Small Business Blogging

Just got off the phone with a Facebook friend in Manchester. Saz Bailey is doing some amazing things with her business and is launching a new blog to chronicle her journey to rehab a home for her handicapped son.

We discussed the ideal configuration for her new WordPress site, and that inspired me to create a short and updated post for my recommended gear.

If you want to develop your own new business site using WordPress, this is a list of recommendations that’ll get you off to the races. It’s fun!

btw…most of this gear is free. Some of it costs a few bucks. If you’ve followed the blog for any length of time, you know I never recommend anything I haven’t tested and used extensively here.

Questions? Need help? Hit me up. I always love to hear from you 🙂

Recommended WordPress Themes

The two frameworks we use most often…

Headway – Easiest to use visual designer I’ve ever used. If you have a vision but don’t want to pay for professional design work, this is what you need.

Genesis – One of the best coded and well-supported frameworks on the market. You simply can’t go wrong with Genesis and one of their child themes.

Recommended WordPress Plugins

This list is in no way meant to be exhaustive. These are however, plugins I consider fundamental to nearly every install we do…

404 Redirection – This fixes any and all 404 errors in one fell swoop. Woot!

Backup Buddy – Here’s the thing…when (not if…when) your site gets busted or hacked, you’ll KICK yourself in the FACE if you don’t have a properly created back up. It’s amazing how many WP sites have no back up strategy at all. Everything on the internet breaks on occasion. If you have a backup, you can restore your site in minutes. If you don’t, it’s too late. Don’t get caught with your pants down, yo.

Bulletproof Security – Security! This blocks SQL injection and a host of other common attacks using a totally different level of security than other solutions. The most effective I’ve seen.

Contact Form 7 – For many years now…one of the best and free plugins for contact form creation.

Google XML Sitemaps – If search engine visibility is important to you, use this. Don’t ask any damn questions. Just install it 😉

Instabuilder – This gives you the tools to easily create lead capture pages, sales pages and sales funnels. Yes, there are LOADS of solutions for this these days. The next time you and I drink bourbon together (you’re buying), I’ll give you the technical explanation if you want. Haha…for real though, it’s the best on the market. That’s just a fact.

Login Lockdown – Security! Install, activate and call it a day. It blocks brute force attacks, which are the most common way thieves and other criminals get into your site for fun time.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer – Great solution for maximizing search visibility for the content you publish.

Revision Control – Allows finer control over the number of Revisions stored on a global & per-type/page basis. Geeky! But seriously…a lot of WP sites end up running way too slowly, and a massive database is a big part of the reason. This helps keeps stuff under control.

SEO Friendly Images – Particularly if you host a lot of images, this is just smart. It’s also friendly. For images. I’m pretty sure that’s where they got the name.

 

Recommended WordPress Hosting

Bluehost – I’ve been recommending these guys for almost 10 years now. One of the best start up web hosts out there. I’ll give it to you straight…if performance and uptime are CRUCIAL for you, don’t go with a hosting package with anything less than business-class VPS hosting. But Bluehost is perfect for anyone getting off the ground and cutting their teeth in the web dev arena.

RWP – I’m a partner with this company. Small business-optimized WordPress hosting. We work on a small scale and pick our clients carefully. But no one, literally, can even come close to the level of support offered here. If you’re a developer that requires full admin control over your hosting environment, this isn’t what you’re looking for. If you’re a business owner that wants your site to WORK, and you want to have a full-featured solution to ANYTHING you need for your website within arms reach, it’s the best solution on the market. I’ll take the pepsi challenge any day of the week 😉

Recommended Email Marketing Solution

Aweber – Ever since I moved to Aweber 6-7 years ago, I couldn’t imagine living without it. As soon as I got past the mental block of paying a few bucks to send email, my list started blowing up like it never had before, and my conversion rates took off as well. The right tools for the job make all the different in the world.

Ummm, how do I set all this crap up??

Hit me up. My pleasure to answer any questions you have. I can hook you up with our latest video tutorials also, showing you the whole process.

