See What They Had to Say: The most valuable Marketing blogs for small & medium businesses John Jantsch Duct Tape Marketing Anita Campbell Small Business Trends Michael Arrington TechCrunch We gave members of our Small & Medium Business Printing Wiki the opportunity to vote on the best business blogs from a selection written by some of the best business bloggers on the web. The top three blogs in the Marketing category have been published in this HP eBook for you to download, print and reference as you need inspiration.Table of Contents Marketing, How the Perfect Marketing Plan Would Work Posted by Duct Tape Marketing, John Jantsch on September 20, 2007 ...............................................................................4 Marketing, Five Reasons for Small Business Owners to Blog Posted by Small Business Trends, Anita Campbell on March 3, 2007 ...................................................................................7 Marketing, Top Ten Things You Can Do to Get Blogged Posted by TechCrunch, Michael Arrington on September 8, 2005.................................................................................. 10Marketing: How the Perfect Marketing Plan Would Work Posted by Duct Tape Marketing, John Jantsch on September 20, 20075 Marketing Depending upon who you ask a marketing plan is either a necessary evil or tremendous waste of time. That’s such a shame, but I think I’ve finally come to understand why this is. A well crafted marketing plan should be one of the most important strategic steps a business takes, but there’s a disconnect. Marketing plans get created, but never used because, once put to paper or ether, they don’t easily relate to the real life experience of a business. They get created but never installed. At a minimum your marketing plan should include: • a description of your ideal customer • your core message (vs. competitors) • your key marketing strategy • your communications tools • your lead generation plan (advertising, public relations, referral) • your web plan (yes, with a blog) • your lead conversion plan • your customer loyalty plan • your marketing calendar • your marketing budget • your key strategic indicators • scads of sales, revenue and profit projections “ Your marketing must have a life and the only way it can do that is if you throw it into the middle of your day to day business.”6 Marketing Now, the creation of the above is a great start and a beneficial exercise for any business, new or existing, but here’s what’s needed to truly make your marketing plan work. Your marketing must have a life and the only way it can do that is if you throw it into the middle of your day to day business. As a document it’s a fantasy and it stops breathing the minute you open the door each day. A truly effective marketing plan must integrate into the reality of the stuff you do each day. You create the plan as prescribed above, you bake the appropriate elements of your plan into your CRM system, you tie the plan to your actual sales, you flow the plan projections into your bookkeeping software and you circulate actual results through your key indicators, automatically updating your projections. Now that would make a living, breathing powerhouse of a marketing plan and, now, your marketing plan would actually run your business (as it should be). I’m not sure the specific software to do what I’ve described actually exists today, but I’m betting a web application bringing together current offerings from some of the smart folks at a Palo Alto Software, Microsoft, SAP, NetBooks, Intuit, Sage, Zoho or NetSuite couldn’t be that hard to hack together. I know there are plenty of BigCos and VARs out there that have created something like this for the enterprise market, but what about one for the real small business (2-50 employees)?Marketing: Five Reasons for Small Business Owners to Blog Posted by Small Business Trends, Anita Campbell on March 3, 20078 Marketing ” Why do small business owners write on blogs? With millions of people worldwide doing it, blogging has become a major phenomenon of our time. (If you arrived here through a search engine and do not know what a blog is, well, you are reading one right now.) I’ve been tagged by Troy White and Edita Kaye of the Rich Writers blog, to give five reasons that I write a blog. So here goes. Blogging is: • A faster and better way to create newsletter articles. Four years ago I used to place newsletter articles online either by sending each one to a Web design firm (an expensive option), or doing it myself using Dreamweaver (a time-consuming option). Then I found blogs and discovered the freedom of posting articles online quickly and easily. The whole process of publishing became much more satisfying, too, because I found I have greater control. For instance, if I happen to notice a small typo or a left-out word, I can change it in seconds. Because of the many advantages of blogs, this site has since taken on a much bigger purpose in my business. But in the beginning I merely was solving a simple problem: finding a better way for my small business to publish newsletter articles. • A strategy for getting published. Publishing my own articles on the Web, daily, was the fastest and most direct path to getting published at magazines and other business publications. Once I had enough articles published here at Small Business Trends for readers to judge my ideas and writing ability, I naturally started to get the attention of magazines and business publishers. A track record always helps. • A low-cost way for a small business owner to market online. You can spend a little or a lot marketing your business online. I choose to spend a little. A blog gives a small business a fighting chance to get found in the search engines, alongside the sites of big companies that have more money to spend. I learned that after I set up this site. One day, someone pointed out to me that when my name was searched online, my blog showed up higher in the search results than my traditional business website. That’s when I decided to focus my efforts on this blog instead of the traditional website. “Blogging is a faster and better way to create newsletter articles.9 Marketing • A method to communicate and connect — especially important for business owners. When you run a small business, as I do, you feel alone at times. We may be in business, but in the end we are human beings — isolation is a real issue. We blogging business owners actually communicate with one another, online, using our blogs. You can’t do that with a traditional style website. For instance, I have never met Troy or Edita. The very fact that they “tagged” me by writing an article and linking to my site (thank you Troy and Edita!), demonstrates one way we communicate with one another and establish connections. This is one of the things people mean when they use the now-overworked phrase, “blogs are conversations.” • Satisfaction of some inner need to share. Many of us have a strong desire to exchange opinions and ideas with others. It must be an instinctive human need. How else do you explain 70 million blogs? Why do you blog? Or, if you do not currently blog, tell us the reason you do