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Tag: blogging

  • How To Start a Blog For Your Business

    Cross-posted from the General Assembly blog.

    Blogging-for-Business-How-to-Extract-Value

    In the daily operation of Atlanta Tech Blogs, I have spoken to dozens of daily and weekly bloggers about what, how, and why they blog. Unfortunately, I’ve spoken with many more businesses who do not blog. The reasons so many startups and small businesses do not blog are many, and include the following:

    • Not enough time
    • Can’t write well enough
    • Not enough content
    • Don’t see the advantages

    These are valid points that anyone can make; however, the biggest obstacle I’ve seen in those who “get” content marketing and really understand that the need to blog is this: they just don’t know where to start. To help everyone overcome that obstacle, here’s a step by step plan to get you started blogging regularly, consistently, and effectively.

    1. Choose a service/platform

    Sometimes this decision is the hardest one!  Isn’t it odd when life gives you too many choices that it’s even harder to make a decision? That’s how I feel when trying to decide on a new pair of running shoes. I just shut down, and that’s how it can be when you dig deep into all the different blogging software available today. It’s amazing! But fear not. Here’s a short list that beginners won’t find overwhelming.

    • WordPress – simply the easiest, most flexible, most popular, and most well supported platform for anyone to start blogging.
    • Blogger – Google’s clean and simple blogging service gives you a free yourblog.blogspot.com domain or your can use your own custom URL, e.g., yourblog.com
    • Tumblr – Yahoo acquired Tumblr last year, and has generally left the service alone, allowing Tumblr to remain a really, really simple user experience.
    • Medium –  If you just want to write and show off beautiful images, Medium (built by the same guy who created Blogger back in the day) is for you.

    I’ve used all of these, and now in my daily blogging I use Blogger because of its simplicity. For more flexibility (via plugins) to manage Atlanta Tech Blogs, I use WordPress. Don’t fret too much about it. Just pick one and make a start. A year from now, if you want to switch to a different blogging platform, you can do it. It’s not the end of the world.

    2. Ask a few questions: who, what, where, when, why

    More specifically, you should ask these questions about your intended audience. Your target audience could be your customers, your prospects, your partners, your community of resellers, or a group of users who cause your community to thrive.  Asking – and answering – these questions as the purpose of your blog will help you every time you sit in front of that blank screen wondering what to write. (We’ll cover that in part 2 of this series!).  Here’s some food for thought on each of these questions.

        • Why are you blogging? This question is first for a big reason, or I should say dozens of reasons, but you need to understand why you are blogging for your brand. That’s part of your plan (next step)
        • Who do you want to read your blog? This answer is the audience you will reach with your words.
        • What does your audience like to read or consume (e.g., images or video or podcasts)?
        • Where are your readers? The Bitter Southerner is targeting an audience is mostly located in the south, so colloquialisms and southern phrases are the norm.
        • When (2 parts) can you write and when will your audience read? Both are very important. You will develop a rhythm of blogging, whether it’s daily, weekly, monthly, or 2-3 times per week.
    3. Prepare a plan for your blog

    The worst mistake you can make when you start a blog for your company is not having a plan. What does that mean? Well, the result of not having a content marketing plan looks like this: “OK, what should I write for today’s blog post?” Don’t do that. Create a plan, no matter how simple. Here are the basic elements of your content marketing plan for the first 3 months.

        • Goals – back to the why you’re writing a blog question, you aren’t just blogging to say that your company has a blog. You must have goals before you start. Some common goals of a blog are:
          • to establish your company as an authority in your market space
          • to keep your ecosystem updated on the changes in your software (or whatever you make)
          • to share your customers’ successes
          • to generate buzz for an upcoming launch..
        • Writing team – who owns this blog? In a small company or startup, it might be just you. ProTip: make sure company leadership is completely 100% on board with content marketing as part of the company’s marketing plan.
        • Posting frequency – how often will you publish posts? Decide and agree on a frequency (daily, weekly, twice a week, but no less than once a month) and stick to it.
        • Post length – for SEO purposes, 300-500 words is optimal; however, you should try (and measure) different length posts to see what your audience prefers.
        • Post image types (or not) – decide from the start whether you will use images in your blog posts and to promote your blog posts. I recommend using at least one beautiful, relevant image in each post and to promote each post.
        • Subject matter categories – what sort of topics will you write about? You really want to decide this long before the first post.  The next post in this series will provide different ways to come up with ideas for individual posts, but here are a few “buckets” of topics to consider writing about:
          • Company events
          • Products and product updates
          • Your market space
          • The company’s ongoing history
          • Announcements (in addition to press releases, if you do that)

