The First 100 Days of Obama and 9 Inches

Just like Barack, I’ve hit a milestone.  Today marks my 100th day of officially being a blogger.  It’s been an interesting journey and I’ve learned a great deal. Let’s take a quick look at the numbers:

33 posts.  I’ve settled into a Sunday / Wednesday routine.  It generally takes me between 3-5 hours to write a post.  So far I’ve put forth 25 axioms.  Axioms are self evident propositions and they serve as the basis for my posts.  

64 comments.  Not bad, but I really hoped my posts would elicit more feedback and ultimately conversation.  I’ve learned that 95% of folks are lurkers in the sense they look, but are reluctant to write. My hope going forward is to do a better job of engaging the 5%.

70 subscribers (60 e-mail, 10 RSS).  I use a service called Feedburner.  It mails new posts to my e-mail subscribers only on the days I post.  About 10 people access the blog via RSS (really simple syndication).  If your not familiar with RSS, it’s a great tool for blogs and news content via a reader.  Here is a tutorial on how to use it.  

3616 page views.  The new math tells me that averages to roughly 36 per day.   It’s been trending upward each month.  My biggest hit so far was my launch day with 152 hits.  Weekends are light and the busiest days tend to be Tuesday and Thursday.

So – why do I blog?  It comes down to 3 main reasons:

1.  Walk the talk – Marketing is transforming and we are in the midst of a sea of change.  You can’t be half pregnant.  If you are going to preach, you better practice.  If you are going to educate, then you need to be informed.

2. Thought leader – I want to be seen as credible and forward thinking when it comes to a sensory approach to integrated marketing communications.  Writing the blog challenges me to research and develop my thinking.  My hope is that it will lead to further speaking and writing opportunities.  Need a speaker?

3.  Visibility – My main role at Synergy is in business development.  My hope is two-fold in that I’d like to stay top of mind with our current clients and ideally generate new leads for the agency.

Issue:  Should you or your company be blogging?

Blogging is not for everyone.  But within the realm of social media, the ability to create strong content via a blog is an invaluable tool.

Here is an excerpt from a great post by Newt Barrett of the blog ‘Content Marketing Today’: 6 reasons  your blog must be the core of your social media strategy:

1. To have meaningful social media impact, you must provide a critical mass of content that will position you and your organization as thought leaders within your market niche. Nothing works better than a blog to achieve that objective.  Over time, your blog will contain an increasingly rich and relevant reservoir of information that serves as a Google magnet.  Thus, you will become more and more findable by those customers you need to attract.
2. You can provide an unlimited amount of vital information in a single location. Because Web visitors are desperately seeking answers to their most pressing questions, you have the opportunity to provide just the right answers for your ideal target customers. The best blogs can provide the vast majority of targeted information that there ideal visitors require in their search for solutions.
3. Content aside, the structure of a blog enables you to organize your information almost effortlessly to the benefit of your visitors. By defining the most important areas of information that you will cover and translating them into ‘categories,’ you enable your visitors to find exactly what they want with minimal effort.
4. Unlike other social media tools, such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, your blog is open to the entire world.  This enables you to achieve potentially infinite reach for your critical mass of content.  Although you may request visitors to register and offer them enticements such as a free e-book or eNewsletter, they don’t have to join a special club to benefit from your information.
5. You can be both timely and comprehensive.  Although Twitter couldn’t be more timely, the information, opinions, and advice you tweet can never be comprehensive.  Your blog can be just as timely as Twitter because you can post information instantaneously.  But you can also make each post as comprehensive as necessary and integrate that post with lots of other relevant information on your blog.
6. Your blog posts, far from being isolated from other great tools such as Facebook and Twitter, can be automatically pulled into each one.  Thus, those two powerhouses can enhance your online presence every time you post an article on your blog.  That’s three for the price of one.  Not bad.

The bottom line: Start your blog today.  It’s that important.

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Today’s Lagniappe (a little something extra) – A true story and some trivia:

Story – The concept of the ‘First 100 Days’ dates back to FDR’s first term in 1933.  Roosevelt passed 15 large pieces of legislation through Congress in a swift and unprecedented fashion.  All subsequent Presidents have been graded (probably unfairly) on this 100 day standard.  One of our earlier Presidents would have struggled in this department.  William Henry Harrison contracted pneumonia during his inauguration.  His presidency lasted for just about a month before he succumbed to his illness.  

Trivia – There are 8 of our Presidents that have last names which are one syllable.  Can you name all 8?  For extra points . . . only one of the 50 states is one syllable?  Which one?

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