Most people agree that much of our everyday communication is non-verbal. The common number thrown around is 93% because of some study in California back in the 70’s. Seems high to me because words are important. But hey, I’m not in California. Or in the 70’s.

Regardless a whole bunch gets left out when just looking at words on a page. Or a screen.

If you’ve ever had an email exchange spin out of control because someone read something into your words that you completely didn’t intend to be there you’ve seen this in action. They attached different non-verbal cues to your email than you did. That can get messy.

One of my favorite exercises in acting class involves taking a line or little snippet of dialog and coming up with as may different ways, moods, and emotions to say it. Depending on how you use your face, voice and body when you say something can completely change what you mean.

Consider the phrase, “Yeah. Right.”

Depending on how you say it it could mean you completely agree, completely disagree, or some shade in between.

Enter Video

It turns out that the overwhelming majority of people on the web prefer to consume their content via video versus text, to the tune of nearly 90%! Combine that with the technology improvements going on and we begin to understand the huge increase in video sharing on the web these days.

That being the case, one great way to spice up your business blog is by adding video. It’s easier than you think.

For one thing you don’t even have to make your own videos. YouTube has tons of great business related  videos that you can embed right in your blog. When you find one that relates to your audience you can embed it as easy as copy/paste.

Even so I would encourage you to make you own videos. That’s far less complicated than you probably think too. And you don’t need a whole bunch of expensive equipment either.

One of the top selling electronic gadgets on Amazon.com right now is a Flip HD video camera. You can get it for less than $175 and be recording high definition video for your business right away.

But you don’t even need to get that “fancy.”

So far I’ve recorded all my videos on Chris Cree.TV using just the webcam on my laptop and a screen capture program. Since I’m on a Mac I use ScreenFlow. For Windows users I’ve heard good things about Camtasia.

Here’s an example of what you can put together that way. Remember, it doesn’t have to be fancy to be effective!

One thing every entrepreneur and most small business people struggle with is too much to do and too little time to do it in. Our (yes I fit into both of those categories myself) plates are full already so the thought of having to add time to write content for a business blog can be enough to keep many businesses who could benefit from a blog from even getting started.

Business blog posts can be short and sweet!

I know exactly how that goes. My posting frequency here on SuccessCREEations has been erratic to say the least. I’ve gotten so “busy” with client work that I don’t post much at all. I would joke that “the cobbler’s kids have no shoes” and explain that’s why I neglect my own blogging.

Yet I tell my busy clients that blogging for their business is easy and there is time to do it because it’s an important part of their overall online marketing strategy. This weekend it occurred to me that I was being a bit, um, hypocritical telling business owners that they have time to blog if I’m not going to make it a priority myself!

The good news is, writing blog posts for your business blog doesn’t have to be some long, drawn out affair. They can be short and sweet.

I tell my clients that a business blog post only needs to be between 180 and 300 words to be effective. That means they only need to be a few short paragraphs, about the length of a typical email.

That means most business blog posts can be written in a few short minutes.

In fact, this post took me right at 10 minutes to write, including time to find the image and resize it, and is 329 words long, which puts it at the “long” end of a typical business blog post.

When posting to your business blog is made that easy, there really is time for it!

Last week I alluded to an upcoming announcement. Today I’m thrilled to announce that I have joined Skinny Moose Media as their new Community Development Director.

Between their Skinny Moose blog network and their US Hunting Today brand they have just over 100 websites in their community generating nearly a million page views a month.

As Community Development Director I will be working with the Skinny Moose bloggers and their readership to create a place that people can feel a part of where they want to belong. We have several initiatives that we’ve talked about and I’m exited to be joining such a dynamic group over there.

Longtime Relationship

I first met Steve Remington, the President and driving force behind Skinny Moose,  years ago over on Liz Strauss’ Successful-Blog. It was one of her Tuesday night Open Comment Nights in fact. (I even found that original connection.)

That was when he was just getting started putting a blog network together. And I was just looking at taking the step away from Blogger over to WordPress. In Steve’s world that was 2 kids ago (he’s got 6 now!)

