The problem with the Yellow Pages is… they just don’t work like they used to. 

Yellow Page ads are expensive…, plus they tie you even more closely to the phone company. I mean–haven’t we paid enough money to Ma Bell over the years? 

The way to get prospects to call you ready to buy what you’re selling these days is by achieving top rankings for your web pages. Top Rankings help you in two ways (1) you get more targeted traffic to your website, and (2) you’re viewed as being more trustworthy (if you’re top ranked, you must be good, making it easier to sell).

One of my clients–Back Bay Hardware in Boston, MA–wanted to achieve greater search engine visibility to take their business to the next level, so we did three things, which I’m going to share with you: 

Three Really Easy Ways to Get Top Rankings:

1.) Sign up for a Universal Business Listing

With a UBL, you can list once,  and be found everywhere, and you don’t even need a land-line. If you use your cell phone for your business–you can use that. And it’s only $49 bucks/year. 

UBL distributes your batch client listings to all the major Search and Directory outlets – hundreds in total. These include: 

• Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN
• Online Yellow Pages such as Superpages, Yellowpages.com
• Portals and Guides such as AOL, CitySearch
• Databases like infoUSA and Acxiom
• Cell Phones and Mobile devices such as BlackBerry and iPhone
• 411 Directory Assistance
• In-Car GPS Navigation
• Telematics such as OnStar

The Result? Take a look. They are listing “B” in Google Maps 

The downside? The result may differ a bit depending on your proximity to the center of your geographic location. But at the very least, your information is accurate everywhere! 

2.) Create a Wordpress Website with All-in-one SEO (WordPress Plugin)

All-in-One SEO makes Search Engine Optimization easy by optimizing keyword phrases on each page of your website, which gives your website a boost in the search engine rankings, and increases traffic to your website. 

In this case we’re trying to not only achieve top rankings for search terms like “Hardware Store Back Bay”, “Hardware Store 02116″, but also “Hardware Store Boston”. 

All-in-One SEO is a WordPress Plugin

What is a “Keyword Phrase?” ~ Just in case you are not 100% sure about what a keyword phrase is, this is the word or phrase that someone will type into Google when they’re searching for information.  

3.) Optimize your Web Pages using the SEO Pressor Plugin  

SEO Pressor is a handy little On-Page Optimization Wordpress Plugin that forces you to choose one keyword phrase per page, and reminds you to do all the right things to optimize your web pages (proper use of Title Tags, Header tags, Alt tags, Hyperlink Text–boring SEO stuff), tells you your keyword density, and provides you a score that serves as a guideline for improvement.  

It’s really awesome and I use it on all my websites! 

Search Engine Ranking Analysis for Back Bay Hardware (click to view details)

You can see the search engine ranking analysis for Back Bay Hardware in greater detail by clicking the image above.

The Result? Back Bay Hardware is #1 for the Key Phrase “Hardware Store Boston” on Yahoo, Bing, and Google. 

By the way, you get the best results if you do a little keyword research prior to setting up your UBL – Universal Business Listing. If you’d like I can have one of my guys do it for you for $299.00. If you fill out this form we can have your listing updated in 2-3 business days. 

If you’d like more information about how to achieve top rankings please contact me today.

As marketing folks, we certainly have their work cut out for us–especially in this brave new world of social and new media, where relationship-building is literally everything!

Every small business owner, it would seem, now has a LinkedIn account, a Facebook Page, a Twitter Account, and many of the smaller retailers have Yelp and Foursquare accounts.  How are we supposed to keep up with all this? It can be overwhelming!

Yet manage we must

As Marketers, we’re ultimately graded (and paid) based upon the quantity and quality of qualified leads and sales that we generate through our websites, blog posts, and email blasts.  Our success (or failure) in using Social Media effectively is about  (1) connecting (2) listening (3) engaging, and (4) turning social connections into customers.

