Groups are one of the best places on LinkedIn for networking. Groups can be formed around specific industries, geographical areas, or social interests. Group members can sign up for email digests of the activity at the group, which basically means when you post a discussion topic it ends up being delivered via email to most of the members in the group.
Unfortunately, this has led to a lot of the "communications" from groups being self-promotional. (In the spirit of transparency, I'm as guilty as anyone else here.)
Spamming Groups
However, the other day I noticed nearly the identical promotional posts at two very different groups, from two different people. They were promoting free social media webinars, normally a $149 value.
Here's one from Linked 2 Leadership:
And the other from Maine Entrepreneurs:
Only a few words keep these posts from being identical. That's not so strange; people often post the same message to multiple groups they belong to. What caught my attention is that they were from two different people. I wondered who these two people were, so I checked out their profiles.
Here's the woman who posted to Linked 2 Leadership:
And here's the woman who posted to Maine Entrepreneurs:
Despite being a member of several groups and associations, Keita has no contacts. You'd think that she'd have at least one contact from her company, Digitags Advertising, right?
Well, I believe that has to do with the fact that Digitags Advertising appears to be a made up company. (If you work for Digitags Advertising please let me know. I believe I can help you with your search engine optimization.)
As for Ella Campbell's company, the ironically named American Integrity Services, does appear to exist, but has no Web site and the listed telephone number is not in service.
Social Media Magic
And what of the company that's putting on these Webinars? Following the links took me to Social Media Magic, offering "Turnkey Social Media for Busy Executives." A quick Twitter search brought up a number of people who seemed to enjoy the Webinars.
However, having seemingly imaginary people promote your social media Webinars seemed a little disingenuous to me, if not a bit spammy. That's not to say that the company themselves were behind it. In reading the small print on the site it appears they use affiliates and take a strong stance against spam. I sent an email to support alerting them and asking for a comment for this post, but after a couple of days I still have yet to hear back.
What's LinkedIn to Do?
Unfortunately, it's easy to set up a fake personality on LinkedIn, join a bunch of groups, spam those discussion boards, and thus deliver spam directly to the inboxes of desirable groups of business people you can't reach otherwise.
Perhaps LinkedIn could add some requirements around the number of connections one must have before joining a group, answering questions, or posting to discussion groups. As someone who has set up a number of groups on LinkedIn, I'd love to have the flexibility to require a set number of connections before someone could join my group or post to our discussion forums.
Spam is a Fact of Life
Wherever people gather online, spam is sure to follow. However, with a few administrative changes LinkedIn can make it more difficult and time consuming for spammers to infiltrate the network. After all, if LinkedIn group alerts start delivering more noise than signal most of us will quietly opt out.
There's been a lot of talk recently about Twitter's business model (or lack thereof), and how they plan on making money in the future, whether it will be through advertising, paid pro accounts, pay-for-features or some combination.
In addition, there's a question of whether Twitter is delivering all of your mentions to your attention.
I was doing a little experiment the other day to see if I could reduce the number of API calls TweetDeck makes to Twitter on my behalf. (I know, I'm a geek.) I figured that since a request to Twitter for my mentions (@therichbrooks) takes one API call and a search on "@therichbrooks" doesn't require any API call, that I could just substitute one for the other.
In other words, searching for "@therichbrooks" should bring back the same results as seeing all my mentions, right?
Turns out...not so much. This is a recent example of my mentions column vs. my @therichbrooks search on TweetDeck. I've highlighted the tweets that only appear in one column.
You'll just have to take my word for it that the last few in the right (search) column didn't appear further down the page in the mentions column.
I can't seem to find any rhyme or reason: it's not specific to whether the tweets start with @therichbrooks, whether they're a RT, whether I follow the person, or whether the tweet comes from a beautiful woman.
I also ruled out the possibility that it was TweetDeck; the mentions page and search at Twitter.com showed the same results as above.
At this point I'm actually keeping both columns up and running on TweetDeck so I don't miss any other mentions. I just wonder what important messages and opportunities I've missed already.
If Twitter does want to be an enterprise level tool, it needs to deliver leads and opportunities with at least the consistency that we've come to expect with voicemail and email.
People want to do business with experts; they want to feel like they’ve chosen the right person for the job. This reduces the risk in choosing a vendor and provides peace of mind. It’s your goal to establish yourself as an expert in your field.
Establishing your expertise and credibility is a two-step process: first you need to know the questions your prospects are asking, second is providing helpful, non-sales-y answers.
Anyone who has been in business long enough knows a lot of the questions and problems that their clients run into. These are likely the same issues your prospects are researching at Google and on the social web.
If you don’t know the questions in advance, there are plenty of places where your prospects are publicly asking these questions: Twitter, LinkedIn and Yahoo Answers are just a few of the more popular ones.
Once you know the questions, it’s time to create some compelling, helpful answers and put them where they’ll do the most good. Here are some of the places in the social media landscape where you can have the biggest impact.
Blog
A blog is the perfect place to create quality content that addresses your prospects’ biggest concerns. Use common questions from your best prospects and turn them into keyword-rich content on your blog. As people facing similar problems search for answers at Google they’ll find your blog post, which will give you the opportunity to connect with them.
YouTube
Whether it’s YouTube or one of the many other video sharing sites out there, try and create how-to videos around the same topics you tackle in your blog. These videos often show up in search results, and for many people video is more compelling than the written word.
To maximize your return with video, create a blog post explaining the video and embed the video into your post. You can further extend the reach of your video by using TubeMogul to upload the video to multiple video sharing Web sites at once.
Twitter
Your prospects are on Twitter, asking questions or venting their frustrations. By visiting http://search.twitter.com you can search for specific keywords and respond to those people through Twitter. A seafood market might search for “lobster” or “haddock.” An accountant might search for “QuickBooks” or “1040E.”
If you’re “geographically challenged” you can perform a similar search on NearbyTweets.com, which allows you to search within a given area. A personal trainer might search on “workout” or “diet” within 25 miles of their home base.
As you find questions or tweets that you can respond to in a helpful, informative way, you can try answering them in 140 characters or less, or linking to a blog post or video you’ve created that answers that question.
You should also follow that person. The knee jerk reaction when someone follows you is to check out their Twitter profile to see if they’re worth following back. If you provide a quality answer, or follow someone, you may in turn gain a new follower.
