Does it sound like there’s a whole bunch of social media gabbing and not a lot of actual doing? Yeah. I think so, too.

Photo by oatsy40, used with Creative Commons license

There’s a phenomenal book from a few years ago – WARNING – NOT A SOCIAL MEDIA BOOK! – and it’s worth another look.

The book? Paper Tiger by Tom Coyne. [NOTE: I'm in Illinois and can't make a red cent off of Amazon Affiliate Links; thus, there's nothing in it for Area 224 if you buy that book or go to your library and check out a copy.]  The subtitle of this book probably tells you a ton: “An Obsessed Golfer’s Quest to Play with the Pros.”

I won’t spoil the plot of the book – it’s a true story about the author and his handicap index and whether or not he can get a tour card. It’s a great read.

A Story with Social Media Parallels

There’s a ton of gabbing in social circles about who is great and who is awesome and who is killing it or crushing it. And if you were to believe everyone you follow, tweet with, are friends with or subscribe to – the economy should have no problem rebounding.

Which brings us to the story from Coyne’s book. About a young golfer who showed up for his first day on tour bragging about how he wasn’t nervous because he had already been a winner at every other level of his career.

Amateur Champion. College Champion. And so on, and so forth – this was nothing by comparison.

The story may be a little apocryphal – but, as Coyne explains in the book…

“As the story was told to me, it was Craig Stadler who wandered over to where the rookie was hitting balls and gave the young man a few quiet words of advice.

“‘You see the guy next to you, and the guy next to him? Every one of them, All-Americans…hell, some of these caddies were All-American…nobody here gives a damn if you’re All-American, or even if you went to college at all. All anybody here wants to know is…can you play stick?’”

Can YOU Play Stick?

There’s humble-bragging a plenty on the interwebs. It’s getting annoying – sorta like showing up at the tournament as a seasoned pro and having to listen to the guy brag about how he just won the college championship.

And the scary thing is – a good many of the braggers haven’t done anything of substance. They talk a good ballgame but, when it’s time to execute, they’re big on excuses – and small on actual work product.

Consider the precarious position of some social media types with no actual inside-the-ropes experience. (“Inside the ropes” being a golf term, as in…those inside the ropes are playing in the tournament. Those outside the ropes are spectators.)

They may have watched and reported on the business world from the get-go – and they may even have a blog with hundreds of subscribers, or a flirtatious Twitter presence that draws you into their lifestream.

But have they actually been inside the ropes?

AND, those who throw the darts at those who are “doing it wrong” may have never actually built something.

Organizational Dynamics On Tour

If you think pro golf involves showing up, hitting a bunch of balls, being awesome and winning tournaments – consider a good chunk of the behind-the-scenes stuff that has to happen. I’m not talking about practice, mind you. I’m talking about playing in the qualifier to make the US Open field. I’m talking about writing the letter asking for a sponsorship exemption so you can play in the smaller event.

I’m talking about being the type of tour pro who has a great time at the Pro Am – not because it’s required of him, but because he’s playing golf with some people that he truly wants to have fun playing golf with.

And the list can go on, and on.

Because word spreads.

Play Stick at the Office

We’re not asking for you to suck up to everyone you meet, hoping that there’s an eventual payoff. We’re not asking that you put in extra hours creating white papers that show that you know what it is you’re doing.

What we ARE saying is this:

There’s “table stakes” in business and life. Eventually, you will be found out as the person who is all hat, no cattle.

You might be bloody awesome at whatever it is that you do. Great. You know what we want to see?

Evidence. Of you being bloody awesome.

That’s All We Want To Know: Can You Play Stick?

New to this site? We’d love for you to check out our book: Six Biggest Mistakes.

Photo by simpologist, used with Creative Commons license

The payoff of your online efforts is proportional to the amount of effort that goes into it.

Spend an hour working on your link-building, and get a few people to visit your site. Spend some spare time on launching a business – and get that sort of spare-time quality traffic.

And so on, and so forth.

