Blogging - Servant of Chaos

Blogging is Writing with a Thick Marker

Many blogs never make it past the first three months. The authors start with a flourish, then founder sometime between months two and three.

What happens? Is it to do with priorities? Effort? Lack of ideas?

My view is that it boils down to one thing – over thinking.

After a couple of months, a blog starts to develop an audience. The author starts to establish a rhythm and a consistency of voice. Comments start to come in and it becomes thrilling to engage with “your” audience.

But then there is a choking point. The authors lose their way – wanting to dramatically increase traffic, comments and subscriptions. There is an attempt to make each post better than the one before, and increasingly the “fun” of blogging begins to look more and more like WORK.

If this sounds familiar – then one technique to help you smash through the three month barrier is to remember that blogging is like writing with a thick marker. This is how Jason Fried from 37 Signals (see below) describes his idea sketching process. The aim is to NOT get buried in the details – and a thick marker is the tool designed for that very purpose.

Think of your blog as a thick marker – and each blog post a single idea designed to inspire, engage and stimulate. And then, sometime in the future, go back, write a whitepaper, create a presentation or write a book on the ideas that stick.

Books On My Bedside Table

Blogging, Books

There is always a long list of things that I want to read. Sometimes they are new, sometimes they are old friends that I need to reacquaint myself with – and sometimes they are unknown frontiers – random arrivals that I hope will tempt me into their brave new worlds.

While I constantly read, I am frightfully bad at actually writing proper reviews. Not that I am not interested – it’s just that reviews often get pushed down my list of publishing priorities, and by the time I get around to reviewing a book, it’s past its launch period. This year I am going to try to be a little more consistent with book reviews – sharing what I am reading AS I am reading it, as well as later reviews and impressions.

Over the last month or so – with the benefit of a little time off – I have indulged in some great reading. I have revisited:

Herd by the fabulous Mark Earls – a must for any serious marketer seeking to understand the patterns in consumer behaviour
The Brand Innovation Manifesto – John Grant’s excellent, practical guide to out-thinking yourself and your competitors in the world of marketing
The Rocks – Grace Karskens’ detailed analysis of Sydney’s earliest white settlement
Open Wallets – Stephen Saunders’ great unveiling of the secrets to retail sales success

New arrivals on the bedside table include:

Death of a River Guide – Richard Flanagan always reminds me that we do have great Australian writers
Stillwater Creek by Alison Booth – new book, new author and plenty to chew on
Wanting – Another great Richard Flanagan novel set in colonial Tasmania – documenting our simultaneous capacity for love and inhumanity
Celebrity Leverage – Jordan McAuley’s insider’s view on celebrity endorsement
The Buyersphere Project by Gord Hotchkiss – a deep dive into the ecosystem of B2B marketing

But what about you – what did you read this holidays? What do you PLAN to read over the coming months?

Seeing the Trees in the Social Media Forest

Blogging, Digital Strategy, Measurement, Social Media

With each passing day there are more and more case studies, examples and justifications for brands to use social media. There are best practices emerging (or easily found with a Google search), thousands of “how to” blog posts explaining every aspect of social media (or perhaps the same aspect repeated 1000 times) and agencies devoted to social media as their core competency.

But it seems to me that we are beginning to swim (or is it drown?) in data. Because our social media interactions are digital, we can measure plenty of things – the time you spend on our sites, the things you click on, where you have come from, where you are going to, how much you spend, what you liked, rated and searched for and so on. And if you happen to have created a social network profile then we know even more about you – age, work history, relationships, preferences for products, brands, music, movies and so on.

But I have to ask – in amongst all this data, are we missing the trees for the forest?

You see, as marketers and as business people, we have been conditioned to think about after-the-fact aggregated data. We are used to thinking about what people DID based on certain conditions. This then allows us to cut-and-dice, segment and fine tune our customer base. It allows us to build out personas that make sense within the context of OUR BUSINESSES.

This works fine in a model where the direction of business communication is one way. It’s perfect in a world of broadcast – for in a broadcast world we are only interested in the forests (there being far too many trees to deal with). However, in a world where communication is polyphonic – where the authority of the message depends less on how shrill you are or how much air time you can buy – and relies instead on the trusted flow of recommendations from individual to individual, then a strategy which allows you to distinguish a hardwood from plantation pine is essential.

What this requires is for us to stop thinking about ROI.

It means turning our attention away from the R – the returns that come to us or our businesses – focusing instead on the I – what it is we are investing in.

By understanding who our consumers are, what our brand advocates look like, what they do (apart from loving our brands – yeah right!), where they play and so on, we can identify opportunities to engage with them. We need to invest in the RIGHT relationships – those that lead towards returns (monetary and non-monetary). We need to remember that branding is a marathon – that it all takes time – but we also need to work smarter. We need to take our excellent marketing processes and understanding and apply it in a way that enhances the way that we view our audiences. We need to use our knowledge of the forests to make sense of the trees, and only then will we begin to realise not only that social media makes sense for our businesses, but that “social” is the business.

