October 23, 2008

If it ain’t broken, PLEASE don’t fix it!

I am seething with rage right now and the object of loathing is Gmail!!! Recently, the Google gods decided to “improve” Gmail – and right now, I’m regretting using the service.

I don’t know who I’m more angry with at the moment – Gmail for “fixing” something that wasn’t broken or my stupidity (and blatant disregard of my own “standards”) for expecting something of value for nothing.

The new Gmail interface – to put it politely – SUCKS!!!!

I’ve composed the same email THREE TIMES over the past 90 minutes.  I’ll be in the middle of composing this same email and suddenly the screen will “refresh” and my reply will be GONE!!! Admittedly, I’m multi-tasking.  I’ve got 5 other things going at once so the reply is happening in “spurts” –  but still – COME ON GMAIL!!!

The first two times it happened, I tried to tell myself that my Higher Power wanted me to revise this email.  Maybe that’s still the case. I’d love to hear your two cents on this situation.

Is this my Higher Power protecting me from myself?

Here’s the deal: I’m actively seeking guest blog posts for a new blog I’ve launched: Divorce Recovery Advice.

(If you’re a coach who specializes in divorce recovery,  consider yourself invited to guest post on the blog.)

The blog is REALLY new and yet it’s already getting some nice SERPS on a couple of desirable keyword terms.

Today I got a GREAT post from a divorce coach.  This woman is a NATURAL born communicator and in the course of just one blog post, she had no trouble gaining my trust.  She knows her stuff and it SHOWS!  It’s a GREAT guest post – so, I head over to her website to grab a head shot to include in her author’s bio box. (This guest post is scheduled to appear later in the month – thanks to WordPress’ ability to schedule posts to publish in the future!)

[Sound Effects] BRAKES SCREECHING!  CARS CRASHING!!!

Oh my – what a DISASTER!  Her website F-UGLY.  However, the good news is that according to Alexa – no one is seeing it anyway.

Remember – my first impression of this woman was her guest post.  Her guest blog post was great – and her website is BAD!

Here’s my dilemma –

I can help and she obviously NEEDS my help.  However, she didn’t ASK for my assistance.

It was the email to her to tell her when her guest blog post will “air” on the blog that I have lost 3 times.

On the one hand, I could invite her to be a repeat guest poster  to my blog.  She would be building content on my blog and putting Adsense money in my pocket.  I could tell myself that she would benefit because my blog after 6 weeks is doing MUCH better traffic wise than her website.  However, if someone clicks through, they’re not going to stick around.

On the other, I could offer to help her.   Which is the horns of my dillemma.  She didn’t ASK for my help – and I’m afraid that offering to help might cast my invitation to guest blog as a filthy marketing whore tactic.

What would you do?

Filed Under: Building Trust with Blogs Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
October 10, 2008

Social Media Warning: I am Rubber – You are Glue …

Remember that chant – back when you were a child. Someone would say something mean or hateful, and your response would be the sing-song, “I am rubber – you are glue! Whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to YOU!”

Web 2.0 gives us a real opportunity to share our thoughts spontaneously. Whether it’s posting to your own blog, making comments on other blogs or sending bulletins via MySpace – sometimes we might share things we wish we hadn’t. If we’re lucky, the rest of the world will be so self absorbed that most people won’t notice when we expose more than we planned.

I recently got a notification about an article which is getting a lot of attention on one of the various social networking sites to which I belong.  The article was written by a member who is telling business owners to get control over their personal spending lest it ruin their business. I think I’ve gotten more insight to her spending habits than she may have been planning on providing.  I thought it was just common sense, but if you want to promote your services as a financial manager, don’t tell me how many checks you’ve bounced in the past few weeks!

Meanwhile, the article makes me laugh because I am currently working with a client who has EXACTLY the opposite problem. This client is processing her own credit card orders manually because she doesn’t want to PAY an assistant to do this menial task for her. As a result, it’s taking WEEKS for some orders to get processed – money that could be safely in her bank account – less a small fee for hiring an assistant to handle the order processing.

We’re in the process of automating this process for her, by the way so she doesn’t have to hire the assistant – however, she’s reluctant to make the investment needed to make this happen.  Her business is relatively new and she’s having trouble making the transition from “requisition forms” to “you’ve got to spend money to make money.”

I can TOTALLY relate to my client because I too have battled trying to achieve balance between the art of bootstrapping and being silly.

For example, I remember that I worried for MONTHS over the prospect of spending $35 per year to register my domain name (way back in 1998) and the subsequent hosting fee!  It took me a long time to get used to the idea that I had to SPEND money to MAKE money. I’ve learned that it’s just a part of the transition from “employee” to “business owner” and for some of us, it’s a tough hurdle to overcome.

Meanwhile, the world is full of therapists involved in horrible relationships who spend their days “fixing” other people’s relationships – doctors who smoke, drink and abuse drugs but reach out selflessly to heal their patients – accountants who can’t keep their own finances in order. The list goes on and on but a key player in this kind of behavior are the MMO bloggers who aren’t making any money.

