Earlier, I got your creative juices flowing (I hope!) with eight ideas for blog posts for your business blog.

But what if you get started on a post and just keep writing … and writing … and writing … ?

That’s when you may want to write a series of posts rather than a single long post.

Ideally, you want your blog posts to be fairly short and to the point.  (These days, I tend to limit mine to about 1,000 words, but that’s a rule of thumb rather than an absolutely non-negotiable limit. Around 300-500 words seems to be a good length.)

So if a topic is more complex than can be covered adequately in, say, 600 or so words, think about breaking the topic up into a series of several posts.  (For an example, see my “Ten Commandments” series.)

Here’s one way to plan a series:

1. Brainstorm your post list. Take your topic and break it out into logical sub-topics.  Use an outline if that works for you.  Then go back and add a one-sentence summary for each major heading.  Now — you have a structure in place.
2. Do rough drafts. You don’t have to draft these in order, nor do you have to finish one article before you start another.  Go ahead and start making notes for each one.  Start writing posts in the middle if you have to.  You can always save the drafts and edit later.
3. Plan your release strategy. You’re probably not going to want to post your entire series at once.  Part of the beauty of setting up a blog is you can embargo posts (that is, schedule the release of your post to your blog for a date and time you choose) within the blog software.  You can schedule post #1 of the series to be available tomorrow, post #2 to be available three days later, etc.  Just choose a post frequency that will suit your readers.
4. Ask for feedback. At the end of every post, invite comments — ask questions, solicit ideas, etc.  You may find that reader comments give you great ideas for revisions to existing posts and/or future posts in the series.
5. Tease and link. Link backward to previous articles in a series, and leave a “teaser” in the end moving people forward to the next post in that series for continuity.  (Here’s a great link on the technical aspects of interlinked series for those using WordPress.)
6. Create a “sneeze” page. If your blogging software supports it, create a static page that links to all the articles in that particular series as a courtesy to readers (and a convenience to you when you want to link to that topic in the future).

Now — start thinking about topics you can build a series on.  What about those “10 questions” topics I referred to in the previous post?

A friend of mine — a consultant — is starting to blog at the behest of her company’s webmaster.  “But I don’t know what to write about,” she said when we had lunch recently.

So, for anyone out there who’s just starting to blog for business and doesn’t know where to start (content-wise), here are a few memory-joggers that’ll get your creative juices flowing:

• Ten questions your customers/clients ask. I’ll bet if you sit down with a pencil and paper for 5 minutes, you can jot down ten questions that you’re always being asked.  Now you’ve got ten 300-500 word blog posts right there.
• Ten questions your customer/client ought to ask. I’ll also bet there are some areas of ignorance that your prospects have that you’d like to clear up.  There’s another ten 300-500 word blog posts.
• Ten myths about your professional area. Granted, there may be a thin line between this one and the one directly above, but surely there are a few persistent myths you’d like to clear up.  Here’s your chance.
• Seasonal issues. Are there any issues you deal with on a seasonal basis?  For instance, tax preparers are always busy giving advice at calendar-year-end and during tax season.  You probably have at least one of those issues as well.
• “I wish you’d talked to me before you did that” moments. These are the forehead-slappers, the “doh” (think Homer Simpson) moments when you want to tell a prospect/customer/client, “If you’d only come to me first — I could have saved you time/money/frustration!”  Jot those down as they happen.
• Editorial commentary. If you keep up with news in your field, either with a tool like Google Reader/Alerts or by trolling various websites and blogs in your professional domain, you’ll probably find items you want to comment on.  Go ahead and link to the source, then comment away.  Your regular readers will probably appreciate the heads-up, and you’ll add to your reputation as a thought leader in your field.
• Case studies. If you’ve been in business any length of time at all, you’ve got some success stories to tell.  Get the subject’s permission, then write up the story of how you solved their problem.
• Product/service reviews. Has someone published a particularly good (or bad) book in your field?  Is there a related service you want your readers to know about?  Review it in your blog.

