blogging


Why are America’s fastest-growing companies killing their blogs?

Jan 29th

30 comments

Are America’s fastest-growing companies shifting away from blogging as a primary social media platform?  ”Maybe” could be a conclusion based on new research examining the INC 500 from The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts.

For the first time in the five years that this research has been conducted, the use of blogging declined. Blogging had been steadily climbing as a corporate communications tool — 19% of the INC 500 blogged in 2007, 39% in 2008, 45% in 2009, 50% in 2010 and just 37% last year.

But there is an element of mystery here.  Despite the decline, blogging was considered the most “successful” social media platform for the fourth consecutive year!  In addition, among those companies not blogging, 62 percent are considering adding a blog.

How can we reconcile this seemingly inconsistent data?  Is corporate blogging really declining? I have a theory that would conclude “no,” but before I explain my rational, let’s look at a few more interesting trends from this study:

Facebook and LinkedIn lead the way. For the first time, the platform most utilized by the Inc. 500 is Facebook with 74% of companies using it. Virtually tied at 73% is the adoption of the professional network, LinkedIn.  As you can see in the graph above, video and podcasting use declined in this period. The researchers theorized that companies are spending more time on Facebook at the expense of blogs and video.

Social media tools are seen as important for company goals. 90% of responding INC 500 executives report that social media tools are important for brand awareness and company reputation. 88% see these tools as important for generating web traffic and 81% find them important for lead generation. 73% say that social media tools are important for customer support programs.

Social media investments will rise.  25% of the respondents said they plan to keep their social media budget the same in 2012, and 71% plan to increase their investment by 20% or more. Just one company had a plan to decrease the social media marketing budget.

Monitoring the social media buzz levels off. The 2011 study shows 68% of companies are using social media monitoring tools, down from 70% in 2010, which was the highest percentage of the past 5 years. Only 24% of the companies have a formal social media policy.

Measurement is inconsistent.  When asked how they measured the effectiveness of their social media efforts, executives reported using fans, followers and supporters (26%), web traffic (25%), lead generation (16%), reduced cost of customer support (10%), the value of sales generated through social media programs (7%).

The work is being handled inside. Executives were asked how social media resource needs were filled in their companies. Two-thirds of the companies reported retraining or repositioning existing employees to handle their social media efforts, 10% use external consultants or agencies, 7% have made new hires specifically for their social media efforts.

Are company blogs really declining?

If you just read the headline of this study and looked at the graph at the top of this blog post, you would be hearing a death knell for blogging. But let’s not bury blogging so fast. Let’s apply a little critical reasoning to this study …

  • It is important to consider that the data presented by the university researchers is not an apples-to-apples comparison. There is a tremendous “churn” of companies on the INC list. In fact, from 2007 when the survey started to 2011, the list of companies has almost completely changed.
  • The authors admit that these changes have impacted the overall statistics in “distinct ways.” Most notably, there has been an increase in companies providing Government Services (a result of “Obama administration initiatives”). The researchers state that Government Services companies are among the least likely companies to blog.  So in 2011, many traditional “blogging companies” were replaced on the list by companies that are unlikely to have blogs.  If the researchers surveyed the exact same sample group, blogging levels may have even gone up in 2011.
  • Also notable is that more than 60 percent of the companies on the INC 500 list did not exist in 2005. It is possible that these start-ups are not moving away from blogging to Facebook as the authors surmised.  I think a more likely scenario is that these young companies are STARTING with Facebook because the entry barriers are so low compared to blogging. This would reconcile the curious fact that the companies with blogs see them as successful (why would they quit?) and that most companies who are not blogging plan to do so.
  • Finally, another possible cause of the strange drop is sampling error. Only 34% of the INC 500 companies responded to the survey.  Within the stated sampling errors, it is possible to conclude that the 2010 data and 2011 data are nearly identical.

It’s also interesting to note that the UMass researchers also do similar studies for non-profits, universities and Fortune 500 companies. In these studies — which have a relatively stable group of comparison organizations from year to year — blogging rates are level or on the rise. Why would the INC 500 companies be so different?  I don’t think they are.

