I spent last weekend in Salt Lake City, at the Altitude Design Summit, a three-day conference for design and lifestyle bloggers. I came home with nearly 60 pages of hand-written notes (scrawled on my iPad, of course) and a list of things I need to do with my personal blog in the next few weeks and months. At the top of my list was create an editorial calendar.
The hardest part of blogging — for me, anyway — is coming up with topics to write about. I’ve been an editor at a variety of sites, and we always had some sort of calendar to track what was assigned to the writers, when it was due, and when it would be published. For obvious reasons, this made life easier, particularly when there were three or four editors and a dozen writers creating the site’s content. But for my own site — and for the other sites where I am a contributor, required to develop my own topics — I’ve never done this, and recently, I’ve been scrambling to come up with ideas, always at the last minute, it seems. (In fact, in a deeply ironic twist, I am writing this post past deadline, on the fly — clearly my editorial calendar needs some work.)
Creating an editorial calendar for The Working Closet will, I think, let me do two things: it will enable me to write and schedule posts well ahead of when I want them to be live on the site, allowing me to have a consistent body of new content, and it will enable to me add some bigger projects to the site, like photo editorials and video, things that have to be planned and executed well in advance of publication.
In other words, an editorial calendar lets me act more like a professional writer — which is precisely what I am.
I’ve organized my calendar around eight different types of posts, each of which appears on the schedule in two-week rotations. Having a carefully selected set of posts will enable me both to focus my writing and to work more successfully with sponsors and advertisers. I think it will also change the feel of my site — in a good way.
More and more bloggers are relying on an editorial calendar to focus and organize their sites, and this, in turn, makes their work more professional and better suited for partnerships with sponsors and advertisers. I’m excited about the upcoming content at The Working Closet — and I’m hopeful that planning ahead will keep me excited and end my last-minute scrambling forever.
This week, my personal blog, The Working Closet, was named one of Babble Media’s Top 100 Mom Blogs of 2011. ABC News dubbed the list “the most influential mom bloggers in North America.” ABC adds that 32 million moms go online each month, with over half visiting blogs.
That’s a lot of influence.
So how influential are the women on Babble’s list? Very influential. “There are now 3.9 million mom blogs in North America alone, according to eMarketer.com,” ABC News reports. “Of those, about 500 have considerable power and reach, [Babble Co-founder Rufus] Griscom said. Another 4,500 take blogging seriously enough that they might fly to a blogger conference.”
That Is amazing.
The world of mom bloggers is a pretty small community; of the 100 names on Babble’s list, half are women I have met in real life over the past few years, at conferences and retreats and PR events. Another quarter are blogs I read regularly. Many of these women are my friends, people I exchange holiday cards and emails with. But they are also women I work with on panel presentations and various projects; as an editor, they are my go-to people when I need writers or spokespeople.
These are the influencers.
What does it mean to say that a blogger is an “influencer?” It means that she has readers — hundreds or thousands or, in some cases, hundreds of thousands — who are listening to what she has to say and basing their own behavior on her opinions and recommendations. My personal web site is a style blog; I write about products and brands as part of my daily posting. I hear from readers and Twitter followers and Facebook fans that they take my recommendations seriously. They trust me, and they buy the products I write about. That’s influence.
How does a blogger become an influencer? Two things are key: she has to write with an authentic voice, and she has to create excellent content. The bloggers on the Babble list are doing both of those things, both in their personal writing and in any work they do with brands. In fact, that’s why brands want to work with these women — because they are willing to lend their authentic voice and incredible writing to the conversation about ideas and issues and items that they think are worthwhile.
But influencers are also picky; we’re not the mom bloggers who will create free content in exchange for samples of a product we could pick up ourselves at CVS. We’re looking for brands that are a match for our beliefs and our values and our lifestyles, because those are the brands we can speak about in an organic, trustworthy way. We are also looking for brands that will compensate us fairly for our work and our influence. We’re not in it for free stuff; we know our voice is valuable and powerful.
I’m thrilled to be included in Babble’s list; I love what I do, and I work hard at it, and it is nice to be recognized for that. It’s also nice to realize that people really are listening to what I say, even if I spend most of my time talking about shoes.
