Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

PicMonkey Review

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PicMonkey Review Update

Since writing this PicMonkey review in 2013, I no longer recommend you use the service. I’ve since discovered that PicMonkey set up user accounts, so that money is automatically taken from their accounts at renewal time, despite the user not requesting this! PicMonkey also  started inserting advertisements into the app, even for paying customers. As a paid PickMonkey customer, the service is promised to be ad free. This was only removed after a user backlash. Please consider this when reading the following review. Such a pity that the potential of the service has been tainted this way.

Here’s my original PicMonkey review

Today, I want to recommend a wonderful, free resource to you. I’m talking about (drum roll please) the PicMonkey app!

picmonkey review

My PicMonkey review

In short, PicMonkey is a web based app you can use for free, to edit photos and create designs. However, that brief description does not do the app justice. Not even close.

PicMonkey has become an invaluable resource for my blogs and websites. Just to qualify that, since last winter, almost all the graphics you see on this blog were either created or edited using PicMonkey.

From Photoshop to PicMonkey

Previously, I used Adobe Photoshop to compress images, resize images, fix images and place text on images. Photoshop is one of the best pieces of software out there and has an almost endless number of great, professional features. However, for someone like me, who just needed to quickly make images for blog posts, using Photoshop was like using a Formula 1 car to go to the shops.

Picmonkey review

With PicMonkey, I can do everything I need in a fraction of the time. Also, because it’s web based, there’s no need to install (or buy) software for all my devices. I just visit the site and am working in seconds. This also means that it works fine on Windows, Mac and Linux.

How free is PicMonkey?

Some products offer a free version, which is either time-limited or so scaled down as to be of little real value. With PicMonkey, the majority of the features are available free of charge.

In many cases, people will upgrade, not because they need the premium features, but because they want to show their support for what is a superb service. I use it daily and have not found anything I have needed to do, which required a premium account.

picmonkey review

I can not recommend this amazing app highly enough. It’s fast, easy to use and a superb productivity tool. Give PicMonkey a try.

If you are a blogger, or want to make images for Facebook, Google+ etc, it could be just what you’re looking for.

Picmonkey review update

[If you skipped my update message at the top of this PicMonkey review, I no longer recommend the service to anyone. Please read the opening paragraph to see why.]

WordPress botnet attack: Improve your security

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If you have a WordPress blog or website, it’s important that you improve your security, as soon as possible. This post explains why and offers some tips to make your WordPress site safer and gives you links to 2 free security tools you can use.

WordPress botnet attack

Wordpress botnet, username password, distributed attack

Hosting companies worldwide are reporting a surge in attacks on WordPress sites right now. It was reported yesterday that a botnet, with an estimated 90,000 servers (and growing), is trying to log into WordPress sites by cycling different usernames and passwords.

Ars Technica reported today, that this ‘huge attack’ could create a botnet like we have never seen before. My security provider, Sucuri, (affiliate link) says the number of attacks has increased by almost 300% in just a few weeks.

(UPDATE) This free online tool from Sucuri, will check if your blog has been attacked. It also shows you if you’re using the latest version of WordPress and if your site has been blacklisted. You will see your results in seconds. Simply enter the address of your blog.

WordPress botnet: What to do

As this attack seems to use brute force to cycle through usernames and passwords, I suggest you beef up your log in security, by adding a WordPress plugin. This will block anyone from accessing your site if they attempt more than a certain number of failed log ins. The plugin I use is called Limit Login Attempts and is available for free, from The WordPress Repository.

By default, WordPress allows people unlimited log in attempts. This means botnets can target your website / blog with hundreds or thousands of different user name and password combinations. By limiting log in attempts to just a handful, you make it significantly harder for this type of attack to happen. (Update) Whilst this may help and is a good idea against general attacks, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has suggested that ‘log in throttling’ plugins may not be of much help with this specific attack.

Change your WordPress username from admin

I also suggest you change your WordPress user name from ‘admin’. Admin is the default WordPress user name and sites using it are massively easier to break into, because only the password needs to be hacked.

If you’re not sure how to change your WordPress username, there is a step by step guide here. You can also go to YouTube and search for: ‘Change WordPress username’. There are lots of videos showing exactly what you need to do. It’s very simple, takes just a little time and improves your security significantly.

Update your WordPress software and plugins

It’s important to make sure you’re running the most recent version of WordPress. New versions of WordPress often contain security updates, which will protect you from attacks that target older versions of the software. Before you update WordPress, it’s a good idea to back up your data first.

Make sure your plugins are up to date too. Out of date software is easier to hack and newer versions often provide additional security, which patches holes found in older versions.

Update your WordPress blog themes

If you use a blog theme, make sure that it’s up to date. It’s also important to either update or delete OLD blog themes, as these inactive themes can still be used to get into a site. Before updating your blog theme, remember to back up your data first.

These are just some of the things you can do, for free, which will make your site safer. With such an increase in WordPress botnet attacks right now, it makes sense to take some time as soon as you can, to improve your security.

News regarding this attack

VentureBeat: WordPress admin accounts target of botnet attacks.

TechCrunch: Hackers Point Large Botnet At WordPress Sites.

The Verge: Massive botnet using brute force attack to target WordPress sites.

