To prove the point of how effective blogs are, let’s do a case study on a website I released a few months ago. It’s ran by a blog.

In January, I was at a wedding reception doing the Master of Ceremonies and DJ duties. They had this one thing I had never seen at a wedding before, and to tell you the truth, at first I was very skeptical about how it would work. Well, to my surprise it was a huge success, people lined up for hours to take their turn in this new phenomenon… Ok, I’m exaggerating, it was not a phenomenon, but it sure seemed like it. What was it?

It was a Photo Booth,

…the same concept as in the malls, but this was portable and was all digital. People lined up for hours to wait their turn at the picture booth.

So being the entrepreneur that I am, I thought, wow that would be a great thing to offer. Especially since this one photo booth came all the way from Dallas Texas to provide their service.

You can find my website by doing a search in Google.com for “Houston Photo Booth” and you will see the website listed as #6 on the first page of the search results.

This was possible for a few reasons.

First, the power of the webstie, FHP Entertainment.com is so strong that if I place a link on my website for any website and add the right content, I can get any page indexed by Google.com. So that’s what I did, I wrote a small launch post for the new Photo Booth Rental Service in Houston I had started.

Second, I decided to use a Wordpress blog and an existing free template. So the design time was NOTHING. It was already done for me. All I had to do was come up with the content and fill up the website with the content that I thought would compel people that visited the website to take an action.

Finally, because of the Blog Content that I added to capture as many keywords as I could think up. Using the same tip I gave out at the Related Search Engine Terms post, I took all the popular keywords for my DJ website and replaced them with photo booth.

What was the result?

The website was launched in February 11th, 2008, exactly 2 months today. I’ve had 23 people fill in the form for more information. A few other decided to call my phone number, and one other emailed me directly at my DJ website looking for pictures, pricing and availability.

A couple booked the service within the first phone call and a few wanted more pics of it being used. I will dare say that about 10 people out of those 23 will book the service. Not bad for 0 advertising.

As it stands, my form sends out one emial at this time. The pricing information.

Hope you can see how powerful bloggin’ is.

Happy Bloggin!

–

Francisco H. Perez
Wedding DJ Blogger

Tracking your visitors is essential to your website’s success. Not only do you want to know how many visitors your website is getting, you also want to know where they are going, or how they are leaving your website.

As a wedding vendor, you have only a small amount of time to capture your bride’s attention, offer them something they want or need, and get them to take some sort of action.

Once they are gone from your website, there is a good chance they are never coming back. If there is nothing compelling them to call you or email you, you’ve lost that bride or potential client for good.

If you know nothing about copy writing, now is the time to find out about it and use some copy writing techniques to compel your visitors to take action.

What is Copy Writing:

Copywriting is the process of writing the words that promote a person, business, opinion, or idea. It may be used as plain text, as a radio or television advertisement, or in a variety of other media. The main purpose of writing this marketing copy, or promotional text, is to persuade the listener or reader to act — to buy a product or subscribe to a certain viewpoint, for instance. Alternatively, copy might also be intended to dissuade a reader from a particular belief or action. Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copywriting

In short, copywriting is a technique, or techniques, where by you, the website owner, arrange the words on your site to instill trust, inform about your product or service, and get your reader to want your product or service over your competition.

Quite simply put, if your visitors are leaving your website without taking action, it’s not because your website is ugly (well not entirely), or because you have bad information, or because you don’t differentiate yourself from the competition…

It’s because you don’t use a copywriting technique that does all that and then compels your reader to take an action; to call you, to email you, to subscribe to your newsletter, to subscribe to your blog, etc.

But you can’t know that if you don’t track your visitors and what pages they visit, what pages they exit your website from, what pages they land on, what search engine terms they use to arrive at your website etc…

By knowing all this, you can find out exactly where your website need improvement and thus you are able to maximize your time and efforts on improving only that portion of your site.

OK, already I’m convinced, but what are my options?

It’s a good thing you asked.

