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Don’t Let Ties That Bind Lead to Content That Strangles Online Growth

June 3, 2014 by Rosemary Leave a Comment

By Lisa D. Jenkins

Last week, I was supporting a radio broadcast team covering a long-standing, week-long live event with tweets. This is the fourth year I’ve been part of the KOZE Sports team and this year I keyed in on something new. Not with the event but with the team of two announcers responsible for bringing the event to thousands of people across the nation.

NAIA media pass

Over the several years Brian Danner and Mike Tatko have been announcing NAIA World Series Baseball, they’ve developed a history. They’ve created and maintained off-air relationships with each other, coaches and players, families of coaches and players, fans, officials and a host of other people. A natural part of those relationships is personal experiences that spawned stories most of the listening audience knows nothing about, but those stories come up in on-air color commentary. Because that’s what sports color commentary is … stories to fill dead air between plays.

What I keyed in on, was they way these two men were able to share their histories. Instead of cracking a private joke on-air about something that happened in the past, they took the time to fill in the back story. Every memory reference was colored in. Every person listening was provided with an explanation that invited them into the conversation.

In the same way that Danner and Tatko have developed a history, brands that were conceived and launched online or brands that have been curating content over an extended period of time have a very real history.

One thing that makes a brand and its content attractive to people is a consistent voice that shares that history and the new events that continue to contribute to it. This takes on increased importance when you have a team of people managing that voice.

With any good team you want to encourage ties and relationships that give your team members a sense of connection. A cohesiveness that allows them to pull together to pursue common marketing goals. The danger comes when the intimate aspects of those ties and relationships begin to bleed over into the conversations that take place on your social media profiles.

I’m not writing about behind-the-scenes snapshots of Team Member Josephine caught sleeping at her desk during a quick power nap. Or teasers of an almost-ready-to-launch product. I’m writing about insider banter made up of private jokes and subtle references to previous events new followers might not be familiar with. Instead of being invited to participate in and contribute to conversations that occur on your Facebook Page, Twitter stream, Tumblr profile, or LinkedIn presence, your followers become observers, voyeurs if you will, over an exclusionary conversation.

An oblique reference once in a while shouldn’t damage your brand but if your team becomes comfortable with presenting too many tweets, updates or posts that have overly private resonances and not enough public appeal, people will stop retweeting, sharing or giving +1’s because they don’t have the contextual references they need to understand the content your team is publishing. It will kill your online momentum.

The best time to manage this situation is before it occurs by addressing expectations for your team’s online behaviors in a set of social media guidelines.

If you find yourself having to navigate the situation as it’s occurring online, you need to find a way to help your team bring the content back around to a place where your followers feel included and invited to take part in a conversation.

Author’s Bio: Lisa D. Jenkins is a Public Relations professional specializing in Social and Digital Communications for businesses. She has over a decade of experience and work most often with destination organizations or businesses in the travel and tourism industry in the Pacific Northwest. Connect with her on Google+

Filed Under: Audience, Content, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, connection, personality, voice

How to Make Your Blog Stand Out in the Crowd

December 24, 2013 by Rosemary 7 Comments

By Tracy Vides

To err on the side of diplomacy has always been a safer bet than being blunt. Diplomacy is everywhere. Being nice is an all-pervasive disease. To be boring, just like diplomacy, works for a lot of people.

As long as you don’t stand out, you don’t ask for trouble. To stay out of trouble is a global requirement.

People start blogs just as they start political parties, form governments, and start businesses. Since most people try to stay safe, their blogs will reflect that ‘safe’ vibe. As a result, the content is usually trite.

Rehashed, over-used, and boring blog posts are the staple of the blogosphere, as this slide deck from Velocity Partners makes painfully clear. It’s tiring to see just another blog out there.

We agree that there’s only so much information that can be shared on a topic. But who said that you’d have to keep it bland?

Popular blogs share the same content, but they do it differently.

Only a few bloggers stand out. They are different. Their voice is powerful. Their content is engaging. How do they manage to do that? What’s the secret sauce?

They are bold. They are beautiful. They write what they want to.

Here are some ways to make your own blog stand out from the rest:

Stick to Your Opinion, Don’t Waffle

Pick up a few facts, put your brain to this data, and craft your own opinion (rolled into a blog post). While you use your own voice, personality, and writing style to express your justified opinion, take a vow (in writing, if you can) that once the blog post goes live, you won’t budge from your opinion. Even if the string of virulent comments might want to make you think about your initial stand, don’t bother updating your blog post with the new school of thought.

Blogs get their mojo from opinionated writing. There’s no place for you to waffle here. No changing shoes once you wear them.

One caveat here:

One danger, when you’re writing lots of quick, opinionated blog items about the latest developments, is that you never get around to stating fully, in one place, what you think about a particular topic.

– Mickey Kaus

Write for the Emotion Connect, Not the Spider’s Web

Google is powerful. Bloggers all over the world love a continuous, incoming stream of traffic from search listings. Yet, you have to let go of the obsession to rank in search. I’m not knocking down SEO or SEM, do what you have to do. Just don’t assume that your blog promotions or marketing for your blog depends wholly and completely on Google.

Stop writing for search engines, because that makes your blogs read like school textbooks or poorly maintained journals of manipulative keyword-stuffing maniacs. Or worse, like The Dullest Blog in the
World
.

If you ever have to create a blog post, do it for the reader. Google search takes care of itself. Your readers will thank you for it.

Bring in the Fun

Whether it’s a blog post or the copy (long-form or short-form), you need to use interesting and engaging content to market your products or services. Work hard to bring in the fun in your writing.

Your ultimate goal: bring that smile on your readers’ face, convince and convert.

