maine web development, web design, internet marketing

You may have seen them leaving off-color remarks on blogs, or always being negative on Twitter but Internet Trolls can be serious business. If you haven’t run into them first hand, you should probably be prepared to and have an idea of how your business will deal with them.

What is an Internet Troll?

Internet Trolls are internet users who find enjoyment in attacking and criticizing other people’s content. Their mission is usually to get a reaction from the person they are attacking or from their network.

An internet troll can be found in the comment sections of blogs, on social networks, in message boards and more. Their protocol is usually to comment on someone else’s content or profile in a negative and sometimes controversial manner to try to get a reaction.

Where the damage can occur to your business is in how you react to an internet troll. Your comments are as much of your marketing as your original post or profile.

Wikipedia Defines Troll (Internet)
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

As you become an authority in your industry, you are more susceptible to trolls. Remember when your mother told you that kids were mean to you because they were jealous? Well the same applies here but with grownups and new tools for malicious behavior. As you establish yourself as an authority and broadcast to your network what your point of view is on a topic, you have put yourself out there and need to be prepared for trolls to try to get a rise out of you.

Sonia Simone from Copyblogger had a great post called The Dark Side of Authority where she explains that we all know being an authority in our industry is what we want, but trolls are one of the downsides of being an ‘expert’. She goes on to say that it is human nature to admire authority, but it is also human nature to for some to resent authority.

How to Deal With an Internet Troll

First things first, an internet troll is looking for a reaction so carefully consider your response or your decision not to respond.

Here are a few tips for dealing with internet trolls:

• Have a plan first – As with all things we talk about with internet marketing, it is important to have a plan first. This could be a conversation with anyone who is participating in your business blog and social networks or an official policy on how to respond to off-color comments. Going into the situation blindly without considering the possibilities means you could be more prone to having a gut reaction, and giving the troll exactly what they are looking for, attention.
• Approach each comment as constructive – As many of us have learned the hard way, there is no tone in written text. You cannot tell when someone is being sarcastic, or trying to be funny, maybe had a typo, or shouldn’t have read your blog after that martini and they misunderstood your content. Treat each comment like it had good intentions. Some will be very easy to tell that they are malicious but if it is borderline, treat it like it had the best of intentions.
• Delete content that hurts your network – I think leaving negative comments on your blog or profile is usually ok, if not good. It shows debate or lets you realize how other people view your opinions and you can have some really great conversations that help you grow. You should delete content that attacks another member of your network, has profane language or that you find offensive. You don’t want to be the arena that one of your readers gets into an argument with a troll.
• Say ‘Thank You’ – If there is a comment or a tweet that I think is malicious but I don’t have anything constructive to add, I will just say a simple ‘thank you for your comment’ or ‘thank you for your perspective’. That way, they know they were heard but they did not get a big reaction out of me.
• Follow up – On at least a dozen occasions someone has said something hurtful about me, my work or my company I have followed up and made a relationship out of it. A few have even become partners I refer work to. A whiny tweet could just be someone else who provides similar services but thinks their way is better, a cry for attention to view their work or a faceless crime and when you meet them face to face they are guilt ridden for their comment.

Dealing with internet trolls or off-color remarks is definitely a case by case and company by company basis. You need to do what is best for your business, your employees, your network and you. If you are prepared beforehand, you will probably have better results versus a petty battle of words in the comments section of your blog.

How and When Can You Use Other People’s Content?

As we talk about blogging, social media and creating content online, we have to stop and talk about sharing content, copyrighted material and when it is ok to use other people’s work and when it is not.

For years, in our recent history, we copyrighted everything that we created. We copyrighted photos we took, videos we made, music we created and everything else so that people knew it was ours and we would get credit for it.

Now with the internet, blogs and social media – users are creating content all the time. With that they are re-purposing, sharing and building off other people’s words, thoughts and art; standard copyrighting laws are too strong. Many people want their content to be shared, built on and used for collaboration.

Introducing Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that is working with content creators of every kind to make it possible for some of their work to be used in some ways. Creative Commons provides free licenses for creators to use when making their work available to the public. These licenses give the creators that ability in advance to know what their content is intended for.

In the past, copyrighted material meant all rights were reserved and that you had to ask permission to use or build upon that work, without ever knowing what the original creator’s intention was. Now when you create some type of work you can use Creative Commons to tell potential users exactly how and when they can and cannot use your content.

In the late 80′s copyright laws changed, and as soon as you finished a piece of work it was automatically copyrighted as yours. What if you wanted to share that work? Let people add onto it? Build upon it? Make something else with the content you created? You couldn’t really. The copyright laws were too restrictive. Creative Commons created their own terms and agreements so you can make the decision on how and when people can use your work the way you intended.

