Look around at the bloggers who influence you. I’m going to bet they post frequently, lead with news you’ve yet to learn, educate you about some tech thing, and generally fuel oodles of comments and engagement.
There’s something else you should take note of, too:
What new collaborative project are these bloggers announcing of late?
Let me illustrate what I’m talking about:
Gini Dietrich
A favorite blogger, author, speaker and friend extraordinaire Gini Dietrich, of Spin Sucks fame, recently announced her collaboration called The Three Things with Howie Goldfarb and Michael Schechter to run one post each Sunday about something that’s new and is meaningful.
Danny Brown
Danny Brown spins more creativity than anyone I’ve ever seen. Back in the day, 12for12K was his pet project; it’s how I was introduced to him. Since that time, I’ve been privy to his blog changing focus, changing design, and announcing new collaborations.
His latest is For Bloggers By Bloggers, and peeps can jump in there and ask questions of leading bloggers and gain access to just about any topic. Danny has other blogs, too, with a band of writers. Don’t forget the recent event in Toronto on social media he just put on. Here’s a post from one of my favorite search marketing experts, Brankica Underwood.
Mark W. Schaefer
Mark Schaefer has two books under his belt, a smashing success with Social Slam (third year upcoming), and a new collaboration with some big names in Jay Baer, Tom Edison, and Jason Falls called The Social Habit. His Sunday post shows how Mark gets out of his box to interview the founder of Storify…a channel I need to look into.
The SMB Collective (shameless plug)
I’d be remiss not sharing my pet project that began with Neicole Crepeau two years ago and engaged a community of small business owners to contribute posts to The SMB Collective. I’m trying desperately to resurrect this wonderful blog (gosh, where is my time), because it’s an outlet for each of us to focus on business issues and share tips. Let me make this my call to action for you to join me. Submit a post from the archives with links and an image if you choose, and you can earn some link love.
Continuous Creativity
These are just 3.5 examples of leaders on the ‘sphere who are continually innovating to keep things interesting for themselves, their brand and their community. I could interview them for this piece, but I’m going to do something I rarely like to do, and that’s assume.
Here’s what I think these three blogger leaders are doing:
1. Innovation is a requirement of growth to keep fresh ideas and content in front of an audience and community.
2. With new concepts comes more attention from a wider array of audiences.
3. Without change, the blogging journey would be boring and a community would also get bored.
4. Collaborations help everyone be on top of their game and engage with the smartest minds and close the six degrees of separation forever.
What does that say about your blog:
- If you’ve been blogging 12 months, it’s time to change it up.
- Ensure you tweak your design every six months or else the landscaping gets stale.
- Invite more guest bloggers to write and expand your network beyond just your own writing.
- Do more video or try podcasting. (When you upgrade your technology, you can do podcasting much easier.)
- Do Q&A with someone you admire or who has a high level of influence.
- Add calls to action to the blog to encourage people to subscribe and/or download a study, e-book or something.
- Always have something in the works. There must be a top-secret project you’re working on to drive your creativity?
- Start on a small scale and grow from there; people are in your tribes, in your stream, in your network…ask them to collaborate!
Think first.
Please do emulate the leaders, but engage on a scale that works for you. With more creative juice flowing, you can also boost mojo that leads to long-term success.
I’m glad you’re talking about collaboration, too. It really is important.
I know we talked about the SMB Collective in the past. Maybe we need to revisit the topic?
@Erin F. Hey, Erin. I’m just putting out the feelers to get some old or new content and trying to find peeps interested in expanding writings for small businesses. I know many can contribute; if you have something you’d like to share send over to jayme at soulati dot com, etc. Or, if you’re more serious about posting more frequently, I’m so game for that! Thanks!
@Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing It can be previously published content then? Maybe some of my other published guest posts might work.
I don’t know if I can be a regular contributor. I’m already a regular at two other places. I don’t want to commit to something then not be able to keep it.
@Erin F. Dear Erin…there is absolutely no pressure. You already have content that works very well on all your writing posts. Writing for business…tips galore! Yes, what we would do is say “This post was previously published at Write Right” with a link and byline. Easy peezy lemon squeezy.
@Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing Yay! That makes things much simpler. I’ll dig around the archive. 🙂
Hey there miss,
For some reason, I just got the pingback alert on this now – bizarro! 🙂
Thanks for including me here – it’s so true, we need to keep innovating to stay fresh. That can be ideas, design, voice or even just the way we present content (move from text to video or a podcast, for instance). Here’s to continued change!
