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Marketing ideas and answers at your fingertips

June 11, 2010 by Jim Connolly

There are thousands of marketing ideas and answers here on the blog, spread over hundreds of pages and that number is growing daily.  Of course, as new material is being added, it can get harder and harder to find what you are looking for.

So, to make it easier for you to find the marketing ideas and answers that you need, I have added a new search box – That’s it on the right.

Give it a go

If you haven’t already used it, give it a go – Just type in some words that are related to your marketing query and watch the results!

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

Filed Under: General marketing Tagged With: marketing blog

Are you getting bankable results from your blog?

May 12, 2010 by Jim Connolly

Fact: Very few small business owners who blog, generate anything like the results they could.

Why?

This is the easiest question I have ever answered here! The reason so few bloggers attract the volume of sales, leads or enquiries they should, is that they copy what they see other bloggers doing.

Here’s what I see all day every day:  I see bloggers writing a valuable, correctly optimized blog post, before heading off to their preferred social networking sites to try and get the post noticed.  Sound familiar?  If it does, I hope it’s not because you are using that same approach.  If you are, you are missing the most important elements – those rare, additional steps that make all the difference and get people spending money with you!

I was explaining this to a new client of mine yesterday afternoon.  She’s intelligent, charismatic and a specialist in her profession.  However, like many specialists who use blogging as part of their marketing mix, she had been using the same approach that I outlined above – which failed her (which is why she hired me.)

An hour into our meeting, I showed her what’s possible when you use the right approach.  I quickly checked the email account, which gets all the enquiries generated from this blog.  In that hour alone, there had been 3 emails, including an enquiry for my services.  By the end of business yesterday, that enquiry became a confirmed, new client and I’m really looking forward to helping them achieve bankable results too.  I’m not telling you that to impress you, but to impress upon you just what’s possible, when you use the correct strategy.

Of course, there are 2 major problems with trying to achieve success, by copying what you see others doing.

  1. You might be copying what does not work.  It’s easy to see a blog with lots of comments or lots of retweets / facebook “likes” etc – and assume this means the blog is also commercially successful.  It doesn’t!All those measurements show you is that there are people who commented there or retweeted the post.It tells you zero about how commercially effective that blog is at generating new business for it’s owner.  Many of my clients come to me with large social networks and active blogs that they have worked really hard on, with nothing to show for it.  You know what?  People will have been copying THEIR approach too, because it looked successful from the outside!
  2. Not only may you be copying what does not work, but even if you found a blog that was doing things right, the untrained eye will miss it completely.That’s because the many differences between a blog that’s an income generating machine and one that’s not, are extremely subtle.For example, I don’t know much about golf, so when I see a golfer hitting a golf ball, that’s all I see.  When a professional golfer sees that same guy hitting that same ball, they can identify exactly what’s happening – what’s failing, what needs removing and what needs to be added to the golfer’s swing etc.

When it comes to marketing, a blog is like any other tool.  If used correctly, it can easily become your best source of new, targeted business.  However, just like every other marketing tool, only a tiny fraction of small business owners use blogs correctly, for what they want to achieve.

The rest just dabble and as a result, it costs them a fortune in lost business and YEARS in wasted time.

In short, if you want to enjoy better results you need a better strategy.  You need an effective strategy that’s been developed for; you, your business, your industry, your unique resources and what you want to achieve.  Whatever you elect to do, if you are not currently getting the regular stream of new business from your blog that you deserve, please change course.

As I have said here many times before; if you are rowing your boat in the wrong direction, no matter how hard you row, you will simply end up further and further away from where you want to be.  You deserve far better than that!

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

Filed Under: Blogging, Business Development, General marketing Tagged With: blog marketing, bogging strategy, marketing blog

REVEALED – The fast track to wealth!

January 29, 2010 by Jim Connolly

It’s a fact: We live in an age where people are seeking instant gratification.  More than this, many people want results immediately – without having to do anything.

Ever wondered why there are so many of those spammy looking sites, selling ebooks / programs that promise to make you RICH in 30 days?

Those sites exist because there are a significant number of people who REALLY want to believe it’s possible.  They see the promise of instant wealth and think;
“It’s only a $29 ebook – why not?”

They then download the ebook and realise they’ve just wasted $29 and are no closer to that silver bullet for success they dream about.  It was a scam, like all the others.

By the way, I’ll give my secret to getting on the fast track to riches in a moment – And for free!

Get rich slow

I know lots of successful businesspeople, many of whom are self-made millionaires.  Guess how many got rich quick?

None!  By the way, that’s NOT a coincidence.

The simple truth is that lasting success comes as the result of an ongoing commitment to intelligent activity.

My last speaking gig (almost 5 years ago) earned me over £12,000 for around 4 hours work.  On my drive home, I had a sudden realisation.

I realised that I had just been paid £3000 an hour!

Then it hit me!

I was wrong.  What REALLY happened, was that I had been paid £12,000 for giving people the benefit of years worth of my experiences.  I had been paid so handsomely, because of my reputation as a marketer – built on the back of years worth of bloody hard work.

I had not earned that £12,000 on the day – But on all those days before the event; as I burnt the midnight oil, perfecting the effective marketing strategies and ideas that I had become known for.

