Your blog isn’t just a place for you to show everyone how brilliant you are. It’s a place where you can introduce yourself to people and where you can build real relationships with real people. The people who are reading your blog obviously have some interest in your topic. That means there’s a good chance at least some of them will be valuable connections. You can make those connections through the comments. But if you really want to connect with people, you have to know how to write great responses to their comments. Marcus Sheridan at Social Media Examiner has 19 tips for using your blog comments to build relationships with your readers. Here’s a quick breakdown:
- Use a personal tone. If you want to build relationships with your readers, you need to speak to them like a real person.
- Ask questions. In each blog post, ask a few questions at the end to invite your readers to share their opinions or their personal experiences. If you give people something specific to comment on, they’re more likely to leave a comment.
- Don’t act like a know-it-all. No one wants to talk to a know-it-all.
- Admit you could be wrong. Inject a little humility into your posts by saying that you realize you are only human and you can be wrong sometimes. It makes you more appealing to your readers and it can be a great way to get a real conversation started.
- Put a bio and photo of yourself next to your post. Let people know who you are. It’s much harder to a reader to create a connection with a faceless name.
- Start by saying hi. Just say hello at the beginning of your responses. Acknowledge the person you are speaking to before you launch into the rest of the spiel.
- Use their names. When you’re responding to someone’s comment, use their name. Everyone loves to hear their own name.
- Show empathy. Often people use the comments section to share their own problems or struggles related to the topic you were discussing. Have empathy for these problems or struggles. Show that you care.
- Ask more questions in your response. Sometimes a commenter will ask you for help or advice. Instead of just throwing a response out there without really thinking about it, ask the commenter for more details. Ask them for more information, so that you can really help them.
- Invite readers to respond to each other. You don’t have to be the only one responding to comments. Invite your readers to help each other. To become their own community.
- Respond by email. Most blogs require commenters to provide an email address. In addition to responding to comments on the blog, you can also send a personal email to the commenter. They won’t expect it, and it will really make them feel special.
- Praise them, and be specific. If you see something in a comment that you like, tell the person in your response exactly what you liked about it. Tell them something about the comment that you appreciated.
- Recognize returning visitors. If you see someone coming back and commenting more than once, acknowledge them. People love to feel noticed and appreciated.
- Make sure they will see your response. Sometimes people comment on a blog but don’t bother subscribing to future comments. Use a plugin that will send people an email every time they get a reply, so they will be sure not to miss anything.
- Say thank you. People are taking time out of their busy lives to leave a comment on your blog. Take a few extra seconds and include a little thank you in your response.
- Sign it. Like a letter or an email. You start by saying hi, and using their name, and you ending by signing yours.
- Refer back in future posts. You might get an idea from one of these comments for a future post. When you write that post, refer back to the comment that inspired it. Give credit to the commenter.
- Don’t yell at people who disagree with you. Not all comments say “great post.” Sometimes people disagree with you. Don’t be nasty. They’re entitled to their opinions. Treat them with respect, as you treat everyone else. If they get nasty, you can always delete the comment.
- Last but not least, in case you didn’t get it yet: Respond. If you don’t have time to respond to every single comment, at least take the time to do what you can. You’ll never build relationships with your readers if you ignore everything they say.
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Did you know that 95% of all SMS messages get read by the recipient? That’s a big chunk better than email. You can achieve a lot of success with an SMS campaign, as long as you do it right. Just like any other kind of campaign, there are best practices to learn and pitfalls to avoid. Before you start sending out those mass texts, make sure you know the right way to run a text campaign. A good place to start is Henry Cazalet’s guest post at MarketingProfs on 5 SMS best practice tips. Here are 3 of them:
1) The first rule: Target. This is nothing new. You were already doing it with emails, right? Every marketing campaign you run must be carefully targeted so that the right message goes to the right people. Texting is no different. Some of those phone numbers on your list might belong to loyal fans of your brand, others might belong to people who bought something from you once, and others to people who have never actually bought anything from you but are following you on Twitter. Use whatever information you have from the people who have given you their phone numbers to segment your list as much as possible.
