Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Blogging at the weekends: Is it worth it?

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blogging, blog tips, content marketing

I get asked that question a lot, because I tend to write a post most weekends and people want to know if they should publish posts at the weekend too.

So, what is the answer?

Optimum days

Depending on the subject of your blog and the demographic of your readership, you will find that there are some days that are better to publish posts on, than others. For example, this is a business blog and I get a lot more readers on week days than I do on a weekend. To give you an idea of the difference I see here, around 45% fewer people will read a post I publish at the weekends, compared to a week day. Other bloggers I know, write for the general public and find that Saturday and Sunday are the busiest days on their sites.

From a purely marketing perspective, it would be better for me to write posts Monday to Friday, which begs the question; why do I publish posts at the weekend so often?

Why I Publish at the weekend

I write a lot. I mean thousands of words every day. It’s something I love to do, however, it presents me with a rare challenge. Most bloggers find it hard to write once or twice a week, whereas I find it hard not to flood the blog with too much content. I write more than one post a day and spread them across 3 blogs and a website. By adding the weekend to my publishing schedule, I can deliver lots of content, without having to cram it into 5 days.

Of course, if you have something you feel you need to say at the weekend or you would like to tie a blog post to a weekend, breaking news story, do it! Measure the results and form your own conclusions. If you write a blog aimed at business owners, I do not recommend publishing posts at the weekend. Unless you are publishing fresh content 6 or 7 days a week, it makes more commercial sense to publish your posts on the optimum days.

What has your experience been?

I’d love to hear what your experiences have been, regarding the best and least effective days to publish posts in your niche. Please leave your feedback with a comment and remember to tell us what type of blog you write.

Photo: Sean MacEntee

Blogging tip: Go with the flow

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Following 4 interesting emails today (Saturday), I wanted to quickly share a great little blogging tip with you. It’s all about discovering and embracing the best time for you to write your posts.

Time after time

Like many people who publish regular blog posts, I seldom write a post and publish it on the same day. Usually I have posts written between 10 and 14 days in advance. If something time sensitive happens (as with today’s post), you will get the post that day. Otherwise, I write posts in batches and schedule them to go out over the coming days / weeks.

Earlier today, I published a post that was written on Tuesday 14th August (11 days ago). It starts off by mentioning someone who emailed me for advice, but when they received the advice, they decided to ignore it because it wasn’t easy enough.

The light bulb went on!

Within 5 hours of that post going out, I received 4 emails from people who wanted to know if I was referring to them in the post. They all assumed that as the post went out today and they had emailed me recently, it HAD to be them. Ironically, the guy in question didn’t get in touch. None of those who got in touch seemed aware that my blog posts are almost always scheduled and that the post was written over a week before I’d heard from them.

There’s a REALLY good reason why I do this – Hence, this blogging tip!

Blogging Tip: Go with the flow

Many bloggers, especially those who are new to blogging, do not schedule their posts. They write a post when they get an idea, then press publish. That’s it. Job done.

Here’s the tip: If you find yourself struggling to publish useful content as often as you would like, I’d like to suggest YOU try scheduling some posts (unless your topic is time sensitive, obviously.)

The reason is simple. Many people find that when their mind is in the right place for creating content, it’s better for them to go with the flow and keep writing. You may find that it’s a lot more productive, for you to produce a few posts when you feel ‘right’ and then schedule them to be published, rather than try and write when you feel less creative.

Is this a cure-all?

No. It works extremely well for some people and less well for others. However, if you find yourself struggling to publish great content as often as you would like to, it’s worth a go!

PS: I also suggest you read this post – “How to write great creative content, every day.“

I can’t write a post for you today, because…

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content marketing, writing, material, information

Today has been a pretty challenging day. I woke up with a fever at 5am and have been feeling unwell all day. It’s now 9pm, so I have been awake for around 16 hours – making this the perfect time to write THIS blog post.

I can’t write a blog post today, because…

As business owners, parents or people employed in jobs where we work long hours, there are always plenty of reasons not to turn up on our blogs, when people are expecting us:

  • We may have a busy day ahead of us (or behind us).
  • We might not feel creative.
  • We could be feeling less than 100% healthy.
  • We may even be feeling a little tired.

I think I am speaking for every successful blogger I know, when I say that if we only published blog posts; when we had nothing to do, were feeling super-creative, were wide awake and in perfect health, we would write very few posts. Yes, there are good reasons most days NOT to bother writing a post, if you look for them.

People notice

There is also one really good reason to turn up and write posts worth reading, when you have great excuses not to: People notice.

