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Brand Your Blog Or Name?

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Read this headline from a recent Ad Age — The Big Winners at Cannes: Emerging Markets and Not Just for Bagging Lions.

Two words in that headline, Cannes and Lions, conjured two brands for me, John Falchetto and Marcus Sheridan. John writes Expat Life Coach and lives in France ( thus the Cannes assimilation), and Marcus writes The Sales Lion. Obviously, you can understand how I thought  of Marcus.

Neither of them know me well, but each of us appears in one another’s houses on occasion to contribute to comments. The fact is I lurk on their blogs more than I comment; their brands are significant in my opinion, and I glean from content other perspectives than mine.

Which leads me to my point. Are you a brand or is your blog?

In the case of the two gents I referenced above, both have branded the name of their blogs well. When Reading Cannes in the Ad Age headline, I thought of John first who lives in France and then segued to the name of his blog and his recent video interview with a PR professional in Costa Rica. All of this happened within seconds of course, but the thought patterns were definitely real and in sequence.

As for The Sales Lion, this blog shares content about family, a small business, customer stories, social media, and marketing. Powerful stuff with a community to boot. Marcus does a fab job with it. The fact that a word, lions, prompted my recollection of the name of Marcus’s blog is exactly what he wants that word to connote. As for Marcus’s business, he’s in the swimming pool business. I don’t get the correlation between lions and swimming pools, but it obviously works for him and his customers.

Here’s a great example to build on what I’m talking about…John tweets using his name and Marcus tweets using TheSalesLion (both Twitter links are above). My brand recall for John and Marcus is John’s name (not his blog title) and the title of Marcus’s blog rather than his name.

How have you branded your blog? Is it your name or a key-word rich title that draws people in to learn more?

 

 

 

 

Is Power Blogging Really The Holy Grail?

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What is a power blogger anyway? We can call “them” professional bloggers, A-listers, or just darn simply popular. I’m not a power blogger, but being the competitive spirit that I am, I’ve often wondered how I could get on that Ad Age Power 150 list –yikes; it’s a lofty goal.

For sure these peeps who are powerful bloggers in my circle devote skads of time to their blog; kinda like one person I know who admitted spending 40 hours a week on hers. They have an IT team standing in the wings to re-design this and tweak that. They have a team of writers helping on an off day when the main squeeze is traveling, and the researchers are combing industry rags for all the breaking news so they can make hay about it before anyone else.

I’m a power walker; does that count? Heh, not really, but it serves as a great analogy. My speed is quicker than most; I have an end goal, usually to move the heart rate up and the time down. I am (trying) to keep a consistent schedule (shall we say daily for all intents and purposes), and I’m competing with (myself) to do it better earn something (loss of calories, great legs, a break from Twitter?).

Alas, power blogging has its pitfalls which makes these blog owners just like we stragglers, followers, newbies, and awe-inspired wow-ers:

  • Mark Schaefer who writes Ad Age Power blog 48 has invited a cadre of guest posters to author articles while he holidays in Eastern Europe for two weeks. In doing so, he lamented his failure to manage social media and blogging while aiming for a desperate unplug from it all.
  • Gini Dietrich, who writes the Ad Age Power Blog 39 called Spin Sucks (and coming soon, the perfected Spin Sucks Pro) admitted her lack of inspiration coming up with ideas to write a blog post and wrote a blog post about nothing. (And, damned if I just went to get the link to that and there’s 251 comments — ABOUT NOTHING!)
  • Marcus Sheridan who owns The Sales Lion blog recently had one of the most civil, contentious, well–commented blog posts I’ve ever had the privilege of being part of (with perhaps 368 comments as of today), and he had to manage each and every one of those all alone.
  • Heck, Jayme Soulati (that’s me if you forgot) even wrote a blog post This is a No Mojo Blog. (Oh, yeah, am not a power blogger.)

I leave you to ponder the treasure or empty bucket of power blogging with these final thoughts I’m seeing from just about everyone who’s been alongside me in the last several years:

1. We’re humans who require sleep, a beverage, hugs from our children, and an unplug during holiday.

2. We have real jobs that pay the bills, unless your real job is as a professional blogger and thus you should not be reading this, so skitter away, mein Freund.

