Thinking Strategically: Listen
When you have your goals in mind the next thing you need to do is listen. Monitor what is being said about you, monitor what is being said about your area of interest, read about some of the tools you are considering, and see what other people in your niche are doing.
Listening directs you to where you can accomplish your goals. It teaches you about the success of others and the failures/tribulations that you can learn from. By taking the time to monitor and track conversations/interests you will be set up to target your audience, know where you need to set up outposts, know where you need to participate, and gives you some ideas to what tools you should begin to look into.
My favorite part about listening is that it tells you what your potential connections want, what they are interested in, and what they are knowledgeable about. It helps determine the type of content you should consider generating and what value you can add to the community. If you listen intently with an open mind you can craft what you need to include in your social media strategy, what is getting covered well elsewhere, and how you can set yourself apart from the marketplace.
Now that you know what your niche wants, where the conversations are happening, and what networks the conversations are taking place on you can apply this knowledge to your goals.
Thinking Strategically: Goals
This week I want to take the time to talk about thinking strategically. I am going to take a little more general approach and cover some broader concepts when thinking about social media. Seeing how some people and companies use social media it is obvious to see that they don’t have a strategy behind what they are doing. Now I know some people are going to push back and say that social media is supposed to be natural and fun, not everyone needs a strategy. If you are messing around with some of these tools to connect with friends do you really need to plan how you use them? Well if you are applying for jobs and your profiles are using your real name and information then yes, you do need to plan.
The first topic I like to talk when looking at strategy are goals. What are your goals for using a social media site? Is it to have fun with your friends without people from work watching what you are doing? Is it to drive traffic to a site? Is it to sell a product? Is it to provide better customer service?
Whatever your reasons are you need to outline them and determine how your actions impact those goals. These goals help define your strategy, they help impact the direction you are going, and they are your litmus test against your actions.
Without goals things can tend to be overwhelming and when you are overwhelmed you tend not to go anywhere.
What are your goals?
Moving To A Multi-Author Blog Is Easier Said Than Done
I have a blog that has been around for what will be five years this summer. It started on MySpace (I know… I know) and eventually moved off of the site onto its own domain. For years I created content five days a week but lately I just can’t churn out the content that I used to be able to. Not wanting to downshift because the site has continued to grow in traffic and subscribers I decided to go bring in more writers.
Honestly I thought it would be really easy, I would just be able to take a few days off while other bloggers took the reins. While bringing in other writers did alleviate the workload for me there was a new set of challenges that I should have expected but didn’t even think about.
1) Backlash from long time readers- I thought there would be some small push back but I received a lot of nasty e-mails and instant messages from people that I didn’t even know were reading. People get used to a certain voice and drawn to a blog for that voice, when that voice is altered and change comes about it doesn’t go over well with some.
Every blog writer is going to be different, while I could have tried to find someone with the same style and sense of humor I knew that his or her voice would still is different. However, I figured if I found them entertaining so would my audience. That wasn’t how things went.
Over the years I have dealt with a lot of criticism, that is what happens when you write something for public consumption, you eventually get used to it. But when people write you personally and attack a decision that you made with such bile, it does feel like a punch to the stomach.
I know I lost some of my readership by bringing in people that had different styles, sensibilities, and senses of humor. But sticking to my convictions and knowing I was making the right move helped me overcome the stomach punch.
2) Stepping on each other’s toes- Since my blog is primarily a humor and pop culture blog I didn’t create an editorial calendar for the site. It was kind of pointless to do because the subject matter doesn’t really lend itself to something so regimented. You can’t try to organize humor.
This freedom helped make the writers feel open to write about whatever they want. The only problem is that sometimes people beat me to the punch on a topic I wanted to cover. While I might have lost out on writing something that I thought was a comedic winner I had to subjugate my ego and learn to get over it. At least 9 times out of 10 they took the topic in a direction I didn’t expect and probably did a better job than my original idea.
3) Favorite kid syndrome- Once and awhile if I think we really have a winning post that is getting a good response I will give it a push on social media sites. It depends on the post, how much time I personally have, and if I think it lends itself to be pushed on social media. (While I could probably leverage social media on every post I don’t want to submit things that are below a certain standard, unlike some bloggers with a strong social media profile.)