  • People notice when you are committed to your blog.
  • People notice when you regularly dig deep down to find something worth sharing with them, even though you give the information away for free and usually without even a ‘thank you’ from 99% of those who read it.
  • People notice when you care enough about the people who read your blog, that you push through the excuses and turn up for them.

In short: We need to understand that people won’t show commitment to our blogs, if we don’t!

Attract massively more clients, with these 3 powerful marketing tips!

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If you would like to see a dramatic increase in your sales or client acquisition, here are 3 areas to focus on along with some suggestions, to help you find the answers you need.

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Why should someone hire you or buy from you, rather than one of your competitors?

Find the answer to this question and make it the cornerstone of your marketing message. It’s what sets you apart from the others. It’s what stops you having to sell, based on being the ‘cheapest’.

By the way, your answer can’t be ‘we try harder’ or ‘we offer the best customer service’. Your competitors already claim to offer that and it’s subjective. Your answer or answers must be based on something, which you can back up with facts.

2. How many of your clients or customers regularly recommend you, via a word of mouth referral?

If you are not seeing a steady flow of referrals from your existing clients, you must find out why and fix it. Find out who your most prolific referrers are and learn why they are so keen to tell the world about you. Then, share it with your other clients.

If none of your clients regularly recommend you, you need to know why. It could be a sign that you make it too hard to refer you or that they are not ‘comfortable’ recommending you to their friends.

3. How many sales leads or business enquiries does your website (or blog) generate each day?

Your website should be a lead generating machine for your business. It should be there, findable and ready, at the exact point when a prospective client or customer is looking to hire an expert or make a purchase. Please, do not scrimp when it comes to investing in your online marketing. This site generates over 100 emails a day and massively more client enquiries than I can handle. Your site should be working just as hard for you.

It’s insane to miss out on all that potential, because you’re using a DIY approach to Internet marketing. If you are not getting high quality, tangible results from your website every day, get expert help – otherwise you are going to lose a fortune in missed opportunities!

Finally

Those are 3 areas of marketing that small business owners tend to overlook, yet they can produce an exceptional return on your investment. I hope you find these ideas useful, but more importantly, I hope they motivate you to take action.

Blogging, competition and commitment

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blogging, blog tips, content marketing

Someone recently asked me if I thought it was a good idea, for them to start writing a business blog. Whilst you may imagine my answer would automatically be a resounding ‘yes’, it wasn’t!

I explained that in my experience, blogging is only a worthwhile commercial investment if you invest in it appropriately for what you want to achieve. For a blog to succeed, we need to start off by understanding the incredible volume of competition and noise out there.

Competition and noise

At the time of writing this, on WordPress.com alone there are over 50 million blogs with 500 thousand new posts published every day. That’s just on one version, of one blogging platform. There are many millions more blogs out there, like this one, which are self-hosted WordPress blogs. Then, there are over 100 million more people blogging across platforms like; Blogger, Tumblr, Typepad and Posterous etc.

To attempt to cut through all that blogging activity and the billions of pages of content out there, with a blog that even the blog’s owner isn’t committed to, is unrealistic at best.

The opportunity

Thankfully, there is an amazing opportunity if you are prepared to invest the time, energy, creativity and money (yes money) required, in order to build a commercially valuable blog.

We need to start though, with a commitment to take blogging seriously and invest in it, as we would with any business opportunity. Anything else is a waste of time.

Bloggers: Yes, you can write a post in 20 minutes

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blogging, blog tips, content marketing

Yes, you can learn how to write a blog post in 20 minutes. It won’t be particularly creative, but if speed is what you’re looking for, 20 minute blog posts are really easy.

However, here are a couple of far better alternatives to ‘fast’ posts:

  • You can also learn how to write a blog post worth reading, but it could take 40 minutes.
  • Better still, if you’re only going to blog once or twice a week, how about learning how to write a great blog post that people will want to comment on and share. That could take you an hour or more, though.

The need for speed?

The blogger whose focus is on how to write fast posts, is missing the point. After her post is written and published, it will fly or flop based on the value it delivers. People don’t care if it took her 2 minutes or 2 hours to write it. Their concern is whether the content is worthy of their valuable attention and worth sharing.

In short: Don’t aim to write 20 minute blog posts. The Internet is already full of them. Instead, aim to write useful posts. There is always a high demand for useful, valuable information. THAT’S what your readers and future readers are looking for!

How to build a massively valuable blog, using a more human approach!

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blogging, blog tips, content marketing

A reader emailed me today with a great question. If you are interested in Content Marketing or blogging and want to know how I built my blog, you will find this really useful. So, here’s what Sally asked:

I work in SEO and notice that you don’t optimize your blog posts the way I’d expect yet you rank on page 1 of Google for some top search terms. I believe I know how you do this, but I’d love you to write a post to explain it.