And if those 8 ideas aren’t enough to get you started, here’s one of the most comprehensive blog post idea lists I’ve ever seen: 20 Types of Blog Posts.  (The whole “Battling Blogger’s Block” series on ProBlogger.net is here.)

Get writing!

Like this is a suprise … The New York Times reports that a U.S. government study shows that roughly two-thirds of eighth-graders and three-fourths of high school seniors are not proficient writers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/education/03cnd-writing.html?ex=1207886400&en=f8d63bf9a998b0e8&ei=5070

Of course, anybody who’s read an interoffice memo lately can tell you how poorly most people write, even if they’re college graduates.

The study (http://nationsreportcard.gov/writing_2007/w0016.asp, http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008468) does show, at least, that students’ writing skills have not declined in the five years since their 2002 study.

(As an Alabama resident and Mississippi native, I’m going to refrain from the usual Alabama taunt of “Thank God for Mississippi,” the state which ended up last in the rankings.  Alabama probably didn’t fare much better, anyway.  But at least Alabama improved somewhat, at the eighth grade level.)

No, it’s not just you.

Other B2B marketing professionals are getting the same results.  Calls are going straight to voice mail.  Phone messages aren’t being returned.  Sales appointments are harder to come by – when you can actually get past that Rottweiler of a gatekeeper.

And that’s just your direct contact strategies.  But even your networking and advertising efforts seem to keep hitting some invisible barrier.

The “same old, same old” techniques for reaching prospects aren’t getting the same results they used to.

You and everybody else are asking the same question: What the heck happened?

What’s happened is this: Technologies and attitudes have converged into what one marketing expert calls a “perfect storm” of prospect inaccessibility.

That’s the new reality.  So how do you succeed in it?

That’s the bad news — but there’s good news, too.

If you’re going to survive this “perfect storm,” you have to understand not only its origins but its opportunities.  You need to know:

• How changes in technology and psychology are fueling the storm
• What common characteristics marketing-resistant prospects share
• Where those characteristics create “white spaces” you can strategically insert your company into

Once you understand these phenomena, you can create marketing communications that slip past the barriers marketing-resistant prospects put up and get your company’s products and services on their radar.

To learn more about marketing communications that reach even marketing-resistant prospects, go to www.savadra.net/marketingresistance.html and download the new special report, “Reaching the Marketing-Resistant Prospect.”  It will give you new and more effective marketing tools and ideas to help you not only cope but succeed in the new marketing environment.

Advertising is risky and expensive.  Networking can be time-consuming and downright exhausting.  And Caller ID has all but killed cold calling.  What’s a small business to do?

Anyone who’s been in sales and marketing for long can tell you the game is changing, and in a lot of ways. 

Consider these factors:

Technology is making it easier for prospects to hide. The bright, shining promise of communications technology was supposed to be greater accessibility.  Communication without limits, they called it.  Everybody will be reachable all the time, they cheered.

It never happened.

Instead, prospects are using technologies like email filters and Caller ID to block interruptions to their already overcrowded schedules.  Potential vendors are screened ruthlessly.  Gatekeepers are reluctant even to give out decision makers’ names and job titles, which makes pre-sales due diligence that much harder.

It’s now okay to lie to salespeople.  Sales trainer Ari Galper tells the story of a phone conference he once had with what he thought was a serious prospective client.  At the end of the call, Galper was about to hang up when he heard the prospects talking amongst themselves after they thought they had disconnected. 

“Okay, so we’re agreed,” one man said to his colleagues.  “We’ll string this guy along until we get the information we need from him, then we’ll go with [Galper's competitor].”

Galper was floored.  It was one thing for prospects to do competitive research and seek bids, but this was a new low. 

Advertising cynicism is at an all-time high.  According to marketing expert Jack Trout, the average person is bombarded with over 4,000 marketing messages each day.  Much to the chagrin of advertisers, people are now reacting in self-defense.

