You have your Facebook page setup just the way you want it and you are beginning to accumulate those ever elusive “likes”. Now the big question becomes how do you go about increasing the level of engagement you have with your new “fans”? You got them commit and say they like you as a friend but how do you get them to show you they “like you” like you? There are a great many ways to get your fans to show the love but here are three simple ones that you can start implementing right away:

1. Pictures – Everyone has heard the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” but what it did not tell you is that it can be just as valuable when trying to interact with your new social media peeps. Facebook, like life, moves pretty fast and photos are much harder to miss whether you are looking around once in a while or not. People on Facebook do not always have time to read the latest and greatest bits brilliance you feel compelled to share with your ever-increasing audience but they will always scan their news feed for any interesting images even if those images showed up hours or days earlier. So if you are posting images to anchor the info it will be more likely to be seen by the masses.
2. Captions –  Keeping with the pictures theme, the next best way to entice weary Facebook pilgrims into your web of marketing brilliance is to let them write the copy. Post an interesting photo and ask your social media minions to come up with a good caption for it. The photo can be of anything and it gives your fans an opportunity to be creative and gives you yet another opportunity for interaction that is separate from business that helps build a rapport with clients and potential clients.
3. Questions – for those of you who just want to write and don’t want to be bothered with photos, another good engagement inroad is post questions for your Fans to answer. The questions can be about anything you like but usually the less formal the better because it opens up the field to more potential connections.

So what fits your personality best? Pictures, Captions, Questions or maybe a combination of the three? The ideas are simple but they all have the potential of new interactions at very least and the potential of going viral at most. So why are you still reading this, other than the fact that this entire blog is chock full of brilliance? Head on over to Facebook and start making some magic happen.

Most small businesses ebb and flow with the seasons and summer more often than not is one of those slower times. The kids are out of school, vacations loom and clients are slower to respond even when they are very anxious to get something completed. During these times it is important not to lose focus. Don’t get me wrong, you deserve a break and should take some time to smell the roses but think of how much easier your life will be the rest of the year of you take a little of this time surplus and apply it to some of the housekeeping things you have been forced to ignore? So what can you do now that will make your life easier the rest of the year?

1. Editorial Calendar
   As you know, regular site/social media updates are the cornerstone of any SEO success. I know you have your blog setup and have been dazzling everyone with the shininess of the pearls you have been putting on display but how much easier would it be for you if you had a calendar to rely on for your blogging, newsletter, social media and website update topics? Take some of the extra time you find yourself with this summer and rather than spending it trying to beat your old paddle-ball record, use it to sit down and come up with an outline of topics to get you though the rest of the year.
2. Design updates
   If you are thinking about making updates to your identity in the form of design changes for your logo, website, collateral materials or social media themes, now is the time to put those thoughts into action. If you have plans for a new media blitz in the fall, you don’t want to lose valuable time going through a design process when you could already be reaping the rewards. Get the things you need done in process during your slow times so you can take as much time as you need to make sure any graphical updates are exactly what you want rather than rushing the process and accepting an inferior product because your are in a hurry to get things out the door.
3. Blogging
   Now that you have your editorial calendar, why not take a little of this time to go ahead and bang out some of those posts? If you are using something like WordPress for your blog, you can go in and write as many posts as you like and schedule them to go live over time. How great would that be to be going into fall with posts queued up to run at regular intervals without a thought. Just fill up that marketing crock pot and let it run. And who knows, you might find some other marketing uses for your brilliant prose along the way.

Summer is finally here but fall is right around the corner so make sure to make the most of your summer and smooth out some of the business wrinkles for the rest of the year.

Most of the time when people hear the word “Compatibility” they immediately think online dating but when it comes to your online presence you need to think about more than just viewing your matches for free this weekend. When it comes to compatibility and your website the kind that should be forefront in your mind is more of the browser variety.

You might not realize this, but not everyone is using the exact same browser as you do when you go online to admire your latest dispatch of inspiration to the masses. I know what you are thinking “So what? Aren’t all browsers the same!”. Were that only true the world would be a much more lovely place for web developers but alas it is not the case. Not all browsers are created equal but how different could they be, right? Well that depends on your website design. In some cases you will see little or no difference while in others it could be night and day so it is important to make sure that you know how your site looks in other browsers.