Recently, I spent a long weekend in Palm Springs, at Camp Mighty, a retreat for bloggers. My trip was sponsored by McDonald’s; they covered the cost of my registration and travel and all incidentals. In return, I served as an ambassador for the Ronald McDonald House Charities and their annual Give a Hand fundraiser.
As part of my trip, I toured the Loma Linda Ronald McDonald House, to get an inside look at how RMHC works; I also helped out with an on-site fundraiser at Camp Mighty as part of the Give a Hand campaign. Camp Mighty attendees raised $10,000 for the Ronald McDonald House Charities over the weekend, simply by having a message painted on our hands and then tweeting a photo of the message with a specific hashtag.
This was a terrific partnership, for a lot of reasons. I am always happy to talk with sponsors about picking up the cost of my travel to events like this, for obvious reasons, but I also want to feel like I am representing brands and programs that fit organically with my life and my writing. The RMHC program was a perfect fit for me, particularly this fundraiser. As a parent and a fashion blogger, a fundraising effort that benefited kids and had a strong visual component was a good match for what I’m already writing about.
My presence at Camp Mighty was also a win for McDonald’s, because it gave their fundraising effort a familiar face. The other Camp Mighty attendees were my peers, and so talking with them about the Ronald McDonald House Charities and encouraging them to take a few minutes to participate in the Give a Hand fundraiser was an easy thing for me to do. And it was much more natural than the McDonald’s PR team trying to do the same thing.
Sponsoring a blogger for a specific event — a conference or retreat, for example — is an easy way to raise your brand profile within that blogger’s community. Working with a blogger gives your brand a familiar face and voice, one that readers already trust and look to for guidance. In some ways, this is the next iteration of the celebrity spokesperson strategy, but instead of hiring a movie star or model, you’re asking a blogger to be the voice of your brand. And we know that consumers are listening to bloggers, so you can be sure your message is getting to the right people.
Last week, I spoke at the M2Moms conference in Chicago; I spoke to a wide range of brand managers and PR people who are sincerely interested in working with bloggers to get the word out about the products and brands they promote. Over and over, they asked how to find the best bloggers. The short answer, of course, is to do your research — there is no one-size-fits-all directory of Great Bloggers.
There are a variety of Best Of lists available; Babble Media’s Top 50 Twitter Moms is a perfect example of a really useful list. Their list covers a variety of categories (Most Controversial, Most Helpful, Funniest) and points to some of the most prolific mom tweeters on the web. If you’re planning a Twitter-heavy campaign, this list would be a good place to start. A simple Google search for “best mom blogs” turns up multiple lists — all of which are a good jumping off place for tracking down that perfect blogger. (You can substitute any term for “mom” — food blogger, craft blogger, dad blogger — depending on what exactly you’re looking for.)
Once you’ve found a list, take the time to actually read the blogs. This seems like such a simple directive, but it’s one that many PR people and brand managers often skip. Rather than pitching your brand or product to everyone on a list because they are on the list, pitch only those bloggers to whom your pitch will be relevant. There are lots of terrific mom blogs out there, but not all of those moms have babies; indiscriminately pitching a campaign for baby products to every mom on a particular list is a good way to convince bloggers you have no idea who they are — and, even worse, that you don’t really care.
Reading the blogs you’re planning to pitch is also important because you want to be sure the blogger’s voice and tone are a good match for your brand or product. Look for bloggers whose online persona is a good fit for whatever you are pitching. Look also for bloggers who are already writing about brands and products similar to yours; a blogger who writes frequently about the environment, for example, would be a terrific match for an ecologically safe cleaning product, but a poor match for an SUV campaign.
How can you measure a blogger’s influence? A quick way is to look at his or her Twitter profile. A blogger with a huge number of followers may very well be heavily influential on Twitter, but be wary of making a hiring decision solely on that number. A blogger who follows 200 people but is followed by 2,000 may very well be more influential than a blogger who has 25,000 followers but follows an equal number of people. In other words, a blogger who is speaking to a loyal group, even if they are on the smaller side, may do more for your brand than a blogger who is not genuinely engaging with his or her followers.
