Featured Posts, Miscellaneous Blog Tips 155 comments
Over on Twitter recently @jimlavin asked if I had any ‘ideas how someone with a normal day job can schedule time to blog on a regular basis?‘
Image by Helico
This is actually a great question and one that I’m sure many others will grapple with. While a handful of bloggers are able to blog full time the vast majority of bloggers can not and blog ‘on the side’ before, after (and I’m sure for some ‘during’) other work or life commitments.
This is how I started out. When I started blogging entrepreneurially I was working 3 part time jobs and studying part time (in addition to other ‘normal’ life stuff like being a husband. You can read more of how I progressed from a part time blogger to a full time blogger here.
Following are a few lessons that I learned through that process. It doesn’t just focus upon the topic of scheduling posts (although does give a few tips on that) - but rather probably gives more general advice for those juggling blogging and other priorities such as work, family and other commitments - particularly advice for those wanting to transition from part time to full time blogging.
When I first started blogging it was simply a hobby and something I did out of interest. I had no intention of making money from it or growing it into a business. However when I began to realize that there was potential for this medium to earn an income I (or ‘we’ as I always involved my wife in the decisions) had to make a decision as to whether I was seriously going to pursue it or not.
If you want your blog to grow into a significant income stream or to achieve other serious goals then you do need to make a decision to invest time, energy and perhaps even a little money into it. Making this decision doesn’t guarantee success by itself but for me it was important.
In actual fact for me there were probably a series of 4-5 such decisions. Each time I let go of a part time job to put more time into blogging was a decision that we thought long and hard about and was effectively a stepping stone towards going full time.
This might vary a little depending upon your situation and personality and style of blogging but I found that I worked best when I set aside regular times to blog and established a daily pattern of when and where I did it. For me the times that I blogged varied a little at different periods depending upon my other commitments but I distinctly remember a time where I was getting up an hour earlier than normal to do a solid hour of blogging before going to work. At other times I would set aside time in the evenings (the same time each night) or arranged to have access to a computer over a lunch break at work.
I found that if I didn’t set time aside to blog (and to effectively diarize it) that I simply didn’t do it (or struggled to). For me it was a little like exercise - if I don’t set aside the time it doesn’t happen.
One of the things that I struggled with particularly in the first year or so of blogging was the setting of boundaries. Working a number of jobs, studying, family life and blogging all competed for my attention and at times blogging encroached upon some of these other aspects of my life when it should not have.
My last point of setting aside time to blog was helpful in this but so was giving those around me permission to tell me when I was getting obsessed with blogging.
One practical tip that I would give those juggling numerous hats is to learn about Batch Processing. I’ve written about how batch processing made me more productive but in short it is a technique where you set aside concentrated time to do one particular task rather than trying to achieve lots of things all at once.
For me there was a time where I would set aside every Monday morning simply to write posts for my blogs. I’d take my laptop to a local cafe, stay offline, switch off my phone and church out 5-6 posts in a morning. I’d then schedule these posts for the days ahead and let them publish automatically. I would still do other shorter/newsy type posts during the week - but the posts I wrote on Mondays were my longer, deeper more feature length content.
I found this approach to writing suited me and released me during the rest of the week to concentrate on my other jobs as well as other areas of my blogging.
If you read my story you’ll see that ‘going pro’ as a blogger was a fairly gradual process which effectively involved me decreasing the time I put into other work to increase the time I put into blogging.
While this is not the only way to do it (I know 1-2 bloggers who just decided to go full time and live off savings) it is the approach I recommend IF you have the goal of going full time (and I say IF because I know many bloggers don’t want to go full time). I recommend this approach mainly because building successful and profitable blogs takes time - deciding to quit your job and go full time as a blogger is a nice dream but in reality most blogs earning enough to support a full time blogger take years to build. Unless you’ve got a nice nest egg to live off in the mean time you’re cutting off the income stream that will sustain you while your blog grows.
