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Twittfaced: Your Toolkit for Understanding and Maximizing Social Media

• November 16, 2009
• View comments2 Comments and 36 Reactions

While the title invites a predicted round of wordplay, I will spare you the attempts at low hanging witticisms.

During this past summer, I was in the throes of promoting my current book and writing my next title (which I won’t officially announce until January 2010.) As I was deep in the zero hour, I was approached by Clay Bridges Publishing to discuss my level of interest in writing the foreword for a new book on Social Media. Even though it was tempting, I maintained a fervent policy of saying “no” to anything that would distract me from my objectives. When I learned its author was Jacob Morgan, an old friend in the San Francisco Web scene, I immediately realized that no matter how preoccupied I was with my writing endeavors, I needed to push my schedule back. And, so I did…however, I did so with one request. I asked if I could share the full foreword with you once the book was published. They agreed.

At the time, I was spending a beautiful long weekend in Half Moon Bay. The Pacific Ocean served as my backdrop and the warm Northern California breeze roused my focus.

The book is now available. And, here I am, sharing with you a wonderful memory and hopefully an even better composition that I hope somehow helps you in your current or future venture.

Social media is a humbling topic, one that I do not approach without deep study and reflection. On the surface, social media has democratized content, placing the power of publishing in the hands of every day people. Peeling back the collective layers, we realize something more profound however; social media has democratized and equalized influence and the ability to inspire action and establish vibrant and dedicated communities around a sense of purpose and belonging.

Whether we’re consumers or brand advocates or both, we have been given a powerful gift in the form of real-time, uninhibited access to information and intelligence and the people who share their insights—the new influencers.

It is how we choose to embrace this gift and as such employ it and also interact with new influencers that defines our presence and stature within the social landscape and in turn, the real world.

Indeed social media is a privilege and with it comes great responsibility (and accountability).

You are reading this book and therefore have made a conscious decision to learn, and for that, you’re to be commended. Social media is an elusive subject and its lessons are extensive, invaluable, and continuous. Attempting to master any form of emerging media provides us with a unique and tuned perspective that actually relegates us to a more meaningful and beneficial role, one that represents practitioner, student, and apprentice.

We are always learning and we do so through observation and participation.

Questions are the seeds for cultivating knowledge and experience is the intelligence that serves as the curriculum for teaching and inspiring those around us. The shift from inquiry to practice is a pivotal step in earning a meaningful sense of understanding and judgment.

While we never cease to ask questions, we must also immerse ourselves in the online societies that will one day benefit from our strategic participation. It is not done without intelligence of course and for all intents and purposes, we are responsible for what we learn and what we earn. Our rewards are measured in relationships and reflective in communities and activity. Our failures are documented in the words and actions of influencers and visualized through the state of social capital and market share.

At some point, we must pause our reading, limit our attendance in webinars and conferences, and set aside our fears and excuses to listen and engage to the individuals who define our communities in online networks. It’s where we learn and it’s where we begin to uncover the answers to our questions that only we could fulfill specific to our own realities.

The study and application of emerging and interactive media is both an art and science. We have access to data, research, and academics that will provide us with an incredible knowledge base. It is our intuition and interpretation that determines our action however.

This is “social” media after all and therefore, we apply ourselves as individuals and personalities in everything we do. It is what we take away from our occurrences and experiences that defines our adeptness and shapes our future participation.

New media is a journey and not a destination. We grow in intellect and prowess at every stop in our ceaseless voyage. Thus, to succeed in social media requires us to study and grasp much more than what we know today. In many senses, throughout our interaction and immersion in interactive media, we become part marketer, customer service representative, publisher, connector, and digital anthropologist. We are the social architects who construct the framework for engagement and the engineers who build the roads between our stories, value, and wisdom for those seeking it.

In doing so, we become the very people we sought to reach and earn a place within the communities we hoped to galvanize. And, we learn through each instance and interaction to increase our awareness and eminence within our relevant networks.

The socialized Web is therefore more significant when viewed as a human network.

Conversations are distributed across multiple social networks and real world factions. In all honestly, attention spans only continue to thin with every new network that vies for their participation. As such, we are forever in a competition to earn the attention of those whom define and direct our markets, wherever they are active today. And as countless social networks and online communities populate the social Web, at first glance, engagement could frighten and intimidate many or otherwise seem impossible to manage and scale.

It is the listening and observation that tells us everything. By searching keywords in individual social networks and also using effective listening tools and dashboards, we can reveal the exact networks where relevant traffic and movement is transpiring right now. If we dive a bit deeper and view the activity through the lens of sociology and psychology, we also identify influencers, behavior, and cultures that govern each and every salient society.

While social and interactive media is connected and facilitated through technology, we are, in the end, attempting to make connections with people to engender relationships and influence action and responses.

