Successful Blog

Is Your Blog Having An Existential Crisis?

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By James Ellis

Why Do You Have a Blog?

If your reason to have a blog is because a content marketer said to, or because your competition has one, or because you figured out how to install WordPress on your hosted web service, these are not good enough reasons. Blogging is not climbing Everest; “Because I can” does not constitute a good reason.

More than likely, you blog because you have been convinced that the more content you generate, the more sales you will ultimately create. I’m not going to argue with that idea, but I will quibble with your execution.

Content marketing assumes the content you build drives traffic from search engines and links from other web sites. But once someone shows up, what then? Do they read your content and then wander away? Do they even know what you want them to do once they enjoyed your post?

Your blog needs to exist for a reason. And that reason is to get people you draw in to do something. They can buy something, they can fill out the form that asks for more information, or they can just subscribe to your newsletter. But if you are going to lay out all that bait, there needs to be a trap at the other end.

A mountain of blog posts, even excellent ones, without a call to action, is a worthless pile of bits. You might as well hire a million monkeys to type on your blog.

Of course, this leads to the next question: are you measuring your call to action conversions? Do you know which posts create the most conversions? Do they do the most work the first week, or do some posts seem evergreen in their ability to create conversions? Why those posts and not others? If you can learn what posts create the most conversions, you can learn how to not waste your time writing endless useless posts.

It’s a pretty straight-forward process to measure these conversions. Set up a goal in Google Analytics and filter out all visits that don’t convert. What do they all have in common?

Things to look for: What are people coming from social media or your newsletter converting? What works for them? What’s the difference between people who are new to you (found you via search engine or inbound link) and people who already know you (converted because of a newsletter link)? What topics work best? Emotional titles or factual titles?

And based on all this information, what are you going to do differently?

We live in an age when everything can be measured, but if you aren’t willing to see what worked, what’s the value of measurement? And if you don’t measure, how do you justify to yourself the value of building those posts week after week?

So again, what’s the purpose of your blog?

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.

What Are Your Assumptions?

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By James Ellis

closeup_donkeyPeople don’t read the web, they scan. People don’t like to click. People don’t look past the first four Google search results. People only search Google with 2-3 word search terms. People don’t open their email on the weekends. People don’t spend money online. People don’t trust strangers online. No one cares what you had for breakfast. No one will want to look at a picture of your lunch. People buy most Christmas gifts online on the Monday after Thanksgiving. No one will download a movie to watch on their phone.

All of the above statements were once considered gospel at one time. Gospel. Carved into stone tablets. Given to marketers’ children to recite every morning.

But you should all see at least one statement that you know to be patently false (in fact, I’m pretty sure that they almost all are, depending on circumstances). But they linger on, because they are based on assumptions.

These are just examples of online/web/tech assumptions that linger in the minds of people close to us (especially clients and bosses). There are plenty of business, blogging and personal assumptions we make and live by that simply aren’t true anymore (assuming they ever were).

Assumptions are the blind spots in our vision. We see them without acknowledging them every day. We work around them instead of challenging them, when challenging them is how we create success. Think of Kodak and Poloroid, who assumed we’d always want printed pictures. Think of Ford (circa 2009) who assumed Americans only bought big cars. Think of the music industry, who assumed that we wouldn’t like to download our music whenever we wanted.

Businesses fail every day because their assumptions were wrong. Businesses thrive every day because they took a chance on challenging assumptions. Think of Starbucks, who didn’t listen to the assumptions that people wouldn’t pay $5 for a cup of coffee. Think of Apple, who didn’t listen to the assumption that people didn’t want to check their email every second of the day. Think of Rick Bayless who didm’t listen to the assumption that Mexican food is cheap food.

What are the assumptions you live with every day? Are you challenging them? If you don’t, what happens when someone else does?

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.

Photo credit: Dieter van Baarle, Flickr CC.

Beach Notes: Do You Love You?

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

Walking on the beach we came across this beach inspiration left by another beach walker.

In the busy world of business we so often put our work before ourselves. It is important that we give ourselves the time and care and remember that to love ourselves is to be of greater value to others and the world.

When did you last look in the mirror and say I love you?

I love you

With gratitude and in abundance always,

– Des Walsh & Suzie Cheel

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Beginnings and Endings

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By James Ellis

There are really only two hard parts to writing effective marketing pieces. If you’re thinking about your email, web pages, or direct mailings, it doesn’t matter.

Sadly, these two things are the beginnings and endings. Do those properly, and you barely need a middle.

The job of the beginning is to get your target interested. The job of the ending is to tell the target what to do next. Yes, it really is that simple. If I was running your marketing department, i’d rather have killer beginnings and endings rather than all the great middle content you can stuff in a web page.

Yes, the beginnings and endings are just that important. Think about it. Once you’ve got someone interested, the only thing that can happen is that you can either close the deal and convert them, or you can say something stupid or unappealing and lose them. Why take that chance? Once you’ve got them interested, tell them what to do next. Don’t waste your target’s time (trust me, they will appreciate it) and get to the point.

Please note that I never said how long the beginnings or endings need to be. The perfect email isn’t necessarily just a subject line and a call to action link. But if you can get their attention in ten words, and the link is the offer, what else is there to talk about?

The beginning isn’t just the subject line and pre-header, but those are part of the beginning. The beginning isn’t limited to the structure of the medium (subject line in emails, headlines in web sites, etc), but whatever it takes to achieve the goal: gain interest.

The beginning of Moby Dick isn’t “Call me Ishmael.” It’s a hundred thousand words that explain the relationship between a man and a white whale, or really the nature of obsession. All those words are needed to get our attention because simply saying “An old sea captain lost a leg to a whale and wants revenge” is not attention-getting; it’s an idea in need of supporting detail.

