The downfall of America
July 30th, 2009 — 2:09pm
Archive for July 2009
9 steps for noobloggers
July 29th, 2009 — 5:08am
I had to share this. Since I will be launching a new blog for my humble employer in 30 days stuff like this is right for me. Lists are hot.
Publish 10 Posts
Getting your first comment from someone you don’t know
Get your first link from another blog
Build your readership up to more than 20 readers a day
Hit a level of 20 RSS subscribers
Getting your blog indexed in Google
Get your blog earning $1 a week (update: only if making money from your blog is one of your goals – it’s not for everyone
First guest post on another blog
Having someone (not you or your mum) tweet about your blog
9 First Step Goals for New Bloggers
My youngest boy will take his first steps any day now. He’s been watching his older brother (and his mum and dad) run around the house for 12 months now and you can just see in his eyes the desire to be up and doing it too. This week he’s started pushing around the block trolley (right) and is practicing his standing up without the aide of anything to pull him up.
It’s not been a fast process and by no means do I expect to see him running around the house soon but he’s almost ready for his first steps.
Many bloggers start blogs these days with the dream of millions of readers and making large amounts of money.
While it is possible to build blogs that are widely read and profitable and there’s nothing wrong with dreaming big – the reality is that it takes time and a lot of work to build these kinds of blogs.
New bloggers would do well to spend more time thinking about their ‘first steps’ than just the big picture dreams and goals that they have..
Yesterday while chatting with a brand new bloggers who had some very lofty goals for this blogging I reflected back to him that I felt that in addition to the big dreams he had that I wondered if he might also benefit from having some realistic goals for the short term.
Here’s a list of 9 first step type goals that I suggested to him that might be a good place to start:
Note: Others goals might include goals more to do with setting up your blog including those related to design, platforms, setting up metrics/stats etc.
To someone who has been blogging for a while these kinds of goals might seem rather small and insignificant – but for a new blogger they’d be where I would start.
For new bloggers these goals might also seem a little insignificant also (in fact the blogger I was talking to told me I was thinking too small and dismissed my idea) – however I’d argue that to get to your big dreams there is a lot of steps in between – many of which might not be glamorous or as fun to think about. However sometimes it’s helpful to visualize the very next steps that you need to take in order to move towards your goals.
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Assuming you have readers – How to Get In Tune with Your Readers Needs [and Produce Compelling Content]
July 29th, 2009 — 5:03am
Compelling - “having a powerful and irresistible effect; requiring acute admiration, attention, or respect” Image by margolove
Compelling content is a cornerstone of all great blogs. But what is it? How do you write it? Why do some blogs have it and others don’t? Over the next week at ProBlogger I’ll be exploring a number of important principles (I have 7 so far) of producing compelling blog content. Not all of the principles covered will be relevant for every post you write or even for every type of blog but hopefully in these principles you’ll find something that helps to take your own content to the next level. Make sure you’re subscribed to ProBlogger to get updates of each post in this series. For content to be compelling it needs to connect with needs of those consuming it. Whether those needs are for entertainment, news, inspiration, community, instruction, intellectual stimulation, a laugh/or a cry etc – if your content meets the need it goes a long long way to being compelling – after-all, who pays attention to something that has little relevance to them? Staying in tune with these needs can be done in a variety of ways including: I’ve recently asked my readers to share their ‘best and worst’ aspects of blogging at the end of a week. One of the benefits of doing this (and one I didn’t anticipate) was that it identified some common and recurring problems that my readers were having. The comments on these posts have led to me writing numerous posts that directly seek to solve their problems. Ultimately your goal as a blogger should be to produce content that adds value to people’s lives. Produce this and you’ve got a great foundation to build a successful blog upon. I love the question that Chris Garrett (the co-author of the ProBlogger book) encourages bloggers to ask every time they write a blog post. The question is - ‘So What?’ This question is all about asking yourself whether a post actually matters – does it have any point? Will it help people in some way? Write it out in bold lettering and put it somewhere prominent in the place that you blog. Before your hit ‘publish’ on any post ask it to yourself – ‘SO WHAT’? Does your point have a point? Does it meet a need? Who will it help? One of the best ways to ensure that your content is meeting real needs that people have is to Solve Your OWN Needs and Problems. An exercise that I do every time I start a new blog is to not only brainstorm a list of topics I have expertise on and things that I can help others with – but I also create a list of things that I need to learn for myself on the topic. What don’t I know yet? What challenges do I currently face? What aspects of this topic do I ask others about? Once you’ve got that kind of list you have a list of real needs that people have and your goal needs to be to learn more in order to be able to answer them or to find someone else to help you write content on those topics. Another useful list to create is a list of problems that you have previously had and have overcome. Think back to when you were just first exploring your topic (or if you can’t remember put yourself in the shoes of a complete newbie who has just started out). What questions did you have? What mistakes did you make? What challenges did you not know how to overcome. These beginner questions and needs are GOLD – write them down and write posts that answer them. Take 15 minutes to go on a Reader Need Hunt Your goal is to spend the next 15 minutes compiling a list of needs that your current readers and/or potential readers might have. Start in your blog’s own comment section and hunt for questions and then proceed through the list mentioned above. If you don’t have any readers or those you have are not verbalizing their needs yet – focus upon the last two items on the list. You can’t find enough of these types of problems and needs. Compile them all in a list and keep it somewhere that you can begin to work through. When I asked you what compelling content was to you the themes I’ve explored above came up a lot – here’s some of what you said on the topic:
You must have readers for this to work. Since I am reading this it makes total sense that I can lecture you (myself).
