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How to Turn WordPress into Your Unfair Advantage (a primer on business blogging)

By Christian

blogging-to-do-list — It's no secret blogging should be on your "to do" list for 2010!

If you run a business, it’s no longer a secret that you should also be running a business blog. When it comes to social media for business, your blog is most often the most valuable component of your marketing strategy. The most favored platform for a business blog is WordPress. There are a number of reasons for that, but for today, I want to help you turn your WordPress blog into a marketing tool that literally gives you an UNFAIR ADVANTAGE, one that will utterly destroy the competition. Sound good? 😉

Why Most Blogs Fail

First, let me preface this article with an explanation as to why most blogs fail. It’s important, because it’s true. Most blogs do fail to get results. There is a great reason for this, and the reason is because most bloggers spend the majority of their time doing the wrong things…things that don’t grow their blog.

They tweak their design.
They try out a million different themes.
They try out a million different plugins.
They constantly tweak their SEO (search engine optimization).
They spend too many hours writing content.

Candidly, all these things SOUND important, but they’re not. Design, SEO and content certainly have their place. Don’t get me wrong; they’re important, and they shouldn’t be ignored. But they should represent the SMALLEST investment of your time.

Most bloggers do the opposite. They spend the majority of their time on things that don’t grow their blog.

Then what happens? They give up out of desperation. They work for months and get no results. They wonder why blogging is so difficult. They wonder why other bloggers get tons of traffic and make money with their site, while they languish in obscurity.

A Blogging Success Secret

Here’s a blogging success secret for you. Setting up your design and SEO are just Step 1! Yet ironically, most bloggers spend a TON of time on this. The idea is that if your blog is so beautiful, so awesome, so optimized…then people will be drawn to it. Unfortunately this doesn’t work! Most bloggers never get past step 1. The spin their wheels endlessly here. It’s no wonder they never get the results they want!

Time is Your Greatest Asset

time-for-blogging — If we had all the time in the world, we could afford to do everything. It's not the case. As it stands, to get we results...we have to DECIDE we're only going to do what gets RESULTS. Not just what makes sense or what's fun 🙂

Would you agree that time is your greatest asset? If so, then we need to make the best use of it we possibly can, correct? So let’s do that. Let’s make a COMMITMENT that we’re going to spend the majority of our time on things that actually build our blog and make it successful. How does that sound? You with me? If so, then take these 3 steps to turn your WordPress blog into an unfair advantage for your business!

Build Your Blog: Step 1

OK, so Step 1 is getting the design out of the way. You need a great looking, highly optimized, very customizable design right out of the gate. Get the sucker set up, so you never have to think about it again! Get it set up right in the first place, and you’ll never have to spend tons of time on your design. It will always look sweet, so you don’t have the “I have an ugly blog” baggage weighing on your shoulders. Your burden will be light, because your blog will look great, just as you want it. This way you’ll have all the time in the world to focus on building your blog and bringing traffic in.

How to get an awesome looking blog quickly

There are a few ways to do it. One, you can bite the bullet and simply hire a designer. Many may try to advise against this when you’re first getting started. For a personal blog, I would agree. But if this is a business, I think it’s a fair option. Custom blog designs aren’t as expensive as you may think. If you’re looking for something very professional and simple, no one should charge you more than a thousand bucks, and you will likely be able to get a fantastic, custom blog set up for just a few hundred bucks.

I offer these services for clients, and there are also a number of other professionals who do this. A couple I like are:

Kinetic Knowledge
G2WebMedia

This is a way to get a great design right out of the gate. It’s fast, easy and inexpensive.

If you’re comfortable doing a little work yourself, another way to get a fantastic design right out of the gate is to install the Headway theme. Honestly, I’ve road tested a bazillion (yes that’s right, I counted!) free WordPress themes, and here’s the bottom line…you get what you pay for. Even most professional themes require a good amount of coding and expertise to truly personalize them.

The Headway theme for WordPress is the most flexible, optimized and powerful theme on the planet right now, and I don’t say that lightly. If you’re 100% comfortable with coding and web design, then you should probably just put your own design together. But if you’re not a coder, then Headway will give you total control over the look and feel of your site. Headway is a search-optimized monster, and it gives you total control in that regard as well. As far as the design of your site, you have complete control via a point and click interface. A monkey can work this thing!

Install Headway, and you’ll be up and running in just a few minutes. Spend an afternoon with it, and your blog will be decked to the nines.

If you have any doubts as to why I am an affiliate for Headway, I encourage you to take notice of the theme I’m running on this very website (and several others) at this very moment. That’s right. It’s Headway. I don’t sell anything to you that I wouldn’t use myself!

Build Your Blog: Step 2

Use your blog well, and it will pay you handsomely! Now that we’re no longer stuck on Step 1, we can move on two Step 2, where we can actually start targeting what will make your blog grow!

Make a list of keywords that apply to your business. For simple, fast results, I recommend going to adwords.google.com. Click on “get keyword ideas”. There are a number of tools you can use for keyword research. This is simply the most common. It’s powerful, and it’s free! The market where I personally started in business was real estate, so let’s use that as an example.

On the Get Keyword Ideas page, type in “Miami Florida real estate”. You’ll get a screen like this one:

Grab a list of keywords that you feel are particularly relevant for your business. Don’t just go with the highest traffic keywords. That’s tempting. Instead, focus on keywords that are the most relevant for what you actually do. Make a list of 5-10. Then, do a Google search for those keywords. Find forums and blogs that are already in existence, catering to these niches. Set up profiles and start reading and talking to the people there.

Additionally, set up profiles on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Spend time there, meet people. Join in the conversation. There are already a lot of groups and ongoing discussions that are relevant to your business. Jump in and talk to people! Don’t be overly promotional. Just talk. Real talk is what wins here.

What the heck does this have to do with building my blog?

You may wonder what this has to do with building your blog. After all, how can spending time on OTHER PEOPLE’S sites help out YOUR SITE? The answer is, it does a TON to help your site. That leads me into Step 3. This is the good stuff!

Build Your Blog: Step 3

Don’t overlook the power of Step 3 because of its simplicity! This is where you can truly obtain the unfair advantage, because you’ll be doing the work that most everyone else wants to skip. Remember, just because it’s SIMPLE, doesn’t mean it’s EASY! Building anything of consequence…something that truly wins over your market, is hard work. But is it worth it? You bet. Does it pay well? Oh, yes!

So, what is the BEST use of your time when it comes to building a fantastically profitable blog? The answer to this question, as I’ve mentioned, is deceptively simple. It all comes down to using the tool skillfully, for its intended purpose. And what is a blog’s intended purpose? A blog is made for talking to people. So, talk to people! Sounds simple, right? Yet when we look at the facts, few bloggers do actually this. They tweak, they tool around, they try out new plugins, they buy expensive “systems” to “drive traffic” to their blog, they do everything under the sun to try to find a quick and easy way to make their blog successful. It’s such a shame, really!

Is social networking (i.e. “talking to people”) really the key to making your blog successful? Well, yes actually! How so, you ask? Well, the cool, convenient thing about social media is that nearly everything you do easily links back to your blog. Your profile, your forum signature, your blog comments…they all link back to your site. So when people check you out and want more information, it’s easy for them to stop by. It’s important to understand you can’t MAKE someone stop by, but if they like you and want more information about you, they will!

As you connect with more and more people on their home turf, more and more people will come out to your blog. If you’re engaging people in legitimate conversation and actually have something to talk about (you do, trust me), then they will almost always want to know more about you. It’s a natural part of human interaction. How many times have you met someone new and they’ve NOT asked “so what do you do?” If people meet you and like you, they will want to know more about you. And they will come to your blog.

Blogging Success is Counter-intuitive

It’s a little counter-intuitive, isn’t it? You’d think to build a successful blog that you should spend a lot of time on your blog. But that’s not the case. You should in fact spend very little time on your blog! Hard to believe? You can spend all the time you want on your blog, but until there’s a large readership, there’s not a lot to do there! You want readers, right? Well, then go talk to them!

When you’re first starting your blog, you should not have to spend more than a couple hours a WEEK on your blog. And that should be spent on writing content. All the rest of your time should be spent networking and talking to people. See, there are already thousands of people out there who should be reading your blog. Don’t wait for them to find you…go find them 😉

The principles of building a successful online operation are fairly simple wouldn’t you agree? I suppose I could make it a lot more complicated if you want, but the bottom line is that it all comes down to work. Spend time on the right things, and you will get the result. We all have the same amount of time in the day. Where you get the unfair advantage is when you decide you’re not going to look for shortcuts. While everyone else is spinning their wheels, you will be busy spending time on leveraged and effective things that actually get results. Tools like Headway make it possible to put the stupid busy work behind you, so you can concentrate on building your business. Get the ball rolling now!

I hope this basic primer on blogging helps you build your business this year. If you have any questions, I am at your service!

The Biggest Problem with Customers (and how to fix it)

By Christian

key-customer-brain — This Simple Technique will Help You Unlock Your Customer's Brain:)

All these dang customers. So many people wanting to BUY stuff from me! If they’d just leave me alone, maybe I could actually get some WORK done, you know?

Do you ever feel that way?

The Problem with Customers

Of course we all know that customers are kind of necessary. But nonetheless, they are challenging. See, if working with people was so easy, everyone would be rich. And that’s what running a successful small business is about. It’s about effectively working with people.

If you can’t be effective with people, you won’t be effective in your business.

This is a big hang up with the internet crowd, because so many of us are focused on click-throughs and impressions and other non-human lingo that we easily get out of touch with the fact that it’s PEOPLE we’re selling to. This is the salesman in me talking of course, but I think it’s a valid point.

The internet business is a people business. You have to understand people…how they work, how they think, what they want. If you don’t dig into this, your blog, your landing page, etc…will all fall short of the effectiveness it could have. Bottom line, you won’t reach your potential until you get good at engaging with people on a human level.

If you pay attention to the underlying message of a lot of the content on Next Level Blogger, it speaks to this very thing. Next Level Blogger is sales training, disguised as blogging tips and such. Get it? I’m pulling a fast one on you 😉

That said I want to mention the biggest problem with customers that I’ve found. If you can get over this hurdle, your business will run more smoothly. Here is the biggest problem:

Customers don’t know what they want, but they desperately want YOU to give it to them.

See how that might be a problem?

People Don’t Know What They Want

kids-know-what-they-want — Kids Know What They Want and Have No Problem Telling You. Your Customers Will Need a Little More Coaxing.

Seriously, people don’t know what they want. Look at a group of people trying to decide even the most mundane thing like where to go for dinner. It takes 15 minutes to decide. No one can make up their mind. It’s a restaurant for god’s sake! You’ve done this a million times. Still, our minds cannot be made up 😉

And then when we get there, what happens? We stare at the menu, like we’ve never seen this stuff before! Some of you are decisive and know what you want, yes. You represent 5% of the population. Everyone else is not in touch with what they want. It’s the human condition. Most of us know we want SOMETHING, and we assume we know what it is, but we don’t. Why? Because there is an immense amount of emotional baggage we carry with us into every situation. It clouds our every judgment.

When we’re kids, we know what we want. Where do you want to eat? MCDONALDS! What do you want to eat? CHICKEN NUGGETS! There is no hesitation. We know what we want, and it fills us with joy just thinking about it! Fast forward 20 years, decisions are a lot more complex, aren’t they? Why? Is the selection of restaurants a lot more complex? No. It’s the same as it’s ever been. And it’s not because we like so many more things. It’s because we have accumulated emotional baggage we didn’t used to have when we were kids.

When you ask a kid where they want to go, they don’t think about things like:

Is it too expensive?
Is it in a convenient location?
How was the service last time?
What will everyone else think of me if I want to eat at McDonalds?
Do they have food that will work with my diet?

Of course, the list goes on. Kids don’t think about this stuff. They know what they want, and they give you a straight answer. As adults, getting a straight and helpful answer is not so easy. But it’s doable. It requires a little digging. And that’s what we need to do as business owners. We need to dig. There is another word for this. The word is “sales”.

Digging is Essential

questions-are-essential — Asking Questions is a Lost Art and the Most Powerful Tool for Being More Effective With Your Customers

Learning to dig is one of the most powerful things you can do to improve your bottom line and help your customers in a much more personal way. How do you dig? You ask questions. Questions are powerful. There is a concept called “going three deep” that I learned from a great sales trainer Howard Brinton. It’s a great concept that I recommend to everyone involved in selling a product or service.