Thanks Jim. ~ Sally

Business is human

I work from the mindset that business is all about people, so we need to maintain a human-based approach to business, if we want to succeed in any meaningful way.

One of the core reasons that people struggle to achieve the quality and volume of sales leads or subscribers they would like from their sites, is that they focus too little on human engagement. For them, it’s about numbers. They talk about building their ‘list‘ rather than building a community. If you read about their approach to online marketing, it sounds like they are developing a spreadsheet, rather than welcoming and nurturing human relationships.

People belong in a community, not on a spreadsheet!

Here’s the thing that so many people seem to forget, when marketing their business online. Feel free to quote me on this:

Behind every blog comment, tweet, Facebook update and avatar picture is a person. A human being. Someone worthy of recognition. Someone’s son, daughter, mother or father. Real people, worthy of being respected as such, and not treated like inventory items on someone’s marketing list.

Why do I reply to just about every comment on this blog and every tweet I see? Because it matters to me. It REALLY matters. Why? Because without the people behind the clicks, emails, comments, tweets and shares, this blog has no value.

Here’s the short answer to Sally’s question

It’s almost 4 years since I wrote my first post on Jim’s marketing Blog and from day 1, I decided to develop the blog by focusing on community building, rather than focus on heavy SEO, guest posting, link building and ‘list building’. As a result, the readers of this blog have built the blog with me.

I put content out there and if it’s good enough, the community connect with it, value it and share it. I never, ever forget that.

The upside

The upside of this approach, is that I don’t need to spend time SEOing any of my posts. So, I never see a downturn in visitor numbers, when Google change their algorithm. Also, because I have the freedom to write exclusively for humans, rather than figure out how to work certain key phrases into blog posts, it’s easy for me to publish better quality content, more frequently.

I also don’t need to do things, like write those ‘best of the week’ blog post at the weekends, just to quench Google’s thirst for keyword rich, frequently updated content. I can write posts like this, instead.

The downside

It takes a leap of faith at the beginning to go against the grain, but after that, it’s easy because you are blogging from a mindset of total freedom. Other than that, I haven’t found a downside to embracing a human focused approach to blogging and online marketing.

Ironically, I manage to achieve better results than most spreadsheet marketing guys, in the areas where they are fixated. For example, around 40 new people, and climbing, subscribe to this blog every day via email. Without offering a newsletter, I have permission to send email to thousands and thousands of great people daily, who are part of this blog’s community. That’s an enormously valuable, Permission Marketing asset; built on providing value.

Equally, by focusing only on writing content that people will find useful, my posts tend to organically attract the back-links, which Google values so highly. Then, because it’s so much quicker to write posts when you are not deliberately SEOing the content or thinking of things like ‘SEO friendly HTML title-tags’, I am able to publish more content, more often – giving Google lots of that frequently updated content I mentioned earlier.

This approach works for me, because it allows me to focus freely on producing content, which I believe you will find useful. I don’t have to waste a minute, learning about the latest and greatest ways to keep the search engines happy or figuring out how to ‘build my list’.

Google’s position

Interestingly, this is the exact approach to blogging, which Google’s Matt Cutts advocates. Google staffers have told us again and again, that they are all about helping the best content reach the top of search results.

When you think about it for a moment, this makes perfect sense. Google lives or dies based on the quality of the search results it delivers. If Google allows generic, scraped or over-SEO’d content to take over the search rankings, people will stop using their product and advertisers will go elsewhere.

Conclusion

The longer I have studied online marketing, (I started my first email newsletter in 1998), the more I see that long term success comes from producing frequent, useful, original, people-focused content.

I believe that the mindset, which says people are to be targeted and referred to like inventory items on a spreadsheet, rather than valued members of your community, is both disrespectful and totally missing the point. As I said at the beginning of this post, business is all about people. It’s people who hire you, buy from you, connect with you and recommend you.

In short: I believe there’s real value in ‘keeping it human’.

Bloggers: Are you 1 question away from 10000 daily readers?

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marketing lists

In this post, I’m going to share what is easily the single best piece of blogging advice I know.

Here it is: Drum roll please…

If you would like more great people to read your blog, start off by asking yourself the following question:

“If I already had 10,000 prospective clients reading my blog each day, how much time and money would I be prepared to invest in developing it and delivering useful content?”

When I ask people that question, they often say things like:

  • Wow… with 10,000 readers each day, I’d invest as much time as I possibly could.
  • The  blog would be worth a fortune, so I’d invest in a professional design. With all those readers, I wouldn’t want to look cheap.
  • I’d publish posts most days and really work hard to make the content as useful as possible.

