Think before you write your ad copy
by Janet on September 10, 2009
in Marketing 101
This post originally appeared on an older blog, MarketingIdeaBlog.com. I am re-publishing it here because I believe the information is not only still valuable, but because it can help readers better understand my approach to business communication.
Gather any group of employees and ask them to contribute their thoughts to developing a marketing campaign, and the vast majority of them will focus on the look of the brochure, the name of the celebrity spokesperson, and the “big event” you’ll stage where you invite the media. That’s because writing the ads is the fun part – it’s what nearly everyone thinks the Marketing Department does, and since Marketing folks seem to have a lot of fun, they’re eager to take their turn doing “what Marketing does.”
What they don’t think of are the questions that must be answered before you try to sign the local weatherman to drive sport-drink sales. These answers make up the creative strategy behind the funny ads.
Creative strategy means developing the over-riding message and tone of a series of related marketing pieces, so that the end result is a marketing campaign that sends an appropriate, cohesive and resonant message to the targeted audience.
So what are the hard questions that make up the creative strategy?
- What is the goal of the campaign? Write a goal that includes a specific and measurable result. Expecting something measurable from your marketing is reasonable. It puts you one step ahead of those competitors who are just trying to “raise awareness.” (Examples: increase leads in the pipeline by 15 percent; increase sales of sports drinks by 10 percent.)
- Who is the audience? Be specific. “Current customers, potential customers, investors and employees” is too broad for one marketing campaign. While your brand should certainly be consistent across these groups, you need to identify a primary target for your marketing campaign. (Hint: the goal of the campaign will likely drive, to an extent, who your target market is.)
- What is the message you want them to remember? You’ll want your audience to remember something important about your company. What is it? (Hint: your brand position will dictate this in part.)
- What is the action you want them to take? This goes back to your measurable goal. The action might be to visit your website, to call for an initial meeting, or to place a direct order. It will depend on where the marketing pieces fall in your overall sales process.
- What style or tone of message does your audience respond to? An elderly white male will, obviously, respond to a different style or tone than a 20-something Latina woman. You may find the style or tone easier to nail down if you can determine the message first, as the latter may suggest the former.
- What media do your target audience members pay attention to? It doesn’t matter if you have a great idea for a viral video to put on YouTube… if that’s not where you target audience spends their time, there’s no sense in putting your money into that video.
Of course, your strategy must work to uphold your brand. (And, toward that end, you must be confident in what your brand is.) Can you name a company that can’t seem to decide on a creative strategy?
Photo from the Flickr stream of Sirkus.
You know more about marketing than you think you do!
by Janet on September 8, 2009
in Marketing 101
This post originally appeared in longer form on an older blog, MarketingIdeaBlog.com. I am re-publishing it here because I believe the information is not only still valuable, but because it can help readers better understand my approach to business communication.
“I know nothing about marketing!”
Is that the lament that brought you here? If it is, take heart: you know a lot about marketing, but much of it is so ingrained that you don’t even realize you know it. That’s because your definition of marketing is probably limited to something along the lines of, “Marketing consists of advertising, sales letters and cold-calling.”
To convince yourself that you do, in fact, know something about marketing, just broaden your definition. Marketing is, actually, everything you do to attract, serve and keep your customers.Think about that. If you truly view marketing as “everything you do to attract, serve and keep your customers,” that means it encompasses everything from what you’ve named your business to what music plays when folks are on hold to how efficient your refund policy is to how personable your receptionist is.
By this definition, marketing includes prospecting, advertising, promoting, publicizing, producing work (or delivering goods) and maintaining customer relationships. And I’ll bet you know something about each and every one of those.
Of course, broadening your definition of marketing isn’t just an exercise self-esteem-building (”Hey, maybe I do know something about marketing after all!”). There’s a trade-off for that little ego boost. When you see marketing for what it really is, you elevate it to its true level of importance. And then you realize you can’t relegate it to the back burner. And you can’t skimp on resources devoted to it.
And then you begin to get a headache, because you recognize that this little blog you stumbled onto is going to encourage you to spend money. And time. And talent. On marketing, that thing which you know nothing about. Aren’t you glad you’re here? Me, too!
Photo from the Flickr stream of Cowbite.
Blog production toolkit: quick summary of tools
In the Blog Production Toolkit Series, we’ve gone into some detail on the why’s and wherefore’s of using various tools to enhance our blogging productivity. In the final post of the series, I’ll simply round up all the tools we’ve mentioned so you have them in a single handy list. Of coure, these are just the tools that make MY blogging more productive and efficient – if you have other favorites, be sure to mention them in the comments!
