Remarkablogger

Wayfinding, Self, and Internet Business (This Post has no Point)

Michael Martine — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 18:42:33 +0000

Most people wonder from time to time if they’re doing the right thing with their lives (whatever that means). For me, this is an acute, chronic condition that just never goes away. If I’m not twisting in the nether, I’m not awake. And when I sleep my dreams are often of being lost in a huge labyrinthine basement filled with ducts and plumbing (make of that what you will).

I have this belief that at some point I will have Found What I’m Looking For (cue U2 music). It’s a belief because there’s no rational basis for it at all whatsoever but I continue to act as if it were true even though I consciously know better.

There are many ideas and ideals at (conflicting) play here:

Do what you love and the money will follow.
Do what you’re good at better than anyone else.
Find a specific group of people who have a problem you are uniquely suited to solve and offer them the solution they seek.
Enjoying life doesn’t mean working 24/7.
Enjoying what you do to earn a living isn’t actually “work.”
Everyone will be known for something after they’re gone, so what is it I want to be known for?
Is it better to aspire to greatness or to enjoy life?
If I hate to do something I will procrastinate until the end of time if I can get away with it.
In the new world of internet business, where blogging, social media, and email are your main avenues of communication, personality/personableness/authenticity rule.
I suck at following my own advice.

As I’ve been running Remarkablogger over the years (since the summer of ‘07) I’ve made some changes based on many of the above ideals. For example, I don’t do blog designs anymore. Seriously, I would rather work at a checkout lane in a grocery store. I have the skills and the talent but I’m not cut out to deal with people when it comes to this kind of work. I don’t want to do what people tell me, I want to tell them what to do!

Teaching, training, coaching, and writing are what I’m very good at and also enjoy. I always feel jazzed after helping a client over the phone or doing a webinar. Writing and making videos are also easy for me and I’m good at them. If you believe in natural talent, then I guess those are mine.

But over the past few months, I have seriously questioned everything and found a sudden distaste for things I did regularly, like writing blog posts, being on Twitter, promoting affiliate products, or even creating my own products. I grew to hate, hate, hate, hate my inbox. I unsubscribed from newsletters left and right. I have well over one thousand ignored feeds in my reader.

I actually hate sports, but I think a sports analogy works perfectly here: it was like being a pro basketball player and suddenly questioning the game itself. Think back to what happened when Michael Jordan decided what he really wanted to do was play baseball. Yeah, that didn’t go so well. And by the way, I’m not comparing myself to Michael Jordan like I’m so great or anything, he’s just the only example I can think of that parallels what I’m experiencing.

Destiny

Destiny sounds like a big deal, but I don’t think it is. I think destiny is pretty mundane stuff, actually. The problem is that destiny often seems to conflict with these notions we hold so dear of doing what we want or love to do.

If I wasn’t doing Remarkablogger, what would I rather be doing?

I have asked myself that question a million times in the past couple months, and you know what?

I have no idea. There are simply other things I’m good at which I could be doing, but they do not “call to me” as it were, and I could not take them up and earn a living from them in a short amount of time.

And what is destiny, anyway? In one sense, it’s a predetermined outcome, sort of like the idea of fate. I don’t believe in predetermination in that sense, nor in Predetermination, either, if you know what I mean. I’m working with the other definition of destiny:

fortune: your overall circumstances or condition in life (including everything that happens to you)

All the choices I’ve made in my life and the circumstances of my life combined have brought me to this point, like a train on a track. And the train’s gonna keep going.

So Now What?

Well, I’m not exactly sure, but I can tell you that the writing here will become a little more personal because I’ve decided let you into my head instead of just “teaching at you.” This is what is so different about how we do things online compared to the past. It’s a cliche that the medium is the message but like all cliches it’s perfectly true, and of course what is a blog at its core but an “online diary.”

What kind of online diary? Well, it will probably read and feel a lot like this post to begin with, but who knows how it will evolve. Like I said in the headline, this post has no point. Blogging and online business is what I do, and it’s a really big part of who I am. It’s not some slick marketing persona or facade I put on, it’s the real me: the guy who sleeps in late, has a messy office, and plays Warcraft too much.

But damn if he isn’t working from home and making money online and has a knack for helping you do it, too (ok, enough with the 2nd person weirdness).

It has become my place in life (my destiny, if you will) to help other people figure this stuff out, and every time I speak with someone and the light bulb comes on over their heads, that destiny is confirmed.

If you’re running an online business, too, then your destiny may easily be linked to mine. I hope you’ll join me, but just remember we really have no idea where we’re going.

