If you have a small business website it should serve one purpose – generating sales

Sure, it should inform your visitors of your offers and give them social proof of your abilities through testimonials. Without a doubt, your website should generate and capture leads. And most importantly your business website should move your visitors toward buying your offers.

While there’s nearly infinite ways to do generate sales, a few necessary pieces need to be in place on your business website in order to generate more sales effectively. Most of this is really common sense. Yet after the more than 20 Business Website Assessments I’ve done in the past month, these basic elements are consistently being missed on small business websites.

Yet, these basic elements are so fundamental that you want to be sure you’re not missing them on your website.

1. Ineffective use of Page Titles

Page titles are part of the HTML code on your website. Usually you’ll see the page title in the top bar of your web browser window.

While it serves a number of purposes, it has two very primary, and important, functions. First, it is an important piece in keyword optimization for SEO. No effective SEO strategy is complete without including keywords in the page titles. For effective SEO, each of your business website pages should have unique page titles. These page titles should include the keywords that you’ve optimized for each, specific page.

Secondly, and perhaps even more important, your page titles are used as the main, linked text in search engine results. It’s the large blue text you see in the graphic below:

Effective page titles tell people what they’ll find when they click through the search results into your website page. Ideally, your page title will show a benefit the searcher can gain from visiting that page. The best page titles will increase click-through rates from search results, increasing your visitors, your leads and potentially your revenue. Spending any time SEO without optimizing your page titles for conversion is a poor idea.

Of the 26 websites I’ve evaluated in the past month through my Website Business Assessment, every single one of them were not using page titles effectively. If you have a small business website, you may want to look into this.

2. No Clear Business Objectives

Your small business website is nothing more than a marketing tool. On its own, there’s nothing magical it can do. It’s merely a servant to how you want to use it to market and promote your business.

As a marketing tool, your business website needs to be considered as part of your marketing plan. when you create a marketing plan you identify objectives – the things you want to accomplish through your marketing efforts. Then you set out to do the tasks that will accomplish the objectives.

Your business website, as a marketing tool, needs to also have clearly identified business objectives. In other words, you want to be absolutely clear what your goals are with your website. Sure, it could be getting more clients. But there’s a process involved in getting more clients. And your website is a place to implement that process.

But to go a step further, it’s not just enough to state your business objectives and then go about using your business website to accomplish them. You need to prioritize your business objectives. You need to decide that this one objective is the primary mission of my website. Then do everything you can think of to get your primary objective in front of your website visitors, blog post readers and anyone else who will see your website.

After you identify your primary business objective then decide on the second and third most important things you want people to accomplish on your website. Make each of those visible at the most opportune time in your business website. Just make sure they don’t trump the primary objective.

An example that came out of the 30-minute follow-up call I do with every Business Website Assessment came from an alternative healer. She had her signup box for joining her email list on every page of her site. Yet, when we spoke, her primary objective was a free consultation time. The email signup was important – actually her secondary objective – but was not as important as the free consulting time. So we discussed ways that she could adjust her website to make the free consulting time more visible and more appealing. What’s great to here is that after two weeks she’s gotten 6 more inquiries than she usually had.

Be clear, ultra clear, with your business objective, prioritize them and then design your website around them. Doing so, you’ll find much greater success using your business website to promote your business.

3. Few or No Enticing Action Steps for Visitors to Take

In every case in the past month, the websites I’ve evaluated have had few, if any, direct action steps. Action steps, I define, as what you want your visitors to do when they arrive a to a certain point on your website page. Every page of your website needs to have clear, easy-to-do action steps – even your bio page. Actually, especially your bio page.

To have easy-to-do action steps it helps to have clear business objectives. If you know the objectievs of your website, the action steps you want your visitors to take simply become an extension of your primary, secondary and tertiary objectives.

The key here is that the steps are easy for your visitors to complete. Remember, this is the point of conversion. The action you’re asking your visitor to take will directly engage them in your business. So this isn’t the time to get cute with language or too wordy. It’s not the time to explain a bunch of things about what you can do for them. Simple, easy-to-understand, to-the-point content is what you want here.

The best action steps are the ones that combine your business objectives with the wants of your visitor at the moment. When their wants meet your objectives, you’ve got a conversion – a list signup, a consult inquiry, a seminar registration, a product sale, etc. Ultimately, your website’s copy should almost always be about moving people toward an easy-to-do action step.

Now, I keep saying easy-to-do for a reason. On three occasions this past month, I’ve done Business Website Assessments on business sites where the action steps visitors were asked to take were way too complex. In one case, the primary objective was an email list signup in exchange for a free product. The business owner, wanting to get as much from the conversion as they could, insisted that first the visitor signup for a list, then verifiy their email address, then fill-in a “short”, 16 question survey, then verified their email address again, and then they finally got the giveaway product.

All this was explained up front so there was no misdirection. But the business owner wasn’t getting many signups. So I suggested moving the survey in the process to the end and don’t require it. Deliver the product and then offer the survey. I spoke with the business owner yesterday and in the past week he’s tripled his list signups and doubled his survey respondents. Make the process easy.

And…make it easy to find. Don’t hide your action steps like I’ve seen on a number of websites.

Of Course, There’s More…

And there always will be. But when it comes to having an effective business website for your small, service-based business, these are the three most common mistakes I’m seeing during a Business Website Assessment. They also happen to be three of the most critical pieces to having a successful business website.

Perhaps it’s time you find out what’s working and what’s not working on your website. Or what you can do to make your website more effective in reaching your business goals. I’ve got a few slots available still for Business Website Assessments. Signup today.

