Jim's Marketing Blog » search engine opitmization

How dependent is your business on Twitter, Facebook etc?

Jim Connolly — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:27:34 +0000

If your Facebook or Twitter account got suspend or deleted, what impact would it have on your business?

I ask this question, because I’m seeing more and more people invest huge amounts of their valuable time building social networks on 3rd party sites, which they have very little real control over. Conversely, I see remarkably few people invest anywhere like enough time on the development of their own social media platform – namely, a commercial, self-hosted blog (like this one.) I’m sure you’ve seen it too; people who only manage to put new content on their own blogs a couple of times a month, yet they update Twitter or Facebook on and off all day long. Their blogs are being neglected, yet their Facebook stream is packed with interesting posts, great ideas and useful links.

In other words, they are building their primary social networking hub on something they have little real control over – Something that can be suspended or deleted without their consent, at any time.

Twitter account suspensions

I was prompted to write this after receiving an email this morning from a reader, who has just had his Twitter account reinstated AFTER Twitter suspended it, without warning or reason, for 8 days! Although I no longer follow him, I do read his stream occasionally and it is a very typical Twitter account, which doesn’t spam or abuse anyone. By the time his account was restored, 2 new prospective clients had unfollowed him. Apparently, they saw the “account suspended” sign and assumed he was a scammer!

In fact, of the 30 or so people I know of, who have had their Twitter accounts suspended, I can’t think of any that were actually doing anything wrong. By the way, one of those I helped get their account back, via a conversation on Friendfeed, was non-other than Chris Anderson; Editor of Wired Magazine and creator of what we now know as the freemium marketing model. Again, a completely random suspension.

Free blogs get suspended too

Just over a week ago, 70,000 people, (yes seventy thousand) had their Blogs shut down without notice, when the blogetery blogging platform they were using was closed down. Some of these people will have invested months of their time, developing content for that platform, only to see it erased without warning. Had that same time been invested in developing on their own self-hosted blog, it would still be there.

Even WordPress.com, which I consider the best free blogging platform by far, can suspend or remove your blog if, for example, one of their moderators believes you have Search Engine Optimized it, so that it’s too Google friendly and does not read well enough for people. In a list of blogs that are not allowed on WordPress.com, they list their now famous SEO clause:

Blogs that are written for search engines instead of humans. These blogs are dedicated to trying to fool Google and other search engines into ranking them or the sites they link to highly. WordPress.com is not meant for this type of activity.

The challenge here, is that many people would consider that “type of activity” to be nothing more than SEO! It’s a very grey area. What you or I consider a legitimately optimised blog post, one particular moderator at WordPress may consider to be too SEO friendly. If so, and someone reports it, you are at best suspended or at worst, the blog is deleted. I have to say here, that typically, the moderators at WordPress are very good these days and only want to block scammy blogs.

Your marketing on your platform

However, why give someone who knows nothing about you or your business, the power to suspend or delete your business blog, when you can build a self-hosted WordPress blog, like this one, which you control and direct 100%? In my opinion, this alone is a great reason for business bloggers to consider owning their own platform.

My point is that whilst social networking sites are a brilliant idea and a great opportunity for you to reach new people, you should also consider investing in a central Internet space or hub, which YOU control and can develop with total freedom. No 3rd party should have the power over you or your business, to be able to pull the plug on your primary online platform.

I love Twitter. (You can join me on Twitter here)
I really enjoy Google Buzz.
I CAN NOT WAIT for the rumoured Google Me social media site to launch!

But I put at least 95% of my social media time into producing content for this blog and connecting with the reader community here.

Because of this, if any of my social media / social networking accounts were suspended, I would still have a thriving community of readers, commenters and people who regularly email me via this blog. I would still be able to reach new prospective clients every hour of each day.

Do you think it’s worth investing more time developing content and a community on your own Internet hub, and maybe a little less time pumping your ideas, your best links and your moments of creativity into 3rd party sites? Maybe you see greater value in using Facebook or another 3rd party site as your primary hub. I’d love to know!

Whatever your thoughts, please share them.

Photo: Smemon87

If you found this information useful, just think how much more successful your business can be, with you & I working together on your marketing! To see how I can help you attract more high quality clients or customers than ever before, read this!

Some signs to help you to the top!

