Margie Clayman

It’s coming up on the year anniversary of when I started blogging, tweeting, and doing other such things. I have learned so much over the last year that it seems pretty hard to believe it has only been a matter of months that I’ve been in this world. I can’t wait to see where I am a year from now!

In the meantime, I have been reflecting on some of the resources that have helped me immensely over the last several months, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to share them, and others, with you.

Books

They say that hindsight is 20/20. If I was starting my Social Media efforts right now, as you might be, I’d start out by reading the following books, in this order.

UnMarketing, by Scott Stratten

Content Rules, by Ann Handley and CC Chapman

Trust Agents, by Julien Smith and Chris Brogan

The Now Revolution, by Amber Naslund and Jay Baer

In my defense, only Trust Agents was published at the time that I started. Still, no excuses!

Must read blogs

ChrisBrogan.com (Chris Brogan’s Blog): The idea of interweaving humanity into my online presence was molded as a result of reading Chris’s blog religiously. There’s always a ton of other great info over there, too!

PushingSocial.com (Stanford Smith’s Blog): Stan focuses most on blogging (and with good reason, he’s a master), but he is also a great source for motivation!

CopyBlogger.com (founded by Brian Clark): Content, content, content – and great Social Media tips as well.

ProBlogger.net (founded by Darren Rouse): Lots of other posts about content creation as well as how to make a living from your blog.

DeniseWakeman.com (Denise Wakeman’s blog): Denise is a blog queen and her own blog is always full of helpful information. I learned an awful lot from her when I was first starting out.

DawnWesterberg.com (Dawn Westerberg’s blog): Social Media and marketing wisdom plus a sunshiny disposition.

Kherize5.com/blog (Suzanne Vara’s Blog): Social Media and how to market your company online.

MarketingProfs Blog: A constantly updated resource that is worth checking daily.

People to follow on Twitter

Look for the following hashtags:

#blogchat (Sunday night chat, begins at 9 PM EST)

#tweetdiner (Saturday night chat, begins at 9 PM EST)

#usguys (24/7 conversation with some of my favorite people in the online world)

and look for the following people (among others)!

@OneJillian

@qstreet

@KnowledgeBishop

@FredMcClimans

@REALChaseAdams

@SuzanneVara

@debmorello

@myagenda

@solete

@carlsorvino

@ckburgess

@pprothe

@pushingsocial

@dwesterberg

@dannybuntu

@ianmrountree

These folks are just a few of the ones who have helped me get to where I am (wherever that may be). Tell ’em I said they have to be good!

Posts to read right away!

I highly recommend reading these posts. Some of them helped me when I first got started, and others would have helped me if they had been written at the time!

50 Power Twitter Tips, Chris Brogan

Why Smart Readers Prefer Dumb Bloggers, Stanford Smith

How to be a Twitter Champion, Heidi Cohen

Is there a crisis in crisis management? Cheryl Burgess

You, me, the internet, and the war for attention, Tommy Walker

5 grammatical errors that make you look dumb, Brian Clark

This is why you don’t bury your blog’s gold, Mack Collier

I’ve also written a few posts to help you out if you’re just getting started:

Ten Tricks for Twitter Newbies

1 month, 40 blogging action items

1 month, 40 Twitter action items

Do you have resources that have helped along the way? Let me know!

Image by Jean Scheijen. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/vierdrie

There was an interesting commercial on the other day. It was a commercial for a local furniture store. The owner comes on and says, “You may know us for our funny commercials, but what we should really be talking about are our great products and our low, low prices.”

Ding ding!

There’s a lot of talk out there right now about creating content that stands out. You hear phrases like “People don’t like interruption marketing.” You hear that your content is competing against, well, against pretty much everybody else’s content. The reaction to all of this advice seems to be heading towards, “Oh, ok, let’s make content that will get people talking about the content.” This methodology may get people to talk about your product or service, but then again, it may not. Do you want to risk it?  Sure, last year’s Betty White commercial got a lot of press. Do you remember what the ad was promoting?

What this means for you

If you are a blogger, the same challenge applies. You want people to find your content interesting, and hey, it’s great if your blog creates buzz. But ultimately, more than anything, you need your blog to work for you.

