Adventures with Blogging 101 - Part 2

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I recently took a webinar on blogging for business with Social Media Magic. It was taught by Dave Barnhart. It was great. I learned things I wish I hadn't and other things I'm glad I did. My previous post was about things didn't want to hear about... ('cause they mean more work for me!)

And now I thought I'd mention some of the cool things I was happy to discover. Here are some:

1. Blog posts can be short and sweet. Its actually good to have long and short blog posts - so posting weekly or even twice weekly doesn't have to be a burden (phew!)
   
2. What to blog about? This was especially helpful in terms of building a brand. There are four topics Dave suggested you blog about;
   

• Aspects of your business you're passionate about (I've done virtually no blogging on that - oops!)
• Industry trends (I think I've done a fair amount of blogging on that...)
• Behind the scenes of your business (one might consider this blog post in that category.)
• And personal stuff. He recommends between 5-15% of your posts fall into this category (I've done many blog posts related to my passion for social activism - not sure if that counts as personal...) And it seems from what Dave's saying, I could mention something about my love of animals and the many rescue efforts we've engaged in (for instance, last year we drove 6 injured pigeons three hours upstate to a sanctuary, after having nursed one pigeon back to health for a year. - I know.)

I'm also a fine artist and painter when the spirit moves me. Did I mention my pet portrait website? (No. I thought that would be confusing. Now I may choose to mention it within the context of sharing something "personal".) Sneaky huh?

It had been my strategy, up until now, simply to experiment with blogging; find out how much time it takes, see if I enjoy it and determine if I'm really willing to commit to it. Learning about advanced tactics and strategy at this juncture is perfect timing. I followed what he was talking about easily because it wasn't theoretical, I had already been blogging.

My next step then, as a business, is to articulate a revised strategy based on what I've learned and go forward from there.

All and all it was a great webinar. Those are some of the highlights. I hope it helps you as you think about blogging for your situation.

Humane Society Partners with Ad Council to Help Animals

I was thrilled to learn tonight a client of mine, The Advertising Council, will be creating a major PSA campaign to support the efforts of Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).

I just came back from a town hall meeting with Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the HSUS. He is a personal hero of mine. I was so impressed with their response to hurricane Katrina and have been a dedicated member ever since. The HSUS has been fighting successfully for animals suffering all forms of cruelty; factory farms, puppy mills, the barbaric seal hunt in Canada to name only afew. Their growth in membership, the passage of significant pieces of legislation, the raising of public awareness has helped hundreds of thousands of animals over the years. Much of this is attributed to Wayne's leadership.

It was so satisfying to be there and get personally updated. I hope to get trained in animal rescue so I can be of use during natural disasters. Alas, the curse of enthusiasm strikes again!

Adventures with Blogging 101 - Part 1

I was talking with a women the other day about possibly re-designing her website.  She spoke about being overwhelmed by all the technology that comes with being on the internet as a business. I could only empathize. I do this for a living, and I find the amount of information there is to process and learn about an ongoing challenge. And in other ways, I'm completely excited by it all. The possibilities are really quite amazing. I have a bit of a love hate relationship with it all.

Today I took a webinar on blogging for business with Social Media Magic. It was taught by Dave Barnhart. It was great overall. I learned things I wish I hadn't and other things I'm glad I did. Here's what I didn't want to hear... (Did I mention I have a love hate relationship?)

1. The minimum one should blog is once a week. Posting twice a week is even better. And anything beyond that is "prolific". I've been blogging sporadically about twice a month. And why, you may ask must you blog more? The frequency of posts makes your blog more likely to be found by Google. And that's a good thing.
2. Blogger is not the best platform to be blogging on. (shhhhh - don't tell blogger!) Wordpress.org and Typepad are preferred. Well I already knew that, now I know why. They both have trackback features and technorati tags and blogger doesn't. Those are fancy things that help you track and gauge your efforts. Sort of important wouldn't you agree?

The reason I'm unhappy to learn these things is it means more work for me, like writing more blog posts, and moving over to WordPress. As a small business owner, more work is never good news. Sigh...

There were also things I learned that I was happy to discover. However, to find out what they were, you'll have to come back and visit my blog next time. (This is part of my strategy to start posting once or twice a week. See how it works??)

To be continued....

How did Ford save 35 million going green?

