#100 Boosting Engagement & Growth: The Power of Blog Comments & Essential Website Tools

Jonny Ross: 00:00:16

It's the 90 day Website Mastery podcast. It's episode 23. This is the companion to the 90 day Website Mastery program. Very excited to be here. Got my co-host Pascal with me. Uh, and, um, you're right. Pascal. Um, I'm all right. But talking of.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:00:34

Numbers, found out this is number 23. But for you, Johnny Rose, as a kind of, um, you know, really generous content creator, the numbers are a bit bigger, because, if I'm not mistaken, I was checking recently. You're doing your Ross fractional CMO podcast. Um, website. This is number 100 for you.

Jonny Ross: 00:00:53

This is number 100. This is a momentous podcast. Uh, if you are here live, if you're here listening afterwards, uh, on the replay, this is episode 100 of Johnny Ross, fractional CMO. Uh, I, uh, we use Johnny Ross, fractional CMO, to also do the 90 day, uh, podcast as well. Uh, so it's episode 23 of the podcast, but yeah, this is 100 episodes.

Jonny Ross: 00:01:18

It's crazy. I've done 100 episodes.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:01:20

Absolutely crazy. So 12,000 listeners, I am, um, you know, promising that I will have generous as a special guest very soon to tell us about the lessons that he's taken away from recording 100 conversations, primarily with a few solo shows and so on, and, and and yet for some of you, maybe getting to the point like which I've been through, you've been through where you feel like it's plateauing, you can't quite get that fire back in your belly. Maybe you'll be thinking about starting content series, whether that's podcast and videos. And I reckon, Johnny, you've got a lot to tell and lots to share.

Jonny Ross: 00:01:52

Yeah, and learned so much along the way as well. Um, and, and as I said, we are live right now, so perhaps you're with us right now. We're live on LinkedIn. We live on Facebook. We live on YouTube. You may be listening afterwards, uh, on your favorite podcasting platform. Or perhaps you're watching on you watching the replay on YouTube as well.

Jonny Ross: 00:02:10

So it's great that you're here. And yes, all 99 of the episodes are fully available. I've learnt a lot, changed the tech that I'm using, uh, changed, played with some of the formats. One of the big things that I've learned along the way is the importance of repurposing podcast content as well. Uh, and, uh, and bike sizing and, and sort of streamlining, even just the, the admin process. And there's so much I could talk about in terms of podcasting. Um, but let's focus on episode 23 of the 90 day website, uh, mastery podcast. It's the companion, as I said, of the 90 day website mastery program, uh, program that me and Pascal have put together. And it was a way to, um, the podcast was a way to find, uh, to continue to share advice and insights about making your website work harder for you, because ultimately, we want you to feel proud about your website again. That's what this is all about.

Jonny Ross: 00:03:04

We want you to feel proud the moment someone says, what's your website URL? What's your website address? We want you to feel proud and not have that pang in your stomach where you think, oh no, don't look at my website. So we always have four segments. We have the US, we answer, we have website stories, we have the website engine room. And we always finish with a call to action, uh, which is the website call to action, where we give you one little change or adjustment that you could be doing right now and making a difference on your website. So let's get started with you ask. We answer.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:03:43

Now flip is a 23. We have received a very, very interesting question. I think one that's going to really get us to debate on this idea of the comment section on a blog. The question is, should I switch on or switch off? The comment section of my blog have been told it's good for SEO, but I'm worried about poor and spammy comments.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:04:03

What? See you, Jenny Ross.

Jonny Ross: 00:04:09

Jim, one of the things, one of the first things I'd say is I'd be more worried about trying to get comments than worrying about whether you should have comments on or off. And, you know, it's really difficult to get engagement. That's the bottom line. It is difficult to get engagement and you will get tons of spam comments. And it's quite easy to, uh, you know, have an approval process and turn those off. Um, but from an SEO point of view, well, they can be extremely valuable if the user is talking about your content. But, you know, if they're just saying, oh, great article or thanks for sharing, it doesn't really add much value at all. So I think, um, the the question comes down to how engaging is the content, the audience, the website. And so for example, if you're a large media company, uh, big newspaper, etc., having that comment section adds a huge amount of value, not just from an SEO point of view, but also from a user point of view.

Jonny Ross: 00:05:02

But if we bring us back to the real world, and this podcast is very much focused on sort of small medium business owners, uh, or small to medium, uh, even marketing managers, marketing directors, when we're looking at those types of businesses, I, I wonder if you get any engagement, any comments at all. And I wonder if it's just worth turning it off.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:05:25

Yeah. For me, what is interesting and and the question was is twofold. What are the benefits, what are the pitfalls and the whole SEO things? I think it's been some some kind of myths and the urban legend for quite some time, because to your point, it was probably, uh, something that people took away from the larger enterprise type solutions and, and platforms. But also I think it's historically what people were used to with the forums back in the 80s and 90s with kind of the infancy of the internet. So forums, discussion boards and so on. And, and I think, you know, I have some sympathy for the aspiration of I'm going to create a thought provoking piece of content and then people will react and comment.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:06:05

But actually the vast majority of people and if you look at the numbers, even just with social media and for the vast majority of people are just keen consumers, they they like what you do. They actually really respect you for it. They don't necessarily express it. So if you think the average, um, kind of activity rate on social media, it's less than 1%. And we can take a hint there for, um, when I was asked to question, uh, my position, this one that is informed by and who got nearly three decades of doing website projects. Oh, God. Um, is turn them off. You want to have the time necessarily to do a very good job as a moderator. You want to have the time to promote and stimulate conversation and for what you're going to get, you know, it's that kind of, um, you know, return on effort, return on investment. The only exception to to that rule, if you will, is if you have created an almost inner circle type experience.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:07:05

So with a login details, you invite people to take part in membership like experience on your website. You can do that. Probably the only time I would say, okay, I get it because then now you have a very attentive audience. You maybe have an audience whereby you have regular touchpoints. It could be webinars, it could be, you know, in-person events and so on. And therefore the likelihood, you know, the goodwill, uh, and the brownie points you've earned over time would encourage them to become, uh, to leave comments. Probably the only reason I would leave the comments on for that kind of inner circle membership like experience.

Jonny Ross: 00:07:41

Yeah, I, I think I think that's the answer. I yeah, I agree and uh, I think, um. There's no point overthinking this, turning them off as a small to medium business. Just just turn them off.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:07:58

Thank you very much. Listeners, let us know about your own position on comments section on and off. Do you have a success story? Let us know.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:08:07

I would give you a shout out on the next episode. For now, let's move on to our next segment website stories. See, this is where we choose one article, one video, one podcast, something we can review and react to to help us understand what it means to be a child of a website today. So we've chosen an article from inc.com. It was written by Kyle or the founder of Arise Digital in Philadelphia, USA, guiding your website three through its four stages of growth and the reason why I chose this article journey, because it plays to the advice that I give to my customers. Which is your first website is never the website. You know, you've got to understand that there's going to be an evolution of your thinking, your mindset, your skill set as your website manager and so on. And what you want to do is understand that it may take actually 2 or 3 iterations before you finally have the website. So if I was to take you through the four stages of growth for for your website, and then what we can do is get your your reaction can just see a bit of noise in the background on it.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:09:18

So I'm going to ask you to near the mic if you don't mind. Uh so phase number one of that website growth is do it yourself. Now I'm going to go back to that. There's no shame in using DIY solution. I'm going to tell you why. Phase two is a kind of startup mentality, where you've learned from the DIY stage, and the likelihood is you'd be, um, concerned about things like the speed of pages being loaded. The navigation is reviewed completely. To become more intuitive, we create a more seamless journey for the visitor in and around the product pages and the blog section and so on. And you've started. You've started to gather, um, social proof like reviews, testimonials and case studies. Phase three, the established business. You're going to have more case studies. You're going to have more testimonials. You're going to have a more content rich blog because as the evolution in the business, but also you be using more data for your decision making around the website experience. And we're looking also about this website to start to bring value at side of the marketing and sales function.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:10:19

