Virtual Impax

Effective Strategic Digital Marketing

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To Blog or Not to Blog…. Which is Better for your Business

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When Darren Rouse of Pro-Blogger posts, bloggers listen. So when I saw that he had post “Should I Change My Website Into a Blog” I felt compelled to share my experience.

Darren points out 6 reasos why you might want a blog and 5 reasons why you might not want a blog for your business. It’s a great post and I heartily recommend it to you.

Darren states that one reason you may not want to use a blog to promote your business is that blogs take time to mature. A HEARTY AMEN TO THAT!!!! Nothing frustrates me more than to have a blogging client contact me 6 weeks after the launch of their blog and complain that they aren’t ranked #1 on a highly competitive search term which they haven’t used ONCE in any of their 6 posts. However, it takes time for ANY web presence to “mature”… even traditional ones which are launched with all their content “in tact” and ready to roll.

Darren also recommends blogging daily. If your blog is the foundation of your business, then by all means, you’ll be posting at LEAST once daily to generate the kind of content you need to generate. If you want to blog for blogging’s sake… then think of it as launching your own independent newspaper. Fresh content and breaking news are truly king.

However, most of my clients don’t aspire to full time blogging. My clients want a powerful marketing tool they can use to promote their business.

I’ve played it both ways. I had a “conventional” web site parked here for YEARS!!! When my web site was “just a web site”, when a potential client would contact me, the conversations would begin with “so and so says you’re wonderful.” After launching the blog, my phone began to right with people saying, “I read your post on [insert topic here] and I thought you might be able to help me. I can’t say I ever had ANYONE who wasn’t a referral contact me without an article being picked up by a newsletter prior to launching the blog.

Darren is MUCH more “balanced” on this issue than I am. Read his 23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers… despite earning a comfortable income from his blog, he still doesn’t think it’s for everyone.

However, Darren blog is his business. My clients are encouraged to see their blogs as COMMUNICATION TOOLS for their businesses.

My favorite word picture is as follows and I use it with clients who have a web site they love and they are considering whether to add a blog.  Read that post here: Using Your Blog to go Fishing (warning, it’s targeting authors, but it works for any business!)

Easy Transition to WordPress 2.5

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So far so good…. I must admit, I was REALLY worried about the upgrade to WP 2.5

The upgrade to 2.3 was a real bear for me. It took a bit for me to sort out which plug ins could co-exist peacefully within the new framework.

However, I just upgraded to WordPress 2.5 and the only plug in that didn’t make the transition was the one I used to display online videos inline in blog posts. Since WP 2.5 offers that feature as part of the “standard” package…. it’s not a great loss.

If you’re one of my “people”… ignore the beg message from WordPress asking you to upgrade. Allow me time to make a few test posts on the new system to ensure there aren’t any “hidden” surprises in store.

The administration panel is completely revamped… which means all those video tutorials I created for my people are now obsolete. New video tutorial creation will be filling my early morning hours for the next few weeks.

Definitely not worth migrating to a new platform over!

How “Regular” People Use the Web

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Frank Gilroy has a GREAT post on his observations on “6 Things Regular People Aren’t Doing on the Internet.”

He also covers some I haven’t harped upon like “buying big ticket items sight unseen” and “telecommuting” but first and foremost on his list is this: “regular” people aren’t subscribing to RSS feeds.

It’s a common question for tech teachers such as Dave Taylor and despite a WEALTH OF posts and pages on how to subscribe,  according to SlashDot… as of January 2007, only 12% of internet users knew what RSS was and even fewer, 4% used it knowingly.

Most of my clients aren’t creating web sites directed at the tech savvy 4-12%….  instead, they’re focusing on reaching “regular” people…. which is why I recommend that ALL of my clients treat RSS in the same manner  that they treat the search engines.

Treat RSS as if it doesn’t exist.  Any RSS subscribers to your blog are “gravy”.  The real value is in your email newsletter.  The level of trust required to subscribe to your RSS feed is minimal (see Trust is Not Transitive) so even if regular people WERE using RSS to subscribe, it’s still a good idea to have an email newsletter in addition to your RSS feed from your blog.

If your customers are “regular people” you’ve got to meet them where they live.  Regular people may not understand RSS but they do understand email and that’s where your email newsletter comes in handy!

GoDaddy Domain Names and Hosting May Put Your Business in Danger

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I’ve had more than one client politely listen to my warnings about using GoDaddy as a domain name registrar/host and then go right on using their services. I do understand their reluctance to accept my warnings at face value. After all, I do offer in the course of my business what I believe is a “better” alternative.

