Having spent some time in the military, I’m all for differentiating between social media tactics and social media strategy. When it comes to social media, however, many companies overlook, or are not aware of the power and the implications that exist with engaging the company in social media. Consequently, companies will rush in to get a Facebook page, a blog or some other social media profile because “everyone is doing it,” and they fail to set up a strategy, a plan for their activities. The resulting abandoned blog, and Facebook fanpage with little activity is proof to them that this “whole social media thing” doesn’t really work.

But this is not true. A company wouldn’t be successful without a business strategy. In the same way, social media engagement can only be successful if and when the company is willing to invest the time and effort necessary for any business activity. So, if you are thinking about moving forward into the social media realm, make sure the people that you hire to lead you know the difference between social media strategy and implementation.

Strategy vs. Tactics

Wikipedia states that “in military usage strategy is distinct from tactics,” in that “how a battle is fought is a matter of tactics: the terms and conditions that it is fought on and whether it should be fought at all is a matter of strategy.” Most people know what strategy means and what tactics are, but how are these two definitions applied within social media?

1. Ask “Can We Support Social Media Activities?”

Marge Kornow Brown, writer and social media advocate for WordsFYI reinforced Wikipedia’s latter concept about strategy when she stated in a LinkedIn discussion on the topic that you must first ask, “does social media makes sense for your company at this time?” A company must first attempt to discover if they have the personnel to support the implementation, the content creation, the management and the time commitment for continued engagement and follow-through before deciding to join into the social media realm. Carolyn Berghoeff, Online Producer at Professionally Speaking TV, agreed with Brown’s statement and added, “if the company hasn’t the resources to maintain or monitor these new channels it can be damaging.”

2. The Social Media “Discovery” Mode

Nick Robinson, Inbound Marketer at Social Media HQ, recently submitted an article to one of my LinkedIn groups, excerpted from their new e-book “6 Social Media Strategy Tips for Market Leadership.”  In it, they state that the first step to a social media strategy is discovery. They write that “before you can write a plan, you need to gather the appropriate information from all the parties that will have a stake in your social media program.” I questioned Nick a little further on discovery, and he provided me with some example questions that you should be asking. He differentiated between questions that you would ask the C-suite, managers and front line staff—sales, customer service, etc. This latter group of people is most notable because not only are these people stakeholders, but they are the people who are most intimately involved with your customers.

As this information gathering takes place, the direction for the social media strategy starts to take shape, and it becomes clear that social media can help in more ways than just with marketing and PR.

3. A Social Media Strategy Considers the Whole Company

“If you believe in social media and understand it’s potential, then you will bring it to the centre of your company and have it affect HR, PR, product, marketing and more,” writes Philip Macartney. This statement speaks to the power that can be inherent in using social media if a strategy is created to take advantage of this power.

Many companies don’t know that social media can be used for more than marketing, and if they hire a consultant or firm that doesn’t show them the possibility there, they are hiring implementers who are likely out for the money gained, and not truly concerned for their client’s best interests. It is imperative that the strategist should at least educate their client about this potential not only because it could be powerful for their client, but also because it is possible that their social media activity will take on a life of its own. The company may well be set to use social media for marketing, but when suddenly they find that their customers are using it to ask questions, make a complaint, inquire about a job, or give suggestions, the company will be unprepared for how to handle this. If the company decides they don’t have the time or personnel to handle this much social media activity, they at least need to know what to do and how to redirect that traffic should it occur.

If you are new to doing social media for your company, I hope that this gives you some things to think about before getting started. If you’ve been doing social media for a while now, leave a comment and let us know what else those new to social media should consider.

Chess photo by pepperazi on Flickr via creative commons license.

The world of business blogging exploits the full global-reach marketability of your company. Savvy blogging draws new and existing customers into a conversation that will increase site-traffic, generate exposure, and potentially increase your customer-base and  future sales.

But get it wrong, and your business blog can turn from an asset to a liability.

