Merrit Colaizzi posted from the Online Marketing Summit on the 24th with Live from OMS: The 10-Step Content Strategy

I’d like to take a minute and discuss what I feel are the two most important parts of the strategy:

6. Commit to your blog. In Arnie Keunn’s business, Vertical Measures, 25% of his Web traffic comes from its blog. The blog should be the hub for your marketing activities, with platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, [and] LinkedIn as the spokes. Your blog is real estate you own, and you can control 100% how your content is presented.

Control. Something that every business wants to have, over every aspect of their marketspace.

Too bad. Social Media and user-generated content is outside of your control, but you can control the content that is on your own site. You can use it to do some things that can push the conversation in a healthy direction:

• Promote the people that have nice things to say about your company, publish links to their Tweets, their websites, etc.
• Engage them in conversations about your company.
• Provide them with a forum to discuss their issues and problems – make a case study out of how they used your company to solve those issues.
• Remember that it is your job to let the conversations take place. While the website is your hub it is your job to get out of the way and let people share.

Here is another important concept, that I just discussed with my colleague Kevin Ferrasci O”Malley: (@kfom on Twitter)

7. Make content educational, not promotional. Tell stories about problems your customers have, don’t just pitch your product. Consider asking for registration/further engagement with your audience at the end of your content — once readers are hooked — rather than at the beginning. Shoot for 200 to 400 words, which is the sweet spot for blog-post length, and don’t forget to augment your content with video whenever possible.

Video is important, and something that small businesses need to invest some time and energy in learning, because (sooner rather than later) video is going to be essential to your success. I am still experimenting with video, especially in my book review posts, and I have found these types of posts to be much more popular and successful.

Videos are fantastic tools for teaching, and for exposing the “wow” factor of your product or service. It is one thing to tell people about what you do, it is another to be able to show them and let them show other people.

Let me start with this: I met these gentlemen in May of 2008 at SOBCon and they are two of the most knowledgeable and sincere people that I have encountered. I really didn’t know who they were or what they did, but I have sure learned a lot from them since then.

In fact, I have spent about 3 years learning about what is in this book:

You need to go to Amazon and order this book right now. It’s okay, I’ll wait.

This book is a complete course in how to do business online in today’s world. There is quite a bit of buzz about this book, it is a NY Times best-seller after all. But that is not why I want you to go out and buy it, or why I gush a little about how cool Chris and Julien are. No, the reason is that you can save yourself a lot of time and effort learning the things that I learned the hard way – reading lots and lots of blog posts and e-books and whatever else I could get my hands on.

Trust Agents – Find out what Social Media is really all about

Chris and Julien have put together a reference book and instruction manual for gaining the background and skills that you need to bring your business into the world of Web 2.0 and beyond. To quote from the introduction:

“Trust Agents is the answer to the question,”What do I do now?” It is full of actionable information, supported by research and strategies, studies, and an explanation of the thought process behind what we do on the web. We love all the great “idea” books out there, and we do have lots of ideas packed in here as starting points. In addition to these, we give you actionable tasks that you can execute.”

Ideas and actionable tasks for business

The book starts off with a couple of stories about building trust, social capital, and the state of media today (and this will probably be the only business book you read this year that has stories about mobsters and student loans). Basic Social Media Literacy, followed by an in-depth explanation of what they call the six principles of trust agents.

Now, since this is a review and not a summary, I am just going to tell you about one of these principles:

The Archimedes Effect

This is my favorite, primarily because it is about leverage, a word that lots of marketing people hate to use. Which is too bad, because – even though it may be badly overused, it is the best word to describe the effect.

“Everyone uses leverage every day: Business owners hire employees so that their business can do more; people use technology such as cars to help them get to work faster; companies have systems that allow them to be more efficient. Yet millions use the Web every day and ignore how best to use the tools at their disposal to bring the greatest benefit.”

This chapter has page after page of examples on using leverage to increase the power of your online (and offline) efforts:

• Build on one success to fuel another
• Arbitrage and Pay Per Click advertising
• Applying these principles for online gaming and business
• Building your network and strengthening relationships
• Create your own niche
• Using your time effectively – delegate
• Get creative with your business marketing, be bold
• Protect your community

If you can’t find something in this chapter to apply to your business, well, it’s likely that one of your competitors will. Guess what happens then?

Buy Trust Agents at Amazon, now.

