Successful Blog

Don’t Build Your Business Castle on Another Guy’s Land

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How to blog series

Content Is King

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When building an online presence for a business, people quickly think of a website, social networks like Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, and Google+ — all of which, when put together, can seem overwhelming. Add in a blog to the mix and often people will flinch. It’s reasonable that growth-focused businesses might worry about the commitment and time that a blog could represent.

Still, whenever I’m invited to help a business connect to their customers and grow their community, a blog is always central to the content strategy. Content attracts, informs, demonstrates, and establishes value. There’s a reason online professionals say, “Content is king.”

Don’t Build Your Business Castle on Another Guy’s Land

All of the social sites might seem to replace the role of a blog. Twitter allows us to connect, converse, reconnect, faster and easier. Facebook and Google+ allow us to be social with our customers. LinkedIn is the Chamber of Commerce online. Instagram and Pinterest give us a chance to share what we see and like.

But if you want to the search engines working for you, a blog is a cornerstone to reaching those goals.

Have you read the terms of service on those social sites where you’re putting your advice, your expertise, your unique content? Would you keep your address book, your contact lists, your communication records inside another guy’s business?

It’s hard to have a true presence, if everything you say is on social sites. How to people know which place you call home? Where do you put your serious thoughts? What home holds your business body of work?

Your business blog content is the cornerstone of your business online. Well thought and well presented content is easiest, fastest, and most meaningful way to share your expertise. Helpful (not hypeful) insights, how-tos, and information that’s relevant to your customer’s lives is an invitation to get to know your business beliefs, values, and business sense. Content like that attracts people you want to work with, and give search engines valuable pages to index. Those indexed pages advertise you whenever people search for the solutions you write.

Don’t put something as valuable and attractive as content on another guy’s url.

If you’re going to build and share online content, own the url where you house it. Instead of writing a post on a social site write it on your business blog. Share the link and an excerpt on that social site instead. Keep the original content on your own URL – where Google and your visitors can connect it to your business.

Let the traffic and the authorship come to you.

Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google+ and the rest make it easy to build groups and share content quickly. But what are we risking by building a following in places where we don’t own the “land”? The social site “landowner” is gaining benefit of every customer you attract. If you decide to leave, you might lose your whole list.

Who can trust that the social site sill never change the “rules”? Are you willing to risk your business on that?

Free isn’t free when you think about it.
Go visit instead and invite folks back to where you’ve build a location that looks, feels, and interact with them in a way that only your own property can. Content is king. Don’t build your castle on another guy’s land. You might find that you can’t get to the castle one day.

How would your business be affected if Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, or Google+ lost the content and connections you’ve built?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

A 5 Point Plan to Differentiate Your New Business

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Jacob E. Dawson

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Building a new business is challenging, frustrating, exhilarating and rewarding. If you’re embarking on the journey of entrepreneurship, it will be the hardest yet most satisfying adventure you can imagine. You will have a million things to take care of on a daily basis, and a seemingly endless check-list of tasks you need to undertake in order to reach the success you’re striving for. In addition to discovering your customer’s pain-points and creating a great product to satisfy their needs, you’ll also need to take care of the books, understand the legal requirements and make sure you can keep your head above water as you approach profitability.

A 5 Point Plan to Differentiate Your New Business

If that seems overwhelming, you can take a deep breath and relax. There are plenty of valuable guides for new business owners. in order to give you a helping hand, which is why we’ve put together a 5-point plan to help you differentiate yourself from competitors once you’ve entered the market with a new product.

