Recently, it became clear to me that I was not walking the talk.  That as a marketer, I was using excuses like: “I spend my days marketing others” and “I am very fortunate that I get so many referrals, so I don’t need to be marketing myself.”  But then, it occurred to me I couldn’t ask other folks to be investing their time to doing email marketing, blogging and social media, if I was putting it on the back burner, myself.

I understand how hard it is to find time, and how easy it is to ‘do it later’.  So, to help me, as well as all of you reading this, I have decided to start back to the basics, not only to give me a fresh start, but also to help all of you learn during my process.

To get started, I am going to have to make sure I know my intended audience. Then I can create an editorial calendar, which will keep me more focused on blogging several times a month, mentioning those blog posts on appropriate social media outlets, and then wrap each month up with an email recap.

I currently mention a lot of great articles in my status updates on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, so I will continue doing that, as well.  The articles are ones which inspire my/your business, offer insights on cool new tools (from a new WordPress plugin to a time management app), and bring new ideas on how to communicate my/your meaningful difference.

So, how to get started (or re-energized) and accomplish the goal of understanding my intended audience better?

First, I need to do the first thing I have my prospective clients do.  Answer some questions about who my audience is, what they really want/need from me, and where my business is at with its current marketing efforts.

Why don’t you do this along with me?  Answer the questions for your own business…

I have a list of questions that I tend to start with, and sometimes I have to ask less of them, because the client makes it easy by being clear up front.  Other times, I have to dig deeper.

Here is the first (and yes, obvious) question that helps me know whether the client has put thought into what they say when folks ask them what they do.  Though the question is obvious, it really makes it clear how well the client knows their own audience:

Describe your company – what is your Elevator Speech? (an elevator speech is a short – very short – statement you can say to folks ‘between floors in an elevator’, to explain what you do, and whether they or someone they know can benefit from finding out more).

Here is a bad elevator speech, I should know, I used it my first year out: “I can do any kind of marketing you need.  What are you looking for?”

This was bad because most people don’t really know what marketing is – they might think it is sales, public relations, or marketing research (calling folks to ask their opinion on a product).  I don’t really do those tasks, though I have and could, I really did not want to be doing ‘those things’.  And, yet, I was telling them I could do anything.  Also, what I found was though it was an open ended question, when I asked them what they were looking for, they usually didn’t know.  If they wanted anything from me, it was help to figure out why they would need me.  I was not being clear with my own marketing message.

Here is a better elevator speech: “I help people build their complete online presence: blogging, email marketing, social media…  Since my forte is marketing, I also create or redesign websites (using WordPress) with the goal to make it easier for your visitors to get the info they want.”

Though I don’t always say it exactly like that, I can state something to that effect in about 14 seconds.  At which point, people either say, they have been considering one or another of these activities, they know someone else who is looking for help with marketing, they don’t know what social media really is or they just heard about WordPress and have a question.

Sometimes, they tell me they have no interest in Twitter, or some other site, and I get to ask what it is that they don’t like. And we begin to have a great conversation.

On occasion, they say they know someone else who offers similar services and then I can ask who the person is – because I may either know them or may find someone new to align with (I’m always open to talk with folks who are doing similar things – as I’ve found often its more complimentary than competition).

However they respond, at least they are responding. I don’t get that blank stare I used to get from my old conversation ’stopper’, where I was leaving it up to them to tell me what they didn’t know they needed.

Anyway, getting back to the questions I ask, I’ve provided a link to download UniqueThink’s New Client Questionnaire.  This way, you can quiz yourself on how well you know your own company and why you are doing things you are doing and what you are trying to accomplish with any new marketing goals.  It is a very helpful exercise, so I truly hope you take advantage of this and try it, now.

You can either print it out and ask yourself the questions or call me for a 1-hr free consult, to go over it together.  Again, when I go over these questions with the client, it is to help them figure this all out, as much as it is for me to understand where to go next.  I don’t always ask every client every question.  Sometimes I skip around and sometimes I probe deeper on one specific question.  If you are reading the questionnaire, right now, you may notice, some of the questions are repetitive.  Those are for those times I haven’t felt like I fully gathered the insights I needed to understand the clients goals (or that they haven’t really addressed the goal), with the way the question was originally framed.  And in most cases, I tend to ask 5-8 of the questions and ‘get it’ enough to move to the next step.

