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If you aren’t blogging yet, or you’re looking for shortcuts to save time and blog more frequently, here are three ideas to get you started:

1. Can’t write?  Then talk!

Too many people don’t blog because they can’t write, or it takes them too long to write well.  The solution?  A small tape-recorder.
When an idea strikes, simply dictate your blog post into the recorder.  Then transcribe it yourself or hire an inexpensive assistant to transcribe it for you and post it to your blog.

2. Recruit guest bloggers.

Most of your blog content should be your own.
But you can recruit guest bloggers occasionally to fill in when you’ll be on vacation, taking time off, suffering from writer’s block, or when you simply want to expose your readers to another viewpoint.  Blogger LinkUp.com  links bloggers who want to write guest posts with bloggers who need them.

3. Recruit others on your team to blog with you.

Don’t carry the entire load on your shoulders. If you work for a company or nonprofit, ask fellow employees in your own department or other departments to contribute to your blog occasionally by writing their own posts.  Be sure to include their photos.

If you’re a sole proprietor, ask your virtual assistant, or a vendor, or business associates to write on a topic that would interest your target audience.  They’ll probably be thrilled to receive the exposure.

At a small networking breakfast I attended recently, I met five people who were either job-hunting or were there to talk about their businesses.

They brought their resumes, engaging personalities, impressive marketing materials and succinct elevator pitches and shared them with our table of 10.

But all five were missing a critical marketing tool that could have landed them a job or set them apart from their competitors.

Not one of them had a blog.  For more than an hour, the conversation centered on how each of them can reach their target audiences.

By the end of the breakfast, I lost it.

“Everyone at this table should be blogging!” I yelled.  With nine pairs of eyes riveted on me, I explained:

–A blog establishes your credibility and expertise.

–It’s like a giant magnet that pulls in traffic.

–It can impress visitors and turn them into buyers.

–Many of your competitors are blogging.

–Unlike Twitter, you can use your blog to discuss topics in-depth.

–You can engage visitors and carry on a conversation with them in the comments section.

–A blog can give you a huge online presence, even if you can’t afford a website.

If you had to choose one or the other, which would you choose: a blog or press releases?

Arianna Huffington, cofounder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, says a blog is more powerful.  Her comments appear during a Q&A interview in the February issue of PR Week.

The magazine asked if PR pros were reaching out to offer rebuttals to opinions at her website, “or are they not reaching out as much?” Her response:

“We absolutely get a lot of response from PR pros.  I think a lot of them are recognizing that it is more effective now to blog about something, to have the principals blog about something, rather than send press releases.  The world of the press release is dramatically changing.”

I agree.  Here’s why:

Blogs do a far better job establishing you as an expert in your field.

They give readers a chance to comment, and you can continue the conversation by replying to their comments.

Blogs are the new website.  Many companies no longer have to pay several thousand dollars or more for a website.  You can even run an Internet marketing business from a free WordPress blog, using a good shopping cart.

Not blogging yet?  Get going!

Social media is more than just collecting Facebook fans, sending tweets and joining the conversation.  It’s also about making all that hard work pay off.

Here are five great social media marketing ideas, courtesy of DP Dialogue, a social media marketing agency in Australia.  All of them are free.  Pick and choose which ones are best for you:

–Start a Twitter account and give people incentives to follow you.  Read their blog post to see how Domino’s Pizza did this at http://budurl.com/8flq

–Use Google’s keyword tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal to find whatever keywords related to your business are being searched for the most.  Blog about them and make videos about them.

–Become an expert and start blogging or podcasting.  (Read the excellent Expertise Imperative White Paper that explains how to become an expert at http://www.PublicityHound.com/expertise.pdf It was written specifically for professional speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds.  Use it as a starting point to grow your own expertise.)

–Start a Facebook group that people will want to join and subtly sponsor it.  If you sell candles, start a Facebook group for people who are afraid of the dark.  (See “11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook” at http://budurl.com/wcxb

–Figure out who the key influencers are for whatever it is you’re selling.

If you’re weary of cranking out quality content for your blog, consider recruiting an occasional guest blogger.

Guest bloggers expose your readers to new opinions, topics and perspectives.

They give you a break.  And they give other writers and experts exposure to your audience.

Here’s the best part.  They don’t even have to have their own blog.  If they can write well, they can guest blog.

Here are five ways to find guest bloggers:

–Invite bloggers whose opinions you admire.  Ask them to write original content, because the search engines don’t look favorably on duplicate content.  Stress that they’ll have the chance to be in front of a new audience and that you’ll give them a link back to their website or blog.

–Invite some of the most frequent commenters at your own blog– writers whose opinions and writing you admire.

–Consider inviting publishers or editors of some of your favorite ezines, as long as their topic is related to the topics you write about.

–If you’re on LinkedIn, pay attention to the question-and-answer feature.  I found a great answer to a question, and asked the writer if I could print her answer as a guest blog post.  She said yes.

–Ask your readers to contribute their best posts–again, original content.  It’s best that readers pitch an idea for your approval, just like they’d pitch a story to journalists.

One way to stay on top of what’s happening at your favorite social media site is to read the site’s corporate blog.

That’s often the first place where you’ll learn about major changes, minor tweaks, improved customer service issues and important topics like security issues and additional features. 

