On Not Judging a Social Media Gig By Its Cover

On Monday as I was trolling the job boards to drum up clients for my social media consulting business, I came upon an ad for a blogger to help with a marketing campaign. I applied and landed the gig and immediately began wondering if I was doing the right thing. The company appeared to be an advertising agency that printied stuff on cards and poker chips and wanted to create a viral campaign and heavy social media presence. Viral playing cards? Yeah Deb, good luck with that.

As I asked the client questions throughout the day I learned there was a lot more to her company than be-logo’ed playing cards.  My client made personalized cards to send to troops in Iraq or for charitable causes.  She doesn’t charge the folks who are doing good for her designs at all, she has a big heart and does good things with her little company. My client also represents several others looking for social media campaigns and I will be helping them as well.

I could have run at the first sign of a boring gig but instead I took my time. I asked the client lots of questions to find out what was beneath the intial first look. The blog was poorly designed and didn’t have interesting content. I thought I would also have to provide dull content about Texas Hold ‘Ems or pretty poker chips. That’s not the case at all now. By digging as deep as I could to learn as much as I could I now know my client has a wonderful story, an interesting project and now I’m very exciting to help with her social media campaign.

It doesn’t matter if you’re acting as a blogger for hire, social media consultant, community manager or the person who washes the dishes. Everyone has a story. Every business has an angle. Don’t take your clients at face value, dig deep and find their essence. Learn what drives them and find out what the public doesn’t know. I thought I’d have to blog about poker and find communities interested in playing cards, but there’s more to my client than that. Now I am in the throes of what is turning out to be a fascinating and lucrative project.

How much time do you take to learn about YOUR client?

Improving the job market for bloggers and online writers

Improving the job market for bloggers and online writers is a big task. Since I started posting gigs here daily I’ve noticed a slew of terrible jobs and a much smaller selection of decent jobs that actually pay a fair wage. I don’t think the fault is all on the lame clients who offer low-pay jobs though. A lot of it is dependent on us, the folks who want said jobs.

For example…

1. Apply for work IF you’re qualified: I was chatting with Deb yesterday and she noted that she was shocked by the amount of people who applied for a blog job she posted who had no experience blogging at all. Worse many told her this straight up when they applied. If you’re not a blogger or have no idea about what a blogging gig entails make sure you learn something about it before wasting the client’s time, and all the other qualified applicant’s time. It’s lame to have to sort through crap applications to have to find the qualified apps – it’s no wonder potential clients end up writing ads with all sorts of bogus rules. Blogging and online writing gigs are very different from other sorts of writing gigs. To improve the market, we need more qualified applicants and less junk applicants. To learn about blogging and online writing gigs (BEFORE you apply) start your own blog and read:

• Blogging for a Living: Don’t Enter into it Blind
• Can you blog your way to a writing job?
• Beyond Blogging: Using Your Blogging Skills for Bigger and Better Things
• Do You Need to Be a Good Writer to be a Good Blogger?
• The Warm & Fuzzy Side of Blogging for Others
• Top 11 Reasons Why I Might Quit Blogging & Open A Candy Store

2. Be confident: If you apply for a job, apply with confidence. I’ve talked to way too many blog clients who say they get non-cofident applicants which one, makes them uncertain that competent bloggers and online writers exisit and two, lets them know that lower wages are a-ok. You’d never go to a job interview in person and say, “Oh, well I’m not sure I know what I’m doing, and I’m not that good at my job, but hey, hire me anyhow.” At least I hope you wouldn’t. Be confident. If you’ve got the skills – show that you know it. For help read:

• Pros & Cons of Being A Confident Blogger
• Admit what makes you a good blogger

3. Work for good clients: There’s more to a good client than pay. If a client pulls sneaky suspicious acts or never pays on time, they’re just going to keep right on doing this if there are writers willing to write for them. Put your foot down when clients treat you like crap. This benefits all bloggers and online writers.

