Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

Are You a Fan of The Blog Squad?

As you know from my last post about blogs vs. Facebook, my strong belief and advice to anyone in business is to use your blog as your hub site, your home base. However, that does not mean I advocate ignoring social networking sites and if you've followed me for more than a day, you know I'm quite active on Facebook and twitter and LinkedIn (a little bit less).

In my view you need to be where your audience is and then drive them back home (blog).

In case you don't know, I do have a fan page set up on Facebook. If you prefer to hang out on Facebook, then I want to be there with blogging info for you.

The Blog Squad on Facebook

One of the things I'm doing for people who join The Blog Squad Fan Club is make special fan-ONLY offers once in awhile and on the last day of the month will offer a substantial discount to a product or service. You've got to be a fan to find out and get notifications of special deals. 

There is also a discussion forum and I'll answer your questions about business blogging and social marketing. I hope you'll join me on Facebook!

By the way, if you have a Fan page on Facebook, post the link in the comments so I, and other readers, can check it out and join your community too!

Why Blog When You've Got Facebook?

I got a really good question last week via twitter/email and after yesterday's twitter problems, it's appropriate to address this now. Here's what I was asked:

From your perspective on blogging, what's the advantage of actually doing a blog, over having a well-developed page on Facebook--where you not only share regularly updated status reports, but can also post Notes (where I imagine what would have been posted to a blog would be posted on Facebook), can easily share media, engage people in conversation and relationships, and organically have your updates propagated to other friends' pages, etc.?

It's an excellent question and one that does come up in some form when I speak and teach.

First, let's look at what happened on Twitter. Yesterday, with no explanation for nearly 4 hours, hundreds of thousands of legitimate twitter accounts were suspended citing "suspicious activity." People on Facebook, FriendFeed and blogs went nuts.

OMG! We can't communicate with our followers!

Michael Stelzner Interviews Denise Wakeman

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting my colleague and King of White Papers, Michael Stelzner. I was in the San Diego area meeting with colleagues and attended a tweet-up with a 100 twitter friends. On my way back to L.A. I stopped in Poway to have a chat with Michael. 

Michael is the brilliant mastermind and organizer of the Social Media Success Summit with which I've been associated, promoting and presenting at for the past four weeks. Wednesday is the final day of the amazing online event (you can still register and get access to all the video presentations, audio, transcripts, bonuses and private forum). My presentation on business blogging concludes the series.

But I digress. Michael grabbed his Flip HD Mino and we did a short interview about blogging. Mike's first question was: is it too late to start blogging for your business?

Got your own questions about business blogging? Submit them here and blog on!

How to Drive More Qualified Traffic to Your Blog - TeleSeminar

** Business Building Mastery Expert Teleseminar Training Series **

TOPIC: How to Drive More Qualified Traffic to Your Blog With Denise Wakeman (interviewed by Travis Greenlee

WHEN: June 9th, 2009 - 10am Pacific | 1pm Eastern

In a hurry? Grab your FREE seat: http://budurl.com/BizMastery

Every blogger wants to know how to get more readers. And of course readers are the life blood of your business blog if you want to grow your business. Readers create your community and when they become
raving fans, they become your clients.

There are myriad ways to drive traffic to your blog. And, there are some simple tactics that can exponentially increase the right traffic to your blog. This program will give you 7 specific tactics to drive
more qualified readers to your blog.

You will learn:

1. How to create compelling headlines
2. The strategic way to use keywords in your blog posts
3. How to automate your social networking sites to get a flood of traffic
4. Two elements that absolutely must be on your blog
5. Two simple habits that will continually encourage traffic

As Travis Greenlee says, This is going to be one ROCKIN' call...

Grab your seat now --> http://budurl.com/BizMastery

Why blog? William Reed Shares His Success Story

I am often asked if blogs really work to build a business. I say "yes." The next comment usually is, "your business is about blogging so of course it works for you." Well, to that I say, there are hundreds of success stories about how blogging has helped a business build more awareness, get more traffic to their web site, build a database of prospects, attract new clients, media coverage and myriad opportunities. Most of those businesses have NOTHING to do with blogging or online marketing.

