Margie Clayman

Sometimes in life, we figure something out without realizing it. Then we go through a phase where we think, “Oh, hey, that’s accomplishing this thing over here. Wow, neat.” Then we realize that actually, this could be super helpful to lots of other people.

It is this exact scenario that leads me to our engagement post for today. My great Twitter secret. The thing that, in my opinion, helps me enjoy Twitter, helps me engage better, and helps me get the most out of any time that I spend using Twitter. Are you ready?

Live on your @ page or your @ column.

[Read more…] about The greatest key to Twitter engagement

Since I’ve been blogging, I’ve had a fair number of people ask me to take a look at their blog sites. There are usually a few things that I look for as potential problems when I’m asked to do this kind of analysis. I’ve come up with 15 of these bloggy growth stoppers, in fact. If you suffer from any (or all) of these, take heart. Noticing them is the hardest part.

1. Your blog topics are all over the map: When I first started blogging, I took great liberty with the word “musings.” The problem is that if your topics are all over the board, no single demographic will feel like your site is the right home for them. Settle on a general theme, and then diversify within that over-arching theme.

2. Your posts aren’t easy to share: I know it might seem like a bummer, but if you don’t have really easy ways to share your posts, people will probably not take the time to do it for you. That means a Facebook like button, a retweet button, and then maybe other share buttons like Stumbleupon.

[Read more…] about 15 reasons why your blog is not growing

Take a moment and think about all of the people in your life. I mean all of them. Sure, there’s your family. Then your brain is probably moving to your close friends. Now you’re thinking about your friends with whom you aren’t as close. Let’s dig deeper. The person you see on a regular basis at the grocery store. The person who delivers your mail or your newspaper. That person you see on Facebook or on Twitter. What would you do if you found out any of those people were suddenly gone? Those dreaded words – passed away suddenly.

My life has been peppered with this phenomenon from a very young age. When I was six, a severe asthma attack took my grandmother’s life. In fact, by the time I was in fifth grade I only had one grandparent left. In my professional life, three contacts have passed away suddenly over the last year or so. However, there’s one story in particular that I want to share with you, because it gets to the heart of why I try my best to see the good in everyone, even if they are just a passing face in my Twitter stream or my Facebook feed.

[Read more…] about There’s no time to take people for granted

I’d like to try something a bit different with Tweetdiner. We’ve been having really good conversations lately, but after each one, there’s kind of a gap. We don’t follow up and then we start a whole brand new topic the next week.

I thought it might be fun to schedule a series of chats that would all be pieces of big theme, and I thought the theme that would be best as a starting point would be How to Build Your Brand Online.

I’ve sketched out a chat schedule (below). What I’d love to see is participation on our Facebook page throughout the week, including any blogs you think would be good references for that week’s topic. Every Saturday I’ll post the archives here and to our Facebook page (once I figure out how to do that now that WTHashtag is gone) so that you can jump into the chats at any time.

If you see a session that you’d like to co-host, please leave me a comment here, email me, DM me, or contact me via some other means so that we can work out the details.

Without further delay, here is the proposed schedule for the ongoing chat, How to build your brand online!

[Read more…] about TweetDiner: How to build your brand online

This post may not make some people very happy, so I’ll try to be as gentle as possible. First, let me get a few things out of the way.

1. Not every blog post is a masterpiece. I have written more than my fair share of duds.

2. Just because a post may not be great doesn’t mean you are a bad writer or should give up.

3. You are judged by the content you share almost as much (if not moreso) as by the content you create yourself.

Over the past few days, I have gone to links that people I respect have shared via Twitter or Facebook or even their blogs. In some cases, I have been happy and impressed, as per usual. But lately, seemingly more and more often, I click on a link and I think, “Really?”Maybe the build-up in promoting the link sets me up for what could only be disappointment. Maybe the person’s reputation for sharing great information has set me up with the idea that everything that person shares will be excellent. Whatever the case may be, I have read the post per a recommendation and have left with a feeling best described as “Hmm.”

This begs the question, and I don’t have any particular answer in mind, “When should your promotion of content have more to do with the content than your relationship with the content creator?”

I know that sometimes I want to help someone out who has been helping me out, but that particular day’s post for that person just doesn’t ring my chimes. I may comment on it, but I only share content that I really and truly believe is top notch. If you have tons of spelling or grammatical errors, I don’t feel like I can pass that on to my community. If your blog post is mostly ranting and raving, I’m probably not going to share that post.

I know that there’s a lot of pressure to promote other people. I know that tweeting out a person’s blog post is a great way to build a relationship or get on their radar. Does that mean you should randomly tweet out posts that you normally wouldn’t give any thought to?

What do you think?