We have had a great week for our new Sales Director, Brad Hermett and with his assistance we have added two new clients.  The interesting part is both have a connection to us via our blog.

The first new client is VIP Reality who has done great things with SEO on their own, they currently are doing great with the Dallas Market but they also have a company to run, clients to serve etc.  So their president (Richard Soto) has given us the opportunity to start working with them on their new San Antonio Real Estate site.

How did I first meet Richard?  Via this very blog as he was doing some link building for his own company and interacting with the local business community here in Dallas – Fort Worth.

Our next new client is Tom Sadler owner of Executive Press a Dallas Printing Shop that has made a strong commitment to running an environmentally friendly company.  We will be doing some basic optimization and analytics services for Tom and we are also already quoting him to update the look of his site and take over his hosting.

While I met Tom initially because we choose him as our vendor to do some printing work for two of our clients there is still a blogging story in this relationship.  While Tom is not quite ready to start blogging himself just yet I did a post last week about meeting him and his commitment to the environment.

So here are two instances where blogging was a part in developing relationships that have led to new business and new partnerships.   Blogging is a very powerful marketing tool.  The key though is to make it part of true relationship development, this is not like casting a wide net.  In both instances these were exceptional organizations with something special about them.  They were both “blog worthy” even if we never directly worked with them.

Blogs and Blog Marketing are big news today, there is nothing novel or revolutionary about that. So in general we always talk about the possibility of blogging as part of a marketing campaign when we speak with perspective client. It isn’t always a great fit though. First you have to buy in on the ownership or at minimum the “ownership” of the marketing department. With out doing this you won’t positively know if a blog is going to get used or updated.

In such instances, I actually think selling a client on blogging is disservice to them and I believe it contributes to the fact that 50% of all “Business Blogs” fail in the first year and by fail, I mean these become dormant and never updated. Hence, these are not visited nor read.

Additionally you need to be able to come up with an “angle” for the blog, something that makes blogging effective for the client so that dedicating time and resources to it is worth doing. Companies that blog in a way that is just sales copy or PR on a different web platform seldom have any real success. So again with out making sure you and your client know what they will blog about and how it will assist them in building their business is another disservice.

Recently I had my new Sales Director out on his first call to do some field training with a potential client. The company is Executive Press, a Dallas printing shop that serves our local market and is actually doing some printing work for us right now. When the topic of Blogging came up the client was not that interested in it at first and I was about to simply move on and follow my own rules about the issue.

As the conversation continued, something unique was brought up, it turns out that Executive Press is a “Green Print Shop” as in being environmentally friendly. The gentleman that we were meeting with, (Company Owner Tom Sadler) made a commitment to this and explained things to us like using soy based inks and other concepts that make a Print Shop actually “Green”. He also noted that he recently observed a competitor who was advertising being “Green” by buying “Carbon Credits” and that there was a big difference in the two schools of thought.

Mr. Sadler is also very committed to “Green Industry” in Dallas – Ft. Worth as a whole and spends times working with several organizations on these issues. During that meeting and in the proposal that we then delivered to Mr. Sadler I highly recommended that he blogs about these issues. Simply dedicating say twenty minutes a day, a few times a week to talking about what is going on locally, mentioning other “Green Companies” and what they are doing to better our city and letting his readers know about events they can attend.

We have advised Mr. Sadler to blog somewhat independently, as an owner of his company but on a separate domain  vs. his company website. This helps bring to focus the subject of doing environmentally responsible business and less about his specific company. The advantages of doing so are immense. There are exceptional short and long term local Public Relations opportunities. There are also excellent networking opportunities because his fellow business people will appreciate being mentioned in his blog.

The real key is that Mr. Sadler is genuinely committed to doing business in this way and encouraging others to do the same. Sure the topic is hot, sure it is easy to gain traction with on Search Engines and in Social Networks but with out a genuine belief and passion such efforts are hollow and soon fail. In this instance Executive Press and Tom Sadler have put their money and their commitment ahead of their claims, they made the commitment, are practicing what they preach and were not afraid to spend the money to get it done.

When you add to that the current market opportunities and have a creative and committed entrepreneur like Tom Sadler, blogging is a natural and perfect fit. Whether we are chosen to handle Internet Marketing for Executive Press or not, I do hope Mr. Sadler starts a blog and posts to it often. The Dallas Business Market, Mr. Sadler’s Business and the Blogosphere will all benefit by it. I also would not hesitate to recommend Executive Press to my fellow business owners in Dallas, the work they have done for us was outstanding.

~ Jack Spirko

I run a blog called ComTech News that I started a few years ago that has a pretty good readership at this point. I discuss a lot of technology stuff there but 80% or more is about Internet Marketing, Blogging, SEO or similar topics. About 4 months ago I did a post about Donald Trump’s blog where I was how shall we say, less then kind about it.

The post was never really about Trump or meant to be negative in any way about him or his organization. It was really for my readers (many of whom are Corporate Marketers) to understand a fundamental mistake that many companies are making today. That is blogging with out real “voice” and putting to much “sales speak” into blogging. The reality was there were some great posts on the Trump blog (Trump’s personal ones were great) but these mistakes were being made as well. I only used the Trump blog as an example because it was very well known and I felt it would make my readers more willing to admit their own mistakes.

Then something happened I never expected, several members of the blog team showed up, and opened up a discussion with me on my blog. Needless to say the discussion was a bit warm (not heated but warm). I did my best at that point to explain my criticism and do what ever I could to suggest improvements to what was currently being done. I also then posted a follow up post pointing out the many things Trump’s team was doing right. Over time we developed a relationship and just last week we signed a consulting agreement with Trump University to help them with things like improving rankings and conversions for their real estate training and wealth creation training programs.

Now let me be clear this is not the direct path I would suggest for finding new clients! In fact if I had the whole thing to do over again I would have tempered my words a bit, yet to me there are a few real lessons here.

1. Smart business people appreciate honesty so long as you have a solution to match the problems you point out.

2. Blogging indeed is worth doing, for our relatively new company to have landed a client with this level of name recognition with a phone call or by conventional sales means would have been very unlikely.

3. Companies do pay attention to what is being said about them, so be careful what you said about who.

4. When a person responds to your blog posting it is good practice to take the time to answer their questions, concerns and points fully and with a sincere desire to be helpful, even if the discussion did not start off on the best foot.

5. When you are willing to help others sooner or later it all tends to come back to you.

So while again I do not recommend that you go out and point out faults publicly on your blog of major companies in hopes of landing business with them I think there is much to be learned from the process that took place here. The real relationship with Trump’s team came after the post. It came with free advice, several somewhat consultative phone calls and a clear message that we would never let them down as a client, yet it started with a far from conventional blog post.

If you would like to see the initial post, the follow up comments and my second post you can view them here,

Initial Post

Follow Up Post

One thing is for certain we are very happy to be working with such a world class organization and brand and will be doing all we can to improve traffic and conversion for our new partner.

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: blog marketing, blogging, social media, web 2.0, franklin spirko, internet marketing