We often make our social media efforts much harder than they have to be.  For example, if your company has a blog, how do you know if it’s successful?

Oops.

Finding the value of your blogging efforts is one of the biggest issues companies face when it comes to social media.  Now finding the ‘value’ is not the same as calculating ROI, but when a company asks ‘What’s the ROI of our blog?’ they usually mean ‘What’s the value?’ because unless you have access to their financials, you can’t give them an accurate ROI figure.  But we’ll look at both.

First, you need to start with a solid strategy for your blogging efforts.  This is the biggest mistake most blogging companies make, and without a solid strategy, you make it MUCH harder to accurately measure the success of your blogging efforts.  I am working with a client now that has a business blog, and is having difficulty seeing how their blog is making ‘the needle move’.  In this case, that needle that they want to move is called ‘sales’.  I bet many of you are wanting your blog to move the same needle at your company.

So if we think about it, we need to use the blog as a tool to either do 1 of 2 things:

1 – Generate sales directly

2 – Move the visitor closer to a sale, via on the company website, on the phone, by carrier-pigeon, whatever.

The great thing is, now that we know how to use the blog, we can begin to craft our strategy to reach those goals.  And in doing so, we can begin to measure certain metrics that will help us determine the success of our blogging efforts.

For example, let’s say I make software that helps automate a company’s social media efforts (I don’t and have no desire to, just an example).  On my blog, I would probably want to focus the content to discuss how companies can improve their social media efforts, and especially the role that automation can play in that success, since I am selling a product that does just that.

Let’s also assume that I am not selling my software package on my blog, but rather on my site.  So then my blog’s biggest goal becomes sending qualified leads to my website.  Then once they reach the website, I need to convert them into a sale.  One way to do this is to put Calls To Action in my blog posts.

For example, let’s say I write a post entitled ’5 Ways Automation Can Save Your Company’s Social Media Strategy’.  This post is designed to educate the reader on the value of automating some of their social media efforts.  If I do my job well, the post should open the reader’s eyes to the value of automation, and I could end the post with a Call to Action.  Such as a link to my website, inviting them to check out my software package.

Then I can track how many people read that blog post, and clicked my Call to Action link, and visited the page on my website for that software package.  Then I can go to the website side, and see what people did once they reached that product page on my site.  Did they leave without doing anything?   Did they signup for a free trial?  Or did they purchase the product right there on the page?

All of this means I can now track and measure metrics associated with my goals.  If I did this with every post, I might notice the following:

1 – If I write a post with a Call to Action sending visitors to my website and the software package page, an average of 50 visitors will click the CTA in the post and arrive on the website’s product page.

2 – Of those 50 visitors, 10 will signup for a free trial.  I also know from past tracking that for every 10 signups I will generate one sale of the software package.

3 – Of those 50 visitors, 1 will purchase the software package directly on the website page.

So, I know that for every 50 visitors I send to the website from a CTA in a blog post, that it will result (on average) in 10 free trial signups (which average converting into 1 sale) and 1 direct sale.  So for every 50 visitors I average 2 sales.  Which means that if every post with a CTA averages 50 visitors sent to the website, then every post also averages 2 sales.

Whew.  But by rolling up our sleeves and creating a solid strategy AND aggressively tracking our blog and website analytics, we can now accurately judge the success of our company’s blogging efforts.  When the boss asks if our blog is working, we can confidently state that “Yes, every post we write with a sales-oriented call-to-action sends 50 visitors to the company website, and on average 2 of those visitors ultimately convert into a sale.

Now in order to calculate the ROI of your blog, all we need to know is 2 things:

1 – The amount of profit your company makes from each sale of your software package. And total number of sales generated from your blog in the reporting period.  Let’s say this was $5,200 for the last quarter.

2 – The total amount of expense of your blogging efforts.  Include all associated costs such as hosting, design, and writing costs.  Let’s say this was $3,600 for the last quarter.

The ROI calculation would be ($5,200 – $3,600) / $3,600.  Which would equal  $1,600 / $3,600, which would equal an ROI of 44%!  Not bad!

But the upshot of ALL of this is, you need to start out figuring out exactly what you want to accomplish, then develop a strategy to help you reach those goals.  When you have that strategy in place THEN you can determine which metrics to measure and that will help you determine what value your blogging effort is creating for your business, as well as your blogging ROI.

1 – Create the strategy

2 – Decide on the tactics you will use to help you execute that strategy

3 – Measure metrics associated with those tactics

4 – Determine the business value of those metrics

Now, back to work!

…it’s actually writing the damn post.

You don’t need ideas, open Google Reader or join #Blogchat.  You’ll have enough ideas to write posts for the next year.

The problem is, when you actually WRITE the post, then it’s real.  Then you are dangerously close to publishing it.  Which means suddenly everyone will see it, and read it, and judge it.

And yet, you are often the harshest judge of your own work.  Too often, you assume that your post isn’t worthy of the reader, before they have a chance to dismiss it.  So it stays in your Draft folder, mocking you.

You can’t ‘sell’ until you ‘ship’.

Stop assuming that you know better than your reader does.  Write the damn post.  Then if it bombs, you can figure out why, and make the next post better as a result.  Stop writing with a perfect filter.

And if you haven’t figure it out, when I say ‘you’ need to just write the damn post, I mean *I* do

Around this time last year, and mostly on a lark, I left a post here asking for sponsors for a Live #Blogchat at SXSW.  Honestly, I didn’t expect to get any responses, but within 15 minutes of publishing my post I started receiving offers, and within an hour, my friends at 1680PR were on as the Main Sponsor of the first-ever Live #Blogchat.  That would be the first of 7 Live #Blogchats held in 2011, and I’m planning on announcing the first Live #Blogchat for 2012 in just a few days.

