Category: Social media

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Some thoughts on beginning blogging from a writer at FlowingData… 

I answered a few questions for Amstat News not too long ago, and the questions were centered around why I, as a stat grad student, take the time to write for FlowingData and why others should give blogging a try. The questions were more from a career standpoint, but it really all comes down to this. It’s fun.I have fun picking apart designs and playing with data. It’s fun reading comments. It’s fun looking at others’ work. It’s fun learning how to make stuff. It’s fun getting emails from people who were totally scared of numbers, but are now taking stat courses.

People often ask me how much time I spend writing posts, but it’s like asking someone how much he watches TV or plays video games. How many hours have you spent roaming an art gallery?

I’ll let you in on a little secret though. Maintaining a blog doesn’t take as much time as you think. You just need to manage your time wisely. Don’t waste minutes checking stats, tweaking design, etc. Get rid of the extraneous, and you’re just writing in a journal. Doogie Howser wrote every day and he was a doctor and he had a social life. So it must be possible.

Hold on. I think I have a point here.

I guess—if you’re thinking about starting a blog, go for it. I highly encourage it. FlowingData has definitely been a good thing for me. There’s a book on the way, and I’ve been lucky to connect with people and groups I probably never would have been able to otherwise. But don’t just do it because you think it’ll advance your career. Do it because you actually like what you’re doing, and other stuff will follow. It’ll be much more fun that way.

via flowingdata.com

Sorry for the longish curation excerpt, but this was a great post by ‘askflowingdata’ at the FlowingData blog that I just had to share! Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization. btw, here’s a bit of ‘Doogie Howser’ eye candy for those unfamiliar with the reference…

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Sweta of GlobalThoughtz has an interesting blog post on the topic of corporate blogs…

“How do you follow your favorite company? How do you come to know about their latest launch or what’s cooking in their labs? My answer to this would be their ‘Corporate Blogs’. Not only does it give me a constant update about the company I like but also makes me feel connected to them. It gives me the feeling that they are listening to me. 

Today as a consumer, I have several products to choose from for each of my need and certainly my choice is driven by my affinity to a particular brand. Just like Internet presence had become crucial a few years back, corporate blogs are absolute necessity now. After all we live in the world of Social Media.

Its not just web companies that need to engage their consumers with their blogs. Few of the most loved companies in the world also house must read blogs. One of the best example of corporate blog is Official Google Blog, not only does it provide an insight into the company but also provides useful information to its readers. Corporate blogs such as McDonald’s Corporate Social Responsibility by McDonald’s, Check Out by Walmart and Fast Lane by GM have made these most loved companies even closer to their consumers. The Social networking sites Facebook and Twitter constantly update their users with their blogs The Facebook Blog and Twitter Blog.” Source: Why a company must have a blog.

Here’s the real payback, however, and the real reason why these corporations do it: HubSpot says that companies that blog get 55% more visitors, have 97% more inbound links, and 434% more indexed pages [which are valuable from a search perspective]. Better yet, customers who are engaged by a corporate blog and social media spend 30% more than their disconnected counterparts, according to MarketingSavant Dana VanDen Heuvel…

I guess you don’t really HAVE to have a blog, but at a time when many companies are fighting for their economic survival, I think it’s good to know there’s a good, fast and cheap tool that delivers these kinds of results. Question? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page…

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Last week, I posted that I had been chosen by Erin Davisson of WFRV TV in Green Bay to talk with her viewers about Google Reader. That segment was aired this evening…

http://www.wfrv.com/v/?i=123863049

Here’s the transcript…

Need to do a lot of online research? There’s a Google tool that can help make you a lot more efficient. It’s called Google Reader. It’s a free, web-based reader of RSS feeds, and once you find out how useful it is, you’re going to want to use it.Todd Lohenry is the owner of e1evation llc, and a social media expert. He’s a big fan of the Google Reader.

“Google Reader is a tool that lets you track the sites that you trust to search for terms that you want to know about and to track the people that you trust and turn the tide of information from chasing websites, hoping to find something good – to making the information you want flow to you,” said Lohenry.

The Google Reader is able to bring content from your favorite websites, blogs and topics to one location by the use of RSS feeds. Lohenry says RSS feeds are like the antenna on top of a television station. It broadcasts a signal to anyone who chooses to receive it. Google Reader is one of those receivers.

Google Reader also offers extras like personal stats, and keyboard shortcuts. You can track topics by using an RSS feed of a Twitter search. Lohenry says mastering the Google Reader means freeing up massive amounts of time, and says, “It makes all the difference in the world in terms of what you are able to accomplish on the internet.”

It will take some time to set up your Google Reader. but once you’ve found all your RSS feeds- it’s very handy.

via wfrv.com

Thanks so much to Erin Davisson for featuring my thoughts on ‘personal news aggregation’ with Google Reader on ‘Online with Erin’. Comment or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how Google Reader applies to your organization…

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In many ways, blogging is no more difficult than sending an email and much more effective in the long run…

“If you’re a great baker or known for your mad IT skills, chances are you get asked the same things over and over again. You probably also end up fielding distress calls from frantic friends struggling with a pie gone awry or a blue screen of death. Instead of typing out the same email responses repeatedly or talking yet another person through a troubleshooting process, slap up a web page with your own personal Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s) and answers.

