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January 30 2012
Myth: Blogging will work as long as you’re awesome
A little after I started tweeting, when I still had about 75 followers and was convinced that Twitter was a complete puzzle of fluff that I’d never understand, I happened upon Mack Collier’s #blogchat. If you are not aware of #blogchat, it is one of the biggest chats in the world of Twitter. Twitter chats are great because with the simple use of a hashtag, you can talk to people in a group about one single topic. Blogchat, of course, focuses on all things blogging.
When I first started participating in the chat, I was entranced by how helpful and welcoming everyone was. I was shocked that so many ideas could float back and forth from peoples’ fingertips. If you are new to either Twitter or blogging, I still highly recommend that you give Blogchat a try.
All of that being said, I’ve become a bit disenchanted with #blogchat of late because of a back-and-forth that has become all too familiar. It goes something like this.
Person A: I love getting comments on my blog. It helps me build community, it helps me engage, and it helps me hone my content to what my growing community wants to read.
Person B: Comments are stupid. You can’t build a business based on comments. Get out of your fluffy unicorn-filled world.
Factually, as is the case in so many social media conversations, both people have a point. The difference is in objectives.
When you’re not blogging for business
A lot of people who are blogging are not blogging in order to make money, technically. For example, while I work for Clayman Advertising, I make no pretense that my blogging will put more money in the company’s pockets. I blog because I really enjoy conversing with people online, and if my blog is a way to make people aware of our company, that’s great. I hope that is happening, but this is not something that will lead directly to a sale, in most cases.
If you are blogging to raise awareness of yourself and your thoughts, or if you’re blogging for fun, or if you’re blogging because you want to have a place to vent your most heartfelt frustrations, creating awesome content that inspires people to comment is a great goal to have. There are numerous blog posts that can teach you how to get your audience revved up, how to create actionable content, how to help new bloggers, and more. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with this approach. It’s admirable, in fact, to want to create consistently great content that your growing community responds to (whether positively or negatively).
Blogging for your business
Here’s where the problems lie. If you are blogging because you want to increase sales, those anti-comment people are on to something.
We’ll come back to this again and again throughout this series, but here is a core nugget of truth. In the world of social media, numbers, those things that everyone lusts after and expresses envy over, really don’t mean much. Why? Well, let’s say I make a tiny tool that is used for precision machining. If most of my readers are either in the same exact business as me, or if a lot of my readers are people I met in a chat about my favorite soap opera, the chance of any of my comments leading to a sale is pretty slim, right? The same goes for the number of subscribers, the number of retweets I get, the number of Google +1s I get, etc. The amount of exposure becomes irrelevant for a business blog if the audience you’re getting exposed to is not going to ever buy from you.
As Marcus Sheridan wrote on his excellent site, “Community is NOT the holy grail of blogging and online success.” Why did Marcus say that? Because if you focus solely on engaging and comments and social media stuff, your blog simply will not pull in any additional sales. In fact, one might argue that if you are spending a lot of time trying to get more comments, your company might actually lose any sales it was gaining before you started your blogging efforts.
Awesome is also not the holy grail
Piggy-backing on what Marcus wrote, “being awesome” is also not a business plan. First of all, “awesome” is relative. For some people, “awesome” may mean content that is beautiful and poetic. For others, “awesome” may be something that kicks them in the butt and gets them moving. For others, “awesome” may be content that solves a problem. For a business blog, this latter category is most often going to equate to success. How can you solve your readers’ problems?
If you have the right audience, your content probably does not need to be the most eloquent ever. It does not need to use swear words, nor does it need to use 10-cent words. It just needs to make the case for your product or service. It needs to inform your target audience. For the world of social media as a whole, your content might appear to be about as boring and pointless as anything anyone has ever seen. You might not get a ton of comments or dozens of retweets. But if your content convinces a reader that they need to buy from you, you’ll get what a lot of other bloggers don’t get – money in your company’s bank account.