What was really interesting was what happened next.  As soon as I arrived in Austin for SXSW, everyone had 2 questions for me.  The first was ‘So how does a Live #Blogchat work?’, and the second was ‘So who is 1680PR?’  Answering the first question paved the way for my getting more Live #Blogchats throughout the year.  In fact, I met Joe Pulizzi at the Houston airport flying INTO Austin for SXSW, told him about the Live #Blogchat, and that began the conversation that would eventually lead to me doing a Live #Blogchat at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame to kick off Content Marketing World.

But what was really cool was to see how everyone was interested in learning more about 1680PR.  To me, this is how sponsored content should work.  By joining my friends at Dell in sponsoring the first ever Live #Blogchat, Ken and the team at 1680PR were doing two things:

1 – They were helping to facilitate an event that had value to the #Blogchat community

2 – They were becoming RELEVANT to that same community in the process

I got to spend a lot of time with Ken during SXSW, and he got to meet a lot of the people I know in this space, and they got to know him.  To this day, during #Blogchat on Twitter I will see Ken jump in and immediately some of the people he met during SXSW will chime in and say hi!  I had so many of my friends pull me aside during SXSW and tell me how much they liked Ken, and was glad 1680PR had helped sponsor the Live #Blogchat.

Also during SXSW, I got to talk to my friend Tom Martin about how he was providing sponsored content at TalkingWithTom.com.  What Tom did was go around the country interviewing some of the top thought leaders in the social media marketing space, and once a week he would post a new video interview he had done with them.  And Emma sponsored the site.  It was a smart move by Emma, because they got to have their brand associated with all these smart people, but they also made possible the creation of this site, which created value for others.

Tom and I have spent the last year discussing the idea of sponsored content.  But not just that, but the idea of how companies could benefit more from partnering with content creators that have an established community versus simply connecting with influencers.

For example, if a brand contacts an influencer about promoting their product, the influencer may be willing to promote the product if they are properly compensated, maybe with money, or maybe with a free product.

But if a brand contacts me about sponsoring #Blogchat, my first question is ‘Will this sponsorship create value for the #Blogchat community?’  This is an important distinction, because whereas the influencer’s motivation might be in receiving the free product, my motivation is in getting money from the #Blogchat sponsorship, but also in seeing how that sponsorship can be leveraged to create more value for the #Blogchat community.

For example, I’ve begun talking to a select few brands about having them be the long-term sponsor for #Blogchat.  I’m doing this for two reasons:

1 – It will give me a new source of income

2 – The income generated from the sponsorship will allow me to devote more time to building the #Blogchat brand and providing more value to its community.  Which will grow the #Blogchat community, ultimately providing even more value to the sponsor.

I really think you will begin to see more brands moving toward working with content creators to sponsor their content.  In fact, I’ve been talking to several other Twitter Chat hosts over the last several weeks, and many of them had either recently brought on sponsors to their Twitter chats, or were being approached by major brands about sponsorship opportunities.

I also think it makes more sense for the audience, because the content creator has a more vested interest in vetting the sponsors and making sure that bringing them on will provide more value to their readership/audience.  Tom also shared with me a Business Week article on how Expedia is teaming up with bloggers to promote their site.  I thought this ending passage was interesting:

Both company and bloggers say they aren’t concerned that readers may be turned off by commercial relationships between the travel agent and writers. Kim Mance, a Brooklyn, N.Y., video blogger and co-founder of Galavanting, a site aimed at female adventure travelers, says disclosure is important for readers but bloggers need to retain the mission and voice that garnered an audience in the first place. “Bloggers will miserably fail and lose their audience if they piss them off,” Mance says.

Bloggers say they’re ready to deliver travel tales and potential new Expedia customers—so long as they are compensated with exposure and cash. “I’ve spent five years traveling and building up an expertise and a following,” says Sherry Ott, a blogger from South Dakota who was among the Expedia visitors in Seattle. “I want to be able to be paid for my knowledge and for access into my audience.”

This speaks to why I think sponsored content makes so much sense.  Bloggers, for example, that have built up a following, are smart enough to know that if they bring on a sponsor, and their content suffers as a result, that they will lose that following.  So naturally, they only want to bring on sponsors that will bring VALUE to their following, because they want to GROW that following.  Which means they can get MORE sponsors.

It really does seem like a win-win when properly executed.  BTW if your company would like to talk to me about sponsoring #Blogchat on Twitter for either 3 or 6 months, please email me.  Since it is a 3-6 month sponsorship, it will be a bit more, but the benefits will be greater as well versus simply sponsoring one week.

It seems that every blogger is doing a ‘Best of 2011′ list on their blogs, and almost all of these posts are a list of their 5 or 10 most popular posts for the year.  For me, that seems like too much horn-tootin’, and if I’m gonna do that, y’all are coming along for the ride

So instead of posting the 10 Most Popular Posts of 2011, I wanted to share what I think are 10 of The Best Comments Y’all Left Here.  These posts were so good cause of the comments y’all left, so you deserve the spotlight as much as I do.  Here’s 10 of the Best Comments Left Here in 2011 (Ranked by most recent first):

10 – Tom Martin – One Way You Can Be a Better Blogger Than Seth Godin:

“Mack,

Great helpful post here. Something I’ve been thinking about lately is how you can use the post headline to help you in Google and then use your Tweets, FB posts, G+ posts to test and push click-worthy headlines. Meaning, the headline you tweet doesn’t have to be the headline of the post.. it could be something more titillating to garner a click and then when a person comes to the post they are rewarded with good content.

Thoughts?”