LinkedIn Answers
Business people from around the world ask questions at LinkedIn. By answering questions in your area of expertise, you can create networking opportunities and establish your credibility.
Start by visiting the Answers section at LI and browsing through some of the categories they have there. Whether it’s finance, non-profit or sales, you can find an area where you can answer questions in a helpful way. You can also subscribe to categories so that you’ll get updates as new questions are posted.
Facebook
Establishing your expertise at Facebook is going to be focused on creating a fan page for your business and participating at other appropriate pages and groups.
At your own page, you can provide content that can help your audience and link to relevant resources. At other’s others’ pages and groups, you can answer questions as they come up. However, don’t try and hijack someone else’s group or page to further your own agenda. It’s best to follow the golden rule in social media.
In Conclusion
This is just a small list of social media places where you can establish your credibility. Podcasts, Yahoo Answers, discussion forums, industry-specific social networking sites, the list goes on.
Remember that social media is not the place for the hard sell. The goal here is to establish your credibility and help your prospects. This will attract people to your business or service. And attracting clients is preferable to chasing after them.
I've often said that the best book on social media marketing is Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. Although Carnegie never updated his Facebook status, tweeted or even commented on someone else's blog, the lessons one can learn from that book can be used to win Facebook friends and Influence people on the social webs.
This book is not about how to get more followers on Twitter, or to get the most connections on LinkedIn. Rather, it's about understanding how the Web--and specifically social media--is changing the rules of engagement and networking.
The book takes a step-by-step, chapter-by-chapter approach of how to become a trusted member of this new society, and how to leverage that power. (But always for good; the book does address the possibly slippery slope of questionable activity, or taking advantage of one's community. However, no doubt that some people will put the lessons learned towards hacking the trust equation.)
There's a lot of great examples in the book, both from Chris & Julien's lives, as well as Gary Vaynerchuk and dozens of others who have learned the lessons in this book firsthand. I found myself folding down a lot of the page corners, and recommending the book to several friends and clients.
The book was also good at reinforcing what I already believed to be true, just with more concrete examples. Chris and Julien say a lot of the same things I say--except when they say it, it comes across as much more intelligent and insightful--I'll have to work on that.
You won't find get rich quick ideas here, and there's no promises of untold riches. If you're looking for how to set up a Facebook fan page or create a custom background for YouTube, better to Google it than read this book. But when you're ready to think about strategy and how this fits in with the bigger picture of your business, your career, your causes, this book will help you get there.
You may have heard that Gourmet magazine will stop publication after the November issue.
In
a world where "gourmet" has been replaced with the more egalitarian
"foodie", over-scheduled families prefer 30 minute meals, and search
engines serve up (no pun intended) more than one million different
recipes, it may have just been Gourmet's time. How can a print magazine
compete against a search engine that will provide recipes based on what you have in your cupboard?
Gourmet is just one business that has been upended by the Internet. Travel agencies, newspapers, independent bookstores, realtors, the local video rental store...the list goes on.
And yet, within each of these groups certain people and businesses survive. Instead of seeing the Internet as a threat, they adopt their business plans and leverage the new tools available.
Some
newspapers have abandoned print entirely, others have leveraged local
bloggers and added community elements to their online editions. Some
realtors have created video walkthroughs of homes and posted them to
YouTube. Some local bookstores have partnered with Amazon, or formed a
co-operative to compete.
Unfortunately, for each of these
nimble businesses, there's 10 or 50 or 100 other businesses that do
everything they can to hold onto their outdated business models, squeezing out every last penny from the buggy whip business.
Many
business block their employees from using social media while at work.
They often do this in the name of security or productivity, although I
feel there are holes in both these arguments.
Tweets and
Facebook updates aren't the only ways to share proprietary information;
it's easier to put something a thumb drive. Likewise, the very tools
that employees often need to do their job better are the ones being
blocked.
The bottom line is that the Web and social media are changing the way we communicate and how we work; no one's going to argue that anymore. If your customers are on social media, then you have to let down the castle gates and talk with them.
You must learn to engage with them the way they want,
be it through blogs, podcasts, YouTube or social media sites like
Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're not willing to meet with them
half-way, they'll find someone who is.
If your customers suddenly start communicating through smoke signals, then you better light a fire.
The Web takes no prisoners; if you don't adopt, if you don't take risks, your next issue may be your last.
Just in case this is the first time you you've used the InterWebs, let me introduce my guest.
Gary Vaynerchuk is a 33-year-old
entrepreneur whose dual identity as both business guru and wine guy has
made him known as the "Social Media Sommelier." He's a dynamic speaker and passionate about everything he does. It's almost enough to forgive the fact he's a Jets fan.
********************************
Rich: I'm very excited you've got your first book coming out--Crush It!-- on October 13. It's about how to create a career around what you're passionate about.
Obviously, the economy is not great. Some people might think this is a pipe dream. What are your thoughts on that?
Gary: I'm not really interested in convincing. I think my arguments and my thoughts are compelling. I know what it's about. I'm not looking to do something that's not real.
Anybody I know that's in the Internet space or social media space that really knows what they're doing is up 35%, 50%, or 80% in ad revenue, things like that.
The economy is bad for traditional places. It's never a bad time to build a great business, right?
I love this time. I think that this is where the real players step up and win. I feel that if you come from a place of passion, you're going to love the process. The results become almost secondary.
Clearly you need to pay rent, take care of your family and things of that nature, but I think people need to start wrapping their head around how much opportunity there is right now.
Rich: You talk a lot about passion. Do you think that passion is something that you can develop over time or is it just something that's innate in that some people have it and some people don't?
Gary: I think everybody has it. I think the innate thing is that some people see it and others don't. What I'm good at is communicating and trying to force people to see it and understand it. That's what I'm passionate about.
Rich: What happens if you're passionate about something that's kind of unlikely or odd or just a very narrow niche? How do you turn that into a business that's going to help you make a living?
Gary: Mixed martial arts was a small niche seven years ago. If you came out and owned that space, you'd probably be sitting as a content provider and be in the half million or million dollar a year business right now.
