Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

2 Reasons not to be a copycat writer

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As many of you were kind enough to point out, one of the world’s biggest websites ‘borrowed very heavily’ from a post I wrote last week. They did so with no reference to my original post and yet people spotted it immediately.

There are 2 useful lessons here, which I would like to share with you.

1. Copies seldom have the same impact as the original

Even though that site gets millions of visitors, their rewritten version of my post achieved just 30% as many social shares as my original.

Why? Because by padding out my points so that his post wasn’t an exact copy, the power of my original post was lost. He’d wasted his time. He deserves better than that. Time is too important to waste.

Had he started with my post, referenced it and then expanded on the original or added some new, relevant information, he could have improved my work and avoided the embarrassment that followed.

2. People notice

Within an hour of the rewritten post being published, people started contacting me via email, Facebook and Google+ to tell me. Although I decided not to join in (I found it interesting but unimportant), the conversations on social networks naming the author and site have created a bit of an embarrassment for them both.

Here’s the thing: Every piece of work we produce will get noticed, to a lesser or greater degree. If we do anything we are not proud of, as soon as we hit send or publish, it’s out there.

Thankfully, the opposite is also true

When you put your own work out there and share your own ideas, people value the uniqueness of your contribution.

It makes you stand out from the ‘ditto heads‘ who just agree with everything.

It makes you stand out from the copycats, who copy everything.

It makes you stand out for being you!

PS — Here’s some great advice from Steve Jobs and Picasso, on why it’s a bad idea to copy other people’s work.

You’re not scared: You just need the right strategy

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We live in a golden age of marketing, with amazing opportunities for you to grow a hugely successful business. So, what are you doing with it all?

Today, you can share your ideas via blogs, email and social networks and build a community of people, who are interested in your work and what you have to say. Moreover, you can do it for peanuts. When done correctly, this generates regular inquiries from highly targeted prospective clients.

What an amazing opportunity.

What does the typical small business owner do?

They decide not to build a community around their own ideas, beliefs and thoughts. Instead, they create social networking accounts for their business, then mostly fill them with the thoughts, links and work of other people. They start a blog, but fill it with generic ‘me too’ content that tells us nothing about them, their beliefs or ideas.

Yes, they get follower numbers, but no community. In fact, most people that follow them will know very little about them or their business.

I was prompted to write this, after hearing some very strong words on the subject from marketing thought leader, Seth Godin. I provide a link to the audio below, so you can hear what he has to say, in context (it’s around 7 and a half minutes in).

No personality, invisible conduits

During the 15th episode of Seth Godin’s Start Up School podcast, Seth called those who regularly share his content and the content of other well known experts (rather than their own ideas): “No personality, invisible, conduits”.

Seth continues: “These people aren’t showing the guts to say, I have a point of view. I have something to say.”

That’s a little harsh and very different to my experience of business owners. Very few of whom are gutless.

It’s not guts that small business owners lack

I disagree with Seth’s belief that it’s fear, which primarily stops people from creating their own content.

I started what’s now called Content Marketing in 1998, with my marketing newsletter. Over the years, I have spoken with countless small business owners, about building their business via email, then via blogging and social networks.

Do you know what stops them?

Here’s a clue: It’s not fear!

In the majority of cases, they simply don’t know what to do or where to start. It’s a strategy they need.

They don’t want to waste time just adding to all the noise that’s already out there. They want results. Let’s not forget, business owners have already shown the courage to start their businesses, often leaving ‘safe’ careers to do so.

When business owners know what to do and they can clearly see the direct commercial benefit of sharing their own ideas, most will get straight to work on it. They are not gutless – certainly not those I work with.

So…

If you are not developing effective marketing assets online right now, stop what you are doing. Then, either learn how to build an effective content marketing strategy or hire someone who can show you exactly what you need to do.

Yes, feel free to share other people’s content, but remember to tell us who you are and what you think. It’s the latter, which creates community, builds relationships and drives marketing success online.

