Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

Blog Commenting Etiquette: Who are you?

Here's another tip on blog commenting etiquette: please leave your name. This is quickly becoming one of my pet blogging peeves. This week alone, three lovely readers left comments and signed the name of their businesses.

People, please, it's very hard to comment back and have a conversation with "Prints and Needles," "Internet Marketing," or "Real Estate Sales Coach". I want to know your names, your real names.

This is Web 2.0, after all. We have this amazing ability to network and meet up through the powerful Web. Why not use it to its fullest? And this goes for Facebook and Twitter and blogging too.

Oh, you guys think you're being clever marketers, I'll bet. Well, no, you're not. I'm just not connecting with you when I have to say, "Oh, thanks for stopping by, Ms. Prints, or Mr. Internet Marketing."

Denise and I leave our names, and for branding purposes, we sign Patsi, AKA The Blog Squad, or Denise, AKA The Blog Squad. That does the marketing thing and is personal. Blog commenting is great, but use it well, don't be silly. There can be a merging of manners AND marketing if you think about it.

Chris Baggott on Business Blogging

Last week we spoke with Chris Baggott about search engine optimization and business blogs (audio and transcript available). Overall the response was excellent, though a couple of bloggers didn't like the "corporate" approach of using a blog to generate leads.  Chris sent us this comment:

I just wanted to thank you both for a great session last week. Your questions were insightful and I really appreciate your open-mindedness for some of these new concepts.

A successful relationship requires direct communication. To get the right to build a relationship with a customer or prospect you have to first be found, second build credibility that a relationship with you will add value to the prospect or customer. Blogging is spectacular for this stage of the relationship.

From that point however 99% of the time that relationship is going to evolve to leverage some other medium...which might include face-to-face, email, telephone or even paper based things like catalogs.

You guys are a perfect case to show that a successful blogging program shouldn't be measured by the number of comments...but from the amount of traffic and conversions.

Thanks again,

Chris Baggott, CEO
Compendium Blogware

Related post:
SEO Blogging vs. Community

Business Blogging: Do You focus on the wrong things?

When we hear from people wanting to start a blog, they are often excited and passionate about getting started with blogging their message. They can hardly wait to blog.

We have a quick start guide that asks a few questions before you start a blog. And the focus isn't on what you have to say. It's on readers and knowing what your readers want.

Joe Pulizzi of Junta 42 says this happens to him as well. He writes about 10 Questions to Ask Before You Blog. Here is an excerpt from his excellent post:

"My questions back to them usually startle the person, because so many start thinking about what they want to say, other than what their target audience needs to hear.  Here are a few...

SEO Blogging vs. Community

Chris Baggott, co-founder of Compendium Blogware, challenged some of our assumptions and beliefs about business blogging during our interview with him yesterday (audio now available).  Baggott contends that business blogging is all about SEO: driving traffic, engagement and then call to action. Community is not as important.

I'm not totally convinced that community isn't important. I think it's the combination of driving traffic, then engagement through content AND relationship that creates the conversion to real, tangible business. But Baggott's point is that you need to move people into your database someway, somehow and that's with your call to action.

Baggott did affirm much of what we teach our business blogging clients: you need your blog(s) to be very narrowly targeted on a niche, focus on specific keywords for that niche and post a lot of content.  A lot of content. 91% of people go online to SEARCH. You need to show up high in search results for your terms so they FIND your content so you can ENGAGE them and MOVE them into your funnel.

And make sure you have a CALL TO ACTION which moves your blog reader into your database -- initiates a phone call or a request for your white paper, subscription to your ezine, etc.

We emphasize Call to Action as part of our 4 point CODA system, in our free report on Better Business Blogging.

Your thoughts?  Remember, we're talking about using a blog to drive business...

Vlogging Doesn't Have to be Difficult or Expensive

Are you vlogging yet? Vlog = video blogging.

If you've been around this blog for awhile, you know we occassionaly post videos. You also know that we are not professional videographers, but the content is always relevant and the videos get our points across. We even have a blog solely devoted to our videos so we can get the search engine juice.

I confess, I used to be very intimated by the idea of making videos. But the tools have become so easy in the last couple of years that now I'd say practically anyone can create video blog posts. But it's not my expertise so I won't even attempt to teach video blogging.

But, our colleague Leesa Barnes is an expert with video and she's teaching a two-part teleseminar on how to create video to boost your business.

 

How to Use Videos to Boost Your Business
A 2-part teletraining with our colleague Leesa Barnes
July 23-24, 2008, 8 p.m. Eastern Time

Use VIP coupon VID723 to pay only $20 for the program

If you want to learn how to create videos for your business without blowing your budget, then check out Leesa Barnes' program now. She's the real deal when it comes to creating awesome video on a budget.

Business Blogs Are Like Department Stores

Yesterday I did a very "girly" thing: I went to Nordstrom's and bought a new dress! Hadn't bought anything other than tennis clothes for a long time. But as the true Blog Squad-ette that I am, I got to thinking how blogs are like department stores. People come in, look, try, buy, ...or not. How do you know if your business blog is working or not?

Imagine your blog is Nordstrom's. On any given day, so many people come into the store. Some buy, some just “window shop” or want to find out what’s new, and some are there to pick up any freebies being offered.