Visitor Tracking Options

I use a free software that I installed on my website. It’s called Trace Watch, and you can download it from their website at www.tracewatch.com. Installing it may be a job for someone more technically inclined, like your web guy.

Your other option is to use, Google.com’s analytic program. This one may be more convenient because all you have to do is add a few lines of code to your pages and they do all the tracking. There is no additional software to install. It’s free, it’s good, and it will do just about everything you need. The only thing it won’t do that Trace Watch does is that it will not give you every page that your visitor visits. Read more about it at Google Analytics.

In conclusion, if you are able to find the leaks, so to speak, of your website, then you will be able to plug them by filling them up with the content that your visitors are looking for or will compel them to take any form of action. By capturing those confused website visitors, you will in turn get more money from your website.

Happy Bloggin!

–
Francisco H. Perez
Wedding Blogger!

Start Bloggin’

So you’ve installed your blog on your website (hopefully)… Now What!?!?

To get started, you have to have a focus, an angle, a niche, a way to solve a problem so to speak. You have to find something that you can write and educate your readers about. Bloggin’ is all about solving the problems people have. At the meeting someone summed it all up, “Why do I want to read about someone’s day in the park?”

People really don’t want to read about that, they want to read to solve a particular problem.

For example, you will only read this blog if it solves your problem on how to integrate a blog to your business. If not, then you will probably not find it interesting, you won’t read it, and you won’t come back.

There are blogs about scrap booking, moms cooking and losing weight, dating advice for men, etc…

And then there are the professional Bloggers, the ones who make all their income through bloggin’

Yaro Starak : Entrepreneurs Journey, Darren Rowse : Pro BLogger, Brian Clark : CopyBlogger, and a few others. These bloggers make a healthy income, between $5,000 – $20,000 a month just from their blog. Now that’s motivation…

On a side note, I am a member of Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Group ( Blog for Profits Blueprint – Make money from your Blog ) and I’ve been a member since June of 2007. Membership is closed at this moment but will re-open to the public at a later time.

Getting started is the hardest part.

I remember when I first started bloggin’ I thought to myself. What will I write about? Who will read my blog? Who am I to start a blog? What will my friends think when they find out? Should I even tell them? I’m a math major, I suck at writing and expressing myself and people won’t understand me… and so on

And these are of course, the hardest things that I had to get over; my own stumbling blocks. At the time I really didn’t know where it was going, I just had read, from my initial Google.com search,that blogging was a great way to get your website to rank high on the search engines. I really didn’t know or understand how, but that’s what a lot of articles said so I said, what the heck let’s just try it.

It took me a while and it wasn’t easy, but I didn’t have anyone to guide me, I just did it.

A year later I achieved #1 in Google.com, Yahoo, and/or MSN for highly sought after keywords. Now I am content to be in the first page of the search results, which even that is hard to do.

Here are a few of the keywords:

1. DJ in Houston
2. Houston Wedding DJ
3. Quinceanera DJ
4. Bilingual DJ Houston
5. Wedding DJ in Houston

Why is this important???

I know it’s common sense, but let me elaborate. As a marketer, you soon learn that you have to put your brand in front of the bride as much as you can so that they can see your brand and recognize it. Jennifer preaches that a lot and you may even be tired of hearing it but that’s because to marketers that’s common sense but to us business owners, it’s not. It takes some repeating to get us to understand that concept, and that’s perfectly natural. We are worried about providing a great product or service more than anything.

Now-a-days the internet IS “the information super-highway” and it’s called that for a reason, if you need information on anything you just go to the internet and search for it. And that’s what brides are doing, they are searching for the best options on reception halls, on DJ’s, on photographers, etc… and if you are not on there, you are no one to them. Your website is on an island that they will never take the time to find. They are going with the top few and once they find one that is good enough.. they will book that service or buy that product.

