Business Plan and Marketing Plan – what’s the difference?
The lovely Neil from Milk Relief Soap recently asked me this great question:
“What’s the difference between a business plan, and a marketing plan?”
I see a lot of people getting caught up in this, and often their business plan is actually more of a marketing plan.
The two are very much related; however they’re not the same. I’ve got a different opinion from most people on what a Business Plan is and what it’s purpose is. If you’ve looked at the Two Hour Business Plan then you’ll see that I define a Business Plan as being about what your business does, not a financial plan to take to the bank (although that’s part of it).
A Business Plan is ‘about’ your business – who your target market is, what you do (core business), your business goals, an action plan.
A Marketing Plan is how you attract customers and sell your product in order to achieve those goals – blogging, advertising, networking, attraction and conversion.
In October last year I gave a talk at The Business Mums Network Pampering Day on Business Planning. To illustrate how the Business Plan, Marketing Plan and Action Plan all fit together, have a look at this diagram.
Make sense? Your Business Plan is what encapsulates your entire business activities and goals, what drives and directs your actions. Your Marketing Plan is one aspect of that, which directs your monthly, weekly and daily actions towards achieving those business goals.
In some respects your Business Plan is the What, and the Marketing Plan is the How.
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Do you have a business question that you would like personally answered? Email me and ask away!
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A Pity Party and Bad News about Blogging
Hubby brought this cartoon home from work several weeks ago. I had intended to post it earlier with quite a few LOL and HA HA HA’s and ROFL, but never quite got around to it.
Lately though, I’ve been feeling both sides of this. The Darling Daughter, 12yo, has been on school holidays for the last two and a half weeks. Hubby was home ‘sick’ last week with a bad back, and a couple of days this week with the flu (no, not man-flu thankfully, just ordinary flu).
So in the last few weeks I’ve launched the Two Hour Business Plan in the middle of finding time for a 12yo on holidays, looking after an injured/sick husband and then the lovely generous man (hear the sarcasm there?) decided to pass his revolting germs on to me. Gee, thanks honey.
Self Pity and Woe Is Me is not what today’s post is about though. Today I thought I’d have a chat about blogging with a business and list some resources that I use. Some of the links are affiliate links, so if you end up buying any of these I might make enough to buy a cup of coffee, with cream. Maybe.
Business blogging
I’m going to assume that everyone reading this knows what a blog is and what RSS is. If not, feel free to email me and ask. No, it’s not a silly question and you wouldn’t be the first person to ask me.
What’s your blog’s purpose?
Blogging is really useful for your business but it’s not a golden ladder leaning against the wall of huge profits. It takes time, effort, technique and purpose. It can also be a huge waste of time for very little ROI (Return On Investment).
Before you go putting all that work into your blog, you have to know why you’re doing it. Here’s some of the things that a well-written blog can do:
- attract potential customers
- improve your website’s SEO (as long as the blog is on the same domain as the site)
- show people that you know what you’re talking about
- build a community of like-minded people through comments and discussion
- advertise sales, specials, new products
Know why before you start
Too many people jump into blogging for their business without a clear direction and purpose for it. Just like everything else in business you need to know what result you’re working towards, so you know when you’re on track and if it’s working or not.
Know what you’re doing and why, and then aim every single post towards that purpose.
Readers aren’t buyers
I’m mainly talking to those who sell a service here, although this is still true – albeit to a lesser extent – for those who sell physical products.
Your blog readers aren’t your clients.
The majority of people who read your blog, subscribe to your RSS, comment on your posts – they’ll never buy from you. This tends to be a shock for a lot of people, it sure was for me, when you’ve put in hours and hours and hours writing posts and then you realise that the readers aren’t actually buyers.
The majority of your readers are there for the free content. There’s nothing wrong with that, and business blogging is still a great way to spread the word of what you do. But if you’re looking at several thousand readers and wondering why they’re not buying – welcome to reality.
Readers don’t look at your website
The majority of readers never visit your website after the first hit, when they subscribe to your RSS. So you can update your site to your hearts content, fill it with ads, promote every product under the sun and your readers still won’t know about it.
If you want your readers to know something, put it in a blog post with a powerful headline.