Enter Social Media CRM: Social media CRMs are applications that aggregate information on your contacts’ social profiles, making it easier to engage and ultimately influence and educate them to the point where they’re ready to do business with you. That’s why I’ve evaluated several of the the top Social Media CRMs:

Evaluation of Three Social Media CRM Tools:

Sprout Social - is very simple, clean, and easy-to-use, and has toolsets perhaps better suited for the small, retail business or marketing agency. 

Dashboard: They’ve put all the information that matters in one, simple interface, with all the information you need to measure success and know exactly where to spend your time. Brand Monitoring & Research: If there’s a conversation about your business anywhere on the web, whether it be tweets, reviews, blog posts, news…, it’ll show up in your inbox. Also, you can research users based on their Twitter profile to find targeted prospective customers and influencers based on criteria you define. Contact Management: You can manage all of your social media connections in one place, complete with history, notes, and more. 30 Day Free Trial. $9.95/month, $49.50/month for expanded capabilities.

Batch Book -  A very easy-to-use business solution, minus Facebook (as of now), which makes it perhaps better suited for the small to medium sized business selling to other businesses.

To get started you just import your email addresses, and click of the “Search Social Network” button, you can easily find and add your contact’s Twitter, Flickr and LinkedIn profile information. When you view the contact record, you will have links to social networking profiles as well as their last three tweets, most recent Flickr photos, and a LinkedIn summary will appear alongside their contact information and communication history, giving you a more holistic view of their social networking activity. Batch Book actually acts more like a traditional CRM with web forms, to-do lists, and pipeline development. 30 Day Free Trial. $9.95/month for solo users, up to $99.95/month for up to 50 users.

Gist - An elegant business solution perhaps better geared towards the enterprise.

Dashboard: Gist helps you meet your contacts where they are, whether they’re in email, social networks, on your mobile phone and many other sources. Gist brings your contacts into one place to give you a full view of your network making it easy to find anyone, anytime.  News & Updates: You can get the latest news, blog posts, and tweets for anyone in your professional network delivered where you want it, when you want it. Always keep up to date with all of your contacts. Contact Management: You can see all your contacts across all your inboxes, social networks, and lists assembled in one place for easy access and use – no invites to send or friends to request. Gist brings the whole mobile media dimension to Social Media CRM by integrating with: Outlook, Gmail, Lotus Notes, Saleforce.com, iPhone, and Droid. Ease of Implementation: Very easy to implement. The signup wizard accessed all my contacts through Gmail and linked Google Calendar, as well as Twitter and Facebook. It was going to make me manually upload my LinkedIn Contacts (which is a bit of a pain), so I didn’t do it.  Free Trial (indefinite) while its in its Beta Period.

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Each of these Social Media CRM tools offer Social Media users a major step forward. While Gist looks like the enterprise version with its integration capabilities, it seems poised to be the solution for larger businesses.

Sprout Social has more of a small business/retail/agency flavor and makes it extremely easy to manage Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Yelp, and Foursquare–for ten different accounts for only $49.00/month. Most importantly, it grades you on your engagement and influence with your followers, and provides suggestions to help you improve–which is what a Social Media CRM should help you accomplish.

The Best Social Media CRM: Sprout Social is my choice because I’m a small business marketer/marketing agency. I’m going to use it to help my clients manage their social media.

If you have any other questions about Social Media CRM please contact me today.

Can you bring them back to life?

Most leads are declared dead prematurely. If this happens at your company, this means your CRM is the equivalent of a “Lead Graveyard”. 

Very often the best sales people are somewhat technology-averse. Your Reps land like a ton of bricks on the “A” leads, and all the other leads are consigned to the dustbin of CRM history. 

Many sales reps, and most telemarketing firms,will give up on a lead after 3  phone calls, so many leads are declared as unqualified without having a single conversation! The supreme irony is that sales reps are continually asking for more leads after ignoring 3 out of every 4 leads produced for them.  

