What’s your story?

Blog is a contraction of ‘web log’.  And a log is a kind of diary recording events and your commentary on them.  Today they have evolved far beyond that and have become much wider ranging.  This blog focuses on knowledge sharing on all things marketing, but there are blogs that are closer to the original and track journeys, events, achievements sharing progress, images and experiences. 

There are blogs that focus on reviewing products or services around a specific subject.  There are blogs that feature interviews with experts in the relevant field.  There are even blogs written by many different people, but with a common target audience.

Some blogs aren’t written, but are video-based, there are now blogs that are audio only (but now we call them podcasts!).  I know of artists whose blogs are more image-focused showing progress on each piece of work.

So that means there are few rules, except that your content needs to be of interest to your target audience.

Whether your style is formal, informative, personal or quirky, it needs to be consistent and capture your audience.  

Your blog should have a purpose, which might be to inform, educate, entertain or build a community and your posts should keep that purpose in mind.

What to write

When you know your purpose coming up with subjects to talk about is a whole lot easier.

If you’re an accountant write about the latest changes in tax, business grants, financial deadlines and similar issues.  Ensure your facts are accurate, but write in layman’s language as though you’re explaining to a friend who knows nothing about accounts.

If you’re a kitchen fitter write about doors and door handles, comparisons of whiteware, different styles of sink, positioning of areas, etc.  Include plenty of images so people can see what you’re talking about Be down to earth and practical.

If you’re a speaker, do a vlog (to showcase your talent) and talk about aspects of what you speak about, give insights into the life of a speaker, and share your opinions.

Whatever your expertise and specialist knowledge, you’ll have a story to share with your target audience, so know your audience and create content just for them.

There’s more to being an author than writing

Virtually everyone has valuable knowledge they could share in a book and, if you’re a business owner, you’ll have experience to back that up.  But writing a book isn’t just about sitting down and writing 40-50,000 words.

Research 

A smart author does their homework.  It’s important to look at what’s already out there – authors who write the kind of content you’re thinking about, publishers that publish that kind of book, what’s hot and what’s not!

Planning 

With your research done it’s time to start planning your book.  For a non-fiction book that means planning out the structure of the book, chapter by chapter.  Also creating a structure for each chapter will make both it easier to write – and easier for the reader to read, as well as improving reader retention.

The writing process

If you have a book plan writing will be relatively straightforward as you are literally fleshing out the skeleton.

There are a number of ways to get the book out of your head and into written format.  If you don’t like writing or feel your writing isn’t good enough (although a good editor will help with that), you could choose to work with a professional writer on the development.  

This might be providing notes and/or other material for them to develop or you may simply talk to them and let them ‘ghost-write’ or record what you want to say and have it transcribed.

Editing and proofreading

Editing is an essential for a book to be successful.  Even professional writers work with editors to hone and polish their work.  If you have a contract with a publishing house editing is often part of the package.  However, if you’re self-publishing or using an independent publisher this is usually an additional cost.  

Editing isn’t cheap as it takes time and considerable expertise, but books that aren’t edited are often difficult to read and, consequently, never get finished.  You don’t get reviews if someone hasn’t finished your book – or you may get negative feedback, which isn’t what you want.

Editing is all about how the content hangs around the book’s concept.  What needs developing, what needs pruning, what needs moving or repositioning?

Proofreading is the final step before publication and is purely to check spelling, typos, wayward punctuation and grammar.

Publishing

This process depends on which approach you choose.  

Getting a contract with a publishing house may involve a number of applications, a few rejections slips and certainly quite a bit of time.

Self-publishing means you literally do everything yourself (or pay experts to do the bits you can’t do) – editing, cover design, book layout, ISBN number application, etc.  Then you would use a book publishing service like Ingram Sparks or Lulu to publish your book.  

You may decide to go the ebook only route, but you’ll still need all of the above services and will need to learn how to convert your book into the various formats for ebook sales platforms.

The middle road is to work with an independent publisher.  These vary enormously as to what they offer.  Very few will include editing, but that will be reflected in the royalties you are paid.

Launch

This isn’t just the actual publication date, it’s about planning ahead and deciding how best to promote your book so you can get launch day sales.  That can include social media and email campaigns, beta reader groups, launch partners, webinars, live broadcasts and more.  It needs planning and quite a bit of work!

