Although most of you already know what online article distribution is, I’ll give you a quick description here, just to make sure that we’re all on the same page: Article distribution is when you write an article and submit it to a site that posts the article online and makes it available for blog and ezine publishers to use. They might republish it on their website or in an email newsletter that they send to their subscribers.

In this Tips In Ten, I’m going to start talking about articles and article submission. This is the beginning of a series in which we need to cover several helpful sub-topics. So, by the end of the series, you’ll be able to create and submit articles like a superstar and it should only take you about ten minutes a day. (I’ll show you how). But we need to “lay some groundwork” and that’s what this Tips In Ten article is all about: “WHY article submissions?”

Reason #1: Positioning

In general, articles are about 300 words or more, but usually less than 1000 words; and often the average of 500 words is a good word count to aim for. In theory, they could be shorter than 300 words or longer than 1000 words but there’s the issue of practicality that needs to be considered: People may not read content that is longer than 1000 words and anything shorter than 300 might not allow you to cover the topic at hand.

In that space, you have the opportunity to show yourself to be an expert on the subject at hand. By writing high quality, compelling content on a topic, you’ll show your audience that you know what you’re talking about and that you not only have a command of the problem but that you also provide a solution.

And, multiple articles contribute even more to your positioning. By writing an entire series of articles on your subject, you’ll demonstrate your deep expertise, which will help you to win the respect of your audience… and more business from them.

So, how can you position yourself effectively? Identify topics that your audience wants to read about, and then write about those topics.

Reason #2: Higher traffic to your website

Website owners are always on the search to find more channels to generate traffic to their site or blog. Articles give you another channel.

People might search for a topic and not find your website or blog, but they could find an article by you which has been disseminated around the web. Think of it like a bricks-and-mortar business. If you only have one location, you only make money off the people who actually walk in your door. However, if you have several kiosks around town, you’ll increase the likelihood that people can see your brand and buy from you.

When writing your articles, write content that is helpful and compelling. That will increase the likelihood that it will be distributed around the web, creating more ways for people to find you.

So, how can you generate more traffic to your website? Think about writing articles that will be popular to your audience.

Reason #3: Back links

Google transformed the internet with their idea that any link to your website is a vote for your website… and the more votes a website has, the higher it will be placed in search results. In this one “rule”, Google made “back links” (that is, getting links to point back to your website) an extremely important part of an entrepreneur’s marketing plan.

Articles give you back links. When you write an article and submit it to an article distribution site, you get a back link. And, when that article is picked up by bloggers and syndicated around the web, you’ll get many more back links as each posting of your article points back to your website.

So, how can you get more back links? Think about writing articles that will be widely distributed.

Reason #4: Search engine optimization

The fourth reason to write articles is to improve your search engine optimization. We’ll talk more about this in future articles of Tips In Ten, but one of the ways that articles gives you search engine optimization is through anchor text. Anchor text is the text that is turned into a link. Here’s an example: My link is http://hireheathervilla.com. If you click on it, you end up at my website. But, I can use an anchor text like “Productivity Coach” and link to the same domain, like this: Productivity Coach. Google will still credit me with a back link (see #3) but they’ll also note that the link to my website is describing the website as “Productivity Coach”.

Now, doing this once or twice is okay but when you write several articles and they are widely disseminated around the web, Google will notice that many of the links pointing to that one site all refer to the same thing; that’s good for improving search engine rankings.

So, how can you improve your search engine optimization? Use your articles to link back to your website (I’ll show you how).

Reason #5: Cost effective marketing

Google AdWords costs you money every time someone clicks on your ad. It’s effective and ROI can be easily measured. But it still costs money and, depending on the keywords you’re bidding on, it can cost a lot of money. Other types of advertising and marketing also cost money. If you send out newsletters, you might need to pay for your list management and distribution service. If you advertise, you probably need to pay for ad design and placement.

Articles, however, are quite affordable. If you write them yourself, they cost you nothing but time. If you hire a writer to write them for you, you can have them written quite affordably. And distributing articles costs little or no money, too. Some article distribution sites will charge nothing and others might charge a modest sum. We’ll talk more about what these sites charge in an upcoming issue.

So, how can you generate more cost effective marketing? Write articles; lots of articles!

