What your blog can learn from Guy Fieri's bad restaurant review

Guy Fieri is a famous chef who just got blasted by a New York Times restaurant review. And from reading the review, it sounded as if Chef Fieri created dishes that were just a wee bit out of context. Well, in a restaurant, creating recipes that are out of context is when you go so far with your recipes that diners are left wondering why in the hell you've covered foie gras with Milk Duds. The two have nothing in common. One doesn't compliment the other. Just as Guy Fieri learned that creating recipes out of context doesn't work; in your blog, if you are writing out of context, your readers won't know what you are talking about.

What is "writing out of context?"
At a recent social media conference, a speaker gave this example:

"I was watching Drew Carey's Improv-a-Ganza show with some older friends. In the show, Drew has actors act out improv skits based on the topic he presents to them. In 
acting out one of the skits, one actor kept referencing 'Milk Duds'. My friends were all laughing as the skit unfolded.  

Now, to ground you in what I'm about to say, you should know these facts about me. I am 25 years old, I have an undergraduate degree from Stanford, I have a graduate degree from Georgia Tech, I am married, and I have my own successful design consultancy. My point? In my entire life, I have never, not once,
heard the term 'Milk Duds'." 

No idea what you are talking about
Think about that for a second! He had never hear the term 'Milk Duds.' He had no idea what Milk Duds were, and thus he had no idea what was so funny. The whole thing was out of context. You've probably heard of Milk Duds, those awesome marble-sized balls of chocolaty goodness. So to you, a comedy routine that incorporated Milk Duds would make perfect sense. You've come from a background where you know and love Milk Duds. They are part of the context that you understand.

You had better not answer 'Yes' to this question
If you were writing about Milk Duds in a blog article, would your audience know what they were? The speaker at the conference was a highly intelligent, highly educated guy, yet he didn't know what Milk Duds were. Does that make him a nimbleweed because he doesnt know something so ingrained in your knowledge? If you answer yes to that question, you may not know your target audience. Do you know who your target audience really is? Do you know what their problems are? And if you don't, how is it that you are writing to them? You can fix this by getting to know your target audience.

How do you get to know your target audience?
Beth Hayden of Copyblogger offers this advice:

1. Do market research so you can know what problems your audience has
   Solving their problems is the #1 reason they will buy from you. What keywords are they searching on? What are they saying on social media? What questions are they asking on your blog or your competitors blogs? What's the airspeed velocity of the unladen swallow? (that was probably out of context for you, sorry)
2. Join the community you are trying to serve
   Take part in discussions and conversations via social networking sites, blogs, forums and other online groups.
3. Research your audience’s mindset
   The first thing you need to study is your audience’s mindset — the way they look at the world. What’s important to them? What types of people do they admire? What are their values? Once you have this information, sit down and write down everything you know that describes this person. 
4. Write to that person
   Now that you know your target, write as if you were talking directly to them, one on one. Solve their problems, and they'll keep coming back to you.

In the comments tell us what audience you are trying to serve
We'll reply (along with other readers) about ways to help you understand customers in that industry or demographic. Who do you think your readers are? What problems are they trying to get solved?

Suggested: Why 1700 CEOs are Wrong about Social Media


Image credit: ProComKelly

Why frequent marketing touches will fail every time

It's so common that we small business marketers believe that frequently interacting with our customers is what grows relationships with them. Send them a lot of emails and tweets, touch them on a Facebook business page, respond to every comment on our blog posts, repin their pins on Pinterest, blah blah blah. Sounds good right? The more you interact the closer your relationship is with your customers, right? I mean, that's what a relationship is right? It's about interacting a bunch of times? Well, let me ask you a question. Was it the number of times you went on a date with your future husband when you were "courting" (sorry, it's an old southern term) that really added up to that head-over-heels love that grew between you? Or was it the quality of the shared experience that the two of you had together during that time? Think out loud for a minute. But don't let Loraine in the cube next to you hear this. Did it matter that you and your (future) husband happened to hear the Louis Armstrong song "What a wonderful world" playing in the background on your date, OR was it actually the fact that that song was playing the first time the two of you ever danced? The first time the two of you danced was a shared experience. And the fact that Louis Armstrong's "What a wonderful world" already meant something special to you, and you two shared that experience together, is what built the relationship between you.

