Followers, Likes, Retweets, Subscribers… Is any of this stuff important? I’m sure you’ve listened to both sides, “get more followers” and “numbers are not important”.

There is a lot of noise on both sides, people telling you that numbers are important are usually trying to sell you some kind of software and people telling you they’re not, have 50k followers and get retweeted like crazy. So which one is it?

I’m going to tell you when and why numbers are important, or not.

Let’s take it step by step…

Business Objectives

First of all, the most important thing is that you understand what your business objectives are and how they translate into online goals. That will make the difference and you will be able to determine if numbers, either high or low, are important for your business AND, if it’s relevant to display them on your site/blog.

Profit Anyone?

How do these numbers affect your bottom line? most likely not directly, having higher Retweets than your direct competitor means nothing on the front-end. Having a bigger influence over that same competitor could mean everything and Retweets, Likes and RSS subscribers could be part of that.

The point here is that higher numbers don’t necessarily translate into profits. I know of a few individuals out there with very small communities that are very successful creating a sustainable income. In other words, when we talk about a profitable business, we should focus on dollars, not on Retweets. When we talk about reaching a bigger audience through a blog, then we focus on Retweets.

So when exactly are these numbers important?

On two different fronts:

Online Community

IF (notice the big “IF”) our business objectives require that we reach a higher audience then numbers like followers, “likes” and others become a measurable item. For example, if you sell information products through a blog, then your social media strategy should include increasing those numbers.

When you create something, you need to put that creation in front of people.

Social Proof

For the same reason a book cover reads “Author of the Best-Seller…”. 10k monthly readers, 15k Twitter followers, 10k Likes indicates that you are a successful whatever you are, a leader in your industry or at least an important blog in your niche. People don’t join Ning communities with 8 members or share posts with 2 Retweets. This is the same reason why blogs have comment counters.

As a quick exercise, visit the blogs from different leaders in your niche and see if they display these kind of digits.

Social proof builds credibility, like it or not.

A Reality Check

Our reality check also comes on two fronts:

Externally

On external platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, there is a publicly accessible digit known as Likes or Followers, however, you have to be realistic and admit that only a tiny fraction of those digits are actually engaging or are relationships. Those could mean people that you interact with or people that consume and share your content.

If you run a Facebook Page for example, it’s very easy to get an idea on the users that actually engage with you. Just a look at the number of “Active Users” and compare with the total number of “Likes”. It looks something like this.

In this case, only 16.87% of the users are active. A higher percentage however, clicked the “Like” button and never came back to the page.

Internally

By “Internally” I mean your blog. These numbers are considered “Content Engagement”. If you want to analyze the performance of a single post, you could start by measuring visitors or pageviews and then see how many of these actually shared your content through a Retweet, a Delicious bookmark or other.

The truth is that you could be kicking ass at this level BUT, if this content is not converting then all these numbers are useless. I’m not saying traffic or content engagement are not relevant, of course they are. What I’m saying is that if tons of traffic and shares are not achieving your online goals then it means nothing.

A lot of the Retweets on posts are done without even reading a single line, they are retweeted because people share stuff for different reasons. If you have an audience, a clever headline is sometimes enough to fly. Is this bad? not necessarily, you are getting more exposure after all. I’m just saying…

Final Thought

My conclusion, and this is just me (you should express your thoughts in the comments section), is that numbers matter. They matter in different ways and at different levels. You are the only one that can determine that.

One of the worst things you can do is to start following people on Twitter without having a clear objective. Can you drive traffic from Twitter to your blog? You bet… Can you get Retweeted? of course you can… the question is: For what?

Also, to make it very clear, these numbers are highly addictive and can waste a lot of your valuable time. Not recommended for people that gets distracted by shiny objects. Like my wife ; )

Your Turn…

What are thoughts? Do you care about social proof? What is your business goal behind having more followers? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments and please… feel free to disagree!

One more thing before you go, please share this post! =)

When you blog for business, one of the most important aspects is to grow your email list, if not the most important one…

Remember all those people saying that you should not pay attention at how many Twitter followers you have? Well, when it comes to your email subscribers you will want to count and focus on its grow because this is going to become the heart of your online business. This list is the start of what we call “Email Marketing“.

In this post we’ll review some of the methods you can use in order to increase that number of subscribers rather than focusing on the reasons why you need to grow your list. We’ll leave that for another post.

So here we go…

Sidebar Opt-in Box

The Opt-in Box on the sidebar is probably the most basic form of subscribing and while I suggest you follow some conventional practices so that people recognizes what it is, I also encourage you to be creative in order to make it stand out.

When I talk about conventional practices I mean things we already know from studying online user behavior, for example having it on the right, at the top of the sidebar and of course above the fold if increasing the number of email subscriptions is a priority.

Here is an example from IlluminatedMind:

Lightbox

In other words, a simple pop-up box that shows when the reader visits your site. This one is kind of controversial since it has been considered something that annoys the reader but lately, while some of the more recognizable people online are starting to use it, it seems to be getting a positive reaction. It dramatically increases your subscriptions and in exchange, bloggers are dropping tons of value. Kind of like a win-win…

In this image we see Lewis Howes promoting his LinkedIn Master Strategies which by the way, you should get…

In-Post Box

The In-Post is a box located usually at the end of the post, while I have never used it on SocialMouths I have seen it perform very good on other blogs. I think the reason is that some of the regulars (people that visit your blog on a regular basis) might not be paying attention to elements on the sidebar since they go directly to the content. It’s kind of the “Related Posts” widget that encourages more pageviews on your blog, in this case it is a reminder to opt-in.

Here is a great example from ProBlogger.net

Free Product

This is obviously very important because the value and quality expected on products nowadays is higher than ever, not only for premium products but also for free ones too. In other words, when you are ready to give away a product in exchange for your reader’s email address, make sure that product is about the same quality of something you could sell.

Jon Morrow, Associate Editor of CopyBlogger does this perfectly at GuestBlogging through an awesome series of videos. The user ends up feeling like he/she just got a lot of value in return.

Opt-in Box On Your Facebook Page

Think outside your blog, opt-in points of entry don’t necessarily have to live inside your blog. If you have seen this and your head is spinning trying to figure out how to do it, it is probably just a simple FBML snippet and a Facebook app developed by the email provider. You have the option to place it on your left sidebar or as an additional tab (as shown on the following image). You should look into it since it’s a great way to leverage from all that traffic you’re getting on your Fb Page.

Here are the MailChimp instructions on how to install their Facebook App on your page, I’m sure other companies have something similar: Adding A Newsletter Subscribe Form To Your Facebook Fanpage

Free Webinars

Webinars are huge right now because they are a way to really blow up your email list in just a few days, of course this is not as easy as it sounds. A successful webinar requires of a lot of promotion and preparation but if it’s done correctly it has great rewards.

In this case, I recommend you observe how some of the most experienced people do it before you jump into it. The obvious place to go is HubSpot because they run tons of webinars, you have probably seen them or even attended a few of them but I also want you to put attention to some of the personal brands online doing this successfully.

Contests

We have all seen the contests on Twitter, most of them with the objective to get massive visibility and increase following. Next time you run a contest on Twitter, Facebook or whatever platform you are using for this, instead of asking for a follow or a retweet, ask for an email address.

Now, you should also consider if the prize of the contest is worth and email address or just a retweet. I just mentioned above that the bar has been raised when it comes to quality and value. If you’re giving away a copy of a book…

Landing Pages

Also huge to help you build that email list like there’s no tomorrow are landing pages. Nothing new here but still very effective. If you are launching a new free product, consider creating a landing page as part of your strategy, it’s not an either/or situation, you can run a sidebar box, a lightbox and a landing page at the same time.

Today, landing pages are easier to create and manage. You can simply dedicate a specific page on your blog or you can use a service like unbounce if you’re ready to kick it up a notch…

It’s Your Turn Now…

So what do you think? have you used other methods or have good ideas on how to effectively grow your email list? share with the rest of us in the comments section.

Also let me know if you’re interested in learning more about Email Marketing and what aspects of it would you like to know.

Happy emailing!

Image Credit: Dry Icons

Usually when other blogs post your content is a good thing, you increase your visibility, you get some extra traffic and depending on the blog, it could even be good for your search engine ranking.

But wait! There is also a negative side to it. There is a fine line between aggregation and just hijacking content. In this posts we’ll review two different real-life scenarios based on the same piece of content and we’ll discuss the etiquette for good honest aggregation, what not to do and how if affects the source.

We’ll take one of SocialMouths posts from just a few days ago: 13 Quick Tips To Write A Successful Post, a piece that was republished by a few blogs in different ways.

First let’s look at how HolyKaw! does it, I’m sure we’re all familiar with the site but in case you didn’t know, it’s ran by Guy Kawasaki on AllTop.

