Blogging For Your Business - Workshop - June 27
11 Jun
Posted by elemental as Marketing Tips, web 2.0 tools
“Blogging For Your Business” Workshop – Beginner Level
“It was easy to feel overwhelmed by the big, bad world of bloggers. Lucy demystified it all and I’m now addicted to my blog! Thanks, Lucy!” - Andrea, Boli Bling Designs, LittleDesignerBook.com
If you would like to use a blog to enhance your business but aren’t sure where to start, I will show you how to do it from the ground up.
This workshop will show you everything you need to know in order to set up a blog, maximize both SEO (search engine optimization) and branding potential, and the basics of using your blog as a marketing tool. If plugins, widgets and RSS are alien concepts to you, I will enlighten you, demystify the process and give you the confidence to take control of your web presence.
Attend the next workshop on June 27th, to learn in a comfortable, friendly environment, and network with other budding bloggers. There are a limited number of spaces available, so it’s necessary to register below to confirm your place.
Topics to be covered:
- How a blog can help your business
- How to install and set up a blog (using the Wordpress platform)
- How to use Wordpress and it’s features
- How to install key plug-ins
- The do’s and don’ts of blogging
- Marketing and attracting traffic to your blog
- Becoming a ‘blogger’ - integrating blogging into your business routine
- I also provide post-workshop support to help you implement what you have learned.
The next workshop will take place:
June 27th from 1-3:30pm in West Los Angeles (full location information provided upon registration)
The fee is $45 per person.
Non-profits get a $10 discount!
Email me at: lucy@elemental-consulting.com with questions, for more info or to claim your non-profit discount code.
Register now and secure your place. Click below to use either Google Checkout or Paypal to make your payment. When payment has been received you will be sent a confirmation email.
Or you can use Paypal
I also provide 1-on-1 services, and consulting services for existing businesses looking to maximize their web presence.
“Lucy helped us update our blog by providing our team with best practices and areas for improvement. We’ve seen increased traffic and greater customer engagement since we implemented her suggestions. Lucy is very friendly, and a great teacher- we appreciated her approach and expertise.” Deborah, MyCorporation
It can be daunting process to start a blog from scratch so here’s a few tips that might help.
1) Just Do It! Take A Small Step, Any Step!
Starting is the hardest thing, but once you’ve taken that first step, it will become easier. It’s easy to come up with a laundry list of reasons why not to do something – I don’t have time, I need to redesign my site first etc etc. In reality however the most important thing to do if you are new to blogging is simply to BLOG and start building up your stash of content. Ultimately the more content you have the better, so start NOW with your first post.
2) Keep It Simple
Don’t worry about tricking out your blog with every little widget right off the bat. You can figure that out in time. Start out by just getting some posts up – short and sweet will do the trick. All the widgets in the world aren’t going to help if there’s no content.
3) Don’t Let Perfect Be the Enemy of Good.
I stole that concept from The Happiness Project but it works for blogging. Your writing style and voice will develop over time so don’t expect it to be perfect right away. This is YOUR blog – not a national newspaper so as long as you have something of interest to share, don’t worry about sounding like a Pulitzer prize winner. Allow yourself the luxury of practice – write some posts and the more you do it, the more comfortable you will get with the process. Get into the feel of writing and allow your own style to develop.
4) Get Into a Routine.
This is necessary advice when trying to develop any new habit – essentially this is what blogging is. Try and carve out certain times during the day and week that you will reserve for blogging -30 minutes here and there, or whatever you can manage. If you leave blogging to the end of your already full to-do list, chances are you will never get to it. So make it a priority and make an appointment with yourself. Set yourself realistic goals – one post a week, for example – a goal that will motivate you without overwhelming you.
5) Who Do You Want to Come to Your Site?
This is one of the central questions that you should keep in mind when blogging. Who is your audience? Oftentimes your audience can be broken down into several different categories or segments, each with a varying profile of interests. Sometimes when you are stuck for an idea, it can be helpful to re-visit your list, pick one of these segments and think about something that would be interesting or of value to them that could be turned into a blog post.
6) Anything Can Be a Blog Post!
