How to use Twitter for Marketing – Why should you care?

Twitter for Marketing

What is Twitter?

The press tell you it’s all the rage.

“The world is all a twitter”, they say.

All the cool young kids (MC Hammer? Mr. Demi Moore?) are doing it, they say.

But what actually is it? And why should you care?

Apparently it’s a microblogging platform.

I have no idea what that means, but it doesn’t seem very bloggy to me.

I see it as a really easy way for people to send messages to one another without any of the awkwardness of talking on the phone or the formality and structure of email.

It’s great for small talk. Great for networking. And as a business or a one-(wo)man-brand it’s great for building social proof and establishing your brand in the mind of your customers.

You send messages out into the ether and people can choose to listen to them, or not. Similarly, you get to choose whose messages you want to listen to.

Sounds a bit odd, but it makes sense. So why should I devote any of my time to it? I’ve got enough on right now thank you very much.

That’s a good question. I know your time is precious. I know you’ve got a to-do list longer than a really long piece of string.

And I don’t want to add to that list if it’s not going to make your life easier, your time more productive or your business more profitable.

The good thing is, used correctly, it should help you achieve all of the above.

How so?

Well let’s think about the journey that a stranger has to take to go from guy-on-the-street-you-wouldn’t-recognise-from-Adam to raving fanboy – the guy who buys everything you ever produce and tells all his friends how much you rock (heck, he probably has your face tattooed on his arm.)

Following our discussion the other week about permission marketing, let’s pretend your customer’s journey looks like this.

1. He notices you.

2. You ask for his permission to carry on a dialogue.

3. He gains trust in you.

4. You make him an offer. He buys some stuff.

5. You grow your relationship by carrying on doing what you agreed.

This is by no means the only marketing strategy you might use. In fact, many of your customers may well jump straight in at step 4. But let’s run with this for the sake of making our discussion nice and simple. Read this post for some background on this model.

So what I think you want to know, my beautiful small business owner, is..

How is Twitter going to help me do these things better?

I’ll tell you for how…

Step 1: Your customer notices you.

This first step is often the most difficult for new business owners.

You have a Really Cool Thing that You Do, but no-one seems to know about you or your Cool Thing.

How do you get our stranger to find out about you?

Well… you could find out where he hangs out and stick an advert in his face. You could run adverts in a local paper or a relevant trade magazine. You could buy a mailing list and send out letters. You could buy adverts for relevant keywords on Google Adwords, or buy advertising on a popular website.

These are all valid and relevant marketing techniques. Generally, however, they cost money. And it’s best to avoid spending too much money when you’re just starting up.

So what’s the alternative?

Well… if we can provide the content or information that our customers are already looking for then you can be sure that these people are going to tell others about it.

The best way to get the word out about Your Thing is to have other people get the word out about Your Thing.

It just so happens that Twitter is one of the quickest, easiest and most efficient ways to connect with a large number of people with similar interests or groups of people with similar problems that you can help solve.

You can connect with people, help them out with their thing and they will be more than happy to talk about you. It’s an excellent way of building social proof and getting Your Thing in front of more people’s eyes. (Yes, I know.)

So now the news of Your Thing is buzzing around the Twitterverse. Our stranger (let’s call him Adam) is no longer quite such a stranger. He’s heard all about you. And he’s paying attention. What’s the next step?

Step 2: You ask for his permission to carry on a dialogue with him.

You want Adam to agree to hang out with you some more.

Twitter facilitates this process in a number of ways.

Firstly, if he likes your stuff he might choose to follow you on Twitter. This means he has agreed to see the messages you write. You, in return, might choose to follow him back, and you might choose to communicate directly with him if you wish.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Twitter makes it easy to direct interested people to relevant and targeted information on your blog or website, by sending messages with links to pre-selected content. This is free, helpful, totally non-creepy and it doesn’t look like marketing.

Even better, other people will happily share the links to all their followers if they like it. And guess what their followers are going to do if they like it?

If that doesn’t make you pee your marketing pants and squeal with joy, I’m not sure what will.

Of course, your web page is optimized to make it easy to collect Adam’s email address, isn’t it?

Good.

Adam now follows you on Twitter and is a subscriber to your email newsletter. Perhaps he’s even your Facebook friend now.

I think he’s made it clear that he won’t mind hearing from you again! ?

What’s next?

Step 3: He gains trust in you as you deliver on your promises

Adam followed you on Twitter because he wanted to hear your pearls of wisdom. Or maybe you told a dirty joke and he kind of liked it.

Either way, Adam expects you to act in a certain way and deliver a certain emotional experience to him.

Do this. Consistently.

You can use messages on Twitter to send links to interesting content on your blog, to videos on YouTube, to useful and relevant articles on other blogs. You can do this much more often and much more informally than you could via Email. Send someone an Email every day and it will piss them off. Send ten messages a day on Twitter and people will not bat an eyelid. (I don’t want to get into Twitter best practice in this post, but here’s a quick word of warning. Twitter is, above all, a sharing medium. People will respond badly if you appear only to be promoting yourself.)

If you’re useful, friendly and, above all, consistent Adam will grow to trust you.

Step 4: You make him an offer. You buy his stuff.

Twitter makes this easy, as it gives you the power to publicize your offers to a large group of interested people. It also makes it easy to bring Adam to your blog, website, or wherever you want him to go.

Step 5: You build the relationship by carrying on doing what you agreed.

This is where a lot of people get the wrong idea about relationship marketing.

Relationship marketing is all about “creating authentically meaningful connections”. It’s about sharing. It’s about personal attention, trust, feelings, rainbows and fluffy bunny rabbits. It’s about campfires, acoustic guitars and singing Kumbaya. Right?

Umm… No.

Sorry.

It’s about selling stuff.

(The clue is in the marketing bit.)

You don’t buy an iPod because you played online Boggle with Steve Jobs and he knows about your niece’s swimming medals. You buy it because makes you feel cool and it does what you want it to do.

Relationship marketing is about consistently satisfying the initial promise you made to the customer.

It doesn’t involve a huge amount of small talk. It doesn’t involve getting to know every one of your customers on a personal level. You don’t need to know their children’s names, their shoe size and the intimate details of their relationship with the pool boy. You might want to, but it’s not necessary. Probably a fantastic procrastination technique though!

Relationship marketing is about focussing on customer satisfaction and retention. It’s about delivering a consistent emotional experience to your customers.

Basically… Make your stuff cool and do what Adam wants you to do.

Twitter helps this process immensely as it provides you with an excellent way to get your name and your messages in front of your customers’ eyes on a regular basis.

Convinced?

Great. In this post we focussed on why you should care about twitter. If you want to know more about the basics of Twitter, how it works and how to get the best out of it then check out this excellent article from the Remarkablogger website.

Then, once you’re up to speed, we’ll talk strategy!

I can’t wait.

See you around!

JJ Jalopy.

How to follow me on Twitter

As Dave pointed out in the comments, I’ve been banging on about making it easy for your readers to give you permission to talk to you but then totally failed to tell you how to follow me on Twitter. D’uh.

I’m @jjjalopy. You can find read updates here. Go there and hit the follow button. Then send me a message and I’ll follow you back. Otherwise I won’t notice you and I’ll just assume that you want me to join a pyramid scheme or sell me viagra or something. And that would be a shame.

How to Become a Better Writer

Hi there!

