Last week Ed and I were honored to host the Coffee Connection for the Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce at the Steppenwolf Theater.

As always the turnout was great. Especially when you consider that it started at 8:30 in the morning before everyone had to be at their offices – they were 74 people total at the event!

I have to say that I love the Lincoln Park Chamber, and they are all so welcoming. They also have a great diversity in their membership; encompassing businesses from small to quite large! And it was our pleasure to host the event!

But what I love about these events is that they draw a lot of great people to them, without being overwhelming. Even in an hour, you can still meet a lot of great contacts…and all before 9 am!

After we all networked, we were treated to a Behind the Scenes look at Steppenwolf, which is amazing when you consider the talent that has graced that stage. We saw it all – from behind stage left, to the greenroom.

Furthermore - and I can’t stress this enough - you never know who people know. Many business owners don’t attend these events because they don’t feel as though they are meeting their “target audience”. BUT…you don’t know who they know, and having a large network of people is how you break down walls to the people you want to get to!

So don’t be afraid to let people put a face with a name!

Maybe I’ll see you around town!

We’ve been talking about three big reasons you should be blogging. The past two articles have shown how blogging generates traffic and credibility. Now, let’s take a look at the third reason we think you should be blogging.

#3: Feedback

The whole idea behind blogging is to start a conversation amongst people with similar interests. Rather than just reading an article or an eBook, blogs allow the reader to write back, share their thoughts and opinions, and add more content to the conversation.

There are three reasons why feedback is so valuable to you.

1. It’s a sign that the reader is engaged
2. It gives you direct market feedback on the ideas you are presenting
3. It helps to stimulate new ideas

A blog reader who takes the time to respond with a comment is an engaged reader. Since you are probably blogging to promote your business, an engaged reader is an engaged prospect. Beyond the immediate benefit of having a potential sale wanting to have a conversation with you, you can see bigger trends.

Look at the comments you receive in response to several different blog posts. Try to identify patterns. What topics generated the biggest response? Was there some particular style or language that was common to the posts with big response? The answers to these questions will tell you what your market responds to.

The second reason feedback is so important is that it tells you what people think about the ideas you are blogging about. This is another great opportunity to understand your market and their perceptions of your business. Perhaps you wrote about the importance of customer service, but you had several comments on your company’s lack of it- now you know what needs to be fixed.

If you are a consultant or you develop information products, the feedback to your blog posts are an opportunity to test your material before committing to development of an entire book or seminar. Write a series of blog posts that summarize the key points. Then simply monitor the comments.

You can see instantly what people think of that topic. And from there you can either decide that the topic is good, needs a little polishing, or has missed the mark completely. It’s much better to spend a few hours upfront on some market research, than to spend hundreds of hours developing your content and have it fail!

The third reason follows directly from the second. Reader feedback is often a great way to identify new ideas or a new twist on what you’ve been writing about. When a reader leaves a comment, they are telling you what is on their mind – in their own words. This is priceless because it gives you a clear understanding of what your market is thinking about and the words they use to describe it.

If the feedback you are getting tells you that you need to make some changes, the new ideas you can get from the market’s feedback will often tell you what those changes should be.

These three great benefits of feedback all build upon each other. Let’s say you write an article and get some useful comments. You can respond to the reader who left the comment and start a conversation.

Happy Blogging!

Last week, we talked about about the importance of blogs and about how a blog can attract more traffic to your site, and ultimately, your company.  Now let’s take a look at the second big reason you should be blogging.

Credibility

Blogs provide a platform to demonstrate your expertise and experience.  This is a critical step in building trust with a prospect – particularly for those of us who provide services and who are marketing their small business.  Prospects are unlikely to spend a cent on you if they don’t believe you can deliver.

Many consultants I work with are initially reluctant to “give away the farm” by making information available for free.  Their concern is that if they give the information away, no one will pay them for their services.  This is a short-sighted view that ignores the fact that no one will pay them if they aren’t convinced they will get good information.

In my experience, there is a lot of room to provide quality, useful content for free without undercutting your business.  In fact, the usual result is that the more you give away, the more your business grows.

Why?

The free quality content that you put out develops your reputation in the market.  If the content really is good, you will become a trusted, sought-after source.  This opens up business opportunities that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

One caution.  This process works just as well – if not better –in reverse.  If you put out a bunch of garbage just for the sake of producing content, you’ll also develop quite a reputation for yourself – just  not the one you want.

So, what can you do to create credibility-boosting content?

Stay on top of new happenings in your industry.  Talk about how these trends could impact your prospects or customers.  This works for you on two levels.  First, it provides news that the reader may or may not have heard.  Second, it provides analysis that explains what the possible consequences are for the reader.