Just because your system came with IE installed does not mean that is the case for everyone on the net. If you use a professional to build your site, this is usually part of their regular process but even still it is a good idea to see for yourself. Every browser renders slightly differently. Firefox, Safari and Chrome are very similar but not always exact and IE (the bane of most designers existence) although it has gotten better in recent versions, can still have some significant differences. The last thing you will want is for site goers to think your site was inspired by Picasso because it was not tested and in their browser it looks like some cubist version of the reality you thought you were showing.

So how can you test it? Well, that is probably one of the easiest things you can do on your own where your site is concerned. All major browsers are free to download and most can co-exist in peace on your machine, the notable difference being different flavors of IE (and yes from version to version of IE you can see major differences but the most recent version will do the trick for our purposes). The process is simple (even old hat if you are used to downloading and installing applications for the internet). The steps are simple:

1. Download
2. Install
3. Test

Easy, right? Now all you need are the links to get started so here they are in order of their market share:

• Internet Explorer – 54%
• Firefox – 19.7%
• Chrome – 19.5%
• Safar – 4.6%
• Opera – 1.5%

As you can see IE owns the lions share of the market with Firefox and Chrome neck and neck for a distant second and Safari and Opera rounding out the top five. So what does this tell you? You need to make sure your site works in IE first and foremost but at a minimum you also need to make sure that Firefox and Chrome are given due consideration. Safari can be more of an afterthought and opera only for really hardcore Type “A”‘s out there.

Although it seems like a simple thing, cross browser compatibility can be a major issue when it comes to website usability so what are you waiting for? Depending on your internet connection, the download and install of the applications should not take very much time and all you will need to know to use them is your website address. Who knows, after your testing is done, you may just decide you prefer a different board for your future web surfing outings.

The latest social media craze sweeping the net is Pinterest but what everyone really wants to know is “Can I Use it for Business?” and the answer is, strangely enough,  yes.  For those that don’t know, Pinterest is a new social media platform where users create virtual bulletin boards of images that interest them. The images can either be uploaded or pulled in from other sites on the net. When a new image is added it is known as “Pinning” and boards can be shared so others can “Re-Pin” things of yours that they find interesting. Although it seems a bit unorthodox to many business models, just about any business can benefit from using Pinterest, they just have to be willing (as with most things) to conform their marketing to fit the medium. So how can you use Pinterest for your business? Here are three easy ways

1. Add a Catalog/portfolioAs always it is best to begin with the most obvious. If you already have images that represent your products or services, you are half way there. All you need to do is create a board (or boards if you have many categories of things) and start pinning. You can either upload images from your offline archives or pin directly from images you already have online. Then you just add a description to each image.
2. Create Special Offers 

   A step up from a simple catalog but an infinitely more interactive option is to use Pinterest to showcase special offers. Good deals will always get re-pinned and it is a great way to spread the word and drive traffic. You can make the offers exclusive to Pinterest so that it is easy to calculate the ROI. Then you can post new offers on a regular basis to keep them coming back for more. People will make your boards a favorite and they will tel their friends to follow you as well.

3. Have some FunIt is said that a picture is worth a thousand words and a great way for customers and potential customers to get to know your company is by showing them more of who you are. Pin images that describe your corporate culture. You can use original images as well as found art to give your customers and potential customers more of an idea of who you are. Make them part of the team by allowing them to feel they know what you are all about. It is also a great way to bring in potential customers that have shared interests because they will your re-pin your images based on that interest and then they might dig a little deeper to see what else you might have and discover what your company has to offer. You can also re-pin from other people’s boards to build this up as another way to get their attention.

These are but a few of  the many ways to dip your toes into the deep waters of Pinterest. As with any social media venture it will take regular updates to make the most of it but as you devote a little time to it, you will find more and more ways to connect with those potential customers and have a little fun while you are at it.

No matter what you do from submitting a proposal for a very lucrative contract to trying to use the restroom after the latest summer blockbuster, timing is everything and online marketing is no different. Many of you might have some idea that when it comes to email marketing there are certain days and times that are more effective than others but did you know the same was true of social media? So what are the best times to make the most of your online marketing?

