Marketing Talk

A lot of people have been asking me lately to look at their blogs and diagnose “what I’m doing wrong.” I always get very nervous when I get these questions. I am by no means at a point where I feel like I can hand out sick bloggy prescriptions. However, I have noticed that when I look at blogs for people, I have a certain way of evaluating what I see, and usually that analysis results in some recommendations for specific types of action items.

To underscore the fact that everything in Social Media takes time and patience, I’ve created an outline here for what you could do to try to improve your blog situation over a 1-month time period. Just 25 things a week. Even then I am certainly not going to promise that you’ll be bigger than Copyblogger or ProBlogger, but hopefully you’ll have tried some new things, learned some things, and maybe you’ll even see some improvements.

I’m offering this information for free, but there is a catch – I want you to report to me when you start the process, what you decide to do, and how it works. Deal?

Well then. Here we go!

Week 1

1. Decide if you’re happy with your platform. If you make a whole ton of changes and then change where your blog is afterward, you’ll be quite frustrated with yourself. This is something I DO know a lot about!

2. Remove moderation and CAPTCHA from your comments. I know, it’s scary. I had moderated comments for a long time. One major advantage of using WordPress is that you get Aksimet, which is a very powerful spam filter. It does the job. If you love your comments, set them free!

3. Create or improve an “about” page. Include information about why people should read what you have to say, but also add some human interest in there. Let people get to know you.

4. Find a way to highlight “popular” posts. This, again, is really easy to do in WordPress. The advantage of this is that it keeps people interested in posts that did well for you, and it also offers a good preview of what your content is like.

5. Make sure your subscribe options are super easy to find. My subscribe box is over there in the upper right-hand corner. A lot of people include an invitation to subscribe at the end of every post. Make it easy.

6. Perfect the name of your blog. When I go to your blog site, I should have a pretty good idea of what you’re writing about and what your mission statement is. If you are writing about GeoLocation but your blog is called Puppy Chow, I’m going to be very confused.

7. Make sure you’re sharing. Can people easily tweet out your post? Find widgets like Sharedaddy or TweetMeme and make it extremely easy for people to share what you have written. If they have to work to help you, they’ll probably not help you.

8. Pick 5 posts and read them out loud to yourself. A lot of times we don’t hear our voice or tonality when we write – we’re just kind of transferring our thoughts to our site and then hitting publish. To see how you sound to your readers, literally get the sound of your voice in your ears. If you find yourself wanting to skim read your own posts, you probably need to sharpen things up a bit.

9. Pick 5 posts from someone you admire and read those out loud to yourself. How does this experience differ from step 8? Use that knowledge to your advantage.

10. Refine the design of your blog. Do people have to scroll down before they see the first blog post? Do you have 5 columns, each jam-packed with information? Simple is better – the blog posts are your centerpiece. Make sure they pop!

Week 2

1. Engage the “give to get” rule. Every day this week, don’t let yourself tweet out a link to your blog post until you’ve tweeted out 3 other peoples’ posts. That means that if you want to tweet out your blog post 3 times, you’ll have to tweet out 9 other blog posts as well.

2. Comment on 15 blog posts this week. You can do three a day, and they can be some of the same posts you’re tweeting out. Pace yourself so that your comments can be genuine and thoughtful.

3. Link up with LinkedIn. You can passively promote your blog by linking it to your LinkedIn profile. Get some new eyes on that blog! (If you don’t have a LinkedIn account, step 3.5 would be to start an account)

4. Talk to 1 new person on Twitter each day this week. Look for conversations that are going on and just dive in. This is a great way to start building your community, which has the nice side effect of helping your blog’s popularity.

5. Study your blog headlines. Do your headlines tend to be a bit long? In other words, are they hard to fit into a tweet? Your readers may be having a problem sharing because they don’t want to take the liberty of revising your title for you. See if you can write headlines this week that easily fit into less than 140 characters.

6. Study the images you’re using. If you’re not using images, try to dabble with them this week. If you are writing 1,000 word posts and are using just 1 picture, try experimenting with using more than 1 picture.

7. Attend #blogchat this week – Sunday night at 9 PM EST. Find me or @pushingsocial if you find yourself overwhelmed by the experience. Prepare for a firehose of information!

8. Link to a post that you think your Facebook community would like. Experiment with how you prefer to promote blog posts on Facebook (notes application, manually linking, networked blogs, etc).

