Tag: Blogging

Most writing could be better.

Not just a little better — significantly better.

If you start out with a solid topic, a good knowledge of your audience, and a reasonable degree of writing ability, you’ll usually end up with a pretty good piece of writing.

But you don’t have to settle for “pretty good.” A little attention to the final details can kick “pretty good” to “magnificent.”

Whether you’re creating blog posts, special reports, sales letters, a video script, email autoresponders, or whatever else, you can take your writing up a level just by applying some simple principles:

via copyblogger.com

I love the first way; write drunk/edit sober. Follow the ‘via’ link to read all 5 ways…

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“We all know that there is growing agreement that podcasts are a great way to share your thought-leading content.

According to a study released by KnowledgeStorm and Universal McCann on the emerging role of new media, over 41 percent of survey respondents claimed they had listened to podcasts on more than one occasion, and 13 percent stated that they frequently download or listen to them; and 65 percent of podcast listeners said they listen to podcasts for both personal and business interests (source: Emerging Media Series: The Influence of Podcasts on B2B Technology Purchase Decisions, July 2006).

There is increasing demand for podcasts as part of the marketing arsenal to engage audiences and advance conversations with prospective customers. Podcasting is proving to be a great way share multimedia content because your audience can fetch it automatically or when it fits their schedule. Podcasts are fun and easy to do and there are plenty of free or cheap ways to get started. Click here to read the original article or give me a call at (920) 486-4798 if you’d like to know more…

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Tamar Weinberg
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Tamar Weinberg’s got you covered. Here are some characteristics she says you’ll need…

A few weeks ago, I posted about the seven characteristics of highly effective online video. Taking this theme a little further, I decided to branch out into the blogosphere, but using the number seven this time around was a tad too limiting. There are at least ten characteristics off the top of my head that make blogs and bloggers successful. These characteristics give the blogs mentioned below fame, fortune, and loyal followings.

Want to build your blog and following? Here are some key ideas and takeways — as well as inspirational bloggers you might want to follow — who can help you realize that dream. Source: 11 Characteristics of Highly Influential Blog(ger)s » Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg

Go to the source to read the rest of the article…

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I’ve been following industry oracle Guy Kawasaki for over 25 years and I agree with him almost all of the time. He was right about the Mac, he’s right about Posterous and he’s right about Alltop. He’s right about so many things. When he speaks, I take notes. This time, however, I take issue…

He posted a recent article on the topic of Facebook pages recently and this is one of the rare times I need to take issue…

“Q: I’m a small business entrepreneur, and I’ll be introducing a consumer product soon. Should I create a website for my company or a Facebook fan page?

A: I faced a similar question a few weeks ago for my book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. I had three options: create a site for the book, add a section for the book to my existing website, or create a Facebook fan page.

After five minutes of thoughtful deliberation, I decided to add a bare-bones section to my website (which I haven’t gotten around to do yet—which should tell you something) and create a Facebook fan page but not to create a website for the book. Here’s why I did not choose a website:” Source: Ask the Wise Guy: Facebook Fan Page or Website? : The World :: American Express OPEN Forum

Guy goes on to elucidate 4 reasons why he did not choose a website and 8 reasons why he chose a Facebook page along with 3 potential ‘gotchas’ — go to the source and read the entire article if you’d like…

Here’s where Guy and I part thinking. In business, the answer is rarely either/or. Frequently it’s both/and. Guy’s advice is great for someone launching a product or a book, but it’s not really great long term advice for an entrepreneur launching a company. As a short term strategy I recommend that entrepreneurs buy a domain, set up Google Apps and create a Facebook page. Google Apps will give them the ability to send corporate email from their domain and their domain name can be temporarily directed toward their Facebook page until they build a blogsite. This will give them a total ‘appearance package’ that will allow them to look professional immediately while they contemplate their website and further social media strategy and tactics…

On this issue I side with author Lisa Barone who recently posted…

“Brace yourself: Facebook is trying to take over the world. Or, if not the world, at least the entire Internet. With Facebook partnering up with popular sites like Yelp, many SMB owners may feel as if their load got lighter. I mean, why waste time worrying about your building your blog or your own site when you can grow your Facebook presence instead? If Facebook’s opening up the doors so that people can take you with them, you don’t have to worry about anything else anymore, right?

Wrong!

It doesn’t matter how hot Facebook or any of the other social media sites are looking right now. You still need to be focused on using your blog to create your own authority and brand.” Source: 10 Reasons Not To Ignore Your Blog For Facebook

Reason #1 she cites? “You don’t own Facebook”…

The problem with Facebook from my perspective is that you’re not only a renter, you’re a free renter and you can expect all the rights and privileges thereof. In other words, you have no rights on Facebook — not even privacy. You use it at your own risk. Facebook can — and has — made major changes to their technology without notice or recourse. Using a Facebook page is a great place for an entrepreneur to start but not to stay. I agree with Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse and other internet visionaries who propose an internet ‘homebase and outpost‘ strategy that puts a blog at the center of your online presence. The key is that you have to own that presence and be ‘master of your domain’ name and internet brand…

In the future, these homebases may become less important as more people understand the wisdom of David Sauter and his team at Envano. Their ‘autobahn’ model describes a future where a website becomes less important as a company embraces appropriate social media tools to build their internet presence, but the lack of an ‘easy button’ or unified social media dashboard makes this more of a future vision than a present reality…

Guy, I love you, your thought leadership and your content, but just this once I think your Q&A might have done the reader a disservice. Readers? Questions? Feedback? Please comment, call or use the contact form to connect so we can talk about how this applies to your business…

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From time to time, I post a list of WordPress plugins that I’m currently using. It must be that time…

Click to enlarge...

