Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

Friday Feature - Sandi Faviell Amorim's Social Media Success Story

Blogging and Twitter provide the one-two punch that took a static site and turned it into a client-attraction tool as you'll learn in today's Friday Feature...

Sandi Faviell Amorim, Deva Coaching

Website/Blog URL:    www.devacoaching.com
Follow on Twitter:    @devacoach

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

Since launching my blog and then Twitter profile back in May (2010), I have:

• Attracted new clients
• Connected with amazing people that have shared their gifts as well as business opportunities
• Contributed to an ebook and guest posted
• Gotten my first paying gig as a writer!
• And launched a group program (www.juicylife.ca) with ease

There's more but that gives you an idea of how much fun I've had since committing time to social media!

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

Friday Feature - Jeff Domansky's Social Media Success Story

This week's featured story is one of overcoming personal setbacks and using social media to create a new business model. Twitter is a star in this story...

Jeff Domansky, The PR Coach
Website/Blog URL:    http://www.theprcoach.com
Twitter: @theprcoach

In a nutshell, what success did you have as a result of your blog/social media?   
I soft-launched the site in May 2010 to get feedback from users and modified the site accordingly. By mid-June, I started using Twitter to build a credible profile and showcase the type of blog and site content available for PR professionals. Twitter was the perfect vehicle to reach out. Tweeters are generous with feedback and retweeting when they like something. The PR Job Board has proven very popular. It's early days, but traffic and subscribers are growing and in 4 weeks I have 600+ Twitter followers.

What was the obstacle that you were facing in your business?   
The obstacles are the same for most new sites: how to rank well in search engines, SEO, traffic growth, building subscribers and most important finding ways to work efficiently. Revenue from ads and affiliates are still a long way off. After having Twitter success, the biggest challenge now is getting higher natural search engine ranking to reach wider range of users who will find the PR resources to be valuable.

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

How to Get Your Blog Post Retweeted

It goes without saying that in order for your blog to be successful...convert readers to clients...you need consistent, constant, compelling content. And, you need traffic.

If you're following my Online Visibility Secrets program or have attended any of my teleseminars or programs, then you know I adamantly insist that you connect your blog to your twitter stream so your posts are auto-tweeted when you publish.

On twitter, one goal of many entrepreneurs and marketers is to get their tweets retweeted (like forwarding an email). A great tweet can quickly go viral, reaching a much wider audience than you may currently have. This can generate new followers, clicks through to your website/blog, new leads and new prospects.

A great goal then is to get the tweets with links to your blog posts retweeted.

Business Bloggers Twitter List

Thanks to all the business bloggers who contributed their own twitter link and those of others to my Business Bloggers twitter list. If you're looking for smart, savvy professionals to follow on twitter, this is a great place to start.

Lots of different industries are represented and you're sure to find a few cool new people to engage with...you never know what kind of opportunities will emerge!

Business Bloggers Twitter List in Development

If you're on Twitter, then you probably know that the introduction of lists is keeping everyone quite busy creating their ultimate lists of tweeple in every category under the sun. I'm no exception. (See my post on Biz Tips Blog about Twitter lists.)

I've started a list of business bloggers and I need your help.

First, check out my list of business bloggers. Follow the list if you would like to stay apprised of new additions.

Next, let me know who I should add to the list. Post their name and twitter ID in the comments below and I'll add them to the list.

[TIP: Please submit URL for the twitter ID so it's easy for me to click through and add to my list, like this: http://twitter.com/DeniseWakeman - don't forget the http://!]

Who is a business blogger?

People who use their blog as a marketing tool for their business. Bloggers who blog about business and business blogging. ;-)

I look forward to learning about new people I can connect with! This is a list in progress so if you don't see your name on the list and it should be...let me know!

Driving More Traffic to Your Blog

After lamenting that they can't find time to write on their blog, the next most popular challenge I hear about is that the blogger is not getting enough traffic to his/her blog.

Aside from the obvious - publish valuable content consistently and constantly - there are dozens, if not hundreds of ways to drive traffic to a blog.

