Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

Low Cost, High Return Marketing Tool

In my post a couple of days ago about the 10 year anniversary of blogs, I complained that all the articles were about the impact blogs have had on politics and culture.  When I mentioned this to a friend, he asked if I had seen the article in the New York Times - Blogging's a Low-Cost, High Return Marketing Tool.  I had not but immediately looked it up. 

The article states what we've been preaching for more than 3 years: a blog is tool that can help a company market, build their brand and raise its profile.

A recent American Express survey found that only 5 percent of businesses with fewer than 100 employees have blogs. Other experts put the number slightly higher.

There may be a plethora of blogs online, but the opportunity is still great for businesses, especially consultants, according to Aliza Sherman Risdahl, author of The Everything Blogging Book,

They are experts in their fields and are in the business of telling people what to do.

I know you're reading blogs, but are you blogging for your business yet?

Internet Marketing Traps: Free Audio Replay

Did you miss the free teleseminar we presented a couple of weeks ago?  Along with Kathleen Gage, the Streets Smarts Marketer, we hosted a free class on 5 Internet Marketing Traps That Can Derail Your Business.  If you missed it, you can listen to the replay here.

10 Year Blogiversary

December 17 marked the 10 year anniversary of the date the first weblog went online. Amazing!  That makes us newbie bloggers still, having been blogging only 3.5 years.

Wired's article, After 10 Years of Blogs, the Future's Brighter Than Ever, reminds us of the first person, Jorn Barger, who coined the term "weblog" to describe his collection of links that "logged" his Internet travels.

CBS News has a short article, The Blog Turns 10, and the Wall Street Journal covers the anniversary as well with Happy Blogiversary. NPR has a week-long series on the evolution of blogging. They also have a great timeline starting in 1967 with the invention of the Internet.

Most of the articles about blogging's 10 years mention the impact on politics, culture, and entertainment...

Best Blogging Tips: 2007 in Review

At the end of the year many A-list bloggers are reviewing the year and publishing lists of their best blog posts. This is a great way for you to learn about blogging without wasting a lot of time searching for good info.

Here, I'll make this easy for you: both Brian Clark of CopyBlogger and Darren Rowse of ProBlogger have their best tips all ready for you.

CopyBlogger is the best site around to learn about blog writing, marketing and copywriting. So here's the month-by-month replay of Brian's best posts in 2007:

The Best of Copyblogger in 2007 by Brian Clark

ProBlogger.net is all about making money with your blog. Here's a list of Darren's all time best posts:

Cosmo Headlines: How I quadrupled blog traffic

As an experiment I responded to Brian Clark's challenge to write a compelling headline based on a Cosmopolitan magazine title. His post The Cosmo Headline Technique for Blogging Inspiration suggests that we can benefit from the sensationalism journalists use to create headlines that entice and titillate.

On December 4th I published "Shocking: 68% of Bloggers Do This in Bed!" over on my blog about Writing on the Web. Sure enough, traffic doubled for a couple of days.

Last week I noticed another spike, this time to an all-time high, four times the usual number of daily visits. I tracked where the visitors were coming from: Brian had published a follow-up post called Cosmopolitan Link Karma and linked to my post.

Lessons here:

1. Sex still sells.
2. Magazines and tabloids can teach us how to write!
3. Getting a link from Brian gets results.
4. Play in bigger sand boxes if you want more traffic.
5. Getting more traffic doesn't mean anything: it's new subscribers that really count.

Google Trends Can Help You Find Blog Content

In my previous post about Search Engines and Blogs, I mentioned an article on Grokdotcom about search engines.  The author, Juan Tornoe, also discusses Google Trends, one of Google's myriad tools for analyzing the content on the Web.

On the Google Trends home page, there are links to the top 10 current, or HOT trends.

With Hot Trends, you can see a snapshot of what's on the public's collective mind by viewing the fastest-rising searches for different points of time. You can see a list of today's top 100 fastest-rising search queries in the U.S. You can also select a recent date in history to see what the top rising searches were and what the search activity looked like over the course of that day.

Hot trends are updated hourly.  You can also do your own search for trends related to your niche. Click on any of the trend links and you'll get a snapshot of how "spicy" the topic is, links to websites, blog posts, and google search results.

Here's a screenshot for the trend "time person of the year":

Search Engines and Blogs

Over on Grokdotcom, there's an excellent article about The Search Engine's Love Affair with Blogs by Juan Tornoe. As Tornoe points out, and we've said many times ourselves, "search engines love blogs." And Tornoe goes on to say, it's not as simple as it sounds:

First, there's the issue of relevance. A blog won’t magically give you a top ranking position on Google, Yahoo! or the like. The content your blog has, the frequency with which such content is being updated, and the amount of relevant incoming links to your site are some of the factors that will make-or-break the effectiveness of your weblog.

Don’t add a blog to your site if you're not willing to consistently invest time and effort. An outdated blog will reflect the opposite image of whatever it is you want potential customers to know about your company.

That second paragraph (the emphasis is mine) is key. When we speak to prospects looking to add a blog to their marketing mix, we emphasize this point along with the following point that a blog that's not consistently update has the same effect as a storefront with broken windows and no inventory. It's not good for your business image.

It bears repeating that a business blog is a marketing tool and like any other tactic you use to market your business, it must be done consistently and professionally to get the results you want.

Juan Tornoe's article is excellent so do read it when you get a chance.

Controversy: Lesson learned from a "negative" post

I recently learned something from a blog post that left a little mud on my face. Probably not the first or last time...we're all learning to navigate this Web 2.0 interactive-everything-gets-indexed blog world.

Here's what happened: I caught a video interview by Ralph Wilson of Web Marketing Today of Andy Beal on How to Get Started in Business Blogging. I spotted some holes in what Andy Beal said, and immediately wrote up a blog post calling him out for faulty information.

My intention was to stir up the conversation a bit to get increased traffic and attention. However in doing so, I violated my own principle of "always be respectful."

I was sloppy. I went too far. I implied that Andy Beal should know better and as an "expert" (yes, I put quotes around that implying he wasn't really an expert!), he was misleading new business bloggers by omitting important information.

Ouch. That was a bit harsh...

1000 Blog Post Contest: Thursday & Friday Winners

In the final days of our contest, the winner of Thursday's contest is Reeva (no link to a blog) and Friday's winner is Anne Toole of Writers Cabal Blog.

Thanks to all for submitting comments to the posts and congratulations to our winners. There were some very thoughtful responses to how people are using blogs and social media to market their businesses.

What's next? Stay tuned and BLOG ON!

1000 Blog Post Contest: Wednesday Winner

I'm a bit behind here.  Our Wednesday 1000 Blog Post Contest winner is BT.  I don't know if BT is male or female and there was no blog linked to the comment.

The Wednesday question was: who is your favorite business blogger and why. BT replied:

This is hard as there are many I like but my fav has got to be Darren [Rowse] from problogger.net. He's a professional blogger with his own business - a blog network called b5media. He's always got some useful tips and articles on blogging and how to make money with it!