Building Trust with Blogging

Marketing wisdom teaches that it takes 8 “touches” to build enough trust with a stranger (a.k.a. a potential client/customer) for them to contact you for more information. This is just another way of saying that you have to build trust with potential clients/ customers before they will consider doing business with you.

Trust is built through communication.

Blogs and blogging are the buzz words of the day and with good reason: Blogging is a GREAT way to communicate and communication is essential to building trust.

The question that has plagued business owners for generations is HOW do you get the opportunity to make those touches or build that trust up front.

In the old days, small business owners would rely on using traditional media to make those touches. It was strictly one way communication, by the way, but it was all that was available at the time. Business owners would buy ad space in newspapers, magazine and air commercials via radio and television to establish a basic level of “trust” with their potential clients. If nothing else, spending the money to air those ads assured potential customers that the business being promoted was a legitimate business…. the first brick in building the wall of trust.

Using traditional media to reach a large audience is still a GREAT way to begin the communication upon which trust is built!

I strongly encourage my clients to consider using “off line” media to promote their businesses. Traditional media is a GREAT way to introduce your business to a wide array of strangers. When you use traditional media to promote your business, be sure to set the “call to action” for them to visit your blog. Think of the radio, television or newspaper ad as an “introduction” to learn more… via your blog.

However, before you issue such an invitation, be sure that the your blog is doing what it needs to do: BUILDING TRUST!

That means your blog posts will need to be written with your customer/client in mind. The chiropractor who blogs about how a song speaks to his soul is NOT going to be inspiring trust with potential patients. The chiropractor who blogs about how chiropractic helps relieve back pain will find that his blog is indeed inspiring people to call for an appointment.

If you have a blog… then take a fat felt tip pen and a piece of paper. Write the following in big letters and put it where you can see it as you blog:

I’M BLOGGING AS A WAY TO BUILD TRUST WITH MY POTENTIAL CLIENTS/CUSTOMERS!

What do you know? Why should I trust you? Can you really do what you say you can do?

Those are all questions running through your blog visitor’s mind. Make sure you keep that in mind as you post to your blog.

The Importance of Creating Great and Creative Blog Titles

Why the most clever blog titles may kill your blog’s readership.

In the world of copy writing, headlines make or break the ad. A great headline isn’t just important for advertising, a great headline can make or break a blog post as well.  There’s no doubt about it,

Great Blog Titles grab attention.

Great creative blog titles not only grab the attention of human readers, but the search engines as well.  However, clever blog titles, while they may capture attention, may not encourage your reader to click and read more.

Dharmesh Shah discovered this harsh truth when he wrote a guest post on Hubspot: Forget digg: Join Mixx Where You Can Still Become A Power User.

He reports on his home blog SEO 2.0 in his post Top 10 Reasons Why Great Content Fails on Social Media that he suspects that the wording of the headline played a significant factor in the failure of a GREAT article.

The headline is crucial, without a proper, intriguing, kick-ass headline the best content will fail.

What the heck is it about? Nobody knew and thus it failed even on Sphinn where otherwise it would have ruled the homepage. I was silly enough to submit it without changing the headline.

Basically the original title just does not give you a clue what the post is about and why anybody should care for it.

Remember, when you’re creating content for the largest publication in the world (the Internet), your audience isn’t seeing this article within a specified context. A blog title that generates a ton of clicks from your RSS subscribers may elicit a big YAWN from other sources such as Digg, Sphinn, Stumbleupon or even Google.

Creating great blog titles takes time. Make sure that your blog title gives the uninformed reader a clue about what information the post contains. Sometimes the most clever blog title may be the worst thing you can slap onto your great blog post.

Do You Twitter? Do You Need to Twitter?

I forget when I first heard of Twitter, but I signed up and quickly lost interest.  With a 140 character limit, I could not IMAGINE why anyone would care about how I spent the mundane parts of my day.

Rewriting the htaccess file for yet another client as I trudge through the endless process of updating their Wordpress installation to the most

Oops… no more room.  Maybe I’m just too chatty to use Twitter.

Most importantly, I couldn’t imagine getting anything of importance DONE if I tried to Twitter about it.

My closest Twitter moment was when the Space Shuttle had to be rerouted on it’s landing and passed over my house.  The sonic boom was incredible and once I’d met and talked with my neighbors about it, I went in and posted probably the only “relevant” Twitter post of my Twitter career.

Not only have I not been able to get “into” Twitter… I just haven’t been able to get inspired to “follow” anyone else’s Twitter.  I know that when I say, “I just don’t have time”… it usually means I can’t see any reason to do it.

There… I admitted it.  Twitter just doesn’t strike me as a productive use of my time.

I ignored Twitter and Twitter ignored me.  Then came the SXSW 2008 conference and top bloggers began Twittering about what was going on and suddenly, everyone wants to talk about Twitter.

I’m reminded of the scene from Zoolander:

Mugatu: SHUT UP! Enough already, Ballstein! Who cares about Derek Zoolander anyway? The man has only one look, for Christ’s sake! Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigra? They’re the same face! Doesn’t anybody notice this? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!

