There has been a lot of talk in the past couple of week about the elusive social media expert. It started with Gary Vaynerchuk who called 99.5% of social media experts clowns. Then there was Peter Shankman who wrote an impassioned piece on why he would never, ever, hire a social media expert. While I agree with Peter on some parts (e.g. that social media needs to be integrated into every facet of marketing and cannot be silo’d) I respectfully disagree with a lot of what he wrote. I not only think, I know, that there are SM professionals who do a hell of a lot more than, “build you a fan page, and when all that work doesn’t convert into new sales, say, ‘Well, we’ll just post more.”’ To me, saying there is no use for someone who specializes in a rapidly changing industry makes very little sense.

After Shankman’s post garnered a ton of attention, Stanford from Social Media Today wrote a great post on how to spot a social media expert. His description of a true expert was dead-on, especially the part about the need to be a social scientist – someone who is a student of human nature and is fascinated by seeing what makes people tick. Stanford argues, and I agree, that while such a social media expert is hard to find, a truly good SM professional can be an asset to a company.

So the question remains, if your company is looking to step up its social media game should you look to hire a social media expert? My answer may surprise you, but I am going to say no.

The truth is, you’ll have much better luck if you “grow” your own social media expert.

Social media is still new, so if your employees haven’t reached SM superdome just yet, don’t think that means they never will. An expert can be created if given the right tools and direction. And the good news is – you don’t have to be the one to teach them. You can work with an agency to teach your future expert the lay of the land and to provide continued strategy and analysis. You can empower your expert to identify key blogs and influencers to read and learn from on a daily basis. You can send your expert to conferences, to hear from the best of the best, talk to like-minded people and become inspired by new ideas. And you’ll be doing all this with someone who already knows the ins and outs of your business. Someone who will innately understand how social media ties into customer service or marketing or sales, because that used to be their primary job role. In short, someone who gets it.

So if you are an in-house marketing manager or an agency leader, here are my tips on how to grow your very own social media expert.

Step One: Start with the right person. May seem like a duh, but it is amazing how many people miss this step. Your future expert should be excited to learn about social media. He/she should be smart, a darn good writer and ready to put in the work. This expert should share your vision of reaching social media star status and understand that it may take more than average effort to get there. If you are starting with someone who sees this as an unwelcome addition to their to- do list, they aren’t likely to become a star.

Step Two: Make sure that person reads – a lot. There is no shortage of blogs about social media, marketing, digital strategy, case studies etc. Part of your expert’s job description should be to read daily about what is going on. This will keep he/she up to date on the latest SM technology and trends as well as inspire them with new ideas. A few good ones to start with are Mashable (the SM and business section), Social Media Examiner (has a lot of great case studies) and Jay Baer’s Convince and Convert.

Step Three: Look for outside resources. The web is a great source of knowledge, but nothing beats talking to real people and asking questions. Agencies are an easy way to go for help with this. If you get a good one, they can help train your social media expert on best practices and stay on to assist with strategy.  If you don’t want to go the agency route – look for conferences, meet ups, classes, consultants etc. to help your expert learn.

Step Four: Encourage them to watch and emulate. Your expert doesn’t have to come up with entirely new ideas or figure out everything on their own. Have he/she look at what other companies in other industries, or what national brands have done, and see how it could be applied it to your company. Task them with looking at both the big picture ideas and the small tactics. The brands and people that are successful can teach your expert a ton.

Step Five:  Let them test. Guess what, sometimes your social media expert is going to get it wrong. Not all ideas are awesome. But testing is key in social media and even if an idea fails overall, there may be elements of it that work. Make sure to give your star the ability to try things, even when he/she isn’t sure it will work. Sometimes those risks will really pay off.

Step 6: Ask them to analyze. As they test and learn, make sure you are tasking them with not only reporting back what worked but why it worked. This will require them to think, a skill they should master if they want to reach expert level.

Step 7:  Share and teach. Nothing empowers an expert more than giving them the opportunity to teach others in your company. This is key to ensuring that social media isn’t operating on its own and that the rest of the team understands what your expert is doing and how their efforts can be integrated. It is also a great way to grow your experts knowledge and confidence. Social media is intimidating for many because there is no real “right” answer. But a good social media expert must be confident that whatever direction he/she suggests, is one that they can make work.

So there you have it – my seven steps for growing your very own social media expert. Perhaps as more companies adopt this strategy, we’ll see less articles that claim social media experts are a myth.

