I have a weekly marketing group for small businesses that meets for 90 minutes each week. In the group we are setting measurable goals and learning to target activities such as writing blog posts to help reach their goals.  I wrote these tips for them but wanted to share them here too.

Blogging Tips

1. Keep your target reader/customer/purpose in mind.
2. Break your posts into short paragraphs, with no more than 7 lines.
3. Use sub-headings between paragraphs. Helps readers to scan and not be overwhelmed.
4. Do not use a black background or text that is too small. Why do people have blog themes that make their writing impossible to read? On the other hand, don’t have text in your blogs posts the size of the senior edition Reader’s Digests .
5. Use links rather that writing out a link URL. And please check the links. Best to go to the site that you are linking to and copy their url and then paste it into the link box. Don’t guess.
6. Use bulleted lists or numbered lists. People like them and Google likes them.Win-Win.
7. Have calls to action on the pages that your posts are on. Don’t make people guess what you are wanting them to do. Make it easy for them to shop with you, become your client, sign up for your newsletter etc…
8.Use the “read more” tag in your posts so that the articles on the front page of your blog are not too long. You want people to be able to scan a number of the titles and thumbnails of your posts. If the posts go on too long they won’t keep scrolling.
9. Use images in your posts. They breaks up the text and makes your posts more appealing. Dreamstime is one of my favorite places to get images at reasonable cost. You only need the small low resolution graphics that don’t cost very much. You buy yourself $20.00or so, of Dreamstime credits then you have access to downloading the images you want.
10.Do post about other people’s posts and link back to them. Don’t copy their entire post. Just tell your readers what you liked about the material, maybe put your own take on it and then link to their posts. Hopefully you will write a post or two that other people will link to.
11. Make em mad, Make em laugh or Kick up some dust with your posts. These are the things that have people comment.
12. Ask questions of your readers. Get them to start commenting.
13. Use key word phrases( something someone may search on to find your article) in the title and the content of the post. Catchy headline titles are old school, print cliches. Your post titles may appear in a Feed Reader or search result, so they needs to describe what you have written about. On the other hand, don’t just stuff key words into your posts you will get dinged by Google and it is bad form and spammy.
14. For most blogs, you should write in the first person. Write conversationally. People want to know you and you should show up. And it will make it easier to read.
15. Proof read and spell check.
16. Keep a file of good blog post ideas that can move you towards your goals and then make a schedule as to when you will write what.

Homework

Marketing plan: Pick one short term goal that you have for your business. How will you measure it? What steps are you going to take to reach that goal?  Write post titles that may help you reach that goal. Schedule the posts. Write and post the first one.

Leave a comment here on the goal you would like to work on and your ideas for it.

I  just read a great post called Why Redesign Your Website? by HubSpot which is a SEO marketing Company that is pretty darn on target. I really liked what they said. One of the main points is that sure you have to have a well done site that is polished and put together, but…. the point is getting more visitors and leads, SO you do a redesign if you are not on a CMS platform, not because you are bored with the design or because your CEO wants it to be blue not red.

The HubSpot post quotes marketing guru, Seth Godin as saying,

“I’m going to go out on a limb and beg you not to create an original design. There are more than a billion pages on the web. Surely there’s one that you can start with? …Your car isn’t unique, and your house might not be either”.

The founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweig once said to me ( I love that he actually, in person,  said this to me)

“I wonder why any developer would build a theme from scratch for a client when there are over 5000 themes to customize and save them time and money”

The HubSpot post also touts creating great content as a hugley important activity and this content drives people to your site. Especially if it is a CMS site. Which brings me to another one of their points, That you should absolutely include a blog, RSS and landing pages.

They say,

Any website built today should include these basics.  They are not expensive, and they work.  A blog is a great way to create content on an ongoing basis, and to start to converse with your customers and prospects.  RSS allows some content from your website to be automatically pushed out to other websites and people, increasing the reach of your content.