Is blogging dying?  We can’t tell for sure, but I would not make that conclusion from this study. What do you think? What does business blogging look like where you work?

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Did this blog make a difference?

Jan 1st

29 comments

At this time each year I reflect on what has happened on {grow}.  After 274 posts, did this blog and its community make a difference? Did it move ahead?

Here are some the aspects of {grow} that I hope had the biggest impact this year. You can be the judge if it made a difference in your life, your outlook, and your business.

Innovations

I pushed the blog in four new directions in an effort to create diverse, compelling and entertaining content.

1) Paid contributing columnists.  I put my money where my mouth is and took a stand by ending this practice of bloggers building their businesses on the backs of others by expecting free content.  I’m sure you’ll agree Neicole Crepeau, Stanford Smith, Srivanos Rao, Robert Dempsey and Steve Goldner consistently knocked it out of the park with their superb content. Neicole’s post “Are We Killing Our Customers With Engagement” was one of the most-viewed post of the year!

2) {growtoons} On May 6, the first of the weekly social media cartoons was introduced with Joey Strawn‘s  Desperate Measures.  A few months later, Kacy Maxwell joined the team.  This innovation adds an element of fun and unique social media commentary. After all, how else could you poke fun at Chris Brogan’s sycophantic fans and get away with it?

3) New perspectives.  I’m passionate about showcasing fresh, deserving voices on {grow}. I featured 40 different guest contributors this year, including some that I flat-out disagreed with! Probably my favorite contribution was Jon Buscall’s wonderful case study, How 20 High School Students Ignited a Social Media Success.  Celebrating others is the most rewarding part of blogging.

4) Video.  In 2011 I had twice as many video blogs as all previous years combined. It’s still not my preferred medium but it gave me the opportunity to shine the light on some incredible people I met throughout the year, including Helen Brown, who provided an interesting view of The Google Filter Bubble.

Darkness on the Edge of Town

In many ways, 2011 was a very disturbing year.  I unwittingly hosted a ghost post scandal.  My {grow} friends Steven Parker and Imad Naffa died. SEO tricksters continued to push past digital marketing ethical boundaries. Social media privacy problems made me wonder where all this is heading. A friend had her career destroyed by social media. And I am still struggling with the suicide death of my friend Trey Pennington.  All of this was getting me down and it was coming through in the tone of the blog.  And then something amazing happened.  Hope showed up in a most unexpected place!

Breakthrough content

As an educator, I try to use this forum to get people to think about social media and its context in new ways.  Ten posts that turned the thinking around included:

  1. The World’s Best Company Blogs
  2. The World’s Best Non-Profit Blogs
  3. Why the Economics of Blogging are Broken
  4. Turning PowerPoint slides into Social Media Gold
  5. How Social Media is Transforming Government
  6. Finding the Balance Between Personal and Professional on Twitter
  7. Marketing, Journalism and Truth as Competitive Advantage
  8. The Business Case for Facebook, In One Sentence
  9. A Process to Connect Social Media, Content Marketing and Sales
  10. Why Klout Matters. A Lot.

Five Big Favorites

As I scanned through the year’s work here on {grow}, I came across a few special posts that made me smile and think, “Yes, that was a good one.”  This year, I received nearly 10,000 comments on {grow} and many of them were generated by these five favorite posts:

Why the Social Media Elite Are Ignoring Us? — It started out as a simple question but 2,000 tweets and more than 200 comments later it stands out as a blog post that helped put social media success in a rational context.

The Making of a Social Media Slut — Sometimes blog posts come from the most unexpected sources. I had lunch with a friend who was looking for a job and in a moment of weakness suggested she should watch her Klout score. In less than 15 minutes I had written a post and ignited a debate!

For Google, the Party is Over Before It Starts — I went against the grain and predicted that Google+ would not be the Facebook killer all the social media geeks predicted. This is the only blog post I have written that received more comments than tweets. Earlier in the year I also went against convention by stating that Quora (and the Quor-gasm!) was not the salvation everybody was saying it was and that QR Codes are doomed.  Time will tell … but I still think I’m right in all three cases!

How Blogging Changed a Life — This was a difficult post.  I like it because it represents the biggest personal risk of the year.  Through my posts and speeches I challenge others to push themselves. In this one, I am taking my own medicine.

On Twitter No One Can Hear You Scream – This is my favorite post of 2011 because it combined all five elements of a perfect blog post: snappy headline, entertaining content, original thinking, crisp writing, and a personal perspective. Plus I thought the illustration was funny!

So there you have it. A retrospective of 2011.  If you’ve made it this far, congratulations and thank you … you are a true {grow} fan!!

As always, I would cherish your thoughts and observations on this community and how I can help push it forward in 2012. Thank you!

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Four reasons why I finally like Triberr

Dec 29th

73 comments

For the past six months I have given Triberr a whirl and it has been quite a drama.

Triberr is a new platform that bands together like-minded bloggers who support each other by tweeting worthy posts. I’ve participated in a limited way because up until now, the application was misguided, political and melodramatic.

The first problem was auto-tweeting. Not just auto-tweeting, but an expectation or even a REQUIREMENT for auto-tweeting other tribe-member posts. I created my own little resistance movement and was nearly thrown out of tribes a time or two but I’m happy to say that Triberr now has NO auto-tweeting. So I’m staying.

The second problem was/is the politics. For some tribe members there is a strong entitlement mentality that since your post gets tweeted, you should always return the favor.  Which I do … unless the blog posts aren’t very good or are blatantly self-promotional.  Everything you do and say reflects on your “brand.”  You are what you tweet. And part of my brand is “quality content” so I’ve had to ignore some barbs from people who I would happily tweet if their content was aligned with what my audience comes to expect from me.

Now let’s talk about the upside to Triberr and why you should consider this interesting innovation.

Fresh voices. I’ve been introduced to new bloggers like Eric Wittlake, Douglas Idugboe, Michael Brenner, Pam Moore, and many more who are delivering AMAZING content. I love almost everything they write and I enjoy sharing their insights with my audience. And many of these new connections are also becoming friends and even business associates.

Meaningful traffic.  I am not a big advocate of driving blog “traffic” as a goal. What does that really do for you if you are trying to build a business?  However, Triberr has boosted my blog visitors by about 7 percent and I suspect that many of these new readers are sticking around and becoming regular readers because the tweets of my posts are coming from other trusted bloggers.

Feedback. Triberr provides some nice analytics about how your posts perform in the blogosphere.  In a very real way, tribe member “tweets” equate to votes. When I write a post and knock it out of the park, the Triberr community clearly rewards me for it. If I put something out there that gets a reaction of “meh,” I usually learn something that will help me be a better blogger next time. So Triberr has been a bit of a Darwinian catalyst for continuous improvement.

It solves a problem. There is a chronic unfairness about the blogosphere. Many bloggers are popular simply because they were there first. They may not be the most creative or talented, but their blogs are at the top of the pile because they have so many followers, so many backlinks, and so much social proof. There is one blog in the AdAge Top 100 that has not been updated since 2009.  So it is literally impossible for new voices to crack into the elite league because of this permanent disadvantage.  I really hate this aspect of the social web. There is a blogging glass ceiling and mediocrity is institutionalized.

Triberr helps combat this problem by supporting worthy new voices.  Now that auto-tweeting is over, it is a true meritocracy.  If you do good work and help others doing good work, you will be rewarded. That’s the way it should be.  We may not have 100,000 followers, but with the support of an engaged group of supporters, we can make a dent and at least promote deserving work from people who are not considered A-Listers

I think Triberr has evolved to the point where it’s now focused on the right things and founders Dino Dogan and Dan Cristo continue to innovate and add cool new features at a breakneck pace.  If you’re trying to break through the clutter, meet new friends, and learn to be a better blogger, you should give it a try.  One challenge is you need an invitation to join (and my tribes are complete). But there are message boards with people looking for bloggers to add to the mix, or you can start your own tribe. Check it out.

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Oops! I made this Social Media mistake. How about you?

Sep 28th

35 comments

By Stanford Smith, Contributing {grow} Columnist

Many passionate and hardworking social business operatives are making a business-killing mistake.