UPDATE: WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg released some advice from his blog:

Here’s what I would recommend: If you still use “admin” as a username on your blog, change it, use a strong password, if you’re on WP.com turn on two-factor authentication, and of course make sure you’re up-to-date on the latest version of WordPress. Do this and you’ll be ahead of 99% of sites out there and probably never have a problem. Most other advice isn’t great — supposedly this botnet has over 90,000 IP addresses, so an IP limiting or login throttling plugin isn’t going to be great (they could try from a different IP a second for 24 hours).

Stop writing for Google. Really. Stop it.

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google, seo, content marketing, keywords

As a passionate advocate for small business owners, I want to make a plea to you: Stop writing your blog posts and web copy primarily for Google.

Earlier today, I spoke with a business owner who wanted to know why the ‘traffic’ to her website and blog was not converting into business or sales leads. According to her analytics software, around 400 visitors arrive on her sites each day, then leave again without making a purchase, making an inquiry or subscribing.

She wanted to know what was wrong.

As her problem is extremely common, I thought I would share what I found with you, along with how to avoid falling into the same trap.

Keyword stuffed nonsense doesn’t convert people into customers

Within seconds of seeing the sites concerned, it was clear why they were so ineffective, why they had not attracted a single sales inquiry in 9 months. It’s simply this: They were primarily written for Google and not for people. Her content was keyword stuffed – here’s Google’s definition of keyword stuffing.

Her content was over ‘optimized’ for SEO and not written to appeal to prospective customers. For example, her website had the same 3 word phrase repeated 41 times on the home page alone! The services page on her blog has the name of her service repeated 39 times in just 350 words. It read horribly. It reflected poorly on her and her business. It was toxic and she has been paying the price.

In her eagerness to get ‘traffic’, she forgot about customers, prospective customers and what they would find when they actually arrived on her sites.

Effective SEO should be based around making great content easier for search engines to find and read. It should not be about producing keyword stuffed junk, which people can’t understand or connect with.

Writing for people

It’s hard enough to write compelling content, which will motivate people to buy from you, call you, email you, visit you, link to you or share your work. If your content reads poorly because it’s stuffed with keywords and key-phrases, you stand no chance.

You may get fewer visitors from search engines then those who stuff their content with keywords, but you will engage your readers. That’s what attracts customers, generates sales leads and (ironically) motivates people to link to and share your work – which massively improves your search engine rankings, anyway.

7 Benefits of business blogging

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marketing tips, content marketing

Here are 7 benefits of writing a business blog. Some of them may surprise you!

1. Blogging is a great tool for building a tribe

Blogging is the best tool I’ve ever known, for building a community or tribe. Blogging allows you to show your leadership, rather than claim it. By being brave enough to write YOUR point of view, you demonstrate your ability to lead – rather than follow.

This is, of course, a double-edged sword. Most bloggers simply amplify what the most popular opinion is on their subject. However, for those who genuinely are prepared to show their leadership to people, via the work and words they share on their blog, it represents an amazing opportunity.

2. Blogging and relationship building

Blogging allows people to get to know you, before they call you, email you or hire you. I get calls and emails daily from people I don’t know, who tell me they feel like they already know me. This has massive commercial value and leads into the next point…

3. Blogging helps you attract new clients and sales inquiries

Blogging is a great way to attract highly targeted inquiries from potential clients and customers. By blogging regularly about your core areas of commercial interest, you position yourself in the mind of your readers as an authority in your field. Then, when they need expert help they can trust, you become a very attractive option – far more attractive than going to Google and looking for a stranger or taking a chance on someone they don’t know, who’s recommended to them.

4. Blogging helps you communicate

When you write a blog post, you really need to think about what you are going to publish. You need to question the information you are about to share, for value, accuracy and clarity. I’ve found that by writing regularly for small business owners, it has massively improved my copy writing, when writing any commercial communication.

In short: Blogging is a superb communications training asset.

5. Blogging gives you an enormous reach

Blogging allows you to share ideas with an almost unlimited number of people. Your blog gives you the potential to build your own media asset – your own publication, with as large a readership as you are capable of building. This is an opportunity that was unthinkable for small business owners even a decade ago.

This alone makes blogging a wonderful business investment.

6. Blogging is amazingly powerful for market research

Blogging is a fantastic market research tool. You learn the topics your readership is most interested in, very quickly. Thanks to inexpensive or free analytics tools, you can see which of your posts are read the most and shared the most. You also see the posts which generate the most emails from your readers. By learning what your readership is most interested in, you can develop new products and services or adapt existing ones.

You can also improve the effectiveness of your marketing messages, knowing what your readers are most interested in.

7. Blogging allows you to prove your reliability

By showing up on your blog regularly with useful information, you are doing more than showcasing your knowledge. You are also showing prospective clients or customers that you can be relied upon to turn up.

It takes commitment, durability and a great work ethic, to regularly update a blog. Once you have been blogging for a few years or more, you also have a body of work that shows your longevity. We live in an age where people often set up a website and some social networking accounts, with no track record – and claim to be experienced professionals. Many of my clients told me that the fact they could see years worth of my work on Jim’s Marketing Blog, made them a lot more confident that I was an experienced professional.

A confession about the blog post I published earlier today

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I want to share something with you, about the post I published earlier today.