The Proper Way

So let’s pay attention to a couple of items here:

• HolyKaw! has slightly modified the headline of the post
• They wrote their own excerpt, a short couple of paragraphs using their own words to describe or summarize the story
• In this case, since it is a list, they have only included three items
• They are even using their own photography
• Proper credit to the source was included (in red), with a link
• They have included a call to action to visit the source

Traffic

What HolyKaw! does is aggregating content, what they consider interesting. People trust them for that and this usually results in you getting traffic from a trusted source. This is not the first time a SocialMouths post gets picked up by the site and I can tell you that it always drives a nice amount of traffic, this time, an extra 1,129 visits in only 5 days I wasn’t planning on.

Not all sites will offer that kind of traffic, we’re talking Guy Kawasaki here… but every month a few blogs here and there do something similar and that can bring you a couple of hundred visits. Awesome!

The Dark Side Of The Moon

Not all aggregation is created equal and while it doesn’t necessarily mean there are bad intentions behind it, it still affects the source. Let’s take a look at this other case…

I gotta admit this example has a couple of elements that are funny or even ironic, they have emphasized the first line of the post, which reads “Writing content is not easy, no doubt about it.”, which I didn’t in the original post, you know, the one that was not easy to write…

Also, at the end of the post, in the related posts section they list a post called “Tips On Creating Content For Your Blog“. Are you kidding me?

The previous image shows the beginning and end of the post because it’s too long to show the whole thing.

Now to the serious stuff:

• The headline is exactly the same as the original post
• The byline says that the post is “by kwpreston” (the “kw” stands for Keller Williams)
• There are parts in which I wrote in first person and they were left like that giving you the impression that is actually kwpreston writing it
• They have posted the entire content of the post, which has a word count of 1,280
• They are also using the same images without any attribution to the sources
• At the end of the post, they give credit to SocialMouths WITHOUT A LINK and gracefully added a nice call to action that reads “Check it out”… There is nothing to check out anymore

But besides getting pissed off at someone that just hijacked your content, there are other issues you need to consider:

• In my case, I make an effort to provide value week after week by offering free content, that means it is there for you and I hope you get to leverage from it
• Sometimes, people that reads my content turn into clients because they like what I do. Thank you for that
• Sometimes, people find SocialMouths on search engines because I wrote about a specific topic

So what happens now? not only we are misleading readers but we are also confusing the search engines by having duplicated content.

What To Do?

I’ll give you 3 more bullets before I go:

• Read this great post from Jason Falls: How Share Alike Copyright Can Hurt Your Brand And SEO
• Head over to Creative Commons and learn about how to protect your content (even if it’s free)
• And tell the blogger in question that you’re happy to have your content aggregated as long as it’s done the right way

What Do You Think?

So what’s the point of writing a post like this? First hoping that we all learn a little more on what aggregation is and how to do it properly and second, so we understand that even if you offer free content, you should protect it.

What are your thoughts on the whole matter? Share in the comments section of this post and feel free to disagree with me if you need to.

Photo Credit: Franz Patzig

Turning your blog into a profit center. It sound like a dream, right?

We’ll continue to talk more about these things here on SocialMouths, hopefully you can benefit from them.

In this post we’ll take a closer look at what I call a perfect setup for your online income powerhouse, in other words, the tools you need to run your blog as a business.

Notice that I don’t include advertising or affiliate programs as ways of blog revenue, it’s because I talk about blogging as part of a marketing strategy for business rather than becoming a full-time blogger.

One thing I will mention before diving into the list is that while none of these applications are free, they are very affordable. And since we’re already in the subject, I will also say that I do love the whole “Free” concept BUT (uuuh… the big “but”!), when we’re talking about our business, and I will assume we want to be successful at it, we should be open to invest.

So I’ll include the cost of each service and at the end of the post we’ll add it to see how much we need to spend in order to turn your blog into a true profit center.

Disclosure: None of these companies has asked me or pay me to review their products or services. It would be nice… but they didn’t.

1. MailChimp

Let me put it this way, an email list is a list of people that have said “Yes, I like you and want to know about your updates, events or products”. My preference at the moment is Mailchimp but there are also other products like Aweber, MyEmma and others.

When you’re shopping around for a system to handle your email marketing, you need to consider things like how it integrates with your blogging platform, what kind of metrics it offers, if you can connect to Google Analytics, etc.

Cost: With Mailchimp you can manage lists of up to 1,000 subscribers for $15/month

2. SalesForce

A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is not always necessary, let me explain. If you sell a quick check out product such as an ebook for $24.99, people come to the site and pay for it then maybe you don’t need to capture any data other than what you get on an email subscription.

Now, if you provide services as a freelancer, let’s say web design, copy writing or life coaching, then it is important to establish a stronger connection with your prospect or client. This requires more information than a name and an email.