They fast-forward their DVRs through ads.  They visit the Internet armed with pop-up blockers.  And they subscribe to “commercial-free” satellite radio. 

People are willing to pay good money just to be left alone.

The Internet has created unrealistic expectations.  The biggest battle that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) faced in its quest to stop illegal music downloading wasn’t legal but psychological.  The generation that had grown up with the Internet, with its vast store of free stuff, simply expected that all media should be freely available. They didn’t understand violating a copyright as depriving an artist of compensation for his/her work.

Similarly, prospects scour the Internet for free information on you, your competitors, and your industry.  Why should they take your calls or give you face time when they can Google you instead?

The convergence of these factors creates what sales consultant Jill Konrath calls a “perfect storm” of marketing resistance.  Is it any wonder that, according to her research, 75% of all small businesses close because owners spend too much time generating too little revenue?

Aligning yourself with the new reality

Fortunately, there’s good news in all this.  The same “perfect storm” that makes it so difficult to market your business the old way is opening up a new way to reach marketing-resistant prospects. 

The silver bullet?  Information-based marketing collateral.

How to work with (not against) the marketing-resistant prospect

If you’re going to prosper in this new environment, you have to understand not just its origins but its opportunities.  The marketing-resistant prospect has several key attributes that create “white space” you can strategically insert yourself into.

They want to buy, but they don’t want to be sold.  Marketing resistance doesn’t necessarily mean sales resistance.  Prospects’ need for your products and services didn’t evaporate — just their tolerance for traditional marketing approaches. 

Marketing communications that take an informative rather than “salesy” approach are more effective with this audience.  Tone is everything.

They need to know what you know. The new marketing-resistant environment often makes it look as if prospective clients aren’t open to new ideas.  Don’t believe it for a second. 

Globalization is forcing decision makers at every level to do everything better, faster, cheaper.  New ideas aren’t just tolerated, they’re sought out as critical competitive advantages.

Prospects may not have time for a sales pitch, but they’ll make time for research.  And if you’ve got the right information presented the right way at the right time, you’ve got your foot in the door.

They often value convenience and credibility over all else.  If you’ve positioned yourself correctly, their time constraints can be your friend.  Several small but well-received information pieces, distributed over time, will keep you on the radar screen, increasing your chances of being “top of mind” when strategic decisions have to be made quickly.

For the full special report, “Reaching the Marketing-Resistant Prospect,” go to www.savadra.net/marketingresistance.html.  You’ll be able to download the full report complete with strategies for creating information-based marketing materials that reach this elusive (and growing) market.

No question about it – spam filters are a good thing. At least when they’re protecting your inbox!

Often, though, legitimate email marketing messages can get caught in the net intended to screen out all of the junk.

While spam filter avoidance is becoming more complex every day, here are three tips to help your message get through:

Limit email size to 50 Kb or less. Virus protection programs subject large emails to special scrutiny to avoid malicious payloads like viruses. That means your perfectly innocent email could be deemed a threat. Check your message size before sending and eliminate any unneeded graphics or attachments.

Don’t have more than 15 recipients in the “To” line. If you’re using your email program to send out mass messages, be warned: emails with 15 or more recipients in the “To” field are often blocked by recipients’ email programs or Internet Service Providers. Better to use a well-known email marketing service so that emails are addressed individually.

Avoid certain “spammy” words and phrases. I’d list some here, but then I’d probably get caught in your spam filter myself! You’ll often see e-marketers use carets (^) or asterisks (*) in the middle of certain words (like fr^e) to avoid capture. However, spam filters are evolving to catch even this trick.

If your emails are being sent out via a professional email marketing service, you probably have access to a content checker that will allow you to test your content for spammy words before sending your email.

So write carefully, test thoroughly, and reap the benefits of well-targeted email marketing!

“Yeah, I know, he’s got a Yahoo.com address, but we won’t hold that against him.”

