A couple of weeks ago, I asked: Do Blogs Work? I was surprised to find that this topic took off like a rocket, and was picked up by several bloggers across the Internet:

• How Do You Feel About Marketing Your Writing Business?
• What is Your Writing Blog Doing for You?
• Inspiration Points: Abraham Lincoln’s Secret
• When Blogging Is Not Enough
• Do Blogs Really Earn Business?

In comments to my original post and in these follow-ups, some said blogs could improve your business, if done the right way and if part of a larger marketing plan (notably James from Men with Pens). Others said that the time and work involved could be better applied elsewhere, if you are looking at a purely marketing point of view. A third group said “Who cares?” since blogging for them is just for fun.

Tom Chandler of the Copywriter Underground also pointed out that some freelancers may use a blog as a way of avoiding less desirable but more active methods of marketing like cold calls.

(If you like, you can read all the comments here.)

But except for a select few, bloggers are not sure what impact — if any — their blog is having on their marketing efforts. I realized that I was in that group of people who couldn’t accurately measure my blogging results.

So, I decided to put my money (or at least my time) where my mouth was, and set out to devise a way to determine Blog ROI.

Why the ROI?

Should we measure any type ROI in the first place? I think so. I think it’s important to gauge how well our marketing efforts are working. But some marketing methods are definitely easier to measure than others.

For example, it is fairly easy to track your costs and your response rate (along with other important statistics) with Google Adwords. Ultimately, this allows you to track your Return On Investment or ROI. The idea of course is to measure how effective your marketing is in terms of dollars (pounds, drachma…) spent. The formulas are so simple even a writer can use them:

• Adwords costs/Number of New Contracts = Cost of Acquisition (of Each New Contract/Client)
• Income Generated/Adwords Costs = Income Generated Per Advertising Dollar

Now here’s the “tricky” one:

• (Income Generated-Adwords Costs)/Adwords Costs*100 = Return On Investment or ROI (represented as a percentage)

If I spend $1,000 on Adwords and get $5,000 in contracts, then my ROI is:

($5,000-$1,000)/$1,000*100 or 400%.

By trying different marketing methods and comparing the results, you can gauge which advertising method gets you the best bang for your buck. You can do this monthly, yearly, or during the life of a specific Adwords campaign.

The Difficulty in Calculating Blog ROI

So if we accept that we should measure ROI of our marketing, and we look at blogging — at least partially — as marketing, then it follows that we should examine our Blog ROI.

But how do you measure blog results?

First of all, the investment is in time, not money (except, perhaps, for any web or graphic design work you contracted out, etc.). And second, unless someone says: “Hey, I read your blog, and I want to hire you…” there is no obvious way to make a direct connection between your blog and a new client and/or contract.

I should point out that this question is not new in the corporate world, where the demand for demonstrated Blog ROI is likely much higher than the freelance world. I came across two articles (there are many) that became my reference points:

• http://www.rickwhittington.com/blog/calculating-business-blog-roi/
• http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/2006/06/calculating_the.html
  

Now I think that it is important to point out that these posts are written with larger companies in mind. Charlene in the Forrester blog asks how corporate bloggers can justify their blogging time. As she says, blogging is part of her work as an analyst and (hopefully) gains goodwill for her corporation, among other things. But she cannot accurately gauge how her blog here will impact sales over at another part of the company.

And that is a big difference. Freelancers generally handle the front end and back end of marketing and client acquisition, so we do have that advantage. Whereas measuring impact is almost impossible at a larger company, there must be some way for us freelancers to see how many (if any) clients we attracted directly or indirectly through our blog.

I’m going to try to find out just how easy it is to measure, and share that with you in coming posts. In the meantime, let me know how you feel about Blog ROI. Is it important? Am I on the right track here? Am I off my rocker? Let me know!

~Graham

Here’s a thought that makes you glad it’s Friday: Paris Hilton is a more famous writer than you.

I caught a bit of David Letterman last night (a re-run, I think), and Paris Hilton was a guest. Now don’t get me wrong, she seems like a nice person. But what is the fascination? She is like a train wreck still happening, marked by the incessant, nails-on-a-chalkboard screech of the brakes that never quite take. I truly hope that the “ditzy blonde” image she portrays is an act.

