A few months ago, I roughed out the text because I was getting quite a few questions about small business blogging from fellow small business owners. This is by no means a definitive guide, but someone suggested this morning that I post it to my own blog, so here it is:

 

Why do you want to start small business blogging?

First, be clear on your goals. I hope you are small business blogging for three reasons:

1. Search engine optimization
2. Thought leadership
3. Relating to customers

 

What will your small business blog be about?

Second, decide what your focus will be. What the heck are you going to blog about? What can you talk about that other people might not be? What topic gets you excited and would be easy for you to write about? For example, my friend with an Indian restaurant wants to blog. Possible “themes” for her blog are: vegetarianism, Indian culture, running a small family-owned business, having an ethnic restaurant in a redneck town, cooking, Indian food, recipes, being a single mom running a restaurant, food allergies, etc.

 

Another example is my local florist. I’m trying to get her to start small business blogging because she’s very online marketing savvy when it comes to pay-per-click, but less so for SEO. I’m also trying to get her to blog because she’s so knowledgeable and well-respected and she could be even more so. I’d love to see her write a blog as the florist expert, offering advice like when to start choosing the flowers for your wedding, seasonal suggestions for wedding flowers, plants as corporate gifts, catering advice, maybe she talks about her favorite catering venues. She could talk about the price of flowers as impacted by gas prices, how to keep flowers fresh, etc. I see it as “advice” oriented.

 

Or consider my small business blog: Although I’m primarily a Seattle copywriter, my real passion is marketing, and my beliefs about being customer-centric. (Stated at the top of my blog: helping people talk to customers not at them.) My goal with my small business blogging is to get people thinking a little differently about marketing, while still using keywords that are helping my blog get found for copywriting. In the future, I’ll be doing more consulting and speaking, so my keywords will shift, but the blog’s theme will stay the same. So on the other hand, my goal is also to get people thinking about me in a certain way.

 

Your small business blog title

Third: Decide on the title of your blog. Make sure it reflects your blog’s focus, but also your keywords if you’re small business blogging for SEO. For example, when I started a blog for an email marketing agency, I chose “Email Marketing ROI” for the title, so the URL included those words. (It now has a different name.) And that was the theme of the blog: improving email marketing ROI by providing useful information.

 

Set a small business blogging schedule

Fourth, set a schedule for small business blogging and adhere to it. Blog at least two times a week, but if you want search engine results, do it more often. I have a Task in Outlook that pops up a reminder for me every Tuesday and Thursday. In that task list is a running list of topic ideas (more on that later). If you have produced an email newsletter or another publication, you know you have a production calendar to stick with. Think of your blog the same way.

 

Round up the bloggers

Fifth, consider having more than one person at your company blog. It doesn’t have to be the CEO or the marketer writing the blog. In fact, the best blog content might come from someone who works with customers every day, or on the shop floor. The first person would have insight into customer concerns, and the other into production. Both would produce great blog content that an executive or marketer might not think of.

 

Be clear on your keywords

Sixth: If you’re blogging for SEO purposes, determine your keywords. Use a free keyword research tool like SEO Book (http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/) or Google Adwords (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal), or maybe you already know your keywords you want to win? Then look at how competitive the search landscape is for the terms you want to use. Remember, more specific keywords won’t be used by as many people, but they’ll get you found by the smaller group of people who are a more targeted audience for you. The less often you plan on blogging, the fewer keywords you’ll be able to use enough to compete. But come with 4 or so keyword phrases. Long-tail keyword searches seem to do well in blogs. Keep this list in mind every time you blog and use your keywords, in a post title and in the post itself. I usually write a blog post, then go back and sprinkle in a keyword or tool. And I admit it, I don’t focus on the SEO part enough sometimes because I get caught up in the topic. J

 

Do you want editorial control?

Seventh, think about editorial control: If more than one person will be small business blogging, do you want administrative control so content is reviewed before it goes live? Will someone be proofreading blog content before it gets posted?

 

Developing your voice

Eight: When you first start, you don’t necessarily have to post those initial blogs. Just write them in a Word document first, or even on paper. You’ll want to write a few to get your voice, a sense of how you want to come across. But do be yourself, do be natural and a real person.

