Business Blogging

Back in the delirious, go-go heyday of Internet Marketing 1.0, in the distant era of the mid-’90s, all that was on the collective minds of marketers, site owners, and web publishers was the giddy notion of “click” or “hits.”  The more, the merrier, or so the thinking went.

We must get to the point where we stop viewing traffic as the goal and get back to what makes us money–customers!

Search engine Optimization (SEO) is about presenting a solution to a searcher at the moment they need it.  Good news for business, gone are the days where searches only typed in one or two word searches.  Searchers are now asking search engines questions, using full sentences and even punctuation.  The service you offer first starts as a question in a prospects mind.  That prospect goes to one of two (primary) places to find the answer–a friend or the internet.

Most small business folks who are trying to get found on the internet view Google, Yahoo and a like like the phone book.  The phone book uses a single keyword sorting system to organize data.  When you are only dealing with a few thousand options, a single keyword (like Accountant, Mechanic, or Plumber) works just fine.  However, on the internet there are billions of service providers.  What is the important benefits for your service?

Writing your web content for a specific audience with a specific benefit need.  Use you blog to write lots of content and watch your conversion rate go through the roof!

Until just a few years ago, Google changed its rankings algorithm every month or so.  The ranking algorithm is what many SEOs live and die by–it’s the complex, top-secret formula that determines how high (or low) a site or web page ranks in organic search results.  Is yours the top result on the first page of results, or do you show up as result #24 on the third page?

My clients often ask for advice on how to gain a first page listing on Google.  Some have even went so far as to ask if they paid more money, could I “make it happen.”

Everyone in business today knows that a first page ranking on the search engines is needed for business to be generated.  Since the decrease in phone book importance is VERY evident, most business folks are seeking the buy for placement option that once was available in the phone book.  Pay enough money for a big ad and Volla!  No more!  Those days are gone.

“…there are no absolute guarantees any page will be listed for free on Google, or on any of the other major search engines.”

As business owners, your new mission is build great content and publish often.  Gone are the days of build-it and forget-it.  Today, consumers (and Google) demand fresh information.

Of course, you can pay for placement on Google, Yahoo and alike–it is called pay per click.

Big companies can afford expensive market research.  Small business, to stay competitive, can turn to business blogging as a way to measure consumer acceptance of new products and/or services.

Armed with a target market profile and Google analytics; create two articles based on a desired action.  That action may be visiting a contact page, clicking on a download or visiting a specific page.  Set your Google Analytics to record the navigation path so you can identify the page source.

Schedule your “pre-written” blog postings to publish a few weeks apart.  Do not try and publish two marketing messages for the same product or service at the same time.

Use normal social networking promotions to bring additional traffic to your articles.  The article that generates the greatest desired action wins!

This brings up the most important consideration when business blogging–a plan!  Improvements in business starts with n organized plan of action.  Do not blog by the seat of your pants.  The goal is to build BETTER traffic, not just MORE traffic.

Put another way, business blogging will allow you to convert more visitors into customers because in a business blog article you have more time with the reader to build a relationship.

by Rebecca Lieb

“Rebecca’s book is chapter-by-chapter gold for anyone who needs to understand how we find information on the Web.”

Kevin M. Ryan, Motivity Marketing, Inc., and Chairman of Search Engine Strategies Advisory Board In this book, leading search optimization expert Rebecca Lieb brings together more than 50 absolutely crucial facts and insights decision-makers must know to drive more web traffic through better search engine placement. The Truth About Search Engine Optimization doesn’t deliver abstract theory: it delivers quick, bite-size, just-the-facts information and plain-English explanations that executives, decision-makers, and even small business owners can actually use, no matter what kind of sites you’re running, or what your goals are.

You will learn how to set realistic goals for search optimization… attract qualified traffic, not just “any” site visitors… incorporate search engine optimization into both new sites and redesigns… write for users… implement search-friendly content management… avoid problems with rich content technologies such as Flash and AJAX… create metatags that actually work… use public relations, blogging, and other techniques to drive traffic… budget and manage search optimization projects… and much more.

Spiders, robots, and crawlers are your friends.  In the name of search engine optimization, you’ll not only learn to love them, but also you’ll actually go out of your way to attract them to your site.

Sitemaps are particularly useful for websites containing content that cannot be accessed through a browseable interface.

When a spider hits your website, it will read your text and visit all your links.  The critical factor is making sure ALL your website data is reachable via links on your home page.  The golden rule is if the spiders don’t crawl your site, the search engines will not list your business.

Things to consider:

1. Keep your most power keyword laced text near the top of your page.
2. Write your text using bullets, lists, heading tags, and on-site links.
3. Don’t over due it!  Keep it simple and keep your focus on the value to the visitor.

