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blogging is our story…our free will…content RULES!

There are so many mixed messages and “how-to’s” about blogging that absolutely drive me up a wall. It is actually disheartening to read much of the online conversation surrounding this space.

I spent Sunday night watching the mixed conversation surrounding opinions of personal blogs and the value they bring to the space. Many people think that there is no place for these personal spaces of exploration. Some people think that there is no room to use them as a journal or place to write our “pity parties.” Some even think that you should use the same SEO and marketing techniques to broadcast and optimize for the web.

I have news for all you self-promoting, money hungry consultants who are trying to share your business and shape online content…go sell your mess to someone who is willing to pay your lame, nominal fee.

I am terming personal blogs as spaces to that are not used to generate a business lead or promote some service/product. These spaces are places of self-expression, places of free will, and spaces to write…just to write. These are spaces owned by those who create the content and if they choose to connect, open for commenting, post on social sites, make them anonymous, make them public, or share their darkest moments…then they are just as organic and crucial to the space of digital free-expression as business blogs.

“By the end of 2011, NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company, tracked over 181 million blogs around the world, up from 36 million only five years earlier in 2006.

Bloggers: Who are they?
– Women make up the majority of bloggers, and half of bloggers are aged 18-34
– Bloggers are well-educated: 7 out of 10 bloggers have gone to college, a majority of whom are graduates
– About 1 in 3 bloggers are Moms, and 52 percent of bloggers are parents with kids under 18 years-old in their household
– Bloggers are active across social media: they’re twice as likely to post/comment on consumer-generated video sites like YouTube, and nearly three times more likely to post in Message Boards/Forums within the last”

Ok…so if you look at these stats, you can probably infer that not all these bloggers are business bloggers. They are probably individuals writing about their lives, their kids, their thoughts, and probably have a tremendous sphere of influence. They are probably not writing to make money, they are probably writing to share and connect.

In the B2C world…we need these bloggers and all their willingness to generate self-expression and share raw, un-marketed content. We need them to write from the heart. WHY?

First…it reminds our souls that it is ok to share our thoughts/feelings/expressions online. We live in “free society” and we should encourage self-expression. I would be willing to bet that a small portion of these bloggers listed above tell a tremendous story and eventually turn this content, their into a book. I will address the idea of self-destructive content in blogs.

Second…from a digital marketer’s perspective, we need to share. We want them to talk about their experiences, their favorite food, their favorite place to go, what makes them happy, what makes them sad. Why, so if they happen to talk about “our” brand, then we can glean some rich consumer driven, un-solicited attitude that could help us better understand the effectiveness of our brand. If a mom was fussing about a bad visit with a doctor, I would want to know and have context so we could find a way to fix the experience.

Third…these blogs/journals/spaces of self-expression are spaces in our digital/social documentary. We now have a place that allows us to publicly share our lives then allow us to go back and re-live that experience. Blogs are perfect organizational tools for social content. It gives us the place to organize information according to dates, times, categories, etc. so we can go back and find that recipe, that video, that thought we had that day when we were happy, sad, or whatever.

Fourth…these spaces can create rich communities. We are so bogged down with self-promoting, ego driven, digital marketers selling the snake oil that an “effective” community is all about large numbers. A rich, sustainable community can be a community in small numbers. I think of many blogs from women who are going through/dealing with breast cancer. These outlets are not only crucial for the healing process, but a place to connect with others sharing the same experience whether it is a shitty day or a high-five. We are social creatures and we want to connect with people having similar experiences.

Personal blogs are the backbone of this sphere of self-expression. We should not try to put these people in a silo and force them to conform to the same practices as those trying to make money from clicks. We should not also condemn these individuals for having enough strength to share their inner most thoughts online. BUT… Tumblr has drawn the line with this self-destructive content being generated by reversing it’s opinion:

“Tumblr has announced that the policy of permitting self-harm blogging has been reversed. The updated content policy will disallow any blog post which “actively promotes or glorifies self-injury or self-harm”. The company plans to prohibit content which urges cutting, disordered eating habits or suicide. Instead, Tumblr searches which look for these subjects will be directed to information on helpful organizations such as the National Eating Disorders Association and other counseling hotlines.”

