Blogging 101 Archives - Page 2 of 22

I Married My Blog

01/22/2014 By Jayme Soulati

This is a true story. I finally found my soul mate, and it wasn’t the opposite sex or even the same sex for that matter. It is my blog; hands down.

This blog, named ever so rightly as Soulati-‘TUDE!, is approaching a birthday in March. It is turning the big 4, not the big 4-0, but the big 4. I’d hasten a guess that four years of straight blogging as a professional is akin to the big 4-0. You know, something like cats have nine lives or dog years are longer than one human year.

My blog has become:

My obsession (it tells me to write without even speaking)
My OCD (I have to write or else I succumb to the next bullet)
My guilt
My happiness (I’m thrilled when I know I’ve written a winner)
My sadness (I’m gloomy when I need a break and then force myself to write)
My investment (Uhmm, yeah, time is money)
My professionalism (It defines my read next bullet and competency)
My brand marketing (Indeed)
My influence building (Writing gives me influence, right?)
My authority (The content I write builds authority, authenticity and thus creates influence)
My emotion (Agony, pride, laughter, happiness as above)
My daily activity and neglect (It’s a totally consuming)
My love (Right?)

I am totally immersed eye-deep in this blog after 650+ posts, 10,000+ comments and four years of lessons to navigate the complexity and rewards of professional blogging. Add all the guest posting I’ve done and NOT captured here, and that post tally is likely up to 700 now.

Is It Time For A Divorce?

Do you think all marriages end in divorce? There’s a great piece of data somewhere that supports something like that, I’m sure. For a blogger to divest herself from blogging, the outcome would be much like a divorce – extreme sadness, too much time on hands, where to write and about what, how to keep the brand front and center and alive, and how to share with a community that’s invisible yet not.

After four years of blogging, I’ve learned this:

• I have mastered the content strategy – my content is my craft, and it’s NOT an echo chamber at all, ever.
• Data and analytics continue to plague me because I’m a creative, presenting creations via words for everyone to see.
• Digital marketing is more challenging than one thinks, and I’m unhappy having to make it happen.
• I write my best work for others and love guest posting for the ability to showcase talent in another’s house or use a different voice than how I pen for me.

Rocky Start to 2014

I’ve not been posting much; first time ever, and can’t say the guilt has consumed me…yet. This break was unplanned and it was necessary. As I continue to ponder what it means to be married to my blog, I came to the understanding that MY BLOG OWNS ME. It is in charge, top dog, drives the ship, dictates decisions and eats my money. But, with every unbalanced marriage where one partner holds the upper hand, there is some balance of give and take and partnership, too.

In this partnership of four years that is truly 10, I married my blog and continue to work through the kinks and experience every growing pain and emotion, whether happy or sad. One day soon, we will make money together (we’re already making music) and add more variations of bread for the table loaf by loaf. As blog and blogger continue to evolve, inspiration comes from bread crumbs and eventually loaves are baked until it becomes a bakery.

You know, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.

Your Blog, You and 2014

01/06/2014 By Jayme Soulati

Bet you didn’t notice this blog had nearly a two-week hiatus, or maybe you did. There wasn’t a day that went by I wasn’t guilty to not be writing despite the lowest-trafficked periods of the year.

What I continued to tell myself is that this holiday break was critical for my need to rejuvenate and refresh my moxie while getting inspired to write about a whole bunch of new topics.

You see, blogging becomes part of you; it gets under your skin, and courses through your blood. There’s never a conversation or interaction in which I don’t identify a topic or two to write on. It makes me a better listener; it’s inherent now with easy thought to add to the endless stream of ideas.

How about you?

If you’ve been blogging on nigh a year, perhaps this sort of topical instinct isn’t happening yet; no worries! Trust me when I tell you it will!

If you’ve been blogging three years, you should absolutely have blog topics written all over the place on scraps of paper. Maybe you’re truly an electronic wizard (which means you use the other side of your brain a tad more than creatives), and you can organize your thoughts into a list. Does List.ly have private list-building?

It’s A New Year

What I’m trying to say is that a new year is always psychologically, well, new. You know? The ball drops at midnight, and the pressure is on to be more…you know, more.

Let me try to explain.

As the years go by and blogging becomes part of your inner psyche, you want to grow. Your blog has to change with the times and become more exciting in parallel to your own growth journey.

