So you have a great blog, one with vast amount of good content and visits. But when you look at your page views per user counts, they are paltry at best. You look wistfully at the PV counts on sites with crappy content but a reason to keep people around, and wonder what you can do differently.

There are only so many times the same avid reader can read all of the articles on your site. But wait, I have comments! Comments are linear, as they can only be made on each individual post. It’s kind of like having a conversation with your friends and rigidly forcing them to stay on topic…not very fun is it?

So What’s the Solution?

You need to build a community around your content, thus giving your audience a reason to hang around. I write more about this on the Vanilla blog on “Building An Online Community Around Your Content” but the crazy thing is your audience is probably dying for you to do just that! The shared interest in what you have to say gives them more in common with each other than the fact they bumped into each other at a party and are now Facebook friends. What’s even more striking is you’ve already solved one of the hardest parts of building an online community – seeding it with great content.

How do You Build a Community?

The best way to build a community that will stand out and give your readers a reason to stay, is by tying it directly to your content in the form of conversations. You have already given them the what to talk about (or at least to start the conversation), now you are giving the where on your site. That’s through a forum. A Forum!? Those clunky old bulletin boards that look like websites circa 1997 and are a beast to manage? No, the new ones that take a fresh approach to the power of forums, are easy to set-up and manage and integrate tightly with your site through theme design, modular architecture, advanced user management and single-sign-on authentication.
When the Online Community Report surveyed top community managers on what community tool they used most it was discussion forums. So take a look at forums as a way to realize the full value of your content and build a community on your site.

Greg is Vice-President of Sales and Marketing at VanillaForums.com. He has a background in strategic planning, alliances, marketing and sales. As part of his role at Vanilla, he is active in researching, analyzing and reporting on community management best practices, both to inform Vanilla’s product development and also to provide advice to customer communities. Having owned and managed his own content and community websites, he is also aware of some of the unique challenges facing content producers. His major hobby of the moment is training for his first full-distance Ironman triathlon.

Company Bio

VanillaForums.com powers content and customer communities, designed with the community manager’s job in mind. Its flexible design system makes it possible for customers to customize community sites to fit their vision (not that of the forum software company), including exactly matching the look and feel of an existing site. The modular core architecture enables the platform to be added to fit exacting needs and the open authentication plugin system allows the community to connect through Single-Sign-On to any website or application, as well as to external networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and OpenID. And since Vanilla Forums is open-source customers can rely on a wide network of developers who actively use and test the software and add plugins to the community, and customers can build additional plugins themselves.

BlogWorld INFLUENCERS: Join the YouCast Influencer Network by tonight at midnight and automatically be entered for a chance to win an iPad!
Help us learn more about your blogging interests here – so we can connect you with the brands that best fit.

Brands include; Turner Networks, Pepsi, Mandalay Films, CBS Films, Pepsi, OMD, WPP, Energizer, Novartis, GE, Ad Council, Ventura Foods

BRANDS can also sign up and enter code #bwe10 to automatically be registered for $1,000 off your next marketing campaign with YouCast.

YouCast is a highly specialized digital marketing company with established expertise in social media marketing including Influencer Marketing, Digital Word of Mouth, Social Media Reputation Management, Social Media Strategy.  With a range of products and innovative marketing solutions for major brands and advertisers, YouCast incorporates key components of SEO, Media Buying and PR into a winning formula/secret sauce that results on managed and tracked distribution of Brand Assets & Communications into the Earned Media space.

The YouCast Vision:
Provide advertisers with the ability to activate and communicate with thousands of proven influencers across multiple channels for multiple brands, while measuring and optimizing the impact on the brand and campaign on a real time basis.  Provide Influencers with a source of powerful content and publisher growth opportunities from both a traffic and a revenue point of view.

Creating Brand Influencer Networks:

• Developed proprietary technologies that allow the company to produce superior and more cost effective campaigns for its clients.
• Part CMS, part Influencer Management, part ad network, the YouCast Influencer DataStream delivers to advertisers the ability to track, re-target and build audience beyond the network hub or owned media properties.
• Developing Brand Influencer Networks that allow for highly targeted campaigns enlisting segmented teams of Influencers who can drive sales and conversions with their significant power of referral.