Conclusion

Over the years I’ve done a handful of this type of post. Every time so far I get a lot of email about stuff I’ve “missed”. No worries. Here’s the thing. I love you even if you have a difference of opinion 😉

Please do feel free to let me know your thoughts. This isn’t a end-all-be-all list. There’s no such thing. I’ve been building WP for about as long as it’s existed. I’m a marketing guy. I focus on bottom line results, performance, security and ease-of-use. That’s where I’m coming from.  There’s no substitute for having a pro set you up. Sorry. There’s just not. That said, if you’re of the DIY persuasion, this list will get you up and running. And it’ll put the right gear in your hands so you can focus on marketing your biznas. Most importantly…by far…have fun!

This post is one of my longer ones. Stick with me til the end though, because I’m addressing two of the most common questions I get…

I get two primary questions from new bloggers. First, you may want to know how you can possibly come up with a constant stream of ideas for your blog. Understandable! I’m going to show you how. Second, you may want to know how you can possibly fit blogging into your already busy schedule. I’m going to answer that for you today also 🙂

The question I get MOST often is how to come up with ideas for what to publish to your blog, so I’ll start there. It can be intimidating to have to always come up with something to write about.

Til you know the trick!

The trick is, you’re already blogging. Did you know that?

I bet you didn’t know that 🙂

Well, you’re not blogging per se, but I guarantee you’re already doing 95% of the work it takes to have a profitable, lead generating blog. You’re just not publishing. Stick with me for a second, and I’m sure you’ll see what I mean…

Blogging is Way Easier than You Think

The idea of sharing ideas with your readers on a consistent basis can seem daunting when you haven’t done it. But here’s something weird…you never seem to struggle with what to say when you’re talking with a customer or client in your normal day-to-day business, right? Why not?

It’s because you just act like yourself. You talk casually. You have fun. You share ideas. You answer their questions. It’s just a normal human interaction. It’s all very natural.

What a lot of would-be bloggers don’t realize is that your blog is the same.

Blogging isn’t for stuffy, uptight professional writing. It’s the opposite actually. It’s very casual and honest way of communicating. It’s just a different format than you might be used to using.

Your Blog is Your New Cell Phone

If you’d grown up in the 1800′s, the idea of talking to someone on the phone would have been strange indeed. Some people probably would have even said it was from the devil.

If you grew up in one of the past few generations, having a cell phone you can carry around in your pocket…that’s some freaky weird alien technology shit right there. We don’t think twice about these things now. Your blog is no different.

Sure, it’ll take a minute for you to get used to using it as a communication tool. But rest assured, it’s not any more complicated than operating a smartphone.

Is there a learning curve? Of course. There are a few mechanics you’ll need to learn, but you can learn everything you need to know by simply browsing YouTube for some tutorials. We even give our clients an entire archive of training videos, showing them how to blog, how to create squeeze pages, how to build an email list, etc. It’s really as simple as that.

How to Fit Blogging into Your Already Insane Schedule

Remember when I mentioned you’re already doing 95% of what it takes to have a successful blog? In the section above, my intention is to demonstrate that blogging is not a technical, geek-o-licious nightmare. From a technical perspective, it’s actually quite simple.

But if you don’t have any time to do it, you will clearly not be able to benefit from it. So what I try to explain to clients (and today, to you…) is that there’s no reason blogging has to take up a huge chunk of your time.

Remember all those emails and phone calls you get from customers or clients of yours? They ask you questions. You have answers. Instead of just clicking “reply” and responding to that email, why not take a couple extra steps and publish your helpful answer to your blog?

Seriously. If someone had a question compelling enough to email or call you about it, there’s a good chance several other people may be looking for an answer to the same question.

When you start looking at your business in that way, all of a sudden you’ll start seeing that you already spend plenty of time producing content that is more than appropriate for your blog.

You’re literally…already doing it.

Examples:

• Your interactions with your customers
• The lessons you learned during that day in your business
• Your comments about some recent changes in your industry
• Changes in your business (new hires, promotions, expansions, etc)
• Your thoughts about why you got into your business to start with
• The toughest thing to deal with in your business
• The most enjoyable thing for you in your business
• Funny things that happened in the office that day
• Employee birthdays
• Community events, hobbies, etc …blog content doesn’t have to be strictly business.
• Etc

All of this and much more are things you’re ALREADY DOING. You already have all this (or similar) going on. You’re already discussing these things with others in and around your business. You’re already having these interactions with your customers, etc.

You’re just not capturing it. You’re just not taking the extra step to share it, and that means you’re not leveraging it.

And that, my friend, means you’re not getting the maximum benefits from the work you do.

