Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

The secret of a top 10 blog

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I’ve had a few emails this week, after technorati.com ranked this blog inside the world’s top 10 small business blogs for the first time.

technorati, small business, blogsWhilst this ranking will go up and down all the time, to have actually reached that spot is quite an achievement, for a marketing blog that’s little over a year old.

People wrote to me wanting to know how I did it, so here’s my secret!

I write exclusively for people – NOT Google!

Ask any top marketing writer (or copy writer) and they will tell you that it’s a challenge to produce material, which inspires people to take action, to; buy from you, visit you, call you, share your work, click links or email you etc.  That’s because people are complex.

As a marketer, people need to find your message both interesting and motivating and that’s no easy task – Especially if you are simultaneously trying to write that same message so that Google’s search engine software likes it!

So, here’s my secret sauce for a top 10 blog

This blog is read by people, enjoyed by people and designed to help people.  If I get enough genuinely useful content onto this blog, people will share my work and people will link to this blog, allowing me to reach more people.  By repeating that process, people have increased the profile of this blog and it’s readership.

Notice a common thread there?

Yep – it’s all about writing for people!

I love SEO – But I write exclusively for YOU

I don’t try and get certain keywords or phrases into my posts, to score highly with search engines.  If I did, it would change the way I write and dilute the effectiveness of what I share with you.  As a result, 100% of what you read here is written exclusively for people.

I love SEO.  It’s one of the reasons I use the Headway WordPress theme on this blog (affiliate), which is extremely SEO friendly.  I also use tags for my posts to help with my SEO too.  However, I do not deliberately write anything to keep Google happy.

Ironically, by writing exclusively for people, I have attracted around 16,000 links to this blog, which has gifted me a pretty good search engine ranking for many key marketing terms.  For instance, people going to Google searching for marketing blogs will have been able to find this blog on page 1 for the search term; “marketing blogs” for the past 6 months.

In my experience, many bloggers spend way too much time ‘optimizing’ their material for search engines and looking for that one killer trick that will magically send their website / blog to the top of the pile.

While they are waiting for that quick fix, you and I can focus on delivering the best content we can, to people.

Thank YOU!

I would like to personally thank EVERYONE who reads this blog, links to it and shares it with their friends.  As you can see, without your support, this blog is nothing.

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!

Have something worth saying and say it well!

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I want to share a valuable piece of advice with you, which I received from my mentor; the late, great Jim Rohn. Here’s what Jim used to say;

“Have something worth saying and say it well.

Jim would use that phrase when speaking about effective communication and I believe it’s also a very simple, powerful way to remind ourselves how to focus our marketing efforts. Let me explain what I mean, looking at both parts of that message, 1 part at a time.

Have something worth saying

Are your products or services worth talking about, or are they pretty similar to other people in your industry? You see, no matter how good someone’s marketing is, it will fail to generate sales or motivate people to buy from them, if its a great message, about an ‘average’ or slightly better than average service.

  • People are bored by ‘average.’
  • They see average everywhere.
  • Average, is camouflage that stops you getting noticed.
  • Average, is bland.
  • Average, doesn’t compel people to do anything.

People need to ensure that their business, products and services are REALLY worth talking about.  Not only is this required if you want to generate word of mouth publicity, it’s also required if you want your marketing to work.

…and say it well

Many people really struggle with effective communication, yet unless we know how to communicate effectively, we can never achieve anything worthwhile in business.  This is why it’s so important that when we have something worth saying, we learn how to say it well.

No business wants to be “the best kept secret” in their industry.  However, the majority of what we see and hear from small businesses is very poorly communicated.  A business that cannot effectively communicate what it does and why people need to buy from them, is placing a VERY low ceiling on their potential.  If such businesses are intent on handling all their own marketing, at the very least, they need to make a study of effective written and verbal communication.

Bottom line: By having a business, product or service that’s worth talking about, and learning how to effectively share this compelling news, marketing becomes a great deal easier.

Marketing blog experiment

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As regular readers will have noticed, the blog looks quite a bit different today!  That’s because I’m running a marketing experiment with a new, more basic looking blog design.

One of the great things about the Internet is that you can easily see, very quickly if a design change is encouraging people to use the site / blog differently.  For example, I will be able to see if there are changes in things like; the number of pages the ‘average’ person views, how long they spend on each page, how many times a page is shared, etc.

I’m really curious if making the blog’s design more basic, will help readers to focus on the actual content; which is what the blog’s all about, after all. Let’s see!

One of the benefits of running this blog, using the Headway wordpress theme (affiliate link) is that I can quickly make changes like these myself, usually in seconds.  As effective marketing is all about testing and measuring, the ability to make changes so quickly, and then adapt based on the feedback, is massively valuable.  Equally, if it’s quickly apparent that the new design needs changing, this can also be done in minutes.  That’s great peace of mind and allows for changes to be made with total confidence.

Sharing my results with you, as always

Because the vast majority of my readers have their own website or blog, I will let you know if the new, more basic look generates an improvement or drop in the blog’s statistics / analytics.  This way, we can learn from my experiment together. I’m guessing it’s going to take a week or so, before I see any relevant data.  Rest assured that as soon as I do, I will pass the findings on to you.

What (if anything) do you think about the new, basic look?  Also, which blogs do you read most often and do you think the design of that blog influences how you read it?  Please take a moment to share your thoughts.

Why bloggers post every day – Part 2

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Do you write a blog?

Are you thinking about blogging or taking your blog more seriously?

In either case, I believe you will find this post really useful.

As regular readers will recall, I wrote a post last month about the results I have seen, since I increased the frequency of my blogging from around 1 post a week to 6 or more posts a week.  This is part 2 of that post; Why bloggers post every day.  I suggest you read part 1 before you continue, as it contains some very interesting findings, which could really help you!

However, since writing that post I’ve noticed another interesting development, which I want to share with you.

