Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Strategies. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Strategies. Afficher tous les articles
samedi 12 novembre 2016
6 Strategies to Brand Your Blog
Whether you already have a blog or you’re just getting started, there are two fundamental truths about blogging. The first is that almost every niche in blogging is completely glutted. And the second is that despite that fact, it’s easy to stand out. If your approach to blogging is to slap up a generic theme onto WordPress and write average content, it’s going to be harder to create a memorable project. But with just a couple of hours invested in setting up the foundation, you can lay out a blog that will catch people’s attention and bring them back time and again.
Let me address two different scenarios. The first is that you’re thinking of starting a blog, and you need a map in order to do that. The second is that you have started a blog, but it hasn’t really taken off the way you hoped. Whether you’re setting the stage or working on a blog reboot, here is a list of six things you can take a look at to turbocharge your blog branding.
1. What’s your unique selling proposition? Or, what’s your why?
One of the basic tenets of good marketing is the concept of understanding your unique selling proposition (or USP). Your USP is essentially answering the question: what makes you different from every other blog out there today talking about the same topic?
Sometimes answering that question is really easy. Let’s say, for giggles, that you’re in the knitting space. A general blog on knitting may or may not find followers. But if you “niche down” your niche, you stand a much better chance. What about knitting 101 for absolute beginners? Even better, what about knitting for knitting haters? How about a project a day that knitters can explore with their kids? What about extreme knitting or hipster knitting or wearing something you’ve knitted every day for a year and journaling that experience?
Your USP can be a hook, or it can be the angle you take to dive into the content. Whatever it is, make sure you have one and that you consistently and ruthlessly apply it to everything you post. Your USP can also be (and should also be!) connected to why you do what you do. Rather than go at length on this topic, let me introduce you to Simon Sinek, who says it better than anyone I’ve ever heard talk about this issue.
Simon Sinek on TED
2. Memorable Title? Great. But associate it with your name.
One of the hottest bloggers and writers out there is Danielle LaPorte (
There are two things to think about – the first is that a great blog name is memorable, matches your URL (which is preferably a .com) and says what you’re about. The second is that even a great blog name -“White Hot Truth” is a fabulous example – may eventually just be one aspect of the brand you’re trying to build. So from the beginning, make sure that even if your URL is not your own name, that you’re associating yourself with the brand name. We like to buy from, listen to, and relate to other human beings, not to nameless, faceless entities. This is especially true in the online space.
Pat Flynn from the blog
3. Rock the tagline – explain what you do, with feeling.
Whenever I’m talking to a client or attending a business strategy session, one of the major things people are freaking out about is their tagline. Whether their brand is their name, or even if the business they are working on is unintelligible related to what they do, people intuitively grasp the importance of the tagline.
Sometimes people are in love with language, and they want something that sounds beautiful. “Leading soulful sojourns for women seeking adventure and rejuvenation.” It’s not perfect, but if you’re kind of a hippie retreat leader with a bit of an edge, it could work as a starting point.
Other times, you’re looking for something that more conveys a fundamental truth in a voice that works with your audience. Internet web show host David Siteman Garland absolutely kicks ass on his show The Rise to the Top. You know what his tagline is? The #1 Non-Boring Business Show. Not only is this absolutely true, it gives you a sense of who David is and how he approaches his business.
There are three questions that can be helpful when you’re doing your tagline:
- What do you do, for whom, and how do you do it?
- What is the emotional experience you want your customers to have? (And therefore, people to associate with your brand)?
- What words do you or others consistently associate with your blog, content, subject area, you?
4. Pick a look & feel, and carry it across your blog/site/social media presence.
With WordPress essentially taking over the internet, it’s now easy to get a great looking website. Thousands of free themes exist. If you want a more personalized look, you can purchase a higher end theme or have one custom designed. Your look and feel should make sense with your subject matter, be pleasant to look at, and speak to what you’ve already tried to create in terms of your name, your tagline, and more.
But here’s my big takeaway. You’ll figure out the look and feel aspect of your branding. You’ll see something you like or you’ll hire someone to get you there. But remember that branding your blog doesn’t stop at the blog itself. It’s really important that you also have a consistent look and feel across all your content channels. Your Twitter background should integrate. Your Facebook cover photo needs to match. Etc. So sit down, do an audit of all your points of contact, and make sure that your brand is carrying out across them all.