PS – I’m guessing ginidietrich is the 0.5 example? 😉
@Danny Brown ginidietrich That’s an LOL!!! Actually, your pingbacks are working very well as this post is from today, 10/8/2012…
And, BTW? You change clothes more than any blogger I know! That’s a good thing, Mr. Chameleon.
@Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing ginidietrich See, that’s these crazy Americanized dates again, I read it as 10th of August, bah!
@Danny Brown @Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing ginidietrich Wait and see. Within 6 months we’ll see pictures of our friend playing baseball and making fun of cricket. 😉
@Danny Brown Danny! How are you, sir?
@Erin F. Tipper dandy, miss! Just enjoying Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada – hope all good with you! 🙂
@Danny Brown Tipper dandy? I like that. I must remember the phrase.
Everything’s well for the most part.
@Danny Brown Also, happy Thanksgiving! I somehow missed you when I sent Thanksgiving wishes to the other Canadians on Saturday. :-/
@Danny Brown Jerk.
Great ideas here, Jayme!
About upgrading technology: I just bought an iPhone 4S after dragging my feet for the last year and a half. Scott always has the latest technology and stays cutting-edge. So last week, my ages-old Nokia E71 falls headlong into a full cup of coffee, giving Scott a rare opportunity to show me all I was missing with the iPhone. By that afternoon, I was in technology heaven — and no, he did not use the opportunity to upgrade to the 5, but only because there weren’t any in the store! (Although I’m hearing reports that it’s buggy?)
I cannot believe all I’ve been missing. What a putz. And get this — I’m saving $10/month on my calling plan. Here I thought I was being frugal. Yeah, frugal to a fault!
Just this one upgrade has opened up so many options. I just might give podcasting a whirl!
Great ideas here, Jayme!
About upgrading technology: I just bought an iPhone 4S after dragging my feet for the last year and a half on giving up my cheapo smartphone from WalMart. Scott always has the latest technology and stays cutting-edge, while I’m slower to adopt. So last week, my ages-old Nokia E71 falls headlong into a full cup of coffee, giving Scott a rare opportunity to show me all I was missing with the iPhone. By that afternoon, I was in technology heaven — and no, he did not use the opportunity to upgrade to the 5, but only because there weren’t any in the store! (Although I’m hearing reports that it’s buggy?)
I cannot believe all I’ve been missing. What a putz. And get this — I’m saving $10/month on my calling plan. Here I thought I was being frugal. Yeah, frugal to a fault!
Just this one upgrade has opened up so many options. I just might give podcasting a whirl! I’m definitely going to head to the beach for video blogging, and start showing off this beautiful place we live.
@New England Multimedia You’re so right and so funny! People are acting like the iPhone is the dark side, but when I moved over, I was thrillingly shocked at how much more productive (and connected, sadly) I became.
How do you think I did Soulati Media On the Street? With the IPhone 4S…uploaded to YouTube in 10 minutes from click to publish.
It’s a dream, really. Can’t wait to see your videos! You guys are New England Multimedia, you know. Shame you haven’t done more of that medium yourselves!
@Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing @New England Multimedia
The iPhone is the dark side and Jobs was Voldemort.
@thejoshuawilner @Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing I have joined the Dark Side. And I like it here. A lot.
@New England Multimedia @Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing Of course. No one joins the dark side and says it was a mistake. 😉
@Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing I know, right? Get this — today’s podcast interview with @JonBuscall was my first Skype call ever. I haven’t needed Skype before today, so why bother? Scott uses Skype all the time, because he talks to programmers and developers in other countries. But I’ve never needed it.
Our video production gear is big-time, for corporate shoots, broadcasting, DVDs, etc.. Totally over-the-top for the simple needs of a video blogger. The closest I’ve gotten to shooting video for blogs is when Scott bought me a Bloggie a couple of years ago. I played with it a bit, but the editing software was clunky and such a pain!
Check out this music video shot entirely on the iPhone 4S. https://youtu.be/cDBHcpHVebo
Oh. My. Word.
I will not be shooting music videos. But I’ll take you all on a tour of The Jewel of America: Rhode Island! You’re going to love it here! 😉
@New England Multimedia @JonBuscall I have been to Newport! Actually held my racquet on court at the Tennis Hall of Fame there…or whatever that cute little club is…We drove from Philly to Manhattan to CT and then to RI all for business.