The Golden Triangle of Online Marketing, Part 3: Email Marketing

Michael Martine — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:46:53 +0000

In this Golden Triangle of Online Marketing series, we’re taking a look at the three major marketing channels for online business: blogging, social media, and now email marketing.

Email marketing has not fallen by the wayside, even though mobile and social media technologies are all the rage. Most of the world does not live in Silicon Valley, Austin, or Redmond. Most people do not have a blog and don’t even comment on blogs. Most people barely stumble their way through their mobile phone operating systems and Facebook.

The Comfort Factor

Most people use email. Most people are comfortable with email.

Email is not public in the same way that social media is, so there’s a chance for more personal communications to be highly effective. Sending private, personal messages to prospects & customers has been an effective marketing strategy since forever. The method by which these messages are written, delivered, stored, and accessed has changed over the centuries, but the basic dynamic and effectiveness of this channel has not changed at all. The infamous Nigerian email scams we all receive are a perfect case in point: this scam has been going on since long before we started using email.

Email should not be overlooked in your marketing efforts. In fact, even if you did no other kind of marketing at all–no blogging or social media–you should still be doing email marketing.

How Email Fits In

But the goal of these posts is to highlight how the three main channels work together with each other and how they tie in with blogging. Here are some main points for how email helps boost the other two channnels:

Email sends traffic to your blog and to social media pages (or any online property you wish, for that matter). You send an email with a link to a post, a tweet, a facebook update, whatever. You can encourage your email subscribers to also follow you on Twitter or be your friend on Facebook. This gives you more chances to be helpful to them, which leads to more sales in the long run.
Email allows you to reach folks who aren’t heavy social media users (which is most people, actually).
Selling on your blog may not always be appreciated by your readers, but selling via email is effective. Part of this has to do with the public vs. private aspects of both channels. A privately made offer in a one-on-one setting is more powerful than a general public update to everyone.
What makes for good blog posts also makes for good emails: a subject line (headline) that grabs attention and content that delivers on the promise made by the subject line. If you’ve been working on writing better blog posts, congratulations, you’re also a better email marketer–even if you haven’t even started email marketing yet!
You can use your blog and social media presence to get email subscribers more easily. While you may not always convince folks to try social media, you can more easily convince social media users to subscribe to your email newsletter.

I love the poetry of the “golden triangle” metaphor, but let’s use a different metaphor for a moment that we all know: the stool. A stool needs at least three legs or it doesn’t stand up. Blogging and social media only give you two legs, but add email marketing to the mix and now you’ve got something that stands on its own.

What You Will Regret

If there’s one thing people regret, it’s not starting email marketing sooner. Nearly every online business person I know or read has expressed their regret they didn’t start sooner!

Email Marketing In Depth

If you want to know more about email marketing alongside blogging, check out this in-depth post I wrote called The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Your Blog. This one really blew a lot of people away, and I think you’ll find it valuable to read it (or reread it).

Series Conclusion

I hope you have a better feel for how these three marketing channels all interrelate and boost each other, and why you want to be working on all three for your online business. If there’s anything else you want to know or if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below!

How to Get New and Repeat Blog Traffic with Museum Thinking

Michael Martine — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:23:19 +0000

This is a guest post by Mark Dykeman.

Pay attention please, students: we’re going to review some things today that you already know. Or that you should already know. At the same time, it’s going to be new for some of you. Or not.

And that’s the classic content problem, isn’t it? Especially on a blog.

How do you handle the fact that most successful blogs get far more new visitors than return visitors? Do you try to be completely new user friendly? Do you assume that your visitors already have a starting point and they know the lingo, the subject matter and the people that you talk about?

Number of new visitors

Here’s a little case study for you to consider:

I have two main blogs. The older blog, which is close to three years old, gets over 70% of its traffic from search engines. Between search engines and other sources of traffic, over 91% of that blog’s daily traffic is composed of new visitors. The newer blog, which is four months old as I write this, only gets about 7% of its traffic from search engines. However, over 58% of the blog’s traffic comes from new visitors and I expect that percentage to increase over time as I continue to build that blog’s traffic and audience.

I’ve read that on average 80% of a blog’s traffic comes from new visitors. I can believe that based on my own experience. Assuming this is true, that percentage is a strong motivation for a blogger to focus on new visitors and try to convert them into regular readers, maybe even paying customers.

Museum thinking

Put another way, it’s like operating a museum and spending a lot of time of tours and education. Imagine the Louvre in Paris, one of the most famous museums in the world. I’ve been there: it’s huge! You need maps, guides and lots of signs to find your way around the place. There are rooms upon rooms, exhibits galore and tons of things to see and do. And many of the visitors will be there for the first time.

