I spend a LOT of time on Twitter.  For me, Twitter is an amazing tool to connect and network with other people.  I know a lot of you like to use Facebook and Plus for the same reasons.

Often, we will hear that we shouldn’t be ‘wasting time’ on social media sites all day, and that we should be busy ‘getting things done’.  What these people don’t understand is that being successful in using Social Media is all about building human relationships.

As I said in my previous post, last week I got to visit Bazaarvoice and present Think Like a Rockstar to approximately 75 of their employees.  Additionally, this was the first time I’d presented Rockstar to a company, so I was excited about that as well.  But I think it’s interesting to consider how I got to the point where I could call Bazaarvoice a client.  You say it actually has taken 5 years.

In 2007, I wrote a Company Blog Checkup for Dell’s Direct2Dell blog.  I gave it pretty high marks, and in the comments, both Richard Binhammer, and John Pope (who was with Dell at the time) from Dell jumped in and offered feedback, and proved that they were listening.  Those comments by Dell got a relationship started with the company, and 3 years later, I was moderating the first #DellCAP event for the company!

The event lasted two days, and on the second day, Dell’s CMO joined us in the morning, who at the time was Erin Nelson, who would later accept the same position at Bazaarvoice!  So that’s the connection, right?  Well last week when I arrived at Bazaarvoice, Erin was telling her assistant about following me on Twitter and she said she loved my tweets because I was always tweeting about college football and giving her updates on games!  So it’s not my insights into brand advocacy that Erin wanted, but the score of the Texas – Oklahoma game in the 3rd quarter

But that makes a wonderful point: Social Media is about CONNECTING with people and ESTABLISHING RELATIONSHIPS.  It doesn’t matter how that is done, for example with the college football tweets, Erin is literally one of dozens of people that have told me over the last couple of years that the love my tweets about college football.  Others have told me they love to watch BURN NOTICE or that they also love Dr Pepper

All of those conversations might seem like a waste of time to some people, but they are leading to real business for me, and I bet they have for many of you as well.  And no, it doesn’t always happen overnight, and it often doesn’t happen when you try to ‘force’ it.  It usually happens when you try to connect with other people and share with them what you have learned, and try to learn from and get to know them as well.  Because Social Media is About Building Relationships.

Just like most areas of life, right?

Two years ago I wrote a post entitled So How Much Will a Social Media Strategy Cost, which was designed to give businesses and organizations an idea of how much they should expect to pay consultants and agencies for basic social media marketing services.  As you might expect, that post was insanely popular, so I followed it up with How Much Does Social Media Cost Companies in 2011 last year, and now this year those prices are being updated again with this post.  For all three, these prices are taken from published rates found online, as well as what other agencies and consultants have told me they charge for these services.

In general, both posts in 2010 and 2011 were designed to give companies basic price information around the most common services, such as setup and execution of a blog, Twitter and Facebook page, as well as basic Social Media Training.  In the comments of both posts, many of you mentioned that there were additional areas that you would like to see addressed in the future.

With that in mind, I reached out specifically to some friends and fellow consultants that offer Social Media Marketing services to their clients either as independents, or as part of an agency (their own, or someone else’s).  I would like to thank the following experts for helping me by giving me their rates for these services so I could have the most accurate price information(And on short-notice during the Holidays!):

Jason Falls, Tom Martin, Jay Baer, Tamar Weinberg, Nick Westergaard, Mitch Canter, Lisa Petrilli, David Griner, Drew McLellan, Bobby Rettew, DJ Waldow, Jennifer Kane and Kary Delaria.  If you have any questions about these services or need to hire a consultant or agency to help you with your Social Media Marketing efforts, please email me and I will be happy to work with you, or refer you to one or more of these fine people.  Also, please click their names to visit their blog/site and learn more about their services.

Before I get to the prices, I wanted to talk a bit about how the area of Social Media Consulting has changed over the last few years.  In 2008 and 2009, Social Media Consultants were in fairly high demand, especially the more well-known and established ones.  Companies were realizing that they needed to start using Social Media as a way to listen to and connect with their customers, yet they had little to no idea how to do so.  Enter the Social Media Consultant.  A shift in marketing philosophy by many companies created a real demand for professionals that could create and execute social media strategies for companies.

