Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

Feedblitz Lingo Clarified

For the past two weeks in partnership with Kathleen Gage, Patsi and I have been teaching a program called The Law of Action.  It's pretty intense and covers the ins and outs of using the Internet to build your business. 

Of course blogging is a big part of that and the second Action Step is to set up a blog, if you don't already have one. We also covered setting up the systems to capture email addresses so you can follow up with blog readers and prospects and clients. For blogs, we recommend using Feedblitz for managing your email list.

We cover Feedblitz set up in our Build a Better Blog ebook and I did a tutorial back in 2005.  Therein lies the problem. Feedblitz has upgraded their service and changed the lingo they use to guide you through setting up a feed for your blog.  This has been creating A LOT of confusion for our clients and the participants in our Law of Action program. And after receiving another email from a client asking about is, I thought I better clarify...

Blog Squad Interview Audio is Posted

The interview Patsi and I did on Monday, on the Let's Talk Blogging Internet radio show, has been posted on Blogging and Beyond.

Wall Street Journal Features How to Make Money on Your Blog

An article in today's online edition of the Wall Street Journal tells bloggers how they can make money with ads in 2008. Video ads are gaining traction and there are several new services for blog publishers to incorporate ads on their sites.

Thanks to Darren Rowse for the article alert. Rowse is interviewed in the article.

Productive and Organized: Stephanie Calahan's Blog Helps

The Blog Squad's featured blog client of the month is Productive and Organized - Finding your Way: Tips, Tricks and Tools for Productivity and Organization from Stephanie Calahan of Calahan Solutions.

I don't know if you've noticed, but there is a huge new industry that's arisen in the last decade: productivity and organizational experts. It seems that we are drowning in a mass of information, mail, paper, receipts, user manuals and a never-ending need to find stuff when it comes to tax time and other events.

Stephanie Calahan is a prime example of this new professional. It's, of course, no surprise that her new blog is well organized and full of useful information to help you save time and energy organizing your life and work. It was a pleasure working with Stephanie to set up her blog and teach her to optimize it for her business.

Here are a few recent posts you should read:

• Cabinets- Make them Work for You
• Managing Your Mail
• De-clutter Those User's Manuals!
• Save Time with Your Postal Needs
• Shrink Your Reading Pile Down with a 5-10 Minute Reading Folder
• Save Time!! Grocery Shopping Can be a Breeze!
  

Denise Wakeman on Houston Business Show

Back in November 2007 I was a guest on the Houston Business Show.  I had great conversation with host Kevin Price on two segments of the show.  At long last I have the link to the audio for that program.

Listen to Denise Wakeman talk about blogging. What else?!

Twitter-style blog tips contest

Darren Rowse over on Problogger is having another contest.  This one is asks you to write Twitter style blog tips. If you're not familiar with Twitter, basically it's microblogging. All "posts" are limited to 140 characters.

There are two reasons I pass along info about this contest:

1. Enter it. It's a great exercise in concise, useful blog writing. Share a tip you have about blogging. Remember, it can only be 140 characters so you really have to think about what you want to convey.
2. With 77 entries at the time of this post, there are some excellent bite-size blogging tips you can learn from.

Let us know if you enter the contest and feel free to post your blogging tip here as well in the comments section.  The contest closes Monday, 1/14 at noon Australia time.  You'll have to check what time that is for you.

By the way, here's my tip:

Use photos in your blog posts to illustrate your point. Images attract attention and like they say, a picture is worth 1000 words.

TypePad Adds New Feature to Link ALL Your Accounts

Thanks to client Stephanie Calahan of Productive and Organized, I found and implemented yet another new feature on TypePad.

You can now set up links to ALL your social networking sites/profiles. Once you set it up, you have a TypeList that has links to your accounts on Facebook, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Digg, etc., etc. I've set it up on my About page which you can see on the left sidebar.

It's really, really simple to do:

Let's Talk Blogging: Blog Squad Interview on January 10

RESCHEDULED FOR MONDAY, JANUARY 14 AT 3 P.M. ET (12 PM PT)

NOTE: Due to technical difficulties on BlogTalkRadio, this interview is being rescheduled.  Stay tuned.

On Thursday, January 10 at 12:00 p.m. ET (9:00 a.m. PT) we're guests on Internet radio show Let's Talk Blogging.

Host Antonio Crawford, CEO of Top Book Sales, Inc. will be interviewing me and Patsi about blogging. Surprise!

Let's Talk Blogging is streamed over BlogTalkRadio and the focus of the show is on blogging for authors and that's what we'll be addressing, specifically how authors can  use a blog to write and market their books. Join us live for the interview on Thursday.

Facebook Can Drive More Readers to Your Blog

Now that I've been sucked into Facebook, I'm spending way too much time poking around the site and checking out all my friends and who of their friends I can invite to be my friend.

I have noticed something about the bloggers on Facebook.  A lot of them do not have any links to their blogs, at least that I can find.  Did you know you can have your blog posts show up on your profile for all to read?

I quickly figured that out.  If you have a Facebook profile and you have a blog, check out my profile to see what I mean.

To set up your feed to be imported into your profile, you need to set up a "note." Under Applications on the left sidebar, you'll see one for Notes.

StumbleUpon can help you attract new readers

Hot on the heels of my last post about getting more eyeballs on your blog, I read a post by Darren Rowse about using StumbleUpon to get noticed by other bloggers.

Rowse gives several examples about how he's attracted new readers when 1) he has "stumbled" a post and 2) when someone else has "stumbled" one of his posts.

I'm not an expert at StumbleUpon and usually forget to stumble anything, but there a lot of folks who swear by it for getting new readers. If you want to jump start some stumbling, you can also advertise your blog with StumbleUpon and it will be shown to people when they are randomly stumbling along.