What you say in your permission marketing (e-newsletters) links back to your Website landing pages, which link to your online optimized press releases and paid advertising, which link one to the other in consistent messaging, which link to your hardcopy branding, signage, and even in-store or in-office merchandising. And if you have a company blog, this is part of the mix, too.
The power is in your message, your words, your content.
DIY (Do-It-Yourself) – A movement? A good idea? What got me to thinking was an article I read recently in Entrepreneur.com on the benefits of designing your brand yourself. The author is talking about logos, that foundation of branding, but logos are just a piece of the DIY “movement” in today’s small business world.
There’s also the somewhat sacred cow of the business world, the business card. Though most businesses are still tossing money into the coffers of printing presses, creating whole boxes of business cards every time there’s a new employee or promotion or website addition, some of the new generation, I’d argue, are rethinking this old habit of pricey business cards. Boosted on by the availability of home office printer-ready business card stock and the ease of setting up cards on blank templates, these do-it-yourselfers are forging ahead on their own.
And now, Enter – the Blog.
The blogosphere is surely a do-it-yourself world! From the setup to the assumed authorship of the blog. In fact, the blog is based on a very personal, DIY premise, the assumption that you, the business owner, are there making a connection, that you, yourself, are the writer.
And with blogs the focus on on the Web shifts to content. People care more about what you say than the color of your font or the choice of your graphic. They want to know what you’re saying, what you’re thinking, and how they can be part of this conversation. They want to respond, to engage.
This is the part that, as a writer, I love!
Blogging doesn’t allow us to hide behind the shield of our logos, at least not much. Bloggers have forced us to shift our attention to our online content.
The never-ending need for content on your blogging site will catch up with you, so “they” say. And here’s proof that “they” are right: it will. Or, at least, it did for me. I’ve been off in the last couple of weeks writing magazine articles, setting up a couple of Websites for small businesses, and a workshop on blogging.
But what have I NOT done? I haven’t blogged.So that’s how easy it is for blogging to get thrown by the wayside. Business interferes. Life intervenes. Mea culpa. I allowed it. But what to do about such things if you are setting up a blog yourself? (And you know that when you set up a blog, you set up expectations in your client base.) Excellent question. From my experience here on the Harlan Editorial business blog, I’d say,
Make blogging a priority.
Put it on the Calendar — Make time for it.
Keep a notebook handy for flashes of insight to include.
Don’t just read other blogs, drop in formally and share your thoughts.
(Now, if I can just listenn to my own advice and remember to do some of this stuff myself, you’ll see me back in a mere day or two or three.)
Blogs are great tools to engage your customer. And an engaged customer builds a vested interest in your product.
A bookstore, for example, is an excellent candidate for a blog. Bookstores sell to customers’ passions — passions for literature, learning, politics. And we all love connecting over our passions. Give us a blog that tells us about the next book-signing, has a bit about the author, has a blog posting BY the author. Add in an RSS feed so we’re alerted to new events at the store. Have a section where we can comment on bestsellers. Have a section for the book club that meets there once a month.
Do all that, and you’re steps closer to engaging your customers, to creating that old-time feeling of the general store as a gathering place and of the storekeeper as a friend and confidante. And that goes for whether you are selling a product or a service.
Blogs can create that cozy, general store feeling. As we get to know you, the owner, manager, blogger, we become invested, engaged. We care.
The subhead here could be Great stuff on blogs! There’s a compilation on a blog, b5media, of great blogs recently posted on the “best” worst practices in businesses – those that will kill your business. They call it 99 Ways to Kill Your Business, and I picked up a link to it from Rachel Clarke’s Behind the Buzz blog.
My point? Lots of people still have the idea that blogs are diaries. I don’t remember how many times people have said just that to me, as in: Why would I read a blog? I don’t care what some so-and-so had for breakfast.
So here, next time the question comes up: 99 good reasons to read a blog.
The essential stumbling block I had to get over: blogging is not another word for ranting.
Let me update you, first, on how I got to this point, — blog site up, ready to develop.It was a long road from print media journalist and Web content creator to blogger. I overcame lots of preconceived judgments and low expectations of the world of blogging along the way.
Since I’m primarily a journalist, I started with research. I googled and yahoo-searched, clicked on links and then on links again, found more links and clicked there until I wasn’t even sure where I was in the universe of blogsites. I was looking for thought leaders in the online marketing industry.
It’s not pajama-clad, midnight rants, though there is a lot of this, for sure. In fact, there are thousands of bloggers throwing their voices out into the blogosphere void for no apparent reason. Some are rants; some are personal, some just for fun, and many with much more intimate information about themselves than I’ll ever want to know.
But I was searching for online marketing leaders and following those links. And I found several blogs written by thought leaders.
These are the sites that I go back to again and again to check in on what blog marketing is all about. Their sites are both sales sites for their companies and content-rich sites for those of us searching for insight. You think people like David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR, are giving away the store because when you visit his site and Susan Getgood’s or John Jantsch’s site, you find rich content.
And that’s the first lesson of blogging. It’s all about content. Readers come to your site not just to learn about your latest workshop, but to learn something about your subject. Give them content. Let them inside the store. Share.
And business will follow. (Example: I bought David Meerman Scott’s New Rules book after seeing it on his blog.)
PS – (Can you put a PS in a blog?) My thanks to everyone who responded and, yes, please do not be embarrassed about just lurking (and learning!); when you want to respond, click on comment below or go to register in the right-hand column. You can sign in either way. (Requiring sign-ins helps me control spammers.)
As we begin this blog, I welcome all of you, my clients and friends, to come along with me on a journey into social media. We’ve all been talking about it, dissecting it and pondering what it would feel like to take the leap away from static Web content and into the dynamic, chaotic, and sometimes downright scary world of blogs and today’s wild world of Web dialog. I know I’m looking forward to it. I think it’ll be fun. So, fasten those seatbelts and get ready for a new version of Mr. Toad’s wild ride.
Right here is where we begin, with my pretty-much-empty blog page. It looks rather naked and exposed at this point, don’t you agree?
But it’s lovely in its own way – empty and full of potential. And that’s the beauty of the Web today. It’s full of exciting possibilities and connections undreamed of even just a few years ago. But back to the Harlan Editorial Blog: This is how blogs begin. Look around and you’ll find a blogroll full of friendly strangers, and one friend that I’ve added already as well.
Even on this very simple grid, I can see so many exciting ways to go! We’ve got places for archives, ways to add additional categories, tags, links, pages, and even a calendar. We’ll play with these as we go along. We’ll go in starts and stops and experiment for ourselves. So, take a screenshot today, and later we’ll compare; we’ll see how far we’ve gone in three months. And then we’ll ask the BIG question: Can a business exist on a blog alone?
If you've had your site for awhile and been updating regularly, it's time for a keyword tuneup. Find out if your keywords are still working for you. And if they're not, get them tuned up now. Contact Harlan Editorial for keyword optimization: send an email to Harlan@harlaneditorial.com
