Best Social Media Advice From This Site
I’m passionate about how certain strategies married to certain technologies allow individuals and companies to build things: reputation, trust, personal brand, community, relationships, and even marketplaces. My efforts to cover larger stories, tools, strategies, and more over the last several months have given you quite a bit to consider. But blogs are a tricky method for learning and reflecting. They’re like a running stream, and if you step out for a moment, a certain point in the stream will pass you by.
To that end, I’ve collected some links to the posts that I think might be helpful to you. Peruse these at your leisure. I’ve grouped them a bit for you. Feel free to pick and choose the topics that matter to you. I hope this proves helpful. If it does, please consider blogging a link to this post, and/or feel free to pass it on to any who might want more of this type of information.
There’s a lot here. Feel free to bookmark it for later. (And if you want even more to read, sign up for my free newsletter, which is even MORE original content.)
Thanks!
Community Development
- Understanding Community Development Strategies
- Ways to Disrupt a Community
- Why Do Community Development
- Should Your Small Business Use Community Tools
- The Long Tail of Community
- If Communitites Are Just Marketing Pools
- The Magic of Including People
- Meeting People at Events
- The Community Play
- The Community Ecosystem
- How Blogs Improve Customer Service and Product Development
Social Networks
- Three Things LinkedIN Does Better than Facebook
- How I Use Facebook
- Things To Do on Facebook
- Facebook - Let Me See My Friends
- Fix Your Facebook Profile Now
- Facebook and the Social Graph - Who Benefits
- Five Things to Do on LInkedIN
- Considering Social Etiquette
- Social Networks are Your Local Pub
- Why Join Another Social Network
- Marketers in a Social Network World
- Real Live Human Social Networking
- Social in Real Space vs. Social Networking
- Making Social Networks Work
- Improve Your Social Network
- The Importance of a Human Social Network
- Three Untapped Values of Social Networks
- Five Things to Do at a Social Networking Meetup
Social Media
- Social Media Starter Pack
- A Basic Social Media Strategy
- My Social Media Toolkit
- A Sample Social Media Toolkit
- Participation- The Key to Social Media
- Social Media - Talk is Cheap for Businesses
- How Big Companies could Use Social Media
- Social Media Inside the Firewall
- Social Media Power Secret - Listening
- Small Businesses And Social Media
- Social Media is a Set Not a Part
- Social Media for Your Career
- Help Someone Understand Social Media
- Social Media as Personal Power
- Snake Oil in Social Media
- Using Social Media to Meet People
- Social Media Starter Moves for Entertainers
- Social Media Starter Moves for Real Estate
- Social Media Starter Moves for Freelancers
- How I Use Twitter
- Deeper Twitter - Tuning Twitter for Value
- Newbies Guide to Twitter
- Twitter as Directors Commentary
- Twitter as an Advisory Board
Personal Branding
- The Power of Personal Leadership
- Slicing Time in a Face to Face Environment
- Brand Stories
- Some Quick Branding Tips for Individuals
- The foundations of Your Power
- Personal Scalability
- Personal Branding and Social Media
- Passion Drives Personal Brand
- Elements of a Personal Brand
- Challenges of Social Media Types in the Workplace
- The Value of Networks
- Scaling Yourself
Making Media
- Why Create Personal Media
- Whats Your Social Media Strategy
- Media Makers Next Steps
- Blogging Advice for the Next Level
- Expand Your Audience
- The Future of Microcontent and Hperlocal Media
- Why Bother Blogging Podcasting and Using Social Networks
- Consider Your Media-as-Business Strategy
- Marketing Media Means Moments That Matter
- Using Social Sharing to Extend Your Message
- Performance and Your Audience - Blogging Tips
- Advice for Traditional and Local News Media
- Tagging and Metadata and Why Bother
- A Sunday Newspaper Strategy for Traditional Companies
- Promoting Your Media
- The Power of Links
- 20 Blogging Projects for You
- Succeeding in Independent Online Media
- Seven Blog Improvements You Can Make Today
- Keeping the Blogging Fires Burning
- 100 Blog topics I hope YOU Write
- 100 PodCamp Topics for You to Cover
I’m writing new stuff all the time at [chrisbrogan.com]. If you’re reading this for the first time, please consider subscribing for free. If you’re a subscriber, don’t forget to get the completely-different content published at least twice a month in my newsletter. And thanks for your attention and time.