If you don’t mind me saying, to me, that sounds pretty awesome. What do you think?
Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/headlouse/1484615917/ via Creative Commons
Make a Jello Fish Bowl Dessert/Shot [Alcohol]
January 29 2012
Man könnte meinen, dass sich Touristen, wenn sie auf Österreichs Skipisten im kostenlosen WLAN surfen, für etwas anderes interessieren als für Filesharing oder Pornografie. Doch jüngste Zahlen aus der Skiregion amadé belegen, dass dem nicht so ist. Uneingeschränktes Surfen in einem "freien WLAN-Netz" ist jedoch nicht in allen österreichischen Skigebieten möglich, bestimmte Inhalte werden auf Wunsch der Skigebiete gesperrt.
Das Acer Inspire S3 gehört zu den günstigsten, derzeit verfügbaren Ultrabooks. Dafür muss man aber auch mit Einbußen beim Display, der Verarbeitung und der Geschwindigkeit zurecht kommen. Die futurezone hat das Acer S3 getestet.
Repurpose Vintage Video Game Controllers into MP3 Player Enclosures [Repurpose]
5 Lessons from Coca Cola’s New Content Marketing Strategy
Coca Cola has been part of popular culture for over 100 years and has been called a “Vision Brand“.
Its marketing and communication is purposeful and connects with its audience in a way that makes it stand out from its competitors.
Its mission is not about selling products but to create significant positive change in the world that makes the world a better place.
Coca Cola’s mission statement
- To refresh the world
- To inspire moments of optimism and happiness
- To create value and make a difference
Recently they have realised that their marketing strategy that has worked well for them for decades needed to evolve and as such they are moving from “Creative Excellence” to “Content Excellence”
Creative excellence has always been at the heart of Coca Cola’s advertising and they have decided that content is now the key to marketing in the 21st century on a social web.
Content for Coca Cola is is now the “Matter” and “Substance” of “Brand Engagement”
So what can we learn from Coca Cola’s new marketing strategy?
Lesson 1: Create Liquid Content
The purpose of content excellence is to create “Ideas” so contagious that they cannot be controlled this is what is called “liquid content”.
On a social web people can easily share ideas, videos and photos on social networks such Facebook.
So create content that begs to be shared whether that be an image, a video or an article.
Lesson 2: Ensure your Content is Linked
The next part of the equation is to ensure that these ideas create content that is innately relevant to
- The business objectives of your company
- The brand
- Your customer interests
This is “Linked” content…. Content that is relevant and connected to the companies goals and brand.
Ensure that the content communicates your message that is congruent with your mission and values.
Lesson 3: Create Conversations
Coca Cola has realised that the consumer creates more stories and ideas than they do so the goal is provoke conversations and then “Act” and “React” to those conversations 365 days of the year.
The new “Distribution Technologies” of Twitter, YouTube and Facebook provide greater connectivity and consumer empowerment than ever before.
Don’t just publish but interact with your audience and tribe.
Lesson 4. Move onto Dynamic Story Telling
On traditional media in the past story telling was static and a one way street. Television and newspapers shouted at you with no interaction.
Coca Cola has come the realisation that to grow their business on the social web they need to move on from “One Way Story Telling” to “Dynamic Story Telling”
This means you need to allow the story to evolve as you interact and converse with your customers. You need to converse with your customers in many media formats and social networks.
Storytelling has moved on from static and synchronous to multifaceted, engaged and spreadable.
Lesson 5: Be Brave and Creative with Your Content Creation
Part of the new Coca Cola content strategy is applying a 70/20/10 Investment principle to creating “Liquid content“.
- 70% of your content should be low risk. It pays the rent and is your bread and butter marketing.(should be easy to do and only consumes 50% of your time)
- 20% of your content creation should innovate of the what works.
- 10% of your content marketing is high risk ideas that will be tomorrows 70% or 20%. (be prepared to fail)
This provides a blueprint regarding moving on from just developing white papers to maybe trying some content that is more visual and engaging in web world that has embraced multimedia and interactive content.
