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Six Secrets to Automating Your Social Media Communication

July 2, 2010 By 1 Comment

How can you make your social media communication easier? Are there any tips or tricks to use to reduce some of the heavy lifting you have to do just to get your messages out to the public?

Since I do social media communication, for myself and for clients, I use several shortcuts to automate a lot of what I do. Rather than posting a blog, and then posting the headline and URL to Twitter, then over at Facebook, and again at LinkedIn, I try to do it in one step. Or rather than uploading photos and videos to Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube, and then uploading them to a blog post to share them, I’m able to do it all at once.

I wrote this for Martin Earley, who is the new Inn-Bedded Resorter at The Balsams Grand Resort Hotel in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. I was one of five finalists, and got to meet Martin during our stay there. I think he was a great choice, and I know he’ll have a good time. But he also has to report what he’s doing via social media, which can be difficult if you’re trying to post content to both your site and a work site, so I offered him some tips to make his work easier. As I started writing them out, I decided it would be just as easy to put it into a blog post.

Here are a few of the tricks and tools I use to make my life a whole lot easier:

  1. Bit.ly: We’ll start with this ubiquitous URL shortener, because it will figure into nearly everything we do. Set up a bit.ly account, and then put your API key somewhere easy to find. (It can be a pain to go back to bit.ly to find it each time you need it.) Learn how to use it, and figure out their analytics section.
  2. TwitterFeed.com: Twitterfeed will visit your blog once every 30 minutes – 24 hours to see if you have anything new. Once you have a new blog post up, Twitterfeed will scoop up your headline and the URL, shorten it with bit.ly (see? We’re using it already), and then send it out to your Twitter feed and Facebook status updates.
  3. Ping.fm: You can expand TwitterFeed’s reach by sending your feed to Ping.fm, instead of Twitter. Not only can you send your new blog posts to Twitter and Facebook, but to MySpace, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, and even your Ning networks. Plus you can go to Ping.fm and directly post medium-length messages to Blogger, WordPress, and TypePad.

    WARNING! Do NOT set up Ping.fm to post something TO your blog if you already set up a Twitterfeed-Ping combination FROM your blog. This will create an infinite loop, which will tear a hole in the space-time continuum. This could be bad.

  4. Posterous.com: I’ve been playing with Posterous for a few months now, and really like it. It’s an email submission blog platform. Basically, you email your blog posts to your Posterous account, and it will post it for you. Your subject line is the headline, the email message is the body copy, and any photos you attach will be placed within the message. Then, you can notify your networks, just like Ping.fm, including populating your other blogs with your Posterous content, and even using bit.ly to shorten your URLs.

    Now, I know Blogger and WordPress both do this, but Posterous does something that the others won’t do: if you upload photos, Posterous will also send them to your Flickr and/or Picasa accounts. Upload a video, and Posterous will send it to your YouTube account.

    So, if you take some photos on your cell phone, attach them to an email, and send them to Posterous, you can send them to any special photo accounts, as well as populate your other blog feeds, which are then sent out to your Twitter, Facebook, etc.

  5. ScribeFire: This is a great blog editor that you use directly inside Firefox. Instead of going to your blog and logging in, you can open it up in Firefox, write your post, and hit upload. Rather than using a web-based interface, you can use an interface right on your computer. Both ScribeFire and Posterous are great if you have a slow Internet connection. (MacJournal is another program I’ve tried. There are Windows-based programs that do this as well.)
  6. TweetDeck: I use TweetDeck on my laptop for my Twitter communication. And when that’s all it did, it was awesome. But now TweetDeck is even awesomer, because whenever I send out a tweet, I can also send it as both a Facebook and LinkedIn update. I can also schedule tweets to take place at odd times — 1:53, 10:27 — instead of the every-5-minute intervals HootSuite limits you to. And best of all, it uses bit.ly as its default URL shortener. I can even pop a URL into TweetDeck, shorten it, and then cut it to use somewhere else. But the URL still gets pushed over to bit.y’s website where it gets included in the analytics.

While I don’t recommend automating everything you do in social media, like message creating, it’s at least a great way to lighten your load and make your life easier.

Photo credit: genewolf (Flickr)

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    Filed Under: All Posts, Blogging, Marketing, Social Media, Tools, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

    New ebook Available: Social Media and Crisis Communication for Government Communicators

    July 1, 2010 By 1 Comment

    I just published a new ebook, Social Media and Crisis Communication for Government Communicators. I wrote it after giving a presentation to a public health conference, and realizing that many of them did not even have access to the different social media tools.

