As in 2011, I tried to find those to recommend you follow that were not yet in the Top 50 of the AdAge Power 150 of top marketing blogs as well as those that were focused on social media and had consistently high quality. As a rule, I also did not include any blogs that I recommended you follow in 2011. With that, I’d like to share with you my picks for the top social media blogs to follow in 2012. Enjoy!

Conversation Agent - This blog, authored and maintained by veteran marketing strategist Valeria Maltoni, gives us various insights into digital marketing, communications and brand strategies. A recognized leader in her field with 20 years of real-world business experience under her belt, she helps veterans and new entrepreneurs alike take advantage of the growing social media space in their marketing efforts. Valeria is also a truly engaging participant in social media and the founder of the #KaizenBlog Twitter chat. Recommended blog post: Blending Personal and Business on Facebook.

Social Media B2B - Social Media B2B serves as a relevant news source and discussion site on how social media impacts B2B companies. Through expert advice from site publisher Kip Bodnar, who is also Inbound Marketing Manager at Hubspot, and managing editor Jeffery L. Cohen as well as other recognized leaders in the field, Social Media B2B is your virtual classroom and business school online for a hot topic that should see a renaissance of activity in 2012: B2B social media marketing. Recommended blog post: 10 Rules for Epic B2B Blogging.

Beth’s Blog - Readers of my blog should already be familiar with the work of Beth Kanter, as her co-authored The Networked Nonprofit book made my best social media books of 2010 list. Beth’s personal website is one of the go-to blogs for nonprofits. She was recently recognized by being a recipient of the inaugural Pepsico Women’s Inspiration Award. For those involved in social causes or those employed by nonprofit organizations, this blog can serve as your indispensable guide to harnessing social media in furthering your advocacy. Read Beth’s blog for inspiration and guides on how to reach out to wider audiences through social media, network building, and relationship marketing best practices. Recommended blog post: Facebook Changes for Organization Pages: Focus on Results

Awaken Your Superhero - I’ve already spoken praise for Christopher Penn, the man behind this site and an extremely valuable newsletter, in my post on Top LinkedIn Open Networkers and Connectors to Follow in 2011. Chris portrays himself as being a bridge – a connector between differing fields, professions and ideas in order to help both sides understand each other. “I can speak and sling code, but I’m not an IT professional. I can design campaign strategies and write copy, but I’m not a marketing professional. Where I provide value is in helping IT understand marketing and vice versa,” he shares. Penn states that we all have social media superpowers. He hopes that this blog will help in your journey of discovering your own powers and harnessing it to better yourself and those around you. Recommended blog post: How to Get Started with Google+ pages for Business. 

ConverStations - Mike Sansone believes that blogs are ”Conversation Stations”. He dubs himself a “Conversation Condutor”, guiding companies in building their own business sites. He coaches small businesses and solopreneurs in using blogs and social media not only as platforms for conversations, but also as a vehicle for linking with customers and forging lasting relationships. The subjects covered in ConverStations are valuable roadmaps for navigating the social media highway. Recommended blog post: 4 Social Elements and the Talk-nology Empowering web.

Jaffe Juice - Joseph Jaffe is the first one that I remember hearing the quote “Social Media is a Commitment, Not a Campaign” from. From a once a week op-ed column online, Joseph Jaffe’s site Jaffe Juice has evolved into a no-holds barred site tackling new marketing, advertising and creativity. Offering rich interviews with top-notch leaders in the field and insightful commentary from new-media thinkers and doers, the site fosters healthy discussions on the issues that face social media today.  Recommended blog post: Photos as Sales Drivers 

SocialWayne.com - One of the most sought-after advisers in his field, entrepreneur and tech journalist Wayne Sutton has helped countless individuals, startups and businesses achieve success by harnessing the power of communicating through the social web. Through his blog, ranked as one of the 50 best technology and social media blogs in the world, readers get to partake of his valuable know-how and  business intelligence to their advantage.  Recommended blog post: 29 of your top social media questions answered on Quora

Smedio - Backed by a diverse team of experts with extensive experience across various disciplines, Smedio is the new media and social web guide designed for marketing professionals. With its aim of continuously defining the business value of new media and the social web, it supplies readers with the social rocket fuel they need to help their businesses reach new heights in 2012 and beyond.  Recommended blog posts: How to Save a Dying Business with Social Media

Heidi Cohen - Heidi Cohen’s blog provides marketing insights–grounded both in digital and direct marketing–that provides readers with the competitive edge for making it big  in their respective industries. She provides practical tips and relevant case studies gathered from her 20 years of experience and expertise as a renown marketing professional. Recommended blog post: Twitter Marketing: 5 Ways to Maximize Your Returns .

Ask Aaron Lee - If you have been on Twitter and are interested in social media, you’ve surely seen the handle @AskAaronLee appear in your news feed on several occasions. Aaron has contributed to this website through his 3 Alternative Ways to Find Great Content to Share on Twitter post, and he has become a good friend of mine over the years. He also has an excellent blog. Geared towards small businesses, Aaron sets out to give businesses a human  dimension and to professionalize people through social.  As  co-founder of apparel company Leneys, Lee has a keen understanding of the workings of small and medium enterprises and what it takes for them to survive in the ever-changing business landscape – and I expect 2012 to be a breakout year both for his company and his blog.  Recommended blog post: 8 ways to humanize your business on social media.