So don’t take my word for it. Take the words of Matt and Seth and HubSpot to heart when you find yourself spending too much time with what the banner should look like. Yes, it should look sharp, but it really matters more that you get it out there and you have the right technology, the right navigation, and a way to start and keep adding really great content.

I am talking to a woman today who had her site redesigned over a year ago and it still has not gone live because she was paralyzed over the design the technology choices and her wording. I agree, for someone new to all of this it can be daunting. And there is a lot of competing information out there. There is a lot of OLD school information out there. Like selling people SEO services around key words and metatags, or people still building static, non-owner friendly sites that the site owner has to pay the developer every time they want it updated! At New Tricks, we really try and make it easy for you but it is nice to see organizations like HubSpot and people like Seth Godin confirming the path the New Tricks is guiding our clients down. Yes, of course I believe in good design, but it is important not to let your obsession on perfection stop you from doing it now.

The New Tricks motto is,

It is never too Late

Here is a list I created of 10 free steps that will jump start your business into the New Year using social media technologies. Do it yourself or call New Tricks to do it for you, but please do it! You will be glad you did.

1. Google your business name and find out what comes up.  Do you come up? Is it what you want to see?  Does your business site come up or maybe a Yelp listing, or listing on some other site? Are those links correct, if not some of them allow you to “claim” your business so you can and correct the info, add pics and so forth. Are you satisfied with your placement or do you have work to do?
2. Set up a Google Profile for your personal name so people can find you and your business. Add all of your websites or links to it.
3. Add your company to Google’s local business center which puts you on Google Maps and so much more.
4. Ask your friends/employees/clients to give you feedback on your current website. Get a free consultation on your current website from a web designer who builds content management websites. There are new technologies available ( WordPress for one) that make it easy to have a great site that you can maintain yourself.
5. Sign up for Google Alert on your business name or brand. What are people saying about you or your business?
6. Set up Social Media Sites. Definitely start with a personal Facebook, a Twitter and a Linked -In account and go ahead and fill out your entire profile to include a real photo of yourself. Describe your business and regularly promote your products, but especially on Facebook do not make it only about your business, these are your fiends and they want to hear about you. Work it. Promote other things you come across, whether it be a  great blog post or  news item that your readers might be interested in. Recommend people you have worked with on Linked-In.
7. Get a TweetDeck account to direct your Twitters to the right accounts, ( multiple Twitter accounts and to Facebook) and have full function of  bity urls and pics on your tweets.
8. Create an e-mail signature that contains your contact information including social media addresses, blogs, websites and logo. You can add this pre-formatted signature to each and every e-mail you send out. You can easily add a text signature but we have a great post on adding a photo to your Gmail signature.
9. Google Social Media and find a few people that you like what your hear. Subscribe to their blogs or follow them on Twitter. Ask people who you admire who they follow.
10. Go to the Gravitar ( globally recognized avatar) website and add your profile picture. This photo will appear whenever you leave a comment on a Gravitar enabled website.

Have fun. The cool thing is all of these things are totally FREE. Social Media Guru, Seth Godin says,

The problem is no longer budget. The problem is no longer access to tools. The problem is the will to get good at it.

Remember this: Three frogs were sitting on a log. One decides to jump in. How many frogs are sitting on the log? Three. One decided to jump in – but he didn’t actually jump in. So jump on in.  It’s never too late. But you need to  go ahead and jump.

Dene found this great and oh so relevant post today called, Lousy Economy, Awesome Website. I loved this post. I completely agree that this is the time, with our economy so precarious, that it is most important to put your best out on the Internet for your business to thrive. I think it is  just as important to have a website if you are marketing yourself in a job search.

With the ever increasing use of the Internet and new web 2.0 technology, people have higher expectations for what a website should look like and how it should behave. Shoddy, poorly organized sites with bad graphics will not be well received. People don’t use the Yellow Pages anymore. They just Google your or your business to get your number. You better show up.

