Don't worry, this is just a prop! Your blog will be fine.
We’ve had a really fun-filled week. We met with a few clients of our good friends at Paper Leaf Designs, and we spoke candidly about business blogging and what it can do for them. One of them complained about their blog saying it wasn’t fresh and they thought it sucked when they looked around at others in their field. It can sometimes seem daunting or painful when people scope out top drawing business blogs with dozens of weekly entries and a warm basket of fresh comments beneath each post. I wish I had an extra 30 minutes to tell them what they really needed to hear, but time wasn’t on our side, so I asked if I could blog about it.
So here are six simple ways to get over your sucky blog.
This is by far the most dangerous play you can make on the blogging pitch. Syndicated content moves around the internet because it is created and promoted by content farms. These are the Monsantos of website content. They drown the world with drivel of low nutritioonal value. Don’t be a part of the problem. Prove yourself valueable. Use your blog to bring your expertise and understanding to your readers.
I like to follow the Golden Rule of Blogging: Love thy reader as you would have them love unto your blog. Don’t get caught up with telling too much of your story and miss out on sharing your customers’ perspectives. They deserve to hear about themselves as much as they deserve to learn about who you are and why you do what you do.
There are very simple steps to take to make sure that people can find you. SEO can seem like a complicated realm to navigate, but it doesn’t have to be. Label the tags for your photos and use appropriate keywords in the description and title tags for each blog post. Be sure to use links for websites you cite and link previous blog posts (that are relevant to the current post). This will go far in helping new visitors find your blog. Read our post about blog optimization here.
This is problem that we often encounter when we first visit a newly launched blog. They might have useful information, but if the blog isn’t properly organized, we can’t shop around. I simply refuse to revisit poorly set up blogs. I am far too impatient to deal with it. Keep an archive handy for people to click through, and have well managed categories, topics and search tools. Using your keywords will be a good start point for how you might want to label your content.
Frequency is the mother of relevancy. The world will only want to frequent your website if you have new content for them to digest on a regular basis. Also, people will shop through your archive, so if you don’t post consistently, you might look unreliable. Imagine if your favourite monthly magazine suddenly decided that it was too busy and published bi-monthly to take a break… Not acceptable. It’s good to treat your blog with the same reverence. Your people should matter that much. An editorial content calendar and schedule will help prevent you from such pitfalls.
Our beloved coach, Mike Mack from X5 Management recently shared a quote from Henry Ford, and he keeps it framed on his wall. “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.” The fact is that every blog sucks, since every blog starts from the same place, the beginning. The world’s best and most heavily read blogs began with one post, and even the most seasoned blogger knows that the biggest room in their house is the room for improvement. Don’t fret about your social media promotion. Don’t frown because your post lacks comments. Don’t complain about your design or cry about not having crazy apps that make everything look more professional. It gets better if you work at it, but it takes time to master anything, especially blogging. All of those other factors will work their way in if the focus is in the right place.
Remember the Blogging Golden Rule, and if necessary, follow Mike Mack’s lead and get in up on your wall.
And since that’s such a fine idea, we’re doing it too.
Have a great week!
Idris
If you are ready to have a serious conversation about your business blog (or lack thereof), get in touch with us. We’d love to help you out!
"A blog-blog-blog..."
Tomorrow is going to be a great day. Mack D. Male, one of Edmonton, Alberta’s blogging elite will be hosting a seminar downtown at the Alberta Business Link. For those who can make it, there is no need to RSVP. Just show up with some business cards and GET YOUR LEARN ON.
In honour of Mr. Male’s upcoming session, I would like to share some perspective on business blogging and where the Red Paper Clip team sees it going.
The consistent growth of business blogging over the last few years is impressive. Email marketing and social media promotion of business blogs are new but essential methods to build leads, authority and community. Their flexibility through the use of platforms and services like WordPress, MailChimp and Aweber makes it easy for even the most novice of content creators.
But the continued growth of business blogs hasn’t slowed down the readership. In fact, it continues to blossom in ways that puzzle even the craziest economists. The readership resource is far from extinguished. For new bloggers, the water’s still warm.
