When a non-Twitter user asks me why I have embraced Twitter as a communication method, I’m quick to point out that I think there are two reasons Twitter is MORE than a communication method; that it’s an entirely new way of engagement.

To say that Twitter is just another communication method is to suggest that it is equivalent to writing a letter or writing an email or picking up the phone – as if Twitter might be a fourth alternative. But I disagree (and I’m not the only one who thinks this, by the way).

The two reasons that I’ve embraced Twitter are because:

1. I enjoy real time person-to-person engagement.
2. I can search the real time web for up-to-the-minute information.

In these newsletters, I’ve generally been focusing on how you can more successfully connect with people in a real time, person-to-person engagement.

But in this ninth TweetsIn10 post, I would like to talk about Twitter search.
Go to http://search.twitter.com and search for something. Anything. Whatever you want. Your city or town. Your favorite movie. Your favorite hobbies. Your industry. Your big-name competitors. The results you get from that search is real time… and not just a real-time dry repeating of the facts, but a real-time discussion of the facts with thought and context.

These results are what people are talking about right now. If there’s a big news story happening, it’s being tweeted about from a thousand different viewpoints. If there’s a major playoff game taking place, every good play and every bad call is being announced, discussed, and analyzed… as it is happening.

That is a transformational way of thinking about our connection through technology to the rest of the world.

• Once, we waited for the daily paper to come out to read about events of the day.

• Once, we tuned in to the 11 o’clock news to watch thirty second sound bytes of the events of the day.

• Once, we waited until Google performed an update to find the latest and most relevant website on a subject.

• Once, we clicked to news sites and viewed the content they gave us when they chose to report on a topic.

But now, we get the information as it is happening. We see topics as they are trending. And, we see it through the unfiltered lens of the common person and not some news agency.

Now, just to clarify, I’m not against the news industry, they definitely have a role to play in delivering insight and in clarifying the facts. But the real-time aspect is huge. Sure, lots of people are quick to point out that this news isn’t necessarily accurate. On the other hand, I’d counter that content created through the traditional news industry may be more accurate but isn’t necessarily timely. There is some give and take and neither option is perfect. But I’d rather have a thousand different viewpoints of right-this-minute news – and rely on my own ability to discern which viewpoints are most likely to be trusted – than to wait until someone else reports the news later. That is very cool.

Lest you think I’m just ranting about the value of real time news, let me now talk about why this is important to you:

Real time connects you to your audience in a way that is unlike anything your business has ever experienced:

• You can change your website copy to be the most relevant based on current events based on trending topics and the latest news.

• You can shift supply lines when you read about the bad weather that is blocking your vendors from delivering raw materials to your factory. Just search for information about weather and road conditions in areas where that is critical to the operation of your business.

• You can immediately address any concerns that your customers might express as soon as they express them. Just search for your business’ name.

• You can modify what you sell and how you sell it based on what’s going on in the world and, specifically, in your clients’ lives. Just keep an eye on the news and search for problems and issues that your clients face.

Twitter search should be a regular part of your business research and you should be consistently viewing trending topics in Twitter so you can react immediately.

Bonus Tip:  Monitor Your Brand

Make sure that at the very least you monitor your brand or product via search. This assures that if anything is said negative or a customer or client needs help that you can respond right away using real-time search tools.

Related posts:

1. Tweets in 10 (Part 3) – Hashtag Like a Pro
2. Tweets in 10 – #Great #Idea #for #Twitter
3. Tweets in 10 – Twitterpress: Combining Twitter and WordPress10

That being said, this article of Tips in Ten is the first in a three part series where I talk about the power of a list and why it’s crucial for your business. When I say “a list”, I’m talking about building a growing list of names and contact information of people who are interested in what you have to say. They may start out as (for example) newsletter subscribers but they are among the most likely to buy from you (“Why,” you may ask? Because they are the ones who have opted-in, meaning they gave you the A-OK to distribute information to them!).

If you already have a list, don’t skip these Tips In Ten articles! I’m going to give you some tips and ideas that can help you generate more business from your list. If you don’t have a list, read every word of these issues and make list-building a priority in your business.

The most basic list that marketers talk about is usually just a list of names and email addresses. This is the simplest and fastest to build. However, there are many other pieces of information you could collect (after all, the concept of the list stretches far back before email so you might also end up collecting their postal address to send them “snail mail”). In today’s world, though, it’s typically names and email addresses (or Twitter names if you are really cutting edge!) and that’s what I’m going to refer to throughout these issues.

Also, I should clarify: I’m not talking about a list that you buy from a list house or list rental company. I’m talking about the list of people who have “opted in” to hear from you. They’ve signed up for a newsletter or report or ebook or free whatever because they want to hear what you have to say. Ultimately, it’s a group of people who have traded information about themselves in order to get something for free from you. What information they give and what they get in exchange can differ from one business to the next, but the principle of exchanging contact info for something in return is the underlying factor.

Okay, I just want to get those details out of the way and make sure we’re on the same page before I continue.

So, why am I devoting 3 entire articles to a list? Because a list is so important to your business and it ties together many of the other Tips In Ten articles that you’ve read in the past. (You’ll see what I’m talking about shortly). It’s a business growth strategy that many businesses swear by (and recently I heard one well-known internet marketer point out that every top-level internet marketer uses a list; they couldn’t think of a single one who didn’t).

So, why do you want a list? Why is it so important? And, why do internet marketers (and, before them, direct marketers) swear by a list?

A list is not just a random group of names and emails. These are people who have expressed an interest in hearing from you. They are a group of interested audience members, warm leads, hot prospects, and happy customers. In other words, they are people who want to hear from you, people who are interested in buying from you, and people who have bought from you.

Your list is a list of people who are listening to you.

In the world of excessive marketing, that’s huge. Every single day, people are exposed to thousands of brands and marketing messages – from the moment they press snooze on their Sanyo alarm clock then get up and pour themselves some Folgers coffee, through the ride to work where they pass billboards and hear radio commercials, to their work day where they read sales messages, and finally at home to watch television (including commercials) – people are inundated with marketing.

As a result, most marketers spend their entire days trying to be heard above the “noise”. A list is a group of people who are listening to you. By adding their name to the list, they have raised their hand to tell you that they want to hear what you have to say and they are giving you a free pass to the front of the line to hear what you have to say.

A list of listeners is invaluable.

1.    People have grown weary and even blind to marketing messages. But with a list, you are able to accelerate past the marketing messages that your list is hearing and actually communicate with them… because they are watching for communication from you.
2.    With a group of dedicated listeners, you can position yourself and your business far more easily because you’re no longer competing for their attention. You have their attention, now you can show them your stuff!
3.    For the exchange of their contact information, you can proactively add value to their lives as a preemptive way to make yourself indispensable to them. (And, if done correctly, when it comes time to sell to them, they won’t think of buying from someone else).
4.    It also serves as your sounding board! You can listen closely to what they have to say (or watch their responses to emails by viewing what content is read or forwarded and what content is ignored) and, in this way, you can develop a good idea of what they would be willing to buy from you.
5.    And, of course, you can (carefully) market and sell to them. (I say “carefully” because you can sometimes position products or services in front of them directly but you sometimes need to be more subtle about it. I’ll show you how).
6.    Once you’ve sold to them, you can (carefully) market and sell to them again and again.

