The branding lesson of a small shop in Anwerp

In the last 12 months, travel played an important part in my life, hence my focus on my travel writing and photography instead of my usual social media and branding topics on this blog. However, as usual, travel gives me an opportunity to discover new social media and cultural practices, to get in touch with interesting people and use the opportunity of spending time in a new environment for finding answers to my old questions.

One of the main things I enjoy while being abroad, is to test the customer service and to notice how the companies and especially small shops are promoting themselves in a very competitive environment. 

Two months ago, I visited the beautiful city of Antwerp and, as usual, I stopped by to a small bookstore in the Jewish area, where I needed to purchase some important books that I cannot find in my side of Europe. After over 40 minutes of searching and considering how many books I can carry with me for the next hours, I decided for a couple of titles and some children books and went to the counter to pay. There, my books were checked and on the last page of each was glued a little sticker with the name of the bookstore, its address and a telephone number. From now on, when someone will have a look to my books, they will see for sure from where I purchased them and eventually, how they can have their own too.

It is a very simple and classical trick, as easy as the usual address of your blog that you add to every official e-mail exchange with your business partners or sponsors or potential collaborations. The costs of ordering the small bumper stickers are minimal and the effects are long-lasting. This is the kind of branding made with heart and without an impressive investment. You don't need to pay advertising in big newspapers or even on websites targeting your audience. Read in the family and shared with friends, the books are always carrying a little mention about your business and this can matter more than some fabulous mention in the media. At least for a medium-sized business, such a local strategy can work successfully, at least for a while and as long as your customers are happy with your products. And if the 'products' are books, consider it a partial success. 

What are you writing for?

My blogging and writing activity goes very well, thank you for the question. It is a lot to do and explore - especially when working full time for travels and foodie blogs. But, as I said on several occasions, writing and living with the impression of doing extraordinary things it is not enough. The blogs need (a lot of) promotion and intensive networking. Sometimes, you also need also some serious resources, financial, especially first because I need to diminish my time spent with various freelancing projects and second because in some cases a little bit of advertising may help. 

Time-wise I need to learn a lot about SEO and ads and various tips how to use Wordpress as a pro. And in between I need to improve at least another foreign language I have in my pocket because I need to go as international as possible. The list is getting longer and longer each day.

However, if I start thinking mostly about what I need to do to promote my posts, I forget something the most important part of my online story: the content of my stories as such. This is why I have blogs and Facebook page and Twitter account: because I want to share stories. Being present only for the sake of the social media profile does not solve the issue of who will write my posts as good as possible to be considered by publishers and companies for getting more work and visibility. No one will go to find out interesting topics or to prepare interviews if I am stuck checking how many people unfollowed me. 

At the beginning of the online adventure, there may be a lot of time needed until getting to an acceptable level. Learning how to use some good tricks - I started to use recently Google+ and I have only good words for this decision; the same goes to StumbleUpon (hope to write more about those experiences in a separate post) - and trying to be as organized as possible when it comes to various online events - such as the Twitter chats that I love more and more instead to the lonely autistic way of posting on my own and connecting from time to time to some fellow Twitter friends. 

The objective of the next weeks is to create more quality content, end up some interesting advertising deals and learn some decent principles of using successfully YouTube. The more I write the more I want to spend more time for my articles and this is why I want so much to do what I am doing. All my work, time and valuable resources should be spend doing the single thing I always wanted to do: writing. The rest is part of the right appreciation that my (hope) quality work might obtain.

  

Using Twitter for more content

When I first joined Twitter, maybe 2 years ago, I used it mostly to satisfy my curiosity of a social media consultant in the making, without having any other secret plan than to change ideas and get the best news in real time. For a good time, this limited objective worked perfectly and the first work-related thing I was doing in the morning for weeks was to check my Twitter account and read the latest news. From time to time, I was also a news setter being among the first who launched on air some freshly pressed information. Even though I was not necessarily following a strategy, I got credibility and serious connections that brought me near an impressive threshold of 1,000 followers in 12 months.

Besides the conversations on general and generous topics and the choice of the right hashtag and some consistent #FFs, there were not too many 

However, after a while I got bored and realized that I have other priorities in life than to check my Twitter. I restricted the access and mostly abandoned it. Now I enter every 3-4 month to check if someone interesting sent me any message. Meanwhile, I decided to be more focused on a specific strategy and opened a business Twitter account. My aim is to connect with specialists and trend setters in my domain, to share my own opinions and thus, to get a good traffic for my blogs as well as to provide reliable content. 

