Sansone’s Way: The First 20 Days (Pt. 1)

By on May 26, 2009 in Blog Coach, Education, RSS Feeds, Social Media with 1 Comment

A lot of folks ask me if I have a schedule or lesson plan for clients. Below is a guideline of the beginning half of our First 20 days (adapted from Fountas & Pinnell's Guiding Readers & Writers)

Day Mini-Lesson Goal/Purpose Learning Outcome Task/Tool Benchmark

.1

 Purpose Driven Social Media Determine the purpose of engagement and the categories of messages Decide who the core audience is, which categories can be written about at least three times each month Pen and Paper; Storyboarding w/ Post-its Define between 6-8 categories, the core audience of engagement; three fringe fields

.2

 Blogging: Easy as Email Get used to the blogware by crafting practice posts Learn how to Talk Write and create a compelling Title Blogware (Typepad or WordPress) 5 practice posts in the next five days (not all five at once)
3 Listening to the Blogosphere Get in the habit of reading RSS feeds relevant to their interest/field Learn how to thin-slice a blog, decide whether to subscribe. Learn how to Skim, Scan and Save important posts Google Reader Subscribe to 10 blogs over next 5 days
4 Commenting on posts To extend our voice, engage in the conversation and create interest; tracking our conversation What makes a relevant comment; why one should comment elsewhere, how long should a comment be BackType, Disqus Comment on min. 5 posts per week (at least 5 different sites)
5 Blog Posting Mantra To craft a post that includes at least one link out and plenty of eye rests Learn how to find relevant posts to link to and images that punctuate the post; Creative Commons Google Blog Search; Flickr; Compfight At least one link out every post; at least two eye rests
6 Embedding Use of third party tools to use in blog posts Learn how to embed videos, slideshows, and documents within a post YouTube, SlideShare, Scribd Successfully embed a video or presentation into a post
7 Bookstore To catch a glimpse of why there's always room for another good voice; notice trends; look at which headlines sell; recognize value in different genres An open mind to new possibilities; think of your blog as a book rather than a journal Barnes & Noble or Borders Pick up a copy of either Purple Cow, Greater Than Yourself, Who's Got Your Back or Think Big Manifesto
8 Search Once & Subscribe Using search phrases, especially with a personal pronoun, to find relevant posts and bloggers. RSS=More knowledge in less time. Always know when someone talks about you and what's important to you. Google Blog Search (with a hint at other social networks for future use) Subscribe to searches on your name, brand and product or service and at least two relevant queries
9 Twitter Basics Guidelines of engagement using 70-20-10 as a compass; use of RT, @, and # syntax; Following other "tweeps" Being a resource to the Twitter conversation. Not about "What are you doing?" but rather "What are you adding to the mix?" Twitter; Twellow Min. 20 tweets in the next 5 days with 70-20-10 as guide.
10 Twitter Intermediate Finding relevant conversations on Twitter. Skim, Scan, Save & Share using Favorites Using the Search Once & Subscribe for Twitter; tracking conversations, merging RSS reading with Twitter conversations BackTweets, Twitter Search Starting to get your "tweets" RT'd

Notice that blogging, commenting, and reading feeds comes first. We don't start with Twitter, though many want to because of the presumed instant gratification. Blogging is the foundation of your social media footprint.

One over-arching theme is time management. We look at maximum 15-20 minutes with each tool use and need to build up (down?) to that time frame for each tool.

By the time the First 20 Days is done, we'll have Blogging, RSS Feeds, Commenting, Twitter, Slideshare, Social Network (Facebook, Ning, or LinkedIn), and Social Bookmarking in our quiver.

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