Expertise:
YouCast has the expertise to reach the right consumer with the right message — to pinpoint niche communities, influencers and social networks where the target market will seek information and make decisions.

Access:
YouCast has access to the target consumers in Social Media through our Influencer Network and proven earned media marketing processes.

Website:
www.youcastcorp.com
@youcast

2) Break the big stories first. Sharing with the new Posterous for the iPhone app is fast. Just touch post, add any combination of text, photos and videos, and you’re ready to share. You can also add tags, share your location, or mark a post as private straight from the app.

3) Most of the fun happens after 5 pm. Capture spontaneous karaoke jam sessions as they happen, take vanity shots of yourself partying with A-listers, and then upload it all on the spot.

4) So you can sleep at night. Capture and post everything on the fly so you can pass out as soon as you get back to your hotel room instead of staying up to blog until the wee hours. Then do it all over again.

5) Post once, share everywhere. With built-in autopost support, just post once and your content is automatically shared to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, plus your pick of over 20 other sites.

Real time collective photo streams will be displayed on Plixi of photos uploaded to Plixi with the hashtag #bwe10!

Photos from the event with #bwe10 will be placed on a collective photo events stream for you and your friends to see at the Plixi booth, #425, or on their PC, Mac or mobile device.

TweetPhoto recently has changed its name to Plixi. All of the stuff that you loved about TweetPhoto basically stays the same, we just added a bunch of cool features like user created places and events and a lot more. We have changed the name to more accurately reflect what our service does and how it is much more than just Twitter. People, Places, Events and Photos… Connecting you to your friends and allowing you to share photos in new and exciting ways socially.

If you used TweetPhoto in the past or you are new to the service you will need to create a Plixi account under 15 seconds by simply authenticating with Twitter or Facebook and choosing a Plixi password here http://plixi.com/signup

Lots of people want to share photos from their mobile phone so that their friends can see what they are doing right then. Our upcoming iPhone app will make that a snap. We are aiming for a better way to instantly share photos and we offer functionality that you won’t find in Facebook or most other photo sharing sites. Here are just a few of the new features that we have added to the new Plixi.

• Events/Places. These are user created and have a location. (e.g., Tiffany’s Birthday Party, Blog World Break Out Session, Mash Bash Las Vegas). These events/places allow for everyone’s photos from the party to show in one place online. Think of it as a group collection of shared memories of an event. One event where lots of different people add photos, perfect for parties, meetups, concerts, college life, sporting events among others.
• Photo Tagging. Tag your friends in photos quickly
• Grid or Stream View across the site.
• Webcam snapshots
• Enhanced social interactions with voting, favoriting, commenting on photos.
• Real Time notifications and alerts via website & email when something important happens.
• See much more of what your friends are doing. Easily view a persons photos, events they added photos to, favorites and photos they voted on.

There is a lot more to discover… so create your account and get a closer look at what is going on from people you care about.

Bring your QR code game face to BlogWorld because we have cooked up some fun for you.

The social media team’s at Ford, Kodak and PepsiCo have banded together to bring an interesting activity to BlogWorld called ‘The QR Code Trip.’ Attendees will be able to enter a contest by activating QR codes to find the answers to questions from the three brands. Entrants will also be asked to Follow/Like the companyís sites on Twitter and Facebook. There will be two daily prizes and one grand prize chosen from the pool of entries.

We thought that this would be a fun way for BWE’ers to use new media to engage with our brands. Entry forms will be available in each of our booths; Ford #127, Kodak #301, and PepsiCo #101.

I know the Kodak team is looking forward to coming back to BlogWorld. It is always nice to meet people IRL that we interact with throughout the year. Make sure you stop in to say; ‘Hi’ to @KodakCB (Jenny Cisney), @KodakEvents (Tina Clark), and me (@TomHoehn). See you in Vegas!

We all know a nurse and have either personally been cared for or have a loved one who has been cared for by a nurse.  Nurses are truly society’s caregivers and as such, they’re critical to our health and well-being.  For the past eight years, the Johnson & Johnson Campaign for Nursing’s Future has been dedicated to showcasing the value and positive image of nurses through programs that thank and recognize nurses.  Through funding scholarships for nurses to further their education and providing awards that recognize their tireless efforts to care for patients, the Campaign shows thanks for the nursing community.