When we got stuck in traffic in NYC, I was driving and rolled down my window and asked the dude next to me, “Do you have any Grey Poupon?”
I’ll never forget that…then we got lost in Harlem cuz the map said we could bypass that traffic. Told my colleague to get down ‘cuz she was blonde and we were driving a white rental car with Georgia plates…yeah, 2 peaches in flippin’ Harlem.
@New England Multimedia @JonBuscall Really? That is an amazing video…woah.
Ok, on a serious note I am an advocate of not hanging out in the same places all the time. I mentioned it at Danny’s blog because when you don’t venture outside of your circle the messages rarely change.
@thejoshuawilner I’m gonna write on this one…was invited to a power sharing tribe with 100 people. It just happened and I’m freaking out. I can’t read all that, nor do I know these people to click over there. My stream is swamped and I think I’m making Twitter peeps crazy with all the posting, too.
BUT, there’s something good; I’ll be able to weed out the folks writing content that has nothing to do with my interests and latch on to a wider array of peeps I never knew. That says something about enhancing circles.
As for the other…it takes a lot of work to get over complacency. When people say they’re bored with “all this” it’s because they’ve become too complacent and have not kicked it up to the next level.
@Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing @thejoshuawilner That was one of the reasons I left Triberr – it kind of felt less personal because there’s no inclination to read what you’re sharing. And isn’t your recommendation worth more than that?
@Danny Brown @Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing @thejoshuawilner Exactly why I’m very careful about the Tribes I’ll join. I have to be able to stand behind every blog post I share with our audience, and there’s almost an unspoken expectation in a Tribe that you’ll reciprocate the sharing.
@Danny Brown @thejoshuawilner This is a whacked experiment…I see a few mates in this tribe and they already agree it’s stupid. A post is coming; will be How Not To Use Triberr. But, I have to stay long enough to be able to walk that talk. It’s an eye opener, too.
As joshwilner said, the same circles can get a bit boring; this is eyes wide open to see what other bloggers do.
I’m seeing some incredible monetization going on; just not something I’m going to be able to do in the field I’m in. Fascinating…that’s another post I got right away, too.
@New England Multimedia @Danny Brown @thejoshuawilner As per what I just mentioned…I’m gonna walk the talk a bit more. Can’t say I can share everyone’s posts nor can I police the content. I’m relying more on the title and the intro to pull me in. Guess there’s the third post.
@New England Multimedia @Danny Brown @Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing @thejoshuawilner I left Triberr because of the reason you state. Now I’m back. My new tribe is really small, but I like it that way. I know the people in the tribe, and I can stand behind what they say.
@Danny Brown @Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing @thejoshuawilner Hmmmmm…..something to think about. I only try to share what I read….try, I say….
@Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing @thejoshuawilner I just joined my first monster tribe too — I didn’t know what had happened to my stream! I’m interested in hearing your thoughts Jayme. It’s very different than what I am used to.
@Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing We might be in that same tribe. I joined just for the heck of it because I am/curious to test out a couple of things/theories.
My gut feeling is that I will drop out soon, but I am curious to see how it goes.
@thejoshuawilner @Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing Jayme/Josh, I just found that you can mute people so they don’t show in your stream (you might already have known that). I think I am going to try purging the stream that way before throwing in the towel.
@Adam | Customer Experience @thejoshuawilner I didn’t know that! Great to know; that means I’m going to stay in. I told @rdopping that I would stick around a week to see how it goes. I have about 3 blog posts as a result already.
@thejoshuawilner I saw you there, too.
@Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing @Adam | Customer Experience @thejoshuawilner @rdopping Mute!?! Awesome. After crashing a few times today I was about to forget the whole Triberr thing.
Sumbich, you mean it’s actually time to bring something to the table?
I did listen to Jason’s podcast w/ Mr D Brown and one of the things he spoke of was reflecting back but always looking forward to stay fresh and relevant: https://www.jasonkonopinski.com/2012/10/04/riffing-on-writing-episode-10-danny-brown/
I’ve got some day-job projects that will keep me busy for now so hopefully I don’t get my blogging card pulled in the meantime. The most exciting is my youngest son will be coming to work for Lanier Upshaw; we’ve discussed it quite a bit and it has taken about 2-mos to make it happen but he should be starting sometime this week or next. How’s that for change?
