Jim Connolly Marketing

Do you walk the walk?

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How often do you take yourself for a good, long walk?

The reason I ask you this, is that the older I become, the stronger my belief is, that the simple act of walking is a massively valuable asset to your mind and body.

Regular readers will know that I get the ideas for most of my blog posts whilst I am walking and that I record the ideas, using a digital audio recorder.  However, the benefits of walking on my mental and physical health and fitness is even more valuable than that.

Walking the walk

When I first discovered personal development, almost 25 years ago, I noticed that many experts extolled the mental and physical benefits of regular, long walks.  Some suggested that the act of having your left arm and right leg moving together (and then your right arm and left leg moving together), somehow gets both sides of the brain flowing.  I’m not  too sure on the science there, but what I am certain of, is the enormous mental benefit of regular walks on my well-being and creativity.

Why am I sharing this with you today?

Walking for strength

Yesterday, I watched a documentary about Nile Rodgers.  Those of us who follow Nile’s work closely, know that he is also a regular walker and walks for miles most days.  In fact, he uses long walks as training, before taking his band, Chic, on tour.  Anyhow, in the documentary, Nile talks about his life, his music and the challenge of being diagnosed with a very aggressive form of cancer.

At one point, Nile describes how he has used walking as a way to become mentally stronger;

“I walk and I walk and I walk, until I get my strength!”

Walking for ideas

I recently had a problem with pain in my lower back and stopped my daily walk for almost 2 weeks.  In that time, I wrote just 4 blog posts (I usually write at least 1 a day, spread across my 3 blogs.)  This week, I started my walking again and am back to my usual problem of having way, way too many ideas to publish.  Today, I have written 5 good posts and published 2.

Will a program of daily walking encourage the muse to visit you more frequently?  I have no idea.  But as walking is free of charge and even a 30 minute daily walk can be of so much mental benefit, why not give it a try?

The money is not in the list!

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The most successful businesses in the world, large and small, have something in common:  They build relationships with their clients on an emotional level and then nurture those relationships.

Many small business owners get this wrong.  They use their marketing channels almost exclusively, to send sales messages to the marketplace.  You are more likely to find them on Twitter sending out links to their sales pages, than reaching out to clients and future clients, with help and ideas.  They are so short-sighted that they see social networks simply as a free way to push sales pitches and broadcast.

The money is in the relationships

The enlightened small business owner has figured out that the money is not in “the list.”  The money is in the relationships.  They know that before they can expect the marketplace to care about them or their business, they must first earn that privilege.

  • This means communicating rather than broadcasting.
  • It means understanding that when you refer to your COMMUNITY as your LIST, you have just transformed them from PEOPLE into ITEMS on some database.
  • It means offering your marketplace independently valuable information (like this brief blog post), rather than sales pitches.
  • It means listening.
  • It means understanding, really understanding, that behind every name, handle, photo and avatar, is a fellow human being.
  • It means understanding that you need to play the longer game, if you want to stay in business long term.
  • It means humanizing what needs to be human and automating what needs to be automated AND knowing the difference.
  • It means understanding that the process of giving and receiving starts with giving.

In short:  Business is all about people, so keep it as human as possible.

5 Great questions to massively improve your results

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Here are 5 great questions to help your business thrive in any economy:

  1. How many leads am I generating each day from my website / blog?  Our sites should be a constant source of highly targeted sales leads.  If your site is not currently generating as many leads as you can handle, you need to fix that immediately.  I’m constantly amazed how many business owners pester people for leads at networking events, when their website or blog could be generating high quality leads for them every day.
  2. How easy would it be, for someone to write a manual, which explained how to do my job?  Whilst every human being is of equal value, those in business with the highest commercial value do work that matters, which can’t be neatly explained in a manual.
  3. What am I doing, to ensure that the next 12 months will be better than the last 12 months?  If business hasn’t been good over the past year, we need to change our direction.  It’s way too easy to mistake movement for progress and end up working hard, doing the wrong things.  If hard work alone were the secret to success, our grandparents would have been millionaires.
  4. If my business was perfect in every way, what would it look like?  Write your answer down in as much detail as possible.  Include everything, from; the type of projects you would be working on, your profit figure and the length of your working day, to the number of hours you would work each week and the location of your business.  The clearer a picture you can build of your ideal business, the easier it becomes to direct your current business into that image.
  5. If my business were to stop trading on Monday, how easy would it be for my clients or customers to replace me?  This is similar to question 2, but is focused on the unique value of your business.  The easier it is for people to replace us as providers, the more volatile our client list will be and the harder we will find it to attract new clients.

You have a voice, so let’s hear it!

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When was the last time you initiated something?

It’s easy to join in, but far more challenging to initiate.  The temptation is to wait for someone else to get something started, then, for us to echo their views or copy what they did.  This is why the Internet is full of me too content; people writing the same safe viewpoints.

It’s also why Twitter is overflowing with retweeted links and famous quotes.

  • It’s easy.  It takes a split second to hit the retweet button.
  • It’s safe.  As someone sharing content rather than creating it, you can’t be directly blamed if your followers think what you shared is a piece of crap.
  • It’s simple to justify.  “Hey, I’m just passionate about sharing!”

Your voice and visibility

Many extremely bright people struggle to get their voice heard, because they initiate too little.  They have great ideas, yet fail to share them because they haven’t seen anyone else expressing that idea or viewpoint yet.  Conversely, we have all seen some pretty average people gain impressive visibility, because they have the courage to initiate, then share, an idea or viewpoint.