    So I based it on several blog posts I’ve posted here, as well as some new information. The ebook is free, and there is both a PDF version and a Kindle version available.

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      Filed Under: Blogging, Communication, Crisis Communication, Public Health, Public Relations, Social Media, Tools, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

      Four Ways Government Agencies Should Use Social Media

      June 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

      While I’m a frequent speaker about whether government agencies should use social media for crisis communication (they should), I was recently asked whether agencies should use it for non-crisis communication.

      Of course they should.

      Having worked in public affairs (that’s government talk for “public relations”), I have seen the frustration many agencies experience in trying to get their messages out to the mainstream media, or media representing their particular niche.

      The Indiana Board of Animal Health and the Indiana Department of Agriculture have great relationships with the different farm newspapers and radio stations in the state. The Indiana Arts Commission has a tie-in with many of the arts media in the state. And the Indiana Office of Tourism Development’s Visit Indiana initiative works closely with the travel media in the region. (Full disclosure: I am a blogger for Visit Indiana.)

      And many of these agencies are using social media, but they’re using it as a broadcast tool, rather than a communication tool. However, I have to applaud these agencies for using social media at all. There are still several agencies within my own state government that are relying on fax machines and emails to send press releases to mainstream media. I’m not saying they should completely drop that method of communication, but rather, they should add social media to their efforts. Part of the problem is the decision makers within these agencies who don’t understand social media, and therefore assume the public doesn’t use it. The other part of the problem is the IT departments who are worried that allowing people to access YouTube or Twitter will open a huge Pandora’s box of ills. (But will never switch to Firefox to combat this problem…)

      So if an agency is on the fence about using social media or not, here are five ways they could use it for great benefit.

      • Use a blog to promote different programs, news releases, announce grants, release official statements, post job openings, and solicit feedback from the public. A blog is the easiest way to communicate with the public, because it’s created specifically for that purpose. No more asking your IT department or web developer to add a new page on your website. Just click the New Post (or New Page button, if you’re lucky enough to have WordPress on your server), add in the appropriate text and photos, click Submit, and voila! you created a new post/page. No programming, no delays, no excuses of “I’ve been backed up with a bunch of requests from other departments.
      • Create videos to educate the public about your different programs. Government agencies are notorious for starting programs, but often have no way to promote them. With a $200 Flip camera, or even someone’s point-and-shoot digital camera, you can create basic videos that can be uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo, and Viddler. You can even embed your videos in new blog posts.
      • Use social media as part of your media relation efforts. Post videos of press conferences to YouTube and your blog. Post press releases to the blog, and then announce them on Twitter. Encourage citizen journalists and bloggers to use your content in their own blogs, which will help promote your media efforts.
      • Maintain a network of professionals or citizens who are associated with your agency. If you’re in public health, maintain a Twitter account of public health professionals. Keep in contact with those professionals and follow what they’re doing. If you’re in agriculture, create a social network of farmers, animal producers, extension agents, and associated vendors. Let them provide support, answer questions, and create new opportunities with each other. If you’re in tourism, create a blog for potential visitors to learn about what your area has to offer.

      What are some ways you think government agencies could use social media? How have you seen it done, or how has your agency used it? Leave a comment in the comments section and let us know what you think.

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        Filed Under: Blogging, Communication, Crisis Communication, Facebook, Public Health, Public Relations, Social Media, Social Networks, Tools Tagged With: , ,

        Accuracy in Web Metrics is a Myth. Go for Real Time Analytics

        June 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

        It’s online marketers’ dirty little secret: Web metrics are not very accurate. None of them.

        Surprised? You shouldn’t be.

        Users can block script and pixel based systems and proxy servers (servers that cache content to reduce bandwidth use on networks, like say, your ISP’s or corporate network) prevent your server’s weblog from recording every page view (I blogged in a little more detail on accuracy issues here). On top of network issues, there are some basic software limitations in browsers and metric packages that prevent every click and visit from being counted.

        How bad is it? Somewhere between 4% and 12%. And it’s almost, almost always missing clicks, visits and page views.

        So, do web analytics have value? Yes. But despite what you may think, their value isn’t counting every single click you get on your site. It’s for identifying trends. Knowing what is happening and what has happened in aggregate has great value. Even with a 6-12% margin of error.