No Shortcuts to Online Success

Here’s a for-instance: Let’s say you’re launching a blog called “New Frugality.” It’s not an overnight success, because it takes real time. Time for you to build relationships, time for you to get real quality content, time for you to carve out your niche.

We’re in our Fourth Month over at New Frugality HQ. And it’s taking some time to get over the hump – as expected.

But here’s the thing: we’re actually in this for the long haul.

The Tactics to Definitely Avoid

If you’re new to the online space – or you’re a veteran marketer but are just now getting into blogging – you can easily get sucked in to some shortcuts that are disguised as strategic moves. They’re actually just tactics that are kinda lame – and will end up giving you headaches as you build your online empire. And here are a couple:

1. The “Can I Guest Post?” Email

These can be great – and you need a healthy reliance on guest posting (as you will read in this awesome “Noob Guide” on the SEOMoz site). But we have had a few requests over at New Frugality that gave us some serious pause.

Quoting an email: “This is Jack…I went through your site while surfing in Google.com, am very much impressed with your site’s unique informations.”

AVOID.

We HAVE had some great guest posts on that site – but they came to us from legitimate people with legitimate social presence. (Hint: they had last names.)

2. The “Same Stuff, Different Site” Post

We have watched a couple bloggers of note make this mistake – and they may NOT be paying attention to words like “Panda” or “Penguin.”

“Penguin” is Google’s Algorithm Update. This controls search like nobody’s business. And this can affect your business like nobody’s business.

In brief, you can’t copy and paste content that you used on one site and put it on another site you own WITHOUT making changes to a good percentage of the text.  (Estimates we’ve heard: 70% of the content can be the same.)

3. The Over-Reliance on Facebook Likes

“Engagement” by big brands on Facebook – that means how many times stuff the big brands say gets shared, commented on, or has the like button clicked – is as high as 0.2% in the auto industry, according to this report by “All Facebook.” (This study looked at “daily page engagement.”)

Wait. WHAT?

Ford is considered the industry standard for its social media presence – and they have 1,400,000 fans on Facebook. They should expect 4,200 of those fans to be engaged each day. A tiny number.

This isn’t to say that 4,200 is a BAD number for Ford.

But for you…that percentage of engagement multiplied by your number of Facebook fans (or people who click the like button) isn’t going to give you much. And the amount of time to get those fans – well, your efforts might be better spent elsewhere. Now, the last thing to avoid:

4. Posting Stuff That Isn’t Good

Chris Brogan had a great piece on this the other day – though we think the title of the post doesn’t match the content.

Upshot? Write Good Stuff.

Not everyone is an awesome writer – we get that. But that doesn’t mean that crap needs to be put on the page just to have the page filled. You’re not running a daily newspaper here – if you don’t have something good, productive, well-thought out, clever or (here’s that word again) “engaging,” don’t publish it.

Real Work – Online AND Off – Takes Time.

Challenge: Write a blog post about marketing and business. Don’t use the First Person at all.

Roman Numeral One, Thanks, chrisinplymouth, used with cc License

Easy, right?

Here’s the thing: people love to talk about themselves. People love to point to the awesome stuff they’re doing – and, with the dawn of Social Media Marketing, it’s so much easier to be self-centered.

Because you have to connect with someone else, and they have to connect with you.

But How To Avoid Crossing “The Line?”

You know “The Line,” because it’s rather garish these days. Everyone has a book coming out, it seems, and they’re doing the mass market promotional thing. Everyone has expertise that they want to tout – for a fee, of course – and it’s tough to separate the value from the pablum, the pitch from the meat.

Even the uber-engagers – the ones who call their fans “community” – have to point to themselves as the examples of pure awesomeness…in a bottle, or on a blog.

Don’t Fall For It. Don’t.

Pretty soon, you can separate the wheat from the chaff.

The valuable posts start going away, the “Buy The Book” posts start arriving. Maybe there’s an F-bomb for effect, or maybe it’s just an old idea disguised by new social media buzzwords.

Don’t. Fall. For. It.

Don’t.