Again this is stuff most people already know…

Stay Motivated:

Write what you love about and love what you write about. It’s as simple as that. That is the best way to keep up with your blog. You have to love your customers, and in bloggin’, your readers are your customers. Love them enough to be able to solve their problems. Help people with your accumulated experience! You own a business and have done your job a million times, that makes you the expert and brides want advice from experts, they want to know what to do and how to do it, or better yet how you will do it so they won’t have to worry about it. They will read your information, find it useful, and you’ll feel great about it. Not to mention that you will benefit by getting an extra event you would have never gotten had it not been for your blog.

Write with passion

In order to get brides to read your posts, you have to put some passion into them. If you are passionate about your job, then they will FEEL it when they read…

Put some EMPHASIS on words that you want to stick out or have meaning.

Use words that describe actions, people remember action if it’s detailed. For example…

The reception hall was elegantly covered with beige satin chair covers, the round tables had the same satin texture under chocolate brown table runners. Each table runner was precisely placed by the lady in a cross pattern

Now that took some time, effort, and pain to transfer an image in my head into the precise words that I thought would be a good example. Given my targeted audience, you (wedding vendors) you can probably see the same picture I saw. And it’s a lot more memorable than and descriptive than: The hall looked nice.

This should give you a good idea of how to get started bloggin’. Remember to get rid of your personal blocks, write to solve problems, stay motivated, and be passionate about your subject. You already are the expert in your field. Now you just need to transfer your experience, the experience you want to share and you know will help your brides, into words.

^Here’s to bloggin’!

–
Francisco Perez

Owner of the DJ in Houston Blog at www.fhpentertainment.com

So what are your options if you want to get started with your own wedding vendor blog?

1. Wordpress.com (free)
   Wordpress.com is a great source if you want to get started. Wordpress is, in my opinion, the best bloggin’ software you will use. That’s what I use and that’s what a lot of bloggers use. It’s easy to use and it’s free. The only downfall about using Wordpress.com is that all the traffic that you attract will be sent to Wordpress.com.

2. An installation of Wordpress on your own domain (after initial setup… free)
   This is what I recommend for everyone, right from the start. You will have to invest a small amount of money to get it installed on your website or a new website, but all the traffic you attract will be directed to that website. For, example, I get a lot of traffic toe my DJ Website, FHPEntertainment.com because of my blog there. If I were to have started my blog with one of the free blog hosts, they would have benefited from all that traffic.

3. Blogspot.com (free)
   Blogspot is another free blog hosting platform. It’s an alternative to Wordpress.com and it’s owned by Google.com. But the concept is still the same and the traffic results are still the same: If you earn traffic it will go to your blogspot.com blog, not your business website.

4. Typepad.com ($4.95/mo.)
   I don’t know anything about Typepad.com or why people would pay a monthly fee for a blog. But it’s there and it’s another alternative.

I would recommend anyone that is looking to seriously increase traffic to their business website, through bloggin’, to take the time and install Wordpress on their website server. The software is free, I would be willing to get it set up for $50.

Here is a summary of some of the stuff covered at the meeting. Some we did not get to because of a lack of time.

1. Online Traffic
2. Web Usability
3. Email Marketing

Online Traffic

• Need a Website
• Identify Targeted Keywords
• SEO For Targeted Keywords
• Search Engines Love Content
• Best Way to do this W/ a Blog
• Most Major Business Have a Blog
• Blogs are nothing but content
• Content can be used to targe to your search terms

Website Usability

• Do Not Confuse Visitors with Links
• Website Should Direct Traffic
• Sales Copy
• Customer Should Call or Email you
• Why? – They take an Action
• Tracking Visitors Google Analytics

Email Marketing?

• What email marketing is not
• Spam, Send same email continuously, insult customer
• Send Information Strategically
• Personal
• Build Relationship
• Keep In contact with customer until he sings your contract
• Surveys, Reviews, Thank yous

Summary / Conclusion

• Go over everything in summary
• More Traffic = More Calls / Emails = More $$$
• Once Traffic gets to your website direct them and get them to take an action
• Once they take that action, keep in contact with them at least until they book

–

Francisco