Step Outside Your Social Media Echo Chamber

December 13, 2011 Filed under: Blogging,Social Media Marketing — Tags: echo chamber, filter bubble, Google, Social Media Marketing —

I was struck recently by a tweet from a social media guru, commenting on how staid and outdated he found the presentations at a healthcare conference because social media was so undervalued and unappreciated as a marketing vehicle. That tweet really got under my skin. It seemed pretentious to me, calling healthcare marketing outdated because they aren’t using the latest social media tactics. But then I realized this ‘guru’ probably spends much of his time on social media blogs, following other social media gurus on Facebook, Twitter & Google+, and using all the latest ideas himself. I’m sure he talks with hundreds of clients, helping them make the best use of social media for their businesses. Of course he would think that healthcare professionals ‘just don’t get it.’ He, after all, lives in the social media echo chamber.

If you’re active in Social Media – any kind of media, in fact — you’re probably familiar with the echo chamber. The echo chamber is what happens when you follow online communities or media sources you agree with, and before long, you find you’re listening only to like-minded people, you hear your own opinions constantly echoed back to you, and you’re further reinforced in your own belief system. It goes a long way to explaining our currently polarized political system, where neither side can even hear the opposing side anymore, much less appreciate their point of view.

For many of us, the echo chamber also frames our business and personal discussions. Do you find yourself bored from reading ever- similar story themes in your daily Facebook stream? Do the tweets from people you follow all start to sound the same after a while? Do you find the sources you read tend to cluster around certain repetitive themes? If so, you’re in an echo chamber that was most likely crafted for you by Google or Facebook. It’s a dangerous place to live for very long, because you’ll find after a time that your opinions become hardened, you start to think your views are ‘the truth’, and you gradually lose your ability to see other points of view. Or, if you’re naturally more open-minded, you’ll find yourself becoming bored by the lack of diversity and new ideas you find online.

Remember those long-ago days when most people got their news from mass media, when we had to trust news editors to decide what was newsworthy and fit to print? In those days, editors had to print a diversity of topics in order to satisfy their diverse readership. Today, Google serves up a smorgasboard of information, making us feel like we’re exposed to endless diversity. But it’s deceiving because Google tailors the delivery of that information in search results based on what it knows of our interests and previous behavior. Facebook does the same, by favoring posts from people we interact with most. And Twitter has the same effect, as we follow people we find interesting and then get drawn further into their circles of similar people. Google+ alleviates the echo chamber somewhat by allowing you to deliberately create separate – and ever-widening — Circles of connections. But it doesn’t do away entirely with the echo chamber.

In the world of social media, it takes work to keep an open mind and a broad perspective. We’ve offloaded that job from the mass media news editor to the online individual. It’s a heavy burden but an important responsibility – to yourself and others. If you leave it to Google and Facebook, they will, over time, cocoon you in a well-padded chamber of echoes of your own voice. If that is scary to you (it is to me!), you’ll need to keep a vigilant hand in the management of your social media circles. Prune the list of who you’re following, what blogs you’re subscribed to, and what perspectives you’re reading. If you feel the chamber walls narrowing, go out and find opposing viewpoints and subscribe to those. Get active in their comments. Engage with other perspectives. The old adage “don’t judge a man till you’ve walked a mile in his boots” could be updated to say “don’t form your opinions till you’ve ventured outside your own echo chamber”.

I have this nightmare image that, if we don’t keep ourselves vigilantly openminded online, we could become an entire nation that’s a macrocosm of our current Congress. Now that’s a scary thought.

Just to keep things interesting and open-minded, here are 3 articles with quite different perspectives on the theme of this blog post.

Mass media marketing is dead. Not. (customerthink.com)
Swarm Theory: How the Media Controls the Debate // Luke Stibbs // 12.06.2011 (thecollegeconservative.com)
The Filter Bubble Within Social Media (searchengineland.com)

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Cool SEO Tool for Bloggers

October 25, 2011 Filed under: Blogging,SEO — Tags: blogging, SEO tools —

I just found a great tool I really like and thought I’d share it out.

If you’re a blogger, like me, you probably focus most of your blogging time on writing your posts, not worrying about how to optimize them for search. If you don’t already have a quick and easy process for optimizing your posts, consider a subscription to Scribe, a great tool that makes SEO easy and fun. It’s developed by Copyblogger, longtime blogging and copywriting experts. This is not going to achieve super SEO results for your entire website, but it will give you an easy SEO-as-you-go approach to blogging. Check it out:

How it Works. SEO typically has 3 major steps, and Scribe provides coaching and helpful suggestions for each, integrated with your blogging platform. Welcome to your online SEO coach!

Keyword research – find search terms that your target audience uses. Scribe has a click for that. Just type the word that summarizes your blog post topic and Scribe will do some quick, on-the-fly keyword research, then suggest the best terms (most popular in searches) to pepper throughout your post.

