It’s hard to believe that this month marks my 5th anniversary blogging.
On average I’ve posted 100+ times a year. (Although for a time a good many of those were “Cause Marketing Links” (short news stories) from my Delicious account–something I don’t do anymore).
This year blogging took a back seat to Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. Mid-year I added Foursquare and Posterous.
Twitter is the best of the bunch. On Twitter I finally found a community that talked back to me and followed my tweets back to my blog where the conversation continued. It was great to finally be sharing posts that you knew people were actually reading and enjoying.
But even with my success on Twitter, not to mention all the fun I have on it, I’ve grudgingly accepted that Twitter is a great complement to blogging but not a replacement.
A great servant but a poor master, if you will.
When I look around at the avatars on my Tweetdeck the smart people are blogging first. Chris Brogan posts every day on his blog. Jay Baer and John Haydon post three days a week. Problogger Darren Rowse publishes three blogs with loads of content.
Some of these people also spend a good deal of time on Twitter and other outposts. But social media is their full-time job!
So in 2010 these are my social media goals for Selfishgiving.com:
Post three days a week. I like Jay Baer’s idea of publishing on consecutive days (he likes T, W, TH), but I can’t make any promises in the beginning. But posts on three days I will do.
Posts will be around 300 words. John Haydon has been encouraging me to write shorter posts all year. I’m going to give them a try. Every week or two, I’ll probably write a feature post that will be 500 to 1000 words, which is my normal length.
Posts will revolve around three themes. Sponsorship, cause marketing and social media. Sponsorship should be a more common topic on my blog as nonprofits are more often grappling with sponsorship issues when it comes to corporate partnerships. They view cause marketing more as an advanced strategy; one they may not be ready for. Social media is a great complement to both sponsorship and cause marketing and a hot topic a lot of people are interested in these days.
Publish my email newsletter twice a month. Right now my newsletter is geared toward readers who aren’t on social media and don’t subscribe to my blog via RSS. Sadly, this is probably most of the nonprofit thought leaders I want to reach! I’d like to offer something *special* in my newsletter for email subscribers who already read my blog, but this means creating new content. And right now, I just don’t have the time for this. I would love your suggestions on this front.
Update my Facebook fan page as needed. I recently created a fan page for Selfishgiving.com with two goals. First, to give people in general yet another reminder of new content on my site. Second, for those folks within the Facebook cocoon , an easy way to follow and read my blog that is familiar and comfortable.
Continue tweeting, just not as much. No worries, or cause for celebration. I’m never giving up Twitter. But I don’t think I need to be on it every twenty minutes, do you? I plan to check my Twitter stream each morning to my heart’s content (not too onerous as I only follow 200 people) and then shut it down for two hours. Repeat. I will no longer sip for pleasure. I’ll gulp for effect.
Personal blogging on Posterous will play a role. I’m just not sure how much at this point. But one thing is for sure. I. Love. Posterous. It’s so easy to use (even wrote a post on it). And when it comes to pictures and video it really is a snap to email media right to the site. I might just use Posterous for cause marketing videos or sets of pictures, and everything else non-text related. I recently read a suggestion to create a subdomain for your Posterous blog and post your pictures and video there. I just might do that.
Give Selfish Giving a major overhaul. During first quarter 2010, I’ll be moving Selfishgiving.com from WordPress to Headway with the help of @GrantGriffiths, @JohnHaydon and @mikhaelacraig. The overhaul will include a new landing page for SixFigureCauseMarketing.com and a custom design for my email newsletter and Twitter page. In addition to giving the Selfish Giving brand a more professional, consistent look, I want optimize my blog for SEO and to fully integrate it with my other social media outposts.
Market my teleconference cause marketing program. I think SixFigureCauseMarketing.com and teaching other nonprofits how to build successful partnerships with businesses is a great idea. The people I’ve talked to about it think it’s a great idea too. But I have yet to actively market the program to nonprofits. That’s will change this year.
[Added 12/30] Spend more time building community. For Christmas I got Gary V’s Crush It and it’s a good read. When I read this I felt like Gary was talking to me:
A lot of people get wrapped up in designing their blogs and writing or taping their content. But creating your content is the easy part. [!!!] Of course your product should be as good as it can be, but it should also be the least time-consuming element of your whole endeavor. What you do after you tape a show or write or record is the whole game. Creating community–that’s where the bulk of your hustle is going to go and where the bulk of your success will be determined.
I felt almost guilty when I read this because I knew outside of Twitter, this is an area with which I’ve been remiss. But like Scrooge at knees of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, I repent and will honor community in my heart and try to keep it all the year.
But enough about my goals. What do YOU think of my goals? Or just tell me about yours. Maybe we can learn together.
Thanks to everyone who turned out for the live discussion today at Philanthropy.com on Foursquare for Charities. I hope you learned something!
It seems lately the more I talk to nonprofits about cause marketing the more I talk about social media and how the two are inseparable. Unfortunately, many aren’t quite sold that these two belong together.