The bad news is that this is potentially a collosal waste of time and money.  The good news is that we, as marketing managers who are tirelessly advocating for our clients’ and employers’ best interests, and reminding everyone about our mutual purpose of increasing sales and profits, can capitalize on this opportunity and reactivate leads through a followup sequence that will bring those dead leads back to life. 

So that’s why I’m sharing a very simple Reactivation Sequence that you can implement to reactivate leads, and bring them back to life: 

How to Reactivate Leads: A Simple Sequence to rescuscitate leads declared dead prematurely:

The most successful drip marketing sequences are moved forward with “if/then” events. So each one of these events gets delayed, or moved into an alternate sequence based on prospect behaviors. 

1. Day 1: Post Card ~ with Landing Page with Education/Key Benefit, and a Personalized URL (PURL) and Low Commitment/Early Stage Reactivation Offer. If the prospect calls your 800 number, or fills out a form to request to have somone call, and speaks to a Rep, skip to Day 8.
2. Day 1 + 7: Follow up Phone Call from Assigned Sales Rep ~ Televalidate contact information; collect email and gain permission to send more information. If the Sales Rep is unable to reach the Prospect this delays the sequence until the Prospect is reached in person.
3. Day1 + 8: Follow up Email from Sales Rep ~ Initiate Subsequence based on Level of Interest and Knowledge based on Interaction from Day 7. If the Prospect visits clicks on a link or visits your website, you can track their behavior, and create a lead score. If they visit the site, and download a whitepaper about how to solve a particular problem, then you could de-activate the current sequence, and start them in a different follow-up sequence, including another call, and a different follow up. 
4. Day1 + 15: Education Email with Relevant Content ~ #1 the biggest problem your prospect is probably facing, how it can be solved. If the Prospect visits a link this can trigger a phone call or a new sequence.
5. Day1 + 22: Education Email with Relevant Content ~ #2 the second biggest problem your prospect is probably facing, how it can be solved.
6. Day1 + 29: Education Email with Relevant Content ~ #3 the third biggest problem your prospect is probably facing, how it can be solved.
7. Day1 + 36: Education Email with Relevant Content ~ #4 the fourth biggest problem your prospect is probably facing, how it can be solved. If a Prospect has not done anything after this sequence, maybe the timing isn’t right. Consider another reactivation campaign in the next 3-6 months.

The sequence above requires knowledge of a CRM with Lead Nurturing Capabilities (For example: Infusionsoft, OfficeAutoPilot, or Eloqua), 3 or 4 White Papers developed around your your customer’s most challenging problems, and how your company can solve them, and the Lead Tracking and Lead Scoring Capabilities based on your prospect’s behavior/interaction with your company, or your company’s website. 

Of the leads that are rejected by sales, industry data shows that 1 out of every 2 will buy something from somebody within the next year. If you’re not vigilant, it could be your competitor. 

If you’re currently closing 20% of your leads and converting them to sales, and you’re leaving 80% of your leads  in the CRM Graveyard. How much more money could you make if you reactivate leads and convert another 20%? 

You could effectively double your sales! 

Pages related to “How to Reactivate Leads”: 

• How to Get Great Leads

If you have any questions or would like to Reactivate Leads at your company please contact us today.

What do you value most?

If you are a small business owner and you read beyond this paragraph, I’m going to share my inexorable logic why outsourcing inbound marketing is the best of all possible options to find new customers for your small business.

If you are a small business owner, what are the two things that you value most?

After speaking and working with many small business owners, and being a small business owner myself, I can tell you without a doubt, the two most valuable things you possess as a small business owner are (1) time and (2) money:

1. Time. There’s just not enough of it. It’s your most valuable resource. With it you create the 2nd most valuable thing which is:
2. Money. It’s scarce. If you invest it, there’s got to be a return on investment, period. The higher the better, so if you can measure it, and improve it, so much the better.