9 – Jeff Hurt – Planning for 2012: Which Social Media Conferences Should Your Company Attend?:

“As a conference organizer, I’m not sure that Regional is better than National. I often find more innovation and cutting edge ideas from a national/international audience than I do from the regional folks. As for networking, I don’t see that a regional or national/international provides more or less. To me, location is not a boundary to networking today.

i want to go to conferences where I can be challenged and stretched by ideas. I often find that regional conferences are echo chambers of ideas because everyone is sharing, borrowing and adapting, especially those in close proximity. I find totally new ideas from people across the states or from around the globe.

here’s another tidbit I like to suggest to people. When we go to conferences with coworkers, we often take the “Divide and conquer” route to get as much info as possible. I like to shift that thinking. Become peas in a pod…go to a couple sessions together. Then discuss each other’s point of view and how to implement back in the office. Their is more likely a benefit for the organization when there is two or more of you tacking an issue together than just one of you. That’s the best organizational learning around…IMO.”

8 – Bobby Rettew – What Rockstars Can Teach You About Creating Kick-Ass Online Content:

“Mack…you know i love it when people use stories in their blogs. Whether it is a business blog or a personal blog…stories create such palatable context for the audience. The second point of this post is a great reminder to us all…we have to hear, see, and feel as our audience. We have to pear at life through their (the audiences) eyes and ears…then write with them, telling stories that connect us together. Blogging is one of the most wonderful opportunities for our very own personal editorial…connecting with our audience in complete symphony. I am a fan of point number 2.

This point makes think of a story the other day. I am working on a series of stories and I was doing a pre-interview with the main focus of the story. He was explaining his point of view, sharing that his experience was like a symphony. He was saved by numerous healthcare providers and first responders, flown to a hospital, and received a life saving procedure. He described this event as a moment where everyone worked as a symphony. The instruments were the technical tools and the healthcare providers were the musicians…and they created beautiful music. Imagine if we could do the same with words…telling stories that bring life to our blog where the audience and the writer work together as a symphony.

Thanks for your great writing!
BR”

7 – Sean McGinnis – Planning for 2012: Which Social Media Conferences Should Your Company Attend?:

“I can see your concerns and they make a lot of sense.

My experience was in a slightly different industry. I sent about 10 SEO consultants to various conferences across the country between 2006 and 2009. During that time I attended only one conference. I felt sending my top employees was more important because they were doing the front line work and also because they really valued the experience of attending these industry events. These were the senior people on my large team (we were about 40 people by 2009) and the feedback I got when sending them was they really appreciated the opportunity.

In fact, as I recruited new employees, i used conference attendance as a job perk, which I know had an effect. I know my replacement has taken the opposite view and only attends conferences himself, and team morale has suffered as a result.

During the report out, I was far less interested in hard core specifics and more interested in their analysis of the event. What were the trends? What should we be aware of as a business? Did they uncover any product opportunities we should consider? What should we be doing that we were not, and what should we possibly not doing any longer that we had been doing. It was a real opportunity to influence policy and change the behavior of my team as well as the business (because SEO was such a big part of our business at that time).”

6 – John Moore – The Promise of Social Media Isn’t in Leveraging Your Customers, it’s in Better Understanding Them:

“What gets measured, gets manufactured.” That’s a line I’ve used many times to describe how companies are making a game out of social media. If Facebook “likes” are being viewed as a measurement of successful customer engagement then, by golly, companies can find ways to make that happen.

I believe social media is making companies lazy as it relates to meaningfully connecting with customers. It’s easy to quickly respond to a customer in “real-time” on Twitter or Facebook or whatever. However that response pales in comparison to a business connecting meaningfully to customers in the “real world.”

At the FIRE Sessions #Blogchat a question came up about how to take customer engagement to the next level using social media. It was then I jumped in the fray to say my HMO (hot marketing opinion) that picking up the phone and calling a loyal customer to thank them was the true school way to take customer engagement to the next level. That’s not the easy way to engage, but it’s a meaningful way that I hope more companies find ways to make happen.

Mack, thanks for the post and for sharing my FIRE Sessions #Blogchat HMO.”

5 – Lisa Petrilli - The Promise of Social Media Isn’t in Leveraging Your Customers, it’s in Better Understanding Them:

“Mack,

I can understand where Jim Farley was coming from having sat in a room full of CEOs listening to them discuss social media. The overwhelming sentiment was fear – which thoroughly surprised me.

I had expected them to be open to the power of social media to connect them more closely with their customers, to deepen loyalty, and to help them understand customer needs – all of which would lead to significant ROI. Instead, what I observed was fear due to a lack of control.

This lack of control over the message (what will our employees say about us? what will our customers say about us?) is not something that they learned to deal with early in their careers, and so they’re well outside the boundaries of the comfort zones. Even the quote from Toby’s Facebook page reflects this. The Big PR Firm VP says their job is no longer control, but that’s exactly what they’re trying to do by arming their fans with talking points.

When a CMO like Jim or the Big PR Firm VP steps in the CEO’s office and presents a message that implies a bit of control…”we’ll do social media this way and then our customers will spread OUR message” that’s something that feels better – less risky.

So, I can see how this perspective would become common in the corporate environment – it’s the one that gets buy-in.

On another note, I don’t know if you saw the link I shared on Twitter earlier today via eMarketer, but it showed that the majority of companies either don’t know if their customers are commenting about them online or are convinced they’re not, and a high percentage don’t respond consistently when they do: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1008686&ecid=a6506033675d47f881651943c21c5ed4&R=1008686

I think this further shows that the mindset of companies is still, “What’s in it for me?” instead of, “What’s in it for you, the customer, and how can I help you with that?”

Excellent, thought-provoking post, Mack!”

4 – Mike Ashworth – The Key Feature That Neither Google Plus or Facebook Really Addresses:

“hi mack, you raise a valid point though i’ll answer by way of coming at this from a few angles.

