Pick your best blog posts

I’ve been inspired by my fellow blogger and marketer Danny Iny at Firepole Marketing and taken up his challenge to curate seven of my blog posts for my readers.

These will be my own selection of seven posts that I’ve written: the most beautiful post, the most popular post, the most controversial post, the most helpful post, the post whose success surprised me, the post I didn’t feel got the attention it deserved, and the post I am most proud of.

Danny, in turn, got the idea from Stuart Mills at Unlock the Door who borrowed the idea from…you get the idea. Hey, viral marketing at it’s best.  So, here goes.

7 Posts in 7 Categories

My most beautiful post. There is actually a tie for the posts I wrote about my wonderful late husband Charles. What I Learned From My Husband About Having a Passion for Life and Do People Write Love Letters Anymore? These are written from the heart and I hope you enjoy them. Tip: don’t be afraid to show your emotions in your writing.

My most popular post. I wrote Profile of a Social Media Director over a year ago and it still regularly tops the charts or is close to it, depending on what I’ve written that week. It’s not surprising. I simply went through the job boards and wrote a list of what I found most often. Hmm. I need to go back and see if it needs an update. Tip: know what’s being searched and write about it.

My most controversial post. This has to be “Connect by Hertz” Car Sharing Deal Leaves Me Spinning My Wheels on Facebook in which I complain about Hertz forcing me to use Facebook to book a $5 car which wasn’t really a deal…well, read the post and the very long response from Hertz (guess they will never hire me). Tip: don’t be afraid to stick your neck out.

My most helpful post. I was surprised that my post How to Insert the Name of Your Website into Your LinkedIn Profile received so many comments. The default “Company Website” in a LinkedIn profile can be changed to the actual name of your website but few people even know you can do it – or how to do it. Made me feel good to help out. Tip: do not be afraid you’ll be talking down to your readers with simple how-to posts.

The post whose success most surprised me. That would be another simple how-to post entitled How to Write a LinkedIn Invitation. I had received a well-crafted invitation that so impressed me that I wrote about it. (You never use the default I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn do you?). Tip: see above.

The post I didn’t feel got the attention it deserved. Considering that I feel a lot of my posts don’t get the attention (read traffic) I want, maybe the post should have been better written. Anyway, here is one that landed with a thud. It received one comment – from my blogging coach. I still think it has a lot of good content even though it didn’t do what my advice said it should! 11 Types of Blogs To Generate Web Traffic and Please Your Readers. OK, stop laughing. Tip: don’t overestimate the power of your writing.

The post I’m most proud of. I didn’t think this post July 4th is a Day to Celebrate Life, Liberty and the Heart and Soul in Writing would generate a lot of traffic, and it didn’t. But I’m grateful to live in America. I have so much to be thankful for when I see the suffering in the rest of the world: hunger, poverty, social unrest. So I hope you don’t mind, if you live elsewhere, that I took the opportunity to celebrate the red, white and blue. Tip: write from the heart.

Which of my seven posts is your favorite?

Taking a cue from Danny at Firepole Marketing, do you want to do a 7 Links Challenge on your blog? (If you do, let me know, and I’ll link to it as Danny will link to mine).

[tweetmeme]In an earlier post, I wrote about Jeremiah Oywang’s widely publicized study, Career Path of a Corporate Social Strategist. Many bloggers weighed in on the findings with their own analysis of where the social strategist fits into organizations.

Social Media in Organizations asked me to review the reflections of seven thought leaders on the study’s findings and the future of social media leadership in organizations. For their commentaries and my reviews, please visit S.M.A.R.T. News: The Corporate Social Strategist. Included are a post by Oywang himself on the findings and implications for the future, plus my comments on posts by Brian Solis, Jay Deragon, Gia Lyons, David Armano, Steve Raddick and Scott Monty.

Thanks to Courtney Hunt, the founder of Social Media in Organizations for inviting me to write on this important topic.

[tweetmeme]I was fortunate today to be interviewed for the Blog Talk Radio Show “Reinvent U One Talk At A Time.”  The subject of my talk was Leveraging Social Media to Promote Your Business Successfully.  Click on the link if you’d like to tune in.

My hosts were Diana McCray and Patricia Rivera, pictured at right.  The theme was how small businesses can leverage social media and compete with much larger companies.  It’s become a more level playing field.  We discussed examples of how companies are using social media and among the questions I answered were:

• How has social media changed the way companies communicate?
• How do the social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook differ?
• Is one more important than the other?
• How can companies involve their employees in social media?
• Are traditional media, like newspapers, going to die off? Is there still a role for them?
• How are companies using different media channels?
• Is advertising dead?
• How can entrepreneurs decide what social media to use when it’s all so confusing and time consuming?

Hope you enjoy the show!