 

Coming up with topics

Now the “hard” part (not really): small business blogging!! The biggest hurdle for people seems to be topics. What will we blog about? If after reading this you still don’t know what you’ll blog about, let me know…

 

Keep a running list of topic ideas. Then when it’s time to blog, use one of the ideas (then make sure you delete it from your list!). If you have a recurring task in Outlook, like I do, you keep your list there. Then when Outlook pings you, you’ve got your idea list right in front of you. But once you start blogging, you’ll start seeing topics all around you. I use one of the topics on my list maybe every 3^rd or 4^th time because something will have happened that prompts a blog post in the mean time.

 

Look for ideas in the newspaper, trade magazines, in other blog posts. I even get ideas from the radio and from conversations.

 

I haven’t done this yet, but try and use photos sometimes. Not cheesy ones though, don’t include photos just for the sake of photos. Or clip art, ugh! But real photos of real people, like your staff or your customers. Videos too…

 

I saw a blog that copied and pasted in press releases verbatim. I wouldn’t recommend this because search engines hate duplicated content. It’s better to blog on the press release and link to it. And if your company creates press releases and posts them online (and you should!), write a summary of the press release in your blog and link to it.

 

Link to other sources. If you read a blog that makes a good point, write your own blog post with your take on it, and link to the original blog. Ditto for online news articles, video clips, etc. You can link to anything. Consider subscribing to a couple of email newsletters or other blogs just to get your own thought processes going. Your reactions to what you read are also valid blog content.

 

Link to studies and reports that are released. Some bloggers are the filter for their readers, helping their readers find important information without having to look for it.

 

Talk about what’s going on with your business: Are you going to be at a tradeshow? Will there be live music at your tavern? Are you moving?

 

Be creative in thinking about what content will be interesting. Like my business is a copywriting agency, but I don’t tell people how to be copywriters. I try to help people be better marketers. If you owned a coffee shop, you wouldn’t necessarily blog on your coffee shop, that would get boring fast, but you could blog on the coffee industry perhaps, because you could still use your keywords.

 

Include customer testimonials with an introduction, maybe “We received a great email from Susan Smith about her new vacuum, and just have to share it with you…”

 

Never forget that small business blogging is about being real. You could even include a recipe! Say you had a staff potluck and Joe’s potato salad was a huge hit. Talk about the party and include Joe’s recipe.

 

Please don’t post just to post. I have a friend that does that because his only concern is SEO, and that means he’s putting a lot of useless stuff out on the Internet. L I want subscribers to my blog, and if I did that, just posted blogs based on keywords, subscribers wouldn’t stay very long because I wouldn’t be providing useful information!

 

That’s my start on blogging basics. Please, please let me know if it was helpful or not by commenting!!

What does a little tavern in an even smaller town have in common with a healthcare powerhouse like Group Health? They’ve both delivered on their promises. And as I develop my marketing is like dating theory, I've realized being true to your word is important in dating and marketing both.

 

Last week at the Puget Sound Marketing Association (PSAMA) luncheon, Jay Gusick of Group Health talked about the enormous rebranding effort his organization has gone through since 2000. When he put up his slide showing the phases they’ve gone through, and the first was on figuring out their brand, I right away made a note about “yeah, but the important thing is to follow through on that brand, that promise!” And sure enough, as he continued to describe the process, turns out that’s what they did: They determined their brand, then went back and made the reality fit, from staff appearance to the look of their facilities to the level of care. And only then did they start to promote the new brand, once they could deliver on the promise.

 

That same day I drove north to visit my cowboy. He was excited to take me to Burlington’s newest tavern for dinner. It had just opened the night before. Walking up to it, I saw an old brick building with the words Train Wreck painted in huge letters on the side. And I began to anticipate the experience: What I hoped for, what an old brick building in a small town “promises” to me, is a straightforward yet neighborly experience, with an interior full of the character that only a renovated industrial building can offer and a menu of what I affectionately call “bar food.” That’s just what I got. The Train Wreck delivered on its promise by being warm and friendly, appropriately decorated with vintage photos hanging from the exposed brick walls, a handful of popular beer choices, and the perfect bar menu. (If you ever go, have the Oyster Grinder. Wish I could have one today!)