It's the shared experiences in our lives that stand out and matter to us, not the number of times we happen to have interacted together. In your marketing, you need to build a shared experience with your customers in order to have a real relationship with them. What does that mean in a small business?  Take a look at a few examples-->.

Ted's Montana Grill
Ted Turner started this small chain of restaurants several years ago. If you don't know Ted, he's this "semi-wealthy" guy who seemingly would to be able to turn even dried cow pies into gold. At any rate, Ted's doesn't just serve up a great, perfectly seasoned, lean, Bison burger and call it quits. That wouldn't be enough to build a shared relationship with his customers. Instead Ted's makes it clear that they care about the environment. The tables are covered with recycled paper instead of fine linen tablecloths that have to be laundered constantly. The drinking straws are made of paper. That's right, paper. Why? Because a paper straw simply disintegrates in the land fill whereas plastic straws will be preserved right along side a twinkie for a thousand years or so. The restrooms have these sporty toilets that may have cost more to purchase, but save on water in the long run. All of this screams of sharing this common feeling and goal with customers who care about the environment, but who still want a spankin' good burger or steak.

Whole Foods
Whole Foods is a grocery chain on a mission to sell nothing but the healthiest products available. A customer who is conscious about their personal health, concerned about what they eat, and concerned about how the foods were grown and sourced would normally go to a typical grocery store and have to scrutinize every product label to see what the ingredients are, and if the label mentions anything about the growing and sourcing of the product. Instead, if you step into Whole Foods, customers rest assured that every single item in the store is basically healthy. You don't even have to look at the labels. We're talking about tens of thousands of items here.  Everything is organically produced, thus it is better for the environment. No product contains toxins like high fructose corn syrup, BHT/TBHQ (chemical preservatives), or trans fats. And everything is sourced in such a way that there are no unfair labor practices being used (such as poor treatment of workers, child labor, or human slavery). Even their coffees are all labeled "Fair Trade", "Whole Trade", "Rainforest Alliance Certified", "We don't kill unicorns", or something similar. Whole Foods makes it a point to tell their customers these things. They reach out and show that they actually care about this stuff.  It's an experience they share with their customers who also care about these things. As a byproduct, they sell a lot more groceries and make a lot more profit.

Thought Reach
We at Thought Reach also use shared experiences to grow relationships with our customers.  For one thing, we make it known that we are obsessed with good coffee.  Our customers identify with us because they too love great coffee. And since we support the Fair Trade movement, our customers who also care deeply about this cause identify with us. It's a shared experience that transcends the normal business relationship that is based on just a bunch of interactions.

For you to apply these ideas to your business, start by thinking about what you are passionate about, and create a way to show that to your customers thereby creating a shared experience.

p.s.-  No gnomes or unicorns were harmed in the writing of this article.

What shared experiences can you use to connect with your customers?

Be glad Twitter broke up with LinkedIn

You date a girl for all that time, you give her all that great stuff, take her on dates to see those sappy girl movies, and then she dumps you for Steve McStud-o-bicepts because he has the really cool hair that has the swooshie thing at the front.  Well that's the situation with Twitter giving the old heave-ho to LinkedIn this week.  What does this mean to you as a small business owner?  In the past, if you created a Twitter post thingey (called a tweet), you could add "#li" in your tweet and that little code gizmo told Twitter to also post your tweet as an update to your LinkedIn profile.  This was looked at as a time saving measure whereby you could update both Twitter and LinkedIn at the same time (oh, and by the way, on your LinkedIn profile, there's also a place to post updates, for those of you that don't know).

Twitter has decided to bite the hand that feeds it by canceling this ability.  Not a smart move in my opinion, but it's no dumber than those nimnods at Netflix who decided it would be a good idea to separate their DVD vs streaming services.