Jim Connolly — Mon, 24 May 2010 09:53:19 +0000

This post is designed to help you advance further, faster – by helping you spot some warning signs, before they become a major issue. You know what’s great about this? When you spot a warning sign and act on it correctly, it is transformed from a warning sign, to a highly positive leap forward in your business!

Warning signs and flashing lights

I was prompted to write this post, after a conversation with a friend, who had been ignoring a warning light in his car. He checked the handbook and thought that as it seemed like a very minor fault, that he would leave it “for a while.” Fast forward 3 months and his car was broken down with a major engine problem! Apparently, has he heeded the warning light, he would have been able to avoid all this, with a small fix and for a very small fee.

The problem with the warning signs in business, is that they don’t come with flashing lights, like those in our cars. This means a lot of people miss them while they are still tiny problems – Then, like the car story above, they end up with a much bigger, costlier challenge on their hands.

From a marketing perspective, here are some early(ish) warning signs that are easy to miss:

Too large a percentage of your income is from too small a percentage of your customer base.
Too few enquiries from your direct marketing.
Your turnover or revenue figure has been static for more than 3 quarters or it has started contracting.
Not enough targeted people visiting your website or blog – and little sign of an improvement.
Your attrition rate is high. Your attrition rate, is the rate at which you lose clients or repeat customers.
Not enough sales or marketing enquiries from your website or blog.
Too few referrals generally – But ESPECIALLY if you are not getting regular referrals from existing customers.
A low conversion rate, when dealing with sales leads.

All of the challenges listed above are far easier to resolve, the quicker you take action. If you recognise one or more of those challenges in your business right now, don’t panic! With the right help, all of them are relatively easy to resolve.

I suggest three possible courses of action – depending on your resources:

Speak with a marketing professional. Pick someone you trust or if you don’t already know someone, ask a friend or business contact who THEY use for marketing. Most marketing professionals will be able to tell you very quickly if they can help and what’s likely to be involved in time and fees.
If you have a lot of marketing knowledge yourself, but have not been using it for whatever reason, get into action! List the challenges in order of importance and put a strategy together to turn it around. The key thing here is to get started.
If you don’t have the resources to pay for professional help and you are not an experienced marketer either, check out this post, which lists lots of free information and over 140 marketing ideas and answers. Also, use the search box on the right hand side of this post and search for other marketing tips and advice. There are hundreds of pages of answers here and thousands of ideas – all free.

Bottom line: Whatever your current marketing challenges are, they can be 100% resolved with the right action. You can achieve amazing results and see the kind of rewards that make all your hard work worth while – so long as you do the right things, correctly.

Go for it

As we approach the second half of the year, this is a GREAT time to renew your focus and start kicking the butt of your sales targets for 2010. Go for it!

Google, link exchanges and you!

Jim Connolly — Thu, 20 May 2010 07:26:21 +0000

Do you get emails from people you don’t know, asking you to do link exchanges with them? If you do, before you decide to do the exchange, please consider the following very carefully.

Link Exchanges: A brief overview

The reason people want you to exchange links with them is simple: The more links pointing to a site, the higher it will rank with Google and Co.

In fact, the number (and quality) of links pointing to your site, is the single most important part of your SEO (search engine optimization). So, SEO companies regularly send emails to thousands of people asking for links, hoping to increase the number and quality of links that point to their customer’s websites and blogs. Usually, the higher your Google Page Rank, the more requests you will get.

Link exchanges: The risks

Link exchanges and the old “Switcheroo”: Increasingly, people are building what look like regular websites and asking for link exchanges. Then, after a set number have been gathered, the site is transformed into a scam site.

This switch tactic is starting to gather pace and as I will explain in a moment, it’s not a good idea for you to link to sites, which Google considers “spammy”, as they call it. If you HAVE already offered links to people you do not know, it might be worth checking their site out again.

Link exchanges into bad neighbourhoods: Linking to the wrong kind of sites can also see YOUR site penalised (see below.) Bad neighbourhoods exist on the Internet, just like they do in the off-line world. In online terms, a bad neighbourhood is a site that is considered by the search engines to be spammy or dubious in some way.

Google does not like link exchanges: If you want to attract visitors from Google, you need to know that Google considers link exchange schemes as a violation of their guidelines and that they will penalise sites, which they believe are involved in them. You can learn about Google’s policy on link exchanges here – Along with a link that you can use to resubmit your site, if you are already being penalised.