You might split them up by location, by social media participation, or by any other measure you know of. It doesn’t matter where you split the list, only that you split it. Then you must craft carefully targeted messages to go out to each segment. An invitation to follow you on Twitter shouldn’t be sent to anyone who already does, and a message about a one-hour-only sale at your store in New York City probably shouldn’t be sent to customers in Colorado.
2) Never send spam. Messages should always be relevant and useful. Just like with emails, you need to make sure not to send out too many too fast and you need to give people a way to opt out if they don’t want to continue receiving your messages. SMS isn’t the spam junkyard that email is; don’t ruin that.
3) Remember that text messages are usually received immediately. For this reason you need to be sensitive to the fact that you are texting people with busy lives, and if you interrupt them at the wrong time they’ll just ignore you, or worse, get annoyed. It may take some experimenting, but find the right time of day to send out your messages so that people will be able to act on them without interrupting their busy day.
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More and more people are using smartphones to connect to the Internet, but some people actually do still use those old desktops. And while it’s true that mobile phone users and desktop users are looking for different things, it’s not a bad idea to look at the mobile web and get a few ideas for fixing up our regular desktop sites. In fact, some users actually prefer mobile sites over desktop sites, and not just because they love their smartphones so much. It’s because mobile sites match users’ needs more closely than desktop sites. If we know what people love so much about mobile sites, we might be able to improve the desktop experience as well, for all those who still actually use desktops once in a while.
Mobile sites are simple and user-focused. Your desktop website might have ads covering half the page, or a huge slideshow at the top, or all kinds of other fancy things that you think are great but that are actually just annoying for the user. The people who come to your site are looking for something. On a mobile phone they will likely have an easier time finding it. Because when we create a mobile website we cut out absolutely everything that isn’t vital, since it just doesn’t fit. But on the desktop version of the site, we always think we have all the space we want and we should go crazy with it, so the user has a more difficult time finding the one specific thing they are looking for. Giving the user a difficult time is never a good idea. So while a desktop website doesn’t need to be as minimal as a mobile website, the lesson to learn is that the website must be focused on the user’s needs.
Mobile loads faster. Don’t you just hate waiting for a web page to load? So does everyone else. We all want pages to appear as soon as we ask for them. On a mobile device we can have that. But desktop sites are often loaded with extra fancy features that slow everything down. You’ve got to ask yourself, do your site visitors really care so much about those extra fancy features? If it’s a choice between faster and fancier, the user will almost always choose faster. So check the loading speed of your desktop site. If it’s too slow, you’ll make your site visitors a lot happier by speeding it up however you can.
Mobile makes social easier. If you’re interested in finding a company on Facebook or Twitter you’ll probably want to check their mobile website, because that’s where you’ll most likely find the company’s social presence prominently displayed. And if you want to find out where the company is located, mobile is usually your best bet. On a desktop site, these things are typically much harder to find. Why do we do that? Sure, desktop visitors aren’t on the go and so aren’t as likely to need directions to your physical location, but that’s no reason to make the directions impossible to find. Your social presence and your contact information fall under that category of “vital stuff that’s on the mobile site because it’s what people are looking for.” If it’s important enough to take up prime real estate on your mobile site, it’s important enough to be easy to find on your desktop site.
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This image craze is for real. We always knew a picture was worth a thousand words. Now we know just how much those thousand-word files appeal to people. Enough that 70% of all activity on Facebook revolves around pictures–uploading, sharing, looking at friends’ albums, commenting, liking. About 250 million pictures are uploaded onto Facebook every day.
And Facebook isn’t even specifically an image platform. Heard of Instagram? Pinterest? Neither is very old, but the growth rates they’ve seen from the very beginning are staggering. Pinterest hasn’t yet evolved past the “invitation-only” stage, but by the end of 2011 it had 15 million users. The simple explanation: We love pictures. Always have, always will. Now that it’s so incredibly easy to take pictures, edit pictures, and share pictures we love with the world, the image craze is only increasing.
