Both books were funny. DadLabs would be the kind of book you get a guy who’s about to become a dad. The Guide to Pirate Parenting is perfect for a parent at any stage. I laughed loads during the reading of these books.

But you know this site, and I’m not going to review soaps. What I am going to point out is their web presence.

Glynne Soaps has built a @glynnesoaps Twitter account with many thousands of followers. They have a Facebook Fan Page, and they also have a blog. All this comes on top of their mainstream Glynne Soaps website, too.

Is it working? I’m not sure, but I sure had lots of ways to connect with the company and the products. That’s a win to me. If I wanted to know about that soap, I had a way to find a bar and get it shipped to me.

My one comment about this is that I’d like to see the human behind the soap, but whether that changes things? That’s another question. I guess they could test a little of both and see what that does to the business overall.

I liked the products just fine, but I really appreciate their approach to connecting to people via the various online channels, and that’s the story I want to tell. What do you say?

Newspapers are also catching flack for saying they dont want their content openly distributed. On this point, they are correct again. They should have complete control over where it is distributed. They should have the ability to choose where it is offered for free.

Not only should they have this control, taking back this control is the exact right business move. Im not saying it will save newspapers or magazines, it wont. But it will make their website offerings stronger in the long run. If Im them, I take the risk that the “printed” content business follows the path of the music industry.

Again, the whole article is here and it’s probably better that you read it before disagreeing with me (or Mark, or whoever).

Distribution Control

Mark frames the biggest point as the right of entities to control where their material is distributed. The point is this: just because something’s available via a distribution method (like RSS) doesn’t mean it’s free for the taking and re-use. Ditto the idea that just because search services (hear me, Google?) can see it and grab it all and index it doesn’t mean that it’s free for the taking and re-use.

At the heart of this is a choice. We can distribute our material and let it loose to the wild and hope to capture value elsewhere, or we can choose to lock our material into containers of perceived value. Model 2 is the way the world has worked for well over a hundred years. There’s a split in our thinking about all this, though.

Seth Godin put it this way:

People will pay for content if it is so unique they can’t get it anywhere else, so fast they benefit from getting it before anyone else, or so related to their tribe that paying for it brings them closer to other people. We’ll always be willing to pay for souvenirs of news, as well, things to go on a shelf or badges of honor to share.

Seth’s right, I believe. I think many of today’s media distribution organizations will either morph or die. (My money’s on people like USAToday/Gannett figuring it out, in the paper world. Not sure who I’d bet on for TV. You?)

Mark’s right, I believe. I think that companies have the right to rein back in their content and that people who think it should all be free no matter what are wrong.

Malcolm? I don’t know. Didn’t read the piece. I’m on vacation. He might be wrong. (I agree with Seth quite often, so maybe I’ll just trust him).

My Take on Free

You might have cottoned to the notion that I give a LOT of what I do away for free. My post on presence management is the kind of stuff that other companies sell to their clients. Why give it away? Because I can keep making new stuff all damned day. And I choose to share because I want you to be able to run with stuff and do it yourself, if you want.

My take? I give away general ideas for free and I sell customized information and execution. I work with really wonderful (and big) companies on their efforts in the business communications and emerging technology space, and that pays the bills. My writing? I give 91.5% of it away for free.

I want you to PAY for some of it soon. In August, for instance. I want you (and 4 of your friends) to buy Trust Agents. I want to sell the crap out of that book. I want it to light up the New York Times and Amazon and everywhere else. Why? Because I’m proud of the work I did with Julien, and I want it to pop!

Should I give you that for free, too? I say no. Because I’ve already given you mountains of stuff for free, and I’ll continue doing this. I don’t want your money for me. I want your money to pay John Wiley and Sons. I want your money to pay indie bookstores and Barnes & Noble and whoever. Because that’s an exchange. I share hard work, and you trade it for some loot.

So what do you think of it all? What’s free mean to you?

Special thanks to Tim Sanders for getting me started on this tonight.

Now, look at what you do in a given day. Not much of it is inherently built for wonder-instilling, is it? Is there something you can do there? Anything?

Could you even shoot for remarkable? An eyebrow raise might even suffice, if we get right down to it.

What comes to mind?

