Mark Tosczak's Blog

Seven go-to productivity apps for 2012

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 10:12:48 +0000

With a new year just underway and productivity and organization being the focus of many new year’s resolutions and goals, I thought I’d give a quick run-down of some of the key apps and tools I’m using to stay organized these days.

General Productivity and Organization

Dropbox for sharing documents between multiple computers and sharing large files with other people. It’s on both my personal and company laptops, plus my iPhone. Dropbox has become my default location for storing any file that I want available to me wherever I am. I’m using almost 90 percent of the capacity in my free 2GB account, so there is a pretty good chance I’ll upgrade to the paid version this year. (Though if you click-through the link here, sign-up for an account and download the software, I’ll get 250MB added to my account, so I’d very much appreciate you doing that.
Evernote, for notes, travel information, reference information and lists — including my to-do lists. I use this every day as a key part of my task management and project management tracking system, and have basically stopped using paper. This is part of my effort to have less stuff and less clutter this. Just like Dropbox, I have Evernote on both my laptops plus my iPhone. I’m using the free version, for the moment.
Basecamp for project management at work. We’ve been using this for over a year now at work, and although it’s not perfect, it still seems to have the right mix of just-enough features without too much complexity.
LastPass for password management. I think it’s almost essential to have some safe, secure, always available way to manage passwords. I have a little home-brew system for generating and remembering unique passwords, but even that isn’t enough for the dozens of different passwords I need to keep track of. LastPass helps keep me sane.

Writing and Creativity

Scrivener for writing. I save the files in Dropbox and have it installed on both my machines. I love the writing interface as well as its ability to handle complex, multi-part documents – everything from blog posts to my daily journal to novels. I wrote the first draft of this post in Scrivener. It’s a Mac-only app, so Windows folks are out of luck (or perhaps there’s an alternative – I just don’t know).
Xmind for mind mapping. I’ve found mind mapping an excellent tool for organizing thoughts and ideas, and translating the results of brainstorming to a coherent structure. I should be using it at work with our teams as a brainstorming tool. I would just hook the laptop up to a projector so everyone can see the mind map as it’s built. This comes in both free and paid versions, but I’ve only used the free version.

Social Media

I continue to be a huge fan of Hootsuite for social media management, especially Twitter. It’s a web app, so it’s available at any computer with an Internet connection, and there’s an iOS version as well for the iPhone and iPad. I get the same set of lists, searches and other features no matter where I log in from. Plus Hootsuite has built in analytics, scheduling and other capabilities. The free version has quite a robust set of features, and the quality is so good I wouldn’t hesitate to pay for the premium version if (more likely when) I need the extra features.

Of course, like most people I use Microsoft Office for word processing, presentations, spreadsheets, email, contacts and calendars. And there’s a range of other applications and tools I’m in and out of each day. But the ones above are really my go-to apps for getting things done. If you have any must-have applications, I’d love to hear about them. Please leave a comment below.

Four tactics to take corporate social media to the next level

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:40:04 +0000

In most companies, social media lives in marketing and/or corporate communications. That’s fine for brand and corporate efforts, but if your company’s social media activities are restricted to just those two functions, you’re not getting everything out of social media that you could be.

Photo credit: Dell (which has successfully used social media for more than just marketing and public relations).

Companies should think about social media at two levels:

The brand level, which typically involves tactics such as corporate Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, corporate blogs and formal social media campaigns.
The employee level, which requires empowering as many of your employees as possible to engage with the outside world using social media tools with the goal of doing their jobs better.

If your company has on-staff recruiters, a sales force, R&D specialists and customer service staffers who are not using social media, chances are they’re not as effective as they could be.

So how do you go about implementing something like this? Here are four steps I’d start with:

Write (or, if needed, revise) your social-media policy so it is simple and clear for employees to follow, and not only protects your company, but also encourages employees to tap social media tools to do their jobs better.
Deliver training in social media for employees in sales, business development, human resources, customer service, R&D and other nonmarketing, non-PR functions.
Provide ongoing support for employees using social media in their professional capacity. That could include everything from arranging for professional photographs for LinkedIn and with other social media profiles to paying for social media apps for employees’ smart phones. You might even think about retaining a social media coach to work with individuals.
Develop a formal process to help new employees understand how they can (and should) use social media. Chances are they won’t have gotten this training in their last job.

