Connie Bensen

An overview of the lifetime traffic around my blog made me realize how much my blogging has impacted my personal brand and the ROI around it. This quick exercise made me realize that I need to start blogging again on a regular basis and start investing again.

I love digging into numbers! And the steady number of visitors to my blog despite the lack of new posts reinforce the statements that I hear on an ongoing basis:

• some have said that it’s a Bible for Community Managers
• requests that I start blogging again
• it inspires people to join the profession

I started blogging in December 2006 on a niche blog. In early 2007, I realized that I needed to be blogging under my own brand and I launched this blog in September of that year. I posted articles many times a week consistently through 2009. Once the startup that I was working for was acquired in mid 2009 my blogging subsided. Part of that was because I was busy writing a series of 10 white papers on Social Media ROI.

It really surprised me that the traffic has continued at that rate and so I took a look at what’s been driving it. Interestingly enough, StumbleUpon drove the most traffic in 2007 and 2008 followed by Twitter. In 2009 it shifted to Twitter driving the most traffic. Over 25% of the traffic for 2010 – 2012 has been from the definition for Online Community Manager on Wikipedia.

The ROI of my blogging and the value of my personal brand is fairly easy to express even though I don’t have any direct revenue generating aspects on my blog such as affiliate links or ads.

Here is an overview:

• My salary has increased 178% since 2006 (the impact is over a quarter of million dollars income)
• Invitations to present and lead workshops at conferences at a global level
• Guest blogging opportunities

This review reminds me of the following five reasons of why it’s important to invest in yourself by blogging:

1. Professional growth – Recently I have been using LinkedIn to document my experience, but it’s time to return to sharing my insights and learnings from them.
2. Profession/career evolution – Online Community strategy is still a nascent role and companies are coming to realize the value of engagement and related KPI’s. (It’s so much more than the platform or social channel)
3. Therapy – Writing has always been helpful for me to express my ideas and I find it quite relaxing. I have also become much more proficient with diagramming my concepts and ideas.

My goal is to publish weekly. It will also be a good opportunity to review some of my most read content and update it.

Have you done a high level overview of your blogging efforts? What are your take aways?

Whenever I get a request to speak, I’m always humbled and honored by the invitation. But when I found out that the audience was crafters, I was thrilled because this is the very group that I was part of when I started on the path to my present career.

I thoroughly enjoyed creating a niche community at DigiScrapInfo.com for digital scrapbookers to assist them in organizing their supplies & photos. For three years I translated digital marketing techniques for this very passionate group of entrepreneurs that are also busy moms and grandmas.

Jess from BlogHer had requested a class on intermediate SEO and technology. In the spirit of crafting I realized that optimizing a blog is like adding bling to it. What is bling? My definition is anything that makes it sparkle and attracts attention. And who doesn’t want the attention of Search Engines?

A personal frustration that I have had with many of the SEO sessions I’ve attended is that they talk in general terms, and I came away only with concepts rather than actionable items. So I have put in specific steps for using the various tools mentioned.

Here are some additions that were a result of the questions during and after the session:

1. If you are blogging for fun, family & friends then using a platform such as Typepad, Blogger, WordPress.com, etc is fine. Some of the tools may be helpful if you’re looking for things to write about. (They aren’t the best for building top rank in SEO. If you want that then it’s best to get a URL and host your own blog. WordPress is a recommended choice.)
2. I had assumed that everyone knew about Feedburner and so didn’t include it. (My apologies as I consider Feedburner as a basic part of blogging.) http://feedburner.google.com
3. Learn more about using Feedburner here

We had so many questions that I didn’t have time to give the most important piece of advice and that is that blogging should be fun. It’s about sharing ideas. Yes, keywords are important, but if you’re consistent in sharing your passion for a topic then you’ll build that coveted organic SEO over time. These tools can help spur new ideas for content and help you focus on a niche that isn’t as competitive.

A huge thanks to BlogHer for inviting me to join the event yesterday! Crafting is a perfect cottage industry for the internet and I’m glad that we could have a day to focus on digital marketing.

I never want to be too far behind Jeremiah Owyang, so last Saturday I installed Google’s Sidewiki. Piece of cake! but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to claim my blog.

Everyone needs to stake their claim online for a number of reasons. In this case it allows you to post a comment that stays at the top. My guess is that more functionality may come. Best practice in branding says you should own your own domain & all related.

On Saturday I spent 2 hrs fighting with it to get that green box to show up. I installed Sidewiki in Flock. Then in Firefox. It was so frustrating! I am very stubborn when it comes to technology. I was almost ready to ask my sister even! (she maintains my blog – don’t EVEN assume that I do!).

So tonite I invested another half hour. And I found the answer! The instructions that I was reading left out one *ahem* major point. And it’s my duty to save you the time & pain.

1. Install Google Sidewiki if you haven’t.
2. Install Google Webmaster Tools if you haven’t previously done so. (yes, you need to put code in your blog*, but I was able to figure it out, so just do it.)
3. Open your blog/site, click on the Sidewiki icon and there you go! The option to claim your site! I see that you can add up to 1,000 sites That link provides examples. I’m going to add other pages on my site.
4. The last step is to write a note there for future Sidewiki users. Bill Hartzer has a couple nice examples (but his instr’s leave out step 2).

And I’m quite pleased now. I asked my Twitterati to test it. We all like comments, huh? Now you can gather Sidewiki comments too!

* If you’re using WordPress, click on Editor on left & then click on Header on right.

Look! It works!!