How did Ford save 35 million going green?
Answer: by following the design concept developed by architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart  called Cradle to Cradle or Waste = Food. Watch the video and be very inspired.

At its most basic it is about including the concept of composting or re-use of materials right into the manufacturing process at the design stage. Or as they put it, producing goods that can be re-used either by the biosphere or the technosphere, thus eliminating the problems of waste entirely. Get it??  I hope so, 'cause its pretty exciting!! No waste. No landfill. No problem.

As a designer, I know about the idea of  sustainable forestry. The concept was once explained to me this way. If everyone in the world agreed to use only recycled paper/wood products tomorrow, we would run out of recycled materials in one week. Ultimately recycling isn't the answer to our waste problem, because its not actually sustainable. That's where sustainable forestry comes in. Trees are planted and cut down for their use. And more trees are planted upon harvesting to keep the forest flourishing. That's the simplified, nutshell version. However, the concept of Cradle to Cradle is even more exciting to me. As Michael Braungart put it, "sustainable is the bear minimum".

So let me get back to the Cradle to Cradle idea and Ford for one moment.

Here are specific examples of one aspect of what Cradle to Cradle meant to Ford when they set out to re-tool one of their plants. Water run off was filtered by their "green" rooftops (designed to be a meadow for birds and bees). This rooftop saves Ford money on maintenance (there is less degradation on such rooftops). The meadow rooftop helps better regulate heat and cooling within the building iteslf, thus saving on heating and air conditioning costs. It saved a bundle of money by eliminating the need for a water purification process. Nature does the job by purifying the runoff water on the roof before returning it to the land. And it so happens that humans enjoy working in plants designed with these concepts in mind because such buildings require more natural light and natural airflow to achieve some of the other cost savings. The fact that the building is a pleasure to work in saves money on sick days, and employee turn-over. Bottom line, Ford saved 35 million dollars by redesigning their plant with Cradle to Cradle thinking. Now that's exciting! And if you watch the video, and I hope you do - you'll see that Ford isn't the only business taking notice.

Reduce, reuse, recycle – sustainable forestry, Cradle to Cradle – Waste = Food. Some provocative ideas to consider for your business and the future of the planet.

Crazy fun with Social Media - FaceBook for business?? Really?

This post is about using FaceBook (FB) for business. It's more about logistics than strategy. I thought I'd share some of my decision making process/experimentation here because I know other multi-talented business owners are also grappling with questions of how to manage online identities and how to use FB for business.

I've just set up two business "pages" for my businesses. I did that because I decided I really want to use FB mostly for keeping in touch with friends and family. Now when business contacts ask to be my friend on FB, I can say, "please become a "fan" of my business, I'm using FB for staying in touch with friends and family".

However, I may live to regret my choice! Keeping up with two profiles will be twice the work. I'm also an artist with a separate website for my pet portraits - so now three times the work. You see the problem!

First of all, FB was designed for you to stay in touch with friends and family. That is how FB wants you to use their service. If you solicit business directly, this will probably cause you to violate FB's terms of use, and they may well delete your profile - no questions asked, no warnings given. So keep that in mind. That being said, there are some recommended best practices about how to use FB for business. (In fact, let me give a shout out to Social Media Magic University (SMMU) and Jennifer Shaheen who teach this stuff).

Now, some people want to use FB exclusively for business. That means they use it for business networking. Their profile is more professionally focused. They aren't soliciting business directly as much as they are building relationships, demonstrating expertise and sharing information of value. For those who don't want to use facebook for keeping up with friends and family, the choice is pretty easy.

The issue that many people face howerver is - what if I want to do both - keep up with family, and also connect around business?? Like myself. Well here are some of our choices:

1. Use a single profile to represent yourself and your business. Intermingle business, family and friends and just determine in advance how you want to balance both and post to your wall with that in mind. You can use the privacy settings to help control what is seen on your wall and by whom. This option is recommended by many experts simply because managing a number of different profiles - one for personal and one for business can be hard to keep up with.
2. The next option is to use your personal profile for friends and family and set up a FB "page" to represent your business. Here are both of my pages for examples Carol Hillson Creative on FB and Carol's Pet Portraits on FB. To set up a business "page" click on the "advertising" link at the very bottom of the page, and then click on the "pages" link at the top of that page. (They don't make it easy!) This approach is actually what FB wants you to do with business. A "page" is a lot like a personal profile, except you invite "fans" rather than "friends" and it has analytics to help you measure the impact of your posts and or marketing efforts.
3. You can also start a group for your business - however, groups are meant more for facilitating discussions and there are no analytics. 

