Archive for May, 2010

Promoting Your Blog

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

By Adam Ward

Today I saw a forum thread where a blogger said he learned how to put posts on his blog the first year, monetize his blog the second year, and market it in the third year. At first it seemed flippant, but I realized he was being truthful. The more I thought about it, the more it struck a chord with me. I imagine this is a common path for most bloggers, at least those that are blogging for business reasons.

Starting a blog couldn’t be easier. There are many tools out there people can use to start blogging in minutes. When I started, I recall seeing a “What should I blog about?” question with the advice to just start writing about something. Once you start, you can then catch your stride, as well as take some time to add plugins and other design elements to your blog. I think that’s good advice.

Monetizing a blog is also pretty easy to do once you’ve made a few posts. It costs nothing for a blogger to sign up for an account on one of the many affiliate networks, such as Share a Sale, grab the code for an advertiser’s offer, and put it on the blog. Now, monetizing a site and making money are two completely different things. If nobody reads your blog, nobody will click through your ads, and you won’t make a dime.

That’s where marketing the blog comes in. I realize not every blogger is trying to make money, but those who do it as affiliate marketers do (I saw a forum post once that said, “Why bother blogging if you don’t expect to make any money?”), and business bloggers (myself included) have kind of a dual purpose in wanting to disseminate useful information that others can use, but also do it in the hopes that readers will become familiar with their business or product, have a greater amount of trust in them because of the comfort level built through reading the blog, and possibly become a customer. But even people who blog for fun and don’t ever expect to make a dime want to know that at least someone out there is reading their blogs.

I started this blog about seven months ago. I got busy with our eSilverBullet development for a few months, so didn’t have a chance to blog. But now that I’m back at it I realize I’m at the stage of needing to promote it. I’m not looking to monetize it by putting ads on it, so I can skip that step, but up until now the blog has been mostly hidden, with no readers whatsoever. Since I’ve been cobbling together advice from the far corners of the Internet on how, exactly, I should market this blog, I thought I’d share what I’ve encountered here. If you’re reading this post someday, that means I was at least nominally successful.

Linking to Other Blogs

One way to possibly get noticed, starting from day one of your blog, is to link to someone else’s blog. This doesn’t automatically create a quid pro quo (i.e. they feel obligated to link to your blog), or improve your page rank in the search engines, but it might get that blogger to look at your blog, and possibly leave a comment. If you use WordPress, linking to another WordPress blog in the body of your post will automatically ping the blog you linked out to. That means 1) they’ll be aware you linked to them and 2) a snippet of your blog post right around the link may show up in the comments area of their blog, without you even having to visit their site.

If a blogger allows trackbacks, you can copy the URL of their post (clicking the trackbacks link will show you the correct URL you should copy in your browser’s address field) and paste it in the Trackbacks field just under your content when you are creating a new post. That is similar to linking to another WordPress blog in your post. It essentially alerts the blogger that you’ve written a post and have referenced their post. If the blogger approves it, that snippet will show up along with all the other comments for their post.

Commenting on Other Blogs

Anytime you leave a comment on someone else’s blog post, you have the option of entering the URL to your blog. If your comment gets approved, people reading your comment can choose to see where you’re coming from. It doesn’t guarantee they’ll come to your site, but it is always a possibility. Although you’ll want to put some thought into the comment you leave, you’ll still be able to leave comments faster than writing new blog posts and referencing that blog using a trackback.

Those Pesky No Follow Backlinks

I’m sure you’re aware that the more links pointing to your site (referred to as backlinks), the higher esteem search engines place on you, right? But before you start spreading comments on every blog you see, be aware that just because a reader may see the backlink, a search engine may not. By default, WordPress sticks a piece of code called No Follow on the URL of each comment left. If you look at the page source (Ctrl+U for Firefox on a PC), if you see a rel=”nofollow” code listed, that means search engines won’t count that as a link, ergo they won’t effect a site’s page ranking.

If you think you’ll be checking source codes often to see whether a site does No Follow or not, you may want to download the NoDoFollow add-on for Firefox, which will color code No Follow links and links that aren’t No Follow (called Do Follow).

To test this out, go to Yahoo’s Site Explorer and type in the URL for your blog. You’ll see which backlinks Yahoo attributes to your site. If you’ve made a comment to a blog and its backlink URL was assigned No Follow, that blog’s site will not show up in the Yahoo search. However, if the blog doesn’t use No Follow, you will see the site show up.

