I’m here to tell you that traditional logic is wrong.

Yesterday, my friend Michael Dorausch tweeted something that caught my eye.

He’s right. As business owners, we’re taught to say YES to clients. Clients mean money, they mean stability, and they mean we’ll have something to do during the day when Twitter can’t hold our interest. However, business owners must also learn to say NO to potential clients. They must use the initial “just talking” period to interview prospective clients the same way clients are interviewing them. Do you know what your perfect client looks like? Do you know the warning signs to help you avoid a bad one?

Here are some positive indicators to let you know you’ve found The One.

The client understands the process

The right client doesn’t expect results overnight. They understand that good work takes time and they’re willing to make the effort and to work with you. You want to start setting client expectations and managing client trust before anyone ever mutters the word “contract”. A client that respects the process will require less hand-holding, email updates, and reassuring than a client who questions the timetables you’ve set. If a potential client is already showing signs of insecurity during the initial phases consider if this is a relationship that will work for the long term.

The client wants to be involved

The best client is an educated client. Someone who wants to know what you’re doing not because they question you, but because they care. Someone who is willingly to write those content pages you’re asking for because they understand that all we do is coach, they have to run the ball. Look for clients who are invested enough in their projects that they don’t just want to hand over the whole thing and forget about it. Instead, they want to work with you to design up something that will be especially awesome.

The client uses real words to describe their company

Want to play a fun game? Ask prospective clients if they can explain what it is they do. Two things will happen.

1. They’ll be able to explain to you, in real words, what their company does and whom they hope to reach.
2. The conversation will devolve into a Rain Man-inspired edition of buzzword bingo that will leave you more confused than when you started.

If the latter happens, stop talks. The best clients are the ones that really ‘get’ their business and their customers. If someone has a hard time putting into real words what they’re trying to accomplish and what they need, then it’s going to be incredibly difficult to create and initiate a plan of action. They’re also going to have a hard time getting you the content you’ll need to help them earn your rankings. Look for clients that are self-aware and who understand their place in the market.

The client doesn’t already know exactly what they want

This sounds counter-intuitive. You would think a client that knows what she wants would be a good thing. However, it’s more complicated than that. A client who has an idea of what they want is great. A client that knows exactly what they want, however, tends to be problematic. Why? Well, because they’re usually trying to mimic something they just saw. They heard about the Old Spice social media campaign and now they want to do that, too. They heard about what their competitor was doing on Twitter and now they want that identical strategy. The problem is that every business and every audience is different. The perfect client understands this, has an idea of what he’d like to see, and is open to working with you on how you can accomplish this together. The perfect client does not want a neon pink Web site just because their favorite color is pink.

The client is someone you can help

My favorite clients aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets or the flashiest Web sites. They’re the ones that we’ve been able to help do really special things. As service providers, we have a responsibility not to take on clients that we can’t provide a clear benefit. And sometimes that means turning down people we’d love to worth with just because we don’t think the investment, for them, will be worth it. It’s easy to collect money from someone who wants to give you money, however, you have to be the adult in the room. If someone wants to pay you to design their dream site in a way that you know will ensure it never ranks or converts, are you going to do it?

The client lives a similar business culture

Company culture is really important. At Outspoken Media, we hire based on culture and we pick clients based on culture. We want to make sure that we’re going to enjoy working with the clients we take on and we also want to know they’ll enjoy working with us. That’s how referrals are generated. When you’re in the talking stages of things, get a feeling for how the prospective client does business and how they’ll expect you to do business. If there’s a gaping difference of opinion, then it might not be worth taking that client on. You spend a lot of your day working. You want to enjoy what you’re doing. We said no to a company that (at the time) would have been our biggest client. We walked away and never looked back. Why? Because the culture didn’t fit and that’s something we won’t compromise on.

Michael’s right in that businesses aren’t taught how to say no to clients. Especially in hard times, we’re told to take whatever we can get and do whatever we can to hold onto them. However, that’s pretty bad advice. Filling yourself up with clients you don’t love just means you’ll be too busy to take on the right ones when they present themselves. As my dad told me, you always have a right to say no. ;)

mmm, viral

Writing for AdAge, Jim Louderback says we should screw viral videos. As marketers and content producers, we’ve developed an unhealthy fascination with viral and it’s making us fat as we focus on artificial flavor instead of repeatability. And, perhaps surprisingly since I did fawn over the Old Spice campaign, I agree with him. We’re all getting way too fat on viral.

My distaste appears to be rooted in reasons different from Jim’s. His concern comes from the videos themselves, calling them unpredictable, easy to manipulate and ineffective from an advertising standpoint. My concern is that it’s teaching businesses to become shiny instead of helpful. It’s teaching them to become brands, instead of small businesses. We chase elusive unicorns instead of committing to providing valuable resources that we can build upon, repeatedly, over time. And it’s when you start down that slope that you begin to lose focus. It’s when you lose customers.

I agree with Jim: We need to stop chasing viral, and start looking closely at [content] that delivers repeatable, measurable and sustainable views. That’s where your livelihood is. And though Jim may be talking specifically about video content, the rule applies to all of your content marketing.

I read an article in The New Yorker this morning that I think is quite applicable to this conversation. The article talks about the crisis in customer service and says, in part:

The real problem may be that companies have a roving eye: they’re always more interested in the customers they don’t have. So they pour money into sales and marketing to lure new customers while giving their existing ones short shrift, in an effort to minimize costs and maximize revenue… These days, annoyed customers are quick to take their business elsewhere. But, because most companies are set up to focus on the first sale rather than on all the ones that might follow, they end up devoting all their energies to courting us, promising wonderful products and excellent service. Then, once they’ve got us, their attention wanders—and Dave Carroll’s guitar gets tossed across the tarmac.

That’s how businesses are using viral — to go after the costly fish they dream of while ignoring the core. When you do that, you risk your real audience for people who will probably never like you. Because they’re not your audience and only came to you for the sex (appeal).  Just because you sit at the cool kids table once doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly have something in common tomorrow.

The folks you bring in through viral encounters are NOT your bread and butter. They’re NOT the people who will buy from you on a consistent basis. They’re not the people who will stick with you after your viral 15 are over. They’re the outliers. They’re the outliers outliers.

This is something we try to nail home with clients when we talk about content marketing. It’s good to aim big, it’s good to go after that one link or that one market that could take you to a new level. But you need to keep producing content that is going to benefit your core customers and the people who could potentially become your core customers. That means creating consistent content that fits together to create small, repeatable successes. That’s how you win.

What does that content look like? It’s the remarkable stuff that doesn’t feel so remarkable.

It’s the DIY video series you run every second Tuesday that shows your customers how to complete a project they’ve always wanted. It’s the eBook you write in a weekend that is filled with ideas for how to market a florist Web site. It’s the blog you write 3x a week that contains informative tutorial and unique insight to help readers see niche issues in a different light. It’s all the little things that are sexy when combined, even if they’re not necessarily sexy on their own. That’s the stuff your customers are salivating over and how you can make your brand useful to them.

One of the interesting things about the Web is that we see things out of order. As a new customer, I don’t know what you did last year or even last week because I’m just finding you today. That means you need to keep producing the stuff I’m after and keep building your own momentum. You can’t make people fall in love with you and then stop wooing them. Because that’s when divorce hits

When you have the option to be viral or useful, be useful. Being useful and serving a real need will often trump viral in the long term. And though Jim meant it in terms of video, I like the idea of thinking of all content as being “episodic” because it underlines that everything you create should flow and work together to create a larger narrative about your brand.  That’s how you attract and satisfy customers. Viral doesn’t do that. Screw viral. Focus on the episodic stuff that tells the real story.

New readers may not know that when I’m not hanging out at Outspoken Media, I’m acting as the Social Media Editor for SmallBizTrends. That’s where I go to chat directly with small business owners and get a taste of what’s on their mind. Often I’m finding that many small business owners feel like they’re behind in the Web race. They were late to the game and now they’re struggling to catch up. Where should they start? What’s most important and what can they wait on?

Here’s my 6-point ‘hurry up & To Do’ list for small business owners to help SMBs come from behind and WIN on the Web.

Create your own existence

Don’t worry; we’re not going to start a psychology debate. [We did that last week.] However, this is the ground level where every business must start on the Web: Can people find you? Do you have a Web site? Is it easy to get a hold of your brand on social media? If the answer is no, you have some work to do. That may mean completing any of the following:

• Claim your domain name: If you’re one of those small businesses using Facebook as your Web site, stop it. Your small business is important and needs a Web site. Luckily, KnowEm now lets you check domain availability to see what’s available for your business. Here are some useful tips for picking a kickass domain name], however, don’t do it just yet!
• Claim your social media presence: Before you buy a domain name, check your brand’s availability in social media (you can use KnowEm for that, as well. I’m not even dropping an affiliate link.) to allow you to sync your domain name and social media moniker, if possible. Consistent branding is important in creating trust and using the same name across all channels will help reassure customers that you’re the same person. Once claimed, start creating your social media plan to outline metrics and a strategy for engagement.
• Submit your site to the appropriate places: Once your site exists, you need to submit it to all of the local directories to help users to find it. If you’re not sure where to list it, our post on launching your SMB Web site contains all the major ones that we recommend focusing on. Though it didn’t exist when that post was written, you should also be sure to create a Google Places listing as this listing will only become more important as Google gets more territorial. If you’re not sure which listings you’ve claimed and which you still need to, GetListed.org can help you.

Create sharable content

When should you start? Right now.

If you’re starting from scratch, put a placeholder page up while you work on the rest of your site content to let people know that you’re here, you’re moving in, and that this will soon be a trusted place for information about your brand. If you’ve already got the initial site content down (home page, About page, contact us page, services pages), then it’s time to work on creating shareable content assets. What types of content should you focus on?

• Evergreen resources & How Tos
• Informative blog/newsletter articles
• Industry-specific guides
• Instructional videos
• eBooks
• Off-page digital assets like videos that users can embed, podcasts, images, etc. [The folks at Top Rank have a great post on digital asset optimization that I highly recommend.]

At a recent Social Media Breakfast event speaker Stephen Masiclat remarked that the content we share represents our clothes on the Web. You don’t want to leave people naked.

Pay attention to SEO

As you’re writing your content, you want to make sure you’re pay attention to basic SEO principles. SEO can be somewhat terrifying to small business owners. In fact, it’s terrifying to even large businesses, but it doesn’t have to be. Even if you don’t have the resources to hire a team of SEO consultants or pay for a full SEO audit, you can still benefit from basic on-page SEO practices. That means being careful about taking advantage of (and using keywords within) your Title tag, Meta description, Meta keywords, headers, body content and internal anchor text. It means making sure your site is easily spiderable, that you’re not intentionally placing roadblocks in a search spider’s way, and that your racking up local citations. These are all very low resource commitments that, together, will help pack a big SEO punch.

Start engaging

You didn’t create those social media accounts just so that they’d collect dust. Even if your site isn’t totally public-ready, start putting your nose out there in social media. Or, at least your ear. Start following your customers, your competitors (perhaps follow these guys via a private Twitter list) and the people in your niche to hear what they’re talking about. Spend some time learning the social hierarchy and deciphering who sits where in the lunch room. Once you have an idea, open your mouth and start talking. As Scott Stratten often says, if you believe that business is built on relationships, then making building them your business. Answer people’s questions, be helpful, and share who YOU are (not what your business is). Don’t overload yourself, just start out on one or two sites to get your feet wet and help you get comfortable with social conversations. Build out a social listening station to help you always keep an ear in the conversation.

Look toward building social links

Links are important. You know this. And as a small business, paying specific attention to social links can help you earn special credibility in the eyes of both users and the search engines. That means creating content that is designed to be shared, bookmarked and passed along through social channels. It means being aware of the bloggers in your niche and focusing on social PR to keep you on their radar (and mentioned on their blog). It means using sites like Quarkbase to figure out your social popularity and see how often you’re getting blog references, tweeted, bookmarked, etc. You also want to check your competitors’ social popularity to see how you match up. By identifying the outlets that are friendly to your site, you can help target your content more toward their liking. You’ll also find what types of pieces do well and where your holes are.

Get analytics in place

This isn’t listed last because it’s least important, nor because this is where it should sit in your To Do list. It’s listed here because, by now, you probably see there’s going to be quite a bit for you to measure and keep track of. And you’re going to need a way to do that. Setting up Google Analytics will help you tie actions to behavior and give you the insight you need to create a stronger site and, ultimately, a stronger business.

If I was a small business owner fighting to “catch up”, these are the areas I’d first focus on. How about you? What would your own Hurry Up & To Do list look like?

Ready to go?

• Addressing the Lack of Women Leading Emerging Tech:  Female tech execs band together to address the dearth of women in top positions at emerging tech firms. And when they do, controversy ensues. Girls are drama.
• Why the devil prefers to invade the bodies of young girls:  When it’s a girl who becomes possessed, we become protective of her and concerned about her well-being.  When it’s a guy, we just assume he’s being a sex-crazed guy. I mean, I guess that makes sense.
• Mom snuggles preemie back to life:  Told her lifeless baby was gone, a mother is unwilling to let go and snuggles her child for two hours.  The baby then ‘comes back to life’. Lesson: Snuggles save lives. Put that on a T-shirt.
• Introversion and shyness are not the same thing: Introverts spend energy in order to be social; they recharge by being alone. This is why Lisa sometimes disappears after conferences or busy weekends. Leave me alone. I’m charging.
• Til Whatever Do Us Part: A really good read about the increased number of people bailing out on marries for “soft reasons”.  If it’s not “to death do us part” than it’s really just legally sanctioned dating and annoying people with couple Facebook photos.
• If historical events had Facebook statuses: I should be so grown up and mature that this isn’t funny but, well, we all know that I’m not.
• Tiger cub found among stuffed toys in Bangkok luggage:  How not to smuggle a tiger: Hide it with the rest of your stuffed animals. Got it. I mean, not that I have stuffed animals.  Don’t judge me.
• Sleep Deprivation: What Commanders Should Know: Rhea suggested I include this link on sleep deprivation since neither of us have slept in weeks, what with the doing work, meetings, finding office space, employee hunting and lots of other stuff.  Basically…we’re all really tired and snappy.
• China’s 9-day traffic jam:  People in China have been stuck in traffic for nine days. NINE DAYS! I’ve heard people complain about long commutes, but geez.
• McDonald’s Hamburgers: Almost Entirely Indestructible: New York photographer Sally Davies is on a mission to see how long it will take for a McDonald’s hamburger to decompose or, at least, do SOMETHING. So far it’s been 137 days and the burger looks exactly the same. Yum!

And that’s it from me. What goodness did you stumble across this week?

A recent post on the Sphinn blog informed community members that site moderators would now be paying closer attention to enforcing longstanding guidelines. They’ll be keeping a close eye on voting patterns and taking steps to remove unexceptional content from the Sphinn home page. I think they feel a bit like their own conversation has been lost as the community is diluted with content of little value, pushed to the front page large writing teams or artificial voting circles. I’d encourage you to read the lengthy Sphinn conversation happening here because it’s quite good.

They’re both cases where someone or something was needed to step in and manage the actions of a community. Someone had to affirm their presence to help things remain productive and useful to members. However, one of us was a lot more successful at asserting that. And it sure wasn’t me.

Community management is something I tend to struggle with. When I work with clients, it’s easy. It’s easy to instruct them on how to put together guidelines, how to enforce them, and how to make judgment calls when something needs to be done. It’s black and white with client communities. However, I’m a bit slower to act when it’s my own backyard, more likely to give someone the benefit of the doubt and less likely to delete or edit a comment that I know doesn’t belong. It’s something I’m working on.

