2. GET ON THE CLUETRAIN
Just before the century turned….
3. GET ON THE CLUETRAIN
Just before the century turned….
4. BLOGGING FOR BUSINESS - HISTORY
EARLY BLOGGERS:
http://www.rebeccablood.net/bloggerson/jasonkottke.html
5. BLOGGING FOR BUSINESS - HISTORY
And then we got tools…
http://www.peterme.com/archives/00000205.html
First hosted blog tools:
Open Diary launched in October 1998, soon growing to
thousands of online diaries. Open Diary innovated the reader
comment, becoming the first blog community where readers
could add comments to other writers' blog entries.
SlashDot, a still-popular blog for tech "nerds" launched in
September 1997.
Brad Fitzpatrick, a well known blogger started LiveJournal in
March 1999.
Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan (Pyra Labs) launched
blogger.com in August 1999 (purchased by Google in
February 2003)
8. BLOGGING FOR BUSINESS - RELEVANCE
Early in the new century the business value started
to get more clear:
9. CONTENT MARKETING
• Companies want and need to move out of
commodity situations with their customers to
build relationships
• These relationships create more value over time
for both companies and customers
• Content is the new marketing
• Customers want value, advice, direction, proof
• Make good content and build trust
• Trusted sources gain more business
10. PERSONAL BRAND
• Have a reason for
each social account
(i.e. my college friends
are on FB)
• Choose a network or
two and maintain it
• Schedule (at least)
monthly check in
• Use other networks to
point to your main
networks
11. PERSONAL SITE
• Photo of the
day site
• Created my
own rules
• Follow those
rules
• Building
audience
over time
12. BLOGGING FOR BUSINESS – MAGNET 360
• When you build a personal brand, you help
yourself professionally as well as personally
• When you help yourself professionally, you help
Magnet 360
• Creating content for the company has business
value
21. BLOGGING MISCONCEPTIONS
MISCONCEPTION!
Blogs have to be directly about Magnet 360
MISCONCEPTION!
Blogs need A LOT of content
MISCONCEPTION!
Blogs have to be written
MISCONCEPTION!
Blogs need to promote Magnet 360
If you are writing
original content, that
you know well, then
you are promoting
Magnet 360.
22. WHAT SHOULD A BLOG BE?
/// Your post should say something new
/// Your post should be original
/// Your post doesn’t have a length requirement
/// You should follow the Magnet 360 blog guide-lines
23. HOW TO BLOG
WHAT QUESTIONS ARE YOU ASK?
WHAT ARE OTHERS SAYING AND WRITING ABOUT?
HOW CAN YOU CONTRIBUTE TO THOSE CONVERSATIONS?
The beautiful thing about history is when you get to live through it and talk about it later. I was lucky enough to be in my career when all of these amazing things started to happen.Social conversation was happening on the web way back before the century turned.This book came out in 1999 and it’s corresponding web site went live in April 1999 of that year, it is the same site today as it was then (saved for posterity – only updated to include the second edition of the book)People / customers were talking to each other, saying good and bad things about companies
This notion of people being able to connect in this way started to disrupt companies that weren’t meeting their customers needs.It was surfacing some of the dissatisfaction customers were feeling from ‘faceless’ companies.This book was starting to identify the entire world of social that has manifested the past 15 years sinceAll these ways people were interacting (Usenet (moderated news groups),CompUServ, BBS, email lists)Internet forum software from WebEx) methods some of you may not have experiencedBut the tools were rough
Early blogging meant writing codeJason Kottke (kottke.org) was one of the people who was part of the Minneapolis communityHe was also an early blogger – doing this before the tools – he began in March 1998First site was called Osil8 and he considered it a collection of ‘digital experiments’Side note: Jason also ended up marrying Meg who co-founded blogger
Manual tools transformed and blogging tools emerged (Jason Kottke was writing html code at the time)Suddenly it was much easierAnd there was an explosion
Sun Microsystems encourages all employees to blog Working at Sun I got to see this early benefitBuilding good willShowing expertiseBuilding web traffic
A CEO dialogues the SEC about the use of blogs for the official dissemination of financial informationThis was just ruled on this April – posts on social networks are just as good as news releases and company websites as long as investors have been told which outlets will be used
The book Naked Conversations is published full of stories on the value of blogging for businessIt also outlined how and why to launch a blogging strategy for your businessThis book was written via blogging – then published (Robert Scoble and Shel Israel)
You will be ‘googled’ Think about what people might find – put your own story out there – it’s getting created for you if you aren’t participating in it.Build your personal brandExpect that people will see personal things – get comfortable with it – that authenticity is a good thing – just have awarenessConsider your limits – what you are and are not going to reveal is key to consider before you are faced with a situation you didn’t prepare for – set your guidelinesSign up for your identities
My personal example-my photo blogRules: publish photo taken on that day or beforemake sure a photo is published each dayPublish on wordpress which posts to tumblrPublish on google+ which points to wordpress and posts to twitter
During an event Magnet 360 held, one of our Sr Directors was called out for not having a large social presence.
We knew that he would be speaking again on a national stage, and that we needed to elevate him socially So we started having Rob write blogs, and make videos
We also made him be more active on twitter, and socialize his recent online contributions
From there he was featured in websites, blogs, and had tons of interactions on twitter based on his content, with no mention of a shallow social presence
After his presentation, we looked at what people enjoyed about his speech and writing and started creating more content around that social listening.
I know what you are thinking, Rob has been publically speaking for years and has deep expertise, but recently we did the same thing for a NEW Marketing consultant. He started writing blogs on information that he could leverage and now is being tweeted by influential people in his field, and building his social presence.
T
There are a lot of misconceptions to blogging.
But if you still to these four keys, you will create relevant and interesting information. If you company does not have blogging guidelines, get them in place to empower your employees.
Take these 6 key points as starting points to creating content
Using linkedin and google+ are great resources for searching out content
Support your staff to write content for your business