As always, there is some subjectivity in how I chose the above blogs , but I hope that it helps you discover new content to follow in 2012.

Are there any other social media bloggers that you think deserve recognition in 2012? Please let me know in the comments below. Thanks!

Having the right plugins can give you an edge over other blogs and can also assist you in gaining the extra functionality you need for your WordPress-powered site, especially if social media is an important part of your marketing strategy. Let’s have a look at the top plugins that I recommend you utilize in 2012. There’s a few new plugins in the mix together with several plugins that I recommended in my Best 2011 WordPress Plugins for Social Media and SEO that you’ll want to reference if you haven’t done so.

Social Media WordPress Plugins for 2012

There are many ways to utilize the power of social media to help spread the word about your blog posts. The 3 essential types of plugins you need to have here that I cover below are social sharing, social commenting, and integrating Twitter:

1. Sharebar
   While there are many social share plugins available, Sharebar provides you something that none of the others do: The flexibility to add the “share” code before it is “officially” supported by the others. In doing so, and with its other customization features, Sharebar allows you to feature only the share buttons that you want on your site. If you want to install the Buffer (one of the essential Twitter apps I use) code on your website, note that this is their “officially” supported social share plugin at the moment.
2. Disqus Comment System
   Disqus is a separate comment blogging system that supports threaded comments and replies with varied indentions. WordPress does not support this by default, so this will make reading comment threads much easier. It also adds the ability to have your readers easily share their comments – and a link to the commented blog post – in social media. If you haven’t looked at Disqus recently, they have revamped their user interface and it is now much more responsive and easier to use.
3. SEO Facebook Comment
   This plugin helps you leverage the power of Facebook by embedding comments in your site. It’s easy to setup and you can have it running within a few minutes. The plugin also allows you to define the width of the Facebook comment box to better fit your site’s theme. The debate is out as to whether you should utilize an all-inclusive comment system like Disqus or leverage the power of Facebook to help spread the wealth of your content on the world’s largest social networking site. But if you do want to take the Facebook route, this is the plugin that I would recommend to you.
4. Tweet Old Post
   If you have been engaging and building a community of followers on Twitter, then this plugin is the perfect way to sprinkle your archived posts into your tweets. Tweet Old Post simply creates a tweet out of your previous blog posts, and sends them to your Twitter account. It even has options to add hashtags and leading text to it. The customization capabilities – and ease of doing so – give this plugin my thumbs up in the field of Twitter integration.

SEO WordPress Plugins for 2012

SEO is a never-ending battle for your blog, so you’ll want to make sure you have the right weapons on your side:

1. All in One SEO Pack
   This plugin optimizes your site by letting you easily add a Title and Description that will be indexed by Google instead of the default title of your blog post and first words of your blog post that is the present WordPress default. While All in One is and older platform that has seen a lot of new competition these days, it is still the default and no-brainer option here. All in One is also supported out of the box by Scribe (see below).
2. BWP Google XML Sitemaps
   After successfully installing and setting up your WordPress site, you need to make sure that all your work doesn’t go to waste. Make your site known to search engines by using this plugin. As new posts are added, this plugin indexes your site quickly by updating the XML sitemap and pinging major search engines to let them know you have new content. There are other Google XML Sitemap plugins out there, but this one was recommended to me by a web hosting service sometime in 2011 – and I have stuck with it with good results.
3. Scribe SEO
   I do not blog without optimizing my posts for SEO, which I do using this plugin. This is a plugin that helps your content rank higher in search engine results by analyzing your posts and making suggestions about how you can improve your post from an SEO perspective. With a click of a button, your content is evaluated and given a score based on its structure and keyword density – and you can rest assured that Google will see the same targeted keywords that you intended for every blog post and page of your website.
4. SEO Rank Reporter
   This plugin gives you the ability to keep track of the keywords you want to rank on or are already ranking with inside the comfort of your WP dashboard. It can even issue you a report every three days by notifying you via email whenever certain keywords experience major changes in search engine ranking. A smart tool to help you monitor where your website stands in the search engine wars.
5. WP Smush.it
   Images are the most resource-intensive content on a webpage. So, if you’re looking for faster load times, which Google has already announced is a factor in determining search results, then optimizing pictures is a good place to start. Smush.it automatically optimizes image compression when images are uploaded to your media library, and provides a simple interface where you can decide exactly how big or small you want your image to be. A no-brainer addition to your collection of plugins.

Web Conversion WordPress Plugins for 2012

Social media and SEO are two of the best ways in which your blog, and blog-equipped website, can be found. But once someone sees your content, how can you ensure that stay on your website and increase your chances of “converting” them on whatever call to action you might have? Check out these plugins to help you achieve just that in coordination with the above SEO and social media plugins:

1. Premise
   Premise makes building effective WordPress landing page templates easy.  It’s loaded with features including graphics for your landing pages, copywriting advice, customizable landing page templates and full compatibility with the email newsletter services of Aweber, MailChimp, and Constant Contact. You can use Premise not only for traditional “landing pages” but also to create “Content Pages” to optimize the SEO of your past blog posts.
2. The Slide
   The Slide is a free plugin that helps you increase your site’s page views. This plugin analyzes your articles and recommends past articles that are similar to it. It slides a discreet window at the bottom right of the screen which has a link to related articles the reader might be interested in. You can see The Slide in action on this website.
3. Outbrain
   Showing related posts on your site helps reduce bounce rates and retains visitors so you can turn them into subscribers, clients and customers. Outbrain adds extra interactivity to your site by letting users rate your articles and check out related content based on the rates they’ve given. It also provides a reporting system that allows you to view your most popular, highest click-through articles. I’ve tried a few of these plugins, and right now my recommendation would be to use this one for ease of customization, good look-and-feel, and performance.
4. Hello Bar
   This is a simple and unobtrusive web toolbar that sits across the top of a website. It lets you catch your user’s attention and leads them to a call to action. You can even customize the color of your bar, the text font, text color and a few other options so that it blends perfectly with your site. Don’t let the most valuable part of your website – the top horizontal space – go to waste! Guide your visitors to where you want to send them!
5. WPtouch
   This plugin detects requests from smartphones and loads an alternate mobile theme for your site that best suits small touchscreens. The styling mimics that of iPhone applications, so the interface looks and feels intuitive to many mobile users. If you haven’t checked your latest Google Analytics you just might be surprised how many mobile visitors are visiting your website. Give them what they deserve – an easy to use and optimized user experience – for free!

For me, these are 14 of the best WordPress plugins for those who want a truly optimized blog for social media and SEO in 2012. Which plugins do you use to optimize your WordPress site for social media and SEO? Any ones that don’t appear on this list? New ones that you recommend to be included in this list? Give me a shout out in the comments below. Thanks!

I don’t think any of this is earth-shattering information, nor am I alone in this pursuit.  However, I see a lot of bloggers, and sometimes even companies, pumping out content that make me scratch my head as to what their objective is.  Perhaps it is an issue, brought up in an earlier blog post about asking bloggers to stop blogging and start thinking, of writing skills and/or style.  Blogging is an investment of time, and just like everything else in life (and especially in social media), it can become a time suck with no ROI.  While every blogger will have a unique audience as well as objective, if you are not getting the volume of website visits or amount of retweets that you would like, ask yourself if you are making 1 of these 6 blog content mistakes:

• Personal Issues – If you are trying to blog about your persona and want to share your life with your readers in hopes that it creates a bond which leads to a friendship, great.  But if not, ask yourself what the objective is of sharing your personal life with the world.
• Tools That Only Affect a Small Number of People – A lot of people are blogging about Triberr these days, but considering that it is a tool only used by a small number of bloggers, those that don’t blog might not be interested. Once again, think about your target market.
• Irrelevant Interviews – Hey, I know that as a blogger, it requires time, creativity, and a lot of drive to pump out consistently high quality content.  Having guest blog posts and interviewing others is a great way to give yourself a mental break in crowdsourcing content. But the person and or content that you provide in the interview MUST be aligned with your content strategy. If not, it doesn’t serve any purpose and merely dilutes your branding.
• Rebroadcasting the News – This is my pet peeve. Don’t try to imitate Mashable, TechCrunch, or any of the other major players because you can’t. If Facebook releases a new interface, don’t feel compelled to blog about it unless you are adding some significant value.  What can I get from your blog post that I can’t find elsewhere?  Same goes with products that YOU might think are cool, but is it relevant to THEM, your target audience?
• Sharing a Video – Congratulations! You just uploaded a great video on YouTube. Don’t just share it in your blog – frame it. Add some value to it by providing some background information or going into more depth about the subject. If you don’t include at least 300 words of text, Google probably won’t consider it resourceful content for SEO anyway….
• A Trite Reflection and Then Asking for a Comment – I get it when you ask questions at the end of blog posts in order to gather engagement. But if you’re going to ask a question, at least give the reader some content! Now, Seth Godin is someone who can pack a LOT of punch into a small blog post. Unless you can do the same, don’t offer just trite reflections followed by a “What do you think?”  It’s your blog, not Facebook! The less resourceful of content that you provide to your target audience, the more they will tune you out.

This is my idea on how I see blogging – what’s your take on the mistakes that bloggers make?  Or do you completely disagree with me?  Come on – speak up!

Even if you are not Catholic nor religious, I think we can all learn a lot about social media through Brandon’s teachings.  It is with this intent, of finding a unique perspective to help us all understand the depth of social media, that I embarked on this interview. 

Q1. Brandon, you were already a Catholic blogger, but with your new book out you are now a Catholic author! Can you describe to the average person the role blogging has made in your religious activities and why others should use it as part of their religious practice? Or is Catholic blogging only for a small subset of religious Catholics?

Blogging is one of the most powerful communication tools the world has ever seen. No other medium creates such immediate, instant conversation about important topics, and few others connect such different groups of people. Look at any comment box and chances are you’ll see a panoply of characters: angry teenagers, joyous mothers, radical socialists, immature zealots, and more. Where else would you ever see these people gather if not in the comboxes?

For Catholicism this is huge. Blogging allows a probing skeptic who would never darken the doors of a church to stumble into a conversation with a priest. Bloggers help expose false caricatures many people have of Catholicism, instead revealing the radiance, brilliance, beauty, and texture of the Church. And in terms of displaying the humanity of an often distant institution, few tools are better.

Blogging has also been a useful spiritual discipline for me. It’s helped me refine and untangle many thoughts while connecting me with people much wiser than I. Where else could I instantly bounce ideas off of theologians, scholars, scientists, friends, family, and even my local priest?

