Journal

Blog Action Day and Social Media – The Perfect Combination

When I sat down to write this post for Blog Action Day 2008, I’ll be honest – I wasn’t sure what exactly I was going to say. Don’t get me wrong – I knew the reasons why I was participating and writing, and I knew roughly what I wanted to say. It was just… how could I convey a message against poverty from a social media viewpoint? And then it hit me – Blog Action Day 2008 and social media are intertwined because we’re all in this together.

I don’t want that comment to come across as glib – that is the last thing I would ever do, or want to be thought as. When I say we’re all in this together, I mean that the social media medium is probably the ideal partner to the changes and issues that Blog Action Day 2008 is having us all discuss.

(For anyone who hasn’t heard about Blog Action Day 2008, it’s a special one-day event for bloggers around the world to stand up and speak out against world poverty).

Apart from the obvious connection of writing a blog post, there is so much more that social media can offer to begin the changes we need to put in place to make a difference. The figures alone from Blog Action Day 2008’s website bear testament to this – 10,723 blog owners (at time of writing this) writing posts on a single subject, with an expected readership of just over 11.5 million people.

But we shouldn’t stop there. There is so much more we can all do, and as a social media advocate there’s a lot that I feel our particular medium can do as well. One of the great things about social media is it gives everyone with an Internet connection a voice – and that’s a pretty powerful thing. If you want an example of how powerful, just look at how serious the US election candidates are taking social media and networking.

So what can we do with this voice, this collection of opinions and influence? The first thing to do is make sure that Blog Action Day (and the similarly themed Bloggers Unite initiative next month) isn’t just an annual event. We need to keep people informed as much as we can throughout the year; we need to make the people that have the power to make a change hear enough of us to do so.

For my part, this is what I will do from today:

For every unique comment received on this post and every post between now and the end of the year, I will donate $0.10 to the Make Poverty History fund. Then, each year end from today, I will continue to donate $0.10 for every unique comment left.

With every new project I take on at my PR agency, I will donate 5% of my fee to the fund.

I will continue to make posts to keep awareness of poverty, its cause and effects via my blog and beyond

I have a project that I have in mind regarding this subject, and will share with you all shortly and ask for support.

This is my personal donation to Blog Action Day 2008 and beyond. At the end of each year, I will let you know how much was donated. Yet as I said, we’re all in this together. Social media brings everyone together, so let’s open up our arms and bring in the poverty-stricken of the world into our network.

For your part, it’s entirely up to you what you wish to contribute. It may be a donation to a worthy cause like Make Poverty History. It may be that you offer pledges yourself for the comments on your blog. It may be something as simple as getting two cookies at the coffee shop and giving one to the next homeless person you see. After all, poverty affects each and every country.

Whatever you do, make sure you do something. It’s taken Blog Action Day 2008 to open up a lot of people’s eyes to what’s going on in the world. Let’s make sure that we never have to discuss poverty again, unless it’s with our politicians. In the meantime, let’s be grateful for programs like Blog Action Day 2008 and make our voices heard.

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Jason Calacanis and the Contradiction of What Defines Great

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a huge fan of Jason Calacanis. The entrepreneurial CEO of Mahalo, and the co-founder of Weblogs, Inc and TechCrunch50, Calacanis is the epitome of self-promotion and flag-waving. However, that’s not to say it’s wrong – it’s just an approach I’ve never favored.

Additionally, there’s no doubting that Calacanis has a never-say-die attitude that, while potentially grating, is better than the fatalistic approach that too many people take when faced with any kind of crisis. However, a recent jobs posting for his company Mahalo seems to contradict everything he advises his readers.

Posted on the Fresno area job board of Craigslist, this is the description for positions available at Mahalo:

Mahalo.com seeks freelance remote writers to build search results pages on breaking news, politics and entertainment topics. Candidates must be excellent writers capable of creating perfect, concise copy at a fast pace. Familiarity with online research, journalism and wiki markup language strongly recommended. Shifts are flexible, ability to work weekends/nights a plus. Pay: $10 – $12 / hour. Please attach your resume and writing samples in an email with subject line: “Remote Guide Application” to evanb@mahalo.com.