Good post and good peeps; thanks for sharing.
@bdorman264 Congrats, Bill – that’s awesome news on your son joining, and something tells me it’s just the start of something very cool! 🙂
@bdorman264 That’s a a proud Papa moment; pretty soon we’re gonna see him on video at your house (blog house that is). Wait you actually understood that Scottsman; heck ain’t you a southern boy?
@bdorman264 Congrats on your son joining the team! Big thanks for the shout out on the podcast episode, too. 🙂
Hey Jayme
That’s a great list of things for me take on board and work my way through! I’ve got to bite the bullet and get that first video done, even if it’s just to say, “Hey, I got a new webcam”.
@timbo1973 You kidding? You absolutely need to do a first video. You should see mine…what an embarrassment I am.
@Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing @timbo1973 Heh. My first is so bad that it’s not available online.
@Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing @timbo1973 Jayme is great on video — don’t believe the anti-hype Tim.
@Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing @timbo1973 Everyone’s first! Love the video format. Don’t fear @timbo1973 we are all in the same boat.
@rdopping @timbo1973 Yeah, except me…I have about 7 under my belt by now! Good news; my top secret project…am doing a video tomorrow for Chief Marketer magazine about a social media survey it just released. Cool, eh?
Except how do you speak all alone about survey results for a national trade publication? I’m freaking out.
@Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing @timbo1973 Just do it and it is cool. Bonne Chance!
To do a lot of what you describe here, you must also read. A ton. Of late, I’ve been getting a lot of my inspiration from fiction, even though I write about PR and marketing. I know you get a lot of your inspiration from business publications. But the point is, you read. I read. It makes all the difference in the world.
Oh and P.S. Have you seen Danny’s newest, newest thing? https://www.helpmebeinspired.com/
@ginidietrich Wait, you called him a jerk and now you’re givin’ him some lovin’?
Actually, that King wears too many clothes; cannot keep up. I believe I saw that and have yet to visit over there…how the heck?
@ginidietrich Ah crap – I owe you another $47 for promotions, don’t I…?
@Danny Brown At least…
@ginidietrich SPOT ON (now where is that Erica McArthur Allison these days? Oh, yeah, she’s engaging over at @Adam | Customer Experience house…boo hoo.
At any rate….YES! I wrote about that somewhere. Back in my Chicago agency days, it was the very first thing I got screamed at for by the supes and directors. read, read, read! I never knew what they meant until now.
You know those agency sergeants, right? Probably cried my way through half my jobs (yep, my career path was the next big gig).
Hey Jayme, you are looking for some posts for your SMB. collective? I have a few from the archives that might work. I am actually taking Cirquedumot in a new direction and wouldn’t mind lending you a few to republish. I will give them a bit of a polish and update to boot.
Hey Jayme, you are looking for some posts for your SMB. collective? I have a few from the archives that might work. I am actually taking Cirquedumot in a new direction and wouldn’t mind lending you a few to republish. I will give them a bit of a polish and update to boot.
I have tried to collaborate more, but I have to do things in parts. The first is to make sure my blog’s SEO is in ship-shape and then I will expand into my other projects. Coming off a redesign and don’t want to lose my good will in search because of some error in the code.
@susansilver That sounds great, Susan. email me!
You’ve laid out a very solid roadmap to getting things done with your blogging relationships. It really is about networking and collaborating with the smartest people you can find.
From what I see, most of the sigificant success on the social web comes from teams of folks who support each other and work together to move mountains.
I like the way you think, miss : ) xoxo
@Mark_Harai Thanks for sayin’ Friend…I love this community more every day.
Oh, wow. Someone is like spitting all over this post and I don’t recognize him! Thanks, Oh Secret Knight!
Somehow I feel like you’re writing specially for me. I’m getting the benefit of private consulting at a very good price. Now if I only had a big budget…
I think the 12 months rule is pretty solid. And if you’re using WordPress, why not?
@barrettrossie I’m so glad I can help; genuinely glad…my point in blogging is to teach from my learnings and mistakes to make someone’s path a bit lighter. Thanks, Barrett!
Oh, wow. Someone is like spitting all over this post and I don’t recognize him!
@jordanlampert.co Wait, wait, isn’t that my line??!! LOL! Great to have you here!
Businesses may also be not-for-profit or state-owned. A business owned by multiple individuals may be referred to as a company, although that term also has a more precise meaning.