Tag: Heidi Cohen

Heidi Cohen writes:

“Social media isn’t the holy grail,” according to Social Media Examiner’s Mike Stelzner, author of Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition, speaking at Content Marketing World 2012. At first blush this may sound ludicrous coming from the founder of one of the largest social media blogs but the reality is that social media isn’t a business goal!

Rather, social media is a conduit for delivering content to and engaging with your prospects, customers, fans and the public, and to answer their questions. To this end, Mike Stelzner recommended becoming a publisher in order to build your own audience cost effectively by creating valuable content for your target audience. This requires knowing who you want to reach and asking them what they want to know. Once you have answers to these two questions, it’s a matter of giving your audience relevant content that’s educational and easy-to-digest.

Otherwise, “social media is just talk without listening” in the words of Content Rules  co-author, C.C. Chapman. Without taking the time to hear what your prospects and customers want to know, you’ll never create what Social Media Explorer’s Jason Falls, co-author of No Bullshit Social Media, refers to as “holy smokes content.” This information drives social media because it gets you in front of your prospects and customers by providing solutions to their problems. Therefore, optimize your content for people by using the words your audience uses to get found because your ultimate goal is to sell your prospects and customers your products and services, not just build a social media following as an end in itself.” Get the rest here: Why Social Media Isn’t The Holy Grail (& Neither is Content Marketing) | Heidi Cohen.

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More good thoughts from Heidi Cohen…

Social media is like a hungry teenage boy. As any parent will tell you, when it comes to food, they’re never satisfied. Similarly, social media has a voracious appetite requiring continual feeding in the form of content and communications in a variety of formats.

What’s a marketer to do keep your social media initiatives sated? Here are seven tips to develop appropriate content and engagement to nourish the social media beast, regardless of which platforms you use.

Source: How To Feed The Social Media Beast | Heidi Cohen

Go to the source if you want to learn more about how Heidi feeds the beast. Me? I use Google Reader to search for content that is in alignment with my brand and my blog so that I curate or create content that is in alignment with my customer value demands. Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to you and your organization…

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WordPressOne of my new, favorite bloggers Heidi Cohen has these thoughts on blog design for you to ponder…

Writers at heart, many bloggers rush through selecting their blog design elements without much thought when they first start. But the reality is that design is core to your blog’s brand and readership. Therefore, out-of-the box blog set-ups most likely won’t work for you.

Blog design doesn’t require artistic training. It requires strategic (read: high level) thought, determining your blog’s goals and target audience (aka: persona) before you jump in and start blogging.

Review the blogs you read frequently to become familiar with your options. Consider which blogs you like and which elements of those blogs attract your attention. Make a list of those elements you want and those that you don’t want.

Here are twenty-one blog design elements that you don’t have to be a graphic designer to select…

Source: How To Design Your Blog | Heidi Cohen

Go to the source if you are interested in her 21 elements. Me? Through a long and rigorous evaluation process, I have decided to become a Woo Themes developer. I won’t bore you with the details of my search, but it literally lasted years. Woo offers over 100 themes that look good ‘out of the box’ but are also very easy for me to customize to a client’s specifications…

Heidi’s right! Much more important than the design is the actual strategy. Adam Osborne said “Adequacy is sufficient. All else is superfluous” and I agree. When it comes to design, I believe a tweaked Woo theme may be all you need – as I tell my clients, ‘Google doesn’t search for pretty’. I focus instead on delivering to my clients a system or toolkit with a repeatable process that is easy to use based on the premise that if it’s easy and fun to do, they might actually do it. On the back end, I have been working hard this year to link my ‘e1evation workflow’ more deeply to the value demands of my target audience by linking keywords to the problems my target audience is trying to solve. If you use a repeatable process like mine for your blogging and use a Woo theme for your site, you will draw your target audience in and the design won’t scare them away!

Heidi’s thoughts on determining your blog’s goals and target audience are must read before getting started — comment or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to you and your organization…

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