Four Steps to an Effective Marketing Campaign
Marketing can be extremely complex, confusing and daunting all at the same time. The burden of launching a good marketing campaign doubles when you juggle this responsibility with several other tasks. This is the exact predicament which dentists find themselves in. They are not just the ones who supervise hygienists and other members of the staff, attend to patients and manage everything that happens in the clinic; they are also the brains behind any practice’s marketing strategy.
In a bid to try to simplify things, dentists should understand that there are really just four elements in any successful marketing campaign – audience, timing, offer and message. [Read more]
10 Common Mistakes To Avoid When Building Your Business Using Social Media
If there is one buzzword in marketing circles in recent years, it is “social media.” Social media, meaning interactive online communities like Facebook, Twitter, and even YouTube, is transforming the landscape of the Web, and with it, altering the way companies large and small interact with their consumers and with their target demographic. Luckily for small business owners, social media marketing is one of the cheapest and most democratic ways to reach a new audience. A well-crafted social media campaign can go a long way towards bringing your company name recognition and media attention. But as easy as it is to use social networking to benefit your company, it is unfortunately also easy to fall victim to any of the potential pitfalls that face the first-time social media marketer. When planning your next Facebook or Twitter campaign, avoid these ten mistakes.
Back Up Your WordPress Blog with BackupBuddy
Some time ago, Jonathan wrote about a blogging pitfall: the failure to back up your blog. He made a very strong case for taking the time and effort to regularly back up your blog. Along the same lines, I share with you a very useful back up tool: BackupBuddy.
In a nutshell, BackupBuddy is more than a backup tool. In addition to backing up, it also offers restore and migration options. The service has been around for a while now, but the recent addition of the ability to back up to Amazon’s S3 data center service makes this an even more viable option because you can store your files off site. In the event that your hard drive or server crashes, your files will be safe in another location – S3. You still have the option to back up all your blog’s data – including media and themes – locally and via FTP, but this additional option does offer more advantages. More so, you can schedule your back ups in advance in case you have memory issues and do not remember to back up regularly!
As for the restore option, you can easily do this within minutes. You do not have to worry about having your site down for hours on end and losing out on potential revenue. If you find yourself facing the need to migrate, you can work on development in one server and then launch on a different server – within minutes as well.
If you want to know more about what BackupBuddy can do for you and how to use it, watch the videos below.
BackupBuddy Overview from WebDesign.com on Vimeo.
This is how you back up your WordPress blog without breaking a sweat.
How to Backup WordPress from WebDesign.com on Vimeo.
Blogging Pitfalls: How to Avoid Lazy Writing and Editing
At the end of the day, the most basic activity a blogger must do is write.
While it is true that bloggers are, with good reason, expanding more and more into video and audio, at some point every blogger is going to have to write something. It might be a description, a bio or even just an advertisement but, at some point, a every blogger is going to have to put words onto paper.
But not every writer has the heart of a poet or the writing skills of a hard-hitting journalists. Bloggers come from all different backgrounds and styles and many have had little training or experience with writing prior to starting up their blog.
The good news is that you don’t need to be the next Shakespeare to be an effective and popular blogger, in many ways it helps not to be, but you do have to be able to write clearly and in a way that is engaging to your reader. It may not require a Ph.D in literature, but it does require that you work on honing your craft and make your writing as good as possible.
Failure to do so can sink an otherwise great blog and make your previous hard work a complete waste of time.
Blogging Pitfalls: Why You Can’t Be Just a Blogger
Everyone knows what being a blogger entails but fewer people know what creating a successful blog involves. Far too many bloggers have fallen for the false mantra of “If you write it, they will come” only to watch their traffic, readership and even profits lag behind their efforts.
There is much more to writing a blog than just simply putting out new blog entries. Even ignoring promotion, communication and other activities all bloggers do, there is a simple truth that, for the most part, a great blog can not be simply a great blog.
5 Tips For Building Expertise Through Blogging
How much time do you need to put into a niche before you can declare yourself an expert? Well, many bloggers seem to disagree, judging by their self-proclamations after only a few months, but once upon a time you were classified as an expert if you had spent roughly 10,000 hours on a skill, in a focused, structured manner. If we’re referring to a career job, at roughly 40 hours/week, that comes out to about five years. But when it comes to working online and establishing your expertise, the Web doesn’t wait around. Five years is too long, since Web technology is always changing.
