An interesting component of your online brand is most certainly audience. Without it, there is little point in doing much of anything online other than email, research, and storing information. Audience is what makes the web 2.0 world turn, as we’re all dependent upon the interactivity that audience brings.
Without people to follow, read, and comment on what each of us creates, we would have no measuring stick to compare ourselves to. We would not have a way to gauge improvement in knowledge or abilities. We’d be unable to find out what help others need, or how to learn something new from readers. Audience is a crucial piece to the social web.
As individuals, we shouldn’t be hesitant to grow audience in building our brand, or writing a blog. It’s not an egotistical to want to reach more people, its right in line with human nature to connect with people and socialize. Maintaining your audience is the other half of the equation – the one that give direct feedback of whether or not you’re adding value for them. It’s important to understand the expectations you set for your audience so you can continue to meet those expectations.
For organizations it’s easier in a way since they have long had marketing strategies that target certain demographics (specific audiences) for their product or service. They have been growing and maintaining their target markets for decades in some cases. There is one difference with online audience for organizations though: interactivity. This is not something that is found offline – you don’t see comments on magazine ads for your favorite soda or show company. You will online though, and that is the big challenge for the enterprise as they move into the social media space.
Bringing people to your social web is an important part of the social aspect. It allows for feedback, interaction and growth for all involved. Are you actively growing your audience?
What tips & techniques do you use or suggest for others to help grow their audience? How do you approach readers, followers, and friends on your social web?
Look for my article ‘Audience’ in the upcoming August 2008 issue of Personal Branding Magazine in which I talk about why growing and maintaining audience is important to personal brand.
I’ve fallen into the trap again. Allowing myself to loose focus on getting things done around here and writing for my blog. The last couple weeks of May and the first week of June allowed me to get a lot done around here and start laying groundwork for moving forward.
This week I blew it. I let work get in between myself and my goals. Sure, getting paying work is an important part in attaining those goals. However, it really smarts when a person let’s it completely absorb all your time. I did that this week, and have little to show for it but inspiration for the weekend.
No, I don’t have grand ideas to make up for lost time, instead I’m simply picking up my plans that I think I left in the front seat of the car under an empty soda can and a bag of stale chips. Oh, never mind about that 😉
Honestly, I find it funny how easy it is to repeat past mistakes and not realize you’re doing it until you can look back over time and see where you missed a step. There are many steps still ahead, so I’ll just keep walking down the path I’ve chosen. See you this weekend!
Wow, what a wild ride the last few months have been. I’ve been planning to refine the direction of my blog and revamp the appearance for some time and it’s finally completed!
Well, it’s almost completed – I’ve got a replacement for the About page almost ready to publish, and I’ve got one last page that I’ll add a little later. Seems I just can’t get it to come out quite right in the past week while working on other things – so I’ll get to that real soon.
Direction
The great part is that I’m refining my direction. Since I’ve come out of corporate, with a strong background in information technology, I’m going to focus on helping those organizations with social media. I’ve changed the description of the blog to "social web & the enterprise". I believe that to better describe the direction that I’m going.
Friends
First, I really respect a number of bloggers for their work & influence on me. So, instead of the old blogroll, or a list of links, I created a new Friends page. This page is people I have come to know, respect, learn from, work with, and I wanted to do more than just link to them. You’ll find a description of each blog and a thumbnail of their landing page.
Resume
Also page that can now be found in the top navigation area is the Resume page. I’ve had a variant of this Social Media Resume up for about 9 months, but never advertised it on the blog. I’ve revamped a number of pieces of the page as it used to be a completely custom HTML page forced into a WordPress theme template. Now it fully fits the theme, with a special resume.php template that allows different sidebars and such. Much better. I’ve pulled the video that I had on it, but will replace it with another one to fit the direction of the blog shortly.
Advertisement
You’ll also notice that all advertising save two things have been removed from the blog. While I make enough to pay for hosting, I believe that the ads detracted from what I’m here to accomplish, so they’re gone. The two items I mentioned that remain are badges for Personal Branding Magazine, and for Avatar Consultants. Their of personal interest to me, I’m involved in writing for one, and the other is my consulting firm.
Nowhere But Up
So if the picture in this post didn’t give a hint, my motto as I revise my direction and enter a new phase, is that there is nowhere to go but up. Join me as we bring the benefits of the social web to organizations of all sizes. Come along and help individuals realize the power and strength of their brand. Let’s make each day the best it can be!
I want to give a special thank you to Mykl Roventine for patience, ideas, and a great design – I wouldn’t have gotten this completed without his work. Thank you.
Got feedback? I bet! Don’t hesitate to leave your thoughts in a comment below.
Just want to share a bit of news. I’m in the process of updating the theme & design of the ol’ blog tonight, so if you see anything odd, broken, or inoperable it’s probably being worked on. A teaser thumbnail of it running on the development system is included just for fun.
However, if you want to let me know of specific things that aren’t working and such, please feel free to do so. You can ping me on Twitter (I’m @rickmahn) or via email (rick {at} rickmahn.com).
This is pretty exciting for me as I’ve been planning on a new design for several months. I’m very glad to have had Mykl Roventine heading up the redesign based on a free theme called WP Premium. The look & feel is clean and simple and suits me quite well. A big thank-you to Mykl for the great work.
That’s it for now, I’ve got a couple of things to finish up before flipping the switch so I’m off to get those done! Talk soon folks!
It’s been awhile since I’ve written a post on corporate blogging, and I thought it was high time to continue what I think may become a series. The needs of many companies are little different than the needs of an individual. However, the process in which most should approach blogging is as unique as the organizations themselves.
For the most part, it’s like most other business decisions. Decide what the purpose is and what the organization expects to achieve by doing it. Many businesses are not ready to use social media on external facing systems to engage customers. Some are almost ready to use it for internal continuous improvement processes that engage their employees. Both these models require that the organization accept negative feedback along with the praise, and that is a very bitter pill to swallow for anyone – businesses or individuals.
If you are an agent of change in your organization and are trying to figure out how to approach the business with a blogging or social media proposition, you need to understand how to present the idea. It’s not unlike trying to sell a new business strategy.
Here are a few tips on preparing to present blogging or other social media ideas to your company:
Learn about social media by participating personally
Research similar companies in size and target market to see how they’ve used social tools
With these learning’s in mind, determine if it’s the right time for your company to invest in social media. Is the climate right, are they receptive to new ideas, are they looking to improve service?
Identify areas, or even departments, within your company that could benefit by using select social media tools. Be specific about the benefits. Understand the negatives.
Write a simple overview to capture these things and provide a structure for you to build a case for using social media to augment the business.
Have samples ready to demonstrate, and be able to talk about how these new tools and ideas help solve real business problems.
There are many ways to pursue social technologies for your company, and many tools, services, and software to choose from. What works for one company, doesn’t always work for the next. Keep looking for the right fit, not necessarily the biggest, or most well known of them are best for your business.
What successes have you had in bringing social media to your company? Does your company actively engage in the social media space? What can you recommend to others who are exploring these tools for their company?
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