Jim Connolly Marketing

Why your Google ranking may soon start falling!

By |

How serious are you about the success of your website or blog as a business development tool?

The majority of small business owners I speak with, claim they are serious about the marketing value of their sites, but then they place their sites on cheap hosting plans.

Here’s why this matters: Google now punishes slow sites with lower search rankings!

Google has announced that as of last month, your site will be penalised if it doesn’t load nice and quickly! That’s right, if your site loads slowly, it will now receive a lower search ranking from Google, than a site that loads quickly.  This makes the true cost of using cheap web hosting providers a lot easier for people to see.

The true cost of cheap web hosting plans

Long before Google’s shock announcement, cheap web hosting plans were a really bad idea for commercial sites.  That’s because no matter how nice your site looks or how good the SEO is, if it loads too slowly, people will NOT hang around and wait. Internet users get really frustrated at having to hang around for pages to load on slow websites.  This is definitely not the frame of mind we want people in, if we are about to give them an insight into our business.

Why are so many small business sites so frustratingly slow?

I used to believe it was because the site owners didn’t think it mattered; that cheap web hosting was just an ill-advised, cost saving measure.  However, this is certainly not always the case! In many instances, the site owner has no idea how unreliable or slow their site is, because they visit it too infrequently to notice.

Bloggers, for instance, who only blog a few times a month, will often only visit their blog when posting or responding to comments.  As a result, they miss well over 99% of their sites performance.  The same is true for business owners, who have websites, which are not regularly updated.  These sites too can be down or too slow to respond for extended periods, again, without the site owner even knowing.  I strongly advise you check out your site regularly and at different times of the day, so you get a more accurate picture of what your prospective customers or clients see.

QUICK TIP

Don’t fall for the “we promise 99% up-time” claims of low end web hosts.  In web hosting, 99% is a very poor service.  This actually means that they expect your site to be down for 1 full working day every month or down for 3 full working days, every 100 days!  What is that worth to you, in lost business, lost enquiries, lost sales?

The bottom line: If you have a commercial site, get it on the most reliable web hosting package you can.

So, you want more blog readers?

By |

I wrote a very popular post recently, about getting more blog comments.  This post is all about how to get more blog readers and it starts with a question:

“Have you noticed how some blogs and websites are really difficult to read for any period of time?”

You know the blogs I mean, right?  The blogs where you find yourself just skimming the content because after a glance of the page layout, you just don’t feel like reading the whole thing?  If you want to attract more blog readers and increase reader engagement on your blog, you need to make reading your posts a comfortable experience.  Otherwise, people will just skim your content and miss what you have to say.

There are already millions of posts that explain how to get more readers via SEO / social media etc.  This post offers you some easy, yet super-effective ways to massively improve the readability of your blog and by extension, it’s reach, impact and readership.

So, let’s go!

Column width

There’s a lot of research, including my own, which suggests that once the width of a content column (that’s the part of the blog you are reading now) goes beyond a certain limit, it becomes less and less readable.

Although some have said that the maximum width should be just 65 characters (including spaces) I have found that there’s almost no difference until you go past 85/90 characters.  I did a test a while ago, where I increased the width of the content area on one of my blogs to 100 characters and had to stop after just a week, because of the massive drop in every reader-based metric!  I saw a huge drop in the average number of pages per reader, fewer comments and a drop in the number of times a post was shared.

So, if your current blog layout goes beyond 95 characters – consider reducing it.

BTW: The content area here is 502 pixels wide and I use a 15px Arial font, which equals a limit of around 85 characters.

Fonts

If you want people to be able to comfortably read your blog content, they need to be able to see what you’ve written without squinting!  Many blogs use very small font sizes and as such, are way too hard to read on normal monitors and almost impossible to read, on smaller laptops and netbooks etc.

I use a 15px font size here, similar to that used by many other marketing and social media bloggers.  You may want to use something a  little smaller, but I strongly advise you not to go too small.

Black and white? Not quite!

Most new blogs use black text on a white background.  Although black text on a white background REALLY stands out, it can be harsh on the eyes; especially tired eyes!  That’s why it’s a really good idea to use a dark grey font on a white background, as used on many popular sites, like; The BBC, Seth Godin’s blog, Problogger and many other leading sites.

On this blog, I use the same shade of grey as The BBC, which is #464646.

