Writing a business blog

Are you writing a business blog? If you are, or perhaps if you’ve  set up the blog but not yet got round to generating any content, there is the question of the correct tone to adapt. Once you have set up your blog, you may ask yourself,  ”Should I sell on my blog”. It’s a great platform for telling customers about your business, right?

Wrong.

Blogging Tips

Our number one tip for blogging for business – don’t sell on your company blog.

When considering what to write on your blog, try this approach : Imagine you’re at a party talking to someone – “Look at this really interesting thing I heard about. Did you know about this? What do you think?”  - let this line of thought inform your writing.

Put a slant on it that will appeal to your customers, talk about how the issue will affect them, and link to relevant content on your website and in your other blogs. Highlight what you found interesting or helpful if you believe it to be useful and relevant to your target market – if you believe they’ll get some value from it.

Providing information with your company blog

If there is a news story that you think your customers will be interested in, write about it and think how it will affect them and their business. Give more examples from other stories you’ve heard or researched ( a quick Google search will  help you here) and expand on the original story. Don’t think of it as a way to push sales, primarily because it won’t work. Think of it as a way of providing hard information that your customers will find useful – and may not get anywhere else. Think of it as a way to build your credibility and the trust factor. That in itself will pay dividends down the line, in terms of hard sales, when the time is right for your prospect to buy.

Giving useful tips on your company blog

Another way that you can get the best from your company blog is to provide useful tips. We all love tips and advice, and people love to share useful, well-written content – make sure that it comes from you though. Cutting and pasting other people’s work is not only poor etiquette and practice, but it will also get you penalised in the search engines’ eyes.

Using your company blog to inspire discussion

Ask questions in your blog – provide case studies, point out examples of issues that you agree or even disagree with. Ask your readers to comment or put their own points of view.  They may not leave comments, but hopefully your blog will stick in their mind and make them think a bit. Your readers will be more likely to return and read further blog posts if you write ones that stick in their mind!

Keep the discussion going – social sharing

Talk about your blog entry on Twitter, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Tumblr. Find out what your customers are thinking, ask then outright if they agree, keep the chat going. You never know, you may even change your mind totally on your original position – one of the things that can happen with a good online discussion.

Don’t sell on your blog

If your blog is a thinly-disguised sales pitch, then you might as well have it as part of your main website. Don’t fall into that trap. Write good content, inspire discussion and provide tips. Make your company blog a real must-read affair.

How does your company blog stack up in terms of the points above? Any other thoughts on selling on your company blog?

Twitter now supports line breaks

The big news from Twitter last month was their announcement that the site now supports line breaks in tweets on the web. This feature means that you can now spread your tweet over several lines, both through their web and on the official twitter app – and it’s aimed at driving users to the web or official app and away from third-party twitter apps.

How can this be used for businesses on social media

Businesses can use this feature in many ways. It can be used for clarity, or to make tweets more prominent in the timeline of followers. This feature has to be used sparingly, however; the risk is that it can turn off followers who object to their timeline being split, or who find the tweets annoying. If you provide good useful content and endeavour to make your feed interesting and helpful you don’t want to lose followers by overusing a style like this that may not be to everyone’s taste.

Used in Twitter competitions

If you run RT competitions, it can be used to separate the main body of the message away from the “Please Retweet” request. We have also seen it used in haiku and poetry competitions on Twitter already.

Twitter users are always looking for new ways to use the Twitter technology; it will be interesting to see how this one develops over the weeks to come!

Creating a Social Media Buzz

Are you looking to create a social media buzz?

LinkedIn created one last month, and all it took was a little flattery. They answered the most basic question “What do people like talking about?” and set a campaign in action.

Answering social media questions.

The answer to their question “What do people like talking about?” was…  themselves

So LinkedIn took advantage of their database and metrics and sent out an email advising a number of their users “You are in the Top 5% Most viewed profiles of 2012.” Some people even received “Top 1%” emails.

Of course, when people received these emails they started to talk about it. They shared the information on their LinkedIn profiles and posted on Twitter. LinkedIn quickly entered the Twitter trending topics. Just as quickly, people pointed out that due to the number of users LinkedIn had, quite a lot of people received these emails. However, that wasn’t important. Did LinkedIn achieve the results that they wanted?

