10 FREE digital marketing tools you need to look at!

A Little Present From Igneous Marketing

Which tools do experienced digital marketers rely on to develop their marketing strategies, plans, and programs?  There are many valuable resources to provide insight into target audience behaviour, competitive activity, social media mentions, search keyword volume, current marketing trends, and a host of other useful information.  But did you know that many of the very best are available online to everyone, for free?

Before building your next digital plan, be sure to check out these terrific free tools for input, support and guidance in 10 important areas.

1)    Competitive site traffic: Compete.com estimates the number of U. S. visitors to practically all the top web sites, enabling users to enter up to five website names and receive Traffic Volume for each, along with additional site analytics.  Quantcast.com provides U. S. audience composition stats, including gender, income, age group, visit frequency, and other sites visited.  Alexa.com ranks sites comparatively based on traffic  by millions of its toolbar users.

2)    Search volume: Google Trends lets you enter up to five topics and see how often they've been searched on Google over time.  It calculates how many searches occurred for the entered term(s), compared to total Google searches, and graphs the results. The Hot Searches feature displays the 40 fastest-increasing searches in the U. S., and is updated hourly.  Google Insights enables narrower analysis to compare search volume patterns across specific geographic regions, subject categories, time frames and other Google properties.  Google Traffic Estimator shows predicted search volume, average cost-per-click, and ad positions for specified keywords.

3)    SEO Evaluation: WebsiteGrader.com, a free SEO evaluation tool, grades any site on its SEO effectiveness, based on factors including title, meta description, keywords, headings, images, Google Page Rank, inbound links, Google indexed pages, directory inclusion, and Delicious bookmarks.  Entering your own url or a competitor's delivers a quick SEO assessment.

4)    Competitive search activity: SpyFu.com reports the keywords a website buys on Google Adwords and the keywords causing a site to rank in search results. It also provides cost per click, search volume, and estimated search advertising spend. Other available information includes keywords used, organic search rank, top competitors, sites purchasing specific terms, and sites ranking organically for a given query.

5)    Social media dialogue: SocialMention.com tracks the most current conversations about a company, product, or any other topic across the social media landscape, encompassing blogs, forums, bookmarks, comments, events, news, etc., by monitoring over 100 social media properties like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and YouTube. Technorati.com is the leading blog search engine, indexing over a million blogs, tracking the authority and influence of blogs, while providing an index of what is currently most popular in the Blogosphere.

6)    Twitter monitoring: TweetMeme.com aggregates all the popular links on Twitter to determine which are popular, organizing these into Categories, Subcategories and Channels, so it's easy to filter and find what you are most interested in.  Klout.com measures influence on Twitter (and Facebook), on a scale from 0 to 100, using variables like the number of retweets, the Twitter audience size, and influence of followers, while also providing influence monitoring tools.

7)    Social media case studies:  To keep abreast of social media marketing activity by industry leaders or competitors, visit these wikis/sites, which provide a wide range of case studies.  For Social Media Cases across all industries, check out A Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples. If you're focused on the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, read the cases at the Dose of Digital Social Media Wiki.

8)    Sample Size Calculator: If you aren't a statistician, but require a simple, quick way to quantify the validity of your results, or establish the correct quantities for an in-market test, either of these two tools will do the trick: http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm or http://www.raosoft.com/samplesize.html.

9)    Online Advertising Impact: Both DoubleClick Research and Atlas Institute Insights regularly publish valuable white papers with insightful analyses of online media performance impact, benchmarks and trends.

10) Marketing Stats and Presentations: Slideshare.com lets you share presentations, or view documents written by others, across a whole range of topics and industries. PewInternet.org is an ongoing research project providing a rich resource of trends and statistics about consumer usage of digital channels.

These are among the most powerful, free tools that equip digital marketers to plan and analyze more effectively, but if you have other personal favourites, please share them by posting or emailing.

