How to Identify "The Next Big Thing"?

And No, WWE fans! I am not talking about Brock Lesnar here.

I am talking about identifying the next big thing in technology. Here's how you identify it:

• When people tell you that they will NEVER (that's the keyword) use a particular piece of technology, then that's the next big thing .
• When people tell you, "It's so stupid. I don't see the point of it. Why would anyone use this? I just don't understand why so many people are using it?" (Did you or someone you know say this about Twitter?) Then, that's the next big thing.

The Next Big Thing is never usually accepted right away. There is always resistance, followed by reluctance and then acceptance. It always takes time before the "New" becomes the "Norm". This however can gain you an unfair advantage if you can identify the next big thing and accept it early on. What are some of the advantages?

• You can make bank (read big money) by investing in it early on.
• If you are a marketer, you can use it to sell much before your competitors figure how to use 'it'. (By the way, did you know that marketers ruin everything that is good? More about it some other day in some other post).
• Or, you can simply use it to improve your life (like a computer or a cell phone).

Still don't believe me? Okay! Let's go through some examples.

When Facebook  first came out, did you or many other people you know say, "I am never getting a Facebook account. What's the whole point?" ... Are you ... on Facebook today? NO! Other people who said they never going to be on Facebook are on as well? You don't say!

In the late 90's cell phones became available for mass market. Do you know anybody who said, "I am not going to get one. Why would I want people to be able to contact me 24/7?" Do you happen to own a cell phone today?

Did you have a teenager in mid-2000's? Did you refuse to ever communicate to them via text messages? What is your primary way of communicating with your teenager today?

When laptops came out, people said ... Why would I want to carry my computer everywhere I go? Do you still own a desktop today?

Let's go back about a 100 years. When cars were first produced for the mass market, do you know what people said? That's stupid. Why would anybody buy a car? My horse and buggy work just fine. What would you have said to that horse and buggy person?

Learning to identify the opportunities before anyone else does can do wonders for you. A few weeks ago, I heard someone talk excitedly about a new phone application called Snapchat. The person she was talking to said, "Why? I don't see a point of message disappearing within seconds." You know what went through my mind?

Here's the kicker. Yesterday, I saw an article that said, Facebook offered by buy Snapchat for a $3 billion all-cash offer. Snapchat politely declined that offer because their 23-year old CEO believes much bigger and better offers are in store.

What kind of things are you saying 'No' to? What things, you said No to in past and accepted later on, become "The Next Big Thing"?

Until next time, be happy! Don't worry!

- Mayur

How to Invite the World to Build your Business?

I recently read a story about how WordPress became so successful because of it's open-source concept. WordPress wasn't the first blogging software to arrive in the market but it quickly became the #1 choice of bloggers because of the plugins, themes and widgets available through it. How did they do it? They invited the world to help them build and grow WordPress. They turned WordPress into an open-source software so that anyone who knew how to code, build plugins, widgets and themes could contribute to it.

WordPress wasn't the first company to open their software to the world and won't be the last. But, my questions after reading the article were, are there other businesses outside of the technology/software space using this concept? Could this concept be applied to mom-and-pop stores? What about small consulting practices? How can they do it? How can a small business with limited resources invite the entire world to build its business?

Idea # 1:  Build an "Idea" forum / site.

How it works:
Build an "Idea" forum / site where people can suggest ideas for your business. The ideas can include a new product/service idea, lead generation idea, marketing idea, customer service idea, anything really.

Tell everybody you know (customers who walks through your door, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, email subscribers, friends, family, anybody else) about your idea blog and how they can contribute to it. Evaluate each idea that comes in and use the ones that you can to grow your business. You might even find great ideas that don't apply to your business currently. Store them for future use.

Starbucks did this a few years ago. They build a site called "My Starbucks Idea" and received thousands of great ideas that they could use.

Idea # 2:  Turn haters into heroes.

How it works:
When a customer gives you negative feedback on a public platform, smile. Acknowledge your mistake and fix it. Once fixed, invite the customer back for another experience and give them a world-class service. They will love you to death, not because you turned things around but because you listened to their input and considered it valuable.

Next, turn that customer into a "hero that helped your business". Write a great blog post, create a YouTube video, share the story with the media by telling how that customer helped you fix the mistake. Make the customer a hero. You will be surprised to find how many other customers will come to you with new ideas or send new business that will take your business to the next level.

Idea # 3:  Build a social media campaign and give discounts for "Collective effort"

How it works:
Create a social media campaign and say if you get X number of likes / shares / tweets / re-tweets, etc. then you will give away a Y% of discount. Tell everyone you know about this campaign and let people share it with their friends and families. It could work something like this:

1,000 New likes = 10% discount.
2,000 New likes = 20% discount.
3,000 New likes = 30% discount.

