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If you’re starting from square one or are in the process of re-launching a blog, there’s a set of questions you’ll need to address. Some are difficult to answer off the cuff without further research, while others fall into category of learn as you go. Nonetheless by dedicating some initial time and occasionally reassessing these 5 questions you’ll have a considerable head start as opposed to jumping in blind and unprepared.

1. What’s your niche?

At first glance this might seem like an obvious question, but have you given some real thought as to what you’re going to be talking about? Are you going after a crowded niche such as health, saving money, digital media, politics, marketing, fashion, or technology? If so you’ll need to get specific, and figure out exactly what’s going to separate your blog from the millions of others. You’ll need to assess what the competition is doing and take an honest look at the talent and skills of your content team, even if it’s just you.

2. Who is the reader?

Like it or not, you’re not going to win over everyone who visits. That’s OK because your job when blogging is to produce content that resonates with your target audience. If you try and win over everyone by casting too wide of a net you’ll end up pleasing no one. Do you really know who your ideal reader is? Do you know what other sites they visit, what products and services they love, what books they read, and what they spend their free time doing? These questions shouldn’t be overlooked. Know your reader well and you’ll learn how to speak in a tone they respect on topics they care about.

3. What does success look like?

Instead of borrowing another person’s definition of achievement, find out what it looks like to you. Maybe the sole purpose of your company blog is to sell an eBook. If that’s the case, how many customers at minimum will you need to justify your efforts?  Perhaps you have multiple goals such as acquiring email addresses, promoting events, and becoming a thought leader within your industry. Establish and set benchmarks for these goals from the beginning so you can avoid waking up one day and wondering how to move forward or why you even started in the first place.

4. Why do you matter?

To put it another way: why should anyone spend time reading your blog over all the other blogs? What do you have to say that isn’t being said or how can you communicate something that others are already saying in a unique way? When a new visitor comes across one of your posts they’ll make a quick judgment on whether or not it’s worth reading and eventually decide if your blog is worth repeat visits or subscribing to. Your goal shouldn’t just be to earn traffic, but also loyalty. Are you showing enough personality? Are you down to earth, relevant, and truthful, or are you reserved and offer only fluff and little substance?

These questions matter and shouldn’t be written off too quickly.
Give them the attention they deserve and you’ll thank yourself 10x over in the long run.

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Everyone, and I mean everyone, is talking about Pinterest right now, and for good reason. There’s a lot to love speaking strictly from a user’s perspective. The design is top notch, intuitive, and easy to use. For those reasons among others over the past several months the site has made a serious push into the conscious of the mainstream. As a tool for sharing images there’s perhaps nothing better, but at the end of the day I’m still a marketing guy. I don’t have time to waste sharing photos, infographics, and what not. I want to know if it’s worth my time when it comes to driving traffic to a site or getting a brand out in front of new eyeballs.

What do the numbers say?

A widely cited report by Shareholic that came out at the tail the end of last month stated that referral traffic via Pinterest had increased from 0.17% to 3.6% over the span of 6 months amongst data gathered from 200,000 publishers.

As you can see Pinterest edged out Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, and came close to matching Twitter. The numbers are impressive to say the least, but what’s really going on here?

Does Pinterest represent an untapped goldmine of opportunity?

Maybe… but for most of us probably not.

Sharing is common, but don’t be fooled by it

Much of the content on Pinterest, a large majority of it, is un-owned. The items that a user decides to “pin” or share are usually stuff that’s visually appealing, but not typically something that’s branded. A stunning photo or graphic might make the rounds on the site, but it does little good for branding if it’s not tied back to a brand.

Not everyone is Pinterest worthy

There are certain industries that fit well within the Pinterest community: fashion, photography, architecture, graphic art, mass media, etc…

For the rest of us though it could become taxing and a big time suck to find relevant material that’s worth sharing. Sure it’s easy enough to create a Pinterest account under a brand name and link material back to my site, but what good is the traffic if it isn’t relevant to my marketing strategy?

If you sell a niche retail product, such a retro furniture or handmade clothing, then yes by all means Pinterest could be a great avenue for finding new customers. For the rest of us though – at least for the time being – Pinterest is still more suited for personal rather than business use.

