How to do marketing for free

This is a good subject for start-ups and very small businesses who don’t have a large budget to work with..

The first free marketing method is networking. Go to as many meetings as possible, particularly the free events or those that don’t require a big entrance fee. But to make these successful you must arm yourself with a good pitch, both 10 and 60 second versions, the first to grab attention to yourself, and the second if you get a chance to address the whole room. If you can create something that is different, easily understandable, poignant and relevant to your listeners’ needs, then you have a head start above many others.

It is important to get yourself as visible as possible in the business world. There are two possibilities: blogging and social networking group pages. It is very easy to create a free blog, and social networking sites allow you to create groups or fanpages which you can devote to your business.  In these you must regularly post up information about your business, and then, as with the blog, use RSS feeds to inform your followers of your new posts, or email through the social networking system to your followers that you have recently contributed new material for them to read.

And then there’s Twitter, equally free, which is an excellent way to promote your business, not forgetting that you can feed your blog to it, and now your posts can be automatically replicated on your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.

Writing articles and publishing them around the net is another way to spread your expertise. Make sure the resource boxes direct the reader back to your website, blog or social networking profile pages, so they can find out more about you.  Take advantage of keywords to improve your search engine optimisation, and careful attention to the headlines and first paragraph will increase the likelihood of a response.

If you do have a website, get as many links back to it as possible from other websites and web directories. The more high profile the link source, the more respect search engines give your website, not to mention providing more portals for the spiders to crawl over your site and report back pages for indexing.

Create a good signature for your emails, to publicise your website, blog and social networking profiles. Don’t forget that the space at the bottom of your communication is just waiting to be filled with promotional written material and links, and everybody you write to will get a chance to see them.

Give guinea pigs more of a marketing girth!

Yesterday Chrissie Slade of Gorgeous Guineas came to see me for a half hour health check (but as always with me she got a bit more than just half an hour!).

Chrissie makes aromatherapy skin products for guinea pigs, and claims she’s the only one in the world doing this. It’s a fascinating little business, and Chrissie spends her time looking after her own five piggies, plus any that are holidaying with her, and cooking up various lotions and potions to cure skin problems in guinea pigs.

But having created her range of products, she wanted to know how to market them better. I took a look at her website www.gorgeousguineas.com and its accompanying shop, and was suitably impressed. Chrissie certainly knows her stuff, and she was keen to write more articles about her products to educate the world. I suggested selected articles could be linked into a the shopping pages that presented the relevant product, acting as testimonials, examples or recommendations.

She already has a blog (hosted WordPress attached to her website) which needs more content, even though what is on there is good. It is lacking various elements such as a RSS feed and a sign-up form to her newsletter, plus better regulation of her categories and tags, and more encouragement for comments, but once accomplished this can become a useful prop towards getting more traffic to her website and shop.

Chrissie also has a newsletter that regularly goes out to several hundred subscribers, each with a defined purpose and special deals, and Chrissie informed me the response rate was good, not only opening and reading it, but reacting to her offers as well.

She had recently moved her newsletter to another provider that offered her an autoresponder as well, so we discussed ways of how she could use that to her advantage, such as creating e-courses on how to care for guineas with particular problems, spacing out the emails over a series of days to correspond with the various stages of the treatment, watching out for signs of improvement and providing gentle reminders. Chrissie could see other ways how this could be used to educate her followers.

We discussed how articles could be transformed into various guises, such as blog posts, newsletter articles, pdfs for downloading, posted onto article directory sites such as EzineArticles.com, and also ‘fed’ into other areas on the web, such as her Facebook fanpage and Twitter, through the power of RSS. Chrissie was impressed that one action could result in several reactionary performances to spread her word around a wider area on the net.

Chrissie had set up a Facebook fanpage but had done very little with it. Once I had explained how she could fill its pages with different details and information about her business and her piggies, such as ‘before and after’ pictures of treated guineas, encourage responses and similar stories from her 117 fans, visit other like-minded groups and comment on their walls, feed in her blog posts and Twitterings, publicise her new products or successful treatments, she soon saw the page’s value. Like all social networking it should not be neglected, only warranting regular small attention now and again.

Whew, all that in half an hour! The next question is: how much are you doing to market your business?

What are your blogging barriers?

