Time for Some Traveling

This week I’ll be on the road, combining business with a little vacation. No blog, no Twitter, pretty much no computer. It’s healthy to take a break once in a while, don’t you think?

Back November 23. Have a great week, everyone!

Recently I wrote a post on four typography tips that enhance SEO. Here are four more ideas that will improve the reader experience on your blog or website – even though they have no bearing whatsoever on SEO.

I make a point of pointing them out for the following reason. Search engine optimization is worthless if people don’t like what they see when they get to your site. Web pages should be easy to read, easy to navigate, easy on the eye all the way around.

Four Ways to Make Your Readers Happy

Margins. Exceedingly wide or narrow lines of text are hard to read on a computer screen. I still think the margins are too wide on my non-blog pages – judge for yourself. My blog post margins seem just about right. Margins may seem like a marginal issue, but I know of cases where a correction of margin width correlated to a reduction in bounce rate. Oops … there I go talking about SEO again.

Color Scheme. As someone who has trouble getting his shirt and pants to match, I rely on design experts like Jesse Petersen to help me bring the right colors into my websites. It’s well worth the expense, because color affects our mood and our response to what we read and see. The science of color as it applies to web design is fascinating – depending on what you are selling or the audience you are cultivating, color selection can make all the difference between a thriving community and a ghost town. A horrible example of color scheme abuse can be seen on Twitter profile pages where people put dark fonts on a dark background, rendering the text unreadable. You’ll frequently see similar issues on blogs and websites – for example, light grey text on a dark grey background – which amounts to throwing roadblocks in front of your own readers.

Font Selection. Appealing to seniors? Don’t use small fonts. Appealing to a younger crowd? Small fonts are OK. Whatever you do, don’t mix too many font sizes and styles, because your page will begin to look like a kaleidescope. There’s quite a bit of disagreement as to which fonts are best for on-screen viewing. Here’s an excellent overview of font selection, and here’s a more specific discussion of serif versus sans serif fonts with research to back up the conclusions. In general, I find it best to play it safe with fonts and break new design ground in other elements of the web page.

Image Placement. Place images above or to the right of the text. The eye first goes to the images, and from there to the text – images so placed draw the reader in. This approach is very old school, by the way. David Ogilvy, in his classic Ogilvy on Advertising, exhorts designers to place images at the top of print ads every time. Strictly speaking, I’m not sure if image placement is a typographical issue, but I do know this. Poorly placed images (e.g., left of the text, over or undersized for the space) deter people from reading what you wrote.

Over to You

1. What do you feel are the strongest typography elements in your website or blog? 2. What do you feel are the weakest?
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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.

Whether your company is large or small, putting a “media room” on your website provides a host of benefits. I’m really surprised more companies don’t do it. A media room is a section -or page – of your site that includes such things as links to press releases, company announcements, a company profile, client case studies, informational podcasts, bios of key leaders, and contact information.

Why Add a Media Room to Your Site?

Legitimacy. When potential customers check you out on the web – and they all do – a robust media room shows them that you are an active and accomplished participant in your industry. In addition, corporate sites are often interpreted (with much justification) as self-serving bombast. A media room properly done offers facts, in some cases from independent sources. All this assures potential and current customers you are a credible source rather than a maker of incredible claims.

Preserve Your Record. We’ve all heard the expression, out of sight, out of mind. Salespeople forget their firm’s remarkable achievements rather quickly. Sales opportunities may be lost because nobody remembered a relevant case study. A news archive ensures that persuasive sales information is there when you need it. A quick repurposing of content such as sending a prospect a link to an archived article can make the difference between a new client and a lost opportunity.

Draw Visitors In. A media room is a popular destination for new and recurring visitors. People are curious: we love news, especially on the web. If visitors like what they see in your media room, they’ll explore other areas of your site.

Create Opportunities for Media Exposure. Reporters scour the web for sources for stories on every topic under the sun. Let them know you are experts in your field, and make it easy for them to reach you. You may be rewarded with a feature story in an influential print or online publication.

Need help setting up a media room? Let me give you a hand. A media room takes a bit of work, but delivers results.
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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.

Lists Are an Awesome New Twitter Feature

Like many of you I’ve been playing around with Twitter Lists over the last few weeks. This new feature has captured my imagination on many levels. While I certainly haven’t figured out all the ways to use Lists, I thought I’d share what I’ve been doing – maybe it will spark ideas for you. And I’d love to hear what you think of Twitter Lists and how you’ve been using them.