Next time you’re tapping out 2 single-spaced pages to Aunt Gertrude describing photosynthesis in all its glory and splendor, consider emailing it to something like Posterous instead; then, fire Aunt Gertrude a link to the page. Now, not only will Trudy have all the chlorophyll-related knowledge [she] can tolerate, but Google will probably stop by and maybe send some other interested parties your way. And the next time somebody hits you up about it, you need only send them a link to that thing you already wrote instead of rehashing the same crap all over again!

We think that’s a pretty ingenious approach to helping people out with a minimum of impact on your valuable time. Of course, there will always be times when you’ll want to help someone directly instead of pushing them off to a web site, but building a personal FAQ is still a smart idea. Your friends and family will probably appreciate it, too, since they might feel weird about bothering you during the dinner hour to help them solve a problem. This way, they don’t have to.” Source: Create a Personal FAQ for Friends Who Want Your Advice – Troubleshooting – Lifehacker

I originally started blogging when I became chairman of a local volunteer organization. I didn’t want to spam members with every great article I found so I posted the ‘just in case’ info on a blog so I could save ‘just in time’ info for emails — that way I didn’t offend members with too much information and they actually kinda paid attention when I sent an email because they knew it wasn’t just another good website I found. A year later, I was stunned to see that my posts had attracted 25,000 pageviews from 93 countries and I was hooked on blogging forever…

This blog has evolved from the simple strategy outlined in the source. In many ways, the blog is little more than a repository for all the cool stuff I find every morning in my ‘virtual newspaper’. Like the source author, if I have something brilliant to say in email or a resource to share, I post it first and then send it based on the principle that if it’s worth sharing with one person, it’s worth sharing with billions. The fact of the matter is you don’t have time NOT to blog! Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization…

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…I did a post on ‘top 10 tactics and tools for tightening your tribe‘ with social media. ‘Tightening your tribe’? What the heck does that mean. Well, in order to understand the reference you’d have to drill down on Seth Godin‘s book ‘Tribes‘ which I have been reading over and over again this summer. Here’s what the summary in Google Books says about it:

In this fascinating book, Seth Godin argues that now, for the first time, everyone has an opportunity to start a movement – to bring together a tribe of like-minded people and do amazing things. There are tribes everywhere, all of them hungry for connection, meaning and change. And yet, too many people ignore the opportunity to lead, because they are “sheepwalking” their way through their lives and work, too afraid to question whether their compliance is doing them (or their company) any good. This book is for those who don’t want to be sheep and instead have a desire to do fresh and exciting work. If you have a passion for what you want to do and the drive to make it happen, there is a tribe of fellow employees, or customers, or investors, or readers, just waiting for you to connect them with each other and lead them where they want to go. 

Seth says that in order to start your movement, all you need is the message and the tools to share it. When he discusses social media, he refers to it as a tool for ‘tightening your tribe’, hence the title of my series. Godin does not, however elucidate on tactics and tools much beyond mentioning Facebook, Twitter, and Basecamp…

Being the social media tactician that I am, I decided to mindmap those tools and for the next 10 weeks starting on Monday, there’ll be an original post to the series. Stay tuned! I’ll work hard to make it worth your while!

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Forrester reported over three years ago that the lead management market was heating up…

“Since the start of this year, I’ve been receiving a boatload of briefing requests from companies wanting to show me their lead generation and management solutions. Most recently, Marketo just announced their lead management solution. While honored, I also find reviewing these solutions confusing because there is a lot of variation in the product presentations and overlap between categories. And it’s not clear to me if lead management automation deserves to be a separate category or to be subsumed as part of the broader marketing platform. (I know Suresh Vittal includes lead management as a component of his enterprise marketing platform. But does the B2B need the same platform components as B2C?) Here’s how I see it and I’d like to hear your views as well.”

Click here to read more…

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I had a great connect with an old friend who is a real estate rockstar in Barrington, IL. She’s not willing to accept anything less than being the dominant player in her industry and she’s looking at social media as a way to help her accomplish her objectives. Couldn’t help but think of her when I saw this article…

“Brian Halligan is the founder and CEO of HubSpot, an Internet marketing software company that helps small and medium-sized businesses get found on the Internet and converts website visitors into leads and customers. He is also the author of Inbound Marketing: Get Found In Google, Blogs, and Social Media.

It used to be that you could efficiently grow your businesses by interrupting potential customers with outbound marketing methods like cold calls, email spam, and advertising. Today people and businesses are tired of being the targets of so much outbound marketing and they’re getting better and better in blocking it out.