Time and money are your most valuable resources. And everybody wants what you’ve got. That is precisely why Outsourcing Inbound Marketing is the best of possible options for you.

First, why outsourcing your marketing makes business sense

If you outsource your marketing, it saves you time. You don’t have to do it. If there’s a return on investment, and it helps you make more money, then you’d be foolish not to do it, right? You’re saving time and making money!

Second, out of all the marketing alternatives, why inbound marketing?

If you are looking for something you need, what do you turn to first? Do you go to the yellow pages? Or do you do a search using your favorite search engine? If you’re like most consumers and business buyers, you sit down at your computer, or use your smart phone, and search for what you’re looking for… and you ultimately find what you’re looking for (without the yellow pages).

And the companies who show up at the top of the rankings, and provide you the things you’re looking for? They’re practicing inbound marketing. With Inbound Marketing, you develop a web presence, and promote yourself online so that when your customers are looking for products or services that you offer, they  (1) find you and contact you first (2) you convert them into a customer, and you (3) measure the results.

Inbound Marketing: How it Works

Inbound Marketing uses the best practices in Web Design, SEO, PPC, Blogging, Social Media… and ROI Analytics:

• Web Design ~ WordPress Websites and Blogs that position you in your unique niche, and put you in the driver’s seat.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ~ Top search engine rankings for keyword phrases that drive targeted traffice to your website.
• Pay per Click Marketing ~ Pay per Click Marketing augments your organic SEO, and helps you focus on keyword groupings and landing pages that will help you convert traffic into inquiries and sales.
• Blogging ~ Timely and relevant information that positions you as an expert in your niche, so that when your prospects have a need they call you first.
• Social Media ~ Connect with People, Collect and share information that it useful to your prospects and customers, Use that information to inform your own Editorial Direction, and Create your own content. 
• Traditional and Online PR ~ Leverage content, events, accomplishments to gain back links from other influential websites, and also media hits with traditional journalists.
• ROI Analytics ~ Measure the effectivness of your marketing activities to see what’s working and what’s not working, and invest your dollars where you can achieve the greatest ROI.

The catch? It really works best if you are doing all of these things simultaneously. It doesn’t work if you just try one tactic here, another tactic there. You might get some results with one or two tactics, but to really make it work, it requires a commitment–and it’s a process, not an event. But you can execute an Inbound Marketing program very cost-effectively, and that leads me to why Outsourcing Inbound Marketing is your best possible alternative.

Third, why Outsourcing Inbound Marketing is the best option

What are your options?

1. Do it Yourself: Not an option. You have more important things to do with your time.
2. Use an In-house Resource: It’s expensive to hire a full-time person, and it might only get partly done because many different skills are required. To be effective, Inbound Marketing requires simultaneous execution of multiple tactics, and a sustained effort.
3. Outsourcing Inbound Marketing to a Competent 3rd Party who can handle it for you: It’ll get done and you can measure the ROI.

The great news? Inbound Marketing is very cost-effective. You can get a lot for a relatively small investment.

Conclusion: So now hopefully I’ve been able to present a logical argument why outsourcing your Marketing, if it’s producing a measurable return on investment, is a wise decision. And by implementing an Inbound Marketing Strategy, you’ll help you find your prospects and customers find you at precisely the most important moment: when they’re looking for you!

And that is how I arrive at my claim that Outsourcing Inbound Marketing is the best of all possible alternatives for your business. Because it’ll help you spend more of your time doing the things you need to do to take your business to the next level, and you’ll be making more money.

Pages related to Outsourcing Inbound Marketing :

• Ghost-Blogging and Blog Management
• Social Media Marketing

If you are looking for Outsourcing Inbound Marketing please contact me today.

Who's the trusted advisor?

The typical small business owner does not have the time or expertise to effectively manage all the Local Internet Marketing investment options.  

Not only are there more numerous, more complex, directory relationships, but pace of the fragmentation in the marketplace is outpacing everyone’s attention span.        