It was written on an inexpensive, Google Nexus 7 tablet, with no special software. I wrote it straight into the web browser, edited it, added the image and hit the publish button.

nexus 7

Here’s why this matters

In marketing, it’s all too easy for us to get hung-up on the tools we use, when we should be focusing on the outcome. The tools alone are not what make us productive. It’s what we do with them, which determines our productivity and our results. For instance, this post is being written in my studio, using a Lenovo machine that cost me more than 10 times as much as that cheap tablet device.

Now, here’s a question… Can you spot the difference between the two posts?

Of course you can’t spot the difference, because there isn’t one.

The ultimate blogging machine?

When it comes to blogging, newsletter writing or marketing in general, it isn’t the computer you use, which people care about. It’s whether you have written something of value to them – that’s what matters.

  • That’s what earns their attention.
  • That’s what positions you in their mind as an authority in your field.
  • And if you do it frequently enough, it’s also what demonstrates your ability to consistently show up and be useful.

Certainly, get yourself the best machine you can. Then, use it as well as you can, as often as you can.

Photo: Google

Do you stand behind your work?

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As business owners, we face a challenge every day: To rise above the broken promises of those who went before us.

Allow me to explain

  • When we say we go the extra mile for our clients, the marketplace was promised that before, by someone who failed to deliver.
  • When we say we finish projects on time and on budget, the marketplace was promised that before, by someone who failed to deliver.
  • When we say our work creates great results, the marketplace was promised that before, by someone who failed to deliver.

promises3

Promises, promises

Whenever we make any statement about the value of our services, the marketplace will have been promised it before, from someone who failed to deliver. As a result, these claims wash over prospective clients. They have nothing like the power that many business owners believe.

Unless… they are supported with undeniable evidence. This is tricky. Even some top websites have been busted, for getting their friends to endorse their products with fake testimonials. Review sites are also littered with fake, positive reviews. This means our legitimate testimonials and promises are viewed through a filter.

Thankfully, there is a super-effective alternative, which provides the essential proof our prospective clients or customers need.

Standing behind your own work

Another option is to make better promises. The kind of promises that are easy for people to believe. This is how I market my own business. It means building a solid, professional reputation and then standing behind your own work.

This approach takes time and requires proof. One of the finest ways to do this, is to create a business blog and show up regularly with useful information.

Why?

When someone arrives on your blog, they can see that you regularly share useful ideas on your topic. They get an insight into your abilities and commitment. For example, when people come to Jim’s Marketing Blog for the first time, they can see 5 years worth of work and thousands of ideas. Before they speak to me or email me, they can see that I know my subject and that I can be relied on to start something and stick with it.

I suggest you consider doing the same. Make 2013 the year you decide to take business blogging seriously. The rewards are huge. I can help you and show you exactly what you need to do. To find out more, click here!

A hope, a promise and a wish

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A new day. A new year. A clean canvas.

My hope for you

I hope that you use the first day of January, as an opportunity to take stock, make some plans and launch your best year ever. You can make real, measurable progress in the days, weeks and months ahead.

My promise to you

I promise to be here for you. I promise to show up regularly and share marketing and business development ideas. If you really want to see amazing results, I’m here for you to hire, either for a one-off session or a whole year.

My wish for you

My wish is that you have a healthy, happy and prosperous 2013.

Here’s to your success!

A human approach to the success of your business

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A great piece of advice for the year ahead, is to stop looking for success in the mechanics of what you do.

It isn’t there!

Allow me to explain

For example, a dummies guide to blogging will tell you the mechanics of writing, publishing and distributing blog posts.

However, successful blogging comes from outside the mechanics.

  • Success comes from breaking many of the golden rules of blogging, so you don’t look just like everyone else.
  • Success comes from digging deep, to come up with posts that your readers will value.
  • Success comes from showing up very regularly, no matter how busy you are, no matter what’s going on in your life and no matter how you feel.
  • Success comes from having the courage to tell it your way, knowing you risk being challenged or attacked.

You can learn the mechanics anywhere. The bookshelves are packed with step by step guides to doing just about anything.

The human element is where our success is determined. It’s our passion, commitment, work ethic, motivation, creativity, values and courage, which set the ceiling on our potential.

6 Powerful business tips from William Arthur Ward (Not Ernest Hemingway as misquoted)

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William Arthur Ward

Most of the problems business owners find themselves in can be avoided, if they follow these 6 tips from Ernest Hemingway William Arthur Ward.

“Before you act, listen.
Before you react, think.
Before you spend, earn.
Before you criticize, wait.
Before you pray, forgive.
Before you quit, try.”

~ William Arthur Ward

Before you act, listen

It’s tempting for entrepreneurs to get an idea and then take action, without first listening or getting feedback. That initial burst of excitement and the motivation it brings, means it’s all too easy to set off full speed – then get caught in a speed trap! Starting any project of value without doing the research required results in wasted time, wasted money and total frustration.

Remember: Ready, Aim, Fire – not Ready, Fire, Aim.

Before you react, think

One of the best ways to guarantee you make bad decisions, is to react before you have taken time to think the situation through.

I spoke once with a small business owner, who lost her biggest client because she reacted to an email from her client before pausing to think. The email seemed to be attacking the quality of her work and as an artist, she was extremely hurt. She replied quickly with an angry email, which attacked her client’s taste. The client then replied the following day, to say they had closed their account. It turned out that the client’s email was intended to be humorous. The small business owner only realised she had made a huge mistake, after showing it to her partner who immediately spotted the joke. She lost 60% of her turnover by reacting without due thought.