Since it is so easy to take and find pictures and to post them online, your business really should take advantage and come up with an image strategy. If you’re not using any images on your site, you’re just out of touch and you won’t be able to engage your site visitors. Adding pictures to your blog posts is an easy way to make them more attractive and to capture attention quickly.
An image strategy. Exactly what does that entail? Your image strategy is how you are going to use images to engage your audience, build your audience, and make money. It’s called a strategy because it’s not as simple as pulling a couple of images from Flickr and adding them randomly into your blog posts. You’ll need to create and/or find some really good images. They should be creative, interesting, relevant. You want pictures that really are worth a thousand words.
You engage your audience by adding images they will love anywhere you can. Encourage visiting specific pages by highlighting them with interesting images. Get people looking, and then get them reading and talking. To build your audience, add social buttons to all your images so that your site visitors can easily share them on their social networks. If your pictures are really doing their job, then when they get shared they will catch the attention of other people in those networks, who will now check out your site because they saw one of your images and want to know more.
How does all of this translate into more money for you? a) More visitor engagement and more site visitors can mean more customers. b) You might try attaching ads to images, just like you can put ads at the bottom of your Youtube videos. Be careful with this–when people see ads where they don’t like to see ads they get upset with you.
http://bit.ly/zikR3t
If you’re sending out an email newsletter, you’ve probably designed the email very carefully with an eye to branding, promoting, and holding the customer’s attention. But have you given the same treatment to all of your emails? The order confirmation, password reset, shipping status, and thank you emails? These emails are all opportunities to communicate with the customer, and you should take advantage of each one of these opportunities. You should use each one to make a favorable impression, to make the customer appreciate you and want to communicate more.
How can you do that with something as mundane as an order confirmation email? The first rule is this: Write like a human being. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know I’m always talking about how important it is to sound like a person. A confirmation email that really sounds like a personal thank you from someone at the company will impress a customer much more than some standard, “Your order has been received. You will be notified when it ships.” message. All emails, even the most basic and most boring, should have that personal touch that shows they were written by a human being. That makes the customer feel as if you’re really speaking to them. This helps you create a connection with your customers.
Keep all of your emails consistent, and keep them all consistent with your brand. What does that mean? It means you should use the same tone throughout all of your emails, the design should match your website, you put all the same contact information in all emails, they should have the same greetings and signatures. All emails should be clearly coming from you, sounding like you. You can’t confuse your customers by sending out one email that has your logo and one that’s designed with completely different colors, and one that sounds like it was written by a robot and another one that’s got the wrong twitter handle in the signature.
The other really important thing: calls to action. Are you sending out transactional emails without clear calls to action? Sure, a password reset email in response to a click on a “forgot password?” link is pretty obvious, but some of your emails might not be so clear. If there’s any kind of action that they need to do, or some kind of action you want them to do, state it clearly with a strong call to action. Nobody should have to figure out what to do with this email they got from you.
So do your transactional emails need a makeover? Just remember: human voice, consistent tone and design, clear call to action. That’ll help you get started.
http://bit.ly/GBsS7F
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Link bait is the stuff content marketers dream of. But dreaming about it doesn’t make it happen. Creating a piece of true link bait requires coming up with a creative idea that will be shared over and over on every network imaginable just because it’s so amazing. A great idea like that doesn’t just walk up to you on the street and hit you in the head. You need to actively seek it out. You need to brainstorm. Some people don’t consider themselves to be very creative. They think a brainstorming session won’t help them at all because the ideas just aren’t there and never will be. If that’s what’s stopping you from sitting down and figuring out how to go viral, you should check out this post about brainstorming. It’s a research-based guide to better brainstorming, even for those who consider themselves not-so-creative. Here are some of the highlights:
Constrain yourself. Though thinking outside the box is good, thinking too broadly about anything and everything will hamper you. This point might more clearly be stated as Focus. Think only about one thing, and don’t give your brain too many options. Think that doesn’t make any sense? Would it be easier for you to come up with an idea for a blog post if your topic was “animals” or if your topic was “cat-themed Internet trends”? By not allowing yourself to think about dogs, you’re freeing yourself to figure out the best way to handle the specific topic you’re focusing on.
