Of course, it’s easy for me to say you should write in your own voice. But how do you actually do that?

Formal or Informal Blogging?

First off, your blog articles don’t have to be informal. Obviously, the tone of your blog will need to fit the culture of your business. But they still have to be written in your voice.

On the other hand, your business culture could actually be informal. If that’s the case, then your blog entries should be as well.

Personal Tidbits

Many bloggers inject tidbits about their personal life into their blogs. This can help to make you seem more “real” to your readers. It does need to be done in a way that’s still consistent with your voice and reflects your business culture.

Recording Yourself

Another good way to jump-start blogging in your own voice can be to record yourself. Typically, it works best to record either a talk you’re giving, or record yourself explaining something to a client. Then once you’ve done that, you go back to your computer, listen to the recording, and transcribe it.

Here’s the specific process I’ve used:

1. Record a meeting, making sure I get the other person’s approval first.
2. Transcribe a section of the meeting that I feel might make a good blog entry.
3. Correct my grammar and tweak to make a more shareable blog entry.
4. Publish!

I certainly don’t do that with every single blog entry, but I do use that method from time to time. And it’s good practice when you’re getting started on writing in your own voice?

Still Having Trouble?

Writing in your own voice is a skill that has to be developed. Some people don’t have the time or desire to develop that skill. If you’d rather invest in having someone else do that for you, we do offer blogging services here at T&S. As one client put it, “you write like I sound, only better!”

If you’re frustrated with writing in your own voice, contact us to see if our blogging process is a good fit for you and your business.

So how can you ensure they’ll be able to find you?

Even if you have a website that was set up properly, often it won’t automatically appear in the first page of the search engine’s results. If you’re not in the first page of results for a particular page, the number of people that will find your site drops off drastically.

A study by Search Engine Watch reveals just how many people click on the different positions in the search engine results.

53 percent go to the top result. The second sees 15 percent of the action, the third 9 percent, the fourth 6 percent, dwindling all the way down to 4 percent to round out the top 5.

Obviously, it’s much more likely people will find you if you’re in the top five results. 87% of the people stop after the first five, according to the study.

So how do you get into the top five?

Blogging

Having a well-written blog on your business website can be hugely beneficial, especially when it comes to increasing your ranking on the search engines. In our industry, we call that blogging for SEO.

The only catch is that it needs to be done on a regular basis. And that’s where so many people and businesses fail.

Back in 2005, I helped a missionary couple put together a website. They wanted to make sure the members at the churches who sponsored them would be able to find them easily online.

I told them to blog regularly to stay visible on the search engines. So from 2005 until 2009, they blogged several times a month.

After several months of blogging regularly, they started seeing results. And since they continued to blog, those results only got better and better.

In fact, even they came back to the United States in 2009, their website continued to be ranked number one in Google for many relevant phrases for several years.

Maximizing Your Effort

If you do take the time to blog on a regular basis, you’ll want to take a few steps to maximize that effort.

How do you do that? By pushing your blog out onto other platforms.

You’ll want to set up a page on Facebook, LinkedIn, and an account on Twitter. After those are ready to go, I recommend using twitterfeed.com for automatically pushing your blog out to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

When you set up your organization on those social media websites and start updating them regularly, you can actually take up more than one spot on the search engine results.

Write For People

Even when you’re blogging for search engines, don’t forget that your ultimate target is actual people. Even if you want to rank higher in search engines, that’s just a means to an end.

Your ultimate goal is to get people to know, like, trust, and value you. That way, they’ll want to buy whatever it is you have to sell.

Don’t Have Time?

There’s no doubt about it, effective blogging for search engines takes time. It takes dedication. And it takes energy.

You may find that you want the search engine benefits, but can’t invest the time. If so, we may be able to help! We do provide blogging services. Contact us, and we can see if they fit your needs.

We’ve dubbed it Mobile May Madness! (Not to be confused with March Madness)

Current Clients

Let’s face it. Almost everyone has a mobile phone these days. It’s the quickest way to get the info you’re looking for. But not everybody’s website is optimized for mobile devices. Well, we have a solution for you.

If you’re a current or past client, you qualify to get a free Starter Mobile Site. Yeah, I said it. Free. This is our way of saying, “Thanks!” for being our client. If you’d rather get a Standard Mobile Site, you can get one for half the price, all month long. All you have to do to get started is call us at 405-285-0348, and set up a time to meet with us.

New Clients

Haven’t done business with us before? No worries! We have something special for all new clients, as well. During the month of May, you can get a Starter or Standard Mobile Site for half off. We’d love to do business with you!

Interested in our mobile sites, or one of our other services? Give us a call at 405-285-0348, or contact us. And don’t forget to check back next month to find out what T&S is doing to celebrate our anniversary during the month of June!