Don’t psych yourself out thinking you have to write an essay each time. Sometimes it’s ok to do something easy like posting pictures of yourself at an event, pictures of people using/wearing your product, a blurb about another website that you find useful or interesting etc. Any number of things can be short effective blog posts. Surf around other blogs you like in your niche and get some ideas and inspiration. Think about what you would like to share, or something you as a reader would find interesting. It could be directly related to your product, or perhaps it’s a news item related to your industry, or just a funny thing that happened on your way to the trade fair. The possibilities are endless once you start thinking like a blogger. You can also join in the conversation of hot topics of the moment, whether it’s current affairs or something related to your industry. Bloggers often like to give their opinion, and people like to read that. So see what others are talking about and join in the dialog by posting your own thoughts. You can reference or quote other bloggers if appropriate (always give credit with a link).
7) Think Outside the Box
This seems like stereotypical advice, but sometimes it’s easy to not see the forest for the trees. It’s easy to get stuck in the rut of thinking only about the product you are trying to sell. But the good thing about a blog is that it gives you the chance to expand beyond your field and this will ultimately be good for search rankings. So instead of racking your brain trying to come up with a new way to talk about your product – let your imagination expand a little. Your main website is where the hard sell happens – your blog is where you get to express yourself and different aspects of your personality and business. Chances are, you are a good example of your target audience so think about the types of things you like to read on other blogs. If you happen to have a real flair for writing and have a distinct voice – perhaps you are funny, or have sharp insights on current affairs – these things alone can help you develop a following. Think about people like Perez Hilton and others who have developed audiences simple because they are entertaining – there’s no rocket science going on there!
8) Networking
Ultimately you will want to network with other relevant bloggers by swapping links. But don’t go crazy contacting tons of other bloggers until you have some good posts on your site and a good amount of content. If you request links from bloggers too early, before you have much posted, they may not want to link to you if it doesn’t look like you are regularly updating, or serious about your blog. But do keep a target list, or bookmark sites that you would like to connect with at some point. Also keep in mind that you shouldn’t target the most popular blogs right away because they may not see the value in connecting with a small blog site.
9) Don’t Ever Be Discouraged!
A common mistake of new bloggers is giving up too soon. Don’t assume that you will be an overnight success – this is the exception, not the rule. Give yourself some time to build up some momentum. And enjoy the process of blogging itself. The more you enjoy it, the more you will be motivated to make it a habit.
Your blog is not going to write itself and it only works if you work it. So it will take some effort and in the beginning it can feel like you are talking to yourself . But Rome wasn’t built in a day! You probably won’t get people leaving you comments the first day you launch your blog. But as you start to develop your content and attract visitors, those things will happen. Also, just because people aren’t commenting or emailing you, that doesn’t mean they aren’t reading. After all, how many blogs do you read? And how many have you actually interacted with? Make sure you have a way to track web traffic to your blog so that you have real info about who’s coming to your site and where they are coming from.
But the most important thing is never to give up. Be tenacious and persistent in your blogging practice and it will definitely pay-off.
Why You SHOULD Blog
1) You have a business website that you would like to attract more traffic to.
Blogs are great for attracting more traffic for several reasons including:
- Search engines like regularly updated content. Many business sites are informative but not updated very often so are hard to keep at the top of the rankings, without buying keywords. Blogs can and should be updated on a regular basis with fresh content.
- Bloggers typically link to each other in their ‘blogrolls’ so once you start to exchange links with others, you will start to gain new traffic as your site is exposed to a new audience. Additionally the more inbound links you have (ie other sites linking to you) the more the search engines will like you.
- The variety of content you post on your blog will naturally expand the number of keywords and phrases that will lead people to your site. On a purely informative business site, you don’t always have the opportunity to target keywords outside your direct focus but a blog gives you more range.
2) You would like to give your business a more personal voice and develop a relationship with potential customers.
- A blog is a great way to add to and enhance your brand. It allows you to craft a more personal voice for your company, which is engaging to the reader. If a reader likes what you have to say and reads you on a regular basis they start to trust you. You can’t build that type of dynamic relationship with a static site.
- A blog allows you to share success stories from your customers, and engage with them through comments. Once you’ve built a decent readership a blog can be a great way to do free consumer research – test out product ideas and poll your audience.
3) You would like to establish yourself as an expert in your field.
- These days a lot of information is available for free on the internet – it’s almost expected. So you may as well join the fray and give people a taste of what you are all about and the knowledge that you have.
- A well-written, informative blog may help you to attract the attention of other high profile people in your industry that you may not otherwise have access to.
- You may also be able to pitch yourself as a guest blogger on other popular sites and blogs, further increasing your profile and credibility.
