’s improve more for October.

Here’s what happened in September:

Traffic up 21.49% from August! I’m very happy with those results. As I continue to post more, search traffic in particular will grow very quickly and continue to push overall traffic levels up.

I started this blog in June of 2009. The traffic for the blog grew consistently every year. So much so that by early 2015, I was getting almost 1,700 visitors a day. The blog was starting to really take off. I decided in February of 2015 that I needed to get serious about the blog and take it to the next level. I made two changes; The first is I switched from ‘shared’ hosting to a dedicated WordPress host. This was a great move as it immediately cut the loading time for the site in half.

But the second change I made ended up having disastrous affects. Around this time, I read an article on an SEO site that said if you wanted to increase search rankings for your site, you should drop the www from your blog. For instance, instead of wwwDOTmackcollierDOTcom, have the site’s URL be mackcollierDOTcom. So I made this change, I switched it to mackcollierDOTcom. But what this article failed to mention was that this change should only be made if your site is NEW. Because making the switch screws with the SEO rankings you have already established otherwise.

Which, unfortunately, is what happened with this blog. My traffic for January of 2015 was 48,385. I made the changes in the middle of February of 2015, and my traffic started dropping immediately. Almost all of the drop was attributed to a decline in search traffic.  By April of 2015, traffic was already down to 36.481, and it continued dropping every month. for 5 years. By August of this year, I was averaging around 50 visitors a day, where I was getting around 1,700 a day in early 2015 before I made the changes. Needless to say, it was incredibly disheartening to see my traffic going down for 5 years, despite everything I was doing, and not know why.

So I really see this as my blogging ‘rebirth’, a chance to rebuild the blog to where it once was, and even surpass it. Yes, starting over sucks, but I’ve learned so much about writing and blogging that I didn’t know in 2009. So the process will be much faster.

I appreciate everyone who has read, subscribed and left me nice emails and comments on social media.

So the goals for October are:

1 – More emphasis on visual elements. I’ll have to dig back into Thrive Architect and see what I can come up with.

2 – More emphasis on good SEO practices.  This will mostly be on the backend and really won’t impact the actual content here.

3 – Traffic goal of 3,000 visitors. That would give me an average of roughly 100 visitors a day after averaging almost 80 a day in September.

 

Onward! Thanks again for reading and letting me know what you think, it is greatly appreciated!

by

Three Ways to Create Content That Connects With Customers

create contentIt’s really tough to create content that consistently connects with customers. Part of the problem is simply staffing; Most companies hand off content creation to mid or lower-level digital people. If they do a good job, they often get promoted into more marketing-oriented roles. So there can be a constant talent-drain happening for your content team.

One way to avoid this is to have good processes in place. Part of this is having a system for the type of content that you should be creating to connect with your customers. Today I wanted to talk about three different roles that your content can play. This will help you think about how you can quickly and easily create content that has value for your customers.

 

Be a teacher. Think about how you use search engines. If you have a problem, you’re searching for a solution, right?  Here’s some of the basic search terms you’ve probably used before:

“What’s the best way to…”

“How do I get rid of…”

“Which (product) is best to solve (problem)?”

 

Often, when we use search engines, we are really searching for the answer to a question or the solution to a problem we are having. So apply this to your customers; What problems do they have, and what solutions do they need?  Once you have those answers, then create content that answers those questions and provides those solutions! This not creates valuable content for your customers, but it also creates the content that search engines will serve up when other customers when they search for those same terms!

So how do you figure out what questions your customers have?  First, look at any feedback you are already getting from your customers. This could be emails feedback on social media channels, or even letters. Next, talk to your customer support team, and see what are the common issues that customers are having. Is there a certain product feature that many customers are having trouble understanding how to use? Is there a common complaint that customers have, and maybe you can create a blog post that helps explain the issue to customers?

