You would think that a copywriter would have no problem writing a blog post. Well, think again. Every month, it takes great effort for me to write a few simple paragraphs. I find myself spending a lot of time typing, deleting, and starting over again, just to write about various aspects of search engine marketing, an area of which I’m quite familiar since I work in the industry.
It could just be:
a) Nerves mixed in with a little intimidation since I’m not an SEM guru.
b) I’m making this harder than it should be.
c) All of the above.
If you’re like me – trying to write insightful blog posts about your company or your industry, and find you’re making it more difficult than it is, you may be interested in an article I found to be quite helpful on Social Media Examiner, entitled, “How to Write a Great Blog Post in Just 15 Minutes.” I found that it might help me to stop being so blogophobic. In the article, author Nerma Moore offers five tactics that can be applied when writing any blog post :
1. Plan Your Writing – Think about what people are searching for on the Web and consider their interests when you’re writing your post. Also think about what they might want to read. Figure this out and then develop an organizational format for your articles.
2. Create a Headline Bank – Determining the right headline for your post can be the difference between a reader staying or leaving your site. Come up with a list of headlines that include questions, quotes, short stories or statistics. You can always go back and tailor your headline a little more after you write the body of your article.
3. Time Yourself – According to Moore, perfection is not an option. Don’t spend all day trying to craft the “perfect message.” Create short, comprehensible sentences and step away from the computer. Moore suggests setting a timer for 15 minutes and when it goes off, you’re done.
4. Use the Series Approach – Instead of cramming a bunch of steps into one post, create a weekly series by breaking each main topic down and creating a single post for that topic. By doing this, you’ll have developed blog posts for a full week.
5. Get to the Meat of the Problem – Keep in mind that readers want value and not diluted information. So don’t draw your readers in with a great grabber, then neglect the body (being the meat) and skip to the conclusion. If you want people to continue to read your blog, remember to always provide quality and not leave the bigger needs unmet.
So there, I wrote this post in 45 minutes. If I keep Moore’s advice in mind, I should be able to shave that down to 15 minutes in no time. I’ll let you know in a month…or two.
Image provided by wwarby on Flickr
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When you have a question about something, who do you generally go to for answers? Your peers. That is why Facebook is now beta testing Facebook Questions, an application that lets you ask the community of 500 million users a question about anything that’s on your mind. Although it’s still in testing and remains to be seen how many users will actually adopt it, it’s safe to say that the application has the potential to surpass Yahoo Answers with ease simply because of the large network of active users.
Using Facebook Questions is pretty easy to do. You can either ask a question to the full Faceboook community by clicking the “Ask a Question” button at the top of your homepage, or you can ask friends questions on their wall similar to how you’d post a comment on their wall. To enhance your question, you can add photos or polls. Although any Facebook user could easily figure out how to use the application, one thing to keep in mind while using the Questions application is that anything you ask is public and visible to anyone logged in to Facebook. For now, your questions and answers are not visible to search engines, but that could change once it’s out of the testing phase.
One feature of Facebook Questions is the ability to target the people that would best answer your question. You can tag questions for a specific category and your question will be shown to people who have expressed an interest in that category. For instance, if I wanted to find out which cars have the best gas mileage, I’d tag the question with the topic “cars.” People who expressed in their Facebook profile that cars are one of their interests would be shown the question.
Another feature of Facebook Questions is the ability to follow certain themes that interest you. If I decide that I’m not completely satisfied with the answers I received from my question about cars or I simply want more information, I can browse questions related to cars. If I find a question I’d like to continue to get more information about, I can click a “follow” button to make sure I’m sent a notification each time someone posts an answer.
With this new application, Facebook is harnessing its power as the leader in social media. When Facebook Questions is rolled out to the full community it’ll be interesting to see the adoption rate and how it compares to other question and answer sites.
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Facebook, the social media powerhouse that boasts more than 500 million members and occupies more than 700 billion minutes of their time per month, is not really all that in touch with its users.
In fact, in the 2010 American Consumer Satisfaction Index E-Business Report, which is produced in partnership with ForeSee Reults, Facebook scored in the bottom five percent of all private sector companies tracked by ACSI. They only managed to score 64 out of 100 possible points which gives them a depressingly lower satisfaction rate than the IRS’s e-filing service.
Facebook’s ACSI rating was more in line with cable companies and airlines who consistently have awful consumer satisfaction rankings. Not exactly what you’d expect from one of the most popular websites in the country, is it?
This was the first time ACSI measured consumer satisfaction with social media sites, and while they also looked at YouTube, MySpace and Wikipedia, only MySpace scored lower than Facebook (with a 63) and Wikipedia trumped it with a satisfaction score of 77.
This surprising data begs the question of why users are so unsatisfied with this social media superpower. According to Foresee Results president and CEO Larry Freed, it may be users’ privacy concerns and their frustration with interface changes, commercialization and advertising that causes them to give such a negative review.
No matter what the cause, this study should certainly turn some heads at Facebook headquarters. An unsatisfied user base – especially one of gigantic proportions – does not bode well for future business.
*Image provided by daveynin on Flickr
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »A recent front-page article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Monday June 21, 2010) touted the power and reach of Internet video for non-profit organizations as these agencies struggle to stay afloat in troubled financial waters. With dwindling donations in tough economic times and volunteerism down, agencies are discovering that videos for their websites and distribution across the Internet are an excellent resource – capable of providing compelling examples of WHY a non-profit needs volunteers or donations and WHAT that volunteerism or financial contribution can do for the agency and its target audience.
We couldn’t agree more. Web videos – capable of providing facility and program tours, interviews with participants and staff, and solid video footage that leaves little to the imagination of viewers as to the efficacy and needs of non-profits, are powerful and convincing marketing and fund-raising tools that educate and inform, inspire and motivate viewing audiences. Allow Fathom SEO to show your firm how to leverage Internet video marketing in order to get the membership and donations you need to make a difference in the world. Call us today at the number at the bottom of the page, or examine our website for more information & details on our Instant Replay video program.
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A lot of us like to do it. We do it in our cars. We do it in bars. We do it on the couch, and we even do it at work. What is “it?” Well, “it” refers to using social media sites.
Many of us have been bitten by the social media bug. We tweet and retweet, like and unlike, dig, post and share around the clock. Social media sites allow us to stay in touch with family and friends. They also allow us to make new connections with people around the corner, or around the globe.
So are social media sites taking over the Web?
A recent article by social media strategy consultant Amy Porterfield entitled, “22% of Online Time Spent With Social Media”, points out that “in the last year, the number of social media users has continued to climb at record speed and the audience demographics have widened.”* Porterfield came to this conclusion based off of a recent Nielson study about Internet and social media usage. The study showed that just in the month of May, Internet users spent an average of 6 hours, 13 minutes on social networking sites. The average time last year was just 3 hours, 31 minutes.
The study also found that:
- 75% of all active U.S. Internet households visited a social networking site in May 2010. A month earlier, the global number was 74%.
- 22% of the time spent online is attributed to social networking sites.
- 20% of U.S. adults online publish or own a blog.
- 55% have at least one or more social networking profiles
These numbers help prove that social media sites shouldn’t be taken for granted. If you’ve been ignoring these sites, Fathom SEO can help your company utilize major social media outlets to increase your visibility on the Web. Contact us today to learn more about our social media services.
*http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/22-of-online-time-spent-with-social-media/
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