It’s not unusual for us to have passionate flare ups on the blog. And when we do, I’m left to ask myself: When do I step in? When, as the community manager, do you have to take back your community and reassert order?

You step in when the perception of your community is actually harming it.

In a completely unrelated conversation, Alysson Fergison tweeted at me that in the absence of substantiated evidence, perception is reality. And she’s right. When the perception of your community threatens it, that’s when you have to act.

• When the perception is that you’ll allow spam comments through, act.
• When the perception is that a few small entities control your community and that non-backed content will be ignored, act.
• When the perception is that you’ll allow personal attacks and flaming, act.
• When the perception is that you’re not listening, act.

My friend Gwen wrote a post on going viral earlier this week. Toward the end of that post she touches on the responsibility a person has once something is sent viral.

She writes:

We have to pay attention to our words, our status updates, because words (regardless of the length of the statement, and whether delivered in person or digitally) matter. We must be vigilant because we have a responsibility – not just to those we’re sure will hear what we say directly. We’re responsible to anyone who may experience the ripple.

I love that. You are responsible for the ripple you create. It is your job to make sure you’re casting your community in the correct light and that you’re not allowing it to harm others. If it is harming them, you have to act.

I’ve watched plenty of Web communities rot and die. We all have. Site X launches, serves as a really valuable hub of information for a while, and then devolves when the cool kids come in to spam it with their own nonsense. We’ve seen it happen on Sphinn and we’ve seen it happen on lots of other online communities. It’s rare that the community managers are able to step in, remove the issue, and put things back on a healthy course. But with proper moderation and butt kicking, it can. I’ll use SEOmoz as an example of a community I think has done a fantastic job of this. Not long ago Patrick Sexton congratulated SEOmoz on the refreshed feeling inside the community saying that he felt comfortable there again (I echoed a similar sentiment). But that’s rare. And it doesn’t happen by itself. SEOmoz made it happen.

Yesterday Michael Gray argued that you can’t maintain a community Web site without heavy moderation and trusted editors guiding the content. I couldn’t agree more. It’s like the old saying goes: spare the rod, spoil the child community.

I’m going to be more aware of the ripples that Outspoken is casting out and doing my best to guide the content and the discussions in a productive direction. Because I think the people here deserve that.  I also invite you to be more active calling out behavior you think doesn’t belong.  Together that’s how we’ll keep this space great.  I give Sphinn major kudos for being so transparent with their own issue and vowing to make it better.

How will you do the same with your community?

If you’re responsible for a team skeptical of social media, how do you calm their fears? How do you comfortably bring employees into the social media mix so that they see it as an opportunity instead of something that may get them fired?

Here’s a roadmap.

Remove the Barriers

If you want to create a habit of socialness and collaboration, you need to remove the barriers to that behavior. And there may be many of them. For example, a barrier to a staff member using Twitter may be their having to learn to use tools like Tweetdeck to monitor it. By removing that obstacle and showing them how interact with Twitter via saved RSS feeds, something they’re more confident with, you help them step over that barrier. Or maybe the barrier is that there’s not enough time in their day to learn social media and fulfill their other job responsibilities. By re-assigning tasks or allowing them to tweet after hours on business accounts, you can remove that barrier. Every team will find that they have different barriers inhibiting their success. The trick is to understand the behaviors that are preventing them from being successful and then re-train or accommodate them.

Focus on One Network

To get employees comfortable in taking the leap and creating a culture of being social, allow them to focus on just one network to start. Pick whatever network you think will allow you to best connect with your audience and start there. Do not have a social media novice immediately create a presence on every channel available. That’s how you’re going to intimidate and scare the bejesus out of them. By focusing on one tool you allow them to really master it and to push it to the limits. You give them an opportunity to become an expert at that one channel. The result of this is two-fold:

• When you really learn a tool, you can learn to hack it to find your own success instead of copying everyone else.
• You limit your newbie mistakes to one channel instead of repeating them all over the social Web, ensuring that ALL of your customers spot them.

Give your employees time to find their social media legs before you throw them to the wild. It’s much better that they establish themselves on a network then to create a bunch of presences you’ll have to rework once they know what they’re doing.

Give Them Guidelines For Interaction

While at CapitolCamp I spoke to a business owner who prided himself in letting employees figure out social media on their own. He didn’t create a rulebook because he didn’t want them to feel “restricted”. It’s possible I winced when he told me this. Realize that your employees are looking to you for how they should be engaging. They want clear and written guidelines so that they can refer to them in times of trouble and so that they have a blueprint for how interactions are supposed to go. When you plot out on a new adventure, you bring a map, a compass or some other tool to help you find your way. The same applies to social media. By giving them a social media rulebook to follow, you help them make the right decisions for your brand. Your rulebook serves as their life preserver in the waters of social media. Have that social media talk and then follow it up with a written plan of action.

Create an In-House Resource

One great way to help your employees feel comfortable using social channels is to create an internal resource or Wiki that they can refer to when they have a concern or that they can use to share experiences with other employees. Let this Wiki serve as the hub for the company’s social media policy and be turned into an outlet where employees can ask questions, find education links to outside resources or simply study up on internal guidelines. Giving your employees a place to go to talk about their frustrations and pick up new tricks helps them to feel like the master of their own destiny. In the spirit of removing barriers, make this resource accessible from their home computer so that they can study it in an environment where they feel more comfortable and where they’re not being rushed to get their other work done. People want to learn new skill sets and master new marketing techniques. You just have to give them the resources to do so.