My secret to getting wealthy as quickly as possible?

The fastest way to achieve the best possible results, is not to waste a second of your time thinking about short-cuts to instant wealth.

Filed Under: General marketing Tagged With: business development, get rich quick, get rich slow, marketing blog, marketing ideas

Are you still on target?

January 24, 2010 by Jim Connolly

I was listening to some people chatting yesterday, about their New Year’s resolutions.  It seems that just 23 days into the New Year, every one of them had broken their resolutions.  This is not uncommon.  The queue to use the equipment at you local gym will be getting smaller right now, just as the queues at your local Kentucky Fried Chicken get longer!

This got me thinking: How many of us are still on target, with the resolutions and plans we set for our businesses?

The ability to make a good decision, and then see it through, is one of the master skills of business success.

However, as my mentor Jim Rohn used to say, even if people could keep the doctor away by just eating one apple each day, most people wouldn’t!

Why not take a moment to review your business plans and check if you are still on target.  Those plans you made deserve the opportunity to fly.  You need to give them wings, by ensuring you take action to see them through.

By the way: If you need some powerful, motivational help right now, this could be exactly what you need!

Filed Under: General marketing Tagged With: business plans, jim rohn, marketing blog, motivation

Marketing blog experiment

December 27, 2009 by Jim Connolly

As regular readers will have noticed, the blog looks quite a bit different today!  That’s because I’m running a marketing experiment with a new, more basic looking blog design.

One of the great things about the Internet is that you can easily see, very quickly if a design change is encouraging people to use the site / blog differently.  For example, I will be able to see if there are changes in things like; the number of pages the ‘average’ person views, how long they spend on each page, how many times a page is shared, etc.

I’m really curious if making the blog’s design more basic, will help readers to focus on the actual content; which is what the blog’s all about, after all. Let’s see!

One of the benefits of running this blog, using the Headway wordpress theme (affiliate link) is that I can quickly make changes like these myself, usually in seconds.  As effective marketing is all about testing and measuring, the ability to make changes so quickly, and then adapt based on the feedback, is massively valuable.  Equally, if it’s quickly apparent that the new design needs changing, this can also be done in minutes.  That’s great peace of mind and allows for changes to be made with total confidence.

Sharing my results with you, as always

Because the vast majority of my readers have their own website or blog, I will let you know if the new, more basic look generates an improvement or drop in the blog’s statistics / analytics.  This way, we can learn from my experiment together. I’m guessing it’s going to take a week or so, before I see any relevant data.  Rest assured that as soon as I do, I will pass the findings on to you.

What (if anything) do you think about the new, basic look?  Also, which blogs do you read most often and do you think the design of that blog influences how you read it?  Please take a moment to share your thoughts.

Filed Under: Blogging, Copywriting Tagged With: blog design, blog marketing, marketing blog

What’s your opinion on this?

December 22, 2009 by Jim Connolly

Ever wondered why some blog posts get lots of comments and other posts get very few?

I have one post on this blog with almost 700 comments and others with just a few, so why does this happen?  Well, there are thousands of posts around the Internet, offering long lists of what to do in order to encourage comments; however, in my experience, it’s easier than that!

Here are what I have found to be the primary things to consider, if you want to encourage people to comment on your blog.

Ask for feedback

The first thing to do, if you want people to comment, is to ask them.  People like to know that their feedback is welcome.

Show you value feedback

There’s a world of difference between saying you want people to comment or share their feedback with you and showing you value their feedback.  A blogger who really values reader comments, gets into the comments section of the post and communicates with the people there.

I switched from using a website to using a blog exclusively for the comments. I ‘chat’ with just about everyone who comments here, so people can see for themselves that I am reading every comment and listening to them.

Make it easy for people to comment

In an effort to reduce spam, some bloggers force their readers to use what are sometimes called a captcha, before they can post a comment.  This is where the reader leaves a comment and then has to look at an image, with a series of heavily distorted letters or numbers, which they then have to enter into a box.  It’s a pain in the rear end and many people just won’t use them.

I also question how necessary captcha’s are for the average blogger. There are some amazingly powerful anti-spam plugings available, which will catch over 99% of all spam.

Leave the conversation open

If you write a blog post, which finishes by closing the conversation, you make it hard for anyone to find something to add.  I did this in yesterdays post, by finishing the post with a series of links (more on that in a moment.)  The post was intended as a resource rather than a conversation piece.  This is NOT the way to encourage comments, so try to use this approach sparingly, if you want people to give you their feedback.  I’ve only every used it a handful of times here.

In advance of today’s post, I wanted to be able to show you what happens, when a blog that gets regular comments breaks these rules.  So, I wrote yesterdays blog post in such a way that it did not ask for comments.  It also closed the conversation and ended in a series of links.  So, there was nothing there to respond to.

24 hours later, it’s attracted just 1 comment!

What makes you comment on a blog?

What things either encourage you to comment on a blog or stop you from wanting to comment?

Do you think the relationship you have with the blogger is important?

What about the ability to get your comments published immediately – rather than having them held for moderation?

A lot of my readers are bloggers, so your feedback here would be of enormous value to them as well as myself.  Please take a moment to share your feedback.

Filed Under: General marketing Tagged With: blog comments, blogging, Copywriting, marketing blog

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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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