Are you making these mistakes with your business website? How about your blog? What will you do to change it?

Or do you feel your website is dialed in and performing exactly how you want it to? Tell us how you did it.

Let’s talk about it.

note: image from TopTechWriter.US on Flickr, some rights reserved)

Your business website should effectively represent your brand while providing ways for your leads to easily engage you. All roads in your business should lead back to your website, making it the pivot point for all your marketing. And you want to treat your website that way.

Furthermore, having a website opens the possibility to not just market to your leads, but to create a powerful touch point for engaging your audience in conversation and building relationships with your prospects and clients.

So if you want a successful business, and I believe you do, it only make sense to create a website that fuels the growth of your business.

Yet, as a small business owner, it can be easy – or tempting – to get in the way of your own marketing. You may take shortcuts with your business website. These shortcuts can become mistakes that undermine your business goals and turn your website from golden egg to fried omelet.

The sad thing is that you may not know your making these mistakes and undermining your business website.

So let’s look at 8 common, and often critical, mistakes I see everyday with small business websites:

Mistake #1: No Clear Objectives for Your Business Website

The very first thing you should do when you plan your business website is define its purpose. What objectives do you want your website to achieve? In other words, what do you want our visitors to see, to read and to do. To do is the most important set of objectives so you want your website objectives to be action oriented. Do you want them to sign up on your list, get your RSS feed, buy a product or take a survey? Any of these can be objectives. Just make sure your objectives are clearly defined.

One more thing on objectives: if you have more than one objective for your website, you want to put them in order of importance. Then, make sure you primary objective is the most visible and easy to find on your site. Your secondary objective should take its appropriate place behind the primary…and so on.

Mistake #2: No Strategies For Reaching Your Business Objectives

Once you know the objectives of your website you want to create strategies around how you’re going to accomplish these objectives. Strategy gets into how you’re going to do what you’re setting out to do with our business website. The more thought out and researched your strategies, the more likely your marketing and your website, overall, will be successful. From a strategy comes our plan of action, which gets us into tactics.

Mistake #3: No Tactics to Achieve Your Business Objectives

If you’re like most people, you’re pretty good at thinking about what you want to do with your business website. Often, where the trouble begins is when you have go from thought to action. That’s where tactics come in.

Tactics are the actionable steps you’ll be taking to achieve your business objectives. Your tactics are, flat out, a task list of what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. Think of your tactics as being the implementation of your strategy. It’s how you’re going to do what you think.

Mistake #4: No Targeted Metrics to Measure Your Progress

One great thing about the internet is that if it happens on your business website, you can measure it. Which means, you can find out amazing detail about how your visitors as seeing, reading and using your website. So the only question is are you recording that information?

What’s sad is that I see so many small business owners who aren’t even looking at their most basic website statistics. Yet, it’s so much easier to know how effectively your building your list, for instance, if you know how much traffic you’re getting. And from knowing that, you can make a plan for increasing you list signups.

There’s no way else to put it, it’s a mistake if you’re not recording your website statistics and looking at them with some regularity (not daily). And it’s a further mistake if you don’t take the time to learn how to interpret your website statistics because they will tell you what’s working and what’s not working on your website.

Yet, it’s important to go one step beyond just your basic traffic stats. You want to also consider how you’re going to measure the effectiveness of your strategy and tactics so you can see how well you’re achieving your objectives. In other words, you want a solid system of metrics – even a simple one – so you can evaluate your marketing and make it work better.

Mistake #5: No Integrated Marketing Plan

So often I see small business owners thinking of their website as one part of their marketing and their offline marketing as being another part. Don’t make this mistake. Integrate the two. Communicate your offline promotions online. And even more effective, use your offline marketing to drive people to your business website. This works great when you can make an offer on your website that your offline audience wants. As I said above, your business website should be the hub of you marketing – not just online, but all your marketing.

Mistake #6: No Focus on the Value of Your Offer

I’m asked to evaluate a lot of websites for whether they’re business ready. One of the most common mistakes I see is small business owners not focusing on or effectively communicating the value of their service. Too often, the focus is on either the cost of service or the ‘unique approach we use that makes us different than everyone else.’ Yet, this just confuses the prospect because either they don’t care about the approach or they have to consider what they’re getting for the cost. In other words, they have to figure out the value themselves.

Don’t make your prospects figure out for themselves the value of the services you provide. Tell them about it. Show them what they get, what they can expect and how you will help them solve their problems. And offer testimonials of people who you’ve helped so that they can see the social proof in your offer.

Mistake #7: No Action Plan for Your Visitors

We said earlier that your website should have clearly defined objectives. Once you’ve identified what your objectives are, it’s likely they require an action by your visitors for you to achieve. So tell them to take the action. Make it exceptionally clear that if they’ve gotten this far in your website, that ‘this is the action step you want to take next.’ Could be a list signup, a free report, a set of articles – doesn’t matter (as long as it’s toward your business objectives). Just be sure you’re hyper-clear about what action steps you want your visitors to take.

Mistake #8: No Balance Between Design & Marketing Message

Having been a website designer for well over a decade, I’ve dealt with this one a lot. Often, business owners become too concerned over the visual look of their website and it gets out of balance with the purpose of their site – which is a marketing tool to promote and sell their products and services.

That’s not to say that a website shouldn’t be visually appealing – it should. For instance, I’ve had dozens of people contact me just to let me know how much they like the design of my site. Yet your website design shouldn’t get in the way of your marketing message and business objectives. It should provide a professional, attractive frame for your all-important content.

