Authority & Marketing Technology Blog

  • On My Way to Chicago

    As you read this I will be either on my way to Chicago for SOBCon, or landed and trying to recover from jetlag, depending on where in the world you are right now. Hopefully one of the two, I am trying not to think of the unfortunate alternative scenarios!

    I am excited and nervous, and not just about the usual long haul travel logistics. It’s a while since I attended any event like this, let alone speak at one. Pretty well out of practice. But, we have to keep pushing ourselves beyond our comfort zones and the program looks a lot of fun. There is even a boat trip with a gang of boozed up bloggers to look forward to. You can be sure I am taking my camera and video phone to that ;)

    One thing few people know about me is how shy I am. You know when people are afraid of spiders they go to the zoo to hold tarantulas? And if you are afraid of flying you can book a special “fear of flying” trip in a jumbo? When I started my career I was so introverted I took a teaching course to get over it.

    I went from being unable to order a big mac without blushing and stuttering to talking to packed auditoriums. I found I actually enjoyed teaching, it was the most satisfying thing I had ever done.

    Now I am in a “feel the fear and do it anyway” kind of place. I will sweat and shake but get a big kick out of it too.

    For this event I have decided against bringing business cards or anything like that. All the attendees get a copy of our ProBlogger Book, so I figure that is a more business card than I need!

    The aspect I am looking forward to most is meeting all the speakers and attendees. Chatting virtually is great but nothing beats actually meeting in person, even if I fully expect one or two of the harassed organizers to want to shake me by the throat rather than the hand ;)

    For all the people attending, I look forward to meeting you, please do grab me when you see me! For those who are not watch this space for my conference report :)

  • Drawing More Readers with Inspiring Aspirations

    Drawing More Readers with Inspiring Aspirations

    One of the big struggles when you are launching a business blog, is how to write content that will both appeal to your audience and have some connection to what you have to offer.

    I have been helping a couple of clients pull their blog topics together, they both were frustrated that there was apparently very little to talk about the widgets they sell. The solution for both was the same, even though they are in starkly different industries. You might find the same solution works for you also, even if you have nothing to sell.

    What motivates your audience? Not just “interests” but really motivates?

    How does this connect with what you do and how you do it?

    This is why it is helpful to create a very detailed Mind Map, talk to potential or existing customers, get into your audience head space. Otherwise there are opportunities you can miss.

    Without giving away my clients niches before they even launch, both sold something seemingly straightforward and practical, but there was something for each that connected with the audiences self-identity and aspirations. One was in the way the product ingredients were sourced and manufactured, the other in the customers overall life goal.

    Rather than creating a “widget blog”, talk to topics that will make your audience really take notice. We often talk about addressing needs and problems, but when you are talking about products and services you can also address your readers sense of purpose, hopes and dreams.

    Goals, Inspiration and Aspirations

    What is the ultimate benefit you are the solution or part of the solution for?

    • Make more money
    • Freedom and free time
    • Be famous, Prestige
    • Safety and security
    • Adventure and excitement

    World View and Activism

    Are your potential customers facing a challenge, are they of a particular moral/political/advocate group? Do they share beliefs with you?

    • Fair Trade
    • Environment
    • Organic
    • Alternative Energy

    Successful Inspiring Blogs

    Consider the following successful blogs, what are the aspirations behind them?

    Some are obvious, some not immediately obvious, but all have a promise that they deliver on. Everything from “make more money” to “look good without spending a fortune”.

    This blog you are reading has a promise connected to my services (build more business through new media), but the promise with real crystal clarity I spun off into Authority Blogger.

    Where do you fit Into your readers world?

    Rather than just focusing on your widgets or services, think how you can fit into your customers world. What can you talk about that is inspiring, fills a need but also connects authentically to what you do and offer.

    For any blog you need to go beyond merely supplying information or being “kinda useful”, if you do not connect in some way to what really matters to your audience, then you will get lost amongst the sea of alternatives and the many distractions of modern life.

    Can you think of any other brands or blogs that are attracting readers through inspiration and aspiration?

  • Engaging Readers

    If you are blogging for a purpose it is not enough just to attract attention, we need things to happen as a consequence. That means at least providing the right content to the right people. As I have said many times before, while many people are looking for “traffic”, you can often be more successful…

  • How to Get More Value from Your Site

    When we put up a website, blog or even an article, in most cases we do so hoping for the visitor to do a particular thing, take a specific action. Those actions are called conversions. We are converting the visitor into something else, a subscriber, a customer, and so on.

    As you know from daily life, getting people to do what you want them to can be tricky. We have our own agendas, we see the world differently, there is also self interest, which can work for or against you.

    That is why many bloggers and webmasters take the easy route. They don’t even try to get any real conversions, they are happy to sit at the bottom of the web metric food chain.