It’s a simple equation. Internal Branding = External Success.  Employee communications programs should embody the brand and foster a culture of communication that rallies employees around the mission and business goals of the company.  Yet many organizations neglect internal communication.  With an economy in the tank, some companies feel that employees should be happy to have a job.  But when things are bad, employees need to be hearing frequently about the true state of the company, what management is doing about it, what it means for the individual employee.

Even in bad times, smart companies are able to mobilize their employees to support the company and its brand by being twice as productive as before and in their communication with customers.   Employees want their company to succeed, so why not give them an opportunity to be part of the solution?  It works in a company that has nurtured a culture of communication that it can rely on to see it through both the good and bad times.

In communication with employees –

Trust is the core component – all communications must be reliable, truthful and contain the full story. At the heart of trust is:
Openness – there must be an unwavering commitment to and support of a healthy two-way communications environment.
Simplicity – communications must be clear, meaningful and accessible.
Consistency – messages must be strategic and integrated.
Caring – there must be concern for the individual.

The most important element in communicating with employees is speed. They need to hear news from the company — both good and bad — before they read it in online forums and news programs.

I subscribe to many (maybe too many) online newsletters, magazines, newspapers and blogs. I enjoy receiving them all and I would like to continue receiving them. But why won’t they let me change my email address? My new company name is Write Speak Sell and my new email is jpaladino@writespeaksell.com. Not surprising, of course.

But when I scroll to the bottom of most of the emails there is an unsubscribe link, but rarely a link to simply change my email settings and other contact information. Maybe it shows a lack of self-confidence in the writer that subscribers would only want the unsubscribe information.

So, please, everyone, let me change my email address! And while you’re at it, how about increasing the size of the typeface in your communiqués.

Thank you.

[tweetmeme]Spring is coming and so is the avalanche of annual reports that public companies send to their shareholders.  And, as usual, most of them will be as dull as dishwater.  Think about it.  When was the last time someone told you he had curled up in bed with a good annual report to read?  Not likely, unless sleep was the primary motivation. Annual reports can be real dullards.

In an effort to avoid offending any of the organization’s constituents, not step on the toes of regulators or in the rush to get the darn thing out, the people who produce them for a living often take the easy way out.  Change the wording a little of last year’s CEO’s letter, revise the financial charts, drop in photos of the new trustees, add a dollop here and there of new initiatives, and that’s it.

It’s time for a new take on these angst-producing documents that so often lie dormant in the storeroom after the initial distribution.  Years later, musty copies are still taking up space.

We need to look at the annual report more strategically.  How can it advance the goals of the organization?  How can it support the sales team or development director?  Who should be involved in the process of defining the content?   Who will most benefit from an annual report that demonstrates the dynamic nature of the organization, its vision, and its role in society?

Make it sell

The report should very strategically position the organization as the leader in its space, developing new paradigms of products and services.

In creating the annual report for a nonprofit in the healthcare field, I worked closely with the director of development to understand his needs so we could present the financial results and new strategic initiatives in such a way that it would be easy for him in personal meetings to walk potential donors through the report, hitting the high spots to pique their interest and open their wallets.

Use Testimonials

Use testimonials from the company’s customers and employees to bring the vision statement to life.  Let them tell the reader what a great company this is.

So, if you’re assigned to create this year’s annual report, how do you ensure it accurately represents the organization and has a long, active life after it’s been printed and distributed?  Here are my suggestions:

•    The CEO needs to be involved from the get-go.  Do not even think of hiring a writer or design firm until you have met with the CEO to understand how s/he wishes the organization to be positioned in the document. S/he cannot delegate this discussion to someone else.

•    Armed with this information, write a creative platform that describes the overall theme and tone of the annual report, its content and “look.”  Get the CEO to sign off on it.

•    Meet with key people in the company or organization who would most likely use the annual report throughout the year such as the head of sales, director of development, director of public and community affairs, and so on.  Get their ideas of what they would like to see emphasized in the report.  Find out what would make them use it during the year to help them achieve their goals.

•    Make a mock-up of the report, page by page.  It doesn’t need to be fancy. Take some legal paper and fold the sheets in half.  It’s essential to know the content of every page and ideas for photos, charts, etc.

•    Now you can meet with your design firm and writer, if that’s not you.  Everyone should be working from the approved creative platform and mock-up.  Believe me, they will love you for it.

•    Show two to three designs to the CEO with the mock-up.  If you’ve done your job right, s/he will have a tough time picking out the winner, because s/he will love them all.

Be true to the creative platform as you go through the process of developing the report.  Be excited as it begins to unfold as a living, breathing document that will take on a life of its own for a year.  Don’t be afraid to be a little gutsy with the copy and design.  You’re not creating the next Bible, after all.

While your readers may not take your annual report to bed, at least you can be confident they won’t fall asleep at their desks as they read it.