reasons to blog Archives - Page 2 of 3 by Mark Murnahan

The Power of Written Words on Day 3,479

I thought for a moment that this article belongs on another of my blogs, but then I realized how it fits here as well. This is a bit different from my typical marketing article. It is a piece that I posted on Facebook in November of 2008 addressing the power of written words. It is not specifically marketing oriented, but it does involve something that bloggers and marketers deal with, which is that of having the right words, and the importance of written words. In this case, it addresses the power of a love letter, but it has a good message that can be applied to many other relationships in your life.

I will note that today is number 3,479. It is also my eighth wedding anniversary, which gives me even more reason to honor the day with something meaningful. This story is about day 2,912. I hope that you will enjoy this inspiration. Here you go:

How Do You Remember Day Number 2,912?

As I witness friends with troubles in their marriages, I am reminded of many whom have come to me or to my wife for advice and counseling. I got to thinking about why we are so popular in this area, but it should be no surprise. We have a great marriage. We communicate our feelings, and let down our pride when it is necessary. We show our love every day, and we do not take the other for granted.

We always try to help our friends when they come to us with marital struggles, and sometimes we are really helpful, but I thought a proactive approach would be even better.

I guess I am trying to lead by example, in hopes that others may start to think of their relationships, and how they can be even better. I wish to inspire others to share their love with their spouses and loved ones, and never wait for a better time.

Put it in writing. It is far too easy to let another day slip by without putting it in writing. Our days together come and go, and the opportunities to put feelings into words diminish with each moment, and with each heartbeat.

The written word cannot be taken away. When you put it in writing, it is a promise … a contract of how you were feeling at the moment it was written. There is no substitute for the written word. We say “I love you” so much that the meaning is often not taken. A love letter is timeless, and it may be just what you need.

It does not have to be complicated. Hiring a pilot to write it in the sky does not show that you care more, and the big gestures like that are often far less frequent than what he or she deserves. Just a quick compliment or something romantic on a Post-It Note can do the trick, if you do it with feeling. It is even better if you do it often.

Let it get your heart pumping. Let it get your tears flowing. Don’t be ashamed to feel, and never be afraid that it will not be taken right. Just the act of thinking about them and putting it in writing can be great for both of you.

There is not a perfect love letter. If I ever thought there was a perfect love letter, I would just make copies and give it to my wife each day. Keep practicing. You will get better at it, and you will love the way it makes you and the special recipient feel.

Say it with meaning, and be very personal. Don’t re-write it a bunch of times to get it just right. Write it, deliver it, and repeat. Here is a quick and simple example:

Dearest Peggy,

I am writing this to you today as a profession of my love. Today is not an anniversary, or a date that would immediately spark a memory. Today is another date in the calendar of our marriage that may one day be just a blur along with the other 2,912 days we have spent together. Today represents another thread in the tapestry that makes up our lifetime together.

Why should I choose to write this today? It is because I love you. I love you every day. I love you with all my heart. Day number 2,913 may not be our greatest. Our days are numbered, and we may not yet know how truly meaningful day number 2,912 is to us.

On day number 2,912 I am reminded of day 556. Day 556 was the day I promised to love, honor, and keep you for all the days of my life. I am reminded of our great pride 2,210 days ago when our son was born, and two days later when we brought him home and wondered “what do we do with him now?” Then just 223 days later, we were wondering how to postpone his walking just a little longer, because “they just aren’t supposed to do that yet”. I am reminded of day 1580 when we rushed to the delivery of our baby girl, and how you were so strong as you pushed through the labor, and how pleased you looked when I introduced you to her for the first time. It is hard to believe that was 1,332 days ago, or that it was 55 days ago when we heard our new baby’s heartbeat and that we will do it all again in the vicinity of day 3,062.

I am reminded of these days, along with the many days of sadness for the death of loved ones, successes and failures, good times and bad times. Best of all, I remember those little moments in between. I remember days at the park, holding hands, stomping around in puddles, cooking a great meal, cuddling on the couch. I remember knowing that you were there each of these 2,912 days, receiving my love with an open heart.

Today is a great day to love you. I look forward with great joy to spending day number 2,913 with you.

All my love,

Mark Aaron

This was a while back, and now we have another member in the family, Jack Walden Murnahan. Things have changed, but one thing that does not change is the power of written words. Use them, practice them, and never forget their importance!

If Your Blog Was a Sales Rep, Who Would it Be?