Keeping LinkedIn profiles updated.

From anecdotal evidence we have seen, many people logged straight into LinkedIn. They updated their profiles, accepted connections and had a bit of a general social media tidy up. For a few users it reminded them that LinkedIn is a useful tool for business.

We have also seen reports of people who didn’t get the email yet also logged in. Whether this was a case of “I want what they’ve got and I’ll get it next time” or a case of remembering about old LinkedIn accounts through the chatter, they also updated their LinkedIn profiles.

Achieving Social Media Goals

Whatever the motivation, LinkedIn succeeded in getting people talking and pushing their service up in the consciousness of social media users.  The initial emails got people talking, the subsequent follow up “but so did lots of people” kept the conversation going, the next round of “it shows how popular a service it is” extended it even further, spreading the message further than to just the people receiving the emails. It was a lesson in sharing on social platforms - how to achieve social media goals.

A very clever piece of marketing, don’t you think? How could you use something in your business to whip up a storm and create a social buzz?

Pinterest Revamp

Last week, Pinterest announced a revamp. It will be testing a new look. Initially rolled out amongst a small group of users, it’s about making it easier to find what you’re searching for on the social media site.

The social media platform aims to improve navigation by making it more intuitive and faster to use. The new design will include a “related pins” side bar, which may encourage users to stay on the site longer by clicking through to other boards – works on me! The pins will be larger as well so a better viewing experience is offered all round.

“Pins are bigger and we’ve added more information related to pins, so it’s easier to find things you’re interested in,” Vy Pham, software engineer at Pinterest, wrote in an official company blog post. “For example, on each pin, you’ll see pins from the same board, other boards this pin was pinned to, and a whole slew of related pins.”

It’ll be interesting to see what this means for the average Pinterest user – already I’m finding it difficult to get off as quickly as I used to! I’m staying on there longer – will this be true for your prospects and customers as well? Are you making the most of that marketing opportunity?

How to use Pinterest in business marketing

If you’re trying to work out how you can use Pinterest in your business marketing, then start with the basics – you need some fabulous images! A great image will increase traffic to wherever you want to send it, get you more pins and repins (like a retweet on Twitter) and improve your online presence generally. It’s about knowing why you’re there though and having a clear strategy on how it can help you to achieve your business goals. If you need some ideas, we have a few over at Saucy Horse Social Media

Saucy Twitter Tips

If you’re feeling a little intimidated by the seemingly non-stop calls for your business to get into social media marketing and to do it quickly – before you lose all of your customers because of your absence on Facebook, say goodbye to any prospects as your competitors hoover them all  up on Twitter, and before you shrivel up and disappear down the plughole of anonymity as your business fails to capitalise on LinkedIn and Youtube – then I sympathise!

Digital Marketing Specialists

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years since we first got involved with social media marketing in our capacity as digital marketing specialists,  it’s that it’s all too easy to jump in unprepared – and to make a hash of it, only to see zero results (what a surprise!) and to give up dispiritedly as you drown in the ocean of emails, tweets and campaigns from every conceivable angle, that keep shouting at you to get on board the social media steam roller.

As with most new toys on the block, it beckons to many of those who’d like to make a quick buck. There are those who perhaps are very good at telling you how to do things – look at some of the Life Coaches, Business Consultants, Marketing Experts, Social Media Gurus you meet – have you ever scratched the surface only to find they don’t have any “previous”? That they don’t have either experience or social media case studies and success stories with other clients that prove they can deliver? –  and there are those who have testimonials and documented results that illustrate real practical metrics and goals reached.

Getting Results on Twitter

Well, as part of our quest here at Saucy Horse Social Media, we are up for giving you the first few small steps in bitesize chunks, so that you actually stand a chance of taking some action and getting some results.

