A couple of months ago I wrote a blog piece ‘Blogging the Seth Godin way…’ .  Effectively, it was a post about what I was learning about blogging from Seth Godin – focusing on the range of subjects he included – the different sized posts (some very long, others just a paragraph) and frequency levels – keeping under my nose at least daily!  

Whilst I enjoyed reading Seth’s musings (which came in thick and fast for a period of time) – I have to say that the ‘Seth’ folder in my inbox is now stacked with stuff I need to read.  And being the type of person who likes to keep on top of things and keep my inbox as up to date as possible – I’m afraid I find myself hitting the ‘delete’ button when that folder gets too full.  So all of Seth’s wise and wonderful advice is zapped from my view in a click!

Dosh Dosh.com however, the other blogger I follow, writes a long piece probably once perhaps twice a month.  And I always read it.

So what does this tell me – great advice from both – one coming in thick and fast and the other coming in relatively slowly…

Whilst I value what Seth has to say – I consider it quite ‘samey’ and so I am happy to delete this.  Why?  Because I know that I’ll be getting other stuff through soon enough and when I pick it up it will be just as relevant – and so it doesn’t really matter if I miss a few.

With Dosh Dosh (http://www.doshdosh.com) – I value what he has to say, but his posts are more ‘meaningful’ and practical to my work and so there’s no way I’d miss a post.

Of course – these views are clearly only my perception.  I’m sure that Seth’s posts are just as ‘meaningful’ as Dosh Dosh’s – but my perception is different.  Seth by being the prolific blogger is making me behave in a more disposable way with his messages – whilst Dosh Dosh being ‘rarer’ I consider more precious!

Blogging the Seth Godin way is I suppose  like following a soap – I used to watch Eastenders (much to my husbands utter disbelief) and even now – as a not so regular watcher, when I do catch the odd program, I can pretty much work out where things are up to in about 3 minutes.  The soap is on pretty much most evenings – and so if I miss it – it’s not a big deal!   Is that how I now view Seth’s blog posts…!

So what do I take from taking a step back and analysing my own online behaviour – and how will this influence my blogging:

Well, I will continue to blog once a week – and I will ensure that my posts ‘mean’ something – make a difference, give a key message, offer practical advice.

Soaps are hugely popular – but they don’t give much do they (sorry Seth!).  I’d rather be a ‘Grand Designs’ – something I look forward to once a week – and record so as not to miss it.

For more marketing news, views, tips and advice – why not subscribe to my blog – or follow me on twitter http://www.twitter.com/michellecarvill

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20 Tips for Successful Blogging from a Relatively new Blogger

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

I subscribe to just a few blogs – one of them is Seth Godin’s – I’ve enjoyed most of Seth’s many books – and whilst I don’t agree with everything he has to say, much of what he says, I concur with.  I’m learning a lot about blogging from Seth – not from the advice he provides, but by observing how he blogs.  Often it’s just short snippets – observational ‘marketing’ advice/lessons/views/thoughts.

Being a ‘marketer’ out there in the field providing practical advice and working directly with a range of clients – it’s difficult to switch the ‘marketing’ channel off.  And, quite frustratingly in many situations of terrible customer service, or poor promotion, difficult websites and such like, I tend to proffer advice – (whether the recipient wants to hear it or not!). And so, I am going to start building these more everyday occurrences into my blog posts.

It’s ok for a post to be just a couple of paragraphs long.  I’ve read that so many times, but it still feels a little light to me.  But hey – I’m all up for mixing things up a bit.

Meanwhile – I particularly liked this recent short snippet from Seth’s blog.  In fact, if you Google my name, Michelle Carvill, you’ll see that I am controlling what comes up top – a Bizzbug profile which clearly promotes who I am, what I do – so I am taking control of the ‘candid camera’ scenario to a degree.  You can too – Bizzbug is free.  Any pointers required, give me a shout.

Personal branding in the age of Google

A friend advertised on Craigslist for a housekeeper.

Three interesting resumes came to the top. She googled each person’s name.

The first search turned up a MySpace page. There was a picture of the applicant, drinking beer from a funnel. Under hobbies, the first entry was, “binge drinking.”

The second search turned up a personal blog (a good one, actually). The most recent entry said something like, “I am applying for some menial jobs that are below me, and I’m annoyed by it. I’ll certainly quit the minute I sell a few paintings.”

