How Are You Building A Comminty Around Your Blog?

Your blog posts are great, but are you building a loyal readership by adding community aspects to your blog.  I have the availability for my readers to consume my posts in a variety of formats.  RSS Subscriptions, Email Subscriptions, and of course direct traffic.  But in order to really establish a loyal user base, you need to be able to connect with your readers.

Blog posts are static, they are information I distribute and push out.  Blog posts are not personal, they cannot interact, they do not engage.  But just because a blog post is limited in forms of engagement, it doesn’t mean that your blog “Brand” has to be.

Create a community around your blog to really take it to the next level.

When I speak in terms of “Community” I specifically mean an opportunity to offer readers additional places to connect and interact with you, but also an opportunity for your readers to interact with other readers.

Participation Projects

I created the 28 Day Challenge out of spontaneous reactions from readers.  Great folks like Tyler Hurst , Ross Simmonds, Matt Stratton, and many many others jumped on board, and off we went.  It was and because it’s ongoing, still is a great chance for people to participate in a common goal or project.

The 28 Day Challenge has definitely added a great sense of community for me and brought together some great connections with people I wouldn’t have otherwise met.  I’m excited to see where this takes me and the participants.

Another great example of Participation Projects is Matt Cheuvront’s Inconvenience of Change project.  Eventually he offered an ebook about what transpired and it’s a solid source of content.

You don’t need a monumental idea.  You just need something that brings good folks together.

Facebook Page

Many blogs also have a Facebook Page dedicated to them…I do not.  If you do decide to create a Facebook Page, or already have one for your blog, make sure you’re adding new content and creating engagement opportunities that do not happen on the original blog.

A Facebook Page doesn’t add value if you’re simply posting articles from the blog.

You need to create extra content specific to Facebook Fans, or at least generate dialogues you can’t have at your blog.  I am a fan of a few different blogs on Facebook…but I don’t think I’ve seen 90% of their updates in my feed.  Not because I’m not interested, but because they just don’t show up.  Is that because they’re not updating the Page?  No, it means that the interaction of fans is small.

Because of Facebook’s new updated algorithm, if you don’t have several people engaging on your posts…very few of your fans will see the updates.  Have a different dialogue on your page to give some real value.

Email Lists

Build a sense of community through content you distribute via email.  Tim Jahn of Beyond the Pedway sends me and his other subscribers a weekly newsletter regarding the state of video content and video marketing tips.

This information is only available via his newsletter.  His blog is strictly video interviews, so his newsletter is valuable to his viewers because it offers new content that’s not available any other way.

This is an option I am in the process of creating.  You can currently get my updates via email, but I didn’t want to offer a newsletter without the proper thought into what new and different content I would distribute.  If you do have a newsletter, make sure it’s original content not found in any other place on your blog.

I use Aweber because it’s very inexpensive and I can use it across multiple websites and clients to manage different lists.  If you just use your own blog, Mail Chimp is FREE for the first 500 subscribers.

LinkedIn Group

LinkedIn Groups are a great place to gather like minded folks interested in a similar topic.  If you decide to create your own group, I strongly recommend revolving it around your topic / industry and not your individual blog name.

Unless you’re Mashable or Techcrunch, you’re going to have a difficult time making people care enough about your specific blog to join up and participate.  I manage Chicago Twitter & Social Media, but do not have a group revolved around this blog.  I’m looking into that option but currently investing time in other areas like an email list group. (see above).

LinkedIn groups are fantastic for generating discussions and distributing other sources of news content.  If you are not 100% invested in managing your own group, join a similar group and become a valued member.

Comments

The fastest and easiest place to connect with your blog readers is through comments.  Blog post comments are a terrific place for your readers to engage with you, but also with other readers.

I use Disqus to manage comments on my blog.  I’ve found it very useful and and easy to manage.  There are several other plugins or options for comments, but Disqus works fine for me…so I’ll stick with them for a while.

Getting readers to actually post comments is a challenge in itself, and we’ll talk about that in another post.  But making comments easy to post and well structured is where you start.

Connect with readers beyond your posts.  Create a dynamic and engaging atmosphere for your blog.  Not only will you gain more loyal readers, but you’ll also become a better writer.

A community allows a look into your readers and a sense of what information they’re hungry for.  Your readers are anxious to tell you what they like and offer opinions, but it’s up to you to provide the right atmosphere.

This is DAY 27 of my “28 Day Blogging Challenge“

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Scott S. Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and a marketing strategist with a specialty in social media.  He is an avid blogger and active across the net.  He is @thescottbishop on Twitter

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Are You Only Writing For The Search Engines?

Read anything about blogging advice and SEO is bound to enter an early chapter.  I say throw out any thoughts of writing for SEO traffic.  Your readers are your top priorities, not Google.

Drop the SEO mindset…at least at first.

Yes, organic traffic is great.  I track mine on a daily basis about what is drawing in new readers and what’s not.  But I DO NOT let SEO control my posts.  I admit, my traffic from search engines is small, very small.  Right now I only have about 8% of this blog’s traffic coming from Google and other search engines.  Any blogging expert evaluating that stat would say that this blog is a miserable failure.  But it’s obviously not or you wouldn’t be reading this right now.

You most likely came across this post because you are one of the 761 readers who subscribe to this blog, follow me on Twitter, or saw someone who did that passed it to their networks.