The 30 Second TV Ad is no Longer King
Coca Cola has come to the conclusion that the world has moved on from the 30 second TV ad. So has the the Old Spice brand and many other businesses who are embracing social media as part of their marketing strategy.
We need to move towards a genuine consumer collaboration model that builds buzz and adopts a more iterative approach to content creation.
Learning how to fuel the conversations and interact has never been more important.
Consumers ideas, creativity and conversations have been set free with the evolution of social networks, learning to leverage and wrangle those conversations to increase your brand visibility is now a vital part of your marketing.
What About You?
Do you create conversations with your marketing? How many people are talking about your stories on Facebook?
Is your content liquid, linked and multi-faceted?
More Reading
- 10 Reasons Why “Liquid” Content Should be Included in Your Social Media Marketing
- What are 10 Addictive Types of Content?
- How to Increase Your Blog Traffic by 55% with One Button
- 5 Motivations for Sharing Content
- 20 Ideas for Social Media Content that Engages
- Is it Better to Share on Google, Facebook or Twitter+
- 9 Questions to Ask your Customers When Creating Content
Image by KB35
Pinterest Becomes Top Traffic Driver for Retailers [INFOGRAPHIC]
Pinterest, a two-year-old social bookmarking site that lets users collect and share things they like on the web, is driving increasingly significant amounts of traffic to retailers’ websites.
The service enables users to create online bulletin boards, or “pinboards,” for popular categories such as home decor, food and wedding inspiration. Members can use Pinterest’s “Pin It” bookmarklet tool and iPhone app to save things they see online and offline, and explore and repin the images their friends collect via their personal newsfeeds. The website is especially popular among women, who account for 58% of Pinterest’s traffic, according to Experian Hitwise.
SEE ALSO: 21 Must-Follow Pinterest UsersThe site’s popularity is quickly growing. Pinterest’s traffic increased more than fourfold between September 2011 and December 2011, bringing in 7.51 million unique visitors in December alone, data from Compete indicates. The amount of traffic Pinterest sent elsewhere has risen accordingly, becoming a top five referrer for several apparel retailers, according to internal data from Monetate, which provided the infographic below.
Although Pinterest is becoming a significant source of traffic for retailers, search still dominates, and the site has yet to prove itself as a potential sales channel. At present, scant data is available about the social network’s conversion rates.
[via Monetate]
More About: pinterest, retail, trending
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Meme Machine: Top 5 Viral Hits of the Week
The Mashable Meme Machine is a daily look at five hilarious viral topics spreading across the web right now.
The weekend is finally here, and if you’ve been too embarrassed to look at photos of cats and Ryan Goslin at the office, we’ve got you covered with this week’s roundup of our best meme coverage.
If those two corners of odd Internet culture aren’t intriguing enough, we also have a canine version of Steve Jobs, Drunk Hulk’s interview about the Oscars and a Samsung commercial parody.
Stumble upon any hilarious memes lately? Let us know. Feel free to contact Brian Anthony Hernandez (@BAHjournalist), Christine Erickson (@christerickson) or Lauren Hockenson (@lhockenson).
1. Steve Dogs
This variation of the popular 2011 meme "Yes, This is Dog" features a Husky looking an awful lot like the late, great Steve Jobs. Its origins are dubious at best, but the image of the canine staring icily into the camera while wearing the innovator's signature turtleneck has blown up all over the Internet.
Yes, that is Steve Dogs.
Click here to view this gallery.
More About: features, humor, Meme Machine, trending, tumblr, YouTube
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- Follow Mashable Business on Twitter
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How To Avoid Hiring The Wrong Person For Your Startup
Chris Rickborn is the COO and co-founder for Unrabble, a cloud-computing hiring software company that helps busy startups make great hires.
In a startup, hiring a new employee can be a business-changing event. The smaller the organization, the more impact each employee has on its ultimate success.