1. i dont think its about “content”. when I follow people rather than say an rss feed of a website, its something else that’s on offer. for want of a better word lets call it your essence, your mojo, the things you post say a lot about the person. recently i’ve been taking a look at behaviours we exhibit in the real world with regard to our interaction rituals and making sense of how this translates to the online world (which in many ways is trying to do just the same except the tools often get in the way). so its more than about content, its about the person. my take on this is that if you want just the “content” subscribe to their blog / rss feed or similar, if you want the “essence” of the person you follow them on twitter (or elsewhere)

2. its all about balance. if i’m connected to someone on twitter then i generally expect to get more than “content”, as explained above. however, and this is an example, if i was following a “thought leader” and pretty much all their tweets seemed to be lame jokes, or updates about reality tv, or all about something other than the passion for which i followed them, then yes, their is a problem. the dilemma for the person hitting enter and tweeting is that the balance between “content” and “other stuff” will always be determined by the person on the other end, always. some ppl will accept / tolerate more non “content” others wont.

3. filters. now this is very interesting and i’ve been reading some research material recently about this, prepare yourself. we don’t need better filters! the reason is simple we only have so many hours in the day to process information. bizarrely as the filters improve, the more “good stuff” is received and then we have to devote more time to processing it, which becomes less efficient. what i’ve discovered is that missing a few things here and there doesn’t actually stop the world revolving, and if it really is something earth shattering, i will definitely hear it from someone, somewhere.”

3 – CK – The Importance of Creating Your Own Blogging Path:

“The beauty of blogging is that it gives us all a way to share our voice.”

YUP! And to share it in different ways: video, slideshows, audio, infodoodles!

I had to make a choice: I could either write a lot more short posts–or be able to create infrequent posts with new tools. For instance, I’m including a ton more video which is great… but it takes time to videotape, then edit, then post them. And I really like creating much larger ‘special’ pieces (like the http://b2bmobilerevolution.com paper = 15 pages!) and that takes time to make a quality piece. Same thing with creating slideshows… they take more time to concept and create–but I sure love doing them.

And after years of doing more posts that were smaller (still a great strategy), I decided to try some different formats that may take more time–and lead to less posts–but I’m enjoying it and learning soooo much. I am so happy to now have a full archive of videos (and that was a BIG step for me to do a full video channel — scary!). But video works for my mobile site as well as my blog–as mobile users need video over longer posts. And it’s fulfilling to look back at a suite of slideshows (love both slideshare and audio-enabled brainshark which lets the slideshow be more ‘personal’). And more, bigger papers and the like are planned… but again, these things easily take a month of planning so the tradeoff is not as much blogging.

But it’s not a sacrifice, it’s just a different choice… and a different way to share my voice, as you so adeptly hit on.

So I learned a lot by trying a different formats/tools and a different frequency. In this ‘era of choice’ with so many tools, it’s good to experiment (as our friend Ann Handley underscored at B2B Forum!). As for the future? We’ll see if it’s still the same strategy but I do know this: the future holds more experimentation, more new lessons and many more valued colleagues to meet, learn from, and cherish.

Sending you a virtual hug and thank goodness I got to see you this month–a year without seeing you IRL is far too infrequent! I want a strategy of seeing MORE Mack 

P.S.: Gini, it’s great to meet you ”

2 - Michiel Gaasterland -Wait, My Blog’s Search Traffic is Down, What happened?:

“Hi Mack,

Thanks for all your posts. I am one of your 3324 RSS subscribers and read most of your posts.

I blog 3x a week myself. Fixed schedule Monday, Wednesday, Friday. My content strategy is simple: I write about the tactical questions my clients have about ‘business’ & ‘social web’ (we help our clients become publishers of great content).

Blogging more would definitely help increase my search traffic for the sheer reasons of having more content out there. But I do think that the keyword aspect is really important.

I always try to visualise my target audience, figure out how they will search and translate that to full keyword phrases (incl verbs, etc). Example: I recently wrote a post about converting your Facebook profile to a page. I knew my keywords, but found out through research in forums, comments, etc that all these people used different words. I translated these words to my post. Ended up getting loads of traffic from people who where searching for solutions to this specific problem.

I can’t comment much on the ‘dip’ in your traffic, because I don’t have enough data to compare.

But as for ‘general advice’ (if there even is such a thing  here’s a thought:

You are writing really conversational. You also have a pretty large following. A lot of people on your blog are people you have met in real life and online. (so keep writing conversational!)

But search engine traffic is mostly from people who don’t know you. They might be more solution oriented. They are looking for specific things. You are offering LOADS of great and specific advice in your posts. I think you also optimise and write well. But the one thing you don’t do (at least from what I see) is pay special attention to your Title Tag. If you use the keyphrase you want to be found on in there, you have a much better chace of getting in that search engine traffic.

Tip: use the ‘Custom title tag’ option in wordpress. You can then keep on using your nice conversational headers (they become h1).

Hope this helps. And thanks for all your great blog posts.

(“Sorry for writing you a long letter: I didn’t have time to write you a short one” – Mark Twain)

All the best from Amsterdam,

Michiel”

1 – Margie Clayman – What’s the Real Business Value of Comments?:

“Here’s where I come down on the plumber issue. It’s a radical, potentially sacrilegious point of view for which I could be very easily burned or thrown into the river.

Ehem.

Not everyone needs to blog. You might be in an industry where a blog, as in, something that invites back and forth communication, is not really needed. Talk to your customers. See how THEY want to learn from you, and then deliver it that way.