Finally, look at product reviews, not just for your products, but also your competitors. For instance, if you see that reviews for a competitors product are constantly complaining that the competing product does not have a certain feature that your product does, then you should point that out in your content. But all of these types of customer feedback give you very valuable insights into how you can create content that helps your customers and which also helps address issues they are facing.

 

Be a storyteller. I am a sucker for case studies and ‘real-world’ examples. I love hearing how people ‘just like me’ are using a product or service and hearing how its helping them. This helps me understand how I could use the product or service as well, and its honestly a more effective way of selling and promotion than simply coming directly from the brand. The reality is, we tend to trust other customers more than we do brands. It is the central lesson behind my book Think Like a Rock Star.

So you can create content that showcases how your customers are using your products or services. This will help other potential customers better understand how your products work, and can also address concerns they have about your products. In fact, you can take customer feedback you get from creating content that teaches in the above example, and use it here. Let’s say you write a ‘teaching’ post that shows customers how to use your product in a particular way.  Sarah leaves a comment on your Facebook page saying thank you, and says that your post solved a problem she was having and now she loves using your product. You could contact Sarah and learn more about how she uses your product, then use her experiences as a ‘case study’ post to show other customers how your product helped Sarah.

 

Be inspirational. So we’ve talked about creating content that teaches your customers how to better use your products, and content that showcases how current customers are benefiting from your products. These are great ways to create engaging content for your customers, but these methods are focused on what’s happening today. What if you wanted to create content that shows customers how their lives or daily routines could be changed for the better, by purchasing your product? What if you could create content that could paint a picture for customers of how their lives would be better, if they owned your product?

Here’s an example of how this could work. I have always been a car owner. I hate trucks and SUVs, simply because when I drive one, it feels like I’m driving a slow tank and I’m gonna run over everything and hit every car. I love driving cars because it feels like I’m more in control, like I have better vision and they are just more fun for me to drive.

So I’m not in the market today for an SUV. However, what if you could paint a picture for me of what my life could look like if I owned your SUV? Let’s say you have an SUV you want to tell me about.  “Sorry, I don’t like SUVs, I drive cars.”

“Hear me out!” you say.  “This SUV is different”.

You then tell me about how your SUV has a dedicated wifi router in place, so it is in effect a ‘rolling hotspot’.  The SUV gives the driver a constant, high-speed internet connection. The center console comes with a laptop docking station and multiple USB ports. The back row of seats feature enough room to comfortably sit and the back of the driver and passenger seats have monitors for taking video calls. Finally, the roof has an attachment that allows you to install a green screen so you can create and record videos, with the included interior cameras. Basically, this SUV is a ‘mobile office’, that would allow me to do any of my normal business and content creation functions, no matter where I am.

Would that make me interested in your SUV?  Well…it wouldn’t hurt! By showing me how your SUV could help me perform most or all of my daily business functions even while on the road, that adds a great deal of value for me. If you can paint a picture for the customer via your content of how the customer’s life can be changed for the better TOMORROW by owning your product today, that gets the customer’s attention.

 

So that’s three ways you can create content that will connect with your customers.

by

Toolbox Saturday: How to Create a Posting Schedule For Your Blog

So let’s talk about how often you should post to your blog, and when you should post. This is one of the most important aspects of your blog and content strategy.

First, define what you are trying to accomplish with your blog. How often should you post to meet your objectives?

Who are you trying to reach?  Who are these people, what type of information would they want from your posts and when would they be most likely to read them?

How much time do you have to write posts? This area should come with the caveat that generally, the more often you write, the easier the process becomes. So if you start writing daily, after two months you might be able to write several posts in the same amount of time that it used to take you to write just one.

For me, when I decided to relaunch my blog at the first of the month, I wanted to use my blog in two main ways: As a channel to create thought leadership articles, but more importantly, to raise awareness for who I am and what services I provide.

Many companies that blog want to use their blog as a way to build awareness of their business. The cold, hard reality is that the best way to build awareness with a blog is to write as much useful content as possible. More content simply accelerates the building of awareness. So you want to write as much as you can. Now you see why I committed to writing 6 posts a week!