But what is most depressing is that she is a published author. People who haven’t even read Shakespeare or Fitzgerald or Tom Robbins have read Paris. Of course at the bottom of the cover — if you squint — you’ll see that the book was written “with Merle Ginsberg”. She is even more famous as a writer than the writer who actually wrote the book.

I know this is starting to sound a bit like a rant. It’s not really meant to be, but hey, read into it as you will. I like to think it’s more a commentary on the state of the world today (or likely how it has always been…)

And for us corporate copywriters out there, it is an important lesson. Talent and hard work are great, but marketing is everything.

~Graham

It nagged at me before I started this blog, it continued to tug at my sleeve as I wrote, and now it’s starting to whisper in my ear with increasing volume… If we are writing blogs to increase sales, are we going about this the right way?

James over at Men with Pens says that he and Harry generate business from their blog. That, for many of us, is a great end result. But I can’t help but feel that most of us are sort of huddled in these little dark alleys across the Internet, quietly talking about writing amongst ourselves. Although it is certainly social and helps us all develop our writing/business skills, I’m not sure it is useful for attracting new clients.

I think blogs have a lot of great potential, but for me anyway (I can’t speak for anyone else) there is room for tweaking.

What do you think? Are blogs about sharing writing tidbits and patting each other on the back? Should we expect to derive measurable business from blog writing? Or is it all just for fun anyway? I’d like to know!

~Graham

One of the most time-consuming aspect of editing text is the “clean up”. Double-spaces between sentences, bulleted text with generic asterisks instead of bullets, and extra bits of code that seem to transfer when you copy and paste…

Well, you’ll be happy to know that you can fix many of these problems faster with the good ol’ Find/Replace tool. One secret you don’t often hear about is that you can actually replace a line of text with — nothing! That’s right, you can actually go through and in essence delete all the left over text that you don’t need.

Below are some examples.

Getting Rid of Double Spaces

To get rid of double spaces between sentences:

1. Open the Find/Replace tool
2. Insert a period with two spaces in the “Find” text box
3. Insert a period with one space in the “Replace” text box
4. Click “Replace All”

Don’t forget to repeat this with all possible punctuation, e.g. “!”, “?” and even quotation marks.

Getting Rid of “Generic” Bullets

Say that you are rewriting web content for a client. Usually the best way to start is to go to their current website, then copy and paste all the content into a Word document. You’ll notice that any bulleted text won’t transfer correctly. What I normally get is this:

*some bulleted text here
*some more bulleted text
*…

What it amounts to is four or five spaces with an asterisk. The old way of dealing with this is to go through and manually highlight, then delete from each line. But by using Find/Replace you can:

1. Enter the number of spaces and the asterisk currently in the document in the “Find” text box (cut and paste for best accuracy)
2. Enter nothing in the “Replace” text box
3. Click on “Replace All”

Now you will get an unbulleted list, which you can re-bullet in Word.

Adding “Smart” Quotes

Often, especially when transferring from the web to a Word document, you get the generic quotes. You can turn these into “smart” quotes (the nice curly kind) by using Find/Replace:

1. Enter a quotation mark in the “Find” text box (doesn’t matter what it looks like)
2. Enter a quotation mark in the “Replace” text box (doesn’t matter what it looks like)
3. Click on “Replace All”

All quotes will automatically turn into smart quotes. Don’t forget to do this for single quotation marks/apostrophes as well.

Getting Rid of Excessive Code

Sometimes some background code gets displayed in the transfer of text. For example, if you copy and paste text from Word into WordPress incorrectly, you can get bits of code between paragraphs that look like this:

To get rid of this, simply:

1. Add the line of code into the “Find” text box
2. Add nothing to the “Replace” text box
3. Click on “Replace All”

All the extra code will now be gone!

Do you have any of your own shortcuts using Find/Replace or some other feature? Let us know!

~Graham

One of the first rules of writing is to use an active voice. Say “Rick drove the car” rather than “The car was driven by Rick.” Nine times out of 10, this is great advice.

