Written on June 15th, 2005 at 05:06 am by JSLogan
Is It Time to Talk More About Conversion?
My background is B2B sales and marketing, more sales than marketing to be precise. I’ve worked with many sales people, teams, and organizations – each go through cycles of activity and business. One staple is the objective remains constant - close more business.
We need more leads and fresh contacts will be the mantra when new business is in decline. Once new contacts are in supply We need more demos and trials is usually the next mandate. Lastly, We need incentives and more closing activities surfaces once it’s noticed a plethora of field activity isn’t producing as much revenue as required or expected. Then the cycle tends to complete and begin again – more new contacts, more trials, more closing. But the objective remains constant - close more business.
Are there similar cycles of Internet presence?
SEO is big. A lot of focus is put on building more and more traffic. We each want our audience to grow. Is it time to talk more about conversion? There are some out there that have moved to what I believe is the next step in the Internet cycle. But the majority appears to remain focused on getting more clicks to their site than clicks to convert once they arrive.
If you have 1,000 or 10,000 visits to your site a day and 1 visitor accepts your call to action, isn’t the net result the same? At the end of the day, you had one visitor that purchased, registered, clicked, etc. If you could get two people to heed your call to action, your results double.
Does it make sense to you the time has arrived to move the discussion from How do we get more people to our site? to How can we can get more people to convert on whatever call to action we offer?
Written on June 14th, 2005 at 06:06 pm by duncan
Riley on Easy Bake
For any enternetusers readers interested in blogging related topics Duncan Riley from the Blog Herald is doing a Q & A free-for-all on a phone hookup with Andy from Easy Bake Weblogs. Any one can join in from Tuesday June 14th @ 9pm US EST 1-858-400-4040, Access code: 60657. Questions are open, but the main topic areas he’ll be chatting about will be
* Understanding bloggers and blogging: embracing blogging or insulting bloggers
* The international blogosphere: understanding that the blogosphere has no borders and the opportunities this presents
* Marketing blogs and increasing traffic
(yes, shameless self promotion and talking about myself in the third person, but some people might miss that I’m not Darren)
Written on June 13th, 2005 at 05:06 am by Darren Rowse
enternetusers in Turkey
Thanks for the many well wishers who have emailed to wish me a good trip.
We’re currently in Istanbul and are enjoying the rich culture and history, the wonderful food, the exquisit sights, the dodgy internet cafe’s keyboards and the company of some fun people.
I’m happy to report that I’ve not suffered too many withdrawal symptoms from blogging - although I’ve spent quite a bit of time the past few days deleting comment spam on my MT blogs - in fact it’s starting to get me down a bit. It seems every time I go away for a holiday the comment spammers seem to find another way to get through my spam catching systems. I’m currently getting 200 - 300 every 24 hours. Deleting them is taking me an hour or so every night which I won’t be able to keep up after today when we leave on a tour. I will need to upgrade my MT version when I get home I guess to combat this problem.
Apart from the comment spam I’m loving the time away and am really grateful for the guest bloggers who are keeping the show running for me whilst I’m away.
A few of you have asked if my blogs have suffered for me being away (or if I expect them to). I guess the answer to that question is yet to be seen but the initial trend I see today is that despite a significant drop in numbers of posts being uploaded per day (with the exception of a couple of blogs where it is higher than normal thanks to a few addicted bloggers) that the traffic remains reasonably steady (it’s a little down overall with some blogs higher and some lower).
I’m suspecting it will drop off a little further as the month progresses with less new content going up - but at this stage the signs are hopeful that the bottom line won’t suffer too much.
Anyway - I just thought I’d drop in and let you all know that we made it to Turkey and are having a good time. Tomorrow we head off to Gallipoli and then down to the southern coast for some time in the sun.
Hope all is well in your neck of the blogging woods.
Written on June 12th, 2005 at 08:06 pm by Darren Rowse
Blog Tip: Be consistent
The following blog tip has been submitted by Jon Gales - the editor of the wonderful MobileTracker blog. Learn more about Jon from this interview we did with him earlier in the year.
