Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

Conversation with Digital Publishing Experts [Google+ Hangout]

Live Google+ Hangout on March 1 (no charge)

This just in...

Friday, March 1, I'm hosting a free, live, on-air Google+ Hangout with several of the featured experts who will be speaking at the upcoming Digital Publishing Online Intensive.

Date: Friday, March 1
Time: 10 am PT/ 1 pm ET

RSVP & Watch live: https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cenfhnb3pnkmcjlb7l43sbi47ro

Got questions about digital publishing? Post them on the event page.

See you on the Hangout!

P.S. $100 discount for the Digital Publishing Intensive expires in 3 days!
http://digitalpublishingintensive.com

Bloggers - How do you package your expertise? #BWELA

A recurring theme discussed among bloggers is how to make money from their blog -- how to package and profit from their expertise.

Well, I'm very excited to announce that the speaking proposal my colleague Rich Brooks, of Flyte New Media, and I submitted to Blog World and New Media Expo has been accepted and we'll be presenting a session on...

How Any Blogger Can Package, Promote and Profit from Their Expertise

I've attended three out of four BlogWorld Expos and it's by far the best conference going when it comes to education and networking with peers involved in business blogging, social media and new media (podcasting and video). So, I'm thrilled to be speaking once at again at this premier conference. In fact, Rich and I co-presented at both the first and second events so this will be our third time sharing the stage at BlogWorld Expo.

Now, here's what I'd like to know from you...

What is your #1 challenge or burning question about packaging, promoting and profiting from your expertise?

We plan to create a killer presentation and want to deliver maximum value in the 60 minutes session. As Rich told me when we were hashing out a theme...

"I want to teach the average blogger who has a job to put together a workable, sustainable program."

What would that look like to you?

What strategies, tactics and details would you want to get out the presentation so you felt ready, willing and able to take action?

Please post your presentation wish list in the comments. Then, register for BlogWorld Expo (November 3-5 in Los Angeles) and we'll see you there! Right now you can save 30% with early bird registration AND get an additional 20% off with the special speaker discount code I was able to wrangle for your: BLOGSQUAD20

If you cannot make it to BWE, you may be able to twist our arms to share our presentation on a webinar...no promises though since I haven't talked with Rich about that yet!

See you at BlogWorld!

Join 23 Blogging Experts at Web’s Largest Blogging Conference

I think you know how I feel about using a blog as a marketing tool for your business. :-) So you can probably imagine my excitement when I was invited to be on the faculty of the largest online blogging conference. No hesitation on my answer, I can assure you.

My friend and colleague, publisher of the wildly popular Social Media Examiner, and  the brilliant impresario of online summits, Mike Stelzner has teamed up with the producers of BlogWorld to host the largest online blogging conference: Blogging Success Summit 2011. Registration opens today and is currently being offered at a 50% discount so you'll want to action now because I have no idea how long the discount is available.

I don't want to forget any important info so here's the official announcement...

22 Social Media Marketing Superstars Reveal Their Secrets

How do you like that for a title? I am excited and proud to be among the 22 Social Media Marketing Superstars included in this brand new book. I'm in fabulous company.

As you know, I talk a lot about why you need to make your business blog the hub of your online platform. And that is the topic of the chapter I contributed to Success Secrets of the Social Media Marketing Superstars, the brainchild of Mitch Meyerson, that launched today.

Right now the book is under $15 on Amazon and after you purchase a copy you can get 8 exclusive audio interviews and videos from the authors at the official book site.

You'll learn:

• The biggest mistakes people make with social media and how to fix them
• Actionable plans for all areas including social networks, blogs, web TV and mobile marketing
• Real-world case studies, best practices and proven techniques from the experts
• Detailed list of resources

Here's the lineup of authors and topics (I have lucky chapter #13!)