Highlight Real-Life Examples

How do you cure a skeptic? You show them real-like examples of campaigns that worked, cultures you admire, or successes that will teach and inspire them. We all work better when we have model for what we’re doing. Let them see the rewards of social media to not only give them an example of how these tools can be used, but as proof that they work and can bring rewards. Pick cases where you can show ROI and that there’s a reason to all this madness. Concrete evidence gets people on board much faster than rainbows, puppies and cupcakes ever will.

Those are some ways we’ve helped nervous teams get on board with social media. What would you need to calm your fears? Or have you cured others?

In the aftermath of the outrage, I was left to wonder if taxing bloggers was such a bad thing. In fact, I think it could help bring professionalism to a “hobby” that’s long needed a push into maturity. I will totally agree that, as is, what Philadelphia is putting together makes little sense. The idea of taxing a grandmother and her crochet blog is extreme. However, tax or no tax, bloggers need to start thinking of themselves as small business owners. And maybe taxing them is just the way to start that new line of thinking. We may find it would actually help, not hinder them.

My name is Lisa and I support taxing bloggers. Here’s why.

A blog tax may:

Force bloggers to be honest with themselves

The loudest argument I’m hearing against this blog tax is that most people don’t consider their blog a business. It’s a hobby, they say. Sorry, but the moment you put ads or affiliate links onto your blog it stops becoming a hobby. That’s the moment you become a small business owner, just like Joan’s Donuts down the street that’s also making no money. Whether you take that fact seriously or not is up to you. But you started down the road of making money via your blog and you should be honest about why you did it. Are you looking to make some money via AdSense? Are you hoping to build your business by creating authority and a stronger personal brand? Are you hoping to get enough traffic on your blog to sell a product? Why are you blogging? It’s time to be honest about your intentions.

Encourage bloggers to treat their blog like a business

It’s been settled. If you attempt to make money from your blog it is now a business. That means you should start treating it like one and stop using it pen your Christmas letter to Aunt Millie. Once you start thinking of yourself as a small business owner your entire approach to blogging will change.

You’ll be more likely to:

• Create an editorial calendar and stop phoning in your content.
• Stop lurking and start networking with people in your industry to build authority and relationships.
• Create a reader street team to build buzz and get the word about what you’re doing.
• Look into REAL ways of monetization and get away from webmaster welfare.
• Invest in blog consulting services so it stops looking like NASCAR designed it.

In other words, start putting the steps in motion to build your blog and your business. If any of that seems like too much work, again, ask yourself what the point of your blog is? What was the goal? If it was “just a hobby” why do you have ads on it? “Hobby” is often another way of saying “I’m scared to fail”.

Help bloggers take themselves more seriously

My biggest issue with bloggers and blogging is the lack of credibility assigned to the medium. And a big part of why bloggers are looked at as a joke and or imposters is because they treat themselves that way by half-assing content and not committing to what they’re doing. When you don’t take what you do seriously, you give other people license to disrespect you in the same way. I don’t think that a $300 lifetime blogger license is going to make people heed the power of the keyboard, but I do wonder if maybe it’s not a step in the right direction to make people take what they’re doing more seriously or at least question it. If you’re appalled by the idea of having to pay a one-time lifetime fee of $300 then maybe you shouldn’t be blogging. I don’t think a fee would fix blogging but maybe it would shine a light on some people who shouldn’t be there. If your blog isn’t worth $300, total, in your lifetime, then I don’t want it clogging up my Internet.

End the “even playing field” blogger myth

Last summer I wrote about why I hate bloggers. In that post I expressed a lot of frustration over folks who viewed blogs as their way to “get famous” only to declare the medium “overhyped” when their blog about being a 20-year-old college student or their passion for coin collecting didn’t transfer into a 6-figure salary. I think one of the worst things to happen to blogging was the idea that anyone could do it or that it leveled the playing field for publishing. I mean, in some ways it did. But in most, it didn’t. In most cases it just highlighted a large segment of the population that shouldn’t have been publishing in the first place. Because they couldn’t write. Or because they had nothing interesting to say.

I don’t think that applying a tax to blogger will smoke out the hacks, but I’m okay with raising that bar to entry just a tad higher, $300 higher. Go print your tax form.

Will the Philadelphia blog tax change anything in the end? Probably not. But something has to. Is your blog a hobby or is it a business? It’s time to decide. And if you decide it’s the latter, then start taking it seriously. Otherwise, get off the road. Bringing in money isn’t what determines whether or not you’re a business. The intent behind it does.  And if you  have ads on your blog or you’re using affiliate links, then your intent is showing.

Worth Noting: In June Philly council members Bill Green and Maria Quiñones-Sánchez introduced a proposal that would that would reform the current Business Privilege Tax and make it so that businesses wouldn’t have to pay taxes on their first $100,000 profits. That’s a compromise that would likely make even the angriest of bloggers happy.

While in the midst of liveblogging Affiliate Summit East, I noticed a tweet sent out by Ruud Hein promoting a post written by Roko Nastic entitled Four Ways To Become An Authority Blogger . Curious to see if I was “doing it right”, I clicked on Ruud’s link during a slow point in a session [hi speakers!]. I then did what I always do when I want to share an opinion but don’t have time to comment or create a new post – I tweeted.