  1. Embrace Your SmallnessEveryone has dreams of building a giant business that experiences hockey-stick growth and explodes onto the market. That’s fine, but one of the best ways to turn a weakness into a strength is to embrace it. Acknowledge the small size of your business in the early days and use it to your advantage. People love to root for the underdog, and will often support you and your business more eagerly than they would a larger, more established company.
  2. Pour Your Personality into the BrandIn addition to embracing your small size, you can also help to build a strong customer relationship by pouring a lot of your own personality into the business. Large corporations are renowned for feeling faceless in their customer communications, and this is a huge point of differentiation that you can use to your advantage. You can cleverly insert quirks and idiosyncrasies into your brand character, helping your business to feel unique, friendly and approachable.
  3. Encourage One-On-One ConversationsWhen you are establishing your new business in the marketplace, marketing and promotion are some of the most difficult parts to get right, especially when you have a very limited budget to work with. There are, however, a few ways to maximise what you have by utilizing the power of word-of-mouth, by finding your most passionate customers and lavishing them with attention. When you invite them into your world, share your business’s journey and give them access to unique insights & offers, you can turn a customer into an evangelist – someone who will passionately share your business with the world – maximizing your valuable marketing dollars in the process.
  4. Show Yourself as a ‘Hands-On’ ExpertIf you can’t compete with larger businesses pound-for-pound, you have to find other ways to outdo them. One of the best ways to do this is to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Write informative blog posts and ‘how-tos’, start finding forums and seminars that you can speak at, seek out public-relations opportunities where you can show your expertise through the media. Before long your customers will see you as an expert in your field, strengthening your business reputation, and enabling you to compete with larger, less hands-on competitors.
  5. Tell Your Personal StoryYou know that starting a business is one of the hardest journey’s that you can embark on, so why don’t you share the challenges you encounter with your customers? When they know much effort you put into offering them the best products and services possible they will become more attached to your brand and feel much more invested in your future success. Let them see the ups-and-downs and your willingness to share will be repaid with stronger customer relationships and, eventually, a successful business.

I hope that this 5 Point Plan to Differentiate Your Business has given you some ideas and inspiration to help you to sharpen your new business and begin your journey towards success! What are your thoughts about these techniques, and which ones do you think that I’ve missed? Do you have any personal experience that you can share with us? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Author’s Bio:
Jacob E. Dawson writes for Delivery Hero, the best way to find local home delivery . Jacob E. Dawson is an entrepreneur, marketing and SEO / SEM expert with a passion for making the most of every day! You can follow him on Twitter as @jacobeddawson

 

Thank you for adding to the conversation!

How to Build Something You Can’t Build Alone

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The Power of Community Focused in the Same Direction

Whether you count yourself in huge corporation, a small team, or feel you’re the only member of an entirely unique group. If we hope to move forward, we all could use a more strategic view. We can chase our dreams. We can hire an evangelist. We can put our noses to the grindstone. Still the truth of the matter is we’re social beings and we build better things together than we’ll ever build alone.

The best dreams are built with insight from a variety of viewpoints. The best ideas and innovations are fleshed out with minds and voices that approach a problem from differing points of view. The best communities come together around participation and personal investment. And we’ve all seen the power of a community focused in the same direction.

Leaders want to build something we can’t build alone.

How to Build Something You Can’t Build Alone

When we think of social business, the tools may have changed, but the people haven’t. We’d still like our lives to be easier, simpler, and more meaningful than just getting up each day to go to work. Invitations attract us. Aspirations move us forward. Focus brings us to a clear path. Relationships well-chosen lighten our load. Quality raises our investment. True collaboration brings out our better selves.

Great leaders who build great things understand that human nature and engage it to fuel their goals. If you want to be that kind of leader — one who attracts, inspires, guides, focuses, connects, and unites — here’s how to build something you can’t build alone.

  1. Be a Magnet, not a Missionary. Quit converting and start attracting. Understand and respect our different, yet symbiotic purposes. The community needs the goods, services, and economic contributions of growing businesses. Growing business need the support and patronage of loyal communities.
  2. Have and Share a Vision. To make a thriving business, start with a long-term loyal, internal community of employees. They will build and protect a healthy innovative culture, promote the values of the business, stay with the company, develop expertise with coworkers, and live to serve customers.In any community, it’s not the how or what of work that builds connection and loyalty. It’s vision and mission. The underlying vision that unites us toward building something that we can’t build alone. A community needs leadership to set and invest that vision and so that they can feel smart, safe, and powerful in investing too.
  3. Know How to Choose the Easiest, Fastest, Most Meaningful Next Move Strategy is a realistic plan to advance a position over time by leveraging your unique opportunity. Recognizing opportunity and getting where you want to go is impossible if you don’t know where you are now. Position is informational — It’s part part property and packaging, part size, scope, and systems. Position is relational — it’s part values and relationships, part mission, vision, and perception. The most advantageous next positions look only slightly different than the place we already are. Deeply study your position and you understand the true value proposition of your brand.
  4. Lead with Relationships Choose the people around you — employees, vendors, partners, customers — wisely with deliberation and intention. They are the people who will build your business with you. Likewise, choose your sponsors and the businesses you support with equal thought to how they build your community and your life.
  5. Even Cheap Is Expensive When the Model Is Doesn’t Work Start a new business and you’ll soon see, that numbers reflect history. Without history, questions are what we use to generate the numbers we use. Numbers are important and useful, but they are as deep as the questions we ask. When we aggregate the numbers into a graphic they become shallow and flat. What I just saw will forgotten in an hour. What I just bought won’t win you my next dollar. Haven’t we figured out yet that impressions, circulation, and hits in general are short-terms goals and NEVER have been attributable?
  6. Understand the Power of Collaboration If communities and corporations, align our goals and head in the same direction the results could be amazing. But first we each have to know where we’re going and negotiate from the SAME SIDE of the table, recognizing that we’re stronger together.