9. Write about a topic you’ve never written about before. This not only makes you think about what you haven’t covered, but it also makes you think about why you haven’t blogged about the topic. It’s also a good exercise to see how you can talk to your readers about something new.

10. Write a post about this process so far. You’re at the half-way point. What have you learned? How’s it going? Make sure you ping me if/when you write that post!

Week 3

1. Give to get a bit more. This week, promote 5 peoples’ blog posts before you tweet out a link to your own.

2. Comment a bit more. Build on the commenting you started doing in week 2. Try to comment on 20 posts this week.

3. Experiment with a new kind of blog post. If you tend to write really long posts, try to write a great post in 500 words. If you tend to write really funny posts, try to talk about something serious. Stretch your horizons. Show your readers your versatility.

4. Try to answer a question about blogging this week. By now, if you’re following this process, you’ve been practicing for 2 and a half weeks. Find the word “blog” and a question mark and see if you can help that person out. Show yourself how much you’ve learned!

5. Write a post in response to someone else’s blog post. Find out whose blogs inspire you (a by-product of commenting and promoting other people). Make sure you link back to them so you can have a blog conversation!

6. Visit a Twitter chat you’ve never visited before. Some options include #TweetDiner (Saturday night at 9 PM EST), #MMChat (for marketers, Mondays  at 8 PM EST), #leadershipchat (Tuesday night at 8 PM EST), #custserv (Tuesday at 9 PM EST), #IMCChat (Integrated marketing, Wednesday @ 8 PM EST), and #B2BChat (Thursday at 8 PM EST). These chats helped me build my community – you’ll learn a lot and meet great people!

7. Scan the LinkedIn “Answers” section. Write a post to answer one of the questions you find interesting.

8. Ask someone you trust and have a really good relationship with if they have any need for a guest post. See how your voice and your progress translates for someone else’s audience.

9. Ask someone to guest post on your blog. If you can give a solid direction to the person as to what kinds of subjects you want and want kind of tonality, then you know you’ve honed in on your blog’s mission.

10. Evaluate where you are versus where you want to be. Are you not getting as many comments as you’d like? Are you not getting much more traffic? Or are you exceeding your expectations? Ping me with your results!

Week 4

1. Continue to promote 5 posts for every 1 of yours. Give to get. This is probably becoming a habit by now.

2. Try to comment on 30 posts this week. It seems like a lot, but there are so many amazing posts out there, it is easier than you might think.

3. Write a post about something great someone else is doing. Shine that spotlight on someone from your community.

4. Try to answer 3 questions about blogging this week. If you participate in #blogchat, you can probably accomplish that in 10 minutes 🙂

5. Analyze your “calls to action.” If you want more comments but aren’t getting them, try saying something like, “I really value your opinion on this.” Tell people what you want/hope for on your blog. They’re most likely not mind readers (although you never know!)

6. Write a post that would be helpful to other bloggers. Did any of these steps work for you? Did you take one of these steps and expand upon it to make it your own? Pass the knowledge forward. There is always someone newer to the process than you.

7. Write a post but don’t publish it. Don’t publish it this week, in fact. Let it sit there. Do you find yourself tweaking the post a bit every day? What is your experience with waiting?

8. Seek out a person on Twitter whom you haven’t talked to in awhile, or visit a blog you haven’t visited for awhile. Show someone that you still care about them and your community.

9. Think about starting a series of posts. Is there a topic you could talk about in all kinds of ways? Do you think this information would be useful to your readers? Break it down into sections. Build the expectation from one post to the next.

10. Set up your own plan for next week. What are you goals? How are you going to continue growing? The journey is only just beginning!

I hope this helps you out. I’d love to hear about your victories, your disappointments, and everything in between.

Frank Lloyd Wright is renowned as one of the great American architects. He created, for example, the lovely “lily pad” environment in the Johnson Wax building, where strong, tall pillars meet a ceiling that lets natural light flit into the huge main room. There’s something interesting about Frank Lloyd Wright though. Despite his fame as an architect who could create unforgettable exteriors and luxurious interiors, almost everything he designed has suffered, at one point or another, from serious structural problems. Ceilings in his buildings leak. Foundations in his buildings crumble. Is beauty enough to certify someone as a master? Does structure not really matter?

The same question holds true for blogging

There’s no shortage of advice on how to create powerful content, content that will inspire people to do what you want, content that will make people buy anything from you that you want them to buy. There are a lot of people around who excel at this kind of content creation. You could wrap yourself in their words. Their blog posts are like the richest chocolate fudge, filled with ideas and inspiration. There’s an increasingly common problem, though. The structure, like in Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings, is shaky. Instead of leaky ceilings and crumbling foundations, many blogs suffer from poorly constructed sentences, spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, and more.

Blogging is writing, right, Wright?

It seems like blog readers are in the same school as fans of Frank Lloyd Wright. Grammar and spelling are not enough to get in the way of the essence of a blog post. If someone has a really good idea, and especially if someone has lots of good ideas, they can get away with confusing its and it’s. They can escape without a tongue lashing when they have a paragraph filled with sentences that don’t really make sense. If the blog post focuses on an idea or a concept that is new and refreshing, you can get away with linguistic murder.

Maybe I’m an insufferable perfectionist, but this bothers me. This bothers me a lot. Am I alone?

It seems to me that if we are moving towards a culture of content marketing and content creation, we should be really clear on what qualifies as good content. Are we moving to a point where the idea carries the day, so much so that the technical details of those ideas are presented don’t matter? Is communication moving to a “close enough” model? Is blogging becoming something other than a type of writing?

So what is a blog master?

What is more important in a blog post? Is it the idea that is presented or is it how the idea is presented? Can you skate past spelling errors if the idea is really compelling? Can you not get past grammar mistakes to even identify if an idea is good? What is our measurement of mastery in this space? I’d love to hear your opinion.

Image by Svilen Milev. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/svilen001

The day was May 7, 2010. I had been blogging for about a month, trying to tweet on and off for about 4 months. I wasn’t having much luck. I think I had about 16 followers on Twitter, and my blog, I’m pretty sure, had tumbleweeds blowing over it. As I was doing my morning reading, I came upon a blog post by Chris Brogan, which itself was a response to something Tony Robbins had said. It was about how Native Americans used every part of the buffalo. I thought “Hmm, that’s interesting. I can tie that to integrated marketing, I think.” So I wrote a blog post during the first part of my lunch, then went off to eat.

When I came back from lunch, I had about 7 new followers and 2 comments on my post. This, in both cases, was completely unprecedented. “What is going ON??” I asked myself. I went over to Twitter, and there it was. Chris Brogan had tweeted out my post. In half an hour, my number of followers increased by nearly 50%.

My first reaction was, “Wow, I can’t believe that someone that important saw my post and tweeted it out!” My second thought was, “Wow…imagine being so influential that tweeting someone’s post out inspires people to follow that person. Just based on you tweeting about them.” I thought I kind of wanted to see what that was like.

You’ve been there, right?

With great power comes great responsibility

It’s 9 months later, give or take a couple of days, and there’s a lesson that I’ve learned particularly over the last 3-4 months that I really want to share with you.

If you’re shooting for that influence, or if you’re shooting for Social Media fame, you are asking for an immense amount of responsibility. Just as Spiderman thought that flying around was pretty cool at first, you will find a lot fulfillment from your successes in Social Media, no matter how big or small those might be. But also like Spiderman, you will be asked to be accountable to and for that power. You should not look at that responsibility, that accountability, as a burden. It’s in fact a tremendous gift. But you may not see it coming.

What success in this world means

There are lots of ways to find success in the world of Social Media, and each of those ways leads to a different kind of responsibility. For example:

If your blog is tweeted out by a big force in this space -> you are seen as moving up a ladder in the “this person knows what they’re talking about” category. People will ask you for advice and will trust you to continue to be a good resource.

If you are invited to write a guest post on someone’s site -> it’s like driving someone else’s car for the day. You’re representing everything that person has built. You are answerable to that person’s community. You are expected to provide the same level of content that the community has come to expect.

If you are put on a list -> you are like the smartest kid in class. People will see you as an increasingly bright candle, and they may come to you if they find that they are having problems getting their fire going.

What happens if you shrug it off

For awhile there, if you watch the Spiderman movies, Peter Parker decided that being Spiderman wasn’t such a good deal. He stopped showing up. He thought he was relieved for awhile. He thought he was happier – for a short while. But as crime increased and Spiderman wasn’t around, people started to lose faith. That’s how it is in Social Media, too. If you find success and someone in your community, someone who helped you get there, asks you for help, it is your responsibility, your obligation, and your pleasure to help them out.