So while, of course, blogging carries some negative baggage, its potency can’t be neglected. I don’t think blogging is only for a subset of Catholics anymore than a mouse is only for a subset of computer users. And I’m not alone in that. Last year, Pope Benedict XVI issued a rousing call for all Catholics to gird their keyboards and engage the so called ‘digital continent’, using all the modern tools to “cast wide our nets.” If an 84-year old Pope can see the value in blogging, all Catholics should.

Q2. Your new book, The Church and New Media, is about the unique convergence of old traditions and new technology. Who is the intended reader of the book? Can you give us a short summary as to what the book is about?

Simply put, The Church and New Media helps Christians use new media both effectively and faithfully. More specifically, readers learn how Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, blogs, podcasts, and text-messaging can be used to connect with non-Christians, form the Church’s faithful, build deep community, and change the world. Covering both the benefits and dangers of these tools, the book is both practical and theoretical. We explore not only how to use these tools but how they are shaping the religious landscape around us.

And as every good, first-time author should boldly proclaim, “my book is for everyone!” But in this case, the book does appeal to every Christian demographic–professed technophiles, Christ-following Luddites, inquisitive leaders, and even those looking for a “Facebook” at their local Barnes and Noble. The books’ contributors are just as diverse as its intended audience. More than a dozen Catholics have a chapter including tech-savvy priests, stay-at-home moms, full-time bloggers, Internet activists, Catholic bishops, and even me, a full-time mechanical engineer. Because it’s both intelligent and approachable, it doesn’t matter whether you know 47 different coding languages or have no idea what a “tweet” is–you’ll learn a lot from The Church and New Media.

Q3. How does the advice in your book transcend religion and be potentially applicable for any professional or business?

The Church and New Media  shows how these tools can further the mission of the Catholic Church. But every business, every professional, every author, and every creator has a mission they’re trying to push. So in that sense, the book’s advice is applicable everywhere. How can you plunge your message into the global conversation? How can you link up with people who are currently disconnected? How can you use new media to change hearts, build movements, and rally support for a world-changing cause? All these questions transcend religion and therefore the answers are applicable everywhere.

Ultimately, the best social media experts realize that this digital revolution is grounded on relationship. That to build love for your brand, product, or movement, necessitates a focus on intentional connections. That’s what the Church does. And that’s what this book helps everyone to do.

Q4. If you were to name a few blogs or Twitter users who you consider to be authoritative on the topic of social media and religion, who would they be and why? 

Some of my favorite experts include Matthew Warner, Fr. Robert Barron, Angela Santana, Lisa Hendey, and Tim Challies. But I’ll also point readers to the resources page on the book’s website for more on religion and social media. And finally, if his brilliant messages and iPad forays are any kind of sign, Pope Benedict XVI is increasingly becoming a global authority on faith and social media.

(end of interview)

If global religions represent some of the biggest “brands” and communities on earth, those of us involved in social media as part of our profession can learn a lot from experts in how religion uses social media.

Do you use social media as part of your religious practice? Any takeaways here that you can use for your business?

Brandon Vogt is a 25-year old Catholic writer and speaker who blogs at  www.ThinVeil.net. He’s an expert on religion and new media, and in May 2010 was invited by the Vatican to dialogue with Church officials on the topic. His first book, The Church and New Media: Blogging Converts,Online Activists, and Bishops Who Tweet (Our Sunday Visitor) was released this August. You can learn more about the book at www.churchandnewmedia.com where you’ll find a list of contributors, endorsements, and many special resources. You can also download a free excerpt from the book and purchase it in paperback or eBook form.

Throw up a page of some kind on any of the popular hosted blog platforms (WordPress, Tumbler, Posterous et. al.), or hire a broke youngster via some crowd-sourcing firm who’ll gladly hook you up with a self-hosted blog for a price of a cup of coffee a day, if only because where he happens to dwell, your money still has a ton of value.

Once you have secured your blogging space, you can now truly broadcast your message to millions of potential customers with a click of a button, so long as you syndicate, and almost anyone looking for whatever it is you are selling will undoubtedly see your blog come up in the first ten results of Google. If not, there are always adwords, or SEOs, either of which will get you some place reasonable on Google for a price of twice-weekly sushi dinner for two at a nice joint, or thereabouts, per month.

Here is what advice they don’t give you at those seminars or e-books on the magical power of business blogging and social media:They don’t tell you that blogging = content creation, i.e. writing (mostly), and for some photography, videography, illustration, etc.

That blogging per se is a meaningless word, thrown out there to make it less intimidating for the non-writers amongst us to throw our thoughts into the great wide world of the Internet. That the only differences between writing a blog or writing an article for a newspaper are that with a blog, you will be less likely to suffer public humiliation should it be lousy, and a small but important fact that there is no editor to guide you, help you fix it, or simply say that your content is not worthy of publication.

Here is why it’s important:

Few people in the world are born great writers, or photographers or anything else that requires a natural gift and the tenacity to hone it overtime. Numbers-wise, probably just as few as have a natural gift for music, painting, or architecture. Fewer, still, have the passion to pursue whatever gifts they are born with. The bloggers who have made their business successful by blogging had not just the gift, but the passion and tenacity to pursue it. You can’t learn how to blog effectively in a 20 minute webinar any more than you can learn to paint by taking those paint by numbers classes. And even more importantly, I am of the opinion that we won’t get good at something for which we lack a natural predisposition by repetition. Trying something may help you discover if you have a talent and passion for it though, but chances are, you already know what you are good at and what you enjoy. Most of us do, past middle school anyway.

