Why Content?

Hugh MacLeod

I heard a statistic the other day, every day 50,000 new blogs are started. In a working year that amounts to around 13 million blogs. The majority of those blogs are vanity projects, they are unlikely to be seen by anyone or rather be found by anyone.

Unless you are going to spend advertising dollars or pounds to get your blog seen it will probably become your little writing platform and that’s all.

Of course big corporates do spend millions promoting their blog or news channel, they believe that their customers or followers want to read their stuff.

Think about the amount of digital words you read in a day. I’m not talking about the Facebook posts, but you may wish to include that too. Yes, me too, I have no idea but if I were to make a guess it’s likely to be a maximum of 1000 words. That would be the very maximum. And yes I would include in to that any social media, although I’m no longer active on Facebook, so it excludes that, but I am including the Apple news app, which I scan very quickly.

Our attention span is suggested as being only between 8 and 59 seconds. I never understand why they give this spread, are we then supposed to calculate for ourselves the medium?

My personal guess is that it’s realistically around just 20 seconds and that’s exactly why I started creating a weekly cartoon, which is exactly 20 seconds.

Sure I’m still writing, but I have shortened my blogs considerably and yes for me I do believe they are my vanity project. I never wanted to blog, I didn’t consider myself as a writer and as English is not my first language I worried whether I would ever be able to pull it off. I’m pleased to say I have managed to train myself to write regularly now.

I did stop writing on my own blog and instead moved here to Medium as even though I don’t get that much engagement, at least the chances of being seen are greater.

Happy creating!

Michael de Groot

Do you contemplate and consider carefully the content you create, curate and share?

Social Media encourages all to be spontaneous, to share something instantly and above all to be expectant of the reactions that we may receive as a result. 

So why do we need to contemplate and consider carefully the content we create every single day?

Because in doing so you are sharing with the world who you are, what you believe in, how you wish to be seen and above all how you wish to be judged. When we decide to be active on Social Media, we are developing and portraying ourselves as a ‘Personal Brand’. Yes indeed all of us are now ‘Brands’, so you better take that responsibility seriously.

As most of us on here (written for LinkedIn) are business professionals, either employed or running our own businesses, our companies are using marketing strategies and tactics to be seen and to encourage buyers to purchase from us. You know the saying, ‘buyers buy you first’.

This is where ‘Content Marketing’ as a strategy comes into play. If ‘Content Marketing’ does indeed cost 62% less than traditional marketing then this must be very attractive to all of us. I've never done any traditional marketing, as I've always believed it was too expensive for a very small business like myself. And maybe I'm not that good yet at ‘Content Marketing’ either as I haven't experienced the true benefits yet. But then again how do I truly know, because I'm not measuring it that well either. I must do more on both fronts. 

There are so many platforms these days to publish your content to.

I'm experimenting by using the following channels.

1. My own blog. Receives very little interaction, although It’s a must these days, everyone needs to have their own hosted blog with its own domain.
2. LinkedIn Publishing. A feature that was started for business influencers and then rolled out to the majority of members. Had massive traction in its early days and nowadays publishers hardly receive any likes or comments, unless you send your article to your contacts and ask them to like, comment and share. A strategy being promoted by many LinkedIn experts.
3. Medium. Personally I believe the most exciting platform around today.
4. Facebook notes. Only in the past few weeks have I started to experiment with it.
5. Apple News. Publishes directly via my blog.

These channels are probably more than enough to be sharing original content on. And yes I do duplicate and no I'm not al all worried how I may get penalised by Google as a result, which some SEO professionals might suggest. 

How about you? What are you using to create, curate and share content across the Social Web?

LinkedIn created a brilliant eBook with my favourite illustrator. @gapingvoid (Hugh Macleod) creates the most amazing messages through his illustrations. Read more about him and @gapingvoid here: http://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/team-members/hugh-macleod/

Regularly I will share one of the articles and illustrations from the eBook and give you my opinion, interpretation, insight and my meaning.

@stayingaliveuk 🚀

#contentmarketing #content #socialmedia #engagement #marketing #socialselling

Online is great and talking is even better. Everyone’s ultimate goal in business and life is to make real connections, where you meet someone face to face. Before that meeting a conversation is the ultimate icebreaker. I value my LinkedIn connections and realise that I don’t really know you or what your goals are and how I might facilitate or support those goals. Feel free to click through and book a call with me. I have blocked out only Fridays each week, excluding holidays, for calls. Hope to speak with you soon.

