50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write For Their Companies
You’ve started a company blog. What comes next? It’s not like someone gives you blog topics and an editorial calendar and suggests which one to post first. Well, I’m here to help. As part of my ongoing desire to see you pick up these social media tools for yourself and change the future of your business, here are 50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write For Their Companies. (Feel free to repost, but please link back to [chrisbrogan.com] ). Oh, and if some of these don’t fit exactly, think creatively about whether you could adapt them.
50 Blog Topics for Marketers
- How to get the most from our customer service department.
- The best way to recommend an improvement to our product or service.
- Podcast - complete installation instructions in audio and video.
- What would you like to see in next year’s catalog?
- Our favorite projects over the coming months.
- Some tricks that might keep you from needing support.
- Upcoming coupons and offers for the next two weeks.
- We want to talk. How should we contact you? Where?
- Choose our product’s price.
- Five tips for getting more from your ______ .
- A little bit about us.
- A walk in our neighborhood.
- Photos from our community meetup.
- What goes into our decision process.
- Video - a tour of the plant, and a day in the life of your product.
- What it’s like to work for our company.
- We support these causes, and here’s why.
- The next two years: how we grow with you.
- We want to come to work with you (and learn how we can help)!
- Giving back to the community: our plan.
- What we worry about over the coming year.
- How we handle your disputes or complaints.
- Can you recommend a better process for this?
- Sometimes, we have to say no.
- Your call is important to us. We’ll tell you how important.
- We’re sorry, and here’s how we’ll handle things next time.
- Report from our independent community review board.
- How to close out your account with us. (Imagine how risky this is?)
- The economy is piling up costs, and we have to share the burden.
- Understanding what went wrong.
- Birthday announcements for August. (Imagine listing your customers’ names on a birthday calendar?)
- Fourteen ways to customize your _______.
- Why we like our competitor’s product better, and how we’ll catch up.
- Customer Profile - Sedah D’Abdul.
- Our fourth annual YOU awards.
- What we think is unique about us. Do you agree?
- Communities in your neighborhood, and several on the Web.
- Your blog posts: Javier Mendoza suggests ways we could improve.
- Companies to consider when you get too big for us.
- Why we believe participation pays off.
- Meet our four favorite customer service reps for September.
- Vendors that serve us so we can help you.
- Our global plan - Vietnam, Italy, and your back yard.
- What we look for in our leadership.
- Video - our new smaller offices downtown.
- Green is our new favorite color- save energy and money with your ______.
- How corporate responsibility saved us $3Mil last year.
- Growing up but staying fun.
- Your event, our treat.
- Five promises we’ve kept over the last few years.
You tell me: where there some squirmy parts in there? Can you see how customers might react to reading these? I wrote almost every one of these with the customer as a reader. How would these shift if your reader was someone else in your list of stakeholders?
What would you add?
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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
All photos are the property of other creators, and licensed under Creative Commons. Click any photo to see the credited photographer of each.
A Sample Blogging Workflow
Your company has decided to launch a blog, and you’re the lucky blogger. Maybe you’ve even asked for this pleasure, suggested it to the boss yourself. Only now, you have to deliver, and you have to stay consistent. It’s not always easy to keep up a steady blogging pace, and there are days when you might run into a roadblock or two that might keep you from delivering on your schedule. Here are some ideas on how to build and maintain a steady blogging rhythm, be it for your personal blog or your business blog. We’ll cover goals, tasks, tools, and some bonus secrets.
Goals of Your Blog Posts
Blogging with a purpose helps you stay consistent. My blog, for example, is dedicated to equipping you with strategy, tools, and knowledge, so that you can go off and do useful things with social media and networking software. That’s the main goal of the blog overall. Secondary goals are to maintain a presence in your mind, should you have business needs. Another goal would be to stay in the habit of writing, and working at improving my writing. Those are goals for my blog.
Goals for my blog POSTS (versus goals for the blog overall) are different from post to post. On top of everything listed above, some ways you might use specific posts are:
- Seek link traffic - I write certain posts (like anything with a big number) with a secondary goal of deriving links from you to the story. Why? Because that tells Google and Technorati that I’m doing good things over here, and that matters.
- Seek advice - I often write posts where I ask for your opinion. Why have a blog if you can’t start conversations?
- Establish thought leadership - When I write about something way off from the norm of what others are blogging about, it’s to show you that I’m not a “me too” blogger.
- Promote something interesting - This might be people or software or an event. One point about promotion posts versus other kinds: if you’re looking for comments, promotion posts rarely get them.
- Link love to others - Sometimes, I want to give other people the spotlight, or point out good writing elsewhere. It’s important to keep that in mind. Linking out promotes linking in.
Blogging Tasks
The frequency of blog posts you choose is important. Many posts a day is great, if you can keep it up. Once a day is probably ideal (but not as easy as it seems). Once every two or three days means your readers won’t know what to expect. Once a week might be enough, depending on how niche your blog is, and how authoritative you are to begin with. But no matter what you decide, make the decision and stick with the schedule. Within that schedule, here are some potential tasks to consider doing for every post:
- Read material first - Use your RSS reader to see what else is being talked about, in your industry, in your vertical, on friends’ blogs, and most importantly, from fringe places that aren’t related to you or your industry.
- Compose a blog post - If there’s research and links involved, open a notepad file to keep track of the links you’re intending to put in the post, or sources of the data you’re collecting.
- Consider pictures - Using pictures makes the posts pop. You can use Flickr photos marked with Creative Commons licensing, provided you cite the source of the original photo, and provide a link. Read more about this at http://flickr.com/creativecommons”>Flickr’s Creative Commons site. There are other places for photos. Want to leave your other sources in the comments section?
- Tag your posts - If your blogging software doesn’t have tags built in, consider seeking a plug in, or at worst, having a few scripted copy/paste details of tags you can add to the bottom of every post. Tags are important for searchability, for getting the occasional new reader by finding you via your metadata.
- Announce your best posts - If I have a post I’m really proud of, and think works well, I’ll send a link to it via Twitter, usually summing up what I’m talking about before the URL. I might also send info about it via Facebook, via LinkedIn’s status line, etc.
- Occasionally, bookmark it, too - If I’m really pleased by a post and want it to have legs, I’ll share it in Google Reader’s shared items (which sends it to other places), will Stumble it in StumbleUpon.com, might even Digg it, too. If you do this kind of thing, be sure to digg and stumble and bookmark other people’s stuff, too, when it’s merited, so that you don’t seem like a perpetual self-promoter. I do my best to maintain a balance. Hopefully, that shows through.
- Check traffic and logs - As the day goes on, check your stats reader of choice to see if the blog is having any kind of impact. If you’ve got a decent ego surfing mechanism set up, also see who’s blogged about your post, and try to add some value back to their write-up. Don’t just drop by and say thanks. (Further note: don’t be crazy about checking your blog stats. They’re just a way to measure how people are responding to your posts.)
- Get off your blog and comment elsewhere - Make sure you’re taking the time to comment on at least five blogs a day. Whenever you’re going to bother posting and putting out new material, others are doing the same. Be sure to respect them and give them comments and feedback where you feel it’s appropriate.
Tools
When you decide you have to maintain a blogging rhythm, and regardless of whether you’re doing this for business or your personal blogging goals, there are some important tools that you should consider. If you’re going to get into a flow, here are the tools you should have on hand:
- RSS Reader - I prefer Google Reader above all others because of several features, including its ability to rapidly scroll through information in list view, its search capabilities, it’s sharing capabilities (make your friends work for you), and all the other options. Starting your blogging habit by having a good blog consumption habit is the only way to fly.
- Picnik - If you need free, easy, web-based photo editing to make interesting pictures, check out Picnik. I find this tool very useful in sprucing up my pictures. If you use it to edit other people’s photos, be sure to check the permissions for whether you CAN edit their images.
- Skitch - Skitch is a screen capturing tool that’s very useful, and has all kinds of built in goodies.
- Summize - If you’re looking for what Twitter thinks is interesting, you can use Summize to ask about interesting links and the like.
- Calendar - Here’s one. If you use a calendar (like Google Calendar, you can make a new calendar to show what you’ve written about, and what you plan to write about. This is called an editorial calendar, and it helps you keep your writing on a decent tack. Thus, if you intend to have 2 interviews a month and five product reviews, and a weekly check-in with some project, you can be sure to track all this in a calendar.
- Notepad or text edit - I write my blog posts in a plain text file so that I never lose a post to a bad Internet connection. Further, if I have a few moments, like if I’m on a horrible conference call, I can jot notes, and occasionally write entire posts while offline. I do this a lot at airports, bookstores, and other places where the Internet isn’t a given.
