Your Small Business’s Blog and You

So, you’ve set up a blog for your small biz. Maybe you’ve had one set up for a while but haven’t really used it, or haven’t really seen a return on your investment in it. Hopefully, you realize that a blog’s overall purpose in the grand scheme of Internet marketing is to serve as a social tool, not necessarily a sales tool. You can use that blog to sell your goods and services, sure, but using it as a way of engaging your client or potential customer, and as a way for interacting with them is a much better use of your blog, and your time. Small business bloggers often get lost in all the confusion that is online marketing. And that’s where we’re here to help. With these tips for small business bloggers, let’s see if we can’t clear up some of that confusion, shall we?

First of all, your blog should be part of an overall Internet marketing strategy. It shouldn’t be your only Internet marketing effort, but it shouldn’t take a back seat to Facebook or YouTube or other “sexier” forms of marketing available today. In fact, it is quite possible that if you are just starting out in the online marketplace, your small business’s blog might just be the most important piece of your Internet marketing puzzle. It’s where loyal customers and potential new ones can find out about you, your firm, and your products. You can engage in conversations, answer questions and dispel doubts or myths all while dispensing information vital to your clients’ needs and buying decisions.

Secondly, your blog isn’t there to sell. Sure, that’s a major function of all marketing efforts, but it isn’t the only thing your blog should be doing. Today’s customers want to be informed, both before and after making a purchase. They also want to know that there’s a real live person behind the monitor. They want to know who you are – what you care about, what makes you tick – just as much as they want to know about your products and services. It’s called relationship marketing, and what it all boils down to is that you and I are more likely to establish a customer/merchant relationship with someone we can trust, someone we can like, and someone we can get to know. Your blog is the ideal channel to do just that.

Lastly, your small business’s blog should be treated as not so much a marketing tool, but as an extension of you and your small business. After all, it may be the first, and sometimes only, contact a client has with you. You don’t want it looking like something your kid threw together for a class project (unless your kid is a web design student, and maybe not even then.) Nor do you want it to give a stuffy, standoffish appearance. You want your blog to represent your small business in the best possible light. Keep it friendly. Keep it topical and relevant to your small business’s products or services. And by all means keep it updated regularly. New, fresh content is key to all your blogging efforts. Even if that means hiring a professional blogger to do it for you.

Your small business’s blog can do great things for you. You just have to know how to use. And how to use it right.

Blogs are a growing tool for businesses. And for good reason. It’s a platform that offers organizations much more flexibility than traditional communications and other social media outlets. Blogs are engaging, authentic, and effective at persuading and influencing customers.

Is Blogging for you?
If you are a business owner, corporate executive or solopreneur, your blog offers an opportunity to drive dialogue in personal and insightful way.  Other advantages to business blogging include:

Credibility
Sharing knowledge about your business, industry, services and laws lets prospects know you are not only selling something, you are a credible resource; a fountain of knowledge in your field. Let’s face it, they are evaluating you against your competitors and looking for a thought leader who understand their needs and responds.

Speed
Updating your website, branded marketing materials, email and direct mail materials take time to update. If you are launching new products or services, breaking news or sharing new industry developments, what a better way to let your readers know quickly through a blog.

Boosts Web Traffic
Adding new content to your blog, using keywords, brings search engine spiders to your blog where a link to your website.

Sales
Blogs are excellent way to draw attention to your ecommerce site where you sell products. Whether you’re selling via your private website or online stores like Amazon or Ebay, promoting your products with a photo and optimized content, you are adding more SEO dimension and casting a wider net.

Getting Started
Today, setting up a blog is much easier now for non-technical web users. There are several free- hosted blog sites to choose from. Depending on your needs and requirements for control, the most popular free blogging software includes Blogger.com, WordPress.com and Typepad.com. Of course, if you have IT programmers on staff, they can retrofit embedded blog functionality into your existing website.

To keep on track and ensure you are blogging regularly, developing an editorial calendar and assigning one main blogger and several guest bloggers will be first call to order. Once you start fleshing out a list of topics for your editorial schedule, you will be surprised at how easy it is to come up with content.

Attracting Readers
Your blog on its own can spur traffic through browsers if you optimize your blog content to include your most relevant key words. Other ways to draw in readers to your blog is through your website, blog directories and social media tools.