Cause and effect

After listening to their answers, I sometimes take a look at their blogs and usually find that they have not invested much time, money or energy into them. They want a highly valuable blog, but they won’t make the commitment required, until after their blog is a success.

That approach is a little like a restaurant owner saying she refuses to serve great food, until after her restaurant if full every night!

My mentor used to say that it would be crazy to walk up to an empty fireplace and expect heat. We know we need to do the work of building the fire and lighting it, before we can enjoy the warmth.

We don’t need to be geniuses to build a successful blog, but we do need to be wise enough to understand that our results will be guided by our actions.

A leap of faith

The people that already have thousands of daily readers, did the work and made the investments before our blogs became popular. We paid the price for success in advance.

That takes a huge leap of faith, but unless you show faith in your blog, you can’t expect others to.

P.S. Still not convinced? Here are 25 Reasons to write a business blog.

Blogging: An equal opportunity!

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blogging, blog tips, content marketing

I received an interesting email this afternoon, from a blogger who sounded extremely disheartened.

He is just 5 months into writing his blog and he was wondering if he was wasting his time. He explained that he was not seeing the results he wanted and that he was rapidly of the opinion that unless some influential people would promote his work, he’d never get noticed. What struck me about his email, was that he repeated several times, how it wasn’t possible to grow what he called an ‘A List’ blog, without influential friends. This is not the first time I have heard that point made and so I decided to cover it, in today’s post.

I’m going to start by sharing three examples of extremely successful bloggers with you: Two who started from what we’d think of as a normal position and one who started off from a position of wealth and influence.

We all start from a different place

The thing is, although every blogger begins by writing their first post, we write that initial post from very different starting positions. Most bloggers start from scratch, with no contacts and no one to help them amplify their message, like the guy who emailed me. A tiny number of others start off with influential friends and hit the big time extremely fast.

However, the great thing about blogging, is that it’s possible to achieve what we want from our blog, regardless of our beginnings!

Here are those examples I mentioned earlier, from the total opposite ends of the scale.

At one extreme, we have Seth Godin

It would be fair to say Seth Godin had a head start on most bloggers. For example, Seth started blogging by writing his first post, sitting next to his friend, Google co-founder Sergey Brin!

When Seth began his career, his father, William, was president of a multimillion dollar business. He saw Seth attend the world’s best business school, Stanford. Stanford students went on to become CEO’s of; Ford, Microsoft, Paypal, Google, Coca Cola, Wells Fargo etc as well as US Presidents. That’s a wonderful head start in business / blogging, with advantages that the rest of us couldn’t even imagine.

So, does this mean that people from a ‘normal’ background are excluded from the top level of blogging?

No. Not even close!

At the other extreme, we have self made guys like Brian Clarke & Chris Brogan

Brian Clarke was a Lawyer, turned Real Estate guy and entrepreneur. Brian started copyblogger by himself, from scratch, and went on to launch a number of million dollar businesses from the success of copyblogger. Today, Brian shows others how achieve great results from their blogging. Similarly, my favourite blogger, Chris Brogan, started from scratch. Today, Chris writes one of the world’s most popular blogs and his client list includes many of the most respected companies in the world. (He’s also a New York Times best selling author.)

Both Brian and Chris (and many, many others) are proof that no matter where we start from, we can achieve outstanding results from blogging. In fact, very few of the top bloggers came from a privileged beginning.

Here’s what I have found, whenever I’ve studied extremely successful bloggers (and businesspeople in general):

  • They determined NOT to follow the flock and do what everyone else was doing.
  • They learned how to do the right things, correctly.
  • If they needed influential contacts, they went out and made those connections.
  • Then, they committed to work as hard as required, for as long as needed, to achieve their objectives.

In short: Blogging is like everything else in life – Regardless of where we start, we have the opportunity to determine where we finish!

9 Posts – 5 of which you probably missed!

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I received an email earlier, from a reader who wanted to know why I had only published a handful of posts over the past week.

The reason I found her email interesting, is that over the past 7 days, I have actually published a total of 7 blog posts and 2 articles.

As well as the 4 blog posts published here this week, I have also:

  • Published 3 new blog posts, over on JimConnolly.com.  I call that site a thunky and it’s very different to the material I share with you here on Jim’s Marketing Blog.
  • I published 2 articles on my Creative Thinking site. One is all about so-called ‘idea people’ and the other is about Raising the Bar on your potential. There are dozens of other articles on that site, written exclusively for those of you who are interested in developing your creativity.

So, I thought I’d put this brief post together, for anyone else who isn’t aware of my work on those other sites, in case you’d like to check them out.  I hope you find something useful.