Mrs. Jalopy and I are back home after a fantastic weekend in the Welsh Countryside watching our friends Paul and Geraldine get married. It was a beautiful ceremony and a fun party.

And it’s good to be back home.

This week is going to be fun because my twin brother is visiting from San Francisco. Maybe I’ll try to get him in front of the man cave webcam so you can marvel at genetic cloning in the flesh…

How to Become a Better Writer

Earlier today I was reading a post on the Copyblogger website called 73 Ways to Become a Better Writer.

It’s an excellent list of suggestions, but I thought I’d come up with some of my own.

• Write a little every day.
• Tell people that you’re A Writer. Harness the power of identity.
• Read your writing aloud. Rework anything that sounds clunky.
• Carry a notebook around. Even if you don’t write anything in it, having it will make you feel Writerly.
• Take time each day to drink tea and ponder. Wear corduroy pants for extra bonus points.
• Read www.jjjalopy.com everyday, even if I haven’t bothered to post anything in a while.
• Rework old writing to make it better.
• Rewrite other people’s writing in your own voice. (Don’t publish it though. That’s called plagiarism.)
• Blog. Consistently.
• Edit out all the unnecessary stuff. Except if it’s really funny. Or it features MC Hammer (big on Twitter), legendary white rapper Vanilla Ice (used to date Madonna) or Kriss Kross (the teenage rap duo famous for wearing their clothes backwards.)
• Be authentic. Unless you’re really dull, in which case you might want to pretend to be interesting for a while.
• Review your own writing critically.
• Ask for feedback and listen to it.
• And above all… keep writing.

Have fun!

JJ Jalopy.

Market testing, copywriting and a website made with crayons.

Bonjour!

I’ve been writing the copy for the Google Pay Per Click testing phase of my Market Testing Kit.

What on earth does that mean, JJ?

Oh yeah. Sorry.

It means I’m writing a basic sales letter for strangers who are interested in market testing their business idea.

The plan is to buy visitors through Google Pay Per Click advertising, direct them to a nice sales letter written by me and see how many of said people sign up for my I’m-interested-in-this list.

Don’t worry if that doesn’t make any sense either. I’ll guide you through the process step-by-step in the Market Testing Kit itself…

So what’s this sales letter going to be like Mr. Jalopy Man?

Would it be more fun if I showed you what it won’t look like?

Probably. I imagine it’ll be somewhat less educational though.

You’re probably right. But, to be honest, this pretend conversation was really just a setup to show you this anyway…

http://youreapoorloser.com

Do go and visit. It’s hilarious. And kinda brilliant. I thought it was a joke at first, but there’s a real product for sale there…

So, yeah. It won’t look like that…

Stay tuned for more educational updates soon. (I think we’ll be filing this one under General Silliness)

Mrs. Jalopy and I are hitting the road tomorrow to go to another wedding in Wales. I think it’s the last of the year. As much as I love a good wedding, I’m looking forward to getting my weekends back.

See you soon!

JJ Jalopy.

Market testing, cowboy hats, cartoon nose jobs and Duane Cunningham’s bikini workout

Hey there!

How are you today?

Excited about my forthcoming Market Testing Kit product?

Of course you are!!

So why aren’t you on my I’m-really-interested-in-this list yet?

Do you realize that I might not even make it if I don’t get the love and attention I crave?

And that if you’re on the list then you’ll be eligible for a massive advance discount and awesome pre-launch bonuses?!

Perhaps you’d like to go here right away to learn about it?!

Another link just in case you missed the two above?

Okay…

So what has this ridiculous title got to do with your awesome Market Test kit, JJ?

Nothing actually. That was just a little rant I wanted to start things off with.

What I wanted to talk about today was search keywords.

You see, one of the great things about business online is that you can monitor and track pretty much everything…

… including the search term people typed into Google to find your website.

Some of these search terms are pretty esoteric.

Here are my favorites for this website so far:

#5 – Cowboy Hats (11 visitors)

11 people  have managed to end up at my website after searching for cowboy hats. They mostly ended up here or here.

Well I guess I do talk about them rather a lot…

But why did they click on a link that is clearly about business advice or coaching?

Who knows. People are odd.

Maybe I should affiliate for Sheplers?

#4 – Make me look like an idiot (15 visitors)

Who would want such a thing?

15 visitors apparently.

They ended up here.

#3 – Cartoon Celebrity Nose Job (1 visitor)

There is so much I could say about this…

I really have no idea what this person wanted to find but I imagine they were rather disappointed when they ended up at this confession about my social media procrastination habits!

#2 – Duane Cunningham Bikini* Workout (1 visitor)

Yes. My second favorite.

I can hear the heavy breathing from here.

They’ve got to have felt let down when they ended up learning about a Wordpress upgrade instead.

* The word bikini might have been added for comic effect.

#1 – JJ Jalopy is an ass (1 visitor)

Come on then. Own up.

Did you type this in?

And just what exactly were you trying to achieve by this?!

I find it incredible and hilarious that someone typed this into Google and pressed search.

Amazing.

So in the interests of research I typed this into Google myself and, as well as finding my own site, I found a lovely comment from my friend Avery on Naomi Dunord’s awesome IttyBiz blog. It reads:

Very nice! I came here from JJ Jalopy’s site. He’s an ass.

Thanks Avery. You ass.

Love you all!

JJ Jalopy.

P.S. Don’t forget about that Market Testing Kit.

Why your business will fail. And how we’re going to stop that happening.

I’ll tell you why your business will fail.

Three reasons:

• not enough people are interested in the thing you’re trying to sell
• not enough people want to pay for the thing the you’re trying to sell
• not enough people want to pay high enough prices for the thing you’re trying to sell.

Yes. I know. I am a genius. Thanks.

Unfortunately, people often figure out this not-enough customers deal a bit late, sometimes after they’ve invested years of effort and invested heavily in their product or service.

This makes me sad, because a lot of this “wasted” effort could easily be avoided with a small amount of simple market testing.

That’s why I made this market testing video.

Awesome as it was, this video generated a large number of questions. There’s only so much you can explain on YouTube in 5 mins.

I want to give you a complete Market Testing Kit for small online businesses.

It’ll show you step by step how to determine if there are enough people who want to buy enough stuff for enough money. I’ll show you how to do it without spending anything.

I’ll also show you how you can actually make money as you test your business idea, without even creating a product or service yourself.

Who will benefit from this?

This is will be of great value to anyone who does business on the internet, or wants to get started.

This is for you if you’re:

• thinking of starting a small online business, but have no idea how to do it.
• looking to move into another market
• an established business owner who can’t quite attract the number of customers you’d like
• looking to narrow your target market
• looking to widen your target market

What will be in it?

There’ll be videos and worksheets and checklists. I’ll even throw in a few lightning bolt flow diagrams too.

Sounds great. When can I get it?

Here’s the thing…

It’s going to take a while for me to make it.

And it’d be super embarrassing if I spent ages creating a market testing kit that didn’t have a market.

Wouldn’t that make me look like an ass?

So I’m asking you, my beloved and trusted blog reader, for your opinion.

I know I haven’t given you a huge amount to work with here. We’re in pre-testing, people. (That’s how I justify this page looking like ass.) BUT… I’ll shortly be throwing together a little sales page for Google visitors. It’ll be more detailed (and probably ever-so-slightly sleazier) than this little description here. I’ll point you at it when I get a chance.

