Too Busy To Blog? Tips for Small Biz Bloggers

I knew this was how it was going to be.

I knew there’d be seasons in which I’d get so busy I’d have to let my own blog take a backseat to my paid writing gigs.  As a matter of fact, that’s why I’d been a writer without a blog for years; I’m usually blessedly busy doing this stuff for other people who deposit money in my account for the effort.  So when I finally committed to starting my own blog—this very one you’re reading—earlier this year, I made my peace with the reality that busy seasons would come and I’d have to prioritize accordingly.

Though I’d prefer to never have a lag between postings, it’s reasonably acceptable in my case because…

• This is self-governed blog.  Though I’m committed to writing for my readers, I’m not obligated to any sponsors, advertisers or clients who dictate my schedule on this endeavor.
• I’d established a good root system from the get-go, so the blog’s continued to be read even without fresh posts for a few weeks; I truly knew I’d be back on track as soon as my workload allowed.
  
• The blog itself led to some of the new work that, by necessity, diverted my attention. Thus, my goal with this blog—to share credible ideas that help small biz people and open professional opportunities for me—is already being achieved.
  
• Paying clients always come first, in a tie with my sanity.  There’s only one of me, so something had to give over the last weeks!

According to Harper’s Index this month, 94% of all existing blogs have not been updated in four months.  That’s a lot of cyber space going to waste.  That statistic makes my four+-week hiatus seem relatively harmless.  But what about your the blog for your business?  When’s the last time you posted?

In these weeks that I’ve not written on smallBizBigtime, I’ve actually been blogging faithfully on behalf of clients for whom it would not be reasonably acceptable to not post in a month, let alone four.

For branding and business blogs, it’s not okay to be among the 94% that are out-of-date and stale.  When you consider the reasons and strategies for blogging for your business, it becomes abundantly clear why you should commit to consistency.

A business blog will help you…

• Establish credibility: become the authority/the resource/ the idea generator/the facilitator, become the company that’s quotable and ‘repostable’
• Raise profile and visibility: create fresh content to bolster web presence (SEO), use content throughout the social web to become a regular and welcomed fixture in customers’ lives, cross-pollenate with other sites/pages/online networks
  
• Inform, educate and motivate: engage customers, inform in a timely fashion, invite interaction, earn the right to sell, make special offers
  
• Craft your message, build your brand: be your own publisher, establish your own look and content style,   communicate within your own guidelines…to your own, targeted audiences
  
• Maximize content: heighten other PR/marketing/promotional efforts by reusing content in other forums, ensure consistency of message, increase frequency of messaging, offer content to other media outlets (with assured attribution)
  

Obviously, there are many great reasons to not only start a blog, but to commit to one.  If you haven’t begun one yet, weigh it seriously before you dive in.  Are you prone to be momentarily motivated or intermittently committed?  Do you rarely have enough to say for your monthly newsletters?  Do you loathe writing?  Are you perplexed by social media in general?  Then maybe a company blog isn’t for you.  Or perhaps you should delegate the task to another employee or hire the help of someone like me to get you going.

And if you do take on a blog, give at test run of a month (or two) before you promote it to the world, to make sure you’re going to be able to create great content on a regular basis.  Also note, there’s no rule about how frequently you must post, though “once a quarter” just won’t cut it.  Start realistically; slow and steady will win this race.

And if you’ve already got a blog but haven’t posted in a long while, consider whether or not to pull the plug.  Few things look less professional than a four-month old blog on your website.  If you aren’t ready to abandon ship, consider investing to get the help you need.

I’ll soon be starting a new blog on behalf of a client.  To get her rolling, I’m going to set up the blog—the account creation, the name, look and customization.  Then, I’ll write one post a week for her.  She can supplement as she has time or feels led throughout the week, but she’ll always be assured one healthy post per week.  We’ll be able to push that content out through her Facebook fan page, LinkedIn group and her company’s website.  I’ll be writing in her style and voice, so the brand will be enhanced in tandem with her credibility.

This approach will cost her more than the total do-it-herself plan, but she knows full well she likely wouldn’t always do it if it were up to only herself!  But she believes a blog is another great way to take her small biz big time.

Thanks for reading today, and I promise it won’t be another four weeks until we meet again!

Look Ahead or Get Left Behind

Know anybody who’s ever attempted a newsletter yet never had any news?  What about blogs; ever seen a stale blog on a company’s site?  And I don’t even have to ask about news pages on web sites, as I’m sure you happen upon the occasional page-as-time-capsule in your surfing.  These businesses had the best intentions of keeping content fresh; instead they posted a perpetual press release circa 2005 or hiccuped out 3 issues of what could’ve been a lovely newsletter.

Some day in my vast amounts of spare time (insert rimshot and laugh track), I’d love to try to tally the number of newsletters I’ve helped name and launch…which will closely parallel the number I’ve seen fizzle.  Ditto that for website news pages.  I could start a communications museum with all the well-intentioned projects I’ve seen preserved in amber—locked, motionless, ancient history.

Seems many companies love the idea of communicating but lack the stamina to follow through.  Sound familiar?

