Getting Personal – Open Up to Let Your Readers In

05/27/2011 By 2 Comments

Open Up and Get Personal With Your ReadersThree blogs I read regularly had intensely personal posts by their authors within about a week of each other. I think this struck me because they came so close together, and because I could really relate to them.

How willing you are to open up and get personal is entirely up to you and how you want to relate to your audience. Getting too personal can put some people off. It can also draw people in and make your current audience even more dedicated.

I’m glad the following authors did. Here’s who they are, what they said, and how I can relate.

Erika Napolitano

(@redheadwriting)

Erika is a bold and brash writer and not always for the faint of heart. I’ve never gotten the feeling she writes this way deliberately to be shocking. She’s just brutally open and honest, and she pulls it off. Anyone who has a section of their blog titled “The Bitch Slap” is good in my book.

Her blog post What Makes Us recounts her feelings of fears and awkwardness as a high-schooler.

I’ve never been a teenage girl, but I can definitely relate to what she’s saying! In my ridiculously small high school I was one of two people that played guitar. The other was one year below me and also my best friend. For the record, I was a slightly better player, and at the time I lorded it over him without mercy. I feel bad about it now, but that was the one thing I had.

I had long hair, torn jeans and a leather jacket (the one with fringe *shudder*) and got lumped into the “stoner” crowd. This was funny not only because I didn’t do drugs, but no one in the so-called stoner crowd did. We were just the metalheads. We’d rather share a new band with each other than all just get drunk until we puked in someone’s bedroom (which was the favorite weekend activity of the popular kids).

Had I gone to HS with Erika, I think we would have been friends (ok, I’d probably have had a crush on her, I did always like smart girls.. and redheads, but she’d just want to keep it friends).

Daniel Rothamel

(@drothamel)

Daniel made a name for himself in the Real Estate/Tech community as the “Real Estate Zebra” (taken from his days as a basketball referee or “Zebra”) only to ultimately find himself on the unfortunate end of a trademark lawsuit.

There was a great show of support from Daniel’s social media friends and followers (#SaveTheZebra). In the end Daniel made the choice to settle the lawsuit and rebrand himself.

He discussed what I’m sure was a difficult decision for him on his On Endings and Beginnings blog post and also opens up on the  how he’s gotten to where he is today.

I already relate to Daniel as a REALTOR and techie, and someone who loves to combine the two. I also personally know the impact of the words “flare up” having a related medical condition. I also have a very supportive wife named Kari!

See how these little similarities can create a feeling of camaraderie and connection?

Brian Clark

(@CopyBlogger)

I want to shave my head just to see what the scar looks like 6 years later


How can you NOT click on that? In The Snowboard, the Subdural Hematoma, and the Secret of Life Brian tells of a harrowing head vs. mountain skiing accident that could have been the end of him.

I don’t have any gnarly scars on my head, but my head did once lose a battle with an ice covered driveway resulting in an ER trip and some scrambled memories of the event. This post touches on my fear of brain injury or trauma, and how quickly things can change.

You!

I’m not suggesting you open up as a ploy to get more dedicated readers. I’m just trying to point out that from time to time, pulling back the curtains and letting people know something personal about you lets your fans and readers relate to you on a whole new level.

Take some time and read the posts I’ve included here. Let them be your inspiration to find ways you can open up more to your audience! The more personal ways your readers can relate to you the more trust you’ll build with them.

If social media is really about connecting then being human, vulnerable, and letting your guard down is a way to let people in. It’s something I intend to put into practice on this blog.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , ,

Forget Your Niche! Sometimes It Pays To Be Everything For Everyone.

05/21/2011 By 2 Comments

Don and Lillian Stokes - America's First Couple of BirdingWe’re told time and again to be successful you need to find your niche. Specialize and focus to find your audience. In general this is good advice, but sometimes you can pull off something special by being everything to everybody!

Last week I had the chance to meet Don & Lillian Stokes (Americas “First Couple” of Birding) at a meeting of the DuPage Birding Club where they presented their new Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America.

As an avid birder you need a good field guide to help you identify birds. I’ve used their Eastern Region field guide for years and was a big fan of their Stokes Birds At Home TV show which aired on PBS (and is planned to be released on DVD later this year).

Six years in the making, it covers all the birds of North America, including more than a hundred rare birds like as the Brown-Chested Martin only spotted in North America six times.

They faced the difficult task of compiling a field guide that worked for beginning birders as well as seasoned birdwatchers. They accomplish this by including the rarity of the bird, on a scale of 1 (very common) to 5 (presumed extinct). Each bird gets the full photo treatment, including immature birds and subspecies to help in identification. Over 500 of these pictures were taken by Lillian Stokes herself.

The result of the Stokes’ effort is a behemoth! Some guides focus on a specific type of bird (birds of prey, shorebirds, etc) but this one covers them all. The only real drawback of this much information is that its size makes it hard to carry out in the field.

You can take a page from the Stokes and consider writing an “Ultimate Guide to…” or “Everything you need to know about…” for your blog. This can be a resource that keeps visitors coming back to your blog.

If you want a real-world example, CopyBlogger recently posted The Ultimate Guide to Twitter Marketing which has covers everything a Twitter newbie or experienced Twitter marketer needs.

Some other examples to check out are The Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn by SimplyZesty and SEOMoz’s Facebook Marketing: Ultimate Guide.

So don’t be afraid to let things get out of focus! Do some research and create your own Definitive Guide to Anything.

Filed Under: Blogging, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Social Media Lessons Learned From Knowledge Management

01/12/2011 By Leave a Comment

 

Knowledge ManagementA company looking to create and follow through on a social media strategy faces several challenges. Marketing Sherpa’s Social Media Marketing and PR Benchmark Survey shows that significant challenges for implementing social media include:

  1. Lack of knowledgeable staff
  2. Inability to to trrack ROI or measure impact on goals
  3. Lack of budget, resources and time
  4. Management resistance
  5. Technical complexity

None of these obstacles are exclusive to social media. In fact, they’re all similar to issues faced when launching a Knowledge Management (KM) initiative.

KM is made up of practices and tools within an organization to internally document and share insights, experience and technical expertise. The benefits of KM include greater collaboration, reduced redundant work, and better training and retention of employees.

At its core, the goal of Social media, whether it’s corporate blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc, is fundamentally the same as knowledge management: Sharing information. The benefits of sharing information online can be:

  • Greater exposure for your company
  • Increased traffic to your website
  • More conversions of leads
  • Recognition as a leader/expert in your industry or market
  • Increased business and revenue
  • Higher search results rankings
  • Recruiting of Employees

When you share expertise online, you not only are you grow your business, but you provide a valuable service to your customers. Your social media efforts should save them time, reduce their workload and provide insights into their industry that your company’s employees have learned through their own experiences.

Some major issues must be addressed when implementing knowledge management or social media:

  1. Executive level buy-in.
  2. Incentive for the “knowledge workers” to become involved.
  3. Employee Time allotted for KM or SM efforts.

Your entire organization, from top to bottom, must be aligned to achieve success. A common pitfall is a company whose CEO believes strongly in using social media, but doesn’t ensure that management give employees time to take part or offer incentives to be involved.

On the other end of the spectrum, and I think more commonly, many companies have employees that are personally active in social media only to run-up against managers that reluctant to join in. They think that sharing information online will help their competitors or they just don’t see the ROI and think it’s a total waste of time.

Your company needs a “Project Champion” empowered to lead these efforts and act as the editor or curator. Work with employees to create an incentive program for their involvement. Start small with a pilot project to address the issues that may come up. This is also a way to keep initial costs low. Learn as you go and keep growing and expanding your efforts.

Your company likely has a ton of information and content just waiting to be shared online. Some great sources that can become online content are your project portals, knowledge base or help desk archives, wikis, market research and product documentation. Obviously you’ll need to carefully review what you decide to publish for legal and competitive reasons.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , ,

Customers as a Content Stream

12/08/2010 By

You’re the CEO of a small or mid-sized business. You’ve been listening to the buzz about Social Media. You have your Facebook Page all set up.

Now what?

You stare at the blank page trying to figure out why you only have 12 likes. Ten are your employees. The other two are you and your mom.

Creating and finding good content is a big challenge when you begin to delve into social media. You don’t want to be a shameless self-promoter or just post the same info everyone else does.

What you may not realize is that you have a treasure trove of ideas staring you right in the face! Your existing customers! Your Facebook page is a great place to promote not only yourself, but also your clients. Some of the items you should add are:

  • New Product/Service Announcements
  • Awards & Recognition
  • Articles featuring your Customer

Sit down with your clients and explain the benefits of collaborating on a Case Study of a recent project you’ve worked with them on. Just make sure you have their permission and approval before posting any possibly sensitive information.

Keep up to date on your past customers or clients and not only will you likely increase your business with them, but you’ll also access a steady stream of great content for your Facebook Page or blog!

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: ,

7 Reasons Why We Blog

11/23/2010 By Leave a Comment

This may sound crazy, but not every blog post is just shameless self-promotion! When sitting down to write something ask yourself one simple question: Why am I creating this? What is my goal?

When you post something to your blog (or to micro-blogging sites like Twitter, Tumblr or Posterous, which I’ll just refer to here as your blog) you should have a clear objective for each post. I think it’s a given that whatever you put online is intended to make someone think, but consider your goal and adjust your writing style accordingly.

This list is by no means complete, but here are seven reasons you’ll want to post something online:

To Inform
I think the most common reason for blogging is to share your knowledge or thoughts on your particular area of expertise. This is a great way to establish your reputation as an expert in your field. Your blog is a great outlet for discussing a trending topic or technology, or to share statistics/market data for your industry.

To Educate
An educational blog entry is usually more detailed and specific than an informative one. A good example is a step-by-step how to article, or something more instructional in tone. Many software development blogs are made up of educational posts describing exactly how to resolve a specific problem its readers may be facing.

To Announce
A corporate blog is a great place to announce a new service, product or partnership. Keep in mind that a blog that is strictly a PR feed would get boring pretty quickly. There’s a lot of debate about if this is acceptable use of a blog.

For example, consider a REALTOR who posts a new listing on their blog. Some say it doesn’t belong there, but I disagree as long as it doesn’t become the main focus of the blog.

To Brag
Sometimes blog posts ARE about self-promotion! (*shock*) If you’ve received an award or recognition, or if your product was written about, consider posting this information to your blog.

You can also post major accomplishments or achievements. Be careful though, becoming a braggart is an easy trap to fall into! No one will want to read you telling them how great you are for too long.

To Ask
Starting a discussion can be a way to draw people into your blog. One way to do this is to post an open-ended, thought provoking article. Ask your readers a question or to share their thoughts on a topic. Engage them in the comments to keep the conversation going!

To Rant
Sometimes we all just need to vent. You can connect with people on an emotional level if they share your annoyance or pain on a particular topic. Before posting a rant, consider how edgy you want to be and how willing you are to offend. Touch a nerve and your blog could quickly become popular (or unpopular)!

To Entertain
To lighten things up, relate a funny story from time to time. Sometimes a completely off-topic post can make your blog more personal. Like a Rant, carefully consider when this type of post is appropriate for you!
Go back and take a look at your recent blog posts and try to determine what the goal was. Break them down into percentages by type. If most of your posts are of one style, try mixing it up a little. Thinking of why you are writing something is a tool you can use to get yourself out of a rut. Try to write your next entry with a specific goal in mind.

Not all blogs fall easily in to a specific type. To me, this post was intended to inform you of my thoughts on why we blog, while you might consider it more educational (and hopefully at least a little entertaining!)

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: ,

Stockpile Your Trust Now for the Market Turnaround

12/23/2009 By Leave a Comment

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
It seems like every week there’s a new report that shows why the housing market is rebounding, or why it’s sinking even further. Just this week we saw new home sales in November drop 11%, while existing home sales rose 7.4%. Predictions of how this (and other factors) will affect values is anyone’s guess! When people ask me what I think the market will do, there is only one prediction I can make confidently: The housing market won’t rise as fast as it fell!

If Robert E. Lee were alive today and selling real estate he’d proclaim “The Market shall rise again!” He’d be right. And when the market does pick up, whether it’s 2010, 2011 or 2017, you need to be ready for it.

Right now is an opportunity to use new tools such as Blogging and Social Media to build your reputation as a trusted resource and establish your credibility as an expert. As you gain more readers and followers you can stockpile your trust now so when the market does turn around you are poised to take advantage. Maintaining an “online presence” beyond a simple, static website will build your reputation as someone that is knowledgeable and helpful.

