Business blogs, podcasts, and RSS are poised to dominate Internet communication for the next half decade or longer. The evidence shows clearly why. It’s because of what a business owner recently in one of our Marketing With Busines Blogs sessions called “the business blogging pardox.” Blogs are not complicated, yet they can accomplish so much for small business owners and professionals.

No magic wand here, and no hype!

Blogs are not the magic wand that many tech gurus and blogging pros tout. But business blogs are an undeniable part of a master marketing formula. And it’s a formula you need to blend yourself if you’re going to master the marketplace of the new millennium.

Whether you realize it or not, elements of blogging are cropping up in nearly every area of marketing, media, and general communication. And the most important reason is because of one key element (what blogs are based on,) — RSS (Real Simple Syndication.)

The solution that binds the marketing formula together

RSS is at the core of podcasts, instant digital distribution, and on-demand media.

• You can use it covertly to monitor your niche, industry, or competitors.
• Use it to stay up to speed filtering an incredible amount of info in a radically shortened timeframe.
• Or out in the open, you can put this core power source of business blogging to work in your marketing, positioning, and promotion.

RSS is something that will exponentially multiply all your online marketing strategies, and many of your offline ones as well. Simplicity is the key.

That’s the beauty of business blogs. You don’t have a lot of moving parts, and what you do have is easy to manage. But the best part is the viral (search engine based and human) multiplication of your efforts.

How digital positioning makes a real world difference

Business blogs, podcasts, and RSS all work together to allow for rapid assimilation and leadership in niche areas of the marketplace. Take Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba for example. These trainers and first time authors took their first book, Creating Customer Evangelists, to levels of national recognition so quickly that they seemed to come from nowhere.

How did this pair of trainers position themselves as first time authors to be crowned the national “go to experts” in their niche by the New York Times and Harvard Business School? (more…)

If you’ve been following along in this series, we’re going to get right to Law #3 from the 12 Laws of Online Marketing with Business Blogs, RSS, and Podcasts. If you missed earlier installments to this 13-part series, you’ll want to go to the Marketing With Business Blogs category to catch all the other laws.

A common question we get from our business coaching clients about business blogs, podcasts, and RSS applications is the ROI (Return on Investment) you can expect. This is a personal question that is unique to your industry and business goals, and it’s one that really requires significant analysis to determine what metrics you’ll even track. But what I can share with you today in Law #3 should be the #1 determining factor in how much time, money, and effort you budget for your business blogging.

Law #3. Know the Lifetime Value of your clients

Lifetime Value (or LTV)… sadly many businesses have no idea what this means. And if they know, they don’t understand how to calculate this crucial figure and how to put it to use to literally squash the competition. While there’s no way for me to effectively show you how to harness the full force of this extraordinary concept in a short article, I can explain lifetime value for you - simply and clearly, and then we’ll relate it to your marketing with business blogs.

Lifetime Value defined by example

LTV is defined as the total dollar amount your average client purchases over the entire period (life) that they’re likely to do business with you.

You can use actual sales figures from past years to arrive at an exact figure, or you can estimate. Either way there are some strategies for making your estimates more accurate, but for the sake of brevity, let me share a quick example using actual historical numbers.

Let’s say that you’ve determined that (more…)

If you’ve been following along in this series, we’re going to jump right into Law #2 from the 12 Laws of Online Marketing with Business Blogs, RSS, and Podcasts.

(If you missed earlier installments to this 13-part series, you’ll want to go back and read part 1 and part 2 to learn some critical requirements for making these laws work in your business.)

Law #2. Your business blogging (and all your online marketing) must start with your USP in mind

Your USP is your “Unique Selling Proposition”. It’s a simple statement of the specific advantages you bring to your clients. It’s a clear statement of what sets you apart from your competitors. Whether communicating online or off-line with your target audience, your USP must be at the core of the conversation. And, in keeping with the first Law of Marketing with Business Blogs, your USP must always be centered on your clients

Your USP woos your target audience

Your USP is a concise, benefit focused, and easy to understand statement. A good USP will be between seven and 18 words. The main purpose of your USP is to answer the question “why should I do business with you instead of your competitor?”

A classic example of a nearly flawless USP is (more…)

If you missed the introduction to this 13-part series, you’ll want to go back and read part 1 now to learn some critical requirements for making these laws work in your business. If you’re following along in this series, let’s jump right into the first of the 12 Laws of Online Marketing with Business Blogs, RSS, and Podcasts.

