With this on my mind, I took to Twitter to see how others deal with this dilemma. Unplugging came up in a couple of people’s responses. Getting away from all the tools to recharge your internal battery. From personal experience I know this has worked for me, so this seemed logical to me.

Then my friend Amanda sent me a link that really got the wheels turning. It was the transcript from the Health Care Social Media chat on Twitter. Topic one covered how to deal with burnout. As I looked over the responses, it seemed no one really was suffering from burn out at all. As Amanda put it, “…  it did seem participants found social media prevented burnout in other aspects of work.” Hmmm. I needed to explore more.

After a little more back and forth with Amanda, we started to realize that while keeping up with social media can be a lot of work and effort, you can actually use social media to combat that same fatigue you are facing by interacting with like-minded people that are dealing with the same issues. Tools like Twitter give you the opportunity to connect with those in your industry that have the same type of job. They actually become a sort of support group or advisory board.

The more I think about this, the more I love this idea. Maybe we all need our own support group, whether it is online or off, to combat social media fatigue? There are Twitter chats for almost every industry out there. Here is a great Google Doc that lists many, if not all, of them.  Maybe it is an informal group that meets for coffee or something a little more formal like Social Media Club?

So what do you think? Is the way to combat fatigue to unplug or just plug-in to your support group?

From a user standpoint, there will be security issues which is not unusual when Facebook makes a change. Also, there are the typical privacy issues that are associated with using a location based service. Wayne Sutton has a great post up already with how to update your privacy settings on Facebook that you should check out.

What I’m most interested in is what this move by Facebook means for location based applications. By adding it to a network that already boasts 500 million users, it is bound to become more mainstream. For business, this means that more people visiting your business and sharing it on Facebook, and therefore something that can no longer be ignored.

This is something that I plan to follow, so I can provide my thoughts on how businesses can utilize Places as another marketing tool. I also will track what this move means to Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and Booyah users since many businesses already have these programs in place. The next few months in location based services should be fun.

What do you think of the announcement? Will Facebook come out on top?

I hesitate to compare the advertising at BlogHer to the movie Minority Report, but it wasn’t far off. There were A LOT of sponsors competing for eyeballs both in the event venue and at off-site parties and events. Suffice it to say there were so many sponsors, I can’t even remember who were the main ones. Most of the sponsors were present as part of the Expo Hall, hosted suites and parties. I am not able to speak about any of the parties because I did not attend any of them, but know there were many that were not advertised and required personal invitations.

My first hand experience with the represented companies came through visiting them in the Expo Hall and Suites. Here are a few of my takeaways:

1. Moms have kids older than 3. A lot of the brands targeting the Moms and thus their kids at BlogHer had products that are used by infants and toddlers, including diapers and toys. As a Mom of a 6 year old, it would have been nice to see some educational toys, books, and board games. It’s not so I could blog about them but because it may have been something I would be willing to try and purchase for my family.

2. As a brand, you need to understand the demographics and psychographics of your audience. I know there were a lot of food bloggers at the event because we talked to a lot of them. A matter of fact, I know first hand that at least two very major food bloggers were in attendance, Pioneer Woman and Steamy Kitchen. Food bloggers are not into processed food, but other than the Got Milk? and Eggland’s Best booths, all the other food was processed. Know your audience.

Another example is that I saw dozens of women walking around with digital SLR’s hanging from their necks. I was one of them. There was only one camera company on site of the Expo (I know another held a private event off-site). A bunch of companies totally missed their chance to share their latest and greatest with a willing audience. Disclaimer: I did win a camera from Nikon by throwing my business card into a bowl.

3. Staff your booth or suite with people that can actually relate to your target audience. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the companies did this pretty well, but a few decided to staff their booths with what my boss at my first job (years and years and years ago) called “booth bunnies”. These were beautiful, thin and very young girls that were definitely not Moms.

Case in point was at the Spanx booth. They were very generously giving out free Spanx to any woman that wanted them. My issue was that the young lady that handed a pair to me was about a size 0, okay maybe she was a size 2. I was pretty sure she had never wore Spanx. It just resonated as very hollow with me and left me feeling a little frustrated with the company even though they have a great product. She even commented about how well they listen to women and respond to their concerns.

So there you have it, three observations that stuck with me from my first BlogHer experience. For the right companies, it is definitely worth the time and money to find the best bloggers to work with, but I hope you keep in mind my 3 points if you go that route. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big believer and proponent of blogger outreach and relations, but just like every other marketing strategy you have to make sure it fits with your goals, audience and message. What do you think of my observations?

I understand the research and for a lot of brands and companies, sites like Foursquare, do not figure into their marketing strategy. What I  take issue with is that these recommendations only take into account big brands and not small businesses that have seen a fair amount of success from rewarding check-ins and Mayors. Often these studies only focus on the big marketers, and I want to shine a light on this. As you know, social media has helped to level the playing field for small businesses in terms of access to their target audience that was once dominated by big budgets of the Fortune 500.

My main point is that as you read these studies, please take them with a grain of salt. You know that not every social media tool makes sense given your target audience and goals, and location-based services are no different. Take the time to do some research and see if people are checking in to your business using the different location based services. If they are, maybe it is time to add this to your marketing mix. Look for the demographics for each site. Maybe that 4% (12 million users based on 300 million US citizens) is your target market?