It is important that you set a time limit as to when the campaign ends and Likes after your selected time limit will not be counted. Announce the results, and send everyone who liked the page a "special discount code" to use with their next purchase.

I hope these ideas help you growing your business and help you invite the world to build your business.

Do you have any ideas for small businesses to grow their business? Or, have you seen a small business execute a phenomenal idea? If so, please share them with others. Growth happens at exponential speed when people decide to help people unselfishly.

Growth happens at exponential speed when people decide to help people unselfishly.

Thank You,
Mayur

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How to Legally use your Competitor’s Marketing Budget to meet your Online Goals

In this post, we will cover the following items:

• Funniest joke you will hear today
• How to observe your competitors?
• How to analyze your findings?
• Using best identified practices to grow your business

 

Funniest joke you will hear today

A young man is riding the subway in NYC. About two stops later, a young woman boards the subway and sits next to him. He looks at her, smiles and says, "You look a lot like my wife." The young woman gives him a stern look and then slaps him across the face real hard.

The young man holding his red cheek says, "Habits match too."

---

Hope you enjoyed that! Now to the meat and potatoes of this post. Shall we?

When I say using your competitor’s marketing budget, I don’t mean sending them invoices for the money you spend on your marketing. Far from it, actually! What I’m saying is observe their marketing efforts closely. Then use that learning to improve your marketing and generate better results for you. This is especially helpful if you have tried a bunch of things on your own without any successful results.

How to observe your competitors?

Identify your top 1-3 competitors and subscribe to their social media channels. Look at everything they post and take copious notes. Some things you want to look at are:

Blog Posts:

• Blog titles. Are you compelled to open them when you first read it?
• Length of their blog posts.
• How good is their content? Do you want to read the entire post or close the browser half-way through?
• What kind of content do they post? Text? Podcasts? Presentations? Infographics? Videos?
• How do they begin and end their post?
• How many comments do their posts get on average?
• Do they post the links to their blog post on other social media channels?
• If you want to really drill down, you can look at the relativity of the picture posted along with the post, font type face & font size (is it easy to read or a strain to your eye?), what keywords could be used find this post, how often do they use those keywords in the body of the post, etc.

Facebook:

• Is their Facebook page branded? Do they have a profile picture and cover photo that match their website?
• How is their description written?
• How often do they post on Facebook?
• What kind of content do they mostly post? Text, pictures, infographics or videos?
• What is their content posed as? Questions, statements or links?
• If links, are they from their site or other sites around the web?
• Which posts get the most engagement (likes, comments & shares)?
• Not all their posts will get good engagement. Look at why some of their posts get lot of engagement and some don’t?
• Are they using Facebook applications? Which ones?
• Are they encouraging people to follow them on Twitter and other social media channels?
• How many people like their Facebook page?

Twitter:

• Is their channel branded? Do they have a profile picture, header background and a custom page background?
• What do they tweet about?
• How often do they tweet?
• Do they engage in a lot of conversations or a few?
• What are some of the things they write in Twitter conversations?
• Do they host Twitter chats?
• How many followers do they have?

YouTube:

• Is their channel branded?
• What kind of videos do they post? Marketing messages type? Educational?
• Are the videos interesting to watch?
• What is the average length of the videos?
• Have any of their videos received lot of views? Why do you think that is?
• How many people have subscribed to their channel?

This is just the beginning. But, I’m sure you get the picture. Once you collect all your data, it’s time to analyze it.

How to analyze your findings?

• Identify what is currently working for them.
• Can you replicate these things in your business?
• Can you improve upon these things?
• If you were to do something differently, what would it be?
• Identify what is not working for them?
• Are they not working for any specific reason? Can you improve upon them and make them work for you?

Using best identified practices to grow your business

Done with your analysis? Let’s get into action and put everything you learnt into practice. You will definitely see a difference in your results much faster than you would have otherwise.
I understand this exercise requires a lot of work. But, it is also going to save you tremendous amount of time and money in the long run. Think about it. Companies like GE, Coke, Ford, etc. are spending millions of dollars, thousands of man-power hours and many other great resources to come up with a social media strategy that works for them. All you have to do is subscribe to their channels, find out what is working for them and implement it to grow your business. It’s a simple and effective way to legally use your competitors marketing budget to meet your online goals.

Social media has leveled the playing field where the small guy has just as much advantage as the big guy. Winning in marketing is not about budgets anymore. Companies with most user engagement will win regardless of budget size.

