SOCIAL IMPRESSIONS

Do you remember when you first started blogging? Weren’t you enthusiastic, eager and willing to spend hours on a blog post to make it perfect?  Ah, those were the days! I remember them well!

I am a big advocate of blogging. I believe in its value.  However, it has become increasingly challenging to blog as often as I used to because of my busy schedule. My friends reprimand me with sarcastic IMs and tweets: “How about you blog more often, Reem?!?!”

I am extremely honored that I have loyal readers who enjoy my content. I wish I had more time to allocate solely to blogging. I am sure I am not the only person who battles with their conscious when their blog has stale material from a month ago <insert guilty look here>.

Blogging Isn’t Just Writing

Blogging is time consuming because it includes many factors, not just writing. If you want to have a successful blog, you have to:

1- Come up with good ideas that you know your readers will enjoy
2- Write the posts
3- Edit the posts to make sure they don’t have too many grammatical mistakes, the tone is consistent, the message is clear, etc.
4- Tag and publish the posts
5- Promote them on social bookmarking sites and twitter
6 - Monitor comments and contribute to the conversation

Although some of those factors aren’t as demanding time-wise, they can still appear daunting when your to-do list for work is two pages long! However, I feel like blogging should be part of your to-do list!

Reem’s New Approach to Blogging More Often

For many of you struggling with the same problem as me, I thought I would share a technique I have decided to start using as of today!

1- Brainstorm during the week for blog ideas
- Conduct your research
- Ask questions on Twitter
- Talk to friends
- Read blog posts

2- Write and edit your blog post on the weekend
- You don’t have to type it right then and there. Write it in your notebook if you are out and about

3- Pick a day that isn’t usually very hectic and publish on THAT day
- Being consistent is always a good way to gain and keep your readers

4- Promote your post as soon as you publish it
- User Poprl as a URL shortening service so you can monitor how many people clicked on the link
- You can ask a friend to submit it to social bookmarking sites, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Sphinn, Digg, etc.

5- Monitor your comments and contribute to the discussion at your earliest convenience
- Download a plugin that allows your readers to subscribe to your comment feed

Let me know if you use this approach and if it works for you!

Wayne Sutton is a social media strategist. He has over 20,000 followers on Twitter and is a well-respected member of the online community. If you look at Wayne’s twitter stream, you’d notice that he is a major brightkite (a location-based social network) advocate.

In our discussion, Wayne and I discuss SXSW, brightkite and the social media space.

There are many identifiable brands online. If you mention the names of Chris Brogan, Liz Strauss, Pete Cashmore or Darren Rowse, many users immediately nod in recognition. These online super stars have secured solid positions in the space and have earned the respect of old and new users. To reach that level of popularity, there is a lot of effort that needs to be invested.

Although it is unlikely that I will blog as frequently as any of the aforementioned gurus, my goal is to build a solid brand online. I’ve consulted others on how to build personal brands, but my journey feels different because it’s personal. It’s me.

Having started my journey in late 2007, below is a documentation of all of my efforts up to this point:

Phase 1: Immersed myself in the online culture

When I started learning about social media, fellow users recommended that I spend time in the space. Since I am passionate about becoming a member of this community, I jumped in full force. I immersed myself in the culture, interacted with the veterans, and participated in the conversation. I joined all the recommended sites like, Digg, Mixx, Reddit, Stumble Upon, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, etc. I contributed to each site as much as I could for approximately a year. The result of my efforts - I learned the online culture, built solid relationships with fellow users and was fluent in the lingo. However, there were still a significant portion of the community who still asked, “Reem who?”

Phase 2: Revised my goal

Spending adequate amounts of time on all those sites is quite the challenge. If you have a full time job (that isn’t in social media,) it can be hard to build up a solid profile on all the sites. Although mass participation might gain you followers, it won’t help you build a solid and identifiable brand.

I decided that my personal focus will be to build a solid brand online. In order to accomplish that, I set the following goals:

1- Continue to learn about the evolving online space
2- Position myself as a knowledgeable social media strategist
3- Speak at more social media-related conferences
4- Write more guest posts and participate on guest posts

Phase 3: Selected the sites that helped to leverage my goals

In an effort to accomplish my 2009 goals, I limited my activity to a specific type of social media sites. I decided that I would actively participate on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and podcasts. Below are the reasons why I selected these sites:

Twitter: Engaging with fellow users on Twitter is an excellent way to build a brand. It allows me to share insight, and have interesting conversations. I’ve used Twitter many times to come up with blog post ideas. Users are always willing to help and support me.

