In the previous article in my YouBidFast series I introduced The TRANSMITTER as the first of three essential components of your Online Business Development System. The Transmitter's purpose is to broadcast your valuable knowledge online to create a kind of "following". In this article I describe how to build your transmitter for online marketing using just free software.
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The Purpose of The Transmitter
The whole point of the transmitter is to help you reach new and unknown contacts - some of whom will want to engage with you in a more personal way using other aspects of your Business Development Toolkit such as The Walkie-Talkie (see the diagram below).In my case my transmitter directly generates about half a dozen great international opportunities for consulting, speaking engagements or other partnerships per year (and indirectly probably a lot more).
The Transmitter is also a great best way to get free major press coverage for your articles (for example here is some recent coverage of my work in the UK Guardian newspaper based on articles I had written on the topic of "Organisational Meetings" )
The main component of The Transmitter is a blog and here is what I will cover in this article:
- Setting up your blog
- Writing great articles for your blog
- Monitoring your blog traffic
- Linking to Social Media
- The role of Email
- Video
Creating a Blog Transmitter for your business
Blogging is essentially the extended online CV for a business or a consultant and is the backbone of The Business Development System Transmitter.Here is my 8-step quickstart plan for getting it going.
STEP 1. You need to select and set up your blog platform....
There are a great range of blogging platforms - Typepad, Word Press and Blogger are just 3 of the most popular ones which can be used totally for free.
(For Your Information this (YouBidFast) Blog is developed in Blogger enhanced with packaged widgets and without any new HTML programming. The only external costs incurred were for a URL and professionally designed logo banner by IT2Max.com.)
The problem with many blogs is the "boiler-plate" look of their main articles page which often looks like the author is just typing into a standard template they set up 2 minutes ago. Its not very appealing to readers - think of the difference between reading a well-finished paperback and the authors original typed manuscript!
So if you are going to launch a blog there are 3 "must dos" :
1. Get a proper URL (e.g. http://www.bioteams.com and point the URL the blog provider gives you to it (e.g. http://kenthompson.typepad.com/myblog) but don't use this blog URL as your public address - its a clear sign you are not a serious blogger.
2. Hire a graphic designer to customise the main blog article template page for you or create a professional blog logo/banner (you can do this for less than $100 if you go to an online resource bidding site like elance.com)
3. Do not go live till its ready. Do not promote your blog too soon until you have at least half a dozen good articles loaded into it. Most blogging platforms allow you to keep your blog "password protected" until a few friendly reviewers have looked at these articles and you have asked for and incorporated their feedback. Remember you only get one go at making a first impression!
STEP 2. You need to start writing some good articles....
There is one very important principle which should underpin anything you write for external consumption
- "that which takes little effort to write gives little pleasure to read"
Remember its not just about the words its also about adding value to the reader. There are also some excellent add-in tools such as Zemanta and Apture which act as your Blogging Assistant and open up in a mini window beside you as you write and edit your blog posts. These tools suggest content (images, links and other articles) you can add in to your posts as you write them with literally a single-click to make your articles more engaging and interactive.
So you need to understand the rules of successful blog writing - here are the 4 Rules I write by (with big credit to Robin Good of MasterNewMedia for helping me getting started with this 5 years ago)
RULE 1. No blatant self promotion (share your knowledge but do not promote your products or services)
RULE 2. Articles need good titles for search engines which use keywords not traditional paper media editorial bylines! It does not matter how good the article is if no-one can find it.
RULE 3. Once you start you must continue. Frequency of articles is key - regular frequent small articles are better than large but occasional articles.
RULE 4. Decide your editorial "line" - for example are you a:
1. Sign-poster. You link to articles (e.g. news) on your topic with some informed commentary (otherwise you add little value) so that your readers can be confident that you will keep them up to date on breaking news. If you just put in URLs and titles then this is "micro-blogging" (and Twitter does this must better than a blog if its really what you want to do).
2. Expert. You write your own serious articles on your chosen topics of expertise. This requires a lot more effort and is much more effective longer-term and can pay off big-time if some of your articles get picked up by some of the major online news sites.
3. Idiots Guide. You make the complicated simple and accessible. This also requires a surprising amount of effort and you must be careful of the two extremes - confusing or patronizing your readers
You can chose one of these 3 lines or indeed (as I do) use a blend of them all.
STEP 3. You need to notify search engines of your new blog articles
Many people don't realise that most of their blog readers (80%+) will not enter their blog via their home pages but will enter via a specific article located through a search engine.
So you need to use the many free Blog Ping services which if you tell them that your blog has been updated will notify the various search engines - there is a list of the ones I use at the end of this article. You can set Ping services up within you blog platform to be pinged each time you publish a new article. Alternatively you can use the very easy to use Ping-o-matic service to manually send out a ping to about 30 services at a time from your blog each time you publish a new article.
STEP 4. You need to monitor your blog traffic....
