Attributes such as:

• Targeting, attracting, and making yourself heard with an audience interested in a specific topic
• Making connections and sharing information with readers, followers and other bloggers
• Establishing your credibility and authority on a topic
• Attracting links that increase search engine results
• Segueing visitors to your website
• Track-ability (you can track subscriptions, comments, inbound links and  search engine results; and, since it is a website you can use web analytics to measure visitor traffic and on-site behavior)

To take advantage of its attributes and realize these objectives, your blog needs to meet some basic content criteria and incorporate certain “structural” elements.

Content criteria include:

• A topic that is related to your business and contains information that is useful, interesting and timely
• Use of an appropriate name related to your topic
• Content that is well written and easy to read
• Content that stimulates thought and encourages discussion
• Maintenance of a regular publishing frequency interval (e.g. – 1 post per week or every other week)

Additionally, one should leave thoughtful comments on related blogs (to make connections with other bloggers and attract links to your blog).

Structural elements that aid success include:

• Use of a search engine friendly blogging platform such as WordPress or TypePad
• Having the blog under your business’ domain name (url) to build equity in something you own, and to generate increased search engine traffic to your website
• Incorporating important keywords in the blog post title and body content
• Use of both RSS feed and email subscription options
• Options to share with others via email or by posting on various social media networks
• Utilization of categories and tags so that specific posts can be easily searched and located
• Linking to appropriate parts of your website

HubSpot (a marketing services provider) conducted a survey of 1,531 of its customers (mostly small and medium-sized businesses), comparing those that blogged with those that didn’t.  They found that, on average, the companies that blogged received:

• 55% more visitors*
• 97% more inbound links
• 434% more search engine indexed pages

*I have a client whose blog is generating more than a 100% increase in visitors to their website.

Results of the study are available at Hubspot

I think you will agree that these kinds of results clearly demonstrate a blog’s ability to produce online synergy.

In our next post we will examine social media characteristics and how they can also contribute to producing online synergy.

Stay tuned….

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1. Creating  a list of specific marketing objectives for your business.
2. Identifying the audience(s) you are trying to reach and developing audience profiles.
3. Segmenting these audiences into separate homogeneous groups you can target, using images and language they will relate to.

In this post, let’s look at your website and some of the ways its performance can be measured.  I like to think of a website as your “long-form” infomercial – designed to persuade people and get them to act.  To be effective in this role, an effective website needs to get visiting prospects to say:

1. I’m in the right place (visitor self-identification using images and language that relate to their interests or needs)
2. They appear to understand my needs
3. They tell me how they work with clients like me (the process and/or methods they apply in working to resolve a client’s needs)
4. They offer proof that that their services/products work by providing concrete examples
5. They provide a reason to act

(Note: If you are selling products you can substitute product performance measures for processes and methods in item # 3 above.)

Assuming your website has been designed with these elements in mind, you will want to find out how well it is working and what can be done to improve or fine tune performance (i.e. measure results, make any needed adjustments, measure again, and so on).  Some obvious results might include the number and quality of leads received, subscription or information requests, sales or conversions.  For less obvious measures of performance, you will need to get visitor feedback (if possible) and use web analytics to uncover problems or roadblocks in the site that may not be readily evident.

An example of using web analytics to uncover problems follows.  When visitors arrive at your site, you can visualize their behavior on that page by examining what, and how often, they are clicking on (click patterns).  This will indicate which links are capturing their attention and interest on that page.  If they click on a link, it suggests that they are going someplace that addresses those interests or needs.  We can get a good measure of how well the page they arrive at performs by looking at the exit rate (% of visitors leaving the site after viewing that page).  Or, if they enter the site by landing on a page after doing a search on Google related to a specific need, we can measure the bounce rate (% of visitors leaving the site after viewing that page).  A high exit or bounce rate may indicate a problem with the page, and suggest a need to make some adjustments in the layout and/or copy.  If you are selling products, you will also be able to measure the ability of that page to contribute to sales using a $ index.   Once you have a clear sense of what’s going on, you can make and test adjustments designed to improve performance for each step in the process. The diagram below is an example of a Google Analytics page showing bounce and exit rates along with other content analysis measurements.

Google Analytics - Content Analysis Example

In the next post we will examine the characteristics of a blog and the role it plays in the process of producing online synergy.

Stay tuned….

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So, how do you put together a combination that generates synergy for your online marketing?   We start with three initial steps.

1. Listing your specific objectives
2. Identifying the audience(s) you trying are to reach and developing profiles based on their demographic attributes along with their interests, connections, activities and the language they use.
3. Segmenting these audiences into homogeneous groupings you can target

For Step 1, let’s look at a list of typical objectives which you can choose from or add to in preparing a list specific to your business:

• Generating new leads
• Making new business connections
• Getting customer/client feedback
• Deepening existing business relationships
• Making online sales – conversions
• Improving website search engine results
• Increasing marketplace visibility
• Establishing authority in your area of expertise

In Step 2 we want to clearly identify the audiences we are trying to reach.  For example, let’s say that we are looking to reach affluent, well educated professionals who either own or work within a small business environment and live in a specific SMSA (standard metropolitan statistical area).

If we already serve this group, we can start by examining existing or recent customer profiles. We may already have a good demographic profile, know how they make decisions about purchasing, and perhaps even something about their personal interests.  To develop an even greater understanding of this group (local professionals), we can avail ourselves of some powerful online research tools – local area groups on Linkedin, professional groups on facebook, and other local professionally oriented social media.  By joining and participating, you will have access to detailed professional background information, connections, and interests. You can listen to and follow their conversations to better understand their online behavior.  Further, if you actively participate, you can ask specific questions that relate to the type of services you offer.

Lastly, in Step 3, if you are trying to reach more than one audience you can separate them into homogenous categories based on their specific interests.  The information gathered from your research in Step 2 will allow you to set up and test ways to address each group using pictures and language they relate to.

These steps should help get you started.   In upcoming postings I will discuss the next steps for creating online synergy….stay tuned.

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