On 28 July 2009 a company named Horizon Realty made some big news on Twitter, namely that they were suing a former tenant of one of their apartment buildings for an allegedly libelous tweet. I first noticed this news via one of the people that I follow on Twitter who pointed to a post about it at Mashable: Woman Sued for Tweet:

The Tweet, posted under the now defunct user name @abonnen, was the impetus for the libel lawsuit filed at Cook County Circuit Court, seeking $50,000 in damages. And although the Tweet and username are now deleted, accessing the account via Google ()’s cache shows it has around 20 followers. While the numbers could have dropped since deletion, it doesn’t appear the message would have travelled far. @abonnen wasn’t a particularly heavy Twitter () user, either – she posted somewhere between 1 and 5 tweets per day and often didn’t post for 2 or 3 days.

After this, things started to get out of hand. The massive crowd of early-adopters on Twitter, as always tuned in to anything Twitter-related started to spread the word (of course Mashable has over 1 million followers and nearly 300k blog subscribers…) and by mid-day “Horizon Realty” was a trending topic on Search.Twitter.com.

And other bloggers started talking about it too. In fact, my friend Sonia Simone, writing at Copyblogger has an interesting comment about it:

It’s not about what you think is fair

Horizon Realty might be the most loveable, fair, decent and true company in the world. Right now, their name recognition has about as much appeal as Saddam Hussein. With mold.

Whether fair or not, Horizon has made a worldwide name for itself virtually instantly, connecting its brand with callous disregard for its tenants, or worse.

(Yes, there is such a thing as bad publicity. This is what it looks like.)

Do social media users read all the facts carefully before flaming? Of course they don’t. Are there dozens of inaccurate accusations about Horizon flying around Twitter at the moment?

Absolutely.

Is that fair? No. Then again, filing a $50,000 lawsuit against a customer for a snarky remark made to a friend isn’t going to strike many as entirely reasonable either.

I have written about Responding to Negativity before, “You should definitely respond to negative posts. In fact, you simply must respond quickly and carefully. Say you’re sorry, offer to fix the problem, and provide contact information. ”

Of course, Horizon Realty has a bunch of lawyers and such hanging around, waiting to jump on people that get in their way (that’s how things work in Chicago), they even said “We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization.” Now that is acting stupidly.

How Should Horizon Have Handled This

They could certainly still sue the tweeter, but could have avoided a massive amount of negative press, by simply getting out in front of the issue. Instead of waiting until it was too late to issue a press release like this one, they could have (and should have) exercised a little more intelligence in dealing with the client in the first place. The client filed a suit of her own last month, which Horizon Realty believes is without merit, so I suppose this is a way of “getting back” at the former tenant.

If Horizon Realty felt that it was too late for any customer service opportunities because the tenant had moved out and filed her own suit against Horizon, perhaps a reply to the tweet, and a polite letter asking her to delete it, would have been a better way to start the process. Remember, the word-of-mouth potential here is enormous.

People who have a bad experience tend to tell more people about it than people who have a good experience. Add in an element of schadenfreude on the part of people who like to share stories like this and BAM, millions of people hear about your customer service fail.

I am not a lawyer, but it also seems to me that if you are going to file a lawsuit re: libel, perhaps you should include a little more background and information in the filing. You can read the original PDF here. They included a “definition” of Twitter and a couple of paragraphs lauding their own good standing, but nothing to affirm their claim that the “statements in the Tweet concerning plaintiff were and are wholly false“.

Seriously.

How about if point 10 had been:

10.          The defendant’s apartment was inspected on such-and-such date, 2009 by So-and-So Environmental Company of Riverwoods, IL and the apartment was found to be free of mold. A copy of the report is attached to this filing.

Of course that might have been too obvious. And I suspect that there is still more to this case than we know about. Stay tuned, we will find out if there really was any mold there…

…that is, Chris interviews me about business, productivity, and the new SEO product – Writing for the Web.

In this 30 minute interview Stephen tells us:

• How he grew his consulting and coaching business after being made redundant
• His system for being productive
• The simple and basic SEO tweaks that any non-technical website owner can do to get more Google traffic

I am very honored to have had the chance to meet Chris in person at the past two SOBCon conferences, and he is an amazing person. I learned a lot from him as I have built my new business, and if you do not read his blog, you should – ChrisG.com

Thanks again, Chris, for the opportunity!