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Why Outsource Your Blogging When You Could Do it Yourself?

October 3, 2019 By Carol Stephen 2 Comments

Why should you outsource your blogging when you could do it yourself? Of course you could do your own blogging. But have you? Have you even started? You could also do your own plumbing. It’s easy, said your brother the Master Plumber. You could also build your own house using leftover palettes. There’s probably a YouTube video made by those guys in Indonesia where they do (and it includes a swimming pool, too!). But have you? No!

Sewing Buttons on Pants

Here’s another thing that hasn’t happened. Sewing a button on those pants, the ones you wore five years ago that used to be your favorites. Hasn’t happened. Inevitably, you end up at the dry cleaner and ask them to do it. And that’s way easier than blogging, right? So if you haven’t sewn that button on your favorite pants, why wouldn’t you outsource your blogging? There are plenty of online resources, such as this: The Complete, 12-Step Guide to Starting a Business. I like their idea of hiring specialists, not generalists.

You’re Great at What You Do

What you do is raise money for your startup. And manage people. You’re great at networking, talking to people, and finding new business. So if you’ve ever wanted to outsource your blogging, why not now? After all, there are people with tons of talent, a background in writing, and years of experience. You might enjoy my previous article: Outsourcing Your Blogging Might Be the Best Thing You Do.

Find Someone Qualified to Blog for You

If you don’t know where to start looking for someone who could write for you, try asking around. You might be surprised at who has people writing for them. Often, bloggers are ghost writers and no one knows where they are (or who they are). Of course, doing a Google search could help you, but you might only find the biggest agencies that way.

What Questions Should You Ask?

There are a number of questions you could ask a would-be blogger. For instance:

Where did you go to school?
How much experience do you have?
Could I see some examples of your work?
Tell me something you do that no one else does

You might like this article: Hiring a Professional Blogger? What You Need to Know First.

Here Are Some Answers You Might Hear

I studied English at Berkeley, have many years of experience (five is a good minimum number, by the way), and yes, I’ve written hundreds of articles. Your results may vary, of course. There may be other questions you want to ask a professional blogger. There are some good comments on this Quora thread: Should I hire a professional blogger for my startup?

What Else Do You Want to Know?

If you were hiring someone, what other questions would you have about the process? Let me know in the comments! And thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: blogging, content creation and outsourcing, hiring a professional blogger, outsource, outsource your blogging

How to Automate Your Social Media without Looking Like a Jack*

September 25, 2019 By Carol Stephen 6 Comments

The dirty secret of the social media world (besides outsourcing) is automation. Most of us do it. But you don’t have to look like a jack* when you do! If you share other people’s posts and then automate your posts, most people will still love you. But there are some ways to not just broadcast all the time.

You Must Be on the Platform

That means you have to get on Twitter, Facebook, or wherever you say you are from time to time. You can’t just broadcast. After all, you’re not the New York Times. For me, that’s at least once a day, interacting live with people. Of course, there’s no law that says you need to be there. But if you don’t want to look like a jack*, get on the platform. How often should you post? According to this post from Sendible “aim for consistency, not frequency.”

Respond to Others’ Queries

If someone asks you a question, answer them. If they share your posts, thank them. And so on. It’s important to have a presence or you’ll largely be ignored. Engage with people. Ask them questions, too. If you don’t know how to engage with people, you might like my book: 21 Ways to Total Social Media Engagement That Will Make You Look Like a Pro.

Don’t Make it All About You

Use the 80/20 rule to share other people’s posts. Comment on their blogs if they have them. Introduce people who might have something in common. Talk to people they way they want to be talked to. You’ll be surprised that people will answer you when you reach out. Here’s some more about the 80/20 rule in case you didn’t know: Why the 80/20 Rule Works for Your Social Media.

Being Playful is the Key

Your questions don’t have to be serious all the time, it’s ok to be playful. In fact, I really like this blog post about play: Why Playfulness Is the Key to Success in the 21st-Century. Author Zat Rana says “…play is an act of learning. More specifically, it’s a low-cost way to explore the world in order to obtain high-value advantages.”

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: automation of social media, social media automation

Yes–Why Not Call Your Friends on the Telephone?

