4 blogging tips and 3 ways to promote it
"You got to be kidding, on top of EVERYTHING else I have to do myself, you want me to blog. Seriously, do you even know what it takes to be an entrepreneur?" Highly censored conversation with a friend and recent entrepreneur who wanted me to work out a social media marketing strategy. Having tried, and failed, at setting out on my own I do know what it means to head your own start-up and that is why I feel a blog is a critical element for any start-up. Here are my reasons:
Share your passion: Entrepreneurs are some of the most passionate people I have met. They totally believe in their idea and their ability to make it big. It is this passion/conviction that gives them the courage to give up six figure and more salaries and trudge the uncertain path of having their own set up. Unfortunately, their passion is only visible to their family and employees. A blog is an excellent way to share that passion with the world. You never know, who else might catch the infection...a VC, potential customers, potential business partners.
Share your expertise: Many entrepreneurs are domain experts. They have spent years honing their skills and knowledge and now want to use that for themselves. If you fall in that category, you have a lot to share. A blog is a great way to share your expertise and to make your clients comfortable with your company. Your knowledge will help build credibility for your company and go a long way in solving the one question most start-ups have to deal with: "Why should I go with you?"
Blogs are not websites: Blogs are personal, they are not the same as your company website. A website represents the formal online presence of your company. That is where you have details about your business, your products/services, customer interface and even your shopping cart. A blog on the other hand is an outlet for you, your personality and lets your community understand the person behind the show.
Connect and share: Helps you connect with peers in the industry or other start ups. Many of them share the issues, concerns you have or could have the solution you are looking for. A blog helps you get to them, and helps them understand your needs. If you are blogging on your expertise, you will be surprised as to how quickly a community forms around your blog.
Test your ideas: A blog is a great place to test your ideas. The feedback will help you refine and better it before implementation. If it is a bad idea, the community will let you know.
Social Networking Tool: Blogs are at the center of the whole social networking Web2.0 buzz. You can connect your blog to your Facebook page, twitter handle, Youtube channel and improve your chances of getting noticed.
Google loves blogs: Google and other search engines love blogs. Also there are a number of blogging directories that you can list in. A great way to get yourself and your business noticed.
Lorenzo Von Matterhorn effect: Okay, I picked that up from a cheesy dating rom-com. Basically in that particular episode the character has a dating playbook. One of the tricks he uses is the Lorenzo Von Matterhorn. Basically, he sets up a web presence for this fictional character--Lorenzo Von Matterhorn, where Matterhorn is an adventurous European billionaire. He goes to the bar, drops his name and goes away. The girl does a quick search for the name, finds the fake news all over Google and the guy gets his girl. TV dramatics apart, the reality is everyone is checking out potential business partners, investments, employees, employers. Having a strong web presence will go a long way in making the deal happen. A blog is the cornerstone of your online presence.
Yes, I know its takes time and effort (I've already spend three hours on this post and figure I still have a couple of hours to go) so here are four ways to do it really quickly and painlessly:
1) If writing is not your thing, consider a video blog (vlog) or even a podcast. You can actually blog straight into the webcam on your laptop and post. It's that easy.
2) Doesn't have to be long detailed posts full of wit or wisdom. It's personal, so develop a style that works for you. I'm a writer, I like writing so I do it. You can share an idea and that's it. Your community will get used to your style.
3) Don't worry about the writing style. Keep it conversational...but do try and avoid an over casual texting approach...that is irritating to read.
4) Repost. I actually write about one original post a week. Rest I repost other posts, videos, slides that I think are relevant for my community.
Finally, if I've convinced you to start blogging do these to get noticed by your community:
1) Republish: See if your posts can be republished. Mine are republished in Entrepreneur India, biztech2.com and sometimes the big daddy in my space socialmediatoday.com also picks up my posts.
2) Share: On Linkedin, twitter and Facebook. I have set up a fan page for my blog on Facebook and have joined relevant communities on Linkedin. They drive a lot of traffic my way. Twitter too helps as, increasingly people in this community are beginning to follow my tweets.