The Campaign was recently awarded the prestigious President’s Award for Transforming the Image of Nursing by the National League for Nursing (NLN).  As part of maintaining that positive image, we recognize that nurses play an important role in our nation’s evolving healthcare system.  Later this year, we’ll be launching an outreach initiative targeted to recruit and retain advanced practice nurses.

Each year, we continue to demonstrate our commitment to our nation’s caregivers… and we’d like to extend that goodwill to all of you!  We all need to recharge our batteries and refresh our minds from time to time (especially nurses), so we’re providing those attending the Social Health Track on October 14 a chance to “refresh & recharge.”  During the Social Health Track, you can take time out of your busy day to recharge your batteries – both literally and figuratively – through electronic charging stations, mini-massages and refreshments.

Because we can all benefit from quick ways to “refresh & recharge” during the day, Social Health Track attendees will also receive a card with ergonomic tips.  Keep the card with you throughout the Expo and even once you’re back home blogging away at your computer.

We hope to see you there!

Visit our website: www.campaignfornursing.com
Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/jnjnursingnotes

How/when did you come up with the idea for MediaPass?
The short answer is that it wasn’t just my idea. MediaPass wouldn’t exist if not for the vision of one of our lead investors and Chairman, Jeffrey Tinsley. He and I have many years of experience in the online subscription world with MyLife. We both knew that asking users to pay for some content always outyields a purely advertising-based revenue model. After bringing MyLife and Jeff’s previous business, Great Domains, to over $70M in annual subscription revenue, a couple publishers came to us for counsel on getting their paid subscription strategy and implementation right. Jeff in particular advised a website called Docstoc on strategy and really encouraged them to get paid elements up in the right way. Docstoc increased their revenue seven-fold almost immediately.

We realized it might be possible to automate our subscription experience, so to speak. The goal was to build something for blogs and other online publishers that eliminates the financial burden and time commitment of incorporating and operating paid subscriptions. The real challenge was trying to accomplish our primary goal: making it as easy to use as Google Adsense. We wanted to turn something extremely complex into something easy to use. It took a year of development but we made it work and accomplished all of the goals we originally had for the product.

Can you briefly describe how a blogger makes money incorporating MediaPass onto their site?
Requiring a paid subscription for some content always outyields having a revenue model that is 100% ad based. So a blogger makes money using MediaPass because they are able to participate in that increased revenue and do so in a way that’s even more sophisticated than large publishers who spend seven figures building subscription functionality internally.

How does MediaPass get paid?
We charge nothing up front and we don’t make any money unless the publisher does. We take a percentage of the subscription revenue, a percentage that scales down with volume.

How quickly can a blogger implement MediaPass on their site?
Five minutes.

How technical is the implementation – can anyone do it?
No technical experience is needed. If a blog has any type of advertising on their site they already know how to implement MediaPass. And even if they don’t have any, it’s still extremely simple.

How easy is to flag specific pages/posts as part of the subscription? Is it on an individual basis or can someone associate an entire category in their blog?
Publishers choose which pages/posts they want to be subscription content. Much like Google Adsense, we generate a unique snippet of code for them at registration. They simply put that code on any page they want to require a subscription to view the content.

Do you think the product works best for any particular niche of blogs/content?
There is a huge range of monetization using MediaPass. The metric we use most to show the strength of monetization is effective CPM. Since CPM is widely used and understood by bloggers as a metric for advertising monetization, we use it so they have a barometer for how their subscription pages compare to the ads they’re running. That being said, the eCPM’s on our subscription page range from $25 to $200. Blogs such as parenting, health, cooking, how to, finance, medical and others will probably see eCPM’s over $100 while blogs like, say, gossip may be only be around $40.

Do you have suggestions for a blogger with an existing audience – and how they transition some of their content to subscription without upsetting their readers?
Don’t put a paywall in front of your entire site.

Really? Sorry, just didn’t expect that from someone I would assume is pro paywall.
Actually, in most ways we don’t even consider ourselves purely a subscription company. We want to maximize the revenue for publishers and blogs. We’re a monetization company. We just happen to know from experience that charging for some content is required to maximize revenue. There are plenty of easy tools for blogs to make money from online ads but no easy way to charge for their content. So we’re filling that void.