My thing is to stick to your passion. I don't understand how you can do something you don't love. If you love it and you're only making $40K and you were making $75K before, figure out how to subsidize the other $35K. Get a second job, a lightweight $35,000 a year job that may be at McDonalds.
Give as much time to what you love the most. You can grow with it. You will be bigger than you could ever imagine if you do the thing you love the most. It's just the way it is. It's so frigging obvious.
Rich: I had actually never heard you speak until I heard you do one of the opening presentations for the Social Media Success Summit and I was just really blown away.
You obviously have a very natural innate ability to attract people to your passion. But I know a lot of people who just don't seem to be able to do something like that. What tips can you give people who might have a hard time attracting a crowd?
Gary: I attract a crowd, not because I'm an extrovert or I'm over the top or I'm oozing with charisma. It's because I care.
I promise you that if you break down the people that you know that are in the content game right now and they aren't building an audience, they're spending more time reading about how to do it, trying to figure out how to do it, working on the content and are not putting in the 15 hours a day into the community. I promise you. I've never seen anybody put in a crap load of effort and time into their community and not grow. Never.
Rich: That actually brings up another question because I see a lot of people, especially lately on Twitter it seems, and I'm not sure if they're people or bots some of the times, but they seem to be jumping into social media with the idea that it's some sort of get rich-quick-scheme, that it's easy money and it doesn't take a whole lot of work.
I know you have a strong opinion on this. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Gary: Yes, there's a bunch of bull crap everywhere. People don't want to work. That's it. There's nothing else to say.
I do not believe that people want to work hard enough and they want to find the quick Twitter, SEO. Anybody who's obsessed with SEO has lost already, period. I believe that firmly.
I just think that people need to think about big pictures. It's a race.
I'm sitting here and I'm thinking about this. People are not running marathons, they're running sprints. They're looking for quick cash. They're obsessed with things like buying AdWords and then converting on an affiliate program quicker and making cash. They're looking for easy outs.
There's only one true way to build a big business and its hard work, differentiating products and really giving a rat's ass about your community.
Rich: I once called Twitter the 'Swiss army knife' of business communications. You had a great quote where you called it a 'caveman's club'.
What do you think social media tools are going to look like in the future and how are they going to evolve?
Gary: I have no idea because that's not what I do. But what I do is when I see them, I use them.
I don't really want to invent a fork. I don't want to invent a baseball bat, but I want to swing that bat better than anybody did. I didn't want to be Louisville Slugger. I want to be Ted Williams and that's what I'm good at. I recognize that. I'm not an inventor. I'm somebody that understands how to use products and tools to accomplish what I want. I know that there are going to be more and more connections and I find that fascinating.
I like that transparency is at an all time high because good people win and that's a game I know I can win.
Rich: It's interesting that you mentioned Ted Williams because I believe you're actually a New York sports fan, aren't you?
Gary: I am, but you've got to respect the sweetest swing. The best hitter, the person that saw it the clearest from all accounts is Ted Williams. It's funny I didn't pick a home run hitter, which I'm going to think about all day now. It's interesting that I didn't pick Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron or what have you.
I'm just a slow-and-steady, singles-and-doubles kind of guy. I just don't want to strike out. It's a step back. I want to get on base. I'm an OBP kind of guy.
Rich: Exactly, small ball.
Gary: That's right.
Rich: You've got a very interesting story to tell, your parents being Russian immigrants and working in liquor store. You also talk about the importance of storytelling. Can you talk to us just for a few minutes about why storytelling is so important?
Gary: Storytelling is the game. It's what we all do. It's why Nike is Nike, it's why Apple is Apple, it's why Walt Disney built Disney World and it's why Vince McMahon makes a billion dollars.
Storytelling is the game. If you're unable to convey your story, consumers will not consume your product whatever that may be, whether it's content or entertainment or food. Whatever it may be, if you're not capable of telling a story, you are not in the game with human beings because that's what they want, that's what they do, that's how they roll and it's the main principle of marketing in our society.
Rich: I also know that you've talked about authenticity. How far can one go to tell their story and still be true to what actually happened? In other words, you're not suggesting that people make up a story, like make up something out of thin air. You're saying you need to be able to tell your own story in a compelling way, right?
Gary: Yes, we're not talking about fiction here. Absolutely, you need to create and invoke emotion around the reality of your product. I'm not looking for people to scam. You've got to tell a story. You've got to connect with people, but around authenticity and transparency, of course, because it's the only game left now in the way that this has all been built.
Rich: Excellent. In the last couple of minutes we have, do you want to tell us a little bit more about Crush It?
Gary: I find it fascinating that a lot of business books that do well are from people who've never made any money in business. It's not that that's wrong because I'm sure that they're intellectually smart and they get it and that's phenomenal.
I just find that I'm excited that I've used these tools and I've made it happen. It's real. It's a very authentic story and I'm excited about that. I just feel like I pulled off a good book and I didn't think I was going to. I'm not kidding. I feel like I was able to articulate what I wanted and I just want people to be happy because it's so damn easy in today's world.
Three years ago, no. Everything I believe in, three years ago, no. That's powerful. That's interesting to me.
I find it completely fascinating, Rich, that everything I believe in, every core principle, was not executable 36 months ago.
Rich: It sounds like you were just born at the right time or you just entered the scene at the right time and that could be part of it.
Gary: It could be. I'd like to think that I'm an explorer and I have my eyes wide open and I would have used different platforms. But the fact that this game is not predicated on cash but on sweat is very attractive to anybody listening to this.
Rich: Where would you suggest people go and check you out and learn a little bit more about what's going on and learn a little bit more about Crush It?
Gary: I'd love for anybody who's listening to this to go to Facebook.com/Gary and say, "What's up?'" and definitely Crushitbook.com.
Rich: Gary, thank you very much for your time today. I really appreciate it. I look forward to reading the book when it comes out on October 13.
Gary: I appreciate it, my man. Thanks for your interest.
It's no secret that athletes love social media, and especially Twitter. By leveraging social media tools and applications, professional, amateur and collegiate teams can build stronger fan loyalty.
With the price of sports tickets increasing even in a bad economy, coupled with boorish behavior by some star athletes, teams need to reconnect with fans.
While these ideas would probably work for any team, they would be especially helpful to teams that get more play on ESPN 8 (The "Ocho") than Monday Night Football or Baseball Night in America.