3) Outsource setting up and marketing of the blog: It has actually taken me more time to set up and market my blog, than post on it. I did it, because I had the time and because I wanted to see what works. But you're probably not going to have the time to write & market your blog and run your business. So consider outsourcing it. There are enough and more firms that will do everything from setting up the blog to marketing it. It is also not every expensive. I have compiled a list of social media marketing companies...take your pick or just google for them. You can then focus on the message, while they take care of selecting the right platform and ensuring maximum audience reach.
Showing posts with label google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label google. Show all posts
Friday, January 21, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
How Google can take your retail business "Places"
The silly pun in the headline notwithstanding, Google Places has become a serious business opportunity for retailers, especially since Google has tweaked the way listings show up on search results. Aimed primarily at boosting the relevance of local searches, think Just Dial and yellow pages, Google places is a fantastic opportunity for retailers to drive in more business.
Google Places also includes user reviews and ratings and unlike the local listings models of yellow pages or a just dial you can customize your search to get the best rated retail establishment. For example a search "chinese restaurants, mumbai" yielded this page:
By changing the search parameter to "best chinese restaurants, mumbai", the results change to:
The ratings seem to involve a combination of website reviews as well as user generated ratings from within the Google system. Google, of course, has made it easy for users to review/rate retail establishments. With the addition of hotpot (google.com/hotpot), the rating facility now becomes available on all Android smart phones, thereby enabling users to rate on the go.
What does this mean?
Retailers need to get listed on Google places. Google already has over 50 million business listings worldwide so chances are you are already there. However, you can simply check and if your business is not listed, then do so immediately. Listing on Google places is easy enough. Simply go to: www.google.com/places and list your business. The site allows for a fair amount of detail, including photos to be added to your listing--this is free by the way.
You can also choose to promote your business. The ads will appear on the right nav bar, where google ads traditionally appear.
Who should do this?
All retailers should get on this immediately. From shops, restaurants to professionals like lawyers, doctors, Chartered accounts, malls, cinemas get yourself or your firms listed.
Why should I list?
Local search is the most powerful way for customers to find you. The fact that Google has integrated its local search on the mobile platform means it is now more convenient for users to find the right establishment quickly. The overwhelming growth of android-based phones is only going to drive local search faster and finally Google is the big daddy of search...so if you want the business you need to be listed.
How to improve your rating?
You can get your customers to provide you a rating via the google.com/places website. A higher rating will help in your establishment figuring more prominently in search results.
Google Places also includes user reviews and ratings and unlike the local listings models of yellow pages or a just dial you can customize your search to get the best rated retail establishment. For example a search "chinese restaurants, mumbai" yielded this page:
 |
| Click to enlarge pic |
By changing the search parameter to "best chinese restaurants, mumbai", the results change to:
 |
| Click to enlarge pic |
The ratings seem to involve a combination of website reviews as well as user generated ratings from within the Google system. Google, of course, has made it easy for users to review/rate retail establishments. With the addition of hotpot (google.com/hotpot), the rating facility now becomes available on all Android smart phones, thereby enabling users to rate on the go.
What does this mean?
Retailers need to get listed on Google places. Google already has over 50 million business listings worldwide so chances are you are already there. However, you can simply check and if your business is not listed, then do so immediately. Listing on Google places is easy enough. Simply go to: www.google.com/places and list your business. The site allows for a fair amount of detail, including photos to be added to your listing--this is free by the way.
You can also choose to promote your business. The ads will appear on the right nav bar, where google ads traditionally appear.
Who should do this?
All retailers should get on this immediately. From shops, restaurants to professionals like lawyers, doctors, Chartered accounts, malls, cinemas get yourself or your firms listed.
Why should I list?
Local search is the most powerful way for customers to find you. The fact that Google has integrated its local search on the mobile platform means it is now more convenient for users to find the right establishment quickly. The overwhelming growth of android-based phones is only going to drive local search faster and finally Google is the big daddy of search...so if you want the business you need to be listed.
How to improve your rating?