Over the years we’ve tracked each others progress and kept in touch. Steve even asked me to come blog for him a couple times in the past but we never quite came together.

We did talk several times the past few months and then last month Steve made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. The moral of that story is that it pays to network!

SuccessCREEations & Clients

What does this new turn mean for SuccessCREEations and our clients?

Ultimately they’ll see no change. We will still serve our existing clients. That was part of what made Steve’s offer so attractive to me.

Of course we will now have to be more selective on the new clients we take on in the future. But that will workout in everyone’s benefit as we will now be able to focus down even further on our core competencies here.

And in the end it may even free me up to once again blog more consistently here at SuccessCREEations. We’ll have to see how that works out.

Traffic Jam

There are two types of people who tend to know how to drive traffic on the internet. And the top players in both categories know how to drive massive traffic.

Interestingly enough historically there hasn’t been much of any crossover between the two groups. In fact, the two groups tend to look on one another with suspicion and disdain.

Internet Marketers

On the one hand you have the hard core internet marketers. These folks go by many different names such as SEO experts, search marketers, affiliate marketers, pay-per-click marketers, ect.

Their realm is that of the paid search results. They live in the land of the Sponsored Results that you see at the top and right side of the Google results pages.

Internet Marketers understand keywords and bidding processes. They know that it takes money to make money and they are perfectly willing to spend what it takes to drive traffic to their web sites because those web sites in turn make them money.

They tend to be really good with numbers and analysis. They use terms like click through rate, impressions, autoresponders, and squeeze pages. Sure they have word skills too.

But their interest in words often only carries as far as it takes to persuade people to take action, whether that is to click on the search ad or make a purchase after their target audience has clicked through to their website. And their websites often consist of a few landing pages designed specifically to convince people to make some purchase.

Good Internet Marketers are making a bunch of money. The best take in millions each year.

Bloggers

The other group that knows how to drive traffic to web sites is the bloggers. Their methods are very different from the Internet Marketers.

Bloggers are the word people, the relational ones. They are really good at generating original content and developing conversation. They network with other bloggers, spend time in the comment box.

For the most part bloggers completely ignore paid search all together. Some even cary that so far as to almost never click on ads or “sponsored results”. Often the only time they pay attention to paid search ads is when they check the few dollars they may earn a month from running Google ads on their blogs.

Instead bloggers live in the realm of organic search. They understand search engine optimization and assume that the only way to be good at it is to master the free side of the search results. They are self restricted from the paid side of the search engines.

Because most bloggers are completely broke.

Bridging the Gap

As I already mentioned there tends to be very little cross over between the two groups. The internet marketing folks are busy tweaking and adjusting their ad campaigns so that they are profitable to have time to generate lots of original content. They may even have a tough time understanding why someone would bother spending time on a website (or a blog) that wasn’t earning any money.

Bloggers have a tendency to be suspicious of anyone motivated by profit. They thrive on independent viewpoints and in their minds once moeny gets involved the independence flies out the window.

But here’s what I suspect. Something tells me that the folks who bridge that gap between the two biggest traffic generators on the web will be in a position to become very wealthy indeed.

As a longtime blogger I’ve recently been doing some heavy research on the internet marketing side of things. And I’m intrigued with what I’m learning.

New Projects

I started looking at paid search because I had an idea for a new project and, with everything else I have going on, that project needs to be profitable if I’m going to make it work. I’m thinking that paid search will play a significant role in that profitability, especially during the start up phase.

Not only will bridging the gap be useful for my own side project but it will allow me to help one of my clients directly. And beyond even that, the simple act of doing the research, gaining the knowledge, has opened the door for another new opportunity for me.

All that to say, expect some announcements in the next couple weeks. Things are happening here at SuccessCREEations!

Is KnowMoreMedia Finished?

This has been a sad week for the blogging world. KnowMoreMedia, a major blog network with over 100 blogs focused on the business world, effectively went out of business as of Thursday.

Well, they laid off all their employees anyway. I suppose technically that’s not exactly the same thing as going out of business.

But it might as well be for the folks who are no longer being paid.

