But with formal SEO training not yet available on mass (i.e. taught in colleges), this growth is going to leave us with a talent shortage.

Essentially, large companies who want to get into this business are going to be forced to buy their way in.

In order to prepare your shop to possibly benefit from this increased M&A activity, it is helpful to have a sense of what factors will make you attractive to a perspective purchaser.

But one size does not fit all.

The evaluation of a one man shop is entirely different from that of a large Agency .

THE ONE MAN SHOP
There are many one man shops that are hugely successful. In fact many of our most authoritative industry experts are sole proprietors.

Like it or not, YOU ARE the business. Your business has little value unless you come with it.

Potential buyers - Your potential buyers are likely those looking to “buy talent” and/or credibility. A new entrant to the SEO Industry can say that they’ve been “doing SEO” for as long as you have.

What makes a one man shop desirable?

1) Reputation / Brand - To be attractive to a potential buyer in this scenario, you MUST have a well known name in the industry. Ideally, you will have case studies from recognizable brands. Further, active participation in the industry increases your credibility as an authority.

2) Re-occurring Revenue Stream - A re-occurring revenue stream will also be important to your valuation as it is likely that your price will be a multiple of your revenue. Moreover, your established business (re-occurrent revenue) should be sufficient to pay for your future salary.

3) Top Line Revenues - An EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) calculation doesn’t make a lot of sense to a one man firm as sole proprietors typically realize their profits as they are earned vs reinvesting.

In this case, a calculation should be made based on a multiple of top line revenues.

SMALL TO MID SIZED SEO FIRM (2 – 30 people*)
If a new entrant is looking to fast track it’s success by”buying the talent” that it requires then considerations around the size and strength of your team will be important.

1) Team Attributes - How many years of experience does your team have? Do you have high turnover? Do you have senior people filling key roles in your business?

2 Process - Process is also an important consideration. A new entrant doesn’t want to just buy talent, they want to buy the secret recipe……

• How do you sell SEO?
• How do you manage the work flow process?
• Who is accountable for what aspects of the process?
• Do you have checks and balances in place?
• What does your reporting look like?
• And to what degree is it automated?

3) Cash Flow - Cash flow will be an important consideration (nobody wants to buy a sinking ship) however if you’re having trouble collecting on your receivables, many companies will assume that once they take over, they can do a better job than you are (rightly or wrongfully so).

LARGE SEO AGENCY (30+ *)
For a large SEO Agency, factors that make you attractive to acquisition focus much more on hard calculations than the softer considerations of small to mid sized firms.

*Note: There are lots of web design firms who claim to be in this category when in fact only a handful of their 30 person shop actually do SEO. This article differentiates between firms with an SEO component versus a dedicated shop of 30+ people who only do SEO.

1) Scalability - The strong team you were proud of as a small to mid sized SEO firm is expected of in a large firm. For a large SEO agency to be attractive for acquisition, organizational structure is critical.

Can the structure be replicated easily for growth? Are there established training programs in place?

2) Cross Sell Opportunity - New entrants will be looking for “fit” with their existing markets.

• Is there an opportunity to cross sell between the acquiring company’s existing clients and your products?
• Is there an opportunity to sell between your clients and the acquiring company’s products?
• What about clients? Do you predominately service mom and pop shops while your perspective buyer mainly targets enterprise sized clients? Your firm will be less attractive if the purchaser is discounting too large a proportion of your business due to “lack of fit”.

3) Technology - Have you invested in proprietary technology that would benefit the buyer either by providing them with a competitive advantage or reducing costs?

Not only does an investment in technology give you an edge against the competition but it also shows long term strategic thinking.

The actual calculation
Keep in mind that there is a difference between book value and market value. A traditional “by the book” valuation will typically end up being a multiple of your EBITDA. Six times EBITDA on the low end and twelve times EBITDA at the higher end.

But EBITDA isn’t always the most fair way to measure value. When companies are growing really quickly, profits tend to be lower or non-existent. This does not mean that your company’s value is non-existent.

This is why in a pressurized environment like SEO, a calculation based on a multiple of your top line revenue may be the more appropriate measure even for large SEO Shops.

At the end of the day, what you’re worth really boils down to how much you’re willing to sell for. And with the industry booming, algorithms changing, new markets emerging - it’s still very much the wild west out there.

so…

…how do you put a price on fun?

Except that we’re poised for some serious growth.

SEO - Introduction Stage - Starting about 1998
Companies who were around in the introduction stage often had to build product awareness and develop a market for SEO.

In the early ‘2000’s, many of our clients had just build their first websites. This was a significant investment for them and they thought that now that they have a website, the online sales would just flow in. Many didn’t realize that they had just invested serious coin into an over-priced business card. Because nobody could find them.

At this point, there was little consistency in the product. And as the algorithm got more complex, the SEO offering varied more. Some companies were offering to “submit to hundreds of search engines” (some still are) whilst others were offering usability, analytics and site architectural input in addition to on-page and off-page SEO.

SEO - Early Growth Stage - we’re still just at the beginning of it.
In the early growth stage, smart SEO companies are beginning to think about building their brand and to increase market share.

Demand is increasing as more customers understand the benefits of “getting found”. There is some competition at this stage but because the market is broadening so much, competition is limited and there is still a huge amount of camaraderie within the industry.

10 years into it, it’s easy to assume that our industry is more mature than it actually is.

We’ve only just begun.