5. Tell your story – compellingly – on your About page. After you find your voice.
The final powerful tool that you have to brand your blog is your voice. To use the examples above, Pat Flynn’s voice is like your best friend who also happens to be a guy making ,000 a month on the internet and happy to tell you how he’s doing it. Danielle LaPorte calls her daily newsletter Truth Bombs and for me, that says it all. It’s raw insight, bold delivery, and a seer-like wisdom she’s pouring down on you. So when you speak, or write, or vid-cast, how would people describe your voice?
For more on voice, I highly recommend you check out the work of
I can’t tell you exactly what your voice will be. I can tell you what it won’t be. It won’t be you trying to sound smart. It won’t be you using your “now I’m writing and must speak formal” voice. It won’t be you saying what you think others want to hear.
It’ll be a little bit how you sound when you’re at a dinner party, maybe after a glass of wine or one too many Diet Cokes. The subject has moved to something you are gripping the table with passion excited about, and all eyes are on you. You’re in your zone of genius. You’re riveting, and you’re pouring your guts out because you can’t help it. Your voice will probably sound a little like that.
So mess around with it. Try writing in some different ways, and give samples to people you trust. Your mom, your man, your best friend, a colleague, your old English teacher. Ask people which ones feel real. Or throw a bunch of content into the world and see which ones light people up. Especially if those people are your target audience…..that’s your voice.
And then bring that voice into your copy, and start with your About Page. Here’s where you want to tell your story. I don’t mean, “Mr. Charles Hinkerstein is a proud graduate of Oxford, where he studied the fascinating reproduction of the earthworm.” I mean, “Hi, I’m Charlie and I have an unusual passion: the English earthworm. Not just the English earthworm – but the English earthworm getting it on. And I went to the hallowed halls of a thousand year old British University to get the best teachers in the world on this topic.”
Write your entire story there, just pour your heart out. Then edit ruthlessly, so you’re authentic and concise, compelling and choiceful. Once you find that voice, you’ll be well on your way to crafting a blog that people will want to visit again and again.
6. Get reliable hosting for a fast-loading site that stays online.
Once you’ve invested in the look and in the copy of your site, an important but often overlooked aspect of good branding is
And once that happens, it can be difficult to get those visitors back – thus damaging their image of the brand you are so carefully crafting. Ensure that you choose a host that has fast load times, is optimized for the type of back-end software that you’re running (e.g. WordPress), and has customer support in case you do run into an issue. The right foundation and hosting will add rocket fuel to all the other work you’ve done on your blog branding.
Page 24 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed
5 Apps and Strategies to Improve Your Social Media Productivity
Showing up on social media is no longer optional; an active presence on the channels where your customers hang out is crucial to finding new prospects,
But finding the time to do it all is really hard.
A
Scheduling posts in advance
Recommended app: Buffer
Strategy: Set up your posts and status updates to post automatically, in advance.
Changing your relationship with time and social media is one of the best ways to get traction without having to panic about having access to Twitter and Facebook three times a day to post content. Before we dive into the specific tools that can help you, let’s look at what this really means. Scheduling your posts isn’t just about adding a post to WordPress the day before it’s set to go live.
Really changing the time – social media relationship is about
Once you’ve sketched out a plan, the other key to success is scheduling the time to generate the content. It’s important to figure out how to effectively manage your time around content creation. There are many options: outsource; create blocks of time where you focus exclusively on content generation for 3 or 4 hours at a stretch; or dedicate 30 minutes a day to the process. Whatever works for you, figure out and stick to it.
There are a whole host of programs out there that will allow you to do this with ease.
Getting Started With Buffer
For purposes of this article, I’m going to recommend that you consider going with Buffer. It’s one of the most natural tools, in that it doesn’t schedule in bursts and user feedback suggests that a broad range of people from social media experts to regular small business users love the program.
Here’s a quick tutorial on how to use it.
- Visit
- Create a new account by entering an email address and password of your choice, and selecting “Create New Account.” A window will then open that allows you to install an extension to your browser.
- Click the orange “Install in Seconds” button. Go through the brief, intuitive install process.