Subscription Drive

Blogging

When I first started blogging, it took literally months for visitors to start showing up. I did everything that Darren Rowse and Yaro Starak suggested – I commented, I created writing categories, editorial calendars, I linked and promoted others and I wrote some lists. I would start each day by checking my visitor statistics, hoping that it would show an increase over the previous day. But months in, the traffic numbers could be counted on one hand.

Slowly the traffic began to build. I was amazed. It felt like magic – that someone out there was finding their way to my blog. And then BOOM! My first comment (I’m looking at you Olivier Blanchard). I could hardly breathe with the excitement.

And you know what? I still feel like that today. If you have a blog, you’ll know what I mean (I hope). It’s like a scorching cup of Single Origin’s finest, sharpest black coffee. It jolts you to life.

For all the people who visit, read and comment here – let me say “thank you”. Your thoughts, ideas and discussions have made my life much richer.

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Thanks!

As always, thanks for reading! And don’t forget, if you are in the sharing mood, drop by my About You page and tell me a little about yourself!

Blogging for Small Business

Blogging, Books, Digital Strategy, Personal Branding

I am often asked whether the strategies, ideas and approaches discussed here on my blog can be applied to small business. The answer, in the best marketing speak, is “yes” and “no”.

For while it is easy to get caught in the endless repetition of strategic planning, creating a continuous digital strategy can be quite fast. If you know what you are doing, you can knock it over in a lazy afternoon. Unfortunately, you can also easily fall into the state of “analysis paralysis” – where you are unable to shift beyond one part of a process due to the volume of information you are trying to assimilate. My advice is to start as SMALL as you possibly can.

However, if you really are a small business and you want to get started with blogging – AND you want to do it in a way that is SCALABLE, can help you GROW your business and delivers RESULTS, then my advice would be to check out The Dialup Guide to Blogging.

I wrote this short (43pp), easy-to-read guide to blogging with the individual in mind – but the lessons and approaches apply equally to the small business. No matter whether your brand is personal or business, there is plenty to learn, and the book covers all the bases of digital strategy as well as the all important DOING IT part:

The book takes you through the practical steps of establishing your blogging objectives, creating domain names, signing up for a blog, creating your online "footprint" and writing your first posts. It is a must for anyone wondering HOW to get started.

And the best part – you can get it as a soft cover for those who are interested in “digital” but prefer non-digital books. Oh, and there is a downloadable eBook version too – for those too impatient to wait for delivery.

Recycle a Blog Post Day: Where the Hell is the Sponsor?

Blogging, Social Media, Storytelling, Videos

Mark Pollard has declared that today is Recycle a Blog Post day. In that spirit, I am recycling this – my most viewed post ever …

If your brand is struggling with social media — wondering how to become involved with a "viral" marketing activation, there is much that can be learned from Stride Gum’s involvement with Matt Harding and his Dancing Matt videos.

The folks at Stride Gum took an interest in the videos that Matt took while travelling. These videos show Matt doing the "only dance" that he knows how to do in a number of places around the world. And while these were initially done for the benefit of his family, they were absorbed into the great viral milieu and spread far and wide. The videos worked because they manifested the P-L-A-Y framework as I discussed yesterday (and in more detail here).

P — for power: the videos demonstrate the power of belonging, the desire to connect
L — for learning and curiosity: Matt chooses his locations well. He sparks recognition in the locals and curiosity in everyone else.
A — for adventure: through this very simple visual storytelling, Matt stimulates our own sense of adventure. Importantly he also demonstrates that despite very different circumstances and locations, that we are connected to others in a primal, joyous way — a connection that has no regard for language or alienation.
Y — the yelp of surprise and delight: just watch this and you will know what I mean.

After seeing the videos and their impact, Stride Gum approached Matt, and sponsored him to travel around the world again, this time on their dime. Again, this was a great "viral" achievement. After that success, and after thousands of emails, Matt returned to Stride Gum and suggested he do the trip again — this time inviting the community to participate. Those who had emailed and commented on his blog were invited to perform the dance with Matt … the result is shown below. Fanstastic.

But even better is the approach taken by Stride Gum. While they could have plastered their logo throughout the clips, provided T-shirts to participants etc, they are content with what is effectively a post-roll credit. This allows us, as viewers, to be drawn into the story and into the experience. It allows us the possibility of transference from passive recipient to imaginary participant. It grants some respect to the story, the communities who participated and the viewers. And it really puts a smile on my face.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo

Special thanks to Ian Lyons for introducing me to Where the Hell is Matt!

Enough About Me

Audience 2.0, Blogging

One of the great things about having a blog is that you have a space for your thoughts, ideas and general “stuff” that you find interesting. And along the way, most bloggers find that they share personal information – the “stuff of life” with the people who read and comment and give a blog its life.

But the thing is … apart from the odd comment or the BlogCatalog avatars that leave your face behind when you visit ends, bloggers know little about their readers. So, taking a leaf out of Valeria Maltoni’s book, I have set up a page specifically dedicated to YOU.

Feel free to describe yourself, share your thoughts, aspirations … whatever!

I look forward to reading more about you.