Zoom in
Principle #1 – Being In Tune with Your Readers Needs
3 Hot Tips For Connecting with Reader Needs
Hot Tip #1 – Best and Worst Posts
Hot Tip #2 – Ask So What?
Hot Tip #3 – Solve your Own Problems
Homework – Go Do This!
What You Said on the Topic
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PDF view on iPhone
July 29th, 2009 — 4:48am
I was readin this article via reader and I clicked xxxx link. I am reading this on my iPhone and I’m pretty impressed with the online PDF viewing mode. Check the pics and link. The read is worth reading too. The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report.
Social Influence Marketing Report Proves Useful
Jason Falls
Razorfish has published a pleasantly useful report on social media called, “The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report.” You can download the report on Razorfish’s website here. It’s well worth the read.
The company’s VP and Global Social Media Lead, Shiv Singh sent a number of marketing and social media bloggers advanced copies of it last weekend in hopes we would write about it. I normally have little time to read reports or books, but most things coming out of Razorfish are pretty good and Singh has a stellar reputation, so I gave it a look see.
The report does something a lot of social media bloggers, thinkers and talkers don’t do. It whittles the focus down to a specific: Influence marketing or leveraging social connections with online influencers to market your product or services. Their analysis includes a survey of social influence which touches on the role of social media in buying decisions, how social media is becoming a place for paid and unpaid marketing efforts and talk of Facebook Connect an the resulting movement of the social graph.
More interestingly to me, though, is that Razorfish reveals in this report a new influence metric call the SIM Score, or social influence marketing measure. The score has two attributes the report calls, “critical.” First is the total share of consumer conversations the brand in question has online. The other is the degree to which customers like or dislike your brand when they talk about it online, or a sentiment score.
According to the report, “The first attribute … is a measure of reach. The second a measure of likability. The SIM Score combines the two attributes to essentially measure favorable impact of your brand.”
Essentially, the SIM score takes the net sentiment score for the brand and divides it by the net sentiment score for the industry, giving us a number. Comparing it to competitors would be relevant. I’d be interested to see other ways they might recommending using it.
There are lots of great insights to be pulled from this report. The best way for you to grasp them is to go and download it for yourself. It can be found online at….
Just click the link above if you want some more of this.
See and download the full gallery on posterous
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Quick tips for blogging as a job
July 29th, 2009 — 4:34am
Not that you would want to treat your blog like a business but a game plan nonetheless.
Here is my gameplan. Post interesting content often. Starting now.
How to Treat your Blog like a Business
In this post Robb Sutton – author of the ebook Ramped Reviews. A very helpful ebook that I’ve just read that has some great ideas on how to get products to review on your blog, how to write profitable reviews and much more. It’s a great read on a topic that I think a lot of bloggers will find helpful.
As you take a look at your blogging habits in your quest to become a top blogger, you need to ask yourself several questions that will determine how you need to shape your blog for the future.
If you answered “yes” to any of the questions above, you need to look at your blog seriously and start treating it like a business. Each of those questions directly correlates to a function that takes you out of the pleasure blogging world and into running a secure business that generates profits. As we continue on this path to creating a source of cash revenues, what do we need to look at specifically to treat our blogs more like a business and less like a hobby?
How to treat your blog like a business
Planning
Every successful business has a laid out plan of attack and blogging as a business is no different. You need to have an idea of where you want your blog to go in the future and the steps you are going to take to get to that goal. Plans change and adapt with the times, but the end result is often one in the same.