Yes…there maybe a line between self-expression and destructive discourse, but we have to be-careful how judgmental we are when we read. Maybe those same bloggers think your business blog is just as self-destructive as their whimpering about the day when lost a loved one, dealing with breast cancer, lost a child, or just got fired.

I am still thinking through where the line should be drawn between self-expression and destructive content, but this was not the topic for this blog post. The topic focused more on the need for more self-expression in blogs…if not more so than business blogs used to generate clicks, Likes, tweets, revenue, and other sources of business income.

Blogs are our place…our story…our free will to explore our ability to articulate our free expression.

Content Rules…It Is Our Story!

The best long term blogging SEO solution is YouTube!

So here is a video that has been trending on YouTube for a while…right now it has over 8 million views…WOW! There is a lot of Google/YouTube traffic surrounding this video. Imagine leveraging that traffic for your blog. Now you would have to create a video that generates that type of excitement, but the point being…their is a lot of rich opportunities when integrating great video content from YouTube into a blog.

I am fascinated why more people do not talk about the value in integrating video into your blogging routine. It has and always will be a no brainer for me. So much conversation talks about the tremendous leverage you get when you share your blog posts via Twitter, Facebook, RSS Readers, Subscribe, and any other distribution platform. But no one is talking about why integrating video from outlets like YouTube really creates long term digital success for blogging.

So let’s take YouTube for a second…here are some stats from YouTube:

Traffic

Over 3 billion videos are viewed a day
YouTube is localized in 25 countries across 43 languages
YouTube’s demographic is broad: 18-54 years old
YouTube reached over 700 billion playbacks in 2010

Metrics

YouTube mobile gets over 400M views a day (up 3x year/year), representing 13% of our daily views
The YouTube player is embedded across tens of millions of websites

Social

Nearly 17 million people have connected their YouTube account to at least one social service (Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, Buzz, etc)
Over 12 million people are connected and auto-sharing to at least one social network
150 years of YouTube video are watched every day on Facebook (up 2.5x year/year) and every minute more than 500 tweets contain YouTube links (up 3x y/y)
100 million people take a social action on YouTube (likes, shares, comments, etc) every week
An auto-shared tweet results in 6 new youtube.com sessions on average, and we see more than 500 tweets per minute containing a YouTube link

So…how does this help your blog when you combine video from YouTube?

“YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world with over 3 billion searches per day. So of course you want to have an optimized YouTube presence. By that, I mean you want to have a well branded YouTube channel with optimized videos,” via SEOinc.com.

Well…let’s get down to the basics.

When you begin creating a blogging strategy over a period of time, you begin mapping out the content you might want to write about. At the same tokin, you can begin thinking about a YouTube strategy. Specifically, mapping out video content you can create that can pair and supplement your written blog posts. As you write each post, you produce each coordinating video. That video is uploaded to your YouTube channel. Your YouTube channel needs to have your information and information about your blog in the about area.

For each video you create, you need to have the following:

Great title that includes the keywords you would use to search for the video.
Great description with keys words about the content of the video. This description should also include a link to your blog, maybe even the actual blog post.
Tags that can be used to search for this video.

Once you write the post, use the embed code from YouTube to embed within your blog post. You have officially linked a specific YouTube video to a specific blog post on your blog. The YouTube video has it’s own unique URL inside your YouTube channel and it is embedded in a blog post with a specific URL inside your blog. You have just connected your blog to the largest search engine inside the Internet. By the way, here is a great post about how to optimize each YouTube video for great SEO…CLICK HERE.

Connecting the DOTS!
Now, think about the stats above. Every time you Tweet, share on Facebook, include this blog post on a newsletter…you have shared two distinct links to two pieces of rich content. This not only helps your audience fing your video via your blog, but also via Google since YouTube is owned by Google. Each time you share, you are sharing exponentially two pieces of rich media creating lots of linkages between your blog, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and any other online outlets. This linkage system begins to rank higher in Google’s algorithm, placing your content in a much more likely position to be found.