Blog Architecture and Mechanics
WordPress software – self-hosted version (www.wordpress.org)
Domain Registration and website hosting services (www.bluegravity.com)
FTP software for transferring files to your webhost (WS-FTP by Ipswitch)
Essential WordPress Plugins
Akismet – fights comment spam
FeedSmith – RSS feed management
SubscribeRemind – Builds your subscriber list
All-In-One SEO Pack – optimizes content for search engines
Sociable – Reminds readers to share
WordPress Automatic Upgrade – Upgrades your software quickly
WP-DB-Backup – manages database backups
Writing Tools
MS Works – free Windows word processor
Windows Notepad – free Windows text editor
WordPress Visual Editor – built into WordPress
Photo/Image editing Tools
Picnik.com – free web-based photo and image editing
Corel Paint Shop Pro – cheaper, leaner version of Adobe Photoshop
Blog production toolkit: writing and image editing tools
So far in the Blog Production Toolkit series we’ve looked at the basic technical tools you need to run self-hosted WordPress, and we’ve studied my list of must-have WordPress plugins for increased blog functionality.
Now let’s turn to the creative side of things. These tools help you manage your writing and images more efficiently so updating the blog doesn’t become a chore.
Posts and Pages – the Writing
WordPress Visual Editor – of course, the WordPress software is centered around a console where you can write and edit your individual posts and pages, upload photos or graphics from your computer, and click to publish. For quick posts, this is the one and only stop you need.
I don’t do a lot of “quick posts,” though, so I have a three-step process that I call “write-strip-post.”
Write – I use the built-in free word-processing software that comes with Windows, called MS Works, to compose my posts. That’s primarily because for me, the writing is still the most important part of the process and I want to be able to focus on it and give each post the attention it deserves. Personally, I can’t do that with all of WordPress’s bells and whistles surrounding my composition area.
Strip – I then copy and paste my finished post into Windows’s free text editor, Notepad, to strip out any formatting that MS Works may have added.
Post – I then copy and paste the clean text from Notepad into the composition window in WordPress. I add any necessary formatting and effects such as bullet points or italics, add an image (or 2 or 6, depending), check my tags and assign a category, preview, and click the Publish button all in WordPress. This step usually takes me about two minutes, unless the preview reveals some necessary editing.
Photos and Graphics – the Imagery
No question that photos and graphics enhance all but the shortest posts – they can provide a visual representation of the concepts you’re writing about, they can help draw the reader in to actually read the post, and they can serve simply as a way to break up a sea of words in a longer post.
Most likely, you’ll need to crop and possibly re-size your images before uploading them into WordPress. I use two tools for this:
Picnik.com – a free web-based photo editing system that performs simple functions quickly and easily without installing software.
Corel Paint Shop Pro – Yes, Adobe Photoshop’s the industry standard. But I’ve been using PSP since I first started building sites in 1996 – it’s cheaper, and later versions rival the more expensive products in terms of features. In fact, I still run an older version of this program because it’s lean and simple.
Once a photo is cropped and sized appropriately and saved to your computer, you can upload it directly into your post using WordPress’s image-loading feature. Personally, I use my FTP software to upload the image into my image directory, then use WordPress’s “add image from URL” feature.
Five tips for in-person networking
by Janet Green on September 2, 2009
in Job hunting
Those who are immersed in online networking might find it hard to remember that there’s also offline networking – you know, meeting actual people at an actual event?
Here are a few tips for making the most of an in-person networking event:
1. Be authentic – don’t adopt some kind of weird, not-the-real-you persona when you attend an in-person event. Just be yourself.
2. Be genuine – when you’re talking to someone, don’t constantly look over their shoulder to see if someone more interesting is approaching. Give your full attention to the person in front of you.
3. Find a legitimate reason to share your contact info – when talking to someone you haven’t met before, don’t assume they want your business card just because it’s a networking event. Think about how you can be of value to them, and offer your card after expressing that potential value.
4. Ask lots of questions – Making small talk can be agonizing, especially when it feels forced. Instead of the usual weather-related stuff, why not ask some leading questions of the person in front of you? What’s new in your industry? How has the recession impacted your business?
5. Become a resource - Write a short “nice to meet you” note to new people you meet and send it via email, and include a link to an online article that’s relevant to something you discussed with them.
Should your small business blog?
From SmallBizTrends.com - creating and maintaining a quality blog on your small business’s website can increase your site traffic by 55 percent, improve your search engine rankings, and increase your number of incoming links.
I would add that by using Twitter and a Facebook Fan Page to provide resources to your friends and followers, and to promote your blog, you’re harnessing the power of social media to help achieve business goals.
Blog production toolkit: essential WordPress plugins
One of the neat things about WordPress is that there’s a whole slew of programmers out there writing “improvements” for it in the form of plug-ins. A plugin is a bit of stand-alone code that adds a new or enhanced function to your WordPress blog. Plugins might be used to control spam comments, remind visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed, or even pull in headlines from the feed of another website. Over the past couple of years I’ve added and removed plenty of WordPress plugins, and have found the following to be the most useful and trouble-free:
Akismet – this is spam-comment fighting plugin and it comes with the WordPress software.
