Recently I’ve been really getting into the idea of growing my business, just the idea I could improve the effectiveness of my businesses if I took it beyond just myself and my cousin here.

We’ve also got this huge old garage that is a waste of space, and I’ve been trying to work out what to do with it for years, especially since my house is in Grey Lynn, Auckland - like 8 blocks from the city fringe, great location.

So now I’ve finally embraced the idea that I’m going to be conducting a lot of operations from my garage.

I’m going to need to improve security, insulation and get some electricity in there before I can get serious.

I’m going to start maybe by warehousing a lot of surplus stock for my business. That can be done with mild improvements to insulation and security. I’ll start selling the stock online, but I need someone to manage it, that stuff drives me crazy.

So there’ll be a point at which people are coming in and out of the “warehouse”, even at night, so it needs electricity for light. We need a client area.

I’ve only realised now how badly that is true. So we’ve got a warehouse and a client area where clients and customers are becoming aware that we are retailing various media items from our garage when they come to pick up their online orders or other items from my cd / dvd duplication or poster printing businesses.

So in order to develop the “client area” into a retail space, I need to at that point have full electricity running in order to have all my cd dvd operations shifted down there which would allow for someone to produce the cd / dvd media and attend to the retailing aswell.

So at this point we have a retail operation selling blank media and packaging, aswell as a service onsite to provide cd and dvd printing and duplication. At the same time you’d lease a copier and start running a copy shop alongside, which could also be attended by the same staff member, start noon-4 5 days a week and then going to 10am-6pm 6 days a week.

Of ourse from that point, I needn’t limit myself to discs and packaging and other plastics or related items. I could start selling whatever I thought was appropriate. From a branding point of view I would most likely expand on the idea that we provide affordability and convenience for those who provide media.

So we’re providing more products that bands and media and creatives and small business and larger local businesses are going to say “okay let’s just nip over to Kurb Promo in Grey Lynn where we can pick that up cheaply.”

So plastics, maybe some electronics (i don’t want to encourage burglers), supplies - recycled papers? eco choices?

“Kurb Eco Choices” I like it already “Eco Promo”. *Barf* :p haha
The copier is probably the point at which I’d have to ensure that electricity and insulation set up was sound.

Definitely push the recycled paper thing, my neighbourhood is full of affluent liberals.

So once I had a console running in there, I would make the improvements, and then start offering copying services once I’d leased a copier or two, with that also of course alongside our distribution/placement services.

At that point I’d want to begin marketing and perhaps improve the front of the building and the “shop” or “client area” - the entrance is a BIG set of old wooden double doors and something would have to be done before you did full days down there.

Other add on services would be graphic design and other associated digital services. Seth Godin talked about a head of outsourcing or something - I see what would be a 3rd or 4th person here in this role.

Just starting off developing an assistant in online marketing to the point they can manage and do quality control on all outsourcing - clients can walk in off the street with graphic design or requirements for other such digital services and we can contact outsourcers immediately.

I think, to get there in 12-18month would probably earn me a bit of a sit down, but surely soon enough I would be moving back to seeing the space used for recording media, recording and editing studios of some description - for music, video or probably both.

Retail is a mid term strategy to build turnover, it’s about leveraging what I’ve already got for secure development. If the products I’m retailing are fundamental to my business otherwise and I can use my existing labour to attend the “shop” which has a reasonable location - not on a main thoroughfare but close to a busy area and many businesses.

It’s safe. I’m not one of these dickheads who thinks he’s going to build a viable recording studio or practice rooms or  editing space in his garage. That’s something I’ll do a few years down the line just to indulge myself.

Just having someone who isn’t my cousin or I fronting the business full time is going to create a better customer experience once the clients know they can simply arrive to arrange what they need, and with the crossover in the range of services provided, I’ll be able to push turnover into a quarter of a million a year.

the confidence I have in the range of depth we can provide individual local clients both cheaply and even more conveniently  means I can back myself to focus on the marketing and branding I need to develop to meet those turnover targets.