After doing countless Twitter trainings with clients and managing many handles, I’ve realized that a person’s success with Twitter all depends on one thing – and it’s not the number of Twitter followers they have.

The truth is, the one thing that will really change the way you use the platform is who you are following. This will affect who follows you and it will determine the quality of content you are seeing. It will also address the two concerns I hear time and time again from people just starting out on Twitter:

1. I don’t have time for this
2. I don’t see the point

When you follow the right people, your time will be more efficient because you won’t be following people who tweet junk, and therefore you won’t have to shift through junk to see what is being said. You’ll also see the point of Twitter more quickly, since determining who “the right people” are will force you to establish your purpose for using the platform. When you understand your goal and then follow the people who will get you there – you’ll inevitable figure out the point of the platform.

But following the right people isn’t just imperative for newbies. It’s a best practice for all of us. Everyone goes through Twitter slumps from time to time. You know, those days (OK sometimes weeks) where you feel like everyone is tweeting about their breakfasts and there is nothing interesting to say or re-share. That, my friend, means it is time for a Twitter Spring Cleaning. This is where you cull through the people you are following, determining who is still relevant to your current goals, and cutting those who are not.

As I am in the middle of one such spring cleaning myself, I thought I’d put together some tips for those of you who also might like to do a little list refining.

• Don’t be afraid to cut someone - No matter how many followers you have, unfollowing someone isn’t a crisis. People on Twitter understand that everyone is on there for different reasons and an unfollow isn’t an indication that that person is irrelevant – they just aren’t relevant to you. My only caveat would be, don’t unfollow someone who you think may notice and be genuinely offended that you are no longer following them. Those few people you should keep.

• Make a criteria for who stays – I am very clear about who I am following and why. Are they someone who will actually talk to me? Are they providing me with insightful information about social media, pr or marketing? Are they a client? These are all my reasons for keeping someone. Anyone who doesn’t fall into these categories, I am cutting.

• Check if they are following you back- When a lot of us started on Twitter we all began following celebrities and social media “gurus.” While some of these people may be tweeting some very interesting content, they don’t know who you are and they definitely won’t be reading your blog. I cut a lot of these people because I’ll see their content anyway when the people I follow retweet them all day long.

• Organize the people you are keeping – Once I stated my criteria to myself, I made Twitter lists. As I have begun the lengthy process of weeding through people, I add each person I keep to a list. If they don’t fit on one of these lists, then they don’t fit my criteria, and they are gonna get the cut. For the people who fit on more than one list, I try to choose which one suits them best. This way, when I browse for content via my lists, they won’t all be the same.

• When you are finished, go out and follow new people – The beauty of unfollowing a bunch of irrelevant people means that you have more space for the people out there who do line up with your goals. This will get you more/fresh followers, who will be new eyeballs to your blog, website or personal brand. For tips on how to find new “right people” to follow, check out this guest post I did on the Flowtown blog a couple of months back.

• Do a gut check – Does this person annoy you? If so, unfollow them. I am not a fan of people who are tweeting out song lyric quotes or pressing the RT button all day long (add a little context to your RTs, people!). So even if they fit into one of your categories, but your Twitter styles don’t jive, there is no need to follow them. If you are really nervous about cutting someone just because they bug you, you can still list them, even if you aren’t following them. That way you can still check in with them from time to time, but their tweets aren’t clogging your stream.

There are many people on Twitter who will tell you to follow back pretty much everyone who follows you. While I think that sounds nice in theory, I don’t think the current landscape on Twitter allows for that. Almost everyone has an agenda (or they should), so find the people whose agenda lines up with yours and keep them. Then, cut the rest. It will make your use of Twitter much more efficient and it will help you prioritize who is worth a relationship investment. Best of all, it will keep you interested in the platform by ensuring that the content you are reading is top quality and on target with your goals.

Foursquare has been busy lately. The LBS darling released a whole slew of changes this month that proves what I have been saying all along – if you are in marketing, you should be paying attention to Foursquare.

The two-year-old platform now boasts over 15 million venues and more than 1/2 a billion check-ins amongst its 6 million users. But even more impressive than the growth it has shown, is the potential for growth that these new changes bring. So, without further ado, here’s what is new at Foursquare. And more importantly, here’s what it all means for you, the marketer.

