Building a content web

Content webs are posts and pages that link to one another to help your target readers find the information. In addition to giving your existing readers the opportunity to discover more of your rockin' ideas, they help Google and friends find your content, too. The more relevant links pointing to your page, the more likely that page will show up in the search results.

So what's a relevant link, exactly?
That's a link that will help a real human being find the information he or she wants.

• The link should be on a page devoted to a similar topic.
• The anchor text (you know, the blue words?) should tell the reader what to expect on the other side.
• The destination should actually have something useful to say, instead of being one of those pages that prattles on in sentences that never seem to make a point.

Example of a content web
I wrote a book review of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide. I added a link to that as part of my Squidoo business strategy devoted to business book reviews. The link is automatically included on the Terence P Ward professional Facebook profile. Your curiosity is perhaps piqued, so I link to the review of this book about small business marketing in this very post.

The links in the paragraph above are just part of a content web. I've given you relevant links to my collection of business book reviews, a review about a small business marketing book, and my fan page on Facebook. The review itself provides links to other relevant topics in my articles, keeping the reader interested in the information I have to offer. My Facebook page collects writing from a variety of sources from me and from others, and keeps my fans informed about what I'm doing overall with my writing business by feeding in other sites I write articles for and other blogs that I contribute to or maintain. Those blogs also link to relevant articles, but since they have different niches they don't always overlap.

The cycle goes on as I write new articles or blog posts. All of my writing is focused on giving readers useful information rather than a desperate plea to use my services or click on ads on the page so I can feed my family. My links are better than your links because they mean something to human beings, because for all its algorithms all Google PageRank is designed for is to give surfers exactly what they're looking for.

Case Study or, How I'm Awesome

My latest assignment in Duct Tape Marketing was to write up a case study, showing how a client with a problem gets it solved with my writing. It's more in-depth than a testimonial, and since I'm writing it I know it will cover the key points (that is, bring out all the wonderfulness that I have to offer). I also link to my client in it, both to show that it's real (or I might want to avoid making it easy for people to verify it) and to promote my client as a thank-you. This is my first draft, here for your consideration:

Kirk White is a minister and spiritual teacher who has been mentoring in his faith for twenty-five years. He began writing books collecting his knowledge, and I asked him about book publishing one day.

“I'm doing everything they tell me to do,”he told me. “I got a MySpace when they said I should, set up a Facebook profile when I was asked to . . . only thing I can't do is get on Wikipedia. They say it would be good if I was on Wikipedia, but I don't know how to do that.”

I thought about Kirk and what I knew of his accomplishments. “I think I can do that,” I told him, “but I'm going to need your help.”

I've been editing Wikipedia for many years, and I've sent many new articles to the gallows deletion – for not every bit of information is notable, and thus worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia. I believed that Kirk was notable, but I was going to have to follow Wikipedia's rules and prove it.

I started by talking to Kirk about the most interesting things that he'd accomplished. We came up with a list:

• He founded the first seminary in his denomination
• He's published two books
• He served on the board of a major organization within his religion
• He has been a featured speaker in a number of venues
  

Now the challenge was to find sources for this information that would be suitable for Wikipedia. I asked Kirk, “Who's been writing about you? Where has your name been in print?” We came up with another list:

• He's interviewed in the disseminal scholarly book on his faith.
• A prominent blogger named him one of the 25 most influential members of his faith.
• He'd been profiled in other books.
• He has been frequently interviewed by newspaper and television reporters.
  

Sources on Wikipedia can't be too close to the subject (so I couldn't use Kirk's books as sources about him) and can't be self-published (such as with a blog or an on-demand book publishing company). The best sources are secondary – books and journals that take an academic look at the subject – and can be considered both reliable and verifiable (with the best possible sources being peer-reviewed academic journals, since they clearly meet all three criteria). Being in a scholarly book was a big plus, with the newspapers and other books giving Kirk, as he called it, “WikiCred.” Being mentioned in a blog, no matter how prominent, didn't help him at all.

I wrote and posted the page with all the citations in place, adding a link to Kirk's web site as a finishing touch. Only one link is needed, and it won't improve the search engine rankings of Kirk's site whatsoever, but it's permitted for the convenience of the readers. Kirk White made the cut and had himself a Wikipedia page, a powerful credibility tool for a published writer.