Many people have told me that they are afraid to start blogging. Digging further into this revealed a number of different fears, and not necessarily about the technology side, which I thought was the main reason. Yes, technology is a hindrance, but it is something that can eventually be overcome with guidance. It is the psychological aspects that can be real barriers.

One psychological area is how you appear to your public. Are you as good as your peers, so is what you write worth reading? Everybody else seems to have such intelligent things to say, and your little contribution will be swamped.

Not so! If you are really passionate about your subject, and know it inside out, what you write about will always be interesting to others. You are the expert here, so why not let others know about it? What you think is just ordinary may be totally new to others, especially if you are able to explain it in a different way to the other bloggers.

Another way to overcome this barrier is to watch and listen (read) other blogs, and follow (or subscribe to) experts as they regularly post. This passive observation will enable you to understand more about how others talk about their businesses, how they publicise their benefits and solutions, and how they increase their visibility and therefore their reputation.

It will enable you to sort out the real experts from the time-wasters who have nothing particular to say, and the latter should fire you up in to producing your own viewpoint to counteract their crass statements. Don’t just sit there stewing, correct it within your own blog!

Another way to contribute your two-pence-worth is through commenting. If you like what someone has posted (or even disagree), then leave a comment! It doesn’t have to be much, but it does have to be more than just ‘Nice post’.

I advise always to be polite, complimentary or forthcoming, even if you are totally disagreeing, to maintain your good character. Remember how horrid it is to receive negative responses that drain all your self-confidence, so don’t go down that road. Stand in good stead with other readers and encourage them to offer their own sides in the argument.

And another barrier is if you are unsure of your own credibility to write well. All I can say to this is, practice. I didn’t start out writing well, so I read lots of blogs and learnt a few techniques, and started writing posts to see how it went, and eventually I picked up a style that seemed to work.

One technique is to imagine talking to your readers, so write like you’re having a conversation with them. It will enable your readers to warm more towards you and your posts. If you find this difficult, try yabbering away into a dictaphone and then transcribe it as a post – this will train you into your conversational style; you can always edit it into good English later. And once you’ve accomplished this ability it will make writing posts that much easier.

If I haven’t covered all the reasons why this stops you from blogging, then why not let me know? If I have enough information I could write another post about it, and acknowledge my sources appropriately (thanks go to Helene Cooper and Ute Wieczorek-King for their ideas). And remember, leaving comments helps bring traffic to your sites too.

Combine price and quality to attract customers

While visiting Nottingham we decided to go for a Chinese meal. Just down from our hotel was an restaurant called ‘Big Wok’, which looked enticing at £10 for all you could eat.

Now normally these ‘pile it high and sell it cheap’ establishments skimp on quality for the sake of price, but we were pleasantly surprised. For the nominal price you could go up several times with your plate to a buffet section in the middle of the restaurant to help yourself to a variety of well presented Chinese food. And that also included a ’sweet’ section for afters.

So how did they make their money, being so cheap yet good quality? Well, they probably made a bit on the drinks, which were not included in the main price, and the place was absolutely buzzing, with all the tables occupied. We worked out that at least 200 people at £10 a head per weekday (and more at the weekends) would soon result in very respectable profits, certainly compared to other places that charged more but had less covers each night.

I had seen this phenomenon around the corner at a local restaurant chain which offered main courses for as little as £5, but then you knew they were making up for it on the drinks and other courses. They were also packed during prime hours, being a very popular haunt for taking the family out for Sunday lunch.

What’s the verdict on this? Can you afford to reduce your prices down during this economic downturn to get the punters in? If what you offer continues to be exceptional value, not tainted or reduced in quality to accommodate the cheaper prices, then you will maintain your status and keep your clientelle who will stand by and support you, and will still be there once everything starts to improve.

Both these businesses are working on their customers’ greed, understanding the state of their wallets, and providing a solution which is plentiful food at very good prices in convenient surroundings at suitable times.

Now – can your company adapt to this mind-set? Hmmm, not all of us are in such a position to accommodate this practice, but we can all be aware that offering a few good quality products at low prices can act as a lost-leader towards gaining more in up-selling or by increasing the ‘bums on seats’ capacity. Both seem to win in the end.

Customers’ copy outweigh your business profile

All copywriting, whether for web or paper, should be biased towards one thing: the customer.

Blabbing on about the company is a total waste of time, customers don’t give a tinker’s toot about the business, they only care about “what’s in it for them”, how will they benefit from the product or services offered, will it make them feel better, look good, improve their life, or whatever.