[Read more]
6 Tips to Make the Most of Your Blog Writing Time
Blogging can be an enjoyable experience or it can be a draining time-suck. Which would you prefer? Whether you’re blogging for your own reasons, freelancing, or doing it for your business, finding the time to write can be difficult if you’re juggling it amongst other work. Here are a few tips to leverage the time that you do have.
[Read more]
How to Stop Being Boring (and Why You Probably Are)
I’m boring and you’re probably boring too.
I just listened to this interview with Seth Godin. He gives really good advice about how to successfully run a business. You should definitely listen to the whole thing if you want to make more money with your blog.
One of the things Seth said that struck me is found at the 38:30 mark. He said, “If people aren’t talking about you, they’re not talking about you for a reason. And the reason isn’t that they dislike you. They’re not talking about you because you’re boring.”
These are harsh words, but the first step to solving a problem is admitting that it’s there.
If you don’t fit Seth’s criteria, if people are talking about your blog, congrats. Keep doing what you’re doing. But I think for most of us, people don’t talk much about our blogs.
So, what’s the remedy? Seth recommends being different.
Stand Out From the Crowd
If you want to be more interesting and less boring, you need to do something that the other blogs in your niche are not doing.
At the 39:34 mark, Seth tells an anecdote about a street in New York City with 18 Indian restaurants. One of the Indian restaurants claimed that they had the spiciest curry in the city. They had a deal that if you could finish a bowl, you got it for free.
Guess which restaurant had the most customers? The one with the spicy curry offer.
Yes, this advice of being different is not new at all. In fact, it’s become a cliche in online marketing circles. But how many of us are actually different from our competitors? If we’re honest, our blogs are very similar to other blogs.
We underestimate how similar we are to our competitors. Consider the following experiment.
Take a post from your blog and a couple posts from other blogs in your niche. Blank out the names and print the posts without the formatting and blog design. With just the printouts, would people be able to tell which post is yours?
Take Risks
To be different, we’ll have to be risk takers. It’s risky to break away from the crowd and do things differently. But like the Indian restaurant, we need to figure out our own unique offer. We need to find something to stand for.
Taking risks will leave us open to criticism since there’s always a group of people that doesn’t like change. Innovators have always had their critics but the critics shouldn’t keep us from taking action. As long as we have enough supporters, we’ll be fine.
My Application
Like I said, I’m boring. After listening to Seth, I realized that most of the content on my gaming blog can be found on other blogs. The main reason I still get a lot of traffic is because my competitors don’t do keyword research.
But that’s hardly a competitive advantage.
There are a couple blogs with much lower traffic that have more influence than me. They have more natural links, Twitter followers, and comments.
I tried to apply Seth’s principles and I came up with these three action items.
1. Narrow my blog’s focus.
I cover too many topics. This is a consequence of just being lazy and not taking the time to figure out the core of my blog.
I realized I’m only really interested in two topics, so I’ll only write about those. This should differentiate my blog since most blogs cover a lot of topics. My niche is pretty big so I should still have a big enough audience to support a business from the blog.
2. Cover a topic that doesn’t get talked about a lot.
One of my topics doesn’t get much airplay, so I was hesitant to write about it. But after some research, I think there’s a market for the topic.
I’ll probably have to sacrifice some short-term traffic. People are not searching for keywords on the topic and I get most of my traffic from the search engines. But by covering the topic, I hope to create my own keywords and make them popular.
For example, a couple years ago seo book was not a popular search term until Aaron Wall saw a market for a book and released his SEO ebook. Once his book was released, the keyword started to pick up and now it’s popular.
3. Sell my future product at a higher price point than the norm.
I’m working on a membership product that I hope to release in the next couple of months. I was going to charge the same price as other membership products in the niche. But I always felt those prices were too low. Also, my product will cover the topic that doesn’t get much coverage, so I should be able to charge more.
Over to You
Are you different from other blogs in your niche? If you are, please give specific examples on how you are different. If you’re not, how can you stand out from the crowd?
Performancing offers blog management services.