Marketing when the rubber hits the . . .

I hope you'll forgive me, but I want to unroll this post slowly.

Really good marketing is about finding a new way to get people to think about a product. Interruption advertising was enough in the 1950s, when the world was glued to its television sets, but in the 21st century people are pretty much desensitized to that tactic. A firm marketing strategy doesn't necessarily need to stretch the truth, but it should find a new dimension to talk about.

That's why I'm terribly impressed by the FitKit, which can be downloaded or ordered by malemail by anyone interested in buying custom-sized condoms. It's great in a bunch of different ways.

• It's a product that still automatically generates a head-turn just by marketing it
• They've identified a biological fact that other manufacturers have largely ignored (my college sex ed professor liked to pull one over her foot and up to her knee to show that none of her students were too big to use one), despite clear evidence that there is an unmet need
• They point out that a properly-sized condom is less likely to fail and is more likely to be worn in the first place
• They use a sizing system that doesn't automatically play into male competitiveness, because it's not sequential (although every guy, and some women, that I've showed it to were curious how I measured up)

This campaign downplays titillation, which is good because we know that sex sells and that it's more effective if the rest of us make the jokes. It promotes birth control and disease prevention. It provides an opportunity for privacy, a far cry from the days when a visit to the drugstore could be a blessing or a curse.

Census Bureau shows us all how to market with education

Randy Aimone, my Duct Tape Marketing coach, talks quite a bit about effective advertising. After all, businesses can easily break the bank getting the word out about their services, and it's nice to be able to get an idea of how much return an advertising investment will yield. In particular, Professor Aimone (yes, he is indeed a college professor) warns how interruption advertising just doesn't have the bang for the buck that it used to carry.

Interruption advertising is something you see all the time, whether or not you know it by that name:

• Television commercials (which use technology to actually louder even if they're not legally louder than the program)
  
• Newspaper stories that are continued after two pages of furniture store sales (honestly, do furniture stores just hang a "going out of business" sign outside on opening day?)
• Radio spots that make you cringe (auto dealerships, anyone?)

Today I heard about a brilliant piece of marketing that is sure to be effective because it's not an interruption - and surprisingly, it comes from an organization that isn't exactly known for innovation: the US Government.

The Census Bureau partnered with Telemundo, a large Spanish-language television network, to reach out to this underserved demographic. A character in one of the network's most popular soap operas will be getting a job as a census worker, and spend several episodes explaining how and why people should participate. Both partners have something to gain: the Census Bureau hopes to alleviate fears that illegal aliens will be reported if they are counted (it's not part of their mandate, so they won't be), which will probably help Telemundo's ratings, since census data are used by Nielsen to place those oh-so-powerful boxes in homes (and the more Spanish-speaking homes have Nielsen boxes, the more Telemundo can charge for interruption advertising on its programs).

The idea is innovative, unobtrusive, and will probably be very effective for both partners. Kudos to the person who pitched the idea, and double-kudos to the people that didn't reject it out-of-hand because "that's not the way we do things."

The case for blogging

Another homework assignment for my marketing kit is writing a case statement - an explanation of a problem that my business knows how to solve, and what it looks like. Here's the first draft.

We blog so you don't have to
Solving the time problem for businesses too busy to blog

Blogs seem to be the new black – everyone's wearing one. Entrepreneurs get a lot of pressure to blog, without any real explanation of the value of the activity. Even business owners who understand why having a blog is important often neglect writing new blog posts, because it takes a fair amount of time, and more than a little skill, to blog well.

Why blogs are actually valuable for businesses
The most common – and arguably the most useless – explanation for why a blog is important is, “Google loves new content.” By itself it doesn't mean a whole lot, and technically it's not even really true, but it's not exactly false, either. Confused? Fear not!

Saying that we should regularly update our blogs because Google loves new content is putting the cart before the horse. Google doesn't actually have a preference either way, but the engineers behind the search engine invest considerable time into making it give us the results that we want to see. Particularly in the United States, there is a high perceived value for things and information for new things.

