Creating Great Content, Keep it Real

I firmly believe that your web marketing goals should be to build a community around your product or service, and that your web presence should be the “clubhouse” for that community. Making your site a place where your community can come to chat, show off, learn and play means that they will visit regularly. This is far more powerful for you than hoping that they remember you next time they want to buy, or spending a lot of money and effort to artificially improve your SEO rankings. Nothing will improve your SEO better than having great information that your customers comment on and share with their friends who need your services. It’s not about getting unique visitors to your site, it is about getting engaged, interested potential customers to visit over and over. Providing great content that is targeted toward your customer’s wants and needs is the foundation of creating this destination website. My 7 Rules for Great Web Content are the basics I have learned in providing content for my own website as well as a number of major players in the woodworking industry.

Rule #1: Keep it Real

These are the rules for GREAT content, not the rules for lots of SEO keywords. Trust me when I tell you that the first time your website shows up at the top of a customer’s Google search and they are dissapointed to find some generic piece that either does not answer their questions, inform them in some way or entertain them, they will never click on your link again no matter where you appear on Google. Here is an example of what I mean. The headline is: “Where to Find DIY Woodworking Plans”. It only takes a few seconds to realize that it is a marketing piece with no real new information. The over use of keywords makes it read like the author’s command of English is not great, and a potential customer that chooses to click the link on your recommendation is likely to feel cheated. You may never have the chance to regain that lost trust.

Worse yet, Google and other search engines are constantly upgrading their algorythms to detect this sort of thing and penalize sites that use it. So Keep it Real and provide your audience with relevent, interesting and useful content. If you are a cabinet shop, what cool storage solutions can you show? If you sell to the woodworking hobbyist, what tips, tricks or skills can you provide that help them make their work better or easier? If you sell B2B, what insights can you share with your clients to improve their sales or profits?

Take a look at Lee Valley’s Woodworking Newsletter. They are very strict with themselves about not directly selling in the newsletter, but by providing a mix of how-to articles, what tool is this? features and general interest content keeps readers coming back. If Lee Valley tools are shown in the hands of craftspeople making beautiful things, that is just a bonus for them.

This needs to be your goal. To provide a place where your customers can go to explore and learn without being innudated with sales pitches and certainly without feeling that they have wasted their valuable time. Give good value for the time they are “spending” with you and they will come back again and again.

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Administrator, January 31st 2012 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media Marketing, Uncategorized

Stop Chasing Your SEO Tail

To begin with, a few notes:
I have been remiss about keeping up with this blog and posting as frequently as I ought to. I hope to remedy that at least for the next several months. One reason I believe that I can do better is that I just found out that I will be presenting a new seminar at IWF Atlanta this year entitiled; “7 Rules for Great Web Content”. Without giving away the store, I intend to use this blog to work through the details of that seminar, so those of you who follow will get much of my thinking on this for free and ahead of the attendees at my seminar.
Another thing that I want to bring to your attention is something sort of new to YouTube. No, I am not talking about the “new look”, but an often overlooked fact which is that YouTube now allows for live links within the video descriptions. This is big if you have YouTube content already. What it means is that by simply going back through your older videos and adding your website address (you must include the “http://”) you will increase the number of links to your website, AND can dramatically increase the traffic to your site with no cost and virtually no effort! I went back and added mine and saw an immediate increase in traffic to the website. I recommend adding the link at the top of the description as shown in the photo above. The new design only shows the first few lines of the video description so even if the viewer does not click the “Show More” button, they will see the link.

Now on to the title of this blog. I try to keep up with SEO issues as part of my work with clients, and I have to tell you, there is just too much! Every day another social media site comes out, or someone tells you that you MUST be using Google + or else you are DEAD! Forget it! Stick to the basics, do what you know and are good at, and concentrate on your core audience and you will be fine.

Having half a million Twitter followers, ten thousand “likes” on your Facebook page, or even seeing a million visitors a month on your website is worse than useless if they are the wrong audience. If they are not inteacting with you, passing your information along to others or not buying from you, then they are just taking up your time and bandwidth. Far better to have 100 really engaged customers than 10,000 that are just “noise”. The days of mass market advertising are pretty well over. You do not need to reach 100,000 people hoping that some fraction of a percentage of them will pay attention to your message. With a little care and effort, you can now directly target the audience you want and get VERY high conversion rates. My newsletter only reaches about 260 names with each issue, but I average a 50% open rate and nearly 50% of those click on the links in my email.

