Putting WordPress to Work
Carrie: Howdy everyone! Welcome back to officehours.fm. Today I have Debra Eckerling on. She is the author of Write On Blogging and the founder of Write On Online. I introduced you a tiny bit but would you share with my audience more about who you are what you do?
Debra: Ok. I am a project catalyst, which means I work with individuals and businesses to help them set goals and manage their projects. Most of them are content related like books and blogs but I also help people with their networking plans, marketing and that sort of thing. My goal setting background came because I had a live writer support group that I started when I still lived in the Chicago suburbs. I relaunched it in LA in the early 2000s. It’s all focusing on setting goals, reporting on goals and encouraging people. It was in Santa Monica for many years and then we were just online. Now it’s like a hybrid. So I have my website which is Write On Online and the Facebook page where people post goals and report on them. We also have a live Meetup once a month in West LA. It has evolved to the point where it’s not just writers but also artisans and entrepreneurs. It’s really just getting people away from their computers and talking. It’s awesome!
Carrie: What a concept.
Debra: We love our computers. We get to do things like the way you and I have connected. Sometimes you just have to leave the house and talk to other people. Like I said, it started out as an evening with just writers. Now it’s just basically anybody who wants to get out there. So many writers are entrepreneurs these days anyway and vice versa. It’s just a really good place to have some coffee and not just talk about goals but talk about what you’re working on. When you expand your network this way, you never know who’s going to know something or someone that can help to move your business or personal life along. We really love having that as well. It’s good for me not just for the people who come.
Carrie: So I am sure you’ve seen the way people approach content on the web change quite a bit over the years. Is there anything that you saw trending in earlier years that people are still doing? You’re like “oh my gosh”. Stop that! We’ve moved past that.
Debra: The ranting on blogs. I remember people in my writer’s group in Chicago ranting back when it was message boards and whatever. It is all well and good except if you are trying to put forth a professional attitude. If your thing is you’re ranting that’s fine. I’m so thrilled that content has gotten more important. I am one of those people where I always knew that I was going to be a writer. I always loved the written word and saw the power of expressing yourself. The fact that it’s now like mandatory if people want to show up on the web (or whatever) to be able to express themselves. I think it’s awesome. Yes. Some people do better with podcasts and other people do better with video and it’s fine. But people embracing and sharing their voice and their expertise, that’s what sets them apart. Like I said, the ranting if you’re in business, maybe you want to tone it down a little bit unless it’s really relevant to your business. Then it’s ok. I know I answered your question. Ranting when it’s inappropriate.
Carrie: When you’re an individual operating a business under your name…so your social accounts are “personal” but they’re also your business accounts…I see a lot of stuff that people post online that I think that maybe it would be better for your business reputation if you did not say those things. What’s your advice when it comes to ranting? You said ranting is ok if it’s relevant to your business but what are some of the guidelines that you operate around for yourself?
Debra: I always approach this as my personal and professional life are the same. Granted, I don’t go places or take pictures where I put myself in a position where those pictures were inappropriate and put them online. The worst people are going to find about me are my fun karaoke pictures. Usually, when I got out karaoking it’s like with my social media friends. I’m an editor for Social Media Examiner, so I go to social media marketing world every year during their annual conference. Karaoke night is our fun little thing you know? Way too much information but this is my personality. It’s fine because this is my public persona. I’m the person who brings writers (and now writers and entrepreneurs together) so they can help each other out and encourage each other and motivate each other…etc. etc. So I’d say the best guideline is if you don’t want your boss to see it, or your grandparent or whatever, don’t post it. Don’t post anything you would ever think could come back to haunt you.
Carrie: Or you client.
Debra: Exactly. Never post anything for someone who’s important to see.
Carrie: So I had an idea for (maybe it already exists) I haven’t actually looked but the equivalent of a breathalyzer that you have that won’t let you start your car if it detects alcohol or a certain level of alcohol…that there could be a device like that for your phone. If you were inebriated it would block social media so that you couldn’t post anything embarrassing. It would block all numbers except for your significant other.
Debra: Wow! That’s brilliant. If it doesn’t exist, it totally should.
