Bulldog Marketing

The Meaning of your communication

Many people who read my blog are familiar with Neuro-Linguistic Psychology, or NLP. One of the presuppositions of NLP is The Meaning of your communication is the response you get. What this really means is that we need to take accountability for how our messages are recieved by our audience. For example, if you are writing marketing material or a blog post, and you get several questions from readers about something, you have obviously missed something that your audience needs and you are responsible for that. Seth Godin does a great job of explaining this and how it relates to marketing. It's worth checking out. If you don't understand what I am talking about, just remember, It is my fault!

Posting Frequency- How Important Is it Really?

WOW! I feel like Rip Van Winkle who woke up from a 20 year nap! It has been over 3 months since my last blog post, which most people - myself included- would say is a complete no-no in the blogging world. In order to explain my absence, I could say that I was doing an experiment to see what effect it would have, but I would by lying to ya'll which isn't ever a good thing. However, I did learn a few things that you may be interested in:

1. Not posting has not changed my daily stats in a major way- only about 1%. Although that seems surprising, if you have a few 'cornerstone posts' that offer basic information that does not change over time, people will continue to find you long after your post hits the archives. This is another reason why great tags and keywords are important.

2. Nobody got mad at me, and said Hey, where have you been. This could be good or bad, but I didn't have people unsubcribe due to my lack of activity. In fact, posting again might remind a few people that they want to unsubscribe, but that is OK with me, I only want people on my list who want to be on my list.

3. I think that although there are guidelines for building your blog and readership, the most important guideline is YOU. What do YOU feel comfortable with? If you are blogging out of guilt and because you have to, I am not sure you are going to attract a huge following by guilt posting.

4. Bark with Purpose! I think if you don't have anything that you feel compelled to write about, just wait until you get a burst of inspriration. If you have ignored your blog for awhile, you may be better off going through old posts and re-tag and reposting them to give you some fresh search criteria. Who knows, maybe you will get a great idea or two along the way!

The Ideal Blogging State

Have you ever considered HOW you need to be feeling when you write a blog post? I know it seems kind of strange, but the reality of it is, the state that you are in when you are writing will have something to do with the effectiveness and reach of your post.
Did you ever receive something hand made from someone and they put one of those labels in it that said something like, " Made with love from Grandma?" Can you imagine if the label said something like,"Made with stress and resentment because Grandma overcommitted herself to doing this?" Not only would it be too big of a label, but I don't think you would feel real good wearing the hand knitted scarf after reading that. But the energy that goes into the work that you do will resonate with the end users and recipients of your work.
So what is a blogger to do?

Trackbacks Revisited

The most awesome thing with blogs is that you get to respond to your readers, and that gives you ideas for creating new posts, and sometimes reviving old posts.  I got a comment about my post yesterday on the benefits of trackbacks, and it did occur to me that I might need to give people some info on how to actually do one, and sure enough, I got a question about how do you actually do a trackback.  So instead of reinventing the wheel, here the link to my original post about leaving trackbacks.  Let me know if you need more explicit directions....

Take a Chance

When I started blogging, the whole Idea of Trackbacks and leaving comments seemed a bit counter- intuitive for several reasons, such as,  Why would I direct my readers to my competition?  or  What if I leave a comment or a trackback and the person gets a bit testy with me?
The first time I ever left a trackback was on TypePad, and it was when  I transcribed Seth Godin's Interview with TypePad on Small is the new big. After leaving my trackback,  nobody got hurt, and a few people read my blog after that. Whew!  I survived! 
About a month ago, TypePad was looking for Tips on how to drive readers to your blog, so again, I took a chance, and left a comment about using Nichebot and google adwords to find  sweet spots in your market niche.  Guess What?  They featured my Tip in their Monthy Newsletter, and I think I even get a free T-Shirt!  But the real prize is that from their newletter, the number of people dropping by to check out Bulldog Marketing has Tripled!  Yes, TRIPLED!!
If you believe in what you are doing, and want to have people find you, using Trackbacks, Comments and linking to other blogs is a great way to get yourself running with the right pack.  It may be a bit scary at first, but start slowly, and pick your spots wisely by commenting on the issues that you feel strongly about and reflect the overall theme and message of your blog.  That way,when people click through to your blog they will find more of the same type of content and information that is in your trackback.  Above all else,  make sure that you are adding value to the conversation and not just barking to hear the sound of your own voice. After all, nobody likes a yippy dog!

Internet Marketing on TypePad

Yes, it is true, you can teach an old dog new tricks!  I recently attended an internet marketing seminar, and learned a few things about internet marketing.  While the principles made sense, the execution left a lot to be desired.  Things like writing code, getting a hosting account, getting a URL for each sales page, and a few more technical details like FTP'ing my stuff to my host left my head spinning, and I did not really take much action.
But you know what?  There are basically 5 key Principles to internet marketing, and I figured out how to do them all on TypePad.

