Effective Strategic Digital Marketing
This is what it’s really like to work with clients, especially corporate clients.
Thanks to Alan Weiss who offers this video as the reason why he doesn’t do OD consulting. Obviously, when working with clients, we all face the same challenges whether you’re a blog theme designer, a graphic designer or an freelance writer.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU9YeOQm3Y0[/youtube]
One of the GREAT things about being involved in a “social networking site” such as Biznik is that people can communicate PRIVATELY with you.
I recently got a question privately there from someone who visited my blog and read my post Business Success Isn’t Determined by Your Alexa Rank. A well respected marketing expert, he wasn’t familiar with the Alexa tool and asked me to blog about it. Since I’m all about educating my clients and other readers, here we go.
What is Alexa?
Alexa is a product developed by Amazon (yes, the internet book selling giant and internet retailing pioneer). It’s a way to “spy” on the traffic of other competing websites.
Alexa “ranks” websites in order based upon traffic from 1 to 24+Million. (I’ve seen TWO sites in the past 2 weeks that were in the 24 Million range.)
The last time I looked, Yahoo was #1, Google was #2 and YouTube was #4 according to Alexa.
If your Alexa ranking is above 1Million, you can congratulate yourself. You’re in the top 5% when it comes to rating traffic of the 24+ Million sites indexed by Alexa.
With that said, Alexa doesn’t get real interested in your website until your site breaks into the top 100,000. Once you break into the top 100,000, you can see your daily reach, rank and page views.
A Brief History on Alexa
The way Alexa used to collect the information it needed was via a plug in for MSIE (Microsoft Internet Explorer), Window’s internet browsing software. The plug in installed a toolbar in the user’s browser. While it offered a way for users to “spy” on the traffic of other websites, it also provided a way for Alexa to TRACK toolbar users movements on the web.
If you think about it, it makes sense that the only people who really CARE about what kind of traffic other websites are getting tend to be part of the techno-geek crowd. Very few sales training professionals CARE about the web traffic of any particular website. On the other hand, people who create websites are PASSIONATELY interested in the traffic ranking for a site. As a natural progression of events, in the early days the Alexa tool bar was used almost exclusively by web professionals or devoted web amateurs.
As the web has grown, so have the number of “non-tech” users. Many of these “non-tech” users didn’t have the Alexa toolbar installed in either MSIE or any other browser. As a result, the results of Alexa’s ranking became rather “skewed” statistically. Sites targeted towards technical users tended to do much better than websites that dealt with non-techy matters such as organic foods.
Meanwhile, new Web 2.0 businesses are popping up left and right. With the explosive growth of blogs has come advertising management services which will allow you to sign up and place ads on your blog via their network. Since ads are sold based on the number of impressions, many of these networks rely heavily upon the Alexa ranking of a website to determine traffic. (Log files can be altered, but Alexa is an unbiased third party.) Also, bloggers are popping up who aren’t blogging about the latest Tech Toy who are developing quite a following. These popular “non-tech” blogs were crying “foul” when it came to Alexa’s method of collecting data.
Recent Changes in Alexa
Back in April, Alexa responded, either to these cries or to the increased competition they were facing. (Compete.com comes quickly to mind.) Alexa changed the way it gathers data for its rankings to try to reflect what was happening in Web 2.0, where it’s not only geeks who roam the web for hours on end. ( Read more here Alexa’s New Ranking System Hurts Some and Helps Some.)
If you go to Alexa, you too can install this tool bar in your web browser. When you do, you’ll be contributing to Alexa’s data collection efforts. In other words, you can spy but you’ll also be spied upon.
There’s actually a plugin for WordPress which will display your current Alexa ranking in your blog if you want the world to see. (Personally, I’m waiting to break into the top 100,000 to activate that one.)
If you don’t want to install the toolbar, you can always go to the Alexa.com site and type in the URL you want to check.
The most important thing to remember with Alexa is:
a) It’s an estimated traffic count
b) It’s a NUMBER and nothing more.
There are people whose blogs were ranked in the Alexa top 100K who have shut down their blogs and gone on to get real jobs because they weren’t making money from the traffic they had. On the other hand, I recently wrote about a business who is RAKING in the dough whose website is ranked in the 24 Million range.