I'll keep you posted if I think I made the right choice. The jury is certainly out for now.

To be continued...

Dr. Riane Eisler speaking at the UN Sept 16, 2009

I saw Dr. Eisler speak in D.C., she was truly inspiring. I couldn't find a link with the information about her upcoming engagement in NYC, so I'm using my blog as a place to host the info and spread the word. If you can attend, you will be happy you did.

The Real Wealth of Nations: From Global Warming to Global partnerships
Sponsored by Grenada
In preparation for the One Day Summit on Climate Change

September 16th
1:15-2:45pm
Conference Room 1
United Nations Headquarters

Dr. Riane Eisler
World Renowned Speaker and Author

Dr. Riane Eislers’s newest book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics – hailed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as “a template for the better world we have been so urgently seeking,” by Peter Senge as “desperately needed,” and by Jane Goodall as “a call for action” – proposes a new approach to economics that gives visibility and value to the most essential human work: the work of caring for people and planet.

Please contact  Derek Nelson for registration at dnelson5@stu.edu or at 305-890-9349 (email preferred)

The dark (and bright) side to Social Media...

I met with a colleague the other day and we talked about Social Media Marketing (SMM). It is on everyone's minds these days. It promises great opportunity and also some peril. I'll give an example of each and suggest some tools I found that might help you manage some of the risk.

Here is an example of the opportunity:

Universal Orlando Resorts was launching a new Harry Potter theme park. They had an unlimited budget for getting the word out. But instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars on conventional marketing, the person heading the team invited 7 of the most popular bloggers to a private webcast at midnight and told them the news. Within 24 hours 350 million people knew about the theme park launch.
source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP4mwdMtlEM

Moral of the story:

1. Clearly, it helps to have the world's most famous wizard at your disposal!
2. SMM has a crazy powerful exponential factor that can work for large and small companies alike and save you a bundle.
3. SMM is built on word of mouth, which is so much more trusted and therefore powerful than "paid" advertising.

But as I said, there are some perils (and a few horror stories too!) Here's an example of one of the perils:

The colleague I visited told me a story about a well known construction company in NYC that had a fine reputation among the general public for years. Though among other construction professionals, their work was not known for being of the highest quality. This company was early in their industry to embrace SMM, and perhaps it was a bit easier back then to manage and even remove negative publicity if and when it did surface. So their reputation, among the general public, remained intact. Well, as SMM has grown since then, it's become harder to manipulate reviews posted online. Apparently, not too long ago, a few negative posts from the general public began to surface about this company. Today they are facing an avalanche of bad posts and their reputation is getting slammed.

Moral of the story:

1. Most important – provide quality products and services!
2. Deal with complaints proactively
3. Make sure part of your ongoing SMM strategy includes the ability to monitor and manage your reputation online

And as I promised, here are some tools to help you do that.

Google alerts - lots of people use this and its pretty simple, straight forward and free. You can enter a phrase for it to search, and when the phrase shows up in Google, you get an alert in your email. However, I tested it and it failed to track a twitter post in real time, so I decided looked at some other tools. However, there is a great article here that helps you determine which keywords you might want to track. The principles apply whichever tool you choose to use.

http://steprep.myfrontsteps.com - I LOVE this tool! What I love about it it's free, easy to use and very robust - you can REALLY manage your reputation, not just monitor it. I also love how I found it – I didn't! It found me. I tweeted about some of the other reputation management tools I had looked at, and StepRep tweeted me and invited me to check them out. Now that's SMM at its best! I investigated and I'm really happy I did. It's a GREAT tool. Go and see for yourself!

http://www.trackur.com - they have range of price points that's quite reasonable for small businesses and nonprofits. Using them is pretty simple and they have a 60 second tutorial. Also they rate the posts on the internet (about your company) as good, bad and neutral. This helps you see at a glance if there's anything to deal with.

http://www.buzzaround.us - this is a very cool, easy to use tool. Not a lot of bells and whistles, but you can add it to your tool bar and see who's talking about you very easily. And its free. Always nice!

So don't be afraid of SMM (its too late for that anyway - it is already here!) Do some research, take it in small steps and learn what you can to be prepared. Then go and have fun!