The Hartsock Agency

If you’ve not yet put a blog on your business website you’re missing out on an amazing opportunity for highlighting your business, connecting with peers, partners and potential customers and tapping into the power of search engine optimization.

There are a number of outstanding corporate blogs and I wanted to list some important things that your company blog should have as well.

Ten Things Your Corporate Blog Should Have:

1. Transparency

2. Ongoing and engaging blog posts

3. Edu-focused content that helps your readers understand the vertical you’re working in

4. Thought-leadership blog posts to help your company grow to expert status

5. Reflections and your take on the news in your industry and how it impacts your market

6. Links to other blogs that are helpful to your readership

7. Strong blogroll that is both strategic and resource-based for your readers

8. Updated blog posts at least three times weekly

9. All your social media profile addresses - Twitter, LinkedIn.com, Facebook.com, YouTube.com

10. Questions in your blog posts to engage your readers to comment

That’s a good start!

I’m so glad to be a part of this amazing group of folks and note that the “Age of Conversation 2: Why They Don’t Get It” is still available for purchase! All the proceeds go to Variety, the Children’s Charity and what a wondrous group of extraordinary creatives, marketers, bloggers, storytellers have been amassed in this book.

Featuring over 300 authors from over 15 countries, there are 3 versions for sale: hardback, paperback and ebook. I recommend you buy one for yourself and one for a friend!

The AOC2 book tackles these categories:

Manifestos
Keeping Secrets in the Age of Conversation
Moving from Conversation to Action
The Accidental Marketer
A New Brand of Creative
My Marketing Tragedy
Business Model Evolution
Life in the Conversation Age

This book like the first, Age of Conversation was created completely through virtual collaboration.

My essay is titled, “Post Traumatic Skype Disorder: There Goes Mommy Twittering Again.” I cannot recommend this book highly enough as a resource and inspiration for all that is Web 2.0.

And here is a the whole list of authors, and next year I’m sure the group will continue to grow! Join the fun and buy the book!

Superb article in BtoB Magazine in regard to the new opportunities we have in video marketing online.

Show me your garden, and I shall tell you what you are.” (Alfred Austin)

 We’ve all seen the commercials urging us to buy a Chia Pet, the low cost alternative to actually going outdoors to watch something…anything grow. And who amongst us has not  lovingly admired our own bear Chia pet and how quickly it sprouted?

My, my, no time at all and you have the whole pet covered in bright green tiny leaves. Oh the happiness and instant green-gratification of my little bear Chia pet. Which just as quickly dies in the next two weeks no matter what the watering, praying, or even a lighting of the Patron Saints of Plants candle.

What’s a Chia Pet have to do with social media? A lot more than you might think. The bigger the corporation, the more the Chia Pet mentality comes into play.

With bottom lines shrinking and pressure to be the next YouTube 50 million views breakthrough, the more the pressure for producing quick growth, beautiful sprouts and bounties of Chia Pet revelers to comment on how wonderful and unique your Chia Pet is over all the others out there.

Here’s the real truth. Social media initiatives are not Chia Pets. They don’t grow that easily, they don’t sprout all over that quickly at the onset, and they aren’t in a perfect shape of a bear, ram or even an Obama. The good news is they also don’t wilt after two weeks never to sprout again. If you plant the seeds correctly your social media initiatives will live on as perennials, one might even say as wildflower perennials.

The challenge lies in getting your team of marketing gardeners to understand that social media has to have time to really take root.

Here are some tips to good rooting:

1. Find the sunniest spot (or the best product attributes), and foster the growth of your wildflower perennials (products, services, software.)

2. Don’t over-fertilize the garden. (No bullshit allowed in this ‘long-tail’ garden.)

3. Don’t overwater it, or protect it too much from the outside community.

4. Don’t put a gate on it that has a combination so only a few can view the highest blooms. 

5. Keep your soil fine-tuned (rake out all the marketing speak and keep the soil deep and real.)

6. Open your perennial garden up to anyone and let them offer insight, tips and their seeds along with yours. Let them help water your perennials.

Make your social media initiatives such that people feel as if they’ve absorbed them through the Cosmos (defined as “the biggest tree in existence.”)

Chia Pets, according to the commercial, grow in just two weeks. Social media initiatives take months to plan and months to bloom.

Wildflowers just like strong social media plans take seeding in all types of climates, locations and weather. Social media initiatives take seeding in Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, online communities, forums, and blogs.

Wildflowers bloom despite the wind, rain, sun, and temperature. The California Poppy, The Purple Coneflower or even the Bluebonnet find their way along the highways and byways across the world. Good social media initiatives seed and bloom as well along the World Wide Web-way.

Social media lets us slowly and transparently grow our garden, in this highly over-Webbed world, and proudly see our perennial seeds root by correctly utilizing all the Web 2.0 opportunities that exist. 

Interesting article on how Facebook is having a bit of a stumble in terms of all the changes it’s making to keep up with Twitter and some of the other social media sites.