Also, most passionate bloggers didn’t start blogging for financial rewards. If that is what drove them, they would have picked a different profession or hobby. They don’t want to lose their audience and putting a wall in front of their entire blog will surely do that. Ask the Times of London. If done correctly, there is no reason why they should lose much – or really any – traffic.

You mentioned the Times of London. What about them?
How much time do you have? They put a paywall in front of almost their entire site and lost a material amount of traffic. Like any good company, theirs was a purely financial decision. One that will probably pay off. But I still don’t think that walling off their whole site was the best way to maximize revenue and it certainly wasn’t the best way to retain and increase traffic.

Do you have any examples of how other websites are using MediaPass?
We built MediaPass to be used in a variety of ways because we wanted, needed really, to have our offering appeal to a broad range of publishers. Our publishers use us to charge for their archived content or just certain sections of their site. Some hand pick content that they intuitively know their users will pay for. Publishers can even create a new premium section that didn’t exist before, which is one of many ways to ensure their subscription revenue is all incremental. We even have one publisher that only asks for a subscription when a user hits their advertising frequency caps. There are dozens of strategies.

Do you handle the customer service for readers paying, stopping their subscription, etc?
Yes. We handle all customer service components. We built this so that a publishers and bloggers don’t need to do anything but continue to put out the content their readers enjoy, and the customer is one of the many things we handle on their behalf. By the way, our customer service reps are all in the U.S. and have knowledge and visibility into all the blogs so they can easily support all customer issues. Sorry, had to put my marketing hat on there.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell our readers?
Well, marketing hat back on and being passionate about what we’re doing here…. I think all blogs should give us a try. There is an appropriate mix of free and paid content for almost all blogs. It doesn’t cost you anything and there is no commitment.

And thanks for the opportunity to tell the MediaPass story.

While many Scotch enthusiasts will tout the primacy of drinking a single malt neat, that doesn’t need to be staunchly true for everyone. In the spirit of innovation, we’ve come up with the following DOs and DON’Ts for a new generation of The Macallan drinkers:

DO be adventurous. Even if you wrinkle your nose at your dad’s single malt, forge ahead—there are tons of flavors for you to taste and experience.

DON’T hesitate to throw out staid rules for drinking Scotch and order it how you like it.

DO mix it. At least once. Scotch cocktails are unbelievable. The Blood and Sand cocktail (don’t let the name scare you) is one of our favorites. But we do draw the line at taking shots of The Macallan.

DON’T be afraid to pair fine spirits with dinner in lieu of wine. A few drops of water can open up the whisky to pair perfectly with a variety of foods.

DO sip it poolside. The Macallan 10 Years Old with soda or ginger ale is surprisingly refreshing on a hot Las Vegas afternoon.

DON’T forget to savor your drink – fine spirits are meant to be appreciated.

DO enjoy with dessert. The Macallan 18 and chocolate make a truly decadent pairing.

DON’T wait until you’re lounging in a leather chair to order a nice single malt. The Macallan complements any situation, from drinks with the boss to drinks on a date.

DO spread the word. Online or in-person, special and unique experiences are simply better when they’re shared.

Help us add to the list by reaching out on Twitter using the hashtag #Macallan or on Facebook. We look forward to toasting with you in Las Vegas!

Research In Motion (BlackBerry), is one of the sponsors for BlogWorld 2010 and also an Edelman client (my employer), but what you might not know about them is that they are quite active in the social media space, especially when it comes to providing customer care in addition to tips on how BlackBerry fans can get the most of their devices. With over 154k followers on Twitter, the CS (customer service) group regularly engages customers out in the open in a variety of ways. I was able to catch up Michelle Kostya and Baldev Solanki who are two of the architects’ behind the social customer service efforts at BlackBerry.

DA: Blackberry offers support to customers in a variety of ways including online forums. Why did you extend this in places such as Twitter with @blackberryhelp?

MK: Due to the nature of the business, customers usually dealt with their carriers rather than directly with us. This meant that when we launched the forums we were able to truly connect with our customers in a way that wasn’t possible before. All of a sudden we had the ability to gather valuable feedback and work directly with our customers to solve their issues. By being able to help our customers immediately and by showing them neat tips and tricks we were able delight them! But, we recognized that just as not everyone will call to get help, not everyone will visit a forum to ask for help. It became our goal as the Social Media Support team to be where our customers were. Our Digital Marketing counterparts had set up channels on various social channels and customers were asking support questions – it only made sense that we were there to help!