Customer Implication
Demand has already started to increase but it is going to skyrocket. And it’s going to come from all types of business from very small customers to Enterprise type of businesses.

Up until recently, the neighborhood dry cleaner didn’t care if someone across the country found their website because they deal within a 5 km radius got very little benefit from optimizing their website. Now as search gets much better at localization, those local business will become much more serious about the opportunities online

It is also likely that we’ll see a lot of growth from Enterprise clients. These clients previously resisted SEO due to the complexity of working within legacy back-end systems. As technology increases and back-end systems become less expensive for more capability, we’re going to see companies replace their antiquated CMS’s with SEO friendly options.

Another change that this stage of the product life cycle will bring is in our relationship with the client. As SEO becomes a bigger part of the mainstream marketing mix, our customers will become more and more knowledgeable about SEO (we’re already starting to see this).

We’ll move from having a sales / consultative role to being a thought partner. Our clients will have a good understanding of what needs to be done but they’ll outsource it to us because we’re more efficient at implementing.

Competition Implication
With high growth in revenues, low barriers to entry, and no certification required, the SEO industry is prime for attracting any and all new entrants.

There have always been new competitors. But the face of our competition is going to change greatly. Up until now competition has focused primarily on small start ups and web design firms who decide to add a search component. Some stick around but many are wiped out with the next major shift in the algorithm.

This phase of the SEO life cycle is going to attract better capitalized, stronger competition from many sectors. These new entrants are attracted to SEO by the potential for profits not by the fit with their offering.

We are already starting to see traditional media firms seek to protect their eroding revenues by grabbing a slice of the online pie. But WalMart has shown us that future competition could be anyone. And it will be.

No all new entrants are attracted by dollar signs. There are also companies that are feeling increased pressure to offer a more well rounded package. As the integration of offline and online marketing services increases, customers are putting more pressure on agencies to handle the full scope of their marketing spend including the online component.

Although we’re already starting to see increased competition, many existing SEO companies aren’t feeling the pinch yet because demand is also increasing.

One implication of increased demand coupled with new entrants to the market is the impact on supply. We’re starting to experience a shortage of experienced SEO talent

SEO talent is a scarce resources. And this scared resource is not yet being renewed at a fast enough pace. Whilst some colleges are starting to offer digital media / internet marketing diploma, these grads know very little about what it takes to optimize a website.

Moreover, what they do know is limited to theory. It’s one thing to know that links are important to ranking. Its an entirely different thing to know how to effectively build links.

So what?

Who cares where we are in the product life cycle?

Although we’ve already experienced a lot of growth, this growth is nothing compared to what we’re about to experience.

In this next stage of the SEO life cycle, we’re going to see shifts in our clients, competition and product offering. Knowing that this is coming, will allow you to prepare.

If we know that face of our competition is going to change from other small to mid sized SEO’s to large Agencies and Enterprise size companies in totally unrelated industries then we can prepare for this by determining how we’re going to differentiate ourselves from the new entrants.

And if we know that there is going to be increased pressure on skilled resources then we should be developing in house training programs now.

The future is now. And it’s only just begun.

But for large enterprise sized clients, a local strategy is one for a particular country. Multi nationals typically are faced with the decision:

Are they going to have one overriding strategy for all markets

or

Are they going to have a local strategy (including different products, pricing, etc) for each market (country) that they play in.

and how this question is answered has a HUGE impact on your Search Strategy (at least it should).

Why is a Local Search Strategy Important?

Google gives preference towards local websites within the search results. Canadian companies get special treatment on .ca; Brit’s on .co.uk and recently American’s on .com.

As the search engine algorithms change, it is very likely that more weight will be given to local factors. Although it is currently very common to see a handful of large powerful sites dominating the results on a multitude of extensions, in the future it will become more difficult to rank in another country.

How does Google determines a websites nationality?

There are many factors that help the search engines to determine the nationality of a website:

1. the extension - is it a (.ca); (.co.uk); (.com.au); (.com); ect, etc.

2. Hosting - where is the site hosted?

The best way to be considered local to a particular extension is to either use that extension in your url or be hosted in that country.

If you have a .com and are looking to rank outside the US, beware of your hosting solution. Hosting companies may appear to be local when in fact they’re hosted in another country themselves.

Other signals to the search engines that help with the nationality of a website include:

3. Google Webmaster Tools - country selection

4. Whois - address of register

5. Contact us page

6. More difficult to control but - the country that most of your links are coming from. For those of you who outsource most of your link building to another country, this could have serious implications in the future.

What are the considerations when determining whether to adopt a Local Search Strategy?

Essentially there are three major alternatives to evaluate. Each with it’s own pros and cons.

1) Do nothing – try to rank with the .com

Pro’s

• Do nothing is an alternative that should always be evaluated. It’s the least costly of the alternatives (at least from a developmental standpoint) as there is no need to invest in a new website.

Con’s

• This alternative is more viable if you are already a hugely powerful site.

If you’re not, then chances are that it may take a lot of time and effort to catch up to your competitors. Sites that rank well for reasonable competitive terms on many extensions typically are older sites (5 to 10 years old) with typically ‘000’s of links and ‘000’s of pages indexed.

• This strategy may work in the short term but may be less reliable 2 years from now. If the search engine algorithms evolve to take more of a local market strategy you may find that you lose your ranking in countries that are not your local market.