Why Connecting YouTube to your blog works!
So, if you can write a blog post, included a specific YouTube video from your channel, and share across all the social outlets…then you are much more likely to be found than just writing a blog post. You have connected the rich descriptions and tags from both the blog post and the embedded YouTube video in world of search engines by simpley sharing on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or any other social media sharing outlet. For every share, you are broadcasting two pieces of media (blog and YouTube video) rather than one. And since YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine, and since Google and YouTube are on in the same, you have immediately connected a Google searching opportunity with your blog…merely by posting a video.

Below is a GREAT infographic surrounding the world of video sharing!

Infographic by: Wistia

Also…here is a great presentation below, how to optimize YouTube videos for rich SEO. If you cannot see the presentation below, CLICK HERE to go directly to the website.

Content is Passion. Content is SEO. Content is King

Content is Passion
Write passionately…I say. So many people have the hardest time writing inside a blog, especially in the very beginning…why? They are searching for their voice. A blog is created for some reason, it could be for business or even for a personal reasons…we write because we have something yearning inside to share. We share it on a public space because we want to connect. We could write in a private journal, but there is some reason we write publicly. We have a passion and it drives our fingers across the keyboard.

Connecting our passion with focused writing generates an audience that can connect, engage, and share. This focused writing channels the passion into key words that begin to index inside the search engines. This allows like minded individuals to find you (YES YOU) based on topics and keywords. The more we write from the heart, the more people can connect based on the social search algorithms that drive Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other outlets.

Content is SEO
Your blog is your mother ship. It is the hub for almost all your digital media properties…why? It is so dynamic and content rich, it provides a rich field of words that Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines index daily. Your mother ship is the home base because we share what we passionately write in one single place…our blog. We share this blog via social outlets, distribution points like newsletters, word-of-mouth, and even email. We point people back to our blog because it is the home of our most creative, carefully craft thoughts.

We want people to read, so we will do just about anything to get them to read. Each time we share our content via distribution points, and direct them back to our blog…the search engines love us. The more we write, the more hits we get, the more we share, the more our confidence grows, the more we find our voice. The more we write…the more the search engines index our dynamic home base. SEO is driven by passionate writing!

Content is King
I hear more people say this is “bullshit”, specifically that content is king. I disagree…it is proven by the SEO and the community that finds you based on the passion you write. The more you write, the more you find your voice, the more you focus…the more you connect. As you focus your writing, you can use outlets like Wordle.net to create word clouds based on your writing.

Wordle.net will create this “cloud” providing indicators of the words most frequently used in your posts. This is an indicator of your passion, the passionate content that allows people searching the search engines to find you and connect. As you fine tune those key words, focus your passion…the better the content of your blog is shaped. Your voice matures and you begin not only writing for your audience…yet writing with your audience. Why…because your audience has found you, commented on your posts, and inspired you to write more. Content is KING.

my life as a visual storyteller…translating to new media

My wife and I have been cleaning out our attic and working on the baby room. I found an old picture from 1998 when I attended the NPPA Oklahoma Workshop for News & Video. NPPA stands for National Press Photographers Association, which is a group of people who believe in one common goal, telling a good story visually. So why do I bring this up in my blog…well, it goes the very foundation of my business.

As a young journalist, the NPPA along with many workshops like Poynter Institute in Florida, I learned how to listen, capture, and craft a compelling story. From technical proficiency, which included using camera, sound gear, and our linear edit bays to visual storytelling that believed in capturing the moment. These skills have stayed with me over the years and influence how I approach every project I work on today.

Being a good storyteller is a subjective trait…many different people have different approaches. Some use writing, some use photography, some use technology. I use my cameras and my digital knowledge. I have learned how to transform that storytelling, journalistic approach into a marketable business in today’s economy. Now what does that mean?

Every project I work on whether it uses video production, new media, teaching, or coaching…I work to find the story in each context. I use a stoytelling approach to each and every project that crosses my desk. I was trained as a journalist to listen for the stories. Yes….listen for the stories. When I would go into a breaking news scene, we were trained as photojournalists to listen visually. Carry our cameras on our shoulders and our microphones in front of us and listen for the stories.

We would capture images from the field during hurricanes, conventions, fires, events, etc. and listen for the story. Listen for people talking and those colorful metaphors that painted the picture. We were trained to look at every situation and then turn 180 degrees to find those who were describing the story. Why…what better way to capture a story than through the eyes and ears of the people who are experiencing the situation. We resist writing voice-over in our scripts…it signifies we did not do our job collecting quality interviews and moments. We aim to allow people to tell the story, not some third party voice-over.