You may not have time to write 6 posts a week, you may have to hustle to make time to write one. So you want to figure out which days are the most important for you to publish new content. If you could only publish a new post one day a week, which day would you pick?  Which day would be the most likely for your audience to read your blog?

Rank the days in order of most valuable to least. If you really aren’t sure, think about who your audience is, and when they would have time to read your blog. If you are trying to reach a professional audience, you would likely want to pick times during their typical workday.  Probably in the morning an hour or two before lunch, then in the afternoon an hour or two after lunch.

Here’s a general schedule I use:  If I can only post once a week, I pick Wednesday.  If I can only post twice a week, I pick Tuesday and Thursday.  Three times a week?  Tuesday-Thursday.  Four times?  Monday-Thursday.  Five times a week?  Monday-Friday.

Now this is NOT a one-size-fits-all schedule. For instance, some business bloggers only post on Saturdays, with the theory being that Saturdays is when their audience is off work and more likely to have some leisure time to read blogs.

So when you are creating a posting schedule for your blog, go through these steps:

1 – Write down why you are blogging. Think about what you are trying to accomplish with your blog.

2 – Write down who your audience is. What do they do for a living? How will your blog content help them? When will they likely have time to read your blog?

3 – How much time do you have for creating blog content?  Your answer to the first question will play a big role in determining how much time you will need to spend writing to achieve your blogging goals.

4 – Once you know why you are blogging, who you are trying to reach with your content and how much time you have, decide when you will blog. Figure out how many days every week or month you will blog and keep that same schedule. For instance, if you will blog two days a week, pick the same two days every week. This helps train your readers to know when there will be new content on your blog.

5 – Re-evaluate regularly. Give your new schedule a month, and see what your results are. Did you have enough time to stick to your schedule? Do you see that you could blog more often? Are you hitting the metrics you need to hit?

6 – Stay with it. Blogging is like a big rock rolling down a hill, it takes a LOT of effort at first to get it moving, but once it starts rolling, it goes FAST! You likely won’t see a lot of momentum at first with your blogging, so you want to stick with it for a few weeks or even months. Eventually, you’ll start to see the needle move.  Over time, the growth will accelerate and it will likely take you less effort to get the same results.

 

Good luck!

by

We Are the News Now

This morning I saw this tweet about the fall of newspapers in the US:

https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1306529824383668225

This graph apparently includes digital as well as print, which is key. Note that growth across all metrics seemed to stall out around 2000, and around 2005-2006, everything started going downhill very quickly.

I think there are two key contributors to this decline. First, remember that in 2005 or so is when blogs started becoming popular. I started blogging in 2005 and there was already a decent community of bloggers out there. I don’t think usage was mainstream yet, but you could tell that it was heading in that direction. I also remember in those early blogging years how journalists looked down on blogs, how they said anyone could blog, but you had to be a professional to be a journalist! Over the years as blogs became more influential, journalists began to source bloggers more often, and many media sites added their own ‘blogs’ to gain a semblance of credibility. Times had definitely changed.

But another factor happening at the same time is worth noting. As blogs and social media use exploded, it meant more viewpoints and more discussion of the news. It also meant more discussion of the coverage given to news stories by journalists. We began to notice that a lot of the news was, quite frankly, biased. Some of it was outright dishonest. We see this today and it’s only getting worse:

https://twitter.com/LD25_GOP/status/1306224239783981057

The reality is, mainstream media sources such as newspapers are struggling in great part because most of us simply do not trust the information they publish. That’s why we are increasingly turning to other sources for our information. I believe this distrust of mainstream media is also bleeding over into social media platforms. For instance there is a popular saying on Twitter that ‘Twitter is not real life’, to speak to how users and media reference opinions that are popular among the Twitter user community, but disconnected from what the larger population thinks or feels.

