121: What’s the Key to a Promotion Strategy?

Filed Under 121 Conversation, Business Life, Successful Blog | 5 Comments

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A Strategic Conversation

Where we left the conversation, DAWUD MIRACLE asked me (and you),

What do you feel is necessary to create an effective strategy to promote a business?.

Wow! I’m grinning. Okay, Dawud, you’ve got me now. Strategy and promotion in one question. Hmmmm. I bet my readers will do better than I do on this one. Maybe I’d better unpack the question first.

Strategy . . . I’ve always liked the idea but forth in the book, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant. Much of why I like it is in the title — find an uncontested space where competition is not. The idea is simple. . . . Why swim in the shark invested blood-red ocean where the fight is always on? Why not swim in the calm blue ocean where I can be a category of one?

For once in my life, maybe the fact that I’m different (you are too — right?) can be a fabulous plus if I turn it to my advantage. That’s a strategic thought!

Strategy for promotion . . . As I look back I see a two-part blue ocean-type strategy that has been a part of tpromoting the business I’ve built behind Successful-Blog.

A great product is its own promotion. I’ve created unique value my ideal customers love. The Perfect Virtual Manager — even the concept that we all deserve a personal manager as a rock star might have — has been helping entrepreneurs, small businesses, and a corporation or two take a new look. We’re working as partners to focus their business and find their ideal customers. The PVM is a one-of-a-kind business support structured around a foundational plan I’ve built during 22 years of training people who teach.

The new series, Inside-Out Thinking, in like manner, is unique in an Internet of “me too” content. It promotes itself. The series is something readers need and hasn’t been offered before. The series provides the hows and whys about building a solid business foundation and finding the ideal customers who love what we love to do. By conceiving and designing from my own experience and proven track record — yours might not be where mine is, but you have yours — I’ve created something others cannot also create. They can follow, but they can’t duplicate it.

Open Comment Night, the Virtual Conference last March, this one2one conversation that we’re sharing are all value offerings that I can create unique customer value. Soon enough as I focus my content in the areas that reflect what I’m particularly good at discussing, my competition begins to fade.

Promotion. Promotion is easiest when you ask cusomters to choose between two options:

  • A. YOU
  • B. Everyone else in the world.

Here’s my most effective promotion strategy.

Set up a choice between me and the rest of the world. Then promote the rest of the world.

And since this is a one2one conversation… to Dawud, (and you too)

How important is strategy to your business? How does your strategy get built?

If you’re reading this, I’d love to hear your answer too.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

One2One is a cross-blog conversation. You can see the entire One-2-One Conversation series on the Successful Series page.

The Key to Link Lists and 15 Focused Resource Link Lists

Filed Under Perfect Virtual Manager, Strategy, Successful Blog | 4 Comments

About Mixing Love and Currency

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Noticing the purpose of a list — who it serves — establishes who values it and for how much. Lists of blogs can be useful or empty. When we build one, it helps to be sure we we know our intent. Andy Sernovitz passes on a great message in his book World of Mouth Marketing, and he also said it at SOBCon07.

Mixing love and money is usually a bad idea.

The Key to Link Lists

Think about link lists. The key to offering a link list that adds value, not just noise is in its intent and usefulness to readers.

An outstanding link list offers readers

  • links the blogger has researched and visited
  • clear anchor text in the links
  • a description of each link
  • a reason for recommending the links, as appropriate
  • a compelling reasons for readers to care

Link lists that serve readers attract relationships as well as backlinks.

A Word about Link Trains Link trains and other meme lists can offer a quick jump in statistics. However, they do this by making forced links — links that didn’t happen through the natural passing on of content. Though the intent may be generous, such meme-lists often get extended without review. They can become a list of blogs compiled to gain rank and without regard to the quality of the list.

Some lists are meant to gain backlinks, page rank or authority may garnering more traffic. Yet the traffic that comes finds a content empty list. So the traffic doesn’t stay. A blogger can start building more lists to continue getting traffic. It’s about traffic not readers. Content has gone away.

15 Focused Resource Link Lists

Resource lists are organized to offer relevant and focused resources to readers. These lists require work beyond coding to exist. Most of these lists are generated by research, formed from the opinion of bloggers, result from a test or algorithm, or are the product of a group project.

