Posts Tagged ‘online marketing’
At the recent ‘Effective Online Marketing’ workshop that we held at the Working Women’s Network, blogging, like Twitter, was another topic that came up as something that people knew something about but weren’t sure exactly how to make full use of.
If you’re a technical kind of person (like my husband!) the history of blogs is quite interesting. Blogs, short for web logs, began in the late 90’s. There are several types of blogs such as personal blogs, corporate blogs, video blogs and more. You can learn all about it on Wikipedia if you really want to! However, from a business perspective, how you can make the most of a blog to get your message across and attract new business is far more interesting.
There are a few reasons you would start blogging to help your business. Firstly, having a blog on your website provides you with the opportunity to create fresh, frequently updated, keyword-rich content, all of which Google and the other search engines love.
Secondly, it gives you a way to communicate with your audience, however large or small, about topics that relate to your business in some way. This gives you the opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in your area and raise your business profile.
Thirdly, as I do, you may blog on sites other than your own if your topic isn’t relevant to your specialist subject matter or you have an interest in a similar topic and can establish yourself as a regular contributor to a popular blogging site. This again allows you to elevate yourself as an expert and drives traffic to your own site from a well, established and popular site. Again, something that Google and his friends are particularly fond of.
All of this is great, you say. But what on earth do you write about on a blog? How often should you post a blog and how do you promote it to the wider world out there?
Working out what to write on a blog is definitely the hardest aspect of the job (believe me, here I speak from experience!). When you’re first starting out it’s a good idea to jot down several ideas and make a start by writing your first few posts before you’ve even introduced your audience to your incredible wit and charm. This means that when you do start to publish the posts you have a few up your sleeve and you feel less pressure when it comes to writing one (oh, if only I followed my own advice on that one!).
Knowing what to write about will get easier as you become more of a veteran and you are more comfortable sharing your opinions with the rest of the world. Mixing up the topics is probably a good idea. You can cover achievements in your business, new customers who have found your services to be of benefit, short case studies where you have had a situation arise with a client and it provides an excellent way to showcase how you can solve issues that people have, topics that are popular in the news that relate to your business, products and services.
You can also use your blog to raise customer service issues, either that you have experienced as a customer or as the service provider, and how the issues were resolved satisfactorily or otherwise. Basically, since blogs are a vehicle for people to express their opinion on a topic, either as the author or a reader, the subject matter you write about is limitless. Relating it to your business and keywords are the key points to remember.
Here’s a good place to point out that blogs are not only useful if you write them. Making comments on blogs that relate to your business is also good to help establish your brand, especially since you can add a link to your website when you leave the comment, again helping your Google ranking.
There are many blogs out in the blogosphere that will give you pointers and tips on how to make your blog effective. But, if you want a comprehensive guide to blogging you really should visit Darren Rowse’s Blog – ProBlogger. Darren is, by all accounts from my Melbourne Twitter friends, a great Aussie bloke from Melbourne. He is also one of the World’s leading bloggers and his site will give you countless tips. I recently started his 31 Days to Build a Better Blog series, which gives you practical excercises on how to improve the content of your blog and promote it to the world. He has created a workbook out of this series and, if you’re serious about making your blog work for you I highly recommend it. By providing a step-by-step guide to daily (or weekly if you prefer to extend it) tasks it is great value at under $20.00.
And, when it comes to promoting your blog and getting people to read it, there are several options. Again, Darren has a comprehensive list of ways to do this here.
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At the recent Working Women’s Network ‘Effective Online Marketing’ workshop, the issue of Twitter was raised briefly. It came to light that lots of people had heard of Twitter but not many really understood much about it.
So, as the Working Women’s Network’s resident Queen of Twitter (J) I thought I’d give you a few pointers about how this popular social network can help you with your business.
First, a little bit of background on exactly what Twitter is. Basically, it is a microblogging site that allows you to post ‘Tweets’ of up to 140 characters with the premise of saying what you are doing. For any of you who are FaceBook users, it is similar to updating your status.
At least, this was how Twitter started. I would contend that it has developed into something so much more than just posting inane statements about what you had for lunch. What it has become is a powerful way to share information, learn new things and develop new relationships for your business.
So, how can you use Twitter for your business? Firstly, let’s look at some basics.
- Joining Twitter: head to http://twitter.com and hit the Join button
- Enter your name (make sure you add your first and last so people can find you)
- Select a user name. There is some debate over whether you should use your personal name or business name. Some suggest that if you are using Twitter for business you should use your business name. I use my personal name (@karenmorris) as I feel that it is easier to connect with people being yourself. You can promote your business in your bio.