Here is a video that I think explains Creative Commons well:

What Should I Do With MY Content?

It is very much up to you and your company what you want to do with your content. Some people want all of their work completely open to give it as much legs as it can get. Some want to publish some content for free and then have some work copyrighted and be able to charge for specific in-depth content. As you work with your business on a content strategy you need to decide what it is people can and cannot do with your content.

Jason Falls recently wrote a post on his blog, Social Media Explorer, on why he recently changed his open, share and share alike copyright to a non-commercial, share and share alike copyright. His work was being confused for other people’s and credit for his work was going to other sites and it was important to him to get those pieces back.

How Do I Know What Content I Can Use?

Not everyone participates in Creative Commons. It is still, in the scheme of things, relatively new. The catalog of items increases every day. You can start by browsing some of the resources Creative Commons has on their site. Some blogs have a logo and link to their creative commons specifics.

I have always used Flickr for my blog entries and they are great with Creative Commons photos. You can search just for items that are part of the Creative Commons and each photo clearly tells you what the image can be used for.

For example this adorable puppy picture (I picked it to make Jenika go ‘awwwwww’) has a link on the Flickr page that says ‘Some rights reserved’. I can click on that link and see what the specifics of using this image are. This image is made to share as long as you attribute the work, which I did below the image, and on the condition that if it is used again from this blog entry, it gets attributed there as well. Here is the link that explains how the image can be used.

The puppy example is just for photos. Now think about how you can use this for text, music and other creative content. Creative Commons has a good thing here, especially now in this time of so much content creation. I hope this post helped explain what Creative Commons is. Happy creating and sharing!

It’s that time of the day (or week) that you’ve set aside in your busy schedule to compose your next blog post.  After exhausting all possible excuses and finding other things to do, the time to write has come.  You’ve racked your brain.  You’ve been keeping up with other blogs and news articles in your industry.  But alas, you are utterly stumped and don’t know what to write about.

Enter WordTracker’s Keyword Questions tool.

Get Some Ideas for Your Post

I have to say, I love using this tool because it is so easy!  All you have to do is pop in a word (try some different words related to your business) and it gives you a list of questions that have been searched for involving that word.  I used the word “SEO” (I know, go figure!):

Now I have a whole list of questions that people have typed into search engines to find an answer.  My next blog post could be “How Does SEO Work?”, since this is something that people clearly want to know about and I can provide an answer (most likely ad nauseam).

You can apply this same strategy to your own blog, whether your business is crm software, wedding dresses, jewelry, PR…you get the point.  When you know which topics people are looking for related to what you do, you can provide a well-written answer and further position yourself as an expert in your field.

Get Some SEO Benefit

You already know that a blog can help your SEO efforts by consistently adding fresh content to your site (which search engines like), as well as reinforce your website’s keyword targets if you include them in your posts.  Since you’re tapping into questions that were typed into search engines, having a blog post title with that question can boost your ability to be found in a search when that question is typed in.

A search for “What does a search engine see?“, a post I wrote last month, puts me on the first page of Google:

Don’t Forget the Search Engine Suggest Feature

I’ve spoken in the past about getting ideas from what the search engine box suggests to you when typing in a search.  These suggestions are based on queries that have already been typed in, so these can also be valuable content ideas.  I stumbled across this great tool called Soovle, which aggregates all of the search box suggestions from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Wikipedia, YouTube, Amazon, and Answers.com in one place, using one single search box.  I highly recommend using this tool as a topic-generator as well.

Do you have any surefire methods to cure the I-Don’t-Know-What-To-Write-About Blues?  I’d love to hear them!

You may remember our Spring Inspirations posts from last year when I interviewed Greg Cangialosi and David Meerman Scott for a a little pick-me-up last Spring. Well I am here again…my calendar says Spring but it is still awfully gray and gloomy outside. For this year’s Spring Inspiration series, I have some more very smart folks to cure our winter blues with some food for thought. I am going to kick off this series with the very smart and always helpful Mack Collier.

As the host of the popular #blogchat and blogger for the Viral Garden & MackCollier.com you have a lot of experience with blogging and social media. How do you see the relationship between a business’ blog and their social media strategy?

I think for many businesses, a blog is a logical ‘central hub’ for their social media strategy. Now if a company doesn’t want to or can’t blog, then that central presence could be a Facebook fan page, or Twitter presence, or even a Ning site. But I think that all the components of a social media strategy need to work together. What’s happening on Twitter should feed into the content on the blog, and vice versa. The efforts should work together as much as possible. And to extend that, what a company is doing via social media should also be in sync with its other marketing and communication efforts.