I write for my readers…not Google

Yes, I have no doubt my traffic could be higher if I wrote topics for SEO.  But I’d rather have an engaged community of readers that are loyal, active, and interested in my content post after post.

When you’re thinking about a post only in terms of SEO, you’re putting content on the back burner.  Don’t.  When you’re starting out your blog you need to be focused on content.  Build up a base of readers by having interesting and engageing topics.

The trouble with the SEO mindset is that the topics you write about aren’t based on your readers interest.  Your posts are based on what you think will get the most traffic from Google.  Your creativity is at the mercy of the search engine.  How boring is that!

I’m not the guy that’s trying to teach you how to make $10 a month from your blog.

I am the guy who will do everything he can to offer suggestions and information to build a brand…a real brand.  Something that conjures up real emotions when your targeted prospects think of it.  If that’s what you want, write content with your readers in mind.

Focus on building a community of readers that will come back to your blog time and time again because you’re a trusted source of information.  You should optimize each post to the best you can, just make sure that this mindset doesn’t invade your creative thinking.  There are still certain techniques you can use or WordPress plugins that optimize your posts that I use.  But I’m not writing post topics because they got 2400 searches each month.

Build your base of loyal traffic first.  Write such fantastic content that your base spreads the word for you to gain even more traffic.

Communities and social media empires are built from loyal relationships…not from search engines.

This is DAY 22 of my “28 Day Blogging Challenge“

Get the Real Time Marketer Directly to Your RSS HERE

Scott S. Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and a marketing strategist with a specialty in social media.  He is an avid blogger and active across the net.  He is @thescottbishop on Twitter

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To the advertising world, the Super Bowl has always been known as…well the Super Bowl for advertisements.  It’s the one time per year that people actually look forward to watching commercials.  The hype has in some way, gotten much of the public as excited for the commercials as they are for the actual football game.

Each year the day after the Super Bowl, USA Today always has a poll of the best and worst advertisements.  Regardless of how much or how little these ads have on ROI or the companies strategy.  This is how the advertising industry decides who wins and who loses.  So rather than wait for USA Today, this year I’m selecting my own advertising / marketing winner for the 2010 Super Bowl.

The Real Time Marketer’s winner for the 2010 Super Bowl is…Pepsi.

Yes, Pepsi.  I can already see the puzzled looks on many of your faces because you probably didn’t remember a Pepsi commercial this year.  Good memory, because Pepsi decided to sit this one out.

In December, Pepsi announced that they were pulling out of Super Bowl sponsorships and advertising for instead…social media campaigns.

Why Pepsi’s Strategy Will Pay Off

Nothing Was Memorable This Year

Was anyone blown away by any commercials this year?  I smiled a few times at talking babies and even chuckled here and there at screaming chickens.  But there was nothing really memorable.  It’s tough to justify the 2.5 – 2.8 million dollar price tag for a commercial that no one will remember two weeks from now.  In fact they were so unmemorable, if you did a survey about the best Super Bowl commercial this year and included Pepsi on the list…I am willing to bet they would still get a lot of votes, even though they had no participation.

An Active Community Will Always Trump An Event

The future of marketing will be less around a single event, and more about sparking and engaging with a  community, or “movement” as Pepsi spokesman Nicole Bradley calls it.  Pepsi pulled out of this year to put their money into the Pepsi Refresh Project.

When I checked for this post, the Pepsi Refresh Project’s Facebook Page has 496, 690 fans.  While this is peanuts compared to the +95 million people that watch the Super Bowl, Pepsi is creating a community that will grow throughout the year.  These are 500k passionate people who are interested in getting involved in Pepsi’s project.  I’ll take an active, motivated, engaged community any day of the week compared to a 30-second advertisement, no matter how good it is.

Colas Have Loyal Customers

I’m drinking a Diet Mt. Dew as I type this post.  I’m willing to bet that Pepsi drinkers aren’t switching to Coke anytime soon.  And Coke drinkers aren’t bailing on them even with the lame commercials they produced.  Coke and Pepsi fans are passionate about their favorite soft drink.  Super Bowl ads or no Super Bowl ads are not changing peoples tastes.

Pepsi Got A Lot Of Publicity Anyway

Pepsi received a lot of publicity just for pulling out.  The announcement of the company who has spent $142.8 million on the 10 Super Bowl ads from 1999 to 2008, second only to Anheuser-Busch, created a title wave of buzz on it’s own.  The announcement that much of the budget will be spent online, only makes people that much more curious to see what it is.

The Advertising / PR / Marketing big dog firms will try and take jabs at Pepsi’s decision because they don’t yet understand social media.  To them, Twitter is just a place to tell people you’re sitting on a porch (just watch this Verizon commercial).  The old giants are afraid of the future and not sure how exactly to navigate in social media’s cloudy waters.  For that, they will wait for Pepsi’s results rather than jump in.

The old guards of the marketing / PR world are stale and afraid of what the future holds.  Their fear shackles their creativity and innovation.  Pepsi has decided to take the torch and lead the way.

For that alone, I think Pepsi has already won.

This is DAY 7 of my “28 Day Blogging Challenge“

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Scott S. Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and a marketing strategist with a specialty in social media.  He is an avid blogger and active across the net.  He is @thescottbishop on Twitter

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