If you have other ideas about companies can move their social media activities to the next level, I’d love to hear them. Please leave a comment below.

Why you should have multiple email accounts

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:18:07 +0000

I have a confession to make: I’ve had something on my to-do list for several months now that I’ve been procrastinating on.

“Record all email accounts and passwords in one place.”

Over the last few months I have been using Clipperz to store my passwords for various accounts. I spend a lot of time online, so I have a lot of passwords. But I’ve been procrastinating on rounding up my email addresses and adding them to Clipperz. The problem is that I have a lot of email addresses, including some I don’t use that often, and I dread the thought of digging them all out and figuring out what the passwords are.

A better solution, you might say, is just to have fewer email addresses. But multiple email accounts are useful.

In fact, if you only have one or two email addresses and you’re active online – especially if you’re doing things for clients, employers or others – you need to use more email addresses.

Making web projects portable

Let’s say I create a website for a volunteer organization I belong to. Along with that website I create a Twitter account, a Google Analytics account, a Feedburner account and a bunch of other things related to this organization’s online presence. So what happens if at some point I hand over the responsibility for this site to another volunteer? I have to go through the rather laborious process of transitioning all these services to the other person.

If I’ve got multiple web projects (and I do) tied into those accounts, this can be a real problem. For some things, like a Google Analytics or Feedburner account, it might actually be easier to just ditch them and create new services for the project – but then we’d lose the historical data. And some services (Twitter, for example) won’t allow you to tie multiple accounts to a single email address.

Facebook is particularly problematic, as its terms of service don’t allow multiple accounts for one person at all. I’ll save how to get around that for another post, as it’s a somewhat complicated and troublesome.

So when you start a new web project – for a client or employer, as a volunteer or for yourself – you should create a separate email account to go along with it. There are lots of very good, very robust free email services out there (Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail and others). I’m partial to Google myself, because I tend to use a lot of other Google-owned services (Analytics, Feedburner, Google Voice, etc.), and creating a new Gmail account gives you easy access to those without the extra step of creating a separate Google account.

If or when you need to hand over responsibility for that web project, you provide the log-in information for the associated email account. And once you’ve done that, you no longer have notifications, data and other inputs from that project cluttering up your email account or other user IDs.

Use forwarding to manage multiple email accounts

Of course, in the meantime, you don’t want to spend all of your time logging in and out of different email accounts.

Once you’ve created that new account, the simplest thing to do is just to forward that account to your main email account. And don’t do what I did and wait a long time before you record all those accounts and passwords somewhere safe – keep up with it from the beginning.

What other tips do you have to manage multiple independent web projects? Please add them in the comments below.

Why you should attend ConvergeSouth

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 10:15:16 +0000

Blogs and social media are great, but you can often learn more, meet more people and have a richer experience attending conferences, seminars and other events in person. There’s a big difference between skimming a blog post in your RSS reader and the immersive, interactive experience of a conference.

That’s why, if you’re interested in social media, search engine optimization (SEO) and doing business online, you should attend ConvergeSouth 2010. (Disclaimer: I am one of the volunteers helping to put the conference together. I’m involved because I’ve attended several past ConvergeSouth conferences and I think it’s a great conference.)

So far, this year’s line-up of speakers includes:

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist
Elyse Porterfield, of quitting a job via whiteboard fame, on viral video marketing
Will Carroll, Sports Illustrated’s Fantasy League writer
SEO pro Brent Payne (who’s in charge of SEO for 50+ Tribune Co. websites)

There’s a full schedule over there on the right-hand navigation menu of my blog. Want to learn more? More importantly, want to register? You should. Visit the ConvergeSouth website and sign-up today. It’ll be worth it. I’ll see you there.