Ideally, your design will be something people see initially and get a good impression of you from. Then, as they begin to read your copy, it should fade into the background. So think of your website design not as a paramount piece of the marketing puzzle but as a frame for your marketing message. And remember, that you want to consider your business objectives in any website design.

So these are the 8 most critical mistake I see everyday in working with clients on growing their business and on developing their web presence. There are more, of course. But I’ve found these to be the biggest and most important 8 to correct.

Does your website make any of these mistakes? If so, which ones? And what will you do about it?

Let’s talk about it.

If you’re uncertain where to turn for help or if you’d like to discuss any of these in more detail as to how they relate to your business website, signup for a free 20-minute advisory session with me. Let me solve your problems for you.

(note: image from iampeas on Flickr, some rights reserved)

Think about it…you put up a few pages of text on a website and you have the potential for a business. People can view your site, read your copy and decide if they want to work with you. And blogs make it even more magical. You can easily write more content and your visitors can engage you and create conversation – increasing the possibilities that they might work with you.

Yet while the internet is magical, for many it provides false hope. So many business owners and service providers believe that simply having a website or blog alone will generate more clients. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Launching a blog or website – on its own – may not change your business at all.

This might seem odd to say, but it’s true. For your website to successfully promote your business, generate leads and help you get more clients, you need people to find it. You need people to use, to read the content and to engage you through it. Ultimately, you need people to visit your website that you have designed your services to help.

But before you roll your eyes with the usual, ‘of course,’ consider something – consider how! How will people find your website? More importantly, how will the ‘right’ people – the people you’re in business to serve – find your website? 

The simple answer is to reach beyond your website. What I mean is don’t rest on just having a website or publishing to a blog. Use them. Use them by thinking of website not as a destination that everyone should visit. Instead think of your website (and blog) as a hub for your business.

As a hub, you website should be thought of as a central part of your business marketing strategy. And just like the hub of a wheel needs spokes to work effectively, you need spokes off your business hub to make your website work effectively. The spokes? Your efforts. Your spokes are the things that you’re doing on the internet that lead back to your hub.

In other words, for your website hub, to be successful in promoting your business, you have to reach out beyond the hub with spokes out into the internet. And this can happen in any number of ways. You can utilize social media like Twitter or Facebook, publish articles to article banks like EzineArticles or interact with people in forums. Really, there are hundreds of ways to reach out beyond your website. I’m even doing a teleclass on the subject - 220 Ways to Reach Out With Your Website to Get More Traffic & Build Your Business.

What’s important, however, isn’t so much how you reach out beyond your website. What’s important is that you actually do it. In other words, for your website to produce more clients, you need to be doing things that engage people on the internet and bring them back to your hub. That’s what the spokes do – they lead back to the hub.

So what are the spokes to your business hub website? What are you doing each day to actively lead people back to your website?

Just as interesting, how are you using your website or blog as the hub for your business?

Let’s talk about it!

note: image from ***Karen on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Now, three years later, she’s struggling to get enough clients. She seems to get just enough clients to keep afloat. However she’s not fully replaced what she made at her day job.

Yet, she’s self-employed. She runs her own business. Or does she?

That’s the question I asked Susan when she called me last week. She told me she wasn’t getting any new clients and that her leads have pretty much dried up. She’s committed to her business, but not sure how much longer she can run in the red since she’s financing her business with her credit cards.

I asked Susan, “So, if you had to think about it this way – are you employed or unemployed? In other words, are you working or not?”

At first she insisted that she was employed – self-employed at that. She has some clients. She just doesn’t have enough and she doesn’t know what to do.

So when I asked her why she wasn’t getting more leads she gave me the same tired answer that the media is banging away on – it must be the economy. She felt that “the economy was keeping people from contacting her and taking her programs.”

Of course the economy is adjusting itself from the overblown, over indulgent corporate abuses. That’s why we keep hearing about layoffs and buyouts. But in truth the economy isn’t affecting us small business owners too much, really. But that’s another story.

So I asked Susan to consider, just for a moment, what she might be doing differently if she was unemployed rather than self employed. Without even a breath she said, “Well, I’d be out there looking for a job.”

EXACTLY!

Getting out there to look for a job is exactly what she – or any of us – would do. We’d be reading ads, searching the web, making calls, scheduling meetings and following up appointments. But wait a minute…isn’t that what we would be doing with our business as well?

Another way to put it – isn’t that the same process we would go through in marketing out business? We’d promote our offer, generate new leads, schedule appointments, and followup with prospects. In other words – we’d be actively engaged in marketing and selling our products and services.

In short order, Susan got it. She remembers the days of looking for work. And she could see, almost immediately, that in having a business she always had to be looking for work. She always had to be generating new leads and working those leads into hiring her.

And that’s the truth with running a small business – you’re always looking for work. Remember, you’re only self-employed if you’re actually employed by your business.

Did you ever think the secret to succeeding in your business would be act as though your unemployed?

If so, what tactics are you finding the most successful in finding more clients? And if not, how do you think your business could improve – even grow – if you treated yourself as being unemployed?

(note: image from nogger on Flickr, some rights reserved)

Yet if you run a small, independent business, the economy has far less impact on your business than you think. So you’re likely not facing the doomsday that’s being talked about with every newscast and editorial.

Unless you believe you are. But remember, as a service provider, you have much more opportunity in these times than corporations do.

You see, all this talk about financial meltdowns, depressions, and layoffs are mostly affecting corporations – at least at this point. Sure, job losses and home foreclosures are bad things. I, for one, don’t want to see my friends and their families suffer. But there are millions of us out out here who aren’t working for corporations. And most of us aren’t serving corporations either. Our clients are other small business owners, other service providers and the like.

