Archive for December 9th, 2009

This is part of the the book BLOGTASTIC! Growing and Making a Difference Through Blogging. You can read the table of contents and follow the book on this page:

See the table of contents for the book here: BLOGTASTIC project

Previous article: There are few short-term benefits

Defining success is hard whether it is for your blogging initiative or something else significant.

BLOGTASTIC: Traffic is NOT the only metric for successful blogging

Traffic is not the only metric of successful blogging

Traffic is like money. You definitely need it, but you also know that it is not everything. Let’s say your blog never crosses 100,000 page views per month, but you get at least two well-paid speaking engagements per quarter. You may still very happy with the results—if getting speaking engagements through your blog was one of your objectives.

People blog for many different reasons. In fact, most people blog for a combination of reasons. Some of those reasons are:

•    Get more leads for their business;

•    Secure speaking engagements;

•    Promote their books;

•    Park their thoughts for future books;

•    Extend their personal brands;

•    Build new relationships;

•    Extend their company’s reach;

•    Share their expertise to the world; and

•    Keep in touch with their fans

You should define your goals for blogging based on your needs. Think about your own life goals, and see how blogging fits with the rest of your life.

As I said earlier, you may even realize (and I hope you don’t) that blogging does not fit with your life and goals. For example, you might have started a blog because everyone around you blogs. Your blog shouldn’t be the result of peer-pressure.

You blog could generate great traffic that provides bragging rights. However, if that traffic does not provide you what you really need (whatever may be that objective) then your traffic statistics will be irrelevant.

In other words, traffic is a means to an end. It’s not the end in itself.

Think about it -

When you travel for work or pleasure, you expect to reach your destination. You get into a vehicle that will take you there.

Let’s say you’re driving across the city in a premium rental car. You enjoy this new car so much that you forget your destination and miss your turn. You’ve gotten your priorities mixed up. You miss your destination.

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Blogging Tip: Both the journey and the destination are important

Blogging is an incredibly personal journey. However you must never lose sight of your destination.

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Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He maintains another blog called Life Beyond Code and tweets as @UpbeatNow

Tagged as: BLOGTASTIC!, metric, Rajesh Setty, traffic

You’ve been trying to get a meeting with a client for quite some time now and now you have one.  Now what?  In my previous post (Developing Opportunities), I discussed what you need to do when trying to identify and develop opportunities before you meet with your customers.

In this post, I’ll discuss how when you secure a meeting with your customer, it’s important that you set the objective and create an agenda so that both you and your customer clearly understand what you will be covering and to ensure that you have the right audience.  Setting the objective will allow you to seize and maintain control of the process as well as help ensure you set the tone to effectively gather the desired information.

As you state your objective in your meeting with your customer, it is important to let your customer know that you are looking for ways to measurably impact their business.  You can continue this conversation by stating that you are looking for opportunities to help them increase their revenues, control their expenses, increase their productivity and/or efficiencies.  To help you uncover this, the next step is to go over the agenda for the meeting.

In your agenda, the last thing you should talk about is your company.  In creating your agenda, follow these steps:

• It is important first to learn as much as possible about your customers’ organization.  This will help you not only understand their concerns, but help you create the best offer to meet their business needs.
• Next, discuss the criteria they will use to determine which provider is best for their company.  Do this to ensure that you provide them with all the information they need to evaluate your offer.
• Third, discuss the process the customer will be using to make a decision and their timeframes to ensure that you bring the desired information to your customer in a timely fashion.
• Finally, talk about your company and the products/services you can offer them and how it can help address their concern.  During this part of the meeting, it will help you determine whether or not your company has an offer that can address your customers concern(s) and whether or not your company could possibly be a good long-term partner for your customer.

Today, more than ever, employers are asking more from their employees.  Remember this when meeting with your customers and be respectful of their time.  Stating a clear objective and having a defined agenda will help you keep your customer(s) focused, ensure that they have the right audience for your meeting and in turn, further help you identify opportunities.

This article was contributed by Robert Driscoll, co-founder of Active Garage. You can follow Robert on Twitter at rsdriscoll.

Tagged as: active garage, Business Management, business planning, Business Strategy, execution, http://activegarage.com, Leadership, management, objectives, possibilities, Project Management, Robert Driscoll, sales, Sales and Marketing, Strategy