    The value pyramid looks something like this, but obviously will differ from case to case:

    Web Metric Value Pyramid

    Traffic

    As you can see, when dealing with CPM (page impression based ads), you are only concerned with the bottom two rungs, visits and page views. They are the easiest to obtain and therefore the lowest value. Your visitor here doesn’t need to like what they see and might have been tricked into visiting. Traffic is not a sign of quality.

    Click Throughs

    Next up is the clicks. If you make money from Adsense or other pay per click ads, this is where you spend your effort. You might also try to get many clicks as a way of influencing other webmasters. When people see a site in their referrers generating a lot of traffic they tend to take notice.

    Another value to take from clicks is if you deal with a wide appeal affiliate merchant like eBay or Amazon. Those clicks can eventually turn into sales but the selling is not your problem, all you need to do is drop that affiliate cookie onto the visitors browser and the merchant does all the hard work.

    Again, clicks are not a sign of quality. The visitor might be just wanting to get away, to anywhere but here. In fact, many Adsense webmasters count on just that.

    Loyal Readers

    Now we are in the zone where a blogger or webmaster has to earn their money. You don’t get return visits, or subscribers without offering some value. Even more true with opt-ins as the visitor needs to trust you not to spam them or pass on the list to someone else who will. Up until this point you could have been automating, spamming and churning out pages by the thousand with not a care for quality.

    When you want people to return, that is when you need to get serious about your content.

    You need to concentrate on not just demonstrating value on the first visit, but showing enough promise that there will be value in future for them to give you another try. Hopefully you will do a good enough job that they will keep checking in on you and turn into loyal readers.

    Leads and Sales

    You will have no doubt heard many times that “the value is in the list”, and it is broadly true. If you get a lot of people to want to hear from you on a regular basis, more importantly if you have an engaged audience, then you should be able to make sales.

    A number of times you will have read me say that I would rather have a smaller and more engaged readership, and now you know why. Across the properties I own, part own, write for or work with, I have access to millions of page views. I would give all those page views up for ten people who really want to hear from me. Just think about that for a second. Wouldn’t you?

    Unlike many bloggers, my mortgage gets paid when people believe in me enough that they seek my advice on blogging, new media and internet marketing. I love to see a Digg front page as much as the next guy, and there is a certain value in that, but if people just click or view pages then my bills don’t get paid.

    To make a sale, and even more to get repeat sales, you have to step right up and show real value and engender enough trust to overcome the very significant objections of doing business over the internet. You have to show that not only is your product or service worth the money, but that you can be trusted to deliver what you promised.

    Plus of course you have to ask for the sale.

    Loyal Customers and Fans

    When you deliver on your promise, then you have a chance at repeat custom. Even better,  if you delight your customer, you might just get a fan or two.

    In order to do this your customer must experience your product or service in the most positive way possible. You are not merely delivering a package and saying “bye bye”. That product has to more than meet expectations, be more than just “worth what was paid for”. The customer needs to reap the benefits of what they were sold.

    This isn’t always possible, it’s not a perfect world, but you must try. The pay off is someone who will forever sing your praises, and the value of someone willing to tell the world how great you are is beyond measure.

    Summary

    When you are thinking about what you are doing online, do not be content with merely attracting traffic and gaining some clicks. The real value is in the relationships, the trust and the actual value you can create. Are you truly helping people or are you just going through the motions and writing the appropriate keywords?

    It might be with a smaller audience you create more value for both you and your audience. Worth considering, right?

  • ProBlogger Book Preview

    ProBlogger Book Free PDF DownloadIf you want to have a taste of what is in store when you buy the ProBlogger Book we have a treat for you. We just uploaded the special preview to the email signup success page. So now, when you sign up to the email list and confirm, you get access to download the PDF.

    Now I know some of you have found a PDF on the Wiley site, and some of you have been curious to know why the PDF wasn’t already available. Well, we have been waiting for this version to be built for us, we wanted something a bit more meaty to give you a proper preview. So even if you have the version off the Wiley site, download this one. Our version is a bit more polished and contains more content.

    We hope you like it!

    A few people have asked how the sales are going. To tell you the truth, we don’t know yet exactly BUT the book has been going up and down in the Amazon best seller rankings like a yo-yo! At one point ours was the best selling book in the “internet” category, which is quite an achievement to say the book isn’t out for a couple of weeks.

    ProBlogger Book #1 in

    Remember, right now if you pre-order online you get additional discounts.

    As many people have pointed out, even without the pre-order discount our print book is less expensive than many much smaller ebooks out there, and this one has been printed out for you :)

    Get more details about the book at the ProBlogger Book site.

  • ProBlogger Book

    You might have already worked this out, but for a while Darren and I have been beavering away on a little book project: ProBlogger Book —” Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income The book is our combined experiences in professional blogging. Making a full time income either directly or indirectly by building…