Posts tagged blog community management
How to overcome the “I’m not an expert” fear
Jan 17th
By {grow} Community Member Sarah Santacroce
When I speak to my clients about the benefits of blogging, I often get a pair of big, frightened eyes looking at me. ‘Sarah, I’m not an expert, who would care to read my stuff?’
According to Wikipedia an expert is “A person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area.” OK, that’s pretty impressive. What probably scares my clients is the word “authoritative” which, means a) Able to be trusted as being accurate or true; reliable, clear, authoritative information’ and b)’Considered to be the best of its kind and unlikely to be improved upon.
Fair enough, that scares me too!
Reframing the discussion
What if we replaced the word “expert” with “specialist?”
My clients seem to prefer that! It’s not as exclusive, and if someone calls themselves a specialist, it tells me that they specialize in this topic, and has valuable knowledge and skills in this area. You don’t have to know absolutely everything, because of course there’s always room for improvement.
In fact, even pretending to be an expert can be a negative, right? Let’s face it, the person who pretends to know everything is just fooling themselves. I’ve always been more impressed by someone who admits that she doesn’t have all the answers, but promised to look them up, do her research, and then report back to me.
Let’s focus on your specialty
So how does that specialist title sound to you? Not that scary anymore, right?
You truly are a specialist at what you do, now you just need to let the world know about it. There’s no better marketing method than to position yourself as the expert/specialist and then writing about what you do.
Funny enough it’s often the same people who are scared of not being an expert, who are also not comfortable with selling their services. Well, that’s the nice thing about blogging — you don’t have to sell! You are just sharing your knowledge, educating your audience without bluntly selling your services.
Through your content people will get to see that you know your stuff and when they are ready to buy, they will contact you !
A few examples
Still not sure what you should write about? Let me give you a few examples:
- If you are a coach, write about your coaching approach, about the most frequently asked questions you get from potential clients, a series of coaching tips, a list of inspirational quotes.
- If you are a stylist, write about the different colors and which color fits which body type, about the latest winter fashion, about Coco Chanel or your favorite fashionista.
- If you are a nutritionist, write about the different food groups, about your best recipes, about the good fat in avocado, about the holiday over-eating.
Do you see where I’m going with this? There’s an endless list of topics for every specialty. What are you curious about? Write about it. You just need to get over that fear and start thinking “Yes, I’m a specialist at what I do and I’m going to tell the world about it!”
I call myself a specialist in Social Media, Online Presence & Internet Marketing, NOT an expert. Far from that in fact! I learn new things every day and there’s people out there who are way more experienced than I am. And yet you are reading my blog post 
What do you think? How are you overcoming the fear factor in blogging?
Sarah Santacroce is a Social Media, Internet Marketing & Virtual Event specialist. She helps small business owners and individual entrepreneurs to find their place in today’s online world. Sarah is a Swiss national, but thinks with a global mind. Read Sarah’s latest blog posts.
Illustration courtesy BigStock.com
How I totally screwed up my blogging strategy
Jan 9th
A few weeks ago, I sat down to prepare for the upcoming week’s blog schedule and I became paralyzed. For the first time in four years, I seemingly had nothing to write about.
I knew if there ever came a time when I had to “force” content onto {grow} it was a sign that I needed to stop blogging so this was a bad sign. It is quite sickening to reach a point where the ideas stop.
But after I thought about the situation, I realized that in fact I had not run out of ideas. I simply had screwed up my tried-and-true system to generate ideas and was paying the price for it. Here’s what happened …
The system
Ideas come at us all the time, every day. It could be an article we read, a speech we attend, or something we hear on the news. Being a good blogger means always being alert to these ideas — and most important — capturing them. For me, that means writing them down wherever I am and then simply writing the headline for the idea in WordPress as soon as I can.
For example, recently I had a wonderful chat over breakfast at a cafe in Brooklyn with my friend Pavel Konoplenko. Pavel and I really had the ideas flying and many of them would have made a wonderful subject for a blog post. As our conversation progressed, I literally wrote the ideas down on the back of the receipt for breakfast and tucked it in my wallet. When I got to a computer, I recorded the ideas in WordPress for future development.
During my dry spell, I realized that I had swerved away from my system. For some reason, I was either too busy, too lazy, or both and ignored my discipline of recording ideas.
Luckily, I had planned for the day when something went wrong and was able to pull from a stable of extra blog posts I had prepared for an emergency. So the quality on {grow} never suffered even though I was temporarily “empty.” Another lesson — have a back-up plan!