Since I've been the last time on Twitter things changed considerably and it is not very easy to win supporters/followers unless you do something (hard, very hard) to deserve them. As I remarked on another occasion in a recent post, I feel that I really deserve every single follower as behind the entry of any new member into my virtual community it is a lot of serious consistent work. Believe me, it is not that easy to expand your audience, but compared with the 'old good times' I feel that the growth is more consistent and thus is worth the effort. 

One of the most serious ways to be considered when looking to connect with the right people on Twitter are the Twitter chats. In most cases, there are weekly's fix whose date is known days in advance. The day of the chat, one may spot at least twice announcement of the event, or even some hourly countdowns that help those interested to gather online for a more than casual discussion. It may last 30 minutes or one hour with regular questions aired every 10 minutes. Each chat has a predetermined topic that has to deal either with the latest trends of the industry or with the people sharing the same interests with you. There it is your weekly or daily - if you have enough time - to share your practises and to convince the other participants at the discussion that you really have something to say.

As in many other cases, this is only one of the many tools one should use for increasing its online audience. Do not expect dozen of new followers after every chat. You better focus on getting the best content and writing nearly to perfection. This should be the main focus of any blogger, regardless of his or her domain. 

How to better use the social reading networks

I am an avid reader and I wish I can spend at least one month the year reading non-stop, with only 5 hours of sleep and one hour of cooking and shopping. It is an utopia, of course, but I try to find as much time as possible to read (almost) any kind of books: literature, travel, cooking, history, self-help, politics, history...You see? Almost everything.

As I also manage several blogs - travel, foodie, social media, and writing - and I am member of the respectable networks of Goodreads and Shelfari and I am always looking to expand my audience and increase my expertise, my book passion can turn into a golden mine for my diversified efforts. Trying to fight with the low social media presence for some of my blogs, I discovered that writing book reviews on my blogs that are later on shared on those social networks plus on Amazon.com could be an impressive free opportunity to raise the awareness about what I am doing as well as a way to attract more readers. 

I am trying as much as possible to have my posts free of a high concentration of key words and to offer honest reviews based of an analysis of the style, information and relevance. Even if I know personally or virtually some of the writers, I always prefer to keep myself at the decent level of evaluation and to not spare any criticism if needed. 

From my point of view, this experience is useful also for improving my writing, my page ranking as well as for preparing the ground for my own books. The motto of my life is to always be ready for challenges and to use my skills for new tasks and opportunities. And there are so many books to read!

Social media is easy, isn't it?

One of the most aired stereotypes, that I am also guilty to nurture from time to time is that social media is a very easy trick. In other words, you need to read a couple of books, set up profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and who knows where and spend half of your life online. And after a short while, you get hundreds of 'likes' and 'followers' of all colours. Of course that the SEO is the piece of cake you can eat and have it too and your income will sky rocket and you will be in a short amount of time the start of the web.

You know what? It's stupid wrong to think that. If you continue to tell other people such a platitude you are disqualified from using your Facebook account even all you want to share with the worlds are pictures with your cat. 

In the last 2 months I decided that I have the time and energy to launch some nice travel projects that I always wanted to do but always avoided too because assuming I am busy making money. I got rid of this illusion and started to plan carefully my posts, and trying to be as marketable as possible. Almost two months of intensive work, sometimes till late in the night, I am still thousand of kilometres away from being a success story. Of course I did follow the social media path being very active on Twitter and posting lots of pictures on Pinterest and creating content and even doing some guest posting. I tried as much as possible to swim in the unknown, without using too much the support of friends that may help me to spread the word about my wonderful project. I wanted to test the water on my own and see how far I can do from the grassroot level.   

I don't know where I am exactly, but I know that it is a lot to work from now on. Things are moving, but I feel somehow that every 'like' or 'follower' joined me because I did something in exchange. There are no free presents and I am happy that things are not that easy. I see how things are growing up, little by little by steadily and it's no better lesson, especially in the world of social media until is first tested by the teacher. I wish I have more time and energy to do even better.