We are forging connections with real people and those ties extend across networks—online and offline. If we are measured by the relationships and contacts that define our social graph, then we must visualize the constructs of the graph as it will be defined less by activity within individual social networks and more through our interaction and connectedness with influencers, advocates, and stakeholders where they discover, share, and collaborate. In the process, we humanize our brand and our persona, allowing personal connections and cooperation.

The Web then begins to become a much smaller and more efficient platform for collaboration and communication. The minute we let conversations, both positive and negative, affect us, is the instance when we truly socialize and humanize our work. In the process we too, earn influence and thus we become much more important than we realize.

Actions speak louder than words and thus, we earn the relationships, influence, and the reputation we deserve.

This is your opportunity to define and create your own destiny.

Be. Do. Get.

- Determine exactly where, who or what you strive to achieve.

-Symbolize and exercise the attributes, responsibilities, and disciplines required to earn and sustain your aspirations.

- Earn the very thing you were already becoming as you forced evolution through actions and outlook.

This is very much our moment in which we are empowered to shape how history remembers us.

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The first push back regarding social media is the dreaded ROI question, right?

There’s also been a lot of talk about how conversation and dialogue can’t be measured in terms of revenue too. Maybe that’s true. Or, maybe we’re measuring the wrong things or we’re only capturing part of the picture.

Since I come from a communications background I never learned much about web analytics until I took it upon myself to learn. It becomes much easier to have the ROI conversation when your piece fits into the overall sales or cost savings equation. However, understanding how ROI is measured in other online marketing disciplines can definitely come in handy.

Mind you, I don’t have all the answers and I know each situation is unique, but I think this fact is worth highlighting. Most conversion analytics credit the final click, with credit for a conversion or sale. This means that the last ad, or affiliate link or referring site gets credit for the sale or conversion. Each one of these types of click installs a cookie in the browser that determines which referrer gets credit. Most links shared in social networks do not come with cookies, but Google Analytics will still pick up the traffic from the referring site.

Why is the last cookie question important for measuring social media ROI?

I have been thinking about this for awhile since having a conversation with Angel Djambazov on the way to Blog World Expo (he and I were on the same flight from Seattle to Las Vegas for the conference). He explained to me how the final cookie, or final click, practice can often skew data. Then a recent post from Rob Birgfeld inspired me to share this information with you here.

Rob’s post on the “myth of the last click” cites a study by the Microsoft Advertising Institute that states, “users interact with an average of 2.2 other ads from the same brand over two days before the conversion.” This study includes a sales funnel of 14 days. Rob then asks what if we were to extend the sales funnel to 90 days?

“…let’s expand the conversion funnel to 90 days, in which case the user is exposed to an average of 18.5 ads over a three-month period… [the] operating theory is that all of these interactions play a role in the final conversion, and they should not be discounted when quantifying ROI. According to Strong, 94% of touch points in today’s “last click model” are thrown away and not given any credit for a sale.”

Several of the touchpoints cited in the above quote could definitely include interaction in social networks and social media channels.

The answer isn’t who gets monetary “credit” for the sale, but rather, doing what it takes to fund, maintain and foster the truly valuable channels that bring customers and that final click into perfect alignment. Maybe one way to examine the data is to look for correlations between social media mentions and actual click-throughs from other online marketing channels.

The idea that clicks trump views and impressions may have been overplayed in social media to give the appearance of substance and business prowess. However, the problem with the final click metric is that it will often discount valuable channels like those in social networks if they do not generate a money-shot style click upon the first impression.

Based on this information provided in this study, my advice to anyone searching for the ROI of social media is:

1. Question how online conversion is being calculated and whether it’s a final click metric. If so, recommend an alternative view to accompany final click metrics based on engagement and look for correlations between the data.
2. Don’t be so quick to abandon outreach efforts that appear to be underperforming based on a final click model.
3. Track engagement on your site from referring sites. Drill down time on site and number of page views by each referring blog, community or social network.
4. Examine the number of return visits generated by social networks.
5. Examine the bounce rate from visits referred by social networks.
6. Look for trends between mentions, sentiment and conversion that attempt to identify the real time it takes most customers to complete the sales cycle.

Social media has the potential to generate a valuable first impression, but it may not ever generate a final click. Aligning outreach efforts in social networks with other types of online marketing and SEO efforts can give a much more holistic view of what networks and channels are adding the most value to your entire sales funnel.

By the way, one of the best presentations on determining the ROI of social media is by Olivier Blanchard, aka @thebrandbuilder on Twitter. Check it out here on SlideShare.

What other types of analytics do you use to determine the true ROI of social media beyond fluff and without giving too much weight to the final click and worrying about who gets the last cookie?

Image of Google’s homage to Cookie Monster and Sesame Street posted by COG LOG LAB.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Becoming a Social Business
• Your Product Cannot Exist in a Vacuum
• Mainstream Media Still Matters
• Gucci Launches Eyeweb

Is Your Organization Ready?