Principle 1:  Get a website.
OK- Not too hard to figure out, but now you can do all of this in TypePad.  If you haven't seen it, check out my post on how to build a simple website in TypePad. You will want to map a URL to this site that is in the general niche that you are in, such as lifecoaching, wellness, executive coaching, etc...

Principle 2:  Create pages that are one level deeper than your general niche.
What I mean by that is, if you are a life coach, you may help people with work/life balance, so you will create a page on your site about work life balance.

Principle 3:  Use Keywords and Tags for all of you pages.
Well, guess what?  How easy is it for you to use the TypePad Key word feature, and you get the bonus of using technorati tags at the same time. 

Principle 4:  Link, Link, Link 
Not to get too much into SEO, since I said I wasn't ever going to talk about that again, but getting a high visibility site to link to yours is a good thing.  By using trackbacks and comments, you can slowly build visibility to your market niche, and become an expert.


Principle 5: Blog
I think you understand the reasons for this, but having a blog is a great way for people to get a chance to see what you are about, and you will develop relationships with your readers.  It does take time, but it is time well spent.

A plan for your blog

I have been working with quite a few people lately setting up their blogs, and websites, and so I have a list of tips for you to consider when embarking on a project like a blog.

1. Make sure that this is something that you want to do, not something that you have to do. Blogging is a labor of love, sometimes it is even therapy, but it isn't a quick fix to skyrocket yourself to fame in 48 hours. You will have spurts of creativity, moments of brilliance and occasionally times when you can't figure out what the heck to write about. All of those are good things, and you need to take them as they come.

2. Blogs are written in Cyberspace, not in a stone tablet, so start somewhere, and grow from there. You can always change and tweak, refine and regroup. Let your blog grow with you, so if you don't have the perfect tag line that is OK- just go with what you have, and the longer you do something, you will become inspired and find just the thing that pops for you.

3. Pick about 10 -12 Topics that will become the foundation and theme for your blog. You will branch off of each of these posts, but you need to have a place where readers can figure out what your blog is about even if they are a first time visitor when your blog has several hundred posts inside of it. Remember, most of your readers didn't start off with you from day one and follow every post that you wrote.

4. If you are getting good response from something, you will be able to have moments where you can ride the wave a little bit and dig a bit deeper into that specific topic, but by watching your stats, you will know when that wave has come to an end, and it is time for something new.

5. Stay flexible, keep your options open, and enjoy the ride. Blogging is a great thing, and like running a marathon, you need to pace yourself.

You can build a website in TypePad

OK, I wanted to see how this could really work, and although it is a bit rough, I think you will get the idea. I built a simple 5 page website in TypePad in under an hour, using the new page function, with a slight twist.

I wanted to have the home page not look like a blog, so instead of enabling the 'Pages' section to list the pages down the side of the site, I used a Link Typelist and did it that way.

Check out the site, and let me know if you have any other little tricks on getting stuff to work without using Custom CSS- that is much to much work for a bulldog!

Business or Personal?

How many of you have tried to start a blog, and got trapped in the "It's suppose to be a business blog, but I like to write about personal things" trap?  I know this comes up from time to time, but a client and fellow blogger Tiffany Kay has found a great work- around for this issue.  She takes an idea from her personal life and personal journal, gives you a peek into what is going on for her, but then takes the issue into a coaching tool or tip.  It is a pretty cool way to introduce the personal side of your life  whilst (Tiffany is from the UK, so I couldn't resist) providing valuable content and information for your readers. 
I have found that inclusion is always better than exclusion, so if you ever find you are in an either/or situation, you may want to find a way to do both.  This not only works for blogging, but for real life too.

TypePad's New Page Feature

Wouldn't it be nice if it was as easy to create a web page as it is to do a blog post?  You never can tell how this stuff really works until you try it, so I had to find out for myself how it all works.  Here is what I did:

1.  I went into my TypePad Account, and clicked on New Page.

2.  I gave my New Page a title, just like I would a blog post.

3.  I put content on the page just like I would a blog post. 

4.  I turned on the HTML editor just like I would a blog post.

5.  I typed in the words, just like I would a blog post

6.  I put in a cool piece of HTML code- thats right...just like I would a blog post.

8.  I hit publish and save...You got it...just like I would a blog post.

9.  Then I came back to new posts, and created this post, just like I would a web page. (gotcha!)

10.  I typed in check it out, highlighted it, clicked on the link tool, and typed in the new page address, which is your blog URL with a / and_the_new_ file_ name.html  just like I would a blog post.

And check it out there is the new page!

In less than 10 minutes, you can have a page up on the web, without the hassles of FTP and a hosting company, and, it really is as easy as creating a blog post.  Thanks TypePad!

Woof!