September 19, 2019 By Carol Stephen 4 Comments

With the rise of social media and texting, we’ve lost something, and that something is telephone calls. We no longer have access to the sound of the human voice, at least not in an interactive way. We love texting because we can “cut to the chase,” right? And now, very few of us use the phone the way we used to. Remember sitting on the floor, talking to friends until all hours of the night? Who does that anymore? This topic reminds me of a couple of posts I wrote awhile back about Baby Boomers. Here’s one: The Best Reasons Baby Boomers Must Start Using Social Media.

Photo by Tom Hilton

Talk to People on the Telephone

By the way, the inspiration for this post came from the following tweet from Robinson Meyer, staff writer at the Atlantic. Robinson refers to an article by fellow writer Amanda Mull: Talk to People on the Telephone. And that really rang a bell for me.

I would go even further than @amandamull: Phone calls are the best way to communicate, we lost something as a society when we abandoned them, and we should bring them back en masse. https://t.co/Z1Sx9JzXpy

— Robinson Meyer (@robinsonmeyer) September 16, 2019

Phone Calls and Messy Reality

Amanda Mull’s words in her article (link above) about pestering her editor with phone calls made me laugh–the person I usually pester is also an editor and my best friend. When I text my editor friend, she says “Let’s talk on the phone.” Or she just calls me. Personally, I hope that millennials do not murder the phone call, as Mull suggests could happen. “Phone calls force you to contend with the messy reality of living in a world where other people might need your attention without warning you through a calendar invite two weeks in advance.” That’s really it, isn’t it? We need to make play dates just to talk. And at the same time, we’re all lonely, sitting at our desks trying to figure out how to make friends.

Complex Interactions Call for Real Conversations

And also, real conversations–phone calls or in-person conversations–are more satisfying than a million text messages. Despite having emojis, videos, and photos that we can add to our texts, they’re still not as fun as a phone call. You can’t hear the person on the other end laugh, or hear their cat meowing in the background. Or hear said cat break a plate and then the ensuing barrage of cursing.

Nuances in Language Are Better on the Phone

When you talk on the phone, you get to hear the weird ups and downs in a person’s voice, the question mark where you wouldn’t ordinarly put one, or the sarcastic tone. And you don’t get the long silences, usually. The other thing you get on the phone is the greeting. The hello! how are you? and the Good Morning. Greetings are important because they say to the other person I see you and you are important to me. As Sam Sommers says in The Power of Hello “little things make a big difference when it comes to social interaction.”

So Say Hello!

When you say hello, people usually say hello back. You might like to know more ways to be social: Ten Ways to Be Social. Saying hello, welcoming people, and noticing them are all good ways.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Call on the telephone, Phone Call, say hello, saying hello, telephone calls

Is Failure Mandatory on the Road to Success?

September 12, 2019 By Carol Stephen 2 Comments

The short answer is no. You do not have to fail repeatedly in order to achieve success. That being said, having some failures is the fastest way to learn, so long as you look at why you failed. If, like many of us, you remember your failures more than your successes, then certainly you’ll avoid the same failures.

Fall Down Seven Times, Fall Down Seven Times?

Why the emphasis on falling down so much? I mean, I get it about persistence and getting up over and over, but do we all have to scrape our knees so many times to learn the lesson? You might like this other article about failure, too: What Happens When You Focus on Failure and creativity? Then again, many people learn the hard way–by making mistakes themselves.

Learn from Others

Sometimes a person’s only purpose in this world is to provide a bad example to others. You know what I mean. Drunk driving is just one example. We don’t have to experience it firsthand to know it’s a bad idea. Amy Reese Anderson suggests that “At the end of the day we can learn things the hard way or we can learn them the easy way – the choice is up to us.” And the advice to accept help or advice from others is one that seems to gain favor the older we get. Read her article: Learning from Others Mistakes is a Great Way to Save Yourself A Whole Lot Of Time, Money, And Pain.

Success Is Not a Good Teacher; Failure Makes You Humble

Shah Rukh Khan, the Indian actor, said “failure makes you humble.” Not only does failure make you humble, you will have empathy with others who have failed. And then there’s the laughing-at-yourself part. That happens, too. And who amongst us doesn’t enjoy self-deprecating humor? But why go out of your way to fail when failure comes naturally? We’ll probably fail no matter how hard we try not to.