I eventually became the voice of reason anytime a client decrees it was “time to launch a newsletter” or “add a news page to the website.”  The term “monthly” or (God forbid) “weekly” often comes with the decree.  Now similar decrees are coming for blogs and other social media tools.  Since I know I’ll typically be responsible for producing said newsletter, web page or blog, I talk the client through the ins and outs of what it takes to sustain these efforts.

Even if the client laments that everybody else has a newsletter, news page or blog and they didn’t want to get “left behind,”  I remind them that they still needed to look ahead.

While I stand to make money anytime a client wants to produce ‘stuff,’ I prefer to guide clients to substantive, long term success.  That’s how we all win.  You don’t get long term success by being reactionary or by placating the desire for a momentary sense of accomplishment.  You don’t sprint a marathon on the heels of competitors, lest you tire out and trip up.  Not to mention, it’s really boring to have nothing to write about.

I rarely advise clients to not get in the game.  I always advise that they get in the game at a manageable pace.

Maybe the monthly newsletter should start quarterly or be a twice-annual mini-magazine.  Perhaps we hold off on the site news section and just create a temporary spot on the home page when there’s a release to post.  Let’s begin a blog slowly without fanfare or promotion, to allow time to establish a rhythm and system for success.

Companies worried about being left behind are typically too busy looking at the backsides of the competition.  It’s more effective to find a good pace and fix the gaze up—and ahead.  The leader has the best view.

Thanks!

Hey, Hey–Over Here!! Getting Your Audience’s Attention

Just yesterday, I saw a national, 30-second prime time TV commercial that invited viewers who wanted more information to “visit our YouTube channel.”

How cool is that?  Thanks to technology and the social web, we are the media.  We have more ways to get our product messages to potential customers.  We don’t have to squeeze it all in a 30-second spot, a display ad or onto a highway billboard.  With multimedia, we don’t have to fill web pages with too much text.  Using video, audio and imagery, we can craft expanded messages and place them at no cost on sites for anyone to see and experience!

Before you start redistributing your ad budget, clue in on a key fact.  In the scenario mentioned above, the company still invested in 30 seconds of national air time.  I would’ve never known they had a YouTube channel were it not for that commercial.  And their commercial had to be creatively compelling, or I would’ve disregarded the whole thing entirely.

You still have to invest in advertising and promotions to draw a crowd.  Just because you launch a great blog or start a YouTube channel chock full of informative videos doesn’t mean the world will just happen upon them.  You must still extend invitations, and in many/most cases, you’ll have to convince potential customers it’ll be worth their while to check out what you have to say.

And you better have compelling content when the crowd shows up.  Content is always king, but there’s an even bigger, brighter spotlight on this truth online.  If you put yourself out there, you need to provide as promised.

Here’s a suggested step-by-step for small businesses to apply these concepts.  I’ll use “blogging” as an example, but this could apply to other online endeavors as well.

1.  Start a blog and nurture it for a time. Don’t write one blog post and immediately mass email the world to proclaim it.  Give yourself up to a month to establish a rhythm, get your groove in terms of content and make certain you’re really committed to it.  Establish a protocol (i.e. – create an editorial calendar, enlist a team of bloggers, get some topics in the queue) so you sure the content will stay fresh.  Ever seen a company blog that’s not been updated in a year?  It’s not impressive.

2.  Announce with direct communications. Start spreading the news internally first, with employees, your existing customers, vendors and perhaps a tight list of strong potential customers.  Get your team on board and enlist them to become your word-of-mouth/click-of-mouse army.  Use your existing connections to organically grow new ones.  Make it easy for this ‘army’ to spread the news by providing them cut-and-paste links that they can quickly plug into their communications.

3.  Get connected. Establish a presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Technorati—anywhere you can build community, share your content, get new ideas and field questions.  Just as you gave your blog its due time before you started telling the world about it, tackle these social media tools in the same way (if you are new to them).  Get a feel for how each of these mediums works so you create a persona and presence on them effectively.  Look into Ping.fm and Friendfeed.com as methods of updating all your profiles at once, so that this aspect of your promotions is less cumbersome and easy to manage.

4.  Get recognized.  Over time, as you establish your content as useful and viable, look into earning recognition for the hard work you’re putting in.  Winning blogging contests or getting listed on respected sites such as Alltop.com can really help boost your traffic.  Seek out the chance to contribute a guest column in a trade publication, with a nice mention of your blog.

5.  Consider targeted advertising. You can also jolt your traffic by investing in advertising.  Again, this should come only over time, as you’re assured that you’re providing great content for new viewers.  From Google Ads or Facebook ads to traditional placements to your targeted audiences, there are endless advertising options today, and many are relatively cost effective.  You can set budgets and timeframes very easily with online advertising outlets such as Google and Facebook.  Be sure to build in methods for measuring ROI to make sure your efforts are well-directed and worthwhile.

6.  Give it time. Never compromise quality of content in the haste to get followers.  Blogs and YouTube pages can be created in a matter of minutes, but reputations are established over time.  You want relationships with root systems, and those don’t happen overnight.