Before you spend, earn

Earning before you spend takes a lot of discipline. We live in a society that promotes the idea of instant gratification. Just put your credit card details into the box and Amazon (or whoever) will deliver that (whatever) to your door the next day. If you can avoid credit, do. Make your money work for you, not the credit card or loan companies. No, it isn’t easy. However, it is possible.

Before you criticize, wait

Criticism can be painful, so it pays to wait before you criticise. Life is too short to spend it upsetting people. Think for a moment about what you hope to achieve by criticising that person.

Offering a critique when asked by someone who respects your opinion, is very different from picking holes in someone who didn’t ask for your opinion. If you have to be critical about someone or their work, at least provide some helpful answers. Then ask why you needed to be critical of them and what you truly hoped to achieve. Try and ask yourself that question before criticising them.

Before you pray, forgive

It’s hard to move on with your life, unless you are prepared to forgive. I was recently left with a bill for thousands of dollars, because someone failed to deliver on a commitment they made to me and then walked away, leaving me to literally pay the price. However, I made sure to forgive the person immediately. In fact, I wish them nothing but happiness. I have not forgotten what they did to me, because if I did I wouldn’t have been able to learn from it. However, it’s pointless to hold bitterness toward people. As Buddy Hackett said: ‘While you’re carrying a grudge, they’re out dancing’.

Look for the learning. Use it as a lesson. Don’t let it happen again. Move on.

Before you quit, try

In my experience, people tend to quit too soon. For example, there are millions of blogs out there, which were abandoned after the blogger wrote a couple of dozen posts. Before these blogs had the chance to become massively valuable assets, the blogger decided it wasn’t working and quit. Instead of starting with a commitment to write regularly for at least a year before quitting, they became disheartened and gave up. They set it up so that it was impossible for them to succeed, by quitting unreasonably early.

If you are going to try something, really try. Make a commitment based on realistic data – then stick to it. This will cause your success rate and your self belief to soar like a rocket!

The quote this post was based on, was originally attributed to Hemingway. The correct attribution has now been applied and I’d like to thank Peter, a reader who kindly pointed out the error.

My increased commitment to you in 2013

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Like most people, I’m thinking about the year ahead right now. Here are some of my thoughts for the direction of Jim’s Marketing Blog in 2013.

Before looking ahead, I’d like to share a couple of things from 2012

Earlier this year, Jim’s Marketing Blog was rated the most influential marketing blog in the UK and the second most influential business blog over all, in Eloqua’s UK Blog Tree. The blog also grew faster in 2012 than any year since 2008, in both visitor numbers and subscribers. I want to send a HUGE thank you to every reader, who has shared this blog with their friends and helped me reach more people, with free marketing ideas.

My email experiment is here to stay

I made the decision in October 2012, to add my email details to every page of the blog. I decided to test it for a month, to see how people would use it. A lot of people warned me not to do it, saying I would get flooded by spam emails. Thankfully, I can report that this never happened. Instead, it opened an intimate channel of communication with every reader, allowing them to connect with me directly. Many people have told me that they find it a lot more useful than leaving a comment on the blog.

Solutions to my huge blog comment spam challenges

Blog commenting has changed massively since 2008, with the vast majority (often 90% or more) of my comments now coming via social networks and email. People know I reply to every message I receive on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook, so if they see me there, that’s where they comment. It’s faster and easier for them, than leaving their social network to login here and comment.

I wrote earlier in the year about a huge problem I have had with comment spam – automatically generated messages, sent to blogs in order to build links or attract ‘traffic’ from the victim’s blog. I was receiving over 2,000 spam comments a day. A small percentage made it past the filters, generating hundreds of fake notifications a week, telling me there was ‘a comment awaiting moderation’ on the blog. This made it hard to keep up with legitimate comments.

I thought I had found a solution, with a plugin that almost eliminated spam comments from ever reaching the blog. Sadly, the plugin also stops too many genuine comments from getting through. This has simply swapped one set of time consuming comment problems for another, as readers now email me to ask if I can find and publish their comment.

As all my readers have at least one social media account, I’m considering using social networks exclusively, for commenting next year. Dealing with comment spam has been just too time consuming and distracting. I dislike using 3rd party commenting systems, finding them often slow and unreliable when I see them on other sites.

The democratising of comments through social networks seems a logical, fair way to remove the issue and allow me more time to actually write for you. It also creates accountability, as comments can not be made anonymously.

More free tips and ideas for you in 2013

This year more than ever, has proven to me that people value the free information I provide here. I get over 100 emails every day from small business owners, many of which are telling me how the ideas I share have become an essential resource for their business.

As you can imagine, I invest a lot of my time developing the content you find here. I have written every post on this blog and shared thousands of ideas, since I started in 2008. As well as writing content for you, I also spend lots of time every day dealing with emails and messages from readers. Although the wonderful people at WebFusion sponsor my hosting, I pick up the bill for everything else. For example, I work with fewer paying clients each year in order to have enough time to offer as much free information to my readers as possible. This costs me thousands every year in lost income and I have happily covered the cost since 2008.

In 2013, I plan to spend even more of my time helping my readers with free marketing and business development advice. To do this, I need to cover the cost of more of my time. I am currently looking at either introducing more sponsor opportunities or becoming an affiliate for some of the products and services I already use and recommend to people. Currently, just one of the products I use has an affiliate program, so sponsorship looks favourite rite now.