I know I missed writing on some other large platforms notably LinkedIn and Pinterest. But, that’s where you come in. IF YOU ARE ON LinkedIn and/or Pinterest, write how you are using those sites in the comment section of this post (see below). This way, we all can learn from each other.

Cheers,

Mayur

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Why Businesses need to think like Media Companies?

Let me tell you why I'm writing this blog post. I was reading a Forbes article on Social Media and it said  that 60% of small business owners say they haven't seen ANY return on investment from their engagement online. I wasn't sure I read it right, so I re-read it. The words apparently did not change. If everybody including yours truly is touting social media as a golden tool for finding new customers, reaching out to existing customers, building customer relationships and solving customer service problems then why are 60% of small business owners saying, "It's not working!" Something was not right. There had to be a major problem.

About eight years ago, I started a Network Marketing business for approximately $250. I failed miserably at that business. Why? I heard a speaker say this at a seminar I had attended a long time ago ... Most people fail at network marketing because it is very easy to start this business. It doesn't take much investment of time or money. Sadly, people operate it like a $250 business as well. Think about it. If you had invested $200,000 in opening a retail store, would you have worked your tail off to make sure you get your investment back and then some more? Of course you would! Then why would you not work a network marketing business with equal passion and enthusiasm? Because, it only took $250 to start the business. That's chump change for most people. The real problem here is not the start-up cost. It's the mindset. Both businesses have the potential to become million dollar businesses. But the secret lies in how you think about them. One took an investment of $200,000. For most people that's automatically a million dollar business. The other isn't. You know the reason why.

My apologies for beating this up so much, but I had to get the point across. The price of the tool is irrelevant. What matters is the future value that tool will provide for your business, and that depends on how effectively you use that tool.

As early as 10-15 years ago, if you wanted to get the word out about your new business or a new product or service, you would either go hire a media outlet to spread the word or you would write a press release and try to butter-up a journalist to get it printed in the newspaper. Good news is ... that was how things were done more than a decade ago (some companies still do that ... Ssshh!).

Today, with social media and search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing, businesses can pretty much reach a vast majority of their target audience without any significant investment or connections with media publicists. Businesses are well-aware of that. Despite that, 60% of business owners claim social media is worthless to them. Could it be that they are thinking about this in the wrong manner? It's possible. Just because social media sites allow accounts to be created for free, could businesses be discounting their real value? Again, it's quite possible. In my humble opinion, success rate will change when the mindset towards these tools will change.

Five years ago, social media was considered a novelty. People were not sure whether this would work or not. That's not the case today. It's proven that these tools work if you work the tools. If they have worked for other companies, why can't they work for you? Why can't you replicate their success? It just takes a different level of mindset and enthusiasm to make it work. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, your company blog, etc. have gone much farther ahead than just places where you post your daily happenings. These are massive global communities. They are broadcasting mediums and you need to use it in that manner. Build your own community within them. Engage with your community by educating them, entertaining them and empowering them with quality content. If you need social media tips, just Google it. There are more tips available than necessary.

Before you paid money to other media outlets to do advertising and marketing for you. Social media has now given you the power to do the same. Instead of money, it's asking for sweat equity. Will you give it? Your company is a media powerhouse. You simply need to realize it.

Until next time ...

- Mayur

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Blogging for Business? This 1 idea can make your blog twice as valuable

If your blog does not have a mechanism to capture your visitor's contact details, you are leaving a ginormous list of your potential customers on the table.

Read that sentence again and let it sink in before you continue reading further.

What's the BIG idea?

Add a mechanism to "capture your visitor's contact details" on your blog.

***** Contact form on the blog does NOT count. *****
***** Comment section at the bottom of each post does NOT count either. *****

This needs to be a separate form placed strategically on your blog. It can be a single field form asking for an email address. But, it NEEDS to be on your blog to double the value of your blog.

Why should I ask for email address only?

If you ask for too much information, most people will never give it to you. Asking for an email address is very non-threatening. Anybody will give it to you. IMHO (In My Humble Opinion), an email address field alone should suffice the needs of most businesses.

But, this is purely your decision. Each business is different. If you feel your business needs more than a email address, feel free to add more fields to your form.

Where should I place this form?

It should be placed somewhere at the top of your blog. Either under the header section or on the side bar of the blog.

In addition to that, you should also add this form on your "About Us" page. Why?

• A new visitor will almost always visit your "About Us" page.
• Based on what they read there, they will decide whether to spend more time on your site or not.

How can I make sure most of my visitors leave me their contact details?