2) Set up geographic specific pages using sub domains

For example http://targetedcountry.clientname.com. This strategy would be supplemented with a link building strategy focused on pointing links to the sub domain.

Pro’s

• It is possible to associate the sub domains with a specific region to Google

• Sub Domains can be hosted separately from the parent domain so can make local to the search engines.
• Also, you can define geographic region in Google’s webmaster’s tools at the Sub Domain level so targeting a specific country is do-able.

• There is speculation that there may be a “sharing” effect on the link building so that links built to the Sub domain benefit the Parent and visa versa. If true, then this might reduce the “sandbox” effect on the sub domain.

• From a branding perspective, this solution allows a company to keep it’s brand intact as each country lives off the Company’s domain.

Con’s

• There will be a lot of work involved in setting up the new domain including creating new content specific to each domain.

• There is likely be some “sandbox effect” on the new sub domain. This is an important consideration as it will impact the ability for the sub domain to rank within a period of time.

• This alternative splits up the link building effort across multiple urls

3) Set up entirely new websites for each country

Pro’s

• This is probably the best way to rank in any one country over the long run

• This is definitely region specific to the search engines.

Con’s

• Unless you had the foresight to buy up a bunch of domains years ago, it is unlikely that you will be able to obtain all of your brand’s domains for each extension that you need. If you haven’t’ already done this DO IT NOW whether you’re considering a local market strategy or not.

• If you can’t get all the url’s that you need then there will be some impact on your brand.

• There will development cost and time involved in setting up new websites for each market.

• There is likely be a “sandbox effect” on the new site.

• This alternative splits up the link building effort across multiple urls

Ultimately there is a lot to consider when determining 1) if a local search strategy makes sense for your company and 2) how best to implement it.

This is definately a case where one solution does not fit all.

but

despite how cool their new blog is…. despite the increase in readers, traffic, comments, etc.

at some point,

your client is ultimately going to turn to you and ask

“What about sales?”

Because unless your client is running a CPM model or is really big into branding, at the end of the day; the only thing that really matters to your client is conversions.

Is this blog making me money?

How do you get your Blog traffic to convert? First and foremost, sales tips are worthless if you don’t follow the 10 Golden Rules of Blogging.

But the 10 Golden Rules of Blogging alone won’t get you sales. They’re just table stakes to make it even possible to sell.

1) Follow Jeff Quipp’s tips for Building Authority:
People want to buy from the best. Strive to be an expert in your field. Even if you sell a commodity product where “the best” is really just better marketing, then do that. Build your online authority and you will be perceived as “the best”.

Use your blog to develop a specialty in a particular niche of your industry.

As Jeff says, this is a difficult balancing act. You don’t want the niche to be too narrow that you limit people’s perceptions of your abilities (not unlike type casting to some actors), though too broad and its near impossible to establish yourself as an expert, and less and less likely over time.

Reach out to others in your field. Or as Jeff says, be an uber networker. One great way to do this in your blog writing is to find other industry blogs to link to when writing your posts. Many blog platforms will ping them that you’ve linked to them.

2) Follow the Loop Strategy in your post writing.

The Loop Strategy suggests that we never want to leave the visitor without telling them what the next step is. There are no dead ends because each page leads to another page.

Think about the most logical path for the consumer to take. If I enjoy this content then I’ll probably like that too. Build the next step into your template. Don’t add new content without thinking about what it relates to. Link it to the next step. This will substantially increase your opportunity to convert.

3) Make sure you have an “About Us” section in your Blog

Depending on your product or service, some people will jump right the buy, but others may want to know a little more about you.

Picture this. I found your blog through a long tail keyword search. I read your post about Rugs, Plastic Products, Petroleum, whatever and it really spoke to me because that’s my industry too.

I find myself thinking wow. Why haven’t I heard of these guys before? Who are they? And sadly, I’m left wondering because there is no About Us page. And if you’re afraid to tell me who you are - then I don’t trust you.

4) Use a Landing Page to ask for the sale

If you’ve given your reader really useful content, there is nothing wrong with linking out to a product page if that product is related to your article.

The Weight Loss Industry is really good at this: for example, do a search for “green tea, weight loss” you will find a plethora of helpful informational articles about the benefits of Green Tea for weight loss. Pretty much every one of these articles was written by someone who is trying to sell you Green Tea.

Does this bother me? Not if the article was useful. Make sure you give thought to color, language and placement when designing the landing page.

5) Make sure you have a call to action on the page you link to not in the blog post.

There are many possible ways to do this:

1. Just ask for the sale. Include an order now button beside the product information (The Direct Close method)
2. Use a deadline. For example, “product will be going up in price by July 30th (The Time Driven Close).
3. Make an offer. i.e. order these two products and save 20%. This makes the buyer feel like they’re making a smart choice or saving money (The Concession Close Method).

Whatever method feels right for you, make sure you use persuasive writing techniques like Brian suggests.

Getting you blog traffic to convert is really just a matter of applying successful marketing techniques to your Blog. The trick is knowing what’s appropriate for a Blog and what belongs on a separate page.

Next week I’ll write about How to get your Blog Traffic to Convert (part five in a 5 part series on Blog Strategy with a focus on clients). But before we can cover that, you must follow these basic principals if you want to your blog posts to convert:

The 10 Golden Rules of Blogging:

1. Start with an SEO friendly infrastructure. Word Press for example has so many useful plug ins such as Netconcepts SEO Title Tag 2.1 that make life (and Marketing) easier.

