How to Start a Successful Blog

There are many benefits to blogging: being a thought leader, increasing website traffic, engage your audience and more. Recently, one of my clients decided it was time to start benefitting from a blog and needed advice on how to get started on creating a successful blog. I set up some foundations with him and thought it might be beneficial to anyone freshly starting out in the blogosphere:

1. Know your audience. If you’re writing for your company’s blog, write for who you are trying to target. If you are trying reach a certain buyer persona, write to them. If you are looking to ramp up on hiring this year, create posts about company culture. Your blog should compliment your company's strategic goals. For example, if you have a product that you are looking to market towards Enterprise size companies, it would not be advantageous to create posts targeting a B2C audience.

2. Be Helpful. Why do most people read blogs? Some people read blogs for entertainment, but most are looking for an answer that solves their problems. When thinking of topics, think in the form of questions: How to, Why you Should, Top Tips. If you have pain points within your own company via customers inquiries; view this as an opportunity to address via a blog post.

3. Writers block? Find inspiration all around you! If you’re at a loss of what to write try to find inspiration via trending industry topics, news and seasonal events. Last May, I wrote a blog about Vidal Sassoon who had passed away that week. Am I in the salon industry? No, but I always thought Sassoon was as talented with branding and marketing as he was with hair. A good example of utilizing the season to create a blog post is MyEnergy’s post on energy conservation during the holidays.

4. Make a schedule. The one thing my client asked me, is how often, how will I remember to blog and what will I blog about? My advice to him was to make a schedule. I suggested this as a way to stay consistent as he is very busy and always on the go. We ended up setting up a spreadsheet via google drive and planning a month in advance.

5. Readability is key. As well as being relevant to your audience, your blog should be easy on the eyes. Long enough to be engaging and yet not too long that it takes too much of your readers time. I try to keep my blog within 350 to 500 words and break up the paragraphs enough that my posts are easy on the eyes.

If you can keep yourself organized and create engaging content that resonates to your buyer personas than you’re on the road to success!

Do you have any further tips on how to create an accomplished blog? Leave them in the comments!

How to create conversations with your customers.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone who is having a conversation at you and not with you? You know, the conversation were all you hear is about their job, their family, their pets, them, them, them, them, them. Here you are sitting there looking attentive while wondering ‘when they will shut the hell up?’  Well consider your advertising, are you only talking about you, you, you? If so, please realize that your customers and leads can and will tune this out. Here are some pointers on breaking out of the monologue and developing a dialogue with your audience.

Realize it’s all about them not about you. You’ve got to face it – no one cares about your products or services. Sounds odd I know, but what I’m saying is people will care about what your product or service is going to do for them. With that being said, try to make sure your all copy has the word “you” more than it has the words “I” or “we”.

Refrain from spamming other people’s social media. This goes along with tip #1 but needs to be pointed out separately. Once in a while, when you have a great achievement sure it’s fine to point it out. Placing your business all over your friends and your business pages you follow however is just plain tacky and annoying. Taking a picture
of your product and then tagging everyone you can think of will easily get you defriended!

Use your social media to ask questions. Questions are great conversation starters. Boston television show Phantom Gourmet does an excellent job using their Facebook page to ask their ‘Phans’ fun, yet relevant questions to create conversation. Bonus: When you ask relevant questions to your fans you get valuable marketing information.

Use your Internet marketing to show your customers love. If you’re a B2B company, using your customers as case studies is a great way to showcase how your product/service made their company more efficient and also it allows you to cross promote your customer and who doesn’t love a little free promotion! If you’re a B2C company, social media is a great place to run contests and thank your loyal customers.

Negative feedback is a great way to show your customer service skills. As hard as it is to see a bad review, view it as an opportunity. In fact, use it to your advantage! How you respond to a bad review can really speak volumes about your company. For example, if you’re a restaurant that received a bad review on Yelp or Google, post a reply apologizing for the reason behind a bad review and offer a solution. First off your acknowledging and taking responsibility for what happened publicly and secondly you didn’t just say “So sorry, too bad.” - you offered a solution. It shows you care about your customers and your public image. Yelp’s Support Center offers further reading.