For me, checking Alexa rankings could be called an addiction. I have a similar addiction to Diet Coke and coffee. (Caffeine FREE Diet Coke… I’m trying to be in “balance” because I drink a pot or two of coffee every morning. Screw moderation, I’m seeking “balance”.)
It’s only recently that I’ve come to recognize NEITHER my drinking habits or my Alexa checking behavior is productive. So before you install the Alexa tool bar in your browser, proceed with caution!
The television show Family Guy parodies this phenomenon by telling the story of Peter’s stone age ancestor who invented the wheel. Unfortunately, the caveman Peter can’t seem to sell his wheel until he strips his wife down to her undies and places her next to the wheel. This inspires the cavemen in the audience to utter such things as “Pretty lady stand near wheel. If I buy wheel, maybe pretty lady will stand by me!”
Using sex to sell products to men is nothing new. However, angering the other half of the population, now that’s a bold and inspired move being made by BMW’s recent offensive campaign.
Progressive Gold says in the post For now you can still buy a Beemer with your dignity intact. The question is, should you?”
The air of innocence suggests virginal chastity, yet the pose of passive abandon says ‘here, take me’.
The makeup is deliberately designed to accentuate the dewy skin, pouting mouth and cherubic curls of extreme youth; yet the direct gaze gives an implicit promise of sexuality.
It’s all very carefully done and just to make sure you get the message, it’s made explicit in the slogan. “You know you’re not the first”.
Oh well, that’s all right then. Lech away at the child.
Pedophilia is not sexy- PERIOD!
Salon doesn’t question the model’s age in the post Used Women are like cars but does state:
Plenty of delightful messages are implied: Used BMWs are like soiled sexpots — dirty but fun to drive. Or: A used BMW won’t tell you to go faster or slower. It lets you drive. Maybe even: Driving a used car doesn’t require protection!
Tracy Clark-Flory ends the post with this simply MAHVELOUS dig: ” You stay classy, BMW.”
To quote another campaign: PRICELESS!!
Yes, it seems there’s quite an uproar brewing over the particularly distasteful ad by BMW. (Follow the link to see the visual and if you’re a man, have a Kleenex ready.) The print ad is an obvious attempt at generating free PR for BMW. It’s got to be. There’s no redeeming value to the ad otherwise.
The ad was brought to my attention initially by Yvonne over at Lipsticking-Marketing to Women Online in the post BMW – No Woman’s Answer to Transportation: Please Leave the Dealership. Yvonne got the heads up from Andrea over at Muse Communications, who doesn’t think much of the advertising executives who created the campaign. Her post inspired me to post a tongue in cheek post The Lazy Ad Executive’s Path to Success: Using Soft Core Porn to Sell Cars
But this party is just getting started. The Ask Patty blog is on board with the post BMW’s Shameful” Greek Used Car Ad as is Copyranter in my car is a woman, my right foot is my penis.
Sarah left a helpful comment coming to BMW’s defense, but alas Sarah doesn’t give a way to check on her identity. Probably a way for BMW to slip on a robe when they discovered they had wandered into a cocktail party dressed in the same attired as the woman in the Bluefly ads. (a.k.a. Naked at a Cocktail Party) Besides, if the ad is a FAKE then why, oh why doesn’t BMW sue the dirty bastards who are slandering their brand?
Mary Schmit calls the ad Very Tacky and Very Stupid. I couldn’t agree more.
This type of advertising has very limited endurance. Trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. How many affluent women will think twice about purchasing a BMW in the future as the result of this ad?
I really, really, really hope the approval of this campaign wasn’t the case of a man’s blood to the brain being reduced and his IQ being reduced to 1. When the brain BELOW the belt is allowed to make the decisions – things to badly no matter which gender you are.
Surely Joe Hage had his tongue firmly in cheek when he wrote the title for his blog post of OMG! It was so easy to set up a blog site!
Joe starts with
I started this article as I was learning how to set up a blog, to share it with you here. It seemed like an intimidating effort but it was SO EASY BECAUSE a GoDaddy.com representative stayed on the phone with me for 63 minutes and took me step-by-step through it.
