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No Comments On The Blog!

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blog.jpgHave you noticed? Fewer and fewer comments are being registered on blogs all over the place. Most comment sections of blogs are like graveyards. Where we used to average 50+ per post, comments are down to a handful.

What Happened to Blog Comments

  • Triberr happened to blog comments.

Dino Dogan and Dan Cristo have done a miraculous job of automating blog sharing so that now comments happen right in the Triberr dashboard.
No one needs to come to your website any more. No one sees your calls to action in the sidebar of your blog any more. People are using Triberr commenting system, and they are reblogging others’ content to boost traffic at the risk of authenticity.

I don’t fault Triberr for its innovation; I knew that was the path and I also knew I would draw the line as a blogger and not take those extra steps at the risk of higher traffic.

  • Commenting systems like Google’s and Facebook’s and Triberr’s have happened.

People put in a comment on each of these social channel comment systems and the comment appears on that channel. Engagement happens on that channel; no longer on the blog.

  •  Social shares happened.

Pay careful attention to where you’re earning comments. When you share a post on one of your social channels, more often than not, someone reads the post and then comments on Twitter or Facebook of Google+. All those folks who used to swing by are engaging with you in other places.

  • Time happened.

People are weary of all the content in their faces day in and day out. People are shutting down and turning off from others’ content because there isn’t time, and there is no obligation, and what’s the ROI?

How To Get More Blog Comments

So, what’s a blogger to do?

  • Do not become part of the echo chamber. Please find a new twist to amplify your good content!
  • Consider Cision’s new Content Marketing Suite where you can do #SyndicationAutomation (I coined that hashtag) of your content. Your blog post can get automatically pushed out onto major national content platforms as “related content” much like how I use Zemanta right here on this blog.

With a click and an RSS feed, you simply push your blog content national and amplify. Traffic should happen, according to the case study I read about a company that is using Cision.

  • Write for Blogging Communities. My friend Mark Harai launched Blogger Beat, and he’s got something really worth looking at. Ask me for an invitation to join forces with a bunch of professional bloggers seeking to capitalize on the power of numbers. You can also get a gig writing for industry outlets, too. Find your niche and get outside of your comfort zone.
  •  Do write compelling content. It has to be different than what others are writing. When you’re a member of Triberr, you get to see who’s writing awesome and who’s writing stinky. Analyze that and change your game.
  •  Supplement your content with other content to fuel your lead generation and digital marketing. You need to write ebooks and decks and share those. You need to use List.ly and Clipsi and make a go of being creative with content.
  •  Video is critical. When was the last time you did some video and showed your face? It’s tough, right? Who wants to look bad on camera, but we’ve all heard how important video really is.

I don’t have all the answers right now. I’ve felt the sea change; have you?

What else should we all be doing to ensure we’re putting our best word forward?

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The Happy Friday Series: Without Woofs I’d Be Nothing

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bassett-hounds-buscall.jpgThe first thing that springs to my mind when it comes to happiness is the distinct lack of it in my life between 1986 and 2005. You see, a black dog often followed me wherever I went during those years. Not all the time, mind; but very often. And when it wasn’t there, I was the Three Muskateers: creative, dynamic, intense, a powerhouse of energy, a fighter.

Then the black dog would return, sometimes slinking up upon me, sometimes springing from nowhere.

Now this wasn’t the kind of black dog that licks your ear or comes when you call. No, this was like Winston Churchill’s black dog: a massive depression that sat on my back, suck its teeth into my very core and crushed me dangerously close to the point of destruction at four points during these years.

Early Spring 2004

I used to teach at the university. I’d dedicated all my early adult life to academia, pouring over books, writing, teaching, determined to inspire others just as I found inspiration. But one March morning, having just taught Seamus Heaney’s Midterm Break, it occurred to me that jumping out of my 8th floor office window felt like the right thing to do. The black dog had savaged me time and time again that winter, even though I hadn’t known it at the time, and now he had floored me. In that very moment I didn’t have the strength to fight him off once more. So I decided to put him to sleep, no matter what it took.

I don’t know what it was that got me out of that room; perhaps the experience of having been here or at moments very similar and even worse before. But out of that room I fled and I never went back to the university.

Instead I went home and walked in the forest. At least that’s what I remember.

Sweden can be immensely beautiful as spring rages into life after the long, dark winter. But this year the rain came, weighing everyone down. Still, somehow, I felt a sense of release.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to turn. So I kept walking the circle through the forest, trying to lead train the black dog once again, just a five minute walk from where I’m sitting now as I write this.