Partial feeds mean non-readers
So when a lot of people realise the above fact they decide to make their RSS feed only partial, meaning that RSS subscribers will see the first paragraph and have to click through to read the remainder of the post on the website. Yay! More hits on the site, better SEO and people see your site and ads, yes?
No.
Statistics show that partial feeds actually reduce readership. Your first paragraph is going to have to be absolutely riveting and compelling to get people to click through. Most readers won’t bother. But if you have a full feed in your RSS – meaning the entire post is there in the reader or email – then most people will read it.
So why bother with blogging?
It’s a pretty depressing picture here isn’t it? The readers don’t buy, they don’t visit the website and they don’t read partial feeds. Why bother putting the effort in?
Because blogging will draw more people to your site. It shows people what you can do and gives them confidence in you. Used properly, blogging will attract the right people and get them recommending you. It’s a great tool, but that’s all it is, a tool.
Use blogging wisely and with a clear purpose, and it will help grow your business.
Blogging Resources
Here’s some resources to help you get the most out of your blogging. They’re all ebooks that I have bought and used myself.
31 Days to Build a Better Blog
31 Days to Build a Better Blog is a downloadable e-book designed to help you revitalize your blog by giving you 31 tasks that will all help to turn it into the page view powerhouse you’ve always dreamed of.
Each day in the project contains:
A Task – something to DO that day.
Teaching – each day you’ll be given great instruction on both the WHY and HOW of the task of the day.
It’s normally $39 but when I checked the link for this post I noticed it’s only $19.95. I have no idea how long this price is valid for though.
On a side note, I’m looking to run a blogging workshop during August for those who are interested in developing their blogs using this ebook. It’ll be free (but you have to purchase the ebook), and I’m still working out the details. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in please let me know in the comments.
Taken from the Beyond Bricks and Mortar sales page:
The Practical Strategy to market your Offline business using Online tools
Beyond Bricks and Mortar gives you the solid footing you need to access practical, useful information on how to blog for your business – when your business isn’t online.
Beyond Bricks and Mortar fills the gap when you’re standing confused on the edge of the online world, unclear on how to bridge it for your physical business, and wondering who’ll tell you how to do that.
This is an amazing book written for those who have physical businesses with an online presence.
How to Build a Professional Blog
How to Build a Professional Blog – the Quick Start Guide to Plan, Launch and Profit with your own Successful Blog.
$47 value, and absolutely free. Gotta love that! 
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The Clean Shower Guide to Marketing
This one of my favourite posts that was originally published early last year. Now updated and edited to be even more good-er. Enjoy!
I was cleaning the shower the other day. This is something I do regularly. Once a year is regular, right? Just kidding – I clean it a lot more often than that. While sloshing water around and scrubbing the tiles it occurred to me that cleaning the shower is in many ways like marketing your home business.
Read through and let me know what you think.
Firstly it needs to be done regularly. I once lived in a house where we thought the bottom half of the shower door and side was frosted glass, and that round bit on the floor was anti-slip coating. About a week or so after moving in, I cleaned it. Yes, it was ordinary clear glass underneath and plain tiled floor. Yuck.
If you clean your shower regularly, it’s easy. If you market your business regularly, it’s easy. Consistency in small efforts is a lot easier and yields much greater rewards than neglecting it and having to put in hours of backbreaking, gut-wrenching work. It’s much easier to keep up than to catch up.
If it’s done wrong you could end up with a greater mess. Sloshing buckets of water around may be great fun, watching it splash, however it has a tendency to, well, splash. And go everywhere, generally all over the bathroom walls and floor – outside of the shower. Or it just rinses the walls and floor and doesn’t actually clean anything.
You can spend as much money and time as you have on marketing, but if it’s not directed to the right people, if it’s not solving a problem for them, if it’s not compelling them to buy, then it’s a waste of time and money. Know why you’re using a particular marketing tactic, do it right, be focused and see the benefits. Make sure you’re marketing to a niche and not a demographic.
Use the right tools and know why you’re using them. You wouldn’t go to clean the shower with the vacuum cleaner would you? Or with a leaf rake? Of course not, they’re tools for other tasks. You go into the shower with some kind of cleaner, cloths to wipe, some way to rinse off the walls, bleach to clean the tiles if needed, maybe a squeegee. You know precisely what you’re doing (cleaning the shower) and the appropriate tools that you need to do that.