Don’t get me wrong — hiring is critical in any size of company, but larger organizations have the ability to orient and train new employees to an extent that startups can’t offer.
In a large company, if a new employee fails, the work can be redistributed and absorbed by other employees without having a significant impact. In a startup, a bad hire can be devastating. To make matters worse, startup owners rarely have dedicated HR staff, software tools or a hiring process that will take some of the risk out of hiring.
Here are five tips to help you avoid hiring the wrong person for your startup.
1. Stop Giving Open Book Tests
Writing lengthy job descriptions loaded with job requirements may keep unqualified candidates from wasting your time, but you’ve also just given every candidate a cheat sheet. Job seekers are taught to break down your job description and weave it into their resume, which will make everyone look equally qualified. There are even websites that will automatically mash your job description together with the candidates resume and spit out a new version with the right keywords embedded. Sell your company, your vision and the position, but make job seekers tell you what they can do for you — not what you told them you want.
2. Don’t Confuse Experience With Skills
Startups move fast, and every position is a skilled position. Job candidates can often blur the line between a previous experience and a skill, which is a trap you need to avoid. Don’t assume that candidates have certain skills just because it’s a keyword on a resume, a previous job title or experience at a similar business. Have an in-depth conversation with your top candidates to discuss what they are best at and learn how they have acquired those skills through experience.
3. Make Sure the Timing Is Right
Just like good timing can lead to the successful exit in a startup, good timing can also apply to job candidates. Where is the candidate in his career? Is he capable of taking a big risk at this point in his life? What kind of adversity has he faced in previous jobs? Does he seem too anxious to hit a home run or does his experience tell you he has the patience it takes to succeed? You don’t need your employees abandoning ship the first time your startup hits rough seas. Sometimes it’s just the right timing that makes a person successful in a new venture.
4. Skip the Initial Telephone Interview
I’ve never liked doing telephone interviews based on the initial review of a resume — it’s way too time-consuming. But I do like communicating with candidates, because that’s when you learn the most about them. After I’ve looked at a candidate’s background I might send off a short message and say, “Tell me about this experience” or, “What do you know about this skill?” How does he respond? Does he respond? Can he write? Is the exchange comfortable? The ability to communicate articulately in writing is a trait of top talent, regardless of the position. If you engage candidates in a more in-depth and ongoing communication string rather than conducting a one-and-done phone interview, you will quickly learn who stands out from the crowd.
5. Separate the “Can Do” From “Can Get it Done”
In most startups, resources are tight and the timeline is very short. When you’re hiring for a key position, make sure to ask yourself if you need someone who “can do the job” or someone who “can get the job done.” The “can do” is the candidate with the hands-on skills who can accomplish the task without any help. The “can get it done” is the candidate who will deliver but may need other resources to make it happen. Both can be valuable attributes to have, but you need to clearly understand which one you need to avoid a hiring mistake that could set you behind.
What other tips do you have? Have you hired the wrong person before? Tell us about your experience in the comments.
Social Media Job Listings
Every week we post a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we publish a huge range of job listings, we’ve selected some of the top social media job opportunities from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting!
- On-Camera Digital Video Journalist at Everyday Health in New York City
- Marketing and Communications Manager at Towne Park in Annapolis, MD
- Producer at Break Media in Los Angeles
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59, AlexRaths
More About: interviews, job interviews, job recruiting, job search series, jobs, trending
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Colour Chronicles: Brilliant Blue
Welcome back to another colourful article, this time dealing with last month’s favourite, chosen by you! Just as last time, it includes a showcase of websites, artwork and palettes, so there is a little something for everybody.
Basics
Blue is one of the three primary colours and as such is also part of the chromatic spectrum. It is a cool colour which covers a relatively wide area of the spectrum, ranging from cyan to a more violet tint. Of course you could always nitpick, but there is usually little doubt as to what all its different shades should be called; light or dark, greenish or not, you can still call it blue and get away with it.