I think all of this is working to the advantage of those of us who are leveraging blogs as a publishing platform. I also think every company should think of themselves as a publisher. In fact, it might be more useful to think of it in terms of being your Publishing Strategy instead of your Social Media or Digital Strategy. By creating and publishing a steady flow of content, you not only help educate current and potential customers about what your company does and what its values are, but you help differentiate yourself from competitors.

But perhaps most importantly of all, publishing regular content gives you a voice and the ability to reach others. On August 31st, I relaunched this blog, and began publishing 6 new posts a week. I’m two weeks into this new publishing schedule. My traffic is already up over 30% in just two weeks. Granted, we still talking small numbers, less than 100 visitors a day, but that still shows the power of creating content to drive awareness and generate interest.

Do this experiment; Think of your company as being a publisher. What would you talk about? What messages would you want to communicate to your customers? What would you want them to know about you? What areas would you cover? You could even view the publishing as creating sections of a newspaper. You could have a business section, a news section, a leisure section, an editorial section, etc.

We are all the news now. Make sure your company is sharing its voice, don’t settle for opting out of the conversation happening around and about your company. Take an active role in it.

by

Marketing and Movies: Moneyball

I am a sucker for shows or documentaries that detail how a business started from nothing and became a success. I’m also a big fan of sports movies. Moneyball is both, so of course it’s one of my favorite movies.

Moneyball follows the 2001 offseason and 2002 season that saw the Oakland Athletics overcome massive budget constraints and the loss of its star players to set the American League record for consecutive wins, and make the postseason. I think the story of Moneyball will resonate with a lot of business owners who are having to take a long, hard look at its direction given the economic and business uncertainty we are all facing heading into 2021.

In the 2001 offseason, Oakland lost its two ‘star’ players, Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi to rivals who could afford to pay far richer salaries than the Athletics could. General Manager Bill Beane went to the Athletics owner and told him he needed more money to make the Athletics competitive. The owner said there was no more money for Beane and that he should do the best he can. Beane then went to his scouts who were focused on trying to replace Giambi and Damon. Beane became frustrated with this mentality because he knew that the Athletics couldn’t afford players that could hit the same number of HRs and who had the same batting average as Giambi and Damon. And even if they could find a couple of players that could put up similar stats to Giambi and Damon, the Athletics would lose them in a year or two when a richer ballclub offered them a higher salary that the Athletics couldn’t match.

Beane knew that the Athletics needed to change the way they viewed acquiring players. At first he tried to get the best players the Athletics could afford. He visited the Indians, and proposed several trades or player acquisitions, but Beane noticed that these offers were all rejected after advisor Peter Brand spoke to management. Beane left the meeting frustrated, and decided to speak to Brand directly to find out what he told Indians management to get them to kill his player offers.

Brand then explained to Beane that many baseball teams were making a grave mistake in evaluating players. Most teams at the time were focusing on stats like home runs, runs batted in and batting average. Brand explained “your goal shouldn’t be to buy players, it should be to buy wins. And in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs.” Beane was impressed by Brand’s new approach to player evaluation and hired him from the Indians to help him rebuild the Athletics team.

In part of doing that, Beane and Brand began evaluating offensive players based not on HRs, RBIs or BA, but instead on whether or not they got on base. In this scene, Beane meets with the Athletics’ scouts and explains the change in philosophy when it comes to evaluating players:

As you can see, the scouts were confused by this approach as soon as they heard it. As Beane and Brand continued to acquire players who didn’t have flashy stats (but who did get on base), the fans and rest of the league scratched their heads at what the Athletics were doing. Then, the team began to struggle mightily, resulting in huge pressure being put on Beane to change his ‘moneyball’ approach to building his team in order to save his job. Beane decided to see the season through, even trading Carlos Pena, who was projected as a future All-Star, simply because he wasn’t the best fit for his new ‘moneyball’ system. That decision led to Brand asking him to please reconsider, and Beane told him that if they believed in their ‘moneyball’ approach, that they needed to commit to it:

Over time, Beane and Brand worked with the players to help educate them on how to get on base more often and how to play smart once they did. In one scene, Beane explains to a player that he wants him to focus on getting on base, not on stealing bases.  The player replies “but you pay me to steal bases, that’s what I do”, to which Beane replies “I pay you to get on first, not get thrown out at second.”