This is where you need to know your target market intimately and thoroughly, inside and out. Why do they buy? Where and how do they buy? What solution does your product provide? How do you market specifically and directly to these people? What medium do they use (online, magazines, forums) to find out about products and ask questions? There’s no point putting an advertisement in the financial times newspaper if your target market loves parenting forums. Don’t put money into any form of marketing just because someone says you should. Know how it relates to your market and what result you expect from it.
It takes work and planning. You clean the walls before the floor. Put bleach on the tiles (my apologies to the environmentalists here) and let it start working before you begin to scrub. And no matter what product you put on the glass and tiles, it still needs some elbow grease to be spotlessly clean. With cleaning, as with marketing, you need to plan the best order to do things.
You can’t sell a product and then tell the customer why they need it. The customer needs to be educated about what it does and why they want it. You, the business owner, need to make this happen. Customers don’t come up and say “I want to buy this widget, what does it do?”. Nuh uh. Customers see your marketing, which tells them how your widget solves their problem and world peace at the same time. And then they come to buy.
And lastly you need to be committed. If you just give the shower a quick swipe over with a dry cloth once a month then you might think you can call it ‘cleaning the shower’. But is it really? If you put an ad in the cheapest magazine once a month, is it the ads fault that no one buys? I have a friend who often tells me that she wishes she could have a profitable online business. And then goes on to tell me how she’s not interested in writing blog posts, or going on forums, or spending money on upgrading her website. She’s not committed to the process or the work required. If your business isn’t profitable, or not as profitable as you’d like, check your own commitment and activity levels first.
What do you think? Are you using the right tools in the right way to clean your shower as efficiently and effectively as possible?
How not to receive feedback
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post I’d sent the business owner a message to say that I hadn’t appreciated the hard sell etc, and by the way, where had she gotten my contact details from? (my phone number isn’t on the website). I was polite, just very clear that I wasn’t happy. This was her response, sent to me two weeks later (there’s a clue, it took her two weeks to respond):
Hi Melinda,
We had your details in the database from a previous contact you’d had with ‘her life partner’- when you were interested in commission only salespeople. The two of you had a conversation and that’s how your details ended up in there.
Uh no, she’s wrong: I’d filled out a free website audit and he’d called me about that, and to try and sell me on a seminar to improve my website. I said no to that one too.
You were rude to him also (after asking for his help).
Wrong again: filling out a free website program does not constitute asking for help in my book. And we’d ended up having a really good conversation, turned out we had a couple of mutual connections. So… I was rude to him and he was still happy to continue a conversation off-topic and talk for nearly an hour? I don’t think so.
Don’t worry – we apologised profusely to ‘salesperson’ (Who was very upset at how rude you were to her) for having left you on the database – and removed you immediately.
Seriously, if she’s that sensitive then she shouldn’t be in telephone sales. I didn’t swear at her or abuse her in any way, nor did I hang up on her. I did interrupt her and speak over the top of her and told her that I didn’t appreciate her manipulative sales questions. Rude? I’d say the rudeness was on her side as she refused to accept my ‘No’ and kept pushing the sale.
As for all of your other comments … I could write a book … and actually, probably will – but look at the end of the day it comes down to this:
‘salesperson’ did nothing wrong.
If you understood sales – even a little bit – you’d know that she did precisely what she should have done.
Right down to burning you.
Really? Since when has it been accepted marketing practice to ‘burn’ a contact? Since when is it good salesmanship to push the sale when the person has told you very clearly ‘No’ three times?
And if I don’t understand sales ‘even a little bit’ then how have I run a successful online business for six years then?
Because you are not now, nor will you ever be our client.
I don’t want to “keep in contact with people” on the off chance that one day, maybe they might want to buy something.
Ok, so if I don’t want to buy your very expensive course today, you don’t want me to be able to contact you to buy it in six months time? Wow. How many contacts is she losing because they don’t buy today, right now?
On top of which – we sell. On the phone. Every day. If you had stayed on our database you would have gotten more calls from more sales people who you would have upset being mean to.
Maybe you should spend a bit of time looking at your own obvious issues around sales, rather than attacking 23 year old girls who are doing their jobs.
Yes, I have issues around sales. I have serious issues around pushy hard-sell sales people who won’t take no for an answer.
