I recently wrote this guest blog post for EditMe, a wiki where regular people build websites.

We’ve all been there: we’ve got a blog, a Twitter account, a Facebook page, you name it…..you’ve got traffic….. but no one’s giving you any love.  No “comments” love.  No “click” love.  No “Facebook Like” love.  No “Twitter Retweet” love.

Is it you?

Well, it is, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that your content is bad itself.  It may mean you haven’t given people a good enough call-to-action, a reason for them to do more than just read what you put out there and move on.  It doesn’t mean that they walk away dissatisfied, or unfulfilled.  In fact, you may very well have left a good impression on them.  But you could be doing more to get them to interact.

So, you ask, what are some ways I can make people want to *do* stuff with my content?  How can I get them to react to it, or even to share it? I’ve listed a few ways below, and would love to hear from you some of your success stories.

Way Number One: Question Them

Assuming that your content is actually good and offers value to your readers, and that you’ve distributed your content enough that it has eyes reading it, getting your audience to take that one step further and process your content increases the likelihood that they’ll want to react to it in some way.  What I’ve found to be an effective tactic – as a practitioner and as a reader – is asking a question.

Whether it’s in the middle of a blog post or at the end, or as part of a conversation on a social networking platform, a question forces your reader to pause and think about what’s being discussed.  Quite literally, the act of reading a question provokes your brain to actually ask it of itself, and therefore mull over answers. This is a much more active process than simply reading, which can sometimes be very passive as we skim, consume, and move on through the piles of content we see each day.

Additionally, asking a question invites your readers to a discussion, and shows them that you want to have that discussion, while also empowering them as capable and knowledgeable contributors to the discussion topic.

Read more at EditMe>>

Related articles by Zemanta

• 9 Ways to Use Social Media to Inspire Your Writing (socialmediaexaminer.com)
• The 5 NEW Rules Of Social Media Optimization (SMO) (rohitbhargava.com)

Today’s Guest Post is by Kristin Zajac, a social media marketing enthusiast and recent MBA graduate from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Find her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Feel like you spend as much time trying to “sell” your own organization on the value of participating in social media as you do actually harnessing value from Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook? You’re not alone.

How many of these objections sound familiar?

• “Twitter is just for posting personal updates that no one cares about. Why would our company want to participate in that?”
• “We want our customers coming to our website for information about us, not Facebook.”
• “What if a customer posts something negative about our company or product? We can’t let that happen.”

One of the biggest challenges for the social media marketer today is assuming the role of evangelist within his or her own company.  For those marketers who want to move forward with a social media marketing program, gaining buy-in from internal teams can be a frustrating and painful process. Try these tips to help accelerate acceptance.

Tip 1: Carefully consider the perspective of your audience.

Marketers, salespeople, lawyers, executives, etc. all have different career goals, and these goals influence how they perceive anything new and different in their company.  If a colleague feels that the company’s participation in social media threatens their ability to be successful in their job, they are going to resist it. Therefore, it’s critical that you consider why someone doesn’t want social media.

• Does the salesperson fear that their value will be eroded if customers can post questions online and any employee in the company can answer?
• Does the engineer worry that too much information about her product will be revealed publicly?
• Does the executive believe that the demographic of social media users is all wrong for your product line?

When you understand the source of the hesitation, you’re more likely to be able to address it effectively. Not only can you mitigate fears, you can also find unnoticed aspects of social media that may positively impact your colleague’s goals. For example, an executive concerned about the ROI of employees producing white papers may respond to the idea that content assets repurposed for a new medium may provide additional return.

If you don’t know what might be making a colleague hesitate – ask! Maybe the concern stems from a simple misunderstanding and can be easily cleared up. Or if it’s a bigger issue, it’s likely that others have the same misgiving and you’ll need to address it eventually anyway. Either way, you’ll show that you understand the important business issues and that you have the expertise to overcome them.

Tip 2: Speak the same language.

Be aware of key vocabulary used in the department of the person you’re talking to, and incorporate it into your conversation if appropriate. Try to avoid using a lot of marketing terminology that may be more familiar to you than to them.