    The idea behind your plan, no matter how simple the plan, is to make sure you never ever sit down in front of that blank screen knowing you have to publish a blog post later today, and asking yourself, “so, what should today’s post be about?”  Don’t do that. Create a plan.

    4. Tell your story

    So many times, I have had the conversation that starts with, “But I just don’t know what we should even write about!”  It’ll come back to your plan (above), but in its simplest form, a blog is by definition a “web log” of happenings or events or thoughts.  So when you start your company’s blog, start by telling your story, one little bit at a time. If it’s your company, then nobody is as good as you at telling the story, because you invented the story.  So tell it. Break it down into digestible chunks, and write it.

    “How much detail, you know, should I share?” The acronym “TMI” should never be in the reader comments of your blog, but your company is a reflection of who you are, and so your blog should be as well. The most important purpose of a blog is for the readers to get to know the people behind the blog. When someone reads your content that you’ve written, they are consuming your content and getting to know who you are and what you’re all about.

    5. Check your grammar

    Fortunately, not everyone majored in English in college.  For those of us who did, it is our blessing to understand grammar and our curse to not be able to correct every single mistake we see on the internet.  For the everyday blog writer, if you are not comfortable with your own grammar knowledge, you are not alone. That’s why there are free services like Grammarly to do it for you. Give it a try, and if you don’t like it, that’s ok. I highly recommend that you find someone – on your team or outside – to do a simple grammar check on each of your blog posts.

    There are those who think that grammar is not important in this text language world, and it may not be important to you, but there is no quicker way to remove a reader from your audience than to make a big, ugly, glaring grammatical mistake on an important point.

    6. Promote your blog

    If you don’t tell anyone, then nobody will read your blog. We won’t get into your entire social media strategy here, but generally speaking, your most effective methods of promoting your blog are as follows.

    1. Link to your blog front and center on your web site.
    2. Use your blog content in your monthly newsletter if you have one (you should).
    3. Share each blog post appropriately on all your social media channels. There are best practices for sharing on each different social media channel, and you will do well to follow them.
    4. Make sure everyone else in the company also shares it to their social networks, and give them appropriate text and images to use.
    5. Measure it

    You cannot change what you do not measure.  Remember that as you start your blogging adventure.  If you use WordPress or Blogger, the stats are built in so you can see how many people are reading your blog posts, how long they’re staying on each page, which are your most popular posts, and what they are clicking on when they arrive at your blog. Those are easy to do, and you should align your goals (above) with your measurements so you can tell at a glance if you are hitting your goals or not.  Establish goals first, then measure against them regularly (weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually).

    7. Iterate

    Not meeting your goals, or blowing past them? Then it’s time for a change! If you’re not meeting your goals, try something – anything – different. Longer posts. Shorter posts. More images. Fewer images. Do something different to see if it moves the needles in your statistics. That’s the beauty of digital content marketing: you can change it as often as you want to meet your goals. The most important part of changing though, is re-setting goals and expectations. When you change strategy or tactics, your goals will change, too.

    8. Repeat!

    That’s right, repeat! Whatever you’ve done right, do more of it. Whatever you’ve done wrong, change it. The more often you post, the more and faster you will learn, and the more effective you will become in your content marketing.

    I have found that getting over the first hump of actually creating and maintaining an active blog is the hardest, and most important, step. You can start an effective, popular blog if you follow these simple steps.  Then you’ll be able to enjoy all the benefits of content marketing for your brand.

