Standing Out

I was inspired to write this after I read and commented on VagabondetteVA’s 6 Things That Will Make Me Leave Your Blog post on May 23. Rather than talk about the things you shouldn’t do (she’s covered them), I figured I would give you some great blogging tips - what you should do - to increase visitors and rank.

There are so many ways a blog can help you create awareness about your cause, service offering or product but it’s important to pay attention to the mechanics - the ins and outs of your blog - otherwise you won’t reach your target market and ultimately your time will be wasted. A blog is not a diary; it’s meant to be shared with someone other than yourself!

Yesterday was this blog’s best day ever with the “Ning.com” post. I already had in mind some great blogging tips I liked to follow, but yesterday’s stats reaction sparked a couple more. So here are some blogging tips you can use to increase visitors and rank.

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Well, well, well! It’s about time that my good friend & SUCCESSFUL serial entrepreneur joined the blog community and graced us with his experience, insight and tidbits of good advice.

Leexan Hong (friends call him Xan) is president of CTE Healthcare Communications (formerly X-Marketing), based in Philadelphia. Xan’s blog, My Life as an Entrepreneur, is located at http://blog.leexanhog.com and is also listed on my Blogroll.

Xan is a self-described “serial entrepreneur” but I need to clarify that he is actually successful. That is key - it’s quite possible to be a serial entrepreneur without actually accomplishing anything (some of us are still in the process of “success” - aren’t we always?) He successfully started his own marketing firm (which was initially out of his home) and eventually grew and transformed that into now what is CTE Healthcare Communications. He’s also successful in real estate among other things. I’ll let you read Xan’s story for yourself.

Welcome to the blog club, Xan! And a thousand congrats on the launch of CTE!!

Cheers,

Tia, All American Admin
Join my Biznik Network!

About CTE Healthcare Communications: CTE develops and facilitates patient, patient advocate and caregiver education workshops. CTE works in partnership with a number of organizations to educate patients and caregivers about various medical conditions in order to achieve treatment goals, and to empower and encourage patients to continue treatment. (Adapted from CTE website. Learn more here.)

So I followed Andy Sernovitz’s advice (admittedly, I followed it partially) and I have to say that I did not get addicted to Twitter, and so now I will officially become a Twitter Quitter. The only part of the advice I admittedly didn’t follow was to “follow” as many people on Twitter as I could. I just didn’t have the time (or inclination) to go through people’s profiles and find others to follow. Too tiring!

Here’s what I discovered: keeping up with the social media crowd is exhausting! This is a lot to ask of any small business owner. As a means of marketing your business or getting the word out, trying to do the social media thing is just beyond me. I use MySpace and Facebook for FRIENDS, and the nice thing about it is that if I don’t log on for a few days, no biggie. My friends have plenty to do besides just listening to me rant or rave about something new. Adding the blog has been great - I’ve expanded my circle of influence and I’ve also gotten a lot more hits to my business website. But beyond the blog and my other marketing methods, and actually doing work for clients, I was tiring myself out trying to figure out how to make Twitter worth it for me.

I also discovered that Twitter simply takes too much time! Yes, they’ve made it more convenient with a feature that lets you text your little updates to Twitter, rather than logging into the website and updating it there, BUT, convenient though it may be, it is not less time-consuming.

So, being the generalizing woman that I am, I am going to go out on a limb and say that social media works for social media gurus and junkies. They have the perfect audience: other social media gurus and junkies. And it also works for people like Andy Sernovitz (who I love) and Seth Godin (who I also love… “marketing-threesome”, maybe? ;-), who are definitely considered experts in their field and who had a huge following before Twitter was even conceived. Twitter also works for people who enjoy reading the little updates of random people they don’t know, OR, who simply enjoying updating people they don’t know about their own random thoughts. Twitter is also popular with the TED crowd. I had never even heard of TED until I joined Twitter.

There are some things to be thankful for. Here is the list.

Thank you, Twitter, for…

1. Introducing me to TED. Very cool.
2. Making me feel proud that Andy Sernovitz became a follower of mine. That, really, was my only goal.
3. Giving me exposure to another very popular social media tool.
4. Aiding in the realization that social media tools aren’t part of my ideal marketing cuisine.

Cheers, folks! Have a great day! By the way, if you haven’t checked out Twitter, check it out! Seriously, you should try it. You might learn something new like I did!

Tia

(I’m also done with Blogjet…but that’s for another blog)