Hey everybody,

This question comes up a lot and I don’t see a lot of good answers out there. So I thought that I would take a swing at it. Hope it is helpful.

11 Tips on How to Blog

1. Get Found Easily: Choose a blog name, and tagline that can let people in your niche find you easily through search engines. Use the most effective keywords for you blog and post titles.
2. Follow the Conversation: Read a bunch of blogs and add comments to them before you start your own and as you are writing your own. Try to establish a conversation with other peer leaders in your category. Use blog searching and ranking sites to find out what the most popular themes in your category are at the time and address those. This will also help you get story ideas.
3. Keep it Simple, Keep it Focused: Each post should contain just one idea or one set of links.
4. Demonstrate Passion: Post often, post about what you care about. Take a position on issues.
5. Demonstrate Authority: Blog about what you know. Be generous with what information you give out.
6. Allow Comments: A good blog is a conversation, not a one-way channel so let others make comments back to you.
7. Be Accessible: Make it easy for people to contact you through your blog either through an e-mail or phone number posting. This includes being honest and open with who you are. No lies or misleading.
8. Tell a Story: Tell your story – a compelling story helps entice people to read on. A personal story makes you seem more human. Even your set backs and defeats make you likeable.
9. Be Linky:  By directing your readers to other sites, even competitors, you become their absolute best resource and they, in turn, will reward you with lots of inbound links. These links increase your search ranking and credibility online.
10. Get Out In the Real World: Nothing beats face-to-face meetings. To build relationships you should go out and meet the people you are speaking with in your blog. Invite others to visit you.
11. Use your referrer log: The Referrer Log tracks who’s linking to your site and how much traffic those sites are sending you. Read them often to know what people are saying about you.

An Additional Note on Blog Advice:

These are really the standard recognized rules of blogging. They were originally laid down by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel in their book Naked Conversations. These guidelines have always served me well. The one important factor that I would like to touch on beyond their recommendations is the importance of personality. It seems to me that there are a lot of corporate blogs flooding cyberspace these days, but the ones that we remember – no matter what their category – are those written by people with character. Out of the supposed 60 million active blogs out there, I can only think of about 50 or so that I really enjoy reading. A family story or a disappointing turn of events on a business deal make great blog posts too. It isn’t just about bragging or even conversations, it is about appearing human enough to seem approachable.

If you want anything more in-depth, just let me know. Just send me a comment and I will try to answer. I work in social media and would be glad to give advice.

Thanks,

William Flavell

Hey Everybody,

As you probably know, I blog for several companies beyond this personal blog. As a new media guy working in an agency I often run into fears from different members of our clients’ companies concerning open posting of comments.

Open comments is the best way to handle your blog. First, recognize that these negative comments will be going on with or without your approval somewhere else. At least on your blog you can see the comments and try to reason with them. It will give you an idea of where you need to go with the posts. Think of it as constructive criticism.

It has been my experience that most of these worriers just want to know that you have a strategy for dealing with trolls (irrational negative commentors). That is when I tell the client that I will use the Living Room Rule. I am kinda borrowing a page from Naked Conversations here, but the living room rule works.

So, what is the living room rule. It goes kinda like this. My blogspace (whether that is personal or corporate) is like my living room. If you are interested in a conversation you are more than welcome to visit, but if you  are irrational and only want to argue or spam me, then I will kick you out of my living room. Most commentors like this rule, because it lets the conversation continue.

So, I hearby institute the Living Room Rule on this blog. Though, I don’t really need it cause all my posters are cool.

Thanks,

William Flavell

Hey Everybody,

 I probably shouldn’t be so flattering to Richard Edelman as he is technically competition, but I gotta say, I love this guy. He has vision, guts and the will to work at things that he beleives in. And, of course, he is also a champion of everything new media and public relations.

This is a quote given by Edelman in the Book Naked Conversations during an interview with Robert Scoble and Shel Israel:

On Blogging:

Blogging is not a passing fad. Any brand, business or organization that fails to grasp [that] fact may very well be. It’s essential to any company seeking to connect in a spontaneous, continous fashion with its publics. It affords a window into a company unlike any other — more credible because it lacks the dimension of control, more sustainable because it is rooted in reality, more powerful because it can be connected to comments of others having primary experiences with a company’s product or service. Smart companies will take heed of what they learn from online critics, amending the product or process by being committed to continuous improvement from whatever source.

On Traditional Marketing and its coming demise:

Marketers could reach 97 percent of the target audience with three ads in prime time on network TV. They relied on a pyramid of authority in which elite audiences such as investors, regulators, retailers, and elite media received advance notice of company plans. A large commitment to advertising and appropriate monies for slotting allowances guaranteed favorable treatment at retail…and the consumer, lured by the ads, would purchase, especially if a big name celebrity is in the ad. The big idea — keep everything under wraps until the last moment before the ads break — give an exclusive to the Wall Street Journal and you are home free.

So now a smart company has a different approach — call it the “paradox of transparency.” Co-create your brand with key consumers. Talk to critics at NGO’s (non-government organizations) in advance to reach an understanding. Use your employees as your first line of offense. Use a real person as a spokesperson or maybe the winner of a reality show like American Idol. Create synergy among the promotions and talk across the silos, but offer real dialogeue, not hot air.

I love that he makes it so simple. I am sorry that I haven’t linked to his blog yet in my blog and this post is my tiny homage to the man that is making these strategies popular and profitable. I can preach the same ideals all day and then once a senior member of our PR team finds an Edelman interview in an AdAge article from 2 years ago saying the same thing, and it becomes fact.

So here’s to the guy that gives hope to all of us tired and haggard PR guy’s trying to push new media to clients and in our own companies.

Richard Edelman.