Don’t let Bob or Mary screw up your blog

Whenever you make changes to the layout of your blog or website, you will get feedback from people, like Bob and Mary.  Bob’s a great guy and has a passion for blogs with really wide content columns and super-small fonts.  Mary’s also a wonderful warm human being, who loves those blogs that have jet black text on snow white backgrounds.  They are both entitled to their opinions, but you must not change the basics of your blog design based on what Bob or Mary might prefer.

The vocal minority will often unintentionally lead you to make piss-poor decisions about the look and feel of your blog.  As bloggers, we need to be a lot smarter than that.  We need to look at the facts – The metrics we can measure.  If after making a change, you notice; greater engagement, more comments, more people sharing your content, an increase in the number of pages the typical reader reads – then you are on track.  Even if Bob or Mary’s intentions were good, they were simply expressing their unique preferences.

Listen to all your readers, not just the vocal minority!

Some advice on making these changes

If you are like me and know nothing about HTML or CSS coding, it can be an expensive pain in the rear, to have to make changes to the layout of your blog.

This is why I recommend you consider doing what I did, and start using the Headway wordpress theme; which will allow you to make changes to your blog, without learning how to code.  Headway (affiliate link) lets you make the kind of changes mentioned here, in seconds.  In fact, I built this blog from scratch, with zero need for expert help, using Headway.  It’s given me total control over the blog and saved me a fortune.  It’s also the ONLY product I have ever endorsed here!

Summary

Ultimately the decision regarding the look and feel of your blog, is down to you.  However, there’s an old saying in business, which assures us that; “success leaves clues.”  There’s a reason why so many of the world’s most respected and popular blogs do things in a certain way.  They have already done the testing and measuring.  Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder, but when it comes to the readability element of your blog, it’s a wise move to make the experience as good as possible for your readers.

I’d like to know what additional tips you have, for making content more readable.  Equally, do you have any experience of changing any of the elements mentioned in this post?

Let us know what you think!

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

Image: TEIA MG

So, you want more blog comments?

By |

One of the questions I get asked a lot by new bloggers, is how can they attract more comments from their readers.  So, that’s what this post is all about.

I have posts here with as few as 6 or 7 comments, many with over 80/100 comments and one post with almost 700 comments.  Here are a few of the things I have discovered about comments, which you might find useful:

  1. You don’t attract comments, simply by inserting “what do you think” at the end of each post.
  2. It’s a good idea to give your fellow bloggers a thank you for commenting on your blog.  For example, if a blogger comments here and they include their blog’s URL, they get a link at the end of their comment, which promotes their most recent blog post to all my readers.Check it out, it’s in that box at the end of each comment.  The software I use is called CommentLuv.
  3. The posts I write that ask questions, typically attract more comments than those that give answers.
  4. If someone is kind enough to comment on your blog, take the time to respond to their comment (if it requires a response.)  Many bloggers ask people for feedback, then pretty much ignore most of them.
  5. The more heavily you moderate your blog, the fewer comments you get.  If all comments are held for moderation before they are published, your comments section will lose momentum.  It can take hours for people to see their comments published on moderated blogs and then hours longer, to see replies to their comments.
  6. Some of my most read posts have the fewest comments.  This is interesting, as one of the reasons bloggers like to get comments, is to show how popular their blog is.  This is the most read page / post on this blog, BTW.
  7. The more often I write blog posts, the more comments I get – Though the FEWER I get per post.  When I was getting 100’s of comments per post, I was only blogging 4 or 5 times a month.I get more comments these days, but they are spread over a lot more posts, as I currently write 4 or 5 times or more a week.  So, overall comment numbers are higher, but average comments per post are down.
  8. Only a very small percentage of blog readers, actually comment.  So, even if you have the correct balance in place to encourage comments, you will need a sizeable readership before you get a high volume of comments.

There are many, many different blog comment strategies and the key is to find the right balance for you and whatever you want to achieve.

Members only

For example, a number of bloggers use a members only approach to comments.  You have to join their blog before you can comment, by registering your contact details (and getting them validated.)  This is sometimes called the velvet rope approach and is intended to create a feeling of exclusivity, whilst eliminating comment spam and trolls.