If you are going to be using social media then you consider having the buttons available below each post.

Consider this, you write a stellar piece of content that is very social media worthy, you submit it to Digg and it’s getting votes. If you don’t have a Digg button you are probably missing out on votes. People want to read the piece and Digg it. Are not as likely to Digg it if they have to go back to Digg to do so.

Socialize Me! Wordpress Plug in is helpful for helping to build friends and your community. blah, blah! technology reviews this plug in well here.

2. Make sure that the design of the blog looks like a blog. Your client will want to make sure that the blog maintains the site’s overall look and feel. This is very important but it’s easy to go overboard here.

Don’t keep too many aspects of the Site’s overall template so that the blog looks more like any other page on their site and not like a blog. A blog should be written in a more relaxed tone than your regular pages and it should look more relaxed too.

Save the Ads for the rest of your site.

3. Write a Killer Headline EVERY time – Headlines have a huge impact on whether your Blog is going to cut through the clutter. Whether your reader finds you through their RSS reader, a keyword search or through social media, a killer title can make the difference of whether it’s going to get clicked on or not.

4. Keep your posts scan-able. Only 16% of people actually read blogs word for word … the rest (84%) merely scan. Make your posts more scan-able by utilizing:

• Lists – easy to scan and read, and typically interesting. Paragraphs are often too difficult or time consuming to read, and are actually avoided.

• Formatting - Use bold, CAPITALS, italics, underlining, to emphasize points. Don’t go overboard as you run the risk of frustrating your reader. Also consider changing font size, color and style to draw your readers eyes to your main points.

• Headings and Sub Headings - Large, Bold words that act as visual cues of what is happening in the subsequent content are effective ways of drawing readers further into articles. Make these intriguing, yet descriptive

• White Space - lot’s of it. Give your copy room to breath.
  

5. Try to keep the length of blog posts between 400 – 700 words. An easy rule of thumb is limit your post to one major idea per post … if you’re trying to cover more than 1 idea, break it into a series of posts.

6. Get to the Point - be succinct in your writing.

7. Use Pictures/Images - Research shows that readers eyes are drawn down the page by relevant pictures. As Michael points out in don’t forget the images and video, it only takes less than minutes to locate, apply tags to, etc an image for your post.

(From www.ishkur.com)

Good quality images can make a site look incredibly professional. The converse is also true, for example, in most cases clip art is just not appropriate for a Business Blog.

8. Build Credibility by linking out. - the more you link out to other notable sites, the more educated you look as a blogger. Guilty by association can be a good thing.

Plus, when you link to another blog post, that bloggers platform will ping them with your link or trackback. Linking out is a great way to get the attention of other industry authorities.

9. Make sure you disclose relationships where necessary (don’t pretend). It’s a lot easier to Manage one’s Online Reputation by avoiding mistakes versus fixing them after the fact. Most social media issues arise from people pretending to be something that they are not.

Perception is everything. I have no idea if Max is who he says he is but Max’s travelog from the Guardian got of hundreds of negative responses to his explanation of who he is and why he’s blogging.

10. If this is a business blog then write for your reader. You can take a lot more leeway with a personal blog, but the average commercial blog reader doesn’t care what you had for breakfast.

Think about needs your readers looking to satisfy? It is possible to come up with really good content ideas for even the most challenging of industries. Remember that good content adds to the body of knowledge. The days of keeping all your knowledge close to your chest are gone.

You’ve sold your client on a blog and you’ve developed a Blog Strategy. Plus you’ve made the blog much more implementable by coming up with 30 to 50 Blog Post ideas. But for this Blog Strategy to be really successful, one of the most important things that you can do is to manage your clients expectations.

Metrics without some point of comparison are just numbers. What turns that meaningless data into useful information is having a point of comparison.

Blog Benchmark figures are difficult to find.

Typically it’s only the top, very successful bloggers who make public their traffic figures, # of RSS feeds, etc. But for the average business blog, these are not a realistic benchmark for success.

In this post, I am going to provide business blog benchmarks. These benchmarks are based aggregate data across a broad range of clients.

1.) Common Measures:

Some of the most common measures of blog success include volume and engagement.

How many visitors does the blog get? Is that number increasing? Is it predominately repeat visitors coming in off your site or is your blog attracting new traffic too?

Number of visitors is really dependent on how broad your industry is. Small numbers are not a bad thing if this traffic is very targeted to your niche.

From what I’ve seen, average traffic benchmarks for a Small Business Blog = 1,ooo to 2,000 visitors per month; for Mid Sized Business = 10,000 - 20,000 visitors per month; Large, Enterprise-Sized Clients = 50,000 to 100,000 blog visitors per month. This is easily doable with a social media strategy.

What about engagement measures? Three great measures of how engaged your traffic is include Bounce Rate, Time Spent on the Site and Number of Page views.

While there are many factors that impact that bounce rate, as a general rule of thumb, you should consider a bounce rate below 20% to be excellent and over 60% to be fairly high. Between 20% and 60% whether these numbers are high or low really depends on what industry you’re in and if you have a high number of RSS subscribers.

Google Analytics measures a bounce as “the percentage of single page visits resulting from this set of pages or page”. This means that if you have a number of people sign up for RSS feeds, or read your blog daily. These “one-page-per-day” awesome visitors, will be counted as bounces.