SalesForce can capture those leads right from your site.

Cost: The “Group” package which includes basic sales and marketing for up to 5 user costs $25/month per user.

3. Paypal

Not much to say about Paypal other than you MUST have it, like it or not. It’s been a while since Paypal became an online standard for payment processing, even if you had your own merchant account, Paypal should not be ignored.

Cost: Since you pay a percentage for each transaction you run, I’m not adding a monthly charge here. We’ll leave it open.

4. E-Junkie

E-Junkie is one of those “behind the scenes” kind of application. Some of you might not even know it. What it does is help you sell stuff online. It is an excellent tool if you are selling digital (downloads) products such as an ebook or an mp3 recording. It protects your file by being downloaded multiple times and it hides your url so it is not visible to the user.

You can also use it to redirect traffic to your own page if you want to host the file to download. E-Junkie also works for tangible products.

2 more things, it’s very cool that it makes Paypal part of its ordering process and lastly, you can manage affiliate programs for your products.

Cost: If you have 10 available products, e-junkie will cost you only $5/month including 50 MB of storage and 100 daily checkouts. You gotta be kidding me!

5. Flowtown

Email lists are usually very limited since we usually capture a simple name and email address. Flowtown takes that information and pulls all the social profiles affiliated with that address.

Don’t take this lightly, in my opinion this is pretty powerful, you just went from having an email address to a full profile that allows you to search and filter subscribers by different criteria. AND, having the opportunity to connect on different social networks with that person that just gave you his/her email address, that’s building community right there.

Two more cool things about Flowtown, first, if you manage your email lists with Mailchimp, you can now integrate Flowtown to add muscle to your plain mailing database. And second, the integration of Klout in their system so you can actually tell how influential your contacts are.

Cost: Flowtown packages start at $17/month and you have to add 4.5¢ per import OR, you can “pay-as-you-go” 5¢ per import, 250 emails/month, which means you’ll be paying $12.50/month. This is just ridiculous…

6. SurveyMonkey

You might be thinking what do surveys have to do with turning my blog into a profit powerhouse. Remember how for the last couple of years we’ve been talking about how social media is a 2-way channel? a dialogue rather than a monologue? Well, bloggers are changing dramatically and are becoming more and more engaging with their audiences. Technology also allows us to push the envelope and get more creative.

The concept of crowsourcing is huge, your community is now telling you what they want, with detail. We just have to listen. Tools such as SurveyMonkey or SurveyGizmo make it very easy and affordable to take those conversations with your reader and kick it up a notch, now you can ask questions directly and the best part of all is… your reader, prospect or existing customer loves being asked!

Cost: For $16.67/month, SurveyMonkey gives you an unlimited account, that means you can setup as many surveys as you want with as many questions as you want.

7. Unbounce

Pretty cool stuff here. Unbounce helps you build landing pages, track your traffic and conversion, run A/B tests and set up your own domains. They also have some pretty kick-ass templates that you can just grab to customize or you can create your own from scratch. You can run several campaigns at the same time.

This is a great tool for lead generation.

Cost: You can check it out by using the Free package which offers 200 visits/month, after that, the Basic package offers 500 visits for $25/month and it doesn’t show any Unbounce branding on your pages.

8. Google Analytics

Don’t you feel like it does matter what we’re talking about, Analytics is always mentioned? Well, the application is pretty powerful and we probably use only a small fraction of it. When you’re running a profit center, besides measuring your visits, your bounce rate and all that stuff, you also want to track conversion.

The good thing about Analytics is that you can seamlessly integrate it with other platforms, for example, you can connect it to e-junkie to know each time a person bought your ebook or, you can track ROI on all your Mailchimp email pieces going out.

The truth is that Analytics is pretty powerful and you should commit to learn more about it no matter what you do online. Cost: AND… it’s Free!

So how much is your profit center?

Let’s see, we have…

• Email list management and marketing for $15
• Customer Relationship Management for $25
• Payment processing (open)
• Ordering process and downloadable files for $5
• Subscriber visibility, demographics, location and social profiles for $12.50
• Online surveys for some kick-ass, crowdsourcing product development for $16.67
• Landing Pages for $25
• And web analytics of all kinds for $0

Our monthly cost to handle business online like true ninjas is $97.17!!!

Ok, so you’re not very impressed… let me share this with you, about 7 years ago I spent $70k on a web-based CRM that is now obsolete, around the same time I purchased a $60k phone system that is now worth $2k, if I wanted to hear my prospects opinions I would have to organize a focus group for a couple of thousands to get bullshit results, I paid around $20k for a static website that the only interactivity it had was the contact form and, believe or not, I never got to know any of my customers, hell! I barely had their location!

