Marketing with Mike Volpe

This is a guest post written by Barbara Govednik, a Chicago-based writer, writing coach and communication strategist. She is also the owner of 423 Communication, writes the blog Being Well Said and contributes to the communication skills blog on Communitelligence.

Photo credit tnarik.

 

More often than not, good writing is the product of good editing. Think about it. There is a reason they are called "first drafts" and not "one-and-only drafts."

For some bloggers, the thought of editing sends shivers down their spines. “Blogs are all about self-expression and speaking in my voice,” as someone said to me at the 2009 BlogHer conference, eyeing me with pity and disdain.

She was absolutely right about self-expression and voice. But blogs are also about getting a message across to your audience. If your posts are an incomprehensible jumble of words, your message gets lost and you have to be cool with the fact that you are probably talking to yourself. If you are seeking a larger audience, embrace the concept of editing for clarity and sanity. It will make your content readable, engaging and authentic.

Editing for Clarity

Editing for clarity means injecting some of the basic rules of grammar and construction into your work. Don’t panic, we’re not about to start diagramming sentences. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Sentences should come to an end at some point. See if you can’t break the really long, complicated sentences – the ones that include all manner of ellipsis and dashes and parenthetical material – into smaller, independent sentences. They are easier to read. Vary the length of your sentences, too.
• Paragraphs give the reader a little break and signal that you are moving onto another thought. Reread your paragraphs and count up how many ideas you’re cramming into them. This number should be low.
• Basic punctuation (periods, commas, the occasional exclamation point) works like GPS and gives readers little signals about where you are leading them. Skip the fancy stuff like semicolons if you’re not quite sure how they work and you aren’t willing to look it up.
• And contrary to the dire warnings of my fourth grade English teacher, no one has ever died because of a sentence fragment. Or a sentence that starts with “and.” Those are conversational elements that give your writing authenticity and a sense that a living human wrote the words.

Editing for Sanity

The fantastic side effect of editing for clarity is that it also improves your sanity quotient. If you are paying attention to things like sentence length and basic punctuation, you have less of a chance of sounding like a rambling madman in your blog. Here are three more ways to avoid that fate. (If you want to sound like the Unabomber or Ryan Adams, skip this section.)

• Scan your work for jargon, acronyms and arcane references that may be foreign to your audience. (See Unabomber and Ryan Adams, above.) You can use a little, particularly if you include a bit of explanation or a link. But it’s best to treat them like the jar of red pepper flakes at the pizza joint. A shake or two may spice things up but too many make the whole thing unappetizing.
• Beware the non sequitur. Random spasms of unrelated content will leave your reader scratching his head. For instance, if I suddenly started to explain how I always laugh at the cartoons of Wiley Miller, you’d probably think, “umm, who cares?” And you’d be right.
• Watch out for your writing ticks. We all have them. One writer I work with is way too fond of the word “it.” Another types “manger” when she means “manager” without fail. A third has a tendency to use the sentence construction “not only (whatever he’s writing about), but (another related thing)” in every paragraph. Go back and reread some of your older blog entries. What pops up as a recurring theme? Watch out for and edit those repeat offenders.

Edit Yourself Today

The best editor is always someone who didn’t write the original blog entry. Give your draft to a writer you trust, a business partner, the barista when he has some downtime. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do a first run-through yourself using the guide above. All of these little niceties make your blog a comfortable place for readers to hang out.

This is a guest post by Jeff Ogden is a demand generation expert and sales leader, as well as the President of Find New Customers, a lead generation company, which helps businesses create lead generation campaigns and continually publishes the best lead generation ideas, so his readers can determine the best lead generation strategy to find new customers. 

Seth Godin, author of best-selling books on marketing like Purple Cow, Meatball Sundae and Permission Marketing and his latest book, Linchpin talks about the need to develop remarkable content. What is remarkable content? Seth says it is "Content the reader finds so interesting, people remark to each other about it."

How can marketers create content so interesting to the reader that people start talking to each other? That seems, to most B2B marketers, a bar set too high. They certainly grasp the concept, but they struggle to put it into action. The goal of this article is to give you specific ideas of how to put Seth's concepts into action.

How can our content deeply engage readers and earn their permission for continued communications?

In order to answer that question, we need to move to an area where most of us have little experience - publishing. Specifically, we're looking at great story-telling - that engages readers on an emotional level. Don Hewitt, the late creator of 60 Minutes, described the continued success of that show as being due to their ability to tell great stories. Look at the young girl in the picture above - she's obviously engrossed in a book she finds of great interest. She's emotionally engaged. But how might you do the same thing in your B2B company? I think the best way to examine this challenge is to look at what makes - and does not make - a great story.

What does NOT not make a great story?

• Information about your company, your products or how great you are.
• Technical and obtuse terms - your speeds and feeds
• Company history and awards

What does make a great story?

• An engrossing plot with surprises, twists and turns. In the B2B world, it may be as simple as a yarn of how companies can move from a business problem to stellar results. But it's got to be a great story.
• Short chapters with images that support the story. Pleasing graphic treatments that engage the mind.
• Each chapter ends with a "hook" - a tease of what is to come in the next chapter. That keeps the reader flipping pages and looking forward to the next installment.
• The ability for the reader to direct the story. Let her move back and forth - look at an earlier chapter, for instance. Readers want to be empowered.

Lastly, once you have a great story, pleasing graphics, "hooks" end every chapter and you're ready to go, you need to take another page from the publishing industry and promote your story. Ask influential bloggers to read it and comment. Get your Twitter followers to tweet about it. Write about it on your blog.  Perhaps you are thinking "Hey, Jeff. This is a great idea. But I'm not a writer." As Brian Halligan, HubSpot CEO and Founder pointed out in a recent webcast - there are plenty of journalists and writers looking for work. All you have to do is go out and look for them.

This is a guest post by Ilya Mirman (@IlyaMirman), who has held marketing and engineering roles at several hardware and software companies. His last three gigs have been as VP of Marketing for SolidWorks (3D design software), and two venture-backed MIT spin-offs - Interactive Supercomputing (acquired by Microsoft) and Cilk Arts (acquired by Intel). During his free time, Ilya enjoys photographing rock concerts and political events. [Photo: Ilya in his "Florida Uniform"]

Serves me right. Here I was, recuperating from a bender in Vegas by relaxing with in-laws in Florida, when I saw Volpe's tweet ("I'm looking for GUEST BLOGGERS for MikeVolpe.com - @ or DM me with an article headline if you are interested") and sarcastically DM'd him the headline above.

Mike took the bait ("love it. email it over and i will print it. if u are serious") - but now I was on the hook to produce something. So here's my two cents on the topic:

7 Reasons Why Guest Blogging is a Great Thing:

#7 - Introduces new perspective, new content to your audience

#6 - At the same time - gives guest blogger a new audience to share their content with

#5 - SEO benefits for your site (broadens the scope of terms your site can rank for)

#4 - The links between your sites will make it easier for your audience to discover your guest blogger's site - and for his audience to discover yours

#3 - The links between your sites will make it easier for Google (and other search engines) to know the sites are related, and leverage each site's SEO juice to help the other

#2 - Helps establish the guest blogger as an expert on the topic

#1 - And YES... it is a bit of a lazy way out: a great way to have fresh new content on your site without actually writing it (though of course there's no free lunch - you're still your blog's editor-in-chief!)

 

Ok, if the above is wicked simplistic, and you're thinking, "Thanks, Captain Obvious!" - here's another angle: there might be something akin to Metcalfe's Law going on here. Instead of two separate audiences exposed to separate content, guest blogging exposes more people to more content, and the social nature of the web allows for that many more possible interactions - blog comments, tweets, sharing. Feels like this would be an amplifying, non-linear force in driving communication, awareness, activity - and ultimately some conversion relevant for your site.

Anyhoozle... Having guest bloggers participate is a great thing for everyone - for the people you are all trying to deliver valuable content for, for the guest blogger, and for your business - so give it a shot. (There's a few tips and tricks to doing it efficiently and successfully - perhaps a topic for another post :).

A new question: What are the marketing goals of blogging?  I think some of the goals for launching a blog are:

• Improve SEO performance - blog articles help with SEO a lot by increasing your presence on the web and attracting more links into your website
• Build thought leadership and bradn - if your blog has interesting content, it can build your brand as a thought leader in the market
• Increase social media performance - you are a lot more interesting in social media if you are writing and then promoting interesting blog articles (instead of telling people what you had for lunch)
• Get more leads and sales - by adding calls to action to your blog, you can get blog visitors to convert into leads and customers for your business

Download video for iPhone and iPod

Often people ask me which is more effective, Twitter or a blog.  As you can see in the video, a blog is much more effective because it has a lot of benefits over Twitter.

• Blog articles help you be more interesting on Twitter - it is hard to be interesting in 140 characters, it is much easier with a link to a blog article
• Blog articles perform well in SEO (search engine optimization)
• Everyone can read blogs, not many people use Twitter

Download video for iPod or iPhone

If you have heard me speak before, you know I believe that content is an important part of inbound marketing.  Not the only part, but an essential part of it.  Here are a couple case study slides from a presentation I am doing this morning.

Sometimes by being more public you get some rewards - blogging is one way of putting yourself out there.  Sweet Services Bulk Candy sent me 5 pounds of free candy and wrote about it, just because I blog.  Pretty cool!

I expected to get a mix of a bunch of candy I had before, but there were a few items that were new to me.  Vanilla Tootsie rolls? Yes, and they are good.  Cowtails?  Also good - they are sort of like bull's eyes (caramel with sugar in the middle), except they are long and thin.  Anyway, to make sure I make it past 40, I decided not to eat all the candy myself and I brought it into the office. 

It took 3.5 days for the company to empty the entire 5 pound bowl of candy.  Here are the photos to prove it.

 

So, check out their candy blog and all the candy they have to offer, including chocolate (my favorite).

Marketing has always been about experimentation.  The old methods get crowded because lots of people are lazy and like to copy rather than innovate.  You need to find new marketing methods.

So I am trying something new this month for this blog.  I am going to write something everyday for the month of February.  A lot of the articles will be short.  Some might not make sense.  But if Seth Godin can write short articles and be a huge success, maybe I can write short articles and be a little success.

I'll report back at the end of the month about how this has or hasn't changed the stats of this blog.  For now, I'll share that I get about 1,000 visitors per month, and January was 1,300 visitors (I had a minor success on Reddit that drove a couple hundred visitors).  About 1/3 of my traffic comes from SEO with Google and another 1/3 from Twitter.  I only have about 90 regular subscribers to this blog (so you are really special if you're reading this).

Let me know over time if you like the content and frequency or not.

I seem to get this question a lot.  Here is an email I sent to a group of which I am a member, answering this question.  Normally I would post something like this on the main blog I write, the HubSpot Internet Marketing Blog, but this was a bit too self promotional, so I don't think I will do that.

Which Blog Software will be Best for my Business?

Dear ______ -

Your question inspired me to do some thinking and writing.  Here is a thorough review of the topic of blogging for business.  If topics like this interest you, you should subscribe this blog - http://blog.hubspot.com/ - I write about topics like this all the time, and its free.

Great reasons to use a blog for business:

1. A blog helps personalize your business, helping prospects and customers get to know you better
2. A blog help you get found by more prospects in search engines (SEO), if you set up your blog properly
3. A blog helps you get found by more prospects in the blogosphere, if you set up your blog properly
4. A blog helps you get found by more prospects in social media (Digg, Facebook), if you use your blog properly
5. A blog can be a good lead nurturing tool, maintaining contact with prospects until they are ready to buy

To accomplish these goals, there are some "must-have" features with blogs:

Blog functionality:

1. Uses your own business URL, not a free subdomain of someone else's URL
2. Allows subscriptions by email and RSS
3. Automatically integrates with social media (Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon,etc.)
4. Automatically send new blog posts to your subscribers by email, and lets you import old lists of subscribers
5. Automatically integrates with social media sites (Digg, StubleUpon, etc.)