Mistake #1 – Irregular Blogging

Blogging compliments your business, and like any part of your business, it needs to be current and regularly maintained. Irregular blogging can lower your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) content, dropping your business page rank, and effectively minimizing potential customers. Consistent, interesting and relevant posting will build your reader-base, and show commitment to your business and your customers.

Mistake #2 – Inconsistent Voice

Unless your business blog is specifically designed to individualize your bloggers, then the tone and style of your blog’s voice needs to remain consistent. Encourage originality from your writers to set your business blogging apart, but set parameters to maintain your blog’s focus and identity. Widely differing voices in your blog posts may cause reader confusion to your business directive, and come across as more of a personal, blog than a collaborative business blog.

Mistake #3 – Personalize Does Not Mean Personal

A conversational tone is the best way for your business blog to connect with your customers. It should should be engaging and have personality. While a blog allows for creativity, it must be relevant to your business. Personalizing your business experience will invoke a sense of community; telling your potential customer-base you have the mother of all hangovers, will drive them away in droves.

Mistake #4 – We Blog, That’s Enough

Business blogging is just one slice of the social media pizza – to achieve optimal effectiveness, your business needs to gorge. By utilizing multiple facets of the social media spectrum, such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin, and by adding an RSS feed, your business maximizes its global-reach and growth potential.

Mistake #5 – Separate URL

Your blog contains keyword-rich content that increases the visibility of your site with search engines – the higher your business ‘page rank’, the more traffic you’re likely to receive. Maintaining your business blog on a separate URL means you have more work to do to build up that new “website” which is how Google will see it.  This does little in the short term to increase the power of your company’s website. Instead of using a wholly separate URL or (even worse) using a blog platform URL such as  company.blogspot.com, try company.com/blog. If you use a more robust blogging platform like Innoblogs or Compendium,  you can use a subdomain such as blog.company.com.  By keeping your business blogging on your primary URL, search engines will reward you for both your website and your blog.

Image credit to Wisdom of We

If your online marketing strategy includes corporate blogging, then I have one challenge for you concerning your blog. Remember from my last article, we are supposed to remember to internalize the idea that our corporate blogs are to gain leads. On that note, I have a word I want you to concentrate on (a phrase really) that makes marketers drool: inbound marketing.

Content Makes Your Blog a Foundation for Inbound Marketing

Seriously? Yes. Seriously. But you have to use it the right way. And that comes down to the content. I have read so many blog articles and books about the importance of content, and I agree with them. Content should be informative, helpful, funny, inspire awe, and yes, content is king. I get it. But there are so many blogs and websites out there that it seems like all the good content has been taken up. It can be a little discouraging. At times, it can even be daunting. But the truth is, in order for your blog to be a foundation for inbound marketing, in order for people to want to share it with others, your content needs to be really, really good. So good, in fact, that people will want to share it. And that takes time.

An Inbound Marketing Challenge for You and Your Blog

Now, before I scare you anymore, I have an answer for this so it doesn’t seem so daunting. It’s based on the writings of one of my favorite bloggers, Leo Babauta, who blogs over at Zen Habits. After reading his blog for several years, it’s clear to me that we need to apply one of his mantras about creating healthy habits to this whole blogging thing: just do one thing at a time. So I’m going to give you a challenge for your business blog: plan ONE really cool piece of content.

One really cool piece of content can help make your blog THE foundation for inbound marketing that it can be. My biggest piece of advice about this one really cool piece of content, is that you make it embeddable (implicitly shareable) content. What happens with embeddable content is that people reuse it! When they do that, that content gets pointed back to your blog or website!

Share and Make Shareable

Consider this really cool piece of content an artifact. It is an artifact of your business. So treat it like gold. Here are some things you are going to want to do with that artifact during its “life”time:

• Make sure to create the metadata (tags) for it
• Support it yourself by posting it to sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, etc.
• Ask your friends, followers, and fans to share it, tweet it, repost it for you
• Make sure you have your social sharing buttons enabled in the post in which it belongs

Slow down for a minute and realize the importance of REALLY good SHAREABLE content. Stop writing and rehashing the stuff you’ve already seen online. Take the time this week, this month (however long it takes depending on how much time you have) to create a really shareable piece of content, a piece of content that you can place in your blog post as say, an image, an infographic, a video, a PDF – and be sure you include credit to your website in a way that is not easily removed from the content. A piece of content that really, truly is a help in some way to your customers. Then come back and let us know what you did, and how it worked for you.