Show tweets on the score board. It would be great to see #redsox tweets show up somewhere on the Green Monster during the games. (Insert your home team.) Of course, there'd need to be some moderation going on, to prevent a bunch of expletive-filled diatribes or hashtag hackers from ruining the national pastime for families, but you'd almost ensure a trending topic as fans try and get their tweets to show up. For very popular teams, the moderator might just show the best tweets, rather than every possible tweet.
Leverage Flickr and Creative Commons to help local sports bloggers. Official sports photos can be expensive to use...much too expensive for an amateur sports blogger. By creating a set of practice, game and profile photos, uploading them to an official Flickr (or other photo sharing app) account and providing the appropriate Creative Commons licensing, teams can help out local bloggers. This will generate good will with bloggers and help them create more professional, polished blogs. It will probably also encourage more sports bloggers, who will invariably link to the team's official site and blog, generated more search engine and online visibility.
Get athletes to tweet more, not less. Recently the NBA drew up some rules limiting when ballers could tweet...something that makes a lot of sense. However, just like athlete contracts encourage/require a certain amount of community outreach, social media should be part of that. Tweeting about the game, or a United Way charity event, or some court-enforced community service could go a long way towards improving the way fans see certain stars.
Run "Biggest Fan" contests on YouTube. Have weekly giveaways of prime seats for fans that create videos and post them to YouTube to show their fanaticism.
Find, follow and engage local tweeps. I live in Portland, Maine. Not exactly one of the biggest TV or sports markets around. (In fact, the NFL doesn't even believe we're part of New England, since they black out Patriot games up here when the Pats are on the NFL channel.) We recently got our own basketball franchise, The Maine Red Claws, who are now on Twitter. They would do well to engage as many local tweeps as possible, offer tickets through a Twitter-fed contest, and send representatives (including perhaps athletes) to local Tweetups. They could use a tool like NearbyTweets to find local people who are talking about basketball or the Celtics.
Build robust, team-specific communities. This would be a place where fans, athletes, coaches and even the front office could connect. And to improve the discourse, ban anonymity. It's much tougher to flame someone as "Rich Brooks" [your name here] as opposed to "SuprFan923".
Of course, there are a lot more things sports teams can do to engage fans using social media. Facebook Fan Pages, sports-centric LinkedIn Groups (great for finding companies who can afford season tickets) and podcasts are just a few.
Likewise, teams need to be careful of sharing too much; policies need to be drawn up about how, when and where to share. Videos that show defensive alignments or trick plays won't help the team, and will certainly encourage fan backlash when the opposing team seems to know too much about the home team's strategy.
However, once a proper balance is achieved, teams of all sizes and at all levels will be able to leverage the social web to build their fan base and deepen those relationships.
If you have any other ideas, or examples of teams who "get" social media, please share them below.
You can follow Rich Brooks on Twitter, even though he's not a professional athlete, nor did he play one on TV.
A theme has come up recently as we work with some small business clients on whether or not they should have a blog, and whether or not they should optimize it for the search engines. (Crazy, right?)
The concern seems to be that if they optimize their blog for the keywords they're targeting, they are in fact competing against their own Web site, and thus their own self-interest.
However, as long as all your properties are funneling traffic to your Web site for conversion, or able to handle conversions themselves, you have nothing to worry about.
It's more like the game of Monopoly: the more properties you own, the more traffic you're likely to get. (Except in this case people are happy to be your guest.)
In fact, if you add optimized, quality content at YouTube, Flickr, Squidoo, and other social media sites, you can really start to monopolize Google's search results for your targeted keyword phrases. And since photos, videos, and localized content are becoming more prevalent at search engines, you don't want to cede that opportunity to your competition.
To create quality content you should use a combination of some keyword research and the questions you get on a regular basis. Often, if a client--or just a random person--sends me an email with a good question I'll generalize the details and turn it into a blog post. Then I'll send them an email with the link to the blog post.
Not only are you helping out your customer or prospect in that case, you're creating content that can help drive more prospects to your blog, Web site, or social media presence.
Just remember to create keyword-rich links back to relevant pages on your site so you can continue the conversation.
Rick, I know you’re not doing this all by yourself, although you are insanely talented. So who are some of the people working with you on BlogWorld?
Rick: There’s my partner, Dave Cynkin. On his card, it says 'Sleep Deprivationist' and it’s absolutely true. The guy never sleeps.
Jim Turner has been a tremendous help to us as our social media director and conference director. There's Patty Hosking, who folks who exhibit in the show would know.
Then we have a small team here in the office that works all year long on the show. And then during the show, when you count up all the subcontractors and all of that stuff, there are more than 100 people who work the event.
Rich: This is the third BlogWorld & New Media Expo. I know you went through a merger this year with another show. What’s staying the same and what’s going to be different?
Rick: The look and feel of the event remains the same. We like to think that we are the center of the social media universe for those three days. Anyone who is blogging, podcasting, using internet radio, internet television, etc. is there. Any business that’s interested in this space is there.
Our 'Monetization' track is always super popular. That will be back this year. Real Estate Blog World, which is for real estate bloggers, is back. The military bloggers are back. That’s a favorite of mine.
Some new things that we have this year are the medical blogging conference, which Johnson & Johnson is a sponsor of, Mind of Moms Summit, which Rockfish Interactive is a sponsor of and Eng@ge, which Collective Bias is a sponsor of.
Another thing that I really think is cool is called Blogs with Balls, which is a sports track. The company is called Hugging Harold Reynolds Media, which, like so many of us, started off a blog as kind of a joke. It took off. They did an event in New York a couple of months back and had 300 sports bloggers attend. So they’re going to do it again at BlogWorld here in October.
There was this name confusion for a little while between BlogWorld & New Media Expo, which was our name, and another event which originally was called Podcast Expo. But over several years, it morphed into, last year, being called New Media Expo. We merged with that event.
We always had podcasting at the show, but now it’s much more significant than it has been in years past. We have three dedicated tracks: audio, video and advanced podcasting for two full days with some of the total rock stars of the podcasting world giving those sessions. I’d say that’s a significant difference and we expect a whole lot more podcasters this year than we’ve had in years past.