A year of opportunity

I believe that 2013 will be a year of opportunity. As the economies of most countries continue to struggle, people will think a lot harder before hiring a service provider or buying a product. When times are great and people feel financially secure, they think less about the impact of a bad purchasing decision. Today, they think long and hard! This means the small business owners who develop their marketing most effectively, will gain a disproportionately large share of their market.

Rest assured that I will be here for you throughout 2013, to help you become one of the small businesses that thrives. Moreover, I plan to be of greater service to you in 2013 than ever before.

9 Amazing free resources to help you grow your business and feed your mind

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Right now, you have access to an Aladdin’s Cave of freely available marketing, business development and professional development tools. In today’s post, I am going to share just 9 of them with you.

Free marketing and educational resources

Here are my 9 free resources. Remember to add yours at the end:

  1. Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, will give you a blog for free and host it for free, too. Many of the world’s top blogs started off on this free platform and some have stayed with the free version of the service. I started this blog off using the free version of WordPress and today, around 60,000 people get updated when I publish each new post.
  2. The people at TED have made thousands of educational and inspirational videos available to you, for free.
  3. Microsoft offer you Skype for free, so you can easily collaborate with colleagues or clients via speech or video conferencing. So long as they have downloaded Skype, you can now work with people, with no geographic limitations and it won’t cost you a penny.
  4. Twitter, Google+ and Facebook welcome you to use their services for free and Linkedin offers a useful, free version of their service too. Years ago, you paid an organisation to attend physical networking events, and lost a huge chunk of your day travelling to the events, attending the events and getting back from the events. You were lucky if 100 people attended and even luckier if you made regular, meaningful contacts. Now you can network with thousands of people anywhere in the world, for nothing more than the time you’re prepared to invest.
  5. Seth Godin digs deep to come up with something useful to say, via his daily blog posts. These are essential reading.
  6. Christopher Penn and John Wall turn up on an almost weekly basis, to share ideas and opinions on the world of marketing, in their Marketing Over Coffee podcast. I reviewed it here.
  7. You can now give your online and offline marketing photos and images more impact, with free image editing software. I use picmonkey.
  8. It has never been easier to capture ideas than it is today. If you use a smartphone, Evernote provides an extremely useful free version of their service, which allows you to collect ideas, sounds, images, webpages and more – and then work with them.
  9. If you have a website or blog, you need to measure what’s happening on the site and by far the most popular tool for this, is Google Analytics. Google Analytics lets you track everything, from how many visitors your site receives and what your most popular pages are, to what words people use when looking for you on a search engine and what type of devices they use to access your site. This free package offers far too many features to mention here and is extremely useful, especially if you do not already have any analytics software.

How to show people your achievements and create a powerful impact!

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No one likes people who are boastful. Little wonder then, that so many small business owners feel uncomfortable when showcasing their achievements. However, unless we learn how to show the marketplace what we have accomplished and when we are capable of, we will place a very low ceiling on our success.

In my experience, the best way to overcome a tendency to sell ourselves short, is to focus on honesty, context and proof.

Honesty and context

By being honest about what you have done and explaining your achievements or accolades in context, you shift your focus from being boastful to being truthful.

Context is really important too. If you simply list a ton of achievements every time you connect with someone, you will look like an ass. However, if you list them in the right places, such as the about page of your website, people will actually be looking for them. You will simply be offering people the information they need. If they are reading your about page, they are checking you out – they want to know about you.

Where’s the proof?

Anyone can claim to have achieved anything. As a result, many people lie like crazy about their achievements. So, it’s understandable that our prospective clients or customers want some proof, to back up our claims.

For example:

  • If you tell people you have been a content marketer for 5 years, link to something that backs that up; such as some old blog posts. You can also do as Seth Godin does and have your archive on the sidebar of your blog. Seth’s shows he was blogging in 2002.
  • If you claim in your marketing material that you have a famous client, get permission from the person to use their name and if possible, get a photo of you together, too. Otherwise, don’t expect people to automatically believe you.
  • If you tell people your work was featured in a well known newspaper, provide a link to the article. If you mention it in your offline marketing, use a scan of the coverage.
  • If you tell people you won a prestigious award, provide a link back to the announcement on the award website.

In other words, if you want your achievements to be seen as truthful you should show some proof. Yes, I know you’re honest, you know you’re honest, but a prospective client who doesn’t know you yet, who’s reading your marketing material for the first time, would like some proof.

For instance:

  • On the about page of Jim’s Marketing Blog, I mention that I write for The Microsoft Small Business Blog. I then link to one of my articles, which is on the Microsoft blog and checkable.
  • I do the same with a link to The Guardian newspaper, when they wrote about my listing on The UK Blog Tree as the UK’s most influential marketing blogger and the 2nd most influential business blogger.

Getting the balance right

Those and other achievements are only on my about page, so they are in context. If I listed them everywhere, they would be out of context. Just mentioning them here as an example, will sound boastful to some. That’s how important context is and how careful we have to be, to get the balance right.

Social media smoke blowers: How to stop them hurting your business

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I recently wrote a post asking you what your main marketing challenges were, so I could cover them in future posts.

One of the most common questions, was to do with the ocean of information being offered online, by people claiming to be social media experts. Today’s post is all about how to tell those with genuinely useful information, from the fakes.

