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Creating Honest Content Marketing

August 21, 2008

Content marketing has an opportunity, should you decide to take it. Instead of going the route of old marketing, you who create content with the intent of building business relationships could try going the route of being honest, being genuine, being human. It’s no more difficult than the alternative: crafting something that’s dishonest but perhaps shinier. The thing is, if you start with honest and genuine, there’s a chance that people will give you extra points for it, in the longer run.

In a recent post, Seth Godin offers some storytelling suggestions, and the best of it is at the bottom of the post:

Start with the truth. Identify the worldview of the people you need to reach. Describe the truth through their worldview. That’s your story. When you overreach, you always fail. Not today, but sooner or later, the truth wins out. Negative or positive, the challenge isn’t just to tell the truth. It’s to tell truth that resonates.

In her post about a series of viral videos created by OfficeMax, B.L. Ochman quotes Vinny Waren about how words get shifted one notch higher in marketing speak: “..funny becomes HILARIOUS. and interesting becomes FASCINATING.”

That’s exactly where the troubles start.

Keith Burwell writes on Better Closer about GM’s employee discount pricing program, and the fact that we all know that just means they’re not selling enough cars.

See a thread here?

Make your creations honest and open. Why not? It strikes me that most things would work better that way. Am I wrong?

The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.

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How to Do More With Less Time

August 20, 2008

You need better time management. You’re looking for time saving tips. Whether you’re in a huge organization, a team of 30, or a solo practitioner, it’s fairly guaranteed that you’ve got more work to do than you have time to complete it. Further, the effort it takes to keep up with people in social media and do it like a human being takes some time. In this post, I’ll talk about how to do more with less time. Part of this will be about the philosophy behind it, and the next part will be about the tools. In a subsequent post, I’ll talk about my social media workflow.

How to Do More With Less Time

I’m finding that there are two keys: have a simple system, and automate everything you can. In both cases, this allows for more time to do the work that matters to you. Remember, a good chunk of our day is spent doing things that don’t really pay us back (in any sense of the word). Part of this comes with a philosophical perspective to consider, and the other is pure business reasoning. Let’s talk about the mindset stuff behind a simple system first.

Have a Simple System

I’m a lifelong fan of Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and also his later book, the 8th Habit. To the end, I work hard to begin with an end in mind. That helps me center on what I should be doing. For those of you who haven’t read it, essentially think like this:

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

Sounds simple, but it’s not. If you have big things to do and little things to do, focus on the bigger ones. If you fill your day with answering email, your inbox will be empty but your important work won’t be done.

If I were to sum up WHAT I think about to keep my day flowing well, it’s this:

What’s going to move me closer towards my goals? (where “my goals” equals company goals, personal goals, family goals).

Now, let’s move into the tools.

Tools to Automate And Free Up More Time

Once you’ve got a sense of what you want to do with your time, you have to start guarding it. There are many opportunities in a given day when people will ask for some of your time, or distractions will snatch a bit away, or idle time will shift from being a refreshing pause into being a wallowing gap in what you’re doing. Time is the one variable you can work with more than any of the others. Here are some ways to give yourself a bit more time.

AwayFind is Jared Goralnick’s tool to help you keep your less urgent emails at bay. I’ve been using it ever since going through Stever Robbins You Are Not Your Inbox program. Essentially, AwayFind lets you set up a small gate on your inbox. People receive an auto-responder message (you customize it) saying that you’ve received their mail and that you’ll respond when you can. BUT, if this is urgent, just click this link to fill out this quick form.

What it does for me is gives me a way to tell people that I saw their email come in, that I’ll get right to them when I’ve a moment, and it gives the person the ability to tell me something is urgent. (By the way, so far four people have submitted via the “urgent” form simply to say, ‘I just sent you email. Did you get it?’ Not exactly urgent, so I tweaked my message to hopefully clean that matter up.) AwayFind is in Beta, but if you beg, Jared might give you a free-level account.

Jott lets you call a number, record a brief voice message, and that message comes out in text format. You can import your contact book in there, and thus, you can both send messages to yourself for reminders and later information retrieval, but you can also send quick voice messages to others as text emails. It’s a great way to get back some time while driving in the car.