What does your social media activity say about you?

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The world is full of mixed messages, and the world of business is no exception.

Photo: Jim Connolly

When someone spam emails us selling their SEO services, it sends us a mixed message. We wonder why they need to send us spam, if their SEO is supposed to be able to generate stacks of sales leads.

When a small business owner claims to offer a professional service, yet they operate behind an amateur or cheap looking website, it sends us a mixed message. We’re left wondering why they either can’t afford a professional site or why they believe quality doesn’t matter.

Mixed messages and confusion

Mixed messages cause confusion and as one of the oldest sayings in marketing assures us, a confused mind always says, ‘No!’ In other words, if a prospective client is confused about making a purchase, they opt for the status quo. Rather than risk making a mistake, they do nothing. This is why it’s vital for your marketing to be free of these toxic, mixed messages.

Thanks to the Internet, it has never been easier for us to show the congruency between what we claim and what we do.

For example:

  • Blogging allows us to share what we know, however, it also provides a way for us to demonstrate our ability to show up regularly, over a long period of time. It provides visible proof that we are knowledgeable, reliable and durable.
  • Then there are our social networking accounts. Facebook and Twitter etc, allow people to gain an insight into what we find useful or valuable. It’s hard to maintain a false front, when people can look back over months or years worth of your updates, as they can with your blog or Facebook.

What does your digital footprint look like?

I’d like you to think for a moment about your website, blog (you are blogging I hope) and your social networking accounts. Now consider the following questions:

  • How do they make you look, through the eyes of a prospective client?
  • If your marketing message is based around offering a professional, high quality service, is that how you look when a prospective client checks you out?
  • Is the general picture created by your online image, congruent with your marketing message or out of sync?

In short: Make sure that your marketing and online image avoids mixed messages, so you create the kind of positive impact your prospective clients need.

Video: Robert Scoble and Chris Brogan talk about Feeding The Blog Beast

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Here’s a great 16 minute video interview, where Chris Brogan talks to Robert Scoble about social media, content development and the value of being a curator, plus lots, lots more.

Enjoy!

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

For more information

You can get more from Robert Scoble via his blog, Twitter and Google+.

You can get more from Chris Brogan via his blog, Twitter and Google+.

Video credit: Robert Scoble / Rackspace

15 Reasons to start blogging!

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So, why bother blogging?

Here are just 15 reasons, why I recommend you add a business blog to your marketing mix:

  1. Blogging is the most powerful marketing tool I have ever seen, used or studied. Period.
  2. Considering all the benefits of blogging, the financial cost is tiny. A self-hosted WordPress site can cost less per week, than a latte at your local coffee shop.
  3. If you turn up and blog regularly, you will also show prospective clients that you are reliable. If you show up regularly for years, it shows you’re durable too. Think about that… before these people even speak with you, they will already know you’re reliable and durable. That’s a huge commercial advantage.
  4. Blogging makes you a better communicator. It causes you to think, really think, about your message. Through repeat practice, you learn how to get your message across with greater clarity too.
  5. New prospective clients will be able to discover you and your work, as your blog posts are all findable, via social networks and search engines. Think about it… hundreds, maybe thousands of prospective clients can find your work each day, at the exact point where they are looking for answers.
  6. If you like the idea of helping others, blogging is ideal. It allows you to reach and help people worldwide.
  7. Blogging gives you a wonderful creative outlet.
  8. There is no ceiling on what you can achieve from your blog. Blogs have changed hands for millions of dollars.
  9. … and many bloggers have gained a high profile within their profession, thanks to the success of their blogs.
  10. As a direct result of blogging you can meet amazing people and make a lot of great friends.
  11. To blog regularly with fresh ideas, you need to feed your mind with rich, mental protein. An active blogger is an active learner too.
  12. If you work hard enough, for long enough, you can become one of the most influential voices in your profession.
  13. If you are passionate about what you do, and you should be, your blog gives you a platform to share your passion.
  14. With thousands of people sharing content, for every one person creating content, useful blog posts can spread like crazy via social networks. There are millions of people on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, etc., eagerly looking for useful, interesting content to share with their friends.
  15. Blogging is also a lot of fun!

Blogging and Punch Bag Heroes

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From as early as I can remember, I have boxed. It was a popular sport in the rough area of London where I grew up and a way for poor kids to channel their energy into something better than crime and drugs. Today, I’m a 46 year old successful business owner and I still get the gloves on a couple of times a week.