How can you accomplish both of these goals? Here are some ideas.

1. Write headlines that are enticing but not spammy. Especially in the world of Twitter, this is a good way to preview what your post will be getting at while also adding some intrigue. For more about this, check out The 8 Most Greatest Tips to write Unstoppably Killer Headlines Guide Ever, by Eric Cummings and Michael Cummings (guest post on ProBlogger).

2. Use hooks wisely. In writing, the opening paragraph is comparable to the punchline of a television commercial. It’s your “aha” moment. Your time to shine. But it’s also your opportunity to tell your readers what you are offering – whether that is information, a soft sell, or something else. For more information about how to make hooks effective and “sticky,” check out The Spectactular Post Formula #2 by Stanford Smith.

3. Don’t out-clever yourself. If you want your content to work for you, your readers have to get it. That means that you don’t want your content to be filled to the brim with jokes, asides, hyperboles, and other stuff.

4. Content should be memorable for the right reasons. Look at what happened to Groupon and their Super Bowl commercials! A lot of people say that creating controversy is a great way to create traffic for a blog, and that’s probably true. But does it help your business? If your stance has a point and it’s tied to what you want your content to do for you, awesome. Have at it. If not, well, maybe another path would suit you better.

5. Don’t over-emphasize the “useful” part. A lot of bloggers can come off as awfully didactic. In fact, sometimes I read a blog post and I find myself quaking in my boots as if I had just heard a fire and brimstone sermon. Other times I feel like I just left a used car dealership. Don’t feel like you have to hammer your point into your readers’ skulls. They’re smart. It’s okay to leave some things to their imaginations, too.

6. Try not to talk like the smartest person in the world. One of the most popular ads during the Super Bowl was the Chrysler commercial. Why? Well, one of the main reasons is that everyone got the fact that the commercial was not just about Chrysler, it was about Detroit, a city trying to pull itself up from the boot straps. It was about the American Auto Industry. The ad didn’t show charts and graphs and statistics. It made viewers feel that message. How can you achieve that with your content?

7. Leave a hole for your readers to fill. Reading is pretty passive. Interacting is, well, interactive, and that makes the whole experience more memorable. If you can guide your readers into contributing to the conversation, everyone benefits.

8. Create new ways to think about your business. If you look at some of the greatest blogs going right now, there is one thing that unites them. They get you thinking in new ways. Chris Brogan’s blog gets you to think about business in new ways. Stan’s blog over at pushing social gets you to think about Social Media in new ways. Lisa Barone certainly gets you to think about SEO in new ways. Stretch your readers’ brains and see what they come back with.

9. Use stories when the time is right. Sometimes the best way to illustrate something is to bring it to a place where almost everyone can relate. Create a meeting ground where you can start out with your readers, and then take them where you want them to go.

What’s number 10?

Now it’s your turn. How do you create content that is both entertaining and useful, either for your readers or for you?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Image by Shannon Pifko. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/SEPpics

This guest post is by Joe Cheray. To read more of her tips and asides and to find out more about Joe visit her at *Wildheart’s Web 2.0* Joe Cheray is a blogger from Topeka Kansas. She also specializes in other aspects of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, and StumbleUpon to name a few.

There are four geo location services or apps I use on my phone. They are:

– Foursquare
– Gowalla
– Whirll
– Yelp

Each one has its own use and purpose as well as distinguished badges of honor so to speak.

For this guest post I will expand on Foursquare.

Foursquare – An Introduction

Foursquare allows you to see where you friends have checked in and when. You
can also leave short comments about the place, or what you are doing there.
You can see what places are nearby and also mark your favorite spots.
Additionally you can leave tips and see what your friends’ tips are. The to
do function lets you make a to do list of places you want to check in to.
Your personal tab lets you see how many mayorships you have, badges, and how
many tips you have left as well as how many check-ins and friends you
have. Currently I have 7 badges: Newbie, Adventurer, Explorer, Superstar,
Local, Swarm and You’re not in Kansas Anymore.

