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10 Excuses for Not Blogging Your Company Can Stop Making Anytime Now

bt-keyboardThis post already sounds so 2007 but many of the small business owners and entrepreneurs I speak to still don’t get it – and until they do will never take blogging seriously as a viable channel for attracting new customers. Why not hammer the point home some more, revisit the subject from scratch and turn it into one of those catchy top 10 lists you wonderful web denizens enjoy reading so much? Fantastic, then. And here come the myriad of lame excuses.


10. That sounds expensive. We don’t have any site redevelopment money in the budget.

Wordpress is Free!
Wordpress isn’t the only open-source (free) CMS (content management system) out there, but it’s the best. It also has the biggest community behind it which means more support, more developers writing more free plugins and a longer platform lifespan. I won’t be telling my grandchildren about Wordpress, I’ll be teaching them how to use it. So download the software and install it in a new /blog/ folder on your server. The only associated expense you can really expect might be for a designer to make the blog look like the rest of your domain, although based on it’s strengths you may want to consider recreating the entire site in Wordpress. It ain’t just for bloggin’ anymore.

9. All our time and effort needs to be spent on SEO and SEM for new business development.

Google Loves Blogs
The corporate blog: A better all-around SEO strategy does not exist. It can address and facilitate all of the major facets which Google’s 2011 algorithm holds so dear. Let’s run down just a few:

  • Frequently updated and original content. Check.
  • Many unique, keyword-laden URLs with differing meta data for each. Affirmative.
  • Integration with and easy sharing within multiple social media outposts (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc.). Roger that.
  • Increased likelihood of attracting natural incoming links from relevant sources. You betcha.

I could go on. For a long time. A blog marketing strategy is never mutually exclusive to an SEO strategy. It is an SEO strategy.

8. So now I have to populate Twitter, Facebook AND a blog? Forget it.

Blogs are Great for Cross-Pollination
Stop thinking of your blog as yet another social media outpost that you’ll have to populate on a daily basis. Start thinking of your blog as the outpost which automatically populates all the others. Via Facebook connect integration, APIs and Wordpress plugins it’s very easy to automatically update your Facebook page and Twitter account each and every time you hit the Publish button on your blog. Of course you’ll want to include additional content unique to your other outposts, but each blog entry gives you a great excuse to ping your audiences across the board and can be set up to happen on autopilot.

7. Between order fulfillment and Customer Relationship Management we’ll never find the time.

Blogs are Great for CRM
Blogs and Facebook pages are already being used by many companies as effective CRM tools. If you add a social media manager at your company in addition to a traditional customer service department, you may be amazed at how quickly the former takes pressure off the latter. Eventually I think the two positions will become synonymous. Engage with existing and future customers in your blog comments. Answer their questions and address their concerns for the rest of the world to see. Folks with an issue can easily have it resolved, and consumers who have yet to make a decision as to whether they’ll make a purchase will have their confidence increased when they view the interaction.

6. I’d rather spend the time creating new services and product pages.

A Blog Can Aid Your Speed to Market
If you have a new service or product in the pipeline you can start drawing relevant organic search traffic for it before the paint is dry. In fact, you can give your site the potential to rank for any term you can think of in a matter of minutes. New static pages on your site can take time to develop and have to fit into your navigation and architecture. Having a blog gives you both a place and an excuse to get information about anything online and ranking in Google, yesterday. The content you can include (all easily filtered via categories and tags)  is limited only by your imagination. And remember – every time you publish a new post using a CMS like the aforementioned Wordpress you’re creating a unique, static HTML page for the search engine spiders to lovingly digest. Lastly, if you have blog you can link to any new content, anywhere on your site. So when those brand-spankin’ new product pages do go live, link to them from a blog post announcing their arrival and Google will find and index them within the same day.

5. We can’t wait for customers to come to us. We have to go find them.

A Blog is Outbound Marketing
They’re far more likely to find you if you have a blog. A new blog post is no less outbound than paying $1.75 for a PPC click. If you’re consistent and maintain the momentum and quality of your posts you won’t be writing in a vacuum for very long. Organic search traffic will not be far behind. Also, remember what you just read about cross-pollination. The blog posts will simultaneously increase the frequency of your other social media outpost updates, casting a much wider net and getting more eyeballs in front of your content.

4. Our biggest competitor outranks us. By a lot. And they don’t have a blog.

Blogs Allow for Easy Differentiation
Give Google a reason to hold your site in higher regard. Your competitor’s lack of a blog isn’t a reason for you not to bother it’s actually a huge opportunity to differentiate yourself and stand out to search engines and human beings alike. Since their Panda/Farmer algorithmic update, Google is even more apt to reward good-quality original content. And potential customers are more likely to buy something from a site that appears to have actual human beings behind it. Bots love it. Homosapiens with disposable income love it. Stop dragging your feet.