More visible, more mentioned

It’s now a month since I started blogging almost daily and in addition to the results I covered in part 1 of this post, I am now starting to see a significant increase in the number of times that this blog get mentioned.  These mentions range from people citing this blog (or me) in their blog posts and articles, through to an increase in the number of times I see the blog and myself mentioned across Twitter, Facebook, forums and newsletters etc.

Why is this happening and what can we learn from it?

As I said in part 1 of this post, there was a significant growth in reader numbers here, as the frequency of my posts increased.  A larger reader-base obviously gets your blog and your name on more peoples radar.  The more people aware of you and what you do, the greater the chances are that you will get mentioned.

Of course, this then alerts new people to your blog and your work, increasing the size of your readership and thus the process feeds itself.

Here’s something special

By getting good quality information in front of people regularly, I believe you also become a more integrated part of your readers daily experience.  Many readers will position you very differently too.

You, (the blogger) become a regular part of their working day.  Your blog becomes a growing repository of answers and ideas, a knowledge-base that your readers can rely on. If you can understand what’s happening there, it’s so powerful that it’s almost magical.

Share your experiences

Do you tend to subscribe to blogs that are updated more regularly or less regularly?

How often do you think a business to business blog should be updated?

If you are a blogger yourself and you have either increased or decreased the frequency with which you post, what kind of feedback have you seen?

Please join in the conversation and share your feedback!

Why Google means so little to me (and you mean so much!)

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One of the first rules of business is not to rely too heavily on any 1 client or customer, for the majority of your income.  If you do, and that customer goes broke or takes their business elsewhere, you’re in BIG trouble!  Even if that customer just decides to pay you late, it can kill your cash flow or put you out of business.

Everyone knows that it’s far better and a lot less risky, to have a wider spread of business.

Or do they?

For some reason, when it comes to the Internet, it seems many site owners and bloggers focus the majority of their efforts on just one form of traffic development; search engines.  Then, the vast majority of that is focused on just 1 search engine – Google.  As a result, some people are now very dependent on Google traffic.  Many invest a staggering amount of time and effort doing everything they can, to keep Google happy.

Even the most read sites on the Internet can become extremely dependent on Google.  In a recent blog post, Darren Rowse from problogger explained that he almost went out of business, when Google decided overnight, to cut his traffic (and thus his sales/leads) by 30%!

I believe it’s insane to allow any 3rd party to have that much control over:

  • Your sales
  • Your leads
  • Your enquiries
  • Your income
  • and maybe even your business’ future

Whilst I recommend that every business invests in professional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), I ALSO strongly suggest that you consider investing in alternatives too.  Why? Because the results can be amazing AND it removes your exclusive reliance on search engines.

For example, although this blog is currently ranked one of the top 100 marketing blogs in the world by Adage, just a small percentage of my traffic comes via search engines.  The vast majority comes from people, via social media (more on that in a moment.)

SEO, social media and your Internet marketing mix

When I started this blog, I decided that Google was NOT going to play any deliberate part in the blog’s development.  I do NOT recommend others follow this path, it’s not the right move for the vast majority of people.

Why did I do it? Because as someone from a traditional marketing background, I wanted to use a form of marketing for the blog, which was not so reliant on Google.  I elected to use a strategy, which used a number of social media related activities. The idea was (and still is) to provide my blog with a much wider spread of human-powered, marketing options.

I use some basic SEO here, like tagging posts so that it’s easier for search engines to correctly identify what my posts are about.  This takes seconds to do.  However, I do not deliberately use Google friendly key phrases or key words – I don’t even have a sitemap!  I also do zero off-site SEO.  If Google stopped sending people here tomorrow, it would have very little impact on the development of this blog. Chris Brogan claims to have gone 1 step further than me, and says he does no SEO on his blog whatsoever! That’s incorrect, as his theme is optimized and he has requested people to link to him – I think he means he doesn’t keyword stuff. Ignoring SEO completely is at best, a little blinkered.

Here are just some of the ways that people, via social media, have helped me generate targeted traffic to this blog:

  • People share my blog posts on Twitter. I use Twitter most days and have connected with a some great people. Some of them are kind enough to share posts on Twitter, if they find them interesting.
  • People use sites like Facebook, Delicious, Stumbleupon and Digg etc to share blog posts. For example, this 1 post gets hundreds of views every week from Stumbleupon users.
  • Fellow bloggers link to posts here, which alerts their readers to this blog.  Some bloggers link to the entire blog.
  • People have mentioned the blog in podcasts.
  • I link to this blog in my marketing newsletter; which helps new newsletter readers discover the blog.

Because SEO is very much the secondary focus of the blog’s development, I focus on optimising my posts, so that they are as attractive as possible for people.  I have to admit that as a writer, I find it far, far more natural to write for people, than to alter my writing style, so that there are key phrases and words scattered strategically – to attract Google’s attention too.

It’s wise to combine great copy writing with powerful SEO.  Particularly when writing copy for a website, as opposed to a blog, the combined SEO social media approach is extremely valuable.

Love SEO – but give social media a hug too!

Do not misread this post and think for one moment that I am suggesting you ignore SEO.  That would be wrong.  I am not saying that at all.  However, I AM saying that all site owners and bloggers should spend some time exploring additional ways to generate targeted traffic. Keep up with your SEO, but seriously consider adding a little people-power to your Internet marketing mix!

Why bloggers post every day!

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Ever wondered why some bloggers write blog posts every day?  Well, I did too – So I tried a 14 day experiment, and I am going to share my results with you.

Usually, my blogging schedule is erratic; often just a handful of posts in a month.  However, as regular readers will have noticed, I have been updating this blog with fresh posts every day, for the past 2 weeks.

Why?

I wanted to measure for myself, just what the value to a blogger is, of updating their blog every day with new posts.  I assumed (rightly as it turned out) that 2 weeks would be a long enough period, for me to get some worthwhile data for you.  The results have been VERY interesting!