Anyway, I'm really not that upset with this Twitter/LinkedIn spat.  Why?  Because you shouldn't be using the same text to post on Twitter as you post on LinkedIn (or any other social network) in the first place.  The reason I say that is because the viewers of  your different social networks have different expectations of what they want to see from you on each social platform (click the link and look for "The Social Breakup").  Twitter followers expect one type of post, Facebook fans expect another, and LinkedIn users a third.  The short of this is that you need to customize each post you place on each different social platform.  So, loosing this functionality isn't really much of a loss.

If you want to help streamline your control over posting to each different social network, try installing the Shareaholic plugin  in the Google Chrome browser.  It will at least help make the process somewhat easier and faster.

5 steps to create your first Pinterest board

5 Steps to create your first Pinterest board and take over the world

Are you a simpleton?  Do you read a lot of "Dummies Guide to...." books?  If so, you've come to the right place.  So, your wife told you to "set up a Pinterest board to help drive traffic" to your small business (eg- restaurant, fishing supply store, online junk seller, used tire salesman, pharmacy, or whatever).  But you don't know what Pinterest is, why your wife is on such a rant about it, or how your business could use Pinterest.  And after all you'd rather be applying suntan lotion whilst sipping iced cafe-o-laite.  And anyway, even if you knew how to set up a Pinterest account, you wouldn't know what to do with it.

Let's quit all the pouting and general caterwauling you're doing and set up your Pinterest account and your first "board":


Request an invite to Pinterest.
I have to request an invite?!  What they hay?  Yes, at this point Pinterest still requires an invitation to join.  The invitation must be embossed on 100% linen card stock.  The engraving must be done in 24k gold leaf in 8 pica font.  And, to get an invite in the first place, you must first prove that the engine oil in your car is Valvoline,... no, make that Quaker State.  Anyway, just request the invite and it won't be long before you get an invite.

Create your first "board"
A board is a hard thing made out of wood. Hitting your head on it hurts. But, it's also a place to stick images onto.  Now that you've received your coveted invite to join those of us who are elitist Pinterest pinheads, and your friends are all jealous, you need to create your first board. Before you do so, read this article because it will tell you why you'd want a Pinterest board, and what you are trying to do by creating one.  Within Pinterest, click Add > Add a Board. You'll get a popup that looks like this:

Type in a clever board title, choose a category, and then click Create.

Add pins (images) to your board
There are a couple of methods to add pins to your board.  You can use the Add+ button at the top of the Pinterest page and you'll get the same popup shown above. Then just click "Add a Pin".  But, to use this method, you need to have the image stored on your local computer.  Instead, it's easier and more flexible to install the Pinterest "Pin It" browser plugin so that you can pin images that you have on your website or elsewhere, from right inside your browser. To get to this magical button, you'll have to travel to the land where gnomes and fairies live.  Or, just go to "About>Pin It button" on the Pinterest.com website.  You'll then see this popup:

What the above image means by "Add this link to your bookmarks bar" is that it wants you to save that url as a bookmark in your browser (on your Bookmarks Bar). When you click the "Pin It" button, you'll see this dialog popup:

So, just literally drag the button onto the top of your browser where your bookmarks bar is located.
To use the Pin It button to add a pin to your board
When you are on a webpage where you see an image you'd like to pin on your board, click the Pin It button on your browser bar.  It will present you with a page of all the images on that webpage similar to the below (on this particular webpage there were two images; one with some text in it, and the other of Elaine Benes dancing, which is awesome).

Select which image on the page you want to pin and then you'll see this dialog:

Add a few details
Here you'll have a way to select which board you want to pin the image to, and what text to add to the pin. The text you add is important!  Search engines will see this text.  You should consider using text that relates to your website.  Once your image is pinned, you can Edit it to change the link (the default setting is that your image will link back to the page you pinned it from).

After you've pinned several images to your board, you should look around Pinterest and find similar boards.  Repin some of those images to your board and comment or "Like" other images.  The more you participate in the community, the more people will find your board and repin your pins.  And the more people that visit your board, the more traffic you'll get to your website, and the closer you'll become to world domination, the demise of your arch nemesis, and independent wealth beyond your wildest dreams.

PS- if you don't like the way Elaine dances, I can't help you.  It's awesome.  Come to think of it, get off my blog, you're not allowed here anymore.  You come back, 1 year.