Success Secrets Of The Social Media Marketing Superstars
By Mitch Meyerson

Section One: Strategies and Principles

1. Building Your Social Media Relationship Strategy – Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz
2. The Psychology of Social Media – Brian Clark
3. Mastering Online Marketing: Six Key Principles – Mitch Meyerson
4. Creating Content People Care About: The Cornerstone of Social Media – Ann Handley
5. How to Create a Mega-Following With Social Media – Gary Vaynerchuk
6. Personality: How To Stand Out In Virtual Crowd – Andy Wibbels
7. Build Strong Online Communities Using Social Media – Chris Brogan
8. Social Media Success Qualities – Joel Comm
9. How To Communicate With Impact Using Social Media – Craig Valentine
10. How To Profit From Your Social Media Efforts - Starr Hall
11. PR Strategies for Social Media – Dan Janal
12. Making Your Content Go Viral With Social Media – Michael Stelzner

Section Two: Applications and Websites

1. Business Blogs: How To Make Your Blog The Centerpiece of Your Social Media Enterprise – Denise Wakeman
2. Facebook: The Essential Rules For Building a Large and Loyal Following – Mari Smith
3. Twitter: Your Power PR Tool for Attracting A Tribe of Raving Fans – Deborah Cole Micek
4. LinkedIn: Transforming Networks into Dynamic Business Connections – Barbara Rozgonyi
5. YouTube: Leveraging the Power Of Google To Get Your Video Content To Millions – Julie Perry
6. Podcasting: Leveraging the Power of Apple To Get Your Content To Millions – Paul Colligan
7. Using Social Bookmarking To Improve Your Traffic, Links and Visibility – Chris Garrett
8. Mobile Marketing: How To Integrate this Powerful Tool With Your Social Media Marketing – Kim Dushinski
9. Online Video: A Mini Guide to Your Own Web Show – Shama Kabani
10. Social Media In One Hour A Day – Dave Evans

Check out the book now and grab the bonus interviews. There's excellent, actionable info from top thinkers and do-ers in the industry.

By the way, Brian Clark's chapter on The Psychology of Social Media Selling is a must-read if you're doing business on the Web.

What's Your Social Media Success Story?

Do you have a social media success story?

I have an offer for you.

How would you like to tell your story and get more visibility for your business? I'm looking for social media and blogging success stories to feature on my blogs in the next couple of month.

If you have a success that was a direct result of increased visibility on the web, I'd like to know.

• Did you land a new client from your blog?
• Get a speaking gig from something you posted on Facebook?
• Sell out your teleseminar from tweets you posted on twitter?

Submit your story and it could be featured on one of my high-traffic blogs.

I'm doing this for several reasons both selfish and not so selfish:

1. I'd like to help you boost your visibility, and a guest post or feature story on a blog other than your own can help that.

2. Sharing success stories helps others see the possibilities for success in their own business. People like to read about people who are like them and face similar challenges. They don't want to only hear about me and what I'm doing.

3. Selfish - I'm going to be traveling a bit in the next few months and want to have inspiring content on my blogs for the times I'm not able to post.

Between blog subscribers, organic traffic, twitter and Facebook, I reach over 30,000 people. Would you like to get in front of these people?

Post your story in the form on this page: http://denisewakeman.com/story/

I've been rolling out this announcement to various groups of clients and mastermind partner. I've received some great stories and would love to feature your's too. I'll be posting them on Fridays beginning this week.

Before you fill out the form, you can prep with these questions:

1. In a nutshell, what success did you have as a result of your blog/social media?

2. What was the obstacle that you were facing in your business?

3. What did you find as a result of using a blog/social media?

4. What specific feature do you like mostblogging/social media?

5. What other benefits did you experience from blogging/social media?

6. Is there anything you?d like to add?

7. In 25 words or less, please provide a short bio and contact info to include with your story.

I can't wait to feature you on my blogs and share your story...blog on!