So how does photojournalism and storytelling translate into new media including blogs and social outlets? Storytelling is an amazing tool. It gives us the opportunity to tell stories, third person accounts through outlets like video, blogs, journals, and other new media tools. It allows us to capture other peoples’ thoughts in a way that we can share them others to enjoy. It provides and opportunity to bring the audience into the context and see thing through someone else’s lens. It also provides and ethical approach to content creation. We learn to honor those whom we are using to tell stories, to represent their interests along with ours as well.

We have an opportunity to take a project, a blog, a video, a message and bring the audience into a theater, our digital theater. We have a chance to see something through another lens by using words, video, pictures, sounds, etc. We have a chance to stop writing corporate copy, generating brand messages…instead craft a story that can translate to the people around us.

One of my favorite things to do on a project is a little ethnography project. When I first start working with a group, I like to emerse myself inside the story. I like to find myself inside the context, then start capturing the sights and sounds of the message. Their are many ways to tell a story, but I chose to tell it through another’s viewpoint…to capture reality for others to enjoy. Content can be king!

Spend one week not looking at metrics. Hell…two weeks!

Can you do it? Can you spend one week not looking at hits, clicks, followers, “Likes”, etc? Can you do it? Can you stop tracking for one week how many people from some geographic location clicked your blog post. Try it…it is liberating.

We have succumb to content creation based on metrics. Yes, all those tracking mechanism we pay for, install, monitor…any thing with numbers. Those numbers influence the content we create. Yes, if we see a post, an update, a spike…then we re-focus what we are creating to try to generate the same if not bigger spike.

How about this, spend a month not looking at these metrics and write, tweet, connect, “Like”, record content that is inspired from within and a community around you. Now some may argue that the community influences the content creation based on the metrics and numbers recorded. JUST SAY NO!!!! HELL NO!!! Lock that idea up for a few weeks.

Have you ever watched the show “Undercover Boss” where a companies’ leadership wears a disguise and immerses themselves inside their company. The purpose is to really see and hear what is truly happening inside the company. Many major company bosses do this to listen inside the community they lead. I like this idea.

What if we as content creators took this approach and immersed ourselves in the places where our inspiration drives our content. Not in the numbers, almost like and ethnographical study. Get away from the blogging, writing, video creation that is driven by metrics and immerse our creativity with the community were are seeking to connect. Listen and engage. Create content with them not for them. Hell, let them create the content for you.

We must challenge ourselves as marketers to step away from the metics and numbers and allow community inspiration drive our content creation and innovation.

[Video Blog] Content Can Be King with Focused, Passionate Writing! A Success Story!

The video above talks about my buddy Marty Boardman and how he is using his blog, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to build his real estate investment business. He has done this through writing great content, storytelling, and keeping a focus on his mission. Ultimately his passion shines through these social outlets.

About two years ago he had hit rock bottom with his real estate business, after generating millions in business. He and I are very close, he was best man in my wedding. So I taked with him about using a blog to start taking control of his message and use it as a focal point to educate the public about his business. Every two weeks on a conference call, we would chat about his successes. He started using his blog to write passionately about real estate investment, his business, and his goals. He started using Twitter to build relationships online and research other real estate investment news and opportunities. He started using Facebook to build a community of people with the same interests and used YouTube to show his properties and also as a video blog.

By writing and generating great content, writing passionately, connecting with others…he has leveraged these tools as a major business focus. Via these tools, he has built quality relationships that have led to over $250K in investment opportunities over the last year. He is a storyteller and he used his storytelling skills to engage his audience with passionate writing and focused content. Because of this content, the community found him and engaged with his passion.

Hats off to you Marty Boardman! To see his blog, go to http://freerealestateeducation.wordpress.com/ or his Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/freerealestateeducation. You can also find him on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/MartyBoardman

Video and Blogs together…hmm, great combo

There is a reason why video and blogs work together…well, it brings personality. People want more than just a reading experience that is based on search-ability and getting information; they sometimes want to connect. As much as they hate to admit it…they want to learn more. They want to learn what makes the writer tick.