Steve Jobs on Failure

Steve Jobs famously said, “you’ve gotta be willing to fail. You’ve gotta be ready to crash and burn.” He also says that you need to ask. Be willing to pick up the phone and ask, which most people don’t ever do. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.

Photo by sagesolar

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: failure, failure makes you humble, reframing failure, success

What to Write When You Have No Clue

September 5, 2019 By Carol Stephen Leave a Comment

You’ve been wracking your brain for the past 30 minutes, staring at the blinking cursor. That blog post isn’t going to write itself, now is it? So how do you get started? Here are some ticklers that could help.

Mindmap Your Way to Success

Write down every word you can think of that pertains to your business. Open up a thesaurus, and find synonyms for those words. Connect the dots using colored pencils. This process can be a lot of fun. By the way, you might like this article: How to Keep Your Content Fresh: Innovative Ways, Part Two (there is an example of a mindmap in there).

What Do Your Clients Always Ask You?

Write about that. The next time someone asks you the same tired question, refer them to your blog post. “But why can’t I take images off Google?” they’ll ask. And you’ll have an article you can send to them. If you don’t know why you can’t get images off Google, I hope you have a good lawyer. Because c’mon! Don’t do that. If you’re really stuck on the idea of using Google to find images, Google has an article about it because of course they do. They’re Google.

What Do You Wish People Would Ask, But Don’t?

Do you want your clients to ask about your experience? I know I sometimes do! Or my degree. Or where I went to school. But it doesn’t always work that way. You could tell your client “would you like to know where I went to school?” And they’ll probably say yes! You can also put that into a post.

Gamify Your Posts

There may be some ways that you can gamify what you’re doing. And by gamify, I mean make it more fun. Because, really, if you’re not having fun why bother? Recently, I’ve been writing lots of restaurant reviews on Google. Why? Not because they pay me! Because it’s fun. They give you little badges and send email every once in a while. It costs them practically nothing, and yet makes the review process fun. You can award yourself points when you write a certain number of words, for example, or whenever you publish something. If you can quantify it, you can gamify it. You may even want to gamify your life, as outlined in this excellent article: Gamify Your Life and Become Massively Successful. And you may want to gamify your social media.

You Won’t Always Feel Creative

That’s a given. So when you’re in a creative mood, write down your ideas and work on them later. And by all means, if you need a hand, give me a call or send an email!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: brainstorming, content marketing

Why You Need to Conquer Your Blogging Fear

August 29, 2019 By Carol Stephen 2 Comments

By now, you probably have an opinion about blogging. Either you love it or you hate it. There doesn’t seem to be much in between. You have a few friends who blog, but mostly they don’t. And you’ve considered blogging for your business or brand, but it seems…daunting. It doesn’t have to be. In fact, you can create a blog post in as little as 60 minutes. You might like: How to Create a Wonderful Blog Post in An Hour.

Accountability Can Help

If you’re having problems getting started, why not find an accountability partner or have a mentor help you? Either way, having someone look over your writing or checking in with someone will make you accountable and get you going. Sometimes my pal, Bridget Willard, and I will exchange ideas or do some brainstorming together, and that helps. Find Bridget Willard here: Bridget Willard.

Photo by jcubic

Create a Community Online

One of the best reasons to conquer your blogging fear is so you can have an online community. Your community may not be a huge group, but they can make you feel connected throughout the day. For me, such an online group is the chat group, #DigiBlogChat. If you’d like to join us, here’s how: How to Join the #DigiBlogChat Twitter Chat.

Reach out to Potential Clients

Your clients are out there waiting for you. Really, they are. You just don’t know who they are yet. Write about your issues, the questions that people frequently ask, and why people would want to do business with you. You know more than you think you know!

You Have a Lot to Say

Believe it or not, you have a lot of opinions about your own business. You are uniquely situated to write about your experiences. Clients sometimes think they have nothing to say. Once they start talking, though, they have all kinds of things to say!

Need a Hand?

If you need someone to help with your blogging, reach out. Email is probably the best way to reach me. And thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: blogging fear, create community with blogging, reach clients with blogging

Social Media: What Does Popularity Have to Do with it?

August 22, 2019 By Carol Stephen Leave a Comment

Photo by Fey Ilyas

Popularity and social media. The two go together like peanut butter and jelly. People are always concerned by how many likes, how much reach, and how many comments their posts get. Who sees what they post? How much attention do they get? Is anyone paying attention?