What Happens When You Choose to Write a Blog

Initially, you’ll go through the learning curve of getting comfortable using your blog. After you publish your first handful of posts, it’s pretty much a piece of cake from there from a technical perspective.

So you publish that first blog post. So what? Who cares, right?

Well consider this. You’ve decided to take a couple extra steps to publish something. Maybe your post only gets a handful of visitors. With a new blog, that’s to be expected. But here’s where the magic kicks in:

1. You publish that first post. Let’s say it’s an answer to a question you get from your customers all the time.
2. You were going to answer the question anyway, so might as well take a couple extra steps to publish as a blog post.
3. Now you have an asset. A page on the web. It’s not bringing in a lot of traffic, but it brings in a little. Let’s say 20-30 visitors a month or something like that.
4. Now that you’ve published an article, you now have a relevant, non-salesy reason to contact your customers. You get to email your prospect list (or contact your people however it is you usually do) with a helpful article. This initiates some awareness of the fact you have a blog.
5. Next, you’ll see that after some time has passed, that article continues to bring in a trickle of traffic each month. Again, maybe it’s not much, but it’s something.
6. In the meantime, you’ve published a handful of more articles. You’ve decided to stick with this “blogging thing” for a year and give it a fair shot. Others have built multimillion dollar businesses around their blogs, so surely you can reap at least some modest benefits from blogging yourself 🙂 What you notice at this point is that traffic is starting to increase. That first post is continuing to bring in a few visitors each month, but your others are too. So maybe that first couple weeks you only got 30-50 visitors. Well, now you’re getting 30-50 per day. Thinking more clearly now, it occurs to you that if you keep it up, you just might be able to continue seeing growth. You’re right about that by the way.
7. After a few months and some diligence on your part, you have a well-crafted blog with at least a dozen or more articles, all bringing in new visitors every day. A percentage of them are signing up for your email list, because you have a compelling call to action installed on your blog as well.
8. From there…your results start to snowball a bit, because you’re getting more traffic. But you’re also getting more signups to your email list. You’re also seeing that some of your visitors are sharing your content with their friends on Facebook and Twitter. This is when it starts to get fun 🙂

From this point, it’s just a matter of continuing with what you’re doing. Yeah, you’ll make tweaks to your approach along the way, but this is the essence of it. Carry on, fellow blogger. It’s really as simple as that 🙂

To help you get started blogging, I’ll even give you some topics that should keep you busy for the first few weeks or months…

Here’s a quick list of blog post ideas to get you started. Please take these and use them as you see fit:

1. Video or written review of the your favorite tools you use in your business.
2. Talk about a book you’ve read that relates to your industry and what you’ve learned.
3. Share your thoughts on an article or blog post you’ve read.
4. Predict where your industry is headed and share why you feel that way.
5. Describe something specific you do in your business that sets you apart, and share how you came to do it that way.
6. Share a problem with your industry or a concern you have about the market.
7. Share testimonials and case studies. Has a client taken your advice recently and had great results?
8. Give a step-by-step system for how to accomplish a specific result in a specific amount of time.
9. Video and/or pictures of your office, your team, your family, your town, your hangouts, etc.
10. Showcase a member of your team or one of your favorite clients.
11. Rave about your favorite blog, magazine or writer. Share what you love about them and thank them for helping you.
12. Share something you’ve learned lately? What are you doing differently now than you were this time last year?
13. Have you responded to an inquiry from one of your customers or clients lately? If one person has that question, it’s likely others do too.
14. Have you ever made a mistake? Share the details and what you’ve learned.
15. Do you consistently see clients or customers making the same type of mistakes? Identify a common mistake and educate your readers to save them a bit of heartache and hassle.
16. Share why you love your business. What motivates and excites you about doing what you do? What got you into your business to begin with?
17. Share your to-do list. What are your 5 biggest goals in your business in the next year? Where are you going? Get your readers involved.
18. Publish your reading list. What do you have on your list to read that will motivate, inspire or educate you?
19. Ask your Facebook friends a question, and share the feedback you get.
20. Interview someone in your industry. Post the audio or video as well as a transcribed version on your blog. This is a great way to educate your readers, yourself and meet awesome people all at the same time 🙂

Got questions or need help getting set up? Hit me up any time.