To No Follow or Not to No Follow

If you use WordPress, comments to your blog posts will all include the No Follow attribute. That means nobody who adds a comment to your blog will get a backlink to their site, at least as far as search engines are concerned. If you would like to reward readers (and possibly given them an incentive even) for posting comments, you can choose to turn off the No Follow attribute. To do that, you have to install the WordPress plugin called Do Follow, since there is no WordPress setting that allows you to turn off the No Follow code. If you search plugins for “do follow” you’ll see this plugin at the top of the list. That plugin just removes all rel=”nofollow” code from your comments, rather than replacing those references with rel=”dofollow” code, (the plugin is called Do Follow, but there is actually no code called Do Follow).

If you turn off the No Follow attribute, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get more spam, or that comments will automatically be approved. You still have the discretion of approving all pending comments. I have not noticed an increase in spam since activating the Do Follow plugin, so I’m guessing either my Akismet plugin is catching any increases in spam, or I’m just not getting more.

Digg, Social Sites and Directory Listings

Although the best backlinks are created by other people (who essentially give a third-party endorsement to your blog), there are plenty of sites where you can link to your blog. If you have an account on Digg or Delicious, for example, you can mark blog posts you like, including your own. Before you link to your own blog on these sites, however, check to see whether they are No Follow sites. Digg is a No Follow site, so just because you link to all your blog posts from there doesn’t mean you’ll get credit for that from the search engines. So if you’re just looking for real eyeballs from those links, think about the pros and cons of possibly being the only person “digging” your own posts, from a public-perception standpoint.

There are some directories that list only Do Follow blogs. So if you have installed and enabled the Do Follow plugin, you might want to go to a site like dofollow.info and submit a link to your blog. You’ll have to verify that it is a Do Follow site. If you get listed on these directories, other bloggers looking to leave comments on Do Follow sites can find your site on these directories, and come to your site looking to leave comments.

Will This Work?

I know bloggers often act like the experts on everything. I’m not. Promoting this blog is new territory for me. My hope is that I’ve been able to consolidate some pertinent information on this subject here, which you can then try to utilize. I’m going to start using what I’ve learned right now, and we can both find out whether this works.

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Posted in Blogging, Online Media | 13 Comments »

Is Privacy Dead?

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

By Adam Ward

There is a blog post by Janet Meiners Thaeler called Google Suggest & Your Reputation that took me back to Journalism 101 in college. As budding reporters, we learned the difference between public figures (e.g. politicians) and private citizens. We learned that the press was almost always protected against writing something about public figures in the paper (even if it turned out to be false), but we had to be careful about what we said—and why—about private citizens (even if it was true). Writing a damaging story about a private person for no apparent reason was cause for a lawsuit. The underlying reason for all that was privacy, and the unspoken need to protect the reputation of the average person. If the mayor is having an affair, it is fair game to report it. But don’t you dare write about the Mr. Nobody down the street having an affair, unless he does something newsworthy and the affair is applicable to the story.

Thaeler writes that a colleague of hers was denied an interview after the interviewee did a Google search for her colleague. Right or wrong, accurate or correct, information picked up from the Internet is influencing our decisions. And we don’t always have control over it.

In the pre-Internet age, someone could choose to remain a private person. The reason why politicians weren’t protected as well against libel and slander is because they chose to put themselves into the limelight, where privacy doesn’t exist. Now it appears that privacy doesn’t exist for the average Joe, either. Thaeler quotes the inventor of the cell phone saying, “Sorry, privacy is a thing of the past.” I certainly hope not.

As far as reputation goes, I know I can’t control what others say about me online, just like I can’t control what people say about me offline. Unfortunately, online commentary stays there forever. All I can do is control what I do and say online, which is why I recently deactivated my Facebook account. I felt like I no longer had control.

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That takes me back to college. With college students today caring less about the information they put online than previous generations, I wonder what professors in Journalism 101, or Media Ethics are teaching today, and whether it is falling on deaf ears.

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Posted in Online Media, Traditional Media | Comments Off

5 Tips For Designing Effective Business Cards

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

By Adam Ward

Business cards seem straight forward, right? You just need your company name and logo, your contact information, and a little design. A lot of blogs about business cards focus on the creative, outside-the-box-to-get-you-noticed elements of business-card design. But have you thought about the utility of your business card? Have you made it easy for the person holding your card to remember you, and reach you again? Here are five tips you should consider when designing new business cards.