    Kevin is a serial entrepreneur and veteran of 7 tech startups. He runs Atlanta Tech Blogs, Pitch Practice, mentors startups and entrepreneurs at ATDC, and teaches Digital Marketing courses at GA.

  • 4 steps to outsource your blog

    After Monday’s post outlining some of the benefits of outsourcing your content marketing, I received several surprised reactions and comments, mainly they didn’t even know they could outsource their blog.  Here’s where we are:

    Now here’s how to outsource your blog.  The first thing to remember is that outsourcing your content creation is just like outsourcing anything else. At the end of the day, it’s going to have your name on it, so there is no “set it and forget it”, and it requires a plan. Here are the 4 steps towards outsourcing your blog.

    1. Create and agree on a plan and create a content publishing calendar, keeping in mind any seasonal events. Here’s a thorough write up of how & why to maintain a content marketing calendar.
      • Topics – create “buckets” of types of content, for example events, team, product, support, etc.
      • Frequency – every day, 2-3/week, once a week, once a month? Choose, and stick to it.
      • Length – For SEO purposes, at least 300-500 words per post. Measure and see if your audience prefers short (300-350 words) vs. long form posts, and adjust accordingly.
      • Images – photos, infographics, marketing images? Who will create them?
    2. Determine an editing / publishing process, meaning who will review each post prior to publication, and the iteration process for each post. Remember: nothing is perfect the first time around. Everything needs edits. Google Docs makes a great collaboration tool, and it’s safe: nobody can accidentally hit “Publish”!
    3. Tell your story, while we listen, ask questions, record, and take notes, for 1 hour once a week. Yes, you could go on for days because this story is your dream and vision, but this is your time, and the purpose of outsourcing is to save your time. 
    4. Begin publishing, according to your agreed-upon content calendar.

    There it is, your simple 4-step process to outsourcing the creation of your most powerful and reusable marketing content. After a few weeks (every case is different), you should be able to trim down to 30-45 minutes per week. Make this time part of your weekly rhythm. You should work towards having at least your first 30 days of content ready to publish, because life happens.

  • 6 benefits of outsourcing your content marketing

    Lots of people who are way smarter than me have written about why you must blog in this age of digital communication and social sharing.  I aggregated hundreds of reasons that you should blog in this post.  So you know you should blog, and you know why you should blog, but you still are not able to get it done.

    Here are the main reasons that startups and small businesses alike don’t blog, in no particular order:

    • Not enough time
    • You’re not good at writing
    • “We don’t have enough content“
    • No resources
    • Not worth a dedicated resource
    • Budget

    OK, all of those are legit.  It’s very easy to push the idea of maintaining an active blog down the priority list, but you really don’t have to.  You, as a (or the) leader in your startup or small business, are the best at telling your story, so it really is on you to find a way to get it done.  Because of all the reasons noted above (which ones are yours?), it may be that your best bet is to outsource your blog. Here are six benefits of outsourcing your content marketing.

    • Focused resource – it’s our job to create and maintain your blog on your schedule. You’re our customer, and we’re focused on you.
    • Excellent writing – we write for a living!
    • Good use of time – You don’t have time to blog, but you know you really need to, so this 30 minutes each week is a very good use of your time.
    • Dedicated PT resource – No, you can’t hire a full time resource to maintain your marketing content, but you can hire a part time resource that is dedicated to and focused on creating the best content your audience can consume.
    • Helps you tell, hear, and see your story – As I mentioned above, you’re the best at telling your story. That’s what we’ll do each week: you’ll tell a different part of your story, and we’ll create fresh new reusable content from that time together.
    • Gets it done – We’ll set a calendar, and get it done, period.  It’s off your plate.
    Johnson Cook recommends that you outsource everything possible.  An active, goal-oriented blog that serves your business needs is one of the most important parts of your digital marketing strategy, and it’s also one of the things you can outsource.

  • Now they blog for their brand!

    At last week’s “Blogging for your Brand” class at General Assembly, I challenged the 50+ attendees to write a blog post during the 2-hour class and publish it immediately afterwards, or at least real soon after the class ended.  Guess what? They were up to the challenge!  Check out these newly educated, inspired, and (most importantly) equipped bloggers!