Why is Google so strict on these exchanges? It sees them as a way of deliberately trying to manipulate their page ranking system. This system is how they deliver search results, and those results are what keep people using Google – and allows Google to make the BIG advertising bucks!

Legitimate linking?

The general consensus is you should link to people, when appropriate for what YOU want to achieve. If you want to share other sites, posts, articles or online resources – link to them.

Where do I stand on this?

I get link exchange emails at least half a dozen times every day and I delete them.

Why?

Because I refuse to associate my name or reputation with someone I don’t know. I don’t really care what Google thinks about my blog, but I DO care passionately about the 15 years I have spent building my business and my brand and I won’t risk negatively impacting that.

Ultimately, you need to do what you believe is right for what YOU want to achieve. I just think it’s useful to have some additional info, so the next time you get a link exchange request, you can make the right judgement for YOU – NOT the other guy!

Your thoughts on link exchanges?

It would be good to know what you think about them and what your experiences are. Please take a moment to share your feedback with us.

Photo: DC John

Don’t get a bad name!

Jim Connolly — Mon, 17 May 2010 11:47:20 +0000

If you are starting a new business or launching a new product or service, it’s really important to get the name right. Sadly, it’s very easy to get it wrong and end up wasting a lot of time and money trying to unpick the mess!

So, here are 3 tips to help you get it right first time:

Choose a name that’s attractive and positive

The name should create an attractive, positive image in the mind of those who hear or read it. This is because people think in pictures. We hear a word and BOOM – We build a mental picture. For example, it’s hard to think of the word elephant, without seeing the image of an elephant in our mind.

So, pick a name that creates the kind of image that your target market will be attracted to.

Choose a name that’s easy to spell

If you give your business a name that’s hard to spell and people go looking for it on a search engine, there’s a real possibility they will not find you.

Famously, a search engine launched last year with 33 million dollars of investment behind it, which was called cool dot com (but spelt cuil.com.) One of the many reasons given for its failure, is that people were hearing all the buzz about cool.com, when they should have been going to cuil.com.

The bottom line here, is that a tricky to spell name creates unnecessary additional barriers between you and people looking for your services.

Think about the URL

It makes sense to pick a name, which has a version of it’s URL available – so you end up with a relevant website address. There are also some huge SEO benefits from picking your name / URL wisely.

Here’s a quote from a post I wrote about the importance of getting the right URL for your business:

“By including the words marketing blog in the URL of this blog, almost every link that points here also includes those 2 words. This means there are thousands of links, which point here and tell Google that this is a marketing blog. As a result, anyone searching for marketing blog or marketing blogs etc on Google, will find this blog on page one; even though there are over 100 MILLION results listed.“

What naming tips would you like to add?

So, those are just 3 tips to get the ball rolling. What are your tips for picking the best name for your next project, company, product or service? Let us know!

Photo: Natalie Maynor

Google, social media and SEO

Jim Connolly — Sun, 16 May 2010 09:20:29 +0000

There has been a lot of talk in recent weeks, about probable changes to the way that Google ranks search engine results. The general belief is that mentions (links) to your site from social media sites are starting to play a bigger role in where Google ranks you.

Because of the secrecy that surrounds Google’s algorithm, it’s not possible to say definitively what kind of additional influence this is having on search results. However, it now seems increasingly likely that links from places like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Linkedin etc may be carrying influence with Google. This post on Mike Moran’s SEO blog by Chris Angus, explains the impact of social networks on SEO nicely and in plain English too (Kudos Mike.)

Whilst the number of pages / sites linking to you is still the key factor in your overall visibility, it seems that mentions on social media sites are starting to be used as a form of additional verification. It has been clear for some time that Google understands the importance of the communications shared across social networks. This is why they added Tweets and shares from other networks, in their search results some months ago.

Failings with the current system are obvious. A good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) provider can get a site of average value thousands of places above a poorly optimised site, with great value content. This is why so much superb content goes undiscovered and why we often find results for searches that are disappointing. Clearly, Google is keen to try and address this issue, though I can’t see their latest initiative changing things much.

Why?

Good SEO providers are already adapting their strategies and incorporating social media as part of their SEO mix. As soon as Google changes their algorithm (or it is believed they have), the SEO guys change too. These SEO’s are masters of testing and measuring. If they see that incorporating social media or social bookmarking is boosting search rankings, they simply add it to their SEO tool kit .