Let’s just leave it there, you don’t want to get me started with mailing lists… what is this water coming out of my eyes?

Your Turn…

What are your thoughts? are you using any of these tools or maybe different ones? What are your suggestions if you already have some experience or what are your questions if you are barely jumping in the water?

Happy profiting!

SocialMouths is turning one year and to celebrate, I’m launching my first product.

It’s called “Launch Your Awesomeness – Your own kick-ass blog in only 48 hours” and I would absolutely love it if you can take a couple of minutes to read this post to understand what it is, why I created it, for who and how you can hopefully benefit from it.

Also, I’m leaving the comments open if you want to give me feedback, if you have some ideas to improve it or to simply ask questions.

So What Is It?

It’s a packaged solution to speed up the process of launching your blog, a successful one, either for your business or for your own personal brand.

I figured that every new blogger needs 5 essential elements to have any chance to success:

• Full control. In other words, eliminate the webmaster
• A kick-ass first impression, which today means a few seconds
• Some SEO basics to be search engine friendly and don’t invisible
• Social media integration to amplify the message
• And traffic analysis for better performance

So I came up with a solution that provides all that by implementing the necessary tools. Your blog is ready to perform at its best and at the same time, I’m eliminating the learning curve. These tools I’m talking about include WordPress, Thesis, Disqus comments, Tweetmeme buttons, sharing systems like ShareThis, Facebook and Twitter widgets and others. These are the tools you have already seen being used by successful bloggers out there.

A true powerhouse, ready for you to come in and start dropping your awesome content.

Also, I have put together a couple of designs so you can pick your choice. The trick here was to create something that looks good and at the same time it’s simple enough to be usable in any kind of business or industry. You can’t just base your online presence on good design BUT (notice I used the big “but”…), don’t you agree that a decent design build that initial trust any website needs? I thought so, you have been in that situation when you hit the back button in a matter of seconds too, right?

What’s NOT

It’s not a WordPress “Premium Theme”. Period.

Who Is This For?

Well, being an entrepreneur myself, I understand beginnings are not easy specially in the financial department. This means that while we’re looking to launch something of quality, we don’t always have the necessary budgets and resources to build from scratch. I see this with some of my clients. Launch Your Awesomeness is a solution for those people.

The reason I didn’t conduct a survey to have a more crowdsourcing approach to the whole thing, which is something I plan to do in the future, is because I had already enough feedback from over a year of working with clients. I have listened carefully all this time to the needs and objectives of people launching their first blog, redesigning an existing one or even going for a second one.

This Is Your Chance

If you have been postponing the launch of your blog because you didn’t have enough money, you didn’t know how to implement all that technology or your cat is looking at you weird, this is your chance to stop those excuses that build up an unreal sense of fear in you and… Launch Your Awesomeness!

Go visit the site at LaunchYourAwesomeness.com

Thank you!

You still there? Go!

Being successful online requires that you beat a pretty long learning curve and while I try to contribute with my 2 cents, there are amazing bloggers out there that you should be reading on a regular basis.

These people put their amazing talent and knowledge into blog content and deliver it to their online communities week after week.

I have to advise you that if you see that I’m not going with the obvious is for 2 reasons, one because I like helping you discover stuff that you might have missed (there is just too much content out there…) and two, not that I don’t occasionally read the usual suspects, but this is the stuff I visit frequently. Also let me say that this is not a ranking so don’t pay attention to the order.

Why am I sending traffic to other blogs? Am I crazy? That’s just how I roll… enjoy and I hope you find something awesome!

Think Traffic

I just love the approach, it presents a different view at building website traffic. It delivers advice that’s easy to understand and also the transparency to showcase itself as a case study so you can learn from real experience. ThinkTraffic is the second blog from Corbett Barr, author of FreePursuits.

The Launch Coach

Dave Navarro, known as @rockyourday on Twitter, takes it to the next level by teaching you how to launch and sell products online like there’s no tomorrow. TheLaunchCoach is a great resource to learn how to monetize your online presence. He’s also the author of the famous ebook “How to launch the **** out of your ebook”.

ViperChill

Glen Allsopp teaches you how to build traffic, get hundreds of comments, tweets and subscribers. My advice is that when you are trying to learn from somebody, do so from a person whose achievements are obvious. ViperChill has that. If you need creds, this kid was the social manager for brands like Land Rover, HP and Nissan at 18 (No, that’s not a typo…).

