Jim Connolly Marketing

Business blogging: The “get rich slow” approach!

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A successful business blog is a great marketing and communications asset.

It’s no surprise then, that so many business owners start blogging.  However, many of them stop blogging after a few months, because they have not seen the kind of results they had hoped for.

It’s like a farmer planting her crops and then trying to harvest them too soon.  The farmer may have planted the crops correctly and tended the soil perfectly, but her crops might take 6 months or more before they’re ready for harvesting.

Building a blog that generates regular sales, leads or opportunities for your business often takes up to a year or more.  Pulling the plug on a blog after just a few months is like giving up on your crops before your seeds had a chance to grow.

Blog development takes time

My first blog post here was read by just a handful of people on the day it was published.  Over the next 2 years, I worked hard to make Jims Marketing Blog as valuable as I possibly could.  I wrote several hundred blog posts, replied to comments, improved the blog design and marketed it to new readers.

Why?  Over the past 12-months alone, this blog has repaid me, by generating over £100,000 in profitable, new business.  Had I stopped after the first few months, because I only had a relatively small number of readers, none of this would have happened and I would have missed what’s become one of the most fun elements of my business too!

Numbers are less important than quality, but you do still need the numbers.

How many readers do YOU need?

That’s easy.  You need enough targeted visitors to your blog each week or month, in order to provide you with a steady, predictable stream of high quality sales or business leads.  Now, in some industries, that may be 5,000 a day.  In most industries you will need nothing like that many! Lots of successful business bloggers do amazingly well with 500 unique visitors a day and others with half that number!

To get you from wherever you are right now, to that magical place, aim for developing a growing, targeted readership, through providing useful, focused content and embracing a good Internet marketing strategy.

The bottom line: Don’t get disheartened by comparing your visitor numbers with anyone else and allow your blog the time it needs in order to grow. If you are looking for a quick fix, business blogging is probably not for you.  However, if you are looking for a way to build an amazingly powerful marketing and communications asset in the medium to longer-term, I suggest you embrace blogging.

What have your experiences been of starting or growing a business blog?  I would really love to hear your feedback!

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

Dead trees and a powerful copy writing lesson!

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Writing marketing copy or sales copy that really works can be a challenge, especially for people with little or no experience.  One of the best ways to learn how to write great copy, is to read great copy and then study what you have read. Why did that particular message compel you to click a link?  What was it about the specific offer you just read, that made you follow-up on it?

Copy writing and Dead Trees

One of the best pieces of copy writing I have seen over the past few years, is just a simple, short phrase.  It’s often used when online publications refer to paper-based; newspapers, magazines and trade publications etc.  The term is dead tree media.  For example, when referring to a headline on the front page of the traditional paper version of The Times, a blogger will often refer to it as the front page of the dead tree edition of The Times.

The reason this is such a clever phrase, is that those 2 words, dead tree, are extremely emotive:

  • The phrase dead tree immediately focuses our mind on the fact that in order for paper to be made, trees not only need to be cut down; they have to be killed!  Even recycled paper was once a tree.
  • By calling the traditional version of a newspaper, magazine or whatever the dead tree edition, we start to think of it as out-dated.  When we see the term applied regularly enough, it can be a very powerful way to reinforce the belief that paper-based media is either dying or dead.
  • When there are 2 options available to the reader; either a dead tree edition of a magazine or an online version, the online version is automatically made to sound more attractive, simply because it isn’t being referred to negatively.

A quick copy writing tip

If you are serious about the success of your marketing, you need to get serious about copy writing too.  Here’s a tip.  Collect all the; emails, marketing letters, articles or blog posts that motivate you to take action and study them.  Study what it was that compelled you to click their link, visit their store, call them or email them.

For example, look at the box below this post, with a call to action.  Every hour of every day, people click the link in that box to find out how they can work with me.  Look at the message and think about how you can apply something similar to YOUR site; something that will provide you with sales leads all day every day.

The bottom line: Your site should (and could) be a relentless, lead-generating machine for your business.  If it isn’t, you could well be missing out on more sales and higher profits than you currently believe is even possible.

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

How long should your blog posts be?

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Some of the best blog posts are also the shortest.  Blog posts that offer information rich copy, with all the unnecessary fluff stripped out, get to the point quicker and save the reader valuable time.  This post about social media experts is one of the most read on my blog and it’s just 112 words long!

Why do many commercial bloggers write mainly longer format posts?

From what people tell me, there seems to be 2 reasons. The first reason, is that it’s believed by many that unless a post is more than 300 words long, it will not rank well on search engines.  I have seen enough evidence of this to believe there’s truth in it.  However, if you are in the UK right now and you ask Google: “What is a social media expert?”, you will see that 112 word post I mentioned earlier on page 1 – Out of over 42Million results.

