Entries from June 2010 ↓

I started this blog about 9 months ago.  At the time, my stated goal was to help SMBs learn more about internet marketing, and thereby help them succeed in otherwise unfamiliar territory.  In the process, all I hoped for in return was some dialogue, and hopefully to learn from the process.  I think I may have half-succeeded.  If you were to aggregate and organize all of the posts on this blog to date, I think you would get a pretty decent – if somewhat disjointed and frenetic – book for SMB’s who want to learn how to market themselves online.

Where I failed was in what I hoped to get back for myself.  This blog has created some dialogue, but not as much as I would have hoped.  I know it’s not because no one’s reading it, because I have the analytics to prove that someone is reading.  So, I began to ask myself, why isn’t there more discussion going on here?  It’s not the quality of the writing.  I write elsewhere, and get quite a bit of discussion on my posts.  I also don’t think it’s the subject matter, because there is definitely plenty to be said on the topic of internet marketing.  So, what is it?

I’ve decided that the biggest reason that I have not generated as much discussion on this blog as I would have liked, is the audience.

Before you, dear reader, close this window in offense, allow me to explain. I’m not saying that my audience is ungrateful.  I’m not saying my audience is lazy.  I’m not saying my audience isn’t intelligent enough to have a discussion.  In fact, there is no blame to be placed on the audience at all. The blame is on me.

I blame myself because my goals were not aligned.  On the one hand, I hoped to educate small business owners.  On the other hand, I hoped to get challenging discussion back in return.  Small business owners were never going to take the time to read my blog, give the ideas in it a great deal of thought, and respond with some esoteric comment.  Small business owners are some of the busiest people on the planet.  If I was at all successful with some of my posts, they read the post, and immediately went to put the ideas into action. They didn’t philosophize over them!

If I wanted conceptual discussion about my industry, I was really writing the wrong articles all together.  As a case and point, some time ago, I wrote a post that was in no way advice to small business owners, but rather a commentary on the state of social media, and the prevalence of “experts” in the field.  I’m sure some small business owners may have read that with some passing interest, but none would argue that it was among my most useful posts.  However, that post generated comments and e-mail dialogue with Chris Brogan and Naomi Dunford, two people in the industry, whom I have incredible respect for.

Therefore, my biggest mistake with this blog was an error in the way I set out to achieve my goals. And I’m certain that there are many people blogging, tweeting, marketing out there, who are making the same mistakes.  So, before you spend anymore time and/or money, stop and ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve with the work you’re doing online.  Then, ask yourself if what you’re doing is really the best way to go about doing it.

In my case, the kinds of articles I was writing, probably would have been useful if my objective were to find clients for a consulting business.  However, I’m not a consultant. I work for a marketing company, and I don’t work in sales.  The only times I’ve ever consulted on the side, were on a pro bono basis (if you run a non-profit, feel free to drop me a line).  I don’t sell my services, so why am I running a blog as if I did?

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I have enjoyed every minute of writing this blog, and I appreciate each and every single one of my readers, and don’t expect any of them to do anything more than read these posts.

However, I do think it’s worthwhile rethinking who my target audience is, and what kind of stuff I should be writing to achieve my goals.  With that purpose in mind, I’ll be taking some time to rethink the direction of this blog.  There’s a good chance that at the end of that reflection, this blog will be much more “big picture,” and a lot less “nuts and bolts.”

Until then, I encourage anyone operating online to do the same. Rethink what your goals are and evaluate if you’re really going about accomplishing them in the right way.  Don’t just keep doing what you’re doing because it’s what you do.

If you read blogs, then you already know about guest blogging. What you may not know is just how important guest blogging is to bloggers, and to internet marketing in general. It’s so important, that Leo Babauta, the founder of the Zen Habits web site (one of the top 100 blogs in the world), credits guest blogging as the single most important way he built his audience. Many websites about web marketing and copywriting devote a lot of words to the topic (my personal favourite being Men With Pens, browse through their archives to find some great posts on the topic, many by guest bloggers).

Guest blogging, though, isn’t just for bloggers. Small business owners have a vested interested in participating in the conversation as well.

I’ve written on this blog about the advantages of content marketing, demonstrating ones expertise and creating a human connection with your audience. Guest blogging works by extending your reach. When you write for someone else’s blog in a related field, you are in essence borrowing that person’s audience. If you make a strong enough connection, you can convince members of that audience to become members of your audience as well.

The key is to increase your profile in your industry, by connecting with those bloggers and websites where your customers will already be spending their time. Then, by contributing, you spread your expertise to them, introduce yourself, and you have just made an easy connection with a person who was already looking for the kind of content you were providing.

The more you write for sites in your industry, the more ubiquitous your name becomes. When guest blogging, being prolific is a good thing.

However, it’s important to remember though, that guest blogging is not just a numbers game. It’s not simply about how many readers you can attract back to your own blog, or how many visitors you can get back to your website. Guest blogging is also about the connections you make with the others in your industry/niche/area. If you run a site or a blog, and you let someone else write for you, there is a level of trust required there, and a certain bond between host and guest is created.