By 2010 and 2011, most companies began to understand that Social Media wasn’t simply a fad, and it was a business necessity that they needed to address via hiring.  Many companies, especially larger brands, hired Social Media Managers, and then entire Social Media Marketing teams.  This shift had a profound impact on the area of Social Media Consulting in two ways:

1 – Many of these companies hired existing Social Media Consultants to be their Social Media Managers and fill their Social Media Marketing teams.  Companies like Radian 6 and Edelman PR aggressively hired independent consultants as well as professionals at other agencies to build and compliment their own Social Media Marketing teams.

2 – Many of these companies stopped (or slowed in) hiring Social Media Consultants for execution work, instead giving that to their in-house team.  The successful consultants and agencies today are usually the ones that adapted the quickest to this change.

As a result, the average Social Media Consultant today is doing less execution work, and is spending more time actually consulting with and training companies on how to use Social Media properly.  Diversification is a good thing.

Now, on with the prices.  As with last year’s post, for every service I am providing a range, as well as a Most Charge distinction.  In general, the fees associated with setup of basic social media tools like a company blog, Twitter or Facebook page have gone down.  On the other hand, rates for comprehensive Social Media Strategy auditing, creation and training services have generally increased.

In general, smaller businesses and non-profits can expect to pay prices that are closer to the low end of the price range, while large companies and organizations will probably see their quoted rates closer to the top end of the range.

Also, when looking at rates for monthly content curation and management of individual social media tools, remember that the more content the consultant/agency has to curate and create/edit for you, the higher the rates.  Likewise, if you can handle the content creation and just need training and some light editing, then your rates will usually be lower.

Here’s the prices:

Blog

Custom design and template creation – $1,000 – $5,000

Most Charge – $1,000-$3,000 

Writing/Editing Content for the blog plus ongoing training – $500-$4,000 a month (Assume 1-2 posts a week at this rate)

Most Charge – $1,000-$3,000

Ghostwriting blog posts – $50-$500 per

Most Charge – $75-$200 per

Twitter

Account Setup - $500-$2,000

Most Charge – $500-$1,000 

Ongoing Account Management and Training – $500-$3,000 a month (For this service, the more content you need provided for you, the higher the fees)

Most Charge – $500-$1,500 a month

Facebook

Initial Page Setup – $500-$2,500

Most Charge – $500-$1,500

Monthly Content Management and Curation – $500-$3,000 a month 

Most Charge – $1,000-$2,000 a month

Facebook Promotion Creation

Short-Term (1-3 months) Contest, including branding for the app, limited promotion on other channels such as Facebook and Twitter to promote the contest.  Fee doesn’t include prize and Facebook Ads to promote – $1,500-$20,000

Long-Term (3-6 months) Contest, including above, more elaborate promotion based on client’s needs – $25,000-$75,000

Note: These are the ‘Big Three’ tools when it comes to Social Media for business, and many consultants and agencies will offer companies a package deal on setting up and maintaining all three.  For other tools such as Google Plus, Pinterest, MySpace (yes many entertainment and music-related businesses especially still use it) and others, assume that rates in general will be consistent for what you could expect to pay for similar services with Facebook or Twitter.

Video

Total to shoot, produce and edit video – $500 – $30,000 (Note:  Obviously, the complexity and length of the video plays a huge role in the final cost.  If you want custom animation, several scenes and a 30-minute video, obviously that’s going to cost far more than a simple, 2-minute one-on-one video.  One expert told me that they charge $1,000 per minute of finished product.)

Social Media Strategy 

Social Media Monitoring (Note – Number of keywords/phrases tracked here has a big impact on fees.  More costs more.):

Setup – $500-$5,000

Most Charge – $1,000-$2,000

Ongoing Reports and Advisement – $500-$7,500 a month

Most Charge – $1,000-$2,000

Social Media Strategy Audit (Examine existing Social Media Strategy and give detailed recommendations on what strategy should look like moving forward, with instructions on how to measure results) – $2,000-$25,000

Most Charge – $5,000-$10,000

Social Media Strategy Creation and Integration with Existing Marketing Efforts (Note – Most consultants and agencies will require that this service be married to a Social Media Strategy Audit, as they will then create the strategy recommended in the audit) – $10,000-$30,000

Most Charge – $10,000-$15,000

Social Media Training and Consulting

Hourly Training/Consulting – $50-$500 an hour

Most Charge – $100-$250 an hour

Note: These rates are for 1 hour of work.  If you can commit to a certain number of hours a month, for example, consultants and agencies will almost always give you a discount.

