Putting Specialized Search Into Action

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In my last issue , I introduced two useful blog search engines. Now let’s put them to use on our test case: a Quebec resort. You’ll find that these resources do a pretty good job of scoping out possible influencers, but they also demonstrate that the search engines alone aren’t enough.

We start at Technorati, where we go to advanced search and type Canada resort into the search bar. We then specify that we only want blogs that the authors have identified as being about travel. We get a list of “44 results for canada AND resort in blogs tagged travel.”

We see that the top results are all from a site called TravelPod, which describes itself as “The Web’s Original Travel Blog.” Going to the home page of this rich site, we type Quebec into the search box. Our top result is a traveler named “Cobi” who has posted more than 100 entries and whom the site identifies as a “Top pick.” We also see that 39 of those entries are about a Canadian trip. Even though Cobi lives in Great Britain, she could be a good candidate for a repeat visit. We bookmark her profile page, where we can send her a message later.

Our search yields another top pick named “kevandsian” who has traveled to over 21% of the world and logged over 190,000 views from visitors. We also bookmark this traveler’s profile.

Returning to Technorati, we see that the second page of search results lists Jaunted, The Pop Culture Travel Guide. Technorati assigns it an authority of 670, which is very high. This site has many contributors and there are quite a few articles about Québec, so we hunt for people who have written a lot about the topic. One of them is Alex Robertson, who describes himself as “Senior Features Editor at EuroCheapo.com, as well as a freelance travel writer.” There’s a link to EuroCheapo.com. A Google search on alex robertson site:eurocheapo.com takes us directly to a staff listing and an e-mail address for Alex.

Not all our searches are as successful. Ask.com points us to AndrewLog, a blog written by a Canadian which has several posts about travel. But how influential is Andrew? If we enter the blog’s URL into Technorati, we find no links and the link: weblog.andrewcorp.com command in Google turns up just five. This blogger probably isn’t a good target for us.

Back at Ask, though, we stumble across SmartCanucks.ca, a Canadian site that features deals and discounts for Canadian consumers, including travelers. There’s a page of editor profiles here, too. A Google link: search turns up 113 citations. That isn’t bad. It’s probably worth offering some kind of coupon or other incentive.

As you can see, there’s nothing fast or easy about identifying influencers. Even though a clutch of services has emerged to handle some of the dirty work, it’s still up to human beings to assess whether an influencer deserves attention.

Our task doesn’t begin and end with search, though. There are elements on each site that may lead us to other influencers. Blogrolls, for example, are links to sites that bloggers find useful. This can be a quick way to discover new resources. You should also look at the profiles of the authors themselves. Frequently they list other sites to which they contribute, and you can often find other enthusiasts there.

That takes care of blog search, but there’s a whole new world of social networks that still need to be mined. Next week, we’ll continue the hunt through a few of those.

Use Specialized Search to Find Influencers that Other Engines Miss

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Search engines do an excellent job of mining the Web as a whole, but if you want to focus on social media, you need to tap into one of the specialized search engines mentioned in the first issue of this newsletter series. You can find all the back issues here.

For blogs, the two most popular engines are Technorati and BlogPulse.You can perform searches with these sites the same way you would with Google or Yahoo, but the results will look very different.For one thing, both sites make an effort to index only social media sources, which they do with reasonable success. Both also take a stab at assessing the authority level of the blogs that they index.

Authority figures

Technorati does this with an authority ranking based upon the number of blogs linking to a web site in the last six months.There’s also a ranking metric that assesses the relative authority of a blog relative to all of the two million-plus blogs in Technorati’s database.

BlogPulse links to a profile page that lists a blogger’s recent activity, links from other blogs, posting activity and other bloggers that have similar interests.You can also track conversation threads for posts that generate a lot of activity.BlogPulse’s “Neighborhood” feature is one of its most interesting services.It attempts to identify authors who have similar interests based upon the words they use and where they link.Click the “Tools Overview” link to learn about these distinctive features.

Technorati indexes many more blogs then BlogPulse and includes photo and video results.Many bloggers also register themselves on Technorati and provide profiles and photos (BlogPulse doesn’t have this capability).This makes it easier to put a name with a face, which is useful information to have at hand when making contact with an influencer.

Technorati also offers the option of viewing search results by authority level. Use this option to screen out spam and occasionally updated blogs. This can save you time. Going back to our example of the Quebec resort looking for travel-related influencers, we search on Quebec travel and find over 10,000 mentions on sites that Technorati says have “any authority.” However, there are less than 4,000 results on sites that are classified as having “a lot of authority.” Both services also offer the option of tracking mentions over time, which is useful in identifying topics that generate swirls of activity.

Tags add human element

Many blog search engines also track tags, which are keywords that authors associate with their content. Tags are useful to marketers because they are a sort of human-powered description engine. This can greatly narrow the list of results. For example, searching on Québec travel in Technorati delivers nearly 4,000 results. However, searching on Québec travel in blogs that describe themselves as being about travel turns up just 111 results. We’ll take a closer look at tags in a future issue.

