Posts tagged ‘blogging’

Top Takeaways from Blogging Strategies Summit

Written June 20th, 2011 by

I’m still processing everything I heard and discussed at the Blogging Strategies Summit last week. With fifteen sessions in two days, there’s a lot to process! Here are some points from the speakers that stood out to me.

 

Bring catnip. Your catnip is what keeps the community engaged. For Oscar Mayer, their catnip is the Wienermobile. Their community loves the Wienermobile, and is very active with posting to and commenting on Facebook and Twitter when they see the vehicle. From Marcy Massura. Picture by Cari McGee.

 

Allow all of your employees to learn. What if everyone in your organization could see this positive tweet that just came in? Let the accountant know that someone following the American Heart Association diet just tweeted about how well they are doing. From Charlene Li

 

Flag your superfans in your contact management system. Make sure that your support team also knows that these customers are your superfans and should be treated accordingly. From Baochi Nguyen

 

Let go of your content and make it easy to share. If you don’t make it easy to share, people are going to rip it off anyway, and you won’t get the credit. From Li Evans. Photo from D’Arcy Norman

 

Consider having a gender neutral persona for writing or commenting on blog posts. There are still many places online where the perception of gender influences interactions. From Christine Herron

 

Blogs don’t have limits to their character counts, which is a huge advantage over Twitter and Facebook. Use your blog to announce things in a new way, and not just reword your press releases. From Jessica Gioglio

 

Betsy Aoki shared this interesting graph from the Social Flow blog with the group. For those familiar with Twitter, it was great eye candy and interesting information. I wonder if the whole graphic (shown in the attached link) would serve to help “share the magic” with those who don’t understand your strategy, or if it would just add more confusion. Charlene Li made a point earlier the people you’re trying to explain your strategy to don’t know what you’re talking about, and it’s like trying to create a TV ad without ever having watched television before.

Blogging in Regulated Industries

Written June 15th, 2011 by

I spent a lovely morning in San Francisco attending a workshop at the Blogging Strategies Summit led by Li Evans today. The workshop was a bit of an introduction to SEO for bloggers, and Li covered everything from keyword research to asset metadata to link building, making me remember just how much of this there is for someone new to the field to learn.

One thing that caught my attention was two attendees asking about blogging in regulated industries, such as the financial services or healthcare industries. I’ve worked with paid search for banks where every piece of the ad text and landing page needed to go through a weeks-long approval process through legal, but haven’t blogged under those types of restrictions before.

Off the top of my head, I thought of a few things that could be done, including:

  • A list of the top ten worst excuses financial planners have heard for people not starting a retirement account.
  • A blog post about where historical figures have kept or invested their money
  • Republishing print marketing collateral (that has already gone through regulatory approval) in an online format.

With so much to cover, there wasn’t time to talk about this specific aspect of blogging, and we had to move on. When I got home, I decided to see how others have approached it and what resources could be passed along to these attendees.

David Meerman Scott writes about Putnam Investments and their activities in social media. Putnam writes a blog about retirement savings in the workplace that talks about public policy, but does not promote their products. There are some great notes and a diagram relating to Putnam’s content cycle and their social media efforts in this webcast summary on Rock The Boat Marketing. A link to the webcast is available. An interesting note is that they’ve reported as much as four times the traffic from their social media efforts as they do from traditional media.

Ron Ploof from RonAmok! published a case study of how Johnson & Johnson started their involvement in social media, and chronicles their progress through 2009. They started off with something that didn’t need much oversight from regulators — their company history. They then launched a corporate blog, and later an online health video channel on YouTube. Andy Sernovitz at SmartBlogs wrote a post about a Johnson & Johnson presentation about their use of social media, with links to the case study presentation and the slide deck.

Mark Schaefer writes on the {grow} blog about a friend in the financial sector that is facing a tough time using any type of social media due to all of the legal ramifications that exist. Mark walks us through a number of ways regulated industries can successfully use social media. There are some great discussions in the 53 comments on this post, and the attendees should be able to relate to the commentators if not pick up some tips to bring back to their workplace.