As you transform, so, too, does your blog.

This morning, I just read a friend’s post about taking a huge hiatus and coming back to find fewer folks who’ve stayed the course, fewer comments, and fewer success stories with nil banter. Indeed. Bill Dorman is right; it’s a tough road blogging. That’s why you need goals and aspirations.

Have you thought about how you want your blog to grow and what you’d like to see happen in your house? Do that; it’s time.

Used to be we blogged more for the fun of it and to have a party in the comments; maybe a good old Team Blog Jack, too. Now, though, that’s pretty much dried up; you’re gonna need to reach deep within and find the divining rod into your heart. Then? Let the floodgates open and turn it up a notch; pour out your passion like never before aligned so closely with your business goals. You need your blog to make that happen; it’s the only steady you have on the social sphere.

Blowing Up Your Business

In 2013, I successfully blew up my business. I’m told that’s what entrepreneurs do; they reach a brick wall and rather than go over, they dynamite. Perhaps they get to the other side, or perhaps they drown in TNT. I’m the latter, and here’s the good news. I KNOW IT. I know I blew up my business (and only I can define internally what that means), and I also know that 2014 is critical to regroup and rebuild.

What that also means is the blog is part of the larger plan, too.

Want to know something really simple? There’s nothing like blogging to showcase smarts, expertise, personality, and to give gifts.

Soulati-‘TUDE! Is Turning Four!

My blogging birthday is coming up; we’re gonna be FOUR! That is HUGE! It’s so #RockHot I can’t even tell you.

I’m seeking ideas for how to celebrate Soulati-‘TUDE! IS FOUR.

Perhaps I’ll plan a virtual party; perhaps I’ll launch 4 guest posts on the same day, perhaps I’ll donate to four charities, or…what? What shall I do to celebrate?

My journey has been so rewarding, and here’s a secret. Without this blog and you, I never would’ve made it (I am not kidding).

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO MY BLOG!

Content Marketing: Can You Master It?

10/16/2013 By Jayme Soulati

By Cision

The online world is awash in content; it’s ubiquitous, invading our every sense and cell of brain power.

Are you contributing to the torrential downpour of words to ether? Are you doing it well and have you mastered it?

It’s anyone’s guess who has mastered content marketing; in fact, I proffer no one. If you are a blogger, then your mastery of content marketing is slim to none, as blogging takes years of daily learning and there’s always more to figure.

The biggest culprit in content marketing is Google. Look every day at Google’s announcements, and you’ll find yet another app destroyed and algorithm rejiggered much to the chagrin of we onliners who think we’re grasping the solutions only to be dismantled with one flick.

Last Friday, I was keynote of the content marketing track at ConvergeSouth. This presentation truthfully made me ponder the meaning of content marketing and where people are headed on this journey.

Do you know?

In this SlideShare deck just below, I provide you with several ponderances:
1. Timeline of a Blogger – Years 1, 2, and 3 and what you may expect (from my POV, of course)
2. Content Marketing definition, data and ideas for content
3. Marketing Automation tools

Content Syndication

A successful content marketer needs tools to syndicate content. In a test campaign I did with Cision Content Marketing Suite, five of my blog posts were amplified to the Washington Times, USA Today and Bloomberg. In 13 days, I saw my traffic rise exponentially with 90 percent unique visitors. It’s a fantastic solution and for serious bloggers wondering about what’s next, this is a grand opportunity and especially for company blogs.

Attend a FREE Webinar

Are you familiar with Cision? It is the mainstay of public relations solutions for we who do media relations. Over the years (and I launched my career with Bacons, the precursor to Cision), the company has methodically innovated additional solutions and tools for public relations and companies to boost engagement and execute more systematically with an eye on results.

You’re invited to join me and Heidi Sullivan, SVP of Digital Content with Cision at 2 p.m. ET on Halloween, Oct. 31, 2013 for a discussion, What Is The Future Of Content?

It’s free to sign up, and based on my call with Heidi yesterday to plan our approach, there’s going to be a lot for you to hear.

Here’s the link:

If you have your own thoughts about content and its future alongside yours, please share in comments. Maybe you’ll sign up for the webinar and post your question in the online chat feature during our session?

Buy Message Mapping E-Book

Lastly, did you hear I launched my second book?