• The latest model of car, even if it only has small cosmetic changes
• The newest updates on a breaking news story, no matter how minor the change
• The freshest styles in clothes and music

We have taken our desire for newness to the web, and Google, its largest search engine, has responded by making new results show up quickly in searches. So yes, Google may love new content, but always remember that this is only because people like new content – people that could be clients of your business.

So what does this mean to the small business owner? In a world where most people who reach for the Yellow Pages rather than a computer to find a local business are over 75 years old, it's increasingly important to have an online presence. The internet has made it easier to get answers to life's questions, so today's shopper does a lot more research before making a buying decision. This tendency to place value on the newest information makes it easier to give your target customer what he or she wants, in the way he or she likes to read it online.

A regularly-updated blog keeps the search engines returning to your site, which in turn brings the people to your site. Those people want information, and a blog is the perfect place to educate these virtual window-shoppers, keeping your site in mind when they're ready to make a purchasing decision. That's what makes a blog valuable: it keeps interested people thinking about your business.

Scheduling blog posting: sometimes timing isn't everything
There are more people convinced that blogs are valuable than there are blogs which get updated regularly. Why?

• Time
• Writer's block
• Procrastination
• More important matters
• Key employee left
• This quarter's sales quota

The fact of the matter is that not everybody enjoys writing, no matter how important it is, and finding the time to change that habit can itself be challenging. Businesses large and small outsource important jobs which they don't do well, and writing should be no exception. Using keyword-centered strategies we can develop a series of posts that highlight your business strengths, educate your target clients, and keep your website fresh in Google results.

The High Cost of Low Price

Author Kirk White once told me that Jack Canfield, of Chicken Soup for the Soul
fame, has an interesting way of setting prices for speaking engagements: ask for the highest number you can without laughing. Canfield has mastered the idea that competing on price is nearly impossible if you're not WalMart, something that I've always understood intellectually but I've struggled with emotionally.

You want me to charge HOW much?
My Duct Tape Marketing Coach is quick to tell me why I should never overspend on advertising, but when he saw my list of services he was quick to tell me that my hourly writing rate was much too low. There are a lot of costs that have to be factored in to the rates you charge.

• Overhead expenses, like the ink cartridges, the internet access, top-notch business cards, and the like.
• The time spent on activities like marketing, meeting with clients, and other critical functions.
• Anything that contributes to top-notch customer service, like overnight deliveries, a solid guarantee, and staying up all night to finish a project that the client really needs done quickly.

It's pretty easy for a business owner, particularly one who used to do the same kind of work for somebody else, to underestimate how much to charge by failing to consider what his services really cost to provide.

The economics and psychology of price
On top of the business considerations, pricing services and products too low can impact my business in other ways. For one, if I pick a price-point that is too far below what others in my industry are charging, potential clients may think I don't have the experience to do the job right, and look for more competent help elsewhere. Drop it even lower and I find myself with rates just a bit higher than writers in the Phillipines are charging. I can't compete with someone who can live on four dollars an hour, at least not on price. My target clients don't go to Elance to find writers, because they know that you get what you pay for.

Overcoming my own objections
I know all of this, but the knee-jerk reaction to setting an appropriate price is, "Good gods, nobody will ever hire me!" Luckily, I had a near-disaster of my own that helped me overcome that objection.

In my Practical Marketing Program we've learned that providing educational content is absolutely necessary these days - people want to know what you know before they'll give you a try. So, I took a long, hard look at my Professional Wordsmith blog, which has been functioning as my website. It has served me well, but I needed something with more pizzazz, and elected to build a Wordpress site because it's powerful, customizable, and easy to learn.

I picked a company from the list of recommended hosting providers with Wordpress built in and arranged for my domain name to be transferred. As soon as I got access I realized my mistake: with no way to compare them, I had gone with the cheapest company, and it showed. Wordpress may be easy, but trying to navigate GoDaddy's interface is anything but! I immediately asked to cancel the transaction and reverse the domain transfer, but ICANN, the organization overseeing such things, has rules preventing transfers more often than every sixty days.

