Category Archives: Storytelling

Facebook, An Introduction

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Today we begin our exploration of some of the key social media platforms that can help you communicate with others and grow your online visibility. First up, Facebook. Today, we’ll cover some basics without discussing whether you should or shouldn’t use Facebook for your business. Let’s just get a feel for Facebook first before we rush to the decision-making.

What is Facebook?

Facebook is a social networking site where the emphasis is on building community through social interactions. Facebook connects friends, families, classmates, colleagues, and people who share similar interests. Users communicate with their contacts, called friends, via short posts, called updates. These updates are typed into a box that asks, “what’s on your mind?” and can be found on a user’s home page or their timeline (profile page). Users can upload photos and videos, and share links to articles and other interesting stuff around the web. They can also play social games, take polls and quizzes, and interact in other ways, too. These interactions are fed into the news feed—a collection of events and updates from a user’s friends—and are visible on a user’s home page.

Facebook currently has over 900 million users worldwide. That represents about 1 in 12 people on the planet. If it were a country, it would be the third largest after China and India. Out of those, 500 million people use Facebook every day. This makes Facebook the largest of the social networks by far.

Among the reasons for Facebook’s enormous popularity is how easy it is to use. The ability to check Facebook from mobile devices while on the go makes sharing updates, links, and photos that much more immediate and engaging. Another reason for its popularity is its addictive quality. According to this article on Mashable, the average American Facebook user spends about 15 minutes a day on the site.

It’s hard to avoid the fact that Facebook has become a major way people communicate. Of course, size alone isn’t reason to jump on the Facebook bandwagon. It’s just as important to know who is using Facebook, and how.

Who Uses Facebook?

Facebook was started in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg in a Harvard dorm room. It was originally a closed network connecting Harvard students, but soon it allowed students at other universities to join. Facebook eventually opened up to anyone with an email address. Key to this bit of history is the fact that from its inception, Facebook has been about social interactions.

Considering Facebook’s start in a college dorm room, you might be tempted to believe that Facebook is only popular among young people. That would be a big mistake. The averageage of Facebook users is about 38 and seems to be rising, not dropping. People 45 and older make up 46% of Facebook users.  More women (57%) use Facebook than men.

How Do People Use Facebook?

All communities develop a culture, and Facebook is no different. On Facebook, the emphasis is on the personal. We use Facebook to reconnect with people we’ve lost touch with, to interact with friends, or to keep up with family members who live far away. It’s all about our relationships.

Facebook comes down to people sharing and responding to the events and stories of their lives. Just like posts in a blog add up to a story over time, so do updates and “likes” on Facebook. Our timelines become a record of who we are, who we know, what we like, what we think is entertaining, and what we believe in and support. Like digital scrapbooks, timelines create a portrait of our lives for the world to see.

Scary? Absolutely. In fact, Facebook privacy issues are a real concern. Before you join Facebook, learn how to control your privacy settings.  Personally, I prefer to assume that anything I post online is potentially visible to the entire world. That way, I minimize the risk of posting anything that I’m not comfortable with strangers seeing.

But despite the privacy risks, this ability to interact with others and share our stories is also exciting. It’s what makes Facebook so appealing and compelling.

Now, just so there’s no mistake about it, Facebook itself is a commercial enterprise. They make money by placing advertising on their site, which is essentially driven by user-generated content. That’s the content WE generate. In other words, our stories, our lives.

Is Facebook using us? Um…yes!

But we’re also using Facebook. Let’s not forget that. And if we’re going to continue using Facebook, we can at least try to be smart about how we go about it.

What Facebook Means For You and Your Business

Facebook gives businesses the opportunity to tell their stories via Facebook business pages. We’ll get into business pages in more detail next week. For now, it’s important to  understand that even on business pages, the emphasis is on genuine sharing.

People gather on Facebook in much the same way they’d gather in a town square, at a garden party, or around a relaxing game of golf. They want to interact, not be sold to. But we all know a lot of business gets done on a golf course precisely because of a magical mix between social, personal, and business interactions.

To get the balance right, keep the focus on your audience rather than on yourself. Share useful information, such as content you create on your blog or articles that you come across. Engage your fans in conversation and respond to their comments. Be helpful, and be yourself. In short, follow the same basic guidelines for interacting and sharing you follow on your blog. 

Then, if you occasionally toot your own horn about an award you won, your 500th Facebook follower, or being invited to speak at a prestigious event, no one will hold it against you. In fact, they’ll cheer you on! Why? Because they’ve come to trust you and think of you as a person or business who cares. Yes, you can let your page fans know about your services or special offers you may be running. Just make sure the balance is right.

Facebook Summary & Further Resources

Here’s a quick summary of the key points in today’s post:

And some more Facebook resources below:

Next week, we’ll take a more in-depth look at Facebook business pages. How do you feel about Facebook so far? Are you intrigued? Or turned off? Let us know!

Stay on Track With a Blogging Schedule

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As many of you already know, I’m a screenwriter. When I set out to develop a longer story, say for a web project or a screenplay, I plan ahead. My initial idea might begin with a cool character or situation, but an idea alone is too flimsy to carry me through to the end. Characters, no matter how cool, need goals, conflicts, and other characters to relate to. A story needs a theme, a plot, and a direction. If I jump in without at least a notion of what the major components of my story are or how they fit together, I can’t know where I’m headed. Without a clear path, it’s too easy to lose my way—and my motivation.

In many ways, your blog is like an unfolding story. You may have started with an idea, but now you need to develop that idea and establish a direction and a clear path to follow. Otherwise, you might find yourself at a loss for material and disconnected from your original purpose and motivation.

So far in this series on blogging, we’ve discussed many of the path-building tools at your disposal. Today we’re going to look at another powerful tool that helps you stay on track and stay motivated: the blogging schedule. Once you know how frequently you want to post, you can begin to schedule what topics you’ll cover when. By following these tips, you’ll soon have a dynamic writing tool for getting those posts done.

Grab your favorite calendar tool.  These tips will make more sense if you can already start integrating them into your blogging schedule. For this you’ll need a calendar. You can work with a paper or a digital version. Just make sure you’re looking at a full month at a time. If you’re working on paper, you might want to use pencil. A blogging schedule is an ever-changing thing!