Mars Dorian

If you’re tired of reading the same old boring crap about online marketing and personal branding, Mars Dorian is your guy. Just out of the ordinary, kick-ass content with fresh design and writing style. One more thing, you gotta love the photography! Also follow him on Twitter.

Fuel Your Blogging

Part of the Fuel Brand Network, it delivers advice on all aspects of blogging from writing content to promoting and building community. Fuel Your Blogging feels very light as they usually craft very short and fresh posts. Most of the content here is created by Brandon Cox, who deserves a special mention.

IttyBiz

IttyBiz has the perfect tagline to describe itself, “Marketing for businesses without marketing departments”. The blog is ran by Naomi Dunford, who is a true ninja if you hang around the social platforms and the blogosphere. Make sure you visit the store for a collection of kick-ass marketing products.

CopyBlogger

I don’t need to introduce CopyBlogger. The only reason I have included it in this list is because I think this is really a solid source for any level. The blog includes amazing sections on topics such as Landing Pages, SEO or Copywriting 101 (look over the left sidebar…).

Social Media Examiner

Solid social media advice for business people, lots of it. Usually very meaty posts with lots to chew on. What I love the most about Social Media Examiner are the contributors, you get content from people like Denise Wakeman or Mari Smith.

The Hubspot Blog

Hubspot talks about blogging, SEO, social media, analytics and other stuff, but what I like about it is the Lead Generation advice. In this case we’re talking about a company rather than a blogger but we are after the knowledge to beat the learning curve. Hubspot also offers a lot of webinars that are very good resources to speed up you learning process.

Convince & Convert

Another one in the social media department, this one is a little bit more on the advance side. Jay Baer’s Convince & Convert is probably one of the only blogs I read on social media. Solid and consistent content.

Kikolani

Straight up kick-ass advice on blogging and social media. Kristi Hines of Kikolani is not afraid to lay it all out, she shares a lot of resources, links, tutorials, etc. She also contributes to sites like SME.

Famous Bloggers

Do you want lots and lots of content on blogging in general? Famous Bloggers has an awesome frequency of quality advice. This is another one with lots of contributors, I particularly look for stuff from Kristi Hines, Hesham (its founder) and Julius Kuhn-Regnier.

TopRank

One of the most recognized blogs in the online marketing world. Top Rank is definitely one of the few you need to have in your learning toolbox. It covers SEO, social media, content marketing and PR. Top 5 in the AdAge Power150 blogs. Also, follow Lee Oden on Twitter.

Kaushik

You can’t ignore analytics. This one is from Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0. Leaning more towards the advance level. Long posts loaded with great concepts, thoughts, examples and graphics.

Search Engine Journal

I have to admit I don’t read much about SEO, Search Engine Journal is probably one of the only places I visit because of the content, easy to understand for regular human beings. The blog also delivers content on social media, PPC and other very useful topics. Look for Ann Smarty‘s posts…

Me?

Hopefully I can continue to build up SocialMouths and provide value too. Let me know if there is something you would like to read here or if you have any ideas on what direction you would like me to take. I’m always open to ideas, specially if they’re kind of crazy!

Your Turn…

As usual, in these kind of lists, there is always somebody left out… I’m sure there are lots of cool people and blogs delivering awesome content that I failed to include, but I need to keep working, you know?

So why don’t you help me by adding your favorite blogs and participating in the discussion by adding in the comments!

Tweet

Writing content is not easy, no doubt about it.

Then we usually go and start worrying about how to make that content easy to share, how to provide valuable information, how to engage readers and so on to make it even harder.

How do you write your content? There are just too many things to consider…

In the last couple of weeks I was asked a few times on what are the things I consider when writing a post, so I thought of putting a list or items together which then turned into this post. I hope it can of help to you.

I will also ask you to participate by adding to the list or simply discuss the recommendations I’m posting.

1. What’s The Goal?

Yes, you can write a post with a specific goal in mind. If you have been blogging for a while, you should know already what kind of content to write in order to achieve different objectives by observing the impact on your previous content.

Your own experience will actually tell you how to write a popular post that gets tons of love from Twitter or provide a powerful list of resources to get Delicious bookmarks like it’s 1,999. Write a controversial piece to fire up massive comments or simply answer a very specific question in your niche to build trust.

Know what you want the outcome to be before you start typing. If you’re fairly new and have no experience in how your content behaves, take a shot. Dare to try things and observe the impact.

2. Research

It is very important that you’re not just repeating what someone else already said. Most of the time this happens not because we’re trying to copy other people but due to our lack of research. A simple search on Google and Twitter will give you a pretty good picture of what has been said around that topic.