Video is such a crazy thing in this world of blogging, online media, social media, and mobile connection. Video provides depth. It takes us further than the textual words, those words that writers work so hard to bring color inside each syllable. Video does that…it brings texture.

There are a few reasons I work with clients to bring video into the everyday web experience, here are a few reasons:

It brings emotion to the screen. People get to see how someone talks, breaths, laughs, sighs, expresses, etc. It reveals the true emotion behind the written word.
It brings texture. The written word is a two dimensional field where we write our thoughts and hope that our ability to craft sentences provides depth. Video provides a three dimensional look into the screen that Brenda Laurel describes as the “theater.”
It connects social platforms together. If video is placed on YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, or any of the other social video sites…it connects rich media outlets together creating a great SEO experience for the user looking for information.
It breaks up the monotony. As bloggers and writers, we get into a habit of just filling the screen with text within our blogs and web experiences. Bringing video into this online experience can bring a depth beyond the words providing connection points. People get to see who they are reading, and hear those words that are typed.
Video reinforces the brand experience. It allows the user to see the branded message in action, connecting those visual cues to the written word.
It takes the pressure off writing too much content. Sometimes it is better for something to be explained visually in video form, those ideas that are sometimes normally hard to explain in the written word. This takes the burden off of the copywriting or creative writing experience; allowing visuals, music, interviews, graphics to take the place of the written word.

There are many times in the world of blogging, people have a hard time articulating thoughts in written form. There are many times that a thought comes to mind, but we are not in a place to write. We are surrounded by devices that allow us to capture video. We can capture a special moment, an interview, an emotion, or we just want to talk into the camera. What ever presents itself, sometimes the camera is better suited to capture the moment than trying to write down the thought.

Use the media, do not be afraid. Video is a powerful tool especially if you want to supplement the written word.

Here are a few people who do it so well in the blogging context:

Organizations that do it well:

So bottom-line, do not be afraid to use that camera and integrate some video into your online experience. You can provide the rich insight many people are seeking.

Are you inspiring…

Write passionately I say…

Blogging is so hard to wrap our heads around. Finding our voice is even harder. We sit down to write and nothing comes out…nothing translates to from our head to our fingers. Who are we talking to…who are we trying to relate. Are we trying to write to inspire ourselves or writing to inspire others?

Sometimes it takes defining our motives…looking deep inside to define our voice and and defining those who we are writing with and for.

Do we write to meet a length quota or do we write without recognition of length, unknowingly fulling our space inside the walls of our blog…inspiring thoughts to inspire others. We write for ourselves but we write to be “read”. We want to articulate…we want to connect…we want to be heard.

So why do you write. Do we write to fulfill other people’s parameters or do you write with the same passion you find in life. Are we so wrapped up in the technology that we forget to write our thoughts that bring inspiring thoughts to our daily lives. Watch out, we might say something that inspires another person…and create a culture of change.

We must write…write what drives our soul. We must ignore the constraints, forget the technology, forget the competition, and write the inner most passion that makes us get up in the morning and conquer the world.

We are entrepreneurial writers at heart…we believe in our ethic…to write passionately.

If you write it…will they come? Monetize this thought?

Blogging is just a place to really express thoughts, ideas, passions…it is editorial and can be a place of free flowing ideas and thought streams. But monetizing a blog is very entrepreneurial. During a Sunday night #BlogChat on Twitter, Mack Collier’s (@MackCollier) weekly discussion group around blogging on Twitter, Daren Rowse (@problogger) moderated the topic focused on monetizing your blog. As I was sitting back and watching the discussion, I posed the question to Daren…”At what point did you begin monetizing your blog, what was your tipping point?” Daren posed this response:

At first I took as a simple smart ass response to avoid a longer discussion amidst this fast past, Sunday night chat. Pfft. But, I sat back and thought for a few minutes. I realized his quick response had merit…spoken from a true entrepreneur. Now, he knew there was a big need out there for great content, but he knew that he needed to pay for his passion instead of letting the expense of the blog not provide a return.

Monetizing a blog is VERY entrepreneurial and *can* have a very small return on investment, maybe??? But let’s think about that for a second, how do you measure return? What is the basic business question…what need is out there that we/you can provide a solution and bring it to market and bear a “profit”? What do you deem as a profit? Monetary profit, web traffic, PR, exposure to services, expressions of thought/ideas???