But for now… if you think this rocks and you’re interested in finding out more, then please add your name and email address below and click submit.

Shortly afterwards you’ll receive an email asking you to click a link to confirm. Do this and you’re registered and good to go.

I like a clean inbox as much as you do. I won’t use your email address for anything other than information about this product. And I won’t do that very often.

Thanks for your help and support!

JJ Jalopy.

P.S. I have some INCREDIBLY EXCITING NEWS coming soon. Stay tuned!

Small Business Therapy #4 – What if I lose all my money and end up scavenging for food in the trash?

This is the forth article in our small business therapy series. Today we’re talking about overcoming fear of failure. Or rather, the fear of losing all our money, having to scavenge for food in the trash and performing DIY surgery on ourselves with a rusty saw and a bottle of whiskey.

Crikey! It’s that time of the week already!

Relax. Pour yourself a glass of your favorite drink. It’s time to talk about our issues. You and me. In a non-creepy, constructive kind of way, without a sleazy old therapist in site.

Have you ever had thoughts like this?

Aaaarghhh…What if my business all goes horribly, horribly wrong?

Aaaarghhh…What if everyone realizes I’m rubbish at this stuff and laughs me out of business?

Aaaarghhh…What if I have to listen to my Mother telling me that she always knew I should never have quit my job for the REST OF MY LIFE?!

Aaaarghhh…What if I run out of money and I have to scavenge for food in the trash?

Aaaarghhh…What if I can’t afford to feed and clothe my family and it’s all my fault?

Aaaarghhh…What if….

Fear of failure.

It’s a bitch isn’t it?

It ties you down and stops you from doing the things you love, living your dream and being so happy that you do star jumps in the street and give sweets to strangers for no reason other than it makes you smile.

I want those strangers to have those sweets so we’re going to sort this out – as much as we can – by talking through it together.

We’re going to break this topic down into two main fears (although they’re really one and the same).

• The fear of looking silly
• The fear of starving / dying / your whole life falling apart

Last week we covered the first of these. This week we’re dealing with the second – the fear of losing all your money and having everything fall to pieces.

The And-Then-What? game

What are you afraid of?

I’m afraid that my business will fail.

And then what?

I won’t have any money coming in anymore.

And then what?

I’ll run out of money and I’ll get myself in debt and I won’t be able to pay the bills or buy food for my family.

And then what?

My family will leave me. I’ll have to live in a box and scavenge through the trash for food. I’ll probably get gangrene end up having to hack off my legs with a rusty saw.

Oh dear.

And this discussion was supposed to make you feel better…

The truth is that most of us have had a lot of practice at the And-Then-What? game. And we’ve gotten pretty creative at it.

The problem is that the game is often totally debilitating. It paralyzes us.

We all crave comfort and security.

When we have these freak-out sessions we often want to return to whatever is most comfortable and familiar to us.

Maybe it makes you want to pack it all in and return to the day job you hated – the one that paid you a predictable amount of money every two weeks?

Maybe it makes you want to hide under the bed sheets with a bottle of gin and a box of chocolates?

Maybe it makes you want to watch girly movies for days on end until you’re swimming in a pool of your own tears?

Sometimes, though, it scares us into massive action.

Sometimes the fear of financial ruin scares you so much that you work like crazy, utterly terrified, desperately pursuing every lead like a rabid dog.

Massive action is a good thing.

Ruthlessly pursuing leads can be a good thing, if you’re not too creepy about it.

But being utterly terrified is not. Not for your business. Not for your health. Not for your emotional well-being. Not for your family.

Just not cool.

So clearly, neither of these scenarios is ideal.

So what can we do about this?

There’s really only one thing that will help here…

You need a plan.

Not very sexy, I know, but that’s it.

The plan will give you comfort. The plan will be your safety net.

It’ll show you exactly where you are, where you want to be, and what you’ll do if you’re not getting there.

It’ll give you exact steps to take when things aren’t working out the way you intended. Because you’ll have planned for everything, including the very worst case scenario.

The brilliance of the plan is that you can do all your thinking when you’re calm and rational. This way, you don’t have to do any of that tricky thinking stuff when you’re too busy freaking out.

You just need to follow the plan.

What should this plan look like?

Step 1: Where are you now?

• How much money do you need every month?
• What is your financial buffer? How much easily-accessible money to you have right now?
• How long can you survive on your financial buffer, assuming you’re making no money from your business.

Got that?

Now, your answer to 2 and 3 might be zero. Maybe you’re in debt right now. That’s okay. We’re planning for everything.

Step 2: What are you going to right now to meet your needs?

• Do you need to take a part-time job?
• Do you need to do to reduce your expenses? How are you going to do that?
• Do you need to borrow money?

Step 3: Planning for the worst case scenario.

Think of the very worst case scenario, whatever that is for you.

Got it?

Okay. Now you’ll want to do two things:

• Make a plan to take action that will reduce the likelihood of this scenario occurring
• Make a plan of what you will do if it does occur.

As an example… if your worst case scenario is being sued, losing all your assets and having to declare yourself bankrupt, then you’ might want to look at asset protection. (If you’re in the states then my buddy Rob Northrup can help you out with this…)

You’ll also want to write down the actual steps you would take to get yourself back on your feet if this really happened.

You won’t enjoy doing this, but it will give you peace of mind.

Step 4: Scenario building

Think three months into the future.

If your income level is below $X and your financial buffer is below $Y, what exact actions are you going to take?

Do this with a variety of numbers, and be very specific. Remember, the goal is to have a complete action plan you can follow to the letter.

Now think six months into the future and answer the same question.

Now a year.

Now two years.

And you can stop for now. Phew.

How does this make you feel?

How do you feel about sitting down and making a plan like this?

Do you think it will give you peace of mind?

Are you resistant to it? Does it seem like a chore? Something you probably should do, but are reluctant to?

Please do let me know.

I resisted this kind of planning for a long time because I found it uncomfortable to confront the worst case scenario. Having been through this exercise myself and with others I recognize its power.

Peace of mind really is just a tedious planning task away!

JJ Jalopy.

Get 6 hours of extra stuff done in a day!

Hey there!

How was your day?

I’ll be quick today. I’ve got to run because I’m late for dinner. I’m going to have streak frites and red wine…

Shhh… Don’t tell my diet coach…

You’ve met time management expert Dave Navarro before. He’s a super cool guy.

He’s so cool, in fact, that he’s giving away his fantastic 30 Hours a Day Time Management program.

It was originally a 11-CD program and Dave sold it for a zillion dollars.

Now he’s giving it away for free on his blog. Because he’s awesome like that.

I’ll let Dave explain what it is…

Hi, I’m Dave Navarro, and I want to welcome you to the 30 Hours a Day Project.  Since this project is a time management program, and since I know you’re already too busy as it is, I’m going to make this introduction short and sweet.  This way you can dive right into what you really came here for – freeing up massive amounts of time and increasing your productivity so you can get 30 hours of stuff done in a regular 24 hour day.  Sound good?  Let’s go.

About the 30 Hours a Day Project

People thought I was a little crazy when I told them I was working on a system to get 6 hours of extra “stuff” done in my day.  They thought it was impossible, I guess the same way a lot of people think it’s impossible to earn a million dollars in a year or two.

But people go from zero to a million all the time, so I figured it that we humans could go from 24 to 30 hours of productivity as well.

