Successful Blog

How to Build Interest (Part 2 in a Series): Honesty

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By James Ellis

(This is Part 2; you can find Part One here.)

I recently flew to NYC (in a plane) and I was reminded of how bad air travel is. I used to be a full-time business traveler. I know plenty of business flyers. And the simple fact is that there is no such thing as a good airline.

Oh, there are people who work in airline companies who can, on occasion, do good things. But usually they don’t. They don’t care that your luggage went missing, that your guitar got smashed, that your child traveling alone never met the airline rep you paid to make sure your child got somewhere safely. On time means pushing off the jetway, not getting where you want to go. Customer satisfaction means you only feel semi-violated getting somewhere.

But I have a way of fixing modern airlines: Honesty.

The worst part about flying is the lying, the lack of understanding how passengers/cargo are treated, the gamesmanship, the arbitrary and hidden rules. You spend a few hundred dollars to be told you will be treated like kings and then get treated like traitors.

Marketing teams think that if they tell us the truth, no one will book tickets. But I disagree. I hate being told that two airlines are merging “for my convenience” and not to lower operations costs by 0.2%. I hate being told that it is time to board passengers in Group 3 when no one actually looks to see if I’m in Group 3. I hate that we all pretend that my iPad will cause the plane to crash if I turn it on during takeoff (um… the entire plane is an electronic device, people).

My new airline will simply be called SucksAir. At no point will any of the marketing lie. I will flat out say that the seats are cramped, there’s no food for free, the air as healthy as your average flu vaccine, the drink cart will mug anyone with an aisle seat, the pilot will always sound hopped up on Valium, and the in-flight entertainment will always be commercials. At no point will anyone who works at SucksAir ever treat any paying customer like a human being. Flights will be coming and going on a schedule closer related to a Roman orgy than a German train station.

Being honest is the unique selling proposition. You know that SucksAir is a crappy airline that just happens to get you where you want to go. No more, no less.

What if you were equally honest? Painfully honest. Brutally honest. About your industry, your customers and yourself. If you can’t be stand-up comedian honest in your blog, you should stop blogging.

What’s the fear? That everyone will realize that you’re making it all up as you go along? That you think some of your customers are idiots? That there are shysters in your industry who make a pretty good living? Trust me, we already know that. It might just be enlightening to hear you say it.

Author’s Bio: James Ellis is a digital strategist, mad scientist, lover, fighter, drummer and blogger living in Chicago. You can reach out to him or just argue with his premise at saltlab.com.

How to Build Interest (Part 1 in a series): Coattails

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By James Ellis

You want to know a poorly kept secret? I met my wife on Craigslist. Missed Connections, in fact. I know! Crazy, right?

Anyway, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t enjoy a dirty little peek at the Missed Connection page in their particular city. Quickly scanning to see if they recognize a person or place is really just cover to see if anyone left an MC about you.

Lots of people do it. And even more single people do it.

If I was a business owner, let’s say of a coffee shop, I’d have to wonder if there was a way to leverage the popularity of Missed Connections to help build my own audience.

Single people drink coffee. They sit for a bit, read a book or surf while enjoying their tea, and then they leave. How do I get more people to come in and drink?

Hypothetically, you could start posting a MC listing every day, talking about how you really liked someone’s glasses, or ask about the book they were reading. Nice shoes!

Do that for two weeks. Stay innocent. Pretend you have no idea where these are coming from. Then, after two weeks, post something on your Facebook page and Twitter account about how amusing it is that all these people are posting to MC from your shop. Keep posting. You should start to see posts that aren’t from you. Good. Keep posting. After three more weeks, start posting your favorite MC from your store of the day on your web site and social networks.

Go crazy. Have an MC day, where the whole store knows what’s going on. Everyone will be drinking coffee to see and be seen, to meet someone, to know that their MC post will at least be read, likely by the person it was for.

This is an example of building interest in your business by riding the coattails of some other popular idea. I’m not saying your nut company needs to do a Gangnam video (yeah, I’m talking to you, pistachio growers), but find your audience, learn what they do, what they like, and slowly and slyly become a part of it. Never let it appear that that’s what you’re doing, because that ruins it. Spur the connection and foster it. Never force it.