Joe spent over an HOUR on the PHONE to set up a Godaddy blog site for his kids. I’m stunned!!!
I’ve followed Joe on the social networking site Biznik and I’d have to put Joe’s hourly rate in the $225 an hour plus club. He’s a Wharton MBA whose list of clients is impressive. His skill at quickly seeing how to make a marketing positioning statement which is tightly targeted AND easily understood literally blows me away. (A skill he demonstrates on Biznik with surprising regularity. The man obviously never sleeps!)
I guess what I’m getting at is that Joe’s time is extremely valuable which means that was one very expensive and extensive blog set up session.
I will confess here that I have absolutely NO experience with Godaddy blog hosting services. My experience with Godaddy HOSTING services on behalf of website clients has not made me willing to brace for the challenge of trying to tame their blog option. Joe’s post only clarified that for me.
In contrast, I set up a blog for my son last night. He’s wanting to earn some income and his passion is video games. So I picked up the domain name Best Video Game Cheats and in the course of an hour, I was able to
Admittedly, I’ve got everything set up to plug and play when it comes to setting up WordPress blogs but it certainly wasn’t “easy” the first few times I did it. (There’s more to a WordPress blog installation than simply clicking “install” in Fantastico. Plug ins, which are what make WordPress ROCK, vary in their ease of use, effectiveness and compatibility with other plug-ins.)
Now, admittedly, you will have an outlay of cash to have me set up your WordPress self hosted blog. In Joe’s case, this was a blog he was setting up for his children, so I can see not wanting to launch a super charged self hosted WordPress blog with all the bells and whistles which will make it a contender for top rankings in the search engines.
However, I learned a valuable lesson via a posting in a forum long ago (the source and link are long forgotten but the message remains) which stated,
“You can always earn more money- you can never earn more time. Money is easily replaced. Time isn’t.”
That has caused me to click the “buy” button more than once over the past few years. Can it save me time? Then it’s probably worth my money.
Lots of people waste valuable time and energy trying to figure out how to get something for nothing. There are tons of free and low cost website development tools which feature complicated and non-intuitive navigation through a labyrinth like maze that consume hours if not days of valuable time. That valuable time was invested on behalf of a less than stellar end product. I’ve not only gone down that trail personally, I’ve also worked with more than a few clients who later said, “Wow! I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time getting to you.”
I get the need to bootstrap. I get the need to conserve cash. But sometimes, you’ve got to spend money so you can make money.
I applaud Joe. I never would have called and hung in for over an hour trying to set up a blog on Godaddy. I’d have gone to WordPress.com and set one up in like 5 minutes and then used URL forwarding for the domain name. Not the most SEO method, but then again… if that was my goal, I would NEVER use a Godaddy blog in the first place.
Am I missing something? Are Godaddy blogs the next big thing is search engine friendliness and ease of use? Or are they just cheap and readily available?
As a web “professional”, I know the frailties that face Alexa. However, that darned tool bar is so easy to install and it’s literally become a habit for me to glance at the Alexa Ranking before the page has had time to load.
Over the weekend, I learned that there are successful businesses who are NOT using the web as part of their success.
I know.
I was shocked.
It’s funny how short sighted those of us who live and work on the web can get sometimes- myself included at the TOP of that list!
This revelation started innocently enought. I got a phone call yesterday from a friend of mine who has a “real” job. She’s the training director for a large company… you know, the type of company that has “divisions” which each are assigned a “budget.”
She began her call with, “I’m at this conference to be a certified-blah blah and I met this amazing woman who’s launching her own business and needs your help.”
“Wait! Certified– to be what? Did you quit your job? Are you launching your own business?”
“No, my division has budget to burn so I’m becoming a certified “blah blah”. ”
I’m not being coy or trying to protect an identity- I really can’t remember the program name- it was THAT generic! It was one of those made up words that people create so they are “guaranteed” top position in the search engines.
“What is a certified blah blah?” I asked.
“You know, I asked that before I left on Friday. No one at work knew either,” she said. “You’d think that someone would ask that question before plunking down $2500 for a 3 day seminar. But that’s how Corporate America works. By this time tomorrow, I’ll have another certification to my name.”