Schedule by category. Categories help you organize your posts so that your readers can find what they’re interested in more easily. TwoPointUhOh’s categories include Blogs, Building Visibility, Getting Started, Interviews, Mastering Technology, Social Media, Storytelling, Tools, Track Progress, Websites, and Why To. If we’re ever stuck for ideas, a glance at our categories is often enough to stir the creative juices. Right now, for example, I see we’re due for another interview. (Excuse me while I make a note in our blogging calendar.) Once you have identified some categories for your blog, look at your calendar and see if it would make sense to schedule weekly or monthly posts on a particular category.

Schedule by type of post. If you’ve been following our discussion, you’ve been introduced to several different types of blog posts. For example, you might want to do an interview on Mondays or answer reader questions on Tuesdays. A popular blogging trend which I only just discovered myself is Wordless Wednesdays. Every Wednesday, participating bloggers substitute a photo post  for their usual written post. Or you might decide to reserve the last Thursday of the month for guest bloggers or Fridays for list posts. Whatever you choose, mark it in your calendar.

Take notes. The more you blog, the more you’ll develop a sixth sense for juicy blog items. Jot down your ideas, even if they’re vague, and put them in your calendar a few weeks out. Don’t worry about fleshing them out yet. You don’t need to turn them into polished posts right away.

Let things simmer. Allowing ideas to simmer on the back burner can yield rich treasures, as long as you’ve put fresh ideas into the pot. When you add your rough notes to your blogging schedule, you’re spurring your subconscious into action. It continues working on those ideas–even when the conscious you is not. This is one of the wonderful mysteries of the creative process. Don’t question it, just embrace it. And keep taking those notes!

Outline posts. Each week, revisit your calendar. Take one of those rough ideas off the back burner and see if you’re ready to tackle it. Do some brainstorming. Can you give your post a title? Can you identify at least three key points to discuss? Great, you now have an outline for your post! The next step, a completed post, should now be infinitely easier.

Research. But maybe your idea isn’t ripe enough yet. No worries—that’s what Google is for. A quick search will turn up a wealth of information, including what’s already been covered and questions that people may have about your topic. See if you can find a fresh angle. Add your notes and discoveries to your calendar.

Create sequences and series. One of my favorite pieces of writerly advice comes from Ernest Hemingway: “Stop writing when you know what will happen next so you have momentum to continue the next day.” Do you have an idea for a longer post? Consider breaking it down and scheduling it as a two or three-part piece. Do you have an idea for a series, like this one on blogs? Schedule it into your calendar.

As you can see, using a blogging schedule encourages you to work on more than one post at a time. On any given day, you may be fleshing out an outline into a full-blown post, brainstorming new ideas, checking over your categories for inspiration, expanding on some notes for a second post, and doing research on a third post. This keeps the momentum going, making it easier for you to stick with your blog.

3 Ways to Enhance Your Blog With Multimedia

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So far in our discussion about different types of blog posts, we’ve covered 7 standard posts to beat writer’s block, 6 unconventional posts for adding sparkle to your blog, and 3 posts designed to get readers talking. Today we’ll be talking about the advantages of integrating multimedia in your blog.

Don’t worry, we won’t be discussing the details of how to produce the posts themselves. That’s a topic for an entire blog of its own, and it’s well covered on other sites. This post is simply meant to show you your options and get the ideas flowing. That said, if you decide that pictures, audio podcasts, or videos would be right for your blog, don’t let the technology scare you off. There are plenty of free or inexpensive tools and simple solutions available to first-timers. There’s a learning curve to be sure, but it doesn’t need to be complicated. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to churn out simple, engaging audio-visual content for your blog in no time.

Why Include Audio, Visuals, and Video

Before you decide that writing is hard enough and you’re not interested in integrating fancy technology, take a look at how using multimedia can enhance your blog:

  • It Engages Your Audience. Pictures, screencasts, audio recordings, and video offer a rich experience and are very effective methods of grabbing a reader’s attention.
  • It Offers Something For Everyone People have different learning styles. While we all learn using a mix of styles, we also tend to have a dominant style. Text works for people who prefer a verbal learning style, while video and images appeal to people who are visual. Audio, of course, appeals to people who prefer to learn through sound.
  • It Builds Credibility and Trust Seeing someone’s facial expressions or hearing their voice gives us a better sense of who that person is. We all prefer to do business with people we feel we know and trust, even if we’ve only seen them on video or heard them on a podcast.
  • It Establishes Your Expertise. This goes hand in hand with the point above. Hearing and watching someone speak knowledgeably about a particular topic establishes them in our minds as the go-to person in a particular area. Within seconds, they become three-dimensional, living, breathing experts. Text alone can’t accomplish this nearly as quickly.
  • It Drives Traffic To Your Site. Video is ranked higher than text in search results and generates more views. While this shouldn’t be your first reason for including video, it’s good to understand how powerful video can be.
  • It Helps Your Content Go Viral. Hopefully your readers will love your content so much that they’ll want to share it with their friends on the social networks. Posts with original photos and videos generate more shares and click-through rates than plain-text posts.

We’re going to look at four types of multimedia posts, ordered from simplest to implement to most complex. Today we’ll cover the first three, the photo post, the audio post, and the slide deck post. Next week, we’ll address video.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

The Photo Post

The simplest way to visually enhance your blog is to include pictures. Any lengthy text post can use a couple of pictures to give your reader’s eye a break from reading, as you can see exemplified here. However, you can also use pictures more creatively and tell a story through them more than through text. This works best for visual topics, such as design or photo blogs, travel blogs, or food blogs. Here are two examples of storytelling through pictures. On Paris Daily Photo, the new photo of the day is posted along with a short text. On Paris Breakfasts, multiple pictures are used to tell a more complete story. Posting pictures to a blog is a simple, straightforward process. However, be careful when using pictures you find on the Internet, as they may be subject to copyright. For a quick primer on how to include photos in your blog, check out these Dos and Don’ts on Real Lawyers Have Blogs.

An old microphoneThe Audio or Podcast Post

Listening to audio posts, or podcasts, is like listening to an old-fashioned radio program. Recorded in an mp3 audio file format, your podcasts can be transferred to a portable device, such as an iPod, smartphone, or tablet, and can be listened to on the go. I personally love podcasts, and I listen to them at the gym and on train and plane rides. You can embed the occasional podcast into your text blog, or you may opt to produce a regular podcast, with new episodes every week or every month.

