Blogger's Secret

Blogging vs social media: yes, and!

If you are writing blog-sized posts regularly, there will be a natural temptation to use other media to also share the same messages and to collect similar people who share your interests. Depending on your world, these people might be on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Pinterest, or heaven knows what other social network is out there in the world today or a year from today. You'll have to make some decisions about how and where to share your content across systems, and how much of a blog post gets picked out to share to the right place.

The tremendous advantage of writing for your weblog first and then adding your link to some (or many) social media streams is that you retain control over your writing. It's hard to find an old Facebook post, no matter how popular it was at the time, but it's relatively easy to go back through most blog archives and track down what you did before. You can rewrite it, update it, edit it, or take it off line - none of which are easy when you are publishing first on some other platform.

That doesn't mean you should ignore any network where there are people who might be friends or fans of your work. The key is to find the attractive piece of your writing and use that as the lead that draws people directly to your site. In Twitter it's a compelling headline; on Facebook, it's probably a good picture. In any case, keep the original copy of your writing on your blog, and circulate the link to it to bring people to read it.

Most of my blogging writing runs from 300 to 500 words long. That's way too long for Twitter, and stretching the attention span of a Facebook reader who's not used to having a wall of text in their feed full of faces and pictures. Depending on the rest of your design, you'll need to think carefully about which part of any given blog post that you share on some other system and which part of it you have to go to the blog to read. Write a lead paragraph which can be taken out and dropped somewhere else to summarize your message, and a lead sentence that sums it all up in a few words.

on building links and weaving a network of trust and reference

One of the key roles of the blogger is to build links to other sources that are relevant.  Sometimes that other relevant source is you under a different name; be prepared to lead people to that indirectly.

Leave room in the reader's imagination to ask and then fill in the answer to the question for themselves.  Prompt them as need be to look up the answer where you have hidden it.  Don't rely on spoonfeeding them; instead, give clues and hints that you know will lead to you.  By doing so you can build links and references and ultimately a web of trust where you can see the paths form and guide people toward you as they come in.

If you cause someone to find your other work by virtue of search or browsing, they will believe in its trustworthiness a lot more than if you had simply sent them there directly.  The incomplete image of the right answer, then fulfilled by your existing work in the place they looked for it, speaks volumes about how you stack up with everyone else in the network who has the same interest.  Identify every possible opportunity to link via a preset search term which you control and monitor for quality.

Properly done this lends itself to multiple chains all intersecting - some people's search will lead them one way, others will go a different way, bonus to you if you can make entire loops of self-referential materials that all stand up to individual inquiry.

For best results use strong existing networks as starting and ending points for reference searches.  The wikipedia entry that refers to you is a good target to point people at, especially if it in turn points to something else that points to you.  Smaller wikis can be ideal for reference loops especially if you can identify the narrow niche where people have reason to trust what you say because it is indeed trustworthy.

Avoid the spammy random link.  You are not helped by randomness in this quest; it's better to link with a purpose.  Where you find that there are a lot of people linking through you to somewhere exceptionally good, include that reference in your forward links, just for the kindness of saving someone a step.

Link building is an art of sorts, not a beautiful art but one that requires painstaking attention to detail and that pays care and tending and good analytics and management.  When you build references you increase the value not only of your own work but of the good works of others.  Do reward that directly where you can, and call out opportunities to make what you do an ever better path towards sources that can be trusted.  Links are the warp and weft of the net, weave them with care.

For more see a search for network weaving and follow where it takes you.

The rule of eight: getting to know you

A recent suggestion from the newsletter that Jason and Jodi Womack write for The Womack Company

Pull out a piece of paper, and put your name in the middle, and draw a small circle around it. Then, draw outward-bound lines from that circle - at least 8 of them all around the paper. On each line, write down someone's name. Write down the name of someone: - you admire - you look to for advice - you respect - you enjoy learning from - you think is really, really smart - you still have something to learn from - you...get the picture! Now, over the next week, reach out to each of the 8 people. Ask them if you can schedule a little bit of "face-to-face" time; it might be a meeting in a conference room, it might be a "before-work" cup of coffee. (jason and jodi womack)

This eightfold rule applies to how to let people know in the early stages of your blogging project that you are getting going with something.  When you write something, figure out who in your world might be interested, and let eight people know about something you're up to or something that you've writen.  Reach out, understand what the common interest is that you can share, and talk to them about it.  Ask for help, ask for information, let them know that you're starting something up and would like to get them involved.

If you're working well, it will be very easy to find eight people who are relevant for any given piece that you write - and you can have them in mind when you are writing.  Whether it's thinking about the power of small temporary groups to provide new insights on problems or the ability to use small wins in the starts of something to launch something new - or even just the value of a fresh pair of eyes - asking for help can be a big part of a good start.

Network building - the slow growth approach

Every Thursday in Ann Arbor, MI I meet for lunch with 15-30 people at Eastern Accents on Fourth Avenue.  I started doing this in 2005, and have kept up a regular schedule ever since.  There is a mailing list for the group, which is made up almost entirely of people who I've actually had lunch with, and at every occasion I find something new and of interest to fill the weblog that I keep which focuses on the Ann Arbor area.  There are about 300 people on the mailing list right now, and every week I add one or two new faces.

300 people sounds like a lot, except that if you measure it out over time it's only two new people a week for 150 weeks.  Your Blogger's Secret exercise of producing 150 posts over six months should, if you manage to organize your people-collecting efforts appropriately, collect 150 people who care about what you are doing, know what you're up to and can help out.

How do you organize this effort?  It's best not to do it quickly - an instant spam message to 150 people who look at your first day's work and say "meh" is not going to get you where you want to be.  Rather, collect individuals one at a time individually, by writing something that's relevant to them and telling them about it when you're done. 

Long, slow endurance with a sustained effort pays off in ways that instant "viral" style adoption never does.  You're looking to recreate a forest full of tasty morels that reappear every spring, not a battlefield of victims of the Spanish Flu.   Build your support as slowly and as gradually as you can afford to.