So much promotional material uses the wrong slant; if they were to adapt the way their descriptions were written into the customers’ point of view, talking about how the customers will benefit, then they will achieve more sales.

Analyse the successful ads on TV: the one’s that work don’t even mention the product, they go on about the effect it will have on their customers, how their hair is thicker and glossier, how much the decor of their house has changed, how soft their skin has become, how good their feet now look, what a fantastic two weeks their children will have on holiday, etc.

Stop being selfish and start thinking about who you are actually selling to. The customer is king, not the content.

How aware are you of the power of the picture?

I’ve just finished my blogging package ‘The Power of Pictures’.

This is just one of my series of blogging packages I’m creating to help women (and men) towards creating their own successful business blog. The first ones of the series are scheduled to be ready towards the end of July, so watch this space!

I like it when I see pictures in a blog. This isn’t only for photographers and those whose business survives on imagery such as arts and crafts, jewellry and silver-ware, stationery and cards or whatever. I know I am guilty in the fact that I don’t put enough pictures into my blog, but it certainly does make a difference, not ony because it is colourful, but because it enables those who thrive on the visual side of comprehension to understand your point of view better.

But there are a few pointers that you need to know before submitting an image to your blog.

First, do you have copyright? So many pictures are ’stolen’ from the web, both consciously and unconsciously, but it is a crime. This also includes scanning in images from books or whatever, just like photocopying music, which carries a heavy fine. Please be careful about where your pictures come from.

I generally create my own, or otherwise I pay for my pictures from the web from special websites that provide imagery, usually at very reasonable costs. I’m very much aware of copyright, since my mother said she fell foul of this practice in the beginning of her freelancing days, and had to pay the author more for his picture than her commission for her work. It truly isn’t worth it, as it’s very easy to be found out.

OK, so you have your picture, then it needs to be adapted for the web. I use Photoshop because as an ex-graphic designer I have it to hand. It sizes my pictures by centimetres or pixels (whatever you are used to), transforms the image into RGB which is the correct form for the web (as oppose to CYMK for printing), and can create a myriad of file types that are acceptable for uploading.

And once you’ve created your pictures to the exact specifications, it’s very easy to pop into your post – but to find out how you’re going to have to buy my ‘The Power of Pictures’ blogging package that’s available at the end of July!

Saying exactly what in the tin

Following on from my visible networking material idea I came across this business card from Jill Wigmore-Welsh. I wanted to share it with you because it stood out from all the other business cards at this networking meeting I went to.

Why? Because the first thing it said is what she does, but in a way that was beneficial to the customer. There isn’t much room, and she even managed a rhyme, but the aim of her business was the most visible element on the card, whereas her details took a back seat.

I like this idea, because the customer should always come first. Why should our networking material bang on about ourselves? The customer cares only about themselves and what they can get out of you and your business, not actually your business. Use the fact that we’re all naturally self-centered, so by turning the tables we can take advantage of this fact and steal a march on our competitors.

What do you think of this idea – your comments are always welcome!

Treat Twitter respectfully for the right response

Twitter is also called micro-blogging, because it is an opportunity for you to express yourself and tell the world all the facts about you and your business you are unable to fit into your website. It’s micro-blogging because it is confined to only 140 characters per ‘tweet’, which means you have to be concise with your message. (If you reduce it down to 120 characters that will leave room for any retweets.)

Just go ahead and join up, but make sure you’re careful with your username. Does it truly reflect you or your business? And if you were to change direction, would it continue to be useful? And is it memberable, easy to spell, universal to understand? If you can squeeze in a keyword, so much the better.

Communicate with your followers, don’t just post endless bits about yourself. Also don’t tweet rubbish or uninteresting material. Find out others within your target market and ask them questions, engage them in conversation, just like networking. People react to a lively commentary, and if you want to know something, tweet it in general – some people say Twitter is better than search engines for finding out what you want.

Find all the gurus and experts in your field through Twellow.com. Ask them questions and try and get to know them, but don’t bombard them – they also have a life. It’s best to watch and read their tweets first to learn how to tweet effectively and what line they are taking. Look at their followers and see if there are any you would like to follow too.

Post up some valuable information for your followers to read, and if you’re stuck for content, use Google Alerts to send you material on your chosen subjects, then trawl through and post up the interesting stuff using tinyurls for the links (this facility is incorporated into applications like TweetDeck). But usually the advice that comes direct from you is best because it shows off who you are, unlike those people who tweet endless quotations.