SpinVox (which I talked about briefly here) is a voicemail service that translates speech to text for up to 3 minutes of voice. I’ve only been using it for a few days on my cell phone, and I’m LOVING what it does for me. I’m often in an area where I can’t pick up my phone (meetings, webinars, etc), but I can usually scan a text reproduction of someone’s voice message very quickly. I get back LOTS of time using SpinVox to cover my voicemail messages.

Google Reader is my RSS reader of choice. I use it for both reading blogs and news sources, but also for tracking social media information from other places. For example, Twitter Search has an RSS subscription button for the searches you cook up, so if you need to dashboard some social media activity, throwing it into a capable, fast-paced reader is important. I get lots of time back reading blogs and scanning information rapidly through Google Reader.

Firefox is a fast, flexible, customizable web browser. I use it more than any other application on my computer. To that end, I use it smartly, as well. I use the tabs feature to keep up a few pages that I need throughout a day (like my RSS reader, like some search information, etc). I also use all the keyboard shortcuts so that I can move even faster.

Evernote is a great tool for capturing snippets of information. It’s a lot more powerful than that, including letting you snap photos, and having a built in optical character recognition system. It also has a mobile client for iPhone and Windows Mobile, a standalone client for Mac and Windows, and a web sync. This saves me time in lots of ways, including making sure I have important notes at the ready wherever I am.

Also use some kind of text replacement application. I use TextExpander for the MAC all the time when typing. I have complete emails stored and at the ready in there, as well as all kinds of nifty html replacement information to help me with repetitive tasks.

If you can afford it, get a wireless cellular modem for your computer. I got one from work and now I have no idea how I wasn’t doing this all along.

What I Do With All This

Giving you a list of applications and saying this will make your life better is like sending you a box of paint and wishing you well on your new portrait career. Let’s go through a few ideas on how to do more with less time, and how I use my philosophy, methods, and tools to do that. Let’s just run through that now:

Guard your time. If you have work to do, ask yourself repeatedly if this work moves forward your main goals. Learn how to minimize the work that doesn’t.
Work towards checking email less frequently in a day, and also not being a slave to your phone. We forget all the time that these tools are supposed to be helpful, not constant distractions.
One trick there: kill notifier lights, buttons, sounds, and other indicators, and instead, schedule a task on your calendar or however you keep your appointments, where that task is to check your mail. (I haven’t gotten that far yet, but I’m working at it).
Find pockets of idle time and use them for something productive. When I’m grocery shopping, I Jott little audio reminders to myself to follow up on later. When I’m sitting in a waiting room, I read books on subject matter that nourishes my career. I use drive time for LOTS of things to go along with driving.
Build your projects to be modular, so that you can work on them when time comes up. Blog posts are a great example. I keep a text file where I can jot ideas for future posts. Then, I go back and flesh those in from time to time, or delete them, if I can’t remember what my notes meant.
Learn polite ways to decline things. We say YES to wayyyyyyyy to many things. Learn very warm and polite ways to say no. (Here’s a great audio podcast by Stever Robbins about saying “no” that I need to listen to often.)
Decide how much of your down time is really recharging you, and whether some of it is just idle for idle’s sake.

I know that some folks are going to retort and say that rest is important, that overworking one’s self is a bad thing, things like that. You’re absolutely right. All those things are true. I love relaxation and rest. I love finding time to rest and recharge, play with my kids, that kind of thing. My point is, if you need to find more time, there are ways to go about doing it.

Your Additions

How are you finding more time? What have you found out about the way you work that might be helpful to others? What tools are you using that maybe we should consider for this list? Let’s talk about that in the comments.

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Content Networks and Storefronts

August 17, 2008

Back in May 2006, I wrote that content networks are the new blogs. With all kinds of great information out on the web, I posited that people would start needing aggregations of content. Though many of us on the web know how to roll our own collections of reading material, the general public doesn’t want to go through all the work. Content networks cover more than just blog networks, and there are a few other ways to slice the pie than just thinking about blogs as ad platforms. Here are some quick thoughts about content networks and storefronts.

Content Networks

On one side of the equation are content networks. These include things like Weblogs Inc, Gawker Media, and some of the other larger media creations. They include new offerings like Stowe Boyd’s /Edgewards (congrats, Stowe). In a way, Alltop can be seen as a content network (though it is mostly an aggregator pointing to the individual sites. Even I had a stab at it back in 2006, with the help of Kevin Kennedy-Spaien and Whitney and Becky and Megin and some others.

