The thing is, I have no time to run any of these projects. None. I’m working over 80 hours a week, and these will require more attention than I can give them.

The problem gave me something to consider: what I’d want (and by extension, what I feel other people would want) in an executive editor for a blog. In this case, I’m thinking about retail or B2C or the consumer-facting.

Build it as a Business

Blogging isn’t always just writing whatever comes to mind, or riffing off other people’s posts. It can be built around solid business intentions, such as content marketing (writing posts that are intended to deliver action, or at least actionable information), thought leadership (ideal for consulting opportunities), or even media sales model (typical “write good stuff and put ads against it” thinking). For someone to run a blog project like this, they have to develop a simple set of filters.

• Does this move my business goal forward?
• What’s working? What’s not?
• Can I isolate things that aren’t working and replace them with new experiments?
• What purpose is the content serving?
• How do I measure that success?

That’s simple enough. If you answer these questions faithfully every time you consider posting content, every time you consider adding some widget or functionality, every time you work off-blog to build promotional relationships, and in other business circumstances, you’ll find progress a bit more reasonable.

Be Merciless About Content

Write great work or don’t post it. Make decent videos or don’t post it. Create exceptional pieces that drive the business forward, or don’t bother.

There are plenty of personal blogs that roam about just fine, unchecked and all. We’re not talking about them. We’re talking about you as a blog’s executive editor, with a goal of empowering your audience with actionable information. Ask yourself every day whether your efforts are having results.

Promote Liberally, but Tastefully

“Write it and they will come” has been disproven. There are some great blogs out there who never see more than a few hundred people a day. In many cases, what’s often needed is just some old fashioned promotion and potential audience expansion effort. It’s not difficult, but it takes effort.

Always be looking for ways to connect more people to your blog. Find ways to tie-in to other, more successful blogs, perhaps through a guest post, and see if that changes your numbers. Think often about ways to grow your audience and then experiment with them. Leave nothing sacred. Are the titles of your posts boring? Are you using a messy screen layout? Have you built several ways for people to subscribe and pick up your work?

It all relates.

Look for New Revenue Models

Money from blogs doesn’t begin and end with finding ad sponsorships. There are several ways to build revenue. Beyond ads and affiliate marketing opportunities (and I think the latter offers so much potential in the coming years, you might also find ways to build a consulting practice around what you know. You might find crossover or tie-in opportunities that pay better than typical banner sales. You might discover that informational products sell like hot cakes on your site.

A great executive blog editor thinks about this all the time. How do I get more from the effort of blogging, and sometimes, when I say “more,” I mean “any.”

An Executive Editor Makes Decisions

There’s not a lot that can crush a blog too quickly. Build boundaries and relationships with your other business partners, if there are any, and then give the lion’s share of the decision making power to the person running the day to day of the blog. She’ll know better.

Decide up Front the Money Situation

If this is a blog intended to make money, be very clear with all potential business partners what the money exchange situations will be. Know before you spend a dime, and know before you make a dime. This kind of experience can really wreck it for some folks.

Find Great Writers And Develop Them

You have a sense of the work that needs doing. You know what’s important in a blog. How do you work with your writers? My recommendation is to praise and develop the ones who do good work. Be willing to give them advice on how better to craft a story. Give them a sense of how strong you need the piece to be.

By developing them, also give them a platform from which to grow. Make this their place to be “discovered,” and create your business accordingly. Meaning, don’t worry if your stars run off to launch their own blog projects, but instead, develop a deep bench. Make sense?

If it Ain’t Fun…

Decide how long to do this, and what your target setting goals will be on the way to that decision marker. Is it “Write for 3 months and determine the potential revenue between now and then is the kicker, or if its number of readers, or whatever you want to use as a killswitch. Decide whether the experience is fun, whether you want to keep doing it, what you’ll do to transition it or kill it, if it doesn’t worky.

Make sure you keep fun in mind. I wrote this about business, and I’m thinking from the perspective that an executive editor for a blog is here to serve a business purpose, but if that’s you and you’re not having fun, bail out. Be clear with your business partners about what would lead you to make that kind of decision. Be ready to talk through all the details of that with your partners.

What Have I Missed?

What else should an executive blog editor have for a skill on board? Where are these blog editors all doing their work? Can you see how this shifts if you do B2B or enterprise blogging? Can you see the similarities?

Photo credit, ChicagoEye

Another point of note: I love that the LA Times shot a video but then let me embed it, and that the reporter, Jessica Gelt, had links out to the various details in the story, such as the Kogi website. Good on ya, LA Times.

Watch this:

John has a customer of the day post on his blog. See what he does? He brings the customers into the light. He makes the people in his space the star.

How simple. How perfect. I love the whole blog.

There are other small cafe blogs out there now, each with its own personality.

Are we seeing cafe-shaped businesses already? Learn from these people. Oh, and read Becky McCray. She lives and breathes this stuff where I dabble.

But first, I have to tell you a bit of backstory about Carolyn Jordan.