Author: Jay Deragon

11 12th, 2009

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

This entry is part 29 of 34 in the series Social Media

Social Media

• What’s A “Certified Social Media Specialist”?
• Enabled or Stimulated By Social Media?
• Is Social Media Strategically Relevant?
• Can You Explain Social Media?
• Again, What Is Social Media?
• An Agency For Agencies?
• The Enemy Of Social Media
• Is Social Media Relevant & Relative?
• Will Social Technology Change Business?
• How Much Is Twitter Worth?
• Do You Like Clutter?
• Social Media Ignorance?
• What Does It Cost To Think?
• Guru’s, Experts Or Stupidity?
• Do You Copy Or Create?
• Social Media Counterfeits?
• Why Do They Want Our Data?
• New Spin On Old Ad Strategies?
• Nobel Prize Goes To Social Media
• What Is Your “Real” Network?
• Can You “Restrict” Communications?
• Does Social Media Fuel Agility?
• 5 Things You Must Ask About Social Media
• Social Media And Management
• Are You The Example?
• Who Has Social Media Directions?
• The Irony Of Social Media
• Social Media Force Fields
• The 3rd Element of Social Media: Affinity
• The Devaluation Of Social Media
• The 1st Element of Social Media: Attention
• How Do You Sell Social Media?
• All Of A Sudden It’s About Culture?
• Is Your Organization Ready?

Organizations are jumping into social media without being  ready for what might happen. You ask what might happen? A lot of things could happen and many you are not ready to handle.

In order to get ready before you leap you really need to assess whether your organization would be consider “social”. The people who could answer that question best are your employees then your customers. However if you’ve never really asked those people whether you are good at building and keeping relations then you might consider assessing that before you jump into social media.

To assess whether the organization is ready means to check three things that will give you keen insights into whether or not you are ready. These three things include:

1. People: How do they really feel about their relationship with the organization. People being suppliers, employees, customers and prospects. You might be surprised at what they might say and that is if you are ready to listen.
2. Process: Your organization has many processes that either enable or constraint people from communicating. How well are those processes performing? How would you know? Your organization also has processes, spoken and unspoken, which say trust, collaboration and the tone of your communications. Do you know what these processes are? What do the processes say to the issues of trust, collaboration and relations?
3. Culture: The BIG UMBRELLA of stuff that reflects the organizations trust, relations and mind-set that speaks the sentiment of managements view of its people, internal and external.
4. Tools: Does your organization have the right tools to efficiently and effectively communicate? Does your organization provide people with tools to improve processes, relations and make changes that enhance the culture and its market sentiment? How would you know? Do you know? Not knowing is a clear indicator of not being ready.

Besides understanding the issues of people, process, culture and tools the overriding issue is one of methods.  By what methods do you manage, communicate, measure and make needed adjustments? Methods reflect managements knowledge and if you are using the wrong methods well you’ll get the wrong results. The method of management has evolved and is constantly changing with the aim of improvement. When markets shift methods have to change because the old method simply cannot respond or satisfy the market demands.

New Methods Require New Knowledge

You cannot adjust to revolutionary change by applying old thinking. Social technology is changing everything because everything is fueled by communications. Social media is communications but a new method that requires new knowledge if you want to tap into the power of effective and efficient communications. Who and what is communicating to you and about you. Everything and everyone.

This new method  is more powerful than any other communications medium in the history of mankind. Why? Because it has reach and influence beyond traditional media and is grounded in trust, relations and honesty. It appeals to the very fabric of human nature and avoids anti-social behavior. Anti-social behavior is when your organization constrains people with bad processes, a closed and controlled culture, a lack of tools to do things right and management methods that lack knowledge and common sense.

You may discount all this and ignore its importance to your performance meaning your bottom line. Then again if you don’t understand these simply things then you are likely to discount them as irrelevant and unimportant to getting you the results you so desperately want. By the way, how are your results?  If you want them to improve then you’ll have to change the methods otherwise nothing will improve. Get it?

Listen and Learn: New Media, New Metrics

View more presentations from Amber Naslund.

Series Navigation«All Of A Sudden It’s About Culture?

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1. Is Your Culture Transparent? Doing so is the solution to the creation of innovation...
2. Social Media And Management Since communications is the fiber of any economy one would...
3. Are You The Example? Unless you "know" what the new dynamics are and how...
4. Do You Copy Or Create? To create a new bandwagon requires you to think by...
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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Advertising Factor, Age Factors, Business Factors, Change Factors, Communications Factors, Convertising, Disruptive Factors, Economic Factors, Human Factors, Industry factors, Influence Factors, Relationship Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Is Your Organization Ready?”