The Explore Tab

Think of this as the equivalent of Amazon recommendations, except instead of recommending what you should read, it tells you where you should go. The value in these suggestions comes from the sophisticated algorithm Foursquare uses to make them. Before suggesting a venue it looks at:

• Places you’ve been
• Places your friends have been
• Places that you are uber-loyal to
• The types of places you go
• How popular each place is with all users
• What day/time you are exploring
• What tips each venue has

It then serves you its best recommendations and tells you why it has chosen these for you, so that you can make an informed choice.

Why this matters: This added functionality will likely draw many new users – potentially a LOT of new users. Not everyone was able to see the benefit of keeping track of where they’ve been, but history tells us that most everyone can see the value in good recommendations. And recommendations that are tailored to your preferences – well that just makes sense. An influx of new users will also increase the activity amongst existing users, therefore making your company’s Foursquare program substantially more visible and enticing.

The New Leaderboard

Also in version 3.0, Foursquare revamped its leaderboard. What’s that you are wondering? Exactly. The leaderboard was actually a pivotal aspect of baby Foursqaure and it tracked the points each user got for checking in. The goal was to create competition and to encourage people to check-in more often. This element fell by the wayside as the platform grew, so Foursquare revamped the leaderboard and its point system in this latest version of its app.

The new leaderboard lets you easily see your points vs your friends points right from your phone. It also comes with a much cooler point system that awards you for a wider variety of things. Will this refresh of the gaming aspect motivate everyone to check in more? Heck no. Will some people certainly be into it? Yes.

Why this matters: Anything that encourages more people to get out of their homes and check in to public places will ultimately be a good thing for your venue. Plus, the more active the users, the quicker the platform grows, and that’s good for you, too.

New Specials

The key to Foursquare’s initial “mainstream” success was the Mayorship special that rewarded users for being the most frequent visitor to a venue. Now there’s much more. This month, Foursquare rolled out five new types of specials and a new interface to make the platform that much more valuable to businesses. Your company can now offer:

• Short term flash specials – The first 3 people to check in get X
• Friends Special – check in with Y friends and get X
• Swarm Special – check in with a large enough “swarm” and everyone gets X
• Newbie Special – check in for the first time and get X
• Frequency/Loyalty check-ins – Like a punch-card, check in X times and get Y on your return visit

With all these new options, Foursquare also released a printable poster to help small businesses promote their special on-site and a new analytics dashboard to track the success of each campaign.

Why this matters: You now have a whole heck of a lot more ways to entice people to come to your venue. In addition to getting more people to spend money with you, these new specials allow for more creativity, which could become fodder for PR stories and will likely increase your word-of-mouth buzz as well.

The Venue Project

Without getting too techy on you, Foursquare released its venue API to developers. While this may not seem like a direct change for marketers, it is hugely indicative of where this platform is going, and thus important to note.

Remember when Twitter just started out? After growing slowly and steadily for awhile it began to draw attention by 3rd party app developers (think Tweetdeck and Twhirl). Twitter didn’t have the capital or the brain power to develop the innovative tools that these developers did, so it gave them the API and let them do all the work. Such tools raised Twitter’s popularity immensely and made the platform incredibly more useful. Sounds like a good growth plan, right?

Well, clearly Foursquare thinks so, and the timing couldn’t be better. With the recent announcement that Twitter will no longer allow 3rd party app developers, there are a lot of: A) Pissed developers, and B) Developers looking for somewhere to funnel their genius ideas. Enter Foursquare.

Why this matters – Similar to the previous changes, this change means that Foursquare is primed to grow. With the support and ingenuity of so many talented developers, we haven’t even scratched the surface on what Foursquare could be.

The Best for Last

Foursquare is particularly excited to release this last piece of news. As of last month, the BG team has officially joined Foursquare (They’ll be issuing a press release on this any day now, I am sure).

If you’ve met us, you know we are an active bunch. We are always out and about – at a client event, a happy hour, or an industry social – and we are chock full of suggestions and tips about the places we go. So, we thought, why not aggregate our knowledge and make a profile so that you can follow our team? This way you can stalk us and come drop off your resume at inappropriate times. OR you could just check our tips and our check-ins to get our recommendations on what’s hot – and what’s not.

Either way, here’s where you can find us: http://foursquare.com/user/6839891. Hope to see you on there!

I can’t keep track of how many times I’ve heard people predict the demise of Facebook. Everytime there is a hiccup in the service, or a major news outlet comes out with a story about Facebook and privacy, it stirs the pot all over again. And as a marketer, these uproars always come with the concern from clients and colleagues that maybe we shouldn’t be investing so much in Facebook. What if Facebook goes the way of Myspace and all this time, money and strategy we’ve put into it is useless?

Although I understand the concern, I think it is wasted energy. Here’s why:

Facebook isn’t going anywhere.

Now before you all jump down my throat about Diaspora and all of Facebook’s privacy flubs, or all the people you know who have quit their profiles, let’s put things into perspective. Facebook has 600 million users. 600 million. And each of those users has spent time and energy building their network – whether it be 100 people or 1,000. As a whole, the public is invested and has come to rely on using the social network for everything from making plans and sharing photos to dating and networking. Because of this, even Facebok haters would have to agree that the only way Facebook would ever lose its ground is if some other miracle network blew it out of the water (eg. the way Facebook did to Myspace). “Exactly!” you say to me, “It has happened before, it could happen again.”

Well, I am going to have to respectfully disagree. Even if there was some amazing network that had no privacy problems or service hiccups, how likely is it that all 600 million people are going to want to start from scratch on building their networks again? Not only would that be a huge pain in the arse, it would also mean much smaller networks. You see, everyone has connections that they friended at one point, that they would never be able to friend again. These are the people that you would never admit to paying attention to, but whom you thoroughly enjoy checking up on. People like friends from high school, ex-boyfriends, frenemies from college, co-workers from your first jobs, etc… The idea of giving up all of these connections is insanity. And while those of us who have been on Facebook since the beginning may have more of these “friend relics” than the ever growing 50+ demo on Facebook, I’d be willing to bet that almost everyone has at least one.

I also think it is telling to see who is all up in arms about the privacy concerns on Facebook. I’m making generalizations here, but it is most usually the crowd that has only been on the platform for a year or two and is much less invested. It is also the crowd that doesn’t have a history with mass Facebook protest. If you fall into that group, I don’t blame you for your reaction. In fact, when my relationship with Facebook was just beginning there were all sorts of times when my friends and I were outraged about Facebook changes. First there was the newsfeed, “UM, a Newsfeed?? So now I can’t see birthdays prominently displayed?? AND I can see when people break up? Oh this is horrible. I will sign a million petitions about it and complain endlessly.” And then they introduced photo tagging – “WHAT? You are telling me other people can just tag things and they will appear on my profile without me approving them first? This is crazy. Crazy!” Oh and don’t even get me started on when they started letting companies on Facebook… And guess what. Despite how outraged I was over these changes, it didn’t take me too long to realize that ol’ Mark there knew what he was doing. And that he’s really smart. Sure there have been awkward times along the way where Mark has gotten over-zealous and made changes without properly explaining them or giving you an opt-out option, but he always remedies that. So for those of you who haven’t yet had the long relationship with Facebook, you’ll find yourself trusting Mark after a while. And then you can laugh with us when the next generation gets all out of whack about Facebook and starts predicting the network’s demise.

In the end, it really comes down to why people are on Facebook. They are there to connect with their friends, sure, but you can connect with your present friends easily enough via phone and email. The real power of Facebook is that it allows you to essentially keep a scrapbook of friends. It lets you to “creep” on people and build relationships you wouldn’t have had otherwise. It has a low enough barrier of entry that it makes it possible to connect with people in a way that no other medium can. And that is why, for the forseeable future, Facebook is here to stay.

Now, I will never be one to tell you to put all your marketing eggs into one basket, nor do I think Facebook is the end all be all for social media marketing. Far from it. I am simply saying for those marketers who are crossing their fingers and hoping this whole Facebook craze will blow over, you may be waiting for awhile. And while I respect that many may dislike the platform for personal reasons, it is undoubtedly a successful marketing tool and will likely be so for years to come. So if you are wondering what the next steps for your company’s Facebook page should be, I say invest. If you don’t have the skills to develop a business strategy on your own, find a social media agency to help you with long-term goals and who can advise you on how to handle the daily changes. Ultimately, how much you spend and to what extent you use the network will vary for every company, but if you were planning on sitting around waiting for the next Facebook to arrive, that may not be your best bet.

I’ve seen it happen a lot. A super cool brand knows that the time has come to put some strategy behind its social media efforts. So they begin the search for an agency. But since no one tells the company what they should look for in said agency, the group often becomes impressed by a flashy presentation or name dropping and go with an agency that may rock at PR and advertising, but hasn’t mastered social media strategy just yet.