FeedSmith – runs the RSS feed from the blog through Google’s FeedBurner service, which allows you to track your number of feed subscribers and otherwise maximize the power of your feed.
SubscribeRemind – Reminds readers to subscribe to your blog’s RSS Feed.
All-In-One SEO Pack – allows you to optimize your blog’s posts and pages for exposure in the search engines.
Sociable – Reminds readers to share your content with favorite ‘social’ sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, and Technorati.
WordPress Automatic Upgrade – Whenever a new version of WordPress comes out, WPAU helps you update in a flash. (I recently upgraded four blogs to the latest version of WordPress in under 10 minutes, with no glitches.)
WP-DB-Backup – Lets you schedule backups of your WordPress Database at regular intervals.
Each of these plugins is free – you simply download the code, then upload it into your wp-contents/plugin folder, and activate it in the WP dashboard.
Blog production toolkit: self-hosting with WordPress
It’s no secret that I love the WordPress blogging platform. I use it on all four of my personal blogs, and I use it as the sole platform for my business website. One of the things I like about WordPress is that there is a large and vibrant community of developers who support it – not only the folks who work on WP itself, but thousands of others who write plugins and create design themes. There are entire excellent blogs devoted to WordPress and its features. There is no shortage of help if a problem arises.
I’ve said before that there are times when a free-hosted blog is just what you need. For my present situation, however, I use what’s called “self-hosted WordPress.” What’s the difference?
A free-hosted blog is one where your blog sits on a server owned and operated by the company that makes the software. The URL of the blog will look something like this: http://nameofyourblog.wordpress.com. WordPress doesn’t charge you anything to use their software, or to store and back up your site. The range of site design templates is somewhat limited for free-hosted WP blogs.
A self-hosted blog is where you go out and find a web hosting company, install the blogging software on their server (and likely pay them a fee to do so), and manage the site yourself. There are many more design templates available for free-hosted WP blogs – in fact, you can write your own or edit an existing one if you’re so inclined.
Of course, self-hosting my own blogs means I’m responsible for updating the software when notifications come out, for backing up my sites on a regular basis, and for paying my web host each month to keep the lights turned on. (Fortunately there are tools that automate almost all of these tasks, but that’s another post!)
In case you’re considering a switch to self-hosted WordPress, I thought it might be useful to share my personal blog production toolbox. Here are the basics for self-hosting:
- WordPress software, self-hosted version
- Domain registration and Website hosting services through Blue Gravity.com
- WS-FTP software from Ipswitch, for transferring files from my computer to the webhost
In future posts I’ll share other tools that enhance my blogging productivity. Those mentioned above are the bare minimum needed to self-host WordPress.
Welcome, Blogopolis Blueprint Readers!
by Janet Green on May 7, 2009
in Miscellany
I’ve got a guest-post up today on Blogopolis Blueprint asking the (hopefully) provocative question, “Has Blogging Lost Its Soul?” and I wanted to take a moment to welcome those readers to my little network of blogs! I write about a variety of topics, and I invite you to take a look:How to find relevant blog posts to link out to
I’ve talked a little before about the importance of linking out to other blogs as often as possible. But, how on earth does one find relevant posts to link to? Since my goal is to become a resource for my readers, I always want to steer them to quality blogs that might improve their blogging or some other aspect of their lives. It’s important to me, therefore, to find quality links worthy of receiving my link.
The first way to find relevant links is to search the blogs you currently subscribe to in your niche. Visit the blog’s main page and look for a search this site feature. Type in a few key words or a whole phrase, click Search, and see what you find. This can be a good way to find a quick worthy link, or it can also be a good fall-back strategy for when you can’t find anything else.
To find other quality blogs to which you can link out, just try the Google Blog Search feature. By visiting Google.com, and under the “More” link clicking “Blogs” before you do your search, you’ll end up searching Google’s exhaustive blog directory for any phrase you wish. I use this strategy all the time.
For example, if I want to write a post about updating the “About page” on your blog, I can head over to the Google Blog Search and search for a phrase like improve about page. (Notice I leave words like “the” or “your” out of my search, as including them could limit my results.) I click to search, then can review the results of recent blog posts on this topic. A quick perusal of not only the relevant post but also of the rest of the website tells me if it’s a blog worth linking to (and not just a link-bait or “scraper” blog), and voila - I’ve got a blogger to link out to, a new resource to share with readers, and probably a new blog to add to my own RSS Feed Reader.
Finally, it’s important to note that you don’t always have to link out to other blogs in your own niche. If you come upon a post from a blog in a completely different niche that you think would be valuable to your readers, by all means link to it!
And, if you don’t find a link immediately that you want to use, go ahead and publish without it. If you do find a great link in the future, you can always update the post later to include the new-found link.
