You’d think the latest question Liz asked me would be simple to answer. And on the surface it is. Yet, I’ve needed an extra day to think about where to take this one2one conversation next.

When you go around the Internet, what mistake do you see most often?

That’s her question. Think about it for a second. Do you see what I mean? I could answer this from so many different levels and perspectives that I’ve actually been stuck on how I wanted to answer it.

Since Liz is asking me for one mistake, I’m going to need your help. So let’s have a discussion in the comment box. I’ll start it off…

Having been a web designer for so many years, you’d think the mistake I’d see most often would have something to with visual design, site architecture, or layout. Sure, there’s plenty of poorly designed sites out there. And we all know plenty of blogs that are poorly organized and cluttered.

But the mistake I see most often isn’t in the way a site looks. The mistake I see most often is how a site owner uses their site to communicate with their audience.

I’m bias, that’s certain. And my bias leans heavily in the direction of conversation and relationship. Yet, I know from experience, that it’s conversations that lead to relationships that lead to business. People want to do business with people – not with businesses. In other words, they want conversation and relationships.

Most website owners, most business owners and a lot of marketing coaches simply don’t get this. They focus on slick or carefully crafted marketing copy that’s meant to evoke an emotional response to create action. I’m not saying that’s bad – not at all. I just think that there’s more.

So what I often see are business owners trying to fit themselves into a method of copy writing that’s not so much about building relationship and which I feel is unnatural. Pick a handful of business websites and read the copy. Tell me if you feel like the business owners want a relationship with you or do they just want your business?

I advise all my clients – even those working with copy writing and marketing gurus – to consider their websites as the beginning of a dialogue with a person in their target audience. Don’t just meet them where they are, engage them in conversation. Write as though you’re sitting with them over coffee, listening closely to the problems they face. And respond with an open, conversational tone.

This is easier to do on a blog because of the chance for conversation in the comment box. The blog has the advantage as well in that you continue to engage in that conversation with your audience each time your write a post. But you can do this on a static website as well. As you write, just picture yourself having a conversation about where they are.

Remember, people want to do business with people. So don’t be afraid to show who you are as a person. You can be a marketing professional and still be person. Anyway, you know from your own business interactions that connection, personality and temperament play an enormous role in successful business relationships. So why not build your personality into your marketing materials. Let people know who you are right out front. Let them see you as a person. Then invite them to sit at your table with their cup of coffee. Who knows what can happen next.

So I think not actively engaging people in a conversation that can build a relationship is the most common mistake I see in websites.

There are many others – certainly – even around content. So I turn my site over to you to share what mistakes you often see was you’re perusing the web.

And I have to be sure to continue our one2one conversation by asking Liz…

What’s helped you go from just being a writer on a blog to becoming a conversational dynamo?

I can’t wait to see Liz’s answers. She is truly a master at writing conversational copy, if you ask me. But until she answers, let’s talk…

Continuing our one2one conversation, Liz Strauss asked me (and you):

What’s the the part of business, besides relationships, that you look forward to doing more of?

Okay, so here’s how I read your question…”what other part of business, besides building relationships.” I hope this is what you meant, because my entire business is about relationships. From how I market to how I work with my clients, what I see in my business IS relationships.

But I can look through building more and stronger relationships at aspects of my business. So that’s what I’m going to run with.

I’ve been building websites for more than a decade at this point. So it’s mostly what I’m known for. It’s also the easiest way people can describe what I do to their friends, clients and colleagues. So more often than not, I get calls about website design.

What ends up happening, however, is that the people soon find out that I do so much more than most web designers. They learn that I understand business development, marketing, product development, copy editing, etc. And often, they hire me to consult and coach them while we’re working on their website.

So really, I’m really a born teacher. I know that sounds like a vast, presumptuous statement. Yet at every point in my life this fact has been mirrored back to me. In elementary school I used to show my classmates how to do math problems when they didn’t get it. As a baseball player I could spot mistakes in a teammate’s swing and help them feel the correction. Even when I had a private healing practice I would somehow find a way to explain complex spiritual concepts in a way that people just understood.