DA: Doesn’t interacting with customers who may be frustrated with your products open the door to public displays of dissatisfaction? How do you manage the risks?

BS: On the contrary, every dissatisfied customer is an opportunity for us to provide a great support experience. The real risk is not engaging. Our goal is to always be professional and follow through. It is a great feeling to delight a frustrated customer and see them become a raving fan.

DA: You decided to take a somewhat personal approach to providing customer care in a social channel by putting the faces of the team behind the account vs. it being the single brand. Why?

MK: Customers service is about a 1:1 conversation. Even when you are talking about traditional customer service it is one person talking to another on the telephone. We wanted our followers to know that the team on Twitter are real people. So they sign their name on each tweet and have their pics up on the background. And, we are taking it offline too! At Blogworld two members of the team will be “live” at the BlackBerry booth providing on-site help and tips!

DA: In the traditional customer care model, success in channels such as call centers is often measured by volume and time per call. What are some of the ways you measure success?

BS: Sometimes defining success measures feels like a quest for the holy social media grail. We tweet a lot of tips so we use retweets as a measure of how useful the content is. In addition we treat positive tweets and thanks as a measure of customer satisfaction. On our forums, Accepted Solutions from the community is a good measure. Remember that some of the standard call centre metrics still apply. Response time and mean time to resolve are definitely things to track.

DA: @blackberryhelp isn’t the only social embassy you’ve built to help your customers get the most out of BlackBerry products. You also have the BlackBerry Help Blog. In the age of Facebook, Twitter and other “shiny objects”, what does a blog get you?

BS: Blogs are about sharing with authenticity. A good enterprise blog can help you really connect deeply with your customers in a meaningful way because the content is not only relevant but insightful and personal. I think most enterprises miss that point. When you do it right, your customers will walk away not only having learned something new but will also feel much more connected to your brand.

MK: Some of the CS staff already wrote how-to posts for Inside BlackBerry Blog and we discovered that these posts were incredibly popular. Our customers wanted to be better (or, the best!) at using their BlackBerry and these posts gave them the info they needed to do this – in a fun and personal way. As with all of the Inside BlackBerry blogs our intent is to get our readers the inside scoop – just focused on the know-how we have on cool tricks, shortcuts and how-to in more than 140 characters.

DA: What are some of the most common requests you get from BlackBerry users? Do your responses vary?

MK: There isn’t really a “typical” request coming to our @BlackBerryhelp team. They get 800 tweets a day from our 155,000+ followers and they range from technical questions to feature requests and from questions about release dates to conversational tweets asking the team how they are doing. So, yes our responses definitely vary although we do have some typical answers for more common requests. Plus, we have a huge library of helpful tips and tricks that we share throughout the day.

DA: What is the one piece of advice you would give to other major brands looking to help their customers leveraging social media?

BS: Don’t succumb to “Cheshire Cat Syndrome” (remember how confused Alice in Wonderland was in choosing a path?). Be careful of starting down the path of social media customer support if you don’t know where you want to end up. Define objectives first, and then try a pilot to limit the risk. A lesson learned from the trenches – most of the time in Social Media land, when you open a door, it’s really hard to shut.

MK: I would say the biggest piece of advice I have is that you need to recognize that customers don’t care what department you are from when they are talking to you via a social channel. A customer is just as likely to ask a technical support question, as they are to provide you with product feature requests, or post they are looking for a job at the company! No matter who “owns” the channel internally– you need a way to route feedback and respond when necessary to your customers. Participation in social channels means breaking down silos inside your business.

Michelle, Baldev, Thank you both for your time and insights. If you’re reading this and attending BlogWorld (and have a BlackBerry device), feel free to bring it to the BlackBerry booth to receive complimentary tips and general assistance from members of their customer service team.

