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What do your contacts say about you?

February 3, 2010 by Jim Connolly

I have a question for you:
Which people or companies do you publicly associate with?

The reason I am asking you this, is that potential customers and clients often look at the people or businesses we associate with, as a short-cut to determining the kind of people WE are.

Trust and credibility can either be destroyed or boosted in seconds, depending on the individuals and companies we are aligned with or associate with.

Bad company

I recall being at a local business exhibition, when a young man joined a small group of people I was speaking informally with, before we entered the main exhibition area.  He introduced himself and joined our conversation.  One of the guys asked him what line of business he was in and he said he owned a local printing company. After about 5 minutes, the group dispersed.

Interestingly, just before the printer joined us, one of the guys said he was looking to get some promotional flyers printed and needed to find a local print company.  I was curious why he never asked for the print guys business card, so when I saw him later, I asked him.

“I noticed he arrived with (persons name.)  That guy’s little better than a conman.  If he hangs around with people like that, I don’t want him near me or my business.”

It’s possible that the print company owner never knew about the reputation of the man he arrived with and later sat with.  He was almost certainly unaware that he had just damaged his reputation with a large number of people in his local business community – his potential clients.

The bottom line: We need to be extremely careful before we associate our name, brand or reputation with another individual or company.

It’s just the same online

I am not an active user of Linkedin, but have an account there purely as a way to study it, for my work as a marketing coach.  It’s a good service, which is why I study it, but one that I have zero need for right now.

However, I get emails every day from people via Linkedin, whom I have never heard of, asking if I will join their ‘network’.

The thing is, at least 90% of these invites claim that I’m someone they have worked with, even though they know it’s a total lie and I don’t even know them!

Why do they do this?

Because IT WORKS!

If they send that spammy message to enough people, some will accept, in an ill-judged attempt to build their own network.

Guess what kind of people send those requests? Right – the kind you do NOT want to be linked with!

Here’s a great question to ask ourselves

If a stranger wanted to build a picture of the kind of person I am, JUST by looking at who I associate with, what kind of a picture would that be?

If you are not happy with the answer – disconnect from your toxic contacts and replace them with honest, credible people like you!

Filed Under: Blogging, Business Development Tagged With: bad company, blog links, linkedin, negative company, Networking, reputation management, seo links

WordPress.com and business blogging

September 25, 2008 by Jim Connolly

I wrote a post a while ago, saying that WordPress.com was a good place to host your business blog, if you were just starting out and wanting to ‘test the water’ as it were.

However, since then I have been emailed by a reader; who pointed out some poorly publicised, but extremely important limitations to a WordPress.com hosted business blog!

I looked into this and found 3 REALLY IMPORTANT reasons why I believe you should NOT use a WordPress.com hosted blog for your business.  Here they are:

1. WordPress.com insert ‘hidden adverts’ into your blog

Automattic (the company that runs WordPress.com), inserts ‘hidden advertising’ into the blogs hosted on their servers.

Hidden?

Yes, the ads they place into your blog are hidden from you – so you can’t see what THEY are advertising to YOUR readers in YOUR company’s name! Because Automattic use Google Adwords for these ads, they could be advertisements for your competitors products or services!  This is perhaps why they feel the need to hide these adverts from their users?  Anyhow, many of their users have no idea these adverts even exist; because they will not be able to see them when they look at their own blog. The ads are only displayed to their readers!

As of last week, you can pay to have these adverts removed, the fee is currently $30 a year.  This is an improvement, as until last week you were stuck with them! However, there are two far bigger problems with hosting a business blog at wordpress.com!

2. WordPress.com won’t let you advertise anything

I have been in marketing for over 20 years and I own and run a very successful international marketing business.  I don’t know a single company, which has a commercial blog and does not use it to promote their business or market their services in some way.  The whole point of a commercial blog is commerce after all!

Although Automattic actually encourage people to host a commercial blog at WordPress.com, they forbid any form of commercial advertising!  So, if you have any desire to advertise your services in your blog; you simply can not use WordPress.com – full stop!

3. WordPress.com won’t let you link from your posts to your website

One of the major marketing benefits of having a business blog, are all the links you get from the blog to your main website.  These links can be really useful for a business blog!

For example, the newsletter button at the foot of my blog posts is a link; however, it would be BANNED from use on a wordpress.com hosted blog! Also, links from your business blog to your main website can really help with the sites Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

However, these links to your main website (what Automattic refers to as a ‘third party’ website) are forbidden on a WordPress.com hosted blog.  Their terms of service state that by making content available on your blog, you warrant that it:

“does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites

Although it is impossible to understand what they mean by ‘unwanted commercial content’ (as this is always going to a matter of opinion), the threat itself is clear.  If someone at Automattic sees that your posts link to your business website – you could have your blog suspended until it is removed!

Conclusion

Even if you pay Automattic to have their adverts removed from your blog, you are still left with a blog that:

– You cannot link from as you wish
– You cannot market advertise or promote your services on or even insert adwords
– You cannot customise fully
– You cannot advertise other people’s products or services on
– You cannot add commercially useful plugins to

A ‘free’ business blog on WordPress.com, with the ads removed, your own url added, some slight changes to its look and some extra space will cost you between $70 and $145 dollars a year.  For not much more, you can enjoy full control of a blog and (most importantly) use it to market your business; by hosting it with another provider.

I love WordPress software and the people in the wordpress.com user community are fantastic! WordPress.com servers are really reliable and very secure too.  However, if you want a commercial blog that you can advertise your services on and you want the freedom to link when and where you wish – I believe you need an analternative host.

UPDATE: Because some people are commenting here, without checking the date of the post (September 2008), I have disabled comments.

2 years later, changes to WordPress.com Terms and Conditions make it slightly more business friendly, but ultimately it is still a platform over which someone else has control.  WordPress.com these days says you CAN link from the blog to your 3rd party site (or main website) though they decide if you are OVER linking!  Any time you elect to put your time and effort into building something, which someone else can suspend or delete, you are taking a risk.  If you are happy with that risk, WordPress.com is still the best free platform out there.

Think long and hard before you build your marketing on a platform they do not control.

Jim.

Filed Under: Blogging, Business Development, Copywriting, General marketing Tagged With: automattic, blog advertising, blog links, blog marketing, blogging, sales, small business, wordpress, wordpress.com, wordpress.com advertising

marketing advice, marketing help Hi! I'm Jim Connolly and I help business owners to make more sales, boost their profits and build amazing businesses. You can find out more here.

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