As I puzzled this all out, my site and my email service tanked, and I was in a near-panic when I discovered I had a solution right under my nose: I knew that Kathode Ray Media, a Hudson Valley marketing firm, is excellent at web design, but I didn't realize they also provided hosting services. Arielle Doerle took a look at my situation and quickly hashed out a solution: keep my domain registered through GoDaddy, but transfer the hosting to Kathode Ray. I didn't know there was a difference, and there wasn't a person at the other end of a phone to lay it out the way Arielle did. She got my hosting resolved so that my email was up and running again within the hour, and within a week I'll have a site with all the flexibility of Wordpress but without the headaches of a distant stranger hosting my site.

So what did I learn? Without going on a serious tangent, a few things:

1. Shop local, you ninny!
2. Don't assume the companies you already work with don't provide a service you need. Ask, you ninny!
3. Be suspicious of low prices! I just can't get the level of support I need from a discounter like GoDaddy. Knowing that my domain is safe, my email is reliable, and my site is customizable by me is valuable to me. Being able to pick up the phone and get a problem I don't even understand fixed in under an hour is invaluable to me. You just can't put a price on value.

For me, the value I provide is in listening to my clients, and taking the time to make sure my words say what they mean. I guarantee work that's free of the grammatical, spelling, and typographical errors which are common in the work of even the most fluent writers of English as a second language. I revise when I miss the mark, and I listen to the feedback I get as carefully as I do during the initial interview for the project.

That's value to someone looking for writing. After seeing how valuable choosing the best was for me and my website, I am now ready to price my services fairly for the value I provide.

FAQ or Not-so-frequently asked questions about writing

My assignment for the next session of my Duct Tape Marketing class is writing some frequently asked questions, or better yet questions that should be frequently asked about my business. I tried to cheat, but I had no luck finding out what questions the other freelance writers are asking.

Here's my first draft of the questions and answers, in no particular order.

How do you decide what to write in a blog post?
During my initial interview about a new blog project, I want to generate several keyword phrases that are important to my client. I do this by asking questions about your company's goals, including plans for products and services that you offer. Each keyword (two- or three-word phrases that your potential clients will be searching for online) can be used to create one or more blog post topics.

Do you design brochures?
I write copy for brochures, but I don't actually design brochures. I can create a basic mock-up brochure to get a visual sense of the text in the space. I can recommend a full-service marketing firm if you need professionally designed marketing materials.

Do you provide copyediting and proofreading services?
Yes. My first editing job was a detective novel written by a friend when I was nineteen years old, and now I find myself critiquing the wording and punctuation of virtually everything I read. I have written a number of articles on how to master some of the more difficult rules in English writing.

Do you proofread your own material?
Proofreading works best when it's a fresh set of eyes looking at the manuscript. I have mastered a number of techniques to make sure I don't miss my own errors as I reread what I've written. For my longer and more complex writing, I have access to a high school English and journalism teacher, one who is more than happy to take her red pen to my work.
Misteaks do happen, so in addition I guarantee that I will rewrite any piece that contains errors or otherwise doesn't meet with your complete satisfaction.

Do you write newsletters?
I write newsletter articles, including executive and employee profiles, company news, and informational articles that would be of interest to your readers. Both internal (employee) and external (customer) newsletter articles are within my scope.

Can you register my written material so no one can steal it?
You're looking for a copyrighter, not a copywriter. Copywriting is the writing of promotional, sales, or marketing materials, while copyrighting is the process by which authors protect their rights to written works. It's one of the fun coincidences that make English a bloody hard language to learn.

Do you guarantee your work?
Of course! The interview process at the beginning of any project is designed to make sure that you get what you want out of the written words you're buying, but you're not stuck on the off chance that you still don't get what you were hoping for. If you're not satisfied with the writing you've received, please provide as many specifics as you can so it can be tweaked to fit your expectations.

Suggestions welcome. Are there gaping holes you'd like to see filled? Answers that don't satisfy? Misteaks I didn't see? Just remember that my class is on July 13.

Marketing is Everywhere, but Narrow is Still Better

Taking a marketing class has one absolutely clear benefit for me: it helps me see the marketing in all aspects of business. One of the things that Netflix is known for is customer service (real live people on the phone!), and I think Staples is pulling out all the stops by preventing customer frustrations after the sale. Target offers umbrella bags, Beyond Wealth Management sponsored area Wild Kingdom events, and the Lime Gazelle underwrites WAMC and has a location at the Mid-Hudson Children's Museum.

Some of these activities are clearly promotional, others are philanthropic, and some are simply good business practices. What they have in common is the ability to make me think about these businesses in a positive way. They encourage me to tell people about my experiences. Marketing aims to leave an indelible impression on people, and different people can be reached in different ways. If you want my money, then you should consider supporting NPR or educational shows like Wild Kingdom - you'll never get my attention by advertising at a Yankees game.

Being more aware of what's influencing my buying decisions makes me appreciate all the more how valuable it is to clearly define one's target market. You have to know who wants your services if you want to get in front of people that are interested and ready to make a decision.

Today's confession? I haven't finished narrowing yet. I know that I make your business make sense to your customers, but I can do better than that.

Marketing Improves with a Tighter Focus

Probably the most challenging - and most important - step towards successfully marketing a business is figuring out the answer out how to respond to those four little words:

Who am I marketing to?

Yes, I know that this question has five words, not four . . . but if you think marketing is a small word, then either you're a native speaker of German (or another language with words as long as javelins), or you meant it metaphorically and have no clue just how big marketing is to your
business.

The four little words I mean are the ones that shore up marketing with the personal responsibility to take action and not just assume that you can do business with anyone that has money.

• Who indeed? It's a narrow, clearly-defined target market that ensures we don't piddle away our time and resources on people that just don't want or need what we're offering. I know that my who is business owners, small business owners even, but I need to fine-tune it more if I want to market meaningfully.
• am is the action word. This means you've got to remember that marketing is a verb and doesn't happen by itself. Of course, running a display ad with my logo and a phone number is about as verb-like as my rock garden is avalanche-like . . . it may be active, but just barely. (I think this is a perfectly legitimate reason to slip my new logo into this post.)
• I is the whole personal responsibility thing. Not only do I have to work on my marketing before it can do me any good, I've got to hold myself accountable for doing so. I don't know if that's tougher for a one-man show or a multinational oligopoly, but if you don't know who is doing what about the marketing, and when they expect to have it done, then it's just never going to happen.
• to brings it right back to the customer, like it should. My training in my rather unsuccessful journey to the world of multilevel marketing taught me that I should be talking to anyone that has a pulse, because the only people that don't use this service are just too stupid to breathe. My marketing coach Randy would definitely have told me that refining my aiming mechanism is worth the effort, because I would have spent less time in unproductive conversations (and no doubt would still be speaking to a few of my former friends and coworkers).

So I'm finding this bit of the marketing journey to be more than a bit challenging, and I'm looking to jump ahead into the fun parts. I won't get away with that, so instead I'm giving some further thought as to the demographics and psychographics of my market - what they look like, and what they want.

Narrowing a market is counterintuitive but logical. If I spend my time learning how to reach a small number of businesses that really need to hire a blogger, I'm going to get a better return because I'm talking to people that already value one of my services. And narrowing isn't irreversible - I can always relax my definition of the client just a bit if I tightened the statistical screws too much, or just add another target market entirely.

Want to know what your clients value? Ask them!

My client interviews have given me some interesting insights into the psychographics of my ideal market, and how closely they fit my business model.

Of course, if I keep writing like that I'm just going to make big problems out of little ones - but I'm getting ahead of myself. The questions that I asked each of my best clients were designed to help me know my ideal market, and the answers I got fell into three general categories:

1. Strengths that my clients value;
2. Value I didn't realize I provide; and
3. Shortcomings that aren't really as bad as I had feared.

For me, the most valuable information fell into the third category. There's no doubt in my mind that my clients were candid with me about where I fall short, and areas that give me the greatest anxiety didn't come up. It doesn't mean that I don't really fall short in those areas, but now I know that they are weaknesses that don't hurt my brand.

I also found out that, even though I'm good at finding the right voice to reach my client's target audience, that occasionally I assume that the target audience is a bit more knowledgeable about the subject than it really is. Using "psychographics" in the opening line of a post targeting novice marketers and small business owners may not draw in the readers I'm looking for.

The creative insights inspired by these interviews have been surprising and exciting. Armed with the knowledge that my descriptive language is powerful and evocative, I've been coming up with ways to tie visuals into how I describe my writing. If a picture is worth a thousand words, doesn't that mean that words are currency? How much is your business worth? Is The Professional Wordsmith worth a thousand pictures? I'm not sure where this will take me, but I'm due to brainstorm about it with a bunch of creative business owners and my Duct Tape Marketing Coach in a couple of days, and I'm really looking forward to it!