What this means is that you’re much less affected by what you’re hearing about on the news than the guy working for Ford or GM. As an independent business owner, your job is secure if you make it that way. Even if you’re, say, a corporate coach who’s working with large companies, you can still have a great deal of control over how successful your business is – and especially in troubled economic times like these.

The key is to first not get scared. Turn off the TV, stop listening to analysis on the radio and just pass by those articles in the newspaper. In other words – stop buying into all the titillating stories about how we’re heading for a depression worse than the 30’s. We may be – and I’m not saying don’t pay attention to what’s happening. Just stop listening to all the scare tactics that keep you from focusing on the growth of your business.

Everyone with half a business sense knows that it’s during an economic downturn that you have great potential to increase revenue and grow your business. But you have to have a strategy for doing so. And the strategy often means looking at your business, your customers and clients and your revenue model with fresh eyes. See the changing market for its benefits. For instance, there’s less money being loaned right now by banks – so don’t rely on borrowed money. And remember that a good portion of your competition does. Tighten your own belt a bit to stay out of debt – but don’t tighten your spending to the point of loosing business.

I ranting now, I know. But the thing to realize is that during a repressed economy like the one we’re facing now there are tons of opportunities – if you choose to see them. Be bold in looking for them. Be bold in taking them on. And be bold in knowing that you have a chance to grow your business while many others are shrinking.

Just be smart. This is not a time to overextend your business. And it’s not a time to take risks that bet the farm like you may have in the past when a loan could bail you out. Be smart – meaning evaluate everything you’re doing in your business. Look for places your can be more productive and more efficient. Look at your costs and make sure you’re getting a return on what you’re spending.

And more than anything, evaluate your market. Not only yours, but others as well. Begin thinking of your business from the point of view of your audience. What are they likely dealing with in these times? How can your business help them get through? Look for opportunities inside the problems people are facing. And attach your business solutions to those problems. Then get out there and let people know that you can help them solve the problems they face.

In other words…define and refine your niche market and how you’re positioned to the people in your niche market. Be bold, yet be smart. Find the new opportunities and be bold in claiming them. Yet be smart in how you go about it. Think it, plan it, do it and measure your results. Then do it again. And you’ll find your business growing – while others fade.

How are you dealing with this economic crisis? What will you do if it gets worse? Are you positioning your business to take advantage of the downturn? How?

Let’s talk about it…

And if you need help clarifying your niche, positioning yourself effectively, or figuring out how to grow your business right now, then you’re welcome to a free consultation with me where we can talk about how to solve the problems you’re facing in your business.

(note: image from fabiogis50 AWAY TILL 2/11 on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Let’s talk about it

How do you define success in your business? It’s a question I ask every client – and most of the prospects I ever speak with.

The interesting thing for me is how often the people I speak with don’t have a specific answer. Sure, we can come up with just about anything on the fly. Yet it’s not difficult to tell the difference between established, well-thought-through business goals and those that we sort of find when we need to talk about such things.

Having a way to measure the success of your business, however, is one of the most vital parts of running a business.

It doesn’t matter whether your business is selling products, providing services or selling ad space on your blog – it does you good to have a clear idea of your goals. And, hence, a clear definition of what success looks like for your business.

All my clients use the web in some form these days. So often I hear success measured in visits to their website or page rank in Google. Sure, those are measurable results. But I, as a business advisor, would never consider those to be metrics used to define success of your business.

Let’s think about it for a minute…

You can have a page rank of 6 in Google and get 1000 unique visitors a day to your website or blog. That’s good, right? And most of us would be happy with numbers like this, right? Heck, the way Google’s playing around with page rank these days, I’d be happy to get back to a 6.

Yet, your page rank doesn’t equal income. Nor do any of those visitors guarantee a dime of revenue. Sure, if your website is selling ad space, you might get bits of cash for impressions. And you may be able to get a little higher ad rates with traffic and page rank higher. But you’re certainly not going to make a living on that alone.

And so these aren’t very solid metrics to use for defining your business success. Don’t believe me, ask around and see. Personally, I know more than a dozen bloggers who have highly successful blogs – more successful than mine in terms of traffic, page rank, back links and Technorati rating – who aren’t making enough money to cover their monthly expenses, let alone turn a profit. A couple are good friends that I’m trying to help out.

The point is you want to define the success of your business based on what you’ve set it up to do – make money. That doesn’t mean that you only measure by your bank statement at month’s end or by your bottom line accounts receivable versus accounts payable. There’s more to it than that.

For instance, take whatever you’re doing currently to market your business and track responses from your marketing efforts. Let’s say that one of your goals is to spend some time commenting in forums to drive targeted traffic back to your site that you can convert into leads. It’s a clear goal and something that can be easily measured using basic website statistics. Measuring your success might look something like this:

You posted 50 times in the forum last month. From those posts, you got 41 referring links from the forum to your website. From those visitors 11 commented on a blog post (leaving their email address with you), 6 subscribed to your newsletter and 1 contacted you directly with a question. You can then decide whether those 50 forum posts were worth the effort (I’d say yes, depending on what the commenters and newsletter subscribers do over the next few months).

You see, the idea here is that you set metrics that relate to your business goals. The month of forum posts may or may not directly result in revenue that month. But it’s not always about revenue. To make money you need leads and so the work you did in the forum could have been about generating leads – which you did. Now you just have to create the next metric for converting those leads into paying clients.

