Most businesses feel a bit overwhelmed when it comes to finding or creating content to use in regular updates on social media channels or on a company blog.

“What do I say?” they ask.

“Say something that your customer (or potential customer) will find useful and valuable,” I tell them.

“I don’t have time to blog…so where do I find something useful and valuable to share?” they ask.

“Google is your friend,” I tell them.

If you’ve never used Google Alerts before, you’re in for a real treat. My clients are always amazed at this tool when I show it to them. Google is everywhere. Google sees all. Google knows all. So if you need something good to share, just ask Google. Here’s how it works:

1. Go to www.google.com/alerts
2. Type in a keyword you want to search [and you'll automatically see recent posts that include your keyword appear on the page]
3. Determine the type of content you want to find. Maybe you only want “News” posts or you’re looking specifically for “Blogs” talking about your keyword. You might want to start out looking at “Everything” just to see what kind of alerts you get. You may find that it’s too broad, or it may be just right for what you need.
4. Decide how often you want to be alerted. I’d recommend starting out with once a week [or else you might get a little overwhelmed]. Remember, there are millions of pages of content on the Internet, and Google will happily point you to them all day long if you want. But, if you’re trying to run your business, you might not have time to read Google alerts all day!
5. Determine the volume you’d like to receive. I recommend selecting “Only the best results” so that you’re getting the most refined list possible.
6. Give Google the email address where you’d like these alerts sent
7. Click “Create Alert” and watch the magic of Google deliver happiness into your inbox!

A few things to keep in mind… You don’t want to send your customers to your competitor’s websites for great content. So make sure you pay attention to the sources of the content you find that you want to share. Ultimately, you might begin to see the value of creating your own content so you can constantly be pointing people back to your website instead of someone else’s! [Did you know VOD can help with blog or article writing?] Also, remember that Google is not necessarily all-powerful enough to determine what is fact and what is fiction…so check your facts. Make sure the content you’re sharing is credible and useful for people. You don’t want to be the one who sends them down the wrong path.

If you set up your alerts and you still don’t know how to make it all work into a social media strategy that actually engages people, give me a shout. We can help!

It’s not very often that we brag about work we’ve done here at VOD, but we recently helped create a promo video for a new cleaning product, and we’re pretty excited about it. Not only is the product itself intriguing to me, personally, but I loved every part of the process of writing the script, working with the designers/developers on storyboards and art direction, and providing the voiceover work for the video [me as the narrator, and our intern Shawn, who makes a cameo as "Annie" in the video].

Check out the video and let us know what you think. In case you’re interested, we work with a number of very talented filmmakers and motion graphic video geniuses, so if you have a need for any kind of video to promote your business, your product, or just give your customers something fun to watch, let us know and we’ll see what kind of magic we can create for you!

The good folks at WordPress have challenged everyone with a WP blog to post something daily, or at least weekly in 2011. Well, I’m always up for a good challenge…so here is the first official post of 2011. Only 51 more to go! [I'm being completely realistic here. There's no way I'd get a post a day in here!]

Of course the challenge of a regular blog post is to offer something substantive, worth reading, and well, not crap. Thankfully, one of the most prolific and insightful bloggers out there has a few tips that will help me [and hopefully help you, too, as your figure out your blog strategy for this year].

So to kick off your blogging year, make sure you know the two most important words in blogging: YOU and BECAUSE. Make sure when you’re blogging to connect with existing customers, potential customers, fans, etc., that you are addressing their most important needs. What do you have to offer them that will truly benefit them? And if you want to motivate them to some sort of action, you have to give them a compelling reason why they should.

I’m beyond excited to tell you about a new ebook that I had the privilege of contributing to, along with several other amazing people. If I Would Have Known Just One Thing is the brainchild of Shane Mac (aka @shanemacsays). In this free ebook, 30 leaders share one thing they wish they would have known…anything from the one thing they wish they knew when they started in business, to one thing they wish they’d known during a specific experience in their careers.

As a storyteller, I connected with the vision of the concept and jumped at the chance to be part of it. I love the idea of 30 people from all walks of life sharing the lessons they’ve learned along whatever path they’ve been on; and I love the fact that no matter who you are or where you’re heading, there’s something of value to be found in other people’s stories. So you should definitely check out the ebook and tell your friends about it. It’s really easy to share the whole thing or tweet specific pages if you find one you think your friends would resonate with.

If you don’t know Shane Mac, you should. I met him through another Twitter friend, Andrew, aka @wordpost (another contributor to the ebook, and also a really cool guy), and both Shane and Andrew are the kind of people you find on Twitter who go beyond simply tweeting at people. They both engaged in conversations with me and have been a source of encouragement and help when I needed it.

So make sure you check out my story from the ebook, and pass the whole thing on to your friends!

So I sat down today to write a stellar post about something or other… (It will be stellar, when it gets finished!) The problem is that I got so distracted today by a bunch of tweets with links to compelling articles about writing. So rather than actually writing what I had been thinking about, I spent half the day reading what other people said about writing. And they had some good stuff to say. For example:

Chris Brogan wrote about “The Writing Practice“: I’m writing this to you while I’m waiting for someone to get some webinar software rebooted. I find time like this everywhere.

Copyblogger had a post, “How to Blog Like Shakespeare“: I want to be clear that writing for each of your audiences is not the same thing as trying to write for everybody. Writing for your different audiences isn’t the same thing as writing for Wikipedia.

And again, on Copyblogger, “37 Seconds to Great Storytelling“: We tell you about the power of stories quite a bit. And now we’re able to see what happens in our brains when we encounter a compelling story. But how do you learn to tell these types of stories? Often, just by studying great ones.

So, I have been stretched, encouraged, and challenged by these posts today. And, at the very least, I got this blog post written. Hopefully their words will encourage you as well. I know I have some writing to do…

[photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenorton/ / CC BY 2.0]