- Connect each of your accounts to Buffer. You then are able to post in real time by typing something in the box and clicking “Post Now.” To schedule something for later, click the “Add to Buffer.” You’ll receive the confirmation screen advising you of when Buffer elected to schedule it for. This random timing (in my case, 8:51am EST tomorrow morning) is meant to feel organic and avoid bursts of content that tend to occur with awkward scheduling.
So install Buffer (or one of the other recommended apps if you prefer) and experiment. See how much more active you are with tools like Buffer working on your behalf 24/7.
Blocking time in your day for social media – then leaving it
Recommended tool: Your calendar
Strategy: Stop wasting time on social media by specifically scheduling time.
Another factor that contributes to the idea of social media as a time suck is that we can be on it – literally all day. We go about our days with Facebook open in our browser. We check our Twitter feed on our phone while waiting in line. That’s fine when you’re following vacation pictures from your best friend’s trip or watching everyone’s reactions to the latest game.
But when your social media use transitions to a marketing strategy or part of your business, schedule it the way you’d schedule any other activity. Hopefully you’re already using an app discussed above to preschedule your content, so block out a maximum of 30 minutes a day to add any breaking news content, respond to comments, etc.
There are a few ways to do this. Use your social media time as a way to ease into your day. Or check in at the end of the day, and catch up on all the day’s news. If you are a bit more of a junkie, preschedule 3 10 minute sessions throughout your day (morning, afternoon, end of day) where you get to interact.
Use the rapid fire approach. The goal here is not to aim for 30 minutes and then be happy when it’s 60. The goal is to transform your understanding of what it means to be productive on social media by taking massive action and getting massive results within the allotted time. In order to do this, you need to triage priority messages. Consider having lists within specific sites that highlight your Most Important People (MIPs). Your MIPs can be personal, such as family and friends, or they can be high value professional contacts such as business partners, clients, or thought leaders in your field. Start with your MIPs and then allocate whatever time is left over to your general stream.
To keep yourself honest, schedule your 30 minutes between hard appointments that will force you to stop. If your schedule is more fluid, use a timer that will shriek and remind you that you should be done. If technology or calendaring won’t work, consider using an accountability partner that will pry the laptop/mobile phone/iPad from your fingers until you learn to be honest about the time you’re spending on social media.
Save content ideas easily
Recommended App: Evernote
Strategy: Reduce the amount of time it takes to write content by organizing your systems for tracking ideas and inspiration
If you haven’t used
Evernote is a program that allows you to add notes, take photographs and tag them by keyword, and more. This means that from a simple handheld device, you can create an evolving database of your best ideas, inspiration you encounter, real time whiteboard brainstorms, and more. You can then share these ideas via various social media channels, or call them up when you are drafting your next tranche of content.
Evernote and its place in our strategy are important for a couple of reasons. Feeding the content beast is one of the biggest issues with maintaining an active social media presence. It can be a huge time sink, even if it’s carefully planned out. One of the major aspects in the process is to ensure that as you encounter ideas when you’re reading, working or in conversation that you can efficiently recall those when you sit down to write content or generate lists for your freelance writers to work on.
Here’s how Evernote works. You begin by downloading the app to your phone. You’re then able to snap photos with your built in camera. When the photograph is taken, you’re able to add titles and keywords which can later be searched as well as the possibility to add to folder, etc. For a complete tutorial on Evernote,
If this, then that with ifttt
Recommended App: Ifttt
Strategy: Automate routine tasks related to archiving, notifications, and more
Personally, I use Ifttt to help me with some of the cross-platform activities. So for example, as you browse your Twitter feed you might find motivational quotes that you like and later want to use in a different context. One way to keep track of them is to Favorite them; but using Ifttt, you can set up a trigger where anytime you favorite a quote on Twitter, you can have it added to a file on your Dropbox or a list in Evernote.
Another way to use Ifttt is to help you track priority information or discussions happening in social media. For example, if anyone on a selected list of people tags you in a post, tags you in a picture, or tweets at you, you can have Ifttt configured to send you a text message. This can help you respond quickly to priority conversations with valued contacts and customers.
So whether your challenge is staying organized, responding quickly, effectively archiving materials, or just automating routine processes, Ifttt can get you headed in the right direction.
Find your tribe online
Recommended App: Rapportive
Strategy: Maximize your productivity by spending your time cultivating the right relationships
Sometimes the hardest part of social media is reaching your audience, especially when they are active beyond the standard channels of Facebook and Twitter. Two of the biggest myths I hear related to social media focus on the fact that it’s difficult to reach the right people, or that you need to pursue numbers just for the sake of getting your followers up. While it certainly helps to have a robust following, it’s more relevant to
With
Here are three more ideas to connect with the right people online:
- Centralize your contacts on your computer in one place, like an outlook file. Then ensure that you’ve connected with all your contacts on priority networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Each of these sites also allows you to check for contacts on other social networks. It can be time consuming to build these linkages, but they can give your social connections a tremendous bump.
- Spend time expanding your reach by participating in groups on LinkedIn, joining Fan Pages on Facebook, and answering questions on Quora on subjects related to your area of interest. By proactively reaching out, you’ll make new connections and quickly gauge the individuals that are interesting and influencers that are worth your time to follow.
- Develop a short list of individuals whose work you admire, and set out to build a relationship with them. Let me be clear; I don’t mean stalking. Read their blog posts and comment. Interact with them on social media. Share resources that might be useful on topics that are of interest. Consider pitching a guest post or creating value for them in some other way. The goal is not to barrage them, but rather to make an investment in insightful and interesting interactions that can help you become a valued colleague and friend.
The time you spend on social media can help you reap great rewards in terms of your bottom line. The key is to be strategic about how you invest your time, and use planning and tools to maximize the returns you get for the time you invest.
Page 22 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed
Web Hosting and Marketing: A Blend of Effective Strategies
When it comes to web marketing, the effectiveness of a web hosting service is intricately tied to the success of a campaign. The impact of hosting issues on a business’s advertising efforts can be either obvious or hidden. So it is first and foremost important to
Fast and Steady Wins the Race
Source:
The speed at which someone can access and browse your website is always an important factor for maintaining a successful and reputable web presence. But the important of speed is amplified when it is considered relative to PPC/SEO web marketing campaigns. In 2012, the
You’re out there designing ads, analyzing market trends, and brainstorming ideas to ensure you have the best ad to catch your consumer’s eye. You’re doing a great job and tons of people are clicking your ad and finding themselves on the About Us page of your website. But it’s taking a full minute for your site’s homepage to finish loading. The consumer is still interested so they wait. But then they click on the tab for more information about how much lessons cost. And they find themselves waiting…again. They really want to know how much a lesson is so they stick around. They find the lesson they want so they click the tab to sign up. More waiting. At this point, they are just a couple clicks away from becoming your next customer but their patience runs out. They go back to Google and search again. This time, they click through to a different website…and it’s your competitor’s. The page loads immediately and moments later, they’ve secured a surfing lesson for next weekend.
Your web hosting service has just lost you a precious customer. And because you pay per click, that means the more brilliant your marketing campaign is, the more money you end up losing when those clicks don’t convert. So if you’re up to speed but your web hosting service isn’t, it might be wisest to re-evaluate.
Hosting Uptime: 24 Hours a Day
Investing in
Similarly, if your hosting service uses “masked redirects” or “masked forwarding,” Google will have a hard time ranking your site accurately… if at all. Google
Bells and Whistles
When you’re investing time and money trying to drive customers to your site, you want to back that up with a strong user experience. Hosting issues like server time-outs and slow speeds will definitely detract from your marketing efforts and at worst, will destroy your campaigns completely. But some web hosting services can actually boost your campaigns. So let’s assume you’ve done your research and found some web hosting services that offer speeds and uptime percentages that you can actually work with. The next thing to consider is what types of marketing tools they provide in addition to their general, baseline features. For example, some web hosting services offer pre-built shopping carts so that you don’t have to worry about creating an efficient, user-friendly checkout experience from scratch.
Location, Location, Location
The Internet has revolutionized the consumer experience. But at the end of the day, people are still people and ultimately, the factors that have traditionally driven a successful business are the same in the Internet age. Just as retail stores must maintain a clean environment and organized inventory, web-based businesses need to make sure customers leave with a desire to come back. “Web hosting, web hosting, web hosting” might not have the same ring to it as “location, location, location” but the message holds true.
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Page 20 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed
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