How to Deal with Negative Comments

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Rionald Soerjanto

If you have been blogging for a while, you have probably felt the frustration associated with negative comments. If you are new to blogging, you probably fear receiving biting criticism. But you might be surprised to learn that negative comments can sometimes be a good thing.

Understand the Criticism.
When you have somebody who is thoughtfully critical of you, respond to them and show that your organization is human and you are a caring person. Critical comments can spark meaningful and authentic discussions. Responding to them shows that you are attentive to the remarks of others and that you are not just rambling in a vacuum.

React in the Same Channel.
It is always a good idea to react in the same media that the comment was made in. If someone posts a tweet, tweet back at them. If they leave a blog comment, comment on the same post. Pay attention to people’s preferred method of communication and continue the dialogue on that platform.

Don’t Respond to Bullies.
If it is a thoughtful comment, it deserves a response. If it is a bully and all they are trying to do is bully you, you don’t have to respond to that. Trust your guts to evaluate if a comment is attacking you or your argument. If the commenter is being insulting without providing any meaningful criticism, feel free to ignore them.

How to Think About Business Blogging

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Rionald Soerjanto

When thinking about blogging, take off your hat as a business owner or marketing manager and instead try to think like a magazine publisher.

The goal of your business blog should be to publish articles that are not promotional but instead share industry expertise, much in the way a column or an article in an industry magazine would.

Think about what you are writing and the words you are using. Don’t use industry jargon that only you and your employees would understand. Just as you did when brainstorming keywords, think of the words your customers would use to describe your business and use those keywords in your blog posts.

Key Components of a Great Blog Post

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Rionald Soerjanto

A well-constructed blog post should include several key components:

An Attention-Grabbing Article Title: Because your blog article’s title is the first thing people will see, it’s important to make sure it clearly indicates what the article is about, is concise, keyword-rich (because the header tag is the most important for SEO), and attention grabbing.
Well Written & Formatted Text: The body of your article should be well-written and formatted in a way that makes it easy to read. Consider using header tags and bullet-lists to break up the content into sections.
Images/Videos: Relevant multimedia content can make a blog article more memorable and fun to read. It also helps to break up text to make it more pleasing to the eye.
Links: Include in-text links to relevant content. These can also point to landing pages to help you generate more leads for your content.
Call-to-Action: Each and every blog article you publish should include a relevant call-to-action at the bottom of the article to help boost lead generation.

When in doubt, ask questions

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Vanesha Manuturi

With all these crazy demands for companies to have a website, a Facebook page, a blog and a Twitter profile, I wasn’t exactly surprised when this non-profit organization that I recently volunteered in asked, “What is actually the difference?”

Especially in differing between Facebook and Twitter, questions like “Aren’t they basically the same old same old social network sites?” shouldn’t be a given a raised eye-brow as if it should be common sense, instead those question can be extremely effective in constructing a working marketing strategy.

With this post, I’ll try my best to give my two cents in why various use of social networking site is crucial in marketing. For one, each different medium provide different forum and reach to different markets. In crude words, they’re all different sides of marketing that in the end, should lead customer toward the same goal and that is for the company. While websites and blogs provide thorough detail about the company, it’s usually used by loyal customers and requires some sort of intention from the customer to check these media. Facebook and Twitter, on the other hand, is integrated within the customer’s daily life, thus having the ability to turn curious, potential customers to regular followers of the company. Twitter is especially effective because it’s also updated constantly.

Maybe some of your questions were answered, maybe not. My main point of this post is not exactly to answer all the questions in one post, yet I’d like to say it’s okay to ask questions. In fact, it’s highly crucial that companies ask questions to really dissect their vision and mission for the sake of an effective marketing strategy.

Nowadays, there are many resources that companies can use to really dissect the matter; there are consulting companies and positions have been opened for “Social Media” intern. When in doubt, ask questions.

New Client: Realtor Carrie Haymond Blog Website

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Rionald Soerjanto

Carrie Haymond is a Certified Residential Specialist with the Windermere Real Estate Company. She is a native to the Seattle area, with over three decades of experience in the Real Estate industry as a Realtor and seasoned investment property entrepreneur.

Sky Soft Consulting designed her website a while back and last month we were approached to help her with Social Media Marketing. Blogging is part of Social Media Marketing and companies or business owners need to start utilizing them. Here is an article we did a while back on Benefits of Blogging for Search Engine.

Anyway, here is the screenshot, once the Blog is alive, it will be informed here….

Facebook Shopping

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Vanesha Manuturi

Just when I thought that Facebook could not get any bigger, it just did. Recently, Express, the retail company, expanded its Facebook marketing platform by adding a new application tab “Shop EXPRESS” that enables Facebook users to access its retail products and buy from the Facebook page.

