alstin communications

Chris Baggott and Jay Baer’s webinar “Should Blogging be the Hub of Your Social Media Strategy?” had so many great facts, tips, pointers and humorous analogies I ended up writing up 5 pages worth of notes! I’m now 100% convinced that blogging is THE best way to engage people for a variety of different business reasons or purposes (solve a problem, answer a question, provide service, convert to a subscriber, convert to a sale, etc.). I also wanted to send a special ‘shout out” to Debbie Weill who’s original blog post/e-book started the idea for this webinar and she has the timely upcoming launch of the Kindle edition of her book “The Corporate Blogging Book” which I’ll certainly be downloading. (This last sentence would have been complete gibberish four years ago—if anyone watches “Community” on NBC, you’ll know I grabbed that line from Chevy Chase’s character…but I digress).

I enjoyed Jay’s “Social Media Scattershot” term that helps define what many companies and organizations are doing right now…utilizing ALL of the social tools without real thought into strategy and goals, not to mention the ability of measuring results. I’d agree that social media can be a very inefficient use of time and if you’re not asking the integral and ‘up front’ questions about implementing social media (such as “Why are we doing this?” or “What is the business-level outcome?”) you’re doomed from the outset.

So, I’m asking myself, “Why do people want to engage with Alstin? Or, with any organization for that matter?” And, once you answer that question you’ll know how to build your strategy. (For Alstin it would be multi-pronged effort: engage current clients to participate in new services, engage prospective clients to become new clients, and help brand the “Alstin” name as the premier employer marketing communications agency—easy to do right?).

I believe that the notion of a blog as a central spot or “hub” is an excellent analogy with a variety of social media “spokes” driving visitors, traffic, etc. to the hub (ie. Facebook Fan Page, Twitter channel, YouTube, etc.). And, I really enjoyed the analysis of why a blog is superior in the social media space because it passes all of these four questions:

Four Characteristics of a Good Social Media Hub:

1. Is it Controllable?
2. Is it Measurable?
3. Is it Sociable?
4. Is it Searchable?

My other take aways from the webinar include:

• “Search and Sociability are tied together like peanut butter and jelly.” I love this analogy!!! So much of Alstin’s blog traffic comes from Google and a large percentage is 1^st time visitors and we’re constantly seeking new ways to make our blog more ‘search friendly.’  And, we’ve had a number of new prospects contact us as a direct result of a blog post.
• It’s not about volume (ie. Number of Facebook Fans, Twitter followers, etc.) engagement is about depth.
• Be sure to evaluate your business-level outcome…and be careful how deep you jump in the pool.
• Compendium offers some great tools (which I’ll be investigating more) that would assist in the ‘multi-author’ blog process with a ‘gentle’ approval process and ‘SEO keyword strength-meter.’ These type of tools are an absolute must if you’re overseeing a blog(s) that have multiple authors, etc. It’s the humanization of social media that makes or breaks its success. So, having ‘real people’ who are the experts in doing/solving/selling what your goals are makes a huge difference in the voice you’re sending out there.
• Companies that blog have 55% more traffic to their web site than those who don’t.
• Blog Measurability: pick the right metrics! If you are focusing on building a community with repeat visitors and comments, use those areas to analyze. If you’re blogging for business—to create an awareness of your company, look at total visits, % of new visits, visits from search. If you’re blogging for e-Commerce, look at average length of stay, pages per visit, referrals to other sites (like your corporate site).

“Blog Measurability” brings me to my final thought for today…Alstin (@AnnetteAtAlstin) recently published our first “contest” blog post to engage new and returning blog visitors. Some stats that we’re all proud of (big kudos goes to Annette!!):

• 28 comments to the ‘photo pix’
• Traffic doubled on March 4th and March 5th
• 76% of blog visitors entering the blog on our contest page
• 90% of the visitors to the contest page went on to view other pages of our blog

Cost: Zilch. (Well, ok a $50 Starbucks card)

But it goes to show you, engagement, interaction and the humanization business in today’s online world is only going to continue to increase—so thanks Jay, Chris and Debbie for all of your valuable insights!

Author Bio:  Jennifer Greenfield, Consultant, Interactive Services, seems to have coffee, not mortal blood, running through her veins. Juggling her bags (laptop, spinning stuff, cool purse, projector) and array of web-based duties with professionalism, composure and a random assortment of funny faces, Jen, has been with Alstin for more than 13 years, lives and breathes the 'net.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 4:51 pm and is filed under The Daily Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.