In brief, here’s what I have found:

RSS Subscribers

One of the biggest differences (in percentage points) has been the increase in new RSS subscribers to the blog.  New subscriber numbers are up an amazing 400% on the 2 weeks previous!  I was expecting to see some increase, but this was far, far higher than I imagined.

Blog Comments

The number of comments per post varies all the time, literally from post to post, making it very hard to measure over such a short period.  Equally, comments are often added to blog posts weeks, months and even years after a post is written.

Comments in total during the past 14 days are up by around 300%.  This is less impressive than it may sound, as there were many more posts for people to read and thus comment on than usual.  Also, regular readers have been visiting the blog more often and sharing posts with their friends more often, which increases comment numbers.

This leads me on to the biggest difference I have noticed with the comments, over the past 2 weeks.  The biggest (and most interesting development for me), has been the number of new people commenting here.  I have seen a lot of new commenters, many of whom have said that they have only just discovered the blog.

Blog traffic

The number of unique visitors here increased by just under 30% during the 2 weeks.  That’s a significant increase, especially as most of it came over the past 5 days.

Interestingly, the number of page views here increased massively.  This seems to be from new visitors having a look around and established readers visiting more often, in line with the number of new posts.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that daily blogging, even for a relatively short period of time, has significantly increased ‘traffic’ into the blog.

Conclusion

The biggest revelation for me has been how much fun I’ve had! I have REALLY enjoyed putting the posts together.  More than this, the increased activity on the blog from commenters and those discussing posts on Twitter, has been amazing.  The whole ‘atmosphere’ of the blog has been improved in every way.

However, it is very clear from the significant increases across the board, why so many bloggers post fresh content every day.  Daily blogging has improved literally every metric I have measured – not just those mentioned in this brief post.  It’s also improved areas that are far harder to measure, like making the blog a lot more ‘alive’ and vivid.  These things are harder to plot on a chart than RSS subscribers or traffic, but they are massively valuable to anyone who genuinely cares about their blog and it’s community of readers.

My dilemma

I strongly believe that the only time to write a blog post is when the writer has something VALUABLE to say, which is worth sharing.  I don’t believe in having a blogging schedule. As a professional writer, I have found it relatively easy to publish fresh content each day – but what about the quality of that content?

I see zero point in posting dross occasionally, just so that I don’t miss a day!  That material will live on the Internet forever, with my name attached to it. My 4 year old son will see it when he’s older – I don’t want him thinking his daddy writes pedestrian, generic bullshit occasionally, because I’m a slave to some self-imposed, daily blogging schedule.

I occasionally read posts by people considered to be GREAT bloggers, which seem ‘pretty average’ at best.  The thing is, these guys are NOT average writers; they are the top of the blogging pile.  I always wonder if the reason I find those posts average, is just that the subject is not of interest to me, or if it’s because the blogger wrote an average post, just to maintain his or her daily blogging schedule.

The bottom line for me, is that by blogging here each day, the value of this blog has improved in every way.  So, I’ve decided to aim for blogging here on a more regular basis than before, but only when I have something I believe is worth sharing with you.  If that’s daily, then fine. If not, then I assure you, you will be missing nothing worth reading.

What do you think?

Did you find any of that data useful or interesting?  What has your experience been?

Photo credit: UnSung

Successful blog marketing – 3 things to consider!

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Here’s a quick example of the kind of results that can be achieved with a well-marketed blog.  If you are either thinking of starting a blog or you already have one, but wonder if it’s worth marketing it more effectively, you will find this extremely useful.  It’s based on 3 key areas you need to consider – But first, here’s why I decided to write this post for you today.

I had the pleasure of speaking with one of my long term readers for the very first time yesterday.  The guy’s name is Brent Pohlman and Brent’s the Marketing Director at Midwest Laboratories in Omaha, Nebraska.  During our call, Brent mentioned how he attended a morning meeting that day, for local businesspeople in his part of Omaha.

During the meeting, Brent told the group that he was going to be speaking with Jim Connolly later in the morning.  When he said this, one of the businesspeople there asked;
“Isn’t he that bald marketing guy from the UK?”

Ohama, Nebraska is located in the beautiful Mid West of the United States; 6 time zones away from the small village here in the UK, where I live and work.  Even so, through the effective marketing of this blog, people were already aware of what my name was, who I was and what I did.  What makes that name / brand awareness even more amazing, is that the people attending that meeting were marketing people and business owners; the exact people my work is aimed at.  For those of you, who don’t know, I help market small businesses all over the world.

Now, I have no idea how many millions it would have cost me, to generate that kind of targeted, international name awareness via old-school, paid advertising.  However, I do know what it cost in order to achieve this using the blog.

There are 3 investments you need to consider:

Blog marketing – The FINANCIAL investment

I use a premium WordPress theme for this blog (it’s called Headway and I love it so much I am an affiliate.)  This theme allows me to make all changes to the blog myself and have it look exactly how I want it to, with the functionality I need, without requiring a web designer or CSS expert.

Then, there’s the financial investment for hosting this blog.  However, as I already host 2 other sites with my server people, this one actually costs me nothing.  I recommend to everyone that they get the best hosting they can afford – not the ‘cheapest.’ When it comes to hosting a site, avoid the bargain bucket providers.

Blog marketing – The TIME investment

The biggest investment required for successful blog-based marketing is time.  For example, there’s the time it takes to write the kind of compelling copy (articles/posts) that people will value and want to share. Like many successful blogs, this one doesn’t grow its readership  thanks to Google; it relies on people sharing what they find here with their friends and contacts.  That means the information here needs to be good enough to regularly motivate people to want to share it with their friends on social networking sites, bookmarking sites and via their blogs.