A list is gold! A carefully cultivated list will become one of the most valuable assets your business will own and it will become the item you rush into a burning building to get.

Here’s what you’ll want to do with your list:

First, you will want to create something to build your list with. I’ll show you how to do this in the next issue. Then, you’ll want to grow your list with intentional effort in everything you do.

Now here’s what really separates the novices from the pros:

Think of your list as part of your sales pipeline. Instead of just making it a convenient way for people to hear from you or get your blog in their inbox instead of having to view it in their browser, use your list as a way to nurture a relationship and slowly turn prospects into customers.

An even more advanced strategy that really good pros do is to know exactly what every name on their list is worth. In the early days, while you are still getting set up, you might not know. But make it a goal to get to the point where you know what each name is worth.

For example, let’s say you figure out that 1 person out of every 100 names on your list will buy something from you when you offer something, and that person will typically spend up to $500 at a time. Therefore, the average name on your list is worth $5.

This is very helpful for you:

• If you spend $1.00 in AdWords to get one qualified lead to sign up to your list, you know that you can still make $4 profit on a per lead basis (or, to better sum it up, if you spend $100 getting 100 qualified leads, you know you are going to be able to make $400 profit on at least one sale out of the 100 leads).

• You can also forecast more effectively. If you have a list of 1,000 people, you know that every offer will result in 10 sales of $500 each, or $5,000. That’s your starting point and you can estimate expected returns on email marketing campaigns and plan accordingly.

Your homework
If you don’t have a list, start brainstorming about ways to build one. I’ll give you some ideas and tips in the next issue but you should be prepared with a few ideas of your own that you can refine. Think about who your prospects and customers are, what free information they would be interested in getting from you, and how you might present it to them.

If you do have a list, look at some of the advanced “pro-level” tips I’ve just mentioned. Are you nurturing a relationship with them? Do you know what each person on your list is worth?

Watch for the next article to read about how to build your list.

Related posts:

1. The Power of a List: Part 2
2. The Power of a List: Part 3
3. Building a Fanbase of Followers in 10 Minutes a Day

In this article of Tips In Ten, I’m going to give you some basic steps to train others without spending more than ten minutes a day. Even if you don’t have staff yet, you might some day. Or, you’ll soon have an assistant or virtual assistant to train. Or perhaps you’ll outsource to someone and you want to give them a rough idea of your business. And, this might even work when putting together some instructional content for clients, too. So this issue is about “training” but it could relate to training anyone.

There are just four simple steps that you can do and most of the time it will take just ten minutes to put this together. In some circumstances where it will take longer, you can break it up over a few days. However, if you regularly train people and you get into a pattern with developing this kind of training, you probably won’t take more than ten minutes anyway.

Before I start, I want to give you a couple of ways to deploy your training. There’s no need to get fancy but you should use something that works for you. Depending on what you’re comfortable with, you might want to do:

• Written training (i.e. in Microsoft Word or some other word processing program).

• Audio training (where you record your voice talking to the trainee). If this is your preferred method, your computer probably has a standard “sound recorder” program in the Start > Programs > Accessories menu. Or, a free audio program I really like is Audacity which allows you a lot of freedom to record and edit sound.

• Video training (where you record your voice, your face, and perhaps a screen-cap video for the trainee). If you want to record your voice and face (and a whiteboard or other visual aid), you can just use your computer’s built-in camera or an inexpensive computer camera. If you want to record videos of what’s on your screen, Camtasia is really good.

Feel free to use a mixture of these three different types of training media, depending on what you are trying to teach. If you are trying to teach a program that has a lot of detailed things to do, Camtasia is great. If you want to give audio instructions about how to answer a telephone, audio is good. If you have some basic concepts or a training about a simple website, a written document (with images) is fine. Once you’ve made all this training, be sure to store them in one convenient place with obvious names so your trainees can access them later.

Here are the four steps I recommend for your training:

Step 1: Give them the bigger picture. (Duration: 1 minute)
This is so important and often ignored! Most trainees will do a much better job at whatever you are showing them if you just tell them why they are doing it and how it fits into the bigger picture. If you are teaching them to use Twitter on your company’s behalf, for example, don’t just show them the technical aspects of tweeting; instead, start them off by briefly explaining why Twitter is important and how Twitter fits into your company’s social media marketing strategy. You don’t have to spend long on this, just a moment to tell them why it’s important.

So you might say, “We believe that social media is a powerful way for businesses to interact with customers and we’ve chosen Twitter as one of our social media tools. You will be tweeting on behalf of our company to share our brand with our followers.”

See how easy that was? It only took a moment and it gave a nice, clear picture about Twitter’s role in the company.

Step 2: Give them the highlights. (Duration: 2 minutes)
Next, you are going to just hit some of the important things they need to know. It doesn’t have to be very detailed (you’ll get to that), but it should give them an overview of what they are doing and how they are doing it. I like to think of it like this: In a moment, you are about to give them the detailed instructions but first you are going to give them some key things to remember so that when you touch on those things in the detailed instructions, they will jump out.

Just keep it really simple and quick with bullet points. Keep it to ten or fewer highlights.

To use the Twitter example again, I might say: “You are going to spend ten minutes a day interacting with followers on Twitter using a combination of tweets, retweets, replies, and direct messages. You’ll also be actively following other people. What we are looking for is an engaged audience who thinks of us as the experts. And we always want to make sure we are engaging our audience and not just promoting ourselves.”

I wrote that as if I was doing an audio or video but you could easily arrange those into about half a dozen bullet points for a Word document. Now, when the trainee reads this and reviews the detailed part (in the next step) they will recognize the important parts that you want them to cover.

Some other valuable items to cover in this section:

• If you are measuring them on something, tell them what the measurable is.
• If there are several ways of doing something, tell them that and point out which way you are showing them.
• Tell them whether you are giving them a general overview as a guideline or a strict “must-follow” step-by-step system.

Step 3: Give them the details. (Duration: 5-8 minutes)
If you’ve done the other parts, this is going to go quickly and easily. Just show them how to do what you want them to do. Keep it simple. Make it step-by-step. Go through the material quickly but be mindful that you don’t blaze through so quickly that they will miss important parts.

If you are going to use a Word document, use screen capture (Press “Control” and “PrtScn” at the same time and that will copy a picture of your screen to your clipboard, then you can click “paste” in your Word document and the image of your screen will be pasted there).

If you are using audio or video, speak naturally and clearly into the microphone and jot down an outline before you start so that you don’t ramble on beyond your time limit.

There’s no reason why you can’t spend more than ten minutes but here’s what I find: You are already busy and don’t have a lot of time, but the only way to train your staff is bite the bullet and take the time to train them. So if you take ten minutes now to get them started, and you take ten minutes later for some intermediate training, and another ten minutes down the road for advanced training, that’s probably going to be easier to carve out of your busy days than half an hour all at once.