Blogs, Twitter, Facebook — social media provides so many ways to reach out to consumers and clients. How do you know what format is right for your brand or business? The first step is understanding how each of these social media platforms works.
Twitter: Twitter is a microblogging platform; you have exactly 140 characters (about the length of a text message) to convey a quick bit of information. Twitter is frequently compared to a cocktail party — there are a variety of conversations all going on at once, and you drift in and out of several at a time. Twitter can be used to direct followers to blog or Facebook posts, or to offer quick snippets of information.
How to use Twitter: Your brand needs a distinct voice to be heard in the crowd. Don’t just share links to blog posts or contests; talk about more than just your brand.
Facebook: Facebook is the online coffee shop, where friends meet to catch up and find out what’s new and cool. Facebook allows you to share multiple mediums — blog posts, photos, videos, quick snippets of information — with fans, in a format that is more detailed than Twitter’s. Keep in mind, though, that your Facebook updates show up in your fan’s feed in between updates from their actual friends; like Twitter, think of this as a conversation, not a billboard.
How to use Facebook: The best Facebook feeds are those from brands who are able to personalize their business. Successful brands have a voice — and sometimes a face — behind their Facebook updates, someone who makes the brand feel like a friend, not a company.
Blogs: A blog is old school social media at its best. Blogs allow you space to talk in detail about your brand or product, to provide consumers with in-depth information or inside scoop. But keep your blog posts relatively short — no one wants to read a dissertation-length treatise on why you’re the brand leader — and make sure you’re posting consistently. You’ll never create a following if your posting schedule is something akin to “once in a blue moon.”
How to use a blog: Keep blog posts focused and tightly edited; provide readers with enough detail to keep them engaged and informed. Make sure that your posts have a voice and a point — and, ideally, some type of narrative. People love a story, because it gives them a way to relate to you — or your brand.
No matter what platform you choose, there are a few general rules to keep in mind.
Updates — no matter what their length — should be well-written and grammatically correct. It’s ok to draft a Tweet or Facebook status update in the way you would draft a blog post; just because you’re limited to 140 characters doesn’t mean you can’t carefully edit what you’re writing.
Engaging in a social media forum means being social — take time to engage with your fans, followers and commenters. And don’t stop at responding to conversation they direct at you; engage with them on their own ground as well. The cocktail party analogy is useful here — no one likes the guy who only talks about himself. The same is true for brands.
Finally, if you’re going to use social media to reach clients and customers, make a commitment to do it right. Designate or hire someone to manage your blog and update your Twitter and Facebook feeds. In order to create a significant online presence, you need someone who can be online for a significant amount of time each day.
Engaging with consumers via social media requires a commitment of time and resources, but the return is amazing: you will create a community of fans who are loyal to and enthusiastic about your brand. And that’s absolutely worth the effort.
For over ten years, I grew up side by side with Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley. I remember the first time I picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, a fresh birthday present, and promptly got lost in the wizarding world. Every book holds a place of honor in my book case, much loved and well-worn since I haven’t put any of the books down since. And like so many other fans, I pretended that the owl carrying my acceptance letter from Hogwarts was merely a couple of years late.
It’s why sitting in a darkening movie theater with my best friends, awaiting the start of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2”, was such a terribly sad moment. It was truly the end of an era. With the publication of the last book, Harry Potter fans were in denial, hoping that really JK Rowling was holding out on us, and there were more books on the way. But the last movie was a final goodbye to characters that had become friends, and places like Hogwarts that had become home. Unsurprisingly, I found myself tearing up multiple times throughout the movie. Also unsurprisingly, I don’t want to say goodbye to Harry Potter.
And so I find myself looking for Harry Potter blogs where the author reminisces about how great it is to be a fan, analyzes the books or weeps about how it’s all come to an end. I find myself watching countless YouTube videos about the ten year journey Harry Potter has made. It’s become addicting, I swear. I’ve even signed up for Pottermore, the mysterious Harry Potter website that JK Rowling created to reel in her fans a little more (like she needs to). I didn’t need to turn to social media when the books were being published, because they were more than enough. But now that the last book has been published and the last movie has been revealed, I find myself looking for Harry Potter anywhere on the Internet, blogs or YouTube, to keep that connection going. And so I’ve become a participant, because I’m in agreement with the billions of other fans…it would be heartbreak to really let go of Harry Potter.