You can get your customers to provide you a rating via the google.com/places website. A higher rating will help in your establishment figuring more prominently in search results.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Facebook Ads Vs Google Adwords
Keying in the above headline on Google will return thousands of articles, posts, comments, links and videos on a topic that could decide the eventual winner in the great FB Vs Google battle. It could also define how big and how fast you can grow your business with a small marketing budget.
It is an interesting debate, especially as both Facebook Ads and Google's Adwords have provided marketers never before access. Adwords is successful primarily because the ads are linked to keyword searches. So if the search term happens to be: "cannon autofocus camera, Mumbai" and you happen to be a dealer in Mumbai and have selected these keyword(s) your ad will show up. With the almost perfect mapping of intent to purchase and you, that is a match to die for. However, that is in theory. In practice, adwords' incredible success could also be the cause of its downfall. Most popular keywords have been purchased at very high CPC rates, therefore your cost of buying the keyword gets more expensive every day. You could look to analyse the long tail and buy cheaper keywords...but that is a time consuming task best left to experts...in other words more cost.
Adwords began as a perfect solution for small businesses, but have since been swamped by multi-billion dollar budgets of the big corporates. In the example stated above, you could be competing for the same keywords with Canon, Nikon, Sony, Samsung, Croma...thereby increasing the cost. Still, Adwords unique ability to serve up relevant ads to its searchers and connect audiences with business is unprecedented. With over 60 billion searches happening everyday Adwords is not going away anytime soon.
So where do Facebook Ads come in? Facebook offers another unique ability...that of narrow targeting. Because of all the information we provide Facebook--at the time we set up our profile--the company is able to offer unprecedented targeting options. Continuing our earlier example of the cameras, if you want to target 20+ something professionals in Mumbai, male or female, you can exactly get your target audience. This level of targeting has not been available before, and is the USP for Facebook ads.
But you are reaching a passive audience. They might not be in the market for a digital camera. Another drawback with Facebook ads, is the state of mind of the user. When we are facebooking, we might not be there to purchase a product or service, we are probably only socializing. An ad at that time will not achieve very high click through rates (CTRs). Facebook has partly solved the passive problem by providing both CPC and CPM ads. So if you are looking for camera buyers, the CPC option would ensure that only those seriously interested in your product will click...and therefore increase ROI. CPM ad world be more useful in a marketing campaign where visibility, not leads is a priority.
Another advantage of the Facebook ads is the fact that you can use the ad to build up fans to your company/product page. So if you have a page on FB, you could actually use the ads to increase the fan base. Why? Simple enough. A fan of your FB page is a long-term prospect. Getting one person to like your page also increases the potential of their friends circle becoming aware of your page...therefore increasing the networking impact. On the other hand, Google Adwords have no such impact. They will drive traffic when on and its back to square one when your campaign ends.
Eventually your ideal platform depends on your campaign objective and budget. While you're working that out, one quick clue...Facebook ads are relatively new and therefore cheaper than Google adwords. But that could change very soon. So hurry.
CPC: Cost per click. You only pay when a user clicks on your ad
CPM: Cost per thousand impressions. Irrespective of a click you pay.
It is an interesting debate, especially as both Facebook Ads and Google's Adwords have provided marketers never before access. Adwords is successful primarily because the ads are linked to keyword searches. So if the search term happens to be: "cannon autofocus camera, Mumbai" and you happen to be a dealer in Mumbai and have selected these keyword(s) your ad will show up. With the almost perfect mapping of intent to purchase and you, that is a match to die for. However, that is in theory. In practice, adwords' incredible success could also be the cause of its downfall. Most popular keywords have been purchased at very high CPC rates, therefore your cost of buying the keyword gets more expensive every day. You could look to analyse the long tail and buy cheaper keywords...but that is a time consuming task best left to experts...in other words more cost.
Adwords began as a perfect solution for small businesses, but have since been swamped by multi-billion dollar budgets of the big corporates. In the example stated above, you could be competing for the same keywords with Canon, Nikon, Sony, Samsung, Croma...thereby increasing the cost. Still, Adwords unique ability to serve up relevant ads to its searchers and connect audiences with business is unprecedented. With over 60 billion searches happening everyday Adwords is not going away anytime soon.