While I advocate blogging for marketing purposes, the truth is that it’s a lot more valuable than just that. I’ve found over the years that while I do indeed get a lot of benefits business-wise from blogging, the main benefits are personal.

Blogging is therapeutic. It really is.

I’d compare blogging to journaling, and this comparison is obvious in some ways. Blogging was originally born out of journaling. But the act of journaling has been a tried and true practice for building a successful life for generations. We seem to have forgotten that. We seem to have forgotten where blogging came from.

It’s not some damn new marketing tactic. It’s actually not new at all. It’s old. Really old. It’s been going on for as long as pen and paper have been readily accessible.

Success gurus like Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy…gosh I don’t know…everyone…have been talking about the value of journaling forever. This isn’t a coincidence. Bottom line: it makes you better at what you do. And that’s important.

Most people don’t do it. Most people don’t write and share their goals. Most people don’t take the time to record and develop their ideas. Most people also…don’t achieve their true aspirations in business and in life.

To paraphrase Jim Rohn’s take on it, “It’s easy to do. It’s also easy not to do.”

Blogging is introspective. You have to ask yourself what is worth sharing with others. You have to think about your customers in a human way. They have hopes and dreams, fears and worries just like you do. You have to think about how you can help them, legitimately…not just how they can help you. You have to take stock of what’s going on in your business.

Maybe that’s all just a big pain in the ass. Or maybe…just maybe, there’s a reason that journaling has been a pastime of many of the most successful business owners and thought leaders throughout history.

I’m probably waxing philosophical a bit. I do that late at night sometimes. Especially after two glasses of wine. Which is exactly where I’m at right now.

But I think it’s an important point. The benefits you get from blogging extend far beyond just making some sales. It’s way more important than building a list. Far more profound than just finding a cheaper way to market yourself.

It really will change how you look at your business.

But if you look at it in a purely utilitarian way, it’ll be a drag…pure and simple. I just used a fancy-ish word in that last sentence. I broke one of the small business blogging rules…keep it dumbed down. Sorry about that. I’m pretty sure you can handle it 🙂

When you go to get a massage, the point is not to get it done. It’s not the point to cross the massage off your to do list for the day. The point of the massage is not for it to be over. The point of the massage is the massage itself. The experience itself gets you straightened out. It energizes you. It focuses you. And doing it regularly forces you to keep your priorities straight.

Yeah, blogging can feel inconvenient sometimes. So does prospecting. So does exercising. So does eating an apple a day. Sometimes the things that make us successful don’t always feel fun. Sometimes we feel like we’re too busy. That’s exactly why it’s so important. It’s why I believe every small business owner should have a blog.

Yes…I’m publishing a blog post about how blogs don’t work. Shhh. Don’t tell anyone how silly that is 😉

Before I got into this internet business full time, I spent several years selling real estate. I never once heard a home builder say “hammers don’t work”. Why not?

I mean, you absolutely cannot build an entire home with a hammer. So clearly if you go around wielding a hammer, even if you do it with finesse and a level of Bruce Lee mastery the likes of which the world has never seen…you’re still never gonna wind up with a beautiful home from using just a hammer.

Also…imagine what would happen if you swung the hammer just half an inch to the left of where it was supposed to go, even once. Damn! You’ll end up with a big hole in the wall. The nail still isn’t driven in, and now you have a big hole in the wall. And here you are using this damn hammer left and right. Now you have a hole in the wall, and you STILL don’t have a completed home. Ridiculous.

Clearly, hammers don’t work.

Right?

Oh wait…maybe that’s a horribly dumb analogy 🙂

A hammer is a tool. It doesn’t work. YOU work. Or you don’t. That’s a decision you can make on your own. If you decide to build a home, you’ll likely put a hammer to work for you at some point. Or you’ll hire others to use them. Whatever.

The point is that a hammer is a tool. It enables you to do things that you couldn’t otherwise do. That’s what tools are for. What kind of results you get with them has very little to do with the tool itself. How well you use it is what will determine the results you get. It’s also very likely you’ll need more than one tool to reach your goals.

Your blog is a powerful tool

I’m an advocate of blogging to market your small business. I’ve been saying for years that blogs are the new smartphones. They enable you to engage and converse with a large number of people in a leveraged way. It’s a powerful communication tool. But simply having a blog is the same as having a hammer. No one is impressed. Now…if you put the work in and learn how to use it expertly, the results you can get are phenomenal.