Instead we decided to give away free marketing consulting, courtesy of our friend Kyle Golding at The Golding Group. Kyle is an expert at helping businesses and organizations do what they do just a little bit better. They provide strategic planning, communications, and process development, with a focus on growth and longevity. Cool!

Let’s find out who won in the video below:

So who is the lucky winner? It’s Robert Elliott with Shine! Honduras. Shine! Honduras is a non-profit organization that helps provide scholarships to students in need in Honduras. Providing these young people with college preparatory education and tutoring can help change their entire community, and Kyle is excited to work with Robert and his team.

We’ll be getting in touch with you, Robert, to let you know the next step. Thanks for entering!

And thanks to everyone else who entered! If you missed out on this giveaway, come back next month to find out what we’re offering next. Sign up for our email newsletter to receive updates on future specials and giveaways.

Last time, we looked at building your audience by doing them a favor. But taking one more step greatly increases your chances of getting them on board.

Simply put: Ask!

Now, it helps if you do them some sort of favor before you ask. You might Like their page on Facebook, Follow their company on Twitter, or even Endorse or Recommend them on LinkedIn. Whatever the case, doing them a favor first will increase the chances they’ll reciprocate.

Once you’ve done them that favor, simply send them a brief, private message, asking them to follow your organization.

Here’s an example message I’ve used.

Clark,

I just endorsed you for some of your skills on LinkedIn. Would you would mind terribly following T&S Web Design on LinkedIn? (Yes, this is bribery.)

We’re building up our company’s LinkedIn presence to 50 followers, and would appreciate your help. If not, that’s perfectly fine. No hard feelings.

Just go to this link and click follow on the top right: http://tandsgo.com/linkedin

Thanks!

Okay, so I didn’t really message someone named Clark. I’m just a Superman fan. But if you’ll continue to play along, we can take a look at a few key elements of the message.

It’s personal

I didn’t send the message publicly, but privately. That makes it a little more intimate and personal. It means it wasn’t a desperate, public cry for attention. I really wanted to talk to Clark personally and ask for his help.

Gave them an out

In order to make it really non-threatening, I gave Clark the option to say no. Obviously, he always had the option, but in order to make sure he didn’t feel obligated or forced, I specifically mentioned that it was fine if he didn’t want to.

Was honest

I was very honest and up-front about my intentions. I even specifically joked that it was bribery. I fessed up, and injected a little humor in there at the same time.

Made it easy

By including a link right to our LinkedIn Company Page, I made it as easy as possible for Clark to take action. You may notice that I used a shortened link, rather than the long link that LinkedIn provides. You can do the same thing using a publicly available service like bitly.

Shared my goal

I had a specific goal for our LinkedIn Company Page, and I shared that with Clark. When you share your goal, sometimes people will take some ownership in helping you achieve that goal.

Stayed on the same platform

Since I wanted Clark to do something on LinkedIn, I made sure that the favor I did for him beforehand was on LinkedIn as well. The same would follow if you want someone to retweet something you say on Twitter, Like your page on Facebook, etc.

Get started on your own online marketing! Go to your favorite social media site and build your own audience by doing someone a favor, then simply asking.

So what can you do to build your audience online?

Do someone else a favor. This is what I refer to as building your audience at a micro level. It’s not huge masses of people, but it’s one person at a time.

If you give someone something that has a perceived value, they’re that much more likely to take the effort to click “Like” or “Follow.” Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Law of Compensation states (somewhat simplified), “If you want to get more, you first have to give more.”

So what kind of favor can you do for someone? Here are a few examples.

Endorse or Recommend on LinkedIn

If you know enough about someone that you would endorse or recommend them in real life, then visit their profile page and endorse or recommend them on LinkedIn. Endorsing is a one-click process, so it’s easy to do. Recommending takes actually writing something about them.

If you’re endorsing them, make sure that you know for sure that they have those skills, because LinkedIn will automatically suggest skills they may not have entered.

Like or Follow their organization

This one’s pretty straight-forward. Find their organization on various social media platforms, and like or follow it. You may be able to use their website as a starting point, if they’ve linked to their social media platforms from their site. If not, you may have to do a little hunting.

Share their updates

When you see a particularly noteworthy update that one of your contacts has shared, share that in turn with your contacts. If it’s social media, sharing is often a one-click process. If it’s an email newsletter, you can simply forward their email on to others.

If you’re forwarding an email newsletter, look for a link in the email itself to share with a friend. It will probably take you through a web form, but the individual will actually be able to see that you shared their email with others.

Publicly support their cause

Similarly, if you see a person or company you know mentioning a cause, become a champion of that cause for them. A great example of this is nonprofits that have fund-raisers. Not only the nonprofit organizations themselves, but any people you know that support non-profits. If you publicly support their cause, you’ll have a devoted audience member.

What other favors can you think of doing to help build your audience online? Be sure to share anything you think of in the comments below. And then start doing favors!

Next time, we’ll look at what to do after you’ve done a favor.