As noted in the first article in this series, Technorati and BlogPulse aren’t your only options. There are dozens of blog-specific search engines that each have unique features. Subscriber Ed Vielmetti just introduced a new one to me this week, in fact. BoardReader indexes only message boards and discussion groups, which other search engines sometimes miss. Using Boardreader, I actually found a review of my book that I had never seen before!
Why not make it a goal to learn one new search engine every week? It won’t be a big time investment, and you’ll be amazed at the capabilities you’ll unlock.

Smart Searching Saves Time and Frustration

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In the last issue I talked about choosing a search engine to help you monitor online conversations. You choice of search engines doesn’t matter much if you don’t ask the right questions, and here’s where it pays to know the advanced options that are available to you and how to be creative with search terms.

Let’s continue to assume that you’re marketing a resort destination in Quebec, Canada. Of course, you’ll want to start by searching for your own resort in the various engines I’ve outlined. Then you’ll probably want to find people who are talking about your industry but who perhaps aren’t familiar with your business. They can help build awareness.

Think like a customer. Experiment with combinations of words that describe not only the destination but also what people expect to do there. For example, Québec resorts fishing, Québec resorts skiing, Québec lodging winter, Québec luxury hotel, Québec resorts recommended and Quebec hotel best all deliver different result sets. Substituting Canada for Quebec will also give you different results.

One powerful timesaver is to narrow your results using quotations. This will deliver pages that have words in the exact sequence that you specify between the quotation marks. This can make a huge difference in the size of the results domain. For example, “best Quebec hotels” returns only seven results on Google while best Quebec hotels returns nearly 2.3 million! You can also combine quoted and unquoted search terms in interesting ways: Quebec luxury hotel and Quebec “luxury hotel” actually return somewhat different results, with the latter query identifying specific hotels on the first results page that don’t show up from the first query.

Use Advanced Search

Most search engines allow you to narrow your search using quotes. However, not all do. Use the advanced search page in that case. You can also use advanced search to narrow your query terms. For example, you can specify that search results may not contain the word Montreal. Advanced search is also where you can specify whether words appear in the title, text, page name or other locations. This is another way of winnowing down your result set to a more manageable number. For example, it’s a safe bet that a page that mentions Quebec luxury hotels in the headline is going to be more specific to that topic than one that doesn’t.

You can even use advanced search to specify results for a single site. This is useful in assessing influence because it quickly shows you the level of activity about a particular topic on any site. For example, the query “quebec luxury” site:tripadvisor.com delivers a small number of articles from the TripAdvisor.com site that specifically mention the keywords. This filtering is useful if you discovered a site that seems relevant to your area of interest and want to find out how active it’s been.

Another useful filter is the “link:” command. This quickly shows you a list of all other pages linking to a site or page you specify. It’s a quick way of assessing influence. For example, if you want to find out the popularity of The Informed Traveler blog, you’d type link:traveler.fivestaralliance.com and immediately learn that 649 pages link to this site. You could visit a sampling of those pages to see how valid those links are.

That takes care of the general-purpose search engines, but did you know there are sites that search only blogs and social networks? In the next installment, we’ll take a look at those.

Use Online Tools To Find Influencers

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One of the most common questions I hear is how to identify social media influencers. In particular, people want to figure out who are the most important sources of influence in a given market. So over the next few issues, I’ll outline some tactics you can use to do this.

These are strategies that work for me, but they are by no means the only ones you can use. Please let me know what works for you by posting your comments on this article’s permanent page. I’ll include your recommendations in the conversation as we go along.

For the purposes of demonstration, let’s assume that you’re marketing a resort destination in Quebec, Canada. You need to identify people who are interested in Canadian travel and who have an audience of regular readers or viewers. These people may turn up several different venues, including blogs, video- or photo-sharing sites and social networks like Facebook. Let’s start with the bloggers, and specifically with blog search.

Advanced search is your friend

Most people go to Google when they want to find something on the Internet, but there are plenty of other options to consider. In addition, there are capabilities buried within Google and other search engines that most people don’t know about. These can save you lots of time. For example, you can cut down the time you spend waiting for results pages to load simply by registering with a search engine and specifying in your preferences that you want to display 50 or 100 results per page instead of 10.

Don’t forget about the vast universe of search engines that aren’t Google. Wikipedia has a pretty good list of these. One of my favorites is Dogpile, which is a meta search engine. Meta search aggregates results from multiple search engines. Many search engines use Google, Ask, MSN or Yahoo! as their core technology, adding value on top. The results you get from these engines won’t differ appreciably from those of their technology providers, but the added features can be useful.

You should also know about the power of advanced search. Most search engines have an option to specify all kinds of search conditions and results options. Google’s advanced search page, for example, lets you specify sites that originate in a particular region or pages that were first found within the past day, week, month and so on.

This latter capability is particularly useful because you often want to strike while the iron is hot. If you can identify someone who is writing frequently about a topic, chances are that person or organization will be more interested in hearing from you.

There are gems buried in other search engines, too. Excite advanced search, for example, lets you specify a date range for when a Web page first appeared. Yahoo has Search Assist, which suggests alternative search terms that might get you closer to what you’re looking for. Ask.com has a similar feature and can also give you thumbnail previews right in the search results.