Think about this for a second: Did You Know…
According to WordPress, “There are over 27 million WordPress publishers as of September 2010: 13.9 million blogs hosted on WordPress.com plus 13.8 million active installations of the WordPress.org software.”

According to The Future Buzz in January 2009, ” The number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002 are 133,000,000 and the number of people who globally read blogs are 346,000,000.”

According to Technorati on November 3, 2010, “After Hobbyists, Self-Employeds make up the largest cohort, representing 21% of bloggers. Such bloggers say they ‘blog full time or occasionally for their own company or organization.’ 57% say they own a company and have a blog related to their business, while 19% report that their blog is their company. 65% say they manage their blog by themselves. Reflecting their professional nature, Self-Employeds are the most likely to blog about business, with 62% saying they have much greater visibility in their industry because of their blog.”

Point being…there are a lot of people blogging and a lot of people reading. Lots of competition, you better have a tremendous business plan behind your blog if you intend to “monetize” those very words you so carefully craft. Yep…monetize your thoughts, your passion, your eloquence. You think you can just sit down and write and expect they will come…sounds like the pipe-dream of a business that cannot make it past year two with an SBA loan. The ole “Field of Dreams,” if you build it…they will come!

In the movie…it nearly bankrupt the family. They were not waiting for the players to come out of the corn fields, they were waiting for those people with $20.00 bills to see those ghostly players take the diamond, to enjoy America’s past time. Risk…lots of risk.

But what do we really risk by putting a blog out there. I mean, you probably are only spending a monthly hosting fee, design time, maybe paying someone to build it for you? Maybe the most hard costs incurred is at most $600 in a year. Then you are talking about that creative time, that creative tension…that passion that you so eloquently craft with each word in the hopes you will connect with your audience. But at some point, after the confidence has been built and your realize your investment…it is time to make some cash! Yes, you are an entrepreneur…take that little bit of hard costs and lots of that sweat equity and turn into a monthly little bonus. And, if you can work hard…you begin focusing your writing (according to audiences), take part in some adwords and other paid ad campaigns, and you really generate traffic, clicks, and cash. But did you set out to make cash or did you set out to be heard? Or did you set-out to generate interest for your business as a small business owner?

In 2006, my wife set-out to write a journal. Overtime it turned into a full scale blog that tackled topics like breast cancer and infertility. Slowly over time, she gained an audience and built some online relationships. It became her support group…her place to release her thoughts and connect with like minded individuals. She shared her joys, pains, laughs, and cries as she wrote openly and honestly about loosing her best friend, her mother to breast cancer. She revealed to all her struggles with infertility. She had not built a community…she found her voice. But wait…she was not looking to generate any money. She did not set-up those pay for click campaigns…but how is she monetizing her blog? Her value came from the community…her place to share open discourse. Is she any less of an entrepreneur? No…she is more of a social entrepreneur.

I think it is up to us to find what we want to monetize in a blog. With so many audiences and so many spaces to fill with the free flowing words that come from our hearts…we must have a focus in our writing. We put ourselves out there, and for the first time in this world of publishing, we have a platform to feel somewhat equal to those journalists and accomplish authors who make money from their published/broadcasted voices. It is still about community and we as entrepreneurs still have to find a need, a reason to write…because ultimately we want someone to read. Thanks Daren for making me think a bit! Monetize this!

Anderson Area Chamber New Media Workshop

I was asked a few months ago by the Anderson Area Chamber of Commerce to spend some time working with businesses concerning New Media and Social Media Strategies. This morning was a great workshop with a small group of people inspired and engaged. It is was so much fun to work with small business owners that are so passionate about their business. This post is just for you, all fourteen of you that spent time with me this Wednesday morning. I encouraged you not to take notes, but to take part in the conversation. Here are the two presentations form this morning. The first presentation below was the primer, the place to get us going.

The second presentation below was a way to think about implementing New Media into your strategy. It is full of some examples and case studies.

I am also including the worksheet as a PDF to download. Click Here to download.

Thanks to the Anderson Area Chamber of Commerce for hosting this workshop along those who attended, specifically sitting through two hours of my crazy information.