Jim Connolly Marketing

Things just got better!

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I have some great news, for those of you who receive this blog via email and some advice for fellow bloggers!

As from today, you have more choice over how your emails look. You can choose to receive your emails as HTML (that’s how this one was delivered), as plain text or you can choose to receive them using a dedicated mobile format. Simply click on ‘update subscription preferences’ at the foot of the email and take your pick.

Here’s why I upgraded

For the past 4 years, I have used a service called Feedburner to deliver the email version of this blog. Feedburner has slowly deteriorated and is now in the process of being scaled down and closed. So, I have decided to take this opportunity to significantly improve the way this site delivers email and have chosen a service called Mailchimp. The thousands of people who read this blog daily via email deserve a great reading experience, and by choosing Mailchimp I have invested in what I believe to be an excellent service for you.

By the way, if you do not already subscribe via email, you can get future posts delivered to you via email for free by clicking here.

If you subscribe to this blog via RSS, the new RSS address is https://jimsmarketingblog.com/feed. If you use Google Chrome, you will need to add a feed reader as it still comes without one built in. Google Reader and Feedly  are good options.

Feedburner advice for fellow bloggers

If you currently use Feedburner as your email RSS provider, I strongly suggest you look at making alternative arrangements. Whilst there has been no announcement of a closing date, Feedburner has announced that access to their API will cease on 20th October 2012. The Feedburner blog has also closed down and they have closed the Feedburner Twitter account.

PS: I will be doing a review of Mailchimp in a week or so, for those of you looking for a business class email provider.

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.