Jim Connolly Marketing

Why your Internet marketing NEEDS your voice!

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I saw a joke on Google+ yesterday. It simply said:

How to start an argument online

  1. State an opinion.
  2. Wait.

There’s some truth in this

Many small business owners lack visibility online, because they fear being challenged for expressing their own opinions. So, they will like, retweet, +1 and stumble what others say and ensure their own messages are as uncontentious as possible. Whilst this approach does almost eliminate confrontation, it also robs you of the visibility you need, in order to succeed.

  • Your marketplace listens to you, when you have a message worthy of their valuable attention.
  • They follow you, when you lead. Not when you simply nod along like everyone else at the back.

Business should be challenging

Yes, you will get challenged, if you have the courage to share what you think and it happens to go against the grain. If you believe in the value of your opinion, you should welcome people to test what you say. In many cases, you will learn something about the strength of your own view point. In others, you will learn how to make your point more clearly. I have learned a great deal from people, who have caused me to dig deep and question my own opinions.

Looking through their lens

So, what about those people who just seem intent on arguing, when you confidently express your opinion? A quick look at what you have said, through their lens, will usually show you (in seconds) why they are arguing with you. Looking through their lens, is a phrase used to describe looking at what you said, from their perspective, so you can identify their motives.

Here’s what I commonly find, when I look through the lens of someone intent on arguing rather than discussing a viewpoint:

Vested interests: They have a vested interest in the opposing view. I saw a recent post by a guy who said that traditional networking groups were becoming less relevant, as more people connected with others on services like LinkedIn and Facebook etc. He was attacked by a lady who said online networking was of zero value, zero use and that he was in denial. After clicking through the link on her comment, I saw she ran several offline networking groups. Her business model needs that guy to be wrong.

Trolls: You are dealing with a troll. Trolls are going to troll, it’s what they do. Welcome to the Internet. It’s your call, but if they are only looking to insult you, there’s little value publishing their abuse or responding to their jibes on social networks. Seriously, you would not allow someone to do that to you in public and you shouldn’t online either. If someone’s just being a bastard, there’s no room for that in my business and I’m guessing the same is true for your business, too.

They want your juice: They want to gain your attention or the attention of your readers / followers. Some people seem to believe that it’s an effective marketing technique, to argue with people in their profession on social networks and on their competitors blogs. This is pretty rare and tends to happen more when you have a large readership or online following and a reputation for publishing comments that disagree with you.

In summary

I’ve written thousands of blog posts and only ever needed to delete a handful of trollish comments. Others who challenge my views, often open up the conversation and that’s how I evaluate their input: As an asset.

It’s your marketing and your decision, but it’s extremely hard to attract the attention of your prospective clients or earn their respect, if you’re simply nodding along with the masses.

Are you prepared or playing?

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One of the BIG differences between successful business owners and those who struggle, is preparation. The average business owner doesn’t prepare very well. They want their business to succeed or their marketing to generate bankable results, but they fail to do the heavy lifting beforehand. They fail to prepare correctly, in advance.

Preparation

Last Monday, I launched a new project via an announcement on this blog. Just 7 days after launching Creative Thinking Hub, it has over a thousand subscribers, a Google Page Rank of 3 and more daily traffic than most older sites get. Here’s what people didn’t see: For 8 weeks before the launch, I invested around 100 hours to get the preparation right. I hired 2 designers. I spent money where it was needed and did the right things, correctly.

Conversely, I hear from business owners regularly, who have sites that are over a year old and still floundering, because they refuse to hire the expert help they need and prepare correctly for success. This strikes me as an odd attitude to have toward your own business: Like drowning and refusing to call for help.

Unprepared

There are many excuses why business owners refuse to prepare correctly. These range from those who say they can’t afford it, in a message sent via their iPad from the coffee shop where they blow a grand a year on coffee – To those who have settled for lowering their lifestyle aspirations, to fall in line with their under performing business results.

Ultimately, we have the freedom to start from nothing, prepare correctly and build something amazing. I started off with nothing, as the son of an Irish immigrant family with no connections and no money. I took the decision at age 21 to prepare for success and as soon as I could, I paid for the expert help I needed. I planned well and then worked the plan. It worked. Beautifully. I do the same today, like every successful business owner I know.

In short: Professional preparation is to business, as carbon is to steel. Don’t expect to wing your way to success in the worst economy in living memory.

How to love what you do

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I’m in the process of launching a new site right now, dedicated to helping people think more creatively. You will love it! It’s a new and exciting project, which reminds me a lot of how I felt when I launched this blog, almost 4 years ago.

