Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

Money-making Blog Tips from Experts on CDs

Are there any business bloggers out there who want to learn a few money-making tricks? At the risk of sounding like Fast Eddy, have we got a deal for you! Come on down...

This is a quick commercial about a 61% discount on CDs. For the few remaining days of January 09, you can find out what the experts like Tom Antion, Joan Stewart, and ourselves, The Blog Squad, do to boost business with blogs, viral campaigns, book blogs, and other tips.

Learn about key marketing tactics with these programs:

=> Blog Your Book: The Easy Way to Write and Market Your Book

=> How to Lure Prospects with Words: Using White Papers to Attract New Clients

=> Protecting Your Intellectual Property Rights

=> How to Pitch the Best Bloggers and Create a Publicity Explosion

=> 32,000 Readers and a 2-Book Deal: How to Launch & Profit from a Viral Blogging Campaign

=>Packaging is Everything! How the Right Words Can Sell Your Book or Product in 15 Seconds or Less

=> Blogging to Gain Expert Status

Cool Copy and Paste Tool for Bloggers

Just had to share this. Client Bill Branson, Whiteboards That Work, sent a link to a very useful tool for bloggers.

During the first meeting we have with new bloggers, almost the first thing we tell them is NOT to copy and paste content from a Word doc, web page, email or any other rich text document. If you do that, you pick up all the hidden formatting behind the scenes and it gets pasted in to the blog post and can really mess up the look of your post. Remember, when you create a blog post, you're creating a web page that has a lot of coding built it.

One way to get around this is to copy from your doc, then paste the content into Notepad or any other plain text editor and then copy it and paste the content in to your blog editor. Quite a few steps there.

Bill Branson sent me a link to a tool called PureText. It's a simple program that creates a hot key which you use to automatically strip out extraneous code and formatting from a source doc. And it's free.

Download the zip file, install the PureText.exe file and an icon shows up in the task bar next to the time (PCs). A hot key (Windows + V) is created. When you select content to copy, simply use Windows + V to copy straight in to your blog editor. You can skip the steps of pasting into notepad, recopying and repasting.

Voila! Your blogging is more efficient! Want more time saving tips for optimizing and managing your blog? Check out our Better Business Blogging Training Program.

Blogging about Blogging: Round Up of Posts

Even though this blog is about business blogging, every now and then I think it's important to share what others are saying...especially when it supports our position that blogging is an essential tool for businesses of any size to get found, get known and get new clients.*  Here are a few posts that illustrate why blogs and blogging are important...

10 Reasons A Blog is Better Than a Website
by Terri Zwierzynski (note: we are guest experts on business blogging for Terri's community in February and that is the inspiration for her post)

Why Blogs Matter
by Shannon Paul (Thanks to Debbie Weil for the head's up)

27 Blogging Secrets to Power Your Community
by Chris Brogan

Stop Blogging?
by moi - Denise Wakeman

*Ok, I know this may be one sided, but hey, it's our passion to share the power of having an online presence that you control, that's inexpensive and that can generate real, tangible results for your business!

What's your opinion? Does having a blog matter for your business? If not, why not? If yes, how does your blog support your business?

How to Get the Best Out of Your Business Blog and Create Massive Visibility

You won't want to miss Leesa Barnes’ Social Media Summit II. It's Leesa's second year of presenting the telesummit with expert info on what's new in Social Media and what you really need to pay attention to for growing your business on the Web.

On Friday, January 23, 2009, at 1:30 p.m. ET, The Blog Squad presents this program:

Get the Best Out of Your Blog: How to Create Massive Visibility on The Web

Think about it: Many of your ideal clients go online every day, and some have problems only you can solve …but sadly, most of them can't find you.

In order to build desire for your products and services you need to be findable online. If you want to take your business from doing OK to doing great, you need to have massive visibility online. With the proliferation of easy-to-use web tools, you can easily connect with more people than ever before.

If your goal is to transform people's lives doing what you love, then you need to create massive visibility online. The best way to do that is with a business blog that's optimized.

You'll learn how to use your blog to:

• Get you massive visibility so your ideal clients can find you
• Reverse the client chase, to attract your ideal clients online, spending less than 30 minutes a day and $10 a month
• Tap into the pool of 1.4 billion people world-wide who are connected to the Internet and looking for information and solutions
• Connect with ideal clients in a more intimate way so they are driven to contact you, already pre-sold to buy your products or services
• Leverage the power social networking sites without wasting your time

Don't waste time trying to guess what's best. Learn from the experts. For more info and to register, click here.

3 Ways to Motivate Blog Readers to Take Action

I was recently asked: what are three ways you motivate readers to take actions?

This is something we regularly teach professionals and business owners who are just starting out with a blog. It's part of The Blog Squad's CODA System: Content, Outreach, Design and Action.

Encouraging readers to interact creates loyal followers who are more likely to take further action and get more deeply involved with you (like purchase your products and services).