Many of the post types we’ve discussed in the past are suitable for podcasts. Frequently Asked and Should Ask Questions could be addressed in an audio podcast. Interviews, of course, are well suited to audio, as are how-tos, definition posts, personal story posts, and news, predictions, and trends posts.

Podcasts can have a single host, featuring one person, usually you, or a multiple hosts. A solo podcast is easy to coordinate and produce. All you need is your text and the ability to record audio on your computer.  However, listening to a single voice drone on for too long can become monotonous for your listener. If you opt for a solo podcast, try to keep it short, preferably under five minutes.

The multiple host podcast breaks up the monotony of a solo podcast by adding at least one more voice. A co-host, interview subject, or commentator also brings in a second point of view, enriching the experience for your listener. While a little more challenging technically, it’s not too hard to do. You and your co-host or interview subject don’t even need to be in the same room together. There are tools for recording your podcast directly over the Internet, with the two (or more) of you in different locations. A good length for multiple host podcasts seems to be 20-40 minutes.  One example of a podcast blog is Katia and Kyliemac, covering the hilarious adventures of two expats in Paris. 

The Slide Deck Post

If you’ve ever made a PowerPoint presentation, you know how to make a slide deck post. Sometimes a quick run through a slide presentation might be the best way to get your information across. For example, say you spoke at an event recently where you used a slide deck. Why not share that same slide deck with your readers? Simply upload your slides to a platform such as SlideShare and then embed it on your site. Slide deck posts require less technical know-how than audio or video, but they still provide a visual element and are easily shared.

Here’s a fantastic example of a slide show that explains…slide sharing! I was able to pick up the code on SlideShare and embed it here to share with you. See how easy it can be?

Content Marketing on SlideShare

View more PowerPoint from Gregory Ciotti
Next week we wrap up our multimedia discussion with video. Stay tuned!

7 Standard Blog Posts To Get Past Writer’s Block

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If you’re considering starting a blog, you’re probably wondering how you’ll ever be able to think of something interesting to write about each time you need to post. Athletes call this mental block “hitting a brick wall.” Writers call it writer’s block.

I have to admit when I first started this blog with Alexis, I thought I’d have writer’s block almost every week. I was sure I’d run out of topics or that I wouldn’t be creative enough to keep the reader’s attention.

Applying the Athlete’s Attitude to Writer’s Block

When Alexis and I met in a Parisian café last September to plan Two Point Uh Oh!, I was thinking, “What am I getting into? I coach athletes to reach their goals, not bloggers! How will I ever engage readers?”

Uh oh!

But then I remembered that I knew how to keep my own interest as an athlete. People ask me all the time how I can be such a dedicated triathlete. “Don’t you ever get bored?” they want to know. No, I don’t, because I have a strategy to stay engaged. I plan a variety of workouts, and I make sure never to do the same workout too many times in a row. I alternate between short sprints, longer workout at a steady pace, cross training, core workouts, and fun runs. The types of workouts I can do to stay interested and to keep myself from hitting the brick wall are endless.

The same strategy of alternation applies to blogs. To beat writer’s block, maintain momentum, and keep your readers engaged, you can alternate between different types of posts. Just like working out, if you mix it up, you’ll keep it more interesting for you and for your readers.

3 Categories of Posts

Over the next three weeks, we’ll be looking at 3 categories of posts:

  1. The Standard Posts In this category, you’ll find the most basic types of blog posts. You can consider these types of posts as your go-to posts. They will make up the bulk of your blog. We’ll be covering standard posts today.
  2. The Unconventional Posts This category covers types of blog posts that you might use from time to time to spice things up for your readers. We’ll cover unconventional posts next week. 
  3. Audio and Video Posts This category takes a look at how you can integrate technology to create a more immediate and personal connection with your audience. We’ll cover this in two weeks’ time.

7 Types of Standard Posts

Standard posts can be likened to what you might see in a newspaper or magazine. Taking the form of articles written from the author’s point of view, standard posts present information or ideas to the reader. While in many or even most cases, such broadcasting posts are the ideal choice, at other times they may seem somewhat limited. That’s where the unconventional posts we’ll discuss next week come in. But for now, here are 7 types of standard posts:

1. How-To or Tutorial Posts This type of post is by far the most common. Information imparted in a how-to format is the “bread and butter” of most blogs. Two Point Uh Oh! relies heavily on tutorial posts, and most businesses or blogs can probably add tutorial or how-to to their mix. This past summer, the fig tree in the back yard of my new home produced a bumper crop of figs. The only solution I could think of was to make fig jam, so I looked up a tutorial blog post on the subject and voilà… soon I had 90 jars of fig and lavender jam.

2. Definition Posts If you think your readers might have a question that begins with “what is” followed by a blank to be filled in, then you might want to consider a basic definition post. Defining your terms is a great way to ensure your readers will get the most out of your posts. We created a definition post with this post on Web 2.0.

3. Personal Story or Experience Posts People love to hear stories, especially of someone’s personal experience. A good, well-structured story with a clear point can make your post come alive for your reader. This can be especially true if you traveled the path that they are now on. For example, a yoga teacher who works with injured people might want to include some stories about her own healing journey with yoga. Other examples of great stories to share can include a from-failure-to-success story, your personal reflections and how you came to them, the lessons you’ve learned, or a story about an inspirational moment or person who changed your life. Key to this kind of post is to make sure the story is relevant to your reader. On this blog, we like to mix in a little storytelling with our tutorials, like I did in the introduction to this post.

4. Personal Opinion or Op-Ed Posts Just as many newspapers carry op-ed columns, your blog can include op-ed in its posts. Use opinion pieces to discuss something you feel strongly about, establish your expertise, and help you stand out from the crowd. Depending on your style and personality, your opinion might be presented in a way that’s balanced or bold. You may even opt to put forth an opinion that goes against the grain of your industry. The key to a personal opinion post is to make sure you know whereof you speak. If you disagree with the mainstream thinking on a particular topic, make sure to present your arguments in a logical and cohesive way. Be passionate–but don’t be all over the place. Personal opinion is not the same as a personal rant. A great example of a successful personal opinion approach is the blog Altucher Confidential by author and entrepreneur James Altucher.