Don’t ever let a content strategist, social media person, or anyone who has a job on the Interwebz tell you that data doesn’t matter. One of the greatest advantages of the internet is that everything is trackable. Use this to your business blog’s advantage. Track clicks through Google Analytics, search socially trending topics on Twitter trends and Google Alerts, and get a sense of what people really want to know. Your relevance to them—and your popularity—will skyrocket within a few posts.
We’ve entered a really interesting time in content creation and management. Today, it’s easy to post images, diagrams, client testimonials, comments, questions, videos, clickable links and audio conversations. Take advantage of these content possibilities by looking at your business blog more like a magazine and less like a sidebar newspaper column. I’ve seen industrial business blogs that look more like climbing magazines (by design, of course), and they earn a much higher yield of leads and traffic than their more conservative counterparts.
The fact that I have to further explain so-called Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds to new and established clients is proof that they are never going to catch on. I can’t be bothered to tome on their history (since I predict that their death knell might be in 2012), but here is a great explanation. I always suggest that companies keep their email lists close to their hearts, because it’s where some of your best leads will always come from.
I like imagining mobile and smartphone communication like I imagine Zooey Dechanel’s recent explosion on television. Dechanel’s been in film for a few years, and she’s been working her skills on the big screen just fine. But since earning the lead role in The New Girl, she has been surrounded by a crack team of comedy writers and producers that has really shaken the industry up. Mobile phone use is the same. We’re sitting in a perfect storm of mobile market advantages (ease, cheap prices, easy applications, ubiquity) and the world has thus responded. Keep mobile users in mind when preparing your blog topics. Avoid anything that might not translate well to mobile users, and they will continue to visit.
The proliferation of business blogs has created one problem: There is so damn much information out there, readers often don’t know who best to follow. Many of us in the same profession may have similar views on best practices. So how do you keep those lucky few who visit? Tell your story and keep it up top in your messaging. Readers like to connect with people more than information. Be human. Be courteous. Be professional. Be yourself.
People will read only what they can find. Using simple and effective search engine optimization practices will ensure that you rank where you need to, captivating the right audience to build those leads. Great content is invisible without good SEO. We’ve a few good articles on the matter here.
So for those of you in Edmonton, I look forward to meeting you at the Business Link seminar tomorrow!
Bests,
Idris
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HAPPY NEW YEAR!
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably got 50+ emails, phone calls, to-dos and miscellanea that was supposed to get handled in the onslaught that was Christmas break.
Well, now that we’ve come out from under that pile (not by having finished it, but by having it brushed aside for two weeks), I have laid my New Year’s resolutions on the table.
Unfortunately, the 2012 to-do pile just overtakes them.
If you’re anything like me, you probably sat down with your team. You’ve probably talked about those outstanding things your business should have completed this year. This might have included upgrading your website content or writing X number of blog posts a month, and you may have felt pressured to push those closer-than-future regrets into business resolutions.
And you may have even coupled this with the obvious business disclaimer, “We don’t have time to write/complete/edit these web pages/blog posts/ebooks/reports.”
It might hurt to hear this, but your content for 2012 looks a lot like your content for 2011.
Don’t let your content slide. We can help you take control of your content.
This is normally the part where I get into a diatribe about how we do it. But we have web pages for that. Instead, I want to give you a leg up on fulfilling your own content requirements.
And this all begins with an editorial calendar.
This is your chance to do what magazines, newspapers, research institutes and professional writers do. We all rely on editorial calendars to clarify the roles of our team, the themes, topics and ideas for the content, and (most importantly), the deadlines for each part of the content. It gives you a chance to plan a process for delivering your content in a timely way so it doesn’t have to infringe on your other work or your peace of mind.
For those of us in the writing industry, editorial calendars can be complicated project architectures separating the roles of contributors, editors, and even typesetters and publishers.
That said, we don’t need to use anything complicated, and neither do you. But we all deserve to have the tools to stop saying, “There’s no time to get this done.”
We’re a Mac-outfitted office, but we tend to use Google Calendar. Apple’s Calendar is painfully elementary, and Outlook (as clean as it is for PC networks) isn’t as clean for us. Many people prefer to use shared spreadsheets. What you prefer doesn’t matter as much as picking the method that others can use comfortably.
