Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Erin

This is certainly one of the best marketing forums around.

You could help yourself a little by completing your profile details and linking to your blog. And if you become active here and answer a bunch of questions, your profile will start to develop some real credibility. All grist to the search engine mill.

I see you're on LinkedIn. Are you a member of the MarketingProfs group there? https://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=100106 There is also a fair bit of forum activity within other LinkedIn groups.

I presume WordPress pings every time you post. Do you also Tweet your blog posts?

Do you have MySpace and Facebook listings that point back to your blog?

If so, you're probably doing all the cross-linking basics. Maybe it's time to have a hard look at content. On first look, I thought your blog was an advertising site for SurveyMonkey. Maybe you could look at some different images rather than images that look so close to the manufacturers logos?

As for followers - where does someone click to follow? I couldn't figure even how to sign up for a RSS feed - can you put up a link for Feedburner or similar?

Hope that helps.

ChrisB

The frustration that you're feeling is because it seems like no one is interested in your wisdom. The reality is that no one probably knows how valuable your wisdom is for them. And as a marketer - that's what you need to convey - why someone should listen to you (among the hundreds of thousands of other bloggers).

So how can you get people interested in your blog? By spreading your wisdom throughout the Internet, where people who are likely to be interested in your wisdom are. If you're really interested in sharing ideas, then take each of your recent postings, and search for where others have been talking about similar ideas and add your voice to the mix. In you like what someone else has written, contact them. Start a dialog with them. On the Internet, no man (or woman) can afford to be an island.

Dear Erin,

Keep at it.

Nothing worth having ever comes into one's life swiftly.

I've learned this the hard way.

To encourage people to sign up to your blog you must offer them something. Your site looks WAY better than many I've seen (including, I hasten to add, mine) but you need to offer people something—some incentive—to join your herd.

You must also focus on your readers, on their wants, needs, and desires. By all means talk about yourself. But don't do this more than you talk to and about your readers and what's of importance to them.

What makes you different? What makes you worthy of other people's time? What, in essence, makes you worth someone's vote?

One way to offer worth or value is by offering a simple newsletter as premium content. The only way to receive this content is to sign up for it—to subscribe.

You'll need (or really benefit from) a decent auto responder for this, and I can recommend www.aweber.com.

Over the last few months I've used a combination of the newsletter technique together with my posts here on the KHE, and posts on Twitter to establish my voice and bolster my credibility.

Does it work? Yes, it does.

I now have blog readers in three continents, I have blog subscribers in six countries, and although it's early days (I've been contributing to this forum since May 2, 2009) it's working and I'm now in the Top 25 in terms of the Marketing Profs Know-How Exchange contributor list.

The secret is to take action and not to allow one's self to be beaten down by naysayers or by one's own self limiting beliefs.

The trick is to take small steps. To advance just a little every day. And this is something I cover in depth in my latest newsletter "The Marketeer".

So please, keep at it.

I hope this helps. Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA