If you’re not involved with Twitter or blogging it’s probably because you’re scared that the time you invest in getting interesting content together is actually a waste of time.

Twitter’s A Time Waster

So many people have denounced Twitter as simply navel gazing. Or they say they’re  completely uninterested in the fact that someone is making a cup of coffee, or is saying hello to everyone who follows them, or is going for a walk in the park.

That means they’re looking at it in the wrong way. Twitter is a relationship builder. It builds your profile for prospects and clients alike. It shows what you’re like when you deal with customers day after day.

Using Twitter properly is a definite advantage to business, check out my Twitter Action Guide for Business to see the tools you’ve got to help you.

Blogging Is A Dead-End

Maybe you’ve heard people say that blogging is a dead end, people run out of things to say. And anyway, “it’s impossible to make money through a blog.”

I make money through my blog, I know plenty of other people who make money from their blogs. And the important thing to remember is that a blog is really almost (but not quite) like a web site with content that’s continually changing. That changing content is the golden key to the Google front page ranking. Because Google likes fresh, relevant, content.

What’s Squidoo and HubSpot?

Are you aware of important social media sites like Tumblr, Squidoo or Hubspot? They’re all very much like blogs but use different terminology. However, they’re liked by Google and therefore your content can get good rankings, if used properly.

I Don’t Need The Internet

You’re right not everybody really needs the Internet. However, you can bet the number of people using Yellow Pages to find your product or service is dropping.

You can bet that even if you’re referred by word of mouth they’ll be able to check up on you on the Internet. If they dislike your site, or its content, that’s a referral you’ve lost.

If they’re referred again and they re-check your site and it’s still the same, they’re going to think nothing happens at your company. And they use Google to find another company.

Wouldn’t you rather be the company that hoovers up prospects disappointed by another company’s web site or lack of Internet presence?

Are You Missing The Point?

If you’re not taking advantage of these low cost ways of exploiting the Internet you’re guilty of not exploring and testing other ways to get new clients and to address previous and current clients.

Where To Start Social Marketing…

The best place to begin social marketing is to think strategy. You need to incorporate social marketing in your business. Do it half-heartedly and it’s totally pointless.

The other thing to bear in mind is that social marketing is evolving, you need to test what works for you. Incorporate it in your marketing arsenal and keep up to date.

That way you wont miss out on changes to how to use the Internet. Alternatively, of course, subscribe to this blog because I tend to be at the bleeding edge of marketing. Although I rarely advise my clients to go that far until I’m happy things are working.

Whatever you do remember that Peter Drucker said that in a cojpany there are really only two things that are important: Marketing and Innovation. And the Internet incorporates both!

This Social Media Article from the New York Times shows that the social media sites themselves are not making as much money as everyone expected.

There’s no doubt that they will make more money as they go on because there’s been a recent upswing in interest in social media sites, advertising and marketing on them.

At the moment if you’re a traditional off-line business it’s difficult to see how you can use social media.

However, remember how satellite TV had vast rivers of cash poured into it. Satellite broadcasting lost money hand over fist for years. Think what Sky is like now? If you’d invested in Sky when it launched you’d be sitting pretty today. And yet everyone was shaking their collective heads saying it wasn’t something anyone needed, or could afford.

Equally the offline businesses who can move online and into social media before their competitors stand to gain significantly. Social media applied properly will get customers their competitors don’t even see.

History is littered with examples of businesses who assume everything will remain pretty much the same year after year. Yet regularly something comes along to upset that happy view. Think of the buggy whip manufacturers who thought cars would never be taken up because they were too pricey. What about the US rail tycoons who thought rail was the only transport system anyone would ever need.

Or nearer to home, IBM who assumed that PCs would be a useful little desk top monitor that would take some processing off their mainframes and maybe act as another inroad into their clients. Now many companies use PC servers, whereas previously IBM might have expected to get their computer business now it’s an open market. In addition IBM assumed the operating system for something so low budget (compared to a mainframe) would be irrelevant. So they let Bill Gates keep the operating system. And now look – Bill Gates and Microsoft are doing very well thank you.

Firstly, marketing should be looked upon as an investment which should pay back 2, 3 or more times the investment.

Secondly, many companies try so many different marketing techniques and tactics. They’re looking for the silver bullet that will nail the customers they want. Or they simply try and keep up with the same marketing everyone does in their industry.

As Jay Abraham might say, “that’s just dumb, dumb, dumb..!”

Marketing Like Everyone Else

Maybe you’re wondering what’s so wrong with using the same marketing tactics as everyone else in your industry to get customers. After all “if it works for them why wouldn’t it work for me?” is the thought that crosses many business owners minds.

