BusinessBlogAngel

Small Biz Marketing Idea from Tim the Ideas Guy

One of the things that continually delights me about 'doing business online' is the rather more 'abundant' mindset which tends to go with it - compared with the 'scarcity' attitude so typical of 'old school', 'bricks and mortar' business where typically your competitors are 'The Enemy'. I used to watch what they were up to with derision or 'professional envy'. The thought behind that was something to do with there not being enough business to go round - hence 'scarcity'.  Doing business online however, is a totally different ball game. Your competitors can be very useful to you in all sorts of ways, the most basic being 'watching and learning'.

Last week, I came across a guy on Twitter called TimboReid, who describes himself as "Dad. Marketing Ideas Guy. Podcaster. Blogger. Closet Rock Star." I can't remember now why I started to follow him, but follow him I did and it was what happened next that I want to share with you, because to my mind, it was a thing of business beauty...

Twitter for Business: Is it a good place to promote a newsletter?

Had a very interesting question come in yesterday in this comment from DesignGuy. He asks,

"In your Twitter-experienced opinion, do you think it would be a good place for a newsletter drive?"

As I said in response to the comment, my answer would be 'yes' and'no'...  it depends... and I promised to elaborate in a post, so here goes..

Social networks are all about building relationships - most people use them to network and make new connections and keep in touch with existing 'real-life' friends. So ordinarily, I'd be saying that using Twitter for purely 'self-promotion' purposes is a bit of a bad idea - unless you are socially adept enough to do it in such a way that you don't abuse the trust people have placed in you and ultimately alienate people.

But this question is about a newsletter drive for an online magazine, so right there we're in a different space...

"Twitter sucks and so do you. Probably."

So Twitter Gold, my random series of Twitter-related posts... here we go... Was in Twitter yesterday for all of 3 tweets, but just happened to see my dear friend Rory Reid tweet that provocative headline from a post on his blog at CNET UK.  Naturally, I had to respond, but their comment function doesn't recognise page breaks so reading my response over there is a bit of an ordeal - hence I thought I'd reproduce it here as a post. Before you go on, read his "Twitter sucks..." article and then come back here.

"Rory, Rory, Rory!  I can't believe you still don't get Twitter!  Of course, some, nay... many of your points are indeed true, but it's not the whole truth 'cos the thing with Twitter is HOW you use it.

To address your points:

Who cares?  Well, a Nutritionist might have a great suggeston for what to replace cheese with... and may find themselves with a new client as a result. If people's tweets are mundane - don't follow them! Follow those who are interesting - or who have information which could be useful to you."

Otherwise engaged. How would you like your Twitorial?

As Business Coach @LouiseBJ commented, "For a BlogAngel, you are mighty quiet ;-)" and she'd be right. 'Til this moment, I hadn't blogged since December 11th - well not on this blog at least - I've been otherwise engaged, so please forgive me and accept my very best wishes for you and yours for 2009 and wasn't the inauguration uplifting and the snow fun!?

So we're in a recession... well, at the risk of being insensitive to others' alleged suffering, you could have fooled me!  I got back to work on the 6th Jan and haven't had a quiet moment since - so yet again, I find myself with plenty to say, but no clue where to start...

BLIP.fm blog badge - take it, it's yours...

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen I've been getting into BLIP.fm which is what I'd describe as a social music network - tho' the official strapline is 'Global Music Radar'. Anyway... 2 words of advice for you - GET IN! 

It's absolutely brilliant fun and adds a whole new dimension to social networking.  If I said BLIP.fm is 'Twitter for music', I'd be selling it short - not that it isn't 'Twitter for Music'... cos it is... in as much as you can send short messages with each blip and reblip etc and you can connect it to Twitter so your blipped track shows up as a short hyperlink in Twitter, but there's the added dimension of props which are a great idea. Go look at BLIP.fm

So as with all these networks, you need to let people know you're in there. BLIP offers a natty little blip player widgety thing. It's lovely - except 'tho it says it will shrink to fit the width of the column you stick it in - it doesn't - at least not on my blog. My columns are 200px wide, and once you take the spacing into account I've got just 170px to play with. I figure this is a common width setting (its standard for 99% of my clients) and so there must be plenty of others wanting a lovely looking BLIP.fm badge too. So... in the absence of any alternative I could find, I made one!