5. Problem-and-Solution Posts This is another type of post that fits nicely into many small business blogs. Identify a problem your readers might have and then offer a solution. RealSimple does problem and solution articles and posts very well. Here’s a great example: How to Deal With Nuisance Neighbors

6. List Posts List posts have several advantages. First, they are a great way to get you over writer’s block. If you’re really stuck, sit down and brainstorm a top 10 tips (or top 3 or top 5) list having to do with your niche. Second, list posts organize information in a way that’s easy to skim and read. Finally, they provide catchy titles to attract readers: “The Top 3 Reasons To Visit Paris,” “The 5 Best Job Interview Tips,” “16 Ways You Can Make a Difference.” This post is an example of a list post. Here is another list post on one of my favorite topics: the best chocolate shops in Paris.

7. News, Predictions, and Trends Posts  Does your business depend on your staying on top of the latest happenings and trends? Then consider including these in your post mix. Make sure to credit original sources and include your own point of view. A good example is this post on Digital Publishing Predictions.

That should keep you busy for a while. Next week, we’ll take a look at unconventional posts for those moments when you want to give your readers something new!

Social Media Strategist Mina Zaher on Blogging: Interview

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This week we continue our conversation on blogging with an interview. Our guest today is writer, blogger, and social media strategist Mina Zaher.

The Power of Social Media

Before we get to the interview, I’d like to tell you a story about the power of social media. It’s called “How I Know Mina.”

I “met” Mina on Twitter when I joined #ScriptChat, a weekly chat on screenwriting that she was helping to run at the time. (We’ll cover Twitter, hashtags (#), and chats in later posts! For now, all you need to know is that chats allow like-minded people to meet online and chat on a regular basis.) I liked her energy and her natural ability to keep a conversation going on #ScriptChat. It was evident to me that Mina has a way with social media.

Collaboration

At the time, I was putting together an ebook called “Circles Joined to Circles: Real Stories by Real Women on Mothers, Daughters & Sisters” to help promote my web series “My Bitchy Witchy Paris Vacation.” The ebook, which is free to download, extends the themes of the web series in a collection of 13 non-fiction essays by 13 women writers. I invited Mina to contribute, and she graciously accepted. You’ll find her touching story, “The Operation,” in the collection.

We continued to stay in touch. She followed my projects, and I followed hers, including the growth of her lifestyle blog King’s Road Rocks! A lifelong Chelsea girl, Mina decided to start a blog about the place she’s always called home, and her passion for Chelsea shines through. When I learned that she was now also writing a social media blog for the Huffington Post, I was not at all surprised. That’s when I reached out to her about an interview for Two Point Uh Oh!

Although only a EuroStar ride away, we’ve never actually met face to face–yet. I’m in London this week, and on Saturday we will finally have lunch together. But I don’t need to meet her to have a good sense of her professional abilities. I already consider Mina a trustworthy and reliable colleague. All thanks to Mina’s online profile which I discovered and got to know through social media! As Mina points out in the interview, social media is all about connecting with people and building relationships. While our lunch on Saturday will almost certainly deepen our professional exchange, at this point I’m just looking forward to catching up with a lovely person I consider a friend.

The interview below focuses on writers, but it also applies to non-writers. If you’re a freelancer or a small business owner trying to build an online presence, you can learn a lot from Mina’s experience. Read on!

How does blogging fit into an overall marketing strategy? Who should be blogging, and how should they use their blogs?

This is quite a big question that probably deserves its own post. But the key things to remember are that blogging can help a website’s SEO. It can also help the individual or business to create interesting content which they could use to attract an online readership. These are some of the reasons why business marketing strategies often include blogs these days.  Most businesses would benefit from having a blog of one form or another. The type of blog they would create depends on their business. As for individuals, anyone who has a passion could blog. That’s the thing, it’s for everyone. Blogs can be very personal things that resonate deeply with their niche audiences.

How should one use their blogs? It all depends on the business or personal needs of the blogger. Do they have a business to promote? Do they want to share their passion? Do they want to increase their online profile for a reason?

How did you get into blogging?

I started blogging because of my screenwriting. I was in the midst of my second year of my MA in screenwriting and my blog gave me a platform not to just chronicle my writing journey but to find my voice as a writer. It also helped build my confidence as a writer and forced me to put myself out there into the real world, so the two worked hand in hand.

How are blogging and social media useful to writers?

Writers are inherently introspective people. That’s why we write rather than act or direct. The process of storytelling happens in our minds (unless of course, we’re brainstorming with a co-worker). The fact is, no matter how interesting the writer’s mind is, it isn’t the real world. If used properly, blogging and social media can help lift the writer away from their desk and place them onto the (global) map.

Social media is about connecting with other people, building relationships and in turn creating networks. As a result, you inadvertently end up promoting yourself, developing an online profile and become interesting to other people. This is all important for a writer who has to distinguish themselves from all the other writers out there. The writer also needs to adapt to current media trends and establish themselves in the grand arena that is the internet – because the rest of the ‘competition’ is doing just that. And with so many writing opportunities, filmmakers, other writers and actors also using social media, the writer can’t afford to miss out on the chance to become involved.

That’s true of many freelancers and small businesses too. What can writers—or other freelancers—learn from blogging and social media?

A blog and becoming involved in social media could help a writer or freelancer build their confidence, not just with their writing but with their professional identity. For writers in particular, the basis of storytelling is also similar to the engagement process of social media: you have to remember your audience and work to engage, entertain and move them emotionally. So the engagement skills you learn with social media can be applied to engaging the reader of your story.

What can non-writers learn from writers about blogging and social media?

There are plenty of bloggers who aren’t writers. Instead they are motivated by their passion: food, fashion, gadgets and so on. These bloggers develop their own network as a result and build on their passion. In fact, the most successful bloggers don’t start off as writers. They begin with their passion.

Do you find people are thinking of you as a social media expert rather than a writer? How do you keep the brand focus on your writing?

There are quite a lot of bloggers/writers who are also working in social media. My social media clients know my identity as a blogger and what I do with King’s Road Rocks! Of course, my screenwriting and fiction writing aren’t applicable, but as storytelling across multiple platforms is becoming increasingly important to brands as well as a mainstream form of engagement, these skills could in time become quite handy.

