Jim Connolly Marketing

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!

A letter from Google

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I received a sales letter last week from Google. That’s right, one of the world’s leading email providers contacted me; not via an email, but via a letter.

Email marketing and Google

google email marketingGoogle already has my email address, because I am a user of a number of their services – including Gmail. So, it would have been very easy for them to have sent me the same sales message in an email. However, Google know that they will get a higher response rate from a targeted letter than from a sales email.

If the owners of Gmail are writing letters with sales offers, rather than sending sales emails, there’s a BIG marketing lesson here!

People hate sales emails and spam

People have a VERY low tolerance for emails, which are just sales messages.  The letter from Google was exactly that – a sales message.  However, I did open the letter and read it.  Had Google sent me that same sales offer via email, it would have been deleted, unopened; as soon as I read the subject line (no matter how clever it was!)

The average person hates spam with a passion and many tend to consider all sales emails (no matter how well targeted) as spam. As a result, not only is a prospective customer or client unlikely to respond to a typical sales email, they are very likely to develop strong, negative feelings about the sender too.

Is email marketing dead

No, not at all! Email marketing, when handled correctly, is still extremely powerful and getting more powerful all the time.

If you re-read the above, you will see that I use the term ‘sales emails.’  Sales emails are extremely low leverage and increasingly ineffective.  These are emails that contain a sales message and are often sent to a ‘list’, which the sender has either bought, borrowed or built by harvesting email addresses from business cards / directories etc.

Unless the sender has a good relationship / rapport with the people on that list, the sales emails they send will be deleted before they are read.

Email marketing & sales emails

Email marketing could not be more different. For example, I write a very popular marketing newsletter, which contains a unique marketing article or some valuable marketing ideas / advice.  Most editions have zero advertising.  Occasionally, I will include a single, one paragraph piece to promote something I am involved in.  The response rates are fantastic, because my readers already know me and trust me.  Some of my readers even blog about how much they value my newsletter.

In fact, many of my readers tell me that they have ‘Jim Connolly’ marketing folders on their computers, where they file my newsletters, for future reading.  How many people keep spam email or sales emails on file? No one!

Mail shots, direct mail, marketing letters

The overuse of sales emails is creating a growing resistance to them within the marketplace.  Obviously, with so many businesses mass emailing sales offers to people, the amount of traditional marketing letters being sent has dropped enormously.  As a consequence, marketing professionals are seeing traditional marketing letters, (sometimes called direct mailings or mail shots,) achieve better and better results.

A well crafted marketing letter, with a hand written signature, sent to a small, targeted group, with a compelling offer and a ‘call to action,’ can be extremely effective right now.

Mail shots or email marketing?

This is a HUGE subject.  Here’s a very brief overview.

I suggest you try a professionally handled mail shot IF you provide a service, which is only offered to a relatively small geographical area.  Some examples might include; accountants, commercial lawyers, franchise operators, insurance brokers etc.  Let me be completely clear. I am not suggesting these types of service providers cease using email to market their services.  I am suggesting they STOP using sales emails, START using email marketing AND consider trying a professionally handled, direct mail campaign as an addition to their marketing mix.

Jim Connolly’s marketing

I offer a service, which is sold internationally.  As a direct result, 100% of my marketing is conducted online.  My marketing approach is all about giving away free marketing advice, information and tips, to as many small and medium sized business owners as possible.  Then, when they want someone to look after their marketing, they give me a call.

I don’t sell my services, people hire me instead.  For those of you who provide services or products across a big or unlimited geographical area, I suggest you do exactly the same.  Instead of sending sales emails; emails that just ‘push’ or attempt to sell your services – use email as a way to engage potential clients and provide massive value.  Also, make sure that every person you send your information to has proactively sign-up to receive it.  For example, don’t send newsletters or e-bulletins to people, just because you know them, are a member of the same network or you happen to have their business card.

Use email communication (and your website / blog / FaceBook / LinkedIn / Twitter) as a way to showcase your expertise and encourage potential clients to email you, call you, comment on your blog, follow your Twitter account etc, etc.

The results can be stunning!

The Seth Godin Blog – Highly Recommended

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Occasionally, a blog stands out to me as being extra special and when it does, I award it one of my rare ‘Highly Recommended’ awards.  Today, I am highly recommending Seth Godin’s blog.

The Seth Godin Blog

seth godin blog tribes purple cowFor those of you, who do not already know, Seth Godin is a highly successful author, marketing expert and entrepreneur.  However, it’s Seth Godin’s blog excellent blog that I would like to bring to your attention.

Seth’s blog is updated every day and primarily covers marketing.  His blog posts are written for ‘real people’ not marketing experts.  They tend to be short posts, thought provoking and always interesting!

Seth’s approach to marketing is very similar to my own, with an emphasis on building communities and delivering value – rather than pursuing people / business with marketing tricks.

As you may already know, I have worked in marketing for over 20 years and have run my own successful international marketing business since the mid 1990’s. In my opinion, you and your business will benefit greatly from a subscription to Seth Godin’s blog.

Seth Godin, Robert Scoble & Chris Brogan

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In this post, I am going to share one of the success factors behind; Seth Godin, Robert Scoble and Chris Brogan with you.  It’s all about one word; contribution.

A few weeks ago, I had a problem with this blog.  So, I got in touch with two experts, who I knew would be able to help; Robert Scoble and Chris Brogan.  In no time, both were kind enough to get back to me with some excellent advice and the problem was solved.

For those of you who don’t already know; Robert is the former ‘technology evangelist’ for Microsoft and is now one of the best known figures in technology.  Chris is, in my opinion, one of the world’s leading authorities on ‘social media.’  Between them, they have a dedicated following of hundreds of thousands of people.  These are two very busy people!

Of course, these guys gave their help without a second thought.  They also did so privately, OUT of the public gaze; so no one knew how helpful they had been to me, except me. That’s because they gave without expecting something in return. Neither of them know I have written this post or that it will be read by thousands of people today.

Seth Godin and contribution

As marketing expert and best selling author Seth Godin once told me;

“If you have an ulterior motive, your generosity is suspect.”

Wise words – especially as Seth shared them with me freely and in private! That’s right, these were not comments Seth made on a blog or in a Twitter message observed by thousands, to show how smart he is.  No, it was just Seth taking time-out from a very busy schedule, to share an idea with me. (Thanks Seth!!)

I genuinely believe that it is not a coincidence, that each of the three people I have mentioned in this post, are at the very top of their chosen professions.  For example, I was first made aware of Seth’s work, not by an advertisement or by his marketing blog – but after a good friend recommended him to me.  I was first made aware of Robert’s work, after Leo Laporte recommended him to me.  Again with Chris, he was recommended to me by a client of mine, who’s a fan of his work.

I would LOVE to think that after reading this post, some of you check out Seth Godin, Robert Scoble or Chris Brogan for the first time.

Seth, Robert, Chris – Thanks!