Are you trying to build a successful review blog on fishing equipment? You have to lay out the steps required to get to the top of your niche. What products are you going to need to review? Which interviews do you need line up? Which companies and blogs do you need to work with to create more traffic and subscribers? Are you going to hold contests and giveaways with some of the industries latest gear? These are all types of questions that you need to answer for yourself and create action steps to carry out as you continue to grow.
This long term planning and focused goals are what sets the successful blogs apart from the vast wasteland of un-updated waste that plagues the web. Each of these blogs had grand plans of making it big, but by not having a defined plan that required action…they become unsuccessful and ignored in pursuit of the next big thing. By creating these action steps that lead towards goals, you are developing a business plan for the…
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Lolcat magic
July 29th, 2009 — 4:04am
Lite as a fether stif as a board…
Picture by: dunno source. Caption by:anthascats via Our LOL Builder
Lite as a fether
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Learning from leaders
July 29th, 2009 — 4:03am
One day I’m going to print all my google items and make a hard copy. This little gem is a quick read on being a savvy business leader and growing your business.
5 Leadership Skills That Will Help You Grow Your Business
5 Leadership Skills That Will Help You Grow Your Business
When starting a home business whether it is MLM / Network Marketing or Direct Marketing there is no leadership manual that comes with the “opportunity”.
Sure, you can get advice, attend meetings and go to the conventions, however, nothing replaces “hearing it” like actually “doing it”. RJ states, “Over many years in this industry and leadership development in the corporate world, I have identified 5 leadership skills that will help entrepreneurs avoid the common pitfalls of leadership.”
Skill #1 – Invest time into those who are investing time, energy and money into themselves and their business. This will ensure that you do not become an organizational babysitter.
Skill #2 – Work with those who are coachable and follow direction. This is not the same as skill #1. The key here is to look for assistance not resistance.
Skill #3 – You must first become a Master Marketer and secondly a Mentor. If you want to stop your organization from growing then shift into the full-time “teacher” mode.
Skill #4 – Obtain true self confidence and avoid becoming your team’s therapist. The key here is to understand who you are and stay confident in your role as a leader.
Skill #5 – Understand the value of your time and protect it. Sometimes the servant leadership role gets abused so don’t forget that time is money.
Photo by a2gemma
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7 Secrets to Tweeting Your Corporate Culture
July 29th, 2009 — 3:16am
Mashable gets it when it comes to social media. Will you use a guide like this at your company?
via Mashable! by Sharlyn Lauby on 7/27/09
Sharlyn Lauby is the president of Internal Talent Management (ITM) which specializes in employee training and human resources consulting. She authors a blog at hrbartender.com.
I admit I’m a Twitter addict. I enjoy the flurry of tweets and the variety of information my followers share with me. But even though I like the variety, it’s still important for me to feel some sort of connection to the people and companies I follow. On the people side, the way I connect is by getting to know someone’s personality. It’s the same if I’m following a company. Where the person is offering personality, the company is successfully tweeting their corporate culture.
But if all you’re doing is sending out auto-tweets, I’m not sure either of us is getting the full benefit of your presence on Twitter. Some people don’t like communicating with a company logo. But when a company offers a pleasant look and feel, and tweets out information of value to customers, then it is possible to connect with them. Here are 7 suggestions (along with some Twitter examples) for establishing a rock-solid corporate culture on Twitter:
1. Share Your History
I’m not talking about chronicling the 42 year history of your firm 140 characters at a time. Although, I guess if you really wanted to, you could. What I mean by share your history is that you should tell the Twitterverse when you make history. For example, if your company is named one of the Top 50 Places to Work or wins an industry award; that’s making history and you should tell the world by tweeting about it.
Another historic moment is when an organization grows and expands, especially in the current economic climate. Dunkin’ Donuts did a great job announcing their entry into the Birmingham market.
2. Talk Vision and Mission
Kris Dunn, vice president of people for DAXKO, explained to me why Twitter is a great fit for his company. “We’ve got a culture that calls for a lot of communication, so the transparency and immediacy of Twitter fits that. Also, we believe in our team members being active in their professional communities (their profession – marketing, software engineering, etc.), so Twitter fits that as well.”
His point is well taken. People want to be engaged with companies that look engaging. Think about the purpose of your organization. Twitter can be a place to talk about goals, plans and offer a glimpse of what life is like at your place of work.
3. Reveal Industry Insights
Many companies are using Twitter not only as a place to talk about their organization but their industry. For example, looking for the top 10 cruise vacation destinations? Rather than hoping customers find that information via some travel survey, then put two and two together, Princess Cruises smartly tweets that info out and at the same time lets people know they have cruises that take you there.