My feelings exactly regarding Twitter.  Micro-blogging!  WTF?  Blogging restricted to 140 characters or less… WHY?  Please… someone… tell me… WHY?

When you promote your Twitter… Are you saying, “Hey, I’ve plenty of time to micro blog about nothing… follow me on Twitter.”

(HORROR!!! I just logged into my Twitter account and I have followers!!!  WTF?   I had to have my password emailed to me as a reminder because it’s been so long since I’ve used it!)

Thankfully, I’m not alone.  Mark posted “Twitter is Stupid” over at Courtney Tuttle’s Internet Marketing School.  Since he broke the ice, I don’t feel nearly so alone.  Mark writes:

A noteworthy blogger talks about how he loves twitter, but then he disclosed his traffic sources: Google - 42%. Twitter - 1.87%. I think that pretty much tells the story.

Go build some links.

Thank you Mark!!!

I truly thought I was the only one…. I truly thought maybe someone had been slipping crazy pills into my morning coffee.

As for the limited number of Twitter followers… sorry to disappoint you with the lack of updates in my life.  Rewriting htaccess files just isn’t that glamorous.

Blogs are Blogs…and success doesn’t matter what platform you’re using…. right?

Blogs are blogs… that’s what you’d think.  Wordpress, Typepad, Blogger blogs or even the free Wordpress.com blogs… they’re all the same… right? That’s exactly what I used to think but over the past two years, I’ve seen evidence to the contrary.

For example, I had one client who launched a blog on a VERY popular free blogging site on my recommendation.

The plan was to use the free blog as “bait” for her sales site.  The plan was to capture targeted reader’s attention and those readers who were interested would click through to the frequent references to her sales website.

She blogged faithfully five times a week for several months yet when I ran the log files on her sales site, we didn’t see a single visitor come from her free blog to the sales site. In other words, over a 6-9 month period not a single person who visited her blog and went on to visit her web site.

I probably need to add here that I wasn’t using a free “stats” counter to track this or even the free “stats” programs available for free.  I was using ClickTracks to analyze her log files.

Sure, my client didn’t have any $$$$ invested in development, but she was investing a significant amount of time and effort in her blogging efforts. (She’s a WONDERFUL writer, by the way!)

During this time, I launched quite a few wordpress self hosted blogs for other clients and the testimonials from those clients were outstanding.

It just didn’t make sense.

These people weren’t blogging as faithfully as the client with the free blog nor were they as well “branded” and tightly targeted as she had been with her free blog yet they were seeing growth in their blogs.  There was increased traffic with the self hosted blogs (something we couldn’t track with the free blog) but most measurably, when you typed the other blogs into Google, the blogs came up in the search. That was NOT the case when it came to the free blog.

Because of what I had seen, I advised my client to launch a self hosted Wordpress blog. (I’m a boot strapping entrepreneur’s best friend and hate to recommend spending money they don’t have to spend.)

Her Wordpress blog was hosted on it’s own hosting account with a unique domain name pointing to the Wordpress software installation. Her new blog acts as a “free standing” web site.

I then installed the necessary plug ins to “pump up” performance and she went to work blogging on the new site with the same enthusiasm she was on the free blog.  She put a notice up on her free blog account that her blog was “moving” but we didn’t port the content over to the new blog.

Within 6 weeks of launching the self hosted Wordpress blog, we began seeing traffic from her new blog coming to her HTML “storefront” web site.  That traffic started as a trickle and is now a reliable flow.

Thanks to this hard working client, and a few that aren’t quite so enthusiastic when it comes to their blogs…. I’ve developed a real confidence in recommending that small business owners make the investment to launch a self hosted Wordpress blog.

So these days, when I get an email asking me how to create an “alive and vibrant” blog presence, the first step I suggest is to launch a self hosted Wordpress blog. It’s been my experience that free blogs just don’t get the attention they deserve or the traction for long term growth.

Wordpress 2.5: Fix for the “unable to upload files” blues

I love Wordpress… really I do. Wordpress blogs are great for so many reasons which I’ve covered before here. I’ve got clients who can barely use email who are creating posts on Wordpress blogs that are getting GREAT SERPS.

Wordpress is DEFINITELY the technically challenged person’s dream application.

Installing Wordpress is easy.   Using Fantastico, it’s positively simple.  The devil is in the details.

For example, when Wordpress 2.5 is running on a security minded hosting platform… well, let’s just say allowing Wordpress 2.5 to upload images or video is NOT viewed as a desired activity.

In order to work around this, you have to rewrite the htaccess file. It’s not a biggie and while I was in there, I found some great suggestions on how to rewrite the htaccess file to keep the “bad bots” out.

With that said, it only takes a misplaced character to screw up your ENTIRE website when you’re messing with your htaccess files. Mistakes were made…. but no clients were injured in the process. <grin>

Here’s a bit of the code that I found on the Wordpress.org message boards which fixed the 2.5 image upload file error. Add this to your htaccess file and VIOLA… Wordpress 2.5 uploads files, images and videos.

<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>

As for my clients… they are ecstatic that this is my job and not theirs.

Unfortunately, as Wordpress becomes even more powerful and more popular, it’s becoming less accessible for the technologically challenged.