Social Media Questions For Wendy Piersall
This week Wendy Piersall steps into the interview chair as part of our ongoing series of interviewing the top people in the social media marketing space.
Over the past year Wendy’s has been busy expanding her blogging empire and increasing her visibility online. In addition to her main blog Wendy has also found the time to launch a second blog called Shoestring Smarts and she also has a site on Entrepreneur.com called Inspired Business Growth.
Wendy, your blog has really taken off over the last twelve months Can you tell me about your decision to launch a blog
Honestly, I did it on a whim, purely because it sounded intriguing and I knew it would be good for SEO purposes. I had NO IDEA what I was getting into, how big it would become, and that it would hijack all of my other online marketing plans!
Since I had a good amount of experience being a work at home mom, I just kind of figured there would be a few other moms out there interested in my entrepreneurial experiences.
Hundreds of thousands of mom and dad visitors later, I guess I was right. 
How has your blog helped you promote yourself as an expert on working from you and being a female entrepreneur?
Since blogs are such a conversation medium, I think people have really appreciated the fact that I write with an honest and authentic voice. It has enabled me to build a lot of trust and a good following in a niche that is riddled with scams. I’m also quite transparent about my shortcomings and my growth challenges, which I do on purpose. I believe it helps my readers, especially women, realize that if I can do it, they can too.
But the success just tends to build on itself now, which makes it a little easier to promote myself and the site as a whole. The visibility of the blog has helped to land other great promotional opportunities, such as writing for Entrepreneur.com and speaking engagements – which again, work to grow the business further.
You have built up a sizeable reader and subscriber base Wendy. What tactics have you used to being visitors to your site?
Social networking and social media have been extremely important to the site growth – arguably the most important of all. There is always a fine line between obnoxious and elegant self-promotion, though. I will sometimes forgo some promotional opportunities if they come off as spammy, yet I know I promote myself and my site more than most people do. Either way, it takes constant work to maintain and grow traffic and readership.
You web site has felt the impact of successful social media campaigns Wendy. What social media tools or tactics have you used? What works? What doesn’t work?
I do a small amount of self-promotion around my best content, including seeding social media sites with submissions. But even though I know enough people to Digg me to the front page, I would never go that route – for one, it breaks trust and I also think it violates the social media communities. I’d rather the content succeed or fail on its own merits.
On my site, it is important to make social bookmarking icons and voting buttons easy to see and prominent. I use FeedBurner’s FeedFlares prominently to show off votes, which gives a level of social proof to the popularity of top content – and also encourages more votes.
What are some of the opportunities in social media that you see that marketers are not taking advantage of?
Honestly, I can’t believe how few businesses are jumping into social media – even blogging.
The Marketing “rules” have changed over the last year or two. If companies want to skip social media and are waiting for “what’s next”, they will be even more behind the ball when “next” arrives, because the next thing will grow out of social media.
What new social media tactics do you see trying in next 12 months?
I would really like to experiment with finding some kind of cross between a forum and a blog. Blogs tend to build community around the author, and I would really like to broaden the community on my site to help my readers connect more directly with each other. I haven’t found anything like this yet, I may have to bite the bullet and just build it on my own!
Which SMO techniques that you think are wastes of time?
Personally, I think trying to get every single article or post to the front page of every social bookmarking site is a waste of time. I think it’s kind of like the “boy who cried wolf” syndrome.
Tell me about the most successful campaign you have seen in SMO?
I recently decided to do some SEO around a very competitive term – I optimized my site for the term, then spent hours on a fantastic post written specifically to raise my rank for it. I purposefully left most affiliate links out of the post to ensure it would be well received, and it was very popular on several social media sites.
The combo of the optimization and the social media popularity have been responsible for a 55%+ increase in search traffic to my site in less than 2 weeks time, and honestly, without the social media part, I think it would have been more like 5%.
Tell me about the biggest blunder you’ve seen in SMO?
Pretty much already covered – either doing it too much or not enough. It’s a critical component to online success these days, but don’t overdo it.
Filed under Brand Marketing, Interviews, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (7) : Sep 3rd, 2007
September 3rd, 2007 at 7:23 am
Great interview, Wendy is a great woman!
This series has really gone well David
September 3rd, 2007 at 8:03 am
[…] Wendy Piersall […]
September 3rd, 2007 at 9:53 am
Submitted to Sphinn, already has 5 votes
September 3rd, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Thanx for doing that Glen. I wondered where all the traffic came from on this holiday Monday and then I saw the post on Sphinn.
David
September 4th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Nice interview! Wendy is one smart woman and a truly great person, too. She has become successful through honesty, hard work and being nice to people - we should all follow her lead.
September 7th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
[…] I was just looking through my feeds for an interview with Wendy Piersall and thinking for the millionth time “I wish Google Reader had a search feature.” […]
October 1st, 2007 at 5:33 am
[…] Social Media Questions For Wendy Piersall […]