Social Media Workshops(All fees exclude travel and are for ON-SITE Workshops, not online):

Half-Day (Up to 4 hours): $500-$7,500

Most Charge – $2,000-$3,500

Full-Day (6-8 hours): $1,000-$15,000

Most Charge – $4,000-$6,000

Note: Keep in mind that these rates represent a significant amount of training and content creation time.  So if you pay a consultant $5,000 for a day-long workshop, that consultant might have spent 20 or 30 hours creating that workshop.  So the prep time has to be considered in addition to the actual time delivering the workshop when looking at fees.

Rates to Hire a Social Media Speaker

Individual session (Up to 90 minutes, usually 1 hour): $1,000-$5,000

Most Charge: $2,000-$3,000

Keynote: $1,000-$15,000

Most Charge: $5,000-$10,000

All rates exclude travel.

Finally, I wanted to close with some advice on choosing a Social Media Consultant.  First, before you begin the process of hiring a Social Media Consultant, you need to address a few areas:

• Figure out what you want to accomplish via Social Media.  Do you want to generate sales?  Increase brand awareness?  Establish thought leadership for your CEO or company?  Connect with donors?  Giving some thought to what you want to accomplish via your social media efforts will make the rest of the process smoother.
• What are your human resources?  How many people can work on your social media efforts?  If you have a team of 10 at the ready, then the amount of assistance you will need is far less than if you are the only person for your company that will be handling your social media efforts.  Know how many people can work on your social media efforts and how much time they can devote, because if you plan on executing a Social Media Strategy that will require a team of 5, and you only have 2, that shortcoming will have to be addressed either through hiring, or outsourcing to the agency/consultant.  Either way, it costs you money.
• How long is your project going to be?  You probably can’t pin this down exactly without talking to the consultant first, but it helps to give some thought to this.

When you contact a consultant or agency, they should be asking you questions as well.  They should want to know why you want to use social media, what are you trying to accomplish.  If they try to give you prices or push you toward using a particular tool without asking you questions, that is a red flag.  They really can’t give you prices until they know more about your company, your resources, and what you are wanting to accomplish.  Even if you contact them and tell them you need prices on creating and launching a blog, they should still ask you some questions to determine if you do need a blog to reach your intended business goals for your social media strategy.

As always, I hope this helps you in creating your Social Media budgets for 2012.  If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment.

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!

Interaction and participation.  It’s something many community sites and managers struggle with and focus on increasing.  Engagement is the lifeblood of many online communities, and yet, so many struggle to reach that ‘critical mass’ of participants.

When #Blogchat started in early 2009, participation wasn’t an issue.  Even in those 1st few weeks where we’d only have a few hundred tweets, there was plenty of engagement.  But even then, I noticed some problems.  It seemed that there were a core group of really smart bloggers that were, for the most part, answering the questions of everyone else.  So the core group of smart bloggers were mainly talking to each other, and fielding questions from everyone else.

If you think about it, you see this in a lot of online communities, especially knowledge-based ones.  You have the ‘newbies’ and the ‘experts’.  And early on, that’s what we saw with #Blogchat, the ‘newbies’ were asking questions of the ‘experts’.  And there’s nothing wrong with that, but the problem is this: If you’re not a ‘newbie’ or an ‘expert’, how do you participate?

What started happening is that I would talk to people that follow #Blogchat, and when they told me they lurked, I would invite them to participate.  ”#Blogchat is so much better when more people participate so we can all learn from each other!” I would tell them.  Almost every time, they would reply by saying “Oh no! I don’t have anything to add, I’m not an expert!”

I hated hearing that.  So I added a new rule for everyone in #Blogchat: No experts allowed.

That’s not to say that smart people can’t and shouldn’t participate, but I wanted to communicate to everyone that they should feel comfortable participating.  #Blogchat works best when everyone is comfortable sharing what they know.  Does that mean that some people make some points that are completely off the wall?  Yep, but that also leads to new discussions, because others feel comfortable questioning and debating those claims.