Hi I’m Matt, I’m a specialist in Small BUsiness Marketing advisor from Auckland, New Zealand. Email me at kurbpromo@gmail.com to learn how I can energize your business marketing and revenue strategies.

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You need to be connecting with the customers that need you the most, and need you more than any other provider.

Usually I work on my businesses during the day and do my online marketing stuff at night. But when I’ve got a lot of work on both with my online and offline businesses it’s hard to fit in marketing efforts here and there, especially when you’ve got to have a “marketing campaign” type approach and commit fully to executing a marketing strategy before evaluating it’s effectiveness.

When in doubt, write a blog! Mulling over SEO or PPC is not always productive.

Branding, well you need to be really on the good stuff before you start getting brave with your branding ideas.

Blog commenting and blogging itself as a dedicated strategy is well, it’s kind of indulgent trying to leverage the “blogging community” or the “blogosphere” for profit when you’re not already rolling deep, to try and announce yourself as the latest expert.

I blog about the work I do as an online marketer building small business internet marketing I’m not a professional marketing blogger. The blog gets me leads. That’s it, as long as I keep adding to the content it will continue to get me leads and if I tweak it, even more so.

You need to be connecting with the customers that need you the most, and need you more than any other provider.

So address that, search for, locate, engage and qualify your targets. The only way you can do this without a large commitment is to sit and write a blog that discusses how your work, your services, your products address the concerns of those who are concerned about it, because they’re the ones who’ll be searching their hearts out for you, by way of Google, word of mouth, or any other means.

So what I’m talking about is when you have an hour to commit, keeping your blog fresh and building up your content is probably as straightforward commitment to your marketing as any. I’ve been kind of bummed that even 3 or so months after the change over from my old wordpress and blogspot blogs - my old blogs still get more traffic. It goes to show the kind of clout you build up when you’re building up your content over years.

I’ve seen blogs at that six month stage when they jump up from10 visitors a day up to 100. I am a stage where I got a whole bunch of blogs and none of them are averaging 100 because I’ve spread myself thin with the switch over.

That probably happens after building a blog over years, you get thousands of hits. And it is my belief that a lot of my clients don’t want to read a blog, they just want to find an expert and pay them. They find my blog, they find enough evidence there that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to online marketing, and it’s a straightforward process to email me - at kurbprmo@gmail.com - and start talking about how my internet marketing experience and skills can help build your project.

By ongoing commitment to posting on my blog - it’s not core, it’s just marketing - I’ll ensure it continues to provide a small but valuable contribution to getting more and better work.

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I don’t want to sound up myself or like I’m blowing my own horn here, but all my blogs have gone a little quiet over the last 2-3 months as I have just been inundated with growth and have almost doubled my income from earlier in the year.

At first it was exciting, but as it’s broken through and held steady in the very low 5 figures p/month range for the last 2 months I started really scratching my head. Sure, there are good times and you make hay while the sun shines.

But it’s been a bloody long summer! When can I assume that I’m safe here on third base?

Last week I had the best week ever from my businesses. They are not all online businesses, but all the marketing of these businesses takes place online. My weekly marketing budget is $50.

This is by the way because, if you hadn’t guessed, I’m a small business marketing consultant - and I’m not too shabby, obviously. You can hire me to help you with each and every part of your online marketing, though demand is fairly heavy. Email me at kurbpromo@gmail.com if you need affordable small business marketing strategy and implementation.

This week, though I’m still pretty tired without having had a whole day off for a while, it looks like I’m going to do a similar figure again. To me it’s significant because I never thought I’d be doing so well!

Y’know? I thought, probably like a lot of people, $100k, that’s a good goal to aim for. That’s good money, and it’s good money for someone like me, knocking on 30, and heading up the curve to my peak.

And so I DO seem to be doing really well! Ever since I got back from tour around mid september, everything just took off, or well, just really levelled up, profit consistently rolling over that 2k mark each week, when earlier in the year (when I still had some time for myself and my music over the week) it had just been here or there.

