I am speaking from experience here as I try to drop some pounds (many in fact) … but keeping a website or Blog going is like being on a diet:

• You have to have a big picture goal - something to aim for. The more realistic, the better.
• You have to find something that works for you. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.
• The more varied you diet, the better chance you have of sticking with it.
• You need to cut some things out that don’t help you one your quest
• You need to add more of other things that get the desired results
• You need to work out from the two points above, which is which.
• You need to have the odd day off otherwise you may go mad.
• Regular measurement is good, but remember the main goal and big milestones - they are the results that count, not the daily micro measurements.
• When the going gets tough, a constant reminder of why you are doing it is needed, rather than slipping in the short-term.

Anyway, that’s my thought for the day… back to the salad and, of course, the Blogging.

Yesterday, I had to chase someone for a reply to an e-mail one week old. His answer was that I should appreciate that he is extremely busy.

When I suggest Blogging to people, many say they won’t have the time.

Are we all really THAT busy? Really?

How about making time?

Yes, it’s a case of priorities but both examples to me contain elements of personal marketing. What are these actions saying about that person?

I love writing. I’m no J.K. Rowling, but I do like to tap away at the keyboard and ‘create’. I also believe in the power of words to help change the way people may think about a subject, or even a product. It’s part of my job I guess, trying to persuade people. That takes focus.

In the same way, I like to read a lot and once in a while I find a book that persuades me to change my thinking. That’s why I am pleased that I made a great discovery in the book Can I Change Your Mind? by Lindsay Camp.

If you write anything, I would highly recommend this book. It may start changing the results you get from that Ad, that e-mail to your colleague, or even that job interview.

Great article here by Chris Anderson (Author of The Long Tail): Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.

It’s a hard philosophy to sell to a client, but if you can life your head above what will happen in the next 2, 4 even 6 months, you may begin to see the longer term value, and, the sustainability of the model.

The Google Effect! When is the last time you paid them to perform a search? $1.21 Billions later…

So, you’re sitting at your computer to find a product or service. You open up Google and get ready to type in your search query.

I can bet you didn’t type in “integral solutions” or “peace of mind”. In fact, I would suggest it was quite specific.

Where a lot of businesses go wrong with their websites is the use of marketing speak and non-specific content.

This video highlights common mistakes when it comes to web page content and shows you what you can do to make them better.

Every time you search, Google is trying to sort through billions of web pages in less than a second to deliver THE best page it possibly can. Two elements that it uses to decide who’s is top for a certain phrase are:

1. Content on your website
2. How other people see your website with links.

So, how do you get to the top for your key phrases? Firstly, you need to make sure your pages say what you do… and secondly you need to assess what incoming links you can get (deserve) and how.

One way to see how other people do this is through competitive research. This little video shows you some simple ways to look at other peoples successful websites.

Reference Links

• Firefox - web browser of choice
• SEO for Firefox - cool plug in for easy viewing of competitive search data

Sorry for the cheesy headline but there is an important point coming about website strategy.

I just left a comment on a new Blog I am doing some guest posts on. These guys do NLP and something called The Human Element and I did the course last year. Anyway, Ben posted today about root causes of behaviours and it summed up a meeting I had today with a client and their website.

90% into the project, together, we have established what it is they want from the website.

Many companies focus on the technical platform, the design, the colouring… I am sure you’ve been there. What they feel to sit back and decide, is the money question - What do I actually want from my website?

Web strategies and KPIs (key performance indicators) are essential to the success of any web project. I you don’t know what you want, how can you measure the success, or failure?

Back to the onion - it’s enough to make my eyes water!

All the lonely websites, where do they all belong?

Many individuals and companies have great enthusiasm when their web site is launched, but if they don’t deliver they soon get forgotten.

Code breaks (for one reason or another), technology moves on, news is way out of date and the website never get any visitors… it must feel so lonely.

I was just looking through my company database and couldn’t work out one of the contacts was, so I visited their website…

“Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name…. Nobody came”

Why is it that trashy mags and Red Top newspapers in the UK follow the lives of ‘celebrities’ whilst some people with genuine talent struggle to get noticed. The skill of self-promotion and personality can go a hell of a way whether we ethically like it or not.

If you can then back it up with some genuine talent, then you have something special.

The normal route in society is to chase the bucks as quickly as possible and make serious money. Others choose a different route and arguably manage the ultimate goal of credibility and marketability - enabling sustainable avenues of revenue rather than a crash and burn approach.

Take Google. They spent a good few years delivering search free, concentrating on making the product better and better, while relying on word-of-mouth. They had marketability and credibility before they even began to make money.

Without the luxury of VC funding, small businesses are under pressure to deliver revenue pretty much straight away. If you have a great product though, it’s just a case of adding a bit of personality to your offering and doing a bit of self-promotion.

Twenty years ago you couldn’t imagine a company with a name like Google, Yahoo or Squidoo but now they are common. They ooze personality.

I often talk about the need for great content. I don’t often talk about the other side of that - how you write it.

A little personality goes a long way.

I have a friend who approached me recently for an all singing, all dancing website with a budget that couldn’t even raise a tune.

Anyway, not a project for The Escape, I produced it as a favour with the help of another friend.

It just goes to show what you can do to create a content-management system with Wordpress.

CBS Recruit does just that, allowing my friend to update his case studies and jobs, keeping his website relevant for less than £1000. I am now trying to teach him the fine art of content creation.

There are a whole host of cheaper ways of doing this of course if you can keep your website structure simple in Wordpress, using off-the-shelf templates.

Then you have Joomla (I’m not a big fan of this to be honest) or plain old blogging.

If it was me setting up a new business and I didn’t have a budget, I would actually go for a Blog.

Wordpress, hosted on your domain name. You need a little knowledge of how to do this but it’s all out there if you are a bit savvy.

I reckon the cost of a .co.uk domain is £2.99 for the year, Wordpress hosting I have found for $70 per year (£35). A free wordpress template and you have a web platform for less than £50 per year.

And, coming back to the situation with my friend’s website… it’s the content that is the real investment required.