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The Socratic System of Sales. The Customer Questionnaire.

March 12, 2013 myonecall 2 Comments

The Socratic System of Sales is a system that is based on using the questioning process to persuade a prospect to buy your service. In fact, it can be used to pre-qualify a prospect, and in doing so, save the salesperson time in establishing that the prospect is in fact qualified, and what is important in the buying process to that prospect.

I should ask you, why are you reading this? Is closing and qualifying more prospects important to you? If so, read on.

The main complaint I hear about salespeople is that they don’t care about a prospect’s needs or issues. They “show up and throw up” as they say. It’s all about their product and service. True sales professionals speak less than the prospect, and ask excellent questions.

I am going to blog about many uses of the Socratic form of sales, but to introduce it I want to encourage you and your sales department to have a standard prospect questionnaire that is a required part of any sales process or presentation.

It’s important for your salesperson to understand the following.

What is the number one issue the prospect has that you need to fix?
What buying criteria will they use to make a decision?
Does the prospect understand your company’s value as it relates to their problem?
. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here is a quick example of questions a business might ask every prospect, and the reason they ask it should be clear. Many of these may apply to your business.

How soon did you want this project completed?
How important is a detailed proposal showing all expenses and a bottom line price?
How important is it that the company you select have experience completing similar projects?
How important are recent references of people that had similar projects completed?
How important is it that you are able to speak directly to those references?
How important is the financial stability of the business you select?
How important is the insurance and licensing of the company you select?
How important is bottom line price in your decision?
How important are the billing arrangements the company offers?
What other areas will you look at to make your selection?

A salesperson should never address any of the answers until all the questions are asked. If you take off on a tangent because they say a detailed proposal is very important, you may never get back to the other questions, in which you may have found out that the detailed proposal while being important, is not the hot button. Take the time to walk through all the questions. It’s certainly okay to add a brief statement after a question, like, yes we find that true with many of our clients, and then move on.

You should build your questions around the strengths of your business. If you have only been in business 1 year, you don’t ask, how important is the number of years a company has been in business is. You ask. How important is it that the company you select has new ideas and is hungry for your business?

Oddly enough, many small businesses don’t use a questionnaire because they don’t want to hear the answers. They would rather have a “shot” at the business and ignore the reality their business doesn’t actually have a shot.

Once you finish the questions, you have a couple of choices to make. You can address the main issues at this time (If this is a one call close) or you can briefly cover their main concerns, and then go into detail when you return with the actual proposal for work.

Your presentation or proposal needs to focus on the answers to the questions. If you have a canned presentation you send to every prospect, then you are losing out in sales conversions.

Start with these words…. Ms. Smith, let me tell you why our customers love our service. Like you, they were looking for a business that had experience in servicing their industry. We have over 25 clients in similar industries, and have learned that it takes a very specific approach (go on about this unique and valuable approach).

Can you see the benefits of using a questionnaire with your prospects? Instead of selling them what you “think” they need or want, you can actually address what they feel they want and need.

Another value of a questionnaire is many businesses fight the “price” battle all the time. A questionnaire will help you educate a prospect on your value. If used correctly, it will help you win business over the “cheap” competition, by having the prospect state and acknowledge that there are far more important issues than price.

Now if the prospect says the biggest issue is price, and you know you can not compete on that basis, then you have saved a lot of time by identifying this, and not moving into a proposal process.

There are so many examples of using the Socratic method of communication I will be blogging about later. It’s used in Marketing, Sales, H.R., P.R., as well as Education and may other fields – because it works.

Sit down and write out the questions you should ask every prospect and then start using them! I am positive you will see a much better sales conversion rate, and have a better relationship with new clients or customers.

By Mike Bayes

If we can help you accelerate your sales contact us at www.salesjumpstart.net

Who was Socrates? http://www.columbia.edu/itc/lithum/wong/Socrates.html

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Top Five Local SEO Ranking Killers

March 7, 2013 myonecall 3 Comments

Top Five Local SEO Ranking Killers. Sometimes it’s more important to know what will kill your rankings than what will help your local rankings.

1.) Inconsistent Name , Address or Phone, on different web sites.