April’s giveaway is nothing short of totally awesome. We are, in fact, giving away…

One Million Dollars

How do you get in on such an awesome giveaway, you ask? Just watch the video below, and Tim will give you all the details.

All you have to do to qualify for this awesome giveaway is enter the contest here, telling us why you and your business or nonprofit should win. At the end of the month, we will randomly choose a winner. Get commenting!

Secret to success

Well, there’s no simple answer on how often to send out your emails. However, you can’t expect much success with a one-time email. If you try to do one-time email blasts, you’re really trying to get away without putting any ongoing work into your email marketing.

And that’s really the secret to success with your email newsletter: Ongoing work.

Building your audience through frequency

You need to build your audience before you need your audience. How you do that is by proving helpfulness on a regular basis with consistency. Remember Ralph Waldo Emerson’s law of compensation: If you want to get more, first give more.

When clients contract us to run their email newsletter for them, we won’t take on clients unless they’re willing to do it at least monthly. In fact, a good rule of thumb based on data balancing link clicking and unsubscribe rates in email newsletters suggests 2 – 4 times per month.

Ultimately, consider how often your target market thinks about your topic, and structure your frequency around that. If it’s all they think about in their job or in their free time, weekly or even daily might be appropriate. If it’s important to them, but they’re not constantly thinking about it, you may want to consider one or two times per month.

Need help?

If you’re frustrated with the time it takes to run an effective email newsletter, or are embarrassed about how your email newsletter looks, the team here at T&S can help. Feel free to contact us for more information.

Email Marketing Series

• Your email marketing plan simplified: The purpose
• Your email marketing plan simplified: The content
• Your email marketing plan simplified: The frequency

It’s all about focus

When planning your email newsletter’s content, remember to focus. Write each newsletter as if it were directed towards your ideal customer. If you can actually pick out a specific customer and write the email as if it were only going to them, that’s even better.

If you have multiple target markets, pick out the ones that are easiest to write to, and don’t worry about the rest. Of course, that may mean you have a few highly-targeted email newsletters, rather than one really broad one. But they’ll be much more effective.

Don’t be purely promotional

Even if you’re building up your email marketing to create a cost-effective marketing platform, make sure every email you send out isn’t purely promotional. The content of your email newsletter needs to balance three things, represented in the acronym P.I.E.

• P – Promotional
• I – Informational
• E – Entertaining

Everyone’s specific recipe for their email marketing will be different. The key to remember is that nobody likes too much P. in their P.I.E. If you’re purely promotional, people will ignore your emails.

Avoid too much content

Too much content in your email newsletter will cause people to get bored, and frequently miss any content they could have actually benefited from. Avoid content overload.

A good rule of thumb is to have three or less sections in your email newsletter that change. You may have information about your company and contact information in the sidebar or at the bottom, and that’s fine. Those sections don’t change. But for the sections that do change, limit yourself to three or less.

Some example sections include:

• Blog entry
• YouTube video link
• Featured client
• Special
• Upcoming events
• Quick tips

Whatever sections you put in there, just don’t overwhelm your subscribers.

Next time we’ll finish up the series by looking at the frequency of your email newsletter. As always, if you need help designing or running your email newsletter, we would be glad to provide that help. Just contact us for more information.

Email Marketing Series

• Your email marketing plan simplified: The purpose
• Your email marketing plan simplified: The content
• Your email marketing plan simplified: The frequency

Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a look at three things you should consider when planning your email marketing.

Email marketing purpose

There are many specific purposes for email campaigns. You might want to build credibility and awareness so that people will know, like and trust you even if they’ve never met you.

You may want to create an avenue to test ideas before releasing them to the public. Whether it’s a special deal, new product or service, a workshop, or something else entirely, your email list can potentially serve as a great place to test those ideas before spending money on other marketing.

You may simply want to build a cost-effective marketing platform. Whatever the case, make sure you have a clearly defined purpose for your email newsletter. Without a specific goal, you won’t know when it’s effective.

Trackable goals

And when you’re setting your goal and planning, make sure your goal is trackable as well. Whether you’re just following up with people in person to find out your effectiveness, or actually looking at statistics in your email provider’s administrative interface, you should have some way of determining if you’ve reached your goal.

If you do like statistics, there are a few you can look at.

1. Number of subscribers. If you track this, make sure you remember that quality is better than quantity.

2. How many people open your email. Some of the more popular email providers will let you compare this to your past emails and to the average in your industry.

3. How many people click on links in your email. This is one reason why many email newsletters that make use of articles only include the first part of the article with a link to read more.

Next time we’ll take a look at planning your email newsletter’s content. If you’d like assistance with designing or running your email newsletter, the team here at T&S Web Design would be glad to help. Contact us for more information.

Email Marketing Series

• Your email marketing plan simplified: The purpose
• Your email marketing plan simplified: The content
• Your email marketing plan simplified: The frequency