How is a small business owner supposed to keep track of all the different ways to promote their business? Directories, Internet Yellow Pages, Search Engine Optimization, Pay per click Marketing, Blogging, Social Networking, Mobile Advertising, Hyperlocal Advertising Sites–as well as Web Design Issues, Marketing Experiments, ROI Analytics, and all the other time-consuming issues of running a Local Internet Marketing program.           

This is the primary reason so many 3rd-party providers have jumped into the Local Internet Marketing game over the past few years. There is a void to fill. And there’s a desire on the part of small business owners to hand off this business of Local Internet Marketing to a trusted advisor.          

So who ‘s the Local Internet Marketing Expert?

So who’s the expert in Local Internet Marketing? Your Web Design guy? The local SEO expert? How about the Local Phone Company? Your Local Newspaper? The Company that publishes your Tax Software? Because all of these people also claim to be your best Local Internet Marketing Expert.  If everyone is a Local Internet Marketing Expert, the problem is: “Who do you trust?”  

Whoever you choose to help you–here are a 7 Things Every Small Business Owner Should Do  to launch a Local Internet Marketing program, obtain greater visibility, and drive business through the door. I’m going to share some of the things I have done and that I do to help me drive business for myself, and hopefully by doing that, you’ll pick up an idea or two that will help you with your business. 

7 Ideas Every Small Business Owner Should Do to Achieve Success in Local Internet Marketing        

 1. Claim your Directory Listings  

Claim your listings

All of your contact information should be consistent on Google, Yahoo, Bing, Best of the Web, Yelp, and the Mobile Directories.  

At the very least, you should include your business name, address, phone number, your main keyphrases that someone would type in a search engine to find you, and include links back to your website or blog. Also make sure your Google Map is up-to-date. Luckily you can do this all in one place with a Universal Business Listing. 

2. Create a web presence  

A web presence is essential

 You can create a free website at WordPress.com. Or Weebly.com. Or even better, get a designer to create a self-hosted WordPress website with a pre-built theme customized to match your logo. You can take a pre-built theme, make it your own, and have a website you can be proud of for a relatively small investment. While you’re at it, create a Facebook Page for your business, and a Company Profile on Linked-in, because these days they’re all connected. 

Even then, keep it simple. Regarding your website design, all people want to know is: “Who are you?” “What do you offer?” And “Why should I trust you?” Unless you have an ecommerce website and are selling lots of things online, or you’re selling something very complicated, a simple 5 page website plus a blog should suffice for most small businesses.  

Small Business Tip: If you already have a web presence, make sure that it’s easy to optimize your website to get traction with the search engines. Maybe you don’t need a new website, when a simple SEO Makeover with On-page Search Engine Optimization would suffice. If you want to add blogging capability, maybe it’s time for a do-over anyway. 

3. Create a Special Offer for New Customers  

Offers drive business

Keeping your pipeline filled, and new customers are the lifeblood of any small business.

Restaurants regularly offer 50% off one item for new customers, or an appetizer for free with a minimum purchase. Hair stylists offer a free color with a hair style for new customers.

Do you have an offer especially designed for new customers?  Use the offer in conjunction with a Groupon, or a FourSquare program. 

If you structure your offer correctly you should have no problem driving new customers through your door.   

4. Optimize your Website
One of the best ways to maximize the results of your Local Internet Marketing is by optimizing your website for local keywords, for example: Your Product/Service > Your City, Region, State, Zip Code.  Also you can add a list of the local communities or municipalities in your service region at the footer of your website to drive additional local traffic. The trick to getting top spots in the search engines is to create pages with high keyword densities (the proportion of the number of times one keyword phrase is used to the total number of words in the page: 3-4% is a very good number to aim for). 

I have optimized my website, and in the image below, I’m showing you a top-view screen shot of my Google Analytics Web Statistics from the last 30 Days, so you can see how this is working for me, and how I use it.  