She then asked me to check out the website for the firm putting on the seminar. My friend is a business woman through and through and instead of paying attention to the presentation (which usually annoys her because she’s a real expert in training and sees the mistakes being made in the presentation instead of every absorbing the content), she’s counting heads and computing how much money this guy is bringing in.
She counted 300 heads in the room… and multiplied it by the $2500 her company paid for her seat there. She figured they made$750,000 in revenue from this seating alone and she knows there’s another seminar next month on the west coast.
I’m intrigued. I type in the website address and my attention goes first to the Alexa ranking. I’m STUNNED at what I see- I didn’t know Alexa numbers went above 24 million!
The Alexa ranking for the website is in the 24,500,000 range.
Talk about a billboard in the Alaskan Wilderness, this website is a wasteland. Oh, and it’s a mess both from a coding standpoint AND from a content standpoint.
The coding issue is obvious. I mean, you don’t reach the deepest darkest depths of 24 Million plus in Alexa without some serious coding issues at work. However, the content is what surprises me. I mean, it’s little more than a narcissistic rant tooting the horn of the seminar’s developer.
The site doesn’t follow ANY of the rules for website success!!! Lousy domain name, poorly coded, narcissistic content… I can’t imagine anything he could do to make the site worse.
Despite all of that, he obviously has a thriving business. I text my friend with a “you’ve GOT to find out how people found out about the seminar,” because one thing is certain, he’s not using the web to market it.
Turns out, he’s made connections with a national association and is offering this “course” at a substantial discount for members. The association sent out the communication to it’s members and offered them a half price discount.
The whole experience has shaken me a bit. It has forced me to admit a bad habit which I’ve developed – I tend to look to Alexa rankings to judge how “successful” a website is and by extension, the business which owns the website. This particular website destroyed that belief system of mine. It goes to show that you don’t need a great Alexa Ranking to have a successful business venture.
I should have known better. I mean, I tell clients all the time that a blog can be used as a powerful tool for business communication. Using your blog to communicate your marketing message is a GREAT use of a blog. Using a blog in that manner is actually using your blog to target the non-blogging community.
Do I think a great web presence would help this guy’s business – definitely. But the lack of one obviously hasn’t stopped him from achieving a level of success.
I love blogs… WordPress self hosted blogs in particular. Like any great love affair, there are ups and downs.
The down side…Wordpress has announced version 2.6 is released today. UGH! I’m currently installing 2.6 on my “test” blog EZ Marketing Tool. I’ll soon know what works and what doesn’t in WordPress 2.6. The frequent updates are a downer for me because I not only have to bring my blogs up to speed but also roughly 100 other blogs as well.
On the up side though, there are several blogging stories out there to make the minor inconvenience of frequent updates seem minor in comparison.
Isn’t that the way a great love affair works? Sure there’s a pinch of G&A (grief and aggravation), but that pinch of G&A just adds a level of texture and flavor to the 101 things that are great about the relationship. (I’ll have been been married for 24 years this December 1, so my G&A thresh hold is obviously very, very high!)
Micheal Martine begins the singing the praises of blogging hit parade with his post How I Brought My Business Back from the Dead with Blogging.
I’m quote Ben Yoskotiz so often, I don’t have to check on how to spell his name lately (grin). Yet, here he is again with his story of how he was Quoted in The New York Times – The Power of Blogging.
To that I’ll add the story of my own client. Janet Simpson is an AMAZING woman who has truly “been there, done that.” She’s a lifestyle coach who survived a car crash against the odds. Her tale of survival is documented in Junkyard Janet. About six months ago, Janet decided to convert her static website Nourish Your Life to a self hosted WordPress blog. This week, film crews are visiting Janet at her home to document her tale of survival against the odds.
One of the things that fuels my love affair with blogs is how search engine friendly they can be. Ben found that an article he posted over a year ago was the source of his claim to fame in the NY Times article. The title of the post probably matched the exact search terms the NY Times reporter was using to find information.
Janet’s blog includes this line on her about pager which probably included the keywords A&E researchers were using to find stories for their series:
Life took an unexpected turn when a car accident/miracle changed everything.
What story do you have to share? Share your story here.