We spend a lot of our time researching and imparting our wisdom (and experience) about social media, client news, blogging and mobile updates along with some interesting teen insights. What we don’t spend enough time doing is asking you questions and getting to know you better which we will be doing more often going forward.
So today is the first poll of many and we are curious to know more about your blogging quandaries. As a blogger representing a brand or your own site, there are many challenges associated with keeping an interesting, informative and entertaining blog so please answer our questions or add your own thoughts so we can learn from you or even answer some of your questions.
I wake up every morning to an email in-box full of PR pitches. A good PR pitch can be the first step in a wonderful working relationship between a brand and a blogger, but a bad PR pitch is a waste of time — yours and mine. Here are three simple mistakes to avoid when pitching bloggers.
Strike one: addressing pitches to the blog, not the blogger. Nothing tells me you don’t know who I am quite as clearly as a pitch addressed “Dear Working Closet.” An even worse version of this is the pitch that comes addressed “Dear Mommy Blogger.” If you really want to work with a specific blogger, do your homework and find out what his or her name is. Bloggers who are interested in partnering with brands make that information easily available, typically on the website you are pitching.
Strike two: typos and grammatical errors in your pitch. Bloggers are writers, and we are careful about how we use language. Do us the same favor by proofreading your pitches. By the same token, keep pitches focused — bloggers don’t want to read a five page document about your company, we just need to know what exactly you’re offering to send us or asking us to work with you on. Think about it this way: you wouldn’t want a blogger to write about your brand or product in a post riddled with misspellings and overwhelmed with irrelevant information. Set the standard with well-written, carefully edited pitches.
Strike three: pitching the wrong kind of blog. A majority of the pitches I get are for things that are not a fit for my site — kids’ toothbrushes and sex toys and books about nursing, for a blog that focuses very specifically on fashion and personal style. I find these pitches frustrating because it is always clear to me that the PR person has pulled my name from a list somewhere and has not actually looked at my site. Before you pitch a blogger, get a feel for his or her work, and consider how your brand fits into that niche. Pitching me solely because I’m on a list of influential mom bloggers doesn’t do anything to help your brand — or mine.
I work full-time as a freelance writer, focusing specifically on fashion and style; an important part of my portfolio is my personal blog, The Working Closet, where I write about my love of J. Crew and Neutrogena and anything else that interests me. There are a lot of perks to this job (the ability to work from my sofa in my pajamas, for one) but one of my favorite things is the opportunity to partner with brands that I truly love, for product reviews, giveaways, and larger media campaigns.
Why would a brand partner with a blog? Simple: Blogs are where people — particularly women — go for information about what’s hot and cool and worth spending their money on. According to Maria Bailey, CEO of BSM Media, and author of “Marketing to Moms,” “Trillion Dollar Moms” and “Mom 3.0: Marketing With Today’s Mothers,” online research and online sales sites are the most popular methods used by moms to find deals on the Internet. Blogs are often a go-to source for moms; a product review written by a trusted blogger is frequently more persuasive than a comparable traditional media ad campaign. Readers get invested in the blogger’s story and feel like they know her; when she recommends a product or brand, they trust her.
Contrast a blog campaign to a traditional media campaign with a celebrity as the spokesperson. Your customers may want to emulate that celebrity, but they probably trust the blogger — who understands their everyday mom life — more strongly, because she is more like them. And that can lead to bigger sales for your company.
I’ve worked with lots of brands, but far and away my favorite is Ellington Handbags. A small Portland, Ore.-based company, Ellington makes beautiful bags that are both multi-functional and reasonably priced. I frequently review pieces for them; as part of my reviews, I test out the bags, which is just like it sounds: I fill them with all my stuff and tote everything around town to see how it all works. Having a hands-on experience with a product lets me speak to its quality in an honest, organic way, which is what my readers expect from me. When I tell them that Ellington makes terrific handbags, they know they can trust me.