I continue to believe there are some great opportunities for content networks. I think that most of the models are trending towards ad platforms, and that’s okay. It’s what people know and understand, and people are making decent money doing it. Others are just gathering good stuff under the same banner so that others know where to find it. But there are other models.

Storefronts

Another way to use content is to help people market a product. Some people use this as part of their effort to do affiliate marketing. For instance, there are review sites built essentially as a means to sell products. There are also coupon sites, blogs, and other web platforms built just to sell things.

I believe there’s an opportunity here for bloggers. I think that well-crafted custom content would be a much better way to sell products and services than typical ads. More than half of what Copyblogger and Problogger teach you pertains to being able to write great content.

There are a few ways to implement this. It could be towards the sale of products or services, such as an affiliate marketing model. There are many blogs who trade great content for potential affiliate sale revenue.

Another model is as a lead generation tool, such as what Corante and Beeline Labs have successfully executed several times. In those cases, the sale isn’t direct and related to the site. It’s more a matter of creating a marketing funnel, where there’s a conversion point, and then the leads become actionable for business.

You could say that [chrisbrogan.com] follows the lead generation model. I do get some business from my website for CrossTech Media or for just speaking gigs. Mostly, I write to inform, share my explorations, and give you some potential new tools to consider.

I plan to investigate affiliate sales a bit more over the coming months, but not necessarily on this website. And in all cases, I think disclosure if what is most important when mixing a content site and a sales site. I don’t think they go well together naturally.

Disclosure: Still The Important Part

It’s a little tricky for bloggers. Are we disclosing our relationships? Are we spelling it out when we have a professional relationship with some product or service that we’re talking about? Does your audience know your stance? Seth Godin posted his position on this. I recently added a Disclosures section at the bottom of my About web page, so that you’d know where my most likely biases are. (By the way, if I missed something that I should disclose there, just point it out and I’ll add it).

I believe that if you’re blogging about how great a product is, AND you’re trying to sell some of that product, you might mention that relationship. In creating my Disclosures section on my About page, I opted to spell out the relationships I have with companies who’ve given me something to review.

In most cases, I’ve been lucky, because I’ve reviewed products that I really like, and I enjoy what they can do. When I get to the situation where someone sends me something and it’s not really all that and a bag of chips, what I’ll have to do is be fair and honest in that reporting. That might upset the company, and might cause a problem for the marketer who sent me the product, but if I don’t do it that way, the negative impact is this: I’d be telling you about a product that I wouldn’t endorse.

(By the way, do you think all the products endorsed on TV are actually appreciated and used by the celebrities? I think we have an opportunity here as bloggers to be a bit more open about it).

What’s Your Opinion?

Content networks like the ever-expanding TechCrunch and Giga Omnimedia empire are one thing. Storefronts that convert from content like FastForward or Daily Candy are another.

What do you think about either of these models? Do you see the benefits? Where are the risks?

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Consider a Marketing Funnel

August 15, 2008

Brian Carroll gave some interesting advice in an interview with Chris Coch at ITSMA. He talked about creating a marketing funnel, and how this differed from a sales funnel. In brief, his interview covered five points:

Create a marketing funnel.
Create a universal definition of a lead.
Use the phone.
Ask about goals—don’t sell.
Define lead nurturing—and the right people to nurture.

The full interview is here.

If we think about how this applies to social media, it’s something we need to consider (somewhat) differently.

You might be blogging or podcasting for lead generation. If so, how are you helping sort your audience from your leads? If you’re making media, that’s a starting point to a conversation. Are you asking your audience about goals? If you need to further qualify a lead built from your online efforts, is the phone the next step, or are there steps in between?

The idea of a marketing funnel, where one builds up even more information and distills even more who might be a prospective customer or client, versus who is simply enjoying the media, is something worth considering for your business. Have you looked at your media that way? How will you discern who’s just consuming your media versus who’s interested in doing business with you? What comes next after your blog post or video?