        The problem is, many web metrics solutions are on a time delay (like Google Analytics) that prevents you from seeing what is happening now. On the internet “NOW” means everything. And if you want to see what is happening minute to minute, your options are rather limited.

        Here’s a situation that happened with one of my clients:

        We had a client who had just started a $90,000, 48 hour advertising campaign for a major affiliate network. We didn’t realize it, but some bad code was preventing people coming to a landing page for step 3 in the registration process. A real-time analytics package allowed us to see the problem and fix it in about 15 minutes, but a once-a-day analytics package would have only pointed out the problem halfway through our 48 hour schedule.

        Should we have tested the landing page better? Yes. Reality is that marketing sites are often done on much tighter deadlines than traditional software development and sometimes testing isn’t that great. That means real time metrics are critical.

        If we had waited 12 hours for metrics to become available, my client would have lost 25% of sales and 25% of the money they had spent on the campaign.

        Real time matters more than you think. If you’re not investing in it, you need to consider it.

        Mike Seidle is currently the CTO of Virtual Payment Systems, Inc, and is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service. Mike currently serves on Professional Blog Service’s board of directors.

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          Filed Under: Blog ROI, Blogging, Social Media Analytics, Tools Tagged With: , , , ,

          Which Blog Hosting Strategy Has Higher SEO Results?

          May 31, 2010 By 1 Comment
          bloglocation0

          After reading Erik’s blog postThe Number One Reason Companies Need to Blog About Their Products, I thought I’d clarify the best place to put your blog if your objective is to get the most search juice and the top search rank.

          If your blog attracts lots of links, it may be better to have the blog inside your website as the links will drive your site’s page rank and SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) up. In fact, links are so critical to search engine optimization that almost always, the right answer will be put the blog inside your website’s domain. For those who have and have no idea what I’m talking about, we’re talking about this difference in your blog’s address:

          mydomain.com/blog
          versus
          blog.mydomain.com

          This is a very important consideration as search engines see blog.mydomain.com as a separate website from mydomain.com. Search engines see mydomain.com/blog as part of the same website, so links to the blog are going to help raise the page rank and search position of the entire website.

          There really are only three reasons that are likely to come up for hosting your blog outside of your website’s domain for SEO purposes:

          1. You already have a top rank for your keywords and wish to banish your competitors further down the first page of search results.

          2. There is a technical reason you cannot have your blog inside of yourdomain.com. For example, you might use a subscription service for your website like a lot of Realtors, attorneys and financial planners do. Often times, these services will not let you install WordPress or another blogging system on their servers.

          3. No one is going to link to your blog, and so the best you can hope for are a few keyword links back to your website.

          Let me say it again: putting your blog inside your website is generally the best strategy unless you are already top ranked, have a technical limitation or no one is going to link to your blog.

          Note: In Compendium Blogware’s case, their blogs fall under situation number 2. They have to do subdomains or external domains(somenewsite.com) and cannot do a mydomain.com/blog URL as they would have to move their software to the server hosting mydomain.com. While the “rising waters raise all ships” philosophy will help your SEO efforts, you don’t get quite the boost that you do from the mydomain.com/blog strategy.

          Mike Seidle is currently the CTO of Virtual Payment Systems, Inc, and is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service. Mike currently serves on Professional Blog Service’s board of directors.

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            Filed Under: Blog ROI, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Lead Generation, Tools Tagged With: , , , ,

            7 Ways to Use Blogging to Promote Events

            May 19, 2010 By 4 Comments

            We’ve often used blogging to promote special events for ourselves and our clients. I’m even a blogger for VisitIndiana, the website and blog for Indiana Tourism, our state government’s tourism department.

            1. Pre-event promotion: This is the one thing most people think of. But don’t limit yourself to a single blog post about the event coming up. Tie every blog post into your event. Blog about topics that tie into the event. For example, if you sell tradeshow displays, talk about the upcoming social media and tradeshow marketing panel discussion you’re going to host on June 9 at the Hilton Garden Inn. (By the way, I’m speaking at a panel discussion on social media and tradeshow marketing on June 9 for Skyline Exhibits – Indianapolis).

