All posts in Social Media

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS 2 – TWITTER

Posted
April 6, 2013
Categories
SMAG Lab
Social Media
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Welcome! If you missed the first lesson, it’s here. So we defined social media, related that definition to our daily lives. Then we justified the need for social media for our businesses, and went on to list a few general tips for using social media, regardless of the platform. As promised, Twitter’s the topic for discussion today.

Let’s quickly define some basic terms.

Twitter – your world in one hundred and forty (140) characters. It gives the opportunity to answer the question, ‘what are you doing now’?

Tweep/Twitterer – the person tweeting

Handle – name of the tweep; could be the person’s real name, an adaptation of the name, or something totally different.

Follow – adding people who interest you to your Twitter reading list. Their tweets will appear automatically.

Hash tag – A hash tag or hashtag is a way of organizing your updates for Twitter search engines. One of the currently most commonly used hash tag on Twitter is #followfriday where users network by providing the names of their favorite people to follow on Twitter.

Direct Message – DM for short, it refers to private messaging on Twitter between two people. If Jeremy follows Brandon, Brandon can send a DM to Jeremy. Jeremy can only reply the DM if Brandon ‘follows’ him back. So, why consider Twitter for your business? – because of  the immediacy it affords your business. Whether it is praise, criticism, clarification, or a query, it is fast, and used properly, boosts the customer service perception your audience will have of your company.

It also functions as a great listening tool. – it reduces your organization’s dependence on traditional media channels (which you might not be able to afford anyway) and counters inaccurate press coverage. It increases the reach of your existing content online by providing easy access for journalists, bloggers, etc. – most importantly, because your target demographic is there. That means that if your target is not on Twitter, it will be a little fool hardy to go on Twitter and hope to reach out to them. *note to self: discuss ‘what platform for what business’ soon*

Are you convinced yet? Let me know!

Term, Terms And Terminologies! (PT3)

Posted
October 9, 2012
Categories
Nigeria
Social Media
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twitter

Ok, the first and second parts of this series are here and here. This is the third, and I’m excited to announce that we’ve got fresh content on the site from next week! Whoop!

Blogs

Weblogs, or blogs, are websites that usually combine text, images, and links to other blogs and web sites related to its topic. Many bloggers provide commentary or news on a particular subject while others use them as forms of personal online diaries. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of the tool. Blogs have been heralded as a revolution in mass communication. The popularity of blogs, is among others, due to the below factors:

Bookmarking and link sharing services

Social bookmarking is a way of easily saving, tagging and sharing information online. In these systems, saved links are usually public, though they can also be saved privately and shared only with specified people or groups.  Many services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware and discover new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users. The sites are free.

Del.icio.us is currently the most popular bookmarking service. Digg, Yahoo!Buzz, and Reddit are a few other examples of tools through which people can discover and share content on the internet by submitting links and stories to the site, as well as rating and commenting on submitted links and stories.

Microblogs

Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write and publish brief text updates. The benefit of micro-blogging is that messages can be submitted rapidly in a variety of ways, including text and instant messaging, email, MP3 or through the web.  Messages can thus be sent on the move, for example from a mobile phone and are instantly updated on a blog and to subscribers/followers.

The most popular microblog service are Twitter (up to 140 characters/each post) and Tumblr (unlimited characters).

Mobile applications (mobile apps)

This term is used to describe Internet applications that run on smart phones and other mobile devices. Mobile applications connect users to online services commonly accessed on desktops or laptops, and make it easier to use the Internet on their portable devices.

Online chats

Online chat is a way of communicating informally by sending text messages to people in the same online chat-room in real-time, using tools such as instant messaging. File sharing and web cameras are included in some programmes and almost all online chat or messaging services allow users to display or send photos. Among the more popular instant messaging services are American Online (AOL) Instant Messenger, Microsoft Network (MSN) Messenger, Skype and Yahoo! Messenger.

Podcasts

A podcast is audio or video content that can be downloaded automatically through a subscription to a website so you can view or listen offline. The name refers to Apple’s iPod system, and their iTunes store is still the main source of podcasts. SoundCloud is also very popular for podcast hosting and sharing and has the advantage of being open to all.

 Social networking services

A social network site is a service, which enables the creation of an online community.  The main types of social networking services contain directories, means to connect with other users, and recommender systems linked to trust. Popular methods combine these functions with a variety of externally built applications, with Facebook being the most widely used.

