Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Who is influencing your decisions and why?

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As a marketing professional, I’m a keen student of human behaviour. One of the things that never ceases to amaze me, is when I see intelligent businesspeople looking for answers in all the wrong places.

For example, I hear of business owners asking their web designer to write the marketing copy for their new website; even though the designer is not a copy writer.  I hear of people asking their accountant for legal advice; even though she has no legal training whatsoever.

I was inspired to write this post, after my first marketing session with a brand new client yesterday.  This guy used the complete opposite approach. When he first called me to find out what I do, I asked him what motivated him to get in touch with me.

He said; “I got in touch Jim, because I want my prospective clients to think and feel the same way about me and my business, as I think and feel about Jim Connolly and his business. The best person to show me how to achieve that has to be you – right?”

Business success comes from making good decisions and backing them up with action.  Most businesspeople are hard workers, but find they are working hard doing the wrong things or doing the correct things – In the wrong way.  As a result, they don’t really own a business – they have simply bought themselves a really stressful job.

You deserve better than that!

Thankfully, you can improve any area of your business, simply by acting on better advice.

Are you fishing for time wasters?

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Have you ever wondered why you have to deal with so many time wasters?  I was thinking about this question earlier, after hearing the owner of a small business complaining that all he seems to get these days, are enquiries from people who are wasting his time.

Marketing and fishing

The thing is, marketing is a bit like fishing.  When an angler wants to catch a certain type of fish, she knows she needs to do 2 things.

  • First off, she needs to find the correct spot (where that particular kind of fish is.)
  • Then, she needs to use the correct bait.

If she’s in the right place, with the right bait, she stands a good chance of catching the fish she wants. However, if she uses the wrong bait for that type of fish or she uses the correct bait, but is fishing in the wrong place, she is going to attract either the wrong kind of fish or no fish at all!

If you find yourself dealing with a lot of time wasters, it’s probable that you are using the wrong marketing message (bait) or that you are using the correct message, but delivering it to the wrong people. Yes, there are many other possibilities, but I would always check those 2 first.

Quick Internet marketing tip!

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If you want to create stacks of leads, fill your client base or sell more widgets, you need to do the total opposite of what the vast majority of small businesses do online.  You need to be original.

That’s because there’s a serious problem with the generic, copycat approach to Internet marketing:

It doesn’t work!

It’s easy to see why so many people just copy the marketing they see on other sites.  After all, the ability to develop an effective Internet marketing strategy and write copy that compels people to take action, is very rare.  Knowing how to motivate someone to click your links, send you an email, subscribe to your newsletter, call you, visit you or buy from you is perhaps the rarest, most valuable skill in marketing today.

For example, I was called earlier this year by one of my readers, who is a marketing consultant.  He wanted to know if I would quickly review his blog, (quickly meant do it for free, apparently!)  I don’t work for free, but I did take a quick look at his blog out of curiosity. I was unable to figure out what his service was, let alone why anyone might need it.  His blog was packed with buzz-words, marketing bullshit and stacks of rambling, pedestrian copy that went nowhere.  In the time it took me to finish my coffee, I was able to spot well over a dozen, serious, marketing-related problems.  It was easy to see why he needed free advice!

Why your business needs its own Internet marketing strategy

So, this is the part of a blog post were an Internet marketing guru would give you a list of; “killer Internet marketing tactics that are guaranteed to work” – And that’s part of the problem.  Business owners are being told all the time that there’s a generic, one size fits all way to maximise the potential of their sites or blogs, when the reality is the complete opposite!

An effective Internet marketing strategy differs massively, from; industry to industry, country to country and business to business.  It needs to take many factors into account, like; the size of the business being marketed, what they want to achieve, where their prices or fees are pitched, who their target customer is and if they are selling business to business or business to consumer etc, etc.

It’s really important that you don’t make the same mistakes.  If YOU want YOUR blog or website to be a business generating machine, use an Internet marketing strategy that’s been developed for YOU and YOUR business, based on YOUR unique situation and YOUR unique goals.

