Jim Connolly Marketing

Funny: What is a social media expert?

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Someone studying marketing at university, recently asked me what I thought a social media expert was.

I told her that I see social media experts as people, who understand how to make social media platforms deliver results for organizations and individuals.

However, she had a better answer, which I ‘think’ she intended as a joke.  I just had to share it with you, because of you follow any of these people it might sound familiar.

“A social media expert is someone that talks about community, follows tens of thousands of people, then uses software, so they never have to listen to what the people they follow are saying!”

That made me smile!

The secret of a top 10 blog

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I’ve had a few emails this week, after technorati.com ranked this blog inside the world’s top 10 small business blogs for the first time.

technorati, small business, blogsWhilst this ranking will go up and down all the time, to have actually reached that spot is quite an achievement, for a marketing blog that’s little over a year old.

People wrote to me wanting to know how I did it, so here’s my secret!

I write exclusively for people – NOT Google!

Ask any top marketing writer (or copy writer) and they will tell you that it’s a challenge to produce material, which inspires people to take action, to; buy from you, visit you, call you, share your work, click links or email you etc.  That’s because people are complex.

As a marketer, people need to find your message both interesting and motivating and that’s no easy task – Especially if you are simultaneously trying to write that same message so that Google’s search engine software likes it!

So, here’s my secret sauce for a top 10 blog

This blog is read by people, enjoyed by people and designed to help people.  If I get enough genuinely useful content onto this blog, people will share my work and people will link to this blog, allowing me to reach more people.  By repeating that process, people have increased the profile of this blog and it’s readership.

Notice a common thread there?

Yep – it’s all about writing for people!

I love SEO – But I write exclusively for YOU

I don’t try and get certain keywords or phrases into my posts, to score highly with search engines.  If I did, it would change the way I write and dilute the effectiveness of what I share with you.  As a result, 100% of what you read here is written exclusively for people.

I love SEO.  It’s one of the reasons I use the Headway WordPress theme on this blog (affiliate), which is extremely SEO friendly.  I also use tags for my posts to help with my SEO too.  However, I do not deliberately write anything to keep Google happy.

Ironically, by writing exclusively for people, I have attracted around 16,000 links to this blog, which has gifted me a pretty good search engine ranking for many key marketing terms.  For instance, people going to Google searching for marketing blogs will have been able to find this blog on page 1 for the search term; “marketing blogs” for the past 6 months.

In my experience, many bloggers spend way too much time ‘optimizing’ their material for search engines and looking for that one killer trick that will magically send their website / blog to the top of the pile.

While they are waiting for that quick fix, you and I can focus on delivering the best content we can, to people.

Thank YOU!

I would like to personally thank EVERYONE who reads this blog, links to it and shares it with their friends.  As you can see, without your support, this blog is nothing.

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

Can I have your attention?

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It amazes me that there are still businesspeople, who have not figured out that there’s a right way and a wrong way to grab someone’s attention.

For example, I’ve been emailed this morning by 2 unrelated companies.  Both wanted me to write a review here on the blog, about their service.  Each email consisted of a poorly written, cut-and-paste sales pitch.  Both senders thought that the best way to grab my attention, create a great initial impression and inspire me to blog about them, was to spam me.

Attention grabbing

If you walk up to a stranger at a networking event, you can quickly grab their attention by simply poking them hard in the chest with your index finger.  However, this is not going to be the kind of attention you want.  Spammy emails are just like that! They may gain someone’s attention, but only to alert them that the sender is a spammer.  That’s not the kind of attention any business wants to attract.

Now, if one of the companies that spammed me earlier had actually took a moment to market their service to me correctly, I might have checked it out. If, for instance, either of them had followed me on Twitter and then tweeted to me, I would have definitely checked out their website.  This would have presented them with a window of opportunity, to make a great impression.

Attention grabbing – Done right

  • Seth Godin didn’t spam me and ask if I would write a review about how brilliant his marketing blog is – but I did!  Seth’s blog was mentioned on a radio show I was listening to years ago.  I read it and was hooked.
  • The reason I bought a Samsung when I was shopping for a netbook, is because there were universally excellent reviews for the NC10 all over the Internet, from trusted sources.  I even mentioned the netbook in a blog post.
  • When Danny Brown told me how great the Headway (affiliate link) wordpress theme was, I had to check it out.  Within 15 minutes of reading about it, I had bought it.  A few hours later, I had it installed.  A week later, I became an affiliate; the first product I have ever been an affiliate of!

The bottom line is this: If you want people to write positively about you, recommend you and buy from you – don’t poke them in the chest.

The X Factor, sneezing & your business

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One of the many things people find really strange about me, is that I don’t watch reality TV shows.  That’s because, as an experienced marketing professional, I know what’s happening behind the programs and they become predictable.

However, I DO LOVE watching how some people respond to these shows.  That’s why, no matter how busy I am, I try and get a look at Twitter when the UK version of X Factor is on.  It’s a lesson in sneezing!

The X Factor: A lesson in sneezing

Like every commercial TV show, the object of this program is to sell advertising.  The more viewers the show attracts, the more awareness and sales it’s sponsors and advertisers will achieve.  This is why shows are pulled off the air when their viewing figures are too low for too long.

For people living alone or with partners, who were not TV fans, watching TV used to be a solitary activity.  However, now that viewers have tools like Twitter, the experience has been dramatically improved and it’s a massive amount of fun too!  If you take a look at Twitter when the X Factor show is on, you will see intelligent people (business owners, lawyers, accountants, jugglers ect) making the same points, about the same performers.

From a marketing perspective, what happens is that these Twitter users become what Seth Godin refers to as ‘sneezers.’ They spread the X Factor virus via their Twitter account – but more importantly, they spread the X Factor virus to the kind of people who are most likely to be sneezers!

How come?

If Bob follows Mary on Twitter and discovers the X Factor show via Mary, he’s extremely likely to follow the show AND tweet about it too, so he can join in the fun!  That’s why the #X-Factor hashtag becomes a trending topic every time the shows on. It’s marketing brilliance and the producers of the X Factor deserve a huge amount of credit.

A marketing lesson

There’s a lesson here for anyone, who wants to grow the readership of their company blog or website.

First the hard part: You need to do like the X Factor producers have done and produce content for your site that will get people talking about you.  Then, you need to make it super-easy for people to share that content, with LIKE MINDED people. If you do those things, your site will have people sneezing like a meadow full of pollen during hey-fever season!

Is it easy? No.

Is it possible? Yes.

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!

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!