Originally published on Medium

Do You Have Your Finger on the Pulse?

As LinkedIn continues their roll out of 'long-form' (blog) posts across its membership, content is being created at an alarmingly fast rate. My own notifications I receive show from my personal connections are somewhere between 5-10 posts per day. And because I use many of the LinkedIn apps, including the flagship and pulse apps, it means I'm getting these notifications in 3 different places.

I know that some LinkedIn members are not at all happy about all these notifications, as some members do share posts that are all about self-promotion and as we all know we do de-test being sold to don't we?

I wanted to share my own balanced view of the downside and upside of Pulse long-form (blog) posts.

Downside

1. Too many notifications about your network’s posts, which delivers pressure for us to go and read them. And this pressure may mean that we are turned off and don't want to read any of them.
2. By seeing our network posting frequently, we then also feel pressured to make sure we keep up with all this posting and go into ’FOMO’ syndrome. (FOMO = Fear of missing out). The trouble is some of our network post 2 or even 3 posts per day. They really can't have a day job or they've employed someone to write all this material. Some of us (including me), believe this multiple posting is a massive turn off.
3. Obvious promotional copy about products and services is a real nuisance to some of us. We don't appreciate that these people haven't got anything better to say about themselves or are willing to respect people’s preferences. 

Upside

1. Being able to tie long-form (blog) posts in with your LinkedIn profile is hugely beneficial. It allows readers to get a great insight in to your experience, knowledge, views and expertise all in one place. There actually is no other place on the web where you can achieve this today.
2. As you post new articles, your network is notified every time you do this and thereby driving visitors to your posts. More views means more potential for engagement, comments and exposure. 
3. Your posts go to LinkedIn’s Pulse engine and categorised in the appropriate Pulse channel, creating even more potential for even greater exposure to LinkedIn members who you are not connected to.

You can draw your own conclusions about whether your personal brand will benefit from Pulse or whether the ’dementors’, who use it for self-promotion, will ruin its amazing potential.

You can always unsubscribe by following the instructions via:

http://styin.me/long-form-post-unsubscribe

Blogs that wear Clogs...

I have done it, I have resisted doing it for months, but finally I have opened a hosting account with the brilliant 1and1.co.uk and transferred from a ".com" Wordpress account to a ".org", wordpress.org.  And I am delighted with it. Because now I am in charge of my own destiny, and able to make use of the thousands of plugins for Wordpress, develop true social integration and if need be mess with HTML and embed code, when I fancy.

It's quite incredible to think that only a few years ago, creating a website or blog was the domain of web developers, graphic designers, charging "an arm and a leg" to create a website for you.  But now the website is free and the hosting is a just a few pounds per month.  This makes it incredibly cost effective for anyone to have their own website and more importantly be in charge of their own updating as well.

Their is a huge amount of training available either through Wordpress and many others who have created hours of video or tutorials to help you develop your own learning of Wordpress.  And it's all free!  All you need is a bit of courage and a friendly help desk in 1and1.co.uk who give all their telephone support for free to get your hosting up and running.

The other thing I have learnt as part of my Social Media journey, is that blogs are more important then having a standard brochure website.  It means you can be more engaging with your audience, it allows them to understand better what the company is about and what they are up to, through reading or subscribing to their blogs.  Obviously if you are selling via the web then that is different.

Therefore my suggestion is to ditch the website, create an engaging series of videos (we can help with that), which talk about your business and create a "weblog" instead of a "website".

Most of the information you can include on a weblog is the same, it is just displayed differently, no difficult navigation buttons, just a simple clean layout is what is required and I hope that this is what I have managed to achieve here.

I have noticed that a lot of the latest websites have gone for this very clean, white and open design.  And I do like it, because it means my eyes are not distracted from lots of stuff on the site.  Hopefully it means that the viewer will stay on the site longer and will be more interested in making an enquiry.

Anyway I hope you like it and please feel free to leave me some feedback and share the site by using the social media toolbar wibiya.com at the bottom of this weblog.

And if you need any assistance in doing the same, you know where I am!

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