Yes, it’s a whole new world, and we can all have a YouTube channel if we so desire.  Yet I still see the guy dressed up like a sub sandwich on the street corner a few times a week, holding a giant arrow and comically waving cars into his shops parking lot.  It’s not very technological, but I surely can’t help but notice him.

When it all boils down, we all have to something to say or something to share, and we need to get attention to get an audience—offline or online.  Most of all we need to make sure what we’re saying or selling is worthwhile; that’s the best attention-grabber of all!

Thanks!

Online in No Time – Practical Ways to Get on the Web

You’d be hard pressed to convince me there’s a business out there that doesn’t need some kind of presence on the Internet.  While I’ll admit not every business merits (or is ready for the commitment of) a full blown, flashy website, all businesses need to be findable and reachable online.

Know anybody who’s still rebuffing the need to be on the web?  For some small biz owners I’ve encountered, the hesitancy boils down to fear of the unknown.  We stick with what we know, and there are still business people who “know” offline marketing much better than they do online tactics.  They perceive websites to be expensive money pits or techie mind twisters to maintain, or they discount social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube as dismissible teenie-bopper banter.

I’ve previously blogged about the fact that small business owners simply can’t disregard the realities of the web.  It’s essential to get online lest you fall behind.  So for you or any of the hold-outs you may know, here are a few practical, immediately applicable ideas to make the ‘Net work for you.

Create a blog and/or a Facebook page for your business.
There is no cost involved in creating a blog through a platform such as WordPress.  Ditto that for setting up a Facebook page.  For both these entities, all the tools are web-based and self-service.  When it comes to building your blog or Facebook biz page, you can do-it-yourself and update likewise, as long as you have Internet connection.  There’s no need to purchase or download software or any web page building tools.

I’ll give you fair warning.  If you’re not well-versed in the ways of web page creation or blog lingo, you’ll likely feel a little overwhelmed as you first attempt to create your blog.  There are many hints and ideas to help you out online; tap into them.  Though blogs have innate limitations in terms of design options, you can select templates that accommodate multiple pages and customization.

Facebook business pages are fairly straight forward, but if you’re new to Facebook, it’s advisable that you get your bearings before you build a page.  A business page is preferable to a Facebook ‘group’ if you’re goal is to create brand presence and convey information for customers.

And once you get the framework going for your blog or Facebook page, you can take your time to perfect and add on to what you’ve created.

Secure a domain name, and point it to your no-cost blog.
Whether you’re ready or not for a full website, by all means secure your domain name now, if you haven’t already.  The great news is that you can point your branded URL directly to your no-cost blog (free WordPress blogs include “wordpress” in the URL).  That way, you can give everyone a web address that best fits your biz, yet you won’t be fretting with hosting costs or monthly fees.  The only cost will be the in the acquisition of the domain name.  I did this for Small Biz Big Time.  I secured the smallbizbigtime.com domain, and directed to my blog on WordPress.  My only expense was in the reserving of the domain name, which I tackled as a one time fee through Yahoo! Small Business.

Make the most of free listings!
Countless sites offer free listings for business of all kinds.  These sites often have built in functionality that makes upload of media very simple and provide areas for business owners to promote goods and services as needed.  From Reverbnation.com for musicians to Etsy.com for creative artists, there are endless options for being connected and present.  My husband is a voice-over artist, so he built a page at voice123.com/jpwilliams.  Creating the page involved no cost, it is a great place to house his demos and pertinent information.  It’s been immensely helpful whenever he’s needed to email samples of his work to potential clients.

Let other sites do the heavy lifting.
If you have video content that you’d like to use on any of your web pages, blogs or websites, start the process with YouTube or Vimeo.  YouTube or Vimeo will handle file conversions so you don’t have to, and the sites even provide you with handy links and codes that you can embed rather simply anywhere you need them—from your blog to your Facebook biz page, wherever!  Additionally, many sites build in options for creating customer lists, calendars, cross-branding updates, etc. (check out Blog111, for example), so you needn’t try to conquer all those options by yourself to include on your own website.  Someone else has already done it for you; make the most of it!

There are so many layers to each of these topics.  Please—email me your questions, and I’ll gladly delve further into anything you need to know more about, or at least I’ll point you in the right direction for more information.  No matter what, it’s time to be more than a spectator on the Internet; it’s time for you to get on the Web and be in the game!

Thanks!

Small Biz Big Time is In “Suburban Turmoil!”

Blog – Social Media Business Strategies – Social Media Connection.

Last week, I blogged about, well, blogs, and this new episode of “Small Biz Big Time” was certainly on my mind as I did!  My interview with Lindsay Ferrier, renowned blogger of the wildly popular “Suburban Turmoil,” certainly deepened my understanding of the role that blogs play in modern marketing/advertising efforts.

I assure you, the 6 minutes and 11 seconds you’ll spend watching this interview will be well worth your while, whether you’re looking for new ways to promote your business or you’re interested in starting a blog of your own.  Get ready for some practical tips to take your small biz to the big time!