Highly recommended – Danny Brown’s blog

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DannyLarge-239x300In an age where there are so many blogs, often repeating the same information, it can be a real challenge to find blogs with content that’s worth shouting about. So, when I find one that consistently delivers the goods, I like to recommend it to you.

In the past, I have recommended blogs by; Seth Godin, Robert Scoble, The BBC and Leo Laporte.  Today, it’s the turn of PR professional, Social Media maverick and fund raiser extraordinaire; Danny Brown – From dannybrown.me.

First off, you do not need to be interested in PR to really enjoy Danny’s blog.  His writing style is engaging, refreshing and original.  Danny opts for a bullshit-free approach to blogging, with the occasional use of strong(ish) language; as is often the case when passionate people speak.

Did you notice that I used the word ‘speak‘ in the previous sentence and not ‘write‘?  That’s because Danny’s writing style reads as if he were having a chat with you face to face.  I’ve never spoken with Danny myself, but I feel like I know him.  That’s a skill that very few bloggers possess.  In fact, one of the main reasons I am recommending Danny Brown’s blog to you, is that many of my readers are students of great copy writing and Danny’s copy writing is superb.

The 12for12k challenge

12412k imageDanny is also a passionate fund raiser for good causes all over the world, which he assists via the 12for12k challenge.  The challenge is a BIG one; to raise $12,000, for each of 12 different charities, over a 12 month period.

You can find out more about the 12for12k challenge by visiting their site.

So, why not take a look at Danny’s blog and see what all the fuss is about?

Will 2010 be a New Year for you or the same frustrating year all over again?

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income and time chartFor most small business owners, the first day of January 2010 will NOT be the start of a New Year!  It will simply be another chance for them to relive the same frustrating year over again.

Sure, they will complain about their lack of results, but they will continue to make the same basic marketing errors that they made this year and last year and the year before. For them, it’s just too attractive to stay as they are, rather than STOP making the same mistakes and move forward based on an effective, proven strategy.

For those of you, who are serious about growing your business and finally making the income you deserve, you need to do something that very few people have the guts to do. You need to change your approach to marketing and making money. You need to move away from what you feel comfortable with and embrace what works.  You need to throw your current approach to making money and generating sales into the bin and replace it with something that is finally going to work for you.

When people start working with me for the first time, I begin by doing a fact-finding session with them. During this session, I find out all about what they want to achieve from their business. Then, I put a plan together with them, which we work on together for a whole year! The reason they get such great results, is that the plan we work on throughout the year is developed and refined by me; a marketing professional.

My clients are; accountants, designers, IT companies, trainers, consultants, lawyers, recruitment companies, insurance providers etc – NOT marketing experts.  In today’s super-competitive marketplace, they know they need specialist marketing support if they want to thrive and grow their business.  They know the clock is ticking.  They know that businesses without specialist marketing support always reach a plateau, where no matter how hard they work, they can’t seem to move on to the next level.

Whatever you plan to do with your marketing in 2010, I strongly recommend that you change your marketing strategy if you want better results.  As Einstein once said; “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Only when you use a better strategy will you see better results.  Working hard doing the wrong things is fruitless and stressful.  If you are rowing your boat in the wrong direction again in 2010, no matter how hard you row, you will never get where you want to be.

Those of you, who are genuinely interested in massively improving your business results in 2010, should read this and then get in touch with me.  HOWEVER: This is only open to small businesses and entrepreneurs.

What is FREE advice costing you?

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If you run a small business, you and your business need to guard against the damage caused by Internet freebie hunters. These people see the Internet as a 100% free resource; a place where the normal rules of business simply don’t apply; a place where your time and your knowledge is theirs by right!

The best way to think of their mindset, is that they would eat free cheese samples at a deli counter – even if they hated the taste of cheese – JUST because it was free.

If you have been online for any length of time, you will have encountered these freebie hunters yourself.  They are the ones, who email you asking for free advice on complex problems they are having.  They are the ones, who see the comment section of a blog as a place to get free advertising for their business.  They are the ones, who go to forums to tout for business, rather than contribute to the conversation. They are the ones, who send you DM spam on Twitter (it’s free advertising in their mind.)