Understanding the Google +1 button

So, if you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks and have emerged, bleary eyed and wondering "What on Earth is this Google +1 button?" Then you've come to the right place.

The Google +1 Button is like… the "Like" button on Facebook, but instead of being for people's posts, updates and photos, it's for the web. Instead of liking a post, you're liking a website, a blog article, someone's profile… anything! To use it, you have to have a Google Account and, in turn, a Google Profile. If you've just got an account, you can still +1 a page, but you'll have to click "Create a Profile" when you first try to use this new feature. Why not try clicking our +1 button at the top to get into the swing of it?

The Importance of the +1 Button

The Google +1 Button is going to be important for many reasons; Google will begin to tailor search results so that if you've got a friend associated with your Google account that has liked a page related to what you're searching for, chances are, Google are going to rank the page they 'Plus-Oned' above the pages that they didn't. The other thing is, even if none of your friends have Plus-Oned a page, chances are the pages that have more will rank better.

It's for this reason, and this reason alone that we deem this new +1 button as very important. People are starting to speculate that if the +1 button kicks off a lot, Google might start to favour the pages using it over the pages that aren’t...

We also know that the +1 button is a surefire way to make sure Google knows about your page. All +1s will be stored, somewhere, in Google's complex database systems, but Google's algorithms will be looking at this list to make sure it is regularly spidering the pages people are 'Plus-Oneing.' (How many of these have we created?!)

If you have any questions, or need any advice, give us a call at 24/7

Learn more on the official Google +1 Page.

Creating a Strong Brand - Small Business

Creating a Strong Brand Name

The name is the brand trigger. When it is said or read or thought, all the impressions, experiences and promises of the brand are brought to mind.

Creating a new brand name, whether is a new company or a new product line, is an opportunity to take a deep breath, take stock of who you are and where you’re headed, figure out what new things you need to add to the marketing mix, and what baggage you may be ready to leave behind.

The following key attributes should be present in every company name:

■Position the company/product within the markets it serves.

■Attract customers and prospects, usually by stating a benefit, specific or implied.

■Be memorable

■Be easily pronounced

■Have positive verbal associations and connotations.

■Be unique, not at all like competitor names.

■Be protectable.

Next is a list with some five things to be considered when you start naming a new company, product or service:

1. Determine How Important the Name Really Is

Having a clever name isn’t always important. Many companies thrive in industries that are based on government contracts, bidding wars, business friendships, etc., and their name is often just a unique identifier to be placed on legal paperwork.

For most companies, however, their name can be an integral part of their marketing process. A clever, memorable name can make a potential client think about the company for a few extra moments, which may be all you need to get the edge on your competitors.

2. Stand Out…

The most common mistake made when naming a new business endeavor is to make it sound like the others in that industry. This is based on anxiety about whether the new business will be taken seriously. In reality, it’s critical that you stand apart from your competition, and that you look to your competitors as examples of what to avoid.

There are literally 30 or 40 wireless companies called Mobile-something — Mobileum, Mobilocity, MobileOne. Make a rule and don’t pick a name with ‘mobile’ in it, if you name a wireless company.

3. …but don’t get carried away.

A name that doesn’t mean anything, or it has no depth won’t work ussualy. A name should connect with something already in the collective subconscious. Don’t forget, you’re trying to make an emotional connection.

4. Test your tolerance for going ‘out of the box.’

If you’re looking for something unusual, usually when it comes down to it, the obstacle is always fear. Make sure that the fears aren’t based on what happens to brands out in the world. It’s like Banana Republic. People don’t see the name and think, ‘Whoa, an ugly racial slur — I’m not going to shop there.’ It’s all contextual.”

5. Don’t involve too many people

Most corporations have no problem delegating marketing and advertising issues to the marketing department, but when naming is involved, especially naming the company itself or key products, suddenly everyone wants to have a say in the process, and it can quickly become politically and emotionally charged. Therefore, it is essential that you keep the number of people involved in a naming project to a minimum, that they have real authority, and that they all understand the ideas outlined above.

