My buddy Krystian Dryniak runs a monthly meetup in Krakow, Poland aptly called Social Media Poland and he asked me to be his special virtual guest for his May meetup (I’m probably more virtual than special). I was asked to record 10-15 minutes about myself, my thoughts on social media and blogging in particular (which I have learned the hard way, by trial and error).
Here’s the video they showed on the evening, I had some good feedback from their attendees and hope to see some of them coming to my own meetup Social Media LONDON one day.
This is roughly what I say in the video:
Welcome everyone to Social Media Poland, in Krakow my favourite Polish city!!
I was asked by your host Krystian to say hello as I run a community called Social Media London – which is where I met Krystian about a year ago now.
So briefly about me, my name is Jorgen Sundberg and I am originally from Sweden and have lived in London for 9 years now. I’m a very active social media user, you’ll find me on Twitter and all other places.
My background is that I used to work for an IT recruitment agency, where I recruited top IT talent for large companies across Europe.
I was always an early adopter of technology and started using social media tools very early on, back in those days we used tools like OpenBC, Viadeo, Plaxo and a little site called LinkedIn. Because I learnt to maximise these tools I was able to reach the best candidates in the market quicker than my competitors and it made me a successful recruiter.
About 2 years ago I set up a company called Link Humans, where we train and consult both recruitment agencies and large employers on how to use LinkedIn and other social media tools to recruit quicker, better and cheaper.
Alongside this we started a community called Social media London, to gain more exposure in the social media world and it has worked very well.
My blogging experience
Krystian asked me to also talk about my experience of blogging and how it helps your personal brand. For me it’s absolutely vital to have a publishing platform of some kind where you can create content. A blog is great place to start, it’s free, simple but it does require your commitment if you want to make it into a good blog.
I started blogging back when I was a recruiter and that blog is still going, in fact it’s the no.1 recruitment blog in the UK now. Then we have a blog for Link Humans where we write for our target clients, we produce case studies and practical social media tips for manager types. Then I also have a personal blog where I can put anything that doesn’t really fit into the other two, such as writing about a holiday to Italy.
My 10 top tips for bloggers would be:
1. Realise that blogging is a commitment, you should be posting at least once per week and ideally 2-3 times per week. A post doesn’t have to be War & Peace, about 400 words will do – think quality over quantity.
2. Write stuff that helps others, make your posts valuable to the reader. If they find value in it, they are likely to tell others about you and your blog. Do some research, what are other bloggers writing about – maybe you can get inspiration from them?
3. Mix up your content – five years ago everyone was just writing posts. Nowadays you can create a SlideShare presentation, a YouTube clip like this, a podcast and embed on your blog. Try to alternate a bit and see what works for your audience.
4. Don’t worry about SEO, when you are a blogger is all down to your content. Google loves fresh and original content and they will promote you in their results when you deliver this. Big companies can worry about SEO because they have short term campaigns running all the time – your blog is a long-term project and there is no end date.
5. Make your site look nice and clean – there’s nothing more annoying than a personal blog with too many menus, advertising and widgets all over the place. Keep it simple and let the content speak for itself.
6. Stimulate conversation, sometimes the best content you can write is very short and a bit controversial. People love an opinion and they tend to want to react. Encourage comments and make sure you’re there to respond.
7. Connect with other bloggers and social media types. Going to meet ups is a great way of connecting, you can also check out relevant hashtags, Twitter chats and LinkedIn groups to find more like-minded people. When you get to know people, they will start reading and hopefully sharing your content.
8. This should be easy for you at the social media meetup…. Use Social media to drive traffic to your posts. Don’t overshare but be sure to share at least once on the main platforms, you never know who is looking. For a personal blog I find that Facebook works really well, for my recruitment blog it’s a toss-up between Twitter and LinkedIn. For our company blog, LinkedIn is the best channel – this is where you find business people hanging out.
9. Check your stats to see what type of content people actually search for (Google Analytics) and where people are sharing. These are the type of articles that you should be focusing on.
10. Enjoy blogging! Create a routine where you set aside maybe 30 minutes every day for creating content of some sort. You’ll find that not only are you teaching others about a topic, you’ll also learn lots yourself.
That’s it for me I think. If you’re coming over to London anytime soon or have friends here (which I am sure you do), check out Social Media London or come to a workshop sometime. Have a great evening and thank you Krystian for having me there virtually. Bye now!
Related: LinkedIn and Personal Branding Presentation at the Nordic Career Forum [Slides].