Six tips for getting more out of conferences

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:41:25 +0000

Don't just sit there. Make sure you get the most out of attending a conference or seminar. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/211097)

I recently attended Ragan’s Social Media for Communicators conference in Atlanta (which was excellent — the folks at Ragan did a great job finding speakers and putting on a great event). For 2½ days about 500 of us met at Coca-Cola headquarters and heard first-hand how some of the country’s best known companies are using social media.

In addition to getting a lot of good ideas about social media, I also came away with some thoughts — some new, some old — about ways to get more out of a conference or seminar.

1. If it is a social media event or if people will be tweeting about it, find out the hashtag (or designate one if no one else will) ahead of time. Bonus: start tweeting before the event to make yourself known to other attendees and meet them before you actually arrive.

2. Find other ways to organize attendees online. I started a Twitter list of conference attendees. After the Ragan conference, a fan page for conference attendees was started on Facebook and another attendee started a LinkedIn group.

3. Write your Twitter ID on your name badge. Even if it’s not a social media or marketing event and you’re the only Twitter user there, this still could be a great way to start conversations.

4. Camp out close to the walls and the power outlets in the conference room. It sucks to have your laptop battery die in the middle of a presentation as your taking notes or tweeting or whatever. Bonus: Bring a power strip with you to share the outlet with others — you’ll quickly be the most popular person there.

5. Decide which social events around the the conference you’ll attend. If you’re an introvert like me, you have to pace yourself a little bit, so decide what’s the most valuable to you and make plans to get the most out of that.

6. Bring back notes, copies of slide presentations and other materials to share with your colleagues. You can provide your employer and clients more value if you share what you learn after you return.

Everyone has their own tricks for getting more out of conferences. What are your tips? Please share them in the comments below.

Four things readers want

Mark Tosczak — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:29:30 +0000

Publishing news about your niche or topic area is one sure-fire way to attract and retain an audience. (Photo: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/106233)

What do readers want? And not just readers, but viewers, listeners – audiences for all media. If creating content is part of your marketing strategy then you’ve got to figure out what content your audience wants. What kind of blog posts, ebooks, podcasts or videos will attract the most people, get shared most often and keep your brand uppermost in people’s minds?

What they want is likely to boil down to four kinds of content.

How To

How to be wealthier, how to be sexier, how to be slimmer. How to do something — create a great Facebook fan page, sell more life insurance or bake the perfect cake.

Bookstores and libraries are full of how-to books. Magazine covers are scribbled over with how-to headlines – “How to get your guy to ____” screams Cosmo. And the Internet has become a treasure house of how-to content of every type.

People want to know how to do things. They want to know how to do things because they think that being able to do those things will get them something they want — a better sex life, more money, less stress. How to content appeals to a fundamental human desire for empowerment. Help fulfill this desire, and your content will be successful.

Examples: Lifehacker, eHow

News

The conversations around the water cooler used to be about what happened the day before, what was on the news last night and the paper this morning. Now those conversations (which are perhaps more likely to occur on Twitter or Facebook) are about what happened today at lunch time, the announcement made an hour ago, or even the big press conference that’s taking place right now.

People want to know what’s new and different. We’re hardwired to constantly scan our environment (that’s why we’re so easily distractible). In the today’s world scanning our environment means monitoring the news. Providing relevant, up-to-date news can be difficult (I used to make a living doing this), but it can also attract massive audiences and attention.

If you can provide the latest updates in your niche or industry you can quickly establish your content as authoritative and worth revisiting frequently.

Examples: CNN, Mashable

Emotional Experiences

Make them laugh, make them angry, make them cry. Whatever you do, make them feel something. If you provoke emotion in your audience, chances are they will stick around. Emotional experiences are the foundation of all good entertainment, and it can be the foundation of all sorts of compelling online content.

Fundraising appeals, for example, often seek to tap our empathy and inborn desire to help other people. Every funny TV commercial you’ve ever seen uses the same principle — it makes you laugh, giving the company a chance to deliver a sales message to you while you’re paying attention and feeling good.

