Be Transparent in Social media

November 3, 2010 By 2 Comments

Good Afternoon, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

For social media to work you need to be transparent and deliver what you promise, actually now I think about it this is very similar to the off-line world, I wonder why people are turning it into such a big deal?

If I go to a shop and order a red dress I expect to get a red dress, not a green one, not an orange one, but a red one.  So why don’t people do this online?  They get busy?  They forget?  They just say something to get you in the door then do nothing?

The reason this is the topic for today’s post is because I promised a certain blogging calendar to my readers and due to webinars, speaking, blogging, blah blah all excuses.  So in the spirit of transparency today I am fessing up and saying – I haven’t done what I promised.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , ,

Here’s a Quick Way to Come Up with Blog Ideas

August 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Good Morning, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

Whether you are posting on your blog or on Facebook or YouTube or wherever one of the biggest challenges that people find (this Rabbit included) is coming up with ideas on what to post – hands up if that’s you…

What I want to show you is how you can incorporate everyday things into your blog posts, they don’t have to be rocket science, if you are passionate about something then relate it back to what you talk about.  Remember people like to be entertained, they remember the things that entertain them, and so many ideas out there come from others that you can use practically anything in the everyday world to relate to what you want to talk on, just use a little imagination!

Events

Make your posts topical (note – this is great for SEO for your blog), what I mean by this is find out what is coming up in terms of events and then relate your posts to that, if you check out this events article it has a calendar of events happening worldwide.  For example July 6th was Running with the Bulls, you could easily relate that back to your topic, I could write a blog post on how people run like a bull at the red flag of social media without stopping to think about what happens afterwards!  Another good site for this is Frommer’s What’s On When this has events from all over the world.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging, Small business, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I NEEEEEED Ideas for My Blog

July 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Good Morning, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

Ever had one of those days, or maybe a few of those days when you need ideas on what to blog on, you spend hours/days (well it feels like days) surfing the net waiting for inspiration to strike…  Yes?  Me too.  So to help both of us I have put together a list of places to go for ideas…  Admittedly this Rabbit has just pulled together a resource list for you, but it will be handy one day when you are stuck! [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , , ,

Life is better if you plan your blogging

June 17, 2010 By 1 Comment

Good Morning, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

Today after reading this you are going to thank me :)

First a question… What is the hardest thing about blogging?

Answer: Thinking of new and interesting content

Now all my Rabbit readers will know that I blog daily (although I know I missed last Thursday and I apologise, so please don’t hold it against me…).  My biggest challenge is what to blog about, some days it comes to me easily, other days I can surf the net for hours and still not have decided, this may be a bit of procrastination, but at the end of the day I admit it is because I don’t plan properly.  Yes I have a list of blog ideas, and yes I look at them each time I come to write a blog, but my biggest challenge is the lack of accountability on those days when I don’t have a theme…. UNTIL NOW!

I am an avid reader of Problogger.net for tips etc, and on Monday I thought there has to be an easier way to decide what to blog, I need a calendar, at the moment I just have one in my diary that I colour in the box for each day the blog is written so I can see when I am getting low on posts.  But this doesn’t tell me what I am planning to do, so I thought I need something in excel that works for me.  Rather than re-invent the wheel I thought that there may be something already out there, and low and behold there was… this:

OK so it may not look like much, but believe me life will become easier – to download it in excel click on the picture.  This is what in the blogging game is called an Editorial Calendar developed by Andy Wibbels, I have to admit to Andy that I have modified it slightly as I like my week to start on Monday (and the dates are out as this was developed in 2006 – time for version 2.0 prehaps?), but otherwise it saved me a job (ok, not a huge job).  This is one of the things this Rabbit loves about social media, that people share :)   Andy saved me probably 30minutes, but also gave me the idea of listing the keywords which I probably wouldn’t have included.

How I use it is writing in topics when I see an article that is relevant and think that would be a good blog I bookmark the article and then fill in the details in my calendar, so when I come to write life is easy.

If you are a blogger, or a blogger in training, having an editorial calendar is a great way to plan what you post, my only frustration is that sometimes I have something great to say, but I have to schedule it into the next time slot for that topic… as I am often impatient you might not get the exact theme every day as planned, but hey – if I’m excited about it then I usually think my readers will be too.

Has anyone else found anything cool that helps with blogging that they’d like to share?  Please tell me in the comments or on the Social Rabbit Facebook Page or Twitter.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , , , , ,