Tag: Twitter

Donna
Image by nooccar via Flickr
Growing a blog?

Do you want to attract more readers?

Do you want to grab the attention of the big players in your industry and leverage their star power?

Silly questions, right?

In this article I’ll share how you can grow a loyal and sustained fan base by working with the top experts in your niche.

They’re out there, and it’s not nearly as hard as you think to get them on your team.

Why do I need an expert?

Everyone wants entertaining, useful content. That’s what content marketing is all about.

But they also want access to great people. When you present a new idea or a new voice to your audience, your blog becomes a valuable source people will want to visit again and again. Bringing in expert voices rounds out your site and adds dimension.

Getting outside experts involved also validates your own expertise. When you can attract the best, people will see you as an expert in your own right.

Finally, there’s an often-overlooked benefit of working with experts. If you work well together, some may turn out to be strategic partners who can take your business places you never dreamed.

Experts can include:

  • Authors, particularly those who have new books out
  • People who frequently speak on relevant topics
  • Bloggers who are creating exceptional content
  • Practitioners working inside companies
via donnadenil.com

Great advice from Wisconsin business blogger Donna Denil. I’m available if you were asking…

:-)

0

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…

0
Pretty Awesome 3D Metal WordPress Logo
Image by bobbigmac via Flickr

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…

2
Image representing Android as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

Things we’ve been tracking in the past 24 hours…

 

0

…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!

0

This afternoon, I thought I was heading to a personal digital coaching session on Google Reader for local anchorwoman Erin Davisson of WFRV TV in Green Bay. Instead, unbeknownst to me, it was Erin’s intention to interview me for an upcoming news segment…

Fortunately, I’m always ready to talk about the power of ‘personal news aggregation’ using Google Reader and I had no trouble giving Erin 50x more content than she’ll ever be able to use! Erin was also kind enough to give me a tour of the studio and sit for this picture. Now I’ll have to ask her to autograph my blog…

:-)

PS Be sure to tune in Tuesday the 14th at 5:00 to see the segment!

1
Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase
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?

Related articles
0
This icon, known as the "feed icon" ...
Image via Wikipedia
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…

2
Image representing RightNow Technologies as de...
Image via CrunchBase
Tell me again why I should monitor my brand online?

The spotlight — or maybe the flood light — shines on bad customer service online. Companies should worry about public complaints and reports of their brand failures more than ever, suggests a new report from RightNow and Harris Interactive. Contrarily, they stand to make more money if they can deliver a superior experience, the report says.

The Customer Experience Impact 2010 report reveals that 82% of consumers in the U.S. said they’ve stopped doing business with a company due to a poor customer service experience. Of these, 73% cited rude staff as the primary pain point, and 55% said a company’s failure to resolve their problems in a timely manner drove them away.

Almost everybody surveyed, a full 95%, said after a bad customer experience they would “take action.” 79% of U.S. consumers said they blabbed about their negative customer experiences in public and amongst friends. Of consumers who took to social media sites including Facebook and Twitter to publicly air a complaint, 58% expected a response from the company, 42% expected a response from a company within a day, but only 22% said they’d actually gotten a response as a result of griping there.

via techcrunch.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above if you want the rest of the story…

0
Darren Rowse - Photography Blogger Extrodinaire
Image by kk+ via Flickr
Having trouble posting? Listen to Darren Rowse…

We all have a message drummed into us throughout life: people make snap judgements on you based upon the first impression you give. In many instances, those judgements are lasting ones.*

The same is true for your blog posts. Your opening line really does matter—readers will make a snap decision about whether to read your post by how you open that post, both in the headline or title and the opening line.

It’s no wonder that so many of us feel pressure to get our first lines right.

