Blog Offers Whiff Of Website

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Talk about a “sense” for marketing – the June 22nd issue of the Indianapolis Star, in an article about car dealers’ flagging sales, singled out Colussy Chevrolet in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania.  Tim Colussy says he uses a box that sends up puffs of “new car” scent as part of his overall plan to entice buyers to visit his dealership (and to leave driving a new car).
new car
In a sense (pun intended), that’s exactly what a well-conceived business blog is out to achieve – lure internet customers to read the blog, then “enter” the website, and leave as a new customer or client.  The informally presented, relevant, and new information you provide in your blog is part of your business’ overall marketing strategy.

Reading further into the article, I learned Colussy does a lot more to market his dealership than blowing scent – he’s had the floors resealed and repaired, the lights brightened, added colorful displays, flat-screen TV, Wi-Fi access, workstations, and a coffee bar.

Carrying on with my comparison, your blog is just one piece of the strategizing you do with your web designer, marketing consultant, ghost blogger, managers, and employees.  It’s all part of what sales trainers call your “unique selling proposition”.  Your blog is a key piece of that proposition.  It’s the” whiff that whets” – your potential customer’s appetite for doing business with you!

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Does Kanye West’s Ghost Blogger Say It For Him?

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James Blunt did it.  Used a ghost blogger, I mean (see my earlier blog For Songs Or Blogs, Success Proves The Best Silencer Of Critics). Now his ghost blogger, Amanda Ghost, is busy composing songs for Beyonce and Shakira. David Byrne did it.  In fact, Byrne let a building do his singing for him (see Buildings, Like Blogs, Can Be Interactive).  Now, the big question whizzing and quizzing its way around the blogosphere these days is this: Is Kanye West doing it, too?

A professional ghost blogger myself, I’m always alert for what others in my field are blogging and for whom.  Then – bam! In the past week or so it seems what’s preoccupying a whole lot of gray matter for a whole lot of people is Kanye and the big “Is He Or Isn’t He?” issue.  It’s so ironic, because, whatever the real answer, Kanye’s reaping a whole lot of green matter over this dispute by earning (through blogging, mind you!) a whole lot of attention on search engine slates.

The popularity of Kanye West’s blog has grown enormously, and Sandra Rose’s claim that Marcus Troy is the real writer of West’s blogs has helped grow it even more enormously.  What do I think? Well, first I need to confess – as a financial columnist and now professional ghost blogger, the world of hip hop music has not been on my radar screen until now. Marcus Troy himself says in a post, “How the H___ does Kanye have time to update his blog with ten new posts a day?”  Now that is a question to which I can relate, because most businessowners don’t find the time to update a blog ten times a month, let alone ten times a day!  That’s exactly why the demand for ghost bloggers like me is growing.

Blogging is an essential business tool in the web-based world of today.  Email is a way to reach customers, but you can’t use it to reach potential customers.  For that, business blogging fits the bill. Fact is, very few business owners, even with the help of talented and dedicated employees, can be assured that relevant, new material will get posted on their blog with enough consistency to improve rankings. Finding the right professional ghost blogger and working with that ghost makes the most sense for winning the search.

From my point of view, all the excitement about whether Kanye is writing his own blogs or whether he found someone that can “speak” for him well enough to even trigger a debate – it’s a matter of “So there you have it!” Blogging works to drive traffic and interest.  Period.  Ghost blogger, anyone?

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Business Blogging Can Help You Get To Meet Zig Ziglar At The Top

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ArrowDecades ago, just beginning a career in insurance and investments, I had the privilege of hearing the great Zig Ziglar speak about good selling practices. He described selling pots and pans to the nurses at the hospital on New Year’s Eve, right after his wife had borne their first child.  Zig ended the presentation with one of his signature lines.  If we would devote the time to practice good selling habits and product knowledge and if we focused our efforts on achieving our sales goals, he would “see us at the top” !

All these years later, Ziglar’s still traveling the world, motivating people to reach the top in their professions. Today, however, “getting to the top” has another meaning, one that is essential for doing business effectively in our increasingly web-driven world.  Backbone Media Corporation conducted research on 140 companies that advertise on the Internet.  These companies spend a combined $36 million a year on Google Advertising, and the reason they do it is for search engine rankings.  (In other words, they are buying placement through Sponsored Links or Pay-Per-Click arrangements.)