3. Passion and inspiration are fleeting when we’re tuckered. Understand that shift, and your readers will be ever more thankful.

4. No one is telling you to post every day; see bullet three.

5. Numbers are metrics, but remember, the quality of comments mean more than the number of tweets from the blog (in fact, I get more RTs on Twitter for posts than I do from the tweet button app or Share This).

What might you offer about power blogging? Is that your goal, or are you standing in the wings watching and whispering, “thank goodness that’s not me.” ? (P.S. I’m trying to heed my own counsel; it’s tough!)

(image: indexofwallpapers.com)

 

 

Does Your Blog Make Commenters Comfy?

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I was along for the ride on one of the most contentious (according to comments) blog posts ever, and based on “Popular Posts” tallies in his sidebar the highest-number-of-comments (250) as of this moment (and no signs of stopping).

I’m speaking of Marcus Sheridan who writes The Sales Lion. He owns a swimming pool company and said he turned to social media in the downtick to save his business. Everyone talks about him, and his brand is authentic and popular. I read my first blog post of his via my reader one late night and was so blown away by his writing and content I kept it as “unread.”

So, in earnest, I read his post early Friday morning about Blog World because I had really wanted to go and meet some great folks. Marcus’s post was the first recap I would read; however, it’s turned more into a critique free for all with the show’s organizers, other speakers, other attendees, and even people who “most offended” those in audience during the final keynote.  You can read it all here; it’s amazing.

But, that’s not what this blog post was intended to be about, although it’s a really nice segue.

I was duly impressed with the comfortable feeling I got when I first arrived at Marcus’s blog on Friday and felt compelled to comment and then began to hijack the comments in usual banter with Gini Dietrich. Gini and Marcus assured me it was OK to do so when I said, “oops, apologies if this isn’t cool.”

What that means is a huge welcome mat is open at The Sales Lion. I just went back to check, he has no “Ad Age Power Blogger” badge or other award-winning badges in his sidebar (although, I know if he tried, he’d win something hands down). By welcoming comments from the small and large, unknown and well known, The Sales Lion allows all of us to commune within his community, and that’s what he’s done tremendously well – create a vast community.

The comments rolled in all day long on Friday and were still going strong through the night, on Saturday and today (Sunday). I was overwhelmed and wondered how on earth someone receiving that measure of comments could get any work done? (Marcus, how do you do that? Manage comments without them controlling your time?) Curious, I decided to check in Friday during dinner and see how the comments were tracking.

Lo, the one I opened was TO Gini Dietrich and it was ABOUT how comfortable the woman felt leaving a comment because others were not just “trolling.” (I assume that means bantering?) She felt her thoughts would be sincerely welcome.

And, so, the topic for this post was being written on a napkin in a restaurant and the one comment I decided to open confirmed it was a viable topic. Oh, yeah, and Gini just had to pop in to also confirm we are the same person.

Think about your welcome mat on your blog. What would commenters say about your house? If you need a lesson, head on over to Marcus’s and see the warmth and sincerity with which he invites you in. He doesn’t need any badges in his margin; he’s already an exponential power.

I’ve written about this before, but this level of engagement is so hugely quality that I need to share. It’s Marcus’s grace, sincerity, authenticity, and balance with which he responds to each and every commenter and not just with a brush-off. He engages people and invites them back without asking.

We can all learn just by observing; my take-aways are still in gel form, but the first lesson is right here.

 

Momaraderie Is Sunday Sweets With Shakirah

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This Momaraderie feature is the first (besides my mom’s) to share about a woman who doesn’t know she’s being tapped. (I love surprises!) She made such an impression on me in the last 48 hours, and what a lovely way to spend a Sunday morning sharing it with you.

Shakirah Dawud is a mother of a daughter who is two-years-old. We all know what that means; following around the baby, consistent attention and basically doing EVERYTHING for her child. She is also a professional copywriter and book editor, and when you sign on to regularly read her blog at Deliberate Ink, you’ll grasp immediately how she can be an editor…a really good one.

It’s because her writing always knocks it out of the park. ALWAYS. I’ve not had the privilege of working with copywriters (it feels more like an advertising thing), and she’s not fully in the camp of public relations (because she’s sitting just outside the fence) yet I see the possible blend, especially with someone so engaged.