Law #1. All of your business, all of your online marketing, and all of your profits depend on your clients.

While this may seem obvious, if you consider the failure rate of businesses today, and the number of owners who are suffering with sub-par results of their online and off-line marketing — the only thing that is obvious is that most small business owners and professionals don’t really understand this law.

The true function of any successful business is to connect people with solutions to their wants, needs, and wishes. To put it bluntly – the people in your target audience don’t give a rip about you or your business. They shouldn’t be asked to. All they care about is (more…)

As I was catching up on some reading/research this weekend I came across an interesting story of how McDonalds is starting to employ business blogs inside the mega-corporation. There’s no plans to start marketing with business blogs anytime soon — but when a corporate giant like this starts to incorporate the technology, you can bet there’s some serious research that is backing their moves.

Kevin Newcomb in a recent article sheds some light on the moves McDonalds is making in response to today’s online marketplace. The company is apparently slipping slowly into the waters of the blogosphere by starting with internal blogs (behind their firewall.) Their first moves are intended to help improve internal communications and stem the tide of management “surprises” and misunderstandings.

But it looks like McDonalds will quickly move to external blogs for marketing, PR and customer relations. Here’s a quote by Steve Wilson (senior director of global Web communications for McDonalds) that caught my attention:

“We showed them that there were already members of our crews blogging, operators blogging, and customers blogging,” Wilson said. He then showed the executives results of a blog search that found 675,000 entries by McDonalds employees, franchisees, or customers talking about McDonalds in one 90-day period. “That got their attention very quickly,” he added.

Clearly the ease of blogging, the viral nature of the blogosphere, and the increased weighting of blog posts by search engines has had a direct impact on the McDonalds name — good or bad — without any attention from the company. McDonalds cannot afford to ignore the World Live Web. It’s only a matter of time before the company starts to develop a marketing strategy using business blogs.

More momentum behind business blogging

This is just another news story in a long line up, about big money being put behind efforts to “catch up” with the blogosphere. When huge publicly traded corporations get involved in business blogging (internally and externally) it’s clear that they have significant market research to justify these moves to shareholders. As we’ve talked about before on our Marketing With Business Blogs coaching calls, this is just another indication that blogging has moved beyond (more…)

Yesterday I wrote a thorough review of Google’s new blog specific search engine (http://blogsearch.google.com) and discussed it’s long-term impact on your marketing. I mentioned the impact this would have on the marketplace, but I didn’t have the room to expand on that.

Here’s why — if you’re a business owner serious about marketing with business blogs, podcasts, and RSS (and making them a permanent arm of your marketing plan) — you MUST appreciate the underlying market shift that this event shines a big fat spotlight on.

The launch of Google’s blog specific search engine is a long-anticipated development that’s expected to help propel blogging into the cultural mainstream. Over the past year or two blogs have gained more and more press. Initially noted for the ease at the average person with little/no technical knowledge could share opinions and information, the blogosphere now wields substantial power in the online world.

This is the same power that is allowing the blogosphere to break news before mainstream media. It’s the power that has allowed bloggers (highly educated people) to hold the mainstream media in check with something they sometimes conveniently forget — the facts. And it’s the same power small business owners can put to use in their marketing and relationship building with consumers.

Business blogging has now turned into a powerful marketing arm of small and large businesses alike. And podcasting along and RSS are not far behind in their ability to multiply your marketing efforts.

What we’ve been saying for over a year now here and on the Business Owner’s Blog is now just coming into reality. Business blogging allows the average small business owner to compete in the marketplace of the new millennium with corporate players on a level playing field. Mainly because business blogging allows marketers to put word-of-mouth on multi-media steroids.

There are a number of other indicators reinforcing what I’m laying out here, not the least of which is the documented growth and adoption curve proved out in every major technological and market advancement.

The five stages of market adoption

On the graph below you see the five stages of adoption and the related growth of a market related to that technology. It starts with the Innovators, moving to the Visionaries, then the Early Majority and Late Majority, and finally the Laggards. You can see how blogging is positioned to take off in the next 6-months or so, with podcasting and a full acceptance/integration of RSS into the daily lives of consumer not far behind.

As a proactive business owner interested in maximizing your marketing, you can’t afford to wait much longer.

You’re either going to make it easy on yourself and learn how to communicate with your target audience, market effectively with business blogs — or you’re going to be spending a lot of time, money, and effort trying to catch up to your competitors.