For mining the blogosphere, the options expand. There are dozens of blog-specific search engines (you can find a good list here), but the most popular ones are Technorati, Google Blog Search, IceRocket, Blogdigger, Blogpulse and Bloglines. Zuula is a new meta search engine that just does blog search.

These alternative engines each have unique features. Blogdigger, for example, can organize results by date and has an option to find only multimedia results like video and podcasts. IceRocket searches MySpace.com. Opinmind has a “Sentimeter” that calculates a rating baseded upon the relative number of positive and negative opinions it finds. It’s limited, but can be useful if you have a big brand.

So we’re at the end of our first chapter and we haven’t even entered a search term yet! We’ll get to that next week. In the meantime, please post your own suggestions at this article’s permanent address here.

Innovation Flourishes When You Give Up Control

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I recently attended a fascinating presentation by George Faulkner, Advanced Communications Professional at IBM and de facto leader of the company’s internal podcasting initiative. George Faulkner, IBMPodcasting has succeeded within IBM largely because the workforce is so distributed; some 40% of IBM’s 400,000 employees work primarily outside of an office. The initiative was launched much more recently than the company’s blogging campaign, but it has raced ahead of blogs in popularity. Podcasts are now second only to wikis as a tool for internal communications.

IBM’s internal podcast program has more than 100,000 unique members and 12,000 files. The medium’s popularity has grown despite some rather onerous regulatory requirements. For example, IBM must transcribe the contents of any executive interview. No matter: Thanks to individual initiative and a corporate hands-off policy, it’s the employees who are spreading the good word.

One of the first successful podcasts at IBM had no ROI at all. It was a battle of the bands, featuring groups composed of IBM employees. The show ran for 35 weeks and IBMers lobbied for an opportunity to be featured. “That was the moment I realized this wasn’t about knowledge-sharing; it was about community-building,” said Faulkner, who produced the program.

IBM’s story has some important insights about how new technology can be effectively spread throughout an organization. In this case, the company never demanded that its employees use podcasting. Instead, officials sanctioned the project and simply allowed anyone who was interested to start playing.

It’s the “playing” part of the equation that’s so important. Many of the most productive technology innovations of the last 20 years have come about because business professionals were allowed to experiment, even if their activities didn’t have any apparent business benefit. The popularity of the Internet itself came about in large part because executives saw their kids playing with AOL and recognized applications to the business.

This phenomenon is happening right now with social media inside many organizations. Employees use the tools to share their individual interests and areas of expertise. Corporate marketers watch and cherry-pick the best ideas to promote to the outside world. Once executives give up on the idea that they have the monopoly on innovation, innovation truly flourishes. That’s when we find the business value.

Faulkner cited the example of one executive who used to hold a weekly conference call with 500 people spread across the globe. A live call of that scale is simply impractical, and no-shows were a problem. So the exec switched from a phone conference to a weekly podcast. The move doubled listenership. Now road warriors and people in distant time zones can tune in at their leisure.

IBM now routinely podcasts news for investors and periodically uses the medium to showcase customers and executive perspectives on developing trends. Many of the sessions from the 2007 Lotusphere conference are available as podcasts.

For businesses that are still treading carefully with social media, these internal experiments can be a great way to get the ball rolling.

Click here to read George Faulkner’s prepared remarks.

Three More Business Blogging Options

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Let’s look at three other emerging approaches to business blogging:

Executive blog – A company that wants to showcase the talent of its management team can handpick a number of senior managers and set up their own personal spaces on a company website. Good examples of this are PriceWaterhouseCoopers UK, Hewlett-Packard (which is greatly expanding its blog presence) and the public relations firm Edelman. The trick here is to make sure that the executives have the will and time to write regularly. These are busy people, and it’s easy for early enthusiasm to give way to scheduling reality. It’s usually a good idea to choose topics over people. That’s because it’s likely that channel relationships, for example, are more critical for you to publicize than the executive who oversees them. Also, turnover may play havoc with your carefully chosen lineup. Have a backup in reserve to pick up the ball in case an executive leaves the company or is reassigned.

Executives need support in this effort. Many have come up through the ranks in disciplines where writing skills were not important. They need coaching and editing to make sure they get their points across. Don’t be heavy-handed; remember that this is a medium of personal expression. Let their personality come through and encourage them to go off the business topic occasionally and write about personal experiences, even those outside of the office.

Advice blog — This is one of my favorite approaches to business blogging, and I can’t understand why more companies don’t do it. An advice blog connects with customers about topics that are mutually interesting. Its purpose is to offer practical information that helps readers be more successful and productive, thereby associating the sponsor with that expertise. A great example of this is Extended Stay Hotels’ Road Warrior Tips, which is full of useful advice for frequent business travelers. Clutter Control Freak is a new blog from Stacks and Stacks, a retailer of storage and organization accessories. It’s been online only four months, but is already getting 1,500 visitors per day. GlaxoSmithKline has a new blog called AlliConnect that’s all about weight loss.

Advice blogs are relatively easy to maintain because they can be written by multiple contributors and they do well on search engines because they pertain to keywords that people frequently use when searching. You can also mix practical advice with references to new company products and services, a subtle but effective marketing tactic. As long as you don’t overdo that, you’ll be fine.