Most importantly, they are the ones, who will send you out of business, if you let too many of them suck your resources dry!

What makes these serial freebie hunters so dangerous, is that they sometimes disguise themselves as prospective clients / customers.  However, they are a totally different breed of person.  They know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. They will devour your time, energy and resources, knowing from the very start that they have no intention whatsoever of repaying you for your help.  They leech advice from experts, then try and deploy what they have been told themselves. Of course, it seldom works, but it’s free and that’s their primary focus – FREE!

It’s often hard to spot these people upfront, but there is a common characteristic I see in the ones that target me: Their business is almost always in really bad shape!

This is true even if they have been in business for years.  Their business reaches a plateau and stays there until they go broke or change their attitude.  Somehow, they don’t seem to realise it’s impossible to develop a successful business, based on leeching free advice from people.

The only effective way to protect yourself from the damage they can cause, is to set some limits on the level of free help and advice you give to people.  You need to set your limits based around your unique situation, but here’s how I do it.

General advice is free BUT specific advice isn’t.

I give a lot of valuable, free marketing advice away to people every day here on the blog.  Now, this has to be general marketing information, which is designed to provide as much value as possible to as many small business owners as possible.

However, if someone wants me to work with them on specific, targeted answers to the problems ruining their marketing and hurting their sales, they pay me.

Yes, there are people I connect with online, who I have never met, who I call and help for free.  But these are people, who have connected with me and whom I have offered my help to.  They didn’t ask – I offered.  They are often not in a position to pay for professional help and I’m in a financial position where I can afford to help them for free.

You know what?  I LOVE helping them too!

You know what else?  They value my time and that is worth a lot to me.

Your time is not money

Your time is not money – it’s far, far more valuable than that. Money can be replaced, time can not.  Unless you put some kind of structure in place, even a simple one like I mentioned above, your business is at risk of being bled dry by the Internet freebie hunters.

Now, this is where you come in: I want you to either share your experiences of Internet freebie hunters (don’t name them please), or share your tips for dealing with them.  Your feedback here will be of great value to my readers and myself, so please share your experiences.

Your online reputation EXPOSED!

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This brief post is all about the trail of published content we leave around the Internet and the impact this has on our reputation.

When I was starting out in sales and marketing, one of my former bosses advised me to always engage my brain before I engaged my mouth.  His point, was that it was easy to say the wrong thing by accident – simply by not thinking first.  That was well over 20 years ago, but his advice is just as valid today as it was when I was a 21 year old, hot-headed salesman.

However, in the era of the Internet and social media, it’s just as important for us to think before we post content to a forum, a blog or our accounts on services like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter etc.  Just last month, both Google and bing.com announced deals with Twitter, to allow them to show real-time search results from people’s tweets.  In other words, it’s no longer ‘just’ the millions of people with Twitter accounts, who can search your tweets, but anyone that wants to!

It’s hard to get the toothpaste back in the tube

Digital tattooOnce we hit that send, publish or tweet button – that’s it: Another chapter in our online profile has been created.  The challenge with the written word online, is that it’s a bit like toothpaste.  Toothpaste is really easy to get out of a tube, but very, very difficult to get back in again.  What we publish online leaves a trail around the Internet, which anyone can follow.

Even after it’s deleted, much of the material we publish online is still possible to locate. This is what my good friends at Symantec call your digital tattoo.

Then, let’s not forget that anyone can use The Internet Archive for free, to track ‘deleted’ websites and the content of those sites!  Quick tip: If you have never used the Internet archive, give it a go – it’s amazing!

Our clients, future clients, employer or future employers can easily get a snapshot of the kind of person we are, simply by knowing how to use Google.  Business owners and consultants would do well to consider that by most estimates, over 90% of people now check-out a potential service provider online, before they decide to do business with them.

Always remember, once you hit that send / tweet / publish button – It’s gone.  However, it’s seldom gone forever!