Nowadays, my brand isn’t about me as a writer. My brand is King’s Road Rocks! And through that, I write (for a local glossy magazine) and develop relationships with social media clients. I’m always looking to explore new  forms of storytelling across multiple platforms and I’m hoping to develop this strategy in line with my King’s Road Rocks! brand.

What are your top three blogging tips?

  1. Blog about your passion.
  2. Blog consistently. The more content you create, the more readers you should have.
  3. Remember that the point of a blog is to build a readership. So if you’re going to write an online diary, make it funny. If you’re going to write about business, make it interesting and informative.

Where to find Mina Zaher online:

3 Milestones in 3 Months. Can We Meet The Challenge?

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In last week’s post, Mary talked about the importance of setting milestones as you build your online presence. Your long-term goal may be to get more clients, become a go-to expert, or grow an audience, but those goals take time and can be hard to measure. Breaking down your larger goals into measurable milestones with shorter time frames can help you stay motivated and let you know if you’re on the right track.

As I was reading Mary’s post, I realized we hadn’t set any milestones for this blog.

Uh oh!

Since we’re determined to share our experience through examples, we clearly needed to remedy the situation. So we went ahead and created some milestones for ourselves.

©Photo: vizzzual.com

Our Goal:

Our long-term goal is to create engaging content on building an online presence and navigating the waters of social media from a fresh and hype-free perspective. We want to help our readers understand the variables involved in building an online presence and to identify a strategy that feels right and works for them.

Our 3 Milestones:

1. Concentrate on storytelling. Stories create context, and context helps us learn. This is equally true for you the reader and for us the bloggers. It’s easy to create lists of Twitter and Facebook tools. It’s a little harder to construct a meaningful narrative over time that delves more fully into the process of building an online presence. But the second is, well…more engaging.

The measureable steps:

  • Interview at least one entrepreneur, freelancer, or businesses willing to share their Web 2.0 story.
  • Experiment with the art of headlines to see which ones draw more readers and share the results. I started with this week’s post and this nifty headline writing tool.
  • Never publish a post that doesn’t belong to the larger narrative we’re trying to build.
  • Launch a new category of blog posts on storytelling.

©Photo: Erik Charlton

2. Build out blog features. Part of engaging readers is providing them with a site that’s easy to navigate. After the quality of the content, organizing the content in a user-friendly manner is crucial. We’re a bit behind here, so we thought we’d make it a milestone.

The measureable steps:

  • Build out our Getting Started page so that first-time visitors to the site can quickly orient themselves. The Getting Started page is also helpful for regular readers wanting quick access to our most practical and evergreen posts. In the next three months, we’re committing to adding the categories WEBSITES, BLOGS, and SOCIAL MEDIA and to writing at least one basic, evergreen post in each category.
  • Create a blog roll. There’s excellent information already available on navigating Web 2.0, building an online presence, and creating a social media strategy. Rather than re-create it here, we prefer to focus on the “WHY to” and point our readers to the great blogs that already cover the “HOW to.”

3. Create community. An engaging blog without an audience is like the sound of one hand clapping. Nobody hears it. It has no impact. Since we’re not interested in blogging into the void, we’re adding some community-building milestones to our list.

 The measureable steps:

  • Triple our Twitter and Facebook followers by sharing interesting content and interacting with them. Yes, we could run our numbers up quickly using other methods, but we’re interested in the quality of followers over their quantity. We currently have 104 followers on Twitter and 23 on Facebook.
  • Network offline. With so much to take care of online, it’s all too easy to forget about good old-fashioned face-to-face networking. It still remains one of the best ways to build community, however. We’re committing to getting out and about in Paris more regularly. Already on our calendar are events sponsored by the European Professional Women’s Network (EPWN), the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), Transmedia Paris, and Paris eLounge.

©Photo: CarbonNYC

Follow Our Progress

We’ll be blogging on our progress (or lack thereof) as we go along, so keep checking back and let us know what you think. Can we accomplish all of these milestones in three months and keep our posting frequency to once a week? Or are we biting off more than we can chew? Looking forward to hearing from you on the blog or at a live event!

2 Keys To Sticking With Your New Years Resolutions For Your Online Presence

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Photo by Lane 4 Imaging

Every year at this time, people take to my local pool after sitting on the couch all year. With their New Year’s fitness resolutions fresh in their minds, they jump in the fast lane. This is the lane I enjoy sharing with other competitors. What do these new swimmers do? A slow breaststroke right down the center of the lane. It’s OK, my competitor friends and I know all we have to do is wait. January begins with the swimming pool full by 7:00 AM, but it ends with most people having quit and gone home. There are two key reasons New Years resolutions fail.

1. We Don’t Manage Our Expectations

I support people’s desire to get fit, but year after year I see them begin with unrealistic expectations and really bad pool etiquette. This is deadly combination that almost always leads to the early abandonment of their New Year’s fitness resolutions.

When I interview newbies who are interested in competitive swimming or triathlons, most have never had an athletic background. They usually don’t understand that it takes about 16 weeks of steady work to see results and an increase in their fitness level. Fitness isn’t as simple as the TV infomercials make it look. There’s no such thing as instant results with a thigh master or an eight minute ab routine. You can’t banish the bulge in 3 weeks or less.  If this is the mind set people bring to their fitness routines, then I’m not surprised they become discouraged and quit.

Increasing and maintaining your level of fitness is just like building and maintaining your online presence. It’s a lengthy process, a marathon rather than a sprint. If you go into it expecting instant and miraculous results overnight, you will be disappointed. Overnight success is unrealistic. People who are able to manage and adjust their expectations have a better chance of sticking with online marketing long enough to see results. People who become frustrated and discouraged when their expectations aren’t met often quit too soon.

2. We Don’t Set Milestones

Photo by Jram23

Going from never having exercised to competing in a triathlon is a big goal that takes time to achieve. But we human beings are motivated by quick results. The key here is to set milestones so we have some way of measuring our progress along the way. For new exercisers, these can be time trials where you race the against the clock to beat your previous time, or signing up for a 5K race with a first-step goal of finishing. From there, you can create a training plan to meet your milestones, all in the service of your larger fitness goal. This year I’ve started a 30-week training plan toward a long distance triathlon. My motivation is staying fit and healthy, having a good-looking body, and being able to eat chocolate without packing on the pounds. But these things are hard to measure in the short term, so I need more immediate, concrete goals to track my progress. I know that without the triathlon and the milestones to focus on and work toward, swimming random strokes and distances in the pool every day would quickly become meaningless and boring.