On the other hand, what else do I need to know beyond “50% off all our most popular products” except what to do next?

It doesn’t matter if you use emotion, loss aversion, numbers, relationship reminders, or sensational quotes. Just be intentional about getting their attention.

So once you have their attention, you need to do something with it. Don’t tease, don’t dawdle, don’t wait. Get to the next step. Click the link, call for an appointment, sign up for a subscription, whatever it is, just get to the point.

It’s crucial that you make sure that the beginning aligns with the ending. If you get my interest by saying “Free beer and pizza” the ending can’t be “Sign up for a subscription” because I won’t understand why they go together. I’ll smell something fishy and bolt.

This is the basis of all good marketing. Making it more complicated than that just clouds the issue. Nail your beginning and ending. The rest takes care of itself.

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.

The blank web page

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By James Ellis

Let’s play a game. In this game, I have all the power of a Greek god. I am James, God of Websites. No, there’s no need to bow down, for I am an beneficent god.

thunderbolt

In this game, you have a web site. Wait, you have a web site? Great, let’s use that. Ready? Here we go.

I, as the great God of Web, have destroyed your website. I have smote it! When you go to your domain, all you get is a blank white screen. No 404 errors, no broken code, just a clean screen, like the lake after a snowstorm.

Now I have not destroyed any content. All your text and images and databases are still intact in your WordPress/Drupal/Joomla admin screen (See? I told you I’m an understanding god). They just don’t show up.

In this imaginary world it’s January 1, so no one is going to go to your site all day, and therefore no one knows about this calamity that has befallen you. But you have already put a big ad buy in for January 2, so you expect a tsunami of traffic to descend tomorrow. Your design and development staff is off on their annual trek to visit every bar in Wrigleyville and have turned off their phones. You are alone.

This is the game. You have one day to save yourself. It’s impossible to bring the site back to what it was on December 31, so don’t even try. But you need some basic functionality when people return January 2 or else everyone gets fired. Fun game, right?

So what do you do? What do you save? What’s the first thing you bring back? What’s the one or two things that are vital to saving your job? Is it the logo? (Spoiler: no.) Is it the perfect design? (Probably not.) Is it the compendium of products, 98% of which no one looks at, let alone buys? (Um, I’ll let you guess.)

What is crucial to your site? I mean truly crucial? The clock is ticking and your site is blank, so what are you going to do?

As a beneficent god, I will reward good work. If you choose what is crucial and get it up quickly, ignoring that massive PDF of design guidelines and logo placement, of coding things to work in Netscape 4, of all that you’ve learned about the marketing/corporate tone, I will direct that massive wave of traffic to your site and your work will determine how much of it converts.

Sadly, this is just a game. Instead, you’re stuck with that behemoth of a site, one that has every word ever written on it since 1998, with a glut of images and code that makes any change to the site take five times longer than if it was just your personal blog.

You are shackled to the past. To move forward, you need to think about what the future could look like, and it shouldn’t include 50% of the stuff you probably think about now. So take this moment and think about what needs to go and how you convince everyone that it’s the right way to go.

Because one day, you might be visited by a less beneficent god of the web (I’ve heard ugly rumors about the God of Automated Backups).

Consider this your only warning.

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.

Image: Flickr Creative Commons, by Peter Davey

You Are Not Your Audience

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By James Ellis

Right now, go look at your website. In about ten seconds you can probably think of five small things you’d like the site to do better, whether it’s load faster, sort product listings a certain way, maybe even (shudder) that the logo should be a little bigger.

Maybe all those things are going to get done, but maybe they aren’t the right things to focus on. This year, you’ve got a limited amount of resources to manage your site, and you can’t do everything, so you have to make choices. Instead of making choices with your gut based on what you see and what annoys you, maybe you should ask your audience.

I’ve heard the argument that you are enough like your audience that you don’t need to conduct field tests or focus groups or surveys. You don’t need their feedback because you know best on behalf of your audience.

I’m going to set you straight: you are not your audience. It’s not that you can’t understand what your audience wants, it’s the fact that you are a content expert where your audience is not.

Perspective is Important

You are blinded by the curse of knowledge (and yes, maybe this is the first time that someone has said that you are cursed by knowledge, but we’ll let that go). You know, after months and years on the site, where every button is, where every button leads, what every obscurely-named tool is designed to do and who should use it. And that’s the problem: your audience doesn’t have the same knowledge.

You have maybe, MAYBE three seconds to get your brand new user to understand who you are, what you’re here for and a good idea of how to proceed or they bounce. Bounce, the scariest word in any user experience designer’s vocabulary. They came, they saw, they bolted. Sure, some of your audience isn’t looking for what you sell, but without a well-considered home page or entry page that helps frame your story to make it super easy to comprehend, some of your bounces are going to be potential, now lost, customers.

Design for your Customer, Not Yourself

Look, I know you. You’re gonna name every online tool something clever and cute, but something that completely obscured the purpose of the tool because you came up with the name by yourself in a hurry as you were about to push the product out. I’m guessing that’s how Qwikster/Netflix happened.

Or maybe you think that a series of big pretty pictures of food in your restaurant site should push down things like location and hours.

Have you asked your users what they want? What they come to your web site for?

You don’t need to spend hundreds or thousands for a professional focus group or eye-tracking studies. There are plenty of cheap and free ways to collect simple information on what your users want. For example, http://www.4qsurvey.com/ will put a super-simple four-question survey on your site and gets to the heart of the issue, helping you learn what the customer came for and if they were successful in accomplishing that task.

Because their purpose is going to be different from yours. And they aren’t cursed with your knowledge. So embrace this curse and stop trying to think like your audience. Because you are not your audience.

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.