Archive - April, 2011

Small-Town Small Business Web Pages – One Page at a Time

By on April 20, 2011 in Blog Coach with 0 Comments

"I don't need a website.  I don't even have a computer here."

That's what the owner of a small-town, three-chair hair salon said to me the other day. Really. But she's not alone in her thinking.

6a00d834516aff69e20147e3bb57d8970b-500wiNow that the weather has improved, I've again been building single-page websites in the highways and hedges of rural Iowa.

I'm finding that the number of rural businesses that don't have websites (or in their mind, a reason for one), is much greater than the 30% I've alluded to in recent years.

I asked the hair salon owner if she had ever googled a business to find contact information, or simply used Google as a yellow-pages type of tool.  Of course, she said yes.  I asked her if she thought maybe her prospective customers might do the same.  We built her a single page site within an hour.

A paragraph. A picture. A page. 

It's a great starter kit for the rural business to get a presence on the web.

I've created a simple form for business owners or independents to use if they want their own single-page site (complete with their own domain).

If you know of anyone (or want one yourself – we're starting and building these in less than an hour for less than $200 each)


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Are Whitepapers Dead?

By on April 11, 2011 in Marketing, Social Media with 0 Comments

Are Whitepapers Dead?

If you ask Lauren Carlson of Marketing Automation Software Guide,, the answer is clear in her article No One Wants to Read Your Whitepaper, Let's Hope They Recycle It.

The days of the Whitepaper have changed. Twice it seems.  And a third time could be a charm for both writer and reader.

I had the opportunity to ask Lauren a few questions to help us understand the future of whitepapers and their possible replacements:

Q: In your piece, you point to PDFs, ebooks, and microsites as potential replacements for whitepapers of old.  As content management tools continue to get easier, is this one reason whitepapers are becoming passe (quick-attention spans being another)? /div>

A: I think that content management tools make it easier to manage your content in multiple mediums. However, I think the attention span has a lot to do with the whitepaper's waning popularity. A good whitepaper – one that provides valuable information or is educational in nature – can be very helpful further on down the decision-making process. However, the early-stage buyer is not interested in digesting a dense sales pitch. They want a simplified version that can give them an overall idea. Save the dense material for later.
Q: Can you give us an easy definition of "microsite" with possibly a few examples of good ones?
A: A microsite is typically a page or cluster of pages that act as a supplement to a primary website. They are usually focused on one topic, product, area of interest, etc. Our company, Software Advice runs several microsites. Some examples include:
 Q: Whitepapers may have gotten too "salesy" because business people were offering "free" whitepapers to build an email list. Is there an acceptable length and maybe a better term than "white paper" to use in offering such an exchange (info for email)?
A: I would say that it's not so much about the length, but the formatting. So many whitepapers look like essays. A person opens it and, even if they are interested in learning more about the topic, they will tune out. Formatting the whitepaper with a user-friendly UI, incorporating interactive elements such as embedded videos, polls, etc. – these make the content more appealing to the reader. However, the addition of these elements make it more of an eBook than a whitepaper.

If you'd like to follow more of Lauren's thinking and linking:

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Feed the Junkies

By on April 8, 2011 in Blog Coach with 1 Comment

Fanatics!

From a poker junkie to star trekkie, football fans to Beatlemania – people flock together to celebrate and commiserate and even fan the flames of their fanaticism.

The content ignites community and creates conversation. Are you providing and provoking the content worthy of the flame?

Again, we can go to our bookstore lesson and especially the magazine section to see what’s hot or not.

  • What topic has multiple titles?
  • What are the weeklies and top monthly mags headlining?
  • Who is adorning the most covers (either individual or genre)?

If you want ideas on what’s being devoured, tap into the mags on the rack. These publishers spend millions in market research. Stop guessing and follow some of their lead.

Have an abundance mentality in sharing too. Don’t hoarde your findings. Be the resource!

By sharing the best poker games and sites, the junkies will return and reward you, and then you will have a winning hand.

Writing With FastPencil

By on April 6, 2011 in Books, Cool Tools with 0 Comments

Inspired by Doug Mitchell's book The MultiThread Marketer (review coming soon), I started putting together archives of ConverStations into book form on FastPencil a few nights ago. Not all of the posts, just the best of them.

FastPencil makes it very easy to organize and publish your book to Amazon as Doug has done with his book. So I'm doing likewise.

At 22,000 words  and two years of archives still to go through, I might break things up into two volumes (one talk, one tech).

It's been so easy, Angela and I are beginning to work on a book together ("Extravagant Love: With Christ as Our Example") with plans for a late-summer publishing date.

More to come.

Maybe you should start working on your book, too.

 

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