Blogging is one of the best ways to tell customers about your products and generate sales.
Recent trends show that businesses are blogging more than ever and having success.
Here is some information from an American Writers and Artists Institute (AWAI) presentation on blogging trends, including helping people make buying decisions.
Search engines love blog posts and blogging leads to more links to company websites.
What to Blog?
Blog anything that will attract the interest of your clients and provide information to help them choose your products.
Some ideas include:
Product Descriptions
Case Studies
Useful Tips
Testimonials
Product Comparisons
Company Story
Company Accomplishments
Team Profiles
Special Offers
Use Case Scenarios
Smart Ideas
…
How Long Should the Posts Be?
According to AWAI, posts longer than 2,000 words are more likely to have strong results.
There are a few reasons for this. For one, more words mean that search engines have more to work with. Chances are better that your post will have the phrases that potential clients are using in their searches.
SEOTip: Use phrases in your text that people use when searching for products and services like yours.
Greg Dixon, The Blog Whisperer
Another reason is that longer posts are more likely to answer the questions that the person may have about your product.
How Often Should I Post?
Posting at least once a week is a minimum.
Once a day is a good target.
It depends on how much you want to share with your customers and your energy and staffing.
How Can I Share The Posts?
The goal is to reuse and repurpose your posts in many places.
SEO TIP: Use the social media meta tags to control how the Title, Description, and Image appear in searches and social media shares.
Greg Dixon, The Blog Whisperer
Suggested places to post links:
Facebook
LinkedIn
Instagram
Pinterest
Email Newsletters
Practice Makes Perfect
Study posts that you like, especially for your competetors, and emulate the writing and presentation in your posts.
Write and post often. You will naturally get better with practice.
Need Help?
I am available to help with your blogging, from individual posts to a retainer to create regular posts.
Send me a note and let’s build your business with blogs!
Like any acronym, the meaning of B2B is not immediately obvious.
Sounds like it could be a code word for something in one of the Fifty Shades of Grey books.
Could be, though I am not going to read through the books to find out.
B2B is short hand for Business to Business. Also sometimes written as B-to-B.
B2C is Business-to-Consumer. Sometimes written as B-to-C.
A Business-to-Business company provides products and services for other companies.
A Business-to-Consumer company provides products and services to consumers for personal use.
Business-to-Business Copywriting
Business-to-Business Copywriting can sound a little mysterious and a little intimidating for writers and businesses alike.
It need not be.
Simply put, companies need to tell other companies about their products and services, how they can help their business, and why to choose them over other solutions?
Most businesses use a lot of different ways of doing that, including:
Websites
Content Marketing Posts
Product Brochures
Product Manuals
Print Advertising
Radio Advertising
Social Media Content Marketing
Webinars
Product Overview Videos
Product Demonstrations
Email Marketing Campaigns
Email Newsletters
White Papers
Review Articles
Product Catalogs
Podcasts
Direct Response Marketing
Much more
Opportunities For Writers
The good news is that most successful companies do some or all of the above.
So they need lots of writers.
Chances are that you have worked in a few industries and have experience. Perhaps you sold office equipment, offered accounting services, worked in a salon, or was a specialist in some industry.
That experience is golden for Business-to-Business writers.
You can start in a niche you have experience in or have curiousity about and start there.
In most cases the writing needs to be clear and competent. It does not need to be salesy.
Chances are that potential customers are seeking out information about a product or service and simple need to know more to make a decision.
That is your mission as a copywriter.
The other good news is that there is far more demand for solid copywriters than there are copywriters.
So I suggest adding Business-to-Business copywriting to your list of writing services.
Study business copywriting that you like and model that.
You probably have a lot of competence already. And you can learn the craft from trusted teachers.
The most important thing is gaining experience doing it, starting with small assignments with a company.
Opportunities for Businesses
Chances are that you business could use more Business-to-Business campaigns and writing than you are currently using.
I can help you with many Business-to-Business copywriting projects.
Please contact me to discuss how I can help your business.
Simply write a post, make sure the SEO is good, select categories, and WordPress makes sure it is easy to find and share.
I am also addicted to GTranslate and put it on all my WordPress sites. I am not sure how many people use it, but I think it is absolutely amazing to have your site instantly translated to one of many languages.
The translations are likely to be imperfect, though I think they are helpful to non-English speakers.
However, I had experiences with my GoDaddy Ultimate hosting package that risked my websites for quite some time.
Running Out of Resources
Even though the sites on my GoDaddy hosting plan, including some near abandoned sites for clients now doing other things, the sites were extremely slow and I was getting reports of resource limitations.
Then JetPack started reporting that the sites were unresponsive because they were so slow to respond.
Then I could not add images or do much of anything with the sites because the file usage exceeded 250,000 files.
That is more than 200,000 more than I could account for with File Explorer.
Numerous calls to Technical Support revealed that they could not account for the number of files either and recommended purging some files on the account.
Here are some of the files I purged.
Email from Spammed Comments
The first area where I found a lot of files was in the mail folders.
Some of the WordPress sites had tens of thousands of comments waiting for approval.
I manually deleted the email messages from the email folders.
Removing the Comments from the Database
WordPress will allow you to delete comments 20 at a time.
That can take ages if you have over 80,000 comments!
A plugin like WP Bulk Delete can help you purge the comments quickly.
Preventing Spam Comments
WordPress defaults to Allow Comments and Allow Pingbacks and Trackbacks.
I recommend turning these off on individual posts and in the general settings.
There are various plugins to block spamming and a security plugin like WordFence can help secure your site.
Remove Unused Themes and Plugins
I resisted the idea that removing themes and plugin could eliminate tens of thousands of files.