It’s the same with building an online presence. When your overall goal is hard to measure and evaluate in the short term, the importance of milestones can’t be underestimated.

Setting Milestones—An Example

Photo by gnuckx

One of your milestones might be to build a community of people interested in you and your product or service. How will you find them?

When I started university, I didn’t have many friends. Most of my fellow students liked to go out drinking and partying. But I needed to be fresh in the mornings so I could get in my swim, bike ride, or long run. I felt alone most of the time, so I decided to do something about it. I set a goal of finding other people like myself with similar interests. First I brainstormed a list of qualities of the people who I wanted to meet. I decided I could find the combination of fun, socializing, and physical activity I was looking for in salsa dancing or ballroom dancing classes.  Believe it or not, on the first night of my first salsa class I met the man who would become my husband—a triathlete like me!

We sometimes forget to take a moment to think through our problems. Take pen and paper and brainstorm your way to greater clarity. Get your ideas down in writing. What are the qualities of your ideal online audience or community? Where can you find them? Once you’ve identified those places, go join them and become a part of that community.

Managed Expectations + Milestones = Step-by-Step Success

Photo by lindz graham

Breaking down your larger goal of “marketing online” into milestones gives you smaller, more concrete steps to focus on.  Building an online presence can be frustrating at times. By breaking it down into measureable, “doable” pieces you can help yourself stay positive and motivated. There’s a big difference between, “I want to find clients,” and “My ideal clients are moms, ages 25-45, who have never exercised before but want to participate in a triathlon. I know they belong to Go Mom Triathlete Forum, and that one of the most popular mom triathlete bloggers is Mom Racer. I’ll send her an email and see if she’s willing to be interviewed for my fitness site.” If you stay on the level of, “I want to find clients,” but a month passes without any change, you’ll be frustrated. If in that same month you’ve worked toward a milestone by publishing an interview with a leading spokesperson in the community you want to reach and your blog followers and facebook page members have increased by ten percent, you’ll know you’re on the right track!

Six Key Ways We Communicate With and Without Web 2.0

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Photo by Sure2Talk

Evolving technology has always shaped the way we communicate.

Imagine a love letter being penned by a young suitor in the 19th century. His fingers grip the quill, his mind searches for the perfect words to express the power of his emotions. Imagine the moment three weeks later when his beloved tears open that very same letter with breathless anticipation. Romantic, isn’t it? I can almost feel myself swooning.

Fast forward about a hundred years. Imagine two young lovers before the advent of email or cell phones. They call each other on their landlines at the same time every day. Sometimes they do their homework or listen to the radio, but often they simply enjoy being silent together. That’s romantic, too, isn’t it?

Now imagine those same teenaged lovebirds today, texting one another sweet nothings via their mobile phones in the middle of class. This modern-day version of note-passing, like its pen-and-paper predecessor, drives teachers up a wall. But teens? They think it’s romantic.

As the times and technology change, so does the way we communicate. But as the examples above show, communication itself is not about technology—it’s about the human interaction.

Below, I’ve listed six key ways we communicate in our business lives. I’ve also listed offline and online methods of delivering that communication.

1.   Publishing and Distributing Information

Businesses publish information to update existing customers and to let prospective customers know who they are, what they do, and where to find them. Offline methods of delivering this information include printed brochures, articles in trade or professional journals, books, and printed newsletters, postcards, invitations, or special offers sent through the postal mail. Today’s online counterparts are websites, downloadable media kits and e-brochures, blog posts, online articles, ebooks, slideshare presentations, videos, as well as emailed newsletters, postcards, and invitations.

2. Networking and Building Community

Whether in a formal business setting or in a more relaxed, social environment, meeting new people and staying in contact is an integral part of communicating. Offline occasions for networking and building community include industry events, conferences, the office Christmas party, or the weekly golf game. They can also include church groups, charity events, or your child’s music recital. Online counterparts include the social networks, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. They also include blogs, groups, and forums created around a cause, a charity, or a shared interest. Just as in real life, some online platforms are focused on business, others are more social, and either can lead to unexpected connections and opportunities.

3. Establishing Expertise

How do you stand out amongst your competitors? By showing the world that you’re the go-to expert in your field. Offline occasions include writing books and articles, teaching and mentoring, delivering talks and presentations, speaking at graduations, and sitting on juries. Online counterparts include writing ebooks, articles, and blogs, posting video or slides from your live presentations, creating a podcast, teaching a webinar, or answering and asking questions in industry-appropriate forums and groups.

4. Collaborating With Others

If you have a large project you’re working on, a group or  association you want to create, or a cause you want to promote, you need to communicate with your collaborators. Offline occasions are limited to face-to-face meetings, telephone exchanges, faxes, or postal mail. Online opportunities are much broader and include online meetings, wikis, shared documents, chat and instant messaging, groups, forums, and email. Another advantage of online collaboration is that you’re less restricted by geography. Collaborators can be in other cities or even in other countries.

5. Keeping Up With Your Industry and Sharing Information

No matter what business you’re in, you need to keep up with the latest happenings. Offline resources include chatting with colleagues, attending conferences, talks, presentations, and events, or reading trade publications. Online counterparts include writing or reading blogs, exchanges on the social networks and in online groups, and using content curation and aggregation tools. Web 2.0 allows you to track the latest news as it’s happening and to share it quickly and easily with others.

6. Listening and Responding to Customers

Web 2.0 has revolutionized the relationship between businesses and customers. In the not so distant past, a customer with a complaint would be forced to follow the protocol established by the business. Their options were limited: call the customer service line or go stand in line somewhere. Today, they have many more options—and they use them. They can contact a business publicly via their Twitter feed or Facebook page. They can read reviews on blogs or forums before purchasing, or write their own reviews. If they are happy with the way their complaint is handled, they will often express their gratitude. People don’t expect businesses to be perfect, but they do expect responsiveness and a willingness to help them when there’s a problem. Businesses who get this make it easy for their customers to reach them offline and online, and they set up monitoring tools to alert them of what customers are saying.