Another time investment that I believe is essential for marketing your blog, is to read other people’s blogs.  I read around 10 marketing-related blogs every day and about 50 others semi regularly.  This is a great way to keep abreast of what people in your industry and marketplace are talking about.

There’s also the time it takes to interact with the people who comment on your blog, and those, who share your content.  If someone comments here, I always try and find the time to thank them.  I do this either on the blog or, if they use Twitter, I will often thank them on Twitter – sometimes both.  There are a few posts here with over 200 comments and one with close to 700 comments, which were impossible to keep up with, but I do regularly connect with everyone who comments here.  The people who comment on this blog and those, who share my content, are of FAR more value to me, than the blog itself.  I can start a new blog tomorrow, but those relationships are pure gold dust!

Blog marketing – The expertise investment

The final investment you will need to consider, is the investment in expertise.  You will either need to invest in learning how to produce inspirational, compelling posts and market them, or you will need to buy that expertise in.  This could have been placed in the time investment or financial investment section – but it’s so important (and neglected) that I wanted to give it special attention.

You see, some of the most interesting blogs out there are among the least read!  The thing is, from a marketing perspective, having a ton of great content on your blog is of little real value, if your prospective clients aren’t aware of it.

You must find out how to create content that will motivate people to; call you, buy from you, visit you, email you, subscribe to your mailing list, etc. You need to know how to inspire people to want to share your content.  You need to find out how to build an active community of people around your blog. You need to know how to make people feel great about you and your business / brand. This requires considerable expertise.

In my experience, most business bloggers decide not to invest in at least 1 of those 3 key areas.  If there’s any 1 area listed above that you are neglecting right now, I strongly recommend you give it the investment it deserves.  Your business will thank you!

5 grand a month, every month & quickly please!

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I received an email over the weekend from the owner of a website, which I want to share with you. It’s a great example of how people think the normal rules of marketing do not apply to the Internet.

The emailer wrote to me, asking if I could just do a quick marketing job for her.

All she wanted was for me to make her website generate $5,000 a month, every month, without her having to do much; because she’s too busy to update it. She went on to say; “I don’t think it will take much to reach my goal,” before asking if I could do all this as a quick, one-off project.

The site this lady contacted me about is over 4 years old and is really dated.  Despite her efforts over the years, her site gets very little traffic.  It also has very few inlinks for a site of that age.  Oh, and it’s competing for business in one of the most competitive, professionally marketed marketplaces on the Internet; personal development.

Even if the emailer threw thousands at advertising (and there was no suggestion of a marketing budget), to make it profitable would require a total overhaul and a VERY effective short, medium and long term marketing strategy.  It would require ongoing testing and measuring (like all successful marketing.)  The bottom line here is that generating a $5,000 per month income, competing alongside some of the best marketed organisations on the planet for every one of those dollars, is not a quick project.

Internet marketing benefits

There’s no doubt that the Internet and digital communications offer unprecedented marketing, sales and business development opportunities; however, you still need to apply an effective strategy if you want your Internet marketing to succeed.  For example, this blog attracts an average of just over 50 emails for my marketing business, each day (7 days a week.)  It has generated 6 figures in income for my business in the past year –  BUT, this didn’t just happen. It was the result of an effective marketing strategy.

Google announced back in 2008 that it had already indexed over a TRILLION unique URL’s.  That number will have increased massively since then, and it gives you an idea of how many other pages and sites there are, that YOUR prospective clients or customers could be looking at rather than yours.  They may be wasting time on some of those sites or listening to music or tweeting or spending money.  The thing is, you need a strategy if you want to capture their imagination.  You need a strategy if you want them to ‘discover’ you and see how brilliant you are.

Just ‘being online’ is not enough!

Quick Internet marketing tip!

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If you want to create stacks of leads, fill your client base or sell more widgets, you need to do the total opposite of what the vast majority of small businesses do online.  You need to be original.

That’s because there’s a serious problem with the generic, copycat approach to Internet marketing:

It doesn’t work!

It’s easy to see why so many people just copy the marketing they see on other sites.  After all, the ability to develop an effective Internet marketing strategy and write copy that compels people to take action, is very rare.  Knowing how to motivate someone to click your links, send you an email, subscribe to your newsletter, call you, visit you or buy from you is perhaps the rarest, most valuable skill in marketing today.

For example, I was called earlier this year by one of my readers, who is a marketing consultant.  He wanted to know if I would quickly review his blog, (quickly meant do it for free, apparently!)  I don’t work for free, but I did take a quick look at his blog out of curiosity. I was unable to figure out what his service was, let alone why anyone might need it.  His blog was packed with buzz-words, marketing bullshit and stacks of rambling, pedestrian copy that went nowhere.  In the time it took me to finish my coffee, I was able to spot well over a dozen, serious, marketing-related problems.  It was easy to see why he needed free advice!

Why your business needs its own Internet marketing strategy

So, this is the part of a blog post were an Internet marketing guru would give you a list of; “killer Internet marketing tactics that are guaranteed to work” – And that’s part of the problem.  Business owners are being told all the time that there’s a generic, one size fits all way to maximise the potential of their sites or blogs, when the reality is the complete opposite!

An effective Internet marketing strategy differs massively, from; industry to industry, country to country and business to business.  It needs to take many factors into account, like; the size of the business being marketed, what they want to achieve, where their prices or fees are pitched, who their target customer is and if they are selling business to business or business to consumer etc, etc.

It’s really important that you don’t make the same mistakes.  If YOU want YOUR blog or website to be a business generating machine, use an Internet marketing strategy that’s been developed for YOU and YOUR business, based on YOUR unique situation and YOUR unique goals.

Highly recommended – Danny Brown’s blog

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DannyLarge-239x300In an age where there are so many blogs, often repeating the same information, it can be a real challenge to find blogs with content that’s worth shouting about. So, when I find one that consistently delivers the goods, I like to recommend it to you.