 

In one day I witnessed both a big business and a small business be true to their marketing. They delivered on their promises. You might think what does that matter, marketing is just to get people through the door in the first place, right? Wrong. Your marketing is a lie if you don’t follow through on what you promised in the first place.

It's just like in dating: If you say you're going to call, call. If you present yourself as an outdoorsy person when you first meet someone, you'd better be an outdoorsy person. Think how frustrating it is when someone pretends to be something they're not.

Marketing is like dating. Think how frustrating it must be for your customers when your marketing makes you out to be something you're not.

Today is Diwali, the Indian Festival of Lights, so I took my daughter and two of her friends to my friend Harpreet's Indian restaurant for sweets. I've been after Harpreet to use blogs as marketing tools for a while. But she--like me--is a busy working single mom, so small business blogging isn't exactly top of mind for her. Once we left her restaurant, Punjab Sweets, and we were done gorging ourselves on the sweets, I started thinking once again how cool it would be if she were blogging. As a non-Indian patron, how great if I could have read up on Diwali before taking the kids so I could tell them more than just "it's a festival where you give each other sweets." And I was enticed to go because Harpreet said she and the employees would be dressed up in Indian finery. I wanted Emma to see that. Heck, I wanted to see it!

Imagine the picture we could have painted with words if using blogs as marketing tools for her small restaurant. I as her friend had the advantage of her telling me what the day would be like: stacks and stacks of empty boxes, tables covered with trays of all variety of sweets, women dressed in colorful garb, and the festive feeling of the day. Imagine all that in a blog, how enticing would that be? Especially with a photo or two of the sweets. How many more non-Indians would be up there buying boxes of sweets having read that description?

I still believe small business marketing can benefit from blogging. But right now I'm suffering from an Indian sweet induced sugar stupor, so I'll end this blog without any more preaching.

One time I was so late in sending a thank you note to a relative that I ended up never sending one. That was over 20 years ago, and I still feel bad about it. But it got so awkward, you know? It became a matter of what was worse, sending the note ages after it was appropriate, or ignoring the situation.

That's how I feel about my blog right now! It has been sooooooo long since I blogged! It's hard to get back to it! But I am back, for a quick note from the Seattle copywriter.

Although I get so busy I don't keep up the way I should, I push blogs as marketing tools for good reason. They work. My blog is one reason I've been so busy with copywriting and web writing. Clients have been finding We Know Words because using blogs as marketing tools is equivalent to being an SEO copywriter: you blog with keywords, you get found.

I'm happy to say I convinced client ClickMail Marketing to begin blogging on email marketing. Hurray! You can find their blog at www.clickmailmarketing.com/whitelist. And, yes, I help with it. So I can tell you it's a useful blog on email marketing, one you should check out.

Other marketing tools I've helped them with that I can recommend are the whitepaper on driving ROI after your email gets to the inbox, download it at http://www.clickmailmarketing.com/whitepaper.html. And we've started publishing the ClickMail Marketer for advice on email marketing. See a sample issue at http://www.clickmailmarketing.com/newsletter.html.

Remember, email marketing makes sense for any size business, and I strongly recommend small business email marketing. But as easy as it is, there are lots of parts to it, so big business or small, make sure you educate yourself on email to make sure you're doing it right. These tools from ClickMail will help.

And of course if you need a Seattle copywriter to help out with the content, you know whom to call, er, email. :-)

When I first fell for a cowboy, a friend teasingly sent me a link to a Garth Brooks song about whatcha going to do with a cowboy. And it’s has been stuck in my mind the past few days but with “website” instead of cowboy. Here’s why…

 

Sunday night at a wedding reception, I fell into a conversation with the owner of a medical billing company. Although she and her partner have a successful and growing small business, they do not have a website. Usually I avoid talking about work at social events, but small business marketing is a subject near and dear to my heart so I couldn’t help myself. I talked shop…

 

Because they’ve grown without one, they haven’t felt a website was necessary, and I explained that maybe they don’t need one but suggested reasons why they might.

 

For example, all their business comes from referrals and word of mouth. A website can be a great first introduction. I know people looking for a Seattle copywriter almost always look at the We Know Words website before they contact me for copywriting. And that works well for both me as copywriter and them as prospect: My website is a pre-qualifier. If you don’t like the attitude all over it, you probably won’t like my customer-centric approach to copywriting (as opposed to generic, me too copywriting and web writing).

