Virtual Impax

Measuring Blog Success

by Kathy

Measuring Blog Success How do you measure blog success? Is it determined by the number of RSS subscribers? Is it determined by how many blog comments? Do you measure blog success by how much money you can make from your blog?

There are many different ways to define blog success and the list above doesn’t begin to exhaust the possible definitions of success. Because blogging is new, we’re still LEARNING about all the things blogs and other social media tools can (and can’t) do for a business.

We’re learning that blogs are a HORRIBLE “Minor Sale” facilitation tool. If your business is making Minor Sales -sales which do not warrant an investment of time or energy into researching alternatives – then a blog will probably not be a profitable investment of your time and energy.

On the other hand, if your business is making Major Sales – then a blog is almost a “must have” tool in your marketing toolbox. (Read more about whether a Blog the Best Marketing Tool for Your Business)

Unexpected Blog Success

A couple of years ago – I converted this traditional HTML web site to a WordPress blog. In making the conversion – I changed paths so to speak. I went from a “set it and forget it – softer easier way” HTML based web site to a dynamic, constantly changing blog.

While the change from a static HTML web site to a blog has meant more time and energy being invested in the “care and feeding” of the blog -it’s also resulted in some outstanding “side” benefits – benefits above and beyond introducing prospective clients to me – my thinking – and my services.

For example, last week, I got a phone call from a client who had a turnkey online training business for sale. She had contacted me and asked if I knew of anyone interested in buying her business. This is traditional marketing 101. If I hadn’t had a blog, I would have done as she had done and sent a “mass” email which outlined the opportunity to everyone in my address book. However, because I had a blog – I was able to create a blog post and then send emails to my contacts who might be interested.

For the next six weeks, I received a steady stream of people expressing interest in the business. Surprisingly – none of them were from my immediate sphere of contacts. Without exception, all of the interest in the business came from virtual strangers. Some left comments – which I did NOT approve to protect their privacy – while others contacted me via my contact page. It wasn’t an overwhelming flood of response- but it was enough for my client to set up an auto responder to deal with the inquiries.

According to my client, the quality of the inquires was truly amazing. Many were real prospects – which put her in the enviable position of being able to pick from the best offer. I’m not a business broker – nor do I play one on TV. However, with a small investment of time and energy, I helped to connect my client with not just one, but several serious prospective buyers.

My willingness to turn from the softer, easier – “set it and forget it” style web presence has been one of the best investments of time and energy I’ve made. However, I think it’s important to point out that when I launched this blog – becoming a business “pimp” was not part of my grand blogging plan. This experience just provided a very POWERFUL illustration of the unexpected long term benefits one can expect from business blogging.

There are plenty of people out there who are definitely willing to sell you their system to the softer easier way to achieve blogging success – but I’m not one of them. My “blogging help” resource is called the 8 week Power Blog Launch – not the “overnight success blog launch.” That’s probably because the one thing I’ve learned over the years is that seeking the “softer, easier way” ultimately leads to regular attendance at 12 step meetings of one kind or another!

However, if you’re looking for a reason to begin blogging for your business – the best reason I can give is you that you never can tell what future opportunity lies ahead. I have yet to say to myself, “Darn! I wish I hadn’t converted my html web site into a blog!”

With that said, I don’t recommend reckless business blogging – on the contrary.

Determining HOW you’ll measure the success of your blog is the first step to ACHIEVING blog success.

Start your blog with a plan. The old “if you fail to plan then you’re planning to fail” cliche comes to mind. However, with that said – you also shouldn’t try to “contain” the direction your business blog blog takes.

When you begin to blog for your business, it’s best to adopt an adventurer’s mindset. Be ready to accept a possible “alternate” blog success scenario. Maybe you don’t need 50 comments per post to achieve blog success. Maybe you don’t need 10K RSS subscribers to call your blogging experiment successful.

Maybe – just maybe- you’ll find a whole new way to define blog success.

Want to learn more about creating a successful blog? Pick up a copy of the 8 Week Power Blog Launch today. It's one of the many essential blogging tools we have to help beginning business bloggers learn from OTHER people's mistakes.