Create a offer they cannot refuse. Provide your visitors something of much larger value in return for their contact information.

I hope this posts help you think differently about your blog. A much more than a knowledge database. It can be your best marketing tool if you use it in a effective manner.

Thank You,
Mayur

Difference between Sales and Marketing

You know, I used to think everybody knew the difference between sales and marketing. I recently found out, that's not the case. Some people think it's one and the same thing. But, that's really not true.

In simple words, a marketer's only job is to generate awareness. If what they do does not generate brand/product awareness, they are not marketing. A sales person's only job is to generate revenue. Everything they do should be geared towards getting the customer to purchase their product/service.

Look at it this way - Sales begins where Marketing stops.

Say, you recently moved to New Town, USA. You are walking down Main Street. You see a fancy board that says, "Jackie's Juice Bar". You decide to walk into the bar. You open the door and survey the place. It's a warm, inviting place. You like it. You checkout the menu and place an order.

Here's what transpired in 'sales and marketing' speak.

Marketing Part - The fancy board you saw generated awareness. You liked it so much (and possibly were part curious), you decided to check the place out. By the way, good marketing will occupy a space in your mind. When you think of a soft drink, what is the first company that comes to your mind? How about shaving razors? What about high-tech gadgets? My answers are at the bottom of this post. Do yours match?

Transition Part - You walked into the bar and surveyed the insides of it. You wanted to make sure it was a quality place and you'd enjoy your experience. Understand that if you did not like what you saw, you could have turned around and walked right out. It would not have mattered to you how fancy "Jackie's Juice Bar" board looked.

Sales Part - Now that you like the place and the menu, you decide to place an order. The trick to selling is to get the transition right. Once the customer likes you and trusts you, the sales is almost certain.

We go through this cycle every time we walk into a store or purchase something on the Internet. Sometimes the only marketing that needs to be done is good customer service at your last visit.

What do you think? Is there anything you can add to this article that I might have missed?

Send me an email at mayurgudka@gmail.com or connect with me on Twitter (@mayurgudka) or LinkedIn to chat about Sales and Marketing.

Be Happy,
Mayur

Answers:  Coke, Gillette, Apple

Crucial Website Mistake Business Owners Make and How to Fix It

What is the Crucial Mistake?

Having upside down priorities. A business owner walks up to a web designer and says, "I want a very cool looking website. Can you design one?" At the onset, it doesn't look that bad. However when it comes to business priorities, it is almost a criminal offence.

Here's Why ...

Your website is simply a tool that you use to make money with. Nothing more, nothing less. The purpose of your website is to generate revenue for your business. As soon as you deviate from that purpose, your website starts becoming useless. Making a website look cool is important, but it should not hold the #1 spot on your list of priorities.

• Your first priority should be to make sure your customer has a fantastic experience on your website.
• Your second priority should be to make sure your website is search engine friendly.
• Your third priority should be to make your site design look good without compromising the two bullet points listed above.

I'd say, "Capisce?" but it would probably be too cheeky.

Anyways! Can you cut your cake and eat it too? Absolutely! There are countless examples of websites who have done so. Similarly, there are countless examples of websites of failed websites that look so slick, you might think the designer charged an arm and a leg for it. Sadly, these website are mostly seen only by the business owner, their family, friends and employees.

How to fix this problem?

When your web designer asks, "What can I do for you?", tell him/her that you want a site that is customer friendly, search engine friendly, easy to navigate through and then if possible, make it the really good looking as well.

Be a smart business owner. Understand that your website is just a tool to help you do business better. Don't get emotionally attached to its design. If it works, let it work. Don't change it. Hope this helps!

Thank you for reading,
Mayur

Two Approaches to Selling

I am currently listening to "Never Eat Alone" by Keith Ferrazzi in the car right now. It's made up of 10 CDs with a total of over 11 hours of audio on them. Lots of good information on it especially if you want to learn the basics as well as some secrets of networking and relationship building.

He was also talking about how relationship building makes sales easy. It reminded me of a good & bad sales experience I had when I was shopping for the car I currently drive. The dealership I bought my car from was very inviting, gave me all the facts I requested for, gave me the time and room needed to make my decision. I remember walking into the dealership, driving the car, collecting information, reviewing it and purchasing the car all within 45 minutes.

There was another dealership I had gone to before. I spent 45 minutes there as well. But the feeling I came out with was that of resentment. I will neither go to them again nor recommend that dealership to anybody.