• Email
  As a direct descendent of that old marketing standby direct mail, email has been around the longest but the ideal days and times for sending campaigns have remained the same since the beginning. The best windows for Email are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays between 10:00 and 10:30 a.m. or between 1:00 and 1:30 p.m.. The research bears it out but the reasons are simple. Monday emails will either get lost in the morning or post lunch purge and Friday emails often go unseen because people are trying to finish up for the week and they end up being caught in the same combine as the Monday emails. The morning time slot is great for single time zone emails because they make it in after the morning purge, but before the after lunch purge and are generally seen. The afternoon time slot is best for emails that go to multiple time zones because they achieve the same result avoiding purges on both ends of the spectrum.
• Facebook
  Social Media is somewhat new to the game but it has found its own windows for maximum traffic. Facebook falls in line with emails love of middle of the road travel with links sent between 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. getting the most traction while Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. being the best time to post on Facebook all week. This does not mean you should stop posting the rest of the time, on the contrary, if everyone did that, the trends would change to accommodate the content patterns (besides, lets face it, not everything you have to say is a gem). All this means is that you should adjust the timing for your most important content to go out in that sweet spot to maximize visibility.
• Twitter
  Social media is the great equalizer for marketing and Twitter proves the rule once again with its disdain for established timing. For maximum Twitter traffic, the best time to say your peace is on a Monday between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. ET. So just when you thought you would start taking long weekends, you realize that you will have something to do Monday after all.

So now that you have found some of the sweet spots for your marketing exposure, you might need to revise that editorial calendar I know you have for all of your communications. And if you don’t have one already, it might be time to start thinking about one so you can make sure that all of your marketing brilliance will not fall on deaf ears.

Everyone who has a business blog (and whose business is not blogging) has the same issue, content. You got into business to do what you do best not write about it but in order for others to know about it, you need to get them to your site. To get them to your site you need to enhance your SEO. The best way to enhance your SEO is regular content updates and the easiest way to regularly update your content is with your blog. Everyone knows they should be blogging but figuring out what to write about is not only a huge source of stress, but sometimes the bane of an entrepreneur’s existence. But it does not have to be that way. In fact if you look hard enough you will find that half of your work is already done.

So with that in mind I offer you these 5 easy content sources for your business blog (Ginsu Carving knives not included).

1. Customer questions
   When it comes to content the first and best place to go (which is where most of my most polished gems emanate) is right to your customers. Those questions you answer time and time again with each new client. Those things that you take for granted and just roll off your tongue without a thought. Those are perfect fodder for new posts. And if you play your cards right, you can take one common question and turn it into a series of posts. Just think of all of the great material you have at your finger tips. No, seriously, think about it…NOW….See, there is a lot of stuff in there that you did not realize you had. No mater how run of the mill you think it is, if it is a question you answer regularly or information you routinely provide to new customers, then as Jeff Foxworthy might say “iiiit might be a blog post”.
2. Competition
   Another great place to look is back to your old school motto, “When in doubt, plagiarise”. OK, well not exactly but stay with me. One of the best sources for information for your blog can be your competition. Yep, you heard me, competition. I know what you are thinking, “I don’t want to copy what they are doing, I am different”. Well true as that may be, they can still be a good source of ideas. Take a look at the information your competitors provide about their products and services and no matter how different you are, it will give you ideas that are all your own. And sometimes you might just find content that could be helpful to your clients on its own. In those cases you don’t actually want to copy what they have but take that idea and create your own version of it that is tailored specifically to your business and your clients. And you don’t have to limit yourself to direct competitors, you can look around the net and see who is doing what in your space and jot down some topics because, “iiit might be a blog post”.
3. Webinars or other marketing materials
   When sourcing content for your blog you should never overlook existing materials especially things like webinars. Many companies put webinars on a regular basis to keep clients up to speed on products or services and with each new one you do you can be sure to find at least one posts-worth of information. Even if you have already covered the content in a cursory way on your site or in a brochure make sure to look closely because, “iiit might be a blog post”.
4. Industry changes
   Changes in your industry are another no-brainer for content. When new reports come out that have any bearing on what you do, its time to play telephone and repeat what you’ve heard. You should try not to lose any meaning in the translation but you understand what I mean. First make sure that the information is potentially valuable to your clients and potential clients. Then all you have to do is take the information you have received and put it in your own words and,  “iiit might be a blog post”.
5. Customer success
   When it comes to blogging, customer success is often overlooked but your blog is a perfect forum for sharing this information with current and potential clients. Think about it. You can keep it simple and just explain how Company X is making use of your product or service. Other clients or potential clients can see that and put themselves into the story. No matter how specific a product or service is, every company that uses it will use it slightly differently. This differentiation opens up the possibilities for existing customers to see new ways of making use of what they already have or why they might need something else from you. So when it comes to customers, no matter what you are doing for them, you can now look at them with fresh eyes and realize that, “iiit might be a blog post”.

