Triune Designs Blog: Web Design, Development, & Marketing

Oh, the search engines. I think they are my best friend and my worst enemy at the same time. Writing posts that might ring true for people engaging in this blogging community and with people cruising along on the search engine highway comes with a slight risk. The wrong people will also find this blog.

I have two examples come to mind.

The Iconic Symbol
The first is with a blog post I did on Twitter a few months ago. I had a good conversation with some readers and got a few links coming to the website. Awesome… and then the junk came. Apparently, the icon was picked up on Google images… and a few bloggers liked the it enough to steal bandwidth hotlink the image. I assume a few of them did it by accident, but either way it was pretty annoying and required a bit of angling so they would not use my resources.

Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt Me
The second example brings us to today: our blog kind of got hacked yesterday. I believe it has to do with some of the recent blog post about web security. So far, I cannot tell that anything actually happened, but two “people” registered on the blog as subscribers. They/he/she did this despite my not having user registration access on the main part of the website. After a quick Google search I found that one of the email addresses is associated with a person who uses that newly acquired access to break into the website and do (presumably) bad things.

I guess I might have to try and increase the security on the blog. Between that and prayer, hopefully nothing bad will go down on the back-end of the website. Stay tuned!

The Jeep Community
Last fall, my wife and I bought an old Jeep Wrangler. Our thought was that it would be a fun vehicle that our family could enjoy driving. (Ah, driving with the top down and the doors off – awesome!!) Little did I realize that we were joining a community. Having only owned 4Runners, Civics, and Explorers in the past, I was never truly exposed to communities built around cars.

Driving around, I immediately started to notice people in other Jeeps waving to me. After a while, I began waving back when people waved at me even progressing to where I was the initiator many times. I noticed other occurrences of the Jeep community. Other Wrangler owners began talking with me when I parked. Friends who own Wranglers offer to help me with various repair projects on the vehicle – more so than when I worked on my previous vehicles. And I am just touching the surface leaving out Jeep festivals, off-roading gatherings, etc.

I have learned that people are passionate about their Jeeps and this passion has developed a great community.

Communities All Around
What is great is that there are communities all around us and oftentimes we never see them. Some are obvious – motorcycle riders have an avid member community; some are not – have you ever seen the Mazda Miata community? Believe me, it is there (one of my old roommates, Chris Crumpton showed me that). And these examples are just dealing with cars, there are thousands of other communities out there centered around church, sports, computers, movies, occupations (just to name a few).

The definition of a community is a group of people with common ownership, common agreement as to goals, or a body of people in a learned occupation. I argue that a community is also built around people with a common passion.

Communities & You
As a small business, you are very passionate about what your company creates or sells. So, use this passion to your advantage and help build a community centered around your business.

You have two options for building a community. You can either get involved in existing communities that are related to your your passion (and/or business) or create your own. There are people who are passionate just like you, it is just a matter of finding them. Once you are involved, you can help that community develop. The other option is to build your own community (using platforms such as blogging, Facebook, or Twitter) and begin showing your passion. Make it easy for other like-passioned people to join you and help the community grow.

Have fun with your passion-based community… and if you happen to see me driving around in my Jeep make sure to give me a big wave. I will throw one back at you.

David over at Web Ink Now wrote about his top five Twitter applications. He then challenged his readers to provide a list of their top Twitter apps.

So, here are my top Twitter applications.

Twhirl (for my Mac)
TweetDeck seems to be the choice of Twitter power users everywhere; I am not a power user.

After trying out a few different apps for my Mac (including TweetDeck), I finally chose Twhirl. Twhirl has all that I need in a nice clean interface. Twhirl allows me to have multiple accounts up at the same time so I can easily follow what is happening in my personal and business tweetstreams. I also like the Growl notifications, which allow me to follow along without having to to constantly switch over to see new tweets.

BirdFeed (for my iPhone)
I have tried five or six different Twitter apps for the iPhone. A while ago I read about BirdFeed on TechCrunch. They spoke highly about the new app so I thought I might give it a chance. I have been using Birdfeed ever since.

Birdfeed has a simple and clean interface, it allows me to easily see mentions/replies, and it provides easy access to retweeting or replying to other people’s tweets. Birdfeed also bookmarks my Twitter time line so I can easily refer back to a recent tweet I want to see. Finally, I like how the interface looks similar to the iPhone texting (or iChat conversations) interface.

Flickr (for sharing photos)
Flickr was a little late to the Twitter-picture game, but I am glad they are here. Facebook and Flickr are the two places I share my photos with the world. Since I am already adding my photos to Flickr, it makes things easy for me to reference my “photo” tweets through them instead of worrying about another website.