1.  AchieversNet (Achievers Network)
   
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   November 12th, 2009 at 5:29 am

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   Is Your Organization Ready?: You may discount all this and ignore its importance to your performance meaning yo.. [link to post]

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2. uberVU - social comments
   
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   November 12th, 2009 at 5:44 am

   Social comments and analytics for this post…

   This post was mentioned on Twitter by JDeragon: New blog post: Is Your Organization Ready? http://bit.ly/xcxmG…

3. Tweets that mention Is your Organization Ready? | The Relationship Economy...... -- Topsy.com Says:
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4.  johnfoleyjr (John Foley)
   
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   November 12th, 2009 at 6:52 am

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   The Relationship Economy…. Is your organization ready? [link to post]

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5.  mustafaduran (Mustafa Duran)
   
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   November 13th, 2009 at 3:19 am

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101 Ways to Promote a New Blog

by Guest Author

This is a guest post by David Turnbull. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Promoting a new blog can be quite daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. As you might expect, breaking down blog promotion into small, actionable tasks eliminates the mental road block you’ve probably experienced when trying to wrap you head around how to get people’s attention. You don’t have to do everything in this list, and some items will have a greater effect then others, but every tactic will at least drive some traffic, and any traffic is better than no traffic.

Content
1. Write a list of over 100+ resources or ideas.
2. Write the definitive guide to something. Spend time making this awesome.
3. Release a manifesto.
4. Release 2 manifestos.
5. Interview cool people. People like talking about cool people.
6. After your articles are indexed in search engines, break them up into smaller articles and submit them to ezinearticles.com (and other article directories).
7. Or just pay someone to submit the articles for you.
8. Write a list of all the cool blogs and people in your niche.
9. Check out the most popular content on high trafficked blogs. Create similar content but applied to your own niche.

Facebook

10. Start a page.
11. Make that page awesome.
12. Start a group.
13. Make that group awesome.
14. Create a Facebook app for your blog.

Fundamentals
15. Wait. After you’ve taken action it can take a short while for traffic to arrive.
16. Be patient. Some bloggers may seem like overnight successes, but if you look back in their archives, they’ve been creating content for a long time.
17. Motivate yourself.
18. Read The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.
19. Have an interesting story and overall purpose.
20. Embrace the Law of Reciprocity. Everything you give will come back exponentially.
21. Make blogging easier.
22. Take action every day. Just get one important thing done every day and eventually you’ll start getting traffic. The more you do each day the faster your blog gets traction.
23. Find people with blogs at a similar level to yours and help each other out.
24. Turn off your computer, do some cool stuff, turn on your computer again and blog about it.
25. Understand the importance of context.
26. Be consistent. You don’t need to blog every day but try to stick to at least some sort of schedule.
27. Make it a numbers game. Decide upon a definite plan of action (eg. 20 blog comments per day, 1 guest post per week etc) and stick with that.

Online Video
28. Create videos and distribute them through tubemogul.com
29. Or for wider video distribution trafficgeyser.com may work for you (expensive though).
30. Respond to YouTube videos with your content.
31. Include your full blog address at the TOP of your video descriptions.
32. Take your time with devising video titles and tags.
33. Convert your video to multiple formats, with slight editing changes, and upload it to video sites multiple times, targeting different keywords. The content remains the same but you can test what videos and titles work the best.
34. Buy the accounts of popular YouTubers and then add your blog address to the descriptions of their videos.
35. Start the first live show in your niche (Ustream, Justin.tv and LiveStream are popular choices). Make sure you record the shows too so they can be distributed as a podcast later on.

Other Blogs
36. Be the first commenter on the posts of popular blogs. But still provide value.
37. If you can’t be the first then comment anyway. But try to be the first.
38. Stumble and Digg cool blog posts you find and let the blogger know via a comment. If you have something worthy on your blog, they’ll probably reciprocate.
39. Use google.com/blogsearch to find fresh blog posts and then leave intelligent comments.
40. Link to blogs of a similar size. They’ll notice and then good stuff may happen.
41. Write a guest post for a large blog. You may not always get published, but when you do the traffic spike will be significant.
42. Write a guest post for a small blog. You’re more likely to get published and build relationships with the next wave of A-List bloggers.
43. Write some more guest posts. Can’t hurt, that’s for sure.
44. Join a blog network.

Paid
45. Start a StumbleUpon Ads campaign.
46. Get reviewed.
47. Buy some ad space.
48. Send out a press release.

People
49. Attend relevant meetups.
50. Tell your friends and family about your blog. Have them tell everyone they know.

Podcasting

51. Start a podcast and submit it to the iTunes directory.
52. Convert audio files to video files (just use Windows Movie Maker or iMovie) and send them out via tubemogul.com
53. Submit it to some other podcast directories.

Search engine optimization
54. Write linkbait.
55. Have any video or audio content transcribed and posted to your blog.
56. Register your domain name for 10 years.
57. Take advantage of sites scraping your blog’s feed by interlinking posts. Simple way to get deep inbound links.
58. Use Thesis.