When you’re talking to someone in sales, mention that social media generates leads that will help them reach their quota.  If it’s someone in finance, stress that adding social media marketing will add little to nothing to the budget.

At the same time, don’t use social media-specific  terms like hashtag or fan page — not only will novices not understand what you’re talking about, they may also feel defensive about their lack of knowledge and annoyed that you don’t understand where they are coming from (see Tip 1). If you need to reference a social media term, make sure to explain it.

Tip 3: Provide relevant examples of success.

One of the most powerful ways to convince skeptics of the value of social media is to give concrete success stories. Research your competitors’ efforts and make sure to point out any wins they have had, even if it’s as simple as their number of Facebook fans.

Anecdotal evidence works great too. For example, perhaps you’ve heard that a competitor closed a big sale with a client who came to them by finding the company’s blog. Relay those stories to colleagues early and often.

The more concrete examples you can give, the more you can open up a skeptic’s mind to the ways social media can be a fantastic tool — and less of a liability.

Tip 4: Reference or hire third party experts.

Sometimes an external expert in a space can bring credibility to a claim made by an employee when colleagues are skeptical.

Find and share an article highlighting the value of social media in a publication that your colleague respects. For example, if you’re trying to win over your CFO, scour the Wall Street Journal.

Or, consider bringing in a speaker who is an expert on social media marketing to explain the space and answer questions. This can take some of the onus off you to be able to respond to every potential issue.

Tip 5: Show that your customers are already on social media.

Provide evidence that your customers are already present on social media and talking about topics related to your industry. Gather screenshots of customer comments about your company, your competitors, or the pain that your products solve on various social networking platforms. Then show your colleagues. Ask: If our customers are already having these conversations online, shouldn’t we have a voice in the dialog?

Related articles by Zemanta

• 10 Tips to Help You Stay Focused in Social Media Marketing (onesocialmedia.com)
• Forget Strategy: How do you Scale the Social Media Strategists (newcommbiz.com)
• Six @ Six: Six Tips to Maximize Your Social Media Efforts (bulletproofblog.com)

Time for some more brain juice to get you going…..

Are Blog Comments Dead? (Justin Levy, 30 July) Increasingly bloggers are concerned that even though they know that their posts are being shared through other channels, that their communities still aren’t commenting on their posts.  It’s a completely understandable feeling.  You work hard at putting together a thought or position, flesh it out, find an engaging photo or video to help enhance your point and then publish it to the world……

The Ultimate Pairing: How to Leverage Social Media to Increase (Wine) Sales (The Buzz Bin, 4 August)  Imagine how the average wine drinking Joe feels. He just wants a nice spicy red to go with his hanger steak, and everywhere he turns, there is a different piece of advice, and in every wine shop, a thousand bottles to choose from. What’s a vino lover to do? In walks social media…..

Social Media Top 5: Five Years From Now, People Will Still be Making Know-Nothing Predictions (Doug Haslam, 5 August) Thoughts on what’s happening in the social media space, and what’s to come in the future.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Brain Zap: Minutes to blog success, non-profit content, getting heard, and social media monitoring (othersidegroup.com)

As many of you know, I put a good chunk of time into “labors of love,” and the Meta-Activism Project (MAP) is pretty near top of that list.  Because he’s influential in many fields, including that of social media, I thought it relevant to let you know that we’ve just got Clay Shirky on our Board for the organization.  I look forward to working with and learning from him…. <<Read Clay’s bio on the MAP site

Related articles by Zemanta

• Clay Shirky On The Internet as Methadone (observer.com)
• Clay Shirky talk on Cognitive Surplus (thepenguinblog.typepad.com)
• Does the Internet Make You Smarter? (Clay Shirky/Wall Street Journal) (techmeme.com)

I’ve been using Flipboard for about two weeks now.  It’s all the buzz so I thought I’d put out a few of my thoughts on it so far.

Do I like it?  Sure, it’s pretty.  Do I LOVE it?  Nope.  Keep reading….

