Business Blogging

This is a myth put forth by some marketing consultants and debunked in the book “Marketing Myths that are Killing Business”, by Clancy & Shulman.  Truth is it is hard to tell if a marketing program is working.  Well, that is until the internet and business blogging.

When we blog for business, we keep our topic focused.  That topic gets good initial visibility on the search engines and using the FREE Google Analytics software, we can measure the effectiveness of the posting.  If people are digesting your content AND visiting another page on your company website, then your business blog marketing strategy is working…  However, if the phone does not ring then one might conclude that the effort failed.

Your website makes the case for people to call.

• Use your blog to capture keyword focused search engine visibility
• Provide value to the reader in the form of knowledge they can use
• leave the selling to your other Web Pages

All to often we, as business owners / operators, panic when we see lots of web traffic but not phone calls.  This is a business matrix.  Find the most common page visitors read next, after your business blog posting.  Have a trusted friend read the second page and ask them this question:

What, if any, action are you inspired to take?

If the answer is none, then you have found the failure in your marketing program.  Modify the page and repeat the process.  In business, we improve that which we measure.  Use Google Analytics to measure your marketing effort and keep adjusting until your phone starts to ring.

There is no such thing as instant results or a sure thing in internet marketing.  For that matter, we can expand that statement to all marketing.  The most expensive TV commercials can (and often do) fail.  Therefore, when looking to business blogging as a marketing tactic for your business, do so with the following basic understanding: business blogging is a long term process, not a short term solution.

Unlike other marketing methods, business blogging is the process of building a relationship with potential customers.  When blogging, consider the following:

1. People prefer to do business with people they know and like.
2. Nobody likes to hear (or read) a slick sales pitch.
3. Just because you say it doesn’t make it so.

As business owners it is hard to avoid the trap of self importance.  When we attend chamber meetings and business networking events we spend our precious few seconds giving our elevator speech (which is almost always an abbreviated sales pitch).  Because an elevator speech is geared toward educating folks about your products and services, they make for horrible business blog postings.

When blogging, you should focus on helping others.  Keep your topic focused on your visitor and give them FREE information they can use to improve something.

Do not try to write a single blog post on more than a single topic.  Your first target audience member are the search engines; if you try to include too many topics, then the search engines will not know how to list your info.

Lastly, be personal.  Business blogging is informal by nature: so do not try to write poetic master works.  The biggest fear of business blogging is someone will judge your business based on a mis-spelled word or the incorrect use or a comma.  Some may, but most will not.  Unless, of course, your business is writing!

Ed Bejarana Zenith Exhibits, Inc.

Get a FREE business blog site at PDXchat.com

Pay Per Click Advertising is the fastest way to get new traffic to your website, but it requires lots of forethought in the ad creation.

Understanding the Limitations

Besides the punctuation limitations found in the Google Adwords help section, here are field size restrictions you must take into account when building your ad.

Headline:  25 characters Description line 1:  35 characters Description line 2:  35 characters Display URL :  35 characters (must be a valid looking address) Destination URL:  Any length necessary

Before getting starting, keep the following thoughts in mind as you create your first ad.

1. Don’t Rush!
   1. Rushing leads to unplanned action and unplanned action has no measurement system by which improvements can be made.
   2. Rushing also leads to poor keyword selection.  The goal is NOT maximum clicks, it is getting the maximum value for each click.  Less is more, fewer, more qualified leads will out pace thousands of unqualified leads
2. Plan Each Word
   1. You don’t have a lot of space.  Reader will be skimming, so abbreviations are acceptable, but they must be obvious.
   2. Focus on your target audience.  Don’t shoot for everyone, because you will be paying for clicks that will immediately bounce away.
3. Create multiple (competing) ads
   1. Your great slogan may be a legend in your own mind!  Run multiple ad versions for the same (limited) keyword set so you can see which ads work best.

Use Google’s Keyword tool to help you find the best keyword options for your desired ad.  Don’t write your ad to random keywords; find the right keywords for your perfect ad.

Using the Google Keyword tool to try and create your ad will lead to an expensive failure.  Decide what you are selling, write copy using the character restrictions above, and then find the best keywords to support the ad copy you created.

Websites are mission critical in today’s business because 88% of all American Internet users “Use a search engine to find information.” (Pew Internet – April 2009)  WordPress based sites are search engine friendly and can be setup to automatically fill in the necessary meta data fields.  Plus WordPress uses a ping feature to alert the search engines on new or updated information on your website.

The most important reason to switch to WordPress

You can add, change or remove information with out having to hire a web programmer.  You also don’t need any expensive software, you need only your web browser and an internet connection.

WordPress is not limited to a certain number of pages or posts.  You can write a separate page for each of your products and services.  Individual pages or posts for your services improve your search engine visibility because there is more information on a single topic on your page or post.  Since search engines read your content and evaluate the page value for their searchers, have a single topic per page means your content will be scored higher.  A higher content score translates into a higher search engine position.

WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are thousands of people all over the world working on it.  Writing new code, improving the technology and making new tools that help your visitors find you easier.  The best part, is WordPress is FREE.

Click here to read more about WordPress.

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.

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.

“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.

Short answer…sort of.  My twitter SEO marketing campaigns have been so successful that I hardly have time to maintain my follow / unfollow duties.  An important daily maintenance activity is removing those who don’t follow you back AND finding new “targeted” twitter users to follow.

I’ve watched this application grow and mature into a professional marketing tool AND with economic conditions being tough, the guys in product development priced the software to a point where you can’t afford NOT to use the software.  I purchased the five profile version and now don’t have to spend ANY time managing my tweets, DM’s, targeted follows, follow backs, and unfollows.

This is the PERFECT software for busy small business folks working on limited budgets.