Your website or Blog is often a first impression. People accessing it for the first time will make an almost instant judgment call about your worth. If they feel you have nothing to share you have just made a negative impression, essentially you said, no” to them. Saying no to people leaves a lasting impression especially when a negative is their first impressions of you. Chances are when they need you they will not come back.

Blind unqualified traffic leads to lots of no’s, lots of no’s leads to lost future opportunity. Lost opportunity is a killer. Make sure you are not attracting the wrong people as it’s bad for both you and them.

You’re right, all my rules are customer focused because in marketing and in business the customer is the key to success. The more you know about your customers wants, needs and issues, the better you can connect with them. I have a saying, “we’ll get smarter as our customers make us smarter”.

My book (Mommy, Where Do Customers Come From?) speaks to the failing customer connection in most marketing (especially on the web). My hope is to change marketer’s mindsets and have them start developing campaigns from the bottom up as opposed to the old top down approach.

I think the design center approach is a great idea! It will be a great compliment to the furniture products site. One will feed the other and I guarantee your customers will appreciate all the effort and advice. Give a little knowledge and you will get much back in return.

Please email contact me as soon as you have the Blog up and running, I’d love to see it.
Have a wonderful New Year.

Larry

Social networking has its roots in traditional business networking and in the offline networking world we are very aware and particular with who we spend our valuable time with.

This staple of successful networking seems to have been forgotten about in the online space. You simply cannot keep up with the activities and doings of a large unqualified group.

In our clickable culture a large group will trample you on their way to the next big thing.

Thanks for the comment and the book is available online and off at most major booksellers (although most people just seem to go to Amazon).

Larry

BTW: well done on the book! I did try to pick one up at the local Barnes & Noble, but they didn’t have it yet. Will it be in local stores or Amazon only?

Make a stand in those Blogs, become the, “Norm” (cheers reference) to those readers. As they start to see your name more frequently, read and relate to your comments they will start to hold you in higher regard. This will develop into the equivalent of customer evangelism as they will visit your site / Blog, link to you and help to spread the word, your word.

You have to remember one critical element, you are not selling your Blog you’re selling yourself. I didn’t promote my Blog I promoted myself, my expertise and the right people found the Blog, the website and the book.

I hope this helped with your concern, if not please let me know.
Best of luck

Larry Bailin

I don’t know if this is way beyond the pale but lets say you comment on hundreds, if not thousands of blogs relevent to your niche (in this case marketing)a , the only real way the readers will get to know about your blog is either in a signature or a direct link in your comment. So even taking into account your comments being relevant, when does this move from being an interested reader on multiple blogs to a mass comment spam / backlinking technique?