While reviewing the application on Facebook, I have to say I was quite impressed. By adding these functions and app, EXPRESS is able to both promote their product and sell some products. One of the functions that I love is the ‘Like’ function. When a Facebook user click ‘Like’ on one of the products, that action will automatically be shown in the user’s news feed, thus promoting the brand to the user’s circle. After researching more about shopping through Facebook, I discovered that a similar function that enables Facebook fans to shop in Facebook has actually been done by other retail companies such as DKNY and BANANA Republic before although each company seem to utilize it differently. An interesting article titled “Would you go shopping on Facebook?” by theclosthingmenu.com discusses further the topic of online shopping through Facebook.

As for the matter of integrating Facebook for shopping, my opinion stands that I’m not really sure of what the future holds for shopping through Facebook, but I find the use of Facebook for marketing the brands is definitely effective. The ‘Like’ functions and the ability to comment on the product from the company’s Facebook page are quite brilliant. In a way, it’s like an upgraded version of the word of mouth marketing.

Ideal Entertainment Blog

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Rionald Soerjanto

Ideal Entertainment is a professional Disc Jockey and Entertainment company that prides itself on tailoring events to its clients’ specific needs.

I know the owner well and I highly recommend him for all your event’s need.

We had the opportunity to build a blog for him.

What are the four common mistakes of company blogs?

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Vanesha Manuturi

Of all the many tips and tricks of how to maintain a company blog that I’ve read, this quite recent article that I found while browsing by detik.com, an Indonesian-based independent online news forum, is one of my personal favorite. It’s rudimentary and simple. Of course, each of us can have our personal preference to what tips and tricks work best, but personally, I think the article by detik.com should be highly helpful for smaller companies who are still in the beginning phase of their social media websites and blogging journey. Since the article is in Indonesian, I’ll try my best to translate and paraphrase the content on the article.

Basically, the article provided four mistakes that company blogs tend to make:

1) Starting without a strategy

2) Thinking that the blog should be all about your company

3) Failure to create links

4) Ignoring the social media

The number one rule that companies should stick to when starting a blog is: have a strategy. In a previous blog post, Relationship Marketing Through Facebook Ads, I’ve stressed highly the importance of strategizing before launching the blog itself. Even then, it’s still commonly the first mistake that companies tend to do. As stated in the 2^nd company blogs’ mistake in the article, your blog is not a press forum. Just as Facebook markets to the consumer by relationship marketing, blogs market to the consumer by the process of information sharing. After all, ultimately, no one wants to know that they are marketed to.

What the 3^rd mistake that the article refer to is the common failure for company blogs to cite their sources (Yes, I may sound like an English teacher here). Instead of thinking that linking your article with other articles will drive away traffic, think of it as building up your credentials, thus maintaining your image and relationship with the readers.

Lastly, many companies tend to forget to link up their company blogs to other social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. The Re-Tweet and Share function in Twitter and Facebook, respectively, are highly crucial and helpful in spreading your blog, thus driving more traffic to the blog. As you are constructing your strategy, make sure that your company blog is connected to other social networking sites so that it’s updated automatically.

As I’ve said before, these tips and tricks are relatively simple and easy, but I believe that to advance into more development, companies should strive to cover their bases first by making sure that at least, these four mistakes have been avoided. When all of these bases have been covered, then companies can proceed into the next step such as maintaining a blog content or theme and so on.

Going Back to the Infamous 5Ws and 1H

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Vanesha Manuturi

Ever since the explosion of social medial networking and blogs, the marketing and PR world have been pushed to keep up with the Internet as a new platform for marketing. While researching about tips and tricks of creating and maintaining a blog, I’m suddenly reminded of one tool that has helped me in many ways from biology lab research to news articles that also can be applied to strategy-making in marketing: the 5 Ws and 1 H.

For most of us, the 5Ws and 1H has been thoroughly drilled into our process of thinking by our formal education system that it almost seems like an innate trait and well, common sense. In the business of blogging, although it may seem common sense, I propose for the need of companies to consult back to the 5Ws and 1H more thoroughly. The thing is that it’s not just about answering the right answer but also asking the right questions. The 5Ws and 1 H are who, what, where, when, why and how.

Before starting a blog, companies should start building a strategy that can be constructed by asking and answering through the 5Ws and 1 H. Some questions that should be asked are maybe:

Who is the company trying to reach with the blog?
What is the goal of the blog?
What are the resources needed to start the blog?
What image is the company trying to enforce through the blog?
What other social media tools can be used to strengthen the blog?
Why is the company starting the blog? What are the benefits?
And so on…

By asking these questions, the company should now have a strategy, or in other words, a blueprint of where the blog should go. One of the mistakes that companies tend to make is to ignore the strategy-making of the blog. Although it might seem like something that can be put off later, the failure for a company to establish clear goals of the blog through strategizing will seep through to the blog itself, making the blog seem unorganized and confusing. In a more blunt set of words, if you do not care about the blog, then why should the readers care?

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