But if your community only has interaction from the experts and newbies, you’re going to be ignoring everyone else.  Kathy had a great point about this several years ago, and her point is the same as mine, that you need to communicate to your community that everyone should participate, and help them feel comfortable doing so.  For #Blogchat, when they hear ‘No experts allowed, we are all here to learn from each other’, it puts everyone at ease.  Most people are smarter than they give themselves credit for, they might not believe they are ‘qualified’ to join a discussion, but they almost always have something they can share that can benefit the group.

One of your key roles as a community manager is to get everyone to a place where they are comfortable contributing as they can.  And remember that when people start participating in a community, they begin to take a sense of ownership in that community.  That greatly increases the motivation they have to help you grow that community, and make it more valuable for everyone.

This starts by finding ways to get everyone more interactive.  Not just newbies asking experts questions, but everyone asking and answering questions.  This will generate more discussions and more value for everyone.

If you want to get more discussions and participation among your community, consider these steps:

1 – Encourage involvement from lurkers.  As I am watching #Blogchat’s stream, it’s obviously moving way too fast for me to catch even a fraction of the tweets.  But if I see anyone tweet that they are joining #Blogchat for the 1st time, I *always* go back and thank them for joining.  Nothing makes a lurker feel more welcome than announcing to the group that they are joining for the 1st time, and immediately getting a thank you tweet from the moderator.  Additionally, other #Blogchat members have started doing the same thing, which only increases the chance that this lurker will move to being a participant.

2 – Understand that statements are NOT discussions.  Often, I will notice that a member of #Blogchat isn’t directly engaging with anyone, but rather they are tweeting out general statements like ‘Blog from the heart!’ or ‘Make your post as long or as short as it needs to be!’  These tweets will probably get a lot of RTs, but by themselves, they don’t often generate a lot of discussion.  If I see someone that’s constantly leaving tweets like this, I try to engage them.  I’ll ask them questions about their statements, and hopefully get a discussion started with them.  Then, others have an opportunity to join in.

3 – Encourage all members to be helpful.  When I first started #Blogchat, I asked regular contributors to please help me by welcoming new participants, and to help them with any questions they have.  The #Blogchat regulars do a wonderful job of being helpful to everyone.  Now I tell everyone that if they are new to #Blogchat, to feel free to ask any of us any questions, that we will be happy to help.  And I am constantly seeing others tweet about how helpful and friendly the #Blogchat community is, so I think the #Blogchat regulars view it as a badge of honor.  At least I hope they do, because I do

4 – Clearly spell out for all members how they can participate and what is expected of them.  All it takes is a simple post listing out the purpose of your community and any guidelines.  This is important, because if someone stumbles upon an established community, it can be a very daunting thing, and a ‘road map’ can definitely help put them at ease.

5 – If you are active in your community (as you should be), then make sure you are following your own rules.  For example, when I participate in #Blogchat, I am usually asking questions of other participants.  I try to avoid always making statements, and I use the words ‘I think….’ a lot.  If I am asking questions as the ‘moderator’ of #Blogchat then it sets the tone of everyone else to the same.

Remember at the end of the day if you can reach a point where community members are creating value for themselves, then everyone wins.  A great way to do this is to increase the level of participation within that community.

Apple recently launched the newest version of the iPhone, the 4S.  Anticipation was so strong for this launch that it’s being blamed for the 1st ever dip in smartphone sales last quarter, with the thinking being that buyers were holding off on getting a new smartphone till they saw what the new iPhone provided.  Apple said it was its most successful iPhone launch to date.  Also, Sprint now offers the popular smartphone, along with Verizon and AT&T.

But there was one feature of the new iPhone 4S that caught my eye: Twitter is integrated with the phone’s operating system.  That means Twitter is on the phone, and you can more easily tweet from the phone, if you take a picture you can quickly send it straight to Twitter, etc.  It’s also led to an understandable spike in Twitter signups.

And then there’s this: Twitter users are five times more likely to share content on mobile devices versus Facebook users.  And this study was conducted before the introduction of the iPhone 4S.

It’s not about understanding Social Media, it’s about understanding how and why your customers are using social media.