Another company setting the standard in this area is Pandora Radio. When a piece of legislation that could impact their business was introduced in the U.S. Senate, they turned to Twitter to educate listeners. They regularly updated their followers on the progress of the legislation. And, they thanked their tweeps for the support. (Very important!)
4. Recognize Employees
There are so many ways you can share with Twitterland the things you do from an employee standpoint. Everything from healthcare coverage, to free gyms, and employee orientation can all get the Twitter treatment. But when it comes to tweeting about employees, the leader is really Marriott International.
First, they very smartly tweet about their company’s commitment to diversity. As a reader, this speaks volumes about what’s important to Marriott as a company. Second, I have been equally impressed with the sensitivity they expressed for their associates and others during the recent tragedy in Jakarta. That puts a very human face on the corporate Twitter account.
5. Profile Customer Successes
Twitter, like many other social networks, is made up of groups of really supportive individuals who want to see positive happenings and big wins with social media.
Jessica Lee, senior employment manager for APCO Worldwide, feels that as Twitter matures we’ll start seeing companies share more of their own and their clients’ successes. “I personally like sharing even the very smallest things – clients wanting to get more involved in social media, or how our own Facebook Fan Page is growing – because it’s exciting to see the growth along with new and different ways of being applied in the business world.”
DAXKO, meanwhile, is combining the popularity of Twittering by their customers with their company user’s conference by setting up a Twitter account for the conference. According to Dunn, they’ll use the site to “live tweet from the conference so our customers that couldn’t attend can follow what’s going on and hopefully get some value out of it.”
6. Be Responsive
Using Twitter for sharing business messages is one thing. But as your culture becomes more defined on Twitter, you might find yourself using it provide customer service. @ComcastCares has raised the bar for addressing customer service matters via Twitter.
Much of the success attributed to @ComcastCares is their responsiveness. Dunn agrees. “I think I’d rather have no Twitter account than an account that wasn’t responding to replies or DMs within 5 to 10 minutes. Customers that are savvy enough to use Twitter are going to expect a lot of responsiveness.”
And, it’s not only how fast you respond but how you respond. Lee reminds us that “whether your customer is a consumer of your product or service, or in my case, a potential employee who is interested in working for APCO – the tone should still be conversational and friendly. And ultimately, you want it to be an extension of yourself and a reflection of your organization’s culture.”
7. Ask Questions About the Future
If you’re looking to reach into the mind of consumers, Twitter can be a medium to get real-time information. Just ask a simple question, what are you concerned about?
Or, what do you want to see in our tweets?
As a consumer, I love it when companies ask me for my opinion. It shows me they care about me and what I have to say. And, I love it even more when I see a company take suggestions and ideas seriously.
Conclusion
So whether it’s an individual talking about their organization or a company tweeting about what makes them special, Twitter can help to define and promote your corporate culture. Even with 140 characters you can say a lot about yourself, your workplace, and what you do.
Use the examples in this post as the starting point for a conversation or training session about Twitter best practices and your corporate culture. By sharing with your team the right way to leverage Twitter, we can all celebrate our successes together. If you know any other good examples of companies using Twitter to share their corporate culture in a positive way, please share them in the comments.
More Twitter resources from Mashable
- 5 Habits of Successful Executives on Twitter
– Twitter for Beginners: 5 Steps for Better Tweeting
– HOW TO: Use Twitter for Customer Service
– 25 Twitter Apps to Manage Multiple Accounts
– 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them
Tags: business, Lists, social media marketing, twitter
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Found Footage: Robochan gets a 3GS upgrade
July 29th, 2009 — 2:45am
I can’t tell if this is cool. What is cool? Not the soundtrack. It is, however, fitting for the little touchy humanoid.
via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) by Tim Wasson on 7/28/09
Filed under: Odds and ends, Found Footage, iPhone, iPod touch
Back in May, our own Steven Sande reported on a robot with an iPod touch for a head. At the time, Robochan was pretty limited in capability and could only mimic back taught poses and stumble around drunkenly.
A lot has happened in two short months. Robochan has received a brain-transplant courtesy of the iPhone 3GS as well as other software changes. He’s been given alarm functionality to wake you up at a specified time, basic human interaction, and motion teaching and playback. But most importantly, Robochan can now dance around drunkenly to match his drunken walking.
As a robot fanatic I can only hope we see a more sober version of this robot on store shelves everywhere, but I’m not holding my breath.
TUAWFound Footage: Robochan gets a 3GS upgrade originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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swissmiss | Step-By-Step Guide To Getting Shot By The Sartorialist
July 29th, 2009 — 2:36am