Reason #6: Clearer thought processes

While the reasons I’ve listed above are good, immediate, business-building reasons to write articles, I think there is another reason as well, which might not be as obvious: Clearer thought processes. If you write articles, you’re forced to think through what you want to say. In a way, articles are like laboratories where you can get your ideas down and test them out. If you write a hundred articles with fifty on one topic and fifty on another, and you start getting call after call from new clients because of one of the topics (but nothing from the other), you’ve just done some easy market testing. And, I’m willing to bet that your thinking evolved between the time that you wrote the first article and the time that you wrote the fiftieth article!

I do this all the time. I sit down and write content even if the ideas aren’t fully formed yet. During the writing process, many of those ideas crystallize. And, over the course of several articles, many of those ideas transform into something better.

So, how can you focus your thinking and improve your expertise and offerings? Write articles.

The purpose of this article is to set you up so that as I talk more about articles, you’ll be better prepared to take advantage of this huge opportunity.

Related posts:

1. Article Submissions in 10 Minutes a Day – Part 2
2. Bonus: Article Submissions in 10 Minutes
3. Article Submissions in 10 Minutes a Day – Part 3

There is an invisible set of stairs that entrepreneurs perceive in the life of their business and every business owner has the desire to move their business up these stairs toward some (possibly unknown or unstated) level of success. They know that each level requires new efforts and techniques and ideas and comes with its own challenges and rewards.

But the problem is, what the heck are the levels? There’s no manual anywhere suggesting what the levels are. Yet, every entrepreneur knows that they are at one level and they want to get to a higher level. I have people asking me all the time to help them move to a higher level.

In case you’re reading this and wondering if I have somehow divined what the levels are, I haven’t. But I have discovered something else: Moving from one level to another is often preceded by dissatisfaction at the current level as well as an increasing amount of chaos and sometimes an unsettled feeling. I compare it to a child’s top that is spinning smoothly for a while and then starts to wobble. The business starts to wobble, unbalanced, just like that top. That “wobble” is often the time when a business owner wants to move to the next level. But here’s what I recommend first:

Instead of focusing on the next level (which is difficult to do anyway because it’s hard to know exactly what it is for each business), focus on making your current level perfect. Address that unsettled feeling and that chaos. Get it under control.

You can do this by:

• Creating or revising your business’ systems.
• Revisiting your business plan.
• Hiring someone to take care of your details (or extending the responsibilities of someone you’ve already hired).
• Taking a vacation to clear your head.
• Perfecting your current operation.
• Looking at your expenses and reducing them.
• Revisiting your business model to see if there are additional revenue opportunities.
• Strengthening your customer service.
• Increasing the consistency and quality of your marketing.
• Increasing the quality of your deliverables.

“But Heather,” you say, “I want to get to the next level. What you are telling me is how to make my current level better.”

Indeed that is exactly what I am doing. And the reason is: Your current business, which is probably running well enough (after all, you are looking at moving forward) needs to be tightened up a bit in order to more effectively move forward anyway. And, as you move forward, you want to maintain as much control as you can (and as much profit as you can) and cleaning house will help with that. You will also gain a fair amount of insight into how your business is running (and that could reveal for you exactly how you can move forward).

If your business is starting to feel like it’s becoming unbalanced and you’re wondering if you’re ready to move to the next level, make your first step a house-cleaning effort to strengthen your current business and that will help you get to the next level faster and more profitably.

On to the next level!

Related posts:

1. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 1
2. One Small Step for Business
3. How Entrepreneurs Can Get the Benefits of a Team (Without Selling Part of Their Business)

Business owners face two blocks to great productivity each day. The first block is of their own choosing – they may or may not choose to procrastinate. The second block is a series of external barriers that keeps them from getting more done in the day. While the first blocks is completely in their control, the second block is seemingly outside of their control yet influences how much work gets done. I think these outside-of-your-control blocks are manageable, so in this blog post I’m going to talk about what you can do to eliminate them.

The first thing you need to do is figure out what your external blocks are. Typically, there are common ones and you might have others that are specific to your industry. I’ve listed the ones I see most frequently and I’ve suggested ways to deal with each.

Problem: Big piles of email
Solution: Start by unsubscribing to email newsletters you don’t read any more. There always seem to be some. Then use filters to get rid of persistent and annoying emails that aren’t spam but aren’t what you ever read. Then create folders for various kinds of emails that you need but don’t need to deal with right away (such as ezines or updates from teams, which you can read later) and use filters to auto-sort those emails based on the sender or the subject line to put them in the right folder.