Even as a web designer, I’ve been very successful at making the technical easy to understand – even a neophyte. This gives clients the power to make their own, informed decisions about their business.

So like you, Liz, I am a teacher. I’m a teacher and I love to solve problems. And this has led me to doing more consulting/coaching/educating-type work. I love it. And it’s opened up a whole new part of my business.

Now people don’t have to need a new website to work with me. They can hire me to help them with any number of projects or aspects of their business: from service and product development to marketing, increasing traffic and building relationships to branding, utilizing a newsletter to just plain problem solving.

And best of all, they can hire me to help them learn how to use social media – blogging, social networking, etc, – more effectively, to grow their business or to increase the visibility of their blog. That I’m doing already with a handful of clients.

So that’s what I want to do more of…coach people to a more rewarding and successful business, consult with people to solve their business problems and educate people on how to do anything they need without being dependent on me. Does that make me a coaching strategist? Maybe.

So Liz (and you, reading this, too), speaking of strategy:

What do you feel is necessary to create an effective strategy to promote a business?

If you got this far, I’d love to hear your answers to either question. Join our one2one conversation in the comment box below.

And if you need some help with your business, let’s talk about it.

We all want more traffic to our websites, right?

We dream of the day that we get that massive wave from Digg or StumbleUpon. And when we do, it’s a rush, right? We watch our stats climb by the minute – 500….1,000….5,000….10,000 visitors – “oh God, don’t let it end!”

But it does end. It ends as an ocean wave ends: breaking on the shore, splashing its wake up the sands and retreating once more to whence it came. Such it is with our blog traffic.

These social content sites are great, don’t get me wrong. And I’m not suggesting not to use them. I use them and will continue too. But the deluge of traffic they bring can often give us a false sense of our blog’s health.

Essential Keystrokes’ Char wrote about this recently in her Web Traffic – I’ll Take Quality Over Quantity. In her post, she explained how the traffic she got from Digg in a recent post was matched, and in quality perhaps surpassed, by a link in a post from a prominent blogger like Darren Rowse.

Now, don’t run out and link to Darren or Brian Clark thinking that’s the way to get traffic. Though it could be if you’re doing what Char does – write great content. Which is why Darren picked up her link.

But how did Darren find Char to link too? The relationship, of course. Darren had to know Char exists in order to find a link to her. That begins with the relationship.

Same is true of another good friend, Adam Kayce at Monk at Work. Recently, he had a post picked up by lifehack.org. Adam’s blog is fairly new, yet growing at a nice rate. However, when he got picked up by lifehacker, he got a nice, large traffic blip with a number of first-time commenters. His traffic has increased by a nice rate since. But most interesting is that his feed subscribers almost doubled in the few days after.

So even though social content sites are certainly useful, it seems that writing great content and building relationships is the key to building traffic.

What’s been your experiences? Am I right….wrong….short-sighted….somewhere in between?

One thing I can say about myself is I don’t stand still much. It seems I’m always to understand more of what and why I think, feel and believe the way I do.

In my personal life, I don’t often rest on good enough. Instead, I strive to be a better man, a better husband, a better parent, a better son, a better friend, and a better neighbor. And in my spirituality, I constantly find myself working through issues that limit me from the deepest understandings of my soul and its relationship to my Creator.

In business, it’s much the same way. While I know quite a bit about business websites development, marketing strategy and copywriting, I still strive to learn more – always pushing my envelope.

It was just about a year ago that I decide to find out what blogging is all about. So I found out how to use RSS, got a reader and started watching blogs – learning as much as I could from the bloggers I enjoyed.

Now, I didn’t ‘need’ to blog. My business was doing great and I had more still to share with my clients. Yet, I wanted to know what blogging was all about. And soon, I discovered that blogging was, perhaps, the most powerful (or at least accessible) method for building interest in your business then anything yet created. And…you could do it on the cheap.

So I pushed. And now, I have a pretty successful blog myself, my business is thriving, and doors are opening all around me for expansion. To top it off, I’ve also made some amazing friendships and partnerships with bloggers that four or five months ago I didn’t know. Incredible, really.