As I mentioned in my post about 2011 trends in social media, I think this year is the year that brands wise up. Once they realize they are paying a pretty penny for social media strategy, but still aren’t sure what they are getting for it, they’ll begin the search for a new social media agency.

When that happens, I want to help. I want marketing managers everywhere to  know what to look for and how to identify an agency with actual hands-on experience and expertise.

While I have plenty of thoughts of my own, I thought I’d tap some of the most influential people on the web to gather a wide variety pf perspectives. I talked to social media consultants, agency principals, authors, agency social media specialists, in-house social media managers, Twitter celebrities and more.

From these industry leaders, I received more than 40 insightful responses, all aimed towards helping companies find a real social media agency. As I sifted through all the information, I realized I’d need much more than a blog post to share their words of wisdom. So I’ve created a mini-ebook with everyone’s thoughts. If you are a marketing manager for a brand or company that is looking to hire a social media agency, I hope this guide helps you to find the best fit for you.

Download the Guide to Hiring a Social Media Agency by clicking on the image below:

This month is big for our blogging team here at BG. In December, Don’t Drink the Koolaid Blog is celebrating its 3rd birthday and its 800th post. It’s the perfect end to what has been a great blogging year for DDTK. We’ve gained a ton of new readers (thanks!) and have had the opportunity to do all sorts of guest blogging. I know some of you may have missed a post or two along the way, so I’ve compiled a list below of the top 10 posts from 2010.

1. Common mistakes in online advertising – Jennifer breaks down the most common mistakes she’s seen internet marketers make and offers alternative solutions. Mistakes include: sending untargeted emails, not limiting the number of banner impressions, and freaking out over analytics, amongst others.

2. Why Eat, Pray, Love’s publicity will be good for the economy - We are always looking for marketing inspiration, and in this post, Katie L. shares some of the creative marketing she saw for the film, Eat, Pray, Love.

3. What New PR Pros need to know – Erika tapped industry pros and social media experts to compile a list of the things that any new PR pro should know as he or she enters the field.

4. Why I hate Foursquare – Jon expresses his annoyance with Foursquare, shortly after its launch and during the time when most people were still streaming all their check-ins through Facebook and Twitter. Judging by the active comment stream, a lot of people agreed.

5. How to write a creative brief - Kelly shares best practices for the creation of a creative brief (for non-ad people, that is the document that the creative team uses to come up with the concepts for an ad campaign). Tips include: research, personification, simplify, structure and more.

6. Nestle’s Facebook disaster – why you need a social media crisis plan - I wrote this post after Nestle’s Facebook page was targeted by angry PETA representatives. When it was clear that the company did not have a social media crisis plan in place (as evidenced by the rude responses from their page admin), I wanted to share some alternative ways they could have handled the situation.

7. Why you should care about Foursquare – Not everyone is a fan of Foursquare, but most will agree that it has the potential to be a powerful marketing tool. In this post I outlined the basics of the platforms and 5 reasons why marketers should be paying attention to it.

8. How PR agencies devalues the industry – In this post, Indra shares her insight on how agency pricing during the down economy will have a lasting negative effect on the industry. She specifically talks about her frustration with the ways other agencies are going after new social media business and the problems with creating cheap, cookie-cutter social media plans.

9. Key Takeaways from Scott Stratten’s Keynote at BWE 2010 – Scott (aka @unmarketing) delivered a particularly memorable speech at this year’s blog/social media expo. He challenged everyone to stop looking at social media as marketing and start focusing on building relationships and creating solid content. In my post, I outlined my top 10 takeaways from his speech.

10. TweetReach – A social media reporting tool I actually use – Our agency is continuously evaluating and evolving our approach to social media reporting. As a result, we are constantly looking at new tools, and in this post Katy shares everything you need to know about the popular Twitter reporting tool – Tweetreach.

Do you have any favorite posts from DDTK Blog that didn’t make the cut? Let me know in the comments.

The new year is right around the corner (crazy, I know) and people everywhere are talking about what we can expect to see in social media marketing in 2011. Building on the explosion of location-based services, and the continued growth of companies using social media, I’ve compiled the six trends I think we will see more of in 2011. Feel free to refute (or agree with) my predictions in the comments.

• Social media will become truly integrated – Gone are the days where slapping a Facebook button on your company’s website will be considered an integrated social media program. In 2011, we’ll see in-depth integration – a la, the Old Spice Campaign or the Tipp-Ex campaign. Even Corona Light’s simple collaboration of traditional media buying with social media demonstrates how big brands are already beginning to think holistically about their marketing.