Message Mapping: How to Sizzle External Communication with a #RockHot™ Tool for Leaders

You can see why you need this business guide and get your copy (PDF ebook) via https://MessageMapping.co.

Blogging Is No Longer Enough

10/01/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Credit: Cision

Have you noticed your corporate blog may be getting fewer comments? How’s traffic in general and what about that bounce rate?

Blogging by most is regarded as a one off, something that’s done to write about topics and position you and your company as a content authority (or maybe “context” authority). Companies that use blogs as a public relations strategy understand the importance of owned media for overall integrated marketing.

Today, however, there are factors contributing to a blog’s one dimension. Before we understand what that means, we have to know how you regard success:

• What goals did you set up for your company blog?
• How are you measuring against those goals?

• Are you watching analytics, listening on Trackur and earning comments?
• Have you made it a goal to build a community?

As a professional blogger, you likely are incorporating syndication and blogging automation tools to help amplify your content to a variety of other bloggers, channels, portals, and apps. Well, are you?

When you share your blog post to Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, and Tumblr, it provides opportunity for content to be in the stream along with a plethora of others’ content. There’s no guarantee people will open the link and read. Sharing only on social media channels becomes very one dimensional for a professional blogger.
So, what’s the solution?

Syndication Automation & Marketing Automation

About 18 months ago, I began to hear the term marketing automation more and more. With disdain, I wrote about the lack of authenticity occurring on the blogosphere. Today, I fully understand the need for marketing automation tools and, more so, for syndication automation tools. Professional bloggers who may be solopreneurs (like me) or corporate blogs with a team of excellent writers from public relations, cannot boost owned media without help from syndication automation tools.

Triberr

Since the inception of Triberr several years ago, we who have been on board since the floodgates opened have watched creativity spur innovation. The co-founders have stopped at nothing to ensure its platform is a place where bloggers can share content, build tribes, cascade content across multiple social media channels, and leave comments for any blog post while remaining on the Triberr dashboard. Triberr’s reblogging feature allows content from others’ blogs to be reblogged on yours. That means content can be posted every day, and you can write as infrequently as you’d like for your own blog.

RSS Feed

I can bet that few understand the true value of an RSS feed. Every single blog should have a reputable syndication partner, like Feedblitz, to publish blog content to subscribers, on others’ blogs, in portals, in a community of writers, in Triberr, etc.
Without an RSS feed, that orange icon usually in the upper right of your blog’s sidebar, your content goes nowhere. It stays on your website and no one knows it’s there.
RSS feeds allow folks outside of your network to pick up your content via the feed and publish blog posts when they like. When you begin to write really good content, the RSS feed is richer and others become interested in having that content handy.

Blogging Community Like SteamFeed

When you write for an esteemed blogging community like SteamFeed, you get the added bonus of interacting with professionals interested in blowing up the ‘sphere with high-quality content. You also are assured of having decent community managers who help you with deadlines, manage your content, are creating ideas to leverage your expertise beyond just writing, and generally are helping position your brand as authoritative and you as an influencer.

HubSpot

I am a digital marketer with HubSpot. In fact, I’m in HubSpot school. When you have a blog, you need to push it to the next level. It’s OK to write to your heart’s content; however, are you writing to your buyer? Are you adding calls to action in your sidebar and building your email list to also build a book of business online? The blog forms the very crux of digital marketing gold; this owned media provides the content and authority to lure folks in from around the Interwebz and download your content, ebooks, invitations to events, and more. HubSpot is a total solution for email marketing, list building, connectivity between landing pages, calls to action, content, and lead generation from the top of the funnel to the bottom.

Cision Content Marketing Suite

Cision is a provider of public relations tools for public relations professionals and many others. It also has been creating new innovative tools for companies interested in amplifying content. They have a social news room and now, even better, the company is touting a new content amplification suite.
Bloggers can amplify content onto online portals like CNN, Time, U.S. News & World Report, Huffington Post, and many other high-branded sites. The boost from lowly corporate website to nationally branded media is gold.
These are marketing automation tools and give bloggers ways to think differently about why they blog, for whom, and where that content should get published or posted.
At the end of the day, really, we have to ask, “What is the Future of Content?”

This post originally appeared on Steamfeed.

No Comments On The Blog!

09/09/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Have 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?