Get fodder for your tweets from the stuff you have already written – any articles, blogs, e-books, old emails or whatever. You’d be surprised what you have already, and it will be all your own material. Feed your new posts from your blog into your Twitter stream, and get retweet widgets for your blog so people can retweet your posts if they like them, and you can also feed your e-newsletters through Aweber.com and articles from EzineArticles.com into Twitter through their automation.

And finally, get a following to follow you, which you can achieve if you continue to post up valuable information, strike up intellectual and humorous conversations, provide relevant input to discussions, regularly retweet stuff you like and acknowledge kind gestures towards you. Then you’ll get to be known as an expert in your field, and can start to achieve more business through your other business media.

Fascinating faces on business cards

In a previous post ‘How visible is your networking?’ I explored the idea of putting a photograph on your business card. I have found four examples of people who have done just that!

This is done solely to show who the cards belong to.  How many times have you got home, looked at the business cards you collected, and wondered what the owners looked like? Only the ones that made the most impression probably stuck in your memory. Ironically, it is the most rememberable ones that do put portraits on their networking material.

Mary Flavell is a flamoyant lady who takes over networking events by storm (she is not called the Queen of Networking for nothing). She always looks immaculate and her gushing friendliness emphasises her willingness to get to know what you do, and to see how she can help you. It seems only right that she should have a photograph of herself on her card, although once you’ve met Mary, it would be very difficult to forget her.

Graham Jones is well known as The Internet Pyschologist, and all his media includes a photograph of him, so it’s not surprising there is one on his business card. He has rigidly stuck to this branding, so much so that you only need to see the colours and his portrait at a distance to recognise his company. That’s why its a good thing to choose a particular photograph you are happy with and be consistent with its distribution, both on- and off-line, to enable instant recognition – all good marketing ploys.

Ophelia Messer is a lady who I’m sure was reluctant to put her photo on her business card, but I’m very glad she has. Another rememberable networker, recognition plays a major role if she is to be successful in recruiting for her business. Her invitation for ‘call me now for an informal chat’ is made much easier because of her welcoming grin; such call for actions are more personable if you can see your contact.

And finally John Cassidy, who for a photographer of the rich and famous (he does capture ordinary mortals to make them look fabulous too) it would be strange if he didn’t have a self-portrait on his card. It does, of course, make him look georgous, yet he has chosen a more down-to-earth representation of himself in his social networking. It’s always a good thing to get a chance to show off your expertise through your networking material, and John’s picture has done just that.

3 ways to successfully market your messages

OK, without the multi-million pound marketing budgets the big corporates have, how can SMEs compete? But you can accomplish it just as well within your sphere by using these three simple, common sense marketing techniques that needn’t cost the earth.

First, make your messages regular, repetitive and always upbeat. There are plenty of ways to achieve this: blogging is just one of them, and now with the rise of social networking, Twitter in particular, there are other media where we can bombard our followers (or potential customers) with carefully constructed marketing messages frequently posted to gain maximum effect.

The good thing about Twitter is that is you only use 140 characters (or 120 to leave enough room for, hopefully, retweets) so you have to think about what you are going to say before submitting it. This is a very good practice all marketers should adhere to. The same should apply when posting on your blog, or playing with Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites: keep it short, sharp and sweet, making it obvious what you’re talking about from the beginning, and be appropriate, relevant and newsworthy.

Second, turn your marketing around so you don’t mention the product or service directly, but how it will affect the customer, how they will feel, who it will change their lives for the better, what impact it will have. This is a concept most successful businesses employ, and it works! Customers aren’t interested in your product, they only care how it will affect them: will they get their money’s worth, will they look good, feel good, be the envy of their friends, raise their social status or whatever?

Third, be consistent with your marketing messages by creating a routine. OK, this is difficult for SMEs who may not have enough personnel to spend time on this, but try and make it part of your 40% a week marketing activities; I’m sure you can slot in a few tweets and calendarise a blog post now and again? It will pay dividends, as large successful businesses promote their new products at least 27 times, in the hope that their customers will see it between 7 and 9 times.

Frequent marketing tactics will eventually sink in: this is all part of building your relationships with your customers (which is what marketing is all about), either for immediate effect but definitely for the future. Remember, you don’t want them to forget you, or be seduced away by your competitors, do you?