Getting back on track
Once I realized what I had done, it was fairly easy to get back on track. Simply by paying attention to the world around me — and recording my ideas — I was able to quickly re-fill the pipeline.
For example, I read a post about Facebook that I completely disagreed with. I simply copied the link to the post, pasted it into a new blog post and wrote the headline “Comment on this?” Will it turn into a post? Who knows? But at least it is an option so I won’t be facing a blank slate when it’s time to blog.
Now when I settle into my usual quiet blogging time (you do have a quiet blogging time don’t you?) I don’t have to remember that story and try to find it on the web again. It’s sitting right there for me as a great option for a blog post for the upcoming week.
Another example — I was scanning my Google Analytics and saw an unusual keyword phrase that people had used to find my blog. It seemed like an excellent idea for post, so I immediately recorded in it the queue for future consideration.
Think about it. Even if you come across just one idea every day, by the time you sit down to blog, you have at least seven potential post concepts to choose from.
This system really works for me and I found out the hard way that when I’m not disciplined about it, I hit a wall!
What works for you? How do you keep the blog idea pipeline open?
Illustration courtesy BigStock.com
Big blog posts that made a difference
Dec 29th
I’m frequently asked by new readers if there is some way to catch up with the best content on my blog. Well, hopefully it’s ALL good to somebody, but each year I look back and review the blog posts that seemed to make the biggest impact. Let’s start with the blog posts that you loved. Based on page views alone, here are the most popular posts of 2012:
Top 2012 posts by page views:
10. The Six Elements of Human Behavior that Drive Social Media — A fascinating look at the basics behind the phenomenon.
9. Florida State University Using Klout Scores to Determine Student Grades — This piece by Professor Todd Bacile ignited beyond the social web, drawing commentary in the traditional media and educator conferences.
8. Six Ways to Create Great Content in Just 15 Minutes a Day — We’re all starved for time. This post shows you how to get a little more of your day.
7. This is why you must use Twitter — In this post I show how Twitter can change your life.
6. 35 Experts weigh-in: How to create influence on Facebook — Great insights with a little help from my friends.
5. Three Careers That will Dominate Social Media (And it’s not What You Think) — I stepped out on a limb with this post but most people seemed to agree with my projections.
4. Pinterest Drives Enormous Blog and Business and Success — This was one of the first Pinterest business case studies on the web.
3. Why Facebook Will Be the Most Dangerous Company on Earth — I speculated why the Facebook IPO would signal disturbing changes at the world’s most popular social networking site.
2. Why Google+ Needs to be Jay-Z– A cool headline and a success recipe for Google+ rang true with {grow} readers.
1) 20 of the World’s Wittiest Twitter Bios — Humor works! I’ve created four posts in this popular series, with another one on the way soon!
15 Posts that moved the conversation
Here are posts that I’m proud of because I think they moved the conversation forward in the last year. They may not have been the most popular, but each one took a risk:
15. The Social Media Measurement Smackdown — It was time for a rant and the comment section blew up!
14. This is Why You’re Not Seth Godin — Sometimes roles models are not the ones to emulate.
13. The Profound Power of Five Blog Readers — Short but powerful testimony for tenacity!
12. Wisdom from the Most Influential PR Professional of the Century — I got to meet Harold Burson. ‘Nuff said.
11. 7 Reasons Every Job-Seeker Needs to Blog– I send this post out to some young person at least once a week. I hope it has helped!
10. Five ways the Mobile Revolution Impacts Your Blog — A new way of looking at mobile and it’s not all positive.
9. Social Proof and Your Battle for Credibility — Exploring one of the most controversial issues on the social web today.
8. The Business Case for Buying Facebook Likes — It’s icky, but let’s talk about it.
7. Six Factors that turn social media strategy into results – This post seemed to help a lot of people.
6. We are All Standing on Digital Quicksand – I love bringing tech-humanity issues together. Great discussion on this post.
5. Why Social Media Strategy Should NOT start with a drive for Facebook Fans – Injecting common sense through the hype!
4. Three amazing ways social media will change the world — A post filled with hope.
3. How the physics of social media could kill your marketing strategy — A simple but important lesson about what we’re up against.
2. Your 2013 Social Media Strategy: Grow a Pair – One of my riskier posts but it seemed to strike a chord with readers.
1. Is there anything new in blogging? No. — This post ignited a firestorm of commentary, counter-commentary and alternate posts.