*It’s worth noting that you can bounce back from a poor first impression. For example, the first thing my wife ever said to me was, “Hi Michael, it’s nice to meet you.” Not a great opening … but I married her within a year!

via problogger.net

Want to get better at creating great posts? You can follow the ‘via’ link above get the rest of Darren Rowse’s perspective…

0
via twistimage.com

Travel much? Then you might benefit from this advice from social media superstars Chris Brogan [above] and Mitch Joel [here]…

Posted via web from e1evation, llc

0
Related articles
0
Los Angeles Lakers Shaquille O'Neal 12/20/1999
Image via Wikipedia

All the topics that interest US in the past 24 hours…

 

Related articles
0
Image representing Steve Ballmer as depicted i...
Image via CrunchBase

All the topics that interest US in the past 24 hours…

 

Related articles
0


A long time ago during Apple days, I was privileged to work with Nilofer Merchant. She writes here…

I believe in the power of stories. Stories are like Maps. They point to directions and paths that we might not have seen if not well marked. I share my stories, and my goal is to enable others to be emboldened to share theirs. Stories told as they are happening is a way of seeing the imperfect, raw, and often tenuous ways that outcomes are shaped. When any decision is seen in retrospect, we can say “of course” but that’s rarely how it feels at the time. I did a very transparent process of sharing the Rubicon closure story over the course of a year, in the hopes that perhaps it will be informative to others and knowing that how I tell the story years from now will be different than the steps on the journey. This blog can then be a learning journey of stories – yours and mine.

via blog.nilofermerchant.com

Nilofer is brilliant! Follow her blog and you’ll see why…

Related articles
1
Lifehacker
Image via Wikipedia

All the topics that interest US in the past 24 hours…

 

0
Amber Naslund & Jay Baer at The County Line
Image by djwaldow via Flickr
Jay Baer says…

Social media is growing up fast. No longer a niche plaything of the digerati, social media is firmly entrenched as a societal game changer of historical importance. For many, social media and social networking are so ubiquitous and pervasive that we presume we have it figured out, that we have a finger firmly on the pulse. But we don’t. Data about how social media really works, who uses it and how, continues to surprise.

This point was driven home in The Social Habit II, a new report from Edison Research and Arbitron that follows up on their landmark study in 2010 (and their 19th study about the Internet overall).

My friend and the architect of the study, Tom Webster, was kind enough to give me a preview of the report (I also very much recommend Tom’s blog BrandSavant), and here are my personal highlights – the pages that made me say “hmmmm”.

I encourage you to peruse the entire report, which you can access for free in a day or so. Tweet me or Tom (@webby2001) to get the URL. It’s a 50+ page orgy of data based on 2,020 telephone interviews of Americans ages 12 and up, conducted in February, 2011.

via convinceandconvert.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to if you’re interested in obtaining the 9 facts…

1
Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

All the topics that interest US in the past 24 hours…

 

Related articles
0
Image representing Apple as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

All the topics that interest US in the past 24 hours…

 

0

Internet marketer Jack Humphrey has curated some great content in a post called “The Content Guide for Bloggers” which I in turn, have curated for you…

“Content curation as a blogging model is widely misunderstood by most bloggers and marketers. Many people would tell you that curation is about finding and posting links of related material around a certain topic or keyword.

And they would be wrong if the goal was to get people and search engines to appreciate and react to said content. (And if your goal is to use curation as a means to get attention, then make money, from what you are doing.)

Real content curation is a set of links and snippets to other material on the web along with insightful, expert analysis provided by the curator.

There’s been an explosion of content on the web around “curation.” And new services that seek to make the process easier for different groups of users.” Source: The Content Curation Guide for Bloggers | Internet Marketing Consultant Jack Humphrey

In the model I teach my students, there are two main types of blog posts; creation and curation. Optimally, in my model, about 5-10% of my posts are creation posts. The rest is all curation. Why? Continue reading “Why curation rocks, part 1” →

12

Please forgive me, but it’s not my title! The content is that good…

You can read the transcript if you click ‘continue reading’… Continue reading “What the hell is social media?” →

0

Start a Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