Business Blogging Pros

Owning a Hammer vs Building a House

A few days ago, my friend Mark Roberts wrote a great blog post about smores (Social Media Whores). From his comments to me this morning it's obvious that he stirred up something.  It's a topic I feel strongly about so I want to elaborate:    

You may know how to use a hammer, level, and saw but that does not mean you know how to design and build a house.

Gary Vaynerchuk said the same thing using a different analogy at the AZ Entrepreneurship Conference last year:

The Telephone is not a Marketing Strategy.  It's a Tool.

When I started this business - way back before the term 'social media' became popular - a business owner could start a blog almost anywhere, write anything anytime to anyone and he would likely get noticed. Maybe even end up on the front page of the NY Times.  Businesses that blogged were that rare.

It's different today.  Technorati's 2008 State of the Blogosphere says that one million new blog posts are being created every day. "If you write it they will come" doesn't work any more.

As another friend and colleague Dave Cooke says, you must start with a strategy.  Who are your clients?  What does your perfect client look like?  What are the problems you solve for them?  What are their reasons for not buying from you now?  

For example, in my Twitter webinars we talk about using Twitter as a branding tool, but if you don't know what you want to be known for then you've got the cart before the horse.

There are a lot of consultants and 'experts' who only want to talk about the tools. Why? Because tools are cool.  Particularly bright shiny new tools.  Several months ago I mentioned to one of these smores that I was planning to offer webinars.  He immediately replied that I should use XXXXXX for that.  Why did he recommend XXXXXX? Because it was new and it was what he was currently fixated on.  A quick review of XXXXX revealed that it did not fit the needs of my business.  It wasn't even close.

Don't focus on the tools. Focus on the business.

Mark Roberts has some great recommendations for steering clear of smores.  I'll add my own:

Look for someone who starts with, "Tell me about your business".  Questions like "What's your target market?", "Who's your perfect client?" and "What problems do you solve for your clients" tend to indicate that you are taking so someone who understands business and marketing, not just the tools.

When you engage us to create a blog for you, we spend over half of the entire engagement focused on issues like these.  We help our clients answer these questions.  The results is not just a better social media strategy, but a better business strategy as well.

Typepad Help: What Should I Write About on my Blog?

If blogging is part of your business strategy then you've probably asked yourself:

• What should I be writing about?
• How should I be writing it? What should the tone of my posts be?
• How can I best use my blog to tell people about my business?

Think of your blog as a symphony orchestra, and each blog post is an individual instrument. As the conductor, your job is to make this collection of blog posts work in harmony and deliver a rich message to your audience in a way that makes them want to read more. 

So what do you do if your orchestra sounds like a couple of kazoos and a banjo? (No offense to banjos, I play one myself) The instruments in a symphony orchestra are divided into four groups: 

• Strings  
• Woodwinds 
• Brass 
• Percussion 

Similarly, you should be writing four kinds of posts in your blog: 

• Describing problems you solve for your clients. 
• News and trends in your industry, education, and information. 
• Behind the scenes activity in your business. 
• Personal anecdotes that humanize you and your company. 

A symphony orchestra may have as many as 32 violins but generally only one bass drum. Used at specific moments, one single bass drum can have a tremendous impact upon the audience. However if the sound of the bass drums is the only thing the audience hears, they will probably be shaking their heads and walking away. 

The point is that proportionality is important. A few posts about the antics of your cat are endearing and provide a point of connection for your animal-loving audience. Too many such posts and it's a blog about your cat and not about your business. 

Describe Problems You Solve For Your Clients 

This is the most important group and by far the hardest one to get right. Classic marketing texts call it your USP or Unique Selling Proposition, but it's more than that. Your blog is not about you or how you "efficiently and effectively integrate a wide range of resources and core competencies to provide flexible, scalable, ground-breaking industry-standard, cutting-edge solutions." Instead, your blog posts in this group must be about: 

• Me, your reader, 
• My problems, 
• Conveying to me that you really do understand my problems, and 
• How you solve them 

The most important - and most difficult - part is to articulate it the same way your customer does, not the way you would do so. Look at their problem through their lens. Frame it in language they would use. For example, a personal growth coach might be working with people who are living too timidly, but her client would never say it that way. Her client would say something like "I keep wimping out." 