The way I see it, there are two approaches to selling; a difficult approach and an easy approach. One approach will give you a one-time sale, the other approach will help you sell over and over. In one approach, you are trying to sell to people. In the other approach, people want to buy from you. In one approach you are spending money to make sales. In the other, you are spending money to acquire life-long customers. One approach drives away customers. The other approach is attracts customers.

Let's define the approaches a bit more clearly.

First approach is a hard-sell approach. The salesperson chases customers until they buy from him. Sometimes the customer buys only to get rid of the salesperson. In this approach the salesperson will often pressure the customer to make a quick decision. Why? They are afraid that if the customer takes too long, they might miss the sale. This approach is not about building customer relationships. A salesperson who uses this approach is focused on selling the product any way possible. Companies that use this approach spend a lot of time and money selling. The results unfortunately don't usually equate the investment.

The Second approach is relationship-based. You build relationships with your customers regardless of whether they buy from you now or not. People who use this approach work with the understanding that, "If I treat customers with courtesy and intelligence today, they will remember me the next time they want to buy what I sell." Relationship based approach generate lots of repeat sales and happy customers. Their results, many time surpass their investments by multiple folds.

There you go ... my two cents on selling. Hope you had fun reading!

Thank You,
Mayur

Building an Online Community - (Last) Part 5

Hello! This is the last part in "Building an Online Community" series. Building an online community is not about doing the work once and then watching the community grow automatically. Majority of the work happens after the launch. You have to continuously monitor it's key metrics and refine your approach and methods to improve them.

An important question to answer at this stage is what defines your community's success? Is it number of unique visitors per month? Number of repeated visitors? Number of people signing up? Sales volume?

A few metrics that I believe most communities need to consider while measuring their growth are:

• Number of visits / visitors / unique visitors
• Bounce rate
• Time on site
• Current SEO rankings for important keywords
• Domain authority
• Number of new leads / form submissions
• Total amount of sales generated

By the way, Google Analytics is a wonderful tool to use to measure these metrics. And so is HubSpot's Inbound Marketing System.

Number of visits / visitors / unique visitors

A growing community ensures that the number of visits to your blog or website are increasing on a regular basis. You might find that certain posts or certain sections are getting more visits than others. Find out why that is happenning and try to duplicate the results.

Bounce Rate

What is Bounce Rate? It is the percentage of people who come to your website, stay on the single page without browsing any other page and leave the site. They come and leave. They bounce back to somewhere else.

A high bounce rate is not good. It means people are not interested in exploring your community. Your goal should be keep this bounce rate as low as possible. In most cases, improving the content of the site will do the trick. In some cases, better navigation will help. It is also important to note that all links on your website are working. If the links are broken, the bounce rate can be very high.

Time on Site

If you operate a community like Facebook, it's important that people spend more time on your site. Higher the time people spend on your site, higher fees you can charge your advertisers. Increasing this metric will often times decrease your Bounce rate autmatically (unless your pages are really really long and visitors spend a lot of time on a single page).

Current SEO rankings for important keywords

Google has a keyword tool that will assist you with this metric. This tool will help you find out how hot a certain keyword is. For example, if your site is focused on "green tea" and it's health benefits, type in "green tea" or "health benefits of green tea" into the keyword tool and it will tell you how many people searched for those words in the last month.

If you are drafting a blog post, this is an important tool to use. Identify what keywords identify your post. Do a search in the keyword tool to check it's popularity. Then insert the most popular words in your blogpost a few times. Chances of your blogpost appearing in the search results for those particular keywords will be much higher.

Domain Authority

This is one of the factors search engines use to determine search results. When a user types in a search term in Google search engine, Google wants to provide him/her with the best search results and thus will display pages from authority websites first and non-authority websites later. In other words, Google checks the strength of your website and another website and then displays the results of stronger authority website first.

There are certain factors that affect the domain authority. Some are:

• How long has your URL been registered? Longer the better.
• How often is the content on your site updated?
• How relevant is your content to your users?
• How many pages does your site contain?
• How many visitors do you get on a regular basis?

Getting some of the other metrics right can automatically increase your domain authority number.

Number of new leads / form submissions

If your goal is to have visitors ask for more information, sign-up a newsletter, get a RFP, fill out a contest form, etc. then you should be focusing on this metric. Find out what percentage of people visit your site AND fill out the form? Do you have a target number in mind? Are you meeting the target? If not, you have work to do. Find out its cause and then work to meet your goals.

Total amount of sales generated

This again is similar to number of new leads / form submissions. If you are selling products or services and intend to sell certain value of products/services per month, then check your sales figure. Are they meeting your goals? How can you increase the numbers?