If all this choice looks overwhelming, my Social Media Crash Course provides a quick half-day or full-day introduction and interactive training on concepts, terminology and applications. Contact me if you’re interested.

Advocacy blog – This relatively rare blog addresses a specific public policy or legislative agenda upon which the company wants to make its position known. It’s most effective when the topic is controversial and the company wants to burnish its reputation as a thought leader or activist. Examples include the McDonald’s Corporate Responsibility Blog and the National Association of Manufacturers’ ShopFloor.org. However, companies like General Motors, Benetton and Chrysler frequently use their corporate blogs for this purpose.

Advocacy blogs can gain significant visibility in the media and with legislators and can become powerful platforms to head off attacks from critics. However, if you decide to launch an advocacy blog, do so with your eyes open. Your readers are likely to include the people who are most critical of you and they may try to turn your words against you. You need a thick skin to do this well, and it pays to take the high road. By acknowledging and responding constructively to criticism, you can keep the conversation civil.

For a constantly updated list of corporate blogs, see this list on my website. Debbie Weil’s BlogWrite for CEOs is also an excellent resource.

Three Solid Options for Business Blogging

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Many people formed their impression of blogs in the early days of the medium, blogs were primarily as online diaries.That’s still a popular approach, but blogs have matured and changed.Blogs are simply a way to display information, and there are many ways you can choose to apply them. Here are some good options for businesses:

CEO blog — If your chief executive has the desire and discipline to maintain a personal blog, count yourself lucky. Very few CEOs use this tool, but those who do find it an excellent mechanism to connect with all kinds of constituents.For one thing, the media who cover the company become immediate subscribers.

Popular CEO bloggers include Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz, GoDaddy’s Bob Parsons, RedBalloonDays’ Naomi Simpson and Marriott International’s Bill Marriott. Many CEOs of small companies also blog.

A CEO usually doesn’t need much guidance in what to say, but he or she may need writing and editing help. It’s important that a CEO blog has a voice and style that is appropriate to the executive’s objectives.For example, a brusque or “strictly business” style may not work if the company is trying to soften its image.On the other hand, a style that’s too chatty or informal may confuse readers about whether the boss is serious enough about his work.

Marketing communications people should play a role in creating stylistic guidelines and supporting the CEO in writing and copy editing.They should also make sure that images and videos are available to illustrate the topics the CEO chooses to cover. But don’t try to be too heavy-handed.

Incidentally, a CEO blog is the one exception I’d make to the frequency guideline of one new posting a week. CEOs will get good readership regardless of when they write, so if they want to go a month between posts, so be it.

Group blog — This is an increasingly popular form of business blog because it’s the easiest to maintain. In a group blog, a select team of employees contributes to the site on a rotating basis.The schedule may be hard-coded or kept flexible. Some companies find a group blog to be so popular that employees actually bid for a turn at the keyboard.

Popular group blogs include Southwest Airlines’ Nuts about Southwest, the Google blog, the Chrysler blog and Benetton Talk. Eastman Kodak’s A Thousand Words blog takes the innovative step of actually including customer entries in the rotation. Bravo!

Marketing should take an active and visible role in a group blog.It’s important that everyone involved understand the objective, editorial profile and desired voice. It’s a good idea to launch the blog behind a firewall for a few weeks to get people comfortable with the process and it’s appropriate for marketing to approve entries until bloggers get their sea legs.Contributors need to know that they are speaking as authorized representatives of the company and that there’s a responsibility that comes with that. Otherwise, give people as much latitude as possible to tell stories in their own words and to convey enthusiasm for what they do.Marketing shouldn’t dictate content, but should watch out for potential problems.

Company blog platform — A few companies encourage employees to maintain their own blogs on a company-branded site.There may be just a few high-profile individuals (the PriceWaterhouseCoopers approach) or the platform may be thrown open to everyone (Microsoft has over 4,000 bloggers at last count). You can even start with the first model and move to the second over time. For example, HP launched its blogs with a few executive journals, but is rapidly expanding its roster of writers and topics. IBM has over 1,000 employee bloggers, but doesn’t provide a corporate platform for their work, preferring instead to issue a set of common-sense guidelines.

A company blog platform is a useful way to get the people who make and sell the products directly in touch with people who buy them.It’s also a way to show the world the talent that exists in your organization (but beware: Recruiters will be lurking).

You can’t possibly control or even monitor what everyone is saying in a companywide blog initiative, so don’t try.Use a good set of policies built on your existing nondisclosure guidelines (here’s a good article on that topic).Make sure employee bloggers signed a statement that outlines what’s expected of them. It’s perfectly all right to define topics that are considered off-limits.

Although the prospect of allowing employees to speak to a global audience whenever they want and without oversight may seem frightening at first, the reality is that there have been no publicized cases of legal or regulatory action that resulted from an employee blog. In fact, most employees welcome the opportunity to speak directly to the market and are only too happy to stay within company guidelines.

If you trust employees to do the right thing and want to improve openness and customer interaction, this is a great way to go.