Lists allow me to selectively organize people I follow… Every time I follow someone, I try to assign them to one or more of my Lists. I wish I’d been able to do that from day one. I’m trying to go back and list folks I’m already following, and if you can think of an efficient way to do that, please share.

… Allowing me to focus better on what people are saying. When I have extra time I peruse one of my Lists – for example my Writers List – and go in depth on what’s happening in that area of interest.

I’m trying Lists as a way to step up Follow Friday. Last week I tweeted my Lists – for example, my SEO List – to share more of my favorite follows. Good idea?

Lists help me decide who to follow. When I look at a person or organization’s profile page and see that they are on a few or several Lists, that’s a very positive sign. It tells me this person is involved in Twitter, not just taking up space or spamming. Presumably people wouldn’t put you on a List unless you were contributing useful and/or entertaining content. As an example, take a look at the profile page of Meryl K. Evans – impressed?

Lists help me find great new follows. When I peruse a List put together by someone I respect – for instance, Meryl K. Evans’ Marketing List – that leads me to people I want to connect with.

Lists pressure me to write better Tweets. I’m on a few Lists myself, and for me that’s a real honor. If someone thinks enough of me to more carefully track and generously share what I’m writing, well, that inspires me to write more informatively and thoughtfully.

Inclusive Twitter Lists or Exclusive Twitter Lists?

Jan Geronimo wrote a fascinating post about selectivity on Twitter Lists. Should your Lists include everybody you know in a given category, or just the cream of the crop? For me, the issue is not as pressing, since I’m fairly selective about people I follow to begin with. So my thinking at the moment is, make my Lists inclusive and let others judge for themselves who the “best” are.

Future Development of Twitter Lists?

• It would be great to see Twitter Lists integrate with HootsSuite, my favorite Twitter interface. Kim Fenolio reports that TweetDeck is working on an interface already.
• How about an email notification when someone adds you to their Twitter List?

Over to You

What new features would you like to see on Twitter Lists? How have you been using them so far?
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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.

Do You Have a Cure for Writer’s Block?

How I Feel When the Words Won't Come

Every now and then a chill comes over me because I can’t think of anything to blog about.

Everything I know has been shared, or is already known. Every observation I can make has been observed. Inspiration is nowhere. Nothing I read or see suggests a topic. And most disconcertingly, this state of affairs for all the world feels permanent.

I shared my feelings on Twitter, and Muse Crossing bailed me out with a simple suggestion. Wisely and with a helpful heart, Christine said,

And so it is. What do you do when you can’t think of anything to blog about? What do you do when the ink runs dry, the keyboard won’t clack, the fertile field of your imagination falls fallow?
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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.

When I was young, I thought I had all the right answers.

Later on, I thought I had all the right questions.

Then, I thought there were no right answers.

And now, lo these many years later, I’ve reached the point where I think I was right in the first place.

Here’s what I mean. I was having a conversation with a young lady, a recent college grad with absolutely no business background or particular interest in marketing. We got on the subject of a b2b project I was working on involving website content creation and some social media work. At one point the conversation went like this.

Her: Wow! That’s a neat product. They should put a video on their website.

Me: Yeah, I’ve suggested that, but they don’t want to.

Her: But that’s what people want. They love video. It should be funny, too.

Me: Well, a couple of their sales people suggested funny video, but it got shot down. Too wild and crazy for their business, they think.

Her: (Stupefied expression) But their customers are going to be people my age pretty soon, and I’m telling you, we love video with a comic slant. Don’t they realize this?

Me: Well …

When marketing ideas that elude b2b leadership are patently obvious to young adults with zero training in marketing – you’ve got yourself a real problem. You’ve got a disconnect between what buyers want and what sellers think buyers want. Or, more precisely, you’ve got a disconnect between what buyers want and what sellers think they themselves want when they’re buying.

This point has been made time and time again by David Meerman Scott, and quite recently in a blog post by Jeff Bulla, 6 Questions To Ask The CEO When He Says Social Media Won’t Work For His Company. Corporate honchos use the web and social media when they’re buying or researching a purchase, but they continue to push old school marketing on their own customers.

Are these corporate honchos hypocrites? Idiots? No, not at all. I really do think the problem is generational.