At the same time, people and businesses have fundamentally changed the way they shop and learn, turning more and more to Google, social media sites and blogs to find what they want. Inbound marketing helps companies take advantage of these shifts by helping them get found by customers in the natural way in which they shop and learn. The following are Brian’s five steps to help you get “get found.”” Source: How to Get Found : The World :: American Express OPEN Forum

You can go to the source and read more, but just in case, those 5 ways are:

  1. Be remarkable
  2. Create content
  3. Optimize content
  4. Promote content
  5. Measure results

As for my old friend, she certainly has 1 and 2 down cold — I’m hoping to get the chance to help her with numbers 3-5… ;-)

In the meantime you can use the site tools [comments, contact form, call button] to contact me if YOU are an entrepreneur who wants to be found!

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Here’s part 3…

As I introduced at the beginning of this post, using social media to react is just the beginning. But at some point it takes a shift to not only react, but also lead. Demonstrating the value of social media is our mission in 2011. In 2012, proving the value of the insights learned from customers and prospects in social channels will help connect disparate business units and functions into one connected and adaptive company.

This is about taking the perpetual switching of social media from on and off to on again and evolving campaigns to that of continuum engagement. A connected customer is always on and as such, an adaptive business must do just that, remain nimble.

Your task is not easy. The case must be made to leadership that there are material benefits in embracing change. To help, I’ve assembled three videos produced by Salesforce featuring my dear friend Dr. Natalie Petouhoff. In each of the three videos, you’ll learn how to build the business case, how to calculate ROI and how to make the cause for an adaptive business.

via briansolis.com

Here’s the final installment on how to make the cause for an adaptive business…

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via marismith.com

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Here’s the second installment…

For some of you, I’m preaching to the choir. Perhaps this comes across as rudimentary or common knowledge. But in my experience, social media is largely siloed in marketing departments. And for those businesses experimenting with customer engagement in social media, engagement insights and lessons are largely siloed within the service department. I challenge you to extend the value of social media beyond any silo to not just socialize the entire business but introduce new processes, systems, and methodologies that makes it more relevant and adaptive to an increasingly discerning connected customer.

The opportunity before us extends beyond Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and even in the communities that exist to connect customers to one another in branded forums. The challenge however lies in our ability to translate engagement into either direct or dotted lines to existing business metrics. Yes, we need to look beyond what I refer to as the 3F’s (friends, fans, and followers) to prove the value of social media. But this goes beyond just documenting converting numbers into KPIs that lead to ROI. This is also about translating insights into catalysts for business transformation.

To determine the ROI of social media, programs must be designed with the end in mind and compared to the performance of existing programs using existing measurement processes. Additionally, customers insights and trends must be documented to demonstrate the opportunity to improve customer experiences. For example, you can demonstrate that social media reduces inbound call volume and thus saves the company money over time. But that’s just the beginning. If you identify repeat problems, issues, or trends, your next step is to work with the affected business units to create or deliver a fix. Once this is communicated to customers through all available channels, customers en masse will feel acknowledged and appreciate the businesses ability to adapt to their needs and concerns. What’s the value of that experience?

via briansolis.com

Here are some thoughts on the ROI of social media…


Part 3 tomorrow…

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Yup. This about says it all…

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Ponder this…

At CES, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo revealed that 40% of all tweets come from mobile devices, demonstrating mobile’s increasing importance to the social media company.

On stage at the AllThingsD event at CES, Costolo bantered with Kara Swisher about why Twitter is at CES, its plans to become simpler and more consistent across platforms, and the impact of its celebrity users.

During the course of the conversation, Swisher asked Costolo which devices and operating systems are the most important to Twitter’s future and its health. Costolo responded by saying that 40% of all tweets are now composed on mobile devices, up from around 20% to 25% a year ago.

Twitter mobile usage exploded with the release of the company’s official iPhone, iPad, Android () and BlackBerry apps. The mobile web site, SMS, Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for BlackBerry are the most popular Twitter apps after the company’s website.

Costolo also revealed that Twitter () now has 350 employees, 100 of whom were hired just recently in Q4 2010.

via mashable.com

Does this surprise you?

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Google Reader is the killer app for ‘personal news aggregation’ for ‘thought leadership’ marketing. It all comes down to effectively managing rss feeds…

What is RSS?
An RSS Reader is a simple and easy way to read your favorite news site or blogs. Instead of going out to these site to read the most recent stories or posts, the newest stuff comes to you, all in one simple page. Even more convenient is having a Reader which is online, reaching it from any place in the world.

In my eyes Google Reader is one of the best online RSS Readers on the web. For the first time user, just getting used to the whole RSS thing, this post will talk about: a) How to subscribe to a feed b) view your feeds c) the cool features built into Google Reader and d) just some nifty little tricks you can use while you’re at it. Remember, being a master of your RSS feeds is also a very important way to build up and maintain powerful social media accounts :)

The first thing you would have to do, is head over to reader.google.com and sign up for a free account. From there, you would want to start building up your subscriptions.

via blueglass.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above if you’re just getting started with Google Reader…

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