Finding Focus

When deciding on what your blog will focus on, think about the type of readers you want to attract. Notice I said readers and not clients. You shouldn’t try to sell your services or listings to your followers. Every “Social Media Guru” has their opinion on how much you should promote yourself in the context of your blog. Shameless self-promotion won’t provide any value to the reader and eventually they’ll get turned off and ignore you. Keep it relevant and you’ll be OK. The key is finding just the right balance.

Your blog shouldn’t be all things to all people. It should be geared to the types of people you’d like to connect and work with or to build your reputation in a certain area. If you do half your business in a certain area or type of client focus on that! Here are three areas to consider:

1. Geography
Do you work in a specific area? You could focus your blog on your city or even down to a neighborhood or subdivision.

2. Client Type
Think about the types of clients you work with most. You could focus your blog on topics of interest to first time buyers, downsizing retirees, commercial/retail, distressed/bank/short sale sellers.

3. Lifestyle
Going “green”, Healthy/Active lifestyle or Outdoor living are all topics you could cover, and how it relates to what to look for in a home or home improvements.

Whatever you choose to focus on, write from the Real Estate perspective. I read a LOT of real estate blogs that only focus on real estate. Your blog should be a source of information for your clients, not your competition. Unless your blog is just a hobby your ultimate goal is to grow your business.

Build your reputation as a resource in whatever area you choose so when your readers do decide to enter the market, you’ve established yourself as a knowledgeable resource. You’ve already built up a certain level of trust that you can leverage to get their business.

If you build it, they will come… eventually.
Don’t worry about promoting your blog in the beginning. Work on your writing style and find your voice. If you send people to a blog with just a handful of entries they aren’t going to put much value on it and probably won’t come back. Keep it focused, relevant and creative and readers will find you. After you’ve established yourself and built up some valuable content you should start actively promoting your blog.

Write whenever you can. If you have fits of creativity write several blog entries at once and stagger when you publish them. A steady stream of content will keep your readers interested and increase your search engine rankings.

You should read and follow blogs similar to yours for ideas and inspiration. If you find a great article post a summary and link to the original site. Don’t be afraid to send your visitors to someone else! If your readers think of you as a resource for information they’ll come back to you.

Most importantly, Have fun!
Yes, writing can seem like a chore sometimes. It’s perfectly ok to mix things up and write about something completely off-topic from time to time. When you see your view counts and followers start to grow the effort will be worth it. Nothing will beat the first time you introduce yourself to someone and they say “Oh yeah, I know who you are, I read your blog!”

Filed Under: Blogging, Real Estate, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

The Franchising of the Web

12/12/2009 By Leave a Comment

At the risk of sounding like an old man (which at 37, I Don’t consider myself) I can clearly remember the Internet and World Wide Web from back in the day. (Back then you capitalized Internet and didn’t just call it “the web” or the interwebs, or anything of the other clever things it gets called today.) 14.4k modems, the always temperamental Trumpet Winsock, or Internet Explorer from the Internet Jumpstart Kit in Windows 95 Plus!

I first got on the internet in 1995, fourteen long years ago, when AOL bought the Global Network Navigator (GNN) and used it as their WWW counterpart to the old proprietary AOL service. Remember “Keywords” before they became a hot SEO topic? Oddly enough, the built-in GNN browser used the tabbed browsing style made so popular by Firefox. When AOL shifted to flat-rate billing and greater web access in 1996 the GNN service was phased out.

The Early Web

On the early web, sites were made mostly by hand-coding HTML or using the first generation of WYSIWYG editors like Sausage Software’s HotDog or HoTMetaL by SoftQuad. I spent plenty of time in both, and about a dozen others along the way.  If you wanted a site you had to know your way around HTML. Although many, many sites were definitely coded by those that didn’t!

For hosting you paid a princely sum for every last megabyte of space, or used the free web hosting provided by your ISP with a url like www.myisp.com/~myusername. I kinda miss that tilde sometimes.  That’s back when there were a lot of ISPs and you picked the one that had a local dial-in number and prayed they didn’t get too busy!

Believe it or not, but finding new, interesting sites wasn’t always easy. Yahoo manually reviewed its listed sites (as in by a human being!) and you could find the best and worst of the web on sites like Mirsky’s Worst of the Web or the Cool Site of the Day.