Rich: If you buy a pass to the event, are these mini-conferences standalone things or can I go from one track to another track? If I want to Blog with Balls one moment and then go over to the Military Blogger the next, is that something that people can do or are you kind of locked into your own mini-conference?
Rick: You can do either/or.
Every one of those, we call them Partner Programs. These are basically communities that came to us and said, “We want to hold something at BlogWorld,” so we helped them organize it. We kind of have our own little formula of how to do it and fit them into our schedule. Then we let them run with it; invite their speakers and reach out to their communities to get people to come.
If you just want to go to Blogs with Balls or you just want to go to the medical blogging track, you can do that as a standalone event. Those are only one-day events. Or if you want to go to all of the sessions at BlogWorld, you can do that with a Full Access pass. You can go anywhere you want, anytime you want with that.
Rich: Who is the audience for BlogWorld as you see it? Is this only for people who are pretty advanced in blogging and just want to learn the newest things or is it open to everybody?
Rick: That’s a great question and again another long-winded answer.
There are several different groups. It’s definitely meant to appeal to the newbie blogger because that was me and that’s how the event got started. I wanted to go to this to learn how to make my blog better and learn how to integrate audio and video into my blog, which I didn’t know how to do at the time. So there’s content for newbies.
There’s definitely content for more advanced folks as well to teach them how to monetize content and how to build community and new technology that they can use to create and distribute their content, etc.
Then you’ve got businesses. You know this well. So many businesses want to understand, "How do we interact with bloggers? How do we advertise in blogs? Should we send them press releases? Should we hire bloggers to post about us?" That is going to be a hot topic this year - paid conversations or sponsored conversations. We’ll be talking about that quite a bit.
And then with traditional media, we have people coming from The New York Times, from the L.A. Times, from Discovery Channel and from CNN. All of these traditional media outlets are integrating new media into what they do.
I think, by the way, the Iran elections that just happened and the subsequent protests and all of that stuff really opened traditional media’s eyes. They’d all been making token efforts into new media, but that really opened their eyes. When Twitter was the way that we were getting news out of Iran, that made traditional media understand, “Oh my goodness, this is a news gathering and news reporting tool.” They didn’t get it. They thought it was just a gimmick and a toy before.
Rich: We talked a little bit about the fact that you have all these different types of mini-conferences. That’s one of the things that I noticed when I first went to BlogWorld the first year. The idea that there was even a military blog out there, kind of seemed strange.
How do these groups differ? In other words, what would I learn at a military blogging session that maybe is not going to be covered in the sports or the business one?
Rick: Again, that’s a good question and I guess it allows me to give another long-winded answer.
Rich: Those are the kind of questions you seem to like the best.
Rick: Yes, exactly.
The military blogging sessions are going to talk about military blogs. For example, the first session is “They Also Serve: Spouse Bloggers”. These are spouses, husbands and wives who are at home while their husbands, boyfriends and significant others are deployed overseas, often in a war zone.
They’re talking about what happens in their lives, what they are doing on their blog to reach out to their friends, their family and their extended community to keep them in touch with what’s happening with their life. That’s a very unique thing to a military blog that you’re not going to see anywhere else.
This is versus a real estate blog which is very business-focused. There’s one called "Using Social Media for Real Estate". I guess that is a great microcosm of how businesses can use social media on a hyper local business. Real estate agents are masters of getting their name out to talk about both their own personal brand and then properties that they have listed, etc. So social media is that latest tool for them and may be one of the most powerful tools that real estate agents have had in their lifetimes.
But the overall purpose behind that, the reason that we encourage these vertical communities to come to the show, is for the same reason that BlogWorld opened my eyes. When I first had the idea for the show, I thought it was just going to be political bloggers. That was my blogging universe. I’d never heard of Robert Scoble or Dave Winer or Mike Arrington.
When I started doing research for the show to see if it was a good idea, I realized, “Oh my goodness, there are these techie bloggers.” I’d never heard of a real estate blog or a medical blog or a mommy blog. I realized, "I’m actually a small part of something so much bigger. It’s not just about politics or political blogging. It’s about the social media revolution."
So by bringing them into the community, they get to meet their friends in real life and people that they’re familiar with. It also opens their eyes to everything else that’s going on around them and makes them all feel part of a much bigger community than that vertical community they’re already in.
Rich: You hinted about it a little bit with the podcasts and the new media, but specifically in social media, what are we going to learn if we go to the shows?
Rick: What are you going to learn? I don’t know. But I know the things that we’ll be talking about:
"How Social Media Outlets Impact Digital Terrorism and Hate" - Brian Cubin is going to talk about how hate groups are using social media outlets to get their message out and how do we prevent that and how do we counteract those types of things?
"Why Blogs Are Your #1 Search Marketing Tool" - we talk quite a bit about the impact of blogs on SEO and SEM: search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Blogs have turned search on its head, so we talk quite a bit about that.
Again, sponsored conversations - we will be talking about is it a good thing or is it a bad thing? If it’s a good thing, where does the line draw? Is it okay for Ford to give a free car to Mark Horvath and let him drive around the country to raise awareness for homeless people? Is it okay for Kmart to give Chris Brogan a couple of coupons for him then to blog about Kmart and say how great they are? Where do you cross that line between what’s acceptable and what’s not?
Steve Rubel is talking about lifestreaming.
Any issue you can really think about in social media like how to use Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn for your business, blogging and podcasting and all those sorts of things, we talk about all of that stuff.
Again, for bloggers, so many of us start because we’re passionate about something. For me it was politics. For other people it’s about their kids or whatever it may be.
If you’re good and lucky, you reach a certain critical mass where you say, “Oh my goodness, I’ve got a whole bunch of eyeballs here. Maybe I could make money doing this.” That’s where we talk about monetization. If you want to do that, and if you’re at that level, how do you do it? Do you sell ads? Do you do affiliate marketing? Do you have premium content? What are the ways that you can use on your blog or your podcast etc. to monetize that content?
Rich: As you’re looking forward to this year, are there any things that stand out that you’re really looking forward to this year or moments in the past that you really think, “These have been great moments at BlogWorld”?
Rick: The first year with Mark Cuban, that was amazing. It was totally, I guess, luck and hard work that we pulled it off. Connecting with him on Facebook and having him agree to come and give a keynote at our first year, that was amazing.