4. Only accept decent wages: I almost don’t want to mention this, because we mention it ALL the time here, and still it seems people aren’t listening. That said, I’ll say it anyhow; don’t work for pennies. A recent job listing (bid gig) shows that people are willing to work FT (30 hrs a week) for anywhere from $2.22 – $3.11 AN HOUR. Really? People are also taking up clients on all those crappy revenue only gigs. I’ve personally talked to clients who say that to get a gig, bloggers and online writers will offer to work for free. It’s totally insane and makes the market a very bad place.

If you went job searching for a job outside of your home (a non-writing job) would you seriously take $2.22 per hour? Even tax free that’s a crap living. It’s not even a living. Aren’t you better than that? If you think, “No, I’m not” then quit applying for writing gigs. Your time is more important than this. Other writers time is more important than this. Clients will NEVER offer fair wages for work if the workers are willing to do it for free or cheap. And keep in mind that real bloggers and online writer don’t work for nothing. Most of us have learned to score decent paying gigs and top bloggers are paid even more. To learn more about fair blogging and online writing wages read:

• Typical Blog Wages – How Much Money You Should Make Blogging
• Calculate your hourly blogging rate
• Dealing With Blog Compensation Offers – Clients Who Offer Too Much Money

Now, what do you think will help to improve the job market for bloggers and online writers? Let us know in the comments.

Note: Sorry if you came by earlier and the links were not working – not sure what’s up with the site, but it should be fixed now.

17 Tips for Promoting Your Blog Without Being Spammy

After my last post, 5 Reasons You’re Not Making Any Money as a Blogger, some of the members of this community asked if I could offer a few tips for promoting blogs without being spammy or annoying.

A key to successful blogging is knowing there’s a fine line between self promotion and spam. The important thing to remember is to build relationships rather than spreading links everywhere you go. If you only drop links, you’ll turn off potential readers. However, if you take the time to participate in discussions and get to know people, they’ll want to learn more about you and what you do.

Here are a few tips for promoting your blog without spamming the people you need most:

1. Post in forums - Forums are a terrific way to build up relationships and have a conversation with like-minded people – as long as that’s what you’re doing. When every comment you make is pimping an article (”I wrote a post about that once, check it out…”), you’ll find yourself banned or shunned in no time flat. When you take time to have an intelligent discussion with people who share the same vision, they’re going to want to check out the links in your signature. Conversational marketing works better than spam.

2. Visit other blogs - Other blogs in your niche are not your enemies or your competition, they’re colleagues. Instead of worrying about another site stealing your traffic, or who is higher in the Google Rankings, use other blogs to your advantage. Participate in the comments and offer a useful point of view. If you left a thoughtful remark, others might be include to check out the link in your signature line. Keep in mind it’s considered spam to drop your links anywhere but the appropriate space. Don’t drop links in your comment post unless invited to do so. Read more

How to Start a Blog: Part 1 – Choosing a Platform

Ok, so I think we all agree one can’t really earn a livable wage blogging for a network. As mentioned here before, there Are perks, but it’s best to start out with a network and take that experience and use it to start your own successful blog.

First things first though…

Blogs don’t happen over night. It can take years for a blog to become successful and turn a profit. When it hits however, there’s no better feeling. So enter into blogging with the mindset that you will not be an overnight sensation. It’s happened, but it’s rare. Look at it as an investment that will pay off if you’re dedicated enough.

How to Start a Blog

You can start your blog one of several ways. You can use a free platform such as Blogger or WordPress.com or you can host a WordPress.org blog on your own domain. The blog platform is still free, but you’ll need to pay for hosting.

Here’s what I did, and it worked out well:

I started a blog with Google Blogger because it was so user friendly. You can use Blogger on your own domain too, if you’re so inclined. After I built up a readership and traffic, I switched over to WordPress on my own domain. I recommend a Blogger hosted blog because if you’re not serious about blogging or if it doesn’t work out, you didn’t spend money on your own domain. When it DOES work out, you can move your blog.