So when my dear friend Adam Kayce tagged me a little while back asking me about my learning edge, it gave me a chance to think a bit about where I’ve been and where I’m heading.

In the meantime, I checked out the other folks that have been tagged on this meme like, Edward Mills, Ben Yoskovitz, Jean Browman, Daily Triathlete, Eve, Evelyn Rodriguez, Sue Melone, and the dear Colleen Wainwright from Communicatrix. They each wrote some great posts on where they’re stretching.

For me, I’ve read a fair amount. Though less than I used to with two kids under 4 years old. I read lots of blogs daily and manage a number of great phone conversations each week; constantly exploring how to better build my business (and my client’s) through blogging and social media.

I’ve learned a ton about using social media in the past year since watching blogs – and even more in the past six months since I’ve been blogging. And so now it’s time to push the envelope even wider.

Now I want to bring together the parts of social media – social bookmarking (e.g. del.icio.us, ma.ganolia), social networking (e.g. Linkedin, MyBlogLog, Facebook), social recommendation (e.g. Digg, StumbleUpon, Netscape) and social content (YouTube, Flickr) – together into a program that will help service-based business owners grow their businesses sustainably and with authenticity.

I’m using social networks more and more – learning everything I can about how they work and how they can aid business growth. I’ve read 15 books on blogging. Most were pretty useless – though I got something out of Clear Blogging, Publish & Prosper, and What No One Ever Tells you About Blogging and Podcasting and Naked Conversations. And, as I’ve written about, I absolutely loved Lorelle’s Blogging Tips.

I’ve also read a few books on on social media and social marketing such as Andy Sernovitz’s Word of Mouth Marketing, Mark Hughes’ Buzz Marketing, and, of course, Seth Godin’s books and the Cluetrain Manifesto. And I’ve got Ben McConnell’s books, Citizen Marketers & Creating Customer Evangelists, along with Paul Gillin’s The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media coming from Amazon.

As for blogs I regularly read ProBlogger, Copyblogger, David Armano, Lee Odden, Chris Garrett, Andy Beard and the guys at Pronet Advertising – along with a search responses I find daily in my reader.

In thinking about using social media – social bookmarketing, social networking, etc – who do you read and how has it helped you utilize these services to grow your business?Â

And to David, Char, Gayla, Stuart, Dave, Dylan, Randa and Chris I’d like to know what you’re current learning edge is. Find out more about this meme at Adam’s site.

Let’s face it, people do business with people – not with businesses. A business owner may like, want and need something that a marketing coach, for instance, offers. But the single biggest reason they hire the firm is because of the people they meet, talk to and build relationships with.

Why?

Well, people want to be in relationships. They want to feel connected to the people they work with. In some way, at least, the business owner wants to trust that the marketing coach really cares about them, their business and helping them solve their problems.

Sure there are other things business owners look for before they sign a check – like competence, professionalism, knowledge, previous results, etc. But ultimately, the relationship will be one of trust.

The New Oxford American Dictionary lists trust as: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone.

Think about it…aren’t these the qualities you want in your business relationships? So do your clients. So how can you build greater trust with your target audience?

• David Airey’s 5 Easy Steps to Building Trust Online
• Naive by Design’s How to Build Trust Online
• Susan West’s Building Trust is Key to Business Success
• Greg Balanko-Dickson’s Business Blogging Strategy: Build Trust and Rapport
• Marius Wlassak’s Earning Customer Trust Online
• Paul Sarvadi’s Building Profitability by Building Trust
• Shonnie Lavender’s Building Trust With Your Business Blog
• Beautify’s Building Trust in Your Business Relationships – 10 Steps
• Michelle Howe’s Earning Customer Trust Online

Here’s some examples of how others are building greater trust with their audience. How do you?

Are you blogging to build relationships? I sure am. And so are many other bloggers.

Sure, if we’re blogging, we probably like to write. We also probably enjoy playing on the internet to some degree. And for many of us, we’ve got businesses to promote. Yet the reason many of us blog is to create conversations. And those conversations lead to relationships with people from all over the world.

