Successful Blog

Are You Doing Enough for Your Business?

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In running a business, you have a myriad of responsibilities on your plate. As such, you can’t afford to drop the ball on many of them. When you do, it can have a negative impact on your brand.

So, is it time you did more for your business?

Even when working as hard as you are, it may not be enough.

What Kinds of Promotions Are You Engaged in?

One of the big keys to being a successful owner is making sure your brand gets the proper promotions.

With this in mind, do you feel as if you are doing everything possible for your business?

Promotions come in many different forms.

For instance, do you use social media on a regular business? That is to get the word out about what you have to offer consumers?

Unfortunately, some business owners are out of touch when it comes to social media.

They for one reason or another fail to utilize it and all it has to offer. As such, their competitors take advantage of them.

If you are not using social media or use it infrequently, now would be a good time to change this.

Among the sites it would be wise to be active on include:

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • You Tube

By being active on social networking, you increase odds of engagement with consumers.

Another great way to promote your business is through podcasts.

Okay, you say you are not all that familiar with podcasts?

Note that podcast studios for rent are something that would be worth your time checking into.

In doing occasional podcasts, you can get your company’s message out there to consumers.

One of the other advantages of doing podcasts is that you can be seen as an expert in your specific line of work. This can go a long way in influencing a consumer to which products and services they will end up buying.

If you do decide to some podcasts, make sure you do not rush them. Take the time to come up with relevant and informative topics. Doing so is worth the time and effort they take.

Last; use social networking to spread the word about your podcasts.

As podcasting is gaining traction, you should be a part of it.

Don’t Forget About Customer Service

Even when doing many or all the needed promotions, you can’t be lax when it comes to customer service.

With this in mind, are you doing everything to give your customers the best experiences?

Too many business owners get so wrapped up in other things that they lose sight of customer service. When this happens, it can mean lost business over time.

Take some time to reflect on your customer service efforts.

Among the areas you should be covering:

  • Being there for your customer whenever necessary
  • Making sure they leave each business transaction happy.
  • Showing them you care by rewarding them for their business

When you make customer service a top priority, you and your customers win.

If the time has come for you to do more for your business, what are you waiting for?

About the Author: Dave Thomas covers business topics on the web.

 

Should I start a podcast?

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“All my friends are doing it!”

That excuse doesn’t fly in our house, and it shouldn’t drive your marketing decisions either.

Podcasting is experiencing a well-deserved renaissance, because audio-based content is the perfect way to squeeze more productivity into our busy lives. Learn and laugh while you’re on the treadmill, while you’re driving, and while you’re brushing your teeth in the morning.

All of the great podcasts out there, and all of the discussion about podcasting, may have triggered an urge to start a podcast of your own. Before you go out and invest in that professional microphone and headphones, you need to test the idea against your marketing strategy.

A podcast can be a powerful component of your content marketing, but only if it fits into your overall business plan.

Key considerations – should you start a podcast

  • Do you have a voice for radio? If you’re going to be the primary host on air, you need to evaluate the quality of your voice when it’s recorded. Do some test recordings using your equipment, and have colleagues listen to it. Not everyone is cut out for broadcasting.
  • Are you committed to a schedule for the long term? You don’t want to burn out or ignore your primary business. Just the same as for starting a blog, you want to be sure you’re going to commit before launching your podcast. Don’t leave your listeners high and dry after three episodes!
  • Do you have a promotional plan? Producing a podcast is just the first step. Once it’s recorded, you need to know what you’ll do with that great show, and how you’ll find your audience. Check out this fantastic post from Jay Baer on producing and promoting a podcast for some inspiration.
  • Have you found a topic that you are an authority on, and is not saturated already? I don’t buy the whole “I can’t create content about X because everyone else is already covering it,” because no-one else has your specific point of view and life experiences. However, you do want to give yourself a fighting chance, so find a topic where you are the ultimate authority and can spend lots of time talking about it without running out of ideas. What are you endlessly curious about?
  • Do you have a content plan? Is the format of your show like a talk show? Will you be monologuing? If you’re going to be conducting interviews, start with a dream list of guests and do some outreach to get bookings. Bone up on the structure of a good interview, while you’re at it.
  • Do you have professional equipment and resources? The bar has been raised. You can’t just use your little white iPhone earbuds and hope for the best. The top podcasts have bumper music, logos, high quality sound, and other professional touches. You don’t have to build a studio in your backyard, but put some care into your sound equipment and it will pay off. Here’s a good summary from ReadWrite on podcasting on a budget.
  • Does your target customer listen to podcasts? Do some market research…ask your current customers if they’d listen to a podcast from you. Check out the professional research on podcast listeners and trends.