Punch bags don’t hit back

One of my trainers had a fantastic phrase he used occasionally in the gym. He used it to describe people who loved to grunt and scowl as they worked on a punch bag, but who wouldn’t get in the ring and fight. He used to call them punch bag heroes. As he said, anyone can look tough hitting a punch bag, because the bag just soaks up the punches and doesn’t throw concussive punches back at you.

Blogging and punch bag heroes

When I started blogging, I quickly figured out there were lots of blogging equivalents of punch bag heroes. I found bloggers who would refuse to give their readers the power to question them, by deleting comments that disagreed with them.

A few weeks ago, I had a big problem with spam comments to this blog. I was getting around 2,500 a day. One of the options open to me was to turn comments off. It would have saved me time and completely eliminated the problem. The reason I decided to do whatever was required, in order to leave comments enabled, was that I figured out it was a cowardly option.

Here’s why:

  • Turning comments off would have refused you the right to have your say.
  • It would have stopped you being able to publicly question what you read here, where the rest of the blog’s community can see it.
  • It would have made me a blogging equivalent of a punch bag hero.

So, the comments are staying on here for as long as this blog exists!

Blogging or broadcasting?

It’s easy to publish anything, when you know your words will never be challenged within your own tribe, because you delete comments that disagree with you or because you refuse your readers the right to question you in public, by turning comments off. However, it takes courage to open yourself up to critics and allow people the freedom to question what you say, where you know it will be seen by your readers.

What do you think?

I believe a conversation based, accountable approach to blogging helps a person improve the quality of their work and the value of their blog.

3 Lessons from the past week

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I was reminded of 3 lessons this week, which I’d like to share with you.

  1. Never take good health for granted.
  2. Never think you know someone, just because you read their work.
  3. The Internet truly is making the world smaller.

The week started well. A long running throat problem I have been struggling with, has finally started to mend. It seems that the mixture of being surrounded by farmland and our area being hit by some very weird weather, resulted in me suffering from an allergy, which made my throat dry and inflamed. Just 1 day after taking hay fever tablets, the problem was recovering and has now almost fully recovered.

The middle part of the week started disappointing. The great author Ray Bradbury passed away. On the day of Mr Bradbury’s death, Seth Godin published a tribute, but inserted a sales message into it. It’s here.

There was a small uproar, quelled by a quick, successful damage limitation post, apologising. Sleazy, Seth.

The week ended on a real high! On Friday, I was contacted by a childhood friend. The last time we met, we were just 13 years old. He was the kid next door, but his family moved from London, back to Jamaica. He found me via this blog and saw my photo – leading him to ask where my hair was! ;)  Anyhow, we spoke on the phone for over an hour and I freely admit, I welled up with tears, when his daughter and son spoke to me. They are the age now, that their father and I were when we last met. It was a truly wonderful experience.

So, I started my day today, grateful for good health, laughter and good friends.

How NOT to learn from the best

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Do you copy what you see the top people doing, hoping to use it as a short-cut to success?

I received an email today from someone who started blogging a few months ago. He said that he had copied what Seth Godin was doing on his blog, by disabling comments and using a very basic looking blog design. It wasn’t working. He wanted to know why, as it was working fine for Seth.

One size doesn’t fit all!

His problem is common and highlights a potential pitfall, when you copy a strategy or tactic that works for someone in a very different situation to your own, with different goals.

Seth Godin says he needed to remove the comments section from his blog, in order for him to have the freedom to write things his way. With hundreds of comments coming in, it was just too time consuming and frustrating for him to respond to so many people, over so many different posts, every day. However,  disabling comments is not necessary for 99.9% of bloggers.

The problem of copying the top .1%

This got me thinking. I chatted with Robert Scoble last week, about his issue with poor noise control on Google+. Robert currently has 1.7 MILLION circling (following) him on G+. I myself have just 13,000 people circling me and it can be a little hard to deal with at times. With 1,700,000 following you it must be mayhem. However, Google+ noise control works well for 99.9% of G+ users.

In short: It’s extremely useful to learn from the triumphs and lessons of others. However, before copying what you see the top .1% of people doing, ensure you know how and why they are doing it.

Check out these cookies!

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Someone asked me a great question last week, about a new page I added to the blog. She wanted to know why I bothered to publish a new page all about cookies, (that’s browser cookies, not the delicious ones!)

The new EU cookie regulations!

I explained that there was a new ruling here in Europe. It means that every Europe based site that uses cookies, has to make its European based readers aware that the site uses cookies and what they use them for. In case you don’t know, cookies are stored on our Internet browsers and are used for things like the Twitter and Facebook buttons we see on blogs and also for the software that people use, to measure their site traffic. Cookies are also used on sites that carry advertising, sites that have a commenting section and sites that allow you to personalise your visit, etc. As a result, pretty much every blog uses cookies and the massive majority of websites do too.

