eBiz Tomorrow by Chris Salazar

I recently wrote about how to become a successful intern since I was interned for about 2 years at a Bay Area tech company. But, since I’ve grown into the workforce, I’ve seen my blogging decline. I thought it was going to be the opposite, but I’m getting back into shape and motivating myself to continue blogging.

I will give this my best shot, but these are characteristics that I currently working towards since they seem to be prominent in most successful bloggers. This will serve as a checklist for me…I’ll revisit this to check on my progress.

How To Become A Successful Blogger

• Think PASSION, not numbers
  • Some bloggers start off or eventually participate in the popularity/number contest–AKA your technorati rank
  • Numbers and Ranks are a distraction, instead write about your passion
  • Blogs written with passion are much more powerful, resourceful, and interesting
• Join the CONVERSATION
  • Shel Israel, author of Naked Conversations, said we should join the conversation by listening FIRST–excellent advice!
  • Listen to what others have to say, start writing your own thoughts, comment on other blogs, and invite them to talk with you
  • Be a good listener and a good contributor
• Exhibit THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
  • Keep your posts unique and resourceful
  • Add value to what has already been said and introduce new ideas and questions
  • Make your posts thought provoking, not just a summary of what’s going on
• Create TRUST
  • Shel Israel said blogging should be like:
    • “Two neighbors leaning on a fence talking about their interests”
  • Create trust by creating an informal and open global conversation
  • Invite others to agree and disagree with you
• Enable comments
  • Comments are an important feature of blogs, enable them and help keep the conversation going
  • Positive and negative feedback are both good, don’t worry
  • The best thoughts, perhaps some you did not think of, come from comments
• Become the starting and ending point for all conversations
  • You want the conversation to start and end with you
  • First, keep up to date with global trends, news, and innovations and provide your honest opinions
  • Be enthusiastic and raise eyebrows
• Network with other bloggers
  • Build relationships, do not just sit back and hope things will happen
  • Venture out in the blogosphere, meet new people, and build friendships
  • Commend bloggers for a job well done and help them become thought leaders as well

Despite being a personal list, these rules apply to all (even corporate bloggers). This is an on-going list that I will continue to update with YOUR COMMENTS!

I am introducing a set of guidelines that can be used to enhance your user’s experience and inspire conversations. These commitments have been introduced by Barry Posner, Dean of the Business school at Santa Clara University, but in a student-leadership context…instead, I am relating these ideas to Blogging.

The Ten Commitments of an Exemplary Blog

1. FIND YOUR VOICE by clarifying your personal values and including your expertise. All publishers must have their own unique voice that sets them apart from all others. Whether its with humor or language, defining and exemplifying your own voice is key.

2. SET THE EXAMPLE by aligning actions with shared values. (GO FIRST!) Exemplary Blogs are leaders and need to model the way for others to follow. Set the example for everyone else and let them drive their own experiences, then allow them the opportunity to reflect and converse.

3. ENVISION THE FUTURE by imagining exciting and emerging possibilities. Most successful bloggers are “early adopters” and are constantly searching for the next opportunity. While some are just starting to blog, others are moving on to podcasts/audio conversations, and soon few will be moving towards video conversations.

4. ENLIST OTHERS in a common vision by appealing to shared aspirations. Publishers know their audience and should always write with them in mind. Appealing to their needs heightens the experience and enriches the conversations.

5. SEARCH FOR OPPORTUNITIES by seeking innovative ways to change, grow, and improve. An exemplary blog is always changing and finding new ways to both attract new readers and fulfill needs. There is always room for improvement, but those blogs who embrace the idea of positive change and run with it succeed.

6. EXPERIMENT AND TAKE RISKS by constantly generating small wins and learning from mistakes. Never be afraid to challenge the common belief, after all the worst that can happen is you are wrong. But in some cases, the “minority” belief is right, as we have seen in Why Blogs are NOT Important

7. FOSTER COLLABORATION by building trust. (Let the user’s drive the conversation). Allowing the user to take control builds trust. This is why RSS Syndication (the user’s vehicle) has been generating some hype among many online companies. In short, RSS gives users complete control over what they want to read, which establishes a sense of trust between the reader and the publisher/coporation.

