Fear of being different is often what keeps us in place and keeps our business from standing out in the crowd.  Fear stands between us and success. 

Do you really want to be successful in your industry?   Do you want to be what Seth Godwin describes as a “purple cow in a field of brown cows”?  Then. . . . ..

Don’t be afraid to stray from the proven patterns created by others!

What worked for other people, might work for you. But it might not also.  It might make you just another one of those brown cows munching away in the field instead of the “purple cow” that gets the attention.  If you want to stand out from all the other gift companies, then find the unexplored paths. Lead people to places they have never visited before! Try new things.  Add new products.  Create new markets.  If it doesn’t work, try something else.

Don’t be afraid to be yourself!

It’s your business and you are your business.  Don’t try to be something you are not.  Let a little bit of “you” show through in your website and both your online and offline marketing.  It makes the business less commercial and more friendly.  And, best of all, it creates TRUST. 

If you’re writing a blog, and have an opinion, state it.  If you’re not comfortable with your own opinions and viewpoints, don’t blog. Blogging is about being personal.  It’s not about being more of the same. Your voice is YOU and is different than all the other voices in all the other blogs within your industry.   Even if all of the bloggers in the gift industry say the same thing, your voice is what will make your statement stand out and be different.

Don’t think you can please everyone all the time!

Because you can’t.  If you’re blogging, your opinion is going to be different than that of others.  That’s a chance you take when you let YOU show through.  Without intending to, you may offend someone or they may read something entirely different into your meaning.   If you’re operating a business website, there’s no way you can offer something for everyone.  Even the way you have your site set up may offend some.  A Bible verse may turn off those who are not Christian while those “Naughty” gift baskets that you offer on Valentine’s Day may offend the more conservative.  Sure, whichever direction you take, you may lose a few customers along the way.  But you will be yourself and, by daring to be yourself–even if it’s different than the standard– you may attract even more customers.  You may even discover a whole new market that you never thought of targeting before.

Don’t be afraid to dream!

Dream. Hope. Believe! If you continue doing things the same way all the time, you will achieve the same results.  Act on those dreams or  you’ll never achieve them. Believe in yourself and understand what makes you different.  Don’t just march in the gift industry parade or even in the parade of life.  Step up and LEAD THAT PARADE!

The leader of every parade is someone who  DARED TO BE DIFFERENT!

What would you do with that last year?  What would you do differently?  Would you stop spinning your wheels, attending to all the little details, being a perfectionist, taking care of the mundane tasks that don’t make much difference?  Would you spend more time on your business?  Travel?  Your friends?  Your family?  Your personal and spiritual life?

Each of us would answer that question differently.  Each of us sees life through different eyes.  All of us are at different phases in our life.  Each of us has different values, different goals, and different dreams.  And most of us think that we have all the time in the world to accomplish those goals and dreams.  But it ain’t so!

I don’t claim to be a philosopher and I certainly don’t have all the answers.  But each day that is added to our lives adds additional knowledge and growth.  And as of today, I’ve had 24,028 days to accumulate the joys and pains of daily living.

So, since I can’t speculate on what you would do, I’ll talk a little bit about me.  For me, my life is my job.  And that life includes family, friends, my own goals and dreams.  At this stage in my life, I find myself asking “Is what I am doing making a difference?”

I’m at the point in my life where I can do just about anything that I want to do.  I have enough money to live comfortably.  I’ve raised my daughters and take time to enjoy my grandchildren.  My husband and I will soon be celebrating 49 years of a happy marriage.  So why would I spend my time building internet businesses, writing blogs, and sharing what I’ve learned about business in general and the gift basket business specifically?

Part of it, of course, is the competitive spirit and challenge of creating a successful business that is as much a part of true entrepreneurs as breathing is.  But even more is the drive to do something that matters as I conduct business in a humane and ethical way.  The approaches I use to achieve my goals are as important as achieving them.

Take this blog, for instance.  You see the ads in the right hand column.  They’ve been carefully selected to include only those opportunities that I have personally use and can recommend instead of all those opportunities that could perhaps make me lots more money.  This blog was not created to be a money-making blog.  It has other goals.

The older I get, the more I require the freedom to express my own feelings and to tell things as I see them.  I’ve seen the backside of the results of the need for paying advertisers — even in our own industry.  For example, when you attend conventions and tradeshows, the products you are going to see pushed in the classes are not necessarily those that the speaker would have recommended if given the freedom to do so.  They are the products supplied by the vendors.  And if a speaker knows something negative about a vendor or personally feels that they aren’t a good match for our industry, the freedom to say so isn’t there.