What are some of the biggest things to keep in mind when developing a blog for your business?

I think the biggest thing to remember that applies specifically to a blog is to realize that a blog is a long-term commitment. Blogging is probably the most time and labor-intensive social media channel a company can utilize, so they need to understand going in that the blog does not have an expiration date. If they can’t commit upfront to blogging from now on, then they probably shouldn’t launch the blog.

In your experience, what are some of the biggest challenges you see small businesses having to overcome to have a successful blog?

Usually with small businesses, the biggest obstacle is simply finding the time to create and maintain a successful blog. This is a big reason why you see Facebook being so popular with small businesses, because it offers some of the functionality of a blog, but is much easier to update, and takes less effort.

Speaking of successful, what do you think a company needs to measure and gauge to see if their blog is successful or not?

Ok, here is where I take a deep breath and pull out my heavy soapbox… (clunk!) Ok…

First, the company needs to establish WHY they are blogging and what their goals are. Some of the possibilities include:

• Sell more stuff
• Establish thought leadership
• Increase company awareness
• Provide customer service

Now once you’ve picked the goal for your blogging effort, then you can decide what you want to measure. Let’s say you decide you want to launch a blog to sell more stuff. Some of the things you could measure in that case would be:

• Traffic referrals to a product page on the website from the blog
• Including a special percent-off code on the blog, then tracking how many times that code is redeemed on the site when placing an order
• Number of email requests or comments asking for more information about purchasing products

But even here, you need to be careful. Let’s say for example that you note that the blog is increasingly sending more traffic to a particular product page on the blog, but since you aren’t seeing any sales as a result, you might conclude that the blog isn’t doing its job. But if the product page on the website has no place to actually PLACE an order on that page, then the problem is likely with the product page, not the blog. So when determining the effectiveness of your blog, you have to take into account if any of your other marketing and communication efforts play a role as well.

Another quick example, if your goal is to increase company awareness via your blogging efforts, then you could track metrics like total number of online mentions and total number of inbound links.

But in general, this is not one ‘this is what your company should be measuring’ list to decide if your blogging efforts are successful. It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish via your blogging efforts. Then you track metrics associated with those goals.

I am just returning from SXSW and we are gearing up for a large industry conference next month. You attend lots of conferences and events speaking and participating. Do you have any advice for how people can use social media and their blog to get more out of the experience?

Oh I am jealous cause I had to miss SXSW this year! My advice is, and this might tick some people off, but forget about social media when you get to these events. Focus on connecting with the people you are AT the event with. You can always go back later and get on Twitter and trade key takeaways, but the best part of most social media conferences is the time you get to spend actually TALKING to speakers and attendees. Don’t take that time for granted. I rarely tweet sessions I attend anymore, simply because I want to pay attention to the speaker and what their message is. When I get back home, then I can blog about what I learned and share any key nuggets. But while I am there, I want to BE THERE. Social media will still be there when I get back home

Since this is an inspirations post who is inspiring you lately? Who is putting out some really good work that inspires you and really makes you think?

I always love reading bloggers that talk about how companies can have passionate connections with their customers. I am a big fan of Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell at Church of the Customer. I also love the work Brains on Fire does, they are truly inspirational. And I think Kathy Sierra, who hasn’t blogged in three years, is absolutely brilliant. I still spend time going through her archives, she is such a genius, here’s an example – http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/01/death_by_riskav.html

What exciting things do you have coming down the pipeline that we should keep an eye out for?

Well nothing I am ready to go public with, but I have a few side projects that should go live in the next 2-3 months, stay tuned

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I can’t thank Mack enough for taking the time to kick off this series. If you want to know more about Mack you can read all about him on his website.

Want to know more about business blogging or Mack Collier now?

Check out: #blogchat on Sunday nights at 9PM EST.
Check out: Mack’s 2 websites he blogs at frequently Viral Garden & MackCollier.com
Read: Any of our archived posts on Business Blogging

Watch: SEO, Analytics, and Online PR: Strategies for Better Blogging In this intermediate level blogging webinar, we’ll discuss some of the strategic decisions you can make when it comes to blogging and what tools you can use to monitor and assess your performance. Learn how an aggressive attitude towards analytics, built-in SEO optimization, a full editorial calendar, and ongoing outreach to other bloggers will help you turn your blog from a passive news feed into one of your most powerful marketing tools. View Webinar

Watch: Get Your Business Blogging Is a blog a worthwhile strategic marketing investment for your company or a waste of time? Find out what your should know about blogs in order to make the most of the technology, and how to avoid common pitfalls of newbie bloggers. View Webinar