New business? Want a website? My advice is: don’t!

You’re an entrepreneur and you want to start up a business. Great.

The first reaction to getting a slot on the internet is to get a website. Wrong!

Why wrong? This is because websites are notoriously expensive things! How much cash do you have? I suggest you should have a good think before you go throwing it away on unnecessary, inappropriate, uncostworthy things such as a website.

But surely everybody needs a website, or they won’t be taken seriously by prospective customers?

Of course you need a presence on the internet – it’s a requisite requirement nowadays. But not a website. What you need is a blog, and a good grasp of social networking. That’s how you get yourself known on the web. Only when you’ve made it, got a load of followers, built up your list of contacts, made some money, then you can go ahead and get yourself a website. By then you will know exactly what you want it for, and will build it with a proper purpose.

The trouble is, so many people get themselves a website, and it just sits there, looking pretty, and doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. They haven’t got the money to update it, because unless they have built it themselves they will have to pay a fortune to their webmaster to make any changes.

Now, if you have a blog, that’s exactly what you can, and should, do. This is because blogs are self-editable; they thrive on new material because they are designed for it. They are also little web magnets for internet traffic, as the search engine spiders are programmed to visit blogs extremely frequently, just in case there is something new for them to ‘read’. If they like what they find, and there are lots of keywords and key-phrases that match up to what is ‘hot’ at that moment, then you can get really high in the search engines!

And the other side of the coin is to get into social networking. The beauty of the web is that you can link and ‘feed’ all your blog content into social networking, so a lot more people can start reading about exactly what your business does – as long as you have written about it. And blogs are the place to write about your business: frequently, easily and regularly.

Don’t hide under a bushel – reach out and network. Tell the world about what you do. If people like what they read, you can start to make friends, contacts, business, liaisons, strategic alliances or whatever, all on the internet, through a relatively inexpensive blog – not by wasting your money on a website!

And does it work? There are plenty of businesses who are extremely successful today and have all started with just a blog, even before social networking got off the ground. Blogs are the beginnings of social networking, it’s just that the interactive side of the web (Web2.0) has developed a bit more recently…

You don’t buy gifts with yourself in mind, do you?

When you choose a present for a friend, I hope you don’t choose it because you really like it?

When you choose the colour, you don’t choose your favourite and not your friend’s?

When you choose the size, you don’t see if it fits yourself, do you?

Think about these facts and compare them to how you treat your customers.

Long ago, when I was creating my totally unsuccessful wedding stationery, I was making stuff that I liked – what I would have chosen for my wedding stationery. Unfortunately I did not think whether it was anything that anybody else would have preferred. OK, I thought about the kind of card it was on, the matching envelopes, the accompanying reception stationery like place cards and favour-boxes, I even tried to consider what colours where fashionable and how much brides were prepared to pay (grossly undervalued as I was not creating them in bulk [thankfully] so I made a BIG loss), but I didn’t understand the way brides thought, where they got their ideas from, what really was in fashion, what their friends were using, what was already in the shops and catalogues.

The moral of this blog is: you must truely understand your customer. Get inside their heads, find out what makes them tick, look at the world through their eyes – and the way to do this is by asking questions. Only your customers know what they want. You must get outside of this naturally selfish trait we humans have, and start being Mother Theresas in the marketing world – consider others before yourself. Strip away any preconceptions you have, and reform your marketing strategy totally from your customers’ point of view.

Then do something about it. Action the reactions – change and adapt your business, products or services according to your market research. I met a market researcher who told me she had saved one particular company tens of thousands of pounds because she had found out what their customers were really thinking, and it was totally the opposite of their new advertising campaign. A big shock, but also a big wake-up call – and now their new adverts are spot on, with the inevitable results.

Ask questions > analyse the results > action the reaction = success in business!

Always provide a focus for your adverts

At my first networking meeting for a month (since I had got Bell’s Palsy) I met an interesting lady who taught golf, at home as well as at the golf course.

I asked her how she marketed her business. (It’s wise to do that to see if they know what they are talking about – there’s nothing worse than trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs.) She mentioned that she did do advertising in magazines in the past, but had given it up because it was a waste of money.

Probing a little further I found out that the magazines that fared the worst were the national golfing magazines, whereas the adverts that did achieve a result were from the monthlies that are pushed through letterboxes. I asked her what did the ads say, and found that the contents was generally publicising the business and what it offered to customers.

