Tag Archives: blogs

Why Should You Comment On A Blog Post?

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I was reading an article today titled,  Behind the Wheels: An all-too-real Cinderella story it had 12 comments. The piece was beautifully written and it was interesting to see what those 12  people had to say. Which got me to wondering:

How come useless throw away blog posts and articles have tons and tons of comments and the good stuff gets next to nothing?

Part of the question also emenated from this post, Why Your Networking Sucks — And the Secret to Doing it Right which had 30 comments, but also sucked people in, including me, because it held the promise of revealing a…secret.

I felt like a sucker. I knew that the post wouldn’t really reveal a secret that I had not read countless times before. So why did I click on it?

I have narrowed it down to these five things:

  1. It’s all in the title of the post
  2. Salacious content always works
  3. People are suckers for lists
  4. People like  a good car wreck
  5. People want the Cliffsnotes

But the next component after you have read the post is, what do you do? Do you share it, save it, or comment? Why should you comment? Here’s a couple of ideas or thoughts.

  1. Something in the post moves us
  2. Agreement-You want to let the writer know you are with them
  3. Disagreement-You have been moved to tell them they are wrong
  4. A desire to be seen or heard-self promotion/branding
  5. The notion that someone else will read what you have written and respond to you and maybe something else is kindled
  6. The desire to be a jerk-Happens a lot more than you think
  7. The need to pick a fight-Bored people with nothing better to do with their time

 

Social media has changed the game for journalists, for newspapers, for magazines, for bloggers and readers. It’s created a two way mechanism to have a conversation. When you write a blog post or an article, do you write it for the purpose of being heard, to offer up your two cents, to share your perspective, or to have conversations, or for SEO purposes?

As a reader, should we all be obligated to comment on a blog post? What would our world be like if we all were required to provide an educated, thoughtful comment to anything we read? I know some of us barely have time to respond to emails let alone a blog post, but I take solace in the fact that we all now have the opportunity to be heard should we so choose. Though we  have an obligation to comment thoughtfully, it just doesn’t happen that way. As a reader or “blog commenter”, have you ever thought about what you wanted the outcome of your comment to be? Think about that.

5 Reasons Why Social Media is so Explosive

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Given that we have been punked by the dry erase girl it has become apparent to me a few things about our new social transparent world and why marketers want to tap it.

  1. We love to share stories where good triumphs over evil
  2. We love to talk and tell others about train wrecks for companies and people
  3. We can be easily punked
  4. We love watching video-and then sharing it-it takes no effort, none. zip. zilch.zero.
  5. We are suckers for top ten lists

I know there are more, but these were the first 5 that came to mind..

The free ride in social media is coming to an end

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As Twitter continues to edge towards more of a business model that will offer something close to a premium level offering, something else caught my eye this week and it was this…

Ning announced that it was doing away with its free product and forcing its existing free networks to either make the change to premium accounts or migrate their networks elsewhere. They also announced that the company has cut almost 70 people —accounting for over 40% of its staff.

In case you don’t know what Ning is:  It’s a service that allows people to join and create social networks. Ning currently has more than 1.9 million Ning Networks created and 40 million registered users.

About 6 months ago, I mentioned on a panel that the free ride of social media had to end at some point. People need to make money with this social media stuff and hopefully it is not a model based on traffic/advertisers.

This is only the beginning.

10 social sites I bookmarked last week and why.

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Yes there are lots of websites and blogs to read; and for that reason a lot of times I bookmark them and hope to get back to them later. There’s a method to my bookmarking and it usually revolves around learning. I’m an infofreak and my thoughts are that I need to share more of this these bookmarks. So here goe…

Disclaimer* None of these companies paid me to do this and these are not in any kind of order.

1) Objectivemarketer seemed like an interesting site, though the description was ambigiuous but certainly worth trying out.

2) Evernote– Ive been meaning to check this out I just haven’t pulled the trigger on it. Anything that simplifies, I’m all for.

3) Lazyfeed– this seems pretty cool and is exactly what you might think. It’s a real time feed of topics that Lazfeed finds, sortable, searchable, findable, realtime monitoring. I believe its in beta, follow them On Twitter for a reg. code.

4) The Spinks Blog Not that David needs any help but he has an interesting read here and glad I finally went over to see what he had to say.

5) Eventful Find share and promote events- This could be a useful site. The jury is still out though.

6) Hubpages Still checking this one out too-Publish online with easy to use, non-techie tools

7) The ultimate list of basic SEO resources– This is pretty self explanatory no?

8)  What the fuck is social media one year later- this slide deck is a follow up by Marta Kagan from her immensely popular first deck on the same subject. Great to read and share, lots of useful stats.

9) The Ultimate list of Twitter tools Ignore the annoying popup and check this list. You never know what you might not know.

10) Why social media marketing fails This is really good, listen to the audio podcast featuring Peter Kim , Jeremiah Owyang and Charlene Li.

