Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research

10 Tips MR Blogger Tips & Interview with MRIA’s Vue Magazine

In an interview with Canada’s MRIA for this month’s issue of Vue Magazine they asked me if I could provide some tips for aspiring marketing research bloggers. If interested you can read the rest of the interview about why I blog etc. below. As for the ten tips here goes. Let me know what you think.

Tom’s NGMR Top-Ten Blogging Tips

1. Just Do It! If you’ve thought about it, force yourself to try blogging. Blogging is a great way to build your individual brand or to help your companies in branding (our blog regularly receives twice to four times the amount of traffic that our website does). It gets easier as you go. Give yourself eight weeks. If you don’t like it, at least you tried.
2. Don’t worry too much about topic or content. After a few posts, you’ll probably naturally start finding your voice, and your topics will eventually become more focused.
3. Try or experiment with different topics and titles. It’s hard to know ahead of time what kinds of posts will generate a lot of traffic.
4. Write as inspiration hits. Blogging is supposed to be off the cuff. If you take it too seriously, like work, it won’t happen. Don’t worry about what others think.
5. Try to commit to posting about once a week. But don’t feel you need to stick to any rigid schedule.
6. Expect to share. You need to share more than you probably feel comfortable with initially. If you’re not willing to open up and take chances, your stuff is likely to be very boring, both for you and your reader.
7. It’s all about search engine optimization in the end. Just like the saying that one luxury product goes well with other luxury products, so one social medium goes well with other social media. Expect to cross-promote your posts via other channels, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. It’s very much about traffic, followers, etcetera. Anyone who tells you otherwise is being dishonest.
8. Purpose and repurpose. Don’t worry too much about duplication of content. There will be a certain amount of unique reach on each social media channel you use - your website, Twitter, Facebook, etcetera - and there’s something to be said for frequency as well, right? So don’t be afraid to use and re-use items. For instance, if you send an e-card to your customers via email, consider posting it on your blog as well. News releases over the wire? Why not put them up on the blog as well?
9. Collaborate. Blogging is a great way to network and collaborate with others. Interviews are one of many great ways to do this. Interviewing another blogger usually will mean that blogger will back-link and help drive additional eyeballs to your blog. Interviews are fun, and easier to do than you think.
10. Don’t take it too seriously. A surefire way to guarantee that your blogging effort will fail is to take it too seriously. Agonizing and editing posts not only makes blogging more difficult, but it ensures that whatever you blog about will be boring as hell. Just have fun!

Interview with MRIA Vue Magazine

What do running a successful market research business and maintaining one the Internet’s most visited market research (MR) blog have in common? If you’re Tom H. C. Anderson, you know the answer: Everything.

Tom’s firm, Anderson Analytics, uses text analytics capabilities in social media to analyze public online communities and digital word of mouth. But he doesn’t stop there: Tom insists on practicing what he preaches. His blog (tomhcanderson.com) is the most trafficked personal blog dedicated to market research - in terms of both overall traffic and unique monthly visitors. He tweets under three accounts: Under @InfoAdvantage, he shares news regarding Anderson Analytics. Under @OffshoreTrans, he shares news related to the Foundation for Transparency in Offshoring, which he founded in 2009. Under his personal account @TomHCAnderson, he shares information on market research in general. On social networking, Tom has been very active founding and moderating the market research networking group, Next Gen Market Research (NGMR).

Coinciding with his appearance at Net Gain 5.0 this past January, Tom welcomed the opportunity to connect with Vue readers and share his experience gaining influence online. He also offers ten tips for any aspiring market research bloggers.

Vue: What came first: the blog, or the business? When did you make the decision to commit to blogging?

TomHCA: I founded Anderson Analytics in 2005 but didn’t start blogging until late 2007. I actually didn’t have any plans to be a blogger when I started. I didn’t think I had anything to write about and didn’t think anyone would want to read it.

Because I had founded Anderson Analytics to leverage NLP (natural language processing a type of text analytics) in traditional market research, by 2006 we had moved on from analysing survey open ends to also indexing and conducting in-depth content analysis of online discussion boards and blogs. I felt my view of blogging would be lopsided if I didn’t give it a try and see it from the blogger’s perspective. So, initially, it was really more for me - to simply understand the mechanics etcetera.

In a very short period of time, though, I noticed the blog (tomhcanderson.com) was getting more than twice the web traffic that our company site (andersonanalytics.com) was getting. The company site had been around for three years longer and had paid advertising! So I decided I had better continue to blog.

Vue: What have been the main benefits to maintaining your MR blog? Have there been any surprising or unintended consequences?

Sure, all kinds. The main and initial benefit was that it generated excellent SEO (search engine optimization) and traffic for our site in Google, etcetera. We started getting calls from clients who had read a blog entry about something I had written on customer segmentation or text analytics. And of course these calls ended up leading to business from clients.

I still recall the first project that we landed because someone had read one of my blog posts; it was a segmentation study for Babson College.

Anyway, beyond that, it’s been a great way to help me network and build relationships. I’ve met and had the chance to talk to interesting people like Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki as a result.

With the possible exception of my industry speaking gigs, I find a good social media strategy can save me time and money, because it allows me to get to know customers without having to travel all over the country and the world.

Vue: How do you typically choose topics and plan content?

TomHCA: I don’t really do much planning. The blog, while important, is only one small part of the overall social media strategy, so I really can’t devote as much time to the blog as I’d actually like. Sometimes, I’ll have an idea about a blog post, but I’ll end up discussing the idea in the NGMR group I moderate on LinkedIn, instead. Not that I couldn’t post about the topic on the blog after that as well, but by that time I often feel I’ve used up the time I’ve allocated to social media for the day.

If you’re not careful, social media can eat up a lot of your time. It’s fun, but I have to remind myself that it’s just one small part of the business. But it certainly is a very effective marketing and PR tool.

Vue: How do you personally measure the success of a post? Is it by traffic, number of comments, or the potential to generate a business lead?

TomHCA: I would say all of the above, but mainly traffic. According to services like Compete.com, Alexa, etcetera, I believe it’s still the most trafficked personal blog related to market research.

It’s sometimes hard to tell ahead of time what kind of post will generate interest. Some posts, while generating a lot of traffic, don’t generate a lot of comments. This is the case if the post is more informational. Controversial posts usually do a good job of doing both. Often, the ones that generate business will be more specific and sometimes not generate much traffic or comment. So it’s a mix, with traffic being most important. If you get a lot of traffic, the blog overall performs better in Google, etcetera. And even those posts that aren’t very popular, but which might be interesting to the client looking for specific info, are also more likely to be found.

Vue: What advice would you give to aspiring MR bloggers? Do you have a top-ten list?

TomHCA: Great idea. Any top-ten or top-five list usually generates a lot of traffic. Here are a few top-of-mind that, hopefully, someone will find useful. [See list above]

[Tom Anderson, MBA, MEcon, is the founder of Anderson Analytics and Next Gen Market Research. In 2010, the American Marketing Association named him one of the industry's "Four under 40" market research leaders. A recognized authority on social media, Tom lectures regularly at universities and industry conferences, and is published widely in trade journals and decision science publications. You can contact him at Anderson Analytics or find him on Twitter