Eventually he slunk away with some help from a shamen. I dragged myself from my cocoon, translated a couple of books, wrote some articles for the newspapers. I started talking.

I also bought a basset hound.

2013

Anyone who knows me, whether it’s through my podcast, website, or in person will know that my four basset hounds are an enormous part of my life. They sit under my desk as I work. They drag me round the woods every day. Although I’ve been apart from them for a few days here and there, they are pretty much my constant companions. They bring me such happiness.

Watching them smile as they tear through the grass, their loose skin flaying, I want to wrap these moments up and treasure them forever. They are moments of intense happiness.

I’m blessed to have two grown-up step sons in my life, but I never really managed to sort myself out in time to have children of my own so the dogs are my true babies.

I’ve bred 18 pups the nine years I’ve had the woofs. Raising a litter of basset hounds until they’re ready to leave the nest means spending the first three weeks sleeping next to the whelping box, watching that mom doesn’t squash them 24/7 and being able to put life on hold. But I’ve done it and loved every minute of it. These have been moments of great happiness.

And happiness is what I’ve found growing a business, many days spent in my office, connecting with the people that work for and with me and with customers, stoically protected by the floppy-eared angels who’ve helped me keep the black dog at bay. It’s years since I walked with the black dog although I see him on the horizon from time to time.

Still, I couldn’t have built my business without Winnie, Aggie, Tia and Digby.

Being Happy to Share My Story

Being bipolar is both a curse and a blessing. It’s a blessing because sometimes I can feel so energised, so hyper that I really am like the Three Musketeers, able to tackle anything, do anything, conquer anything and that feeds into the immense creativity, determination and passion I run my business and (hopefully) bring to each project we do.

I also know that the subject of mental illness can make people uncomfortable, send them running away; friends, family and customers. Still, I’m always happy to be frank about my story, matter of fact if you will, because people who walk alongside a black dog can function and do succeed. Perhaps not all the time, but often. And that makes me happy.

About The Author

Dr. Jon Buscall runs Jontus Media, a marketing and design agency, out of Stockholm, Sweden. He regularly podcasts about Online Marketing from the Dog House Studio. See the podcasting gear he uses here.  Connect with him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jonbuscall or visit: www.jontusmedia.com. Access his blog here. 

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Serendipity And The Social Web

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3-princes-of-serendip.jpgSpoiler alert: the secret to making people like you on social media is to stop trying to make them like you on social media. Letting go of that desire can cause some amazing things to happen. I was reminded of this principle recently.

One morning I started my day doing two things I do not do enough.

The first was to look through my Twitter stream. Usually I see links to the same articles I find on Triberr, my RSS feed and other content discovery sources. This time was different.

Immediately I spotted a tweet from Jayme with a link to a new post: “Thoughts On Love In Business.” It’s a topic I have blogged about, and I was thinking about it again for another post.

Clicks And Comments

I clicked the link that led to this blog. That’s when I did the second thing I do not do enough.

I left a comment. Just a quick response to the question posed and a “thank you” for opening the discussion. Those two things, a Twitter discovery and a comment, triggered a series of unexpected events that amazed me.

First, Jayme replied to my comment asking me to leave links to the articles I’ve written. Then a chain reaction:

• She read my posts and liked them. A lot.
• She left comments.
• She shared them on Twitter and Facebook.
• We connected on LinkedIn and Facebook.
• She encouraged her community to visit my blog.
• Some community members left comments and subscribed.
• We had an awesome phone conversation the next day.

All of that happened within 24 hours of my leaving that comment. Jayme asked if I’d be interested in writing a guest post about this experience. And so here we are.

Social Media Serendipity

Some would describe this chain of events as the law of attraction at work. Some would call it good Karma. Others would use the word “grace.” Whatever your orientation, the common idea is serendipity.

Serendipity is most commonly defined as luck or good fortune and the aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. But when I looked it up, I found a new wrinkle to its meaning.

The word originates from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip whose heroes had a gift for making accidental discoveries of things they were not in a quest for.

Which brings me back to the beginning.

What I learned from this experience is that ‘happy accidents’ can happen on social media when you are not trying too hard to make them happen. When I started the day, I wasn’t on a quest to make power connections or drive traffic to my blog. I didn’t even leave a link in my comment until being asked.