When it comes to lead nurturing, building relationships with your customers will be the key to a successful long lasting relationship is to show you care by creating an open dialogue. 

7 Elements of a Professional Website

As a business professional, you are always trying to put your best foot forward. Nice business cards, smart phone to keep you organized, polished appearance – but what about your website? Your website is your first impression to your new visitors and potential leads. Here are some elements of successful websites:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, functionality is in the hand of the user. While a great looking design will attract your visitors, it’s the user experience that will keep your bounce rate down. Make sure your navigation is easy to read, your site has cross browser functionality, and your overall design is clean. Always run quality checks in order to ensure all your links and forms work.

Design does count for something though! Try to stay away from dark backgrounds as they are hard on the eye. A light simple background with an attention grabbing call-to-action will be your best bet in encouraging your visitors down the sales funnel. Use fonts that make sense with your industry and company image. Would you call a lawyer who uses Comic Sans Font on their website?

Loading, Loading. If a site takes to long to load, you are going to cause your customers to hit the back button and go to the next item in their search query. Using a free service such as Web Page Analyzer or W3C Markup Validator will clue you in on how your website is performing.

Consistency is the key to your branding. Keeping your website, blogs, online accounts and print material aligned will help create brand recognition. Try to use the same logo, color schemes and design elements as much as possible. If you view my blog, compared to my website, twitter and LinkedIn accounts there is consistency. I use the same image, color scheme, fonts and design elements.

Keep it fresh. An outdated website speaks volumes about how your customers perceive the way you run your business. Just think, if you have a website that was created or last updated in 2007 claiming you’ve been in business for 5 years – well you’re shortchanging yourself since now you’ve been in business for 10 years. I would suggest a redesign on anything from before 2010 and if your serious about your online presence use a CMS system such as Drupal or WordPress to keep your site current.

Blog. Blogging is a an excellent way to keep your website fresh and adding new content is always good for search engine results. Another bonus about blogging is that it opens up an avenue for your customers to get to know your brand and build trust. According to HubSpot, 57% of businesses acquire a new customer through their blog. I believe this, this is after all how I originally heard of HubSpot.

Hire a professional. Never cheap out on your website. Your high school cousin might know how HTML, but he or she probably doesn’t know marketing essentials needed to create traffic. Hire a professional or agency that know Web Design and SEO. You wouldn’t rely on WebMD to accurately diagnose that pain in your chest would you?

A well-rounded marketing plan means keeping your print and web promotions current. Since print material doesn’t need to be updated, it is the easier medium to keep up with. With 93% of online experiences beginning with a search, it’s important that your website is optimized, engaging and is easy on the eyes. If you need help with your online presence, contact me today for a free marketing consultation.


I certainly didn't cover every element - feel free to comment any tips and ideas not covered!

Holiday inbound marketing ideas to boost your end of year revenue

Tis’ the season to drive in revenue!  That year end sprint is a driving force for every business. If you own a business that sells products or services to consumers, here’s how to drive holiday traffic to your store with discounts, free gifts and contests using:

Check In Deals

Offer customers that “check in” to your store/restaurant via foursquare, Facebook or other location based social networks to enhance your special promotion.  Not only will this drive traffic into your business; this will also increase your reach beyond your followers, as friends of your fans will see status updates at your location.
Bonus: Point out on your Facebook page and/or twitter account who took advantage of your offer, make sure to use the @ symbol, so your follower gets highlighted and the post will go on their page as well.

Facebook Landing Pages

That’s right, use Facebook as a Landing Page! Not only will you gain more “Likes”; you can offer a holiday gift and at the same time collect information from your customers, which will enable you to segment market better.  The page will be a tab found on the right side, make it your main page when someone comes to your page and let the holiday cheer come in!
Bonus: By gathering information on your customers, you can find out who your buyer persona is and keep them engaged via email deals and newsletters that are more suited to their needs.

