Conversational Media Marketing

Today, I want to share a few secrets I've learned along the way that may help you to become a more successful business blogger.

(OK, so they're not really "secrets." In fact, they've become pretty well-established business blogging best practices. Of course, if you don't already know them, then perhaps secrets they are. Now that I've cleared that up, uh-hum, on to our program.)

1. Define your community - Determining the audience you're attempting to reach is Marketing 101. In social media terms I think the word "community" is a better representation, for we no longer "target audiences" but "participate in communities."

Defining who it is you want to reach has bearing on everything you do, and it's no different where blogging is concerned. I believe it's helpful to even go so far as creating a persona, someone who is a representative of the community in question. For me, that persona is, in fact a real person, Ines Hegedus-Garcia, a Realtor in Miami.

A year or so ago I had the privilege of tutoring Ines in a contest called Project Blogger held by Active Rain. It gave me the opportunity to share everything I'd learned to that point and Ines would tell you that she benefited as well.

2. Write with that community in mind  - When I blog, I try to do so with Ines and those of her ilk in mind. I work under the assumption that if the content is beneficial to her, it will be beneficial to others as well.

As you participate in the community you'll learn what their needs are and can address those. If you scratch where they itch, you're sure to get their attention.

Someone who keeps this principle at the forefront is Chris Brogan. Everything he writes is for the benefit of his readers, and the community has rewarded him with a huge following and credited him with a high degree of influence.

I can tell you this, if Chris links to you via his blog or Twitter, it will mean a wealth of traffic and a number of Twitter follows. I've been the grateful recipient of his kindness in that regard a couple of times and that's been my experience.

3. Write with Google in mind - Face it, you have two audiences who read your blog. One is human and the other is made up of machines. We call them "spiders," little creatures who index the content on your site with a view toward understanding its proposition and ranking you accordingly.

Make sure your posts are: Keyword-optimized, frequently updated and thematically-relevant.

As to keywords, once in the post title and twice in the body content.

Take this post for example. I used the term "business blogging" in the title and in the post itself (or variations on it). It's best to front load the keyword in the title when possible too,  as I did in this case. The title would have read better had I said "Seven simple secrets to successful business blogging," but that would have put the keyword at the end, so I opted to shift the phrases.

As to frequency, posting three to five times per week is minimal, at least until you gain a greater degree of authority where Google is concerned.

As to topical or thematic relevance, if you're writing a blog about cats, then don't write about dogs, hamsters, giraffes, kangaroos and koala bears too. Make it about cats, cats, and more cats!

Chris says to keep at least a 10:1 ratio of on-topic to off-topic posts. That's sound advice.

There's much more detail I could go into regarding blogging with search engines in mind, but will save that for a later post.

4. Find, follow and communicate with influential bloggers in your niche - That practice will garner a number of benefits. If you subscribe to their feeds, read and comment on their stuff, write your own posts in response and trackback when possible, the will take notice and may return the favor. As a result, you're likely to become the beneficiary of some of their readership and traffic.

I made this a common practice early on in my business blogging (see, there's that keyword again) career and it paid off. Though the playing field is much more crowded nown, it's still a good practice.

5. Write "Top 10" posts on occasion - My friend Rick Bruner, the founder of Business Blog Consulting and a man I credit as being one of pioneers of business blogging made that suggestion and it's also sound advice which I'm trying to take. This post is one such example. 

6. Write link-bait posts on occasion - I am reluctant to even include this on the list as the term, for me, carries a negative connotation. (It's a completely acceptable practice in SEO circles however.)

Link-bait, in case you're not familiar with it, means creating content that generates back-links. Brian Bille, my marketing partner-in-crime here at Bizzuka, lends this definition:

Link bait is a piece of content (blog post, site content or an application) created intentionally or unintentionally to obtain incoming links. Some link bait is purposely created to stir up controversy or mentions high profile individuals in hopes to recognize the content with a link from a quality site.  Other link bait is simply well-written, informative content that does the same.

It's the latter I'm talking about. I never write posts strictly for the purpose of link-baiting. But, I do write posts that, based on past experience, I assume will become link-bait. My Savvy Women in Social Media post is one example. While I knew it had the potential, my motive was to recognize the achievements of this select group of women, women I admire and respect. The back-links and traffic that may have accrued were lagniappe.

So, let me rephrase this point and put it this way: Write high quality, informative editorial content.

Last but not least...

7. Establish a presence in the social mediasphere - Used to be blogs were pretty much the Alpha & Omega of conversational media. Everything hinged around them. No longer.

Now, we have , Facebook, MySpace (cringe), Bebo, niche online communities -- an entire universe of social networking sites and applications where we need to have a presence if we're serious about using social media to communicate our message.

Our blog should be the base of operations, but we should have outposts in many of these places and become active participants. It's just how things are done these days.