Another reason I didn’t use a WordPress.com blog starting out is because a WordPress hosted blog doesn’t allow you to use ads or widgets containing javascript. Blogger does. That’s WordPress.com – which is hosted by WordPress. If you host a WordPress.org blog on your own domain, you can do anything you want with it.

Research

Before you begin blogging, research the various platforms. In addition to WordPress and Blogger, there’s TypePad, Moveable Type,Drupal and others. Some allow ads, others don’t. Some are user friendly, others aren’t. Read the reviews and figure out which one works best for you. I love WordPress, but I’m glad I started out using Blogger as it allowed me to learn the ropes and earn a bit of money without commiting to my own domain. After two years, I knew I was in it to win it and moved to my own domain and switched to Wordpress.

Wanted: Someone Who Gets It

by Deb Ng

Warning: Brief rant up ahead.

The other day I had a frustrating talk with someone about building community around a website. He’s going for celebrities and shock value rather than reach out to bloggers and social media, even though the bloggers and social media experts embraced the business early on. He called bloggers “amateur hour.” (Hint: Don’t wonder why no one is blogging about you, if you dismiss bloggers as amateurs.) I submit we can give you something the expensive, hot shot P. R. firms can’t.

Now that more businesses are looking to build up community and need to create a web presence, old school bloggers, especially those who are consulting or working outside the blogosphere, are going to run into more of this. I get that. But I wish more folks would at least try and understand what we do and why we do it.

Here’s the thing, if you’re going to hire me as someone to help you liase with bloggers, don’t ask me to hug them one minute and insult them the next. You can’t have it both ways. We’re not just here you need someone to write about you. Visit our blogs, talk with us on Twitter, seek us out at conferences…and you’ll find that we have a lot to offer. Bloggers create buzz around products, offer how-to’s and tools for making things work and foster community. Moreover, if we think a product, or the people behind a product suck, we’re the one’s who will write about it in a negative manner.

If you hire a blogger to help create a community, build up your brand, and give you a web presence, hear us out. Some of us know what we’re talking about or we wouldn’t have made it this far.

That is all…

Enough With the Comment Spam

Lately I’ve been seeing a trend I’m not thrilled about. Comment spam. But not the kind of Viagra/porno site/make money online comment spam we’re used to finding in our spam filters. These are from real people who are participating in the conversation and then somewhere in the comment they drop a link. I especially get this from folks dropping their work at home or Associated Content affiliate links. It’s annoying.

Recently one person called me a hypocrite. She wanted to know how come we post ads for jobs all day but she can’t put her own ads in the comments. Because there are specific spots for ads. The comments section is for creating and participating in a conversation. It’s not for dropping links to your own blogs and websites.

I love that we have new bloggers coming on board every day. The problem is many of them are taking the “comment at blogs to gain traffic” thing to heart.

What do you think? Has this sort of thing gotten worse?

What Happened to Blogrolls?

When FWJ began making the switch from single blog to blog network I decided to clean up a few things that have been neglected, for example, the blogroll. I hadn’t added any new blogs in some time, even though I come across great blogs every day. Moreover, I know a few of the links in my sidebar were dead. So I removed the blogroll for revamping.

At the same time, I started looking at many of the top blogs and top bloggers and noticed something interesting. Most of them didn’t have a blogroll and if they did it was kept down to a minumum. Less than a dozen links in many cases. Why is this?

What happened to the blogroll? Is it that we don’t care about helping out our fellow bloggers anymore? It used to be we prided ourselves with a big blogroll filled with friends and good stuff from others. Now, it seems that top bloggers consider the blogroll a thing of the past. When I look at a top blogger’s sidebar nowadays I see ads, links to products, popular posts and top commenters.