Measuring your success isn’t difficult. It just takes a little strategy, planning and forethought. And on the web, tracking results is incredibly easy. You just have to know what you’re tracking – and why. Then you can adjust your efforts for the next round of lead generating activities. That’s how successful business owners use the web.

How are you measuring your business success on the web? Are you at all? If not, why not? Would it change if you had someone to help you (I know someone, personally)?

All-in-all, how do you know if you’re successful with your marketing efforts?

(note: image from victor_nuno on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Think about it. If you run a small business, where do you usually put the majority of your focus? Marketing? generating revenue? Your work with you clients? Things like this?

So often the question you have about your small business deal with how or what, right? You know – how do I generate more revenue or what do I need to do to get more from my marketing? Aren’t these the questions you most often find yourself asking?

The answers to these questions are often lengthy, require learning or have many steps required to see results. So much so that we then find ourselves lost in the jungle of what to do next. So we can learn about what and understand how, but one question – the most important business question – remains unanswered. And without answering that question, it’s difficult to truly succeed.

The question…why?

In your small business, you need to know ‘why.’ And you need to know ‘why’ about everything. And I do mean everything.

Of course, perhaps the first most important part of asking why is asking why you’re in business in the first place. While this may seem elementary, it’s of vital importance. It’s difficult to evaluate where your business is heading if you’re not clear why you’re in business in the first place. Find that out why you’re in business will help you align all the parts of your business behind a united goal. Not knowing why, in turn, often means a splintered business model where not all your business processes point in the same direction.

One note, there’s no wrong or right answer to why you’re in business. It’s only important to know why you’ve started and continue to run your small business. The goal isn’t right or wrong, it’s clarity of purpose and understanding.

This is why asking ‘why’ should  penetrate every single aspect of your small business. In other words, you should be asking it about everything. “Why did I choose to sell this product?” “Why do I answer the phone that way?” “Why am I not closing more deals?” “Why are people hiring me?” And on, and on…

Ultimately why is the foundational question about your business. No other question really matters too much until you understand why. And if you look at most small businesses that are failing most often you’ll find that they’re not clear about why they’re in business in the first place. And if, by some chance, they do know why they’re in business, their lack of success provide a window into what they’re not asking why about in their business.

Take it out of the context of running a small business for a moment and think about being a parent. If you’ve had three year-old kids, you know that the only word that ever comes out from their little lips is, “WHY!?!?” Why, why, why, why, why? There’s no end to their questions. The reason for this is that developmentally they’ve reach a place where they being to see that the world has structure and order and they want to understand it. So they ask why about everything so that they can – no, not annoy their parents and other adults. They ask why about everything so they can – LEARN! And that’s why you want to ask why about every part of your small business – to learn.

So use ‘why’ as a chance to awaken your understandings of your business. Ask yourself ‘why’ you do what you do the way you do it. Ask yourself why your customers buy from you. Ask yourself why you’ve generated less revenue this month than last. Ask yourself why – incessantly. Doing so will help understand the motivation and goals behind how you run your business. And when you understand what lies beneath, you can make better decision about marketing, positioning, pricing, etc.

Do you ask ‘why’ in your business? If not, why not?

And if you do ask ‘why’ about your business what new understandings has it led you too? What insights have you gained? And how has understanding why you do what you do changed your business?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from Amish Shah on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

I remember much from our conversations – though truthfully, he was often doing most of the talking as I’d just try to absorb what he was teaching me.

One of the things he said again and again is, “what you focus on expands.” He said it often, in many different ways. But the core message was always the same – whatever you think is – is.

Now I’ve seen this hold true in just about every instance in my life. If I thought something was a certain way, it would almost always show itself to be that way. Just think about how many times you’ve miscommunicated with someone because you were focused on one perspective while they were focused on another.

How you think about your business is no different. What you focus on in your business is what will expand. It’s what you believe that you’ll put effort into. Hence, where you put your focus is where you’ll put your energy which is where you’re business will evolve from. Think that you can’t get the clients you really want, and it’ll be pretty difficult too. Think that no one wants your service and you’ll become prophetic by putting your efforts into proving yourself right. That’s just human nature.

But moreover, it’s what your brain does. Your brain sees the world, sees your business, through the filters of your beliefs. How you think your business is, is what you’re business is – or what it will become. The interesting thing is seeing how easy it is to trick your brain. Just watch:

Pretty incredible, huh? See how easy it is to trick your brain?

Now consider how your your brain, your throughts, your beliefs are affecting your business. How is what you believe affecting your bottom line? Are you limiting the growth, the potential, of your business because of something you perceive about it?

Would you consider seeing it differently?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: both images from skippy13 on Flickr, some rights reserved)

By some odd combination of keystrokes, I deleted my client calendar within Apple’s iCal.

iCal is neat in that I can have multiple calendars that can service different puposes. I have different calendars for family, home, personal appointments, holidays, birthdays, etc…and, of course, my work calendar where I keep detailed track of all my client work.

But not any more. The client calendar is gone. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking…just select ‘undo.’ Tried it, it was grayed out. Next I spent two hours on the phone with Apple trying to get the calendar back – only to be told that once it’s deleted it’s deleted. Not in Trash. Not in cache. Gone. This I found odd that the file wouldn’t end up in Trash or that it couldn’t be rebuilt.

Funny thing, I wasn’t asked to confirm if I wanted it deleted. It just got wiped away. And I still have no idea what keys I hit that made it happen. Could this be rare? Do I feel safe using iCal for business anymore? Not sure yet.

Yes, there is a backup feature. But it’s manual and I’ve never bothered with it. That will change.

