Conversation starters help you share your content

I can really relate to what Lena West recently wrote about the cobbler's son having no shoes.

Since Kristen Beireis and I talked about conversation starters (social media updates that build on and link back to my recent blog posts), I've noticed my mentors and colleagues using them, and I've even been creating them for some of my clients!

But until very recently, I haven't been using them myself! 

While I have Typepad set up to automatically publish each new blog post to Twitter, after that the sharing stopped. My contacts on Twitter and LinkedIn had to be online and watching me in their stream the instant that I published, or they would never see it.

Now, I'm writing several social media updates about the topic of each post, and sending them out over the following days. While Kristen's stance was that you should not include a link in all of your updates, I think it's a good point of reference for the conversation you're trying to start. From there, you can engage with people directly.

Here are just three of the reasons that conversation starters are such a good idea:

1. You'll reach more people than just those who happened to be online when you published or posted about your new content.
2. You can learn more about your readers and what they're interested in, by monitoring, measuring and analyzing which links they click on.
3. You can stay active and visible on social media without having to think of brand new conversation topics each time you post.

Would you like to learn how to write social media conversation starters about your blog posts? Then please join me for my next free call, "Conversation Starters: Let the content sharing begin!" on Thursday, August 12, 2010, from 9:30-10:00 a.m. Eastern.

For call details, subscribe to the Content Mastery Guide updates (from the top right-hand corner of the site), then watch your email next week for information and reminders.

On the call, I'll also show you how I automate this process and measure my results with Hootsuite.

Action Club members, you'll get a Conversation Starter Worksheet, a call recording and a handout - not to mention an entire day devoted to creating great content.

I hope to hear you on the call!