Research will give you a better idea of where you stand and how to approach the topic.

3. Your 2 Cents

Chances are there is already some content published on the same topic you’re writing about, that’s fine as long as you’re adding to the conversation. Again, focus on answering questions that are still open, disagree, do something but add your 2 cents. Don’t make people leave your post with a sense of “being there, done that…”

Kick it up a notch and reference the previous material and then take the discussion further. In other words, provide value or die!

4. Be Yourself

The beauty about blogging is that you have become the publisher, the content creator. Remember that when you’re writing a piece of content.

There are two common thoughts I get from people:

• One is trying to write like somebody else. There are some awesome writers out there BTW… but you should try to bring out your own personality in your content. People will eventually see that and maybe recognize it as your writing style.
• The other one is the world famous “finding your own voice”. Great, but sometimes we force the situation and end up with a final product that doesn’t represent who you are.

Being yourself when you write content should be a natural process.

5. Forget The Search Engines

There is a lot to chew on this topic but I’ll give you the quick version. Do you write for search performance or do you write for your readers?

This is just my humble opinion, forget the search engines when you’re writing and focus on communicating with human beings, robots don’t benefit from your kick-ass piece of content. Once you’re done, go back and optimize as much as possible but please stop as soon as you feel you’re starting to sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Seriously.

6. Clever Headline

Of course you heard this before, first the headline then the first paragraph and so on, that’s when the reader is sitting in front of your post. I also want you to take this in consideration…

Social media is an attraction tool and if you think about it, the only part of your content that makes it to Twitter, Facebook and the others is usually the headline. With the invention of the 140 characters, we are forced to allocate a little more time on crafting that headline.

Let me also point out that I said clever, not smart-ass. Sure, a cute headline will probably get you that click but if there’s no meat on the other side, you’ll also get the visitor to bounce.

7. Never In First Person

The focus of the post should be on others, not yourself. Nobody cares about you (sorry…). People care about getting their needs covered and their questions answered.

A good exercise to accomplish that is to prohibit yourself from writing in first person.

8. Make It Fun To Read

People love when you throw in a little humor or use some sarcasm here and there, without being obnoxious of course. There are bloggers that get away with lots of this stuff, in fact, people can’t get enough of them, but this is not always the case.

This should start with you, if you’re not having fun writing it, this most likely reflect on the post. Do your readers a favor and lighten up a little =)

9. Provide Resources

Don’t be afraid to share links to other people, specially if somebody else has written a great post on something related to your topic. This is not only appreciated by your readers but it builds relationships with other bloggers.

Besides, links is the name of the game baby…

10. Examples

Use lots of real-life examples to illustrate your point. You can even point out people as case studies. This makes for a more entertaining read and allows people to see how a concept works in the real world.

Metaphors can also get you home if you can’t find a good example.

11. Images

It might not be considered as important but I gotta be honest and say that I put some time and thought into getting photography for the post. Having a bad image (you’ve seen those blurry old images…) on your post will damage your chances of a good first impression.

There is a lot of good content you can use for free on sites such as Flickr but if you want to step up your game, paid services are also available and for a buck or two you’ll have your post looking like a million dollars.

2 quick tips on the use of images:

• Optimize for web so it doesn’t affect your loading times while it still a good quality.
• Optimize for search engines. For example, change the name from “DC_10112009.png” to “socialmouths_quick_tips_to_write_a_successful_post.png”

12. Get Rid Of The Clutter

After you finish writing your post, strip it down. Eliminate the fluff. Thank you!

Find simpler ways of getting your point across. Get rid of all the unnecessary wording we sometimes use trying to sound smarter or because we feel the post is too short.

Don’t be afraid, people appreciates the simplicity in reading.

13. Hand It To The Reader

Finish with a call to action. What do you want from the reader? If you want the reader to participate in the conversation by leaving a comment, then ask for it. Sometimes we complain because we get no interaction from readers but we fail to open a forum to discuss the topic. Leave some room for people to add their thoughts.

Here is an idea: Invite people to disagree with you!

Your Turn Now…

As I said, these are some considerations I take when writing a post and thought of sharing them with you, feel free to share your process or why not… disagree with me!

Happy writing.

One of the toughest parts of starting a new blog is getting some visibility.

The problem with doing your initial promotion post-launch is that at that point you have already develop a new series of activities such as content management or front-end interaction. These tasks will considerably reduce your time and resources.

What if you could instead create buzz around your blog even before its launch and before you drop a line of content in it? In this post I’ll share with you a few ways you can build hype about your launch and go live with traffic already coming in your door.