You should decide early into your pro blogging what style standards your site will adhear to. It looks sloppy to switch styles between posts. If your site has multiple authors, a written style guide is a must-have.
Examples
- Do you use the first, second or third person when talking about your site?
- Are media sources italicized? (e.g. MobileTracker)
- How to credit sites
- How to link to sites (e.g. inline or at the end of the post)
- Image sizes and alignments
- How quotations are denoted
- How updates are denoted
By developing a series of standards, your site will appear much more professional without any extra work. After your standards are set, go ahead and slowly work on updating your archives… Visitors from search engines likely still visit older content and will benefit from the consistency.
Written on June 12th, 2005 at 04:06 pm by Arieanna Foley
Canadian Professional Blogging Podcast 2.2 - your blogging voice continued
For those of you following the start of our Canadian Professional Blogging series, thanks for turning in. Tris and I really appreciated the feedback and have built upon that to create a more detailed look at finding your blogging voice.
Having a voice is a key factor in getting noticed, being read, and building up that much needed traffic to your site. However, creating that “voice” may seem like a daunting thing. Many people don’t find writing easy, and that makes it even harder. We hope that our podcast and the notes will help people figure out a path that works for them.
One tip we talk about is reading everything you can find. The writers that appeal to you likely do so because you connect with that voice. Try to apply that same style to how you write and you’ll be one step closer to a distinctive voice. Another tip is to think about your writing verbally - your conversation style should go into your writing. If you are someone who speaks in short bursts, then you can try that out on your blog.
Here is the beginning of the notes that go with the podcast:
• Read a lot online and offline
• Experiment on a “test blog” or personal blog so you can experiment with your topics
• Have fun - try some wacky posts on your personal blog to learn how to write casually consistently
• Practice, practice, practice
• Write like nobody is reading–with caveats
• Have an edge. Something to make you inviting
more…
The podcast and full set of notes are available over on Blogaholics and on Larix Consulting.
Technorati Tags: professional blogging, podcasting, podcasts
Written on June 11th, 2005 at 01:06 am by flashlight
Strategy for maximizing page views
I was going to call this article tips for maximizing page views. But tips implies that what I suggest is going to work! These are merely thoughts and suggestions. I hope to encourage a bit of experiment and conversation with this post. Please use the comments and trackbacks to let us know if you try something as a result of this.
So, page views. A page view is not a hit, nor is it a visit. Total page views tells you how many individual pages have been seen over a given period. Dividing that total by the number of unique visitors gives you your average page views per visit.
How ever many you have, you want more. Page views are the add-on items of the web world. They’re the rust-proofing on your new car. The guacamole with your nachos. They’re where the profit is made. More page views = more ads seen = greater chance for your visitors to click on an ad.
Of course this is all completely moot if users are clicking on ads on their first or second page view. But if they were doing that we’d all be out shopping for Porshes instead of playing in Darren’s playground while he’s on holiday.
There are two main strategies I want to discuss here. The first is easy, the second requires some creative thinking.
Excerpts
Using excerpts instead of full articles on your home page can increase page views in two ways. Obviously, if you hook someone with a post title and opening paragraph and that person clicks to continue reading, she’ll have been exposed to two pages instead of one. Also, the ads on the second page should be more focussed on that particular post, increasing your click through rate.
Of equal importance is the fact that you can increase the click-able density of your home page. Instead of one post above the fold (the bottom of the first visible screen), you can have 2 or 3. Instead of 4 or 5 posts on the home page you can have 10. This may mean that you have to put some more umph into your titles and opening paragraphs. Which will help your clickthrough from newsreaders. Win win.
To make this even more effective, I’d add a “more” button to the bottom of the home page. Clicking this button would bring you to an index2 page that continues with another 10 or so titles and opening paragraphs. Click more to go to index3, etc. What a terrific way to get more mileage of your archives! (runs off to do this right away!)