Let me tell you a bit more. I’m learning about her in snips and snaps and this should give you a head start:

** Not sure how I was first introduced to Shakirah, perhaps she just appeared in my stream one day with this terribly long Twitter ID with her full name TaqqiyahShakirah_Dawud, I think. And, then, she shortened it to @ShakirahDawud (yeah) b/c I could remember it better. In my blog comments she was commenting, and I asked her how I ought to address her as there were two first names; she told me Shakirah and that was perfect.

** And, she told me she was shy; and I saw that in comments and could feel her holding back. Now that she’s entirely more comfortable the floodgates have opened and she’s pouring out the content and comments everywhere and engaging her personal brand. It’s marvelous to see.

** Nice segue to the comments; Shakirah is one of the most thoughtful and in-depth commenters I’ve ever had the privilege of having on my blogs. On Friday, I posted a Childhood Obesity and BMI Screening Mandates piece over at The SMB Collective. It was one of the most popular posts ever on that blog (I’m still in test mode trying to figure out what it’s going to be when it grows up), and I thank Shakirah for pushing the conversation. She posed such rich thought which encouraged others to weigh in, too, and keep the stories coming. I will be pulling from comments to do a round two on that topic.

** Around the same day, Shakirah posted a blog at her house about Wet Jeans and Chrysler about her childhood memory of wearing tight, skinny jeans to a water park and getting teased.

I’m so eager to keep learning more; in fact, I’m quite eager to see her lovely face – when do we get an avatar, Lady? Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy getting to know Shakirah as much as I have. Her blog is a wonderfully warm place with equally warm individuals sharing personal anecdotes (how does she do that?). Stop in to find out…again, you can find her over at Deliberate Ink.

 

Does Your Blog Banter?

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I love banter; in fact, I thrive on it. I sit here zipping off the one liners on Twitter and laughing my arse off and fully enjoying the 10 p.m. inanity and nonsense.

Banter is an art, I fully believe. There are some blogs that do and some that don’t. There are two peeps who immediately come to mind as the Banter Queen and King. I respectfully crown them such here today – Queen Davina of 3Hats fame and her cohort King Bill Dorman (with whom I’ve only recently begun to share snark).

There are two blogs that immediately come to mind who banter well; is this intentional? Perhaps…visit SpinSucks by the venerable Gini Dietrich; she’s definitely in the King and Queen royal court. And, Ingrid Abboud aka Griddy at the NittyGriddy blog. That woman rocks the house; hands down – IN the posts every time!

And, this is the crux…banter typically comes alive in the comments, and I’ve been thick in the middle of blog comments that don’t quit; in fact, they continue over the weekend (@Shonali, @Gini and others who shall not be blamed, I mean named).

If you want to be a banterer, and that’s not like a bantam chicken just clucking all day, you need to look at a few things:

**Personality. Queen Davina shares that’s she’s an introvert; really? No way in Laxahatchie is that chica an introvert; if she is then I’m a man.

**Confidence. Do you dare to write that remark that rides the edge between acceptable and downright dirty? Who’s going to be offended? Do you care?

**In-The-Moment. It’s so EZ to get caught up in the moment and zip it off; ensure your comfort level is accepting of what comes back because social media can and will provide that intellectual stimulation (I crave and cannot get in my day job and location).

**Clever (not cleaver)ness. Let’s face it, banter takes a semblance of intelligence on a plane where true meaning and implication fly on a higher plateau. If you don’t get the joke, it’s OK, just don’t ask “what does that mean?” of someone on a roll.

Not every blog banters all of the time; in fact, banter happens when you least expect it. I wrote a post at midnight recently in 10 minutes (Is Goal Setting Genetic), hit publish and did not edit, rewrite, get nervous whether the voice was too strong or offensive or whether the person I was picking on was going to hate me. (Turns out she laughed her patoot off, and suggested I write in that voice every day; heh, impossible.)

Want to get crowned banter royalty? Insert yourself in comments; start there and you can’t go wrong.  Share me some banter-ful blogs, would you? I think it’s time to make a list so we can all belly laugh, cuz it’s so healthy.

(credit: Balooscartoonblog.blogspot.com)