Digital Marketing Strategy, PR and Messaging
It was about time for a bit of video; I so love this medium, but stink at any of the editing. So, you get me raw and in one take. I’m trying to figure out how to import this into iMovie on the Big Mac, but if I can’t do it in five minutes, then time to move on.
What’s the message today? Three tips to stay the course in two minutes. I’m sensing a bunch of animosity, uncertainty and doubt; this summer hello may put you back on course…I hope so! See what you think!
Summer is a time for most moms to scream for help. You’ll see my hashtag frequently: #MomInSummer and others are already on board to feel my pain. There are some moms who love summer; perhaps they don’t run their own business or try to blog three times weekly plus be a mom taxi back and forth to camp.
Because I’m already affected by a serious strain on my time for my blog, I decided to give a little love to my community by compiling a categorical description of bloggers with various bloggers LISTED in each category. That became a spur-of-the-moment blog post,
My goal was pure; my naiveté embarrassing! I knew that recently I had neglected my community as well as visits to bloggers’ houses to comment. I thought this a good way to accomplish several purposes — give a little, get a little.
Alas. Lists are a no-no for bloggers. In comments, Shonali of and Shelly Kramer of each mentioned that lists are a tad offensive due to various and sundry reasons. I didn’t know. The good news is the way I presented the bloggers in the lists was different than just weakly attempting to earn attention; it was a more thoughtful approach oriented to types of writing.
Get A Little
At the same time, when you do put a blog post together with outbound link love, you get some wonderful support in return. In fact, it’s awesome. I was surprised with the number of folks who did, in fact, come on over to share thoughts and ask which category they should be in. That was way cool and felt good because I have been neglectful.
I have to call out here, too. She suggested a new category of bloggers as curators, and I gave her a triple hmmm on that one. What say you? Is curating blogging? I really want to know!
So, here is my take on lists, based on feedback from doing one this week:
1. Do not just list every blogger you know in a blog post. It comes across smarmy and offensive.
2. If you are going to list a bunch of bloggers in a post, ensure there’s a creative way to do that.
3. Understand that people will see right through you if you are only out to get attention.
4. Meanwhile, if the mood strikes you, test it out!
Yes, no, maybe?
What type of blogger are you? What do you write about the majority of the time? Here’s what I’ve noticed in the circles I’m in; perhaps you comfortably conform or you’re more of a mashup writer, like me.
The big question is not what are you going to write about, but who is it for? Are you attracting folks to your blog you know you need? Is your writing matching up to the goals for your blog? Uhmm, do you have goals?
Who did I miss above? Add your blog here and the category you typically write under!
A boatload of bloggers has been following Mitch Joel’s lead and talking about how they blog. There have been some wonderful posts that look inside many bloggers’ strategy from Mark Schaefer, Gini Dietrich, Jason Konopinski, and others. From what Ken Mueller discovered over at Inkling Media when he posed that question to some of us, people seem to get out the keyboard and just write already.
Me, too. No notes, just thought processes in ideation all the time taking up valuable brain space. Since blogging began for me two years ago, everything is a story, everything has an angle, everything is blog fodder. It’s maddening, and I read science fiction at night to shut down.
About Negative Comments
So, rather than follow Mitch Joel’s challenge to share how I blog (oh, maybe I already did that), I want to look at a very intrinsic part of blogging that makes the world go round. It’s comments, but it’s not the type of comment you might think.
Detractors and bot spammers and people with some real negativity are showing up in comments. This has happened to me when I post on a national level, and it’s no fun. It also happened last week over at a client site, JD Match, where someone named Bob asked me if I didn’t have anything better to do than to blog about something that detracted from making the world a better place.
Over at Spin Sucks yesterday, my friend Jenn Whinnem wrote a post about her employer, Connecticut Health Foundation and how it measures success. A headline adjustment caused the headline to imply they were measuring ROI; her article didn’t really address that. The comments came out of the gate fast and aggressive. For a guest blogger who rarely blogs to feel that angst on the receiving end, it’s not fun when you’re on the firing line.
There is a range of emotions I experience when I read a negative comment the first time. Let me try to share what they are and see if you have experienced any of the same:
1. Immediate lack of confidence. Did I write something wrong? What did I say that didn’t sit well? Should I go find it and switch the language?
2. Angst. Darn it, I hit publish too quickly; I was in a squirrely mood and it showed in the flip tone. I needed to let that post sit over night.
3. Anger. The urge to launch back with a slew of discourteous words is so tempting I fire off a retort then come to my senses and delete and rewrite something as smooth as silk pie.