So where do Facebook Ads come in? Facebook offers another unique ability...that of narrow targeting. Because of all the information we provide Facebook--at the time we set up our profile--the company is able to offer unprecedented targeting options. Continuing our earlier example of the cameras, if you want to target 20+ something professionals in Mumbai, male or female, you can exactly get your target audience. This level of targeting has not been available before, and is the USP for Facebook ads.
But you are reaching a passive audience. They might not be in the market for a digital camera. Another drawback with Facebook ads, is the state of mind of the user. When we are facebooking, we might not be there to purchase a product or service, we are probably only socializing. An ad at that time will not achieve very high click through rates (CTRs). Facebook has partly solved the passive problem by providing both CPC and CPM ads. So if you are looking for camera buyers, the CPC option would ensure that only those seriously interested in your product will click...and therefore increase ROI. CPM ad world be more useful in a marketing campaign where visibility, not leads is a priority.
Another advantage of the Facebook ads is the fact that you can use the ad to build up fans to your company/product page. So if you have a page on FB, you could actually use the ads to increase the fan base. Why? Simple enough. A fan of your FB page is a long-term prospect. Getting one person to like your page also increases the potential of their friends circle becoming aware of your page...therefore increasing the networking impact. On the other hand, Google Adwords have no such impact. They will drive traffic when on and its back to square one when your campaign ends.
Eventually your ideal platform depends on your campaign objective and budget. While you're working that out, one quick clue...Facebook ads are relatively new and therefore cheaper than Google adwords. But that could change very soon. So hurry.
CPC: Cost per click. You only pay when a user clicks on your ad
CPM: Cost per thousand impressions. Irrespective of a click you pay.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Quality trumps Quantity
One of the early lures or promises of internet marketing has been its ability to reach out to huge volumes of users for a fraction of offline marketing costs and do this instantly. A billion emails ids is a small marketing campaign, as is a billion pageviews.
However, as most of us discovered these numbers do not really translate into substantial business gains. Marketing emails quickly became spam and most of us either deleted them or built elaborate spam filters around our email IDs. Most websites promise and indeed continue to deliver massive amounts of pageviews, but ad click through rates do not match the expectation of most marketers. The problem again is one of relevance. Marketers are generally unable to get to their target audience, as audience profiling on the web is still far from mature. In this scenario marketers have little option but to try and reach as big a base as possible…expecting some of the reach to be relevant. One of the most successful online advertising options is Google adwords.
This program is at the heart of Google’s revenues and works with the simple premise of providing relevant ads based on keywords that users search for. So if your business deals in cameras, all you have to do is buy the relevant keywords and users typing those keywords would see your ads. Simple, yet the system has its flaws. For one thing, most of the popular keywords are very expensive, so the cost of each conversion goes up. Second, even keyword mapping has not proved to be as relevant as it seems. Bounce rates from SEM campaigns can be very high. Basically means you paying to drawn irrelevant audiences to your site.
In this environment, Social Media Marketing takes the best of online marketing, which is the volumes, and adds loads of relevance to create a killer marketing tool. The fact that you can do it for minimum cost is a tremendous bonus. The main advantage an SMM marketing campaign is its ability to attract and hold relevant audiences. This is because an SMM campaign would actually require the user to participate…thereby creating an environment of active consumption, not the passive consumption mode that is the norm for most marketing strategies. For example on twitter of Facebook, you will have to either “follow” the product or campaign or “like” it. This indicates a first level of interest on what is on offer. A good SMM campaign will then ensure a high degree of user engagement to get the message across.
This brings me back to the SMM campaign for compareindia.com, which is underway on Facebook. It has been two months since we began a page on FB, which we populate everyday with information on products and prices. The number of “likes” per day has gone up from about 25 to 27-28, people liking our FB page. We have also seen an increased level of user interaction on the page. For now the interaction is between users and compareindia staff. Our target is to get users to interact among themselves, thereby creating a great buyer community. That has not happened yet, but that could also be due to the low number of fans. We have a little under 1500 fans, and as this number goes up, I expect the level of interaction to also increase. As stated earlier our objective to set up this page, was to drive traffic to our website. The numbers from FB continue to increase impressively. While the base is still low, current pageviews growth is at 75%, the highest among all other traffic sources to our site. Also the quality of this traffic is much better than what we get from search engines. By quality, I mean users from our FB page do more on the site and spend more time there, than users coming to us from searches.