Pulling six hours of results out of thin air may sound unattainable, but it’s not when you really think about it. It’s like increasing your daily get-things-doneness by less than 25% – and that is certainly very reasonable, if you have a solid plan on how to do it.

(Yes, technically, I’m aware that if you take out the 8 hours that many people sleep in a day, and you’re left with 16 hours, well, then pulling an extra 6 is a little over a 35% improvement.    Still not impossible – if you have a solid plan, that is.)

The Solid Plan

The 30 Hours a Day Project revolves around three simple steps that you can take to send your daily results  through the roof:

• Discover what problems are you holding back from getting things done

• Create a battle plan to kill those problems, one by one

• Create a system to work that battle plan every day so you can reap the benefits

Now, I know that sounds simple, and that’s because it is.  Success isn’t rocket science, it’s just a matter of getting solid on the fundamentals. There’s no reason to get overly complex, like a lot of other time management methods do.

Most time management systems make things really complicated and bog you down with these huge systems that you are supposed to use to replace the way you are doing everything in your life.  From my experience as a coach, I’ve rarely, if ever, seen that work.  If you’re too busy already, the last thing you want to do is step back and try to change everything at once.

That’s why the 30 Hours a Day project does things differently.  I’m going to take you through a series of mini workshops that are going to show you the small, manageable next steps you can take to start making progress right now, right where you are.

You don’t have to change everything overnight to start seeing some massive progress.  You’ll be able to go at the pace you want to, you’ll be able to pick and choose the areas you want to work on, and you won’t really have to break away from the tools you are already using.  You’ll see what I mean as we start moving on.

Now, I told you I’d keep the intro short and sweet, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. We’re done.  So let’s start getting you closer to your 30-hour day!

Get the 30 Day Time Management System Here.

Don’t say I’m not good to you!

JJ Jalopy.

How to turn total strangers into raving fans!

People won’t buy stuff from you if they don’t know who you are.

Traditionally, businesses have spent a large amount of money trying to attract the consumer’s attention.

Seth Godin called this interruption marketing. The idea was that the marketer would find out where the prospect his likely to hang out (often in front of the TV!) and grab their attention by shoving an advert in their face.

Interruption marketing techniques included unsolicited direct (junk) mail, television, radio and billboard advertising.

Back in the day, attracting people’s interest with interruption advertising was a simple but expensive business.

If you could put a repeated television advert out to the whole country then pretty much everyone would know who you were within a few weeks.

Nowadays, though, more information is thrown in our faces than ever before.

This is mostly due to one thing… The Internet.

And what has been the result for the marketer?

Well… consumers have become much more sophisticated in their ability to ignore traditional marketing messages.

Attracting interest in the modern world has become more complicated (as there are more messages competing for our attention), but potentially cheaper.

Why cheaper, you say?

Because we can now use modern web strategies such as blogs, websites, social media (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter), article marketing (Ezinearticles, GoArticles) , user-generated content sites (Squidoo, Hubpages, Tumblr)

Implementing these strategies is very cheap and even free in many cases. All it takes is the time and effort needed to build up a presence on the internet using these tools.

In this model, we allow people to find us by providing the content or information they are already looking for.

So, once our customer has found us, what are the next steps?

Well, before we do anything else, we must get permission to carry on the conversation with the customer. This could be done by asking the customer to sign-up to a newsletter, like the Jalopy Gang V.I.P. list.

Mr. Godin calls this permission marketing. He describes the concept like this:

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.

Source: Seth’s Blog

The next step is to build trust with the customer.

You do this by doing what you agreed to do, providing huge amounts of value and generally helping people out with their lives. You can do this by providing your customers with helpful things, like this article here!

Then, and only then, can make them an offer to buy something awesome that will help them.

And of course, you’re not quite done yet…

The final (and ongoing) step is to nurture and grow your relationship with the customer through your continued open and helpful communication. This is how you create raving fans and loyal, appreciative customers.

As you develop your marketing, keep asking yourself how you move your customers along this path.

You’ll want to develop a complete understanding of exactly how this process works for you.

Ask yourself this:

What exact steps would a total stranger need to take to become one of your biggest fans and a trusted and appreciated customer?

See you soon!

JJ Jalopy.

All in One SEO Pack Plugin Configuration. Or Why SEO is the Most Tedious Thing in the World.

How to configure the All in One SEO Pack Plugin so that your search traffic doesn’t suck.

Or why SEO is the most tedious thing in the world.

Have I got a nerdtastic treat for you today OR WHAT?!

Like any self-respecting narcissist with a website, I track my visitor statistics in painstaking detail.

One thing I’ve been noticing recently is that the amount of traffic I’ve been receiving from web searches has been significantly down, whereas the amount of returning visitors has been significantly up.

For a while I focused on the latter of these two observations, happy that you like me enough to come back. (Thanks, by the way. I like you too.)

And I kind of forgot about the first bit, writing it off as one of those things.

The world of the internet is pretty predictable most of the time.

One of the things I love the most about business on the internet is that it’s pretty easy to predict what is going to happen.

Let’s think about how someone gets to a website from an internet search:

1. They have a question, problem or a thing they want to find out about.
2. They type a relevant phrase into Google, Bing or one of the other (crappier) search engines.
3. A list of results are returned, matching your search.
4. The user picks the one that looks like it matches their query the best.
5. They get to your site. They’re either happy that they reached your awesome and information-rich resource, or they’re pissed that your website is a great big pile of spammy nonsense.

Pretty straightforward, right?

Now, there are two things that we can work on in order to get more people to our websites.

1. We can work on making our webpages appear higher up the search engine results pages (SERPs).
2. We can work on making the title, description and summary details more relevant, interesting and clickable.

Both these points are generally lumped under the banner of SEO. Or Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is the most tedious thing in the world.

It’s a fact of life that if you abbreviate something enough it becomes really boring.

SEO is one of those things. Every hormonal teenager on the internet thinks they’re an SEO expert. Do an internet search for proof.

Really, there is nothing magical about SEO. It’s simply the art of structuring your website and webpages in such a way that they are appear high up the list of possible search engine results for certain key phrases that you expect people are likely to search for.

These key phrases are generally called keywords, even though they are usually composed of more than one word.

Google decides what to return on search results pages based on:

1. How the keyword phrase appears in your webpage.

Ideally you’ll want the keyword phrase to appear in the URL (the address you type in to get to the webpage), the title, description and in the main body of your text.

Ideally you’ll want the keyword phrase highlighted in bold, or in a header at some point. And you’ll want other webpages (they can be on other pages of your site) linking to the page with the keyword in the link text.

You’ll also probably want these keyword phrases to appear in the META tags of your page. If you don’t know what this means then don’t worry. We’ll cover it a bit later.

Many people think that having your keyword phrase loads of times in your webpage helps too. I think they’re wrong. Even if they’re not wrong, doing this will make your articles read like crap and people will think that you’re weird.

2. How important Google thinks your website is.

Google has favorites.

It decides how much value your website has based upon some magic and mysterious criteria that Google puts on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.

It also decides, based on the links between the pages of your website, which are the most important pages on your site.

It sums all this up in a thing it calls PageRank. No-one really knows what this is, but you can get an estimation of it from 0 to 10 by installing Google Toolbar on your computer.