The Bonus Round
I guess in some ways, I should’ve started with this. First off, if you’re not reading Copyblogger, you’re missing some of the best advice on what to write and how to write it. Brian Clark and team (he has more guest writers!) keep a decent pace on giving you writing ideas and inspiration. Now, let’s talk about some more ideas that will keep you going with blogging material:
- Go to the grocery store - there are more headlines and interesting WAYS of saying things right there in your face at the checkout counter than you’ll likely come up with on your own. (This was a Copyblogger tip that I love).
- See what makes the front page of Digg.com (or your industry’s most likely haunt) - learning by emulating is an important blogging skill. Don’t be a clone, but if you pick up some tricks from writers you come to admire, all the better.
- Don’t forget other media - with YouTube, Slideshare, and several other places full of free and interesting content, don’t forget to give people a taste of video and audio to go along with your text and photo posts. In fact, be willing to mix it up often, or on a schedule, so that people get a sense for all the ways you can keep them informed and entertained.
- Schedule posts - My all time favorite piece of advice. If you can, write more than one post at any given sitting. Take the second post, especially if it’s not time-specific information, and schedule it for the next day. If you do this enough times in a row, you can build up quite a store of posts, and never miss a day (or whatever your schedule is) due to a random issue. Note: you can usually re-schedule things, in case the mood strikes, or news breaks, or the like. Don’t feel pinned down as much as you might feel liberated for all the last minute conflicts this will help you avoid.
Does this help? Do these mechanics give you some ideas on how to improve your own blogging habits? I’d love to know if you have other advice to add.
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
Photo credit, Rita Banerji
Writing Email That Gets Answered
Writing email seems to be a recurring topic of mine. I receive about 400 messages a day at present, and most of these require an answer. There are mails that get a faster response, and some that take days. Here’s the difference, plus a few more ideas.
One Decision Per Email
It seems counter to cutting down on email to ask you to limit the decisions required in a message to one per email, but I’ve seen it have the opposite effect. Think about choosing to go out to eat: if the first message is, “what day is good for you?”, the second message is, “what type of food do you like?”, and the third message is, “should we invite Jay, even though he laughs a lot and makes it hard to concentrate?”, you’ll see my point. These three questions all have a certain level of decision making to them. The mail on which day (better solved by a phone call) is different from the mail on what type of food, and both are different than whether or not to invite Jay (also probably better solved by a phone call).
Don’t Ever Say “Quick Question.”
I say this because what almost inevitably follows are five to nine paragraphs explaining WHY the question will be asked. It’s as if there’s lots of context needed. It’s almost always not. I’ve written complete strangers and used under 200 words to convey my needs and interests. In fact, I do that often.
Here’s a quick question:
From: Chris Brogan
To: You
Subject: Will you register for PodCamp Boston 3?
I’d like for you to register for PodCamp Boston3. It takes place July 19th-20th at the Harvard Medical School. I feel it will be the most powerful and transformative experience you’ve had with media in a long time.
Please consider it: http://podcampboston3.eventbrite.com
Main PodCamp Boston site: http://podcampboston.org
Let me know if you have any questions,
–Chris…
Your Signature File
I’m in between signature files. When I rebuilt my hard drive, my tools for writing a signature with formatting seem to have broken. So, I’m using a plain text one at present. Let’s just say I’m looking at all of your signature files closely.
Good: ways to contact you online and off (never presume your email address is obvious, especially if your email has been forwarded by others).
Good: very brief descriptor of your title and company (if it’s a business email).
Good: link to your primary blog or website
Bad: all kinds of marketing at the bottom
Bad: links to every social network where you belong
That’s my opinion, but if you want to form your own, pay attention to signature files over the next several days. See what you pay attention to, and what gets overlooked.
Following Up
With the volume of email I receive, some messages get overlooked for a duration of time. Some people follow up perfectly, and others do something that will nearly guarantee that I don’t respond to the second email as well. Here’s what’s useful in a follow-up message:
- Brevity. I probably know I haven’t responded to you, but your message might not be top of mind. Just seeing your name and the words “following up” in the body of the message over a forwarded copy of the last one you sent me will usually jar me into action.
- Simple summary. Maybe your last email was huge and had lots of requirements to it. If you sum these into a few short sentences, it might get me to complete the work.
- Reminder of deadlines. Lots of us work on all kinds of things at the same time. My job alone is challenging, so when you’ve asked me for help with an interview or the like, a little reminder of when you need it (especially if I get two days or three days before the deadline) usually can get me back on track.