Creating Great Sales Copy

What’s the difference between a good piece of direct mail and a “junk” piece?

Not all direct mail is junk mail. A clear message, with a good offer, sent to those who want to receive it is not junk mail. But there are some howlers out there that’s for sure.

Here is a quick list of things that make for a dreadful sales letter:

• Poor targeting that consigns the piece to the bin – immediately
• No copy on the envelope that encourages me to open it and read more
• Contains copy that only talks features and not benefits
• Copy that doesn’t follow the AIDCA principle (Attention, Interest, Desire, Conviction, Action)
• Doesn’t get to the main point within 3 paragraphs
• Littered with poor grammar and punctuation
• Line lengths that stretch from here to infinity
• No subheads to make me want to read on and on and on and….
• Printed in an unreadable typeface that’s so small I need a magnifying glass
• Type printed over a picture (with a drop shadow) because it looks “trendy”
• Doesn’t repeat the offer several times (because the writer assumes I’m an elephant and never forgets what I’ve just read)
• Doesn’t put explanatory captions under any pictures or illustrations (because the marketer knows what they are and assumes the reader is as knowledgeable as he is)

Stick to these and you won’t go far wrong

6 Things to try to improve sales

Things that can be done quickly to improve your sales today!

So a quick blog today on how to make a few tweaks to your sales and marketing approach which can result in some major shifts in fortune. So here are the Igneous Marketing top tips for today!

1. Your Website’s navigation

There’s little point having lots of wonderful, valuable content on your website or blog, if people can’t find it.  Many sites have pages within pages and information on the same subject, which is scattered all over the site.  Keep your site clean and clear.  Make sure it loads nice and quickly and that all your links work.  The easier your prospective clients can navigate your site, the more likely they are to find what they are looking for, and get in touch with you / buy from the site.

2. You need to make it easy for people to contact you via your website too.

That DOESN’T mean a contact box on a contact page, where you tell people they have to give YOU their email address, name, company name etc – just to get in touch.  Many people (me included) will not do that!  If that’s the only way for people to contact you, I can assure you 100% that it is losing you business inquiries.  To be easy to contact, give people your phone number, email address, social networking accounts and if you want people to trust you, I suggest you put a postal address down too!

3. The benefits of using your services need to be easy to understand.

This means short, information rich content that’s written in plain English.

4. Make it easy for people to trust you.

Use testimonials from named people, who had great experiences with you.  If you have won an award or reached a certified level of achievement within your industry, make sure people can easily see it.  You need to mention associations and affiliation to breed trust

5. Let your Personality shine through
If you use your blog or social networking accounts as a way to broadcast what you think, rather than engage people and communicate, you will attract very few inquiries.  Prospective client’s find it a lot easier to email or call a potential provider, if that provider is personable and approachable. Be human and make it easy for them to see the real you.

6. Make it easy for people to call you.

This means never, ever using a premium rate phone number or cell / mobile number as your contact number.  No one wants to have to pay you, via a premium rate number, to find out about your services.  Many small businesses use non-standard numbers because they want to disguise where they are located, in case it puts people off.  That’s nuts.  I suggest you use a normal number.  Mobile phone numbers, when used as the only contact number, make you look less stable.  As a consequence, this will reduce the number of calls you receive and by extension, the number of inquiries you get.

Don’t forget to visit our brand new marketing bundles page – everything you need, every month for one low monthly payment – talk about ROI!!

Why a small business MUST use the power of PR

We often get asked why PR? What can PR do for my business that advertising or marketing can’t.  Whether you are a small business, start-up company, or simply expanding into a new country or geographical area, PR is an important tool for you. Here is what we think…

Credibility – Public relations holds a powerful position in the communications suite. One of the major impacts of PR is media relations, which assists you in achieving editorial coverage. People in your target market may see editorial as an independent and objective evaluation of your company. Due to the perceived objectivity of editorial coverage, PR is said to hold more credibility than other forms of marketing communication. Editorial coverage is trusted more than running an advertisement.