Productivity Tips For Bloggers From a Bestselling Author
Steven Pressfield is great example of perseverance for anyone in the creative field including bloggers. His first couple novels never saw print. But he kept at it and 17 years after his college graduation, he finally got a book published and received a paycheck. His later books became bestsellers.
In this podcast interview, he gives a couple productivity tips that have really helped me in my blogging.
The Writer Life is a Battle
At 1:41 of the podcast, Pressfield talks about the writing process as a war. To succeed, you have to have similar qualities of a good warrior; qualities like courage, patience, and long-suffering. He brings up the image of an infantryman that’s gaining ground on the enemy slowly but surely. In the day to day struggle, writing is like that.
This principle has helped me realize that blogging is hard work. Sure, there are days when the words come easily and I knock out a quality post in a couple of minutes. But those days are few and far between. Usually, it takes me awhile to get going. My first few sentences are pretty bad and I have to struggle to stay focused on finishing the post. By the time the post is done, I’m satisfied but I’m mentally tired.
Resistance is the Enemy
At 14:25, the interviewer quotes Pressfield’s book The War of Art:
There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t and the secret is this: it’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.
Pressfield goes on to talk about Resistance as the negative force that rises up whenever we want to start a creative task. Resistance shows up in many forms: procrastination, self-sabotage, excuses we make up, reasons we give ourselves that we’re not good enough, self doubt, etc. The most important thing for a writer to do is overcome Resistance.
Pressfield says that Resistance comes to us in negative voices. Our task is to ignore the voices and realize that they are bulls**t. They are keeping us from making progress.
I found this principle very helpful because it showed me that I’m not alone in the creative struggle. If a bestselling author has to deal with Resistance, then I will have to deal with it too.
Also, by identifying the enemy, Pressfield helped me not to be surprised by Resistance. I am prepared to deal with it because I know it’s there.
Turn Pro and Stop Being an Amateur
At 25:00, Pressfield gives a great metaphor for overcoming Resistance. He says we have to “turn pro.” When we see ourselves as amateurs, we will yield to Resistance when our circumstances become tough or distractions come up.
But if we think of ourselves as pros, we’ll have the mindset to carve out daily time to pursue our creative endeavors. As pros, we won’t give in to external influences.
Pressfield brings up Kobe Bryant. During the season, his knees may hurt and his back may be sore, but he still suits up and plays in the game. Pros like him don’t make excuses. They see their task as a job instead of a hobby.
Pressfield says a mysterious thing begins to happen when we turn pro. Inspiration starts to flow regularly as we persevere and make it a habit to work on our craft daily.
Further Information
Make sure to listen to the whole interview where Pressfield has more advice for writers. Check out his book The War of Art for an in-depth treatment about productivity and overcoming procrastination in the creative process. Also, he started a new blog, which includes writing tips.
Performancing offers blog management services.
How to Sustain Inspiration in Blogging
Jason Fried from 37signals talks about sustaining inspiration in this speech at around the 19:40 mark.
He suggests that inspiration is perishable. He contrasts the lifespan between the actual idea and the inspiration for the idea. The idea lasts forever but the inspiration can go away.
He likens inspiration to a perishable good like milk or fruit. Like these goods, inspiration has an expiration date and it doesn’t stay fresh very long.
He advises that if you’re inspired about something, if you motivated to do something, you need to take action as soon as possible. If you wait to do it later, you won’t be as motivated. Every day you don’t take action, your inspiration starts to rot and go away.
Also, you’ll have the most creative energy during that initial spark of inspiration.
Blogging and Inspiration
In blogging, I’ve found Jason’s theory to be true. I have many ideas for blog posts that I came up with in the past. At the time of idea conception, I was excited about the ideas. However, a couple weeks went by and I still hadn’t turned those ideas into blog posts. Now when I think of the ideas, I’m not excited about them and I wonder what ever happened to my inspiration.
On the other hand, if I come up with a good idea and then work on the post right away, writing is much easier and I have a good amount of creative energy and motivation to complete the post. This is why it’s a good idea to read only when you have time to act on it.
You’ll be more productive and your content will be better quality if you’re inspired and motivated rather than trying to “force out” a post after the inspiration has gone away.
Over to You
How do you sustain inspiration? Have you ever experienced “rotting inspiration”?
Performancing offers blog management services.