Before diving into business blogging, we need to compare and contrast Personality Based Marketing with Traditional Social Networking. While not an exact science, we can use basic math to weight each marketing model to determine which has more potential. Traditional Social Networking Model Traditional Social Marketing Connection Diagram Traditional Social Marketing Connection Diagram

The strategy behind business blogging is to create multiple points of entry for your company website AND establish a connection with a target consumer market.

Looking at traditional social networking, the multi-connection opportunity exists in the relationships between friends. For a complete list of the connection relations, click on the diagram.

Social networks are classified as word of mouth marketing. With word of mouth marketing, success is dependent on the openness of the relationships between online friends. For our example, we will assume person 1 grants full social network access to person A AND because of person 1′s relation with person 3, person 3 grants access to his social network to person A. Last assumption is we do not count person 1 in our formula because we are assuming he to already be a customer of person A and therefore is not the target audience for the sales presentations.

Conversion rate expense is the time it takes to navigate the network from node to node and while it seems extensive the actual expense is unknown and therefore ignored in our equation.

Conversion success is dependent on the qualification process, but using a traditional one out of ten conversion factor, person A would need to convince person 1 to grant access to all six of his friends AND convince person 3 to grant access to his one friend.

With only seven people in the network (in our example) there is a 70% * 10% or a 7% chance of closing a deal. Put in terms of out one to ten close rate, there is a 70% chance that the marketing effort will produce a conversion.

Social networking only works one sales presentation at a time. There is little to no long term value in the introduction. Person 3 has no direct connection with person A and therefore no emotional influence towards doing business. With each new sales presentation there is a one in ten chance of a conversion. With our 70% conversion factor: * two presentations equal 1.4 conversions * three presentations equal 2.1 conversions * four presentations equal 3.5 conversions

Ignoring the possibility of SPAM tagging, we will assume best case scenario. Modified Traditional Marketing Connection Diagram Modified Traditional Marketing Connection Diagram Actually, person 3′s business relationship with person A is also emotionally tied in with his business/personal relationship with person 1. If the relationship between person 3 and person 1 dissolves, there is no further connection between person 3 (and and person A.

If person 3 drops out of person 1′s network after your first sales presentation, then the formula changes:

50% * 10% = 5% conversion percentage or a 50% conversion rate. so here is our new conversions chart:

* first presentation, 7 people .7 conversions * second presentation, 5 people 1.2 conversions * third presentation, 5 people 1.7 conversions * forth presentation, 5 people 2.2 conversions

By losing one member from person 1′s network, your conversion rate has dropped 38% Social Networking Theory Dr Robin Dunbar theorized humans have the cognitive ability to maintain stable relationships with 150 people. These 150 people are considered ones Social Network. While other scientists has suggested numbers higher than Dunbar’s, 150 is a good enough number to use for our exploitative purposes. Six degrees of separation Six degrees of separation

We have all heard of the theory called Six Degrees of Separation. Putting Dunbar’s theory together with the six degrees theory, we can conclude that every social network will have 25 people in common. While there is incredible value in the value of any one person’s social network there is great expense to gaining access to the network. While we ignored the actual time expense value we can conclude the value is number of sales presentations * X (representing time).

In our example above, our time expense would be 22X or 22 sales presentations times the amount of time it took to make the sales presentations.

Social marketing is the act of using common relationships as evidence to support expanding access to your social network in exchange for access to the other parties social network.

Most social networking sites automatically report friends in common, but the sharing of unique friends is voluntary on the part of the member. Because of SPAM abuse and predatory horror stories on the internet, the sharing of social networks is reserved for teenagers and other non-business people.

A new system of connecting business people together must be developed. One that is more efficient, higher success rate, and less SPAM. Personality Based Marketing Model Personality based marketing connection diagram Personality based marketing connection diagram Personality based marketing is using topic based information to build multiple connection points through the major search engines.

In this diagram, website A has four categories (a, b, c & d). Each category has five articles (1, 2, 3, 4 & 5). Each article is the primary point of entry and is open to everyone who search for the topic of the article. Success using this marketing approach is dependent on topic focus so the search engines can verify classification. High relevancy will improve organic search result listing. All paths from the internet to the website count as a point of entry.

Each article has an author and those authors become associated with the category and topic of the article. These become connections between people with similar interests.

From a conversion point of view, building a relationship with the reader prior to making a sales presentation improves the conversion factor. Conversion improvement is dependent on writing style and quality in relationship to the product or service, but there is a disconnect from the author if the subject is only about the product or service being discussed, so there is an unknown point where conversion success drops off exponentially. To simplify our equation, well assume the article is written correctly.