They worked with the players to stress to them the importance of waiting for their perfect pitch. Brand used analytics to show the players when to take pitches and when to swing, based on their hitting history. The play of the team improved dramatically, as the Athletics went from one of the worst teams in baseball to one of the best. Along the way, the Athletics won 20-straight games, setting an American League record that would stand for 15 years.

Now there’s several themes from Moneyball that I think tie nicely to successful marketing and business. First, there’s having the courage to try something new if your current strategy has proven not to work. Beane faced a ton of resistance to his Moneyball approach both within the Athletics organization, and in the sport of baseball. He was trying something new, and quite honestly a lot of people wanted to see him fail. That leads to the second key lesson, to commit to your strategy and give it a chance. When the Athletics actually did start losing, that just increased the pressure on Beane to drop the ‘moneyball’ approach. But Beane trusted in the strategy that he and Brand had developed, and committed to seeing it through.

But what really resonated for me personally was the idea of evaluating players based on whether or not they get on base versus if they have flashy stats. Getting on base can be done in some very unsexy ways, like taking 12 pitches and a walk, or getting hit by a pitch. Beane just wanted to see his players get on base, he didn’t care how they did it. At the time, many teams wanted a player that would hit 40 HRs, and didn’t really care if his on-base percentage was .250.

For years, I approached blogging and content creation as if I was constantly chasing home runs. Or in terms of blogging, a home run would be an ‘awesome post’. So every post was supposed to be a home run, or ‘awesome’. And we constantly hear this, don’t we?  ‘It’s about quality, not quantity!’ or ‘If you can’t write a great post, wait till you can!’

The reality is, no blogger writes a great post every time. But for years, that was my goal, write a great post every time. And write a lot of them.

I used to love Kathy Sierra’s blog Creating Passionate Users. Kathy was a very infrequent blogger. She would typically blog once, maybe twice a month at most. But almost every post she wrote, was incredible. Whenever a new Kathy Sierra post was published, it would create an immediate ripple throughout the blogging and tech community.

Kathy hit a home run every time she posted. I thought that was the standard. That’s what I wanted to do.

So every time I would start out to blog, I wanted to make every post be an awesome one. By the 3rd or 4th day, I had typically run out of ‘awesome’ ideas for posts. So I would tell myself ‘if you can’t write an awesome blog post today, then don’t write anything’. So I wouldn’t. Then the next day I would try again. Before I knew it, I was blogging once a week, then once every other week.

This process repeated itself over the years. This year, I decided to try something different. Before, I told myself “Your job is to write an awesome blog post today”.  Now, I tell myself “Your job is to write a blog post today”.

See the difference? Before I was shooting to hit a ‘home run’ at every at bat, which is completely unrealistic.  Now, I focus on getting on base.  Just writing a blog post.

Because the reality is, the more you write, the better you become at writing.  The more often you blog, the better you become at blogging, the better you become at writing awesome posts.

So that’s my ‘moneyball’ approach to blogging; Don’t worry about hitting a home run, just get on base.

by

Toolbox Saturday: The Google Analytics Mobile App

Google Analytics has always been one of my go-to tools for maintaining and growing my blog. What I’ve always liked about it is that I can quickly easily get key information about what’s happening with my blog’s traffic at any moment.

And that level of convenience has been taken to the next level with the Google Analytics Mobile App. Thanks to this app, I’ve now got that information right with me on my phone. And these days, I have my phone with me almost every every waking moment, whereas I’m often away from my laptop for hours at a time. I also have the WordPress mobile app on my phone and with Jetpack enabled it also gives me some basic traffic information and between the two apps I can pretty much tell what’s happening with my blog traffic in a few seconds. Which is just what I need.

