Let’s get some perspective here…go out into the off line world, have a coffee with your average Joe or Jane and ask them just what they do on the internet. I think you’ll be surprised.

Here’s what we’ve found when we do this:

• The majority of people on the street have no idea what a blog is nor follow a blog regularly.
• 99.999% of them have no clue what RSS or a feed reader is (even if they follow a blog in some cases).
• Many of them are not sophisticated users of the internet at all and restrict their usage to the odd foray onto Facebook or searching for basic information on Google.

Faced with those results, it’s a good job our target markets aren’t your average Joes & Janes!

As bloggers, business owners and relatively savvy internet folk, it’s easy to forget that we’re the ‘internet elite’ – we know what RSS is, we follow and even subscribe to blogs and we utilise the tools of social media to market what we do.

Why do we do this?

Because supposedly we *have* to and because we’re told that this, the internet and social media, is *the* new age of marketing and business models; if we’re not with it, we’ll fail.

The problem is that the majority of the population are not business owners nor entrepreneurs – they don’t use the internet in the same way as we do, so in some cases it’s not hard to see why business owners try and fail in their online and social media marketing efforts.

In some cases and for certain target markets, there is nothing as effective as a solid off line, traditional marketing strategy forming the core of your marketing activities backed up by (not solely based on) online tools.

Whaaaat? I hear you say…but how can someone who markets a business 100% online say that?

Let’s be honest. A great deal of our business comes from referrals – in fact we actively encourage referrals from people we identify as “centres of influence”.

It’s true that we’ve never met most of our referrers and centres of influence and so our online efforts have helped create this trust and these relationships but if we look at where our last few big projects have come from, it’s largely from referrals not the blogs, the ezine nor any of my other online networking activities.

Indeed the last three clients I’ve spoken to didn’t even know I had a blog (yet alone 4) and had no idea of my online activities (soon put that right!).

So is it a big, fat waste of time?

No – for our business and target market it’s not; for us it’s about walking the walk as well as talking the talk and we need a way to demonstrate to clients that we do indeed know what we’re talking about. We don’t just create logos, blogs and websites for clients because we can, we do it because we believe in and can demonstrate how effective these tools are when utilised properly.

And before you ask, yes we do turn clients away! In fact, one of the questions I ask prospects who contact us is “Do you actually know why you want/need a blog or a website?” and if I don’t think it’s right for them and their business, then I will say so and discourage them from wasting their money.

But will online and social media marketing work for you?

The answer is “it depends”. It depends on many things:

• Your target markets
• What you’re offering
• Your strategy and goals
• Your expectations
• The time & effort you have to implement your strategies
• Your knowledge, expertise and experience

There are lots of people waxing lyrical about the power of social media and online marketing (I know, I’m guilty too) but the cold, hard truth is that it isn’t for everyone, it won’t work for every business and you really do need to know what you’re doing.

Because it’s what people see when they first come to your site and it’s essentially the information that people use & process to decide whether it’s worth their time checking out more of your site or not.

Melissa argues that this is not necessarily true any more by ‘Blasting the myth of the fold‘. Unfortunately, I couldn’t disagree more. How can I say this?

From several hours of sitting in an internet cafe next to several (yes, more than one) people who didn’t even seem to know how to scroll down a web page. Seriously…these people sat there with a mouse with a scroll wheel and had to ask the very friendly (and patient) guys at CCB (our local internet cafe here in Muizenberg), how they can get to the ‘top’ (technically, it’s the bottom of course!!) of the page.

After a couple of simple demos on how to use the mouse scroll wheel to scroll down the page (below the fold), they got to read the rest.

Living and interacting in a tech savvy world as many of us blog readers/subscribers and internet savvy people do, it’s easy to forget that there are still a huge number of people who have extremely basic computer skills. Many of these may well be your prospects and target market….

Reason enough for me to still recommend to Project Woodward clients that the content above the fold is vital.

The client had a great question:

How do you use a blog to drive people to sign up to your mailing list so you have their email and can keep in touch with them regularly?