Five Fearless Predictions for 2008

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It’s been a wild year on the Internet as social media has taken the Web by storm. Some people say this is a bubble waiting to burst, but I think we’re in for another year of innovation, turmoil and strategic posturing. Here are five fearless predictions for 2008:

The year of social search – Google’s great, but it isn’t perfect. Its inherent weaknesses (the inability to search by date, for example) and the explosion of new online content spark interest in a new class of search engines that incorporate user recommendations. Projects like Mahalo and WikiaSearch are early proofs of concept, and new players pile on as prototypes show promise.

A social network privacy backlash – A scandal erupts in 2008 as news headlines tell of people being harassed, stalked and fired because of information revealed in their Facebook accounts. The lurid details are shocking, and politicians quickly move to call for government limitations on social network disclosure policies. The furor prompts Facebook, which is preparing for an IPO, to scramble to revamp its service and tighten its policies. The incident becomes the first great crisis of the Web 2.0 era.

Facebook‘s IPO – Facebook weathers the privacy crisis and stages a successful public offering that values the company at $25 billion and positions it as the number one suitor to Google’s market crown. A power struggle ensues as Facebook immediately leverages its market capital to buy up rivals and solidify its position as the most comprehensive social network. Google continues its acquisition binge (see below).

Blogosphere bust – Technorati reports that worldwide blogging activity is declining for the first time. This sparks a predictable round of tongue-clucking by people who said the whole thing was a fad all along. In fact, the blogosphere is simply entering a normal cycle of maturation in which early tire-kickers fall away. Meanwhile, more corporations launch blogs in 2008 than in any previous year.

Google buys Skype and Second Life – eBay has had enough of Skype and it sells the Internet phone service to Google for a bargain basement price of $750 million. Google is more than happy to make the purchase. It has new technology that delivers ads based upon words spoken in phone conversations. Google also moves to snap up Second Life, which has struggled to find a mission and a business model. Google immediately announces its intention to open up the Second Life program interfaces to support third-party applications and to integrate virtual worlds with its Google Earth and Google Maps products.

Should I Start a Blog for My Business?

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That’s one of the most common questions I get, and it’s one of the most difficult to answer. Although plenty of social media consultants will tell you that business blogging is a no-brainer, the reality is that the medium isn’t for everybody. In this issue, I’ll talk about some factors to consider in deciding whether to enter the blogosphere. Next week, I’ll look at the six different categories of business blog and discuss the pros and cons of each approach.

Here’s a little quiz you can take to determine if the blogosphere is right for your business. Answer appropriately and then total up your score.

Do you want to do it? A blog isn’t a short-term project. Once you start, you need to consistently update your site, at least once per week. The novelty will quickly wear off, so ask yourself whether you have the stamina and a wellspring of ideas to keep you going beyond the first few months. Yes: 5 points; No: 0 points

Do you have a topic in mind? Ideally, your topic should be expressible in less than a dozen words displayed under your blog title. This isn’t always easy. Some markets (marketing, entertainment and sports, for example) have hundreds or thousands of bloggers. In an environment like that, you need to focus your topic very precisely. Other markets (architecture and construction, for example) are nearly wide open. Pick a theme for your blog and be sure it doesn’t duplicate what’s already being said. The more distinctive your topic, the faster you’ll achieve success. Yes: 3 points; No: 0 points

Are you passionate about the topic? Good blogs have personality and personality is a product of enthusiasm. That doesn’t mean you need to be a cheerleader; in fact, some very successful blogs are negative in tone. It does mean that your topic should be something that you can talk about for hours, because that’s basically what you’ll be doing with your blog. Yes: 3 points; No: 1 point

Are you knowledgeable about the topic? A public forum isn’t the place to go to school, particularly if you represent a business. It’s important to engage in dialogue and learn something from your readers, but you should also have a point of view backed by expertise and experience that makes you credible. Yes: 2 points; No: 0 points

Do you communicate well? Some people don’t, and a blog is probably not the right promotional vehicle for them. You don’t necessarily have to be a good writer; many successful bloggers use video and sound to great effect. But you do need to be able to express your thoughts coherently in some form. Yes: 2 points; No: 1 point

Do you have a thick skin? If you’re opinionated enough to sustain a blog, you need to accept the fact that others may differ with you. Assuming you accept comments (and I strongly recommended that you do), be prepared for some pointed response to what you say. Yes: 2 points; No: 1 point

Scoring:

12 or more points: What are you waiting for?

8 to 12 points: You’re on track, but you need more focus or enthusiasm

5 to 8 points: Think hard about whether this is the right vehicle for you

Less than 5 points: Don’t bother

Small business blogging

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Excerpted from The New Influencers by Paul Gillin, Quill Driver Books, 2007.

Stephen Powers isn’t an Internet guy. Stephen Powers is an automotive guy. He opened his first auto reconditioning shop when he was 17. That was 1983 and Powers has been passionate about auto reconditioning ever since.

Stephen Powers is smart about technology, though, and when he first used the Internet a decade ago, he realized it was going to be an asset to his business. That’s because Powers’ business, Rightlook.com, Inc., isn’t the kind you’d find in the phone book. San Diego-based Rightlook helps people get started in the auto reconditioning business. Rightlook provides education, training and materials to help them market, manage and grow a real company.