FriendOrFollow (for a bird’s eye view of my Twitter community)
FriendOrFollow easily allows me to keep track of my Twitter community. On their website, I have three options. I can see who is following me (with no love in return), who I am following (without reciprocation), and who are my friends (those who follow me and I follow back).

The benefit of using FriendOrFollow is that I have a better idea of who I am actually engaging with on Twitter. The information is used (in conjunction with other criteria) to allow me to make more informed decisions on who I should continue following.

Your Favs
There are my favorite Twitter apps, but I am more interested in you. What are your favorites?

I had lunch a few days ago with Jonathan Scott, my life coach.. uh, my one-on-one motivational speaker… uh, my good friend and LifeGroup handler/director. During our conversation we talked about Twitter. I tried my best to explain Twitter and why people use it:

Well you see Jonathan, Twitter allows you to tell people what you are doing. It is in a similar vein to Facebook’s status update, but it is so much more than that. Through these frequent back-and-forth updates, Twitter allows you to really engage in conversations with other people. All of this helps to build a solid online community of friends and peers.

That explanation adequately describes Twitter and how it operates, but it occurred to me that you cannot truly understand what Twitter is until you dive in.

I Feel A Little Stupid
I was listening to a great web developer podcast a few weeks ago when I heard the following conversation. The conversation reinforces my aforementioned thought. The excerpt from the podcast is when two of the co-hosts were talking about President Obama using Twitter during his campaign.

Brad Williams:

Now, you can’t tell me that he [President Obama] didn’t think Twitter was a little stupid when he first heard what exactly it was.

I think everyone that signs up on Twitter has to question what they are doing when they first sign up.

Kevin Yank

Step one of Twitter: acceptance.

And there it is:

• You will probably feel stupid as you sign up for Twitter.
• You will definitely wonder what use you will ever get out of Twitter.
• You may think how it will probably be a waste of time.

Join the Crazy Community
However, once you accept that you are just as crazy as the millions of other Twitter users then you will find a vibrant, exciting community. And from a web marketing perspective, this community is important to help build your brand, reputation, and relationships. All of which are necessary components of an ongoing web marketing campaign.

The Twitter icons are courtesy of Smashing Magazine and Mirjami Manninen.

I just read a post on ChurchCrunch that talked about 50 great examples of blogging goals. I have to say that agree with a lot, but I also disagree with a lot of them as well. Here are a few of John’s examples.

Bloggers who I believe set great goals. These bloggers…

• want to increase their consistency and/or frequency of writing posts (Devakishor, Hardgainer Transformation).
• set a goal to write a certain number of posts per week (Slavi, Hardgainer Transformation, Daily SEO Blog).
• set a goal to learn more about their specific subject matter (Slavi).
• increase the amount of original content they publish (Devakishor).
• increase visibility through various social media websites (Devakishor).
• set a goal to start video blogging (Hardgainer Transformation) or write an eBook (Geek Entrepreneur).
• get more involved with other projects (Daily SEO Blog).
• write a guest post for three blogs (Geek Entrepreneur).
• I would love to see some more sustained conversation going on (Sean P. Aune).
• set goals to put more effort and time to become a successful blogger (MayUOnline).

Bloggers who might have set problematic goals because they seem to focus solely on the numbers. These bloggers set goals such as

• daily unique hit: 4000.
• daily hit: 6000.
• page views: 5,000 a month by November 2009.
• unique visitors: 1,000 a month by November 2009.
• increase subscriber base to 10,000.
• I am hoping to increase my average over this year, and though I am still seeing slight growth, it won’t be easy. I will again shoot for a 50% increase, and hope to do this through writing more general appeal posts that result in better search engine traffic.

My Disclaimer
Before I continue, let me provide a disclaimer. Most of these blogs probably have a higher following than this blog. They probably have a larger amount of traffic than this blog. Therefore, they could be considered more successful than this blog, so I provide these thoughts with a huge level of humility.

Are You In the Circle of Trust Influence?
Stephen Covey provides us with a great concept in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. According to Covey, you have a Circle of Concern (CoC) and a Circle of Influence. Our Circle of Concern contains our “wide range of concerns – our health, our children, problems at work, the national debt, nuclear war.” (pg. 81). In contrast to this is our Circle of Influence, which is a smaller circle inside the CoC. The Circle of Influence contains those concerns that we can actually do something about. (pg. 82). Where you end up putting most of your time and energy determines how proactive (and eventually effective) you are.

That was a long set up, but it is important to help explain why I liked the first set of goals and disliked the second set of goals. The former list shows bloggers who are focusing on their Circle of Influence. They are working to blog more consistently and with better quality. They desire to increase their knowledge in order to be better thought leaders. These bloggers are setting their goals on what they can really change (or influence).