I remember attending a “Jubilee” a number of years ago.  All the speakers had this beautiful peacock printed cello that they used on their baskets.  Of course, it was available from one of the vendors.  And, impressed by the recommendation of the speakers that this was going to be the “hot” look for the season, I bought a roll.  That roll–and it’s almost a full roll– is still sitting in my bucket of cello.  Anybody want a roll of peacock-print cello?

Writing is one of the talents I’ve been given and I’ve learned the techniques to make it work well for me.  I’ve used that ability in the past to teach some of the knowledge I’ve accumulated in a column for one of our trade publications.  But the freedom to express my feelings about a paying advertiser wasn’t there.  As a result of overstepping that limitation, that column is no longer in the magazine.

So, this blog is the result.  I can say what I want without having my hands slapped.  I can be honest and express my opinions.  I am beholden to no advertiser.  Of course, there are still the limitations of not writing something that is untrue and can’t be proven.  But I wouldn’t do that anyway.  This blog allows me the opportunity to share what I have learned through the years and perhaps, as a result, help others create success.

The same is true of my website at www.giftretailersnetwork.com .  It allows me to provide information and the ability to communicate with each other for the members of my other website at www.giftbasketnetwork.com .  And, I am beholden to no advertiser.  The vendor members at the site don’t pay a dime for membership.  They have to contribute to the cause, however, by providing a discount to the members.  In exchange, they receive the ability to communicate with the gift basket companies through the private forum.  It’s a win-win situation and part of my way to give back to the industry.

This post is a lot longer than most — and more personal.  But, I’ve been asked:  “What is the reason for this blog? What do you hope to accomplish?”  And, I’ve felt the need to explain.

This blog is simply the answer to two questions:

• My life is my business.  What am I doing with it?
• Is what I am doing making a difference?

Back to the original question of  “What If? ”  I’ve talked about the business part of my life.  The rest of it is too personal to share in a blog.  But if I died tomorrow, I could tell myself, “I’ve accomplished my goals.  I’ve allowed the most important parts of my life–family, friends, faith, entrepreneurship–to influence each other and, hopefully, I’ve made a small difference in someone’s life along the way.”

So just how long does a blog post need to be?

And the answer is:  As long as necessary to get your point across without boring your reader.  Some tips to consider:

• The attention span of your readers.  Most readers won’t spend very long reading each post so only write a long post when you have something important to say.
• Search Engine Optimization.  Most web pages should be at least 250 words long for maximum SEO.  You could apply this to blog posts as well since each post is considered a page.  But only write posts that long when you have that much to say.
• Quantity of posts on the blog.  If you write frequently, you might want to write shorter posts than if you only write an occasional post.
• Variety is the spice of life.  So mix short posts with long posts to keep the reader interested.
• The topic you are writing about.  Sometimes you’re writing about a topic that just needs to be longer than other topics that you may write about.
• Statistics.  As you blog, keep track of your statistics and see which posts are the most read.  If the most read are usually short and to the point, you might consider writing more in that style.

Very few people read word for word.  Most scan for content.  Keep that in mind when writing your posts (or even your website pages) and make them easily scannable.  This is easy to do if you incorporate a few things such as:

• Lists (like this one). 
• Using bold, italics, CAPITAL LETTERS, and underlining to vary your text.  Just make sure you don’t overdo it.
• Use headings and subheadings to break up a page.
• Pictures,  that are appropriate to your subject, will draw a reader’s attention.
• Sometimes put an important bit of text or a quote inside a box or indent it.
• Use short paragraphs.  A single sentence or even a single word can create an effective paragraph.

The answer to the first question depends on your blog, how you have optimized it, and how you market and use it.  The answer to the second question is the same as the answer to the first one.

If you provide content that people are really interested in and let people know that it exists, you can generate much traffic within a short period of time.  I can’t guarantee you any results with your blog but to give you an idea of the possibility, this blog attracted 2591 visitors during its first 2 and 1/2 months of existence (from launch date of March 19th through the end of May).

How do I know this?  I check the stats for this blog regularly.  They tell me how many visit the blog daily, where they come from, and which blog posts are the most visited.  They also tell me which links are clicked on each day.

So how effective is it really?  I consider 2591 visitors in a 2 1/2 month period pretty effective.  How about you?

Most blogs welcome comments and allow you to leave your website address when you make a comment.  The way to use this method of “blogging without a blog” is easy.  Find blogs (including this one) that are related to your business and post comments when you have something to say.

Since there are so many spammers on the web that have software capable of automatically leaving spam comments, most bloggers install “askimet” as a plug-in.  This little tool recognizes suspected spam and requires the blog owner to approve the post instead of it just magically appearing.  Also blog owners can manually delete posts that are nothing more than an ad for the commenter’s website and have nothing to do with the post they are commenting on.