I hope at least some of these "secrets" have been helpful. If so, let me know by leaving a comment or Twittering me. Perhaps you have some secrets of your own you'd like to share. I welcome those, plus any questions, comments or critique.

If you need a case study as to how Twitter can serve business purposes, allow me to provide not one, but two.  (Just so you know, it takes a little while to tell this story.)

A Touch of Gray
I was setting up some segments on Blog Talk Radio for the Bizzuka Buzz radio show we do every Friday when an ad banner caught my attention. It said something like, "Listen to Jack Nicholson's last words in A Few Good Men." (I apologize for not grabbing a screenshot when I saw it.)

Being a Nicholson fan to begin with and in the mood to hear him say, "The truth. You can't handle the truth," I clicked the ad which took  me to a landing page for Just for Men's Touch of Gray product which included the clip as well as a call-to-action to get a free box of the stuff.

While I don't have a lot of hair left to color most of it is gray, so I clicked the button. That's when things went awry and where Twitter enters the story.

If you've become a fan of Chris Brogan and David Alston's Twebinars, you know it takes a bit of doing to get all the pieces in place to successfully participate. During yesterday's Twebinar, for example, several questions were asked about what was needed. This post is designed to answer that question and make the next Twebinar a walk in the park.

Twebinar how-to:

First, you'll need to log in to the "webinar" portion. That goes without saying. If you want to keep things basic, that's actually all you would need to do. Questions can be asked via the Q/A panel on the interface.

However, what makes Twebinars the fun, unique, interactive and social event they've become is the added layer that Twitter provides. Here's what you need for that:

1. Be logged in to your Twitter account so you can send tweets to Chris, panelists and other Twebinar attendees.

2. Have a second browser tab open to (used to be Summize until Twitter acquired it). That will give you the ability to follow the conversation timeline and enable you to interact with others. (I just switch back and forth between the two tabs. I'm sure evntually Twitter will incorporate both components into one interface.)

3. The glue that holds all of this together is the use of what are known as hashtags (#) specific to the event. In the case of yesterday's Twebinar it was #Tweb2.

Each time you post a tweet just include the hashtag associated with the particular Twebinar and your tweet will be added to the timeline.

That's all there is to it!

NOTE: Early on www.hashtags.org was the site used for tracking tagged conversations, but with the advent of Summize that seems to have changed.

BTW, Twebinars are great resources for meeting others who have similar interests as you and for building out your social network inside Twitter. I find interacting with others during the Twebinar is as informative and enjoyable as the webinar portion itself.

When it comes to faithfully consuming RSS feeds in , I suck! The things pile up after days of neglect to the point where I simply click "mark all as read" and be done with it.

I'm far from being without recourse however. , and to some degree Plurk, have become my new RSS feeders of choice. For example, just today I received the following tweets...

• To my 'dotcomrades': Check out these newly minted words: http://tinyurl.com/5ftgjm
• MarketingProfs Avoiding the CAN-SPAM buzz kill: http://tinyurl.com/65fzty
• This Conversation is Making me Dizzy: http://tinyurl.com/67mjtn
• Oldie but goodie: " How to Successfully Moderate a Conference Panel, A Comprehensive Guide" http://tinyurl.com/2kmnbt
• Traveling around the U.S.? Have time to kill between conferences? Check out Crocs' www.citiesbyfoot.com website for walking destinations! (I'm a big Crocs fan btw)

All that within just a few minutes. So, tell me, what do I need Google Reader for again? Has Twitter, Plurk, Friendfeed and other such apps changed the way you consume RSS feeds and gather your information?

Back in the day (circa 2004-2005), most of my blog traffic came from one of two sources: a) blogrolls and b) other blogger's posts. Nowadays, a lot of it comes from Twitter, Plurk, Friendfeed, Facebook and, yes, Google (thankfully).

What does that indicate?

1. The conversation is much more distributed than it used to be. Mack Collier thinks so too.
2. Blogrolls are less important that they used to be.

As to why I'm not seeing traffic from other's blog could mean that:

1. The value of my content is less than it used to be.
2. There are more of us talking now so less attention is paid to any one blogger. The competition for attention is higher to be sure.
3. I'm not spending enough time commenting on or referencing other's blog posts myself.

Lately, I've been getting notices of followers with names like mandy711, nikkiwikki and brandi454. When I click through to view their profile there's usually an avatar of an attractive woman associated with it, though not always. (One avatar contained the words "adult content.")

It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but these and others like them are nothing more than spammers invading Twitter. I refer to them at "twammers."

Here are eight tips to help you spot a Twitter spammer a mile away.

Talk about good timing. If you needed a good excuse not to use Twitter on July 4, this is it. Announced just yesterday is a new microblogging service called identi.ca. It's a lot like Twitter, only better.

How so? It's open source.