Here are some factors that affect your Google Page Rank:

• The age of your website
• How big it is
• How many other websites link to it
• How much Google likes those websites that link to you.

3. Other stuff

There are many other verified or hypothesized search engine ranking factors. You probably don’t need to worry about them. Here is a good place to start if you’re interested.

Fine. But I can’t really be bothered with all this. I just want to write cool stuff that helps people and makes them laugh.

Yeah. Me too.

I find this SEO stuff a bit ick really. I want to concentrate on writing cool stuff, not on gaming the search engines.

Thankfully, the search engines rules are set up to look for cool stuff (as opposed to spam.) So if you’re writing lots of cool stuff, then you’re really halfway there.

All you need to do, is add a few little tweaks to help the search engines to realize what you’re stuff is, and to realize that it’s cool.

If you’re running Wordpress, then something that will help you a lot is the All in One SEO Pack Plugin.

It does a lot of useful stuff for you, so you can concentrate on making good stuff. The only thing you need to do is have a think about what your keywords should be and put them in the relevant places. Then let the All in One SEO Pack Plugin handle everything else for you.

Cool. So how to I install it?

Go here.

And follow the instructions.

Configuring the All in One SEO Pack Plugin

The All in One SEO Pack Plugin is not one that you can just install and leave alone.

In fact, the reasons that my website search traffic had started to suck was that, on upgrading Wordpress to version 2.8, my plugin had resorted to its default settings. The result was that my search result titles and descriptions now looked like ass and no-one was clicking on them.

So here’s how to set things up so your search traffic will rock.

Home Title	Put the title of your whole website in here. This is the title that gets displayed at the top of your website home page and the title that will appear in the search results for your website. Make it good and relevant, and include your main keyword if you can do it without it looking ick.If you leave this blank then Wordpress defaults to the name you defined in the main Wordpress configuration.
Home Description	Describe what your website does here. Include a few keywords if you can.This description is displayed below the title of the site in the search results pages. If you don’t fill this in then your the text in the search results will simply display the first bit of text on your homepage. This could be totally irrelevant and create confusion in the mind of the searcher. Confused people don’t click, so put something good in here.
Home Keywords	List relevant website-wide keywords in here, separated by commas. The jury is out on how much attention the search engines pay to these keyword META tags, but you might as well put some in anyway. It can’t hurt.
Canonical URLs	Leave this option checked. This helps avoid duplicate content problems. It is believed that the search engines don’t like duplicate content too much, so leave this checked.
Rewrite Titles	Check this box.This one is really important. By default Wordpress puts the Category or the Home Title at the front of every Google search result and then the post description afterwards. This is a bad thing because the post or page description is generally much more relevant to the term that the user is searching for. Putting the page description first gets you more relevancy points from an SEO perspective, and it means that the user is much more likely to click on your link. By default, this option will rewrite the title of a post to be Post Title | Blog Title. This is much better.
Post Title Format	%post_title% | %blog_title%
Page Title Format	%page_title% | %blog_title%
Category Title Format	%category_title% | %blog_title%
Archive Title Format	%date% | %blog_title%
Tag Title Format	%tag% | %blog_title%
Serach Title Format	%search% | %blog_title%
Description Format	%description%
Paged Format	- Part %page%
404 Title Format	Nothing found for %request_words%
Use Categories for META keywords	This lets you use post categories as meta keywords for each post. You might want to do this or you might not. I don’t.
Use noindex for Categories	Check this box. It prevents duplicate content, which is believed to be bad from an SEO perspective.
Use noindex for Archives	Check this box. It prevents duplicate content, which is believed to be bad from an SEO perspective.
Use noindex for Tag Archives	Check this box. It prevents duplicate content, which is believed to be bad from an SEO perspective.
Autogenerate Descriptions	Check this box. If enabled then the plugin will automatically generate a description for your post (the thing that appears below the title in a the search engine results pages) from the first 160 characters of your blog post. The plug-in will allow you to override this with a unique description for every post, but this is great when you’re posting quickly.
Additional Headers (3 boxes)	Leave unchecked. These are a bit complicated to explain and I can’t be bothered right now. You don’t need this.
Log Important Events	Leave unchecked. This probably lets you log problems with the plugin developer. Not sure. Don’t really care.

Here’s how mine is set up:

The final bit – Overriding the defaults for specific posts

Now you have everything set up then you can leave everything alone and never really worry about it again, if you like.

However… the plugin also allows you to override some the default title, description and meta tags for each post and you’ll want to do this for posts in which you’re targeting a very specific search term.

These settings appear in the Wordpress Visual Editor, as shown below:

Go Forth and Optimize!

You now have the power within you! Go forth and optimize your website!

Rock on!

JJ Jalopy.

Small Business Therapy #3 – What if I Fail and Look Stupid?!!

This is the second article in our small business therapy series. Today we’re talking about overcoming fear of failure. Or rather, the fear of failing and looking stupid.

Yep. It’s that time of the week again.

Relax. Pour yourself a glass of your favorite drink. It’s time to talk about our issues. You and me. In a non-creepy, constructive kind of way, without a sleazy old therapist in site.

Have you ever had thoughts like this?

Aaaarghhh…What if my business all goes horribly, horribly wrong?

Aaaarghhh…What if everyone realizes I’m rubbish at this stuff and laughs me out of business?

Aaaarghhh…What if I have to listen to my Mother telling me that she always knew I should never have quit my job for the REST OF MY LIFE?!

Aaaarghhh…What if I run out of money and I have to scavenge for food in the trash?

Aaaarghhh…What if I can’t afford to feed and clothe my family and it’s all my fault?

Aaaarghhh…What if….

Fear of failure.

It’s a bitch isn’t it?

It’s a big heavy bitch that ties you down and stops you from doing the things you love, living your dream and being so happy that you do star jumps in the street and give sweets to strangers for no reason other than it makes you smile.

I want those strangers to have those sweets so we’re going to sort this out – as much as we can – by talking through it together.

We’re going to break this topic down into two main fears (although they’re really one and the same).

• The fear of looking silly
• The fear of starving / dying / your whole life falling apart

This week we’re going to talk about the former.

Overcoming the Fear of Looking Silly

I hate looking silly. Don’t you hate looking silly?

Sometimes the fear of looking silly rings so loud in my head that I don’t do something I really want to do.

Why?

Because I’m worried that I’ll look like a tit. Or I’m worried people will think I’m stupid. Or that they’ll realize that I’m not actually cool after all…

We hate being embarrassed and, naturally, we try to avoid it. (We’re good to ourselves like that.)

This is… that feeling often rings louder inside our heads than the drive to do the thing that we love. And we end up missing out.

Perhaps you’re putting off staring that business doing the thing you love because you’re scared it all go wrong and people will think less of you?

Perhaps you’re putting off really promoting your business because you’re scared it’ll put you in a limelight that you’re not ready for?

This is totally sensible and totally understandable.

But I know it’s not what you want…

I know you don’t want to be a slave to your emotions. I know you don’t want your fear of looking silly to get in the way of doing what you love.

I don’t want that for you either. I think you’re brilliant and I don’t want to deprive the world of your brilliance.

How do we overcome fear of failure?

Well first of all let’s recognize that it’s not the failure or looking silly that you’re scared of, per se. It’s the emotions associated with these things. It’s the desire to avoid guilt, shame, or any other emotion that you think you’ll experience that is stopping you from taking action.