8. STRENGTHEN OTHERS by sharing power and discretion.

9. RECOGNIZE CONTRIBUTIONS by showing appreciation for excellence. Recognize those who are thought-leaders and provoke interesting conversations.

10. CELEBRATE THE VALUES AND VICTORIES OF OTHERS by creating a spirit of community. Ah Yes, building a community is important and perhaps an important goal for every blog. Exemplary blogs build communities where everyone is NOT afraid to speak and everyone has a voice. This voice is what drives the conversations and enhances the reader’s experience.

If you had to make your own list, what would you have?

I read this article about the 6 ways to not get stumbled. A lot of these reasons are logical and really take aware from the essence of the content posted. We all know that you need to not only report/summarize other content, but add some sort of value, right? Yes, this is all true, but HOW DO YOU GET STUMBLED?

Readers will stumble your blog if its useful and entertaining to them. This means your blog has to be in tip-top shape! Let’s review my 4 C’s of Blogging: Content, Clarity, Conversation, Customer. All of these shape your blog into something that is real and filled with value.

1. Content - Your content has to be relevant and up to date. This is what keeps your users coming back for more. Don’t just provide the bare bones, but add extra interesting and thought-provoking incite. Content on your site is key…and gauge success by noting trends and periods when you have most traffic.
2. Clarity - Make sure your voice is clear. Take a clear stance and prove it! In fact, be clear from the beginning of your goals for each blog post. This will help you stay on track with the blog post and gauge your success at the end. Is the purpose and point of your blog post conveyed clearly?
3. Conversation - Create an atmosphere that is ready for conversations. This will not come right away and takes work, but gear up and be ready for when it does happen. Conversations is important, but its not most important. First connect with yourself, write down your thoughts, then work on getting others involved.
4. Customer - Plain and simple, think of your users as customers. What do they need? What mediums do the use? How can you best express your thoughts? And, why are you blogging? Treat your users like customers, work on not only finding new customers, but keeping them. Shouldn’t be too hard considering we are all each other’s customers, just put on those shoes and write to your specific audience.

These are pointers on how to have a good blog, but theres still a lot of effort needed from you. You’ve got to connect with other people around the blogosphere. Don’t wait for them, go out and get them yourself!

Each corporation has several different entities and business units. Somehow, someway all of these must fit together to work towards the overall business strategy. Its imperative that each corporation have their own brand, but still hold together and create one…this is especially true for corporate online communities.

In an attempt to show this, I’m noting all of the different business units in a typical corporation:

• IT
• Marketing/PR
• Finance/Accounting
• Channel Partners

For every company this may be different, but these entities MUST work together for the overall purpose of the corporation. However, each must take into consideration their target market and specific customer.

Here’s some examples of different brands for each:

• IT - “The Techies”
  • Your experts in all the back-end tech stuff that not very many other people even understand. Your brand is “geek” and use this to attract these types of people.
  • Tech shows, blogs with technical info, podcasts, videocasts…doesn’t matter what it is, it should be TECHY!
  • Community Actions: Create tech shows, blogs, forums podcasts and videocasts demonstrating the capabilities of your products. Think about what “you” as a techy would want, and create it! Host user forums, live demos, and work closely with user groups during customer events.
• Marketing/PR - “Creative and Customer Facing”
  • These groups touch the customer. All eyes are on them, messaging is on them, they’re the face of the company. Again, speak your customers language, but stick to what you’re good at (leave the tech stuff to the techies)
  • Informal blogs, marketing campaigns that reach the customer, reach out to user groups and connect them with IT folks. Make the connections, generate leads, gain interest…and do all of this informally (thats the key)
  • Community Actions: Use PR and Blogs together as compliments. However, do not confuse them. Marketing should make sure the online community is involved in all customer touch points (events, product launches, R&D, etc). When creating PRs, Marketing should create two versions…1) the PR, and 2) a human version (informal) of that for the blogs
• Finance/Accounting - “It’s all about the numbers! Show me the money!”
  • Provide customers with the good numbers. Provide all of the other business units with the right numbers to pave ways for improvement.
  • Financial advisors need numbers, provide these to them. However, always, always be accurate.
  • Community Actions: You’re the number geeks, show your expertise. Do not be afraid to boast how well the company is doing or even a specific product! Strategically let your customers know through the blogs, events, or even website…just make sure this does not come off as bragging. Customers don’t like big egos.
• Channel Partners - “Customer Outlets…the VARs”
  • Other than direct sales, channel partners bring in the majority of the customers. Strengthen relationships with VARs, work with Marketing to create tools and campaigns that are beneficial for your partners.
  • Help partners increase visibility of your products/services, encourage them to promote them too!
  • Community Actions: Create tools your VARs can actually use. Videocasts, webinars, demos…all of this is good, but make sure the content is relevant. Partners are very specific in their needs, get one of your Partner experts talking to customers. Channels need a spokesperson, whether this be a blogger, podcaster…it’s important.
    

Each business unit can work on creating and enhancing these brands. All can work together to create a group of bloggers that target each one of these, or even a set of podcasts with an expert from each brand involved. Doing this will inevitably reach your customers in a variety of different ways.

Each brand should have one individual who represents them and touches the customer. This person should be savvy enough to know about the industry, company, product/service, and their specific brand. As each person markets their brand, they will all be working together to improve the overall brand of the corporation. This shows synergy…synergy is attractive and customers like it!

I’ve previously talked about the basics for building an online community starting with corporate blogs. This is great for building a foundation, but each online community must have an underlying strategy to keep it living. Strategic planning is vital in ensuring online community goals are met and evolving.

Here’s my list of milestones and goals for all online community blogs (within the first few months):

• Integrate corporate blogs in all customer touch points including:
  • Announcements
  • Product Launches
  • Product Developments
  • Support
  • Customer Events

• Create community blogs to foster industry conversations (2-way) and thought leadership

• Encourage Product Marketing to actively participate in the online industry conversation:
  • Watch corporate bloggers and step in when needed
  • Interact with other industry practitioners and build an online social network
  • Provide corporate bloggers with research and ideas from the blogosphere

• Allow corporate blogs to be used as a feedback mechanism to improve products, support/tech help, messaging, and strategy
  • Connect product teams with current customers/users to build better products
  • Connect users with users to solve technical issues and log information in archives/database

• Utilize corporate blogs as sales tools
  • Use blog entries as conversation starters
  • Refer to corporate blogs and/or specific posts for tech help/information
  • Use blogs/bloggers to answer questions from the sales field

• Improve communication with partners and vendors
  • Blogs = reseller tools to promote vendor’s product info and support
  • Another medium to foster communication, product awareness, and channel partner advantages

• Use corporate blogs as a mechanism to keep track of competitor’s successes and advantages
  • Listen to their customer feedback - what are they doing well?
  • How are their customers reacting to your product launches, etc?
    • How can this information help your company improve product and operations?

This is a great list to start off with. It’s general, yet each corporation can prone it to their own liking. Additionally, here are some other thought-provoking posts that can help with your planning:

1. How to sell social media to your boss
2. Social 2.0 and How to utilize it’s full potential in business
3. The 4 C’s of blogging
4. Benefits of corporate blogs
5. Users vs Consumers - Who’s in, Who’s out

Jeremiah posted his eight things, so I’ll post mine here too!

