Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

TwiTip Challenge: Top 10 People You Follow

On TwiTip today there is a challenge to list the top 10 must-follow people in your niche. Last week I posted a list top blogs I regularly read so this seems like a good opportunity to list a few of my favorite tweeple.

I use Tweetdeck to organize my tweets and the people I follow. One of the best features is that you can create groups so you don't have to scan through thousands of tweets to find out what the influencers are talking about. I have a group called "Peeps to Follow", a group for members of my mastermind, and a group for students in a program we teach.

Though I follow way more than 10 terrific people, here are the ones who are active and I often learn something new from, in no order of importance:

Mari Smith @MariSmith
Liz Strauss @lizstrauss
Chris Brogan @chrisbrogan
Darren Rowse @problogger
Jeff Herring @jeffherring
Dave Taylor @davetaylor
Deborah Micek @CoachDeb (co-author of Twitter Revolution)
Dave Lakhani @davelakhani
Sherman Hu @shermanhu
Paul Chaney @paulchaney

Remember, this doesn't even scratch the surface of the number of people I follow (2,401 at the moment) or the people who follow me (3,292) with whom I have daily conversations.

If you're new to twitter, you can't go wrong following any of these folks and learning from them: what they tweet, how they converse, how they add value, and how they promote.

Who are the top 10 tweeple you follow?

Related Post
TwiTip: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Twitter

How to Give Away Free Content and Still Make Money

Colleague Rohit Bhargava writes a good post 3 Ways to Give Away Content Online (and Still Make Money). He makes a good point that some things like voice mail and content are like sex: you shouldn't have to pay for it!

So how do you give away free content and still make money? Obviously, all your blog posts are free, unless you make your blog private by password protecting it and charging membership.

A prime example of giving content away is our free special report we offer to readers in the upper right hand corner of this blog, Better Business Blogging. This is an overview of our in-depth training on how to optimize your blog for business results. It functions to generate leads, but will give any reader a great start in making a blog more efficient for business results.

Very soon we are launching the revised ebook Build a Better Blog, along with a 3-tiered training site to suit the needs of all levels of business bloggers. If you've downloaded this free report, you'll get a pre-announcement for the ebook and our new training site at a pre-launch discount.

Like Rohit, we are strong believers in giving away plenty of free content. This is the best way that people can judge your value and decide if they can trust you to deliver the goods when the time comes.

Are you offering free content off your blog? What's your favorite format, ebook, special report, ecourse, white paper, teleseminars, audio file, video clip, others? Hit the comment link and share.

Denise Wakeman Interviewed at BlogWorld Expo 08

It's amazing what you find on YouTube when you do a search on your name! I was looking for an interview I did at BlogWorld for Investor Village and I stumbled on a couple other interviews I had done as well and totally forgotten about.  Here's one I did for Sparkcast:

Related Post:
Starting a Blog? What to do BEFORE you begin.

Related Video Interviews from BlogWorld 08.

Top 10 Blog Lists - What are your favorites?

Do you have a list of favorite blogs? Blogs.com (owned and operated by Six Apart) is soliciting Top 10 blog lists for their site. If your list is selected, you get featured and a link back to your blog from a high traffic site.

Blogs.com is a like a blog directory of the best of the best and every blog is reviewed by an editor. Here's a list of 10 marketing blogs that I read pretty regularly and that I submitted, in no particular order of importance:

1. David Meerman Scott: Web Ink Now
2. Chris Garrett: ChrisG
3. Chris Brogan: Chris Brogan
4. Jeff Herring: Great Article Marketing Blog
5. Rich Brooks: flyte blog
6. Paul Chaney: Conversational Media Marketing
7. Brian Clark: Copyblogger
8. Patsi Krakoff: Writing on the Web
9. Toby Bloomberg: Diva Marketing Blog
10. Michael Martine: Remarkablogger

This list is in no way comprehensive. There are a lot of other great blogs I read in other niches as well as in the new media niche.

Do you have favorite, must-read blogs? Submit your list to blogs.com, write it up on your blog and let us know by posting the link to your list in the comments below.  We can all help each other discover new treasures AND get some traffic!

UPDATE: forgot to include link to an interview we did with Andy Wibbels, the project manager for Blogs.com.

Attention TypePad Bloggers: Many new upgrades...

TypePad has been upgrading their platform for nearly a year now. Most accounts are on the new platform (except mine) so you may be noticing some changes to your dashboard.  If you're not reading the Everything TypePad blog, I suggest you review some of the recent posts detailing the changes.