Time spent on site is typically going to be much lower for your blog than for the rest of the site, particularly if your site is attracting a large number of return visitors.

Where time spent on site might average 4 or 5 minutes, time spent on your blog might only average 1.5 to 2 minutes. Time spent on your blog over 4-5 minutes (what would be considered average for the rest of your site) is quite good for a blog.

This is because it only takes about a minute to half read, half scan an average 800 word blog post. If your traffic is spending more than 3 minutes per visit and are visiting more than one post at a time then I’d consider your blog content to be engaging.

2.) Blogger Metrics

Most bloggers I know measure volume and engagement differently; in fact, RSS Feeds and Comments are darn near sacred.

Most people don’t publish their RSS Feed numbers until they get a decent number of subscribers. For some that means subscribers in the hundreds, for others it means subscribers in the thousands. Either way, this gives new bloggers unrealistic expectations for how to define success.

RSS Feeds rely heavily on building momentum. The first hundred RSS subscribers will probably take longer to build than it will the next two hundred. This is because it takes a whole lot of inertia to power something from nothing.

For a Business Blog, building your first 100 subscribers is a great achievement.

Most bloggers will agree that there is nothing so satisfying as knowing that you’ve engaged someone enough to stimulate a comment. I think that it’s because as bloggers we “put ourselves out there”.

Maybe we’re being as true to ourselves as we can be, or maybe we’re really honest. Whatever the case, as bloggers we expose our vulnerable side and then…

nothing.

We have no idea how our readers responded to the post.

Unless they comment. Comments turn your blog from a one way dialogue into a conversation.

How many comments should you aim for? Highly successful blog with thousands of subscribers will routinely get 50 to 100 comments per post. These blogs tend to be the most visible but they’re not a realistic benchmark for the average business blog.

For a new blog, getting one comment is an achievement. A solid stretch goal for your new business blog, should be to routinely get between 5 and 10 comments per post.
3.) Smoke and Mirrors Metrics

Some bloggers like to measure the “value of their blog”. This metric doesn’t really make sense for the average business blog though because they are unlikely to ever sell their blog. So if you’re never going to sell it; who cares what it’s worth?

Another measure of blog success often quoted is Technorati ranking. Technorati ranking is based on links to your site from other sites. For the typical business, this measure has very limited value. If you want to measure links to your blog then there are better tools to do this.

When used as a relative measure i.e. to compare your blog’s ranking to your competitors; then technorati can be somewhat interesting. But it should be considered a relative measure not an absolute measure.

4.) The most important metric of all.

ROE “Return on Energy”.

Apart from every other measure that I’ve discussed, the success of your client’s blog really just boils down to return on energy. Is the blog making them more money than the next best way they could spend their time and money?

One really cool way to measure the value of your blog traffic is to use Google Analytics. In Google Analytics you can set up your conversion tracking to measure Per Visit Goal Value [the average value (based on goal value) of a visit to your site].

For example, if every visitor who hits your homepage is worth $1.00, you may find that every visitor who visits the blog is worth $5.00.

Basically the ROE of your blog boils down to the following: Is the blog traffic spilling over to the site and are those visitors spending money?

and

are they spending more money than the value of your time invested and/or the amount of money that you are investing in your blog?

As stated earlier, these are benchmarks based on the metrics I’ve seen.   I’d love some feedback on these benchmarks. What have you seen?

————————————————————————————————-
This is the fourth in a 5 part series on Blog Strategy with a focus on clients. This series will explore:

1. How to Sell your Client on a Blog Strategy
2. How to develop a Blog Strategy? What makes it a ‘Strategy’ versus just implementing a Blog?
3. How to Come up with Blog Post Ideas for Challenging Industries
4. What are realistic measures of success for your Client’s Blog?
5. How to get your Blog Traffic to Convert

How do you come up with 30 to 50 compelling blog post ideas for Plastic Products/ Rugs / or the Petroleum Industry <insert challenging client industry>?

This is the third in a 5 part series looking at Blog Strategy with a focus on Clients. In this post, I’m going to discuss How to Come up with Blog Post Ideas for Challenging Industries.

Chris Winfield put it nicely in Dave Harry’s interview a few weeks ago when he said “…there are people interested in your products/services (or else you wouldn’t have a business) so there is a way to reach them through social media marketing”

(thanks Jordan)

Your client’s blog will be about them. The end customer who is interested in your client’s product / services. Think about blog post ideas that would appeal to them.

1) Start with your client. They know their end customer best. Get them to help you come up with 7 to 10 potential categories for posts. To do so you should ask them a series of questions designed to get to know their customer better. Ultimately it’s their customer who’s going to become the audience for their blog.

Who is your customer? Why do they buy from you? What problem does your product or service solve?

For example, if we were going to use the Rug Industry, people buy rugs for a number of reasons: because they can add to a home’s decor; because they want to make a decorating statement; or maybe it’s a simple as they warm up cold floors.

Based on these needs, one could come up with many categories for Rugs: Home Decor, Design, Healthy Living, Environment, Art and Culture, Weird & Wonderful facts about rugs, Rate my Room - Designers answer questions from readers photos, Video tutorials on how to select carpet, install, dispose of etc, there are many different categories that one could come up with.

Based on your discussion with your client you now at least 7 to 10 potential categories for the posts.

2) The next step is to come up with 3 to 5 ideas for each category.

