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I’m often asked how do bloggers keep blogging during the holiday season when family commitments can often find you away from home without a regular internet connection. The answer, of course, is that we are so committed to writing that we always take a laptop with us, with an internet dongle, and post from the beach! (Pauses for mental picture of Chris Brogan in Speedos, with laptop, on beach. Not a pretty sight!) Read more…

Social Media Rockstar

Do you want to be an overnight success? It’s easy – all you have to do is put in a lot of time, effort, persistence and possibly money and the chances are you’ll succeed!  I read somewhere, and I’m sure he’ll correct me if I’m wrong, that Chris Brogan took 6 years to  be an “overnight success” and a social media rockstar!

Read more…

Social Media and Social Networking are fun, rewarding and can be very time absorbing. Sooner or later though, you have to ask yourself a fundamental question: why am I doing it?

All you bloggers – why do you blog? All you Social and Business Networking site addicts, why are you members?

Bloggers

Why do you blog? Is it altruistic, happily sharing information with anyone who will read what you have written? Did you get seduced by one of the “You can make a fortune out of blogging” scams but are still waiting for the money? Is it to complement your business, keeping clients, colleagues, prospective clients up to date with your activities and offers? Unless it’s the first reason, how are you doing? Is your blogging helping your business to grow?

Analyse your time – how much time do you spend going from one site to another, seeking that “one missing, vital insight”? As Seth Godin wrote last week, reading is not doing! It’s easy to waste days reading expert after expert and what do you end up with? Paralysis by analysis together with a severe case of information overload! I’ve done it and, as my primary school teacher used to say “it’s not clever and it’s not grown up!”

It was a shock for me to realise that I’d owned some of the most important pdfs about setting up and running successful blogs and static sites for quite a while. But I’d got them when I was in a mad goldrush to get as much info as possible so they stayed on my hard drive, unread.

And I had wasted so much time since, trying to find information I already had! If I think of that wasted time, how much different things could be if I’d used it “doing”, rather than “researching”. You can add to the time wasting, the hours I spent tweaking my site’s design, rather than writing or doing things to draw traffic to the site. Part of a step forward in my personal development has been realising that pursuing Social Media for its own sake is a severe case of the emperor’s new clothes, unless you are a social media commentator or consultant.

How many of you (me included) have products and/or services that are not on your site and that could be earning you money? At the very least, they could be drawing people in.

Social and Business Networking

How many sites have you joined? I came across a software site the other day that sold an app that will register you automatically with the top 150 social networking sites… why? What’s the point? I’m in the process of quitting those few sites I have joined as I can’t keep up with the e-mails and messages. And that makes me look bad!  So, I’m going to cut right back for the time being to LinkedIn, ecademy, Twitter and Facebook (and the latter only because it’s the easiest way to keep in touch with my wife’s family and our friends in South Africa.)

Focus

For me, this year is about focus; Chris Brogan introduced me to the concept of having keywords for the year rather than New Year’s resolutions and focus is one of mine. Focus on clients, on quality networking and on using time profitably – that doesn’t mean that every moment has to be monetised, far from it.

But every working moment has to contribute to success as I have defined it for myself. Yes that includes time for networking, for building supportive relationships; it includes time for acts of altruism too as giving without expectation of a return is an important value. In on-line terms, it’s about identifying those people with whom I would like to connect, engage and share with at a deep level. It’s also about making sure that key off-line relationships are nurtured.

Time Management

It’s going to be tough! I’ve already started reducing the number of feeds from blog sites and making a plan for returning to my roots with my own blogging. I’m not an SM expert, yet I’ve spent far too much time recently writing about SM rather than personal and organisational development. Focus and minimalism is the way forward for me, at least in the number of sites of which I am a member.

I’m also going to cut back to three posts a week at each blog during the working week and the review of the SM week here at the weekend, as people seem to enjoy it and I’ve sorted out an efficient workflow.

Although many of the tools may be free, social networking isn’t. There’s always an opportunity cost, if only for the time spent and sooner or later there has to be a return on the time invested.

Anybody interested in joining me in this exercise?

One of the facts that gets quoted every now and then by people advising bloggers on how to write articles is that the top bloggers use the word “you” more often than “me” or “We/Our”. So I thought I’d take a look and see if this is true, or another Social Media Urban Myth.

As a starting point, I took the blogs of 8 of the top Social Media Bloggers and looked at their percentage use of “I”, “We”, “You” and “They”. In each case, I collected at least 5,000 words, which for most equates to between 6 and 8 articles.I know it’s not a very large sample of writers or words, but I wanted to see if any patterns emerged. And they did!

Louis Gray blogs more about developments in SM and emerging technologies, so I had thought that perhaps he would have used “me” more often, as he is often giving his opinion. But he still managed to use “you” more often than “I” and “We” combined

Chris Brogan uses the first person singular a lot in the sample tested but there’s a good reason for it – among the posts that I sampled were several explaining how he uses mind mapping, how he doesn’t use LinkedIn as he feels he should etc.. I’m going to go back and examine his more general articles to see the pattern there.