But there is a time in marketing when the passive voice subtly helps you convey your point.

Using the passive voice can imply that something is happening to your target audience, something that they are helpless from stopping. It shifts the blame from them to the product or service they are currently using.

For example, say you were writing ad copy for a new window cleaner and comparing it to the old brand. Instead of saying “Tired of leaving streaks behind when you clean?” (which implies the user is doing something wrong), you can say “Tired of seeing streaks that are left behind?” (which more likely implies the product doesn’t work right.)

Not only does this avoid blaming your potential customer about his or her shortcomings, but it also shows empathy. “We’ve all been there, I feel your pain…” Plus, you get to be the hero: “Well this new glass cleaner does not leave streaks — when your window is clean, it’s clean!”

Again, this technique is subtle and works at the subconscious level. But it is one addition to your bag of persuasive writing tricks.

Have some tricks of your own? Leave a comment and share!

~Graham

Tom at the Underground Copywriter found this great new online application: Wordle. Check it out (the blog and the app) to find out how you can make your own word soup.

Here’s what Chapter One of The Great Gatsby looks like:

(Click to see a bigger image)

And here are the famous last three paragraphs:

I don’t know why I like this so much, but I do. There’s something visually poetic about it, obviously. It is also vaguely Douglas Coupland-like (his art, not necessarily his books…) But more than that, it forces you to consider the words in a whole new way.

Do you think Fitzgerald would mind if I turned this into a T-Shirt? For personal use only. I’m not planning to sell them out of my trunk or anything.

But that does raise some interesting copyright issues — can you legally sell the words in this form? Is this The Great Gatsby or does this little application change it into something different?

Ooh, too heavy for me to think about right now. But in any case, spread the Wordle!

~Graham

As I would imagine is true for most writers, I’ve always thought of website visitors as readers. Obviously, good design is important, but I’ve always been of the mindset that people come to read the content.

But this past weekend, I read part of a book that described website visitors as “website users”. This struck me as strange at first. After all, how do you “use” a website?

When you think about it, that’s exactly what you are doing. Visitors use a website to find out about a product or service, contact a vendor, look at pictures or videos, even make purchases. In fact reading in itself is incidental — visitors don’t come to read, per se, they come to get information.

Some might say that I’m arguing semantics, but I think that there is an important distinction here, and one that writers especially need to be aware of. Most writers are guilty of falling in love with their own words — I’m certainly one of them. But people don’t want to read a novel if they can get the same information in 100 words.

If we think of website visitors as users rather than readers, this will help us focus our writing in at least two ways. First, we will cut out the wordiness. Second, we will be more conscious of stressing the key messages.

Don’t get me wrong — there is a place for longer web pages. A website can be an inexpensive place to store easily-accessible user guides, tech specs, additional background information, etc. But for the average marketing website page, brief content is king.

What do you think? Are website visitors users or readers? And should we make the distinction?

Let us know!

~Graham

Or “The Medium is Not the Message”

In a guest post on The Copyblogger, Bob Hoffman takes the stand that the Internet is not interactive for “the vast majority of users”. He goes on to define interactivity as “the ability to interact with the content of the medium, not just the medium.”

I disagree. First, most people at some point or another have used highly-interactive websites like Facebook, MySpace, even MSN Games (which has been around since what, the 90s?) These are clear examples of interacting with the content. Then there are bookmarking sites, forums, chat rooms, and adjusting the font size of a web page. Even choosing which content to access next by clicking a link is interactive.

But I’m going to take this one step further and state that I disagree with Bob’s definition. For me, the Internet is not about interacting with websites, it’s interacting with people. I bought an image in 1996 from a store in Phoenix I found through the Internet. Got the phone number, called the owner, and ordered it. That is interactivity, because it helped connect two people who likely never would have met.

Today, the site content is definitely more interactive. You can complete a sale without ever actually talking to anybody, though you still have the option of meeting people you never would have otherwise. (And how cool is that?)

Defining “The Global Village”

The Internet emerged about the time that the idea of the “Global Village” started coming into vogue. I don’t think this is a coincidence. Yes, we could say that globalization was and would continue to develop as a driving force without the Internet, but it certainly sped up the process. It also brought it down to the level of the individual, so that instead of just ABC Company purchasing goods from Beijing Emporium, Joe Smith could too.