Bottom line: Today AND for the foreseeable future, great content backed up with solid SEO are a vital part of gaining visibility for your site. High value content will keep people coming back for more and encourage them to recommend you, but they need to find you in the first place. Embracing social media has always been a good idea, but perhaps even more so now.

Photo: Danny Sullivan

Are you getting bankable results from your blog?

Jim Connolly — Wed, 12 May 2010 10:26:04 +0000

Fact: Very few small business owners who blog, generate anything like the results they could.

Why?

This is the easiest question I have ever answered here! The reason so few bloggers attract the volume of sales, leads or enquiries they should, is that they copy what they see other bloggers doing.

Here’s what I see all day every day: I see bloggers writing a valuable, correctly optimized blog post, before heading off to their preferred social networking sites to try and get the post noticed. Sound familiar? If it does, I hope it’s not because you are using that same approach. If you are, you are missing the most important elements – those rare, additional steps that make all the difference and get people spending money with you!

I was explaining this to a new client of mine yesterday afternoon. She’s intelligent, charismatic and a specialist in her profession. However, like many specialists who use blogging as part of their marketing mix, she had been using the same approach that I outlined above – which failed her (which is why she hired me.)

An hour into our meeting, I showed her what’s possible when you use the right approach. I quickly checked the email account, which gets all the enquiries generated from this blog. In that hour alone, there had been 3 emails, including an enquiry for my services. By the end of business yesterday, that enquiry became a confirmed, new client and I’m really looking forward to helping them achieve bankable results too. I’m not telling you that to impress you, but to impress upon you just what’s possible, when you use the correct strategy.

Of course, there are 2 major problems with trying to achieve success, by copying what you see others doing.

You might be copying what does not work. It’s easy to see a blog with lots of comments or lots of retweets / facebook “likes” etc – and assume this means the blog is also commercially successful. It doesn’t!
All those measurements show you is that there are people who commented there or retweeted the post.It tells you zero about how commercially effective that blog is at generating new business for it’s owner. Many of my clients come to me with large social networks and active blogs that they have worked really hard on, with nothing to show for it. You know what? People will have been copying THEIR approach too, because it looked successful from the outside!
Not only may you be copying what does not work, but even if you found a blog that was doing things right, the untrained eye will miss it completely.That’s because the many differences between a blog that’s an income generating machine and one that’s not, are extremely subtle.
For example, I don’t know much about golf, so when I see a golfer hitting a golf ball, that’s all I see. When a professional golfer sees that same guy hitting that same ball, they can identify exactly what’s happening – what’s failing, what needs removing and what needs to be added to the golfer’s swing etc.

When it comes to marketing, a blog is like any other tool. If used correctly, it can easily become your best source of new, targeted business. However, just like every other marketing tool, only a tiny fraction of small business owners use blogs correctly, for what they want to achieve.

The rest just dabble and as a result, it costs them a fortune in lost business and YEARS in wasted time.

In short, if you want to enjoy better results you need a better strategy. You need an effective strategy that’s been developed for; you, your business, your industry, your unique resources and what you want to achieve. Whatever you elect to do, if you are not currently getting the regular stream of new business from your blog that you deserve, please change course.

As I have said here many times before; if you are rowing your boat in the wrong direction, no matter how hard you row, you will simply end up further and further away from where you want to be. You deserve far better than that!

Why your Google ranking may soon start falling!

Jim Connolly — Mon, 03 May 2010 07:32:20 +0000

How serious are you about the success of your website or blog as a business development tool?

The majority of small business owners I speak with, claim they are serious about the marketing value of their sites, but then they place their sites on cheap hosting plans.

Here’s why this matters: Google now punishes slow sites with lower search rankings!

Google has announced that as of last month, your site will be penalised if it doesn’t load nice and quickly! That’s right, if your site loads slowly, it will now receive a lower search ranking from Google, than a site that loads quickly. This makes the true cost of using cheap web hosting providers a lot easier for people to see.

The true cost of cheap web hosting plans

Long before Google’s shock announcement, cheap web hosting plans were a really bad idea for commercial sites. That’s because no matter how nice your site looks or how good the SEO is, if it loads too slowly, people will NOT hang around and wait. Internet users get really frustrated at having to hang around for pages to load on slow websites. This is definitely not the frame of mind we want people in, if we are about to give them an insight into our business.