Is your marketing worthy of you and your business?

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So, you’re not getting as many inquiries or sales leads as you’d like. Some things to consider, include the following:

  • Maybe prospective clients lack the vision, to see just how awesome you are?
  • Perhaps prospective customers are not clever enough, to understand what a great deal you’re offering?

Or you need to improve your marketing message!

Most people are far wiser then some business owners think. When they see real value, they happily pay for that value. However, they need to be able to see that value. That’s where you come in.

It’s your job as a business owner, to ensure that your value is clear, so clear that your prospective clients or customers can easily see it.

You work hard… really hard. Your product or service is good… really good. Now, make sure your marketing messages are worthy of you and your business. Either learn to write a better marketing message or get an expert to do it for you.

Clear and compelling

Make the decision now, not to miss out on your share of the marketplace, because your; advertising, marketing emails, newsletters, brochures, website or mail shots, etc., are not clear and compelling enough.

When you match the value of your product or service with an equally great marketing message, everything changes. You will start getting the volume and quality of sales and inquiries, which your products or services deserve.

Content Marketing: Get better results, by removing these 3 words

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content marketing, writing, material, information

In my opinion, there’s no real need to insert the first 3 words of this sentence into your newsletter, blog or social networking update. What you write is, by default, your opinion.

Here’s why I want you to reconsider using those words in your marketing messages, unless you legally have to.

Hands up time!

The reason I am sharing this with you, is that I just caught myself writing the words ‘in my opinion’, in a blog post I am working on. It immediately dawned on me how totally redundant those words are.

Moreover, they would have significantly diluted my message — just as they can dilute your marketing messages.

Why do we feel the need to say in my opinion, when we state our opinion?

I asked myself that question and here’s what I came up with: I think it’s a way to make a point, which is harder for others to attack. If I start a statement saying in my opinion, I have distanced myself from stating it as a fact.

For example:

  • If I say the new XYZ book is terrible, I am stating what I believe to be true. The book is terrible. Period.
  • If I say that in my opinion, the new XYZ book is terrible, I’m stating that it’s possibly a great book, but I thought it was terrible.

Of course, in both those examples I am giving my opinion. The thing is, that first statement sounds so much stronger. It tells you exactly what I believe. The second statement comes with a qualification, in case you disagree. Even though, as I said a moment ago, in both cases I am giving you my opinion.

The next time you find yourself about to dilute your message or soften a statement, by saying in my opinion, think whether you really need to use those three words or not.

A word of caution

Yes, there are legal reasons why you may need to put a qualifying comment before a statement, in some circumstances. Telling people that food at the XYZ restaurant is low grade dog food, without stating it as your opinion, could land you in trouble in some parts of the world.

However, if you are stating something you believe, as I have with this post, there’s no need for you to say, in my opinion. Those three words will almost always weaken your message. We know it’s your opinion, without you telling us.

If you can make your point without those 3 words, you get to express what you believe to your readers at a deeper, more intimate and maybe more honest level. This is especially useful for those of you seeking to position yourself as a leader or authority in your field.

A Content Marketing tip your competitors don’t want you to know

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content marketing, writing, material, information

Here’s a quick Content Marketing tip, to help you improve the effectiveness of all your marketing material.

Content Marketing and speaking their language

One of the cornerstones of effective copywriting, is to remove as many barriers to communication as possible. The person reading your copy (or message) needs to be able to connect with it cleanly and clearly. This means speaking their language.

Lawyers, web designers, accountants and financial experts etc, regularly use industry terms, phrases and buzz words in their marketing to potential clients. This massively reduces the effectiveness of their marketing message.

You can immediately improve your marketing results, by embracing a more accessible approach.