I may well be biased since a good portion of my income is earned by creating content, but I (and my customers) are convinced that content is still king and the secret to reaching the right audience for your business. I work largely with woodworking retailers and manufacturers. The goal is to create a web presence that the customers see as a destination unto itself rather than the place we hope they remember when it is time to order. For example, I write many of the blog posts for Rockler, arguably the biggest retailer in the industry. We use the blog to teach and instruct, especially for newer woodworkers who are specifically looking to learn more about their craft. A recent series of blogs showed different methods of bending wood. The readers learn new techniques, actually read the blog and comment on it, and begin coming back regularly to learn more. Along the way, Rockler gets to show and link to tools and materials on their website, and add ing any number of keywords that will enhance their SEO organically.

The organic part is very important. If you have a follower click on a link to one of your articles and it is obviously fluff written only to enhance SEO, (you know the type I mean) it does not matter if your website is link #1 on Google, they will not be fooled again by you. In addition, every day Google and the other search engines are building better and better filters to penalize the irrelevent fluff posts. SEO for SEO’s sake is going to hurt more than it helps.

So spend your time, effort and money creating great content for your target audience. Trust me, if you do it well, the SEO will come. Creating great content is not all that hard nor does it have to cost much. I will be discussing how I do it over the next several blog posts.

Please feel free to comment here on this blog, get in touch with me at rbagnall@consultingwoodworker.com, follow me on Twitter or connect with me at Linkedin.

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Administrator, January 4th 2012 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media Marketing

Of What use is Video to Me?

I know it has been some time since I posted here, and I promise to try and be better about getting new posts up. The truth is, I have been VERY busy, and much of my time is being taken up by producing videos for my website and my clients.

More and more companies are beginning to realize the value and even the necessity of adding video to their marketing efforts. And it is not just about sales videos! When I got started producing videos, the focus was less on sales and more on the “how-to” of the product. Most videos were of router bits, which can be expensive. The focus of these videos were to show potential buyers the bits in action, and suggest alternate uses where possible. They were the answer to a customer’s question; “Will buying this bit solve my problem?”

I have produced a number of these videos and continue to do so, but was asked if I could also create sales videos as well. The products and their videos are much the same, but the focus is a bit different. Sales videos are more geared to introducing the product to a customer and pointing out the features and benefits of owning it. Video allows this to be very quick and even entertaining.


I also produce videos my clients are using for FAQ pages of their website. This can be VERY valuable to a company, especially if your products are technical in nature. An FAQ video can be accessed by your customers worldwide and 24/7. If properly executed, it can help reduce technical support calls and emails, taking strain off your staff by answering the very basic questions which allows your highly trained and cometent staff to deal with more in-depth issues.

A note: While I believe all online videos should be limited to apporx 90 seconds in length, with FAQ videos this is even more important. A customer is not going to scrub through a 20 minute video to find the answer to his basic question. Break that information up into short videos that are clearly labels so a customer can easily find the answer they want the same way a written FAQ page is broken up into individual questions.

Interviews are another great type of video for marketing your business. Are new laws or regulations of concern to your customers? Film a short interview with an expert and post it! Typically you can find someone who is willing to do this for free. after all, they will get publicity from the interview and your promotion of the video, and they get an added credence from being presented as an expert. Interviews can be recorded in person, or via video chatas long as the connection is good. I have even seen the questions and answers recorded separately and edited together. My advice for interview videos is do not rely on the micraphone built into your video camera. Even pocket video cameras like the Kodak Zi8 that i shoot with have a jack for an external microphone. This will greatly enhance the sound quality.

Video is here to stay for the foreseeable future, and technology has made it inexpensive and easy to use for your marketing. If you do not have the time to do it yourself, then find out what it costs to have it done for you. It can cost far less than you may think, and I have customers that are very happy to simply tell me what they want, and not have to worry about anything other than posting it once I send them the finished file.

As always, I invite you to comment or ask questions here on the blog, via Twitter or Linkedin. I’m always happy to discuss!

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Administrator, July 6th 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media Marketing

Video is Not for You, Huh?

Ok, I get it! Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and now Quora? Who has time to keep up with all this stuff, let alone getting caught up with YouTube videos! I know that everyone is telling you that you HAVE to do social media, and you just do not have the time!

Ok, take a deep breath…. let it out slowly…. and take a breather for a few while you enjoy a quick video:

Feel Better? What you just watched was a review I shot and produced for my own website. Rockler sent me a set of Bench Cookies just after they debuted at AWFS in 2009.