The problem with marketing a business like Rightlook is that it doesn’t fit into any conventional “bucket.” People don’t go to the phone book looking for help getting into auto reconditioning. They might look for books or magazines in the library about entrepreneurship, but they’re probably going to hit on auto reconditioning only by accident.

But people might open up Google and type “automotive reconditioning” and up pops Rightlook. That’s because Stephen Powers is a marketer at heart and has used Internet savvy to build Rightlook’s visibility and make it a leader in its niche. Rightlook’s website is about as polished as you’ll ever see for a company of its size. There are only 20 employees in the company, but one of them works full-time on the website.

In the summer of 2005, Powers bought an iPod. He began to poke around the Internet, looking for podcasts about his interests, like photography and marketing. “It didn’t take long to realize that this would be big,” he says.

Powers invested $5,000 in equipment, a princely sum in the low-rent world of podcasting. But he wanted to do it right. RightLook has succeeded, in part, because it always looked bigger online than it was in real life. RightLook Radio would be no different. Besides, the company was in the business of creating training materials. It couldn’t afford to put out a shoddy educational product.

Rightlook Radio launched in early 2006. It’s a talk-show format and new shows are posted every three weeks or so. Powers and co-host Mel Craig bring customer into the studio to talk about their success and extol the benefits of auto reconditioning as a career. The show isn’t about selling Rightlook. It’s about spotlighting success. It just happens that Rightlook’s services relate very directly to that goal.

Stephen Powers is having a blast. He’s got an engaging, friendly style and he’s a natural for radio. A female staffer conducts field interviews, a subtle message that auto detailing is a good business for women, too. In fact, one of the shows spotlighted a reconditioning business run by women.

Powers is putting every ounce of his marketing experience behind Rightlook radio. It has promoted the podcast in full page trade magazine ads, sent out press releases and made t-shirts. When clients come to visit, they get a tour of the professional-looking studio. Rightlook looks hip and in tune with technology.

Powers doesn’t have any hard statistics on the podcast’s success, but says downloads have been in the thousands. It doesn’t really matter. The whole program paid for itself after one customer signed a $24,000 deal after listening to a podcast. Another show about ozone machines led to multiple machine sales in the days after the podcast launched.

Operational costs are next to nothing, and the buzz that the program generates in its industry is well worth the effort, Powers says. “Without question, we’re going to continue to do this for a long time,” he says. And with each episode, Rightlook puts more distance between itself and its competitors.

Just do it

Stephen Powers is a prototypical New Influencer. He cares deeply about a very specific discipline. He has plenty of expertise and the gift of communication. He’s in a position to influence a lot of other people who care about his specialty. The only difference between Powers and the enthusiasts profiled in Chapter 3 is that Powers has a product to sell.

In the last chapter, we talked about the tightrope that corporations walk in venturing into social media. Small and medium-sized businesses have none of those issues, though. Regulatory pressures are minimal, everyone in the company is in contact with customers and you probably are an expert in a very specific discipline. Corporations must answer questions about why they should be in the blogosphere. Small businesses need to answer questions about why they shouldn’t.

Here are some reasons that social media is so well-tuned to smaller businesses:

It’s all about search – Google and its competitors are the best thing that ever happened to small business. Companies that can’t afford to advertise can achieve international visibility in vertical disciplines through search performance. As we noted earlier, blogs do exceptionally well on Google because of the search engine’s fondness for frequent updates and relevant page titles. A focused blog, podcast or videocast that stakes out an unclaimed niche in the market can come to dominate search results in a short time. The more you write, the faster you’ll move.

Get personal – One of the main reasons people do business with a small company is to get personal service. Blogs and podcasts are all about personality. If you bring a distinctive voice, a sense of humor and a hint of passion to your commentaries, people will feel like they know you. And that will make it easier for them to do business with you.

The voice of authority – Let’s suppose you’re a small business that specializes in scuba diving equipment, training and excursions. You decide to specialize in the new technology of closed-circuit rebreathers. Launching a blog that helps people to understand the technology and its benefits will get you quick results. People searching on that term are likely to find your helpful, educational articles on rebreathers ahead of the catalog entries of the equipment companies because, remember, Google favors content over commerce. You won’t get anywhere near that kind of cost-efficiency from advertising.

You can’t beat the cost – At monthly prices that top out at $15, the cost of a blog is a non-issue. You can produce a decent podcast for less than $300 worth of equipment. Your real investment is time, so you have to ask how much of your new-business investment you’re willing to channel into this effort.

Several tales of small-business blogging success are almost legendary at this point.

EnglishCut.com is a blog by Thomas Mahon a Saville Row tailor who was frustrated that more people didn’t appreciate the distinction between off-the-rack suits and the work of a professional custom tailor. His blog, launched in early 2005, talks about the fine points of fine tailoring. Because Mahon was one of the first tailors to start a blog, he got lots of attention from other bloggers and the media. And the recognition translated directly into business.

As detailed by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel in their book Naked Conversations, “When Mahon was in New York in December, 2005, he sold only two [suits]. When he returned 10 weeks after starting a blog, he sold 20 suits and eight sport coats, more than he had sold before in an entire year.”