When it comes to business, measuring is an integral part of success. While measuring sales, marketing even web visitors is common, many businesses fail to recognize the need to measure customers service… and with good reason.
Measuring customer service is hard and quite honestly, most businesses are not created with customer service as part of their business DNA.
Customer service as part of a company’s DNA is the absolute best description of what it takes to truly deliver on the customer service front… and it’s so not mine. That phrase totally belongs to Ben Yaskovitz. It’s in Tip #4 of his latest blog post Using Great Customer Service as a Differentiator.
What an elegant, descriptive way to describe the perfect delivery of exceptional customer service.
Ben goes on to tell of his own customer service testimonials from his start up Standout Jobs.
Exceptional customer service has earned him not only testimonials but also new sign ups for the service. Obviously customer service is part of the Standout Jobs DNA.
This really contrasts with my own experience with another start up. However, a more recent and horrible tale is tole by Marketing Pilgrim Andy Beal who writes a tale of customer service gone bad with his blog post Office Depot Joins the Reputation Deadpool.
In a nutshell, Office Depot put out some ATTRACTIVE bait to capture a new customer by offering a great limited time offer of a special low-low price on a Toshiba Laptop. That’s the way it works. A a business, you entice a customer to try your product or service with an offer that is too good to resist. Office Depot even sweetened the already sweet deal by offering next day shipping. You can’t build a successful business on profit margins this thin, but it’s necessary to win new customers.
Then, as you fulfill the order, you amaze the customer. You meet or exceed their expectations with the hope of winning that customer as a steady customer for life… or at least, the next few years.
In Andy’s case, Office Depot was trying to woo him away from his “steady” office superstore, Staples. At the very least Andy expects flowers, a nice dinner and a movie. Poetry, a moonlight gondola ride and ridiculously expensive champagne would have sealed Staple’s fate as soon to be “used to be”. Instead, Andy was stood up and then sent a bill for flowers he never saw and a dinner he never ate. Andy’s devotion to Staples has grown ten fold as a result of the experience. Meanwhile, Office Depot’s brand is being drug through the streets after being tarred and feathered.
Obviously customer service is NOT part of Office Depot’s DNA.
Kelly over at Maxiumum Customer Experience writes:
Your customers are skeptical. There are customers who want you to provide delight, and then there’s this lady. Depending on your industry, there may be thousands lined up behind her. At this point she’s not looking for delight. She’ll take a discount or some other special offer, but what I heard in her voice says it’s not what she’s looking for.
She wants to know somebody at this company cares.
BRAVO Kelly!!! That’s a hit the nail square on the head kind of observation!!!
Does anyone at your company care?
Trust me, if there isn’t anyone who cares, it’s going to show. It’s surprising how a truly sympathetic ear can take the edge off of the burning rage that builds when you feel you’ve been reduced to a number.
How do you measure customer service?
Leadership Tools offers these as ways to measure customer service quality.
- Customer Attrition Ratio = number of customers leaving / total number of customers (for the same time period) – the higher the ratio, the less likely it is that your company is consistently delivering quality customer service.
- Sales Growth – your reputation precedes you. If people are still buying from you, and referring others, chances are they are happy with the service and they are loyal to your organization.
- Customer Survey Results – directly asking customers to rate the service level they receive is by far the best way to measure service quality.
- Customer Complaints – be thankful for each complaint that comes to your attention. You can only provide a thoughtful response to customer issues once you are made aware of the issue. When customer’s complain they represent not just their issue, but perhaps an issue that is affecting others.
However, it’s all for naught if customer service isn’t part of your company’s DNA. It’s cool to care about your customers. Pass it on!
In advertising and in business, familiarity doesn’t breed contempt -it breeds business.
Telling your business story is an essential part of your marketing efforts. James Chartrand writes in his post Creative Storytelling
A good story grabs anyone’s attention. We love stories. We listen to the tale and imagine everything in our mind’s eye. We experience emotion and are compelled to take action because of the stories we hear.
Matt McGee seconds shares in his post 12 Tips on Creating Content for Social Media that sharing stories is a GREAT way to leverage social media.
