Relationship marketing builds good long term customer relationships thru regular communication. This means working to build customer relationships over a longer term. People prefer to do business with people that they know and like. You can expand your relationship marketing using online methods thru blogs, websites, email and social media. It’s a matter of building trust.

Blog Marketing: Blog marketing allows you to regularly reach readers on a conversational level. Each day you can reach them with problem solving ideas, business advice, and insights on how you can help them. They can answer back with comments. You can engage them in a blogging conversation. Blogging allows you to develop strong bonds with your existing and future customers.

Relationship Website: Design your website to be relationship oriented. This means inviting visitors in and creating a warm friendly user experience. Show your hospitality and offer guests free “goodies” in the form of free information, eBooks or tools.

A well developed FAQ area makes it easy for people to locate info and get answers to their questions. Encourage two way dialogue where they can easily call, message or email for immediate answers.
Make your website interactive. Create a two way flow of information with live support. Allow visitors to describe their unique needs and receive specialized answers their needs.

Email Communication: Use email to stay in touch with visitors that give you permission to send emails. Offer to send visitors valuable information or resources. This is about creating a positive experience, not spamming. Always offer an easy way for them to opt out from future emails so they have control.

Social Media: Using websites such as LinkedIn and Facebook, you can interact and network with your prospective customers. There are hundreds if not thousands of social media websites where folks from different market niches gather and converse.

The key to using the web for relationship marketing is to distinguish yourself from the masses. You must be willing to do what others are not willing to do. You need to dare to be different.

Relationship marketing involves building a trust relationship with potential customers. People prefer to buy from those businesses that they trust the most. Customers will start doing business with you if they like and respect you. They will also keep doing business and stay with your firm for the same reason. This is especially effective in B2B business services such as business consulting.

Typically businesses spend 80% of their marketing dollars going after new customers and clients rather than nurturing and retaining their current customers. With good relationship marketing, businesses can increase their repeat orders from existing customers by more than 50%.

You need to build a “relationship” with your customers and prospects. What are the basics of relationship marketing?

1. Get to know them: Keep records not only of what they purchase, but also personal information such as dates of birthdays, anniversaries and even family member names. What are their interests and hobbies? Take a genuine interest in them.
2. Show your appreciation: Do things to show you appreciate them as a customer. Send them a thank you card or token of appreciation. Sometimes it’s even as simple as just saying “thank you.”
3. Stay in touch: Find ways to stay in touch with your clients. Make regular telephone calls or send email. Send holiday cards or postcards.
4. Take an Interest: Ask questions. Find out what their challenges are and see if you can help them. Show them you understand their business or their issues and you’re interested in more than just their last purchase.

What is the benefit of building a relationship with a client after they have bought? Quite simply, not only repeat business but potentially more powerful and profitable - is the prospect of referral business.

If you are starting up a blog for your business, you need to answer the basic question: “What topic should I write about?” Blog marketing requires that you write something that your targeted clients will find interesting.

Your blogging journey begins by choosing a topic that your targeted audience will want to read and that you will enjoy writing about. Start by answering these 3 questions.

1. Whom are you writing to? This should be your targeted customer. This may only be a part of your overall customer base. Perhaps an area you would especially want to grow. Be specific. An example might be purchasing managers and senior buyers from industrial companies who buy MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operation) parts for plant operations.
2. What are you interested in? You should write about a topic that you are knowledgeable about and that you are passionate about. It should be a subject that your targeted customer is very interested in. You should focus on an area that is a narrow niche and yet broad enough so you can write for a long time and still not run out of things to say.
3. Why are you writing? You might want to brand yourself as the authoritative expert, improve the search rankings of the company website, attract new customers or promote products. You will need one primary objective to create a focus on what you write.

Now you are ready to select your blog topic. Remember to write about topics that will reach people before they make their buying decision.

As an example, if you sell baby furniture, you could write a blog about selecting baby names. People generally start thinking about baby names before they purchase baby furniture. They are closely related and a link from a baby name blog could lead interested readers to your baby furniture website.

Search engine optimization has so many misconceptions and yet is so critical to the success of a business website. So what works and what doesn’t? What practices should you stay away from?

Myths

1. You have to submit your website URL to the search engines. This is no longer true. Spiders crawl through links as long as you have people linking to your site.
2. Your site must have a Google site map to rank well. This is not true. Most sites can be spidered the way they are.
3. A web page needs to have a minimum of 250 words to be indexed. There is no minimum requirement. Text content is important, but you should focus on writing good SEO text that tells a compelling marketing story.
4. You need to update your site often to rank well. Frequent updates will increase your crawl rate, but not your rankings. Some of the highest ranking websites haven’t been updated for years.

