New blogging visual e-course coming together!

It’s finally happening! I’ve written 17 of my blogging visual e-courses so far to help you create a successful blog. And I’ve also written an 18th one to add as a prize to all those who sign up to my blogging newsletter (go to my blogging pages to sign up). It’s all about how links are beneficial to blogging, and contains information you cannot fail to miss out on. Oh, and I’ve got at least two more e-courses to write! It’s all go at the moment, in spite of it being the summer holidays, so watch this space for more once I’ve sorted everything out.

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!

Up-selling pizza blogs

Up-selling is a concept I have been thinking a lot about lately. The book The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber explains how the idea of franchises combined with upselling have helped businesses become successful – but how do I transform this into my own business?

I want you to visualise a pizza base, which is an excellent medium for adding things onto. Not just tomato sauce and cheese, which adds value anyway in creating a Margerita, but all the extra toppings which make the pizza individual and appropriate for its consumer. You can add many different toppings to enhance the product, and its the combination of these when added together creates the final effect.

What if your blog was just a Margerita, serviceable on its own, but a bit boring? OK, it tastes nice, and it seems to do well, but do you think extra features would help?

Consider mushrooms as a link to other websites, peppers as a link to your newsletter signup page, chillis in the form of your picture, olives as RSS feed options, anchovies linking to your categories and tags, pepperoni as your social networking links, pineapple for your recent visitors and tuna to show past comments.

As long as all these ingredients are your favourites, it doesn’t matter if you put them all on at once! Although they all have an individual purpose, explore combining these tastes to see what effect they have. Test and measure the responses. Rearrange the positioning to highlight specific items. Work with your widgets!

But don’t forget the tomato and cheese, which should relate to the blog posts, as these are the mainstay of your pizza. Good quality and value should always be on the menu.

How does this relate to upselling? ‘How to beautify your blog’ offers a series of packages that can be added to the main staple, the blog itself. Investigate this concept and give me feedback – does this sort of thing appeal to you? More ingredients cooking away are advice on exiting posts and how to write them effectively, plus all the other marketing elements of blogs I am researching into. Should be the making of the most fantastic pizzas (sorry, blogs) ever!

Don’t just say it one way

If you look at the BBC website newsdesk, you’ll see lots of different links to their news items. It looks like there’s lots of news there, but in fact there isn’t. If you investigated further, you’d find that quite a lot of the links go to the same news article. Why is this?

People view the world in different ways. That’s why we’re all unique. Therefore if you want to reach a wider area of customers, you have to think more outside the box. Most of this can be accomplished with research, hence why there’s websites for finding out the most popular keywords for your website (and your marketing literature). As people think differently, you need to promote your business in a similar vein. Not everybody will respond to the same stimuli, as coaches trained in NLP will confirm.

That’s why there are many newslinks going to one source: to capture more of an audience. Each headline or link has been carefully sculptured to fit in with a certain type of person, in the hope that it will encourage more to respond favourably. They’re designed to work on many levels, in order to increase the success rate of getting their news out there (and this has proven to work).

How can you do this for your own business? If you were able to describe your company in many different ways, how many extra customers could you attract? How could you market your product or services through a variety of avenues to encourage a wider target market? Or even vary the product or service themselves perhaps? Hmmm.

I have said in the past that one way to promote your business is through your ‘perfect customer’. It is much easier to get your prospects to relate themselves to your ‘ideal’ than for you to adapt to their inexhaustible brain patterns. But I’m going to complicate things further by saying you should still promote your ‘ideal customer’, but in more ways. Allow your extremely varied customer base the chance to understand how you help Tom Jones, or whatever you’ve called your ‘ideal’, so that they all get a chance to relate to his predicament, and the solutions you provide for him. Even vary the solutions in which Tom is able to achieve his success; promote from different angles, view points, attitudes, methods, presentations, but all with the same role model.

And to find out these different ways? Don’t forget to use the power of questions, and the qualities of ‘test and measure’…

Up-selling pizza blogs

Up-selling is a concept I have been thinking a lot about lately. The book The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber explains how the idea of franchises combined with upselling have helped businesses become successful – but how do I transform this into my own business?

I want you to visualise a pizza base, which is an excellent medium for adding things onto. Not just tomato sauce and cheese, which adds value anyway in creating a Margerita, but all the extra toppings which make the pizza individual and appropriate for its consumer. You can add many different toppings to enhance the product, and its the combination of these when added together creates the final effect.