                                                                                                                                            

with a website, this company could give a sales pitch to potential customers by having a website these prospects could go to after getting a referral.

 

And that can save time. Instead of prospects calling the small business to ask questions about their services and rates, they could get the answers themselves by going to the website.

 

In talking to the small business owner further about the idea of a site, it turns out there’s a lot of information they need to update clients with on a regular basis, and she realized the website could work for that. Plus I pointed out they could use an RSS feed to push the updates out or at least to let clients know there’s new information.

 

Small business marketing doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. But it doesn’t have to be copycat either. Maybe the smart approach is to first figure out what you want to do, then look at how a website could help you do it. A website just for the sake of a website is silly. But a website that helps you sell and saves you time and lets you do a better job of serving clients makes a lot of sense.

 

Is it time to revisit your small business website and make sure it’s pulling its weight? Is there some function you could have your website do to save you or staff the time of doing it?

 

Whatcha gonna do with that website?

 

And I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do with that cowboy!

I found my notes from OMS Seattle!! I had tucked them into the copy of “Groundswell” I got that day. I didn’t win the drawing for the book, as much as I wanted to, but my friend Carmen did, and she kindly gave it to me as she already had a copy. J When I started reading it last night, lo and behold, I found my notes with all my blog topics! So I admit sometimes this Seattle copywriter is a little spacy...

 

Now, with all these marketing topics to touch on, where to start? How about with this great observation made by Aaron Kahlow, the guy behind the Online Marketing Summit, excuse the paraphrasing: Companies spend a ton of money on lobbies that most prospects and customers will never, ever see. But how many thousands of people will go to their website? And is the same investment made there to make the same great first impression?

 

Because your website is your first impression, and you only have a few seconds to let the visitor know they’ve arrived at the right place before they click away. Your home page has to clearly and immediately state what people can expect to do/find/buy at your website.

 

As a website copywriter, it can be a challenge to get clients to look past what they want to say to what the customer wants to hear. Because with only a few seconds to get someone to stick around, your only choice is to talk to customers, not at them! (See my copywriting mantra at the top of this blog.)

 

And the lobby vs. website analogy is a great one. Imagine an office building with droves of people coming through the door into the lobby, looking around quickly, then marching right back out again. How unnerving for the security guard or receptionist at the front desk! But that’s exactly what happens when your home page fails to communicate right away what you offer and people just click away.

 

(Makes me wonder if the lobby is really for impressing the potential customers, or more for boosting the egos of the executives? Which some websites seem to be built to do! To boost egos, that is.)

 

And the really good news is, this is another place where small business marketing plays on a level playing field with big business! It might take tens of thousands of dollars to create a truly impressive lobby. But a truly useful website doesn’t have to cost much at all!  But small business or big, you'll want to invest in a great website copywriter, of course. :-)

 

Last week this Seattle copywriter went to the Online Marketing Summit in Seattle. Although most of the information was stuff I already knew, I took notes and had about eight blog post ideas jotted down, prompted by the day’s presentations. I was delighted to have so much blog fodder, knowing I could post every day for a few days and have sweet Sarah, my Client Success Manager at Compendium Blogware (whose job it is to keep the bloggers blogging!), praising me for my blogging frequency. But alas, I lost my notes! And I don’t lose things! Especially anything related to copywriting. Frustrating!

 

One thing I remember though: Although the Online Marketing Summit is, of course, focused on online marketing meaning anything from email marketing to web usability, there were two recurring themes I noticed throughout the day:

 

1) Social media: Again and again presenters either framed their talks around social media, or the attendees asked questions related to it.

2) Face to face: Several times I heard people say something akin to “nothing can replace in-person, face-to-face communication.”

Do you notice those two themes go together? When companies are using social media to market, they are able to act more like they are marketing in person. Think blogs as marketing tools, where you have a real person doing the talking, not a generic, faceless company. Or the segmentation that can be done with email marketing: Your marketing can be very targeted and specific to an audience, making them feel like you are talking just to them. How about User Generated Content (UGC) where the users are creating the content for you, as real people talking to your audience “face-to-face”?