Architecture of a Web crawler. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Clean up old listings that have the old address by searching that address in Google, and then contacting each site and up dating it to the new address.

Same thing for a changed phone number. Google the number to see what sites have it listed and get it changed or deleted, and if for some odd reason (and we have seen this several times) you have a different URL, with a different phone number, please remove the site!

As a side note make sure your business listings are consistent in every directory. Same exact name, same exact phone number and same exact address.

A confused robot is not your friend! ( Robots are what Search engines use to look at your site)

2.) No Address on the Site

I don’t know why I see so many local web sites with no address listed. I assume it’s because they are home based. In most cases, you should either list your home address, or get an office. You can hide your home address on Google Places (as a matter of fact its part of their terms of service that if you are home based, to click do not show my address). Any way, if its really important that you don’t want your prospects to know you are working in your pajama’s, as if they won’t figure it out anyway, your not going to have good rankings. And if you had good rankings you could probably afford the little office up the street. LIST YOUR ADDRESS, PHONE and Company name on the home page.

3.) No local citations

It takes an hour or two to list your company in the important local directories. Go to getlisted.org (It’s free and a great resource). List your business with most of the directories they recommend.

4.) Using Dex tracking numbers for your PPC

There is some disagreement in the SEO world about how damaging this is. I have had several discussions with some of the countries best Local Maps and Local SEO experts , most notably Mike Blumenthal (see his blog here http://blumenthals.com/blog/ and follow it if you are a serious local SEO student), But they all do agree that after looking at some case studies, a DEX tracking number published on multiple different local directories is not good for your rankings.

I would take it a bit further, IT IS A COMPLETE RANKING KILLER for Google Places. It’s the same thing as having different phone numbers published on different web sites. It confuses the Robots, and then you are in rankings trouble.

5.) No Meta Titles or descriptions or poorly written ones.

So your nephew did your web site when he was studying web design… nice! The most important part of your web site for SEO, is your meta title. If you don’t know what that is (and you can not see it BTW on your site) call a web design firm or SEO and ask them to check. If its your company name, your hurting your rankings, unless you want to rank for people who all ready know who you are). Have a pro take a look at your meta tags, and your on site SEO in general while they are there. This one may cost you a few hundred dollars on up to fix (including the on Site SEO changes), and yes 90% of the web design firms you speak with with tell you to build a new site (and maybe you should), but, just get the tags right to start!

These are the top 5 ranking killers for Local sites that we have seen. And any one of them can keep your site from being well ranked. It’s worth the time to have a company ( like us) fix this issues if Search Engine traffic is important.

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13 Good Luck Tactics For Your SEO Programs

February 27, 2013 myonecall Leave a comment

13 Good Luck Tactics for your SEO program.

We all know SEO is hard work, and lot’s of research, but as in anything, some good luck is always welcome. Here are the top 13 tatctics to attract good luck for your SEO.

1.) Type in your search term every hour, click on your listing, stay on home page AT LEAST 45 seconds. Click onto another page. Stay there as you hold your breath to the count of 10.

2.) Do this again from another IP address, but stick your tongue out as you hold your breath.

3.) Go to any of the Google blogs, and make HIGHLY positive comments about them. But be sincere, like you can tell them how great their Google Places service team is. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

Image via CrunchBase

4.) Go to Rand Fishkin’s wife’s blog and make a comment about how smart her husband is. http://www.everywhereist.com/ . Buy the way, it’s a great blog!

5.) Never, ever mention SEO in any article or published piece that in any way can be associated with you or a client.

6.) State on your site you do not list clients because you don’t want Google to know who they are.

7.) Each week mention how sexy your wife or girlfriend thinks Matt Cutts is. Post a picture of her on your blog. If need be, post a picture of a model and say its your girlfriend or wife. You can extra points if you mention it here. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

8.) Always use broad match in your Adwords… and spend too much.

9.) Do a blog weekly on how great Google Plus is. Extra credit if you bash facebook or microsoft. (I find that pretty easy to do).

10.) Just tell people they can find your site by Googling you or your company name, because, yes, you are that good. ( You might remind them to add the city after the name just in case)

11.) Carry a lucky mouse foot around in your pocket with your keyword and site written on it.

12.) Brag about your new Chromebook on your Facebook page and refer them to the post you made about it on your Google + page.

13.) Hire someone from fiverr to search on google just like this:
Your Company name | Popular in your keyword 100 times a day.

Using all of these on a consistent basis will do wonders for your rankings. Do you have any you can add?

These are just some that work for us.. What good luck tactics have you found work?

Mike Bayes

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SEO Programs Need Laser Target Prospects

February 7, 2013 myonecall Leave a comment

One of the largest mistakes you can make when you are starting your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) process is skipping identification of your most likely prospects.

Almost all SEO’s will start with a Keyword analysis, but far to many don’t think about where these prospects can be found. As a easy example, if you are selling Insurance and do nothing but a key word analysis, you may have a good idea of what your best prospects will type into the search box, but you are still a long way away from providing a high ROI laser targeted SEO program.

When we provide a sales crystal ball program to a client, it starts with the following pages. By reading this you can get a much better idea of how to create a laser targeted SEO campaign. If you think of that Insurance program I mentioned above, why would you not want to know specifically the locations, incomes, and why customers buy the insurance before you start.

Here is a good way to start developing a laser targeted profile. It’s generic, and can be customize to SEO or any marketing and sales programs.

Overview of Commonalities

Identification and the analysis of what traits your best customers have in common is the foundation of developing a laser targeted list of new prospects. Without this information companies will waste both time and money marketing and selling to prospects who are unlikely to buy from them, and if sold may become a low quality customer.

With a laser targeted list provided through the Crystal Ball process your sales and marketing will be far more productive. You will spend your time and money attracting better clients while maintaining your current marketing budget. The combination of spending targeted dollars on better prospects will lead to your business selling faster and more in a shorter period of time.

Your Crystal Ball program is designed to fine tune and pinpoint three areas that are the basis for any marketing campaign.

———–> Laser targeted List

———–> Compelling message

———–> Reach tactics

In our process, we have identified the commonalities that are shared between your best customers. We then apply our years of experience in business analysis and marketing to establish not only mathematically what the highest scores are in each trait, but also to assess the value of that trait for your marketing. A simple high percentage of total score in a trait does not in and by itself mean that trait has high value.

As an example, many Crystal Ball clients will score high in their best clients utilization of social media. But, even though there may be a very high percentage of your best clients using Social Media to promote their services, it won’t cause a high overall score based on the fact that we would expect the normal percentage in this area to be around 70%. So in fact, although there is a very high percentage as a total of your best customers, the percentage is normal, and does not produce a high score unless other unique attributes can be assigned to this trait.

To determine the overall scores on a trait we look at three areas.

1.) Is the number of customers to the total high. For example, if 17 of 20 customers have the same trait, that would be a 8.5 baseline score. That by itself is a very high score.
2.) Is it unusual to see this percentage in this trait considering your industry. Using the social media example above the answer would be no, and the score is adjusted to represent that depending on the exact percentage score and the normalcy of this trait percentage.
3.) And then, how pertinent is it to the identification of your laser targeted list. During the analysis we may find several areas that have a high percentage of total, and are unusually, but in fact, based on years of experience we know that this particular trait is not worth focusing on.

As you can see, with some solid research, and analytically assessments you can find a Gold mine of information that will help you as a business or an SEO as a vendor provide a true laser targeted list of prospects.

By Mike Bayes

See more about the Sales Crystal Ball here

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Do It Yourself SEO, Internet Marketing

Twitter and Local SEO

January 24, 2013 myonecall 2 Comments

A fellow SEO just noticed some major keywords are showing up on the first page of Google. I wonder if you use a hashtags on your tweets for your company or a local brand (company name) of it would do the same thing?

Here are two quick examples of Twitter Hashtags showing up from searches in Denver: Searched : Earthquake

Here is a search for Denver

I think I will start Tweeting with the Company as a hashtag and see what happens. I will use #Myonecall.

Any one else want to help just to see if it shows up?

Increase Your Reach On Twitter Using Hashtags

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Increase Business Sales through Giving More Referrals

January 18, 2013 myonecall 1 Comment

How To Increase Your Business Sales By Giving more Referrals.