In the meantime, I’m looking for a new calendar program for the Mac. I do like iCal, but am thinking maybe it’s time for a change.

I’ve been running all my client work through iCal, Address Book and Merlin (project management software) because they all easily integrate. I do have Filemaker Pro and use it to store client passwords, etc. I’ve been thinking of moving my address book and calendar to it, but I’m not fond of the learning curve nor the time it’ll take to create the database layout I’ll want.

Any suggestions on other calendar systems for the Mac? And remember, back up your calendar.

Just a couple of days ago I asked the question are you the whole or just part of the whole? That lead to a very interesting conversation around whether we look at ourselves as whole beings or beings made up of parts. I’ll let you read and add to the conversation, if you like.

So when I was considering Darren Rowse’s lastest Writing Project, I wanted to write something that tied into that conversation. Yeah, sure, I could write the standard, top 5 blogging tips list. But that’s boring, really.

Instead, what I’ve done is gathered 5 of favorite quotations and relate them to blogging. Each of these five inspire me in different ways. And while there are thousands of quotes I’ve read (and collected), these are the most interesting ones I could think of.

1. The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence but by oft falling. -Lucretius
   Conversational blogging is not a sprint to happy high lands of massive traffic, huge link backs and Alexa rankings. It’s a marathon of touching one person at a time with something that’s meaningful to their lives.
2. It is every man’s obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it. -Albert Einstein
   At the very least, a conversational blogger gives as much (s)he receives. And if (s)he can give more, it’s all the better.
3. Grant that we may not so much seek to be understood as to understand. -St. Francis of Assisi
   The conversational blogger doesn’t see his/her self as the expert that everyone should be learning from. Rather, they see themselves as students more than teachers – always being open to learning from what others have to share.
4. Once harm has been done, even a fool understands it. -Homer
   The conversational blogger is careful with his/her words because (s)he does not wish harm to anyone. They may have strong opinions, but they never make it personal or hurtful to others.
5. Talent develops itself in solitude; character in the stream of life. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
   Conversational bloggers are in a constant cycle of learning, growing, changing and integrating. Their work is when the keyboard is silent. And, the fruits of their work are shown in how they interact with others.

Okay, I can’t stop. So how about two three more…

1. To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day. -Lao Tzu
   As conversational bloggers, we can learn to fill our selves every day with more knowledge about how to blog, how to drive traffic, how to get more links. What get, then is that – knowledge. But wisdom, and great conversation, comes from stripping it all down to just the conversation. Share, give, link and the rest takes care of itself.
2. To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself. -Soren Kierkegaard
   The conversational blogger stretches his/her self with their blog. Since they don’t have to be the expert, there’s room for them to slip into risks without unknown outcomes. This can become exciting and engaging conversation, without which we’re not authentic.
3. What do I think about when I strike out? I think about hitting home runs. -Babe Ruth
   One of my favorite all-time quotes. With your blog, swing for the fences. Just know that sometimes you’ll miss. So don’t let striking out get you down. Think about the sweet feeling when you connect and the ball goes sailing over the wall.

So, there it is…five eight inspirational quotes that tie directly into better conversational blogging.

Be sure to check out some of the posts that are showing up daily at Problogger. You can view the entire lists for Days 1, 2, 3, & 4 as Darren posts them. I’ve found some great topics from Day 2:

• 5 Back-to-Basics Strategies For Renewing Your Energy by Ririan
• Top 5 Top Blog Posts in SEO by Michael Jensen
• Top 5 Steps to Redirect Traffic from Your Old Site to a New One by Friedbeef
• Top 5 Tools Every Blogger Should Use by Scott
• If Only I Could Read Just 5 Blogs! by Jonathan-C. Phillips
• Top 5 Ways To Stop Being a Perfectionist by Krista
• Top 5 Easy Ways to Create Information Products by Gobala Krishnan
• Top 5 Things Moms Should Keep in the Family Minivan by Neena
• Blogging Networks: Top 5 Pros and Cons by Singhania
• My Top Five Motivational Quotes by Dave Das (hey, like me)
• Top 5 Free Ways to “Start” Generating Traffic to Your Blog by Ankesh Kothari
• Top 5 Tips for Beating Blogger’s Block by Joanna Young
• The top 5 reasons RSS is so great by Allan
• The Top 5 Strangest Things I’ve Learned While Blogging by Robert Hruzek
• 5 best places to go while visiting Acadia National Park by Norman Sargent (filed for later)
• Do You Know These 5 Easy Ways of Making Online Friends? by kayliz
• Building A Blog Community by Shelly Kneupper Tucker
• Top 5 Ways To Identify a Bad Listener by Derick
• 5 things I wish all bloggers did by Zieak

And please visit some of my friends who I know have participated:

• Self Improvement Strategy: Top 5 Reasons to put a STOP to Top 5 Lists! by Aaron Potts
• My Top 5 Successful Bloggers Who Made a Difference by Liz Strauss
• Top 5 Reasons GPS Tracking Makes sense by Dave Starr
• 5 Mistakes Made by Beginning Programmers by Brandon Wood
• Top 5 WordPress Plugins That Help Increase Comments by JohnTP
• The Top 5 Free Search Engine Optimization Tools by Wendy Piersall

What are your favorite inspirational quotes – whether they relate to blogging or not?

One way to do this is through testimonials and case studies. You know, something like this…

When Judy called me, her business was struggling, her website traffic was stalled and her newsletter list was all-but stagnant. I helped her see what she was doing wrong. I corrected those problems for her and now he business is thriving.