How to create powerful, accessible content

Before you write your next piece of marketing material:

  1. Think about the benefits you provide, from the prospective client’s perspective.
  2. Focus on ‘them’, their business, their needs.
  3. Clearly explain how the benefits you provide will tangibly improve their life, business or both.
  4. Finally, review your message and make sure it’s pitched to the sophistication of your ideal profile of client. Tip: Listen to the different way radio ads are pitched, according to the product and audience of a station or show.

In short: Match your message to your ideal profile of client, by focusing on benefits and using their communication style, not yours.

Be irresistible to prospective clients in just 3 steps

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How to get noticed, be seen, stand out
By Rupert Britton

If you want clients and prospective clients to think of you as the go-to person, for whatever service you provide, I believe you’ll find this post really useful.

It’s based around 3 steps you can take, which will change the way people think and feel about you, so you become their irresistible choice.

What is a go-to person?

Firstly, I’d like to confirm what I am referring to when I use the term, go-to person. I’m talking specifically about those valued people in business, who we immediately think of when we have a need, related to their area of expertise.

When someone thinks of you as their go-to person for a particular need, they go direct to you.

  • They don’t ask a friend for a recommendation.
  • They don’t poll their friends on Facebook.
  • They don’t take their need to a search engine.
  • YOU get the call!

Clearly, the commercial value of being the go-to person for your marketplace is huge. Not only will you retain your existing clients for longer, you will also attract more inquiries from prospective clients.

To earn this valuable position, we need to focus on 3 core areas.

1. Demonstrate that you know your subject

A newsletter or blog is a great way to achieve this. By sharing useful ideas and information, people come to think of you as a valuable resource.

This is why it’s so important to avoid the common mistake, of only offering diluted information to your readers. If you hold back the good stuff, the really useful ideas, you will cause your readers to assume that shallow information is all you know!

Give away as much value, freely, as possible. Now, at this point some of you will be concerned, that if you give lots of valuable information away for free, people won’t bother hiring you. That is actually the exact opposite of how it works.

Here’s what really happens, when you offer extremely useful information for free in your newsletter or blog posts:

  • Some people will use your free ideas, with no intention of hiring you. As they were never going to hire you anyway, you lose nothing.
  • Some people will use your free ideas and get part of the way, then realise they need your expert help. These people will call you. Had you not given so much free information away, you’d never have positioned yourself as their go-to person.
  • Some people will see the value of what you do, then figure out very fast that it’s far better to hire you to do it for them.

It works. People in that 2nd and 3rd group make up almost all of my non-referred clients!

2. Demonstrate that you are approachable

If we want people to get in touch with us, we need to be as approachable as possible to them. This means taking every opportunity to demonstrate that we are friendly and professional.

Unbelievably, many business owners are cranky or confrontational, even when they are sharing their thoughts online, for the world to see. This is, of course, their prerogative. However, there is a price to pay for being cranky or confrontational. It makes us far less approachable. If we want people to feel comfortable approaching us, we need to be approachable. We need to show humility. We need to remove any barriers.

3. Demonstrate your reliability

Again, publishing a newsletter or blog posts is a great way to demonstrate your reliability. Of course, this is only the case if you have reliably published content over a reasonable period of time. If you write a newsletter or blog and the last thing you published was several months ago, it works directly against you. Instead of demonstrating your reliability and stick-ability, you do the opposite.

If you have been in business for a long time, let people know. When a prospective client reads my about page, they can see that I set this marketing business up in 1995 and that I have worked in marketing all my adult life. That, along with almost 6 years worth of publishing ideas via Jim’s Marketing Blog, offers those thinking of hiring me a huge confidence boost. You should do the same for your prospective clients and customers too.

IMPORTANT: Drawing a line

It’s important at this point, to make a very clear distinction between positioning yourself as the go-to person and positioning yourself as the freebie person.

Yes, it’s a privilege to be regarded by our family and friends as a person they know they can rely on for whatever they need. However, in business, we need to draw a line between what we are prepared to do for free and what we will offer as a paid service. Otherwise, we are likely to become a magnet for freebie hunters. Freebie hunters are people who abuse the nature of others, with selfish demands for free goods and services.