Alongside blogging, social networking has become the most powerful new way of sharing information and connecting with people.   The immensely popular service places peer-to-peer influencing at the core, and enables local conversations to rapidly spread on a global scale.  Understanding the way people link through these networks, picking up, creating and sharing content on the way, is central to success in social media.

Video and photo sharing

Video sharing websites enable users to upload, share and view video clips. The bulk of video sites offer free services and are easy to use. The most popular video site is YouTube. Other popular sites include Google Video, Yahoo Video and Vimeo.

With the tag line ‘Broadcast Yourself’, YouTube has fundamentally changed how video content is delivered. Previously one had to invest a significant amount of money to produce a sophisticated video that would attract attention.  Now anyone with access to a handheld camera and a good idea has the means to create a video viewed by millions, opening up a completely new environment for marketing.

Flickr is currently the most used photo-sharing site. In addition to being a popular web site for sharing personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository. Its popularity has been fueled by its organization tools, which allow photos to be tagged and browsed by a certain topic.

Virtual Worlds

A virtual world is a computer based, simulated environment intended for users to inhabit and interact through created avatars. The basic avatar is human in appearance, but may be of either gender, have a wide range of physical attributes, and may be clothed or otherwise customized to produce a wide variety of virtual life forms.

The most popular of these worlds are Second Life, a 3D world created mostly by its residents, followed by Habbo.   Due to their growing popularity, virtual worlds are increasingly being used by the private and non-for-profit sector for marketing, educational and information sharing purposes.

Widgets

A widget is a snapshot of a web page that is displayed in another web site by pasting a small piece of code on the page.  It allows information to be shown on the site without the host having to create and update the content.

That’s it! The third and final bit of this series! Any questions? Get in touch!

Many thanks to Mari Tikkanen of M4ID, she gave these resources at the New Media and Governance Conference in Abuja earlier this year. She’s on Twitter as @M4ID_Mari and is interested in putting social media, technology and creativity to work for international development and health. 

Photo Credit: JefferyTurner via Compfight cc

TERM, TERMS, AND TERMINOLOGIES! (PT2)

Posted
October 6, 2012
Categories
Nigeria
Social Media
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Hello!

Welcome to Part Two of my Term, Terms and Terminologies Series…

First part was published a few days ago, and we’re continuing with a few more terms I think anyone playing around with social media (either for marketing, advertising, content production, etc) should be aware of. Enjoy, and share with a friend!

Platforms are the frameworks or systems within which tools work. A platform may be as broad as mobile telephony, or as narrow as a piece of software that has different modules like blogs, forums, and wikis in a suite of tools.

Profiles are the information that people provide about themselves when signing up for a social networking site. As well as a picture (avatar) and basic information, this may include personal and business interests, a “blurb” about oneself, and tags to help people search for like-minded people.

Streaming is a way of accessing audio or visual data that is hosted elsewhere on the web without downloading the file and opening it on ones own computer.

Tags are keywords attached to a blog post, bookmark, photo or other item of content so people can find them easily through searches and aggregation. 
Tags can usually be freely chosen – and so form part of a folksonomy – while categories are predetermined and are part of a taxonomy.

Threads are strands of conversation. On an email list or web forum they will be defined by messages that use the same subject. On blogs they are less clearly defined, but emerge through comments and trackbacks.

Tool is used as shorthand for a software application.

User-generated content refers to any text, photos and other material produced by people who don’t own or control the space and previously just consumed content. Typically it refers to users of a website posting content directly to a web platform, but can also refer to any public content created by participants of a project, such as videos or SMS messages.

URL stands for Unique Resource Locator, and is the technical term for a web address, like http://www.m4id.fi/.

Web 2.0 is a term coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004 to describe blogs, wikis, social networking sites and other internet-based services that promote community, collaboration and content-sharing, as distinct from the older content publishing and e-commerce websites (Web 1.0).

A wiki is a web page, or set of pages, that can be edited collaboratively. The best-known example is Wikipedia, an encyclopedia created by thousands of contributors across the world. Once people have appropriate permissions – set by the wiki owner – they can create pages and/or add to and alter existing pages.

 

That’s it, second part done! Believe it or not, there’s a third, and concluding part so you’re coming back for it! I’m sure you will!

Many thanks to Mari Tikkanen of M4ID, she gave these resources at the New Media and Governance Conference in Abuja earlier this year. She’s on Twitter as @M4ID_Mari and is interested in putting social media, technology and creativity to work for international development and health. 