There is a virtual plethora of other simple sources out there just waiting to make your life easier. So get out there and let them be discovered because you never know,  “iiit might be a blog post”.

When marketers hear about bounce rates the first thing they think (like the rest of us) is about the college paddle-ball championships in which they carried their intramural team to victory when they kept their cool while their opponent sneezed at the crucial moment of a heated bounce-off . Once they come out of their reverie they then think of email but that is not the only kind or worse kind of bounce rate you can run across. Nay, the worst kind of bounce rate is the one that occurs with most site owners blissfully unaware. The bounce rate I am talking about is for your website. Now, I know what you are thinking, “But I am not sending my website anywhere, how can it bounce?”. Well. It is not THAT kind of bounce. When someone talks about website bounces, they are not talking about emails and they are definitely not talking about rubber balls; unfortunately they are referring to site visitors. Specifically ones that that make their way to your site and then leave from the same page they entered without going any deeper into the gooey deliciousness of your well crafted content.

So what can you do to mitigate this paddle-ball like nature? The best way is to try to avoid some of the barriers to entry that site owners sometimes unknowingly include in their site.

1. Design & Layout
   The first place to look for potential issues is your site design. One of the biggest offenders can be in the use of media. I am not saying that you should not use media, in fact it is just the opposite. As I have stated in other posts, media (like greed apparently) is good. It should just be applied judiciously. You would not make a meal of Twinkies (at least not on a regular basis) and that same rule applies to your site. Avoid using gratuitous animation, automatic pop-ups and under no circumstances should you have media with an audio component play automatically when the site is loaded. A lot of it sounds good in theory but in these situations it is always best to harken back to that first law of web design: First, Do NOT Annoy!. Keep your site focused and that will help your visitors focus on why they are there. Stay away from things that could be at very least a distraction or at most a full on deterrent to nestling in and basking in the Cool that is your site.
2. Content & Navigation
   The next places to look are your content and navigation. It should not require and advanced degree for people to find what they need. The ability for users to find their way around  quickly and easily is one of the most important elements of any website. If a user cannot find what they are looking for, they leave. It is as simple as that. The easier you make it for people to find what they want, the more useful your site will become. But finding it is not enough. If you want to reduce those bounce rates you also need to make it easier to comprehend as well. The content itself needs to be clear, concise and valuable. Marketing speak for the sake of hearing your self talk or technical jargon that does not mean anything to anyone outside your industry does not do anything for anyone. And forcing someone to read a hundred paragraphs on the technical specifications for flushing a toilet when the words “press lever” will do, will likely lead to that unwanted rubbery response you are trying to avoid. The easier you make it to read and understand, the faster they will get the point and the more likely that they will slip unknowingly into the comfy chair of your brilliant content without need of the Spanish Inquisition (whether or not they expect it).
3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
   Probably the biggest contributors to a sites bounce rate are irrelevant search engine rankings. I know what you are thinking, “There is no such thing as a BAD search engine ranking!”, but that is not necessarily true. As you may have remembered while putting on your deodorant this morning, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression”. It does you absolutely no good to rank for keywords that are not relevant to the content on your site. Sure you might grab a good spot in some searches but by trying to rank for unrelated keywords you could be hurting yourself in more ways than one. Not only are you getting a bounce because as soon as someone realizes that your site does not have the content they are looking for  they leave but you are also creating a negative first impression with a potential customer.  So when you pop-up later in a search that actually does makes sense, you might get skipped because all they remember that your site was not relevant. So the best way to avoid this is to make sure your site is optimized for the most relevant keywords possible.