Social networks
59. Join every social network you can.
60. Or, just join a couple and be really active.
61. Become active in relevant ning.com communities.
62. Convert blog posts to PDF files and submit them to Scribd – include your blog url in the description and document itself.
63. Add your Scribd documents to relevant groups.
64. Submit your best posts to blog carnivals.
65. Join relevant forums, add your blog address to your signature and start posting intelligently.
66. Sign up at ping.fm and use twitterfeed.com to auto post your latest blog content to a bunch of social networks.
67. Create lists on Amazon.com
68. Write reviews on Amazon.com
69. Better yet, create video reviews for Amazon.com
70. Answer relevant questions on Yahoo Answers, leaving your website as the source.
71. Or on Mahalo Answers.
72. Or even through LinkedIn Answers.
73. Start your own Slinkset, and feed your RSS feed into it automatically.
74. Submit your site to alltop.com
75. Write an article aimed at Digg (okay, that article won’t help much).
76. Also, befriend one of the many Digg powerusers.
77. Create a new thread on a forum and write up a really great guide with no self promotion. Simple way to be seen as an authority figure and to elicit comments on your writing (don’t forget that signature link though!).
78. Submit your content to dofollow social bookmarking sites.
79. Or have Bookmarking Demon do it for you (certainly a bend in ethics though).

StumbleUpon
80. Become an active stumbler to understand what stumblers like.
81. Friend people who stumble your content (they may just want to stumble more in the future)..
82. Have other people initially submit content (or “Discover” it as it’s known).
83. Place a Stumble button in your post template.

Su.pr
84. Sign up at su.pr and use it for all your short url needs.
85. Post content to your Facebook and Twitter stream.
86. Install the Wordpress plugin to automate the process.
87. Identify the times that result in the most clicks and schedule tweets for them.
88. Setup your blog as a promoted website.

Twitter
89. Include hash tags (#tagname) in your tweets.
90. Search for your niche and answer any questions people have.
91. Place a Retweet button in your post template.
92. Follow relevant, popular, and interesting people.
93. Send @replies to relevant, popular and interesting people.
94. Tweet links to your content at multiple times during the day.
95. Love a product from a company that’s on Twitter? Review it and they may just notice and tweet about the review. It’s happened to me.
96. Sponsor some tweets.
97. Find cool people in your niche who live nearby and organize a tweet up (a meet up where you invite anyone on Twitter).

Wordpress
98. Install All In One SEO Pack.
99. Automatically ping lots of ping services.
100. Create a theme, include a link to your blog in the footer, and then release it for free.
101. Create a plugin and release it for free. Add a link to your blog within the admin area. If it’s a good plugin people will love you for it.

David Turnbull is a Buddhist blogger, Apple fan boy, lousy musician, designer, book worm, simplicity freak and dedicated computer geek. You can visit his blog on davidturnbull.com.

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60 Responses to “101 Ways to Promote a New Blog”

1. V.C on November 4th, 2009 1:54 am

   This is an awesome post, I would say.
   I agree with most of your ideas.
   From my point of view, I think advertising is a good way to promote blog. IN your list I’d like to suggest Google Adsense.

2. Costa on November 4th, 2009 2:13 am

   I am but prompted to say, by the time I reach the ‘facebook’ stage, I will already be one exhausted blogger, abandoning whatever I have started and never to return.

   Maybe I’m just plain lazy, but blogging is no fun this way. LOL.

3. David Turnbull on November 4th, 2009 2:27 am

   Great to see my name up on the blog again. And thanks for the comments so far guys. You definitely don’t have put *everything* listed into use, but I thought a bunch of practical tips could be useful.

4. sibaho way on November 4th, 2009 2:50 am

   Good job, David !

5. Antti Kokkonen on November 4th, 2009 3:31 am

   Thanks for compiling such a great list and sharing it with us David! Quite a bit of things I’ve seen and knew already, but forgotten about it over time. Lessson learned, I really gotta start writing these things down and put them on a plan.

6. Oscar - freestyle mind on November 4th, 2009 4:43 am

   Lots of useful stuff here, I need to update my todo list!

7. Cassandra Jade on November 4th, 2009 5:42 am

   Some great advice and information here. I love the organisation of this list. I found it interesting that even though I use a lot of these options, I’m probably not using them particularly well. Thanks for a great post.

8. TR on November 4th, 2009 6:02 am

   I’d add two, which are related:

   1. Don’t even THINK of promoting your site until you have been writing it for at least a month. Very few survive a month. Running around telling everyone, hey, come read my site! when it’s day 1 and you have one post of, is a waste of all that effort.

   2. The best thing you can do is write really good content. If you write it, they will come, and you don’t have to do too much crazy artificial stuff to promote it. I’ve seen people put up a lame weekly post and waste time promoting it. They may come look – and then never come back. By the way, I disagree with you WRT daily. DO write daily. If you don’t have at least an idea a day, what are you doing writing a website? Just go contribute occasionally to someone else’s.