Just imagine how disappointing it’d be to have your posts generate conversations that lead bloggers to contact you only to have you drop the ball by not responding. This is like inviting someone to a lunch where you spend the whole time talking to someone else on your cell phone. Not the way to build a relationship.

Bloggers want to reach out. They want to get a viceral feeling for who you are. Doing so takes a little courage on their part. And not following through sends the message that you just don’t care.

So, here are five quick-and-easy ways to be sure you don’t make the biggest mistake in your blogging relationships:

1. Reply Immediately by Email
   Sending a two sentence email right away that thanks them for contact you is can send more of a positive message than a well crafted longer message two days later. The immediate response makes the other person feel like they’re important to you.
2. Send an Instant Message
   If they publish their IM Screen Name, use it to contact them as soon as you can. Sometimes this can lead to a brief virtual conversation that can be picked up later.
3. Set an Appointment
   Even if you’re busy, take a few moments and respond to their message by inviting a time to talk later. Scheduling an appointment time for a brief (or lenghthy) conversation can be an effective way to meet them without stopping your current work flow.
4. Call Them Out of the Blue
   If you have the time, respond with a phone call instead of an email. This can create quite the impression. I once had a well-known blogger send me an email saying that she was going to phone me at ’1 pm today.’ She did and we had a great talk.
5. Be Honest About How Busy You Are
   If you’re really busy and can’t get a bit of time away, let them know. People understand. A polite message letting them know that you’d love to meet them soon, but you’re currently under a deadline crunch can easily get the point across without seeming like a blow-off.

If you’re blogging to build relationships be sure to respond to people who contact you. Not doing so will send the wrong message.

Have you made the biggest mistake in your blogging relationships? How have you made up for it? What do you do to not make the biggest mistake?

There are, of course, plenty of other mistakes you can make with your blog. Here’s a few other posts where people have offered up the wisdom of their own experiences…

• The Top Ten Blogging Mistakes I Made In My First Year – eMomsatHome
• Missed Opportunities Are Worse Then Making Mistakes – ProBlogger
  
• 10 Blog Mistakes / Why Your Blog Struggles – Seach-This
  
• 3 Blog Mistakes You Can Avoid – Lee Odden
• 10 Mistakes That Will Kill A Forum…or A Blog – ProBlogger
• 10 Common Blog Writing Mistakes and How To Fix Them – Rich Minx
• Top 5 Mistakes Made When Naming Your Website Or Company – Chitika’s Blog
• 10 Blogging Mistakes I’ve Made – Webomatica
• Top 10 SEO Mistakes – PhoenixRealm
• Twenty Usability Tips For Your Blog – Condensed From Dozens of Bloggers’ Experiences – I’d Rather Be Writing

Many bloggers, like Preston, have asked this question of whether they should fake comments on their blogs to begin the conversation. Darren Rowse had some great advice. As did Jason Kaneshiro from Webomatica and Dee of Blogozine.

They each had some great suggestions of writing more conversationally and more often, asking direct questions of your readers, and having realistic expectations. Also, consider creating a comment policy, and removing no-follow. All these are really great suggestions.

But I was thinking…what do we want from our blogs? If we want comments we probably want conversation. And if we want conversation, we likely want to create relationships. And through relationships, there’s even the chance we could create community.

So if we want conversation, relationship and, eventually, community through our blogs, why not just jump right in?

How? Find other new or newish bloggers whose content you enjoy. Sure, leave some comments on their blogs. You know they’ll come a visit. If they jive with your content, they’ll likely leave a comment or two also. If so, email them and start a dialogue.

That parts all pretty straight-forward, huh? You’ve probably heard that before.

But let’s go one step further…create an agreement where you comment on each other’s posts. That way the conversation can get started on both your blogs. And there’s no need to fake comments.

The beautiful thing is that your agreement has the potential of developing into a relationship that could help you both grow your blogs – and perhaps your business. And if nothing else, you’ll make more friends in the blogosphere.

So, have you tried this? If so, what have been the results?