For example, I occasionally get emails from people, asking me to do unpaid work for them. These range from things that would take me a few hours, to tasks that would take me a week.

It’s worth mentioning that many of my clients started off as readers, yet none, not one, of my clients came to me after asking for freebies.

How to get the balance right: The one-to-many approach

There best way to offer free information, which is scalable and sustainable, is to adopt the same approach I use here. I call it the one-to-many approach.

Here’s how I do it: All the free work I do for people is offered via Jim’s Marketing Blog and the email version of the blog. I call it the one-to-many approach, because I create one piece of work and it benefits many people.

Offering one-to-one work for free, simply does not scale. It makes no sense for me to give an hour of my time to 1 selfish person, when I can use that same hour to write something, which will benefit thousands of people.

Finally

For some business owners and consultants, there is a huge mindset change required, to adopt the idea of freely sharing, valuable content. However, for those who embrace the idea, the rewards are huge. It’s the primary marketing model I have used for years and is the most powerful form of marketing I have ever seen. I can’t recommend it highly enough to you.

Bloggers: Social search and the freedom to focus on quality

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Social search is changing the game for business owners who blog and create content. Thankfully, it’s changing things in our favour and that’s what today’s post is all about.

marketing tips, marketing help

Even the best search engine is flawed

Whilst regarded by many as the best search engine available, even Google search is extremely easy to fool and still often rewards frequently updated content, over high quality content. As a result, people like myself who find it easy to write regularly, and those who use super-smart SEO to game Google, often outrank far better writers.

Social search is here… well, almost!

Thankfully, traditional search is becoming less and less relevant, as social search, (recommendations from our social networks), soar. I can either go to Google or Bing and search for what a machine ‘thinks’ is a great article about marketing – or I can see what my friends, the people I know and trust, recommend.

Google themselves really get social search and have spent hundreds of millions of dollars (maybe more) on the development of their own social network. Whilst the Google team do not call Google+ a social network, it’s a place where you can network and share ideas with like-minded people. I connect there with almost 20,000 people and it certainly feels like a social network – a darn good one, too! You can join me on Google+ here.

Social search: Recommendations from people you trust

Even if your prospective customers are not asking their networks for recommendations, it has never been easier for them to find what their friends recommend.

With the advent of Facebook’s social graph, you will soon be able to get that information extremely quickly. Twitter search and Google+ search are already there and make it simple to see what your friends recommend. The image below is a screen shot of what I saw, when I did a Google+ search, to see what business books were being recommended by people I know.

I trust this far more than a search result, which could well have been gamed.

social search

 

Social search: Focus shifts to quality

I believe that those who have been put off blogging, because they either lacked the inclination to publish regularly or the time / money to get their SEO ‘right’, should reconsider.

I suggest they change their approach, so that they focus on publishing useful blog posts, when they have something useful to share – then share it on their social networks. If they are writing something of value, their friends will share it with their friends and a subset of THEIR friends will share it…

Ironically, if enough of their friends link to it and share it, it may also do well in search engines. This is especially the case if you use basic SEO (and you should).

For WordPress bloggers, I recommend Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin. It gives you the freedom to write exclusively for humans, whilst making your work visible by getting the basics right.

Google doesn’t own your voice!

Google is just a company, a huge and influential company, but just a company. Don’t give them too much control over what you have to say. You own your voice – not Google.

  • Tell us who you are and what you know.
  • Tell us how you can help.
  • Answer our most pressing questions.
  • Become a valued online resource.

The search engines may or may not ‘rank’ all that value. However, people will. And it’s people, not Google, who hire you. That’s the magic of social search. It’s also the model I have used here since 2008 and it works extremely well.

How to get the attention of prospective clients and motivate them to take action

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Here are 2 essential areas to focus on, if you want to attract the attention of prospective clients and inspire them to take action.