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Write Your LinkedIn Profile for Your Future

August 9, 2008

I was speaking to one of the best upcoming tech bloggers the other day about LinkedIn, and how I view it. To me, LinkedIn isn’t a place to dump a snapshot of where you’ve been. It’s an opportunity to stay connected to people, and to demonstrate where you are now, and where you plan to go next. To that end, I’ve got a little advice for you to consider applying to your own profile.

Write Your LinkedIn Profile For Your Future

First Impressions

First, your headline matters. It’s what people see when they accept your invite, and it’s probably the fastest first impression one receives. If you work for a company, put that name in the headline. When I don’t see a company name, I wonder if you’re solo.

Your Summary

Here’s where I think the most work can be done. When I look at my profile, I think it’s a bit long, but otherwise, I’ve done the following:

Lead with what I do most.
Lead with the type of business I want to do.
Move into the reasons why you’d do business with me.
Move from there into all the nuances of what I do.

In every case within the summary, your plan should be to write from the mindset of the prospective employer (or client), such that when they read it, they think, “I need to hire this person.”

Tip: refresh your summary every two weeks.

Your Work Experience

Here, I do something you might not expect. I make sure my past experience still supports my current and future aspirations. I write the past work experience summary to highlight those functions I performed that will still be useful to the current and future goals. Why? Because if you’re still reading that far down my summary, you want to kick the tires a little on my experience.

Tip: Refresh your past work experience sections every four weeks or so.

Power Moves: Recommendations

Ask people for recommendations. Be smart about it, though. Ask people who can vouch for your abilities.

I receive a few requests for recommendations a week from people I know from Twitter. I’m sorry, but I can’t really vouch for you. And this, to me, the reputation engine part of LinkedIn, is the most important part of the product. I will only recommend people that I would hire for myself, or that I would work for. At the time of this writing (August 2008), I’ve written 146 recommendations.

In both cases, I feel that recommendations are powerful.

What’s Next?

A list of next steps:

Review your LinkedIn profile. Look at it as if you’re a prospective new boss, or a client. Would you hire YOU to do something? If not, rewrite it. Keep it tight. Do as much editing as you can.
Enter your blog’s RSS feed on the profile page. People want more color.
Add a photo. Not one of those weird grown up versions of a school class picture. Find a good candid. If you don’t have one, go to a social media meetup. Someone will snap you a good one. Worried about discrimination? Guess what: they’ll figure it out eventually. Get it out of the way up front.
Start writing quality recommendations for people you can vouch for. If they can do the same for you, ask for one back. If not, hold off. No sense making someone feel awkward.
Grow your network. LinkedIn and I don’t agree on this. I say connect to whoever. It helps you build a network. (I only recommend people I can vouch for, and to me, that’s where who you know or don’t know really matters).
Keep looking at your profile as it applies to your future.

My own LinkedIn profile is here. If you want to connect, I use linkedin at chrisbrogan dot com as my address.

And you? What’s worked well for you?

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How Content Marketing Will Shake the Tree

August 6, 2008

Content marketing, in my definition, is the ability to produce useful and entertaining information that is worthwhile on its own, but that might also be useful towards a sale or subsequent action. For instance, a really good review of a product from a trusted source is content marketing. Every time Paisano writes about an amazing piece of software that he loves, it’s a kind of content marketing that I’d call reputation- or authority-based content marketing (meaning, maybe he’ll get consulting work based on someone feeling he’s a thought leader).

Before I go further, I should say that there are variations on the theme. I was speaking with Todd Defren of Shift the other day about content marketing, and this was his take on it. That’s another great way to look at it. I spoke a few weeks back to Francois Gossieaux about another variation that he’s done for years. It’s all in the same ballpark. This is essentially what Brian Clark has talked about for two years and counting.

Content Marketing Will Deliver

First, it’s simply a better way to go. Why spend time, money, and creative effort making fake, glossy, slick pieces of marketing material when something honest and informative (and ENTERTAINING!) would likely do a better job? Twizzlers are great, but not for breakfast. I think traditional marketing efforts, the slick and shiny kind, are like red licorice. I think of content marketing as a well-balanced meal. Crazy? Maybe.

Let’s say your goal is lead generation. A good chunk of marketing effort and attention seems to be shifting in this direction, especially for products and services with a complex sell. In a traditional approach, you might work very hard on explain just why your product is the best tool for a certain job. But what if, instead, you wrote up some really great suggestions for how one might do that certain job better, with or without your product, and then made a very simple link back to whatever your product offer might be? Which would offer more value to your prospective customer?