That's it up there ^... nothing too fancy... but pretty enough to catch your readers' eyes I hope. Just so you know; I've not asked BLIP for permission or anything, tho I will drop them a 'courtesy email' in a sec to let them know, and I can't see why they'd object, so if you like it - please do help yourself.

And then come give me Props or Favourite me on BLIP.fm or if you hate my taste in music - as if :) - then just follow me on Twitter instead.  

See you in BLIP.fm for a big ol' nostalgia trip later...

Are YOU using Social Media to grow your business or brand?

I'm so excited! Last night, I emailed all my clients and mailing list subscribers announcing the new BusinessBlogAngel's Social Media Inner Circle. I wanted to give them a bit of head start before I blogged about it here, but since the Qualifying Calls start tomorrow, I can't wait any longer!  Whether you're already using social media or not, this Social Media Marketing Intensive will deliver tangible results, slash your marketing budget and achieve an unparalleled 'ROI' to boot. Click on the image for the full lowdown.

Qualifying calls Friday 5th, Saturday 6th and Tuesday 9th December.
Click Now for details.

Twitter Gold - follow and be followed

OK, so I promised regular Twitter Gold, didn't I?

Apologies that it's taken a while (there's lot's of other stuff going on which I'll tell you about later), but in the meantime, here are 3 more nuggets for you.

This time, they are all to do with Twitter itself, specifically how to find people to follow and attract more followers of your own...

1. Promote your Twitter Profile on your blog or website.

If you want to build your network, you need to let people know they can be a part of it.  The following link was posted on the official Twitter blog a couple of weeks back now. It leads to French blogger Vincent Abry's blog and a selection of wonderful little graphics or buttons you can add to your blog or website.

Check them out here: www.VincentAbry.com

Twitter Gold - 3 Really Useful Social Media Marketing Resources

Had a conversation with @JoannaYoung today in Twitter... went more or less like this:

Me: Ur experiment's pushed me to add 'subscribe by email' to [this blog] Not that there's owt new to read :)
Joanna: Maybe the new subscription box will tempt you to blog something...?!
Me: I have a lot of explaining to do - and lots of great stuff to share! But no idea where to start!
Joanna: You could start with just that - where do you start when you've so much to share?
Me: You're so wise! This'll sound like procrastination :) but I promise to post something by the end of the day!
Joanna: I'm not wise Claire, but I have learned that writing what you know and where you're at is best way to go :-) 

Well, technically, the end of the day happened over an hour ago. However, since I'm still up, fuzzy logic says the day's still going... ergo, I made it.  So "where do you start when you've so much to share?"

 

Sharing content - ShareThis er... share research

I know, I know... it's been ages since my last post... there's just so much going on. I'll update you on all that as and when, but in the meantime, I just had to share this with you:

Remember that ShareThis research I blogged about early August, well there's more... the following is taken from the latest ShareThis update:

* Email is still primary channel for sharing – 69% of adults cite email as the primary source of sharing information

* Less than 1/3 of online adults said they learned about the new content from generally shared content sources such as YouTube, a wiki, or social networking sites

Writing with confidence - project confident writing

Was coaching a client this morning - teaching her about the technical stuff, showing her round the admin interface and talking about effective blog writing etc. when the topic of 'what to write when you don't know what to write' came up.  I immediately thought of a brilliant post on this topic which Joanna Young wrote on this blog.

Here are 3 super simple ideas to try when you're stuck:

1. Post a video. Got to YouTube, search one of your keywords and see what comes up. Chances are there'll be something fun or interesting or both. Use the 'embed' code to have the video appear on your blog.

2. Post a quote. Google 'quotes about xxxx' replacing xxxx for one of your keywords. Simply posting a really thought provoking quotation can sometimes be enough. Or at least provide the inspiration you need to write a quick 'top' and 'tail' for the quote.

3. Post about a post. Go to Technorati and search for your keywords under Blogs to see who else is writing on your topic. You'll almost certainly find something recent and relevant that you can create a post around - inserting a key paragraph of theirs, or simply linking to them. Remember to Trackback, or comment on, the original post.

There are loads more ways to get inspiration - what are your favourites?
Where do you go for blog content inspiration?