On Point with Peter van Aartrijk and Rick Morgan, Episode 18: Blogging Tips & Other Online Ideas

On Point with Peter van Aartrijk and Rick Morgan is an audio conversation with insurance industry leaders who champion change and challenge all of us to think.

Social media expert Amber Naslund is Director of Community for Radian6. Her job is to steward the Radian6 brand on the social Web—monitoring what the community is saying about company.

There’s no perfectly right way to blog, Naslund says. “I tell people if they are going to start blogging, it is kind of a commitment; something that will take some time.” Blogging a couple of times a week should keep you in the habit, she says. Her blog is Altitude Branding.

Set expectations for your audience so they can rely on steady information, she says. “The beautiful thing about blogging is that it can be a little bit messy; it doesn’t have to be perfect. It can be an evolution of ideas. Blogs are an opportunity to share all types of things, like videos—it’s not always about creating new content.”

Consumer expectations have shifted with social media, she says. People expect companies to be more responsive. But at the same time, old values implemented into new technology—like treating your customers well—and social media has given businesses ways to meet expectations of customers faster and easier then ever before.

Yet, it can be “very scary” for a business to have transparency, she says. “Open up dialogue inside the company. Pay attention to the larger dialogue in social media doing searches on Google or socialmention.com. You need to have rules and frameworks, but it’s more about trusting your employees.”

The very nature of the online world is that it is evolutionary, Naslund says. “The location-based stuff is really popular. I also think that we will see more exclusive networking sites, ones that are smaller and more niche.”

Naslund offers two free e-books at Altitude Branding. Other contact sites: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

The podcast was published Monday, April 26, 2010. Run time is 27 minutes 54 seconds.

Be Sociable, Share!

•