Here’s a couple of screenshots of the basic traffic information that’s available to me when I open the app:

This is the information I look at the most. I want to see how many people are online right now, and what traffic is looking like so far today. Whenever I track traffic, I always track it hourly, versus the same day a week ago. This gives me a useful way to see how traffic is doing today versus the same day a week ago. Basically, I’m looking for spikes up or down.  If traffic is way off, I want to know why.  If it’s way down, was there a connection issue or was the site down?  If it’s way up, was there a post that was getting shared a lot, or was I getting some spam traffic?

Here’s another graph found as soon as I open the app, a sort of ‘heat map’ of how traffic did throughout the day:

I like the way the traffic levels are represented as colors, that helps me easily understand what times of the day had the most traffic, and which ones had the least. This can help me adjust when I promote content and when I publish new content.

Overall, I really like having this information available to me at a glance and right as soon as I open the app. Now the one thing I wish was available as soon as I open the app would be a list of the most viewed posts for that day. I get that with the WordPress app, but it would be nice to have that with the Google Analytics app all in the same place. There’s probably a very easy way to add that report that I simply can’t figure out.

You’re probably already using Google Analytics to track your blog’s traffic, so why not grab the mobile app as well?

by

The Blank Space on the Calendar

I talked last week about how I’m enjoying using the Editorial Calendar plugin to help organize and plan my content here. It’s helped me plan out my content this week and last as I rededicated to blogging 6 times a week.

Well all last week and all this week, there’s been a blank spot on Friday, Sept 11th. I simply couldn’t decide on a topic for today’s post. Now in the past, my blogging philosophy has always been if I can’t write something awesome, don’t write anything at all. Which sounds like a good idea. The problem I would often run into was, if I missed one day, it seemed to increase the pressure to make sure I got a post out the next day. But it also had to be an ‘awesome’ post. So if I couldn’t come up with an idea for an ‘awesome’ post on that 2nd day, just wait till the 3rd.  After I had gone 2-3 days without blogging, it was very easy to justify not blogging again till I had that ‘awesome’ idea.

As you can imagine, that often led to gaps of a week or two between posts.  Sometimes longer.

When I was planning out the ‘relaunch’ of my blog over the last few weeks, it came after I saw this wonderful interview given by Kobe Bryant. What really struck me was this portion here Kobe talked about how he had to show up every day:

Kobe’s comments about showing up every day and being faithful to the people who were paying to see him resonated with me.  I was thinking of two separate stories that relate to the value of showing up, and what happens when you don’t.

When I first started blogging in 2005, I had no idea what I was doing, and I wanted to study how other people were blogging in order to improve my craft. I would use Technorati’s blog search (remember them?) to find new blogs, and I wanted to find great blogs that weren’t yet ‘known’, but I also wanted to see how other new bloggers were growing their blogs. I found this one blog, and I started with the first post on the blog. For the first couple of weeks, the blogger had a new post every day like clockwork. Then starting on the third week, the posts came every other day. Then one post the fourth week.  Then a couple of weeks later, the title was the post “Why isn’t anyone commenting on this blog???”

That was the last post on the blog. I knew at that point I’d just seen this blog die. Anyone that’s started a new blog knows that it typically takes months if not years to build a decent and engaged readership. Especially in 2020.

Here’s the second story that Kobe’s comments reminded me of. I talked yesterday about how Twitch content creator Nickmercs is using YouTube to create new content. Nick regularly gets over 100,000 viewers for his Twitch streams. That’s in 2020, so keep that in mind when you see this tweet from 2014:

Here’s Nick in 2014, 6 years ago, happy that he had 170 viewers for that day’s stream. From 170 to 100,000 in 6 years. Not bad.

So I think there’s value in creating the best possible content you can, but it’s also important to show up as often as you can.

Or as Seth Godin likes to say “Done is better than perfect.”

