Blogging
Written by Corrie Scott, July 27th, 2011
Tumblr is a microblogging platform that allows users to share just about anything via their personal Tumblelog. You can 
quickly and easily post whatever you want – text, photos, videos, music, quotes, and links, from wherever you want – your web browser, phone, desktop computer, or email. The service prides itself on its ease of use, as well as the ability to customize everything including the colors of your Tumblelog and the HTML code of your Tumblr theme.
As of last month, Tumblr has surpassed WordPress in total number of blogs with more than 20 million. In fact, Tumblr has almost 22 million blogs, more than 7 billion individual blog posts, and averages more than 30 million posts each day. The service also boasts a retention rate of 85% versus Twitter’s 40% – once users sign up for Tumblr they are very likely to continue using it. When you compare Tumblr’s retention rate with traditional blogging you can see that they must be doing something right!
Benefits of Tumblr
Tumblr is poised to do to blogging what texting did to email, ie. not rendering it obsolete, but certainly giving it a run for its money.
With Tumblr, you spend less time writing content, and yet readers of your Tumblelog tend to get a better picture of who/what you are as a person or company. As founder David Karp said, “Tumblelogs don’t need all the context of written post. The context is the blog itself, or the person writing it.” Reading one post in someone’s Tumblelog doesn’t tell you much, but browsing through their posts gives you a remarkably accurate picture of who/what they are, without all the reading associated with a traditional blog. Also, Tumbelogs are likely to appeal to a wider audience, as some will prefer the assortment of photos, video files, and links that a traditional blog may be lacking.
Tumblr’s API allows Tumblelogs to be extensively modified; users can delete all the basic formatting and start from scratch. If you can imagine it, chances are you can do it with Tumblr. The outcome for brands and businesses is huge; connect more deeply with your readers, in less time, and on your customized, easy to use microblog. No wonder Tumblr is exploding in popularity!
To find out more about why everyone loves Tumblr, click here to see the many features available to you via your Tumblelog.
Written by Jan, March 04th, 2011
Today and over the next few weeks we will be taking a close look at social media for non profits: we will even share some of our “Social Media Strategy Smarts” specific to this sector with a view to helping you understand how using social media can benefit your organization and help it grow.
Keep It Simple and Achievable
The Out-Smarts mantra for our non profit clients has been “Keep It Simple and Achievable”. Adding social media tools to the strategy of non-profit business is essential in our networked world and tools such as Facebook, email, blogs and twitter are not only cost effective they also encourage a two-way conversation between people and organizations that can effectively increase the momentum and reach of a non-profit - but it has to be manageable given your time and resources.
Good Planning Makes for Good Fortune:
Non profits that focus first on developing a clear strategy are best positioned to succeed with an Social Media program. The first step is to develop a strategy that authentically reflects the organizations strategic goals and vision – whether the aim is to increase fund raising opportunities, engage volunteers or educate the public.
Here are some questions to explore to jump start your Non Profit Social Media strategy:
1. What do you want to accomplish with social media?
i.e. Do you plan to use Social Media to:
- Listen and Learn?
- Build Relationships and Issues Awareness?
- Improve Reputation?
- Generate Conversations?
- Drive Visitors to a website or blog?
- Taking Action or Fundraising?
- All of the above or other?
2. Identify and Research your Audience:
- Who must you reach to meet your objectives?
- What do you want to say to your key audience? (and what will they say back!)
- Which social media tools does your key audience currently use?
- Is there research required to better understand the online social behavior of your target audience?
3. Integrate your Social Media with existing marketing – harmonize with your online approach with off-line message:
- How does your social media support other components of your communications and fund raising strategy?
- Is your website Social Media ready?
4. Change can be hard – Social Media means added transparency for your Organization
To move forward with your strategy you will need to face these common fears and concerns:
- Loss of control over your message
- Dealing with negative comments on-line
- Perception of wasted of time and resources
- Suffering from information overload already, this will cause more
- Not being successful, fear of failure
5. Pick Your Tools and Your Leader
- What tools to support your objectives?
- What tools suit your audience?
- What tools do you have the capacity to implement?
- Who will be responsible for over sight?
6. Get Started
- Do you need any outside expertise?
- Who will implement your organization’s social media strategy?
- Do you have a Social Media Policy to provide posting guidelines
- Determine how much time you can you allocate to your strategy?
If your Non Profit can answer most of these questions it is clearly ready to step out onto the Social Media stage with your message. Remember keep it simple and achievable. Treat your first steps as experimental. Go easy and record your successes and challenges to share with others.