(Sister, Heidi & @SecretSushi – are you guys shocked & amazed?!!   )

Last week in San Francisco I visited the offices of a company that had proudly launched their blog the previous day. They asked for feedback and as a Community Manager my first impulse is: ‘How can I help you?’. Here is my advice for them & all of you bravely venturing into this world.

First, I am not an expert on SEO but I have been successful. I invested a considerable amount of time reading up on it when I started blogging. And I never do anything part way! So how good is the search engine optimization on my blog? Google ‘community manager’ and see what you get:

What does this mean (ie: why should you care?):

1. Today I rank #1 for searching in Google for ‘community manager’. (I finally rank higher than my friend, Jeremiah Owyang, who rightfully deserves high regard for his Four Tenets article.) Yes, this is a competitive sport.

2. The organizer of Community 2.0 reached out to me to speak because she Googled ‘Community Manager’

3. My present client Googled ‘social media community manager Minnesota’ and found me. Yes, I also live in Minnesota (And yes, I do consult on special projects)

Be forewarned that SEO (search engine optimization) is addictive.

But the payback is that a blog can greatly increase a site’s presence in the eyes of search engines. What does this mean? 

1. People who are looking for your topic can find you.

2. You don’t need to buy Google Ad’s for your site or advertise it.

3. It gives you presence as a leader in the niche and increases your brand presence.

Let’s translate that into business goals:

1. Customers seeking your product/resource will find you

2. Little or no $$’s need to be spent on marketing and advertising

3. Establishes your brand as an industry leader providing information and increases your brand visibility

Most importantly, it’s gratifying to give back to the community that supports you (whether as an individual or as a company)

My sister is my webmaster and she’s done a great job with mine. You can find her at SolutionsByHeidi

Here are her 3 suggestions in terms of what she feels are important:

1. Sitemap – submit to Google & Yahoo so that it’s crawled immediately
2. AllinOne SEO – this is a very popular WordPress plugin (esential is probably more like it)
3. Metatags – choose ones that people search for and don’t have too many

Content – This takes time but writing about related topics on a consistent basis builds SEO quickly. For example, I put up my blog in Sept 2007 and focused on Community Management in Dec 2007.

There is no need to worry about keyword density. (If you don’t know what I mean by that – don’t worry about it, be happy!)

Note: If someone hands you a list of corporate keywords & tells you to use them… you need to have a talk with them. Here are my suggestions:

1. Review the keywords. Are they words that your customers use in their daily conversations? (If not, it’s no use to use them).
2. Use a monitoring tool like Techrigy SM2 to analyze conversations around your brand & industry to analyze the author tags to identify the best keywords to use. Here’s an example of a tag cloud for my niche of Community Manager from SM2. (Do the corporate SEO keywords need tweaking? oh my! See what I mean?)
3. Writing around corporate keywords comes off stilted. Just write naturally & the organic SEO will happen. I always appreciated that @ShashiB got that when I worked with him at Network Solutions.

More importantly, make sure that your titles have keywords related to your topic in them. For example I used to put up a weekly post called Community Strategist Links to reinforce my SEO for that phrase. I also have a redirect from http://communitystrategist.com so the URL helps with my SEO. (ie: purchase a URL related to your keywords if possible).

And search engines also see the first paragraph, so getting your terms in there is also useful. (Make your point as soon as possible). If you scroll back up I slid in ‘Community Manager’ in the first paragraph. For awhile I was on a bent of disliking ‘community manager’ so I was using community building & community strategist but I realized that I was doing myself a disservice in terms of SEO.

Utilize internal links within your site. If you wrote about a related topic then link back to it. Search engines like seeing the interrelationship within your site. In number 2 just above I linked to a previous post that shows an Author Tag Cloud that I was referring to.

Search Engines love back links

Link love – Link to other blogs in your niche. As bloggers we all like to have backlinks. That builds our own SEO. And when you link to us, then we’ll come over, read your post, comment and then in the future link to you. This will increase your SEO and it creates a lot of happiness in the community at large. Not sure where to find related bloggers? Use Technorati Search and search by those with High Authority. (It will introduce you to new friends in your topic area too!)

Blog Roll – These are another type of backlinks but they aren’t viewed as highly by search engines as backlinks in the content. Link to the blogs that you read and as time goes on others will link back to you. If you get to know a blogger, you can ask if you could mutually link to each other’s blogs but please develop a relationship before asking (otherwise it’s tacky – I delete so many emails about this… If you don’t know me, don’t spam me!).

Commenting on other people’s blogs – This is really important if you’re going to be a blogger. It’s as much about participation as it is about writing. So go forth and read other people’s blogs in your niche and comment. Leave meaningful comments. If you have written a post that adds value to your comment then add the link. I call these legacy links or breadcrumbs because they create a path back to your blog for readers in the future. It also contributes to your SEO because it’s another type of backlink. People love getting comments and if you expect them then give first and ye shall receive.

Measuring your progress

Google Analytics is the best place to watch your blog presence grow. You can see what keywords are helping people find your blog with. You can also see where your traffic is coming from (both physical source as well as blog url’s). Google has set up a self paced course at Conversion University.

Claim your blog on Technorati – this shows your Rank, Authority & the number of backlinks. You can track your progress. Some bloggers feel that Technorati no longer has as much relevance.

Finally, Google your topic area. Once you start getting on the top one to three pages it will serve as additional motivation.

For more reading: Darren Rowse has tons of resources (that’s where I learned much from!)

What are your suggestions for improving blog SEO?