Funniest posts:
Humor is a big part of {grow}. Here are a few that made people laugh!
5. What Proctology Exams Teach Us Aabout Social Media — A genius post by Chris Reimer that pokes fun at a social media trend.
4. Punterest. Kind of Like Pins Only Funnier — A totally whacked-out post!
3. 210 Seconds of Fame – I was on National television. A lesson in pure terror.
2. The Secret History of Pinterest — Revealed! – A tongue-in-cheek-post poking fun at the “visualization” of social media!
1. The World’s First Social Media Sniglets – There’s a first for everything. An assist by Kerry Gorgone for the funniest graphic ever!
Five favorite Guest Posts of 2012
I encourage guest posts from community members and we had posts from nearly 50 different perspectives this year. Here are five that really stood out to me:
Social Media Levels the Playing Field — One of the best things of 2012 was meeting Anne Reuss and this was my first guest post done in American Sign Language. It was also my most-viewed video blog of 2012.
Straight Talk on Social Media Gurus — Stanford Smith rocks. He just does. Stan has been a regular contributor and had so many great posts this year.
Social Media Good Samaritan Donates Tweets to Save Business — I wish this post by Pavel Konoplenko would have gone viral because it is such a sweet story depicting social media at its best.
Is There a Formula for Going Viral? — Srini Rao has been effectively riffing on this theme all year: Cutting through the clutter in a human and authentic way. This was one of his best efforts.
Four ways to be a spell-binding online personality — Mars Dorian rocked {grow} with his provocative writing and mind-bending art. Don’t miss this example of Mars at his best.
The post that had the biggest IMPACT
The kid who wanted a door for Christmas — It didn’t have the most shares, page views, or comments, but it did show the {grow} community at its best because it raised nearly $6,000 for a great cause and touched a lot of hearts.
The {growtoon} Nation
And we couldn’t end the year without a nod to the {growtoon}-ists! Didn’t they do a GREAT JOB in 2012? A great reason to look forward to Fridays. Selecting my favorite {growtoon} was VERY difficult. They all still make me chuckle. But this one by the hilarious Joey Strawn made me laugh out loud and represents a lot of clients I think! 
Well, after nearly 300 blog posts, 10,000 comments and a ton of fun, that wraps up the highlights for 2012. Thank you very much for reading and sharing my blog. I never take you for granted!
The Paradox of Social Media Popularity
Dec 20th
By Srinivas Rao, Contributing {grow} Columnist
The paradox of popularity is that it can create a paralysis that inhibits you from creating the work that made you popular in the first place!
The fear of how people will respond to you can start to creep into your work until it becomes so watered down that you become part of the echo chamber. In some ways, isn’t it liberating to be an early stage blogger with few readers? For those of you trying to build an audience I know that might sound ridiculous. But you’re free to say anything. You’re not necessarily biased by how the audience will respond. That is a powerful place to create from if you’re willing to embrace it.
Are you addicted to the glow?
As your blog grows in popularity, it’s not uncommon to become addicted to the glow of audience response. Pretty soon, you start to approach every piece of content with the question “What will they think?”
If you create something they love, you feel good, and you want to get that feeling again. I usually dread it when one of my posts does well here at Mark’s blog because I’m afraid that I won’t be able to replicate that glow.
If you create something they hate, and it upsets a few of your readers, you start to hold back and quit taking risks. At the same time, you begin to avoid the risk of creating something remarkable.
Don’t Try to Replicate Success
Every single time I’ve written something with the intention of making it as good as a post that went viral or was a big hit with my readers, it falls flat! That’s simply because it’s not authentic. I’m trying to apply a formula to authenticity.
Don’t forget that just because it’s words on a screen, people can’t feel what’s coming across. If you’re trying to replicate the previous positive response from an audience, you’re doomed before you start. At best you’ll create a pale imitation of your best work. It’s what I think of as the sequel syndrome. Most movie sequels are terrible. Remember the Karate Kid?
Try What’s Never Been Tried
We all know that “lists” posts seem to get shared a lot. It’s also the reason every single time I submit one Mark sends it back to me without his stamp of approval. He forces us to try what’s never been tried. To accomplish what’s never been done, you must try what’s never been tried. Look at the so called “best practices” adapt and break a few rules. It will change your work.
The reaction isn’t yours; it belongs to them. The art is yours - Seth Godin
What do YOU think?
Srinivas Rao writes about the things you should have learned in school, but never did and his the host-co founder of BlogcastFM. You can follow him on twitter @skooloflife
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-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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