The basic idea is to never take anyone’s answer at face value. Why? Because they don’t really know what they want, remember? But they DO have needs, wants and desires. It’s our job to uncover them. We do that by asking questions. Not just one, but three or more.

How to Dig

Here is an example of “going three deep”:

Home buyer: I definitely want the home I buy to have a basement.
Real estate agent: No problem. Why is that?
Home buyer: I use the basement in my current home for storage. I have a lot of crap. A basement is essential.
Real estate agent: That makes sense. Do you use a basement for anything other than storage?
Home buyer: No that’s pretty much the point of a basement.
Real estate agent: So if there’s a home with no basement but that DOES have all the storage space you need and then some, do you want me to exclude it, or would you like to check it out?
Home buyer: Well if it really has all the storage space we need, then yes we should look at it.

What happened here? Most real estate agents would simply take an order from a client and only show them homes that have basements. By going three deep, we find out that the client doesn’t care about basements at all! They want storage space. Surely, a basement is a terrific way to accomplish this, but it is by no means the ONLY way. It’s also in many cases one of the most EXPENSIVE ways to get more storage space. So we’ve made a lot more homes available, a lot more opportunities to make a sale, and we might even save the client a lot of money.

Do you see the power in asking questions? When we take people’s answers at face value, we make powerful assumptions…assumptions that are often wrong. By being willing to dig a bit, we can uncover some real gold and learn what our customers REALLY want. It’s not like they’re hiding it from us intentionally. It is our duty to be diligent.

Your customer is not the professional. You are the professional.

By applying this single technique to your interactions with your clients, customers and colleagues, you will find your interactions a lot more clear, a lot less hazy. You will be able to get more targeted results in a lot less time. You will become more effective at working with people.

Applying this to Blogging and Internet Marketing

It’s one thing to be able to “go three deep” when you’re face to face with a customer. It’s entirely different when you’re running a blog or otherwise selling online, correct? I’d argue not so much. One of the reasons I’m in this space talking about building a business online is because I’ve successfully built up several websites using these principles. There’s a certain amount of translation when it comes to moving your sales strategy online, but the principles on human interaction remain the same. Social media makes all this possible.

Conversing takes place on different platforms when you’re marketing online. Etiquette may be a bit different, but the differences are not as acute as they may seem from the outside. I interact with my readers and clients pretty closely. We email, IM, leave comments on each other’s blogs, etc. Just because we’re using new platforms to communicate does not change the nature of communication. The same principles apply.

If you’re NOT interacting with your audience on this level, then I suggest you start. Can you maintain an intimate dialog with every single person? It depends on what level you’re at and the size of your community of course. I don’t have a huge audience like a Chris Brogan or Gary Vaynerchuk. When your community grows to such a size, the rules change. But then again, so does the very nature of the opportunities at your disposal. But even when your reach is that far, the basics always still apply. Look at how those guys hustle. If they have to hustle, so do all of us.

Yes, your success may eventually take you to the point where you cannot personally connect with every single person. One important point about that:

That type of success is optional in most cases. Unless you are a complete freak of nature, growing an audience to that size is simply not done on accident. It’s done deliberately. And importantly, it is only one model of business. Don’t assume you have to be “huge” to be successful. I don’t have any one email list larger than 11k, but they are highly targeted, powerful lists. Trust me, even a very small list can produce a lot of revenue for your company, if it’s comprised of responsive, engaged and highly relevant subscribers.

I personally like small, powerful sites and small, powerful businesses. It’s my thing. I understand it’s not the only way of doing things, but I urge you to consider your options. The A-listers of the world are always easy to see, and it’s understandable to want to model them. However, don’t make the assumption it’s the only way to go. In fact, there are many low key, highly effective, highly powerful ways to build a business.

To me, human interaction and being personally engaged with your audience puts you in a position to truly care about who you’re working for, and that’s the best way to go. I find a lot of value in not being huge. Is that just sour grapes? If you’re creating massive value for your audience and getting paid well to do it, isn’t that what matters? Does it really matter how BIG your audience is? What do you think?

How to Screw Up Your Business Forever

By Christian

coca-cola-marketing — Some large companies like Coca-Cola understand the value of social marketing and the demise of interruption marketing. They're adjusting. Some are just not.

