Blogging: How long should my Blog be?

Many businesses today are blogging as a form of creating content to attract clients. Whether they be photo blogs from cafes and travel agents, or predominantly written blogs from service companies such as Law firms.

When it comes to written blogs, from my experience there are a lot of extremely dry ones out there, content that may be valuable, although it is the value of a gold nugget lost in a riverbed. So many service providing firms are publishing blogs which are just too long and they are therefore losing readers, for more on this idea check the golden rule of content writing.

So how long should it be, is there a rule I can follow, or not?

The Rule

Well unfortunately there is no black and white rule, there is no number you should aim for particularly. So sorry about that. 

Although there are general parameters which might be an idea to follow. The 300-800 spectrum is a handy idea to start with. 

The lower parameter of 300 is rather important, much like the movie. It told a significant story, stretched graphics (or CGI) to the limit (for its time) and gave absolutely unreasonable expectations for men around the globe. (I also never saw it, hence why I'm not fussed about being skinny and lazy).

Google ranks websites based on several functions, two of the main ones (along with whether it is mobile friendly and attractive) are how often new content is uploaded and whether the content is deemed to not be spam. This is judged by some google algorithm which can be understood by about four humans and the machine which wrote it; although one of the things this algorithm looks for when it scans new pages (articles) is whether the blog is longer than 300 words.

So.... write more than that. Pretty straightforward right.

The upper parameter, is up to you, although remember. People get bored quickly, you only have their attention for a set period of time, so use it wisely.

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The Golden Rule for Social Media Marketing Content

When it comes to social media marketing it is extremely difficult to know what to say, and how you should say it. We worry about whether people will care, if it will interest them, and whether it will lead to them wanting to interact with you and your business, whatever the platform you and you market are operating on.

Although it doesn't encapsulate every principle in the marketing world, this simple rule can increase the quality of your content, whether it be blog articles you write or posts and comments on social media platforms.



Yes it is the common terms of snackability and consumability, (of which neither are real words). This rule will help you develop your content to the point where you can be confident in its worth and purpose.

Valuable Content

The first thing to ensure is that your content is valuable, that it is worthwhile. There is no point regurgitating meaningless unquantifiable information that doesn't add anything to the readers lives.
What is valuable for you is up to you, likewise what is valuable to your market is up to them. Therefore it is of paramount importance that you know your market, (as discussed in my previous post). When you know your market, what they want and need you can begin to determine what is of value to them.
It may be an article about fruit and veg tips for kids if you are a green grocer operating in a community with lots of young families or photos of the best coffee spots if you are a producer and roaster of coffee beans. For a law firm targeting families then you don't want to be sending them articles on the basis of business disputes and negotiation. Make sure that what you are posting and sharing with your community are things that are of value to them.
Don't just share for the sake of sharing.

Snackable Content

Secondly, your content needs to be easily consumed. This means 1. that it is easy to read and understand and 2. that it isn't too long.
In our fast paced world people don't have the time to read every 800+ word article that you are posting. Often they just want something that is going to able to be consumed in a matter of minutes, in fact, you may not even have the consumers attention for even one minute. Therefore it is of paramount importance that you are sharing information that the consumer can digest in the amount of time that they have available to read your content.


Finding the Sweet Spot

Creating valuable content is easy, although the problem is that it is often very long. Likewise producing snackable content is easy, although when it is it is often rather meaningless. Like a cheeseburger, snackable, but it isn't filling you up in anyway.
Therefore we have to find a way to meet in the middle, a way to share value in the short amount of time that we have consumers attention.
This often requires great creativity, so start thinking of ways that you can relay value in a very short amount of time. Think of using strong sentences and one liners that encapsulate your cause and a call to action, think pictures and videos, think of finding the sweet spot, always ask
How do I share valuable content that is easily and quickly consumable?

Facebook: Small Business Pages

Here are a few basic tips for you and your Facebook page.

Interact with Your Community

Social media is based upon social interaction, communicating, sharing and building relationships. On Facebook we have the opportunity to do that in many different ways. A few to get us started which are extremely affective are as follows;

• Follow like minded businesses, people, and others in the community you are operating in. Most towns and community groups have Facebook pages of their own, such as community boards.
• share with the community you are a part of.
• always respond to comments on your page
• comment on other pages posts, if you want people to interact with you, you have to first interact with them. 

Its not About You!

The art of posting on your page is something that is reasonably hard to tackle. What do I post, how do I post it and when do I do so.
These things are completely dependant on who we are trying to reach and communicate with. Every marketing campaign should begin with the preliminary question of: who is the target audience?

• who are they?
• what groups do they operate in?
• what do they care about?
• how do they talk?
• what do they need/want?

What we are posting should be all about what our audience wants hear, not necessarily what we want to say.

Therefore we can lead into the 1-4 posting ratio.