Once you have improved your listening skills, it’s time to invest in the following.

Good communication, presentation

1: Have something worth saying

If you want to get your voice heard by your marketplace, you need to have something interesting to say. If you’re saying pretty much the same as your competitors, your voice fails to stand out. You become camouflaged, among everyone else offering a similar message.

Everything you do in order to fit in, will stop you from standing out. Show us who you are. Tell us what you know.

2: Say it well

A great message, poorly delivered, seldom achieves much.

Think of it like this: A perfectly targeted shot at goal that lacks enough power, will still miss the target. That’s why we need to invest the time required, to master the art of communication – So our message hits the spot.

We can ether write content or we can write compelling, inspirational content. We can either speak to prospective clients or we can speak to prospective clients with confidence, clarity and impact.

Common sense?

The first time I heard that message, ‘have something worth saying and say it well’, was from my mentor, Jim Rohn. I remember thinking at the time, ‘this is just basic common sense’.

That was over 25 years ago. I’ve learned since that these basics of effective communication are anything but common. In fact, they are so rare that those willing to master them, can achieve uncommon success.

How to get more done in less time AND improve your thinking!

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marketing tips, marketing blogs

Many people ask me how I manage to run a busy marketing business and still produce so much creative content every day.

So, here’s my secret!

  • I figured out a long time ago that there is never enough time to do everything.
  • However, I also discovered that there’s always enough time to do the important stuff, so long as you decide to stop reacting to the unimportant stuff.

Please allow me to explain.

Reacting or acting?

  • You can start the day by checking your email inbox and reacting to what you find. Alternatively, you can start your day by listing what’s most important and getting started on that. And only then, opening your email.
  • You can react every time your phone alerts you to a text message. Alternatively, you can finish what needs finishing and then read any messages you’ve received.
  • You can react every time you see a social networking notification. Alternatively, you can wait until you’ve stopped for a coffee etc, then use that time to check your notifications.

Never miss the important and urgent

Tell your family, friends and clients that if they need to contact you for something that is both important and urgent, to call you. Then, if your phone goes and you can see it’s one of them calling, you know it needs answering. Otherwise, unless you are a firefighter, plumber, midwife etc, people will not expect you to respond instantly.

This gives you the freedom to regain control over your time, your focus and your output. And you’ll never need to worry that you have missed something that’s important and urgent.

Regaining your time and your focus

One of the reasons small business owners find it such a challenge to get important things done, is that the distractions they react to, cause them to lose focus. This is especially the case, when they need to do something creative.

Here’s the thing: It’s extremely hard to focus on something that requires your creativity, when you allow yourself to be distracted and your focus to be scattered.

For example, imagine you want to write a newsletter article first thing tomorrow morning. However, you decide to read your emails first, instead of focusing on your newsletter. You’ll soon find your focus scattered between the newsletter content and all the questions and demands from your inbox.

By writing the newsletter and then dealing with your emails, you can focus 100% on the newsletter. You end up with a better end product. Plus, you can then invest all your focus on dealing with your emails.

Getting through the day or from the day?

Most small business owners are happy to just get through the day.

The most successful business owners take a different approach. They get from the day.

That’s not just a play on words ether. The difference is huge. Those who get from the day, start their day with a list of objectives. They then determine to control their time and their focus. As a result, the important things are always taken care of, with their full attention, and in reasonable time. This means they not only get things done, but the quality of their work also benefits from the added focus. It’s win, win.

We all have 24 hours available to us each day. It’s what we do with our time, which makes all the difference.

3 Things to focus on if you want to quickly see amazing results

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How is business?

If you would like to attract more high quality clients or make more sales, here are 3 areas that can produce massive, immediate results. They are based on 3 of the areas I work on, when I start marketing a new clients business.

1: Why should someone hire you or buy from you, rather than one of your competitors?

Failing to answer that question correctly, is the most common mistake small business owners make, yet it’s the single most important element of your marketing.

