Penn Olson recently ran a story about The Big Social Media Marketing Plan, which featured the above diagram. As you can see, content is central to the social media strategy, encouraging engagement and communication. Willis Wee, who penned the post, created the infographic to help those who are new to social media marketing develop a suitable strategy.

Content is key

Knowing the tools is great, but if you don’t have the high-quality content to back it up, you’re unlikely to be successful. Editorial that your community can sink its teeth into lies at the heart of your social media strategy. You can see that the community here are putting in as much as they are getting out and the most engaged and “noisy” of those will act as your brand ambassadors.

It’s also worth noting that without that unique editorial web content, you have a lot less to feed out to your social networks. Being active online isn’t just about making as much noise as possible — even your most faithful followers will tune you out eventually — it’s about working to excite and enthuse your key influentials so they feel they’re getting something out of the relationship.

Want to know more? Keep an eye out for the announcement of dates for our Miramus Secrets of Blogging Success Workshops, We only run them from time to time, so you’ll need to snap up a place quickly!

Recommended Reading:

Want 55% more visitors to your company site? Some pretty amazing stats from Hubspot analysing over 1000 companies. Upshot? Companies with editorial content performed significantly better than those without.
Blogging and social media marketing. Original content is key to success CEOs are recognising the need for original content — 85% say it’s key to success.
Search Engine Optimization Guide for Beginners – Content is King [Article Intelligence] A really helpful, simple explanation of why editorial content on your site is so important for your search results.

Source: [Penn Olson]

Being a blogger can be a bit of a juggling act, involving constant switching between your To Do list, blog reader, email and assorted gadgets. So it’s nice to have them all in one place on iGoogle.

On gadgets site Dork Adore recently we rounded up 15 of the best iGoogle gadgets for bloggers to help you get organised, improve your SEO and indulge in a bit of procrastination.

Read: 15 of the best iGoogle gadgets for bloggers

Check out all our Blogging Tools on Miramus

Recommended reading:

How to write a company blog – Blogging for business doesn’t have to be dull. Read our advice and get started!

Blogging tools for Firefox Must-have add-ons for bloggers using Firefox. If you’re blogging you need these amazing (and free) time-saving tools!

Blogger Vs WordPress. Which blogging CMS is the best? Everyone talks about WordPress, but can Blogger compete?

Over on Dork Adore we’ve been lucky enough to have several guest bloggers sharing their favourite tips. Recently, Darika Ahrens shared her favourite tools for broadcasting your content on the web, whether it be a slideshow (check out our recent slideshow in the post Blogging for your business), phlogging, music or screencasting.

How to broadcast yourself on the web

Productivity Tools

Darika also shared some handy tips for sites that bloggers and web geeks can use to steamline their lives, both in and our of work.

Best tools for Getting Things Done. Pt I: Work

Best tools for Getting Things Done. Pt II: Life

Recommended Reading:

Blogging tools for Firefox Must-have add-ons for bloggers using Firefox.
How to write a company blog Blogging for your business? Read our guide.
Blogger Vs WordPress. Which blogging CMS is the best?

Wordpress or Blogger?

Confused about all the different blog publishing options? It’s a tricky decision to make, and completely dependent on your personal requirements and plans.

Over on Miramus Gadgets for Girls site, Dork Adore, we’ve put together a handy guide for the pros and cons of WordPress and Blogger, the two leading free blogging platforms.

Choosing your CMS

The post, Blogger vs. WordPress, should hopefully help you make the decision on the best blog service for your personal or company blog.

And don’t forget, Miramus can take the stress out of the decision for you. We offer outsource blog writing services, acting as your web content generator — and even building your business blog for you.

Find out more about our blog writing services.

Recommended Reading:
Miramus Frequently Asked Questions. The place to go if you’ve got a question about our blog writing services or blog training.
Blogging tools for Firefox users If you write a blog and you use Firefox, these add-ons will make your life SO MUCH easier.

[Image: Endunham]

Still unsure about the future of blogging for your business? A recent survey by eMarketer.com shows a huge shift towards the social media practice in the US, with 43% of businesses expected to be blogging by 2012 — almost half the market.

While personal blogging has seen a decline thanks to micro-blogging sites like Twitter, business blogging has seen a surge in popularity. Businesses are embracing blogging as it can suit the needs of their customers who refuse to tweet and shun Facebook, whilst improving their customer service and Google page ranking.

It certainly helps that marketers and PRs identify blogging as the most effective way of spreading news of their products and services, in particular in creating and launching virals.

Considering how quickly the UK tends to follow the lead of our friends over the pond, we’re likely to see similar statistics over here.

So the question isn’t really whether you should blog, rather can you afford not to? If your competition is optimising their target market with a blog filled with high quality SEO content, can you really justify not doing the same? This is particularly relevant to SMEs, who are the leading the pack when it comes to blogging.

Don’t forget you can find out more about business blogging and see some great case studies on the Miramus “Why Your Business Needs a Blog” presentation [4:28, needs audio]

Related: Blogging and social media marketing. Original content is key to success

Find the rest of the report on eMarketer.com