Carrie: Well, I pulled us a little off with that. There’s a product idea. Most of the folks who listen to the show…we’re a WordPress podcast…so when it comes to the website part of blogging…we’ve got it in spades. We all have websites and our blogs set up. Personally, where I start to struggle is consistently writing content that is both relevant and just being motivated to write it. It’s hard. If you’re not a writer or not in the habit of writing, where do you recommend that someone start? Say someone is their business and they serve clients doing website development or whatever it is. First of all, do they need to blog?
Debra: Yes.
Carrie: Secondly, how do you get forward motion if that’s just been something that’s kind bogging you down?
Debra: Ok. I will expand on the yes first. It’s really what sets you apart. There are designers and your listeners know. I’m not telling them anything they don’t already know. There is a gazillion of them. There are a gazillion writers, there are a gazillion food bloggers, there is a gazillion of anything (not an actual number). What sets you apart is your background, your body of knowledge and your personal experience, right? The best way to express your individuality and your knowledge is by blogging. That’s the reason for the yes. Writing is scary. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Writers sometimes have trouble writing. I know you’re clearly shocked by this but the other thing that you find is the more you write it becomes easier because you are in a pattern. You know what you’re doing. I always say that the best first step is a dedicated blog journal where you write down all of your thoughts. It’s great especially when you’re starting a blog. I have this process I call directed journaling where basically you schedule a few 15-minute appointments with yourself over the course of the week or two (depending on how much time and how quickly you need to get this done). You just bring down every single thing you think about, every topic that interests you and everything that you think could be a story. It’s especially good for people who are trying to find their angle for their blog. The idea is you do this several times but don’t read any of your previous entries until you’re ready to get going. Then you can read like five. The reason we do this is to see common themes. You’ll say oh well! I must really love animation because I mentioned it every single time that I sat down. I think people don’t talk nearly enough about logos and that’s clear because it came up twice this day and three times a different day (whatever other functionalities were). In WordPress, I wish they did this for WordPress. Well, if you say I wish these things existed for WordPress a bunch of times, that tells me that would make an awesome weekly or even monthly post. So this is a great to figure out your angle and a great way to generate ideas. Once you honed in on your angle, keep using it whenever you have a thought that comes to mind. You just add it to this ongoing document. Whether you want to do it by hand or on the computer, I don’t care. It should probably be in one or the other. It should all be the same place because that we are not looking for a bunch of different pieces of paper that are everywhere. This way all of your ideas are in one place.
Carrie: That’s a really that’s a great exercise. I want to talk more about it.
If you’re joining in a little bit late I’m speaking with Debra Eckerling. She is an author, a writer and is very passionate about helping others get their write on. Do you see what I did there?
Debra: I did. That’s beautiful!
Carrie: If you ever need some cheesy marketing you call me Debra. I’ve got your back. So talking about how to get rolling for a personal blog, you mention this angle. Maybe there’s some angst in there. Is this angle or is this topic something that is appropriate for the audience that I’m targeting? Do you have some thoughts around that?
Debra: Well, the same way that you brainstorm your content, you can brainstorm any of these elements like your audience. Who is your ideal reader? Who do you want? You can say, everyone. Sure why not? But you know who they are. Mine is really broad because mine is no longer writers, but writers and entrepreneurs who need motivation with their writing…or what tips, advice or what have you. Think about who your ideal reader is and then go with that. I’ll let you in on a little cheat. If you have a lot of different things that you want to talk about, that can be your angle, you know? I am the web designer who also talks about unicycles and food. I don’t know.
Carrie: Unicycles and food?
Debra: Don’t ask me. I have no idea where that came from. So let me ask you this Carrie. What do you do when you are not being your awesome business self?
Carrie: Like actual hobbies?
Debra: Yeah, those.
Carrie: You know what? One of my goals for 2017 is to find a hobby that does not involve being in front of my computer. That sounds so bizarre, but a lot of the things I love to do involve being in front of my computer. I want to get out from behind that. To answer your question, generally speaking, I enjoy reading and being outside.
Debra: But even more interesting would be blog posts on your journey to find a hobby that’s not in front of your computer. You can easily do either… let me back up. When you start blogging if you think you can commit to once a week just start with once a week. Make it the same day. That’s because you are setting expectations. If you think you can do it twice a week, fine. If you think you can do it three times a week…really? Ok. Figure out what is going to work in your schedule. Look at your other commitments. Figure out how much time you can commit. What I was going to say with you is…let’s say you have a weekly blog. Once a month (maybe your last blog post of the month) is I do this Web design which dear readers know, but it’s just as important to get away from the computer. I am on a year-long exploration to find a hobby. This month I explored that.