That’s exactly what a brand hopes for when they partner with a blogger. “Partnering with bloggers can be a great way to raise brand awareness — and if done right, a partnership can potentially generate significant sales, too,”says Amanda Carter, Ellington’s marketing manager. “Devoted readers trust the bloggers they follow, so when a blogger writes about her personal experience with a brand or product, it’s as if the reader is getting a recommendation from a friend. There is a value in that element of trust, which is something you don’t typically get with traditional advertising.”
Blog-brand partnerships, if done properly, are a win-win for the blogger and the company. Partnering with a blog is an innovative way to get your brand on the radar of all those moms who are turning to the Internet for shopping guidance. It’s also a way to get your product into the hands of the women and men who influence what we buy, both on and off the web. I can’t tell you how many times someone has stopped me at Starbucks to ask about my handbag. And I am always happy to tell them about Ellington — online or off.
It’s likely you’ve heard the axiom “Content is King,” to which many online marketers have amended, “Context is Queen.”
In keeping with the monarchy analogy, to these decrees I add “Relevance is Prince.” Here’s why.
Content – technically well composed and stylistically appealing – is a critically important component of inbound lead generation and brand image development. Simply put, smart white papers, case studies, opinion papers and the like demonstrate your company’s commitment to the industry in which it belongs, and its intent to advance the product or service category. The King and Queen may be well attended due to your consistent content production and promotion efforts.
But what about the Prince Relevance?
It’s unlikely that good prose alone will tip the shopper’s allegiance in favor of your brand. But the right information, formatted for easy consumption and delivered (or made available) to prospects at the opportune point can be just the button-pusher your marketing team has been looking for.
Content relevance presumes a deep and abiding knowledge of your prospects and clients. In the old days, a crusty old salesperson’s anecdotal thoughts about what prospects wanted to know and what they cared about was sufficient insight to inform a copywriter tasked with updating a sales sheet or product brochure.
Thankfully, we now have more sophisticated and quantitative methods for understanding our content audiences and the best ways to get our resources out to them. Here are some tools that may enlighten your process for continual content production and distribution:
Google Analytics: Consistently monitor and compare key metrics like top pages visited and time spent on those pages. You’re looking for cues that suggest the type of content your site visitors find most interesting and spend the most time on. Conversely, you should monitor for signs that some content isn’t hitting the mark at all (bounce rate will be a clue).
Google Insights for Search: Does all of your web content center around “higher education marketing”? Google Insights for Search may help you grab low-hanging keyword fruit like “college marketing.” If you find some relevant alternative key words loaded with opportunity for rank, then you can adjust content on some of your pages (and perhaps produce a new content piece specifically optimizing the phrase) to reflect the discovery. Hello, new traffic stream, have we got relevant content for you!
Twitter chat schedule: So you know some groups have chats sometimes. But did you realize that some of the chats have significant drawing power? Each week, scores of people follow and participate in the #solopr chat. Those that can’t attend read the blog for the summary or digest the transcript in its entirety. Find the chats closely related to your industry and follow along. Granted, some chats are better organized than others. But you’re sure to find new (possibly influential and definitely relevant) folks to follow, and you’ll gain firsthand accounts of their key issues, concerns, and successes. Let the insider information fuel your content plans.
Twilert: A simple tool that filters through tweets to cull the hash tags, users, and terms most important to you. As you scan results, keep track of new users and hashtags (often used in tandem with those you may already know). Explore your findings to discover new folks to follow and woo. You may also learn new terms to start folding into your messaging.
Triberr: A Twitter tool that helps Twitter users of similar interests group together to promote each members’ blog posts. Whereas you may often have a RT or several for your new posts, Triberr ensures that through the collective group boots the retweet factor.
Use the technology and tools at your disposal to improve your content’s relevance to its audiences. When you focus on the King, Queen, and Prince of content marketing (content, context, relevance), you’ll have all the right jewels in your crown.
I spent last weekend in Salt Lake City, at the Altitude Design Summit, a three-day conference for design and lifestyle bloggers. I came home with nearly 60 pages of hand-written notes (scrawled on my iPad, of course) and a list of things I need to do with my personal blog in the next few weeks and months. At the top of my list was create an editorial calendar.