Like anything on the web, commenting on other people’s blog posts can be a valuable tool if not abused.

Remember that your blog will be different than all the others out there because you are different.  You have different goals and ideas and you are a different person than all the other bloggers out there.  So don’t make the mistake of trying to copy someone else’s blog or even comparing yours to others.

Your blog is going to be unique and your blog’s appearance will help determine its uniqueness.  If you look at a lot of blogs, you’ll see that many of them are a scrambled mess of links, widgets, ads and distractions that make it hard to focus on why you clicked on that blog in the first place. 

Keeping your blog simple will make it easier for your readers to focus on what you are trying to tell them instead of wandering off to another site. 

Here are some tips for keeping your blog simple and easy to follow:

• Choose a template that will brand your blog.  You don’t need a fancy design.  There are many free blog templates to choose from if you’re using a free blogging service and thousands to choose from if you have chosen to use wordpress.org and have the blog hosted on your own domain (as this one is).
• Keep your layout simple.  Unless you know what you are doing, a two column format is easier to simply and a three column format should be tha absolute maximum.  Your main and widest column is for your blog post and the other narrower ones are for navigation and any extras that you include.
• Should you use a right navigation or a left navigation format?  This is a personal decision but remember that the eyes of most readers on the web read from the left to the right.  Since I consider my blog posts to be the most important part of the page, I use a right navigation so that they read the posts first.
• Choose widgets (add-ons to blog pages) carefully.  There are so many widgets to choose from (and we’ll talk about some of the more important ones in a later post), that the temptation is to add lots of them.  But I suggest that you consider each one carefully before adding as less is usually better unless the widget serves an important purpose.
• Keep your feed options simple.  By feed options, I mean giving your readers the opportunity to subscribe to your blog either via email or via an RSS reader.  Most of your readers will have no idea what all the many options are so don’t clutter the feed options area with a lot of different options.
• Should you have a blog roll?  Blog rolls are standard on many templates.  But beware.  They those links can leak out valuable SEO ability.  Unless they benefit you, why include them? 

In our next post, we’ll talk about how to design your blog posts for maximum effectiveness.

This is true of so many people who start blogging.  They don’t know what to write about.  They don’t know what to say or how to say it.  They don’t have time to make regular posts.   I’ll discuss what I’ve learned about how to prevent this meltdown in a later post.  But before we get into all the bells and whistles or the technical aspects of building a blog that will draw traffic, let’s start with the basics.

Before starting your blog, you should consider what your goals are.  If you want it to be a money making blog within itself, it will be set up differently than a blog that is meant to send traffic to your ecommerce sites. 

Whether you already have a blog or are considering starting one, you’ll save yourself a lot of time if you consider some of the following:

Who is Your Target Audience

Think about who will be reading your blog. A tech-savvy reader is more likely to understand and use such things as RSS and Digg than a mom who is looking for favors for a kid’s party. If your readers are business owners or corporate execs in a hurry, they’ll skim through your post looking quickly for the meat of it. If your goal is to sell products, how do you reach the readers who are ready and willing to buy those products?

Your target market will determine the layout and graphics of your blog, your content and even your wrting style.

If you already have a blog, look at it and see if it is attracting the kind of audience you want? Is your audience clicking through to the products that you are trying to sell with your posts, if that is your intent? What image are you protraying and are you happy with it?

Plan Your Blog From the Very Beginning

Most of us started our first blogs by just launching it and hoping for the best.  But I did it differently with this one and it has made a world of difference.  I took the time to determine who I was trying to reach, why I wanted to reach them, and how I was going to set up the blog.

Some things that I considered were:

• What was it going to be called?  (Creative Entrepreneurs)
• Who was my target audience? (Business owners in general and gift business owners in particular)
• How frequently was I going to post? (At least three times per week and more often when possible)
• What would be my writing style for this blog? (An informational style without being a know-it-all)
• What topics would I cover? (Anything related to general business, gift business, and gift basket business)
• What advertising would be allowed on the blog? (My own gift business websites plus other honest businesses that I felt comfortable recommending to my readers).
• Would I write all the posts? (I decided to include posts from guest bloggers who had something to tell my readers that would be informative and useful. )

Think carefully about the name of your blog.  Once you’ve established an audience, you don’t want to change that name.  I had a blog that was a combination of business, personal, and information about my community in Flagstaff, Arizona.  That blog was named “Flagstaff Woman”.  I soon discovered that the name was too limiting as my market and audience was much larger than Flagstaff.  And trying to combine a variety of information into one blog created a haphazard blog.  I then made the decision to start all over again and used the same blog for Creative Entrepreneurs.  I did this for a few months but something was still not quite right and kept bugging me.  I decided that  the domain name “Flagstaff Woman” just wasn’t right for that blog. 