3. I’m the sole employee. I’ll have to do it myself. I don’t have the time.

Posts Can be Brief and Somewhat Infrequent
I mention alternate authoring possibilities below, but first let’s make sure you understand one important thing not every post needs to be The Winds of War. You can link to a relevant news article, write an intro, post a quote, add a sentence or two about why you liked/disliked it and you’re done! You can do the same with an embeddable video, article or whitepaper. You’ll definitely want to space shorter posts between ones of higher quality, but those can wait until nights and weekends. You’re not required to spend an hour or more on each and every one of your posts. Also, a blog which is updated twice or even once a week is still a blog. The more posts the better, but do what you can manage. You don’t need a lot of time to make a major difference.

2. This will actually hurt us. I’m not a good writer and may come off as stupid.

Many Authoring Options Exist
Not everyone was put on this Earth to write and sometimes accepting your weaknesses is a smart thing to do. While you should know that the more you write the easier it becomes, there are alternatives to doing it all yourself. Consider the participation of existing resources. Everyone at your company, from your VP of Sales to the summer interns, may be a potential blog author. If you’re a one person operation, many cost-efficient outsourcing solutions exist and it’s quite common for companies to use this as an option. It doesn’t have to rest on your shoulders alone.

1. The website is already full of helpful information about our product/service.

Become a True Authority on What you Sell
Blogs are a very effective way to build consumer confidence and increase the likelihood of a sale. Would you rather buy a hockey stick from a cookie-cutter drop-shipper’s site, or a that of a retailer where you can see real people discussing and reviewing the equipment? Even if the product being searched for isn’t mentioned in a specific post of its own, potential customers will know and appreciate that there are knowledgeable staff behind the curtain who care about them, value their business and will be easy to reach if there are any questions or problems during the ordering process.

As I wrote these out, I quickly realized how much crossover exists between the entries. Which in a roundabout way proves my main point for every excuse you can give me regarding why you don’t have the time, the need or the resources for a blog, I can give you 50 or more to the contrary. An original, relevant, well-written and engaging blog effort with a content strategy behind it can help just about every conceivable marketing angle. Don’t be afraid. Don’t find yourself justifying your lack of a blog with yet another lame excuse. Your target market is out there and are trying to find you. Find a resource, make the time and give your business a voice.

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Here Comes the Revolution: Facebook’s New Comment Thread Plugin

fb-hummingbirdMarky Z. and company upgraded and intensified the functionality of Facebook’s comment thread plugin earlier this month and I’ll be honest at first glance I didn’t get it. The news came in like a lamb. I read a few articles on the subject but none of them really told me much or gave me practical examples. Yeah, so like. there’s new comments and stuff was the extent of the info offered up. I figured there’d be a new and more intuitive thread design, maybe a better link attachment preview and then promptly moved on to something else in my typical hummingbird-stricken-with-ADD fashion.

Upon closer examination, however, I’ve become so impressed with the new features that I’m strongly considering adding the plugin here and on some of my other blogs. I think at this point it’s safe to say: this whole Friendbooky thing has legs. Here are a few of the reasons I’m possibly just seconds away from the Kool-Aid keg stands of a convert:

  • Posting as Pages: A dropdown menu now gives commenters the ability to post as themselves or as the persona of any Facebook Page they own or have administrative rights to. That’s the big one for me. But wait.
  • Post to Your Profile: The plugin is no longer insular. A simple box tick allows you to publish your comment on an external blog directly to your Facebook feed.
  • Thread Synchronicity: Whether people reply to your comment on the blog, or upon seeing it in your feed, both locations will be updated.

There are a few other tweaks involving comment relevance, etc. but if you’re not already convinced of this tool’s social potential you never will be. I’ll take one more stab at you I know that my external blogging has decreased as a result of Facebook. Across the board. It’s quicker to update your status than to flush your thoughts out into more significant content and you’ll reach more people instantaneously. But the real reason my writing has suffered is because of the community dispersion I see. I used to have a regular gang of commenters on my blog whom I miss dearly. Sometimes when I post a link to one of my articles in Facebook (which I think looks better aesthetically than the FB note import via RSS and also drives views and spiders back to your blog) people will comment. but it isn’t the same. And when they do, those comments are invisible to anyone on the blog. And, obviously, vice-versa. That creativity and momentum crushing problem has now been eliminated for me. Yes, the new plugin version came in like a lamb – but it’s eventual influence will leave a lion-sized bite mark on the internet’s left buttock. Or something.