Perhaps most exciting is how doable this is for small business marketing. From small business email marketing to small business blogging, this Seattle copywriter sees plenty of opportunities.
 

Just something to think about… Meanwhile, I’ve ransacked all my recycling bins and my car and my purse, but I remain convinced those notes are around here somewhere. And ransacking my brain isn’t helping: I’m coming up empty, trying to remember all my great blog ideas!

Big news for this Seattle copywriter! I have an article in today's issue of MarketingProfs.com, my favorite marketing publication:

http://www.marketingprofs.com/webnews/8/news8-5-08_0.asp?adref=mpt188

Seriously, this is my favorite email newsletter, and one I recommend all the time to fellow marketers, copywriters and marcom people. The quality of the articles is always high, whether the authors are addressing email marketing, blogs as marketing tools, SEO or small business marketing.

The article is also on one of my favorite marketing topics: The Sin of Assumption. Read it and let me know what you think!!

I was just on a web page looking up the root of a word and I saw an ad for weight loss. No surprise there. But the ad must have been for surgery because the image in the ad was of internal organs. I assume the stomach, I don’t know the human innards very well. And my reaction? Gross! What in the world are they selling!

 

Well, they’re not selling what the customer is buying! They are selling weight loss surgery, but the customer is buying weight loss. The best image to have there is one of a skinny person, silly advertiser! Sure, you use surgery to achieve the weight loss, so that’s what you’re selling. But that makes for a bad ad no matter how good your online copywriter.

 

Think about it…

 

You are selling mattresses but your customer is buying a good night’s sleep.

 

You are selling small business blogging software but your customer is buying search engine optimization.

 

You are selling sports cars but your customer is buying status.

 

Before you do any copywriting, blogging, small business email marketing, anything, make sure you get out of your head and into your customer’s: What is she really truly buying from you? Sell that!

 

Right now, answer the question: What is your customer really buying?

 

And about that word I was researching? Sure enough the words smite and smitten are related. This Seattle copywriter thinks that’s pretty funny!

If you’re in email marketing, you’re using a welcome email (aka welcome letter), I hope! It can be one of the most powerful tools in your email marketing toolbox, because it’s the most often read email a business can send to a prospect or customer. (If you’re new to email marketing, or getting into small business email marketing, or just wondering what a welcome email is, it’s the email automatically generated and sent to a new subscriber to your in-house email list, someone who signs up on your Web site.)

 

Sadly most businesses don’t use one or use a crappy one. Yet the welcome email should be required in email marketing. Not only is it highly likely that your customer will open and read it, it gives you a chance to make a deeper connection with them, further your relationship along, and even up sell them or get them back to your web site.

 

Earlier this week I started on whitepaper project for a new client and we were talking about how people would get the whitepaper (because this Seattle copywriter believes how you deliver a marketing message is almost as important as the message itself). I mentioned about using a welcome email and did he want me to do the copywriting for it, and I found myself explaining the welcome letter…which led to a great new term (I think) and this blog post.

 

I told him to think of it as a reinforcement email, and then had my “ah ha” moment: Maybe if marketers thought of this welcome letter as a reinforcement email, they’d both be more likely to use one and they’d make sure to have better copywriting too.

 

By “reinforcement,” I mean this piece of email marketing reinforces to your customer that signing up for your email newsletter or email promotions was a smart decision. It’s like a buy for the customer: She is giving you her contact information. In return you will provide her content of value. It’s an exchange of “goods” and you can confirm for her that yes, that was a good idea. It also reinforces your message regarding frequency and what type of information she’ll receive from you via email, ensuring that she’ll be more likely to look for messages from you in her inbox. It can reinforce your brand in tone and voice (which is why I keep mentioning copywriting). And it can reinforce the beginning of your relationship with this person. She raised her hand and said yes to hearing from you. You can take the next step in the relationship with this email.

 

I hope calling it a reinforcement email instead of a welcome email makes it make sense to marketers, because—like I said already—it is so important, it should be required in all email marketing, especially small business email marketing. If you have a small business, this is one easy way to stand out and differentiate yourself from the big guys…wait, that’s the start of another blog post.