I like to leave time at the beginning of the month to gather ideas about my industry, pulling favourited tweets, emails from my subscriptions, magazine articles I clipped, notes from websites, etc. The timing of this isn’t important. Just make sure you leave one hour a month to gather or assemble these things and collate them into possible ideas. Believe me: It gets easier as you go, and you can move along whatever doesn’t get used the month before (assuming it’s still current).
Most people get stuck here. They get the calendar started and they get the team on board. They gather materials, and then they get caught in committee purgatory. That lifeless place is where good ideas go to die.
Don’t do it. Don’t share everything. Instead, take the agreed-upon ideas and assign them outward. If you have a team of one or two, it gets pretty easy. If you have a team of three or more, don’t share who will do what. Assign tasks and allow them to trade. They can see what might be due when. Allow them the chance to update the responsible parties and move on. A great example is assigning a website content rewriting. You might find that people fear writing the home page or the about page. Don’t let that slow you down. Assign it to who you think the best candidate might be and move on. People can broker their good deeds as trade without committee-style conversations slowing the calendar down.
Now you have a calendar that lays out who is responsible for what content and when it is due. You now have a tool that saves time, effort, and most importantly, backtalk and quips about there being no time to see it through.
As I am often told by one of our architecture clients, “Planning IS execution. Do it right and the labour becomes the easiest part.”
If pulling together a working editorial calendar still feels like an impossible task among your 2012 to-dos, CLICK HERE and we’ll get in touch with you directly. We’re happy to help.
Good luck,
Idris
"This wouldn't be a bad time to think about my blog... where's my notepad?"
I know we tend to go on and on about blogging and content optimization, but it’s so hard for us not to! Blogs are great for providing fresh, relevant content and they can dramatically improve your search rankings, customer base, community and brand.
But blogs can be brutal for busy people, and the time required to build an effective blog can seem daunting. For those few who take the plunge, coming up with strong, strategic blogs that speak to your audience and fulfill your website goals becomes too much to bear. Stale, dusty or rusty business blogs are commonplace.
What most people don’t realize is that blog writing isn’t like writing fiction. As most professional writers will tell you, web writing is more design, planning and adjusting than it is idea generation, language or prose .
And since most people don’t have a handle on the tricks that we use to stay on top of our blogs, here are some short tips that you can use today that will get you writing optimized blog posts in an hour, not an afternoon.
Having a way to talk about what you know is critical to writing good content, especially for blogs. I always find that my best ideas come at those times when I am finishing up with a client or am just hanging out with friends. Keep a notebook handy so you can record your thoughts, other people’s questions or opinions. You can tighten these ideas later, but building the list is a huge advantage. Flip through it once a week to…
Give yourself time to create a picture for how you want your blog to be structured. The more time you spend on this, the stronger the flow of your blog will be, and the shorter the time you will need to assemble your ideas as you…
Create a short list of the central parts of your blog post. You’ll need an introduction, a few short points and way to get out quickly that hits the spot. Take those elements and simply fill them in. Remember that Google, as well as readers, love short, snappy content with headlines, sub headlines and lists. No need to wax poetic. Simply state what’s on order and finish up, but…
Putting the reader first to most means keeping the blog focused on the reader’s frame of mind. We agree, but just as important is thinking about how your reader will find your post. Think about the search terms they use and how they could fit in the blog content, headlines and subheads. Be sure not to neglect your blog tags, meta information and image tags (if you are using WordPress or other blog content platforms, this is easy to do). We’re big fans of Yoast SEO for WordPress for helping us to manage meta information (get it here).
It’s like we always tell people (who will listen): Writing is a process that gets better as you practice and refine your process. The writing becomes easier, faster, and normally better. We’ve seen blogs improve their ranking with a dozen posts of optimized blog content, and there is no reason why any business cannot have a successful blog. By using these 4 tips and following through on them, you’ll build a solid, optimized blog archive that will help the right people find you and make the right decisions on your website.
If time is an issue for you making your blog or website content work, please visit our Contact Page, fill our the form, and we’ll get in touch with you.
This should be on every "exit."
We’re having a lot of fun right now.
We’re working with X5 Management on their blog and website. They are an outstanding team. And as we have been working with them on their website content, blog strategy and blog writing, their understanding and skills have grown at a rapid rate. (We highly recommend you visit their site and enjoy their offerings on taking business to the next level.)