So as a business, if your customers are on Twitter, it’s definitely important for you to understand how to use Twitter.  But it’s even more important for you to understand how your customers are using Twitter.  For example, here’s some questions you could ask:

• Do our customers prefer to use Twitter when they are on the go (smartphones) or do they prefer to use Twitter at home (iPads and laptops)?
• The study mentions that Twitter users share more, what type of content are they sharing?  Tweets?  Pictures?  Both?
• How are our customers using Twitter?  For networking?  Keeping up with friends?  Sharing and finding out the latest breaking news?
• Does the way our customers use Twitter change when they are on their smartphone versus their laptop or iPad?

It’s very important to understand social media, but it’s far more important to understand your customers.

I am totally piggybacking on Marcus’ post over at Spin Sucks, but this is a question I have been pondering for a LONG time.

The two most popular posts so far this year (by a mile) are this post on How Much Social Media Costs in 2011, and this one on How Much Social Media Costs in 2010.  Also, three of the top 7 keywords that send search traffic to this blog are associated with the price of social media services.  So I only have to look at my Google Analytics to tell that there is a HUGE interest in the price of social media services.

And yet, most social media and/or marketing consultants don’t list their prices.  Or if they do, this information is usually buried on their site, in doing research for both of the above posts on the price of social media services, I found several ‘name’ consultants that did have prices for their services, but it was like hunting on their site for a needle in a haystack to find the numbers.  It seems that the few consultants that do quote prices are quoting prices that are so far and above what most of their peers charge that it seems to simply draw ridicule from their peers.  Which might be the plan, cause it also draws a lot of attention to their prices!

I did start listing prices for my Social Media Strategy and Blogging Strategy Audits, but that’s really all I have solid prices down for.  And I also offer a Satisfaction guarantee on both, which is something else I am experimenting with.

But really I want to know what y’all think about this issue.  And I can completely see both sides:  I can see why it would be better to list prices, but I can also see why it would be hard/impossible to quote exact prices for some services.  And to further stump me, I have very good friends and business professionals that have told me I should absolutely list my prices, and others that tell me I absolutely should not!

What do you think?  Should every consultant/agency list prices for their services, or nothing?  If you are a consultant or work for an agency, what’s your policy?

Should consultants list what they charge for social media and marketing services on their site?  Yes or no?

One of the ‘problems’ I am running into when I talk to event organizers and potential sponsors about doing a LIVE #Blogchat is that it’s sometimes difficult for them to understand what a LIVE version of a Twitter chat would look like.  I try telling them that a buncha smart people get in a room and talk to each other, but somehow that still doesn’t get the point across very well  Thankfully, Chris and his team from Huddle Productions created a short video with footage from the LIVE #Blogchat that Dell sponsored last week prior to the start of its #DellCAP event.  This should give you a better idea of what a LIVE #Blogchat is like (Hint: Smartitude galore!):

If you are interested in learning more information about adding a live #Blogchat to your existing event, or in sponsoring one, click here.

The second area I wanted to point your attention to is an update I am making to my consulting services.  For a couple of years now, I have been offering Social Media Strategy Audits to clients.  This service has proven to be very popular so I’ve decided to begin offering Blog Strategy Audits to clients as well.  For many companies, a blog is the only social media tool they are using, so for these companies, a Blog Strategy Audit makes more sense.  Both of these audits will analyze what the company’s competition is doing, as well as assess how the client is currently using blogging/social media, and give them a blueprint and recommendations on what they should do moving forward.  And perhaps most importantly, both audits will include a section on how to measure the results of your strategy.  So I’m not only going to tell you exactly what your strategy should look like, but I’m also going to show you exactly how to measure your efforts.  This is a key area that’s often missing from most blogging/social media strategies.

Both the Social Media Strategy Audit and the Blog Strategy Audit are two-month projects.  For each, you’ll make three payments: You will be billed for the first payment when you agree to purchase the audit, and I must have this payment before I can begin work on your audit.  At the end of the first month, you will be billed for the second payment, and I must have this payment before I can deliver the finished audit.  At the end of the second month, the finished audit will be delivered, along with a bill for the third and final payment.

The price and billing schedule for each audit is:

Social Media Strategy Audit – Price is $7,500.00.  You will be billed in three equal payments of $2,500.00.

Blog Strategy Audit – Price is $5,000.00.  You will be billed in three payments of $1,600.00, $1,700.00 and $1,700.00.