Author’s Bio: James Ellis is a digital strategist, mad scientist, lover, fighter, drummer and blogger living in Chicago. You can reach out to him or just argue with his premise at saltlab.com.

How to Become a Psychic Blogger

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By Nathalie Lussier

How To Write The Blog Post Your Reader Really Needs From You Now

Are you a psychic bloggerIdeas. We all have them. Ideas for blog posts, new projects, and things we need to remember to buy at the grocery store.

Sometimes you get a flash of inspiration for a blog post, and if you have the time to sit down and write it, that blog post can turn out to be the exact thing your reader needed at that moment. Other times, you find yourself re-reading your piece and asking yourself what you were thinking when you penned that jumble of words.

It happens to all of us. In today’s post I’m going to talk about the tricks I’ve learned in my 10 years of blogging, that have allowed me to read the minds of my readers. I regularly get emails and comments from my audience telling me that my post came at just the right time for them, or that I must be psychic because that’s exactly what they were wondering about.

Do your blog posts currently hit the “psychic spot” for your reader? If not, keep reading to find out how you can hone your idea generating and selecting process, to deliver the best content on a consistent basis.

TRICK #1: Know Who You’re Talking To

When brainstorming for a blog or video post, can you think of a specific person, reader or client of yours who would benefit from what you’re writing about? Who is this reader? Whether you are writing for industry leaders or newbies, knowing exactly who you’re talking to and how they’re going to take action based on the information, stories, or advice you share with them is key.

For example, when I first started my blogging career as the Raw Foods Witch, I used to write to my peers. I just didn’t know any better, I thought that the world was full of raw foodists.

Silly? Absolutely.

It was only when I shifted my attention towards the everyday person who wanted to eat healthy but didn’t really know how, that I was able to capture my readers’ attention.

Today, at Nathalie Lussier Media, I talk a lot about technology, and I need to remember what my audiences’ burning questions are so I can share the most relevant new tech tools.

I would never do a video about a complex programming solution, because I know that my audience is not filled with not software engineers like myself and this information just won’t resonate with them. Instead, I talk about ‘done for you plug-ins’ and solutions that solve their problems easily with no coding required. By focusing on what my readers need to know, I can connect directly to them.

TRICK #2: Ask For Feedback

I often hear these statements. ‘I know there are people out there, but no one is reading my blog’ or ‘I’m not really sure who reads my blog.’ Does this sound familiar?

If you don’t have a large readership on your blog, simply asking your current readers to leave a comment should get the ball rolling. Alternatively, you can send out a survey and ask people what they need help with and what they wish they knew how to do better.

Beyond just asking, you also need to connect with people more than you might currently be doing.

TRICK #3: Connect With Your Current Readers

Before you build your castle in the sky, I highly recommend that you get in touch with your audience, the real people who are actually reading the words that you write and find out what they need from you the most.

Send the people who comment on your blog a quick e-mail asking them what you can do for them and what kind of content would really change their lives.

TRICK #4: Answer The Burning Qs

The benefit of blogging and creating great content is that you only have to do it once, and it lives on the Internet forever. If you find yourself getting the same question from your readers all the time, share the answer in a blog post.

Not only will this save you the time of answering this question over and over, you will actually attract more people who need that particular problem solved just like your original audience.

So here’s your filter question for the next time you sit down to write a blog post or create a video: Do I know a specific person in my audience who will benefit from me answering this question?

Follow these 4 tricks and get ready to have people showing up and telling you how amazing you are, because you’ve actually tapped into what they need from you the most.

Are you ready to join in the exclusive club of psychic bloggers who comes up with the best content all the time? Leave a comment below with any tips or tricks you’ve found for getting great blog post ideas.

Author’s Bio: Nathalie Lussier is a digital strategist for the ambitious business owner. She’s the creator of the Website Checkup Tool, a free tool that gives you specific steps to improve your site’s traffic and conversions, no matter stage of business you’re at right now.

Image via CC by Thomas Hawk

Beach Notes: Bleach Festival

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By Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

Suzie and Board

Today we visited the local Bleach festival, a celebration of the visual and performing arts and beach culture.

We saw that one of the stands was for the ABC Open service, provided by our national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

ABC Open is dedicated to providing a way for people in “regional Australia”, i.e. those of us who live outside the big cities, to produce and publish photos, stories, videos, and sound, via the ABC.