Cost Effectiveness – Public relations can be less expensive than other forms of paid communication, even if you hire an external public relations agency rather than performing this task in-house. Whilst you are paying for the services of a PR specialist, what you are achieving in the way of media coverage and changes in public perception may have otherwise cost you much more.

Exposure – Media coverage achieved through PR is likely to be more extensive than that which you would achieve through advertising, given a similar budget. Specialist PR people know which media to target for which message (and often have cultivated incredible contacts), what content the media want, when to pitch them which story and what is the best way to deliver your message.

Flexibility – Public relations has the benefits of being flexible in message content and being responsive to news. A skilled PR professional can turn around media releases in reaction to news or crisis situations within hours

Check out our site for some PR ideas

10 Common Small Business Marketing Mistakes

If you’re a small business owner, you’ll usually have to wear a number of different hats during the day to day running of your business and it’s not easy to be an expert in many different areas.

Marketing your business effectively is critical to its short and long term success, so here we’ve identified 10 of the most common online marketing mistakes small businesses make.

Not identifying a target market

Before you do any marketing at all, it pays to have a clear idea of who your product or service is aimed at. When it comes to designing your website and writing the content for it, you need to appeal to the people you want to buy your product or service and connect with them.

Not doing enough research

If your small business is offering a new or innovative product or service, how do you know that people will either need it or want it? The time to find out is not when you’ve had a website designed and spent a fortune on Google Adwords with little or no return; it’s at the planning stage.

Building a poor quality DIY website

In 2009, almost £50 billion was spent on internet retail sales in the UK, so if you want a share of the online market, your website will need to be up to scratch. There’s fierce competition online in almost every market sector so a poor quality website that looks homemade will not do you any favours at all.

Communicating features rather than benefits

Confusing features and benefits when it comes to website copy is a very common mistake. Let’s say you were selling golf balls online, a feature could be that they have a titanium core but why would that interest the reader? The benefit would be that you can hit them longer distances which of course would appeal to most golfers.

Advertising once and giving up

It’s widely accepted that people often have to see an advert or brand name 6 or 7 times before they will act on it. So if you decide to advertise your business online via Pay per Click, it pays to run a campaign consistently rather than doing it once and deciding it’s the wrong way to market your business.

Copying your competitors

Whether you’re trying to compete at a local or national level, copying your competitors is never a good idea whether it’s having very similar content on your website or using the same words on your Pay per Click adverts. Be innovative, do something different and people will notice your business.

Focusing all your attention on getting new business

It’s all too easy as a small business to concentrate on gaining new customers and forgetting about your previous or existing ones. Email marketing is a cost effective way to communicate with your client base and help keep them as loyal customers.

Not advertising when you’re doing well

If you fail to market your business when things are going well then you will find it difficult to expand as well as potentially missing out on lucrative orders for the future. For example shutting down a successful Pay per Click campaign or deciding to stop emailing past customers doesn’t make good business sense.

Having separate online and offline messages

It’s important to treat your online and offline marketing as one overall strategy. Too many small businesses fall into the trap of not combining their marketing efforts and end up with a haphazard approach that’s confusing to customers.

Failing to measure your marketing results

If you don’t measure your marketing results, how will you know what marketing efforts are worth continuing with and what’s losing you money? A simple “How did you find us?” option on an online contact form or analysing your Pay per Click statistics regularly can help you measure your return on investment.

Ethical Marketing

Marketing has expanded far and wide in the past few years. The continued growth of social media marketing and rise in mobile marketing will see this trend increase rapidly in the coming months. The internet is often seen as a dark and scary place with tricksters, hackers, cheats and swindlers hiding behind each click. Therefore,  it’s more important than ever to be trustworthy. As a starting point, here are the Igneous Marketing seven rules for ethical marketing:

1. Tell the truth. Don’t write or say anything, anywhere, that isn’t true. True is not a relative term—it’s black and white. If it looks grayish, don’t say it.