If you only measured traffic into the store, you still don’t know if your store is working well for you or not. Here's why: Other things matter: comfort of the shoppers, overall impression as a style leader, friendliness of staff, cleanliness and order, and a thousand other details.

The same is true for your business blog.

Chris Baggott on Tracking & Measuring Your Blog

A major frustration for many bloggers is how to track and measure the success of a blog. What analytic tools are the best? What should be measured to give a true picture of how your blog is doing?

Chris Baggott, co-founder of Compendium Blogware, is The Blog Squad's guest on Thursday, July 24, and will address these questions.

Get the Results You Want: How to track, measure and adjust your blog
The Blog Squad interviews special guest, Chris Baggott, co-founder of Compendium Blogware

Thursday, July 24, 2008
2 p.m. Pacific Time (5 p.m. ET)
Live Event is Free - Registration Required

Among the topic we'll cover are:

• How businesses can get mearsuable value from blogging
• Budget-friendly analytic tools to monitor your blog
• How to benchmark your blogging success
• Whether or not comments are important
• Measuring blog traffic for quality vs. quantity
• Calls to action for your blog and how to test them
• Plus much more...

About Chris Baggott
Award-winning blogger Chris Baggott has been a leader in marketing for more than 20 years. Named by BtoB Magazine as a "Who's Who in B-To-B," Chris’ blog was also voted "Best Online Marketing Blog" by MarketingSherpa readers and "Best of the Web" by Forbes.

A marketing futurist and voice for blogging, search engine optimization and email best practices, Chris has been quoted in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Inc. and ADWEEK.

Chris is a co-founder of ExactTarget and recently launched his latest venture Compendium Blogware, which focuses on organizational blogging and its role in search engine optimization.  As a long-time blogger, he is a firm believer and witness to what goals blogging can help a company accomplish, especially as it relates to achieving high search engine rankings.

Finally, Chris is author of a book from Wiley: Email Marketing By The Numbers (The Blog Squad contributed 2 chapters!).  He is also one of the featured marketers in the new book from Wiley: Online Marketing Heroes: Interviews with 25 Successful Online Marketing Gurus.

A native of Pittsburgh, Chris now resides near Indianapolis with his wife and four children.

Content Marketing with Blogs: 5 Questions

I just got my copy of Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett's book Get Content, Get Customers: How to use content marketing to deliver relevant, valuable and compelling information that turns prospects into buyers.

This is an important book for any business professional who wants to master marketing with content. Content marketing is the new style of marketing that uses valuable relevant content to build relationships with clients. I thought I'd share a few paragraphs that resonated with me.

On business blogs:

Today they play key content marketing roles, enabling honest dialogue with customers who care deeply about your company, products, and content. Be sure to establish a blogging strategy that integrates with your content marketing strategy. Begin by asking the right questions:

• Why are you blogging?
• What will you blog about?
• Who will blog?
• Can you maintain frequent blog entries?
• Can you accept negative feedback and respond openly and honestly?

These questions are a major part of the work we do when we set up a new blog for our clients.

7 Super Triggers to Get Readers into Action

How do you persuade your blog readers to take action? How can you generate responses that are almost automatic? With triggers. Everybody’s got them.

A trigger is any stimulus that helps us make an quick, non-thinking decision or action. A trigger activates a person’s immediate compliance to an attempt to influence.

We are pre-programmed to comply with requests when a trigger is activated. It’s simply a shortcut to avoid the pain and effort of mental activity, to help us conserve energy in case of future threat to survival. Mental activity takes up a huge amount of energy, so we avoid it whenever we can.

Research has identified seven super triggers. Once you know and understand them, you will see them everywhere. In every request you make, in every email you write, and certainly in every commercial on TV, these seven super triggers are present. Why not put them in your blog posts?

You can improve your chances of persuasion success by using more than one trigger.

Here are seven triggers to automatically influence others, as revealed in psychological research:

1. Friendship
2. Authority
3. Consistency
4. Reciprocity
5. Contrast
6. Reason why
7. Hope

Blogging and Branding: Free teleseminar on July 10

As you may know, we will be speaking at the Speak Your Way to Wealth Seminar August 22-24, 2008 in Manhattan Beach, CA. (Denise's hometown!)

Our friends Arvee and Lee, who put on the seminar, have decided to give everyone a sneak preview of some of the great insights taught at the event.

Whether you're planning to attend Speak Your Way to Wealth in August 2008 or not, you're invited to attend these educational teleclasses for free.

We're doing the next of the 15 classes in this series. Arvee and Lee will grill us on "Learn the New Success Secrets for Attracting More Clients and More Money - Branding + Blogging"

Date:  Thursday July 10, 2008
Time:  5 p.m. Pacific Time (8 p.m. ET)

To sign up for this one free event or for the entire series, go to:  http://snipurl.com/syww_08
and scroll down to click on the link '2008 teleseminars' at the bottom of the page.

We're excited Arvee and Lee have asked us to give you this sneak preview.

PS: Don't worry. If you can't be on the call; sign up anyway because the call will be recorded.

Related Post:
Big Time Consultant Dead Wrong About Blogs & Social Media?
Names, Branding & Anonymous Conversations