Blogging on the Internet, in contrast to purchasing domain names and sponsored links, by contrast, isn’t “bought”.  Yet effective blogging can translate into the kinds of favorable search engine results that online advertisers seek.  The results in blogging come through a sort of “sweat equity”, meaning consistent, disciplined hard work creating relevant materials and posting them on the Web. While each search engine (along with Google are MSN, Yahoo, and others) has its own “algorithms” for judging the merits of blogs and hence their rankings, there are three primary keys to success.

First, post often – if not daily, then three to four times a week. (If this is out of the question, that’s where a professional ghost blogger comes in!  – visit www.sayitforyou.net.)

Second, keep doing it – the scorecard is cumulative; blogs that have been appearing for longer periods of time rank ahead of “newbies”.

Third, provide relevant content about your topic, using and repeating the search terms people are most likely to use in the effort to get information about your type of product or service.

Not to steal any thunder from the great Ziglar (as if anyone could!), I’ll end by saying that, if you will follow these blogging steps faithfully enough – and long enough – to win customer hearts along with search engine rankings, I will see you – at the top!

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No Trash, Just Treasure for O’Neal And For Your Blog

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Responding to a broadcast about ex-Pacers basketball star Jermaine O’Neal’s supposedly “trashing” his old team at an introductory news conference with the Toronto Raiders, Indianapolis Star’s Bob Kravits remarks how unfair he considers that report to be.  Kravitz points out that O’Neal has been a treasure for our community, spending lots of time and money to make Indianapolis better for young people.  Needless to say, I wasn’t present at Kravitz’s talk with O’Neal on draft day, and I had not caught the broadcast “Trashing Our Town” on WTHR that made Kravitz so indignant. What this whole incident reinforces for me, though, is how careful we all need to be with our words, first because it’s easy for words to be misinterpreted, and then because it’s more productive in business to emphasize the positive and unique things you bring to the market than to “trash” your competitors.

Because blogs, by definition, are much more informal and personal than marketing brochures or websites, bloggers need to be particularly watchful to avoid “trash” and deliver treasure.  Being informal (which is what blogs should be) is different from being casual (which perhaps is what blogs, at least business blogs, should not be).  With each blog post, you should focus on some aspect of your overall marketing approach.  In trying to “win the search” and at the same time “win the hearts” of potential customers, include at least one valuable nugget – some expert information, a little-known fact, an observation about something going on right then in your business or in the world.

In winning blogs, the number of words devoted to bashing the competition or used just to fill space on nonrelevant topics:  few to none.  As a professional ghost blogger, I know that the focused blog offers byte-sized “treasures” (pun intended) in each blog post!

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Buildings, Like Blogs, Can Be Interactive

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A month ago, a building began to sing.  “Playing the Building” is a project that, this summer, is turning a New York City landmark building into an interactive keyboard.  Rock singer and artist David Byrne wired an antique organ to a few dozen spots throughout the building, so that visitors can stop in (free of charge) and touch keys that trigger hammers which clang against pipes and columns, activate motors that make ceiling beams vibrate, and shoot blasts of air through pipes at different pitches.
While this building is not the first to be “played”, this latest Byrne exhibit is quite different from former offerings by him and by other artists.  “People going into an art institution are treated as passive consumers, as vessels to be filled with …music emanating from the stage”, Byrne explained in a Newsweek interview.

The artist goes on to explain the one aspect of his project that’s so very important for today’s business owners to comprehend.  “‘Playing the Building’ only exists and comes to life when the public participates in it,” Byrne said.

In today’s world of marketing, it’s not enough to “hand out” material about a business.  Yes, brochures, postcards, advertising, billboards – all of those things can still be valid business marketing tools.  But, as with David Byrne’s building, the best blogs don’t “sing to people”, but instead invite them in to make music together with the business behind the blog.  Blogs, by their very nature of being on the Worldwide Web, are available not only for reading, but for acting and interacting.  A good blog invites readers to post comments, and makes it easy for them to subscribe to the blog (through an RSS feed or an email service).  Individual readers whould be able to get back to earlier posts to read more in depth on a topic that particularly interests them.

In short, it should be all about “Playing the Blog”!

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