Attacking 23 year old girls who are doing their job? Sorry, wrong again. I never ‘attacked’ her in any way. Definitely not picking up any guilt for that. Don’t try and make it my fault because I disagreed with your staff.
Good luck with everything.
Rest 100% assured that NO ONE from my company will EVER contact you again … even if you begged us to.
I think I was supposed to be sad and sorry that they’ll never contact me again. Really, that was the best news I’d had all week. And I don’t beg.
Feedback is a part of business
No one is too precious to receive feedback. And it’s not all going to be good. Get over it. If someone took the effort to let you know that (in their opinion) there was something lacking in your business then the least you can do is thank them for the effort they took to write.
Note that I didn’t say you had to agree with the feedback and tell them you’d make changes. You don’t have to agree with it, you just have to be nice about it. Put on your big girl panties and deal with it.
Get over your own issues around feedback. It’s not always going to be a nice pat on the back. That kind of sycophantic feedback won’t help you improve and grow. If you get a brickbat thrown at you then consider if there’s any truth in it. If there is then take it on board and use it to improve. If there’s not truth in it then simply ignore it.
Attempting to bully and score over the person who sent it just exposes your own issues. And it’s really bad PR when they write a blog post that is seen buy thousands of readers who could have been their customers….
How to screw up a cold call and lose customers
We all need to market and sell our stuff, right? That’s the whole point of being in business. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to sell.
Sell something the right way and the person is happy they dealt with you and everyone is pleased by the whole transaction. Sell the wrong way – or try to – and it ends up a bun fight.
How Not to Cold Call
A few weeks ago I had the dubious pleasure of receiving a business cold call. By the time the call finished I was so angry I rang my husband at work to vent – the venting took longer than the call. (Hubby ended up being late for a meeting, and told his boss “She was way angrier than you, and I have to live with her” LOL)
Normally cold calls don’t bother me. We’re on the Do-Not-Call register so if we DO receive any cold calls it’s generally for my business. Usually it’s enough to tell the person very clearly “Nope, not interested, thanks for your time” and that’s the end of it. Not this call. Here’s how NOT to cold call someone:
The one thing they did right
They rang during the day. Ring me in the evening and you’ve got me offside from the second I pick up the phone. Business hours people, that’s what they’re for.
I love you forever, what’s your name?
The salesperson introduced herself and told me the name of the person she was calling for – I slightly know this business owner from a couple of forums that we’re both on. Her script, after the intro, went something like:
Our business helps other small businesses just like yours to grow and make more money. Tell me about your business, what do you do?
Huh? You rang me, you help businesses just like mine, but you don’t actually know what my business does?
Imagine you’re in a bar and a complete stranger comes up to you, takes you in his (or her) arms, looks into your eyes and says in complete seriousness “I love you and want to marry you, have kids with you and be together until we die. Oh, and what’s your name?”
You’d be like “Get away from me you freakin weirdo!”
That’s what this call was like. First you tell me your business is to help small businesses just like mine to grow – and then you ask me what my business is? If you don’t know what I do then how do you know that your business can help me?
Do some research. Look at my website – it’ll tell you. That’s what it’s there for (ok, one of the things). Or at least reword your script so it’s not so contradictory and doesn’t make me think you’re ignorant.
Pushy Pushy
I told the salesperson a very brief and general description of what I do. She suggested that I needed to narrow down my niche. I said it was a lot more focussed but my description would do for now. That didn’t please her at all. Did she really expect me to discuss my business in detail with a stranger who called me?
And then she started on her spiel. She was selling a course on creating info-products. I’d seen some details from the business owner on a forum, so I knew what she was talking about.
“No thanks, I’m not interested at the moment”
You know how in sales books they tell you that a ‘No’ is only an objection? Well, this person had been reading those books.
She began on the marketing questions that are designed so you either have to sound like a complete idiot to turn it down or you open the door for more selling. Her question was something along the lines of:
“Do you want to learn how to sell more effective and higher priced information products to your customers?”
Well, what am I supposed to say? “No, I like being broke and not selling anything” how stupid would that answer be? But if I say “Of course I do” then she’s got an open door to keep pushing the sale.
So I didn’t answer. I pointed out that it’s a typical marketing question designed to either open the door or make me look stupid, and I don’t appreciate being manipulated. And said again “No, I’m not interested in this product”
The pushy got worse
I’m sure she took my ‘No’ as a personal challenge because she continued to try and sell to me. I ended up saying ‘No’ at least three times, very clearly. I told her “I’m not interested and I’m not your ideal client” and she kept on pushing to sell!
At this point I was interrupting her and talking over the top of her. Rude, yes, but it was the only way to let her know I wasn’t interested short of outright hanging up on her.
It ended when I told her (again) I wasn’t interested and was going to hang up. At that point she agreed I wasn’t their client and we said a rather terse goodbye.
Do unto others….
How many of us enjoy having someone disrespect us and ignore us when we tell them no? Who wants to get off a call feeling they’ve just been manipulated and sold something they didn’t really want? Why are these sales techniques still being taught?
A few years ago I read “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by John Cialdini. In it he discusses the brain conditioning and instinctive responses that we’re all wired with. Marketers hook into this brain wiring and structure their questions so we’ll give them the answer they want rather than look a fool.
Marketing or a Used Car Salesman?
Cold calling works – I won’t deny that. But at what ethical cost? Do you really want to sell to someone knowing that they bought because you twisted their responses? That’s why Naomi and Sonia created ‘Marketing for Nice People’ last year, because everyone is so fed up with the manipulative, sleazy sales techniques that are being used. (Marketing for Nice People is no longer available unfortunately, but if you’re looking for a marketing course try the Marketing 101 – great course!)
The point of marketing is to make the customer be panting to buy the product, to be standing there with their wallet in hand throwing money at you. Not because it’s the only way to get rid of you, but because they can see how that product is going to change their life forever and THEY MUST HAVE IT NOW!!!
Pt 1, the end
After the call, when I’d calmed down reasonably, I sent a message to the business owner to let her know that the call went badly and that I hadn’t appreciated being pushed and manipulated by a hard-selling salesperson. Tomorrow I’ll show you her response, and we’ll have a chat about receiving feedback. Let me just say, her reply was even more entertaining than the cold call!
Book Giveaway – 'Get Clients Now!'
I’m giving away one copy of this fantastic book by C.J. Hayden ‘Get Clients Now!’. It was originally recommended to me by a friend who has a very successful business and I’m now following the recipe in this book – it’s amazingly effective and it works.
This book is an essential in any Work at Home Moms library and you can win it simply by leaving a comment below.
From the back cover:
If you’re ready to dramatically increase your client base, this brand new edition of Get Clients Now! is the one book you need. Completely revised and featuring scores of tactics, tools and foolproof strategies customisable for any professional service business, this powerhouse book gives you a unique and proven 28-day program for locating, landing, and keeping new clients in greater numbers than you’ve ever dreamed possible.
You’ll learn: how to choose the right marketing tactics for your situation and personality; a foolproof method for diagnosing exactly what’s missing in your marketing and how to fix it; how to use Internet marketing techniques, including e-zines, SEO and blogging; hands-on approaches for replacing unproductive cold-calling with the power of relationship marketing; and much much more.
Please note that this book is for Service businesses rather than retail.
How to enter
Simply leave a comment below and tell me what you like most about SuperWAHM (or WAHM Biz Builder as we were). The competition runs for four days. On Saturday 16th I’ll draw a random number for the winner and post in the comments as well as email the winner.
I’m more than happy to post anywhere in the world, so Good luck!
And the winner is….. Stephanie, from Scratchpad Secretaries, comment #16
So What Do I Do With My Newsletter/Autoresponder Now?
Yesterday we looked at why you need a Newsletter list and where to get one set up. Today we’re looking at how to use it.
Ok, I have an autoresponder, now what do I do with it?
That’s easy:
1. You get subscribers to sign up to your list; and
2. You email them.
Finding Subscribers
So where do your subscribers come from? Anywhere you can legally and ethically find them…
Signup box on your website – have it clear, easy to see when people land there. For best results, ask for simply their First Name and Email Address. That’s all, just those two pieces of information.
Free Offering – give people a free gift for giving you their contact details. Offer a free report or ebook, related to your business. DON’T give away free consultations or anything that requires an ongoing time commitment!