Last year, Mike Shinoda, from Linkin Park and Tim Ferriss from 4-Hour Workweek, everybody was talking about what a great talk they gave and how much they learned from that.
The great part for me was that Mike in particular hung out all day and so many people told me, “He was sitting right next to me in another session later that day just as an attendee. He wasn’t just a rock star, he was a blogger."
Rich: He also linked to our flyte blog because I was doing live blogging during his session. He said, “If you want to read the whole transcript, here it is.” And we saw this insane spike the next day. I thought, “Wow, where did all this traffic come from?” Yes, Mike had linked to us and that was pretty cool.
Rick: You’ve experienced it yourself, Rich. We have all of these celebrities, right? Some of them are just web-lebrities or blog celebrities or whatever.
But at our show, everybody is on an equal footing. You don’t have kind of the rock star dynamic where some people you can’t talk to. You can talk to everyone and there’s a good chance that if you’re a rock star, the person you’re talking to has no idea who you are. Really, that again puts people on an equal footing.
I love people having that realization moment, saying, “Oh my goodness, I never realized I could learn stuff about my blog from a mommy blogger or from a sports blogger or from a God blogger or whatever.” I look forward to those things.
When people come up and tell me that they’re having a good time at the show or they’ve learned stuff at the show, as we talked about offline, all the hard hours of work that you put into it makes it 100% worthwhile.
Rich: If there are people out there and small business owners or just bloggers in general, people interested in getting involved in this, why should they go this year? What’s the argument for getting on a plane or getting into the car and driving out to Las Vegas, which is reason enough as far as I’m concerned, and going to BlogWorld this year?
Rick: There are so many reasons.
If you’re a blogger, this is your chance to meet your friends that you have built relationships with online in the past. If you’re a blogger, this is your chance to really learn, in three days, so much about how to create, monetize and distribute your content. You will come away overwhelmed by the amount of information that you get.
If you’re a business, you need to be there because social media is going to change your business. Either you’re going to use it or your competitor is going to use it or you both will use it. But I promise you, if you’re a business owner or a business executive, you will be using social media. It’s just a matter of when. At our event, that's how we talk about it.
The same thing goes for traditional media outlets. There’s no doubt that the conversion to new media is already happening and there are going to be traditional media outlets that don’t exist anymore if they fail to adapt. It’s kind of like companies that used to make buggy whips went away when they invented automobiles. They need to be there in order to survive and continue to be successful in their business.
Rich: Tell us a little bit about where we can learn about BlogWorld online.
Rick: BlogWorldExpo.com or you can go to @blogworld on Twitter. You can find us on LinkedIn and you can find us on Facebook. You can find us all over the net.
Rich: Excellent. I’ve gone for the last two years and I’ve learned an insane amount. There’s always this random session that I walk into and learn something new, something that I had never thought of.
Like you said, I had actually known a lot of these people only virtually until BlogWorld. I had never attended one of these big conferences. I went to the first BlogWorld and a lot of the people who I found to be really great writers and really great bloggers were just very cool personable people.
Even though all the social media makes it easy to get to know people virtually, there’s nothing like hanging out and throwing back a beer or a cup of coffee with somebody that you only knew online. I want to thank you for that.
Rick: It’s a different level in your relationship. It’s like internet dating. The goal is eventually to meet somebody in person.
It’s a different level of learning too. We can all learn online and these are powerful tools, but at the end of the day, the whole purpose of social media is to help us make real-life connections. Again, there’s no other place you’re going to make those connections than at our show.
Rich: Excellent. Rick, I want to thank you very much.
Rich: I want to thank my guest, blogger extraordinaire, Denise Wakeman, whom I've know for years, of The Blog Squad.
Denise, you were one of my first blogging friends online. I don't know if you knew that, but you have been somebody that I have been following for years. And we were lucky enough to meet up and have some face-to-face time at the last couple of Blog World Expos. So thank you very much for the interview.
Denise: Thank you. It's a pleasure for me to be here and to connect with you. I always enjoy our conversations. I was thinking about that as well about how long we've been connected 'virtually'. I think we go back to 2005.
Rich: It could be. I remember just as I was starting to get serious with blogging that I discovered you and started following your stuff. You had an ebook and some audio recordings. I read it and listened to quite a bit of that and found them to be really helpful. They really helped me on my way.
How did you get into blogging? What were you doing as far as web marketing before you got into blogging?
Denise: I got into blogging kind of by accident.
I had been working online since about 1996 using the web as a marketing tool. Up until that point, I had been using the typical ways that people do to have a business on the web.
I had a website, I had an ezine, and I was doing some teleseminars. So those were the basic ways that I was marketing my business on the web.
I had an internet marketing consulting business and I was working with a client who had hired me to help her with her marketing. One day I got an email from her saying, "I just started a blog." I thought, "Uh-oh." She wasn't really technically savvy, so I knew that I'd be getting a lot of questions about it.
This was in 2004. At that time, I was aware of blogs because there was a lot of buzz around blogging in the political sphere. That was during the 2004 presidential campaign of Howard Dean. He was really using the internet and blogging specifically to get his message out. So I knew about blogs, but I had never really thought about them as a business tool.
So when this client told me that she had started a blog, I knew I'd better start a blog right away. So I did. I set up a blog on TypePad.com because that was where she had set up her blog and I thought, "That's where I should set up my blog so I can help her."
Almost literally, it was like the light bulb went on immediately when I realized what a simple tool this was, especially for service professionals who were my clients, to get a site on the web that was easy to use and easy to manage to get their message out at pretty much free or low cost. So I was pretty excited about blogging when I discovered it almost five years ago. My five-year blogging anniversary comes up in September.
Rich: Excellent. It's funny because I was just few months behind you. My first blog, also in TypePad, was in November 2004. It was also a client who was a fan of Howard Dean that said, "I want to start a blog. You should too." That's kind of how I fell into it too. So I guess we can thank Howard Dean for that.
You work with a lot of different companies and service professionals as you mentioned. What do you think are some of the biggest reasons that businesses should be blogging?
Denise: There are a bunch of reasons. Primarily, I think that first of all, it's a very simple way for them to get their content on the web that they can manage themselves. Forgive me for saying this because I know that you're a web company, but many of my clients have been held hostage, let's say, by web companies where they get stuck waiting forever to get updates done. I see the blog as a really simple tool for businesses to actually manage their own site.