You could argue that is not savvy marketing. But in that moment I was not in a self-promote mindset. I was just following a discovery I stumbled into by accident.

And wow. At the end of the day I got a wonderful lesson on the power of a tweet and a comment to open up serendipitous opportunities on social media.

Thank you Jayme and community.

About The Author

John-Gregory-Olson.jpgJohn Gregory Olson is a B2B marketing consultant and freelance copywriter. He writes about marketing strategy and leadership on his blog. Follow him on Twitter @John_G_Olson .

 

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Target Buyer Persona When Writing

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mona-lisa-cubs-soulati.jpgWhen you invest in digital marketing school via HubSpot, as I have, what you’re told out of the gate is to know your buyer persona. Now that I understand that phrase better, it makes perfect sense. Quite simply, you need to understand the characteristics and demographic of the person most likely to hire your services.

Define Buyer Persona

What’s not as simple as defining buyer persona is writing to meet those criteria every day. To get there, you have to take a hard, introspective look:

What is your purpose writing blog posts every day, three times weekly or once per week?

If, when you look at a blank screen and see only obligation and weariness, then perhaps your spark for blogging has dimmed.

Instead of looking inward at only you, think about your audience. But, first, think about your business goals.

Bloggers have two paths to take when taking up the virtual pen:

  • Be a personal blogger and write to share about families, travel, school, emotion, etc.
  • Become a professional blogger where content is king and drives your business ROI.

It’s not easy making the leap. When a blogger writes solid and educational content with genuine authority on a highly consistent basis, that’s when things begin to happen.

Write For An Unknown Audience

How do you get there from here? You put yourself in the shoes of your buyer, reader, customer, prospect. What sorts of writing do you think your unknown audience wants from you?

You need to be developing #RockHot content every day; it’s imperative to ensure you’re climbing the rungs of the never-ending ladder.
Each of us who has been blogging more than three years consistently and has a goal to optimize a blog for monetization (the elusive), knows there’s a steep learning curve to the next plateau. To differentiate, it’s up to you to deliver content oriented to the reader you have never met.

The content you craft has to answer the question, “Does this blog post entice a total stranger to pay attention to my writing?”
Let’s get back to the buyer persona thing for a minute. In my view, keeping my target audience top of mind when blogging is a challenge. I have an incredible community built over time who are at varying stages of business success, who are personal friends, who are bloggers, who are business owners, and who are not likely to hire my services.

Here’s the rub…for all the people you know in your community, there are five handfuls of people you don’t know. It is these lurkers and occasional readers whom you want to lure back every day you post content.

If you’ve determined the characteristics and demographics of that occasional reader and defined your buyer persona, then perhaps the content you craft for your blog can be tailored to that group of people.

Switching gears to write for the buyer is a challenge for me.

Everything I read, every conversation I have, and each time I listen provides blog fodder for me. Because I want to teach and share my passion and enthusiasm for what I do, writing content to earn new business is where I struggle.

I’m working on it; trying to make the total leap to being a solidly successful business blogger who is regarded for authoritative content. Right now, the rocky path I’m on is exactly right. No one said a learning curve is without a detour, and I need to keep reminding myself that it’s OK to stay true to your school.

What about you…any hot tips to share about why you blog and how you regard your audience?

The Happy Friday Series: Generosity As A Strategy

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Generosity in Theory

Helping your fellow man is one of the most rewarding things you can do. Unlike traditional monetary exchanges, both parties leave the transaction richer. A Win Win.

It feels as good to give as it does to receive.

Generosity is cultural. We mirror the behaviour of those around us. Generous acts are contagious. Generosity is infectious. Kindness begets more kindness.

Keith Ferrazzi argues not to keep score in his best seller “Never Eat Alone”. It’s so true. To be truly generous it can require you to be less rigorous on how you filter – we need to let more ideas and options into our world so you can be more generous. Not every transaction is designed to bring immediate value. We don’t know who people know, or where a single new connection may lead. Generosity has a lens all of its own. Generosity is a growth strategy, but you need to be committed to generosity for the long haul – don’t expect quick returns.

Ted Rubin has it right with his Return on Relationship #ROR mantra. Investing in relationships pays dividends.

Whilst we should not keep score, we all ultimately have to place some limits on our generosity. We can’t all be generous all day long. We have to somehow choose how and where and why we are generous. We all need to make generosity a strategy. We need to be conscious about how we invest.