Stalls, markets – have a signup form for people who would like to be on your list. If you do this, make sure you add them to your list within 24 hours of the stall and email them immediately to welcome them. Don’t leave it for long because they’ll forget they filled in the form and will delete your email or mark it as spam.
Promote on FaceBook – If you’ve got a fan page on FaceBook then you can add a tab or box with your signup form in it. Remember to let your fans know about it when you put it up.
Competitions – run a competition where people have to sign up to your newsletter list to join in. Check with your local government for rules and regulations concerning competitions first though.
Ask people – when you meet people at networking functions etc, and they express an interest in what you do simply ask them if they would like to join your newsletter list.
Joint Ventures – run a promotion or competition with an another business, complementary to yours,
What do I email them about?
Anything that is relevant or interesting for your subscribers. Unless you’ve set up your list to be very clearly a Sales list – like our VIP list, where people are told when subscribing that they’ll receive sales offers and it’s not a newsletter list – then you need to send interesting content to your subscribers.
I’m not saying you can’t market to them, that’s the primary purpose of having a newsletter list, I’m saying that you need to send them information that is interesting. And bring in the sales content in a nice way, without beating them over the head with it.
- A new product you’re releasing
- Product of the month special deals
- Case studies and testimonials
- New and interesting uses for a product
- Developments and new findings relating to your core business
- What’s been happening in your business
- Profile a client
- Answer questions from clients (be careful of confidentiality issues, ask for permission first before using a clients name)
- Profile one of your staff members
- Articles to help your subscribers
- Subscriber only discounts
- ????
What else can you add to this list?
Questions or comments about Newsletters and ezines? Please come and share your thoughts in the comments.
Why Do I Need a Newsletter List Anyway?
Over the last few weeks I’ve has several discussions with coaching clients regarding email lists, why they need them, how to collect names and how to use the list.
I’ve written about newsletter lists before, in The Money’s in Your Newsletter List and a guest post at IttyBiz on Putting the Permission Back into Marketing Take a few minutes and go read both those posts, then come back to this one. Go ahead, we’ll wait for you….
Why do I need a newsletter list?
You need it so you can market to people, so you can contact them again after the initial meeting. Statistics show that it will take up to seven contacts before a person is ready to buy from you. If you’ve met someone who is interested in what you do, what’s the best way to contact them again? Your newsletter list.
But I already have a blog and RSS
Yes, yes, I know you do. So do I. And I also have a newsletter list for our VIPs. (Are you a VIP? If you’re not already, go sign up now. We both know you ARE important so go join the VIP list) What’s the difference between having a newsletter list and RSS?
People on your newsletter list have asked to be there because they’re interested in what you’re selling. Most people on your RSS list probably don’t read your feed regularly. (Sorry for the bad news, but it’s true) When people are busy – and we all are – feeds are one of the first things to be dropped.
People often sign up for RSS feed if they’re unsure whether they like the site’s content and direction. They sign up to keep an eye on it without having to go back to the site. People who sign up for your newsletter have proactively indicated that they’re definately interested in hearing more from you. They’ve said they want to buy from you.
I have no idea how to set up a newsletter list
Autoresponders are brilliant. They take the hard work out of subscriptions, un-subscribers, setting up the list, emailing etc. Two of the best are MailChimp and Aweber. MailChimp is free up to 500 subscribers, Aweber is paid for.
Aweber has a higher delivery rate and more formatting options but is a a little harder to use (not much, just not quite as user friendly until you get used to it). MailChimp’s pricing increases as you get more subscribers and if you send more emails each month, Aweber’s pricing stays the same no matter how many subscribers you have or how many emails you send. It’s your choice which option is best for your business.
Best-practice – Single or Double opt-in
All autoresponders should give you the option to have either single opt-in or double opt-in. Single opt-in is where a subscriber fills in their details in the form, clicks ‘submit’ and they’re on your list. Double opt-in is where they fill in their details and click ‘submit’, your autoresponder sends them a confirmation email and they have to click on the link to confirm their subscription.
Single opt-in is not complicate with the CAN-Spam Act, however it’s still widely used. Double opt-in has a lower confirmation rate, which is why so many people stick with single opt-in.
Double opt-in is the best practice. It’s the safest option to use and helps give your subscribers confidence that you’re not going to spam them. If you’re taking care of them from the beginning then you’ll likely continue to do so.