TERM, TERMS, TERMINOLOGIES! (PT 1)

Posted
October 3, 2012
Categories
Chioma
Social Media
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Funny title huh? I know, made me smile too the second time I read it! I was looking through some resources I’ve gathered over the years, contacts, etc. and reflected on how I’ve used them in different ways.

And then I thought, why not share some of the basic terminologies I’ve used? Why not start a series where I localise some of the terms we see flying around? Of course it has to do with social media; welcome to Part 1 of Term, Terms and Terminologies! Share with a friend!

Community building is the process of recruiting potential community or network participants, helping them to find shared interests and goals, use the technology, and develop useful conversations.

Commons refers to online spaces, which are held in trust for people/users and are owned by everyone. The term has become particularly popular due to its use in the Creative Commons license.

Crowdsourcing refers to harnessing the skills and enthusiasm of those outside an organization who are prepared to volunteer their time and skills, contribute content and collectively help solve problems.

Embedding is a way of displaying content that is hosted elsewhere on the web (like videos on YouTube or pictures on Flickr), on a website or blog without hosting the files oneself. Most websites that host such content provide the “embed code” for users to copy and paste onto their own sites.

Feeds are the means by which one can read, view or listen to items from blogs and other feed-enabled sites without visiting the site, by subscribing and using an aggregator or feed reader. Feeds contain the content of an item and any associated tags without the design or structure of a web page. They can also be read by other websites, allowing the content of a feed to be embedded in different forms on a range of websites and platforms such as mobile sites.

Followers are the individuals who subscribe to a persons/organizations RSS feeds, have connected with a networking space (like Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr – anywhere that allows users to “friend” other users), or have joined a network based on ones blog, website, or group.

Hashtags are used in Twitter to add a subject keyword to a post, such as #Obama or #haiti.

Mashups are the combination of two or more web applications to create an integrated application for specific repurposing; for example, combining Google Maps technology with an SMS service to automatically map the location of users.

Open source software is any computer software whose source code is open for users to study, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in some form. It is often developed in a public, collaborative manner and the main advantage is that it lets developers use each other’s work to make quick progress building software and websites.

That’s part one, come back in a few days for part two!

Many thanks to Mari Tikkanen of M4ID, she gave these resources at the New Media and Governance Conference in Abuja earlier this year. She’s on Twitter as @M4ID_Mari and is interested in putting social media, technology and creativity to work for international development and health. 

 

SO YOU THINK YOU NEED A JOB?

Posted
September 28, 2012
Categories
Nigeria
Social Media
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Recently I’ve been intrigued by job sites, maybe because it’s become increasingly difficult for school leavers to get good jobs, and everyone needs that extra advantage they can lay their hands on to get ahead.

I’ve had this particular article open in my browser for almost a full month now (you should see the tabs I have open sometimes) and today I’ve decided to share some of the tips in it with you, adapted for the Nigerian situation of course.

Ready?

  1. Create and constantly update your LinkedIn profile with relevant information: this works out great if you’ve got loads of experience, and even better if you have recommendations from your colleagues or superiors. Otherwise, articulating the courses you studied at university, skills and things that make you stand out work just as well too!
  2. Linking all your accounts isn’t a very good idea all the time, in these days when employers look up their potential employees on various social networks; you don’t them to think you’re bipolar or a schizophrenic because (for instance) in your Twitter feeds on your Facebook page you swear like a sailor, but preach against cussing in your status messages on the same Facebook. Separating them doesn’t mean the employer won’t find them, but hopefully he would have hired you by then!
  3. There’s nothing wrong with using your family: who best to tell you’re job hunting than friends and family? There’s nothing (absolutely nothing) wrong in updating your status with your skills and dream (feasible too) job. They know you, and love you, and will help you if they can, hopefully!
  4. Don’t lie: whether in person (at an interview), in a resume, or via social platforms, don’t lie! Especially about work experience, employment status, age, in fact about anything! The world is getting smaller by the day and these things always come back to bite you in the bum! Besides, how do you reconcile your ‘full of integrity’ skill (I’m coming to that in a bit) with outright lies on the same page? Think about it.
  5. Tell us who you are: your interactions on social platforms give employers an idea of who you are. Your followers (and the people you follow), the kinds of things you talk about, are all pointers to your personality. Klout.com for instance easily tells what a person is influential about based on the topics they tweet about the most. Are you an expert in your field?

Still under who you are, how about a nice looking avatar and an intelligent bio (with correct spellings if you can help it). If you want to be different how about uploading your CV to things like SlideShare, VisualCV, or SlideRocket? Tweet links to it, but please don’t spa people. Feel free to use schedulers like Buffer, Social Oomph, Future Tweets, etc. so you can programme the tweets for times that will be most beneficial for you.