One approach you can take is to brainstorm ideas that will solve the end customers’ problems. How do I…

…match my rug to the rest of my home decor? Do I start with the rug or end with it? (home decor - how to idea)

…pick a contemporary colour theme? What colors are in this year? (Design - how to idea)

…Select a rug that is home healthy? (Environment - how to idea)

Use Keyword Selection Tools A second approach is to think about what keywords people might use to find your blog posts and plug these into a keyword selection tool. I really like Wordze for this because it gives a lot of 3, 4 and 5 word phrase results back. These results often make great blog post ideas.

By doing various queries around “rugs” I found these additional Keyword Phrases which would also make great blog post ideas:

• “organic rug allergies chemical sensitivity” or as a blog post “the best organic rugs for allergies and chemical sensitivity”

• “custom size area rug” or as a blog post “How to measure your room for a custom area rug solution”

By using keyword selection software to brainstorm blog post ideas, you’ll end up writing posts about topics people are actually looking for.

Take Concepts and Turn them into more Specific Ideas A third way to come up with additional blog post ideas is to take existing ideas and flesh them out a little more. Broad, high level ideas are often good ideas that if thought through a little further would become great ideas.

For example if your client is a vet then you might use “dogs” as a topic. Compare this with “how to reduce dog smells” or even better “home remedies to cure your dogs bad breath”.

After easily coming up with 5 ideas X 7 categories, your client will realize that there are hundreds of potential post ideas.

Coming up with a bunch of blog post ideas is only the beginning.

Ideally you will take these ideas and create an editorial schedule. This schedule should detail who is going to write which posts and when they’ll be required.

Sometimes the easiest and least expensive approach for the client is one that includes mixed accountabilities. Perhaps your client wants a daily blog post but doesn’t have the time to write 5 posts a week (neither do you).

The best way to deal with this scenario is to have many people contributing to the blog (as per a schedule of course)

Monday - ghost writer

Tuesday - the client

Wednesday - a delegate within the clients company (this could be a rotation of 4 people so each delegate only has to write one post per month)

Thursday - a guest blogger from within your industry. Think suppliers, resellers, customers, or even competitors from a market you don’t serve. Again, this could be a rotation of 4 people so that each delegate only has to write one post per month.

Friday - ghost writer

By brainstorming many post ideas in advance and setting accountabilities and deadlines you’ll have a much better chance of the Blog being a success.

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This is the Third in a 5 part series on Blog Strategy with a focus on clients. This series will explore:

1. How to Sell your Client on a Blog Strategy
2. How to develop a Blog Strategy? What makes it a ‘Strategy’ versus just implementing a Blog?
3. How to Come up with Blog Post Ideas for Challenging Industries
4. What are realistic measures of success for your Client’s Blog?
5. How to get your Blog Traffic to Convert

A strategy is the plan for achieving a defined goal. A tactic is the “doing” part of the strategy. Tactics can be put together in a plan to form a strategy.

Time line is also an important differentiator between a tactic and a strategy. A blog can be up and running in a very short time frame (hours or days). A Strategy usually takes much longer to achieve (months or years depending on how lofty your goals are).

This is the second in a 5 part series looking at Blog Strategy with a focus on Clients. In this post, I’m going to look at how to develop a Blog Strategy for your Client. What makes it a ‘Strategy’ versus just building your client a Blog?

Starting a new Blog is a tactical move. You select the platform, customize a template, add a few plug ins and you’re done. Maybe it will be a success, maybe it won’t.

What transforms a Blog from a tactical move to a Strategy are:

1. Setting Goals and Objective(s)
2. Developing an outlined plan of all the steps necessary to get there from here
3. Having some idea of how you will know whether you’ve achieved your goals (metrics).

These principles apply to any Strategy, in this post I am going to take the above steps and apply it to a Blog.

1. Goals and Objectives

There are many good reasons for starting a Blog.

Having a good understanding of what you want to achieve will assist in setting the tone for your writing; determining what topics you’re going to write about; and making decisions about how often to Blog and whether you wish to have multiple authors.

It will also influence social networking decisions such as if you’re going to show and allow comments, if you’re going to employ social media tactics.

2. Outlined Plan

Getting the right level of detail in a plan is very important. I’m a visual person, so I like to start planning with a diagram

Here is where I currently am -> -> -> -> and this is where I want to get to.

Then I break this plan down into the high level steps that must happen to get me from A to B. Personally, I like to plan three levels deep. Steps A, B, C, then A1, A2, A3. then A1i, A1ii, etc.

By planning three levels deep, you can take big steps and break them down into bite sized, doable pieces. Unless you’re working on a 18 month IT project with 60 project members, I don’t recommend planning in much more detail than this.

Although detail is awesome, sometimes you can get caught spending too much time planning and not enough time doing (also known as Paralysis by Analysis).

3. Metrics

It’s important to make sure that your metrics are tied to your objectives. If your goal is to increase traffic then one of your metrics should be to measure increase in traffic.

Make sure that you set an actual number. Setting SMART objectives is very important. Jeff defined these principles really well in his post about setting goals for social media Profile Development.

It could be a percentage increase in overall site traffic or could be a 12 month goal. If you blow away your 12 month target by month 3, you can always adjust this goal later.

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Here is a Blog Strategy for a Typical Client which employs all of the above:

Objective

Client Objective: My ultimate goal is to increase sales and I’d like to attract new customers to my website.

