Hey readers, today we have continued The Blogging Interview series and published the interview with Mike Allton. Mike Allton is a talented blogger and author, he is also known as the social media manager. Mike has worked with many businesses and improved their strategies. He uses social media and SEO to drive traffic, generate leads and then sales.
He has more than 188,000 followers on Google+. Yes, this a great sum which explains his skills. Now, I think we should move to this interview. So, why are you waiting for?
Interview With Mike Allton
1. Welcome to Blogging House Mike. Thanks again for taking this interview. First of all, please tell us about yourself and how did you started.
My pleasure! I started blogging in 2007 when I moved to St. Louis and started working for myself. At the time, I was doing business development and website development, but found that I had a real interest in writing about Social Media, SEO, Technology, and blogging in general.
Unfortunately, those topics were not well positioned to support my business goals, so I started a new site and blog in 2012 called The Social Media Hat. It was designed to be an ad-supported portal of information, where I could also recommend products and offer services.
That turned out to be a far better direction and a very positive pivot. I have since been able to leverage my expertise into a full-time position with SiteSell as their Chief Marketing Officer. I still maintain The Social Media Hat since I love to blog!
2. The Social Media Hat shows your hard work, what is the best strategy you have done to make this?
I blogged. A lot. During the height of my publishing schedule in 2013, I would publish new blog posts 6 – 14 times per week. It wasn’t unheard of for me to publish 3 – 4 times per day, some days, if there was a lot going on. I put systems and processes in place to help me keep up with industry news, and then I wrote about it. Social network changes, app updates, new ideas… anything I could find that was interesting to me.
I then leveraged all of that content to drive social media activity and engagement.
Other businesses and bloggers should take from that the importance of maintaining a constant publishing schedule. If it’s less often than mine, that’s OK, as long as one realizes the rate of growth will simply be slower.
3. For increasing traffic, what do you think about advertising?
I think advertising is a great method for increasing traffic, particular using Facebook. The ability to reach a very targeted audience, at a very affordable rate, is unparalleled.
I’m also a huge fan of using Triberr’s promoted posts.
Related Post: Top 100 Bloggers On Triberr
4. As you have worked with many businesses, what is the major mistake most businesses make?
I’m not sure there’s a single, major mistake, but there are certainly lots of mistakes that lots of businesses make.
One that I see often is where businesses know they need to use social media, but don’t take the time to really consider how they can effectively use social media. Because it’s definitely not going to be broadcasting. It’s more likely influencer marketing or relationship building or something along those lines. But that takes time, both to discern and to implement and to gauge.
Patience is needed.
5. What do you do when you are not working? or what’s your hobby?
As I mentioned, I love to blog, so I really do write when I have “downtime” as it gives me a tremendous sense of accomplishment. Other than that, I have two beautiful young girls, so my evenings and weekends are spent chasing them around.
6. How did you get more than 188,000 followers on Google+? Don’t worry, our readers will keep it a secret 😛
This 100% goes back to that intense publishing schedule throughout 2013. I was blogging every day, and sharing those posts to Google+ using best practices (formatted posts, interesting commentary, hashtags, blog notification circle, etc.), and was developing a rabid following as a result. Also, at two different points, Google+ put me in one of their Recommended People circles so I was getting tons of new Google+ users – it helped that I was writing about Google+, to be sure.
7. On Triberr, your reach is more than 244M. How did you make so many connections with bloggers?
For Triberr, there’s been no secret sauce. I’ve simply been a power user on the network since its early days. I’ve regularly done Tribe searches and looked for new Tribes that are focused on marketing and business-related topics, and asked to join. Over time, I’ve been able to dramatically increase my Tribe membership and blogger connections.
The result is, quite frankly, amazing. Now, whenever I publish a new blog post, it gets tweeted out hundreds and hundreds of times, to audiences that are already specifically looking for content like mine.
8. Tell us about the three tools that you recommend.
My first go-to tool is Evernote. Evernote is how I keep track of and note every single blog post idea and topic. And it’s where I do the majority of my writing. Since I can use it on my laptop or iPhone or iPad, it’s everywhere that I am, allowing me to capture those ideas, no matter when they pop up.
Second is Feedly, or really any RSS reader so that I can subscribe to RSS feeds from peers and colleagues, as well as news and pressrooms. Want to know what Facebook is releasing so that you can blog about? Subscribe to their RSS feed! You’ll see every announcement as soon as it comes out, letting you be one of the first to write about it.
Third is SocialOomph, which I use to make sure that my Twitter feeds are constantly sharing from my archive of over 400 evergreen articles.
There are more tools, of course, and you can read about them, as well as everything else I do to promote a blog post, at http://www.thesocialmediahat.com/article/blog-promotionology-art-science-blog-promotion
9. What is your next plan?
I am collaborating with Jeff Sieh to create an online course for bloggers. After that, I’ll be working on my next book devoted to Content Marketing.
10. What is the blogging tip for us and how Blogging House readers can reach you?
My best blogging tip is to make sure that you’re doing everything you can to promote that great content and get more eyeballs on it. That’s why I’ve spent so much time developing that blog promotion checklist linked above.
You can find most of my writing at TheSocialMediaHat.com or SiteSell.com/Blog, and I’m most commonly found on Google+ at +MikeAllton or Twitter at @Mike_Allton.
Conclusion
Well, we are taking interviews of many bloggers but Mike is different among them. Mike Allton has many skills and experience of working with a lot of businesses. Anyhow, please share your views in comments.
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