Turns out WordPress is a real file pig!
Deleting a single Theme would sometimes eliminate many hundreds of files.
Who knew!
I was eventually able to remove enough files so that I could install a plugin or add a photo.
Backup. Backup. Backup!
An incompatible plugin or a theme update can leave your WordPress website FUBAR (military slang, look it up).
You can’t log in to fix the problem. Your only recourse is the restore the entire site from a backup.
If you have not installed a backup service or done a manual backup, you may find the hosting company can’t help you either.
So when WordPress tells you to backup the site before making certain changes, heed the warning.
Keep WordPress, Plugins, and Themes Current
If you don’t keep the various components up to date, you might find that you can’t update the components at all. Not a good place to be.
Again, backup before updating anything!
Beware the Hosting Plan Upgrade
I was able to restore my account back to being slow and unresponsive.
So I decided to upgrade to a GoDaddy Launch plan, which is a Virtual Private Server.
The GoDaddy rep said that I would lose nothing and and the migration would take up to 48 hours.
After 48 hours of Coming Soon! Messages, only one of my websites would load.
It turns out that the migration did not update the Add-On domains properly.
I few more calls to technical support and another 48 hours, the sites gradually came back online.
So the sites were down for four days.
Your Hosting Company May Not Have Your Back
Before there was WordPress, I created a system for data-driven websites using ColdFusion and MS SQL Server.
I paid quite a lot monthly to host a Superb.net because they considered it a Legacy platform.
Superb had been great about fixing problems with MS SQL Server and ColdFusion on the rare occasions when there was a problem. Mostly SQL Server logs building up and ColdFusion stalling.
Then one day MS SQL Server Crashed and they could not fix it.
Turns out they had no backup of the server either.
Then the web server itself was hit by ransomware.
Toast.
Turns out they had no backup of that either.
Backups from a year ago would have helped.
But Nada.
Be Prepared! Avoid Disaster!
The lesson in this is that you need to have backups of all your important sites so that you can recover if needed.
Backup so that you can recover, even if the hosting company goes out of business.
Don’t let your WordPress website be a disaster waiting to happen.
Why Kartra is Different
When you use a hosting account for a website, you are renting space on a server, use of the webserver, and a connection to the internet.
You are responsible for all backup and security.
Kartra runs on Kartra services.
Kartra is completely responsible for the backup and security of your account.
A problem on their servers will cause problems for tens of thousands of accounts.
They protect the servers with all of the backup and security needed to keep all of the Kartra accounts and their business safe.
Why Kartra Won’t Replace WordPress
Although you can create beautiful websites with Kartra, there are a few things missing that WordPress provides.
Search Visitors cannot search the site like they can with WordPress.
Blog Posting Management Blogs are automatically presented newest to oldest with a rich set of categories to help the visitor browse.
Near Endless Configuration No matter what you want to do, there is probably a plugin for it or you can create one.
I prefer Kartra for simple websites with few pages and a landing page and marketing focus.
I prefer WordPress for pumping out a lot of content.
Kartra-WordPress Hybrid Solutions
You can have the best of both worlds with a hybrid solution.
You can embed a Kartra page into WordPress using the Blank Slate plugin.
You can use subdomains to blend the two.
For example, www.YourSite.com could be your main WordPress site.
This morning I received an email from Marie Forleo about her Marie TV interview with Seth Godin.
The whole from the email sequence through blog post through video through follow-up discussion is a masterclass in marketing practice and proof of the value of list building.
Email Invitation
I am not sure what first enticed me to join Marie Forleo’s list in the first place, though I was glad I did today.
I have often used Marie Forleo TV as examples of how to do video right.
Marie is a fun and natural presence on video on her own and when interviewing someone.
The guests are usually amazing and cover a wide range of topics and interests. Seth Godin is a good example.
The videos have a good mix of onscreen quotes, tweetables, and ideas to remember.
There are now around 300 videos on Marie TV, starting with the first ones with Marie doing the video herself against a brick wall. Today you can get started with your smartphone.
Invitation to Discuss Online
Each video invites the viewer to share their ideas.
Pitch Perfect Branding
Every video starts with “Welcome to Marie TV, the place to be to build
Every episode starts with,
“You are watching marieTV, the place to be to create a business and and life you love.”
Each episode ends with,
“Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams. Because the world needs that special gift that only you have.”
I think Mario Forleo has helped improved the lives and businesses of hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
Calls to Action
The video, the blog post, the website have a number of gentle invitations:
Join the mailing list.
Download the free audio training, “How to Get Anything You Want”.
I signed up for B-School. I have had people say it was the best thing that had ever done for their business and I think it is the best program for online entrepreneurs.
My partner Bonnie signed up for The Copy Cure.
Takeaways For You?
You can do it too. Here are some of the things that Marie Forleo does that you can start building into your marketing strategy.
Here are some of the steps you can emulate:
Have a great website that acts as a hub.
Create great content that you give away for free.
Include easy ways for people to join your list.
Encourage sharing, which leads to more people signing up for your list.
Use many platforms for exposure. Marie uses email, facebook, YouTube, Podcasts, and other media outlet.
Offer great programs.
Over deliver value at every step.
I Can Help
I can help you plan and implement many of the marketing steps that Marie uses.
We don’t need to do at all at once. Marie took many years to build up her business to where it is today and made many mistakes along the way.
Contact me if you would like to start a conversation about your dreams and goals.
gregdixon@sharedvisions.com
Join My Free Newsletter
After all that, I would be totally remiss if I did not invite you to join my mailing list!
I will send out useful and actionable posts about writing and marketing to your inbox.