And the third? There were only six matches, and the sixth was from the local police department, indicating that the applicant had been arrested for shoplifting two years earlier.

Three for three.

Google never forgets.

Of course, you don’t have to be a drunk, a thief or a bitter failure for this to backfire. Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.

Why not subscribe to my blog and keep up to date with marketing news, view, ideas, ‘observations’ and advice…

Michelle

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

It’s likely that you are familiar with most of the ‘traditional’ marketing practices; direct mail, email marketing, advertising, telesales, pr etc – however, for a few years now, given the opportunities the internet provides, the term ‘new marketing’ has been bandied around.   If we think of traditional marketing as ‘push’ marketing – mediums we use to push our messages onto others ‘interupting’ them, then the new marketing relates to ‘pull’ marketing – marketing activities we do which ‘attract’, as a magnet would, interested parties, at their own accord, to view our wares.

Pull activities include; blogging, social media networks (think Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, Bizzbug, Ning, Xing, My Space) actively participating in forums; (http://www.UKbusinessforum.co.uk, socialmediatoday, ukbusinesslabs, womensmarketingforum), making your information more widely available via resources such as Digg, Blogburst and others – effectively, sharing your knowledge, know-how, experiences, advice, contacts, news, views and opinions to build interest in who you are, what your business is about, what you do – with the hope that users grow to follow what you say and  are encouraged to buy and refer – effectively, building ‘positive share of mind’ – in an online and hopefully viral way!

Social Media activity is not a direct sell – it’s a bit of a slow burner – and in just the same way as we practice traditional marketing, it’s not something that you do in isolation.  For maximum impact, it’s wise to work the social media mediums in an integrated way.

Here’s our my 5 tips for getting started and integrating just some of  what’s available:  (Believe me, if you stretch yourself too far, it becomes a full time job just trying to keep on top of it all).

1. Create a blog. A blog is a great way to share what you do and what you provide with others – and it’s an opportunity to build your brand by being open and getting your ‘business’s personality’ across.  With blogging you have to keep at it – posting articles ideally 2 or 3 times a week.  Attach your blog to your website – and it’s a great way to constantly refresh your site.  Positive for users and search engines.   WordPress www.wordpress.com is a user friendly blog resource and you can get started pretty quickly.  See my 20 tips for successful blog writing post for more info on blogging!
2. Join Twitter. Yes we agree, initially it seems strange – but once you get into it, you’ll start to connect with likeminded people.  Again, it takes a while.  Set up an account, share news about your business and your life (a delicate balance as you don’t want to come across as a hard sell) – and see what happens.  www.twitter.com – why not also promote links to your latest blog posts via this media too.
3. Digg. If you are creating articles for your blog on a regular basis – you can register with Digg and post your articles there too.  You only post a link to your article – and so there’s no duplicate content issue – and who knows, dependent upon what you’re reporting on, you may hit the jackpot and get to their front page where millions of users will see it!  www.digg.com
4. Forums. Get involved with relevant forums.  The www.UKbusinessforums.co.uk covers a range of topics and is well subscribed.  People often post requests for help on business projects, printers, designers etc – and so as well as getting and giving advice, you may also pick up some new business.  Why not also promote links to your latest blog post here too.
5. Social Networks.  More and more businesses are using Facebook and YouTube to promote their businesses – and there are other useful online resources such as LinkedIn (helping to find business contacts, projects and seek referral) and www.bizzbug.com – a useful and powerful ‘intranet’ style collaboration resource.  Take a look at what other businesses are doing on these sites – and consider what would work for you.

So get started and become a social ‘media’ ite today!

For more marketing news, views, tips and advice – why not subscribe to my marketing blog – – it’s easy…

Best wishes

Michelle

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

I’m a relatively new blogger – having only been blogging for the past 6 months, but my passion for blogging is relentless and my appetite HUGE.  I’ve learned quite a bit about blogging over the past few months – and and keen to continue with this curve.  But meanwhile, I thought I’d share my ‘hands on’ Top 20 tips with you:

1) Keep your posts relatively short. Having researched blogging to a good degree – then 500-800 words seems to be a good benchmark.  Short and concise is ok.

2) Keep your posts varied. Have some posts that are very factual – drawing on information that will help the users. Make some light and humorous so that the user understands that whilst you know your stuff, you’re not taking life too seriously. And they get an insight to your personality. Make some posts a little controversial or challenging the user – to stimulate conversation.

