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Blogger or WordPress … that is the question. UPDATED

Marc — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:51:09 +0000

This weekend I transferred a number of Blogger blogs over to WordPress. A frequent comment was that if they had known more they would have begun their blog on WordPress. While it doesn’t really matter on what platform you begin your blog experience with, like a spoon or a fork … Blogger and WordPress have differiences that deserve consideration as a tool to reach your objective. (Fortunately like a spoon or a fork, Blogger and WordPress are almost equally easy to use.)

So the choice depends on the objective. If your objective is to reach an audience that is primarily friends and family with a web-based journal, I think Blogger is probably your best choice, even over WordPress.com. On the other hand, if your objective includes presenting your business or profession and engaging clients and potential clients then self-hosted WordPress.org is your best choice.

If you already have a website, cost is probably not a consideration because all the basic software to operate a WordPress blog is free. Your web-host likely even has a “one-click” install function that you can use to do all WordPress the setup.

There are three important advantages with WordPress if you are considering using a blog to represent your business;

With self-hosted WordPress you have control. All the text, images, add-ons etc are on your server … under your control. Want to move, delete, enhance or anything you (not Blogger) control all the files. Your business should be under your control.

WordPress can expand as you need, it can even become the basis for a complete website. Recently businesses large and small such as the Time, the NFL, Martha Stewart, even the tiny Daily Coyote have moved from different blog platforms to WordPress. Over the last 18 months WordPress has become one of the premier website content managers allowing for low-cost and even do it yourself websites which can be managed without expensive software and hardware. You can even manage a WordPress based website from an i-Phone. Your business can benefit from a low-cost operation and future expansion options

With WordPress it is easy and less expensive to route all your blog traffic using your own URL. With Blogger all your traffic will go to Blogspot. Blogs like Wedding Dish regularly get over 100 new visitors each day just from Google searches. Your URL is part of your business branding, it should always be the basis of your web presence.

And the answer is … in summary, if you want to share a journal with friends and family Blogger is the way to go, but if it is to do with your business or profession WordPress is the best choice.

p.s. – I think you can do it for yourself, but if you want some WordPress set-up help and orientation, let me know we have some very inexpensive services that will get you on track quickly.

UPDATE (11-27-08)

I recently came across this factor as to why if you are using your blog for business you should seflhost instead of using Blogspot. From HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing blog

Savvy technical people will tell you that the right way to move a website or blog from one domain to another is via what is called a “301 permanent redirect”. In lay person’s terms, what this means is that you setup a clean forwarding address from your old site to the new site. By using this approach, you don’t lose any of the search engine love you’ve pulled together. Guess what: Google does not let you do a 301 redirect from your old site to anywhere else if you’re using blogspot.com as your domain. Let me repeat this. If you currently have a blog that is something like mybusiness.blogspot.com and you build a ton of inbound links to the site, Google does not let you redirect that SEO value to a new site (like your company website). This is a Very Bad Thing. (emphasis added)

A new marketing agency devoted to only wedding and bridal businesses

Marc — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:23:00 +0000

Colleague and friend Christine Boulton, well known wedding/bridal business consultant and writer extraordinaire, has new marketing agency for wedding and bridal businesses!

The Agency at Think Like A Bride provides a full range of high value/low cost marketing services to wedding and bridal businesses all dedicated to increasing profits.

Visit her new website and learn what they can do for you!

Death Watch for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Marc — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:09:00 +0000

I haven’t wanted to say much on this topic because the SEO voice is so loud. And for good reason, SEO had some great results and every website should still always have good search engine management and “hygiene”.

For the last few months I have been watching SEO consultants enhancing their marketing efforts at the same time SEO results are becoming less productive and reliable. But as a non-SEO expert I felt I didn’t have the “footing” to express my observations and ideas.

Then I came across this article by Chris Copland of SearchInsider titled the Last Days of SEO. To me the take away graf is – “So, the future of SEO as defined today is a bleak one. Whether we merely change the description of SEO or use a new acronym like DAO, the days of success being optimization for 10 text links on a standard results page is going to end up just like our old description of the engines: as dinosaurs. Extinct dinosaurs.” Please read the entire article.

To me it is the growth of the internet combined with the increasingly sophisticated users and search engine providers that makes it difficult to rely on old style SEO.

Particularly in light of these points;

• Increasing and increasingly sophisticated users. Look at your website logs and see how specific many of their search terms have become. Generation Y has excellent, focused search skills that I respect.

• Increasingly sophisticated search engines, looking to deliver precise valuable results to their users. And at the same time seeking to maximize their sponsored link income.

• Overwhelming size of the commercial WWW. With 200 million websites and over 10 billion webpages and an almost infinite variety of search terms how can SEO reliably assure that one particular site will be in the first 10 results returned for any period of time?

Marc’s tip to wedding professionals –
Use a balanced approach. Continue to follow good SEO practice and hygiene while utilizing other low cost ways to get your company’s website in front of your target market. Don’t be consumed by getting a particular search rank result. Most importantly, shift to concentrating on having an effectively persuasive website thereby converting your visitors to clients.

It is not the format! It’s the story! Change your message for success.

Marc — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:18:00 +0000

The buzz on wedding marketing is to use blogs and newsletters/ezines. Unfortunately many of us are simply putting the same low results text content into these new formats. And we wonder why we are not getting improved sales. Because we haven’t changed the old message. Putting the same old message in a new “envelope” is not change.

Everyday we are presented 3,000+ buy messages. And we have become, particularly GenY and Millennial, very good at ignoring them. To effectively reach today’s bride-to-be requires sharing stories and building relationships.

Our current wedding generations are focused on relationships. Their formative and current entertainment such as Battlestar Galactica, Roswell, Seinfeld, the Office to Charmed, movies from the “Breakfast Club” to “Sense and Sensibility” are all about relationships. Last week I was reading about a screen writer who shared that many of her best story lines for Dawson’s Creek (what show was more relationship anchored?) came from Jane Austen novels. Look at the size and power of social networks like MySpace and Facebook, it is all about relationships.

Long ago I had a sales manager, who told me that “a salesman is only as good as his story”. Stories are how we learn and share knowledge. If interesting, stories are able to pass through the defenses we have created to withstand the 3,000+ daily buy messages. What could be more interesting and persuasive to a bride-to-be than stories about what you do for weddings and the professional relationships you foster?

And this is why blogs and ezines can be so effective. Blogs and ezines are the superb at easily broadcasting your wedding stories to today’s internet connected brides-to-be. Share stories!

If you want to discuss this approach further send me an email and we can arrange a telephone conversation.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics – Average Wedding Spending

Marc — Sat, 17 May 2008 11:14:00 +0000

If Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, walks into a crowded bar … everyone in the bar is instantly a multimillionaire. On average, that is.

Most of us are aware of the constantly quoted and increasing average wedding cost number. I wonder how many of us really understand what the number means, I didn’t. But in trying to develop a new branding strategy for our current economy I thought I should really see what the average wedding was costing. To the left is a graph projecting per wedding spending over the next few years. The graph informs us that total projected per wedding spending for 2008 is $28,704. I think this is just simple mean average of total US wedding spending divided by the approximately 2.2 million weddings projected. But does the average wedding really cost anything close to $28,700? If you mean do half the wedding cost less and half cost more? No. In fact over 80% cost less!

To the left is another graph which divides the number of weddings into four spending ranges using the same data source. You can see that 50% of the weddings cost less than half the 28K+ “average”. And another 32% cost less than the average. Meaning that 4 out of 5 weddings will cost less than “average”. And only 18% of the weddings will spend more than the $28,704 average.

So why is this important? Because I was trying to find a way to position a wedding professional to appeal to brides with less money to spend than the “average” while retaining a desirable high quality and high value image. What I found is that the vast majority of brides have less money to spend than the average. They are already there! No wonder today’s bride seems difficult to communicate with. And when they do mention a budget they are almost timid. Much of our positioning and branding is overshooting about 80% of the market. I think we need to stop it.

Establishing an average so much higher than what the majority of brides have to spend is amplifying their fears, uncertainties and convincing them that their desires are unattainable. Are we helping to create some of the bridezillas? As an “industry” we have helped setup expectations that fewer than 20% of the brides can comfortably be part of. As wedding professionals we need knock that down. I think this issue is lowering our self esteem, and divorcing ourselves from reality and each other. Both brides and professionals. We need to show the typical bride she belongs, is valued and can expect high value, high quality service.

As a beginning, I suggest a way do this is to share with her what your typical client spends with you. Don’t quote your price, quote your client’s typical purchase. Don’t say what you think, share what your typical client thinks. Let your new prospect see you as a place where she can feel comfortable.

Branding by Ben Mack, Free "Think Two Products Ahead" Video

Marc — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:44:00 +0000

He has a lot of fans and Ben Mack always seems to have a little different approach in making the marketing practice of the major companies approachable by very small businesses. I recently came across this recent 79 minute video by Ben Mack on Google.

It is worth a “watch”! Here’s the description – “Ben Mack outlines the information in his latest book, Think Two Products Ahead, onstage at Peak Potentials. His demonstration involves real world branding ideas, and his engaging stage demonstration involving sleight-of-hand and professional anecdotes make this much more than another marketing training course.”

Recap of our recent Branding for Wedding Professionals teleseminar

Marc — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:13:00 +0000

Thank you to all who participated in our teleseminar on April 30th with Christine Boulton of Think Like A Bride.

It was a great discussion and a wonderful exchange of ideas. A few after word comments from participants sent in by email:
“It was informative so thank you for inviting us!” “Thanks for coordinating that seminar. Marc you had as great as info as Christine if not more.” “I’d love the mp3 of the conference call. It was very informative.”

To review the high points of the discussion:
* Spend the time to understand your target market(s).
* Choose and develop “brand” that fits the market target you wish to reach.
* This includes your company, your messages, presence and even yourself.
* Be consistent and repetitive.
* Demonstrate that you understand your target market by sharing their problems and uncertainties when presenting your service or product as the right choice for them to resolve any of those problems.