the business of blogging

Quite often when I try to explain to people what’s involved in setting up a blog, (and why I charge to install WP when it’s “free” ) or with inbound marketing, I watch their eyes glaze over and their brains shut down. It’s not that what I’m going over is all that foreign or technical most of the time, it’s just that the typical business owner doesn’t see the relationship between the tactics, techniques, sites and details. Hopefully these images will help to clear it up a bit.

Blog set up
I offer a couple of different packages for clients for this service, but whether you do it yourself or not, don’t forget to allot the time and energy to creating that initial content (or the keyword research that should drive it — but that’s a different post) . The “hello world” post isn’t meant to be kept!

Click to view full size blog set up image

Inbound Marketing
No, it is not a good idea to select “one from column A” and no, I really can’t tell you which is “the best” technique because the answer really does depend on your audience and your goals. We’re trying to cast the widest possible net to be where your customers and potential customers can find you. Also, in real life they also all relate to one another as they do with your main site. I offer “packages” that are basically drawn on budgetary lines but include work in each area each month.

Click to view full size inbound marketing image

Posted under blog building, inbound marketing

I’m no astrologist. I’ve never even done any marketing work for one, or I would know a lot more about the science behind that daily horoscope than I do.  And, even though I do read my horoscope,  I can’t say I usually remember it five minutes later.

But there is a word that intrigued me enough when I first saw it in a horoscope to look it up. The word was “retrograde.” It’s a scientific term referring to the relative motion of two objects. In astrology it’s used to cover the whole period of time that a planet appears to be  moving backwards, away from the earth.  Here’s how the Astrology Weekly dictionary defines its effects:

It is generally considered that a transiting planet is more likely to develop its negative qualities when it is in retrograde. That it is turning back for a recheck of ground already covered need not necessarily be bad, except for the fact that the future is held in abeyance. Some people look upon any delay as a tragedy, but the real difference has to do with whose neck is in the noose when the postponement of execution is decreed. In some cases it may mean only a temporary delay that is compensated for when the planet resumes its direct motion.

Judging by the rising pile of rehashed, recycled, recovered, and reworded junk piling up in my inbox these days, I’d say Internet Marketing has gone retrograde.

I hope your inbox doesn’t look like mine. I deliberately stay on the mailing lists of dozens of people who represent the three or four main schools of Internet Marketing sharks, er, gurus.  That way I stay in touch with what they’re selling these days.  Consider these offerings:

• A high priced, exclusive training course on how to sell search marketing to local businesses - billed a rate higher than most students can expect to make from the activity in a year. I ought to know, I tried to sell local businesses on the idea in 2006. (Hey Rockford, you remember, right?)
• Another chestnut from 2006 is being repackaged for the 2nd time in an attempt to squeeze one more dime out of the product. This time when the market bit at the 5,000 offered, the author got a bit too greedy and offered another 10,000. Last I read he’s still sitting on 2,000 of them. So much for fake scarcity.
• Speaking of chestnuts, there are literally hundreds of things every one of us can do to increase our sales results a little bit here and there. Last time out, these quick fixes were valued at $39. This time they’ll cost you $697.
• Five affiliates of one seller sent me the exact same message touting the templates and scripts for a social networking site so that I could start the “next Facebook.” I got mine when they were the ‘Giveaway of the Day’ 18 months ago.
• One last blooper was actually left in the final edit of the video sales pitch for one of the 3,750,000 products (I googled it) out there that will help you earn more with Twitter. The speaker said he earned $19,000 from Twitter. His interviewer said, “wow. I thought it was $5,000…”

All of these examples are throwbacks to the web 1.0 marketing tactics that we all said were to blame for the rise of web 2.0 “marketing democracy” and socialization. That’s retrograde behavior all right. And it comes at a good time.

When we have 101,000,000 “expert” offerings on how to use a social network that didn’t exist three years ago, the bloom is off the social rose. Even the gurus are “unfollowing,” shedding friends by the thousands and buffering themselves from the mob with Facebook fan pages these days because they admit they can’t stand the noise.

I can’t shake the feeling that the pressure is building faster now. It’s almost like we’re sitting atop the next volcanic explosion of change. Or maybe the planets are just about to swing through that last retrograde angle and appear to snap back into forward motion.

It’s time to move on from here. Time to get out of the schoolyard where everybody cares a little too much about what everybody else thinks and get back to business.

You do what you do best, and I’ll do what I do best and if we need each other’s services we’ll pay for them. I’ll stop pretending to be an astrologist who can predict the future if you’ll stop pretending to be a marketer. Deal?

Posted under social marketing

Randfish said on the SEOmozBlog that he and Darren Rowse had talked about blogging evolving away from sharing, and how that might leave an opening for twitter links to start trumping blog posts and appearing above them in the search engine results. The importance of rankings for any business makes this worthy of serious thought. He said:

…It seems very likely to me that the search engines will need to start relying on Twitter’s tweet graph, particularly for “new” information and content. Darren and I remarked that:

* Twitter, and sites that aggregate data from it, like Tweetmeme, actually expose content before social voting sites like Digg, Reddit or Hacker News
* It can be 12-24 hours between when content is first “tweeted” vs. when it earns its first external link
* Many pieces of “throwaway” content (a quick, funny image, post or video) will earn virtually no links, even if hundreds of people have shared them on Twitter

I think it’s way too early to determine if this trend is real, or if it will continue, but the SEO industry has been talking for years about when the engines might start to evolve beyond link analysis. This is one of the first credible expansions I’ve seen.

I am very happy to see this evolution unfold and ultimately think it’s good for both blogging and Twitter. Removing the “junk” and overly personal posts on many blogs improves their quality and relevance for a reader immensely. At the same time, confining those personal tidbits and shares to a micro 140 character outburst makes them a lot more palatable and desirable.

In a time starved world, the twitter/blog combo is a perfect division of labor. I can still convince myself that I am connecting with people even if all I get is a brief glimpse through their eyes at what is funny, important, fascinating, or revolting to them. I get that through the links they share on twitter. Of course, to truly connect we must engage each other in real conversations and use @replies, etc. that aren’t solely self-serving…

Even if all I do on twitter is absorb other people’s tweets and links, I can then explore, in depth and dimension, the blog posts that those links take me to. Mind you, I look at blogs as nothing more than a code platform that has replaced the static website. It is an accessible code base that allows bloggers to present their subject in whatever depth and form is best to convey their message. If twitter forces bloggers to concentrate and present more unique, high quality content, in the hopes of gaining links, more power to it.

That makes twitter the sizzle and blogs the steak. Having that sizzle come in the form of a 140 character message is a huge relief after enduring looooonnng sales letters, and squeeze pages of no information fluff in hopes of getting a bite of real meaty content.

Frankly, I even enjoy fewer links between blogs. I have attempted in this post to represent the original goal and purpose of links between blogs. All too often, however, they’re a cheaters way of “contributing to the conversation” that rarely amounts to more than “I heard” or “me too” posts written specifically to get a link from that bigger, more important blog. As a reader, I resent them and the wasted time I spent surfing through long posts to learn nothing new.

So here’s my bottom line contribution to the discussion Rand and Rowse had:
I’m no search engine algorithm expert, but Ido work every onpage and offpage angle I can to help my clients rank well and grow their business.

I wonder if, instead of taking over the rankings directly, twitter will play another, far more important role in the future of search. I can see a “tweet score” being added to Google’s algorithm instead of  tweets outranking posts. If tweets are replacing blog links it makes sense for a tweet score to replace the pagerank formula so many experts have already remarked no longer seems to hold much meaning. It makes even more sense when you consider that pagerank measured the importance of who linked to you.

Even if Twitter is cannabalizing links, I can’t see Google feeding it search prominance while waiting around to see if Yahoo or MSN is going to buy it. They’ll gobble it up first by incorporating it in their supersecret formula (and it won’t cost them a buyout penny). At least that’s what I would do if I were Google.

Posted under SEO

I’ve been taking a little heat lately for not updating this blog on a timely (read daily) basis.

For right now, however, this blog exists for the sole purpose of showing a potential client what a blog is, what routinely appears in the sidebar, what sorts of things you can include for content, etc.

I set up this blog so people could get a taste of what a blog is and what they can do for their own businesses. I wanted it to look like the same stublet I would deliver to them with my premium set-up service.

But I’ve already gone a couple steps beyond that, so perhaps you’re right and it’s time to just dive in to regular blogging again and start using this space to fill some of my clients’ other needs beyond the launch. Perhaps I should talk more about building traffic over time and balancing SEO and PPC. Or where and how else you can build traffic. Or what to do with it once it’s come to your pages.

LOL, perhaps it’s even time to revisit the “you can do it yourself” streaming video and podcasting advice I went bankrupt trying to promote in 2004. I think the market has finally caught up with that one, though the local area still has not.

Tell me what you think, and if I do it, what you would like to see me cover.

Posted under Blog benefits

Yeah! I got a client to say no to an email marketing project today. I wasn’t alone in saying no, and that makes me feel good too.

Yes, I help clients organize emails, and newsletters, and do the creative for them, etc., etc., and that this could have cost me money and future business from other clients wanting to do the same sort of thing and needing to see samples of it, but I don’t care. There are times like this when I know for a fact that my client is better off not having exposed her business to 400,000 people.

This client is launching an existing business into a new market niche. She has a new website with an eCommerce functionality that has taken nearly a year to build. I am helping her with a blog that will drive traffic to that site.

She was excited to be approached by someone who offered an email list of 400,000 supposedly qualified and interested prospects. Who wouldn’t jump at a chance to jumpstart a new business with that sort of exposure, right?

Unfortunately the person offering the database wouldn’t or couldn’t even send us a simple email stating that he legally owned the database and had the right to rent it to us. The programmer who has spent the last year lovingly creating a 1,500 item eCommerce engine and I ganged up on the client to remind her that she’s come too far and worked too hard to throw everything away.

Moral of the story is an old one…if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Compound that old common sense with the new reality that nearly anything and everything can be tracked on the Internet and you have a recipe for business disaster. If  you send emails to a stolen list (or one that is just “scraped” and not double opted), you are just as tainted and guilty as the person who stole (or obtained that list under shady circumstances).

Building a business online takes time. Real time, not just Internet time. The tried and true techniques we use to get your site ranked and increase human traffic to your site work, but usually take at least 3-6 months to see results. The one thing we can do today that will show you results today is Pay Per Click advertising and that will cost money instead of time.

There are no shortcuts if you want to build a business.

Posted under social marketing