Basic Blogging Presentation by Deppe Communications

(NOTE TO READERS: This is from a recent presentation I gave to a small business networking group)

Blog: a type of website updated regularly with new content.

Most blogs are written by a single person and reflect the interests and opinions of that person.

Business blogs educate, inform and engage customers

According to Moo.com, by 2012 62% of all businesses have a blog

Credit: http://www.gcflearnfree.org/blogbasics

Blogging for Money 

• host advertisements from Google
• sell products
• publish blog posts in the form of a book or article online

CAUTION: Making a large amount of money from blogs is RARE!

Getting Started

• Figure out your goals - what do you want to accomplish with your blog?

• What topic do you want to write about? Keep it as narrow as possible - you can always start a second blog, or a third!
• make a list of 6 - 12 (max) keywords you will include in your posts to help with SEO

• Who is your audience?

- Why are you blogging and what benefit will your audience get from your blog?

• How often do you want to blog (once a week is about minimum)

• What will you name your blog? Make sure it is related to the topic so people will know right away what it is about.  Keep it short and easy to remember.

• What kind of design will your blog have?

• How are your writing skills? (Be honest!)

- How much personal information will you share?

-Make a list of blog topics you want to cover and update it regularly. ‘

- Create a posting schedule for your blog if that helps keep you on track. Add it to your calendar.

Credit: http://www.gcflearnfree.org/blogbasics

Blogging Services

Wordpress 

- can act as both a website and a blog; most popular service

• can take a little while to get familiar with how it works, but there are lots of good tools (widgets)
• gives you the advantage of a website with a blog; the blog constantly feeds fresh content into your site, which search engines like.
• there is a lot of free help on the internet including training classes online
• 43% of all bloggers use Wordpress

Blogger 

- 35% of blogs are on Blogger

-owned by Google so it shows up well in search engine results and you can sign in with your Google account

• easy to use, easy to design pages

• Tumblr - a microblog
• use Tumblr to share images, videos, links and short posts
• can customize your blog with themes
• does not offer option for readers to leave comments
• trending very well with young people who are leaving Facebook

• Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest - microblogs
• 140 character max on Twitter
• Can use Vine for brief videos
• can post photos

-Facebook is largely for adult users now - teens have fled

• used to stay connected with friends and family
• can post video, photos, links to websites
• business pages can be useful for sharing updates, events, etc.

Attracting Readers

• Post links to your blog on your social media accounts
• post a new link every time you update your blog
• Make sure to proof read before you post
• Use images in your post
• alt tag your images with the topic of the post for SEO
• Use conversational tone - be who you are 
• but use good grammar and spelling!
• Find similar blogs and comment on them
• promote other blogs that you like by referencing them in our posts, and by adding links to their blogs

-Use keywords in your blog

- Guest blog on other blogs

About Copyrights and Fair Use (THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE!!)

• Don’t borrow images or content without permission
• if you do get permission,  make sure to give credit to the company or person and “used by permission”
• buy photos from Shuttershock, iStock, Dreamstime or other services - for a few dollars you can avoid problems with copyrights
• Use public domain content 
• published before 1923
• if you are not sure, check it first 
• Take your own pictures and write your own copy to be sure
• you can copyright your own work for your protection
• use Copyscape.com to check to see if other people are using your content - can also be used to make sure something you are paraphrasing does not violate copyright laws.

Fair Use

• you are reviewing or analyzing another’s work and using a small piece of it as part of your blog
• you must give credit to the copyright holder
• you cannot make money from others’ work
• it is OK to embed videos from YouTube or Vimeo as the legal stuff is already built in

NOTE: If someone requests that you remove their material from your website, you should do it ASAP.

Resources

Much of this information, including 2 of the infographics, came from this website:

http://www.gcflearnfree.org/blogbasics

Other good sites are:

www.blogger.com

www.wordpress.org

www.blogbasics.com

http://www.dailyblogtips.com/

www.fiverr.com

Need more information or want help with your blogging? Contact Deppe Communications at info@DeppeCommunications.com or 904.524.0170.

Taking the Personal Approach With Your Marketing

I had a pleasant surprise this morning when I logged onto my computer and headed for my Gmail - a personal birthday greeting from Google. My first thought was "wow, Google knows everything about me!" This was followed quickly by a realization that (a) that's because I told them all about myself in sundry ways; and (b) that makes my user experience unique to me. Oh, and (c) - they have some very smart marketers over there at Google.