  1. Stalk without becoming a stalker: so let’s say I want to work with Deloitte; I can do a search for key officers online, and then get in touch, telling them why I am a perfect fit for a particular position, whether that position is vacant or not. To do that your CV must have been professionally written highlighting your achievements at your previous work places, devoid of grammatical errors, and swept clean of dead, clichéd phrases like ‘self-starter, proactive’ or my personal favourite, ‘can work with little or no supervision’. SMH.
  2. Stay safe online: I know you need to find a job like yesterday, but please be safe. Don’t enter into transactions where you are asked to reveal personal details online, or pay money to access application forms for jobs; 98% of the time they are scams. Ok? There are (there always will be) fraudsters trolling the net, looking for whom to devour.

 

There you have it: my seven tips for successfully positioning yourself for employers to find you online! Any success stories, near misses or even outright blunders with your job search you want to share? Save/educate the next person, use the comments section!

I promise, you will!

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Posted
June 14, 2012
Categories
Nigeria
SMAG Lab
Social Media
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Do you know that Nigerians have a penchant for talk and no action? Sometimes it feels like we (the government and its people) are all mouth and no arms or feet, the way we just ‘talk away’ everything. So there are issues in the polity and we set up committees to look into ‘the immediate and remote causes’ of those issues, and then another committee is appointed to review the findings of the first committee and make recommendations, by which time another incident would definitely have occurred. True/false

When I became aware of planning for the New Media and Governance: Tools and Trends Conference, I was very excited. The thrust of the event looked pretty solid, and the line-up of speakers was stellar. Then Stacy Orico’s ‘more to life’ started playing in my head, and I started to think of more.

As a social media post graduate student at Birmingham City University, we were exposed to ‘Social Media Surgeries’. Set up/conceived  by Nick Booth, the basic idea is to get a room full of people who have social media related questions on the one hand, and people with answers or strategies on the other.

Everyone has a computer/laptop/device so you talk but more importantly, you DO. I have attended a number of them and I really enjoyed them.

I pitched the idea of having surgeries at the event to the head of the planning committee. She bought it, and we started to run with it. There would be three booths for Facebook and Google, Blogs and Twitter, and ISP’s, Mobile Apps and Telecoms. To help man the booths were

I’m thankful for logistics, the admin team, and Miss Diane Nduonofit, thank you for being patient with us, and for catering to all our concerns!

DAY ONE

The Omidiyar Network had donated a good number of flash drives for the attendees, and at some point is became our role to not only distribute the drives, but to also put the speeches/presentations of the different speakers in them. My opinion? Good idea, bad implementation strategy. Why? It detracted from the function of the booths, as people were only interested in getting flash drives and filling them with the resources. My colleagues catered to a few ‘patients’ though, but it could have been better.

Don't know what @MrBankole and I were talking about....

DAY TWO

Flash drives were finished (thankfully) so people concentrated more on the resources, and then later on practical questions around social networks, apps, etc.

THOUGHTS

  • The conference was brilliant; and a resounding success. The sessions (minus the ones where the presentations were MS Word documents) were timely, and the discussions were as robust as they were controversial.
  • It was nice to see young people actively engaging their leaders, asking questions, demanding answers and accounts, etc.
  • My team was brilliant. Amongst other things, they braced the heat (and the atrium was scorching) and were patient even when people didn’t come early. I know what feels like to have so much to give and no one comes for it.
  • Young people are keen on exploring social media tools. What tools/networks they need is a totally different matter but the enthusiasm is there; the need to know is there.
  • The government of the day more than ever recognizes that young people can/will not be relegated to the background anymore. They have a voice.

What’s the way forward though? What’s the next thing to do? I’m interested and currently researching ways to step down communication for people without internet connections, exploring text messaging, etc. Why? Social media is essentially people on the one hand, people on the other, and technology in the middle.

WHAT DO YOU REALLY NEED?

Posted
June 1, 2012
Categories
SMAG Lab
Social Media
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Take a moment to look at the picture. I found it on Jack Media London’s page on Facebook. While I don’t have good memories of Jack Media London, the picture looked really interesting so I saved it, and have studied it for a little while now.

Thrust for today is the question, what do you really need? For that new business venture, that social or commercial enterprise, that idea you’ve been toying with. How do you publicize it, get it out there?