As can be seen from the table, all of the others use “you” almost twice as often as they use “I”, the exceptions being Seth Godin who uses “you” 3.5 times as often as he uses the word “I” and Karen Skidmore who uses it a whopping 8 times as much!. This is entirely consistent with SM articles being about engaging with other people and drawing them in. With the exception of self -disclosure articles of the type Chris Brogan has been writing recently, most of us would soon get bored with, and probably stop reading, writers who used “I” twice as much as they use “you”.

There’s a lot more I’m going to be analyzing, such as percentage of past, present and future orientated words, the percentage of nouns vs verbs etc

The conclusion? These people are some of the top in their field – anyone wanting to be up there with them needs to be looking at their writing style. The small words matter. You will find another article here that examines the subject in more detail, and announces a new service for writers.

Week 3 in the series – I had decided to try this for a month and see whether people found it useful. Next week is the last in the month – let me know if you enjoy the reviews and find them useful!

Social Media misconceptions: 1. I don’t have time. by Nick Tadd
English blogger Nick Tadd examines one of the main ‘excuses’ people raise for not getting involved in Social Media

Social Media Gurus – That Old Chestnut by Mitch Joel
Mitch Joel looks at the old cliche “who should own Social Media”; does it fall under the heading of digital marketing, does it ….? I’m not going to steal his thunder

How to tap into your blog visitors need for new information by Marko Saric
Marko’s premise is that you  should always be reminding people that you and your products exist, and you should allow them to spend time with the content and the value that you create.

4 Ways Bloggers Differ From Reporters by Jay Baer
His key premise is that bloggers’ influence is derived from their own ability and moxie, whereas journalists’ influence is in large measure derived via the outlet they represent.

Your Farmer List by Chris Brogan
No, Chris Brogan hasn’t gone agricultural! This post is about what he calls a “farmer list,” meaning the chores you’ve gotta do every day

How does the style of your writing need to differ between your blog, your brochure and your website? by Karen Skidmore
This article is all about considering the different platforms for your writing.  Knowing when to sell and when to give value.  And a blog is place where you will sell more by selling less!

Please stop saying social media marketing is free by Jason Cohen
A plea for a return to sanity and to not be seduced by the free nature of the tools; there is always an opportunity cost for the time involved, if nothing else!

The Key Factors to any Successful Product Launch by Alex of Blogussion
Blogussion e launched their first product recently and this article discusses some of the things they learned a lot from doing it. Some good tips for all of us who sell, or intend to sell, products online.

The Power of Uniqueness [19 Starting Points for Being a Unique Blogger] by Darren Rowse
The title of the article describes its theme – uniqueness, written in Sarren Rowse’s usual flowing style.

How to lose friends and tick off people on FaceBook by Scott Stratten
If I had an ‘Article of the Week’ award, this would be it. It will no doubt ruffle a few feathers and some may find its style edgy but it really does say what many people are thinking. And whilst the article is aimed at Facebook, the points made apply to all networking sites. Great article

Wow, I’ve read over a hundred really cool articles this week (thank goodness for Google Reader)!

Again, in no particular order, here’s my pick of the week.

Will The Business People Please Stand Up? by Amber Naslund
I have to confess up front, I like Amber’s blog and could easilyhalf  fill this post with her articles. But this post struck me as being important as it makes a point that is often neglected: The most successful people in business are People who can admit what they don’t know, and seek knowledge or help.  The article is full of wisdom and if you have the time, treat yourself to the follow up article, Tough Love.

How I Leaped from Pagerank 0 to 4 in 21 Days Without any Connections by Henri Junttila
This article is included as it offers a golden tip. It’s so easy to focus on our blog and on filling it with great content, but commenting on other people’s blogs is what drives visitors to our sites. It’s something I have been very lax at and is one of my goals for 2010.

Branding Battle: Favicon to the Rescue by Seth Godin
A comprehensive post about the importance of, and how to create, a favicon. It never ceases to amaze me how many cool looking sites don’t have a favicon. And for those who use WordPress, there’s the useful plugin Shockingly Simple Favicon

Convert shortcomings into advantages — without lying by Jason Cohen
Sometimes it’s easy for the sole trader to become a little gloomy when trying to compete with much larger organisations. Jason Cohen’s article does a great job of turning some of the perceived weaknesses of the small organisation into strengths.

Deepen Your Networks by Chris Brogan
Another blogger whose articles I always read and possibly my favourite article of the week, this should be printed out and placed by the screen of every blogger or blogging wannabe. The bullet pointed list providing tips on how to deepen your network are worth the price of a book. And Chris says, it only takes a couple of hours a week to deepen the quality of relationships with people in your network. This is definitely one of my key words for 2010 – ‘focus’.

Does Your Customer Want What You’ve Got to Offer? by Sonia Simone
An article that gives great advice about the content of our articles; it uses food as a very cool analogy.

Can We Live In Private and Demand Companies Be Open? by Louis Gray
The theme of the next article is exactly what is says in the title and comes on the back of the weird announcements recently from the head of Facebook.