Facebook: This is an excellent site that allows online friends learn all about me. With all the incredible applications available for installation, facebook serves as a hub of all my social media activity. My friends can enjoy (or mock!) my weekend pictures, watch my funny videos, read my posts and respond to my tweets.

Blog: My blog is the brains of my operation. It shares my thoughts, opinions and ideas on specific matters. It is also a good idea to guest post for other blogs within my niche! I have been fortunate to guest post for Problogger and Searchfuel. I look forward to finding the time to do it more in ‘09.

Podcast: It is another excellent way to showcase my knowledge and personality. Podcasts have a unique benefit - it allows people to tune in on and offline!

Continual: Measure, Measure, Measure

In order to gauge how successful your efforts are, it is important to keep an eye on your numbers. I set the following metrics for myself:

Blog: Levels of reader engagement, traffic and referring sites

Twitter: Number of followers, responses and retweets

Facebook: Interaction with my status updates and notes, and new friend requests

What have your efforts been like? Do you have any advice for me to follow in my journey to establishing an online brand?

* Image includes: Reem Abeidoh and Jeremy Wright

As the social media space is growing, one can find many sites that appeal to every interest and lifestyle. As soon I got engaged a year ago, I wanted to learn as much as possible about planning my wedding. As usual, the interwebs did not fail me. Not only were there sites to help me learn what is involved in the planning process, the vendors were also active on these sites. Although it seems like the wedding 2.0 industry is still relatively young, I believe that it is going to take the online world by storm.

Social media hasn’t only been a research vehicle for me; it has also served as a way for me to connect with my potential and current vendors. I believe that if they know you better, then their work will reflect your personality. Many of the vendors I met were extremely knowledgeable and can execute my vision to perfection. The element that set them apart was their personality. Although one-on-ones are a great way to meet people, I feel like I learned more about them by reading their tweets, blogs, and checking out their facebook profiles. In the end, I hired the vendors I clicked with!

Below is my online journey with some of my vendors:

Wedding Planners:

Due to my busy schedule, I realized that planning this massive celebration would be very challenging. Although I wanted to maintain creative control, I couldn’t take care of all the details, do all the research, and do all the legwork.

In order to identify top wedding planners in the St. Louis region, I visited review sites and forums. Based on the comments written by other brides about their experiences with the wedding planners, I was able to pinpoint five potential candidates. Unlike hand-picked testimonials posted on websites, I believe that comments on forums are more legitimate and credible.

Meeting with them wasn’t enough for me to make a final decision. I really needed to know if I could have a relationship with them for the next year. Hoping they were social media users as well, I looked online to see if they had any profiles. As soon as I saw Shelli Alred’s pictures and profile on Facebook, I fell in love with her spunky, creative and gregarious personality. I immediately knew she would get my vision. She was hired the following day and I have yet to regret my decision.

Dresses:

While working with Shelli, I have been able to make quick and informed decisions. How many women can say that they picked their wedding dress after visiting ONE store and buying the THIRD one they tried on? Me, I can!

I believe that the many hours I spent online viewing dresses really helped me make my decision. I was privy to the latest fashion designs in the wedding industry. I even bookmarked a picture of my dress to share with dear friends who want to see it. Ok, fine, I admit that I sneak peaks at it at least once a month.

Invitations:

I really liked the idea of customizing my invitations to match the theme of my wedding. Since our wedding is reminiscent of the 1001 Arabian Nights, I wanted to make sure that it was an integral part of the final design. During my meeting with Melissa Haley, we worked together to design my invitations, save the dates, menus, agenda, etc.

The first thing I did after receiving the quote from Melissa is check online on sites like on Wedding Paper Divas to make sure that I am getting a competitive price. I was so excited to see that there wasn’t much of a price difference!

Photographers:

The most challenging decision I’ve had to make thus far is picking a photographer. I am a big fan on the photojournalistic style. I searched for a photographer who can document the love my fiancé and I share. I noticed a major trend while visiting different photographers’ sites. They don’t only feature picture galleries, they also blog! I filtered out many of the photographers based on whether I connected with their blog.

One of the photographers who really grabbed my attention was Joanne Kleine. I was really disappointed to find that she was not available to shoot my wedding. However, we connected on facebook and had a long chat. Thanks to our conversation, I was referred to a few other top photographers in town. I look forward to closing the deal on this portion on the wedding planning really soon.