So other departments can start to use it either to access data or to use it either some time as a behind the scenes stuff with the login, or they can use it for their own systems. And then final phase, and that's only for some of the businesses, is the enterprise solution, where we enter the high traffic form of infrastructure and applications. We're getting all departments now using the online destination, and we have better integration with solutions and so on. And you suddenly have a more challenging job because you're looking after the customer's needs, your employees needs and stakeholders. But we have a do it yourself startup established and enterprise. These are the four stages and very, very quickly on the do it yourself phase one. This is the most important phase, oddly, because this is where you're going to learn more about yourselves as individuals in the team. You're going to learn about your working preferences. You're going to understand what it means to run a website, so much more so that you can then bring all that learning and and all that skill set and move on to the start of stage.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:11:21

So don't feel tempted to, you know, leap ahead and say, well, I'm fine, I've got the money. I'm going to go straight into phase 2 or 3. The DIY stage is so vastly important.

Jonny Ross: 00:11:35

I always say, think about the, uh, minimum viable product, the MVP, because when you're producing a brand new website, you it's so many times and I see so many clients suffer from this that they want it absolutely perfect to be all singing, all dancing, to have all the functionality right from day one. And the reality is, like you just said, it's one of the biggest learning phases is that initial phase and no one is out there waiting for you to have your all singing, all dancing website. What they are out there is looking for what presence you have online and if you have nothing, you're better. You know nothing. You better having something that's polished and clean and simple compared to something to compare to. Not having anything or having something so complicated that it takes so long for it to get there.

Jonny Ross: 00:12:33

That by the, you know, the biz, you know, there's been many months or years that have passed by. So, um, I think it's really important to see these different stages and to see the first stage as what's the minimum, what's the minimum that we could have up and live, and what can we learn throughout that process, and how can we then start engaging with other stakeholders? Like you talked about the third stage, we might start engaging with staff, uh, etc., you know, for, for lodging areas or whatever else it might be. So yeah, I like I like, um, piecing it down and making you really think and home in that you just need what's the minimum that looks really nice. And what steps can we take afterwards?

Pascal Fintoni: 00:13:17

Well, I liked about this article by a couple or. I kind of knew it because it was, um, my experience, but never was expressed so clearly, um, in the past. And people understand that. Do it yourself.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:13:35

Does it mean a poor website? It means a simple website. And nowadays there are so many online applications and solutions that be mentioned on the show that can give you that elegance, that that kind of professionalism. And you just stick to the key messages, you know, what do you do? Who do you do it for and what they choose you. And then you learn in a process what the time it takes to run a website. You know how you need to be organized, how you need to plan your content ahead. You start to learn the beginning, what it means to, you know, have a search engine optimization. You start to understand how to organize workloads and processes so that when you get to phase number two, the startup, then we're in a position to delegate in position to a point, you know, third party supplies and so on. But you do that from a position of understanding what what it's like you felt it. You know yourselves and by the challenges, the disappointment, the kind of scratching you had moment thinking, what is it not working? So as you can tell from this conversation, I'm a huge, huge fan of phase one.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:14:38

Do it yourself.

Jonny Ross: 00:14:41

I'm going and just reminding that, you know, bite size it down. Take some small steps, get something live, and then consider what else you can add on to it and learn as you go.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:14:57

Superb. Let us know where you think you are on that kind of scale. You know, do it yourself. Start to, um, established business and enterprise. And do you feel like it's been your journey as well? And, and maybe, um, you thought the first website, which was probably a sizable investment, was it? And then six months later, realize you've learned so much. You've you've got new ideas, you know, you've been able to to learn from others as well. And you want to change so very often. What what I say to my customer journey is, um, if there is a budget, consider actually spending a little less, because I can assure you that first website is not the website.

Jonny Ross: 00:15:36

Totally. And in fact, you just made me reflect that if you were to work out what stage you're on, it then becomes quite, uh, interesting to see the sort of next stage you could take the website to.

Jonny Ross: 00:15:49

So what what gaps could it fill? What things could it, uh, solve? What what, um, how else could it play a part in the user journey? The customer journey or, uh, in staff engagement or or, um, customer engagement. So, yeah, I like the idea of asking people to reflect on where they think they are in the stage, because it not only does that, um, help them sort of realize they don't have to do everything, it also helps them realize that actually, we could we could do something more here. Uh, and so I think it works for both.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:16:20

Absolutely.

