Jim Connolly Marketing

Here’s a quick way to make Twitter much more useful!

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How useful is Twitter to you and your business?  In this brief post, I share what I have found to be the best way to get the maximum results from your Twitter account.

Twitter is a great tool, but the magic is in the people

Many business owners seem to think of Twitter almost exclusively, as a way to build networks, drive traffic to websites and share interesting links and messages with their followers.  As I saw yet again recently, Twitter can be so much more than that.  The key for me, is to remember always that Twitter is just a tool and that the REAL magic of Twitter, is in the people behind those @usernames and avatars.  These people can be pure gold.

Let me just quantify that: The people who network with me on Twitter are one of the most valuable resources my business has.

Twitter & targeted crowd sourcing

As some of you may already know, yesterday 10-10-10, I launched a new social media project on the Jim Connolly website.  It’s really exciting!  Anyhow, because this project is based on a new idea, I needed to find a way to explain it to people, as clearly as possible.  After writing the initial draft of the site’s about page, which explains everything (you can read it here), I asked people, via twitter, for their feedback.  I wanted to know what the message said to THEM. I received responses from people in different areas of industry, different countries, different ages – You get the idea.  They were also the exact kind of people (small business owners) who would most benefit from this new social media project.

As a direct result of the feedback I received, I was able to launch the site and project yesterday, knowing in advance that I had a clear message.  As a result, the launch was as smooth as silk and the response was fantastic!

Twitter and human engagement

In my experience, Twitter only becomes truly valuable to you and your business, when you focus on the people and NOT the tool itself.  All day long, I see business owners on Twitter obsessing about plugins, apps and sites that measure their influence.  They look for software that automates their Tweets and automates their following and unfollowing.  I even saw a top social media guru asking his followers if it was “OK” for him to send some automated tweets.

It’s correct, of course, to use the right tools but only if they help the real you, connect with the real people that are interested enough to follow you and engage with you.  The automated experience may attract others with a similar approach, but it will miss the mark completely, with those REAL people, who want to connect on a more human level.

What kind of people do YOU connect with on Twitter and why?

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

6 things I wish I knew before I started blogging!

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This blog was 2 years old last month and in that time I have learned many, often expensive lessons.  In order to help you avoid some of the costs and frustrations that I went through, here are 6 things I wish I knew before I started blogging.

1.  Everyone starts from scratch

Most blogs start off with no readers, no subscribers and no comments and things don’t change much for months. Yes, Seth Godin started off by writing his first blog post, sitting next to his Stanford friend, Google founder, Sergey Brin — but that’s not how most of us begin.

It took me 2 years of blogging here, before Google starts delivering targeted, unique visitors each day. I had 400 posts published and almost 20,000 back-links, before I had my first 1000 unique visitors in a day from Google. However, an effective social media strategy can really get things moving whilst the search engines get their act together.

2.  SEO is less and less important

Google is fickle. It changes the rules so often, that SEO has become less relevant. Today, you’re better off investing your time on social networks, than messing around trying to keep Google happy.

3.  Some will use your comments section to sell rather than engage

As soon as you start to develop a large readership, people will try and tout for business in the comments section of your blog. I switched comments off in June 2013, because people were spamming the crap out of the comments. Also, unlike when blogs were invested, today we have social networks as a powerful way to comment on what we read.

4.  The price of a blog theme is usually the least expensive part

Well-known bloggers tend to use blog themes that have been professionally redesigned and had a lot of custom code added to them. Sadly, this includes those bloggers who make a big deal of selling the theme on their sites, but a much smaller deal of explaining that their site is not an accurate example of what a typical user, who doesn’t write CSS or HTML, will get when they try and use that theme on their blog.

So, you see a great looking blog from a blogger you trust, you buy the theme they recommend and learn VERY fast that the look you fell in love with, had almost zero to do with the theme. This is often the start of an expensive, frustrating process; for those of us with no interest in learning how to write code.

Find something you like right out of the box or hire a blog designer. The latter usually works far better, unless you want a blog that looks just like thousands of others. It’s hard enough to stand out, without looking like a clone of other blogs, using the same theme.