 

When it’s not an email newsletter, of course…

 

This past week I spoke to a prospect with a target demographic of men between 16 and 30 years old who spend a lot of money customizing their cars. They want to stand out and get noticed and are on the lookout for the latest, hottest cool stuff to put on their cars first, before anyone else. These guys are going to be on YouTube, MySpace, etc.

 

Yet on the company’s Web site, they offer an email newsletter signup as part of their small business email marketing efforts.

 

Picture these guys that make up the target market: Do you think they want to sign up for and read an email newsletter? Neither do I.

 

Nor did I think that this company was investing the time and resources into creating content for an email newsletter. So I asked what they really do send out as part of their small business email marketing. The answer: emails about specials and promotions.

 

OK then, that’s what the signup should be selling, “Sign up to get special email specials and promotions.” That’s going to have much more appeal to a teenager than “Sign up for our newsletter.”

 

Lessons here:

 

1. Choose your words carefully. Use customer-centric words. Don’t assume that because you call it an email newsletter but it’s really something else that your customer is going to translate what you really mean. (Again, marketing is like dating: Don’t assume.) This is especially true with small business email marketing when you’ll likely have fewer people coming to your site and fewer people handing over their email addresses. You want to convert as many of those people as possible, so offer them what they really want by using the right words.
2. Wait, that’s lesson two: Offer them what they really want. Yes, you want to use email to market your small business. Good for you! Email can be extremely effective and cost-effective. But first figure out what the prospect wants to get from you.

 

I’m not saying email newsletters are bad. At We Know Words, we love email newsletters because we do the copywriting of them for clients. But we are going to make darn sure that the content is serving the prospect first and the client second.

 

I’m just saying make sure your email newsletter is the right vehicle (pardon the pun) for your email marketing. And although I’ve been talking about small business during this whole blog post, just because it’s top of mind, this applies no matter how large your business. Because I’ve certainly seen plenty of useless email marketing campaigns coming from the bigger businesses too, when they’ve focused on what they want to say, and not on what the prospect wants to hear…

If you want to grow your in-house email list, use blogs as marketing tools. Huh?

 

Hold on, let me explain…

 

Think from the end: People sign up for your email newsletter or email marketing when they are at your Web site, right? So one way to grow your email list is to drive more traffic to your site.

 

People go to search engines like Google and Yahoo because they have a problem to solve. You want them to find your Web site when searching, right?

 

That’s why I suggest you use blogs as marketing tools. Done right, a blog helps with search engine optimization so you get found online when people are searching for solutions to a problem. That’s because search engines like fresh, up-to-date content, which blogs are assumed to have, so search engines rank blog content faster than static web sites. And because blogs are by their very nature more targeted in subject matter, making them naturally keyword rich

 

Blogs as marketing tools are not ends in themselves though. You use your blog to drive people to your Web site: They search online, they find your blogs, they then find your Web site by clicking on a link in the blog. Once they are at your site, you sell them on the idea of signing up to get emails from you. That’s how you build your in-house email list using blogs as marketing tools.

 

Then your email marketing is for continuing and building the relationship. Ideally once they are at the site, they sign up for your email newsletter or email promotions. They are opening the door to hearing from you by doing so, giving you permission to market to them.

 

Think of it as a three-step process involving a series of yeses:

1. Yes, it looks like this blog is relevant, I will click on this search result
2. Yes, I like what I see in the blog, I will click on a link to this web site to learn more
3. Yes, I like what I see at this web site so I want to sign up for emails and hear from this company again in the futu

The customer has found you and engaged with you, and you’ve grown your in-house email list. All because you blogged.

 

And this use of blogs as marketing tools works no matter the size of your business. In fact, it might just be the most effective way to go about small business blogging and small business email marketing!

I’m perfectly content to drive myself to and from SeaTac airport due to SeaTac Park. I chose them originally because their Web site answered all my questions and I loved their branding. The colors are bright and cheerful and the SeaTac Park mascot is a Volkswagen bug. The tone is friendly and helpful and easy. I stick with them because the service is always prompt and the employees always friendly. And I praise them and make referrals to them on a regular basis.