So, first things first -

Advice for new users of Twitter

1. Create a Twitter account or get someone to do it for you. Tweak your Twitter bio so that it’s meaningful and useful to those that look you up, and start to listen for your business name, your competitor’s names, keywords and terms that relate to your business. It’s the first step in our (borrowed) mantra – Listen, Learn, Care & Serve.
2. Add a profile picture. Stay “dark” until you’ve done this – the world of Twitter has enough “eggs” already. You’ll see what I mean as soon as you get going…
3. Start by talking to people about THEIR interests. Yes, I know, this does not sell more of what you make or do (not immediately anyway), but I promise it’s the only way to be allowed to stay at the  party. If you persist in mouthing off about your own interests all of the time you’ll be ejected from many people’s space (timelines and tweet streams) or even worse, you’ll be ignored!
4. Converse about the wider subject matter around your business sector – not just YOUR business. @ClasswatchUK do this well in their space (educational) and talk about a wide range of issues that are pertinent to their target audience of Headteachers and educationalists.
5. Share links to interesting and useful things in your community. Witness @GreenEnergyHero talking about everything under the sun when it comes to Renewable Energy technologies and issues.
6. Don’t sell your product or service continually – in fact if you can avoid it, you’ll do better in certain circumstances – as many of our case studies show.
7. Be human and talk about things other than business sometimes. Have an opinion (although best to avoid aggression and profanity – unless that’s key to what you do
8. Grow your following organically – you don’t need a gazillion uninterested followers who don’t engage. You need followers who find you because your content is relevant to them in some way. If that means 200 followers for a while then so be it – the thousands don’t mean anything unless those who covet them are actually increasing their meaningful reach by doing so.

It’s not normally the case.

For more advice and regular tips click this link & say hello here and we’ll keep in touch

And for more great advice on using Twitter read Chris Brogan’s article here

Marketing Tips

Our friends at HubSpot are always good for a timely piece of advice or two when it comes to marketing tips – so here’s our pick of the best points for those of you with a small business and big ideas, from their recent article on When not to use a call to action for lead generation in your marketing…

Call to action

Calls-to-action (CTAs) are the signals on your website to your visitors to do something. As our friends at Hubspot tell us, “…if the goal of inbound marketing is finding people who are excited to learn about your product or service, then your CTAs are the big (occasionally red and blinking) heralds telling your site visitors where to go next. We know that marketers who use inbound links & CTAs on their websites are more likely to convert visitors to leads than those who simply post a ‘Contact Us’ button on their site and pray. And over time, you’ll even learn which CTAs perform better than others…” Or, at least, you will if you are tracking what your visitors are doing when they get to your site using tools like Google Analytics.

But marketing doesn’t always have to be about the in-your-face, hard-sell conversion; witness the most successful social media campaigns which are based on anything but the hard-sell and certainly aren’t about converting an interested visitor into a customer right there and then. The Ferrari video below is a great example of this. Granted, that’s the end game, but that end game may not come into play until some weeks or months down the line. The purpose of this initial activity has been to raise your profile, get your business in front of relevant prospects and then drop them into a campaign that will mean they can be converted to loyal customers and advocates of what you do or sell – when they are ready.

Sometimes asking up front just isn’t the right thing to do — and that means sometimes, your marketing shouldn’t have a call-to-action.

Here’s an instance when Hubspot recommends you don’t use a Call-to-Action:

PR and Social Media “Buzz” Campaigns

There are certain PR and social media campaigns where your goal isn’t to drive new leads, but to generate buzz.

If the whole point of a campaign is to create a little mystery and get people talking about you, adding a big red CALL NOW! option at the bottom of your page will ultimately distract from your overall goal. This can work really well for interesting new product launches, or even if you’re just trying to drop more prospects into your marketing funnel. For instance, when Hubspot launched their parody of the popular “Gangnam Style,” they didn’t include a CTA. Not in the video itself, or even the blog post they used to promote it. Why? Over to them…

“Because we weren’t looking to use that video directly to get new leads. Instead, we wanted to generate interest in HubSpot among a wider audience than those we were already reaching. And frankly, who would want to read an ebook about using Facebook for Business after watching a Gangnam Style video? I doubt very many. But a little bit of mystery, especially when it’s well-deployed at the beginning of a relationship, can be a great way to get future customers to learn about you. Once you’ve built some social buzz, nurture those new social contacts by following up with great content like blog posts and lead-generation content to show people the heart of your company.