Motivation is important. We’re more likely to create something good if our name will be attached to it than if the work will be anonymous. Anonymity creates a shield that we can hide behind, even without meaning to, that becomes a block to our creativity. But if I know that my name will be attached to this piece of content, I’m more motivated to make this piece of content the best I can come up with, and I’ll end up creating something better.
Learn as much as you can about the subject or the industry. Creativity requires a solid knowledge base. How can you expect to create link bait about Star Wars if you know nothing about it? If you know some, learn more. Learning and doing new things opens you up and allows your creativity to grow.
Is it better to brainstorm alone or with a group? Diverse groups can come up with a greater number of ideas, but brainstorming in a group setting often hampers individual contributions. The method that has been found to work the best is this: Get the group together and explain to everyone what is needed. Let everyone come up with their own ideas and write them down. When everyone is done, each person should present their own ideas, but with no discussion. After everyone has presented their ideas, the group should discuss them. This way all of the ideas are brought out there before they can be hampered by group dynamics, but you also get the benefits of group discussion and sharing. This group should have up to 12 people and should meet in person.
Often people who believe they are not creative are able to surprise themselves. You just need the right mindset, the right knowledge and experience, and the right environment.
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Some of us have difficulty getting a point across quickly. When we’re forced to limit ourselves to a small number of characters, we find it hard to choose our characters effectively. That’s one reason so many people find Tweeting difficult. Writing a blog post is easy enough, but when asked to compress that piece of brilliance into 140 characters we just go blank. Sure, I can tell you about my day, but I’m going to need at least a full paragraph to do it. Often the 140 characters that we do come up with don’t really end up saying everything we wanted them to say. Well, the same thing often happens in PPC copy.
We get a title line, two lines of ad copy, and a URL. That’s it. And each line gets cut off after what seems like nothing at all. How can we be expected to say anything enticing enough to get clicks in just that little space we are given? No, PPC copy is not always easy to write. But there are some things you should keep in mind in order to make sure that you always make the most of the characters that are allotted to you.
The title: If you’re a big recognized brand, putting your brand name in the title of the ad can be a good idea. Name recognition will help you attract attention that way. But if your name isn’t quite so well known, there are better ways to use the ad title. If the title of an ad is a brand name no one’s ever heard of, they’ll just skip right over it and never even look at the ad. But if the title highlights one of the huge benefits of buying from this company, that gives people something to look at and a reason to look more closely at the ad.
Ad copy: Keep in mind what searchers scrolling through these ads are going to be looking for. PPC is most effective at the end of the buying cycle, when the searcher is just about ready to buy and just wants to decide who to buy from. If your ad isn’t offering to sell what they want to buy, it’s just a waste of space. Figure out what someone who ended up on this search results page might want, and write an ad that lets them know you have it for them, and that your offer is better than all the other ads they’re seeing at the same time.
Copy should be targeted. A generic ad meant for anyone interested in electronics is less likely to get clicked on than an ad speaking specifically to someone who wants a new iPod today and wouldn’t mind free shipping while you’re at it. Create focused ad groups based on keywords that refer to a specific need. Use the two lines of copy to quickly say what you have and highlight the most important benefit of your offer.
The landing page: You should have a different landing page for each one of those targeted ad groups, because each ad group is promising something different based on a different request from the searcher. Each of these landing pages must follow through on what was promised in the ads. If you have an ad group for cars and an ad group for trucks, you should have a different landing page for each one. Whatever promises you made in the ads should be repeated here, along with any other benefits you didn’t have space for. A bulleted list with 3 to 5 benefits usually works pretty well. Remember, someone who reached this page probably wants to buy something, so remind them why they want to buy it here and then let them do it.