Who do my clients think I am, anyway?

My business may be the smallest one that Aim One Marketing has ever worked with, but as Coach Randy told me, I can set some pretty ambitious goals that are still realistic.  For me, I thought quintupling my monthly revenues by the end of the year would be a good start, and Randy agreed that this is entirely achievable for me.

Digging into demographics

I continually spell that word as "demongraphics" as I write, and I note that my browser's spellcheck doesn't have a problem with that version.  This is probably because the devil's in the details.

Once I carefully sifted through my client list and defined it closely, I knew I was going to fall short of my assigned task (compiling data on my ten best clients), because I don't bloody well have ten clients yet!  It looked like that at first, but once I started digging deeper, I realized that not everyone I have done business with quite counts:

• Content sites like Suite101.com and Examiner.com have been a reliable source of revenue for me, but since my writing is self-directed I don't know if I can consider them "clients" in the traditional sense.
• I've also been managing some social networking for AltGlobe.com, but it's an arrangement that doesn't focus on my writing.
• Two clients for whom I have not yet delivered the final product can't really be considered yet.
• Three more of my clients aren't really mine - I did work for them through their marketing firm Kathode Ray Media.

I dutifully pulled together the information I had on what turned out to be my three best clients.  Was this going to be enough?

The interviews

I guess I'll know soon enough if my three clients will give me enough information, because I'm going to have to interview them!  I'll be scheduling time to sit down with each of them, find out why they decided to work with me, what they like, where I fell short, and what they think about writers in general.

It could be fun, it could be scary, but it's sure to wind up making my head explode with the information.  The idea is to discover what my clients value about my services.  The answers may surprise me.  I hope to discover what businesses look for in a writer, and to pick up some interesting psychographics (emotional traits) about my existing clients that may offer me clues as to the sort of person that likes working with me.

Searching for the Ideal Market

The first Duct Tape Marketing class that I took was a little bit of a scramble - the course materials hadn't arrived yet, so we were relying on Randy to guide us entirely from his knowledge and experience.  Coach Aimone did not fail in that regard; he was more than prepared to start our journey without pesky books!

What is marketing?

We talked a bit about the nature of marketing itself.  There are plenty of definitions for the word, and as an adjunct professor at Marist College, Randy teaches his economics students all of that gobbledegook.  However, the economist and the business owner have different priorities, and a definition that is entirely intellectual or academic isn't all that helpful for someone trying to make a business profitable.

So what is marketing?  It's how you get people to know, like, trust, and even love you, says Randy.  It's getting your business in the minds of the right people, so that they turn to you first when they need the type of problem solved that you're good at.

Lacking focus

Businesses with ineffective marketing lack focus in two ways:  they don't know what their ideal client looks like, and they don't know what kinds of messages will make that ideal client stand up and take notice.  Randy sent us home with some marching orders:  sift through our client list, pick out our top ten customers, and pull together demographic information about those people or companies.  In addition, we were going to have to set 1-3 business goals according to the SMART principles.

Of course, I knew what my first goal had to be - I needed to get ten clients so I could do my assignment!

My Story: Big Ideas, Little Plans

I've read plenty of business books over the years, I've helped clients write business plans, and I've done enough blogging for businesses that I have picked up some essential marketing tidbits.  However, when I found myself forging ahead with my writing career and leaving the security of employment behind, I knew that I was going to have to get serious about marketing in order to make The Professional Wordsmith a successful venture.

This blog is about my journey from a simple business writer to a business owner with a comprehensive marketing plan - at least, that's what I hope.  Just over two weeks ago I started taking a marketing class with Randy Aimone of Aim One Marketing.  I agreed to honestly document what I learn and how I apply it to my business.

State of the Business

To establish some kind of a baseline, let me document the types of marketing efforts I had been using up until I started working with Randy:

• Professional blog
• Facebook page
• Other social networking, including Twitter, StumbleUpon, Squidoo, and LinkedIn
• Referral marketing

I pretty much started my writing business on a shoestring, which is why I haven't invested tons of money in advertising.