TypePad for Dummies - Blog Interview on April 7

Attention TypePad bloggers:
Save the date - Wednesday, April 7

I'm hosting the authors of TypePad for Dummies in a blog interview on April 7 (the Q&A will be posted here) and authors Shannon Lowe and Melanie Nelson will be answering your questions as well.

You can submit your questions between now and then in the comments on this post and/or you can post them on the interview post on April 7. Shannon and Melanie will be popping in throughout the day to address your questions about TypePad and blogging in general. I may even jump into the discussion! :-)

The TypePad platform has evolved tremendously in the last year and it's not even recognizable from the platform I started on in 2004. If you're an old-timer trying to figure out all the new bells and whistles or a new blogger looking for guidance, this is a great opportunity for you to engage with two people who know the ins and outs of the TypePad platform better than most people.

By the way, no matter what platform you use for your business blog, you're most welcome to post your questions for Shannon and Melanie - they know blogging and use multiple platforms themselves.

As of writing this post, TypePad for Dummies is doing really well on Amazon. Out of millions of books on the site, it's #3315, a remarkable achievement.

So, what are your burning blogging and TypePad questions? Post them here and I'll make sure they get addressed or come back on April 7during the TypePad for Dummies blog tour stop on Build A Better Blog.

Blogging for Business Success with Sugartone

Blogging is a great way to promote your business expertise and craft top level visibility online. But the path towards success is a long one and it's not always easy to stay on track.

Learn How To Make Your Blog A Success

Of course, one of the first things you can do is make sure you start off properly. You can learn a lot about the best business blogging practices simply by reading this blog and following my programs. But what else can you do?

Communities of Business Bloggers

As you get into the routine of blogging for your business, you'll probably also enjoy hanging out with other business bloggers. Here are 2 places you should look into: BizSugar is a social bookmarking platform for business articles. So if you are blogging about business, you can submit your articles here. But it's also a small and friendly community to network with other business bloggers who come here to read the articles. Bloggertone is a community of business bloggers. It's based in Ireland and after only a few short months Bloggertone has already developed a friendly social business networking community.

Sugartone: the Sweet Business Blogging Contest

As it happens, both BizSugar and Bloggertone are teaming up to run the Sugartone Sweet Business Blogging Contest March 15^th- 19^th 2010. It should be easy for you to join in the Sugartone event because there are 2 different ways to participate:

• Write an original business article writer with a great title
• Vote and comment on the business articles submitted for the contest

And this means there are 2 sets of prizes for the:

• Top 10 Titles
• Top 10 Commenters

$6921 in Sugartone prizes for professionals marketing their business online.

• Lead Page Machine - a software to automatically generate squeeze pages so that you can use this to tailor your squeeze pages to specific audiences, to build your email subscribers and increase your sales conversions. Valued at: $5200
• Animoto - a year's membership to this easy tool which creates videos from photos. Valued at: $249
• Traction Call - a 45 minute call with the Traction Coach Gary Barnes to help you to quickly get some "sand under your wheels" so you can move forward toward the life you want to live. Valued at $175
• ClickMillionaires - 2 x 6-month membership to Scott Fox's social network helping business owners upgrade their marketing to make more money online. Valued at $174
• 5 Critical Tactics for Business Blog Success - this is my own CD and special report on how you can easily make your blog a winner. Valued at $97
• Start.Grow.Run - 8 x a software package with 45 essential tools and services for the 3 different phases of your business. Valued at $49.95 each

Plus there are 2 books for the winners of the Top 10 Titles and the Top 10 Commenters. And the books include:

• Wordtracker Masterclass: Blogging For Business - 50 Steps to Building Traffic and Sales by Chris Garrett. 5 books valued at $39 each
• Sociable by Shane Gibson & Stephan Jagger. 5 books valued at $25 each
• New Community Rules by Tamar Weinberg. 5 books valued at $16.49 each
• Guest Posting by Chris Garrett. 5 ebooks valued at $10 each

Click through here to find out more about the contest and how you can win a copy of my CD and special report 5 Critical Tactics for Business Blog Success as well as the other prizes there.