Problem: Writer’s block
Solution: If you create content (perhaps for your blog, for online marketing, or for clients), you can’t afford to be delayed with writer’s block. Brainstorm subjects ahead of time (I like to brainstorm a month’s worth of content in advance). Then, a day or two before you write, open the document and write the topic as a title and put in a couple of bullet points or subheadings. These will percolate while you do other things and you’ll find it a lot easier to write when it comes time to get started.

Problem: Incoming phone calls
Solution: This can be a challenge because you want to be available for your clients but getting pulled off of projects can be costly. This might go against what you feel is good customer service but it’s good to set up some boundaries. Let them go to voicemail or have an assistant answer the phone. You should include in your voicemail message that you are returning calls at a specific time in the day.

Problem: Waiting for customers to review something
Solution: For someone who likes to cross stuff off a list, this might be frustrating for you if your clients end up reviewing things longer than you’d like. Manage these times up-front by setting project deadlines for you AND for the customer. Don’t be afraid to ping them if they are pushing their time limits. Realize that sometimes reviewing work can be overwhelming for customers so offer to help them. Or, if the customer tends to be slow in reviewing, send them smaller pieces of the project at one time.

Problem: Meetings that take longer than they need to
Solution: Presumably we’re talking about meetings that you are not in control of! This is easily solved by (politely) stating up-front how long you have to give to the meeting. For example, you might say, “Unfortunately I only have 30 minutes”. Also, ask for the agenda up-front to make sure that the meeting will be relevant to you and gracefully back out if it’s not.

There are plenty of barriers outside of our control that can keep us from being productive. But using a few people- and information-management techniques like those listed above, more productive work can be accomplished!

Let’s get productive!

Related posts:

1. Getting More Done With “Oh Sh*t” Productivity
2. 10 Minutes a Day For Better Staff Productivity
3. Enhancing productivity and profitability by outsourcing

Why would I say this? Because failure is healthy; it’s important; and it can help you grow personally and professionally.

Someone who achieves all of their goals every day is setting goals too low.
Someone whose business is often highly profitable is probably not making additional business investments (some of which succeed and some of which fail) to strengthen their business for the long-term.
Someone who is always “great”, day in and day out, is trending towards the average and not branching out into the scary unknown.

Failure IS an option. Failure makes us pause and rethink what really matters and develop new innovations. It’s why children learn language so fast – because they’re not afraid of getting most of the words in a sentence wrong; eventually people will understand what they are saying.

Failure can happen on a number of levels:

• It can be a complete business failure. I know a few people whose first enterprises failed and now they are on their second and third enterprises, which are very successful because the first one failed.

• It can be a delivery failure. If you get an irate customer who doesn’t appreciate the service you’ve provided, you will make changes in the future and eliminate the possibility of a repeat performance.

• It can be marketing failure. A poor response doesn’t necessarily mean that you start over; just that you rethink how (and to whom) you are positioning your offer.

There are many more ways that failure can inspire new opportunities. The value of failure, though, only happens when you learn from it and build on it rather than continuing to do the same thing over and over.

So, what can you do today to excel in the face of failure? Here’s what I suggest:

1.    Write down a recent failure, whether big or small.
2.    Break it down into distinct parts – perhaps the process or the pieces of the deliverable. Just something more manageable so you’re not looking at the whole thing.
3.    Look at each of those smaller elements and perform a SWOT analysis on them.

You should start to see a cascading impact that one element had on another or you might see how a previously unseen problem sunk the whole ship. Get someone else’s opinion, too, just in case you aren’t seeing things clearly. Once you have this information, you have a recipe to move forward! Play off of your strengths and opportunities; mitigate your weaknesses and threats; start over again.

While we’re on the subject of failure, you really should read this great article by Peter Bregman, CEO of management consultant firm Bregman Partners Inc. Why You Need to Fail. This article talks about how to build failure into every day, which sounds counter-intuitive but is exactly the right thing to do.

And now, I’d like to invite my readers to tell me – if you’re bold enough! – how you have failed and what you learned from it. Don’t be shy! Failure is nothing to be ashamed of if it has helped us to grow.

Related posts:

1. A Great Innovation Strategy
2. Does Your Newsletter Suck? 10 Reasons Why It Might
3. The Building Blocks of a Successful Company

Are Trade Shows Still a Viable Marketing Tactic? – Ok, show of hands – who’s been to a trade show?  Now, how many have been to a tradeshow where they were so enthralled by a product that you are now only using that particular item, converted to a particular service exclusively, or increased your revenues because you attended that specific trade show?  I bet not too many hands are left up there in the air!  This article discusses the proper ways of conducting business at a trade show, which does not include using them for no more than a corporate-styled after party once the convention center closes up for the day.  Michael lists 5 points to keep in mind when planning to attend these events.  Good points and great advice!   My suggestion, put these tips together in a checklist for your employees to follow when you send them a trade show.