So here is my sincere recommendation to anyone who is contemplating diving into the world of blogging for business. Take a step back and look at your style of communication, before you do anything else. How do you come across in your correspondence? Would you read you? And if yes, would you hire you to do whatever it is you are selling? If you don’t think you are good enough, do the smart thing. There are people who are good writers, photographers and online communicators. Find one of those close to you, if your place is a mom and pop type, or elsewhere if it’s not, and entrust that person with maintaining your blog and your social media presence. After all, if you are going to blog for business, your blogging and your social media efforts should be looked at as marketing. In simple terms, posting a half-baked blog online is akin to sending someone a postcard you manufactured on your 1990s Xerox. Your potential clients who see it won’t complain or comment. They’ll just file you into the irrelevant folder, and few ever manage to earn a comeback from that one.

Today’s guest blog post was contributed by Inna Hardison, wife, mother to two kids and two adopted pups, marketer, writer and owner of HaMedia Group, a kick ass little ad agency.

1. Start thinking in terms of key phrases

For each category of content that you want to blog about, start thinking of content ideas and associating them with keyword phrases. Use keyword tools (Google AdWords Keyword Tool is often recommended but I often simply use Google Suggest) to research niche key phrases and check out the competition. Avoid choosing the most popular keywords as these will already be covered by high-ranking bloggers, and you are unlikely to achieve high search engine rankings with these. Instead, choose a more specific, potentially long tail key phrase; include it in the blog post title and the body of the post. Better yet, optimize your blog for SEO with Scribe using this target key phrase.

2. Brand your blog

Customize the appearance of your blog with a logo and page template that separates you from other bloggers. If you use a common template, such as a WordPress theme, customize it with unique images and colors. Keep the colors and theme consistent throughout your blog and any other associated content that you produce. The aim is to create a unique brand that subscribers will eventually feel familiar with over time, which WordPress allows you to easily do. Don’t forget to also use interesting and relevant photos in a consistent way as eye candy on each blog post.  Better yet, include an educational video on each blog post, whether your own or created by someone else, as a way to add further value to your blog posts.

3. Don’t make your visitors think

Keep it clean and simple, and include a sitemap and friendly help pages to guide visitors around your blog. Most of the popular blog hosts have various types of plug-ins and options that allow you to create customized menus to file your content into categories; use these options to organize your posts and links to related content. Don’t forget to add a blog search bar!

4. Make it shareable

Set up buttons on your posts that visitors can use to share your content on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Google+ and other popular social networking sites, and add an ‘Email this’ or ‘Tell a friend’ option. Include RSS subscription options for your site, and submit your RSS feed to reputable directories. My recommendations on my Top 15 Social Media WordPress Plugins for 2011 post included DiggDigg for your social buttons and Feedblitz for RSS subscription management (and more!).

5. Build quality backlinks

Submit articles to article directories, write guest posts on other popular blogs, contribute to popular forums, and so on. These are all good ways to get quality backlinks and build your profile with online communities. Avoid using paid-for link building packages or similar schemes as search engines do not value low-quality links, and in many cases it can harm your rankings. Since you’re already involved in social media, simply sharing your blog posts with your followers is the easiest and most organic way to build quality backlinks.

6. Post regularly

The amount of posts you make will depend on the topic of your blog; if your blog aims to keep up with current news events, you should be posting several times a day, but a general interest blog may only be updated two or three times a week. The most important thing is to keep the timing of your posts consistent. Don’t make five posts in one day then nothing for several weeks. Once a week is the minimum you should aim for. From there, try two or three a week. If you don’t have enough content to last you for a month, don’t start blogging until you do.

7. Comment on other relevant blogs

Make sure that your comments are helpful to the blogger, or add something useful to the topic. Don’t spam or post links on other people’s blogs. If your comments are valuable, and give the impression that you know what you’re talking about, readers will click through to find out who you are without the need for underhand tactics.

8. Respond to comments

Allow readers to comment on your blog, and always respond to their comments. Remove any spam links placed in your comments section, but try to resist the urge to remove comments from those who simply disagree with you. Instead, respond in a friendly and courteous way; this can be difficult, especially if someone is being aggressive in their point of view, but it is also an opportunity to show your professionalism. My recommended comment management plugin for WordPress is Disqus.

If you follow the above blog marketing tips, you are well on your way to building a lasting community of visitors who will subscribe, comment and engage with you on many levels.

Any other insanely simple tips that I missed?

What are you going to say in social media? While there are many ways to engage with others, having your own resourceful content is a great way to start, comment on, or join other conversations. This will naturally lead to not only more people engaging with you, but also more website visitors engaging with your content.

2) Creates healthy habits that are vital to social media success.

By sharing industry-related information on your blog, it will create new fans of your company and help you establish positioning as experts in your field. It will also foster development of a habit of creating content and sharing information that are vital for the success of your company’s social presence.

3) Easily integrates into a comprehensive social media strategy.