The issue with this is a blogger puts something out there and wants the same push that another blogger may have received. Their content might be wrong or maybe I don’t have the time to help give it an extra push. This creates a little friction and frustration with the idea that I could possibly be playing favorites.
The blame for this lies squarely on my shoulders for creating this situation and not relating people the right way. (Because adding writers leads to managing people, no matter how much you don’t want to look at it that way it is exactly what it is.) I haven’t educated these writers on social media and what it takes for a post to take off.
In the end the question is, “Would I do it again?” Without giving it a second thought I would, I think bringing in other voices has added different points of view to my site and helped grow the site in a direction I wouldn’t have been able to take it. While initially I think I took a small hit from bringing new people on board over the long term the benefit significantly outweighed any initial issues.
Video of My WordCamp Chicago Presentation
You Need to Protect the Content You Create
One of the biggest fears I have with social media is that the time that I put into content creation could backfire and I could lose everything… every blog post, every picture, every link I have shared, and every video I have created. When it comes to protecting my blogs I have used the database backup plugin for WordPress. As far as the other content unless I have the original file on my hard drive if I lose the account I lose the data.
Now I know it sounds all doom and gloom to think like that. And you are probably thinking that my Flickr account is pretty safe. However speaking from experience I know that I am at the mercy of these services. When I started out blogging I built a massive following on MySpace and wrote a ton of blogs posts on there. (Which I kept in multiple Word files thankfully.)
At one point I ran into a problem with a blogger (he became my stalker… long story) who complained to MySpace about my content and created a story about me leading to my account getting deleted without their customer service department contacting me. Of course I knew how to get accounts deleted and got his deleted in return, twice. The lesson that I learned though was that the status of anyone’s account on a social media site hangs by a thin wire and I shouldn’t get too attached to my content.
Recently my friend Rob May started a company called Lifestream Backup. Personally I was excited when I heard about the concept of the site and asked if I could get in on the beta testing of it. After waiting for the development to be done I finally got to trial the product and use it for the last month and I have to say that I love it. From one central place I can back up multiple social media accounts on Twitter, WordPress Blogs, Flickr, Delicious, Basecamp, Zoho, Google Docs, Photobucket, and soon Youtube and Facebook.
You can choose when your content gets backed up and what type of notification you receive. The best feature though is the multiple account features; I have multiple blogs, twitter accounts, and accounts for my clients. From one place I can back them up and save them as well as download the results of the backup. This is a service that is needed as we create more content and share our digital lives online. For less than $27.00 a year you can have your valuable content backed up, it is worth every penny.
Getting A Grasp On My Facebook Account
I have been pretty good about splitting most of my social media accounts between my personal world and my professional world. Actually I should say between my humor website and my professional website, the only place they really collide is on Facebook. Lately I have been getting a lot of people requesting to add me on there professionally and I don’t want to give them access to my entire life. Additionally my mom joined Facebook last week and I REALLY didn’t want to give her access to all my digital life. (The last thing I want to ever here is, “What happened to that cute girl you had pictures with on Facebook? She seemed nice.”) It was time that I sat down and used the privacy settings built into Facebook to get control of my account.
Here is how I did it.
1) Sat down and created lists for all my friends. You need to place your friends on different lists in order to really use the great privacy functions built into Facebook. Go about this thinking about levels of access not how you know the people. To put your friends on lists click on the friends link at the top of the site and then start creating various lists by using the list functions on the left hand side of the page. (pictured) I have a group called “All Clear”, “Limited Profile”, and then a few others that are a mixture of the two. You will be able to determine what each group sees in the next step.
Note: You can also assign permissions to individual people. So don’t feel like you have to group everyone.
2) Determine who gets access to what. Click on the settings link on the top of the page, go to privacy settings, and then profile. From here you really can divide up how people see your profile and what parts they have access to. The first drop box is for your overall profile, which is the only spot that doesn’t allow you to customize by group. In the customize section you can choose to show your profile to everyone on Facebook, just friends, and assign permissions to your networks.
Next you can go through the other various options from basic info to who can see your pictures. In each of these menus select “customize” and in the box on the bottom select the groups that you DO NOT want to have access to this feature. You can even select individuals if you don’t want to go with groups or if you have someone that you really don’t want to grant access to.
3) Don’t forget your applications and other features. After making all the changes on how people can see your profile go back to the privacy settings page and go through your applications. You don’t want to forget this especially if you are importing content from Twitter, your blog, or other things you do not want everyone to have access to.