5.  Most plugins suck

Most plugins add very little value to your blog. They are also a primary source of tech issues and they s-l-o-w your site down too. I started off with around 20 plugins. Today, I have just 6. You can often massively increase the speed of your blog, simply by removing unnecessary plugins. The first plugin I install on a new WordPress blog, is always the Akismet spam filter.

6.  If your blog is commercial, invest in professional grade hosting ASAP

When you pay $10 a month for hosting, you get $10 worth of service and speed. However, when you spend $50 a month, you still get a very similar service to that $10 a month provider. If you are serious about the commercial value of your blog, get it onto a dedicated server or if money is tight, get on a cloud-based server as soon as you can afford to.

The increased speed, reliability and 24/7 one to one tech support is worth every penny.  When the BBC put a link to my blog on their homepage last year, instead of me gaining a stack of new readers, my site went down under all the traffic.  Today, it would keep working.

Finally, I recommend you either start a business blog or start taking your blog seriously. The rewards are huge… but only if you give your blog everything it needs.

Shouting at Twitter: Is it worth it?

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I wrote a post recently, about people who vent their anger or frustrations via social networking sites and asked the question; is anybody listening?  That post was specifically asking if companies or brands monitor what’s being said about them and their products.

Well, we may not know exactly which brands are monitoring which messages, however, here’s something we do know for sure: Every time we vent our anger or frustration via our online network, it’s those who follow us closest and are most interested in what we have to say, who see it.

Here’s why I believe this matters and why I think it should be avoided.

Who is most interested in what you have to say?

As business users of social networks, the people most likely to be following us closely will include a mixture of; our clients, prospective clients and also those who are interested in sharing what we have to say with their contacts.  In other words, the most commercially valuable people in our network!

Whilst it’s admirable for someone to be passionate, in commercial terms, I’m personally very cautious when it comes to recommending those I believe to be too volatile.

I need to know that the people I recommend (and buy from, partner with etc), can be relied upon to act in a business-like way, when confronted with the daily challenges of business.

In a nutshell, if you ask me to recommend someone to you, I’m not going to risk recommending someone, if I know that they are likely to bad mouth you publicly, if the project doesn’t go exactly the way they want it to.

This is not something I see happening that often and never with the people I personally follow, but it’s likely to increase as social media gurus tell business owners to share more and more of their opinions online.

Just to be crystal clear; I’m not talking about people giving reviews here.  I’m talking about business owners who rant about clients or competitors across their social networks – Rather than emailing or calling them, person-to-person, to get a resolution.

How does it influence you, if at all?

How would you feel about recommending someone to a client or contact, if you had previously seen that person ranting about their clients on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc?  BTW: You can join me on Twitter here

Equally, how would you feel about hiring a service provider yourself, who was like that?  Would the quality of their work override your concerns that they may badmouth you, if they were frustrated with you during or after working with you?

It would be useful and interesting to know what you think, so please share your feedback!

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

2 ways to grow your blog: Independent or associated?

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In my experience, there are 2 ways to build a successful blog.  Both are extremely powerful.  Although the route to success always starts by providing great content on a regular basis, once you have done that for long enough, I’ve found there are 2 routes open to you.

  • The associated route.
  • The independent route.

The associated route is used by many of the world’s top bloggers.  It’s where a group of bloggers from the same niche or a complimentary one, decide to form a loose (or sometimes formal) agreement, to help each other increase their reach and make money.  They then work to promote the other people they are associated with.  For example; they link to each other regularly in blog posts and will write blog posts about their associates products or services.  They also pass traffic to each other, via links on social networks.  It can be extremely powerful, if you have a number of influential associates, all helping each other.  Read any of these bloggers for any period of time, and you will very clearly be able to see who they are associated with.

The independent route, which I use, is used by many successful bloggers.  It’s where the blogger builds his or her blog without entering into those formal or informal associations with other bloggers.  If we mention a blogger or a product, it’s only because we love the blogger’s work or we believe in the product.  We rely on readers sharing our content and effective SEO to develop our readership.  Independent bloggers are equally easy to spot, because we don’t have the same ads on our blogs or recommend the same ebooks / events / products as the associated bloggers in our niche.

The fastest way to grow your readership is definitely the associated blogger route.  Of course, there is a price to pay for this kind of fast track success.  You need to be OK about promoting your associates and their offerings to your readership and social network.  Yes, you will be able to write about what matters to you, but you will also need to write posts that name-check your associates and push their latest offerings.  Is that a small price to pay?  It’s your call.  There’s no right or wrong here.