I went to look up my son’s doctor’s office number and she showed up number one in Google as living and working in Michigan. Her current practice here in Atlanta has a website that one of the doctors put together. The graphics were bad, the navigation poor, and the photos of the physicians were scary. What a waste of an opportunity to make a professional impression. I am not talking about spending an arm and a leg. Good web design does not have to be expensive, and it will pay for itself.

We just got a new intern here at New Tricks. We were immediately impressed by this young man because he had an awesome on-line resume portfolio. No flimsy ass business card for him. he was the first applicant I looked at and so I thought they all would have comparably designed web-based portfolios. Not so. I say bring it on people. Get it together NOW. Our New Tricks motto is It’s never too late….but of course you have to remember that its the early bird that catches the worm!

I have been working with my daughter Amanda on her Global Girl Blog site and thought I would demonstrate how you can start with one of the thousands of ready made WordPress themes and then customize their look and feel for your own purposes. Some of the changes involve replacing the graphics with new images and some changes require edits to the CSS Style sheets.

For  the Global Girl Blog site we started with a theme called Urban Elements by Press 75. Go to their site and check out a demo of the original theme. Some WordPress themes are free and some called premium themes are available for usually $20.00 to $79.00. In this case Urban Elements was a premium theme and there was a charge of $75.00 to download it.

I chose Urban Elements, despite its grunge look, since it has a cartoon like feel to the post box and I liked the little tabs with the post dates on them . This theme also has a stationary background which was important since I wanted to put the global girl avatar on the background and have it stay put even when the post box scrolls down.

After downloading the theme to the “Theme” file in the “Content” folder in Amanda’s site, we went to work customizing it. First, we got changed out the gray grunge background image. I had previously made a text based logo and added that to the appropriate sized header. If you want to use fonts other than the handful of font families that are browser safe you need to make them into graphics and then add them to the site.

I uploaded the new header and a new background  the same size as the one it replaced, that included Amanda’ global girl avatar and voila, an almost new site. But then more tweaks. I then  changed the social network icons, the color of the comment box  graphics and the text colors of the headings and links. Another site that uses this theme is called Simple Tim, if you check them out you can see how what was a grunge kind of site became two other different looks.

Guest contributer, John Bennison, Principal at Bennison Associates and former VP of Product Development at Skywire Software (now Oracle) has quickly become one of New Tricks’ BFF.  John has contributed his extraordinary small business coaching and technical skills to the New Tricks growing world empire.   See the end of the post for John’s bio.

• Are you a freelance photographer during the day but make the cutest little doggie purses at night? You need a single website that lets people find both of you – without displaying symptoms of a multiple personality disorder.

• How about a small business owner who paid gobs of money for a website that’s been promising ‘Under Construction – Coming Soon’ since Y2K? You need a website you can define and maintain – without hiring a cadre of coders, or becoming one yourself.

• Or, maybe your boutique bakery already has a website but needs a way to let your customers know that you’ve just taken the most sinful chocolate cake out of the oven and they’d better hurry over to your shop before it’s gone.  Good news, like good food, is best served fresh.

• Perhaps you are job hunting? You need a website that shows off your bad self and your good work — to showcase your authority in your field.  Every project you do is a potential promotion if you post it on your site.

Small businesses adapt or die.  Change is the one constant.  Your website should set the pace, not lag behind.  A website stakes your claim.  It helps you build and furnish your business’ place in space (Cyberspace, that is.)  Getting your site onto the web is the modern equivalent of getting your product onto the shelves.  It’s not an optional part of the plan.

Whoever you are, chances are if that if you’re ready to blow some benjamins, you’ll want to blow away the completion as well.

The answer my friend, is blowing in ….. well, WordPress

Websites that adapt and evolve – hosting dynamic content and plugging into social networks – weren’t easy with first generation website development tools.  But there’s been a quiet revolution in the Blogosphere and blogging tools have crossed over into mainstream websites -it changes everything.  More and more businesses are using WordPress for their web-sites. WordPress isn’t just blogging software any longer. NO it has grown from a blog  for letting others know about your fishing trip to Alaska, sharing recipes or ranting about politics anymore. Many companies, including the US Government, are using blog engines to drive all types of websites these days.  And for small businesses there are huge benefits.