Attention is the New Currency

It’s not just that we crave attention. Getting someone’s attention is what makes them think about our brand, and possibly consider buying our services or products. Attention is the true value we place on everything we do online. What are the most popular sites? These are changing all the time, but here they are for 2019: Top 15 Social Networking Sites for 2019. Facebook is clearly the winner, with 2.23 billion users. But take a look at YouTube, with its nearly 2 billion users. And my favorite, Twitter, is finally in the black.

The Secret Sauce to Gain Popularity on Each Site

Every social media platform is different, and gaining popularity is different on each site. On Pinterest, for example, you would post beautiful images that are longish. You might like my last article on Why Pinterest Isn’t Social Media–and Why It Is. And feel free to put up lots and lots of hashtags. Same with Instagram–with many recommending 10-12 hashtags per post. But do that on LinkedIn and you won’t get the reach because hashtags turn people off. People on Facebook, similar to LinkedIn, do not like all the hashtags.

How Often to Post and What to Post

Although people differ widely on how often they post and what they say, one thing is certain: You’ll gain popularity by engaging with others. If engagement is an issue for you, you might like my book 21 Ways to Total Social Media Engagement: That Will Make You Look Like a Pro. There are some simple ways to engage, and you won’t break the bank to get it.

Vanity Metrics and Popularity

If engagement is what you’re after, then a vanity metric like the number of followers you have, won’t matter so much. And yet many brands and newbies to social media pay attention to followers and even buy followers to appear more popular than they are. And yet if you look at their engagement, they’re not talking to anyone.

Do You Value Popularity?

How important is popularity to you? It’s good to have a few followers so you can have conversations and engage with people, but do you need a million? Let me know in the comments! And thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: attention is the new currency, social media popularity

Why Pinterest Isn’t Social Media–and Why It is

August 16, 2019 By Carol Stephen Leave a Comment

Pinterest is often seen as a social media site, and yet it’s a very different animal, too. You can “repin” articles, videos, and ideas from others, yet it’s difficult to have a conversation on Pinterest. If conversations are what makes a social media platform, then Pinterest isn’t one.

Pinterest Is a Search Engine

The folks at Pinterest often say that Pinterest is a search engine. And it’s true. You can discover a lot of things you didn’t know you were looking for on Pinterest. Like a favorite retail outlet, you can browse to your heart’s content. You may go into Pinterest not knowing exactly why you came, but there you are looking for that elusive something-or-other. You can use Pinterest to curate your own content, or the content of anything you may find.

Why Pinterest Isn’t Social

Sure, you may see your friends pinning stuff on Pinterest, but it isn’t easy. And it’s easier still to avoid all human contact entirely. Something that us introverts sometimes crave. It’s not like Instagram, where you may have long threads of conversations going back and forth. And it’s not like Facebook or Twitter either, where you can easily connect with people and see who’s online. In fact, in the article Pinterest isn’t a social network. That’s what makes it so great, Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann says “Pinterest is more of ‘a catalog that’s hand-picked’ for users.”

But Then Again, No

If I want to see what my friends are pinning, I can go and look at their boards. I can follow them and repin their pins. I understand why Pinterest wants to distance itself from the other social media platforms with all their privacy issues. And you can see the pins from the people you follow, in the order they pinned them, too. And like Facebook, you can pin your own images from your camera roll. (Isn’t that why you joined Facebook to begin with?) And your pins and boards define who you are, which makes it a lot like Twitter.

Pinterest is Great for Business

Are you using Pinterest for business yet? You definitely should be, and there are tons of reasons why that’s so. For one thing, pins have staying power. Your pinned article lasts 550 days on Pinterest versus 5 hours on Facebook and about 17 minutes on Twitter. That’s a huge difference, and as a business, your time is money. Hootsuite has a good article on How to Use Pinterest for Business that you might like. And by the way, if you think that only women use Pinterest–40% of new users are men. If you have a fantastic startup and are trying to be discovered and heard above all the noise online, then Pinterest is where you should be.

Join Me on Pinterest

If you are interested in Pinterest, and would like to learn more, come on by! Pinterest is a fun place. Who knows what you might find there!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Pinterest, Pinterest as search engine, Pinterest as social media, Pinterest is not social media, Social Media

How to Join #DigiBlogChat Twitter Chat

August 8, 2019 By Carol Stephen 1 Comment

What is #DigiBlogChat?

