Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

MySpace Business Training and TypePad Pages

Are you wondering what MySpace and TypePad pages have to do with each other?

The Blog Squad's mentor, Tom Antion, recently recorded a 67-minute training session on how to use MySpace for business.  As one of his mentees, we have permission to give this audio away, free of charge, to our network of readers, clients, prospects.

The thing is, there are several steps involved when you do something like this:

1. Send an email message to your mailing list (and post on your blogs)
2. Set up a web page to deliver instructions on how to join MySpace
3. Set up a web page to deliver the promised audio (product)

I thought this provided the perfect opportunity to play with the TypePad page feature. So I set up two pages on Biz Tips Blog: one for people to get instructions on how to join MySpace and the second to deliver the audio.

The pages are not linked anywhere in the navigation of the blog.  They are only accessible if you have been sent a link or find them accidentally through a Google search. This is how you can use TypePad pages like a "regular" website.  Only the pages are on my blog so there is an additional benefit that anyone who responds to the offer will also be exposed to my blog.  Cool, huh?

Want to see how it all works? Check out our invitation...

Websites Into Blogs & Blogs Into Websites

Is your website home page traffic going south? Many professionals find they get more traffic to their blog pages than to their website.

The recent addition of Typepad pages has sparked some innovative uses of blogging platforms for landing pages and even 5-page websites. Now there's a discussion going on about the demise of static Web home pages altogether as professionals look at their web traffic and compare it to their blog traffic.

Matt Ambrose wrote about it here, Tom Chandler posted about it here, and got about 18 interesting comments, and then updated his post over on his other blog here.

Coincidently, for the past year I've been moaning about my poor Customized Newsletter Services web traffic. One day I suddenly woke up with a bright idea: kill my website and build a new one using Typepad blog pages. Why not? I blogged about it here.

Think about it...

Blog Popularity: Does Yours Meet the Criteria?

B.L. Ochman of What's Next Blog has an excellent post on the factors contributing to popular blogs. And by popular blogs, she means the ones that have influence:

To influence decisions, impact on business, and grow an international following, a blog has to write about topics people want to read about, in a format that is interesting and compelling enough to make people come back on a regular basis.

B.L. has put together a detailed list of what makes a blog influential.  I tried to think of something else to add to the list, but I think she's pretty well covered it.

New Rules of Marketing and PR: Do You Know Them?

Blogging and Beyond with The Blog Squad, Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D., and Denise Wakeman
With Guest Expert: David Meerman Scott, www.WebInkNow.com.

Thursday, June 14th 2007, 3:00 p.m. PT (6 p.m. ET) 

"New Rules of Marketing and PR"

On the Web, you are what you publish. The Internet is about people, not technology. The Blog Squad interviews online thought leader and strategist David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR. You'll learn why you need to change your marketing to deliver compelling content at the moment your audience needs it and in a form they appreciate.

Use this link to listen live on the air at 6:00 p.m. ET on June 14.

TypePad Page Examples

In the course of doing some research for a teleseminar on  new TypePad features for our Blogging and Beyond Mentees, I was looking for some examples of how people are using TypePad pages.

Here are a few I found:

http://ideaseller.typepad.com/idea_sellers/
http://lutheranzephyr.typepad.com/main/
http://www.kirstenfarris.com/2007/06/you_can_build_a.html - This is an example of how Kirsten Farris built a simple 5 page web site with TypePad pages.

Pages are not dated and there is no interactivity like comments and trackbacks.

Ideas for TypePad pages:
Create a multi-page web site
Contact page
Disclaimer page
Info about your business
A sales page
Newsletter sign up page

Related Posts
TypePad Pages: How are you using them?
TypePad Pages as Sales Landing Pages

Blog Success Story from David Meerman Scott

"There's no doubt that my blog is the most important marketing and PR tool I have as a marketing and PR speaker, writer, and consultant," so writes David Meerman Scott on page 47 of his new book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR. "Even after several years and hundreds of blog posts, I'm always surprised at how effectively this tool helps me accomplish my goals."

As The Blog Squad, we're often asked by companies and professionals about the ROI for blogging and it's an important question. If you're going to spend time writing on a business blog, it should be for results not just ego. And the return on investment is difficult for many people to quantify.

I'd like to share David's story about his experience blogging, since he's our featured guest on Thursday's Blogging and Beyond radio show (details here).

"The first time I shared my ideas about the new rules of PR, in a post on my blog that included a link to an ebook I had written, the reaction was dramatic and swift. In the first week, thousands of people viewed the post. To date, over 150,000 people have seen the ideas, over a hundred bloggers have linked to them, and thousands of people have commented on them, on my blog and others."

Top 25 Blogs About Blogging: We Made the List!

We squeaked in at number 24, but The Blog Squad is proud to be on the list with this blog. Bloggers are always picking their top 10 or 25 blogs, but this one means a lot to us because it is based on numbers and algorithms.

So how could it not be accurate, right? Algorithms impress me, what can I say.

Thanks to Dr. Ellen Weber of BrainBasedBusiness.com for alerting us to the list made by Daniel Scocco, Editor of Daily Blog Tips. You can read his post to learn more about how he compiled his list. It focuses on blogs that are about blogging.

Here are the other great blogs, all with great content to get maximum bang for your blog:

Writing on Your Business Blog: Tips for Finding Content

Apparently John Jantsch over at Duct Tap Marketing Blog also gets asked this question a lot by clients:

1. "But What Do I Write On My Business Blog?"

Next to that question, many business owners ask The Blog Squad:

2. "Do I have to identify myself on my blog, or can I just write 'for the company.'"

If you're in business and want people to find you on the Internet, you need plenty of content. You need to sprinkle keywords everywhere you can. A blog is a great way to do that, and it works as a foundation for creating other content in the form of articles, press releases, and information products.

(By the way, you can tune in to Blogging and Beyond today at 3 pm PT to learn more about content development as The Blog Squad interviews content lover Allen Voivod of www.EpiphaniesInc.com.)

Answers to Question #1: Content is everywhere. And you're usually not going to find it sitting in front of a blank computer screen.

Here's a list of ways to get your content antennae zeroing in on ideas for your business blog:

What do you do with all that content?

Content, Content, Content: Why Having a Content Plan is as Important as a Business Plan

Blogging and Beyond with The Blog Squad, Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D., and Denise Wakeman
With Guest Expert: Allen Voivod, www.EpiphaniesInc.com

June 7 2007, 3:00 p.m. PT (6 p.m. ET)

If you're marketing your business online you need content and your success depends both the quantity and the quality of your words. Yet few businesses develop a content plan. A Content Plan focuses on informing, educating, and entertaining your ideal audience. Strong Content Plans take the "Know, Like, and Trust" factor and formalize it into an ongoing relationship-building habit.

Tune in as The Blog Squad interviews Allen Voivod of www.EpiphaniesInc.com about how to use content to get found online and win the hearts and minds of your clients.

Use this link to listen live on the air at 6:00 p.m. ET on June 7.

TypePad Pages as Sales Landing Pages

I got an interesting question about TypePad pages today from a client:

Q. As I understand how the feature works, a page must be related to a blog.  Therefore, if I wanted to set up a stand alone page, I would need to secure a url, set it up as a blog and then create the page.  Am I correct in my thinking here?

If so, if a page is the only thing that is associated with a blog, will the page open directly when someone enters the blog’s URL?

I would like to create pages for each of my books (similar to www.4SecretsBook.com).  Right now, that site is a blog on which people can comment – which as I understand it they cannot do with a TypePad page.  I would like to have 4SecretsBook.com be a static page, rather than one that acts more like a blog.

I would also like to use TypePad pages to create sales pages.  Am I correct in assuming that I can do all of these things using TypePad Pages?