No matter what you do, some bounces will always occur whether it is a mis-clicked link, an erroneous URL or just someone playing around in their browser. All you can do is optimize your site to mitigate any real and consistent bounces. Using a professional designer from the start can help avoid common pitfalls but even if your site is already up and running and is guilty of some of the outlined offenses, you can always go back and take a lesson from the Beatles and take that sad song and make it better…

To most people LinkedIn is just part of the social media landscape but in this location you will find not only your customers and prospects but employees and competitors as well all interconnected in a web of possibilities. And while the business uses of other social networks are still being explored, here you have one whose original purpose was business networking. With over 100 million plus users in over 200 countries (and getting a new member about every second) there are exponential networking capabilities but how can you make the most of your involvement in this business networking behemoth? It is all about the basics.

Optimize:
Fully optimize your profile. I know it sounds simple but those little nagging completion meters are there to help you. The more information you provide the easier you are going to be to find by potential clients. And don’t just go through the motions to get to that ever elusive 100% mark, make it count.

• Don’ Bury the Lead
  Make the info you provide work for you starting with a strong summary-headline. Think of it like keyword optimization for your website. What is the best way to describe yourself for a search. Are you a Graphic Designer or are you an Atlanta Logo Designer. Once term will pull you up with about a million other people while the other significantly narrows the field
• Show them what you can do
  Make sure to fill out your areas of expertise. You never know what skills a person might be looking for and the more well-rounded you are for the job, the better.
• Give them a Call to action
  Make sure they can contact you. It does not do you any good to show up in all of the searches if people cannot find a way to connect with you once they determine you are the right person for the job. You need to strike while the iron is hot so don’t give it time to cool down while they are trying to figure out the best way to make your brilliance part of their project.
• Let your music be heard
  Request recommendations them from connections you have done business with in the past. Testimonials from satisfied clients or praise from former co-workers can go a long way toward sealing the deal. Anyone can “enhance” their resume to sound better on paper but it is a whole different story when potential clients can hear people singing from the mountain tops about their amazing experience working with you.

Connect:
Making connections is what it is all about but it is more than just names on a list. You need to interact to make the most of the medium.

• Lock and Load
  Add connections from your address book or search people out based on past work history. You have to start building your connections at home before you can expect to be found. And once you make your base connections you can expand your web by reaching out to people they may know. And then they’ll tell two fronds and so on and so on and so on.
• Get Onboard
  And if you are a business owner, get your employees involved and leverage their connections as well because you never know where you might find that next project.
• Follow up
  Keeping top of mind with people only requires you to keep your eyes open. Listen to what your connections are saying and drop a quick note congratulating them on recent promotions or other events notated in their LinkedIn account. It will start a dialog that will make you more memorable.

Socialize:
Get your other social networking involved to help spread the word.

• Twitter
  Integrate your twitter feed into your profile to let people see what you are putting out there and give them an opportunity to follow your musings on a regular basis.
• Blog
  Integrate your blog as well (if you have one) so people get all the info they need about your and what you offer in one place. Give them more than they bargained for and take advantage of the captive audience to dazzle them with your thought leading brilliance.
• Trip-It
  If you travel a lot for business set yourself up on Trip-It so you can easily make sure people know where you are going and how long you will be there. That way you can kill two birds with once stone by setting up meetings with new potential clients while you are in the area.

Contribute:
As with any social network, what you get out of it largely depends on what you put into it so make a contribution.

• Say it don’t spray it
  Use updates to give useful info, not just propaganda. Become a resource for people looking for your expertise. Best case you can become a thought leader on certain subjects and worst case you can provide information that can be a tipping point for determining whether or not your get a call. Either way you can never go wrong with providing useful information.
• Get in with the In Crowd
  You will find a great many groups in Linked-In that cover a multitude of topics from Alumni associations to highly segments industry specific cabals. Find a group that makes sense for you and join. But don’t just join, in order to make the most of this type of interaction you need to participate. Join the conversation. Give your two cents and who knows you might just strike up a conversation with someone who is looking for you.
• Sing for Your Supper
  The recommendation train runs both ways. Don’t be stingy! Make sure you are helping your connections the way they are helping you. And if you are still felling a little bit selfish,  keep in ind that writing recommendations can be just as useful as getting them yourself. What you say about working with other people says as much or more than the what others say about you. Remember, you never know what circuitous route a connection may take on its way to you. Someone could be looking for something completely different, read a recommendation you posted and realize that what they really need is a person like you for a totally unrelated project.