What’s Flipboard? According to them, “It’s your personalized social reader.”  Wired describes it as “one of a growing category of iPad apps that build you a personal newspaper by grabbing content from your social networks. The difference with Flipboard is that it actually feels like picking up a magazine and flipping through it, but the super simple interface hides some powerful features.”

TWiT TV (Episode 258: It’s the New Sex Talk) had a discussion on the topic, much of it was on the legality of their content curating process – Aaron Strout and Jennifer Leggio also talked about this with Marshall Kirkpatrick on their Quick ‘n Dirty podcast (Episode 54: Robots Can be Your Friend) – it’s basically “mashup” style with how it brings you content.

So, if someone in your Twitter feed posts a link, you can view the actual link – graphics and all – in the App.

And what about the viewing? Beautiful. If you’re into aesthetically pleasing viewing, which is what the iPad is awesome at, you’ll love this.  It’s really (really!) slick.

However…..

I don’t want to get into the WAY Flipboard gets you content (really neat!) or the legal issues of it, or how it’ll effect the journalism industry (all interesting topics and great discussions of course).

One thing that came out of the TWiT TV conversation in quick passing really sums up what role I see Flipboard playing in my consumption.  I believe it was Cali who used the phrase “social viewing.”  This really hit home for me, and I couldn’t agree with her more on this.  I might only refine it to say “social content consumption.”

Because, here’s the thing.  Flipboard turns the act of reading content into a casual, social experience and it does that quite well.  You can flip through pretty links and photos (Leo said it was the “photographers dream”).

But what does this mean for serious reading?

I’m a huge content consumer.  My Google Reader has (admittedly) way too many feeds, but I love it.  They’re tailored to exactly what content I want to read, and that’s the first place I go to absorb info on a daily basis.

Once I get that targeted info, I explore what my social network is reading (Twitter links, Facebook posts, Google Buzz, etc).  I’ve gotten a lot of great recommendations on new content sources that I’ll add to my personal feed, but this part of the process is a distant second in terms of where I go to jam my brain.  We can argue whether that’s a good process or not later, but it’s my process.  I’ve perfected it, I’ve perfected what’s being thrown at me, it’s controllable, and I can plug forward.

This is exactly why Flipboard hasn’t floored me yet.  And it’s exactly why NewsRack has.  When it’s the actual content – the words, the information – that you’re after, simplicity wins out. Visualization versus readability.

Yes, I’m an incredibly visually stimulated person (I was really excited about Flipboard).  I LOVE design and good design makes be really happy.  But when it comes down to my behavior, it’s lacking.

I’d love to hear what other people had to say about it?  Does it fit your life?  Am I being close-minded?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Flipboard Drives User Crazy (stealthmode.com)
• iPad e-reading app review: Flipboard (teleread.com)
• FlipBoard Reviewed (technologizer.com)

It’s Monday.  You want to get off to a motivating start.  Here are a few things that popped into my RSS to get your juices flowing and hopefully jump start some action….

How to Create a Successful Business Blog in Minutes (HubSpot)  Fact: it is obscenely easy to set up a business blog today and begin driving new, qualified traffic to your site soon.  An explanation of just how dead simple it is to set up a blog for your business.

10 Blog Content Ideas for Non-Profits (Nonprofit Tech) Many nonprofits don’t consider blogging either because they think they need to blog everyday and that it would be too time consuming, or they have no idea what to blog about. Well… you don’t need to blog everyday (once a week minimum), and here are 10 blog content ideas to help get your creative writing impulses inspired.

What You Do When They Don’t Write About Your Story (Conversation Agent) Developing relationships takes time, and those of you who have worked in companies know that often there is precious little of it to plan as you’d like.  A few words of advice from a blogger.

10 Steps for Effective Social Media Monitoring (Mashable) Taking the first step to actually start monitoring can be daunting. And then what? How do you act on what you find when listening? How do you engage? To ensure that you are successful in your monitoring and measurement efforts, here are some definitive steps you should follow.

[This was originally posted on Today and Tomorrow, but I thought I'd repost it, as it's important to the Other Side Group and all of its colleagues in Boston.]

On Monday, Henry McCance wrote about why he moved his firm from Boston to Silicon Valley, and why Boston isn’t a good place to start a company.