I asked her if her ads had a purpose, an aim or an end goal. I explained that general adverts weren’t going to do as well as ones with a focus, something that led towards an event, a special course or whatever, and that there should also be an incentive, like 10% off when you present this advert or coupon, and a time to achieve this by, for example the actual day of the event or advance bookings to get £5 off the price.

Three simple things to include in your advertising: a purpose, an incentive and a time to achieve it by. General ads don’t grab the customers’ attention, don’t play with their wants or needs, don’t pander to their greed, and don’t command an action to ‘get something for nothing’ by a certain date. Think about these phenomena the next time you write your ads or leaflets…

Complete my Twitter survey on blogs

I’ve just done a survey on Twitter about how you use blogs – care to have a go?

http://sur.vey.me/5146

Go on – and then leave a comment in the box below too – I’m interested in your views.

Never give up on your marketing

I read somewhere that small businesses really ought to spend 40% of their time doing marketing if they want to survive. 40%! That’s quite a lot, especially if you’re a sole trader or only have a few employees, but if you think about it, a lot of what you do would be already considered as marketing without you really knowing it.

Write down all the marketing activities you already do, and I expect you’ll be surprised. Certainly contributing to a blog is one of them. Writing your newsletter, answering questions from clients, writing a sales letter, updating your website, writing the words to advertise your next promotion, getting new literature printed, networking, thinking of a new elevator pitch – I could go on and on.

Next, split up these tasks into their respective areas. By reducing them down to their bare elements they become less oppressive and more manageable. Concentrate on what you enjoy doing the most, and see if you can farm out the less deletable to someone who does enjoy doing them or knows more about it.

Set up a marketing system – mark out on a calendar your tactics ahead, focusing on next week or month or even a year. Work out how they will be achieved systematically and automatically, planning in advance so that nothing is missed out and you know exactly what the end goal is. In fact, why not work backwards from the final product? This method will certainly sort out the time factors much more easily for you.

Try new marketing methods – there may be new ones you haven’t thought of that might make a big difference. Do lots of research and ask others who may already be doing it before you take on any large projects, but certainly dabbling won’t do you any harm. It’s always good to keep in the know.

And don’t forget to keep asking questions to make sure you are on the right track. Do a poll or a questionnaire, find out where your target market is hanging out, what they need and want, and what solutions will be the best thing for them. Be able to adapt your business accordingly – you must keep up with changes.

And remember, marketing is not a quick fix. It does take time, because what you are aiming to do is to gain the trust of potential clients. It can take several months for a marketing cycle to produce results, so don’t get despondent if nothing seems to be working immediately. A watched kettle never boils, but you will get your cup of tea in time.

How can questions help small businesses?

If you start thinking in questions, it will benefit you to:

• focus your mind on what your customers really want or need
• ask your customers what they are asking for
• work out what your own business should be asking for
• then aim to provide what your customers are searching for

This sounds deep, but it isn’t really. It’s not worth providing something nobody really wants.

Years ago I designed wedding stationery which many people told me was beautiful. But it wasn’t what brides wanted. It’s no good designing beautiful stationery that 99.9% of brides don’t want. I spent 2 years of my business life churning out stuff nobody wanted because I didn’t ask. The trouble was, when I eventually found out what brides wanted, I didn’t want to produce it because to me it seemed so tacky. If only I’d known, I wouldn’t have wasted all that time and effort for so little return.

Do you really know what your customers want? Do you think it would be a good idea to ask questions to find this out? Are you willing to adapt or change it if necessary? It might make all the difference to your profit margins…

Think of five questions that would provide you with all the information you require. They should be designed for you to find out whether you are giving your customers exactly what they want. Make sure the questions are open ended so they aren’t replied to with a single word, and are carefully structured so the answers don’t go off on a tangent.

Go to a questionnaire source like surveymonkey.com to compile your questionnaire and send it to all your contacts. If the questions require a full answer, put them onto separate pages: it will facilitate a better response. Include an explanation as to why you are asking these questions, and provide some sort of incentive to get a reply, like a free gift or prize. And once they’ve been completed, don’t forget to take heed of the answers and undertake some sort of process in analysing them.

More information = better informed = higher value = greater success

Would you like to learn how blogs aren't scary?