In 2011 we will see more and more marketing campaigns like these that aren’t distinguishable as a PR stunt, a social media program or an advertisement. They will be a combination of all of the above and they will be the ones that are most effective.

• Klout and rewards for influence will be mainstream – Klout has received a lot of love in 2010, and companies like Starbucks, Disney and Virgin America have all run Klout influencer programs. This is just the tip of the iceberg. As Klout continues to evolve their score to truly represent a person’s interests and influence, the tool grows more and more valuable to business owners. And with such an abundance of people in the social space, companies need a way to distinguish who their target audience is and who are the top influencers in that audience. Right now, Klout is the only way to do that, so you can bet we’ll be seeing quite a few more Klout programs in 2011.

• Companies will turn to agencies for help with blogs as a part of social media management – It always shocks me how many agencies don’t offer blog strategy and blog management as part of their social media services. Blogs are an imperative part of the social space, allowing companies to generate branded content that can be used as fodder across social mediums. If your company has a blog, your social media agency should have a large role in the content creation, the editorial calendar, the site design and more. In 2011, I predict we’ll see more companies turning to agencies for help with their blog strategy and management and more agencies trying to integrate this into their services.

• Location will be all about the niche – Some people think that Foursquare will continue to dominate the location space, while others predict Facebook Places will take over. I, respectfully, disagree with both statements. I think 2011 will be all about the niche location platforms. There are approximately 448,000 location based services (ok that’s an exaggeration) and they all offer different functionality. One of my favorite quotes from Blog World was when Lawrence Coburn, the CEO of DoubleDutch, said that saying there will only be one location based network is like saying there will be only one newspaper for everyone in America. Each area and interest group will have a platform that is most popular and people will utilize more than one platform to connect with the appropriate people.

• Companies will opt for agencies that specialize in social media – I see it all the time. A client chooses an agency that says they do social media, and then the agency puts up a basic Facebook page, spams out a bunch of links, and for a while, the client is none the wiser. That is until that client one day starts to wonder exactly what they are getting from this Facebook page and realize it’s a big fat nothing. That’s usually when we hear from them.

Social media can’t be an add-on for the agency. It should be something that they are engrossed in, and something that they can show you tangible results for real clients. When you meet with them, they should tell you things besides the number of fans they got for X client and rather how the social media efforts impacted business. They should be able to think outside of just building you a profile on Facebook and should come up with a strong strategy using the platforms that make the most sense. Ideas like this can only come from an agency that is invested in social media and has the social proof to prove it. In 2011, clients will be savvier and are going to be able to see the difference.

• There will be less of an emphasis on new technology and more on strategy of current platforms – This was my biggest takeaway form BlogWorld and something I have seen reiterated a thousand times since. There is no “next big thing.” We have still only begun to scratch the surface on the platforms we already have. Should we pay attention to new technology as it pops up? Of course. But not at the expense of focusing on creating quality content. Blogs, videos, photos, etc. are never going to go out of style and people will always have a need for quality information and entertainment.

So what do you think? Am I missing any big ones? Are there any 2011 trends in social media that you expect to see? Would love to hear your feedback in the comments.

So your company started a blog because you have all sorts of insightful and interesting things to say. Awesome. Now how do you go about getting that content actually written so that the blog is worth everyone’s time? Here are 10 tips to help you manage a company blog that I have compiled from managing our marketing blog for the past year.