Use Web Stats to Measure your results

As you can see from my Web Stats, my main keyword phrases are: “Direct Marketing Consultant” and “Small Business Marketing” in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. If you looked at the rest of my stats you’d see that I get small ”long tail” hits for every combination of those keywords, as well as some great traffic from some my more popular recent blog posts, like “How to Build a Great Website” and “How to Create a Better Linked-in Profile.”  

Small Business Insight: I’m also getting a lot of unintended and undesired traffic for how to make an *c-h-e-a-p* (sic) small business website, because in my most popular recent blog post “How to create a great website,” I used the word *c-h-e-a-p* (sic) twice. So now I need to think about a way for me to rephrase that to take advantage of the current traffic, and instead of that undesirable word, use the word ”low budget,” which I could actually turn to my favor: small business owners who have a little bit of budget to create a website.  

5. Get Other Influential Sites to Link Back to Yours  
Your search ranking is determined not only by the web optimization and the quality of the content on your website, but also who links back to you. A great way to create back links is to sign up for local directories, to submit your blogs and articles to other influential websites (like Ezinearticles.com and Bizsugar.com), and to comment on other influential blogs in your area. You’ll see I’ve got some nice traffic coming from BizSugar.com, Linkedin.com, Smallbiztrends.com, and Twitter.com. It all adds up!   

Small Business Tip: Linked-in and Facebook are influential sites. Two great ways you can control getting other influential sites to link back to yours are by Optimizing your Linked in Profile and Gaining Likes on your Facebook Page for Business. 

6. Create a Small-budget Pay per click Marketing Campaign
Pay per click gives you additional insights into what’s working and what’s not working.  Start with $100 or $200 per month on Google Adwords, Yahoo Search, Microsoft Ad Center, and/or Facebook.  The trick to Pay per Click is to create a separate landing page for each logical grouping of keywords. The investment will quickly pay off (quickly meaning you can start gettting hits today). Pay per click Marketing is a great way to augment your organic (free) search traffic. 

Take advantage of all the PPC networks

7. Measure your results
Why is it that so few companies measure their results? WordPress.com Stats is Free. Google Analyticator is Free. My new favorite, Going up Web is also Free. Increasingly, your company website is the focal point through which you can measure the results of your marketing. Each of these tools provides great insights that will help you improve your traffic and your inquiries and sales.     

So that’s my bare bones strategy for Local Internet Marketing Success. Whomever you choose to work with to help you with your Local Internet Marketing, it’s going to require some real work, and if anyone tells you it’s easy, then maybe they’re not telling you the whole story. Every small business owner should be doing each of these things simultaneously, and doing them now! 

Pages related to Local Internet Marketing :    

• Hyper Local Internet Marketing
• How to Get Great Leads

If you need help with Local Internet Marketing please contact me today.

While Linked-in is acknowledged as the premier business-oriented social networking site, many people look at it as a simple online CV or resume.     

But Linked-in is greatly underrated as a place to showcase your talents, grow your capabilities, and develop new business opportunities.  It is certainly worth your time to build a better-Linked-in Profile.   

I know for a fact that many Human Resource Professionals use Linked-in to help find and screen candidates. If you’re a job seeker, your should optimize your Linked-in Profile–just in case someone is looking for someone like you at this very moment.  If you’re a manager or an executive, you should take time to create a Better Linked-in Profile–to put your best foot forward.     

I realize there are many blog posts out there about how to Build a Better Linked-in Profile, but I put together the 5 main things that I do whenever I update someone’s Linked-in Profile. These 5 things will help you (1) connect with others and let them connect with you (2) collect and share information that’s important to you, and (3) to showcase your own content that positions you as the expert, so that when a client or prospect has a need they call you first.     

5 Easy Tips to Create a Better Linked-in Profile

 1.Clean up your URL with your name. When you first create your Linked-in Profile, it gives you a URL that ends with Gobbledygook. You should change this to something shorter. My LinkedIn profile URL is http://www.linkedin.com/in/lesproctor. It’s a much easier on the eyes, and looks nicer when you email it to people.     

