Marketing Roadmaps

Susan Getgood

Promoting your blog: Advice for new bloggers from another new blogger

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As a relative newcomer to the blogosphere (since last November), I’ve had to figure out how to promote my blog in what has become a relatively crowded space: marketing-related blogs. Just as in the early days of blogs, when every blog could list every other blog on its blogroll (source: Rebecca Blood’s book), in the not so distant past, a marketing blogger could know all the other marketing bloggers. The numbers were manageable. Not so anymore.

As Jennifer Rice writes in a post about her link policy and building traffic:

"There are a lot of well-written blogs with decent content that I probably won’t add to my blogroll. No offense, but there are too many blogs out there right now and I don’t want a blogroll that’s 10 miles long. At this point, I’m only adding blogs that are really original. They’ve got a viral component. They either have unique content (tough to do) or they’re talking about it in a fresh and different way. They inspire me to look at the world through a new lens."

So, as a newbie, you REALLY have to get it out of your head that getting on some other blog’s blogroll is going to be what gets the word out about your wonderful blog.

For two reasons. First, it is harder than it used to be (and I expect this is true for most subjects, not just marketing). With the proliferation of choices, people just aren’t going to put every site they might read on their blogroll. The other reason the blogroll doesn’t work is that I just don’t think people are as drawn to the blogroll lists as they are to the actual content of the blog. Just being on the list does not give a reader ANY reason to click over to you. Plus, as more and more people read blogs in RSS aggregators, they aren’t even SEEING the blogroll, unless they link over to the site.

So what does work? You’ll read the answer in a lot of places: Read other blogs and Comment, and Write compelling posts and Trackback.

Okay. But what does that really mean? When should you comment?  When should you send a trackback, and when SHOULDN’T you send a trackback?

I’ve formulated my own policy, and to help other newbies, I decided to share it. Caveat emptor: YMMV (your mileage may vary) but I don’t think I’ve pissed anyone off, I’ve gotten some good feedback and my traffic is going up, so here it is.

  1. I read lots of blogs. Not as many as some, but a good cross-section of my areas of interests and a couple of linkblogs.
  2. When I read something interesting on a blog, and feel I have something to add, but do NOT intend to write about it in my own blog, I leave a comment. If someone links out to me, and their post has something I’d like to comment on, I leave the comment in their blog.
  3. If I write about the topic, and reference another blogger’s post(s), I send a trackback, but ONLY when I add my own thoughts to the topic, as I am doing now.
  4. Once in a while, I will leave a comment, and also write a longer post and send the trackback, but I don’t do both too too often. Usually it’s when I’d like to comment and am not sure when I am going to get around to writing about the topic myself.
  5. If I am simply including the other post in a list of interesting links, which I do quite often, I rarely send a trackback. Why? Because I am including the link for the convenience of my readers, and sometimes myself. If it is something interesting that I may want later, it is easier to have it in my blog than in my Favorites list. Sending a trackback to the original author just seems too promotional. Occasionally I’ll send a private e-mail under these circumstances.
  6. I try to send a thank you e-mail for every link out that I get. I check Technorati and other search engines daily to see if my posts are being linked to by others without trackbacks. I may miss one now and again, but I think I get most of them.
  7. I send a thank you e-mail to every reader who leaves a comment or sends me an e-mail.
  8. Last but most definitely not least, I try to write good posts that people will want to read and link to. I re-read my posts many times before they go up. If I think something has turned out crap, even if I spent a long time on it, I don’t post it.

Here are some of my other recent posts in this vein. They have links to some great resources.

GOP on FEC: Regulate Blogs?

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From Marketing VOX today, Republicans on FEC: Blogs May Be Regulated

I fully support the need for campaign finance reform — the whole situation has become just nuts. But it is a slippery slope (of BS) when you say, as GOP Commissioner Smith did to Cnet:

"We’re talking about any decision by an individual to put a link on their home page, set up a blog, send out mass emails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet." 

In other words, even if you aren’t actually raising or donating money, the actions you take on your blog might be considered a contribution.

That’s crap, and pretty ridiculous, given this little thing we have called here in the USA called the First Amendment to the Constitution. It will be interesting to see if the GOP really pushes this issue or not…

Mid-Week Link Soup

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Guaranteed to be tasty!

From BL Ochman: How to Set a Corporate Blogging Policy  Links to great article from down-under about the corporate blogging phenomenon. Her what’s next blog is a great source of information about corporate blogging.

From Dan Gillmor, and also Steve Rubel, news of the Citizen Journalist Starter Pack. Posted in other places as well I am sure. I have nothing new to add to what already has been said, other than it is really funny, and I wanted my most loyal reader (my mom) to see it!