Analytics functionality:

1. Allows you to track both email and RSS subscribers over time
2. Ability to measure visitors and leads from your blog
3. Ability to measure your rank for important search terms in search engines
4. Ability to track and measure your competition as compared to you

Support and expertise:

1. Has support people that answer technical / support questions
2. Has people, articles and videos that teach you how to be successful with your blog (not support, but marketing expertise)

Here are the three suggested paths to blogging based on price:

1. OK/Cheapest ($10-$50/month): Template using Wordpress or Typepad. With some technical knowledge and advice from people in forums, you can set up a blog with some (but not all) of the features above. To get more of the features you can integrate things like Feedburner, Google Analytics, maybe Constant Contact, widgets from the social media websites and more - this takes some technical know-how in my opinion.
2. Better/Mid-Range (~$250/month): HubSpot - You get all of the functionality I mention above, including training and advice from experts so you can be more successful with your blog. This requires zero technical knowledge. Also included is an SEO system, analytics, competitive tracking and lead tracking.
3. Best/Expensive ($3K-10K+, plus monthly hosting): A custom blog system from a web design firm. A web design firm can build you a custom blog (FYI, they will probably use Wordpress to power it) including whatever features you want, and they will integrate any system or features you want (like Google Analytics, HubSpot, lead tracking tools, SEO tools, etc.). This will always meet your needs exactly because a good firm will figure out your needs and built to that. But make sure to ask them for examples of clients who are successful with their blogs - and make them show you the number of comments, Technorati rank, traffic and search engine results to prove it. You should then as the client if the web design firm actually helped make them successful with advice, training and marketing expertise, or if they just built a good technology platform.

Small Business Blogging Case Study (with Videos):

Note - since I know HubSpot best, yes this is a HubSpot customer - ignore this if you think it is too promotional.  But even if you ignore every time he says the word HubSpot, I think it is still a valuable case study to show the power of business blogging. Business Blog Case Study

Biggest mistake made by business blogs:

Hosting your blog on a Blogspot or Typepad or other free URL.  Just like you should not use a hotmail email address or your home mailing address for your business, you should not host your business blog on  Not only is this a bad idea for branding reasons, but if your blog is successful, it is impossible to move it anywhere else some number of months down the road if it is not on a URL you won and control.  In fact, using a free Blog URL is WORSE than using a free email address or mailing address, since both mail and email can be forwarded to a new address.  You cannot forward a blog from a Free URL to a new one - this is super important to know.  This is one of the biggest mistakes you can make when you start blogging.  Just trust me, your blog should be on a URL you own and control.  I have made this mistake myself.  You can use software from Blogger or Typepad if you want to, just make SURE each article you write has a URL like "www.yourcompany.com/article1" or "blog.yourcompany.com/article1" - do not do something like "yourcompany.blogspot.com/article1" or "yourcompany.typepad.com/article1").

Feel free to contact me with any other blogging questions.  I have been blogging for a while now, and my current blog has been on the home page of Digg and other social media sites, has thousands of subscribers and gets tens of thousands of visitors per month.

Thanks,
Mike

It is surprising to me that in so many Web 2.0 blogs you see and feel a real bias toward the Bay Area in their coverage of new and interesting technologies and services. I mean isn't one of the whole points about "web 2.0" and the "social web" supposed to make your geographic location meaningless? Have we all forgotten that we read "The World is Flat" just a couple shourt years ago? I can hire programmers in Russia, have curtomer service reps in India, marketing people telecommuting in all 3 US time zones, and a headquarters in Bermuda or the Grand Caymans to save on taxes... but I can't get Blog coverage if I'm not in Silicon Valley? Come on guys... practice what you preach. Here are some examples of what I am talking about:

1. http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/24/ilike-brings-free-indy-music-to-itunes-recommendations/ In Michael Arrington's coverage of tons of music reccommendation engines such as Pandora, iLike, Last.fm, MyStrands, and Qloud he never mentions in any of his articles a company called Goombah, which is based on the east coast. While it is not clear if what Goombah has is that much better or different than all the rest, at least mention them
2. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_race_to_beat_google.php In this article Richard McManus neglects to mention ZoomInfo (Alexa ranking of ~1900, a pretty big company) in his article about potential Google competitiors. ZoomInfo has been around longer, developed cooler stuff and is much larger and more established than most of the other companies in the article.

Maybe this all just goes to show that the "social web" has not gone as far as we all might think, and that being geographically close to people does build better relationships, at least in 2007.