I wrote way back in April 2007 on my free Blogger account about the GoDaddy Tar Baby. (You can actually see that at that time, I recommended the service for my clients. UGH! More crow for me to eat…. see my post “Quasi Scientific Blogging Observations).

Back to the Tar Baby that is Godaddy…. for those who think that the stories are of the “urban legend” category, Mashable offers this recent report GoDaddy Pulls the Plug on RateMyCop.

Daily Blog Post concurs and offers commentary on the “quality” of the hosting services at Godaddy as well.
Trouble has been brewing at GoDaddy for a while. Here’s an article I wrote a while back about GoDaddy’s troubles for my clients (it’s a PDF…. so you might want to save this rather than try to open it in your browser.)

Shortly after I wrote and posted that article, Godaddy began donning the cap of “internet police”… the horror stories are chronicled at the site NoDaddy.com In response, I created a GoDaddy Transfer package for my clients.  Quite a few took me up on the offer.

I will admit, I still use Godaddy’s domain name registration services for picking up domain names I have yet to put into “action”. See the following for why I won’t actively develop a site under any domain name I have that is registered with Godaddy.

Hey, I’m just like everybody else. My preferred ICANN registrar charges a LOT more than Godaddy does…. and I don’t want to pay more than I “have” to for my excessive list of domain names. But I’ve been getting a LOT of “update your information or else” emails from them and it makes me nervous… because I DID pay for those domain names because I DO want access to them!! Paying less than $10 per domain name loses it’s attractiveness when you realize that they can be taken from you on a whim.

I hate it when you find out the price being charged is just a fraction of what you’ll pay!

Quality WordPress Themes Done Dirt Cheap

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A while back, I was working on one of my projects and went in search of a Word Press Blog Theme.

Choosing a theme is probably the toughest part of the whole “blog launch” experience. However, as I tell my clients… unlike the process of choosing a “look” for your HTML web presence… a blog theme can be changed as easily as you can change your clothes.

I’ve always loved the work of a designer who goes by the moniker of Small Potatoes and was pleased to discover he’s come up with an interesting method of packaging and promoting his services. Back in February, he launched a promotion Wpdesigner 20,000 Accounts Giveaway

It was brilliant… it was inspired. For $5 you can join a club to get a new premium theme every month. From the support materials:

You can use each theme under multiple domain names. Whether it’s one site, one hundred sites, or more, you do not need to pay any more than $5. Also, feel free to use Wpdesigner club themes for client projects without a developer license.

According to his blog he’s already at 1300+ members…. yet last week he announced that he’s selling WPDesigner.

I’m saddened by the announcement.  I’m not sure I buy the story of his planned extensive travel plans for the year as the reason for the sale.   I suspect the “real” reason is the third stated reason on the blog post where he says he “hates providing theme support”. Unfortunately, this is something he offers using the $5 membership system.

I knew the $5 yearly club membership was “too good to be true”   and I get it.  Support is a HUGE issue when it comes to any business but most certainly a web based one.

Perhaps one reason for the sale is he’s disappointed with the response to his $5 membership club.  According to the information on the auction, he has 400 paying members in the club.  That means there are 900 who won a free membership and will (hopefully) pay next year. I’m one who GLADLY paid $5 and even if he doesn’t offer another theme consider the three offered so far to be well worth the investment!  I’m surprised that only 399 other people saw the bargain of the offer.

By the way, I am his IDEAL client.  His themes are incredibly well coded and I don’t EVER have to contact him about “support”.  IMHO…. pricing the service at $5 per month is no where NEAR enough to deal with the support requests I imagine he gets.  As a result, I’ll pass on making a bid to buy this blog.

Which reminds me of Liz Strauss’ blog post “Wendy Didn’t Wait. Will You?”

A blog isn’t a business any more than a building is a company. We can work our hearts out in the name of our blogs — reading feeds, writing posts, commenting, and social networking — but without a plan, those things won’t get us what we need to pay the rent.

WPDesigner.com has a lot of things going for it:

  • Page views/month:  896,000
  • Monthly Revenue: 890
  • Google Pagerank: 7
  • Uniques/Month: 70,000

With all of that going for it, I think the blog would have been more “attractive” to buyers without the existing membership site and the promise of 9 more themes with support.

Liz is right (she always is, by the way).  A blog is NOT a business…. think of it more as an advertisement for your business that lives on the web.