Think about this …

If you’re using the same tactics as everyone else you’ll get a proportion of the available market because your customers will see a fairly homogenous mass of suppliers who’ll they’ll have difficulty differentiating between. And that will be that. You’ll find it difficult to grow because everyone uses the same tactics and the customer pie is looked at in the same way by everyone.

And of course you worry that if you try a different tactic it might not work and that would cost you money and possibly you’ll be embarrassed at the next association meeting when everyone laughs and points at you for thinking such a marketing method could work!

Marketing Differently

And yet, if you did market differently in some way you’d immediately stand out from the crowd.

And by standing out from the crowd you’re noticed and being noticed is part way to get yourself new customers.

There’s no doubt that marketing differently means trying things that aren’t standard in your industry.

And because they’re different they may not work immediately. And even after a tune-up they still may not work. Finding that out means you know what doesn’t work and you can go on and try another thing that is different to your competitors and may suddenly bring you an avalanche of customers.

And if a new method works…

You’re the only one using it. Every customer you get through the new method is being drawn from the pool of customers from your industry and they aren’t deciding whether you’re marginally better than all the rest, because your marketing method has pointed just to you.

Marketing For No Cost

You can do a lot of guerilla marketing, which is low or no cost marketing. Although again if you’re not careful you end up with a load of tactics that don’t work well together.

Better is to stand back from your business, decide your business and marketing strategy and pick the tools and tactics you want to use. And those tools and tactics can be the ones you use now. The only difference may be that you integrate them to provide a consistency to your marketing.

So that means rather than each marketing component running separately you make sure that the sales letters, web sites and other copy use customer testimonials and PR that’s appeared in the media. PR uses some of the research that marketing has conducted through web or phone surveys. And so on. So that each component feeds all the others which makes the whole marketing message much stronger.

Feeding between different aspects of marketing is a no-cost way of getting better marketing.

Other no cost ways of marketing are to use the power of the PR, run a company blog, write customer emails, write a book or series of articles or phone customers to deepen rapport with them.

What about showing your customers the different people in your Organisation, what they get up to, the news ones, the leavers and the how they all contribute to your customer magic?

Are your staff upset if customers ring up and argue with them over something that wasn’t even their fault? Does your support cost escalate year on year? Do you find yourself wondering whether this company is a good idea anymore?

Do you struggle to convince your current customers to give you referrals? Do you find sales take a lot of face to face contact. Because your company moves fast does your web site even reflect what you’re all about anymore. Put it this way if you have your team on the site are they still the same people?

If you find yourself in any of those situations there’s a secret that will help propel you out of the rut and into the limelight.

That secret is strategic blogging. I don’t mean, “yeah, ok. Let’s get someone to do a few blog posts every week about stuff to do with our industry, clients and the firm.”

What I’m talking about is integrating your blogging into your business strategy. That means at the high level you’re talking about how you’ll use blogging to achieve business goals.

Blogging strategies could include:

1) A relaxed, informal method of putting the company’s viewpoint from one or more staff using a message that toes the company line but doesn’t constrain the bloggers freedom to make their point.
2) Provide a place on the blog where all issues discovered at customer sites for the products are posted about and feedback provided by customers.
3)Use the blog to ask for ideas to generate new products and services that your current customers might buy from you.

You’re probably thinking, “I’m reading this blog, I can already blog, what’s the point?”

It’s like this…

How many people or businesses started a blog with the intention of using it as part of their overall business strategy? Very few I would suggest. They may have used it as part of what they see as a “marketing strategy.” However, sitting back and thinking the business strategy through with blogging being used as a strategic tool, other than for marketing, is rare.

I originally started this blog because I like helping my clients with tips and strategies. And yet although I’m a marketing evangelist this blog is not constrained to simply discussing marketing it also talks about business growth.

For all those who worry that blogging isn’t a proper way of making money you need to check out Business Week’s week July article on bloggers called “Bloggers Bring In The Big Bucks.”

There’s a slide show that they show on the upper left of the article which goes through 13-14 bloggers who are making the money.

And in some cases the money made is quite extraordinary.

The blogs that are making this type of money include

• BoingBoing with Mark Frauenfelder and his wife Carla Sinclair
• Problogger with Darren Rowse (pictured)
• I Can Has Cheezburger with Eric Nakagawa
• Shoemoney with Jeremy Schoemaker
• Over Heard In New York with Morgan Friedman
• Perez Hilton with, you guessed it, Perez Hilton!

There are quite a few others. go check them out yourself.

Now do you see why I keep on suggesting that you need to have a blog?

Check Business Growth Reviews for Blogging to the Bank 2.0 review. I think it’s a seriously useful way to make a mark and money in the blogosphere.

You just can’t go wrong with this anniversary competition from Irish designer David Airey. He’s celebrating his second year blogging with his design blog  and so he’s holding an anniversary prize giveaway.

Smart marketing David, I like it!

There’s more than $4,000 worth of prizes.

Some of them are so good they make me salivate.

There’s Gold, Silver and Bronze prizes that are a package of highly useful services from a variety of experts to help people really improve or start their business blog.

For example David will provide the Gold winner with a logo that he’s designed, a custom WordPress theme that Nate Whitehill will design and produce – very important if you want to stand out and. And that’s just two elements, it also includes a year of hosting a marketing plan by an expert and a blogging tips book by Lorelle VanFossen (whose book I think I’m down to review)

Then after the first 3 top prizes there are loads of bonus prizes, and to just mention 3 that caught my eye:

• the Behringer Podcastudio USB Podcasting Kit donated by Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Blog
• 2GB USB storage key x 3 courtesy of Jamie Clague at Terinea Weblog
• Blog review, plus deep links and images published on Blog-Op with Chris Lodge

I could go on and on…

It’s an opportunity to maybe win a fantastic makeover of your current blog, or the creation of a fabulous new one. Check David Airey’s site out to see whether it’s worth you entering.

Technorati tags: Blog competition, David Airey, SEO, WordPress theme, Blog logo, Nate Whitehill, Lorelle VanFossen

IceRocket tags: Blog competition, David Airey, SEO, WordPress theme, Blog logo, Nate Whitehill, Lorelle VanFossen

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And in this post he explains that blogging SEO can have a large number of posts that pick up differing keyword phrases.

Obviously as time goes by Chris’s new blog called “Blogging Best Practices” is going to slowly, or even quickly, rise through the organic search results. That means as more and more people get into writing corporate blogs his results will be there and his services will be one of the first to be checked.

The widget then displays that persons photograph, or graphic, on your sidebar (you can see it on my far-most sidebar).

Unfortunately the widget can only display and record people who are also registered with blogcatalog. So it can make your blog stats look fairly rubbish to the casual blogcatalog browser.

In my case I’ve bitten the bullet and moved from blogger to WordPress. It means I’ve lost quite a bit of ranking in Alexa and Google but I expect to get that back again in due course.

In the meantime it occurred to me that it might be useful to suggest 5 useful ways to make your blog more visible.

1. Write good content. By good I mean interesting/useful/funny/not copied from elsewhere.
2. Sign up with a host of blog directories. Use Robin Good’s list of top directories
3. Use a service like Feedburner to allow people to sign up to get your posts via RSS or even by email
4. Go forth and comment on like-minded blogs. And please make sure that you have something to say, not “great blog, now check out mine at …”
5. Get other links into your blog – long term strategy is to write articles and get links that way

Above all make sure that you use your own domain name and preferably use a paid hosting service to ensure that people see you’re serious.

Will it grow your business?

The short answer is more traffic means more people who can see your products and services. More people means more sales. More sales = more growth!

LiveJournal tags: Business growth, Blogging, blogcatalog, Robin Good, Feedburner

IceRocket tags: Business growth, Blogging, blogcatalog, Robin Good, Feedburner

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The simple answer is because at the moment it’s the one thing that will pretty much definitely help people do better at blogging and at making money from their blog.

Does the book guarantee untold riches?

Not quite. In fact although it has a pretty good set of solid steps you can easily take to get blogging and making money it misses out one thing.

That one thing is the massive emphasis you need to place on choosing the right niche.

You can get a set of keywords that have 5,000 searches per month and you can have keywords that have 5,000,000 per month.

The 5,000 search niche might be ok to choose if everyone buys compared to, say, 1 in 100,000 buying from the 5,000,000 search.

However, all things being equal…

The money you make depends on the traffic you’re exposed to. Which in turn is linked to the size of the niche you have.

So it’s essential you choose the right niche.

IceRocket tags: Blogging to the bank 2.0, Rob Benwell, Niche marketing

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Human curiosity!

And guess what? I’m a fine example of that trait in action.

I managed to resist the temptation to buy the first edition of Blogging to the Bank. Because of course I thought I knew it all.

I Know All About Blogging!

Or do I?

After all Blogging to the Bank is meant to show you how to create a blog, write posts for a blog, get outsourced posts, articles, links and then in due course m0netize it. So I thought I knew it all.

In the end though I had to buy “Blogging To The Bank 2.0” just to see whether there’s anything I’m missing.

So I’m going to write a review of it.  In fact as it it comes with some interesting bonuses I’ll review those too in another post.

And if the report and bonuses contain lots of stuff that I or your average Joe Blogger would know the review will be more warts than your average review because I’ll be annoyed at forking out for things I know.

By the way, the bonuses include:

• Ready Made Blogs
• Powerpoint slides
• Article Assistance
• Blog Announcer Pro

If you want to get the reviews for “Blogging to the Bank ” and the bonuses type in your email address and click the “Get email updates” button, here