IF your goal is to go full time (or even to earn a significant part time income from blogging) it is probably going to impact those around you. For me it was something that impacted ‘V’ (my wife) more than anyone else.
‘Honey, I’m going to be a full time blogger’ is a statement that you might want to think twice about saying over breakfast one morning (or at least wait until her mouth isn’t full).
‘V’ was incredibly supportive of my vision to grow blogging into an income stream but it was a process for her as much as it was for me. It meant that we were giving up other income in order for me to concentrate my time upon blogging for starters.
One of the sad things that I’ve seen happen a couple of times over the last few years is bloggers forging ahead with their vision to ‘go Pro’ without bringing along their partners. Blogging is great, but it’s not that great!
When you’re starting out the pressure to post every day on your blog is great. In talking to many new bloggers I find that many struggle with this expectation of daily content. Those who don’t achieve it often feel guilty or as though they’ve failed. Others keep the daily posting level up but as a result let the quality of their work slip.
Here’s the thing - daily posting is not essential to grow a successful blog.
For example - when I while Digital Photography School has two new posts go up each day these days - when I started I posted just 3 times a week to it. My goal was to write 3 high quality, helpful, unique, engaging feature length posts each week for the first month or so and then as the blog grew to increase that frequency. I worked toward producing 4 a week, then 5, then 6….. and beyond. It took me over a year to get it to daily posting even though I was working full time as a blogger.
Daily posting is great, but don’t stretch yourself too thin early on. 2 quality posts a week is better than 7 average ones.
To help with the posting frequency it can be well worth thinking about developing an editorial calendar. For me at different times this meant setting time aside to set goals for the types of posts I wanted to write each week.
Some bloggers take this further and allocate a different type of post for each day of a week (ie Mondays might be the day for reviewing a product, Tuesdays might be a day to do a ‘how to’ post, Wednesdays might be a ‘reader discussion’ day…. etc).
I didn’t do this allocating of topics for days type editorial calendar (at least I never did it for long) but I found when I thought ahead about the content that I wanted to produce, identified topics ahead of time and even set myself deadlines for them that I was much more productive than if I just got up each morning and sat down to write with a blank mind.
Further Reading on Editorial Calendars - Editorial Calendars and Professional Blogging and 7 Ways to Keep Fresh Content Flowing on Your Blog.
Featured Posts, Writing Content 69 comments
What type of content helps to build a popular blog? Today Jurgen Appelo from Noop.nl shares three types of posts to help you grow your blog.
There are many ways to build a popular blog, and each blog author has his own ideas on topics and style of writing. In this post I will tell you about my personal recipe for blogs. I call it sugar, spice & vitamins.
The vitamins are the blog posts that are important for regular readers. They are about becoming a better manager, making life more joyful, having a less stressful job, or learning all there is to know about guinea pigs, motorcycles, Britney Spears, or miniature villages made of toothpicks. In short, the vitamin posts are the essential ingredients for your blog to build and grow around a certain theme or niche. My own blog is aimed at software development managers (probably a smaller niche than miniature villages made of toothpicks). So my “vitamin posts” have topics like How to Select a Fine Technical Manager and To Motivate People… Balance Your Practices.
But how do I get people to consume vitamins?
Well, just imagine that you’re trying to interest consumers in eating savory pies. Waving at people with healthy carrots and sticks of celery will probably not be received with much enthusiasm. People might care about vitamins, but what really gets them motivated is usually something else…
People might say they are interested in your important blog posts, but it’s easier to get their attention with sugar posts. Your blog should have just the right amount of sugar to get people interested. The sugar in your blog are the posts that make people’s mouths water from pure delight. You write these posts with the sole purpose of making your blog easier to consume. Some of my “sugar posts” were Top 100 Best Books for Managers, Leaders & Humans and Top 100 Blogs for Developers.
But why always the number 100 in these posts?