About the Badges

The newbie is the first badge you get for your first check in. Adventurer is
10 check ins, Explorer=25, Superstar=50, Local is checking in at the same
place 3x’s in one week, Swarm=50 people checking in at the same location.
And well, You’re not in Kansas anymore is self explanatory. There are several
other badges you can get but since I haven’t achieved them I don’t want to
give away what the requirements are.

Foursquare and Your Business

Now how can this help business. Ok let me tell you how. If you become Mayor
of a place for example(this is achieved by checking in at the same place
multiple times and is a number predetermined by Foursquare) you are entitled
to some incentive such as free bread sticks at Pizza Hut. If Pizza Hut
promotes this heavily they will have people flocking to their place to be
mayor just to get a free order of bread sticks. Subway here in Topeka ran a
promo awhile back that if you checked in you got a free cookie of your
choice. Lots of folks must have taken advantage of that one because there
were hardly any chocolate chip cookies at the one I went to. Hooters also
has had a check in special where they gave folks who checked in an order of
wings for free.

Foursquare can prove to be an additional incentive for business building
plus it is just fun. It can also provide a unique way to think outside the
traditional marketing box.

Now it’s your turn

How do you use Foursquare either as a consumer or as a business? Do you have any questions about Foursquare? Share your thoughts in the comments section!

Moreso than in blogging, the first month of Twitter can be really frustrating and discouraging. In blogging, the principles are pretty easy to figure out, though it can be hard to achieve your objectives. You write a post, you promote post, you hope people respond the way you want them to. In Twitter, you sign up and your page looks like somebody spilled alphabet soup with hashtags all over your computer. People are talking to each other in ways that don’t make sense, and you don’t even know where to begin.

With that in mind, I’ve put together 40 action items that will help you (I hope) get through that first month. If you’ve been on Twitter for awhile but still feel like you’re struggling with it, take a look at these recommended action items and see if some of them might help you out.

One quick note – the action items for week 1 will almost certainly take longer than a week to get done, especially if you need to figure out answers with other people in your company. However, knowing what I know now, I highly recommend solidifying some of the things listed for week one before you jump in. Plan accordingly 🙂

Week One – Decisions, Decisions

1. Decide if you will be tweeting as an individual, as a company/brand, or a hybrid of the two

2. Decide what you will use as your username. This sounds easy, but it’s harder than you may think, especially if you and the other folks in your company want to come up with a naming convention. Also, and I say this from personal experience, don’t try to be “cute” with your choice. For example, my choice of using “RealLifeMadMan” when I first started was totally confusing and really long. Bad combo!

3. Decide what you will use for your user picture or avatar. If you are blogging on behalf of your company, this will likely be a heavily discussed subject. A lot of companies like to use a product picture or a company logo but factually, people respond better if they can see a human face.

4. Decide what you will put in your Twitter bio. You don’t have a lot of room, and if you want to get your company’s website in there, you have even less room. However, this is super duper important! Get the most important information in there first.

5. Decide what you will do for your background. This background is not something that your followers will see on a daily basis, perhaps – people only see it when they click to view your profile. However, once you’ve been on Twitter for awhile, you know what the default backgrounds look like. Showing some effort to customize your background can show that you’re really trying hard to engage and be engaging.

6. Pin down how you will talk on Twitter. I started out on Twitter trying to blog as our company. I found that it was extremely awkward saying “We just read a post.” I worried people thought I had multiple personality disorder. On the other hand, if you are partaking in a company-wide initiative, that kind of tweet may be 100% logical. Work it out before you dive in!

7. Define what your “follow” methodology will be. I can tell you that almost instantly upon signing up for Twitter, you’ll probably get 2-3 followers. There are some accounts on Twitter that have thousands of followers and no recorded tweets. What this means is that there are a lot of accounts out there who just follow people so that they can get followed back. How will you deal with situations like that?

8. Watch a few people for a few days before you start engaging. See if you can figure out how people who might be similar to you use Twitter. Are they promoting themselves a lot, or are they talking to people casually, or both? See what the expectations are in your space.

