Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

BlogWorld and New Media Expo - THE Event for Content and Connection

BlogWorld and New Media Expo is just around the corner (well, October, it seems like it's coming up fast). With a number of projects keeping me occupied, I nearly forgot to let you know that the early bird registration fee (save nearly half price) expires on July 15. Use EBIRD to save 20% on the current reg fee.

If you use a blog or social media to market your business, then this is one event I encourage you to attend if at all possible. There's an entire day devoted to social marketing and yesterday I found out there is an entire Problogger track being run by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett. That's worth the price of admission alone. When you consider these two live in Australia and the UK, respectively, then having the opportunity to work with them live, in person for 4 hours is pretty awesome and will most definitely accelerate your blogging skills.

Other tracks include: content, monetization, real estate, milblogging (military blogging), food, sports and travel. The schedule is not posted yet so I can't tell you everything that is being covered yet.

Being held October 14-16, this is the 4th year for BlogWorld Expo. I've attended every year, spoken at two, and have a proposal in for this year. I wouldn't miss this event because the content, the access, the Expo, the vibe, the people, the parties - are all outstanding.

I'll be there and hope to meet you there too. If you're going, please let me know so we can meet up for a coffee or meal. Check out the details now, register and reserve your hotel (it's being held at the Mandalay Bay Conference Center so you want to get a room there if they aren't fully booked yet).

Register for BlogWorld before 7/15 and SAVE up to $595 off your Full Access Pass!

NOTE: I am an affiliate partner for BlogWorld Expo. If you register through my link, I make a small commission. I would recommend this event whether or not I get a commission. It's one of top events I attend every year.

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.

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.

Technorati's State of the Blogosphere Wrap Up

If you're publishing a blog (a social marketing tool) and using other online marketing and social marketing tools for your business, I strongly recommend you read the entire State of the Blogosphere 2009 report. You'll get insights into trends and how professionals and self-employeds are using the Web to build credibility, establish thought leadership, make money and grow their businesses. 

Here are quick links you can jump to for each section:

State of The Blogosphere Introduction

Day 1: Who Are the Bloggers?

Day 2: The What and Why of Blogging

Day 3: The How of Blogging

Day 4: Blogging Revenues, Brands and Blogs

Day 5: Twitter, Global Impact and the Future of Blogging

The key take-away for me is that for business, blogs are only getting more popular and contribute greatly to the bottom line of most businesses.

If your blog isn't performing as well as you'd like or getting the results you want, check out my free video course on How to Get the Best Out of Your Blog.

State of the Blogosphere 2009 - The How of Blogging

Part Three of Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2009 focuses on the How of Blogging. There are some interesting stats on how bloggers drive traffic to their blogs that jumped out at me.

Look at the "self-employed" (that's you and me - professionals and entrepreneurs who use a blog to market their business) numbers.

From most popular to least, we are using the following ways to drive visitors to our blogs:

1. List your blog on Technorati
2. Tag your blog posts
3. List your blog on Google (have you set up a Google profile with links to your blog?)
4. Comment on other blogs
5. Get listed on blog directories
6. Link to blogs on a blogroll
7. Produce content on other blogs
8. Attend conferences for bloggers
9. Create a blog on a broader network
10. Pay for online advertising

How does that fit with your traffic driving activities? It's not really how it plays out for me. My #1 source of traffic is from organic search results and #2 is from twitter. 

By the way, if you haven't listened to my free audio program on How to Drive Qualified Traffic to Your Blog, you can get the audio and transcript here.

State of the Blogosphere 2009 is Out

I just spent 3 days at BlogWorld and New Media Expo in Las Vegas. This year was by far the biggest: more people, more speakers, more presentations, more parties...

The opening keynote was delivered by Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati, and he shared tidbits from the brand new State of the Blogosphere 2009 released today (here's link to presentation). The report is released over five days and today is focused on: Who Are the Bloggers?

Overall, bloggers are a highly educated and affluent group. Nearly half of all bloggers we surveyed have earned a graduate degree, and the majority have a household income of $75,000 per year or higher. As blogging is now firmly a part of the mainstream, we see that the average blogger has three or more blogs and has been blogging for two or more years. We are also noticing an ever-increasing overlap between blogging and mainstream media.

9% of respondents to the professionally produced survey, are self-employed and 70% of those say they blog about their business and are blogging more now than when they started.

Professional bloggers (including self-employed) stated the following benefits of blogging (reinforces everything I've been telling you for the last 5 years!):

• 71% have greater visibility in their industry
• 63% said clients have purchased products and services
• 56% say their company is now regarded as a thought leader
• 40% asked to speak at conferences

What's not to like about that? It doesn't matter what the industry is, either. So, if you're not blogging for your business, let's talk! If you are and you don't feel you're getting the most bang out of your blog, let's do a blog review and see where you can tweak and improve to get much better results. Business blogging works...you don't have to take my word for it. Take the words of the 2900 bloggers in 50 countries who responded to the survey.

By the way, you can see some of my pictures from BlogWorld on my Posterous site.

I Love Blogging...Let Me Count the Ways

In celebration of Valentine's Day, the folks at TypePad.com have put out a challenge (invitation) for you to share why you love blogging. Since I'm an avid business blogger and use TypePad for most of my blogs and set up TypePad blogs for clients, I figure I better join the party!

I Love Blogging...Let Me Count the Ways (in no particular order of importance)

1. Blogging changed my life...
   
2. Blogging allows me to instantly and easily publish my content on the web
3. Blogging helps me connect with amazing people
4. Blogging has helped me become more findable and visible to my ideal clients
5. Blogging created a new business for me with Patsi
6. Blogging has generated invitations to speak at conferences, contribute to books, participate in joint venture opportunities, create new products, travel and connect
7. Blogging has revealed my inner extrovert
8. Blogging has helped me become a better writer
9. Blogging helps remove barriers when meeting online friends in person
10. Blogging has helped keep me motivated to lose weight and keep fit (my personal blog)
11. Blogging lets me take advantage of my natural love of research and active experimentation
12. My blogging community has helped me raise money for causes I care passionately about...you are the best!
13. ...I'm sure there's more so I may add new thoughts as they come to me in the next couple of days.

Part of the game is to tag 5 bloggers and invite them to play and share why they love blogging. In addition to the 5 I'm tagging, I invite you to share here in the comments section or on your own blog why you love blogging! And send me the link if you post on your own blog. (You can get the "official" guidelines here.)

I tag:

Patsi Krakoff - Writing on the Web
Michael Martine - Remarkablogger
John Trosko - OrganizingLA
Paul Chaney - Conversational Media Marketing (Paul is one of my early blogging inspirations - read his blog!)
Liz Strauss - Successful-Blog

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

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: