I was thinking … if {grow} is a community — which it certainly is — why am I always the center of attention?  I shouldn’t be.

I’m turning the tables and featuring some of the outstanding writing and ideas of the community.  It’s time to shine the spotlight on NEW VOICES on the social scene.  So I am going to try out “Community Week,” which will feature amazing guest posts from fresh new writers — some of our most dedicated thought-leaders who have been contributing to {grow}.

Actually the experiment is going to last two weeks but I thought it would be dumb to call it “Community Two Weeks” or “Community Half-Month.”  Consider it poetic license.

I challenged these relatively new bloggers to compose a post that ONLY THEY COULD WRITE — none of this “Five Twitter Tips” stuff.  And the result is really exciting and impressive!

In the next two weeks you’re going to hear from …

• An introvert’s perspective of Twitter.
• A woman who re-invented her career through the social web.
• A young guy who applied social media guerrilla tactics to get his band into a music festival.
• A new college grad so dedicated to improving her personal brand that she built a strategy to measure and improve it.
• One of the web’s most noted entrepreneurs on how she is struggling to transition from “do-er” to business “leader.”

… And a whole lot more!

There are even a few posts I disagree with.  But the point is, the next two weeks will add to the depth, diversity and fun of {grow} because it’s not all about me.

I would like to ask a favor.  I’m going to be out of the country for a few weeks so during this little sabbatical, please support these newcomers as they enter the stage on {grow}.  Adding your comments and promoting their posts through tweets is a great way to show true appreciation.

Thanks.  You’ll hear from me again in two weeks so don’t enjoy this TOO much!  Ciao!

~ Mark

I frequently receive questions about how I blog.  Where do I get the ideas?  How long does it take?  Where do I come up with the graphics?

The process I went through to create my previous post on “content engineering” was pretty typical so I thought I would dissect it as a way to illustrate a few set-by-step tips that might help you with your own blogging efforts.  Let’s start from the beginning …

Four weeks before publishing

While doing research for a content marketing project, it occurred to me that much of what is taking place today is not necessarily “marketing,” but “engineering” content to produce a certain business result. This term stuck in my head and I thought this observation could be a potential blog topic.  I went into WordPress and simply created that headline — “content engineering” — and a few sentences to remember what I meant by that.  Key point: Write down a lot of ideas as they come to you. For me, about a fourth of them turn into posts.

Two weeks before publishing

I usually carve out a few quiet hours on Sunday afternoons to review the ideas that I’ve captured and write a few posts.  The content engineering topic caught my eye and I decided to do some additional research and riff on that topic.  Once I started writing, I had the framework for a post in about 15 minutes. Key point: Create quiet time and JUST WRITE.  Don’t spend a lot of time trying to be perfect right off the bat. Editing and refining can come later.

Three days before publishing

I saw a post by Lee Odden that crystallized my idea that content engineering could be a contributing factor to a lot of blog posts sounding alike.  Adding the quote and beginning to refine the original post took about another 30 minutes. Now, you might think that seeing Lee’s post while I was working on this ideas was pure luck, but I don’t think so because:   Key point: To be an effective blogger, you have to be an active reader too.

Two days before publishing

Now I was sure I had an interesting post but there was a problem. Half-way through the original post it became humorous. I had started riffing on what it would be like if I slid keywords like <send me money> into my posts. I thought it was funny but it didn’t fit any more.  So I took out the buzz saw and cut the article length by half — might be a stand-alone post some day?  Key point: Have the courage to edit your post to make it succinct and relevant. Don’t write to show off. Write to make it a great experience for your reader.

One day before publishing

I shoot for one well-written “pillar post” per week and I decided this would be the one so I got serious about editing and making the post interesting and fun to read.  I spent another 15 minutes finalizing the post. I was still not happy about the way the post started out but after several attempts, had to decide it was “good enough!” Key point: If you strive for perfection, you will probably never publish a single post.