It will generate the content by which you can base your social media strategy implementation on. All social strategies need to address this issue of content, so your blogging will make this section of your social media strategy that much easier to create.

4) Shareable content gets shared

If you’re looking to utilize the sometimes viral nature of social media to help spread the word about your company, conversations and quotes alone won’t do it. You need content, and it needs to be resourceful and shareable. Creating shareable content should be the job of a talented Content Czar if you have the budget.

5) The SEO of social media.

Tweeting and sharing your blog content on the various social networking sites will lead to an even greater SEO benefit through the fact that search engines are tracking social shares and beginning to reflect them in search results. It also naturally leads to others in social circles who want to link to your content for their own blog posts, which naturally creates the organic backlinks that are so critical to search engine optimization. After all, who wants to link to a company or product page? – unless they are your distributor, of course Finally, blogging increases the amount of and frequency of revising content on your home page, providing you even greater SEO benefits. This will all result in more visits to your website as your blog content gets indexed and analyzed by search engines over time.

Success in social media marketing can require a lot of time and patience.  Don’t underestimate the hidden powers of business blogs.  Beginning your efforts by establishing a corporate blog will create a perfect launching pad for your social presence while attracting new visitors to the social side of your website. It is a sound tactic to begin your social marketing with.

What has your small business blogging experience been like?

Video explaining this blog post in Japanese appears below. 日本語のご説明は以下のビデオをご覧下さい。

Fast forward to 2011. There has been a lot of talk in the blogosphere and Twitterville about a new automation tool for bloggers who tweet called Triberr. After hearing that “T-word,” some of you who know about it may already be cringing or there are some who could be excited to learn more. Either way, I wanted to share my own personal experiences of using Triberr in this review and what it has reminded me about what is important about Twitter. I also write this in the hopes that this review helps foster a better understanding of Triberr as well as provide a potentially different perspective on how the tool can be used.

What is Triberr?

Put simply, Triberr is a tool that aggregates the RSS feeds from all members of a “tribe” and then allows you to automatically or manually post them into your Twitter stream. The idea is that your tribe support each other by retweeting each other’s content. The process can be completely manual if the user changes his or her settings, and there is also an option of rating a blog post with positive or negative “karma” to inform other bloggers whether or not they should manually approve the tweet. The tweet itself is completely preview-able and editable before publication.

Why Use Triberr?

The prime appeal that Triberr has for most is undoubtedly the ability to get greater reach for your blog posts by having your tribe promote it in their Twitter stream. Many a blogger has wondered, “Why don’t I get as many views and/or retweets even though my content is better than [social media rockstar name]?” Triberr allows you to group together your efforts with blogger soulmates to extend your reach to potentially more than 1,000,000 followers, thus leveling the playing field for lesser known as well as up-and-coming bloggers. Some well-respected bloggers with more than 100,000 followers are also using the platform.

Why the Complaints Against Triberr?

Many see those who use Triberr as merely trying to game the system to get more retweets by automating the process of tweeting each other’s blog posts.

Why Did I Use Triberr?

My intent on using Triberr was simple: I recognized one of the bloggers who’s posts I often retweeted as a member, and then found out that he was in a tribe where I knew a few of the other bloggers. Why not join the tribe, I thought, to be exposed to similar bloggers’ content and vice-versa? While I cannot deny that the promise of additional reach was enticing, to me what was more important is that it offered a way for me to supplement my own content curation efforts by providing me the latest blog posts in a dashboard for me to conveniently review and then schedule to tweet. Actually, there are some bloggers that I support and tweet out pretty much everything they post because I know their content is relevant to my followers and I want to support them. To me, Triberr was going to be a natural extension to this: It is a pre-populated dashboard/mini-RSS reader from other bloggers who want to try to support each other.

What Have My Experiences Been?

I joined a tribe and left it shortly thereafter for a variety of reasons I will outline below. I then took a break from Triberr. After Triberr started allowing something called “inbreeding,” I then experimented on joining another tribe with different bloggers, expanded that to multiple tribes, left most of those tribes, and recently joined another. I can’t say that using Triberr doesn’t have its disadvantages – it really is about finding the right people to be in your tribe, and it is not an easy task for many reasons outlined below.

What Have I Learned from the Experience? And What Advice Do I Give to Triberr Users?

I am not trying to criticize those who use Triberr, but using Triberr has stretched my boundaries as to what I am and am not comfortable tweeting. To say otherwise would simply be a lie. However, I have also strengthened relationships with some bloggers and became friends with new ones. Each tribe even has a “Wall” which encourages the creation of a community for your tribe.  With that being said, here’s what I’ve learned – and my advice for Triberr users.

#1 You are What You Tweet and Your Content Must be Aligned with Your Brand (Content Strategy)

Content curation is something which should ideally provide your followers with tweets aligned with your content strategy that you have personally curated. This is something that Triberr has the potential to help foster. The problem, though, is that not every member might be tweeting relevant content all of the time and that the content of some tribe members might be completely irrelevant to what you are interested in sharing with your community. Unless you join a tribe where every tribe member has content that is aligned with your strategy, you may be finding yourself introducing irrelevant and off-brand content to your community unless you’re in the right tribe and manually previewing each blog post before tweeting to be on the safe side.