Interestingly, I am even more passionate and enthusiastic about Jim’s Marketing Blog today, than the day I wrote my first post. It is something that has grown into an increasingly important part of my life. This got me thinking:

Why is it that some projects enthuse and excite us more as time goes by, and others fade with time?

I’d love to hear your feedback on this, but here are my initial thoughts on the projects that continue to inspire and motivate us, based on my experience with Jim’s Marketing Blog.

Here are 4 things that came to mind immediately:

1. They are projects we have a passion for

This blog is all about marketing and business development, two areas I am passionate about. In addition, it also allows me to contribute and serve others, another key passion for me. The reason I look forward to working on this blog, is that it has never once felt like work.

2. They are projects where we see measurable progress in reasonable time

It’s a lot easier to be passionate about a project, when we can see our work paying off. The day I launched this blog, it had 1 subscriber (me) and a handful of posts. Today it has thousands of subscribers, thousands more daily readers, over 25,000 comments and it generates leads for my marketing business every day. Measurable progress is a great motivator.

3. They are projects that are consistent with our values

It’s hard to feel passionate about a project, when it runs against your values. I love the idea of giving as much free information away as possible. So much so, that every word on this site is offered to you under a Creative Commons license, which allows you to use it for free on your site or in your newsletters etc.

It would be harder to convince myself to write for you, if I was against the concept of giving freely to others.

4. They are projects, where we can use our creativity

The need to create is within all of us. From as far back as we can trace, people used whatever they had access to, to create something. From cave paintings and carvings, to the very first musical instruments, people have had a need to create. Writing blog posts on a regular basis is a very creative process and therefore provides a superb creative outlet. Projects that block you, for whatever reason, from pumping your creativity into them, are a lot less rewarding.

How to stop your competitors getting the sales leads you deserve

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Do you ever feel frustrated, when you see low quality competitors making all kinds of inaccurate claims about their services? If you do and you would like to ensure your genuinely awesome service attracts the high quality clients it deserves, you will love today’s post!

First, a question!

Let us assume I am a prospective client of yours. I have a question in my mind, which you need to answer if you want me to invest in your services:

Why should I use your services, rather than one of your competitors?

Here’s the thing: Your competitors, even those who offer low quality services, make some big claims in their marketing. They claim they will offer me great customer service. They say they will go the extra mile for me. They say they would love to hear from me and that they will not pressure me into buying anything if I call them.

This begs another question:

If you are making those claims and guarantees in your marketing (and you really mean it), how is a prospective client supposed to know you really are better than your competitors?

I suggest a very good place to start, is by connecting with prospective clients via a blog and social networking sites. When a service provider regularly shows up to take part in the conversations within his or her business community, so long as the provider is helpful and useful rather than pushy, they can cut through the noise and show how valuable and approachable they are.

Showing works better than telling

Anyone can claim anything in their marketing, which is why poor quality providers are quick to make promises and guarantees, which they know are bullshit. The marketplace, your prospective clients, are influenced far more by what they experience, than a claim made by a stranger’s marketing. As a result, it’s massively more powerful for you to demonstrate how professional and approachable you are via social media, than for you to make that statement in your marketing and not back it up with action.

The massive majority of business owners use social networking sites almost exclusively to push marketing messages at people and as a result, get very little back and attract similar-minded people, so they build low-value networks too. In my experience, you attract far better results when you stop using social media to push generic marketing promises and start using it to be useful to your target market. This gives you an opportunity to build trust and credibility, which is enormously valuable to you and your business.

Useful beats noisy every time

In an age where low quality providers use social media to claim they are wonderful, you can use those same tools to demonstrate how valuable you are and achieve the results your superior service deserves.

2 Ideas to help you write great content every day!

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If you have ever wondered, how certain bloggers are able to come up with useful blog posts on a regular basis, this post is just for you. It contains 2 simple ideas, which are used by many of the world’s most successful bloggers.

Let’s go!

1. Don’t let 4 average ideas block 1 useful idea

You get ideas all day every day, things that you could easily turn into an interesting, useful blog post.  The challenge is, you probably don’t write them down or record them. So, write them down. If you are like me, you will find that most of the ideas are average but maybe 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 are useful enough to be written up into a blog post.

Here’s the thing: Don’t let the average or bad ideas stop you pressing forward until you find a useful idea. In fact, try and come up with as many bad ideas each day as I do and you will have just as many good ideas, maybe more!