Is marketing about transactions? Is it about communication? Is it about conversations? Or is it about relationships?

Of course, marketing isn’t about one thing in particular. Yet marketing tends to focus on one, specific outcome – often the transaction. But what happens if we only focus on marketing as, say, a transaction? Who benefits?

Here’s a great story a friend of mine shared with me. It’s a conversation between Doc Searls and a Nigerian Pastor named Sayo. It begins with Doc explaining the chapter he and David Weinberger wrote in the Cluetrain Manifesto called Markets are Conversations…

…After hearing (about ‘markets are conversations’), he acknowledged that our observations were astute, but also incomplete. Something more was going on in markets than just transactions and conversations, he said. What was it?

I said I didn’t know. Here is the dialogue that followed, as close to verbatim as I can recall it…

“Pretend this is a garment”, Sayo said, picking up one of those blue airplane pillows. “Let’s say you see it for sale in a public market in my country, and you are interested in buying it. What is your first question to the seller?”

“What does it cost?” I said.

“Yes”, he answered. “You would ask that. Let’s say he says, ‘Fifty dollars’. What happens next?”

“If I want the garment, I bargain with him until we reach an agreeable price.”

“Good. Now let’s say you know something about textiles. And the two of you get into a long conversation where both of you learn much from each other. You learn about the origin of the garment, the yarn used, the dyes, the name of the artist, and so on. He learns about how fabric is made in your country, how distribution works, and so on. In the course of this you get to know each other. What happens to the price?”

“Maybe I want to pay him more and he wants to charge me less”.

“Yes. And why is that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You now have a relationship”.

Their conversation goes on to talk about the importance of relationship in public markets. “Transaction still matters, of course. So does conversation. But the biggest wedge in the social pie of the public marketplace is relationship. Price is less set than found, and the context for finding prices is both conversation and relationship. In many cases, relationship is the primary concern, not price.”

What do you think? What’s the reason behind your marketing? Is it just to land business? Or is your marketing about something else? Or both? I’d love to talk about this…

I love to read. Yet being a solopreneur, a husband, a father, a constructrion worker (I’ve just gutted our kitchen), a friend, etc – it’s hard to find time to read as much as I’d like.

So Doug Karr helped me out yesterday when he posted about the book, The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz & Don Jose Luis Ruiz.

From the book’s back cover: The Four Agreements…“reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, the Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom: true happiness and love”

Sounds pretty powerful, huh? So, then, what are the Four Agreements?

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
3. Don’t Make Assumptions
4. Always Do Your Best

Of course, this is great advice for life in general. It’s great advice for marriage, parenting and all relationships.

Which is why I immediately thought about it as a conversational blogger publisher. For me, each are essential for creating conversation and building relationships with you…

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
   Simple, mean what you say. Don’t lie, cheat or steal. And above all, be honest – even when it hurts a little.
2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
   I do my best to share myself through my blog. But truly you’ll only really know me when we build a personal, long-term friendship.
3. Don’t Make Assumptions
   I try not to make assumptions about anyone who comments on my blog. Rather, I look at each comment as a chance to get to know a person a little better.
4. Always Do Your Best
   I don’t always write absolutely killer posts – I know that. But even the ones that aren’t interesting, I still tried to do the best I could in the moment – and I’m happy with the effort.

Aren’t these great? Simple, yet powerful concepts.

I’ve not (yet) read the book. I may. Though there’s many books already on my reading list. If you’re interested in the book, here are some reviews I found:

• Book Review – The Four Agreements – Your Key To Inner Transformation! at Matrimony Express
  
• The Four Agreements – Don Miquel Ruiz at Erica’s Reviews
  
• Book Review: The Four Agreements (links to another site for review)
• The Four Agreements by Don Miquel Ruiz at Gather
  
• The Four Agreements at Pencil Pushin’
  
• The Four Agreements at Dwell On These Things
• The Four Agreements at The Clinton Review
• The Four Agreements at Viva Las Vegas

So you know a bit of what I think. What I’d really like to know is what you think. How do you see each/any of the four agreements as essential (or nonessential) to being a conversational blogger?