Content Mastery Guide

Editor and Ghostwriter

5 Business Blogging Lessons From Tweetstock 2015

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© olly - Fotolia.com
© olly – Fotolia.com

I recently attended the 11th Tweetstock social media conference at the Hamilton Public Library (Hamilton, Ontario). It was my third time at this social media event and once again I found a like-minded group and many tweetable lessons about marketing and business success.

I pulled my takeaways into five core themes and gathered those tweets into a slideshow (enclosed below). For now, let’s look at how these concepts can help you as a business blogger:

  1. Know yourself

What are your strengths as a blogger? Love to talk about your ideas? Combine podcasts and video posts with written ones. Record your thoughts and use a dictation app or transcription service to turn them into written posts. Or use a ghostblogger.

What are your limitations as a blogger? Sam Fiorella talked about the importance of consistency in activating an audience for an initiative or a business. Determine how often you’ll be able to blog, and then stick to that.

(I know as well as anyone that none of us can be perfect with this. A blogging schedule can be the first thing to go when competing priorities arise.)

Give yourself room to grow. Even if you aspire to weekly blogging, start with every other week or even once a month. Still aim to write every day and finish one post a week. Then you’ll have a reserve of posts to draw from if inspiration wanes or your schedule heats up.

Speaking of blogging frequency, you can also take a page from Julie Cole of Mabel’s Labels:

Remember that people may have missed the links you shared last week – keep promoting your old posts!

  1. Know your audience

I think every Tweetstock speaker touched on this concept, and it’s also a common theme at the weekly #CMWorld chats put on by Content Marketing Institute.

Be clear from the start about your blog’s mission and who it serves. In most cases this will be the target market of your business – those to whom you want to sell your products and services.

Try this marketing exercise I learned many years ago, where you immerse yourself into your target market by interviewing a different person every day for a month about their needs, challenges, preferences and ideas.

  1. Don’t broadcast, help

This was another very popular point at Tweestock, and for good reason. People quickly learn to ignore a business that only sends out promotional information. In order for people to know and trust you, they must first feel that you understand and care about them.

Before posting anything, ask yourself how it will help the reader. Why would someone take the time to click through and read what you’ve written, and will they be glad they did?

  1. Connect emotionally, authentically

The more genuine you can be in your writing online, the quicker people will be drawn towards you or repelled away from you. Both reactions are exactly what you want, so you end up connected with the people who are most likely to follow you, promote you, recommend you, and buy from you.

When you read what you’ve written, does it sound like you? Are you the same person online as you are in person?

  1. Don’t just build a network, nurture it

A lot of people talk about numbers in social media, and there can feel like an endless quest to collect more and more. Yet in the end it doesn’t matter how many people see, read or share what you write. It’s whether they trust you enough to let you help them with your products and services.

When choosing blog post topics, look to your audience for ideas. Track whether people are opening, clicking on, and reading what you write. Repeat what’s working. Survey your readers about what they want to see on your blog.

Want to read more quotes from the Tweetstock conference? Browse this Storify slideshow for my highlights.

P.S. If you liked this post, you might enjoy the Blogging Tips newsletter, delivered weekly to your inbox! Sign up here.

The Accidental Blog Post – How to Free Your Trapped Blog Content

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© learchitecto - Fotolia.com
© learchitecto – Fotolia.com

Charlie Gilkey shared a great concept with our BOOST coaching group the other week. He talked about how all business owners have a gold mine of “trapped content” – things we’ve already written for other purposes, then forgot about or left behind.

“How many times,” he asked us, “Have you answered a question in private that you could have answered in public?”

I liked the concept so much I used it as one of my five blogging tips for time-strapped business owners in an upcoming guest post for SteamFeed. I honed in on email, since that’s one of the main places you’re probably leaving this valuable content behind.

Let’s look more closely at the potential sources of your trapped content, how to spot it, and most importantly how to re-use it as blog posts.

Blog posts are hiding in your emails

Have you ever answered a “quick question” from a friend or family member who knows what you do in your business and asked to borrow your expertise? Did your answer take longer to write than you intended, and spanned four or five paragraphs before it was through?

Also consider the email responses you’ve written to clients, prospective clients, or blog or newsletter readers. If one person asked a question, chances are that others have wondered about or struggled with the same thing.

What you’ve already written could have the makings of a great blog post, once you fill it in with an introduction, conclusion, and other connecting thoughts.

Be proactive in mining for new content when people reach out to you by email. Even if they haven’t asked a question, when someone writes to thank or compliment you about something you’ve written, ask if there are any topics they’d like to read more about on your blog.

Social media messages disappear, but a blog post is forever

Do you find yourself with lots to say on social media but then stumped when it comes to blogging? Here are my suggestions for Facebook and LinkedIn. If you like to share quick tips and ideas on Twitter, you could compile those together around a specific theme and turn that into a blog post.

Similar to email, watch for questions people are asking. These don’t need to be directed to you personally. Search hashtags or other key phrases to find real-time questions and concerns about your topic. (Tip: How to use Hootsuite for social listening.)

What are others discussing?

Do you belong to or follow any online groups or forums? As you add your voice to those conversations, see how you could expand those thoughts into a blog post. You can also use the discussion as a jumping off point (this is one form of curated content).

For public groups, you can link to a group discussion as you would any other social media post (tip: here’s how to find the permalink of a social media post), or embed a post right onto your blog from Facebook, Google+ or Twitter.

For closed groups, you can write in general terms about the topic and your take on it, but do not quote anyone else without their explicit permission or paste any screenshots.