A couple of people asked why I would tweet something I don’t agree with. Personally, I think it’s important to bring awareness to all sorts of content – whether you agree with it or not. I also was pretty sure this post would get a bunch of RTs since it was coming from an influential circle so I wanted to at least bring the other side of the coin. Of course, being at a conference meant I did a pretty crappy job doing that. Luckily, I have friends who will call me out. :)

Almost immediately after my tweet I received some well-deserved comments from Ruud via a new post and Donna Fontenot that my tweet didn’t do anything to help since the author would never see my comment on Twitter. Totally valid criticism (though he should be tracking Twitter). Now that I’m back I thought I’d touch on the issue a bit more.

• If you want to know how to become an authority blogger, read about what makes you a blogger people love. It’s the same thing. Also, read about what belly dancing taught me about personal branding.
• If you want to know how NOT to become an authority blogger and the bad advice bloggers often give one another, keep reading. You’ll notice I’m reusing all of Roko’s points since they’re pretty common.

Write less

While this gem is being touted a lot more, writing on a less frequent basis does not an authority blogger make. I know it sounds good in theory. That by writing less you’ll have more time to polish, more time to save up ideas, and that when you finally DO have something to say people will be so shocked they’ll stop in their tracks to devour your post. However, that’s not usually the case. While taking time to research your posts will help you to add value, simply writing less for writing less sake doesn’t bring the readers. It loses them.

If you want real numbers to back this up, look no further than Justin Kownacki. Justin recently ended an experiment on his blog where he began blogging weekly instead of daily, allowing himself to focus on creating one truly great piece of content a week.

The results of Justin’s experiment? Everything dropped. Visitors. Views to individual posts. All of it.

While some say that’s a sign you need to blog daily, you need to find what works best for your audience. For me, by cutting out one post during the Monday through Friday workweek it opened up an extra day to focus on longer internal or client projects. Whatever you choose to do remember that consistency is key. If you want people to remember your name and care about your opinion, you need to woo them on a regular basis.

In every post, write more

It makes sense that bloggers who advise infrequent posts also advise bombarding readers with really long ones. Because, I mean, this is the Web. People love to sip a cup of coffee and read a 5,000 word manuscript on what Microsoft did today.

Or not.

To be fair, Roko’s definition of “long” seems to be 600 words. I sneeze 600 words. But, regardless, intentionally trying to write long posts will often encourage bloggers to throw in the whole kitchen sink. It’s when a blogger starts writing EVERYTHING they know about a subject to make the post long and authoritative looking instead of breaking it up into digestible and actionable portions.

Instead, vary your post length. Write longer, in-depth posts and then switch it up with shorter, easier-to-get through posts. Or study what your audience responds best to and stick with that. For myself, my average post tends to sit between 800-1,000 words. It’s not intentional; my brain just seems to be trained to write like that. Viperchill wrote a great post on how long your blog posts should be that I’d encourage everyone to read. Personally, in most cases I’d rather see a longer post split up into a series than sit through the entire thing. Unless you’re Tamar Weinberg or Aaron Wall. Then I will sit there for hours and happily soak up everything you’re putting out.

Don’t comment or speculate, meditate on past events

This is maybe the worst piece of blogging advice ever. Blogging, even if it’s corporate blogging, is about sharing your view of the world. It’s about taking what’s happening in your niche and making it applicable to your small corner of the world. Sure, sometimes that may result in people sharing “unfounded accounts” of history but are you going to let a bunch of morons deter you? I’d hope not. It’s that kind of insight that makes your blog unique, that gives it a voice and that builds interest in your company or product. Removing it would also remove the soul of your blog. It’s why most agency blogs are unreadable and why your CEO sucks at blogging. No one comes to your blog to read about today’s news. They come to hear your take on today’s news and why it matters to them.

Attract high quality guest posters Make it unnecessarily hard for people to find you

Okay, I agree with Roko on that one so I’ll create my own…

Maybe it’s some sort of Catholic guilt, but I hate bothering people. If someone makes it hard for me to contact them, I take it as a sign they’d rather not be contacted. My original hope was to email Roko, apologize for my lame tweet, and dig deeper into this thoughts on bloggers. But…he’s not the easiest person to grab on the Web. I could have used the contact form on his Web site, but I felt a little awkward doing so. His @webmasterformat Twitter handle and business logo also made me feel like perhaps he wasn’t interested in a conversation. [Which could be totally wrong, that's just my perception.] Roko’s blogging on some great outlets so that’s obviously working for him, but it might not work for you if your readers are as neurotic as I am.

I think being an authority blogger means being comfortable putting yourself in that authority position. And part of that means being really accessible on the Web and using consistent branding at every interaction. Don’t make people hunt for an email, wonder if you’re the same person using a different name, or guess if it’s okay to contact you. Authority bloggers are easy to find, get a hold of, and interact with. That’s where their authority comes from – their constant presence and approachability. It helps to build credibility and trust.

But that’s just my take. What makes an authority blogger in your eyes? What takes away authority?

Well, because they probably don’t completely trust you. Because you probably did a crappy job of ensuring they could trust you.

To companies, their website is their baby. Handing over their FTP info to a new agency is like handing the house keys over to the new babysitter. Will junior be ok for a few hours? Will they remember to feed him and bathe him and not let him play in traffic? Did they make the right decision!?