We work with a company whose industry still prefers print publications for the most part. In fact, the publication’s readers threw a fit when the newsprint was abandoned for glossier paper. If you try to blog for folks who are on the road getting their hands dirty all day, you need to ask yourself not just about comments, but you need to ask yourself when your customers are going to wipe off their hands, take time out of their busy schedule, and read for 20 minutes.

If you’re worried that your audience won’t take the time to comment, you need to ask if they’ll take the time to read. If that’s a concern, maybe a better channel would make more sense. That’s why research on the front end of a Social Media campaign is so darned important.

Just my $1.50 ”

So there’s 10 of my favorite blog comments from y’all this year!  To clarify, I decided to limit it to 1 comment per, or a few of y’all would have had multiple entries on this list

In reviewing these comments it really made me appreciate the value that y’all create here every day by sharing your smart thoughts and opinions.  I appreciate every one of you, and look forward to hearing more of your #smartitude in 2012!

Happy New Year everyone!

Two of the most common complaints I hear from bloggers, especially during #Blogchat is:

1 – I wish I could figure out how to post more often and create more content

2 – I wish I better understood SEO and how to optimize my posts for search

I’m going to show you a ‘trick’ that will hopefully help you with both of these issues.  First, we need to pick 3-5 Topic Buckets for your blog.  These are 3-5 key areas that you want to focus on with your blog content.  For example, my Topic Buckets for this blog are:

1 – How businesses and individuals can improve their blogging

2 – How businesses and individuals can better use Twitter

3 – How businesses can create and improve their Social Media Strategies

4 – How businesses can better embrace and empower their fans

5 – Catch-all (Facebook, Social Media Monitoring, everything I don’t want to blog about quite as much goes here)

Now the great thing about this approach is that notice since I have 5 Topic Buckets, if I just write one post a week from each bucket, I’ve got 5 posts for the week!  Or I could spread those 5 posts out over two weeks, so I have 3 posts for the 1st week, then 2 for the second week.  And if I wanted I could add a 3rd post in that second week, either from one of these buckets again, or maybe I want to let you know about a Live #Blogchat coming up, or an event I will be speaking at.

But once you’ve created your Topic Buckets, it makes it MUCH easier for you to organize the content you create on your blog!  And if you want to be super-organized, you could say pick 3 Topic Buckets for your blog, then write a new post for the 1st one every Monday, the 2nd bucket would be every Wednesday, and the 3rd Topic Bucket’s post would be every Friday!

So thanks to Topic Buckets, we’ve tackled the issue of how to create more content.  Really, the biggest issue you will have with this is deciding on what your Topic Buckets should be, and how many you should have.  I think 3 is the perfect number, if you get over 5, then you should probably consider spinning some of them off into a new blog, or eliminating some till you get back down to 5 or less.

Now, let’s talk about optimizing your posts for search and SEO.  Let me say up front I am NOT an SEO expert, the following is good old-fashioned ‘common sense’ advice that I learned by reading SEO experts, then experimenting with my own content here, and seeing what worked, and what didn’t.  This is 101-level stuff to get you started.  I would recommend that you try this, and then when you see the positive results, that will probably whet your appetite to want to learn more about SEO.

First, learn to write better post titles.  Seriously, this was the biggest improvement I made in my blogging this year.  But it goes beyond simply writing a ‘catchy’ headline, you need to seriously consider what words you use in your headline.  Because what you want to do is use certain search keywords and terms in your post’s title.

For example, lets say we want to write a post on how businesses can use Twitter.  Before you start writing the post or even the title, ask yourself ‘what would someone type into Google in order to find this post?’  Put yourself in the shoes of the marketing manager at a mid-sized company that’s trying to decide if her business should start a Twitter account.  Some of the things she might put into Google could be:

• ‘How do businesses use Twitter?’
• ‘How can Twitter help my business?’
• ‘Does my business need to be on Twitter?’
• ‘How do you get started using Twitter?’

You get the idea.  But notice she is Googling QUESTIONS that she wants the answers to!  Think about it, isn’t this how we usually use Google?  We have a question we want answered.  So taking the marketing manager’s questions in mind, here’s some possible post titles we could go with

1 – Four Innovative Ways Businesses Are Using Twitter

2 – Should Your Business Be on Twitter? Here’s How You Can Decide

3 – How to Start a Twitter Account For Your Business in 5 Minutes!

See how those post titles closely resemble what the marketing manager was Googling?  If you can use the same or similar keywords and phrases in your post title as what others are searching for in search engines, you will greatly increase your post’s chances of ranking high in search results for those words and terms.

Another tip:  Use your keywords as close to the start of the post title as possible.  This helps, but isn’t an absolute.  For example, the first post title of ‘Four Innovative Ways Businesses Are Using Twitter’ could be changed to ‘How Are Businesses Using Twitter? Here’s Four Innovative Ways’.  You may want to make this change because the term ‘How Are Businesses Using Twitter’ will be what more people are searching for.  Personally, I think the 1st version of the post title flows better.

Finally, use the same keyword/phrases in your post title, in the post itself.  Ideally, you want to use the keyword phrase, such as ‘How are businesses using Twitter’ up to 3 times in the post.  Or at least once at the start of the post.  You want to do this because this helps Google and other search engines correctly identify what the post is about.  Google will scan the post and if it sees the same or similar words and phrases repeating in the post, then it assumes that’s what the post is about, then when someone searches for those same or similar phrases, your post will rank higher in search results!

So that’s enough to get you started.  Start creating Topic Buckets for your blog, then start beefing up your post titles with the proper keywords and phrases.  I think you’ll be pleasantly pleased with the results you see!

The biggest improvement I made in my blogging in 2011 was writing better headlines.  There are three critical advantages to writing better headlines:

1 – You greatly improve the chance that your post will be shared on social media sites.  Think about it, we all have the attention-span of a gnat.  We are bombarded by hundreds of shared links every day, and which ones get clicked?  The ones with the best headlines.