Well, I found this to be crap, and sent it to a few locals in high places to see if they had a response. One of them was Doug Banks, Publisher of Mass High Tech, who wrote a wonderful rabble-rouser of a post on the MHT blog (you should definitely read the whole thing, there are a lot of good retorts).

I wrote a comment on the post, and I wanted to repost it here and break it down.

“Completely awesome retort. Glad I sent you the article as you’ve done a great job in countering the many points.

To add a few myself, I think it’s a pretty weak claim to say that you shouldn’t do business in a place because it doesn’t have name brands. As far as I’m concerned, probably half of Silicon Valley went to Silicon Valley simply because name brands were there, not necessarily because it was a better place to do business…..”

As I’ll allude to later, a lot of what McCance talked about was simply “I gotta be where the cool kids are.” The Googles, the Facebooks. I might argue that many of those made it out to Silicon Valley for the same reasons. Granted, they are actually the cool kids, but couldn’t it be that the reason is because Silicon Valley is a great place to start a business (it’d be silly to say otherwise) and not necessarily that Boston is a bad place. And Doug has some really great points about the reality of this claim as well – there a lot of intricacies to the Silicon Valley vs Boston landscape that aren’t so simple as “SV/Cali is bigger and better than Boston…” As an addition here (forgot this in the comments), California in general is actually a really tough place to do business in overall – employee insurance/taxes are atrocious, rent in at least San Fran and LA at least equals and in many cases well surpasses Boston and even NY….. I could go on, but will stop…..

“….I started right out of college in the start-up environment in Cambridge. To your point about MIT, in most cases, the first place MITers would go is right across the street to CIC (founded by MITers). It was like their second home. If they couldn’t get something thru the MIT tech tranfer office, they’d go next door, not across the country. And based on the success of CIC, I’d say it’s a pretty supportive environment to start a company in, and it just keeps growing.

From there, I also had my stint at places like Bose. In terms of encouraging innovation, it’s not as cutting edge as Google, but the stuff that goes on in that place, and the support Bose gives to research and “tinkering” is amazing (Dr Bose started the company based on the premise of trying to solve many of the worlds huge problems, including cold fusion. They have a car that can jump over a curb, which Dr Bose developed based solely on a physics graph that said to him “this is possible.”…”

In addition to Bose, Doug mentioned a LOAD of other rocking start-ups that started and stayed in the Boston area. Are they Google? No (well, actually, as Doug mentioned Google’s second largest “center” is in Boston…). But they’re powerful and successful companies (zipcar, Staples, Monster) and some of the newbies are poised to be big names (Carbonite, iRobot).

That reminds me, someone should do a tally of the companies that have also gotten sold for valuable price tags, because I would also consider those a success…..

“….I agree, there is some work to do, but there are plenty of organizations that not only realize this, but are pushing for progress. Orgs like Mass High Tech, Girls in Tech and Boston World Partnerships are actively pushing for more visibility on the benefits of doing business in Boston….”

And this is important. Doug points out several gaps we have, and the fact that we know we have them. This debate has gone on for so long, we would be silly not to be trying to fix every hole. As Managing Director of Girls in Tech Boston, we had several conversations about this issue internally and externally.

We’re all proud of Boston and the supportive entrepreneurship community that’s here, and we darn well know we have a lot of substantial, meaningful things to offer to any business that wants to be here.

“…..McCance’s argument seemed to be based a lot on PR issues…. Silicon Valley has the brand, Boston doesn’t. That’s no reason to claim that Boston is a bad place to do business though. It needs a few improvements in that area, and a good PR campaign… that’s all.”

This is where I think the bulk of the problem lies. It’s a PR issue. McCance really doesn’t give any more substantial argument as far as I’m concerned. Doug says, “Even [he] agrees there’s “no compelling reason” why Silicon Valley should get all the credit for consumer e-commerce companies. So if it’s a matter of perception, then what should we be doing to change that perception?”

And THAT’s the question we should all be answering. It’s not about whether Boston is a good place to have a company. It is. But what can we all do to change peoples’ views on it?