Today, we have all the marketing tools we need in order to reach a massive, targeted audience.  However, before we can hope to capture a worthwhile share of our marketplace’s attention, we need to be prepared to earn it!  We need to push through the fear of being challenged for what we say or (heaven forbid) being wrong.

Why?  Because on the other side of that fear, is something of great value.  Maybe the missing piece to your marketing puzzle?

Give a blogger a hug!

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blogging, blogs, content marketing

In the tiny village where I live, we have just one small shop.  When severe weather kicks in and we can’t get into the nearest town, that place is our only option.

Every day, I buy something from them; even if it’s just a pint of milk or some bread.  It costs about 10% more than buying the same thing in town, but I know that if everyone does what I do, that little shop will be able to stay in business, serving the local community.  Then, the next time our village gets snowed in, it will be there for us.

The harsh reality is this:  If you find something genuinely useful or valuable, you need to either support it or risk losing it.

Free, valuable information

As a blogger and blog reader, I often see people commenting on blogs regarding how useful they find all the free information, which the blogger shares with his or her readers.  I see business owners thanking the blogger for saving them time, money or both.

It’s important to understand that the free information on these blogs is only free for the readers.  The blogger picks up the bill.  It can be a pretty hefty bill too.  A blog like this one, which gets many thousands of daily readers, requires thousands of pounds/dollars every year in managed hosting costs alone.  Then there are the billable hours, which the blogger invests writing all that free content for their readers.

Give a blogger a hug

If there is a blog you find useful (any blog other than this one, see below), I ask you to do one small thing for me.  Go there today and either buy something they are selling or, if you can’t afford to buy something, recommend the blogger’s work to your network.

Otherwise, you may go there for some valuable, free information one day and find their shutters are down!

BTW: WebFusion pick up the hefty bill for my hosting, on my reader’s behalf.  I’d like to publicly thank them for their support and for keeping this site super-reliable for over a year.  They ensure my work is here for you and accessible, whenever you need it.

Google: How to get your photo to show up in Google search results

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A number of readers have noticed that whenever a post from this blog shows up in Google’s search results, Google displays a photo of me next to it (see above).  People are emailing me more and more, asking how I did it, so here goes.

I need to start by saying that I didn’t do it. Google did! This is really important. Even if you follow the steps in the guide I am about to share, there’s no guarantee it will work for you. According to Google:

This feature is being rolled out gradually, and ranking will be implemented algorithmically, so author information will not always display in search results.

So, this may or may not work for you. Currently, I know just a few bloggers other than myself who has had the feature activated by Google. Every other example I see comes from huge sites like mashable and a-list bloggers like Robert Scoble.

Why are Google attaching “author information” to Google search results?

There is a huge issue right now, with people stealing other people’s content and claiming it as their own. Thanks to this new author information service from Google, it will be easier for people to identify the initial or original source of a blog post or article. In essence, when you see that photo show up in your search results, it means Google are verifying that the blog post was written by that person.

If you look closely at the image above, you will see that next to my photo are the words “by Jim Connolly.” If you then click on my name in the search results, it takes you to my Google+ Profile. By the way, you can join me on Google+ here!

For bloggers like myself, whose content is used without attribution on lots of other sites, this author information allows people to find the original source. Within minutes of my posts being published here, they start appearing on other blogs; something known as content scraping.  This is an effort by Google, to help match the correct blogger (or author as they call us) to the correct post. Most of my posts are scraped around a dozen times, meaning there are lots of versions of my work out there, often attributed to people who simply scraped them.

How does Google Authoring work?

The idea is actually extremely simple. You link from your blog (or your website), to your Google Profile and then, you link from your Google Profile back to your blog. This reciprocal linking verifies that the owner of that Google Profile is also the (or an) author on that blog. If you own a multi authored blog it works too. You just need your bloggers to link from their Google Profile, to their author page on your blog. Once that process is completed, a circle is created, allowing Google to confidently identity you as the rightful author of your own work, in their search results.

Whilst the idea is extremely simple, the process is currently a little tricky. Rather than try and explain it here, I’d like you to read the instructions from Google, which I followed. I also recommend you watch the short video on that page.

Then what?

Once you have followed the instructions, check that you have done it correctly using Google’s Rich Snippets Testing Tool. This tool is extremely useful and will show you if the code is working and what your blog’s listing will look like in Google’s SERPS (search engine results page), AFTER they have activated it. To use the Rich Snippets Testing Tool, simply paste the URL (address) of one of your blog posts into it and press the preview button. It’s that simple.

Then, if everything looks OK and you see your photo in the preview, it’s a matter of waiting!

Sadly, I don’t know people at Google who can fast-track your site and I am not the guy to help you if you try this and find it doesn’t work; so please, no technical questions in the comments. I just followed the instructions and it worked for me.

Is it worth it?

Yes. It’s useful for people to know that they are reading something, where there is a verified connection between the author and the content. I have also seen a significant increase in Google search traffic since the author information was activated. This makes sense as anyone searching Google, who knows who I am, will see my photo next to a search result and be more likely to click it. Photo’s act a lot faster than text and give an immediate signal.

I applaud Google’s work in helping bloggers to be credited with authorship of their own work. I look forward to seeing your smiling faces staring at me when I’m next searching!