9. Irina Kremin on November 4th, 2009 6:40 am

   Great post, it looks like there is nothing I can add or can I?

10. Mark Harrison on November 4th, 2009 7:08 am

    David
    This is an excellent post and contains a lot of ideas on promotion that have never occured to me previously. I guess people who are daunted by it should choose their immediate choices (ie.the ones on the list that are an absolute must and vital to your blogs success)and work down the list.

    The great thing about a list like this is that it allows you to pick and mix your options and whilst some of them will only be a case of ‘if I ever get the time’, the blogger can decide what is important to them.

11. Young on November 4th, 2009 7:47 am

    Cool, the more tips you use, the more traffic you will get, but also the more time you will spend.

12. Mighty on November 4th, 2009 9:05 am

    This list is a good list! It contains a number of specific items and definitely makes blogging look less like rocket science.

    mighty

13. Ben on November 4th, 2009 9:19 am

    Great list. Bookmarking it.

14. Lia Qistina on November 4th, 2009 9:51 am

    Wow, thanks!

    just in time as i really need some blogging guide!

15. Website Reviewer on November 4th, 2009 10:06 am

    Great list. Not so much for the content as too having it all together at once. Many thing you have read somewhere, but having them in a list, really makes you ask yourself: why again wasn’t I doing this already?

16. Andy Michaels on November 4th, 2009 10:13 am

    Wow! It really is 101 ways!

17. ana on November 4th, 2009 11:14 am

    tks for the great post! still, how come we cannot save it Bookmarks? u forgot to put THIS plugin on yr blog… how come?

18. Bob Bessette on November 4th, 2009 11:46 am

    Very comprehensive post David. Now I have to decide which ones are the biggest bang for the buck and implement them!

    Best,
    Bob

19. Available Domains Blog on November 4th, 2009 12:24 pm

    Superb list! Bookmarked, will try to work on most of them.

20. BloggerDaily on November 4th, 2009 12:28 pm

    Gosh. This post itself is an interesting an useful post! I’ll practice it one by one. Thanks a lot! =D

21. Hal Brown on November 4th, 2009 12:51 pm

    Wow. And to think this list, as long and extensive as it is, could have even more added to it. It is excellent, and what I don’t do now I will try a good many of the things on the list.

    I have tagged this message (email) as important for future reference. I have mixed feelings about some of these things – it begs the question, how serious do I want to be about a blog?

    Thanks for a great post.

22. Katharina Boehme on November 4th, 2009 1:04 pm

    Great list! I am working on it..

23. Gabe | freebloghelp.com on November 4th, 2009 1:21 pm

    Pretty comprehensive list there! So much to do, so little time.

    Blogcarnivals really stuck out to me, I’m going to head over there now.

24. mmSeason on November 4th, 2009 2:49 pm

    Tweeting this! Thank you!

25. Ilija Brajkovic on November 4th, 2009 2:58 pm

    Fantastic list, I will definitely use some of your advices. Thank you!

26. Oswald Hobbes IV on November 4th, 2009 3:36 pm

    Ton of great ideas. I’ll definitely tweet this.

27. Haresh on November 4th, 2009 4:50 pm

    A wonderful post indeed. Will try most of them for sure.

28. Eric C on November 4th, 2009 4:56 pm

    Sigh. I just wrote up a brainstorm on publicity, and was looking for posts like these. I’m glad its available…now.

    Anyways, I’m looking forward to seeing if this has any new ideas to add to my plan.

29. Moreno on November 4th, 2009 4:57 pm

    Awesome list. Going to check out his blog and possibly subscribe.

    I think I will go down this list and do everyone of the items. It will be fun and lots of work

30. Eric C on November 4th, 2009 5:08 pm

    The Facebook section and the fundamentals sections were particularly good.

    Some of the stuff not so much, but a must read.

31. nethall.gr on November 4th, 2009 5:56 pm

    Cool article, really usefull!

32. George Passwater on November 4th, 2009 7:42 pm

    Thanks for posting this great list.

    There are many on here that I know and some I wasn’t looking at yet. I will keep this list handy. Great stuff!

33. KiksMedia on November 4th, 2009 8:17 pm

    Has anyone used bookmarkingdemon.com

34. David Walker on November 4th, 2009 8:43 pm

    Excellent list David, thank you. It’s great for beginners and those of us who have been around for a few years but need a little reminding to tweak here and there. There’s so much to do to promote a blog that it can be overwhelming at times; that your 101 ways is in list form makes it easier to follow and implement.
    I’ll bookmark and use it as a reference.

35. Keith Davis on November 4th, 2009 8:46 pm

    Only 101?
    Tons of ideas, although it may take me some time to work my way through them all.

    Good idea to group the suggestions under different headings, makes it easy to pickl and mix.