Please note that I have invested less than $1000.00 in total equipment to be able to produce that video. Please note also that as of this writing, that video has been viewed 25,000 times in 18 months! How does this matter to you? It shows two things that you should know:

First, it shows that shooting, editing and posting video does not have to be very expensive, or time consuming, or difficult. It can even be fun! And that video brings traffic to my website when people find it in their YouTube searches, and when they view it ON ROCKLER’S WEBSITE. That’s right. My amature review video is hosted on Rockler’s website, right on the product page, alongside their own demo video. And that brings me to point number two:

The second thing you should know about getting video onto your website is that you DON’T HAVE TO DO IT YOURSELF. There are millions of people out there shooting video with webcams, digital video cams, cellphones and whatever. Yes, 99% of the “footage” shot is complete crap, but 1% isn’t, and 1% of millions of postings is a BIG number. That 1% is also looking to be shared, and is usually FREE for the asking!

It is important for you to understand that the entire point of Youtube is sharing and passing along content. Anything posted as “public” on Youtube is searchable, linkable and the owner will likely be thrilled to let you use their video on your site. Hmmm, sound to good to be true? Let me show you how it works!

I created and posted this video review to my website. As of this writing it has been viewed 220 times. Not bad, but not stellar either.
Recently, an online retailer, who is adding the Magswitch products to thier website was searching YouTube and found this video. They contacted me and asked if they could embed it on the Magswitch product page of their website. I gladly said yes, with the ONLY conditions being that they post it without editing, and that a link to my website be included. No money needed, and now they have video content that their customers can watch when considering their purchase, and I have another link feeding viewers back to my content, which is SEO gold!
Oh, and this is in many ways better for the vendor than using Magswitch’s own video. (They will likely include Magswitch’s videos as well, they’d be fools not to.) Every customer knows that the vendor or manufacturer’s videos will talk up the product. An amature video (we call it USER GENERATED CONTENT) is often more powerful as a marketing tool because it is essentially customer testimony. It is, in fact, “word of mouth” advertising that can reach a great many more people than used to be possible.

So, start thinking about video again in this new light. I recommend that your marketing message should contain both your own video and user generated video whenever possible. In the next several blog posts, I’ll be discussing such questions as who should generate your videos, how easy or hard getting great results can be, and ways to use video to get more SEO into your site. Hang on to your hats, the ride is just starting!

Please feel free to comment here in the blog, find me on Linkedin or Twitter, or email me if you want more info at rbagnall@consultingwoodworker.com

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Administrator, March 1st 2011 | Posted in Social Media Marketing

Home Depot Does Social Media and Customer Service Very Right

We love to complain about them, we bash them, and especially in the Woodworking community we refer to large home retail chains as “The Borg”. But to give credit where it is due, Home Depot this past week went all out and did it all right, and I think you should know about it.

Just after Christmas, Home depot decided to clearance a very popular tool sharpening system, and listed them at about 25% of the normal retail price. As you might expect, word got out on the woodworking forums, and a number of people placed orders with Home Depot. (read the original thread here) I’m not sure what the mistake was on HD’s part. It was a sale to reduce inventory and should have been limited to stock, but somehow folks were able to back order the item at Home Depot’s online store. When stock ran out, Home Depot cancelled the back orders without explaination. New threads were immediately started on the forum complaining and calling “foul” on Home Depot.

One member of the forum who’s order had been cancelled emailed Home Depot’s CEO, Frank Blake. (Read thread here) Not only did Mr. Blake read the email, he forwarded it to Tish Pollard, Home Depot’s Resolution Manager who contacted the customer and overnight shipped him one of the sharpeners for free! But Tish and Home Depot didn’t stop there.

Tish ended up signing up to be a member of the woodworking forum, and posted an apology on the board! (Read Tish’s Thread) In her post, Tish also stated that HD had made a deal with the sharpener manufacturer to aquire enough stock to honor all of the original back orders at the advertised price!

As a consultant who works with several large retailers in the woodworking retail space, my hat is off to Home Depot, Frank Blake, and Tish Pollard. Mistakes were made, but Home Depot took full responsibility, and demonstrated an unusual understanding of the social media space to correct the problem. This is a model your business should study and your CS team needs to know about.

Ralph Bagnall
www.consultingwoodworker.com

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Administrator, January 3rd 2011 | Posted in Uncategorized

Deeds, not Words (5 Reasons Continued)

The second reason you don’t need to learn Japanese is because Lean is about actions not words. The only words to know are “Can we do this better?” But even that very powerful question is useless if action is not taken to back it up. We all tend to get into a bit of a rut, ignoring the details we see every day. Asking “Can we do this better?” should be a wakeup call to look more closely at those details and decide if we can find improvement there.