Content optimization – weave keywords into your post. Scribe will check the places where search engines look – Title tag, Meta Description tag, and page content – and give you a score for how well you’ve optimized these with your keywords. Then it’ll perform a contextual analysis of your page, showing the top keyword combinations found on your page – in other words, what will the search engines think your page is about? If that’s not your intent, Scribe will suggest how you can change things to more effectively optimize for your desired keywords.

Link Building – create links to your post. Since incoming links give your post (and your blog/website) more credibility, they count a lot in the search ranking algorithm. Scribe helps here by suggesting blog posts with related topics that you can approach to ask for a link – either by leaving a comment, contributing a guest post or establishing a direct relationship. It also gives you a list of influential people who talk about your topic on social media so you can hook up with them.

How to Get it. You can download Scribe easily by signing up for a subscription here (prices start at $17/month), and they’ll take your through the smooth 3 step process of downloading a zip file which you can then just one-click upload to WordPress or Joomla. One of the easiest online tools purchases I’ve made.

So, if you’re looking for some SEO help with your blog, it doesn’t get any easier than this.

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What Does PR Even Mean Today?

August 9, 2011 Filed under: Blogging,Content Marketing,SEO,Social Media Marketing —

Public relations used to mean working with the media, feeding them story ideas, providing access to spokespeople, and putting the best spin on stories about your organization. I know – I did it for many years. The assumption was that journalists, with their high degree of credibility, could influence public opinion in your favor if you played your cards right. The PR skill was in finding and cultivating influential reporters, understanding their audience, and offering them unique, newsworthy story ideas to interest their readers. You could of course spin things in your favor, but most reporters have a keen ear for the truth and a credible reputation to uphold, so having high quality content and an interesting narrative would get you the farthest.

The model has changed, of course, as journalists are scarce and people currently rely on blogs, social media, online communities and other forms of crowd sourcing for their information. And yet, despite the changes, the basic ingredients for how to tell your story haven’t changed. Establishing credibility for your brand still requires compelling stories and influential relationships.

PR today has migrated from media relations and story ideas to encompass blogging, SEO, content strategy and social media. A PR professional who doesn’t embrace these other points on the Communications circle will likely be overrun by those who do.

Blogging – PR professionals understood early that many journalists were turning into bloggers. Today, finding the bloggers that influence your target audience can be more challenging as there are more of them and their needs are different. Many are open to more than story ideas and will welcome contributed articles and guest posts. Most welcome comments and opinions and can be a great opportunity for focused industry discussion. PR professionals need to come to the table with more than story ideas if they want to take full advantage of the blogging opportunity. Ideally, start your own company blog and use your great story ideas yourself. Or build relationships with other influential bloggers in your market and guest post there.

SEO – SEO aims to bring your target audience to your website. It starts with keywords, and uses those keywords to flavor your company’s website content so it can be found by searchers. It then uses links in offsite content – press releases, blog posts, articles, etc. — to bring new visitors to your website. Since PR professionals live by words, knowing which keywords to feature and which sites to target for links will make you a key contributor to SEO and online marketing efforts.

Content Strategy — PR is about communicating a company’s messages to its target audiences. You can’t do that without having interesting stories to tell and plenty of content to share. That’s true now more than ever. But with so many places to tell your story online, you’ll be running in circles unless you have a clear strategy for what you want to publish, to which audience segment, via which channel, and when. A content strategy will help you determine which audience segments to target with different messages, which channels (blogs, social media, etc.) to target for each audience, and how to ensure consistency across the board. An editorial calendar is an essential tool for this purpose.

Social Media – Everyone is chatting on social media. If you’re not there, listening to what opinion leaders and customers are saying, you’ll have a hard time influencing anyone in your company’s favor. Traditional PR media relations required you to connect with reporters who covered your business; social media relations requires you to connect with anyone talking about your business. The importance of relationship building has never been greater.

Are you a public relations professional? How has your job been transformed?

How the Evolution of PR Mingles With Content Marketing (hubspot.com)
How Public Relations Can Avoid Failing at SEO (toprankblog.com)
Traditional PR is dead! Elvis lives! And flying saucers are real! (dsprel.wordpress.com)

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7 Tips to Help You Write Like a Pro

June 10, 2011 Filed under: Blogging —

Guest post by James Adams

At some point in your life, you will be asked to write something. If you’re thinking about starting a blog, that time is NOW. Whether you’re planning to start on a thousand-page novel or are simply putting together some text for your company’s website or blog, it’s important that you write in a clear and compelling style. This article will give you 7 tips to help you start writing like a professional.