You went through the checklist above, and oops…you got derailed on a few of them. But you still want to take advantage of the power of podcasting. No worries, there are other ways you can incorporate audio into your marketing plan.

Alternatives to producing your own podcast

  • Sponsorship – Invest some of your advertising budget in sponsoring a popular podcast in your business niche.
  • Be a guest – All of those podcasts are constantly seeking interesting guests and good stories, so why not go pitch yourself to some of your favorites?
  • Invite a podcaster to your blog – Flip the tables and interview some popular (and relevant) podcasters on your blog. They’ll probably promote it to their audiences.
  • Create content that accompanies a podcast – Create a partnership with a podcaster and help develop written content (or video) that compliments the audio.

I’d love to hear from any readers who are doing their own podcasts. Post a link to your show in the comments so we can all listen!

 

Featured image via Flickr CC: Patrick Breitenbach

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

 

Interview 10.1: Sebastian Prooth, Blogger, Podcaster, Film-maker

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Seb Talks about What He’s Been Doing

Seb Prooth

When Seb Prooth of Seb’s Random Thoughts and I first met, we had a comment conversation about a piece he wrote called, Blogger or Writer? Or Both? I enjoyed that chance to get to know a then new SOB in his “natural habitat.”

It’s been fun for this interview to check back with Seb to see how he’s been spending his time. The article that we discussed was posted last May 9th. It sure seems he’s done a lot since then.

Hi Seb! Tell everyone a bit about the guy called Sebastian.

Well that’s a complicated question! I was just talking about this very subject the other day when I was asked what I do, and I had to give a list of “occupations.” What do I do? Well I am a blogger, obviously. I’m also a writer, technology enthusiast and until recently a podcaster.

For my “real” work I am a student of media, and consider myself a film-maker. I am in pre-production on my first short film with real actors. You can see some of my current work on YouTube at www.youtube.com/meltingclock.

Other than what I do, I can say that I am an American residing in the UK. The reason for that is complicated. I am an old 20 next month . . . read into that what you will! There is a full bio of me on my website at www.sebrt.com/about.

My interests include all those things I do plus a crazy list of other things. I have this strange penchant for interviewing people on my blog. That started back on my first podcast “From the Director’s Chair.”

A little about my podcasting “career.”
I started podcasting back in December 2005 — I know that’s ancient history on the Internet — To make a long story short, my first podcast ran for 17 episodes, and I interviewed some of the movers and shakers in podcasting. In May I merged that podcast with another podcast I was creating with my friend Dave Gray.

Together Dave and I created and hosted what became the weekly “Global Geek Podcast” on which the co-hosts report tech news, web 2.0 happenings and rumblings in the podosphere. The show is light hearted and always includes a wacky news segment. Global Geek Podcast was nominated number 2 podcast to have on your iPod by .Net Magazine in their October 2006 issue.

I left Global Geek Podcast mid September to pursue other projects, however the show is still going strong with a new co-host. I hope that it will continue to grow and gain popularity as long as the hosts are hosting it! You can reach the Global Geek Podcast at www.globalgeekpodcast.com.

[Read more…]

Net Neutrality 10-01-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Podcasting and the battle for Net Neutrality

I just read a post over at MacMikeNews.com about Podcasting. . . . it really hit home why the Telecommunications Corps. and the Cable and Media outlets are scrambling to trash Net Neutrality. . . . They’re LOSING THEIR AUDIENCE.

Many people who are downloading podcasts are using it as a replacement for radio, and are starting to use it as a replacement for television. Think about this– podcasts are commercial free, for the most part. Podcasts are downloaded and can be heard or watched at the convenience of the downloader. And since the technology is easily accessible ANYONE can, with just a bit of learning and some inexpensive equipment, create and upload a podcast. . . . I just sampled a few, and though on some the quality was a bit uneven, I’d say that many of the most popular are pretty damn good. Even better, the quality of the CONTENT is much better than the “lowest common denominator” crap that either commercial tv or radio stations think we want to view or listen to.

[ . . . ]

Now, let’s take this a step further– the political scene. If any smaller and less well financed candidate were to be able to take their message directly to the people via podcast . . .

[ . . . ]

One further step– what do artists and musicians need big media companies for if they can take their offerings directly to the people and CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMAN?

[Media and Telecomm Corps] stand to lose billions of dollars if the internet remains free. They will be cut out of the income loop if people don’t need them as a media delivery device.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Blog One Day

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Guest Writer: Tim Dungan (aka ptvGuy)

Not to be just another SOB, I had to come by and thank Liz personally for including me here in her collection of certified SOBs. I will wear my badge proudly. It’s such an enjoyable departure from the web development and public television stuff that I usually deal in.

Frankly, there are so many fun things about blogging that tend to get lost behind the business end of it. I hope you don’t mind if I share a few things here that I will never be able to write about on my own blog where I must maintain a certain air of “authoritative professionalism” (which is a nice way of saying “stuck-up, self-importance.”)

PageRank and search strings and keywords, oh my…

If you’re like me, then you regularly check your blog stats for all sorts of important information like who’s visiting your site, how often, and, especially, how they’re getting there. When search engines like Google send visitors your way, it’s important–and sometimes quite fun — to note the specific search strings that got them there. The idea, of course, is to analyze your keywords and optimize your content to get more visitors based on what they’re searching for and what draws them to your site, etc., etc. However, there are times when that isn’t such a
brilliant thing to do.

I, for instance, routinely blog about my own unique style of writing perfect code or what I refer to as “anal coding.” It, therefore, doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to figure out the kind of search strings that often manage to bring visitors to my blog (“Anal journey” is one of my favorites.) nor to assume that they probably left disappointed. Like this blog and the award that made it famous, that
was something of a purposeful malapropism — in this case, the use of a negative term as if it were a positive thing to strive for. I hope to be half as successful at it as Liz.

The thing is, there are always certain search strings in the list that simply make no sense. You’re left asking yourself questions like, “How on earth did someone find my website by typing those words into a search engine?” I’ve tried a few of these (No, not the anal ones.) and gotten 30 or 40 pages into the results without finding any mention of my site.

If we assume that our stats are not mistaken, then we have to guess that somehow for some unknown reason and for a limited amount of time every once in a while, the underlying search engine algorithms simply stop to daydream. Why not? It’s a complex system. Given the choice between daydreams and occasional hiccups, I’m going with the daydream theory.It works for me. Then again, I’m of the opinion that PageRank is determined by who can flip a nickel closest to the wall, so what do I know?

Podcasting, the Ultimate Form of Ventriloquism

If you think about it — and it’s best not to–podcasting is about throwing your voice literally around the world. It’s a ventriloquist act. If your blog includes a podcast, then you too have the unique privilege of hearing your own voice coming out of cheap, tinny computer speakers. I guarantee that this will remove any delusions you may ever have had that you sound eloquent or suave or erudite or anything else other than nasally and annoying. Every time I finish a podcast now, I
go and give my wife a long backrub and thank her for tolerating that horrifying sound for all these years.

Another thing about podcasting is that one gets to discover certain habits about oneself that are better left unknown. For instance, I have discovered that I have a tendency to take in a particularly snooty-sounding, deep breath right before delivering a long, self-serving diatribe of a sentence meant to make me sound important. These are things we always notice about others and never see in
ourselves. It’s not pleasant.

And then there’s the kids…

I work out of my own home. Lucky me, huh?
This means that, at any given moment, my children are likely to burst through the door screaming at each other about who did what. We won’t even discuss what I’ve gotten to learn about myself from that. Suffice to say that I’m glad it’s not a live show and that I’ve been able to look up all sorts of information about how to edit an audio file prior to uploading it. (BTW, this has also saved the world from numerous bad puns, the odd moments when I burst into song, and even the occasional belch.)

Thanks Again

Anyway, thanks again for the award and allowing me a place to ramble for a moment. It’s good to be able to drop the professional persona once in awhile and just be me.

Tim Dungan

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Hey, Timothy!
Thanks for this lovely thank-you card.
You chose a way to say thanks that is so perfectly in keeping with the spirit of SOBs and everything about this blog. What fun and how nice that you would take time to do this on a Saturday. That means a lot to me.
Liz