• Old school business discipline says, keep business and pleasure separate. Keep your eye on the ball. Keep your nose to the grindstone. Be the first one in and the last to leave. New school discipline says, if you can’t enjoy your job, you should be working somewhere else.
• Old school business discipline is risk averse. Don’t take unnecessary chances. Don’t jeopardize one customer relationship attempting to initiate two new ones. New school discipline is willing to take chances, willing to offend in pursuit of a vision.
• Old school discipline plays it close to the vest. Loose lips sink ships. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt (A. Lincoln). New school discipline communicates everything with everyone, everywhere.
• Old school discipline is hierarchical. Decisions are made slowly. Communication goes up and down ladders. Trendy ideas are stale by the time they are acted upon. New school discipline is experimental. Better to implement a half baked idea than get burned by the competition.

If you put all this together, you have a recipe for communication disaster. I think that intellectually, business leaders know that the future of marketing is blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. But on an emotional level – and let’s not kid ourselves, that’s where decisions are made – people my age just have a tough time pulling the New Media trigger, going against the grain of every behavior we lived and died with throughout our careers.

Of course the transition can be made, as a multitude of social media marketing geezers wiser and more accomplished than I have proved over and over again. But the issue in b2b is not if the transition can be made. The real issue is that the transition to social media must be made. Otherwise, that young lady and millions like her will continue to take their business elsewhere. Companies that are risk averse should never take a chance like that.
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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.

What’s good for the human reader is good for the search engine reader. To demonstrate, here are four typography tips that improve readability and SEO.

1. Bold Fonts. Used judiciously, bold fonts draw the reader’s eye to important text. Search engine spiders value bold text somewhat higher than plain text – so be sure to incorporate keyword phrases. Too much bold text, however, can backfire by overwhelming or confusing the reader.
2. Italics. Search engines also like italic text, but here, you have to be more judicious still. Italic text is hard to read, especially on a computer monitor. Use too much and readers will skip over it entirely.
3. H2 Tags and H3 Tags. These tags, valued by search engines, are used for subheads in blog posts and web pages. If you have been using bold fonts for your subheads, switch to H2 and H3 tags to generate more SEO juice. Always incorporate keywords in these tags. H2 and H3 tags should be formatted to be larger and more eye catching than regular bold text in order to draw readers in and inspire them to read further.
4. ALT Text and Captions for Images. Images should always contain keyword optimized ALT Text. Again, you’re not only improving SEO, you’re helping out readers who cannot display images on screen, or who need a little descriptive information about what they’re looking at. Captions are also great for SEO and allow you to tell a story about the image – an excellent way to engage readers.

Learn All About DIY SEO with Our Multimedia Training

Are you as sick as I am of the phrase, Think outside the box? Well, for all you b2b marketers, let me put a new twist on it for you -

For Winning SEO, Think Outside the Web

In other words, the real world is a real good source of content for your business website or blog. Even something as old school and old fashioned as an industry trade show can boost site traffic.

This dawned on me (again) as a large industry trade show was about to begin. Manufacturers from all over the world would be showcasing their latest and greatest technologies and gizmos and productivity enhancers. Attendees would visit the exhibits and ooh and aah. Excitement would build.

And then they would go online to see where they could buy.

So, if you were a dealer or a distributor or manufacturer’s rep, wouldn’t you love to have web pages and blog posts dedicated to the products on exhibit, pages that rank high when the surge of searches hits?

Make sure you know when your industry trade shows roll around on the calendar. Several months ahead of time, create optimized web pages with keywords matched to the key products or services that you know will be on display.

These days, any trade show attendee who is considering a purchase will window shop online. Are you going to be in a position to take that window of opportunity and convert shoppers into customers?
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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.

Having an editorial calendar for your blog simplifies and brings discipline to the process of coming up with post topics. Taking it a step further, an SEO friendly editorial calendar simplifies and brings discipline to the process of writing blog posts that support your SEO strategy.

Here is a simplified version of an SEO friendly editorial calendar format that works really well for me.

This hypothetical blogger with an online golf equipment store has four categories he wants to blog about.

Blog Categories. The editorial calendar lists and repeats the category group over and over, so the blogger can systematically cycle through the categories.

Blog Topics. In the next column, we drill down to specific subject matter the blogger wants to talk about within each category. For example, in the broad “Golf Equipment” category, wide selection and high quality are his two most important sales points. The calendar allows the blogger to switch off between the two themes, always having a relevant “angle” for his post.

Keyword Phrase 1. This column displays the primary keywords for each post topic. The blogger will want to incorporate them into each post, particulary as anchor text pointing to the URLs that appear in the last column – more about that in a minute. You’ll notice that the primary keyword phrases exactly match the Category labels in every case. This is not a must, but if you can do it, you’ll enhance visibility for that search term.