1. Determine who your audience is

When you start to write something, the not-always-so-obvious first rule is to know exactly who you are writing to. A juvenile fiction story wouldn’t be written in the same style as a sports column. Decide exactly who your target audience is, and then write in a way they can relate to. If it’s a blog you’re writing, speak to them like you would face-to-face. In order to ‘see’ the face of your audience, write up a description — a persona — of your typical reader, and keep that face in mind when you write.

2. Watch your language — starting with grammar

Grammar and spelling both play significant roles in the impression you create. If you’re going to write and want to be read, brush up on your grammar skills. If you’re in doubt, you can find helpful grammar tips online or off-the-shelf in the classic volume The Elements of Style by William Strunk.

(more…)

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Why Bloggers Rock – A Look at the Bing Business Portal Launch

May 17, 2011 Filed under: Blogging,Local Search — Tags: Bing Business Portal, blogging, Local Search —

On April 12, Microsoft announced its new Bing Business Portal, competitor to Google Place Pages for small businesses. The news got lots of coverage from traditional tech media who follow Microsoft. But the handful of small business bloggers who wrote “Complete Guides” are the real heros, in my opinion.

First, the news

The Bing Business Portal provides the tools to allow local businesses to claim their listing in Bing. Like Google, Bing will display these listings in its local search results, alongside a map showing the business location. Here are some things you can do for your business listing in the Bing Business Portal:

Identify categories where your listing will appear
Spruce up your listing with photos and videos
Offer special coupons and promote them for free on Bing and Facebook
Create a mobile version of your listing for customers to access from their mobile devices
Create a mobile menu, if you serve food or drinks
Authorize a 3^rd party to manage your listings

(more…)

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Bring Out Your Dead — Content, That Is

January 26, 2011 Filed under: Blogging,Content Marketing — Tags: content marketing, SEO —

from Wikipedia

If you’re old enough to remember Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you may remember the “bring out your dead” scene (it still cracks me up!). I don’t want to draw too strong an analogy, especially since the ‘almost dead’ guy gets whacked in the movie, which is not what I’m suggesting. But I would urge you to think about bringing out your dead. Content, that is. If you’re a content marketer, blogger, or Social Media chatterer, you may sometimes wonder where your next idea will come from. Perhaps you’ve felt that knot in your stomach when gazing at a blank WordPress screen and no blog post topic comes to mind. Or maybe you feel like you’re just repeating yourself or regurgitating what you’ve read on other blogs.

One antidote to content cramps may be to look backward. Previously published content may seem like it’s history, used up, or dead. But it can actually have plenty of life left — if you know how to revive it and make it relevant to your readers. After some practice at reviving existing content, you’ll learn how to create new content in ways that are designed for reuse from the start. Here are some ideas:

Company presentations. You can reuse company slide presentations in their entirety or break them up into digestible snippets for multiple reuse. We have a tech client who uses their executive presentations from tradeshows and posts them on DocStoc and SlideShare, re-narrates them into videos for YouTube, and re-casts them into multiple blog posts for the company blog. That’s extended mileage! Instead of reaching only a room of people, the content is spread across the Web, bringing links, traffic and leads to the company website, where visitors can take the next step in the selling cycle.

Educational materials. If your product or service requires instruction, this can be a great source of educational blog posts, helpful tips on Facebook or Twitter, or demonstrations on YouTube or Webinars. Also consider guest blogging on complementary blogs. We have a client that sells beautifully handcrafted furniture and they guest blog on interior design blogs so they can educate readers on how to beautify their homes with classic furniture. And, of course, this builds links to enhance their search ranking.

The voice of the customer. Testimonials. Case studies. Customer reviews. It’s likely you already have some form of written feedback directly from your customers. What else can you do with it? Place it on your website. Feature it in a video and post it on YouTube or your Google/Bing Place Page. Share it on Facebook. Quote it on your blog or e-newsletter. And if you know someone is a fan, engage with them on Social Media and invite them to say more about why they like you.

Press releases. If you have news worthy of a press release, don’t stop there. Make sure you optimize your press release, include links to your website, and post it online. Then re-cast it as an article or a guest blog post on partner websites or blogs. Embed a video and post that to YouTube. And, of course, contact news reporters and bloggers to encourage them to write about your news – then you can feature their article on your blog.

White Papers. A single white paper may be the source of multiple blog posts or an article series for distribution to article directories. A skilled editor will know how to pull out the key points and build each one into a single blog post, optimized for the right keywords.

Ebooks. These work as a source or a destination for content reuse. You can package a group of related articles or blog posts as an eBook and offer it for download on your website as a qualifying call-to-action. Or, if you started with an ebook, you can break it into smaller pieces and run it as a series of blog posts. Either way, a bit of re-wording and selective updating can revive and freshen up old content so you don’t need to start from scratch.

Industry articles or blog posts you’ve saved from other sites or publications can be used as a jumping-off point for your own commentary or to initiate discussions on Twitter or other Social Media.

