HeidiCohen.com is our site of the week this week. Heidi is a social media consultant, and in today’s world full of self-proclaimed “experts,” she is actually the real deal.
Stay at home and work at home moms and dads have to be everything to their blogs, and we often do it on a shoestring budget. The same person handles content creation, website design, social media marketing, customer service, and overall promotion. Not only is this back-breaking work, but it quickly leads to burn-out. How many of us have spent hours promoting posts on Twitter and Facebook, only to see a few retweets and a couple people trickle into our mailing lists? Even the bloggers with staying power eventually run into hurdles that cripple their spirit and their blogs.
That’s why Heidi’s blog, HeidiCohen.com, has been so helpful to me. Her articles (several hundred of them) are all focused on creating actionable marketing. That is, they help you cut through the online clutter bogging you down each day, and teach you how to research, plan, and execute a real social media strategy; one that is effective in creating a thriving community around your business or personal brand.
Heidi’s articles are extremely well written, and accessible to everyone, even those without formal marketing backgrounds. There are three articles, in particular, which I found extremely relevant and helpful to maintaining my own blogs.
- What I Did on My Summer Vacation and 98 other Free Blog Titles – If you’ve haven’t yet experienced writer’s block, you will. This article discusses the science behind creating exceptional blog titles (a must if you want to grab the attention of your followers on Twitter, Facebook, and Google), and gives you nearly 100 examples of attention grabbing headlines. Just browsing the list will give you enough content ideas to last a year.
- Get a Blog Buddy – This article details all the reasons you should use a partner when creating blog content. I’ve written many articles exposing just a few facets of a particular theme, and discovered many more angles after reading viewer comments and suggestions. Using a blog buddy can help you realize those other angles before you write, making your content much more well rounded and informative. Also, if you use a blog buddy whose strengths compliment yours, you can each work on tasks you like, lowering the chances of burn-out.
- 24 Ways to Promote Your Blog With NO Budget, NO Time, and NO Resources – It’s amazing how many problems are solved by common sense. Even more amazing is how few people try using common sense approaches to their problems. This article lists 24 tried and true, common sense, inexpensive ways to market your brand. For those of you starting out with a new blog, this is an invaluable resource.
HeidiCohen.com is not just for the beginning blogger or the marketing novice. Many of her posts focus on those with experience and also the business blogger who has a steady audience but wants to take his marketing efforts to that next level. This group will be interested in posts that include:
- How to Grow Your Social Media Tribe - Here she explains how a small group of bloggers with similar interests can each raise the profile of their individual blogs by community commenting. This is a no-brainer for a niche like mine, Dad Bloggers, who like to help and support other dads whenever we can.
- 3 Ways to Define Customers – To create an effective message that helps solve a need, you first need to know what that need is. This article shows you how to define your customer and to determine what she reads.
- Why You Need an Editorial Calendar – For those with enough content to extend a few weeks into the future, you might consider using an editorial calendar to inform your readers about what you are posting and when you plan to post it. That way you develop return readers, not just the random lookey-loos. This post shows you how.
If you want to get back to the basics, to re-focus your energy on what really matters most to you, and your blog, I encourage you to visit HeidiCohen.com.
Grab a cup of coffee (or two) and read a few posts, or just search her blog for a topic of interest. I’m willing to bet you’ll find something that will change the way you approach marketing, and chances are, it will change your blog for the better.