not. “Once I had enough articles published here at Small Business Trends for readers to judge my ideas and writing ability, I naturally started to get the attention of magazines and business publishers.”Marketing: Top Ten Things You Can Do To Get Blogged Posted by TechCrunch, Michael Arrington on September 8, 200511 Marketing ” “I believe that if more companies approached us differently, a much higher percentage would be blogged. Our primary goal here at TechCrunch is to profile new web 2.0 companies. Finding and experiencing what new companies have to offer is exciting for us. It what gets us up in the morning. We are honestly deeply passionate about this stuff. Usually, the passion, drive and intelligence of the creators is reflected in the company or product they create. And even if a product is very young and/or doesn’t necessarily have a high chance for commercial success, there are usually features that carry our mutual thinking on web 2.0 further along. We try very hard to dig for those forward-thinking features and highlight them on this site. Doing one thing in a spectacular and inspiring fashion and nine things stupidly is far, far better than doing ten things “well”. “Well” is boring. How We Find Companies to Profile We find new companies primarily in three ways. First, we scour hundreds of blog and news feeds daily to see what’s new. Second, we get a number of tips (often anonymously) about new stuff. Usually these are the most interesting new products. The third way is a direct request from the company itself. We receive on average 5-10 email requests a day to be profiled. Usually we’ll write about one of these, meaning if a company sends in an email request to be profiled, they have a 10-20% chance of getting up on the site. This is not a hard rule but more of an observation. I believe that if more companies approached us differently, a much higher percentage would be blogged. I’ve decided to humbly submit my advice on how to approach us in requesting a profile -I think this advice will work well with other bloggers as well. Top Ten Things You Can Do To Get Blogged 1. Build a kick ass company. You can ignore everything else in this post (although you shouldn’t) if you build an awesome web 2.0 company that solves a real problem in an efficient manner. 2. Approach Bloggers Directly. Most bloggers have email and other contact information up on their site (email: editor@techcrunch, GoogleTalk:techcrunch, Skype:marrington). Use it to contact them directly with your thoughts.12 Marketing ” 3. Be Persistent. We are all busy. Emails get pushed down in the inbox and forgotten. Send a reminder or two and try to get a conversation going. Don’t be defensive when you are asked hard questions. 4. Start a Blog. This is important for multiple reasons. First, it is an easy way for bloggers to see what you’ve done over time. It is also a good way for bloggers to find out about new releases and milestones via your RSS feed. Most company blogs have only a few subscribers but don’t let this discourage you. Those that have subscribed are keenly interested in what you are doing. It is very likely they have a blog. Make it easy for them and they will post about you. You can also use your blog to promote bloggers who write about you. Other bloggers will see this and want to write about you too. Jeff Jarvis says: In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build branding. Links equal value. If you don’t have a blog, you don’t even have a wallet, let alone currency. Having a blog gives you a tangible way to say thank you” to bloggers who write about you. Encourage your employees to blog too. Go easy on the blogging policy in the early days. 5. Be humble. The more humble you are, the more outstanding I assume your product is. Showmanship often equals desperation. 6. Be confident. Find the right balance with humbleness. Don’t be humble to the point of mumbling or leaving important stuff out. 7. Be descriptive. Tell me what your product does immediately in crisp and interesting prose that is FOA (Free Of Acronyms). FaceBook is a social networking site for college students. Pandora is a music recommendation engine. See? I need more details down the road, but give me something to hold on to before you jump into the cool way you’ve implemented ajax into the FAQs, or whatever. “Most company blogs have only a few subscribers but don’t let this discourage you. Those that have subscribed are keenly interested in what you are doing.13 Marketing” 8. Tell a Story. Bloggers want to tell a story. Help them. Pandora is different because they break down music. Technically interesting! 60% of FaceBook’s users log in daily. wow! Writely is allowing people to visualize a world without thick clients. big story! 9. Don’t hide information. Put your location, contact information, team bios, faqs, blog and other important information up on the site in an easy to find location. Don’t make bloggers look up who is information or read your terms of service (for legal jurisdiction) just to guess your location. 10. Don’t be a Jerk. If someone just won’t write about you, move on to another blogger. Don’t heckle them. If someone does write about you and you don’t like what they say, deal with it by sending an email or leaving a clarifying comment. Don’t attack. Other bloggers will see it and avoid you like the plague. It’s hard to determine tone in a written blurb. Bloggers easily take offense. Think twice before you post something that can be taken the wrong way, and be very quick to apologize if you screw up. Don’t try to explain yourself -just apologize. If you are going to say something nasty or controversial, do it via email, not in a public comment. One example of this came up today. 9rules network has been adding blogs to their network and people have been writing about them. Paul ScrivensTechCrunch: Top Ten Things You Can Do To Get Blogged -dirtylaundry doesn’t like the fact that people sometimes refer to 9rules as 9Rules (capital R), and Mike Rundle wroteTechCrunch: Top Ten Things You Can Do To Get Blogged -dirtylaundry an arguably condescending post about it today on the 9 rules blog that said: Since our company/service/network is getting links from everywhere nowadays, I wanted to quickly clear up some confusion regarding the name of what it is we’re doing. The company is 9rules, Inc.” and the network is “The 9rules Network” or just “9rules.” These capital R’s dropped everywhere are making our CEO cry in public, and believe me, that’s not pretty. Lowercase r’s are where its at. Uppercase is for suckers :) The post was picked up by TurboBlogger and BlogHerald and 9rules has been roundly trashed in comments. Bad idea. Don’t do stuff like this. Once you have done it, apologize immediately and sincerely I won’t even bring up the Rollyo thing. Perfect example of how poor/hasty communication can hurt a company. Like I said, bloggers are touchy and I’m a blogger. The company handled this the right way and in the end everything was fine. “If someone does write about you and you don’t like what they say, deal with it by sending an email or leaving a clarifying comment. Don’t attack. Other bloggers will see it and avoid you like the plague.