How to avoid bad marketing advice online

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I received yet another email this morning, from someone who’s lost a lot of money, after taking bad advice from a marketing blog.  This seems to be a growing problem, as more and more small businesses look for free advice online, in a bid to help grow their business.

So, to help you (or your clients / friends) avoid making the same kind of costly mistakes, here are a few tips to help you spot the fakes. 

Please share this post on your favourite social networks, as it’s really important that as many people as possible know about this.

Marketing blogs: What to watch for

If someone claims to be an expert at marketing and he or she can’t even market their own blog – stay well away. Because it’s so easy to fool traffic sites like Alexa.com into showing you get thousands of visitors a day, you need to look for more obvious signs that a marketing blog is valued by a large reader community.

A great place to start is by looking at the number of comments it gets.  Marketing people, even very average ones, know how to build a blog that attracts comments on every post.  If you spot a marketing related blog with no comments or very few, it shows the person behind the blog does not know how to market the blog correctly.

It’s also worth checking to see if their blog is listed or ranked by a respected, neutral, third party.  This blog, for example, is ranked on what many consider to be the most influential in our industry, the Adage Power 150 – that’s their badge you see on the lower right hand side of the blog.

Testimonials are easy to fake: What to watch for

Look for proof that the marketing expert actually works with REAL people and companies!  Testimonials are easy to fake. So, look to see if the marketing expert is talking about the companies or people they work with or the projects they are working on.

For example, if people want to check me out, they can see me write about clients I am currently working with AND they can see me openly tweeting with clients and former clients too.

Does the marketing expert exist in the real world?

Fake marketing ‘experts’ exist only online and in their imagination.  The genuine marketing professionals you encounter online, are like any other REAL business. They will happily provide you with their FULL contact details; that’s their physical address and a land line phone number.  We WANT people to call us and write to us.  Always be extra cautious if a marketing ‘business’ only operates behind a website, a ‘box number’ and a Skype or mobile / cell phone number.

This is where YOU come in!

Those are just a few, very basic steps you can take to avoid bad marketing advice.  I would really value YOUR suggestions.  What are your tips for spotting the fakes in your industry?

Please share them here and make this post as valuable as possible for your fellow readers.

UPDATE:
This post from my ideas blog, covers another tool you can use, to identify how many people link to a particular website / blog.

An 800% increase in sales from 1 small change

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Here’s some GREAT news for anyone who needs to see better sales results in their business right now.  You can massively boost your sales, by making just minor adjustments!

marketing newsletter marketing blogsThat’s right, you can improve the success of your marketing enormously, my making tiny changes to what you already do.

For example, you can increase the success rate of a mail shot by 500-900% or more, by improving the headline, (sometimes called a strap line by trendy marketing people.)

A brilliant headline will encourage more people to start reading the letter, and the more people who read it, the better it’s chances of success.

A quick 350% increase, right here!

I recently changed one small thing on this blog and have achieved a huge, 350% increase in subscribers to my marketing newsletter.  What did I do? I added that small rectangle box at the end of each post, which lets people know they will get a free ebook from me (10 secrets of success) if they subscribe to my newsletter.

I also used that box to ask people to subscribe to my blog’s RSS feed. Guess what? Yep, a 120% increase in RSS subscribers too!

I once suggested to a business owner, that she changed the sign outside her store, so that it had the words; “come in” added to it. She reported an immediate increase of around 8% more people coming into the shop.  This, over the space of a year, equated to hundreds of ‘new’ customers and tens of thousands in extra sales.

If you are looking to boost sales significantly, here’s a suggestion.  Before you go and spend a ton of money, make sure you’re not missing something simple, which could boost your sales and profits massively.

Your experiences

What small changes have you made to your marketing or seen others make, which has produced great results?  Share your feedback with is!

Stephen Fry, critics and a business lesson

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As Stephen Fry demonstrated on Twitter a few days ago, it’s easy to allow a vocal critic to screw things up for you.

