I’ve been thinking about how much time a person or company should spend on Marketing / Promoting their Blog. Is everything you do on your Blog considered Marketing and or Promoting? I mean everyday you do things like branding, PR, adding content and making sure your name (company name / brand) is everywhere. Is there ever a time when marketing what you sell or do is too much marketing? I can’t imagine an executive ever saying we are advertising to much, we have our name out there too much we have saturated the marketplace with our Brand. If you do have someone like that, he or she probably won’t be there very long. I would rather have the problem of too much business and too much awareness than not enough.

Some of the tasks involved in marketing & PR today are changing subtly, because the rules are changing, now that Social Media has become mainstream you can’t just set it and leave it. You have to listen more than you do anything in todays new marketing environment. So, how much time should you spend listening? More than you are probably willing to spend time doing I’ll bet. If you aren’t willing to listen, how will you know what to do? How will you know when to do it?

So I keep asking myself, how much time should I spend doing PR & Marketing my blog? I think you should invest more time listening and then figuring out how you can solve what you just heard that day. So, do you market your blog everyday? How much time do you alot for that task?

Do you promote your blog everyday? I would love your input so please leave a comment below.

I was working on a project today and found myself being distracted, sometimes you have these epiphany’s that give you a perspective you never had before right smack in the middle of working hard. You know what I’m talking about, the subconscious never stops, we day dream, we scheme, we plan and sometimes we get deep. So here it is, I stopped working to write this because it wouldn’t leave me alone!

The 3 P’s of Social Media

1. Presence
2. Placement
3. Participation

Presence

It’s not that complicated, we do these three without giving them a second thought or give them the credit they deserve. We all have presence at some level or another here on the Internet, some are very influential through their presence and become high profile, maybe you. Each organization, group or person has a different strategy to ensure that presence. Some may even be misleading, but I like to believe most are honest and true to their mission and vision. Doing the right thing right, being honest, having integrity, the very things required to be of value and trust worthy. Without those qualities your presence could be damaged without you knowing about it.

I wrote about the three parts of a social media marketer back in June:

• Marketing Knowledge
• They are Entertainer’s
• A dynamic personality.

Those three components add up to people that are, savvy, have trust and brand. Don’t take my word for it, follow them, watch, listen and learn.

The 3 P’s are really a platform those three parts leverage, we could go deep six on characteristics and personality profiling but that’s not what this is about.

The dictionary’s definition of Presence:

- the state or fact of being present, as with others or in a place.

In order to be successful in anything you must have presence, you must be present, you have to show up! Showing up is 90% of success in my humble opinion. What you do with that presence sets you apart from everyone, why? There is only one you!

Placement

In order to have presence you have be present somewhere, to be seen or heard, that’s where placement play’s it’s role. It’s part of your strategy in building a presence, in your marketing efforts, and is the playing field to which your brand can have success in the top of mind awareness game.

The definition of Placement:

- the act of placing

- the state of being placed

Where do place your presence? The Internet is the platform that allows all players a level playing field, but not all understand the power of how to leverage the Internet. The Internet is home to a new thing called Social Media, to be frank, Social Media is old news really, it’s always been around under different names and activities. There are literally hundreds of Social Media Networks, you probably know many of them, Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube, Tumblr, FriendFeed and so on. The principles of these networks are primarily the same, how you participate is the critical thing. Give considerable thought to how you present yourself, because it impacts your Social currency and only you can ensure that currency brings value.

Participation

The strategy is done and the presence component has been determined, also where that presence will be maximized, and now you have to heed the call to action…you have to participate. Without this action of participating you have a strategy going no where, it looks good on paper and that’s just where it will stay. Once you have determined placement, you will participate with consistency, persistence and deliver a message that is compelling and powerful.

The definition of Participation:

- the fact of taking part, as in some action or attempt: participation in a celebration

- an act or instance of participating.

Now I know you’re thinking these things are common sense and you are right. We do these things without thinking really, like breathing. The problem isn’t doing them, the problem is not giving these things the respect they deserve, they need their 15 minutes of fame. That’s what I’m doing here, oh sure you could probably explain this better than I but, this is my epiphany

Take inventory of your strategy and make sure you have given the 3 P’s it’s due attention.

I was sharing on Twitter today about a Newsletter I used to write & produce back in 1995 and Rob Cairn’s said he would like to see it. I thought I would reproduce the content and post it here for you to chuckle over.

Back in 1995 I produced a Newsletter called, ” MARKETING TODAY “, it was an informational piece that was distributed electronically, and the local book store was gracious enough to put it on the magazine rack back in the day. So for a walk down memory lane here is a list of things you couldn’t find on the Internet in October 1995. I even had advertisers in this little beauty!

1.) Material on any subject more than a few years old.

2.) Information about small privately held companies.

3.) Information about most companies not USA Headquartered.

4.) Information about Subsidiaries of major companies.

5.) Specialized Dictionaries or handbooks on business subjects.

6.) Directories of companies by industry and location.

7.) Information on business and trade associations.

8.) Information from small commercial databases.

9.) Franchising companies information

10.) Court reports from state and local jurisdictions.

11.) Telephone, fax and TELEX Directories.

12. Business information in languages other than English.

My closing comments on that article were:

I started this section by saying that the information which isn’t on the net now, soon will be. The Internet allows all of the originators of the information to present themselves, the traditional “middle man”  data gathering groups are no longer needed.

Just for fun, I also recommended Seth Godin’s book called, ” E-Marketing”.

Also, the topic of the day was whether or not you should upgrade to Windows 95, OS2 was still very popular back then too.

Of course much of the above if not all is now available and has been for many years, I hope you enjoyed the walk down memory lane.