Special thanks to Alexa Scordato for compiling this data on my behalf. It was a lot of work. Thanks!
NTEN Rocks
The NTEN community reached out to have me as part of their “Ask the Expert” sessions. I told them I’d give them some blogging and social media resources. So, here you are, guys.
Social Media and Social Network Starter Points
Social Media Starter Moves for Business
Keeping the Blogging Fires Burning
Seven Blog Improvements You Can Make Today
Measuring Social Media Efforts
Oh, and I’m doing a newsletter too, if that’s useful.
How Does Your Blog Relate to Your Business
I’m working on something, but don’t have time. Job stuff to do, and heading off to Houston to work on ITEC Houston, which will be fun, too. Anyhow, I have a question:
How does your blog relate to your business? Does it? What does your blog do for you?
Let’s get a discussion going, and I’ll share more of what I’m thinking on this later (or tomorrow).
What’s your take? Take over my blog for me today, okay?
Some Differences Between Pitching Mainstream Press and Bloggers
Meet the next generation of people who put stories out on the web. I say “next,” but blogging has been around for years and years. Some of us are making decent money at it, hiring and employing staffs, etc. Those types seem like mainstream press. But they’re not. One difference? We blog based on what drives our passion, plus in the case of some folks, what drives revenue.
Blogs have reach. Blogs don’t have as many barriers to cross before you reach the decision maker. Blogs don’t (always) require a PR agency to help you get access. Blogs always need good content, right? So it seems like a natural thing to just lob stories at a blogger, because more often than not, they’re going to be receptive, will run the bit if it fits their readership (viewership), and everyone wins, right?
Some differences.
Bloggers Often Write From Passion
Lots of us can’t NOT blog. We love what we do. We’re obsessed with getting information out into the world. Desperate to be useful. I’d say that we’re like news junkies, only we’re really interested in how we can contribute to making the news.
Bloggers Have a Bit More Ego Feeding Required
Try to disagree with me on that one, but when I just start rattling bloggers’ names down quickly, I can tell you that there are things you’ll want to do to reach out, and one is to know what makes a certain blogger tick. Want to get into TechCrunch or Mashable? Be sure you’re giving one the exclusive, and pick wisely. Want to get covered by Engadget? Don’t give it to Gizmodo on the same day. Go a few tiers down in blogs and what we want is to know that you know who we are, and what we cover. A pitch about something in my general area isn’t the same as noticing the kinds of things I write about and giving me something that fits.
Bloggers Like Free Prize Inside Experiences
If you want us to write about your software app or your new gizmo, give a few away. Nokia, Nikon, Flip, GM (Saturn), Garmin, and tons of other companies have given out gear on loaner programs (sometimes handled well, and other times handled a bit weirdly). And if it’s not something directly tangible, it’s something like getting invited to a pre-screening of a movie, or to a closed beta of an application, or something else that makes one feel exclusive. Still an ego play, and yet, very effective because once we play with your toys, we’ll be inclined to write about them.
Will we be fair and give opinions on the competitors like an official review site? Not always. Depends who it is, whether that’s part of their bailiwick, and whether they even know how to approach such a thing. I sure don’t. If I’m given something free to mess around with, I disclose it when talking about it, but then, my site isn’t a journalistic effort to review things fairly.
Bloggers Don’t Have To Be Polite
Though I prefer politeness, and try to be polite often (Sorry, Tom), it’s not required. And we don’t always do what you’d wish. It’s a little uncertain sometimes what you’ll get when you send a request to us. Wish it weren’t true, and I would prefer that we be polite more often, but we don’t have to be.
What Twitter Had to Say When I Asked My Friends
(That’s a hint, too. We’re far more networked. We talk to each other. We talk about YOU.)
Pitching ME
First, I have to say that I’m not usually on the lookout for a news story. If you read back through my posts, a great many of them deal with strategy and tactics that people can employ. I read about 1000 news items a day, plus I have a day job that isn’t professional blogging. So, I don’t always need news.
And yet.
If you’ve got something interesting about a new tool, a new way that someone’s using social media to build business or organizational relationships, a sense of what’s interesting to me and want to feed me something, here’s what you might do:
- Be my Twitter friend.
- Have read my last ten blog posts to have a sense of my flavor.
- Give me links, pointers, possibly screenshots, and follow up in about 9 days when I still haven’t managed to get your story out.
