Content Mastery Guide

Editor and Ghostwriter

Are These Usability Mistakes Undermining Your Business Blog?

By

frustrated blog reader
© Wavebreakmedia – Depositphotos.com

Is your blog confusing your readers and sending them away dissatisfied? Tema Frank, author of PeopleShock: The Path to Profits When Customers Rule, and Chief Instigator at Frank Reactions, walks us through the topic of usability, and how it impacts business bloggers.

Tema Frank is a marketing and customer service expert who built her first website in 1995 and has been helping businesses with online marketing since the late 1990s. Through her speaking, consulting and bi-weekly podcast, Frank Reactions on Customer Experience, she helps companies profit from the Internet.

I met Tema online when we both tweeted that we’d be attending a Toronto marketing conference. By the time we met in person, I’d visited her website, listened to her original podcast series (the Frank Online Marketing Show), and discovered just how knowledgeable she is about online marketing! I’m thrilled she agreed to an interview, and I hope there will be more to come.

Tema, one of the services your company offers is usability testing. I’d like to delve into the topic of usability and how it relates to business blogging.

First of all, what is usability?

Put simply, usability is about making a website (or software program, or anything else used by people) easy to use.

What are some of the consequences of usability problems on your website?

There are lots of them – here are the top five:

  1. Wasted advertising and promotional efforts because people who come to your site can’t do what they want or find what they are looking for.
  2. Bad publicity (thus turning off future clients as well as those who hit the problem). People who have a bad experience on a website are likely to tell many others about it. Now with social media, that bad experience can quickly become known by thousands of people and hurt your business for years to come.
  3. Lost sales. Odds are there is someone else offering something similar that has a more usable website. Guess where your prospects will go?
  4. Higher customer service costs. If frustrated visitors can’t find what they need or do what they want easily, they’ll either give up or call you. Generally a call from a customer costs many times more than letting them do things themselves online.
  5. Increased costs correcting errors. If it isn’t clear how to do something, users will make mistakes. Those mistakes will cost you money as you try to untangle the mess they’ve made.

What are some usability issues that are specific to blogs?

One that drives me crazy is when there are no dates on the posts. Information, especially when it comes to technology, gets outdated quickly. If I don’t know when the post was made, how can I tell if it is still relevant?

(I often get around that by filtering my search results to be within the past month or past year. I wish Google would let me set a default of one year for all my searches.)

Another is lack of scannability. People have short attention spans and tend to read only about 10% of what’s actually written on a page. (Sad for us writers, but true.)

When my daughter was in her first year of university, I taught her that if she was short on time she should read the first and last paragraph of each chapter, then scan the headings and bullet points. That’s what people tend to do on blog posts too. (Though they probably don’t bother with the last paragraph).

Boring headlines will work against you. Headlines are vitally important. If your headline doesn’t grab your readers, they won’t bother with the rest. Jon Morrow has a great free report on Headline Hacks that is worth reading. (You can also check out my interview with Jon Morrow at http://frankonlinemarketing.com/fom52-jonmorrow/.)

Too much text. Along with keeping your text scannable with sub-headings and lists, photos help break up the text on a page and add more visual interest. People are naturally drawn to images, especially photos with faces in them. Use a good headline under the photo, as that is very likely to be read.

Are any of these usability mistakes showing up on your blog? Stay tuned for the next part of my interview with Tema Frank, where she’ll reveal her best usability tips for business bloggers.

P.S. If you liked this post, you might enjoy the Blogging Tips newsletter, delivered weekly to your inbox! Sign up here.

How Long Should a Blog Post Be?

By

Typewriter with paper
© sergeka – Fotolio.com

That is by far the most common question I hear about business blogging, and my standard response is 500 words for a how-to article and 350-500 words for other types of posts.

What about long-form content, i.e., blog posts or e-books spanning 1,000-3,000+ words? These can yield impressive search results and social media sharing, but can be timely and/or costly to produce. You can always experiment with these later once you’re more comfortable blogging regularly, or you have the resources to outsource.

But for now, I want you to succeed with your blog and your business. So let’s set a manageable blogging goal you’ll be able to meet once or twice a month.

Before you get too caught up in how long your blog posts should be, here’s a far more important question:

What is the point of your blog post?

When I’m editing clients’ blog posts, I sometimes notice that they finish their articles talking about something different than when they started. So much so that the titles don’t always reflect what seems to be their most important point.

That’s why it’s a mistake to publish the first draft of your blog post. Instead, review it with a critical eye to make sure you can answer the question, “What’s the point?”

Once you’ve identified your point, make it clear to the reader by spelling it out at the beginning of your article (you might also want to repeat it at the end).

Make your point just as clear to prospective readers, by crafting a blog post title that promises what you actually deliver. From there, you can write a series of social media posts as variations on the same theme.

If you find yourself trying to make several different points, follow these tips for how to pare down a long blog post, how to spot a blog post series, and how to focus your mind, your topic and your writing.

Most importantly, make sure the point of your blog post is something that will be meaningful to your target audience. Does it answer a question they’ve asked? Does it demonstrate your expertise and concern for the problems they’re struggling with? Does it point them towards a helpful solution?

If you can answer yes to these questions, you can confidently use as many words as it takes to get your message across. Your readers will respond to your genuine passion for their wellness.

This is an updated version of This is More Important Than Blog Post Length.