The latter list concerns me because their goals deal mostly with items outside of the Circle of Influence. These bloggers are looking to the numbers game, which they really cannot change. How many hits are they getting? How many unique hits are they receiving? How many subscribers do they have? The problem is that the bloggers cannot really change these numbers no matter how hard they try. Their focus is on things outside of the bloggers’ ability to control.

One risk of setting these types of goals is that they can cause the blogger to become too generic for their own niche market. Another risk is perceiving their work as a failure if they do not meet those specific numbers. What if your blog had a huge impact on a small number of people. What if that small group of subscribers are truly devoted followers that are part of a community you lead? According to these goals, your impact on others and your community is strong; however, since you only achieved 3,000 unique visitors instead of 4,000, your efforts appear to be a failure.

2¢’s – Your Two Cents
So, I leave you with these questions. What are your blogging goals for 2009? Are your goals focused on the numbers or are they focused on what you can do to make your blog better? Do you agree or disagree with my thoughts, and why? Do you have any thoughts or experiences that support or disprove this post? How do you live your non-blogging life? Inside the Circle of Influence or outside of it? Let me know in the comments. I would love to hear your two cents.

Photo courtesty of Carla216 on Flickr.

I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Chirstmas!

Thank you for continuing to read and participate with me in this blog.

Your community and fellowship has been a huge gift to me.

Photo courtesy of me (leoschmidt08) on Flickr.

I will let you in on a little secret about effective web marketing. Come closer so I can whisper it to you. Okay, that is better. It is all about the community. Yes, writing blog posts with search engine optimization in mind is important. Yes, participating on Twitter is valuable. Yes, participating in social networking sites is important. However, the common denominator for all of web marketing is building and maintaining a community.

Building A Community Using Your Blog
Building a community is pretty obvious for social networking sites (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn). What may not be as obvious is how to create a community around your blog. Obviously, writing consistent blog posts is the start of building your community. If you are not writing consistent, freshly updated content you are not giving your community a reason to stay involved and come back. Therefore, this should be your first priority. (Note: If you are not writing frequent blog posts then stop reading, go back to your blog, write a quick and thoughtful post, and then hit the publish button. Come back whenever you are ready; I will be happy to wait.)

Respond To Your Commenters
So, now we know you are writing frequent posts for you blog, well what now? It is time to connect with your readers. First, respond to the people who comment on your blog. We can be honest with ourselves. Almost all of us are not the Seth Godins and Chris Brogans of the world. (Chris has so many people trying to contact him that he hired a personal assistant just to handle the email… wow!) Therefore, you are not getting so overwhelmed with comments that you cannot take the time to respond. If possible, respond to every comment that someone leaves on your blog. Sometimes, you may only need to leave a little “thanks for commenting” message. Other times, a more thoughtful response is better. It all depends on what the commenter writes. Regardless, always stay mindful of engaging with the people who are choosing to participate with you.

Ask Some Questions
Ask questions in your blog. Instead of only preaching and teaching to your audience, engage with them. Your audience looks to you as a thought leader in your given area. That is one of the reasons they read your blog; however, that does not set you up to just stand on your box and tell everyone how things should be. Engage with your audience by asking them questions. Can they add anything to what you wrote? Do they have differing opinions? Have they experienced anything like what you just wrote? Find out, and in the process empower them to get involved with the discussion.

Enhance Your Discussions
Use a commenting system plug-in to enhance the discussion. As you can see, I use Intense Debate as my WordPress plug-in of choice. If Intense Debate members comment on my blog they will see any responses I make to their comment. As a result, there is a higher probability of them continuing to stay in the discussion and come back to leave more thoughts. I have seen this process happen many times on quite a few blogs. There are many other benefits of using Intense Debate and I recommend this as one of the top three plug-ins you need to add to your blog.

Visit Their Website
Your commenters have taken the time to read your blog and add a comment to your website. You have responded to their comment on your blog. Now for an added touch of community-building take the time to look at their blog. Read a few of their posts and if you can, make a comment or two. It will only take you a few minutes to do this, but it may be one of the best (and underutilized) ways to develop loyal readers. People love to receive comments so reward them with some comment love. The one-way street now becomes two directional and it shows that you are interested in them. Giving back to them can pay huge dividends for you in the end.

I like to think of blogs as group discussions instead of keynote speeches. The blogger is the moderator of the group and will work to initiate the discussion instead of merely talking to the nameless, faceless crowd. So get out there and engage your audience.

2¢’s – Your Two Cents
Do you engage your audience? What other methods of audience engagement do you use? What commenting system do you use, if at all? What other metaphors can you create for blogs as discussion starters? Have any of these techniques worked for you? I would love to hear your two cents.

Photo courtesy of striatic