Do the Math
Connections through liked-in are like playing 6-degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. You start out knowing a few people in the far-flung reaches of the world and the next thing you know the Bacon Brothers are playing for your next birthday party. Lets put it in perspective. I only have 141 direct connections through linked-in but those 141 connections actually balloon up to a potential 36,600 connections and that is only going a few layers deep. Just think how many that would be if I actually had to go more than 2 degrees to get to Kevin Bacon? Going all six would yield be a crazy number of connections.

The bottom line is that there is too much business potential to ignore so get it in gear, optimize your account, load those contacts and start some business conversations.

Recent data suggests that 50% of website page views are now being made on mobile devices. I know what you are thinking, “So what, most people doing these searches have smart phones and aren’t they designed to see everything as If you were on your home computer?”. Unfortunately the simple answer is both yes and no. Not so simple, right. Let me ‘splain’… No it’s too much, let me sum up. Yes, smart phones are designed to have most of the internet functionality as your desktop computer. But at the same time, the functionality of your smart phone is more limited in general and more importantly the screen size is significantly smaller than your desktop.

These limitations coupled with the fact that your site is decked out with a brilliant layout, graphics and possibly animation means that when a potential client attempts to view your site from their phone, after hearing from a friend how amazing your product/service actually is, they might not be able to make any sense of what they are seeing.

With all of that in mind you can begin to see why it is important to make sure your customer facing pages are as mobile friendly as possible. So the obvious question becomes, “How do I do this?”. Well, I am glad you asked because otherwise this post would be nothing more than just another self-indulgent rant.

To answer your so brilliantly posed question, as with everything else, there are many ways of doing this but for the purposes of this brain dump we will boil it down to its simplest terms and cover the main two:

1. Separate Mobile Site
   A separate mobile site is pretty self-explanatory. You create a completely different version of your site specifically for mobile devices. This can be done as simply as a text only HTML version of the site, a more complex version that also includes some graphics or as elaborately as fully customized version of the site design that is modified for a smaller screen. The first two ways can potentially be done without a great deal of technical knowledge (even by those hanging on to old school Static HTML sites) but the latter will almost certainly require the skills of a professional for either the graphics modification and/or specialized coding.
2. Specialized CSS
   A Specialized CSS or Cascading Style Sheet — which is just a fancy name for a list of instructions for how things are to be displayed on your pages — is usually the weapon of choice for most entrepreneurs because depending on how your site was created, it can be the simplest to implement and for more daring site owners, something that they can handle themselves. The best part of doing things this way is that it is scalable with your site. Meaning no matter what content updates or changes you make to the main site, the same changes will automatically be available on your mobile site. This is because rather than redirecting users to a totally different version of your site, you are simply modifying the instructions for how things are displayed. Rather than an animation, you show a static image and rather than crazy layout art and special effects you simply show the content.

Once you have decided which way to go on your site (and possibly built it)  the next step is to do the Tim Gunn and “Make it Work”. Implementation of your mobile site is a little more daunting in general for those non-technical folks out there but it doesn’t have to be. It can be as simple as adding a JavaScript to the header of your pages or as complex as setting up a special dynamic page (.php or .asp) that is used to determine what type of device is viewing the site. But fear not, either way you decide to go there are many examples available across the net for you to download and integrate in relatively short order. And for those of you lucky enough to be using platforms like WordPress, there are plugins available to take all of the guesswork out of either option. Some more advanced plugins allow you to create specialized templates that effectively create a totally separate site while others will  simply serve up a Jenny Craig version of your content with the click of a button.

As with most things the simplest option is usually the best but simplicity is relative. If you have a really complex site, it might make sense to create a custom mobile version of your site but for most entrepreneurs the simple modification of the way existing content is displayed is all that is needed to serve the purpose.

No matter which way you decide to go the needs of your audience should trump anything that you think or heard you should be doing. I know, I know, you are thinking, “Well that is kind of cryptic, so what exactly does that mean?”. It just means that you should  make sure to always include a link to the full version of your site in any mobile version because there is nothing more irritating than being redirected to a stripped down version of the info you are looking for when you have the desire and capability to view things in all of their glory.

So why are you still hanging around on my blog? Get to it. Get started making your site more mobile friendly and make sure you keep your share of that 50%.