The cool thing about doing this is that on most of these pages you can enter a person’s name and it will show you what they can see on your profile. It is a great testing feature. Make sure to try out different groups and test what people see to make sure that you don’t accidently grant access to something you don’t want. When you do this don’t forget to check out the various tabs of your profile.
Leverage Multiple Social Networks Using Strategy, Tools, and Preferences
There are so many social media sites out there and so many different people using them. Trying to participate on them all is next to impossible. But selectively choosing to participate on certain networks and outright ignoring some might not be the best strategy for you. You may be missing out on connecting with potential/current readers or customers. So where does that leave you? For most people they end up either spinning their wheels or disengaging.
You don’t have to do that. Using some strategy and available free tools you can leverage these networks without falling into a major time suck.
1) I have said it before and I will say it again, protect your brand, your name, and whatever you hold dear. I’ve written blog posts about this, I mention it every time I talk about social media strategy and I will bring it up again here… If you want to control your brand make sure you register your name on just about every social media site you can find. The last thing you want is your name/brand hijacked.
2) Use Ping.fm to leverage your content and distribute it. Ping.fm allows you to post to over 40 social media sites from one interface (you can use their web interface, your cell, and multiple other options) including microblogging services, photo sharing services, social book marking sites, and soon video sites. Examine the social media sites that the service updates and import the accounts that you want to participate in.
3) Fill out your profiles. I know this is such a simple request but you would be surprised how many people don’t take that step. According to a recent HubSpot report (hat tip to Chris Brogan for sharing this) about the usage of Twitter most users don’t even fill out their basic information.
- 79.79% failed to provide a homepage URL
- 75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile
- 68.68% have not specified a location
Stand out from the crowd and actually do it. Humanize yourself, make yourself approachable, and allow the users of these services to find out more about you.
4) Monitor responses and participate, otherwise you are purely broadcasting nobody wants to be friends with a broadcaster. With a number of these services you can subscribe to an RSS feed involving search terms or monitor replies. Also using the tools I talk about in this monitoring post you should be able pickup any conversations about your content, make sure you engage.
5) Prioritize your networks and strategically grow your accounts. Obviously you can’t go through and spend time growing 20-40 accounts. It just isn’t possible. However picking a few and concentrating on growing them will allow you to build a targeted group of people to converse with. As you continue to create content and populate these networks with your information you may be surprised where followings or conversations take place. Don’t force growing accounts on one network if you see it happening organically on another, spend a little more time on those networks and develop what is growing.
It Is Okay To Be Wrong In Social Media
When studies are released about the adoption of social media one of the biggest reasons that give people pause or cause them to fear using it is that they or an employee could make a misstep and hurt their company. It is a reasonable concern when you have worked for years to build a company into what it is.
Personally though I look at being wrong or making a misstep as something that can potentially help the brand. Being able to admit you are wrong, show that you are human, and show that you care about your product, company, brand, reputation, or customers enough to address it can be much more powerful than the actual mistake.
Instead of writing some long post giving laying out an impassioned argument I think this one quote sums up my position perfectly:
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” –George Bernard Shaw
WordCamp Chicago Recap
Last weekend I headed out to the Windy City for WordCamp Chicago where I presented on how to turn WordPress into your social media hub. Below is my deck from the presentation (admittedly not the sexiest Power Point in the world) but I think there is some solid information in there. There are two things that I would like to add before you view it.
1) I didn’t mention photo sharing in the Power Point presentation which was a mistake on my part. At WordCamp I covered it by saying, “When you look like an overweight Jeremy Piven you tend to stay away from the camera.”
The lesson is if you don’t have time to amend your presentation it is better to make fun of yourself rather than admitting that you totally forgot about photo sharing.
2) In my breakdown of third party commenting systems I mention that Intense Debate doesn’t support Facebook Connect while Disqus does. I actually talked to Matt Mullenweg about this at get together after the first day and he cleared up the reasoning for me. The reason why Intense Debate no longer supports that feature is that they wanted to make it so once you are signed onto Facebook Connect thru Intense Debate you were signed on to whatever sites you were commenting on that were using that platform. Facebook didn’t like that and wanted the user to have to sign on to each site that they visited so Intense Debate doesn’t offer Facebook Connect anymore.