Leaders make work and life easier, simpler, and more meaningful. Sometimes we do that simply by letting folks see what they see, know what they know, and do what they do … because other people see, know, and do valuable things that we can’t see, know, or do.

Leaders who need no one, lead no one. Don’t hire a staff, engage people who contribute. Don’t build a coliseum, raise a barn.
It’s irresistibly attractive to build something you can’t build alone.

How will you be a leader this week?

Be a leader.
Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

How a Blog Contributes to Your Business Model in Crucial Ways

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Alex Summers

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Why Blogs Are Necessary for Small Businesses

If you have a business, you should have a blog. Period. This is because you need a way to communicate with customers at all times. A blog allows you to communicate product updates, allow customers to suggest new products or features and have a way to be visible at all times. Visibility is important when you are a small business.

Here are crucial ways a blog contributes to a business model:

A Blog Improves Sales

Having a blog allows you to sell more goods. This is because you can link your blog to the section of your site that sells your products. Customers can even find your blog without you having to do anything to attract that customer. Optimizing content for search engines will improve sales by pushing your blog higher on search engine results. Most people will click on the first or second result that appears.

You can get sales training online from many sales and business professionals through a quick online search.

A Blog Allows You to Interact With Others In Your Niche

You can connect with other niche bloggers who are writing about the same topics you are. A company that sells sports memorabilia would want to connect with other businesses that sell sports memorabilia. Having those connections makes it easier to improve sales because there are other businesses who could refer their customers to you. You may have something that their shop may not.

Perhaps you are a better option because you are closer to where a particular customer is located. You don’t get that referral, if you don’t connect to other businesses.

A Blow Allows Customers to Communicate With You

A good conversation on your blog can be great for SEO. Remember that there are usually 100 people reading your forum for every person who actually comments. Your blog could be where people learn more about your products or services. Make sure that you are offering an interactive experience for your customers. Give them good recommendations in an attempt to drive sales of certain items. Customers will generally follow your advice if it is sound enough.

Every small business needs a blog in order to survive online. It will allow you to be found by more people. It can get your referrals from other businesses that you connect with. Your blog can also be a great way to influence customers to buy certain goods or services that your company offers. Make sure that you are taking advantage of this wonderful tool that is available to your company.

Author’s Bio:
Alex is a blogger, freelance writer and recent college graduate. She currently performs market research for an online marketing firm when she is not contributing her own thoughts and observations to the online community.

Thank you for adding to the conversation!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

One simple trick to get control of your life

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Rosemary O’Neill

One Trick to Help You Get Control of Your Life

One tactic greatly will increase your sense of peace and control over your life.
Set expectations up front.
When the people around you have total clarity on what you intend to do, and when you intend to do it, everything flows into place.

Parenthood 101

When my twins were two, and my older son was four years old, I learned about setting expectations out in the trenches—at the playground. After observing parents suddenly decide it’s time to go, and grabbing the child by the hand, and spending the next 30 minutes bargaining and cajoling, I knew there was a better way.

Once I started the 10 minute countdown and stuck to it, I never had to worry about the drama over leaving. There wasn’t any.

Time Management 101

Not to compare colleagues and customers to children (that’s a different blog post), but using crystal clear expectations, set up front, is a technique that will serve you well in just about every area of your life.

