I have been to three Blog World Expo (BWE) conferences in Las Vegas and three
Military Blogging (milblog) conferences and it is clear that military bloggers
are a little different in the world of blogging. As someone who writes on ?
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Monday, May 2, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
To Blog or Not to Blog
Outside of the fact that you happen to be reading one right now, I find that there are lots of smart, business savvy folks out there who when placed in the position of having to explain, strategize or build a blog (or decide if one should be built at all) are at a bit of a loss. Blogs are usually easy for most people to recognize but harder for folks to define.
When I hosted a free class on the subject (as I do from time to time) it "sold out" (in the way only free classes can!) the room filled to capacity.
Even those who can sort of describe a blog, often find it hard to understand when, why and how to create one so that it will actually create benefit for a business, organization, cause etc..
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Of course everyone who manages a successful blog has found themselves in a similar position at least once and gotten past it, so I thought I could impart a few words of advice.
First of all, what is a blog really?
A blog is just a Web site.
Let me repeat that for the non-believers — A BLOG IS JUST A WEB SITE.
But it's a special kind of Web site.
Let's start by looking at the different kinds of Web sites that exist. Many of the students of my in-person classes will recognize this.
According to my calculations and ruminations, there are essentially 4 kinds of Web sites you can build based on how your business attracts revenue:
Web Site Types
BrandingExamples: Coca Cola, Dove Advertising Revenue
Examples: Inc.com, Google.com eCommerce
Examples: Amazon, Zappos Lead Generation
Examples: messagemedium.com, razorfish.com
A branding site like Dove is working hard to immerse the viewer in the company's ethos. You can't actually buy any product from their site, they don't seem to sell ads, nor are they pushing hard for you to give up your contact information. Dove's site is all about convincing you of their commitment to improving women's natural beauty and self-esteem in the hope that this will generate an emotional affinity to their brand.
Related Articles by Maisha:Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (final/part 3)
Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (part 2)
Small Business "Success Studies" Using LinkedIn
LinkedIn the 11 Most Useful Features for Small Business
An advertising revenue site like Inc.com has articles and information as its content. It is designed and organized into categories like "Business Advice" "Tech Startup" "The Internet Strategist" to display that content in a way that's easy for you — the reader — to find, read and pass along.
An Online Store like Zappos.com has products — shoes - as its content. So it is organized and designed to make it easy for you to find the kind of shoes you're looking for. One of reasons Zappos is so popular is it provides a variety of ways to find what you're looking for.
A service Web site like message medium has services as its content. So our site is organized to make it easy for you to find our services and also to find the things that make us a credible company to work with — testimonials, articles, client samples, news clippings etc.
As a business owner, more than likely you are not looking to spend millions of dollars on a branding Web site so let's focus on the other three.
So How do Blogs fit in?
Blogs are an interesting breed of Web site. In structure, they are most like Advertising Revenue sites. Like a newspaper, they usually publish content with some predictable regularity, and the content is typically arranged by date and/or by category so that it can be easily found by readers.
But what's interesting about blogs and has made them so ubiquitous, is that they, with all of their content and social elements, can be used very effectively to support an Advertising, eCommerce or Lead Generation Web site.
My blog "The Internet Strategist" is designed to fit within Inc.com's business model of generating revenue through advertising and things like events.The blog of Tony Hsu, the CEO of Zappos, is designed to generate brand loyalty and increase sales of the products Zappos sells.
This blog also does double-duty, helping you the reader understand my areas of expertise as an Internet Strategist, which my company message medium hopes will help us generate more consulting, Web site design and construction, and Internet marketing clients as well as attendees in our classes.
So the first thing you have to identify when considering blogging is — what kind of business do I have and how do we stay afloat? How do we generate revenue? This will help you determine your ultimate blogging purpose.
Next time — I'll discuss "The Big Payoff" what can you expect a blog to actually accomplish for you?
