Put Your Face on Your Blog

May 8, 2013 By 2 Comments

If you’re a consultant or solo entrepreneur you should put your face on your website. Preferably on the front page.

It’s important that you’re visible.

It’s important because it’s all about building trust and a sense of personality. After all, we do business with people.

Show Who You Are

I’ve written a lot about podcasting as a way of making it transparent to your potential customers just who you are and what you do. Video, of course, is also an incredibly useful tool for giving a clearer indication of who you are and what you do.

It’s important, though, not to forget that a simple picture can go a long way to help build a sense of who you are, especially if you’re not ready to get behind the mic or video camera just yet.

Here are some of my favourite pages that use an image to foreground the business owner. Maybe these will inspire you!
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$10 for a promoted update on Facebook earned me $7500

April 10, 2013 By 10 Comments

James Royal LawsonEarlier this year I ran a Facebook campaign. I paid to promote a status update I made on my Facebook business page. I got an ROI (so far) of 75000%.

As a small business owner, I’m faced with a multitude of marketing options both free and paid, time consuming and mindlessly quick.

I’m also a digital strategist, so I have a slightly easier time with the digital initiatives than I perhaps do with the analogue ones.

Even so, there’s only so much you can guess or hypothesise before you need to dip your toes in the water.
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One Thing Your Marketing Strategy Needs in 2013

January 2, 2013 By 4 Comments

Don’t ever be afraid just because you’re not the first business in a niche. Burger King obviously weren’t put off by McDonald’s being in the market and neither were Max here in Sweden or Hesburger in Finland.

Over Christmas I found myself in a shop on Södermalm in Stockholm and although the clothes weren’t really my kind of thing there in the background was a piece of country rock playing that I just loved.

I sat down and listened, trying to figure out the title of the song. After a bit of digging I found it on Spotify and favourited it on a playlist so I could find out more about the band when I got back to my desk.

The song was “I Run to You” and the band are Lady Antebellum.

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Marketing Mistakes You Make Just to Learn From

April 11, 2012 By 1 Comment

One thing I’ve learned about marketing my business online and working with clients is that you need to keep learning.

Over the years I’ve switched blogging platforms, URLs, design, strategy, tone, even some of these several times, just to see what works best and what doesn’t.

At times changes have had a positive result, some times not. But not to worry.
It’s only by daring to try something different that you grow.

My Latest Mistake

At the moment I’m fixated with typography and specifically readability.

Over the last couple of week’s I’ve been trialing a sans-serif font – one that does not have the small projecting features called “serifs” at the end of each stroke – on a darker page background to gage the effect.

I was also using size 14 pixels.

I gave it seven days then consulted with my focus group, who articulated exactly what I was thinking: it didn’t work.

More research led me to back to Georgia (a serif font) at 16 px, which from all the reading I’ve been doing seems to be regarded as one of the most legible fonts for reading online.
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How to Develop an Editorial Calendar Template

January 11, 2012 By 23 Comments

The better your editorial calendar template, the better the implementation of your business blog strategy is likely to be.

Developing a successful editorial calendar, however, is not always easy. What’s more it is often much more complex than just putting a bunch of dates and preliminary titles for blog posts together.
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The Secret to Increased Landing Page Conversions

January 5, 2012 By 4 Comments

Maximizing your landing page conversions is a serious business. Do you have Landing pages for your products and services that convert well?

Or are you struggling to get conversions from visitors to your site?

Landing pages are all about getting visitors who “land” on the page to do something: whether it’s sign-up for your newsletter, enquire about hiring you, download an ebook or purchase a digital product.

In this episode I discuss 5 simple changes you can make to maximize your conversion rates:

  • Why you need great headlines
  • The importance of removing distracting content & links
  • The benefit of dropping your main site header & navigation bar
  • What you can do to improve your sign-up forms
  • The need to split-test and analyze your data

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