The boring-business guide to using Pinterest to drive traffic

If your business is as boring as watching paint dry on a painting depicting grass growing in a drought, then you need to read this article

Is your business as boring as paint drying?

I'm still not surprised that a business owner isn't yet familiar with Pinterest.  What is Pinterest?  It's the #3 social network in the world, that's what it is!  It's the underdog.  It's the Cinderella story.  It's the bronze medal winner at the Olympics.  It's the (something else that I can't think of right now).  Anyway, the thing that makes it different from the Facebook and Google+'s of the world is that Pinterest is a visual social network.  It is based completely off of images instead of just text-based posts.  So why should you read the rest of this article?  It's all about showing you how to get more customers.  Can Pinterest help you do that?  Well, that depends on whether or not your business is exciting and visual-based or boring and not visual-based.  If your business is not visual based, we'll show you how to use Pinterest anyway.

What is meant by a visual business?  
Well, are you a home builder, hairstylist, architect, photographer, wedding planner, or restaurateur?  If so, you have a visual business meaning you can use images from your business to promote your business.  However, if you are an accountant, software programmer, actuarial, ice maker, keypunch operator, lawyer, or cement manufacturer then you're business is not so visual (yawn).  However, that doesn't mean that you can't use Pinterest.  In fact, you can use it to a high degree. And don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking those businesses.  In fact, I've had to use them all in the past.  Well, except the actuarial.  No one needs one of those....

An example of a visual-based business using Pinterest 

Lets say you are a homebuilder or a contractor who does remodeling projects.  Since you create something, hopefully something beautiful, you can use images of your projects to showcase your business.  People will see your "board" and share your images with others.  The images on your board will also serve to link back to your website thus driving traffic to your site and elevating you as an expert in your field.  Here's what to do- create one Pinterest board that showcases the great work you've done.  Show the broken-down shacks, I mean the beautiful homes you've built, the remodeled kitchens you've created, the dusty attics you've transformed into beautiful master baths, and the mud pits you've turned into stunning outdoor patios.

Then create another Pinterest board to display great home remodeling ideas. These aren't things that you've done, these are beautiful images that showcase great ideas for homes that inspire people.  Beautiful kitchens, new types of countertops, great looking bamboo-wood floors, and funky bathroom sinks that don't seem to make functional sense. Anyway, these things are meant to inspire people.  To move them. 

How would a non-visual business benefit from Pinterest?

If you are one of those businesses that is as boring as watching paint dry on a painting depicting grass growing in a drought, then Pinterest can still help!  One thing businesses like this can do is to help give potential clients a sense of who you and your employees are.  What types of things do you like to do?  Who are you when you are on vacation? What are you passionate about? The idea here is to communicate a sense of relationship to people that don't yet know you or your business.  

Other ideas to boost your small business
Other ideas would be for you to showcase what social causes motivate you and your staff.  Are you involved in your community?  Do you help out with the annual community fund-raiser in which money is raised to purchase double-espresso machiato latte machines for all the homeless in your area? (And if you do, that's awesome). Use things like this to create a Pinterest board that shows images of these events, or that shows images that relate to the subject matter.  For example, as an email marketing software company (boring), we have a Pinterest board showcasing coffee!  Yes, coffee.  We love coffee, we love to relax a little bit, and we have a quirky attitude.  But, we are also very moved by the Fair Trade program that aims to protect coffee growers. We care that the coffee we buy hasn't contributed to someone else's poverty. Having a board like this shows people a little bit about who we are.  It shows that we are people that care (and we do). Just conveying that sentiment to our potential clients creates a sense of connection between us. Getting the picture now?  

The overall point of using Pinterest is to drive traffic to your website or to get people talking about your brand.  In a future post, I'll talk about the how-to of Pinterest.  How to create a board, what text to include with your pinned images, and how to not get busted for copyright infringement for using someone else's images thereby having to spend this year in prison : ).  

Want to read more ideas?

28 Creative Pinboard Ideas From Real Brands on Pinterest


What Pinterest board do you think conveys a sense of who the company behind it is?  Tell us in the comment section below.