And the most suprising and freaky part for me is really that I haven’t lifted my marketing game significantly in fact I was away playing gigs for 3 weeks and I’ve been flat out running operations since!

So in saying that, it’s nothing new, it’s built on the solid online marketing foundations I’ve established over the last year or two. Which is nothing too fancy, nothing too complex, nothing overly technical or some visionary concept.

I mean I did have clear plans about how I’d be pushing my marketing forward, I just didn’t have the time, because it’s management skills, particularly personnel management that is shaping up to be my big challenge as I grow my businesses, but I have also addressed my framing recently - whereby rather than shooting for some arbitrary goal, now I just want to fulfill my true potential, and that’s not really about a dollar figure.

Effective Small Business Marketing Strategies:

But for you guys today, in my usual style, I just want to talk honestly about the real and actual reasons why I could possibly have erupted into this sudden growth spurt. I am certain there is no one determining factor but it is actually a concert of elements working together, let me see if I can pin them all. Some are strategies, some are concepts, some are more opinion based.

PPC - Pay per click online advertising: I love ppc now, my own obsessiveness took me to a certain stage but now i’m starting to learn more advanced techniques and seek information outside my experience, I’m actually getting pretty good. As I said PPC takes up almost all of my $50 p/week marketing budget so is anywhere between 2000-6000% profitable. PPC is an art, I see a lot of people just tipping money into it without embracing the dedicated testing and sculpting of your campaign that brings such strong results.

The scary thing for me of course is I only spend $50 p/week. What happens when I double my budget?
Video Promotion + Branding: A few comparisons can be drawn between my video content and my website. Neither would win a design for visual sumptuousness or being utterly immersive in their engagement, but it’s obvious that to a certain extent these platforms are functioning successfully.

Even though my videos are fairly poorly executed in terms of professional standards, there’s a deeply engaging brand connection going on there. I couldn’t tell you what the proportion is, but there is a certain portion of my clientele that are engaging with the videos I have on my site, because unlike many others I’m using video to establish inital trust and authority simply just by fronting up.

Remember it was Woody Allen who said “80% of success is just showing up.” In a new media situation such as online video this is still true. For now.

Without being too analytical, it’s very much a Micheal Hill thing going on. For those outside of Australasia, Micheal Hill became a huge jewellery magnate on the back of Micheal Hill’s self fronted TV ads, where Micheal himself simpy described the specials in a near monotone and signed off, “Micheal Hill, Jeweller.”

We all know about personal branding, but when you run a small business and you’re leveraging online marketing, microbranding is all about creating trust. I know for a fact that there is a portion of my clients who call me simply because of the videos. Because I looked like I was an OK guy. I believe that when people see those videos, they see that I’m someone that is fronting up and can be trusted.

Customer Service: I always knew that my customer service would turn a corner and I would start retaining customers, simply because I really hate how often I’ve had to let clients down and it’s such a stressful experience. I never realised just how much more efficiently my business would run when I wasn’t constantly overstretched just meeting the most basic demands of my clients. Stress makes me panic and get negative, but remove it from the equation and I can really show a lot of stamina. A 12 hour day for me is nothing . . . unless someone yells at me! But also, it never really hit me that as the marketing I was doing would continue to generate the same response, the growing amount of customers I’d retained would begin to add to the total turnover I could expect, and recently business from repeat customers has gone up to 25-30% of total business. This has given me a lot of confidence because I know I’m competitive on price I just have to invest into improving customer experience to ensure I retain enough customers to continue growing in the short term.

Also, I got my very first volunteered testimonial last week to!
Stories: Stories are the life blood of marketing. Stories are what take a commodity and turn it into a message that consumers can understand and find value in. Some people are going to respond to the story that my video tells: That I’m young, I’m fronting up for my businesses as a young entrepreneur who is committed enough to present myself and the services I offer to the world on youtube. Some people are going to respond to the less flattering story of some dude that doesn’t know a whole lot about lighting shooting a bad video in his office.