One of my favorite ways to find cool new sites was to find a random ISP from any part of their country and find their “User Pages” list, the sites created by their users.  At least half of these sites were pretty pointless and not worth even looking at, but if you looked long enough you could come across a real gem. The variety of topics and styles was endless.

The Generic Web & The Introduction of Template Sites

Then came GeoCities (R.I.P.) and after that more sites provided templates and sites started looking very similar. This wasn’t all bad, as “standard” layouts started emerging that users could easily recognize. Then came MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, WordPress… and so on.

The web today is dominated by sites that provide a platform for user generated content. Now more emphasis is placed on the actual content than the look & feel of the site itself. While that’s definitely a good thing, the web itself has turned itself into a strip mall. No more Mom & Pop shops. If I want to publish my photography, I buy a Flickr franchise. If I want my own TV station I buy a YouTube franchise.

The Web today & Indivudualized Content

Content has always been king, but in the early web the content providers, and I’m talking about individuals not big corporations, were judged just as much for their design skills. Today theme driven sites like WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr or Posterous allow anyone to easily publish their content, but this comes at the cost of some level of individuality.

The popularity of the “Web 2.0” design style, with its rounded corners, gradients, large fonts, pastel colors schemes and glossy images makes most sites look pretty much the same as the next. This isn’t intended as a knock on the designers out there. There are some simply visually stunning sites out there!

To me, this all just means that someone creating personal content for the web, of a topic that means something to them, whether it’s a hobby, a cause or a profession, has to strive to inject their personality into what they create. To make the content personal, even if the look & feel is not.

This is what makes the well known bloggers and social media gurus out there really stand out. The platforms they publish to are just the medium for their message. When the next big change in the way we communicate comes along, these same types of people will be the ones we listen to.

Make it Personal!

Even though the style, look & feel of much of the web today is somewhat generic, it’s the content and the way it’s delivered that draws us together into “online communities”. We’re making connections with people we had no way of reaching before. While I do still sometimes miss finding those rare sites that stood out before, I really appreciate how easy it it’s become to find great content.

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With:

5 Great Ways to Annoy your Twitter Followers

12/06/2009 By Leave a Comment

We all know that Twitter is a great way to communicate, but it also provides a new and innovative way to annoy people! Somewhere between being a great resource of information and the lowly spammer lies the Twannoyer. Here’s a list of five great ways to annoy your followers (in no particular order).

1) Be a Big Ben
Post at least once an hour, on the hour (or as close as possible) Post every minute, on the minute. Chances are you’re not the only person being followed. Twitter isn’t a race and you’re not getting points for every post so don’t try to dominate the conversation. Post too often and your followers are at best going start to ignore most of your posts, and at worst unfollow you.

Strive for quality over quantity. Keep your tweets relevant and useful and your followers will appreciate it (and YOU!)

2) Quotable Quotes
You thought those motivational posters plastered all over your office were annoying? Try wading through the best of Gandhi vs. Zig Ziglar every time you log onto Twitter. I have a 961 page, fully indexed book of quotes that has a quote for every situation.
There’s nothing wrong with a well placed quote here and there, but you’re not inspiring anyone by posting your favorite quotes all day. Instead try saying something original!

3) @BFF I dunno, what are you gonna wear?
Thankfully Twitter no longer shows every mention in your timeline, unless you follow both people, which makes reading an inane back and forth conversations possible. A few comments back and forth aren’t a big deal, but Direct Messages are there for a reason. Stop the clutter and take it to Direct Messages.

4) My hero is Dick Vitale (aka BOOM! Goes the dynamite!)
I’m sure you’re very proud of being an alum of some great college. But not all of us are interested in hearing the play-by-play of their latest lacrosse match. I have my favorite teams and I’ll admit I’m guilty of occasionally tweeting my joy or frustration on any given Sunday, but next time you feel need to channel your inner John Madden remember those dire warnings about not having “express written consent”.

5) Goodnight, and Good Luck.
“goodnight”. I hate to break this to you, but you’re not so important that everyone needs to know you just can tweet anymore tonight. If you want to sign off, try listing a major accomplishment for the day or what you’re looking forward to tomorrow.

This list is by no means complete, so what’s your favorite way to annoy your follower s (or be annoyed)? Leave a comment and let me know!

Filed Under: Twitter Tagged With: ,