Seth Godin just wrote a great little article on good marketing practices and how to build trust. If you’re not a subscriber to Seth Godin’s blog, it’s not much of a stretch for me to recommend him. Go do that right now. That said, this most recent post was particularly relevant to me right now, and I wanted to share what it means to me, because I think it will help you approach your business marketing from a more powerful angle.

See, it’s hard work to build a business the right way, and it’s really easy to screw everything up overnight.

You want your marketing to work, right? You want it to bring in sales…that’s the whole point, correct? Think carefully about your answer. Do you just want sales, or do you want a specific type of sale? I’d like to submit that you DON’T just want to make more sales. You want to grow your business, and the two are not necessarily the same! If you’re taking your business down a dangerous path, it can result in short term gains. It can produce sales for you. But there’s a high price to pay. That’s what Seth’s post (in my mind) addressed so well.

Powerful Lessons from Everyday Life

Seth’s post was about how he just set up a computer for a friend of his, and he was struck by how many marketing messages are implanted in that process these days. I just recently had to do this a few times, and my own laptop needed a new drive, so I had to reinstall my OS and all that jazz. Man, it’s a mess to say the least. And it puts you face to face with (in my opinion), some of the worst marketing strategies out there right now. The kind of marketing that can really cause a consumer to loathe you. Why do so many companies shoot themselves in the foot like this?

The whole process of setting up a computer now forces you through these dialogs where you have to respond to number of marketing messages. Do you want to install a free trial of Norton anti-virus? Do you want to install Yahoo Toolbar? My HP machine comes hardwired with a trial version of Microsoft Office 2007, as an example. The list goes on and on. After you set up the computer, you have to go in and spend half an hour UN-installing a bunch of crap that is there for the specific purpose of selling you something.

What really jazzes me up about this is that most of the people out there aren’t even aware of the fact that their new computers are set up to be living, breathing marketing machines, designed specifically to upsell you on a number of different tools and gadgets from the day you log on for the first time!

Where does all this come from?

It comes from companies who believe sales are all that matters.
It comes from companies who don’t understand that consumers don’t want to be forced into things, that they don’t like being tricked.
It comes from companies who honestly think sales produced through trickery and manipulation are just as good as any other type of sale. Maybe even better.

Sales is Essential, But Not Everything

If you read Next Level regularly at all, you know my message…you HAVE to learn to sell. And that’s what I help clients with…online sales tactics that bring in results. However, it’s not a standalone skill. You can’t just sell, at any cost…no matter what. You have to help people. You have to actually care about how you’re selling to, or it all just turns into a mess really fast. I argue you don’t just want ANY type of sale…you want HAPPY sales, HAPPY customers. You want clients that are going to refer their friends to you.

Does manipulation produce those kinds of results? No, it doesn’t. When will companies turn the corner here and start actually caring about the people they sell to? Any thoughts on this? What type of results and long term effects do you think this type of sales tactics has on a company’s image? What steps do you take to make sure your sales come in through reasonable and honest means?

6 Beginner Business Questions for Sean D’Souza of PsychoTactics

By Christian

If you’re new in business or want to take your business to the next level this coming year, I think you’ll find a lot of value in this audio interview I’m posting here. Check it out at the end of this post and let me know what you think! It’s all about how to get the results you really want from your business.

I have to admit one of the coolest things about running a blog is getting to meet and talk with a number of awesome people on a regular basis. Surely the value of learning from the top people in your field is invaluable. Wouldn’t you agree?

I got a chance to interview Sean D’Souza of PsychoTactics recently, and the result was profoundly valuable. I had 6 simple beginner business questions for him, and my main goal was to address some of the biggest issues a lot of new business owners have when they’re first getting started.

I know a lot of you are new in business or wanting to take your business to the next level this coming year, and this time of year has a lot to do with planning and anticipating what we need to do to get the results we want to achieve. I hope you find this interview valuable and helpful in that regard. I know you will! I’d love your comments, and please share this with anyone you think could benefit from it!

