June 23, 2008

Do You Need a Blogging Absence Excuse Letter?

It happens to everyone who maintains a blog… life happens and your blog goes on a temporary “hiatus.” Often, the blog owner will issue a “blogging absence excuse letter” which goes along the lines of:

  • “I’ve been really busy… too busy to post to my blog”
  • “I’ve been really sick… too sick to post to my blog”
  • “I’ve been traveling… so I couldn’t  post to my blog”
  • OR.. the absolute WORST Blogging Absence Excuse Letter I’ve seen:

Dearest Blog Readers:

Sorry there have been no posts lately. I have been out of town all week learning (oddly enough) to blog.  Look for new posts, material and blog responses soon!

I’ve change the content to protect the blogger’s identity, but this post is currently the last post to the blog and it is dated February 2008.  By the way, there were only a couple of posts to the blog before this one!

BORING!  BORING!  BORING!!!  These blogging absence excuse letters are boring and destructive!!!

According to Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger.net, writes in his post Excuse Posts- How to Let Your Blog Go #6

The problem is that when you post a few posts like in a row it has an impact upon your readers and any sort of momentum that you might have created on your blog.

He also writes:

While I occasionally include a little personal information in my posts this information is generally shared in a ‘by the way’ type form or as an illustration to an ‘on topic’ post. As a result if something happens in my life that prevents me from blogging then I generally don’t post a post about it (unless it’s a very major thing – something that hasn’t happened yet thankfully).

Darren goes on to give you several tips for how to blog when you can’t blog.  It’s a great post, a must read for most bloggers!

Most of the time, if you aren’t able to blog you probably don’t need to offer a public apology.  The exception to this rule is if your readers begin to email you to see why you’re not blogging.

I have a client who lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa who hasn’t posted to her blog in a few weeks.  I know darned well why she isn’t posting… her entire town is under water!

When she gets dry and has power again, she’ll be able to regale her readers on her experience of surviving the great flood of 2008.  Meanwhile, her priorities are to get her life back to a semblance of what it was pre-flood.

However, maybe you don’t have a good reason for why you haven’t been posting to your blog.  You haven’t survived a flood, a hurricane, a tornado or any other natural disaster.  Then I encourage you to at least make up a good story before posting your blogging absence excuse letter.  Rather than offering the lame excuses offered above (including taking a class on blogging), try the following:

  • “Sorry I haven’t posted.  I’ll be posting ALL the gory details of my Alien Abduction (complete with pictures) after the nice gentlemen at Area 51 return my cell phone.”
  • “I forgot to bring in the Sunday paper last weekend. When I found it on Monday, I thought Monday was Sunday.  I’ve been running behind ever since!”
  • “My time machine is malfunctioning.  My trip to 2030 did not return me to my exact time of departure as I had planned.   By the way, sell all your stocks and buy jars of chunky peanut butter and brownie mix.  Turns out, the currency of the future is rare food.”

If you have a great blogging absence excuse post  that you’d like to share, PLEASE feel free to leave a comment with your best.  (I’m sure you can do better than I did above!)

Filed Under: Blog, Blog Basics Tagged With: , , , , ,
May 19, 2008

What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging

Every where you turn, you’ll find people raving about blogging, with good reason. Blogs are easy to use communication tools… and businesses NEED to communicate with potential customers. So if you’re a business and you need to communicate to customers WHY they need to be doing business with you… you need a blog.

However, while blogs make PERFECT sense as a business marketing tool… there are drawbacks to blogging.

What no one ever tells you about blogging

Blogging is not marketing magic.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it is true.

I’ve had several clients who paid to have the most popular and powerful blogging software on the planet set up on their own hosting account. I installed essential plug ins to make their WordPress blog even more attractive to the search engines.

More than once I have gotten emails from clients wondering why their blogs aren’t getting great search engine rankings on their highly desired keyword terms. When I load their blog, I’m greeted with the “Hello World” initial WordPress blog post. There are no other posts published. There are no categories set up. Nothing but “Hello World”.

Successful Blogging Takes Planning

Planning and research are both ESSENTIAL keys to blogging success.

Planning begins with knowing who your target audience is and why they are at your blog is the most critical element in your blog’s success.

(Here’s a poorly kept secret… it’s also the key to your BUSINESS SUCCESS!!! That’s why I wrote the book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results. In the book, I take business owners step by step through the process of identifying your ideal target market and then the keys to creating marketing messages which deliver results.)

Once you know who your audience is, then you need to figure out what keywords they are using to find your site. This is the “research” side of th equation.

Top A-list bloggers have shared that on average more than 50% of their traffic comes from the search engines. That means using the right keywords is a KEY element in your blogging success.

There are plenty of free tools you can use to find keywords. However, I got an email today which calls into question the accuracy of those free keyword tools. My client ran her favorite keyword through 3 separate free keyword tools and got the following:

Google: “Average”
Overture — 1211
Keyword Discovery — 600
Wordtracker — not listed

So, I ran her keywords using a new tool I recently discovered called Wordze.

Wordze gave the COMPLETE picture on what was happening with her keyword. It not only showed the standard info… it also showed her who her competitors are on that keyword as well.

PRICELESS!!!

Using the link above saves you $10 a month if you decide to subscribe.

Successful Blogging Takes Effort

The most successful blogs have posts published on a regular basis… at least once a week… more is better.

Many, many blogs begin with a flurry of posts… and then, the new blog owner loses interest and stops posting.  Defining your blog’s direction is essential to achieving blogging success.

Successful Blogging Takes Time

There is no such thing as an overnight success when it comes to blogging. The blogs that do “race” to the top usually find their stay at the top to be precarious at best.

You won’t launch your blog tomorrow and then cash a six figure adsense check within 30 days.  It just doesn’t work that way.

However, if you’re willing to invest the time and effort into this powerful business communication tool… then you’ll find that your blog can act as a powerful, versatile, easy to use marketing tool.

Filed Under: Blog, Blog Basics, Niche Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,
May 15, 2008

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.

Filed Under: Blog Basics, Business Basics, Marketing Magic Tagged With: , , , , ,