Yeah. Great JJ. Thanks. You just changed some words around. Is this supposed to make me feel better?

Well yeah. Kinda. Because it now pushes the issue back within your control.

Although it might not always seem this way, you create the emotions you experience. And by changing the way you interpret the world you can change the emotions you experience.

So many people will give you useful reframes. If you think about failure in a different, more positive way, they say, then you’ll feel better about it all.

Some powerful reframes that you’re probably fed up with hearing about

1. Failure is really just feedback.

Most successful businesses were pre-ceeded by a stream of attempts that didn’t quite work out the way they were intended.

When people talk about this they usually mention Thomas Edison, who made six zillion shitty light bulbs that didn’t work before he stumbled across the final design. If he’d given up along the way then we wouldn’t have America’s Got Talent, they say, as if this were a bad thing.

If you find something that doesn’t work then you’re really one thing closer to something that does. You don’t have to try that thing again. It didn’t work. See? A useful learning experience.

2. The only way to fail is to not try your best.

It didn’t work out, but you worked hard and you did your best? Well you can be bloody proud of yourself.

(This one came from Tony Robbins.)

3. Your business is really just a project.

This is a powerful frame that my mentor, Kevin Hogan, introduced me to. The idea is that what you call your business, that thing you do, is really just a project.

You’ve had projects before and you’ll have projects in the future. You’re trying one out at the moment. It’s not really a big deal if it fails because it’s only a project. Your Mother-in-law might not be so smug about telling you you should never have left your job if she knows it’s just a project.

Clever, isn’t it?

If you can truly convince yourself to believe these reframes then these will help you enormously.

But here’s what to do when you can’t convince yourself of the above

Most likely you won’t buy into these reframes in the short term. You might have heard a hundred times about Thomas Edison’s thousand attempts at a bloody light bulb, but rationalizing to yourself that failure is a valuable feedback mechanism can be somewhat of a stretch when you’re right in the middle of your little freak-out storm.

And whilst it might be empowering to believe that your little business is just a project.

Just try telling this to your body when it’s gripped by panic.

It probably won’t listen. In fact, it’s more likely to yell back at you “shut up Tony Bloody Robbins. I’m too busy freaking out to listen to your feel-good mind-trick crap right now.”

And then it’ll carry on freaking out.

If you’re anything like me you don’t want tricks, techniques or advice when you’re in one of those moments. You want gin. Or Valium. Or more furniture to throw at the wall. The value of a well-placed reframe is not obvious to you mid-meltdown.

So go easy on yourself. Realize that, despite your best efforts, you’re not going to think your way into a position of unlimited self-esteem straight away.

Or ever, really…

So learn to recognize the emotions that you’re running away from and accept that it’s okay to feel them.

It’s okay to worry that your business is going to fail and you’ll feel ashamed. It’s okay to worry that the person you’re about to call about a joint venture is going to be dismissive of you and you’ll feel embarrassed.

It’s okay. We all feel like that sometimes.

Allow yourself to feel what you feel. And stretch out in whatever way you can. You don’t need to “get over it”. You don’t need to jump out of your comfort zone. Just do what you can do right now. Stretch a little, if you can. Next time will be easier.

So how do you feel?

I hope you got a little something out of that. It made me feel better anyway! ?

Join me next Saturday for another installment. We’ll be talking through the fear of having to feed your family with scraps of half-eaten food you stole from the trash. Or something.

Take care!

JJ Jalopy.

P.S. Look. This was really bloody long. I love you lots and lots for reading this far and I hope you enjoyed what you read.

I’d like to invite you to sign-up to my V.I.P. list. You’ll get free email awesomeness just like this delivered straight into your emailbox every week, except when I’m horrendously hungover.

You can even reply to the email and talk to me. We’ll probably end up best friends. Put your name and email address in the boxes below if this sounds like something you would like!

The 3 main reasons people don’t want to pay you for coaching.

A little ramble about food. (Scroll down for the useful bit!)

Hey there!

How are you today?

Mrs. Jalopy and I have just had pizza.

And chips.

And wine.

And chocolate.

It was wonderfully delicious.

I have a appointment with my friend and health coach Anthony Lemme tomorrow. We’re going to talk about my diet. I have a feeling that he’s going to tell me that pizza, chips, wine and chocolate are bad for me. And he’s probably going to recommend that I cut down.

So I’m indulging in a semi guilt-free binge beforehand.

Shhh… Don’t tell!

The useful bit starts here!

If you have a coaching service, then you may encounter objections when you offer your coaching services to prospective clients.

In fact, you’ll begin to hear similar objections again and again.

This is natural. Coach can be a large expense for many people.

Now, I know your coaching service totally rocks, but we can’t expect everyone else to know that straight away.

So here are some really simple strategies you can use to help your prospective client see past a few of these objections and open themselves up to the idea of coaching with you.

Objection 1 – I can’t afford it.

Strategy 1: What is the cost of NOT achieving the goal? What is most likely to happen if you don’t hire me.

Yes. It can be quite a lot of money for some people.

But let’s look at the cost of not hiring a coach. What do you think would most likely happen if you continue on as you have been?

How will you feel about this in 6 months’ time?

Strategy 2: What would make it worth it?

Perhaps we should create a bigger goal. What could you achieve that would make it worthwhile?

Objection 2 – I’ll have to think about it / I’ll have to ask my partner about it

Strategy 1: Identify underlying concern

Of course. I understand this is all new to you.

And I sense that there’s something your worried about that we haven’t discussed. Could you think what that might be?

Strategy 2: Talk them through the thought process or the conversation they will have with their partner

What questions will you ask yourself?

…or…

What questions will your partner ask?

Objection 3 – I could just do it by myself

Strategy 1: What you’ve been doing so far hasn’t been working

How long have you been thinking this way?

And what results have you been getting?

Strategy 2: Working as a team can be fun

How do you think working together with me on your goals might actually be a lot of fun?

Strategy 3: Cool sports dudes have coaches, you know…

Do you think Roger Federer/ Tiger Woods / Lewis Hamilton  would be as successful without their coaches?

Now you have some strategy, go out there and get some clients.

See ya tomorrow!

JJ Jalopy.

Keep Going – You’re Doing Great!

You’re doing great!

But I don’t have any clients and no-one seems to want my products.

But you’re moving? You’re taking regular, consistent action?

Yes. But I feel like it’s not working. I feel like I’m wasting my time. I feel like giving up.

Growing a business takes time.

Most fail because their owner gives up before giving the business a fair chance to succeed.

The people who succeed are not the smartest. They’re not those with the best ideas. They’re not the most talented.

They’re those that take regular, consistent action.

Those that don’t give up.

Those that keep going.

The next e-mail you write and the next phone call you make will make a difference.

Keep going. You’re doing great.

JJ Jalopy.

How to Write Blog Posts Really Quickly

I get a lot of questions about writing.

Whilst I’d love it if people were asking about my concise, conversational and hilarious writing style…

…usually the questions are along the lines of:

How do you manage to write so much?

How do you write so quickly?

How do you keep coming up with ideas every day?

We’ve spoken before about how to write a super crazy awesome blog post.

Today I’m going to talk about how to write one quickly.

Six steps to Writing Blog Posts Really Quickly

1. Start before you start writing.

You don’t want to sit down in front of a blank screen with a blank mind.

