Last week, I talked about some of the benefits of article marketing. Now, let’s talk a little about the basics of how to get started.
Just about anyone with minimal writing ability can publish articles on various article directories. If your articles are the least bit interesting, they can be picked up by webmasters and bloggers to use as information on their sites. (more…)
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.
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.
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.
We all know that a recommendation from a third party is much more effective at generating business than any advertising. So, what are you doing to get those recommendations and referrals and turn them into new customers?
Super-marketer Dan Kennedy has coined a simple mnemonic device called the “EAR formula.”
EAR stands for Earn, Ask, and Reward.
Before you can ask for a referral, you need to earn the right to do so. You earn that right by delivering superior value and quality to your customers.
Believe it or not, too many businesses don’t ask for referrals. Common sense tells us that the best way to get more referrals is to ask for more referrals, so you need to make it a practice starting now.
The final part of the formula is to reward your customers for helping you build your business. The most common reward is some sort of discount on a future purchase or gift in exchange for the referral. But, I would encourage you to be a little more creative in your approach. The reward really can be anything that has value to the customer.
One problem with many referral programs I see is that they make the exchange very explicit upfront – “get your friends to buy and you’ll get something.” This approach can create the perception that you’re buying your customer’s address book like it was any other list. This is especially true if you aren’t doing a great job at earning the right to ask for a referral in the first place.
If you want to provide discounts or gifts in exchange for referrals, then consider “surprising” your customer with an unexpected gift or discount after they’ve made a referral. You could also host periodic “customer appreciation” events. Ideally, these events would be related in some way to your business but should never be overtly commercial.
A referral program works best when you are asking all of your customers for referrals, not relying on a small handful of your “best” customers to do all the referring. If all of your referrals are coming from a very small number of people…
What happens if something goes wrong with that customer?
What happens if that customer moves away or changes jobs?
Certainly, you won’t get referrals from all of your customers no matter how much you deserve them, ask for them, or reward people for making them. But, the more customers you actively solicit for those referrals, the more you will get, and the less impact the loss of any one customer and their referrals will have on your business.
If you don’t have a referral program, sit down now and create one. This doesn’t have to be complicated. Start by simply making it a point to ask every customer (assuming you’ve earned it) if they could refer someone to you. It could be as simple as saying something like:
“I’m glad to see you’re happy with our service. May I ask you to tell at least one of your friends about us?”
Since I like to practice what I preach…
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What do you think about what I’ve said? Add your comments about this article below.
To your success,
Want to make more money?
Give your stuff away!
That’s right. Give it away. Not just some half-baked junk, either. Give away your best stuff.
The Internet has done a lot of great things for marketers – but perhaps one not so great thing is that the Internet has created an expectation that things are instantly available and free.
This actually is a great thing for you.
Why?
Because its gives you an opportunity to prove yourself and earn the trust of the market. That is something that you simply can’t buy.
So what do you give away?
Of course, that depends on what you sell, but the general rule is to give your potential customers something of value to them. Something from which they can benefit – even if they never pay you a dime. This will usually be information.
If you’re in business, it’s almost certainly true that you have some knowledge or skill that your customers need. So that’s what you give them!
Get the idea? There are a bunch of tried and true ways to get that information out there. Here are a few…
How does this turn into sales?
No matter what medium you use, always include a response mechanism. A link to your website or some other way to contact you is the key item to include. It’s important that you don’t come across as some huckster pushing something. Make sure that anything you put out there has at least a 5 to 1 ratio of good content to sales message. Even then, this is not the place to beat people over the head with a sales message – save that for when they come to your site or otherwise contact you. The job of the “sales pitch” here is to get the prospect to contact you – nothing more.
Once you have an article or podcast or video produced, it needs to go somewhere. They can’t drive anyone to your site if they aren’t seen. My next post will give you some resources to use to get your stuff out there.