Why are so many small business sites so frustratingly slow?

I used to believe it was because the site owners didn’t think it mattered; that cheap web hosting was just an ill-advised, cost saving measure. However, this is certainly not always the case! In many instances, the site owner has no idea how unreliable or slow their site is, because they visit it too infrequently to notice.

Bloggers, for instance, who only blog a few times a month, will often only visit their blog when posting or responding to comments. As a result, they miss well over 99% of their sites performance. The same is true for business owners, who have websites, which are not regularly updated. These sites too can be down or too slow to respond for extended periods, again, without the site owner even knowing. I strongly advise you check out your site regularly and at different times of the day, so you get a more accurate picture of what your prospective customers or clients see.

QUICK TIP

Don’t fall for the “we promise 99% up-time” claims of low end web hosts. In web hosting, 99% is a very poor service. This actually means that they expect your site to be down for 1 full working day every month or down for 3 full working days, every 100 days! What is that worth to you, in lost business, lost enquiries, lost sales?

The bottom line: If you have a commercial site, get it on the most reliable web hosting package you can.

Photo: Jpctalbot

So, you want more blog readers?

Jim Connolly — Sun, 02 May 2010 10:01:48 +0000

I wrote a very popular post recently, about getting more blog comments. This post is all about how to get more blog readers and it starts with a question:

“Have you noticed how some blogs and websites are really difficult to read for any period of time?”

You know the blogs I mean, right? The blogs where you find yourself just skimming the content because after a glance of the page layout, you just don’t feel like reading the whole thing? If you want to attract more blog readers and increase reader engagement on your blog, you need to make reading your posts a comfortable experience. Otherwise, people will just skim your content and miss what you have to say.

There are already millions of posts that explain how to get more readers via SEO / social media etc. This post offers you some easy, yet super-effective ways to massively improve the readability of your blog and by extension, it’s reach, impact and readership.

So, let’s go!

Column width

There’s a lot of research, including my own, which suggests that once the width of a content column (that’s the part of the blog you are reading now) goes beyond a certain limit, it becomes less and less readable.

Although some have said that the maximum width should be just 65 characters (including spaces) I have found that there’s almost no difference until you go past 85/90 characters. I did a test a while ago, where I increased the width of the content area on one of my blogs to 100 characters and had to stop after just a week, because of the massive drop in every reader-based metric! I saw a huge drop in the average number of pages per reader, fewer comments and a drop in the number of times a post was shared.

So, if your current blog layout goes beyond 95 characters – consider reducing it.

BTW: The content area here is 502 pixels wide and I use a 15px Arial font, which equals a limit of around 85 characters.

Fonts

If you want people to be able to comfortably read your blog content, they need to be able to see what you’ve written without squinting! Many blogs use very small font sizes and as such, are way too hard to read on normal monitors and almost impossible to read, on smaller laptops and netbooks etc.

I use a 15px font size here, similar to that used by many other marketing and social media bloggers. You may want to use something a little smaller, but I strongly advise you not to go too small.

Black and white? Not quite!

Most new blogs use black text on a white background. Although black text on a white background REALLY stands out, it can be harsh on the eyes; especially tired eyes! That’s why it’s a really good idea to use a dark grey font on a white background, as used on many popular sites, like; The BBC, Chris Brogan’s blog, Seth Godin’s blog, Problogger and many other leading sites.

On this blog, I use the same shade of grey as The BBC, which is #464646.

Don’t let Bob or Mary screw up your blog

Whenever you make changes to the layout of your blog or website, you will get feedback from people, like Bob and Mary. Bob’s a great guy and has a passion for blogs with really wide content columns and super-small fonts. Mary’s also a wonderful warm human being, who loves those blogs that have jet black text on snow white backgrounds. They are both entitled to their opinions, but you must not change the basics of your blog design based on what Bob or Mary might prefer.

The vocal minority will often unintentionally lead you to make piss-poor decisions about the look and feel of your blog. As bloggers, we need to be a lot smarter than that. We need to look at the facts – The metrics we can measure. If after making a change, you notice; greater engagement, more comments, more people sharing your content, an increase in the number of pages the typical reader reads – then you are on track. Even if Bob or Mary’s intentions were good, they were simply expressing their unique preferences.

Listen to all your readers, not just the vocal minority!

Some advice on making these changes

If you are like me and know nothing about HTML or CSS coding, it can be an expensive pain in the rear, to have to make changes to the layout of your blog.