When the world spoke to you and said “You should have a blog”, you listened. Well, at least hundreds of millions did. Others may take a while to catch on and understand the many good reasons to blog. Overall, blogging has caught on extremely well in the past few years. Companies understand that a good blog with things people want provides a means to reach more potential customers than any other method. It can create a lot of additional sales. In fact, it can create a lot more sales than any sales representative you’ve got … even the very best of them. It can also make closing the sale a lot easier for the whole company, and greatly reduce marketing overhead. The potential customer has already done the research about what you offer, and if they contact you, they are already mostly sold.

This all begs the question of how your blog will come across to those potential customers. If you look at your blog like it is a sales representative, would it be the sleazy representative you hired and later regret the decision; the representative who makes people’s eyelids heavy and need a nap; or the sharp and clever representative who makes up your top percentile of volume producers? This really all depends on the person or people behind the blog. If you stop looking at it like a “thing” and start looking at it like your top sales representative, it can make a big difference.

Make no mistake! Blogging can create massive exposure to a company, and drive huge success, but it can also fail miserably without a great plan, clever branding, and fantastic content. If you look at it with the potential of becoming your top sales representative, it takes on a whole new feel, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t the people behind the blog have the skills of a master, and not just anybody you can find to produce it for the lowest cost? Really, this is your business front … shouldn’t you take that pretty seriously?

You should have a plan, and I mean a serious strategy to get what you want. What does this mean for you? For me, it means constantly trying to help people with great ideas, branding myself with a touch of snarky humor, and producing enough fantastic content that some of you will say “this guy really knows his stuff and I’ll bet he could help me sell a lot more if I pay him.”

That is my example … but what about you? Here are some questions to ask about whomever you will trust with your online business front. If it is you, these questions become even more challenging, and you should try to be very honest with yourself.

Do you know what readers want?
Do you understand the technology, psychology, mathematics, and creativity necessary to get what you want?
Can you produce the brilliant content it takes to stand out among thousands of worldwide competitors?
Are you able to amass enough readers that you can mathematically predict how many will become customers?
Do you understand the numbers and use them to optimally further your growth?
Can you defend your company’s position against naysayers?
Is online marketing your real job, or it is just another thing you feel you have to do?
Could somebody else do it better, and if so, will they work for you or for your competition?

The list can go on, but this should be enough to think about for now. Take inventory of these things and consider how you stack up. Is the best sales representative on the job?

Will You Get All the Pieces Right?
Do you know how to harness the value of what people want, and how to spread it to the masses? If not, I know a web guy who is for hire, and that can help you with a better call to action.

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Blogs Are Not Created Equal

All blogs are not created equal, and they are as different as the people behind them. Some will create amazing success, and some will be miserable failures. Remembering this and recognizing the marketing talent and creativity of the people behind the blog as the reason for success is important. It can save you a whole lot of time and money to do it right, and not just do it like everybody else.

Benefits of Blogging You May Have Overlooked

I took a short break from my blog over the past week. I was very busy with other projects, and it gave me some time to consider why I blog and the benefits I receive from it. While I was away, I thought about some less obvious ways it helps me in my business. Some obvious benefits to a blog are easy to list, in fact, here are 10 really good reasons to blog. I want to share a couple additional benefits I consider to be extremely important, and perhaps you can relate to these as well. If you have a blog, I want you to think about those ways it benefits you and how you can further harness those benefits. If you do not have a blog or you are not blogging enough, I want to give you positive encouragement and help you recognize reasons you should.

Blogging as a Thought Portfolio

I want more business, and I know a lot of people feel the same way. In my case, I do not just want more business … I want better business. Blogging helps me to achieve this, because it allows my potential clients to have a better understanding of my work as a marketing guy. It allows people to know a whole lot about what I do and how I do it, before they even pick up the phone and call me. It provides excellent proof that I really know what I am doing with SEO, social media, and other Internet marketing topics. Here is my blog archive. It is like a window to my mind as it relates to my work. The people who spend a lot of time here before they call me are always better clients, because they already know we will make a good fit. That means better business, and not just more business.

Think about how blogging could benefit you in this way. Regardless of your industry, being useful to others and showing what you know and how you think can be very attractive to potential customers … the best customers.

Blogging as a Sales Tool

I am not the salesman type. I give great factual data and I let people make decisions based on real information. I like for people to make their own decisions. People who cannot see the benefits of my marketing services without my having to poke and prod them with a big sales pitch do not make good clients for me. If a business relationship begins with a salesperson pushing to convince somebody to buy, you can bet there will be a lot of hassle down the road.

I realized a long time ago that chatting somebody’s ear off to sell them something they are unsure of is about the last thing I could ever hope to do for a living. I think I would rather be a professional house mover, and with this body, I don’t see that happening.

