Have you heard you should be using social media to promote your business? Has the thought of starting a blog crossed your mind a time or two? You have considered doing both but you have so many questions. How do I get started? What would I write about? Who on earth would want to read the stuff I’d write about? I’ve been there. I think almost everyone has, except for perhaps, the really conceited among us.

The reality is, it’s not nearly as scary or difficult as it seems at first glance. There are so many resources to help you. I’m finding articles every day with tips and tricks for blogging and social media. Ok, sure – I’m really into all this web stuff so I’m naturally finding great articles & info. But hey, all you really have to do is follow my blog and you’ll be a pro in no time. I re-purpose the good articles I find so you don’t have to be out there looking. Over time you will find everything you need right here.

Take for instance the article I found today at Social Media Examiner, written by Nerma Moore. Nerma gives 5 tactics for writing a blog post in 15 minutes. I’m watching the clock as I’m writing this. I’m not going to make 15 minutes but I’m content with them only taking me a half hour. I think it’s worth my time to share these topics with you. I will just share the highlights of her article and if you want more, go to the link above.

Tactic #1 – Plan Your Writing
What are people searching for? What interests them? What do they want to read?
Tactic #2 – Create a Headline Bank
Questions, Quotes, Short Stories, and Statistics – all great to grab attention.
Tactic #3 – Time Yourself (Watch the Clock)
Nerma suggests when your time runs out, you are done. I don’t think I’d agree with that but I do agree you must have some sort of limit. You can’t spend 3 hours writing a blog post. If it takes you that long, you will dread it and will not do it consistently.
Tactic #4 – Use the “Series Approach”
Instead of writing one blog post titled ’5 Simple Steps to Get Your Business On Twitter’, break it up into 5 blog posts. Each could be written in 15 minutes and you’ll have your readers coming back for more.
Tactic #5 – Get to “the Meat of the Problem”
Or rather, don’t leave the ‘meat’ out completely. Some bloggers will get the reader interested with the headline and intro but then the post just sort of fizzles.It brings to mind the ‘Where’s the beef?’ lady. Are you old enough to remember that??

See also the post I wrote June 22 – Three Blog Writing Tips.

BTW – this took about 35 minutes, proofreading included. But keep in mind, I had to flip back and forth between Nerma’s article and mine.

See Day 1 of Better Blogging Challenge.

I attended Social Media: Is It Worth it in Fond du Lac in the morning and attended a webinar at my computer in the afternoon. Webinars are awesome! Hundreds of people can join in and experience a great learning environment. Now and then I have difficulties with my internet connection and the audio gets a bit garbled, but they always offer a dial-in number so I turn off my computer’s speakers and listen via cell phone.

9 Companies Doing Facebook Right and What You Need to Know hosted by Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner along with Mari Smith, Facebook extraordinaire, was time well spent. Mike and Mari shared 9 Facebook fan pages and discussed what the companies were doing right with them. These were not all huge companies we really can’t relate to. Many of them are small businesses and the examples gave me great ideas to use with my clients. Thanks Mari & Mike! Keep it up. We appreciate you.

Continue to follow my blog, register for my RSS feed, or sign-up for my email newsletter to get updates on what I’m doing for clients in my little piece of the world.

Social Media: Is It Worth It? was the name of the class I attended in Fond du Lac yesterday morning. It was part of a year-long series of classes put on by the Fond du Lac Association of Commerce. The 3 presenters for the class shared their insights from using social media in their business.

The answer to the question is YES – social media is worth it, however it is NOT FREE. Oh sure, signing up for Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter are all free but the point the panel was making is social media takes time. We all know our time is worth a lot, hence social media is definitely not free. But if we work it right and smart, free or not free is not of concern. The end result of increased customers will far outweigh our time or $ investment.

Think more about how much time you will put into your social media plan; will you allocate 30 minutes per day? Do you have others in your organization who can help with the daily tasks or are you a 1-person show? What are your goals? Have you thought out your social media strategy? Goals & strategy, you ask? Yes – and here’s why. I’ve seen so many small business owners hop on any one of these networking sites and that’s it. They get themselves registered and perhaps do part of their profile on each site and then sit back and expect something magical to happen. Sorry – no fairy godmother here! You need to put a little more effort into it.

You may want to consider hiring a web marketer such as myself to help you with your goals, strategies, and plans. I will start with a client needs analysis to give us a clear picture of your goals and will lead us to a plan for engaging with your potential customers. That is what it’s all about – engaging your customers and gaining their trust.

Please comment on this post or ask questions. I love to see both.

Just one more item to cross off my to-do list. That is always a good feeling but for some reason, no matter how many items I cross off, the list continues to grow. The upside to that is I never have to worry about being bored.

Look to the right side of this page and you will see the ‘Visit My Web Site’ link (that’s been there a while so I hope you noticed it earlier) and below that is the RSS icon that I’m sure you will recognize. It does link to the sign-up page but it’s main purpose is to just sit there, look pretty and attract attention. Below that, you will see the ‘Subscribe to RSS Feed’ and ‘Subscribe Via Email’ links.

The RSS links work through Feedburner and all the setup is through their site. Feedburner was purchased a few years ago by Google so we get the best of both worlds, Feedburner functionality and Google uniformity.

I have added a few instructions to the RSS Feed sign-up page to make it easier for users who have not used RSS before. I chose the Google button and then chose to add the feed to my Google home page rather than using Google Reader. You may want to do the same unless you already have RSS setup and are just adding my feed.

I still have the email newsletter sign-up button as well. If you don’t get into RSS feeds, you may like to use this button. Soon I will begin to send my posts and other tidbits via email.

While I was at all this, I also replaced the feed on the home page of my web site with the Google Feedburner feed. Some pros and cons of using this over the Feed2JS display but sufficed to say, the setup is all in one place and I can grab this code as I’m setting up the sign-up links.

I know this can all be a little confusing and a bit much to comprehend so this is one of the services I offer to my clients. No need to hassle with any of this on your own. You need to spend your time and talents on the things you do best and leave the tedious web and social media stuff to me!

Any questions – contact me via email. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

I was not surprised to see an article about social media from Ivan Misner in his monthly SuccessNet email. I skimmed through it immediately with intentions of getting back to it soon. If your definition of ‘soon’ is 2 1/2 weeks, then I did good!

A brief and simple article by Dr. Misner, but it hits his target market expertly. I believe he understands many in his BNI community are just learning of social media networking. Many have heard of all this new ‘stuff’ on the web but have no idea what to do with it and have many questions and concerns.

Dr. Misner addresses those concerns and gives a few tips on time management and ROI, reminding us, as with networking face-to-face, it’s more about farming than it is about hunting. He states, “It is about building the credibility of your brand, and we know that doesn’t happen overnight.”

Ivan also reinforces what I have been saying about adding a bit of personality to your posts when he writes, “It is important to offer them useful information balanced with a dash of personal insight.” But he fails to mention Giver’s Gain in this article. I have found in my research and studying of social media over the past several months, the main theme is giver’s gain. No one comes right out and calls it that, but they don’t have to. I get it! It’s all about what we do every week at BNI; we share information about ourselves and our business and over time we earn trust and respect which leads to referrals and sales. We don’t push it and we don’t expect it to happen overnight. We just know if we provide a good product or service and we teach others about us, we will see rewards.

Social media is like that. We share our expertise and experience online so as to have others recognize our value. Throw in a little personality (that’s why I usually write a ‘stupid’ line or two) and you’ll be getting noticed in no time. It’s not at all about the hard-sell. It’s about sharing and helping and knowing it will come back to you. You know what they say – what goes around, comes around.

I will end with Ivan’s Top 5 Common Mistakes of Social Media Networking.

1. Spending too much time on sites you enjoy and not fully evaluating whether or not that particular site is the most effective one for your efforts.
2. Going onto a site for “work” and then running down rabbit holes getting distracted by friends who may have posted something interesting or something that requires a response.
3. Not being able to properly define when it is more cost-effective to delegate certain social media responsibilities to someone else to handle.
4. Setting up a blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter page and then not keeping it populated – consistency and fresh content are key.
5. Forgetting that social media is about engaging in the conversation and not just about selling.

For the record, I think #4 is where many businesses are at and it’s my goal to fix that.

Here is Dr. Misner’s full article. Hope you check it out.
http://successnet.czcommunity.com/from-the-founder/networking-with-social-media/5732/

No, I have not forgotten to write on my blog and no, I’ve not even been too busy to write on my blog. Yes, I have been extremely busy with web sites and that is a very good thing. It’s also mid-summer and that means my garden is beginning to produce like crazy. With all the rain we’ve had this year, it is quite the jungle out there. Armed with a new bottle of insect repellent, I may be able to pick all the cucumbers, beans, and zucchini my over-active plants are producing. And in a couple weeks, we will have sweet corn! Oh yum. I must say, I am not enjoying the garden like I usually do because the mosquitoes are, I believe, the worst I have ever seen. But the crops surely are loving the rain and at least we have summer this year, unlike last.

What has really kept me from writing here is technical difficulties. It started by me getting cute and deciding to fix something that wasn’t broken, and ended with a needed update of DNS and A-record. No worries if you don’t have a clue what either of those are. Sufficed it to say, technical issues. The site could have probably been down a couple days if I had paid it more attention, but it was not my top priority. My client’s sites are higher on my list, especially considering I have very few followers at this time. Perhaps when I have followers numbering those of Ashton Kutcher, I will be forced to worry about my blog and downtime a bit more. But then again, by then I will have ‘people’ to worry about technical issues (and every other possible issue) for me. It just occurred to me, if I ever do have so many followers, I will have to destroy this post!

I must also say, on the plus side, I had a good backup of the database which stores the information typed into this blog, including date and time posted and the post author (always me so far), along with comments made on any posts. So I was never over-anxious about the demise of my young blog. I knew I would recreate it in a snap and all would be as good as new.

I share this now to remind all you bloggers (my future followers), backup backup backup! This goes for your blog as well as your computer’s hard drive and all your valuable work that would be nearly impossible to recreate.

As always, thanks bunches for following. I hope you didn’t miss me too much.