Set up a business profile on Facebook, Twitter and Linked In and link to your blog and website. Research blog directories focused on your target audience so you can cast the net even further.

Keep your reader’s interests in mind. Be authentic, be accurate, and be informative.

There are several sides to the story when it comes to Google PageRank. Some might say PageRank (PR) means nothing, some might say it could be the deciding factor concerning your web success, while others may be on the fence.

We are of course talking about PageRank and not Page Rank because it’s Google’s version. There are other sites that have major ranking systems as well, such as Alexa, but we believe Google is the most prominent.

Why does PageRank matter?
PageRank is quite important to some sites, not because it brings in more links, but because the links you’re getting are valuable inbound links. If your PR is good it could mean you have a lot of inbound links, sometimes from major reputable sites. If your PR is bad, it may mean you are not receiving relevant links from other sites. Having a strong PR matters because it means you are bringing more leads to your site, as well as creating conversions.

The Benefits of PageRank
In terms of SEO, a high PR is like getting a huge check in the mail. It means your search engine campaign is working. The further you go up the ladder, the more traffic you get. Because of this, preparing an SEO campaign to build PR is important.

The Downsides of PageRank
Some businesses could care less whether they have a PR of 2 or 8 because it’s no guarantee of success. Some believe Google controls too much in terms of online marketing. Google can shut down your efforts to improve your PR if for some reason it thinks you are trying to control the system and boost your PR. For example, some bloggers get paid to publish company reviews, not impartial, and then publish links. This builds inbound links for the buyer, and gives money to the blogger, but Google is able to figure this out and lower both site’s PR.

Why not the middle ground?
Many question whether Google PR is still relevant today, and if it actually helps. For companies who focus on search engine traffic, it may be a boon, but only if you go up the ladder. Other businesses get high PR without even trying, and therefore focus on results they can control. The middle ground would be to acknowledge PR as part of an SEO campaign, but because you have millions of other businesses to compete with, to consider it rather as only one piece to the puzzle.

You may wonder why you are getting all this traffic and still making pennies instead of dollars. This is because Google PageRank is about dollars and cents, not traffic. The problem may not be your SEM and PageRank, but rather your product. If on the other hand you have strong sales, but your PageRank is quite low, PR may not be an influencing factor at all. If this is the case we suggest looking at other options to promote your site and increase traffic and sales.

I doubt many people would argue that Website design can play a critical role in a business’ success online, but few understand it also can play a critical role off-line. To understand this, we need to first understand what constitutes an effective Website design, how the target market arrives at the Website, and how they take action (i.e. make a purchase at an ecommerce site or provide contact information at a lead generation site).

What Goes into an Effective Website Design
At TMA E-Marketing all Website design starts with focusing on the target market. In particular, we look at “pain points”. What is a “pain point”? It’s the needs that your potential client or consumer has relative to the products and services your business offers. In simple terms: we work with our Website client to uncover their target market’s pain points and design the Website to offer solutions. We term that “designing the Website from a marketing perspective.”

The fundamental purpose of the Website is to get the visitor to take action, whether that is a purchase in an ecommerce site or a form fill-out / phone call in a lead generation site. However, let me be clear on one critical point. The attractiveness and user friendliness of the site should not suffer from designing the site from a marketing perspective. In fact, the user friendliness in particular should actually benefit since the navigation and content of the site will directly address the market’s pain points (i.e. their needs). All this sounds simple, but can require a good deal of research. Would it surprise you if I told you that many businesses don’t fully understand their target market?

Next, let’s consider how visitors find the Website. Just about 90% of all first visits to a Website are the result of a search, typically in one of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN. That’s right, almost 90%. Many people that have evenly previously visited the site or learned about it via off-line advertising will type the name of the company in a search engine since this is easier than remembering the company’s URL (i.e. the actual Web address) or phone number.

This leads us to the next critical element of an effective Website. It must be search engine optimized and easily found on either the first page or second page of the major search engines. Statistics indicate that 65% of searchers stop after looking at the first page of search returns. Only 35% will look at the second page. Anything beyond the first two pages of search results essentially means that your site is invisible.