When we work with our clients, we tell them that their improvements in creating content is a great thing. It doesn’t matter what level anyone begins at, progress is a wonderful thing.
But when it comes to your blog, what should you be doing with your old blog posts? You know, the ones you might have thought were fine at the time, but you may be afraid to revisit for fear of wanting to alter them altogether.
Ouch! But seriously, you don’t have to go there.
One consideration worth examining involves revisits and possibly a few edits, but rest assured, you won’t have to make faces about your writing.
Instead, you can optimize your old blog posts using a few tricks for SEO (search engine optimization). Cleaning your posts up for search saves you having to do any heavy content editing while still giving you a leg up in marketing your blog to your community and beyond.
It’s possible that your blog posts haven’t really been optimized at all. Not to worry, you need not focus on every post—just the ones that get the most traction.
If you are familiar with Google Analytics, try running it through your posts and track the ones with the most views. This will give you your to-do list.
You might want to go through the blog posts that you feel are the strongest posts, the ones you want shared and found. Add these to your list, but put them at the TOP.
Next, find out what these posts are optimized for by running Wordle. This forms the keywords into a tag cloud. The largest words in the cloud are the most often used terms or phrases.
Run those terms through your keyword tool (if you don’t have one, try Google’s Keyword Research Tool) to find other terms that will fit well in the post. Build a short list and keep it handy.
Have a look at the post and make sure those terms end up in the content in your titles. Make sure those terms use title tags H1 and H2, and they are not just bolded body content. Make sure the best keywords or phrases end up in your image tags and your URL, too.
Once you get through the content, you might want to do a little housekeeping for those few blogs that are lacking:
Yes, it might still seem like extra work and effort to make any of these changes to those pieces that are parts of your website’s past. But remember: You shouldn’t worry about doing it all in one swoop. Any adjustment you make to them will make a difference to the algorithms that rule the web.
Also, it saves you having to make any heavy edits to your already-posted content—because none of us have that kind of time!
If time is an issue for you making your blog or website a success, please visit our Contact Page, fill our the form, and we’ll get in touch with you.
Idris
This week, we were generously invited to a networking event held semiweekly by the BoB Clubs (Business over Breakfast) midday group of Edmonton. Geneve and I didn’t sit together, and so we managed to really work the room, though she got first dibs at our shared lunch plates. I longingly stared from across Expressionz Cafe.
As the members and guests talked about their respective businesses, I diligently jotted notes about each presentation. As we finished our meals and began networking, I got into a spirited discussion about web content, blogging and how to build website traffic.
The chatter attracted a gentleman who came right up behind us and began asking pointed questions. He was in the healthcare industry and had a fair share of news related content on his website, but he was curious if there were possible advantages for him to be blogging.
I was careful.
I didn’t let myself wax endlessly, and I did tell him that we could have a detailed conversation about his clients might be seeking and how that might work for him.
He hasn’t returned my email—it was only thirty hours ago. But I wanted to share a few ideas about what has made me so excited:
This is a big question, and it wouldn’t be easy to answer broadly. The gentleman I spoke with on Friday was an independent service provider for patients, so I will try to answer his question succinctly.
It’s not news that people prefer to surf the web for information and answers to their problems and ailments. The alternative, a trip to the doctor’s office, is even less desirable now that we have this modern convenience. An additional complexity to this issue is the plethora of incorrect or outdated information ranking on Google’s pages. When patients act upon this information, things can escalate to perilous possibilities.
That said, a little guidance from a healthcare professional could go a long way to providing reliable sources for health information. Building a solid blog archive of relevant content, reliable search sites, and new symptom detection sources would be a great start. Additionally, practitioners could share their experiences and professional opinions on changes within their industry, studies that have been published or reviewed, and what possible implications might surface because of those studies. The added advantages of audio, video and guest posts could provide patients with safe, compliant information through a more human medium.
There is huge potential and opportunity for healthcare professionals who merge social media into their content marketing. Social platforms can leverage your reach from your immediate circle and outward. There are possible caveats concerning professional compliance and privacy that practitioners would need to research and understand. But the thought of any real time interaction with a healthcare practitioner frankly is, as a 30-something male, pretty attractive to me.
In fact, I dare say that in our collective near futures, blogs and social media for healthcare practitioners will be more the norm than not.