#DigiBlogChat is a chat on Twitter about social media, blogging, privacy concerns, and many other digital topics. #DigiBlogChat is every Tuesday from 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Twitter. My partner on the #DigiBlogChat is Larry (@LazBlazter on Twitter). It’s free to join. Although this post is about how to join #DigiBlogChat, you could join any other chat using the same procedure. Here are some tips for you.

Mark Your Calendar

I try to start exactly on time and respect the time of our followers. Also, if you’d like a reminder about the chat, send me a DM on Twitter and you’ll get a reminder early Monday or Tuesday morning.

Photo by lexly87 aka Duc N. Ly

Search for the Hashtag

Once you’re on Twitter, search for the hashtag. You can join the chat right on Twitter, if you like.

Look for the Questions

After a few minutes of saying hello, you’ll see the first question. Questions are labelled Q1, Q2, Q3, and so on. When you answer, use A1, A2, A3, etcetera.

Add the Hashtag

Make sure you add the #DigiBlogChat hashtag when you tweet so others can see your tweets. You can also add a column in HootSuite so you can see all the tweets.

Use TweetChat or tchat.io

An easy way to add the hashtag is to get on tchat.io or Tweetchat, where the hashtag is automagically added to your tweet. That way you can focus on your answers and type a little less!

TweetChats Move Quickly!

You may feel overwhelmed when you first follow any chat. If it’s too much for you, you may want to lurk until you get the hang of it. When you introduce yourself, you may also want to mention that it’s your first chat. Most moderators will try to include you (unless it’s a huge chat, where you may feel lost when you join).

Photo by YLev

Chat Rules

Most chat moderators frown upon blatant self-promotion. However, there are exceptions. For instance, if you just wrote a blog post directly related to the topic, you might want to ask the moderator if it’s ok to tweet. The other big rule is not to bully anyone or you may get kicked off.

Tweet a Little or Tweet a Lot

There is a huge variation as to how much people tweet during a chat. Most of us tweet more during a chat than at any other time. You may want to warn your followers that you’re joining a chat. If you want to be a really good guest, you might like: How to Excel as a Twitter Chat Guest: 10 Best Ways.

Questions?

Reach out to me on Twitter @Carol_Stephen. Or leave a comment here. Thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: how to join Twitter Chat, Twitter Chat

What Happens When You Focus on Failure and Creativity?

August 1, 2019 By Carol Stephen 2 Comments

How are failure and creativity related? We all know the Japanese proverb, “fall down seven times, get up eight.” And usually that relates to being unafraid to fail, like kids are, and persevering, despite all odds. Most adults, unfortunately, are literally afraid of falling. Maybe that fear of failing (and falling) could be a physical as well as a psychological fear. We may get a little inflexible if we’re that afraid. You’ve all seen that person on the freeway, driving 35 miles-per-hour in a 65 miles-per-hour zone, white knuckling the steering wheel. By the way, you might like How Nostradamus Predicted Massive Twitter Failure.

Failure is a Big Deal

To some people, failure is a huge deal. We’re all trained to get the good grades in school, not to try for D’s and F’s. J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, talks about the importance of failure, and of the imagination. A mere seven years after her college graduation, she was poor, divorced, a single parent, and jobless. Without her failure, she might “never have found the determination to finish the work the most important to her.” And we all know how that turned out. Because her greatest fear had been realized and she was still alive, she was set free.

Reframing Failure

We can’t plan ahead so much that we never fail, otherwise we risk having a life not worth living at all. And life is full of failures that need to be reframed so that we can move past them. Or else, like J.K. Rowling, if your own worst fear is realized then you can be set free. You might have never thought of it that way. I hadn’t.

When Is Failure Not Failure?

Failure isn’t always failure in the typical sense. For instance, if you release a product that’s a great product but the market isn’t ready for it. Or if you have an idea, but no one listens to it. That may only mean that you’re ahead of your time.

What If Failure Was Mandatory?

I like to play the “what if” game. Here’s one: what if failure was mandatory, and everyone was required to fail a certain number of times? How would that change businesses? There would be a lot more innovation, wouldn’t there? What are your thoughts on failure? Leave me a comment! Don’t be afraid to fail. Really.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: failure and creativity, reframing failure