Home Wealth Project

Blogging can be an important part of any small business today. So how are you using blogging in your efforts? You’ll see some suggestions and inspirational resources below offering tips for blogging and other aspects of business operation. What challenges do you face in your small business? Leave a comment below and start the conversation.

Metrics & SEO

How do you measure your blogging success? Metrics are useful, but without context it’s sometimes difficult to draw meaningful insight into what’s actually working. Five key metrics are all you need to forge a closer relationship with your audience and get the Web traffic you desire. FixCourse

Common-sense SEO can boost your exposure. Sure, you’re a seasoned blogger, but are you really getting all the traffic you deserve? There’s no substitute for good old, common-sense Search Engine Optimization. BusinessZone

Events

BlogWorld and New Media Expo: A Retrospective. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t make it out to L.A. for this monster event! Must-have blogging and social media highlights are hallmarks of this powerful and educational conference. WebSuccessTeam

A closer look inside the event. Many of those attending BlogWorld this past weekend, were there to learn more about using blogs in their business. In this video we get a better flavor of what they experienced and see interviews from some of those seeking more details about how to make blogging work for them. Scott Fox

Blogging Business Models

The Copyblogger case study. If you plan to look to successful blogs for inspiration, there is probably none so successful as Brian Clark’s brainchild. The blogger’s blog, this site isn’t just influential. It has a business model worth examining. IvanWalsh.com

New global reach for face to face business. This is the main advantage that blogs can offer today. Read the story of Elli St. George Godfrey who uses her blog to maintain contact with clients all over the world. BizSugar Blog

Management & Branding

A cranky conundrum. Dealing with difficult employees…it’s something that we, as business people, all must cope with from time to time. These tips for taking the right path when facing friction will help keep your business on the road to success. Angel Business Advisors

No matter what business your happen to be in, standing out is key. Joel Libava gives this overview for franchise owners which actually could apply to just anyone starting or operating a small business. What reasons are you giving people to choose you over competitors? The Franchise King

News & Tips

Where did all those small business dollars go? It’s great when the federal government decides to help small business out, but it’s best to follow the breadcrumbs to see where the money is really going! Inc.com

Nine things successful people do. When trying to build a successful business, it’s helpful to know what success should look like. Here are nine things successful people do differenty. How could you integrate these approaches into your business efforts? Harvard Business Review

How Do You Measure Your Business Blogging Success?

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

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The Ultimate Measure of Marketing Success

Oct 20th

Posted by Home Wealth Project in Marketing Tips

The Ultimate Measure of Marketing Success

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

For most businesses the primary measures of marketing success are more sales, more profits and greater brand recognition.

sahlgoode via Flickr CC

That seems like a pretty obvious, logical and healthy way to view marketing doesn’t it?

What if, however, the real goal was to build trust? What if marketing decisions were made with the best interest of the customer community first? What if the ultimate measure of marketing was a committed customer?

Now, I know that may all sound like some nice rah, rah kind of consultant speak, but if in fact you were to really make the creation of a committed customer your primary objective, you would have some very hard and often counterintuitive decisions to make.

First the cold, hard reality of business – your customers don’t really care about what you sell – they don’t really care about your business – they don’t really care about you.

Now, let me soften that a bit – they may love your products, they may love doing business with you, they may adore the people you send to take care of them, but what they ultimately determine first and foremost is what all of this love does for them.

So, if this is indeed true, and if your ultimate objective is to create customers that are totally committed to your business, you’ll have to learn to view all of your decisions with the best interest of your customer rather than what is often viewed as the best interest of your business.

The difference in this last statement may be subtle for some (unless you run an airline and then is should be pretty gapping.) The difference, however, will show up when you start to question everything you do in this vein – will this decision benefit the customer or will this decision simply benefit the business?

This questioning will prove harder than you think, because sometimes the answer might be, this will cost us a bundle, but it’s the right thing to do.

You may have to learn how to tell your prospects and customers that they shouldn’t buy a particular product or service, because you know it’s not right for them.

You may have to teach your customers how to get more from your products rather than buy more. You may have to teach them how to conserve rather than use up what you sell.

You may have to create and facilitate a customer community that can freely resell and trade what you sell.

