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Eight Reasons Why Blogs Can’t Go Dormant

11/07/2012 By Jayme Soulati

credit: en.blog.wordpress.com

A recent conversation with a small-to-medium business (SMB) included the question, “If my business is booming, then why should I keep blogging?”

Great question because blogging takes a boatload of consistent time and attention. Not only is a blogger responsible for creating and publishing genuine and authoritative content, that blogger needs to nurture a community and comment on others’ blogs, too.

I get it; but, here’s what I said to my peer, friend and colleague:

If your blog goes dormant, you can’t walk the talk with clients.
When you disappear longer than four weeks with no activity, people stop coming to check in and you’re forgotten.
Prospects that want to check out your work expect to see up-to-date product. If a date on the most recent blog post is 60 days prior, then that sends erroneous messages. You may lose a lead if a blog is inactive.
To compete, you need to stay inspired. A blog gives SMB brands an opportunity to differentiate from the competition.
Becoming an authority is no easy task; keep the insight fresh and trendy, and the brand will benefit.

8 Tips To Get Back On Track

1. Post from the archives — there is content no one has seen in 12 months; select a favorite, add a more current opening paragraph, and voila — a fresh post!

2. Write shorter pieces. Blog posts should average about 500 words, give or take. If you’re trying to get back on track, write 350 words (you can do those in your sleep!).

3. Acknowledge your community with a list of the last 25 commenters and their blog urls. That pingback will bring peeps back to your house in droves to welcome you back.

4. Aim for one post weekly for a few weeks to get your mojo working again. Anyone who has blogged more than 12 months knows how to get back to it; just like riding a bike.

5. Remember that community you built? They’re not gone; just dormant, too. But, if you call them back with consistent posts, you’ll earn the traffic once again.

6. Think about SEO juice — what’s the number-one rule? Fresh, frequent content to boost organic attention.

7. You can’t be a one-channel wonder. Great that you’re on Facebook, but where did you really get your start? Twitter. What happened next? Blogging. Where are your clients, community, employees and prospects hanging online? A little bit of everywhere, so you need to engage equal parts Twitter, Blogging, Facebook and Google+.

8. Feeling down and out? Remember the ‘raderie your blog community inspires. There’s absolutely nothing like a good ‘old #TeamBlogJack to raise the spirits of bloggers who’ve been dormant awhile.

So, what do you say? C’mon back! You’re missed!

Eight Reasons Why You Should Thank Twitter Followers

10/15/2012 By Jayme Soulati

Credit: Sociable Boost

Twitter is not a one-way street. Your content gets retweeted by a follower, and they get crickets? Thanking followers should be something you incorporate into your daily tweets.

Some folks think “thanks for the RT” is just noise and clutters the stream. Others think it’s a hassle and are on the fence about whether it’s good practice or not. In my blog post last week “How Not To Use Triberr,” the issue of thanking followers popped up in comments.

Adam Toporek who writes Customers That Stick and Ralph Dopping, the Canadian architect who writes The View From Here, both suggested that acknowledging followers for a blog post retweet was not a practice they thought they should engage in.

So, I politely disagreed and thanked them for the idea for today’s post and hope they come back to lend a few cents below (and you, too, of course!).

Two Caveats

Before I share my reasons below, let’s review a few things…

There are MANY ways to thank someone for their acknowledgment. You can comment on their blog in return; you can RT their RT with a thanks at the end; you can follow them on Twitter and say thanks; you can introduce them to someone else in your stream to ensure they’ve met; you can #FollowFriday; you can make up your own way to show appreciation!
Peeps like A-lister bloggers and authors who have tens of thousands of Twitter followers are unable to thank or acknowledge mostly anyone. The stream is so unmanageable especially when you’re publishing top-quality content. I get that, and I don’t expect community leaders to attempt to do a one-off thanks; not possible. Thus, what’s below is for we who are in building mode – newbies, mid-tier and less-than-12-month bloggers, and peeps who are growing their Twitter stream.

