Blog Workshop Rescheduled

We've rescheduled the Business Blog Workshop from February 17th to March 21st. The response was dead-slow this month. (How's that for transparency?)

Possible reasons:

1. It's winter and we're expecting a snow storm here later this week.
2. The length of the workshop grew from four to six hours.
3. The perceived value is lower than the cost ($88)
4. Blogging as a form of communication is dying instead of thriving.
5. People are tired of hearing me talk.
6. God has something in store for me Friday - I just don't know what it is yet.

My gut says either # 2 or # 6. On the others, here's my answer

• There are few in Iowa that would be hindered by snow.
• Mark True says he found Extreme Value at our last workshop.
• When I look at what Aldo Coffee, Pacesetter Mortgage, and WinCommunications are doing, I'm confident that businesses will embrace blogging as a conversational tool - it's just a matter of time.
• My wife is still listening after 17 years -Happy Valentine's Day, Sweetness!

Maybe it's time to give Zane Safrit a shout and do these workshops via conference call.

Comments

[RichW]

Mike,

Good luck with the seminars.

Thought I'd share this with your audience - pertains to the timeliness one can achieve with blogging.

The Winter Olympics are going on right now in Torino. Torino is famous for a hot chocolate/espresso drink called Bicerin. We added it to our Winter menu a couple months ago knowing it could become a big deal around this time.

Last week we posted a history of Bicerin and this week we did a couple of recipes for making it at home. In between Bicerin was featured on the Today Show and some other shows.

Because we added this content at this particular time - taking full advantage of the Olympics and the Torino coverage, our hits went from 900 to 1500/day - a 67% increase - and it's been tracking that way for a week straight.

Granted, most people who are visting Google or Yahoo! and typing in "Bicerin" are not from our local market. But some are. And it's not a bad thing to make some national noise anyway. Regardless, we've seen a 50% increase in sales of Bicerin and double digits on everything else.

Btw, because of the blog posts we went from not being listed at all on a search for Bicerin to being #2 on Google for a couple of days (we're currently either on page 1 or 2 of results depending on traffic).

Anybody can be timely with a blog. If you're selling anything related to hunting, you should be blogging about the VP's accident right now - write about how to avoid getting shot/shooting someone.

In addition to whatever is the big news story of the day, you can try to tie your product into scenes from top shows like CSI, 24, Monk or Desperate Housewives. What are people talking about from those shows - and how can you make it apply to your business?

And it's not just TV. It's whatever is happening anywhere. The best place to find today's buzz topics is Technorati. What are the top search terms on Technorati this morning? Can you make any of those relevant to your product?

Making a discipline of using your blog to market this way will drive more traffic to your site, and ultimately to your storefront.

[mike]

Great comment Rich. Can I just copy & paste this into a post?

Your suggestions are on target. Great suggestions for any business.

[Idetrorce]

very interesting, but I don't agree with you
Idetrorce