Facebook announced recently that it was releasing a feature that allows administrators of Facebook Pages to publish their Facebook updates to their Twitter accounts automatically.

I saw lots of bloggers discussing it, but the official details are at the Facebook blog. So are several hundred comments from Facebook users who love or hate the change. Reading the comments can often help you see quickly whether that site’s community gives thumbs-up or thumbs- down to a new feature or application. You’ll also glean lots of other helpful tips from those comments.

If the people who read that blog are ideal customers for your products or services, post your own comment. Just make sure it isn’t promotional. The best comments share helpful information, tips and advice.
 
Two other blogs worth noting:

- -If you’re on LinkedIn, don’t miss their blog. The first page includes tips on how to win new clients by optimizing your LinkedIn profile, how LinkedIn helps an entrepreneur close deals, and how to organize networking events for free using your LinkedIn network.

- -Google, the granddaddy of search engines, has an entire line-up of blogs in its blog directory.  It includes search tips, how to use Google tools and applications, and a nifty blog called Citizentube that gives lots of examples on how video is changing the world.

If you have a favorite social site, check to see if it has a blog worth following, and subscribe to the RSS feed.

If you aren’t using trade associations in your publicity campaign, you’re missing a valuable tool that can save you time and help you flex your promotional muscle.

Here’s how:

- -If you belong to a particular trade association, let their PR department know that you welcome calls from reporters. Often, if the media need sources in a particular industry and they don’t know who to call, they call the trade association and ask for names of members.

–Write an article or a letter to the editor for your own trade association newsletter, or for a newsletter that goes to an industry you want to penetrate. Link to your blog. Let people know where they can find you on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, or a business site for a particular niche.

- -Sending a direct mail piece? You can often buy lists of names from trade associations.

- -If you’re a speaker, and you want to be hired to speak before audiences in a particular industry, contact the editor of that association’s newsletter or trade magazine and start submitting articles.  Months later, when you call the meeting planner, you can refer to the articles you’ve written–proof that you’re not a novice to the industry. I’ve written many articles for the Society for Marketing Professional Services magazine and PR Tactics, published by the Public Relations Society of America. Both have led to numerous speaking engagements.

- -Writing an opinion column and looking for ammunition to support your position? If so, find out which trade associations support your cause. Trade groups are among the most ardent lobbyists.

- -If you need statistics to incorporate into your story pitches, or for letters to the editor or articles you’re writing, you can find them by calling trade associations or visiting their websites or blogs.

When you score publicity in traditional media outlets or online, be sure to let your Facebook Friends and Fans know.

–Post a Note to your Fan Page and link to the online video or radio interview.  But go one step further.  Ask your Fans to critique your performance. When you post the Note, you can actually “tag” certain Facebook Friends who you think would be most interested in reading about it.

–If you’re included in an article that appeared online, link to it. Don’t duplicate the entire article for your Facebook page because it’s most likely copyrighted.

–Excerpt tips you’ve offered to newspapers and magazines and tell your Friends and Fans where they can find the article online.

–Has a blogger written about you?  Link to the post, and encourage your Facebook Friends and Fans to comment at the blog.

–Share with your Friends and Fans what it was like to be interviewed by the media.  How did you prepare for difficult questions?  Did you take advantage of media training before appearing on a TV show?  What little extras did you include in your pitch that tipped the scales in your favor?

Don’t forget about Internet radio shows.  Let your Friends and Fans know how to find the archives.

Dying to pitch a certain journalist at a top-tier media outlet
but confused about how to make your pitch stand out among all the
others?

Keep reading for the inside secret.

I’ve never met Deborah Kotz, a woman’s health columnist for U.S.
News & World Report.

We’ve never emailed each other or talked on the phone.  I’ve
never pitched her.

Yet I know intimate details about her, including the type of
birth control she has used and whether her two sons are
circumcised.

You’ll never find those kinds of details in the pricey media
databases you’re buying.

But in some cases, you CAN find them buried within the blog posts
of journalists you want to pitch.  Most PR people, unfortunately,
are too busy or too lazy to search for them.

To make your job easier, I’ve explained in step-by-step detail
how to find out if a journalist blogs and how to navigate the
blog to find all the juicy tidbits you need to customize your
pitch. If you do this correctly, you’ll have more information
about the journalist than you need, right at your fingertips.

Read the blog post I wrote on how to use journalists’ blogs to
research them.

Why is it that when you leave a comment at someone’s blog, your
photo doesn’t show up next to your comment, but photos of the
other Publicity Hounds who comment are everywhere?

Could be you don’t have a gravatar.

A gravatar is a globally recognized avatar, an image that follows
you from site to site and appears beside your name when you
participate.  It’s a powerful tool because your smiling face
might be the first thing that catches a reader’s attention.
To create your own gravatar in a few minutes, go to Gravatar.com.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to set up gravatars on your blog
or forum.  Plug-ins are available for leading blog software and
content management systems.  Watch the tutorials at the link
above for more information.

Publicity Hound David Leonhardt wrote a great blog post on “10
Ways to Make Your Gravatar Sell” at and included my gravatar and
several others as examples of those he loves.

I prefer a gravatar of someone smiling rather than a cartoon-
character depiction, or a company logo, or an inane illustration
that has nothing to do with the person behind the curtain.

Social media is all about transparency and forming relationships
with people.