What is this amazing tool?  It’s Twitter.  Within a short time of being an active Twitter user, you’ll begin to see the word “Lists” in the upper right hand corner of your Twitter profile, right next to Followers and Following.  Lists is a clickable link.  Click on it and you’ll see how your Followers have categorized you.  You’ll see their Twitter name and what they named the list to which they added your Twitter name.

The bulk of the lists I’ve been added to seem to be Authors, Marketing, Social Media, Peeps to Follow.  I’m pleased that my brand message has been consistent and clear.  If the lists had been Rockstar, Pastry Chefs, travel agents; then I’d have had some work to do in focusing my brand message to attract the following I desire.

Once you check Twitter Lists to see how your followers perceive your brand, take some time to interact with those Twitter followers who took the time to put you on a list.  Go to the profiles of two or three each day.  Read a few of their most recent posts.  Comment, add value and interact.  The chances are good that if they’re following you, then their followers might also be interested in you and you in them.

Twitter Lists are a great way to filter the noise of Twitter and find engaged, interested people who want to hear what you have to say.  Those lists are creating conversations about you!

Alisa has a gift for creating bestselling books.  She has ghostwritten and collaborated on six New York Times bestsellers. Her works have collectively sold more than 2 million copies.  A former magazine editor and newspaper reporter, Alisa has written for Better Homes & Gardens, Women’s Health and many other national magazines. The concept behind her blog, Project: Happily Ever After, won her a book deal with Running Press and her book will be published in January 2011.

Five Questions with Expert Alisa Bowman

Writer, Author, Blogger Alisa Bowman

RATZLAFF:

You have a well-read blog that you’ve been able to spin off into a book deal.  What’s different between blogging and crafting a book?

BOWMAN:

This will sound like a giant, “duh,” but a blog is the short form and a book is the long form. It’s similar to the difference between running a 5-K and running a marathon. For the former, you can probably run the race without any training. For the later, if you try to run it without training and preparation, you’ll end up in the medic tent.

But that’s what many bloggers try to do when they attempt to take the leap from blog to book. Thanks, in part, to online courses and workshops that encourage this, they mine everything from their blog, slap it all together in a logical order, and write a few transitions. Voila, they call this a book. While it might technically be a book — it has 60,000 words sandwiched between two covers — it’s not going to be a book that sells. The best books have a personality (a strong voice) and a hook. They can be summed up in one sentence (the so-called elevator pitch), and they fill a deep need in the reader. They solve a problem–whether that problem is boredom or the need for an escape (for novels and memoir) or something more physical (like diabetes), and they solve this problem in a unique, memorable way.

I have a ghost writing background, so I’ve written many more books than the one that is branded with my blog. (Notice, I said “branded” with the blog and not “based on” the blog). I’ve penned more than 30. For each one of them, I followed a similar process, and that process starts with studying the competition. When I was thinking about the Project: Happily Ever After memoir, I bought and read nearly every memoir that had ever been written. I studied them. I thought about what made some successful and others not so much. More important, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about how mine would be different. How would I tell a story about my marriage in a way that had never been told before? How would I address marriage in a new, refreshing way, one that would resonate with readers? What was the one sentence that would tie the entire book together, the one that I could say on TV, “This book tells the story of ….”? To distinguish Project: Happily Ever After from other relationship books, I wrote about topics that most people don’t write about. I wrote about how I was so unhappily married that I planned my husband’s funeral. I wrote about the fights we had over how to fold the laundry. I wrote about sex, and how I dreaded having it. More important, I wrote about embarrassing things: about the envy and jealousy I felt when my husband was unemployed, because, deep down, I wanted the opportunity to be the person on the recliner who watched TV all day long. In writing about all of that, it’s my hope that I created a book that stands out from the others on the shelf. I hope I wrote the first book that allows unhappily married people to feel normal. It’s also, as far as I know, the first relationship book that uses a true story as a parable that others can learn from, complete with tips and a marriage improvement guide at the end. Oh, and it has a happy ending. Oddly, that’s different, too. Most marriage memoirs either start or end with a divorce

RATZLAFF:

How did you grow your blog following from launch to the kind of following that was attractive to a book publisher?

BOWMAN:

In the beginning, I told all of my friends about it, and I begged them to read it. That didn’t work so well. So then got depressed. Then I obsessively checked my blog stats, as if doing so would somehow elevate them. That depressed me even more. Then I read about building a following and everything I read said the same thing: write good content and the following will come. I have to say that advice is pretty much spot on. The following doesn’t come overnight, mind you. There are some bloggers who go from zero to a million visitors in one year, and then there are the rest of us who capture a following slowly over time. But great content is definitely the most important part of the equation. You can’t write a half-assed blog (just as you can’t write a half-assed book). If you don’t put your heart and soul into it–if you are not absolutely passionate about it–potential readers will notice, and they will go elsewhere.

Other techniques that helped included:

• Hiring an SEO (search engine optimization) expert to help me make my blog more Google friendly
• Guest posting on larger blogs
• Getting quoted in the media. One quote in a CNN.com article about Jon and Kate sent 10,000 readers to my blog in just one day.
• Networking with other bloggers who have promoted my blog to their following, and I’ve done the same in return. I highly recommend blogging conferences, especially the smaller ones like Blissdom and Type A Mom. They allow you to meet other bloggers who will remember you–and who you will remember. These smaller conferences foster a true camaraderie.
• Writing somewhat viral “list” posts and promoting them through social networking

RATZLAFF:

How often do you post on your blog?

BOWMAN:

I used to try to post everyday, because I’d read somewhere that all good bloggers do that. You know what? I have a full-time freelance writing career and a family. Posting everyday did one thing: it burned me out. When you are burned out, you don’t produce good content. At least I sure don’t.

So now I try to post 2 to 3 times a week. Some weeks, I get on a roll and feel super inspired, so I post more often. But I don’t smack myself on the butt and force myself to post if I’m having a busy day or if I’m not feeling it. I give myself a break.

RATZLAFF:

What other activities do you engage in, online, to help your blog readership grow?

BOWMAN:

I have a strong Facebook presence. It could be stronger (I still don’t have a fan page!), but it has definitely allowed me to capture a secondary blog audience. I’ve friended just about everyone I’ve ever known: high school and college classmates, former co-workers, blogging buddies, fellow freelance writers, family members, friends, and people who I don’t really know but who are in the same networking groups I am. I also allow my blog readers to friend me. My blog feeds into Facebook, and this has allowed all of those contacts to stay up with my blog without going to it. It’s a softer sell than emailing my friends and asking them to check out my latest post. And now most of my friends do read my blog. More important, my fellow freelance writers generally keep me in mind when they are writing about sex and marriage, and they call me to get my take.

I’m also on Twitter, but as most people who follow me know, I’m quite sporadic about my presence there.

RATZLAFF:

What’s the #1 piece of advice you’d give to new bloggers?

BOWMAN:

I have three tips:

1. Be you. Too often people try to copy super successful blogs. This doesn’t work. You have something unique to offer the world. Find it and put it out there.
2. Be courageous: If a topic scares you, you should definitely write about it. We’re usually scared to write about our weaknesses and our failures, but other people love to read about those topics because it makes them feel stronger and more successful. If you don’t believe me, read Penelope Trunk for a while. She has a huge following, and it’s because she makes her life sound like a daily train wreck.
3. Be willing to break the rules: Be a nonconformist. No rule was made to be followed 100 percent of the time. For instance, people will tell you that blog posts should be short. You know what? My most popular post to date was 2000 words long. People will tell you that you should post every day. You know what? Tim Ferris only posts once a week and he has more than a million readers. People will tell you that you need to stick to your niche. You know what? Many successful bloggers don’t do this 100 percent of the time. Again, study Penelope Trunk. Her blog is supposed to be about career advice, but usually it’s about her screwed up relationship with this farmer she’s dating and sort of marrying but also sort of not marrying. (Yep, you’re so going over there now, aren’t you?)

I love hearing how writers are crafting a living from their talent and I hope these insights from Alisa are useful to you.  Be sure to visit Alisa on her blog, her Facebook profile, her website and her Twitter Account.  Say hi and let her know you met her here.  Alisa is a great example of a writer who knows how to Create Conversations about You!