Any marketer worth her salt knows that mass marketing is, if not dead, then certainly wobbling around on its last legs. Bringing a custom message to your target audiences is not only a more effective approach, it is more cost efficient, too. This blog, for example, is for those who follow me and are interested in what I have to say about marketing. I don't publish it as an ad in the newspaper for the whole world to see because, frankly, most folks don't care about marketing. I would be wasting a ton of money to buy newspaper ads for that purpose.

Likewise, your business' marketing efforts can and should be targeted. That requires some work on the back end - creating segmented marketing lists and custom messages, for example. It can be more time consuming than just developing a TV spot and buying time on the SuperBowl so the whole world can hear what you have to say. But in the end, you will save money and get better results.

Segmenting is more than just dividing up your customers by gender or age. It can include geographic locations, product choice, buying history, brand preference or even birthdays. Wouldn't you rather get an Email telling you when your favorite brand of shoes is on sale than a blast notice that everything in the store is 10% off? How about a notice from the grocery store telling you that your usual brand of laundry soap is on special this week - would that be worth something to you as a customer?

You can take those same ideas and use them in your own business, no matter what kind of business you have. It takes effort to understand your customers first, though, and know a little bit about them and their preferences and buying history. You might have to do a little more record-keeping, but in the end you will be establishing a closer, more personal relationship with your customer.

Interested in knowing more about small business marketing? Visit my website at www.DeppeCommunications.com or call me to discuss your needs at 904.524-0170.

What is a Marketing Strategy?

A marketing strategy is different than a goal, but it’s easy to understand why many business owners get them mixed up. It seems logical that they should both take you to the same end point, so what is the difference? When I meet with a potential client, I like to start the discussion by talking about their goals for their company. Marketing strategy should always be driven by the company’s goals, otherwise you risk ping-ponging your marketing investment all over the place without any real way to measure results. As I like to say, if you don’t know where you’re going, then any road will get you there.

By identifying what your goals are first, finding the right marketing strategies will follow more naturally. Let’s use an example of a small business that has a website but is not getting many visitors. Since the business is in the service industry, the owner relies on the website to drive leads – phone calls and e-mail inquiries. These leads turn into quotes and some of those quotes will turn into new business. If the owner knows that about 1 in 3 leads turns into a new job, then it is easy to figure out how many leads are needed to hit the business goals. For the example, let’s say 50 leads are needed every month to generate the business needed to reach the goal. Now, we have to get people to visit the website and that’s our strategy. Figuring out how to get people to the website – that’s tactics. Once we get people to the website, we need them to take an action – make a phone call or fill out a form. That’s a strategy. Moving things around on the website so that Call To Action (CTA) is more visible – that’s a tactic.

It’s natural for people to start with the tactics first because that is what they are most familiar with and they want to take some action. Unfortunately, not just any action will do – and some actions can cost you plenty without providing any return on investment. By backing up and starting off with your goals, then determining your strategy, the tactics that are necessary will fall into place quickly. And, you are likely to realize that a brochure or a phone book ad is just not going to help you get to your goal. Or maybe it will – but until you have thought it through, you won’t know.

Are you struggling with trying to figure out where to invest your marketing dollars? Give me a call and let Deppe Communications help you build a marketing plan that has its foundation on your unique business goals. 

Figuring Out How to Market Your Small Business

Whether you are a new business or a well-established mom & pop operation, figuring out how to best market your business can be a challenge. Unless you have training, education or a background in marketing, it can be overwhelming to consider the many choices available to you today. Indeed, with the advent of social media, blogs, E-mail, websites and E-newsletters - to name a few - marketing today is vastly different than it was just 10 years ago.

If you are going to go it alone and do your own marketing, I have a few suggestions you can use to get organized and create a strategy that works for you.

1. Figure out what you are trying to accomplish. One of my favorite sayings is "if you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there." Most businesses want to increase sales, but determine exactly how much sales increase you want. In other words, set a goal or two. Try to stay away from vague objectives like "increase awareness of my business."

2. Figure out who you are talking to. In past blog posts, I've talked about figuring out who your target audience is and gave some tips on how to make that determination. Choose your most profitable segments to target at first. Narrow it to just two or three if you can.

