Blog/Social Media Blending for Business, Part 1: Research

August 31st, 2009 by Easton Ellsworth

Are you wondering how to improve your business by combining your blog and your other social media/social networking assets (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)?

Here’s Part 1 of a series on how to blend blogs and other social media tools for professional success. Subscribe now so you don’t miss upcoming articles.

The Problem: A Cluttered Social Media Landscape

And one that is always changing.

For example, TechCrunch has a fascinating article on why teenagers don’t use Twitter. A survey polled approximately 10,000 teens and it boils down to this: Today’s hyperconnected teen already has MySpace, Facebook and text messaging to communicate with the world around them – so she thinks, why clutter my personal social media landscape any more with Twitter?

I thought you might get a kick out of the most popular reason why teens say they don’t use Twitter: “It’s lame.” (Followed by “My friends don’t use it” and “I don’t understand it.)

Not understanding something like that is clutter. Not knowing where it will be tomorrow is clutter. The fact that there are 13 zillion “social media sites” online is clutter.

The Solution: A Simplified, Head-Screwed-On-Straight, Blend-Friendly Approach to Blogging/Social Media

Do you have a blender at home?

Don’t worry, this isn’t a Blendtec pitch.

What do you do with a blender?

Exactly, you blend things. (I know! Strange.)

So if we’re talking about blending blogs and other social media stuff, what’s your blender for this task?

Simple. Your blender is your brain.

I’ve argued before that your blog community is a matter of the mind – that it doesn’t really exist anywhere except inside human noggins (which therefore makes this whole discussion extremely important). Here, it’s the same principle. You figure out what on earth to do with all of your different social media/networking/discovery/sharing accounts by … gasp … thinking about them.

Okay, not just thinking about them. You’ve got to really dig deep and compare the properties of each tool with what you already know about your business based on your brand statement, your mission statement, your experience, etc. We’ll have to cover this in more detail in a future article.

The other thing you have to do is decide to be blend-friendly. Don’t keep your blog/social media blender (your brain) hidden in the back of that cupboard next to the dishwasher, stuck behind an old toaster and under a bunch of napkins. Pull the sucker out and use it. What thrilling combinations can you create? Ask those tough “What if?” questions.

Throughout this series, we’ll talk about how to actually blend Facebook with LinkedIn, Twitter with MySpace, YouTube with Flickr, your blog with everything else – you get the idea. But first I wanted to establish this key idea that you have to first be willing and anxious to spend some time pondering how you’re going to do all this in a way that makes sense based on your existing business situation and values.

How to Conduct Research to Decide on the Best Combination of Blogs and Other Social Media in Your Marketing Strategy

Over the past several weeks I’ve been working with a software startup company called Clickety-Split. Excellent team, run by a great guy I’ve worked for before, Hal Halladay. Anyway, we’ve had the opportunity to use our social media thinking caps – our mental blenders – to come up with some foundational ideas that will guide us through the next several months or even years as we decide how to convert our overall strategy for social media into tactics that make sense for the business in the long run.

Here’s the research model I recommend:

Step 1: Consider Your Core Business Problems and How Social Media Can Soothe Them

No, not that dentist appointment tomorrow. I mean your organization’s problems, challenges. How could social media on the emerging Web solve them or help to solve them?

Ask that question first and you’ll have a much easier time avoiding the flawed mentality of, “Well, everybody else seems to be setting up a Widgetybook or a FlickTuber so we probably need one pronto.” Bah. Just because the company down the street, or a hundred companies in your niche are doing something online, doesn’t mean you have to.

Of course you should pay attention. Watch competitors like a hawk. But always go back to this: What challenges does your company have that you’d like to look into solving via social media tools?

Step 2: Consider the Wants and Needs of Your Customers and Potential Fans and How Social Media Can Galvanize Them

Now that you’ve thought about your business and how it would make sense to use social media to meet its challenges, it’s time to meditate about what the rest of the world would love to see.

First, think about your customers or supporters – what is it they really want from you? How often do they like to talk to you? Where do they go online to hang out? What wants and needs of theirs could you meet via social media (that you couldn’t meet as effectively via any other means, or as cheaply)?

Second, think about the rest of the world – your potential fans. What would they respond well to if they came across it in, say, Facebook? What would set their hearts on fire? How could you get them to love the bejeebers out of your business with social media?

Step 3: Consider the Social Media Tools Themselves and All Their Different Possible Combinations

Picture this.

You have a big desk. It’s completely empty on top – no papers, no computer, nothing.

You have a big list of social media tools and thingies. Each one is a little object, a Monopoly piece if you will. The Twitter bird, the Facebook book, the YouTube TV set, whatever. Dump ‘em out on the desk.

Now look a bit closer. These Monopoly pieces are actually more like Legos. They’ve got little knobs and dimples on them.

You know what comes next, right? Start sticking them together. See what happens. See what beasts you can assemble.

Now this is all in your mind, of course. But have some fun and get creative. Given what you already know that you’ve figured out in Step 1 and Step 2 of this exercise, what combinations seem to make the most sense – again, for your business?

For example, you may find that a lot of your customers spend hours every day on Facebook. And maybe you’ve set up a company blog and a Facebook account. Couldn’t you stick those two pieces together somehow so that you can efficiently interact with your customers on Facebook while driving them all the time to your blog, and vice versa? And couldn’t you figure out a way to harness the combined power of both to generate more sales, more positive impressions of your company, more understanding of what your company really does and how people could get involved in its initiatives?

Maybe you could. Maybe you couldn’t. It depends on what your organization is like. But there you have it.

One last point in this step: Consider not just binary combinations, but also power combos. Facebook + blog is fun to think about, right? Okay, but what about Facebook + YouTube + Twitter? What about all of those + blog + 3 other blogs you haven’t even dreamed of yet?

Step 4: Consider – Okay, Stop Considering … Go Find Out What Internet Users Are Saying and What They’re Actually Doing

There are two ways to do this last chunk of the research leg of your journey to blended social media nirvana. They’re not mutually exclusive and yes, you should absolutely do them both all you can.

First, ask them yourself. You already know how to do this. Just ask people. Pick up the phone. Walk down the street with a stack of papers and some pencils. Knock doors. Send out emails. Set up a SurveyMonkey survey. Get as many opinions as you can about how people connect to the social Web.

Second, spy the heck out of them (and I mean that in the most harmless, innocent way possible). Don’t skip the first part just to get to this, but definitely do your share of espionage. Did you bother reading those survey results that your competitor just published? Are you watching for mentions of certain keywords in the blogosphere and on Twitter and in the online news, etc.? Are you frequenting popular forums to see what threads are getting the most attention?

In other words, are you doing all you can to find out exactly what people really want and how you can supply that with your business?

Visionary Blogging Resources to Help You Make Your Combined Blog/Social Media Efforts More Successful

Note: When I say “blog/social media,” I mean two things that intersect, not two separate things. Brian Clark at Copyblogger would agree that blogs are a form of social media.

• Join VB Pro to get personal help with all of this stuff I’ve just talked about
• 50 Ways to Mix Your Blog and Twitter
• 25 Ways to Mix Your Blog and Facebook
• Course: Advanced Social Media Strategy and Tactics

images: caruba, woodleywonderworks

Coming Soon: Blog/Social Media Blending for Business, Parts 2-5

See the VB Calendar page for details on upcoming articles at Visionary Blogging. Feel free to make any suggestions or ask questions there or in the comments following this post and I will answer them as we go through this week!

Thank you so much for your support of this website and this growing community!

Any links or insights to share?

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