Written by Corrie Scott, February 24th, 2011
Many businesses would like to have a strong social media presence, but are put off by the sheer number of social networks available. It’s easy to get overwhelmed but remember, you don’t have to be on all social networking sites. In fact, being on sites that don’t directly speak to your target audience, or on sites that your target audience doesn’t frequently visit, can be detrimental to your business, and a waste of your valuable time.
A good place to start when entering the realm of social media is with the heavy hitters; Facebook, Twitter, YouTube for video content, and your business blog. If this list still seems overwhelming, don’t despair! There’s a way to connect all these social networking sites so you’re not spending half your day posting the same YouTube link to all your different followers.
It is best to set up Facebook as your hub when connecting all your different social networking sites. This is because Facebook has a huge amount of applications that have been developed for all sorts of social networking related purposes. All you have to do is go to the Facebook Application Directory and search for the appropriate application, chances are it’s there in the directory. Next up, how to connect your blog, Twitter, and Youtube accounts to Facebook.
Blog:
Connecting your blog to Facebook means that each time you update your blog it automatically posts to your Facebook page’s wall, as well as archiving in the ‘notes’ tab of your page. The process for linking your blog isn’t obvious when looking at your Facebook page, but it’s well worth the search. To begin, click on ‘edit’ below your page’s profile picture. Next, click on ‘Apps’ in the list on the left hand side of the screen. Once there, find the Notes application and click ‘Go to App’. Now, on the left hand side of the screen you should see ‘Edit import settings’ as the very last option. Click this. You should now see a screen that looks like the photo below.
From here, enter the url of your blog and click ‘start importing’. Your blog is now auto posting to your Facebook page.
Twitter:
To connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts, log into your business’ Twitter account, then open a separate tab and go here. Find your business page, click ‘link to Twitter’ and follow the directions.
Youtube:
Using the Cueler application, you can connect your Youtube and Facebook accounts so that videos posted to your Youtube channel automatically post to your Facebook page as well. To do this, click here, and then click ‘install’. This will bring you to a screen that looks like this:
Choose the page you want to add the application to, and follow the directions to automatically post Youtube videos to a new Youtube tab on your Facebook page.
Following the above steps will help reduce the amount of time it takes to update your social media accounts. However, don’t forget to manually update your accounts as well. A mix of manual updates and auto posting allows you to save time, but also ensure that your business maintains a humanistic and approachable presence online. Also, if people follow your business across multiple social networking channels, taking the time to manually post, along with auto posting, ensures they won’t continuously see the exact same content numerous times.
We can help:
If you are interested in connecting your social media accounts and are looking for more guidance, contact us at Out-Smarts Marketing – we provide social media and internet marketing planning services to help you achieve your online goals.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 24th, 2010
Guest blogger Kerry Sauriol of Crunchy Carpets explains why small businesses should blog.
When I Started Blogging
A little while ago, I was attending an event held by the Enterprising Moms Network. As usual I had to explain what Crunchy Carpets was. One woman exclaimed to me that she had never gotten into blogging and Twitter and all that stuff as she just never had the time.
This got me thinking about a few responses to that statement.
If she didnt have the time, what did that say about me or the many women I know who are into blogging or social media?
The statement seemed to imply that a blog was a tool mainly for personal use: merely a hobby. Judging from the amount of women I knew at that event that were using blogging and social media as business and marketing tools, I was quite taken aback by this assumption.
Many small business owners and entrepreneurs feel overwhelmed by the thought of adding one more activity to their already demanding days. Most then want to know in concrete terms what they will get out of a blog. What their ROI (return on investment) would be.
If your company has a website, adding a blog to it is the simplest and easiest way to reach out to your customers. A blog can add a human touch to your website. It gives you the space to reach out and communicate directly with your customer base.
The biggest lesson about blogging is ….you get out of it what you put in.
Companies can struggle with the difference between marketing and communicating. With marketing, you see the results of it quickly and easily in the form of sales that stemmed from that campaign. Blogging is different. Blogging is about relationship building. This can be tough to understand when you are focused on the bottom line.
This is true for both personal and corporate blogs.
Blogging shouldnt be demanding…but quality writing is key. Poorly written copy or a blog that is just all about marketing can put off a reader/potential customer. So yes, hiring a copywriter or professional blogger might be your next step.
Blog Examples
Agoo Clothings web presence is an amazing example of taking social media and community building to the extreme. Their site is more than an online store. Their blog is a mix of promotional copy and child and family oriented copy that they feel their readers (their shoppers) will appreciate. Add their HUGE Facebook activity and the promotion they do with personal (mom bloggers) and you can call their social media presence a huge success. Agoo wants you to know that the people behind the clothing line are family people too with kids of their own and so they can share an understanding with their buyers.
