Engage in conversation, especially when it’s tangential to your business
Once you begin creating your editorial network, you now have something to talk about and something to point people to as part of the discussion. Here are just some basic rules of thumb when engaging in online conversation.
Don’t hide – Use your real name, your real email address, and yes, even your real phone number. Let them know that they’re talking to a real human being and that there’s a person they can contact in the future.
Take ownership – On blog posts, don’t advise the public that they can call the generic help line or email address if there’s a problem. Tell them they can come to you. Put a face on the problem, yours. It’s easier to create an attachment with a company (and harder to hate them) when there’s an individual with a name and a face that’s willing to respond to your concerns.
Don’t get wrapped up on “who” responds - I’ve seen responses get delayed because a company is trying to decide whether a VP or an engineer should respond to a question. The public doesn’t care about “who,” they only care about a timely useful answer from a person who cares to respond.
Track conversation about you – Use tools like Google Alerts and Technorati to alert you when someone is writing about your company. I’m always very impressed with companies that comment on my blog or email me directly when I write about them both positively and negatively. When negative, they reach out and say they’re willing to help. In some cases, the error has been mine, I’ve corrected it, and made the appropriate change on my blog post.
Track big media for tangential stories – Your audience will discover you when you leave the nest of your environment and engage in discussions happening in big media, or wherever there is a major discussion. If you’re in the tech field, you should be following the site Techmeme. This site automatically tracks the hottest discussions in the tech industry and points you to the blogs that are engaged in the discussion. For everyone else, you should simply keep an eye out on the big media, such as CNN, NYTimes, and the WSJ. Every now and then a story will hit Techmeme or the big media that’s tangential to your business. This is where and when you need to jump into the discussion.
First, write a post on your blog forming an opinion about the article. Second, see what industry insiders are saying about this article. Responses can be found using a search tool like Technorati or by following the top influencers in your category.
For all those people in the blogosphere that do comment on the big story (i.e. The New York Times article), feel free to post a relevant comment on the blog with a link back to your post. It's a good idea to mention something specific in that post and don't just copy and paste the same comment everywhere. If someone wanted to, search tools would reveal spamming the same comment everywhere.
In addition, you can link to their post within your post using a permalink (also known as a trackback or pingback). That's essentially just a link to the specific blog post. The advantage of linking to a specific post is that the blog owner will be alerted that you've posted about them and as a result they will inevitably come to your site to see how you've mentioned them. This permalink "alert" is a mechanism automatically built into blogs and the blogosphere.
If you want people to discover you, get away from your site and reach out to the community. You can utilize a whole host of new and social media tools to help you get there.