So you have a business blog but can’t quite manage to add content on a regular basis, welcome to the club. More and more companies are jumping into the blogosphere to aid their online marketing efforts but as with most things, just creating a blog is not enough to see any real benefit to your company. To really make your blog work for you, you need to update it on a regular basis. So then the $64,000 question becomes, “How do I do that?”. It can actually be simpler than you think. Here are 5 easy ways to keep those cards and letters coming:

1. Write what you know
   I know it sounds like a simple statement but think about it. When dealing with clients and potential clients, how often do you find answering the same questions over and over again? If you are like me, that answer would be “quite”. So if you are answering things on a regular basis, there must be some value to what you are saying so why not write it down for posterity? Whenever you find yourself repeating an answer that you have given to other clients time and time again, make a note and VIOLA!, you have a topic to write about. Talk to a few customers in a week and you might find yourself with a whole treasure trove of untapped brilliance just waiting to be shared with an unsuspecting world.

2. Editorial Calendar
   An editorial calendar is a simple concept used in marketing departments worldwide but somewhat of a foreign concept to most small business owners. What is it you ask? It is nothing more than an outline to follow for communications each year. It usually refers to content being developed for e-Newsletters, websites and other publications to help plan how to roll out content for products, services and events throughout the year. Once such publication is a blog so why not take advantage of this useful tool and create an outline for yourself for the postings you want to generate? You can sit down and think through anything you have planned for the upcoming year (or even just quarter if you don’t want to get too ahead of yourself) and simply jot down topics that relate to your products, services or events that you want to promote at each time. And then as things evolve, you can evolve with it and simply adjust the calendar to work with any new pressing topics that may be more important that your original. The important thing is to make a plan because once you have that done, you are half way there.
3. Contributing Authors
   Platforms like WordPress allow you to provide limited access to colleagues, employees, partners, customers or friends  so that they can become contributing authors on your blog. If they have something to say on your topic, why not make use of their expertise to help expand your reach. They can login, add their post to the system, then you can approve the content before it goes live. It is a win, win for everyone involved. You give them a voice and they help you by providing different perspectives on things that are important to your clients and potential clients. And if your existing clients are willing to contribute, you can expand the reach of your most effective (and unpaid) sales tool, word of mouth advertising.
4. Media Content
   Can’t think of anything to say (or you spell like I do)? No problem, why not just give your audience what they really want? Turn on that webcam that came built in to your new laptop and serenade them with the dulcet tones of your industry acumen. Let them get to know the real you (and if you are like me you can share your impeccable comedic timing while you are at it). It is not only an easier way for you to communicate complex thoughts – because lets face it, you are amazing at what you do and sometimes text is just not your medium – it is also the perfect vehicle for potential clients to get to know you before they decide to do business with you.
5. Scheduling Posts
   The biggest problem entrepreneurs face when it comes to blogging is the time to do it on a regular basis but that kind of commitment is not entirely necessary especially when it comes to platforms like WordPress. One of the most amazing and overlooked features of WordPress is the ability to schedule posts. Now I know what you are thinking, “Great, but what exactly does that mean”, well hold your horses I am getting there (if you haven’t noticed from previous posts, my wisdom is something that trickles out slowly amidst bursts of comedic brilliance). By default any new post is added “immediately”. This just means that at the time you decide to publish, it captures the date and time of that moment and uses it as the time stamp for your posting. What most people do not realize is that they can edit the post time and even set it for a future date so that your post can go live whenever you want. So, “big deal, what does that mean to me and my time, right?”. Well, what it means is you can sit down for an hour or so when you have the time and bang out any number of postings from your list of questions you have jotted down or the editorial calendar you have painstakingly setup and set them to go live over whatever period of time you see fit. Ideally you should be posting at least twice a week but that is a pipe dream for most. But you can make the most of what you have by staggering the release. You can sit down for a few hours at a time and have blog postings that will automatically post to your site over the course of a month or more. Going on vacation? No problem. Schedule postings to go while you are gone and let your site continue to communicate with the search engines and do your marketing for you while you are away. Have a conference coming up or a really big project, no problem just set that crock pot of inspiration to slow and get to work.

So now that you have some ways to get the content out there, you have no more excuses. Share your secret cache of knowledge with the world and build your thought leadership, website influence and customer relationships all at the same time.