Raspberry Kids, another online child focused store already has a rich and readable website, but the blog has become not only a promotional tool, but a great insight into the life of the owner/operator of the company. She shares the ups and downs of entrepreneurialship with her readers and customers. She is one of “us.”
From these two examples, you can see how well the addition of a blog to your web presence can enable your business to connect with your community.
Marketing today has a far more touchy feelly vibe to it than the days of traditional marketing, and for some this may feel frivolous, but I do firmly believe that community building, relationship building through the internet is the way to building solid business in the real world.
If you already have a company site, the addition of a blog is a simple and inexpensive step. Talk to your webmasters and they should be able to help you or talk to Out-Smarts.
If you don’t have a website, platforms like WordPress are simple and easy to set up and there are many free templates out there that can be customized without needing a degree in code. WordPress.com is a free system and their .org site is where you can set up a blog with your OWN URL and host.
If you need a writer for your blog, there are a lot of us out there!! And we are all so talented and ready to help.
About Kerry
Having discovered that children don’t give annual employee evaluations, Kerry jumped at the chance seven years ago to be a stay-at-home mom. She has found she can more than handle being called a stupid head by her two eldest and sweetly precocious children instead of being fired by her peers.
Kerry’s hold on sanity is her computer and the world of mommy bloggers. She can ignore the chaos created by three kids, three cats, a dog and patient husband and find the peace it takes to come up with her latest post at her personal site Crunchy Carpets . Apart from obsessive Tweeting and Facebooking, she can also be found haranguing people to post on her other site Wet Coast Women.
Blogging has brought her the opportunity to meet amazing people, speak on CBC Radio and be interviewed by the Globe and Mail on a few occasions.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, October 08th, 2010
For this blog post, we invited Kerry Sauriol to tell us about the other side of marketing to bloggers: the blogger’s perspective. Kerry has built a large a loyal following though her blogs Crunchy Carpets and Wet Coast Women (see bio below). If you are considering a blog outreach campaign (especially one aimed at mommy bloggers), this is a must read post.
Marketing To Bloggers
When I started blogging, it was purely as a creative outlet and an amazing way to meet people out there in cyberspace. Later, as I discovered the local blogging community, it also became a great way to make REAL life friends.
I have loved the community that is mom blogging.
What I wasnt really prepared for was discovering what a commodity the mom bloggers of the world are to marketers and big business.
Granted, women count for 85% of the USs purchase decisions, and the mainstream media is saturated with ads targeting us over products from soap to well…soap.
According to much of the pitches that are now arriving in my inbox…..I am VERY excited about things like mops and ham.
Courting mom bloggers has become a huge business. Cars are handed out; trips to Disneyland are offered as well as exclusive getaways at destination hotels where the corporations set up mini conferences for their new brand ambassadors. All for want of a positive post.
According to a survey by PQ Media, an alternative-media measurement firm, roughly, $50 million is spent courting bloggers to extol the virtues of their product. Very little of that money is actually seen by the bloggers writing the reviews.
It is now taken for granted that a review blogger, especially a mom review blogger will happily work for product or free all expense trips to things like the Toyota plant. And for the most, this is true.
For myself, if it is a product or service that I use or would use and I think talking about it would be REMOTELY interesting to my, readers, I will usually be happy to write something up.
For other mom bloggers, they want nothing to do with PR pitches and make no bones about it.
Other mom bloggers feel that our time and our blogs are worth more than some free product.
And that is the main point that all marketers must realize, there is no ONE mom blogger type. What works with one will not work with another. Before you send out your email blast to your mom blog list, do your research.
Read the blogs you are about to pitch to. Make sure that this is the TYPE of mom who will be interested in your product.
Yes, TYPE of mom. I said it. There are so many types of moms….all convinced that there way is the right way, that if you annoy the wrong type, you will be in a world of trouble. And by trouble I mean PR nightmare.
Ask Nestle.
Ask the Corn Refiners Association and (ironically) Mom Central.
While some moms will be happy to enjoy free webinars in return for positive press regarding their love of Betty Crocker or High Fructose Corn Syrup, there can be many more who will not be so thrilled and be more than happy to tell their online world why they are not happy about it.
And so my next key point about marketing to bloggers is BE PREPARED. Make sure you are aware of how mom bloggers are using social media. Facebook is dominated by women. Women and moms LOVE social media. What a mom blogger posts on their own site travels far beyond their RSS feeds….twitter sees all.