A few weeks ago Duncan Riley did an excellent job of analyzing the technology curve shown here in vivid and explanatory article over at Blog Herald. As Duncan lays out clearly in some cleverly crafted language — blogging is leaving the hands of “geeks” and “extroverts” (those who have a strong need to be heard) — and is now moving into mainstream.

And more recently respected business blogging expert Paul Chaney stated on his blog that the reason he was given for a Blogging For Dummies book not being released sooner was that it would be ahead of it’s time. Well that time has come. Paul states on his blog:

Wiley has now published Blogging for Dummies, authored by Brad Hill.

It was bound to happen. In fact, almost a year ago I asked Wiley why they had not done a blogging dummies book and was told it didn’t have enough audience appeal at that time. Now, it does.

Just two more examples to show that the marketplace is shifting and blogging is reaching more into the mainstream.

That means three important changes are going to take place in the next 6-9 months.

1. More “average” consumers will understand and be using blogs — to communicate, to get educated about options, and to find information.

2. More and more people will be searching specifically within the blogosphere for the most up to date info.

3. The mindset of the market will begin to shift once the first two changes get rolling. And that mindset shift will mean the average consumer will be looking for information, education, or exposure to your personality that you provide on YOUR business blog. And if it’s not there, your competitor who knows how to wield the full communication and marketing power of business blogs, podcasts, and RSS will hold a BIG advantage over you.

Business blogging is not a replacement for any other arm of your marketing plan. It’s only an extension and modification of those arms (as bionic as it may be.) Developing a solid business blogging strategy is quickly becoming less of a choice and more a requirement. Start generating some ideas for incorporating business blogging into your overall marketing strategy with the FREE e book “21 Ways To Boost Your Business With Business Blogs” which you can download from the upper left column of this blog.

Learn how to unleash the maximum marketing power of business blogs, podcasts, and RSS (in any industry, profession, or niche) with Marketing With Business Blogs.

John-Paul Micek is a published author and weekly columnist for the business section of the Honolulu Star Bulletin. He’s known as the “Click-and-Mortar Business Coach” by business owners around the world thanks to members of the Business Owners Coaching Club™.


The © Copyright to all audio, video, images, and text are held by RPM Success Group Inc.® and licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Blog For Relief Update 09/06/05:

The weekend’s Blog for Relief fundraiser effort is officially over. With over $1.25 M in donations logged, it was a great success! Here at the Business Owner’s Blog we had $600 more donated by business owners and members of BusinessOwnersCoachingClub.com, even though it was a holiday weekend. With our matching donation to of $600 that makes the total for the weekend $1,200.

The grand total of donations from readers of the Business Owner’s Blog was $13,700 including our Business Blog For Relief Day $1,000 Challenge on September 1. THANK YOU all you business owners who took action quickly and donated.

Check out the full details over at the Business Owners Blog.

Learn how to unleash the maximum marketing power of business blogs, podcasts, and RSS (in any industry, profession, or niche) with Marketing With Business Blogs.

John-Paul Micek is a published author and weekly columnist for the business section of the Honolulu Star Bulletin. He’s known as the “Click-and-Mortar Business Coach” by business owners around the world thanks to members of the Business Owners Coaching Club™.


The © Copyright to all audio, video, images, and text are held by RPM Success Group Inc.® and licensed under a Creative Commons License.

September 1, 2005 bloggers of all types and stripes joined together to participate in Blog for Relief Day. This was one 24-hour period where the purpose was to catalyze an outpouring of donations for relief of victims of hurricane Katrina.

The idea was initially floated by Hugh Hewitt on his blog Sept. 30. Glenn Reynolds from instapundit.com was quick to pick up the idea and suggest September 1 as the day. N.Z. Bear over at truthlaidbear.com quickly jumped into action and built a special area of his site for bloggers the post what they were donating, to whom, and how much.

As word quickly spread throughout the blogosphere, Deborah and I decided to get creative and try to catalyze some action from our business coaching clients and business owners who read our blogs. So we issued $1000 matching challenge on biz-ownersblog.com on the afternoon of the 31st.

We had hoped to get at least $1000 in donations that we could match — but what happened in less than 24 hours blew us away. Including our matching funds we received proof of over $12,500 in donations by 11:59 p.m. September 1.

The total tracked over at truthlaidbear.com was approaching $350,000 at that same time. And with momentum just starting to build, Blog For Relief Day has now turned into Blog for Relief Weekend (Sept 3 – Sept. 5.) The goal is to get international bloggers and corporations to participate to multiply those donations exponentially.

This is how the blogosphere works.