What you are about to read will significantly increase your company’s sales. I am writing it because referrals represent the largest bucket of new sales acquisition for many small and medium businesses, and are the most difficult thing to increase in volume. We all love them, and can’t seem to generate enough of them. First a short background on why we think referral programs are both important and generally are complete implemented in the wrong way.

One of our services to clients besides Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization is a

Sales Crystal Ball program. It falls in the category of sales acceleration. In its basic form, the final product will tell a business where its next 12 months of customers will come from, and how to sell them in half the time.

To accomplish this we look at a large data set of former customers. With in that data we find the largest commonality matches. Those of course turn into a target market. A message based on the findings ofwhy former customers purchased, is developed and then delivered to the new target market.

As an example, we recently finished a Crystal Ball program for a client that clearly identified that 90% of what they had described as their best customers were all part of one organization. The vast majority of their best customers

had 6 or more employees and the vast majority of those had been in business 10 years or more. The new target market was very defined and easy to identify.

Here is where finding new clients becomes a challenge, as most of the clients customers in the above crystal ball assessment came from referrals, and this is the case with most of the businesses we work with. When assessing where new clients find them, the number one (by far) way is almost always through a referral. This is really a good sign as it demonstrates the company does great work. The problem is if you want to build new sales at an accelerated rate you can not just wait for someone to refer you, and most referral systems you can build have a limited success rate, although certainly worth the effort to develop.

Here is why a referral program doesn’t build sales quickly. Its premise is an anti altruistic tit for tat system.In other words you ask for something before you give.

A tit for tat system is simple. I give you something that is valuable, and you feel the need to return the kindness.

In a referral system, you are saying, give me something and I will be thankful, or I will give you a reward. In human nature, that’s a turn off (There are a few exceptions to this rule of course).

To have a truly successful referral program, you must reverse the tit for tat process. You must start the system by giving the customer a gift or help of some sort that has real and unique value. Value has a tendency to be returned in equal or higher quantities. This value you give needs to be a surprise, not baked into a system.

A personal example of the power of a tit for tat system is when your neighbors drop off some home baked cookies before the holidays. They just show up and hand you a gift with a smile. Soon you may find yourself baking a batch for them, or returning the kindness in some other way, but chances are it will be cookies or food. This point is very important. Tit for tat values are generally the same stuff given back and forth.

A business example: B2B

If you want other business to promote your service, you must first, promote their business. If you really want a business to refer you, you need to refer them first!

So it all comes down to this when we discuss referral programs. Instead of building a “we will give you something for a referral”, you need to build an internal process and culture that says, we will give our customers referrals. Then you need to actively find those opportunities. If your sales person(s) can find an honest way to refer one prospect to your better clients a week, you will be pleasantly surprised at the effect it will have on your sales. Even better is to find a way to constantly promote your best clients, so there is an ongoing process of giving.

How to start:

Make a list of all of your better clients.
Next to the company note the services or products they sell.
Next to that, add a note of the clients or associates who might need or purchase their services in the future.
Now make a list of introductions you can make.

You see where this goes. You can send an email to both parties as an e introduction. You can call them and introduce the other party. You can set up a lunch for them to meet each other. You can hold a quarterly networking meeting for all the clients.

Another system is to develop an ongoing promotional program on your site, or in your newsletter, that allows you to promote your best clients. Call them and ask if they would like to be listed or promoted through those opportunities. If you are really into this, you can even add some ad words PPC to drive some traffic to the resource page on your site, using the clients keywords.

There are as many ways to provide referrals to your clients as there are ways to promote a business. Be creative and give first, and do not make this process public or part of a sales presentation.

Mike

303 500 3054 ext 1

My One Call LLC

SEOmoz talks about this in a how to get links article here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/my-favorite-way-to-get-links-and-social-shares-whiteboard-friday

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2013 Local SEO Predictions. Content Marketing Is Phooey

December 29, 2012 myonecall 4 Comments

2013 Local SEO Predictions. Content Marketing is Phooey.

I am going against the general concord in SEO circles this year (what a shock right?) on what will work for SEO firms in 2013, and make a big statement. Links matter more than ever, and are in fact (after your on site work) the absolute most important aspect to any successful SEO program.