Here are 15 examples organized by type.

Group Projects

Awards and Subject Lists

Top 5, 10, 25, etc. Lists

  • 100 Blogs We Love by PCWorld
    Here are our favorite stops in the blogosphere, covering everything from high tech to low comedy and all manner of pursuits in between.
  • Webware 100 - Top 100 Web Applications
    These are the best Web applications there are. We know because you told us.
  • Top 10 Most Practical Blogs for Entrepreneurs
    Scott Allen’s service is “To help you filter that infoglut down to a more manageable level, here is my list of the ten most practical blogs for entrepreneurs.”
  • Top 10 CEO Blogs
    Mario Sundar describes his list, “if you want to get a feel for some big-time thinkers espouse their company’s strategy a bit, then maybe the following ten may be worth a ride. Here goes, my Top 10 CEO blogs . . .”
  • The Top 10 Sports Blogs According to Me
    With all due respect to Ballhype and with full awareness that I’m going with my gut over, you know, actual data, I think my top-10 list holds up, even if it is just a subjective-yet-educated list based on perceived traffic, quality and notoriety.

A list of resource links with ancedotal information makes it easier for readers to find the useful bit and move on. Offering resources that make life easier is a service worth offering. Finding ways to organize the list to help readers save time is a sign of respect and service they’ll notice.

Have you seen a remarkable link post? What sort of link posts do you appreciate? Which ones get you to click away as soon as you see them?

– ME “Liz” Strauss
Can you list the reasons to Work with Liz? Too many. It’s such a good idea.

Strategy: All of the Information Available

Filed Under Perfect Virtual Manager, Strategy, Successful Blog | 16 Comments

Knowing What We Can Know

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Strategy is setting a vision, making a path, knowing what we can know, and planning for the variables. To know what we know . . . That means having command of the information available.

For a while now, new bloggers, mostly those who are younger, have emailed or IMed to ask me the most basic questions. It’s usually obvious from their message that they haven’t done the any research to answer the question on their own. I used to answer and send them on their way again. I don’t anymore. Now I point them in the direction where they might look.

Are they wrong to ask? No.

It’s always good to ask someone who’s been there. Though you might argue when to do that.

But they’re wrong if they rely on me to do their homework. It hurts them for several reasons.

  • I don’t have all of the answers.
  • My information could be dated.
  • I’m wrong as often as I’m right.
  • They’re not investing in themselves.

I’m only one source in a world of the Internet. We often stop at the first answer to our questions. The first answer isn’t necessarily the best. It’s a great strategy to seek out all of the information available.

  • Do a search.
  • Ask someone who usually agrees, someone who usually disagrees, and someone who usually doesn’t have an opinion.
  • Ask an expert.

Having a strategy to find all of the information available at the beginning sets the foundation to build upon. Curiosity is a great teacher.

end of story.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to help you find your strategy, click on the Work with Liz!!

Related
Strategy: 40 Outstanding Blog Links, Bookmark Carefully!
20 Blog Promotion Guides to Inform Your Strategy
Strategy: How to Get Maximum Benefit from Complex Link Lists

Strategy: 40 Outstanding Blog Links, Bookmark Carefully!

Filed Under Links, Perfect Virtual Manager, Strategy, Successful Blog | 29 Comments

Time Management and Research

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What is blog reading and commenting to you? Is it entertainment, interaction, or research for your work? How much time do you spend on the average day reading and commenting on blogs. Think about that before you read further.

I’ll do it too.

Ready? Whatever our answers, we have defined blog reading and commenting to us and quantified how much time we invest in them. Now consider the time we have available in a day. What percent of that time is blog reading and commenting?

Does that leave enough

  • time for our family and friends?
  • time for our work?
  • time for ourselves and for giving away?

If people read as many feeds as they say, I’m guessing it does not. Time is a resource we cannot replace.

Ten Blogs on Blogging

Everyone seems to know Darren’s ProBlogger, our friend from SOBCon Lorelle.Wordpress.com, the “evil” John Chow.com and Successful-Blog here. These are ten others in (no particular order) that offer consistent and quality information about blogging as well.