Slower? Yes. More effort? Yes. But I believe the results will speak for themselves. Instead of gorging on data culled from yet another Free iPhone offer, you will start to accumulate relationships with people who actually care about the space where your company is doing business, and might actually benefit from your product/service.

Examples of Great Content Marketing

One just sold for $125 Million. Daily Candy. If you want proof in the pudding, there’s a big fat content package that someone put to good work.

The Fast Forward Blog produced by Corante is a great lead generator for an enterprise search company. I’m subscribed.

Whole Foods has all kinds of great content. In their case, it’s a bit of customer retention, community support, and also lead generation. Look at how they use Twitter, too. Great content marketing, and filled with personality.

My two most overused but beloved stories of content marketing: Financial Aid Podcast and Wine Library TV. Both sell a product, but do it by giving you lots of interesting information.

What Comes Next

For you to consider doing this, I’d recommend the following steps:

Decide on your content marketing strategy. Is this lead generation, customer retention, thought leadership, or related to product marketing?
Determine if you have content creators on staff right now, and whether this is something they should be doing for your business. If no, start thinking of whether you want to hire or source this kind of work.
Determine the type of content to create, the frequency of your new materials, the form it will take, and whether you have a platform in place to deliver this without much effort.
Build appropriate measurement and listening tools around the platform so that you know who is doing what with the content you’re creating, and so that you can see the impact it has outside of your website as well.
Wrap this all into a process with ties back to your standard lines of business, including marketing, sales, and possibly even R&D. Ensure that this isn’t an island, but rather a strong part of how you intend to deliver value for your organization.

This kind of project can be done in a pilot flavor, and/or can be done in lots of different iterations. I’ve been looking at it very closely for the last several months as part of my work with my colleagues at CrossTech Partners. As businesses are seeking to acquire more quality leads, to retain their existing customers, and to deliver relevant sales, this is where I think the most impact can be had.

Are you using content creation to build your business? Have you tried any of this yet? Where have you seen this done well or otherwise? What’s your take?

—

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Remember Blogging and Podcasting

August 6, 2008

Some days, it feels like more and more people have abandoned their regular blogs and podcasts and have run off to tools like Twitter and Friendfeed. I just stopped by a friend’s blog, worried that I had a bad RSS subscription, only to discover that he hadn’t blogged since June. Another of my friends only blogs Twitter links now. What happened? Why are all the bloggers and podcasters going to Twitter or Seesmic or other temporal moment-in-time platforms?

One reason is that products like Twitter and Seesmic and uStream.tv all give us even faster, simpler conversations. We don’t have to synthesize information, compose a position, and build a post. Instead, we can talk back and forth about things we like. Another reason is that the feedback loop is so much tighter when doing a ping pong game of ideas instead of the blogger-to-comments model.

But wow. I sure miss you bloggers and podcasters that I know in love. Thanks to Mitch Joel and Christopher S. Penn and Valeria Maltoni and a whole host of others who keep writing and/or recording something interesting and useful daily. To the rest of you, come back?

**Update: Inspired in no small part by a great Mitch Joel post, though I didn’t realize it until Mitch commented. : )

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What I Want PR and Marketing Professionals To Know

August 6, 2008

Since quite a number of people who swing by my blog are either in marketing or public relations, I wanted to address you specifically for a moment. I’m writing to you as part of this new version of media, one blogger not paid to blog, not working for a newspaper or magazine outlet, not especially beholden to the traditions that have come before. I’m writing to you as a human being who likes people, community, innovation, and business, not to mention art, creativity, play, and many other things. I want to tell you a few things for you to consider.