That never stops, once you start.

Social Media can seem like a game. It’s called networking sometimes. It’s called community building sometimes. Ultimately though, if I had to put a word on it, I would say responsibility.

Once you build a community of blog readers, you’re responsible for continuing to be a valuable resource, not just via your posts but via your visits to theirs. Once you start building a following on Twitter, you’re responsible for making sure you are helping where and when you can.

The perks and the price

Is experiencing success in Social Media really nice at any level, however you may define it? Oh yes indeed. I still find it amazing that I can tweet something to no one in particular and people respond. I can start conversations now. People are reading my blog and are telling me it’s helping them. That’s awesome. It’s everything I envisioned Social Media could be.

It’s what goes on when you don’t see me on Twitter, or when you don’t see a post here, that matters the most though. Answering direct messages, emails, and comments to the best of my ability. Visiting peoples’ blogs, commenting, and promoting them. Encouraging others in their endeavors. It’s wonderful. It’s rewarding. It’s invigorating. And it is a LOT of time, a lot of things off the radar that you don’t see. It’s no frills stuff. It’s the stuff you don’t get put on lists for.

The more success you find in Social Media (so I would hypothesize), the more it’s “that stuff” taking the bulk of your time.

So, are you ready?

I am not saying this to dissuade you from pursuing everything you desire in this space. But for me, the time investment, the sense of responsibility borne of gratitude – that all came as a big surprise. I am not planning on changing my pathway  and I have only thankfulness, no regrets. I just wanted to let you know, taking that first big step – it’s a lot more than what you might see on the surface. Are you ready? Come on, Spiderman. We’ve got some work to do.

Have a seat. I want to tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there was a person who had a real serious  problem. While they were struggling with it, they encountered all kinds of other people who had the same problem. As so often happens in these kinds of situations, the person in question began talking to the other people. They began checking in on each other, lamenting bad days, celebrating good days. It seemed like they were solidifying relationships that would last forever.

Then one day, one of the people in the group – they reached the light at the end of the tunnel. The key character in our story felt really happy for that person. But almost immediately, that person who got it all figured out – they started acting kind of weird. They didn’t really talk to the other folks anymore. When they did, they would say things that only a few weeks before they themselves would have found really insensitive. The star of our story wondered how someone could so easily forget all of those trials, tribulations, and moments of friendship. Had it been another lifetime?

Nothing brainwashes like Social Media

In the world of Social Media, it is frighteningly easy to forget where you came from. If a couple of blog posts do pretty well for you, it’s easy to forget what it’s like to write post after post with no reaction. If you start adding up followers on Twitter, it’s easy to forget what it’s like to tweet till your fingers are numb and get no responses. In the world of Social Media, success can be like a great eraser. You can forget what it was like to just be starting. You can forget what it was like to have no clue what #FF stands for on Twitter. You can forget what it was like to feel so darned intimidated by that “publish” button.

The funny thing is that Social Media doesn’t just erase bad memories of getting started in Social Media. If you increase your wealth while on your Social Media journey, it’s so easy to start talking to people who have nicer cars and bigger homes, forgetting the people you used to talk to who are still struggling to make ends meet. If you were going through a bad divorce when you got started but now are happily married, it’s so easy to move away from that crowd you initially attached yourself to and join the “happily married” crowd.

There’s always a community, a conversation, and a call to come on over. It’s so easy, so very easy, to take a single step and lose the footprints behind you.

Find some breadcrumbs and retrace your steps

Have you lost track of a group of people? Have you not reached out to someone in a long while who you used to talk to all the time? Maybe they are in a place that you have since vacated. Maybe they are still struggling with something you conquered. Maybe they feel like you’ve forgotten all about them.

Wouldn’t it be great to prove them wrong?

Image by Colin Brough. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ColinBroug

This is post number three  in a series of posts from Facebook expert Tommy Walker. If you have questions, leave a comment here or visit with Tommy on Twitter at @tommyismyname.

1. Log into Facebook. Scroll down the page.
2. When you find something that grabs your attention, stop.
3. Take a note as to why you stopped.

Repeat steps 1-3.