Beyond that, I think they're a phenomenal way for businesses to connect and engage with their clients and their prospects by creating content that engages and entertains, and is helpful and useful in some ways so that people can actually get to know who they are, what they do, their beliefs, their values, etc. and start creating those conversations that lead to business because very often it does.
I also think that they are a fabulous tool for creating visibility on a global level. While not every business wants a global audience, many local businesses also benefit from having a blog. I have a lot of local businesses who have started blogging recently when they finally realized that they can go beyond their own little tiny network that they may know physically walking into their business. They can actually reach out to more people in their community, so I think it's a good visibility play.
Also there's the search engine benefit. All that content being indexed on a regular basis by the search engines only helps a business become more findable on the web. That's a good thing.
Rich: Absolutely. Those are some great reasons and great ideas.
Although flyte new media is known for how quickly we turn around work, ;) I have heard horror stories of other web development firms who are a little bit slow in doing updates. Or just in case you want to make an update or something happens over the weekend and your web developer has gone home for the weekend, with a blog you can certainly update that website yourself.
Denise: Exactly. And that was certainly no comment on your company because I would certainly imagine that your company does not do all those poor practices that I've heard about.
Rich: Certainly there are people who have concerns about blogging. What do you think are some of the downsides or pitfalls to blogging? What should people be concerned about when they start to get into this?
Denise: The very biggest concern I hear expressed—I hear it almost every single day—is time. It's the time that people think it will take to manage a blog.
I usually try to turn that around for them and say, "It's not about blogging per se. It's about marketing your business on the web." As I said, if you can't be found online, you pretty much don't exist because everybody goes online now. Whether it's local or international, people go online to find out information about the businesses that they want to connect with. Even if it's your local pizza place, you want to see, "Are they online? Do they have a menu online? Can I order online?" etc.
When people say to me, "I don't have time to blog," I kind of think that maybe there's an education process that needs to happen about the importance of marketing your business online. It's not about blogging per se. It's about creating content that attracts the right people to you.
Maybe that would be a downside, but otherwise, I can't really think of downsides to blogging because I think it's a very powerful marketing tool.
Rich: You brought up some good points. Time is definitely a concern that a lot of people have. I like how you rethink it or reframe it so that it's more about the marketing. Don't consider it as blogging time. Consider it as marketing time. I think that might help a few more small businesses and entrepreneurs kind of wrap their head around it.
This brings up a good point. How much time a week do you spend on blogging? Do you also spend time commenting and following other blogs? If so, how much time does that take up too?
Denise: That's a good question because of course I'm constantly advocating that people obviously make time to post content on their blogs.
What do I do personally? I have two primary blogs that are for my business. My goal is generally to post on each of them two to three times a week. I would say I spend between 10 and 30 minutes on each blog post. Some blog posts are simple announcements or Q & A. Some are more complex or much more content-rich. So it really depends on the blog post.
I would say that in general I spend probably one to two hours a week blogging. That includes doing some research, making sure I have all my links correct and adding images to illustrate my points. Or I'm doing video blogging, creating videos that I post on my blog instead of actually writing content, because that's another way to get around the "I hate to write" argument that I didn't mention in the downside, but that comes up too.
As for commenting on other blogs, I probably don't it as much as I should, a big confession there. But I do try to keep track of what people are talking about in my niche. I use Google Alerts and I use TweetLater to get Twitter alerts on keywords in my niche. I try to pay attention to what other people are talking about and then follow through those links if there's something interesting that I need to comment on or connect with.
I'm tracking probably 30 to 40 blogs and I probably comment several times a week if there's something that's relevant to what I should be commenting on.
Rich: You consult with a number of different professionals and businesses on starting their own blog or on improving their own blog. What kind of research does a business need to do if they're just getting started or kind of revamping their blog? How does somebody find out what they should be blogging about?
Denise: I usually recommend that a business start off by finding what other blogs exist in their niche. There are some great sites that can help do that. Technorati.com is the largest blog directory on the planet, basically. I think they index 130 million blogs or something like that. The number is probably higher by this time.
There are also curated sites like Alltop.com. By curated, I mean that they don't just index any blog. You have to submit your blog for approval to be on their site. There's also Blogs.com which is run by Six Apart which owns Movable Type, TypePad and Vox. That's a great site too for going very specifically to subject matter and finding out what other people are doing in your niche.
That's where I usually tell people to start. Then I look at what's the core message that they want to be spreading out there in the world. What do they want to be talking about? I ask them to take their core message and maybe break it down into seven to 10 subtopics or, in blogging language, 'categories'. What, underneath that big umbrella of a subject, can they talk about?
Then within each one of those categories, what are five sub-sub categories that they could actually talk about around that subject matter? That usually helps really focus and refine the message. When people see that, they can see, "Yes, we do have something to talk about.' There's how-to, there are opinions and there's Q & A from your customers.
That's the way I try to position it for people to figure out what their content will be.
Rich: A lot of people think of blogs as marketing tools, which obviously they are, but in some ways they need to be promoted as well. What do you do to promote your own blog and the individual posts on the blog?
Denise: That's a great question.
First and foremost, I have a way for readers to subscribe to be notified when there are new updates. I use an email subscription form. There are a couple of ways you can do that. I use Feedblitz.com because that's who I started with years ago and I stuck with them. I think they've got a great service. But also FeedBurner offers an email subscription option.
The reason I really emphasizeemail is because even though RSS, or 'really simple syndication' for those who don't know what that means, is a geeky, wonderful thing for those of us who know it, it's still slow for people to adopt because they don't understand it. I'll be honest. I never look at my RSS feeds, but I always see my email. I always subscribe by email to blogs I want to keep up with. This is a great way to make sure that people keep coming back. So I promote individual posts that way.
I am also part of a couple of bookmarking clubs. If I feel like I have written a post that is worthy of attention, I can let people in those groups know that if it works for them, I would like them to bookmark it or tweet it or put it on Facebook or comment or whatever. I don't do that for every post, but for ones that I think are meatier or pithier than others.
