Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

Business Blogging Workshop - What do you want to learn?

I'm delighted to let you know I have been invited to be on the faculty for the next Niche Affiliate Marketing System (NAMS) in January. By all accounts this is a top-notch learning event with a stellar faculty (Jeff Herring, Kathleen Gage, Ellen Britt, Willy Crawford, Lynn Terry, Nicole Dean, and many more). This is the third iteration and I heard rave reviews by many colleagues about the previous event in August.

So I was honored to be invited by the organizer David Perdew, to do several presentations on blogging. The difference with this event is that it is a 3 day workshop - no pitching - where the goal is to teach real, actionable content. There are three marketing tracks: beginner, intermediate and advanced - so there's something for every level of attendee.

I was talking to David Perdew about the blogging track. I'll be doing 3 presentations: an overview of blogging for business, a workshop on getting traffic to your blog and a third workshop. I couldn't make up my mind about what to teach so I figure I'll throw it open to you...

If you were attending a hands-on business blogging workshop, what would you want to learn? Here are the two options David and I are discussing:

1) a hot seat for 3-4 people where I will review and offer feedback and suggestions to help improve and  optimize the blog.

2) a workshop to create an editorial calendar, identify several types of blog posts appropriate for your blog and create a schedule you can implement as soon as you're back in the office.

Whether or not you plan on attending NAMS in January, I'm curious to know which workshop you would prefer so you can boost the results you get from your blog.  Please vote here:

If you do plan on attending NAMS, be sure to register before December 1. The investment goes up $100 on 12/1.  And, as a faculty member, I have $100 discount coupons to give away so it's an even better deal if you sign up ASAP. Use coupon code: 100NAMS3 and you'll be able to register for the dirt cheap fee of $297!

See you at NAMS and thanks for your feedback!

Blog World and New Media Expo is ON!

The 3rd Annual Blog World and New Media Expo officially starts today with a full day of programs focusing on social media marketing. I'm in Las Vegas to learn, network and reconnect with friends and colleagues. As an introvert, this is a big stretch for me because I'm on for three straight days. It's exciting and fun and exhausting and sooooo worth it.

Because I'll be in sessions literally all day and I have breakfast, lunch and dinner dates with colleagues, and parties every night, I cannot promise any blog posts.

If you want to stay on top of what's happening in real time, I recommend you follow me on Twitter and follow the hashtag #bwe09. If you use Tweetdeck to manage twitter, then create a search column to follow all the tweets with that hashtag or follow the stream on search.twitter.com.

If I do post, I will probably use my Posterous site since I can quickly email photos and updates from my phone. If you subscribe to my updates you'll get an email when I post new stuff.

Can't wait to share new business blogging and social media marketing info and trends with you in the coming weeks...blog on!

Musing about blogging on the Pomo Bluffs

I shot a quick video when I was in Ft. Bragg for the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference a couple weeks ago. Since I've been traveling so much, I haven't had time to post it. Please forgive my inability to get a decent shot of myself. At the end I practically cut off half my face!

This was the second year I spoke at the MCWC and the authors were quite receptive to my message about the need to create online visibility with blogs and social networking if they wanted to sell their books. As usual though, the big concern is how much time it's going to take.

Frankly if you're not willing to put in the time to create visibility, then you probably won't achieve the level of sales success you want.

More visiblity = a bigger audience = more fans = more sales.

Business Blogging Tips from SOBCon 09

First, you'll probably ask, "what the heck is SOBCon?" Stands for Successful Outstanding Blog Conference, the brainchild of Liz Strauss who publishes the wildly successful Successful- Blog.com. The actual name of the conference is Biz School for Bloggers and this year marked the third iteration.

My intention was to get quicky tips from many of the successful bloggers in attendance, but alas, I fell short. You'll see I only managed 3 tips and two of them were in a dark bar at Morton's Steak House so Stephen P Smith and Michelle Vandepas are hard to see. Hope you'll cut me some slack on these. It was a full 3 days, lots of talking, learning, photos, videos so getting interviews felt like a challenge for me. I'm just not assertive enough to break into conversations, though others have no trouble with that!

Following the video are links to notes from the presentation I did with Chris Cree as well as notes and slide shows to many of the other presentations.  Good stuff here. And, if you're interested in expanding your thinking around blogging and social media, I recommend you get on the mailing list to stay up to date on developments for next years program.

Now, here are links to various presentations and write ups from Biz School for Bloggers:

Increase Sales with Social Media - December 5 in San Diego

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:

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:

Rich Brooks on the future of blogging (video)

I had the pleasure of hanging out with Rich Brooks of flyte new media at BlogWorld Expo again this year. Rich was the moderator of a panel on small business blogging so we also got to share the stage for the second year. Rich and The Blog Squad started blogging around the same time in 2004. I asked Rich about the changes he's seen in blogging over the last 4 years and where he thinks blogging is headed. We share the belief that your blog IS the central hub or foundation for your social marketing.

Check out flyte blog and follow "The" Rich Brooks on twitter at @therichbrooks.

David Bullock Shares His Insights from BlogWorld Expo

We caught up with David Bullock at BlogWorld Expo and got a snap shot of what he had learned from the panel sessions. David is a very smart dude so pay attention to him. I met him this past Spring at Liz Strauss' Biz School for Bloggers and was blown away by his approach to business development. He says he's a newbie at social media, but he's a quick study.  David spoke on a panel about how to monetize social media and presented a case study of how Barack Obama is using social media. Check out http://www.barack20.com.

Mari Smith Talks to The Blog Squad

Mari Smith, The Pied Piper of Facebook, is da bomb! We've been virtual friends for several years and finally got to meet F2F (face to face) last week in Las Vegas. First, we spent 3 days with Mari and her husband Ty, at an intensive seminar with Kevin Nations. Then, it was off to BlogWorld and New Media Expo for 3 days. We took advantage of our time together, to get Mari on video.

Mari Smith shares her some of her impressions of BlogWorld as well as a renewed commitment to blogging!

Small Business Blog Panel at BlogWorld

BlogWorld Expo was quite the scene this past weekend in Las Vegas. On Saturday, I had the pleasure of being on a panel with Rich Brooks (right), John T. Unger (left) and Des Walsh (he split so didn't make the picture). Our topic was How to Plan, Build and Promote a Small Business Blog. 

If you were not able to attend BlogWorld or our panel, you can still get a flavor of the discussion. Twitter was all the rage and every single session had dozens of people posting tweets about the content. Our panel was no exception and to make it easier to capture all the content in one place, Rich Brooks set up a hashtag (#sbb08) to code all the tweets.  You can scroll through 4 pages of tweets to get sense of what we discussed.

And, to help you out even more, here are the handouts we provided:

Download small_business_blog1.pdf

Download small_business_blog2.pdf

More thoughts, reports, musings, videos and photos from BlogWorld in come in the next few days after I catch up on a whole lot of work!