One thing I want to clarify this plugin doesn’t override or replace your existing blog comments. Dear me, no. It allows visitors who are currently logged into their Facebook account to leave comments as a Facebook user complete with their current FB profile picture and a link back to their personal profile page or that of their business (depending on whom they decided to be when posting see: Posting as Pages above). The integration of the blog and the Facebook page just made what will inevitably become a revolutionary, albeit quiet, leap forward in social connectivity. This is massive. Reading this back just prior to publishing. I’m pretty sure I just made my decision. Watch this space. I mean. the space directly underneath this space.

Here’s the code and API for developers.

And an easy to install plugin version for Wordpress.

Brace yourselves.

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Facebook Marketing First Steps: Beware of Square Pegs

square_pegs-showIf that seminal 80s TV show which launched the career of a very young Sarah Jessica Parker doesn’t already have a Facebook page it damn well should. (Update: it does.) This article doesn’t directly involve any pimply, angst-filled teenagers with Flock of Seagulls haircuts, but any Facebook marketing effort that doesn’t have a specific goal or plan behind it runs the risk of ending up just as out of place, rejected and miserable as the aforementioned and unfortunate fictional highschoolers. Instead of hazing and wedgies, however, the end result will likely be unengaged followers, no measurable success metric and a tremendous waste of your precious budget. A wedgie may now seem more appealing. Like, gag me with a spoon.

The term in question of course comes from that old chestnut It’s like putting a square peg in a round hole. Other versions of this saying include putting t*ts on a bull or spitting in the wind, but they’re all metaphors for the exact same thing futility. Cutesy crap aside, simply creating your company’s Facebook page is not a guarantee of success. Were I still being cutesy I’d have undoubtedly used the term silver bullet there. I may have also referenced the film Field of Dreams but unlike Costner’s cornfield to simply build it is nowhere near enough. I assure you without a clear plan of attack coupled with a set of goals which is then multiplied by the internal resources required to operate your Facebook presence they will not come. And never will.

I plan on typing up some tangible Facebook Marketing case studies in the very near future, as gross generalities like, You’se guys need to get on Twitter are about as helpful as those previously discussed bull-udders. For now, here are some admittedly general (but no less crucial) suggestions for initiating your Facebook marketing effort.

Facebook Marketing: 4 Crucial First Steps

  1. Identify Internal Resources
    You know you’re going to create a Facebook page for your company. Do you also know who will be responsible for its content population, follower interaction, tracking, etc.? If you don’t have about 15 minutes a day or an hour a week to devote – stop dead in your tracks until you reorganize your own schedule or find an intern, employee or consultant who can manage the page for you. It will require consistent attention over an extended period of time. If you don’t have a resource, don’t bother.
  2. Set Clear Goals
    Building a boat doesn’t make much sense without a destination to sail to. Likewise, a Facebook page without a purpose will never amount to more than the online equivalent of a vanity license plate. You’re allowed to rethink your strategy as time passes but at the very least start out with a handful of tangible intentions. Do you want to attract thousands of followers to build the Facebook equivalent of an e-mailing list? Do you want to give your paid Facebook ads an interesting landing page capable of converting? Is this effort meant to supplement your company website’s organic traffic? Write them down, refer to them, change them as needed just make sure you’ve thought about the purpose behind the page.
  3. Define Tracking and Success Metrics
    You know you want your Facebook page to drive traffic to your e-commerce site, but how will you measure results and attach real value to your efforts? Get familiar with Facebook’s internal Insights reporting tool. Install Google Analytics on your website and add a Facebook referral tracking Goal to your dashboard. If it all gets too much there are a wealth of 3rd-party reporting tools you may wish to consider. You can track the value of your efforts far beyond the number of followers you have. Use readily available (and free) data to figure out how and why they’re engaging with your page (sharing, commenting, liking) and then use that data to do more of what’s working.
  4. Devise a Clear Plan
    Where to start? It can be an overwhelming question when dealing with a beast as open-ended as Facebook. Keep it simple and start off by commoditizing and scheduling certain recurring activities. Every Monday you might set a target of finding, adding and then contributing a comment to 5 Facebook pages or groups (operative word being contribute, don’t blatantly promote yourself). Tuesdays and Thursdays might be for manually sharing blog posts (on groups, other pages and with individuals) from your main site which were imported via RSS onto your page. Wednesdays share a relevant link. Fridays write a medium length piece of content which is unique to (and will only ever appear on) your Facebook page. See? It’s not that daunting anymore. Rinse and repeat, week after week until you can identify what’s working and change the plan accordingly.

What have we learned? Your content will never be seen without a plan. A plan is worthless without goals. Goals and plans have to evolve and change. And absolutely none of this will work without a steady stream of the aforementioned content and user engagement facilitated by a resource (ahem, step #1) with the time to devote. What a mind-cluttering maelstrom of interrelated dependencies. Break everything down into these four steps, however, and your efforts are far more likely to succeed. We’ll get into these steps in more detail over time. Until then please feel free to agree, disagree or contribute in the comments below.

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