Agency Objective: We can use your blog to help bring new visitors to your website. If the ultimate goal is sales, then we will go after targeted traffic. Quality first, quantity if possible. (this is different than if your client is on a CPM model who strictly is going after eyeballs).

Outlined Plan (3 levels deep)

In this case I would optimize the site to help rank for many more broader keyword phrases than we’ve targeted in the past. Further social strategies will encourage referral traffic from like minded sites. Finally, niche tier II social media will expose your site to potential customers.

Here is the plan one level deep:

SEO –> Content –> Social Strategies –> Blog Promotion using niche social media

Taking it two more level deep it might look something like this:

1) SEO

Select an SEO friendly blog platform (like wordpress) and customize it so that it has the look and feel of the clients site. Add plug ins that will make it easier to do your job.

2) Content - Develop editorial schedule for next 3 months.

• This will involve coming up with at least 15 to 60 Blog Post ideas that will appeal to your clients target market. I’ll be discussing how to come up with post ideas for Challenging Industries in Part III of this series, next week.

• Decide who is going to be responsible for the writing. I really like it when the client does the writing. Not only does this keep the budget down but it starts the conversation between your client and their clients. Plus, they are the expert in their field. They know what matters to their clients.

• Ideally you will be able to assign topics to various experts on the client side. Not only does this split up the work effort but it gives your client’s blog more variation in voices and content.

• If the client is going to be doing the writing then some Blog Writing coaching is probably required. Writing a blog post is different than writing an article which is different than writing a business email.

2) Determine what Social Strategies you are going to employ.

• The most common Social Strategy is to allow commenting on your site. I personally really like comments because take a one sided conversation and turn it into a dialog. Plus it can give your blog more of a community feel.

• RSS Feeds are another social strategy. Your client’s readers may not be very technically savvy so it’s very important to make it easy to subscribe and to give the reader the choice of subscribing by email.

• Linking out to other bloggers through your blog roll and in individual blog posts is also a good social strategy. When you link to another blogger you will get their attention. Chances are they will check out who is linking to them and if they like your blog they may subscribe to it. Or even link back to you in the future.

• Further, by linking to authoritative bloggers in your industry, your readers will perceive you to be at their level, defined by the company we keep. It’s very important that these links make sense and that they add something to your ideas. Name dropping industry experts into your posts does not add to the quality of your post and will probably take away from your readers experience.

3) Promote the Blog using Niche Social Media

• Research your clients industry to find social media sites that their potential clients may use. I.e. if your client’s product is helpful to the environment then environmentally conscious posts may appeal to the HUGG crowd.

• Decide which posts would appeal to which social media. There is no point in spamming social media with every blog post your client writes. Only the really good posts that are on topic for that social property should be submitted. If your post is interesting to the social media’s target market then social media can drive quality traffic to your client’s site.

Make sure all the steps i the plan are mapped out into a process and that the process is communicated to everyone involved.

Metrics

Forget about what all the experts say. Just ask your client “what would make you consider this a success?” You may have to coach your client to keep it reasonable but this is going to open up a very important dialog.

i.e. You want get more traffic to your site and you want some of it to convert. So we have two objectives here.

• Quantity of traffic (this is going to build over time so I would set goals for this for 3months, 6 months, 12 months).

• Quality traffic. Some of my favorite quality indicators include bounce rate, time spent on site, and number of pages visited.

Down the line you will want to start looking at how social measures like the comments your posts are generating and the number of RSS subscribers.

I’ll discuss what realistic measures are for your Clients Blog, in part four of this series.

A Blog without Objectives and a Plan is just a Tactic.

By breaking out the steps and assigning accountabilities & time lines to those steps you can take a tactic and turn it into a successful strategy for your client.
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This is the second in a 5 part series on Blog Strategy with a focus on clients. This series will explore:

1. How to Sell your Client on a Blog Strategy
2. How to develop a Blog Strategy? What makes it a ‘Strategy’ versus just implementing a Blog?
3. How to Come up with Blog Post Ideas for Challenging Industries
4. What are realistic measures of success for your Client’s Blog?
5. How to get your Blog Traffic to Convert

Implementing a Blog is relatively simple to do…the tough part is getting the client to agree to one.

This is the first in a 5 part series looking at Blog Strategy with a focus on Clients. In this post, I’m going to look at some of the typical objections clients have to implementing a Blog Strategy, and how to answer them.

The Client: Why would I think about implementing a Blog Strategy?

Blog growth is exploding. If you do a search on Technorati for “blog” you’ll receive over 15 Million search results.

There is a good reason for this.

Blogs are becoming the de facto source for news and information for our culture.

Here is a case in point. A couple of years ago, I heard that there had been a recall on Polly Pockets. Given that I have a baby who puts everything in her mouth and these toys in the house, I headed straight to the computer to find more information.

What struck me as incredibly interesting is that the only information available that quickly was through Blogs. Although I couldn’t find the actual news source, I was able to find a link to the information I needed (including the companies recall) through a Blog.

The Client: We have always resisted a Blog because we’re not sure anyone would read it. Who wants to read an online diary about plastic products / rugs / or the petroleum industry <insert client industry>?

What? You don’t have a Burning Desire to tell your online story about Plastic Products/ Rugs / or the Petroleum Industry <insert client industry>?

Are you crazy?

Of course not. Chances are your industry doesn’t lend itself to an online diary.