For a new reader, it’s much more reasonable to ask them to share a great article or sign up to read more in the future, than to ask them to attend an hour long webinar we’re hosting next week. And remember, there are other legitimate marketing goals you can try to reach with your content other than lead generation. Increasing your list of subscribers and social media reach are two extremely important ones — ones that often result in more leads down the road.”

Hear hear! As we said earlier, playing the long game is sometimes very much the right way to go!

Car companies do this well – for a new product launch they’ll often whet the appetite of their audience with videos showing glimpses of the features of what’s come before it’s available to the market – have a look at this 2011 Ferrari FF – Official video teaser on YouTube - not a call to action in sight!

Read the full article here : Hubspot – Why you don’t always need a Call to Action in your Marketing

Coldest Winter Ever in UK

The coldest winter in British history is widely regarded as that of 1684. Why? Because average temperatures stayed below zero for two months. Brrrr!

There have been lower temperatures recorded for short spells but 1684′s average of -3C for the month of January was enough for the River Thames to stay frozen for more than two months.

It also froze in 1895 – college barges in Oxfordshire were stuck in their moorings along the south bank of the frozen river.

Artificial Snow World Record

The Guinness World Record for the largest area over which artificial snow has ever fallen is 12,462.78m, The record  is held by Snow Business International for the switching on of the Christmas lights in Bond Street, London on November 23, 2006.  The record was achieved by covering the New Bond Street, Bond Street and Old Bond Street areas simultaneously for the ‘Bond Street Association’.

Coldest ever Christmas Day?

Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, recorded a temperature of -21.7C on Christmas Day in 1881y. Not only that, but more than 61cm of snow brought Britain to a standstill, when galeforce blizzards & winds battered the whole country.

Smallest Ever Snowman

According to the Daily Mirror online, the smallest ever snowman measured just 0.01mm across – that’s just one fifth the width of a human hair!

The minute snow sculpture was made in 2009 by Britain’s Dr David Cox at the National Physical Laboratory with tools for handling nanoparticles. Tiny deposits of platinum ensured that it stuck together. Not sure it was a miniature carrot he used for the nose, though

Snow train delays

Snow was also responsible for Britain’s worst ever train delay. At 3pm on March 9, 1891, the West Country Express left Paddington, London, for Plymouth. It finally arrived in Plymouth four days later on March 13 after becoming stuck in snow in the outskirts of London. Puts your 10 minute delay this morning in perspective, doesn’t it??

Are the UK Winters getting colder?

During last year’s cold snowy snap in the UK, the Saucy Horse video production team were sent to film horses on the morning gallops at Lambourne, Berkshire – it was so cold when we arrived at 7am that the batteries in our video equipment stopped working momentarily as the charge seeped out! Normally this is a problem only experienced by cameramen working on wild life films in the Artic or Antartica – does this mean we need to buy all our crews better thermals as the UK’s winters get colder?? It certainly means we need to warm up our batteries before we start filming on cold mornings!

Kindle knows it

For those of you familiar with our work, you’ll know we love a little bit of sass when it comes to standing out from the crowd and making your business & your products more visible to your potential customers. In fact, are on a mission to eradicate business invisibility and to champion business visibility – when it comes to our clients anyway!

Don’t Be Vanilla

Indeed, to coin a phrase from one of the experts at standing out, Nigel Botterill – entrepreneur extraordinaire, we are not afraid to regularly nail our colours to the mast and shout, loud and proud – #DontBeVanilla

So it. is with no little enjoyment that we heard Kindle’s latest marketing strap – have a look at this… and, Hey Normal… Take that!

Kindle – Reinventors of Normal. All new Kindle Fire HD Commercial on Youtube

Have you set up a Google+ page for your business? What do you need to do? And why? Here are some pointers that will help you get started – and the good news is that it’s easy!

1. Your Customers & Potential Customers on Google+

Google+ is growing. People are looking to follow businesses and brands, and if you don’t have a page, you’re losing opportunities to gain followers just because you don’t have a profile. Come on… it’s easy!

2. Join Conversations with your Customers

If you want to engage in conversations with people talking about your business sector, you should have a business profile so that you can talk back with your business name in the online places that your customers choose. So, you have your LinkedIn profile sorted, right? (And while you’re at it, why not connect with me on Linkedin?)

Why not get Google+ sorted as well and offer your prospects more places to find you. Makes sense.