Building a relevant, respectable and goal-busting online presence is more than possible. And building the right strategy to get things started is a few letters away. If you are in a professional field and you are still unsure of how content marketing could work for you, please fill out the floating form on the left.
If you know what you need, please visit our Contact Page and we’ll get in touch.
Have a great week.
- !dris
Image blatantly stolen from the Stillwater Public Library Blog. THANKS, GUYS!
There is no shortage of blogs and blog marketers touting the power of blogging, and you’ll see no exception to that here. Blogs are a central part of effective online marketing, and they provide numerous benefits for businesses seeking to build leads, community and authority in their industry. And with the people-driven nature of blogging and blog marketing, businesses of all sizes can quickly benefit from them.
Blogs are lovingly described by social media experts as the centrepiece from which all social media should take place. But blogs for business can be so much more. In fact, blogs can be the leverage point for how a business creates and connects competitive researchers, readers, buyers and ambassadors, as well as encourage deeper interactions among those groups.
It seems far easier to justify a business website than it is to justify a business blog. Much of this is because the same metrics are used for each.
This is an incorrect way to think.
Blogs enable companies to facilitate connections between people who may be directly or indirectly connected to the brand. These individuals, by being completely human (with attitudes, experiences and opinions) contribute to the “energy” of your blog. Therefore, the critical creative decisions you make about your blog must have these people’s interests in mind.
As you begin to build your blog, consider the type of impacts and conversations you wish to facilitate. The reason that I mention this is that the kinds of conversations you have, for some, is as important a measure as your number of visitors.
You can define the success of your blog based on reputation/social interaction, visitors, search engine ranking and the redirects of your readers to other areas of your website (landing pages, forms, etc). We like to call these points of conversion.
People may be interested in your company, but the reasons for visiting your blog can be for much deeper reasons, and these should not be ignored. It could be for a specific post a writer had posted. It could be the controversial or contrarian position your company takes on a related topic, or it could be a guest blogger of mention that interests your readers. These organic interests should be reason enough to consider your blog a key entry point to your website, your conversion tools or your enrollment methods. Perhaps your email newsletters will see even more interested readers that the ones you recruit in person or over email.
Either way, we say your business blog requires more attention than your website. You’ll get more bang from it than you can imagine. And since people have become more familiar and active on business blogs, you’ll do best to plan, set and move toward your goals. It will come back in relevant and measurable successes.
Cheers,
!d
Hey folks.
I just watched this video from Chris Brogan’s Google+ profile. If you are not already aware of him, I highly recommend you visit his blog http://www.chrisbrogan.com. It is the source of great information on marketing online, social media, and it remains one of the top visited blogs out there.
Anyhow, at first glance this appears to be a video about online checkouts, and you are partly right. But this video reveals a problem that afflicts more than the world of e-commerce. Website and content usability remains one of the consistently overlooked areas in website design and development.
So as you enjoy this video, consider the effect that poorly arranged, poorly developed content can have on readers.
Cheers,
Idris
We’ve been writing this blog for long enough, and it’s time to dole out some secrets.
I struggle in malls.
It’s not because my dashing good looks are bringing throngs of new fans chasing me from store to store.
But the same things happen, whether I am at Walmart or Shoppers’ Drug Mart.
I get shocks. All the time. If I walk along tile floors, regardless what I wear, I get shocks whenever my hands near a metal surface. The surface might be touching the ground, it might be elevated, it doesn’t matter. Heck, the metal could be beneath rubber, I still get shocks. And sometimes, they can be painful (and bright).
How does it happen? Friction. I blame the friction for the days I wander through the aisles and hallways hoping for a positive experience, but getting nothing but the opposite. Instead I build a daylong static charge that releases in small, shocky increments.
I never want to touch any surfaces, people’s hands, products or even pocket change (don’t worry, I know it doesn’t conduct much electricity). The friction has became such a distraction that I can’t escape it. I often go home frustrated and without anything I was planning to buy.
Online sales experiences are remarkably similar. No, people may not be shocked away from website or subscription forms in an embarrassing display of light and awe. But in web content and web usability, friction is a reality for visitors. Inconsistencies, like rough surfaces, increase friction. Friction creates static in potential buyers’ minds. Static breeds skepticism, and prevents people from clicking forward.
What are possible inconsistencies that cause friction?
1) Your visitors’ mindset and the thoughts that enter their minds should be the source of all your creative decisions. When they are not, these cast subtle negative cues:
Each of these issues can create a climate for your buyers’ mindset, and these are either working for you, or they are working against you. It’s up to you (with people like us) to find out what parts might be doing that and what parts need to be kept.
2) Your buyers’ experience may seem a more difficult element to measure, but it is no less important as a way to reduce friction. The quality of your products and the experience of your staff has no bearing if visitors can’t learn what they want when they want it. Frustration is the ugliest emotion in web usability, so it serves you to know what to watch for:
Friction in a web experience can be a dangerous thing, but if you are watching for those inconsistencies, they can become a powerful learning tool. Using analytics to track clicks and time on pages will give you your to-do list. For many businesses, social media comments and searches are also great ways to know what people are saying about you and your site. (We recommend that negative comments are responded to quickly and with grace.) Always be thankful for people’s positions. They are a living learning tool.
As people, we have deepened our reliance on the web for making decisions and marketing to those people who are making decisions. We must remove all points of friction to make their experiences easier.
And until I figure out how to safely maneuver my way through the mall without friction, it might be where I stay, too!
Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving!
Idris
Keyboards: The Quill of our century—at least until iPads take over.
We don’t want to come off like jerks.
But we know that there are scores of content writers out there, and there are even more writers eager to dabble in content creation for clients.
The world of copy and content writing is flourishing. In Edmonton and Alberta, we’ve grown into a community of vibrant professionals with differing skill sets and specializations.
But this is also a caveat. Being a great writing company doesn’t make us the best choice for all companies, and this can be said of every other copy or content writer out there.
We have those days when we talk to prospective clients who simply didn’t get what they were hoping for in their past content writer, or worse, they don’t get any results from their online marketing efforts. They are disappointed, nervous and out of some money.
We all know that content is the central component of any successful online presence, so we decided to create a list of tips to help you make an educated decision when considering a content provider.
You’ve likely seen Death of a Salesman, TV’s Madmen or other shows that reveals dark characters pulling the wool over the eyes of audiences and clients. Marketing can be seen as a dark art, and sometimes specialized service providers make the error of trying to razzle and dazzle buyers and clients with whiz-bang terminology. Don’t fall for it. Overuse of flashy words and phrases at best turns your website into adjective soup that doesn’t help your search ranking and at worst costs you more money for pay-per-click marketing.
Many content writers assert that the key to good marketing content is to understand the Internet tools people are using to connect with each other, which might include web, blog, or social media marketing. We agree with this point, but it’s also important to know who is using which of these tools. Why should you pay anyone to beef up your company’s Facebook page if your best clients are on LinkedIn and Twitter. You’ll be trying to connect with people that may not even be there.
One other thing to watch for: Many journalists are veering to digital content marketing, and their skills in story craft is very useful. But watch out. Content has a specific need to be useful, and it requires a unique set of tools and strategies to be profitable. Revealing story is only one component of that, so beware of journalists who lack internet marketing experience.
This is hard to say, but many great writers are just that, writers. Content specialists need to be more than writers. They need to understand search, research and strategy to know how people find you and who those people are. They need to know how to build audience, attract the right attention and persuade people to act. They do not need to know your industry specifically, but knowing your people and what compels them to buy will make the difference between success and failure.
One of the advantages of content is that it ends up online. You will forever be able to find it… somewhere. Use this to your advantage. Search their blogs, websites and social media accounts. Look through their client lists and testimonials and if they don’t have any, walk away. Also scour the followers and fans on social media. If there are marketing VPs on their LinkedIn account and you are a marketing VP, your needs will likely be better understood than someone with a network of solopreneurs—or vice versa. Don’t make this the big decision, though. Ask for their list of clients first, then snoop.
Searching for a solid content writer/content strategist can be daunting, but the risks of doing it incorrectly can be costly. Follow your possible provider’s posts and social media to get a feel for them, and use the list above to get a sense of their knowledge and skill. Your content and your strategy will be what you hoped for, and you will save on time and cost as you move toward your goals.
Good Hunting!
Idris Fashan
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