On the odd occasion, you might need to create something that takes longer than ten minutes. If that happens, break it up over a couple of days so that it doesn’t become a time stealer for you. In general, though, you should adequately cover a lot of material even if you restrict your time to ten minutes.

Step 4: Help them troubleshoot. (Duration: 1-2 minutes)
In some cases, I’ve found that a troubleshooting training session is worth ten minutes all on its own. But there are times when you only need to spend a moment or two helping your trainees avoid disaster. Give them a couple of the top things to watch out for and ways to deal with it. Then point them to a resource to get more information if they need it. If I was going to add some troubleshooting tips onto the end of my Twitter training, I might say something like, “Make sure you don’t explicitly sell our services while using Twitter because that’s not what it’s for. And be careful when you click on any shortened URLs; don’t click on them if they aren’t from a source you recognize.”

There! You’re done and it only took ten minutes. Now you don’t have an excuse not to train your staff to do the work that will be truly helpful to you! Just take ten minutes a day to create some training and your staff will be able to take on so many more projects, freeing you up to focus your attention on other aspects of your business.

Related posts:

1. Business Growth in Ten Minutes a Day… IS Possible
2. Run a More Efficient, Profitable Business in 10 Minutes a Day
3. Growing Your Business with YouTube in Just Ten Minutes! – Part1

Then Twitter grew. And grew. And grew. It burst into mainstream awareness in 2008 and bazillions of people, their businesses, and their pets all got Twitter accounts.

I’m not complaining. I was in Twitter a little earlier than most and I loved seeing how this fun engagement tool grew in popularity at a breakneck speed. But there’s no gain without some pain and the pain that Twitter users often feel is the signal-to-noise ratio. They may follow a bunch of people but those people tweet stuff that just isn’t worth listening to. The good stuff (the signal) is sometimes outweighed by the bad stuff (the noise).

There are ways that you can deal with that. TweetDeck and HootSuite, for example, give you the ability to add columns and sort the people you’re following in various ways.

To help with the signal-to-noise ratio, Twitter unveiled a useful part of its interface called Twitter Lists. Twitter Lists give you the power to fix the signal-to-noise challenge but they do more. In this article of Tips In Ten, and in the one that follows, I’m going to show you what to do with your Twitter Lists to put this powerful and under-appreciated part of Twitter to work for you.

Here are a couple of facts about lists you need to know before we go any further:

• Lists can be public or private. I like having a mix of both; sometimes I use the private ones for sorting and market research and the public ones are a little more useful for positioning.

• You can only have 20 lists. Decide wisely! However, I suspect that this number may eventually lift once Twitter plateaus a little.

Why have Twitter lists for people you’re following?

This is the simplest and most obvious use of Twitter lists. There are a few of reasons to list the people you’re following:

• If you happen to be using the Twitter interface (instead of TweetDeck, Hootsuite, or another tool) to pay attention to the people you’re following, you don’t have just look at the overwhelmingly large Twitter stream and try to sort the nonsense from the good tweets. Instead, you can click a list and view the tweets just in that list, eliminating everything else from your attention.

• Building on the idea above, you can do industry-specific research or see what’s going on among a particular group of people by viewing a list instead of your entire stream. For example, if you want to go out to the theatre to watch a movie, but you’re not sure what to watch, go to your Twitter list of movie critics (assuming you’ve created such a list) and see what they are talking about. Or, if you’re wondering if it’s going to rain and you have a list of 10 local meteorologists you can quickly see their tweets without sorting through all tweets or clicking across all 10 of their profiles.

• By creating several public lists of Twitter users who are relevant to your business, you are doing a form of marketing (by showing others what you think about, what markets you serve, and who you like to pay attention to).

So, Twitter Lists of people you are following are primarily a sorting mechanism so you can separate the signal from the noise, and they serve some time-saving and positioning value as well.

But that’s not the only functionality you can enjoy with Twitter lists…

Why have Twitter lists for people who are following you

Twitter lists can include people who are following you. There are a couple of reasons why this might be important to you:

• Market research. Businesses don’t always know who their target market is or what they want to know. By sorting your listeners into lists and seeing who is listening, you can better decide what to tweet about. Let’s say that you’re a cobbler and you tweet about men’s shoes. But, after sorting your followers into various lists, you discover that most of your followers are women who want to talk about sandals, you will probably want to shift your tweeting.

• Marketing. As with the people you are following, a Twitter list tells other people who happen to be viewing your Twitter profile that specific groups are paying attention to you. If you find yourself on a bunch of lists called “boring” then take the hint and start tweeting interesting things!

• Twitter lists also give you way to listen to your listeners. If you don’t happen to follow people back, you can still pay attention to them by going through your lists from time to time and seeing what they tweet.

And that last point leads nicely into my next subtopic…

You don’t need to be following someone (or have them following you) to have them on a list

This was an element of Twitter Lists that surprised me. Basically, you can add people to your lists whether or not you’re following them and their tweets will show up in a list-specific tweet stream.

So, why might this be important to you? I have a few reasons:

• Let’s say that you secretly love celebrity gossip but you don’t follow any celebrities because you recognize that having them in your following list doesn’t mesh with your brand. You can create a private list of celebrities and add all of your favorites to it. Then, with one click, you can see what they are talking about without having their tweets in your stream.

• Twitter limits the number of people you can follow (although they don’t publish what the limit is but it’s basically a number that is near to your number of followers). However, you can “circumvent” this by adding people to your lists even if you aren’t following them. Their tweets will still show up in your lists (just not on your main tweet stream).

• Research: If you are a coach, consultant, or freelancer, you might periodically take on a job that requires you to do industry-specific research. You want to temporarily listen to a number of key people in an industry but you don’t want to add them to the list of people you’re following because this is short-term research for a client. So a private list with a number of people added to the list allows you to do that.

Before you make a list

Making a list is really easy and it doesn’t take very long. But before I tell you how to do it (in the next issue), I’m going to give you a recommendation to do as homework first:

Before you create lists, think about what lists you want to create. Likely, you’ll want to create lists that are related to market segments you serve, and if you tweet for business you’ll probably want to create lists for friends, family, vendors, and clients. That way, you keep them all separate and can pay attention to one or another as necessary.

Here are some Twitter List ideas for you:

• Client lists: Consider a public list of current and previous clients and a private list of prospective clients.

• Industry lists: or markets or segments or demographics or however you divide up your target market.

• Geographic or municipal lists: for example, if you live in St. Louis, you might stay informed of what’s up in the city with a list of local tweeters.

• Sports or lifestyle lists: If you follow basketball or kayaking, a list based around that activity will keep you up to date.

• •News: I like the idea of keeping CNN, MSNBC, and the rest all in one list. I’m not a news hound, but when I want the news, I want to get it from several sources at once.

• Stocks: If you like to invest, keep your tweet stream clear of the latest hot tips until you’re ready to think about it.

• Family and/or friends: This might be one list or two.

• Noise: I will occasionally put people on a private “noise” list if I think that they are simply spamming all day long. Then, from time to time, I will go in and review the noise list to see if they do have relevant things to say. If they do, I’ll sort them to somewhere else. If they don’t, I’ll unfollow them.