QR Codes

A fun way to fun ways to keep your customers interested in your products or services is using a QR Code. The possibilities for what you can place a QR Code on and what you can do offer with them are endless - Place them on your holiday signage as a “secret discount”, send your customers an email blast holiday card that has a QR code with your holiday promotion, create a business card size holiday tag with a code and place the card in your customers shopping bags with discounts on their next purchase.
Bonus: For more great QR code ideas check out Create and Tracks, “Top 5 things to do with QR Codes this Holiday Season”.

Send a Holiday Greeting

Use your email list to send out a Holiday Greeting to everyone on your email list.  Make sure to send emails to you vendors as well as your customers.  Since not every customer or vendor is the same, experiment with different offers based on information you have collected in your CRM software.  Experiment with different subject lines as well based on to maximize the amount of customer who open your email.
Bonus: Give a discount for your customers Friends and Family.

Update your Google Place

Did you know you can update you Google place advertisement to offer special deals? Simply go to your Google places account and and click the offers tab an place your holiday deals!
Bonus: You can set an expiration date on your offer.

Hope these tips help you have a successful end of year!

Happy Holidays!

6 Companies every entrepreneur can be thankful for

With the stress of Thanksgiving planning and cooking finally being over; I took the time to think about businesses that have made my life as a freelancer easier, with either their products or blogs and I hope sharing them can make yours as well!

Hubspot 
Hubspot is a marketing software company based out of Cambridge, MA.  With 3 different levels of their software, they can work seamlessly with any size company. What makes them so awesome is their commitment to their customers. They don’t just build an awesome product; they provide training and support via their passionate inbound marketers. Outside of their normal trainings, they offer hubspot.tv, webinars, an awesome blog full of top tips, quarterly meetups and their inbound marketing university. Hubspot offers a free 30 day trial of their software – why not test it out today and see why they are worth bragging over!


Grasshopper 

Another Massachusetts company, Grasshopper is a company that offers virtual phone systems geared towards entrepreneurs.  Some of Grasshopper’s features include: 800 numbers, call forwarding, call screening, unlimited extensions, email to voicemail, onhold music.  What you can be thankful for is their low monthly price and their commitment to entrepreneurs. Point in case, Co-fouder Siamak Taghaddos is a Founding supporter of National Entrepreneurs' Day.  Also worth checking out is Grasshopper's blog, which is a great resource for entrepreneurs.


BizLaunch 

Canada’s, BizLaunch provides training and education to entrepreneurs. BizLaunch is excellent resource proving plenty of webinars, excellent advice and tools such as business plans, break even analysis reports, balance sheets and plenty more. The best part about BizLaunch is that all of their resources are free! Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or you’re just starting out and don’t know where to begin, BizLaunch has the resources for you.


Eventbrite 

As an entrepreneur, you want to get name out there as much as possible, and that means networking and throwing your own events. Eventbrite is a website that you can place your own events in their database and search for events going.  What’s great about Eventbright is the search feature, you can search in your local area, date of event, price (from free to expensive), category and you can further narrow down the events to which town they are in. Most of the networking events I go to, I have found on Eventbright.  If you’re thiking about hosting an event, you can take secure payments through Eventbright via their own processing system, pay-pal, authorize.net or Google checkout. 



Salesforce 

The ultimate CRM Cloud software, Salesforce offers a variety of SaaS and PaaS solutions to help you reach out to your customers and analyze your customer’s behavoirs. Salesforce not only offers sales and marketing data software, it also offers great products and apps such as chatter, radian6, force.com, database.com and Heroku.  Like Hubspot, Salesforce pricing ranges per how big your business is and salesforce also offers free trials.


Bonnie Gibson

Ok ok, I know this part is a bit of a stretch/shameless plug! However, I enjoy offering marketing advice and sharing knowledge of print/web design, content writing and SEO via my blog and twitter. Feel free to find me on linkedin, twitter or google+ and follow me. If you need some marketing advice, I offer a free marketing consultation, just drop me an email.

Enjoy the rest of your Holiday Season and 6 cheers to the companies mentioned above!