William Reed, author of Entrepreneurs Creative Edge, shares some of the huge opportunities that have come his way as a result of being visible on the web with his active blog.

What do you think of that invitation to write a weekly column that gets in front of more than 80,000 people? Not bad, eh?

Now, William Reed and I have decided to partner on offering blogging programs for the English speaking population of Japan and possibly the rest of Asia! We're offering a free teleseminar on using a blog to build online visibility, to gage interest and then we'll decide where we go from there. Now tell me that blogging doesn't work to create business opportunities!

Want some more proof?
Blogging Success Stories Wanted! (read the comments)
GolfAsian Blog: 3 Years Old & Still Posting
Blogs Build Your Business: You Want More Proof?

New Trends: Twitter + Blogging = Happy Traffic

David Tokheim, general manager of Six Apart Media, aka Typepad blog services, discusses new blog trends in an interview with eMarketer.

Key take-away:

"Twitter is bridging that gap between blogs and social nets and allowing bloggers to be able to have a good distribution vehicle to publish and instantly connect with an audience."

It seems that Twitter and business blogs are a marriage made in heaven. Live well, blog well, and Tweet often.

Put Down Your Twitter Toys and Get Back to Blogging

I am looking at the Twitterverse and shaking my head. So much going on there, so much noise. And like a kid with a new toy, some of you are abandoning your old stand-by business blogs in favor of quick updates on Twitter.

Tsk, tsk. Put down your Twitter Toys right NOW! Here's an important post I want you to go read: 19 Reasons You Should Blog And Not Just Tweet by Adam Singer over on The Future Buzz.

Blogging demonstrates true commitment and passion to your industry that you really can’t fake long-term.  Most won’t be able to sustain it over long periods of time with frequency, but those who do so are rewarded in spades and stand out from the crowd.

Twitter is in a sense social sticky notes... It’s snack-sized content. Are you or your business interesting enough to provide the full course?  It’s telling who engages deeper vs. those who simply choose to engage 140 characters at a time.

Isn't it time we get back to writing meaty, useful blog content instead of just poking our heads in and retweeting something? Now, don't get me wrong, I love Twitter. But I also enjoy good business blog content that educates, entertains, and grabs me where I feel it.

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:

Bloggers - Are You Using Video Yet?

I'm coming back to the video blogging theme because the trend continues to grow with no end in site.

In a report out this month from Nielsen, they report that since November 2007, video audiences have OUTNUMBERED email audiences. I was shocked to read that.  I mean, EVERYONE reads email so to think that more people are viewing online video than reading email is amazing. Contemplate that for a minute.

And video isn't difficult to create and distribute widely on the 'net. Did you see the video I created using animoto? I simply uploaded pictures, picked a music track from a list they provide and pushed a button. You don't even need to be in the video if you're camera-shy.

In the home study course Lou Bortone and I created called Online Video Made Easy, we go into detail about equipment, software and distribution sites. All available for little or no money. But here's the "readers digest" version:

Equipment - Camera
Flip Digital Video Camera
Web Cam

Video Creation Software
Animoto (web based, free 30 second videos)
Camtasia (for screenshot videos - top of the line)
Jing Project (free)

Video Distribution
Tubemogul (free - upload to more than a dozen video sites)

Did you know that YouTube is the second largest search engine? That means well-optimized videos come up high in search engine results pages. After all, Google owns YouTube so it stands to reason that videos on their site would do well. Yet another good reason to create your own channel with videos on YouTube as well as the other big video site players. Here's one of my YouTube Channels.

One of my mentors has advised me to step up the video production. Nothing elaborate or long; short, content rich videos that can help position me as a leader in the blogging world.

Are you using video in your online marketing mix? If not, what's stopping you?

Related Post
Engage Your Readers in Multiple Way

Business Blogging Tip: What's the Blog's Purpose? (Video)

What's the purpose of your business blog? This is a critical question to answer BEFORE you dive into the blogosphere.

Before you start a blog identify your ideal reader, your goals, who else is in your niche, and a compelling name that reflects the content. Having this information clear at the outset will keep you on track as your blog evolves.