You can re-purpose a course, report or tutorial

As you’re creating a resource to share with current or prospective customers, consider making some or all of it available via your blog. You may be wondering, “Why would someone pay or sign up for something that’s available for free?” I addressed that concern in an earlier post.

The idea for the post you’re reading now came from my own accidental blog post. I was working on my blog planning worksheet and I realized that the section about social media promotion didn’t quite fit the style of the rest of the document. It was more of a tutorial than a worksheet.

Did I scrap it? No way! I turned it into Blog Post Promotion on Social Media – Five Key Ingredients.

Where is your own trapped content hiding? Free it up now to fill your blog with valuable content.

Blog Post Promotion on Social Media – Five Key Ingredients

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© Oleg Zhukov - Fotolia.com
© Oleg Zhukov – Fotolia.com

Sadly, readers probably aren’t visiting your blog several times a day to check for something new. You can use email to reach your audience, but what about those people who haven’t subscribed? Or those who haven’t yet discovered you?

Social media may be your answer. People are always searching for and sharing content that answers a question, solves a problem, or provides a few minutes of welcome distraction.

When someone finds, reads and shares your post, this can create or deepen a trusting relationship with that reader. As long as your blog has a clear strategy to expand on that relationship, that is how blogging leads to business.

An equally important benefit of promoting your blog posts on social media is that it gives your colleagues and fans a quick and simple way to share your content with their own networks.

Here are five key ingredients that will help you promote your posts effectively on social media:

  1. An enticing invitation to read your post

Let the prospective reader know the benefits they’ll find by clicking through to read your articles. Will your post educate, enlighten, inspire or entertain? Provide a compelling hint or quote from your post, or ask a question that brings them into the conversation.

  1. Separate messages for each social media site

Every social network has its own culture, common practices, and restrictions. A Twitter post, for example, cannot exceed 140 characters (and it’s best to go even shorter to give people room for comments).

That means if you automatically copy your Facebook posts to Twitter, they will probably be cut off partway and won’t make much sense to your Twitter followers.

I strongly recommend not automatically posting the same message to all sites, but if you can really only write one message, make sure it’s short enough for Twitter. And don’t use any hashtags or usernames that won’t translate to the other sites.

  1. Permalink

Every blog post has a unique permanent link (URL, or web address), which is different from the main link to your site or blog. Be sure this is what you use in social media posts (as well as email messages).

For example:

  1. Related hashtags

These are words you can add to your messages on Twitter, Facebook and Google+, along with the # sign, e.g., #blogging. Using hashtags can help new people discover you and your content.

Search each hashtag before using to make sure it’s relevant, and then include 1-3 hashtags per message.

  1. Usernames for tagging

Tagging people (adding their username to your message) sends them a direct notification, unless they’ve chosen to block them. Tag anyone you’ve mentioned in your post, to credit them for their ideas and show your appreciation. In return, they just may share your post with their audience.

Note that tagging works differently on each network (on LinkedIn, for example, you can only tag your connections). That is why you can’t use tagging if you automatically post the same messages across all of your networks (see #2).

Want an easy way to remember to gather these details for every blog post you write? Create a repeatable template that will prompt you to fill in the specifics – here is the publishing and promotion template I use myself.

Before You Share a Link on Social Media, Answer These Five Questions

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Content curation is an excellent way to extend your reach on social media. By consistently and strategically sharing the right kinds of links, you can:

  • Build your personal brand (reputation) as an expert in a topic
  • Be more active and visible on social media
  • Enhance your relationships by being helpful

But wait!

time out before sharing a link
© vgstudio – Fotolia.com

Can sharing the wrong links in the wrong way detract from your social media activity and damage your reputation? Yes, absolutely! That’s why I encourage you to review these five questions before you share a link. If you can’t answer yes to every one, head back to the drawing board and review your curation strategy.

  1. Is this a topic your prospective clients care about? First and foremost your goal is to help, inspire, enlighten, educate or entertain the people in your network – and the best links will accomplish all five!
  2. Does this link reinforce your expertise, resourcefulness and connectivity in your industry? Everything you post is a reflection on you and/or your business. When you limit your curation to a set list of topics, you become a trusted source of information about those issues.
  3. Have you read or skimmed the entire article? If this is a site you’re not familiar with, click around a bit to ensure it’s one you want to be associated with. If this is someone you already know and trust, be familiar enough with the content to reply to any comments from your network.
  4. Have you added your own text? This could be a quote from the article, an opinion about the topic, a summary of what’s included, or the reason you think it is worth reading.
  5. Have you given credit to the original source? Including the personal or company name (“tagging” them on each specific social media site) increases your credibility, and notifies the author you’ve shared their content. You may even want to go the extra mile and tag the person who helped you discover the link.

BONUS question: Have you used smart scheduling tools to spread your links throughout the day and week? If you’re silent all week and then bombard your stream with several links in a row, fewer people will see them (and those who do may be annoyed). Use Buffer or Hootsuite to take out the guesswork and make the most of your precious time.

Want to curate content the right way? Try our content curation services!

Which of these questions will most change the way you’ve been sharing links? Please let me know how your network responds!

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Curating Content With Twitter and HootSuite (Slideshow)

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Everyone is feeling overwhelmed by how much new information is always flowing towards us, especially on social media. By becoming a trusted resource for relevant content, you can help others AND attract new customers who recognize you as an expert about the topics you’re posting about.

In this SlideShare presentation, you’ll learn three steps to get you started with content curation for your business, complete with examples from ESS Direct in Barrie. Hint: You don’t have to be active on Twitter to use it as a content curation tool.

For more information, see How Content Curation Keeps You Visible and Valuable to Your Network, or these other posts about content curation.