We’ve got to develop a solid PR strategy, and the organizations I listed above along with plenty of others can get the job done. There’s no point in just letting this argument be an argument, a we’re-better-than-you-are discussion, because that’s not constructive.

Doug called for solutions and progressive movements forward, and I’m calling for them as well.

I’m also calling for collaboration and partnerships to get the job done. We’ve got the people, we’ve got the brainpower, and we’ve got an awesome city, with awesome people in it.

So let’s do it.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Greylock Partners on Why You Shouldn’t Start a Company in… Boston (fastcompany.com)
• Thought Leadership moves to Silicon Valley from Boston (cambridgecluster.com)
• Innovation Events: a Tale of Two Coasts (vocecommunications.com)

Emotional Brand

I’ve been thinking a lot about branding lately.  It’s because there are a lot more elements we have to be thinking about in new marketing that we may not have had to think about in such a way or to such an extent before.

A few weeks ago it was on the Voice Brand.  Closely related is the idea of your Emotional Brand.

There’s always been an emotional component to your brand (or there should have been, at least).

But now it’s different than what it meant 15 years ago.  Then, it was a uni-directional connection, and generally the emotions were connected to how people felt about product or service performance or how your advertising campaign made them feel.  The emotions weren’t tied to the things we’re all talking about now: conversation, engagement.  All of those terms have different meanings in new marketing. 

Now you have a bi-directional relationship with your customer, the emotional connection to your brand is more than liking your products.  It goes beyond a one-way connection, and becomes a give-and-take relationship.

These emotions can work both ways for you.   Take two long-standing social media examples:

• Zappos. Mashable even said “your relationship IS your brand” when discussing Zappos.  Spot on. Zappos has been able to develop strong and positive relationships not only with existing customers, but with non-existing ones as well (many of whom I’d be willing to bet are now loyal Zappos users).
• Motrin.  Now, granted, you don’t want to get me started on the response by the actual mom’s in this situation, so we’ll leave that alone (I disagree with it, plainly put).  However, the social media response (or lack thereof) on the part of Motrin was at best weak, and at worst late and irritating for the angry crowd it needed to talk to.  What did that do? Increased the negative emotions even more.  This is where the response part of the brand wasn’t effective enough to mend the relationship.

A more recent example (still in play) is Domino’s Pizza Turnaround Campaign, which I think is working pretty darn well for them.  This is a case where the saw their relationship with customers declining for reasons unrelated to social media (basic quality) and they’ve launched a relationship management program that’s reinvigorating the emotions of their eaters (or non-eaters) in positive ways.

Get Emotional

The way you choose to handle the relationships with your audience  members will be a big determinate in how your brand is perceived, and the types of emotions they’ll have towards your brand. 

Related articles by Zemanta

• Sponsor Post: Understanding Your Visual and Voice Brands (readwriteweb.com)
• How to Create Brand Equity (customerthink.com)
• Customer Service Excellence – Lecture 3 (slideshare.net)

You can find Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change on Amazon now. My chapter is on the Digital Divide.

From Amazon:

Editorial Reviews

Review

Product Description

The media have recently been abuzz with cases of citizens around the world using digital technologies to push for social and political change from the use of Twitter to amplify protests in Iran and Moldova to the thousands of American nonprofits creating Facebook accounts in the hopes of luring supporters. These stories have been published, discussed, extolled, and derided, but the underlying mechanics of this practice of digital activism are little understood. This new field, its dynamics, practices, misconceptions, and possible futures are presented together for the first time in Digital Activism Decoded. Topics include: how to think about digital activism: the digital activism environment: infrastructure, social, political, and economic factors: digital activism practices: two research perspectives and the danger of destructive activism: digital activism s value: balancing optimism and pessimism: building the future of digital activism.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Chapter Excerpt: How Digital Activism Empowers Existing Elites (othersidegroup.com)
• The Internet And Politics In America And Iran (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)

Conversation
Response
Bi-Directional
Engage

We’ve heard them all.  Social media marketing requires us to think seriously about these aspects of our marketing campaigns.  You must engage in bi-directional conversation and respond to your audience and engage with them when they reach out to you.  With a focus on conversation and valuable content, brands literally must talk to their customers, both in private and in public.