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the New Year!

Wishing you all the best during the holiday season and a joyful, healthy and prosperous 2010! [click here if you can't see the video]

To get your blog in shape for the new year, my gift to you is a free audio program: 5 Critical Tactics for Business Blog Success!

Blog on!

Six Apart Launches TypePad Micro

I've been hearing hints and murmurs about something new coming from TypePad for quite some time. Finally I got a sneak peak yesterday...TypePad Micro which launches today at noon Pacific Time.

TypePad Micro, according to Chris Alden, CEO of Six Apart is...

...a new, completely free level of TypePad that is streamlined for microblogging. We see this new form of blogging emerging -- living between the short status updates of Facebook and Twitter and the full-length posts of classic blogs -- and we want to make that easy and fun with TypePad Micro.  

TypePad Micro is free, and comes with...

• A blog with our new Chroma theme
• Easy cross-posting of new posts to Twitter and Facebook
• Friends can comment with their TypePad, Twitter, Facebook or any OpenID-enabled account
• Simple reblogging for readers
• Easy tools for posting to your blog, including post-by-email, a one-click magic bookmarklet and our iPhone application

Having been a TypePad user for over 5 years, I was curious to see how it's different from the original platform. In fact it's the same platform, just a simplified template designed for quick, easy set up. I quickly set up a new Micro blog (Online Visibility Tips) and found that it's not as customizable as I'm used to. But then again for someone just starting out, that can be a good thing. Streamlined options means you can get your micro blog up and running fast.

The new Chroma theme "suggests" a color palette for you based on the colors in the image you select for your banner. That's pretty cool. And hey, it's free (it's included with my Pro account) and the goal is to make it a no-brainer for new bloggers or bloggers who want an simple way to post stuff that may not fit on their primary blog.

Here's more of what Chris Alden has to say about TypePad Micro:

TypePad Micro is the culmination of a huge year of investment in TypePad, in which we’ve put in place many of the building blocks of social blogging, such as:

• Writer and reader profiles
• Following and a follow widget
• A dashboard with activity streams of the people you follow
• Sign-in and cross posting to Facebook and Twitter
• Easy posting by email and a snazzy bookmarklet
• Favoriting and a favorite button for post footers

We even released an entirely new open source application, TypePad Motion, for building custom microblog communities tapping into the power of TypePad. And now with TypePad Micro we're making it easy for anyone to get started with TypePad. No other blog platform combines these great microblogging capabilities – easy posting, profiles, following, an activity dashboard, etc. – with the full capabilities of a world class, full-featured blogging platform.

Considering it's free, I can't see any reason why you wouldn't want to check out the new TypePad Micro. And if you don't have a blog yet, this is a GREAT way to start. Really, super simple to set up and start blogging immediately. When you're ready to add more bells and whistles to your blog, it's will be a snap to upgrade for a few dollars and get access to dozens of designs and all the tools TypePad provides.

Thanks to Andy Wibbels and Ginevra Kirkland for keeping me in the loop on the big launch.

Free Webinar on how to use WordPress for your business

As you probably know, I use TypePad for my blogs and love the platform. However, I do also have a couple of sites built on Wordpress and appreciate the love and enthusiasm millions of people have for
Wordpress.

This Thursday, September 3rd, my colleague Christina Hills, is holding a free webinar for you:

"What is WordPress and How can it Help Me in my Business?"

This is going to be a webinar for non-techies, who want to understand 'the big picture' of what  WordPress is and how it can help you in your business.

Plus she'll be taking live questions from you.

So go here now to get the webinar call information.

You may know Christina Hills at The Shopping Cart Queen, however she is also passionate about Wordpress and has taught hundreds of people how to build their own sites with Wordpress.

If you're a do-it-yourselfer and  want to know more about Wordpress and how it can work for you, I highly recommend Christina's free webinar.

Blog on!