Even when people email me or call me, I can often either reference something I already produced on my blog or give them an article to read about the given topic. Having so many of my thoughts and ideas laid out on my blog and indexed nicely by Google makes an invaluable tool when I need to answer a question for somebody. Just having written the information also makes it easier for me to have words to answer the question.

Give it some thought about how your blog or other website may be an excellent sales tool beyond just those nameless and faceless people on the Internet. You may find a blog to be extremely useful, because it already says all the things you want to say, and can prevent a lot of wasted breath. In my case, I find that if somebody is not willing to do some recommended reading about what I offer, they are probably not too serious about doing business with me anyway.

Other Blogging Benefits and Tools

Blogging holds extremely high value when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) and it is at the core of good social media marketing. If you feel that you just don’t have the time for it, by all means, hire it out. If you feel that blogging is not important or does not have a benefit in store for you, reading the following articles will surely convince you otherwise. I am confident that there is information in these past articles on my blog that will provide value to you and help your business pursuits. Take a moment and find out for yourself.

10 Really Good Reasons to Blog
If you think blogging is just for geeks or those with extra time on their hands, think again! If you ever wondered if you should be blogging, or why to continue blogging, this list will give you very strong reasons.
Produce More Website Content … But Why? SEO?
More website content means more things for people to find in a Google search, but it goes a bit deeper than just that.
Blogging Improves Intelligence and Here is Proof!
Blogging can increase your business intelligence, expand your creativity, provide you with a better perspective on the intelligence around you, and more. Much relies on how you use it, and I am here to help you get smarter, so stop scanning and start reading!
Twitter is Useful but Blogging is Better
This article shows a statistical analysis of how blogging provides more value than any single social media effort alone.
6 Essential Blogging Tools for Non-Bloggers and Bloggers
Even if you are just a casual reader, I want to give you some really useful pieces of information to help you receive more benefit from blogs and to make the information more manageable. These will not take a lot of time to implement, and it will be worth the time you spend.

Blogging Dilemma: Truncated Blog Excerpts or Full Blog Articles?

Excerpts or Full Articles: A Grizzly Question

Blogging and SEO (being found in search engines) go hand in hand. If you have read more than a couple of my articles, you know that I am a strong proponent of blogging. Blogging is a huge asset to anybody wanting to be more visible to the public, and so it should not be taken lightly. If you do not have a blog, be sure to read “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog“.

Blogging comes with a lot of choices, and those choices include whether to truncate your blog posts and show excerpts on the home page, or to include full articles. Let us consider these options.

Truncated Blog Excerpts vs. Full Articles

As you may notice, I have opted to truncate the blog articles on my home page. Until this weekend, my blog has always included full length articles on my home page, archives, tags, and categories, but I decided to try something different. I will tell you a couple of pros and cons to the decision. I will talk a bit geek for some people here, but I will circle back around to something human that everybody can clearly grasp.

How Do You Like Your Blog? (My Blog Too!)

When I looked at the option of using blog excerpts on the home page, I thought of readers first. Perhaps you have had to make this judgment call as well. Sure, I see what other bloggers do, but I seldom do things just because somebody else does it. Well, except for smoking … the cool kids smoked so I fell into that trap. When it comes to writing a blog, I like to believe I can do something original. Please tell me you didn’t already read this somewhere else. There simply is not a solid rule for this, because bloggers have different styles … millions of different styles.

I tried to be deliberate in my decision making. I tried to think of everything, and I crossed my fingers hoping it will not explode in my face on Monday when you see this, or in the future, after my decision kicks in with more readers. I considered website performance issues such as page load times, average article length, length to truncate the excerpts, search engine indexing, and others. I will be happy to share my thoughts on these matters and l how I addressed them if you ask me.

From a reader standpoint, I know that you do not want to wait around for a page to load. Nobody wants to wait … even for me. Crazy thinking, I know. I considered how it may affect existing search engine rankings, because my home page ranks very well for anything I write. I considered a long list of other technology issues, but I mostly considered you, the reader.

How do you want my blog to work? After all, I am writing this for you as much as for me. I do not just write this to be stagnant and without public attention. Without readers and potential clients who actually take action on my blog, I will have a pretty hard time explaining to my wife why our kids are eating so much cake instead of other kid food (my wife is a totally amazing cake decorator, by the way). Cake does not make a great diet in the long run … believe me, I tried. I like eating grilled animals, and she does not make that kind of cakes. I have to buy my animals the hard way, so I need to find readers with action running through their veins and ready to push the marketing go button. That means I have to reach about 30 squillion of you before one reader takes their business to the next level with my services. I cannot do that alone, and I cannot do it with a mediocre blog … and neither can you. So I had to take this pretty seriously.

Blog Excerpt Pros and Cons

Something I knew going into this is that by truncating my blog posts and using short excerpts on the home page instead of full articles, I would be increasing the number of blog posts showing right upfront. This means people can scan through things easier to find what they want to read, and then click on it if it looks interesting to them. A couple of thoughts on this were that it should look interesting, and even quicker than before. I would have to try and set the hook with new readers sooner than ever with just a short excerpt. People don’t like to click around to find what they want to read … they want it right now. The three click rule is written in the laws of Internet statistics (I should add that to my 11 Important Internet Marketing Laws article). We “Web Geeks” know the rule of three clicks, and we know that readers will go *poof* like Cinderella’s carriage at midnight if we ask for a fourth click. I also had to consider that a massive number of people enter through pages other than my home page. I had to know where they enter, and why. I had to analyze their usage and consider the user bounce rate of the home page in relation to other pages, and a whole lot of other great geek almighty blogging factors. I really needed to feel secure about this decision, but I do not want to feel too secure, because it is not my decision as much as it is your decision. If you do not like it, I need to have a quick fist-full of clicks to bring it back to blogging as usual. Even if you do not tell me with comments (which I hope you will), you will still tell me by your usage patterns. Make no mistake … the masses will win this decision, and mine is only one little vote in that decision.

Using excerpts also means more database work to load all the articles, tags, categories, and images. Since I generally try to include just one or two images per post. Using full articles, including one image per post was fine, and I could still load full articles pretty quickly. Increasing the number of posts on my home page means increasing the number of images on the home page, because I wanted each article to be represented with a thumbnail and I would be adding more articles. More images normally means slower pages. At the same time, I had to weigh in the consideration that most of my blog posts are very long. Yes, I have no idea when to shut up most of the time. So maybe I could balance that out, since the text of a typical Murnahan blog post is about long enough to make up for a huge image download.

Another consideration in favor of truncated excerpts in place of full blog articles is reducing possibilities of duplicate content. It is a big problem for a lot of blogs, because the same full article content is on the home page, each individual article, archive pages, tag pages, category pages, and etcetera. I have always done things to help reduce duplicate content issues (search engines don’t like duplicate content) like using a meta “noindex, follow” tag in my archives, blog tags, and category pages. That helps, but I also really wanted to focus on individual articles, so along with implementing excerpts, I reworked my XML sitemap to boost the indexing priority of individual posts and reduce the priority of categories, tags, and archives, which already had “noindex,follow” meta tags in the headers.

Blog Usability Comes First

What I know above all else is that you, the reader is what matters more than anything. I know that if I write information that people can use … the things that they really like, and that other people cannot or did not produce as well as I did … that is what matters. How much does it matter to me, and to blogging in general? It is what makes the big difference in why most SEO fail at link building. Great … no, fantastic website content is what matters more than even the blog structure. If you have great usable content on your side, you can kill grizzly bears with a toothpick and a rubber band.

Grizzly Bear SEO and Pink Ponies for Sale

Just as I was writing this, I was alerted to a very fresh article about grizzly bear SEO writing. The article linked back to a piece that I wrote titled “SEO Directory Submissions and Pink Ponies for Sale“. What?! Yes, this is what makes my SEO world spin, and I do know when people link to my work. It is usefulness and marketing talent that matters more than website structure, alone. Blog structure matters a whole lot for SEO, so do not get me wrong, but the bottom line is usefulness. That means useful in every way, and sometimes that means testing and pushing the envelope.

If you get all the pieces just right, and you give people something useful and interesting, the rest of the SEO factors fall into place divinely. To see what I mean, just brave the wild Internet enough to go and see the grizzly bear article I mentioned, along with my response to the grizzly bear poo and pink ponies offered out there in the SEO marketplace.

Now I ask for your input. What do you think? Do you like the new truncated blog excerpts or full blog articles? Answer me with your comments, or answer me with your actions. Either way, I am paying close attention and I do care. After all, my kids can only eat so much cake!

Twitter is Useful but Blogging is Better

Twitter is a great place to gather useful information. It can also be a good place to find an audience of people who care about what you have to say. Twitter makes it easy to create a lot of business and personal connections. If you use Twitter with a little foresight, it can become an extremely valuable resource. If I did not believe this, I never would have spent the time and effort to write a book about Twitter, but blogging is even better. I am using Twitter as an example here, but much of this can be applied to other social media resources as well. What I wish to show is that many tools may be used for effective social media communications, and at the hub is a blog.

Many Twitter users have a blog, or even more precisely many bloggers have a Twitter account (or several). Blogs still outnumber Twitter users by hundreds of millions after all. Although Twitter can be useful, particularly in conjunction with a blog, it is not a silver bullet. I will explain this with data that I collected between March 2009 and March 2010, and provide charts to include comparisons as follows:

Twitter update (tweet) frequency and website traffic
Twitter followers and website traffic
Blog frequency and website traffic

Blogging is Better than Twitter, but Twitter is Still Useful

This is not a criticism of Twitter. I like Twitter, and I find a lot of great uses for the service. I meet a lot of wonderful people, I have interesting conversations, I learn from Twitter, and I share information with people using Twitter. However, it seems that while millions of business people have been fascinated by Twitter and a handful of other social media sites, it can be easy for them to overlook the even greater value of creating excellent website content, and doing it often. Social media can bring many people to a website, but consistent and high quality content development is key to keeping them coming back and keeping them telling their friends. This is extremely valuable to most business efforts.

In order to emphasize the importance of content creation (blogging), I will illustrate the side by side growth and reach of a Twitter account and a blog which were both created near the same time. The first blog post was on 7 December 2008 and my @murnahan Twitter account was created on 9 January 2009, so about a month apart. I used Twitter in conjunction with several other sites prior to this (copmagnet.com, stormmagnet.com, and others) but my @murnahan Twitter account and this blog create a good comparison. This is a one author blog and a one author Twitter account of about the same age.

Twitter Update (tweet) Frequency and Website Traffic Comparison

Many people believe that if they tweet at high velocity all day and night that it will bring huge traffic to their website. There has been some validity to this, but the landscape has changed. It should be obvious that influence is more important than simply yelling across a room and the same is true with Twitter. Here is a chart showing numbers of Twitter updates (tweets) compared with blog visits. I will add additional metrics later, but this may be an eye-opener to some people. Since lines on a tiny chart will not do this justice, I am providing the number of actual Twitter updates I sent during this period, below the chart. The high levels of traffic in the earlier part of the chart coincide loosely with a huge numbers of tweets, but then toward the more recent months you can see that traffic went back up (after I finished writing three books in 2009) while there were many thousands fewer tweets per month. Look at March 2009 with 9091 tweets compared to March 2010 with 175 tweets month-to-date.

Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb	Mar
9091	5969	1272	659	671	850	314	406	329	400	355	238	175

Twitter Followers and Website Traffic Comparison

A lot of Twitter followers should surely do the trick, right? It seems that there has been some amazing wool pulled over Twitter users’ eyes with this myth about Twitter followers. Sure, it is great to make a lot of connections, but how does that play into actual relevant website traffic? After all, website traffic is a common reason that a lot of people use Twitter. A squillion followers is a big dream for many people, but the way Twitter follower numbers relate to website traffic is not the same as some people may imagine. There is a lot more to building a brand and building website traffic than sending a bunch of tweets to a large number of followers.

I must say that in the beginning, Twitter was massively helpful in introducing people to this blog. In those days, people were retweet crazy, and it seemed that people retweeted everything I wrote. An example is an article I wrote about Twitter retweets … it was retweeted over 400 times. It was probably actually retweeted a lot more, but that is just what tweetmeme has on record.

Twitter helped to spread the word and create a lot of incoming links from many other social media sites as well. In May 2009, I wrote about how Twitter improves blog traffic (NOTE: “improves” and not just “increases”). In social media time, that was a long time ago. Twitter still holds great value that should not be overlooked or underutilized, but Twitter is different now.

Blog Frequency and Website Traffic Comparison

Twitter gets them there, but frequent content creation keeps them coming back.

Twitter can be instrumental in generating and cultivating an audience for a particular blog topic or service offering. A chart that cannot be overlooked is the one below which shows the direct relation of blog content creation and site visits. I used actual numbers of visits to my blog, so I multiplied the blog post numbers in order to be more visible in the chart. What I wanted to point out is how the lines follow a very similar course. While comparing nearly every metric of my website traffic, the one thing that relates more closely than any other is to continually create useful information for my readers. I hope that you will see this as an important focus in your efforts, too.

A blog is a hub for good social media outreach and is what keeps the machine moving. It is where you can reach more people with the information you want to share the most. All of the many related tools in your social media marketing strategy are fantastic and should be used to the best of your abilities. In the end, the tool that is expected to create more sales for your business is your website, so take good care of it and pay attention to the numbers.

If you have not already read the following articles, I encourage you to take time for these.