There is a ton of content marketing, and social signal pundits in SEO since Panda and Penguin marched into town burning and destroying all search rankings developed with sophomoric and thoughtless tactics, that will tell you the only path to high Internet traffic is through a massive content marketing strategy. The mass hysteria that followed has been epic.

I have read a great volume of blogs’ and posts on “how to “implement SEO now that every thing has changed. The truth is, very few “things” have changed, and authors are simple feeding a hungry and worried Internet Marketeering community.

I recently posted on a very popular blog (about local SEO issues) that the loss of keyword information from Google was not a really big deal for local services. I mean, if you need a keyword tool to tell you how people find a local Plumber, you may want to get another gig. SEO is not for you in 2013. Most will use the word Plumber. Maybe add service, company, a city, I mean there just are not all that many combo’s to figure out. In my experience, what is important in local internet visibility is not the combination of keywords a prospect uses, but how they use those combinations in search. Most SEO firms won’t even report (because there is no automated tool to do so) how a site ranks in important local zip codes with no local intent term used. And this is becoming the MAJOR search type for local services.

This race to content now being promoted as the SEO tactic de jour may be exactly what we think it is when it comes to non local sites. For local sites, and local SEO, which is where the vast majority of us plow the ground, it is in many cases complete phooey. Not that great content is phooey, just that this obsession with great content as the number one all in one SEO device is phooey. Google wants a site to communicate the information a person goes to that site for (I am guessing). A local plumber doesn’t need to be the Robert Frost of the copper pipe crowd, to rank well. They just need to have a well designed 4 or 5 page site, giving people what they want to read and see when they get there.

Example: In the last 4 months we have ranked a site with one page of actually content (two pages total) for a local intent keyword, by adding a few local back links, using an emd, and ummm that was it. Does it have much competition? Yes, some. Would it ever have a chance of ranking on a national search? No. And that’s the point; Local SEO is to National SEO what Physics is to the M theory. They both deal with universe in completely different ways.

So for Local SEO in 2013:

Backlinks to your site will continue to be the number one (off site) ranking factor.
On Site SEO will continue to be important.

That’s it.

PS A backlink doesn’t mean a listing on a horrible directory that no one ever visits. It means a mention of your site on a site that real people who might be interested in your service visit, and may actually click through to your site based on that visit. It may also mean an advertisement on a highly promoted site, or a mention on a popular face book or linked in page. This hasn’t change in the last 2 years. Spammy directories and link wheels where never good for SEO. If you were using those and keyword stuffing and all of that, then I will agree with you, your SEO has changed a lot.

By Mike Bayes

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SEO Leads. How To Generate Leads For SEO Services

December 21, 2012 myonecall 2 Comments

SEO Leads. The How to generate more Leads.

<<< — Click to call us anytime by clicking on the click to call tab on the left.

Since writing my blog on how to sell SEO services (http://www.salesjumpstart.net/blog/2012/02/09/how-to-sell-seo-services/, and having one published on SEOmoz http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/selling-seo-is-link-building-but-with-human-links, the number one question I get is,… OK, now how do I generate more leads. So, with that in mind I will give a few sample systems that are so powerful you must promise never to tell anyone about.

But first, I have to say that you must be willing to spend either a good amount of your time, or pay someone a good amount of money to have a strong ongoing sales program. If you can’t do either of the above, this isn’t for you.

Quick recap. Your best prospects fall into 1 of 4 categories.

They have no idea who you are
They know who you are
They trust you
They buy from you

So your job is to get, what is clearly the largest group, the “I have no idea who you are”, into the “they trust you” category. Selling SEO is about trust.

Step One: (Tremendously Important) Your Target List.

Step one is like on site SEO, if you don’t do it, the rest of the program will not work. I mean it. Define what type of company is most likely to trust you. We use what we call, a sales crystal ball system for this. Here is how that works.