If making this shift in thinking is difficult (you're not alone), try calling your most recent dozen or so customers on the phone. Begin with, "Hi, how are you doing?" Let the conversation be open-ended and non-directed. After the conversation has warmed up a bit simply ask, "So tell me: I’m curious why you chose to do business with me instead of my competitor." Then listen. Really listen. Take notes. 

Write about the problem in a way that doesn't bury it half-way down the page; Get it right up there in the first sentence so that your reader doesn't have to invest a lot of time to learn that you are talking about his problem. 

Most of us get too formal in our blog posts. When you are writing, imagine yourself sitting across the table at a coffee shop from your client who is an old friend. Write like you would say it. 

Your objective is for your readers to think, "She really understands my problem."  

News and Trends in Your Industry. Educate and Inform 

You are an expert. The more you share that expertise, the more you will be considered an expert by others. The objective of this group of blog posts is for your readers to think, "She is eminently qualified to solve my problem."  

For example, if you are a tile installer, explain the process of installing tile in a shower stall in such a way that it stays intact for twenty years instead of falling down in three. Educate your reader. Strive to help your readers be informed consumers. 

Behind the Scenes 

Everyone loves to get the inside scoop. If you are a printer and the new printing press arrived today, blog about it (better yet include some pictures!). Blog about getting it set up and calibrated. If you are an auto mechanic, blog about the new diagnostic machine. If you are a janitorial company, blog about your hand-held air-born particle counter. You have clients who are your fans. These are the ones who drive past six of your competitors to buy from you. Make them feel like they are part of your inner circle. 

Personal Anecdotes that Humanize You and Your Company 

Now that your reader recognizes that you understand his problem and knows that you are qualified to solve it, there is one more thing you want him to think: 

"She is the kind of person I am comfortable doing business with. I can trust her."  

People don't do business with your company, they do business with you. You want your readers to know that you are not a big cold impersonal company. Write about your hobbies, kids, pets, and personal achievements. Readers who are your future clients will connect with you. 

Video is a great way to accomplish this. With YouTube, an inexpensive video camera, and some free editing software, anyone can include video in their blog. 

One caution: It's easy to get carried away and let the volume of posts in this group overwhelm the rest. The objective is for posts in this group to act as that one lonely French horn in your orchestra that gives the whole thing an emotional tug.

"Nobody Can Show Me that Social Media Leads To Business"

An 'old media' guy said that. 

He's viewing social media through a traditional TV/Radio Advertising lens instead of a Networking/Relationship lens.

I can attribute more than half of my business to referrals from people I am actively engaged with in social media.

Social Media is nothing more than building, nurturing, and maintaining relationships.

That same old media guy can probably rattle off lots of business he's gotten from building relationships at places like Chamber of Commerce mixers and other networking events.  Social Media is the same activity, just in a different medium using different tools.

The most important word in social media is social.  It's about real people, real relationships, and real conversation.

Use Your Blog to Create Landing Pages

Almost everyone needs to create a Landing Page now and then. 

If you are using Wordpress, most themes contain a 'No Sidebar' template and you can use that. For this client we created a special template that removed the theme's extraneous background colors. 

Typepad users may be frustrated because they can't select the template on a page-by-page basis and don't have a way to eliminate the sidebar. Here's the trick but it requires a PRO level Typepad account: Create another blog in the same account. Select the same theme and give it all the same stylesheet customizations. Then select a Layout that contains no sidebars. 

The final thing you should do is to give the landing page it's own short memorable domain name. GoDaddy makes it very easy to forward a domain name to a specific page on your blog.

If I Twitter do I still need a Blog?

Yes!

Pamela Slim (@pamslim on Twitter) and I were having a conversation via Twitter today about the frequency of our blog posts since the advent of Twitter.  The truth is that the combination of your blog and Twitter is very powerful.