What if your blog was just a Margerita, serviceable on its own, but a bit boring? OK, it tastes nice, and it seems to do well, but do you think extra features would help?

Consider mushrooms as a link to other websites, peppers as a link to your newsletter signup page, chillis in the form of your picture, olives as RSS feed options, anchovies linking to your categories and tags, pepperoni as your social networking links, pineapple for your recent visitors and tuna to show past comments.

As long as all these ingredients are your favourites, it doesn’t matter if you put them all on at once! Although they all have an individual purpose, explore combining these tastes to see what effect they have. Test and measure the responses. Rearrange the positioning to highlight specific items. Work with your widgets!

But don’t forget the tomato and cheese, which should relate to the blog posts, as these are the mainstay of your pizza. Good quality and value should always be on the menu.

How does this relate to upselling? ‘How to beautify your blog’ offers a series of packages that can be added to the main staple, the blog itself. Investigate this concept and give me feedback – does this sort of thing appeal to you? More ingredients cooking away are advice on exiting posts and how to write them effectively, plus all the other marketing elements of blogs I am researching into. Should be the making of the most fantastic pizzas (sorry, blogs) ever!

Consistency is the key

Whilst cleaning my bathroom I was struck by the Body Shop bottles on the shelf. That got me thinking on a variety of levels.

One: how the contents of the bottles matched the colours on the labels. Silly really, but I liked that consistency.

Two: the labels themselves were simple and uncluttered, and each bottle matched its partners so that you could tell they were of a set: cleanser, toner, moisteriser, serum, eye cream, etc.

Three: I thought of the consistency of the Body Shop interiors; as a franchise, they are all presented in exactly the same way, so regardless of where you are (Reading, Brighton, Brisbane in Australia) you know exactly where the shampoos are, as well as your favourite brand of face creams.

Four: the consistency of the patter of the sales persons; they all spoke from the same hymn sheet, so no conflictions of information could confuse a potential customer.

Don’t you think that consistency makes your marketing safe? You should make it so that your customers don’t have to think too hard, that it is easy for them without being condescending, that they can find things really easily without losing their interest, that your messages are consistent to avoid confusion, and the simplicity factor highlights your success because everything runs like a well-oiled machine.

That’s something for me to strive for in 2009…

Include your imagery everywhere!

Continuing on the images theme, I was advising another business about their leafleting campaign, and as well as following the AIDA (attention, interest, desire and action) marketing system, suggestions were made that the same pictures should be incorporated into other areas of their visual presentation. They owned a shop, so the window should be dressed to include the same ideas taken from the images on their leaflets. This would add to the continuity of their visual identity and overall message, and would allow the recipients of their leaflets to recognise it whenever they drove or walked past their premises. This stimulation should encourage them to enter, ask questions and eventually make a purchase.

See me describe my business!

I wanted to put my video on my blog, but I can’t do it! You’ll have to visit my website and view it there.

Or try this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv2PM_1zFcA

Acknowledgements go to Gillian Gee of Oceanwake Services – excellent video producers who take time to create the best possible outcome for you.

HTML versus content in newsletters

So many e-newsletters are designed using HTML it is now assumed this is the norm. But does HTML contribute to your newsletter getting more likely to read?

The e-newsletters I most enjoy reading (which seem to be published by successful businesses) are quite plain, just with a logo and a few pictures. Content seems to be more important, with a highly relevant message combined with a call-to-action. Frequency depends on whether they have a valid point to promote or publicise, and always contain important information, impelling action points, contextual links to relevant landing pages, unrefusable special offers, good business or lifestyle advice, and clear, noticeable contact details.

In other words, does content take precedent over design?

Alternative Technology Uses

Just a little idea I had: a lady at a networking event proudly showed me her new iPod, which I much admired.  I’m used to products made by Apple, and noticed one feature that showed a gallery of record covers relative to her music that ’swelled’ up to the fore when moused over.

I wondered if this could be put to another use – a series of images that backed up a pitch or small presentation in a 1-2-1 situation, intimately shown to the prospective as a visual aid.  Examples and information pages could ’swell’ into view to emphasise certain points or highlight subjects to concentrate upon.  An audio description could accompany each slide if necessary.