Not Just Me
With more and more people overwhelmed, I’m not writing these suggestions and advice to help myself, except insofar as I’m saying that I have the same problems as other people. You might see some advice in here that you wish others would do on YOUR behalf. If so, great. Feel free to forward a link to your friends who need to follow this advice the most, with a loving and courteous message before the link, naturally.
What About You?
What are your ideas for how to improve the state of your inbox? How might you convince people to write emails that get answered faster? Where do you want to correct me?
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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
Photo Credit, juan23for
Whats In It For Me
The next time you go to write a blog, give a presentation, record a podcast, or shoot video, I want you to think about this first: your audience consumes everything from the mindset of “what’s in it for me?” Not because they’re rude or selfish, but because that’s how we’re wired to think as humans. We’re forever taking in new information and applying it to what we already know. The way we do this is by asking, “How can I apply this to my own life?”
To that end, make your blogs/presentations/podcasts/whatevers such that it starts out pretty early showing the answer to that question. Look back at a bunch of my posts and you’ll see that I try to answer that as early as possible. I start with a personal line or two, and then I let you know quickly what you’re going to be able to do with my information.
Does this make sense? How are you doing this with your writing/presenting/etc?
Growing Your Audience- Some Basics
My friend and former coworker, Mike Desjardins asked me about how people go about growing a blogging audience. It’s a great question. I run into tons of people who have wonderful blogs that deserve much more attention than they receive. So what gives? What can one do to grow your audience? If you want to grow your audience, you need to know who they are, give them easy to consume chunks of content, promote your work effectively, and be persistent.
Let’s Start With Audience
First and foremost, who are you writing this blog for? If the answer is “myself” and you have more than one RSS subscriber, congratulations. You’ve done it. If the answer is, “Anyone into _____,” like “anyone into tech,” and you have more than 10 subscribers congratulations. Be clear about the audience. If I’m going to bother giving you some of my time, I want something back.
Let’s take Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation. This is a top shelf blog, with clearly written content, that speaks to people looking to better understand the future of digital influence. Brillant work, considerately written, and created in such a way that I come away thinking about how this impacts me. Perfect. Spot on.
Other great examples of a focused blog that targets its audience well:
- Problogger (I’ll send a few posts over shortly, mate.)
- Web Worker Daily. I miss Anne Zelenka, but the rest of the team are doing great.
- Copyblogger. I miss Brian posts, but the one I linked to shows you how to add subs.
- Livingston Buzz
Technically, I could give you links all night, but the point is this. Look at how the content is focused on a specific audience. Look a few posts forward and back. Except for a few exceptions, you can tell exactly who the audience is.
When my audience dips, it’s because I lose my focus. But there’s more to it than that.
Your Content Needs to Be Well Chunked
First off, journalists know this, but I’ll tell you: start with the best stuff right up at the top. Don’t do it as a build-up. Second, make it such that people can read it in chunks. Look up at this. I’ve got headings that break up the post. I’ve got bullets that break up the post. I’ve led with a graphic. I could pull out a graphic or a pull quote to keep it looking better.
Break things up so that human eyes can read them easier. Dense posts and super long posts are a turn-off. Oh, and that’s another thing. Brevity. It rules. Pass it on.
Promote Your Blog Effectively
First, make sure there’s a very prominently displayed link for folks to subscribe to your RSS feed for your blog. The bigger and more attention-drawing, the better. Second, add an email subscription option to your blog. I prefer using FeedBurner to manage all that.
Second, be sure your blog’s URL is loaded into pretty much every social network where you belong. Add it to MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Flickr, and wherever else you can bring awareness. Make sure you submit it to directories like Dmoz.org, and Yahoo and Google. Get that URL out there where people can find it. I’ve had lots of interesting moments where someone has found my blog via Facebook or LinkedIn.
Third, add it to your email signature and your business cards. If your company doesn’t give you business cards, go to Overnight Prints or Vista Print or Moo and buy some. Thirty or so bucks and they help people find you (and your blog!).
In services like Twitter, promote your blog posts from time to time. Not EVERY post, but ones where you feel you’ve done well. I never use automatic post-to-twitter links. They just don’t seem to net decent conversations. Instead, try using a conversational tone. For instance, when I’m done this post, I will send to Twitter something like this: “I shared my thoughts on growing your audience. What are YOUR ideas?” and then the link to this post. You don’t have to follow, but you’ll know exactly why I asked for your attention.
One quick note: it’s not always about your blog. Don’t be that guy.
Be Persistent
I could also say “be consistent,” but in this case, I want you to persist in not only putting out your content, but also making it better. EVERYONE can make their stuff better. I could do to focus on my takeaways. You might need to pare down the word count. There’s always room to do better work.