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Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (final/part 3) Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (part 2) Small Business "Success Studies" Using LinkedInLinkedIn the 11 Most Useful Features for Small Business
Evil Genius Finds Case Study in Her Pepsi
Tracy Brown, CEO and founder of Evil Genius Designs, doesn’t profile as the standard entrepreneur type. After working at Anderson Consulting and as Director of Technology at American Eagle Outfitters building their ecommerce and running information security, the next step isn’t usually a startup. But I found out the real story at South By SouthWest (SXSW) when I met Tracy by her video game at the PepsiCo Stage.
Tracy was a semi-professional gamer on the side. When she helped a student who wanted to be a game designer, she ended up finding her dream Master’s Degree program at Carnegie Mellon, applying, and cashing out her career. During her years at school she worked both on an alternate reality game and on the Activision “Quantum of Solace” project. While finishing the program, she came up with the idea for “Get In Line Games,” which is the concept of entertainment while you’re waiting for a concert, event or movie to start. Her goal was to make the waiting experience “worth waiting for” and to harness attention during those times. Throw in brand connections and you get the Evil Genius part of the story.
Evil Genius’ 5 employees and extended team have created a platform that enables people with mobile devices to play a shared game around a common screen. If you have a phone, wifi-based iPod or Nintendo, it can be your game controller. Their first experiment, at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) conference had 7,000 people playing while waiting in line for two hours to get in, being exposed to brands and products, and thanking them afterwards for a fun game.
Skip forward to last summer and Evil Genius Designs applied with over 500 other companies to be part of the PepsiCo10 Competition. According to Pepsico, the company is partnering with up to 10 emerging technology start-ups, helping them execute pilot programs with PepsiCo brands. “We were looking for shovel-ready tech that we could partner with in four strategic areas: motion video, social media, mobile, and digital in-store,” said Bonin Bough, Global Head of Digital and Social Media for PepsiCo. “We wanted to find companies that changed the way we connect with our consumers.”
The 500 submissions were distilled down to 20, who all presented across the PepsiCo organization to brands including Pepsi-Cola, Frito-Lay, Tropicana, Quaker Oats and Gatorade, and to every area from package design to legal and marketing, letting the entire organization see all the tech possibilities. “As a way to add value to the companies participating, we brought in venture capitalists, mentors, and guides for these 10 companies and we exposed them to our agency partners as well,” said Bough.
The top 10 finalists were given a pilot to run with a brand. For Evil Genius, their task was to help people spend their waiting time while providing utility and monetizing that time with brand exposures – in other words – to entertain people around a brand experience. They created the Super Shopper video game experience, which I tried at SXSW. It is a very Microsoft Xbox 360 kinect-like game that takes place as a shopper “runs” down an aisle. By moving my body right and left – with full hand motion and leaning – I picked up products in the aisle by rolling my “cart” past them, avoiding spills and abandoned carts that slowed me down. (You can see my picture – but note the camera seems to have added a few pounds. Really. I came home from SXSW down 5.) I got extra points for grabbing SunChips, which was the featured product in this demo.
Then there was a challenge round – me versus the computer disgused as an evil shopper – and I almost won. I also found out by collecting items that there were a few products I didn’t know came from PepsiCo (Stacy’s Pita Chips, for example). So the game increases customer awareness, exposes customers to brands, and provides a fun experience. There were free SunChips for me to taste in the booth after my “workout.”
Brown said “For my company, participation in this PepsiCo 10 has raised awareness that large brand company sees value in our platform. In addition we think it is valuable to talk to brand managers in the company, and to Pepsi’s agency partners. I get to refine our offering with people in the industry and it puts more credibility behind our small startup. It also gives us a case study when we talk to other companies and investors.”
She hopes to take the company to the next level using this demo to get some new contracts and attract investment. Bough informed me that the PepsiCo 10 is launching in Europe soon. Are major consumer packaged goods companies like PepsiCo the next filters for digital innovation? Let us know what you think about sharing your product with a company in the comments below.
An Introduction to LinkedIn: In Restrictions a Gold Mine
"I've been trying to find a way to use Facebook in a more professional manner and I've found it — it's called LinkedIn."