http://selnd.com/FPIJPM
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We always talk about how important it is for a business to have a blog, but if your blog isn’t getting you any new customers, is it really doing you any good? The point of a business is to make money. The point of a blog is to help that happen. So the first step is to get people to read your blog, and the next step is to turn those people into paying customers. Having trouble with that second step? Here are a few things you can do with your blog to convince your readers to become customers:
The most important thing is to win your readers’ trust. The first step here is easy: Put up a little bio about yourself next to a small picture. Also write an About page to introduce yourself more completely to your readers. This will help them to connect with you and see you as a real person they can trust. To keep this perception strong, put up some posts about your real life. Not that this should overpower the purpose of your blog, but why not post something once in a while about a funny thing that happened to you on the train or how annoyed you get when people cut in front of you at the supermarket? Customers are much more comfortable buying from someone they feel they have a connection with. Give them this connection by sharing your real thoughts and real experiences. Bonus points if you can connect these personal posts with your business.
The next most important thing is to help your readers. It might seem like holding back everything and leaving only tantalizing hints about your product is the way to go, but that’s wrong. Your blog needs to provide real value to your readers, and the value you can provide is your expertise in your field. You shouldn’t be afraid to share your expertise. Doing so won’t stop people from buying your product because they think they know it all from your blog; it will encourage them that you really are an expert and your product really must be worth the price if you’re even willing to give pieces away for free. Not providing helpful information in your blog will just make your blog not worth reading. And it’s tough to turn readers into customers if you don’t have any readers.
In the same vein, respond to comments from your readers. This is part of being helpful. If someone asks a question about one of your posts, or uses the comments section as a way of getting in touch with you to ask about your product, or if they just want to say something about the post, you should respond to the comment. Answering questions is helpful, and answering a response about the post, even if it didn’t specifically require an answer, shows that you care, you appreciate their opinion, and you’re willing to engage in conversation.
If you really want to use your blog to convince people that you are worthy of their trust and that your product is worth buying, add a space for testimonials. Got any satisfied customers? Any of them ever thank you for how much you’ve helped them? Post the thank yous in a special testimonial section on the blog. When your readers see that others have benefited from your product, they’ll be more likely to want to try it out themselves. So dig up a few of those glowing reviews and find a prominent place to put them.
http://bit.ly/x6XvwF
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With email marketing, you can nurture leads, stay in touch with your customers, keep yourself at the front of their minds, inform them of your news, and promote special offers. But as soon as a customer opts out of your emails, you lose your connection to that customer and all opportunities to continue this conversation. This is a problem for most B2B marketers, and if it’s happening to you it’s important to figure out why it is happening and do what you can to prevent it.
When a customer withdraws permission for you to send them emails, you lose the relationship you’ve been building with them. No more weekly newsletters, no more special promotions. Once they’ve decided they’re sick of you, that’s it. So all the money that you might have gotten from them over the course of time is now lost. What’s the lifetime value of your typical customer? When a customer stops letting you sell to them you lose all of that. When too many customers stop letting you sell to them, your bottom line takes a beating. Opt-outs are very bad for business. How can you reduce the number of opt-outs you get?
People generally opt out of emails when they get annoyed by them. The business executives you’re marketing to are busy people who get a lot of emails. If you send too many and they’re not all super relevant and extremely useful, those business executives get annoyed by your emails. They’ll opt out just to stop the influx and keep a clean inbox. The solution? Don’t send too many emails. When you do have an email to send out, target it very carefully so that you don’t end up sending it to a bunch of people who will consider it an irrelevant waste of time. The more of those they get, the more likely they are to refuse all future communication.
Target carefully, ensure relevance, and provide options other than straight opting out. A lot of companies now are giving their customers more control over communications. They are allowing customers to choose the types and the frequency of emails they want to get. If a customer wants to opt out, these companies allow them to instead select only the types and the frequency of emails that would best meet their needs. By doing this you can take a customer who was going to say goodbye and prevent them from leaving. That’s a lot of revenue that you no longer have to miss out on. Just by cutting down on the annoying and offering options.
http://bit.ly/AELDue
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