Mistakes

1. Don’t use the same META tags on every page. They should match the content on the page. The <title> tag is the most important for SEO. The first 65 characters are the most important.
2. Don’t ignore using the description tag <meta name=”description”>. It may be ignored by most search engines, but it may be used as the description of your site in the Google results.
3. Don’t produce your whole website in Flash. Flash will either be non-indexable or indexed poorly. Instead embed flash elements in HTML pages along with text that can be easily indexed.
4. Avoid using intro pages. Flash or graphic intro pages waste the most valuable SEO page on your website. Unless you want to be found for the keyword “skip intro”?

Mayhem

1. Beware of SEO firms that promise a #1 ranking. How can they claim this? They can’t control the search engines. You have to wonder what keywords they might be willing to do this for.
2. Beware of SEO firms that have secret methods that they won’t disclose. This is a warning sign that they are using black hat SEO methods. Remember, you are responsible for your website and your reputation.

The writing style and format is different for blog marketing than for other types of writing. Blogging uses an informal and more conversational style. Postings should have a single main idea. Blog readers have short attention spans. Blog postings should be short, easily scanned and quick to read.

1. Keep it fresh: Interesting and original content is what keeps your readers coming back for more. Don’t be afraid to give opinions, tips and commentary.
2. Short Postings: A typical blog posting should be about 250 words. The longer a post goes, the more people skim. Studies show that people will read up to 300 words. When readers encounter a 500 word blog, they will only read 300 words.
3. Short Paragraphs: Write in short sentences that are broken up into short paragraphs. Your writing should be broken into easily digestible chunks. 50 word paragraphs are easily read, while a 250 word block of text looks overwhelming.
4. Design for scan: Your reader wants to scan down your blog and get the gist of it before reading. The main points should stand out in sub-headlines, lists, images, colors, italics and indented text.
5. Keep it simple: Simple means getting rid of extra words. Simple writing is persuasive. A writer’s ability to edit himself is probably the most important blog writing technique.
6. Use Easy to read fonts: Unusual font choices and other poor formatting choices can make something visually difficult to read.
7. Edit Your work: Write your blog quickly and get your thoughts and ideas down. Then go back over it to make sure your points are clear and concise.

The term ‘breadcrumb’ comes from the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel where the children leave a trail of crumbs to find their way back out of the forest.

In business web design, breadcrumbs usually appear horizontally near the top of a page. They are a method for telling the visitor where they are. Users can “jump” to prior pages without using the back button by simply clicking on one of the breadcrumb links. Breadcrumbs show a path home for the visitor. They may look something like this:

Home >> Men’s Clothing >> Dress Shirts >> Van Heusen

Breadcrumbs or breadcrumb trail is especially useful on complex websites where there are many levels of content. They show a linear path in websites that are organized in a hierarchical structure. When a visitor arrives into a site from a search, they can quickly orient themselves and begin moving around the site.

There are three types of breadcrumbs that can be used.

1. Path: This shows the actual trail the visitor followed to arrive at a page. This is usually generated dynamically. In the breadcrumb example above, the “dress shirts” section could have been found by either going to “men’s clothing” or by going to the “sales” area.
2. Location: This shows the standard path a visitor would follow and represents the site structure. This is regardless of how visitors actually arrive to a page.
3. Attribute: This shows all the different areas the page may be listed under. In our “dress shirts” example, shirts may be listed in the “under $25”, “On Sale” and “Van Heusen” Sections. It would contain all three attribute breadcrumbs.

Breadcrumb navigation is an important navigational aid and it should be clearly visible. Here are some basic rules to follow in setting up breadcrumb navigation.

1. Position it on the top of the page
2. Include 1-2 words that summarize the page title.
3. Always include the full path from the home page
4. Make it obvious what part of the breadcrumbs are clickable links.
5. Do not link the current active page.
6. Do not include on the home page because it would only contain the word “Home.”

Use trigger words to attract visitors and then encourage action. Keywords are used in search engine optimization and bring visitors to your website, usually via search engines. Trigger words are the words or phrases that cause a visitor to click or take action. They motivate action and movement within the website.

In Internet marketing, there are certain trigger words that create curiosity and interest. Trigger words are the words and phrases that trigger a user into clicking or buying. Coupling trigger words with a “call to action” is especially important to create a website that converts well.

8 trigger words that work to create positive emotions and guide people into buying.

1. Discovery: capture imagination and thrill with an amazing discovery.
2. Free: Free is a powerful motivator to many.
3. Guarantee: Make it risk free; a sure thing.
4. Confidence: Comforts and encourages.
5. Save: Save time, save money…
6. New: Makes people curious; is it a breakthrough product?.
7. Simple: Better than easy, but closely related.
8. Proven: Take the risk out because it is tried and true.