The second reason, which I am going to focus on in this post, is the belief that the longer a post is, the more valuable it will be, and the more people will want to read and share it. My experience over the past 24 years in Marketing, is that the quicker you can make a valid point, without all the fluff that typically weakens a message, the more impact your message has.  Because of this, I think it’s worth adding some shorter blog posts to your commercial blog.

Seth Godin understands the value of brevity

One of the reasons Seth Godin’s blog is so popular, is that his posts are never any longer than they need to be.  Seth’s blog posts are focused, information rich, but never too long.  That’s because Seth understands the power of brevity.  This means some of his posts are just 1 or 2 paragraphs in length.  With Seth’s blog, you get all the juice, without having to wade through acres of bloated content.

Interestingly, I noticed a post on Seth’s blog recently, which is apparently his longest post of the year.  If you look at the number of times people have ReTweeted that post, you will see that it was actually less popular (from a sharing perspective) than many of his very short posts.  BTW: It still achieved over 900 ReTweets, which is amazing!

I’m not suggesting you ONLY write short blog posts

There are good reasons for writing longer format posts, (including SEO.)  I wrote earlier this week about how to write more great blog posts, and it’s almost a thousand words long.

Here’s what I’m suggesting: The next time you have an interesting point you want to make, but you think it may be too short for a blog post, try publishing it anyway!  You may be pleasantly surprised with the feedback you get.  Don’t waste all your short, insightful ideas and opinions on Facebook or Twitter – Write them on your blog and then share them across your social networks.

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

Marketing messages: It’s all about THEM!

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All too often, small business owners market their services based on what is most appealing to them.  They make offers that they think are great.  They focus on benefits that they think are important.

Here’s the challenge with that approach: It’s very ineffective!

Your prospective clients buy for their reasons, not yours.  If you want them to become clients, you need to be able to see things from their perspective and adapt your marketing messages accordingly.  You need to write in terms that are native to them, not you.  You need to inspire them to call you, email you, visit your store etc, and they will only do that if you give them a good reason to.  This means using their language, to demonstrate the benefits of what you do, based on their most pressing needs.  It’s all about THEM.

I saw someone recently trying to encourage small business owners, to attend a free talk he was giving, about how to use foursquare.  Here’s what his primary marketing message was:

“Learn how to geosocialize with your local commercial spectrum!”

Now, for 99% of the small business population, that phrase will be more likely to turn them off, than convince them to check out the service.  He was talking in HIS language, not his intended audience’s.  He failed to explain in clear business terms, what the benefits of attending his talk would be.  He failed to explain why a busy business owner should take time out from running their business, to go and listen to him.

One of the fastest ways you can improve the effectiveness of your marketing copy writing, is to review your material and ask yourself:

  • Is this written in the language I use, or the language of my prospective clients / customers?
  • Does this message clearly explain, in as few words as possible, compelling reasons why they need my product or service?

If you find your copy is failing on either front, rewrite it.  This time, place all the emphasis on them and their needs.

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

How dependent is your business on Twitter, Facebook etc?

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If your Facebook or Twitter account got suspend or deleted, what impact would it have on your business?

I ask this question, because I’m seeing more and more people invest huge amounts of their valuable time building social networks on 3rd party sites, which they have very little real control over.  Conversely, I see remarkably few people invest anywhere like enough time on the development of their own social media platform – namely, a commercial, self-hosted blog (like this one.)  I’m sure you’ve seen it too; people who only manage to put new content on their own blogs a couple of times a month, yet they update Twitter or Facebook on and off all day long.  Their blogs are being neglected, yet their Facebook stream is packed with interesting posts, great ideas and useful links.

In other words, they are building their primary social networking hub on something they have little real control over – Something that can be suspended or deleted without their consent, at any time.

Twitter account suspensions

I was prompted to write this after receiving an email this morning from a reader, who has just had his Twitter account reinstated AFTER Twitter suspended it, without warning or reason, for 8 days!  Although I no longer follow him, I do read his stream occasionally and it is a very typical Twitter account, which doesn’t spam or abuse anyone.  By the time his account was restored, 2 new prospective clients had unfollowed him.  Apparently, they saw the “account suspended” sign and assumed he was a scammer!

In fact, of the 30 or so people I know of, who have had their Twitter accounts suspended, I can’t think of any that were actually doing anything wrong.  By the way, one of those I helped get their account back, via a conversation on Friendfeed, was non-other than Chris Anderson; Editor of Wired Magazine and creator of what we now know as the freemium marketing model.  Again, a completely random suspension.

Free blogs get suspended too

Just over a week ago, 70,000 people, (yes seventy thousand) had their Blogs shut down without notice, when the blogetery blogging platform they were using was closed down.  Some of these people will have invested months of their time, developing content for that platform, only to see it erased without warning.  Had that same time been invested in developing on their own self-hosted blog, it would still be there.

Even WordPress.com, which I consider the best free blogging platform by far, can suspend or remove your blog if, for example, one of their moderators believes you have Search Engine Optimized it, so that it’s too Google friendly and does not read well enough for people.  In a list of blogs that are not allowed on WordPress.com, they list their now famous SEO clause:

Blogs that are written for search engines instead of humans. These blogs are dedicated to trying to fool Google and other search engines into ranking them or the sites they link to highly. WordPress.com is not meant for this type of activity.

The challenge here, is that many people would consider that “type of activity” to be nothing more than SEO!  It’s a very grey area.  What you or I consider a legitimately optimised blog post, one particular moderator at WordPress may consider to be too SEO friendly.  If so, and someone reports it, you are at best suspended or at worst, the blog is deleted.  I have to say here, that typically, the moderators at WordPress are very good these days and only want to block scammy blogs.

Your marketing on your platform

However, why give someone who knows nothing about you or your business, the power to suspend or delete your business blog, when you can build a self-hosted WordPress blog, like this one, which you control and direct 100%?  In my opinion, this alone is a great reason for business bloggers to consider owning their own platform.

My point is that whilst social networking sites are a brilliant idea and a great opportunity for you to reach new people, you should also consider investing in a central Internet space or hub, which YOU control and can develop with total freedom.  No 3rd party should have the power over you or your business, to be able to pull the plug on your primary online platform.

But I put at least 95% of my social media time into producing content for this blog and connecting with the reader community here.

Because of this, if any of my social media / social networking accounts were suspended, I would still have a thriving community of readers, commenters and people who regularly email me via this blog.  I would still be able to reach new prospective clients every hour of each day.

Seth Godin Vs Bob the Blogger!

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As a marketing coach, I am always studying the power of influence and influential people.  For example, we all know the power a celebrity can have, when they give their personal endorsement to a politician or their paid endorsement to a product.  This is because a large chunk of the general populous, uses what a well known or well-respected person says, as a short-cut to their decision making process.

A while ago, one of my favourite writers, Seth Godin, made a couple of statements that were widely accepted as fact – Despite them simply being his opinions.  Fans of Seth heard what he said and then looked for things that would support it.  It’s actually a very good piece and as always, delivered with passion and power.

Here’s what Seth said:

“Blogging is free, it doesn’t matter if anyone reads it.  What matters is the humility that comes from writing it.  What matters is the meta cognition of thinking about what you are going to say.  How do you explain yourself to the few employees you have or your cat or whoever is going to look at it?  How do you force yourself to describe in 3 paragraphs, why you did something?  How do you respond out loud?  If you are good at it, some people will read it.  If you stick at it, you will get good at it. But this has become much bigger than are you boingboing, are you the huffington post.  This has become such a micro publishing platform, that basically you are doing it for yourself, to force yourself to become part of the conversation, even if it’s (Seth gestures with his index finger and thumb, to denote a tiny amount) just that big and that posture change, changes a huge amount.”

Here’s the clip of Seth saying this on YouTube – It’s powerful stuff.

If Bob the blogger (I just made that name up) told you that it didn’t matter if anyone reads your business blog, most of you would disagree.

You might remind Bob that a blog with 5000 unique visitors a day will out perform an identical blog, with just you and your cat reading it.  This is why every blog development program and every leading blog development site, focus so much on developing a targeted readership and increasing your blog’s visibility.

If Bob the blogger told you that as a busy small business owner, you should be writing a blog for humility, you just may question that too.  Here’s why:

  • Bob is not Seth, so we question what Bob says.  With Bob, we are a student.  We study what Bob says and ecology check it, to see if it actually makes sense.  Then, and only then, we accept it.
  • Seth is not Bob, so the temptation is to accept what Seth says, without question.  At this point, we cease being a student and miss much of the learning that people like Seth offer.

The challenge here, is that when we fail to study, we fail to learn.

Blindly accepting something, turns the student into a sheep.  Even when the person is as intelligent and honest as Seth Godin, we owe it to ourselves to study what they say.

This is NOT a post about whether or not Seth is right or wrong with what he said in this one instance.

It’s about whether more people would have questioned what Seth said, if he was “just” a normal guy, like my fictitious friend, Bob the blogger.

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