When it comes to planning, this is no different than doing so for your actual blogging in which we’ll assume you have a strategy for content generation, scheduling and stuff like that. In this case, you should also write a little pre-launch strategy.

So here are some of the ideas and hopefully you find them of value:

“Coming Soon” Landing Page

First you need to create a very simple but attractive landing page with the domain name you will be using. Until the day of the launch, this is going to act as your online hub. Don’t think of it as a dead end for your traffic, instead be creative and focus on getting people excited about it.

A plain “Under Construction” page does nothing but annoy people. Give them a little taste of what’s coming.

Start Building Your Email List

Yes, it is possible. Getting people to give you their email address is not easy even having an existing blog with lots of content, doing so for a blog that doesn’t even exist is even harder.

The main element on your “coming soon” landing page will be an email signup box to get updates on the launch of the blog. In order for this to work, it needs to be attractive enough for people to get excited. Focus on great copy and great design.

Guest Blogging

In order to start building up a name for yourself without having your own platform, you should offer to guest post on related blogs. There are a couple of things to consider here:

• Most bloggers will be happy to get a hand with content so don’t be afraid to ask.
• Try to guest post for a relevant blog. If the blog gets no decent traffic it will probably not do much for you either.
• Stay in your field. You don’t want to write for your direct competitor but make sure you find a blogger in your niche, where you know what your talking about and people in your industry can start recognizing your name.

Comment On Other Blogs

I’m not talking about “Hey John, great post” kind of comment, I’m talking about significant contributions to the conversation and obviously staying on topic. Remember that at this point these are the only opportunities you have to express your thoughts.

Also important is to make your comments friendly, create profiles at Disqus and IntenseDebate so you can be compatible with the rest of the planet and make sure you include your future blog address as it will be visible on every comment you make.

Build Some Twitter Muscle

Twitter will be your blog’s best friend but in order to really leverage from this relationship form the beginning is better to start tweeting in advance. Here are the main reasons:

• Twitter will help you establish relationships, by the time you launch, you will already have a small community to go to.
• Being resourceful by sharing good content in your industry will build some initial trust.

By the time you announce the launch on Twitter, people will already be listening to you.

Get Some Celebrity Hype

Announce some kick-ass content to start with a big splash, a good way to do this is by getting somebody with rockstar status in your industry to do an interview with you. There are many ways of doing an interview, it can be written or video over Skype (Read: “How To Produce Video Interviews For Your Blog Using Skype“) if there is some distance in between but if you have the chance to do this interview physically present, you can very easily go for a very nice quality product without losing your shirt.

Last year I saw a couple of blogs do this successfully by leveraging from Gary Vaynerchuck’s popularity.

The good thing is that these kind of leaders in your industry usually need the exposure too, see who’s getting a book published for example. Don’t be afraid to ask.

Give Stuff Away

Another way of getting attention is by giving stuff away, nobody cares if you have published any content if you are giving something for free. Don’t think you need to give away an iPad, you can also do other interesting things like a few copies of a good book related to your niche.

Contests are very powerful if you know how to ask for something in exchange. You can ask people to follow you, to subscribe or to simply tweet to participate but the point in this particular case is to get your blog on the map. Read my post “How To Run Successful Contests On Twitter” to get some ideas.

Facebook Ads

I can already see your face now. A lot of people won’t even consider this but let me tell you that Facebook ad campaigns not only can be very affordable but you have full control of daily limits and even when to stop, there are no long-term commitments.

Even if the campaign is a failure, it is good that you become familiar with these kind of things and get some experience under your belt. After all, this is a testing game.

Ask For Help!

Yes, believe or not, getting help is also on the menu. Ask your peeps to help you amplify the message. Everybody can get some additional support. To give you an example, every time I have an interest on promoting something online, even if it’s not myself, I have the @nakedelephant (my wife), my team at the office and a few online relationships ready to spread some love.

Depending on who you got in your corner or how much support, the message can be easily amplified by 10 times or more…

Your Turn Now…

Share some others ideas, other methods you have used in the past or seen other people do successfully. What was your experience launching your blog?

Or… If you are planning on launching your blog soon, ask any questions!



In previous posts and polls we have discussed the issues of maintaining a blog, that is of course, if you blog for your business and the goal is to make it part of your marketing approach.

Today, entrepreneurs are known for being great at delegating and outsourcing segments of their business to be able to focus on the essentials but, would you consider outsourcing your blog? or at least aspects of the work load it represents?

What would you be willing to outsource?

Also, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments sections. Maybe you think it should not be outsourced at all…

Thanks for participating!