This is why I recommend you consider doing what I did, and start using the Headway wordpress theme; which will allow you to make changes to your blog, without learning how to code. Headway (affiliate link) lets you make the kind of changes mentioned here, in seconds. In fact, I built this blog from scratch, with zero need for expert help, using Headway. It’s given me total control over the blog and saved me a fortune. It’s also the ONLY product I have ever endorsed here!

Summary

Ultimately the decision regarding the look and feel of your blog, is down to you. However, there’s an old saying in business, which assures us that; “success leaves clues.” There’s a reason why so many of the world’s most respected and popular blogs do things in a certain way. They have already done the testing and measuring. Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder, but when it comes to the readability element of your blog, it’s a wise move to make the experience as good as possible for your readers.

I’d like to know what additional tips you have, for making content more readable. Equally, do you have any experience of changing any of the elements mentioned in this post?

Let us know what you think!

Image: TEIA MG

The right answers to the wrong questions?

Jim Connolly — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:44:08 +0000

One of the problems with people who use a DIY approach to marketing, is that they often waste time and money, looking for answers to the wrong questions. As a result, the very best they can then hope for, is that they learn how to do the wrong thing, correctly.

I was prompted to write this, after hearing someone talking earlier about the problems they have, because of the URL they are using for their website. It is hard to spell and apparently, even the site owner’s friends often misspell it. The URL also has no SEO benefit, as it does not contain anything that a potential customer would associate with the actual products offered by the site.

One of the reasons this blog is on page 1 of Google (and has been for a year) for the term “marketing blog” or “marketing blogs” is that the words marketing blog appear in my URL. As a result, almost 100% of the 20,000 links that point here, have anchor text that tell Google this site is related to the term marketing blog.

The site I mentioned earlier is pretty new, has just a handful of links pointing to it and apparently, it gets very little traffic. So, the solution to the guys URL issue is simply to get a more people-friendly and seo friendly URL – and THEN to market the site effectively. However, the site’s owner was focusing on how to overcome all the problems with the existing URL. In other words, he was looking for answers to the wrong question.

This is easily the single most common marketing problem I see among business owners and entrepreneurs. To quantify that, I would guess that well over 95% of the marketing questions people ask me, fit into this category.

Of course, the reason this is such a widespread problem, is that the people who are right now wasting their time and money looking for answers to the wrong questions, are totally unaware. They will think that I wrote this post for someone else.

I produce a great deal of free marketing material, in an effort to help as many people as possible. As someone who’s passionate about helping people, this conundrum is perhaps my biggest frustration.

Is there an equivalent frustration in your industry or profession or am I alone here?

Photo: Horia Varlan

How balanced is your marketing?

Jim Connolly — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 09:42:44 +0000

With most things in life, there’s a balance we need to adhere to if we want to get a desired result. Marketing is no exception!

I was speaking with a motor mechanic yesterday, who explained to me the importance of balance in high performance cars. He said that many people will add a faster, more powerful engine to a car, but fail to upgrade the breaks and steering for all that additional speed and power. The end result is often a serious crash.

Business owners and entrepreneurs also need to be aware of the importance of balance, when it comes to their marketing. Otherwise, they too can see their efforts crash!

Marketing balance

For example, many people invest in great SEO and generate lots of targeted visitors to their website, but when these new people arrive, they are greeted with home-grown, pedestrian copy writing. In other words, all that SEO money is wasted because the messages that greet these new readers are not powerful enough to get them to take action. Equally, many well written commercial websites have very poor SEO and get very little traffic, so their message is seen by too few people to generate the volume of enquiries and sales they need. It’s all about balance.

Another common marketing imbalance, is the way people allocate their time. It’s not uncommon for some people to spend more time adding content to sites like Facebook and Linkedin etc, than they do developing THEIR OWN site or blog! I wrote last year about a guy who I saw adding content to Twitter every day, yet his blog had not been updated in 3 months.

Here’s a suggestion: Take a moment to review where you currently invest your marketing time and money and see if you can spot something, which is setting your results off balance. Here’s a very popular selection of marketing ideas, which you should take a look at, if you want a more balanced approach to your marketing.

Over to you!

What examples do you have of getting the balance right (or wrong) and what lessons you learned. Please share your experiences, with a comment.

Photo: Ky Olsen