In the past, I have recommended blogs by; Seth Godin, Robert Scoble, The BBC and Leo Laporte.  Today, it’s the turn of PR professional, Social Media maverick and fund raiser extraordinaire; Danny Brown – From dannybrown.me.

First off, you do not need to be interested in PR to really enjoy Danny’s blog.  His writing style is engaging, refreshing and original.  Danny opts for a bullshit-free approach to blogging, with the occasional use of strong(ish) language; as is often the case when passionate people speak.

Did you notice that I used the word ‘speak‘ in the previous sentence and not ‘write‘?  That’s because Danny’s writing style reads as if he were having a chat with you face to face.  I’ve never spoken with Danny myself, but I feel like I know him.  That’s a skill that very few bloggers possess.  In fact, one of the main reasons I am recommending Danny Brown’s blog to you, is that many of my readers are students of great copy writing and Danny’s copy writing is superb.

The 12for12k challenge

12412k imageDanny is also a passionate fund raiser for good causes all over the world, which he assists via the 12for12k challenge.  The challenge is a BIG one; to raise $12,000, for each of 12 different charities, over a 12 month period.

You can find out more about the 12for12k challenge by visiting their site.

So, why not take a look at Danny’s blog and see what all the fuss is about?

Stephen Fry, critics and a business lesson

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As Stephen Fry demonstrated on Twitter a few days ago, it’s easy to allow a vocal critic to screw things up for you.

In Stephen Fry’s case, one of his followers told him that his tweets were boring.  Fry then threatened to quit Twitter and sever his ties with the million people who actually DO enjoy what he has to share.  Whilst Stephen Fry’s lives with some well documented mental health challenges, his reaction to this criticism is common among many business owners; who allow fear of criticism to hurt their businesses.

Fear of criticism

I had an email today from a reader, who wants to add a pop-up box to her website; to encourage people to subscribe to her newsletter.  She explained how she was concerned that some of her readers might not like it. In my reply, I explained that her decision should be based on what’s the correct thing to do and not what’s the easiest thing to do.  If there’s a chance that by adding a pop-up box, she will get more subscribers and as a result make more sales or win more clients – then it’s worth testing and measuring it.

She then sent me a 2nd email, which said how she was worried that a few hyper-critical readers would complain.  Apparently, her readership is over 3,000 and she’s seriously considering missing out on a potentially effective way to grow her readership, because of what 3 or 4 readers (not customers) might think or say!

This got me thinking:

  • I wonder how many great ideas have never seen the light of day, for fear of criticism?
  • I wonder how many opportunities the average business owner or entrepreneur misses each year, for fear of what the vocal minority might say or think?

Here’s a question to ponder:
What changes would you make to your business, if you knew for certain there would be no negative criticism?

Criticism: What do you think?

I would love to hear your feedback on either the people who criticise or those who allow fear of criticism to govern their decisions.  Let us know what you think!

Blogging from the bathroom!

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$10,000 for 5 weeks work – blogging from a bathroom!

I was just reading a great post by Jack Neff on the AdAge.com blog, about a blogging gig being offered by Procter and Gamble; the owners of the Charmin toilet paper brand.  It seems they are offering five bloggers the chance to earn $10,000 for five weeks work.

Apparently, the bloggers will be expected to “greet and entertain bathroom guests and blog about their experiences” at Charmin’s restrooms on Times Square, New York.

The marketing power of blogs

Amid what seems like a pretty light-hearted story, rests a really valuable marketing lesson.  You see, although Procter and Gamble will be paying these 5 people a total of $50,000 for their blogging – the story has already generated way more than $50,000 worth of publicity for the Charmin brand.  This $50,000 sounds like a lot of money, but is peanuts in relation to what multinationals spend on their marketing.

Because the bloggers will be writing about the event for over a month, the story will ‘develop legs’ and have a bigger impact over a longer period than more typical, more expensive but less creative marketing ideas.  This really is an excellent example of creative marketing and Procter and Gamble’s marketing team deserve a massive amount of credit.

Their decision to choose blogging as part of this promotion, serves as yet another indicator of how big brands are realising the marketing power of blogging.  I think this $50,000 investment will be money well spent!

What do you think?

Jim’s marketing blog – Now on Headway

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As regular readers will notice, things look a little different on the blog now! That’s because I have just upgraded the blog from it’s previous, limited wordpress theme and am now running the blog using Headway.

Why I moved to Headway

The biggest frustration I have experienced as a blogger, is the massive amount of my time that’s wasted, when I need to make stylistic changes or modifications to one of my blogs.  This happens more often than you might think; as I am always looking for better ways to engage with my readers and provide them with a more valuable experience.

I do most of my blogging activity when it’s quiet – for me, that means nights and weekends.  Now, even though I have always paid for professional help, it’s seldom available to me when I needed it.  As a result, whenever I wanted to make a change to the blog that wasn’t directly accessible via the theme, it could take from a few hours to a few days for the changes to be made.

Last week I launched a new ideas blog using the Headway theme.  Like many wordpress themes, Headway claims that users like me can design a blog from scratch, with no need to touch the CSS / HTML. Unlike every other theme I have used, Headway actually delivered – In fact, it massively OVER delivered.

So much so, that Headway is the first ever affiliate product I have promoted on a blog!

What’s the big deal with Headway?

I am a marketing specialist, a content creator, a writer – but NOT a coder! I have zero HTML skills and no idea how to configure CSS.  However, using Headway, I can do everything I want to my blogs, using their drag and drop system.  In fact, I managed to reconfigure this blog today in less than 40 minutes – with no need at all to touch the code.

Here’s a few of Headway’s features, for those of you who are interested.  I wrote that post myself, to try and explain how easy, fun and flexible Headway is.

Full disclosure

I was so totally blown away with Headway, that I wrote to the developers to thank them.  After wasting almost a thousand dollars over the past 2 years, on themes that universally disappointed me, I decided to promote Headway as an affiliate.  This is the first affiliate product I have ever promoted on any of my blogs; such is my gratitude for how it has (literally) transformed how I blog.