2. Add your Twitter Account. In case you missed it, Twitter is going mainstream. And your microblog posts (or “tweets”), can now show up on the status update at the very top of your Linked-in Profile page. You can see a post that I put up entitled “An Open Mind is Good for the Bottom Line.”  These status updates are important because they illustrate to people visiting your website that you are active, and that “the lights are on and someone’s home.”     

Les Proctor's Linked-in Profile

3.Add Anchor Text to your Website Links. You can add up to 3 links on your profile to your website, or different pages on the same website; these links pass Linked-in’s SEO authority to your website, so you should take advantage of them. Customize the text on the links, so that the search engines understand more about the content of pages they link to.     

In my case I’ve added 3 Links to different pages of my website: (1) Direct Marketing 2.0 Blog, (2) Results Marketing Services, and a (3) Free Website Analysis.  

Adding Applications to your Linked-in Profile

You can add all kinds of really cool applications to your Linked in Profile. Your Creative Portfolio, Polls, Events, Your Reading, a Blog, and more. In my case I’ve added my Reading List and my WordPress Website Blog.      

4. Add your reading List. What people read tells a lot about who they are. By adding my reading list this I am giving you a sneak peek at the books in my library. Art, books, culture…, these are the things that bind us all together.     

Les Proctor's Linked-in Reading List by Amazon.com

 5. Add a Blog. In this case, my website is developed on WordPress, which is the most popular web publishing platform around. By adding my Blog, I’m publishing my 4 latest Blog posts, so people can see what I’ve been writing about lately.     

Direct Marketing 2.0 Blog

I know there are many others things you can do to create a better Linked-in Profile, but these are the areas where I consistently see an opportunity for improvement. I’m sure I’ve left something out.     

Please let me know what *you do* to build a better Linked-in Profile. And, if you liked this post, please share it with your friends. Share

If you’d like me to help you Build a Better Linked-in Profile or a Social Media Marketing Program, please contact me today.

Blogging is communicating

Blogging can be a great way to leverage social media to  position yourself as an expert–the “go-to” resource whenever someone has a problem you can solve, but to blog effectively you should follow the best practices of business blogging.

I know that a lot has been written on this subject, but I’m putting up what I consider the top 5 Best Practices of Business Blogging for your review–if you feel I’ve missed something or I’m off the mark, please let me know!

The 5 Best Practices of Business Blogging

1. Write with a specific audience in mind — Who is your audience? As you’re writing, pretend like they’re sitting down right next to you. What is going to get their attention? What can you write about that’s going to help them solve the problem that’s been keeping them awake at night?
2. Focus on the content and help your readers solve a real problem–Chances are, you know how to help your customers solve a real problem, or else you wouldn’t be in business. Your article (or blog post) should fulfill a real need, or else it is not relevant.
3. Be educational not promotional–Blogging is not broadcasting, so educate your readers, don’t pander to them. This is your chance to show them you know what you’re talking about… by helping them solve a real problem you are establishing yourself as an expert, and you increase the likelihood that when they have a need they’ll call you first.
4. Write for readability–”Pretend like I’m in 8th grade“–that’s what one of my old bosses used to say. You impress people the most when you get your message across. In most cases, your writing should be made to be simple so that your readers follow you, and understand what you’re writing about. Write in plain english and avoid foreign languages and jargon. (This post was written at an 8th grade level--which means that most 13 and 14 year olds can understand it–you can check your own readability at http://www.read-able.com)
5. Create ways for your readers to engage with you–Comment forms, polls, social media buttons, live chat buttons encourage your readers to interact with you. Your objective shouldn’t be to get a purchase right now at this moment–but rather interaction, engagement, and feedback. Engagement deepens relationships.