Keyword Phrase 2. Now we display secondary keywords, which may be “long tail,” or niche phrases that perhaps – but not necessarily – apply more specifically to the topic. For example, when the Golf Clubs topic is Drivers – “low price drivers” is selected. When the Golf Clubs topic is Sand Wedges, target phrase becomes “sand wedges on sale.” Secondary phrases usually vary more than primary phrases from topic to topic.

Target URL. The overriding goal of this blog is to drive traffic to specific landing pages of the blogger’s online store, where people can buy his stuff. Therefore, every blog post will contain links to a landing page, which will help that landing page rise to the top of the rankings for the selected search terms. We always want the store’s home page to appear prominently in searches for “golf equipment” and “shop golfing”, so the keyword emphasis and URL target for posts in the Golf Equipment category will remain constant. However, in other categories, the target URLs will vary to cover other landing pages, such as drill down product group pages and sale item pages.

You should add other columns to the spreadsheet for things like Publish Date and Author, but I hope this stripped down version gives you the gist of the idea. A little time spent on planning up front can make a world of difference in your SEO results.
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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.

Start Connecting

A few Sundays ago I met the world’s greatest marketer.

I was not at a Web 3.0 convention or a Fortune 100 firm or a seminar at the University of Chicago. I was leaving church.

Standing on the sidewalk at the church’s parking lot exit was a young woman holding a sign and carrying a cup. Her clothes were old and a little tattered, but she had obviously taken time over her appearance and carried herself with dignity. The sign, written on cardboard, said something to the effect -

Please help me. I am a single mother with two children, trying to find a job. We need money for food and clothing. God bless you.

The woman’s plight moved me, and I gave her some money as we exited from the parking lot to the street. I hope she and her family make their way through these difficult times.

As a human being I was saddened by her suffering. As a marketer I was blown away by her strategy.

Timing. Asking for donations to relieve human suffering as people are leaving church – how could the timing be any better? Most often, companies send out their marketing messages at any old time. There is no catalyst to make people respond. In fact, asking for money when people are going about their business, with their minds on other things, is starting with one big strike against you. Think it over – when is the best time to send your message? Telemarketers notoriously violate the rules of timing when they call folks at home during dinner. Again, think carefully – might the timing of your message be worse than neutral?

Simplicity. The woman’s strategy and message were simple and straightforward. I got the message without even exactly reading the message. Complex strategies and intricate messages mainly confuse people, and confused people seldom take decisive action.

Originality. I live in the Chicago area, where, sad to say, hard cases press for money here, there, and everywhere – street corners, sidewalks, traffic intersections – you name it. But in all my years here, I’ve never seen anyone position herself – literally and figuratively – where this woman did. It seems so obvious … but I suppose most brilliant strategies do – after someone else has thought of them.

Resonance. It’s impossible to remain indifferent about this woman. Her appeal is deeply emotional. I hate putting it in these terms, but she paid careful attention to her content. She took the trouble to state her case. There was no guesswork involved as to her motives or intent, as there might be if a strange, shabbily dressed man or woman accosted you on the street. Do customers know where you are coming from? Do they care? Do you stir prospects into action, or is your message as flat as last night’s beer?

Positive Motivation. People asking for money on the street quite often put passersby on the defensive. Passersby may feel fearful or (again, sad to say) scornful toward them. A few may feel guilty enough to make a donation, but guilt or pity are rather negative motivators. The woman at church sought to inspire action by appealing to the sense of compassion and community and brotherhood that people presumably feel in high degree upon leaving church. She minimized potentially negative feelings by paying attention to her appearance. By refusing to take a “woe is me” stance, by asserting her human dignity, she reinforced the positive appeal of her message tenfold. Emotional messages are not enough – is your marketing message hitting the right emotional buttons?

Believability. There are cynics out there who believe every person asking for money on the street is running a scam. Ridiculous and contemptible as that attitude may be, it exists to a much greater degree in the business world, and perhaps with greater justification. Sure, the woman could have been making up her story, but if so, her audacity is admirable. I believed her. Nope, this woman couldn’t lose with me. Even if I had suspected her of running a scam, I would have given her money anyway as tribute to her ingenuity. What about your marketing message? Is it believable? And … are you brilliant enough to give skeptics a reason to buy, too?

On this blog, I like to talk about marketing strategies, tactics, and techniques. The world’s greatest marketer in the world made me feel woefully inadequate – at least as far as my blog is concerned. Reason being, she reminded me that marketing is much, much more than what’s going on in one’s head. Marketing is about heart and yes, even soul. Let’s hope that, in the interest of sustaining a strong economy where can people find work, we marketers always remember this.

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Chicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.