Characteristics
According to its proper theory, blues are considered far colours, meaning that they seem to expand whatever shape they fill; a room, for example, will seem larger if painted blue, rather than yellow or orange.
It is easily perceivable by the human eye, given that blue colours present a wavelength between 440 and 490 nm. All three types of photosensitive cells respond to this range, albeit to varying degrees. On the other hand, the inclusive nature of the name means that some shades are (literally) easier on the eyes than others. Nevertheless, blue is a common sight in top favourites.
Symbolism
Although present in living beings (mushrooms and frogs, for instance), generally it has more inorganic and abstract associations.
One of these is the sky. Light tones give a sense of open space and freedom, an overall calming effect. Using light blue backgrounds in web design can make a site look friendlier, but large backgrounds have the risk of becoming dull. To avoid this, take inspiration from nature: the sky is much more appealing when the Sun creates a sort of gradient, rather than when it’s more or less one solid colour.
"Trondheim omgivelser" by Helene Rojas Nagel
Next is the sea (or water in general). As a symbol of life and vitality, it also represents versatility; you can find it nearly everywhere, filling different shapes in different states. Although it is colourless in small quantities, in reality water has a slight blue tint that becomes more obvious in large quantities. While the image of a still body of water can be considered peaceful, remember that it can just as easily turn into a source of turbulence.
Blue is also a powerful corporate colour because of its association with stability and confidence. This is also why many IT companies prefer to use it in their visual identity, trying to combat the (to a certain degree) volatile nature of technology. Of course this all depends on the company’s philosophy, profile and desired image, but reliability seems to be the most wide-spread.
Some of the more negative associations are cold and melancholy. Less saturated shades remind of murky skies on cold days, while brighter shades closer to cyan have a frostier feel to them. Also, save for eye colours, the presence of blue on the human body is an indication of something wrong. This can be both physical and mental, hence the expression “feeling blue”.
Combinations
Bright, electric shades of blue create a fantastic effect when combined with dark, ash brown. Although it dominates and gives the overall composition a cool feel, at the same time it manages to generate energy. It works well with dark metallic colours as well.
Together with teal or mint green it creates a natural, watery scheme that is also very fresh and inviting. Of course, there must be some balance and hierarchy between the two colours; otherwise they will compete with each other if they have the same intensity.
Using blue for less important details in orange or yellow schemes can cool down the design and take away some of the glare. While traditionally, orange is blue’s complementary, combinations with yellow will have roughly the same effect.
Palettes
01. Complementary blue by tudor.girba
02. Swimming Sports by julievonderropp
03. Sunny Shores by twinklebunnytoes
04. Sea Foam by louisan
05. Lilac Bathroom by nightzdragonz
06. Leviathan by matthepworth
07. Bleu Blanc Rouge by kuler
08. blueberry pie by elsabartley
09. Nautical Cruise by thecolorcat
10. Giant Attack Robot by stevereed.m
Web – WordPress themes
01. Sealight (premium)
02. MyStream (premium)
03. Irresistible (free)
04. MixBloo (free / must keep footer)
05. The Revival (free)
06. Blue Earth (premium)
07. Feather (premium)
08. SiliconApp (premium)
09. TheCorporation (premium)
10. Envision (premium)
Artwork – animals
01. Sea turtle by Ruth-Tay
02. The Safe Place by ShadowUmbre
03. Hyacinth Macaw by doormouse1960
04. La fable de la girafe by AquaSixio
05. Snowy Owl by markkarvon
06. White Fang 2 by Ginseng-fox
07. Out of Blue by kerembeyit
08. Bubbles by trenchmaker
09. The Emperor by D-NA
10. Into the blue by orcasaurus
Facebook: Die Timeline/Chronik kommt für alle! Bitte keine Panik – ein paar wichtige Infos!