What kind of results will you get with your small business blog? It depends on what you do with it.

My companies can pull in as many as 300-500 leads in a single day. Over 90% of that comes from blogs. I’ve literally built my entire business using blogs. Does that mean blogs work? 

I know many who have had a blog for years and get luke warm results at best. Does that mean blogs don’t work? 

If you view your marketing tools as something that should produce results on their own without reference to how well you use them, then you’ll find in most cases that your results are pretty dismal. Small business blogs are no different than any other tool. Some use their blogs to build multimillion dollar businesses. Others use them to talk about what Katy Perry did with her hair last week.

The principles we teach clients work. How do I know? Because I use the exact same principles and the exact same tools in my own business. My livelihood depends on these things being effective. Will you follow the systems and demand the results you’re seeking? I hope so. Will you follow 10% of what we recommend and then decide that “blogs don’t work”? Totally up to you 😉

When you’re new to blogging, it’s easy to see other successful blogs out there and feel intimidated. I’ve heard from clients many times about how difficult it is to write a blog. Yes, you see others doing it and getting great results, but you feel your writing isn’t nearly good enough. Besides, you’re not a professional writer anyway. Surely blogging isn’t for you.

This mentality is understandable, but it also implies that blogging is mostly for talented writers. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Blogging is not for writers

You live and breathe your small business. You’re an expert in your field. That is the prerequisite for successful blogging, not a talent for writing. Yes, there are professional writers who blog. Of course professional writers blog…every small business owner should, particularly writers. But this doesn’t mean the blogging world is meant exclusively for writers and talented journalists. Absolutely not.

If you’re an expert in your field, that means you have a lot of knowledge about your industry that your customers don’t necessarily have. Remember you’re not writing for the New York Times here, and you’re likely not writing a blog for millions of people in the general public. You’re writing for your customers. That’s who you need to impress.

And guess what. When you’re actively publishing content and sharing your ideas, your customers notice. When you’re blogging and your competition isn’t, guess who wins. You do. Every time.

The reverse causation issue

A lot of times we see someone with a very successful blog, and we think we need to be like them in order to succeed. This is backwards. The truth is the reason they’re successful is because they’re simply sharing their expertise in their own way. You can’t be them. You don’t have the same skills. You don’t have the same experiences. But the good news is that you have your OWN skills and your OWN experiences to draw from. You have your OWN insights to share with your customers. You have your own style.

The successful bloggers out there are not successful because they have a certain formula or way of doing things. They’re successful because they do things their own way, in their own style. This is what attracts their ideal customers.

The reverse causation issue is what happens when we think someone is a successful blogger because they’re a good writer. The truth is they’ve become a good writer from creating a successful blog. It’s totally opposite of what most people think. It’s the act of blogging that makes you good at it, and there is no required education or training to get started.

Getting started

Getting started is often the hardest part. I’ve seen it over and over again. After you get over that initial hump of not wanting to do it, blogging gets easier and easier. In fact it’s very much like going to the gym. It feels like such a horrible idea when you first get started. But after you’ve worked out for even a short time, it quickly starts to feel weird when you DON’T do it. Blogging works that way too. You start to see and feel the benefits, and it quickly becomes one of your most lucrative marketing efforts.

These days, I can send a single email to my list and get new business. It gets easier, and you start to experience more and more leverage after you’ve been blogging for a while. The trick is just getting started.

You have the expertise. You have the experience. You have all the insights to share with your customers. You know more about what you do than anyone else. The only trick is to get the ball rolling, and forget the idea that blogging is just for people who are talented at such things. No one is a natural born blogger. You simply learn how to do it.

If you’ve followed the blog for any length of time, you’ve heard me say that blogging is the new smart phone. We never needed one before, but it’s foolish to ignore how much marketing has changed over the last several years. Many of us cannot imagine operating our business without a cell phone these days. But we never had one before. We simply learned how to use a smart phone, because it gives us a leveraged way to stay in contact with a large number of people. Blogging plays that exact role in small business. It’s quick and inexpensive, and it enables you to market your business in a very targeted, effective way. When it comes to ROI, blogging is the smartest thing you can add to your marketing. Hands down.

If you have any questions about how to get started or about blogging in general, hit me up. At your service 🙂