For example, I've discovered that the same half-dozen questions about blogging ('Which is better: Typepad or Wordpress?') get asked over and over on Twitter.  I've written blog posts answering those questions.  I continually search - using TweetDeck - for terms like 'Typepad'.  WHen I see one of those common questions come up I send the person an @reply containig a link to the specific post on my blog that answers their question.  They get their question answered and they explore, learning more about me and about blogging.  Many times I not only gain a new Twitter follower and blog reader, I gain a client too.

There are lot's more ways that Twitter and your blog make a powerful conversation.

If you want to attend a webinar about leveraging Twitter in your business click here.

Trust and Credibility

I met with Loni, the Marketing Manager for a local medium-sized building contractor. It was an interesting conversation, both of us exploring ways that blogging could benefit her company.

One of the themes that kept recurring in our conversation was the owner - I'll call him 'Sam'. She told me one story after another illustrating Sam's integrity, devotion to his family, and his willingness to go above and beyond for his customers. Sam was a living example of the phrase:

People don't do business with your company, they do business with you.

Sam is the company. Yet, when reviewing the company website, Sam was nowhere to be found - The company's biggest asset was invisible. Sam's company needs a blog for several reasons, but the biggest is to get Sam out in front of his prospective customers and let them build a personal connection with him.

Here in the Phoenix area, there are a bazillion contractors. When you need a contractor, who do you pick? You pick the one you trust. Certainly you need to use your blog to demonstrate your expertise and develop your credibility, but it is just as important to use it to develop trust.

You develop trust by letting your readers see you are human. Be genuine. Share a little of your personal life. If your son or daughter has a significant accomplishment, brag about it a little. (Who can help but brag about their kids?) Talk about your hobby, interest, or avocation once in a while.

The result is that not only do people start to see you as a three-dimensional human being, readers that share the same interest will feel a connection to you. You have no idea how many people feel connected to me because of my food blog.

The results of that is that your prospective customers learn that you are the kind of person they are comfortable doing business with.

Trust. Credibility. Interest. All three must be present in order for you to convert the prospect into a customer.

Credibility Upon Entry

I was reading a conversation on one of the better known sales forums today about the advisability of 'assuming the sale'. In other words, using language such as:

"what we're going to do for you is..."
"what colour would you like that in?"
"what address would you like that sent to"

Blogs, websites, Google, and the internet in general have fundamentally changed the nature of the traditional sales funnel.

Consider the traditional model:

1. Prospect responds to a print ad by calling/writing and asking for literature
2. Prospect contacts us for more information.
3. Prospect asks for a demo
4. Prospect asks for more information..
...
5. Prospect buys

We could track the prospect on his complete trip through the funnel. This is a double-edged sword. On one hand, we can capture great metrics on the conversion rates for each step, but it is also time consuming.

Things are (or can be) very different today. What if your first contact with the prospect was at Step 5?

We can use our websites, blogs, and other tools to provide the prospect with all the information he/she needs. The prospect LOVES it because he can proceed at his own pace without the perceived 'pressure' from a salesperson. (And there is a side benefit in that you are seen as a more open and friendly company that is easy to deal with.)

I am fond of quoting my friend and sales guru Michael Goodman who says that the three elements that must be present before the sale can be made are trust, credibility, and interest.

Consider the way we buy things today. The first step is usually a Google search. We probably locate a small number of likely candidate firms who appear to offer the product or service we want.

Then we perform some additional research to narrow those candidates down to a single selection. When I bought my Bosch dishwasher recently, by the time I visited the local dealer's showroom I had already decided upon the exact model and that I wanted to buy it from him.

Ideally, by the time you hear from the prospect for the first time, you want him to already know three things:

1. He has a problem/want/need
2. You are supremely qualified to solve his problem.
3. You are the kind of person he feels comfortable doing business with.

Done well, your blog can satisfy items 2 and 3. You can, through your blog, demonstrate your expertise and knowledge so well that you are perceived as an expert. (Of course, when someone refers to me as an expert, I usually reply that an expert is nothing but a former drip under pressure.)

And by sharing bits of your personal side, readers will come to know you as a genuine human being. For example, David Meerman Scott collects Apollo space program artifacts. I am an amateur gourmet chef. Our purpose is to help our readers get to know us. They then relate to us and form a connection. We become the kind of person they are comfortable doing business with. Remember:

"People don't do business with your company,
they to business with you."