Social media smoke blowers

It’s extremely easy for someone with little social media skill, to pretend they are a social media expert. All they need is a blog, a photo of them in front of a screen (looking ‘dynamic’ and preferably wearing a headset) and a few social networking tricks.

Here is a selection of what I have personally experienced from some smoke blowers:

  • I was emailed by the author of a book on how to make money on Facebook, who didn’t know what to do as he’d sold fewer than 100 copies. This social media marketing expert had no idea how to market his book, via social media or anything else.
  • I was called by a social media trainer, who is well known on the speaking circuit. He wanted to know if I had any work I could give him. This guy specialises in telling people how to attract high quality sales leads.
  • I was emailed by a blogger, author and speaker, who wanted to know if I could get her a free version of my blog theme. I explained that it only cost $60 and she told me that times were tough. This same person is selling online courses and ebooks on how to grow a successful business. She offered to repay me, with retweets!

So, how do you tell the genuinely informed experts from the rest, when you are new to social media and seeking to use it effectively for your business?

Protecting yourself from smoke blowers

I believe the best way to protect yourself from taking bad advice is to do a little research first, then apply some common sense.

For example:

  • If the only testimonials they offer are from others, with similar Pinocchio business models, be very cautious. (A Pinocchio business is one, with no visible means of support.)
  • Always remember that the rules of business apply online, just as they do offline.
  • Don’t let their numbers fool you. 100,000 Twitter followers means nothing. You can buy followers. You can buy software to build massive follower numbers. You can just randomly follow thousands of people, get a subset to follow you back, unfollow them all – then repeat until you have a huge following. If someone seems to lack credibility or you think they are promising impossible results, don’t let their social numbers fool you into ignoring your instinct!
  • Someone claiming to be a social media author or radio host/personality, still needs to be checked out:
    • Thanks to self publishing, my 7 year old son can claim to be an author.
    • Oh, and thanks to free services like blogtalk radio, he can claim to be a radio ‘personality’ too.
    • In both cases he would be telling the truth, but it would have nothing to do with his ability to help you improve your social media results!
  • If it seems too good to be true, it almost always is (yes, even on the Internet).

Consider the source

Always check the source of information before you act on it. Never let easy to fake social media numbers or lofty titles fool you into taking damaging advice or get you to part with your money. Not every social media expert or social networking ‘superstar’ is a fake. Some offer useful information, which makes commercial sense and offers a logical return on your investment.

Just be extremely careful of those promising amazing results, with no logical business path.

Your answer to this question, will tell you in advance how 2013 will look for your business!

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The opportunities in front of you today are amazing.

You have the tools to:

  • Get a targeted message in front of your ideal profile of client, in seconds, with their full permission.
  • Create a blog, which will allow you to build a massively valuable community around your business, with limitless potential.
  • Build and nurture a targeted network of wonderful people, who you can connect with daily through social networks.
  • Develop a newsletter and grow an extraordinarily valuable reader community, which grows in value every single day.
  • Increase the conversion rates of all your marketing and sales activities.
  • Attract more word of mouth referrals in a week, than used to be possible in a year.

What are you going to do with it?

The big question right now, is; what are you going to do with all that potential?

The final weeks of 2012 offer you an amazing opportunity, to lay the foundations of what could be your best year ever in 2013.

Take some time today to look at the elements of your marketing that are under performing. Write them down. Include everything that is not generating the results you need. Each item on that list needs to either be improved or replaced with something that works.

Cause and effect

What you can’t afford to do, is go into 2013 with the same strategy and tactics as 2012, and expect to see different results. The law of cause and effect tells us that to get the right effects (results) we need to put the right causes (actions) into play. The same old approach will result in the same old outcome.

Thankfully, you can set the right strategy in place whenever you make the decision to. The challenge, is making that decision. It takes courage. It means being one of the few, who is prepared to do what’s required, rather than what’s easy. Once you have the courage to take control, all the help and information you need is there, waiting.

If you are ready to take control, I’ve got you covered.

Why I welcome and value your emails

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I recently added my email address to every page on this blog. Very soon after, lots of you asked me why I did it and what the results have been. So, here’s your answer.

Why I value your emails so much

Ever since I started this blog, I have published my email address (and my office address / phone number) on my contact page. This means I was already used to receiving email from readers.

My decision to publish my email address on every page, was to make it easier for you to contact me and also to demonstrate that I welcome and value your emails.

What type of emails do readers send me?

When people email me, they tend to do so because they either want to share something with me (around 95%) or to make an unrealistic request for free, specific marketing advice (5%). I can’t do the latter, it simply doesn’t scale because of the time required.

The variety of emails I receive, is huge. For example:

  • I get emails from readers who want to update me on the progress of their businesses and emails that let me know when a reader has spotted a typo.
  • I get emails asking if I will cover certain topics and emails thanking me for something a reader learned from the blog.
  • I get emails asking why there are no advertisements here and emails from people who want me to share their stories with you.

A wide variety of emails, from all kinds of people. I value them enormously!

The value of a 1-to-1 connection

Although every email I receive is different, they ALL have one very important thing in common: They open up an intimate, 1-to-1 communication between you and me.

If you want to connect with me, you are welcome to do so and it has never been easier. I look forward to hearing from you.

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

Keeping you in the picture

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Regular readers of this blog may have noticed a slight change in the format of last weeks posts. They didn’t contain any images.

For years, I have invested a great deal of time trying to find interesting images for blog posts. I was of the opinion that posts needed images, yet as I discovered last week, that’s not always the case.

Images suck up lots of my blogging time

In recent months I have become increasingly aware of how long it takes me to find the right image, edit it so that it’s the correct size, then compress the image so it loads quickly, then position it so that it’s in the ideal spot within the post and then get the correct attribution, so you know who actually owns the image.

I found that I’ve been spending hours of my time on images every week, when I could be using that time to share useful ideas with you.

So, I decided to see what would happen if I posted for a week, image free.

Here’s what I learned:

  • Either no one noticed or no one was bothered, as not a single person mentioned the lack of images.
  • I have been able to add a new dynamic to the blog, by getting ideas to you a lot faster than before. Last weeks posts were all written on the day they were published. Previously, posts were written well in advance, then edited (including image work) the day before they were published. It feels a lot more natural to share ideas with you, whilst they are still fresh in my mind.
  • I’ve had more time available for blogging, allowing me to share more ideas with you than I would have been able to.
  • Posts load faster now because they use a fraction of the data they did before. This is especially useful for those of you with slow, mobile connections.

Social shares

I was expecting to see far fewer people share my posts on social networks. This didn’t happen.

It’s a fact: The image pulled from blog posts into services like Facebook or Google+, is a big factor in people seeing and resharing them. Previously, I tested this and saw a direct drop in shares when posts were on Facebook with no image associated to them. People are visual, after all.

I was able to overcome that problem by using a great little WordPress plugin, which grabs my avatar image and inserts it into my posts, when you share them on social networks. This approach has worked fine for me so far. It’s also used by brands like The Wall Street Journal and by some fellow bloggers, including Seth Godin.

The idea of going a whole week image free was to measure the impact over a full, working week. I am still going to use images in posts, but not in every post – just when one is needed.

Don’t try this at home

[quote]Blogging without images isn’t a good idea for most people reading this and I am not suggesting you try it.[/quote] I believe that a great image does add something to a blog post. This is especially the case if you need to show products regularly in your posts or if you need to show images that are linked to the visual nature of your services. Also, if you only blog once or twice a week the time saved will be minimal – across my 4 sites I sometimes publish as many as 40 posts in a month.

Images are also useful if you are big on SEO and want to optimise all your posts using image alt tags.

As I never optimise images for SEO and I don’t offer a particularly visual service, these reasons are less compelling for me. They could be a lot more relevant to you and your blog though, so please don’t copy this approach unless it’s in line with what you want to achieve.

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

How to learn from the best, without copying them

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How to, tips, advice

One of the best ways to develop your business, is to learn from what already works.

It’s not about copying. It’s about using what works for others, as a source of creative inspiration for your own marketing. Allow me to explain.

Here are 3 examples of what I mean

1. Think of the last product or service you paid for. Now ask yourself, what were the main motivators, which persuaded you to make that purchase? Look for a way to uniquely incorporate those persuasive factors into the marketing of your own products or services.

2. Think of the last time you recommended a product or service to your friends. What were the key factors that motivated you to give it your endorsement? Look for ways to uniquely incorporate them into your business, so you attract more word of mouth referrals.

3. Think of the last newsletter you read, which inspired you to make a purchase, click a link, email the sender, etc. What was it about that newsletter [or the person who wrote it], which motivated you to take action? Look for ways to uniquely build that into your own newsletter, so more people take action when they read it.

As you may have already noticed, this approach can be applied to any area of your business that you want to improve.

Learning is more valuable than copying

A well known example of this approach came from Steve Jobs. When designing the first iMac computers, Jobs studied the design of sports cars for inspiration. Apparently, people would see him in the Apple parking lot, looking at the lines and curves of sports cars. His machines didn’t look like cars, but the ‘design lines’ of some Apple products were influenced by them.

The key thing to remember is that the value comes from learning, not copying. Look at what works and search for the lessons behind it. If you fully embrace this idea, it will be a powerful development tool for both you and your business.

Bloggers: 8 Tips to help you attract more readers, sales and business leads

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blogging, blog tips, content marketing

If you write a business blog and would like to see better results from it, I believe you will find the following 8 blogging tips really useful. They are based on my own experiences, having grown Jim’s Marketing Blog from zero, to one of the world’s most popular marketing blogs.

Let’s get started with tip number 1.

1. Write when you have something useful to share. Be useful often

Very few bloggers seem to understand one of the most basic facts of blogging. It’s simply this: You can’t expect people to keep returning to your blog, if you don’t.

For example, if a reader finds a new, useful post on your blog today, then returns in a few days and there’s nothing new, then returns a few days later and still nothing new – you stand a great chance of losing their interest. Conversely, if they find something useful on your blog every few days, they’re extremely likely to keep returning. That’s how you become part of their world. That’s how they start getting to know you.

When you publish posts infrequently, it’s almost like starting from zero each time. There’s little if any momentum: Momentum is essential if you want to grow your readership.

I often hear people claim that they just can’t find useful topics to blog about, on a regular basis. The thing is, these same people have no trouble finding useful things to say to their clients, contacts and friends, every day! Writing is like talking. If you can talk regularly about your topic, there’s no reason why you can’t write about it too. I believe everyone can think of something useful to share at least a couple of times a week.

The next tip takes this one step further.

2. Write as closely as you can, to the way you speak

Have you ever noticed that when you read the best blogs, it almost feels like you can hear the blogger speaking the words to you? That’s because these writers have discovered, that when you write similarly to the way you speak, you make it easier for people to connect with the person behind your posts.

In fact, allowing your personality to shine through your written words, may be one of the best kept secrets of the most successful, prolific bloggers.

3. Avoid writing ‘me too’ blog posts

Some bloggers will only write posts, which agree with what almost everyone else in their space is saying. By adding nothing new, you give people nothing to connect with. You look like a sheep. Always look for a way to add something of your own, something that shows your readers what you think and what you feel about the topic.

4. Aim to be useful

The most widely read blog posts are those, which people find useful in some way. So, give your readers something they can take away from the post and put into action.

Give them an idea, which they can chew over and then draw their own conclusions.

Give them a fresh way to look at an old challenge.

In a nutshell – The more useful you are, the more valuable your blog will be to your readers.

5. Focus on them

Yes, it’s nice occasionally to write about yourself, but if you really want to engage your readers, you need to focus on them. Talk about what’s happening in their world. Offer answers to the problems facing their industry.

There’s a big difference between writing posts that just talk about you, your product and how amazing you are – and writing posts that are all about being useful to the reader, yet contain lessons from your own experiences. In fact, it’s a great idea to share your own experiences, when offering useful examples to help make a point. I’ve done it a few times in this post. Your readers will value learning what happened when you did XYZ – it could save them time and money.

The key is to ensure the focus of the post is on helping them, rather than bragging or pushing sales pitches at them!

6. Don’t try and sell in every post

You write a business blog and the purpose of the blog is to help you build your business. It’s essential to write posts, which promote your products or services, but you need to get the balance right.

In my experience, the vast majority of your posts should be designed to offer independent value to your reader. By independent value, I mean the reader should be able to get something useful from your posts, without having to buy something from you or hire you. I write just a few posts a year, which exclusively promote my marketing services. These are sometimes called conversion posts. All the hundreds of other posts are me offering independent value.

I’m not suggesting you write as few conversion posts as me, but remember that there’s a reason people skip the ads on their TV’s. They watch TV for the programs, not the commercials. Too many conversion posts and you’ll find it extremely hard to build a great readership.

N.B: One of the reasons I write so few posts that promote my marketing services, is that I include a small excerpt at the bottom of my posts. This has a link you can use, if you want to know how I can help you grow your business or build a successful blog. Readers know it’s there and can ignore it, until they want to find out more. It’s out of the way, until it’s needed.

7. Keep it human

If you want your readers to connect with you, you need to be approachable. The reader needs to know that if they email or call you, you will welcome them. This means humanizing the relationship between you and your readers.

Here are a few examples, based on what I do.

  • I respond to every comment, which needs a reply.
  • When I reply, I try and always include the name of the person who commented.
  • If I notice someone commenting here for the first time, I welcome them to the blog. And I genuinely mean it.
  • Everyone who reads this blog via email, can send me a personal email, by simply replying to it! Your reply goes direct to my inbox, so we can have a more private connection. If it isn’t spam, they get a response and they know I love to hear from them. Many readers exchange emails with me several times a week. It’s wonderful. I love hearing from you. If you’d like that deeper connection with me, you can get all future posts via email, for free, by subscribing here.

8. Never aim for perfect

If you do, you’ll seldom publish anything. The perfectionist mindset places the bar impossibly high. It tells us that we have to cover every point, counter every possible argument and do all this, in an engaging way. I’ve written thousands of blog posts and not only are none of them perfect, none of them would ever have been published had I been aiming for perfect.

That’s the thing about the perfectionist mindset. It stops us from even getting started.

Here’s what we know about your marketplace: None of them are expecting perfection from you. Not one. As I mentioned earlier, what people want is something that’s useful, something of value. Something they can quickly read and get at least one insight, answer or nugget of information from.

In closing

A business blog can either be a waste of time or an enormously valuable business asset, depending on what you do with it. I hope you find something here, which helps your blog join the latter of those two groups.

To your success!

Do you follow these 3 keys to business success?

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If you’re not seeing the business results you want, it’s likely you are not working on one or more of the following 3 key areas, correctly.

Here they are:

1. Be so good that they can’t ignore you. This is the key to attracting genuine interest, from the right kind of people. You can apply this to anything. If you want more followers, do something worth following. If you want more word of mouth referrals, offer a service that’s so good, people want to talk about it. And so on.

2. Start blogging. It’s the best way I have ever found, to build a community (what affiliate marketers call a ‘list’) and position yourself as an expert in your field. Publish useful posts regularly. Be prepared to invest for the long term. Blogging is about relationships and trust. You don’t build those overnight.

3. Offer unique value. With so many other people competing for the attention of your prospective clients, doing it your way is the only way to get noticed. Be yourself.

Everything improves

Those are what I consider to be 3 keys to success, especially for small business owners. I show my clients how to develop those 3 key areas (and many others) because; when you are so good that people can’t ignore you, when you publish useful blog posts regularly and when you offer the marketplace unique value, everything improves.

I’ve seen some truly amazing results, working with clients who were previously making little real progress, until they focused on those 3 areas. I recommend you do the same.

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.