You can do it! I know you can!

Thanks to Funchye at Flickr for the great sharing photo

One of the things we are very proud of at innogage is our business blogging software, innoblogs. About a year ago, we got a little nuts with our blogging software and our goal to crack the ROI nut. We developed a mantra at innogage called “Search and Convert”. In other words, any enhancements to our blogging software were immediately halted if they did not relate explicitly to Search Engine Optimization or Customer Conversion – the two pieces of the ROI puzzle in social media.

The result was a cool piece of technology called the Search Engine Optimizer inside Innoblogs that coaches non-technical / non-SEO writers during the blog creation process to ensure that blog posts are strategic and driving brand, as well as being optimized for the RIGHT keywords and phrases for SEO.

Because of our diligence to building a collaborative blogging tool that optimizes for Search Engines, we recently struck a partnership with The Search Engine Academy! The partnership between innogage and the Search Engine Academy represents to major things.

1. A global group of SEO experts loves our business blogging software (innoblogs) so much they want to use it and recommend it to others
2. innogage has access to the incredible SEO knowledge across a global team of SEO practitioners

As we continue to build more and better functionality into our innoblogs business blogging tool, it's great to know the Search Engine Academy will be using our platform and assisting us as knowledge experts to help make our software even better.

Be sure to read the Press Release from Search Engine Academy!

Last week at the Dublin Entrepreneurial Center (DEC) our monthly blogging roundtable group explored possible blog topics for small business owners.

Finding a suitable topic to write about can be a big stressor for bloggers. In fact, I received an email from one of my clients who gave up trying to write a blog post for today, “I went down one road and it just didn’t work …”

Even a writer on my team started a blog post on a topic last night that he hadn’t researched, and didn’t appear passionate about, and he ended up at a dead end.

My advice? It’s better not to post than to post something you don’t like and doesn’t move you closer to your marketing goals.

Here are 10 content ideas for your business blog:

1. Review an event, blog, App, website, movie, book or song. This is one of my favorites because you experience something new and it feels good to share your opinion backed up by your personal experience, research, links and and compelling visuals. Check out this clever approach to a Twitter and Facebook review.

2. Interview a thought leader. Interview someone, in any field, who is good at what they do. Their personal journey may be very interesting especially if you, as the writer, find those interesting nuggets that help make it applicable to your reader’s lives.

3. Share your side of something going on in the world and relate it to business. A friend just did this very well in a blog post as he tied holiday preparations to business.

4. Research a technology you want to learn more about anyway. I just discovered an App called Noteminder which allows you to shake your iPhone to activate, talk, and shake to stop and your verbal notes are emailed to you. Cool. This gave me the idea to research and write a full review of handy note-taking apps for bloggers.

5. Shine the Spotlight on a not-for-profit. Everyone loves a feel-good story and you probably don’t mind asking people to share it. If you have not-for-profit clients, or you are a volunteer with an organization, this can be an easy and compelling story to tell.

6. Write about a Trending Topic on Twitter. What are people talking about? Give them your perspective. Build out the trending topic or often-searched topic on Google in an area you have an interest. A few of today’s trending topics on Twitter for Columbus, Ohio: #thingsthatIwant and #MyFavoritePlaces, Family Matters and North Korea.

7. Taking the opposing viewpoint of a blog post you read. Creating a little controversy can encourage folks to comment and share. Do your research, be professional and make sure you topic is current. My idea for a post at this moment? “Why I am skeptical about Facebook Timeline” in response to: Facebook Timeline: 9 Things you need to know.

8. Explore the human condition as it relates to business. The benefit of adversity, how to manage transition, what inspires me to keep building my business, how driven people manage, when success is a bad thing are just a few thoughts.