Postmortem

I can’t imagine autopsies being fun.  Nor do I understand we’re so prone to slow way down when passing a highway accident to be sure we get a good look.

Yet we do slow down to get that good look. And I can’t help asking some questions as I look at the apparent downfall of one of the larger niche blogging networks out there.

And as an aside let me say that I completely admire what KnowMoreMedia did for blogging as a medium and for bloggers individually. I consider Easton Ellsworth, their now former Senior Editor and longtime author of BusinessBlogWire, a good friend.

I take no pleasure in their demise. But I do have lots of questions.

Too Many Questions

With the crazy way my mind works the questions that cross my brain are all over the map. For example,

Is the paid writer supported exclusively by advertising (often generated nearly overwhelmingly from Google’s AdSense) the best business online business model? Is it even a sustainable business model?

David Bullock pointed out a while back that a single marketing channel makes for bad business. I don’t know what KnowMoreMedia’s business model was. But any company that relies on revenue from Google’s AdSense while at the same time also depending on Google to send them tons of search traffic is looking for disaster.

One little algorithm change or policy modification and you’re sunk.

Wendy Piersall experienced exactly that in her early days as CEO of Sparkplugging. Fortunately Wendy was able to adapt her business model and Sparkplugging survived. But I know it sure wasn’t easy for her.

Is MovableType really that much worse a platform for SEO than WordPress? Was theirs just set up poorly? Or was the Google penalty they got really that severe?

I ask because if you search for their business name, KnowMoreMedia, their domain , KnowMoreMedia.com is burried on the 4th page of Google results. Now granted that may not be their primary keyword. But it’s not like they show up prominently for business blogging, business blogs, or blogs about business either.

They don’t even show up prominently for Business News, which is one of the things they said their site is/was primarily about. “Know More Media is an online publisher of business information and news.”

Couple that with the talk of many of the bloggers moving their blogs to WordPress and it makes me wonder how much of a factor MovableType was in all this.

The general consensus is that KMM was heavily penalized by Google when the Big G decided they didn’t like sites using things like text link ads and paid reviews. In the eyes of the Goog those sites skewed search results inappropriately and therefore needed to be penalized.

KnowMoreMedia.com was far from the only site affected by this change in policy. Affected sites either adapted, or didn’t. From what all I can see KMM was in the latter category.

A huge debate has raged throughout the bloggosphere about whether it was a justified change or just a move by Google to stifle competition from other advertising sources.

Regardless, building your business on a single income source is asking for trouble should market changes ever dry up that source.

Will blog networks have to take on some of the characteristics of traditional media companies to survive long term?

Jeremy Wright, the CEO of b5 Media (one of the most successful blog networks around) wrote a long post last week about what it takes to build a successful blog network. That post should be required reading for anyone looking to start a blog network today.

In it Jeremy explains the complexities of managing a network of bloggers. Many of the issues he mentions require structure, organization and resources along the lines of traditional media companies. Bloggers are a notoriously independent bunch. That independence makes many bloggers dislike and distrust many of the structures needed to make a blog network successful.

Jeremy also gives some tips on getting started right. First one?

Don’t rely on one type of revenue: It is sometimes very easy to become dependent on one “circle of life”: more google pagerank means more text links which means more revenue, etc. As soon as Google says “selling text links are evil”, though, things get… hard. And that sucks.

Becoming more like a traditional media company while retaining the things that make blogs so appealing is the highwire act that blog netoworks must walk. No one’s saying that it is easy. But failure to walk that fine line has disasterous consequences.

Even More Questions

I’ve got even more questions on topics ranging from the implications for a non-profit network like HighCallingBlogs.com (a client of mine) to the long term survivablilty of advertising supported social media sites.

I’m working on a post exploring the non-profit implications that will be published over on HighCallingBlogs tomorrow. I’ll update this post with a link.

The bottom line is blogging is still a remarkably new arena. I think many blog networks will succeeed long term for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that they will be able to achieve economies of scale that are simply impossible for individual bloggers.

UPDATE: As promised, here is the post on HighCallingBlogs.com about Blog Network Sustainability. Go check it out to see the discussion over there.