    There is no greater feeling than “moving the needle” in anything that you do. If you dig ditches, you get to see your progress. If you blog, you have a sense of fulfillment (if not relief) when you hit “Publish”.  When I teach a class, there is no greater reward than to see the proverbial light bulb go off when someone gets it. But then to see these people immediately put into action what they just soaked up? Priceless!

    Thank you for attending the class, listening, engaging, soaking it up, and then acting on it! Well done. Well done.

  • Blog or Newsletter or both?

    The more I write and speak about writing, the more I get asked this question: should I use a blog or a regular newsletter?  I have my opinion, based on experience, but here are a few arguments for each.

    Newsletter

    • Push instead of pull – when you publish an email newsletter, that email hits your subscribers’ email instantly, and they know it’s there.
    • Instant audience – you already know who your potential readers are, because they’ve subscribed via double opt-in, and they are expecting your newsletter.
    • Simple reach measurement – you can measure within a few hours exactly how many people got the email, opened the email, clicked on the email, and much more.

    Blog

    • Easier to share – the power of social media has changed completely who can and will read your content. When was the last time you shared something via social media? 
    • Indexed by search engines – Google loves fresh new content, and when Google loves your content, your site rankings improve, and more people can find your content faster and easier.
    • Reusable – when you blog, you can then reuse that same content via social media and in a regular newsletter.
    So what do I recommend?  A planned mix. Blog, share, email, repeat.  I do this to an extreme with Atlanta Tech Blogs. Every post is reblogged on atlantatechblogs.com. Every post is shared to Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and now I’m experimenting with Instagram (nothing there yet). Every morning at 9am, Mailchimp’s RSS newsletter function pulls every post that was published since the previous daily digest and emailed out to all our subscribers.  I don’t consider the Daily Digest a “newsletter” per se, because we’re not pushing out “news” and engaging our readers in a conversation. It’s a summary of everything we published the previous day.
    Like I said, this example is to the extreme. What I recommend for organizations that produce great content is the same formula, with a couple of tweaks.
    1. Blog.  Every organization should be constantly telling its story – history, events, vision, successes, failures, new products, new features, new team members, news, product training, industry teaching, support – because no organization’s story is static. You don’t have to blog every day, but you should set a pace (daily, 2-3x/week, weekly, monthly) and stick to it, thereby setting and fulfilling the expectations of your audience.
    2. Share. Every person on the team – whether you’re a 1 man show or dozens or hundreds of team members – should be engaged in sharing the organization’s content. The smaller the team, the more important it is for everyone to share. This tactic requires planning and boundaries around who shares what to where and how it’s shared, because every social media channel is different.
    3. Newsletter. All that content that’s created for your blog is now content for your newsletter, because while your blog has loyal and dedicated readers, not everyone will follow a blog or even know there’s a new post available. When you engage in an email newsletter campaign, you engage those readers who are most comfortable consuming information in their email.
    You can take on the battle of blog vs. newsletter, but I recommend you do both, and add internal social media sharing. There are so many great tools out there that will make it very simple to do so, starting with WordPress and Mailchimp.

  • My Top 5 Posts of All Time

    According to Blogger, these are the posts that have received more visits and page views than any other post I’ve made since early 2012.

    1. So You Wanna Bootstrap Your Startup? (Feb 28, 2013) – Heck I still like reading this one. I delivered this as a seminar at ATDC, and the reception was so good I decided to do a long, long, long form write up of the whole thing.
    2. Apple Keynote? What Apple Keynote? I’ve got Chromecast! (Sep 10, 2013) – I was working from home and very excited about the Apple announcement (can’t even remember what it was now), but got totally distracted when my Google Chromecast arrived. We had just cut the cord of cable TV, and have never looked back.
    3. Preparing to Launch (May 7, 2013) – Ouch! We were just about to officially launch deductmor. Then I pivoted to c|d8a. Then I shut it down. :-(  Oh, the lessons we learn…
    4. Atlanta’s Consumer + Design Weekend Accelerator (Apr 22, 2014) – The birth of Tavani’s Switchyards! That was so much fun. Nearly a year ago? Wow.
    5. Pitch Practice 11-22-2013 (Nov 22, 2013) – I still have absolutely no idea why this post is so popular. Seriously. I’ve just re-read it for about the 100th time. Typical Pitch Practice. No idea why.