In Stephen Fry’s case, one of his followers told him that his tweets were boring.  Fry then threatened to quit Twitter and sever his ties with the million people who actually DO enjoy what he has to share.  Whilst Stephen Fry’s lives with some well documented mental health challenges, his reaction to this criticism is common among many business owners; who allow fear of criticism to hurt their businesses.

Fear of criticism

I had an email today from a reader, who wants to add a pop-up box to her website; to encourage people to subscribe to her newsletter.  She explained how she was concerned that some of her readers might not like it. In my reply, I explained that her decision should be based on what’s the correct thing to do and not what’s the easiest thing to do.  If there’s a chance that by adding a pop-up box, she will get more subscribers and as a result make more sales or win more clients – then it’s worth testing and measuring it.

She then sent me a 2nd email, which said how she was worried that a few hyper-critical readers would complain.  Apparently, her readership is over 3,000 and she’s seriously considering missing out on a potentially effective way to grow her readership, because of what 3 or 4 readers (not customers) might think or say!

This got me thinking:

  • I wonder how many great ideas have never seen the light of day, for fear of criticism?
  • I wonder how many opportunities the average business owner or entrepreneur misses each year, for fear of what the vocal minority might say or think?

Here’s a question to ponder:
What changes would you make to your business, if you knew for certain there would be no negative criticism?

Criticism: What do you think?

I would love to hear your feedback on either the people who criticise or those who allow fear of criticism to govern their decisions.  Let us know what you think!

Take action!

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There’s a big difference between knowing what needs to be done and doing what needs to be done.  That’s because information, (even great information) by itself is useless, without the motivation to use it.

There’s an interesting post on problogger.com, where Darren Rowse shares how it was not until his wife gave him an ultimatum, that he turned his blog into a full-time business.

Darren already knew what he needed to do and he had bundles of ability.  However, none of that was getting him the results he and his wife needed, until he became motivated enough to take action.

That’s because knowledge is not power

One of the most inaccurate common sayings is; “knowledge is power.”

Knowledge is not power – it only acquires power when you elect to do something with it.  For example, knowing how to speak Japanese has no ‘power’ for you whatsoever, unless you use that knowledge in some way.  You can use that skill to reach a brand new marketplace with your product or service – but if you decide after mastering the language, never to speak or read it again, nothing will happen.

Knowing and doing

On my motivation master class audio program, I mention a guy I met, who had recently lost his business; running up massive debts in the process.  I met him at his home, and immediately noticed that his bookshelves were packed with the most powerful, highly-acclaimed marketing books and CD’s on the market.  His collection must have been worth thousands.

I asked him if he had not found the material in these books of any value, as the primary reason he went broke was a lack of sales.  He explained that he had read or listened to all of them, but had not been motivated enough to use what he had learnt until it was too late.

In my experience, his situation is not that uncommon.  Some people will scour the Internet for sites that have valuable advice, which they then do nothing with.  They love to read about new, powerful marketing ideas but they do nothing with them.

By the way, you can download a copy of my Motivation Master Class audio program here, which shows you how to motivate yourself (and others) to take action. (It runs for just under 2 hours!)

Whatever line of business you are in, don’t simply gather marketing advice and find it interesting – Use it!

Not all business is good business

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It can be tempting, to accept any kind of business that comes our way – especially during a tough economy or when sales are flat.  However, this is often a bad idea, as some new clients or customers can have a toxic effect on your business.

For example, I was listening to the owner of a pub / bar yesterday, as he described how his trade increased, after a particular customer stopped coming in for lunch each day.  Although this customer spent money with him on a regular basis, it seems he was such a disagreeable character that his presence stopped other customers coming in.  They would apparently see this person’s car parked outside and decide to go somewhere else.

It’s easy to see what a client pays you – but sometimes harder to see what they cost you!

Blogging from the bathroom!

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$10,000 for 5 weeks work – blogging from a bathroom!

I was just reading a great post by Jack Neff on the AdAge.com blog, about a blogging gig being offered by Procter and Gamble; the owners of the Charmin toilet paper brand.  It seems they are offering five bloggers the chance to earn $10,000 for five weeks work.

Apparently, the bloggers will be expected to “greet and entertain bathroom guests and blog about their experiences” at Charmin’s restrooms on Times Square, New York.

The marketing power of blogs

Amid what seems like a pretty light-hearted story, rests a really valuable marketing lesson.  You see, although Procter and Gamble will be paying these 5 people a total of $50,000 for their blogging – the story has already generated way more than $50,000 worth of publicity for the Charmin brand.  This $50,000 sounds like a lot of money, but is peanuts in relation to what multinationals spend on their marketing.

Because the bloggers will be writing about the event for over a month, the story will ‘develop legs’ and have a bigger impact over a longer period than more typical, more expensive but less creative marketing ideas.  This really is an excellent example of creative marketing and Procter and Gamble’s marketing team deserve a massive amount of credit.

Their decision to choose blogging as part of this promotion, serves as yet another indicator of how big brands are realising the marketing power of blogging.  I think this $50,000 investment will be money well spent!

What do you think?

Marketing advice: Start with gold

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Many businesses offer 3 levels of service and define them based around the words; gold, silver and bronze.  The idea is to show prospective clients or customers (herein called clients) that the value/quality of each service improves as they go up the scale from bronze.

It’s used as a way to justify charging 3 different prices, for 3 different levels of service.  However, is it possible that we can improve upon this gold, silver and bronze model?

marketing advice GoldAsk any athlete, who’s out training at 6am on a cold morning, if he or she is motivated by the prospect of becoming a bronze medal winner. I think you already know what their answer will be – a resounding “NO!”  That’s because bronze does not have the same motivational pulling power of gold.

In business, we often refer to the best product or service in a category as the gold standard.’ We talk about those cherished memories from the past as golden memories. Highly valued information is often referred to as gold dust.  We use the word gold in many ways, but it always conjures up images in our mind of high quality.

Make gold your starting point

So, here’s a question to consider: Why not make gold your starting point? If you offer 3 levels of service, why not make a statement and start with gold, then go to platinum and then on up to diamond?

In an age where every business is claiming to go the extra mile, this is an opportunity for you to tell the marketplace what your attitude to service excellence is.  It’s a bold marketing statement, which requires the very best from you if you are to back it up.  But what a message to give your prospective clients and those who work with you, internally and externally.

What do you think?

Thank you!

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It seems hard to believe that it’s now just over a year, since I launched this blog.  In that time, the blog has developed a great community of readers, who regularly contribute comments, feedback and suggestions.  This reader input, has helped shape the direction of the blog and been of immeasurable value to me.

Interestingly, over the past few weeks, the blog has started to gain recognition from organisations outside our reader community.

Two new developments in particular have really taken my breath away.  Firstly, Advertising Age ranked this blog high enough to be included in their prestigious AdAge Power 150 list.  As a reader of Advertising Age for more than 20 years, this recognition means a great deal to me.

Then earlier this week, it was brought to my attention that technorati has also listed Jim’s Marketing blog, in their list of the top 100 small business blogs!

marketing blog technorati

Content AND reader engagement

Although I have tried to provide as much genuinely valuable material here as possible, the reason the blog has started getting noticed outside of the blogs community, is because of the blogs community! No matter how hard I try to make the blog of value, without YOU being so proactive in the way you have recommended and shared this blog with your friends, NOTHING would have happened.

The encouragement and feedback you have given me over this first year has been of massively more value to me than you can possibly imagine.

I am not going to name names, because the list would be just too long.

For example, it would include the name of every one of you, who has commented. The current comment count is just under 4,000.  It would include those of you, who share this blog with your friends on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter etc.  It would include those of you, who have linked to this blog.  It would include everyone who has subscribed to the blog’s RSS feed and those, who have tweeted with me or called me for a chat; after finding my phone number (01427 891274) on the contact page.

You know who you are, so:

THANK YOU!

Make your marketing count

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One of the marketing challenges that all businesses face, is how to leverage their time and money for the best possible return on investment (or ROI).  There are so many things we all could be doing, yet these are not of equal value to us.

For example, there’s an interesting debate along these lines over at my ideas blog. It’s about whether people ought to spend more of their ‘social media time’ providing content for their blogs and less of that time providing content for social media sites like; Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc.

Marketing puzzle

Part of developing the best marketing mix for your business, is to build a marketing strategy that focuses all your efforts in the most profitable way possible.  This is why it’s so important to monitor and measure your marketing feedback.  This will show you where your time and money is best invested, as well as any areas where you are not seeing a worthwhile return.

Why not take a moment to review your marketing activities. Look at what you are doing and what each activity is costing you in both time and money.  Then, measure your marketing return for each of these activities.  The results are often illuminating and extremely valuable.

Jim’s marketing blog – Now on Headway

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As regular readers will notice, things look a little different on the blog now! That’s because I have just upgraded the blog from it’s previous, limited wordpress theme and am now running the blog using Headway.

Why I moved to Headway

The biggest frustration I have experienced as a blogger, is the massive amount of my time that’s wasted, when I need to make stylistic changes or modifications to one of my blogs.  This happens more often than you might think; as I am always looking for better ways to engage with my readers and provide them with a more valuable experience.

I do most of my blogging activity when it’s quiet – for me, that means nights and weekends.  Now, even though I have always paid for professional help, it’s seldom available to me when I needed it.  As a result, whenever I wanted to make a change to the blog that wasn’t directly accessible via the theme, it could take from a few hours to a few days for the changes to be made.

Last week I launched a new ideas blog using the Headway theme.  Like many wordpress themes, Headway claims that users like me can design a blog from scratch, with no need to touch the CSS / HTML. Unlike every other theme I have used, Headway actually delivered – In fact, it massively OVER delivered.

So much so, that Headway is the first ever affiliate product I have promoted on a blog!

What’s the big deal with Headway?

I am a marketing specialist, a content creator, a writer – but NOT a coder! I have zero HTML skills and no idea how to configure CSS.  However, using Headway, I can do everything I want to my blogs, using their drag and drop system.  In fact, I managed to reconfigure this blog today in less than 40 minutes – with no need at all to touch the code.

Here’s a few of Headway’s features, for those of you who are interested.  I wrote that post myself, to try and explain how easy, fun and flexible Headway is.

Full disclosure

I was so totally blown away with Headway, that I wrote to the developers to thank them.  After wasting almost a thousand dollars over the past 2 years, on themes that universally disappointed me, I decided to promote Headway as an affiliate.  This is the first affiliate product I have ever promoted on any of my blogs; such is my gratitude for how it has (literally) transformed how I blog.

To Clay and Grant Griffiths, the guys behind Headway; “Thank you!”

Why bloggers must come clean

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Something I have been passionate about for a very long time, is the need for bloggers to fully disclose if they are getting paid in some way, to write about a company / product / service.  Well, yesterday, The United States Federal Trade Commission announced that it would fine bloggers up to $11,000 if they post positive reviews or endorsements, for which they are rewarded in any way, without letting their readers know.

I have three blogs and operate a full disclosure policy on all of them.  Like all well-read bloggers, I get offerers pretty-much every day from people, who want to pay me (either money or freebies), if I will ‘just’ write about them, their business or their service in glowing terms.  My tech news blog often gets several such offers in one day.

Full disclosure

When a blogger is honest enough to declare any gifts they receive, it encourages the reader to trust their content.  For example, I found out yesterday that big time blogger Chris Brogan, receives his hosting for free from a well-known hosting provider.  The reason I now know, is that Chris openly disclosed this gift in a post he wrote, about the company who give him his free hosting. Sadly, there are no disclosures anywhere about his cross-promotion of products with other top bloggers, which kind of defeats the object of disclosing an affiliate link or sponsor.

That kind of honest declaration, allows readers to place the post in context, of how they feel, knowing about the relationship the blogger has with the company.

The trust of your readers is everything

The importance of trust when developing a successful relationship with anyone, can not be overstated.  This is equally true of the relationship between a blogger or content provider and their readers.  After all, who wants to read content that you can’t trust?