Why? Because unless you can answer that question correctly, you’re wasting your time trying to market your business. Until you know what sets YOUR business apart from the others, you have no marketing message. There’s no compelling reason for someone to buy from you or hire you, rather than one of your competitors.

If you sound just like your competitors, the only way someone can judge your value, is to compare your fees or prices to your competitors. Remember, your competitors all promise a great service and they all have impressive testimonials. What sets you apart, needs to be something that not everyone else can claim.

This is the very first thing I would work on with you if you were my client, because it improves every element of your marketing. It also helps you attract the best clients and the most rewarding fees. Getting this right can be a game changing moment for you. This is especially the case, if you find people are fee sensitive when you speak with them or you find you attract too few word-of-mouth referrals. If this sounds familiar, fix it now.

2: How compelling is your written marketing or copy?

Maybe once a month I see a piece of small business marketing, which has been written correctly. The rest is clearly written by a keen amateur and is failing the business horribly. What’s the point of going to the time and expense of having a website, brochure, blog, email campaign or newsletter and then wasting the opportunity with ineffective marketing content? None!

If you want to motivate people to buy from you, hire you, visit you, email you or call you, your written content needs to compel people. It needs to inspire them. It needs to be so much more powerful than the average marketing message. I’d work with you on this at the very start, because it’s so extremely important. It’s almost certainly losing you business on a daily basis right now, as it stops people contacting you. You and I would review your marketing messages and work to make them perform massively better for you and your business.

When applied to your online marketing, the copy you and I produce could lead to great results very quickly – as all those readers, whose inquiries you are currently losing, feel compelled to take action and get in touch.

3: How effective is your website, at attracting new client inquiries or sales?

Within an hour of this post being published, I will start attracting inquiries from people who want to know how or when I can start helping them and their business. They will read this post, click on the link about how to hire me and then get in touch.

YOUR website or blog should be doing the same!

Your website should be a regular source of highly targeted business inquiries or sales. As mentioned above, it should be expertly written, so that when people find your website they are compelled to take action. It should inspire them to go from being a reader, (passive), to being someone who gets in touch with you, (active).

If your site is attracting people but they are not getting in touch with you, it’s failing on one or all of the above points. In other words, your lack of a compelling difference between you and your competitors and your lack of effectively written copy, is hurting your business. As a new client, I would show you how we can apply to your website, the same ideas that grew this site from zero, to one of the most popular marketing sites in the world.

Now what?

Those are just 3 of the things you and I would work on, if you were one of my clients.

If the opportunity to develop your business with the help of one of the world’s best known marketing professionals appeals to you, I currently have just 3 spaces 2 spaces ONE space available on my Marketing Mentor Program, where you and I work together for a whole year, on the development of your business. Here’s how it works. I recommend you get in touch as soon as possible, to avoid disappointment.

Stupidity?

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I heard a business owner earlier, saying his customers were too stupid to understand how great his offers are.

He was wrong

Here’s the thing: When a prospective customer does not understand a marketing message, the focus should be on building a better message. Writing people off as stupid is where the real stupidity comes in. It also shifts the focus away from the business owner (who can fix the issue) to the prospective customer (who can’t).

A more useful alternative

  • Try being clearer. Cut the fluff from your message. Get to the point. Embrace brevity.
  • Try testing a new message on a selection of prospective customers, before you go live with it. Get feedback on what they believe you are trying to say. If they get it, others are more likely too also.
  • Try explaining things using more forms of media. For example, if it was originally a written message, add video, images, graphs or audio.

Giving up and accusing people of being stupid, when it’s a message we created that’s causing the problem, fails the customer and fails us.

5 steps to increase the success of all your written marketing

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content marketing, blogging, newsletters, email

Today’s post will show you a way to massively improve the effectiveness of any important content you write. It will also show you how to avoid one of the most common and damaging copy writing errors.

Stop limiting your options

Most people will write their initial piece of content, call it their draft copy, then tweak it until it’s as good as they think they can make it.