JFP offers dovetailed drawers for clients who want them, and economy plywood box drawers where cost is the driving factor. Building these economy boxes was a standard practice that they had been doing for many years, but the cost difference was not as large as they thought it should be. This is the sort of day in, day out task that gets ignored since human nature is to look for the big score, the “home run” that will save the company bundles of money. By walking the shop as an outsider, none of these details are day to day to me. I inquired about the economy boxes, asking how many they make a year, and how they are processed. Once we began working the numbers, it became clear that this was an area where significant savings were possible if we could find a more efficient process. Since these economy drawers were boxes with applied fronts, we decided to set up a dedicated router table with a drawer lock bit for joining the boxes. Both sides of the joint are cut with the same set up, so boxes can milled very quickly with no lead time.

JFP makes literally thousands of these boxes per year, so saving even a dollar a box represents real money, but more importantly, man hours were freed up to be applied on work that can be applied to more skilled (and higher paying) work. It is deeply important to think about being lean, but it is more important to jump in and try to implement the improvements. The drawer lock bit cost about $30.00 USD, and building a dedicated table took about half a day. Small enough risk to try something new, and that small risk is still paying dividends every month four years later.

As always, I invite your comments and suggestions. You can reach me by email at: rbagnall@consultingwoodworking on Linkedin, or on Twitter as @Consultingwood

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Administrator, May 9th 2010 | Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Lean Manufacturing

Lean is Simple (“5 Reasons” continued)

In “5 Reasons You Don’t Need to Learn Japanese to Become Lean” I promised to elaborate on the five reasons. Here is number one; Lean Is Simple:

I was in Jamaica this month working with one of my long time clients. They have come a long way in the last four years, and are looking forward to still more success. We have long since picked the “low hanging fruit” and done most of the easy stuff…or had we?

While there for two weeks, I had numerous opportunities to help them find low to no cost ways to improve their efficiency. I saw two workers in assembly building a bench seat for a restaurant. They were setting a central pillar in the bench frame, one trying to hold the part in place while the other measured and screwed it in place. We discussed how cutting a couple of dados in the stretchers would hold the pillar in place making the task quicker, easier and more accurate. Since the parts were already being cut on the CNC machine, adding the dados was a simple and easy fix. We discussed with the team the idea that any time they had to measure to locate a part in an assembly, they need to think a minute and ask; “Can this be done better?”

Some prototype parts were being cut on the CNC, and one team member noted that the edges were rough and would require much difficult cleanup before they could be shipped. He literally asked; “Can this be done better?” I instantly gathered the CNC operators, the programmer and management. First, I pointed out to the operators that they certainly should have questioned the edge quality with the FIRST part. The programmer and I discussed strategies for cleaning up the cut by reworking the tool path, but most importantly, I made a positive example of the team member in front of everyone. His attitude and response were exactly what I want every worker to adopt. He asked the question to himself, but then took the important step of taking the question to the chain of command. Again, a simple solution that cost a few minutes of programming time will drastically reduce the finishing time needed on these production parts.

Throughout my stay, we constantly reinforced the idea of asking “Can we do this better?” and are devising a simple and immediate reward system to encourage all the workers to bring their ideas to the table. Every day, with every task, answering this simple question will improve your bottom line.

As always, I invite you to share your thoughts here in the comments, by e-mail to rbagnall@consultingwoodworker.com, through Twitter at @consultingwood or on Linkedin

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Administrator, April 29th 2010 | Posted in Lean Manufacturing

5 Reasons You Don’t Need to Learn Japanese to Become Lean.

1) Lean is simple.
At the heart of it, Lean is simple. Forget the books, courses and gurus. Making your custom shop Lean requires nothing more than developing the habit of constantly asking; “Can we do better?”

2) Lean is about deeds not words.
The only term you need to learn is “Constant Improvement”. It is all too easy, working day to day, to lose sight of the common details. Like living near the ocean, the sound of the waves quikly fade into the background. Becoming Lean is about listening for the waves again.

3) Lean is inexpensive to start and pays off quickly.
I’m not talking about taking courses, learning a bunch of terms and hiring gurus. When you first begin to look at your operation through “Lean Eyes”, you will quickly notice a number of fixes that can be implimented right away at little or no cost. Cleaning and organizing workspaces and storage is the place to start.

4) Lean is attitude, not language.
As a manager or owner, you cannot do Lean alone, but you do set the pace and tone for the rest of the shop. Take the time to talk with your floor team. Ask them how they think things can be done better, faster and cheaper. They will surprise you with what they know that you don’t.