Inevitably many users have an "aha" moment when, after spending a quiet afternoon digging a little deeper they stumble upon some feature of LinkedIn that they find immensely valuable. At that moment they become converts, thirsty for knowledge about how to do more. This is what happened to my friend of the quote above. But many businesses never get there.
LinkedIn is a far less frenetic tool than most of the other social networking sites. As noted by blogger Sam DeReign "On LinkedIn, I am able to share the things I am most proud of — accomplishments that show what a capable person I am in the workplace. My contacts on LinkedIn aren't going to tag a photo of me attempting to do the Cha-Cha Slide after a bottle of wine." Thanks to LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman for hipping everyone to this simple but spot on blog post. It is LinkedIn's subtlety which makes it powerful.
So how do you use LinkedIn effectively to help your business in ways you cannot really do on Facebook? As with all of the social media tools, there are three keys to unlocking the value in LinkedIn. Since LinkedIn is designed specifically to be used in a professional context, I think it is worth investigating them here in more depth.
LinkedIn Strategies — similar to my breakdown of the different Twitter strategies or "personality types" LinkedIn can be approached in a variety of ways depending on your need, your resources and your personality or brand.Note: I will be sharing your stories - stories of how businesses have used LinkedIn effectively. If you'd like to share yours to be noted in my future article submit your LinkedIn strategy here.
LinkedIn Tools — the applications you can use on LinkedIn to help you spread the word about what you do.
The LinkedIn profile — arguably the most important LinkedIn "Tool" not only because it is central to how everything else on LinkedIn operates but because of the important role it plays in branding you and your business. It has the ability to tell the world about your professional life in a way no other tool or social networking site currently can match.
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I remember when I first discovered LinkedIn back in 2004. I had spent a considerable amount of time with social networking sites from many perspectives:
as a usability advocateas a programmer (anyone remember PERL?)
as a traffic and engagement analytics advocate
as a customer service advocate
as a strategist & business advisor
and perhaps most importantly
With all of that experience when I stumbled upon LinkedIn back in '04, it was easy to see that it was different from all of the other online communities that were popular at the time. LinkedIn was attempting to mold restrictions in usage, interface design choices, and a carefully selected but limited feature set into a social network that actually stuck with it's stated purpose - to be both perceived and used for professional networking and nothing else.
Their success in sticking with this stated purpose, and limiting the site's functionality around that purpose is what enables you as a business owner to use LinkedIn as perhaps the most significant tool in your social media marketing tool box. It is this context of (usually) subtle limitations that gives the three keys I describe above their great usefulness on LinkedIn.
There's a lot to cover, far too much for a single post, so next week I begin breaking down those keys one-by-one.
In the meantime I'm giving you a homework assignment!
Below is a screenshot of my LinkedIn profile with the areas of most interest highlighted. Take the next week to start investigating LinkedIn. There are probably gems there that you didn't even know existed. Come back with your questions, strategies, tactics and stories.
If you've had particular success with LinkedIn and can describe results/back it up with real data, let me know. I will be highlighting a variety of companies as examples. You can submit your LinkedIn strategy here.
Add "The Internet Strategist" RSS updates to your reader or your Web siteRead Related Articles by Maisha:
Top Twitter Techniques (or 9 Good Excuses if you want to Ignore Twitter)Facebook Demystified: Profiles and Pages and Groups (oh my)A Guide to Social Media Tools and their UsesThe Weakest Link - Your Social Media Marketing "Killer App"
Homework Assignment - investigate the LinkedIn profile hotspots:
(click to view the full the image with hotspots highlighted, it will open in a new window)
Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (final/part 3)
The last 2 posts I've written have focused on featuring real businesses that have created highly successful social marketing strategies using LinkedIn as a key element.