And that is interactivity.

Now the main point of Bob’s post was regarding “social marketing” and I’m not going to argue with him that there are a lot of unfulfilled dreams. But I think that the potential is still there too, we just have to look at it a different way. Internet marketing isn’t sticking in ads like you would on TV. It’s taking advantage of the medium, and finding new ways to deliver the message that plays to its strengths.

As Tom Chandler has mentioned on occasion, it’s all about engaging the consumer, not interrupting them. Deliver the right message to the right people and the right time is basic marketing. Adapting that premise to Internet and social marketing is the challenge.

What do you think? Is the Internet interactive? Are there better ways to market ourselves and our clients on the Internet?

~Graham

Came across this neat little web app called “Scribble Live” featured, apparently, at the Toronto Mesh web design conference last week. Its tagline “Fast/Easy/Live Blogging” certainly says it all. It may be neat, but is it useful? Is this just a re-packaged online IM system?

I remember hooking up with friends through IRC chat rooms about 10 or 15 years ago. Someone would open a room, we’d all meet there and chat. It was great for hockey pools!

Now, 15 years later, the technology is different but the result seems to be the same. Mind you it is a bit easier to log in (though you do need a Hotmail or Facebook account to create your live blog).

Blog This Conference

In Scribble Live’s product description, they illustrate some of the uses, including “blogging” at a conference that someone is attending so that everyone back at the office gets a play-by-play of what is going on. In fact, some delegates did a live blog of the Mesh conference. However if conference blogging really did break, then wouldn’t the “best delegate” be the one with the fastest fingers? And how much could you actually participate if you are acting as its stenographer?

I think the greatest value of Scribble Live is to show how far Web 2.0 is progressing — and how it’s pushing against its own limitations. I don’t think “live blogging” will catch on in a huge way (though Anne at the Golden Pencil may have found a use for it last Thursday…!)

Next Killer Google App?

But as a group chat app, it might be one of the easier ones out there, especially considering that you can share images, YouTube videos, etc. It might foreshadow what is to come for real-time, cyber meeting rooms. Sort of an easier “Go To Meeting” but without the go-to cost. Wouldn’t be surprised if Google swooped in and snapped this up for their ever-growing library of online applications (and maybe that’s the point.)

At any rate, I know what I’ll be using for next year’s hockey pool…

Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think: Scribble Live

~Graham

or “Zen and the Art of Social Media”

At the beginning of “Contact” (the movie, not the book) there is a brilliant sequence where the camera pulls out from Mother Earth and all the TV and radio waves aurally pull out with it. You hear snippets from the soaps, ’60s shows to finally the first radio recordings. The further from Earth you get, the less chatter there is until finally silence.

Besides the great way it sets up the movie to follow, I really have an affinity for that scene.

There’s a lot of talk on the blogosphere right now about time-sucking things on the Internet like blog reading, Twitter, and the like. (Funny, no one’s mentioned Bejeweled yet…) Social media is showing its downside. Yes, it is great to connect, but have you ever tried to write in the middle of a convention or a cocktail party? Not conducive to great work.

Yesterday I tried an experiment. I shut down my email and my IM and focused on a couple of projects I needed to work on. I did cheat — I opened my email a couple of times in the day and I did answer the phone. But even in the semi-silence, I found I was a lot more focused.

I must admit it was also eerie in a way. Part of the draw of all these techno-gadgets is that we don’t feel like we are working in a void. It’s like we all have these little cubicles that Coupland so derided in “Generation X”, except that instead of listening to the chatter in the same room, our cubicles are thousands of miles apart. I’ve never worked in a cubicle, but I would imagine that if I did and suddenly everyone left, it would be a bit unnerving, despite the opportunity to really get down to work.

Ultimately, I think we need to balance connection and me-time, social media and work time, being readily available and putting out the “Quiet — writer at work” sign.

How about you? Have you tried cutting out the noise? And how did that work for you?

Any tips you have to creating a zen-like balance between the two, let me know!

~Graham