1. Choose a blog manager (or managers)- Ideally this is someone who is passionate about blogging and who wants the venture to be successful. They’ll be in charge of holding the bloggers accountable, editing each post, and managing the flow and schedule of all blog posts.
2. Have a strategy - Put in writing what topics the team should be blogging about, what the goals are with the blog, who your audience is now and who they should be. By establishing all these things in writing, it will help the blog manager direct bloggers towards smart topics and to provide feedback when a post may not be quite on par with the company’s goals.
3. Get the employees blogging – Everyone is an expert at something at your company, although not everyone may have a writing background. Encourage the non-writers to contribute in ways they feel comfortable (possibly a Vlog?) and provide them with feedback often so they can improve. Most importantly, celebrate every blogger’s success as they each become more and more comfortable with the medium.
4. Make a schedule - Make sure the topics flow strategically and then ask the team to choose days. Then, once someone has been assigned a day, hold them accountable. Really. No one has free time just waiting to use blogging, so running out of time just can’t be an excuse. For extra accountability, try writing out who is blogging each day on the company calendar for everyone to see.
5. Be flexible - All in all, you want blogging to be a positive experience and if bloggers are finishing posts at 2 AM, they probably aren’t enjoying the process much. For those who do have to miss a deadline (which my wonderful team never does…), work with them on ways to ensure this doesn’t happen again. It is also helpful to schedule a few extra posts per month to keep in the queue for instances like these.
6. Measure success - Use Google Analytics to measure the success of the blog overall and for each individual post. Share with the company when blog traffic goes up for a month and which posts received the highest traffic. This will give kudos to the individual bloggers, while providing the blog manager with insight on what content is resonating the most.
7. Set goals – There are all sorts of goals you can set for measuring blog growth, but one of the ones I have found most effective in increasing overall traffic is setting per post goals. Try giving bloggers a goal of how much traffic each individual post should receive and challenge them to reach that number each month by sharing it with their networks or by making the post searchable.
8. Promote sharing - Teach the team how to build their individual networks based on their areas of expertise and share with them best practices on promoting blog content. This will make for more targeted viewership and takes the pressure off the blog manager.
9. Educate often – Take advantage of staff meetings and share with the whole team best practices for SEO, blogging, writing, etc. While not every person in the company has to be an expert in these areas, you will be surprised at the people who do grasp the concepts and rise to the top as star bloggers.
10. Find guest bloggers (and encourage guest blogging) – This will bring fresh content and a new audience to your blog. Consider asking other industry leaders, clients, vendors, or consultants to contribute and give them few brief guidelines so they know what direction to go in. If you aren’t already convinced of the value of this, Jay Baer talks about all the benefits of guest blogging in his post “Are you growing enough voices?“

These are just my top ten. Any other tips you’ve found particularly helpful when managing a company blog?

I’ve already shared with you my top ten takeaways from Scott Stratten’s opening keynote, and to be honest, if that was all I had gotten from Blogworld, I would have been pleased. But as it turns out, the conference was chock full of interesting information, and I left with a lot to think about. Below are my ten takeaways from my three days in Vegas.

1. Content is so “in” right now – While good content has always been a staple for successful blogging and social media strategies, this year it was talked about more than ever. To me, this was part of a shift towards making the things we are already doing, simpler and better. Overall, there was much less of an emphasis on what’s new and next, and much more talk about the subtleties that can make all the difference in your strategy.

2. Conferences are about much more than the sessions you attend – I was reminded of just how great it is to meet people in your field and share ideas and learning. I love being around people who are motivated by the same things I am and who can talk social media all day long. Plus it is always great to put a face to a Twitter avatar.

3. Timeliness is everything – With everyone being so busy, it is easy to forget how important a timely blog post can be. I was reminded of that this week, when I wrote my post about the keynote. I was excited to write it, so I worked on it in between sessions and at lunch, and was able to make it live just a few hours after the presentation. By getting it out before most others and when people were still paying attention to blogworld and the hashtag #BWE10, the post was shared more than 100 times and picked up by Smart Brief. As a result our site saw a large spike in new and qualified traffic.

4. There are a few new tools/platforms to look into – Just like last year, there were a couple of products/service I heard mentioned more than once. In the next few days I’ll be looking more into Disqus, Whrrl, Gist, Plancast, Tungle, and Livfyre and shall report back on my findings.

5. We are going to see many, many more location platforms – Many have argued about which location platform will “win out” and kill all the others. But in the location session I went to Lawrence Coburn from Double Dutch explained that their philosophy was that there would never be just one LBS platform that every person used. Rather, location based services would be like newspapers, where there are many different platforms for different areas and/or interest groups, and people would choose to use the platform that suited them best.

6. Forums and social search are good places to find blog topics – I often have our blog team asking me what they should write about and I sometimes struggle to help them since they have different areas of expertise than me. Chris Garrett mentioned using forums to see what people are asking and then writing a post that answers that question. Lee Odden suggested using social search (eg Twitter Search) to see what people are talking about in regards to your keywords, and then structuring a post around that.

7. Klout is the ubiquitous measurement for influence - No joke, I heard Klout scores brought up on approximately 100 different occasions, including social settings. People were comparing scores and many were announcing their scores with pride and in conjunction with the term “internet celebrity.” I’m not lying.