2 – You greatly improve your blog’s Search Traffic.  By including relevant keywords and phrases in your blog’s headline, you are helping search engines understand what your post is about, so they can show that post to people that are searching for the same topic.

3 – Learning how to write better headlines will give you a competitive edge.  The bottom line is that most bloggers REALLY suck at writing great headlines.  And I’m not talking about newbie bloggers only, many of the smartest and most popular bloggers in the world, write amazing posts, and horrible post titles.

Now for the big question: What does a bad headline look like?

From my own experience, my biggest problem with writing headlines was that I would focus on the post, then simply summarize the post with the headline.  I see a lot of bloggers that do the same thing, their post title is only a few words, that somehow, and loosely, tie back to what they talk about in the post.

Here’s a few examples of weak headlines I found on one blog this morning:

“Santa and the mob”

“Insulate yourself…”

“Well rounded (and the other)”

“No choice”

“I am here”

These headlines all appeared on posts written this month on a blog.  Notice that none of these posts really focus on specific keywords of phrases, so by itself, the headline won’t help the post stand out in search engine results.  And if you saw any of these headlines whizzing by your Twitterstream, are any of them compelling enough to make you want to click that post?

Probably not.  But what if I told you that Seth Godin wrote all these posts?  As I said, sometimes even great bloggers struggle with writing effective headlines.  Seth is so popular that he can afford to write a weak headline now and again, since people don’t read him for his headlines, they read his posts cause they are short, to the point, and make you go ‘A-Ha!’

But if you are like the rest of us, you need every advantage you can get

When you are writing your headlines, ask yourself ‘How would someone find this post if they were searching for it in Google?‘  What are the relevant keywords and phrases they would search for?

For example, let’s say I want to write a post on building engagement on my blog.  I am going to highlight a few ways that I use to build engagement and interaction on my blog.  If I wrote a headline that merely summarized the post, it would be ‘Building Engagement On Your Blog‘.

Now think about it, how many people are going to Google ‘building engagement on a blog’?  Or anything similar?

In fact, I just Googled the exact term ‘building engagement on your blog’ and there are SIX results on the entire internet.  And half of them are from me! (But none as the headline!)

Think about it: When we talk about ‘building engagement’ on a blog, we are really talking about getting more comments, right?  So let’s change our headline from Building Engagement On Your Blog, to Get More Comments On Your Blog.

Now if you Google that exact term, you see that there are over 200,000 results.  That means if more bloggers are writing with that specific term in their headline, it’s probably because more people are searching for that term!

So let’s return to our post.  The headline now at least has some Google juice, and a more search-friendly title.  Plus, the title is a bit more descriptive, so it increases the chance that others will click it when they see it floating by on Twitter or Facebook.

But remember I said that I was writing about a few ways bloggers could get more comments on their blog?  What if I wrote up, I dunno, say 40 ways to get more comments on your blog?  Then that could become my headline!

So the post stays the same, but which headline would you be more likely to click on if you saw it on Twitter:

1 – Building Engagement On Your Blog

or

2 – 40 Dead Simple Ways to Get More Comments On Your Blog

Most of us would probably click #2, as it is not only more descriptive, but it makes us a promise:  It’s going to give us 40 steps.  Readers LOVE How-To posts that also give you numbers  ’40 Ways to….’ or ’8 tips for overcoming….’

In closing, there’s one area that you need to keep in mind: Walking the tightrope between writing a headline that’s search-friendly, and one that can be ‘too cute’.  For example, the original headline to this post was going to be ‘Want to Improve Your Blogging in 2012? Write Better Headlines’.  But as I started writing about Seth’s headlines, I decided to change the headline to ‘One Way You Can Be a Better Blogger Than Seth Godin’.  It’s a calculated risk, as I don’t think that headline will do quite as well with search engines (What’s the keyword or phrase? ‘Better Blogger’?), but I do think this headline is a bit more interesting, and will hopefully get more clicks on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.  Because everyone wants to be a better blogger than Seth, right?

Just remember, focus on including relevant keywords and phrases in your post’s headlines, and ask yourself ‘how would someone find this post if they were searching for it?’  If you start paying more attention to your headline-writing in 2012, you’ll be very surprised at the increase in not only search traffic, but overall traffic to your blog!

If your company is like most around the country, you’ve probably been planning your marketing and communication efforts for 2012 for a while now.  To help you get a leg-up on these efforts, I wanted to give y’all some special discounts on some of my Social Media Marketing consulting services!  Please note, these prices are only valid through the end of 2011 and good to companies based in the continential United States.

1 – Social Media Strategy Audit: This service easily pays for itself by giving your company a solid foundation for its Social Media Marketing Strategy.  If your company is currently using Social Media, this audit will evaluate your existing efforts.  If your company is looking to get started using Social Media, this audit will recommend what your Social Media Strategy should look like.

The Social Media Strategy Audit is a two-month project.  You will be given the audit in the form of a report (usually 15-25 pages), and after you are given the report, we’ll schedule a 1-hour phone call to discuss my findings and recommendations so that you know exactly how to proceed.

I’ve created a separate page that tells you exactly what is included in the Social Media Strategy Audit.  Please understand that additionally, this service comes with a guarantee that you will be pleased with the results!  Normally, the price of this service is $7,500, split into 3 payments.  You will receive the report along with an invoice for the 3rd and final payment.

If you are not satisfied with the report, you don’t make the final payment.  As I said, this service is normally $7,500, but through the end of 2011, I am lowering the price to $6,000!  And yes, it still includes the guarantee!  You’ll make 3 payments of $2,000, and if you aren’t satisfied with the report, you don’t make the final payment!