Here’s the other thing: parts of the Louvre change. Sure, the Mona Lisa is a more or less permanent fixture there, but many other exhibits come and go. New paintings arrive, new sculptures appear and things get moved around.

So what does a museum do manage this change for both new and repeat visitors? They make good use of the following:

Web pages (including blogs) – so you can be found on the Internet
Maps – so you can actually find something once you get to the museum
Tour guides – sometimes the personal touch is tres important
Deals for new or returning visitors – a little bit of honey never hurts

And they do these things even though they know that they have some unique artifacts that people literally travel around the world to see. (Although a lot of people still aren’t convinced that the glass pyramid in the middle of the Louvre is one of those can’t-miss attractions, if you know what I mean…)
We tend to think of museums as musty, creaky and stagnant old places, but any good museum doesn’t work that way at all. They change, rearrange and market themselves to stay fresh and relevant.

The lesson

Your blog or website will have some of the same basic features of a museum.

Static parts (static pages)
Changing parts (blog entries)
Maps (sitemaps, which have really been replaced by headers, categories, sidebars and widgets)

Your blog may be famous for some pillar content, for your eBook or some other feature. You probably have regulars and a good vibe going. That’s all cool.

But for heaven’s sake, give your first time visitors some directions. Help them get caught up. Make your special features easy to find.
Every new visitor is a potential regular visitor.

Mark Dykeman (@markdykeman) is the founder and main brain of Thoughtwrestling. He is an IT professional who has been blogging since 2007. He is the author of the award-winning blog Broadcasting Brain. His work has appeared in numerous blogs, including Mashable, Lateral Action, Problogger and Copyblogger.

Announcing: Headway 1.7 Beta (Brace Yourselves)

Michael Martine — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 18:00:11 +0000

The next version of Headway is just around the corner. If you currently hold a developer’s license for the killerest, awesomest WordPress Theme Designer anywhere, then head over and download your copy now.

Here are SOME of the Improvements and Changes You can Expect:

Quick Start Wizard

Starting from a fresh install, the quick start wizard will show immediately after loading the visual editor. Otherwise, you can run the wizard through the Tools menu in the visual editor.

The wizard will guide you step-by-step through choosing your layout:

Uploading your header image
Color scheme (get this: it even detects colors from your header image to create a color scheme!)
Selecting fonts.

At the end of the wizard, you click a button to build your site and it’ll all be done in a snap!

Column System For Leafs

Instead of dragging all of your leafs around, you can now put them into columns. You can move and resize the entire columns with ease. The previous layout system is still present. You can specify whether or not you want columns for the particular page in the visual editor.

Styles Manager

Before Headway 1.7, Headway came with 1 layout and you had to work from there. Headway 1.7 comes with 4 pre-loaded styles in the new Styles Manager, which allows you to save and load styles. You can also import and export styles just like before, but in a much more organized way!

Leaf Templates

Instead of linking pages and being locked into the layout of the page you are linking to, you can now save your leafs (and columns) into Leaf Templates. Leaf Templates can be loaded onto any page. Once a template is loaded, you can modify it just like any regular page.

Automatic Upgrades

Even though we think all of the other features in 1.7 are incredibly cool, we REALLY think this one is cool . No longer do you have to go to the Headway site, download the latest version, upload it, and activate it. Oh, and if you ever did any custom.css or used the custom folder in Headway, you won’t have to worry about transferring that to the new installation either. The automatic upgrader does it all with only a few clicks!

HUGE Speed Improvements and Optimizations

In 1.7, we rethought how Headway was coded. We’ve made major improvements to the visual editor to drastically reduce the amount of conflicts from third-party plugins and also make loading the visual editor MUCH faster. Also, we completely rewrote the content leaf to be more efficient and more stable than before.

Feature Removal: Photo Gallery Leaf

This was a difficult consensus to reach amongst the team here, but we decided it would be best to remove the Photo Gallery leaf from the Headway core. We felt that the leaf was too complex to be in core. Also, the photo gallery was the only leaf that used the advanced leafs panel, making that a waste of space in the admin panel. If you’re screaming at us now, don’t worry! If you use the Photo Gallery leaf on your website (or wish to use it anyway), you will be able to download the leaf from the Headway Marketplace for free.?

What if You Don’t Have a Developer’s License?

You can upgrade your current license to a developer’s license. In addition to beta access, a developer’s license allows you to use Headway on as many sites you own as you like (you don’t have to really be a developer).

What if You Don’t Have the Current Version of Headway?

Grab the current developer license for yourself, then you can access the beta for 1.7.