    Lots of social networking… I really have to make an effort to get into it! This post might be the one that makes me get started.

36. David Turnbull on November 4th, 2009 9:57 pm

    Thanks for all the comments guys. Glad you liked the article.

37. elmot on November 5th, 2009 2:01 am

    There are no more reasons for people of not having the tools and tips on making a new blog boost up the rankings, performance and popularity with these long list.

38. GoBusiness101 on November 5th, 2009 2:35 am

    Wow! you said everything. I do agree that you have to wait patiently. Look at my site, its now gaining more traffic than the usual! tanx!

39. Haresh on November 5th, 2009 6:08 am

    Any ‘All In One SEO Pack’ for Blogspot?

40. John Samuel on November 5th, 2009 9:07 am

    A great collection. I will try to test some of these.

41. Anne Lyken-Garner on November 5th, 2009 9:39 am

    Very useful article. I hope you don’t mind me putting up a link to it on my newest writing blog. This will be helpful to my readers.

42. Weightlosswise on November 5th, 2009 10:10 am

    wow ! more than 4 cool methods to for promoting blog. Though i think facebook promotion method is not for all types of blogs and it rarely works with all.

43. Traffic-Bug.com on November 5th, 2009 10:17 am

    Comprehensive post! You could also plug in the url of your blog and blog posts and have it social bookmarked via traffic bug.

44. Tinh on November 5th, 2009 12:16 pm

    Excellent list, I have just tried several of them and hope to get positive result soon

45. Website protection on November 5th, 2009 12:16 pm

    I don’t own a blog but website.I think i could use 90% of your tips on my website also.Although its for promoting blogs there are some pretty interesting things i can apply to my daily routine for for my website
    thanks

46. GetFreePublicity on November 5th, 2009 12:38 pm

    Since I am relatively new to blogging this list will be a great help. I found it very interesting and informative.

47. Ahmad Barirani on November 5th, 2009 1:04 pm

    Excellent article. Thanks for the wonderful work. This would be a great checklist of things to do for bloggers.

48. Sandy Jones on November 5th, 2009 4:39 pm

    All I can say is wow. I will start my first blog boot camp on Sunday with Hollis Gillespie in Atlanta, and I will definitely bring this list to her attention. So much to learn…so it is time to do it! Such a comprehensive list is fabulous, and so well organized.

    Thank you for all of your good advice and I’ll let you know how it goes. Will sign up for your daily dose of wisdom.

49. Paula from Affiliate Blog Online on November 6th, 2009 6:11 am

    I love #22…without action you will never make a sucess of your blog. It is the key to everything in blogging.

50. Robert Phillips on November 6th, 2009 8:26 am

    David I like your post “101 Ways to Promote a New Blog”. The list which you mentioned here in the post is really incredible. Although, I know some the tactics to promote a new blog but, there are some important tactics which you mentioned that I have never seen anywhere in the internet. I am in process of making a new blog; I will implement your ideas once it is finished. Anyway thank you very much.

51. Oliver on November 6th, 2009 12:59 pm

    An excellent and very useful list, which will be very useful for me as I’m fairly new to blogging. I will have to bookmark this list for reference. Thanks for compiling such a comprehensive list.

52. Reg on November 7th, 2009 10:32 am

    Thank you very much. Very helpful for a new blog like mine.

53. g3niuz on November 7th, 2009 10:36 am

    this article is really great…

    was a pleasure to read ;D

54. Gastrogossip on November 9th, 2009 7:51 am

    What an awesome post, loads of great suggestions. Thanks for sharing. Will definitely try some out for my blog

55. munawar am on November 10th, 2009 4:04 am

    Complete Ways.
    Need more time to complete the action almost 101 days or more

56. make money online ebook on November 10th, 2009 9:54 am

    This is indeed a great list of ideas for promoting a new blog, sometimes we get so caught up on pinging technorati or commenting on blogs we forget there are other ways of marketing our sites. I especially like the idea of creating themes for bloggers. It can be a really good way of getting a backlink and also doing something that other bloggers will thank you for. There can never be enough themes for bloggers because we all have different ideas of what we like.

57. BlogrPro on November 10th, 2009 7:17 pm

    Well, Blog carnivals site is not updated for more than 2 years and I wonder why the link appears here!

58. CNET Infosystem on November 11th, 2009 5:40 am

    Nice 101 Ways to Promote a New Blog i really try to on my personal blog if i hope its promoted after using all this way if have any problem i will contact you bye leave reply thank for this tips.

59. Jeff Sabo on November 12th, 2009 11:34 am

    These are all incredible ways to help promote a blog! Getting the word out about a blog is key and having different strategies to do so is also a big part to being a successful blogger!