It’s such a great question because it hits on two vital aspects of blogging and internet marketing that people don’t always realise.

The first is the aspect of using a blog to improve your online marketing; in my experience (both my own blogging experience and from watching the progress of clients with blogs) the people who use a blog most successfully to promote their businesses are the kind of people who also actually enjoy blogging and writing.

Effective blogging is not easy but it doesn’t have to be hard – what does help though is if you enjoy it. And if you don’t, then it’s going to feel like one more marketing chore that you feel you “have” to do and then berate yourself for not doing. That’s why it works for me – because I enjoy it and I personally find it a less pushy medium to connect with potential clients. But it doesn’t always work for everyone – and particularly those people who don’t enjoy it.

The second interesting part to the question is the relationship between blogs and mailing lists. Do you need both?

Traditional internet marketing wisdom says that the money is in the list; every single email address you have is effectively someone’s permission to contact them – which is a powerful tool. But let’s look at blogs…every subscriber you have is effectively someone saying “Yes, I like what you write so I’d like to be updated every time you do”. So in effect you have 2 different sets of subscribers saying the same thing – “Yes, please I’d like you to keep in touch me”.

There are a few crucial differences that you need to be aware of however:

1. With mailing lists, you know the name and email address of the subscriber (as long as they’re being truthful); with blogs, you don’t always know the name and email address of the subscriber (unless they’ve subscribed via email and they’re being truthful)
2. Many of the mailing list services enable you to get a rough idea of how many people actually open your emails; with blogs you have no idea whether people actually read each of your posts.

So does the name thing really matter other than being able to personalise an ezine or email sent from a mailing list, so that you address the subscriber personally? I’m not so sure it does now that most people know the emails aren’t written personally from you to them but are likely going out to hundreds or thousands of others. The big benefit of mailing lists and ezines over blogs is that you do have far more accurate stats about whether people open and click on anything in your email.

So if both sets of subscribers are saying “Yes please do keep in touch” – you now have their attention. And that’s the crucial thing.

In both cases you have a subscriber who has paid enough attention to you, said “yes” to you on one level and is potentially willing to pay you more attention in the future. Do you want to divide that precious attention between two different mediums?

(BTW – a blog and a mailing list can be used very effectively to promote a business in combination but only if each has a clearly defined role and strategy).

Even from ‘gurus’ who don’t need to use this kind of tactic and also some people I know who really aren’t like ‘that’ and are above using that kind of strategy.

I have an email address which I use to sign up for all the freebies. I’ve just checked the account and noticed with horror that I now have about 100 unread emails all from things I’d signed up to (so yes, I know it’s my own fault really)…

• Emails with titles that use words like ‘amazing’, ‘once in a lifetime’, ‘last chance’ etc. etc. get dumped straight in the trash folder unless I know & like who the email is from.

• Emails that come from an ‘info@’ address also get dumped straight into the trash can because I can’t remember what I signed up to and cant be bothered (when I’m wading through 100 at a time) to open them up to find out what they are.

What I’m learning from this for my business, is to do the exact opposite – although I am sure I have been guilty of this in the past (and still am to some extent when my head gets the better of me and convinces me that if all these guys are doing it, it must work).

I know that some tactics work and that many of these guys are doing exceptionally well but it’s not for me anymore. If I’m not writing things that aren’t useful and valuable enough in their own right to keep people’s attention, then no amount of hype is going to help me.

I want my readers & prospects to trust me.

I don’t want to turn them off by bombarding them with several emails a week. And yes, I believe sending somebody you don’t work with yet or with whom you are not friends or related to more than 1 email a week is excessive and unnecessary.

I don’t care that the ‘perceived’ wisdom is to ‘touch’ new prospects once a day for up to 14 days when you first make contact. It’s just too much. Nor that you should be in constant (more than weekly) contact with your prospects so they don’t forget you and they don’t go somewhere else.

Personally, I find it annoying. So this is what I’m going to be trying…

…A bit of an ‘anti’ online marketing approach, if you like.