This can be a great thing for a marketer or a very bad thing. If your product is REMOTELY controversial make sure you are prepared to field discussions online about your product. Do not leave this up to the blogger.
When marketing to mom bloggers, you have to be very clear about what you want from them and their blogs. Are you looking for an advertorial or do you want an actual honest review. Be clear and honest in your pitches and expect the same from the blogger.
Build a relationship with the bloggers you work with. Get to know them. The better you know and understand the bloggers you are dealing with the better the posts and results of the posts will be.
Understand that a mom blogger tends to be a mom first and a blogger second. If you are inviting a mom blogger to a marketing event, childcare or being allowed to bring children to the event will be key to the attendance of that blogger.
And again, remember that while yes indeed you may be giving product or trips to the bloggers for free. Their time and their sites are valuable. Respect that and the bloggers will respect you in turn.
About Kerry
Having discovered that children dont give annual employee evaluations, Kerry jumped at the chance seven years ago to be a stay-at-home mom. She has found she can more than handle being called a stupid head by her two eldest and sweetly precocious children instead of being fired by her peers.
Kerrys hold on sanity is her computer and the world of mommy bloggers. She can ignore the chaos created by three kids, three cats, a dog and patient husband and find the peace it takes to come up with her latest post at her personal site Crunchy Carpets . Apart from obsessive Tweeting and Facebooking, she can also be found haranguing people to post on her other site Wet Coast Women.
Blogging has brought her the opportunity to meet amazing people, speak on CBC Radio and be interviewed by the Globe and Mail on a few occasions.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 07th, 2007
Its all very well having a company blog and contributing to it regularly but you have to ask: are we doing everything we can to ensure that our intended audience can reach us? If you don’t submit your blog to relevant blog and search engines your efforts will be handicapped. Here’s a list of 10 sites that you should consider submitting to to promote your blog and reach more people (listed in no particular order).
- Technorati
- Ice Rocket
- iBlog Business
- Add-Me
- Sphere
- Blog Search Engine
- Google Blog Search
- Yahoo Feed Submit
- Blog Top List
- MSN
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, March 19th, 2007
The Outsmart blog is no longer a pipe dream. Its up and running. I have something insightful and valuable to say. Its time to spread the word! But how?
Id like to use this forum to share with you my own experiences garnered from the trial and error and research I have done in order to determine the most appropriate next steps to promoting the Outsmart blog. I hope these help you in turn to spread the word.
Evidently, there are many ways to publicise your blog: some are common sense and some more involved.
I consider connections to be vital to establishing your blog: connections both on-line and the physical world. The more connections you have the more people will see your blog, the more you will build awareness of your organisation and what you do.
Start with the easy stuff – make it easy for people to connect with you and make them aware that youre blogging – add the url of your blog to your e-mail signature: some software such as Plaxo will let you customise unique e-mail signatures (check out the Plaxo Blog), business cards and promotional materials
Connect with your network – tell people you meet about your web log (include friends, family, business associates, partners and clients and anyone else who will listen) – ask them to check it out and tell them their feedback is invaluable. This will all generate traffic to your web page and help establish your blog.
Links – if youve done your research, you already know of many appropriate web logs that talk about your industry or area of expertise so start placing meaningful and appropriate comments on articles that are relevant to your business. This will begin to establish your page (not to mention your credibility) by linking with other revered blogs.
Christine at Bluelime Media had some great advice: if someone comments on your blog then e-mail them back to establish a connection with them. Check out the Bluelime Media weblog for some very relevant posts about blogging.
Make sure to connect your blog with the main Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN) so that people find your posts on the Internet. I found the following “Top 10 Search Engines in the United States (The Majors) by Rank” article invaluable when I did this and had little or no difficulty registering with most of the major search engines.
Next connect with the main blog engines so that readers can locate your pieces. There are numerous blog engines (I found over 50) but the main ones seem to be Technorati, Ice Rocket and the major search engine’s all have blog readers. I found some of these easier to manoeuvre my way around than others but once you find the right place on the web sites you can often set up them up to update your listing automatically so that your new articles are listed as they are posted.
By promoting your blog, you will bring more traffic to your site and help establish your expertise. I am learning as I go here so this is by no means a conclusive list of ways to promote your corporate blog. Its a great start though and it has kept me busy this week… I would love to add to this any innovative ideas, tactics and promotional vehicles that you use and that I may have overlooked so please add your comments.
the “top this and that of 2011”, and here we are throwing another one into the mix. But, we really wanted to share with you our most read blog posts of 2011. Hopefully you’ll find some bits of wisdom, or a key takeaway, from the following list:
