Social media marketing Archives - Page 49 of 60

6 ways to quickly improve your profile

By Jim Connolly | February 28, 2011

How do you think people feel about you and your business, when they discover you online?

The reason this matters to small business owners, is that feelings are the key factor in whether someone buys from you or not. We do business with people we feel good about and avoid people we have a bad feeling about. We buy things that feel just right and avoid buying things that feel wrong. In fact, it’s often said that the decision to buy a new house, the biggest single purchase most people will ever make, is based on the way they feel about the house in the first 60 seconds!

Online profiles and the feelings they create

In my experience, small business owners tend to have 1 of the following 2 broad approaches to what they share with the world on their blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc:

The first group writes in positive terms about their business and the marketplace. Even if times are challenging for them, we wouldn’t know because they talk about what they want, rather than what they fear. Of course, their enthusiasm builds confidence in them and their business, which creates a positive circle of events, as people are attracted to them – Giving them even more to be positive about.
The second group write in largely neutral terms about their business and the marketplace. However, their lack of enthusiasm fails to inspire confidence in them or their business. Some seem to confuse being confident, with being boastful. Others fail to share their positive news, for fear that it may make people resent them for what they have achieved.

6 things to think about

I strongly believe you should be confident enough to get your stars out and show the world your brilliant self. Here are 6 suggestions, to help your prospective clients get a glimpse of the REAL YOU and how amazing you truly are, when they check you out online. Use your blog and social media accounts to:

Talk (and write) about what you want, not what you fear. Prospective clients might not want to do business with someone, if they think that person may be about to go out of business, after reading how bad things are.
Share your successes.
Show your gratitude. Be fast to thank. Be first to thank.
Show your willingness to contribute.
Share your uniqueness. It’s hard to get noticed unless you are willing to step out of the crowd. Don’t be a human RT / “like” machine for the gurus!
Showcase other great people.

Never confuse confidence with arrogance. Have the confidence to share your successes, but also the humility to readily celebrate the beauty and uniqueness of others.

92 reasons to invest in your business blog

By Jim Connolly | February 11, 2011

Thursday morning, I checked my email at 7:30, to find that 83 of you had emailed me following Wednesday’s post and a further 9 people had called my office. The post offered a place on my mentoring program and was not published until 3:45pm Wednesday, making those 92 requests even more amazing.

Your incredible response, both in volume and in speed, confirmed the marketing effectiveness of having a blog. Yes, like every other form of marketing, blogging only works when handled correctly. Copying what 99% of sites do, will all but guarantee failure, but for those who decide to learn how to blog effectively, the results can be stunning. As of Friday morning, I have had a total of 117 genuine inquiries for that single spot on my program.

Based on my fee and typical conversion rate, the small blog post I wrote on Wednesday would have generated at least £90,000 in fee income, if I had an empty client list!

You, blogging, time and money

How different would your client list, income and lifestyle look right now, if you could generate over 100 client inquiries from a post like the one I wrote on Wednesday? OK, that was a rhetorical question. Here’s a direct question for you:

“Is that kind of potential inspiring enough to you, for you to commit to invest the time and money needed to make it happen?”

Sadly, very, very few small business owners are willing to resource their blog properly. Some will invest the time required, but refuse to pay for expert help, even though their blog clearly isn’t generating what they need. Others will invest in the expert help that’s essential, but refuse to invest the time that’s required. Many will do neither.

My investment

I’ve invested the time required to write around 800 posts. That kind of commitment means I wrote for you on days when I was ill and days when I had other deadlines to meet. But I still turned up. I have also invested around £6,000 on this blog so far, though my hosting is now sponsored by WebFusion (that’s not an affiliate link, just a link to their site.) That’s my commitment so far and I will continue to invest more time and more money.

What next?

If you have a business blog that’s under-performing, get serious about it. Listen to what your blog is telling you. If it isn’t generating the results you need, stop! Invest in some expert help. There may be one small element you are getting wrong, which when corrected will transform your results.

As Einstein said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results!” Be one of the tiny minority of small business owners, who does the right things, correctly. Oh, and if you DO pay for expert help -TAKE IT!

If you don’t currently have a business blog and are thinking of starting one, start off with a commitment to do it right. If you can’t afford to do it right, save some money, do some research and then launch correctly; knowing what to do, so you start off in the right direction.

Give your blog everything it needs and it will give you all the high quality business you can possibly handle.

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

The cost of attacking your competitors online

By Jim Connolly | January 14, 2011

Have you ever heard the saying, that when you bad-mouth a competitor, it actually makes you look bad and not them? Well, the same holds true when you decide to invest your time attacking competitors online.

It seems a popular way to gain traffic to YOUR blog, is to attack the top bloggers in your niche. If you piss them off, they may mention you, putting you on their readers / followers radar. If your attack is nasty enough, they may even blog about what you said. This might gain the attacker a short-term traffic spike, but at what cost? I honestly don’t think these people realise just how bitter it makes them look, to try and destroy a competitors credibility or dent the business, which their victim uses to put a roof over their family’s head, just for traffic.

Yes, if you identify that someone is making what you believe to be a mistake, it’s good to let that person know. A while back, Yael Rozencwajg from Yopps.com noticed an error with the way my blog’s email RSS was working, so she emailed me to let me know. She didn’t write a blog post to say what an idiot I was for missing the error or what a smart-ass she was for spotting it. That’s because her intention was purely to help me, rather than attack me in order to get a response that she could convert into traffic.

The law of return

As a person of faith, I have a great deal of respect for the world’s Holy books. In each of those I have studied, there is a belief that we tend to reap what we sow. This is something professional development experts refer to as the law of return. It works on the sound premise, that we tend to get back whatever we put out there.

Negative seeds (actions) produce a negative harvest (results) and positive seeds produce a positive harvest. For example, Yael’s kindness in taking the time to offer me some help, has just resulted in her being highlighted to my readership, in an extremely positive way.

Of course, the negative feelings we have about those who bad-mouth their competitors, are formed by that same law of return. Their attacks tend to damage themselves, rather than their intended victims.

I sometimes see people offering poor or misleading marketing advice. In each case, I write a blog post to ensure my readers avoid making mistakes by following that kind of bad advice. However, I do this without calling out the person. This means my message gets out, is seen in a 100% positive light and is actually more likely to be acted on. If I ever woke up feeling like I needed to attack Seth Godin or Jay Abraham, in order to gain readers, I would like to think I would recognise it as a sign that I ACTUALLY needed to work harder on MY OWN business.

Yes, you can gain traffic by attacking your more successful or better known competitors, but who needs to attract that kind of reputation?

How to turn your blog into a massively valuable marketing machine!

By Jim Connolly | January 10, 2011

Do you write a business blog, but feel frustrated right now with your results?

I have a message for you: Don’t give up! The success you want may be just around the corner and the results can be exactly what you and your business need!

Here’s why

Most small business owners need to invest a considerable amount of money each year, if they want to introduce their services to targeted, prospective clients or customers. They invest in mail shots, radio and print advertising etc. Every time they want to reach those people, they have to pony up with some more money. It can be a costly exercise, especially for those small business owners who handle their own marketing and need to reach a lot of people in order to generate enough leads or sales, because they get the typical, crappy, small business owner response rates.

That’s how most small business owners market themselves. Yes, some attend networking events, hire telemarketing companies or hire PR firms etc, but they all involve spending often large sums of money, every time they need to generate sales or inquiries.

And then there’s business blogging

Most business bloggers, and I include myself here, start off with very few readers. It’s usually just us and a few contacts, who we share our blog with. Then, over a period of months the readership increases and if the content is attractive enough, we can build a sizeable, targeted audience. From this point forward, whenever we want to reach these extremely valuable people, we simply need to publish a post, (like this one.) There are no additional financial costs involved, for you to reach people and engage with them via your blog.

If we keep our content as valuable as possible to our readers and we focus our content, so it’s of direct interest to our core profile of clients, our audience increases in both volume and value. Once you have bought a URL (or web address) and some server space, there are no additional financial investments required to get started. Just a lot of work, creativity and the commitment to learn how to market all that great content. The rewards, however, are amazing and in some cases, life-changing.

Is it easy?

No! It requires time and commitment.

Is it worth the effort?

Yes! The results are easily the most powerful of any form of marketing I have encountered, as a marketing professional with 25 years experience behind me.

Powerful? Let’s take last week as an example. One of my blog posts was read by over three thousand people in just 6 hours, with thousands more reading it since. It was also featured on several websites. Last week I also did an audit of the financial value of business I generated directly via inquiries involving this blog, and it was over £100,000. I started this blog just 2 and a half years ago, with a £10 investment; which was the cost of the URL and the hosting that came with it!

Blogging and the law of return

Around 14-months ago, I decided to start taking this blog a lot more seriously, as it was quickly becoming my primary source of new business. Within weeks, the number of readers / inquiries increased.

Then last year, I invested in a fast, super-reliable dedicated server from WebFusion, who now generously sponsor this blog! This allowed me to be able to concentrate 100% of my blogging time on creating content, without worrying about technical issues or my server being down. Again, the numbers increased, in both readers and business inquiries, as I was able to produce more and more content, which people could access reliably.

In other words, every time I have committed more into this blog, I have seen a significant, measurable, bankable increase in my results.

Blogging and the need for speed

Whilst most forms of traditional marketing require a significant financial investment, they tend to reach people very quickly. As we live in an increasingly “instant” society, people like the idea of immediate results. It may cost 2k to send 5,000 prospective clients your latest mailing, but those letters can be on their doormats in a couple of days. Your blog, on the other hand, starts off a lot slower. Yes, it can be up and running for the cost of a lunch at Starbucks, but you will probably have to work at it for many months, before you can reach 5,000 people each week.

However…

What about when you HAVE managed to build a blog, which reaches 5,000 or 50,000 prospective clients each week?

At this point, you will probably want to improve your blog hosting and buy a nice looking blog theme so your site looks polished and professional, like the one I use here. I built this blog from scratch, using Headway blog theme software (affiliate link.) From that point onward, so long as you continue to invest the time required to publish worthwhile content and you learn how to make your blog as visible and shareable as possible, you will be building your own, increasingly valuable marketing / media asset!

Think about it:

You don’t need to pay someone for advertising, when you own a media asset yourself (your blog), which is read by more targeted prospective clients than their publication is.
You don’t need to invest in mail shots, when your marketing is being read by hundreds and then thousands of prospects every day of the week, every week of the year.
You may even get featured in The New York Times, just because they find value in what you have to say on your blog. It’s less likely one of your mail shots or ads will gain that kind of complimentary attention. The value to your blog of those kind of A-List links can also have an ongoing, positive impact on your Google ranking. Again, this builds the value of your blog as a media asset.

If you want to take your blog to the next level, here are a few ideas, based on the lessons I have learned over the past couple of years:

Decide in advance to persevere during the initial 6-12 months, whilst your blog gets established. Your blog should be seen as a medium to long term investment, not a quick fix.
Commit to putting as much highly valuable content on your blog as possible. When I was posting just once a week, the development of the blog was extremely slow. If you only publish 1 post a week, it will take you a month to publish just 4 posts. That’s 4 posts for people to share and 4 updates, to encourage people to return to your blog and check it out again. Give people a reason to visit your blog regularly, with frequently updated content. Make reading your blog a part of their routine.
If you find it hard to write more than once a week, you may be trying too hard to make each post perfect. Blog posts don’t need to be perfect every time. Give yourself permission to write “as well as you can” on any given day. The perfection mindset destroys more blogs than anything else, in my experience.
Learn how to Search Engine Optimize (SEO) your blog, so that it is as easy as possible for Google and others to find it.
Learn how to write compelling posts, which people will want to read and share. The more good quality content you give away, the faster your blog will develop and the more people will value it.
Make your blog as easy to share as possible, using the kind of share options you see at the bottom of this post. It takes time for Google to start sending you significant, regular traffic; yet you can start getting share traffic immediately, by writing great content and sharing it with your social networks.
Read the top blogs in your niche and learn from them.
Read some crap blogs too and see what they are doing – So you can avoid it!
Ask people to subscribe to your blog, with a prominent subscriber box. Your subscribers are your most loyal readers and often your most valuable too.
Be relevant. Focus your content, so that it is of direct interest to your ideal client profile. Don’t try and write for everyone, as this dilutes the value of your writing.

Nothing of genuine commercial value is ever created on the quick! A successful business blog is no different. It takes time and commitment. However, if you are prepared to invest the time, learn the lessons and keep on keeping on, the results can be simply stunning.

What’s in a tweet?

By Jim Connolly | January 4, 2011

What kind of an image are you creating for prospective clients, who check out your social media updates?

I received an interesting email from a reader last night, which I would like to share with you. She asked if I would not use her name, so I am going to call her Barbara instead. Her email was short but contained a very valuable message. It’s something I have heard of many times and it’s becoming more and more common.

Here is the section, which Barbara agreed I could share with you:

I am writing this, hoping it will stop others from making the same idiotic error . Ive just had what would have been my second largest ever project cancelled. The client had verbally agreed to proceed and we had set a price. Lovely. I called today as agreed, to arrange the start date. That’s when he told me he’d changed his mind. Over the holidays he checked my social media messgaes, and now had concerns that I wasn’t suitable. He referenced that I sometimes sign-off from twitter after work saying something like “great, its wine o’clock.”

He told me he didn’t want to hire someone, who was so happy to finish work that they celebrated or someone with a drink problem. Here’s the kicker Jim, I don’t drink much at all. It’s what i see a lot of others saying. I explained this to him but understandably he didn’t believe me. I feel foolish for not thinking that potential clients would look at my tweets and reading them back its easy to see why someone would get the wrong idea about my drinking habits.

Our digital footprint

For me the interesting thing here, and the reason I decided to share Barbara’s email with you, is not whether it’s a good idea to tell people you look forward to drinking after work or not. Thankfully, we each have the freedom to say whatever we like, because it’s us who pay the price if we screw up or get the rewards if we don’t. No. What interested me about Barbara’s email, is this: More and more people are using our social media streams, as a way to check us out, before becoming one of our clients or customers or even recommending us to their contacts.

I used to follow someone, who was always tweeting about how stupid his clients were. He never named them, but would tweet what he called the stupid questions they were asking him. In other words, any of his clients reading his twitter stream, would know he was insulting them, from the questions he was making fun of with his friends. Is he free to do that if he wants to? Yes (thankfully). Would I recommend him to one of my clients or contacts, knowing he may insult them in that way? Not a chance!

The best advice on this subject that I know of, came from Brian Clark of copyblogger. Brian recently said that to be effective with social media, a businessperson needs to;

be authentic to the element of themselves, that meshes with their audience.

Seth Godin makes pretty much the same point in his book, All Marketers Are Liars.

That approach is how I use social media and it works extremely well for me. On my Twitter account and my Facebook account, you get a more professional version of me then you would experience, if you and I were at a football match and my team were losing. However, it’s still me. My core beliefs and values are the same at the game or in the office on Twitter / Facebook etc.