Webdeology

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

21 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue | Copyblogger

Steal content and ideas

If you’re flat-out exhausted and out of ideas, then get them from somebody else — either content, or ideas, or both.

I’m not talking about real stealing, of course — it’s more like “borrowing with the author’s blessing”.

Done right, this can produce some valuable content that the authors you “stole” from will thank youfor using!

Curate content. Find your ten favorite websites, and then find your favorite post on each of them. Publish a post listing these top ten posts, and explain why you like them. You don’t even have to think about being creative, and everyone you feature there will appreciate it. This is what we do with our Best of the Web feature, and there are lots of other examples.
Ask friends for ideas. If you’re tapped for ideas, then reach out to your friends and colleagues, and ask them what they’d like you to write about. You can do this with offline friends, or with like-minded online entrepreneurs. If you’re not already part of a mastermind group, then reach out to a few bloggers that are about as big as you are, and suggest starting one. I’m in a mastermind group with Jon Alford, Paul Wolfe and Caleb Wojcik, and they’ve all been a great help to me.
Ask your audience. You can kick the last strategy up a notch by reaching out to your audience. This can be done in several ways — it can be as simple as running a “what would you like me to write about” post (which is a bit lame), or it can get more interesting by asking for their input on a problem, as Marcus Sheridan did to create his tag-line, or by asking a question so that you can compile their answers into another piece of content, like nittyGriddy’s free blog posting schedules e-book.
Do an interview. There are lots of reasons why interviews are great for blog content, but right now let’s focus on the simple fact that it’s a lot easier to write a handful of interview questions than it is to write an entire post! Plus, it can be a great way to connect with really interesting people. (I got to interview Randy Komisar, who is my hero in the business world – and all I had to do was ask!)
Solicit guest posts. This is a great source of content, and it’s easier than most people think – find a handful of blogs that are your size or smaller, whose content you really like, and invite them to write a guest post for you. They’ll be flattered, and happy to get exposure to your audience. They’ll work hard to bring their A game, and not only will you get a great post, but they’ll happily tell their contacts about it, and bring you a few new readers in the process.

Create content without creating content

If you have to create your own content, then there are a whole bunch of ways to do it without “creating content”.

In other words, you can write something great without having to be creative or original.

This doesn’t mean that the content won’t be good — only that you’re going to rely on creativity and originality that has already been percolating in your mind.

Create a best-case study. Think about your favorite blog, company, or product, and write a post about why you like them so much (like Marlee Ward did about Rise, Pushing Social, and IttyBiz). Explain what you think they’re doing right, and what others can learn from their example.
Create a worst-case study. Same thing, but focus on a blog, company or product that you hate. This can be even more interesting, particularly if it’s a popular offering. Explain your frustrations with it, explain why it is successful anyway, and explain what you would do differently.
Write a review. Think about a product that you like, and are happy to endorse, and write a review about it. No need to get too creative, just explain what you like about it, and why. And then write what you don’t like about it, and why — easy peasy. You can kick it up a notch by contacting the company and asking them to donate a product that you can raffle off to blog commenters, like Kristy Hines did with an IBM ThinkCentre M90z.
Explain your success. Think about a time when something went really right for you, and write a post explaining how you got it to happen. Don’t just brag about successes — explain all of the steps that you took to get there. Draw out the lessons that you learned from the experience, the lessons others can learn as well. This is what I did when I shared how I landed Guy Kawasaki on Problogger.
Explain your failure. If there’s anything that people love reading about more than a great success, it’s an epic business failure. A post about your most challenging experiences is likely to be powerful just by virtue of how intense the original experience was for you, and you don’t have to make up anything original or creative — just tell it like it is (or, was), and explain what you learned from the process.
Link to old favorites. Go through your archives, and make a short list of your old favorite posts that newer readers probably haven’t read. You can even do a quick deconstruction, and explain what you were thinking when you wrote the posts, what worked, and what didn’t.

Borrow some name recognition

Okay, so maybe what you really want is to find a great original idea to write about, but it just isn’t happening.

In that case, all you need is a creativity jump-start; a useful constraint that can send you off in the right direction.

The idea is to take two unrelated things, and force them together into a really interesting post. It’s really easier than it sounds.

Start by picking something that your readers are interested in, and then pick something unrelated, that your audience will be familiar with.

Merge them together into a post with a headline that goes something like:

Are you starting to see the pattern?

Just to get your brain going, here are some of the things that you can plug into the “fascinating hook” part of that equation:

Use a movie. Use either the name of a movie, or a character from that movie. Think about the last movie you’ve seen, and think about what you can learn from that movie about your topic of interest. There’s always something there, if you dig deep enough. It doesn’t have to be a recent movie, either — it can be an old favorite, like the Princess Bride, which Brian references in his Inigo Montoya’s Guide to 27 Commonly Misused Words
Use television. Same idea, but this time pick a television show that your audience is likely to watch. That’s what Jon Morrow did in his super-successful Mad Men Guide to Changing the World with Words post, and I did the same when I wrote Desperate Housewives on Writing, Storytelling and Selling. For extra credit, you can make a list of the top five TV shows you can think of, and do keyword research to see which one is hottest.
Use a book. Just make sure it isn’t a book about your subject matter (“What How To Win Friends and Influence People Can Teach You About Winning Friends and Influence People” is kind of lame). As long as it’s off-topic, you’re good to go. It doesn’t even have to be the book, it can be the author (“What Tolkien Can Teach You…”), a poet, or even a line out of a poem.
Use a comic. There’s a reason why they’ve been remaking movies about Superman, Spiderman, the X-Men, and half a dozen other, more obscure comic book characters. Unless it is a spectacular failure, you can pretty much count on a certain volume of sales at the box office. By the same token, if you lean on the super-powers of one of these characters, your post should perform just as well!
Use a celebrity. This is a blanket category for any kind of icon that your audience would recognize. It could be your favorite pop star, movie star, or blogging star (whether it’s a big name like Brian Clark, or an equally awesome but slightly lesser known blogger like Jk Allen) … as long as your audience would recognize the name, it should be solid.
Find out what’s trending. While we’re on the topic of celebrity, take some time to see what else is currently trending. Visit google.com/trends, click on the “More Hot Searches” link, and pick something from the list.

Get inspired

The last thing you can do when you’re fresh out of ideas is to recharge and get inspired.

This may sound difficult when you’re looking at a desk covered in crumpled note papers with lousy ideas, but it can be done.

There are at least four ways to do it.

Go for a walk. This is the generic advice that you’ve probably heard a hundred times before. If you just can’t do it anymore, then take a break, go for a walk, and get some fresh air. It’s not quite that simple, but it’s close: we all have routines and practices that are good at triggering high performance mental states. It’s just a matter of finding the right triggers for you.
Go to the theater. The theater is a fantastic source of ideas — much better than just going to a movie, because there’s so much more atmosphere, and so much more happening, which means there’s that much more for you to deconstruct and draw analogies from. Find a show in your area, get out of the house, and come back refreshed and ready to start writing.
Explore new cultures. No, no, I’m not suggesting you book a vacation every time you’re out of ideas. You don’t have to fly half-way around the world — why not start with an authentic restaurant? Go somewhere that you aren’t familiar with, and really pay attention to the experience. All of this is fodder for analogies that can get your creative juices flowing.
Tell your story. This is if you’re ready to kick yourself into overdrive, and write a post about an experience that is powerful and deeply personal. For this, you’ve got to dig deep, and pull up a formative story in your life — share a real crisis that you overcame, and how you became a better and happier person for it. This isn’t an easy thing to do, but you don’t really need original content, because it’s all stuff that has already happened to you. And the results are stories that stick with people for a long time, like Danny Brown’s failed suicide attempt, Jon Morrow’s childhood fight for survival, and Brian Clark’s subdural hematoma.

Bonus #22 — Write when you do have ideas

You can fall back on these strategies when you’re fresh out of ideas and don’t feel like writing, and with a bit of discipline you’ll be able to create a really solid post.

But that doesn’t make it easy.

The reality is that when you’re feeling uninspired, it isn’t the best time for you to do your writing. That’s why the last strategy is to do the writing when you are feeling inspired.

Write a handful of articles and keep them in an “emergency posts” folder, to run when you absolutely don’t feel like writing.

And of course, you can use any of the ideas described in this post as a starter for filling up that folder. So go to it — start writing! But first, join the discussion …

Which of these methods has worked for you? Which one do you plan on trying first? Leave a comment below and let me know.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Amazon.com: Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization (Que Biz-Tech) eBook: Olivier Blanchard: Kindle Store

Monday, February 13, 2012

It's Harder than Ever to Be a Senior Executive - Boris Groysberg - Harvard Business Review

The job of the senior executive is much more complicated today than it was a decade or two ago — and that trend will continue, especially if you hope to play on a global stage (which is a nearly universal condition these days for many companies). Why? Here are five reasons.

1. Soft skills are more important than ever. Most people come out of business schools fairly well armed with technical skills, but the softer side of management — communication, collaboration, cross-cultural intelligence, for instance — has dramatically grown in importance, and will continue to do so. And for many people they're harder to learn. To some extent, they come only from experience. I've written about the rising significance of soft skills, including in the March 2011 issue of HBR (coauthored with Kevin L. Kelly and Bryan MacDonald), on how C-level jobs are evolving, and in my upcoming book on communication with Michael Slind[link]. In a knowledge economy, the shift is inevitable; you need to keep up with it.

2. So are technical skills. Though the balance of management skills has been shifting, hard skills are also more important than ever. Regardless of how it's divided, the entire pie of necessary managerial skills has grown. In other words, you need to be better at everything. Technical and functional knowledge are vital to making good judgment calls, being legitimate in the eyes of your people, and making resource allocation decisions. Running a company has become dramatically more complicated, and your skill set has to keep pace.