Proud of their impressive Twitter followings, Facebook crowds and Klout scores they are lulled into a false sense of security.

The rude awakening often comes when they try promoting their product to their audience. Suddenly, their enthusiastic following vanishes into thin air leaving behind crickets and one or two “mercy” sales.

Their error is simple. They have invested too much time engaging their peers and have overlooked their customers in the process. This social rut is easy to fall into, let’s see if you are in danger of falling into it yourself.

Pop Quiz:

  • Do you spend hours trading @mentions with people with profiles identical to your own?
  • Do you struggle to remember the Twitter handle of a customer but can rattle the usernames of 5 social media A-Listers in 5 seconds flat?
  • Are you afraid that promoting your product would offend 90% of your followers and blog readers?
  • Are you hoping that your followers will share their audience with you when the time is right?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions then you are in danger of being popular and broke.

But, don’t beat yourself up. I’ve been in the exact same rut. In fact, I started and shuttered two blogs before I realized that being social is different than “Social Business.”  Knowing the difference is critical to your success.

This is How Social Business Works

The world of Social Business is like your typical high school cafeteria.

Take a second to remember lunch hour.

Striding into the cafeteria you quickly made dozens of “life and death” social decisions. Sit with your friends? Invite the new kid to your table? Introduce yourself to the Student Government crowd or take a risk with the Jocks?

Depending on your social goals: getting a prom date, finding the best parties, not getting hassled on the school bus, you picked your “community.’

As a hormone happy teenager, I should have sat with crowd most likely to attract the cheerleaders’ attention!

Instead, I spent my time, dreaming and drooling from afar with the chess club geeks. My buddies were “Stand By Me” cool. We encouraged each other. We had our own language and didn’t miss an opportunity to hang out on Friday night.

But, my buddies rarely helped me get a date.

It’s easy to make the same mistake on social media.

Sure, it’s comforting and safe to hang out with people with similar interests. But if you are in business, you need to sit with a different crowd – your prospects.

Why Do We Get Trapped Selling to Our Navel?

It’s easy. We go to a popular conference in the name of research and networking. We meet some cool folks, share some raucous memories and head home snug in our mental rug.

Meanwhile, not one new person with cash and a purpose has been introduced to our blog. Oops. Not one person with signing authority has started to follow our Twitter account. Double oops.

Here’s the tough love. You should be networking and masterminding with professionals who share similar goals. You should not build your business on these comfortable get-togethers.

If you do, then you are needlessly delaying your success. You should immediately take a frank look at your activities and focus them on finding and attracting quality prospects to your blog.

How to Find Your Prospect’s Social Watering Holes

Finding prospects is a different game.

By nature, prospects don’t want to be found. They lurk in the shadows only making an appearance when they can’t afford to stay anonymous anymore. When they do step into the light they sign-up for email newsletters, register for webinar, or put you on the RFP list. Retweeting, commenting, and liking isn’t their style.

Like a lion on the Serengeti your best bet is to find watering holes, where your prospects gather to network, trade advice, and share resources. The watering hole location is different for every industry and prospect type:

  • C-Level Executives read top-shelf trade publications dedicated to their profession. Sites like the Harvard Business Review is a likely watering hole. Comments and guest post gigs can give you instant visibility with this crowd.
  • Passionate hobbyists hang out in niche-forums where they exchange tips and compete for social credibility. Joining these forums and being a resource for new members while discreetly promoting your expertise is a winning strategy.
  • Micropreneurs and service professionals like attorneys, home appraisers, coffee shop proprietors and insurance agents often run in packs. You can spot them congregating around LinkedIn Groups or following one-another on Quora. Answering questions on LinkedIn, creating niche-specific twitter lists on Listorious, and hosting free webinars never fails to attract their attention.

It Will Be Tough (but profitable)

By the way, if you blog solely for pleasure then hang out with whoever you wish.

But, If you need to show results for the time you spend on the social web then get serious about sitting with your prospects.

Make sense? What are your social business strategies for finding and attracting prospects?

Stanford Smith obsesses about how to get passionate people’s blogs noticed and promoted at Pushing Social, except when he’s chasing large mouth bass.

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