In these days of social platforms literally becoming a panacea for all our lives, business or otherwise, it is easy to think that every business venture a Facebook and/or Twitter page. You look at the statistics on subscribers and think, where else do I advertise my business but on these?

At the just concluded New Media and Governance: Tools and Trends Conference held in Abuja, I listened in on a friend’s session. Femi Longe is the co-founder of CCHub, the brains behind brilliant projects like this, this, and this. One of the things he talked about was identifying your market. A few of us had a chat afterwards further buttressing the point that the fact that there are over 850 million worldwide Facebook users does not mean that your market is there.

For example, if you’re targeting people who live in a village without electricity, or even people who are educated but computer illiterate, of what use will Facebook be? If you put that business on Twitter, you’d gain a few followers, but when did random followers on Twitter ever translate to money in the bank? Even if you bought Facebook ads from today till the day you leave this earth, if the circumstances of your target audience have not changed, you might as well be selling wedding rings to toddlers!
Research can never be replaced by facts. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, even Blackberry Messenger are not the answers to everything. What if your audience don’t have Blackberry phones? You’ll literally BB broadcast yourself into penury!

What am I saying? Do your market research. Not all social networks will be appropriate for your business, free and wonderful as they are. Some ventures around these parts will not even require social media at all. It is ok for that to happen.

If you need expert advice, want to understand what will and what won’t work, get in touch. Use the contact me page (where there are multiple ways to get at me), or tweet @chiomachuka. Lots of options cos……… not everyone is on Twitter.

NEW MEDIA AND GOVERNANCE: TOOLS AND TRENDS!

Posted
May 14, 2012
Categories
SMAG Lab
Social Media
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0 Comments

It’s the New Media and Governance: Tools and Trends Conference! Full information about the speakers and programme is here!! You’re welcome to join the event below by tweeting with the hash tag #NGNewMedia. Enjoy!

NOT SO SOCIAL ARE WE? (PT 1)

Posted
May 6, 2012
Categories
Social Media
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Originally posted on @SOluwatobi’s website, this is one of the guest posts I’ve done. Follow @chiomachuka on Twitter so you don’t miss out on any more ‘free guest post’ offers!!

Sometime last year, my mom called to tell me I’d lost my uncle; was a terrible time for me especially since I’d seen him only a week before.  May his soul rest in peace, amen.

A friend of mine lost her dad around the same time; somehow her cousins found out before her and because she was the closest to him and the most emotional, everyone was scared of telling her. One of her ‘brilliant’ cousins wrote this on her Facebook wall; “hey coz!! Sorry about the death of your dad, he was my favourite uncle.”

This was the first thing that popped into my head when @SOluwatobi got in touch about highlighting some of the errors we make in our use of social media/platforms. Whether professionally, security related, or just because we are human beings with a modicum of common sense, ladies and gentlemen, some things are not just acceptable! I’ll focus on personal uses in this first post, and then we’ll deal with business uses in the second part. Also, I’ll focus only on Facebook and Twitter for both parts.

Facebook Features

So you’ve signed up, gotten yourself a Facebook or Twitter account in 2012. To start with, where have you been? Lol. Secondly, I hope that by reading this piece you can avoid some mistakes older users have made.

A little definition: Facebook and Twitter are some of the channels/enablers/tools under the broader term, ‘social media’. Social media in itself is simply communication enabled by technology. So it is talking to your friend in the market/school/church/mosque, only online rather than in person, via a letter or over the phone. It is also making new friends that way too, instead of writing and asking to be pen pals.

It is important to remember this simple analogy in our everyday use of these networks because it will help us not to alienate people in the name of being ‘social’. Especially when we’re not sending private messages. For example, would you write on a notice board at your university that you had the best sex ever with xyz? Even if the board asked you what was on your mind? Or would you say you’d just received payment for a job done running into millions of naira and you were on the way to cash the cheque? And for good measure, write where you were at the time?  If you said (or thought) yes to any of the questions, you can stop reading now. But if you thought it absurd, why do we post such things online? In these days of heightened crime and insecurity, why do we put ourselves out there like this?

Back to the story I shared earlier, would you inform your cousin of a death in the family by pasting the information on the notice board in your community centre? So why do we do these things and appear really insensitive? Social networks are not much different from real life! Really!

While I agree that we are all different, have different levels of openness et al, I think we should apply some self-censorship to our interactions on social networks. That’s it.

Personally, I always assume anyone can read the things I put online. ‘Anyone’ could range from my folks, peers, a present/potential employer, to thieves, perverts, or even law enforcement agents. Therefore, while I have a lot of fun with the accounts I own, I’m careful too.