I wanted to be among the first to comply with the cookie regulations, so the page went up along with a new banner in my sidebar, so people could see it on every page they visit here.

Blogger concerns about cookie disclosure

Over the past few weeks, many bloggers have told me that they are in no hurry to disclose their use of cookies. It isn’t that their blogs do anything weird with them. Their concern was that by being among the first to offer cookie disclosure, they may lose traffic.

Their logic looks like this: Most people (and many bloggers) have no idea that almost every blog uses cookies, so if they make a point of highlighting THEIR policy, before the other bloggers, some readers will wrongly assume the other blogs don’t use cookies. They think this, even though cookies usually make the reader experience better and allow the blogger to improve the quality of their blog.

I see transparency as an opportunity

One of the best kept secrets in business, is the amazing power of transparency. People like the idea that the people around them are being open and honest with them. Conversely, they lose trust in people, who they discover have been hiding something relevant from them.

In my experience, whenever you are gifted with an opportunity to display your eagerness to be transparent, you should grasp it with both hands. This is even more important online, where people often connect with your work, before they have the chance to meet you or check you out in person. Transparency helps us earn trust and build credibility.

Those are 2 extremely valuable assets, which every business needs.

Marketing and an open mind – The undeniable link.

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When it comes to marketing, how often do you question what you believe?

Black hat – White hat

I was prompted to write about this, when I read a very interesting blog comment earlier today. It really made me think.

Here’s the gist of it. The commenter stated that in his opinion, all SEO could be defined as black hat (or unethical.) His point was that Google claims it wants only the most valuable sites to rank the highest, yet Google actively encourages so-called white hat (or ethical) SEO tactics. In other words, business owners who learn SEO or pay for professional SEO, are welcome to gain an advantage over sites with better content, with Google’s blessing.

The interesting thing for me there, was NOT whether black hat SEO is worse than white hat SEO.

The interesting thing for me, was that until I had read that comment, I’d never really thought about things that way before. I saw SEO as a very black and white thing (excuse the pun). White hat was good, black hat was bad – period. Now, I see there are shades of grey, too.

In short: It’s so easy, maybe too easy, to become stuck in our thinking. It does us all good, from time to time, to question our beliefs and check we’re not making decisions based on incorrect assumptions.

Bloggers: How I went from thousands of daily spam comments, to zero!

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blogging, blog tips, content marketing

I wrote recently about a real challenge I was facing, regarding spam comments here on the blog. Today, I have the answer I need and also a wonderful piece of advice for any of you, who use WordPress and have a spam problem.

My comment spam challenge

As I wrote a couple of days ago, the volume of comment spam here was around 2,500 a day and increasing. Almost all this spam was being successfully caught by the Akismet plugin, however, in with this spam were some legitimate comments from readers. My challenge was the amount of time it took, for me to find legitimate comments, when a reader emailed me to say their comment had not been published. This was made harder, as many would forget to send me the email address they used for their comment, so I had no way to do a quick search.

When I wrote about this challenge, I saw 2 possible solutions:

  1. Install a 3rd party commenting system, like LiveFyre or Disqus, with everyone needing to register in order to comment.
  2. Turn blog comments off and have readers respond to the posts via social networks.

In the end, I did neither!

How I cured my comment spam problem (for now)

This morning, for the second day running, I went to my blog to find there were no spam comments in my spam filter. There were also no emails, from people whose comments had not been published. So, no spam comments, yet every legitimate comment went through. Here’s how I did it!

I received a huge amount of feedback from people regarding how to resolve my issue and 5 different people recommended the same simple plugin, which they said would solve the problem in minutes. They were right.

Conditional Capture for WordPress

The plugin is called Conditional Captcha for WordPress.

It works with Akismet, so whenever Akismet identifies a spam comment, it asks the sender to complete a simple captcha (see image.) If they complete it successfully, their comment is accepted. If they don’t, the comment is deleted.

Another thing I like about this plugin, is that unlike other captcha plugins, where everyone has to fill it in, this one is targeted. Unless Akismet thinks you are a spammer, you will never see it. This means it’s as quick and easy to comment here now, as it has always been.

Two additional lessons learned

After writing the blog post asking people for their feedback, two things became very clear, very fast.

The first was no surprise. It seems a lot of people dislike commenting on blogs, which use 3rd party commenting systems. Some, including me, find them unnecessarily confusing. Others dislike the idea of handing their details to a 3rd party Internet start-up or giving them access to their Twitter, Facebook accounts etc – Just to leave a comment. Many also said, they disliked how sites using 3rd party commenting systems often loaded slowly. Speed is a big deal to me, which is why I have dedicated hosting.