Here’s your “homework” for the week: Take ten minutes this week to do the following:

1.    Brainstorm some potential lists that you can make, using the above list or your own ideas.
2.    Decide whether you want it to be public or private (but don’t worry, you can switch back and forth once it’s created.
3.    Check out some of the lists that you’re on (by going to your Twitter profile and then looking at the “lists” link beside the number of “Following” and “Followers”).

In the next article, I’m going to show you go to create a list and make Twitter Lists really useful for you.

Related posts:

1. Be a Twitter List Champion in Just Ten Minutes- Part 2
2. Tweets in 10 – Groups for Groupies
3. Twitter in Ten Minutes a Day!

But getting comments is only part of the story. Commenting on other people’s blogs is also an important part of the conversation. You can’t expect people to comment on your blogs if you’re not commenting on other people’s blogs. (That’s not to say that the people whose blogs you’re commenting on will specifically be the ones to comment on yours, but the whole idea of getting people to comment on your blogs requires people to be commenting! So you should contribute to that, too).

So in article issue of Tips In Ten I’m going to show you how to easily comment on other blogs in just ten minutes a day and build up some valuable marketing “currency” while you’re doing it.

Leaving comments on other blogs

Commenting tools

In the last issue I mentioned CommentLuv and Disqus as commenting tools for your own site. However, they are also useful for you when you comment on other people’s sites. With a CommentLuv account your picture will show up when you post elsewhere, and with a Disqus Profile you can manage your comments across several sites really easily. Consider at least one of these tools, maybe both, since they are common commenting systems.

Commenting often

You should consider commenting on a couple of blogs each day. This gets you actively out there reading what other people are writing and it helps to get your name out there. But if you don’t do it right, you could end up spending your time searching for blogs to comment on and you’ll blow that ten minute target easily. (Trust me, I speak from experience). While browsing the web is fun, it can also be time consuming. So here’s what I would suggest:

Find 5 blogs that you love to read that fit the following parameters:

• They need to be relevant to your subject matter
• You need to have something valuable to contribute
• It should be something read by your target market
• They post a blog at least once a week (or perhaps more frequently).

Once you’ve chosen 5, bookmark them in a folder named: “Commenting” and rename them as follows:

If you use an alphanumeric sorting bookmark system, like Delicious’ Firefox plug-in, you’ll want to name them something like 1 – Monday – [blogname]; 2 – Tuesday – [blogname], etc.

Also, you’ll want to bookmark another site like Alltop.com or Technorati, which are a source for many blogs.

Now here’s what you do:

On Monday, click to your Monday blog and read one of the posts that they’ve written since you were last there and comment on it. Then click to your multi-blog-source like Alltop or Technorati and pick a blog and read and comment. There, you’ve commented on two blogs and you’ve likely done it ten minutes; maybe less.

On Tuesday, do the same thing: Go to your Tuesday blog, read one of the blogs that they’ve written since you were last there and comment on it. Then click to your multi-blog-source and pick a blog and read and comment. Another ten minutes.

Do the same thing Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. (Heck, why not take ten minutes each day on the weekend and do it Saturday an Sunday, too)

Depending on how fast of a reader you are and how long the blog posts are, you might even be able to pick 2 blogs from your multi-blog-source and comment on them. But don’t push yourself. Start with 2 a day and go from there.

At the end of the week, you’ll have at least 10 and possibly up to 15 blogs you’ve commented on. Five of them will be your regular community and another 5 to 10 will be new communities. By the end of the year, you’ll have commented on between 520 and 780 blogs by just spending 10 minutes a day from Monday to Friday. If you comment on 2 a day every day of the year, you’ll have commented on 730 by the end of the year, and 1,095 if you comment on 3 a day. That’s some significant contribution to the blogosphere.

Those comments not only give you good backlinks but also can mean potential traffic to your site. The likelihood of getting traffic to your site based on your comments is enhanced by…

Insightful comments

Not enough people leave comments and of those that do, many don’t leave insightful enough comments!

I would encourage you not to rush through the commenting process. You can do it well in ten minutes but don’t try to do it in less time than that! My recommendation here isn’t for you to hit a dozen blogs in a week with “Great post, Bob” or “I enjoyed your blog, Mary”. That’s not helpful. As a blogger, I love hearing that stuff, sure, but I enjoy it far more when I hear something that is more insightful, constructive, and participatory. If you want to compliment them on how good their post was, that’s fine, but be sure to follow it up with something else. Interact with what the post was about. You can talk a bit about yourself and what you do, just be careful not to overly promote yourself. A good blog comment might look like this:

Something simple like that compliments the blogger, interacts with what they’ve just written about, and also helps to align you with them in some way or position you as someone who thinks along those lines, too.

It doesn’t have to take long but it should be more than just “thanks” or self-promotion. Add something to the conversation!

Additional tips

• Sometimes the commenting software gives you the option to subscribe to replies. Because of how much I comment, I generally don’t subscribe to replies. That’s not to say I never do, but my comments are often like those I’ve written above and it’s not likely that someone will add additional comments after refuting my position. However, on a particularly controversial issue or if I’m participating in more of a multi-person discussion in a comment section of a blog, I will subscribe to replies. But if you’re posting a few hundred comments a year, you can fill your inbox pretty quickly with potential replies so I’d advise that you do it sparingly.

• When you’re selecting who you should pick as your 5 main blogs to comment on, consider a blog that is an active blogger and commenter. I am less motivated to post a comment on a blog that has lots of comments but nothing from the owner. I am far more motivated to post a comment on a blog that has slightly fewer comments and active, prompt replies by the blog owner. This tells me that the blog owner is interested in building up a community and not just putting out content and ignoring it after that.

• I like to comment on blogs that have anywhere from zero to 25 comments per post. Of course, if I have something to say, I’ll comment on the blog no matter how many comments there are, but if I’m going to be strategic about positioning myself, I find that I can give some good insight and not get lost in the onslaught of commenters if there are no more than 25 comments on a post. While lots of people are automatically attracted to the blogs with huge followers (and those bloggers obviously have good things to say and it’s okay to comment on those blogs), there are lots of hard-working bloggers who are coming up through the ranks who will likely be more communicative with their commenters. Think of it this way: You will probably make far more of a contribution and receive far higher benefit from commenting on a site that gets 10 comments – and being noticed – than you will by commenting on blogs that can get hundreds of comments. By findin g bloggers with zero to 25 comments per post, you are strategically getting your foot in the door of the successful bloggers of tomorrow rather than jumping on the bandwagon of the insanely popular bloggers of today.

• If you get to the end of a blog post and you think the writer covered it well and you’re not sure what to write, don’t despair! Comb through the comments and find something that a commenter has written and respond to that.

So, now you have the tools and ideas to help you manage comments on your own blog and in this issue you read about how to comment like a pro on other blogs! Get commenting, help to build communities. When you grow other people’s comments, you will grow your own business!