Take your best customers over the last 2 years, and identify their common traits. Location, number of employees, age of company, industry, and associations they belong to. You should be able to see a clear pattern. We use 50 + possible areas of commonality, but if you have the basics above, and of course use your gut feeling about who trusts you, and you should have a good enough picture.

Now, let’s say in your research of your customers, you found that the most common areas are they belong to the BBB. They have 5-9 employees. They are in the Industrial Parks, and they have been in Business more than 6 years.

So your target customers will be members of the BBB, have an office in an industrial type building, have more than 5 employees and have been in business more than 6 years.

Go develop this list, or hire a list broker to get the list for you.

Step Two: Contact them.

Here’s the hard part for so many business. You have to contact them! Funny how this step stops about 90% of business from moving forward with a super powerful, gonna make you happy, sales campaign. Why? The fear of rejection and it’s administratively outside of a SEO companies comfort zone. So here are two ways to make that first contact. One for the more courageous (or with the budget to hire a professional firm to do calls) and one for the more timid, who think of a cold call as a dip in a frozen lake.

For the Lions (Courageous, or lot’s of marketing dollars to spend)

Call each company on the list and ask if it’s okay to send them an invitation to a webinar or seminar your company has produced specifically for their industry. The actually script is important, so you may want professionally help on this, or hire a professional telemarketing firm to make these calls and log the results in a CRM for you. During the call you want the name of the person who makes the decisions on Internet marketing, as well as their email. Promise to never spam them or sell the email.

Make sure you enter all of this in a CRM.

Let’s say you have a list of 500 businesses. You should call every one, and end up with about 100-150 approved emails to send invites too. (You are well on your way at this point). Your time frame will vary, but count on making 3 contacts an hour in this type campaign, so with 500 businesses someone will be calling for 167 hours. You can always start when you have 50 emails, and just continue the calling as you start your webinar/seminar program.

Step Three: Invite to your seminar/webinar.

The secret here is to have an absolutely killer name for your seminar/webinar. Something like: Learn the two simple and fast ways our ______ < industry> clients make more sales in a month than others do in a year using the Internet. Free.

(YOU MUST BACK UP THIS CLAIM WITH PROOF)

A well crafted email invitation with RSVP to your 30 minutes of powerful ways to attract new clients on line will start moving businesses on your list from they don’t know you to they do know you. This is a bigger step than you think. And if nothing else happens, you now have a bunch of targeted companies that didn’t know you, who now do know you.

Use constant contact or a similar email system so you can track who opens the email, and have a RSVP tracking. Offer three different days and times. And have a well thought out- all about them, actually examples seminar/webinar ready to go.

I am not going into detail here about how to pull off a great webinar/seminar and get people to RSVP . If you do some research you will find a ton of good information and help on-line.

Step Four: Give the Webinar or Seminar (On different days and times).

Basics here. Make it valuable. Give them real information and examples. Do not spend more than 90 seconds talking about you or your company. They don’t care at this point. Make it great tips on how to utilize the Internet to get more calls or prospects walking in the door.

At the end of the webinar, offer your help. Something like, if this all sounds a little over whelming, we do have 10 spots open for clients that we can do this work for. And as a thank you for being on our call, we want to make a special offer, you can have both the programs we just talked about for the price of one, or we can through in an additional $$$$ for your new Google Ad words campaign if we start this week. Or the offer of your choice.

Many of you have been on webinars or in seminars where this exact process happened. I can tell you that they work if done correctly.

System for the more timid: Joint venture with a company that targets the same group of prospects. A web design company that doesn’t provide SEO services is a perfect joint venture. They have prospects that already trust them. Make a few calls and see who would be interested in hosting or promoting a webinar on the topic you developed. If your content is good and valuable for their customers and prospects they may be very open to it. You save a ton of time and get a third party endorsement as well. Or find the associations these prospects are most likely to belong to, and make then an offer to provide this content at no charge.

And finally if you can not do either of the above. Send a series of three letters (each with different content) to the target list spaced by two weeks. Give then a web site to register for the webinar, and repeat the process every two months with new letters. The letters need to be well crafted, and here again, I would recommend you get professional help if you are not a pro at the copy writing thing. If you’re sending to 500 businesses, your cost will be around $250.00 per mailing, and $750.00 for the three letters.