Part 2 on using Autoresponders and newsletters will follow tomorrow.
The Basics of a Good Blogsite – Part Two
Last Tuesday was part one of Basics of a Good Blogsite and today I give you Part Two.
1. Don’t make your visitors think. When a visitor lands on your site they should NEVER wonder
- What’s this site about?
- Where do I go?
- How do I find things?
- Where is …?
- What’s that…?
Make everything on your site clear, simple and easy. Tell visitors where to go and what to do. “Click Here”, “Buy This”, “Subscribe Here”, “Now Read This”. And try to keep down the number of clicks the visitor has to make. There are some statistics floating around that say you lose 7% of people for every click they have to make. Based on my own experience and anecdotal evidence, I personally think the percentage may be higher.
2. Check Your Spelling. Personal rant coming up! I detest sites where there are spelling and grammar mistakes all over it. I know that mistakes creep in, and there are probably one or two on my own site, however I have seen websites and blog posts that are full of them. It’s unprofessional and shows a level of disinterest on the part of the business owner. It’s distracting to the reader.
Every computer has a spell checker – use it. Then proof read for words that are spelled correctly but out of context, ie: check correct usage of words like ‘your’ and ‘you’re’. The spell checker won’t pick them up because they are spelled correctly, however they are the wrong word to be used there.
If you know your spelling ability is lacking, ask a friend to read over your work first. Some mistakes will always get through. Correct them when you find them, don’t stress too much over them, however don’t send out any mistakes that you could have prevented.
3. Keep Statistics. Ok, I know this isn’t something that visitors will see, however it’s really useful for you. Have a look at this recent post for what and how to measure your business statistics.
4. Popular Posts. As Marc mentioned in his comment on the last post, Popular Posts is a great way to let new visitors know what other people on your site enjoyed reading. I personally don’t use it because of a lack of space in my sidebar. I don’t see it as being essential, however it’s certainly very nice to have. A good plugin to use is Easy Popular Posts.
5. Subscribe to comments. Please, please, please install a subscribe to comments plugin on your site. Nothing is more annoying than being forced to revisit a post to see if anyone has posted a comment after you or answered your comment. I’ve seen this on sites I’ve guest posted on, and it’s really frustrating to have to check it a couple of times a day in case there’s been a comment. I use Tempus Fugit Subscribe to Comments, it works well and I’m very happy with it.
6. Ads – Who are you promoting or selling? Ads on blogs… There’s two things I’m going to say about this:
i) Never advertise someone who sells the same products you do. Why would you send your site visitors to a competitors site? Therefore, be careful of Adsense. It places ads according to keywords on your site – which means that the ads are for businesses using the same keywords as yourself. I’m not saying don’t use Adsense, just be careful of what is being promoted.
ii) Always promote your own products or services first. If you have more than one advertisement then your products and services should be at located at the top. The first ads that a visitor sees.
7. Know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Writing blog posts – why? What purpose are you aiming to achieve with them? Setting up a newsletter list – why? What are you going to use it for? Are you doing things simply because you’ve been told ‘that’s how it’s done’ or do you know your reason behind it? Everything you do should have a clear purpose defined before you start.
Well that’s it for this two part series. Feel free to add your own suggestions for improving or tweaking a blogsite in the comments.
Also, beginning next week, we’ll be back to posting three times a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
The Basics of a Good Blogsite – Part One
A lot of work at home mums put together their own websites using WordPress, and this is great. Most of the A-lister bloggers I know also use WordPress – you’re in great company! However, there’s so many possible options that you can include on your site. How do you know what to include and what to leave out?
One of the things we’ve been doing recently over on Virtual Coach Forums is website critiquing for people just getting their sites up and running.
I’ve put together some of the basics that need to be considered when planning and setting up your site.
1. Is your website Business or Personal? If it’s a business site, then that needs to be obvious. Your business, what you do or sell, needs to be front and centre on the home page. It is more important that people landing on your page know what your business does than that they read your latest blog post. A good compromise is to have an excerpt of your latest post on the front page if you really want it there.
Include a fantastic tagline in your header, or somewhere very prominent, so a first time visitor can see it, read it easily and know what your site is about.
If your site is a Personal website, then this is not an important consideration.