Related posts:

1. Comments and How They Can Make You More Successful (In Just 10 Mintues) – Part 1
2. Building a Fanbase of Followers in 10 Minutes a Day
3. “What Should I Do?” – Blog Commenting

I’m also predicting that you finished the issue last week with plenty of highly productive “research” in which you watched tons of videos. (Sorry about that).

In this article of Tips In Ten I want to go over some of the nuts-and-bolts of creating and producing an online video.

What should your videos be about?

The first thing you’ll want to do is figure out what you want to share with people. Do you want to share an ongoing video series? Or maybe just occasional content? Or just do one video? If you just want to do one video, grab the nearest camera and go for it. Try it out – even with the web cam on your computer – and see what happens. Are you comfortable in front of the camera? And, more importantly, are you comfortable with other people watching videos of you?

Getting serious about video marketing

If you want to do one video to try it out, that’s fine. But if you want to do some serious video marketing then you will probably want to do more than one video. (After all, you’re putting in the effort). And, if you’re going to do more than one video, you might as well go out and invest in a good camera, tripod, and microphone.

Choosing a format

As you think about your video and put together a plan for it, consider what format you want to go with. I recommend that you pick just one format. People like predictability and it will be easier for you to do a good job over and over if you just stick with one method. It might be tempting to try different things, and you can do that in the beginning to see what works, but plan to find a format and adhere to it as soon as possible.

In choosing a format, find something that fits your personality and your brand and, of course, your budget. If you don’t have a very high budget, you’re probably better off to go for an information-heavy video. It can still be engaging (like the “In Plain English” videos) but information is going to be your key selling point. If you do have a higher budget, you’ll be able to produce entertaining video that could be well received (like the “Will it Blend?” series). What I recommend strongly against is producing a low budget video in the hopes that it will be entertaining. Often, it tends to miss the mark.

I suggest that you get creative. And you can, even with a talking head format. Have fun with whatever format you choose and make sure that it fits your brand. Don’t shy away from a particular format just because other people are doing it. You can build up your own audience and potentially do a great job with a similar type of format. Consider the “In Plain English” videos. Those are cheap to produce. They are just whitepaper images and whiteboard drawings with some stop-motion animation and a little bit of post-production. The idea of printing stuff out and drawing on a whiteboard isn’t new. But these videos take those well-known concepts and make them engaging. So it’s not a surprise that they have become popular. Can you do something similar? (I don’t mean similar to the Plain English series; I mean similar in a creative reinterpretation of something well known).

Making the right investments

Even if you’re on a tight budget and/or a tight production schedule, just go with the talking head format – either an informal hold-the-camera-yourself style or a newscaster style. It’s simple, direct, it connects the audience with you, and it doesn’t require a lot of elaborate set-up.

Depending on your format, you might need a set. I know of one popular video marketer who has turned a spare bedroom of his house into a set. If you’re really serious about producing fairly high quality content, and if your video format requires it, use a spare room as your set and put foam around the walls. Paint one wall as a background. Create a bit of stage and add lighting. This doesn’t have to be expensive but the more professional you want to seem, the more you’ll need to invest. At the very least, and I can’t stress this enough, get yourself a half-decent camera with a microphone.

Beginning production and creating video content

Once you have your format chosen, create a “production calendar” just as you would create a publishing calendar for a blog or for article marketing. Select the topics that you are going to speak about. Don’t just sit down and film whatever comes to you because that is going to drive your audience crazy and then it will drive them away. You can be informal and even seem unscripted while still sticking to a point.

As you create content for your video, consider how it fits with the rest of your online marketing. For example, if you blog short snippets of insight, maybe your video offers longer versions of the same thought. Or maybe your website seems really impersonal and you want to have a bit more of a personal touch so your video is an interview format where you and a guest sit in armchairs and chat with each other.

Figure out what you want to say and consider writing out a script and practicing it first. (Don’t read it onscreen and don’t memorize and deliver it verbatim from memory, but get comfortable with it). If you need some visual cues while you are filming, consider writing out bullet points on a big piece of posterboard, but be careful that your eyes don’t track across the sentence while you’re speaking. While writing your script, start with a basic opening that introduces you and tells people who you are and what the video is about. Then do the main portion of your video. Then close quickly. You’ll want to give a really quick one-sentence introduction and/or bio in every video because videos can often be shared or embedded so they don’t have the context of other videos to help people know who you are.

Getting your ideas into video

Once you’ve written your script and gotten comfortable with it, practice a couple of times in front of the camera as if you were filming. When you’re ready to film, have someone help you by holding the camera, zooming in and out, and pressing the record button. Then do a couple of takes. Maybe do two takes entirely close up and two or three takes from a distance, splicing your takes together to create the best finished copy. That way, you can cut back and forth to keep the visual a little more engaging.

As for any post-production editing, there isn’t much for me to tell you because it depends on the camera you’re using and your budget and the format of video (some video won’t require any post-production and others will require a lot). I would encourage you to first figure out what kind of format you want and let that influence what kind of camera to buy and let that influence what kind of editing software you use.

Getting your video online

When you post it on YouTube, you can just post it in the general content but as a user you get your own “channel” and you should run with that idea. Don’t just think of it as your user account but your channel, like a specialty channel on cable TV. A YouTube channel is a dedicated place where you can upload your own videos and do some minor styling and branding. You may recall that I gave you a video last week of Chris Brogan (one of the talking head examples). He has his own channel on YouTube.

I like this method for people who are serious about marketing their business with online video because it gives you a central, brandable place to put your content and it’s almost like a blog where followers will click back to regularly to see your latest video.

General recommendations

• Don’t worry if you don’t have a high budget. You can still produce good video. However, in setting your budget and in planning your expenditures, don’t scrimp on the camera equipment. Get a good quality camera and a microphone. And, to reduce the echo that you frequently get in amateur video, get a lapel microphone and consider creating a studio out of a spare room or closet by putting foam around the walls and reducing the sound-reflecting surfaces.

• If you add sound or images, be careful about copyright infringement. YouTube is under a lot of political and social pressure to monitor copyright closely and it is not unusual for a video to be pulled for infringing on someone else’s copyright. If you’re going to have a soundtrack (which is a good idea), consider buying an inexpensive audio file from a site like Royalty Free Music as your soundtrack.

• It’s a good use of your time to write a few videos, film them at once, and publish them over time. The reason I suggest this is because you’ll minimize your set-up/tear-down time and your preparation time, and I think there’s some value that comes from being in the mindset of filming.

• Comments can be a tricky. They are a way for people to interact with your video, which is good. However, they can attract a lot of less-savory interaction (and, for some reason, YouTube comments tend to attract more than blogs and I’m not sure why that is). You can turn off comments so that might be something to consider. It really depends on your brand. If you don’t care, or if you thrive on a little controversy, then let the comments roll in!

And now, the big question you might be asking:

“How does this only take ten minutes?”

Well, from end-to-end it takes more than ten minutes. But, I think you can divide the effort up easily into 10 minute segments: Give ten minutes for writing a 1-2 minute video. Give ten minutes for practicing it. And give ten minutes to do a couple of takes.