Well today’s post is Done. The blank space on the calendar is filled. On to tomorrow.

by

Why I’ve Decided to Blog More and Spend Less Time on Social Media

Adversity doesn’t create character, it reveals it.

Over the last few years, there’s been a growing sentiment that social media has become more and more toxic, especially in regards to the discussions happening around news and politics.  I’ve heard many people say they have left Facebook completely because they were overwhelmed by the constant arguing and finger-pointing.

Since 2020 is an election year, we all knew it was going to get bad on social media.  What none of us expected was for covid-19 to happen. The election, plus much of the country being on lockdown for most of the year has understandably put all of us under a huge amount of pressure.  We are worried about how to deal with a real or likely loss of income.  We are worried about the health of ourselves and our families. We are worried about the future.

What troubled me, and I especially saw this on Twitter, was how people reacted to the spread of covid. Many people became judgmental, shaming people for not reacting in a certain way or for not taking certain issues or developments in the way that they felt was appropriate. Instead of being understanding and compassionate. I saw too many people judging and attacking.

And what stunned me, was that many of these people were in my Twitter network. Some of these people were friends I had followed for years. On the one hand, I would tell myself that they are worried and scared and rightly so. On the other hand, we are ALL worried and scared, and rightly so.  Being scared and worried doesn’t excuse you from being an asshole.  And a lot of people I followed on Twitter were exhibiting this behavior.

So I decided to ‘de-tox’ my Twitter network. I effectively unfollowed 60% of my network over about a month.  But I started thinking about this, and realized this isn’t a Twitter issue, it’s a social media issue.  People are being jerks on Facebook just like they are on Twitter.  Every community has its jerks.  If they are in the minority, it’s easy to ignore and overlook them. But when the jerks become the majority and start creating and dominating the conversations, I want to opt-out.

That brings me back to blogging.  Literally.

The one thing that I’ve always loved about blogging is the power it gives you to share your voice. It gives you the ability to have a say, to share your thoughts with the world. Today’s social media world is based around the soundbyte. 140-character missives designed to spark instant engagement. Often emotionally-charged attacks and insults that people are compelled to immediately respond to.

It’s the complete opposite of a conversation. It’s yelling in 140 characters, the person that yells the loudest gets the most Likes and RTs.

Blogs are different. Blogs are where you can have your say fully and completely.  You can use 140 characters, or you can use 140,000 if you want.

I’ve talked before about the 4-step process for creating advocacy; Interaction leads to Understanding leads to Trust leads to Advocacy.

On social media, we often never have those interactions. We yell at each other and talk at each other instead of to each other.

With a blog, you have a chance to have your say.  You have a chance to state your opinions and make your case with as many or as few words as you need. You can then respond in the comments, or via email or even on your own blog.

But more than anything, I’m tired of the yelling. We need less yelling and more listening. We need less judgment and more empathy.

We need to be better people. That’s what I think, and it’s a lot easier to say that here, than it is on social media.

by

Toolbox Saturday: The Editorial Calendar Plugin

Welcome to the first edition of Toolbox Saturday! Every Saturday I will talk about a tool or technique you can use to make your blogging, content creation or social media efforts just a little more effective and efficient.

When I decided to ‘relaunch’ my blog, I wanted a plugin that would help me visualize the posts I have running for the rest of the week, and month.  Basically, I was hoping to find a plugin that would show me all the upcoming posts that were due to publish, on a calendar.

Luckily, that’s exactly what I found with the Editorial Calendar plugin.  Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like for this blog in September:

At a glance, I can tell what my editorial calendar looks like.  I can see the first week is ready to go, and the remaining weeks still have work to do.  Also, I love how it lets me get a list on the right side of all the unscheduled post drafts I have ready to go.  Over the last 11 years of blogging here, I have started a lot of posts that never made it past the ‘draft’ stage. This gave me a way to see what all those drafts are.  Now granted. some of the older drafts covered topics and information that may have been relevant 5-10 years ago, but no longer was.  So those were scrapped, but I also found many great ideas that had been buried for years in my drafts section.

