Great Success (and fun) blogging

Shawn Chambers, a passionate plastics blogger is having great success, and fun, blogging. In his own words:

My blog is now the 2nd greatest referrer of people to our website in less than 30 days of operation, 1 behind google and now surpassing the yellowpages...

Granted it's not 1,000's of people yet, but still... for a commitment of about an hour a day to publish a useful, meaningful article we're attracting people that, in all likelihood, would have never known who we are.

Some Blogs to learn from

I learn a lot about blogs by looking at and reading blogs.

You can observe a lot by watching.  -- Yogi Berra
And you can learn a lot too, as I'm sure Yogi knows

Here are three relatively new blogs you and I might learn something from:

What's The Diff?
A group blog exposing Quicken Loans as a fun place to work.
From their about page: " THE DIFF blog is all about the things that make the difference in business and in life.  Most of the time, it's the little things."

Holder's "Stuph File"
Peter Anthony Holder is a fixture on Montreal talk radio and a great interviewer - he's even interviewed me on the air. Man can this guy write well, and he's funny too! Welcome to the blogosphere Peter!

The Plastic Spork
Shawn Chambers has "A Passion For Plastic And The People Who Use It" and it's obvious. He's been blogging about 3 weeks and Shawn says "I've already had almost 600 visits!!!! And other industry people have noticed and linked to me as well..."
Great start Shawn and welcome to the blogosphere (and thanks for the book review too)!

And in case you don't know what a spork is.

"Hidden" Business Blog Success Stories

I believe there are lots of professionals helping their business through blogging who stay "hidden" from mainstream view.

They may be hidden because they don't want to talk about their success with business blogging, because they're not sure how much their blogging is helping business, or maybe because they're in some niche where main stream bloggers rarely venture.

For example, Kevin O'Keefe writes about a blogging lawyer having incredible success. 18 new client inquiries over the last 12 days! Now I'm not a lawyer and my clients are often very longterm, but I usually get 18 new consulting and mentoring client inquiries every 2-4 months max.

It's very interesting that this lawyer insists on remaining anonymous -- not wanting the competition to know where all the new clients are coming from.

So, a few bucks in AdSense or other revenue or a bunch of new clients, I know which one I'd prefer!

Social Media and Higher Education

Social media is becoming common and accepted in business and education. Even accountants learning how to become a CPA are beginning to adapt social media principles to advance their practice.

Here's a recent email interview I had on higher education and social media - blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc.

1. How large an impact are social media having on the way colleges and universities communicate with their various audiences (students, prospective students,alumni, etc.)?

Social media are starting to have a large impact with colleges and universities, but we are very early in the adoption curve. Admissions are the furthest along, and "student life" blogs, for lack of a better name, are the most prevalent and popular, for example the admissions blogs at MIT.

2. What are the disadvantages of using these tools in higher education?

The perceived disadvantages are that they take too much time, and may reveal "secrets" the institution does not want to have publicized. Of course everything takes time, but plenty of very busy people make time to blog. In reality, higher education administrators and other employees are just starting to realize blogs exist and may be a very effective communications tool for them. As for "revealing secrets," anyone - students, administrators, alumni, etc., can and will blog, anonymously if necessary. There are no secrets anymore!

Building Community with Blogs for Higher Education and Alumni Organizations

Blogs are great ways to build community. I'm surprised more alumni organizations aren't blogging - building community (it seems to me) would be key to involving alumni and increasing donations.

I spoke with Don Philabaum of the Internet Association Corporation recently about alumni associations and blogging on his podcast. Click here for the audio.

I know if any of the alumni associations of schools I've gone to were blogging, I would take an occasional look at least, but very few are.

Certainly part of this is because alumni professionals are extremely overworked. A few options are to have a group blog, where several bloggers each blog occasionally, as well as having students blog -- and many students are happy to as they don't see this as "work" (many more ideas in the podcast).

I've only uncovered a few alumni association, alumni professional, and similar blogs. Here's a sampling:

Alumni Futures is a great blog by Andy Shaindlin for alumni relation professionals.

Dartmouth Association of Alumni is an example of a multi-author blog by several alumni.

And Anthony Rizos writes an admission blog for MIT I've been enjoying lately.

 

Crawling Inside Brain of Freaking Marketing Founder

Freaking Marketing's Robert Rosenthal claims I climbed inside his brain!
Robert blogs to helps him avoid nasty clients - if they don't like his blog, they won't like him!  Most reasonable folks are going to like his blog.

Thanks, I did my best Robert! Check out what I found here.

Robert is a regular read of mine, and I owe him a visit for a beer or two.

Blog Lessons From a Novice

John Kinde, featured in my book What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting, was kind enough to send in the following fascinating post - thanks John!

I've had a web site for seven years.  But just a year ago I had no idea what my traffic statistics or search engine rankings were.  In fact, I had never looked at them.  A computer and Internet wizard I am not.  I'm just now getting familiar with some of the technical aspects of these amazing cyber wonders.  In the last eleven months I've learned a few things. 

In February 2006 I started blogging.  Wanting to measure the results of my effort, it made sense to learn how to download my web log statistics.  To my amazement my traffic doubled, then quadrupled in three months.  From 200 visitors daily to 900.  The results of the blog were amazing.  Here are some lessons that a novice has learned in the past year:

1.  Steady posting to the blog maintains momentum.  My web site traffic has steadily grown to 1000 daily visitors for several months. In one year I figure that my blog is responsible for bringing 300,000 extra visits to my site.

2.  In the past year, I have had only two good spikes in traffic which resulted when my site received a plug in a "high authority" blog (one with lots of links and traffic).  The first spike was before my blog was online.  After the spike, the traffic fell back to the low level before the spike.  The second spike (which was after the blog was active) resulted in the higher traffic level being maintained after the spike.  Clear evidence to me of the value of the blog.

5 Prerequisites For Blogging Success

Great list from guest blogger Tony Hung at Problogger today:

1. Putting in the Time and Commitment.
2. Willing to Market The Blog - “if I build it, they will come” doesn't work
3. Be Interesting
4. Realize It's Not About You - It's About Them
5. Be Focused - “focused” and consistent in every single way.

Worth reading in detail

Non-bloggers who profit from the blogosphere

Many people who don't blog profit from the blogosphere, just like many people who don't read books benefit from them.

Mike Sansone writes about Jim Foster, a friend and sales professional I highlight in my latest book, who considers blogs an essential sales research tool.

As Mike points out, if blogs only contained useless banter, they still ARE the voices of your customers! You really should be engaging them.

Quick tip from Mike:

Are you about to propose a business deal with a new company? Check to see if anyone is blogging. Conduct a LinkedIn Search for the company's name and add the word "blog" to the search. Check to see what the blogosphere is saying about that company using Technorati or Google Blog Search.

And thanks for being in my book Mike (and the very kind words!).

(and nice to see The Google Blog pick this up!)

Blogging's Biggest Business Effect

What is blogging's biggest effect on my business? A recent business survey made me critically rethink blogging's #1 biggest effect.

It's not more paid speeches, not the two book contracts, not more traffic, etc. - although those ARE effects I've seen.

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