Blogging for Geniuses
Sometimes the element of blogging that holds people back the most is over-thinking their blogs. That’s why this post is entitled “Blogging for Geniuses” as opposed to ‘dummies.’ Many companies will engage in paid search management or marketing analysis to determine what topics to blog about on their corporate web pages. But for individuals looking to get their voices out into the blogosphere, sometimes the easiest way to get started is to shoot from the hip and write from the heart. Here are some practical tips for the wayward blogger to get started, or to augment their productivity and blog performance:
Don’t tackle subjects that are beyond your area of expertise.
Most any subject you can think of will be covered six ways to Sunday by people who probably know the facts a little better than you. Stick to topics that you know about from experience. It will imbue your posts with an air of authenticity that speaks to Internet readers who are already inundated with duplicate material on a daily basis. Be sure to include links to the articles from your research, especially if they’re from sites with a high page rank.
Research before you write.
Even though you should blog from the heart, you still want to have your facts straight. It’s also good to be able to bring interesting historical perspectives to contemporary issues. Research is the best way to fact-check your blogs and give them original angles.
Use keywords to make sure your blog is optimized for search engines.
Keywords are excellent for SEO, as they give weight to your blog in popular search engine results, and they also help you to keep your writing focused. Blogging is not rocket science, nor is it brain surgery, but it is a powerful Internet tool. Combined with email marketing, SEO on your blog can earn you cash, prestige, and a loyal readership.
Use social media to promote your blog.
Once the writing on your blog is focused, it’s time to focus your blog as a whole by getting it into niche corners of the Internet. The best way to do this is with social media sites like Twitter and Reddit. They allow you to highlight links to your blog among relevant readers. Plus, you can have your blog shared, reTweeted, and listed by others.
Blogging is not exactly an art form—or rocket science—but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some complex tasks you must face when you get going. Many of the tasks involve writing in such a way so as to connect with your audience. Focusing your subjects, researching your topics, using appropriate keywords, and promoting with social media are the right ways to enter the blogosphere.
Read MoreSocial Media Marketing Summit: Brand Spotlight on Cisco
This presentation focused mostly on Cisco’s launch of a new router ASR 2000, but they parlayed a singular product launch into an entire social media network for Cisco for uber users of networking tools that brought fun into the mix.
- LaSandra Brill, Manager, Web & Social Media Marketing, Cisco.
Wow… the computer she was using prompted her to restart now or later for automatic updates and she clicked Restart Now, so there was a hiccup in the program, so to speak. I have to give her props that she totally knew her presentation and continued on, even citing accurate figures, and just picked right back up. The entire audience groaning “ooh, noooooo” when she clicked Restart Now was amusing. But as I said, she held her own and recovered very well.
I saw an interesting tweet that someone came just for this presentation because they possibly have a less sexy product that this tweeter has! Good point – making a networking router exciting is quite the feat.
Bullet Point Review!
- Marketing in a web 2.0 world is much different than traditional marketing.
- Foundation of the campaign was the uber user – created a micro site to gather registrations for the launch event.
- Normally this happens a week or so ahead of time, but they instead used fictional characters to say something a bit more vague while being fun and interesting.
- Traditional campaign leveraged on a social media level. Used videos on YouTube, Facebook, etc.
- They created a Facebook group to leverage for this launch, but also didn’t want to make it toooo specific because they wanted to utilize it later.
- Group continues to grow even after the product launch.
- it is a long tail, but they feel that it’s worth it. They don’t pay for the sponsored group, but utilize the free group to minimize investment.
- Advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable.
- Created a game (Edge Quest) and used it with a tournament to create buzz in the blogosphere.
- Leveraged Second Life as well with a pre-event live concert, launch event countdown calculator.
- They did research before venturing into Second Life and found that they did have a big audience within SL.
- Created a video of the launch event on SL and posted that on YouTube and Facebook to leverage and cross publicize.
- Created a widget that became viral with an embed code for bloggers and social media. ProBlogger picked it up. Free advertising is awesome.
- Because the widget is hosted on their servers, they could update it whenever and it’s syndicated.
- Built up anticipation and speculation about the product to entice bloggers to write about them through teaser releases.
- Vaguness kept speculation fueled and buzz going.
- Leveraged the concept of a social media release – clear & simple, ensure accuracy, build community, easy access, attention-grabbing, embed code for sharing.
- Saved a ton of money by having a virtual product launch over an online only product launch. Only had to utilize John Chambers for an hour of his time instead of half a day.
- Reached 128 countries with a prerecorded launch video.
- Lessons learned:
- Avoid hidden costs – ensure roalty free access to videos so that content can be re-purposed on social media sites.
- Test, test, & more test – widget was a new tool so the embedding perfection took more time than anticipated.
- User generated content – the UGC on Facebook was the most active discussion with the “Top 20 Signs you’re an Internet Addict” thread.
- Edge Quest ASR Design Craft content was a bust – the promotion for this was lost in the promotion for the tournament itself. Lesson – stick to one message.