4) You would like the opportunity to network with other people and bloggers in your field or related areas. Being part of the blogging community allows you a way to network with others in a friendly fashion, without having to push a hard sell. It’s easier to make friends with people when you have something to offer (a link exchange, good content), rather than something to sell.
DON’T Blog If…..
1) You really don’t have anything to say. If you’re not inspired about your subject matter or feel that you have nothing to contribute, blogging may not be for you.
2) You think it will be a quick fix. Blogging is not an overnight quick-fix to getting more traffic. It takes a little time to start generating traffic, although once you get going you may see a snowball effect.
3) You’re not in it for the long haul. To really get the most out of having a blog, you will have to spend some time working on it, writing and promoting it. There’s no real way around that, so if you’re not prepared to carve out some time for it, you won’t be maximizing it’s presence.
Veeple - Make Your Videos Interactive - Interview Feature
03 Nov
Posted by elemental as Interview, web 2.0 tools
Veeple is an “interactive video service”. They provide a way for content owners and publishers to monetize their video content, by embedding interactive, clickable elements to your video. So for example you can embed clickable logos and links within your video to send viewers to your website, social network profile, online retailer etc.
This is not another Youtube. Veeple is not a distribution network, but rather a tool to enhance the content that you distribute. Taken from the Veeple site:
Make anything in your video clickable, or add clickable media files, images, relevant icons, MP3 files, and more, creating a powerful interactive experience for your users.
Engage with advertisers and sponsors to pay for interactive links anywhere within your video. Share your interactive video across the internet, driving traffic back to your site or anywhere on the web through your clickable links.
Why You Need A Digital Strategy, Not Just A Marketing Campaign
14 Oct
Posted by elemental as Marketing Tips
The idea for this article would nag at me each time I realized that an artist or label didn’t have any kind of long term digital plan, relegating online matters to the realm of “let’s set up a myspace page” but were banking on their next album to create a big splash. I find that many still aren’t collecting email addresses or doing anything to proactively find and communicate with their fans. There’s also some large corporations I know of whose online activities are less strategic and mostly just chaotic. Artists, (and indeed other businesses and brands) would do better to think of themselves in larger terms and see album releases, not as the be-all and end-all, but as another promotional event within an overall business strategy.
What’s the difference between a strategy and a promotional/marketing campaign?
What I mean by strategy is a long-term vision, plan or direction that you have for your career as an artist, business or brand. It is not only the vision, but the roadmap that helps you plan your course. Your strategy may change over time or adapt to circumstances, but the point is that you are not just blindly plodding along hoping for the best.
In contrast, a marketing campaign is a short/mid term promotional plan, usually around a specific product or event, such as an album release, or a tour. Such a campaign would be one element of your overall strategy.
What I usually find is that a lot of independent artists think that their album marketing campaign IS their strategy. They hire publicists and promoters etc when they have an album coming out and know they need a promotional push, but what’s going on the other 9 or 10 months out of the year that are not part of that new release window? Many times, the answer seems to be, not much.
Why treat yourself as a seasonal business that must hope to make as much as possible from one release? Wouldn’t it be better to develop ways to create residual income with the bonus of spikes around album releases, tours and so forth?
This is where strategy comes into play.
A Musician Speaks Out On The Benefits of P2P
13 Oct
Posted by elemental as Marketing Tips, New Music Business Models
DrownedInSound.com just published a post from a musician explaining in clear detail how P2P, and specifically Mininova has helped him gain access to potential fans. It can be summed up in this sentence:
“In two days more people have been exposed to my music than in the entire previous 12 months.”
While this type of promotion may not be the right choice for every artist, Fakesensations’ story shows that it can be an effective strategy, and more importantly that the option to utilize P2P should be up to the artists, not the major labels, ISPs or anyone else.
So this is definitely the coolest thing I learned this week and I wanted to share it with you because it takes digital marketing to a whole new level!
Yesterday I was coordinating the press preview for Scion’s new exhibit at their Culver City gallery: “Insiders, Outsiders & the Middle” curated by Giant Robot. Space Invader is one of the featured artists. As I watched the artists set up their work and transform the gallery before my eyes, I had the opportunity to chat with Space Invader about one of his pieces. The photo below was taken with my Blackberry Curve, so it’s not the best, but it will do….