Sounds fine, right? My client needs to be rescued and I can save them from their peril.

I thought so too until I read Drew McClellan’s post Are We Playing the Wrong Role in Our Stories. Drew’s post changed my thoughts on how I approach case studies and testimonials. He suggests that when we tell out clients story we have the classic setup…

We have a hero, a problem/villain, a victim and a glorious solution.

Uh oh. If we’re the hero, guess who we’re casting in the role of victim? Yup. Our client.

While the prospect might identify with the challenge and be heartened by the solution, do they really want to see themselves in the victim role?

Of course we don’t, Drew. We just want to tell the stories of how our clients have gotten so much from working with us. But we don’t want to make them into victims. So how else do we tell their stories?

What if we twisted our tale in those case studies or testimonials, so that our clients were the heroes? We shift to being the glorious solution. (Not a bad role to play) But we give the credit, spotlight and heroine’s role to the client. They are smart enough to see the problem and devise a solution. And, in the end, everyone lives happily ever after.

Oh, I get it now. So I could retell Judy’s story like this…

When Judy phoned me she knew her website wasn’t meeting her goals. She knew she needed more traffic but didn’t know how. Together we devised a strategy to incresae her traffic. We also optimized her newsletter list for greater conversion. Judy’s business quickly increased and now her website is not only meeting, but surpassing her goals.

Subtle differences in this case study over the first one. You can see I wrote about Judy as being in control the entire time. And she was part of the solution. Never was she the ‘victim with the problem.’ And I come out as the solution instead of the hero.

How do you write about your clients? Are they victims or heroes?

Mike and I talked for quite some time, covering many topics. There certainly were highlights I took away from our conversation.

But one comment Mike made to me stood out. At one point, when we were talking about how we found each other’s blogs, Mike said, “I saw your name come up constantly in blogs I read and comment on. I had to find out who this ‘Dawud Miracle’ was.” (note, not a direct quote)

This moment in our talk really stood out for me. Why? Because that’s exactly how I sign all my comments – Dawud Miracle.

When I first began commenting on blogs I would just leave my name however I thought about typing it at that moment. So there’s comments floating around from Dawud, DawudM, DMiracle as well as Dawud Miracle. If you find any, they’re all me.

But after a few days of commenting I changed my strategy. I quickly realized that to get the most out of my commenting efforts, I needed to sign my comments in a consistent manner. I choose Dawud Miracle over other variations, and over Healthy WebDesign, for a number of reasons.

First I wanted to be identified as a person so I used my name instead of my business name. Second, I wanted to distinguish myself from other commenters so I decided to use my first AND last name. Even with a name like Dawud, I didn’t feel my first name a long gave me enough ‘oomph.’ Doesn’t hurt, too, that my last name is quite unique and often memorable. Third, I wanted to ‘brand myself’ as Dawud Miracle so that as I was more visible around the blogosphere, the recognition of my name would carry more and more weight. And fourth, I knew my commenting efforts would help open the door to relationships with other bloggers. So I wanted to be known for who I am and who I am is Dawud Miracle.

Whenever I leave comments, I pay attention to other commenters as well. I look for names I either know or have seen before. On my blog it’s the same – I look for familiar names. I immediately can recognize Ben Yoskovitz, Dave Starr, Drew McLellan, Doug Karr and Liz Strauss. But I have a harder time knowing who Tony, Sara, Maddy, Karin H., Chris M or Dave are.

Since they comment on my blog frequently, I know who Karin H. and Chris M are. And Dave is friend and mastermind partner. But is ‘Dave’ getting the best return on his commenting efforts? I think not. But if he he began signing his comments as Dave Schoof :: The Disquiet in Men – that would distinguish him. It would create some recognition and help him brand his himself and his blog more effectively.

So how do you brand yourself in the blog comments you leave?

I can say without a doubt that my blogging success is directly related the links other bloggers have tossed me. Thanks to all of you, by the way.

So, here are some bloggers I know. Many are beginning their blogs. Some may interest you. The most developed blog (and the most interesting to me at least) is Dave Schoof’s Engaging the Disquiet in Men. Have a look.

And check out these other blogs. Something here might interest you.

• BarryMorris.com’s Irresisti-Blog (blog appears to be down)
  Barry Morris – Helping copywriters become irresistible
• Blog: Business Heart
  Mark Silver – Can you heart it beating?…When you want to make a difference and need to make a profit.
• Breathing Space Home & Office Organizing
  Joanna Rueter – Creating space for who you are and what you do
• Conscious Cooperation
  Stuart Baker – how the decision to cooperate can drastically improve working communication and results in the construction industry and beyond.
• Engaging the Disquiet in Men
  Dave Schoof – Helping men who feel something missing in their lives
• Inquiry365
  Mona Grayson blogs for Daily Inquiry
• Mindfulness Maverick
  Jason Stein – Working Mindfulness with A Twist
• Synaptus Insights
  Dennis Stevens – Bridging the Gap Between Strategy and Performance
• Your Ideal Customer
  Elisa H. Gillispie – Clarity, Relationships and Results

But how do they know they’re experts?

Is it based on how long they’ve been doing something? If so, I’ve been building websites for almost a decade, does that qualify me as an expert?

Or maybe I’m an expert at working with small businesses to plan, develop, and execute strategies to grow their businesses through their web presence (which is what I do today, by the way). Think about it, a web designer that understands business development, target marketing, and results-based web strategy. Very rare. But am I an expert?

So what is an expert? Oxford defines an expert as:

Someone who has comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area.