 

So keep in mind my affection for this SeaTac airport parking lot when I pick on them for a minute…

 

Recently SeaTac Park gave me a flyer for a loyalty card. It spells out what I’ll get if I choose to sign up for the SeaTac Park loyalty card with a bulleted list of benefits. I had to laugh when I read it though because one of the benefits involves email marketing:

 

“Be in the system to receive blast emails and special parking offers from SeaTacPark.com”

 

Their branding is straightforward which I admire, but this goes just a little too far or they are simply misusing the word. Because no one wants to receive “blast emails.” Blast emails are the ones that go willy nilly to everyone, by marketers who don’t get email marketing.

 

Email marketing done correctly, even small business email marketing which is what SeaTac Park is doing, should be select, targeted, relevant and useful.

 

Blast emails are unsophisticated email marketing that adds to the clutter in everyone’s inbox. Blast emails make small business email marketing even harder to do well as a result, because of fatigue on the part of the recipient, because it increases the numbers of emails we get and therefore the competition for attention.

 

I hope SeaTac Park isn’t really blasting out their emails. I hope that was just a poor choice of words on their part, by someone who doesn’t know about small business email marketing. I wouldn’t know because I didn’t sign up for the SeaTac Park loyalty card in part because I don’t want to get blast emails, even from a small business I champion.

 

No one does.

As much as I push blogs as marketing tools, I confess my own is the first to be neglected when I get busy. But I still keep learning more about marketing with blogs and blogging, so I can pass that wisdom along to my copywriting clients. (I’m really pushing small business blogging, because I am a blogging believer! Even though I neglect my own!)

 

The other day I was reading up on blogging best practices, and came across a blog that said to link out, link out, link out…. This blogger was really pushing the concept of getting your blog fodder from reading other blogs and linking to them.

 

To me, that’s a strange concept. I find my blog topics come from living, breathing, doing…seeing real-life examples of marketing and copywriting at their worst and at their best both. If I focused on reading other blogs and commenting on them, what would I really be adding to the conversation?

 

It’s my own experience, like the grief I had the other day on Verizon’s web site trying to view a photo a friend sent me, or the conversations with clients who just don’t understand email marketing but think they do, or a story from one of my kids…

 

Maybe it’s because I blog on marketing, and marketing is something that goes on all around us all the time. Whether it’s my daughter trying to talk me into buying her a Slurpee, or a man asking me out on a date, or me as Web site copywriter helping a client with SEO…it’s all marketing all the time. So maybe that means I don’t have to turn to other bloggers for blog fodder. Besides, that sounds boring. I’d rather live and comment on living (as related to marketing, of course) than spend any more time online.

Jeffrey Rohrs, VP of Marketing at ExactTarget, spoke at an ExactTarget conference in Seattle yesterday with a fabulous presentation called “Subscribers Rule!” He made many great points, above all, that email marketing is different from everything else we do as marketers. Again and again he emphasized that email is a long-term tactic, a marathon not a sprint. Amen to that. Search engine optimization and pay-per-click and blogging are going to get people to your site. Email marketing is how you nurture your relationship with them over time.

 

So how does all of this relate to my world as a Seattle copywriter, and yours as a marketer? The word that popped into my head as he spoke was “respect.” And one way we respect our email subscribers is by giving them the content they want. That doesn’t mean that we offer a newsletter, but bombard them with promos. That means we carefully and slowly build our in-house list, not buy a list and blast a bunch of strangers. It means our email subject lines are carefully crafted to help the customer know what our email offers.

 

It also means having something of real value to offer them in the first place. Which is why I continue to promote email newsletters as an “indirect” marketing tool. Even for small business email marketing, email newsletters make sense.

 

Jeffrey recommended we celebrate, love and protect our subscribers. Investing the time and energy into developing content that is truly useful to them, not us, is key. Think of a subscriber like a friend or a colleague: You’d want it to be a mutually beneficial relationship, right? You wouldn’t constantly be asking your friend or coworker for something, it would be give and take. Same with your subscribers.

 

Are you going to get an immediate payback on taking this long-term, carefully thought out approach to your email marketing program? Probably not. Are you going to cultivate stronger, deeper, longer term relationships with your customers? Probably yes.

 

Which will you choose?