You might say, ‘but it’s my account, why will people care what I put out? Think of it like this; a post functions like you’re talking to 50 friends in a room, only that everything you’re saying that they can hear, all their friends can hear as well. And the friends of your friend’s friends can hear too. Does that make you want to be a tad more thoughtful?

There have been countless cases of people losing jobs, getting in trouble with the law, or even getting harmed because they put out too much information about themselves and their activities. These things should be examples we learn from; pitfalls to avoid.

Same thing goes for the pictures we put up. Dear friends, the world has shrunk considerably thanks to the internet. With the tentacles of social media sinking into our daily activities, it’s shrunk even more! That picture of you in a compromising position that attracts a few measly followers on Twitter today will surface tomorrow when a potential employer searches for you on Google. #EnoughSaid

General rule of thumb? Let’s take a few seconds to think of the immediate and future effects of the things we post online; if the cons outweigh the pros, consider sending a private message to the person(s) directly involved or shelve the ideal altogether.

 

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TEN WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR BLOG

Posted
April 26, 2012
Categories
Social Media
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7 Comments

Hello!!!

If you’re looking for new ways to improve your blog and increase your readership, there are always a few key tips you can follow to inject some energy back into the blog and garner some excitement. They’re very simple, and I guarantee you’ll have fun with them as you explore!

1. Talk about yourself! A good place to start is by telling your own story.  Who are you, why are you writing this blog, and what do you want to share with the world? Your readers want to know you, and know why you’re writing.  Plus, if you’re stuck with a bit of writer’s block, what subject do you know better than yourself? What lessons have you learnt in your time on earth? How can you make your readers smile? Go on, dig deep!

2. Create a regular feature. Find a topic that you can write on and feature regularly. Whether it’s interviews related to the subject of your blog, or maybe just a weekly photo, creating a recurring feature gives you some structure within which to plan, and gives your readers something to look forward to. A regular feature also suggests that your articles not be too far and in-between. Write as often as you can, don’t let your readers wait too long for something new.

3. Focus on images. If you have writer’s block, look through your trove of photographs related to your blog, and start sharing some of those. Start with just writing quick captions to explain the photos, or create an entire post or story around a picture. Images are important to help your blog stand out from the others. Instead of using stock images, try taking your own pictures to make your content unique. If you are not good at photography, ask around your friends or check http://www.tradestable.com.ng to find somebody more skilled to help you.

4. Use audio and video as well. Make a short video instead of writing a post. Your readers will get to know you a little better, and you’ll get to try something different and exciting. Experiment with podcasting, video blogging, see how you feel about it!

Photo credit: Google

5. Seek out inspiration.  Think about why you started the blog in the first place, what you love to write about, where your passions lay. Go out and experience those things again, find experiences for you to write about and share. Think about things that make you laugh, pleasant memories, and if you’re brave enough, things that have made you cry. People relate very well to things like that….

6. Explore the offline world. There are now blogger conferences for just about every genre. Find a meet-up in your area and get out there and network. Talk to others who write about similar topics. You’ll come away with new ideas and new friends! Never forget that online drives offline, and vice versa; they don’t exist exclusively!

7. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice. Whether it’s from other bloggers or just trusted friends, seek out their feedback, and advice on your work.  Solicit suggestions on where you could take the blog and what improvements you could make. No one is beyond correction, and what looks marvelous to you might just be putting your readers off!

courtesy gembapantarei.com

8. Invite guest bloggers. Bringing a new voice onto your site will generate excitement among your readers, as well as inspiration in yourself. Reach out to bloggers that cover a similar topic, and propose a post exchange. You’ll each gain new readers and new ideas! Put in your best when writing for them, you don’t get too many chances to sell yourself!

9. Redesign your blog. Whether it’s a full overhaul or just a new template, spend some time looking at the design of your blog and whether it best fits your needs. Besides, a new theme is a brilliant way to re-invent yourself, and is a good justification to toot your horn without feeling  vain!

10. Enter the world of social media. By engaging with social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, you can promote your brand, as well as encounter new sources of inspiration from your fans, followers, and fellow bloggers. You can also take advantage of the many functionalities these platforms allow, like syndicating publishing, sharing, etc.

There you go, 10 ways to improve your blog!! I’ll add an eleventh for good measure….

11. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  If you want people to read your articles and comment, like, share, or reblog them, when last were you on someone else’s blog? When last did you comment on a post, or share something you read and really liked? When was the last time you linked to someone else’s blog in a post? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you!

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