Here are some ways you can set expectations as a small business owner or entrepreneur:

  • It’s easy to be “on” 24/7 in your own business. If you don’t want to be left without weekends, stop answering work emails on the weekend. You’re teaching people that you are available (and telling your staff that you expect them to be available too).
  • Post your business hours clearly, even if you are a purely online business. Just because the internet is on all the time doesn’t mean you must be personally on.
  • When you reply to an email, give the recipient some idea of when you will follow through on whatever they requested. If the request comes on Friday, shoot back a “I’ll get back to you by Wednesday” and you’re set.
  • On your company voicemail, set an expectation of when you’ll call back. Tell callers that your corporate box is checked several times a day, and promise a returned call within x hours.
  • In meetings, whenever a new task is handed to you, set an upfront timeline for when it will be done. Then be sure to incorporate it into your time management system.
  • On your social media outposts, be clear about why you’re there and how often you will engage. If you start providing customer support via Twitter, you can’t suddenly stop. Consider posting your policy in your profile, so there’s no confusion.
  • Set up an editorial calendar for your content; you don’t have to be nuts about it, but having a plan in advance, and knowing how often you will produce content, gives you peace of mind.

How do you manage expectations? What do you expect of yourself?
Do you have any tricks to help you get control over your life?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Have What it Takes to Run a Small Business?

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In my blog piece last week, I talked about the potential need to turn to family and/or friends for funding for those looking to start their own small business.

Yes, such a move can be tricky on several fronts, most notably potentially upsetting relationships that have formed over decades. But before you possibly go to a loved one or friend with your hand out, consider the pros and cons of starting your own venture in the first place.

According to the Small Business Administration (SBA) as of 2011, there were some 27 million small businesses nationwide, with anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of all new employment created in the U.S. attributable to small business.

So, are you looking to become one of the millions of small businesses nationwide? In the event you are, keep these four factors in mind:

1. Have a mission statement – It is of utmost importance that you clearly define why you are going into business for yourself in the first place. Sit down and put in writing the reasoning behind your business, what your business will do, and what your long-term goals are for the company. Not only does this help you stay on track, but it also gives potential customers an idea of what they can expect from you as far as products and services. If your mission is simply to make a whole lot of money, trust me, you’re already off to a bad start;

2. Learn New Skills
When you take over as your own boss, there are many hats to wear. In many cases, it is too soon for you to hire much help if any at all. That being the case, you need to make sure that you can handle a diverse number of tasks like sales, accounting, marketing, and project management. In today’s world, all of the above-mentioned skills are important to your business having a fighting chance, especially marketing. Long gone are the days where you just hung a shingle out and waited for people to come into your office. In 2012 and going forward, marketing involves things like social media, SEO, email blasts and more. One of the first things I always recommend to someone thinking about going out on their own is that they be social networking savvy. You do not have to live on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc., but you do need to know how to work them, how to market yourself, and how to outshine the competition;

3. Be willing to work long hours – Whether you are running a restaurant, floral shop or your own marketing company, be ready to roll up your sleeves and put in some time. When you are working for someone else, it is normally their job to make the assignments, balance the books and put out the fires, i.e. customer service complaints. When you are the top man or woman, however, you get to make all those wonderful calls. As someone that has been laid off for several weeks now, I have actually found that doing freelance work for this individual and that company, etc. is tougher than I thought it would be on a regular basis. While my freelance work use to consist of evenings and/or Sundays, it now keeps me hopping from early in the morning until the time I go to bed. I find myself spending lots of time doing research and writing most days, along with looking for another full-time position. Given I have some friends that run their own companies, I can tell you first-hand from my chats with them that they are always thinking about the next project, how they can grow, and what it will take to increase their return on investment (ROI). If you are not willing to put the time in, running your own business is not a good call;

4. Appreciate your opportunities – I can’t help but always remind myself on a daily basis of how grateful I am to have been born and raised in the U.S. While there are opportunities to be a successful businessperson in other parts of the world, there are also many regions where the dream of running one’s own business is just that. Even in the event you open a business, give it all you have for a year or years and it fails, appreciate the fact that you had this opportunity in the first place.

I found an interesting Tweet recently (not mine) that said “Success” depends on the second letter of the word. That comment really resonated with me as I explore my options today.

Running a small business is not for everyone; those that choose such a venture should always refer to that Tweet I mentioned a moment ago.

To me, that says it all.

Photo credit: http://www.forbes.com/2010/11/02/retire-early-plan-lifestyle-personal-best-10-saving_slide_2.html

Dave Thomas has more than 20 years’ experience as a writer, covering marketing, SEO, press releases, social media and more. Contact Dave at: http://beemoresocial.wordpress.com/