I flew out late last week to join Gorgeous in Dallas at the eWomenNetwork annual national conference. I bought the latest Technology Review to read on the flight because the current issue is all about social media and the future of Web 2.0, which is obviously something I’m interested in.

On page 56 is an article about the coming bandwidth crunch and how much video content is passing around the web. One of their examples is a video called Evolution of Dance by a guy named Judson Laipply. They pointed out that this particular video was viewed 87 million times.

Evolution of Dance

Judson Laipply performing the Evolution of Dance

I mention this because the very first speaker of the eWomenNetwork conference was none other than Judson Liapply. Turns out he’s a very entertaining speaker.

His message is pretty straight forward. If you don’t adapt to the rapidly changing nature of our society you’re going to be left behind.

In the social media environment that is especially true. And it turns out that Judson’s video clip has been seen another 5 million times since that Technology review article was penned.

I don’t know what the lead time is on an article for that publication. Regardless it doesn’t seem like the demand for video content is going anywhere but up! Since that’s the case take a moment and check it out for yourself.

Networking in the Middle

The time in Dallas was non-stop analog networking. With something like 2500 women (and about 6 other guys) you can imagine how conversationally focused the event was.

Was it weird being one of the very few guys in attendance? A little I suppose.

But quite frankly it was a good business decision. Starting with the shuttle ride to the hotel from the airport I was able to make several great contacts there with people who are looking to tap into my services to propel their businesses. And their business will propel my own business as well in a win-win situation.

I don’t think I can possibly stress enough how vital analog networking is for folks in our line of work. It can be tempting bore sight on the computer monitor and forget that our businesses are ultimately about people.

Taking the time to connect with some of them in person can do wonders for your bottom line profitability.

Michael Gerber’s E-Myth

One of the last speakers was Michael Gerber, the author of The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It and who knows how many other phenomenal other books.

Chris and Michael Gerber

Michael presented a ton of great information in his talk just like he does in his books. Perhaps the single biggest thing I took away from his talk is that we should be building our businesses for scalability.

If developed correctly our businesses can grow far beyond our own personal abilities. The trick is to develop systems that allow for growth. Then make them simple enough for anyone to follow.

Otherwise your business will forever be dependent on you or on bringing in personalities just like you to keep it going. A personality dependent organization will never be able to reach it’s full growth potential.

I’m about 3/4 of the way through that first book and I recommend it highly for anyone who is serious about building thier business to the point where it can still operate smoothly even if they take some time off for a vacation or whatever.

And to top the whole thing off, Michael Gerber was gracious enough to let Gorgeous snap a picture of me after he signed one of the books we purchased. Good stuff all around.

Oh. Yes. I do see the irony in the fact that it was the rare male speaker at this event that resonated most with me. Go figure.

One of the big reasons we have web sites and blogs is to generate traffic. I mean why put up a site unless want people to see it, right?

Yet some people insist on adding this traffic repellent to their sites and then wonder why they never see more than a handful of visitors.

Smelling Fishy

When folks do this to their blogs or web sites it’s like the owner of a high end clothing store who chooses to intentionally have an overpowering smell in their store that’s just a little offish.

Perhaps that store has a nautical theme to its branding. Maybe the owner is even an avid boater. Perhaps he loves the smell of the sea. So he has figured out a way to bring that smell into his store. The idea is that he’ll boost sales because people will feel like they are shopping by the ocean.

Sure a small percentage of folks will like it. But the trouble is, to a whole lot of people the ocean just plain smells fishy. And those people almost never come back to the store.

Sound like a silly example? Well some people do exactly the same thing with their blogs and web sites.

Assaulting Your Visitors

If you want to maximize traffic to your blog, or your web site, then please, please, refrain from automatically assaulting your visitors with your favorite music the moment they click over to your site.

Now I like music as much as the next guy. More probably. I keep my iTunes running in the background pretty much all day long. If you care you can usually see what I’m listening to in real time on my Last.FM profile. If I’m in my office, chances are good there is tuneage playing.

And I cruse the web a lot, especially looking at new blogs. It’s part of my job.

