Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Marketing blog experiment

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As regular readers will have noticed, the blog looks quite a bit different today!  That’s because I’m running a marketing experiment with a new, more basic looking blog design.

One of the great things about the Internet is that you can easily see, very quickly if a design change is encouraging people to use the site / blog differently.  For example, I will be able to see if there are changes in things like; the number of pages the ‘average’ person views, how long they spend on each page, how many times a page is shared, etc.

I’m really curious if making the blog’s design more basic, will help readers to focus on the actual content; which is what the blog’s all about, after all. Let’s see!

One of the benefits of running this blog, using the Headway wordpress theme (affiliate link) is that I can quickly make changes like these myself, usually in seconds.  As effective marketing is all about testing and measuring, the ability to make changes so quickly, and then adapt based on the feedback, is massively valuable.  Equally, if it’s quickly apparent that the new design needs changing, this can also be done in minutes.  That’s great peace of mind and allows for changes to be made with total confidence.

Sharing my results with you, as always

Because the vast majority of my readers have their own website or blog, I will let you know if the new, more basic look generates an improvement or drop in the blog’s statistics / analytics.  This way, we can learn from my experiment together. I’m guessing it’s going to take a week or so, before I see any relevant data.  Rest assured that as soon as I do, I will pass the findings on to you.

What (if anything) do you think about the new, basic look?  Also, which blogs do you read most often and do you think the design of that blog influences how you read it?  Please take a moment to share your thoughts.

Enthusiasm is contagious

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As I read the business press, business blogs and even some business owners Twitter feeds, I’m seeing more and more people expressing their pessimism about their business in 2010.

Before people bring this type of negative message to their marketplace, they need to understand the kind of damage it can cause.

Pessimism is like a virus

When times are tough, many business owners share their pessimism and fears with their suppliers, contacts and in some cases, with their clients or customers too.  This quickly spreads like a virus, creating in its wake, one of the most damaging problems a business can face – a lack of confidence!  People are far less likely to invest in, recommend or use a business if they fear that business is in trouble or likely to go under.

Blind optimism is not the answer.  However, once you have decided what you want to achieve in 2010 and developed a plan to make it happen, you should focus your energy and efforts on want to achieve; not what you fear.  You see, enthusiasm is just as infectious as pessimism.

Enthusiasm is contagious too

I was prompted to write this post, after meeting Julie Camm. Julie owns Alveston House Hotel.  She and her team are genuinely excited about 2010 and beyond.  This enthusiasm is contagious and it has spread throughout the whole workforce, onto their guests and their prospective guests and the wider marketplace.

With that kind of stewardship, is it a coincidence that their hotel was one of very few to have enjoyed a good 2009?  No.  That’s because enthusiasm is just as contagious as pessimism.  Whilst many hotels lowered their prices and cut back on staff / suppliers / services, Julie took a very different route.  She decided to face the recession with optimism, a solid business plan, hard work (and great marketing of course!!)  As a result, they have created their own self-fulfilling prophecy.  People feel confident booking with them, which creates additional business for them, which generates a buzz; as their guests see so much positive activity.

It would be nuts to just ignore the fact that 2010 looks like it will be another challenging year for small business; however, once you have planned for the challenges ahead, it’s wise to face that challenge with the correct mindset.

How important do you think it is, to focus on what you want in 2010, rather than your fears?  Please take a moment to share your thoughts on enthusiasm / pessimism in the marketplace.

Why bloggers post every day – Part 2

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Do you write a blog?

Are you thinking about blogging or taking your blog more seriously?

In either case, I believe you will find this post really useful.

As regular readers will recall, I wrote a post last month about the results I have seen, since I increased the frequency of my blogging from around 1 post a week to 6 or more posts a week.  This is part 2 of that post; Why bloggers post every day.  I suggest you read part 1 before you continue, as it contains some very interesting findings, which could really help you!

However, since writing that post I’ve noticed another interesting development, which I want to share with you.

More visible, more mentioned

It’s now a month since I started blogging almost daily and in addition to the results I covered in part 1 of this post, I am now starting to see a significant increase in the number of times that this blog get mentioned.  These mentions range from people citing this blog (or me) in their blog posts and articles, through to an increase in the number of times I see the blog and myself mentioned across Twitter, Facebook, forums and newsletters etc.

Why is this happening and what can we learn from it?

As I said in part 1 of this post, there was a significant growth in reader numbers here, as the frequency of my posts increased.  A larger reader-base obviously gets your blog and your name on more peoples radar.  The more people aware of you and what you do, the greater the chances are that you will get mentioned.

Of course, this then alerts new people to your blog and your work, increasing the size of your readership and thus the process feeds itself.

Here’s something special

By getting good quality information in front of people regularly, I believe you also become a more integrated part of your readers daily experience.  Many readers will position you very differently too.

You, (the blogger) become a regular part of their working day.  Your blog becomes a growing repository of answers and ideas, a knowledge-base that your readers can rely on. If you can understand what’s happening there, it’s so powerful that it’s almost magical.

Share your experiences

Do you tend to subscribe to blogs that are updated more regularly or less regularly?

How often do you think a business to business blog should be updated?

If you are a blogger yourself and you have either increased or decreased the frequency with which you post, what kind of feedback have you seen?

Please join in the conversation and share your feedback!

Why Google means so little to me (and you mean so much!)

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One of the first rules of business is not to rely too heavily on any 1 client or customer, for the majority of your income.  If you do, and that customer goes broke or takes their business elsewhere, you’re in BIG trouble!  Even if that customer just decides to pay you late, it can kill your cash flow or put you out of business.

Everyone knows that it’s far better and a lot less risky, to have a wider spread of business.

Or do they?

For some reason, when it comes to the Internet, it seems many site owners and bloggers focus the majority of their efforts on just one form of traffic development; search engines.  Then, the vast majority of that is focused on just 1 search engine – Google.  As a result, some people are now very dependent on Google traffic.  Many invest a staggering amount of time and effort doing everything they can, to keep Google happy.

Even the most read sites on the Internet can become extremely dependent on Google.  In a recent blog post, Darren Rowse from problogger explained that he almost went out of business, when Google decided overnight, to cut his traffic (and thus his sales/leads) by 30%!

I believe it’s insane to allow any 3rd party to have that much control over:

  • Your sales
  • Your leads
  • Your enquiries
  • Your income
  • and maybe even your business’ future

Whilst I recommend that every business invests in professional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), I ALSO strongly suggest that you consider investing in alternatives too.  Why? Because the results can be amazing AND it removes your exclusive reliance on search engines.

For example, although this blog is currently ranked one of the top 100 marketing blogs in the world by Adage, just a small percentage of my traffic comes via search engines.  The vast majority comes from people, via social media (more on that in a moment.)

SEO, social media and your Internet marketing mix

When I started this blog, I decided that Google was NOT going to play any deliberate part in the blog’s development.  I do NOT recommend others follow this path, it’s not the right move for the vast majority of people.

Why did I do it? Because as someone from a traditional marketing background, I wanted to use a form of marketing for the blog, which was not so reliant on Google.  I elected to use a strategy, which used a number of social media related activities. The idea was (and still is) to provide my blog with a much wider spread of human-powered, marketing options.

I use some basic SEO here, like tagging posts so that it’s easier for search engines to correctly identify what my posts are about.  This takes seconds to do.  However, I do not deliberately use Google friendly key phrases or key words – I don’t even have a sitemap!  I also do zero off-site SEO.  If Google stopped sending people here tomorrow, it would have very little impact on the development of this blog. Chris Brogan claims to have gone 1 step further than me, and says he does no SEO on his blog whatsoever! That’s incorrect, as his theme is optimized and he has requested people to link to him – I think he means he doesn’t keyword stuff. Ignoring SEO completely is at best, a little blinkered.

Here are just some of the ways that people, via social media, have helped me generate targeted traffic to this blog:

  • People share my blog posts on Twitter. I use Twitter most days and have connected with a some great people. Some of them are kind enough to share posts on Twitter, if they find them interesting.
  • People use sites like Facebook, Delicious, Stumbleupon and Digg etc to share blog posts. For example, this 1 post gets hundreds of views every week from Stumbleupon users.
  • Fellow bloggers link to posts here, which alerts their readers to this blog.  Some bloggers link to the entire blog.
  • People have mentioned the blog in podcasts.
  • I link to this blog in my marketing newsletter; which helps new newsletter readers discover the blog.

Because SEO is very much the secondary focus of the blog’s development, I focus on optimising my posts, so that they are as attractive as possible for people.  I have to admit that as a writer, I find it far, far more natural to write for people, than to alter my writing style, so that there are key phrases and words scattered strategically – to attract Google’s attention too.

It’s wise to combine great copy writing with powerful SEO.  Particularly when writing copy for a website, as opposed to a blog, the combined SEO social media approach is extremely valuable.

Love SEO – but give social media a hug too!

Do not misread this post and think for one moment that I am suggesting you ignore SEO.  That would be wrong.  I am not saying that at all.  However, I AM saying that all site owners and bloggers should spend some time exploring additional ways to generate targeted traffic. Keep up with your SEO, but seriously consider adding a little people-power to your Internet marketing mix!

Mouth-watering marketing

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I just want to quickly share something valuable with you, which happened to me a couple of days ago.  It’s a simple, yet powerful example of how extremely persuasive words can be, when we use them to create strong, mental images.

I’m writing this post just after returning home from a delicious lunch with my wife and son.  We went to a small local place, where the food and atmosphere are always good.  After we finished our food, the waitress asked us if we would like some dessert.  I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but decided to ask what was on their lunchtime dessert menu anyway.  Here’s what she told me:

“This afternoon Jim, we have a mouth-watering strawberry cheesecake and some freshly made profiteroles in a delicious, smooth chocolate sauce, which melts in your mouth.”

She listed several more options, but to be honest, I was already sold by the time she reached the freshly made profiteroles.

The marketing power of words

Here’s the thing: We all had dessert, even though we hardly ever eat dessert at lunchtime.

So, why did we have dessert?

Because it sounded delicious, before we even saw it!  The mental pictures she painted in our minds, as she described each dessert, took them from being items on a list and turned them into tastes in our imaginations.  If she had simply read us a list of dessert choices, I know we would not have had any.

Take a moment to look at the copy (wording) you currently use for your marketing.  Are you painting inspiring, compelling mental images with them?  Are your marketing messages motivating prospective customers to; buy from you, recommend you, call you, email you, subscribe to your mailing list etc?

If not, it’s highly likely you are simply giving details of the benefits your services provide. I know you have been told that you should sell based on benefits, but you need to make those benefits come alive.

Your written marketing needs to jump from the page or the computer screen and produce the motivation required for the reader to take action!

Quick marketing tip

Copy writing is one of the master skills of successful marketing.  If you are serious about making regular, high quality sales or filling your client base with brilliant clients, I strongly recommend you make 1 of the following 2 investments.  I recommend that you either invest the time required to learn how to write effective marketing messages OR invest the money required to hire the best marketing copy writer you possibly can.

By relying on pedestrian marketing copy, you simply place a very low, uninspiring ceiling on your business’ potential.

What’s your take on this?  Share your feedback or experiences of great (and not so great) copy writing, with a comment below.

Why bloggers post every day!

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Ever wondered why some bloggers write blog posts every day?  Well, I did too – So I tried a 14 day experiment, and I am going to share my results with you.

Usually, my blogging schedule is erratic; often just a handful of posts in a month.  However, as regular readers will have noticed, I have been updating this blog with fresh posts every day, for the past 2 weeks.

Why?

I wanted to measure for myself, just what the value to a blogger is, of updating their blog every day with new posts.  I assumed (rightly as it turned out) that 2 weeks would be a long enough period, for me to get some worthwhile data for you.  The results have been VERY interesting!

In brief, here’s what I have found:

RSS Subscribers

One of the biggest differences (in percentage points) has been the increase in new RSS subscribers to the blog.  New subscriber numbers are up an amazing 400% on the 2 weeks previous!  I was expecting to see some increase, but this was far, far higher than I imagined.

Blog Comments

The number of comments per post varies all the time, literally from post to post, making it very hard to measure over such a short period.  Equally, comments are often added to blog posts weeks, months and even years after a post is written.

Comments in total during the past 14 days are up by around 300%.  This is less impressive than it may sound, as there were many more posts for people to read and thus comment on than usual.  Also, regular readers have been visiting the blog more often and sharing posts with their friends more often, which increases comment numbers.

This leads me on to the biggest difference I have noticed with the comments, over the past 2 weeks.  The biggest (and most interesting development for me), has been the number of new people commenting here.  I have seen a lot of new commenters, many of whom have said that they have only just discovered the blog.

Blog traffic

The number of unique visitors here increased by just under 30% during the 2 weeks.  That’s a significant increase, especially as most of it came over the past 5 days.

Interestingly, the number of page views here increased massively.  This seems to be from new visitors having a look around and established readers visiting more often, in line with the number of new posts.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that daily blogging, even for a relatively short period of time, has significantly increased ‘traffic’ into the blog.

Conclusion

The biggest revelation for me has been how much fun I’ve had! I have REALLY enjoyed putting the posts together.  More than this, the increased activity on the blog from commenters and those discussing posts on Twitter, has been amazing.  The whole ‘atmosphere’ of the blog has been improved in every way.

However, it is very clear from the significant increases across the board, why so many bloggers post fresh content every day.  Daily blogging has improved literally every metric I have measured – not just those mentioned in this brief post.  It’s also improved areas that are far harder to measure, like making the blog a lot more ‘alive’ and vivid.  These things are harder to plot on a chart than RSS subscribers or traffic, but they are massively valuable to anyone who genuinely cares about their blog and it’s community of readers.

My dilemma

I strongly believe that the only time to write a blog post is when the writer has something VALUABLE to say, which is worth sharing.  I don’t believe in having a blogging schedule. As a professional writer, I have found it relatively easy to publish fresh content each day – but what about the quality of that content?

I see zero point in posting dross occasionally, just so that I don’t miss a day!  That material will live on the Internet forever, with my name attached to it. My 4 year old son will see it when he’s older – I don’t want him thinking his daddy writes pedestrian, generic bullshit occasionally, because I’m a slave to some self-imposed, daily blogging schedule.

I occasionally read posts by people considered to be GREAT bloggers, which seem ‘pretty average’ at best.  The thing is, these guys are NOT average writers; they are the top of the blogging pile.  I always wonder if the reason I find those posts average, is just that the subject is not of interest to me, or if it’s because the blogger wrote an average post, just to maintain his or her daily blogging schedule.

The bottom line for me, is that by blogging here each day, the value of this blog has improved in every way.  So, I’ve decided to aim for blogging here on a more regular basis than before, but only when I have something I believe is worth sharing with you.  If that’s daily, then fine. If not, then I assure you, you will be missing nothing worth reading.

What do you think?

Did you find any of that data useful or interesting?  What has your experience been?

Photo credit: UnSung