The challenge with that approach is that you are working from the mindset that the initial draft is the best foundation for the content. This is almost never the case! You need to write from the best foundation possible, not simply the first draft you write down.

The most effective content comes from experimenting with ideas and one of the best ways to get new ideas, is to refuse to restrict yourself to working from one perspective.

In other words, instead of writing an initial draft and then building on it, you commit to writing your message in 5 or more different ways. By writing the content in a number of different ways you open up new possibilities, which often lead to breakthrough ideas that make your content massively more compelling.

Yes, it takes longer than writing from one perspective and hoping it will work, but the goal of your content writing is not to write as fast as you can – it’s to write the most commercially valuable content you can.

It works like this

  1. Write down exactly what you want to achieve from your content, so you know what your outcome is.
  2. Next, write down what kind of action you want the reader of your content to take. For example; email you, call you, visit your premises, fill in your survey, etc.
  3. Then, write 5 pieces of content, which address the previous 2 points as clearly as you can.
  4. Remember, you are not looking for 4 revisions of your initial piece of content, but 5 fresh perspectives to help you achieve the outcomes you listed in points 1 and 2.
  5. Finally, look for the most compelling of your 5 pieces of content, then build upon it.

If you do that, you give yourself a greater chance of writing your content from your best foundation – not just the one you thought of first.

Yes, sometimes that initial version will be the best, but every time it isn’t, you will have improved the quality and effectiveness of your writing.

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.

Clear?

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Einstein famously said: ‘If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.’

Of course, even when we fully understand something, we need to be able to explain it with clarity in order to avoid confusion. That’s what this brief post is all about.

As a business owner, it pays to embrace clarity

Many small business owners use buzz words, industry slang and management speak – creating unnecessary confusion. This is the exact opposite of what we need, if we want people to buy from us, hire us or recommend us.

In marketing, one of the golden rules is, a confused mind always says ‘no!’ When a prospective client or customer is confused and you ask them to make a decision, they will typically say no or avoid the decision.

Here’s the thing: Everything you do, which clarifies your message, will simultaneously increase it’s marketing effectiveness.

Communicate without confusion

Simplify your message.

Aim for clarity.

Embrace brevity.

Remove doubt.

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.

How to find windfall profits within your business, starting now

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There could be a fortune in hidden, windfall profits in your existing business, just waiting for you. In today’s post, I want to help you find it!

I need to begin with one of the fundamentals of marketing…

marketing maximizer

You never get marketing right, the first time

No one gets their marketing right, the first time. The best marketing comes from testing each element and then measuring the feedback. You then make the required adjustments and test and measure again. You repeat that test and measure process until you can’t wring another 1% of improvement from it. Then, when you have maximized that, you move on to the next element of that piece of marketing.

For example, if I were helping you massively improve the success of your marketing emails, I’d start by testing and measuring each of the following areas, one at a time:

  • The headline or subject line.
  • The call to action.
  • The number of links within the email.
  • The language used. (Phrases like ‘click here’ or ‘amazing results’ within the text of your emails can result in them being filtered as junk mail)
  • The same is true of using characters in your subject lines, which are not letters, such as exclamation marks (!) and percentage signs (%) etc.
  • The length of the email. Most are at least 300% too long.
  • The font style and size.
  • The size of your paragraphs.
  • The day you send your emails out.
  • The time of day you send your emails out.
  • The form of distribution you use. Do you send them yourself or use a 3rd party? If you use a 3rd party, do they have a solid reputation for getting emails through filters?
  • There are many, many more elements we’d need to work on in addition to these obvious ones.

Small changes can lead to massive improvements

Even seemingly small changes to your marketing can lead to massive improvements in your results.

Let’s take the example of the first item on that list above. Something as simple as using a better headline in your marketing emails, can see your open rates increase by hundreds of percent or more. Most small business owners find a headline they like, then just use it because they like it. By testing open rates with different headlines (or subject lines) and then measuring the results, it’s possible to uncover headlines, which your prospective clients find irresistible and have to open.