When you boil it down to its very essence, Blogging is just another way to communicate–a very powerful way, because like all “real” communication– it’s a two-way street, an opportunity to engage and build relationships with others–by commenting on blog posts you can show off your active listening skills, and offer value to the conversation.

Make your content so good that people want to share it

If Social Media is about (1) connecting with others (2) collecting  information that’s important to you, then blogging is about making your content relevant so good that your readers will want to collect it and share it with their connections, friends, and followers. If you follow these 5 Best Practices for Business Blogging, your content will be so good they’ll want to share it with their friends.

So those are my 5 Best Practices of Business Blogging, and I’m sticking to them! I’m sure there are other best practices out there, so if you have any you’d like to share please “make my day!”

Oh, and if you ever need a hand setting up a WordPress Website, or implementing the Best Practices of Business Blogging, please contact me.

While the Internet has brought us a huge, new marketplace with boundless opportunities for success–it’s opened up a whole new world of problems, especially when it comes to marketing and sales.

Every day, we’re deluged with unwanted information about goods and services we’re not looking for.  Otherwise known as ”spam”, it comes in many forms: undifferentiated email blasts, facebook posts, tweets, etc. It overwhelms many potential customers, and if you’re not careful you could break a protocol that will make customers consciously decide not to do business with you. 

Content Marketing and Conversation Marketing  offers a solution.

Conversation Marketing is a Two-Step Process:

Instead of the traditional sales pitch spammed out to everybody on the planet, conversation marketing strives to provide reliable, high-quality information to potential customers.  Well-written blogs or articles providing valuable information, and delivered at the right time in the right way, are much more likely to be read than spam, which is filtered out or deleted. 

This duplicates an important aspect of the marketplace of yesteryear.  Conversation marketing makes it easy for prospective customers to locate suppliers of the goods and services they need. 

The medieval cobbler or blacksmith, for example, kept a sign outside his shop and he often greeted passersby with valuable information about repairs and costs for his services.  Well-written, informational blogs and articles about specific subjects have replaced the helpful artisan and his sign.  The cobbler and the blacksmith didn’t wander all over the kingdom delivering canned sales pitches to people who had no need of their services and no interest in learning what was available. 

The sign attracted the prospective customer, and intelligent conversation by the artisan-helped close the sale. First, attract and get found. Second, engage and convert.

Step 1: Attract prospective buyers with a great offer and a compelling call to action

If the social media revolution is a revolution of user-generated content, that means we all need to start thinking like publishers. So what does it mean to think like a publisher? When you boil it down, publishing is simple to explain:

1. Define a target group of buyers (your prospects and customers) 
2. Determine what information they need and how they want to receive it
3. Create an offer to deliver valuable and relevant information to your prospects and customers the way they want to receive it, and  
4. Get them to subscribe to your offer

Step Two: To engage and convert, you’ve got to stop marketing and start engaging

Once you’re connected to someone, start listening, and engage with them to find opportunities to help. You can send out a marketing sequence, but every message should have a mechanism where you ask for feedback. And or you should add a human intervention into your marketing sequence so that they know there’s a real person behind the information you send out.

1. Task: Add to Social CRM
2. Task: Take a look at the person’s latest tweets, posts, etc. (If there aren’t any use the phone #4).
3. Task: Engage with prospect to establish rapport and start a conversation
4. Task: Call them and have an actual person-to-person conversation to learn about what their problems are, and what they’d like to accomplish
5. Task: Send them the information they’re seeking and that shows you understand their problems

The research you do will tell you a lot about how this person likes to be communicated with, without asking them with a dumb web form.

Is it still possible to automate this marketing process? Yes! You can automate anything. When it comes to marketing automation, you’re better off automating the human side of the equation, rather than the messaging side. You want to get the messaging and information side right, so that you’re providing people valuable information delivered the right way, so that your prospects are receptive to your message.

If you’d like some help implementing a conversation marketing program please contact me today.