User behavior on compareindia of traffic from FB Vs Google
* Bounce rate refers to users coming to the site and leaving it after viewing just one page. So a higher percentage is not good news.
All in all, SMM is helping compareindia reach out to a wider audience. The only problem we have is with the pace of this reach. It would be great if we could get more users to “like” our page everyday than the current 27-28 users.
This article first appeared in the November 2010 issue of Entreprenuer. It has also been published online on biztech2.com. The link is here: http://biztech2.in.com/blogs/editorial-blogs/quality-trumps-quantity/95382/0
However, as most of us discovered these numbers do not really translate into substantial business gains. Marketing emails quickly became spam and most of us either deleted them or built elaborate spam filters around our email IDs. Most websites promise and indeed continue to deliver massive amounts of pageviews, but ad click through rates do not match the expectation of most marketers. The problem again is one of relevance. Marketers are generally unable to get to their target audience, as audience profiling on the web is still far from mature. In this scenario marketers have little option but to try and reach as big a base as possible…expecting some of the reach to be relevant. One of the most successful online advertising options is Google adwords.
This program is at the heart of Google’s revenues and works with the simple premise of providing relevant ads based on keywords that users search for. So if your business deals in cameras, all you have to do is buy the relevant keywords and users typing those keywords would see your ads. Simple, yet the system has its flaws. For one thing, most of the popular keywords are very expensive, so the cost of each conversion goes up. Second, even keyword mapping has not proved to be as relevant as it seems. Bounce rates from SEM campaigns can be very high. Basically means you paying to drawn irrelevant audiences to your site.
In this environment, Social Media Marketing takes the best of online marketing, which is the volumes, and adds loads of relevance to create a killer marketing tool. The fact that you can do it for minimum cost is a tremendous bonus. The main advantage an SMM marketing campaign is its ability to attract and hold relevant audiences. This is because an SMM campaign would actually require the user to participate…thereby creating an environment of active consumption, not the passive consumption mode that is the norm for most marketing strategies. For example on twitter of Facebook, you will have to either “follow” the product or campaign or “like” it. This indicates a first level of interest on what is on offer. A good SMM campaign will then ensure a high degree of user engagement to get the message across.
This brings me back to the SMM campaign for compareindia.com, which is underway on Facebook. It has been two months since we began a page on FB, which we populate everyday with information on products and prices. The number of “likes” per day has gone up from about 25 to 27-28, people liking our FB page. We have also seen an increased level of user interaction on the page. For now the interaction is between users and compareindia staff. Our target is to get users to interact among themselves, thereby creating a great buyer community. That has not happened yet, but that could also be due to the low number of fans. We have a little under 1500 fans, and as this number goes up, I expect the level of interaction to also increase. As stated earlier our objective to set up this page, was to drive traffic to our website. The numbers from FB continue to increase impressively. While the base is still low, current pageviews growth is at 75%, the highest among all other traffic sources to our site. Also the quality of this traffic is much better than what we get from search engines. By quality, I mean users from our FB page do more on the site and spend more time there, than users coming to us from searches.
User behavior on compareindia of traffic from FB Vs Google
| Parameter | FB Traffic | Google Traffic |
| Pages/Visit | 3.04 | 1.83 |
| Average time on site | 3 mins 57 secs | 1 min 28 sec |
| Bounce Rate* | 53.14% | 60.41% |
All in all, SMM is helping compareindia reach out to a wider audience. The only problem we have is with the pace of this reach. It would be great if we could get more users to “like” our page everyday than the current 27-28 users.
This article first appeared in the November 2010 issue of Entreprenuer. It has also been published online on biztech2.com. The link is here: http://biztech2.in.com/blogs/editorial-blogs/quality-trumps-quantity/95382/0
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