Photo credit Woodley Wonder Works

A Strategy is the Path You Choose to Take

Before we dive in, just realize this: strategy is a word that’s rarely used properly. Check out Erika Andersen’s Being Strategic if you need more on the right way to think about strategy. If not, just accept that strategy just means “the best way I can think of to get to the goal.”

Strategies are flexible. People don’t realize this. If your goal is to land more sales, then making one decision and sticking to it is not likely going to be the best way to plan your blogging methods. For instance, if you decide to write about product features every post, and that doesn’t convert to sales, would you still do it? No. You’d adjust your strategy and try new content approaches.

With that all said, let’s go in a bit more.

Sample Goals to Start our Strategies

Here’s a quick list of some ways one could use a blog in alignment with business strategy:

• Customer Loyalty
• Product/Service education
• Lead Generation
• Organic Keyword Marketing Assistance (SEO/SEM)
• Entertainment
• Awareness
• Thought leadership
• Announcements

There are, obviously, many more ways to use blogs, but you get the picture. From these goals, we can devise strategies.

Blogging Strategies

• Customer Loyalty – make a “customer of the week” post. Write about and promote others.
• Product/Service education – write several how-to posts
• Lead Generation – write posts that attempt to move people to a conversion point.
• Organic Keyword Marketing Assistance (SEO/SEM) – write blog posts that help you rate better for the search terms that matter to you.
• Entertainment – create interesting posts that keep up people’s good will
• Awareness – write frequent posts that maybe dip into many of these categories, to try and keep people interested
• Thought Leadership – write posts that establish you or your leaders as credible industry voices with great value.
• Announcements – use the blog as a glorified press release engine.

Again. I could write another 12 strategies each for the above-mentioned, but that’s not the point. I’m illustrating ways you can think about strategies for your blogging. Let’s go another layer down.

Tactics to Consider

• Customer Loyalty – include pictures in every post. Link to the customer often.
• Product/Service education – build good category support. Use sharethis.com or similar.
• Lead Generation – make simple calls to action. Don’t confuse with too many links, pictures, or other distractions.
• Organic Keyword Marketing Assistance (SEO/SEM) – learn which keywords you want to rank for and blog accordingly. (I’m not very into this method).
• Entertainment – build cross-promotional efforts, like tying posts to facebook and friendfeed for more exposure. The name of the game is eyeballs.
• Awareness – find ways to share and distribute. Look for external sharing mechanisms. The more you can cross-pollenate the message without seeming spammy, the better.
• Thought leadership – empower your leader (whoever you choose) to share as much as possible with the community. Comments help this cause lots.
• Announcements – be concise, and be able to share as much as possible.

What Works For You?

One thing to never forget is that you should always discount anything I say by tempering it with the understanding of what works best for you. You might be having tons of success by writing huge posts with no visual breaks. Who knows? Go with what works for you.

If you want more about the mechanics blogging, here is my best advice about blogging. Some of that might help, too.

Was this useful to you? What else did you want to share with everyone about your own successes? What’s worked or not worked for you?

Photo credit Floyd Nelio

Twitter

1. Find seven things worth retweeting in your general feed and share.
2. Reply to at least five things with full responses (not just “thanks”).
3. Point out a few people that you admire. It shows your mindset, too.
4. Follow back at least 10 folks. (I use an automated tool, but this is a personal preference. If you want such, I use SocialToo.)
5. 10 minutes of just polite two-way chit chat goes far.

Facebook

6. Check in on birthdays on the home page. (Want a secret? Send the birthday wish via Twitter or email. Feels even more deliberate.)
7. Respond to any comments on your wall.
8. Post a status message daily, something engaging or interesting.
9. Comment on at least seven people’s status messages or updates.
10. Share at least 3 interesting updates that you find.
11. If you belong to groups or fan pages, leave a new comment or two.

LinkedIn

11. Accept any invitations that make sense for you to accept.
12. Enter any recent business cards to invite them to LinkedIn (if you’re growing your network).
13. Drop into Q&A and see if you can volunteer 2-3 answers.
14. Provide 1 recommendation every few days for people you can honestly and fully recommend.
15. Add any relevant slide decks to the Slideshare app there, or books to the Amazon bookshelf.

