Back in March 2012, I started an interview section on my blog where each week I featured men and women bloggers in the spotlight. I never realized how much fun it would be showcasing other bloggers and introducing you to people who have affected my blog experience. I wanted to start this section up again and start this week off with Carol Lynn Rivera from WebSearchSocial.com.

Please introduce yourself and tell us about your blog?

My name is Carol Lynn and I blog at websearchsocial.com. It’s a marketing blog focused on web, search and social marketing but since we run a marketing company, we also share information about branding, design, writing and other related topics.

What most influenced you to launch your business?

My marketing business (Rahvalor Interactive) launched nearly 15 years ago when my husband and I were at a career crossroads. He was working in the marketing and web department for a company that went out of business so he needed to find another job. I was a teacher at the time and was ready for a change. We were feeling entrepreneurial, we both had experience with marketing in different arenas, and we had the freedom to take the risk, so we did!

We were mostly influenced by the fact that we no longer wanted to rely on someone else for a paycheck. We wanted the freedom to make our own rules, be good at what we did, and work for ourselves.

As for our blog, we want to be a resource where people can get really good information and actionable ideas, and feel comfortable sharing their own stories and asking questions. We started with our company blog but rebranded a little over a year ago as a marketing magazine so that we could reach and help more people. We currently have four regular writers who bring their experiences in writing, business and marketing from different perspectives.

We were influenced to do it by a lot of the bad companies out there and the bad experiences our clients were having before they came to us. We wanted to mitigate that and help educate people to make better marketing decisions.

What is the biggest challenge you have faced so far with your blog?

Time! Blogging isn’t my full-time job though sometimes it feels like it! There’s a lot more to it than thinking of what to write next. We have to write it well, which sometimes means research and usually a lot of editing.

Then we have to get it formatted nicely, find the photos, do the SEO work. Then once a post is published we’ve got to promote it. That means being active on social networks because you can’t just throw a link out and expect traffic to come.

I spend at least as much time reading and commenting on other blogs as I do writing and promoting my own. So that’s like three jobs now!

There’s a lot I want to do with my blog that I haven’t had time to do the way I want to. So juggling everything and making sure we’re consistent has been a big challenge.

What role do social media play in your blogging life?

It’s huge. I honestly can’t imagine how we’d get traffic or traction without it. Can you imagine just relying on a Google search for people to find your blog?

We promote everywhere we possibly can. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr, LinkedIn, you name it. I’ve joined blogging groups on Facebook and Google+. I also take part in a Word Carnival.

Triberr has been a tremendous asset. I can look at my Google analytics and tell you exactly the day I joined because there’s an uphill trend in traffic that’s been priceless.

I also find and use whatever other networks I can, like Blokube, Blog Interact and Inbound.

How has blogging affected your career?

It’s made it very busy!

I would say that we’ve built up a level of credibility with our clients and prospects that helps close deals and move jobs forward. Our blog itself isn’t a direct source of revenue – yet! – but it’s been good for our reputation and business. People will come to us and quote something we said in a post and that starts a whole conversation. We’ve built some good working relationships that way.

What advice would you give to aspiring bloggers?

You have to be committed.

Lately it seems like everyone is telling you that you have to blog. That the only way to really make money or build a reputation or grow your business is to blog. Well, that may be true but you can’t just “start a blog” and wait to be successful.

You have to be committed to blogging and to making it work. That means writing, which a lot of people aren’t entirely comfortable with. If that’s you, then you’re going to need to learn. You have to be committed to learning to write well.
It means thinking and editing, not just typing something out at midnight before a deadline and hitting publish. There are a ton of blogs out there. If yours isn’t up to par then people have plenty of other options. You have to be committed to respecting your readers’ time and giving them what they need.

It means research. You can’t possibly know everything about your topic so you have to keep learning. You have to read what other people in your industry are saying so you can fill in the gaps or join the fray. You have to be committed to always giving the best and being the best.

It means promoting. There’s no way your blog will get anywhere unless you’re actively promoting it. But you also have to be careful that you don’t become some annoying spammer just sending out blog links, so that means networking and building relationships. That all takes time and commitment.