Video marketing is not for everyone. It can be a lot of work to set up (depending on the format you choose) and it can cost money (depending on the level of quality you want and whether your format needs a set) and it can cost a lot of money (if your format requires a lot of set-up or excessive post-production). But it doesn’t have to be. It can be affordable, fast, a lot of fun, and very, very effective.

Related posts:

1. Growing Your Business with YouTube in Just Ten Minutes! – Part1
2. Training Others in Just Ten Minutes a Day so You Can Free Your Time and Grow Your Business
3. Running a Fan-Attracting Facebook Page in 10 Minutes a Day

I showed you how to select a keyword rich, search engine friendly domain name and how to select a content management system that you can use to add content. And, I showed you how to create a plan that you can use to add content to your site.

In this article, the last article on the topic of informational sites, I’m going to fill in some final gaps so you can create information sites that are successful and can help grow your business over the long term. This issue is very much a “pick up the pieces” type of issue where I tie up some loose ends so that you have everything you need.

Your niche

When you are creating your niche, work hard to narrow it down to a tightly defined group. Here’s the tricky part: You need to narrow it down so that the group is focused enough to be able to be targeted appropriately, but you need it to still be a large enough group that there will be a consistent supply of content about that topic.

I can’t give you an exact description of how narrowly to define your target market, but I’ve found this rule of thumb to be helpful: If there’s a magazine published for that group of people then it’s about the right size for you. Find a list of trade journals and publications for your niche to see if it has a group large enough to merit having a magazine. If it does, you’re on track. To give you an example, if you are creating an information site for people who knit with blue yarn, you’ve probably narrowed the field too much. But if you are creating an information site for people who knit, you’re good!

Building a following

The marketing you do drives people to your site but ultimately you want those people to come back again and again and to see you as an expert so that they will contact you to buy from you. So, once you have people on your site, you want to create a following of those people to entice them to take an interest in what you have to say. There are a few ways to do this:

• Invite them to leave comments and then interact with those comments (in a positive way, of course!)

• Invite them to have their name posted on the website in the blogroll to link back to their site. That will give them a sense of ownership over the site.

• Invite them to submit guest articles to your blog. This eases the burden of writing off of your shoulders and broadens the “voice” of the blog. It also encourages more backlinking because they will likely link to your blog after that.

• Make sure you offer RSS feeds. Many blogging platforms will do this automatically for you.

• You might also want to offer a newsletter or ezine. This helps to create an audience of pre-qualified contacts (prospects!) but it also means a lot of extra work and expense for you so make sure it’s worth it before you put in all the effort.

Obviously, you will want to link back to your business’ website so that your newly generated traffic (who respects you!) can find you.

More search engine optimization

I mentioned that these sites are search engine friendly, partly because of their informational (non-commercial) nature and partly because of the keyword domain name. But there are other ways that you should optimize the site for search engines:

• Make sure that you have at least one keyword in every title.

• Throughout each blog include subheadings and make sure that each one contains a keyword.

• Add tags and categories and make sure they are keywords.

• Aim to write naturally and then go back after and add a couple more keywords throughout the content. A keyword density of 4% is an ideal density but it’s not very readable for humans so if you write first and add a couple keywords after, you’ll probably end up with 2% or 3% which will be good.

• Link to previous blog posts you’ve written (this is called “internal linking”).

• Make sure the links, alt-tags, and anchor text for other parts of your blog (such as graphics, outgoing links, etc.) contain the keywords you want to hit.

Writing content

The content you create needs to be helpful to your readers. That’s the only way they will come back again for more. That doesn’t mean it has to be long but it should be long enough to provide value. Aim for every article to be between 250 and 1000 words. It can vary in length, depending on the subject matter. If you have a choice, you may find it easier and more effective to write five 250 word articles – one every weekday. That will ensure rich content for your clients and can help you to stay motivated through the process without taking up too much of your time.

Some bloggers take the easy way out and just republish articles that were posted on other article distribution sites. Google may “punish” your site for doing that, though, because they are working hard at addressing issues of duplicate content.

If you start running out of ideas, ask your audience what they want to read about!

One trick that works really well

One trick that I’ve found can work well to create a consistent attraction to your site is to release regular reports. Make these brief, downloadable pdf files. They don’t have to be long and you don’t have to publish them really frequently. But a five page report every quarter should be sufficient. Choose a topic that is of interest to your audience and explore it in-depth, offering advice and some valuable ideas, and perhaps linking back to your blog. Not only are pdf’s indexable by search engines, they also help to contribute to your credibility.

Two success tips

Success Tip # 1: Start and don’t stop. Your information site can do really well if you work hard at it and don’t give up. And, the longer it remains online and the more valuable content that gets added, the more successful it becomes and each success grows upon the next. The secret, though, is not to give up!

Success Tip # 2: Once you have some momentum with your first site, start up a second one. Run that one in much the same way. Over time, that one will gain its own momentum and then you can start a third… and a fourth… and a fifth… etc. Eventually, you may not need to market anywhere else because of the volume of customers that you get from your information sites.

Wrap-up

Information sites can offer you very good business growth opportunities. By following what you’ve learned in this Tips In Ten issue and the three issues that came before, you will have all the pieces you need to be successful. The only other thing you’ll need to do is mixing in diligent consistency!

Related posts:

1. Success with Informational Sites – Part 2
2. Success with Informational Sites – Part 3
3. Success with Informational Sites – Part 1

So, over the next 4 articles, you’ll read about information sites (some people refer to these as Content sites) and I will guide you step by step through the process of setting them up and succeeding with them. But first, I need to make sure we’re all on the same page so let’s start by talking about what they are and why they are important.

Informational sites are exactly what their name implies: Sites that are rich in information. In many cases, they are presented in the form of a blog (and that is how I tend to use them) or they contain other ways to communicate information, such as articles, reports, wikis, links to other sites, etc.

What separates information sites from other sites is that they don’t sell anything. They are information only: Just informative content as far as the eye can see! However, just because they have lots of content but don’t sell, don’t write them off as money-losing, time wasters. On the contrary! Information sites can generate you a lot of money and I will show you how.

Think of information sites as resource centers for a niche market to visit in order to get the information they want about a specific topic. They need to be rich in the subject matter that your audience is looking for.

So, the next big question you’re wondering is…

Why would I want an informational site?

Good question! And, if you’re not sure about informational sites in general then you might be wondering why you’d want to pour your efforts into a separate site… after all, why not just make your own business’ site an informational site, right?

Informational sites have some advantages over building a resource base on your own site:

• Informational sites give the appearance of being an unbiased resource center. In general, I’m sure that the information you provide would be unbiased, regardless of whether it’s on your site or on an informational site, but the customer’s perception can often be mistaken. They’ll think “of course the business is saying that; they’re trying to get me to buy something.” Even if it’s not true, that’s consumer psychology: They tend to trust more the information that seems “separate” from the business. So an informational site creates a “one step removed” site that makes it easy for you to provide information without seeming biased.

• Informational sites help to position you. Which business would you trust more: A business that sells something and that’s it, or a business that sells something AND selflessly provides a learning center? Of course the learning center business tends to be positioned as an expert (and therefore more trustworthy and able to command higher rates). But for reasons given in the previous bullet point, that needs to take place on a different site.