I started the series with an overview of LinkedIn concepts, then moved into a guide for creating your LinkedIn profile, followed by a list of the 11 most powerful LinkedIn tools for small businesses. Finally, I outlined 6 core strategies that small businesses use to leverage LinkedIn for building a tribe and covered the first three:
Building a live community (LinkedIn tribe part 1) Business development (LinkedIn tribe part 2) Promoting a blog/branding/building traffic (LinkedIn tribe part 2)I also hosted an in-person Social Media Marketing workshop in New York City in which I provided the hands-on help many small business owners need to translate these strategies into action. If you missed it, click here to be notified of my upcoming Social Media Marketing events.
Today we cover the final 3 strategies.
Getting work as a freelancer or consultant Promoting a product Strategies for everyoneThe Freelancer or Consultant
As a consultant, outside of being good at what you do and generally being able to successfully run a business and manage clients, success is heavily dependant upon two things:
making sure people remember who you are and what you domaking sure enough people are in group number 1 to keep your pipeline full.
Finding ways to stay on the radar of people who will either hire you or refer you to new business is a critical challenge for freelancers and consultants.
You will find many examples of business owners who are using LinkedIn's "Q&A" feature as a significant element of their visibility and lead generation marketing.
Heidi Cool, owner of Heidi Cool Consulting is one great example. Heidi shared with me how by providing excellent answers to the questions of other LinkedIn members, she has built visibility and credibility for her business, more and higher quality traffic to her Web site and more leads.
Here's what Heidi did...
Using LinkedIn Q&A
The key for Heidi is not generic visibility, but high quality visibility - where her answers set her apart. She focuses on answering questions that are directly relevant to her areas of expertise and will possibly get selected by the questioner as "best" answers. When this happens, both the question and the answer show up in her profile further building her credibility as an expert in her field.
To give you a sense of scale, Heidi has spent 1-2 hours per week over the last 6 months answering questions related to Web site design. Questions her take about 5-30 minutes each to answer properly.
As a great example of the inherently holistic nature of social marketing, Heidi relies heavily on her existing blog content to make sure that questions get a thorough response in a way that would not be possible by just answering the question on LinkedIn alone (as of this writing there's a limit of 4,000 characters for responses). Heidi's Results
Related Articles by Maisha:Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (part 2)
Small Business "Success Studies" Using LinkedIn
LinkedIn the 11 Most Useful Features for Small Business
How to Use your LinkedIn Profile — a ChecklistHeidi received more than 3 times the number of visitors to her site in July when she focused heavily on this technique. She adds:"I can generate traffic from other sites for much less effort, but the quality of visitors isn't as high"Heidi defines quality as both how many pages visitors view on her site ("stickiness") and how many real inquiries/leads she receives from site visitors. For example, the visitors from an article aggregator site she posts content to are not "high quality". 86% of those visitors leave after viewing only one page, "and so far none have made an inquiry through my contact form".
But during July when she ramped up her Q&A strategy, LinkedIn visitors sent her 29 email requests for more information or project proposals.
Other Freelancer/Consultant techniques:
Create an Email Signature and consider including your LinkedIn Custom URL on your business cards and on more of your marketing materials to enable potential customers to learn more about you and your companyCreate a group
Send connection invitations immediately after conferences and events
Recommendations as strategy. Michael Zittel Owner, Serr.biz LLC offers this advice (in response to a LinkedIn Q&A of course):We use, and recommend to our clients, to at least utilize Linked In as a validation service of testimonials and "recommendations." It's easy for anyone to write a bogus testimonial about their services and post it on their site. It is not possible to do so on Linked in. So, having recommendations here, and posting on your site, then linking to LINKED IN so people can validate the reference is, in our approach, one of the simplest methods of utilizing LinkedIn.
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The Product Promoter
LinkedIn is a very interesting tool for those who have a product to sell or promote. The same way communities must be built for the purpose of congregation, businesses also need to build communities around services and products.