The software is available for download. In other words, instead of relying on one set of servers as with Twitter, the system is distributed among its users, or can be at least. Read/Write Web explains it this way...

"I put a customized version of the foundation software (called Laconi.ca) on my server, you put one to your liking on yours, we both get friends on our local copy and any other versions around the web - and everyone can communicate with each other just like we were using the same service from the same provider."

Technology pundit Duncan Riley says the biggest breakthrough is "support for the new OpenMicroBlogging standard, which means that in theory, anyone could host the script and each service would talk to each other, creating a distributed, decentralized Twitter."

Does this guarantee reliability and scalability? Not necessarily, but, as Brian Solis suggests, it's "incredibly promising."

Some are wondering what my motives are in calling for a boycott of Twitter on July 4, a day I'm suggesting that we "declare our independence from Twitter" for 24 hours.

I can understand that some, perhaps many, consider this an exercise in foolishness (or stupidity) and that nothing will be accomplished. It's obvious that others view Twitter's foibles as nothing more than an annoyance, something to be tolerated until the day finally comes when we see the Fail Whale no more.

Here's my rationale:

1. Like many of you I've been frustrated with Twitter's performance. And, like many of you, I've done my share of complaining. The thing is, I was raised to believe that if something needed to be changed, just talking about it was not the answer. Action had to be taken. Based on much historical precedent, I feel a boycott is an appropriate course of action.
2. I'm sure that Biz and Evan are taking these issues seriously and I'm sure they're not oblivious to the cries of the masses that the service needs to be fixed. However, if they are listening, they're not communicating that fact. As such, I feel an incontrovertible shot across the bow needs to be fired. A 24-hour mass exodus would send such a message. (We send a message by NOT sending messages via the service.)

My rationale is not:

1. To get link-bait. I could care less about that.
2. To simply vent my frustrations. While I'll not deny the boycott is born out of frustration my hope is to accomplish something positive. 
3. Based on a disdain for Twitter or a desire to see it fail. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love the app. I want it to succeed. After all, it's where my peeps are.

Why I chose a boycott

Boycotts have been used down through time as one means to effect change. A great example, and one reason I suggested July 4 as the date for the twittercott, is the boycott of British trade goods in 1769 based on the "taxation without representation" issue.

There have also been scores (if not hundreds) of consumer boycotts over the years. That's what this is essentially, and I don't see the fact that Twitter is a free service as being reason enough not to call for one.

Call this effort into question if you will. That's your right. While I may be extremely naive, I'm also very sincere. If you happen to support the Twitter boycott (what I'm affectionately calling a "twittercott") I'd ask you to do at least one of the following:

1. Don't use Twitter for 24 hours starting at 12:00 a.m., July 4.
   I'm not asking you to permanently discard Twitter, just don't use it for one day. Use the boycott as an excuse to explore other services like Plurk, FriendFeed or the new identi.ca. Heck, use it as an excuse to get away from the computer or cell phone and enjoy the day with your friends and family!
2. Leave a comment here expressing your support.
3. Join the I started to evidence your show of support.
4. Help spread the word via your blog, , Facebook or other social network, and, yes, even via Twitter.

And, please, if you hold an opposing opinion, feel free to leave a comment to that effect as well. If Independence Day represents anything, it's our right to freely express our opinions and convictions no matter what they may be...even if that includes boycotting a service we all love.

UPDATE: Please read today's post where I explain my rationale in calling for a boycott.

, an app we all love (or love to hate), has its share of glitches. For a while, we all overlooked those because, as you know, love covers a multitude of sins. No longer.

Twitter's "twouble's" have morphed from being a mere annoyance to an outright aggravation. Despite the fact the app is free to use (there are plenty of apps that are free to use...and they work!), Biz and Ev have had plenty of time to get it fixed. And they haven't.

It's time fans of Twitter express some tough love by joining in a 24-hour boycott - a "twittercott" - starting at 12:00 a.m., July 4th. Let's declare our independence from Twitter by not using it the entire day. We send a message by NOT sending messages. Get it? If enough of us were to participate it would be a shot heard round the world wide web!

For the serious junkies, there are other options available that will at least get you by until the boycott is over, Plurk and Friend Feed.

NOTE: I have no desire to see Twitter fail. I just want it to work! It seems to me a boycott is one way we can express our dissatisfaction. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment and indicate whether you're joining the boycott or not and why. Thanks!

Move over webinars and workshops...Twebinars and Plurkshops* are the new, fun ways to facilitate familiar business interactions.

Webinars and workshops are common business meeting practices. What if you could take these very familiar forms of interaction and combine them with the coolest, quirkiest, geekiest apps available today, and Plurk?

It's already being done. People are finding ingenious new ways to use these apps to congregate around topics of shared interest and have meaningful, even in-depth discussions in 140 characters or less!

(*I just reserved the domain name so you'll see a parked page.)