5 trigger words that create a negative emotion.

1. Pay: This is the opposite of free. Use get, take or gain.
2. Cost: Focus on savings and benefits instead.
3. Lose: Avoid phrases like “you can’t lose.” Consider using win, gain or profit.
4. Fail: Only the negative is heard in “this can’t fail…”
5. Hard: Say “it’s easy” not “It isn’t hard at all.”

Emotional trigger words can prompt visitors to take action, to click onto a link and to move to the next step. Well laid scent trails can guide visitors to find the information that they are seeking. Use context to reassure visitors are on right path by using breadcrumb navigation. An example of breadcrumb navigation in a jewelry website would be
home > jewelry > earrings

Have you have been writing a blog for your business and it has not been successful? Does your blog still have few or no comments and very few visitors? Are you are getting frustrated? What to do?

It is time to get back to basics. A blog without focus or one that is written in a dry or uninteresting style will not attract readers.

A successful blog needs a central message or focus that is directed to a particular audience. Business blog marketing requires posts that are written with a purpose and written in a way that is interesting to your targeted reader.

Let’s assume that your motivation for blogging is to be recognized as an industry expert. This is what you should do to redefine yourself.

1. Who: What audience or market segment are you trying to reach? This will probably be someone who will want to buy your products or services.
2. What: What interests this targeted group? What answers, tips, advice or news are they seeking? This should be focused around a topic that you know and closely related to what you sell.
3. Focus: To maintain the attention of your audience and the search engines, keep focused on a single topic. Dominate this topic as the authority. People who are very interested in this topic will return often for updates.
4. Style: Write with personality and with an active voice. Express opinions and most of all write original and interesting content.
5. Postings: You should write postings that are short (about 250 words) and write regularly (3 times a week is optimum).

People will keep coming back and you will develop a loyal following if you are consistent and keep your posts interesting and on topic.

Nofollow is a way for webmasters to instruct search engine spiders not to follow certain links. This can be applied to an entire page or to individual links. By using NoFollow tags, you have the ability to control the PageRank flow within your site and the value that is passed to external web pages.

PageRank Flow
PageRank flows into a site via inbound links and flows out via outbound links. NoFollow is a method to help redirect this flow. The essence of this is that the fewer links on a page, the more PageRank share each link gets. By applying Nofollow to 20 of the 25 links on a page, you will effectively reduce the PageRank flow to 5 links.

This allows webmasters to concentrate PageRank to the most important pages within their website. For example, the Contact page is an important page for business reasons, but not for search rankings. By adding NoFollow tags to the navigation links, you can focus PageRank on pages that are rich in keyword text. ou can effectively sculpt PageRank to the most important pages and to control the link architecture.

NoFollow allows shaping of the overall relevance of your website. NoFollow allows you to focus the relevance to a single topic. You can effectively “prune” out the off topic pages as far as the search engines are concerned.

Google
This is a Google approved method for Webmasters to use. Google suggests that it be used on untrusted content, paid links and to set crawl prioritization.

Does this guarantee a page or link won’t be indexed? No Google is clear that it won’t eliminate indexing, but it will control PageRank flow. A Recent post from Rand (seomoz) indicates that search engine spiders still follow the NoFollow links for purposes of discovery.

Business blogging is very different than personal blogging. It is focused and done with a purpose. Business blog marketing can be used as a powerful tool to improve website search engine rankings and bring in targeted website traffic.

Search engine optimization involves anything that improves your rankings in the popular search engines such as Google, MSN & Yahoo. You can optimize your blog to bring in more traffic to your blog. This is easy to do by using keywords in blog titles, blog categories and in the first paragraph of your blog text.

Even more powerful, is using your blog to raise the rankings for your business website. This is particularly effective if your blog is on a separate URL and host from your website. In other words, your blog should be independent and completely separate from your website.

Blogging will still involve writing keyword-rich content that is original, creative and compelling. Keywords are still used in the blog titles and categories. The additional step will be the use of hyperlinked text. Using keyword phrases in the link text and then linking these to a highly relevant page on your website is a very effective SEO method that gives SEO results fast.

How many links should you include in a blog post? 2-5 would be a pretty typical number of links. Be sure to include occasional links to high PR authority websites such as Wikipedia. This speeds the crawling of your blog posts by the search engines.

Blogs traditionally have a large number of postings focused on a particular subject. The page code is often very clean, text rich HTML. They are usually written in a simple, easy to spider format making them an excellent completely natural SEO tool.