Examples: Gary Vaynerchuk, Dooce

Secrets

Everybody wants to be part of the in-crowd. Letting your audience in on something that very few people know is a great way to keep them coming back for more. This is more than just a desire to know what’s going on in the world. People like secrets (or what they think are secrets) because knowing someone’s secrets makes them feel special.

If you want to quickly establish powerful ties to an audience, try giving them some secrets. Of course, the problem is that as soon as you tell them the secret, it’s not a secret anymore. So for most of us, this is probably only going to work a few times, at most. That doesn’t stop advertisers form trying to tap into this, however. Over the next few days, notice how many times the word “secrets” appears in ads that you see.

Examples: Post Secret, Penelope Trunk

As you might guess, you don’t have to restrict yourself to just one of these categories. A single blog post or video can combine, for instance, how-to content with secrets. And the content still has to be relevant to your niche. Mashable attracts readers interested in news about the latest in social media, not readers who want to know about the latest news in home improvement.

What category or categories does your content usually fall in? Please share your thoughts in the comments.Four things readers want

Why you should stop trying new social media sites

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:17:57 +0000

Google Wave. Google Buzz. Farmville. Foursquare. Gowalla. Yelp.

Don't get lost in the maze of choices social media offers. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1093677)

The list goes on and on. There are more social media sites, social media apps and cool online things that people are talking about than I will ever have time to fully explore. Even though I make my living in part by helping companies use social media, I can’t commit enough time to explore every new thing to come along. Chances are, you don’t have the time either. And that’s OK.

It’s easy to get caught up in trying the latest and “greatest,” easy to worry that you’re going to miss out on the next Facebook or Twitter if you don’t jump on a new site right away. In other words, it’s easy to forget why we’re here in the first place.

We’re here to have conversations, to learn, to market and brand ourselves, our businesses and our causes. Actually doing those things requires work, attention and focus. But the siren song of Google’s latest project or the newest game that all your friends seem to be playing on Facebook can be all too alluring sometimes.

A better strategy might be to focus on just a handful of sites and activities, to spend real time building real relationships, creating real content and establishing a real presence. It’s OK to not be everywhere. Instead, pick your places and really BE there. For me, these days, that means I’m spending a lot of time focusing on this blog (my home base on the web), on Twitter and on Facebook. I spend less time on LinkedIn and a private forum or two.

I have dipped my toe into Google Buzz and Google Wave, am intrigued by FourSquare but not ready yet to focus on it, and I keep an eye on the news, apps and sites that keep social media enthusiasts talking. But that’s all. And that’s OK. It’s better to pick your places, focus and have an impact. Trying to be everywhere is probably a formula for being nowhere.

So I don’t really mean that you should never try a new social media site. It just means that you should do so carefully and with some consideration as to why you’re doing it and how it fits into your overall goals.

What say you? Where do you spend your time online and how do you figure out what’s valuable? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

30 content ideas for an email newsletter

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:48:45 +0000

One day your boss comes into your office and announces that he wants to publish an email newsletter about your department, company or organization. And then he gives you the job of actually producing it. He gives you a deadline and says “I look forward to seeing a draft of the first edition next week.” What do you do?

I’ve created and managed a few email newsletters over the years. Just as with a blog, an email newsletter is built around content. Here are 30 content ideas for your email newsletter.

1. Links to and excerpts from your recent blog posts.

2. Links to and excerpts from other web sites or blogs that your readers might find useful or interesting.

3. A short essay or letter that’s not published anywhere else.

4. An exclusive tip of the week/month.

5. Links to your company’s social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook fan pages, etc.).

6. News and announcements about what’s going on in your business or organization.

7. Special offers, discounts and coupons.

8. If your employer is a for-profit business, links to the favorite charity encouraging people to donate and explaining why you support the group. (Like I did with this post.) If you work or a nonprofit, links to businesses that support you in a substantial way.

