Jim Murray

7 years ago · 2 min. reading time · ~10 ·

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How To Become A World Class Blogger Like Me :) Part 4. Understanding The Tribal Nature Of The Online World.

How To Become A World Class Blogger Like Me :) Part 4. Understanding The Tribal Nature Of The Online World.

This is the fourth installment in a series on blogging and what works for me. It's based on things  I have learned throughout the trial and error process of posting more than 600 articles on Pulse, WordPress, Medium, Google Plus & most recently, bebee.com.
Read Part 1 In This Series
Read Part 2 In This Series
Read Part 3 In This Series

So here you are thinking wow… posting my blog and having it exposed to millions of  ‘professionals’. This is gonna be great. I’m gonna build a massive following like those ubiquitous INfluencers, over on LinkedIn, engage with a good percentage of my fans and then the world will be my oyster.
LOL.
LOL because ... after pouring your heart and soul into whatever is is your talking about ... after carefully choosing the right buzzwords for your headline according to some LinkedIn hamster who wrote a blog about i t… after carefully constructing your argument, painstakingly detailing your story, keeping it to the appropriate length and wrapping it up with a flourish … what do you get - 36 page views and a couple of lame-ass comments.
Just shoot me, right? Don't be so hasty. Bullets cost money.
The Tribal Geography Of Business Media
Any social media site is a tribal culture. The tribal boundaries on LinkedIn are drawn, in my opinion, by occupation, areas of interest and personal motivation.
The biggest divide is between the tribe of people who work for other people and their bosses and the tribe of people who work for themselves.
People Who Work For Other People
People who work for other people tend to make up the vast majority of any social media environment, because they make up the vast majority of the industrialized world. 

So if you work for yourself, anything relevant that you may have to say is of little interest to these people.
If, for example,  you look at all the INfluencers, over on LinkedIn, who are drawing hundreds of thousands of page views, you will see that most of them pander to the employed, the wannabe employed, the wanna stay employed, the wanna make more money from being employed and their bosses. These people are remote coaches (ie they coach through books, webinars, podcasts and high priced speaking engagements) and HR experts. There are a few business leaders sprinkled in for good measure.
So if you want to talk to people who work for other people in your posts, you're gonna have to stand in line behind all those big time and heavily promoted bloggers and their fairly generic, list-based, kinda vacuous stuff.
Tough gig.
The Entrepreneurial World
This kingdom of is much smaller. In my area of operation, (marketing & communications), for example LinkedIn has told me there are about 4.3 million souls. Many of those people deal mostly with sales. Much fewer of those people deal with actual communications in a buying or selling capacity.
Then, of course you have about a zillion or so vertical silos: (accounting to zebra ranching and everything in between) and the various areas of endeavor that these silos define, including: product design, engineering, manufacturing technology development, software development, communications, logistics, sales management, insurance, etc
What do you know, another tough gig, mostly just figuring out who to reach and how to reach them.
Targeting Is The Single Biggest Issue
Understand that all I have done here is the first thing I would do on any communications project I was charged with.
This is quite simply, asking & answering the question, WHO AM I TALKING TO?
Once you know or have decided that, then you have a lot more gas in your tank. Because knowing who you are talking to is the key to figuring out:
a) What you want to say to these people, b) How to say it so they will get it
c) What their hot buttons might be, and d) How to push them.
The BeBee Solution
Fortunately for all of us, beBee has come along with an affinity based site. What this means is that you can actually, after a bit of research, target your posts much more specifically to the target audience or audiences you feel would be most receptive to your message.
My Own Purpose Here Is Very Simple. Like Yours Should Be
The primary reason I blog is that I’m trying to show people who may need the services of a highly experienced professional communicator, strategic thinker, writer, art director etc, that I am one of those, and that I’m here to help them.
So the majority of my posts have to do with explaining the various tools and processes that are needed for effective communication.
I have a secondary target audience of younger, less experienced people who just want to learn how to communicate more effectively.
What I hope is that these people read my blogs and learn something that will help them develop their creative skills, so that when they do communicate, here on beBee or anywhere, they will be putting out good quality stuff.
This, in turn, will help shrink the great pile of crap out there and ultimately help gain more visibility for those who are writing useful and meaningful stuff.
Does It Work?
It's a little too soon to tell on beBee, because it's relatively new.
But the majority of the work I am doing right now has come from contacts I have made through focused blogging on LinkedIn, group participation and posting on my wall. So, yeah, it works just fine.
The other key thing to always keep in mind is that nothing good on beBee or any social media site, happens fast. It’s a slow process that will try your patience and bend your mind a bit.
But then again, nobody ever said success was an easy thing to come by.
The Learning
1. The keys to effective blogging on LinkedIn are: Identifying your target audience, 
figuring out what they might be looking for and giving it to them.
2. Choose you target audience based on the potential need they might have for your product or service.
3. Blogging is a process that requires a long term commitment on your part and the patience and persistence to keep it going.
4. Jim Murray is one of the world’s great communicators and a hell of a nice guy.  (LOL).
Now you know a little bit more of what I know. Feel free to use it for both the betterment of mankind and your own selfish ends.
********************

I am a communications professional. Through my own core skills as a strategist, writer & art director and with the help of some insanely talented associates, I work with primarily B to B clients, large and small to create hard working communications in whatever sector of the marketing universe their strategy dictates the need to travel through. I am also a mentor, blog post editor and a pretty decent photographer.
If you have a marketing or communications challenge
you would like to discuss, (no obligation),
there are three ways you can contact me:
Direct Line: 416 463-3475  • Email: onandup3@gmail.com • Skype: jimbobmur61
Link To My WP Portfolio Page: http://tinyurl.com/p6vqxex
Finally, you can download my free ebook,
Small Business Communications For The Real World:
https://wordpress.com/post/onwordsandupwords.wordpress.com/557


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Comments

Cyndi wilkins

7 years ago #1

If there is ONE thing our young millennials are in desperate need of is the development of better personalized communication skills...It is extremely painful listening to my twelve year old daughter try to have a phone conversation...Which is something I constantly push her to do instead of sending a text message if she needs an immediate response from the recipient...My partner continually complains as well about the "youngsters" he manages using email as their "go to" form of communication...Sometimes you just need to pick up the damned phone! I also shudder to think what any of them would do if their car broke down in an area with no cell phone service;-) LOL

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