Many business owners say they just don’t always know what to tweet about. I advise them to tweet about events they’re hosting, new products they’re launching, tips and strategies that will be useful to people in their industry and in general to talk to their customer on Twitter exactly the way they would in person. But even the most prolific among us can sometimes be at a loss for ideas. I’ve shared before that I subscribe to several great blogs and use some of those posts as tips to tweet out to my followers.

Another great idea comes from Mana Ionescu via Twitip. Because Tweets are short, they are often very similar to article headlines so an RSS feed may be the right solution for those who want to subscribe to tweets alongside their news and blogs in a reader such as Google Reader. Twitter has an RSS solution only for your Favorites, so here is a simple way to turn any Twitter list into an RSS feed for your favorite reader.

Follow these steps for a simple and quick solution:

1. Create a list of people you want to follow closely; people who regularly put out quality content that you often share with your friends and followers. For example I follow the Forbes.com list of the Top 30 Women Entrepreneurs to Follow on Twitter. You can create your own custom list or access an existing list. If you haven’t created a list before, look in the right column of your Twitter account and click “New list.” You’ll be prompted to name the list and then add peeps to the list.
2. Copy URL of list. Once you are viewing the list, copy the URL from your browser window.
3. Go to this simple set up page aptly called Twitterlist2RSS and follow the easy two step process to generate an RSS feed URL.
4. Copy the generated RSS URL from your browser window.
   
5. Paste that RSS URL into your favorite reader to create a subscription.

You’ll be able to browse your own custom list of influential tweets along side your favorite blogs and news headlines and have an unlimited source of great information to share with your friends and followers. By passing along valuable tips and techniques, you become a trusted resource and create conversations about you.

Guest Blogger, Bob Martin

A few weeks ago, the Eastern Pennsylvania Business Journal published an article from an experienced marketing and communications professional, offering a contrarian view of the rush to incorporate social media into business communications. The gist of the argument seemed to be that incorporating these new techniques and channels into your business’s marketing efforts offers no obvious, tangible benefits over those delivered by a traditional mix of marketing communications activities and media.

I respectfully disagree – and not just because of the increasing power of younger, more social media-oriented individuals in the customer and consumer pools. As someone who’s worked in media and business communications for more than two decades, I see a compelling philosophical reason for embracing the new social media in our efforts to reach and serve our customers.

Since the beginning of mass media, business communicators have struggled to overcome the technical limitations of traditional communication channels, as we work to make our message connect more effectively with target audiences. Today’s new social media channels – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs and the like – are game-changing advancements precisely because they’re breaking through those limitations, and creating a new, more effective business communications paradigm in the process.

Encouraging give and take during discussion, alternating the roles of messenger and receiver within the communication, adjusting your message on the fly based on the other party’s reactions – by enabling these actions, social media presents smart business communicators with something we’ve always wanted: a way to have an honest-to-goodness conversation with our audience.

Admittedly, this new conversation paradigm can be disorienting to traditional business communicators, because it adds a third dimension to our messaging – not brand to customer or customer to brand, but customer to customer ABOUT the brand, in which the communicator has to relinquish some measure of control over the message. For example, consumer products companies are realizing that relationships with influential bloggers can be excellent avenues to introduce new products, or emphasize features of existing ones, or just communicate their brand promise. But it comes at a cost: the power of the blogger can be directly related to their perceived independence from your influence, and you need that perception of independence to maximize the potential benefit of your relationship, so you accept the possibility of loss of some control over the message to the blogger and their audience.

Forward-thinking companies who can accept the social media conversation paradigm can use it to constantly adjust and update marketing strategies as they are executed. A social media audience is different than the total target audience, of course – but they’re different in ways that add to their value as “thought leaders”: they enter the conversation as generally knowledgeable about your company and its products, they are comfortable with the new conversation paradigm, and they relish the feeling that their opinion matters to what happens to “their brand” and so take that perceived responsibility very seriously.

