Posts from — December 2008

I just read Chris Brogan’s great post on blogging tips. One of them was to claim my blog in Technorati, which I just did.

Why claim your blog? Here are five reasons why:

1) You’ll be listed in Technorati’s blog directory
2) Your profile will show up in Technorati search results
3) Gain eligibility to be featured on Technorati’s channel pages
4) Use and install Technorati widgets. Use the widgets to add a “Favorite Me” button, show your Technorati authority, or add a tag cloud.
5) Get higher indexing priority when Technorati gets a ping (an alert from your blog that you’ve updated it).

Here’s how to claim your own blog. Go to Technorati. Create an account, add the name of your blog, create a profile (a little mini-me bio), and write a short description of the blog. They’ll send you an email to confirm, and then have you add a link to your site (which you can later erase). It’s like a double-opt-in for a newsletter to confirm you are who you say you are.

You can read the rest of Chris’s tips here.

Danielle is starting a new business offering virtual assistant services. She wants to send out a postcard offering her services and asked for help on Marketing Exchange (12/29/08). She said she wanted to offer “off-site business support services that free their time and allow them to focus on revenue-generating activities.”

As I was reading this, I noticed that a sheet of paper had fallen out of my files. I picked it up and saw that I’d written Strategy and Tactics on the top. It said, “Strategy: How can I achieve my goal? Tactics: Have you identified your prospect’s problem? Have you presented your solution in a way that makes them want to do business with you? Have you established trust?”

Danielle has chosen a tactic (sending a postcard), without a clear idea of what her strategy is. She has no clear picture of who her clients are, how she helps them, or how she creates trust.

What’s your strategy for the new year? How will you create trust with potential new customers and keep it with your current ones?

How do you make your product stand out when it’s not unique? Say you have a coffee cart. It’s in a good location, and gets lots of traffic, but you’re no different from any of the thousands of other coffee carts in your area. What do you do?

The answer is to make the stand (and the experience) remarkable – build a tribe.  The key is to differentiate it from all the other stands and all the other coffee places in the area and make it a fun and special place to go and tell  your friends about.

Offer something worth talking about

1) Offer free Wifi – draw customers in, make your stand a place to hang out, stay, and order more coffee.

2) Hold a contest for customers to invent a new blend of coffee.  The winner gets a cash prize or say 10 pounds of the winning entry.

3) Have customers submit quotes (either their own or from famous people) about coffee, or just inspirational, to be printed on the cups.  Have a new quote each week or each month.  Have customers vote on the best ones.  Winners have their quote printed, along with their names.

Build a story around your company

This works for anything, t-shirts, music, dolls, Lego…make the product experience special:  be the company that gives away free t-shirts with every order, or the one with no time limits or scripts for customer service reps.  And, you don’t need a big budget to do it. What can you do with a $500 budget to make your product worth talking about?

(i) by Bonnie Larner

1. Comment on blogs and forums (be helpful, not promotional).

2. Send a press release. Make sure it’s really newsworthy, not a puff piece about your company.

3. Build a Google pages Web site.

4. Interview someone and upload the mp3 file to your Web site with Audacity.

5. Build a Squidoo lens. It’s a one-page Web site that focuses on one topic. Share your expertise, and strut your stuff, but don’t spam people with “me! me! me!.”

6. Write articles and send them to trade publications in your field.

7. Start a blog at Wordpress or blogger.com.

8. Add referral and sharing tools to your Web site, such as Add This or Share This.

9. Answer questions at Yahoo! Answers, LinkedIn, and Marketing Professionals Know-How Exchange.

10. Sign up for HARO (help a reporter out). It’s a free service with queries from reporters who need sources for stories.

I was just reading Bob Bly’s blog post asking whether it pays to complain about bad products. He wonders if it’s worth complaining about poor service in restaurants or other places, and whether any one really listens.

It turns out they do. A few months ago, my doctor fired my insurance plan. It was disruptive, annoying, and irritating. I don’t go to the doctor often, but he’s convenient, he has my records, and I rarely have to wait.

Well, two weeks ago, I got another letter saying the economy is bad, patients’ options are limited, and the doctor’s practice was able to negotiate with the insurance company to ease some of the administrivia. So, he’d changed his mind. He would continue to take the insurance and apologized for the “disruption, hardship and angst” that many patients endured after the original decision.

I thought that was remarkable. He realized he’d upset his “customers” and he took steps to fix it.