Although, I hadn’t really intended to enter the Guest Blogging Contest that the blog is currently holding, I was only trying to promote the Iron Blogger Contest and Birthday Celebration Contest I’m holding on my other blog, but I’m all for taking advantage of every opportunity that I can, so if you’ll be kind enough to drop by and RT and comment on my guest post, it would warm my heart immensely – and possibly help me win :)
While you’re at it, you might as well enter, too. If so, please let me know and I’ll be more than happy to return the RT and commenting favor!
Thanks! It truly is a pleasure to write for you everyday.
On January 12th, I posted a tweet asking the question, “If a business were going to hire you for a few hours per week to apply your social media savvy, how would you best use that time for them?” I asked it because it was asked of me in just that same way.
“Social media marketing” is a fad, a trend, and it’s raging with popularity right now. Will it last? Absolutely, but not as we know it today. Some of the buzz words will eventually be dropped and social media marketing will finally be seen for what it is – a very effective single prong of a multi-faceted way of sharing news about a person, product, or organization. But it still won’t reach my grandmother.
In this short video, I’ve shared some thoughts about the single greatest threat to your blog, or even your entire blogging career. A few notes are below…
The single greatest threat to your blogging career is YOU!
Four ways you can kill your own blog…
Greed – getting anxious to see the return can cause you to mess up early on.
Self-doubt – negative thinking can kill your blog.
I’m assuming you’ve heard of this new thing called Twitter. It’s okay. It has a few fans. And maybe you’ve also heard of a tool called Friendfeed.. It used to have a few fans, but they all left when Facebook bought Friendfeed. (I exaggerate.)
UPDATE 12/28: All is restored. But I think my opinion, below, still stands in spite of the personal cost.
UPDATE 12/27: Hold the phone! There hasn’t been much communication about this issue from Feedburner or Friendfeed, but just a couple of hours ago, Feedburner posted this update on Twitter: “As many have noticed there appears to be a reporting issue with FriendFeed subscribers. The cause is currently under investigation.” So perhaps I’m wrong! We shall see!
Overnight (Christmas, at that), the subscriber count for this blog went from over 2,000 to around 100ish. Ouch. The reason? This blog is fed to my Friendfeed stream, which was formerly counted into the Feedburner count. But no more. For me, this obviously stinks a bit, but I understand the change and even welcome it.
When I first started using Twitter heavily, the #FollowFriday hashtag was just taking off, and I genuinely looked forward to Fridays because of it (which might be a sign of a social media addiction). I’ve always appreciated anybody that has mentioned me. But has #FollowFriday lost its original luster?
I say, if you enjoy #FollowFriday, keep it up, but I wanted to mention some possible alternatives to it that are also quite valuable.
Your next blog post might make you hundreds or millions of dollars overnight. You’ll write an ebook, teach a course, offer a certification for others who want to write similar posts, and you’ll be “successful”… right?
I’ve sent out over 20,000 tweets since getting started on Twitter. Exactly three of them have been sponsored (via Sponsored Tweets). Each carried a disclosure of some kind and I earned a total of $23 from those tweets. But some feelings kept nagging me, so I erred on the side of caution and de-activated my account… and I’d like to tell you why (whether you care or not).
First, I don’t think you should avoid sponsored tweets solely on the basis of what I say. There’s a good, healthy debate going on within the Twitter community and that debate should probably continue. Therefore, I’m actually going to state some points to the contrary of where I’m really going with my thoughts.
I don’t normally rant about things, especially when everyone else is ranting about them, but I was inspired after reading a rant by Olivier Blanchard (aka, the Brand Builder) about a nearly $3,000 course offered by a particular social media… thing, which offers you the opportunity to become certified… in something.
You’ve got to read Olivier’s post for a sense of context.
I’m going to go out on a limb and just presume that 99.3% of the people who read this blog post will not be social media experts. At least not in the sense that you have something substantial to back up that title. I don’t call myself one, even though I think I know a little tiny something.
When I first started using Twitter heavily, the #FollowFriday hashtag was just taking off, and I genuinely looked forward to Fridays because of it (which might be a sign of a 
I’ve sent out over 20,000 tweets since getting started on Twitter. Exactly three of them have been sponsored (via 
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