Patagonia, a well respected outdoor apparel and gear brand, recently created a platform in conjunction with eBay that makes it very easy for customers to resell and purchase used Patagonia gear.

Patagonia benefits very little directly from this move, but they have created something that I believe is very much in the best interest of their community.

Now, some might conclude that this is just a natural extension of the Patagonia brand of recycling and that all they’ve really done is aggregate a market that existed in places like Craigslist – until you dig into the companion initiative called the Common Threads Initiative.

This is the message Patagonia is using to build a committed customer and it could come of as heresy to most hard-core marketers.

“Reduce. Don’t buy what we don’t need. Repair: Fix stuff that still has life in it. Reuse: Share. Then, only when you’ve exhausted those options, recycle.”

In fact, they are asking customers to sign this pledge: I agree to buy only what I need (and will last), repair what breaks, reuse (share) what I no longer need and recycle everything else.

While this initiative might actually cost Patagonia sales, it’s the right message for the brand, it’s the right message for the planet and it may ultimately be the right message for the customer’s best interest.

Making business decisions for the benefit of your customers first will almost always pay long-term dividends no matter how tough they may be from a profit standpoint at the moment.

Telling a customer that your solution probably isn’t the best and then ushering them to another, better solution, even one from a competitor, is the right thing to do and over time will create a totally loyal and committed customer willing to tell the world they can trust you.

View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing, Measure, Success, Ultimate

5 Metrics to Measure the Health of Your Community

Aug 24th

Sure, you’re active in social media, but as a responsible small business owner you know that it’s your site and your own community where you should be building your home base. This is where you direct people you meet in other outlets and it’s where you’re trying to form the real conversations and conversions, because this is the only site that you control. But how do you know that it’s working? What metrics should you measure to be confident that you’re growing a healthy community, while also pinpointing areas for improvement?

To help you get started, below are five areas I’d recommend keeping an eye on to help you benchmark and improve your on-site community.

1. Increase in Subscribers

I state this first because it’s the obvious benchmark that many of us will immediately look at. And while the actual number of people reading your blog or joining your community at any given moment doesn’t particularly account for much, what is important is the growth. It’s important that you’re able to chart the positive growth of your following over time as you put out content and engage more with your community. As long as this number is growing and doesn’t appear stagnant (or worse, dropping), it’s a good sign that people are invested in what you’re doing and that you’re on the right track.

2. Increase in Conversations

A healthy community will see an increase in not only the number of subscribers over time, but also the community’s conversational level. More specifically:

number of active threads
number of unique commenters
number of active commenters
number of people you’ve identified as brand evangelists

These numbers will give you a good understanding of the health of your community because they show engagement, rather than just warm bodies. You’ll start to see what percentage of your community is really tuned into what you’re doing, what they’re interested in talking about, and what people you can count on to help you start and field conversations.

3. Share of Buzz

Another metric to keep an eye on is your share of buzz in your niche and how that number is (or is not) growing over time. Basically, is your authority and perceived expertise growing as a result of what you’re building on site?

For example, how many people are talking about your community – either about the services that you offer or the content you’re putting out? How visible are you in your space and how does your visibility measure up against that of your competitors? Who is ’s talking about you? How often is your content being shared? In a world where share of buzz often means social authority, this is a pretty big health indicator for your community and something you’ll want to watch.

4. Sentiment

More important than simply knowing you’re being talked about is knowing the sentiment behind that conversation and how it’s evolving over time. What’s the ratio of positive/neutral/negative mentions? How many times are people recommending your product or service to others? Do people come to your defense when others say things that don’t put your company in the best light? Are you growing an army of evangelists or are people lukewarm about your brand? These are all things to monitor to help you understand how your community is evolving and whether what you’re doing on-site is helping you off-site.

5. Increase in Conversions

All of the above will help you determine the health of your community, but increase in conversions is what really tells you whether or not you’re adding dollars to your bank account. Look at referrals generated as a result of your blogging, the number of customers who are also community members, and customer loyalty from community conversions – how many times do they buy/refer? While conversations and engagement are nice, they don’t mean much unless they’re eventually turning into more money for your business.

Those are five metrics I recommend small business owners take a look at to understand the health of their community. What have I missed?

5 Metrics to Measure the Health of Your Community

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

community, Health, Measure, metrics

How Does Your State Measure Up?

Jan 28th

Posted by Home Wealth Project in 2478

Not sure how statistical these labels are, but here’s one look at the United States of America:

Image: pleated-jeans

View full post on Business Pundit

Measure, State

How to Measure a Case Study’s Performance

Oct 22nd

In this three-part blogging series, “3 Phases to Turn a Case Study into an Effective Marketing Tool,” we’ve discovered “5 Steps to Craft a Case Study’s Content Strategy” and “How to Build a Case Study’s Online Distribution Strategy.” For this last post, we’ll explore how to measure and evaluate an effective case study.

With an abundance of Website and social-media tracking software available today — including free analytics such as Google Analytics and Webstats BASIC — tracking online statistics has become more and more accessible for small businesses.

Digital marketers have access to in-depth measurements to track who’s visiting their site and what they’re doing once they get there; calculate their return on investment for both online and offline campaigns; and estimate their social popularity. But when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of your case study, choosing the right metrics to track and understanding what they mean are the keys to success.

Take, for example, an increase in unique visitors. This can be a positive indication, but if you look deeper into the stats and realize there is a high bounce rate due to visitors jumping right away, it’s not doing your business much good.

By aligning your metrics with your campaign objectives (see “5 Steps to Craft a Case Study’s Content Strategy”) and the buying cycle that your digital marketers are attempting to influence, however, you can achieve an in-depth picture of your case study’s performance. It’s a simple way to understand your metrics and evaluate your case study’s overall performance. Though there are hundreds of metrics to track, in the interest of time and space I’ve depicted a simplistic illustration below. Depending on the complexity of your campaign and its objectives, specific statistics likely will need to be adjusted.

Buying Cycle Stage 1: Company/Product Awareness

First, track metrics that indicate an increase in brand and/or product awareness. For example, analyze increases in Twitter followers, Facebook fans and other social connections. Track newsletter sign-ups, blog subscriptions and additional connections to company materials used to distribute your case study.

In addition, review traffic spikes on your homepage and the landing page where your case study resides. Look for increased page views here, an uptick in unique visitors and a jump in campaign-specific keyword rankings. If you’re running an AdWords campaign for the case study, be sure to review impressions and click-through rates, as well.

Buying Cycle Stage 2: Research and Consideration

Next, measure the amount and depth of customer interaction with your organization. Are visitors commenting on your blog, posting on your Facebook Wall or retweeting your case study? Are they clicking on links embedded in your newsletter and then downloading your case study?

Then, analyze the time spent by visitors on the case study landing page and homepage, and dig deeper to find out where they navigated from there. Most importantly, measure how many of those visitors converted into leads.

Buying Cycle Stage 3: Purchase

Finally, it’s time to measure your campaign’s overall performance. Track the number of leads that converted into customers and then determine your cost per customer (Total Case Study Costs / # Customers Generated). Also, calculate your campaign’s return on investment (Revenue – Cost / Cost) to determine its true value.

Now that you’ve designed a metrics system aligned with your campaign, you can tweak and improve its performance based on the results.

What other metrics have you found to be helpful? Do you use a specific campaign tracking software that you’d recommend to readers? Please share what you’ve found to be helpful in gaining the best possible results for your campaign.

How to Measure a Case Study’s Performance

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

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A Guide to Measure Your Social Media Marketing

Aug 15th

1 comment

Social media has brought unprecedented change in the way a business markets its services and products online, as well as how it communicates to customers.

But how much of that change is being measured? From the latest industry surveys, very little, despite heavy investment. Yet with more corporations employing social media for branding, lead awareness and sales, the need for relevant metrics has become essential to successful financial performance. Books on social media have appeared, but few have dealt with metrics from an analytics framework. Until now.

Jim Sterne is no stranger to the Web analytics community. Founder of the E-metrics Marketing Optimization summit and co-founder of the Web Analytics Association, Sterne has tirelessly guided the discussion of digital marketing. Now, Sterne has created a short guide to optimizing your digital marketing called Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment. I bought a copy to review, and feel that while the book is geared for large organizations, small business owners wishing to best manage their resources will benefit too.