Conversely, the independent blogger is free to recommend anything he or she wishes.  For example, although this blog now has a significant readership, I have just 1 affiliate product here; which is the Headway theme I use to design the blog.  However, I’m not associated with Headway or any of the bloggers who use their theme.  I read Danny Brown’s blog and he uses Headway, but I also read Seth Godin’s blog and he doesn’t.  I know Grant Griffiths, who owns headway, but I get no special rates from them; nothing which you wouldn’t get if you were one of their affiliates.  Here’s the thing: If I switched to another theme tomorrow, it wouldn’t be an issue for Headway or me.  That’s the freedom I enjoy, by being independent.

The associated route is powerful and many of the blogs I read are written by associated bloggers.  It doesn’t bother me.  I know why they promote what they do and I’m 100% fine with it.  These guys have businesses to run, bills to pay and many are doing so VERY effectively, thanks to the massive reach of their combined associate network.  Make no mistake – It’s amazing!  This is why I believe that for many people, if they get the chance to take the associated route, and it is an association of great people, they should really consider it!

So, why do I take the independent route?

The answer is simple:  For my business model, it’s more valuable for me to have the total freedom that comes with independence.

I am in a very different position to many bloggers in my niche.  For instance, I am not part of the speaker circuit and many of them are.  They have seats to fill at events and need a massive reach, in order to promote their gigs.  I don’t.  I have no ads here and don’t push affiliate sales, so I have no need to drive up page views either.

For me, the independent route is best.  I write for you.  I show you my work.  You call me if you want great marketing, because you know my work and my approach.  I like it like that.

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

People are venting but is anyone listening?

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When you get bad service from a provider or a product lets you down, what do you do?  Increasingly, people are venting their frustration or anger via social media.

For service providers, who care about their customers (which is more than you may think) this presents an opportunity.  Using very simple, freely available tools, they can track mentions of their brand, service or product names and learn from what their customers are saying.  They can interact with their customers before greater damage is done to the relationship.

Of course, in order for this to work, they need to be listening.

The brands that elect not to listen, are not only missing out on some incredibly valuable feedback, they are also missing out on the opportunity to reach out to their customers and retain their business.  It’s a lot less expensive to retain a customer than it is to win a new customer or motivate someone to switch brands, so it makes sense on many levels for companies to monitor and interact with their marketplace.

The savvy business owner is always listening

He or she not only monitors what their own customers are saying, but also what their prospective customers are saying.  They know that if they spot a common problem among their prospective customers, which is causing people to want to vent their frustration, they can adapt their offering to answer that problem and stand a real chance of winning that slice of dissatisfied people.

Whilst most of the marketing emphasis regarding social media, seems to be about building your follower / friend numbers, it’s also important for you to listen to your marketplace.  The rewards can be amazing.

Do you monitor what your marketplace is saying via social media?

What tools do you use and recommend?

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

Your Marketing Goldmine is almost ready!

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To mark the 2nd anniversary of this blog, I’m about to make it easier for you to find all my best posts, on the areas of marketing and business development that you are most interested in.

Think of it as your marketing goldmine!

My challenge

I was recently thinking about how the typical date order format of a blog is far from ideal, for people like myself who seldom write time-sensitive posts.  I have posts here, for example, which are just as relevant today as when I wrote them 18 months or 2 years ago.  However, because of the date format used to present blog posts, with the new posts added to the top of the pile, some really valuable marketing material gets hidden away under hundreds of newer posts.

Yes, you can use the blog’s search box to find posts on a particular subject, or click on a category section, but surprisingly few people use them.  I removed the categories tab from the sidebar months ago because it wasn’t getting used.  Most people either find the content here via their RSS feed, a social bookmark or a Google search.  As a result, many readers will be missing out on some of my best, most valuable content.  This is especially the case for newer readers and those who only visit here occasionally.

So, I’m creating a free Marketing Goldmine for you

I’m working on developing a new section for the blog, which will provide you with an index of my most popular posts on certain subjects.  Rather than a category section, which displays everything with a certain tag, this will only include my best posts in each section.

So, keep an eye on the blog!

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