This Tuesday, we bring you Erik Deckers, owner of Pro Blog Service and author of No Bullshit Social Media, among other books. His contribution is a brief Q & A on blogging for companies, punctuated with tips to help you succeed.
Reach Erik on Twitter, LinkedIn, Professional Blog Service, and Google+
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(Photo by Firebelly Marketing)
Tell us a bit about bit about your background and how you decided to pursue social media/blogging as a profession?
I started blogging in the late 1990s as a way to post my humor columns. My goal was to build a website that would attract readers who would then want to buy my book, if I ever compiled one of my old humor columns. I switched from a website to a blog in about 2003, and have been doing it ever since.
I eventually became known as the blogging guy around Indy. This was a problem, because I was supposed to be focused on direct mail, but everyone wanted to talk about blogging.
In 2009, I got a job at Professional Blog Service as a blog manager. A few months later, I became an owner with Paul Lorinczi, the other employee. In July of this year, I bought him out and became the sole owner.
We hear a lot about blogging, generally speaking, how can blogging help an organization connect with people better?
It lets you become a source of credible and valuable information. Stuff they might normally ask friends for or call the customer service line for. If you can teach people how to use your product, or how to function better in your industry — say, a running shoe company that writes articles about effective training for all different ability levels — then you connect with them better.
There are several ways blogging can help businesses, but what are three ways blogging can help organizations practice PR better?
- You become the expert source to the media. They can come and find information for their news articles.
- You skip the media, and become the publisher and source to the general public.
- You compete with the media and tell your story, even when they’re getting it wrong.
How should an organization plan for blogging success?
- Come up with a regular editorial calendar that matches seasonal changes for your business. This lets you keep up with consumer questions and concerns.
- Create a structure or hire the staff that lets you publish on a regular and ongoing basis. Don’t give it to your most overworked staffers; this will drop to the bottom of their list every time.
- Research your best keywords. This will give you an idea of what to write about and what people are looking for. This will drive your editorial calendar.
What three tips you would give business owners looking to hire a professional blogger?
- Make sure they can write well. Not just have a high schooler’s grasp of the English language, but are actual, honest-to-God real writers.
- Make sure they are up to date on the latest search engine optimization.
- Make sure they are creative enough to help you come up with an editorial calendar month after month.
Tell us about an accomplishment you’re proud of and why?
This week, I went to the launch party for my fourth book, The Owned Media Doctrine. I wrote it with Taulbee Jackson. I share this moment with my other three publications, No Bullshit Social Media with Jason Falls, Branding Yourself with Kyle Lacy, and I ghostwrote half of Twitter Marketing for Dummies, also with Kyle.
I’m also working on book number 5, which should come out some time in Spring 2014