I love The filter aspect of Twitter and believe it or not, a lot of these originated from tweets. I just amassed them into an uber tweet for you 🙂

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When the tweet doesn’t live up to the hype

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play_risk

What do you, what can you do? You click on a compelling tweet with a link and it brings you to a lame blog post or just bad content. You took the link bait. What do you do? You read it and you say to yourself this is bullshit. It has a lot to do with credibility going forward doesn’t it? You feel like a sucker.

Trust? Your trust of who sent the link is diminished. Your skepticism for any subsequent posts is raised and the likelihood of ever going back to that blog and or to even follow that Tweeter is in jeopardy. So is this you? Are you the offender? If it is, here is one piece of advice. We’re not that stupid.

Don’t play us.


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Let’s quit talking to each other

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This post is or was inspired by Liz Strauss.  Actually though, I was going to write this post a long time ago. It’s origins can be found within Twitter, and it’s flourishing within the blogosphere.  Part of my post is fueled by the innate ability of the late comers and the me-too’ers to echo what everyone else is saying via Twitter and their Insta-blogs. Some of them are merely trying to get in the game, while others are just trying to profit off of the efforts and sincerity of others. But the bottom line is they are bringing nothing to the table-zero. You know who you are.

The other part of my post is about the rest of us, me included, who tend to write about whats right, wrong, great, shitty, and awsome about social media, marketing, and all things related to what we do. There’s one big problem with this though. You see we get paid by companies who need what we do. We get paid by companies who have no clue. But our blogs and our Tweets are read by  most people who already know or pretend to know what to do. I know that’s not completely the case but for the majority it is.  Sure we share resources and blog sites with another “great post”,  but the people that we need to be reaching out to are companies that need what you do for a living. And they might not have access to your blog or access to your Tweets.

We need to quit validating each other so much and patting each other on the back. We need to start doing more with clients, and talking less to each other. You need to figure out a better way of getting clients to listen to your Tweets and how you’re going to get them to your blogsite and your website. If that means changing your tune on your tweets or your blog, then so be it.

Wouldn’t you agree?

10 social media ideas you can blog about

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In my efforts to provide readers and writers with the tools they need to write better content, here is a topical list of subjects that you could probably write a pretty decent blog post on. If you do, give me some props and some link love. Or better yet, we could discuss them as we go, we can just start with #1 and we can collaborate and work our way down the list together. Your choice.

  1. What is Your Personal Social Media Strategy? Whether you are an agency, corporation, or an individual you need to have a plan.
  2. SEO depends on social media. As much as some purists might not want to admit it, seo and social media are joined at the hip.
  3. Should bloggers be held to journalistic standards? Bloggers can say and write some pretty outlandish things and get away with it, should they? Should they be held to the same standards as traditional journalists?
  4. Communications Decency Act and Social Networks-Are we doing enough to police what is written and produced and generated on social networks?
  5. Transactional conversations-is there now a value that can be placed on every conversation that takes place via social media?
  6. Social Media is a time suck-how much time do you devote to social media per day and per week?
  7. Whats more important? User experience or Technology? What drives the user? Is it the platform or the the experience?
  8. The criteria for judging social media platforms? What is yours? what do you base your usage on? What should they all be judged on?
  9. Social networking failures, you can’t force the action.-Not all social media/social networks succeed.
  10. How to choose the right social network? Should they be more vertical, will they eventually be?

OK, so there’s your topics, pick one, any one and go to it! Soothe your inner writers block demons and be sure you let us all read it too!

Who are you talking to?

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Anyone know who Travis Bickle is? Back in 1976, an actor you may have heard of, was still trying to carve out a name for himself in Hollywood. He was in a movie called Taxi Driver, In this one memorable scene, Bickle is looking into a mirror at himself, imagining a confrontation which would give him a chance to draw his gun. He says the following line:

You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well I’m the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?

So my question to you, who are you talking to? When you write your blog, who are you writing for? Are you talking at them? or to them? Who is them? Someone had written recently that you don’t have a successful blog unless it’s loaded with trackbacks and comments. I bet to differ, but I do think it’s important that you are writing with purpose and conviction. That’s what makes a blog successful. But one other important aspect of blogging, is the ability to listen and the ability to focus.

Here is your thought for Monday. take a step back and figure out what is the message and the theme of your blog. When you do get traffic, what brings them to you? And how can you get them back again. What is your unique value proposition? it should be, listening first and talking second. I’m not saying your blog is wrong, I’m saying, be more succinct in the theme. BE CLEAR There’s nothing wrong with randomness, but if I want random, I can find that anywhere. This is especially true if you’re first starting out as well. Know why you want to blog. Here’s a good primer on how to blog ,for the uninitiated.

BTW, Travis Bickle was played by Robert DeNiro, but you knew that right?