It all comes down to one word: ASK

1. Ask readers what they want by publishing polls and surveys (use SurveyMonkey, Vizu or SocialToo).
2. Ask readers to comment and tell them how to do it ("click on comment link below...")
3. Ask readers to submit tips, guest posts or finish your post for you, i.e., you write a top 10 list and include only 7 tips, asking your readers to contribute their best tip.

Provide opportunities for people to get more involved by taking them beyond your blog: download a free report, attend a teleseminar, meet in person at conferences and workshops.

Connecting on your blog is the first step. Interacting on your blog is the second step. Moving readers off your blog to a deeper experience is the third step.

The Blog Squad's free report on Better Business Blogging goes into more detail about the CODA System and how to motivate action with your readers.

Blogging Prediction for 2009

Yesterday I was interviewed by Scott Paton (@ScottPaton on twitter) for Blogger and Podcaster Magazine. Scott wanted to know my prediction for blogs in 2009. While my prediction isn't new or revolutionary, I think it's relevant nonetheless! You'll have to listen to the 11 minute interview to find out what it is!

After you listen, click on the comments link to let us know what you think the future of blogging is in 2009.

Related Post:
2009: The Year of the Personality?

Blogging and Social Media Marketing Programs

Two programs for you to put on your calendar AND attend...

Wednesday, January 14*
1 p.m. PT (4 p.m. ET

Boost Your Biz with a Blog: It's Not an Option Anymore!
How to Build a Professional Blog that Turns Prospects into Clients...

You don't have to be a techie, a marketing genius, or a writer. It's OK if you don't have a website, an ezine, or a large list of subscribers. You don't need to invest much more than pocket change to get started, and can have your first blog set up in minutes and then quickly turn it into a traffic and client magnet - without ever again being held hostage by your webmaster!

Having a successful business blog can boost your web traffic, build trust with prospects and clients, increase the size of your email list, and make you more money - even if you don't have your own information products - you'll learn why you need a blog and how it can boost your business in this info-packed teleseminar. 

This class is free for members of the Master Business Building Club. You get a 30 day free trial and $925 in bonuses when you join.

*This class was originally scheduled for last week but I got laryngitis and had to reschedule.

January 21 - 30

Social Media Telesummit 2009

An 8 day online event with 18 social media marketing experts.

The Blog Squad will be presenting on January 23 at 1:30 p.m. PT about...you guessed it...business blogging.

There are so many great speakers that I will be attending most of the events as well, or at the very least listening to the audio replays during my runs and on the treadmill. The social media landscape is evolving so fast that it's critical for business to not only use social media marketing in order stay ahead of your competition, but also learn best practices so you get the most bang for your buck and your time.

Join me and Patsi for the Social Media Telesummit!

SEO for Bloggers: How to Get Started

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a mystery to most bloggers. I don't claim to be an SEO expert -- far from it -- but knowing a bit about how search engines work and how to find and use appropriate keywords for your content is useful (some would say critical) for creating an effective business blog.

For the last couple of days I've been reviewing a new training program called Wordpress SEO Secrets created by my colleague Michael Martine (@Remarkablogger on twitter). Like the title says, the program is directed primarily at bloggers who use Wordpress, but in my opinion, much of the content is important for all bloggers to know, regardless of the platform you use. 

The tutorials however, are all created for Wordpress. And since we know there are millions of Wordpress bloggers and some of them actually read this blog (even though it's on TypePad! :-) ) I thought it important to share this program with you.

When we work with clients, one of the first things we talk about is the fact that if you want to be found on the web by your ideal client, there are a few things that will greatly help:

Social Media Marketing Survey: Do you get it?

So many tools and sites fall under the term "social media": video, blogs, twitter, facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon...do you really get it? Do you know how to use social media to market your business or why you should?

Michael A. Stelzner of Writing White Papers, has developed a survey for the industry to see what business people know, don't know and want to learn about. To get a well-rounded look at what's going on, please take this short survey (it'll take you about 60 seconds) and share your insights. Everyone who participants can get a copy of the results when they're published.

This could be very useful for businesses, marketers and those doing PR.

Take the survey here >>>

TypePad Account FINALLY Upgraded

My TypePad account has finally been upgraded to the new platform and I'm excited. I think I'm among the last of the millions who use TypePad.  I was told it's because I have multiple blogs on my account (10) and multiple authors on several of the blogs. The migration is tricky and they didn't want to screw up my blog.

The system gets better and better. But, there's a downside...I realized I have to update the tutorials in the Build a Better Blog System AGAIN. The entire design module has been redesigned for the better. It's so much easier now to customize your TypePad blog.

If you own a copy of Build a Better Blog ebook, stay tuned for new tutorials coming soon...

Thank you TypePad. You're doing an awesome job on creating a powerful blog platform for professionals.