Price for the Social Media Strategy Audit (Through 12-31-2011): $7,500 $6,000!

Please email me to reserve one of the 2 available slots for this service.  Payments can be made via Google Checkout or PayPal.

2 – Blog Strategy Audit: This is similar to the Social Media Strategy Audit service, but focuses strictly on your company’s blogging efforts and strategy.    You will be given the audit in the form of a report (usually 15-25 pages), and after you are given the report, we’ll schedule a 1-hour phone call to discuss my findings and recommendations so that you know exactly how to proceed.

You can get more information on exactly what is included in the Blog Strategy Audit by clicking here.

Please understand that additionally, this service comes with a guarantee that you will be pleased with the results!  Normally, the price of this service is $5,000, split into 3 payments.  You will receive the report along with an invoice for the 3rd and final payment.

If you are not satisfied with the report, you don’t make the final payment.  As I said, this service is normally $5,000, but through the end of 2011, I am lowering the price to $4,500!  And yes, it still includes the guarantee!  You’ll make 3 payments of $1,500, and if you aren’t satisfied with the report, you don’t make the final payment!

Price for the Blog Media Strategy Audit (Through 12-31-2011): $5,000 $4,500!

Please email me to reserve one of the 2 available slots for this service.  Payments can be made via Google Checkout or PayPal.

3 – Monthly 1-Hour Phone Consultations for January – March: Get your Social Media Marketing Strategy off on the right foot in 2012 with a monthly hour-long phone consultation!  You’ll be given a 1-hour phone consultation each month for the 1st 3 months in 2012.  We can use this time to discuss your existing Social Media efforts, or to help you flesh out how you can get your Social Media efforts off the ground!

Normally, 1-hour consultations are $250.00 each, but you can get this package of 3 calls for only $500.00 (Through 12-31-2011)!  Please email me to reserve this package at the discounted rate of $500.00.

4 – THE WORKS! – This is only for 1 company or organization that is serious about using Social Media effectively to connect with its customers/donors/clients.  I can only offer ONE of these custom packages.  Here’s everything you will get:

• The Social Media Strategy Audit as listed in Service #1.
• A quarterly, on-site full-day workshop and training session with your team.  I’ll spend up to 8 hours in one day, on-site working directly with your team to help them improve their Social Media efforts.  We’ll tackle whatever areas your team needs the most help with, be it content creation, understanding Social Media analytics, building community, whatever you need.  FOUR on-site, full-day training sessions are included.  Client will be expensed for travel (flight plus 2 nights hotel per trip).
• Up to 10 hours per month of consulting time.  We can use this on whatever you need, be it continued training for your team, assistance with executing existing projects, whatever you need help with.

Total Price for this Year-Long Package is $35,000.00.  I can only offer one company or organization this package at this price, and this price is only valid till 12-31-11.  Each of these services priced individually totals over $50,000, so this package price is discounted over 33%!

If you are interested in purchasing this package, please email me.  For this package only, a $10,000.00 retainer is required, with 10 additional payments of $2,500 each.

Have any other ideas for how we can work together?  Please email me!

Subscribe to your blog’s feed via email, then read it on your smartphone.

For those of you that aren’t aware, I live in a very rural area of Alabama.  Most days I work from home, but at least a couple of times a week I will go ‘into town’ to run errands and I’ll usually stop off at a local library to get some work done, etc.  Earlier this week I was on one of my trips into town and I went by Olive Garden to grab some lunch.  I do this often (yes I love pasta, and yes I have simple tastes ), and when I do, I will always use my smartphone to get on Twitter.  What I’ll do is scan the tweets from my lists, and RT any interesting links I see being shared by my followers.

On Monday, I was eating lunch, when I got that day’s blog post emailed to me because I am subscribed to my blog via both email and RSS.  Here’s what I saw when the email arrived:

1 – The title of the email was ‘Why Social Media Measurement Fails Most Companies‘.  Boom!  No fooling around, you know exactly what you will be getting when you open the email.  And note that the title promises to address a real problem that many businesses are facing.

2 – When I opened the email, the very first sentence of the email answered the post’s title:  Because they measure what’s available, instead of what benefits their company.  You know, there’s something to be said for writing well, and using stories to make your point, but there’s also something said for getting TO the damn point!

3 – The rest of the post offered simple and relevance examples that (hopefully) backed up the main premise of the post.  There wasn’t a lot of beating around the bush.

And as I read that post, I realized that a lot of people, especially executives and marketers at companies, were getting this same email right now.  They were just like me, they were busy, they were probably going to get lunch (just like me), so they were likely either reading this email in the back of a cab, or at a restaurant table while waiting for their meal.  So because they were subscribed to my blog via email, on their lunch break they got an email from me that was quick, to-the-point, and included social media advice that they could take with them back to the office and start working on as soon as they get back from lunch.

This also drives home another point; you have to consider how your blog’s readers are receiving and reading your content.  You can’t assume that they daily set aside 30 mins just to come to your blog and be blessed by your insightful thinking.  You have to assume that they are getting your content in a way that’s convenient to THEM, and that they will be spending at best 30 SECONDS with your content, not 30 minutes.  You need to quickly give them a reason to invest their precious attention reading what you have to say.

Now, one final tip about improving the experience you are providing your email subscribers: Make damn sure that when your blog’s posts are emailed out, that the subject of the email is that post’s title and NOT the title of your blog!  I learned this TOTALLY the hard way.  An email subscriber contacted me well over a year ago and sent me a screenshot of the last 20 or so posts he had received from me.  He said ‘now Mack I know you aren’t a spammer, but how does this look to you?’  The screenshot showed 20 emails all in a row, every one had the same thing:  From – MackCollier.com  Subject – MackCollier.com

I was mortified!  I didn’t realize that Feedburner was sending out my posts via email with the title of my BLOG as the SUBJECT of every email!  I naturally assumed that the subject of each email would be the title of each post!  This is another reason why it pays to subscribe to your own blog via email, so you can see your content as your subscribers do.