I don’t tend to comment too much on tech issues, although I do follow them. For example, the recent “discussions” about the Google toolbar. Others who focus on the search space have been far more articulate than I could ever hope to be. Here’s the exception: you have to check out the Dougal Evil Toolbar, which I found on Threadwatch.

For non-techies, Dougal is such a crystal clear way of showing just how evil manipulating search results could be….

If you want to follow the search engine wars, you should check out Threadwatch.

Leads. leads, leads

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Earlier today, I was working on another post (ie not this one). I spent a bit of time on getting my words just right and so on. It was getting kind of long, so I re-read the post to do some editing. And realized that after a number of paragraphs, I hadn’t gotten to the point, and even worse, it was just ****ing boring. I had shed no new light on my subject, and my post bored me. I can only imagine how dreadfully dull all of you would have found it.

So, you are spared my boring post.

Instead I am going to write about leads! Over the past couple of weeks, a few of my favorite sales/marketing bloggers have written some thoughtful posts about leads. Here’s a sampling:

You know you’ve read a good post when it REALLY gets you thinking, and these three posts, well, they led to this post 🙂

Leads are the lifeblood of every business, and the source of more misunderstandings, confusion and strife between sales and marketing teams than just about ANY OTHER issue in the business. And the sad truth is, all it takes to avoid the battles is a well thought out integrated lead program. So why don’t more companies do this? Quite a while ago, I suggested some reasons why this is so, and promised to go into more detail in a follow-up post.

Well, two months later, here we are. As clearly as I can, without a whiteboard and visual aids, I am going to give you a model for lead rating and nurturing that delivers the filtered leads (without the crap) that Brian and Dana referred to in their posts. And will end the sales/marketing war….

First Step: Definitions and Responsibilities.  It is marketing’s job to identify, qualify and nurture sales prospects to the point where the prospect becomes a sales lead. Sales then takes over and is responsible for converting the lead into a sale. So you say! Seems simple, how come we have so much confusion?

Diagnosis:

  • We don’t have a clear, unambiguous, agreed definition of PROSPECT and LEAD.
  • We don’t have a clearly defined "hand-off" point. Things shift around depending on how busy the sales team is or how much budget is available for telemarketing this quarter.
  • We don’t have a clear, tested process for nurturing leads, from mild interest to avid adopter. So, it is feast or famine for the sales team, depending on how well a particular lead gen program did this week in generating folks that are ready to buy.

Second Step: Stop doing all that bad stuff in my diagnosis. Instead:

  1. Implement a lead rating system. Your sales and marketing teams KNOW how to define a qualified lead and a qualified prospect. Put them together and have them develop a lead rating system that can be applied to all incoming prospects. The lead rating should be based on three basic parameters, although it may require more than three questions to accurately define this for your business.

    Some people like the MAN model, Money – Authority – Need. I prefer Budget – Timeframe – Decisionmaker (Need is assumed by the fact that the prospect responded to an offer, and the more important dimension to surface is the Timeframe of the purchase.) 

    But it doesn’t matter which of these you prefer – pick one and develop the lead rating questions for your business that will let you classify your prospects appropriately.

  2. Build a mathematical model that classifies leads as A, B, C and D based on your important parameters. Using my preferred Budget, Timeframe, Decisionmaker model, A leads are the hot leads, with budget, immediate timeframe, and the prospect is the decisionmaker. B leads typically have a longer timeframe.

    C and D are prospects — they typically are missing some key ingredient in the mix, or have a much longer timeframe. And they shouldn’t go to your sales people. Cs and Ds should be nurtured in marketing.

    There is a lot of detail in this process, more than I want to go into here. If you are interested, please feel free to drop me an e-mail at sgetgood@getgood.com. I’d love to talk leads with you.

  3. Use your model to assign A and B leads to sales people, and C and D prospects to marketing. Sales focuses on converting hot lead to sales and marketing works on nurturing longer term prospects into leads.

Step Three: Nurture prospects. This is where companies usually miss. They may do the work of classifying leads, but they don’t assign the responsibilities appropriately. Everything goes to sales, even the folks who aren’t ready to buy. Somehow, the company imagines that all the prospect needs is to talk to our excellent sales reps and they’ll cut the PO. Wrong. In fact, it may do more damage to put a prospect in the sales queue. If all you want is to start the conversation, you really don’t want someone trying to close you.

Depending on your product set, you could have a simple or complex lead nurturing process. The key: make sure your prospect is engaged by, and engaging with, the appropriate folks in your sales/marketing team at the appropriate points in the sales cycle.

Leads to sales, prospects to marketing, clear definitions, and a clear handoff point.

Much better than bitching about lead quality or bad conversion rates, isn’t it?