With those two points cleared up here is my deck from the presentation.
Besides my presentation there were a lot of other solid presentations from the attendees. Some of the presenters included:
- Matt Mullenweg, founder of our favorite blog/CMS platform, WordPress
- Jeremy Wright, CEO of one of the largest global new media blog networks, b5media
- Jim Turner, business and social media blogging consultant at One By One Media
- Erin Blaskie, CEO of global internet marketing strategy consultancy, Business Services, ETC
- David Dalka, marketing and digital technology coach and founder of, Search Engine Marketing Strategy
- Liz Strauss, online business strategist and owner of Successful Blog and SOB Con
- Micah Baldwin, VP of business development of search-powered web application, Lijit
- Tim Frick, who creates design-driven communication solutions with his company, Mightybytes
- Doug Hanna, head honcho of running the day-to-day operations of the WordPress showcase
Also I would be remiss if I didn’t say that a lot of credit needs to go to Lisa Sabin Wilson and Brian Gardner for their efforts to organize the event.
Social Media vs. SEO vs. Web Design, Why Does It Have To Be A Battle?
I don’t understand why the world of Internet marketing is so fractured. It seems like there are three camps with each camp bashing the other. People will bash SEO disciples saying that they over promise, under deliver, and use shady techniques to game a system where nobody completely understands all the rules. Then you have people bashing social media believers saying that the ROI is poor, well that is if you can actually determine what the ROI is. Finally you have people knocking designers pointing out that a lot of modern designs are all sizzle and no steak. The sites they design might be pretty but they aren’t optimized for the end user, for search, or for social media.
These arguments have been going on for a while, what I don’t understand at this point haven’t we learned that all three of these things work in concert with each other? Creating a comprehensive strategy that touches on all three of these discipline areas is important, why are we still getting people taking shots across the bow of each of these skill sets? It is like people that work on a car saying the wheels are more important than the engine or the steering wheel.
Last month on SEOmoz Rand Fishkin wrote a post about Social Media Marketing and how he feels that it doesn’t produce the same hard results that a person can get from doing some solid research and improving the SEO on their website. Rand explains that getting results from the SEO changes don’t pack the same punch as social media on an emotional level, “To a marketer, from a selfish, emotional, human standpoint, it’s not nearly as gratifying as even the most superficial social media engagement.” Throughout the post he makes a logical argument backing it up with stats and well thought out points.
Personally I don’t think Rand is wrong, especially for what he is tracking but in reality would his time investment work for every company or product? No. A campaign that is focused more on social media than SEO has a place with a lot of companies, especially when it is focused on a short-term product or even a personality where the connection matters. Rand does acknowledge that he believes in the power of social media when it comes to certain strategies:
I recognize that SMM, when it achieves dual goals of traffic & link building, is of massive value (as are other activities designed to leverage the social web to bolster high ROI tactics), but I’m more skeptical of the ROI from social networking & driving up social media popularity.
In the end though for most companies a straight social media play isn’t going to work for them just like a straight focus on search engine optimization isn’t going to work for a lot of companies. (To throw design in there as well we can make the argument that you could have coolest looking site in the world but if you don’t have the other two planks very few people are going to see it.)
I don’t want to harp on Rand here because I think he is one of the more knowledgeable people on the planet when it comes to SEO. (And I know Rand wasn’t bashing social media, but his post was the one that got me thinking.) There is a flipside to this; I recently had lunch with a “social media guru” that is pretty well regarded in the social media world. At lunch he told me that he only had a slim grasp on the very basics of SEO but really felt like he lacked knowledge in that area. Judging from some of the sites he has worked with he also doesn’t haven’t a strong eye for design either. Is he really serving his clients that well because they are obviously missing major pieces to the Internet marketing puzzle?
A cohesive strategy touching on all three bases will lead to much better results than just focusing on one area.
- Better design is going to improve your SEO, SMO, and improve your visitor’s experience.
- Improving your SEO is going to bring in targeted organic traffic, give you information on what content to create, and help direct your design improvements.
- Participating in social media (with a strategy behind it) is going to help drive traffic, improve customer service, increase links, and help not only convert but retain customers.
Isn’t it time that people being to balance out their skill set, stop looking down at other disciplines, and learn to create comprehensive strategies that will best service their customers?