  1. Ditch the glossy paper. Yes, you want your card to look professional, and often we equate glossy with professional because, quite frankly, it looks nicer. But it isn’t very functional. In Japan, it is bad form to write on someone’s business card, but here in the United States it happens all the time. How often have you written notes on the back of someone’s card, such as physical cues about them, something specific you discussed, or their level of interest in your product? Well, you can’t do that very well on glossy paper. Instead, you get back to your office and see nothing more than indentations made by your writing utensil, with no idea what you were trying to write. Although there is nothing you can do to prevent receiving glossy cards from contacts, you can make it easier for them to make notes on you by using a light card stock that easily facilitates writing.
  2. Ditch the dark colors. I’ll admit, I like dark colors when it comes to design. Websites and marketing materials with dark backgrounds just seem to have a certain “cool” factor going on. But like with the glossy paper, they can actually be counterproductive. Sure, you want your business cards to give off a certain vibe, but don’t do that at the expense of function. By printing on a light card stock, you’ll increase the chances of a digital card reader to pick up your contact information (see Moving Business Cards into eSilverBullet). And the easier it is for someone to get your information into a database, the more likely they’ll be able to reach you when the time comes.
  3. Put your mug on it. Sounds a little self-righteous, right? But isn’t a business card about promoting your business? And aren’t you, as an individual, an extension of that business? Attorneys, bankers and realtors seem to know this, based on their proclivity for putting their pictures on billboards, print ads and business cards. But besides the self-promotion, there is a practical reason for doing it. You hand out business cards usually one at a time, when you are face-to-face with someone. They know what you look like when you give them a card. But will they remember what you look like when you contact them later on? Probably not. But they will if you’re smiling at them from the card in their hand. And since people are more likely to do business with people they know and like, that smiling face can go a long way toward making them feel like they know and like you, even if you’ve met just once in person.
  4. Display your contact information prominently. Yes, you want to make sure your business card tells a little bit about what your company does. But a business card is more for contacting purposes, not for selling purposes. So a business card is more like the white pages than the yellow pages. People thumb through rolodexes looking for a specific person, rather than looking for a type of business they may want to use. So make it easy for the person to find you on your card, as well as how to contact you. Make each piece of contact information very clear, both in placement and description. And not all contact information is of equal importance, so take that into consideration. People usually put phone and fax right next to each other, in the same font and size. The reality is people will call much more than send a fax to you, and it is easy to punch in the wrong number when the two look so similar.
  5. Keep the design consistent with your marketing. Your business card should be an extension of your marketing materials to make sure your branding is consistent. So even though the card will be used more for contacting than marketing, you want someone who has been exposed to your branding elsewhere to instantly recognize you belong to the same organization as soon as they see your card. And if your card is their first exposure to your brand, you want them to know they are at the right spot when they go to your website, which they will if the look of your website matches that of your card.

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Posted in Selling | 3 Comments »

Why You Should Care About CRM

Monday, May 17th, 2010

By Adam Ward

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is one of those tools that, once you start using it, you can’t imagine how you got along without it for so long.

So often we get wrapped up in the idea of making money for us or our business that we forget to focus on the specific steps we have to follow to bring the money in. Often, our success is impeded by our lack of (or dread of) organization skills. It is common for us to feel like we have too much to do and not enough time or people to do it. We don’t know whether we’re working efficiently because we don’t have time to evaluate our efficiency.

Using a CRM system is one way to offload some of the day-to-day tasks that we have to do (but don’t necessarily enjoy) in order for us to work more efficiently at the parts of our jobs we like best.

Growing sales and new business contacts without CRM is kind of like building a car from scratch. It is going to take longer, have more gotchas, and be harder to replicate than cars built on an assembly line. Whereas a good CRM tool becomes the assembly line.

We have a business advisor at eSilverBullet who has a PhD in engineering. He worked for IBM and started Iomega. He views sales the same as he does product development: as a process of small, replicable steps that, if followed the same way, will produce predictable and favorable results.

By putting each of those steps into a CRM system, the CRM’s workflow can then walk you through them, or walk a new employee you bring in off the street, so that either way, you’re going to get the same results: more customers, more money, and more time.

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