Well, that surely describes me. I have comprehensive knowledge and skill at utlizing websites to grow businesses. That must mean I can all myself an expert, right?

But what about authoritative knowledge? About authoritative, Oxford says:

Able to be trusted as being accurate or true; reliable.

Ah, wait a minute. Being trusted or considered reliable…to whom? Well, as a business owner I can trust myself, but that doesn’t necessarily bring me clients. I can know I’m reliable, but does it matter if noone else does? So trusted and considered reliable must mean to another person.

And for me, there’s the rub with declaring myself an expert at anything. By definition, authoritative knowledge would mean as seen in the eyes of another person.

Now it makes sense. I don’t declare myself an expert – others do. Other people decide whether I’m an expert in a given field or not. I get it.

So then why are all these people calling themselves experts?

Aweber is an email list management and autoresponder service I’ve used for quite some time. I even recommend it to many of my clients. List management is good, delivery is great and their customer service has always been top-notch.

Which is why I was thrown aback after placing this comment on their blog:

I don’t use verified opt-in, so my strategy is slightly different, yet still secure.

I put the link to my pdf download directly in the autoresponder message. That way, if they’ve given me an incorrect email address, they don’t have access to link (because it’s not only the thank you page).

If they do give the correct email, the link directly to the pdf will be delivered to them in their inbox and then can download it at will. I make this clear on my thank you page so that they know where to look for the download.

What I said works and secures the download – just as the post at Aweber explains.

What happened next is what threw me back. A few hours after my comment, I received a rather lengthy email from Justin Premick, Education Marketing Manager – who writes most of the blog posts for Aweber.

In the email he basically disagreed with me about using single opt-in and that my suggestion is not secure. All fine, after all Aweber goes to all lengths to get their users to use verified (double) opt-in. So I basically got ’schooled’ on how I should be using verified opt-in and how it protects everyone (include Aweber), etc, etc.

I’m thankful for Justin’s concern and fine with his ‘need’ to educate me on the virtues of verified opt-in. I did email him in return thank him and resubmitting my opinion.

What I have trouble with is that we had this discussion in private – by email. You see, he removed my comment from their blog. I know he has every right to do so. Yet, this goes against the very fabric of blogging – conversation in community. That means that we don’t have to agree to have a discussion.

Justin, and perhaps Aweber themselves, must not realize the benefit of carrying on such a conversation within the comments. He could easily have stated his point in the comments and could have responded appropriately. This would have created a dialogue between Aweber and I that everyone could see. It would also allow Aweber to stake its case about verified opt-in by rebutting my stance.

Truthfully, I’ve waited so long to write about this because I was a bit ticked at Justin for removing my comment and for not carrying on our conversation in front of the other commenters at Aweber. I said above, and I’ll repeat – this, to me, goes against the very fabric of blogging.

So I leave Justin with this chance to carrry on a conversation on my blog, where I won’t remove an different opinion. Perhaps we’ll see him show up.

The lesson I’d like to share from all this…use your comments to carry out conversations. Don’t resort to email because you don’t want conflict or because you simply want to control the message being read. Encourage differing opinions and have a friendly debate about it. Everyone learns that way. And everyone wins.

How have comments on your posts or others lead to indepth conversations about a topic?

Over the years I’ve seen my static site’s traffic fluctuate up and down a bit – but never in large amounts. Traffic usually just went up steadily. Sometimes I’d get blips by placing articles or running campaigns, but they were never huge spikes and they often returned to their nice, easy upward slope once the campaign was finished.

Then I got into blogging. Really just three weeks ago. Yeah, I’ve got older posts I wrote during my psuedo-live development time. But I wasn’t pinging and had no outgoing feeds. So I think of my blog as beginning three Sundays ago when I ‘officially’ launched it.
And boy have my traffic patterns changed.

Almost from the first day, I saw increases in traffic. And over the first week, as I posted once each day, got involved with MyBlogLog and commented on other blogs, I saw a much more agressive upward trend – with some really interesting spikes in my traffic patterns. My blog had definitely changed my reach just in the first week.

Over that first weekend, I didn’t post at all and watched my traffic pattern drop just a bit below its pre-blog state.
The second week saw a steeper climb as I returned to writing on Monday and made more comments on more blogs. I also spent some quality time with MyBlogLog that second week. By week’s end I had some pretty interesting results:

• In my first two weeks of blogging, I had more unique visitors to my site than my best entire month of 2006.
• More interesting was that after two weeks, my page views were 150% higher than my best entire month of 2006.
• Lastly, my time per page view went up almost 1 full minute.

If trend continue, my first month of blogging should bring me more than double the unique visitors to my site as my best month in 2006. I should also see my page views rise 300% over my best month in 2006.

I’m not entirely surprised by these results. What I am surprised about, however, is how these results came with, what I consider, very little work. Basically, all I did was:

• Write one blog post each day – usually early in the morning. A couple of days I wrote two posts.
• On each post, I linked out to other blogger sites and posts
• I spent about 30 minutes finding and commenting on various posts.
• I joined and spent about five hours total with MyBlogLog. Then I visit once-per-day to check for updates and write comments.

That was it. I also managed to begin relationships with a couple of bloggers, Gary Conn and Gleb Reys. And, I had one of my posts, Why Would I Possibly Want to Link to My Competition, highlighted at LexBlog.

All-in-all, I would say it’s been a successful first two weeks. Interesting considering I have so many more plans for developing and reaching out with my blog. Today, the sky seems like the limit. I’ll keep you updated.

Tell me or link me to stories of your first weeks blogging. I’d love to hear more…