Jul 1021
A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of conducting a webinar on Blogging Best Practices with my friend, blogger and activist Shaun Dakin, Director of Business Development at Infield Communications. Shaun and I are passionate bloggers and we each had a lot to say about what we think it takes to be a good blogger and have a successful and well-read blog! Here are some of the take-aways from the webinar:
- What Are Your Goals? The most important thing is to align your blog’s goals with your organization’s goals. Are you trying to engage your target audiences? Influence? Foster specific actions? Your goals should be measurable so that, at the end of the day, you know if your blog is a success.
- Who Should Blog? Shaun and I believe that anyone can blog, but for most organizations, you need people who have a 20,000 foot view of the industry or issues, enjoys writing (or is paired with someone who enjoys writing and is a good writer to boot), and is committed to pumping out content on a regular basis.
- What Should You Blog About? This is the $64,000 question! Ultimately, you need a mission statement for your blog that guides your content strategy. We grouped blog posts into the categories. In practice, most blogs employ a variety of blog post types to keep readers engaged.
- Hot items/News – These posts tend to cover what’s new in the industry, breaking news, etc.
- Strategy/Commentary – These posts try to provide a perspective on specific issues and usually aim to persuade readers to take a certain point of view.
- Trends - These posts report on market trends, trending topics, research and statistics.
- How-To Guides – These posts are often a combination of text and video and aim to provide users with a practical guide to doing something specific.
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Jul 1014
I had an early meeting in Hyattsville this morning. I was armed with my Garmin GPS and printed directions from Google Maps — I still got lost. I had to call my husband for extra navigational assistance. He was incredulous on the phone: “Don’t you have Jane (the GPS) with you? Did you follow the directions from Google?” Yes and yes, but I was still lost.
How is this even possible? For the last nearly 20 years (how did I get so old?), I have been in sales in the DC area. I feel like I have driven to most corners of the region. I know this region and I do not get lost!!! How on earth did I get lost this morning? And how did I get lost when I had so many tools at my disposal?
I have a hunch that all of these digital assistants are making me stupid. How and why?
Well, long before cell phones, GPS systems and Google/Mapquest maps, I would get directions the old fashioned way. I would call the prospect or client and get detailed directions. Mr. client would ask me where I was coming from and he would give me directions that included navigational clues like:” go 4 lights then turn right; if you see the Giant, you’ve gone to far; or go about 3 miles and then get on 95 on your right.” I would also get really helpful suggestions, like “don’t go through the City at that time of day, take the Beltway.” I would heed these directions and almost never get lost. And if I did get lost, I would find a gas station and ask the always-friendly attendant for help. Oh yeah, I also used to carry around maps with me, but I tossed those when I got my GPS; silly me!
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Jul 1007
Last month, I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the Women Grow Business Boot Camp in Washington, DC. Organized by the Women Grow Business Community blog (sponsored by Network Solutions), the event brought together women business owners and entrepreneurs from around the region to learn about starting and growing a business.
It was during this conference that I heard Kathy Korman Frey, Chief Hot Mamma of the Hot Mammas Project, talk about the Sisterhood of Success and how every successful business person needs a Party of five that she can turn to for advice and support.
The Hot Mammas Project is creating a giant library of case studies and role models for girls and women. When not running the Hot Mammas Project, Kathy is also a professor at the George Washington University School of Business. Here’s what she had to say about the Sisterhood of Success:
- There are two things that most affect a woman’s success in business: family life and access to mentors.
- In business and as a formula for success, everyone needs 5 people they can turn to for advice, support, problem-solving, coaching, and networking.
- If you have your Party of 5, you are more likely to be paid more, have higher status at your company and in life, and have higher levels of self-confidence.
- You will not be as successful unless you have your Party of 5. Period. End of story.
While Kathy directed her message to the woman solo-preneurs and business owners in attendance at the conference, her advice applies to anyone who wants to be successful, get ahead, do great things. Kathy’s Party of 5 message makes a lot of sense and rings true even in our personal lives. Her research shows that people who have 5 or more friends are happier and have higher feelings of success.
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Jul 1001
10 days ago, the Matrix Group Facebook fan page had 280 fans. As of tonight, we have 576 fans, more than double our starting number. How did we do it? We launched a campaign and created an incentive for people to “Like” us.
The Background
Matrix Group has had a Facebook fan page for a couple of years now and we had been slowly building up our fan base. We did all the usual things to generate new fans: we let our customers know about our Facebook page, we linked to it from our Web site and blog, we asked staff to invite their friends to “like” us, we included the link in staff e-mail signatures, and we asked our Twitter followers to fan us.
I had recently read an article about how the Weekly World News got to 40,310 fans in 4 days (up from 3,244 fans!) and got inspired to launch our own campaign. Weekly World News offered an exclusive video, they changed their ad daily, they did A/B testing on their ads and they leveraged their huge user base. But what kind of incentive could we offer? Unlike Snapfish, the photo printing site, which recently offered a coupon for a free 8 x 10 photo collage for “liking” its fan page, Matrix Group doesn’t have products to offer. And we don’t have a customer base of tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
The Campaign
We decided to use good, old-fashioned corporate philanthropy to incentivize people to “like” us. The campaign was incredibly simple: we would donate $10 to a specific charity for every new fan we got between June 21 and June 30. We selected the National Park Foundation’s (NPF) Disaster Recovery Fund in the Gulf to be recipient of our campaign. NPF is a Matrix Group client and the entire Matrix Group staff, like the rest of the country, is upset about the Gulf oil spill. Selecting this fund only made sense for us. BTW, we put a time limit on the campaign because we know that people are more likely to act when they have a deadline; hence the June 30 end date for the campaign.
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