4. Relief. After I reread the negative comment, I realize while it’s directed at me, it’s not about me. It’s about the commenter who likes to bring discomfort to bloggers in their own community.
Managing negativity in a blogging community is one thing. When you write at a national level, it’s expected. If you’re a guest in someone else’s community with a guest post, there ought to be respect. Well, heck, there ought to be respect anywhere, but that’s a bit lacking at times, isn’t it?
At Michelle Quillin’s house today over at New England Multimedia, I’ve written a guest post, 10 Tips To Handle Negative Blog Comments. I’m certain her community will be nice to me as a guest, and I’m hopeful, too, the 10 tips will prepare someone for how to manage a bit of angst in comments.
Now, it’s your turn…how do you manage detractors and dissenting comments? Please share so we can all learn.
Last week I was late posting this because the dog ate my homework. Actually, it was stuck on my iPad, and I had to retype because I knew it was killer content. I posted at 11 a.m. ET on Wednesday; always murder when hawking on Twitter because most are back in the throes of work.
What I quickly realized, as the post earned few comments or retweets, is the subject matter—highly specialized for professionals in public relations. To highlight, I wrote about GoPro, the media darling upstart wearable video camera company loved by extreme sports enthusiasts. My content was oriented to media relations for PR professionals interested in the elements they need for national media relations.
To promote this niche content pertaining to my profession, I had to pimp (aka push, promote, market) my post, and here’s how I did it:
>>Twitter. I scheduled about four tweets throughout the day, and invited a few close peeps to review. While they read for me and re-tweeted, comments were few. (As Erica Allison reminded me, don’t ever gauge the strength of a post on its comments, especially one oriented to a specialized topic.)
>>Triberr. I am a member of three tribes, and I’m always grateful when my tribe members retweet my blog posts. My post was tweeted by about 10 peeps to their networks. I’ve come to rely on the tribes to extend my content for me, and it all works together in correlation. Triberr is not a one-off social media strategy…it’s part and parcel of the overall strategy.
>>Buffer. I signed up for Buffer for the first time (after seeing many using it). Buffer scheduled my tweet at the most opportune time of the day when most are active in the stream. Very cool app…try this out.
>>Facebook Profile. My tweets to share the post were also sent over to Facebook at the same time. HootSuite is a wonderful platform with which to push content on multiple channels simultaneously.
>>Facebook Fan Page. I admit, my firm’s Facebook page is not frequently attended. I registered my blog with Networked Blogs which automatically posts my articles on my Facebook company page; however, this blog post warranted more of a push to folks in my community. I garnered a few likes from a few doing this.
>>Facebook Fan Page of GoPro. What did I have to lose? With 1.5 million likes in its community on Facebook, I shared my blog post on the GoPro wall. I congratulated them on all their publicity (in Inc. magazine) and shared my post. The result was a handful of likes on my post from the GoPro community.
>>Google+. As we’re all being required to engage more frequently with Google+ to influence search, you bet I shared my post there. I timed it for the morning before noon ET and then again in the afternoon. One was broadcast to all circles, and the other was in my PR and social media circles.
>>LinkedIn. I’ve not been engaging on LinkedIn as efficiently as I should. I posted my article on my own profile, and then I looked at the groups I was part of. There were two public relations groups I knew would be interested in this content, so I posted. I also joined another group, Social Media Marketers, and shared there because the story of GoPro as a social brand is compelling to anyone playing in social media marketing.
>>Blog Comments. That day, as I didn’t need to manage my own community as much, I sought other blogs to read and place comments. Those blogs with a commenting system that showed my current blog post brought in new readers to my site. (This is one good reason why you comment on others’ blogs…to help other communities become acquainted with you and yours.)
RESULTS
Clicky. What an amazing analytics tool. I love this dashboard, and I’m fully aware Google Analytics has spiffed up its user friendliness. For someone as anti-analytics as I am, Clicky is a good starter dashboard to get me acclimated to reading stats.
In so doing, I saw that today, hits are up 214% on the GoPro blog post. When I went back seven days to see traffic, I noticed that every single tactic I made above garnered hits to the post. People were stopping in the day of the post, the day after and through the weekend. Clicky showed me how long people stayed, what blog post they arrived at, and whether they opened on a link.
As I said, I’m terrible peeking under the covers to see what the back end is doing on my blog. When I do, I’m always amazed at the extent of data available to help drive my content choices. While I’m never going to let analytics drive my writings, I realize now that having some knowledge at the core of this experience is never a bad thing.
What tales from the rear can you add to this mix? Heh.
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