A good strategy to building a community is "Fire, Aim, Adjust" approach. Launch the community. Set goals. Adjust your methods and approaches to meet those goals continually. The longer you wait to launch a perfect community, the higher the chances of your community not being launched, EVER.

Lastly, understand that building a large community is often a trial and error process. Lots of experimentation, time and patience are required to build a successful community. Hope this series helped you in your quest of building an online community.

Thank you for reading!

Like they say in Hawaiian,
Aloha

Building an Online Community - Part 4

Welcome back to "Building an Online Community" series. In Part 4, we will talk about what creates a wonderful blog entry that will be useful to your readers and search engines.

A blog post should serve one of these three purposes.

1. Education
2. Entertainment
3. Inspiration

In other words, any blog post you write, should either educate, entertain or inspire your readers. If it does not do that, you need to rethink your post.

An effective blog post will have a minimum of these things.

1. Well written header
2. Picture
3. Opening paragraph
4. Personal experience
5. Main body AKA message of the post.
6. Call of action

Well Written Header

The purpose of a header is to let the readers know the subject of the post. A well written header entices readers to click on it. It builds curiosity. My most popular post is titled Never let two days go by without ... . It was one of the first posts when I started this blog. That post currently has about 4-10 times more views than any of my "Building an Online Community" posts.

Picture

Some bloggers consider posting a picture in their post very important and some consider it optional. It is your personal choice really, but I would include it if possible. Especially, if you have a picture that is relevant to your content. A good picture is like a tie. Common belief is that a good tie makes an ugly looking man attractive. Similarly, a good picture makes your post look attractive.

Opening Paragraph

It's like writing a school paper. You have an intro paragraph, a body and a conclusion. A opening blog paragraph tells the reason the blogger decided to write about the particular topic. It answers the questions, "Why are your writing this blog post?"

Personal Experience

I call this blogger's weapon of increasing stickiness. We love to know about others. It's the inquisitive human nature, we can't help. A good blogger will make use of this ... weakness if you may, and personalize the post for the readers. The readers get to know a little about the blogger's life and will also feel that they know the blogger personally. This is important if you want to turn your visitors into "repeated" visitors.

Main Body AKA Message of the Post

This is where you deliver the main message of the blog post. Regardless of whether you are trying to inform, entertain or educate, it should happen in this part of the post. It is the core of your post and should be the longest than any other part. Be careful that your blog post doesn't become so long that readers lose interest.

Call of Action

What do you want your readers to do after reading your post? Commonly, the blogger asks his/her readers to post their thoughts on the article, share the post with their friends and family, share new ideas, contact the blogger, go to a specific site to buy a product or read the next post. Call of action should guide readers to take the next step.

Few things to consider while writing blog posts

• Don't write endless posts. Size matters. Keep them short and straight to the point.
• If the post is long, make it scannable by bolding the main points or adding bullet points where possible.
• Use simple language. Your readers' vocabulary might not be the same as yours. Hence, simpler the language easier it is for everybody to understand.
• Provide internal relevant links. This allows your readers to access other interesting material on your site. It also helps search engines give your site a higher rank since that is one of the deciding factors in page ranking.

Hope this helps. If you have a question or comment about this, please post them in the comment section below. I will reply to them at my earliest.

In the past weeks, we talked about what to do before you begin your efforts of building an online community, how to prepare for the launch of your community, how to market your community after you launch it. Today, we talked about how to create a successful blog post. Next week will be the last entry in this series where we will talk about measuring your results and analyzing them for continual improvements.

Thank you for reading!

Like they say in Spanish,
Hasta La Vista, Amigo!

Building an Online Community - Part 3

Welcome to part 3 of "Building an Online Community" series. In the previous parts (part 1 and part 2), we discussed about the mindset and basic preparations needed to build an online community. Part 3 is about "Launch Day". Before we talk about it, there is one thing I need to address.

I just realized that, I never talked about the online tools needed to build our community.

There are so many tools available around which you can build your online community (blog, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, etc.). You decide what works best for you. My personal preference is starting with a blog. All forms of content can be incorporated in a blog and that's awesome. If you plan on creating a photo blog, I would use Flickr along with your blog. If you are creating a video blog, start a YouTube channel of your own. It's fairly easy.

Congratulations! You've picked a medium you want to build a community around and just posted your first post. Now what?

Here's what happened after I posted my first post

I'll tell you what I did after my first post. I was excited to post my first Welcome message. And, then I waited in anticipation for someone to comment or page views to go up. Neither of those things happened. Two hours later, no one had visited my blog. I believed people had dumped my blog the day I launched it. Then it hit me. I hadn't told anyone about it. In the excitement of launching it, I had forgotten to tell people about it.