Social media isn’t that scary, but it is different than what you’ve been doing. For one thing, it’s far more messy, and requires a lot more hand-holding.
You have SO MUCH to gain from figuring out some of these tools and the way we’re using them. And one difference from typical businesses: most of us social media types are very willing to share what we know. Just ask.
I love every one of you who makes an effort to get to know me before you have to market something to me or pitch me. It works out so much better when you and I have talked in some non-pitch way beforehand. And it only takes a few minutes every now and again to say hi.
I’m tired of adjectives. Your new website isn’t innovative. The word doesn’t mean anything to me any more. Further, let me decide if it’s innovative.
Bloggers aren’t all the same. I’m definitely not the same as Michael Arrington at TechCrunch. I’m not the same as Seth Godin. I’m not the same as most bloggers. I’m just doing my own thing, and they’re doing theirs. It pays to understand which of us you’re trying to reach for what, and reading the last 10 things we posted, just to get a sense of whether we’re the right kind of person to write about your thing.
Blogging isn’t the same as releasing marketing materials.
Putting up commercials on YouTube isn’t videoblogging.
Be human first on social platforms like Twitter or Facebook. I know Lionel Menchaca as a human and as a Dell employee. You can do the same.
Understanding Technorati and Google Blogsearch and Summize goes a long way towards helping you listen and hear what people are saying about you, your client, etc.
You’re doing great things here and there. Sometimes, you’ll get praise for it. Other times, it might be overlooked. It’s still great.
Great things are erased quickly when you mess up.
If you mess up, say sorry fast. Acknowledge that you made a mistake, and then act on what you can do better next time.
There’s lots you can teach we media maker types, too. I learn lots from you every day. I do this with phone calls, and by reading what you’re sending me. It’s a two way street.

There. That’s what I wanted to tell you.

What do you want to tell me?

—

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How to Reach and Influence Prospects

August 1, 2008

This was requested by GirlPie

We talk about how social media like blogs and podcasts and social networks will help us grow our business, and yet, there are several ways in which we’re hampered. Some of our customers won’t provide testimonials. Others will take a while to actually execute a project. Still others have stumbled onto your site, and it’s up to you to keep them. Let’s talk about these prospects, first.

Who Are Your Prospects?

There are, of course, tons of ways to think about who your potential customers might be. David Meerman Scott talks often about buyer personas as a way to better understand who you’re hoping to reach. And in my examples below, I’ve only picked three types of prospective new customers. You have many other people interacting with your media, and it’s up to you to balance your efforts such that they align with the relationships you need.

Here are three prospect type examples:

Private Customer

In the example GirlPie provided, her customers don’t really want to refer her. This means she has a Private Customer. You could say that SEO and search marketing professional often have Private Customers as well. In these cases, your audience doesn’t want to tout your skills, because they don’t want to admit their prior weakness, or have other reasons to stay quiet.

Newcomer Customer

Some of us have customers from larger companies who are very new. They’ve been tasked with adopting an online strategy, or a social media marketing plan, or something like this. These customers are browsing the web, grazing through keynote searches, and hoping to gather enough information to convince their senior team that they understand enough to make some starter moves. This audience will recommend you, but only after they’ve launched their project (and sometimes that’s a long while after you could’ve used their recommendation).

Clean Slate Customer

Several people find their way to your site by way of search. Perhaps you rank high in Google for blog topics (that’s my constant #1 search term), and so someone searching for topics for their blog will land on your site, and wonder what to do next. In these cases, these potential customers might need a bit more content and guidance before they become actual prospects (and remember, we’re talking business in this post, not community and other reasons to do social media).

Reaching These Prospects

In all three cases mentioned above, different tools will have a different impact. Here are some suggestions:

Private Customers - consider an email newsletter with discrete information that reinforces your benefits. In that newsletter, encourage forwarding. Email is much more intimate than a blog setting. Consider a private online pay forum that allows for anonymity, if that’s also useful.
Newcomer Customers - along with your media posts (blogs or podcasts or the like), create specific-to-their-industry informational documents (or recordings or presentations), with an eye towards empowering your contact with information that will convince their senior team to take action.
Clean Slate Customers - In many ways, the simple answer here is to provide great content that’s useful, evocative, and invites further inquiry. From there, if you see any responses that match your business offerings, reach out. Send an email. There’s no harm in exploring a potential business relationship, should you see signs that a person has a need you can help fulfill.

You’ll note that I didn’t mention social networks much in this instance. The way I use social networks is to build relationships. I do any business prospecting by way of the media I create. I’m on the networks to connect, to be helpful, and to learn new things. Hopefully, that distinction makes sense. If not, ask me to define that better, and I will.