My focus on this blog is helping small business make sense of all the digital strategies that are available to market your business. Therefore, you will see more from me on these studies and what they really mean to you. What do you think? Am I off base?

I put a lot of my own advice to work this month and can confirm that it does work. My personal focus for the month was on the content organization and creation aspects that I discussed. By using the tips and tools that I covered in week 3, it was much easier to publish one post each weekday of July. I was even able to enjoy vacation the past 2 weeks while still posting content. I also learned that vlogging is more fun that I thought it would be, so you may be seeing more of those in the future.

Next I want to put a lot of the things I covered in week 2 into practice. I have a lot of things I want to change this blog in regards to the design and some functionality. If all goes well, you should see some of those changes throughout August. I will also be building “commenting on other blogs” into my routine as there are so many great blog communities to get involved in and learn from, with the added benefit of some possible traffic.

I am focused on posting on a more regular basis from now on, and am open to suggestions of what else I can help you learn more about. To finish up, I ask you two things:

1. What, if anything, did you learn from reading Better Biz Blogging?
2. What other information can I provide you to make your job easier?

Most people think that comments are a sign of how well your blog is doing. I say this totally depends on your audience. I would say that a large percentage of blog readers (I would venture 90% in my case, and sometimes 100%) don’t leave comments on blog posts. There are many more consumers of content out there than creators and contributors. I truly believe you don’t realize the value of a comment until you begin to blog. Then you quickly learn how the feedback and interaction can help foster ideas and conversation.

Well, if no one is commenting on my blog, how do I know people are reading it? Easy, I installed Google Analytics on my blog when it was built. Just generate a new code and insert it in the footer template of your blog theme. Some themes even give you a place within their configuration panel to make it even easier. I can see the traffic spikes on my blog the days that I have posts, so I know people are at least going to the page. I like to review the referring sites area of my analytics to see which spokes are driving the most traffic.

In addition to analytics, I have people that come up to me and talk to me about a post. They aren’t comfortable posting a comment, but they have ideas or thoughts on something I said. It’s pretty cool when this happens and makes a great conversation starter if you know you are going to meet someone new. Take a look at their blog and bring it up in discussion.

You set up your subscriptions with a tool that can track your subscribers, right? We talked about this earlier this month. This allows you to track how many people have subscribed to your blog and the reach gives you an idea of reach which is the number of people that read your blog via their reader or clicked through to read it.

These tools give you some idea of what posts are most popular and your overall readership. What have I missed?

When you leave a comment on someone’s blog, you also leave a link to your blog as part of your comment. This allows other people to check out your blog if they feel you have left an insightful comment and want to learn more about you. Also as an author of a blog, I like to check out the blogs of my readers and add them to my reading list.

My word of caution here is to not treat other people’s blogs as a billboard to promote yourself or your blog. Think of it as online networking. You are engaging in conversation with the author and other people that comment on that blog. Through regular conversation, you enhance relationships and thus readers, and those that may promote your through their spokes.

So you are reading this and saying “Great Beth, where am I suppose to find these blogs?”. You may find them by seeing what blogs people are talking about on Twitter. You can also use search tools such as Technorati and Google’s Blog Search. Look for blogs that have the same kind of audience you want to attract to your site, in addition to those that you learn from and interact with peers.

Just like everything else, this needs to be built into your routine and that is where I fall short miserably. Reading through my RSS Reader, and therefore commenting, always gets pushed aside when I am busy, but I am vowing to change that right here and now. I know you will hold me to it too. Who’s with me? You can start by leaving a comment here

I suggest to clients to add your blog address to anything that currently has your website address. This includes, business cards, email signatures, marketing collateral, and your email newsletter. If you are adding it to printed materials, you may want to wait until you do run out of the item and do your next print job so you don’t incur a lot of extra expense. Of course don’t forget to promote your blog on the home page of your website and vice versa.

In addition to putting a link to your blog on your email newsletter, you may want to consider integrating the content into your newsletter. You may want to consider adding links to the most popular posts of the month to your newsletter. If people haven’t subscribed to your blog, they are still getting the content and may even consider adding it to their reading list.

Tomorrow I’m going to talk about commenting on other people’s blogs as a way to gain traffic. Now it is your turn. Give me some other ideas where you can promote your blog.

Twitter is a great way to let people know about your newest blog post in addition to your other activity there. I will caution that in order to build a true community on Twitter, you need to do more than tweet blog posts. Get in there and converse with people and share information from others. You can automate the process of sending your latest blog post to Twitter using a tool like TwitterFeed, which will also send to Facebook. Another caution is that this turns some people off since it is viewed as an auto post, but it does make it easier if you are the type that forgets to Tweet your posts.

Facebook is another spoke that is popular for both community building and promoting your blog posts. Facebook makes this easy by giving you the ability to import your blog’s feed into your Page’s Notes. When it imports into your notes it also shows up on your page’s wall. It’s quick and easy and that is why it’s the chosen method for me.

In addition to promoting your blog through your spokes, you can give your readers the ability to easily promote you through their spokes. Make it easy for your readers to share your content. The first way is when you Tweet. Be sure to leave enough room so it can be Retweeted easily and without edits. There are also several plug-in options to add sharing to your blog. The one that I use is called Socialble and is easy to install and configure. Facebook also provides you many ways that your audience can easily share your content on Facebook.  These tools are great, but be careful not to add too many that it causes your site to load too slowly. That will turn people away for sure.

What is your favorite way to share your blog content?