Seth Godin’s blog strategy

Some bloggers have copied Seth Godin’s blog comment strategy, to completely block his readers from commenting on his blog.  From a marketing perspective, this approach is not as crazy as it may first seem.  If you want to discuss something you read on Seth’s blog, you will probably do it on Facebook or Twitter etc; which spreads the word about Set’s blog and generates more new readers.  If you made that same point on Seth’s blog, only you and his existing readers would have seen it.

If you are a blogger: What are your tips for encouraging readers to comment and get involved?

If you are blog reader: What motivates you to want to leave a comment?

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

Content marketing: What is it and how does it work?

By |

This is a quick post about content marketing and how to get great results from it.

Content marketing

Millions of small business owners (including me) use content marketing as a way to market their services.  They produce content for; newsletters, blog posts, articles, audio, video, social media sites etc.  The idea is that their content will engage prospective clients or customers and generate enquiries sales and also position them as an expert in their field.  Make no mistake, content marketing is extremely powerful when used correctly.

However, as many small business owners discover, there’s an enormous difference between producing content and producing content that actually helps them grow their business.

In marketing, we know that the messages that resonate with us most powerfully are those that make us think or capture our imagination in some way.  Generic messages do the exact opposite.  They pass us by, undetected.  They wash over us, because they’re predictable.  Yet these generic messages are the stock-in-trade of most of the content marketing pieces we see each day from small businesses.

Why?

I believe one of the reasons, is that it feels a lot “safer” to toe the line, follow what the crowd are saying and just blend into the background.  It takes courage for a blogger, for example, to offer their unique perspective on a topic or allow their personality to shine through their work.  After all, what if they are wrong?  What if their point of view generates negative comments?  It would surely be the end of their world as they know it!  So, rather than risk ruffling too many feathers, they opt to rehash generic ideas, which feel safer, because most people seem to agree with them.

Here’s the problem with that approach: It acts like camouflage and stops you getting the visibility you need!

To be visible, we first need to have something to say, which is worth listening to and sharing.  People only pass on content to their friends or network, if they find it useful or interesting and believe that others will too.  In short, people share the good stuff!  The most successful content marketers never seek a full consensus.  They just try hard and deliver content, which will be as valuable as possible to their target market.

Some important content marketing questions

  1. Who am I writing to? You need to know your target audience and focus your content exclusively on what they will find value in.
  2. Why am I writing to them? You need to know your desired outcome or outcomes, so that you can check if you are on course or not.  You can’t manage, what you can’t measure.
  3. Does my content showcase my expertise? Give genuinely useful information to your readers for free (and do it with a smile)!  Don’t send a watered-down version of your expertise into the marketplace.  Why?  Because how on earth are your readers supposed to know that you are any good, if all they see is a half-assed, diluted version of how great you are?I give away tons of free information on this blog, which encourages my readers to share my work with their friends.  As a result, I get business enquiries every day, from people who want to work with me.  This post, for example, gives links to over 140 marketing tips and ideas.

So, what are your content marketing tips or experiences?

Whether you are new to content marketing or a seasoned campaigner, it would be great to hear your feedback.

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

Dealing with critics!

By |

How well do you handle criticism?

If you use blogging, newsletters and/or social media sites as a way to market your services, you will receive varying levels of criticism.  Paradoxically, the more successful you become, the more criticism you will receive, because your work will reach more people.

I wrote a post in January, about the criticism bloggers receive, which readers never get to see – emails etc.  Today’s post covers other forms of criticism, and offers some ideas on why it happens and how to deal with it effectively.

I would also like to encourage YOU to add your tips at the end of the post!

Genuine, informed criticism

This is when someone, who knows the subject in question, believes they have found something in what you are doing or saying, which is incorrect.  Their motives are well intentioned and their feedback is often of great value, even though many people greet it with hostility or sarcasm.  In my experience, genuine, informed critics almost always tell you their opinion via email, the phone or face-to-face – Rather than via a social network or blog comment etc.  That’s because their intention is to help and nothing else.

Genuine, yet ill-informed criticism

Some people are going to tell you that you are doing something wrong or that you “don’t get it” and their intentions are good; yet their feedback is from an ill-informed perspective.  Like the people in the above example, these guys mean well, but unlike that example, their help is more likely to hinder you than it is to help you.

If we act on criticism that is factually wrong, we make bad decisions.  This is why it’s really important to check the source of the feedback we receive, before we decide to take action.  If someone with no expertise or experience in something is criticising you in that area, get some more feedback from an informed source.