    I still enjoy randomly re-reading an old post once a week or so. If I’m feeling really nostalgic about my family, I’ll go back and peruse some of the posts from our adoption adventure to Kazakhstan, 10 years ago this year.

    Think I’ll go hug my kids now.

  • What we learned in Blogging for your Brand

    We had a fantastic time last night at General Assembly Atlanta!  Thanks to everyone who attended “Blogging for your Brand”!  Even on a ridiculously cold night, we had a packed house full of people who were eager to start or get into first or second gear in their blogging.  Here’s a simple recap of the highlights of the evening.

    • Blogging is popular! As evidenced by the crowd, it’s clear that there’s a strong need for people to learn the basics of regular blogging, and get over the perceived hurdles of blogging every day or every week for your own brand or for your company’s brand.
    • Personal and/or corporate brand – blogging is blogging! There are a few clear differences between blogging for you vs blogging for your company, but for the most part, it’s the same.  Start. Write. Repeat. Anyone can get bogged down worrying too much about whether to use Blogger or WordPress or Medium or whatever, whether to tweet about your blog or post to Instagram, whether to write every day or every week or twice a week, or whether to monetize a blog or not. Your best bet is to start.
    • Start a movement – Just like in this fantastic TED Talk video. Someone HAS to start everything. Why not you?  If you’re hesitant about blogging, it’s ok, just go. Tell your story. Everyone loves a story!
    • Seinfeld did nothing – We defined what everyone’s “story” really is, and it’s everything! Seinfeld made multiple millions saying nothing. You and your company have so much more than nothing.
    • Everyone has content – Consider Seinfeld’s approach. Everything that happens to you or your company is content for content marketing. Every new hire, new product, new feature, new event, successes, failures, partnerships, news…everything. Make a list of everything that could provide value to your audience, and then write about it.
    • Everyone has their own style, cadence, and degree of content. Find yours. For comparison and contrast, consider personal/vulnerable (John Saddington) vs. regular/analytical (David Cummings).
    It really was an awesome crowd, and it was a ton of fun teaching this class. I look forward to doing that one again.

    I’ll be teaching again in a couple of weeks on how to create and execute a social marketing strategy, and then the GA Digital Marketing Class starts Jan 27, and takes place every Tuesday & Thursday, 6:30pm – 9:30pm for 10 weeks.

  • Preparation

    How do you prepare for an event that you will lead?  I think about this process all the time, and every time I lead any event.  Every Friday, when I lead Pitch Practice, I prepare to welcome newcomers and give them an overview of why we’re here and what we do, and then to help any and all who attend with the intent of improving their pitch.  Today, I’m preparing to teach “Blogging for your Brand”, put on by General Assembly.

    How will I prepare?  That’s a loaded question; however, I still go about it generally the same way I went about preparing for tests and exams in college.  Here’s how I studied and prepped in college.

    • Always attend class. Woody Allen’s famous words are applicable here: “80% of success is just showing up.”  My Economics professor prepared us for the “real world” by telling us to “get ready for the world of all 8AM classes and no cuts.” You don’t cut class in the real world.
    • Take copious notes. I wrote down every single word the professor said. Everything. My hand would cramp several times in each class. No, we didn’t have iPads or laptops when I was in college. #oldschool  It’s been proven that writing something down is the equivalent of reading it seven (7) times.
    • The same day, rewrite your notes.  My fresh, first run notes from the class looked like chicken scratch and would be gibberish to anyone else. When I rewrote my notes, they’d be neat and understandable.
    • Read the re-written notes once a week until text/exam time. Reading them a little at a time cements them into my brain, and doesn’t take nearly as long nor is it as painful as cramming the night before.
    • The day before the exam, I read my notes 3 times all the way through.  This part of the process would take a while, since I would average 3+ pages of notes per class session, but it would be the 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th time I had read the notes, so it really became more of a “skim” than a hard read.
    • Relax. There were many times that I would take a nap during the class period before an exam. I always preferred to go into a test or exam with a completely clear head, rather than cramming and stressing at the last minute.