Websites have become the cornerstone of our businesses, the hub that all of our marketing efforts lead back to. If something goes wrong, how will the business fare?

The solution (to most of life’s problems, actually), is in managing expectations.

Be transparent

The key to managing client expectations is to be as open as possible, from day one. Make sure you outline all the whos, whats , whens, wheres and hows that your company intends to use. And then follow through.

Here are some examples of things you can tell your clients to be more transparent:

Employee Profiles
In your proposal or on your webiste, include short bios of your employees or key management personnel. Give an overview of their expertise and experience, so your clients know that you haven’t just picked the closest “social media guru” to handle their account.

Goals
Outline the goals you plan to accomplish, and how you plan to implement them. You’re going to increase their rank, that’s great. Will you be performing keyword research? Will you be suggesting on-site changes? Will you be doing link development? Outline all of your plans.

Measurement
Discuss how you plan to measure your goals and whether this will be done on a regular basis, or at the culmination of the project.

Timeline
Explain your timeline, from when you will be working on various stages, to when you will provide deliverables. If they expressed a need to have certain work completed before a specific deadline, make sure you address that. And if you can’t make a deadline reasonably, tell them why.

If parts of your process will require materials from the client (even payment!), be clear that any delay on their part will hold up the entire project. Severe delays may cause the entire project to be rescheduled.

Abilities
Your company provides a specific set of services. Your team has a specific set of skills. If a client comes to you wanting something outside of that, be honest in your abilities. You can’t be all things to all people.

However, you can suggest other service providers in that area that you trust. Or you could be willing to work with sub-contractors on that specific part of the project. Let your client know what you are and are not willing to do, and they will appreciate that.

Be Available

Establish ground rules for contact that both parties can agree on. Some clients may require a weekly check-in on progress, others only monthly. The nature of client work means you will have to be available to them at some point. Set that up initially so that the client knows what to expect and is never wondering when they will hear from you next.

Of course, there are going to be reasons for more informal contact, so let your clients know you are available to answer questions or concerns during the process, and that if you have any questions you will be sure to be in touch. If you are working on something collaboratively with the client, communication may be more frequent, even up to several times a day.

But if you start spending all your time communicating with the client rather than getting their work done, you’ll want to rein that in. Have a chat and remind them of the timelines and due dates you outlined in your proposal. If the client has a set number of hours per month, remind them of their time allowance and that all communication time is taken from this total.

If you keep specific hours – especially if they are outside of the normal 9-5 day – ensure that your client is aware of those and at what times you are available to them. And if you are working in a different time zone, ensure that they know the conversation, so they don’t try to call at 2am.

Be Punctual

Stay on time with your deliverables. If you promised a report by the 30^th, have it in their hands no later than the 30^th. Staying on time allows clients to feel comfortable that you’re holding up your end of the deal. If you fail to do that, how are they to know that you won’t fail at their SEO efforts?

Of course, there are times where we can’t make deadlines. You over-booked your staff, and there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. Someone on your team had a family emergency and got called out of town 3 days before the deadline. These things do happen, and sometimes they are out of our control. In that case, let your client know with as much advanced warning as possible. Don’t make excuses, but outline the problem. And let them know what you can deliver to them, and on what day. You’ve got all but the last section of the report done? Great, send them that, and tell them when to expect the remainder. Get other staff members to help, stay late, work a Saturday, whatever it takes.

Most of all, it comes down to communication and being thorough about it. Often when you feel a client doesn’t trust you, it’s because you’ve failed to communicate something about your process to them. It’s ok for them to call and check on junior once in a while, and they’ll probably find that he’s in good hands.

Scott’s been in NYC for two weeks. He’s staying in Chelsea market. On Saturday he was wondering what was up with all the tourists there.  He’s been here two weeks and he’s already really bitter about people being in his city even though it’s not his city.   Canadians are silly. And possessive.  I know this through Rae.  Wait…what?

Scott says there’s been a lot of talk about leads and ROI at the conference. What there hasn’t been is a lot of talk about people and relationships. Not in a we-are-the-world kind of way, but just recognizing that we are all human.

Oh, oh, Scott has rules for his presentation.

• Please turn your phone ON. He wants you to tweet about his talk.
• Keep the ringer on, ONLY if he likes the ring tone. If it’s Kesha/Tick Tock he will throw your phone.
• Tweet it up – @unmarketing. He’s going to change his legal name to @unmarketing since that’s how people know him now.  #whitecollarproblems

Marketing is not a task. It’s not a department in your company. It’s not an action item in your list of To Dos. Marketing is every single time you interact, have a touch point, have a talk point with ANY  audience. [He's totally yelling. NYC has clearly made him anger] Every time you talk to someone it is marketing. That means every single person in your company is a marketer.  Your audiene is no longer listening, they’re talking. Your audience has created the conversation now and your opnion is irrelevant.

If you believe that business is built on relationships, then making building them your business.   People do business with people they know, like and trust.  So what are you doing to increase those three things on a daily basis? What are you doing to increase those silos within your company, within your peers, within your industry, etc? The only way to grow an industry is to get outside of it.

He came from the viral marketing world. He was an affiliate before he knew he was an affiliate. The word affiliate is ridiculous.  We don’t need that term. He started off 8 years ago making motivational videos (ouch) that you may have seen online. He’s made 70 of them…and he’s really, really sorry about that. He just said “FML” aloud. He’s one of THOSE people who speaks acronyms.