By testing and measuring just that one element of your email marketing, you can see amazing results. Now imagine the potential, when you leverage all the elements!

One word of warning here: Only test and measure one element at a time. Otherwise, you will not know what change created what result.

Other areas to maximize

Every area of your marketing can and should be fully maximized, not just your email marketing. Here are just a tiny number of examples:

  • Test and measure the call to action message on the sales pages of your website, blog, mail shots and advertisements, etc.
  • Test and measure different locations for the email capture box on your website.
  • Test and measure different voice mail messages. Subtle changes can increase the number of people who leave you their number.
  • Test and measure different advertising vehicles.
  • Test and measure different window displays.
  • Test and measure different guarantees within your marketing.
  • Test and measure sending out your mail shots, marketing emails, catalogues, newsletters, etc., with different frequency. If your newsletter is sent once a month, try sending it out every week or every 10 days. If you offer a catalogue and it’s sent twice a year, consider sending it 3 or 4 times a year. I’ve seen this double a company’s turnover and profits.
  • Test and measure different order amounts. If people currently buy from you one item at a time, test selling your product in batches of 3 or 6 or 100. If you sell individual blocks of your time, test offering your time in batches of 3 sessions or 5 sessions.
  • Test and measure different prices or fees. Start by testing increases as these tend to have the best results.
  • Test and measure offering an elite version of your service or product. There is a highly profitable section of your marketplace, who will happily pay more for a more exclusive service or product.

Uncovering your windfall revenues and profits

No small business owner can afford to leave a fortune in windfall revenues and profits on the table. However, that’s exactly what most of them do, by failing to maximize their existing marketing assets. Test, measure, maximize and start enjoying massively better sales results.

Please check out this post’s sponsor: Clarity For The Boss.
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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

3 Tips to help you get massively better sales results

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Here are 3 tips, to help you get massively better results from your advertising, email marketing, mail shots and blog marketing messages.

Let’s go!

1. Get your message right

Message

No matter how great your product or service is, unless it’s marketed with compelling copy (wording), you will struggle to achieve the sales results you want. People need to read your message and then feel inspired to take action; to buy from you, call you, email you, visit your store, etc.

Pedestrian copy lacks the impact required to motivate readers to do anything. Either learn how to write great marketing messages or hire someone, who already knows how to. Don’t let your business be one of those, which loses a fortune in sales needlessly, because of ineffective copy.

2. Get your audience right

So much marketing fails, purely because it doesn’t get in front of the right people. Once you know who your prospective clients or customers are, you need to think about the best way to target them, so they see your message.

For instance, Jim’s Marketing Blog is a highly targeted publication, which is read by owners of small and medium sized businesses. If you wanted to reach business owners with your marketing message, this blog would be a great place to do it.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Build a list of readers. Don’t buy the list! If you use email marketing, are you certain that your ‘list’ is highly targeted? Also, if you purchased the list, there’s a good chance that the people on it have had their email address sold to thousands of other businesses and were getting deluged with relentless spam. These people often either set up a strong junk mail filter, allowing only white-list emails through – or they will have abandoned the email address completely. As a result, you may think your email marketing messages are reaching 10,000 people, when they are only being read by a small fraction of that number.

If possible, and it’s always possible, build your own email marketing list. This is a key area I focus on with my clients and I suggest you learn how to build a great list, too.

3. Get your timing right

Great comedy and great marketing have one thing in common… timing! So, here’s a great question to ask yourself, when planning your marketing: ‘How relevant is my message, at the point where people connect with it?’ For example, it’s harder to sell certain products on the 3rd week of a month, than at the very end of a month, because of people’s monthly pay cycles.

Know your market and learn when they prefer to buy. Then focus on getting your marketing message in front of them, at the best possible time.

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.

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!