For example, if you receive this post via email, it will read From – MackCollier.com  Subject – The One Simple Thing You Can Do to Increase Email Subscribers to Your Blog.  Much better, right?  If you use Feedburner to provide email subscriptions to your blog and want to make this same change, here’s what you do:

1 – Sign into your Feedburner account

2 – Click the Publicize tab at the top

3 – Click Email Subscriptions on the left

4 – A few sub-options will open up under Email Subscriptions, you want to now click Email Branding

5 – At the top where you see the box for Email/Subject Title: you want to put ${latestItemTitle} in that box.  That way Feedburner knows to use the title of each post as the subject of the email and NOT the title of your blog.

That’s it!  So if you haven’t already, make sure you subscribe to your blog via both email and RSS.  Then try to access your feed in all the ways your readers might.  Look at it in Google Reader (or whatever RSS reader you prefer).  Look at it in your inbox, and yes, look at it on your smartphone.  Consider not only readability, but also what that person might be doing as they are reading your post.

For example, if they are reading your post in the back of a stinky cab on their smartphone, will your post instantly resonate with them?  Because many times your readers will be reading your post in an environment that’s less than optimal for understanding.  Which is why you need to simplify the content delivery process, and make it easier for your subscribers to understand your point(s).

I am thrilled to announce that Valeria Maltoni (@ConversationAge on Twitter) will be co-hosting #Blogchat this Sunday!  Valeria is one of the most respected blogging marketers on the planet for one simple reason: She creates incredibly valuable content on a daily basis.  Let me tell you a quick story about Valeria: Earlier this year during SXSW, I was at the Hilton’s bar with Valeria, Ann Handley and Leigh Durst at around 11pm, on a Saturday night.  It’s been a long day, we are all exhausted cause we’ve been on the go since about 6am that morning.  As we are sleepishly chatting, Valeria whips out her Macbook, and after a few minutes I ask her what she’s doing.  She says ‘I’m doing some research for a blog post that I need to get up on my blog for tomorrow morning.”

And there you go.  As I blogged about yesterday, for the 1st half of 2011 I blogged up to 5 times a week.  It was a TON of work, and Valeria blogs more often than that, every week.  I wanted Valeria to co-host with us not only to teach us how she can keep up such a prolific posting schedule, but to also talk about how her blog has helped establish her as an expert.  This is really an area that so many of us want to learn how we can do with our blog.  I’ve noticed in the last year especially that Valeria is one of the people that other marketers in this space are always talking about as one of the truly ‘smart’ people.  She does a wonderful job of creating amazing content on a daily basis on her blog, which really helps her establish herself as an expert.

So first, check out the prep post Valeria has written over at her blog covering what her #Blogchat topic is.

Now here’s the breakdown of our conversation with Valeria this Sunday:

8:00-8:30 PM Central – Valeria will talk to us about the prep work that goes into her posts.  The research she does, how she comes up with post ideas, etc.

8:30-9:00 PM Central – Valeria will talk to us about how she uses her blog to establish herself as a Subject Matter Expert.  This will be equally applicable to those of you that are independent or small business owners, as well as marketers that are looking to stand out within their company and industry.

I’m REALLY excited to have Valeria join us, and I’m sure you are as well!  Please make sure you are subscribed to her blog, Conversation Agent, and please follow her on Twitter!

BTW if you are new to #Blogchat, here’s what it’s all about.  Also, I’m excited to announce that next Sunday (the 18th) will be co-hosted by #Blogchat regular Bruce Sallan, talking about how blogging and social media can be used for social good!  And already confirmed to co-host in early 2012 are @MarketingProfs, @GenoChurch and @Pistachio!

See y’all on Sunday!

Last night’s #Blogchat topic was getting inspired again if you’ve lost your love of blogging.  It was a fabulous discussion once again, and here’s the transcript if you missed it.  I wouldn’t say that I no longer love blogging, but over the last few weeks, I am loving it a lot less, and it seems more like ‘work’ than FUN for me.

One of the things I continue to struggle with is how often to post here.  I want to create as much amazing and valuable content for y’all as possible.  But I also know if I only blog when I have something amazing to say, y’all may not hear from me for a few months  So then it becomes a trade-off between posting more often with slightly less valuable posts, versus posting slightly more valuable posts, but less often.  Sometimes I just want to stop blogging and only blog when I have something that truly think is worth sharing.  If that means I only blog once a month, so be it.  But at the same time, this blog isn’t my personal soapbox, it is a business development tool.  So I can’t afford to only post once a month, I need to use this tool to create and increase visibility for myself.

So how do you find the optimal number of posts for your blog?  I would like to shoot for a consistent 2-3 posts a week here.  I’ve talked to other bloggers recently and they are going through the same ‘I don’t want to blog more for the traffic, I want to blog less for my readers’ struggle.  Sure, I know if I write 5 new posts a week, that traffic will skyrocket, and overall post quality will also likely fall.  Is that tradeoff worth it?  I don’t think so.

Another option is to allow guest posts.  Honestly, I don’t like using guest posts, and don’t like reading blogs that allow a lot of guest posts.  A few months ago one of my favorite bloggers turned their blog into a group blog, and I rarely read the blog anymore.  Because the reason why I was reading it (that blogger) never posts there anymore.  So while I may rarely use guest posts in the future, I want to be driving the majority of the content here.

So how did you set your posting schedule?  How did you find a method that works for you?  Think it’s time for me to shake things up here, what’s worked for you?

Pic via Flickr user ptrktn