2. Say it nicely. Don’t write or say anything, anywhere, that you’d be ashamed to see on a billboard or on the front page of the newspaper.


3. Give credit and say thank you. It’s so easy to get information and much of it is free. But if you use information from the Internet, credit the source. If possible, link to it.


4. Protect your customers. Never use a story about a client, even if you’ve removed the name, without asking for permission.


5. Treat your blog like journalism, not marketing. Pretend the editor at the The Times is going to fact-check you.


6. Use ghostwriters with integrity. If the ideas come from an expert, and a writer builds an article, blog post, newsletter, or seminar content from those ideas, it’s the expert’s work.


7. Respect your competitors. It’s just bad form to say negative things about competitors. Differentiating your company means saying positive things about yourself that are truthful, can be supported with evidence, and make a difference to clients. Don’t lie to get competitive intelligence. Instead, consider asking your clients who switched or employees who moved. Follow competitors on social media, and set up Google alerts.

Don’t be tarred with the same brush – make sure your website or social media presence is seen and trusted

Subject Line Inspiration

We all know this:

Subject lines are the key to getting your email read. Once you get through the firewall and into the prospects inbox, the next big hurdle is getting your email opened and this relies 100% on your subject line. It must interest and intrigue the recipient enough to make them click open.

So the main piece of advice here is to cheat! Yep, you heard me –cheat. Copy and “borrow”. You need to see what others are doing and see what works. I spent 4 hours the other day scouring my inbox to which emails I had opened. This would have been due to the title and made a list of them. This gave me great insight into what works and I strongly recommend you do the same.

The key seems to be providing an intriguing offer and personalisation. A great one was “Simon, can Igneous Marketing profit from this simple, cost effective tool”. What a great line!

Below are the MarketingMixer’s top 50 opened subject lines.

Enjoy this Special Offer at Our New Location

25-40% off - Email-Only Offer – Today Only

Invitation-Only 2 Hour Event Starts 11:30 AM CT

Ends Today! 20% Off Friends & Family

Top 10 under $10

Free shipping - offer ends in 3 days

Free product with purchase of [product name]

[New Product] has arrived. Order now before we run out.

Earn double points for [insert product or action].

Last Chance: Get up to $25 now

Save 10% on your next order

Enjoy [season] with rates from $65

Service Notice: Exciting new changes at [your company]

An Exclusive Offer for You

[Your company] October Specials

Last minute deals, special offers, and new [product name]

Act Now to renew your [subscription name]

Online only: 25% off friends and family

Introducing our latest…[product/feature here]

[Product name] Promotion week. Save 25%

Extended for a day! Get Free shipping through Friday

Stock up and save 15%

Limited Supply: Limit 2 [product name] per customer

Ho-ho-ho: The [your company] holiday catalog is here!

Email subscriber exclusive: [Product name] sale is here

Ends Today: Take 20% off your entire order

Private Sale Ends Today

Your choice of amazing items $50 + under

Great gifts for [Dad, Mom, etc]

Best Sellers every [girl, boy, man, woman, dog, etc.]

Everything you need when the temperatures [rise, fall]

Free Shipping--Limited Time Offer

Another great source of inspiration is newspaper headlines. What gets read? What makes you read on? Apply this principle to your email marketing subject line. I have also been looking at twitter to see what inspires me to click the link.

Which marketing practices generate the most results

In my usual search for marketing news and insight, I stumbled across a report with some very interesting stats on business marketing practices. Here at, Igneous Marketing, we are often asked which of the millions of marketing practices, strategies and techniques give the best result and why. This is obviously impossible to answer in generalist terms but a report from MarketingSherpa seems to provide a few answers on this topic.