The second thing I learned, came as a huge surprise! I was amazed that the majority of people thought it was perfectly fine to simply turn blog comments off and have the conversations about the posts, on social networks instead. I was ready to be attacked for even suggesting this as a possibility, yet it seems people spend so much time on social networks now, that it’s easier for them to comment there, rather than on the actual blog. This was especially the case for those, like me, who usually read blogs on a tablet or phone. I currently get around 80% – 90% of my comments AWAY from this blog.

Best of both worlds

I can now provide you with the best of both worlds. Readers who like to comment here (I’ve had almost 30,000 comments so far) can do so and without any fuss. Those who like to comment on social networks will carry on doing so. I have also been able to save myself a lot of time and frustration, now that comment spam is no longer an issue.

I’m hesitant to recommend anything after using it for just 2 days. However, as I was getting as much blog comment spam in 2 days as many get in a month, I can confirm that Conditional Captcha for WordPress has been extremely accurate and easy to use. This plugin is also free, though ‘d have liked to have been given the option to either buy it or at least donate to the plugin’s creator.

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who chimed in with their feedback, suggestions and fixes.

It’s beautifully ironic, that it was you, the reader community, who solved the problem for me.

THANK YOU!

Photo: Andrew Hyde

Can you help with this, please?

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blogging, blog tips, content marketing

Blog comments have changed a lot, since I started blogging.

Initially, the vast majority of feedback I received from my posts, came from comments, which were left on my blog. Today, I get most of my blog comments from people on Google+, Twitter and Facebook (in that order.) There are posts here with 10 comments, which received 40 or 50 comments from people on social networks.

Comment spam has become a much bigger challenge

Back when I started, I would get maybe 10 or 20 spam comments a day, which was easy to control. It took just a minute, to spot any genuine comments that were incorrectly identified as spam and approve them. Today, the volume of spam has increased so much, that this is no longer sustainable. Comment spam to this site is getting out of control.

In fact, that’s what has prompted this post. For example, in the past 48 hours alone, I have been hit with over 4,000 spam comments (see image), all of which were caught in my spam filter. This has been getting steadily worse for years.

Here’s the problem: Sadly, somewhere in with those 4,816 spam filtered comments are legitimate comments from real people, who probably wonder why their comments have not been published. I regularly have people contact me, to ask where their comment is. I used to sift through the filtered comments to look for real comments, but it’s just too time consuming now. With so much spam to wade through, I now have to wait until someone asks me to look, so I can do a search using their email address, fish the comment out and then approve it. It’s time consuming, frustrating and getting slowly worse.

Clearly, something needs to change.

I’m looking for an answer & your feedback, please

My current thought is to either try using another commenting system, something that was better at allowing real comments through – or have comments here turned off and get all feedback from social networking sites.

I’d like your opinion on which of the 2 options you think is best.

Option 1: Install Disqus or LiveFyre

I spent much of Monday researching the various commenting systems, but none did exactly what I needed. The closest I found were Disqus and LiveFyre. If I use LiveFyre or Discus, you would need to either set up an account with them or sign in via a social network, before you could leave a comment here – in order to block comment spam the way I would need it to. This approach encourages accountability, though it wouldn’t eradicate non-automated comment spam.

A major plus is that either system should ensure that all legitimate comments get through.

As with any third-party commenting system, when these services are down, you won’t be able to comment here and I won’t be able to do anything about it. I’m not thrilled with that. Neither of these platforms would provide me with exactly what I want, which is to spend all my blogging time creating content for you and connecting with you. I would still have the aggravation of non-automated comment spam and the frustration of relying on a third party company, for my comments to work.

Although not perfect, I’m very happy to work with one of these systems if enough readers want to comment on the blog.

Option 2: Turn blog comments off and have feedback from you via social networking sites

This is already where the vast majority of reader feedback comes from. It would mean there was no spam to deal with. Also, there would be no need to slow my site down with plugins or worry about the third party commenting systems slowing the site down or not working. Time wise, as I am already responding to people’s comments about my posts on social networks, there would be a huge time saving for me. This would give me more time to produce content and connect. However, none of these benefits matter, if they result in the value of the blog decreasing to enough of it’s readership. That’s non-negotiable and it’s why I am keen to get your feedback.

What do you think?

I’d love to know what you think and I truly respect your opinions. This is especially the case, if you are one of those who comments on my posts, either here on the blog or via a social networking site. Which option would you prefer to see?

(UPDATE)

Problem solved. Here’s how I fixed the problem, quickly and easily, going from 2,500 spam comments a day, to zero!