Jonny Ross: 00:16:21

Should we go to our next section, which is quite exciting. It's the, uh, website engine room. But the reason I say it's exciting is because we have, uh, we're working on an e-book right now, uh, where we're going to be, um, taking all the apps that we've talked about in the website engine room and sharing them in just one book, uh, where you can have access to over.

Jonny Ross: 00:16:45

Well, we're on episode 23, so we've done 46 so far. Come the magic 50. We're going to release and launch this entire list. I know, and it's full of great apps and and tools. So should we move to the website engine room and find out what today's are? Let's do it.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:17:10

So as you heard a moment ago, John and I proposed two apps tax or hardware that can make life easier. As a website manager and website content creator. Jonny, what is your selection for episode 23?

Jonny Ross: 00:17:22

So for episode 23, it's Zapier. You may well have heard it. You may well be using it. I imagine that a lot of you still are not using it. I often say that you don't need to go for the paid version. I say that a lot, but actually with Zapier, I think it's worth paying for, and I think it opens a lot of doors. So what we're talking about here is automation. What are you doing on a daily, weekly basis? That's a repetitive task.

Jonny Ross: 00:17:50

And how could you join the dots and or to make things. So whether it's connecting Gmail or Slack or MailChimp or 2000 other apps that are out there, what? Automate it. What what could you automate, uh, and create workflows? They're called zaps in Zapier, Zapier, dot com. Um, and um, and I would just, you know, on a daily basis, consider the things that you're doing and consider actually, I seem to do this all the time. Could I get Zapier to do this for me? And there's so many things it could do. But what I found is that it's it just enhances productivity. It reduces error, uh, and it speeds things up. It gives you it gives you time back and, and for the low cost of, uh, of, of opening up more than what we call a hundred zaps a month or 100, uh, 100, uh, things happening a month, which you can hit quite quickly. I think it's worth every single penny.

Jonny Ross: 00:18:48

So this week, my, uh, website engine room tip or app is Zapier.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:18:54

I am a lapsed user of Zapier, so thank you for the reminder. And that's so I'm. I'm sensing that what you're asking us to do is actually maybe over the coming days to capture, uh, the repetitive work, the routine work, things that perhaps we thought we could delegate or things that we don't like to do so much, and then it gets pushed back and so on and so forth, and then see where there's a match there.

Jonny Ross: 00:19:17

It's like when, you know, maybe you you're about to invoice someone. What's the process? What are the things that you do? And then do you, you know, you might put it into some software, produce something that then, you know, do you then take those numbers and put them somewhere else or, you know, that's just that's just one example. But every single thing that you do, every interaction that you have to stand back and look at what you're doing.

Jonny Ross: 00:19:43

And if you're doing something repetitive, uh, or, or, um, copying something, uh, putting it into 2 or 3 places at the same time. I would imagine Zapier can do it for you. So, you know, you know, for example, someone signs up on Eventbrite. Uh, perhaps you want to automate that into your CRM system and automate some emails and, um, and maybe you want to automate that into your payment system so that you can track the, uh, to help your account flow. There's so many little things that you can, uh, automate, uh, and it just makes things so much quicker and easier and especially from a website point of view. So perhaps someone filling out a contact form, uh, someone downloading something. There's lots of things that you can connect to that journey to, to then, you know, send it off to MailChimp, send it off to, uh, to, to whatever app that you're then going to do some, some further engagement with that person on.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:20:37

Thank you very much. Now my selection for the website Engine Room is linked to a website called To Action from from a few episodes ago, where we asked people to actually visit and study a website from other sectors and see if they could find inspiration in terms of the design and the construct of the blog header picture or the blog featured image, which is what it's called on WordPress, to see if there were trends, maybe there was some styles and design kind of flavors that could help you stand out from the crowd. So if you've done so and if, please let us know and do go ahead. But then you get to the task of sourcing images and graphics that can help you then create that blog header picture using Canva and other platforms. So people will be familiar with Pexels and many other platforms. But did you know that Adobe are offering utterly free stock photography and free stock 2D and 3D images? Some of them are very, very stylish, and what I liked about Adobe, the the content in the images and more, they have a very unique style, you know, they're very, very different to all the other platforms.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:21:44