Generosity in Action

This week something really special happened that we just had to share.

If you follow our blog, you’ll know we recently created the “content audit” and have since completed audits for 100 top blogs. We have plans to do many more audits, with 30+ requests for audits outstanding (We’ve been offering a free audit for anyone that likes and comments on this slidedeck.

Well, this week I got into a dialog with Jackson Middleton of a kilt wearing Canadian Mortgage Broker from Regina. He had some technical questions about the image customization.

Screen-Shot-2013-08-19-at-5.21.50-PM-300x196

The photo hides the fact that Jackson is a fervent wearer of kilts.

 

 

 

Here’s what’s not shown in the picture above. I think that’s pretty cool!

Jackson-middleton-kilt-generosity

I apologized that his audit was not ready yet. He was being very complimentary about our content audit project and offered to help complete some audits.

It’s funny, but when people offer, you often don’t take them up on their generosity (we often think people don’t really mean what they say – or we don’t want to feel obliged). I didn’t disbelieve Jackson for one minute, I just didn’t quite get the full force of his intent.

2 minutes later, he reiterated his offer and so I accepted. I dropped what I was doing and shared a batch of blogs and the instructions to complete an audit.

I was truly appreciative and he was only too happy to help. Win-Win.

What happened next was unexpected, intriguing and really rather charming.

Jayme Soulati noticed the list he’d made to audit her blog and wrote a post title “Use List.ly For Gifts And Curation” about how it was a gift.

Jayme-Soulati.jpg

I know Soulati via social media and I know Jackson via Listly and prior exchanges., but they didn’t know each other. They got into an exchange. In social there is nothing better than connecting your customers.

@kiltedbroker Good Morning! Did you do this @list.ly List.ly about my content?

— Jayme Soulati (@Soulati) August 15, 2013

@Soulati good morning Jayme. I had a great time looking through your last 25 blog posts helping @NickKellet with your Content Card.

— Jackson Middleton (@KiltedBroker) August 15, 2013

It’s funny how it happened as it wasn’t my intent, but connecting customer and cultivating community amongst Listly users is high on my agenda..

This dialog was not planned, and yet this is what social networking is all about – you have to let serendipity into the building. You have to give chance a chance.

Very shortly after, I noticed Merlin Ward was in a dialog with Jackson too. It turns out Jackson’s audit list of Merlin’s posts was Merlin’s top referral source for the day. I’ve know Merlin for ages, but Merlin and Jackson had not previously connected.

MerlinuWard.jpg

@KiltedBroker Jackson, thanks for curating my blog on @listly. You’re in my top 10 referrers today!

— Merlin U Ward (@MerlinUWard) August 15, 2013

@kiltedbroker I’m flattered and appreciate your support!

— Merlin U Ward (@MerlinUWard) August 15, 2013

There’s a trend happening here. It turns out that auditing people’s content is social. Both these connections came about because of a generous act.

Creating engagement is hard and yet here was Jackson making it look like child’s play. Generosity creates more generosity.

I also found the result of creating the audit to be highly social too. It created a lot of engagement and I deepened many of my existing connections, whilst making many new ones too.

What kind of study could you perform for your niche? Do you have a target list of people you’d like to get to know. Have you thought of ways of getting into a dialog with them?

The content audit does a good job of creating engagement and it’s universally applicable in an age where content is king. Would you like to create an audit of 20 bloggers in your domain, city, niche etc.

We all want to discover ways to enhance our content creation machine. The best feedback I’ve heard about the Content Audit is that it’s highly actionable. It makes it easy to see your content gaps and take action to fill them.

What Does This Mean for You?

You could:

  • Take it local e.g. Canadian Bloggers or San Fran Bloggers
    Take it vertical /niche e.g. Compare the content of 20 top email marketing providers (pick a segment relevant to your business)
    Take it local and Vetical/niche e.g. Denver Travel Blogs

This post, revised from its first publishing, originally appeared on the List.ly blog by Nick Kellet.

Nick-Kellet.jpg

Nick Kellet, someone impressive you should know. Woah.

About the Author

Nick Kellet plays with the future and it plays back. He’s a creator and curator of ideas. Nick believes that passion in the company of friends and community is an unstoppable force. He’s always been an innovator with heartfelt enthusiasm for every new project he touches. As co-founder of List.ly, Nick is actively shaping how people think, feel and experience curation. He believes curation should be as much about listening and engaging as it is about publishing and the tools themselves.

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