Dude, Blog Your Business!

A few weeks ago Tom and I did an impromptu interactive social media seminar at the 3000 Club Friday networking meeting.  It went so well that we decided to get together with our friend, Christine Springer, an expert and teacher on all things  LinkedIn, and create a seminar series on social media.

The first of that series – ‘Social Media Idol‘ starts on April 20th. Jasper is the seminars’ Simon Cowell character and the event and series have been designed to be interactive – in other words, you do all the work and we stand there and give our critique!  Only kidding –  don’t worry, Jasper isn’t nearly as harsh as Simon Cowell can be!  This first seminar is based on the premise that you need to know what the job is before you choose which tools you are going to use, and covers lots of interesting subjects like ‘purple cows‘, ‘buyer personas‘,  ’inbound marketing‘ and Web 2.0! 

This first seminar provides the groundwork for the later seminars in which we look at some of the specific tools of social media, such as Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, and Video Blogging – yes, even the video blogging will be interactive!  

Join Christine, Tom Hinchey and myself on Monday, April 20th OR Monday, April 27th from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. at Catch 22 Sports Grill in Phoenix . (Food and drink specials will be available!) The cost is $34 in advance for the initial seminar – register here or at Christine’s site  www.LinkForSuccess.com.

 
Picture from bloggingfornoobs

One thing I hear time and again from experienced bloggers is that they all learned from their mistakes.  The advice they give to new bloggers is that you shouldn’t worry too much about getting everything perfect before posting on your blog, or even starting a blog.  The best think is to just get in there and do it.

A great way to get the feel of blogging before committing yourself to your own blog is to comment on other people’s blogs.  This will give you some valuable experience and will give you the chance to see whether you like it or not.  Blogging is something you have to do on a regular basis so you want to know before you start whether or not it is for you.

Just remember, even the expert bloggers didn’t always get it right when they started.  I saw this post on Social Median today and thought it worth sharing with you – “15 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started My First Blog” by Neil Patel.  Neil talks about some of the major things that you need to know about blogging, including the importance of picking a niche, being passionate, blogger ‘burnout’, having a unique design, responding to commentators, picking the right platform and so on.

If you are a business or non-profit contemplating a move into blogs and social media then this article will give you some valuable insights into what you are getting yourself into! And hopefully, steering you away from some early blogging mistakes. Enjoy.

Dave and I always stress the importance of using images in blogs, both for drawing in the visitor to read the post, and for SEO reasons.  (The image above was one I used for our Invest in Energy Blog client today). An interesting point came up in conversation the other day about the increasing use of hand-held devices such as PDAs and cell phones for accessing websites and blogs on the move.  It was stressed that images in blog posts can be annoying when trying to read them on such devices because the image files can be quite large and take a long time to download. And on a small screen you cannot see them that well anyway.

This is an interesting point and certainly something that blog owners increasingly need to consider.  While I would reiterate the importance of using images in blog posts, the blogger can make life easier for readers on all platforms by scaling and optimizing their images for quick download.  This is especially important if you are taking your own digital pictures for your blog (recommended).  These often come out at approximately  2000 pixels in size, with a file size somewhere around 2.5 Mb – that’s huge for the web.

Ideally, you need to scale the picture down to around 500 pixels wide and optimize the file size to around 100 – 150 Kb or so.   This is especially important for bloggers using developer-hosted blogs because free space on those is limited to around 3Mb – after that you pay a monthly fee.  Optimizing images is always good practice for anything on the web, even if just as a courtesy to your readers. If the software that comes with your digital camera isn’t completely up to the job – mine certainly isn’t – then something like Photoline has all the functionality you will ever need for only 59 Euros.

I actually won something! Woohoo! I have just received a copy of ‘Radically Transparent – Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online by Andy Beal and Dr. Judy Strauss, which I won in a draw for people who commented on a particular blog post, of all things. It looks a good book – all about building, managing, monitoring and, if necessary, repairing your online reputation. Now, I haven’t actually read it yet, but I wanted to share with you their outline of Chapter 9 which is on the power of blogging, because it is very pertinent to all you companies and non-profits out there who may be contemplating setting up your own blog. I quote:

“Building and launching a blog can add a lot of value to you and your business but is not something that should be done halfheartedly. The software you select, the style of blog you use, and the way you engage your readers all play an important role in determining your success or failure in the blogosphere. Understanding what your stakeholders expect from you an how to reach them with an authentic, radically transparent voice will ensure your blog is a positive reflection on your reputation”.

That, my friends, is why it is worth paying the money!