Live teleseminar: Thursday 14 May

• Have you been thinking about setting up a blog recently but have been putting it off?

• Do you want to know how a blog can help your business?

• Do you already have a blog but want some more tips on how to improve it?

Would having a blog help you market your business better?

Sometimes just having a website is not enough – you need to have somewhere where you can express yourself, providing on-going news about your business, educate your customers, promote new events or products – all in an environment that is publicly seen throughout the net.

A ‘brochure style’ website is far more difficult to update, needs the use of a webmaster and is seldom visited by the internet spiders. It’s a space on the web that just sits there, looking pretty, but doesn’t encourage interaction from your customers.

So what is different about a blog?

A blog is self-editing, thrives on regular input and spiders visit blogs hourly. It also uses applications to spread your word around the web easily, efficiently and automatically.

It encourages and succeeds on feedback and input from your readers, and can also be used as an archive for your articles and other information, as each post is allocated its individual URL.

The free software provided by the blogging platform is excellent for search engine optimisation, too.

So if you are interested in finding out more about blogs, then join me live for an hour’s teleseminar class (or if you can’t make the day a recording will be available).

You will discover how to:

• publicise your business to a wider audience

• increase your expert status

• let customers check you out before they buy

• bring more traffic to your website

• interact with potential customers

• provide an archive for your newsletter material

• work better with search engine optimisation

• help link you to social networking sites

But above all I want you to realise that blogs aren’t difficult technology to master, and that everybody can and should have one!

I will reassure you how unscary blogs are, and there will be a chance for those on the call to ask questions and provide their own opinions.

When is it? Thursday 14 May

What time is it? 8pm – 9pm (GMT+1)

What happens if you’re not free at this time? Register, and you will be automatically sent a recording of the teleseminar for you to listen at your leisure. Don’t forget if you have any questions, you are welcome to email them to me before the event.

What else is included? I will also send a pdf of the teleseminar’s notes and resource information so you won’t have to write everything down.

How much is it? The initial cost of this seminar is £27 -

but wait – if you book before Friday 8 May at 8pm you can register for only £17!

You will also be eligible for a competition to win my first two blogging packages for free!

• Book before 8pm on Friday 8 May to get the call for only £17 plus the recording

• Enter your name into a draw to receive first two blogging packages f*ree!

Click here NOW to register and reserve your place – and begin your journey to blogging success!

I really look forward to hearing you on this call.

Alice

What's the similarity between blogging and twittering?

Hi Alice

I am new to all this twittering and blogging and I need some help. I have my business and have been told that blogging and twittering are a great form of marketing my business. So I have a blogger and twitter account but am unsure of how these work. I know that you post your little blurbs but how does that send people to my site? Can you help me please?

Kerry

–oo00oo–

Hi Kerry,

Blogging and twittering are similar that they are both a medium for you to express yourself, except that blogging allows a bit more than 140 characters to do so. Twitter is also called ‘microblogging’.

Twitter works on the question ‘what are you doing?’, and you shouldn’t tweet mundane things like what you had for breakfast, but snippets of information about your business that people will want to know more about. Your link in your bio should either lead to a special landing page all about you, or to a relevant page on your website or your blog. Each Twitter post can also link back to your website or whatever (use tinyurls for this purpose) so that your traffic will increase. If you tweet questions or leading statements this will also increase any interested parties.

If you’re starting out I suggest you get blogging under your belt, and then you progress to Twitter. But as you already have an account (mine’s @alicedesigns) you can feed each new post you make on your blog onto Twitter through the RSS feed I’ve been talking about. There are lots of applications to do this, but I expect Twitterfeed.com is the most well known.

Why do this? You want a many people as possible to read your posts, hence why you should also have a well publicised link from your website to your blog. Search engine optimisation thrives on links, and if you can create as many links as possible to both your blog, Twitter and website, your traffic will increase and so will your followers if they like what they see.

Alice

Should you blog, tweet or start an e-newsletter?

Guest blog by LisaMarie Dias, e-newsletter diva

As a designer of e-marketing materials, people will often ask “Should I blog, tweet or start an e-newsletter?” While the question is usually posed as ‘which one’, I will often answer “Yes” in an attempt to help them re-frame the query. There are valid reasons to start any one of these and in my opinion, often very good reasons to have all three!