More so than almost any other field, athletics and art are two career paths in which very few participants emerge as financially successful, despite a widespread base of interest and collective knowledge. There are many golfers, but very few can make a living from it and there can only be one Tiger Woods. There are many film makers, musicians, and sculptors, but almost none make it out of the garage and into the free market to an extent where art can be a full time means of income. One can choose to be an artist or an athlete for the pure joy or challenge of it, but the competition will always be so intense that anyone who isn’t extremely gifted and/or talented won’t be able to make it into the big leagues.

Online marketing and communications is different though in that everyone who wants to be successful ultimately can be if they so choose. With the right know how anyone regardless of age, gender, culture, economic status, or education background can leverage search, social, and web design to make a profit from a product, service, or idea. The sky really is the limit.

Accepting this to be true, the question I’d like to pose is are you approaching marketing as an athlete or an artist?

The Athlete

Success in athletics comes down to skill mastery and strict discipline. LeBron James is going to spend years of his life working on the free throw. His income, number of championships, and eventually his legacy will partially hinge on how well he can shoot the free throw in times when it matters most. To succeed he’ll need to practice for hours on end going over the same basic principles. The job is never over. Slack off and you’re at risk of falling behind.

As a marketing professional we have different versions of the free throw. A big one that comes to mind is publishing content. Every day we have to go back to the basics. Open the document, put words to the page, and publish. If inbound marketing truly is a priority, this needs to be a regular habit. There are numerous ways to improve, such as reading the right books and learning from those who’ve done it for years, but only through repetition can a person improve. There are no shortcuts. It’s getting up and doing the same thing again and again.

The Artist

Artists are different. They’re rewarded for creativity, ingenuity, and breaking the norms. By the athlete’s standards we would assume that by practicing for 4 hours a day over the span of 5 years than any person can become a great songwriter. Ask any musician and you’ll learn that nothing can be further from the truth. Songwriters make a name for themselves by pushing the boundaries of what’s currently accepted. They craft songs that speak for the moment and they see things in ways that others don’t. Art is as much about passion as it is about having the courage to think outside the box.

There are times when a digital marketer needs to act like an artist and be willing to take risks and communicate in ways that others aren’t. Online marketing isn’t a stagnant endeavor and new opportunities and even new frontiers emerge every year. While others are focusing on search and social network marketing, have you considered what your options are for online video and mobile app development? How current is your toolbox and when is the last time you tried something new? Are you creative or do you simply follow your competition when it comes time to decide what to do next?

If online marketing is a priority in your business you’ll need to learn how to work like an athlete and think like an artist.

Discipline and creativity
Repetition and inspiration
Application and vision

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Many people, this writer included, fall into the camp of believers that think customer service is one of, if not possibly the most crucial parts of every business. Call me old fashioned, but I still see the value in customer service. I’m actually quite obsessed with it. Why? Because I’m a customer to many companies and like anyone else who has ever been a customer at some point in their life, I can quickly differentiate between good customer service, poor customer service, and absolutely outstanding customer service. It’s one of those things that just doesn’t hide very well.

Social media is either a blessing or a curse in that it exposes gigantic flaws in an organizations commitment or lack thereof when it comes to genuinely serving customers. A large number of us have fallen victim to the myth that social media has been a magic bullet of sorts that has made businesses friendlier, more trustworthy, and customer oriented.

This, I’m sad to say, is a gigantic lie.

The one thing social media has done is that it has made everything much much much more transparent. The glass is clearer than ever these days and customers are gaining uncharted glimpses into the personality and culture of the businesses that they give their money and time to.

This is an incredible advantage for some, but a liability and big problem for most. If social media gives consumers an unprecedented opportunity to see a business for what it truly is, what happens when consumers don’t like what they see? What happens when a business puts customer service last on their list of priorities?

When a customer has a problem and decides to pick up the phone to dial a 1-800 number, it’s natural and expected to receive at least some notion of help on the other line. If the customer is fortunate and doesn’t get stuck with an automated answering system or put on hold for 20 minutes, he or she will get an opportunity to voice their problem and interact with a real flesh and blood human being, maybe even a manager if the problem is severe enough. Large organizations spend a lot resources refining this archaic complaint system in hopes of minimizing it down to as little of an expense as possible. Small businesses, solo entrepreneurs included, can act in the exact same way when they knowingly choose to put off or completely ignore voicemails or emails from customers.

Social media is dangerous, and possibly fatal, to the businesses that don’t care or don’t care enough. Some of the problem is still ignorance in that a large number of mid to small sized businesses are still in the dark when it comes to social media, or that it’s nothing more to them than a irregularly updated Facebook page. This group is shrinking more and more all the time and within the next couple years it’s very possible to that these late adopters will start to become a insignificant chunk of the pie that makes up all businesses. No this message here today is in reference to those who “get” social media, but yet still aren’t answering the call.

If someone comments on the company blog with a question and doesn’t receive a response it’s a customer service fail. If someone writes a blog post mentioning the company and doesn’t receive a response it’s a customer service fail, or what I’d call a customer recognition fail. The same can be said for Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, or any other social network. If customers are present, the business should be there listening and waiting to respond.

Social media doesn’t create the problem of a lack of customer service, it just exposes it and puts it out in the open, often for all to see. Sometimes it’s not the social media strategy that’s broken, it’s that there’s been a dangerous lack of customer service within the entire culture of the company that’s just now rising up to the surface. Trying to get aligned with social media before getting right with customer service is foolish. It’s kind of like trying to run before learning how to walk; it’s just not going to work.

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Glassybaby, a Seattle based boutique retailer of handmade glass blown votive candle holders and glasses, has a lot going in its favor these days: a staff of around 100, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as an investor, and a coveted spot in Puget Sound Business Journal’s 100 fastest growing private companies. The company has grown from a small operation to 4 different locations and several million dollars in revenue because it sells quality products and is heavily vested in giving back to charitable causes, but also largely in party to the company’s online presence and the significant role it plays in the life and growth of the brand.

Efficient web design

Glassybaby operates not just as a Seattle and New York retailer, but has also positioned itself to be a global brand by investing in a professional web presence that starts with their no frills minimalistic web site. What’s most impressive about Glassybaby’s site is that it seamlessly accomplishes two objectives at the same time: that of being an online storefront and simultaneously as a hub for the brands marketing and philanthropy message. The design is simple in nature and is far less cluttered than what may come to mind when thinking of a typical ecommerce site. The site layout is sensible and the top navigation bar keeps everything well organized. Clear graphics and video are used for additional impact.

 

Selling and living a story

Founder Lee Rhodes and the team behind Glassybaby take a smart approach in that they leverage their brands message frequently and have tied in into every angle of their branding strategy. After starting the company, Rhodes, a cancer survivor and advocate, decided to donate 10% of all gross sales to charities that promote healthy living. As a part of this mission the brands website, social media accounts, and live events continue to support regular giving. There are many retail brands, and many candle holder and vase companies, but not many with a message that customers can actively connect with.

A commitment towards social media

Glassybaby uses a variety of social media sites to help spread its message. The brands Facebook page is consistently busy with activity, including 500+ photos, recommendations by fans, and several updates every week. Page admins comment on all feedback and encourage fans to share their story of how they relate to the brand. Over the spring the brand ran an Earth Day promotion using a custom tab to allow fans to give virtual gifts to help support Conservation International.

The company blog has been updated like clockwork on a weekly basis and as of July the brand uses a custom built Tumblr page to share photos and updates.

Glassybaby uses Twitter for keeping followers current with news and products, but also as an avenue for customer outreach.

Glassybaby is a rare case in that it’s a brand that has built a real community by having an attractive purpose and communicating it clearly with gusto. As opposed to trying to craft an artificial branding message, the company uses the web as a canvas for projecting already established core beliefs. In tough and crowded markets, retail brands could stand to learn a thing or two from Glassybaby.

Glassybaby has locations in Madrona, Univeristy Village, Bellevue, and New York. 

Neil Patel, a serial internet entrepreneur and seasoned startup blogger, recently stirred up somewhat of a debate regarding the differences in ability when it comes to execution and sales between large and small SEO agencies. In a thorough and well written guest post for SEOmoz – 7 Lessons Learned Running an SEO Agency – Patel ignited a spirited conversation that ran its course via the comments.

True or false: Smaller agencies might not always be as organized as the larger ones, but yet they’re still just as capable, if not more, than their bigger counterparts when it comes to delivering results.

While noting the clear bias that Sparkplug Digital falls into the former, as opposed to the latter category, it’s still a question worth chewing on. It’s one that will hold even more weight if your company happens to be seeking SEO services.

Let’s start with some common assumed advantages in favor of hiring a big agency:

Staff

Larger agencies with higher revenue tend to have more employees on hand at any given moment. Does this matter? The answer really depends on how organized the agency is when it comes to communicating with clients and managing expectations. An agency with 10 employees can be just as qualified, if not more, than one with 100.

Years in business

Many SEO agencies have come and gone, but some have stood the test of time and continue to be profitable year after year. As opposed to just years in business, the reputation of an agency should also be weighed when it comes to making a decision.

Some larger agencies choose to work with Fortune 500 clients, while others intentionally work with smaller companies. This may have much or no real significance. As opposed to size or number of clients, look for similarities in the work the agency has done. Who have they worked with that’s in your industry? What challenges have they solved in the past that most resemble what your company is currently facing?

Multiple disciplines

A number of agencies have grown big simply because they dive into many different disciplines. Instead of having a single focus towards SEO, a large agency may earn a majority of its income through design, branding, or a variety of different services. Again this really isn’t an advantage or disadvantage, but more of a mater of preference.

What about smaller agencies? What can they bring to the table that larger agencies might struggle with or often overlook?

Specialization

Leaner agencies can hold the advantage of specialization over larger agencies. A smaller agency may diferentiate itself by offering a unique skill set, such as being experts exclusively within a specific industry or choosing to only take on a certain type of client.

Support

It may not be an initial concern, but the client agency relationship can end up being a disaster if while working together an agency fails to meet the expected norms of communication and availability, both spoken and unspoken, written and unwritten. Yes it’s true that larger agencies should be just as capable when it comes to managing client relationships, meeting deadlines, and keeping an open dialogue, however there are some larger agencies that are notoriously sloppy in this department. It’ll greatly depend on the agency, but going with a tigther, more cohesive team might be a better fit in some cases.

Cost

It can’t be left unsaid that the bottom line costs of services will end up influencing at least part of the decision. A word of precaution is that the advantage shouldn’t necessarily go to the agency that costs less, but should rather be based on what the deliverables will be in conjunction to the final cost. Look at value over price and always try to think in terms of return on investment.

Despite the apparent and hidden advantages and disadvantages of big and small agencies, the end goal should be to find a partner who will value your goals and work hard to reach them. Expertise isn’t limited nor confined to size and in most situations there usually isn’t any merit to say otherwise.

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How much “junk” do you put online?

Stuff that just doesn’t belong.
Random thoughts, ideas, photos.
Content that has little or no context.

Where does it go?

Personal Facebook page
Business Facebook page
Wordpress
Posterous
Facebook
Twitter
Google+
Somewhere else?

Enter the junk drawer

A junk drawer is a valuable thing. It’s where all the extra pieces go; things that don’t quite fit within the normal bounds of your company’s communications or branding strategy. An extra Tumblr and Twitter account combo can make for an excellent junk drawer. It doesn’t really matter where, but there’s a lot of value in having an extra place to store tangent ideas and information. Not every idea generated by the CMO needs to finds its way to the business’s public facing blog or Facebook page.  For larger organizations an internal company blog or wiki might be a smart choice.

Separate with care

A photo of last weekend’s camping trip fits into the category of personal.
A 500 word article about a new product release goes in the category of professional.

Although a social media junk drawer can be beneficial, it should be ushered in with a few words of warning. Many online marketers tend to think in terms of either/or, in/out, personal/professional, and leave little little room for grey area. The danger of having two containers (personal and professional for example) is that the risk emerges of desensitizing the human element behind the brand. Many business blogs and Twitter feeds end up being dull because they have no distinguishable human touch to them. It’s as if someone took away the welcome doormat and replaced it with bold signage stating this is a place of business. This is where SERIOUS business happens. These places tend to get boring and stale quickly. Amber Naslund, the VP of social strategy at Radian6, is a great example of someone who knows how to perfectly mix personal and professional elements over on her Brass Tack Thinking blog. Naslund will often share a personal story, but in the end ultimately ends up bringing it full circle back towards the online community and social media topics that her readers care about. It’s a rare example of a near perfect balance between hiding everything and revealing too much.

The alternative to not having a social media junk drawer is that all stray ideas, unfinished thoughts, and misplaced content is out in the open, leaving onlookers with the burden of sorting through it. Speaking on behalf of online consumers everywhere, most of us don’t have nearly the amount of patience or time necessary to deal with it. Make relevancy a priority and try to picture yourself subjectively from your audience’s shoes.

Does this really belong here? Does it contribute to the overall story that my brand is trying to communicate? If not, put it in the junk drawer where it belongs.

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Page for page The Lean Startup by Eric Ries might just be the most valuable book of 2011. Not since Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start has a work on startup ideology been as encompassing or as densely packed. Ries is a passionate teacher and it shows. He leaves no stone unturned when it comes to the topics of gaining and maintaining users, interpreting customer behavior, and making tough and drastic changes.

There’s a lot of material covered in the book, but here are 5 lessons that stood out:

1. Never make assumptions

Assume nothing and test everything is the mantra of a lean startup. Ries points out multiple times, with companies both large and small, that even our best assumptions are often incorrect. Leave as little to chance as possible.

2. Get out and interact with customers

Customer feedback is vital for a startup no matter what size it may be, but it’s especially crucial in the early stages of growth. Get out and talk to your customers. Find out what they can and can’t live without. Prod and ask the tough questions. Good feedback is priceless and goes far beyond what analytics can provide.

3. Avoid measuring with vanity metrics

This one hits close to home, because it happens far too often and we all fall victim to it. Vanity metrics are the numbers that may appear to be beneficial, but are actually misleading in that they provide a false sense of accomplishment. If a product is seeing more signups month over month, is it because of an improvement in the product, a search marketing campaign, or something else? An educated guess is still just a guess.

4. Find a viral coefficient that leads to growth

Marketing professionals need to understand what a viral coefficient is and how to measure it. The viral coefficient is in simple terms the rate at which something is being spread. Any number greater than 1 is an indicator of growth; any number less than 1 and sooner or later you’ll be out of business.

5. Welcome experimentation and innovation

At the core of the lean startup methodology is the belief that a company should be able to quickly gather input, make adjustments, ship a product, and completely change direction if needed. Ries claims that startups must be agile enough to make bold changes and not be afraid of adjusting expectations, even if they change vastly over a span of time.

This short list by no mean does justice to the variety of experiences and tactics outlined in the book. If you market for, work in, or are at all vaguely interested in startups (or really any business for that matter), The Lean Startup should be at the top of your reading list.

 

Stumbleupon, one part social network – one part content discovery platform has just crossed over the milestone of 20 million members and is consistently ranking amongst the top 100 visited sites in the United States month after month. Compete.com is tracking Stumbleupon at over 12 million unique visitors last month, which may or may not be an entirely accurate estimate based upon a sudden spike in traffic between October and September, but nonetheless Stumbleupon is far outperforming Reddit, Digg, Delicious, and all of its other social bookmarking counterparts.

To Stumble or not to Stumble, that is the question.

Is Stumbleupon worth your time?
More importantly, can it drive traffic to your site?

The short answer is yes, but it largely depends on a couple of factors.

Is the content actually stumble worthy? In other words will it quickly catch and hold the attention of the Stumbleupon community. A clever, highly information, and detailed infographic is probably a safe bet. In contrast a long piece of generic site copy won’t receive much attention. Love it or hate it, it’s just the nature of the site.

European agency SimplyZesty recently revealed some surprising insights into the quality of their SU traffic. For an unknown reason Stumbleupon generated a large spike in traffic at some point in the day, but a careful look at Google Analytics showed that a strong majority of visitors had viewed the content and then left immediately. Although several thousand people landed on the page most of them stumbled off of it just as quickly as they came. The traffic was there, but it wasn’t anything worth getting excited over. SimplyZesty went on to say that a focus group revealed that many teenagers had said Stumbleupon was their favorite site and a “great way of wasting time.”

Fortunately Stumbleupon is more than just a flash in the pan game of chance, although a little bit of luck never hurts. Well composed how to articles, blog posts with large eye catching images, and lists of any nature tend to outperform other types of content. By using the site’s social networking components it is feasible to build a community of friends made up of likeminded stumblers who will promote your content, but doing so takes a large investment of time and ongoing commitment, to which the benefits often don’t outweigh the costs. There’s no harm in having a Stumbleupon button as part of a sharing widget or using the site for content discovery, but much of the hype around Stumbleupon needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Results may vary so experiment and take what it’ll give, but don’t get carried away with high expectations.

Image via Scott Beale / Laughing Squid