So if you're looking for that copyright free photo and visual library for your web pages, for your content and so on, then I recommend that you follow the link in the shownotes@stock.adobe.com. And then depending on where you are in the world, you'll be taken there and you have a search kind of um, boxes we'd expect. And if you select the option free, um, very generous, you know, Adobe will give you a lot of things, but this idea of not only do you need to have a good design, but you need to avoid, of course, using the same image as everybody else. And what happens, Johnny, as you know, practically people would go on on Pexels and Pixabay and Pixlr, you know, all those platforms that are very well marketed. Oddly, Adobe don't do do so much marketing and they put a keyword without much thought, and the user first picture on the top left of that page, and eventually you see it appearing on social media, uh, you see appearing on websites, power presentations and that kind of thing.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:22:43

So you've got to be careful because it creates that disconnect and, and, and a friction with your audience. So I'm thinking, you know, a vastly improve and you can use, you know, longer term longer phrases on stock adobe.com but use also that there are different styles and hopefully they'll support your activities in terms of content creation.

Jonny Ross: 00:23:04

Thanks, Pascal. Yeah, there's loads of, uh, really cool images on there that you just wouldn't know about. And, uh, and, and it is about having something unique that's not everyone's got. So it's definitely worth having a look at, uh, the Adobe stock, uh, photos, I would agree. Should we move to the website? Call to action.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:23:30

Now, in the final segment of the show, we recommend the one change, the one adjustment that can make a big difference for your website and make it work harder for you. Johnny, what is your call to action?

Jonny Ross: 00:23:41

Really simple. If you don't already have a sticky menu, but implement a menu that sticks to the top as you scroll down.

Jonny Ross: 00:23:51

Makes it so much quicker and easier for the user. Keeps them on the site that bit longer simply because the the sort of relevancy is right at the top of the browser and very quick to get to, and they're not having to sort of find the menu again or find the contact button, etc., etc. it's really simple to to implement on most websites, especially if it's a, uh, you know, a WordPress or a Shopify or a Wix type website. Um, so I'm talking about making that menu at the top stick. Uh, you might want to even take it further and consider having a slightly different version for the sticky menu. Uh, especially on how it works on mobile as well. So you might want to consider what the call to actions are in that menu, whether it be a phone number and email address, a contact button. Um, but there's so much you can do with a sticky menu. It doesn't have to be the same on desktop. It doesn't have to do the same on mobile.

Jonny Ross: 00:24:42

It can be different. Um, but it's about making the nav nice and easy and quick to get to, uh, and, you know, do you know if you've even got one or not? Go on your website, have a look. Does the menu stick when you scroll down? Is it still visible when you scroll down the page? And if it's not, have a word with your web developer and see what you can do about it. So that is my website call to action for this episode.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:25:05

And I like it a lot because, you know, it's so simple. But the impact from the first impressions point of view and this idea of, wow, they thought about it, you know, and we were said before, this website is a representation of your presence of mind when it comes to customer service and customer care. And and that simple thing could just say somebody, somebody is, um, caring about my own experience and ease of use on this website, so that's great. My website, Call to Action, is actually one that I must thank you, because we had a conversation in Green Room some time ago about this challenge of embedding videos from YouTube on your website.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:25:44

So we recommend people do, particularly if you recall webinars, conversations and so on. And and YouTube is a great hosting platform. I mean, there are the options, but certainly is good for that ease of use and more. But there is a challenge with YouTube videos, and the YouTube is a service free service, which is then when you I'm on your website to say Johnny, I played a video, I've had a great time listening to you advice and so on. But the very end of the video then we have, you know, what would you like to watch next? And we have a montage of YouTube thumbnails that are selected from the YouTube library of content. Some of it could be some of you's could be the competition, which we don't want, and completely irrelevant, downright to actually quite compromising and embarrassing. Because of course there's all sorts of content on YouTube. There is a way you can reduce that distraction at the end. It's not perfect, it's not foolproof, but it can work.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:26:36