So I will ask you…should we still care about blogrolls? Would you rather see popular posts and comments than links to other blogs? Why do you suppose the blogroll is falling to the wayside? Is it because ads and products are more important than community and sharing links?

Discuss…

Image via diskurs’ flickrstream

Are You Easy to Contact?

I had a frustrating morning. I was working at my “day job” and needed to contact a bunch of bloggers. The problem is a couple of them had no contact info on their blogs. No “about” page, no email adress, nothing making it easy for me to get in touch with them. This is a big mistake.

I asked a couple of bloggers why they didn’t have contact info on their blogs. Both told me they didn’t want spam. They also said they don’t want the hassle of email to deal with. As someone who gets tons of email daily, I can sort of relate, but I also enjoy reading mail from the members of my community. How do I know what’s on their minds or what I’m doing wrong or right?

Without contact information no one can ask you about advertising on your blog, invite you to guest blog or speak at a conference, interview you for a blog post or offer you a job.

As someone who needs to contact bloggers on a regular basis, I can’t tell you how frustrating it is not to find contact information on a blog. Your readers and others should know how to contact you if they need you. I’ve been blogging for several years now and I can tell you that most of my mail isn’t spam. If I didn’t provide contact info I would have missed out on so many opportunities. Don’t you miss out, let people know where to find you!

Image via stock.xchnge

Social networking is fuzzy – what’s your take?

I was making a list of social networking methods for blogs, plus discussing it with Deb, and I realized that some of the methods I use are pretty fuzzy. Many social activities cross over with blog promotion and the other way around, and it all mixes up with building your own blog community. For example, if someone finds you through Technorati and you become pals and maybe score a gig through that friendship, is it blog promotion, or are you doing a little networking? Fuzzy business.

That said, I’m going to cover some blog networking methods over the next few posts, but some of the methods we’ll look at may cross over into blog promotion. Although networking is fuzzy, here’s my take. If you’re a blogger, you need to get out there, connect, and interact with others. If you do that, you’ll not only be networking, but promoting your blog.

Here is a sample of what you’ll see if you look up “social networking” online:
Read more

BlogTalkRadio and Blog Action Day Unite for 12 Hour Talkathon

Are you blogging about poverty on Blog Action Day? If so, you could win a prize. If you hear your blog mentioned during BlogTalkRadio’s 12 hour Blog Action Day Talkathon for Poverty Relief, you will have an hour to call in to receive a prize.

The twelve hour online talkathon will feature interviews with activists, noteworthy bloggers and other talking points relating to poverty. The event will be hosted by event organizer, Easton Ellsworth along with many BlogTalkRadio hosts assisting throughout the day. Listeners can also participate in the chat room and even call in to chat with guests or co-hosts.

From the BlogTalkRadio blog:

Anchored live from Denver by Easton Ellsworth, U.S. director for Blog Action Day, the special will be co-hosted by BlogTalkRadio’s Eric Olsen and Shaun Daily of BlogTalkRadio Today, Dawn Olsen of Glosslip Radio, Tom D’Antoni of D’Antoni and Levine, Reuben Torres of Let’s Get Real, Charles Mattocks of The Poor Chef and other network personalities from throughout the U.S.

Leading bloggers – including Paul Chaney, president of the International Blogger and New Media Association, Liz Strauss, founder of SOBCon (Biz School for Blogging), Chris Garrett, co-author of ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income, and social-media guru Beth Kanter – are scheduled to appear as guests on the United Nations Millennium Campaign-supported program, along with notables from the political, entertainment and literary arenas.

As you are probably aware, Blog Action Day was created to unite bloggers and have them discuss a single issue on a single day. This year’s topic is poverty. Bloggers who wish to participate in Blog Action Day 2008 can register for free at http://blogactionday.org.

I hope you’ll stop by and listen to the talkathon throughout the day. Many bloggers and podcasters are giving up their time to lend their voices to a worthy cause.

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