Business blogging with personality, tip# 2: Pass the pen

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A great way to add some personality to your corporate blog is to have multiple people writing and sharing stories – through their own points-of-view.

Start by figuring out who the “thought leaders” (yea I know, it’s an aging term) are in your organization – these are the people that readers will care most to hear from (aside from the corporate heads, of course). A thought leader may be a manager of a certain division within your company – someone who has worked in their sector for 10+ years, and ideally is already known and respected within their industry.

Of course, your organization’s thought leaders aren’t the only people that you should have contributing to your corporate blog. Your junior staff may very well have some leading-edge, game changing ideas too, so be sure to give them a chance to write and share their thoughts as well.

Once you’ve determined who you would like to have contributing to the blog, present them with the opportunity to write a weekly, monthly, bi-annual (whatever the case may be that best suits your needs) blog post. Allow them to write in their own words, and editing must only be for grammatical and spelling errors – do not alter their message.

If your blog features regular posts from various members of your staff, personality will automatically be “injected” through the different ideas and points-of-view that each of them present. If done right, your blog may even become a resource for people interested in learning more about your industry, and can lead to new business opportunities. It will drive traffic to your website, that I can guarantee.

It will also help retain readers and keep them coming back to your blog, as people will enjoy learning from multiple writers. So go ahead and pass the pen!

Thank you for reading and be sure to add your own blogging tips for businesses and other thoughts in the comments!

 

Online influence measurement: you can’t “count” on the numbers

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The Friendship Algorithm, as seen on “The Big Bang Theory”

It seems that more and more people are relying on numbers to determine online influence lately. They’re interested in Klout scores, numbers of followers, how often things are shared or retweeted, and don’t seem to be looking too far beyond that.

Since there is no definitive algorithm behind measuring online influence, and never will be, we need to do away with this trend in our way of thinking.

No matter how you analyze the numbers (followers, retweets, etc.), you simply can’t determine influence this way. Even if you’re a mathematical genius, there is no formula that can be built on any variation of these numbers to accurately determine influence.

Just because someone has a lot of followers on Twitter, or a high score on Klout, doesn’t mean they are influential.

Case in point

To use David Armano’s (@Armano) example from the Mesh 11 panel with Valeria Maltoni (@ConversationAge) and Mark Evans (@MarkEvans) titled “How do you (or can you) measure online influence”: Charlie Sheen has over 4 million followers on Twitter, yet has little influence over his following (“Sheen’s Cadres” aside), as far as affecting their actions.

If you are following Charlie on Twitter, it’s most likely because you, like most people in western society, can’t help but get a front row seat to watch as yet another celeb spirals out of control. Does he have influence over your actions though? Not likely… If he does, you may want to see a psychiatrist.

So, what exactly is influence anyway?

This seems obvious, but if it were then this blog post probably wouldn’t be needed. According to Merriam-Webster, influence is:

  1. to affect or alter by indirect or intangible means
  2. to have an effect on the condition or development of

For the purpose of our topic today, it simply means to affect someone else’s actions, by way of a tweet, Facebook update, or blog post (for a few examples).

Pete Cashmore VS. Charlie Sheen

Let’s take a look at two Twitter accounts with very different numbers.

For those who are unfamiliar, Pete Cashmore is the CEO and founder of Social Media site Mashable – one of the most read and shared social media content sites in the world, and the 3rd ranked blog on Technorati’s top 100 blogs list.

Compared to Charlie Sheen’s 4+ million followers, 19+ thousand seems miniscule. Yet Pete has a knack for driving action (aka influencing people) – here are just a couple of recent examples:

Pete mentions a game for the iPad – people check it out.

Pete tweets about the Syrian Revolt and not only does it get retweeted by a number of people, but Alyssa Milano gets on board to show her support too!

Pete is so well respected online that Entrepreneur Magazine turns to him for answers to questions like “who should you be following on Twitter?” Most importantly, people who read the list will follow Pete’s recommendations.

And then there’s Charlie:

This tweet received over 100 retweets, but only two replies… here they are:

Here’s how Pete and Charlie stack up on Klout:

While Charlie’s tweets do often get retweeted by A LOT of people, they don’t typically lead to any form of action. Seeing how he has over 4 million followers, he needs only a small percentage of his following to retweet his messages to appear influential to a tool that calculates influence based on the numbers.

According to Klout, Charlie is more influential than Pete – who do you think is more influential? Does Charlie drive action through his tweets?

How SHOULD we measure influence online?

By digging! I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it will take effort. You have to get in there and research the potential influencer thoroughly before you can really even begin to judge whether they’re influential or not. You have to look far beyond Klout score, or how many followers a person has – these numbers unfortunately aren’t directly indicative of influence. Are tools like Klout useful as a starting point in finding those who may be influential? Absolutely, but that’s a whole other discussion entirely.