9. Employee profiles (to put a human face on your business or organization).

10. Customer profiles.

11. Customer testimonials.

12. Links to independent reviews of your products or services (such as on Yelp or Amazon).

13. Invitations for readers to review your products or services on your web site or an independent site.

14. Contact information (seems basic, I know, but it’s important).

15. Polls or trivia questions.

16. The results of the last poll or answers to your last trivia question.

17. Photos of your products.

18. Reader-submitted photos of your products being used.

19. A contest.

20. Listings of upcoming events (sales, meet-ups, open houses or whatever’s appropriate for your organization).

21. A tutorial or lesson. You could do a series of these.

22. A guest column by an outside writer, perhaps a well-known blogger in your industry or even a celebrity.

23. Q&A style interview with a key employee in your organization.

24. Emails from readers, answered by you “Dear Abby” style.

25. Inspiring, compelling stories of about customers of yours who are doing great things (climbing mountains, raising money for charity or maybe training for the Olympics).

26. A funny video produced by your employees.

27. Holiday greetings (during the holidays).

28. An invitation to an event or webinar exclusively for your newsletter readers.

29. New job listings. Hire your customers? Why not. If they buy from you, they could be great advocates for your brand.

30. Sneak peeks or previews of new products or services.

What else have you put in email newsletters? What would you put in a newsletter if you were doing one? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Five mistakes newbie bloggers make

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:31:20 +0000

Some blogging mistakes can block your path. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/589399)

I’ve been blogging for about 10 years now. Along the way I’ve learned a lot. I’ve also made a lot of mistakes. A lot.

So, if you’re new to blogging and determined to be successful at it, here are five mistakes to avoid.

Mistake #1: Not sticking with it.

Some bloggers see a lot of success relatively quickly, but there is no such thing as an overnight success. Even those bloggers who brag about how they took a new blog from zero to 10,000 subscribers in three months, or whatever, didn’t really go from zero to hero overnight. Chances are they put in years of work before they ever launched that “overnight success” blog, developing skills and acquiring tools to make a big splash quickly.

Whatever your goals are as a blogger, you’ve got to stick with it to see success. A good rule of thumb would be six months of steady blogging before you begin to see significant traffic, readership or (if it’s a goal) revenue.

Mistake #2: Not focusing on content.

Great design, cool widgets and useful plug-ins are all good things to have on your blog. But you can waste hours on these things without adding the one thing that makes the biggest difference: new content. If you want to fiddle with your design, write a new post first. If you want to add a new plug-in to the back-end of your WordPress admin panel, write a new post first. If you want to add a cool new widget or explore a new social media site, write a new post first.

Readers come to blogs, and come back, for one thing and one thing only: content. Make that the No. 1 focus and you will be much more successful.

Mistake #3: Not being consistent.

One of my biggest mistakes as a blogger has been inconsistency. Being consistent means regularly creating and publishing new content. You don’t have to publish a new post every day. And you certainly don’t have to do what the big, commercial blogs such as Mashable and Lifehacker do — publish many, many posts every day. But you do need to publish consistently.

Pick a frequency that you think you can maintain (once a week is probably a minimum for most of us) and start with that. If you want, and can, then increase your frequency down the road. But don’t decrease it. Pick a goal for how often you want to publish and stick to that.

Mistake #4: Not writing for your readers.

The biggest misconception that blogging and social media suffer from among those who are not enthusiasts is the idea that we all sit around and write about what we ate for breakfast or that we’re all writing poorly thought out, uninformed reactions to the news of the day. This isn’t true, of course, but there are some bloggers and social media aficionados who do those things. And that’s fine, but it’s probably not going to get them a ton of readers, bring in torrents of new business or job offers, or result in highly profitable online information businesses.

The key is to write for your readers. What information and content do your readers need and would find helpful? What are they looking for online in your niche or your industry? What would you want to read if you were one of your readers? It’s fine, from time to time, to write about things that may be more meaningful to you than some of your readers (like this post of mine from last week on global poverty and educating girls). But overall, concentrate on content that’s of value to others. Give value, and over time you will receive value in return.