• Informational sites give you a “laboratory” where you can express your ideas and try out different things. Because of the volume of material you post, you can create content and try out different ideas and see how they are accepted. If you develop a great new coaching technique and all of your informational site readers love it, then maybe you can think about marketing it on its own. Or if your readers hate it, then you know that you should cut it out of your processes and move on. This laboratory helps you create and disseminate and test thought-leadership.

• Informational sites that have regular content also help you to generate an audience who might not normally follow a business’ site or blog but who do crave information. So, you get a bigger share of an audience.

• Informational sites are also very search engine friendly – for a few reasons that we’ll be talking about in upcoming Tips In Ten issues – so they help people to find “you” even if your own business’ website doesn’t turn up that well in search results.

For these reasons, informational sites are highly valuable assets that every business should own. But I would add yet another reason that informational sites are so valuable (but let me first clarify that this reason should NOT be your primary reason for starting an informational site, though it can be an important secondary reason):

• nformational sites can provide valuable ad revenue from people who click through ads placed on your informational site.

How should I start?

Here’s the process that I use when I begin an informational site:

1.    Start by thinking about who your target audience is for your business. Remember that whatever you decide to do for an informational site, you want it to be related to your business somehow because you are attracting your target audience so you can hopefully serve them some day and because this site can help to position you as an expert. (Besides, why would you want to split your focus between the subject matter of your business and some other subject matter? It’s less productive that way). So start by listing your target audience and try to narrow the niche to very specific audiences. For example, you might be a sales coach for small businesses but you can probably narrow it down further than that to “would-be entrepreneurs”, “MLM entrepreneurs”, “recent start-ups”, and “small businesses that are about 1 year old”. There, you’ve got 4 niches that you might want to consider creating informational s ites for.

2.    Once you’ve thought about your target audience, now it’s time to think about what information they are looking for. You want to find the “intersection” between what you do and what they need. Once you find that “intersection”, you’ll need to focus all of your content there. So, let’s say that you choose to start with an informational site for would-be entrepreneurs. The “intersection” between your business and their needs might include information about sales basics, the importance of sales to various aspects of the business, the sales process, etc. I would list as many topics as I could think of, aiming to have 100 or more topics. You might actually end up with a couple of different ideas for sites for a single niche. Just pick one and work on it first.

3.    Plan the format that you want to use. We’ll talk more about this in an upcoming Tips In Ten, but in general you need to decide if you are going to create a blog, a Squidoo lens, a site that is full of articles (but with a different structure than a blog), a wiki (which only you update), etc. There are lots of options and in an upcoming Tips In Ten I’ll talk about why I prefer blogs.

Okay, put your pens down! You’ve done enough for today. Watch for the next article of Tips In Ten when we talk further about informational sites and the business-building opportunity they provide you.

Related posts:

1. Success with Informational Sites – Part 2
2. Success with Informational Sites – Part 3
3. Success with Informational Sites – Part 4

I’ve recommended sites like Guru and Elance for this purpose. I like these sites because they provide business owners with an efficient way to get several quotes on their project at once. This is a good use of time and a great way to find the right freelancer at the right price. Of course, there are other sites out there (vWorker and Odesk come to mind) and these ideas apply to most of those sites, too.

In a previous Tips In Ten article, I listed a six step process that you could use to find freelancers or contractors to work on your projects. Step three was creating a request-for-proposal and I talked in more detail about that in the last issue. And that’s where we left off: You had taken ten minutes to post a project on Guru or Elance and proposals (or bids) were starting to come in.

In this article, I’ll talk about comparing proposals and sorting them to ultimately hire the right contractor.

In general, the early stage of finding the right contractor is basically a sorting stage. You’ll have a big list of freelancers who have submitted bids for your project and you need to sort them. The fastest way to start sorting them is into a “definitely no” pile and a “maybe” pile. If you do this electronically, you might be able to just delete the “no” people right away while you keep the “maybe” people.

And how do you choose the “definitely no” people to delete? My advice: Start by eliminating:

1.   People who clearly are not proposing a solution to your problem. Yes, you’ll get some people who will make you wonder: “Did they even read my proposal?”
2.   People whose lack of talent is apparent. This will be easy to spot: If they send you samples that are of extremely low quality, get rid of them.
3.   People with poor feedback. You should be able to see feedback that people have received. If they have bad overall feedback, get rid of them.

After you’ve done that, it’s now time to take that group of remaining “maybe” freelancers and cut them in half.

At this stage, people often look to price as a key indicator, especially if they have never worked with freelancers before. It seems to make sense because it’s an easy metric to observe. However, you’ll find that there is a broad range of talent and it doesn’t always mesh with price: You can find talented freelancers in a range of prices and you can find untalented ones in a range of prices. Automatically sorting by price (at this stage) is a mistake.

So, how do you cut that pool of “maybe” freelancers in half? I’d suggest this simple exercise, which you should do periodically throughout the proposal process: List the names of all of the “maybe” freelancers on a piece of a paper (or in an Excel spreadsheet) and then review their proposals against the following questions, awarding either a 1 or a 0 as a score for each question:

1.    Do they show that they understand the project and have the expertise and samples to back it up?
2.    Do they make proactive recommendations or provide guarantees? (Good professionals will provide these things).
3.    Can they communicate in a way that you understand and can work with?
4.    Do they provide clear financial AND timeline parameters?
5.    Do they fit with your financial AND/OR timeline requests?

You’ll notice that question 4 and question 5 are similar. This is why you need to ask both: Question 4 makes sure that the freelancer understands, communicates, and commits to both financial and timeline parameters. Question 5 compares their view of the project with your own. (It’s possible that you have under-estimated or over-estimated the budget or timeline).

So, by assigning a simple 1 or 0 to each question for each of your professionals, you’ll get stellar rockstars who have scores of five and you’ll find a bunch of mismatches who have scores of zero… and a bunch of freelancers in between. This will make it really easy to eliminate half or more of your freelancers. (I’d suggest that you eliminate any freelancer who scores three or less. If you’re still left with a whole bunch, then eliminate any freelancer who scores four or less. And there’s a very good chance that you’ll end up picking someone who scores four or five out of five on this list.

If your project’s proposal acceptance period has expired then you should have a small pool to draw from. (That’s why doing the above exercise periodically throughout the process will help you to manage the amount of time you spend sorting the professionals).

I keep saying that price shouldn’t be used as a sorting tool, but you will at some point need to think about price. I believe it’s better to do it towards the end, once you have a list of freelancers culled down to a few. But even then, don’t make your decision based on price alone. Instead, make your decision based on the balance between price and return on investment. You might find that one price will give you one level of return but a slightly higher price can give you a disproportionately higher return. In that case, you’ll want to revisit your budget and see if you can rework something to get the return that is better.