Now, the big change I am making to these services is that as of now, I am adding a guarantee to both of these audits.  Note that above it states that you will be billed for three payments, and that for each audit, you will receive the finished audit, along with a bill for the final payment.  When you receive the finished audit and if you are not satisfied with the audit, then you do not have to make the third and final payment.  I *only* want you to make that third and final payment if you are thrilled with the audit.

I often ask my close friends to give me advice on my work, and to be honest, when I told them that I was thinking of adding this guarantee to these audits, most of them did not think it was a good idea.  As they correctly pointed out, if the client is under no obligation to make the final payment, then why would they?  But I am ok with that.  Because I want companies to understand that I am willing to take that risk because I believe in the quality of the work I will produce for them.

So if your company is interested in either service, please click here for more information on the Social Media Strategy Audit, and click here for more information on the Blog Strategy Audit.  And if you have any additional questions about either audit, or about Live #Blogchat, please do email me.

PS: If you want your blog to be considered for one of the three review slots for this Sunday’s #Blogchat, please leave a comment on this post!

Beau wrote me an email asking the following: “Some time ago, you wrote a post called “40 Dead Simple Ways to Get More Comments on Your Blog.” This is a great post, and #27 in particular intrigues me: “Leave comments on other blogs.” You state: “The best way to grow your blog is to leave it.”

Could you share with me briefly just how this works? How is it that commenting on other blogs brings traffic back to one’s own blog? I suppose I could always leave my blog URL in a comment on someone else’s blog, but at a certain point this seems like spamming to me. My sense is that “URL-dropping” is not exactly what you had in mind here.”

Beau thanks for the question, and here is Beau’s blog.

Let me give you an example of this idea from 2005 when I started blogging. I was completely new to blogging, and I was writing on a group advertising blog Beyond Madison Avenue. Personally, I was hoping the blog could be a tool I could use to help me land a job. So I had a very vested interest in seeing it succeed.

Now I had no idea what blogging was about, but I knew I need a lot of visitors and a lot of comments. And BMA had neither. So I started reading all the supposed ‘best’ blogs, with the thinking being that I could learn from these other bloggers what the ‘secret’ to blogging success was, and then copy it for BMA.  So for the next few weeks, I started reading and studying the top blogs religiously. At the same time, I was writing every day for BMA, sometimes as many as 4 posts a day.  Nothing was happening.  No traffic, no comments, virtual tumbleweeds were rolling by and taunting me.

And I really wasn’t learning anything from the blogs I was reading, either. But as I was reading I was discovering new blogs that were interesting, and once in a while I’d even leave a comment on a post if I thought it was interesting. Over the next couple of weeks, I discovered more blogs, and left more comments on blog posts.

Then suddenly one day, BMA started getting comments.  At first it was only a couple, then every new post we wrote would start getting comments within an hour or two.  In a week we’d gone from a blog with zero comments from readers, to one where every new post was getting 5-10 comments!

Which was amazing, but I still had no idea what had prompted the change.  Then one day a reader left a comment and said that they were thanking me for the comment I had left on their blog, and wanted to come leave a comment on my blog.  That’s when it hit me: All these comments were coming from bloggers who wrote blogs that I had already commented on!  They had followed the link back in my comment to come check out my blog!

Beau thats when I learned one of the most fundamental truths of building engagement via social media: The more you participate, the more participation you get.  The more comments I left on other blogs, the more comments I got back on my blog. And it doesn’t work just for blogs, the more active I am on Twitter, the more tweets I get as well as followers.  And I don’t mean simply ‘name-dropping’ but actually participating in conversations and trying to build the discussion.

When you participate via social media, it raises your awareness.  It’s a way of getting your name out there, and getting people to notice you.

Now for increasing comments on your blog by leaving it, here would be my tips:

1 – Watch your referral traffic. If you don’t have a way to track your blog’s stats, there are many free options available. I use both SiteMeter and Google Analytics here.  But tracking your referral traffic will show you who is linking to your blog.  If you see from your referral traffic that another blogger has linked to your blog, go back to their blog and thank them.  Or even write them an email thanking them.  That simply encourages them to link to your blog again, plus comment on your blog.

2 – Leave comments on the blogs of readers that comment on your blog.  Same as above, this simply encourages them to leave more comments on your blog, because you are doing the same for them. It’s all about rewarding the type of behavior that you want to encourage.  This is one that I honestly don’t do as much as I should.

