My blog on blogging....

Writing a Blog may seem daunting at times. Unless you absolutely love writing and just want to see your words on paper, don't over burden yourself thinking you have to write something everyday. Blogs are supposed to be interesting and fun. Blogs are about telling your audience something that you believe in and that they might want to hear more information on. This is why I am writing about... yes, writing a blog.

Sit down and write something fun, humorous or interesting. Keep it short if you don't have a lot to elaborate, but make it interesting if you can. If you don't enjoy writing, then don't write a blog. Have someone eles on your team write blogs on behalf of your business. If you write a blog two to three times a month it's plenty of information for your audience to enjoy and learn from.

Now if you love to write and have a lot to say... then this is your paradise; you can write as much as you want when you want. Although, if you have this much to say then maybe you need a personal blog to write. Too much of a good thing does not mean it's perfect for your customers. Write what is pertinent to your business on subjects that make sense. This goes a long way to improving customer retention and opening up a dialog to your customers.

Blogs are just another avenue to opening up a dialog and presenting your customers with who, what, where, how, why and when about your business. Blog too much and your customers will tire of reading all of them. Not enough and they wont come back to see what you have to say. Every week or so is just enough to make it interesting. Unless of course, this is how you make a living. :)

Happy blogging...

Best Practices

In the age of electronic marketing and social media sites being so prevalent it is better to know what the best practices are to utilize the service to its best ability than it is to just jump in and not know the best practices on how to use the system. More harm than good will come from not knowing how to use the service the right way. It's not the service that's bad, its the person utilizing the system. Don't blame the technology... you get out exactly what you put in.



Let's take a look at e-mail marketing. There have been white papers galore written about this subject. How to use, what to say, what is spam, what happens when it is spam, how to avoid spam etc... The list goes on and on.



Most commercial sites (the ones you pay for) that send opt-in emails have this technology built into their system. If you don't plan on building your own bulk email system, just sign up to one of these services and work with their systems. Remember, these are e-mail address from your customers and not ones that have been purchased. If the email are not opt-in then it's considered spam.



If you are buying an email list, you can use the email service from the company you purchased the list from. They can pinpoint who you want to reach and then send it out in your behalf it's just like buying a mailing list except it's email not snail mail. After the email is sent they can give you a report on how many people opened the email up, who clicked on specific links (if you had any) and what type of response you had. This is a good way to build a email list fast if you want to start right away. Build the email and have a link to your website directly to your opt-in page and give them something they want in return to have them sign up (i.e. buy one diner receive one free)



One white paper I truly like is from Right Now Technologies. http://www.rightnow.com/ They explain all the idiosyncrasies of sending out opt-in emails. Your customers will thank you by spending money with you.



If your going to use this method to increase sales do it the right way and see how your bottom line increases.



Thanks,

Scott