Archive for Content Marketing – Page 40

Dart Board Marketing: How to Avoid Holes in the Wall

I was at the beach a few weeks ago at my friend Amelia’s beach house. She put a dart board up on her kitchen wall. There are a lot of holes on the wall around where the board hangs.

Which reminds me a little of marketing. Sometimes it’s tempting to think that the more you do, the better results you’ll get as far as getting found and getting leads on the Internet.

Social media marketing is a little like that. You post here, comment there, retweet this, update that… and hope you’ll connect with someone at just the right time and right place… and that something good will come of it.

It does happen, I know. I’ve gotten a few clients signed up for my teleseminars because I tweeted something and it led them back to my blog or sales page. Read More→

Blog Traffic for Smarties
…and the dumb things they do

Attracting ideal clients to your blog and driving blog traffic is part of Blog Outreach: everything you do technologically and personally to let the search engines and people know where you are on the Web.

I talk about this in my free ebook Content Marketing with Blogs. To maintain a successful business blog, you have to pay attention to four key areas, and neglect in any one of these will cause blog failure.

When you work on each of these four areas, your blog is the best marketing tool on the planet. When you know how to attract people AND search engine traffic to your blog, you’re a smart blogger. Read More→

3 Things that Make Me Mad Blogging

What makes you mad, really mad about your online content marketing and blogging?

For me, it’s when I write something I think is smart and clever and nobody reads it, or if they do they don’t let me know it’s helpful to them.

The second thing I hate is when I give away something I think is valuable and only a few people respond to my offer.

But I think the worst things of all are those creepy inner thoughts of…

  • Is anybody out there?
  • Does anybody care?
  • Am I writing to the wind?
  • Why am I knocking myself out with all this online content marketing?
  • Where’s the traffic?
  • Where’s the money, honey?

What about you? Are you getting enough traffic to your blog and web pages so that you reach enough of the people who want your services? Are you getting sales and new clients from your online marketing? Read More→

Get More Blog Traffic: Initial Survey Results

There’s nothing worse than spending time and energy writing on your blog and not reaching the very people who need your help, the ones who have the problems you solve.

I take that back, there is one thing worse, and that’s NOT to write your message at all. At least when you publish on a blog, you put it out there on the world-wide bulletin board. Eventually someone will see it, and if you do a few things right, many will see it.

In my ongoing traffic survey, www.surveymonkey.com/s/getmoreblogtraffic, more than 80% respond that they don’t have enough readers to their blog, and more than half report they’re not sure how to attract their ideal clients.

If you haven’t taken the survey yet, please do so now. I’d like to find out what your challenges are with driving traffic to your blog.

If you’re going to use a business blog to drive sales and grow business, you’ve got to tackle the traffic problem. But don’t worry, you don’t have to hire an SEO expert and spend a lot of money. You don’t have to be a techie-geek type either. Read More→

Get More Blog Traffic: Take the Survey

What problems are you facing with traffic to your blog or web pages? What do you know about traffic tips and how they work to help you get found, get known and get clients on the Web?

Indulge me: 3 minutes, 6 questions, a quick survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/getmoreblogtraffic

Myths & Realities of Blog Traffic: 7 Steps to Clarity

It’s sad and disappointing. My friend and colleague Sam spent some big bucks on a fancy new website, that included an attractive design, a flash banner, nice pictures and ten pages of text… only no one was finding him.

Hardly any traffic at all. He tried using his name on some of the search engines but he could hardly even find himself.

I told him he needed a blog, so he had his web people add a blog page, but he really didn’t do much better. A few months later, over coffee and a phone call, Sam confided his frustrations:

  • The only comments he gets are spammers: “Nice post, visiting my site for Viagra/insurance/poker, etc.
  • He’s in a competitive market with well-established players/bloggers
  • He has no idea how to get the attention of his ideal clients
  • He fears his clients don’t read blogs
  • He’s baffled by his low traffic, and Google analytics seem like Greek to him
  • He tried going over to Twitter and came away with a headache
  • He’s recently discovered an Internet Marketing Millionaire Guru site and is about ready to invest in an expensive Traffic program

When I heard that, I  yelled into the phone, “STOP right there, bubba! Don’t you dare throw your hard-earned money at this problem and expect it to be fixed. First off, you don’t have a traffic problem.” Read More→

Online Content Marketing:
What Do You Wish You Had Known?

What do you wish you had known sooner? Done differently? When it comes to blogging or your online content marketing, what do you imagine could have been better?

Michael Martine of Remarkablogger asks this question and it’s a good one. Here’s what he says:

“What is something you wish you had done differently in the past regarding your blog? For some folks, it may be having a self-hosted blog sooner. Others wish they had known more about blog SEO or traffic-building. I wish I had known more about copywriting, information product creation, and email marketing  sooner.”

For me, it’s been learning about how the search engines work, keyword phrases, and how to make my content marketing efforts pay off in getting found on the Web.

How about you? What do you wish you had known or done earlier?

Smart Professionals with Dumb Blogs

Help me please. If I read one more organizational change blog full of corporate speak and business jargon, I’m going to fall off my chair and hit my head on the desk on the way down. At least that will wake me up.

Listen, I know some of these blog authors are smart. They’ve got Ph.D.s. I know they can write, after all, they’ve written dissertations. Maybe like those people who work for government agencies, the problem is “they know too much.”

I also happen to know from having a few personal conversations with them, they have personalities and actually come across as bright, interesting, and down to earth people.

What happens when they go blogging? They pack too much into a sentence. Here are several blogging blunders smart people make with their blog writing. Read More→

Pivotal Moments in Blogging

Why are you blogging? How is it you discovered blogs, and at what point did you make a decision to start your own?

Do you remember the thrill of publishing your first blog on the Web, where you could publish your own thoughts without having to go through any tech person or getting your content accepted by someone else?

I’ll never forget the day, because it was September 4, 2004, my birthday. I’d injured my shoulder and couldn’t play tennis, which meant I was home, bored, and looking for something to do on the computer.

I opened an email from Debbie Weil. She said, “Every business should have a blog, and any idiot can go over to Typepad.com and start one in under an hour.” Read More→

8 Tips for Content Marketing on Your Blog,
One Conversation at a Time

If a blog writing is “like having a conversation,” then how should I write it? How can I possibly have a conversation when I don’t know who’s reading it? And…if it’s one-way, then it’s really not a conversation, but a monologue…

Okay, let’s not get so literal here that you talk yourself into writer’s block. All I’m saying is when writing on a business blog, forget what they taught you in school about writing an essay or an article or a report.

My point is this: on your blog, write more like you talk, and write sentences like you would use in a conversation with a favorite client.

You can even make up a typical response like I did in the opening paragraph. Invent a conversation.

Direct marketers and copywriters are expert at doing this. They are the ones making a fortune writing sales letters that persuade people to pick up the phone or click the buy button with their credit cards in hand. Read More→