Remember: It’s a BETA

Beta means it’s not… quite… ready for prime time. You shouldn’t use Headway 1.7 beta on a business-critical site. Most web hosts allow you to create new WordPress blogs inside of folders on your main site, though, and you can test out Headway safely that way.

Don’t delay… grab your copy of the Headway 1.7 beta today.

Turn Your WordPress Blog into a Traffic Magnet via SEO

Michael Martine — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 22:07:29 +0000

I’m teaming up with Lexi Rodrigo, one of the best freelance copywriters I know, to bring you a free interview-style webinar on simple SEO strategies you can use to increase traffic to your WordPress blog. Normally, people pay me decent money to ask me anything they want about blog SEO, but you get to have me for free on this webinar.

See the details and sign up here: http://blogtrafficexperts.com/michaelm.

DATE: Tuesday, July 6th, at 8pm Eastern

After you register you will receive the URL and log in information for the webinar via email.

Lexi has a bunch of awesome questions to ask me, but the best part about this is that you get to ask me anything you want, too.

For free.

So be sure to sign up and we’ll see you there!

http://blogtrafficexperts.com/michaelm

The Golden Triangle of Online Marketing, Part 2: Social Media

Michael Martine — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:28:04 +0000

There are three major online marketing channels for any business these days: blogging, social media, and email. If you haven’t read the first post in this series, check it out. It covers blog marketing for business. In this post, we’re going to cover the second point in what I call the Golden Triangle of Online Marketing: social media.

To someone who hasn’t been steeped in web culture from its beginnings in the early 90s (and even earlier in some cases), social media doesn’t seem like an appropriate business marketing channel. After all, it’s… social. It seems like a waste of valuable time: we’re just shooting the breeze or even playing games with people and other silliness.

Where Does “Social” Happen?

Pretend we’re back in the old days before the advent of telecommunications. Where did a lot of business actually take place? In places of business? Sure, of course, but where else? Star for you if you said cocktail parties, pubs, conventions, golf courses, hunting trips… in other words, social gatherings of some type.

Let’s jump back to the present day (whew… the hygiene is much better here!). Same question: where does business actually happen? A high percentage of it still takes place in social settings. It’s just that now we have a new social setting: the web. And because people are social creatures, this new social “setting” (or tools, depending on how you look at it–kind of like the whole photon vs. particle thing with light, but I digress…) is where business takes place. It’s available to us 24/7 on any internet-connected device.

It’s possible for web-based social settings & tools to be the only ones we use, but using “real life” settings & tools along with the web still gives us the best relationships with other people. And that’s what matters, and what gives us the best results in the long run (if we were to be so focused on the bottom line).

The Two-fold Job of Social Media in Online Marketing

Social media has two jobs to accomplish for us in online marketing:

Build relationships for mutual benefit
Send traffic back to your blog

These two goals reinforce each other, too. Each needs the other for social media as an online marketing channel to be effective. And while these two points are the “job” of social media in online marketing, there are a number of benefits wrapped up in this:

You have listening posts in social media so you can always understand how your business is perceived and what your market is really hungry for.
Opportunities will come from your social interactions online just like they do from offline social activities.
You will get greater traffic to your money-making online properties, resulting in greater sales.
Your authority in your market will grow.

How Social Media Accomplishes This

Here’s a quick rundown of how, exactly, using social media accomplishes all this wonderfulness for you:

Each social media site you belong to gives you a profile page with links back to your blog and often a biography and picture.
Your interactions with others in social media, if done correctly, will cause people to want to know more about you, so they will visit your profile page to do so. From here they can add you as a friend and/or visit your blog.
Profile pages tend to show up in search results, too, which means that even if someone else has the same name as you, your name will show up top in search if you have a bigger social media footprint. There are other Michael Martines out there, but none of them are ever going to beat me in a search for that name.
In your interactions with others on social media, your goal is to provide information your market wants and to be helpful to your market. This builds trust, traffic, and, ultimately… sales.
One of easiest ways to do this is to simply post links to helpful information in your social streams. Some of those links (the minority) should be to your own blog posts in order to create value for your market and send traffic back to your blog.
Engaging in chat-style conversations to help others is another easy way to do this: just be there for people and offer a helping hand when you can.
One of the goals of social media is to drive traffic back to the blog. Make this easier by adding in social media tools to your blog so that your readers can help you with this.

What About Tools? Which Ones?

You’ll notice that in all of this I haven’t mentioned a single specific social media tool, like Facebook, Foursquare, or Twitter. There are good reasons for that. This is not a “how to” article for any tool. The main tools right now (note that emphasis) are Facebook and Twitter. There are plenty of others that resonate with some folks but not others (Reddit vs. Digg vs. LinkedIn, for example).