8. Creating a community is more than just getting comments, it is a shift in the way you manage your blog. During Darren Rowse’s session on building a community, it became clear to me that it isn’t just about asking for comments, or responding to people who comment at you. It’s an entire strategy that is reflected in everything you do from a content strategy to design to even SEO.

9. PR should be actively participating in link building - This is something we’ve talked about quite a bit internally, but it was interesting to hear it discussed here as well. Public relations teams have the opportunity to improve SEO by requesting that editors use a specific link and designating what they’d like the anchor text to be.

10. Guest posting is awesome - not just for you, but for your company too. The in-bound links from your guest post to your company’s site will help with SEO. Plus you are exposing yourself and your company to an entirely new audience.

Those are just my top ten. How about the rest of you? Have any good ones?

So the first lesson of this year’s Blogworld was that Scott Stratten, from Unmarketing, is exceptionally funny. He’s also spot on about a lot of things regarding marketing and social media. In addition to some great one-liners, he had 10 key takeaways that I think serve as great reminders for anyone, or any company, that is using social media marketing.

1. You want blog traffic? Virality? Lots of tweets? Simple. Create awesome content. No one is going to share “meh” content. Anytime you phone-in a blog post, or even a tweet, you lose readers and you hurt your brand. It’s better to just forget your schedule and write when you have something good to say. (Note this doesn’t mean if you can’t think of something to write in 7 seconds, you are off the hook. Just that if you truly have nothing to say, its better to go a day without a post than to have something that will cause you to lose readers’ trust.).

2. So after you create your awesome content – don’t “stop the spread.” Scott outlined a few specific ways that you may be inadvertently hurting yourself by preventing your content from being shared:

• Thinking RSS feeds are the holy grail. Make sure people have options for reading and sharing. It’s not about how you, as the blogger, consume content, but how your readers will.
• Make sure your blog is mobile capable. People want to read your blog wherever, whenever. And even if Google Analytics is telling you that your readers aren’t coming from mobile phones, it’s possible that this is only because they can’t.
• Don’t piss people off. If you have an obscenely large pop-up ad, or if you force people to log-in to comment, you are likely going to annoy them. Annoyed people don’t share your content. Sad but true.

3. The secret to SEO is not keywords, title tags, or searchable URL’s – it’s good content. No influential blogger is going to link to your post because it is keyword rich. Since links from reputable sources are a huge factor in search ranking, your content should come before any SEO tips and tricks.

4. Social media can’t make your brand successful. In Scott’s words, “If your product sucks, social media just makes it suck harder.” This point very much resonated with me. So often we hear about companies who don’t want to fix the gaping holes in their products or services and rather turn to their shiny new tool (social media) to make them a success. I haven’t seen it work yet, and apparently Scott agrees.

5. Stop asking about what’s next in social media and focus on making what we have now work better. We already have amazing tools available to us that can accomplish our business goals. Instead of obsessing about what social network will usurp Facebook, lets spend time finessing the way in which we use Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc, because we have only begun to tap the surface on these tools’ potential.

6. Another awesome Scott quote -  “Every time someone asks about the ROI of Twitter, a kitten dies. And a unicorn.” Twitter (and social media, really) are about talking to people – plain and simple. At the end of the day, people want to  buy from people they know, trust and like, and these tools help you do just that. While I think this so profoundly true, I know all of us in social media marketing won’t be allowed to abandon the quest for social media ROI anytime soon.

7. You can’t rock at every single platform. Choose one to focus on, and nurture it. We all hear people talk about how they don’t have enough time to do social media, so rather than trying to have a superstar presence everywhere, see what works best with your target audience and grow it.

8. You can’t shortcut relationships – social media doesn’t change the fact that relationships take time. Scott shared that 75 percent of his 60,000 tweets are @replies – aka conversation. These conversations, slowly and over time, build relationships, and relationships increase business.

9. You don’t have to believe in social media – it’s not a religion. It’s a real thing and it is happening. If you don’t want to be in social media – don’t be.

10. And finally, don’t ever justify yourself to trolls. The haters will always be there and they are just there to hate. If you engage with them they win, and you’ll never convert them. Just blog with passion and blog with awesome.

And that was really just the tip of the iceberg. As far as keynotes go, Scott’s was quite possibly one of the best I’ve ever heard. If any of my fellow 5,000 #BWE10 attendees captured some of the other amazing Scott tid-bits, feel free to share them in the comments.