  1. Bloggingbasics101.com

  2. chrisg.com

  3. BloggingPro

  4. Vaspersthegrate.Blogspot.com

  5. A List Apart

  6. Smartwealthyrich.com

  7. eMomsatHome.com

  8. Alister Cameron, Blogologist

  9. Daily Blog Tips

  10. Buildabetterblog.com

Top Ten Blogs for Writers

For the Top 10 Blogs for Writers Mike Stelzner asked his 20,000 newsletter readers to participate in the nominations. I’ve shortened his definitions of the quality that each blog represents.

  1. Brian Clark’s CopyBlogger: does an amazing job of helping writers improve

  2. Deborah Ng’s Freelance Writing Jobs: for freelance writers seeking new work

  3. Tom Chandler’s Copywriter Underground: regular doses of inspiration and writing tips

  4. Liz Strauss’s Successful-Blog: amazing insights into the craft of writing

  5. Angela Booth’s Writing Blog: something useful for all writers

  6. Kristen King’s InkThinker: improving the written word

  7. Anne Wayman’s The Golden Pencil: gold nuggets of information to freelance writers

  8. Carson Brackney’s Content Done Better: write better copy and make a living (now by Michi Beck)

  9. Dianna Huff’s B2B Marcom Writer Blog: marketing communications copywriting

  10. Allison Winn Scotch’s Ask Allison: For writers looking to break into the publishing world, be sure to check this one out.

Top Ten Blogs on Making Money

The Top Ten Blogs About Making Money in which Shane spends an entire blog post explaining how he came to choose his top ten.

  1. ProBlogger

  2. Shoemoney

  3. Self Made Minds

  4. Entrepreneur’s Journey by Yaro Starak

  5. John Chow.com

  6. Net Business Blog

  7. Bootmoney

  8. Andy Beard

  9. Dosh Dosh

  10. Mike’s Money Making Mission

Top Ten Web Analytics Blogs

This is the April 2007 update ranking from Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik. Be sure to read the post that details how the ranking is done.

  1. Occam’s Razor

  2. Web Metrics Guru

  3. Google Analytics Blog

  4. Web Analytics World

  5. Web Analytics Demystified-Eric T. Peterson’s Analytics Weblog

  6. Increasing your website’s conversion rate

  7. Unofficial Google Analytics Blog

  8. Lies, Damned Lies…

  9. WebAnalytics.be Blog

  10. Web Analysis, Behavioral Targeting and Advertising

I gathered this set with the intention of an offering that would cross blogging cultures. In that way, I’m hoping we all might explore, expnd our tastes, but leave room to let some go early on.

We choose from thousands of books to read and movies to see. Let’s do the same with the blogs that we read. I offer this set of 4 lists of 10 blogs with the hope that we’ll keep the those give us the best return on our investment.

How do you choose the blogs that serve your purpose?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to help you find your strategy, click on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar. Is Your Business Stuck? I’ve Found a Way to Help

Related
20 Blog Promotion Guides to Inform Your Strategy
Strategy: How to Get Maximum Benefit from Complex Link Lists
The 5-Point Strategy to a Powerful Network
Money Strategy, a Dead Horse, and Folks

20 Blog Promotion Guides to Inform Your Strategy

Filed Under Marketing, Perfect Virtual Manager, Strategy, Successful Blog | 43 Comments

Strategy

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Strategy, a solid plan that moves to a completed vision, doesn’t come on it’s own. Some folks appear to do it naturally. The part that is natural is that they are big picture thinkers. The part that doesn’t show is that they have done significant work. The two together is what makes it look easy to observers.

Strategy starts with knowing the territory. What Do the Other Guys Do?

20 Blog Promotion Guides

It’s silly to start from stratch to devise the unique promotion strategy for a business or a blog. That’s flying in the dark and re-inventing the wheel at the same time. Other folks do good things that work. It’s only efficient to know what folks who went before us did. Seeing their finished work can inform our choices in these ways.

  • We can see the standard approach.
  • We can imagine our version without producing it.
  • If we look as a customer would, we can see what to avoid.
  • We can notice the exceptions that work and determine whether they might work for us.
  • We can sense the depth, breadth, and repetition of the promotional noise.
  • Everything we see can be mashed into new ideas.

With those benefits in mind, I offer 20 links to review. Later we might choose to take a closer look at one or two of the approaches offered in this sampling.