Why You Need to Work with a Consultant – As a consultant, I found this post to a breath of fresh air.  Many people think hiring a consultant is out of their reach and not cost effective. Yes, hiring a consult does cost money, but the benefits you reap will last long after your consulting period has ended. As James so clearly points out, “Consultants have a mission, and it’s to figure out the right strategy for your business. They’re experts, they know how to apply the principles to different companies and different people, and they can make sure you don’t make any costly mistakes.”

How to defeat zombies (and be more productive) – Talk about an attention grabbing title! And how do zombies and productivity relate??  Once I read the title of Aaron’s new ebook, “Stop Procrastinating: Fight Zombies”, it all started to make sense.  Aaron compares procrastinated projects zombies who will follow you relentlessly until you “take care” of them and complete them.  What a great analogy! (Even if the picture did make me a little nauseous.)

What Would You Do If You Only Had Two Hours? – What article DOESN’T look good with Johnny Depp on it?  Beside that though, Taylor writes an easy, fun to read blog post that packs a heck of a message that we all can benefit from. She expounds on the question, “What would you do if you only had two hours left before the world ended?  She compares what a “slacker” might say or do vs. someone who is uber motivated. Very interesting. Give it some thought and you’ll learn something about yourself.

I Would Rather Shoot at Fish in a Barrel – If you need to catch your dinner in the ocean would you a) wonder from spot to spot casting in random places in the HOPES of catching dinner?  or b) look for the areas where there are fish, and drop a line there? Ok – so unless you have some sort of secret fishing bait that will attract them from miles away I am sure you would have chose option b.  The point is this: would it make more sense to spend countless hours jumping from social site to social site responding to comments from various people in all ‘niches’ or would it make more sense to focus on selected groups, networks, social sites where you know the audience you want is hanging out?  I agree with Kyle, I’d rather shoot at fish in a barrel.

SEO Trademark Registration Terminated – Winning her fight against the SEO Trademark Registration, Rhea committed a lot to something she believed was wrong. This is an amazing article that shows when you believe strongly in something there are no boundaries which will stop you. Rhea now has the most amazing story to tell of how she was able to stop someone from actually trade marking the term “SEO”, which would have prevent anyone from selling SEO as a service. This is such an amazing journey and one that so many will benefit from.  Thank you Rhea!

That’s all for this week!  Of course you can check out more of my favorites on HeatherVilla StumbleUpon.

Have a wonderful weekend and happy reading!

Related posts:

1. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 5/14/10
2. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 3/12/10
3. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 5/21/10

I have the very good fortune of meeting a lot of entrepreneurs and working with them to make their businesses more successful. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that entrepreneurs who work with others are more frequently successful than those that work alone. I’m not saying that solopreneurs will be less successful than those who partner to start a business. Rather, I’m saying that solopreneurs, freelancers, coaches – the “one person show” business owners – will be more successful when they collaborate with others in some capacity.

In this blog I want to talk about some ways you dial other people into your business so you don’t have to do it all yourself.

1.    Outsource. You’ve heard me beat this drum before. Outsourcing parts of your business costs less because paying someone to do it for you is usually faster and cheaper than you doing it yourself (And, depending on what it is, they may do it better). Start by outsourcing the administrative work and then, as you regain capacity, look for a salesperson who can help you generate more business. Lots of people start with more marketing, which is okay, but marketing will only get you so far without sales. Once you have a sales system in place, and humming smoothly, then start marketing.

2.    Joint venture. You may not want to split your business in half and partner with a co-owner, but you can joint venture on specific projects. You’ll split the rewards, split the risks, and likely enjoy greater success because 1+1 often equals way more than 2. To get started joint venturing, find someone who you work well with and who has a similar target market as you (even if they do something completely different for that target market). Set up a handful of these JVs with various people and work hard to get them running as much on autopilot as possible.