Carrie: Bam! See folks? This is why I have a podcast. I can bring people on for free consultations. Thanks, Debra!
Debra: You’re welcome!
Carrie: Let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about actually promoting your blog. Let’s say you’re getting in the habit. You’re actually producing content. You’re looking at Google analytics and you’re like wow! No one is here to see my content, which is depressing and makes me not want to write more content. What are some general strategies that you can share about how to promote what you’re writing?
Debra: My main three are (as should everybody’s in my personal opinion) are LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Actually, of all of the platforms, I’ve been on LinkedIn the longest…probably since early 2000. It’s a great business network. The reason we love LinkedIn so much is that it’s not as cluttered as the other platforms and not as many people are using it. If you post on LinkedIn even once, twice or three times a week you’re probably are going to get a better response. With Twitter, you have to retweet things a whole bunch because it goes by so quickly. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be using Twitter, participating in Twitter chats and inviting your peeps. Of the three, I’d say make sure you are posting on LinkedIn. You can put a link, image or whatever for your blog post. Make that part of your routine to be posting the link. The other thing you can do is…I’ve heard that two weeks is the magic number… two weeks after you post something on your blog you can repost it in other avenues. So you can use LinkedIn publisher to either write, repeat your intro and then say see blog for more information on this topic. You can just re-repost your blog post in LinkedIn publisher. You can add images, you can add links and you should add a line that this was originally published on my blog. That goes in search because it’s LinkedIn pulse. Oh! They do let you add keywords as well. That’s another way to use LinkedIn to share your blog content. Facebook (I know more of the kids these days are on Snapchat) but Facebook is still king. You have to be on Facebook, right? If you have a business, I’m assuming you should also have your social media links that are consistent with your branding. Except for my personal profile which is Facebook.com/deckerling…for anybody that is listening…feel free to connect with me. Just send me a little note that you heard me. Everything else is /writeononline. So with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, if you already have a website and you’re adding a blog to it, make sure you have all of your social links consistent.
Carrie: Yeah that’s a great tip.
Debra: And also LinkedIn, but I digress. My original website was Coast Bunny. For a Californian who moved from Chicago, that was my original freelance website profile.
Carrie: Ok! I saw that on your LinkedIn profile and I was like…hmm…there is a story there.
Debra: There is a story there. I have Debraeckerling.com that redirects to writeononline.com. I thought it would be much more fun to have a profile site. Originally I started it as my profile site. Writeononline was a tab on it until it I to became its own website. I said ok. I’m going to go with Coast Bunny because what else are you going to call yourself, right? It makes a great story. If I had to do it again, yes, of course, I would do it again. That’s how long I’ve been on LinkedIn. If I had to do it again, of course, I would do LinkedIn.com/in/deckerling. But I didn’t.
Carrie: That’s ok.
Debra: Everything else is consistent. If you’re starting from scratch there’s no reason to not have that consistency. The other site I love is called namechk.com. You can go in there to search when you’re looking for your website name or your blog name to see what names are available on platforms.
Carrie: Ahh. That’s cool!
Debra: It’s like my favorite.
Carrie: That’s a great little nugget. For folks tuning in, I will post all the links that we talked about in this episode over at officehours.fm. You can check later if you’re listening to this in your car and don’t want to be unsafe and write down that link. We don’t promote being unsafe.
Debra: That’s awesome!
Carrie: Debra? I’m going to let you get back to work here shortly. But before I do, is there any one bit of advice, inspiration or wisdom you could share about writing?
Debra: Only one? Did I answer your social media question completely?
Carrie: I still did kind of have one more question. You touched on it a little bit, that’s frequency of sharing. You don’t want to feel like your total pest reposting the same stuff all the time. On the other hand, a tweet, once it’s gone is never seen again. What are your strategies or recommendations for frequency of posting same content?
Debra: Ok. When I do a blog post, I will put the link on LinkedIn and I will put it on my Facebook page. Occasionally, the people that I interview will tag me so I usually don’t put it on my personal page. I’ll just put it on Write On Online. With Twitter, that’s the only one that I repeat more than once. The other way that you could do that (and this is why it’s also great to interview people or have people guest post) is you tag them and they retweet it. Find any little easy thing that you can do to make your tweet a little bit different so it’s not the same thing all the time. The other thing Twitter lets you do (I think it’s only once) but they let you retweet yourself.