8 Twitter Tips

Here are my 8 reasons why I believe you should thank peeps for their engagement, acknowledgment, and ‘raderie on Twitter:

1. Twitter helps you build community. When you thank someone for an RT, a comment, a compliment, a supportive gesture, etc. it shows you’re paying attention, listening and appreciate someone for their time to engage.

2. When someone engages with your blog by sending along your content, that means they’ve taken time to either read, comment, share, and take the first step to build a relationship. Isn’t a “thanks for that” peanuts when you think of your content being shared by a relative stranger?

3. When you don’t know someone who has RT’d a post of yours, it offers you the opportunity to address them by name, say, “nice to tweet you,” and thank them at the same time. You just accomplished a trio of good community.

4. What profession are you in? If you’re in a specialty niche, customer service, like Adam is, then you ought to be building community with like- minded customer-service peeps. If one happens to find your blog and you speak the same language, then all the more reason to acknowledge them and say thanks.

5. Your stream can never be littered unless you’re spamming it with rotten content. Who is the judge of what litter looks like in a Twitter stream? Has anyone told you that you put out garbage…that a “thank you for acknowledging me with an RT” is trash? Absolutely not. Gratitude is not litter; it humanizes your brand and makes you personable.

6. Why would you regard “thanks so much” as noise? Noise and clutter…hmm. I mentioned that I was choosing not to re-tweet posts from bloggers writing about Halloween family dinners and baby products. These topics are not for my brand or my community. Were I to consistently retweet these to my followers, this would be regarded as noise and a dilution of my brand.

7. Are you self-employed and building a company? If Ralph is an architect blogging for some fun and not to boost his business (because he works for a firm), and I’m in B-to-B social media marketing and PR, then absolutely you betcha I’m going to thank people for acknowledging my content. When someone RTs my content, I recognize immediately if they are new to my stream. That’s how tuned in I am to my followers. Because my followers are organic I have had measured growth, and that’s enabled me to monitor the stream well.

8. What are your goals as a blogger? If you want to be an influencer, thought leader, earn more comments, build a community, monetize and sell products, earn credibility, get ranked, etc. then you need subscribers, right? A thank you to those who pass along your content seems minimal when it comes to these larger goals.

What did I miss; do you agree or disagree?

Blogger, Twitter, Triberr

07/24/2012 By Jayme Soulati

You can tweet without a blog; you shouldn’t blog without Twitter, and every blogger needs Triberr.

Oooh, that statement is going to get me in hot water, eh? So many people can’t see the light about Triberr, but have you seen the innovative things happening over there? Triberr is trying to single handedly alter the way we blog, get subscribers, earn traffic and analytics, and so much more.

Most of us were in on the early ground floor when Dino Dogan and Dan Cristo were accessible with lots of marketing time on their hands to do some fancy sheep videos with Danny Brown about Klout. Today, Dino and Dan are so famous, they nary have time for us small fry. Kidding. Dino and Dan are still the most accessible chiefs, cooks and bottle washers the blogosphere has ever seen.

I digress.

For those of you bloggers who aren’t on Triberr, think about how hard you work to push out your content. When it’s good content, and you know it, here’s what you have to do:

Post to Facebook
Post to your Facebook company page unless you’re part of Networked Blogs
Post to Google +
Post to LinkedIn
Post to LinkedIn groups
Tweet all day
Post to Buffer and Crowdsource
Tweet your friends and ask them to stop by to comment

When you have Triberr and belong to a slew of tribes, then your reach is exponential with all the social sharing possible and feasible right from the Triberr platform. And, the cool thing is, when you’re in a tribe with mighty bloggers you get access to their content right away as soon as it publishes.

I was never so glad to be invited to a tribe recently to hob knob with a few big-daddy bloggers I hadn’t been able to bump shoulders with. Once in their tribe, now I can easily comment on their blog after I re-tweet their post from Triberr, and I can come right on back to the Triberr platform and repeat the process as often as I wish with other bloggers.

What Triberr allows is streamlined productivity and each time you head there, new buttons and features and functions are added with that in mind.

Dino and Dan are working on new beta products always – there is a micro-sharing thing that’s interesting and exciting, and there is also atomic Triberr in early beta for testing.