3. Build Relevant Links to Your Website

Links to your services pages, your landing pages, your contact pages all help potential customers find what they’re looking for. The easier it is to find you, the more likely it is that you will make a valuable connection.

4. Brand Protection

You don’t want others to start creating pages with your business name. Create the official page for your business so that people using Google+ know where to find you, and so that you don’t end up having to use a less-than-perfect version of your business name that people will have difficulty finding – it’ll mean more work for you in the long run in terms of having to optimise your page.

5. Build Relevant Links to Your Website

Links to your services pages, your landing pages, your contact pages all help potential customers find what they’re looking for. The easier it is to find you, the more likely it is that you will make a valuable connection.

6. Own more of the search results on page 1

When someone searches for your business name in Google, you will own more search results on the page by having a Google+ page listed there, in addition to your other profiles. That means you’re pushing other results down the page. Good.

7. Build Relevant Links to Your Website

Links to your services pages, your landing pages, your contact pages all help potential customers find what they’re looking for. The easier it is to find you, the more likely it is that you will make a valuable connection.

8. Google +1

Google offers you the chance to use +1 in AdWords ads, on websites, and now +1 on pages and blogs. When your page gets a +1 it helps Google determine how relevant a business listing or ad might be for someone else in the future. Google wants to help businesses get more relevant traffic by monitoring +1 rankings to make the content it delivers more relevant to potential visitors in the future. Bottom line? Encourage +1 on your pages!

9. Learn with Google+ Analytics

Google will soon bring in analytics for Google+ pages so you can learn a lot more about your visitors – this will help you with your advertising efforts. Imagine the marketing possibilities and intelligence you’ll have when you combine analytics from AdWords, your site, and  Google+ Page circles – you may not like the Google centric world it’s becoming, but if you can learn to embrace it there are big marketing benefits.

10. Set-up Your Business Page on Google+

It takes minutes to set up a page – some info and details and a quick upload of some photos & a logo. Even if you don’t have time to spend writing posts, get your page up so people who are looking for you can circle you. If you want us to help create your Google+_page we are happy to! As with all social media marketing &  activity though, you need to be active on a regular basis, otherwise you’re not going to optimise the benefits.

11. Position yourself as a Thought Leader on Google+

Develop a page around topics important to your business. Get ideas, share, and start a conversation to get people talking about topics important to your business – and remember to incorporate your keyword phrases where you can!

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

It’s all about that front page of the search engine results, isn’t it – whether you’re appearing on it when people search for whatever you do. How do you use social media to improve SEO?  Here are our tips on how to use Social Media to increase your SEO rankings.

Tweet your key phrases

Make a list of all the key phrases that you would like to be found for, and drop them into tweets.  Make sure that the information that you are tweeting is still useful and helpful, or you run the risk of alienating your followers and looking like a spammer. This won’t work for all your keywords and keyword long tails but when it does, it won’t harm your cause.

Cross Link Your Social Media Platforms

Make sure that your Twitter is linked to your blog is linked to your Facebook is linked to your YouTube is linked to your LinkedIn is linked to your Pinterest… you get the message! This all increases the ease in which your company is found and also your SEO ranking. The platform we are liking very much at the moment when it comes to SEO juice is Google+. It’s a bit of a hinterland right now but Google likes it (I wonder why ), and seems to rank your posts highly if you’re using it as part of a coordinated and integrated approach – at least at the moment!  It may prove to develop into something that gains wider acceptance as we move forward. So no harm in setting up a profile now!

Keywords in Social Media

From the smallest tweet to the longest blog post – make sure that you include your keywords when it seems right to do so.  Make it easy for search engines to find you!  If you are writing a blog entry, make sure that you categorise, tag and header each blog appropriately, and that you’re using all of the available meta fields to give yourself the best possible chance of being found for your chosen words.

Use Videos And YouTube

YouTube is owned by Google, and you have to take advantage of that when it comes to helping Google to find your website and online content. Make sure that your videos are tagged and that descriptions include keywords for full SEO benefits (For more video tips, you can read our Saucy Horse Video Blog

Is your Social Media activity improving your SEO – are you getting more traffic to your website because of what you’re doing on the social media platforms?