    With different types of social media out there on the Internet, utilizing those sites can be very key in promoting a blog. Being a blogger myself, I do send post links through Facebook and Twitter as a way get the word out about my blog. After doing the blog for about a month, I was a bit surprised when a couple of my friends told me they started bookmarking my blog and read it on a daily basis! I don’t think that would have happened if I didn’t utilize social media as part of my plan.

Got something to say?

Think about your organization and ask yourself these two questions:

• Are external social media sites restricted or blocked while at work?
• Is the use of social media in the workplace inhibited or frowned upon?

If you answered yes, then your organization is one of the majority of firms with over 100 employees that have yet to embrace the use of social media in the workplace for the average worker. In a study conducted by Robert Half Technology entitled "Whistle But Don't Tweet At Work," many organizations are struggling with how to integrate social media into the workplace.

However, there are a growing number of firms such as IBM, Toshiba, and Cerner Corporation that are becoming über-connected workplaces. Using social media tools such as wikis, blogs, microblogs and corporate social networks, they are connecting employees globally, and are fostering mass collaboration. As a result, these companies are seeing improvements in communication, cross-functional collaboration and creative approaches to problem solving. More companies are discovering that an über-connected workplace is not just about implementing a new set of tools — it is also about embracing a cultural shift to create an open environment where employees are encouraged to share, innovate and collaborate virtually.

Recent research provides evidence that there are business benefits to becoming an über-connected organization:

• Access to social media improves productivity. According to Dr Brent Coker from the Department of Management and Marketing at University of Melbourne in Australia, workers who engage in "Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing" are more productive than those who don't. "People who surf the Internet for fun at work — within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office — are more productive by about 9% than those who don't," he says. "Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos on YouTube, using social networking sites like Facebook or shopping online under the pretense that it costs millions in lost productivity, however that's not always the case."

Millennials will seek jobs that encourage the use of social media. Those born between 1977 and 1997 — the ones you need to hire to replace the retiring boomers — are networked 24/7 and expect the company to accommodate pervasive connectivity. An Accenture survey of Millennial preferences for various technologies at work found that they prefer to communicate via instant messaging, text messaging, Facebook and RSS feeds. What's more, they are prepared to bypass corporate IT departments if these tools are blocked. One Millennial MBA, typical of those we meet, says, "I need to access my Facebook in order to do my job." Has blocking Facebook today become the equivalent of denying an employee access to a phone at work 40 years ago or email 20 years ago?

Companies that provide access to social media create a more engaged workforce. Take the case of Cerner Corporation, the health IT firm. In 2009, Cerner implemented uCern, a corporate social network. In 2010, it will extend this social network to its customers and suppliers. Why? Because uCern has demonstrated significant business benefits to Cerner such as allowing employees to have increased access to experts across the globe, reducing the cycle time from discovery of new products to launch of new products, and increasing employee engagement and satisfaction in the workplace.

As we scan the workplace of the future, we see that everything we know about work — where we work, how we work, what skills we need to stay employable, what technologies we use to connect with colleagues — is changing. And these changes will only continue to accelerate as we move toward 2020, as the Millennial Generation will comprise nearly half of the workforce by 2014.

Companies who want to attract and recruit the best talent will realize becoming über-connected will be a business imperative. The journey starts with asking yourself three questions:

What business benefits are you trying to solve? Will an increased ability to collaborate across the organization yield faster time to market, increased innovation, improved productivity, and increased collective intelligence as people are able to find knowledge and experts quickly? Will engaged employees reduce your turnover rate and subsequent expenses related to hiring new talent?

Who needs to be involved in the coalition to become über-connected? This is not an HR, IT or Learning initiative. Rather becoming über-connected is really a new way of working. Consider forming a coalition of executives from Human Resources, Corporate Learning, IT, Legal and Corporate Communications. These are the ones who will plan, monitor and agree to a set of social media guidelines to ensure responsible use.

What type of change management plan needs to be put into place? Recognize that the biggest hurdle is your culture and internal processes — not the technology behind the adoption of social media. Focus on finding ambassadors and influencers, then make it easy for them to share and participate in a social media pilot. Recognize that in the web community, status is built upon making meaningful contributions; so be sure to include recognition and incentives for participation early on.

Can your organization really hold on to policies that do not support the 24/7 hyper- connected lives employees are living outside of the workplace? Increasingly they are bringing digital expectations with them to the workplace. We do not think companies that compete for global talent want to continue with outdated policies. Do you?

Jeanne C Meister is an internationally recognized workplace-learning consultant dedicated to delivering competitive advantage, innovation and improved business results for organizations. Jeanne is the host of the blog, www.newlearningplaybook.com. Karie Willyerd is the Chief Learning Officer of Sun Microsystems and has been the Chief Talent Officer or head of executive development for three other Fortune 500 firms. At Sun Microsystems, she has led the organization to win over 20 awards for innovation excellence in learning. Jeanne and Karie are the authors of the book The 2020 Workplace (forthcoming in Spring 2010).

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