According to Seth Godin, there are two reasons people don’t buy (or do) things:

1. They don’t know about it.

2. They’re afraid of it.

If you don’t know about blogging and the substantial benefits it can bring to your business, that’s at least partly my fault. My business, and my mission, is to help businesses understand how and why to use blogging and blog platforms to grow their business. I’ll work harder at that: I promise.

The Psychology of Fear

I can detail all the advantages, show you examples of other businesses that have made blogging pay off, explain how much less money you will spend for the same or better results than you’re getting with your newspaper and radio ads, even plead with you (if I suddenly misplace my dignity); everything short of promising success. But at some point, you have to find the courage to do something different from what you’ve been doing, and different from what most people have been doing.

As the economy changed from orange alert (mild fear and wariness) to red alert (duck-and-cover NOW!), I had imagined that small and medium-sized business owners would be actively looking for something that would give them an edge. But I read an article (now long-misplaced) that suggested that the psychology of an economic downturn for most people is to hunker down and either do whatever they were already doing (but harder, with desperation), or to stop doing even what they were doing, while waiting for economic winds to blow more favorably. I can testify from the difficulty I’ve had convincing some businesses that blogging is at least part of the answer to their marketing dilemma in a down economy that this is the case.

Fear, apparently, is exaggerated in economic difficulties, and most people are even less likely to try something new, even if it holds the potential to overcome or mitigate the problem that’s the cause of their fear.

Now for the Opportunity

Here’s the good news for you if you’re even a little bit courageous: while your competitors are hunkered down waiting for the sun to warm their backsides again, you can get a jump on them. I’ve never talked to a business blogger who didn’t tell me they wished they’d started sooner. While you can’t start sooner than you start, you can start sooner than your competitors. Like most people, your competitors will wait until almost everyone is already on the bandwagon. By the time they’re figuring out "Step 1," you can be doing business with their ex-customers. Yup, it’s the law of the jungle. Survival of the fittest.

If I can help you with the issues you will face as you boldly go where few have gone before, please let me know. I can almost guarantee, those issues all have reasonably simple, easy-to-implement solutions.

Tags: Blogging for Business, Change, Zeitgeist

OK, there are probably a few exceptions to that statement. But for the most part, small businesses—say, 98%—that have either static websites or websites that are separate from their blogs are missing out on two huge advantages:

1. search engine traffic
2. an inexpensive, easy-to-use content management system

Search Engine Traffic and SEO

Attracting search engine traffic is the difference between a website that’s an asset and one that’s nothing more than an expense. If your website is not a search destination for your prospective customers, it’s not helping you very much. Oh sure, if you have a website people can go to when they see the URL on your business card or your Yellow Pages ad, that has some value. But the old idea of a website being a sign alongside the information superhighway pointing to your business is outdated and not very effective.

The key to a website that helps you build your business is search engine traffic, even if your business is exclusively local. I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a local business person say they don’t need to be found in online searches, because their business is all local. Yet, they spend (lots and lots of) money on local newspaper ads and local radio ads. I guess they think local people don’t have an internet connection and don’t use it to look for local businesses? Think again!

The number one way people look for places to buy goods and services is by internet search, overtaking the Yellow Pages more than a year ago and widening the gap on a daily basis. And that includes checking out local businesses that people intend to drive to and do business with after they’ve determined online that the business offers what they’re looking for and appears to know what it’s doing (the quality of your site and blog posts have some influence on that one).

Blogs are search engine magnets, IF they contain focused, frequently updated content that your potential customers search for. Google’s algorithms favor focused, frequently updated content, the kind of knowledge and information you already have your head. Put it into some blog posts (frequently, and focused) and watch your business benefit from additional traffic from online searches.

Having your blog integrated with your website (what we often refer to as a blogsite) gives the non-blog portion of your website a higher pagerank than if the blog is completely separate from the website, moving it higher in search results.

Inexpensive, Easy-to-use Content Management

Secondly, a blogsite makes it easy for small businesses to update any part of their website using the same backend used to publish blog posts. The days of calling the "webguy" for simple content updates will be over. You may still need the webguy to add certain kinds of functionality or to make fundamental changes in the structure of your blogsite if and when that becomes necessary, but you will have full day-to-day control over the information it displays. And that’s important, because if people are finding your site, the last thing you want them to see is outdated information.

But beyond that, the information on your site can reflect what’s happening currently and can make your website an integral part of your sales and promotion strategy. Suppose you offered a daily special to the first person each day to say the word of the day that they could only get on your website? Suppose you gathered email addresses on your website from people who wanted to be made aware when there was a sale? You could email these opt-in, prequalified customers and save yourself the expense of a radio ad or newspaper ad announcing the sale.

These are just a couple of examples of how having greater control over the content on your website can lead to more business. There are other strategies, likely some that would fit your business perfectly.

Tags: Blogsites, SEO, Small Business

ThemeGrade is a website that tests and grades WordPress themes for general code compliance and for on-page SEO. Our recently launched theme for professional designers using WordPress as a CMS (Evo4 CMS) scored 6 of 7 points on the SEO portion, and 12 of 16 points on the general portion of the test (2 points were deducted because we don’t offer support: It’s a free theme! Who in their right mind would offer support for a giveaway?) At any rate, a silver rating puts Evo4 CMS in good company, in the top 30 of more than 175 themes currently, and we’re really pleased that our first theme did so well.

Other than offering support (maybe on the next release, we’ll make it paid and offer support), we’re looking at the areas where we lost points to see how we can fix them, or if fixing them is even desireable. For instance, we lost a point by not having nested or threaded comments. I’m not sure we want to "fix" that. First, few people use or want nested or threaded comments, and second, if they do, there are some pretty good plugins available to make that happen.

We lost another point having to do with sidebar link heirarchy. Frankly, I’m not sure what that is, but I will find out. And I’ll also do some research on what the SEO issue is with "home page heading."

Tags: Design/Development, WordPress as CMS, WordPress Themes