by tradesmeninsights | Aug 18, 2011 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
Let’s face it, one of the reasons you have a blog is to get your message out to as many people you can who share the same interests. Doesn’t it make sense then to use other social media tools to drive people to your site and increase engagement?
I recently read a guest post in ProBlogger by David Cowling, that outlines some great ways to capitalize on other social media outlets. Here are some highlights:
- Promote your RSS feed – increases visitors and can result in back-links to your blog which result in better search engine rankings.
- SEO your social media profiles – This is a fairly new idea, but one that intrigues me. Facebook – about box is seen by search engines so make products specific if you’re selling something. If you have several Fan pages, link them together.Twitter profile – your user name becomes the title tag on your page. LinkedIn – your name, headline, current location and industry are placed in a meta description tag.
- Use social groups to promote your topics – Create groups and discussions on both LinkedIn and Facebook. If you belong to groups, promote them there as well as create your own group.
Other questions you should be asking yourself:
- What networks send you the most traffic as a blogger?
- What percentage of your traffic comes from these networks?
- What’s been your most shared article and what can you learn form this?
by tradesmeninsights | Aug 18, 2009 | Marketing Tips, Social Marketing
My blog focuses on helping manufacturers better communicate with contractors and professional tradesmen. We have three challenges: 1) identify our audience, 2) give them meaningful content, and 3) keep them coming back. One of the most important things I try to communicate is that to be successful, you must be able to engage and have a genuine relationship with your reader. I recently read a guest post on Problogger from Leo Babauta of Zen Habits on 7 steps to build a genuine relationship with your readers, which highlights ways he’s been able to engage and develop relationships.
Here are some highlights from his post:
- A genuine relationship starts with you – start with an open and positive mindset and be willing to work on the relationship.
- Make posts as helpful and useful as you can – it’s not about you, it’s about your readers’ problems and concerns.
- Be helpful and positive in all interactions – whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook or your blog…always be helpful, positive and upbeat.
- Encourage discussion in comments – you’re not the only one with good ideas. Make sure to engage on your response and ask their opinion.
- Give back on other blogs – link when appropriate to other blogs, visit their sites and make comments and write guest posts for them.
One of the most important points Leo makes is you can’t fake this stuff. If you are just pretending to care about your readers, if you don’t really want to talk to them, they’ll feel it and then you’ve lost them.
Leo is a best selling author of The Power of Less. He also just released a free report for bloggers called, How I Got 100,000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits. Check out his report as it gives some insightful ways to help get and retain viewers
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 17, 2009 | Marketing Tools
Your blog can actually help you hone your elevator pitch.
People want to quickly know 3 things before they decide to read, much less bookmark your blog:
- Who you are
- What you do
- Why you’re writing a blog
If any of you have ever been involved with a local business networking group like BNI, you’ll know what I’m talking about. At every BNI meeting, each person has to get up in front of the group and give a 30 second “elevator pitch” as to who you are, what you do and what you’re looking for.
Your elevator pitch should be no more that 150 words. If you’re like me, it will be very hard to put so much into so few words. My elevator pitch has helped me with 3 things:
- My marketing tag line
- My social media profiles in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, E-mail signature
- I read it prior to writing each post and it keeps me focused and on track
Darren Rowse had a recent post where he outlines other reasons to develop a pitch and has pointers on how to write one. You can read his post at: Write an elevator pitch for your blog
Here’s my elevator pitch:
Sonnhalter is a B-to-B marketing communications firm to companies that target tradesmen in construction, industrial and MRO markets.
We understand how to reach tradesmen and can integrate custom marketing programs for our clients that are empowered by great ideas.
We make efficient use of our clients’ marketing budgets with the right combination of traditional and new media.
We also generate the best return on investment for our clients’ marketing budget. Our philosophy is, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.
A blog is also a great branding tool for your company, especially if you’re using it for your business. But I’ll save that subject for another post!
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 9, 2009 | Marketing Tips
Will blogs replace e-mail?
After Al Gore invented the Internet, everyone was saying that print magazines that served the trades would be a thing of the past. They said that this old technology would be replaced by the Web. Well since the invention of the Internet, there have been thousands of new magazines launched the old-fashioned way via the printing press.
Darren Rowse from the ProBlogger wrote an article on Hendry Lee from BlogBuildingU. Hendry makes a point that the same was said about e-mails once blogs were introduced.
E-mails lead all other channels by a wide margin in terms of performance. 80.4% of more than 3,000 surveyed choose e-mail as a strong adverting performer compared to 56.8% who chose search.
He suggests a combination of both. Here’s his rule of thumb:
Reach your readers whenever they want and via the content distribution channels and formats they prefer. That almost sounds too simple, doesn’t it. Give the customer what he wants, when he wants it. Brilliant!
He goes on to highlight some benefits to both e-mails and blogs.
Here are some highlights:
E-mail lets you deliver content on a regular basis which promotes recognition… good content creates interest … interest encourages interaction.
E-mail helps you move the prospect down the roads by nurturing a relationship and interaction.
Blogs. E-newsletters are the most popular method of driving people back to your blog… build buzz… create a series of lessons that can be delivered using a sequence autoresponder which will deliver them one at a time over a pre-determined interval.
By using both these tools, you can improve your marketing efforts .
To read his entire post: Blogs and Email How to Get the Best of Both Worlds