Further, do lots to try new things. Stretch out the medium. Think of new ways to ask the same old questions. Decide on challenging approaches to blogging in ways that powerfully reveal the information your audience seeks from you. Persist in such matters, never accepting that your work is flawless, but instead analyzing your responses and uptake or downturn in traffic, and giving more effort accordingly.
And Now, the Bonus Round
Other ways that I’ve built traffic to my blog include the basics: comment on great blogs. Write and submit guest posts to top blogs in your similar space (but be careful of HOW you guest post). Add occasional links to your blog posts in places like Flickr. Consider contests. Participate in other people’s events. Find groups of bloggers you like and see if you fit their circles of friends. Write series so that people want to participate and come back for more. Make your URL memorable.
And beyond all that? Be as human as humanly possible, only do that in the most interesting senses of the idea. Make sense?
What else did I miss? The part where I ask you questions so that you help add YOUR personality and ideas to the conversation?
Photo Credit, Chel Pixie shooting for Financial Aid Podcast
Basic Business Blogging Suggestions
You’ve decided you’re going to take the recommendations of the office evangelist and start writing a blog. The word still bothers you, but you’ve been told that it’s just like a newsletter or an article for a magazine, only faster, and online. But what comes next? How should you approach it? And what will make the difference between a blog that people read, and a blog that people ridicule? Here are some basic ideas and suggestions. (None of these are rules. There are a hundred ways to do things. My associates will fill the comments section with variations on the theme.)
Above All Else, Be Human
If that advice sounds familiar, it’s not unlike the very first post in the Social Media 100 series: Above All Else- People. The advice is the same. People are who read blogs (okay, we could argue that Google also reads your blog, but let’s save that for another time). To that end, present yourself as a human. Write with the first-person (”I”) perspective, and write as if you’re telling me something, not a faceless mass.
Also, pay attention to that previous post and be attentive to people’s attention constraints.
Commenting Is Just as Important
Remember to visit other blogs in the space and comment on stories and posts that appeal to you. Do NOT be “that guy” (or “girl”) and reference yourself and your company on all these comments. Instead, be sure to seem human and comment on things that have interest to you. Commenting matters, and we know if you’re part of our community by how and where you comment.
Blogging Policies
Your blogging policy shouldn’t be any more complex than your email policy. Look over your company’s policy documents and see if you can replace “email” with “blog” and “blogging.” If yes, and it makes sense, that’s probably fine. It should go without saying that company strategy as well as financial data is not especially good to put on blogs.
If you must have some kind of process in place where more than one set of hands has to touch a blog post, keep it simple. Anything more than two sets of eyes beyond the author, and I believe you’ve already killed people’s interest in blogging.
Does This Tie to Strategy at All?
Remember that your business blog has more requirements than a personal blog. Why did you start it in the first place? What’s the GOAL of the blog? What are you hoping to do with it? Think this through and check your efforts against it regularly. If you can set up metrics of any kind, these might help.
For instance, if your goal is engagement, measure number of comments, web hits, RSS subscribers, inbound links, and a few other criteria. But if your goal is customer service, maybe the blog itself doesn’t get measured as much as overall sentiment in the marketplace gets measured.
My point, simply, is to pay attention to the strategy behind why you’ve bothered blogging in the first place.
Platforms Aren’t THAT Important
But you should consider whether the blogging platform you’re using is easy enough to keep it enjoyable, that it has RSS subscription capabilities, tagging, the ability to add plugins and external code, and a few other details that I’m happy to share, if this is a big concern.
Mix it Up
We don’t want to read only about your company, your product, you. We want your take on the industry at large, on events that might be resonant with us outside of your organization, on other forces that might impact our relationship with you and your products. Try to have that in mind when you write. Yes, it’s a blog for your company, but it’s also a source of information, and has to reflect the world around us.
Don’t Sell, but Don’t Be Shy
A blog isn’t about the hard sell. Let’s accept that. Yes, we’ll be suggestive. Yes, we’ll be persuasive. We’ll give you tastes of what you might receive if you buy the whole deal, but if it’s just a place for selling, we’re not reading. There has to be passion and interest and information flowing through there. Sure, you can help us find where to buy things. But maybe try to mix it up a bit. Don’t pretend like you’re not selling, because that can seem awkward, too, but if you can, consider the last few posts you’ve written and see whether or not it’s time to sell to us again.