1. I am a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. TKD has been a big part of my life since I was 7 years old. I actually got beat up before I started, my parents put me into TKD to gain some confidence…well it worked! The next time someone tried to pick on me, I made sure it was their last! Since then, I’ve done boxing and kickboxing too.
2. My first car is a scion tc becuse of Jeremiah. I was stuck on a Toyota Corolla (type s), but he said one day “how about a scion?” I said …”whats that?” I went back to my cubicle, looked it up, then called me parents.
3. Speaking of Jeremiah, I was his intern and believe it or not, I was there when he went from intranet manager to social media evangelist…I witnessed his newfound passion.
4. I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico…moved to San Jose, CA when I was 7-8 years old.
5. My first name is Chris and up until a few years ago, no one called me Chris except for when my mom was mad at me. Everyone else (family and friends) knew me as Anthony.
6. I am a DJ. Although I don’t DJ much, I did for a few middle school dances!
7. Im a pool shark…I love pool…and will hopefully join a tournament some day. I have yet to find someone who can beat me consistently…no one can. Im not being cocky, just no one that I know can.
8. MY LIFETIME GOAL IS…to become a music producer…work in the studio with artists. Not necessarily doing the creative part…but overseeing a music company like Jive Records.

Please, let’s keep this going. Let me know what your eight things are.

For the next few months, I will be putting on the hat of an Online Community Marketing Manager and pretending as if I’m starting my own from scratch. For simplicity reasons, let’s assume I’ve already got all the back-end server stuff taken care of.

Some questions to ponder about building an online community are:

• who will participate?
• how much time with contributors need to spend on the tool(s)?
• how long does it take to see results and how are these measured?
• how will the online community integrate with other promotional and communication efforts?
• should you allow comments?

Some corporations have only a few bloggers, usually expert thought-leaders, and others have a wide range of employee bloggers (like Sun and IBM). Figuring out what best fits the company’s culture is very important. Either way, here’s a good blog policy to follow (created by sun).

The next important question to ask is why you are blogging. How can you align the blog with the online community and most importantly, the overall messaging of the company. Here’s a few steps to do this:

1. What is the corporate message? Write it down on a piece of paper and figure out how you can achieve this
2. How can you shape the blog to support and coincide nicely with your company’s overall strategy?
3. What trends and topics are hot in your industry? Visit sites like technorati to find out. Using tools like Google Alerts to keep up with the market. You need to be 100% up to date.
4. Who should blog? An individual, a group, or the whole company?

It’s one thing to create tools and push them out there, but its another to have a strategy and a goal for them. They must be part of the value chain that ultimately leads to the corporate message. The blog should spark conversation within the industry, somehow promote the company’s image, and be used as a knowledge base for all.

There are a few important aspects of blogging that serve beneficial and could help jump start other community marketing tools as well:

• Tagging - the method of categorizing information by topic, idea, customer, solution, etc
  • Taxonomy - formal categories grouped by data hierarchy, data relationship, and data type
  • Folksonomy - allowing users the power to define categories to make info easy to search, find, and store (i.e. flickr)
• Webfeeds, RSS - allow sumarries and/or full text entries to be read in feedreaders (MyYahoo, Google Reader)
• Comments - allow all comments, only delete spam. This fosters a dialog between multiple individuals at a time
• Web Analytics - how will traffic be analyzed? Google Analytics is a great tool. What stats must every blog have?

These are all things a Community Manager must take into account and be ready for. Just the first step in creating a blog, but there’s more. What about other help docs? If I were to create help docs (as few as possible), they’d have the following titles (in no particular order):

1. How to incorporate blogs with Flickr
2. Best Practices for blogging: Blogging 101
3. Blogging etiquette: What should and should not be said
4. How to become social and up-to-date with industry trends
5. Blog Analytics Essentials: How to make sense out of graphs and stats

Last, but not least, the role of a Community Marketing Manager is important. This person must possess certain characteristics in order to successfully evangelize the importance of such tools and to keep a program growing. Jeremiah has the 4 Tenets of a Community Manager, which are very difficult to uphold.

This should be enough for now. Please let me know how you’re doing…what roadblocks are you facing? Maybe we can help each other!

