Blogs – One Click Away From Colossal

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When it comes to blogs, staying small may be the best recipe for business growth.  For one thing, to be an effective marketing tool for your business, your blog must aim at a specific segment of the market.  That’s why, in Blogs And Podiums – Choose Yours Wisely!, I advised selecting just one area of focus.  That’s likely to be a lot more effective than trying to tell blog readers about everything you do and everything you have to offer.

When I think of the blogosphere, I picture a giant highway, with blog posts being the billboards on the sides of the road.  When it comes to billboards, I’m reminded, there are laws about those.  Last summer, for example, both the zoning board of the city of Anderson, Indiana and the Indiana Department of Transportation got involved when a gigantic electronic billboard was being put up to advertise the new Hoosier Park "racino". The Department of Transportation, I learned, regulates how often the video screen on a digital billboard can change.  The location of the billboard itself, specifically its distance from the road, was dictated by the zoning board rules.

To some degree, when it comes to blogging, the readers are your regulators. Your blog "billboard" calls attention to areas of your business you want to highlight or showcase.  If the blog is too long, no regulator will show up to fine you, but readers will quickly navigate away from the site. 

Your parents and grandparents will recall how, in years past, you’d go into a store to buy, say, a fine cigar or perhaps a fur coat. The proprietor, in order to make you feel you were a special customer whose business he prized, would have you wait a moment while he went to the back to get his very best merchandise.  The idea is to keep your blog content short, inviting browsers to learn more by clicking through to "the best stuff" kept back at your website!

Blogging maven Meryl K. Evans advises, "Save your longer stuff for newsletters.  Readers want to get to the heart of the matter and get out."

 

 

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Who Says Blogs Can’t Dance?

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On occasion, I find the need to remind my ghost-blogging clients of the differences between their advertisements and marketing materials and their blogs. Business blogs exist to promote your expertise, products, and services, true, but in a manner much briefer and less formal than brochures, and a lot "softer" in approach than ads. The word "advertorial" is the closest description for blogs.

First of all, as I explained in Blogs And Billboards Strike Only When The Iron Is Hot, the only people who are going to notice your blog are those searching for information, products, or services that relate to what you do.  In other words, your blog visitors are already in the market for what you have to offer.  The iron is hot!

As fellow blogger Kyle Lacy points out, "Wouldn’t You rather shoot at fish in a barrel?" However (and this is a big "however"), your blog’s gotta "dance" to keep the readers engaged.  No, I don’t mean dancing around the issues.  I’ve been stressing in former blog posts the importance of offering relevant information and a clear viewpoint.  

In his popular business book "Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?", author Lou Gerstner, known for having turned around the corporate culture at IBM,  rails against the over-use of Power Point slides that have lots of data and bullet points.  Instead, Gerstner advises, "Just Talk!"

The SpeakAssured team, dedicated to helping people overcome fear of public speaking, agree.  "Power presentations have little to do with technology…their power comes from the connection between the speaker and the audience," adding  "That’s the sort of power the SpeakAssured team wants to unleash."

Bottom line, folks, that’s the kind of power blogging can unleash.  Interested people are showing up at your blog.  Help them get to know you and your company.  No hard sell.  No formality.  No elaborate charts and graphs.  Just talk!  In blogs, the "dancing" comes from feeling connected.

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Don’t Tap Dance Around In Your Blog

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The "Wizard of Id" comic strip is about politics, but bloggers can take a few lessons from its messages.  In one episode, the subjects complain to their ruler, "We’re tired of your tap-dancing around our questions.  Why is it your answers have nothing to do with what you’re asked?"

Since the whole point of business blogging is to "win search", it’s crucial for the information provided in your blog to have everything to do with what you’re asked! The search engines’ goal is to provide the most relevant answers to browsers’ queries.  Relevance, in fact, is one of the main criteria used in ranking blogs on Google, Yahoo, or MSN.

Second, blogging is a form of "pull marketing", which attracts potential customers and clients because they’re already interested in something you sell, something you know, or something you know how to do, as I explained in my earlier blog (see Blogs And Billboards Strike Only When The Iron Is Hot). So, don’t "tap dance around" – give your readers the valuable information they need.  Yes, in answer to a question I’ve often heard from my ghost blogging clients, you will be giving out information "for free", but that’s exactly why many of those readers will choose to work with you rather than with your competitors.