Four hours before “publish”

I always do the illustration and headline last. I think both are important to the reader experience and I try to come up with something catchy without spending too much time on it.

My original headline was “Is content engineering killing blogging — or saving it?”  Then I read Danny Brown’s article about how he is tired of everybody writing about the “death” of this or that. Crap. So I challenged myself to do better and the final headline was “Should you write your blog or engineer it?”

Sometimes the idea for a graphic is easy but I was really stuck this time.  I try to come up with something fanciful, something to make my readers think or smile, but nothing was coming to me. How do you illustrate “content engineering?”  Then the blueprint image came to me. I found a generic blueprint picture and added my own words on top of it — I do this all in Powerpoint — crude, yes, but simple and speedy. If I can’t conjure an imaginative graphic in less than 10 minutes, I just use a piece of clip art of some kind.

Key point: Don’t overlook the importance of headlines and illustrations to make the post more interesting.

PUBLISH

When I finally published, I had invested about 1.5 hours in the post.  Still not totally happy with it, but if you’re going to have balance in your life you can’t keep second-guessing and editing forever.

The time and day I publish is somewhat determined by my work schedule. I don’t like publishing before a day I have a lot of meetings because then I won’t have an appropriate amount of time to respond to comments. On some posts, hosting the resulting dialogue takes more time that it took to write the original post. But that’s what it’s all about, right?

It was also shortly before I published that I had the idea for this post so I cranked out most of this in a few minutes while I had the thought fresh in my mind.

COMMENTS

The best part of the blog is the community commentary. I feel very honored and humbled that people take the time to comment on something I’ve written so I try to acknowledge as many comments as I can. Key point:  Celebrate the people in your community and their comments.

Jeremy Victor is a respected marketer and he pointed out in a very direct way that my opening paragraph implied a generalization about content marketing that I did not intend. I knew there was something about that opening paragraph that I didn’t like!  I frequently admit I’m wrong on the blog and this was one of those times to eat humble pie.  I admitted that my writing was unclear and corrected the problem. Key point: Offer humility to your community. They’re smarter than you are.

Lee Odden also dropped by to comment. This was a nice surprise and I was delighted that this respected authority took time to contribute for the first time on {grow}.  Some unexpected fireworks erupted when we could not see eye-to-eye. Unfortunately his comments and tweets degraded into personal barbs.   This presents a difficult situation but it’s probably going to happen to every blogger at some point. If you put yourself out there, you’re not going to connect with every person, every time, even in a community of well-intentioned professionals.  It’s a part of human diversity and the challenge of trying to communicate only though the written word.  Key point: Don’t be thrown off-center by criticism. It’s a sign that you took risks. Take the high rode, stay positive.

Ironically, I did not expect this post to be especially controversial. The idea seemed straight-forward to me.  In hindsight the tone of the post was probably a little smarmy. Perhaps my point got lost behind the smarm. Key point: Learn from your mistakes and keep on plugging. Your next post will be better for it!

Thanks for hanging in there through what turned out to be one of my longer posts. Can you connect with any of this?  What works for you?

This is my first video blog.

I hate it.

But we all need to push ourselves and experiment, right?  This is WAY out of my comfort zone.

I intended to edit out the turning on and off parts (why doesn’t this camera have a remote?), add a title etc.  but the video editing software is too complicated and I just don’t have the time or patience to mess with it. If somebody wants to make a title with a scorching rock theme and teach me how to paste it on there, I will gladly pay you to do it.  Also show me where the “make it look like he lost 10 pounds” button is.

In the end I decided just to post it as-is — one-take, mistakes and all — because it was just turning into more excuses to not  do it. I’m trying to encourage you to stretch yourselves and {grow} so I’m taking my own medicine on this one.

I appreciate all of you who have encouraged (pestered) me to finally do this.  Sort of.