 

Great post this morning from Email Insider on small business marketing with email . In it, blogger David Baker reviews just how simple and easy email marketing can be for the small business, with a few “how to” reminders.

 

It warms my heart to see this post, and I hope it’s read by loads of small business owners, because really, email can be such a cost-effective way to market. But, as with so many marketing tools, email is easy to do wrong.

 

I’ll add a couple of tips to what David suggested:

 

Have a plan—I see small business owners (heck, bigger businesses too!) start out with email marketing and then flounder because they didn’t have a plan. How often will we email? What is the point of our email? How will we track our results and know whether or not it’s working? (How often as a consumer have you signed up with your email address at the cash register of a small business—then never heard from them? No plan.)

 

Think like an editor—As part of your plan, create an editorial calendar. He mentions tying in to local events. Great idea! Know what events are coming up, know what your seasons are and what you might want to promote.

 

Have a theme—I use theme for lack of a better word, but I hope it resonates with you. I mean, knowing what your email marketing is supposed to be and be doing. Is it informal with tips for doing something better? Is it more of an event calendar? Is it written with humor, from the standpoint of the business owner’s dog perhaps? Whatever it is, determine the theme from the start, then be consistent.

 

Speaking of consistent—Be consistent with length, types of content, frequency…you want to train your recipients to know what to expect and, we hope, look forward to your email.

 

OK, that’s enough of an add-on to the original post. But hope it gets you thinking about email marketing if you’re not doing it already, or reviewing your email marketing if you are!

Okay, not really narrow minded. But narrow…

 

Yesterday at the PSAMA lunch in Seattle, Alan Brown from DNA talked about how you market as a challenger, as opposed to front runner. With great local examples from the MS Society, Boeing Employee Credit Union and Pemco Insurance, he again and again reiterated the importance in having a narrow focus. He didn’t call it that, “narrow” is my word. He pointed out the advantage of taking a position, even though positioning can mean sacrifice.

 

But positioning can get people to listen. If you narrow your marketing scope, your marketing message, your marketing method, you might be heard by fewer people, but you are more likely to be heard.

 

Then later on the phone, a mom friend wanted to talk about her husband’s business and the direction they want to take it. (Yes, I’m the queen of free marketing advice, I swear. The downside of being so nice: even your neighbors hit you up for advice!) So, great—no, brilliant—focus. I loved hearing about it. Then she went on to say “but we also want to offer this service and that service” and she talked about lumping it all under one umbrella with a generic term that no one would know the meaning of.

 

Ugh.

 

I did my best to persuade her otherwise, to go with the one targeted niche idea and market that one narrow business only. We’ll see if they listen. The idea of offering fewer services rather than more does seem to challenge people, whether they have a small business or a big one.

 

If you have a niche, put your resources there. If you can speak more narrowly to a smaller audience, do. Sure, you are sacrificing the “masses,” but guess what? The masses aren’t listening!

 

I really do love small businesses and small business owners, but they can make me crazy…

My best example right now is the small business owner who is pissed at me because they put up their new Web site and aren’t getting any hits. This is apparently my fault because my copywriting agency did the writing for the Web site. Never mind that their Web developer neglected to use the title tags and other meta tags we’d written. Never mind that it’s poorly coded and designed. Never mind that they chose not to do all of the pages we’d suggested for more content. Never mind that it only went up three weeks ago. Never mind that no sites link to it yet. Never mind that they have no content management strategy for updating the site. Never mind that I had explained all of this to him months ago when we first started on the project.

Just because someone is running and marketing a small business doesn’t excuse them from educating themselves about marketing. I’m not saying they should be an expert. (I joke that I don’t want to know about taxes, that’s why I have an accountant. But I still know what taxes get paid and when, I just don’t have to know the nitty gritty.) But they should know something.

Not all are like the client described above. I’ve worked with plenty of small business owners who took the initiative and learned enough to have a dialog about their marketing, whether it’s an email newsletter, web marketing, blogging or direct mail.

And thank goodness for those clients! Copywriters and marketers can’t do their jobs with clients who don’t know anything and aren’t willing to learn is the lesson I’m learning this week. Sadly, it’s usually the small business that falls into that category.

And for any small business owners who now feel compelled to know it bit more about web marketing and SEO based on this gripe, start here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769.