My friend Doug Karr, blogging and social networking expert, reminds bloggers to include a "call to action" in each blog, a way for blog readers to contact you via email or phone, a procedure for posting questions or comments, and an easy connection to your website.

Just as the Wizard of Id sbjects didn’t like not knowing their ruler’s position on the issues, your readers will want to hear a clear "voice" in your blog posts.  Allow your passion – and your point of view – to shine through, making it very clear how problems can be solved using your services and products.  Tap dancing around the issues is a no-no.  But include consistent and targeted blogging in your marketing strategy, and the results could give you a reason to dance!

 

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Blog Testimonials And Success Stories

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I like to quote the wise man who noted that everybody’s favorite radio station is WIIFM (What’s in it for me?).  When online searchers arrive at your blog, you know they got there because they were looking for information about something you sell, something you do, or something you know a lot about. If the information those searchers find in your blog matches what they are looking for, their perception is they’ve “tuned in” to the right station!

Of course, your goal is to convert those searchers into “shoppers” who move the process forward by clicking onto your website, where you hope to convert them into customers of your business or clients of your professional practice. The blog which begins the process, though, needs to be about them, not about you, as I stressed in Blogging’s What’s-In-It-For-Them Rule.

In that earlier blog, I promised to get back to testimonials and success stories, and how those fit into your blogging-for-business strategy.  Your website can include customer testimonials to boost credibility. Webcopyplus.com explains that testimonials help your business in two ways. Customer success stories and client testimonials, needless to say, boost your credibility with new prospects, helping them decide to do business with you. But, as webcopyplus.com explains, website testimonials “also foster commitment from those providing the testimonials.”

Robert Cialdini, author of the social psychology book Influence: Science and Practice , explains why that happens. “…when people take a stand that is visible to others, there arises a drive to maintain that stand in order to look like a consistent person.”

To make maximum use of the two-way link you’ve created between your website and your blog, you can build a blog post or two around a customer success story. Say you’re a realtor, and today you’re blogging about how important “curb appeal” can be when you’re marketing a client’s home to potential buyers. To illustrate that point in your blog (while earning “Brownie points” with the search engines, to boot), you can briefly allude in your blog to Sam and Susie.  These successful sellers improved the curb appeal of their residence by planting colorful flowers and painting their front door an attractive red. As a final touch for your blog, you link back to the full version of Sam and Susie’s testimonial and success story which are already part of your website.

In this way, your clients’ testimonials and success stories can be turned into a success story for your blog! Keep up that back-and-forth linking in your blogging , and before you know it, your blog-website combination strategy will turn into one big marketing success story for your business! And, just as in the Hokey Pokey, folks, “that’s what it’s all about.”

 

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A Blog By Any Other Name Wouldn’t Smell As Sweet

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Shakespeare’s question "What’s in a name?” has a well-known answer: “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
Despite that famous sentiment, what we name things and people has mattered throughout history, and, as we’ll see, modern-day business blogs are no exception.

I found out that “name days” are still celebrated in place of, or in addition to, birthdays, across most of Europe, and that the name day for me, Rhoda, is August 30.

The Social Security Administration publishes a list of the most popular baby names for each year and then for each decade.  Top male name for 2007: Jacob. Top female name: Emily. For both the 1980’s and 1990’s, “Michael” and “Jessica” were tops, while back in the 50’s, the names James and Mary enjoyed top billing. 

Would Oprah have become a famous talk show host if her name had been Mable? Would Elvis be the King of Rock and Roll if his name had been Bob? asks SearchYourLove.com, adding that “their name is the first inkling most people have of their personality”. One thing I know for sure (as Oprah herself is fond of saying) – names matter in business and in blogging.

One objective in business blogging is “winning search”, so following some simple rules for search engine optimization can make a big difference in your blog’s rankings. Blog-Maniac advises using your primary key phrase in the title of your blog posts. For example, if your primary key phrase is “house painting”, make sure one or both of those words appear in each blog title. You can use key words in the body of your blog, too, of course, but don’t overdo, or you’ll end up sounding unnatural and “spammy”, says Blog-Maniac.  When you use links in your blog, (see Ties That Tell The Truth In Blogging), create the link by using those key words in your own blog to link to other websites (just as I did in the first part of this paragraph!).

What’s in a name?  A blog by any other name (other than one using your key search terms) would not smell as sweet to the search engines.  Remember, though, sweetest of all to web spiders is fresh food, meaning recently posted content!

 

 

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