Use it or lose it! 5 Tips on How to Keep Your Blogging Regular by Darren Rowse
A candid article by Darren Rowse that warns of the perils of taking your blog’s readers for granted or not keeping in regular contact with them.

Why a portfolio of web content is as valuable as a portfolio of property by Nick Tadd
A very thorough piece from Nick Tadd about SM and the need for clear objectives

How to set up your mobile blog design – Step-by-step guide by Marko Saric
An extremely comprehensive article that does exactly what it says on the tin – provides a step-by-step guide to setting up your blog design for mobile platforms.

Happy Reading!

Sometimes we can feel buried under the avalanche of blogs on SM issues. Below, I’ve detailed ten of the best that I’ve found from the last week, and listed them in no particular order – happy reading

Louis Gray on Blogging for Business, Social Media Sales, Strategy
Louis recently published three more short videos, including sales advice in the world of social media, how to launch a high quality business blog that gets traction amidst all the noise and three steps to a robust social media strategy.

Chris Brogan on How to Reach Out to Bloggers
Timeless advice form the author of ‘Trust Agents’ on how to connect with bloggers and get the word out about your product or service; how to find someone who’s interested in what your company is offering, and then share the pertinent details so that hopefully the blogger will write a decent story about you, maybe even include a few links; and how to get  a better return for your SM efforts.

Chris Brogan on The Soul of A New Business
Chris Brogan asks important questions that few businesses ever ask such as  What is the soul of your business? What resides at the center of all that you’re doing? What is the ecosystem that surrounds your business?

Marko Saric of How to Make my Blog.com – 36 favourite posts from 2009
There were lots of posts like this at the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010 and I like this one more than most, mainly because of the breadth of issues it covers. Well worth a read as is this post, that he wrote, about the  posts from other people  in 2009 that he found to be inspirational.

Darren Rowse of Problogger wrote this answer to those people who say that the only people who make money from blogging are those who sell material on how to make money blogging.
He uses his own experience to show that the statement isn’t true and it’s a well-argued post.

Steve Hodson of Shooting at Bubbles – I get mine back at all those slimy marketers on twitter
Annoyed at getting spam Tweets from “all the marketers and their following me just because I mentioned marketing in a message or a post here”, this post details Steve’s revenge – he set up a website to name and shame these marketers, called Twitter’s Marketing Hell. It will be interesting to see if the idea takes off.

Steve Hodson of Shooting at Bubbles was also responsible for making me laugh out loud with this post – This was almost too painful to read
I won’t spoil the fun, just read it and make sure you’re not drinking coffee at the same time!

Olivier Blanchard of the BrandBuilder Blog – wrote this blog on other Social Media absurdities.
Olivier Blanchard, whose slide show on Social Media ROI I posted earlier this week, was sent an e-mail offering him certification in Social Media! OK, the post is older than the last 7 days but creeps in as it is referred to in Steve Hodson’s post above. It goes to show that people are always inventing new scams.

Mitch Joel – What a website will be and Never Be
Author of one of my two favourite SM books of 2009 (Six Pixels of Separation), wrote this piece advocating the owning of your own online presence, building it and nurturing it and using the SM platforms to promote or extend the brand. Nothing particularly new in it, but it is well written and sums up the issues nicely.

Mitch Joel – The Google Phone
Unsurprisingly, there have been lots of posts on the Google Phone and I like Mitch’s the best, mainly because he takes a differrent line to many other writers. Whilst they are blogging about Google having released a rival to the iPhone, Mitch Joel argues that it’s about “A computer that is in every person’s hand that connects them to information and everyone else in the world.”

I’m sometimes asked to recommend a book on social media and social networking and thought I’d post a few ideas here; these are all books that I’ve read in the last 2 months!

Trust Agents – Chris Brogan, Julien Smith
This is in some ways similar to Penny’s book in that the focus is clearly on creating trust.  Because trust is key to building online reputations, the authors define those who understand the value of, and set out to create, trust as “trust agents.” It’s a mixture of the theoretical and the practical and is well worth a read, if only because it is written by authors with over 10 years of online media experience

That said, the checklist in appendix a is worth the price of the book alone, for those who are new to the topic or who what to make sure that they have covered everything.

It takes on an ambitious task, to unify the concepts of Personal Branding, Digital Marketing and Entrepreneurship, and achieves it in a clear, fun and provocative manner. Full of  case studies to illustrate the points he makes, this book offers a complete set of tools, tactics and insights to empower individuals to reach a global audience and consumer base with a few clicks of the mouse, and almost all of them for free.

Recommendations

So, my recommendations? I enjoyed all four and think people will benefit from reading any or all of them.And recommending books is always difficult as it’s so much a matter of personal preference and each of these books has much to offer.

However, if I had to make a recommendation, it would be to buy Mitch Joel’s book and if you want to add a semi-autobiographical account from a woman who’s been there, read Penny’s too. The get on the internet and watch Gary V’s videocasts and hop over to Chris Brogan’s blog (one of my favourite blogs) for a full set!