He wanted to see how may newsletters actually had news so he signed up for 40 random Internet marketing newsletters for 6 months.   None of them had standalone content. This is why he hates people so much. There were no stories.  People are dying inside when they read these things. Stop it. For the love of the world and kittens.  You can’t call it a newsletter if your only news is “give me money”.

Viral marketing has changed. Not WHY we spread something around, but HOW we we spread something around. No one ever spreads mediocrity.  No one ever rushes to read nothing. We spread GREAT content.  He knows nothing about SEO except that the best SEO is to write great damn content (HOLLA!) That’s how it works.  We’re so scared to do something that has content in it, that has value. Stop trying to trick people.  People spread awesome.

Viral is not a verb. He is not Harry Potter and cannot “viral” your video. The audience chooses what to spread. The how they spread it is different from how we started.  People share content within their circle.  Its better for your video to be spread on someone else’s blog than on your own.  Don’t try and hold on to it. Let it go. The shift has been so quick.

Social media success doesn’t exist. Social media does not make something successful. The content does, social media is the vehicle.  If you suck, you just suck harder on social media.   If you hate people, social media isn’t a good place to be.

There are so many choices, where the hell do we start? You can’t justify spending your whole day on twitter, blogging and YouTube (I CAN!). You have to build a platfrom. Choose which platform it’s going to be and then build it. His platform is Twitter because it’s the lowest barrier to entry and relationships.  He didn’t want to have to accept you as a friend before he can talk to you because it’s awkward.

3 Stages of Platforming

1. Traction:  This is the hardest part because nothing happens. It’s when you tweet, get no response, and then double check to make sure your tweet went through.
2. Momentum: Cool phase. You log on first thing in the mornings to see how relevant you are. Seven replies overnight!
3. Expansion:  Once you get to a point where you’ve gotten so much traction you can expand your platform. You have to play for a small crowd before you play for a large one. You’ve got to invest your time in a network first before you try to withdraw something from that network. You can’t pull until you’ve given into it first. He tweeted 10,000 times before he tried to send people to this blog. The more you do, the more you give, the more you get.

Seventy-five percent of his tweets are replies to someone else. He thinks that’s where his success comes from – they were points of conversation. He believed relationships worked so he had to go out to get them. His ROI isn’t just on Twitter, it’s everywhere.

How do you break through the noise?

It’s user-dependent. People follow people. You can still get through the noise. Find the new people who are still jumping on. He follows a gazillion people (he thought he was being polite at first) so he uses a smaller list (about 150-200 people) now instead of looking at the main Twitter page.

His personality works well for Twitter.  He got followers by writing retweetable content. [I get followers by being hilarious...ly ridiculous] He writes messages less than 120 characters so that people can retweet it.  But be careful what you do on social media. Everything you say and do will be used against you in the court of public opinion. He went pole dancing in Vegas and before he was off the stage it was online.  And his mom saw it. So…there you go.

You’re always your brand. You have to be careful with what you say. Status updates are very reactive based. Don’t say or tweet anything you don’t want to see on a billboard with your name, face and logo with your mom and biggest client driving by.

We vent on Twitter before we go to the company.  That’s why you have to listen.  It’s worse to have a Twitter account and not monitor than to not have one at all.

With Twitter, you get to know the person before you know their business.  You become interested in who someone is before you find out what they do.

His ROI on Twitter is Tanner.  Twitter proved that people are awesome.  We forget that people give a damn and that they will stand up.  They brought an airline down using Twitter. That’s his ROI and what he wants to see. That’s how people can work.

Affiliate 2.0: You’re Doing It Wrong

Stop trying to ruin social media. Social media isn’t a new way to send out crappy advertising. Build a relationship with social media then talk business somewhere else.

Publicized customer service changes your audience levels. It’s no longer one-to-one customer service. It’s no longer an angry email. It’s an angry tweet or an angry update on your Facebook page. What do you do? Do you address it? It doesn’t matter if THEY’RE the ones that are wrong because everyone sees it.

Immediacy & Relevancy

Everything is immediate and everybody’s relevant.  People with 50 blog readers or 50 followers are relevant, because it can catch on. Corporations do not control the message.

Facebook relies on perceived relevancy.  Your job if you run a Fan page is to get as many people to react to it as you can.  Be careful of automation.  It’s like going to five networking events and getting a mannequin with your logo to stand in the corner.  You have PRESENCE…as long as no one tries to talk to you. If you send out one scheduled tweet once, fine, but are you really too busy to do it yourself? What are you doing right now?  You do have that time. You’re not that important. Take the 12 seconds to write it. We make ourselves way more important than we should be.

Trolls

Don’t give your emotions to trolls. There are so many great people on Twitter, online and in real life to give your emotions to people like that. It’s human nature to look at the bad.  Why are we so concerned about people we don’t care about? They  hate you so much that all they do is talk about you? Haters love you.  It’s okay to block people and walk away.

What if the troll is a paying customer? Fire the customer. At the end of the day, 90 percent of people are lurking. They’re watching but they don’t react. They see you taking the higher ground. The majority people will always lurk. 3-4 percent of his readers comment.

What tools do you use to manage your account? Tweetdeck.

And we’re done. Thanks SO much for sticking with us through Affiliate Summit. Hope you found the content useful. Until next time, friends. :)