Most CMSs have some sort of excerpt function. I know textpattern and MT have auto-excerpt plugins - you set the number of words or paragraphs before the plugin inserts a “continue reading” link. I’m sure other cms’s must have similar plugins.
Archives
Your archives are your biggest, most underused treasure trove of page view potential. Most archive systems (including mine) suck. Badly. They are hard to navigate, difficult to explore, and plain old useless. There is so much fantastic writing locked up in the blogosphere’s archives. I’m working on a plan to free some of that content, which I’ll share with you in a few weeks, but there are a number of steps you can take to recycle your existing work.
One option is to use a “greatest hits” list. I use a textpattern plugin to generate a list of most viewed articles that I list on the sidebar. This works, but its a rich-get-richer solution.
I’d like to add a “my favourites” list to highlight some of the overlooked gems. Pulling this list out of sidebar and sticking it somewhere prominent would be an interesting effect. Perhaps it could be made random, so each time a visitor checked in, the list would change. With textpattern this would be relatively straightforward (let me know if you’d like to know how).
Putting Excerpts and Archives together
Let’s take this another step further. What if at the bottom of each article you listed a random excerpt from your archives? If you used categories (you do use categories, right?), you could randomly select an article from the same category and offer it with a line like “If you enjoyed reading this article, you might find this of interest…”
This is really just a light skimming of topic. There’s enough meat in this subject to make for a book (hmmmm…). As I stated up top, these are merely ideas, and are completely untested. Yet. Perhaps some of you would be interested in exploring this in more detail? Feel free to shoot me an email and we’ll see if we can’t have some fun!
Written on June 10th, 2005 at 02:06 pm by JSLogan
Ouch!
Best argument yet for posting less. Blogs keep challenging old thinking.
Are the rules of business changing?
Written on June 10th, 2005 at 07:06 am by Rachel
Business Blog Survey
Hi everyone, I’ve been asked to see if I can get feedback on these questions by anyone who is involved with business blogging for a magazine article on business and blogging (as inspired by this article) - so I thought I’d throw these out as a Friday survey (yes, it’s Friday here in NZ and Australia!).
- What is the name and address of your business blog?
- What is the business it relates to? Are you the owner or an employee?
- Why and when did you start your blog? Did you model it on anyone else’s?
- What’s the payoff in doing it?
- How often do you post to your blog?
- Is the content strictly business, or do you let a little of your personal life in?
- Does the content focus on your business itself, or on issues of interest for the business sector you’re in?
- How do you relate to your fellow bloggers?
- Is it important to present as a real human being, rather than simply a company name?
- Who are your readers? How many of them are there? Do you communicate with them by any other means apart from the blog itself?
- Any other thoughts about business blogging? Is it important? Should more people be doing it?
Should be interesting to us all too!
Written on June 9th, 2005 at 03:06 pm by Tris Hussey
Canadian Professional Blogging Podcast No 2: Developing your Blogging Voice
Written on June 9th, 2005 at 01:06 pm by JSLogan
Stickiness
One thing all bloggers and webmasters want is return visitors. Many of us watch the stats and monitor this critical measurement of web success…if you come back time and time again, you must like me. If you like me and return enough you’ll finally heed my call to action – make a purchase, register, click on an advertiser, etc. Stickiness makes a blog and return visitors are paramount to ecommerce success - repeat buyers are a critical component to revenue growth.
How best do you get people back to your site time-after-time?
Like many, I’ve tried countless ways to attract and retain repeat visitors – polls, weekly features, giveaways, interviews, guest bloggers, links, quizzes, contests, etc. Some worked better than others, some had little affect at all. Great content is a given. But what puts you over the top? Sometimes just adding a fraction to your audience makes all the difference in the world.
Polls were interesting for a while; they seem to be abandoned now. Contests got old and quizzes smelled funny. Guest bloggers and interviews are currently popular. Maybe there’s a cycle and what was once old will again appear new.
If you blog or run a website, what are the best features you’ve added to your site to attract and retain repeat visitors? What are the most effective features you’ve seen on other blogs and websites? Lastly, why do you think they work?
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