Third Person Credibility

So, here’s a list. Some blogs that aren’t all First Person. Ones that aren’t overly promotional – and, instead, give you a taste of knowledge that you can take and do something valuable with.

Go forth. Avoid the First Person.

1. Olivier Blanchard, The Brand Builder. This is worthwhile for the past couple posts alone: a frying pan to the face of conventional business wisdom.
2. Marjorie Clayman, MargieClayman.com. She’s just cool – but her insights, which DO sometimes involve the First Person, are spot on.
3. Shelly Kramer and Team, V3im.com. People from Kansas City are just really nice. Down-to-earth. And focused on helping you.

Done. One List, No First Person. What do you think?

If you’re new here, great to see you. We’d love to have you join us starting March 6 for our series of Webinars on Marketing and Business. Learn more about FORWARD:MARCH here.

If you haven’t seen Dave’s side project called New Frugality, that’s okay. We – Dave and Indigo21‘s Heather Acton – spent the month of February in beta mode – which is the way people say “soft launch” or “private open” these days.

But we’d certainly like you to come visit – it’s not a “work in progress” anymore.

Why DID We Launch New Frugality?

It might seem counter-intuitive for Dave from Area 224 to work on something so…well, “consumer-y” – but here are a couple reasons.

1. Frugality is More than “Being Cheap”

Everyone can learn a thing or two about how to best spend resources – and, I’ll be honest, I’ve learned more over the past few weeks researching articles and reading up on things people do to be frugal than I would have expected. (A month ago, there’s no way the thought of ditching shampoo would have crossed my mind.)

2. Frugality Can Help You in Business

Yes, Area 224 prides itself in sharing Marketing knowledge – but we have to get better at the whole allocation of resources thing. Who doesn’t?

Plus, if anyone claims to have all the answers, they’re wrong – and I picked up some great tips from Heather in this post on the low-cost small business.

3. And, Let’s Be Honest…New Markets

Frankly, while I’ve spent some time in consumer marketing, I can always learn more about how consumers think. What’s on the minds of shoppers? Who is looking for what, and when?

The insights from this site have already shown us what sorts of things the visitors want to know about, and what things they’re not that interested in. Expect to see more of what you actually like to read.

So, yeah, this is a self-serving blog post inviting you to visit another blog. Here’s a link to New Frugality. Thanks!

Welcome! New here? Say hi, and check out something special and cool we’re doing for the Month of March called “FORWARD:MARCH.” Your business may well thank you…

Remember this logo kerfuffle? Jeremy Lin pinned about it

Jeremy Lin. Pinterest. Infographics. Downton Abbey. Social Media. Business. Life.

It seems as if every stinking topic on the Internet these days is being blogged about in a “Top 5 Things” post. It’s enough to make you run, kicking and screaming, to your nearest book, as a means of escaping the madness.

Can you really learn anything from any of these Top 5 (or any other number) posts? Why yes, yes you can. Sometimes. Kindof. If you pin about it. Here goes:

1. Be prepared to chase car bumpers

Ever wonder what the car that chases the car bumper actually DOES with the car once he catches it? That semi-rhetorical question is meant as a thought-provoker: No dog has ever been shown on YouTube catching a car. But they chase them anyway.

It doesn’t matter if Jeremy Lin is a flash in the pan, or if Pinterest will have its traffic wane – bloggers are a mercurial bunch and will chase whatever topical car bumper they can.

2. Bigger means more, not better

I’ll call two sites on the carpet: Huffington Post and Forbes. Both have had posts in the past week that had this author scratching his head: they seemed to have been thrown together randomly, weren’t very well thought through, and were done entirely for search value.

As if to say that a “Top 5 Things That Jeremy Lin Can Teach You…” post is going to actually teach you something.

(As if to say THIS list will actually teach you something.)

The fear is that blogs are becoming like any other news outlet that has space to fill: if it’s a rainy day, then you run a story on umbrella salesmen if nothing else is going on.