9. Avoid the temptation of starting out of the gate following 575 people. When you first sign up for Twitter, you get all kinds of categories with big names to follow. It’s super easy to follow hundreds of people right away. However, the folks that Twitter starts out recommending are people like Yoko Ono, Michael Ian Black, and the President of the United States. I know you’re a lovely person, but these folks probably will not engage with you. Hand-pick a few, but know that this will not be your base of operations.

10. Search for words that are important to you and follow people who seem to have interesting things to say about them.

Week Two – Twitter Speak!

Twitter has very peculiar shortcut words that make following conversation pretty hard when you’re first starting out. In week two, the goal is to learn about some of these and then practice using them. If you have a hard time figuring these out, feel free to ask me either here or @margieclayman.

1. Learn what a DM is

2. Learn what an RT is

3. Learn what #ff is

4. Make sure you are clear in your head about the difference between a DM and a regular tweet

5. Watch how people RT. People have their own ways of doing this and there are good reasons behind each methodology. Find out which way makes you feel most comfortable.

6. As a piggy back to number 5 (hint hint) learn how to use URL shorteners so that you can link to things on Twitter. For example, check out goo.gl or bit.ly. Watch how people use those and see if you can practice using them yourself.

7. Decide how you will thank people if someone RTs you (or says something else nice). Some people will RT any nice thing sent their way. Other people will respond in other ways out of the Twitter stream, while other people (like yours truly) usually simply say “Thanks!”

8. Observe how people do #ff (Hint, this will happen on your first Friday). There are 2 schools to this: 1 is to mention tons of people, and 1 is to mention just 1 or 2 people but explain why you are mentioning them. I prefer the latter myself.

9. Observe how people use the # symbol. Not only is this a really important thing to learn in order to use Twitter, but you are also likely to jump into some pretty good conversations by following that little symbol. *Hint: “trending topics” will give you a hint on this one.

10. Make sure you know how to talk to people on Twitter. Remember, after the @ you need to type their name exactly as it is in their handle. Otherwise, they won’t see it. To make sure you have this down, tweet out a hi to me and let me know how your action items are going so far. You’re halfway there!

Week Three: Jump into the pool

1. Introduce yourself to five people this week. If they don’t answer right away, that’s okay. Practice pushing yourself into the stream.

2. Practice promoting someone else’s blog post this week – this is very important to a lot of people who use Twitter. This will introduce you to people and will also help you practice linking to things using URL shorteners.

3. RT something someone says – and make sure you know now what RT stands for 🙂

4. Try to come up with a question that would be pertinent to other people learning Twitter or relevant to your  business niche. Questions are a great way to start conversations and meet people. Again, don’t be discouraged if you don’t get any answers – just focus on learning how to engage.

5. Try to find another person who is learning the ropes – help each other out as you go along. It’s great to have a buddy!

6. If you have someone to mention for #ff, give it a go. I have to warn you that a lot of the big names don’t like being included in those kinds of mentions just because they get absolutely flooded with them. If you do mention them, don’t be sad if you don’t get a huge thank you 🙂

7. Tweet something out that is of interest to you, whether it’s one of your own blog posts, an article you read that’s interesting, or something you learned at a webinar. If you do the latter, see if the webinar has a # so that you can tie your comment to other people doing the same thing (there, I gave you more of a hint for your week 2 homework!)

8. On Saturday night at 9 PM EST, search for #tweetdiner. This is a Twitter chat that my friend Stanford Smith (@pushingsocial) and I started. Its goal is to help people new to Twitter talk with people who are new or who have been on Twitter for awhile, and it’s also a place where you can ask questions and be assured of getting lots of help.

9. Look for a question mark and see if you can find a question you can answer. Now you can help someone else and maybe meet someone new at the same time.

10. Take stock of where you are. Do you feel like you are moving in a good direction? Send me a tweet and let me know how you are doing!

Week Four – Start building your Twitter house

1. Learn how to use lists on Twitter – you may be listed on a few already. Some are automated, some are created by other users. See if you can tell the difference. Are you ready to create your own lists yet?

2. Begin to watch the content of your tweets. The golden rule is to make sure you are promoting other people more than yourself. The unspoken rule is that interacting with people person to person is a lot more interesting than just tweeting out links. Now that you’re getting the mechanics down, learn how to translate your personality into 120 characters.