I also make sure that my blog posts are fed into my Twitter stream. Some people don't agree with this, but I don't blog 20 times a day, so I don't think that it's a problem to get two or three tweets in a week that have blog posts in them. I also make sure that they're pushed out to Facebook.
Occasionally, I will send emails to my ezine list saying, "Hey, I think this is a blog post that's really relevant for you. If you're an author, I just wrote about 'XYZ - Using a Blog for Writers'," or whatever. I'll pick posts that way to promote.
Rich: Tell me more about this bookmarking club. Is this just kind of like an ad hoc group of friends and co-marketers where occasionally it's a 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' kind of thing? As long as there's quality content, are you promoting each other's work to get them into Digg and to get them into Delicious and some of these other similar sites?
Denise: Yes.
Rich: There's nothing wrong with that. The bottom line is that even if you had somebody do this, if it wasn't good quality, it wouldn't take off. If it is good quality, this just gives it that initial jump to get enough interest so people can decide, "This is also something I'd like to Digg or something I'd like to suggest to StumbleUpon."
Denise: That's exactly right. And, of course, there's never any requirement that anyone Stumble or Digg or bookmark any piece of content. It's entirely up to them. It's just like, "Here's something. If it works for you, go for it." I don't Stumble or Digg everything that comes across my path.
Because of the way these sites work, it's better if somebody else does it rather than you because you can get banned from Digg or StumbleUpon if you're bookmarking and Stumbling and Digging your own stuff too much.
Rich: As you mentioned, you have been blogging for quite some time. What things have you seen change since you started blogging?
Denise: I think that the blogging platforms have become much easier to use for the non-techie. It's easier to design and manage blogs now, for example, just TypePad alone. I know that a lot of people use WordPress too and I also have sites on WordPress. But just for example, TypePad, their platform has evolved tremendously in the last five years to the point that I would say it's comparable to WordPress in terms of what you can do with it.
They're so much easier to use now. Before, you kind of had to really spend some time figuring out how a platform works. Now I think it's much more intuitive.
Rich: That's really funny what you say about TypePad because, like you, I started on TypePad and now, in part because of whom I've hired, we're developing most of our stuff on WordPress these days. I work on both platforms.
I always used to recommend TypePad for people because I thought it was so easy. I have actually found that WordPress finally caught up from a user interface and maybe even surpassed TypePad.
But the bottom line is that those are the two platforms that I find most easy to use for business people who really don't want to worry about anything else than creating compelling content for their audience.
Denise: Exactly. Those are the two I recommend also. I always say, "It depends," when somebody asks me.
I have a reputation of being a TypePad fanatic, but that's not really totally true. It's just that I happen to use TypePad and I know it inside and out. I don't know WordPress as well. I always found that WordPress was a little bit more challenging for me, not being a real techie geek. I had to hire people to help me with it and that has never been my message. My message has been that you should be able to do it yourself if you want to. I have heard that it's getting much more user-friendly for the non-techies, but I just haven't had time to focus on checking that out.
I recommend them both, depending on what somebody is looking for.
I also have found, as far as changes, that of course more people are blogging. That's huge that more people are finally seeing that a blog can really be a very powerful tool and that a blog doesn't have to be just a blog. The blog or journaling aspect of blogging can be integrated with your site and with other tools. People are using blogging platforms as the foundation of their websites. So that's a huge shift.
I also think that it's more important than ever to stay very focused on your message in order to stand out from the crowd of blogs out there. There's competition in just about every content niche. You just have to be really focused. You have to be constant and you have to be consistent. Those are the blogs that will stand out and be successful over time.
Rich: Obviously, social media is all the buzz these days with things like Twitter and Facebook and YouTube. How are you leveraging some of these tools to promote and to increase the value of your blog?
Obviously, blogging is a part of social media. There is a very social aspect to blogging that you don't find on a traditional website. So how are you integrating some of these tools into what you're doing with your blog?
Denise: First of all, I do agree that a blog is a social media tool by the very nature that it can be interactive through the commenting features, so you can connect with your readers that way and that makes it social right there.
As I mentioned before, I make sure that my blog posts are automatically fed to my Twitter stream. I use tools to automate this. I use TwitterFeed to send my blog posts to Twitter. I use the 'Notes' application in Facebook to make sure that my blog posts are sent to my Facebook profile and my Facebook fan page. I use what I think is called the 'Blog Link' application in LinkedIn to make sure my blog posts are sent to LinkedIn.
In my view, there are so many sites out there now. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of social networking sites and you never really know where somebody is going to find. Somebody who is a LinkedIn contact, for example, may not even know that I have a blog. They've only seen me through LinkedIn because they were referred to me by somebody else. So by having my blog content fed into my LinkedIn account, they can see some of my content. And if it's compelling to them, they'll click through and go to my blog.
My personal opinion is that the blog is really my home base. It's my hub. It's the hub of all my activity because there's only so much you can say in 140 characters on Twitter. I can go deep and intimate with people on my blogs. That's where they can really get to know me. They can get to know my values and my beliefs.
I'm actually more of a pragmatic writer on my blogs. It's more about 'how to' and, "This is why you need to do this. This is how you need to do this." That's just my style. I'm not a big philosophical kind of person. But I get a lot of compliments for that because people want to know how stuff works and why they should do it.
People who are interested in that will follow those links if my headlines are compelling enough. A key there is making sure that your headlines are well-written.
Also, I've noticed in the last probably nine to 12 months that probably 40% to 50% of my traffic to my blogs is now coming from social network sites, specifically Twitter and Facebook. So that's a no-brainer to make sure that my blog is linked there.
And what I've noticed is that the people who are coming from those sites are much chattier. They're much more inclined to comment. I'm getting way more comments now on my blog posts than I ever used to because people are used to conversing on the social networking sites and they're comfortable posting comments.
Rich: I want to thank you because you've given us a lot of stuff to work on. You've constantly been a source for me to turn to in terms of improving my own blogging.
Why don't you tell us a few of the places that we can find you online?
Denise: I'd be glad to. My first primary blog is BizTipsBlog.com. That's my original first blog that debuted in September 2004. It mostly revolves around internet marketing and creating online visibility. That's a big thing that I've really been focused on lately, so I talk about those things there.
Then BuildaBetterBlog.com is where I write specifically about business blogging. I keep that very, very focused on all things related to blogging.