It’s important not to to underestimate the value of those connections. Bloggers and website curators are quickly becoming industry leaders in the 21st century, and cultivating relationships with these people is going to become more and more important as time goes by — just as it’s important to have good relationships with reviewers and trade publications in your industry.

It’s also important to note that while the guest may gain a lot of benefit from blogging, the host is also benefiting. After all, websites and blogs publish content. Without content, they have no purpose. Guest blogging affords bloggers fresh, free content that they can use to continue to build their own audience. Furthermore, as a guest blogger, chances are you will promote the fact that you have posted on someone else’s blog, and will be sharing your audience with your host.  The same way he is sharing his with you.

Guest blogging is networking in digital form. The same way local business owners will help each other, guest blogging allows individuals in the same industry to partner for the mutual benefit of all.

As an analogy, when I used to run a handful of bars and restaurants, it would occasionally happen that something would go wrong in the ordering process. Either someone forgot to place an order for a particular item, or the supplier ran out, and therefore we’d run out (this always seemed happen with beer kegs for some reason…). On these occasions it became almost standard practice that neighboring bars and restaurants, even if they were technically our competitors, would loan us a couple of kegs to get us through a weekend. When the same thing happened to them, we would return the favor. In the end, everyone ended up ahead. I see guest blogging as a very similar practice.

There are a number of tips for how to go about guest blogging, and a much longer piece could be devoted to just that topic, but I find that most advice on guest blogging complicates the matter too much. First, find a site that you’d like to guest blog on. Make sure you understand the site and its audience. If it has guest blogging guidelines, read them. Then reach out to the site owner, and start a dialogue. All too often, people forget that at the other end of an e-mail address is a person, and the same way you’ve interacted with people your entire life is the way you should interact with people online. Be polite, make it easy for them to say yes, and give them something of quality to post on their site. That’s all.

I have not done a lot of guest blogging — something I hope to change in the near future. In the meantime, however, you can find me as a regular contributor at Workshifting.com and TheNextGreatGeneration.com.

Have you had any success with guest blogging? If so, share some of your tips. If not, what’s held you back?

I hate junk mail.

I pay all my bills online, and no one ever sends me hand-written mail. I don’t even know my postal code. I check my mailbox about once per month, at which time, it is just about bursting at the seams with circulars, fliers, and other promotional stuff I can’t be bothered to look at. All of that wasted paper, that’s all marketing content, and it’s called direct mail advertising. Most people despise it. I do.

In the online world, a similar beast exists, and it’s also called junk mail, or spam. Some estimates say that as much as 85% of the e-mail sent on a daily basis is spam. As a result, modern e-mail softwares and servers have developed sophisticated spam filtering. My e-mail inbox used to look like my physical mailbox, but on a bad day, only one or two messages will trickle through the filters.

If most people are like me, and they simply toss out a month’s worth of fliers and circulars, and have decent spam filters set up in their e-mail, why would any marketer go to the trouble of direct mail? The simple answer is because it works. The equation with direct mail has always been simple. You don’t convert many people into customers, but the incremental cost of getting more people the message is minimal, so you still end up with a decent return on investment. In the world of e-mail marketing, the incremental cost of sending more e-mails is zero, so even if you have a terrible conversion rate, you’ll probably still see a return on investment.

So, what’s an honest businessperson to do? On the one hand, you know what it feels like to be inundated with junk, on the other hand, you’ve heard that this marketing method works?

The answer is to create targeted direct mail advertising. The reason direct mail converts so poorly, and is so annoying, is because there is no targeting. It’s carpet bombing people with paper. With just a little more creativity and effort, most direct mail campaigns, especially electronic ones, can be made to convert far better, be less annoying, and have the added advantage of creating not only a customer, but a loyal fan.

The first step is to pick your audience. I live in an apartment building. Why do I get fliers for landscapers? I also get mail for things I don’t want, don’t need, or don’t like. If you can exclude from your direct mail campaign people who don’t want, don’t need, or don’t like what you have to offer, then you will finally be targeting an audience that cares about what you have to say.

Once you’ve found your target audience, the next thing to do with your direct mail is to be useful. A tagline and a phone number, or an e-mail address is not useful. A promotion can definitely be useful, but it can also be boring. Do something interesting with your promotional material to get people’s attention. Run a contest, provide valuable content, do a give-away, entertain or just plain do something different. Alternatively, provide something useful. I’ve never used a real estate agent, and yet I know the names of a few of them, because I often write on complimentary pads they’ve sent me.

Finally, don’t send anything out unless you’ve received some form of sign that the person wants to receive it. This is the basis of permission marketing. The person may explicitly give permission by opting-in to a mailing list, or they may give it implicitly by purchasing something and giving additional contact information (note: whenever you deal with implicit permission, make sure opting-out is VERY easy).

Not all direct mail marketing needs to be spam. When direct mail marketing is done right, it is a cheap marketing method, that provides excellent returns, and creates loyal fans. Think about that before licking the next stamp, or hitting send on your next e-mail blast.