Heck, I even wrote about the importance of sharing your business’ story in my book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results:
You must be familiar with your customers. Know who they are, where they live and what they like to do. Then, be sure that they become just as familiar with you. Tell them your story. If you don’t think you have a story, consider these questions:
• How did your business get started?
• If yours is a family business, why did your ancestors get into this line of work?
• What factors led you to enter into this business?
If you’ve got your own small business, then you have a story to tell. How did you get started? What inspired you? What would you do differently if you could do it over?
I’d love to share your story of how you started your own small business with readers of this blog.
Just fill out the form and I’ll be happy to share your story. (I will reserve the right to final editorial approval.)
I’ve recently been reminded that sometimes, selling a service isn’t all that different from selling a physical product. When buying toys for Christmas morning, the three little words that strike terror into a parent’s heart are SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.
When it comes to hiring help, the similar phrase SOME TRAINING REQUIRED causes equal dread.
Since I’m not looking for more involvement with the IRS, the last thing I want to do is to hire any “real” employees. I prefer to work with fellow freelancers. I’ll 1099 you… you can 1099 me. When I hire you, I won’t tell you when, where and how to complete the project and you do the same for me. That way, we can avoid W-4, W-2’s and any other W forms that might indicate a more significant relationship than we really have. That more “significant” relationship would mean that I have to pay federal withholding, FICA, Medicare, workman’s comp and the other delights associated with a formal “employer/employee” relationship.
I recently got an email from someone who used to work for a client of mine. She had heard I was busy and wondered if I needed help. After all, she’s eager to learn and I could easily TRAIN her to do what I needed done.
Let me get this straight… I’m busy doing work for people who are paying me money to perform certain services. You want me to teach you how to provide those services. I’m to invest my uncompensated time (which is currently filled performing services for people who PAY ME) into training you so I can then PAY you to do those services for me?
Not that I haven’t tripped lightly down that path a time or two or ten over the past 12 years. At one point, I was burning through sub contractors at an alarming rate. I am surprised how many self proclaimed freelancers I’ve hired who then expected to be trained to do the job they told me they could perform. Something I found even MORE alarming was the number of people who expected me to pay them on an hourly basis as they learned a new skill.
Asking an employer for training is something you can expect as an employee. As a freelancer, you had better come to me ready to work right out of the box with minimal supervision… just as the IRS requires.
As a business owner, you expect to train your employees to do a specific task which they will perform for you on a regular basis. When you hire someone to run the cash register, you don’t hire those people on an “as needed” basis.
“Jan! Hey, it’s me. I’ve got a customer here getting ready to check out. Can you run into the store and ring up this sale for me?”
That’s not how business supposed to work. (Although I have shopped at a couple of stores where that appeared to be the business model.)
I don’t need someone to run the register. I do sometimes need the services of other freelancers to help carry the load. That’s when I recognize the value of trustworthy contractors.
One of the basics of internet marketing is to recognize that keywords play a huge role in internet branding. Use the right keywords, and your blog will find it’s target audience quite easily. Use the wrong keywords and you’ll be left wondering why more people aren’t reading your great blog posts.
With that in mind, here’s a great big SHOUT OUT of thanks to Liz Strauss over at Successful Blog for introducing me to the very cool and very illustrative blog toy er, I mean tool Wordle.
Wordle will take any text you plug in and create a cool graphic of the keywords contained within. You have the option of choosing random text or you can pull text from your blog’s RSS feed.
To the left is the Wordle created from this blog’s RSS feed.
Not only is a Wordle visually interesting, your blog’s Wordle can also act as a diagnostic tool to answer the question “Why is my blog not working?”
In order for your blog to act as a powerful marketing tool, you must focus your (marketing) message. Focusing on the right keywords is the key to blog marketing success.
For example, you can see in this blog’s Wordle image, that the keywords “marketing” and “credibility” play a HUGE roll in the content on my blog. That’s good because those are the drums I tend to play in my business… so seeing those words appear in “large print” pleased me.
The term troll is a bit more prominent than I’d like… but then again, it’s a recent blog entry AND contained in the title as well. I have to ask myself, what did I expect that particular post to do to my Wordle?