3. Figure out how to reach those people. Where do they live, what do they read, what social media do they use? It's easy to go online and search for media habits of a particular demographic. For example, a Google search for "media habits of teen males" yields more than 1.8 million results.

4. Figure out what they need to hear about your business. Depending on the segment you are targeting, your message could be about an upcoming sale, free delivery or your convenient locations and hours. Think through what your target audience cares about and, based on your experience with your customers, what motivates them to take action.

5. Figure out how much you can spend. This means both time and money. Small businesses have a limited amount of both, so whittle down your messaging to the best two or three and focus on one or two ways to get the message out. That may be E-mail and social media, or an ad in the paper and a radio commercial. It all depends on everything you have already learned above, remembering that some things (like social media) can require a larger investment of time while others (TV commercials) cost more. Knowing what your budget is up front can help you decide how best to invest based on what you believe will yield the most payback.

Finally, I suggest that as you go through this exercise, you put it on paper. I created a brief outline you can use as a guide and you can download it for free here. If you want help developing a marketing plan, please E-mail me.

Kim Deppe is President of Deppe Communications, an outsource marketing firm located in the Jacksonville, FL area. Deppe Communications provides marketing consulting, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, public relations and advertising services to small and medium size businesses across the U.S. For more information, visit www.DeppeCommunications.com, call 904.524.0170 or E-mail Kim@DeppeCommunications.com.

Share This!

By Kim Deppe
With all of the changes to search engine optimization that have taken place in 2013, it is still abundantly clear that good content is the MVP of SEO. Good content drives more clicks to your website or blog by interested readers, which boosts your SEO. But just writing great content is not enough - you have to share it and encourage others to spread it around the internet. It is true that very few posts or videos really go viral in a big way, but that doesn't mean that you can't take a few steps to increase the number of people who see your website or blog.

First, make sure that you are adding social sharing buttons to your website or posts. Ideally, those should be located in or near the actual article. Make it easy for your readers to share the article with their friends or followers by adding icons or links to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. Don't confuse these with the social media icons that you have on your site to direct readers to your own Facebook or Twitter pages. It is best to move these down to the footer or along the side of the page to distinguish them from social sharing buttons.

Next, promote your posts on your own social media pages. Grab the URL to your new article, copy it, then paste it into your Twitter feed, LinkedIn post or Facebook page. Add a few words that describe what your readers will learn in the article. And, it never hurts to ask your followers to share the post.

Finally, make an effort to read and share the posts of others either in your field or among your friends and followers. Engaging with others is a great way to encourage them to do the same. Reciprocal sharing is common when the content is good and the source is trusted.

Taking these steps will increase the number of people exposed to your blog or website, which in turn can improve your SEO due to increased clicks to the article. Now, please share this post!

About Kim Deppe

Kim Deppe is President of Deppe Communications, an outsource marketing firm located in the Jacksonville, FL area. Deppe Communications provides marketing consulting, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, public relations and advertising services to small and medium size businesses across the U.S. For more information, visit www.DeppeCommunications.com, call 904.524.0170 or E-mail Kim@DeppeCommunications.com.

Write right! Lose the jargon and communicate more effectively

By Kim Deppe

It may just harken back to our days in high school or college when we had an essay to write and were having a little trouble. Maybe we didn't know enough about the topic or we didn't do the reading, but there we were having to b.s. our way through a test answer or a paper. It's happened to most of us. That's when we start stringing together the largest, four-syllable words we can conjure in hopes of sounding as if we know what we're writing about. Over time, I think we keep writing in that high-fallutin' style when we are doing our resumes, trying to impress a boss, or just feel that we need to throw as much high-tech sounding content as possible into something we are writing. The end result is usually a bunch of convoluted, professorial writing that few people really understand.

Here's an example: I heard an ad on the radio this week for a local physician group. I'm paraphrasing here, but it's pretty close to truth. The copy went something like this: "we provide a full continuum of care with state-of-the-art medical equipment and board-certified specialty physicians who are committed to providing the very best possible quality of care."

Now, I confess here that in my 21 years of healthcare marketing I, too, have written garbage like this. It populated print ads and annual reports and the medical professionals I reported to just loved it. The only problem is that "Joe Sixpack" didn't get most of that. Not because Joe is stupid, but because Joe does not speak "medicine." He speaks colloquial American English. Or, in my case, Southern. Joe probably doesn't care that we have a "full continuum of care" (whatever that means) or that the doctors are board-certified (whatever that means). And one would hope that every practicing physician is providing "the very best possible quality of care." That's a weasel phrase designed to keep them out of court, anyway.