Prior to this post I ran a series of Marketing Plan Template posts – breaking up a plan template I created – not sure this was the best way to do things as I lost a subscriber (ouch) but hey, you live and learn.

3) Always watch your spellings. Poor spelling really does hinder credibility.

4) Use images in a post to break up the text and add some relevant interest. Check out www.flickr.com or www.istockphoto.com or www.fotolia.co.uk for some cheap yet very good quality shots.

5) Create interesting headings. The piece of advice I came across (Hubspot webinar which was pretty useful) advised that you should write the headline imagining that the user won’t even see the article. So the headline has to grab attention and tell the story.

6) Use keywords where you can – in headers and throughout the content of the article.

7) Keep it going. Stick to a tight publishing schedule. Blogging pays off over time – it’s a marathon rather than a sprint and it takes time to build up relevant and optimised content. I set my schedule to publish 3 times a week.  And I’ve posted twice today, which is unusual!

Insert a call to action such as Subscribe to Blog on the site so that users can easily subscribe. I use www.feedblitz.com but there are many others www.feedburner.com is popular too.

9) Claim your blog on Technorati – Google Blogsearch and Technorati are the two main ways that people search for blogs. That way others can find your blog.

10) Promote links to your blog on your website and in email footers, businesscards and other off and online relevant marketing materials.

11) Get your blog noticed by publishing links on social media vehicles such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Linked In (all social spaces relevant to your industry).

12) Try and provide one piece of practical ‘how to’ advice in each blog post. That way the user will learn that you are always going to provide something useful.

13) Don’t focus your posts around selling your products – users will switch off to this. What you should be focusing on is positioning yourself as someone, or a business, that is able to share advice, news and information which will prove useful to your readers. Remember, blogging is not about directly ‘selling’ your services – it’s a platform where you can advise and share information and knowledge about your products, services or expertise. Perfect ‘conversational’ marketing.

14) Be creative with where you procure your content – if you have published materials offline, then recreate them online. Duplicate content is a spiders web and I’m still figuring out what you can and can’t do (more on that in a later post) but what is clear is that you can post links to your site – and encourage the user to read the entire post via your site. (Hence why a great attention grabbing headline is necessary!). Top 10, 20 lists are good (hey, I’m practising what I preach) – but keep your posts mixed, don’t make every post a list! (Back to point 2 above).

15) Write short excerpts of your blog post – not duplicating the content – but summarising what your post and blog is about. Creating a short excerpt which is unique content each time, is a good tactic for giving users a taste of what the blog post is about, enables you to use keywords within the excerpt – and you can post this to social media sites to share news about your blog in a safe (non duplicate content way).

16) Follow the leader – if you find a respected and popular blogger/expert who focuses on areas you are interested in, your business area, subject etc – then write a post commenting on their post. Always cite the name of the author and provide the url directly back to the post you are talking about. This way you are joining ‘high volume’ and relevant and targeted conversations. And if you’re views matter – then they will be picked up on by others reading the ‘leaders’ blog. I haven’t been doing this – so can’t provide you with any direct feedback on how this works. But it’s a tactic that seems to make sense and I do follow certain bloggers and so I will start commenting and citing their opinions in future blog posts and see if that provides any traction to my blog.

17) As well as having a formal call to action – such as subscribe to blog, always ensure you include a link at the bottom of your blog post encouraging the user to subscribe and citing your blog’s URL. You’ll see that I do this below… (don’t forget to use the http:// before the www. url to ensure it links).

18) Be prepared to review lots of blogs, see what’s working for others and learn about blogging the hands on way. I’m new to blogging and whilst I love it – I learn new things about it every day… I don’t have to accept everything I read – but I am open to learning.

19) Join relevant forums and start joining in conversations – I recently joined http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk – and I throw in a blog post thread into the forum for debate. I recently did this with a post titled: Is your ringtone part of your personal brand. It caused quite a response on the forum – and is still adding traction to my blog. I don’t recommend doing this every time you are on the forum as people will think you are just there to flog your blog – but you can throw a post in occasionally, particularly if it’s worthy of debate – or relevant to a topic.

20) Always keep the user in mind. Remember, people are more interested in what you can do for them than what you do – so add value via your blog posts – and they will come and keep coming…

Happy blogging.

For more marketing news, views, tips and advice why not subscribe to my blog

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

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