Mahon’s blog has become such a must-read phenomenon that he speculates that he could make a trip to any city a success by simply posting on his blog that he plans to be there on certain days. Marketer Hugh McLeod, who dreamed up English Cut, said Mahon’s business tripled in six months because of it.

Stormhoek, a startup South African wine maker, entered the U.K. market by sending free bottles of wine to 150 bloggers – no strings attached. Instead of a website, the company channeled all its marketing through a blog. Sales doubled to 100,000 cases in the year after the experiment was launched and the company went from 0% to 20% market share in its category in the U.K. For its U.S. entry, Stormhoek invited bloggers to organize local dinners. As long as they supplied the people, Stormhoek would provide the wine. Bloggers came up with creative ideas like a Father’s Day theme in Santa Maria, CA, a hot dog-eating contest in Bellevue, WA; and a GPS treasure hunt in Burlington, Vt. The campaign was organized by David Parmet, a public relations professional and blogger.

SignsNeverSleep – This frequently updated blog by the owner of a small sign maker in Lincoln, N.H. is a testament to the power of social media as a way for craftspeople to share their expertise. Owner J.D. Iles details the loving attention that master sign makers pay to their craft in his posts and copious photos of Lincoln Sign Co.’s latest creations.

Illes spends only about 15 minutes a day on the blog, but he writes nearly every day. He told Radiant Marketing Group: “The weblog shows my customers what we are: a small business that is approachable, fun, and hopefully they like the work we do.” Websites and weblogs are great tools, but you can use a tool well, or badly. A “web-presence” should show off your company as it is, and highlight the strengths you have because of “how your business is”. Iles attributes about a 10% increase in business to the blog.

A Painting a Day – Duane Keiser, a Richmond, Va.-based painter, creates a small painting every day and posts a image of it on his blog, along with an invitation to buy. He originally sold them for $100 each, but demand got so strong that he started taking bids on eBay, according to a USA Today profile. He was soon getting $400 to $800 per painting and without the 50% commissions typically charged by galleries. Keiser, who used to sell a couple of paintings a year, is now able to make a good living selling his art, the paper said.

Nancy Boy – The San Francisco-based toiletries maker owes its success, in part to a blog. The company, which targets gay men, did about $100,000 in business in 2001, when it launched. Then it became a favorite of Shaveblog.com, a blog dedicated to shaving. As favorable references to Nancy Boy continued to appear on Shaveblog, business grew to $4 million in 2006. Nancy Boy co-founder Eric Roos also maintains a popular blog on the company site detailing his experiences as a gay man.

Here are some more recent examples of how small/midsized businesses are becoming influencers and having fun at the same time.

The Tin man

Some of the best small-business blogs are in some of the most prosaic industries. The Tinbasher Blog was started by Paul Woodhouse in May, 2004 to help out his brother, who runs Butler Sheetmetal, a UK-based metal-working company. “Initially it was nothing other than an experiment. There was very little to lose and my expectations were simply to be able to open the company up,” says Woodhouse.

The site was lightly trafficked until it was mentioned in an article in The Times of London newspaper that fall. That’s when traffic started to build and Woodhouse began to blog more aggressively. He’s developed a style that’s uniquely Tinbasher, a friendly insider with a puckish twist. “I try to convey what we’d be like if you actually came round to the workshop for a brew,” he says. “It’s informal, parochial and colloquial.”

It’s also amassed quite a following: about 2,000 visitors a day for a website about sheet metal. Tinbasher Blog has already paid for itself many times over. According to a profile in The Guardian, Butler’s annual sales rose from £60,000 to £80,000 a year before the blog was launched to £130,000 in 2005. “Probably 30% to 40% of that comes through the website,” including around 90% of new business, Woodhouse told the paper. “When we just had the website, you would get a very general enquiry. When people have read the blog, they invariably refer to an individual post – it’s a lot chattier email you receive.”

Customers have quoted from blog posts when placing orders and products features on the blog frequently see a spike in sales. Then there’s the boost in search engine results that the blog has stimulated and the media calls. Tinbasher has been profiled at length in the press.

The unanticipated payoff for Tinbasher has been the boost it’s given to employee morale. Sheet metal work isn’t exactly a glamour profession, but Butler’s long-serving employees are proud of their craft and their expertise. The blog has become a way to show off their achievements.

“At first they called it a ‘blob,’ but now they love it,” says Woodhouse. “They regularly tell me tales that have happened during the week with the proviso that they’d be good blog material.”

Girl power

AskPatty.com is a new business that helps auto dealerships and automotive retailers tap the female audience. Women buy more than half the new cars in the U.S. and influence 85% of new auto and truck purchases, says Jody DeVere, president of the company.

The male-dominated auto business is notoriously weak at addressing female customers. Sales outlets tend to be owned by individuals, more than 90% of whom are male, and sales tactics are handed down through generations. With women increasingly flexing their economic muscles, AskPatty is addressing dealers’ and retailers’ needs to better serve that audience. The business model is to provide a comprehensive training and certification program for sales and service organizations, who can then display the AskPatty logo in the showrooms and on their websites.