To that point, a current ad campaign supporting the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating systems centers on PC users who offered feedback to Microsoft that ended up reflected in the new product – prompting each to claim that “Windows 7 was my idea.” The theme carries over to the product’s Facebook presence, which encourages groups of users to suggest, complain about or tout features of the product that others may find useful. It’s easy to see how these discussions could lead to adjustments in marketing strategy emphasis on particular features – which would in turn reinforce the umbrella theme of “Windows 7 is my idea.”

A final word of caution: by facilitating the continuation of a conversation, feedback through social media fundamentally changes the nature of any business communication effort. Establishing a presence in social media amounts to a commitment to your audience to continue that conversation. Fulfilling that commitment will cost time and money, but failing to live up to it will cost precious standing with key audiences that you won’t easily regain. Before embarking on a strategy that includes these new communications capabilities, make sure you’re prepared with the right resources and mindset to commit to a real conversation.

This stance seems to be supported by the recent massive survey conducted by Verso Digital, presented this week at Digital Book World by Verso Digital Business Development Director, Jack McKeown. As reported by MediaBistro’s GalleyCat columnist Jason Boog, the Verso Digital survey reveals that heavy online readers consume their media in multiple formats and that e-book readers also purchase print versions of books regularly. The Verso survey also touched on price sensitivity and the fact that consumers have been trained by Amazon.com to expect e-books to be priced in the $10.00 range. One encouraging note for publishers, however, was that a significant percentage of survey respondents said they would be open to a price point in the $10-$18 dollar range based on the book.

As Apple prepares to enter the e-reader market with the iPAD and Samsung’s Papyrus joins the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Amazon Kindle, the Sony e-reader and other producers, more consumers will flock to digital books. This is good news for writers, good news for readers and ultimately, with a well thought out strategy, good for publishers.

How do you like to read books? We’d love to hear your experiences, predictions and ideas.

How can your brand utilize this information in your own social media marketing campaigns? Let’s look at some possibilities.

1. Offer insider or follower-only discounts. Reward those people who have taken the extra step of finding and following your brand on social media sites by offering them special discounts.
2. Send out early alerts. Turn your fans and followers into true brand evangelizers by giving them a preview of new services or products before word of those things hit the street.
3. Create a brand panel of especially active and engaged fans or followers and offer them the opportunity to test drive new products or services pre-release. Ask them for candid feedback on any improvements you could make. When that feedback is valid and insightful, take their advice and make changes. Thank them. Treat this elite group as the very special brand ambassadors that they can be.
4. Hold special events for fans and followers. These can be virtual or live or a combination of both. The point is to reward those who have invested time in your brand and make sure they know you value their loyalty. Give respect to get loyalty.
5. Check in with your followers regularly to monitor your brand reputation and address any concerns immediately. Make sure that these important people are heard whenever they speak directly to you.

What is your brand doing to reward your fans or followers? Are you helping them create conversations about you? We’d like to hear your story.

Make sure that your social media marketing efforts serve your overall brand goals. As you set or review your brand goals, ask yourself:

1. What unique product or service do I offer?
2. What “need” does my service or product fulfill?
3. Where would potential customers seek solutions for fulfilling that “need?”
4. What 5-7 words describe the “why to buy” for my product or service?
5. What is my complete marketing strategy for announcing and promoting this product?
6. What are my expectations for income from this product?
7. Does this product reflect all of my brand messages and core values?

After you’ve identified your unique offer and created your targeted, keyword rich messages, make social media outreach via your business Facebook page and Twiter account a regular but measured part of your everyday business tasks. Just 10-15 minutes in the morning and perhaps another 10-15 minutes at the end of the day or at midday can help you keep your brand message in front of potential customers.

Here are five things I do every morning:

1. Facebook Profile: Check in-box and respond as need, accept or decline invitations to events and pages, check my “key contacts” stream briefly for any interesting updates, news, innovations I want to share with my friends.
2. Facebook Fan Page: Briefly check to see if any comments or questions need clarifying and post either a link to a news article or blog post that I want to share with my fans or post a tip, strategy or idea. That post goes out automatically to my Twitter as well.
3. Twitter: Check @replies to see if anyone has questions. Thank folks who retweet or #FF me. Check DM’s and respond as necessary. Check one of my key lists and peruse the stream to see if any of these industry movers and shakers has something I’d like to retweet or read or share with my followers.
4. Blog: Post to my blog, which will then auto post to my Facebook Fan Page and my Twitter account.