The main issue most Page admins have using Facebook for business…

is they try to be like everyone else. We’ve all been reading the same advice, “Ask questions, post interesting updates, people will interact and your page will eventually grow to be hugely popular”

But anyone who has ever run a Page knows this simply isn’t true.

There is nothing more embarrassing than asking questions nobody answers.

So what happens? If you’re a human being, you stop asking questions…

If you continue creating content that you believe to be interesting, and nobody interacts with it, eventually you’ll stop publishing it to Facebook and say that your target audience isn’t there.

I’ve seen it a thousand times.

This leaves Page admins scratching their heads.

They wonder, “Why if x amount of people opted in by “liking” my Page, they must have thought at least  something I said would be interesting, how come nobody is interacting with my stuff?”

Chances are, you are not optimizing for the News Feed.

The purpose of the exercise at the beginning is not to figure out what you find interesting, it’s to find what grabs your attention.

Facebook’s News Feed is a very busy place. With all the links, pictures, statuses from friends and family- getting a potential customer to interact is kind of like talking to someone ten feet away at a Lady Gaga concert

But… if you know what grabs your attention, chances are, you know what grabs your fans attention.

Getting attention is the first step to interaction. And I imagine we all subscribe to the same school of thought when it comes to marketing, so the next logical conclusion we can make is… More interaction means more sales.

To recap:

Attention—>Interaction—>Sales

So how do we get attention on Facebook?

Believe it or not, it’s actually very simple to get people’s attention on Facebook.

All it takes is smart use of Photos Albums, Video, Slideshare Presentations, Photos on your blog, and all of those other things that Twitter can’t do.

Yep I went there.

Now before the Twitter evangelists start pulling out the pitchforks and set fire to the comments, I want you to consider the work that you put into just an average blog post.

• You mull over writing a catchy headline, deleting and rewriting until you think it will grab peoples attention where ever you publish it.
• You spend hours writing a post, making sure it’s perfectly optimized for both humans and search engines.
• You spend even more time finding images that you hope will retain your readers attention.
• You further optimize your post by crafting a keyword rich title and meta description with the Seo Plugin tool of choice.
• Not to mention the time you spent putting serious thought into your blog’s url when you first bought your domain

Vs

Don’t get me wrong, I love twitter! But the site is so very text dependent, that as a traffic source, it’s only showcasing about 1/5 of the effort you put into your blog post when you use it as a promotional tool.

The blog post on the other side of the link is the same, however by design, Facebook showcases more of the effort you’ve put in to creating it.

Thinking just a little extra 4th dimensionally about how you select your images when you craft a blog post, can dramatically increase your ability to stand out and get more interaction.

Attention is an all out war

If you want to stand out, you can’t just wait for the world’s most popular blogger to stumble upon you and hand you the “instant success retweet”. You have to consistantly attack with the calculated precision of a Jedi surrounded by an army of drones.

Because let’s face it, pretty much all social media streams are full of  drones. And your future on any given day could depend on whether you’re able to defeat those drones and prove that your words are as deadly as a lightsaber.

You can’t just blog about anything and expect it to succeed. Blogging isn’t about publishing content on a regular basis, any more than being a Jedi is about the act of wielding a lightsaber. It’s about focus, concentration, and knowing how to influence and break the patterns of normal observation to implant ideas to progress the agenda of a greater good.

This means spending hours finding the right photo, instead of 30 minutes.

This means networking with other Page admins every week, not once a month.

This means asking people to share your content without shame or reservation. Not because you’re a beggar, but because you know deep down in the very fiber of your being that the content you update on a regular basis is good and will be useful to the people within your community.

You have to realize that your Page is not just a culmination of “likes”, but there are real human beings that raised their hands and said they want to hear what you have to say. It’s more than just arbitrary status updates, it’s a place for people to connect with your ideas and with each other, and you are the Jedi fighting drones ensuring when they log in, their time isn’t wasted.

So burn it up, baby.

Your fans are counting on you.

P.s I know I detailed only one way to stand out, but that’s because I’ve already published all the others I mentioned. You could dig through my archives and guest posts, or you purchase, for just $20, all of my News Feed Hacks in one place

This second fabulous post for the series is by Dawn Westerberg. Based in Austin, Texas, Dawn Westerberg Consulting LLC serves companies from coast to coast and border to border. Dawn Westerberg is the president of Dawn Westerberg Consulting LLC. An Authorized Duct Tape Marketing Consultant, she invites business owners to “Fall in Love with Your Business Again” through sound marketing strategy.