To Clay and Grant Griffiths, the guys behind Headway; “Thank you!”

Why bloggers must come clean

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Something I have been passionate about for a very long time, is the need for bloggers to fully disclose if they are getting paid in some way, to write about a company / product / service.  Well, yesterday, The United States Federal Trade Commission announced that it would fine bloggers up to $11,000 if they post positive reviews or endorsements, for which they are rewarded in any way, without letting their readers know.

I have three blogs and operate a full disclosure policy on all of them.  Like all well-read bloggers, I get offerers pretty-much every day from people, who want to pay me (either money or freebies), if I will ‘just’ write about them, their business or their service in glowing terms.  My tech news blog often gets several such offers in one day.

Full disclosure

When a blogger is honest enough to declare any gifts they receive, it encourages the reader to trust their content.  For example, I found out yesterday that big time blogger Chris Brogan, receives his hosting for free from a well-known hosting provider.  The reason I now know, is that Chris openly disclosed this gift in a post he wrote, about the company who give him his free hosting. Sadly, there are no disclosures anywhere about his cross-promotion of products with other top bloggers, which kind of defeats the object of disclosing an affiliate link or sponsor.

That kind of honest declaration, allows readers to place the post in context, of how they feel, knowing about the relationship the blogger has with the company.

The trust of your readers is everything

The importance of trust when developing a successful relationship with anyone, can not be overstated.  This is equally true of the relationship between a blogger or content provider and their readers.  After all, who wants to read content that you can’t trust?

If you have a commercial blog or website and you want people to trust you and your business, being fully open is essential.

Using social media to launch a new blog

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So, can social media really help you market or promote something?

Oh yes!

Earlier today, I launched a brand new blog. Now, usually when you launch a new blog, the first day sees very little traction; after all, no one knows it’s there.  However, thanks exclusively to the use of a few social media tools, the blog attracted hundreds of unique visitors within an hour of its launch.  The blog has also attracted some great comments and people have been emailing me and tweeting to me all morning with feedback and ideas.

Here’s how I launched the new blog (quickly)

The primary tool I used, in order to let people know about the new blog, was Twitter.

A few days ago, I set up a Twitter account for the new blog, which had a handful of ‘followers’ but was essentially sleeping until the blog was launched.  Over the past 3 days, I mentioned on my regular @jimconnolly Twitter account that I was going to launch a new blog this week.  This got people asking me about it and asking to be informed when it launched.

Earlier today, I published the first post on the new blog and sent a Tweet via @jimconnolly, to let people know. I also sent a simple message to a handful of people I know on Friendfeed, all of whom shared the information with their contacts.

This tiny amount of Twitter and Friendfeed activity was aimed at encouraging a relatively small number of people to check out the new blog.  It seems they did and that they told their contacts about it too.  In no time, traffic to the blog started increasing at the perfect rate for me to be able to monitor it.  I will explain why this was important in a moment.

When people arrived at the blog, they saw a welcome post, which also contained a few suggestions:

  • I asked people to please check out a page that explained what the blog was all about.
  • I then asked people to subscribe to the RSS feed, if they wanted to keep up to date with new posts.
  • Finally, I asked people to join the new blog on Twitter @theideasblog – If they were interested in sharing ideas.

An hour later, I published a second post, which was a typical blog post and gave people an idea of the kind of content to expect. It also gave people something of value to read / share.

Summary

This was a simple, deliberately planned launch; which gave me the time to respond to comments and check the blog was working – rather than creating a sudden surge in numbers.  I mentioned earlier that it was important for me to be able to build the traffic to the blog steadily.  There were 2 reasons for this:

  • The blog is with a new hosting provider and I had not placed it under a sudden, heavy load previously.
  • For the first time ever, I configured and designed the blog theme myself. I had obviously tested it previously, but it’s different when the site goes live and it’s receiving comments etc.

By using Twitter, a message on my new blog and a few messages on Friendfeed, I was not only able to create a successful launch, but even control the initial flow of traffic (to a degree).  This was a great, real life example of what’s possible with social media.

This blog gets listed on the Adage Power 150!

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It’s always great to be recognised for your work isn’t it?

That’s why I was delighted, when I was emailed this morning by Advertising Age; telling me that this blog has just been listed in their Adage Power 150!

power150badge_blankAdvertising Age is a very popular and well respected weekly publication and online resource; for people interested in marketing, advertising and the media.  As one of their regular readers for many years, this recognition means a great deal to me.

It’s also humbling to listed along with the likes of Seth Godin, BrandRepublic and Mashable.

Don’t copy your social media guru

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I’m a marketing man, not a social media expert. However, because some social media tools are excellent for helping small businesses market their services, I’ve spent years studying the marketing potential of social media.

Here’s an important observation I would like to share with you.

Don’t copy your social media guru

It’s all about why you should not necessarily use the same social media strategy, as your social media guru.  Whilst their advice might be superb, simply copying what you see them do, is not always the right thing to do.

Let me explain.

In my experience, most social media professionals make their living selling a mixture of; books, downloadable products and ads or sponsorships on their blogs. Some of the better known social media figures also offer seminars / workshops internationally too.  Unlike most of their readers, they are not geographically limited in what they provide. Someone buying their latest book or eBook in the same street is no different from someone making that same purchase, on a different continent 10 time zones away.

If you run a business, which provides services (or sells to) a particular geographical area, you are going to need a far more geographically targeted approach to your use of social media.  You will need to focus your efforts in a way that attracts and develops opportunities in the area that’s of commercial interest to you.

For example, if you are an accountant or lawyer, it’s unlikely that you will be seeking business leads or referrals on an international basis.  Apart from anything else, your qualifications will restrict what you can offer internationally.  If you work in insurance, your products may have geographical limitations too.  Same again if you operate a franchise business, with a set territory.