New tools are created, old tools fall out of favor. The tools aren’t the important thing, it’s what they do for us: they help us connect with other human beings. There are a bazillion posts out there on specific tools and even blogs dedicated to them. The top ones are good, just google it and you’ll be golden.

How is it Working for You?

How are social media and blogging working for you as closely related online marketing channels? Any frustrations or insights you’d like to share? Have at it in the comments!

The Golden Triangle of Online Marketing, Part 1: Blogging

Michael Martine — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 22:49:58 +0000

Welcome to a special (and short) series of posts on online marketing. I’m broadening out from blogging alone because I want to paint you the bigger picture of how your business’s blog fits in with other marketing channels. Namely: social media marketing and email marketing. In fact these three are so interrelated that I’ve decided to call them the Golden Triangle of Online Marketing. And also because life is always better when you have cool names for stuff.

As you would expect from me, I’m going to say that blogging is the first major corner of the Golden Triangle. Your blog is your home base and it’s often the first part of the Golden Triangle people work on. That’s not always the best thing (building up your social media presence first can be an awesome tactic), but it’s the most common.

Without a blog, the other two channels are kinda pointless.

Why?

Taking Action

Because the goal of social media marketing and email marketings is not only to foster beneficial relationships, but to get your customers to take action. So… you need a place to send them. A blog is the best place for that. You can also send people directly to sales pages, e-commerce catalog pages, or old-school static website pages, but the magic of blogs is the deeper interaction that’s possible:

Comments
Tags
Tweets and retweets
Facebook likes
Sharing & bookmarking
Related posts
In-depth topic exploration
More personable than other media, which builds like & trust

That last point is particularly important, because until blogs started to become mainstream, you just didn’t see too much of that online. People were treating online marketing as though it were “print marketing on the screen.” And while it’s true that direct-response copy is “sales in print,” blogs are more like “personality in pixels.”

And They Shall Know You by Your Blog Posts

Social media and email give folks some sense of who you are as a person to deal with, but the blog is where they really get to know you. By the posts you publish, your customers will know:

What you care about, and they’ll compare that to what they care about
What you don’t care about (sometimes via omission)
Where you draw lines and what you stand for
How you treat people who disagree with you or who become antagonistic
How you deal with problems that arise
Your ability to communicate what you know and impart understanding
Whether your communication style and personality is a good fit for them
How consistent you are (oops, lol)

So you see that even if you never write a single “salesy” blog post (and you shouldn’t), you’re still marketing online in a profound way.

A Worthy Destination?

A blog is the worthiest destination I can think of to send customers. There some things we need to keep in mind about creating, designing, and publishing with blogs as relates to the other two points in the Golden Triangle of Online Marketing, which I’ll tie together more in the posts which follow this one in the series.

Subscribe so you don’t miss them!

Do you think blogs deserve status as one of the three points in something called “The Golden Triangle of Online Marketing?” Having a hard time elevating your blog to “primary point” status? Let’s hear it in the comments!

Open Discussion: When to Redesign Your Site?

Michael Martine — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 20:00:22 +0000

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while (thank you) and you visit it now (thank you again), you’ll notice th look has been refreshed. My take on site redesigns is that they need to happen with a lot more frequency than we’re probably comfortable with. Why? Because things change faster than we notice and we love to put things off.

But if you’re concerned about visual branding and design, you simply can’t have an outdated-looking site.

And even if you’re not concerned about how things look, you should be concerned about how they function and how smoothly the mechanisms of your online business operate. Design affects this, too, it’s not just the “pixel paint.”

In other words: don’t leave money on the table just because you find site redesigns uncomfortable or expensive.

How often have you redesigned your blog? What prompts you to redesign? Let’s talk…

The Smell of Fresh Pixels: New Remarkablogger Design!

Michael Martine — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:42:17 +0000

Using the awesomest premium WordPress theme ever, Headway, Sherice Jacob of iElectrify has done a fabuloso job of redesigning Remarkablogger!

If you’ve been reading posts in a reader or your email (thank you so much for subscribing), I warmly invite you to come check out the new design.

I get asked a lot who I recommend as a blog designer and as a designer specializing in the Headway theme.

Now you know. Not only did I find her work top-notch, but she was a pleasure to deal with. Please give Sherice your business and tell her I sent you.

Open Discussion: How do You Handle Competition?

Michael Martine — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:58:29 +0000

The thought of entering a crowded market can be daunting. When another business/blog suddenly gains audience and traction, do you worry? When somebody else comes out with a very similar product to yours right before or right after yours, how do you feel about that? Does that army of freelancers out there all doing what you do make you sweat?

How do you handle competition?