3.    Intern. I’ll be honest, I’m torn about this one. I like the idea of an intern and I know there are a lot of people who are willing to give up some of their time to work for free to learn the ropes from someone who is more successful. But I’ve also seen internships go very wrong and basically turn into indentured servitude. And I’ve seen entrepreneurs who offer internships to unsuspecting people (in a veiled effort to get free labor for their administrative tasks). An intern, though, should receive some kind of money AND attribution for their work (the money, however small, honors their time and the attribution gives them a foothold to branch out on their own) and their work should cover critical aspects of the business so that they actually learn the ropes. To create a “check and balance” for yourself, make sure you have a scope of responsibilities and time limit in place so that everyone comes away feeling that it was a winning scenario.

4.   Mentor. If you think of an intern as a “hands-on mentorship”, you yourself should also consider finding a mentor that you can learn from. I’ve seen all kinds of mentors, from those who mentor in broad general concepts to those who mentor for periods of time in very specific elements. Because I believe that we are each building unique businesses, I prefer the “limited time” approach to mentorships in which you find someone to mentor you for a period of time to attain a specific level of success in business. Then find a new mentor for the next step of your business.

5.   Coaches. Yes, I consider these to be different from mentors. Mentors are someone you look up to and aspire to be like (at least in one area), and often have to do with attaining a level of success in business while coaches (at least in my experience) give you the tools and resources to help you achieve something specific. Think of mentors as creating overall success horizontally across the business while coaches often develop strength in vertical aspects of the business. As well, since you are more likely to pay to be coached, there is a certain amount of motivation to follow-through that you don’t even get with mentors.

With these 5 people on your “team”, every entrepreneur can create and grow a thriving business without having to give up part ownership in their company.

Go Team!

Related posts:

1. You will not make a fortune overnight, especially selling advertising space
2. Joint Ventures – Be Picky! Like Me!
3. What Your Business Can Learn from Video Games

Car Dancing for the Greater Good – Come on! You know you wanna!  Check out the video.

How to Donate or Recycle Old Office Equipment – Don’t know where or how to recycle your old office equipment?  Kelly provides many great ideas and links.

Diagnosing Technical SEO Issues – This is just one of the great posts that Lisa has on her blog outlining the session at the (Search Marketing Expo).  Every post makes you feel like you are there.

Slow Motion Dog Treat Commercial Beguiles Internet [Randomly Viral] – Couldn’t resist sharing this one. I love dogs and this is a cool commercial.

Catch more of my favorites on HeatherVilla StumbleUpon.

Have a wonderful weekend and happy reading!

Related posts:

1. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 6/4/10
2. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 2/19/10
3. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 5/21/10

I’m not much into video games. I have nothing against them (although they can eat up time like crazy) but I just have other things on my radar that are more pressing for me. Regardless, I can appreciate a good video game, not just for its artistry but for what it can teach business owners:

Video games are a great intersection between technical proficiency, artistic ability, and user experience.

When those things intersect in the right ways, a compelling game is created. Your business is similar:It’s an intersection between those three things.

• You need technical proficiency to make sure your website and backoffice operations are running correctly
• You need artistic ability in your design, branding, marketing, content creation, packaging,
• You need a positive user experience throughout the entire process, from the time someone first interacts with your business until long past the time that they’ve purchased and used your products.

Since there is a clear link between video game excellence and business excellence, there are a few things we might be able to learn from video games that we can apply to business.

The first thing we can learn is this: You can’t do it all alone. There are very few video games designed and successfully distributed by just one person. (There might be some but I’m sure those are the exception). Instead, it takes a team approach, with each person leveraging the things they are good at, to make it happen.

The second thing we can learn is closely related to the first thing: A team is not made up of people who do the same things. Each person brings something different to the table and, as a result, business owners end up doing the hard work of managing projects to keep everyone happily collaborating.

The third thing we can learn is this: The most successful projects – whether video games or businesses – are achieved when the business-owner/project-manager acts as a visionary head and relies on the team to work together. (Compare this to the more frequent circumstance where business owners are familiar with their small slice of business and try to shoehorn others to fit their ideas).

What inspired me to write this blog was an article I read in the New York Times called: “On Will Wright’s Team, Would You Be a Solvent or the Glue?“  Will Wright is the guy who created the Sim line of games, starting with SimCity (and all of its iterations) and most recently “The Sims” series (and a bunch of other games I confess I’ve never heard of). So if there’s anyone who knows how to take a team of disparate people and create something popular, it’s Will Wright.

This article should be a must-read for any business owner or project manager to learn how to get different people to work together to create something. Be sure to read all 3 pages of the article and get ready to take notes.

Happy Blogging!

Related posts:

1. How to Develop Organizational Culture in an E-Business
2. What’s Your End-Game Play?
3. How Entrepreneurs Can Get the Benefits of a Team (Without Selling Part of Their Business)

I coach a client who is a freelancer. He’s generally productive and looking at different strategies to grow his small business. In a conversation a couple of weeks ago he mentioned that he had just spent an hour browsing through a website that collected and posted complaints that freelancers have about their clients. He related at how funny it was to read these complaints because so many of them mirrored his own experience with customers.

Now, if someone is relatively productive, the occasional internet browsing is okay and it’s nice to take a break to laugh at something funny. But my advice to him was to drop the site from his bookmarks. It’s not that it would make him unproductive – that’s not the issue that he and I are working on. Rather, the site is poison. It’s highlighting something that is negatively funny about paying clients who are very much like his own. While a humorous site is okay, a site like the one he was browsing can bring serious harm to his business because it can highlight things he doesn’t like about customers in general (and his customers specifically!). I’ve seen it happen: Negative talk about customers can turn into negative feelings toward customers. That’s poison.

We all face poison from time to time in our business. It might be a website that poisons us into becoming annoyed at our customers. It might be a toxic relationship with a friend, family member, vendor, or client that derails us from being productive and confident. It could be something big or it could be just a comment made in passing.

You need to identify and eradicate the poison in your business. Start with a list of the things that annoy you. Make a list of the top ten things that drive you absolutely crazy. (Even if you have more than ten, start with the ten most annoying). Is it a customer? Is it something about your processes or marketing? Is it a friend or relative? Is it something you said to someone else that you can’t stop thinking about? Is it a challenge that you face when you try to do something?

If there are several similar things on your list, use that as a warning sign for you to make big changes. You may find that it’s mostly customers. That’s not a good sign. It means that you need to filter your customers better or you need to improve your own attitude about customers in general (as I advised my client to do). Is it mostly receivables? That’s not a good sign. It means that you need to create stricter terms or demand more money up-front.

A more normal situation would be to have a variety of annoyances on the list. That’s okay because we’ll always encounter annoying things. Use the list as a sort-of “to-do” list and deal with each annoyance as it comes. That will help to get rid of poisonous, toxic situations in your life that threaten your business. It will keep stress down and productivity and enjoyment up.

Oh, and once you’ve created your poison list this week and solved it… do it again next week. And the week after. And the week after that. Make it a regular habit and you’ll enjoy your work even more!

Happy Blogging!

No related posts.

It’s the old “what gets measured gets managed” adage. Makes sense (even if it seems excessive to the rest of us).

Recently, he got me thinking about measuring and managing social media conversations with metrics. This blog isn’t so much me talking about what I do, but rather it’s a blog of me writing down my thoughts on the matter.

Social media is a difficult form of marketing/networking to apply metrics to, simply because it’s as much of an engaged lifestyle as it is a form of marketing. (Just compare the difference between most Gen-Y and Gen-X people when it comes to Twitter: Gen-Y people tend to adopt it as another part of life while Gen-X try to schedule it in like email. That’s just a generalization but it nicely illustrates how social media is a form of an engaged lifestyle even more than just marketing).

So, are there metrics you can derive from social media? If my friend wanted to add another column to his spreadsheet of business metrics, what might he put into it when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of social media?

Looking at Twitter, I’d suggest that he might use the number of followers as a metric. It’s not always reliable because of the number of spam followers that fester on Twitter, but it’s a start. He might think about measuring the number of tweets he’s made. Perhaps he could use Google Analytics (or some of the Twitter click-through analytics that are available) to see how many people are clicking through his links to his site. He might also count the number of Retweets that are made of his tweets and even the number of #followfriday references.

None of these are perfect but they’re not bad and, collectively, they give a good picture.

Then I turned my attention to Facebook to see if I could think of metrics there. Number of friends, obviously, is one of the ones that spring to mind. It would be nice if you could keep track of the number of comments or “likes” that people make, but that’s not possible on a personal page. (There are some further metrics along these lines available on a fan page, actually, so you can monitor interaction metrics there).

What gets measured does get managed and many businesses could stand to use a healthy does of measurement when it comes to social media.

Image credit: MRI

Happy Blogging!

Related posts:

1. Recommended social media tool for your business
2. Lessons to Learn from Starbucks and Social Media
3. What’s Your Social Media Plan?