Business Blogging

Archive for October, 2008

This past week I went out fishing with my good friend Ken “Bear” Cole.  Ken owns and operates Fishing With Bear, a fishing guide service for the Portland Metro Area.  Over the past several months I’ve helped Ken with his website and business blogging effort and I’ve gotten to know him as a friend, but I’ve also learned a lot about my own business through our relationship.

Fishing is a LOT like running a business.  Everything from the type of fishing line, the type of rod and reel to the hook and bait make a difference on your being able to catch.  Also, hooking the fish doesn’t mean you’ll close the deal.  Sometimes the fish fights back, leaps from the water and spits out the hook; leaving you to start over again after expending effort.  The last time we went out fishing I hooked 13 fish, but only got 8 in the boat.  Still enough to feed my family, but those five fish that got away will never bite on my hook again.

How do we react, as business owners, in the same situation?  We invest money in fancy web-sites, expensive trade show displays and slick marketing materials and end up in a dance with our prospects that sometimes ends in miserable failure.  We justify the loss with sayings like, “you can’t win them all” or “every no leads me closer to a yes.”  Most of the time we fail to learn from our mistakes only to doom ourselves to repeating them over and over again.

While on the boat, after having lost my third fish off the line, Bear gave me some great advice, “don’t fight the fish too hard, let him have some line and reel him in slower.”  I was over pulling the line and ripping the hook right out of the fishes mouth.  I pull my line back in the water and almost immediately hooked another fish; this time getting it into the boat.  Ken held up the fish with the hook in his mouth and pointed out that I was actually hooked on the outside of the fishes mouth.  Had I pulled hard, the hook would have pulled through.

Sometimes we catch our customers with a slick campaign but misunderstand success to mean the program works, when in reality the hook wasn’t set and the customer never does business with us again.  Business, like in fishing, requires a solid connection with the customer.  Building a trusting relationship requires time and patience and that always costs money.  Targeting a single sale with any one client isn’t building a long term relationship, making sure the hook is set in the right place will make for a stronger connection and a better bond with the client.

Business blogging through a Personality Based Approach gives the customer a better insight into you as a person.  Knowing “you” is an important product or service differentiation.  If your client is presented with two competing opportunities to fill a need, but likes your views and believes, you will have the long term advantage.

The moral of my fishing experience with Bear is understand why the fish got away and you’ll be better equipped to bring the next one into the boat.  I also learned it is good to get away from the office from time to time and see my business from a different perspective.

Ed Bejarana
BusinessBlogging.net
a division of Zenith Exhibits, Inc.

To learn more information about how Personality Based Marketing can help you and your business, please call me at (503) 709-1454.

Social marketing via business blogging is the process of publishing articles the consumer base wants to read.  Last week week we took a big picture look at the process of picking your topics.  This week we will dive deeper into how to format your article such that the search engines and the consumer base like what you write.

The key to this process is knowing the associated keywords for your main topic.  We’ve constructed an example page on our business blogging wiki site that teaches you how to cross reference associated keyword phrases.  This process involves finding those keyword search phrases the search engines consider related; then including these associated keyword phrases in your article.

Including known associated keyword search phrases help bolster the relevancy rating of your article.  High relevancy ratings equals higher search engine visibility.  There is, of course, a catch.  The article you write must be interesting.  You can not just list your keywords in bullet points and proceed to make a sales presentation.

How do you make your article interesting?

You can take a position on something related to the keyword search phrase and make a professional statement; then support your reason for this position.  This blog site you are reading is one example of this type of approach.

You can write in a fictional character to help tell a story that supports your ideas.  You can see an example of this process by visiting my personal blog site.

You can present your personal history which led you to your chosen profession.  As the editor of the East Portland Chamber of Commerce Business Blog, I help chamber members structure their articles in this format when they are hosting a chamber event.  Visit the chamber blog site to see numerous examples of this style of writing.

Writing interesting articles is a learned art and requires practice.  Start by writing things that interest you and find a friend or close confidant to act as your proof reader/sounding board.  Don’t talk about your article with your friend.  Write it out and allow them to review your written product.  I will write more on this concept in the next article, but think of your writings as a pressure cooker. if you let out the steam you lose some effectiveness.

Ed Bejarana
BusinessBlogging.net
a division of Zenith Exhibits, Inc.

For more information on how to use business blogging to help promote your business, you can reach us by phone (503) 709-1454 or eMail Monday through Friday from 8am to 5pm PST.

Business blogging is topically focused social marketing.  We have created this site to help business owners understand the power and cost benefits of including business blogging as part of your over-all marketing strategy.

The basic premises behind business blogging is to capture readers who are surfing the web for things of interest.  More often than not, internet users browse the web as a source of entertainment (Pew Research study 2003).  if your business isn’t valued as something entertaining, then more than half of all internet searchers will skip you and your message.

Who determines if your article is entertaining?  The search engines exist to present searchers results that satisfy the search topic.  Knowing the facts as stated by the Pew research group, search engines add more weight to the articles that are topically focused, popular, and relevantly balanced.  If the secret search engine equation says your article is entertaining, then it is shown high in the search results.

What constitutes written entertainment?  Since search engine spiders still cannot make a personal judgment call, the process is broken down into a mathematical equation.  Search engine companies keep a very close guard on their formulas, so nobody really knows for sure how they measure article value.  We are assuming the Flesch Reading Ease formula is at least partially in play.

Skipping over the formula, I believe there is an easier way to determine entertainment value.  When you give it to your personal editors, do they like it?  At the end of the article, does your reader have more knowledge, feel happier, or want to read more?  Then it is entertaining.

Before you can write an entertaining article, we must first make sure we are writing on a topic people are searching for on the internet.  Using free tools provided by the search engines, you can look up average searches per month for any keyword search phrase.  Start by picking five or six different article topics and then use Google’s keyword tool to see if there is enough traffic.  How much traffic is enough traffic will vary based on your industry.  If you are in a very competitive market, then you many only need a few thousand searches per month on a longer, more specific keyword phrase.

The last consideration for topically focused social marketing is making sure you keep your article focused.  Write on one topic at a time.  Don’t try to introduce multiple topics in a single article because the over all relevancy rating will be significantly lower.  Again, keeping in mind that the search engines are in business to give searches what they are searching for in as few searches as possible, the clearer your article is on topic the better.

Let’s recap.  Business blogging is a very viable marketing tool, but to be effective, your articles must be:

Ed Bejarana
BusinessBlogging.net
a division of Zenith Exhibits, Inc.

If you are interested in learning more about how Zenith Exhibits can help your company start business blogging, then please call us at (503) 709-1454 or eMail me at ed@zenithexhibits.com