While your blog post should have facts and opinion rolled together, your sales copy would have to be brief. Yet, make sure you bring in the humor when you are writing.

Stop being a bore.

Plant the ‘Feel’

Marketers now need to don the role of publishers through blogging. All marketers must work to ‘plant the feel.’

What do I mean by that? By making customers ‘feel,’ you bring a string of emotions, desires, needs and wants to the fore. Your customers almost visualize what you are writing about. The ‘feel’ factor can do wonders to your blogging efforts whether you are a physics teacher blogging about quantum mechanics or a tiny mom & pop e-commerce store that sells handcrafts online.

Stay Consistent

Add blogging into your lifetime to-do list. Blogging ought to happen every single day (or whatever frequency you like to blog with). While you might think that this was probably the first lesson you learnt about blogging, it’s one of those things that will help you stand out from millions of other blogs.

Why?

Most other blogs are dead. Most bloggers don’t update regularly. Some lose steam, while others just aren’t blessed with the commitment it takes to see a blog through success.

By blogging regularly, you are already in the top percentile of bloggers who are real, professional and serious.

Hook Up with Readers Personally, the Human Way

Forget about building relationships through your blog the usual way. If it’s usual, then everyone does it. You’d still have to build relationships with your regular readers, but how do you make a difference? It’s called ‘The insane reach out plan.’

The Insane Reach out Plan for the time-starved reader (that’s you):

  • Got a comment? Go hunt that commenter down and then follow his or her blog. Leave comments to reciprocate.
  • Find out who your readers are and then connect with them on social media to continue the =93small talk=94 that forms the bridge between your relationships.
  • Find opportunities to highlight some of your readers. There’s a reason why widgets that show ‘recent comments’ or ‘top comments’ or ‘most active contributors’ are downloaded by the thousands.
  • Sit down and send out emails to some of your regular users. Most popular bloggers tend to get high volumes of emails from readers, most of which end up unanswered. Turn this practice upside down. Actively send out emails instead.
  • Whenever possible, call or meet your readers.

Hard work? Yes.

Payoffs? That’ll require another blog post.

Necessary? No. But mandatory.

The only blogs that’ll work today are those that continuously produce content that gives something to readers that they can think about. Your blog is like a public kitchen giving food for thought to your readers.

That’s a grim challenge, yes, but others are doing it already!

It’s useless to worry about word counts, SEO, the size of your social media network, the platform you use for blogging, and the hosting account your blog depends on.

Worry about value. Lose sleep over how to make your content better. Brainstorm ways you can make your blog engaging.

Write with your heart, not your fingers.

Author’s Bio: Tracy Vides is a content creator and marketer, who loves to blog about subjects as diverse as fashion, technology, and finance. She’s always raring to have a discussion on startups and entrepreneurship. Say “Hi” to her on Twitter @TracyVides. You can also find her on G+ at gplus.to/TracyVides.

Filed Under: Blog Basics, Content, Successful Blog, Writing Tagged With: bc, blogging, connection, personality

How Do You Stay Connected to Yourself?

November 26, 2010 by Liz Leave a Comment

When Your Head Says Yes, But Your Heart Says No

cooltext443809558_authenticity

When we’re born, our hearts are fully wired to our brains. I’m sure of that. We cry when we’re hungry. We cry when we’re mad. Then we learn about things like “good behavior,” and “inside voices.” Then our brains start thinking about where, when, and how to follow our feelings and when, where, and how to over-rule them.

Figuring out the which is what and where is a complicated burden, so for many of us it becomes easier to choose one — usually the brain — as the default. How many times have you heard someone say, “Use your head. What were you thinking?” Or we might choose a brain default for business and a heart default for social situations.

Seriously, that’s a dis-connection. It’s as if we turn off part of our input and output systems most of the time we’re living.

Inner conflict like that can leave us with no certain direction and huge pent up emotion.
It’s hard to take action when you don’t where you’re going.

850676_bucking_zebra

What if we re-connected ourselves to rewire our brains to our hearts — our thoughts to our feelings? It’s not such an outrageous idea. Getting out of our heads to consider situations often gives us perspective into the other people we’re seeing, how they might be feeling, even when to listen.

Being too much in our heads puts our focus on the work not the people doing it, on the product or service not the people who will use it. Being too much in our hearts gets us lost in a labyrinth of feelings without the ability to see clarity of logical reasoning.

But together head and heart can fill out the picture with meaning.

When you’re overthinking, ask yourself what makes me feel this is so important?
When you’re filled with huge feelings, ask yourself why you’re so emotionally invested?
Then check in with your hands and your feet to see which direction they seem to be recommending.

Don’t respond or react until you’ve rewired, reconnected, and rebalanced your view of the situation.

How do you stay connected to yourself?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Filed Under: Motivation, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, connection, direction, head, heart, integration, LinkedIn

Connecting by Being Connected

April 9, 2008 by Liz Leave a Comment

I've been thinking . . .

about connections.

When my head, heart, and purpose are aligned, life is in working order. Words and ideas come easily. Work is a pleasure. People are a wonder and joy.

When I suffer a disconnect from my head, heart, or purpose, I lose track of that smoothness. Colors fade. Tasks get big and boring. Smiles get harder to find. I see with tired eyes. The disconnect disturbs me.

When I look for angels everywhere, they appear in all generosity. When I speak with care and confidence, people respond with the same. When I trust myself, people are trustworthy, and they trust me. When I work hard, people offer help.

I see in other people what I first see in myself.

Community begins inside me.

It’s huge thought.

Liz's Signature

Filed Under: Motivation, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, connection, Ive-been-thinking

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