Because 100 is bigger than 25. And bigger than 50. And it’s the first number to require no less than three digits. The posts I mentioned here have been huge traffic generators for my blog. I believe that list size and traffic volume have a non-linear relationship. A top 100 list doesn’t give you four times as much traffic as a top 25 list. It gives you ten times as much! (I even created an article called How to Create a Top Blog List, so that you can enjoy similar results for your blog.)
You can think of other and better ways of attracting new readers. But remember! We’re talking about sugar posts here. They only exist to attract new consumers and to make them digest the vitamins as well. Go easy on the sugar! You don’t want your blog to turn into a cotton candy machine.
You may notice that vitamins and sugar will not be sufficient to keep people interested for long. You need a finishing touch. Something to spruce up your endless stream of healthy and sweet content. I call this last ingredient the spice posts. The spices give your blog flavor and personality. These are the blog posts that can trigger heated debates. Everyone likes sugar, and nobody dislikes vitamins. But it’s the spices that will have people talking about you. Some of my “spiced posts” were Thank You, Stupid Americans and Professionalism = Knowledge First, Experience Last.
Yes, some of them perhaps. I’ve written posts that made people laugh, scream and cry. Figuratively speaking of course. (And some of their replies made me laugh, scream and cry.) It’s the spices that will divide your readers. Some people will hate them. But many will come back for more, because they won’t find those particular flavors anywhere else.
Exactly one year after I started, my blog now has 2,500 feed subscribers, and 1,000 visits per day. That’s not bad for a blog about an extremely boring topic like software development management. And I attribute the success to my sugar, spice & vitamins recipe. The sugar attracts new readers, the vitamins keep everyone healthy, and the spices make it all the more interesting.
So… have you figured out what kind of post this is?
Images by Fred Armitage, Darwin Bell and Riv.
Social Media Smarts: Interview with Tac Anderson, Social Media Man of Hewlett Packard
One of the great things about the social web is the opportunity socialize offline as well as online. That is how I finally got the chance to meet Tac Anderson from HP during BlogWorldExpo.
Tac currently leads social media activities across Hewlett Packard for both internal collaboration and external marketing. Tac is also the Entrepreneur in Residence for Highway 12 Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm, where he advises them on potential investment opportunities in the social media space. Tac blogs regularly at www.newcommbiz.com.
In this interview Tac talks about his role as the voice of social media at Hewlett Packard and Entrepreneur in Residence at Highway 12 Ventures. He also gives us the goods on defining, justifying, testing, measuring and recommending social media. The icing on the cake comes in the form of sage social media advice for businesses and a few resources for those that want to stay up to date on the social web. Enjoy!
Please describe how you got involved in your current position with HP and how social media and internet communications play into your responsibilities:
I was actually recruited by HP back in mid 07. Some HP people had come to a luncheon I was speaking at. I was doing some consulting at the time while working on a startup with a friend that never got off the ground. They offered me an opportunity that was too good to be true and the timing worked out really well.
I was originally hired as the Web 2.0 Strategic Lead for the LaserJet Business. Basically I worked at a worldwide level to implement Web 2.0/Social Media into the marketing organization. This included everything from implementing internal wiki’s, training product teams on using Google Alerts, RSS feeds and other tools, working with the various regions on implementing social media marketing tactics as well lending my expertise where ever I could across HP.
Today, 2 re-orgs later I now sit in the global enterprise marketing group. I still do most of the things I did before but I’m mostly focused on the Enterprise customer and my role has been expanded to include marketing metrics.
What’s your involvement with Highway 12 Ventures?
To really explain my role at Highway 12 Ventures I have to step back just a bit. Highway 12 is a regionally focused VC firm. This means they only do deals in the Rocky Mountain west (ID, CO, UT, MT, OR). I live in Boise, Idaho and have been very involved in our tech and entrepreneurial community. I helped launch our first downtown incubator, I run the TechBoise blog and hold monthly tech meetups. I’ve known the guys at Highway 12 Ventures for a while now and this summer they asked me to come on as an Entrepreneur in Residence.