Periodically throughout the day, if I find something worth sharing I pop over to Hootsuite, which I keep open on a tab on my browser. I post the link, write a quick post and pre-schedule it to go to one or more accounts later that afternoon.

I spend no more than 10-15 minutes each day glancing through my Google reader which aggregates about 20 blogs I find most relevant to my business and I grab a link and schedule a post from one or more of those on Hootsuite.

Once a week, I spend a full day writing blog posts, making videos and planning additional marketing strategies for my business.

The rest of my time I spend on clients, writing, and creating new opportunities and outlets for my work. For every product, my social media marketing strategy is just one portion of my overall marketing plan. My marketing strategies including speaking engagements, webinars and teleseminars, e-newsletters, targeted advertising, guest blogging, in-person networking and media interviews.

What are your non-social media marketing plans? How will you create conversations about YOU this year?

In terms of monetizing, one way to think of social media is as publicity for your product or service. Traditionally publicity is used to create awareness and then demonstrate to new listeners the specific, compelling reasons to purchase that product or service. Publicity is judged on media impressions delivered and publicists keep track of the viewer and reader numbers to conclude the number of media impressions. The impressions delivered in social media can be astronomical. But the time it takes to effectively spread a brand message on social media can also consume a disproportionate amount of your time and keep you from creating and delivering additional products and services—which is how you actually make money.

As a single employee company and an early adopter of Twitter and an avid Facebook fan page user and blogger, I have fallen into that time trap, too. But I’ve learned some nifty time saving strategies over the years that are helping me get back to creating income and spend fewer hours spreading the message.

Here are a few of my favorite time saving strategies in hopes that they can help you, too, get back to the business of your business.

1. Hootsuite is a great way to organizer for all of my Twitter accounts and my Facebook accounts. I can schedule tweets and posts there during a short morning session.
2. Friendfeed automatically sends my posts to a wide variety of social sites every time I post to my blog.
3. I love the Networked Blogs app on Facebook and use it to automatically pull my blog posts into my Fan page.
4. I use the Selective Tweets application on my Facebook Fan page to feed out my Facebook page posts to Twitter with a link back to my page.
5. On LinkedIn my blog posts are pulled in and posted to my profile automatically using the Bloglink application.
6. I use the Power Twitter application from Mozilla which works with my Firefox browser and puts a link shortener right above the posting space on my Twitter profile. This allows me to shorten links without having to go to another site to find a shortener.

There are many more and I’ll share those in the coming weeks. As you can see, my time saving strategies help me maximize the use of any content I create by helping me share everything I write with the widest possible audience. This helps me put that saved time back to work that actually creates income.

What are your favorite time saving strategies for using social media to create conversations about you or your brand? Let’s share them here. I’d love to compile a list of everyone’s best practices all in one place so we can all benefit from each other’s experience.

1. MEDIA: Traditional media, radio and television, features, op-eds, reviews, mentions, third party endorsements
2. ONLINE: Virtual and social media: video, audio, blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Slideshare, guest posts, internet radio, internet tv
3. LIVE EVENTS: appearances, workshops, keynotes
4. ADVERTISING: Targeted use of Adsense words, Facebook ads, paid press release placement, and other modestly priced visibility opportunities
5. STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS: product or business partners that imply endorsement and provide real or in kind value to campaigns
6. SEO: Search Engine Optimization is the glue the brings all of your brand outreach and marketing programs together to give you search engine ranking that helps people find you and buy your product. Without SEO, all of your various activities exists only by themselves and do not take advantage of their combined power to create massive brand awareness. SEO is the missing ingredient in many campaigns.

By identifying a succinct set of key message points and exploiting them over all of the platforms outlined in the MVP program, your brand will reach the consciousness of your intended end user, client or consumer faster, less expensively and in a more targeted fashion than if you were to employ any combination of these outreach strategies alone. I look forward to helping you create powerful brand awareness for your business, book or ideas this year.