Replace a Broken Zipper Slide with a Telephone Wire Connector [Clever Uses]
iPhoneography: Faved On Flickr, 01.29.12
The Night Watchman by tabiwallah / Alan Kastner
Here’s this week’s edition of our regular Sunday showcase, Faved On Flickr. Every Sunday, I select about two dozen outstanding images from the more than 1,000 photos submitted each week to Life In LoFi‘s group on Flickr. This is our weekly showcase of photography that is shot and processed (or in some cases created) solely on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.
Click past the jump for the great photography in this week’s showcase. >>>
This week, iPhoneographers submitted a lot of outstanding black & whites and amazing abstracts. The week’s lead image by iPhoneographer Alan Kastner is both. Other excellent works this week were shared by Tamara Manning, Dixon Hamby, Greg Schmigel, Benamon Tame, Alexander Kesselaar, Robert-Paul Jansen, Laura Franz, Mansi, Lynette Jackson, and many others.
Don’t forget to visit Life In LoFi on Flickr to see the excellent iPhoneography in all of this week’s submissions.
Links go back to the iPhonegrapher’s Flickr photostream. I encourage you to follow the links and discover new iPhoneographers whose work catches your eye.
Submissions are open to everyone with an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. All you have to do to submit your photography is to post your images to LoFi’s Flickr Group. Sundays, we feature a brand new showcase of outstanding iPhone photography.
Please enjoy this week’s set. As always, many thanks to all of the iPhoneographers who post and share their photography.
=M=
…
wind by ||| laura frantz |||
Study of raking light by Tamara Manning
IMG_4321 by b. Lynne
Dance with black ribbon 2 by Edysia
Alone by chris stern PHOTOGRAPHY
What this country needs is a good 5 cents cigar by magneticart
#panama drive by shooting #highheels by Dixon Hamby
the man at union square by Greg Schmigel
Grow in a Row by Robert-Paul Jansen
"flock in flight" - 23 of 366 by alexkess / Alexander Kesselaar
Les merveilles d'un matin. in Wezembeek-Oppem by shonski32
. by silvia vincenzi
A man of distinction by Jahsharn / Paula Gardener
Eva thinks it is winter by BrettMorrison
Untitled by microbio*
impressione # 01 by francesco X
The puppet took his soul and left him a hollow stolen thing by Benamon Tame
running 2 by Lola Mitchell
Umbrellas by Hochlander, on Flickr
Watching by brionline
Ahhhh...... by Mandolina Moon
@Shinjuku#137 by Subway666
No._334_D2_v2.01 by Page67_Lynette Jackson
Be still, my beating heart by maansee / Mansi
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Open Mail Over Your Recycling Bin to Avoid Clutter [Clutter]
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
"Is it worth to buy basic car maintenance stuff to do myself instead of going to the mechanic?" [Ask The Commenters Roundup]
- When is the best time to buy foreign currency before going abroad?
- I have an idea for a Mac Desktop Application that doesn't exist, but I wish did, however, I'm no coder. I'm thinking of trying to raise money for via Kickstarter and make it happen. Thoughts?
- I'm due to upgrade my phone and can't decide whether to stick with Android, go back to iPhone or wait to see what handsets come in the near future. Any suggestions?
- I've been thinking about buying some basic mechanic stuff and enabling myself to stop going to the mechanic. Is it worth it?
- I have a 2007 Corolla. It has a 6-CD player, but no aux input. Can anyone recommend a cheap and easy hack to get an MP3 player to work in the car?
- I am looking to buy a domain name for personal use, set up a small server here at home for light usage. Any suggestions or advice?
- How do you go about memorizing/remembering large portions of information?
- I am now looking to purchase a Macbook Pro in the next couple of months. Should I go ahead and get the 2011 13 incher (2.8 GHz model) or wait until the late spring months when Apple generally releases the next model?
- How do I/should I put a failed project on my resume?
- Are there any 3rd party cell networks in the US that allow you to use (bring) an iphone but are cheaper than the big 4?
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