1-4 Ratio

When it comes to posting on most social media platforms the best rule of thumb is the 1-4 ratio. That is, 1 of your own posts to every 4 you have shared from another site, group, or organisation.
On social media people don't just want to be "sold to," they don't just want people yelling at them with sales items and promotions. If this is all you are posting them people will be very quick to "un-follow."

Pictures

Have them. Just posting words is meaningless. Advertising has transformed in the recent past from being a means of telling the consumer what a product does, to showing a consumer how the product makes them feel.
Consumers emotionally connect with photos, they relate and can get excited about a page that is colourful and interactive. There is nothing worse than a business page which just long paragraphs of monotonously written updates.
Throw some colour in there.

Doesn't that make you feel happy? :)

How to Make A Facebook Page!

Facebook can be the simplest way to promote a business. Hence why it is the most popular. So many, most businesses today in fact use Facebook, having created a profile page for their brand, product and or service.
Creating page, is extremely easy and doable for everyone, due to Facebook being so well guided and straight forward I promise that you can do it.

Making the page is simple, easily done by merely following the guide that Facebook has set up for you to follow. It is important, (not necessary) but much easier if you already have a personal Facebook account.

In terms of creating your businesses basic Facebook Page, understand that it is fine to start slow, its better to start with a learning process than to jump all in a turn away customers and the market.

To get started try following this link,
https://www.facebook.com/help/104002523024878

or if you would like a more detailed approach.

This should get you started, and here have a look at a template I just created for here,
https://www.facebook.com/trashtalkmarketing

Making a page is a start, although it is only that. in the social media marketing world we often talk about the trial stage. Where businesses will start using social media, such as creating a Facebook Page, to see what happens, possibly simply because that is what other businesses are doing. Because it seems like the right thing to do in this highly technologically dependant 2015 that we live in. And you know what, that is fine.
Although I do not want you to just dwell here, rather I would like to inform you in the following posts, how we can have a Facebook page with a purpose. One that isn't just trailing to see what its like, but one that is effectively communicating with your target market.

Stay posted for tips on how to create a strategic social media marketing plan.

Continue being a lovely person.

Marketing for Small to Medium Businesses

Marketing can be hard, it takes time, and it most certainly costs money. For a lot of people operating small to medium sized business, thats money you don't have, or don't want to spend. Fortunately, in our technologically savvy society, where the oldest to the inappropriately young are using the many forms of social media, we have the opportunity do communicate with our markets, in a very simply and cheap way. Over the next few weeks we will be discussing how, as small businesses, we can use social media to effectively to market our passions and purposes.

Starting with the simplest and most usable we will be looking at Facebook, how to do it, and then how other businesses have done it successfully. Beyond that we will be looking onto other forms of social media, instagram, Linkedin, blogging, twitter and so on.

In this it is important to remember that we are trying to find out what is best for you, for your business, and the marketing strategy that is specific for you.

A Facebook page I run for a local small business we may be using in the future as an example.

https://www.facebook.com/Veg.Out.Victor.Harbor?fref=ts

Why Use Social Media??

Social Media is the platforms we have all come to know and love which allow us needy relationship hungry humanoids to communicate, relate to and share information on the big wide web. Social media is all about Sharing, Participating, Entertaining, Community, Publishing and Commerce.

When discussing social media we have to understand that there is more than just Facebook, Twitter and that website where you can watch and broadcast just about any video imaginable. YouTube, put them all together and you get YouTwitFace, (not an extremely original joke).
I promise you that there are far more social media platforms than you even know about.

When approaching this matter we can formulate social media into four specific zones.

Social community
Which involves sharing, socializing and conversing and is done primarily through platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

Social publishing
Which involves editorials, commercial and user generated platforms such as blogs much like this one, Technorati and then also through media sites such as YouTube, Picasa, SmugMug and SlideShare.

Social commerce
Involves CRM/Service, retailing and sales functions and human recourses processes and can be incorporated with vehicles such as Facebook, LivingSocial, Groupon, Snipi, VideoGenie, TripAdvisor and Payvment

 

Social entertainment
Includes what the generally person uses social media for when they are trying to complete some other form of required work. Games, Music, Videos, Art and so on which can be done an sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, Come2Play, Second Life, Myspace and uGame.

Having discussed the areas and avenues available to us on social media, we can now understand this very fundamental reality of the current human psyche. People use Social media. That may be the most profound and mind-blowing piece of knowledge you have digested today, although I will assume that it isn't.

Our world is spending an alarming amount of hours, draining away their life through the many platforms of social media. Thus the question should rather be, why not use social media?

Our market uses it, hence it is a low cost way of communicating, sharing and providing for the people that our businesses wish to reach.

 

For the small to medium business owner, marketing can seem and intimidating and expensive operation, although through the recourse of social media, it doesn't have to be.