3. We like lists when we can see ourselves in them

Think about it, if you see a list of “Top 5 Bloggers in Arkansas,” you want to see yourself there (if you live in Arkansas). If you don’t live in Arkansas, you may very well want to see yourself making one of those lists for your own state.

Often, especially in “social media,” people don’t become your friend, fan your page, or retweet your blog post because they like you. They do so because they want to BE you. You give off an image of someone who has it in control, or vacations a lot, or has a great MLM business. (If you’re a brand, it’s because of those brand attributes – drinking your beer will make me more attractive, driving your car will make me cooler.)

Chicago Magazine ran a list of the 100 Most Powerful Chicagoans yesterday, and I gravitated toward it – but, knowing I’m not ever going to be in the list, I started scheming about ways to get on similar lists. It happens, it’s human nature.

4. Just because you have a blog doesn’t mean you have something relevant to add to the conversation

Big brands and especially B2B companies are learning this first-hand. Now, everyone and their brother has access to blogging – so, it follows, why shouldn’t everyone blog?

This is my beef with Forbes.com – the addition of a post on Jeremy Lin wasn’t exactly adding to an already noisy conversation. Here’s the link.

5. Everyone is an expert

We saw the first of many “How to Use Pinterest for your Business” blog posts yesterday: and we saw this one by accident, as we haven’t been looking for them. Because we know they’re out there – next to the “How to Market Your Business with Quora” posts.

This expertise on everything that’s everywhere leads us to the next question: if everyone’s an expert, what is anyone actually DOING?

While this blog post might have been somewhat tongue-in-cheek, there are some serious questions we think you should ask yourself:

Why are you blogging? Who are you blogging for? And, most importantly, are you adding anything relevant to the conversation, or just talking?

As you’d expect from this site, we bring together a couple elements in a post about Integrated Marketing…

More than a Logo

Okay, we’ve talked about brand and messaging and how important it is to get people talking about you.  We’ve also talked a lot about effectively using social media to support that goal.  And, because so many of you asked us to help you do all of that, we created CloutReach.

I’m not pushing product here.  Many of you don’t need someone to help you.  If you do, find someone you trust who can help.

90 Days?

The other day, someone asked me what the 90-day ROI is for CloutReach.  My reaction to that?

“A+ for thinking ROI and F- for thinking that integrating social media with your traditional marketing communication is something you can do for a few months and then quit.”

Let me say it again…  You want people talking about you!

Take a look at the video we’ve embedded below and its Starbucks “plug” (http://12mm.co/aliengirl).  How great would it be to find someone talking about your brand like this?

Lower Case "T" Stands For...

The use of social media isn’t a passing fad.  We’re not going to suddenly stop talking about our likes and dislikes and our customer experiences.  If anything, we’re all just starting to speak up, and we’re going to get a lot noisier.

So, once you’ve got the hang of using social media communication holistically and integrating it into your overall marketing strategy, stop paying us to do it with you through CloutReach, but don’t lose focus on the need to have people continuing to talk about you.

See you.  I’m off to Starbucks…

Want more information about CloutReach, or 12 Minute Marketing, or how everything we’re doing at Area 224 can potentially help your business? Use the links above, or get in touch with us using the Contact Page on this site.

Area 224 Mindmap

What ARE You Doing?

Some days, you’re gonna feel like you are spinning your wheels. Are you a blogger, or a business person? Are you a writer, or a developer? Are you launching things, or taking care of things long since launched?

Yeah, this sounds like us, too.

Here’s one tip: the Mindmap.

Go here: FreeMind Download Page.

Start figuring out what you’ve got to work with. With EVERYTHING.

For us:

• What domains do we have, even the dormant ones?
• What content have we developed that’s sitting on the shelf?
• Where have our leads come from – what lines of business do we potentially have?
• What are the relationships that we need to nurture, to grow?

Set aside an hour. Lock the door, turn off the mobile phone, get rid of all distractions. Go to it.

And, if you’ve done one, go back to it at least once a month.

Which is where we’ll be for the next hour.

We keep going with our Blogging Basics series. This is Part Six – Dave returns to talk to you about success.