By putting the emphasis on communication rather than on technology, you can begin to see the parallels between offline and online communication tools. Just like today’s texting teen has a lot in common with our 19th century letter-writer, a printed brochure has a lot in common with a video on the home page of your website. Hopefully this makes it easier to begin to understand what might be right for your business. As of next week, we’ll begin looking at some of the technologies themselves. In the meantime, feel free to continue the list. Did I miss anything?

As United found out in the video below, frustrating your customers by not responding to them in a timely and satisfactory manner can result in a song being written about you. Uh oh!

There’s Something About Mary

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Hello, I’m Mary and I Wear Too Many Hats

Owner and Founder of McLassiter Consulting

Business Mary http://www.mclassiter.com

As many entrepreneurs who launch a business do, I feel like I’m caught in a tornado of things that must be done to keep my business afloat. I have to take on multiple roles in my single owner business, from being in charge of sales, to producing marketing content and overseeing communications, to being the project manager who ensures my projects stay on track. Then, just when I think I’m done, I have to take on the office admin and accounting tasks as well! As a result, my online communication can be random. I have to admit that when faced with an ever-growing pile of paper to sort through, promoting my business is sometimes the last thing on my mind. Two Point Uh Oh! is an opportunity for me to maintain more regular communication with my clients and fans by bringing them all to one platform. It’s a great place for them to tune in from time to time as they see fit and to learn about my latest activities and offerings.

In the Alps

Sporty Mary

A Seattleite During the Golden Age of The Dot Com Bubble

Seattle

My Hometown, Seattle

roundamerica.com - the flying fish at the Pike Place Market where Starbucks started

I grew up in a middle class neighborhood in Seattle. Over time, I watched that same neighborhood morph into a dot com multimillionaires’ neighborhood. I was there when Starbucks started with one store at Pike Place Market, expanding next into my neighborhood. My parents would go there religiously on their weekend morning walks. Now, like the rest of you, I see Starbucks everywhere in the world. Amazon.com is another example of a company that grew to its current gigantic size from humble Seattle roots. Along with Red Robin, REI, and many other successful companies, these businesses have become ingrained in Seattle’s culture.

It was a life-changing experience for everyone in Seattle no matter what their age. For instance, my dad is an architect. At the time he specialized in remodeling and restoring  old 1900 craftsman style houses. Then his clients began requesting all sorts of new things, from a personal movie theater to a secret arcade game room hidden behind a bookcase that opened by moving a single book. Very James Bond. My mom, a public school teacher, was allowed to check out a computer from her school every summer and bring it home for me to use. First it was a big clunky apple with a floppy disk drive. It only had one game, Oregon Trail, and was good for little more than learning how to type. The following summer, she brought home a Macintosh. Every year, the technology upgraded a little. I would play on the computer, discovering its functions. When my mom had to return the computer to her school, I would beg and plead with her to bring it home again. Finally, she was allowed to keep one of the older computers year round. The first thing I did was figure out how to get onto the Internet. I bought a clunky router, read the instructions, and hooked it up to the phone line. I was so excited to access the Internet, browse the Web, and create my first email account.

When I started high school, I borrowed my uncle’s lap top. I set everything up and quickly got into creating PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. I was better at it than many of my teachers, who still didn’t know their way around a computer very well. “How did you do that?” they frequently asked. I was out to impress them, always aiming for that “wow!” effect, and I made sure to stay one step ahead of my peers. I also wanted to get that A+ for creativity. Some of the nuns didn’t like my modern ways and scolded me, but what can I say? I’m a triathlete and competitive by nature. I was proud to be the one to teach my swim coach how to use excel to calculate workout plans for the year.

Seattle

Skyline of Seattle - The Space Needle from Kerry Park

When I arrived at Seattle University, I had to find a way to pay for the high price of my education. I combined my love for competitive swimming and technology to create swim team marketing videos. I also created a successful business using an underwater video camera to analyze swimming strokes and give swimmers and triathletes rapid feedback on their performance. Each participant left with a copy of their video to take home and study. My first underwater video swim clinic sold out, and I was booked solid after that, with many repeat customers. I posted the swim clinic online in swimming forums, and I was pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response from the community.

After university, it took me 6 months of searching for and applying to jobs before I finally landed one.  I was hired to work for Microsoft via a vendor company. The experience of working for a massive machine like Microsoft with a campus the size of a small town was overwhelming at first and a bit of a culture shock. My bosses and colleagues would throw so much technical jargon at me that I felt like they were speaking a foreign language. But I stepped up to the challenge like any athlete worth her salt, and soon I was using the jargon like a pro. Microsoft’s internal communication platform and wiki pages were my first experience of a corporate Web 2.0 culture, and I took to it naturally. Soon, I became the one being called in to set up the SharePoint sites, which were part of the web application platform developed by Microsoft. It was a great experience and I learned a lot about project management and the importance of a good communication platform to a large team.

How I Got To France

In 2006, Microsoft asked me to help them coordinate one of their events with an event in the South of France. I was in charge of logistics and getting alignment with the other event. It was my first time working abroad and I had no idea what to expect. I asked my boyfriend at the time (now husband) to come along as the translator. He had studied French for eight years which made him fluent in my view.

As I worked during the day, my husband would wander around town and speak to the locals. At night he would attend the client dinners with me and make sure I didn’t order sheep’s head or duck’s liver by mistake. He fell in love with the French way of life (minus the sheep’s heads) and decided that moving to France would be a great adventure. I made a promise that if he got a job in France, I would follow him.

Sure enough one year later, my husband found a job and voilà, I was in Paris, France!

Paris

Paris !!!

What Now?

We started our life in France with only six suitcases of possessions. I couldn’t believe I’d moved countries. I didn’t have a work permit. I couldn’t speak the language. How was I going to find others in similar situations?

Uh oh.

Facebook was my lifeline to friends and family back home, but I knew I had to branch out. With the help of Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn, I found numerous resources for expats and networking meetings in English. I started to meet people and develop a network and to blog about my experiences in France. My growing online network pointed me to resources, and soon I was learning what I needed to do to get my career back on track. Thanks to the information I’d gathered, I was able to get a freelance work permit and create my own business, McLassiter Consulting. Facebook and social media became my window into the world of other expats in the same boat as me.