If you have a commercial blog or website and you want people to trust you and your business, being fully open is essential.

Using social media to launch a new blog

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So, can social media really help you market or promote something?

Oh yes!

Earlier today, I launched a brand new blog. Now, usually when you launch a new blog, the first day sees very little traction; after all, no one knows it’s there.  However, thanks exclusively to the use of a few social media tools, the blog attracted hundreds of unique visitors within an hour of its launch.  The blog has also attracted some great comments and people have been emailing me and tweeting to me all morning with feedback and ideas.

Here’s how I launched the new blog (quickly)

The primary tool I used, in order to let people know about the new blog, was Twitter.

A few days ago, I set up a Twitter account for the new blog, which had a handful of ‘followers’ but was essentially sleeping until the blog was launched.  Over the past 3 days, I mentioned on my regular @jimconnolly Twitter account that I was going to launch a new blog this week.  This got people asking me about it and asking to be informed when it launched.

Earlier today, I published the first post on the new blog and sent a Tweet via @jimconnolly, to let people know. I also sent a simple message to a handful of people I know on Friendfeed, all of whom shared the information with their contacts.

This tiny amount of Twitter and Friendfeed activity was aimed at encouraging a relatively small number of people to check out the new blog.  It seems they did and that they told their contacts about it too.  In no time, traffic to the blog started increasing at the perfect rate for me to be able to monitor it.  I will explain why this was important in a moment.

When people arrived at the blog, they saw a welcome post, which also contained a few suggestions:

  • I asked people to please check out a page that explained what the blog was all about.
  • I then asked people to subscribe to the RSS feed, if they wanted to keep up to date with new posts.
  • Finally, I asked people to join the new blog on Twitter @theideasblog – If they were interested in sharing ideas.

An hour later, I published a second post, which was a typical blog post and gave people an idea of the kind of content to expect. It also gave people something of value to read / share.

Summary

This was a simple, deliberately planned launch; which gave me the time to respond to comments and check the blog was working – rather than creating a sudden surge in numbers.  I mentioned earlier that it was important for me to be able to build the traffic to the blog steadily.  There were 2 reasons for this:

  • The blog is with a new hosting provider and I had not placed it under a sudden, heavy load previously.
  • For the first time ever, I configured and designed the blog theme myself. I had obviously tested it previously, but it’s different when the site goes live and it’s receiving comments etc.

By using Twitter, a message on my new blog and a few messages on Friendfeed, I was not only able to create a successful launch, but even control the initial flow of traffic (to a degree).  This was a great, real life example of what’s possible with social media.

What if?

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Here’s a quick tip, which could save you a stack of time and money.

I have just endured three of the most frustrating days since starting my business, around 15 years ago.  However, there’s a great lesson here for you and your business.

So, what happened Jim?

The problem

I discovered that the company that was handling my blogs and email hosting, was just about to cease trading!  I quickly needed to move my blogs onto new servers.  As I had not researched an alternative hosting company, I had to drop what I was doing and spend time searching for a new host.

Thankfully, after a ton of; phone calls, Tweets and emails, I found a great new host.  However, I lost the best part of a day finding them.

Then, there were a few additional hitches.  This meant that instead of working on my business, I lost hours trying to get the blogs and email working again.  As a result, I needlessly ended up working two, sixteen hour days.  I also worked all day today (Saturday) to catch up; instead of taking my 4 year old son on a pre-arranged trip (to see Thomas The Tank Engine.)

The lesson

If you have an website or blog, which is important to your business, you need a strong contingency plan.  You need the name of a reliable hosting company and the name of a reliable tech person; who you can call on to handle the switch over.  I had a tech guy in place and have no idea how long this would all have taken, if I needed to find him as well.  By the way, I will publish the name of my new hosting company for you, if their service remains this good over a longer period.

The bottom line is that the time to get these providers in place is now – Not when disaster strikes.

That’s it!  Time for me to go and get our family trip rebooked...