While it’s true that “The cobblers’ own children rarely wear shoes,” if you want to convince others that you know your stuff – you’d better have some impressive samples.

As always, this is going to come BACK to blogging.  One of the reasons I ADORE blogs is that it’s hard to “fake” expertise over the course of 100 or more posts.  When these MMO pretenders post their monthly earnings and think $89 a month is a sign of their success – well, it’s yet another reasons I ADORE blogs!

If you’re not authentic – or if your SOLE purpose is trying to fleece the masses – then don’t launch a blog and DO NOT participate in social media marketing.    If you’re a pretender, your blog will expose you as one!

If on the other hand, your business is in the business of helping people solve their problems, achieve their goals or placate their desires – the step right up to blogging and Web 2.0.  While you won’t find OVERNIGHT success, you’ll find it’s a fun and fulfilling path to travel.

Your blog won’t be a 30 minute solution to your marketing dilemmas – it may not even earn $89 per month in direct income for you, but it will be great way to begin spreading the word about the solutions you offer!

Filed Under: Blog, Business Basics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
October 8, 2008

Beating the Baby Blog Blues

While the mechanics of blogging are amazingly easy to master, creating a successful blog is actually much HARDER than it looks.

Yesterday, my email box was filled with people who are suffering from what I call the “Baby Blog Blues”.

These bloggers are not web development professionals, but they’re average every day business owners who want to use their blog to promote themselves and their businesses.   They’ve been blogging (some regularly, some not so regularly) and they’re frustrated.  In some cases, they’re getting traffic but no comments.  In other cases, they’re not getting traffic OR comments.

In one case, the blogger who wrote to me desperately wants to build a strong community, just as Cath Lawson, Liz Strauss, Barbara Swafford, and Hunter Nutall have done.    She wants loyal readers who contribute regularly to the discussion.  She wants to give a topic and allow others to discuss – which is exactly what happens in the strong communities above.

At the moment, her blog just isn’t “established” enough to achieve this and I’m calling this syndrome the Baby Blog Blues.

I’ve come up with this “word picture” because I can’t TELL you how often I’ve had potential clients who announce, “This blog  HAS to be generating a four figure income in less than 6 months or I don’t want to do it.”    After 10 years, I’ve FINALLY learned to say “Thanks for contacting me – good luck with that.”

When you first launch your blog, it is like a baby.  Few parents expect their newborn infant to generate income to cover their expenses.  (I had to re-write that sentence to say “few” instead of “no” because – well, the tabloids are FILLED with stories of parents who had children with the sole intent of turning the baby into a cash machine – the last names Lohan and Spears come quickly to mind!)

In the beginning, your blog is a baby! It needs time and effort invested on your part to make it grow. In the case of a human baby, time will work its magic and your child will grow even without top quality nurturing.  The passage of time guarantees that your newborn will grow into a toddler.  Allow more time to pass and the toddler will grow into a child.  Eventually, in the cruelest twist of all, the child will grow into a teenager.  While time is the biggest factor in a child’s development, time is not the sole predictor of blogging success.

In the case of my aspiring blog client, she’s got an infant “blog” sitting on her lap and she’s watching Cath, Liz, Barbara and Hunter with envy as they prepare for their blogs for the senior prom.

What this client doesn’t recognize is that these successful bloggers spent a lot of time creating blog success.  They have spent their time blogging in the dark.  They have spent weeks, months perhaps YEARS posting article after article with few if any comments.  Most bloggers learn to blog through trial and error.  The faster you learn the essential “tricks” of the trade, the quicker you can get moving in the direction of blog success.

Trust me when I tell you that all of the bloggers I listed above did a LOT more than just post to their blog once a week and wait for the traffic to come to them. Like the mother of a newborn human infant, these successful bloggers have gone through the 4 hour feeding schedules and diapers phase with their blogs.

While the passage of time will eventually transform a human infant into a teenager, the same doesn’t hold true for your blog.  If you don’t nurture your blog, it won’t grow – it’s as simple as that.  The GOOD news is that you can ignore your blog for months and then when you begin nurturing it again it will spring back to life.  In other words, no matter how sick your blog is now, you can always resurrect it.

By the way, the client with “blog envy” purchased the 8 Week Power Blog Launch program 2 weeks ago.  Over those two weeks, her Alexa ranking has already decreased almost 800,000.  (Alexa is a highly flawed system which ranks web sites from 1- 24 Million where  #1 is the best, 24 Million is the worst so a rapidly FALLING Alexa rank is a GOOD thing!)  In the course of 2 weeks, her blog went from the 2.4 Million range to the 1.6Million range and has passed more than 3/4 of a MILLION other websites in the race to number one.

She’s definitely on her way to achieving blog success – I just have to keep her focused on the fact that it takes TIME to create a successful blog.

Blog success is not an overnight proposition.  It takes TIME and it takes EFFORT – just like parenting, except when your blog achieves “teenager” status you CAN put it to work generating income – unlike human teenagers!

Filed Under: Blog, Blog Basics Tagged With: , , , , , , ,