It’s not the usual type of EIR role that the Silicon Valley/Alley people are used to. Because of my local involvement and that they see a lot of deals, esp out of Boulder and SLC that are Web based, I consult with them as they look at companies to invest in. It’s “in my spare time” and I don’t get paid for it. What I get out of it is the opportunity to sit in on their partner meetings, review their deal flow with them and in general learn more about the VC business. Because of their broad geographic area and the fact that they don’t have a vertical focus I get to see a lot of fascinating companies across the area and meet all kinds of great people.
A question I like to ask is how would you describe or define “social media” to someone who’s web savvy extends no further than email or Google.com?
I don’t really have a canned response but there are two distinctions I like to make. I used to get a lot of people ask me about the difference between Web 2.0 and social media. I explain Web 2.0 as the technologies and tools that enable social media (RSS, JAVA, blogs, wiki’s etc) and social media is the trend in online content/media/whatever that enables people to communicate with each other directly. It’s media that you help shape and influence.
I don’t get the Web 2.0 question much anymore, I think that peaked in early 08 and I’m already seeing a lot fewer questions about social media. We’re really getting to the point, that we all knew we would, where all online content is social in some way. If it’s not now it will be in the next 2 years.
What arguments or business case justifications have you found to be the most effective for investing time, people and other resources into marketing efforts that include social media participation? How about insights on justifying corporate blogging?
You have to start with two things. I always used to say you had to start with one thing but my time in corporate America has taught me that it’s two things.
The #1 thing has always been, who’s your audience. What matters to them?
As an example if you’re trying to reach consumers then the case for blogs and social media is about reaching them where and how they interact. It’s about building trust and being open,which are all trends I’m sure your readers are more than familiar with. If your customers are CXO’s (CEO, CIO, CFO, CMO) then the reason you have a blog is because the two most influential factors to a CXO’s decision making process are the Two G’s: Google and Gartner. Google is speaking to the importance of all search and Gartner is speaking to the importance that analysts play. Blogs are great for reaching both. There’s no lower bang for your buck tactic to reach the two G’s than having a high quality blog.
The #2 thing I’ve learned is to start with what your company is already measuring. Then look at Return on Total Investment. How much does it cost you to do something today? Can you do it cheaper and more effectively with social media? At first don’t try and recreate your companies measurements and reporting. If they have stated KPI’s (key performance indicators) work with those. How can you use social media to impact those numbers. Once you prove that you are capable of moving certain needles then you can broaden what your measuring.
Do you have a process or decision scheme for deciding what new shiny objects to pay attention to and what to ignore? What are your current, favorite social tools/channels/platforms?
Early on, it was easy, you just tried everything that came out. Now you obviously have to be more particular. I think there are two filters I have in place for deciding what new tools to try: Is it in an area I’m interested in? Is it coming from a reputable source?
I’m not a big videophile. I don’t particularly care if there’s another YouTube like product out. I am a big mobile and publishing geek so if a new tool comes out that enables me to produce content from my phone I usually give it a look.
I also really evaluate who told me about the service. There are some people/blogs that I count on for the good stuff. Conversely there are a lot of people/blogs that will and do talk about everything.
What advice can you give marketers, technologists, PR, communications, customer service or marketing people at organizations thinking about incorporating social media involvement into their efforts, but are not sure where to start?
Start by using the tools. If you’re not already on Twitter yourself, I’d be hesitant to launch a corporate Twitter account. You don’t have to be a power user or anything but be comfortable with it. I think the other thing I’d tell people is to focus on the word you used *Incorporate*. I’ve found that social media works best when it’s incorporated into your existing marketing efforts. Finally I’m still a big believer in the corporate blog. Start one if you haven’t yet and start pushing good content to it. Because there’s so much noise out there now that if you all of a sudden decide you need one, it can take 1-2 years to get your blog established. Start small but get something out there.