By the way, none of these posts are tied to favors, affiliate links or any other kind of kick-back. In fact, a few of these people I’ve never even interacted with so I’m sure this post will be a complete surprise to them!  Here we go …

Kelli Schmith offers so many great posts on her Dig Deep Thinker blog but I found this one extraordinarily useful.  Here are some great resources to turn the head of even the toughest, most stubborn executive social media skeptic:

Advice for execs and social media hype

Kent Huffman provides this gem of a post: Do you need a social media policy?  I know this is a well-worn topic but Kent provides the definitive article on this important subject, courtesy of The Social CMO. If this is a subject in your company (and it should be), save this important post!

A corporate social media policy: Do you really need one?

The merging digital divide has been a personal interest of mine and Anthropologist Krystal D’Costa hits the nail on the head with her excellent post.  She declares that “having the means to access information on the Internet goes just beyond access to the hardware; it also depends on the individual’s ability to understand how to use the tools at her disposal.” That’s an important perspective many people miss. Her blog Anthropology in Practice is on my daily reading list.

Digging into the Digital Divide

Occasionally you come across a post that takes your breath away. This one starts “I am 12 years old, sitting in my father’s apartment.”  This beautiful, personal reflection by Elizabeth Sosnow of Bliss PR made me think about on my own relationship with my father … and frankly, feel some regret. Elizabeth is a gifted writer.

Why did I choose to work for my father for twenty years?

Size does matter. Somebody had to say it and Sidney Eve Matrix, one of the most consistently excellent social observers on the scene, finally did.  She compares sheer size of your audience versus authenticity in this thought-provoking Cyber Pop post:

Size matters

Autom Tagsa doesn’t blog very often but when he does, my blog reader starts to rumble. Autom consistently offers up different ways to present the issues of the social web.  This post is a good example of his creativity.  I like the way he literally turned the microphone to his audience.

Organic minds: Notes from the social front

Apps, apps, apps. But why?  Neicole Creapeau is one of the very best thinkers on the social media scene and I never miss her posts. In this article, she looks at the real business models and strategies behind the creation of creating mobile apps for your business:

Business Model Principles: iPhone, iPad, and Web

There are so many tremendous writers on the web today that it would be difficult to name them all. I hope I’ve at least introduced you to a few new bloggers who weren’t on your radar screen before. I’m thinking of doing a post like this every six months or so. Let me know what you think!

Yesterday, something happened on Mashable which illustrates one of the biggest threats to the social web, to business, and maybe even democracy.  I’m really interested to see what you have to say about this incident.  Let’s start with the lead paragraph from their post:

The Italian Windows website “Windowsette” somehow managed to get a hold of a super-secret, highly confidential PowerPoint presentation outlining many of Microsoft’s goals and plans for Windows 8. Apparently this sensitive data (complete with UNDER NDA watermarks) was just found sitting around the Internet.

If you haven’t been around the corporate world, NDA stands for “non-disclosure agreement.”  This means that whoever had these slides had signed a legal document to keep them secret.

The Windowsette site said it learned of this leak from “Andrea Martinelli.” I have no idea who that is but it seems unlikely she just found secret internal Microsoft documents “sitting around the Internet.”

So here are the questions I have for you:

• Mashable has become the journal of record for the social web. Maybe they’ve been trained as journalists, maybe they’re not.  Does that make a difference?
• Is it ethical for them to publish a “super-secret, highly confidential” internal document that could be extremely damaging to Microsoft?
• Is it responsible to report on a document whose source was a single associate of an obscure website in Italy?  How can we even know these slides are real? Isn’t it easy to create official-looking PowerPoint slides?
• The Mashable post was tweeted almost 1,000 times and included in about 500 Facebook sites.  For many people, this article has become “the news.” What are the implications when non-journalists create the news?

I’ll tip my hand here and say that my undergrad was in journalism and I believe this institution is essential to democracy.  What’s going on in most blogs today is not journalism.  Usually that’s OK.  But with the dramatic decline of the traditional press, whatever we have left on blogs is going to become our de facto news of record. Like Mashable.