I’ve heard so many bloggers, the vast majority really, say that they have plenty of ideas for posts, they just don’t have the time to write. I have the opposite problem; I struggle to come up with ideas for content.  Once I figure out an idea for a post, the actual writing of the post takes no time at all. So anything that can help with the content creation process, I want to know more about it! I also assume that a lot of you, whether you are a blogger for your business or a content manager for your company, you have more time to pick up tips and tricks on the weekend. That’s why I wanted to run Toolbox Saturdays on the weekend, so more of you would have time to implement these tools and tips on your own blogs to help take your blogging efforts to the next level.

Hope everyone has a great weekend, see you on Monday!

 

PS: My buddy Andy Crestodina at Orbit Media asked me to pass along this link to take his blogger survey.  He’s been doing it the last few years now and it’s always interesting seeing the results.  I’ll share the results from this survey in a later post when they are ready!

by

What Happens When Your CEO Wants to Talk Politics on Social Media?

“Very bad things.” answered every content manager who has ever had to deal with their CEO wanting to do this. Politics are divisive enough most days, but especially now in an election year.

But the boss comes to you, wants you to set them up a ‘blog’ so they can get some stuff off their chest.

You will advise them this is a bad idea, they will immediately alienate half the customer base, etc. But the boss is determined  “This election is too important to stay slient!” they might say.

Sigh. So if you decide to move ahead with the boss’ idea of having a blog to talk politics, focus on talking about the values that are consistent with your brand, and avoid hot-button topics such individual candidates. The realty is, as soon as you mention one of the two candidates running for president, most people have an immediate and visceral reaction. So if your CEO truly wants their message to be heard, encourage them to write about the values of the candidate they support moreso than the candidate himself.

Let me give you an example of why this is so important.  College students in their late teens and early 20s have historically been more liberal in their political thinking. This is across the board. As they age, they tend to become more moderate, and eventually more conservative in their politics. Not true for everyone of course, but for the group, it holds.

So most college students view themselves as thinking more as a liberal. Several years ago, a group of pollsters went to college campuses and asked students what they thought of some of then President Obama’s policies. The students overwhelmingly favored the policies. Then the pollsters started asking students what they thought of those same policies, but didn’t explain that they were coming from the President. Pollsters found that when students didn’t know the policy was coming from Obama, they were less favorable toward it. In another example, in 2016, pollsters talked to college students about what they thought about Bernie Sander’s policies, but for each policy, the students were told that it was actually Donald Trump’s policy.  The students overwhelmingly disapproved of the policy when they thought it was coming from Trump, and were shocked when they learned it was actually coming from Sanders.

The point in these studies is that many Americans, especially in an election year, have very emotional reactions for any ideas that they believe are tied to a particular candidate. But if you disconnect those ideas from either candidate, people ‘calm down’ and are more likely to listen to the idea. As long as they don’t think the idea is tied to the candidate that they can’t stand!

So if your CEO is determined to write about politics, encourage them to NOT write about the candidates, and instead write about the values and policies of the candidate they support. Ask them to think about why they support that candidate, what beliefs they agree with, and also ask them how those values beliefs tie into your company’s core values and beliefs.

Point out to your CEO that he or she wants the readers to LISTEN to their ideas. And as soon as the CEO introduces the candidate they support into the equation, half the audience will immediately tune out. And since the CEO’s audience will ideally be the company’s customers, that could easily result in lost business.

Focus on the values and policies of the candidate, not the candidate himself. Highlight the values and policies that tie to the core values of your company.

That’s how your CEO can effectively walk the tightrope of blogging about politics.

 

PS: As we head into Labor Day weekend, I want to wish everyone a safe and happy few days off. And since Labor Day is the unofficial end of Summer I wanted to share this instrumental from FM-84 which just oozes the vibe of being a teenager during the Summer circa 1985.  Have a great weekend!