6 Ways to Success

6 Ways to Increase Your Blog’s Success Rate

Blogging isn’t as easy as some would like to lead you to believe.  It takes time, commitment, a penchant for excellence, and the guts to make it happen.  It doesn’t happen overnight and you will likely not be a blogging superstar anytime in the near future.  However…

There are a few things that can help you exponentially as a blogger to become the type of blogger that makes some serious noise.  I’ve laid them out below, you can choose and implement at your leisure.  Whether you’re new or already have an established blog, these practices can help you.

Create a Plan of Attack

Sorry but blogging just for the sake of blogging won’t sustain over the long-term.  You’ve got to have a plan with an end goal in mind or you are doomed for failure.  You wouldn’t start a business without some sort of loose biz plan at the very least.  You wouldn’t start a marketing campaign without a solid strategy in place.  Why then would you start blogging without a blogging plan?  Outline a goal, create a plan, stay the course.

Create Remarkable Content

Not just good content, not just great content, but remarkable content.  Do it as much as you possibly can and strive for excellence every time you hit publish.  Write with your readers needs in mind and ask yourself with every piece- “Does this article provide value to my reader”?  If your answer is yes, well done.  If you aren’t sure, reassess.

Create an Editorial Calendar

More and more blogs are adopting the style of magazines and creating editorial calendars to plan their blog content.  It’s much easier to write remarkable stuff when you have a clear picture of what you want to talk about.  Creating an editorial calendar can help you map out your content direction for months at a time and help you create content that is fluid and cohesive and builds upon itself with your readers.  This in turn keeps ‘em coming back for more. (NOTE: We believe in this wholeheartedly; it’s one of the things we talk about over at 12 Minute Marketing.)

Optimize, Optimize

For search engines that is.  Yes the main goal is rockin’ content that delivers on value.  But that doesn’t mean neglect basic SEO principles to further grow your blog’s audience.  Things like catchy titles, using H1 and H2 tags within your content, anchor linking, internal linking, meta data, keywords in your content, etc.  All of these things contribute to great content that the search engines also love.  That means more readers for you!

Use Some Personality

No one likes to read dry, boring, interesting as dirt content.  I know I don’t, do you?  Think of your favorite bloggers.  Are they boring in tone and style?  Or do they make an impact as you read?  Make you laugh?  Inspire you?  Motivate you?  A good blogger will experiment and find their “voice” that resonates the most with their readers, and then write content in a way that engages them thoroughly.

Get a Little Friendly

OK not THAT friendly.  But do allow a bit of transparency to shine through on your blog.  People want to know who they are reading.  They want to connect a face with the words.  They want to get to know the person they are taking advice from.  So be transparent, create an informative about page, use a nice, friendly picture of yourself easily found on your blog, and let people get to know the real YOU.  You readers will thank you!

What has worked for you? What did we miss? Let us know in the comments.

Back to Rick Strater as we continue our Blogging Basics Series. And, since he’s the Co-Creator of 12 Minute Marketing, good enough time to talk about Promoting Your Blog.

Marketing Your Blog – Promotional Basics

Marketing your blog is actually easier than marketing a static website. This is partly due to the structural nature of the blog, and partly due to the fact that there are more promotional opportunities available than for static websites.

There are many marketing options you can explore – and then you simply decide what works best for you, and stick to it:

Guest Posting

This is the process of placing articles on other blogs with a link back to yours.  Probably one of the most effective ways of driving visitors to your site, placing guest posts will allow you to be seen on blogs that are quite busy, allowing you to cash in on their authority that has already been established.

It is a very simple, yet effective technique that can – depending on the blog where you place the post – drive large numbers of visitors to your blog.

You can also find ezines related to your blog’s niche, and offer to write articles for them in return for the exposure. This way you will also be able to cash in on the reputation of the ezine publisher, and the relationship that he or she has with his or her list of subscribers.  Same idea, different medium.