The First Store

Imagine walking into a really small town bookstore, asking for a book, and realizing it’s not there. (Mind you, there’s not enough store to have the selection one would need). She offered to order it for me, and that it’d be in two days hence. Perfect, I said. I gave her my contact info, and then I left.

I came back a week later, as I walk in the door, Carolyn says, “Hi Chris. Your book’s here. I found something else you might like, too.” She remembered my name.

First important lesson: knowing someone’s name is a powerful magic for success.

Next, Carolyn had a suggestion for something else I might like. She knows books. She knows people. She did this repeatedly over the next several months. It’s why even when I had a great full time job, I’d work there over the holidays, because she was a book lover like me, and she loved hand-selling books to people who appreciated the reference.

The New Cafe-Shaped Store

Carolyn runs a very small store, You Are Here Books. It’s actually physically in the dining room of her home on a small country road. She has a tax ID. It’s a real business. Only, she hasn’t put up a website yet. Carolyn is actually selling directly to people like me.

We went there today to buy another $200 books for Toys for Tots (or whatever you call the teen segment of that program). She helped me find a whole bunch of great books, and as always, had lots of great conversational information about books she had out.

But not only that, Carolyn had out some crackers and brie, some grapes, and those kinds of things. Her husband, Tom, came home and I had a beer with him and talked even more about books. We spent another $100 of our own money for our own books with Carolyn.

And Social Media and Business Relates to this How?

That is the feeling I want from social media and how companies interact with it. It’s not huge. It’s like… 1915 sized. It’s this thing where people can spend a few extra moments to make a human connection instead of an “off the shelf” connection. I can buy from Amazon, and that’s sometimes convenient, but I can’t get the human touch of what I got with Carolyn.

That’s the time to use social media, when you want to reach people on a more personal and more connected way. It’s not always the path to more revenue. In fact, it’s definitely not as easy as just pushing a few clicks and having books sent to the house. But when you need a more personalized feeling, a more human experience, cafe-shaped is what social media does best.

What say you?

Oh, and if you want to talk books with Carolyn, you can call her – 978.257.3279 or email her: youareherebooks@gmail.com

Social Media Starter Moves for Small Town Small Businesses

By Becky McCray

Small town businesses have some fundamental differences from our big city counterparts. But our relative isolation doesn’t mean we don’t have a use for social media tools. To the contrary, small town professionals have the most to gain from making new connections. Liz Strauss was kind enough to let me tell some of the reasons why over at Successful Blog. To follow up, here are some starter moves to help you get connected to the larger world.

Twitter to make connections

Yes, I know you’re heard that Twitter can be an enormous time sink. But only if you treat it that way. If you treat it as a way to meet people, to expand your horizons, to learn from others, and to feel connected, you can make it a useful tool for your business. I recommend you start by adding a handful of people, and let your network grow organically. Start with me; I’m @beckymccray, and I love to connect with other small town folks. Check Twitter Packs for more people in your industry or in your state. Share cool discoveries, information, and just connect on a human level. Twitter does not require (or deserve) constant attention. You can check in a few times a day, or monitor it more or less in the background while you work on something else. I’ve been known to let friends on Twitter keep me company while I’m doing my least-favorite bookkeeping chores. And yes, I’ve made and strengthened valuable business and personal connections at Twitter.

Blog to position yourself as an expert

Part of what makes a small town special is the sense of community, and that’s what blogging does at its best. Find the blogs already talking about your field, and start reading and commenting. Then start your own blog, telling stories. While your small town business may not pick up paying clients from your blogging, you will be learning new skills, improving your writing, and making connections with people interested in your field. Read the Starter Moves for Freelancers to learn more about making your blog business-like.

Facebook to reach the community

Even in my home town of 5000 people, there is a healthy group of Facebook users. I just got an invitation to join the community summer band, via Facebook. I’m also seeing small town people using Facebook as a tool to remain connected even as they spread out around the country. By staying active yourself, you can make and keep connections based on this natural geographic affinity. Another option are the local community websites. In your town, you might find people online at the local newspaper site, an independent community forum, or even on a local business’s website. The disadvantage? These are usually hotbeds of local politics. Use caution.

Experiment to learn

Use Flickr to connect with your local photo enthusiasts. Sign up with Utterz to give on-the-spot reports. (I would so love to see an ag commodity report on Utterz! “We’re live at the Woodward Stockyards…” ) Use Operator11, Ustream or Blog TV to share meetings, trainings, or build a networking group across distance. Your goal is not to be on every single network out there. Your goal is to try the tools that could work for your business, or even for your clients, and learn them. Drop the ones that don’t help you. And remember that it’s not all about getting business, it’s also about connection, learning and thinking.

Share your secrets

What tools are you finding the most useful for building connections? Share in the comments, and if you are from a small town, be sure to shout about it!

Tomorrow at Small Biz Survival, I’ll have four examples of people who live in small towns and use social media to build their connections.

Written by Becky McCray