Getting Results from Your Business

Getting past the misconceptions and focusing on what gets RESULTS…that’s what I hope to be able to provide you by doing this interview. Why interview Sean for this purpose? Have you READ his blog? If you’re not familiar with PsychoTactics, you need to go there right now. He’s one of the few bloggers out there that really focuses on sales and marketing in a unique and powerful way. It’s not just how to get traffic. It’s about how to sell. How to create value. How to build excitement and create a unique experience for your customers. This is good stuff!

In any case, I asked Sean these 6 questions:

What are the primary benefits you enjoy from running your own business?
What are the biggest challenges you deal with regularly running your business?
What would you tell someone who doesn’t know what business to start or who wonders if they have what it takes to be successful?
Do you consider entrepreneurship more of an innate quality or a learned skill?
What advice would you give to someone who wants to make money fast or build their business very quickly?
Do you think running a business is something anyone can do?

My hope is that by getting direct, candid answers about these business concerns from an established professional, you’ll see the value of what we talk about here on Next Level Blogger and apply these principles to your business with enthusiasm and tenacity.

Here’s a Candid 30+ Minute Interview on the Real Way to Build a Business!

What’s it going to take t0 blow your business up and get it to where you want it to be? No B.S. No sales pitch…just the reality. What’s it going to take…really? Sean took my questions and turned it into a 30+ minute audio response, which was totally awesome! I honestly was surprised how much work he put into his responses by putting together an entire audio presentation. Blew my mind 😉

In any case, I recommend giving his responses a listen. His candor and helpful advice may surprise you. Indeed, I concur with everything he says here.

Oh and by the way, if you’re not already subscribed to Next Level Blogger, please do so in the next few days, because I’ll be delivering a download of this interview for free to all email subscribers. That way you’ll be able to take it with you, listen on your ipod or whatever best suits you. Thanks, and please let me know what you think of the interview! If it’s too long for you right now; definitely bookmark this and come back. There are some serious jewels of wisdom in this audio!

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The Power of Being Ridiculous

By Christian

How far do you think your business will go if you don’t stand out? What are you doing to stand out? What are you doing to be ridiculous?

If you live in my town, you know a guy named Bob Rohrman. He sells cars. Lots of them. Lots, and lots of them. And he makes completely ridiculous commercials that everyone hates. And everyone criticizes him. And everyone talks about how much they hate his commercials, and then when anyone wants to buy a car, guess who they think of first? Bob, that’s who. And is it really any surprise? It pays to be ridiculous!

And anyone who’s actually MET Bob Rohrman knows he is as sweet and genuine and nice a guy as you’ll ever meet. But when it comes to marketing, he does what he needs to do to stand out. He is ridiculous, and he’s proud of it. He understands the importance of NOT being mediocre. He understands that mediocrity is death for any small business.

But so many of us do things half-assed. I don’t recommend it. Go all out. Are you going all out? What do you offer your customers that NO ONE ELSE can offer them? What are you doing to stand out? What claims are you making that your competition can claim to offer as well? If the majority of your value is something anyone else can offer as well, how do you expect to monetize that?

Get Control Over Your Dang Schedule People!

By Christian

I had a great discussion the other day with a friend at lunch. It was about the incessant need everyone seems to have to answer their phone. No matter what. If it rings, it simply MUST be answered. Doesn’t matter what’s going on. Doesn’t matter what you’re in the middle of. Do any of you see a problem with this?

Are you in the middle of a conversation with someone? Who cares? Must…answer…the…phone.
Are you trying to finish an important project, and there’s a rapidly approaching deadline? Who cares? Must…answer…the…phone.
Are you sleep deprived and need to get to bed, but a troublesome client is calling you at 11PM? Who cares? Must…answer…the…phone.

Seriously, where does this come from? Let it ring! Better yet…if you’re busy, turn the sucker off. Sanity and productivity are there for the taking. If you’re insane right now, it’s because there’s too much on your plate. Enough said. Is there any other reason? No. It’s the only reason. If you’re too busy, you need to do a better job at picking and choosing.

And the most powerful things that wreck our day are not the big projects that we take on. It’s the little ones. It’s the little “this will take just a second” phone calls, emails, IM’s and such.

What if you only took calls that you were expecting? Can you imagine how much more focused you would be? What if you simply returned all calls at a scheduled time each day? Would it be more productive?

Is your day getting wrecked by tiny little interruptions? Do you realize you have a choice in the matter?