#2 You Must Maintain the Quality of Your Blog – and Tweets (Content Quality)

No two bloggers are alike. Some might only post a photo together with one or two hundred words of text in Tumblr-esque fashion while others regularly blog posts with more than 1,000 words. While some might use their blog to make casual remarks or ask questions, others might make an effort to try to make their blog post as meaningful and resourceful to others as possible. Only you know what you consider to be “quality content,” but while some in your tribe you might already know and respect, there might be others who’s blog posts just might not be your cup of tea. Another reason that you should be manually previewing each blog post before tweeting to be on the safe side.

#3 Supporting Your Tribe is One Thing, But Do Some Exploit the Privilege? (Authentic Curation)

A lot of people complain that Triberr is all about what is bad in how some marketers exploit social media in quid pro quid fashion disregarding their community and treating Twitter followers as mere numbers. To be honest, the feeling of wanting to follow someone if they follow you as well as retweet the content of others who retweet yours is quite natural. It’s why you get thanked for retweeting other’s content as well as for mentioning someone on a #FollowFriday. I often look for content to curate from my followers who share my content with their community. That being said, I am not one who has ever been part of a “blog party” where we agree to comment on each others blog posts and digg/stumble etc. each others posts. I saw Triberr as being something different, which it is, as it is representing a retweet of content. However, Triberr actually has the potential to become an even more damaging artificial method of promotion. How? Because once a blogger realizes that they can broadcast a tweet out to more than one million followers, they just might start taking advantage of it. Perhaps they start publishing more often then they might normally be doing to take advantage of the situation. Maybe they don’t spend as much time on each blog post and craft shorter, quicker posts so that they can increase website traffic. A feeling of mutual support is one thing, but what if everyone is just not utilizing the tool in the same manner? You might get the feeling that others are trying to take advantage of you with such behavior, and if so, you really need to inform the tribe leader and/or leave the tribe and find another. Another reason to be manually previewing each blog post before tweeting to be on the safe side.

#4 With Reach Comes Responsibility, So Don’t Become the Firehose (Frequency Strategy)

The reach that can be had through Triberr is, simply stated, incredible. However, with the reach comes responsibility. I was a member of one of the largest tribes where I was amazed by how much my own content got retweeted. The cost of that, though, is the volume of tweets to review and thus tweet on behalf of others. I usually like to tweet out some informative links that I have curated to my followers, but I also like to have a threshold as to the maximum number of tweets I want to send out in a day. Joining any tribe over a few members will challenge your threshold, and in turn potentially the threshold of your followers. The problem is that nobody blogs at the same frequency. There are some who blog every day, while some only do it weekly. Aligning yourself with a tribe where bloggers tweet at a similar frequency is a must. All it takes is for one blogger to take advantage of the situation mentioned above or merely someone who blogs daily or sometimes twice a day when you don’t to ask yourself why the same name keeps coming up on your Tribber dashboard. And if you are asking yourself that question, chances are some of your followers might be as well. In such a scenario, can there be any other option other than to manually preview each blog post before tweeting to be on the safe side?

So my conclusion, other than the need to manually preview each blog post before tweeting?

First of all, I have nothing against any particular blogger as there is no right or wrong way with blogging, tweeting, or social media in general. I am not pretending to be an authority on any such subject, because everyone sees everything in their own way, and that is the way it should be. I only share with you my own experience in hopes that other bloggers can find truly aligned tribes while also adhering to what Twitter is all about.

However, my experiences above do tell me one thing: No two bloggers are alike, and no two tweeters are as well.  The only way that a tribe can be a truly unified presence in light of this is if everyone agrees to automatically post each other blog posts all the time in the pursuit of the one thing that can unify the Triberr user: The promise of expanded reach.  However, for the same above reasons, I find that this is a high price to pay and instead am looking for a comfortable medium with tribe members that I respect who also share similar beliefs and philosophies about blogging and tweeting

The developers of Triberr have put together a truly awesome platform which is quick, scalable, and supported surprisingly well by two developers who are only doing this part-time. The platform could develop into a “blogger’s alliance” type of world where companies wanting to engage with influential bloggers might just skip Klout and instead try to influence one of the tribes. How about sponsored tweets from tribes, similar to how platforms have been created to advertise for celebrities? Just as Twitter recommends those who you should follow, Triberr could also team you up with another blogger or two who’s interests and/or content is similar and create a blogger matchmaking service. Not to mention the potential for large enterprises who manage several blogs and multiple Twitter accounts to accurately track the engagement level in terms of retweets from each Twitter community by blog content source. It will be interesting to see how things develop, but one thing for sure: Unless Triberr is used responsibly by those who are active members, tweets coming from the platform may become ignored as much as those “RT @Mashable” tweets coming from Twitterfeed have become…

One could come to the conclusion that a perfectly aligned tribe is impossible because of the varying factors I mentioned above. I don’t believe this is the case, and I also feel that Triberr has its role as a content curation tool which comes with the support of a community of like-minded bloggers. I will continue to use Triberr as part of my social media experimentation efforts as I am presently happy with those bloggers I am in the same tribe with, but I am curious as to your comments and suggestions regarding this review.

What has your experience with Triberr been? Please share your review in the comments. Thank you.

(July 6, 2011) Afterthoughts: There have been a number of blog posts written about Triberr, and this post was in no way in response to any single one. However, I will say that I have had quite a few conversations with Judy Gombita about the subject that were thought-provoking (you should follow her on Twitter as well), and she pointed me to a thought-provoking post on Triberr from Kellye Crane which generated quite a lot of interesting comments.