Support Forums. These will give you a good idea of what your customers are concerned and talking about, and give you fresh ideas for what topics they’ll want to read about on your blog or Facebook. You can quote their comments or questions as your starting point, and turn to your Support department for help with the answers.

So, if you find yourself short on ideas for what to say on your blog or social media, return to the well of existing content. If you pay close attention, you just might hear it whisper “I’m not dead yet.” If you understand the value of content marketing, you’ll realize that existing content can come back to life in many forms, be reused in many channels, and work on many platforms – all of which can help generate traffic and links to your website and build your reputation online. And you’ll never run out of things to write about.

For some great examples of how to re-purpose existing content, see the book by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman, Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks and Webinars.

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Ten Free Image Sources For Your Blog, Website, or Facebook

January 12, 2011 Filed under: Blogging,Content Marketing — Tags: Blog images, free blog photos —

Most websites and blogs regularly post pictures, but using someone else’s picture without permission or credit can be a violation of copyright law. There are, however, many websites that offer copyright-free images for use by anyone. If you want to make your blog posts more readable and visually appealing, these sites can save you a lot of time and hassle. Some copyright-free photos require that you give proper credit to the photographer; others have no stipulations. Be sure to read the usage rules carefully and respect the wishes of those who have donated their work for public use. I’ve tried to provide here a broad range of image types, so browse closely if you’re looking for particular topics or types of images.

Flickr, the most widely used photo-sharing site, has a “freeuse” collection of over 1,000 photos that have been donated by users to be used by anyone. There is no need to give credit or to fear rights infringement. The images are posted by their creators, and by posting to this group, they are allowing freedom of use. Flickr also has a Creative Commons, where many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license. You can browse or search through content under each type of license, most of which ask for attribution (you can use the photo, but you’re asked to cite the source).

Bigfoto offers royalty-free photos from around the world, taken by amateur photographers who enjoy seeing their images on the Internet. Photos are categorized by geographic region and also by themes (nature, aviation, architecture, food, to name a few) so you can browse more easily.

Free Photos Bank allows non-exclusive, non-transferable license to images. You can browse their descriptive categories, search by keyword, and see user-generated ratings and views/ downloads. Beware of the somewhat annoying ‘talking avatar’ on the site and steer clear of it if you can.

FreeFoto allows anyone, commercial and non-commercial, to use images in their collection, but asks that you provide attribution to the image and a link back to FreeFoto.com. Photos are organized in easily accessible categories – mostly geographic. Navigation on this site is a bit clunky, but you’ll find plenty of beautiful photography. (more…)

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Blogging: Eight Lessons I Learned My First Year As A Blogger

November 4, 2010 Filed under: Blogging,Fun Stuff — Tags: blogging —

image from cakecentral.com

It’s my blog’s birthday. One year ago I started down the scary-but-exciting path of becoming a blogger, and I’ve survived to tell the tale (don’t laugh; many bloggers quit in less than a year!). Here are 8 lessons I’ve learned – 4 that come quickly to mind, and 4 that are the result of deeper reflection. I’d love to hear what YOU’ve found in your first months or years of blogging.

First 4 Things I’ve Learned

Blogging takes a lot of time. There’s no getting away from this one. It does get easier as you develop your voice, learn some workable approaches, and get into the “zen” of writing. But there’s no denying the need to carve out time in your schedule to write. More time than I expected, in fact.

It’s tough finding new things to say. At least initially. There’s already so much good content published by others, how can you possibly have anything new to say? And yet, I find there’s always new things happening in my niche, new problems or concerns I hear from my clients, new ideas I find it worthwhile to share and invite discussion about – in short, life happens and is worth talking about. That’s what the world of social media – and blogs – is about, after all. (more…)

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7 Things To Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

October 12, 2010 Filed under: Blogging,Content Marketing — Tags: blogging, content marketing —

The greatest challenge we find among SEO clients is content creation. Content is the key to a search spider’s heart. All YOU have to do is write it. We call it content marketing. But wait, don’t you also have a business to run? A job to do? And what if writing is just not your greatest talent? How are you going to keep the search engines happy and feed their insatiable appetite for new content? Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

Repurpose Existing Content

Source: IQmatrix

Yes, content marketing means you’ll need to create new content. But this doesn’t have to mean the paralyzing process of staring at a blank screen and coming up with new ideas from scratch. At least not every time. There are plenty of places you can go for what I call “starter-content,” which can then be enhanced or recycled. Whether you’re authoring a blog, creating articles for distribution, or adding new content pages to your site, here are some ideas to help you get beyond writer’s block.

1. Company presentations or white papers. If you’re in a B2B business, chances are you or your colleagues have given presentations or white papers to explain your product or educate customers. These are great pieces to use as a starting point for an article, blog post, or FAQ page on your website. You can either recycle still-relevant content in its original form, write an update, or use an old position as a starting point to argue a new perspective. (more…)

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