There is very little that is more annoying than clicking on a site and suddenly hearing some song or other random sound blaring from my speakers. Even though you like music & I happen to like music there is a strong probability that we don’t like the same music.

Not only that but you have no control over the volume your site visitors have their speaker set at. In my case, with iTunes playing in the background, I have my speakers set fairly loud so that I can hear any important system sounds over the music. That means your music pours into my office pretty stinking LOUD!

It’s no different than that image at the top of the post. You are forcing me to listen to your music whether I like it or not.

Potential Visitor Responses

When that blaring noise assaults your visitors they will probably react in one of three ways.

1. Immediately click away, probably via the back button on their browser. This is what I do most often. And rest assured that I am very unlikely to ever return to your site once I do.
2. Frantically search the page for the offending player so I can hit the stop button. I’ll only do this if, because of my work, I have to stay on the page for more than a few seconds (and can’t immediately choose option 1).
3. Reach for the volume button on my speakers to turn them down. I resort to this third option if I have to navigate around the site a little because most of these players reload, and therefore restart in all their loudness every time a new page is loaded.

These are not visitor attraction reactions because regardless of which option I choose I’m annoyed and far less likely to return than I would be otherwise.

Bad For Business

It’s one thing for bloggers to assault their readers this way. There are many reasons for blogging other than attracting visitors. But what still amazes me is how many business web sites are actively repelling visitors and traffic by making this same mistake.

Just because you can add sound to your web site doesn’t mean you should add it, especially if you want people to actually read your content, learn more about your business, and ultimately spend money with your company.

It’s one thing to offer the option to have sound for a “more complete” user experience. But you should seriously consider setting the sound default to off.

Otherwise you’ve basically decided to market your business with that “fresh ocean smell” that many of your potential clients think smells a little fishy.

Image Credit: BoingBoing

This past week I gave a presentation on Blogging and Social Media in Your Business to a local group of 60+ entrepreneurs. The talk was sponsored by the ATDC and the Creative Coast here in Savannah.

The talk was designed as an introductory talk for business people who didn’t yet have an understanding of what blogging and social media is all about. Because most of the people in the room were not much beyond the “we’ve hear the terms” phase it meant I had to cram a ton of information into the 30 minutes I was given. (For some reason when preparing I thought I had 45 minutes plus 15 minutes question time not 30/15. Oops.)

I told the folks to buckle their seat belts and hold on ’cause I threw a bunch of information at them very fast.

My hope was that everyone would find at least one nugget to walk away with that they could take back to their own businesses and get thinking about the possibilities.

Here are the slides I presented for any who are interested.

Enjoy!

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Sandra Yancey the CEO and Founder of eWomenNetwork came to Savannah this week to speak at the local eWomenNetwork chapter’s monthly Accelerated Networking Event.

Her talk was fabulous and I’ve got to say that Sandra Yancey is a tremendously good public speaker. She had the whole room captivated for the entire time she spoke and the audience was silent for the entire time. Getting a room full of 80 women to be quiet for a few minutes can be an accomplishment but Sandra spoke for nearly an hour and a half! The time had passed so quickly while she spoke that it felt like less than half that time to me.

Starting a New Business

Sandra spoke about some of the struggles it takes to get a business off the ground and running profitably. She shared how close to failure she’d been at the beginning of her business and how she was able to acquire the skills and knowledge she needed adapt her business turn it into a successfully growing venture.

As Sandra Yancey spoke she filled her talk with stories and anecdotes ranging from her own personal experiences to relating the classic children’s story of The Little Engine That Could.

Most Valuable Asset

Sandra shared what she thought was the single most valuable asset in her business career, and it wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t capital reserves, marketing savvy, or the ability to come up with earth shaking new ideas.

Instead she said the most valuable asset for your business is Access.

By access Sandra meant the ability to connect with the people who can provide what you need. As a way of explaining she shared the story of Marion Luna Brem and how she went from entry level car sales person to owner of multiple car dealerships with annual revenue measured in the tens of millions of dollars. Love Chrysler in Corpus Cristy Texas is one of her dealerships.