So why is a Blog a Good Idea?

Don’t think of it as an online diary. It’s much more than that. In addition to it being an opportunity to talk to your client in a different tone than the rest of your site, it’s a very Search Engine friendly, Social Media friendly infrastructure.

Blogs provide an opportunity to add a great deal of content to your website. And search engines love content.

If you look at the analytics of your website a few months after implementing a Blog, you’ll typically see a large increase in the number of search phrases that people are finding your site with.

Unlike typical SEO where you’re optimizing specific pages for specific keywords, a Blog allows you to talk about your product, services and industry in very natural language.

This is critical because if you’ve ever examined the long tail of your search results, you’ll know that you will never in a million years anticipate all of the “wild and wacky” search phrases that searchers will use to find your site.

(To the reader) It’s important that you don’t sell the Blog solely on the reasons that we as the SEO want to implement a Blog.

We all know that blog content can get indexed quickly; that it provides another method of link building; various plug ins make things like RSS and Social Media easy to use; etc.

But that’s looking at the Blog from our perspective as SEO’s.

Instead of using SEO jargon and technical terms, try to provide the client with real life examples that they can relate to (although I must say, many of my clients are so Internet Marketing savvy, they could be SEO’s )

The Client: That makes sense but I’m also worried about running out of ideas for posts. My biggest concern is the potential resource requirement that a Blog might create.

That’s a very important point. Implementing a blog can be like getting a new puppy. You’re really excited at first about it and then you realize just how much work this is going to be.

Coming up with post ideas is one of the Key Success Factor for your Blog. As such, before the final decision to launch is made; and before the Blog is built, we will brainstorm at least 30 ideas for future Blog Posts.

When implementing a Blog for our clients we often think of 7 to 10 potential categories for the posts then come up with 3 to 5 ideas for each category. This is important for two reasons. First, this exercise will help you (the client) to realize that there are hundreds of potential post ideas.

Second, these post ideas become the foundation of your editorial schedule. Once we’ve agreed on 30 to 50 post ideas, then we’ll plan out who will write the posts (us, ghost writers, the client, delegates with in the clients company, guest bloggers, etc).

And we’ll put a schedule to it so everyone knows what is expected of them in advance. By knowing in advance who is going to do what and by when, Blog the posts done.

(To the reader: I like to speak to my clients about process. I find that outlining the steps involved in what we do helps to demystify the process. Although it sometimes seems like we just magically press the “easy button” in actuality most of what we do has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with hard work.

Also, outlining the process helps to manage the clients expectations. If they know what the next steps are then they can become a part of the solution. Also, by focusing on how you are going to do what you are doing, it demonstrates to the client that you’ve done this before.

Most clients understand why a Blog Strategy will benefit them. Its usually more of an issue to explain how we will make it a success. From large companies to SME’s most firms have resource constraints that must be addressed.

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This is the first in a 5 part series on Blog Strategy with a focus on clients. This series will explore:

1. How to Sell your Client on a Blog Strategy
2. How to develop a Blog Strategy? What makes it a ‘Strategy’ versus just implementing a Blog?
3. How to Come up with Blog Post Ideas for Challenging Industries
4. What are realistic measures of success for your Client’s Blog?
5. How to get your Blog Traffic to Convert

Keyword Search -> Blog Post -> Another Blog Post

or

Direct Search -> Home Page -> Products Page

Regardless of the scenario, they all have one thing in common. It’s a linear relationship that ultimately leads to a dead end.

Enter the Loop Strategy

The premise of the loop strategy is that we never want to leave the visitor without telling them what the next step is. There are no dead ends because each page leads to another page.

Maybe they follow the planned path, more than likely they don’t
But the point is that we keep the visitor engaged in the site’s content until they find something that they want to buy.

In the scenario pictured above, your visitor could enter on any point. Let’s say they landed on an article that was relevant to a long tail keyword search. In a linear relationship, once they read the article, they usually leave.

In this case, the article points them to a related blog post. They read the post and decide to register for a newsletter. Upon registration they’re asked if they’d like to take a brief survey. If they do we’ll give them a white paper. In the white paper we reference (link to) other articles. And away we go.

Your traffic isn’t stupid.

They just aren’t as familiar with your site, business, or products as you are. Consider the experience of a first time visitor. They happen to find your site through a keyword search, social media, maybe even because of an off line advertisement.

The visitor may be interested in your content/product/service but they have little or no loyalty at this point.

The propensity to exit is high. I entered your site. I enjoyed your content. I’m done.

unless

you tell them where to go (not there).

How do I employ the Loop Strategy?

1) This strategy is not for every website. A content rich site is necessary to successfully employ this strategy.

• Enjoyed this post? try this one
• Like this article? look at this white paper.
  
• People who like this topic love this product/article/paper (whatever your call to action is).
  

Always tell your traffic where to go next. Keep them in a perpetual loop.

Content doesn’t have to be articles though. Let’s say you have an electronics site. So long as the site is content rich with product descriptions, testimnials etc, you can employ this strategy.

• Like this iPod? try this carrying case
• Need a carrying case? what about external speakers?
• Which external speakers are best? here’s what other consumers had to say…

2) Think about the most logical path for the consumer to take. If I enjoy this content then I’ll probably like that too.

3) Build the next step into your template. Don’t add new content without thinking about what it relates to. Link it to the next step.

Is this just usability and calls to action?

maybe

But it works.