            2. Live blogging: This can be challenging, but it can also be fun, because it draws people into the energy of the event, especially if they’re not able to attend with you. I have live blogged at two sporting events. One was the 2009 Indianapolis 500. I had also spent several days in May on the track, blogging about different things I saw, which helped build up my readership for the big day. I also live-blogged from an Indiana Fever game, which I will never do again. As I was writing about a play, something cool would happen, and I would miss it. Now I just tweet the highlights and enjoy the game. The easiest way to do live blogging is to use the Email to Post feature on WordPress or Blogger, or set up a blog at Posterous.com. I especially like Posterous, because I can attach photos and they’ll automatically be placed into each post.
            3. Post-event wrap-up: You want to remind people of the good time they had, or tell them about the good time they missed so they’ll be sure to come back next year. Use this time to talk about what worked well, what could have been better, funny stories, traditions you might start, and photos of the great time people had. Ask attendees for suggestions about what they would like to see changed or kept the same.
            4. Photo blogging: Set up some slideshows on Flickr or Picasa, and paste the embed code into a blog post. You can show photos you’ve already taken, or embed the code early, and then add photos as you take them, which will expand the slideshow. This is especially great for live blogging. Just use a photo uploader on your smart phone, get an EyeFi card for your digital camera, or make sure you have a way to quickly download photos from your camera and then upload them to your photo sharing site. You will need to do some tweaking on your account, but you can start sharing the photos right away.
            5. Video blogging: The same techniques and ideas that you can use for photo blogging work for video blogging. I’m not talking about producing pre-written and edited videos. Rather, take some videos and upload them via your smart phone’s uploader, or YouTube. Take some quick interviews of event attendees, show some speakers/music/events/games, and post them as quick as you can. I especially like Posterous.com for photo and video blogging, because you can set up your account to automatically forward all photos and videos to their respective services when you email them to Posterous.
            6. Get other bloggers: Ask other people to blog about your event in all three stages, pre, during, and post. Give them free admission or tickets to come to your event and write about it. You want to find bloggers in that niche or industry, but don’t limit yourself to only finding the most popular ones. The ones who don’t have a lot of readers can still be valuable. For one thing, they’re reaching a group of people that the bigger bloggers might not. For another, any links they make back to your website help your search engine optimization (see #7), which makes it easier for people to find your event for next year.
            7. It’s all for Search Engine Optimization: It doesn’t matter if you got a lot of people to read about your event this year, or if only a few dozen people were following your blog at the time of the event. All this blogging does one additional thing for you: it builds your content out for search engine placement. If you’re going to hold your event next year, all the work you did this year will help you rank higher on the search engines for next year. This is true whether you’re hosting your own event, or whether you’re participating in someone else’s event. For example, if you’re taking photos, videos, and blogging about your participating at an arts festival, you’ll be one of the first names to pop up when people start searching for it again for next year.

            Just remember, blogging is for the long haul too, not a just quick burst of publicity. It’s the marathon, not the spring. But it doesn’t hurt to have a fast start to get out in front of your competition either.

            Photo credit: MattIndy77 (Flickr)

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              Filed Under: Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Social Media, Tools, Twitter, Video Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

              Why Writers Need a Dedicated Website or Blog

              April 19, 2010 By 1 Comment

              Writers are some of the worst self-promoters I know.

              “I’m a writer, not a marketer” is the familiar lament.

              Writers suffer from the all-too-familiar “if you build it they will come” syndrome. If I write something, publishers should leap out of their chair, shouting that their lifelong search is over, and take the private jet to my house and sign me to a huge book deal. Problem is, it just doesn’t work that way.nude woman with write or be written off

              Show me a writer who’s not a marketer, and I’ll show you a failed writer.

              Fellow humor writer Bruce “8 Simple Rules” Cameron (yeah, those 8 Simple Rules) recently said in an email, “So, despite the fact that nobody can prove to me that a writer needs a dedicated web site, I re-designed and re-launched my writer website last month.”

              There are any number of reasons why writers need their own website. First and foremost, it’s a marketing tool. You build awareness with your website, you give this increasingly-online world a place to find you. Before it was easy to build a website, Bruce built an email subscription list of 40,000 people in 52 countries in the late 1990s. That was his marketing tool, and one he used to great effect, but it wasn’t easy to find or join.

              Secondly, it’s a publishing tool. If you’re just starting out as a writer, there’s no better way to start publishing and finding readers. Set up a blog, write stuff, and gather readers. Then, keep writing stuff and gathering more readers. Eventually, your writing will be seen by influential people, and you’ll find newer and bigger opportunities.