What I really wish the physician group had told me is why I should choose them over someone else. Do they have extended office hours? Do they set aside time for daily walk-in patients? Do they use Twitter to respond to patient questions? You see where I am going with this. In the medical industry, but also in other high-tech fields, it is easy to slip into a lot of jargon when you are writing letters, brochures, or even advertising copy. Everyone thinks it sounds sexier to say bi-modal doppler 4-D imaging (I made that up) than to say "we have the latest diagnostic tools to help us figure out what is wrong with you."

The next time you visit your company web page or read your own brochure, see if you can spot any jargon that should be removed. Pay attention to the reading level, too. Journalists are taught to write at about an 8th grade reading level. Most word processing programs have a tool that will tell you what grade level you are writing at - try to keep it below 10th grade if you can. Keep sentences short. Use jargon sparingly, if at all. Pretend that you are explaining what you do or sell to someone from another planet. By not assuming that they know anything about your business, you can be sure to tell your story in a way they will understand and appreciate.

Kim Deppe is President of Deppe Communications, an outsource marketing firm located in the Jacksonville, FL area. Deppe Communications provides marketing consulting, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, public relations and advertising services to businesses. Visit www.DeppeCommunications.com or E-mail Kim@DeppeCommunications.com to schedule a free consultation.

Marketing Your Small Business: TGIF!

By Kim Deppe
It is Friday, and a good time to look back over the week and cherish your accomplishments, figure out where you could have improved, and then set your sights on the week to come. How many of us really do that, though? Do you do it once a month, or once a quarter? How about once a year?

It might seem an odd way to "do marketing" but reflection and thinking are an important part of your marketing efforts. We have fancier marketing jargon for the process - we call it research, analysis and planning - but the truth is that small business owners can just stop and do some thinking and accomplish the same thing. And it does not have to be a long, involved process. In fact, a few minutes each week can help you stay ahead of your marketing and stay on track with your plan.

Here are a few things to think about:

1. Did you get new customers this week (month, quarter)? If so, where did they come from and how did they find you? You may have some people to thank for making referrals. You may need to look at your advertising budget and put more money into things that are working, less money into things that are not working. If you did not get more customers, try to think about why that happened. Look at everything from your sign out front to the design of your website. If you have a store front, make sure your hours are a match to your customers. I cannot tell you how many small businesses I see that close up shop just as all their customers are getting home from work and could do a little shopping or run their errands.

2. How many people visited your website and how does that compare with last week/month/quarter? If you don't have Google Analytics or some other website tracking method, I encourage you to take care of that right away. Google Analytics is free and it will give you great information about traffic to your website. If your traffic is dropping off, consider some pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and make sure your content is fresh, interesting and relevant to your customers. Your website is often the first time a customer encounters your business - make sure it really represents your business well.

3. Did sales improve? If you have e-commerce on your website you can analyze sales quickly and see what products are selling and which are struggling. Use that information to guide you in future promotions and product choices. If you only sell from a physical location, look for trends in traffic flow to the store, days and time of day when things sell, etc.

4. Ask yourself what you did well and what you need to improve upon. This is especially tough for businesses like mine that are a one-person show because it means we have to analyze our own behavior. But an honest appraisal can help you spot little issues before they become big problems. It is also a great way to acknowledge what you did well - when you are your own boss, you need to give yourself a pat on the back once in a while, too!

5. What needs to happen next week/month/quarter? Think about the changes you want to make in your marketing efforts - blog more often, tweet more, start a new PPC campaign, etc. Write them down somewhere and put some deadlines on them. You don't have to have a fancy marketing plan but if you want some guidance on creating a basic plan, there is a free download on my website that will help you. Look for the big red button that says "Free Download."

Happy Friday!

Kim Deppe is President of Deppe Communications, an outsource marketing firm located in the Jacksonville, FL area. Deppe Communications provides marketing consulting, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, public relations and advertising services to small and medium size businesses across the U.S. With over 25 years corporate executive marketing experience, Kim Deppe brings a unique combination of strategic marketing experience and online marketing know-how to her clients. For more information, visit www.DeppeCommunications.com, call 904.524.0170 or E-mail Kim@DeppeCommunications.com.