At the ABC Open stand for the festival they had a surfboard, lots of colored markers and an invitation to write a message on the board. The format of the message was to be:

(beach name) is the best beach
because……………………………….

Clearly a job for Suzie the artist.

Suzie leapt at the chance to celebrate our favorite local beach at Rainbow Bay.

As you can see from the picture, she wrote “Rainbow is the best beach because it is peaceful and full of spirit.”

– Des Walsh & Suzie Cheel

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Who Is Your Marketing Content Written For?

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By James Ellis

Content marketers love to talk about the power of content. It slices, it dices, it makes unsightly blemishes disappear. Mix some with water to make a paste and it will polish the silver. Content is the cheat code of marketing

But when they talk about content, they usually focus on content that increases lead generation. That’s not a bad thing. We all love new leads. But content can do a number of different things. Content that excites and interests isn’t the same as content that convinces and assures.

So if content works at every level of the sales funnel (and I’m convinced that it can), you need some intentionality.

What do you want this content to do?

Break your sales cycle into stages. Everyone’s funnel is different depending on what book they’re reading at the time, but list every stage. What kind of content will speak to people at each and every single stage?

You might be concerned that your targets won’t know how to find the content for their stage, consider that people in each stage will be looking for different content and will use different terms depending on if they don’t know who you are and if they are trying to validate that you are the correct solution provider. At the awareness stage, their search terms will be about “how to fix…” while their validation stage might be “product name reviews.”

Having killer content at each stage in the sales funnel isn’t an accident. You need to be intentional and build for each stage.

Author’s Bio: James Ellis is a digital strategist, mad scientist, lover, fighter, drummer and blogger living in Chicago. You can reach out to him or just argue with his premise at saltlab.com.

You Might Be the Problem If…

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By James Ellis

Sales sluggish? Traffic down? Conversion rates dipping? Boss seeming a little gruff with you lately? Fewer smiling customers? More customer comments than you’d like?

They all have a root problem and a root solution, but sadly, you’re not going to like it.

The problem is you.

Not the editorial you, the plural you, the groupthink you, or even the royal you. You. The person reading this. You’re the problem.

That’s not 100% true. You didn’t cause the housing crisis and the fiscal cliff. You didn’t create all the public uncertainty slowing economic growth. But you are still the problem.

Why? Because the only person you can control is you. If you claim it’s your boss’s fault, that means you get to pass the buck. If you decide lower conversion rates are because your customers are dumb, that’s an excuse to not try and fix it.

But you can’t just “fix it,” can you. Especially if you believe that the fault lies with someone else. Making it your fault and your problem means that you get to do something about it, not just blame and move on. Making it your fault means that power lays in the one place you can use it: within you.

And that’s not just some self-help/new age/zen-esque notion. The problems with your business and site are usually you, in that you haven’t figured out how to build a site for your customers. You built a site for you.

The joke among web designers and graphic artists is that the client always wants to logo bigger. Why? The logo doesn’t ever help the customer, it’s bigger to stroke the ego of the client. Every pixel of space added to the logo is a pixel taken away from something the customer might actually want. Every interstitial ad is ten seconds you stole from your user. Every home page that touts how much you appreciate your customer is a another click the customer has to slog through to get to their order status.

When you send marketing emails, do you fill it with junk that you want the customer to know, or do you fill it with what the customer actuality wants? Is your web site showing products that you want the customer to know about, or the products your customers came for?

Do you even know the difference?

Don’t you love it when two airlines merge and they tell you that they did it for your convenience. It wasn’t to lower operating costs and increase margins while bringing standards of customer service to ever-falling levels? This is what a company calls convenience?

Do you know the difference between “important customer emails” and “spam?” I bet the standard you have for your personal emails and those your company sends are different.

And that’s why you are the problem. Because you are the only person who can stand up for what your user wants and actually give it to them. They will reward you later with more sales and better word of mouth. But for right now, as the calendar changes over, the burden falls on you to fix your problem.

How will you become the solution?

Author’s Bio: James Ellis is a digital strategist, mad scientist, lover, fighter, drummer and blogger living in Chicago. You can reach out to him or just argue with his premise at saltlab.com.