Improve Your Social Media Gauge

Sterne says it best in the opening pages:

“This book is more for marketers who already know that social media is important and want to get a better handle on managing it as a serious business tool.”

And he wastes no time getting into the nitty-gritty of measurement planning. For example, Chapter 1 quotes a Web Analytics Demystified post on how to prioritize analysis around organizational requests:

Is revenue at risk?
Who’s asking?
How difficult is the request?
Can it (the analysis) be self serviced?
When is the analysis needed?
Why is the analysis needed?

A small business owner may not face all the aforementioned questions, but some of the questions may help apply some thought to developing a social media dashboard and asking the right questions around the three basic business goals in the book: increasing revenue, lowering cost, and increasing customer satisfaction. Although referencing many corporate sources, the book complements social media beginner references, such as Chris Brogan’s Social Media 101, and also works well on its own.

Throughout the book Sterne combines numerous references to studies and resources, such as Groundswell author Charlene Li and Web Analytics 2.0 author Avinash Kaushik, regarding blogging ROI and opportunity cost. Analytics resources like Eric Peterson’s Big Book of KPIs (a free e-book on business metrics) are also referenced.

Sterne first lays out the social media categories — blogs, microblogs, forums, review sites, social networks, bookmarking and media sharing. Chapters 2 through 6 covers the kinds of measurement used — Reach, Influence, Sentiment, Triggering Action (Engagement) and Listening — while each social media category is included where appropriate. Sterne takes time to explain what tools are available, and gives an overview of measurement results. In an automotive example, he explains how hub-and-spoke relationships can measure influence and reach via tagging URLs:

“The first step is to code the links you publish so that when the are republished and re-tweeted, any clicks can be traced back to the original tweet or post. That means a normal link like www.example.com becomes www.example.com?1234. You can count the number of times the code 1234 shows up in your analytics database to determine how far-reaching that post or tweet was.”

He then compares the tracking between subjects (power and style) in an example hub-and-spoke figure.

“You now have a clear understanding of what intrigues people most about your new vehicle. You have marketplace insight you can act on. You know how to tweak your tweets.”

This is analytic essence made into accessible language for small business owners and marketers alike.

Resources Available

For experiences with social media, Sterne uses familiar corporate examples, like Dell’s IdeaStorm, as well as some interesting how-do-they-do-its, like BestBuy’s use of Twelpforce to answer whatever Twitter-sourced questions appear. Other tools mentioned include Twittratr, PostRank and Nielsen Buzzmetrics, along with a resource appendix that includes more on social media metrics, a free tool summary and insights from other respected marketers such as Jeremiah Owyang.

Chapter 7 focuses on business outcomes, with an underscore that social media is best seen as a long-term investment, warning that “regardless of what business outcome you are hoping, planning and working for…social media results take time.” Suggested metrics are offered here, while Chapter 8, Convincing Your Colleagues, brings up the current analytics challenges in organizations. For example, Sterne notes the unspoken concern employees sometimes feel, in that they see analytics as more of a personal audit:

“First and foremost humans do not like being measured… ‘Accountability’ is another word for “We don’t trust you so we’re going to measure everything you do.”

Sterne then segues into an example given by a Symantec vice president which crystallizes the other challenge in introducing measurement responsibility and convincing departments of the benefits:

“Besides doing more with less, we’re asking people to add a page tag here and a reporting mechanism there. “

Sterne covers a few topics on organizational expectations and becoming a measurement leader (a recurring theme in many analytics books like Analytics At Work), though he admits at chapter’s end the topic of change management is too large to be covered effectively. Still, you will definitely learn to manage people as much as the metrics and measurement tools given.

Glaring negatives are few. The book does not elaborate on the impact of some recent online developments, such as mobile devices (I know there has been discussion in some circles regarding measurement of digital magazine articles shared), applications and location-based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla. Sterne does note this as he lays out the social media categories — “…more will appear before this book hits the streets.” However, some further consideration would have given readers insight on how to prepare for more change in a fast-moving medium.

A Useful Guide

Overall, Sterne has taken a solid tone and approach with Social Media Metrics. It explains the value of social media in a style that complements strategies for organizations large and small, for-profit and nonprofit. By any measure, Social Media Metrics is a truly helpful guide in the online marketing jungle.