That is when I got serious about blogging.  That original blog was set aside.  I will go back to it later, wipe it clean, and create a Flagstaff related blog.  But to begin anew, I selected a domain name (giftbusinessowners.com) that reflected my target audience, chose a template that included places for ads for my gift business websites and other products that I trusted enough to promote, and made a list of some of the topics I wanted to cover. 

But that is now.  And, unless you are already a successful blogger, you are at the stage I was at when I started my earlier blogs.  If you’ve never blogged before, I suggest that you go to one of the free sites (blogger.com, wordpress.com, blogspot are several) and set up a blog for yourself.  The process is easy.  Don’t worry about choosing a fancy template.  This is going to be your learning blog.  I did this for two of my very early blogs and learned a lot about blogging and myself.

Make a list of things that you want to blog about and then separate them into categories.  Blog categories are like chapters in a book.  A reader can click on one of the categories and will see any posts that you’ve assigned to that category.  Just as in your ecommerce website, categories make it easy for your readers to find what they’re looking for.

Then choose a category and start writing.

This is my second post in this blogging series.  My plan is to take it slow and easy for those of you who are beginners.  But most of you may already be accomplished bloggers.  I’d like your comments on what you’d like to learn, how accomplished you are, and what you hope to accomplish with your blog.

What is Blogging anyway?

Blogging is an amazing way for you to share information about your business (or any other subject), state your opinions, and best of all, increase traffic to your website or local store.  Blogging for business is a very effective SEO technique and often helps with building your online business.

A  blog can be anything you want it to be. What makes it different than a regular website is in the fact that blogs are more of an ongoing conversation with the internet public, that is updated regularly.

The first blogs started as a way for people to record their visits to different websites that they liked or disliked.  The early blogs were people discussing the interesting things they found online and then linking to those sites.  These evolved into a sort of personal diary for some people.  Take a look at The Confessions of a Pioneer Woman for someone who has done a great job of using her own personal experiences, photography, recipes, etc and is making money doing it.

She has a regular following of loyal readers.  And you can too.  Once people start enjoying or learning from what you write, the chances are good that they’ll return again and again.  As you increase your content, and learn the few tricks necessary to optimize a blog for the search engines, you’ll begin getting higher and higher rankings.

And if you have advertisements on your blog, or links to products on another website, you can generate some good passive income.  But what most ecommerce and gift company owners do when creating a blog is use it as a sales pitch for their own business. . . and this can be a waste of time.

How Can Blogging Help My Business?

Blogging is a way to build customer following and loyalty by  personalizing your business and keeping  the internet public infromed about all the  new and exciting things going on with your company. Blogs are also great marketing tools but only if the  the content is designed to BENEFIT the reader, rather than solely to advertise a product or service.  Blogging  provides another opportunity for people to find your site. Often times when people are looking for a product or service, they will FIRST look for information concerning the subject.

Blogging isn’t difficult.  And it isn’t expensive.  As a matter of fact, there are websites that offer free blogs for you to set up.  Blogger.com and Wordpress.com are two of the most popular ones.  If you’ve never blogged before, this might be a good way to get your feet wet but there are excellent reasons not to use the free blogging services if you’re really serious about using a blog to build your business.  We’ll talk about those reasons in a later post.

Having said that, you might want to just go ahead and get your feet wet by starting your first blog on one of the free blogging platforms.  This will help you learn the techniques and develop the ability to develop content on a regular basis.  By regular, I mean at a minimum of two to three times a week. 

This isn’t my first blog.  I learned by developing several others that weren’t nearly as successful as this one.  Then I got serious about it and decided that I would create one the right way and add content regularly.  That’s when I went looking for resources that would teach me what I needed to know.  There are some technical (not hard, just things you need to know) things that can make a big difference in how effective a blog will be.  I’m not an expert by any means and am still learning.

But throughout the coming weeks and months, I’ll be sharing some of this information with you.  But if you’ve got the blogging bug under your skin, as I did, and want to get going at a faster pace, I highly recommend a blogging membership site that I stumbled upon.  There is a series of free lessons you can sign up for but the membership is what takes you through the paces.  And the lady who operates this site knows what she is doing. 

So, if you want to step up to the next level and build your business with blogging, come back regularly as we begin stacking the building blocks to blogging success.  Shortly, I will be compiling all the information that I’ve learned into an ebook that will be available for download.  And, if you want to really get that blogging horse out of the starting gate and get a head start towards the finish line, check out my little secret.