I have a series on my blog called Twitter for Beginners. As I write this post, I’ve got 15 installments in the series. When I posted Part 14, I got a tweet from an acquaintance who asked “If you’re on Part 14 are you really still a beginner?”

In all honesty, I’d have to say yes.

It was two years ago that I really began practicing social media. Prior to that I had seen it, heard about it, and was only registered with LinkedIn. I viewed LinkedIn as the ultimate contact management system with the great advantage of putting the onus of updating contact information on the contacts themselves – a truly great way to stay in touch with all you colleagues past and present. LinkedIn holds vastly more potential than the initial benefit that I saw in it – and that’s part of the reason that, in all social media platforms, I would describe myself as a veteran beginner. With every facet that you master, several new uses emerge.

The next realm I entered was Twitter. I was introduced to Twitter at a conference and several friends gave me a crash course and showed me how to utilize hash tags to see what other attendees were saying about the conference. I was hooked. A year later I was asked to speak on Social Media at that very same conference. I’ve learned so much more since that speaking gig, that it seems to me, I’m still a veteran beginner.

In my early days with Twitter, the more I toyed with it, the more I seemed behind the game and unable to get any critical mass. I seemed pretty stagnant at about 200 followers. I didn’t feel like I was really connecting. I would look at folks that had thousands of followers and wonder what I was doing wrong.

Let me break here and make a quick analogy – Twitter is a lot like XM radio, which I’ve got in my car. At first it was a little overwhelming. Of all the choices, how do you decide what to tune in to? One sunny Austin day, I sat out in my car with the XM station listing in hand and set about programming all of my radio buttons. First, I had to put down the listing and refer to the Honda’s owner’s manual to figure out how to program the buttons. Then, painstakingly, I read through the list and selected channels that I thought would be of interest to me.
How does this relate to Twitter? It’s kind of the same exercise – you need to plug into things that attract people with similar interests. Things started to move for me when I started to participate in Twitter chats. I started to utilize Twitter lists and used Tweetdeck to keep multiple lists open. Between chats and being a more responsive and encouraging follower, the needle started to move. I also thank people for retweeting my links and tweets. Today, I am well over 3,000 followers. I follow most of the people that follow me.

I have various tribes on Twitter. I’ve got my sports tribes – which I connect to via hashtags, e.g. #Longhorns, #Cowboys, etc. I’ve got my chat tribes – #tweetdiner, #imcchat, #blogchat, etc. I have friends that I check in on regularly via my lists.

The next frontier for me will be Facebook. I participate daily (Tweetdeck allows you to keep a column open on your Facebook and LinkedIn feeds, so that’s a big help) but I know that I am not as proficient on Facebook as I am on Twitter. My goal for 2011 is to become more knowledgeable and active on Facebook.

There are many more platforms than just LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook (and I hope to explore more of them soon) but here’s how I differentiate the three (something I shared at a recent #tweetdiner chat): LinkedIn is a business network for me. Facebook is a collection of friends, family and friendly business associates. Twitter is more of an open house. Twitter, for me, is relaxed. It’s also a place for learning, sharing, asking questions – it’s raucous, educational and fun. In contrast, with Facebook and LinkedIn, I am very selective with whom I connect and the tone and frequency of communication is different.

In closing I’d like to share what has been the reward of persevering with Twitter:

1. Great friends. I have met some incredibly wonderful and generous and encouraging people on Twitter. In a couple of weeks, I will meet in person for the first time, someone I have had as a Twitter friend since my early days.

2. Collaborators. As my business has grown, I’ve had the need for outside help. My intern, a press release guru, and a copywriter/designer have all made money and helped me tremendously – all of whom I met through Twitter.

3. Education. I have learned so much about blogging and marketing and the industries that my clients serve through Twitter. Without Twitter, my learning curve would have been slower and less productive.

4. New business. I have actually made money as a result of businesses getting to me via Twitter.

5. Thrills. I’ve had authors I admire and who are active on Twitter comment on my blog!

6. An opportunity to give back. Through Twitter I’ve been able to help and encourage people. In that small way, I feel better about me because I can help as others have helped me.

It has been difficult at times, frustrating at times – but the rewards, as I hope you see, have been more than worth the effort.

Image from hollrahs.com