              So to answer Bruce’s question, and in keeping with his writings, I give you…

              8 Simple Rules Why Writers Need Their Own Dedicated Website:

              1. Readers and editors can find you.
              2. Your readers become big fans. Big fans tell their friends, who also become big fans. Big fans buy your books, that you were asked to write by the editors.
              3. You hotlink to your book on Amazon, and drive your big fans to it so you can sell your book. Your big fans buy your book from your Amazon affiliate link so you make a couple bucks more with each sale.
              4. People who pay speakers a few thousand bucks to speak at corporate gigs can find you.
              5. People who see you speak at their national corporate event become big fans.
              6. You remember what big fans do, right?
              7. You need a place to tell people to go when you’re on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.
              8. What do you mean, you’re a writer, not a social media geek?

              You don’t need a dedicated website that cost $5,000 though. Maybe if you want some funky graphics or an ecommerce site, you can spend that much. (I can even put you in touch with the people who can help you.)

              Instead you can just get by with a simple WordPress.com or Blogger.com website. Or if you want to get really complex, lease some server space, download WordPress.org to it, and you can have your own look and design, and even add your own plugins. (Our Pro Blog site is made with WordPress.org.)

              The great thing about WordPress and Blogger is that they all allow you to add pages. You don’t have to deal with the typical blog look of only having one page. Not only will you have your blog page, you can create additional pages for your bio, contact information, videos of you doing book readings, and useful links.

              While you don’t have to sell your soul and become a dedicated marketer, it won’t hurt to start thinking that way. (We’ll give you a good price for it.) If you still don’t want to, don’t worry. There are still thousands of writers — many of whom are worse than you — who are out promoting and marketing themselves online, being found by editors, and having important meetings about special projects. But you can console yourself with the thought that you didn’t resort to marketing (eww!) to promote your work.

              You’ll need to when you see their books in the bookstore.

              Photo credit: Djuliet (Flickr)

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                Filed Under: Blogging, Communication, Marketing, Tools, Writing Tagged With: , , , ,

                The Growing Need for Bloggers as Citizen Journalists

                April 6, 2010 By 8 Comments
                Haiti

                Two bits of interesting news this past month for bloggers who consider themselves journalists:

                I’ve been preaching for a while that bloggers are citizen journalists. And now we get confirmation that 52% of us believe it to be true, and that 61% of Americans are possible readers. Plus — and this is a big one — the last-reported numbers from Technorati are that 77% of all Internet users read a blog of some kind.

                The time is ripe for bloggers to begin thinking of themselves as citizen journalists. Social media is making it so much easier for us to not only see the news, but report it as well.

                Social media is breaking the news before the news.

                We’ve seen several instances where social media broke news stories before mainstream media picked it up. The three most notable examples have been:

                1. The first images coming out of Haiti were on Twitter, because mainstream media couldn’t get on the ground. People with cell phones and spotty wifi were sending photos to Twitter and Facebook, and we were spreading them around like wildfire. My family was particularly interested in one set of missionaries in Port-au-Print, and @TroyLiveSay was providing information that we weren’t getting anywhere else.
                2. Moments after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, news was spreading on Twitter before the shots had even stopped.
                3. When the US Airways flight landed in the Hudson last year, news had broken on Twitter 15 minutes before the first news reports hit the airwaves.

                While none of these examples show a failing of the mainstream media, they show that in many cases, people reporting on incidents that happened nearby ended up being first just because of the widespread nature of the tools.

                I’ve been playing with Posterous as a possible blogging platform for rapid response and crisis communication professionals. You email your blogs to your email address (it’s actually just post@posterous.com), your subject line is your headline, you attach any photos, type and format your content in your text box, and voila! You’ve got a blog post sent from your smart phone.

                And I totally geeked out a few days ago, when Chris Brogan showed how you can take photos on your digital camera, and immediately have them uploaded to your favorite file sharing service, with something the size of a quarter and something else the size of a pocket calculator.

                My advice? If you have even the slightest inclination of being a citizen journalist, start taking your blogging seriously. You don’t have to change the scope of your blog, your writing style, or even the quality of your writing.

                Just do it with intentionality. As hard as it may be to explain (this is the 6th time I’ve written this paragraph), report your news for posterity. Do it with a sense of responsibility and gravitas. When you see something happening, take photos and upload them to Flickr or Picasa. Send tweets. Email news to your blog. Be a source of information to your community. Don’t just repeat what you’ve seen, report on it.