Thanks to Li for inviting me to attend her presentation, and to those two attendees for getting me to find out more about how regulated industries are using blogging and social media. I look forward to the rest of the conference!

Promoting Your Blog: Not Too Late to Start Over

Written May 23rd, 2011 by

Over the average course of a person’s life he or she will reinvent themselves a few times; usually in High School, then College and again a few more times in the real world. We’ve all done it as individuals, but what happens when in comes to your company’s marketing strategy?  Are your present strategies working out for you?  Are you feeling stuck in a rut?

For the most part a good promotion strategy or ad campaign could last forever, but as the times change so should your thinking and planning. Granted,  there are those campaigns out there that are timeless gems. Nike’s “Just Do It” is a slogan that has lasted for over 20 years and doesn’t seem to be losing steam anytime soon. In fact, their competitors are finding that they need to keep changing their slogans just to keep up.

This simple slogan. Still going strong.

Currently, the phrase “Just Do It” is so synonymous with Nike that really at the end of the silent, visual ad,  all they say sometimes is “Just Do It” and you find yourself amazed that they did it again. In February we talked about the Super Bowl ads, what worked, what didn’t and why. One of the greatest strengths a company or even a blog should have is to know when it’s material is getting stagnant. For the purpose of this post we are going to focus on blogs.
Read the rest of this entry »

Business Blogs, Part 1: Simple Encouragement

Written May 20th, 2011 by

Simple Blogging EncouragementBlogging is good for businesses. Business blogging has been on the rise for years, for good reason. Studies have shown that businesses sites with blogs get more traffic. Each fresh blog post gets a little “fresh content” bump in search results, giving businesses a built-in way to briefly rank higher for exact match long tail searches. Each post that clicks with readers is a potential point of interaction via Social Media.

So, why aren’t all businesses blogging?

“My customers aren’t really online much.”

Are you sure? 72.5% of all American households are online. We are from many different demographics that are active in many different ways. Some of who are online consider ourselves to be members of online communities built around personal interests.  There are enough “mommy bloggers” to give rise to naming and researching that sort of blog as a genre with serious financial potential for marketers. Over 68% of us watch video online – that’s a lot of eyeballs! About 27% American Internet users play some sort of Social game – ever heard of Farmville? The United Nations has several Facebook pages – check out this active example, from the The United Nations Development Programme. The hits keep coming and the details go on and on. Read the rest of this entry »

I am a Writer, Can I Blog?

Written May 9th, 2011 by

For those of us who like to write, one would think that blogging would be a snap. Well, I can tell you from experience the only skill that translates from a good writer to a good blogger is the speed in which you type. That’s it. For all other things,  the skills are different. I, for example, am considered by those who know me as someone who can spin a yarn and tell a good story. That skill, though helpful in getting out of bloggers block, does not translate as well as I thought it would.

So much more goes into blogging than mere storytelling. Sure, there is an aspect of storytelling in every blog regarding flow but there is no blogging in storytelling. For example, in order to have great content and page rank, a blog should contain keywords in the titles and in the article itself. A good story just flows.  There is no real thought to structure at first but rather on the re-write. A good blog needs a re-write or editing to add organic SEO and keywords to the content.  With a story we assume the story will attract the reader but in a blog, keywords for search queries draws in readers. A good blog also requires an audience and tools to attract that audience.  Facebook, Twitter Update, forums or even other blogs help with delivering your blog posts to the audience you’re hoping to attract.

As someone who’s written personally and for businesses large and small, in print and online, I’d like to take the time now to tell you some things I have noticed over the past few years about bloggers and blogging.

Read the rest of this entry »

Telecommuting, WordPress.com Style

Written May 6th, 2011 by

WordPress.com is more than the WordPress-hosted version of self-hosted WordPress. It’s also WordPress’s proving ground and the product of an intriguing workplace culture.

Several WordCamps feature a “How is WordPress.com Made?” presentation by an Automattic representative. The recent Seattle Wordcamp version of “How is WordPress.com Made?” was given by the ever perky Scott Berkin.

For those of us who work online or have busy email inboxes, this glimpse at WordPress.com’s project management practices was invigorating. It was as if I could hear the most of the audience imagine putting themselves in WordPress.com-style shoes, with a liberal dusting of a true believer’s sense of purpose. As Scott put it, blogging “closes the gap between ideas in my head and the rest of the world,” and helping that happen “is kind of noble.”

WordPress is a content communication engine.

Read the rest of this entry »

WordCamp Finds – WordPress Plugins for Security, SEO and Content Management

Written April 19th, 2011 by

Do you need to check a WordPress theme for hidden links? There’s a plugin for that. Want help managing a group blog’s editorial and scheduling needs? There’s a plugin for that, too. Da Li SocialIM sent me to Seattle’s recent sold-out WordCamp, where I learned about a lot of promising WordPressy things.

What an experience. I don’t get out much, so besides the marvelous shell shock of being in my element with 370 others who do WordPress, I was more than your average woo-woo over all that walking and talking eye contact. This won’t be my last WordCamp.

Theme Check Plugin

Theme Check Plugin is probably getting more buzz right now than any of the rest. Though it was not central to one of the talks, it came up several times. Theme Check bills itself as checking to make sure a theme is up to spec with the latest official WordPress standards, but it’s not just for theme developers. Theme Check can find encrypted code that can hide hidden affiliate links or malicious code. Never again wonder if there is something bad hidden in that free theme by an unfamiliar author.

EditFlow

EditFlow Screen Shot

EditFlow's Custom Statuses

The EditFlow Plugin was introduced in an Ignite talk at the end of WordCamp. It sounds like a blog manager’s dream. With EditFlow, a post can have any number of custom statuses, including “Waiting for Feedback” and “Assigned.” Users can cut down on those back-and-forth emails that can get lost, instead discussing a post’s development using threaded commenting in WordPress’s back end. Email notice is sent to admins, authors and any other included users when there are new editorial comments, or when a post changes status. This sounds like an absolute delight.

JetPack

jetpack logoJetPack came up in the very first presentation at WordCamp Seattle, “How is WordPress.com Made?” by Scot Berkun. The JetPack Plugin is shiny new, debuting just last month. It’s envisioned as a way to let WordPress.org style users enjoy popular features previously only available to WordPress.com blogs. The way Scott put it, WordPress.com is WordPress’s proving ground, so it gets the new goodies first. Plus, JetPack components can be cloud hosted via WordPress.com, so they won’t put an additional load on your server. Right now, JetPack includes WordPress.com stats, a Twitter Widget, neato Gravatar Hovercards, WP.me Shortlinks, LaTex markup language, After the Deadline grammar and spellchecker, Shortcode Embeds for sites like YouTube and SlideShare, and last but not least, Sharedaddy, a Social Networking sharing tool complete with stats. But wait! There’s more! Or at least WordPress.com will be adding more. Tell them what you want.

If you use plugins that do even one of the things JetPack can, install JetPack instead. Down the line, if the equivalent of anything else you use becomes available in JetPack, change to the JetPack version. Because JetPack plugins are wired into the frequently tested offerings of WordPress.org, they will be updated regularly and they won’t conflict with each other.

WordPress SEO by Yoast

Have you tried Yoast’s SEO plugin yet? It’s in beta, but it’s a good beta and the buzz among WordPress fans is positive. In addition to the Post titles and meta description tweaks included in other popular SEO plugins, Yoast SEO can add breadcrumbs, edit your robots.txt and .htaccess, produce an xml sitemap and more. WordPress SEO by Yoast is several coordinated plugins in one. Fewer separate plugins means fewer plugins to update, fewer plugins that may one day not be supported. Besides, anything by Yoast has a high probability of being awesome.

p.s. Here I am – the farthest left in Justin Sainton’s Group Deals session, wearing a black turtleneck and gold scarf.

Free Marketing Resources

Categories

Free Marketing Resources

Categories

© 2011 - Da Li Integrated Social Media Marketing, LLC
Scroll to Top