9. Write a ‘How to’ post. We want to do everything better. Give it to your audience in easy steps so they can comment, share, adopt and keep them coming back to your blog for more.

10. Reach out to guest bloggers. Reaching out to other bloggers who are friends, mentors, or people who have an interesting writing style or angle to share creates some content variety on your blog, gives you some time to do something else and may drive new people (from their network) to your blog. If you get a lot of requests from potential guest bloggers, develop and post some guest blogger guidelines.

What are some blog topics that allow you to develop interesting content quickly and effectively?

Lori Crock is a writer and founder of Written Impact and Blog Coaches. She lives and works in Columbus, Ohio. She is passionate about helping entrepreneurs and non-profits leaders build their brand through powerful marketing messaging for web, print, video and social media.

I sat down with two members of the Westerville School board this morning to discuss the tough situation facing the district. Westerville is, like many communities, experiencing a financial crunch with decreased property valuations, delinquent tax payments and less money from the State. A levy to close the gap recently failed by a large margin (60/40) in a district that rarely fails levies.

“Rarely does the rumor mill

work in your favor.”

What happened and what does it mean for me and my business or organization?

I believe the levy primarily failed because of lack of communication – basically lack of a marketing plan. Even though the district was experiencing financial hardships, no real information was communicated or marketing campaign launched until just before the levy.  The information that was available was either hard to understand or high level. This resulted in people forming their own beliefs about the underlying issues and whether or not they would support the levy. Clearly this did not go the way the district had hoped. Rarely does the rumor mill work in your favor.

The moral of this story is take control of your brand and the information flow before the problem arises. You can accomplish this in a few straightforward steps:

1. Do not wait until the last minute to communicate important information. Whether its a change in policy, end of life of a product or service or needing more tax revenue, communicate as early as you so you reduce the shock factor. Have you noticed that no one blinks at the $3.00+ per gallon we pay for gas now? Do you remember when the price was climbing quickly to these new levels? It’s all anyone could talk about. Now we just accept it as the norm.

2. Push information frequently and repetitively. A business blog (or organizational blog) is a great way to keep the flow of information – flowing! You may need to tell someone the same thing three or four times before it sinks in. I have heard seasoned public speakers say “state your main point at the beginning, in the middle and at the end”. This is because repetition sticks with us and sometimes we just aren’t listening the first couple times.

3. Be transparent. Nothing kicks the rumor mill into high gear like the perception of hiding or spinning information or facts. Most stories have two sides. Present both to your audience. Feel free to choose a side, but present them both anyway. Another way to enhance transparency is to invite comments and questions. (Think blog comments or posts to a facebook wall). Be sure to respond appropriately to all legitimate questions. Chances are, when a question is asked, many people have the same question in their minds. Respond with honesty and compassion and stop the rumor mill in its tracks.

Keyword density as it concerns content optimization, is the percentage that a keyword appears in your content, as compared to the total number of words in your content. There was a time when keyword density was extremely important to your search engine rankings. Today, not so much. At least, not in the way it used to be.

Keyword density: old news, but still relevant

A little keyword density history
Over time, a couple of things began to happen. First, online content writers became proficient in applying keywords, and this method of website optimization became the norm. Second, webmasters began to take advantage of keywords, to the point that they abused them. Terms like keyword stuffing, search spam and spamdexing came about as a result of this abuse. Essentially, search engines are smart enough to realize when content has too many keywords and this can result in lower rankings for your website. In fact, it is Google’s policy to remove a website from their search engines if they find this happening. Why? One, they find it unethical, and two, keywords repeated endlessly renders your content useless to the reader. Remember, Google searches for quality content.

So when it comes to keyword density, content optimization doesn’t just mean slapping some keywords in your content to get noticed by the search engines. You need to find that perfect balance for content optimization. Too much is a bad thing; too little is not good enough. Most experts state that anywhere from 2 to 8 percent is a decent balance for keyword density. If that’s all we can use our keywords, then we better use them wisely.