3. C-level jobs have become less circumscribed. Senior executive roles are increasingly interdependent, so it's less and less viable to remain a focused specialist. The CIO has to know what's going on in finance and marketing, for instance, and P&L experience is important even for support functions like human resources. That's one reason that job rotation is more common than ever as a development tool. A well-rounded executive will rise to the top much more quickly than one with singular expertise.

4. Companies are increasingly global. A handful of industries are still local — waste management, for instance — but most companies are competing on a global scale at some level. And if they aren't, they will be. So executives need a global mindset and a global IQ — and meaningful global experience (a short stint in Sweden won't do). They need to be open to different experiences, attuned to cultural differences, and comfortable working with a highly diverse and globally dispersed employee and customer base. And the competition for good jobs is fiercer than ever. So, for instance, if you want a top finance job it's not enough to be the best CFO in the U.S.; you have to be the best CFO in the world. Many executive searches are done on a global basis now.

5. You have to be constantly learning. Industries have become much more dynamic — the rules are always changing, new competitors come out of the woodwork, the talent pool has expanded exponentially. To be employable you need to demonstrate a learning orientation, learning agility — defined as an executive's ability to acquire new skills quickly by seeking and learning from new experiences, which allows them to be more adaptable in this uncertain global environment. Many executives also set up procedures and relationships to have access to constantly changing information and best practices. Reverse mentoring has become popular today for precisely this reason. Younger employees may lack the experience of their senior colleagues, but they've grown up in a different world and are more accustomed to the new rules of business. And industries are crossing boundaries in completely unexpected ways — there was talk recently of Apple looking to buy the distribution rights to U.K. soccer, for example. You never know where the next challenge is going to hit, but it's your job to be prepared.

That's a pretty hefty set of requirements. And to make matters more complicated, companies no longer have the responsibility to help you update your skills. Many will offer various learning opportunities and they're certainly happy if you're able to keep up, but in the end it's up to you. The emerging global executive has tremendous opportunity for an exciting and rewarding career, but it will take a lot of work. So how are you preparing for the future?

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Web Sites - Social Media Users Prefer Social Login Over Traditional : MarketingProfs Article

More than three-quarters (77%) of social media users say websites should offer social login—i.e., using a social media identity to log in at a website—as an alternative to traditional account creation or logging in as a guest, up from the 66% who said so a year earlier, according to a study by Janrain.

When required to register or create a new account at a website, only 14% of social media users say they complete the registration, whereas 54% say they’re likely to leave the site and not return; 26% go to a different site if possible, and 6% say they leave or avoid the site altogether:

Below, additional findings from Janrain's new study, which explores consumers' perceptions of online registration and social login.

Leaving False Information

Many socially networked consumers leave false information when asked to register: 88% admit to having given incorrect information or leaving forms incomplete when creating a new account on a website, up from 76% who said so a year earlier.

Preferences for Social Login

Among the various options presented for gaining access to a website, social login is preferred most: 41% of social media users use websites via social login, 35% create a new account and sign on, and 24% use a guest account to sign on.

Fans of Social Login Are Valuable Customers

Consumers who are interested in social login are more likely to influence and be influenced by their social networks.

Among "social logins fans," those who say social login is a good alternative to registering online:

83% would consider buying based on positive comments or messages from a social network, compared with 64% of "critics" of social sign-in who say the same.
69% of would be more likely to purchase an item if they read positive reviews found on a social network, compared with 54% of critics who say the same.
82% are more likely to seek out or avoid a brand based on reviews found on a social network, compared with 65% of critics who say the same.
78% say they share information about products and services they like or believe other should know about on social networks, compared with 54% of critics who say the same.

Personalizing Site Experiences

With social login, consumers are given the choice to have a more personalized experience when they visit a website without needing to re-enter preferences.

Social media users were asked to rate the attractiveness of that capability on a scale of one to ten: 51% rated the capability highly (7-10), whereas 25% were neutral (5-6) and 24% said the capability to personalize was not attractive (1-4).

Roughly one-half of social media users said they would be more likely to return to sites that offer a personalized experience, and 46% said they would be more likely to buy from sites that offered such an experience.

About the data: Findings are based on a survey of 619 active social media users who had purchased a product or service online in the past 30 days and/or read articles or watched videos online from major media outlets in the previous 30 days. The research was prepared for Janrain by Kelsey Goings and Paul Abel, PhD, of Blue Research, October 3-9, 2011.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Google Panda in Plain English (Infographic) - Single Grain

In February of 2011, the Google Panda algorithm changed the SEO world forever. After a year of ripping through what Google deems as “spammy” sites, how has Panda affected you? There has been non-stop chatter between Internet marketers and SEOs about how to protect your site from Panda, but with all of the updates and revisions to this algorithm change, things can get confusing quickly. So here it is; Google Panda in Plain English.