Business Isn’t Evil

The social web has enabled all kinds of new opportunities to communicate. Business and sales are just one portion of a large spectrum of ways we connect and transact. As with everything you and I talk about here, it comes down to clarity of purpose. If you’re selling something, state it. If you’re looking for customers, talk about it. If you’re there to educate, that’s fine, too. They’re YOUR tools. Use them the way you want. Just be clear and open about it.

What’s your thinking on all this? Have I identified your prospect type here? If not, tell me in the comments, and we can open the question up to the community. What’s your thinking?

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How to Create Business From a Blog

July 30, 2008

This post was a request from Eric.

How to Create Business from a Blog

First, let’s agree that there are many ways to create business from a blog. I’ll cover a handful to start. You’re very welcome to share more advice and ideas in the comments section.

Straightforward Sales

Blogs are a wonderful piece of software to use as a home base for several kinds of website projects. For example, I believe Chris Pearson used a Wordpress blog to build his DIYThemes.com site. There, he’s selling a beautiful theme called Thesis for $87. That’s one way to create business from a blog: a simple sales platform.

Affiliate Marketing

Another way is through Affiliate Marketing. For example, go back and hover your mouse over the URL for the two links to Chris’s latest project. You should see this: http://diythemes.com?a_aid=t4ag3 . That part after the ? is an affiliate code. Some sites don’t really divulge that they’re doing affiliate marketing. Others make disclosure very vital. Now that you know to look for it, you might look at other blogs you read and see when they’re slipping you an affiliate tag here and there.

Want to learn more about Affiliate Marketing? I’ve been reading Revenews, and I also plan to attend (and speak at) the upcoming Affiliate Summit event in Boston in August 2008. One reason why I plan to attend is to understand this space more, because I’m still not 100% sure how I feel about the variations on the theme. Affiliate marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry, so there’s something there to consider.

Lead Generation

Blogs are a great way to establish thought leadership, and further, to encourage lead generation. For instance, a lot of what I do by writing this blog is share with the world at large what I know about social media and how it might apply to your business. My primary goal is to give you as much information as I can possibly share, so that you can likely run off and solve most things on your own.

My secondary goal is to encourage you to contact me, should you have business needs. I work with CrossTech Partners to help me fulfill larger projects (such as building Market Relationship Management platforms and the like). This blog often starts conversations with people who need next-step help. And that’s great. It’s another value, and another way to create business from a blog.

A great person who gives in abundance with her blog is Liz Strauss. She derives some amount of leads from her thoughtful and meaningful efforts, too.

Content Marketing

He could tell you this every day, but Brian Clark has been praising the value of content marketing since 2006. This is basically how the Financial Aid Podcast brought millions in revenue to Christopher S. Penn’s Student Loan Network. There’s nothing shady about it. Chris creates great podcasts and blog posts and uses the trust earned through information sharing and helping others as one way to drive sales of his primary product: student loans. He’s the only student loan guy I know who gets profiled by BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, and all kinds of other press.

See also Gary Vaynerchuk, the only wine seller I know who has a Hollywood agent. He’s that cool.

Content marketing is essentially doing great things with content but with a goal that this work leads back to a sale on top of being useful and interesting. To me, this is where it’s at right now. If I were looking to build even more business, and I might just do so, I’d blend content marketing with a mix of my own products, and perhaps some well-chosen affiliate opportunities, and start from there.

By the way, content marketing has the added benefit of helping you with organic search engine optimization, meaning it helps people searching for things find it easier.

Other Opportunities

There are lots of other ways to make money from a blog. I’m definitely not qualified to talk about search marketing, for instance, but this article by Paul J. Bruemmer looks like a useful starting point. There are also projects like Ted Murphy’s Izea, which covers pay-per-post and Social Spark. I’m not versed enough to talk about any of these, but maybe Ted will stop by and talk about his, or you can swing by the IZEA blog.

The web is an interesting place to make money these days, and there are many ways to take a swing at it. Be open about what you’re doing. Be helpful. Offer value. And maybe something will come of it for you.

**Update: I’m not sure how I forgot Darren’s and Chris’s book - ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income . (And yes, that’s an affiliate link). ;)

Your Ideas

If you have some other great ideas for creating business from a blog, let’s talk about them in the comments. Some will be promoted to the main post via updates, so please fill out your URL when you comment, so I can give you credit if I use it in the post.

What do you think?

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