- Complete your bio. This is important. For people to connect with you they need to know that you have similar interests and ideas. It’s good to give people an idea of what you do as well as some personal interests
- Add an ‘avatar’, your photo. It’s a bit daunting to have your photo on the interwebs but I have my business promotion photo as my avatar. Again, I feel this is important for people to get to know me. I do follow a lot of people who use their logo or other pictures but it’s nice to know who you’re chatting to. It also makes it easy to see at a glance who’s tweeting at you!
Okay, so you’re on Twitter, what next? The first and probably most important thing to take on board is that, just like any other relationship-building exercise, Twitter is not an instant broadcast medium for telling everyone how wonderful you and your products/services are. It takes time to build a network of followers (I’ll come to what that is in a moment) and, to build a good network of followers it needs to be done through genuine connection and interaction. There are lots of ‘get 400 followers a day’ schemes out there and they come in many forms. I wouldn’t advise taking any of them up as having thousands of followers who have no connection to you is like a fashionista attending a tech conference!
So, what are followers and how do you get them? Followers are like ‘friends’ on FaceBook or ‘contacts’ on LinkedIn. Basically, they are the people you connect with. To get started on Twitter you can do various searches either for people you already know or for people in your industry. Then, once you start following people you need to start interacting. You can tweet about things that you are reading that would be interesting to people in your line of work, things that are in the news or whatever you think will spark a conversation. It’s also good to see what other people are saying and then reply to them.
To get you started some great people to follow, who know a lot about social media are @SilkCharm (Laurel Papworth), @problogger (Darren Rowse) @SuziDafnis from ABN @sammutimer, who is probably the MOST enthusiastic social media champion you’ll ever come across, and the list could go on and on. And, it goes without saying, feel free to follow me @karenmorris! Once you follow, join the conversation by replying to tweets people make and the follow-backs will start flowing.
How do you know who to follow? Well, the rules of Twitter are really very similar to real life. By looking at a person’s twitter stream you can get a feel for things that interest them and whether you would have a connection. I have a few different types of people I follow. I connect with quite a few PR people, the sharing on Twitter is phenomenal and doing the same job as someone else doesn’t make us competitors, it somehow brings us together. I also follow a few rugby people such as @JTActiveMngt, who is also a great marketer and champion of getting Australia active again, @willcarling (yes, THE Will Carling, for those who know anything about rugby, and he found me first!). Then there are people I have found through conversations with others and have found that we have things in common.
Do you have time? This is a BIG question. Getting involved in Twitter can be a time-draining exercise. It is very easy to get sucked into many conversations, follow links that people post to interesting articles and find that the day is half gone. It is all about discipline and how to manage your day. In the early stages when you are still trying to build a following and make connections it will probably require more time and effort but after a while you can just join in for short periods and still maintain your profile. Using apps like TweetDeck or Destroy Twitter to manage your Twitter groups and messages also makes it a little less time consuming.
How do you follow the rules? Like any other networking situation there are several rules of engagement and terminology that take a little bit of getting used to, especially all the terminology. The best advice I can give you for this is to go and read some of the many, many blogs out there that tell you exactly how it’s done. The best place to find out all there is to know about Twitter is a site called Mashable. This is an endless source of information about social media in general. Sam Mutimer also posted a great blog recently about the art of retweeting (I did mention specific terminology!) and I came across another great blog today by @NickBowditch who runs a family travel business on the Central Coast, on 30 things I wish I’d known before I joined Twitter.
I could go on ad infinitum about Twitter and how to use it but I think the best way to find out is to do it for yourself. It may seem a little scary at first and not worthwhile but, once you have started to connect with people it becomes a great resource for ideas, information and business. And, if you get stuck you can always send me a message!
Happy tweeting!
Until next time.
Karen
Karen Morris is the Working Womens Network media officer. She runs Inscriptions, a copywriting and PR Consultancy, is a contributor to Flying Solo and is a wife and mother to three active boys. She loves life and work and has an insatiable appetite to learn all things new, especially all things 2.0.
Are you true to your website mission?
Every website has a mission. Something it needs to achieve above all else. Even if your website mission is not formally understood, or often discussed, it still exists. Generally, your website mission is the measure by which you will decide whether your website is a success or a failure.
What do I mean by a website mission? Well, let’s say you run a service based business and you have already built a website or are planning to do so. There will be something you intend it to achieve for your business. Chances are your website mission is to “produce qualified leads for my business”.
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