So, I posted about it on my Facebook and Twitter channels. But, that wasn't enough. I knew from reading other blogs and articles that much more needed to be done if I was to get any significant amount of traffic. Here are some of the resources I found that were very helpful.

• How do I market my blog? (A Yahoo! Answers page)
• 23 Directories to submit your blog to
• 12 Ways to Market your Blog for Free

A few lessons I learned about Marketing

Here's what I learnt from these resources when it comes to marketing my blog.

1. Use a good blog design. It should make things easy to read and navigate as well as be appealing to the eye.
2. Write for the members of your community.
3. Create titles that build curiosity.
4. Make sure the blog is updated regularly and current.
5. Give your visitors a reason to come back.
6. Submit regularly to blog directories. If the directories are relevant to the theme of your blog, even better.
7. Post regular comments on blogs that you admire.
8. Encourage your visitors to engage with you and each other.
9. Do something everyday to market your blog. It's doesn't have to be a ginormous effort everyday, but do something towards marketing it.
10. Have Patience. It takes time effort and patience to build a sizable community.
11. Stay excited. Pretend everyday is a launch day.

I implemented some of these things to find out it works! I experienced a surge of traffic to the blog. People from 12 countries around the world were reading what I had to write. I hope even better things happen to you after you launch your blog.

Know who's talking about you on the Internet

If the content on your blog is good, it will be shared. If other bloggers pick it up and share it, even better. But how would you know that happened? Create Google Alerts for your blog name. You can go to http://www.google.com/alerts and create an alert. What this does is, anytime your blog is mentioned on the Internet, it will send you an alert. You can pick the frequency of this alert. It could be instantly, daily or weekly.

To summarize our launch day, tell as many people as you can about your community. Engage them in conversations and entice them to visit you again.

Next Friday, let's talk about what makes an blog post awesome for your readers and search engines. If you know of any good resources to market a blog or other forms of content, please share them using the comments below.

Thank you for reading!

Like they say in Slovene,
Adijo

Building an Online Community - Part 2

Building a successful community requires a lot of preparation before it's actual launch. Before starting Starbucks, Howard Schultz went to Italy and studied more than 500 Coffee shops at different times of the day to learn and understand how they operated, how they interacted with their customers, why customers bought coffee, where did their customers come from, etc. He even taped some of the sessions so he could continue learning from them after coming home. Launching a community of your own is no different. Entrepreneurs who do their homework and prepare for expected growth, have a much greater chance of success than those who don't.

Last Friday, I talked about the three parts of an online community and listed a bunch of questions that should be answered while building a plan for your community. Today, let's take a in-depth look at those questions for better understanding.

What is your purpose? Why do you want to build a community?

Having a purpose will provide you a direction in which you want to take your community towards. It also helps when you are formulating a strategy for success. There are many different reasons why people build online communities.

• You are starting a new business and looking for new clients.
• You want to widen your potential client base for an already successful offline business.
• You have a new product and want to introduce it.
• You want to build your own brand on the Internet.
• You want to make money online.
• You want to entertain people by posting funny stuff.

Whatever your reason, identify a purpose. Without it, your efforts will be in vain.

How do you want people to remember your community?

People will remember your community when it becomes synonmous with something. For example,

Soft drink - Coke or Pepsi
Shaving razors - Gillette
Crime show - CSI
Funny cartoon - Family Guy or The Simpsons
Funny indian guy - Russell Peters

You get the message. What is the first thing you want people to think of when they think of your community? Once you figure it out, make sure all your content reflects that.

A word of caution: Don't come up with too many things you want people to think of upon the mention of your community. Most successful brands are known for 1 or 2 things, no more.

Who are you creating the content for? What does your target audience look like?

If you have new product that companies can use to increase efficiency, don't blast your friends and family on Facebook with marketing messages. They are the wrong audience for that kind of product. Your target audience in this case is probably C-level executives. Your LinkedIn community might be a better choice. But, if you want to create funny stuff to entertain people, your Facebook community might be a better choice.

Figure out the demographics of people who will find the most value in your message and then select an appropriate channel to communicate with them.

Where is your target audience coming from?

I use Google Analytics to do this and I was very surprised by some of the results I found.

I spent the first half of my life in India and my second half in US. My wife is from England. So naturally, I figured people reading my blog posts will primarily be from one of these three countries. Boy, was I wrong in my assumption? I have people from 12 countries reading this blog. And most surprising was the country with second highest readership - Russia. I don't know anybody in Russia, but I have twice as many readers in Russia, then I do in India. How cool is that?