So in terms of identifying the customers who are going to get the best value out of the service I provide, I’m looking at where stories can enhance my brand. That’s why I recently added a piece to one of my sites explaining why our prices were the cheapest - explaining that when you compare my businesses that I run from my spare room and garage with my cousins help to a big workshop or office or shop space with a big staff, it’s easy to understand. That the brand I’m building is that we’re committed to affordable and fast and most importantly to me is that I always work with clients so they can go ahead with their project - without adding costs - and that’s what I call a commitment to problem solving.
Targeting and Access: Another point I came back to with PPC was that I can’t understand how I’ve moved into doing more corporate cd and dvd presentation packs, and it’s common for a company to place an order for a large number of discs in very basic packaging, and of course these are ideal jobs for us in terms of high profit and low effort.  It’s also highlighted that the customer service issues are always with the musicians who tend to have quite high expectations about what their money gets them.

I think this is clearly from using PPC which exposes us to more companies looking for immediate solutions on Google, whereas a year ago a lot of that was still coming from Myspace and of course they were all bands.

Now that I’ve increased capacity I have also initiated a branding exercise to emphasize convenience and to target the urgent market - Almost overwhelmingly my clients are working to some kind of deadline that they are desperate to meet, and a part of that is that I’m quite accessible in Grey Lynn which is one of the closest residentialareas to the CBD, and I’ll often stay up working on such jobs after midnight to make sure they’re done.
Experience and Efficiency: All these factors have come into play but at the end of the day, it’s a sign of maturity - this time last year I was squandring a lot of my gains because my management skills were so poor but now that I have got more experience and try to avoid negative customer experiences, I’m under less stress and that’s translating into a much higher productivity rate.

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I’m on a major blogging binge right now. Mainly a blog is a great to bring in web traffic who are interested in subjects related to your business that you cover. From there, you can begin generating leads with subtle prompts and promote your services or products in the sidebar. As long as you stay committed to providing value for your readers, it works.

I cover every aspect of blogging in assisting my small business marketing clients in their online marketing campaigns. You can email me at kurbprom@gmail.com

I blog because I use it to get into my head and get ideas out and established and processed. Bringing in traffic and readers is a happy bonus, but I still remain distinctly aware of exactly how to leverage my blogging to create income.

Obviously I’m moving away from music promotion as the largest part of the work I do personally, and that’s where I’ve been active building up content since about a year ago. As I’ve said before, my blog provided a nice platform to atttract highly targeted visitors where the broad net of myspace was beginning to provide diminished returns. Now, I rely on pay per click as my main marketing strategy and my blog and myspace presences provide a small feed into the leads I get.

I’m looking at what I am moving into and profitability in the short term is still a big priority for me because activities that generate cash won’t hinder any other project I want to get going.

But regardless, the concept is in leveraging content. On a blog, you’re leveraging content for attention and building a relationship with readers that create trust and authority in your brand.

But strong written content doesn’t need a blog to be leveraged, especially if you’re really only trying to generate traffic that results in sales. Article marketing is an excellent way to generate traffic and SEO without having to keep a blog updated and developing.

You do have to recognise though that strong communication through strong content is fundamental to success online, it’s just a question of how valuable blogging can be to certain businesses and their marketing requirements.

Sometimes, the value you place on your content is high enough that you may want to leverage it in a different way.

With my membership site, blogging is not an effective strategy because I want to leverage that content to create value for the paying members. In a lot of cases, depending on your product or service, building a relationship isn’t necessary if you’re qualifying the value of what you offer in very explicit terms - as in, you’re really providing a bargain and it’s not a product or service that is directly linked to you building a strng and trusted associated brand.

So here you can see, when I’m promoting my digital coaching and online marketing services for small businesses and entrepreneurs here, and the same services but directed toward musicians artists and talent, I’m using my blog to create the authority and trust you’d expect from a provider of this kind of service.