It was just a humorous comment from a graphic designer friend of mine. But it really got me thinking: What impression do your prospects get from something as innocuous as a “freebie” email address?

Not a very favorable one, it turns out.

Many protest that one email address is as good as another. Once your recipients have you in their address book, they say, that’s all that matters.

But with the rise in spam email, phishing attacks, and other Internet fraud, web credibility is becoming more important every day. If your email address isn’t one that your recipients immediately recognize, they may be deleting your email unread to avoid spam or viruses.

Solving this little problem is a lot easier than you think. Most web hosting companies offer packages that allow you to inexpensively register a domain name, then set up POP email accounts (like you@yourdomain.com). 

Domain registration can cost as little as $1.99 (although $6-10 with yearly renewals is more typical), and email accounts from $10-30 per year, depending on how many email addresses your company needs.

So, for about the cost of one large gourmet coffee each month, your email address can:

• Build your brand – Every time people receive email from you, your address reinforces your company name, your value proposition, or whatever else you want your domain to say about you.
• Drive traffic to your website – If you have a website with that same domain name, seeing your domain name in your email address could prompt your email recipients to visit your website for more information. And that’s another opportunity to sell.
• Enhance your web credibility – Having your own domain name gives recipients the impression you’re in business for the long haul. After all, where would you rather do business – with a store that has a canvas banner out front … or one with a permanent sign?

Isn’t your professional image worth $4 a month?

When new visitors hit your website’s home page, what impression do they get? Do they understand what you offer? Do they see something that interests them? Are they intrigued enough to contact you for more information?

If you want your website to pre-qualify sales prospects and encourage your ideal prospects to do business with you, your home page has to inform, engage, even delight. And it can’t do that if you don’t understand their expectations.

So, what do they expect? Here are the two questions new web visitors ask when they land on your home page:

Am I in the right place? Whether they came to your website from a search engine or typed in your address from your business card (you do have your URL on your business card, don’t you?), the first thing new visitors want to know is whether they’re in the right spot. Be clear about who you are and what you do.

Can these people help me? Here’s where a lot of websites fail miserably. A web page is not just an online brochure, it’s a virtual conversation. And the more conversational and needs-focused your home page is, the more powerful a marketing tool it becomes.

One Saturday morning, I was on my way to grab an oversized latte with a friend. I pulled up to the light just outside my neighborhood and saw some local high school students hawking boxed donuts to raise money. But even though I wasn’t interested in donuts (I was craving an espresso brownie instead), one of the students caught my eye – for all the wrong reasons.

She was holding her sign upside down.

I had to laugh – out loud. (I almost rolled down the window to tell her, but I was afraid I’d get snarled at. That happens when you get teenagers out of bed too early in the morning.)

As I drove through the intersection, though, it hit me. That’s a great metaphor for the most common small business marketing mistake out there: Wrong-Side-Up Marketing.

So, what’s Wrong-Side-Up Marketing, you ask? Simply put, it’s marketing that focuses on YOU instead of THEM.

“Of course my marketing talks about me and my company,” you protest. “I have to tell prospects about my products and services, right?”

Well, yes. That’s important information. And you need to talk about that … eventually. But to get their initial interest, you have to talk about THEM first.

This is what marketing experts call focusing on benefits instead of features. In other words, don’t offer prospects a sales pitch – offer a solved problem.

If you talk about features first and foremost, you’re making your prospects “connect the dots” between what you offer and what they need. It’s like holding your sign upside down – people have to work that much harder to get your marketing message. And if your competitor connects those dots better than you do … you’ve just lost a sale.

Think about it. If you’re a certified financial planner, you don’t really sell financial products – you sell security and peace of mind. If you’re a computer networking consultant, you don’t sell computer services – you sell efficiency and a worry-free work environment.