As you narrow the field, contact the freelancers and let them know that they are on a short-list and then give them an approximate date that you will have reached a decision. Do not invite them to do anything else to further compete. Just thank them for bidding and give them the brief heads-up. This will do two things:

1.    It will make sure that they set aside the time. Freelancers who are busy will appreciate the notice. (This can help to make sure your project gets started sooner and completed on time).
2.    It will also help you to identify really good professionals who might sweeten the deal or offer additional resources or information for you. (By letting them be proactive, you’ll see who from among your shortlist most wants to work with you).

By using this simple sorting method, it is possible to find the ideal freelancer in less than ten minutes a day.

Bonus Tips:

• Once you know who your freelancer is, give them a timeline to start. Many projects are awarded but never get past that stage so your chosen contractor will be more prepared when you give them a timeline.
• Stay in touch with your contractor. Make sure that they are equipped with all of the information they need to do the job.
• Treat the freelancer professionally and courteously.
• Provide constructive criticism during the review stage. This is far more helpful than “looks good” or “needs work”.
• When the project is complete, pay them promptly and leave feedback.

Some freelancers or contractors might seem like order-takers who simply do the work you need them to do when you need them to do it. Sometimes these freelancers are the kind we want. However, if you find the right freelancer who is a proactive partner, and you treat them as a professional colleague, you will get higher quality work and a long-term peer who truly wants to see your business do well. When they understand your business goals, they can provide a more valuable contribution to your business.

Related posts:

1. Creating Requests of Proposals that Get Results…
2. How to Hire Freelancers and Contractors in 10 Minutes a Day
3. Successful Business Proposals in Just Ten Minutes a Day

Sometimes that audience is made up of loyal visitors to your blog. They’ve bookmarked your blog and they visit everyday or read your RSS feed to see what you have to say. Sometimes that audience is made up of newsletter subscribers: They’ve left their email address in the hopes that you send them high value content on a regular basis.

There are plenty of tools and resources to help you create the infrastructure to communicate with that audience, whether through blogs or newsletters (or many other ways). In fact, in previous Tips In Ten articles, we’ve talked about those very things: I’ve shown you how to create regular blog content. And, I’ve shown you different autoresponder tools you can use to upload content and distribute it to your audience.

But the question is often asked: How do I get an audience?

You might have great information on your website. And you might have the audience-capturing and audience-communicating infrastructure already set up. But you need eyeballs! You need email addresses. You need people reading your content and thinking about you as the expert.

So how do you get that audience?

Well, as you can tell by the title of this issue, I think you need more than an audience. I think you need a fanbase. I’ve seen people generate an audience: I’m sure we’ve all received email and snail mail that seemed unsolicited and turned out that our email address or postal address were sold to someone. In other words, we were an audience but an unwilling one.

I think you need a fanbase: Where every audience member (whether they click to your blog or they read your content in an RSS feeder or they see your newsletter in their inbox) is a fan. Someone who has sought you out.

These fans are the most loyal of audiences because they appreciate what you have to say and they respond with purchases or referrals.

So, how can you create a fanbase in 10 minutes a day? It IS possible. And before I tell you, I want to reference someone who has a similar idea: Gary Vaynerchuk. If you’ve never heard of him, I’ll give you a short bio: Gary Vaynerchuk owned a wine store in New Jersey. He wanted to build his brand so he started creating video blogs showing his unconventional wine tasting. They are compelling, and if you ever get a chance to view one or two, you should. You can see them at http://tv.winelibrary.com.

Using a very similar method to what I’m about to describe here, he built up his reputation and now is a noted author, speaker, and a go-to authority on branding and on wine.

To build up a fanbase, here’s what you do:

First, find relevant sites. Relevant sites include blogs, forums, Facebook fan pages, and Twitter accounts that are somehow connected to your business or industry. So, for example, when I do this, I would look for blogs, forums, fan pages, or twitter users who were in the small business, entrepreneur, coach, and freelancer segments. When Gary Vaynerchuk does this, he looks for blogs, forums, and fan pages on wine.

Second, I would go there and leave comments, participate in discussion, follow, friend, tweet, talk, converse. I would say things that were relevant (and NOT self-promotional). For example, if I found a blog post that talked about productivity, I would comment with something like “that’s great. I’m going to implement that suggestion” or “you’re exactly right with your idea, I’ve been doing something similar for years” or “Thanks for the tip. I’d also recommend…”

Vaynerchuk says (in a video that I will link to shortly) that he would go to a Facebook fan page about merlot and comment with something like the name of his favorite merlot.

The idea here is not to blatantly self-promote but rather to engage the writer and his or her audience and participate with them. You can sign your name and leave your website address but don’t overload your comment with self-promoting content.

Third, I would repeat this process. I would do it again tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the day after that. Ten minutes a day, each and every day. I would keep finding relevant sites and I would keep commenting and participating.

Here’s what will happen: Occasionally, someone will click on your link. They’ll read what you have to say. They’ll become a fan. Then someone else will do the same. And so on. Those occasional people will build up. Over time, you’ll pick up a following; a fanbase.

I love how Vaynerchuk says it in this video, so check it out for yourself: It takes 2 cents to GROW a wine show. (Note: I’m not sure why he’s filming this one from his bathroom, but the content is good even if the setting is weirdly irrelevant).

In one area where I don’t necessarily agree with Vaynerchuk is in the time this takes. He suggests hours. I think that’s a great idea but I don’t know many businesses where that kind of time is feasible to spend. Quite simply, we need to grow our business but we don’t have hours to spend doing what I’m about to describe. Unless you outsource some of it, you need to find the time to do it and I believe you can do it in ten minutes. Of course, if you have hours to accomplish what I and Vaynerchuk are suggesting, by all means spend the time. But if you only have ten minutes (as most of us do), then use those ten minutes wisely.

That’s it! That’s all you need to do. And it works. I can attest to its success and certainly the infamous Gary Vaynerchuk can as well. If you have hours to spend leaving your two cents on related sites around the web, then by all means do so. But if you are busy (as many of us are) and you only have ten minutes a day, start there. That should give you enough time to read and comment on 2 or 3 blogs or Facebook fan pages. And if you only do 2 a day from Monday to Friday, you’ll have commented on 10 by the end of the week and about 5,200 by the end of the year! That will have a big impact! If even 1% of those people become fans, that’s 52 more people by the end of the year.

A couple other things to note:

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a few other important elements: I believe you need two other things here in order for this to be successful:

• First, you need good content to drive people to. If you’re going to entice people to your site/blog/whatever, you need to deliver with good content. This might mean hiring a writer if you don’t have the time or skill to create the content yourself, or hiring an editor if you have the time to put something together but you don’t have the time to polish it.

• Second, you need to have the infrastructure set up to “lock in” your fanbase. This might mean regular posts on your blog. Or, it might mean that you have some RSS functionality. Or it might mean that you have a subscription newsletter. Whatever you do to engage your audience, you need to be able to deliver on that engagement consistently.

Ten minutes a day for a fanbase? It IS possible. Start today and build your fanbase!

Related posts:

1. Comments and How They can Make You More Successful (In Just 10 Minutes) – Part 2
2. Building and Maintaining a Compelling Website in Just 10 Minutes a Day
3. The Power of a List: Part 1