Tools like LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook and FriendFeed are known for making it possible to easily develop an international network of contacts.  However, they also make it possible to search for (and connect with) your target audience too – people where you do business.

Your social media feedback

I know that a lot of my readers are big users of social media, some with great success!  If you have developed a social media strategy, which has a geographical element, or you have any tips for a more regional approach to social media; please share it with your fellow readers and myself.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Ads, endorsements and full disclosure!

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When I launched this blog, I decided to introduce a zero advertising policy – no paid advertising or endorsements. There were a couple of solid reasons for this.

Firstly, I don’t like blogs, which are just glorified advertising vehicles.  They make me wonder if the posts are being written just as a way to sell ads, rather than provide genuine value.

Secondly, I wanted to show you that this blog contained information you could trust, without you having to wonder if I was being paid to recommend a product or service to you.  My aim was to use my ad free approach, as a way to increase the quality of the content here and make it a more valuable resource for you and your business.

I soon had to include unpaid endorsements in this ban, as it was the only way to prove that this was a fully, paid-ad free blog.  I tried offering unpaid recommendations, but as you will see later in this post, it just didn’t work.

However, after reviewing the impact of this approach since the blog’s launch in winter 2008, it’s become increasingly clear to me that my zero ad / recommendation has actually done the total opposite of what I intended.

In reality, banning all forms of paid and unpaid recommendations, has stopped me being able to provide you with a stack of genuinely useful, valuable information.  I have also been unable to share some great resources with you, things that I pro-actively recommend to people on the radio or when I give a talk.  I have even been unable to answer some common reader questions here; things I get asked all the time and have to answer individually via email – because the answer involves me directly recommending a product or service to you.

To show you what I mean, here’s just a few examples of the kind of issues I’ve encountered, by refusing to offer any form of paid or unpaid promotion here:

  • Over the years, I have invested thousands of pounds and dollars on marketing and other business related audio programmes. Some of these programs have been massively useful and have the potential to directly help you and your business.  One program helped me to totally transform my whole life!  However, I have not been able to recommend them here.  This has clearly stopped me being able to provide you with something of genuine value.
  • After I reviewed Seth Godin’s blog, I got emails and messages on Twitter, complaining that it was an advertisement! In truth it was an endorsement, albeit an unpaid one, for a site that offers stacks of great, free content.  There’s been (literally) dozens of similar examples.  I mention this, to highlight the difficulty I have found in being able to bring you really useful information – within my self-imposed guidelines.  This has clearly stopped me being able to provide you with resources of genuine value.
  • David Henderson sent me a copy of his book; “The Media Savvy Leader” to review.  I loved it.  David’s a former Emmy Award winning CBS News Correspondent and really understands the media. His book is excellent, BUT I wasn’t able to review it for you here.  So, I find myself in the insane position, where I can pro-actively recommend his book to my friends and contacts, but not to you.  This has clearly stopped me being able to provide you with something of genuine value.
  • I get emails on a very regular basis, from people asking the same questions – questions, which I could answer easily in the blog, but can’t because they involve me giving an endorsement.  These include: “What emailing software do you use for your newsletter?”, “Which is best for Twitter management; TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop?”, “Which hosting company do you use for your blog?” and “What wordpress theme do you recommend?” etc, etc.

I know from the volume of email I receive, that answering questions like these here on the blog will help a LOT of people.

So, my friends and contacts all know the things I use and endorse, but my readers here don’t  – And that’s just wrong!

Then there’s the borderline stuff

Things get even crazier, when you look at other borderline advertising issues here.  For example, is that button in the sidebar that says ‘Twitter’ an ad for Twitter or not?  What about the link at the bottom of the screen, that lets you know who configured this blog for me, surely that’s an advertisement?  What about the links in my sidebar or the people who promote their services in the comments section of the blog? Though none of these mentions were paid for, surely they are all forms of advertising?

Clearly, something had to change.  So after a lot of thinking, I have decided to kick the zero ad policy into touch!

Removing the barriers

The time has come for me to remove this barrier, so I can increase the value of this blog to you and your business. As a reader, you are likely to notice two significant improvements:

  • Firstly, I will be able to write posts far more frequently, because posts will be written with total freedom and none of the previous limitations.
  • Secondly, the blog will become a more valuable resource for you.  That’s because the only qualification a post will now need, in order for it to be published here, is that I believe it will help you or your business to succeed.  This leaves me free to share everything with you and is a powerful enough reason by itself, to make the change worthwhile.

Full disclosure

I have not spoken to anyone yet about paid advertising here, as my primary reason for this change is to give myself the freedom to deliver better quality content to you. Everything I recommend on this blog, will be something I use and/or believe in 100%.

Of course, having now made this announcement, it’s likely there will be advertising enquiries.  I have a blog that already successfully offers paid and unpaid endorsements, advertising and reviews; via a full disclosure policy. When the time comes, I will use a full disclosure policy here too. This means everything related to any form of paid advertising that you see here in the future, will be clearly identified. Full disclosure allows total transparency and the development and retention of trust.

For example, if I recommend a book to you that’s on amazon, and I include an affiliate link to it in the post, the link will be clearly marked as an affiliate link. Then, if you want to read reviews of the book on amazon or buy a copy, you can do so with just one click. By the way, bloggers typically make VERY little money from this kind of link.  Chris Brogan refers to it laughingly as ‘beer money’ – and he has a massively popular blog. These links are primarily offered as a useful resource for people that are interested in finding out more about the book.

Conclusion

There’s a real irony about this, as I can be more open and transparent without the former ad ban, using full disclosure, than I could with it. Remember, only a relatively small number of my long-term readers even knew what my policy was! Everyone else must just have wondered why such a popular marketing blog had no ads and seldom reviewed anything!