2. Have your own Domain name. I can’t say this often enough. A .com domain name will cost you around US$8.00 per year to register. It gives your business credibility, increases your search engine ranking, brands you. Using free sites such as blogspot or wordpress.com actually costs you money. The site and hosting may be free, however you are paying for it as you lose customers. It looks amateurish and unprofessional, don’t do it. This is a post I wrote several months back on the advantages of having your own domain name.
Same goes for hotmail and yahoo free email addresses, don’t use them. Gmail is good, but that’s the only one. If you’ve got a freebie site and freebie email address you’re going to look like a fly-by-night business who may not be around for the long haul.
3. Recent posts. Have only five to seven (preferably only five) posts showing in your recent posts. Any more and a visitor is given too much choice and it takes up too much space. The top of your sidebar is prime real estate, use it well.
On a related note, limit the number of posts to only having two to three posts showing on one page. It saves time when loading up and makes reading easier if the visitor doesn’t have to scroll through twenty screens to read your posts.
4. Get rid of the clutter in your sidebar. In the same vein, get rid of any clutter in the sidebar. Your site needs to be easy to read, not have the visitors eyes pulled every which way and distracted. Blogrolls, Tag Clouds, Calendars, twitter updates, if they’re not adding particular and measureable value to your site then get rid of them. They provide a distraction to someone browsing your site.
If you have two sidebars (three column theme) be very careful what you put in your left hand sidebar. Search engines read from left to right and give more importance to those things it reads first. So if your left hand sidebar has your twitter updates, the search engine may rank them as being more important than that beautifully written, keyword rich blog post you have there.
For myself, I prefer sites with only a right hand sidebar. I find them easier to read and find things. When a person looks at a page or a website, their eyes move in a Z fashion. There’s a saying that a confused mind will always say no. By keeping your sidebar clean and simple visitors are more likely to stay and keep reading and looking around.
5. Navigation. K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Silly. Have your navigation organised so the more important pages are listed on the left and least important on the right. The exception to this is your Contact page (yes, you MUST have a contact page.) which is generally on the far right. Label your pages with easy to understand names, easy for first time visitors to understand that is.
Whatever you do, don’t use Flash or Javascript for your navigation. More and more people are using Adblock, pop-up filters and the like, plus the vagaries of all the different browsers. A lot of people cannot see javascript or flash without changing their security settings. If your navigation is in javascript then they can’t see anything beyond the home page. Bad move….
6. SEO. SEO is an ever changing beastie, the bane of all business people and pretty much anyone who is not an SEO expert. Here’s a series of blog posts on SEOwritten by a friend of mine, Marc Pieniazek who is an SEO copywriter. If you want to do your own SEO and want a brilliant step by step guide to SEO at an affordable price (US$39.00) and that has been written for small business owners, then buy Naomi Dunford’s ebook Ninja SEO School. It’s a great ebook. I’ve got it, use it, and highly recommend it.
7. RSS. There’s a couple of things I’d like to say about RSS. First up, please, please, please, offer an email option for people to sign up for. A lot of people don’t like using web-based Readers and prefer an email option.
Use Feedburner to disseminate your RSS. It’s very efficient, it’s free, you can optimise it with your branding and it’s easy. I’ve written about RSS before, about using RSS to keep readers updated and also about branding your Feedburner RSS emails
Send your feeds as a full post, not an excerpt. People are basically lazy and normally won’t click through to read a full post. Make it easy for your readers, don’t make them work for the information. If you’ve gone to the effort of writing a post, full of useful information for your readers, make sure it gets to them. Don’t waste your efforts by depending on readers to click through to read it.
8. Remember that not everyone has adsl or high-speed internet. There are actually people in the world who are still on dial-up. I know…, it sounds unbelievable. But trust me, there really are people who are still on dial-up. Don’t load your pages up with huge graphics, keep your posts down to a reasonable number. If you have a lot of graphics use thumbnail images for faster loading.
Forget about using Flash on your site. It uses up a lot of bandwidth to download and search engines don’t consider it. Same with video and audio. I’m not saying don’t have them on your site, just don’t have them auto-playing when a person lands on the page. Give the person a choice to listen/watch.
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Meet Mel:
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The web's business planning expert - just for work at home mums. Together we'll find the time for you to make money.