2. Give your work the respect it deserves

We all have a tendency to overestimate the words and ideas of others and underestimate our own. I spoke with someone recently, who told me she had read through some documents on her computer, which were really interesting. She looked to see who wrote them and found they were her own draft blog posts, from several years ago! She explained that at the time, she didn’t publish them because she believed they weren’t good enough. As soon as she read them believing they were written by someone else, she saw them for what they really were; useful, interesting blog posts.

Thankfully, today, you don’t need to wait to be picked by the editor of a magazine, before you can publish your ideas and share them with your marketplace. Today, you can pick yourself. Then, it’s a case of ploughing through enough bad ideas until you find something to write about, and get writing. Next, summon the courage to press publish.

It gets easier and easier the more you do it. In fact, I was hardly frightened at all, whilst writing this post for you!

Blogging Tip: Making time for a commercially successful blog

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This post has some valuable information, for those of you either starting a commercial blog or thinking of taking their existing blog more seriously. It’s about understanding the time investment required, if you want to build a commercially successful blog.

Blogging time

A common misconception regarding blogging, is that the time investment required to build a successful blog, is primarily the time it takes to write posts. Whilst at the very beginning, the time it takes to write your posts accounts for a big chunk of your blogging time, once your blog gets established, the time you spend writing the posts becomes a smaller and smaller percentage. Currently, just 20% of my blogging time is spent writing posts. The majority of my time is spent looking after the elements that come into play, when thousands of people read your content every day and your work becomes highly visible.

That’s what I want to share with you in this post.

A wonderful challenge

It’s a wonderful challenge to have, but one that is seldom discussed. The thing is, if you are thinking of either starting your own commercial blog or you are about to start taking your existing blog seriously, you need to know the kind of time commitment required once your blog takes off.  In the case of this blog, it’s a few hours a day now.

When I started Jim’s Marketing Blog, almost 4 years ago, I would invest around 30 minutes writing a post and then an hour a day marketing that post and the blog itself. I would get to know the people who commented here, connecting with them on Twitter and (back then) Friendfeed. It was fun, enjoyable work, but there was a time investment required, which I knew I needed to make if I wanted the blog to progress.

Fast forward 4 years and I still do all of that, though I now use Google+ (a LOT), Twitter and Facebook. However, today I ALSO invest around 2 hours on other blog related activities.

Blog related activities?

As your readership builds and your blog ranks well for lots of popular search terms, you will attract lots more attention. This includes:

  • Sales pitches: Anyone Googling the words ‘marketing blogs’ will find my blog on page 1, so, when they want someone to pitch a marketing related product to, they always find me.
  • Guest bloggers: I also get emails daily from people asking if I will let them ‘guest blog’ here. Because none of them do any research, they are unaware it’s a self-authored blog, so email me anyway.
  • Reader questions: I get lots of emails every day from readers, with often extremely complex marketing related problems. Whilst I am unable to offer them individual support, I do reply to every reader email.
  • Advertiser emails: Because of the blog’s position on Google, I get emails all the time from people who want to advertise here.
  • PR spam: PR firms insist on adding me to their lists, without consent, when sending out their client’s press releases, even though I have never published a press release here. PR spam is easily the biggest source of unwanted email I encounter, with 30/40 emails a day.

N.B: Yes, I know it would be a lot easier for me to just hit delete on every email or have filters set up to try and catch the pitches, PR spam and link requests, but it would mean many genuine, reader emails being lost and I am not prepared to do that.

All in all, I would say that actually writing blog posts is now less than 20% of the time I currently invest in this blog and activities directly related to it.

And in return?

The rewards are many and huge!

If you have the time or can make the time, to handle the feedback created by a successful blog, the pay-off is amazing. Make no mistake, starting this blog was easily the most valuable business decision I ever made and has repaid me many, many times over for what I have invested into it. The benefits of blogging can be stunning, if you manage to develop a large, targeted reader community:

  • Most important for me is the opportunity to connect with, work with and meet amazing people. The readers of this blog are my biggest commercial asset. I feel like I know many of those who comment here and must have spoken to a couple of hundred of you so far. It’s a true reader community and invaluable to me.
  • You can contribute to others, in a way that helps hundreds of thousands of other people every year. It’s impossible to overstate the value of this, for those of us who are committed to serving others.
  • You can build a very enjoyable, 6 figure business from it, as I did here. If affiliate products or software sales are your thing, look at what Brian Clark did with copyblogger, launching several, million dollar businesses off his blog. It just requires skill, time and a LOT of work!
  • You will attract countless opportunities for you and your business, as your reach and influence increases.
  • You will also get a massive amount of enjoyment from it.

In short: If you are serious about developing your blog into a massively valuable asset, make sure that you have processes in place, for what happens as your blog takes off.