Mistake #5: Not blogging because you’re afraid of failing.

Everyone is afraid of something, and lots of people hesitate to start something (or continue it) because they’re afraid of failure. That little voice inside that warns you that maybe you shouldn’t because you’ll fail, because something bad will happen? That voice was really useful thousands of years ago when human beings had to worry about getting eaten by a prowling sabretooth or a hungry bear. That voice isn’t so useful now, but it still won’t shut up. So ignore it.

Listen, you may fail (however you define that). But even if you don’t achieve what you set out to achieve, even if you fall short of some goal or promise or commitment, it will be OK. Chances are, most people won’t even notice (the Internet is a noisy place, after all; it’s hard to keep track of who’s gone silent). Even if you fail, you will still learn something in the process and you will still be a better human being for having tried it. Don’t let fear stop you.

What other mistakes have you (or other bloggers) made? Don’t keep them a secret. Please share in the comments below.

How to use personas in blogging

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:33:29 +0000

Putting a face on your readers with personas can improve your blog and content marketing efforts. (Source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/499007)

Many marketers use personas to help them better understand their customers and design products and marketing campaigns that will be attractive to those customers. You can use them to improve your blog or other content marketing efforts — podcasts, videos, white papers and so forth.

What is a persona?

A persona is a fictional character used to better understand the desires, goals and motivations of some set of potential customers.

If you’re running a blog about weight loss, you might use personas to understand the differences between a 19-year-old woman and a 47-year-old man when it comes to losing weight. Chances are they have different motivations, different values and different circumstances in their day-to-day lives. Rather than treating those two sets of customers the same, personas allow you to clearly fix in your mind how each group is distinctive and will likely seek different information as they explore weight loss solutions.

Properly constructed personas are built off extensive research, which could include interviews, spending time with people in their day-to-day lives and collecting statistics about a target group of customers. If you have the resources for that sort of research, then you have a huge advantage compared to your competitors. But even if you don’t, you can still use personas to rough out some basic ideas about different audiences.

You can still consider all the people you know in real life who are representative of potential readers. That can help you define personas based on interactions and communication you’ve had with real people.

Also note that you can have multiple personas for a single brand, product or service. Different groups of people may purchase the same product for different reasons. Effective marketing communications will still take into account the needs, aspirations and values of these different personas in creating an overall marketing plan.

Four steps to building blog reader personas

1. Figure out who your readers (or potential readers) are. Or, if you don’t have any readers, figure out who you’d like them to be. Are they male or female, young or old, from your country or from abroad? Just the basics here.

2. Figure out what your readers are looking for. Do they want actionable information (how-to posts), industry news, strategic perspective or insights into the big picture? And take this beyond merely what kind of information they want. Ask yourself why they want that information: What is their root motivation?

3. Decide how knowledgeable your readers are. Are they rank beginners? Jaded experts with decades of experience? Somewhere in between?

4. Craft persona portraits. Once you’ve figured out your readers are, what information they’re looking for and how knowledgeable they are about your subject matter, write short bios for each persona. Here’s an example of a persona profile I wrote last year for this blog:

Media Michelle – A young professional in media, marketing or PR who is just getting into social media and wants to learn more about them. She needs basic information about how to do things better and more efficiently, plus examples of others doing things well, ideas and some basic theory.

I’ve seen personas much more detailed than Media Michelle, so don’t hesitate to pile on the detail if it’s relevant and helps you form a richer picture of who you’re trying to reach.

How to use reader personas

Once you’ve got your reader personas developed, you can start to use them to guide your content development. For each persona you can come up with content ideas (blog posts or whatever) that meet the persona’s needs. You can edit and review content you’re creating with an eye toward how well it works for the target persona. And you can check your persona or personas periodically to make sure that your blog or content marketing efforts aren’t leaving any important audiences out.

Have you ever used personas for a blog or other content marketing efforts? If so, please share your thoughts and ideas in comments.