Fast, fluid, viral, and completely in control of the citizens in the marketplace. Bloggers not only keep the mainstream media in check, uncover facts others ignore, and inform readers in real-time. They also act as a cohesive whole to quickly transform digital communication into tangible support for people in need.

In the midst of chaos and calamity being shown on cable news, there’s an untold story going on. A story that consumers of mainstream media still aren’t aware of. It’s a story of Americans helping Americans in a time of need. It’s the story of people taking action, not just talking about affixing blame.

With no direction, no government assistance, and no political leadership blogs like Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog and Metro-Blogging New Orleans sprang into action using digital word-of-mouth to hit the ground at the same time the first rescue started taking place.

Small, local organizations who can act quickly and decisively are getting support so they can reach their full potential and help people immediately. Churches like Canal Street Presbyterian Church right smack in the middle of the city of New Orleans. And organizations like Soldiers Angels which started a special effort to help the families of Louisiana National Guard who are deployed in Iraq.

The new world were word-of-mouth is put on multimedia steroids is here. Climb on board to help, step aside, or prepared to get bowled over.

Learn how to unleash the maximum marketing power of business blogs, podcasts, and RSS (in any industry, profession, or niche) with Marketing With Business Blogs.

John-Paul Micek is a published author and weekly columnist for the business section of the Honolulu Star Bulletin. He’s known as the “Click-and-Mortar Business Coach” by business owners around the world thanks to members of the Business Owners Coaching Club™.


The © Copyright to all audio, video, images, and text are held by RPM Success Group Inc.® and licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Have you ever wished you could quickly and painlessly transform all that great content on your business blog into a book? Think of the possibilities!

• A free book that you distribute to your current clients, customers, or prospects to boost your credibility and positioning as a respected authority.
• An orientation overview for new clients when they come on board.
• A book that you sell for general exposure, niche positioning, or for pure profit!

Well now there’s an elegant solution that will help you quickly meet these goals and more. It’s called Blogbinders And this could be the tool you’ve been looking for to transform your strategically structured and well crafted business blog to book and make it a major component of your marketing.

So how does Blogbinder work?

The folks over at Blogbinders have done a terrific job in creating an easy to use, intuitive interface for busy business owners running popular business blogs. In six simple steps you can (more…)

Two weeks ago I wrote a review of Rush Limbaugh’s new podcast service and highlighted how with one fell swoop several hundred thousand Rush 24/7 subscribers instantly became podcast subscribers. No matter what your political views — it’s a pretty powerful (and exciting) act when 22 million people get exposed to and educated about podcasting, especially when it happens in a highly sought after high-end demographic like Rush’s audience.

Well, as I was perusing some recent news over at wired.com, I came across some trends beginning to surface with traditional radio stations in relation to podcasting. For instance:

• San Diego station KFMB-FM/100.7 Jack — that’s the same format that derailed oldies stations in NYC and Chicago earlier this month — is charging $4.95 a month for podcasts of the morning show.
• KCRW-FM, an LA public radio station, has scored underwriting from local Lexus dealers for its 22 podcasts.
• Podcasts of WNYC’s “On The Media” are being downloaded 15,000 to 18,000 times a week. “We’ve already been migrating to a digital environment, so (the cost) is really negligible,” Phil Redo, VP-station operations and strategy, told Wired News.

You can read more on traditional radio entering the podcast arena over at wired.com.

I have to tell you that news like this is really exciting! It reinforces our coaching focus with clients over here at RPM Success Group inc. — and we’re really excited for small and mid-size business owners because of the power that lays in a carefully crafted synergy between business blogging, business podcasts, and v-blogging (video delivered via blog and pushed via RSS.)

The rate of growth for podcasting continues to outpace any other trend on the internet (including blogs) because of the inherent flexibility of content consumption. Finally there is freedom from the desktop, and a viable alternative to traditional and even XM radio(define)!

Stay tuned for more info, education, and coaching on these exciting channels so you can learn to boost your business growth with an intravenous feeding tube of multi-media steroids.
________________________

John-Paul Micek is a contributing partner in the only multi-media course that truly coaches business owners how to integrate business blogging for more traffic, more clients, and more profits — How to Master Business Blogging.

He’s a weekly columnist for the business section of the Honoulu Star Bulletin. He’s known as the “Click-and-Mortar Business Coach” by by business owners around the world thanks to members of the Business Owners Coaching Club.


The © Copyright to all audio, video, images, and text are held by RPM Success Group Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons License.