Build a Workflow
The mood to blog might not always strike you. It might be helpful to keep a notepad file of topics and ideas so that you can tap into these when you’ve a moment. Also, don’t be afraid to write into a text file, and then dump it into your blog software when it’s all done. This will enable you to write anywhere, with or without the web, and when you have a moment. (Note: there are plenty of great tools for this, as well, including Windows Live Writer for PC and Mars Edit for the Mac (Any good offline editors for Linux? No, besides vi!)
Another trick to building a good blogging flow is to have a good blog reading habit. Use a tool like Google Reader and subscribe to sites and relevant searches that will keep you in quality posts.
Link Out
We pay attention to where you link. If every link in your blog is to your own stuff, we discount you as self-referential. Consider pointing out other great posts in your space, and give adequate links and credit. Don’t sell the store, but make sure you’re building a healthy linking habit. Otherwise, links will rarely flow inward as well.
Frequency is How Often You Have Value to Add
If you blog on a monthly basis, your traffic will likely be dismal. Unless you’re Donald Trump, and then, I imagine you’d still pull it off. For the rest of us, try to stick to a weekly-at-worst and a daily-at-best standard for your blogging. Don’t feel frustrated if you can’t do daily right away. Blogging takes practice, and it can sometimes fall to the bottom of our priority list (as it should). But if you build a decent work flow, this effort should become more natural over time.
Pay Attention to Design
I wrote recently about blog design, and so I won’t reinvent the wheel, but in brief: make sure you have easy-to-use contact information on the blog. Put up a very human About page, including information on the blog’s author as well as the company you serve. We KNOW it’s a company blog. We want to know about you, too. Finally, make sure the blog has all the social sharing tools built into it, such that people can bookmark sites easily, share in popular places, and provide this information easily to others.
Encourage Conversation
How do you build blog posts that last and add value? You encourage conversation. One way that I do this often is by asking questions of the people who read this blog. It’s a great way to tap the expertise of the people in your space. No experts in the crowd? Then consider writing your posts in such a way that your most likely audience will have something upon which to comment and add their own value. Making a post too rock solid is just an invitation to have nothing said about it after the fact.
What Else Would YOU Recommend?
Until now, I’ve written this as if you were the prospective new blogger, but I know that the folks reading [chrisbrogan.com] are professionals in their own right. This post will certainly be shared as advice to others considering starting up a blog. What would you add to the advice I’ve already given? What have I missed? Your comments make this post dozens of times better than what I write on my own. How would you advise a newcomer to business blogging?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
Photo Credit, foundphotoslj
Bloggers Need Errors and Omissions Insurance
A friend (wasn’t sure if I can name you?) sent me something fascinating. Here’s the story:
It appears that a whole new issue is coming up for bloggers and online content/freelance writers. A few contacts and I have been getting requests for freelance writing and writing for pay on company blogs, but we require errors/omissions insurance. I (as well as two others) have been turned down by the underwriters because they went back and read our blogs and say the content is “error prone and not subject to verification”. HUA??? It’s a BLOG. Anyhow, we are all really stuck right now because while we’ve got business insurance, we can’t obtain E/O underwriting. Maybe your readers can help out? How can we approach these antiquated firms and get insurance? Personally I don’t even think they should read our blogs and make a judgement. My husband has O/E insurance for software coding he does, and the insurance company has never once asked to look at his code. I’m finding that turning blogging/social media outreach into somewhat of a business, we can’t be taken seriously. One door opens, another closes.
Depends on the Blog, Obviously
My comments don’t reflect the person who asked this question. Take that off theif y table. I’m talking about the space in general.
If you’re looking to blog professionally, your reference blog should also be professional. For instance, if you’re bringing all the fun of BLARMCast, which is obviously a tongue-in-cheek (and oft-times fun) podcast/blog by a relative of mine, would you recommend that our resident @Wankergirl (her name on Twitter) use that site to show what would make her the best person to produce the CBC’s next great show?
Yes and no.
If you’re looking to recreate what you do on a professional site, then you want them to get the full breadth of what you do.
If you need to show a professional face, you have to model that in the reference product.
But Errors and Omissions Insurance?
Wow, if I had to be factually accurate all of the time, I’d quit blogging. It’s not that I’m not into research and factual accuracy. I just don’t know if that’s the space my blog plays in the world. My blog, at least, is about opinion, mostly. It’s about my advice and my ideas and a lot of “my.”
And finally, how can you advise my friend here, who has a real problem that needs solving? How does she get this insurance? What’s next?
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?
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?