Marketing

If you don’t tell people about your book your sales will fall off the edge after the launch.  You’ll need a promotion campaign like any product.  Will you use Amazon, Facebook or Google ads, email marketing, social media offers or more?

If you want to dig into the whole book writing process there’s a free checklist you can sign up for and download here.

 

The 5 key ingredients for a website that works

In the course of my work I look at a lot of websites and the majority of business websites have obviously had time and money invested in creating a functional and aesthetically pleasing designed site.  Unfortunately, the same level of effort and professionalism doesn’t seem to have been applied to whether it’s reader-friendly.

Assuming a professionally built and designed website is your foundation, these are my five essentials for a website that converts more visitors to enquiries.

1: Navigation that I can understand

Menus should be simple and a no-brainer to find what you’re looking for.  It may be tempting to create quirky new titles for your pages, but will your visitor understand them?

For instance:

• ‘How we work’ – what does that mean?
•  ‘Who we are’ – is this a company history, an About page or a gallery of your team? 
• ‘Opportunities’ – who for, sponsorship, partnership, recruitment?
• ‘Benefits’ – is this a loyalty scheme, a list of what customers get or an employee package?

These are pretty tame compared to some very quirky tabs that are completely incomprehensible! 

Stick to what people don’t have to think about so use ‘About’ and ‘Contact’, not ‘Company profile’ and ‘Get in touch’.

Remember, your visitor doesn’t want to have to work hard to find what they’re looking for – it should be completely transparent and easy.

2: Headlines on every page

Your SEO expert will be keen to have the key words in the headlines on every page, but that doesn’t engage with your visitor in the same way.  If you sell widgets and you have a product page called ‘Widgets’, you don’t need to tell people that they’re on the widgets page, but a headline saying ‘Here’s how to get your equipment working at its best’, will present a benefit. 

In tech language the search engine is looking for the H1 tag (the most important headline).  However, it doesn’t differentiate in relation to font size, so you could have the page name in 10 point and the H2 (next most important heading) in 20 point.  E.g. Widgets

Here’s how to get your equipment working at its best

‘Welcome to our website’ or any variation of that is not a headline.  Think about the visitor and focus on their problems and create headlines that tell them how you can help.  The rule of thumb is that a visitor should understand how you can help them without having to scroll down, so be clear.

3:  Write for your reader

The majority of websites, especially those written by owners or employees or the company whose site it is, are predominantly inwardly-focused.  So there’s a lot of ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘us’ language, which doesn’t connect with the reader in the same way as ‘you’ and ‘your’.

People are not interested in what you do – they want to know what they get.  The level of engagement when you write about them is dramatically higher.

It’s simply a case of repositioning your message, so instead of ‘We do [this]’, you write ‘You can have [that]’.  If you know what your customers want, the problems they experience and the results they are looking for it will make it much easier to create messages that tap into that, both in headlines and in any copy.

4:  Tell people what to do

… and make it easy for them to do it.  Every page – and every section on your home page – needs a call to action (CTA).  On the home page that may be a clickable box or link, on other pages state what you want people to do next.

‘For more information call us on [your phone number] or email us now.’

If you want them to phone, put the number right under their nose and ensure the ‘email us’ instruction either takes them to your enquiry form or automatically launches an email for them to complete.  Don’t make them work to get in touch.

In addition, including your phone and/or email in your brand banner at the top of every page (usually top right) is a good strategy so people who come to the site to get in touch, don’t have to click more than necessary.

5:  Understand your SEO

Professional SEO costs a lot of money, but you can give your site a head start with a few tweaks.

• Know the key words and phrases for every page
• Ensure at least one key word is in the URL  e.g. yourwebsite.com/marketing-services
• Add Alt tags with key words and descriptions to every image that’s relevant to the image and your key words for that page
• Make sure that the copy is focused on your key message for the page – short and succinct is good, but include relevant key words and phrases.  You don’t need to stuff the copy with key words, as long as the message is relevant.
• Ensure all your links and connections work – and check them all regularly. 

If you address these 5 issues your website will work much better in engaging visitors and generating leads.