These concepts are new anymore.  Are we taking them seriously enough? But WE’RE NOT TAKING THEM SERIOUSLY ENOUGH.

The Voice needs to become an integral and crucial part of your brand strategy. It is….your Voice Brand.

Yes, that’s capitalized for a reason.  It should be an” official” part of your brand.  A line item in your short list of brand elements.  Like your Logo or your Tagline.  Something you sit down and have brand meetings about.

How is your Voice expressed? Much of the time in new marketing it’s through content.  Valuable content.  That content is what starts the conversations we’re talking about, the ones you need.

How you communicate through this content – your Voice – is something that needs to be very well thought out, not just in terms of your social media strategy, but also in terms of your core branding strategy.

Aside from asking yourself how you want to “sound,” you have to also be asking yourself who you want to start conversations with, and what you want to have conversations about.  These are the same types of questions you’ve been asking about your brand for years – what types of people do you want be aware of your brand, and what do you want them to do with that awareness.

Where the traditional type of marketing, made up in large part of push marketing, relied on getting your logo or some other recognizable brand element in front of eyes (think billboard, magazine ad, TV commercial), new marketing suggests that the relationship people make with your brand is through conversation and engagement with the brand beyond simply a recognition.

I don’t mean to suggest that the traditional elements of your brand are less important.  That’s not the case at all.  But it’s kind of like trying to find a date in bar – your trendy shirt and fresh haircut only take you so far.  You’ve really got to nail the “Hi my name is” part to stand a chance.  And cheesy pick up lines can also only take you so far…. so you better put some thought and emotion into it.

Visualization vs Readability

In a recent Six Pixels of Separation Episode (Episode #207, Media Hacks #31, 20 June, minute 38:20 or so…..and you should definitely listen to the rest of the podcast as the whole conversation is full of good stuff), Mitch Joel talks about brands creating content for readability:

“…..in a lot of instances, most people didn’t design so that the consumers could consume the primary force of content, they’ve actually designed it so it would look good and attractive so that they could give it a level of credibility that might incite an advertiser to buy a banner ad, and I think that that is the real dichotomy of marketing….we’re trying to design really nice websites, and a lot of the time I look and I do say to myself, “Is this simple enough?” and part of the reason I think [Twist Image] gets accolades for the design of the Six Pixel blog is because the focus for me when looking at it has always been….please make the reading as easy and seamless for the consumer as possible so they can read it quickly and comment effectively and that it not be too complex….and what I find is that, all too often, as designers, we design with the complexity of the visualization in mind versus the simplicity of making it more readable….they are completely selfish …not embracing the reader’s need to get to the content in a fast, simple and clean way.”

This highlights a number of really important points about the concept of a Voice Brand.

• Again, it’s not just about how you LOOK.  You have to make sure that your content can be consumed easily and can be interacted with appropriately for it to make a real impression on your audience.  If you can do that and make it look nice, icing on the cake.
• If you’re trying to cater towards advertisers, you’re probably missing the point.  If you haven’t solved the problem of making your content easy to access, you won’t have an audience to woo advertisers with regardless.  Google knows this.  If they didn’t make their experience what it is for the users, it wouldn’t be nearly as valuable for the advertisers, and the way they do that is they cater almost 100% towards the needs of those users.
• It’s a constant revisiting of your content.  Mitch mentions that he continually tells himself that.  I’d bet he does it with close to every piece of content he puts out (yes, it’s probably at the point now where he doesn’t need to put a lot of effort into this thought process, but he still likely does it on some level).

Develop your Voice Brand for the New Marketing Landscape

Thinking about how marketing concepts are shifting doesn’t mean that the foundations of marketing don’t apply.  Your brand is still your brand, and it’s still incredibly important.  But it’s taking a new form, and requiring new elements to be effective.  Wherever and however you’re reaching your audience means that brand elements  are and should be present, so be sure you’re thinking about the right ones.

Don’t miss the opportunity to create a strong brand that fits today’s marketplace.