5) Lean is an American Idea.
Benjamin Franklin, in his “Poor Richard’s Almanac” strongly advices against waste, and Henry Ford is known for being lean to the point of having engines shipped in crates that became the wood rails for the Model T trucks. At the close of WWII, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was tasked with rebuilding the shattered Japanese economy. He chose to apply the same design and manufacturing standards used to ramp up US industry for wartime production. He brought W Edwards Deming in to advise Japanese industries. These companies, most visibly Toyota, took Deming’s production techniques to entirely new levels. To this day, Deming’s portrait still hangs in the lobby of Toyota’s corporate headquarters.

In the next several posts, I will be expanding on these ideas, and as always, I am happy to hear your thoughts and ideas.

Ralph Bagnall www.consultingwoodworker.com
rbagnall@consultingwoodworker.com
Twitter: @Consultingwood

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Administrator, April 12th 2010 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in Lean Manufacturing

Can Your Company Pass the Test?

Social media sources are a great way to “listen in” on your customers and get a solid feel for what they are saying about you. I came across a really great example of that this week. On an online woodworking forum, (which I certainly feel is social media) I noted a posting about a company I work with, so I checked out the thread.

The member posted that “Something is Wrong” at this company. The complaint was that he wanted to buy a particular item, but felt it was too expensive there and then linked to another online retail site where a similar product was cheaper. The entire tone was very “passive/aggressive.

Read the Thread

For a student of social media marketing, it is great to read all the replies. The company in question is the leader in the field and has a good reputation for customer service. Many members of the forum came to their defense, even going so far as to look up pricing and figure out shipping cost differences.

Over and over again, members recognized that every retailer has items that are more AND less expensive than their competition, and that with enough shopping around, a similar case as the original poster’s could be made for any retailer.

This is EXACTLY what you want to see when you are searching the social media space for your customers. Let me be clear here: The forum community ONLY came to the defense of the retailer because the retailer has spent a lot of time and money doing their business well. No amount of advertising, and no low price point would cause that level of loyalty. Only consistently good products, pricing and customer service will spur your customers to rise to your defense.

No amount of marketing, online or off, traditional or web 2.0 is going to save you if your products or your service are sub-par. Are you searching the web to see what your customers are saying about you?

If the company in the thread was yours, who would write in your defense?

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Administrator, February 18th 2010 | Posted in Social Media Marketing

Social Media as Market Research

Hopefully, by now you are at least thinking about your Social Persona, and beginning to test the waters. This blog post is going to show you one way to begin getting real value from your SM efforts.

One of the most powerful uses of social media (and one that seems to get little attention from ‘experts’ and the press) is as a real-time market research tool. There are both active and passive ways you can use all the chatter out there to find out about your customer’s needs and wants, what they are talking about, and what they tell each other about your business.

Passive listening is akin to old westerns where the cavalry scout puts his ear to the ground and tells the captain how many horses are approaching and how far away they are. You can pretty easily “read” the social media sites to get feedback on what is being said.

Most social media sites have search features that you can use to see what is being said. Twitter for example has two: Trending Topics are displayed on the right hand side of the Twitter home page. These are the most used terms over the entire twitter network. They are not likely to be of direct use, but can give you a feel for the current “mood”. Twitter also offers direct search capabilities. You can easily search for keywords and see what tweets recently contained those words. With many Twitter clients (programs such as TweetDeck or Tweetie that add functionality to Twitter) you can see recent tweets locally, within a range up to 100 miles from your location. Certainly if you are a cabinet shop, this is a big feature. You can literally see what is being said about cabinets or remodeling in your own neighborhood.

Facebook is a bit different. You can certainly search, but the results will be pages from people or businesses, not keyword searches within the conversation. This is useful to find connections and build your network. And as your network grows, you can easily see what people in your network are talking about.

For those of you who do more B2B marketing, Linkedin has some powerful “listening” tools. There are numerous groups you can join (or even start your own) and receive regular updates on topics of conversation among the group members. There is a Question and Answer section where users post questions and other users provide answers. Keeping track of the questions being asked, and reading responses to questions in areas of interest, is a way to see current thinking and meet new contacts.

In the next post, I will discuss more active methods of gathering market information through Social Media. I encourage you to comment of this post as well as suggest ideas you have used!

I can be found on Twitter, (@Consultingwood) on Linkedin, (http://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphbagnall) or via email at: rbagnall@consultingwoodworker.com

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Administrator, January 29th 2010 | Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media Marketing
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