Well, that’s enough info to get you started on the first step.  Any questions, yet?  How do you feel about going on this journey with me?  Do you see the value of exploring or re-exploring this (even if you’ve already begun your own marketing efforts)?  Feel free to share your experiences, insights, and more… by commenting below.

Editor’s Note: The video of the Blogging for Biz panel is now available at WordPress.TV – it is also added to the end of this post.
I had a great time at WordCamp Boulder.  Beth J. Hayden – of BloggingWithBeth.com – and Jim Turner – of OneByOneMedia.com – shared the Blogging for Business Panel with me (Bethany Siegler of UniqueThink).  I heard there was video of it, so I won’t repeat much of what was discussed.  And once I find it, I’ll link to it.  In the meantime, I did want to add to the conversation we started about what types of businesses should be blogging.

It has long been my belief that ANY company CAN benefit from blogging.  As a panel we came up with the following, as some of the top reasons to consider blogging for your own biz:

1. Get found online
2. Build a community of people who trust your company will take care of and listen to them
3. Communicate your meaningful difference, to let folks see how your products/services help resolve their situation

When our panel was asked if blogging was REALLY for every type of business, there was a discussion about whether a Dry Cleaner could truly build a successful blog.  My response: “YES, definitely!” and then I think I gave a few examples off the top of my head, like Green Cleaning Pros OR Cons.  I could come up with tons of post ideas people would like to read, there are endless topics, like treating your garment when the stain first occurs TO how to care for that antique quilt you inherited from Great Aunt Sally.

Then, to prove my theory about ANY business benefiting from blogging, I offered the audience an extreme example of a business blog. I was once in a conversation where someone asked, “Is it appropriate for a Mortician to have a business blog?”  And, to me there is no question, YES!, so I gave a quick example of a possible topic to the WordCamp audience.  Not everyone might be interested in that specific topic I mentioned, but if done correctly the overall blog could offer readers a great deal of trust and a level of comfort when picking out a funeral home.

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t want to take the time to talk about what we already talked about at WordCamp (but you can find the video, if you want to hear the whole panel discussion.  And, if you do find the video before me, please let me know!).  For the rest of this post, I’d like to focus on how blogging can be good for every kind of business:

Now, when I say ANY company can benefit from a blog, I have to state the conversation Beth and I had after the panel.  We both agreed we should have stated:

There is one ‘type’ of company who should not blog: A company who is NOT willing to make the commitment to blogging

However, what does that mean?  What is ‘the commitment to blogging’?  The commitment is about figuring out why you should be blogging and coming up with a strategy to make it happen.  And then, making it happen!

Below are some tips to get you started:

• Understand the purpose of your blog.  Determine what you want your company and, most importantly, your readers to get out of the conversations. For instance, here are some good reasons to want to blog (you should want to do more than less of these):
  • Answer Frequently Asked Questions: Let people get to know your product/service better
  • Get visitors familiar with the company’s philosophy: Helps to assure it’s aligned with the customers’ needs
  • Encourage Involvement: Gets the customers’ to take actions, like commenting, to build a community and even share insights and ideas to help others
  • Become a thought leader in the industry: Share your knowledge of the overall industry, not just your products place in it
  • Learn from your clients:  Listening to what your readers have to say can help to create future services and products they want, instead of what you assume they might want
  • Engage with your community: Having a blog is a great way to get to know your customers’ better.  The more back and forth dialogue, the better
• Lay out a successful, effective and easily maintainable strategy:
  • Decide who will be contributing or better yet, ask the staff which portion of the following tasks they might be good at helping with: content manager, editor (if needed), writers, researchers, media/arts department (don’t worry if you are all of the above – there are always tools to help)
  • Figure out how frequently you want content added and if that is a realistic goal, with staffs’ other obligations – you can always adjust, but don’t overload at first, or it may never happen
  • Determine the appropriate tools (WordPress is at the top of that list)
  • Plan an editorial calendar – just like the newspapers and magazines do.  This does not mean you can only write when something is on the calendar – it just makes it easier to know when some important dates or material needs to be added.  But go ahead and blog on a whim, if you have something of interest to share!
  • Set realistic goals, maybe you are unable to blog as often as you’d like, but when you do, it is great content!  Or maybe you only have time to do short posts summarizing things you read somewhere else, instead of heavily researched articles prepared in-house.  As long as it is relevant and informative, that is fine!
• Follow through, start your blog and make sure to maintain it!

Please keep in mind, these are just suggestions, and they can be tailored to work for any company.  Maybe instead of you writing the content in-house, you hire a copywriter.  Or maybe you go to the local college and get an intern, if your budget is tight.

As far as a ‘type of business’, there really aren’t any businesses that I can think of who could not benefit from a blog.  If you have a business and don’t think your readers would be interested in reading your blog, why not give me a chance to brainstorm an idea or two, by commenting below.  And if you just want to challenge me, just name a biz that you don’t think could find material worth blogging about, to their specific audience and let me see if I could come up with a couple of content ideas.  Post your thoughts and challenges in the comment box below…

Watch the Blogging For Biz Panel at WordCamp Boulder: (Note: It is a 45 min video, so may take time to load – and looks like nothing is happening.  If you have issues, you can also go directly to WordPress.TV to view it there, along with the rest of WordCampBoulder).

One of my clients who does a lot with videos, Freddy at Atomic Tango, shared this info with me and I had to share it with all of you.

As you’ll see from the video below, WordPress.com is getting into the video hosting business.  What does that mean?  Well, if it means what I believe it does, it means these things:

• You can now host a video at WordPress.com directly – you don’t have to host your own videos somewhere else and then embed them into your own site
• As Freddy points out, you aren’t advertising for some other site, because there doesn’t appear to be a logo – like YouTube puts in the corner of their embedded videos
• Folks can easily share your video by embedding it to their own site (such as self-hosted versions of WordPress.org), as I have done with the below video from VideoPress’s site – which will give you more insights on what tools it includes and why this tool is very interesting, so go ahead and watch that now:

This sounds like a great idea for folks at Wordpress.com.

The biggest downside of things – that I can think of at the moment – is that there isn’t currently a way for Wordpress.org bloggers to directly host using this cool tool, we still have to have a Wordpress.com account, upload it there and embed here. But in most cases you would already have a Wordpress.com account, because you’re probably using Akismet to protect your comments and that is the only place to get your API key. So, you could use that existing account for hosting the videos and embed here. Though that is kind of like hosting it on YouTube – minus their logo presence.

Also, if you aren’t hosting the video at a high traffic site, like YouTube, then you aren’t getting their extra exposure for your video.

So what do you think? If you are using Wordpress.org already, is it worth it to use this new option? Maybe for the sizing and other features listed in the video? Watch the video and let me know your thoughts, by commenting below!

It is always rewarding when you can find another reputable voice who writes up some of the same things you’ve already been saying about how to get maximum impact from your blog.

Recently, Marketing Sherpa dedicated their Chart of the Week to a graph showing how to insure maximum impact from your blog (click on the chart to see their post).

Among the things they point out, in this quick read, are what they call the ‘three absolutes in blogging’:

1. Genuine, heartfelt content – too often, this one throws corporate clients, when it shouldn’t. After all, when you meet folks face to face don’t you find that you are most effective when you are genuine and present? Why wouldn’t you want your website to be as effective?

2. Regular updates – Simply stated: Your blog needs to be providing continuous content, to make the greatest impact and to get folks back for more!

3. Focus – Instead of focusing on what everyone else is, why not be highly focused on an aspect of your industry that is important, but (none the less) missing from everyone else’s site?

Read what Marketing Sherpa had to say about all this…

And, let me know what you are doing to make your blog more impactful for your readers…