In the end, this incident will have a shelf life of about one day and it’s easy to let a big company like Microsoft be our target. But what if this unsubstantiated piece of news was about your secret new product development?  Your company? Your congressman? A terrorist threat in your community?

What if it was about you?

Seems like everybody wants to produce content that goes viral.  Speaking from experience, you should be careful about what you wish for!

Last week I followed with tradition and posted something light and entertaining on a Friday. In fact I thought it was funny — skewering Guy Kawasaki for his voluminous and sometimes bizarre tweets.

To my surprise and delight, Guy actually found the post and had a great sense of humor about it.  And it must have created some traction for him — his team tweeted it out five times over 24 hours. This is a fellow with nearly 300,000 followers.

The post didn’t set a record for an individual day on my blog, but over three days, it was pretty huge — about 5X the normal rate of page views for a weekend. By some definitions, I guess you could say it went viral.

And then the problems started.

When you go viral, you reach a lot of new people outside the comfortable “normal” audience you’ve built over time.  In fact about 95% of the readers last weekend had never been to the blog before.  This was also a new population who didn’t realize I was trying to be funny. People who don’t even know what funny IS.  So I started getting nasty-grams from folks who thought I was being profane: “Who are you to call somebody a devil? You need to look in the mirror, pick up a Bible and ask this man for forgiveness.”  How do you respond to that?

Next came the imposter. Somebody logged into the comment section with a Guy Kawasaki email address and hijacked the blog. Then the “real” Guy showed up to defend himself … or was it a representative? … or another imposter? … and for awhile I didn’t know which end was up. It took me about an hour to sort through the mess, delete the imposter’s comments, and “stand watch” over new comments coming in.  Up until that day I had only deleted one comment in the history of the blog.

Since I made the choice to not have ads on this site, I don’t receive any financial benefit from thousands of new readers coming to the blog.  What about new RSS subscriptions? As best as I can tell, it was about ZERO.  They were all blog tourists I suppose.

I’m really grateful that Guy took my post in good humor and liked it enough to tweet it out.  From the imposter incident, I have a new appreciation that being a celebrity comes with a target on your back. In the end, I’ll settle for my good ol’ {grow} homeys any day!

I really appreciate the consistent friendship and support from the {grow} community, whether I suck or whether I knock it out of the park.  I don’t need viral. I just need you. Thanks!

I’ve had the most fun over the last few weeks working with Billy Mitchell, Martine Hunter and the incredible professionals at MLT Creative in Atlanta preparing their company’s first major webinar.

They gave me the license to think through the implications of new research and trends on corporate blogging and it resulted in some really fresh — even controversial — myth-busting ideas.  For example, have you considered:

• Actively selling <gasp> through your blog in a way that your customers will love?
• Dismissing customer comments as a measure of blog success?
• Market-segmenting your blog?
• The two possible conditions for an active corporate blog community?
• Why “entertainment” should be a cornerstone of your blogging strategy?

If you missed this webinar, MLT has made the entire session available by clicking HERE.

But it gets better!  MLT has also provided a free eBook on Corporate Blogging (has some different information than the webinar) which is available HERE.

There were so many questions at the end of the webinar that it will take 15 consecutive blog posts to answer them all. To see answers from see really interesting blog-related questions, visit the MLT blog over the next two weeks or so.

Many of the ideas in the webinar are against the grain of social media convention, but I think represent a realistic assessment of the role of blogging in the corporate world today.  I’d love to hear your take on what I’ve presented!

Check out this quote from Patrick CraneVP Marketing, LinkedIn

“We started the LinkedIn Blog almost three years ago when we were a 60 person company.  Now we are a 600 person company … Promoting your blog front and center is a massively efficient way to promote your business and achieve multiple nosiness objectives — launch products, hire talent, proactively address issues your company faces, tap the evangelism of your customers … Management was dubious in the beginning, but Kay Luo our PR lead pushed it through. Nobody doubts the power of our blog now. In fact they depend upon it.”