If the same seven people in person 1′s direct and indirect social network are browsing the web and come across person A’s article, then all things being equal there is a 70% chance of a conversion right from the start; but the conversion rate is actually higher.

Because each person who reads the article found the link in an organic search result and not through a word of mouth connection, the emotional impact of the presentation is higher than our previous sales example. Now instead of relying on the chance of interest we know with absolute certainty there IS interest. Transaction Stool Concept Transaction Stool Concept If we view each transaction as needing legs to support the decision, our stool would need at least three legs.

By searching for the specific topic which brought the searcher to your article, the prospect has already shown a need or want and thus has a 33.3% conversion rate.

Building trust or likability between you and the reader (i.e. consumer) improves your close rate to 66.6%.

In our previous example it required 22 sales presentations to close 2.5 deals; using the Personality Based Marketing Model we need only make 8 sales presentations to achieve the same close rate. Multiplier Effect of Business Blogging Multiplier Effect of Business Blogging The effort that went into making the 22 sales presentations we determined was 22X. In the Personality Based Marketing Model the time investment is higher, we will call it Y and we will assume Y is greater than X, but where X increases with each sales presentation Y remains constant.

Since Y represents the time it takes to create one article, 2Y represents the time it takes to create two articles. Using the traditional social networking model our target market never changed, they were the same individuals. Using Personality Based Marketing, each article can target a different market segment and because every article remains indexed on the search engines, the long term search value of the article continues making sales presentations to anyone who searches no matter when they search. Business Blogging Concept

Blog articles are a reflection of you. Your believes, ethics, and thought process become searchable marketing material. When balanced against equal options for your product or service, knowing your believes, ethics and thought process will help sway the consumers purchase decision.

What if the consumer doesn’t agree with your believes, ethics or thought process? Then they will probably not do business with you. However, for every person that chooses one way there is a consumer that will choose another way. Putting your believes, ethics and thought process in a searchable manner will attract consumers with similar believes, ethics and thought processes. Business Blogging in Practice

Business blogging can be a way to increase consumer awareness, customer satisfaction, or industry recognition. No matter how you slice it, business blogging is about building relationships.

Typical marketing experts will tell you to use features and benefits based or solutions based presentations. While these marketing approaches are very valid and work in most every other internet based presentation, business blogging is a perfect platform for a personality based marketing approach.

Originally created as a social communication medium, blogging was a way for people to tell their story. While political discussion forums, news outlets and and other social blog sites have flourished, business blog sites have struggled to gain readership traction. Why? Because, unless your business is social in nature, using a social marketing approach is foreign.

Like any language, learning how to adopt a social slant for business blogging is a relatively straight forward process. First you find your voice and then you practice. To help find you voice, you need to know what consumers want to hear, so keyword selection should be an ongoing process for you to learn what searchers are searching for on the major search engines.

Once you identify your primary keyword selections, it is time to focus your article text to capitalize on search engine visibility strategies. Writing for search engine visibility is more of an experiment than an exact science. While there are very clear, industry recognized, techniques for getting seen by Google, Yahoo and a like; you won’t really know what works until you try. This means you will need to make a concerted effort to find the right language for you and your product or service offering.

If you need assistance building or improving your business blog we can be reached at (503) 709-1454 or via eMail.

“Search engines drive website traffic; social networks promote brand awareness and blogs encourage community engagement.  But what about eMail?”  Wrote Peter Prestipino, Editor-in-Chief and Mike Phillips, Senior Editor for Website Magazine.com.

The article goes on to explain the importance of including eMail marketing in your company internet marketing strategy.  My take from the article is the importance to have a multi-faceted internet marketing approach.  In today’s market, relying on any one internet marketing strategy is a recipe for failure.

Rather than preaching, I’ll dive into the topic.

Who is your audience? Do you level best to spell out the nitty gritty details of your target customers.  Education, marital status, children, income level, hobbies and interests, social economic status, political believes, and anything else you can think of that will help you find search habits, locations, and motivating factors.

Since Google (and all the other search engines) are motivated by relevancy to keyword searches, the more specific your landing page content to the target audience and their search habits, the better.

If your website does not incorporate a business blog, you should meet with your web design team and start the site redesign process.

How? Stop thinking about your internet marketing effort as a sales process and more of an education opportunity (except in cases where a click and buy presentation is desired).  View your business as auditioning for clients.  Provide detailed, helpful information for “people” to digest and learn from.

Knowing the full demographic make up of your target customer will help you create highly targeted content for your website, social networking messages, blog articles and eMail campaigns.

You can have as many target customer profiles as is needed to reach your desired business level, but stay disciplined enough to create marketing collateral for every marketing channel for each customer profile.