I’ve got and I’ve found it…rather I’ve found the person who have surpassed me by a great deal! Someone who is my age and has already done so much with social media in both his personal and professional life…Dan Schawbel.  His main focus is BRAND…and he recently gave his predictions for Personal Branding in 2008

In the light of the new year coming and my attempt to add value to Dan’s contributions, here are my own predictions for 2008’s world of Social Media:

• Corporations will move past “community” and work to create CUSTOMER UTILITY
  • Yes, corporations should concentrate on providing their customers with a service; whether that be an interactive knowledge base, variety of web 2.0 product interfaces, or a network of online consultants available around the clock
  • Everyone is creating a community, but investing in the customer is important. Common questions to ask: What can they actually use? What’s missing in my industry? Why should customers invest their time with my company?
• Users will challenge corporations to become transparent and real
  • Open-communication is not enough; every leading corporation will have 2 faces (the CEO and the Community guy)
• Job openings in social media will explode - will we see CCOs (Chief Community Officers)?
  • We’ll have two versions of the story, two different types of Press Conferences. One will be on TV and in front of reports, the second will be on a blog “translating” into real terms what’s going on. Nowadays, CEO’s messages are lost in translation…its the CCOs job to keep it real.
• Blogging and Facebook will lose its value and utility
  • I’ve seen it with Facebook already, I’ve been bombarded with way too much SPAM and I’ve lost interest in it. I see other profiles, who I used to frequently visit, and they are filled with so much extra stuff that makes it look like one big blob of junk.
  • Blogging…people are trying to make a living through their personal blog? Too many adwords, too many attempts to make a $1, too many people why to become e-famous. What happened to true, passionate blogging for the love of writing and sharing one’s ideas?

What are your predictions for 2008? Am I on the right track or do you have some objection?

Many of us understand and realize that social media is powerful for individuals and businesses. However, there’s a vast majority out there who either disagree or are too old fashioned. Unless you work for a young company, those people are probably your boss.So, I want to start my own community marketing program at my company…how do I do it? Fortunately, I was privileged to follow under the footsteps of Jeremiah, who introduced social media to HDS; we have forums, a wiki, and a few bloggers. Yet, it was far from easy…but I learned from him.

Still its very hard work, so I look up to experts for advice and I came across an interesting article that really sums up how to start one. Only one catch, this article tells how to start one if others in your industry are catching on too…nonetheless, i cant argue with his findings.

I started off this blog with the intention to summarize someone’s thoughts, but instead I’m pushing myself…I’ll give you my advice from what Ive learned.

Here goes…

“In order to sell social media to your boss you must…”

CREATE A NEED

Bosses are busy people…in and out of meetings and/or working on bigger/better things; which is they have no time to waste on worthless projects. So…make social media a NEED, not a want. Make him/her say “We need to have blogs.” Social media is a utility that every company should and needs to somehow get their hands on.

Sounds easy right? But, how do you create this need? Here’s a few ways:

• Show ROI and Success with SEO- One word: proactive. The success of the social media program is in your hands; if you’re not proactive, you will not be able to see ROI. I read about how to show to your bosses that this ‘new media’ program is worth it’s weight, but its missing one important aspect…SEO
  • SEO - Search Engine Optimization is something that every company should be worried about, yet are they? Whether or not its in your scope, SEO can be accomplished by social media (forums, blogs, wikis, etc). Smart and active blogs have the ability to: come up early in search engines, produce incoming/outgoing links, and store a collection of thoughts and information. All of this helps SEO tremendously.
    • Example #1: Everyone knows about the whole DELL SUPPORT finding. When you search “Dell Support” in Google, scroll down, what do you see on the first page? …a link to Jeremy Zawodny’s post: What the F*** is with Dell Technical Support?
    • Enough said, this shows the power of blogging, especially with SEO. (I think before it came up a lot sooner, maybe 3rd or 4th in the search results). How much did it cost? NOTHING, FREE.
  • How much WORK does it take? - Aside from initially setting up the blog, which could take 5-8 hours total for branding, back-end work, etc…it depends on your strategy (which could range from 2-10 hours per week). I recommend blogging 3 times a week to keep your audience interested and subscribed.
    • Each blog takes 2 hours max, blog 3 times a week, that is 6 hours per week
    • 6 hours per week times 4 weeks = 24 hours per month
    • This is all the time you need…if done correctly, your company can use the 24 hours of time to benefit the overall SEO strategy.
    • Example #2: Type in “storage bloggers”…what is the first search result? The storage wiki (referenced above) that Jeremiah started. It might have cost something, but definitely not as much as paid search.