3 – Leave comments on blogs that are influential to your readers.  Think about where your readers are going now to get their information and connect with each other, and go there. By connecting with them there, leaving comments on posts, etc, you will get on their radars.  By participating in their space, that will encourage them to come check you out on your blog.

So those are some ideas on growing interaction on your blog, by leaving it. Again, the key to building interaction via social media is to participate. Great content will only help you if people know it exists, and that’s where interacting with others in THEIR space helps you build your own awareness.

So a couple of weeks ago I was blogging about how my search traffic seemed to be flat over the last few weeks.  I decided to do a 2-week experiment to try to see if posting frequency or posts with targeted keywords would have a bigger impact on increasing search traffic.  For the week 2 weeks ago, I posted 5 new posts during the week, but didn’t worry about targeting keywords in the post title or in the post itself.  Last week, I only posted 4 new posts, but I made more effort to target keywords and phrases in the post titles and the posts themselves.  Here’s a graph of search traffic over the life of this blog:

BTW, I promise my writing isn’t as terrible as it looks in this graph  As you can see, there’s been a nice steady increase in traffic till the middle of April, and has been fairly flat since then.  The last two weeks at the end are with the red lines under the graph.

So two weeks ago I posted 5 times and didn’t worry about targeting keywords or phrases. I had 767 visitors from search the week before, and it fell to 705 2 weeks ago.  Now since 2 weeks ago included Memorial Day, that affected the search traffic a bit, but didn’t account for all of the drop.

Last week, search traffic rebounded nicely, up to 804 visitors from search, which was the 4th best week here ever for search traffic. And that was with only 4 new posts, but I made an effort in each post to target keywords and phrases in the title and post.

So what can we learn from this incredibly unscientific experiment? It seems that targeted keywords and phrases do a better job of increasing search traffic than simply posting more does.  BTW in case you were wondering, overall traffic last week was up over 50% over the previous week.  So the fewer posts with targeted keywords and phrases resulted in more overall traffic as well.

Writing this from the Huntsville Airport, so I hope to see some of you at the B2B Forum this week!

Steve Woodruff started an interesting discussion at his place about the latest PR quagmire that Delta Airlines finds itself in.  Apparently, some soldiers brought 4 bags onto their flights home, and were charged for those 4th bags, as per Delta’s policy.  The soldiers were assuming that they would not have to pay for the 4th checked bag, and were upset, and made a video about it (that has since been removed).

Delta, to its credit, was quick to address the situation on its blog, and has now changed its policy to allow for a 4th free checked bag for soldiers flying in economy.  But given what a hot-button issue this is, you can see in the comments that hundreds of people are outraged and angered over this issue.

And honestly, I feel sorry for Delta, especially the people on Delta’s blogging and social media team. They handled this issue about as well as they could, but they are still getting absolutely raked over the coals in the comments to their post.

But as I read through that post and scanned the wall of angry comments, I was looking for the one thing that I never saw: Comments from Delta’s brand advocates.  There are a few comments from people that are sympathetic to Delta’s position, but they are quickly targeted by multiple commenters siding with the soldiers.

And to be fair to Delta, they can’t stay and respond to the individual commenters. That would literally take them all day, and would likely generate even more angry comments.  Because this is an issue where most people, rightly or wrongly, are going to assume that Delta is in the wrong. And if any Delta representative tries to explain their side of the situation, more angry comments will be the result.

Which is why Delta should have its advocates speaking on its behalf. But Delta can’t rely on its advocates, because it hasnt invested time in connecting with and empowering them.

For example, let’s say Zappos caught itself in a PR nightmare similar to the one Delta is in now.  If angry customers started attacking Zappos, how soon would it be before Zappos’ fans would come to the brand’s defense? Pretty darn soon, and my guess is the number of negative comments against Zappos would decrease as a result. In the Delta example, in the absence of Delta’s advocates, the volume of negative comments seems to be increasing.

So my advice to Delta, who I am sure is scratching their heads wondering what they could have done differently, is to start today connecting with your brand advocates. Find your most passionate customers, and embrace them. Then the next time you have a PR fight like this one on your hands, you won’t be going it alone.

PS: And Delta if you or any other company is wondering how in the hell you embrace and empower your advocates, here’s your roadmap.