Track your audience. It will help you craft better messages and get some unexpected surprises.

What form will your content be in?

This depends on your personal choice and the type of tools and resources you have available at your disposal. Text, pictures, videos, podcasts and webcasts are some popular choices of content.

What is your content schedule?

Set a schedule of when you will post new content. It builds positive expectations within the community. If your schedule is once a week, pick a day. If it's few times a week, pick certain days. If it is every day, make sure you do that without fail. The easy part of scheduling is creating it. The difficult part is sticking to it. Once you have a schedule, stick to it. Abandoned schedules result into abandoned communities.

My content schedule? Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

How can your audience become a part of the community?

There are multiple ways to do this. Listed below are just a handful.

• Encourage them to comment on your content.
• Ask them to share it, if they like it.
• Invite them to be part of special groups and events.
• Connect them with each other.
• Ask them for their advice and suggestions on improving your community.
• Provide them with incentives for sharing the core message of your community.

How will you measure your community's growth?

If your goal is to have new followers, keep track of new followers every month. Are they increasing or decreasing?

If your goal is to build a list of potential clients, provide them with a way through which they can send their email address or phone number. Then compare the number of people who visited your site to the number of people who sent you their contact information.

If the goal is to generate sales, compare the number of clients who purchased vs. clients who browser shopped.

At what level will you call your community a success?

Identify some milestones that you want to reach while growing your community base. Now, turn them into specific targets that you can shoot for. For example, 10,000 new subscribers, $1,000,000 of sales generation, etc.

When you reach them, you are a success.

Do you have any other questions that you think would fit within this list?  Please write them in the comments below. Next Friday, we'll talk about the launching day.

Thank you for reading.

Like they say in Punjabi,
Sat Sri Akal

Building an Online Community - Part 1

A Note of Apology

My sincere apologies to those who tried to login to the blog or email me at mayur@mayurgudka.com for the last couple of days. I had some technical difficulties. But, all is well now. The direct URL for the blog is http://blog.mayurgudka.com. You can also get to through www.mayurgudka.com.

Thank you for your patience and for continuing to read my little blue blog.

Last Friday, we talked about Community as the currency of the Internet. All successful businesses have built a community of loyal users around them. But, where do you really start? Building a community as large as Facebook's or YouTube's seems like a daunting, herculean task. And, you're right. It's not easy to build a community as large as Facebook's. But, it's not that difficult either if you are smart about your approaches and decisions.

There are three parts to building an online community (Before, During and After).

• Prepare for your growth and sustainability before you launch your community.
• Building the Community - What can you do to get your users involved and have them become a part of the community?
• Sustaining a growing community - After you build a sizable community, how do you sustain it's growth?

Creating a Plan for Growth and Sustainability

Building a community online is very similar to building a business. When you are building the business, the first thing you need to do is write a business plan. Why? Because a business plan becomes your guiding source. A good business plan helps you survive the rough storms you will encounter while building the business.

Writing a plan for building an online community involves answering questions like:

• What is your purpose? Why do you want to build a community?
• How do you want people to remember your community?
• Who are you creating the content for? What does your target audience look like?
• Where is your target audience coming from?
• What form will your content be in?
• What is your content schedule?
• How can your audience become a part of the community?
• How will you measure your community's growth?
• At what level will you call your community a success?

These are some basic questions you need to answer before you launch an online community. It will help you grow your community at a much faster rate compared to those who don't plan and prepare.

Remember, prior preperation prevents poor performance.

Because this is such a large topic, I will be breaking it down into pieces and cover it on a weekly basis. Next Friday, let's take a in-depth look at the above questions. Meanwhile, if you have other ideas or suggestions I can add to this list, feel free to email me at mayur@mayurgudka.com or post it as a comment below.

Thank you for reading.

Like they say in Hindi,
Phir Milenge.

The Currency of the Internet

In the early 90s, two software engineers by the names of Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith started a free email service called Hotmail. A few short years later, Microsoft purchased Hotmail for $400 million. Do you think Microsoft couldn't build it's own email server and give away free emails? Of course, they could. So why pay $400 Million? For the community that came along with Hotmail.com. Bill Gates understood early on that when you combine the power of the Internet with a large user community base, miracles can happen.

Microsoft was the one of the first companies to realize the value of a community, but not the last.

• Google bought YouTube for $1.65 Billion.
• Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace for $580 million.
• Groupon, LinkedIn, Yelp and Facebook recently launched billion dollar IPOs each, with Facebook (Valued @ $100 Billion) leading the pack.