If you find yourself in this position then set the intention of coming up with a great idea for an article, and then go and do something completely different. Go for a walk, sit in the jacuzzi with a beer, give the dog a haircut. Whatever you like. Just get away from the computer screen and do something else for a while.

Soon, a rather wonderful thing will happen. Ideas will spring into your mind as if from nowhere. This might appear magical but it’s really just the way your subconscious mind works. (Probably. Ask someone clever for proof.)

You’ll soon start to consciously think these ideas through in your mind. Maybe bits of dialogue or a great story or metaphor will appear. Maybe you’ll start to flesh out the structure of your argument. Maybe you’ll just come up with a really great topic.

Either way, now you have material.

It’s time to grab a pen and paper and…

2. Make an outline

You’ve got all these ideas swilling around inside your head. Now is time to get them out of your head and onto paper.

Make a rough outline of what you want to cover in your post, in whatever format you like.

I draw mind map-like doodles. You might prefer bullet points. Do what you dig.

Now we’re ready to write, but first…

3. Remove all distractions

I am so easily distracted it’s silly. I’m like a magpie in a jewelry store. A child in a candy store. A tired metaphor in a tired metaphor store.

I’ll be halfway through writing and then feel the urge to go and tell Mrs. Jalopy a funny story for the day. Or I’ll feel the urge to check my email. Or look at how many people replied to me on Twitter. Or check the number of new subscribers I got. Or…

You get the picture.

So if I’m going to write something good, I need to make sure that I’m not going to be distracted for the next twenty minutes.

Maybe you need to shut the door to your office for next twenty minutes? Maybe, like me, you need to write your posts on an editor which takes over your entire screen, removing all possible computer-based distractions?

All distractions removed? Good, now…

3. Start with whatever excites you the most

Now you’re ready to start writing. And we want to start with a BANG!

Sometimes you might have some great ideas but you’re feeling anxious because you’re not sure how to start.

You want to start with whatever excites you the most. Not necessarily at the start.

Maybe you’ve got a really great story that you want to tell. Just thinking about it makes you smile.

Start with that. Get excited! Get fired up! You’ll build up momentum for the rest of the piece.

Sometimes you might have a really great first sentence in my mind. In this case, the start is the place to start!

Once you’re in flow and you feel the excitement, keep writing. Structure is important, but emotion is more so. You can tidy things up later on…

4. Drop anything that doesn’t work

Don’t be a slave to your outline.

You’re writing, you’re in the zone, and some of the items in your outline don’t seem to work anymore?

Drop them. They won’t mind.

5. Don’t be tempted to save good stuff for later

As a blogger, sometimes you might worry that you’re going to run out of ideas.

It can be tempting to want to hoard ideas for future posts. Don’t do this at the expense of the post you’re writing now.

There will always be more ideas, so make this post the best you can.

6. Get it finished!

If you’re anything like me, then you’re never going to be 100% happy with anything you write.

There will always be a better adjective. There will always be a wittier way to make that point. There will always be a more thought-provoking question to finish with.

Learn to accept that good enough is good enough.

Press the Publish button, make yourself a cup of tea, and celebrate a job well done.

JJ Jalopy.

P.S. I have officially decided that this post is linkbait. That means that it’s a brilliantly bite-sized piece of shareable web-fodder. So, here’s what you do… Link to it from your blogs. Tell your friends about it on Twitter or Facebook. Digg it. Stumble it. Do all that other stuff that web people like some much. Your friends will love you for it. They’ll think you’re brilliant. Because you are.

Small Business Therapy #2 – I Don’t Want to Blog!

This is the second article in our small business therapy series. Today’s session is about blogging.

Happy Fourth of July!

I had planned to write this post last weekend.

I had also planned to send out my awesome and much-hyped (by me) Jalopy Gang Newsletter to my beloved V.I.P. list.

Instead I sat on a beach in the South of France for about 12 hours in the blistering heat and drank enough premium French Lager to kill a horse. (And a burly, hard-drinking one at that.)

Predictable results ensued.

I am never going on another bachelor weekend again.

So… I’ve been away for a while. This post almost didn’t happen. Newsletter awesomeness didn’t manifest. And God wept.

But NOW I’m back….

And it’s time to talk about our issues. You and me. In a non-creepy, constructive way with no seedy old therapist bores in sight.

The introductory story about the man with no name.

An unnamed client recently came to me to ask for help in promoting his business on the internet.

(He’s doesn’t actually have no name. He has a very lovely name, in fact. It’s just that I’m not telling you what it is.)

He has a small but successful offline business, and he’s looking to expand his marketing efforts online. Good for him. This idea gets the Jalopy Seal of Approval. (You can have one too for a small donation into my Paypal account.)

He’s getting a website designed. It looks pretty flash. It’s even made of Flash.

That’s a cool looking website, I said. Do you have a blog?

No. I don’t want a blog, he replied.

We’ve spoken about blogs before, me and he. He knows that I believe that the blog is the pinnacle of awesomeness when it comes to non-pushy, value- and relationship-focused internet marketing. This is true for a million reasons I have bored him with previously, and a million reasons that I’ll explain to you in my forthcoming product How to Use the Internet as your Faithful Marketing Love Slave.

So I stared at him blankly until he elaborated.

I don’t have time to maintain a blog, he replied.

The reason you don’t do something is rarely because you don’t have enough time. If something is important enough to you, you’ll make time for it.

<<Blank stare>>

<<Silence>>

I don’t have anything original to say.

What I have to say is boring. People won’t be interested in that.

And I don’t write very well.

And I’d run out of things to talk about.

And I don’t like putting myself “out-there” so personally. What if everyone realizes I’m not as much of an expert as I’d like to pretend? What if everyone realizes I’m weird or thinks I’m a screw-up?

Great. Now we were actually getting somewhere

So let’s talk these through together, one by one…

Objection 1 – I don’t have anything original to say.

We started to address this in our first small business therapy session.

It’s not true that everything worth writing about has already been written about by someone.

But it nearly is.

So does that mean you can’t write about it too?

Must every point you make be completely and totally original? A unique and perfectly-formed gem of knowledge spawned from your mind only?

Of course not!

What’s important is that you say what you have to say, in your own voice, at the right time.

In doing that, you’ll change lives.

Don’t believe me?

Okay. Have you ever heard something that you’ve heard a hundred times before, but for some reason, this time you hear it, something really clicks?

Why is it that the same information, presented slightly differently, only sunk in when you heard it described in a certain way, by a certain person?

It’s because that person was able to describe it to you in a way that you could uniquely relate to.

There are people that need to hear what you have to say. From you.

And you owe it to them to be yourself, to tell your story, to spread your knowledge.

Next…

Objection 2 – What I have to say is boring. People won’t be interested in it.

There are many massively popular blogs that I find mind-numblingly tedious.

What does this tell us?

Well… it either means that I’m a poor judge of blog quality…

…or it tells us that different people like different stuff.

Have you ever done any random, un-targeted web browsing? (You should. It’s an excellent procrastination aid, if nothing else!)

If you have, then you’ll know that there’s a huge amount of unoriginal, pointless, yawn-inducing stuff out there. And it’s very very popular.

Which means that there must be a whole ton of people who like unoriginal, pointless, yawn-inducing stuff.

Or rather, a whole load of people who like the stuff that I think is unoriginal, pointless and yawn-inducing.