RSS Automation

This is where you submit your blog’s RSS feed to your Facebook and Twitter accounts for instant exposure to your followers and friends. This can easily be accomplished by using a service called “Twitterfeed“. Additionally, you can submit it to Feedburner – a service from Google that will re-distribute your blog’s feed to a number of different destinations.

Social Marketing

This is often marketing on forums and social groups – by contributing value to any conversation, it is possible to showcase your expertise to people and by extension lure many of them into exploring your blog. Don’t just leave a comment and move on, but become involved in the conversation. The more you do, the more opportunities you will have of being noticed, and attracting people to your blog.

Blog Commenting

Placing comments on other blogs can be effective – or not – depending on how busy the blog is, and how soon after the actual post you can place your comment. The sooner you comment, the better the chance that it will be seen by a lot of people, some of which will translate into visitors.

Don’t waste your time commenting on blogs that have very little commenting action… you want to see a minimum of at least a couple comments on any given post before adding that blog to your commenting schedule – or you’ll see very little traffic from it.

Warning

Don’t even think about using traffic exchanges. These are frequented by people simply looking for more traffic to their websites, or opportunities to make more money. If your blog targets any of these, create a simple landing page, and funnel them from there. Most people using traffic exchanges do not really want to work hard to view any page – they just want to run up some credits and get some traffic of their own.  Really a colossal waste of time in my book!

There are many more options you can explore however – like videos, distributing documents, etc. Depending on the niche of your blog, some techniques will work better than others. You will simply have to experiment and keep the ones that work for you, throw out all the rest.

At the end of the day, it’s all about effort versus reward and taking daily actions to promote your blog.

So how will you market your blog today?    

Will It Stop? NO! We continue with Blogging Basics by talking about…Niche vs. Authority. Dave’s at the mic again.

Niche Blog? Authority Blog? Both? Neither?

The question of niche blogging versus authority blogging faces many new bloggers.

On one hand you might want to simply get something going that will make you some money, the sooner the better. On the other hand you might want to do something bigger that will last, make an impact, and not allow you to “outgrow” your project.

Creating an authority blog is a long-term project. It is about presenting yourself as an expert in your field. It takes time and effort to establish, but the rewards are great. To create an authority blog you will need to create loads of content over time, and some of it will have to be outstanding.

You will have to consistently provide good quality content, and connect with other bloggers for additional exposure. Getting your blog ranked well in Google and other search engines will take time and effort, since you will be up against some stiff competition from established marketers.

If you should decide on the “blogging for money” niche for instance, you will be up against people like Darren Rowse from “Problogger“, and Yaro Starak from “Entrepeneur’s Journey”. While it is not impossible to break into the market, it does present a challenge, especially for someone with no prior branding campaign.

On the positive side, however, authority blogging allows you to choose your field of blogging according to your own passions, or at least according to your own interests.

This means that at least it is unlikely that you will tire any time soon of writing about topics related to your blog!

On the flip side, creating a niche blog is easier. Unfortunately, it is also somewhat limited. There is only so much that you can write on any given topic, after which it can become difficult to come up with new ideas for content.

To make it worse, you might even tire of writing about the subject along the way, making it a drag to carry on in the first place.

But a benefit is that it is easier to rank well in Google for a niche blog. Since it is written for a very specific type of target customer, the blog can be created around the needs and search engine searches of these potential customers.

Additionally, due to the lesser amount of work involved, it is possible to maintain a couple of these niche blogs, and have more than one stream of income. Whenever you tire of any given topic, you are also free to sell or “flip” your blog, and start something new.

If you built an authority blog, on the other hand, it would be harder to let go of something that you put so much work into, and it would also be harder to sell something with which you deliberately have branded yourself.

At the end of the day, though, it all boils down to your own expectations and preferences. If you get bored easily, you might want to consider creating niche blogs. There are many marketers who specialize in creating profitable niche blogs, and that is their sole business model.  They create a string of small, profitable blogs and outsource the maintenance of them, and they are happy with that.

Which direction appeals to you the most?

BTW, don’t hesitate to check out what’s going on at 12 Minute Marketing. We’re in full launch mode. Love to have you join in!