The report itself focuses on SEO but also offers some interesting insight into what other organisations (B2B) are using and what is bringing them success. According to MarketingSherpa, the top concerns of B2B Marketers revolve around getting more value and revenue out of limited resources – all in a fast paced world of increasing competition. Prioritizing resources for maximum impact is critical.

The graph below provides some interesting insight

The report also highlighted that obviously combinations work more effectively than single practices in isolation. The report also advocated regular activity, refinement and measurement.

Does this sound familiar? Have a look here!!

Creating Great Surveys

Creating Great customer service Surveys

This blog focuses on your customers and how you can learn, advance and even benefit from them in a low cost, quick and easy way.

Why bother?

Good customer service is the life blood of any business. Although new customers are important good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business is likely to win many more customers through recommendations and remember, if you are not taking care of your customers, your competition will.

A Customer Satisfaction survey will help you not only identify problem areas but will also demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

Where to start?

Objective - Before you start compiling your survey you should first consider what the objectives of the survey are, in that way you will remain focused and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.

Analysis - In addition to the objective consider also how you will analyse the answers having completed the survey. Keep in mind that 'closed' questions (where the respondent is asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than 'open' questions (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want). Much will depend on the volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – Keep in mind that as well as obtaining valuable market research data customer surveys are also a good way to publicise aspects of your service that your customers may not be aware of. After you have drafted your survey read through the survey from a market research view point and check that you are asking the right questions in the right way and that with the feedback information you will be able to make informed decisions. Then, read through the survey from a marketing view point, check that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business? The ideal question will perform the following three 

functions:-

Market research - provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business

Marketing - promote aspects of your business
Information/Education - advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

By asking this question not only will the store receive good feedback on the facility they provide but they will also advertise their baby changing facilities and promote themselves as a family friendly store beyond those customers who have a specific need for the facility provided.

Warts and all – to benefit most from a customer survey you need to be prepared to dig deep and accept the worst. A customer satisfaction survey should be designed to highlight problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and will also give early warning on where your competitors initiatives may be losing you business.

What to ask?

Although each business is likely to have specific and unique factors that are important in providing good customer services there are common areas that are relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, Internet based or a service industry. The following are some key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication - Do you make it easy for the customer to communicate with you? When a customer telephones is the phone answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services properly handled? A good business will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, quickly, politely and fairly. If a problem is not resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise? Use a customer satisfaction survey to confirm that all your staff are perceived by your customers as being helpful, courteous and knowledgeable.

Location – Do your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, is it conveniently located with good access?

Making it pleasant, making it easy - For a virtual business it is important to ensure that your website is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use. Physical store or website, is the store properly laid out, can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – Not only should you measure the quality of the service that you provide but you should check that the products and services that you market are what the customer wants and closely match their expectations.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is not always a good measure, value of money is. Do your customers equate your business with value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – No matter what the business, the majority of customers will want to be dealt with quickly but attentively. Are you doing everything you can to avoid delays? Good businesses will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Attention is one thing but this has to be hand- in-hand with a quick and satisfactory resolution of the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example where do they live and what is their age group? The more you try to understand your customers the better you will be able to target your business. Within the survey allow customers to highlight specific problems and provide contact details.

What next?

Having completed the survey analyse the results.

Trends – Look for common and specific areas where the service is failing. Ask yourself if the criticism is valid and is there anything that can be done to resolve or minimise the problem?

Training – Are the staff properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge? Where staff training programmes have been implemented have they had a positive impact on the business?

Follow-up –If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue ensure that they are contacted and their complaint addressed. Don't lose an opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.

Continuously Monitor - Make-changes and then measure by issuing further surveys.

Follow up - THE small business marketing tool

Follow up is THE tool of the small business

Most of us will agree that quick response times to potential customers are vital. Delaying making that call allows your competitors to beat you to the punch. Speed is essential in the world of small business response.

This really is the tip of the iceberg though and as a small business you need to go further and make professional, rapid “follow up” the mindset of your entire business. One of the small business owners biggest tools is it’s speed of response.

So let’s talk how to enhance your follow up and become true masters of it:

Prospect Follow up

• Use auto responders to send a series of emails or snail mails to prospects over time. This is a fine way to stay top of mind and continue to build trust. Several email services such as SwiftPage and Infusionsoft can change the path of emails based on the recipient’s action so you can deliver the right information.
• Connect your prospects into your CRM software and add their social media activity. Few things allow you to start connecting faster than follow-up that’s informed. Don’t forget to connect with these same prospects in networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn

Customer Follow up

• Create an auto responder email series that provides additional training for products and services purchased.
• Follow up with additional company information in the form of an orientation package
• Create a follow-up process that allows you to assess with your customer the results you were able to bring
• Bring small groups of customers together to allow them to network and discuss business challenges
• Send handwritten notes of thanks to every customer

Hope this helps

A Blog on writing Blogs

Here are 9 ways to write more, high quality blog posts.

1.      Write short posts.  You don’t have to churn out 1,000 word essays. As my wife always says it’s quality not quantity!

2.      Don’t try to write like someone else.  The more your posts reflect the real you, the more people will value them.

3.      Spend less time publishing your ideas on social networking sites. Focus on your blog instead.

4.      Avoid seeking perfection.  The perfection mindset will cause you to write from a position of fear.  Be human, which means being imperfect.

5.      Use a voice recorder or your phone to capture ideas when out and about.  You will often get your best ideas when you can’t write them down.

6.      Don’t feel like you have to bring the answers with your posts.  Ask the questions.  Get a conversation going: It’s a blog, not a broadcast!

7.      Write when you feel creative.  If you feel inspired to write a post, write one.  Then, write another one! I seldom write 1 post at a time.

8.      Use the questions you are asked  as inspiration for future posts.  If someone is asking you a question linked to your topic, there’s a good chance other readers will find the answer useful too.  I wrote this post, after a reader asked how I managed to publish 12 posts here in the past 7 days.

9.      Most importantly, enjoy it! Many bloggers say they have to force themselves to write posts.  You don’t need to force yourself to do something you enjoy, so identify and resolve whatever it is, which is stopping you from enjoying your blog.

Using Video on Your Website – Some advice and tips

Video marketing is flying at the moment with more and more people are trying it out. Video is certainly attention grabbing and access to cheaper digital equipment means it now far more possible to achieve to a high standard. However, this does not mean that is it is always done well. In fact, I have seen more poor videos than good ones. So here is the Igneous Marketing top tips for creating good videos for you website:

Use a Script: It is vital to know exactly  what you want to say and how you want to say it. Practice, practice , practice and make sure you have bundles of personality to engage the viewer. I would also recommend printing out the script and having it directly above the camera. This makes it look as if you are looking at the camera and not reading.

Lighting: Most videos fail here. Ask any cameraman or video director and they will tell you the painstaking lengths they go to, to ensure the lighting is just right. Never have a light directly on you or chining up. The best position is above you and to the right or left as this gives you that movie star glint in your eye. It should also be positioned to ensure you do not see any shadows.

Microphone: Do not use the in built mic. No matter how good the camera, standard mic’s just do not cut it. There is too much distance between you and the camera so you pick up too much white noise. You should buy a good quality lapel mic as this will pick up far more and make you look more professional.

Presentations: Videos are great for live demonstrations. This can often save the cost of a visit and is far more informative than simply talking about a product. The only issue here is your hands! Make sure your nails are trim and well kept – think QVC!

Call to Action: Just like normal marketing, you need to finish your video presentation with a call to action for the viewer. What should they do next. How do they get more information – ultimately what do you want them to do next?

The key bit of advice is to be a perfectionist. The slightest stutter or blemish should mean another take. This can become laborious but the results will speak for themselves