- Kindly understand if the story doesn’t fit what I cover (often).
- Realize that I can’t always check out your website.
- Understand that a “social network for ____” (dogs, lawyers, imaginary friends, ex-cons) isn’t really new unless they’re doing something REALLY new.
- Write the first paragraph of your email as if you really did only send it to me (I get it, but pretend, okay?)
While We’re At It
Here’s what I *am* really interested in writing more about, and where you can help me, if you’ve got an interesting story:
- Social media and network use inside the enterprise. (Spoke at Thomson/Reuters and IBM recently and was really impressed in both cases with what they’re already doing).
- Specialized social network applications - things that make a network more valuable, vs just profiles, blogs, pictures, and friends.
- Books about social media, social networks, next-generation PR/marketing, business, etc.
- Business models that aren’t advertising-centric. (For instance, Sermo has a neat model. So does Gimp.TV).
- Mainstream people coming into social media in a realistic and meaningful way.
- Nonprofit and organizational experiences with social media that have made an impact.
- Location-based tools and networking (for instance, I’m digging Yahoo’s Fire Eagle stuff)
- Technology that improves business, that improves personal interfacing with the Internet.
I’m probably forgetting a few of my favorites in there, but let’s start there. If you’re pitching something like THAT, drop me a line. My contact info is in the sidebar. I’m easy to find.
Further Reading
Social media expert, Jason Falls covered an advertising professional’s view on this recently, and that’s worth checking out, too.
Edelman’s superstar, Leah Jones showed us how to talk to bloggers.
Your Thoughts?
Lots of people who come here are PR or marketing professionals, journalists, and the like. What do you think about what I’ve said so far? What are your tales of success with bloggers, or your tales of woe? Bloggers, am I wrong in my starting concepts about what might feel different about bloggers vs mainstream press? I’m eager for your take.
Screen caps made with Skitch
10 Blogging Tips
Briefly, some tips:
- Write to be helpful.
- Be brief.
- Tell a story.
- Connect others, if appropriate.
- Share. Often.
- Don’t overthink it. (It’s a blog, not a dissertation.)
- But be thoughtful.
- Don’t be mean.
- Publish often enough to build a relationship.
- But be mindful of your audience’s time.
What else would you say? What if you were telling someone at Disney or Starbucks or the Woman’s Society for Advanced Cancer Research about blogging? Share your blogging tips?
Who is Technorati Trying to Reach
Technorati is a site that I used to explain as a place to search for information, a place to find out who’s talking about you, and a tagging format that you might consider adding to your blog posts.
But when I visit the site, I no longer get it. All the stuff I wanted to use (mostly for searching about blogs, references to ideas, and my own blog’s stats) seems to have been hidden, bent, or watered down.
Who are you courting, Technorati? Why aren’t you ours anymore? And where’s your successor?
Conquering Fear of Blogging
Three different friends over the last two days have told me about their fear of creating, a fear of blogging. They each had their own demons to wrestle: perfectionism, failure, self-consciousness. These are difficult to overcome, and I’m not going to pretend that you just have to follow a few steps and you’ll overcome your fear, but I can tell you a few things I know about it all, and see if it’s helpful. Here are a few ideas to help you look past some of your fears.
Keep a Scratch Blog
Whether you’re just starting out, or even just sometimes not sure if something you’re thinking about is right for your blog, consider writing it to some place else. Consider using a Tumblr blog as a “scratch” blog, a place to write stuff that’s not fully formed, or that you’re concerned might be taken wrong. You might not even brand the site, maybe not even make it publicly visible.
Say it Out Loud
One way that you can get a little more confident in your writing is by reading it out loud to yourself. Go over what you’ve typed and read it as if talking to a friend. Does it make sense? Are there parts you want to change? Try a few times.
Read and Read and Read
Not just blogs, but read lots of things. Read magazines. Read books. Read things that make you think, and then understand more than what you read. Understand how they CONVEYED what you read.
Lots of times, we talk about how we’re unsure how to do something, but we don’t do the two parts of the puzzle: figure it out, and then practice.
Start by Commenting Elsewhere
There’s nothing wrong with developing your voice for blogging by commenting on other people’s blogs for a while. Go into blogs that you find interesting, and expand on what someone said in the comments, or disagree, or add your own spin.