Non-criticism, criticism

Just because someone disagrees with our point of view, does not mean they are being critical of us.  It’s easy to regard those who see things differently, as being negatively critical, when they are simply offering a different perspective.  This is especially the case with blog comments, where readers will often take a counter-point from the blogger or a fellow commenter.  The whole point of asking for comments and feedback, is to get different opinions and ideas.

Finally, consider the motivation behind negative criticism

People do what they do for a reason.  If we take a moment to consider why someone might make a critical comment about us or our work, it’s easy to see the point they are making in the correct context.

Some do it to attract “traffic”.  For example, the best-known bloggers often find less established bloggers writing extremely critical posts about them, in the hope that the popular blogger mentions them and in so doing, delivers a ton of traffic to the critic’s blog.  Some do it to get noticed.  Others do it because they just LOVE to look for the negative (I get lots of these, whenever I make a spelling error.)  Some do it just to have a little fun, at our expense.

The bottom line: There many reasons that people feel compelled to negatively criticise and many different types of criticism.  If you use (or plan to use) blogging, social networking sites and newsletters etc, as part of your marketing mix, negative criticism is all part of the feedback you will receive, as your audience grows.

Who owns YOUR name online?

By |

How many Internet users have the same name as you?

For most of us, the answer will be in the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or more.  Right now, this represents a challenge for a growing number of consultants, entrepreneurs, trainers and authors etc, who trade or work in their own names.  That’s because right now, it’s almost impossible for them to register their name on social networks or to buy theirname.com.

Whilst there is something nice about owning yourname.com, there are also a number of good reasons why it’s useful for some people to own a version of their name online.  For example, if you are an advisor and trade in your name, it’s easier for people to remember your URL / web address, if it’s yourname.com.

Also, as Gina Trapani, the founding Editor of lifehacker.com recently pointed out, there are some great SEO benefits from owning at least one version of your own name online, IF people are likely to be searching for you, by name.  I experienced this myself, when I used JimConnolly.com as my primary website and was the number one result on Google for anyone searching for me.

Social media name grab

Until quite recently, it was pretty easy to get yourname.com.  I was able to buy JimConnolly.com with zero effort at the first attempt.  However, in more recent years the Internet “got social.”  Today, hundreds of millions of people are building social networks and blogging.  For example, I was the first Jim Connolly to register their name on Twitter, so when my friend, who’s ALSO called Jim Connolly (From Thomas, Connolly & Phelps in Bloomington Illinois) joined Twitter, “his” name was taken.

To resolve this name issue, there are stories of people creating unique names for their unborn children, so that they can get them their own .com address and social media accounts!

Some possible answers

Here are a few suggestions for businesspeople, who do not already own their own name based URL, but would like to:

  • The most obvious suggestion, is for you to check now if your name is actually taken.  This is especially the case, if your name is uncommon or uses an uncommon spelling.  Even if your name was not available the last time you looked, it could be now.  I use 123Reg.co.uk to check URL availability.  By the way, that is NOT an affiliate link.  It’s just a service I use.
  • You can also try and get an alternative to the .com top level domain or TLD.  For example; yourname.me, yourname.biz, yourname.org etc.  However, some TLD’s come with restrictions on how you can use them, so check before you buy.
  • Another suggestion is to get creative and add something to your name, such as JaneSmithMarketing.com or MrBobSmith.com or Mary JonesOnline.com etc.  This is still pretty effective and provides an easy to remember option, when giving out your web address to people you meet or in radio interviews etc.

So, what if even the most creative versions of your name are taken?

Don’t panic!

As you can see, even though I own JimConnnolly.com, I still choose not to use it here on my primary marketing website.

Why?

By including the words marketing blog in the URL of this site, almost every link that points here also includes those 2 words.  This means there are thousands of links, which point here and tell Google that this is a marketing blog.  As a result, anyone searching for marketing blog or marketing blogs etc on Google, will find this blog on page one; even though there are over 100 MILLION results listed.  It’s also pretty easy to find me here using Google, just searching for Jim Connolly.  BTW: Keep an eye on JimConnolly.com!!

With the annual price of a URL around the same as a quick trip to Starbucks, there’s no reason for business owners not to try and get at least one version of their name.  Even if it’s not something you plan to use immediately, it could prove useful for a future project.