So when you embed your YouTube videos, all of you, I imagine you copy and paste either the URL of video or you copy and paste the embed code, the address of that YouTube video at the very, very end. If you add very simply a question mark, then three letters r e l equal zero. So all of it is a little code at the end. More often than not, what it should do when the video is finished playing, it would only suggest videos from your channel or from the playlist. So we actually retain first impressions point of view, but we retain the attention of the customer within our content. They should be less. If not, no suggestion for all the brands, including the competition, because you know you have a similar subject matter. So that little code that you'll see in the show notes can really make sure that at the end, when YouTube is doing its job to suggest other videos, it's primarily all of yours from your channel or your playlist.

Jonny Ross: 00:27:32

I like it really simple.

Jonny Ross: 00:27:33

Um, yeah. If there's already a question mark in the URL, then you can just replace, uh, Pascal's suggestion with an and sign. So if there's a question mark already, you just add an end and then rel equals zero. If there's no question mark, you put the question mark in and then rel equals zero. And as Pascal says, that gives a signal to YouTube to not show all the crap that's got that's got nothing to do with your video whatsoever. Um, and, um, I'm to try and take some of the, the, the, the rubbish away and make it a bit more focused. Uh, you know. Yeah. The real answer is, um, if you wanted to, uh, clean it completely and have it, you know, totally on brand. Uh, then we'd talk about Vimeo. But we love YouTube a lot. Um, enhances, you know, having, uh, open content on YouTube and sharing that and embedding on your website has a huge, uh, signal from an SEO point of view and from a.

Jonny Ross: 00:28:30

A user point of view. So so so, um, we yeah. As Pascal said, we like YouTube a lot, but, um, just add that rel equals zero on to get rid of some of the nonsense.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:28:40

And that concludes episode 2320.

Jonny Ross: 00:28:43

Ross it does. I mean, we've talked about, uh, you know, blog comments. I think we've said just turn them off. Uh, unless there's a very compelling reason. We've talked about getting you to think about what stage your website is in. Are you right at the start? Do it yourself. Is it start up? Is it established? Is it enterprise? Consider the stage you're at. Consider that you don't have to have it fully enterprise on day one, but also consider where you are, where you are now, because you may want to start going into the the upper stages. Stage two. Stage three. Stage four. We've given you some hopefully great apps and some website call to actions to help you start feeling proud of your website again.

Jonny Ross: 00:29:21

Uh, reflect, you know, the reflection and roundup. Well, actually, you know, forget all of this. It's my 100th episode. That's that's the that's the only takeaway here. It's just we've done 100 episodes and, uh, and, you know, if if you've joined us on all or some or any of them. Pascal will say the same for his own podcast. It means so much for you to be here and for you to be listening, for you to be sharing, for you to be watching. It means a great deal. We're very passionate about this, this subject. But it's even better knowing that we've got people watching and listening and more importantly, helping you. This is about we're passionate about adding value. That's what we do. We we we're terrible. We give way too much away. Uh, and, uh, but we that's what we like doing, don't we, Pascal?

Pascal Fintoni: 00:30:13

We do just one. Yeah. Once we've got to episode 25, do watch out for the announcement about the e-book.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:30:22

We're a top 50 website tech and apps.

Jonny Ross: 00:30:25

Totally. Well, that's it for today. This is the hundredth episode of Jonny Ross, fractional CMO. It's episode 23 of the podcast series, uh, the audio companion to the 90 day Website Mastery program. For more information, please visit 90 Day Marketing mastery.com and you'll be able to book your discovery call with either myself or Pascal. We'll be back with another episode. In the meantime, feel free to send your questions, share your preferred apps and links to your website once you've made the changes we spoke about, because we'd love to give you a shout out, but ultimately we want you to make you feel proud of your website. So it's bye for now and we'll leave you with a fun video or audio montage, depending on whether you're watching or listening, whilst you go through your notes and actions, and we will see you all soon. Take care. Cheers, Pascal. Bye bye.