I think the best recent find is Google Docs Embedder which allows me to easily display documents without having to post them to Scribd first. How about you? Have any good ones to pass along?

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via 1stwebdesigner.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above if you want an excellent synopsis of what your small business website needs to be successful. Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization…

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Blogging? ProBlogger has an interesting perspective on monetizing your blog… 

It has been a year now since an eventful day when I was browsing the Internet and clicked on an advertisement that seemed an obvious scam: Get 90% off a new iPad. “Yeah, right,” I thought. But I wanted to check it out anyway since I seemed to recall seeing the same ad previously, and I wondered if it was a new type of scam I should be aware of. As it turned out, it wasn’t a scam, just misleading advertising … and thus began my blog on penny auctions, which are a class of entertainment auctions.

I found the idea exciting enough to blog about. I was just getting interested in multi-player game theory and thought that auctions are a nice field to study. The problem was, I had no experience of problogging at all. Like so many others, all I previously had was a blog for my random musings but nothing serious. I had a very elementary knowledge of SEO which I gained working as a freelance writer. I knew nothing about how to rank well in Google or how to use backlinks effectively. As a writer, the only promotional tool I did know about was article marketing.

I started this blog in May 2010, and it’s been growing for one year now. Looking back, I have learned so much and there is still so much to learn. Here is my journey in a nutshell.

via problogger.net

You can follow the ‘via’ link above if you’re interested in the ‘journey’, but personally, I wouldn’t start something like this on a Blogger blog. Despite what you might think, they are not at good at driving Search Engine Optimization [SEO] as WordPress. I mean a Google product should produce great Google search results, right? Wrong! Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization…

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Nilofer Merchant; Author, Speaker, Inspirer

The good Lord has put some amazing people in my path. For a guy ‘straight outta Wisconsin’, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to collaborate with some pretty high octane people. One of them is Nilofer Merchant. Now Nilofer herself is not in need of a ‘total beauty makeover’ but her web presence was another issue altogether…

Nilofer and I met and worked together at Apple during the ‘Think Different‘ campaign — she at the ‘mothership’ in Cupertino and me at the field office in Chicago. We both left Apple and went on to other things; she to GoLive, Rubicon Consulting, writing a couple of books and me to eventually start e1evation, llc. Thanks to social networking, our paths crossed again recently. I commented to her that I was surprised to see a global thought leader like her using Posterous for her blog. She remembered that comment and a couple of weeks ago asked if I would guide her through the process of moving to WordPress…

The old Posterous site; click to enlarge...

For her theme, we chose the highly modifiable Canvas from Woo Themes and designing the site was ‘easy peasy lemon squeezy’ due to their flexible and powerful approach to WordPress theme design. We still have a few things to clean up, but Nilofer, being the hard charging kick ass girl she is, couldn’t wait to ‘go live’. You can view her site online at http://nilofermerchant.com but don’t follow her unless you want your world rocked!

The new site; click to enlarge

Are you a great thinker that wants to engage in ‘thought leadership’ marketing? Do what Nilofer did. Ask me to guide you through the process. Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can get started…

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Long before I was a website developer, I was in sales and sales management. The other day, I had a convo with a fellow sales puke and we were discussing the top 3 sales movies of all time. They were, in our opinions, Glengarry Glen Ross, Boiler Room and, of course, Tommy Boy! Here’s the best sales team meeting of all time imho [warning: NSFW!]…

Blake, Alec Baldwin’s sales manager character says ABC means ‘always be closing’, but if you’re a blogger I say ABC means ‘always be curating’!

In my weltanschauung [worldview for those of you behind on your German], blogging, on one level, is little more than the public e-mailing and bookmarking. After all, what is a blog post but a “to whom it may concern” memo to the world? Because most people save bookmarks and send e-mails and links to one another they already have the basic instincts they need for thought leadership marketing. They are however using tools that are sub optimal for the task at hand. Even the person who has 1 million people in their address book cannot match the reach of a tool that can reach out to 2 billion people on the Internet.

What then are the right tools? I believe they are the 10+ tools in the elevation workflow…

  • Google Chrome
  • Gmail
  • Google Reader and Feedly
  • Shareaholic
  • Posterous
  • WordPress
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • MailChimp
  • YouTube
  • Dlvr.it

I firmly believe that anyone who wants to be a thought leader can use this combination of tools to establish their public point of view. Many people are using some or all of these tools but have not aligned them in an optimal fashion.

I want to take a moment to talk about Shareaholic. When teaching social media I tell my classes if you only add one extension to Google Chrome [or Firefox], make it Shareaholic. Why? Because Shareaholic is the one tool that allows you to always be curating. With the Shareaholic extension installed I am always ready to share content to the appropriate channel in my vast Internet publishing empire. Shareaholic, I have said earlier, is the Swiss Army knife of sharing. Allow me to demonstrate…

Curation not only adds authority to your public brand, but it will also rock your SEO. Shareaholic is the secret to my success, because with it, to paraphrase Night Ranger, I’m curating and blogging 25 hours a day…

I believe that the elevation workflow is a kick ass solution for thought leadership marketing. Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your organization — I’m always available for Personal Digital Coaching on the ‘e1evation workflow’…

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imho, I think I’ve really stepped up my design capabilities lately. Here’s a site I finished over the weekend…

From Portfolio

You can see it live here!

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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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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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