Become an information resource.  Use your blog to help people find information about your area – even if that means referring them elsewhere.  It is perfectly fine to link to other blogs and sites, and in fact helps boost your credibility as an information resource.  Do make sure that any other sites you link to are providing quality content.

Next week, we’ll take a look at the third big reason to blog – feedback.

See you in the blogosphere

I am often surprised at how many small business owners I meet that don’t blog.  When I first start working with clients, that is generally one of the first things that I recommend to them to change their marketing strategy…write a blog.

Mostly, what I find is that people just aren’t fully aware of the power of blogs.  They aren’t aware of what they can do for their website(s) and their business.

So, over the next several posts, we’ll talk about three of the many, many reasons that blogging should be an important part of your marketing efforts.

Today, let’s take a look at the first reason to blog – traffic.

#1: Traffic

First, every web expert in the world will tell you that one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site is content.  And there’s no faster and easier way to create content than a blog.

Search engines love fresh content.  The more often the search engine spiders find new content on a site, the more often they’ll come back looking for more.  The more often your site is spidered, the fresher the content stored in the search engine’s cache.

Some search engines, like Technorati, very explicitly make freshness a factor in results listings.  Others, like Google, don’t say exactly what they evaluate, but it’s a pretty safe bet that all else equal, fresher content will rank higher. (Note to all you SEO experts: I know I’m oversimplifying things here.  It’s not my intent in this article to get into the nuances of SERP rankings.)

Beyond the search traffic that a blog can deliver, the use of RSS feeds can get you a following of subscribers.  Simply put, RSS (really simple syndication) is a method of subscribing to some piece of content (its most often used with blogs, but will work with just about any web content), much like the way you might subscribe to a magazine.  New content is delivered automatically to the subscriber’s feed reader.

This is a powerful thing because subscribing requires that a reader take a specific action to request delivery, meaning that they are likely to be an engaged reader/prospect/customer.

To make this idea even more powerful, you can encourage your subscribers to get their feed by email.

Why do this?

Now you have their email address AND permission to contact them.

Congratulations, you’re now on your way to building an engaged and responsive opt-in email list of prospects and customers.

How to get started

You’ve got a bunch of options if you want to write a blog.  If you’re into instant gratification, you can set up an account on any of several blogging sites.  It’s fast and easy, but you will miss out on some more advanced features and search engine benefit.

To set up an account on one of these systems, take a look at:

www.blogger.com
www.typepad.com
www.wordpress.com

Many social networking sites also have built-in blogging.

The slightly more complicated, but ultimately more flexible and powerful set up is to host the blog on your own website.   Most of the big web hosting companies have 1-click installation options for blogging software.  Go to your hosting control panel and look for the area to install additional software.

If you’re using GoDaddy, click on the big “Your Applications” button at the top of your hosting control panel to get there.

The two most popular options are Movable Type and Wordpress. It will take a little longer to get set up, but will pay dividends in terms of what you’ll be able to do as you grow.

There are a lot of great articles out there about how to get the most from blogging. One of my personal favorites is Lorelle on Wordpress.  A quick search will turn up thousands more.

Next week, we’ll take a look at the second big reason to start blogging – credibility.

In the meantime, go get yourself set up to start a blog.

This past weekend was the Independence day holiday in the US.  That got me thinking about why I started my business in the first place, and why I bet most of you either have started or want to start your business – independence.

Independence.  From a boss.  From a paycheck.

Today’s Tip is all about a trap that far too many small businesses fall into.  A trap that undermines your independence and puts your business at risk.

The trap is allowing any one customer (or supplier, or distribution channel) to get too big.

Independence means not being reliant on someone else for survival.  The best way to do that is to diversify so that no single person’s actions can harm your business.

A lot of small businesses – especially service businesses – I know get started because they have one big customer, without whom they would be out of business very quickly.  To some extent, that situation is hard to avoid, but is one that should always be watched very closely.  If you find yourself in this position,  getting free from it should be your top marketing priority.

It’s obvious that if one customer accounts for 90% of your revenue and they stop buying from you, you’re in big trouble.  The same is true if all of your products come from one source, or virtually all of your sales come through one channel.  What is a little less obvious is this.  The situation is almost as dire if any one customer, supplier, or channel is responsible for 30% or 40% of your sales.

The rule of thumb I use is to limit any one source to no more than 20% of my revenue.  When anyone controls more than 20% of my income, I start to get nervous.  If they make it to 30%, finding a way to dilute their influence becomes an urgent priority.

Why?

Because, if 20% of my business vanished, I would survive.  Life would become a bit uncomfortable for a while, but the business would get through it.  If much more than that vanished, the survival of my company would be much more doubtful.  I suspect yours would be in trouble, too.

The next time you are looking at your financials, take a close look at where the money is coming from.  If you find too much of it in one place, diversify.