• Illustrate how your company can benefit from “human” contact - one of the most valuable rewards from a community marketing program is the human contact. 10 years ago, this sort of communication was unheard of, but now its part of our life in and out of work. Human contact sparks relationship marketing and relationships build trust. Trust in every business activity is very important and difficult to achieve. Social Media is the hub for open communication and a new way of “marketing”
  • Social Media allows for all types of communication - prospects to prospects, prospects to customers, customers to customers. More importantly, this is all happening in YOUR space…you can listen and participate openly and freely.
  • Can be used as a sales tool - bloggers should be subject experts and because of this, the sales force can use it to their advantage.
    

    “Our product has XXX and it can be integrated with XXX solution, which is why we are the leaders in our industry. For more info, you can see XXX blog post on this…”

This list will continue to grow as I learn more about these new mediums.

Also, I’ve left out some important parts…but now its your turn!

Today’s life of constant give and take redefines the “user/consumer” role in business. Think about how business in general has evolved–several hundreds of years ago, it was the job of the engineers/managers to decide what is made. Slowly, the “market” decided how businesses work. But that’s not enough. Within every market, there’s individual micro-communities with very unique needs.

Fast forward to the “user-generated media” era of today. The keyword word here is “user” …we’re users create media. This means we’re in charge of what we see, do, and have. In a way, the market is for the people and run by the people; which is the beauty of social media.

However, we’re moving past this idea quickly. B/c not only are we just created or generating media, but we are consuming it at an increasing rate. From blogs to podcasts to vlogs we are consuming tons of content each day. No longer do we just use data, we consume, learn, store, and express ideas. It’s important how the roles are shifting here and businesses must take note of this.

The life of a consumer:

• Social Bookmarking: Tools like delicious make it easy for users to consume information at any time of the day no matter where they are (at home, work, or from their mobile device). Not to mention, you can share your delicious links with other users using tags. Again, we aren’t just creating content, we are consuming it and making it easy for others to consume as well. Its quick, fast, easy, and non-techy. It’s social bookmarking, NOT technical bookmarking.
• RSS Feeds: Similar to bookmarking, RSS feeds can be read through a feedreader, like Google feedreader. Today we want instantaneous updates on the fly! Feedreaders bring all of that to you. Subscribe to an RSS feed, keep it stored, visit the link in the future. Consuming information from multiple sources is easy and quick!
• Social Networking: Everyone is involved with this…whether it be MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, or online dating sites (match.com). Everyone has an account! Again, the easy factor comes into play here…plus all of these tools provide users with the opportunity to consume candid information from their family, peers, or even people of the same interests around the world.
• Blogs: Plain and simple, blogs drive social media. The majority of the tools I mentioned above all grab content from blogs or some sort of repository for information. First, being able to store information/thoughts in one place is great, but sharing it with the world at large is remarkable. Im contributing to the world…im offering my own candid thoughts for others to consume.

There are several other components that drive the lives of consumers and as technology moves forward so will the tools. For now, its important to understand why this is so important.

Consumers are engaging with their peers, neighborhoods, and the world. Before social media, we only had school, work, and clubs to engage with others locally. But, the conversation has moved globally now.

Although, how can we measure the effectiveness of these tools? Here’s what I think:

• Word of Mouth
• Increase in the number of users
• Comments/User Feedback
• Innovation of new tools for users
• What’s missing?

I’m positive measuring the effectiveness of a community marketing program will always be difficult.  But, hey, at least it gives us something to talk about.  I’m curious as to what other strategies are for measuring if your community program is engaging enough?