At the end of this process (and it never really ends) you should have about 200 businesses that now have moved from the “don’t know you”, to the “know you”. With a good webinar series, you should see about 150 of that move to the trust you bucket! And of those, you should see new sales of about 35 to 50 over a year.

This is just one of several successful sales programs we have developed for clients over the last 10 years. It’s not original, as many of the most successful companies in the world use this system, or one like it. I’ll blog more on other systems in 2013 if we get enough requests.

Now if all of this seems a little too much, and you want some help, we can provide all of the above, or direct you to good vendors for the parts you need help with. We have room for 4 new business development clients in the first quarter of 2013. If you are interested in this, just send me an email. The Basic cost is $ 2800. a month for all of the development and calls (30 hours a month) to your target list. We also will co-host your webinar the first time if you need that. As each program is different, and we must have confidence in your commitment to succeed, we need to do an interview with you to determine if this is the right fit and the right program. We have other highly successful programs that may be a better fit both for your budget and your goals.

Have comments or want to discuss this post?

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Or, email me at mike@myonecall.com and lets talk. I

By Mike Bayes

Managing Partner of My One Call LLC

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Internet Marketing, SEO Analysis Denver

How A Blog Can Help Your Google Rankings, Or Not

December 18, 2012 myonecall 4 Comments

How A Blog Can Help Your Google Rankings (again, and again):

Blogging is a buzz word in the small and medium business community. Almost every client we talk with (or potential client) wants to know how to do a blog because they have “heard” it will help their search engine rankings. This falls into the tradition of small business owners being about 8 years behind on new marketing tactics. That’s not a criticism, it’s a reality. Most small business owners don’t have the hours in a day needed to stay on top of anything besides what they do.

The Bad News. Although there is clearly some truth left in that assumption that a blog will help your sites rankings, but, and it’s a big but, if you are to see an increase in your sites popularity based on a blog, it must have valuable content that other sites and social media will pick up on and mention. If your blog is just another 700 + words of regurgitated news, facts, rumors, or opinion already published or blogged about on the Internet by 100 or 1000 other sites your chances of a web master or influential social media picking up on the blog are very low. And if your Blog isn’t mentioned on other web sites, it gets no help in rankings.

Additional Value of a Blog bedside’s Rankings. Now, if your blog gives your prospective clients or current customers some unique insight into your business or industry, even if they are not going to mention it or link to it, it’s still of value, just not for your search engine visibility. It will help you become more of a trusted source for whatever it is you do.

Blog Machine (Photo credit: digitalrob70)

Internet Marketers Are Blog Obsessed. That’s a problem, because many (and I mean many) Internet Marketers have had some success with getting their blog or content mentioned and linked to, (and all that SEO stuff), by writing a blog,. They write blogs about blogs that are based on another blog in the hopes that someone they don’t know, and who is trying to get followers on twitter will retweet their content to an audience that has little or no interest in what they are saying, and have already seen the information 5 times in other higher authority blogs or sites.

The reason they have any success is it’s far more likely to get Internet Marketing content linked or mentioned on the INTERNET because Internet Marketers spend half their life reading this stuff. If you are a Plumber, or a Dentist, the likelihood of having your content picked up is very small. Plumbers and Dentists, and normal people don’t spend their life on-line reading every blog written, even when its content is the same as the last 5 they read.

It’s important for an Internet Marketer to be up to date on all the new stuff on the Interweb, if for no other reason, so they can sound really knowledgeable and use uncommon words when they speak to Plumbers and Dentists. I call it selling through a vernacular fear factor. More on that some other time.

Blogging For Visibility. So how does a small business utilize a blog for better Internet visibility? It’s all about the subject and content.

Blog about a question a customer asked you.
Blog about a unique problem you solved.
Blog about how a person can prepare for your service.
Blog about your kids.
Blog about your employees.
Blog about your favorite customers

All of the above will at a minimum be unique, and unique is the first principle of good content. Any content you write and publish should have these attributes.

Unique
Interesting for your prospects
And if you can make it about the internet you’re really doing well.

By Mike Bayes, My One Call LLC, www.salesjumpstart.net

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