So while this is a piece of art, there is very literally a hidden message. This is actually a QR Code/Data Matrix , which is the next generation of barcodes. I believe that QR Code and Data Matrix are 2 versions of the same technology and that the former was developed by a Japanese company and the latter by an American one. They work in the same way but just look a little different. We are all familiar with the black and white vertical lines of a barcode which designate a series of numbers. Well the QR Code, which is already very common in Japan (of course the US is technologically lagging), actually contains real data - words, hyperlinks, contact info, numbers etc. You can scan it with your reader-equipped cell phone and a message will pop up on your screen, or even a hyperlink.
Will Variable Pricing Ruin The Music Industry?
28 Jul
Posted by elemental as Commentary, New Music Business Models
Well, in my opinion it will if the price goes too low.
Ever since iTunes instigated the $0.99 per song model, it has been hotly debated. Some folks think $0.99 is too expensive for a song; others think it is not expensive enough. Still more think that there shouldn’t just be one standard price for tracks; that labels and artists should have more flexibility in pricing so that hot, new items can be priced higher than catalog material, following the pattern in brick and mortar stores. As part of this overall debate, there seems to be emerging what I think is a disturbing trend of wanting the new standard per-track price to be in the region of just $0.25.
I was prompted to write this specific post by what I read in a recent email newsletter from Bob Davis of Soul Patrol. He referred to some comments from Nettwerk Management CEO Terry McBride suggesting that the sweet spot for selling digital tracks is $0.25 and that this is what labels should be selling them for in order to create a ‘tipping point’ for digital music sales. Davis suggested that he felt the same way based on sales of his Virtual Album project where he varied the pricing of the album and found that approx $0.20 was the most popular per-track price.
I definitely agree with the overall concept of having variable pricing available as a digital retail model - the more options for artists, labels and consumers, the better. But I just can’t get my head around the overall goal of making music so ridiculously cheap. Call me old-fashioned but music in digital format has already been greatly devalued in the eyes of the consumer so why perpetuate this devaluation by suggesting that a song is only worth $0.25? Shouldn’t we be doing more to add value, not decrease it?
An article in the new VIBE magazine looks at ways rappers like Crooked I, Mickey Factz and others have been operating outside the label system and using the internet to create demand for themselves. I just read the online excerpt but am curious to check out the full story. For the past 52 weeks, Crooked I has released a new freestyle via the web every Tuesday to create his own buzz. Factz has released numerous mixtapes online in the past couple of years and is now about to have a video on MTV.
So this is proof that the internet can work for some artists, but the common denominator in these, and other examples, is that it didn’t happen overnight. We’re talking months and years of consistent action and online networking in order to create the critical mass of online buzz needed to garner real attention. As I emphasised in my post on common Myths and Mistakes in Online Music Marketing, a digital strategy has to have a short and long term - it’s not a fast-track to instant success and I think this is where a lot of artists go wrong. This applies offline as well, but you have to be in it for the long haul and have a plan that makes best use of the tools available.
Adding Value To Single Songs
15 Jul
Posted by elemental as Commentary, Marketing Tips, New Music Business Models
Even though I’m clearly firmly entrenched in the digital age, I’m still a little old school when it comes to music. What I mean is that while I buy digital music on a regular basis, I still love the idea of CDs- something tangible that gives me more than just the music - liner notes, pictures, lyrics, all the writing/production credits etc. There’s no doubt in my mind that the advent of digital music has devalued music and the consumption of it. Quantity has overtaken quality in many cases - how many free songs can I download, how much can I fit on my iPod, how many new artists can I find today. Nothing inherently wrong with any of that, but it just means that, in these terms, a single, solitary song is seen as disposable and barely worth paying for.
So it made me very happy to see what Lucas Gonze has been working on with his own music. He has created a dedicated page for a song “Frog In The Well” which adds a tremendous amount of context and value. There’s video as well as audio files, blog posts, sheet music, and background info. This is smart from several points of view and I’d love to see more artists doing this:
1) Additional SEO-able content for your site
2) With the addition of comments, you can create community around one song and further engage your audience.
3) Adding all this value for one song adds an additional emotional appeal to your music. Not only can fans see the amount of care and attention that has been invested on the part of the artist but it broadens their experience of the song and their emotional attachment to it.
4) By using a Creative Commons license and encouraging derivations, the life of the song is extended.
These are just some of the benefits of this type of song - enhancement and I look forward to see what Lucas and other artists will continue to do with this type of experiment.
If you are an artist and are doing something similar, or implement a similar method to Lucas, feel free to drop me a line.
Lucas has also taken this concept a step further and published on his blog a manifesto for the song page which includes ideas for structured implementation of this concept. I highly recommend reading this