While any company hiring in these times of uncertainty should be applauded, the job posting raises other questions, due to the views Calacanis shared with his email subscribers in a recent newsletter (also available at his website). When talking about how to improve your company’s success, Calacanis writes:

3. Firing the average people: Again, it?s totally politically incorrect, but I highly recommend firing anyone who is good or average. Startups are an Olympic sport and every slot on your team is critical. You wouldn?t put a ?good? swimmer in a relay, would you? Don?t have one in your startup. Fire the good and replace them with the great.

If indeed the right thing to do is fire anyone that’s doing a good job at a company (something I’m against – I tend to find the good workers are the ones that give the superstars the solid platform from which to work), then the economic crisis must be really hitting home. I can’t think of how else Mahalo will attract superstars with an hourly pay rate that may be able to buy a movie ticket.

Unless it’s an example of another piece of Calacanis’s advice: “Cut spending everywhere you can.”

Social Media is Social – So Why Closed Comments?

Take a look at the phrase “social media” – what would your response be if you were asked its literal meaning?

The most obvious answer would be media that is social – whether that’s participating in an online group, sharing your views on a topic or leaving a comment on a blog, offering your opinion and insight. So why do so many proponents of social media come across as anything but social?

I’m mainly talking about blogs that either have closed comments, or require you to register with the site to leave a comment. Maybe it’s just me, but personally I feel that takes away the whole social aspect of social media.

My take on social media is that it’s a combination of different tools and communities, all coming together to offer an invaluable and co-operative journey with online friends. Even business social media is more about how businesses can reach their customers effectively and pro-actively, therefore building a loyal online database that ensures the company’s growth and sustainability.

So why potentially ruin this new world by sticking with the old cliquish approach of invite-only commenting?

I know that it’s down to personal choice as to whether you allow comments on your blog or not – after all, one of the negative sides of the blogosphere (at least in the early days) has been the puerile comments that are often left.

(Although thanks to the likes of BackType, the quality of blog comments should hopefully improve to a consistent level of maturity along the lines of those found on the leading social media blogs).

But isn’t this what comment filters are for? Having the option to approve all comment posts before publication eliminates (or at the very least, greatly reduces) playground-level comments.

Perhaps the blogs that have closed comments or require membership to post a response do so in the belief that it helps build their own specific community. This seems plausible, since the majority of blogs that I’ve come across with closed or member comments only do seem to be of the business variety.

I can’t help but feel that they’re missing out, though. Sure, a members-only comment option may encourage a number of people to sign up so that they can join in the discussion. Yet at the same time, you can pretty much guarantee this is a far smaller number than the amount of commentators you’d get with an open comment policy.

And if you don’t know what your readers are really thinking, aren’t you missing the whole point of building your brand and voice through the social media medium? Doesn’t seem like good business to me…

What do you think? Does it matter if comments are closed? Do you feel the need to share your opinion on something you’ve just read, or are you more interested in what’s being said as opposed to what you want to say? I’d be interested on your views.

Why High Profile Bloggers and Social Media Consultants Will Survive the Economic Downturn

There’s been a lot said recently about blogging, and in particular high profile bloggers and social media consultants. A recent article by leading technology blog ReadWriteWeb looked at how much the top bloggers and blogging consultants were earning, while Mich over at Social Media and the CIA broke it down into three easy chunks of average earnings.

What’s interesting about the second piece is that Mich raises the question whether the “consultant bloggers” who make the top tier earnings could soon be extinct, due to the current economic climate. While it’s certainly a valid point, I don’t think there is a worry that outsourced consultants are heading toward extinction.

Many of the most successful companies know the value of an outsourced or freelance consultant, both from a knowledge and cost-effective point of view. Consultants can look at a business’s approach from an unbiased angle and therefore without the blinkered view that someone that’s put sweat and blood into the company would naturally have.

This ensures that any weak points that may have been glossed over can be addressed, in turn strengthening the company and helping it toward future success and growth. Yes, consultancy fees can be high, but the rewards are more than worth it.

Outsourcing also offers a proven way to keep costs down. While there may be the initial cost of hiring the consultant in the first place, this is only for a small amount of time – look at the problem, make suggestions, and move on. Compare this to continuing to make costly errors due to a biased or unqualified approach.