Blogs

16. Visit your blog’s comments section and comment back on at least 5 replies.
17. If you have a few extra minutes, click through to the blogs of the commenters, and read a post or two and comment back.
18. While on those sites, use a tool like StumbleUpon and promote their good work.
19. Write the occasional post promoting the good work of a blog in your community.

It’s Not Easy

Maintaining your online presence takes time. If you look at all I’ve listed above, that’s easily more than an hour of work. But it depends what the value of that presence is to you, if you’re doing this as an individual, or to your organization, if you’re doing this on behalf of a brand or product.

We’ve traded dollars for time, in lots of these equations, as we see the return on our advertising spend diminish. It’s your choice whether you want to maintain an active online presence, or if you want to get away with a bit less.

What do you think?

The first, How to Build Small Business Websites Using the Thesis WordPress Theme [pdf file], comes from Expand2Web.com, by Don Campbell. His site was packed with similar information, so if you like this doc, swing by and check out his other information.

The other document was called Thesis Tutorial – SEO for Everyone [pdf file] , and I found that at DoubleMule, which had lots of posts about Thesis themes and designs.

Most folks appreciate the theme and get it installed just fine, but I do get the occasional email from someone who isn’t as comfortable with the installation process, or they might have it configured in bare bones mode, but want to do more. I think having an affordable premium WordPress theme is a great way to make your blog look even more attractive and professional, but you have to remember that I’m biased.

Need suggestions for good designers? I recommend both Nico Pin and WeFixWP.com. If you want to go a bit more premium than even that, my friends Justin and Eric at Coffee House Ideas kick serious butt, too.

Good luck with tuning up your blog with Thesis. I think it’s a really useful theme and I love promoting it.

If you’re more of a visual thinker, you might try checking out Great Thesis Resources, where I found you some videos to browse.

Let me know how the docs work out for you, okay?

  
Download now or listen on posterous

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Posted via email from [chrisbrogan.com] – On the Run

Please forgive me if it takes me a while to get back to you via email. You’re very important. I just will have a big heap to sort through when I decide to plug back into that.

I haven’t had a really decent vacation in a long time. This one should be decent. We’re doing a bunch of trips all over New England, and possibly Manhattan, as well.

Whatever the case, just consider this a personal note to you. You’re important to me, and I wanted you to be up to speed.

I’ll be back on the 13th, but will be posting DAILY, so don’t worry about a thing. : )

–Chris…

It Starts With Being Helpful

I’ve come to realize something: there are people who can be helpful, and then there are people who offer their help over and over. Guess which one is really helpful?

If you can jump in and participate, or point out the kinds of people who you know can help others, that’s a great way to start cultivating an active network. We all respond well to someone who is quick to help.

Be There

Online and off, the person who gets the most out of a network is the person who is actively tapping it. You can’t always contribute to every event, but how often can you be absent from a network before it no longer “remembers” you?

Visit with your network and contribute on a regular basis. Notice that I say “contribute” and not “just leave a message.”

Touch As Many as Possible

One way to keep a network vibrant and response is to touch everyone you can. Talk to them. Absorb some of what they’re working on or inquire about their passions. The more you can contribute to others, if only by communicating and participating in some small way, the more likely you’re building reciprocal relationships.

Talk About Them

If you’re communicating in some kind of “one to many” way with your network, make it peppered with stories about them. In our Trust Agents community, Julien and I look for what our group members have shared on their own Facebook networks, and we pull in the occasional related piece. Because we’re asking people to participate in our community, we make sure to keep the chairs turned in so that we interact instead of pontificate and preach from the pulpit.

Deliver Value Back

For every time you ask your network for something, try and give something back in return. The more you can leverage the contributions of your network such that they serve you and return a value, the better things work. If I join the Sharpie Uncapped community, not only can I contribute my art and ideas, but I can benefit form the people who have also shared. The creators of the community (Sharpie markers and their agency) have this built such that everyone gets something for their interaction.

Can you deliver value back for the value you asked?

Active Networks are Your Capital

You probably do know the difference between being connected to a network of sorts versus participating in an active network of like-minded people who share disparate but compatible goals. In the first case, you feel great until you need something. In the second case, you know that people have your back and that you can deliver as much help as possible until the time when you, yourself, might have to call on the network.

Invest and you’ll see a return. Start an account without much interest and you’ll get back only what you put in.

Do you belong to an active network?

(Want to see an active network in action?)