3. Try to find and join a new chat that interests you. There are tons of chats every day and night of the week. Jump in, introduce yourself, and meet some new people!

4. Try to meet 10 new people this week, either by answering questions, via chats, or through searching for terms that are important to you and seeing who is talking about them.

5. Turn your attention to beginning to build relationships now that you’re getting used to the wacky world of Twitter. If you see someone talking about a movie you love, jump in and talk to them about it. Get your humanity involved!

6. Check your “following” list. Are you staying true to what your follow-back policy was? Why or why not?

7. Take stock of the kinds of reactions you’re getting. If you are not getting a lot of traction yet, is it possible that you are not engaging enough? Does your profile not say enough about you? If things are going really well, try to isolate things that are working well for you and keep those going!

8. Try to introduce two people to each other this week. If you don’t know enough people yet, that’s okay. Keep this one in mind though. Introducing people is a great way to start building a community.

9. Try to find a person who is newer than you are now to the world of Twitter. Try to help them out.

10. Let me know (if you could) how this program worked for you! Are you feeling okay about Twitter after your first month or are you still kind of unsure? I’d love to get your feedback.

A few days ago, my good friend Joe Ruiz (@SMSJoe) asked me a question. He asked me how I stay connected with everyone that I do. It’s a question I get now and then. As serendipity would have it, the answer plays perfectly into this weekend’s #usblogs theme, which is how to improve Klout offline.

A bit about Klout

Klout seems to be the topic that won’t die. I am as guilty as everybody. I’ve written about my distaste for the whole concept of Klout, I’ve done a presentation exploring Klout with a more unbiased approach, and now I’m doing this post. Just this week, Mark Schaefer quoted an excellent exploration of Klout from the Boston Globe, Trey Pennington wrote a satirical post about things that are wrong with Klout, and Mack Collier wrote a post taking off on Trey’s post.

That’s a lot of content – and this is by no means an exhaustive search.

Here’s the main thing that bothers me about Klout. Despite all arguments to the contrary, it seems that Klout scores rise the more you tweet. Icing on that cake is how often you get retweeted. I’ve been taking a bit of time off Twitter over the last week or so, and my Klout score (I just checked) has dropped 3 points. In essence, to the point of the #usblogs theme, to get klout, simply being online is a good start.

I have a problem with that.

It’s about real connections

I don’t want to downplay the importance of Twitter for today’s online marketers and business people. It’s immensely important, not to mention pretty darned fun and interesting a lot of the time. But (and to quote Pee Wee Herman, everyone has a big but), you find that the more you get connected on a real basis with people, the less you center your communications on Twitter.

A lot of my communicating with people now happens on their blog sites, on my blog site, in emails, on Facebook, on the phone, or all kinds of other places. We wave to each other in the stream, but if you were to judge my relationships with some of my best buddies, like Suzanne Vara and Maya Paveza, merely by what you see in the Twitter stream, you would probably not think there was much going on there.

That is really how I stay connected with people, and I think that’s how people stay connected to me as well. It’s really not a conscious thing for me. I have been fortunate enough to build relationships via Twitter that I truly care about, so following up with that person is a pleasure, not something I check off of a checklist. Does that connection mean that we support each others’ blog posts? Sure. Does that mean that we tweet each other when we can? Yep. But Twitter – the thing Klout measures most – that’s not where the heart of the online world is headed. To me, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of the online world – that’s your really nice car. But you’ve got to be going somewhere exciting for it to be truly worthwhile in the end.

Building Klout offline

Klout emphasizes what it calls “influence,” which has become a tired and controversial buzz word in this space. In my experience and in watching other people who just continue to grow and blossom online, influence is a side effect – a happy coincidence. It’s the relationships and what you do to keep and grow those relationships that really matter. It’s reading a post for someone before they publish it. It’s promoting someone’s e-book to help them out. It’s checking on someone who seems down. All of the things that Klout can’t touch and doesn’t try to touch are what matter the most to me. It may not all be offline, but it’s out of the range of Klout’s radar.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your take!

Image by Franque de Win. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Franque