                Even something as simple as reporting a small incident you just witnessed can sometimes lead to national or even international stories, or you may be the lone voice that speaks for someone who can’t do it themselves.

                While I’m not suggesting we all change our focus and become word slingers, I am suggesting we adopt the mindset that we’re just as good as the professionals who, I’m sorry to say, just aren’t as quick as the “ordinary citizens” armed with nothing more than cell phones and a serious case of Twitter-thumbs.

                Related posts:
                Rules for Being a Media Blogger
                Defining Two Types of Crisis Communication
                Five Things Newspapers Can Teach Us About Blogging
                What Stylebook Should Bloggers Use?

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                  Accountable Person : Erik Deckers  •  Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Content Rating : G  •  Copyright Holder : Professional Blog Service  •  Copyright Year : 2010  •  Creator : Erik Deckers  •  Editor : Erik Deckers  •  Genre : Non-fiction  •  Headline : The Growing Need for Bloggers as Citizen Journalists  •  Keywords : blogging, citizen journalism, citizen journalists, crisis communication, earthquake, Haiti, news, photo sharing, Chris Brogan  •  Publisher : Professional Blog Service  •  Version : 1.0  • 
                  Filed Under: Communication, Crisis Communication, Social Media, Tools, Traditional Media, Twitter, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

                  The Fishers Gaga for Google Fiber Video is Done

                  March 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

                  This past Sunday, I joined 199 of my fellow Fishers residents and we shot a video, singing about the virtues of the Google Fiber network, to the tune of Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi.” Mercifully, we weren’t in the video very long, and you can barely see me, and only if you know where to look (hint: I’m NOT the guy at the beginning of the video. That’s Caleb, and that really is him singing.)

                  You can read more about Fishers’ quest to get some of that Google Fast Fiber at the Professional Blog Service blog.

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                    Filed Under: Communication, Networking, Tools Tagged With: , ,

                    Who has time to do the work today?

                    March 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

                    Clock - who has time to get work doneThere has been a lot of news lately on how companies are really not hiring right now. A recent report talks about how a companies are hiring temp workers, but they are not hiring them to stay. In the past, a common practice was to test drive a worker then offer them a position. Hiring them as full-time employees is not happening right now.

                    So, who is getting the work done?

                    When I joined ATA Airlines back in 1997, George Michelsons brought in Bain and Company to basically prepare the company for sale. The process was to get rid of a lot of people and put more jobs onto fewer people. While this strategy worked around the country for Bain, it usually preceded an upgrade in office automation to ensure the work could still get done.

                    The office automation phase did not occur at ATA Airlines.

                    The result was a lot of stressed out people carrying around their imaginary trays trying to figure out how they were going to fit one more item onto an already heavy load. No longer were people interested in teamwork, they were more interested in self-preservation. It created a lot of ill-tempered people in the process.

                    As some of my clients reveal their corporate cultures, I am finding similarities to what I experienced at ATA Airlines. No one has time to commit to anything above and beyond what their core responsibilities are. According to the Wall Street Journal, it is not projected to get much better – CEO’s are reluctant to hire.

                    What are the solutions?

                    The easiest is what is being done by some today. Hire temp workers to get things done. They may cost a little more in the short-term, but allow you to avoid the headaches of hiring employees and their costs over the long-term. There are a lot of companies providing these services.

                    Sometimes, just hiring a grunt worker is not enough. Sometimes you need a professional person to do the work, you don’t have time to do. There are companies being set up that can act as your Marketing Department, your Accounting Department, or your HR Department. They can do it at a cost that is far cheaper than hiring full-time employees, but are focused solely on getting work done for you.

                    So, look around and ask yourself, are you and your colleagues a bunch of stressed out grumpy people not really accomplishing much because there is too much to do? There is help out there that can help your company meet its strategic goals for the year.

                    We actually put together a white paper on the ROI of outsourcing blogging and social media. You can download it here, if you want to take a look.

                    Paul Lorinczi is the President of Professional Blog Service. The goal of the company is the help clients use Blogging and Social Media to expand their business online through planning, execution, and measurement.

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                      Filed Under: Blog ROI, Blogging, Ghost Writing, News, Research Desk, Tools, Writing Tagged With: , , , ,
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