Imagine your small business if you had a blog that didn't suck - 8 tips to avoid oblivion

Elaine needs your help

You own a small business, and business is down, revenue is down, profit is down, cash bribes under the table are down..... And what's that I hear you saying?,  "Oh, it's the economy, that's the problem".  Yeah, yeah. Cry me a river. Listen, if  your business is off, then you need to write a blog.  And not a blog like your current blog, but a serious blog that actually elevates you into the position of being looked at as an expert in your field. A person that people turn to when they have questions. A person willing to help by providing expert advice in your field. And no one is more adept at providing that type of advice than you. This isn't something you just hire out for someone else to write. YOU write it. Otherwise it will come off as cold, off-point, and impersonal.

Now, picture yourself a year from today with this great blog that you've written. Lots of insightful, witty, advice-giving, smart blog articles. And instead of empty tables at your restaurant, or more employees than customers in your retail store, or less traffic to your e-commerce site than the Queen has to her Diamond Jubilee website (actually, her website is probably slammed, bad example), or less good looks than that jerk who stole your girlfriend in high school just because he had an awesome Nissan 240-Z and you had a stupid '78 Pinto.....  
Anyway, picture your business with a blog. What looks different just because you have a blog of awesome-ocity?  People are now talking about your business whereas previous to your blog, no one even knew about your business. Why are they talking about it? Because one of your potential customers read a blog article of yours and told one of their friends about it. Since it was really helpful to her, she really liked it and posted it on her Twitter feed believing it could help other people in her situation too. It was seen by 81 out of the 426 twits who follow her on Twitter. And one of them was that jerk that stole your girlfriend in high school.  BUT, now he writes articles for the Decatur Dispatch, that cute little neighborhood pub that distributes around 8,000 free copies per month (about 524 of which are actually picked up and read), so you forgive him (and his now rusted out 240-Z) because he wrote a short little bio of your business and actually called to get a quote from you for the article. That's social media man. That is what I'm talking about.  Your blog, if good enough, is the cornerstone of you finding your way to many many more customers than you have now. Don't revisit this concept of writing a blog a year from now, having done nothing. Read the rest of this article to help you get going, and don't whine about it.

If you need to build your business you need to go at this with all cylinders firing. I'm not telling you to stop the adds you are placing on Google, take down that roadside billboard you rented off of highway 41 in Hahira, Georgia, or even stop paying for that Yellow Pages ad. Well, actually, I am going to tell you to stop that one.  Anyway, those are all "outbound" forms of marketing and are valid methods that can and do work.  But you want to also use "inbound" forms of marketing. Inbound is marketing where customers come to you instead of you pushing ads to them. How do you do that? Well, the pillar of a good inbound marketing campaign is an exceptional blog. Let me be clear about this.  If your blog sucks, your inbound marketing efforts will be about as profitable as that investment I made in online grocer Webvan.com, right before it imploded in 2001. When it was all over-with, the only thing I was able to recoup was a couple of over-ripe papayas and a broken down '79 Pinto that was once used as a grocery delivery vehicle.  

Anyway, when you write an incredible blog, people want to read it, people want to share it, and your status is elevated to that of Supreme PooBah (or at least to the level of Grand Under-secretary to the assistant to the Grand PooBah). Writing a great blog just takes some thought.
Here are the things you want to consider when writing a blog that people will want to read:

• What problem do your potential customers have that you can solve?

• Do not sell.  Selling will turn readers off.  They want your expertise.  The selling will take care of itself.

• Write with a single person in mind.  Her name might be Elaine Benes or whatever.  Think of Elaine and what problem she has that you can solve.

• Write the blog in service to your customers

• Write to equip your customers to be successful

• A catchy title is a must

• If you have other content to offer, like an ebook or some other such nonsense, then have a call-to-action in your blog to download the additional content. Other calls to action might include: Follow the business on social media, Subscribe to the blog, or Join your newsletter

• Types of blog articles that go viral:  

• Controversial articles- stay away from politics or the really sensitive stuff, but if you have a specific opinion on how to solve a problem, then state it.

• Motivational articles- tell them your sappy story about triumph over adversity in a down economy when everyone said it couldn't be done, and how your high school guidance counselor said you'd never amount to anything. People love that crap.  