You have to be committed to trying new things. We’ve tried different layouts, different email sign ups, different sidebars, different promotions. You can’t keep doing the same thing and hope it will work someday. You always have to look for new ideas.

You have to be committed to waiting. Blogs are a dime a dozen. You may be awesome and unique but people only have so much time in a day to process everything. So they’re more likely to visit the blogs they know rather than look for new ones they don’t. Some days it feels like you’re running uphill and you’ll wonder why you’re not getting more traffic or more subscribers when you’re putting so much effort into it. That’s just going to happen so when it does, commit to keep going.

What aspect of social media has helped your business?

The fact that there are so many opportunities is the best part of social media. Some people say “find the networks you’re most comfortable with and use those.” I say “use them all!” Why not? You wrote the blog post. You’re already putting effort into promoting it. So why not do it in as many places as possible?

No, you can’t be totally involved in every conceivable place but you don’t have to be. I have my favorites, where I connect with people best, but that doesn’t mean I can’t stop in on other networks and share there, too. You don’t have to be best friends with everyone on every network just to share a blog link now and then. Grow your favorites but use all the options available to you. If your content is good, people will appreciate it.

What would you say is the single biggest reason for your success?

Well, not to sound like a broken record, but if it wasn’t for the networks I’ve built, I don’t think we’d have a fraction of the traffic we do now. So I guess you could say it’s the relationships. There are people I can count on to visit and share my posts because we’ve gotten to know each other and we help each other. My success comes thanks to other people.

And I know you said “single reason” so this is cheating, but I wanted to add that we also owe it to being completely committed. We never throw junk out there and always aim for something valuable. If we were publishing junk, there’s no legitimate network on the planet that would help us promote it!

If you could step back in time to when you were just starting out, what advice would you give yourself knowing what you know now?

It’s probably a good thing I can’t go back because I would tell myself to plan better. Ironically I think that also would have hurt me because I would have spent a lot more time planning and a lot less time doing!

But I think a little extra time to figure out what we were doing would have been good. We started blogging with no plan at all. We just did it. A year ago when we took off in a new direction, we put everything together over the Christmas holiday week and relaunched on January 1^st. That wasn’t a lot of time to decide how we wanted to approach list building, email marketing, promotion, product releases.

It took me a year before I started using an editorial calendar! That’s been a life saver, and I wonder, if I had done that a year ago, how much easier would it have been?

So my advice would be: make a basic plan for how you want to publish and promote your blog. But don’t plan too much because you have to start!

Do you have any big projects in the works?

I am planning two eBooks, one of which I really wanted to get out in February but that time thing got in the way! One is about building a website that matters to your business. It’s a conceptual book about how to plan it, how to create the right kind of content and the small details you should be paying attention to.

The second is about how to plan a “big picture” marketing strategy. I find that’s one of the big gaps in content. There’s a lot of information about how to use one social channel or another, how to write a good blog post, how to write a good email, but not a lot on putting it all together and making it work for your business.

The first is nearly done. When it’s ready, it will be available for download on my blog – free if you’re on my email list!

The second is just started but I plan to crowd source some of it. I want to find out what people really want to know and what questions they have that aren’t being answered. It’s a research work in progress and if anyone reading this has any burning questions to ask, I’d love to hear them!

What websites do you visit most?

I visit a bunch of the big hitters in the marketing industry to see what they’re up to, what they’re writing about and also to learn from them. The Sales Lion, Social Media Examiner, Content Marketing Institute, Chris Brogan, Duct Tape Marketing – these are all “must be” places if you want to learn or be inspired in your business. There are so many more but those are my top five. For now. Ask me in ten minutes and I’ll probably have five more!

What is the best way for our readers to learn more about you or contact you for more information?

Anyone can contact me through my blog. The contact form comes to me and I email back anyone who sends a message. I’m also on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

I enjoy meeting new people and I’m always on the lookout for things to write about that really matter to people so your readers are more than welcome to connect with me and share their thoughts and frustrations or ask questions!

And I just want to say thank you for having me, Sonia. I’ve always found your blog to be a source of inspiration so being in a spotlight here is awesome!

Thank you Carol for being a part of this series. You have been a great friend and support to this blog.