Points brought up during the LaSandra Brill Q&A
Cisco has a big voice, so how does this translate to smaller business? You have to make it sexy, a router is very routine and they made it sexy – was in their top 5 product launches of all time.- Most costs were soft costs – human time, engagement.
Overall a great session – at first I admit that I was worried it would be a snooze fest but it was actually really interesting to see how well they leveraged many different venues of social media to launch this product and the success they acheived with it.
Read MoreTo Continue This Blog Or Not?
I’m considering whether or not I want to continue with this blog. I’m not sure that many people really read it consistently, and I’m beginning to doubt if there’s room in this space for another marketing blog from someone who didn’t even go to school for marketing. Is my perspective that unique? Not sure… so, I’m at a precipice I guess.
The blog isn’t even a year old yet, but I find myself questioning whether or not the blog is adding any value to the space or am I yet another jackass sharing their opinion with people who didn’t ask for it? According to Google Analytics, which longtime readers will see that I couldn’t even keep THAT working, I get about 61 visitors per day. 10,072 since January 1. But how accurate is this since my reporting has had fails a couple times? And does this even matter?
Unless I receive a boom of entries for the contest by Sunday, the contest has been a complete failure with not one single entry as of this moment. I thought the prizes were pretty sweet… hell I’d love to win them myself. What did I do wrong? Not put WIN A VADO! in the title? Rely too heavily on promoting it through Twitter?
Of course, this first year is a total learning curve. Find what works, what doesn’t. I can’t expect to just jump in and be the bomb. Am I being too rash? Not patient enough?
Confusing whether I’m representing my employer or myself is also weighing heavy. Am I forsaking my employer by endorsing my personal brand within my web presence?
These things weigh heavily on my mind as more and more work seems to pile on me – both at my place of employment and at home. Sure it’s building my “personal brand”, and I’ve gotten some cool opportunities from it like co-hosting the Affiliate Thing podcast and an upcoming opportunity that I’m not quite ready to announce yet, but…is it ultimately worth it?
Read MoreIn Consideration of Guest Blogging
I’ve had the opportunity to blog as a guest for a few blogs now, and I’ve been approached by other bloggers interested in guest posting on this here blog. It’s a weird subject for me. While it might be nice to put the reigns down every once in awhile and get a fresh take on some content, I also feel like people come here for my opinion. Perhaps that’s self centered of me. But allowing a rival gang member onto my turf makes me uncomfortable.
Perhaps it’s not about rivalry. Perhaps it’s about cooperation towards a shared goal.
When thinking about what to write for a blog that I could guest post on, for some reason I get nervous about that too. My education in writing started out from a very journalistic place, so I feel the need to really write a professional, newspaper quality article when writing for someone else. I don’t feel nearly that amount of pressure when writing for my own blog since this is my publication – I’m solely responsible for it and have no one else but myself to blame for it’s success or failures. So while the exposure of guest blogging for someone else would be a definite pro, the pressure I’d put on myself in crafting the “perfect” article might overwhelm that.
To return to cooperation, it’s always a shared goal when guest blogging. The blog owner gets the benefit of a fresh outlook and a lighter work load while the guest gets the benefit of more exposure of their name and style which might drive some readers to check out their blog as well. There’s always more room for another feed in your feed reader of choice. And as the blog owner, you have complete discretion over what gets posted on your blog – very much like the managing editor of a newspaper or magazine. If the article isn’t up to your own standards, you have the freedom to ask for changes or just reject it outright.
As someone who works full time and then blogs, it’s a bit difficult to consider guest blogging just from a work load standpoint. Working all day, then coming home to develop content for my own blogs AND guest articles is a lot of work. I guess my biggest question is, is it worth the amount of work put in?
So speak up… have you written guest posts for blogs? Do you accept guest articles for your own blog? What have your results been?
Read MoreChanges A-Foot
Frequent visitors here to TrishaLyn.com will notice that the design has changed, among other things. I haven’t updated in awhile because I’m trying to fix the issues first. This is all in an attempt to NOT corrupt my source feed.
As with all budding bloggers, I’ve screwed the pooch a bit and now having to fix what I broke. Apparently a combination of “Pretty Permalinks” structure and my old theme are killing my RSS feed for some reason. Whenever I change the permalink structure the source feed dies and I get an XML not well parsed message.
So I admit that I’m at a loss and don’t know how to fix this without going back to the ugly default permalink structure. And that also kills all the links that are out there & doesn’t sync previous Disqus comments to their posts, so I really do NEED to go back to the pretty permalinks… but how do I do that without losing the feed?
I’m working on it… if you have suggestions, throw them at me PLEASE. I’ll, of course, share the solution once I find it. I’m not giving up!
I’m getting some help from a heavy hitter in the blogosphere/affiliate marketing world… so let’s all hope this works out. By the by, I changed the design because I thought it was my old theme that was mucking things up, but I actually really like this new theme. Professional but still “me”. Meh anyway… HELP 😛
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