P.S. If you liked this post, you might enjoy the Blogging Tips newsletter, delivered weekly to your inbox! Sign up here.

Shedding the Burnout Business Model

By

burnout business model
© SIphotography – Depositphotos.com

Burnout is a common phenomenon in business, particularly in helping professions. In both the Wellness Leadership Academy Masters and the Wellness Business Academy Black Sheep communities, I’ve met many talented wellness professionals with stories of burnout that led them to seek a new path.

This is a topic I first explored many years ago as a music therapist, when I faced my own burnout after several years in the field. Is burnout inevitable? It doesn’t have to be!

Mary Davis is dedicated to helping wellness professional become prosperous healers, by avoiding burnout business models in the first place. I recently interviewed Mary for a two-part series on her own blog. Since this is such an important topic, I wanted to share the links with you here.

Part One – Shedding the Burnout Business Model

Part Two – Business Burnout Needs Personal Self-Care

5 Ways to Lead Local Clients From Your Blog to Your Clinic

By

Local client at wellness clinic
© romankosolapov – Fotolia.com

If you’re new to the concept of content marketing, it may be difficult to imagine how publishing an article on your website could help bring clients into your local clinic.

After all, if you give people home-care tips to solve their problems, won’t you be blogging yourself out of new clients?

Actually, the opposite is true! Effective wellness blogging will lead local clients from your website right to your clinic. Here are five ways:

1. They see and think of you often

It makes sense that the more content you post on your blog and on social media, the more people will see and think of you. What’s most important is what you’re posting.

Sales promotions and ads can feel intrusive and give a negative impression of your business, even subconsciously. If, on the other hand, you consistently send helpful, interesting, and entertaining content that people appreciate and enjoy, that positive association will permeate every interaction.

From blog to business: As you promote each helpful new blog post in email and on social media, you create positive feelings and establish trust.

2. They start to associate your business with a specific topic or area, and see you as an expert

You don’t only want people to see and think of you often – you want them to think of you in relation to a particular topic or set of topics.

On your blog and on social media, I recommend sharing a combination of high-quality original content that your company produces, and equally high-quality content from other sources.

The key is that all of this content is centered around key topics that reinforce the expertise you deliver with your products and services.

From blog to business: When your network sees you consistently post high-quality content about a particular set of topics, you will be the first one they think of when they or someone they know needs your service or program.

3. They start to rely on you as a resource

When the tips and suggestions you provide are relevant and get positive results, you become a trusted resource in the minds of your readers.

By giving advice about the issues they most care about – related to your topic areas – you connect with your readers on different levels and become a bigger part of their lives.

From blog to business: People may wonder, “If they give away this much great information for free, I wonder how much more they could help me if I hired them!”

4. They feel like a part of your business

Aside from sharing information that helps prospective clients solve a problem, you can also use blogging to invite them behind the scenes of your business to meet your other clients, your suppliers and vendors, your partners, and your staff. These backstage tours create a sense of comfort and familiarity before they even walk in the door.

You can also turn the tables and offer people a chance for you to get to know them. Invite them to submit questions, recipes, tips, photos, stories – the sky’s the limit!

From blog to business: Familiarity breeds trust, and so the more often you connect with people in meaningful ways, the more comfortable they will feel approaching you to do business.

Bonus: As people join in public discussions with you and about you, they can soon turn into customer evangelists who help others discover and trust you.

5. They know exactly when to come in

Building onto that sense of familiarity and community, your blog readers and social media followers can enjoy a sense of privilege and exclusivity. While you’ll mainly use your blog for information and not promotion, occasionally you can directly promote your business and something that’s going on there.

Your loyal readers and social media followers will be the first to hear, and will want to boost their own online reputation by passing on these great opportunities to their network.

From blog to business: Because of the trust, familiarity and goodwill you’ve built by sharing helpful, relevant information, people will be much more open to your sales offers, and more likely to say yes if they’re the right fit.

A Wellness Blogging Primer – Interview With Linda Dessau

By

Interview with Linda Dessau
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Curious how I got started with blogging and content marketing? Wondering about the biggest blogging mistakes I see from wellness professionals?

I answer these questions and many more in this interview for Response Mine Health. Put them all together for your very own wellness blogging primer. Here’s just a glimpse of what we covered:

RM: What are some of the specific challenges facing wellness professionals when handling the marketing side of their business?

LD: One thing that comes up is a loud inner critic. “I feel like a fraud because I don’t have this all figured out yet.” “Who would want to read what I write?” “I’m no good at writing; I can’t blog.”

The antidote for this kind of self-doubt is to find a blogging buddy, writing group or blog editor who can remind you that none of us are perfect, and who can look over your work to give you an outside perspective and catch any pesky typos or writing errors.

RM: What are the most common mistakes you see your clients making with their online writing efforts? What should they be doing differently?

LD: The biggest blogging mistake you can make is to start and then stop. Once people see a blog on your site, they’ll notice if it hasn’t been updated or you only seem to post haphazardly. They’ll wonder if that’s how you do everything in your business. Instead, set yourself a realistic blogging schedule like once a month, and then carve out a little time each day to work towards that.

Read the entire interview on the Response Mine Health blog.

P.S. If you liked my tips in this interview, you might enjoy the Blogging Tips newsletter, delivered weekly to your inbox! Sign up here.