Why use WordPress to power your second generation web site?

WordPress sites started out as blog sites. The word Blog came from the combination of web and log. Now WordPress has evolved to provide an easy and versatile framework on which to publish all kinds of content. Non-coders can easily do lots of cool things with a WordPress site like embed video or audio or photo galleries in your posts and incorporate a blog as a base for a podcast, add widgets and nifty plugins or interactive tools. And the open-source WordPress has grown to offer much more than basic blogging, such as  content management websites, multi- user sites, mailing lists, discussion groups, newsletter services and shopping carts.

Sites built on a WordPress platform can be furnished with static pages so that they are indistinguishable from a traditional website.  But they can also show off all the latest capabilities of a burgeoning technology.  Best of all, you maintain control – you can set the tone and tune it to match your style, your business, and your priorities.  Nobody even has to know it’s a blog on the inside.

WordPress sites are Budget Friendly

WordPress software is Open Source. That’s techie speak for cheap and easy.  WordPress, is actually free.  There’s very little set-up cost for you to get up and running.  Just a domain name (great, if you already have one), webhosting (think of it as the office space for your website) and a theme which can be customized and should be customized to reflect your unique brand.

Since WordPress is open source it also has a thriving community of developers constantly improving the software and creating plugins to expand the functionality. It’s sort of like having your own world wide web of developers all working for you – for free.

Building your website on an open source WordPress engine gives you a huge and growing set of built-in features and capabilities, with no licensing cost.

No coding required

The bane of first generation websites was that they required a technologist between you and your site.  You either had to hire one, or become one.   And if you kept your site half-way current, that meant an ongoing relationship with the bits, bytes, and bolts.   WordPress does for website design what iPods did to music collecting: get the technology out of the way.  The new tools let you run your site like you run your business.  You can delegate to your staff, outsource projects, or roll up your sleeves and do it yourself.

Social Networking

Social Networking is about creating conversations with your customers. “Word of mouth advertising” becomes whispering into the ear of the Internet.  Social Networking harnesses the energy of your customers, and feeds it back into your site –  keeping the content on your website fresh and updated. People will want to come back to check out what’s new.  And they’ll help you define, refine, and promote your image – for free!

Structured change, and living history

Websites built with WordPress allow you to have time-driven content and make it easy to manage that content – storing  posted items with categories, tags  and dates.  Customers can subscribe to your site, so they can be updated every time you cyber-speak to them. Sites with inherent blog capabilities are also easily integrated with other Social Networking tools like Facebook, Twitter and RSS Feeds.

Talk may be cheap but it is certainly effective.

Search Engines Love Websites built on database engines

Because it is built on a database, each item on a blog-enabled websites can have an individual “permalink” which is it own unique web address. This allows the web content to be accessed by a search engines, even years later.  This means whenever someone Googles ‘cute dog purses’ your site is more likely to appear at the top of the list.

Database platform websites like WordPress also allow for comments and user participation, which is becoming the standard for how individuals get involved in the companies they do business with.

Fired up, ready to go? Give New Tricks a call. We’ll show you ‘It’s Never Too Late!’ to learn new tricks.

About our guest Blogger:

John Bennison, is a Principal at Bennison Associates, an Atlanta-based Entrepreneurial Software Development company.  John co-founded Micro Dynamics Limited, a document imaging and content management solution which was flipped up the corporate later (taking John along as VP of Corporate Development) until being acquired by Skywire Software (now Oracle).

Prior to founding Micro Dynamics, John mastered the art of mentoring and listening  as  Assistant Director of Computer Operations, User Services, and administration of the academic Computer Center of Brown University. John holds a BA in Math from Amherst College.  You can keep up with John’s online at his blog, Ataraxia