Most blog platforms have their own built-in analytics capabilities to let you know who is visiting your blog and these are very useful. However I have found the best way to check your traffic is by using the excellent free Google Analytics service which will tell you everything you could ever imagine about who is visiting your site including what pages they looking at, where they came from (Referrals and geography) and what browsers they are using.
The key thing to check for here initially is simply that on a month by month your traffic is increasing. It is also important to find out who is sending you traffic (known as "referrers") and to make sure you thank them. You can also offer them advance articles and other incentives (such as putting them on your "blogroll") for promoting your blog.
STEP 5. Don't forget to use your Social Media channels ....
Many books have been written about social media and it has a big role to play in any Online Business Development System. However all I am going to concentrate on in this article is how you can use Social Media to boost the range of your blog - we will deal with the whole social media aspect in its own right later.
Here is what I suggest to get you started:
First you just need 3 social media accounts - forget all the rest - LinkedIN, Facebook and Twitter
Secondly you need to create a good profile and business-like picture in each of these about your business or about yourself (depending on whether you are an enterprise or an individual).
Thirdly you need to make sure your social media branding is consistent with your blog branding.
Now here is the clever bit - get yourself an account with ping.fm (hellotxt and imautomator provide similar functionality) and link your 3 social media accounts into it. Then each time you publish a new blog you open up ping.fm and post the title and its URL.
Ping.fm will automatically send the details of your new blog article to all the social media accounts you have linked to and hey presto it appears on your home page in LinkedIN, Twitter, Facebook (and about 40 others if you want to be bothered).
STEP 6. Think about using email..but not for very long!
I have a controversial view on email - I believe that personalised email is fine but bulk email management and email newsletter systems have probably reached the end of their useful lives for most small businesses.
Here is my experience: For the last 4 years I have been emailing a newsletter quarterly to about 1200 people (all of whom know me and have given me their permission).
The bottom line is only 1 in 4 of them even open the email and only 1 in 20 read it with enough concentration to actually click on a link. Over this same period my blog has generated numerous business opportunities but my email newsletters have really generated almost nothing as far as I can see.
So I am not saying that email management definitely wont work for you - it might - but it did not do much for me and so I stopped doing it! If you really want to give it a go and are looking for a good free tool (not just a tool that allows a free trial) then consider mailchimp (free up to 500 contacts) or emailmarketingpro.
STEP 7. Incorporate the moving image - Online Video Sharing
Don't restrict yourself to the written word - exploit all forms of multimedia - particularly the video channel.
Once you have a video you can host it on Youtube (if its less than ten minutes long) or some of the other excellent video sharing sites such as Vimeo (which allows longer videos).
There are at least 3 ways you can create videos for your blog:
1. Create videos from your Powerpoints (or Apple Keynotes)
Anytime you do a presentation think "Can I adapt this and reuse it on my blog?" For example, you can put powerpoint presentations online with Google Docs or you can convert animated powerpoints into flash videos (e.g. with a great free flash tool ispring). Apple Keynote already has it own built in option for creating Flash videos. Here is an example of a flash video generated from powerpoint.
You can also narrate over a presentation within powerpoint quite easily. If you are doing a lot of voiceovers consider using a professional voiceover artist - they are not free but if you want to show up as really professional they are well worth it. Here is an example of an excellent UK voiceover artist I used to narrate a flash video )
2. Create your own original short videos
You can also make your own "proper" short videos over the web. For example, you can do a video interview with an international expert if you can get them on Skype using the Pamela add-on. If you absolutely must you can talk to your own web cam and record a short video however its much much better if you know somebody with video skills who can record and edit you. Its amazing what you can do with a little help from your friends.
3. Cheat - Use Other peoples videos
There are a wealth of good short videos out there on Youtube (amidst millions of rubbish videos too ) - you can use these to add value to your blog. Make sure you acknowledge the owner and respect any copyright. For example, my most visited pages are not my serious articles but the third-party 2-minute comedy videos each of which highlight some different aspect of collaboration. Here is one people love - For The Birds.
STEP 8. Finally ....don't forget online surveys
These can be embedded in blogs (or emails) and lead to two-way engagement with the added benefit of creating valuable material in the form of consolidated results which you can also offer to share the with your readers. Probably the best tool by a mile is SurveyMonkey which is free at entry level.
Summary
There are many excellent free online tools you can use to build a professional Transmitter as a key component of your own unique Business Development System. Here are a list of all the tools I have mentioned in this article:Blog:
Typepad
Word Press
Blogger
Blogging Assistants
Zemanta
Apture
Graphics Designers:
elance
Analytics:
google analytics
Social Media:
ning
Email Management Systems
mailchimp
emarketingpro
Aggregator:
ping.fm
hello.txt
imautomator
Videos:
youtube
vimeo
google docs
pamela (skype)
Online Surveys
surveymonkey
Video Conferencing
skype
gtalk
Blog Ping services
http://pingomatic.com/ (sends multiple pings)
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx
http://ping.feedburner.com/
To take your Transmitter to the next level read the The Transmitter (Advanced) or find out about the Walkie-Talkie (Basic).
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