Apparently after Marion had worked her way up to General Manager of a dealership and had been successful in that position for a while she wanted to own her own dealership. Trouble is she didn’t have the $800,000 she needed at the time to open a dealership.

And she didn’t have the collateral to get a loan of that magnitude. But what she did have was a successful track record of running a dealership and a stack of testimonial letters from satisfied customers.

So what she did was put together a package with copies of all those letters and sent them to several different CPA’s. She asked the accountants if they knew anyone who would be interested in investing in a car dealership partnership with someone who knew how to get that kind of customer response.

One of them knew an investor who ended up fronting the cash and the rest, as they say, is now history.

Marion Luna Brem didn’t have the money she needed to launch her business, nor did she know anyone who would be willing to provide it. However she was smart enough to figure out a way to gain access to someone who was.

Sandra Yancey is right. Access is tremendously valuable. It makes sense.

Photos from the Event

Here are a few photos from the event for you.

eWomenNetwork meeting in Savannah this week.

Gorgeous with some eWomenNetwork Ladies.

Sandra Yancey gave a great talk about what it takes to successfully get your business up and running profitably.

Sandra Yancey gives Gorgeous a gift of appreciation.

Sandra Yancey and Savannah TV personality Jessica Kiss.

Local News Coverage

And finally I’ve got a copy of the local news story that aired in Savannah with Jessica Kiss from theCoastalSource for you to check out.

It was a very successful event by all measures. The immediate feedback I got from chatting with some of the members afterwards was that they were able to walk away with some great information and encouragement to help them move forward in their businesses.

To a person they were glad they heard what Sandra had to say.

Gorgeous and I were up early this morning. I set the alarm for 4 AM because we had to be down at one of our local TV stations by 6 so that Gorgeous could be interviewed about her upcoming eWomenNetwork event.

The event Wednesday will be a big deal because eWomenNetwork founder and CEO Sandra Yancey will be here in Savannah as this month’s speaker. With over 113 eWN chapters in the US and Canada you can imagine that Sandra can only attend a very small percentage of the events in any given month.

We’re fortunate here in Savannah that Sandra will be paying us a visit and sharing her insights into how to network with folks who can help entrepreneurs and business women expand their business vision and attract new customers and referrals. It promises to be another top notch event.

Small Market TV

Savannah’s not a big city by any stretch. It currently Ranks 97th of 210 television market cities in the US, which is higher than I would have expected for a city of about a quarter of a million people. Looking at a map of TV markets that ranking includes an area from just south of Charleston, SC all the way down to the Florida border. Our “local market” includes a whole lot outside the city limits.

It was interesting getting a peek into the production of a small city TV morning show. As is typical of Savannah the atmosphere was friendly and relaxed. The folks at the station obviously knew their business and went about their morning work professionally. They seemed unphased by the early hour on a Monday.

Jessica Kiss was especially kind and gracious towards Gorgeous. Afterwards she told me that it helped put her at ease realizing that Jessica had done her research and already knew what eWomenNetwork was all about.

Here’s a photo of the two I snagged after the interview was done before Jessica had to move on to the next piece.

Some Observations

It was interesting to me how the on air personalities had to sprinkle their little snippets of talking on camera in between all the other stuff that goes into a morning show. Being a small town most of the feature bits (like the cooking segment for example) were tapes so the on-air & tech folks could chat in between it all.

There was a well choreographed dance as the on-air folks and the cameras moved around between the various sets in the studio. Everyone obviously knew their jobs and what to expect next as things moved through the morning.

Gorgeous thought watching Johnathan Myers presenting the weather in front of the blue screen was pretty slick. She knew how it was done. But I guess seeing it for the first time is a bit different. She kept whispering to me, “That is so cool!”

Video Already Posted

They’ve even got the video from this morning already posted on line. Take a look and see for yourself how Gorgeous did.

When it was all said and done Gorgeous said she was glad it was over. The folks at theCoastalSource were very kind. But Gorgeous says she has no desire to be a celebrity.

Especially if it means getting up at 4 AM on a regular basis!