Sometime in the past few years we all got caught up in social media's fast pace and free options and forgot the essential rule of any business interaction - you get what you pay for. A lot has been written recently (like here and here) about Facebook's decreasing reach for pages. Those of us who are active users have been seeing our organic reach shrivel and more overt pushes from facebook to pay to get in front of our carefully collected audiences. And so, all good things must come to an end. Whether they have to be monetized after going public or need to figure out a way to pay the bills, social media networks that begin free will almost always move to a pay to play format and therefore we must adapt. (If you are cringing here are some great resources on free things you can do here, here and here. )

What Does it Mean that it is the YEAR OF THE BLOG, and wasn't that 2003?

I've been coaching several clients over the last few months to refocus their marketing time on developing an awesome blog presence as part of an overall content marketing strategy. Most of them have never had or a blog or only use it to house their press releases. I've been advising them to craft content marketing maps funneling traffic from their social media outlets back to their blog. But why?

Own Your Content

Owning your Content means you house it. You may create it in instagram but you place it and promote it and link back to it on your blog. For some some organizations this is a no brainer, but most of us have turned away from our blogs in favor of easier to update twitter and facebook. Now is the time to turn back around.

Content Curation is great, but....

If you are consistently sharing other people's content than you are helping them win the internet game. Instead, take a few minutes to craft a short blog post with a picture or two and then post the picture with a link to your blog. This was if you get clicks, you own them.

Think of your blog as your Living Room

Make it cozy, declutter it, make it a place someone can snuggle down and have a nice chat. This means you need to respond to conversations and make it feel like the social hub of your organization. As much as you can, clean up the page and declutter it. Its not time for a super long blog roll, keep your viewers on your content.

WAIT, Are you telling me to stop my social media efforts?

Absolutely not, the key is to spend less time on brief updates and more time creating thoughtful and strategic posts that link back to your own content. Imagine your social media as a big wheel with everything linking back to your blog.

But, will they read it?

Last night I had a conversation with a social media marketer over twitter and he joked that he probably wouldn't read this blog post. To be fair, I'm not sure who will. But if you see this on facebook, pinterest, linked in, or twitter I won't be giving away my social capital by wasting your click, and hopefully you will remember my pretty pictures.

2014 is The Year of the Blog