• Instructional articles- Although this has been beaten to death, people simply like articles with titles like "3 Steps to Newsjack your Restaurant that Would Make Gordon Ramsay Jealous"

I realize here that telling you how to write a blog makes me look like someone who thinks they are some kind of expert and all smarty-pants and all.  I'm likely to catch a rash of some sort from having written this.  But, I'm the writer, not you, so go write your own blog.....

Leave comments to tell me what other information you'd like to know about writing a blog.
Read Next: Gmail gives email marketers a second chance

5 easy steps to build your small business using LinkedIn

Pizza box math humor

Search engines love LinkedIn, just not necessarily YOUR page - 5 steps to build your small business using LinkedIn

If you run a pizza joint that gets most of it's business from passers-by on the corner of 8th & University Place in Greenwich Village, NY (no, there's not really one there, I already checked so stop looking), then your business might not need LinkedIn. But the rest of us, that are made or broken by the connections we make with business people, do need it. Many business people have a presence on LinkedIn but they aren't really maximizing it.  There are several hidden things that will make your time spent on this great social network well worth your time.

1- Link to your website using keywords, not the pesky "Company Website" text that LinkedIn wants to force on you

See the difference in the 2 links?  One has keywords, one does not

To help boost your search engine attractiveness / searchability / affinity / magnetic-ness and all around awesome-oscity, you need to use keywords for the text of the link that points back to your website. How do you do that? See below. This is a simple way to get LinkedIn to let you use whatever text you want for your website link instead of the old stand-by of "Company website" that they default for you. Just select "Other" on the field type dropdown.

Choose "Other" from the Website dropdown to expose a text field

2- Search engines love LinkedIn, but not your page because you don't use keywords in the right places

To get found, you need to make sure that you've not only got the right keywords on your LinkedIn profile, but you've got them in the right places.  Search engines love to see keywords in important places.  Heading tags on a webpage that have keywords in them are given more weight by the search engine than those same keywords in the body of the text of the page.

Add keywords in your job title

Yeah, yeah, I know, you have an official job title and you're afraid your boss will see that you've unofficially granted yourself another one. But really, I don't think she'll care. In the job title field, go ahead and title yourself with something slightly more keyword-awesome than "Sr. Director, Finance at Initech."  How about "Sr. Director, Offshore Financing and Finance Development Consultant Lead at Initech."  With a title like that, you're far more likely to get found by Google searches or LinkedIn searches.

Add keywords to your heading field.  

Same drill. Use some different keywords here. Just keep in mind that you don't have to regurgitate your job title onto the heading field.  

3- You have a personal profile page, but you need a business page

I don't mean to say "duh" here, but.... duh. Actually, if you're new to LinkedIn it's nothing to be ashamed of.  But, go through the process of creating a business page for your company.

4- Showcase your company with video

If your company has a short video, add it to your LinkedIn company business page. How? Well one way is to use the SlideShare app on LinkedIn. 

• Create your video
• Embed your video into a Powerpoint slide
• Using the SlideShare app on LinkedIn, upload your ppt to your profile page.  
• If you don't want the video to start playing immediately, then have the first slide of your ppt be just a intro slide with text that instructs viewers to click Play.  

In PowerPoint, here's where to embed a video into a .ppt file

5- Post, and post again. Use LinkedIn like a social network like Facebook

In the same manner you'll post updates to your Facebook page, post updates to both your LinkedIn company page and personal page. Just don't spam. Your friends and business followers don't want to hear about Farmville. A lot of companies just create a business page and then leave it alone. No! It's for you to tell the world what you are up to, why you do what you do, and finally explain why your haircut looks like Rod Blagojevich.

And, when posting to LinkedIn, keep in mind that people don't want to see the exact same post you just put on Twitter with all the little Twitter hashtags and @ symbols and hoo-ha. Instead, write in a short, business-like tone, use images, and point to your article/blog. The text of your post would look something like a type-written version of what your mother used to say to you when you were little and got in trouble. You know, short, to the point, and with just a touch of color. 

Have any other great LinkedIn ideas?  Post them in the comments below.

Read next: Be glad Twitter broke up with LinkedIn

Image credit: Flickr under Creative Commons