Blogging is so passé. Create a lifestream media platform instead.

With well over 100 million blogs on the web, it is challenging to stand out. And as the blogosphere continues to expand how can you stand out and be heard above the noise? How can a large international Aid and Development organisation (re)launch online properly? Write great blog post headlines?

How does an NGO promote new content most effectively? Optimize blog content for search engines? How could a small local NPO get themselves heard? Emulate the best corporate blogs? Take advantage of free or low-cost blog tools and resources?

It’s time to (re)think your blog, this way: it’s a “lifestream” media platform.
Here’s how to make the most of it to build your influence while leveraging the influence, reach, and expertise of others in a real-time people-driven transformation.

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Lifestreaming Workflow by Steve Rubel

The world is moving toward an age of streams – right now, we are all expecting to inter­act online in an ever increasing streamlined man­ner. We are look­ing for the delivery of valu­able information of all types in a way that is seam­less from our point of view, so the con­tent for­mat is becom­ing irrel­e­vant while the exact meth­ods and platforms are an important choice. How can organisations better lever­age their delivery mech­a­nism to accentuate their con­tri­bu­tion to this ‘lifestreaming’ con­cept?

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About 221,000,000 results in Google for Infographics

Content consumption has changed.
With so many blogs, news websites, twitter feeds, aggregate sources (etc.) vying for attention that can’t possibly all be read, the kind of relationship that is now manageable, is one that delivers in small chunks. (Ever considered using infographics to simplify your data?)

Your stakeholder’s want faster, smaller, and definitely social.
We’re seeing a growth in the behaviors that social networks encourage: commenting, sharing, visual stimulus – because users get immediate feedback. Its easy to achieve social distribution and thousands of views very quickly through Google+’s Currents, Flipboard, Quora, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Pinterest, Focus and Linkedin Groups. Blogging struggles in this.

Provide value. Simple as that.
Social media is about engagement and relationships. Understand this and leverage your social listening skills by creating a “listening station” (Google Reader and HootSuite will do the trick) that will allow you to monitor social conversations happening—in real time—across the social web. Actively seek out relevant and targeted conversations and respond thoughtfully to comments to make personal connections with your stakeholders and identify influential voices.

Unique content is king.
Whats more passé than blogging? Auto-tweeting your blog headlines is. Appropriate social etiquette, and always striving to add value to the conversation is how you will make your content consumable in ways that your stakeholders expect (and that Google’s SEO algorithm likes*).

Where your “lifestream media platform” will flourish is with targeted subject matter written by experts to nurture mind share through thought-leadership. Don’t worry, engagement and participation will follow. (*In Google’s most recent Panda algorithm updates, attributes like content freshness and social signals have gained increased importance in search ranking.)

Launching  your “lifestream”:
I suggest that your “lifestream media platform” is hosted at Posterous. (It’s free) and a lot more social, than many of the other blogging platforms and has a list of supported autopost services that will automatically update your social networks. For your distribution efforts you will see that the overall impact from these platforms together is bigger than ever before, and also easier if you build it right. Posterous is a perfect solution that plays down the technical aspects of having a blog, and is ideal for focusing on the content. It works from a mobile device, email and handles formats beyond text.

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WordPress vs Posterous on Google

(Well yes, unfortunately, it’s not that easy! There are SEO limitations in the long run on Posterous, although it out performs WordPress initially, so I suggest having both platforms and autoposting from Posterous to WordPress.)

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Posterous

To do list:

• Create a format that sits somewhere between a blog and a tweet…
• Experiment with sharing your content on all of the relevant social networks where your stakeholders spend time.
• Rekindle your organisation’s creative side, explore new formats like mindmaps, infographics…
• Post smaller, but more frequently…
• Embed multimedia easily into your stream, like Soundcloud, Vimeo…
• Nurture natural curiosity, add narrative, storytelling, mystery…
• (To quote Posterous) foster great conversations…