See the difference? Prospects aren’t looking for someone who sells “X,” they’re looking to solve a specific problem. Your marketing materials should identify your prospects’ pressing problem – specifically and vividly – and then offer a targeted solution. That’s what hits their hot buttons.

And coming up with a great “hot button” benefit doesn’t take trail-blazing originality, just a little extra thought. There are several common benefits that any business can adapt for their marketing materials.

So what are these common “hot buttons” you need to hit in your marketing? Visualize your ideal sales prospects, as
vividly as you can, then figure out which of the following big benefits they’re really looking for:

* Make money
* Save money
* Save time
* Avoid effort

Those four are the big ones. Everybody’s looking to get one of those four primary benefits, so you need to identify which one (or more) you can deliver. Once you’ve gotten one of those down, add a secondary benefit or two, if appropriate:

* Get more comfort
* Achieve greater cleanliness
* Attain fuller health
* Escape physical and emotional pain
* Gain praise
* Be popular

But don’t just stop at identifying the benefits they want – figure out exactly how you deliver them. Be specific.
How do you save them money? How much can you save them? Show them how you’ve done it for others and what you could be doing for them.

For example, do you claim to give superior customer service? Well, everybody says that. To be persuasive, you need to
quantify just what “superior customer service” means in your business and promise to deliver that result. One local plumbing service really gets this concept – they guarantee their plumbers will always show up on time and smelling good. (Nothing vague about that!) So they help customers “save time” (a primary benefit) and “achieve greater cleanliness” (a secondary benefit).

See how this works?

Remember: your prospects are not looking just to buy a product or service – they want to achieve a particular result. Be clear about what benefits you provide, and you’ll find more prospects come knocking!

I came across your marketing materials a few days ago and was impressed enough to visit your website to get more information.

Wow. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way.

Don’t get me wrong. You’ve obviously put a lot into your startup – a lot of time, energy, thought, maybe even money. You’ve taken a big step into the often scary world of marketing your business on the Internet, and you are to be congratulated for your pluck and forward thinking. The absolute last thing I want to do is discourage you.

But while your website is very attractive aesthetically (the logo is particularly cool), I’m afraid it’s not doing you many favors from a marketing standpoint.

How can I say that? Well, consider these points:

Too much Flash + not enough text = little online visibility. Flash animation – the software powering most of your site – is a very in-your-face, very sexy tool. And when used intelligently, it does what it does very well.

But it’s got one really huge drawback: Google (and other search engines) can’t read it. Its robots take one look at your 100% Flash content and, not seeing anything they can index, move on to another site.  (For the skeptics out there: http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/googleisgod.html explains this further and provides some tools for you to see your own site through a search engine spider’s eyes.)
So all those nice words and phrases your potential clients are typing into the search engines are leading them … to your competitors’ sites. If you don’t believe me, try Googling yourself (not with your name, but with your keywords like “[profession] Mobile Alabama”) and count how many pages you have to scroll down before you see your own site.

Forced Flash. Once someone from your target market visits your site, you want them to come back, don’t you? Then why must your returning site visitors sit through your entire 42-second Flash intro every single time?

Forty-two seconds may not seem a long time when you’re just reading about it. But think about it the way your ideal prospect will. Imagine he (or she) is on the phone with a valued client who’s assigning the firm a new file. He/she tells the client, “We need an expert to evaluate these records.” So he/she pulls out your card, types in your website address … and then sits there for 42 whole seconds waiting for the intro he/she has already seen to finish so he/she can get to your Services or Contact page.

How many prospects do you think will do that more than once?

Too much sound. Here’s another potential turn-off. Since you’re selling B2B (business-to-business) services, most of your visitors will be accessing your site from their office computers. When their co-workers (or bosses) suddenly hear music wafting from a nearby office or cubicle, they’ll be thinking: “Uh-oh, Chris is out there surfing some entertainment site on company time again.”

Do your visitors a favor. Get your web programmers to put a “Skip Intro” link or button on the entry page. And that “Audio Off” button on the other pages should turn all audio off, not just the music. Your prospects’ co-workers will appreciate it.