By having the freedom to write for you, without all the previous restrictions, I hope to significantly increase the value of this blog to you and your business.  I would like to know what you think about these changes, so please leave your feedback in the comments section below or if you prefer, by contacting me here.

Update:
In the 2 days since writing this post, I have received almost 90 messages; through the comments below, emails, Tweets and even a phone call from a long time reader – which was brilliant.  All the feedback thus far is in support of what I am trying to do here.  I have also seen my largest ever increase in my RSS subscribers.  Thanks to everyone!

My dofollow experiment – The results

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Way back in November 2008, I decided to start an experiment. Against the advice of a few SEO professionals, I decided to see what would happen, if I offered ‘dofollow’ links from the comments section of this blog.

I have been able to take this gamble, because this blog is 100% free of advertisers, affiliates and sponsors.  In other words, I have none of the traffic pressures many of my fellow bloggers have.

After 6 months, here’s my experience.

What’s a dofollow link?

Briefly, for those who do not already know, when you leave a comment on a dofollow blog, the links you put in your comment are followed by Google, from the blog, to wherever your link points.  However, the vast majority of blogs and websites offer ‘nofollow‘ links, which means that Google is told not to follow the links you leave in your comments.  By offering dofollow links, it’s believed that you give a tiny SEO boost to those who comment on a blog.

The dofollow results

3 weeks ago, I removed the dofollow attribute from the blog, so that I could see what difference, if any, it made.  I thought it would take weeks to notice any real, measurable difference, but the change started after just a few days.

Here’s what happened.

Spam comments from REAL people

Sadly, this blog slowly became a magnet for people seeking to get dofollow links for their sites and their client’s sites.  This form of spammy commenting, has already all but stopped.  This is because those who make a living from targeting dofollow blogs, usually have software installed on their machines, which shows immediately if a blog is dofollow or not; (like Quirk’s popular SearchStatus plugin for firefox).

Let me make this clear – I am NOT talking about automated spam, which every blogger gets.  I am referring to spammy comments left by real people, exclusively designed to get dofollow links to their site (or their client’s sites.)

Search engine results

After just 3 weeks with the dofollow attribute turned off, search traffic to this blog from Google has increased by over 25% (and it’s still increasing.)  My Google Pagerank has also increased from 3 to 5.  I have discussed this considerable increase in search engine traffic with several SEO professionals. It seems the general belief is that I was being penalised by Google, NOT because I offered dofollow links; but because too many of those links pointed to what SEO professionals refer to as ‘bad neighbourhoods.’

In other words, people were linking to dubious sites from here and I was being penalised by search engines for allowing it.

I believe that this problem can be rectified, by manually checking the URL’s of every link left by every person who comments. However, this blog has around 4000 comments – one post alone has almost 700 comments (and growing!)  The large number of comments on this blog, made it just too time consuming for me to manually check the URL destination of each comment. Yes, there is software out there which is supposed to be able to do this for you, but I found it to be way too inaccurate – often claiming great blogs were spammy and visa versa.

Conclusion

Just offering dofollow links shouldn’t have any negative impact on a blog – providing you have the time to be able to manually check out the URL of every person who comments on your blog AND you are able to correctly identify what is a good or bad neighbourhood.

This causes a REAL dilemma though.  That’s because the temptation is to delete any comment from someone, with a link that you are not 100% sure about.  This inevitably means you run the risk of deleting comments from great, genuine people.

Dofollow clues

There’s an old saying in marketing, which tells us; “success leaves clues.” So, this weekend, I checked out the 50 most successful blogs that I read and NONE of them offer dofollow comment links. By the way, these include; scobleizer.com, techcrunch, mashable, ducttapemarketing.com and veronica belmont’s blog.

Over the past 6 months, my dofollow experiment has been really interesting.  My conclusion is that dofollow is a GREAT idea, if you have the time to check out the URL of every comment and the ability to call it right each time.

If you only get a few comments a day and can afford the time to check them out – Go for it!  However, if you get a lot of comments to your blog and you want to avoid a lot of extra work, I think you have a call to make. 

Ironically, the dofollow benefits you give your commenters will make very little difference to their SEO anyway.

This post covers my unique, personal experience with dofollow links.  I would like to hear your experiences with dofollow links or nofollow links.  What kind of impact did they have on your blog; positive or negative?

More traffic to your site in 2 easy steps!

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If you own a website or blog and you want to dramatically increase the number and quality of visitors you get, you need to encourage people who visit your site, to share what they find with their friends.

Thankfully, we know that when people find material on a website, which they believe will be of interest to their friends and contacts, they are more than happy to forward it to them.  This is why websites like FriendFeed, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Twitter and Digg have become so popular. They allow people to easily share things with their friends.

In order for you to benefit from the viral power of the Internet, there are two things you should consider.

1. Content

Firstly, you need to have content on your site, which is worth sharing.  This means your content has to be better and more valuable than the typical material, which people find on your kind of site or blog.  Many blog owners feel compelled to write ‘something’ every day; indeed many so-called “social marketing gurus” even write posts telling people to do this.  The challenge this presents, is that very few businesspeople have the time required to write new, valuable content every day.

Post only when you have something worth sharing and focus on quality, not quantity.

2. Make it easy to share

Secondly, you need to make it super-easy for people to share your material with their friends.  I use a free plugin for this blog called Sexy Bookmarks, (see below), which allows people to share what they find here, on most popular networksg – quickly and easily.  Just a few mouse clicks and that’s it!

As a result of focusing on what I believe to be valuable content AND making it as easy as possible for people to share it, I get thousands of new visitors from sharing / bookmarking websites every week.

A quick tip!

Take a moment to look at the last few websites, articles, videos, blog posts or whatever; which YOU have passed on to your friends.  Now ask yourself this question: “What was it that motivated you to share that material and how can YOU use that same kind of motivation, to get others to share YOUR content?”

Your answer to that question is a good starting point!