Since I didn’t know about Wordle then, I couldn’t have thought much of it. However, the World of Wordle can help you to get a clear perspective of the role each post plays as you build your blog.
Often, when we’re blogging, we don’t think of each blog post as a part of the whole. It’s easy to view blog posts as standing on their own – when in fact, they are essential building blocks. Each building block makes a contribution to making up the blog as a whole.
From the looks of my Wordle, I’ve been focusing upon marketing, selling and credibility here. The whole troll reference actually fits into that theme if you read the post. I just should have named it something different to fit better into my Wordle.
So Wordle gave me good news on this blog. On to my other blog holdings.
I have another blog where the focus is EXCLUSIVELY upon using blogs as marketing tools for small businesses. The Wordle for that blog is pictured to the left.
Seeing the Wordle for this blog allows me to see that I’ve been focusing too much on the “blog” aspect of blogs as marketing tools in the content on that blog.
Not exactly good news, but useful news none the less.
With this information, I know that I need to start featuring the “marketing ” aspect of blogs in this blog’s content.
On to my next blog.
I created the Wordle to the right for the blog which I use to promote my book (Beyond Niche Marketing).
Ouch again. It looks like I’ve been focusing a bit too much on that magical marketing word “free” in the content of that blog and there’s not enough focus on the term niche. On the other hand, marketing is playing a nice role on the keyword parade for that site.
Informative and fun. This is great.
Just for kicks and giggles, I ran a Wordle for a client who is complaining that her blog isn’t “working” for her. She’s frustrated and with good reason. So I ran a Wordle for her blog. The image to the right is what Wordle came up with for her blog.
Now, if my client’s business had ANYTHING to do with gardening, then this Wordle would be a good sign. But her business isn’t gardening nor is it focused on kitchens. Her ideal prospective clients wouldn’t use ANY of those words featured prominently on her Wordle to find her business.
Unfortunately for this client, her business is about journaling and writing as a way to achieve spiritual healing. I say unfortunately because it doesn’t appear that is what she’s communicating via her blog.
So I ran a Wordle for another client who specializes in executive training.
To the right is what her site looks like through Wordle’s eyes.
Rosemary will be pleased to see how the posts on Miboso Training are shaping up, thanks to this tool!
Then, just as I was playing with this tool, another client emailed me and was wondering why despite consistent blogging her blog isn’t picking up any readers. So, I ran a Wordle for her blog.
This client’s business is coaching people who want to lose weight. Lose weight is an important keyword for her and is included in her domain name.
Yet, when you look at her Wordle, the word YEARS is by far the most prominent and coach does play a big role too. Weight does make it to the hit parade, but lose doesn’t.
Maybe it takes a bit of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) to build a blog full of the “right” keywords, but I’m really beginning to see a pattern here.
For kicks and giggles, I run Darren Rowse’s Problogger.net site through the amazing Wordle tool.
Hmm… blog, people, community, readers, campaign, advertising… those all look like words that readers of Darren’s ProBlogger.net blog would want to read about.
What I find fascinating is Darren has achieved this ideal “mix” while having guest bloggers write posts for his blog. Now THAT is the sign of a blog with a vision!
Wordle may appear to be a “toy” but in fact it’s a powerful blog diagnostic tool you can use to see the word picture you’re building with your blog’s content.
Take your blog’s content for a Wordle spin and see what you can see. It might be the best blog diagnostic tool yet!
It's surprisingly easy to get started creating your own web presence. Here are the basic web site tools you'll need to get started creating your own Continue Reading
I’m constantly prattling on around here about the importance of targeting your audience and there is no way for me to overstate the importance of this principle. Targeting your audience is part of the foundation for the success of your business. You can have the best product – the best service – the best solution […]
This is the story of a locally owned business with a fabulous website. The website “worked” – it brought a new potential customer into the store and the staff went to work to make sure that a potential new customer left – never to return. Our story begins many years ago when I purchased […]
I absolutely ADORE Denny Hatch. I subscribed to his email newsletter Denny Hatch’s Business Common Sense YEARS ago and he has yet to disappoint. Every month he regularly delivers on the promise of “Business Common Sense” promised in his newsletter’s name and continues to generously share his wisdom and experience with his newsletter subscribers. In […]