It’s another blog heavy social 7 this week. Maybe because I’ve made the finals of the Social Media Examiner Top Social Media Blogs I’ve been focused on blogging this week. A massive thank you to all of you, the readers who nominated me and those who have helped me build it over the years. Here’s my pick of my reads this week including plenty of blogging tips and advice, fun Twitter statistics, and a blind photographer who takes better Instagram shots than me. Have a great weekend.
The secret sauce of a great blog post
There is a lot written and preached about writing great blog posts. I’ve been reading a lot of blogs recently and although many of them have great content I find a lot of them are missing something, that something that might want me to go back and connect with the blogger more regularly. I had attributed the missing piece to personality, some might call it storytelling but I think this article from Social Media Explorer really nails it. The secret sauce according to them is emotion and the article makes a compelling case including a remarkable blog post that seems to be succeeding for exactly this reason.
The typical Facebook post receives only 0.03% negative feedback
Pages are still reeling from the recent Facebook edgerank changes. We thought we knew the landscape of Facebook and then all of a sudden we realised our posts weren’t reaching as far and that images no longer seemed to get the most views. One thing Facebook has been clear about is that much of this is due to negative feedback to posts. The negative feedback statistic can be found in your Facebook insights by clicking ‘Engaged users’ next to an individual post in the insights interface. Any negative feedback will be listed here.
Negative feedback referrers to a user hiding the post, hiding all posts from your page, unliking your page or reporting it for spam. Facebook now uses this information as part of the edgerank algorithm to decide who to show your posts to. The good news is that in fact most posts don’t get much negative feedback. Read more on this on the Edgerank Checker blog.
How blind people use Instagram
I love this story. A blind guy who uses Instagram, and what is almost frightening is a lot of his photos are better than mine. I love that he is able to share visual moments from his life with others even though he is unable to see them himself.
How to blog with confidence
We had the first meeting of our bloggers network this week and one topic that came up straight away was how hard it had been for some of us to return to our blogs after the Christmas break. Personal bloggers were finding it particularly difficult to find inspiration. As part of our session we reviewed this post from Write On Track that gives some great blogging tips on getting your mojo back. One of the top tips was becoming part of the blogging community so it looks like those attending our blogging group had already taken one good step forward.
New Facebook guidelines – 20% text overlay on ad’s and cover photos
This week the new regulations about images you use in promoted posts and cover photos came in to effect. Essentially this means you are not allowed to have more than 20% of your image devoted to text. Facebook have a handy tool that advertisers can use to check their promoted posts but it would be handy to know in the design stage if you are going to be complying with the guidelines.
This excellent template from ShortStack will help you plan those images ahead of time.
How to blog successfully about anything
My final blogging tip of the week is this monster article from SEOMOZ on how to blog about anything. Is it really possible to blog about something you have no interest in? There are ways and the key seems to be questions. Not just answering questions from your clients but also asking them. Reading this reminded me of the early days blogging here at Spiderworking.com, before I had found my voice I spent a lot of time researching the questions people wanted answers to and even posing my own ones. I remember a series of posts asking what the rules of social media were was particularly effective.
50 Fun Twitter facts
32% of all Internet users are using Twitter. Over the span of 16 days, the London Olympics generated 150 million tweets. I love these kinda fun statistics, they help us to put a bit of personality on the more serious numbers based Twitter stats. Here’s 50 for you to wade through from All Twitter.
And from Spiderworking.com this week
What is the reach of your RT’s and what are your most commonly RT’d posts?
This weeks cool tool analyses the RT’s that you get on Twitter and shows you who manages to push them out to the most users. What I really loved about this tool though was that it was able to show me my most RT’d tweets. It could also form a basis for identifying your best brand ambassadors although I’d be cautious on basing this on follower account alone. Read more here.
Pinterest tip – Get more blog shares on Pinterest
I’m determined to embrace Pinterest more fully in 2013 and part of that has been looking at making my blog posts more shareable there. Here’s this weeks 30 second video tip, it’s the first thing I’ve tried and it is bringing some, all be it limited, results already.
Video tips and book review – How To Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck by Steve Stockman
There is a lot of terrible online video out there. At some stage we were all told that we needed video on our sites and this spurred everyone to throw together one regardless of quality. This week I review and share some key tips from a wonderful book How To Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck. This will definitely change the way you plan and produce your online videos.
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