Blog or Die

I see a lot of companies and “consultants” here in Tucson doing all the bells and whistles like,  Facebook, Twitter, and setting up YouTube Channels.

Many are tracking down their webmasters opening their wallets to get their sites more SEO, and now ready, SMO (social marketing optimization).

However, many are abandoning their blogs and writing original stunningly spectacular, useful, inspirational, informative (of course if you do all these on every

post you’d be on a Hemmingway) posts.

The impact of blogging relates to search, traffic and leads and as a local Tucson business the numbers are staggering. Hubspot has done some research and

on search, traffic and leads. There are hard hitting, easy to understand numbers like: “Sites with blogs generate an average of 67% more leads”.

Another fascinating stat is that blogs that have a huge jump in leads produced if they have 25 posts and then the number jumps again at 52 posts. What is wonderful about this is it’s something you as a business owner can control DAILY and rule the roost in your niche AT THIS TIME. Things in this world change quickly  and I keep saying this over and over and I sincerely hope some of my readers get it. The moment the bigger players get this, which could be tomorrow morning (because right now less than a third do get it) they have deeper pockets than you and it will be back to business as usual here in the frontier of the web.

In other words if they can hire 150 professional writers who sit and blog all day what possible chance do you think your little plumbing company here in Tucson has to compete. Zero is the answer. And it’s already started – a little. Most of the dinosaurs are still dying or sucking off the government nipple or run by old farts with their heads ………. in the sand so not to worry but time to act now. If you act now, do the right things with the right company and get crackin’

it won’t matter how big they are or they will be knocking at your door to buy what you develop online now. For instance, if you live in Tucson and “tucsonpestcontrol” was (and it was until recently) and all deritatives of that URL were available and YOU owned it and Terminix wanted it because the search engines don’t recognize Terminix but they do recognize pest control then you stay in the power position or you get a large check. It’s very much like real estate or a license with the F.C.C. In fact now that the large URL’s like: coke, bud, budweiser, pepsi, chevy, etc are long gone the next tier down is the local and there are investors who are buying up URL’s by the thousands. I recently worked with a client who hesitated and we found a URL that was perfect but he had to check with the “big boss- his wife” that night and what would have been a $8 purchase had a price tag of over $800 just because of what I am saying.

People think I’m trying to sell them something a lot of the times but like a mentor taught me to say and mean it ” don’t mistake my urgency for (sales) pressure” or something llike that. Here’s the deal. My heart is to help small businesses here in ‘Tucson survive because it’s downright depressing seeing a city die on the vine.

Not that there aren’t some really bright spots here but as I’ve mentioned when you take away the elderly who have money, the elderly who don’t, the A.F. base, the University and the poor in general and the manufacturing base and the depressed real estate market – there’s not much left. So………..the companies that are going to stay in business and thrive need to be aware, alert and decisive and think outside the box. That’s why I’m here.

I’d much rather be diving. For the last year and half I’ve been helping dive shops but now that I am helping local business with their marketing my local mechanic’s phone is ringing daily because of a few hours work on my part and that makes me happy. Not rich but happy. Dive shops are more lucrative but I do live here for now.

NOW Back to blogging:

Blog vs. Noblog

You must blog or die.

If that’s a fact then stick by these principles and you will have more leads and more leads means more money that is if you know how to handle a lead. And that’s a whole other post.

1. Focus on Education
2. Focus on Awareness of the local nuances of the industry
3. That education and awareness should be designed to build trust so that they come to you.
4. Analyze, educate, question and converse with your target audience
5. Freedom of expression (see above – I opened my heart – Whereas a site is rigid and demands a march towards purchase)
6. The art of the soft sale. As in my sales days in another life at a networking event if I listened long enough to a participant eventually the question would come “what do you do?”. This should be the same goal with your blogging, “what do you think I should do”.
7. Focus on content designed to answer questions, reassure the customer, or simply build up a level of trust and rapport over time.
8. Here’s a big one – no pun intended. If you are tiny but want to be huge or are huge and want to appear very LOCAL you can do that with a blog there are so many feeds out there to tap into that even if you have a thousand outlets or are marketing B2B you can “bring it down” to main street where the local readers live. This is especially true if you work with Local Marketing Tucson or any of my 320 Local Marketing consultants. The smaller the business, the better the chance it’s customers will feel it lacks credibility, capability and accountability. These are the challenges that can be difficult to address when your site’s focus is on getting the conversion. And on the other hand a company like Dell has been to able to effectively get it’s personality across to the millions through a series of effective techniques using the exact same technologies.
9. Blog content spreads faster and easier. When I find a great site that doesn’t have a RSS or blog (oxymoron eh?) I bookmark it but since I have a zillion bookmarked sites (hey, there’s some more clients, eh?) I don’t go back or can’t remember how to get back or or or ……. the old “email list” is still in play but if you are like me when I open my inbox I scan down and automatically delete all the “junk” the spam filter didn’t catch and obviously those too soon are automatically labeled as spam. The great thing about blogs is they are updated frequently and if a reader is busy (who you?) and can’t get to the blog today because of  frequent blogging when they do have time to sit down like I am on the couch with my Jack (terrier that is) I’ll go to my Google reader and scan and read and enjoy my day with numerous great beverages catching up on what is going on with my favorite local blogging companies. And if I like it I automatically share it with my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn networks which means EVERY blog post has the potential of going viral. And on the converse every blog post not written well ……….you get the idea.
10. So to summarize: Every post allows you yet another chance to exercise best practices and begin a conversation

There is no substitute for blogging and here in Tucson if you are a local business it’s even more essential.

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