Someone will like your boring stuff. I promise!

Now, maybe you’re worried that no-one will show up to read your blog?

That’s a different issue. And a largely practical one.

Getting people to read your stuff is largely a function of how well you promote it. If you promote it well, people will come. And even if I might think it’s tedious, irrelevant and unoriginal, other people will not. They’ll visit and they will return.

There are more than enough weirdos on the internet for your weird blog to have a weird audience of its own.

There. Doesn’t that make you feel better?!

Next…

Objection 3 – I don’t write very well

I know how this can feel.

I love good writing. I’m attracted to some of my favorite blogs predominantly because of their unique and creative writing style.

Sometimes, when I’m reading a beautifully written blog such as www.copyblogger.com, a little voice appears in my head – the one that says:

JJ – you’ll never be this good. Why don’t you just give it up?

And part of that voice is correct. I probably will never be that good. I probably could be, were I to really work at it, but that’s not my focus.

Sometimes my ego and my desire to be the best at everything stops me from remembering why I am blogging in the first place.

I’m not blogging to become a great blogger. Or even a great writer.

I’m blogging to help people to succeed with their small home businesses. I’m blogging to help people leave their day jobs and do something that inspires and excites them. I’m blogging to promote my services and forthcoming awesome products.

The best writing style for a blog is a conversational tone. Imagine your average reader is in front of you and talk to them as a friend.

If you can write the way you talk when you’re having a coffee or a beer with a friend then you’ll be a great blogger.

Next…

Objection 4 – I’d run out of things to talk about

I strange and wonderful thing starts happening when you start writing.

Ideas seem to be born out of nowhere.

You’ll be writing a post and you’ll get ideas for five more. If you make it your intention to come up with ideas for blog posts and then go about your day, you’ll be surprised at how many great ideas pop into your head.

Give it a try.

Next…

Objection 5 – I don’t like putting myself “out there”. What if everyone realizes I’m not as much of an expert as I’d like to pretend? What if everyone realizes I’m weird or thinks I’m a screw-up?

Ah yes.

You’re going to be writing about yourself and you’re scared that people might find out that you’re not perfect.

Yeah. Makes sense. Because we love people who claim to be perfect, don’t we?

We really connect with them, don’t we?

We feel so appreciated and understood when we’re around someone who says they’ve never made any mistakes in their lives, don’t we?

You see where I’m going with this…

Good.

Your story will give someone hope. Your story is the reason people will finally understand what they haven’t been able to understand so far from anyone else.

Your story is the reason people are there, reading a blog and not an encyclopedia.

Be honest. Be yourself. Rock the world.

<<Deep breath>>

That was good. I enjoyed that.

It’s been lovely. See you tomorrow!

JJ Jalopy.

P.S. If you enjoyed that then you might want to sign-up to my V.I.P. list. You’ll get an email newsletter every week (except when I have heatstroke.) Sign-up now and get it tomorrow!

Life Coaching Math. Or an introduction to income planning for the rest of us.

Pocket protector at the ready?!

Today we’re going to do some coaching math. (Put an S on the end of that if you feel like being British for the day.)

Don’t worry. It’ll be nice and easy. And I’m going to hold your hand every step of the way and tell you that you’re doing great.

So… let’s pretend my star mentoring client and imaginary blog sycophant Life Coach Marjorie comes to me with the goal of making $100,000 a year from coaching next year.

That’s a good goal.

Marjorie’s a great coach. She’s the best, in fact.

But without a concrete plan showing how she’s going to make that money, it’s unlikely that Marjorie is going to wind up achieving her income goal simply by being brilliant.

Thankfully, Marjorie and I are a great team. She’s a life coaching superstar, and I’m an annoying guy who makes her write dates and numbers on piece of paper until it looks like some kind of plan.

And this is a good thing. Because the plan is going to show Marjorie how she can go from zero to $100,000 a year.

So we write $100,000 at the top of our piece of paper. This is our target. We brainstorm how we’re going to get there…

My regular coaching rates are $200 a month, explains Life Coach Marjorie.

Great.

I think I can probably maintain 10 clients a month on average over the year, she goes on to say,

So let’s write that down (pretending that taxes, expenses and other undesirables don’t exist…)

10 Coaching Clients per month @ $200 = $2000 per month = $24,000 per year.

Cool.

But it’s not quite $100,000 yet.

Marjorie could try to reach her goal, by doing on of the following:

• coaching 50 people a month
• increasing her rates to $1000 a month

Fortunately, Marjorie is smarter than that.

And she has been listening to me when I harp on about the value of producing information products to support her coaching service. She thinks it would be a good idea to write a small downloadable eBook on goal setting.

I do too.

This downloadable book will:

• provide a nice customer entry point for people who aren’t yet ready to stump up the $200 for Marjorie’s coaching
• increase her credibility and establish her as an authority in the personal development / coaching field
• make her money

Marjorie thinks she can write the 20 page book and get the design and distribution sorted out in a month.

She’ll sell it as a $19 download. She estimates that 40 people will buy it every month.

40 eBooks per month @ $19  profit = $760 per month = $9120 per year

That’s pretty good going for a month’s work.

Marjorie thinks she has another book in her. This one is going to be a larger, more comprehensive affair. It’s a manual for housewives who want to get back into work.

She thinks she’ll be able to write it and get it on the market in 3 months. She’ll sell it as a $69 download, with an option to pay extra postage for a printed version. She thinks she’ll sell 20 copies a month.

20 Printed Books per month @ $69 profit  = $1380 per month = $16,560 per year

As Marjorie is the greatest coach in the world, she thinks it’s only fair to impart some of this magic on other coaches. She decides to record a CD program with recordings of real coaching sessions. She takes on a few new coaching clients at reduced rates on the agreement that she may record the sessions. She asks her friend’s son to edit the sessions on his computer. She arranges for a fulfillment house to manufacture and distribute the CDs on her behalf.

This takes 2 months.

She sells the CD program for $150. Due to the small expected volumes it costs $15 to manufacture and ship the CD sets. She expects to sell 10 CD sets a month.

10 CD Programs per month @ 135 profit = $1350 per month = $16,200 per year

And if we add this up we come to:

Total projected, 6 months into plan:  $65,880 per year.

So far in our plan we’ve covered 6 months. Marjorie is well on her way to reaching her target next year.

We’ll stop here, but Marjorie might want to go on to write some new eBooks, start a subscription service, run tele-classes or produce another high-end physical product (or two.)

All of these will provide extra income. The introduction of new customers via an increased channels will result in more repeat business, and many of the numbers above can be expected to grow.

This is an interesting model to play with and think about and it’s a good basis upon which to build a plan…

…but don’t believe the numbers in this example. We’ve made some pretty huge assumptions here. All products have a limited shelf life and there are many other costs which have not been considered in the model.

I think the most interesting thing that comes out of this is the realization that the one-one-one coaching model is not very scalable. I’d advise everyone, coaches or otherwise to be on the lookout for ways to supplement their income. This is where the money lies…

Be creative. You rock!

JJ Jalopy.

P.S. If you’re interested in more thinking along these lines, you should check out Andrea J Lee’s awesome book Multiple Streams of Coaching Income.

If you get it using this link here, I’ll receive enough money to buy myself a lovely cold beer. And that would be nice, wouldn’t it? Especially on a summer day like this. Go on… I’m a happy drunk, I promise…