But Start Eventually
There’s a lot of ways you can procrastinate and throat clear. One is to use Twitter instead of your blog. Another is to comment and think, and support others instead of doing your own thing. Another still is to read blogs and consume podcasts and tell people what they’re doing right and wrong, but not add something new to the pot. You might worry that you’re going to say something wrong, or offend, or whatever.
Set a real date. Set some time in the next few weeks (or a month at most?) to post something loud and proud and made by you to your blog, and then do it. See what happens. First off, with millions and millions of blogs out there competing for eyeballs, it’ll be a lot less climactic than you think.
And Then, Do More
Once you get rolling, get into the habit, and just start producing, it doesn’t stop. If I were writing full time for a living, I could keep going for quite some time before I hit a wall, but that wasn’t always the case. I used to get blocks all the time. What changed? I practiced more, and more, and more, and more. I wrote ALL the time. I got into the habit of writing no matter what.
Made all the difference in the world.
Your Thoughts?
What do you think? How have you approached your worries or hurdles to blogging or making media? I’d love your thoughts if you’re someone feeling blocked or a bit afraid. You can even comment anonymously, if that helps.
Photo credit Tom@HK
Inspirations and Origins
We are all derivatives of someone else. It can’t be helped. Musicians have roots in other musical traditions, even if it’s not obvious at first. Nirvana is heavily Beatles-influenced, for instance. Authors are unique-twist copies of other authors. It’s just the way of the world, and how humans evolve.
Recently, I saw a few posts from folks that felt a lot like my posts rewritten a little bit. Now, writing about something that I’m talking about and adding to the conversation is awesome. Rewriting something pretty closely to my own words on your site is probably a little less pleasant to run across. Coincidentally, it looks like David Armano might’ve felt that way, too today. (UPDATED David’s name because I somehow put Darren in a sleepy moment- thanks, Ike).
But it got me thinking about me. I’m inspired by others, and derive some of my skills and abilities from what I’ve learned from others, so instead of bitch about someone copying my stuff, I’m going to praise some people that I have learned from in developing my own presence. (None of this is to blow smoke up these people’s butts. I know most of them. I like most of them. This is about me, and about what goes into the media I make).
Inspirations
- Robert Scoble - I copied the idea of putting my cell number on my site from Robert. Flat out took it for my own, because Robert has proven that it’s a great way to reach out. Robert’s inspired me in other ways, but that’s the most obvious.
- Guy Kawasaki - Not Guy’s blog, but Guy. When I first saw him at a Boston Computer Society event talking about the release of the upcoming Apple Macintosh, I turned to my Dad and said that I wanted to be like Guy. (I seem to recall my Dad telling me that was a bad job idea, but maybe I’m making that up).
- Tom Peters - Not the blog, but Tom. I like his crazy energy and passion. I love his books. I believe a lot of what he says and I use it.
- Annie Proulx - author of The Shipping News. I love her terse style, and use it often in my writing.
- Jeremiah Owyang - I’ll be honest and say pre-Forrester Jeremiah was a little more fun to read, but I like what he’s doing now, too, and I won’t knock him for that. I guess I just admire his coverage of his space, and aspire to do more like that.
- Jon Swanson - From Jon, I get my thinking about storytelling reminders. Jon is a great storyteller. He has a wonderful way of framing things. I’m grateful to that for reminding ME to tell stories.
I could keep going. You could, too.
My big point: none of us are originals. It’s okay. And I’ve DEFINITELY done it myself, where I’ve thought something WAS my thought, only to find out that I was synthesizing something I read a few days back, or a conversation I had (Did that famously badly once, to a friend I love, and had to rescind).
But if you KNOW you’re going to riff off someone, give a little link love and be done with it. Fair?
Blog Tune Up-Search
You’d think search wouldn’t matter, but it does. The #1 thing I seek in a blog I’m returning to (versus a newly discovered blog) is a search bar. Why? Because often, I’m returning to a blog to find a story.
Put your search box WAY up high on your page, above the fold, if at all possible. It matters.
Free Tips for Your Blog
Yesterday was my birthday. Today, I’m giving you a little gift in the form of a free PDF to download: Building Community Around Your Blog. Feel free to send copies to anyone you like.
Some of you might be practicing this stuff already, but maybe there are one or two tips that will be useful.
I wrote this up originally for my new friend, Nina Simonds from Spices of Life, a video show my friend, Steve Garfield helps produce. We were talking about ways to further develop community and build audience.
What else? How are you building community around YOUR blog?