BlackBerry Help:
Twitter: @blackberryhelp
Website: http://helpblog.blackberry.com/

David Armano:
Twitter: @armano
Website: http://davidarmano.com

In blog years, I am ancient citizen of the blogosphere. (I’m getting up there in human years too!) I was involved in the planning stages of Southwest Airline’s corporate blog, Nuts About Southwest from almost the beginning in January of 2006. When my colleague, Angela Vargo, asked me to work on the blog, I had to ask, “What is a blog?” We had a great consultant, Andy Lark, and we gave birth to a bright, bouncing baby blog in April of that year. At the time, we were the only US airline and one of a few Fortune 500 companies to have a corporate blog. Special mention must be given to Linda Rutherford, Vice President Communication and Strategic Outreach for her vision and guidance on the blog and to President Emeritus Colleen Barrett for her early and continued support. Little did I know how much the blog would be a part of my life and that the blog would continually evolve.

We published our first post, and Angela and I awaited the first comments. It didn’t take long, and we were welcomed to the blogosphere with a two-word comment featuring an intimate Saxon verb and a personal pronoun. In spite of that “salty” initial greeting, readers did respond, and the blog began to unfold into a strong young organism. We used it for all sorts of purposes, and the fun was in experimenting to see what we could do and how folks would react. But, we weren’t just throwing stuff on the wall to see if it would stick, our goal was to represent Southwest in a transparent, personal manner and to let our Employees display themselves as the unique interesting individuals that they are.

Two amazing things began to happen. One is that we were building a community. Southwest is blessed to have Customers who are also fans, and they began to talk among each other in the comments section, with the post being the starting point of the discussion. We even flew to meet with one regular before his Navy deployment. This conversation is very much alive today, but it has shifted to social media tools like Twitter (and to a lesser extent Facebook) that are better designed to facilitate ongoing conversations. Some of those early blog conversationalists are now Southwest Employees. As our readership grew, we were asked to speak about our blog before different organizations. Angela and I even got to watch a shuttle landing from Mission Control.

The other thing is that the blog has become part of business decisions, both directly and as a frequently used communication tool. For years, our most requested Customer amenity was assigned seats—we thought. Our CEO, Gary Kelly wrote a June 21 post about upcoming testing of assigned seating. To say our Customers we upset would be an understatement, and they were highly supportive of being able to sit where they chose and even more indignant that we were looking at changing this. 691 impassioned comments later, assigned seating was off the table. The comments also told us that Customers liked open-seating but hated the boarding process. Out of that input came our current boarding process. An example of blog as information tool is whenever we announce new service or a new product. We try to put a human face behind the blog post about the announcement. We’ve also used our blog as a lightning rod to gather comments about negative Southwest Airlines news. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of conversation involved in issues like this with most folks only wanting to register their opinions, but we do track the comments and feel it is important to feature positive and negative comments.

Twitter and Facebook provide a place for discussion, but the blog remains our social media anchor. All of our channels, plus YouTube and future channels, are part of our integrated social media program. The thing to remember about a blog is that the blog is your channel. Unlike almost any other channel where you are limited in your communications by either physical limitations (character count on Twitter) or the channel’s management you own the blog.

Blog life seems to be about two years. Paula Berg who had replaced Angela as my blog partner in crime expanded our expectations for the blog. With the help of our partners, RD2 of Dallas (who have been with us from day one), we introduced a new platform in 2008 that allowed us to incorporate video blog, podcast, a news section, a poll, reader shared photos, and links to our other social media sites in additional to the traditional blog. (Only in social media would something four years old be called “traditional.) Now, a little more than two years later, we are debuting our newest platform that will reflect the lessons we have learned over the past two years. It will feature more visibility for videos and podcasts and better integration of other social media channels. Christi Day, our superb strategist, (photo of Christi) has taken the groundwork laid by Angela and Paula to truly integrate our Social Media efforts and the blog design reflects that approach. We will be conducting user testing at our BlogWorld booth and visitors will be able to chat with the designers from RD2 and our Social Media Team.

So, what do the next few years hold? Hopefully more trips to Vegas for BlogWorld, but beyond that, I would hazard to guess. Based on experience, for it to be successful, any future “advancements” will still need to be based on the human touch. And as for me, what comes after ancient?

Brian Lusk
A veteran of 34 years in the airline industry, with over 15 years in various communications functions at Southwest Airlines, Brian manages the airline’s external corporate blog, Nuts About Southwest. He likes long walks in the rain, pina coladas, food, and airplanes.