Where as if you take the approach I’ve employed with my youtube promotions there are far more defined outcomes - there’s production packages - you pay for a video, you get a video. There’s promotion packages, where we guarantee a certain amount of views.

This is not the greatest example. The best example is a product that does something once and then it’s done. The customer is happy that it does what it said it would, you qualify that outcome strong enough in your marketing to the qualified target, you don’t need to blog about it every other day.

Perhaps my cheap graphic design site is a better example. I don’t want to write about cheap graphic design on a regular basis in order to build SEO or authority or anything else.

I just want them to get in touch with me personally so I can order the work and start the process. That is done best by targeting people who need the work done, not by doing the extensive groundwork it would take to build authority and maintain a community around a blog that would generate warm fuzzy positive branding word of mouth traction.

Don’t get me wrong, blogging is a great strategy, but there are times when you may as well just put more money into pay per click and save yourself the hassle.

If you need small business marketing strategies, I’m your man. Whether it’s blogging, pay per click advertsing campiagns, building and promoting websites, graphic design and print, social media - making money with ideas, basically. My rates start from $100 p/week and my email is kurbpromo@gmail.com

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Hi, I’m Matt Turner! I’m a micro marketing guy from Auckland, New Zealand! I run my own businesses and I also help small dynamic businesses, entrepreneurs and also musicians and talent with an extensive repertoire of online marketing strategies and experience.
Contact me @ kurbpromo@gmail.com or +64 27 684 8250

Growing Pains.

Though I’m fairly short at 5′7 I still remember the dull thudding pain you get up your legs and arms as an early teenager, what caused it?

You were growing. And it hurt. You were growing so quickly, that it was actually felt as a dull numbing pain up your limbs.

I have not had an easy time in business. I’ve had an easier time than most obviously because I’ve been able to build on and consolidate my successes, but it has been a lot of hard work and stress. Mainly I see that as the result of my strengths that lie in creative ideas, innovation, and now the strong knowledge and experience I’ve built up in online marketing.

But Management, organisation, customer service - these are areas in which I was not prepared and found myself lacking in when the successes I had in marketing put considerable strain on the ability of my businesses to deliver to a high standard.

In the past, I’ve been quick to write it off as “growing pains”. In the beginning of the year, “growing pains” usually refered to a situation where my cashflow was looking dodgy or holding me back, or a situation where I had to let a client down or miss a deadline would contribute to the performance of my business.

It would hurt, it would be disruptive, but it was the inevitable consequence of growing so quickly and unexpectedly and the result would be that I would be better off in the future.

Now I am experiencing a similar situation, I need to take my business in the direction that’s right for me. At the moment, I’ve been pretty unhappy because I’ve been working too hard. I’ve been making more money than ever before but have been frustrated because even just having a night out puts me behind my workload. It’s amazing that I’m becoming successful it’s just those growing pains there again - I wish I wasn’t growing so fast that it hurt!

And now that I’m bigger, I face new problems. There’s plenty of cash in the business, I can expand capacity to meet a deadline when I’m overstretched, but expanding my staff to a team and my business to a scale that can support them is the next challenge.

Growth is not arbitrary; Until recently I believed I would be happy earning an above average wage, developing a positive image for the work we do, and enjoying my music and other creative projects.

But I’ve been given an opportunity to see how much potential I really have. I see positive things I could achieve with a higher turnover and full time staff other than myself.

Growing and experiencing growing pains in business is not about pursuing wealth anymore; It’s about a commitment to keep doing things positively to the best of my ability.

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I’m full of small business marketing and promotion ideas! You can hire me, Matt to be your online marketing guy in New Zealand and get a awesome deal on expert digital business marketing advice and support!

kurbpromo@gmail.com

Here’s what I’m thinking business wise right now, maybe I bit of application can improve your business situation.

- It’s been a great year. What can I do for all my valuable clients coming up to the break to let them know I appreciate the work we’re doing together and the opportunity the give me to do my work?

- Use more video. More video can only mean more engagement across more points, more information and more connection. New ideas need more videos and better more sophisticated messages that are able connect with your targets. How can you leverage the digital environment to create more powerful stories using online video promtion?

- Do you understand the power of stories in marketing? In marketing stories can be explanations of how products and services solve problems, but then stories go deeper, creating brand associations and messages to consumers about what your brand represents - Stories must be crafted well in order to connect with the messages you’re trying to communicate.

- I know where propositions I’m creating are providing the most value which comes back as nice high margins. Have I really looked at the platform and the promotion I’m using to develop those propositions? Am I connecting and being persuasice enough, is my marketing really connecting with my targets?

- I watched a presentation by Jason Fried of 37 signals where he talked about “non consumers” - I don’t know about that term but it was definitely a powerful idea. Development of high end products leaves a portion of the market behind, there’s always massive opportunities in delivering and making certain products and services available to those at the entry level or further down the curve who couldn’t otherwise access such products and services due to expense, availability or lack of knowledge. A lot of what I do is related to developing services that create access where there was little before.

- Again this comes back to niches. Where are you experiencing activity, can you drill that down and develop more value for this niche - more services, more products, a more refined platform or proposition in regards to this niche? Are there new “non consuming” niches who you could develop products or services for?

- Plans need to be in place for growth where it is expected. In my case that means fine tuning systems for bringing more people on board and examinig which jobs can be outsourced and to who and which jobs I must or should take on myself.

- Are you thinking deeply about how you’re engaging? Is what you’re offering from the outset excitng enough to draw target prospects in and get them connected, get them engaged, get them interacting with what you’re offering is it just another “me too”? Value isn’t created by offering the same experience or something comparable to something else that was better because it was first. Don’t expect to win people over with mediocre offerings.

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My apologies if anyone is actually reading this blog.

I’ll still throw in a bit of commentary between stodgy SEO posts that are intended to fatten this blog up for a few months before I redesign the shop and get things happening.

So basically . . . the conversation here sucks. Haha. It sucks all over the place. I’m pretty dissatisfied with the tone of the blogosphere right now. I don’t think all the people lining up to comment on the blogs of the world have a lot to contribute by agreeing so endlessly with each other.

I don’t think everything has to be agreed with. I think new things need to be said. I think it’s okay for me to be dissatisfied because it allows me to contribute my own ideas that may be valuable to others who feel similar if - gosh! I can only articulate my argument - my brand? - in the right way.

That’s why this stodgy SEO blogging and all these young parrots echoing their favourite blogger can’t continue to add much value to the blogosphere. Only top rate bloggers who are out there making statements about or with brands can create value beyond ranking high for keywords. Life must go on beyond the optimised keywords. I want to practically explore this at some point.

The marketing value of stodgy outsourced blogger at $5 a post vs. pro brand evangelist at $100 per post.

Y’know. The ROI on that. potential on that.

And so my brand may not be huge on participatory blogging. Blogging as part of a community. My ideas are around innovation, and execution, and basically rugged online ninja survival skills to sustain yourself online, I think this backpatting culture in online marketing is crap.

There’s the preppy social media and new media consultants. There’s the music bloggers and theorists. Random software, tech heads and app geeks. There’s the Guru’s, the MMO brats, shady black hats, the affiliate marketing jocks, the career girl bloggers, the pick up artists, the meme bloggers . . . and I’m stuck in the middle but I’ve learned enough to make decent cash.

And that’s what I want to talk about.

I shouldn’t be writing this blog. I shouldn’t be twittering . . . if I want to see half my best ideas make more money then I shouldn’t be mucking around when I know what needs to be done.

And it’s not blogging, or commenting, or greasing up other bloggers.

But I have to get my ideas out of my head. I have to get them where I can pull them apart and that’s what blogging is about for me.

So when the conversation sucks, talk to yourself.

Talk to yourself about what you see could be improved, what you don’t like, how you can maximise the best or most convenient part of what you do to further improve the value you provide.

I’m excited about ideas that make money, and how I’m learning to execute them quickly.  Often bloggin about stuff leads to new ideas.

I’ve had a couple of new ventures on the go mainly around international services that generate quick turnarounds on digital services. The New Zealand dollar has dropped significantly meaning i’m getting great money on overseas work.

And I’m sold on flipping sites. My plan of attack is this: Start 10 business sites this year, incubate them, fatten them up with stodgy SEO keyword articles and then flip them to some local noob as a working model of a web business. I don’t have a lot of experience, but if I slowly rear them up over a year I hope I can obviously at least double my investment.

Right now, I’m actually pretty overworked. I’m just coming to grips with the whole becoming an employer thing, I guess it’s the only way to get rich, or stop this whole situation form arising where I have to do the 12 hour slogs to meet commitments.

Do I even want to be rich? What happens after you make a million dollars? Not much I figure. I should really plan on taking my time.

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Need a company blog developed for your small business as part of a digital strategy? Starting a blog is a great strategy to attract and build a base of engaged customers and users of your products and services! But it takes 6 months to bring it to a point where it pays off, and you’ll need advice and coaching on this and many other strategies for building low cost but effective marketing that opens new digital doors. You can hire me as your small business marketing consultant for $1800 over 6 months and I guarantee ROI. Email me, Matt - kurbpromo@gmail.com to talk about the online marketing needs of your business or web enterprise.

THE WHY AND HOW OF SMALL BUSINESSES AND BLOGS

If you run a smal company, you might already have started a weblog or considered it. Businesses of every size are using blogs to become more authoritative, increase internet exposure to their targeted niches, network to make valuable connections, and grow their revenue out of relationships with readers. Unfortunately, many companies blogs fall short.

Here I’ve come up with a list of 8 tips for better and more effective was to use business blogging. These tips will allow you get more out of your company blog.

1. A Blog is Professional and Personal- Since this is a business blog, you want to make sure your posts stay relevant and professional. Do you really want to mention private personal details or is that to much information for your clients? It could be fun to mention how drunk you got at the company party last night but is that the image you want to project? However, you also dont want to be stuffy so make sure you show some personality in your posts. Find the right balance of professionalism and character and remember, blogging is a social activity. Readers tend to follow those who stand out, or have something special, a special angle or niche appeal to a target demographic of users going on. How do you do this? By projecting a unique personality brand.

2. Optimize Your Blog Posts- SEO optimization is essntial for any site or blog and a big part of Kurb Promotions work marketing small businesses in Auckland, New Zealand and around the world. You know of the importance of optimizing your website for Google, but you should be optimizing your blog posts as well? Google loves blogs because new posts feed the engine with new content. Since the search engine like displaying new content that is regarded as fresh and suggests your site is more up to date and relevant, it only makes sense to optimize your blog title and body for keywords. This will get better rankings and increase your traffic.

3. Maintain Your Blog’s Relevancy- One key to running a successful businesses blogsite is staying on topic and relevant to your readers needs. These people are turning to your blog  and your business as an authority in your niche and providing this value helps furnish a future client relationship. You need to talk about the important news in your industry. Don’t rehash broad topics from years ago or go to far off topi without bringing it back in some relevant way to your niche. Instead, be on the cutting edge of your industry so that readers will see you as a trusted resource for all their associated needs.

4. Link to Other Blogs - Linking to other blogs in your posts is beneficial - first, it provides your readers with additional opinions on important issues. Again, this establishes you as someone who is providing for readers in your industry. Readers will get comfortable following you knowing you provide access to a wide range of info and related tips and advice. The other benefit of linking out is it catches the attention of the blogger you link to. When they see you’re linking to them, they’ll be interested in learning more about you. This can create some valuable connections for your business.

5. Respond to Blog Comments- One of the most simple mistakes I see on business blogs is ignored comments. Or, the author responds to comments with a simple “Thanks for the comment.” Neither of these is acceptable. You should always respond thoughtfully to comments on your blog. Why? Because you build relationships with your readers. As a reader, wouldn’t you be more likely to keep coming back to a blog if the author engages in interesting conversations with you?

6. Post Blog Entries Regularly- While it’s best to follow a posting schedule, you don’t always have time and hat’s completely understandable - but you need to make sure you at least create new posts regularly. Successful business blogs are built on a strong base of followers and content - over time through commitment. If you only post once a month, you’ll never build a readership. Posting regularly will increase reader retention as well as attract new readers.

7. Give Your Opinion - Make Your Blog A Platform - This just might be the most important tip. Remember, there are millions of blogs crowding the internet. How do you separate yourself from the others? By giving your unique insight on a subject. Don’t just repeat what everyone else is saying. Give your own opinion, and people will respect you as a blogger. Sometimes, that opinion might fall in line with what the other bloggers are saying, but other times you’ll disagree with the general consensus. Be professional, but speak your mind.

8. Develop Ideas and Seek Feedback -

This is still the biggest reason why personally, I Blog. It’s about getting ideas out of my head and in front of me, I’m just still really excited by the way that when I blog reflecting or analysing a point I’ve picked up on, often I’ll quickly start getting immersed in ideas around the issue, and putting my intial thoughts or reflections into a blog post often lead to innovative concepts, opportunities or pathways to new projects. The beautiful thing about a blog is you can develop ideas by getting feedback from your audience to pick up not just through comments, but through analysing your stats, what is picking up traction amongst visitors.

Do you have a business blog? What tips would you suggest for new bloggers to separate yourself from the competition?

Need a blog? Starting a blog is a great strategy to bring in and build a base of engaged users of your products and services! BYou can hire me as your small business marketing consultant! Email me, Matt - kurbpromo@gmail.com to talk about the online marketing needs of your business or web enterprise.

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want to hire an low cost marketing expert to implement a comprehensive marketing and promotion plan for your small business online? I charge about $100 p/week. Email me at kurbpromo@gmail.com and we can talk about it.

But I also launched a site at www.digibiznz.com which, right now is serving as a landing page for my small business marketing services so I can hit them with the proposition.

You want a 3 month package for $950.
Again another blah blah blah post - this time a half finished post from a month back or something. Just churning out the second rate content and building a critical mass of keyword text and stuff and just moseying along!

But definitely time to get some action cooking on this small business promotion blog, even though this theme I’m using now - bloggingpro - was selected on one MMO blog as 1 of 7 blog themes that should never be adopted due to overuse!

We’ll see how we go because I still don’t know exactly what I’m doing with this blog, I’ve got proven and developing skills in growing my own small businesses with internet marketing so that’s kind of what I’m talking about here as I discuss my experiences.

More recently I have decided to start developing this blog by filling out the content for now, and then maybe next year making a real effort to engage new customers.

It’s still that quiet time on this blog for the early stages, even though I did get Chris Brogan tweeting out the cut up job I did on him and all his other little nu marketing buddies. Is nice!

But really what am I going to do with that traffic. Ironic. Ironic how many people would kill for a tweet out from Chris Brogan.

So yeah, a nice happy blend of stale SEO posts stuffed with keywords, boring bullet points posts filled out largely with common sense internet promotion entry level knowledge, and the odd unhinged small business rant by myself whenever I’m under stress or everythings not going perfect to my little plan - right here on Kurb’s Small Business Promo blog, based right here in Auckland New Zealand.

But I am growing tired of the music business, because unfortunately musicians tend to expect things to happen very quickly when the modern reality is that there isn’t the perceived value in music artistry that there was, so if there’s any success to be had is hard won and long fought for.

It’s hard to carry out tasks thinking I could be doing the same thing for someone else and getting a better result and better pay. I guess that’s why I’m pushing forward with small business marketing and promotion.

So if you want to hire me to promote your small business, I charge about $100 p/week. Email me at kurbpromo@gmail.com and we can talk about it.

But I also launched a site at www.digibiznz.com which, right now is serving as a landing page for my small business marketing services so I can hit them with the proposition.

You want a 3 month package for $950.

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