First and foremost, you need to be very clear about the message you are trying to share. The mode of transport – and that is all that these choices are, different modes of transport for getting your info out into the world – depends on what, exactly, you want to say and to whom.  Are you selling a product to a new customer or disseminating information to establish your expertise?  Are you speaking to someone that knows of you and your product or are you introducing yourself?  Once you clarify the message and the recipient, it will usually be easier to determine how to share it.

Each mode is best suited for a different type of message with some working well in multiple situations.  An e-newsletter gives you the time to introduce yourself and to provide detailed information.  It also allows you to define your ‘tone’ and to post upcoming events. But it is not a good medium for sharing time sensitive information or for last minute reminders.  Blog posts are excellent for distributing daily and timely comments, insights and musings but work best when they are sent to someone that already knows you. The same goes for tweets.  They are the perfect way to stay on someone’s radar with quick observations, retorts and reminders but only when received by someone that is ‘following’ you.  They are not a very good vehicle for introduction and certainly not for explanation.

One client, a financial planner, offers a tremendous amount of timely and valuable financial information and advice each month complete with references, charts and foot notes.  This is obviously not a message suited to a blog post or ‘tweet’.  His e-newsletter offers the space and time to deliver this information properly.  Blog posts are a great way to define your tone and to grow your following.  By posting frequently, people get a feel of who you are and over time, you can build a level of trust.  This same client might blog about the daily ups and downs in the market as well. It would not necessary conflict with the e-newsletter and, if done well, could certainly support it. And I suppose he could tweet too, though I am not sure if financial advice via tweet is in anyone’s best interests. My point is that these modes are not mutually exclusive.

Sometimes I will hear the question, “I have a blog and I am active on Twitter, do I need an e-newsletter/ e-zine as well? “

I believe that, if you have the stamina – and do not underestimate the amount of time and effort each of these endeavors will require – it is often best to combine all three modes, using e-newsletters to introduce yourself and define your area of expertise, blog posts to build on that expertise and tweets to ensure that you are on your reader’s radar.

Promoting an event is a great opportunity to use the strengths of all three modes.  An e-newsletter calendar, posted regularly, makes someone aware of the event and allows them to register and plan to attend. A blog post can then be used to discuss the event and build anticipation followed by a ‘tweet’ to remind them when the date arrives.  Working together, in a coordinated timeline, these three tools will increase the likelihood of having your message received and in this case, ensure event attendance.

Pick the format that works best for your message.  Or better yet, try all three. This is not an ‘either – or’ proposition.  They are all useful tools which should be created and designed to work together to ensure that your message is broadcast and shared.

LisaMarie Dias works with people to create dynamic online marketing materials using Constant Contact.  She offers individual and group classes for those that are interested in doing it themselves and full packages for businesses that want it all done for them.  Give her a call and let her help you get your message online and into your client’s in-box!

What do you use your blog for?

Hi Alice

I have a business blog: http://pensarmarketing.blogspot.com

I am not sure how to use it, I have heard different things from different people. My posts vary from personal to business as this is what I have been told works. To be honest I do not use it very often because I am unsure of how to get the best from it.

I would like to use my blog for business more than I do and possibly earn a small revenue from it eventually.

Any advice would be gratefully appreciated!

Thank you, Sara
www.pensarmarketing.co.uk

–oo00oo–

Hi Sara

Took a look at your blog, and I’m afraid my first reaction is why do you use a black background? It makes my eyes go shimmy and I find it very difficult to read.

Blogs are to provide your customers with another insight into what your business is all about. Fill your posts with valuable content to raise your expertise status. Keep them fairly regularly spaced apart (they don’t need to be done very frequently), bt regularity is the key: spiders will soon learn this and visit your blog accordingly.

Increase the search engine optimisation (SEO) by including categories and tags for your posts. The categories are like chapters which provide a place to store your posts for future search, and the tags resemble keywords that give the spiders food to help with getting your post into the search engines.

Add an RSS feed to increase your readership, especially within the social networking sites. Without one your blog is very lonely as it cannot be regularly followed whenever new content is posted.

How to make money? Each post should have a purpose, whether it is to increase your expertise and your following, link to your website for more traffic, guide your readers to sign up to an event or direct them to a squeeze page to pay for a service or product. Don’t blog aimlessly, it may be nice to read but not good for you.

Want to know more? Join up to my blogging newsletter from my blogging pages to keep in the loop! Or listen to my teleseminar on 14 May – watch this space!

Alice