You’ve written on your blog New Comm Biz about measuring the effectiveness of social media. Please share your perspectives on that and what metrics make the most impact when reporting upstream in your organization?
One of the things I really like about this space right now is that there are no best practices. No one has a silver bullet, no one has all the answers. It’s a lot of trial and error. My best advice is fail early and fail often. You won’t know what works for your company until you try it.
But it’s all about the metrics that your organization is already using. One of the metrics I keyed off of early on was Share of Voice (SOV). This is a measurement most PR groups use to measure the amount of penetration your company is getting in non-paid media. You of course have to be measuring this for online not just offline. Take a historical view of what your SOV is before launching a blog or other effort and then measure it after. To best impact this you need to coordinate your social media efforts with your traditional online efforts. If you have a press release going out, do a blog post on the topic and link to it in the press release.
If you’re in a very sales focused group then it’s going to be leads (however your company defines that). Going back to what I said earlier about incorporating social media; does your sales team know how to use all the advanced search functions on LinkedIn? Does the landing site for your newest lead-gen effort have social components? Things like links to a company blog talking about the offer, a rating/feedback or share this option? Is the page mobile device optimized? If not do those things and measure the difference.
Do you outsource any social media work and if so, do you have tips for company social media marketers regarding finding and managing consultants?
We use agencies, mostly for tactical execution.
The things I learned were to hire people that are already familiar with the tools and the space. I have a hard time finding agencies and consultants that have much hands on experience. At best most are all talk with no action. Having your own marketing blog does not make you an expert. Find someone with some experience.
My other rule in working with agencies and consultants is work with someone you like. You don’t have to be best buds or hang out on the weekends but if you like the person and have a shared understanding of what’s important the output of the relationship will be so much better. Too many times there’s this tension between the client and the agency. You each have to be able to tell the other person that their idea is stupid.
Can you share an example of how you’ve successfully employed a social media effort (large scale or a specific tactic) and how you measured success? (marketing, ORM, branding, etc) URLs to examples are very much appreciated.
I use an HP blog to catalog some of the campaigns we’ve done. You can see those at HP Marketing Impressions.
One that I probably have the most measurable results from was the LaserJet blog. It was featured in the Forrester book Groundswell for our response to early Vista issues around printing and print drivers. There are several little things we did along the way and several things we learned but this is the blog that taught me just how effective a corporate blog can be.
There’s been a lot of talk about how “bad” corporate blogs are and how they are just re-purposed marketing material. This is largely the case but some of that’s ok. What do people expect from a corporate blog. There are good and bad ways to do it but it’s all about your goal.
We didn’t care if everyone in the world read the blog. It’s about LaserJet printers how exciting can it be? But we did want the analysts and IT networking crowd to read it and find it useful. The analysts would read it because it’s there job, we just had to keep putting useful things in it. The IT professionals probably wouldn’t subscribe to it but we did want them to find it through search so we did a lot work around keyword optimization and linking to get the blog rated high as well as lift up deeper HP pages.
I wrote up case study which can be found here about how we also used the blog for competitive response. When Xerox changed some pricing on a competitive technology we were able to roll out a response that some day that got picked up by the analysts and search engines. The last time I checked if you search for “Xerox solid ink” or Xerox solid ink pricing” our post is still the #2 or #3 result and that was almost about 1 1/2 years ago.
Please share 3-4 resources for staying on top of social media marketing trends and tactics:
Well there’s always this blog and mine. lol
Forrester’s Groundswell book I mentioned is a must read IMHO.
Honestly I find it difficult to find a lot of great examples out there. I think you have a lot of people that have been talking about it (but not actually doing much) for the last several years and then you have a few of us that have been fortunate enough to be doing some of this stuff but we’ve just been too busy to write about it. That’s why one of my New Years goals is to blog more about the work I’ve been doing.
Thanks Tac!
You can find Tac Anderson on the social web at:
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