Now we’re ready to answer the two key questions:

1.    What gets the target market to take action?
2.    What form will their actions take?

What gets the target market to take action?
The answer is deceptively simple. You must satisfy the visitor’s need with a compelling offer. I told you it was deceptively simple. The real challenge is creating a compelling offer that satisfies the visitor’s need. This is where the pain points come in. If you’ve developed the Website to address the visitor’s pain points, then providing compelling solutions becomes easier. Notice, I didn’t say easy. I said easier. Compelling offers can be developed in a number of ways, including information learned from the Website visitors’ pain points, competitive research, and even focus groups. The right compelling offer can change the visitor’s action rate immensely.

What form will their actions take?
The answer to this question is also deceptively simple. They are going to respond in the way they feel most comfortable. For some, that means they will do the entire transaction online. These people feel comfortable with the security of the Internet and rightly so. If properly constructed, online transactions in a properly secured Website are among the most secure transactions on the planet. For example, if you use your credit card in a restaurant, you have no control on how the credit may be used or copied when the server takes it to process your bill. Online, you have total control over how it will be used; if the Website transaction is secure (i.e. special coding that encrypts the transaction).

However this will not prevent fraud. Therefore, it is important to have confidence in which companies you do business with online. Many people still don’t trust Internet transactions and would prefer to call the company directly. You can use trackable phone numbers that redirect to the company’s actual phone numbers. In that way, you are able to tell exactly how many calls you’ve received from your Website. Some people want the company to call them. In that case, you can provide a call back option. They can specify their number and the time they would like to be called back. Lastly, provide a faxable form. Yes, some people actually like to fax the information and trust faxing more than an Internet transaction. The key point to all of this is to provide the visitor with numerous ways in which they can take action and let them pick the one they are most comfortable with using.

Before I conclude this blog, remember I stated that Website design can play a critical role off-line. That’s totally true. It takes several forms. Two have already been mentioned above, namely telephone calls and faxing. There is an important 3rd option. Consumers, in increasing numbers, are researching online before buying offline (ROBO). The visitor may choose to visit the “store,” especially if you have a retail location near them and if part of your compelling offer involves a coupon offering discounts on merchandise or services of interest to them. In fact, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project 2007, 81% of Americans typically do research online for a product they may buy offline.

Part 1:  What is Social Media Marketing?

Most businesses back in the 1950’s relied heavily on “word of mouth”.  Of course, there were also several significant advertising mediums available, such as newspaper, radio, direct mail, and the new embryonic media called television.  However, “word of month” played a significant role and for some businesses was their life blood.

In today’s high-tech world, “word of mouth” still plays a significant role. 

Let’s look at some recent statistics:

• Recommendations from family and friends totally outweigh other consumer touch-points when it comes to influencing purchases (ZenithOptimedia, AdAge, April, 2008)
• 86.9% of respondents said they would trust a friend’s recommendation over a review by a critic, while 83.8% said they would trust user reviews over a critic. (Marketing Sherpa, July 2007)
• Consumers say that word of mouth is still the number one influencer in their apparel (34.3%) and electronics (44.4%) purchases (Retail Advertising and Marketing Association/BIGresearch Study, November 2008)
• According to a global Nielsen survey of 26,486 Internet users in 47 markets, consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising among 78% of the study’s respondents. (Nielsen, “Word-of-Mouth the Most Powerful Selling Tool”, October 2007)

Undeniably, on the Internet, “word of mouth” has become “word of mouse” and a critical element in influencing the decisions people make.  For example, comScore and the Kelsey Group reported that reviews generated by fellow consumers on Internet shopping sites had a greater influence than those generated by professionals (comScore/The Kelsey Group, October 2007). 

What does “word of mouth” have to do with Social Media Marketing? 

Actually, it has everything to do with Social Media Marketing.  Just consider the results of JupiterResearch.  Online social network users were three times more likely to trust their peers’ opinions over advertising when making purchase decisions. (“Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape,” JupiterResearch, March 2007).

What is Social Media Marketing? 

From my view point, Social Medial Marketing is a form of Internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding, marketing communication, and sales through:

• Participation in social media sites – such as Facebook, MySpace, Classmates.com, YouTube, Flickr, iBlogBusiness, iBizRadio, LinkedIn, and Digg
• Utilization of social media – such as blogs, micro-blogs (like Twitter), audio/video media & podcasts, and public bookmarks

Now, we are ready to address the key question:  Why is Social Media Marketing critical to business success?  Stay tuned for Part 2, which addresses this question.