Scrappy Marketing Solutions Blog

@AngiePedersen Marketing Twitter Roundup - Week of 11/23/08

Here are some highlights from the marketing-related "tweets" I posted to Twitter this past week.

• @KimDushinski is hosting a free teleseminar next week: "7 Ways to Build Your Business with Mobile Marketing"


• Here's an add'l idea: create same info product in multiple mediums - ebook, hard copy, mp3 AND video. To give customers a choice. [posted in response to @LindaLocke 's post on business idea for stay-at-home moms]


• Good ? from @chrisbrogan: How do you refresh your media making? What ways are you challenging yourself in the coming months?


• Via @BianaBabinsky: Take A Few Minutes And Thank A Few People Who Help You With Your Biz. Here is how: http://tinyurl.com/6jptjp


• Via @TopSEOBlogs- Three Ways to Kick Up Your Local Marketing


• Web marketing tip: use <alt> tags to describe images for search engine juice. Here's a How To:  netmechanics.com


• Photoshop template to customize your Twitter profile page

Blog Marketing: What Should I Blog About?

Yesterday I posted a blog marketing tip to my Twitter account: The Scrappy Marketer: Blog Marketing Tip:

Blog Marketing Tip: Use target keywords in your subject lines to draw in both search engines AND your intended audience.

A follower responded: "What should I blog about?"

Good question!  The answer depends on your goals for blogging.

Whether your blog is personal or professional, consider your audience when choosing blog topics.  What would they like to hear about from you?  What questions have they asked you?  What would you like to hear about from them?  As I said in countless Book of Me classes, if you want to know something about somebody else, chances are good someone else would like to know that something about you.

If you blog for personal reasons, or about more personal topics, then pretty much any blog topic is fair game. Just keep in mind that whatever you publish on the Internet is out there pretty much forever.  You may delete a post, but there's always a chance someone grabbed a screenshot or copied and pasted the text, and your wild weekend or frustrated rant could come back and haunt you later.   Prospective employers or recruiters can be particularly adept at finding just exactly what you wish had stayed hidden.

9 possible personal blog topics:

• Upcoming or recent trips
• Current reading or playlist
• Book or product reviews
• Holiday wishlist
• Holiday traditions
• Personal essays - memories or daily life commentary
• Current craft or DIY projects
• Local social scene or things to do
• sharing recent photos

If you blog for professional or business purposes, you'll be more effective if you have a goal in mind.

Top Blog Marketing Tip #1: As mentioned above, determine your target audience. This will help guide your topics and tone. A goal to determine here is who you want to attract to your blog, and what topics would attract them most.

Top Blog Marketing Tip #2: determine your marketing goal(s) for your blog – entice people into a brick & mortar store? Drive traffic to your main website? Increase class/seminar sign-ups? Determine a marketing goal for each post and let that goal guide your writing.

14 Potential topics for a local retailer:

• Upcoming sales and promotions
• Newly arrived stock
• Status of Backorders
• New classes schedules available
• Class changes: supply list additions, postponements, and cancellations
• Event announcements: make & takes, shop hops, retreat registration, etc.
• Tips for using specific products
• Project ideas and examples
• Top Ten gift-giving ideas
• Trade show reports and industry news
• Frequently Asked Questions – about your business or your field of knowledge in general
• Supply organization tips
• Product reviews
• Customer testimonials

So, to answer the question, "What should I blog about?", pinpoint the three W's:

• WHY you're blogging (personal reasons or marketing goals)
• WHO you're blogging for (or hope to blog for)
• WHAT you want to communicate (emotions, ideas, resources, expertise, etc).

If you set that foundation first, your blogging experience (AND results) will be much more satisfying.

P.S. Follow me on Twitter for more blog marketing ideas!

So, Convince Me to Tweet

So, this Twitter thing.  I know many people who are just addicted to it, "tweeting" their way through the day - posting their own micro-blog posts (140 characters or less, also known as a "tweet"), and following other people's tweets.  I know people are making all sorts of professional connections that they wouldn't ordinarily be able to make, either in person or via email.  I know that you can get up-to-the-minute news on story leads, requests for pitches, and other late-breaking announcements.  I know you can feel like you've just attended a conference or teleseminar, just by reading the tagged "tweets".

And normally I'm the one pointing out the value of social media/networking tools like this, pointing out how they can help establish and spread your brand, and how they can help you connect with other like-minded people, and your target audience.

But I'll be honest - the thought of Twitter is overwhelming to me.  Make blogging easier (heck,*anyone* can come up with 140 characters or less to say!), and suddenly people have *volumes* of quick things they want to share.  That's the biggest reason I haven't joined up yet - I just have the impression that if I did, I would be inundated with an avalanche of little updates - just more content I'd have to sift through later.  I can barely keep up with my email and blog reader subscriptions as it is, thank you.

And the whole internal language of it is mildly annoying, as an outsider.  I've clicked on to people's Twitter feeds, but I can't read through even a half dozen tweets before I'm stymied by an "@" symbol or hash mark, and I have to filter through my brain to access some article I read months ago that defined the Twitter shorthand.  And I figure, if I have to work that hard to 'translate' the tweets, it's not worth my time.

But maybe I'm missing something.  Maybe Twitter could make the "sifting" through content easier.  Maybe I'm missing out on content that is only shared on Twitter.  Maybe I'm missing out on that one big connection that could be my "big break".  Maybe it's not the huge time-suck I assume it to be.  Anyone care to convince me?  Please leave a comment and we'll see where the conversation takes us.

EDITED TO ADD: Ok, ok - so it's worth trying out.  Follow me at http://twitter.com/AngiePedersen