A blog is a key part of AskPatty’s business plan. The company could have built a standard FAQ or question-and-answer section on its website, but the founders felt the user experience would be too sterile. A blog was more personal and provocative. Voice was important.

AskPatty’s blog celebrates women. Its articles not only offer advice but showcase the accomplishments of female drivers, encourage women to get into the automotive business and trumpet the power of female buyers. It features profiles of and guest columns from women who have been successful in the male-dominated industry. The site defines Patty as

…a Mom, Daughter, Wife, Niece, Grandmother and Auntie; Patty is young, old, married, single, an experienced driver, a new driver, a race car driver , a hot rod driver, a classic car driver, a mini van driver, a truck drver, a luxury car driver, an SUV driver, a disabled driver, a carpool driver, a stay at home Mom, a female excutive, is gay, straight and comes in all the sizes, shapes and colors of the rainbow…Patty is YOU, ME and US : Women Consumers.

AskPatty struck a chord with its audience. It also got lucky. Shortly after its May, 2006 launch, the site was spotlighted on the home page of Typepad, a leading provider of blog hosting software. Traffic soared to more than a half million visitors a week over the next two months. Visitors were submitting so many questions that the site struggled to meet its commitment to a 24-hour turnaround on answers.

DeVere says the blog offers capabilities for connecting with readers that a website can’t match. The authors of the AskPattty blog are clearly women and their style belies a sympathetic voice. Asked what works in running a business blog, she writes, “Pick a theme and stick to it. Don’t be afraid to use all the tools and means available to publicize your blog. Stay committed to providing interesting content at least three to four times a week. Serious business blogging takes a big commitment of time, energy and brain power.”

Becoming an influencer

The factors that constrain small/medium businesses from leveraging social media are completely different from those that limit corporations. It’s mainly an issue of time. Small business owners and employees are generally more resource-constrained and time-strapped than their corporate counterparts and the frequency with which you need to update a blog – ideally at least once a week – can be a hardship. Smaller businesses owners also don’t necessarily have strong writing or speaking skills or access to people with those talents.

But you can be effective enough with a modest investment of time to make the effort worthwhile. Here are some tricks to consider:

Specialize – If your topic is very specific, you can get away with a less-frequent publishing schedule and still see good impact in search engine results and links. The dive shop that specializes in closed-circuit rebreathers is one example. Tinbasher is another. If no one else is writing about your topic, you can afford to be a little less rigorous about maintaining a strict writing schedule.

Choosing the right topic can be tricky, though. If you’re too specific, no one will come at all. Or you may run out of things to say. Try homing in on a new practice or technology that’s affecting your business. Or you can take a tips-and-tricks approach, posting a new idea every week. Several highly trafficked blogs take this approach; take a look at 43folders.com and LifeHacker.com for ideas.

Be offbeat – Cater to readers’ sense of humor or the bizarre by featuring nuggets of trivia that relate to your business. If you’re an insurance broker, for example, spotlight the strangest claim of the week. If you own a pet store, feature an interesting cat fact or new pet idea.

Start a diary – Blog software is the perfect format for recording a sequence of events because it’s organized chronologically. Many of the most popular personal blogs on the Web are nothing more than personal diaries of people who have a knack for finding humor or meaning in ordinary events. Would other people be interested in knowing about what you do? Don’t sell yourself short; there’s a little voyeur in most of us and peeking into the day-to-day life of others is intriguing.

If you run a local theatre company, blog about the process of getting a performance ready. If you’re a hairdresser, talk about the stories your customers tell you. If you install air conditioning, write about what’s involved in ducting an old house. In fact, take a video camera along on your next job and record some of the tricks you use. Then post the video on YouTube or Google Video or another free service and link to it from your blog. This is reality TV writ large and you’re the star, if you can just get across to your readers the passion you feel about your work.

Use audio and images – All blog software supports images and a $50 digital camera can take pretty nice snapshots these days. Illustrate the topics you write about. If you’re a hairdresser, show some new styles you’ve come up with. If you own an auto body shop, snap some before-and-afters. Be sure to tag your images (we explain that in Chapter 9) so they get picked up by the search engines.

In the same vein, podcasting is a golden opportunity for small businesses. You can get acceptable quality with a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of equipment, free editing software like Audacity and cheap or free hosting services. Try Q&A interviews with your staff or sit down with a steady customer and talk about a problem she solved. How-to podcasts are also a good bet. If you’re a floor refinisher, tell people how to remove wood spots or identify different kinds of hardwoods. If you’re a recruiter, share resume and interview tips. A painter? Help customers make perfect corners. Call it “tip in a minute” and really keep your length to 60 seconds and you’ll have a winner.

Celebrate others – Small business owners enjoy a level of collegiality with others in their markets that doesn’t exist in the hyper-competitive corporate world. If there are others in your business who blog or podcast, point to their sites and compliment their good work. Send them an e-mail and post a trackback, so they know you were there. You’ll get reciprocal links and everyone’s traffic will grow.

As you can see, there is no shortage of ideas for small business people who want to build an online presence. However, one group, more than any other, has led the way in using social media to raise their visibility and promote their expertise. They’re the public relations professionals, and many people think social media is their chance to shine.