Author Gary Unger shared a great example of how he uses LinkedIn to regularly sell out of his book which is available for sale at Amazon.com. In July 2008 he published the book "How to Be a Creative Genius (in Five Minutes or Less)". Gary spends about 4 hours per day on LinkedIn, reading messages, looking for questions to answer, writing answers and interacting with people he meets. His results? He explains that for every good answer he posts, about 15 people will email him asking to connect. For his Web site he gets up to 500 unique visitors per week if he is as he says "in the zone" - active in answering questions. He also regularly checks his book sales during these periods and says that he will easily sell 20 books per week and see his Amazon ranking jump when he is actively posting.
Supporting this experience, freelance copywriter and marketing consultant Leon Altman cautions "You shouldn't try to sell directly from LinkedIn. But you can start building the bridge to marketing your products and services". Leon's also underscores the importance of landing pages "on your website you must get people to opt-in."
To Connect or Not to Connect?
One of the questions that often plagues early LinkedIn users is deciding who to connect to.
LinkedIn offers these suggestions:
Thoughtfully select those people you know and trust because these are the people you will seek advice from and request a recommendation about your/other's quality of work. Because of this, the quality of your contacts is always more important than the quantity of contacts. It is important you know your connections because you may be asked to recommend one of your connections to another. If you know little about the connection you weaken the integrity of the recommendation and your network...Choose your connections wisely as there are certain questions you might only ask a connection because you know and trust that member with this information. Be sure you trust your connections with the information you make available to them."However on the opposite end of the spectrum, many members of LinkedIn support what's called "open networking" meaning they will connect with pretty much anyone who sends them an invitation.
Also keep in mind these LinkedIn facts:
all connections are visible to your direct connections by default (although you can change this)maximum number of connections is 30,000
maximum number of invitations you can send is 3,000
My take on this is that I think once you know your goals, resources and the tools you have to work with, the question of who to connect with no longer takes on the same importance. If you need to build out a community of 500 people with very specific goals like Daniel Tunkelang from LinkedIn strategies part 1, perhaps open networking is not necessary for you. If however you're trying to build a community of 5,000 people with broad interests it's probably more important. Keep in mind that the more people you have in your network, the more people you can contact directly. This is probably the biggest advantage to accepting most of the invitations you receive.
Strategies for Everyone
Here are tips for other things you should do regardless of what category you fit into:
Update your job description — your profile and the details in it are the center of ALL activity on LinkedIn and are at the core of your credibility for whatever you do on LinkedIn. Keep it current with new accomplishments by updating it a few times per year.Check in — often a tactic used by successful business owners as a core of their business success. Use your profile as a Rolodex and check in with a few contacts each week or month just to say hello
Check References & Interests — it is always good to do a little research in preparation for a new relationship. In fact these days it's not at all creepy, it's respectful. The same way you'd research a company before an interview or a big sales presentation, these days each person is his or her own walking brand. Research their interests and know a little before you interact with them to help make the interaction more successful
Find people you should meet — if you know who your target audience is, you should also know some search criteria for finding them on LinkedIn. Perhaps it's not cost-effective for you to try to reach out to every one of your potential customers individually, but perhaps it's super smart to reach out to that guy or gal who runs the local chapter of the retailers association who could make a great strategic partner for your business.
Consider a LinkedIn ad — and tailor the reach to your target audience
What are you working on now? — this feature is often not noticed by your connections in my experience, but it can be used to share good news, newly completed projects, new hires with your connections
Maximize Travel - check the locations of your connections before you travel so you can schedule time to see people in the city your going to. (Thanks to @merylkevans for the reminder on this one!)
Maximize New Connections — Barbara Rozgonyi offers these words of advice "After you accept an invitation, consider replying with a quick personal message that includes a few bullet points about what you do, an opportunity to ask questions about your industry and additional ways to connect with you online such as your blog, ezine or forum." A great tip and something I try to do as well. Thank you, Barbara!
Connect Your Connections - helping others find the people they need from within your own network can go a long way. (Thanks to
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Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (part 2) Small Business "Success Studies" Using LinkedInLinkedIn the 11 Most Useful Features for Small BusinessHow to Use your LinkedIn Profile — a Checklist
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