As an expat with a small business in France, the tools of Web 2.0 give me a way to showcase my business to my niche audience by telling my constantly evolving story. My competitive nature is sparked by challenges, and I love applying what I’ve learned as a triathlete about goals and results to my clients’ benefit. I also love those moments when an experience I’ve shared online turns out to be helpful to one of my readers. My online platform helps me gather all my hats in one place and portray myself as I truly am. It offers transparency to my clients. When they hire me, they know who and what they’re getting.

And now you do, too. Stay tuned for more from Two Point Uh Oh!

Hello, I’m Alexis and I’m a Webaholic

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As we’ve said before, TwoPointUhOh is not about re-creating the tons of social media information already online. We’re about clarifying and simplifying that information for people who are just starting out.

How many of us are building profiles online? That’s how many different ways there are to go about it. The question is, What’s going to work for you? Honestly, that depends on who you are, what you’re trying to accomplish, who you want to reach, the learning curve you’re facing, and how you feel about the process.

In short, there are several variables with many possible combinations and one common denominator: YOU.

We’re here to help you define those variables for yourself and to identify a strategy that feels right and works for your business.

Our Philosophy

We believe context is important, concrete examples are indispensable, and story is the best way to learn. What better place to start than with our own stories?  This week I’ll introduce myself. Next week will be Mary’s turn.

Bear with me as we seemingly take a detour. Sometimes the longer path between two points is more enriching than the shorter one.

From The Personal…

Growing up, my family moved a lot. I lived in New York (twice); Athens, Greece (twice); and the then divided city of Berlin, Germany (also twice). As a college student I moved to Paris (for the first time), and then to New York again, where I stayed for 8 years. Then it was back to Paris (for the second time), and Frankfurt and Cologne, Germany (once each) and finally Paris for the third time. In between there were trips, endless trips (my father was a pilot with Pan Am).

Håkan Dahlström Photography

Four countries. Four languages. Four cultures. Twenty plus moves. Change and starting over is what I was weaned on. The result? A lifetime of not really fitting in anywhere. I struggled to make sense of the world around me, no matter where I was.

I used technology to stay in touch with friends and family all over the world. From the telephone and letters, to the fax machine and email, I was all over it. As Web 2.0 began to emerge, I jumped on board from the start. Soon I found myself enrolling in online classes, joining forums and writing groups, and meeting like-minded people. No longer bound by geography or hampered by language, I could find and converse with my tribe wherever they were.

What liberation!

By the glow of my iMac

For someone like me who’s always been a little bit everywhere but never really anywhere, the Web became a way of connecting far-flung dots. Several years before Facebook or Twitter, I was finding old friends and making new ones.

I was hooked on Web 2.0.

…To The Professional

In 1994, when I was living in Paris for the second time, I started to hear about portable careers—careers that could move with you wherever you went. This spoke to me, and I began seeking out portable work: teaching, translating, writing. Sure, each time I moved I’d have to find a new customer base, but I felt that was possible. Wherever I’d been, I’d always found a sizable Anglophone expat community and the companies and organizations that hired them. This was the early days of Web 2.0, and my mind was still thinking locally.

Between 1996 and 2002, I lived in Germany, where I trained as an Alexander Technique teacher, a mind-body method of centering, connecting, and feeling more whole. (You can see why I needed it, right? If you want to know more, click here.) To support myself, I worked as a translator. The Web allowed me to translate from home, do my research, and deliver my jobs by email. I could support myself using my language skills and I could set my own hours around my training course. Further, by the time I moved back to Paris in 2002, my customers were comfortable with assigning work and accepting delivery over the Internet. As long as I was in the same time zone and could receive a wire transfer, they were happy to keep working with me. My portable life just became smoother.

Professional consistency was now possible—at least theoretically.

Scattered

I still had two problems. One, I didn’t love translating. Two, I couldn’t get myself to do any one thing exclusively, no matter how much I loved it. I still can’t. If I don’t have variety and new challenges, I lose interest very quickly. I used to think this was a byproduct of my upbringing, but now I believe it’s innate. It’s who I am.

Back in Paris, I worked on building a teaching practice while also trying to build my writing career so that I could drop the translating. I networked online, I networked in Paris, and I said yes to just about everything, including unpaid work and community volunteering. I developed a habit of having multiple irons in the fire, several balls in the air, and lots of spinning plates.

Before long, I was stretched too thin. I became scattered and surrounded by broken plates and dropped balls. My online presence reflected that.

Uh Oh.

Some stuff had to give.

Photo by Openroads.com

Anchored

The 2.0 tools I used to create and promote my webseries.

In an effort to take greater control over my projects and my own direction, I decided to produce a web series called My Bitchy Witchy Paris Vacation. I wanted to showcase my work to the entertainment industry in the US—and I succeeded. Much to my surprise, however, creating the web series also had the effect of anchoring me here in Paris. This I had not anticipated.

Through the two-year process of writing and producing Bitchy Witchy, I realized I had become comfortable(ish) navigating France. I also realized that I had been living as if I’d inevitably pick up and move again. For seven years, I had been waiting for the proverbial second shoe to drop.

Was it possible that I was done starting over from nothing? Could I actually stop tearing up roots and focus instead on cultivating the seeds I had planted?

What a freaky little concept.

But it’s grown on me.

Under One Umbrella

Today my professional life is made up of writing, consulting, and translating for the entertainment industry, and teaching (Alexander Technique, screenwriting, storytelling, and building an online presence). In addition, I work on my own creative projects.

It’s still a lot of different things, but they fit together. At the heart of everything I do is story. At the heart of story is infinite variety and challenge.

Photo by ^riza^

Oh yeah. I could stay here a while.

My goal now is to shape an online presence that reflects one business with multiple facets and to create a home base (a company) from which I can venture out (to clients here and abroad). I’ll be sharing my progress on this blog.

Web 2.0 Takeaways

How is this long story useful to you? What does this mean in terms of Web 2.0? I don’t really know, but this is what I got out of it:

  1. Web 2.0 is a communication tool, much like the telephone.
  2. How you use Web 2.0 will change over time. The tools will change and your needs will change.
  3. How you use Web 2.0 depends on who you are. This includes your history, your needs, your level of comfort with technology and social networking, and your personality.
  4. Web 2.0 can help you connect to your tribe wherever they may be.
  5. Web 2.0 can bring you full circle. You might venture out far and wide only to land back home.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Life is a progress and not a station.” With apologies to Mr. Emerson, I would say the same about Web 2.0.