Related articles

• 2 New Social Media Tools to Try: Refynr and Tribrr [Review] (oneforty.com)
• Is your content out of your control? (onourbikes.com)
• The Collaboration Debate (growmap.com)
• Why There’s Nothing Wrong With Social Media Automation (customerthink.com)
• Joining a tribe – is it right for you? (In response to @SeanEClark’s post.) (huwsayer.wordpress.com)

Not blogging for such a long time gave me some time to think about what blogging means to me and why I feel the need to keep publishing my thoughts. But if you have been avoiding blogging or just don’t see the benefits in doing so, here’s why you should be blogging should you make the time to do so:

Your Business Should be Strategically Blogging – I mentioned in a blog post several months ago that almost every social media strategy should have a blog component in it.  The benefits of business blogging are huge: One of my clients literally doubled their website traffic with just 2 blog posts aligned with a social media strategy that I had created.  I have already illustrated some case studies for B2B business blogging which shows real results can be had no matter how niche your industry.  I realize that for many businesses and small business owners they just don’t have time to sit down and write blog posts, but for them I say 2 things:

1. Business blogging will increase your Inbound Marketing and bring you more prospects over time, making your business development activities more efficient and shortening your sales cycle.
2. If you don’t have time for business blogging, hire an expert.  There are an abundance of writers out there that, with experience and training in your company culture and products, can lend a very needed helping hand.  You can also try the excellent services provided by Constant Content.

Professionals Should Begin to Blog (as outlined in my post 7 Reasons to Start Blogging)

1. Blogging is the Best Way to Build & Showcase Your Personal Brand
2. Blogging Helps Differentiate You from Everyone Else
3. Blogging Brings You New Opportunities
4. Blogging is the Ultimate Pay It Forward
5. You’re Already Tweeting…Why Not Add Your Own Original Views in More Depth?
6. You Can Start to Monetize Your Knowledge
7. Because You Can

There is an 8th reason which I just remembered recently after taking time off my blog and concentrating on finishing my book:

8. Leave Your Legacy

We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but we each have unique and rich experiences in life to share today.  Doesn’t publishing this content potentially help others in the future?  If something was to happen to us today, wouldn’t we want to equip our followers with our knowledge so that they can utilize it to better their future?

This blog began as a simple way to help others by answering questions about social media.  As I am about to publish my 2nd book, I look forward to continuing this mission with additional passion, sharing my experience and ideas in hopes that it might help you, my reader.  There is no upsell and no holding back – I am devoted to helping you and hoping that you can leverage this website for your business and professional benefit.  I cannot promise you that I will blog x times per week going forward, as the publication of organic ideas should not be governed by an editorial calendar.  I will promise you, however, that when I do blog, it will be for real.

What is your reason for blogging?

While blogs continue to mystify many companies who think that they are just for people expressing their personal opinions, more and more businesses are realizing the hidden powers that a business blog can provide to their sales and marketing efforts.  Even successful B2B blog case studies are beginning to appear.

If your business still hasn’t started a blog, consider the potential hidden powers that a business blog holds for your company that you might not be aware of:

1) Communicate Freely

Unlike web pages that often remain static for too long, business blogs provide a quick and convenient platform for new company information.  For providing resourceful industry information, background regarding your press releases, in-depth analysis of new product launches, promotions, or simply conveying up-to-date company news, they are an invaluable tool for many current businesses.  Especially if your website isn’t updated regularly, blogs can be a very effective means of promotion, keeping regular customers informed, and attracting new customers to your web presence.

2) Loosen Up

A business blog allows you to communicate in a more informal setting, which can help you to connect on a more personal level with your customers.  Unlike the more formal aspects of a main business website, a blog can afford to be more conversational.  Under the leadership of your social media content czar, blog writers from both within your company as well as from outside sources can write regular and diverse content that can still relate closely to your company’s philosophy and meet your fluctuating needs.

3) Boost Your Ratings

Even with a standard blog on your main website, there are many opportunities to create links to and from your site, enabling visitors to find relevant information with a single click.  This can encourage visitors to discover other relevant pages on your website, and it will also naturally help your search engine optimization.  As the blog brings in more people to your website, you have more opportunities to promote your products and services, which can convert into more sales.

4) Save Money and Time

With a regularly updated blog, you can afford to spend less money and time on expensive advertising.  Giving a worldwide audience new company information will cost very little, if anything at all.  It’s your choice whether you want the blog to be updated every day or every week.  Whatever you decide, you can be in complete control of the content and branding and feel comfortable in the fact that search engines will be indexing your content to provide potential clients new ways of discovering your company online.

5) Get Feedback

If you need to know what your average customer thinks about a new product or future company plans, surveys embedded in blog posts or simple comment boxes can provide you with immediate consumer feedback that would otherwise take weeks or months to obtain.  You can even use the blog to answer visitors’ questions.

Even though blogs are an excellent marketing tool, they do require time and management to keep them up to date, but they should not be dismissed because of the real value they can bring to almost any business.  As a tool for organic SEO, a vital link to potential customers, and a means of inexpensive, effective communication, business blogs can possess powers that are hidden to those who don’t use them.  If your company doesn’t have a blog yet, there’s never been a better time to start blogging.