It seems like every day I see research, testimonies and case studies like this supporting the idea that blogs are not only creating new business benefits for corporations, they’re rapidly filling an information need for customers throughout the sales cycle.

Yet, many companies have been sluggish to climb on board.  At others, the intiative may be misunderstood, with only half-hearted management support. And despite the fanfare of Twitter, Facebook and their much-hyped cousins, meaningful guidance on establishing and nurturing a blog in a corporate setting has been incredibly rare.  

Clearly the time is right to re-think the role of the company blog and figure out how to unleash its potential.

If you’re a blogger, thinking about blogging, or struggling with blogging, I’d like to alert you to an exceptional opportunity.  Billy Mitchell, a frequent contributor to the {grow} community and leader of MLT Creative in Atlanta, asked me to spend some time studying the opportunities and challenges of the business blog.  The results will be presented in a free webinar and the release of an accompanying eBook Wednesday, April 14.  This unique one-hour event plows  new ground for corporate bloggers, examining questions like:

• Positioning a company blog as a point of competitive differentiation
• Dealing with company politics and blogging 
• The myth of community building
• Using your blog to “sell me softly”

I’m really proud of how this presentation developed in terms of the uniqueness of the information and the quality of the materials.   This will be a fascinating, fast-paced event jammed with new ideas. I hope you can attend this event with me and join this timely discussion about unleashing your blog. Click HERE to learn more!

illustration: colunas.globoesporte.com/

I had the pleasure of being Trey Pennington’s guest on his Marketing Professor Radio Show last week.  I didn’t know where the conversation would lead but I spent nearly the whole time talking about YOU, meaning the {grow} community.  A few topics:

• Blogging and leadership
• The importance of kindness
• Writing for yourself
• How to be a conversation starter
• Building true community

If you have a mild interest in the bizarre thought processes that go on behind the scenes of {grow} you might want to check it out:  http://bit.ly/ahchhk

Studies show that web page  views have been dropping precipitously as folks park themselves on the social web. There have even been a flurry of blog posts from Jason Falls, Jay Baer and Debbie Weil debating whether your blog is now the true “hub” of your marketing communication effort.

But honestly, it seems strange to me that these superb bloggers are even wasting space with this debate. Your good old website (Ahhhh … remember that?) is still your hub.  Here’s why.

What are you really trying to do?

Step away from your Tweetdeck, take a deep breath, and think about what behavior you are trying to drive with your communication effort. In most cases it is making some type of connection, right? Let’s just be honest and put the purist stuff aside. Ultimately you want your readers to take an ACTION like register for something, make a call, or buy something from you.

Is that going to happen on your blog?

Probably not, unless you are doing out-right selling there and that’s (usually) a no-no.  The actual “connection event” is going to happen on your website. So all roads should lead to your homepage, right?  Wouldn’t that make it the very epicenter of your marketing universe?

Even though websites seem to be out of fashion, they still play a critical role in actually driving behaviors. A website should explain what you do, why you’re special, and what a reader should do next.  This is where you sell. And that’s a big deal.

Creating the spokes

You need to use the social web to support this effort by creating an “information eco-system” to lead prospective stakeholders back to the Mother Ship and eventually DO SOMETHING. You can think of these outposts on Twitter, your blog, Facebook, YouTube or wherever as spokes or outposts leading your visitors home.  Likewise, your website should also be leading people back to the outposts, if that is where they need to be to get the information they need.

Whether you work for a non-profit, a university, or a business, you’re in this to drive some type of behavior. That behavior is consummated on the website (usually a contact page) and all social properties should point to your site and your opportunity. Your website still matters … a lot!

What am I missing here?

{grow} community update: Dave Fleet posted an article which serves as a nice reference if you’re interested in reading more on this topic.