Social Media Mistake #3: Forgetting what it is…

by Kathy

in Social Media Marketing

Probably the most common social media mistake made by both business owners and individuals is not having a clear understanding of what social media is. When you forget (or don’t know) what social media is – that is the time when the biggest mistakes are made. So what is social media -

Social media is conversation!

True – it’s a unique – technology aided means of communication – but when you strip away the shiny metal surface – social media is simply communication between people who are not face to face with each other.

Because it is conversation – the typical rules of making polite conversation apply. With the way some people treat social media – I wonder how many dinner party invitations they receive – because their manners online are atrocious.

Of course, those with the worst manners are those who are trying to “game” the system. These boorish oafs are akin to the person who shows up at the party and starts barging in on conversations, telling anyone who will listen about this GREAT MLM opportunity. The only reason this type of person ACCEPTS a party invitation is to build his or her “down line.” There is no room for relationships – only rubes.

The real “problem” most businesses have with social media is that their previous relationships with their customers were strictly one way. The company spoke via television ads, radio ads, newspaper ads, etc. The customer responded by whipping out his/her credit card and making a purchase. There is little opportunity for feedback in that kind of “relationship” – and quite honestly it – it made it MUCH easier on the business when the communication was strictly one way.

Instead of dealing with REAL customer feedback – the business could simply speculate on what consumers thought. They could sit in meeting rooms – drinking coffee and pouring over spread sheets and try to interpret the WHY behind their consumers behavior. In the days BEFORE social media – the only other way to gain this valuable data was to resort to focus groups. Focus groups are where people are brought into an artificial setting and asked about their opinions. It’s phony – it’s forced – but a decade ago it was the best way to figure out what was going on inside a consumer’s mind.

That was then – and this is now.

Now we have a more “advanced” tool for gaining access to what’s going on inside consumer’s minds. However, there are those who will try to tell you that [insert social media tool here] is the short- cut to marketing success. Just set up a Facebook Fan Page – or a blog – or begin Tweeting – and you’ll be amazed as you watch your business revenues skyrocket with throngs of customers hungry for your product or service.

Don’t get me wrong – that certainly CAN happen. There’s nothing better than working with a client who has a clear vision of their customer’s GDP (Goals, Desires, Problems) who wants to get involved in social media marketing. On the flip side – there’s nothing worse than trying to work with someone whose social media marketing goal is revenue without relationships.

There are many ways to communicate with your customers and potential customers. The biggest difference between social media marketing and “traditional” marketing methods is that the prospective customers can – and WILL – let you know what they think.

Come to think of it – consumers are doing the same thing via social media when it comes to traditional marketing methods such as television advertising as well. So when you think about it – there really is no escaping the fact that social media will be shaping your business whether you like it or not. You can make the biggest mistake of all which is ignoring social media – or you can try to manipulate social media when you don’t like what your customers are saying – but in the end, remember that social media is merely communication aided and abetted by technology – and nothing more.

Any “magic” you find in using social media for marketing is definitely provided by YOU!

Social Media Mistake #2: Try to manipulate it

by Kathy

in Blog

social media communication The first installment in the Social Media Mistakes series covered the “ignore it and hope it will go away” mistake. The second mistake is usually the next misstep businesses make with social media… they try to manipulate it.

In the blog post, Social Media Marketing – what you don’t know CAN hurt you! I share the story of how Belkin – a manufacturer of electronics – got caught in an attempt to play the social media marketing game by gaming those results.

Rather than rely on customers to post real reviews of Belkin products- they decided to advertise and offered to pay for post positive reviews. Their advertisement was seen by Arlen Parsa who happened to have a blog. Even though he’s not a reporter, he broken the story like a pro in Exclusive: Belkin’s Development Rep is Hiring People to Write Fake Positive Amazon Reviews. Other bloggers saw this post, picked up the story and carried it as well. Suddenly, Belkin has a PR problem.

Fortunately for Belkin, they weren’t new to the web so this “scandal” didn’t eclipse their long established web presence. It’s still there – but it’s never reached #1 on a search for just the business name. The same wasn’t true of the Cash4Gold Social Media Meltdown. Cash4Gold actually had to launch an AdWords campaign on their own brand because the scandal stirred up by social media eclipsed their measly online presence.

For many businesses their first foray into the wild and wonderful world of social media is when they discover a social media shit storm (links to a story about United Airline’s own social media PR disaster) has erupted and their beloved brand is at the epicenter. They come face to face with a disgruntled customer’s blog post and the first order of business is to get rid of it.

It’s human nature. None of us wants a blog post lambasting our business out there for all to see. It’s even worse when the blog posts has comments that say, “Glad I found this – I won’t be doing business with these guys.” That has happened on my own bitchy blog post, “When the Pest Control Company is your most Annoying Pest!

As a business owner, you need to understand that social media users tend to feel a type of social media moral obligation to share their experiences with their online tribe. This is nothing new – people have always felt compelled to share their experiences with others – the difference now is that sharing is “etched” in the stone which is the most comprehensive directory mankind has ever created

Important take away for business owners and brand managers

Recognize that social media is giving customers a voice – their complaints can no longer be counted as “customer noise“. With that in mind, remember that the web is usually not the FIRST step in an effort to resolve an ugly customer service situation. In the case of United Airlines – it took SEVERAL disrespectful interactions before Dave Carroll composed his now famous ditty. (Read What to do when Social Media creates a Shit Storm for more on this story.)

Had Dave Carroll’s experience been “unique” – had he been the only one who was treated with blatant disrespect by United Airlines – his attempts to share his story would have fallen on deaf ears. Instead, there are hundreds – perhaps thousands – of people who have had similar experiences with United. They connected with Dave’s authentic experience – thus the viral nature of Dave’s musical retort.

This is why most attempts at manipulating social media fail miserably. There seems to be a built in “bullshit detector” in social media. Maybe it’s that you can’t fool all of the bloggers all of the time… but for whatever reason – I have yet to see an example of an inauthentic customer complaint getting any traction online.

If you’re a business owner or brand manager – and you see bad buzz in social media about your company – the absolute FIRST step is NOT to try to “manipulate” the situation. Your first job should be to assess and correct the situation internally.

Diagnose and correct the problem – then make your apologies. You might be surprised how willing people are to forgive you and your employees when you authentically make amends. You also might be surprised how an inauthentic response can actually make the situation worse in the long run.

Customer Noise and Social Media

December 10, 2009

I write a lot here about connecting with customers. It’s what social media does best really. While the old web was all about a one way conversation in which businesses “spoke” and consumers “listened”… the “new” web with it’s social media capabilities – allows the conversation to go two ways.
Social media is new – brand [...]

Read the full article →

Before you spend one penny on an AdWords campaign….

November 23, 2009

Before you spend one penny on an AdWords campaign – take a walk with me – a customer – through the whole “searching for a product or service” on the internet.
Yesterday – my clothes dryer quit working. While draping my clothes over the railing of the upstairs over look is an option, it’s not particularly [...]

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Are your customers wearing tin foil hats?

November 19, 2009

In Business Building Strategy: The most important question of all…, I suggested that the word”why” can turn a simple complaint into an essential business building strategy question. Sometimes – a series of very mystifying actions can have their root in a very simple disconnect which can be quickly and easily discovered by simply asking [...]

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Business Building Strategy: What will you do to get their money?

October 30, 2009

I’ve been doing a lot of individual work with clients and a phrase I’ve been using a LOT lately is…. “What are you willing to do to get their money?”
It’s easy to blame those idiot customers for not being smart enough or willing to work hard enough to do business with you.
You know – the [...]

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← Previous Entries

Social Media Marketing: Old school sales strategies don’t work here.

Measuring Blog Success

Unexpected Blog Success

Social Media Mistake #2: Try to manipulate it

Customer Noise and Social Media

Before you spend one penny on an AdWords campaign….

Are your customers wearing tin foil hats?

Business Building Strategy: What will you do to get their money?

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