Inaccessible to the visually impaired. Have you ever considered that some of your visitors may be visually impaired? Such site visitors often rely on tools like screen magnifier and screen reader software to use the web. The magnifiers make the text and images larger so those who have minimal vision can read it; the screen readers read the site out loud for the blind. Even people who are a little far-sighted (like me) use the web browser’s built-in font resizing tools to make the text more readable.

Many (but, certainly, not all) of these tools will be of no use on your site, for a lot of the same reasons that Google will not be able to read your site (the “all Flash, all the time” programming). True, visually impaired users probably make up a small percentage of your visitors. But what if one of them otherwise would have become your best client?

Why all the anonymous (and unsolicited) advice? I’ll admit it – I’m basically gutless. I don’t like getting irate phone calls from people any more than anyone else does. (And after writing this, I probably deserve a good chewing out for being so presumptuous.)

But you’d be better served by taking all that emotional energy you’d otherwise spend calling me and spending it improving your online presence instead. Your bottom line will eventually show it’s time and energy well spent.

And to prove I’m not just some mean-spirited know-it-all who lives for criticizing other people, I’d like to pass along some resources I’ve found really helpful:

Books

Get Clients Now!: A 28-day Marketing Program for Professionals, Consultants, And Coaches by C.J. Hayden (ISBN 0-8144-7374-1) – A terrific cookbook approach to building a well-rounded marketing plan based on proven strategies and activities. Identifies where in the sales process you’re “stuck,” then helps you come up with 9-10 daily actions that, done consistently over 28 days, will increase the number of clients you win.

The Ultimate Sales Letter: Attract New Customers. Boost Your Sales (Ultimate Sales Letter)by Dan Kennedy (ISBN 1-58062-257-7) – If you’re using introduction letters as a direct contact marketing tool, this is a good resource on the art of writing for sales. Some of Kennedy’s advice may be hard to swallow at first (he works mostly in B2C, which has a higher “cheese factor”) but can be adapted to the more professional approach a B2B market demands.

Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin (ISBN 0-471-78753-1) – If you want to learn about getting more visitors to your website, this is an ideal non-techie tutorial. You may be limited in how much organic Search Engine Optimi¬zation (SEO) you can do with the site being built almost entirely in Flash, but there are other elements of SEO you can benefit from like directory listings, pay-per-click advertising, link exchange, etc. And when you update your site in a year or two, you’ll be well prepared to guide your web designers in programming a more search engine friendly site.

Websites

Web Pages That Suck (http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com) – It’s got a rude title and an off-the-wall feel, but the approach – “the best way to learn about good design is to study bad design” – is sound. Behind all that humor are some great lessons in what makes a website work..

Action Plan Marketing (http://www.actionplan.com) – Robert Middleton is hands-down the best marketing guru for the solo professional I’ve ever seen. He’s got lots of free and low-cost advice available in the form of teleseminars and ebooks, and his coaching program is top-notch. Definitely consider enrolling in his coaching once you’ve graduated from Get Clients Now. In the meantime, his Website Toolkit alone is worth ten times what he charges.

Google Adwords (http://adwords.google.com) – Do yourself a favor and sign up for an Adwords Starter account. Set the budget low enough to be comfortable, then start testing ads for your site. Later, upgrade to the Standard Account and get free web analytics (shows you where your traffic is coming from). Most people are afraid of pay-per-click advertising, but you can set your own budget and limit search results to a specific geographical area so only Mobile area prospects see your ad (which further limits your costs).

Please understand – I sincerely wish you and your new business the best. I apologize if my approach offends. But if someone had taken me aside when I put up my first (very ugly and marketing-impaired) website and shown me some of these things, I would be light years (and mucho bucks) ahead of where I am now.

Good luck. I hope your new venture succeeds beyond your wildest dreams.

Signed, a fellow small business owner