    How does this relate to preparing to lead tonight’s class? Almost exactly, except that I’m the instructor! I spent approximately 4-5 hours creating the slide deck, then about 2 hours revising it. Again, I don’t do this all in one session, but rather over the course of a few weeks. Once I’ve decided that I like the deck, I’ll read through it once or twice each day in the week prior to the class. Today, since the class is tonight, I’ll review the deck twice more, making final notes for real world examples, humorous back stories, questions for the audience, etc.

    Then I’ll relax, and not really think about it again.  How do you prepare for big events?

  • Blogging for your Brand this Thursday at General Assembly

    I’ll be leading a 2-hour class called “Blogging for your Brand” this Thursday from 6:30 – 8:30pm at General Assembly, which is located at Ponce City Market, 4 doors down from Dancing Goats in midtown.  If you or your company are engaging in content marketing or if you know that you should be doing content marketing, then this short class is for you.

    Here’s what we’re going to cover:

    • blogging platforms
    • starting your blog
    • writing blog posts
    • best practices for posts
    • promoting your blog
    • measuring your results
    You don’t need to bring anything, though I highly recommend you bring something – iPad, laptop, piece of paper – to take notes on. This isn’t a fluff piece. You’ll be learning the nitty gritty, the basics, blocking and tackling, pick and roll of blogging for your brand. And I won’t be just standing up there lecturing you either. Instead, we’ll take what you already have and get you rolling along to regular, consistent, brand-building blogging.
    And your “brand” might just be your personal brand, so don’t think this class isn’t for you just because you’re a solo practitioner or free-lancer.
    The class is just $10, and you can register here. Hope to see you there Thursday night at 6:30pm.

  • Back to Blogger

    Managing a WordPress site and writing in WordPress are two very different things.  I’ve enjoyed the simplicity and power of plugins managing Atlanta Tech Blogs using a simple, cheap WordPress framework with a dozen or so plugins.  It works.

    But writing in WordPress isn’t cutting it for me.  That, among a couple of other reasons, is why as of yesterday’s obligatory 2014 review post, I am back to blogging using my original favorite, Blogger. In fact, it just hit me today that I started blogging 10 years ago using Blogger as my wife and I traveled to Kazakhstan to adopt our son and daughter. It’s good to be back.

    The other, more mechanical and practical reasons for switching back to Blogger from WordPress, after doing exactly the opposite last May, are three:

    • My blog was getting lost in the stream of Atlanta Tech Blogs posts
    • My SEO and readership were far better as a standalone blog 
    • I like the WordPress admin UI, but not the writing UI, even with WP v4.1

    Re-reading that old post from 8 months ago, I had landed on “In the end, it’s the themes and plugins that did it for me” as the sum of all reasons for moving over to WP; however, it was John Saddington’s epic essay offering deep advice for starting (or restarting) a blog that brought me back to why I really do prefer Blogger for writing.  If you have not yet read that post, I highly recommend that you do it today, especially if you are even considering blogging at all ever.

    One of my remaining issues with Blogger is that the product really has not changed much, if at all, in the 10 years I’ve been using it. Odd, but then like I said in the May 2014 post: Google made Ev Williams (Twitter co-founder) wealthy, and then promptly put the product on a shelf.  It’s this blogger’s opinion that Google has (a) done a huge disservice to the blogging community, (2) missed out on a massive opportunity that WordPress has capitalized on (CMS), and (3) left their content creation machine in the weeds in favor of Google+.

    No matter. The UI is good for me, and I agree with @Saddington that writing is the most important part of blogging, not the tech around your writing. So, as of yesterday’s first post of 2015, I’m back on Blogger to write, and staying with WordPress to manage.