Nowhere is this more true than in the burgeoning social media scene. Businesses are slowly but surely becoming aware that they need a social media presence to keep up with (or stay ahead of) their competitors. Having a poorly thought-out social media strategy can be worse than not having one at all.

This is where social media consultants will continue to succeed and offer a valuable service. The very nature of social media means that today’s buzz can be tomorrow’s roadkill – having someone on your team that understands the medium and works with it is a necessity. Just because Jack in accounts has a Facebook profile does not mean he’s a social media expert.

Of course, social media is maturing and there will be some applications and sites that simply disappear. You could day that once the medium reaches its zenith, there’ll be no more need for the guys who are currently leading the social media consultancy field. However, the strength of leaders in fields is that they can adapt and move with the flow.

When social media reaches its peak – which it is sure to do – there will be a new form of interactive medium for everyone to get to grips with, both personally and professionally. The guys that are heading social media now will more than likely be the guys at the forefront of whatever’s next. This is where their worth will come in, and keep them from becoming extinct.

Nobody wants to see people lose their jobs at any time – unfortunately it’s a sad and simple fact that this will happen in the current climate. The forward-thinking businesses will see that continuing to use an outsourced consultant can help them keep the damage down to a minimum, while advising on how to start the path back to profitability and re-employment.

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Today’s World and the Importance of Brand You

If someone were to ask you what your brand is, how would you answer them? Would it be your slogan or tag-line? Your logo? Perhaps it’d be your product or service? Then again, maybe it’s your business’s direction. If the question doesn’t give you an immediate answer, don’t worry – you’re not alone.

In today’s business world, particularly with the proliferation of Web 2.0 resources for marketing and promoting your company/name/product, it’s becoming even more blurry to define what exactly a brand is.

One thing that is definable, however, is that if you do have an effective and immediately recognizable brand, your business will be better positioned to succeed over your competitors. So how do you build your brand today?

Build Your Experience

If your brand is defined by who you are and what you offer, then the experience you have is going to be crucial at backing up your brand claims. After all, why should a business entrust you with building their brand if your own isn’t all that impressive? On the flip side, make sure your experience is in the field relevant to the brand you wish yourself or your company to be known for.

Self-Promotion is the Way Forward

Although you may feel that self-promotion is akin to egomania, how else are you going to get your brand known? Sure, if you have a client or two that mentions your services to a professional colleague or business partner, that’s the best kind of promotion you can have. Yet as much as we’d like to think our clients talk about us even in their sleep, that’s not always a realistic view.

Instead, start pushing your name out there. However, make sure you keep on the right side of self-promotion – after all, no-one likes a show-off. Some excellent ways of self-promotion include:

Setting up your own domain name (especially now that .me is available)
Have an online as well as offline resume
Set up a blog to share your views on the topic(s) you wish to be associated with
Use web applications like MeeID to show short snippets of information about you

The importance of using these types of self-promotion can’t be stated enough. Google makes it incredibly easy for information on companies and individuals to be found – if your brand doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of an online search by a potential client, you may as well kiss goodbye to any chance of success.

Offer Your Expertise

Similar to building your experience, becoming an expert in your niche (and sharing that expertise) is a proven way to build your brand – just look at Chris Brogan for a good example. After all, what could be better than having someone immediately thinking of you as “the go to guy” when it comes to a certain area of help or expertise being needed? Write free articles or white papers; offer to speak at local conferences or meetings; offer to write a regular column in your local newspaper. All of these methods will steadily help identify you as someone to come to, either from a business or professional point of view.

It’s All in the Relationships

One of the best and most effective methods of building your brand is via your relationships. As I mentioned when speaking about self-promotion, word-of-mouth is still the best form of promotion around. Therefore, the more contacts you have and networks you belong to, the more chance there is of being talked about.

When you meet someone and become contacts with each other, maintain that relationship. Keep in touch and ask how they’re doing, as well as offering tidbits of your latest news and successes. By looking after each relationship, you’re more likely to be recommended to other people than someone who just contacts someone when you need something.

Of course, building your brand is just half the battle. Keeping it is just as difficult – there will always be contemporaries and business competitors after the same target audience as you. This is why it’s so important to continuously strive to improve and strengthen your brand at every opportunity. Look after your contacts; look after your clients; increase your knowledge and never stop learning.

In answer to the original question, your brand is quite simply you. Make sure you look after it.