Carrie: laughing…I know you can like your own tweets. It’s funny to me.
Debra: It is funny to me as well. It’s like liking your own Facebook post. Well, of course, I like it! I published it! The great thing about Twitter is you can have a pinned tweet at the top, which I completely recommend. So if you want people to get to your blog content do a nice tweet with a graphic and a link. When you go to that tweet, if you hit the three dots and scroll down you can pin it to the top of your profile. That way anybody that is visiting your profile sees the primary thing you are promoting. Like mine has my book on it.
Carrie: Gotcha. That’s good stuff. On a scale of 1 to 10 how important is it to have an image attached to that link?
Debra: Nine and a half. Without an image, it’s just text which is ok. The other thing is you should not only just be tweeting your stuff. You should retreat other people’s things. I briefly mentioned twitter chats. If you are really looking to build your twitter community…you can really just Google like twitter chats graphic designers. You should be able to find people who host those. Get on and meet people! Make friends. With any of these questions you asked me, you know I can just go on and on. I’m really trying to be concise there. With any of these networks like Facebook, you’re building a page and you’re building a community. With Twitter, find your favorite people. Make a twitter list, which could be personal or private. The only reason to have a private Twitter list is if you’re following your competitors. Anything else could be public. Again, it’s showing Oh! I’m the graphic design expert. I follow these graphic design experts and I make this list public so when people come to me and look at my list, they’re like oh she knows the people to follow. Great! I’m going to follow the list…rabbit hole, rabbit hole, rabbit hole. Find your community and have conversations. Don’t just be broadcasting your stuff. Share other people’s stuff and share news about your industry (which is the other thing). Twitter is the only one you really should be posting a lot on. Unless you have a gazillion fans is really no reason to post on Facebook more than a couple times a day. There’s no reason to post on LinkedIn more than a few times a week. I actually love Instagram. I was not kicking and screaming… but oh no! Not another platform. What am I going to do with that? If you are attending events you take a picture, you share it. When I did my goal setting workshop (the one that I mentioned that’s on my site a couple weeks ago) they said, Deb, we’re going to stream it live. So I did a live stream telling people that it was going to be live streamed which I put on my Facebook. Then I did an Instagram saying this is where I am. With Instagram, you can connect it to your Facebook and Twitter. I usually just connect it to my Twitter and then I do my Facebook natively. The moral of the story is explore and pick one or two of these and figure out what works. When you get that, go to a different one and figure out what works and on and on. You’re not going to master everything. You can’t do everything. Just pick your favorites and see where you are and see where your people are. Just do that.
Carrie That is solid wisdom there! Debra? Where is the best place, the best social media platform and the best website for people if they would like to follow up with you and say hello?
Debra: Can I give a final thought before this or after this?
Carrie: No. No final thoughts… just kidding. I would love to hear your final thoughts.
Debra: Do you want final thoughts now or after I tell people where they can find me?
Carrie: Oh…I don’t want to wait for final thoughts.
Debra: Ok. I really want to answer your question about the writing and this is the thing. Writing is supposed to be fun. Find things that you’re excited and passionate about and it will be fun. That’s what is going to come across when your blogging. Don’t drive yourself crazy. Don’t worry about it being a certain amount of words. It could be 300 words, 300 to 500 words, or 1000 words where you stand out because you have long blog posts. Figure out what works for you, what’s going to make you happy and what you can share with people that shows your personality. Don’t worry about spelling. There is spell check or you find a friend who’s an editor. You share resources and help each other out. The important thing is to get your knowledge out of your head onto paper or the computer etc. and share it with the world.
Carrie: That was #finalthought #onwriting.
Debra: Yes. People can find me on writeononline.com or they can email me [email protected] As I said before, I’m on every platform. So Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (I don’t do so much on Pinterest) but I am there at /writeononline. LinkedIn/in/coastbunny.
Carrie: Thank you so much, Debra. It’s been a real pleasure chatting with you. Thanks for letting my audience have access to you and follow up with you. I appreciate that. We will talk soon.
Debra: I thank you so much. This has been a blast. For those who are listening, please connect with me. If you’re hesitant about writing you can do it. I believe it!