When it comes to ranking, you can create a system and put people on a scale of say 1-10 yourself, but not without first digging to see the side of the story that numbers can’t tell on their own.

Here are some of the ways you can look beyond the obvious numbers:

  • What kind of content is the person creating and sharing (quality, focus/niche, credible and sourced, etc.)?
  • How does the content they create relate to what you are planning to achieve? The most effective blogs are often tailored to a very niche audience – is their blog attracting the group of people you want to reach?
  • What kind of engagement does their blog receive – comments? Discussions between readers through the comments?
  • Are people sharing the content through their own networks? (Through Google +1, Facebook “Likes”, Twitter, etc. – this can most often be seen by a counter next to its respective button)
  • Is their content ever picked up, or linked to by other bloggers or even major news outlets?
  • Perhaps most importantly, are they seen as credible? (A look at the tone of the comments and the kinds of comments the blog receives should give an indication of this. People won’t be afraid to speak their mind if they think the writer is full of it).

These are the kinds of things that will help determine just how influential someone really is, in my opinion at least.

How do you determine online influence? Do you have any other tips to add? What are your thoughts on tools like Klout and their importance in determining influence? Please share in the comments!

 

The (oft-underestimated) value of an online-only news article

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Nobody ever questions the value of a news article published in the print version of a major daily. Print coverage has been the bee’s knees of exposure in North America since sometime around the early 1700’s. And much to my chagrin, for many that hasn’t changed one bit.

If there’s one thing that everyone in an organization understands it’s that neutral or positive coverage in the Toronto Star or the Globe and Mail, for example, is a good thing. Seeing mention, especially positive, of the company in a major paper will surely get everyone in the organization dancing the happy dance. But what if that exact same article was published online only? Would it get the CEO out of their chair? Surprisingly, it may not.

I have faced the challenge of convincing people that there is great value in an online-only piece on more than one occasion. An advocate of all media types from broadcast to print, I will be the last person to put down an article in a print newspaper. However, I would argue that an online-only article on a major outlet’s website could very well be more valuable than the same story in a print-only version – here’s just a few reasons why:

Sharing: if you wanted to share an interesting story you read in your copy of a print paper with someone you would have to physically bring it to them and show them. With online news you can share it with the world with the click of a button. What’s more, if the story is compelling, people in the sharer’s network may also decide to share the article with their network, further spreading your messages. I can’t personally think of a better way to maximize your “audience” than through word-of-mouth and sharing.

Search engine friendly: an article published online will be indexed by all of the major search tools, like Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc. This means that people could come across the article and learn about your business, even if they’ve never heard of you before. For example, let’s say your company sells home security systems. Someone searching for info on security systems may come across your article just in their search – this could easily prompt them to get in touch to learn more.

Shelf life: unlike a print newspaper, which is generally tossed in the recycling bin the same day it’s delivered, an online story lives on and remains searchable for years to come (perhaps indefinitely). Of course if you would like you can always head to your library and visit the archives for old print stories, so don’t get me wrong, I understand that they too live on in some form.

Discussion: like it or not, people have opinions about your company/industry. Though there are a number of “trolls”out there filling comment threads with garbage, there are also a ton of smart, insightful people joining the conversations. Want to know what people think – read the comments on your article.

Instantaneous: talk about effective crisis communications! Crises happen to the best of us. When they do you obviously want to douse the flames as fast as possible before you have a wildfire on your hands. With major media being online you can now have your side of the story seen by the world within hours of the crisis breaking.

Not just for crisis situations, many readers like to stay on top of news as it breaks regardless. I’ve always been a big fan of sitting with my morning paper and a coffee, scanning through the headlines. However, the more I read online the more often the headlines in the paper are “old news” to me. Most of what I find in the paper I already read about the day prior.

Reach potential: this may not be applicable for some, but with online news you can reach far beyond the borders of your city or nation. A print paper is distributed regionally/nationally and doesn’t typically make it to readers beyond those areas. Your story online has the potential to be seen by readers as far away as Australia, and everywhere in between.

It’s the future! According to the Newspaper Audience Databank (NAD bank), over the past 10 years “Weekly readership of printed editions has declined as technology has provided Canadians with access to contentthroughout the day presented by their favourite newspapers on the Internet using computers and hand-held devices. Anyone can be up-to-date with the latest news or sports scores with the touch of a button; not only local news, but news from around the world.” Source: http://goo.gl/nqMZG . And this won’t change any time soon – the trend will only continue to see more and more people heading online for their news as devices like the iPad make it easier than ever to consume the latest.

In a perfect world your stories would find themselves in both the print and online versions, and when they do it is a major win, for sure. Just please don’t underestimate the value of your story being published online-only!

Thank you for reading and be sure to share your thoughts in the comments!