I encourage all bloggers with consistent content to join a tribe. Heck, join mine! I am always seeking some new inspiration in my Globe Spotting tribe where bloggers around the world share posts with others. I have other tribes I belong to, as well. Need an invite? I have a few bones to spare because Dino asked me to take a survey and the payment was bones – Triberr currency. That was an excellent bribe; took me all of 2 seconds to take the survey.

Confused? Don’t be…it takes a few heartbeats to sign up, and then you reap the benefit of being introduced to new bloggers. You don’t need to automatically share their blog posts — you can select which blog posts you want to push. The thing I love the most is that my favorite bloggers’ posts appear in my Triberr home page, and that’s how I don’t miss anyone.

What’s your thinking? Wanna duke it out? 🙂

How To Write Twitter Profiles With 10 Tips

05/23/2012 By Jayme Soulati

I was drawn to Twitter.com last week for something I don’t recall and decided to follow a bunch of peeps who had kindly followed me. I can really only do this en masse via Twitter’s platform and not via HootSuite, my app of choice.

Reviewing about a few hundred profiles all at once to determine if someone was fit to follow was a cringeful (yep, that’s a word) experience. I was taken aback that peeps still aren’t writing Twitter profiles with substance.

Here’s what I saw that I didn’t like:

Locked profiles. Why do this when were all trying to engage? If you’re afraid, maybe you shouldn’t be on Twitter anyway? If someone is stalking you, then just delete that individual profile instead of turning away everyone else.

I Love My Wife. Are you so sexy that women are asking for your phone number, Guys? Should I say “single and seeking” on my profile and should my friend say “In love with my hubby?” I wonder if this is a statement to appease the wives who wonder what the heck their husbands are doing online all the time and with whom? Too much personal for me.

Nothing. For goodness sakes, add something to your profile. Add some key words that describe your job, who you want to follow, your hobbies, where you live, if you’re a student, or something descriptive.

Wacked avatar. I’ve written about this in the past; you need an avatar someone can align to, can feel comfortable about, that is not an animal or a building. We’re communicating on a very social platform; show me your face!

Caps. Please don’t scream at me. I don’t need to see your profile in all caps, especially when you’re spouting off about yourself, too.

Sales Pitch. Folks selling products? Fine, I respect that, but please be more creative with the profile. Rather than carry on about the product features, tell my why I should engage with you? I’m gonna pass you by because you’re a product and not a person.

What else have you seen that I didn’t add above?

10 Tips

So, here are 10 tips for how to write a Twitter profile (just short of turning all the above around into positives):

1. Be personable and show me who you are with key words that give me a sense of your profession and interests.

2. Limit family talk but not all the time. If you want to talk about your family, please do, but don’t ever assume you have to add the number of children in your household (unless you’re a mommy blogger or mom seeking same and then you’re probably not going to follow me anyway?) or whether you’re in love with your spouse. This goes into your goals (see below) for Twitter — personal or business?

3. Keep politics out of your profile unless you’re running for election. That will be the death of your brand. The U.S. is too divided today to accept either side of the aisle in casual tweets.

4. Share something about your aptitude. Maybe you work for a living as a professional? Maybe you teach? Maybe you’re a pro boxer? Musician? Whatever, Share that as it gives someone an opportunity to follow you with a common thread.

5. Always provide your . I seek that often in someone’s profile and am disappointed when I can’t find it. Hmm, I better to ensure it’s there!

6. Please add an avatar of your face? It is so frustrating not being able to visualize someone on the other side of a tweet after so many years of tweeting together. (I’ve been told people hide for various personal reasons.)

7. Can you show me some personality? You’ve got a short space to describe who you are, but challenge yourself to be creative and show as many sides of yourself as you can.

8. Take your profile to Twellow and We Follow; register yourself to connect with like-minded Tweeps. When you synch your Twitter account, your profile is how you attract new followers.

9. Write a profile with the goal of attaining something – new business, a job, a guest blog post, or something. If you’re seeking a spouse, head to Match.com.

10. Set goals for your Twitter experience (different than a goal for your profile). Are you on Twitter for business or personal reasons? Write content in alignment with your goals. A profile is a mirror of that ultimate strategy.

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