The one you want to study first is the post on comments and profiles. TypePad has developed TypePad Connect as a new way to manage comments and create a profile. You can see my TypePad profile here. It integrates your Twitter status updates and comments you've made on connected blogs.

Next Generation Comments and Profiles on TypePad
Changing the URL (Filename) of Your Post
AutoSave to the rescue
Q. How will I know when I'm on the new TypePad?
Updating your blog's design is now faster & easier
New! Add a horizontal navigation bar to your blog

Entrepreneur's Creative Edge Blog Merges Japan & US Cultures

William Reed is an interesting American: he's been living in Japan since 1972. William has absorbed certain aspects of the Japanese culture and applied and merged them into a unique brand of consulting, speaking and writing for entrepreneurs.

Think calligraphy, think haiku, think American marketing and business savvy with a black belt in Aikido and you might come close to imagining the personality of William Reed.

The Blog Squad is proud to have assisted William in setting up his blog, The Entrepreneur's Creative Edge. It's an eclectic mix of American and Japanese perspectives that anyone would find interesting.

Admin Chronicles Blog Offers Career Success Tips

Administrative assistants! Here's a blog worth paying attention to: AdminChronicles.com is a blog dedicated to be "the administrative professional's guide to achieving career success."

The Blog Squad set up this author's blog. It's published anonymously because the author is a professional admin assistant herself, working full-time and doesn't want any office conflicts to occur. She uses a pseudonym, "JEM", to represent herself as an expert in helping others find answers to office problems and challenges.

Admin Chronicles is a one-stop resource for tips and tools for administrative professionals to prosper, succeed and achieve career success. The blog provides career advice, skill-building opportunities as well as job search strategies.

Admin Chronicles aspires to be the place for information, resources, tips and tools that many admin assistants need to prosper, succeed and advance, whether they're called an administrative assistant, executive assistant, office manager, right-hand woman or man, support staffer or employee.

"JEM" invites readers to visit the AdminChronicles blog and sign up for her free e-book, "Quick, Effective & Real World Tips For Achieving Career Success." There's a page called Just Ask JEM where questions are answered.

Social Media Event Live in San Diego: December 5

Meet Denise Wakeman aka The Blog Squad, in San Diego...

Learn how to unleash the power of Social Media Marketing to increase your sales from leading experts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Social Bookmarking and more!

If you are not taking advantage of what some experts are calling the Social Media Revolution, then you are missing out one the most important Internet phenomena since e-mail.

Discover time-tested strategies that you can start using right away to create your own social media marketing plan. Want more sales? Then attend this event and find out how.

If you're looking to get started using social media marketing to increase your sales, but didn't know where to go, now's your chance.

David Carleton has put together a live "crash course" that will give you everything you need to know. Introducing the Increase Sales With Social Media event of 2008.

Click Here to Learn More and Register

This live workshop is being held in sunny San Diego, California on Friday December 5.

You'll discover tips, techniques and tactics that you can use the very next day to launch your own social media campaign.

Just take a look at the line up of speakers:

Starting a Blog? What to do BEFORE you begin.

Today I had the pleasure of listening to David Meerman Scott, one of my favorite marketing "gurus" being interviewed by Larina Kase as part of the launch of her new book The Confident Leader.

David Meerman Scott is author of the bestselling book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR. It's just been released in paperback and it's #1 in Web Marketing on Amazon.com.

Larina Kase asked David about blogging and of course my ears perked up even more...she asked what his advice was for businesses starting a blog...

We're in total sync with David.  Here are his 3 steps you must do BEFORE you start a blog...

Blog Traffic Experiment: How to double or triple views

Here's how to double or even triple your blog traffic. Denise and I did a little blog  experiment this week.

It started on Monday of last week when I was struggling to come up with a topic to write about over on my writing blog, WritingontheWeb.com. I'm continually faced with the challenge of getting comments and how to get more people interested in writing tips. So I started out with a title from a book I like and reworked it into a compelling title for the post.

The book title is "Don't Make Me Think" and I reworked it to apply to writing blog posts that "make me think." Starting with the post title, 10 Ways to Write to Make Readers Think, I then started writing my list of ideas.

But I got stuck after 7 ideas. So I threw it out to readers to contribute their ideas and tips. That's the great thing about interactive blogs, you can get readers to help you write content. Not only do you get additional ideas, but you get readers to think and get them to engage with you.

As an incentive, I offered to give away some marketing books to 3 random winners.