  1. Mr. Ploppy’s Monday Tool List - Volume XXXIII - Weblog Promotion Tools
    Last January, Mr. Poppy pulled together an organizaed list. It works well to frame research into the promotion playing field.

  2. The Thinking Blog has an outstanding guide to promotion.
    Ilker points out that it’s the posts that count not the blog itself. Ideally, the simple act of blogging in and of itself would attract enough traffic to please the author but there are cases in which more is better.

  3. 21 Ways to Promote Your Startup Business
    This article on starting a business offers 21 venues for promotion, many of which are also useful in promoting a blog.

  4. How to spend $1,000 promoting your established site.
    TDavid has a wealth of information about growint readership, without and without investing cash. Now that the $1,000 is gone, there are still many little things you can do to promote your site that will cost you time, but not necessarily any out of pocket dollars. [via Newsome.org]

  5. SEO Tips: Increase Page Rank By Revitalizing Your Old Posts
    Writing at the Blog Herald, Lorelle explains how to Increase Pank Rank and Ad Vitality and Traffic Interest in Archieved Posts

  6. Best blog promotion techniques
    SEO Blog offers another list of basics perfect for new bloggers.

  7. My blog promotion advice for Ali in Kenya
    David Wallace has developed an acronym that makes the basics easy to remember.

  8. Blog Promotion: What makes sense for you?
    Scot Herrick explains what to consider when choosing the promotional techniques most appropriate for our unique situations.

  9. Offline Blog Promotion Ideas - It’s All About Branding
    blogexposure.com offers a list of ways to get known in our home towns. While online should be where most of your promotion efforts should focus on, do not overlook the opportunity to do some promotions off line. When done correctly, they can be more effective than your online promotions.

  10. Using Video to Promote Your Business
    Zeppelin Media Blog explains the structure of using video to promote a business. Becky McCray from Small Biz Survival gave me the inspiration to extend the conversation she started over at her blog. Be sure to start there! [link follows] . . . Specifically, I wanted to mention some ideas for using video that would help any business or organization.

  11. How to use video to promote your small business
    Any small business could use simple online videos for promotion. Video builds relationships and can be very persuasive. You can make simple videos with just your digital camera and some free software. Need some inspiration for how to use it?

  12. How To Use Community-Driven Blog Promotion For Your Blog
    I Help You Blog suggests that we have our community help us too. Community-driven blog promotion is the term I use for describing any technique a blogger uses to promote his or her blog and that involves getting a blog’s readers to do something that will result in greater exposure for that blog.

  13. 10 Techniques I Used To Go From 0 To 12,000 RSS Subscribers In Seven Months - With No Ads Or Leverage
    Trent Hamm explains how he did just that. I launched The Simple Dollar at the very end of October 2006. I had no pre-existing blog that I could use to drive early traffic, nor did I have any personal contacts that I could use. I also had zero advertising budget. But by June 2007, I had 12,000 RSS readers

  14. Blog Promotion 101
    Tristan from Blogopoly guest posts on problogger with 10 points to review.

  15. Webmaster Forum > Blogging
    John Scott’s Webmaster Forum covers the topic from many angles

  16. Blog Archive Promotion To-Do List
    One from me on how to use your archives to promote your blog.

  17. Promotion, self-promotion and [insert ad here]
    Seth’s take on a variety of free ways to promote a blog.

  18. 42 Methods for Blog Promotion???
    Web Analytics world sets the SEOmoz and Aviva suggestions side by side

  19. 5 Surefire Steps To Increase Readership 300% (or more)
    Ryan Caldwell gets right to it with a focus on increasing readership in ways that count.

  20. 7 Great Ways to Connect with Other Bloggers While You’re Out Reading Blogs
    One of my favorites from my own blog. The title says everything.

This list is a cross-section of what’s out there currently. My goal was to make the list representative of the techniques and strategies suggested at a range of levels. Please feel free to add to the list, if you find something missing.

Know the territory, then decide. It’s the bsst strategy for any plan.

(Wish I understood that before I dated a certain guy in college.)

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to help you find your strategy, click on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related
Strategy: 40 Outstanding Blog Links, Bookmark Carefully!
The 5-Point Strategy to a Powerful Network
Money Strategy, a Dead Horse, and Folks
7 Great Ways to Connect to Bloggers While You Are Out Reading Blogs

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