Three things to do to “optimize” your keywords

1. Give them prominence: put them in your title, near the top of the page, and in the start of your sentences.
2. Give them proximity: that means, put two of your keywords, or keyword phrases together if you can do so naturally. For instance, if I am writing an article on content optimization, it would be good to start a sentence with these two phrases: When you are writing for the web, it is good to have search engine optimized content. The words in italices are the keywords (or phrases) in this situation.
3. For the advanced writer, try to include a keyword or phrase in an H1 or H2 title tag. Search engines give these words a little higher priority than words buried elsewhere in your content.

If you do these things, and you always keep in mind that you need to maintain between 2 and 8 percent keyword density, you will have created keyword rich pages.

*Image credit: http://blogs.longwood.edu/mediacrit/

Business blogging is more than just a way to get content about your company “out there.” A good business blog should become a hub for conversation; it’s not only a great marketing tool, but its a portal for your customers to be heard. The more you hear from your customers, the more you will know what they need and want from your business. If you struggle with writing content that will compel readers to respond, here are a few great blogging tips to start opening up your blog for more conversation.

1. Write as a person, not as a business.
In Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, authors Scoble and Israel write that if you aren’t maintaining a blog and having “naked conversations,” you can’t learn from your customers, and “they won’t come to see you as a sincere human who cares about your business and its reputation.”

Each person that contributes to a business blog has their own perspective and personality, and those should be shared. Obviously, there’s a balance between company brand and a corporate blogger’s own perspective and personality, but this balance can be made by some blogging standards and rules. Businesses are made up of people, and customers like to see the personalities behind the company. Allowing your corporate bloggers to share their own personalities in their blog posts creates another opportunity for customers to feel they can relate to your business.

I know when I read a business blog post written by a person who has obviously had some freedom to write from their own perspective, I am more likely to want to respond. At the time when I respond, I don’t necessarily feel like I’m interacting with a business. I feel like I’m interacting with the person who wrote the article. The more I’m compelled to respond (and assuming the blogger has replied back), the more I feel invested in that company, whether I do business with them or not. When it comes time that I need something that business has to offer, I will turn to them because of the interaction I’ve already had with them.

2. Your company blog is not a podium.
Have you ever had a “conversation” with someone who thought their opinions and voice were the best thing since sliced bread? These interactions are not conversations at all. It was really just a time for that person to feel good about themselves because they had a lot to say. What I’m saying is, leave room for your readers to interject something. Let them feel like they have something to contribute too. Because they do have something to contribute.

3. The customer has a story.
People like to see stories about themselves, their friends, their families, their business associates. These are the stories that not only create conversation, but these are stories that are shared. What does this mean for your business? Write articles about your customers. A good conversation doesn’t stop when the talk is over. A good conversation will be continued when one of the talkers shares that conversation with another person. One of the best ways to get your content shared is to write about your customer. Keep in mind that you will want to get your customer’s permission to write about them. But trust me, more often than not, your customer will love reading about themselves and sharing it with others.

I haven’t covered everything there is to know about starting conversation with your blog. Of course not–that would be breaking my second piece of advice to you. So, what have you done to create conversation with your blog? What have you found that always works? I would love to hear from you.

Every time I read about a content management system, I inevitably see the value proposition of creating an unlimited number of blogs. On the surface that seems great right?  However, in terms of business blogs – is it?

Let me ask you this – who wants to create an unlimited number of blogs? Most of us can’t even get one business blog to work effectively. Instead of creating a lot of blogs that don’t work, focus on creating one blog that does work. Here are a few things your blogging software should do for you:

• Make the content strategy clear to all writers
• Suggest topics of interest
• Permit many writers while maintaining control
• Enable real Search Engine Optimization (on the keywords YOU are trying to own)
• Take care of the heavy lifting in terms of cross linking, tagging…etc.
• Help your readers take an action step towards YOUR goals

If your business blog isn’t helping you achieve the list above, you’ve probably got the wrong business blogging software.  Don’t worry about creating unlimited blogs – just create one really really good blog.