First, I direct you to a free 57-minute audio program on driving quality traffic to your blog that I presented a few months ago. I recently reviewed the entire program and everything discussed is still relevant. You also get a word for word transcript.

Second, there is an entire category on this blog with more than 100 posts about various ways to attract traffic to your blog. OK, that may seem daunting so here's a list of some posts that can jump start your blog traffic if you implement the tactics.

Where do you find an audience for your blog?

Contests and Causes Drive Blog Traffic

SEO for Bloggers: How to Get Started

Twitter Helps You Build Blog Traffic

Blog Outreach: Are You Missing This Traffic Tactic?

StumbleUpon can help you attract new readers

How to get more eyeballs on your blog

If I don't stop I'll end up linking to every post in the Driving Traffic category! You get the point. Start here and then click around through the posts. Then, post a comment with your #1 blog traffic tactic. I have no doubt there are many more ways than I have written about or even experimented with.

*Traffic Jam in Bangladesh - Photo by joiseyshowaa

Are you willing to do what it takes to create visibility on the Web?

True to form, I've been thinking a lot about visibility, blogging and social media. After all, it's what I do. As I was walking to the post box, I was thinking about the opportunities that have come my way in the last couple of weeks: requests for interviews from two reporters; invitation to contribute chapters to two books on social media marketing; email and radio interviews (I get a request nearly every day), and the list goes on.

I don't say this to brag, but to point out that none of this would be happening if I had not made a very conscious effort to create visibility for me and my business. And none of it would be happening without my blogs. Period. When I ask how a reporter found me the usual reply is from a search that lead to one of my blog posts.

One of the topics I'll be talking about with a reporter later today is "social media marketing mistakes." I'll share my list after the interview when I know what is being included, and I will tell you that the biggest mistake I see/hear is a business owner thinking they do not need a blog if they use the myriad social networking sites available to them on the Web.

UPDATE: Here's my list of Social Media Marketing Mistakes - lots of good comments too.

I wrote about this earlier in my post Why Blog When You've Got Facebook? And with the recent cyber attack on twitter it's seems more obvious than ever that you cannot count on third party networks to be there for you 24/7. Your blog is your best defense and will be there in the long run.

Yes, your server can crash but in the end you have a lot more control. And you are backing up your blog, right?

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.

Business Bloggers Group on Twitter

Are you using twitter yet? I find twitter to be one of the most effective ways to stay in touch with my network and then drive them back to our blogs so they can get more in depth content from us. At this point about 50% of our blog traffic is coming from twitter and Facebook!

There are a lot of great tools to help you effectively use twitter. A couple days ago I wrote about Tweetworks on Biz Tips Blog. In a nutshell it allows you to set up groups of twitter users so you can have much more focused conversations. It's helpful for finding and connecting with people in your niche who are interested in your topic/service/business.

I set up a group called BusinessBloggers. The conversations about challenges business owners, entrepreneurs and service professionals are having around their business blogs and how to use them most effectively. It's a great way to get instant (or almost instant, depending on who's on twitter at the moment) feedback and share information. It's free to participate, too!

If you're using twitter as part of your blogging and marketing strategy, you're invited to join us and join the conversation.

Are you following us on Twitter?

Denise on Twitter
Patsi on Twitter

BTW, have you seen our new Better Business Blogging program?

TwiTip Challenge: Top 10 People You Follow

On TwiTip today there is a challenge to list the top 10 must-follow people in your niche. Last week I posted a list top blogs I regularly read so this seems like a good opportunity to list a few of my favorite tweeple.

I use Tweetdeck to organize my tweets and the people I follow. One of the best features is that you can create groups so you don't have to scan through thousands of tweets to find out what the influencers are talking about. I have a group called "Peeps to Follow", a group for members of my mastermind, and a group for students in a program we teach.

Though I follow way more than 10 terrific people, here are the ones who are active and I often learn something new from, in no order of importance:

Mari Smith @MariSmith
Liz Strauss @lizstrauss
Chris Brogan @chrisbrogan
Darren Rowse @problogger
Jeff Herring @jeffherring
Dave Taylor @davetaylor
Deborah Micek @CoachDeb (co-author of Twitter Revolution)
Dave Lakhani @davelakhani
Sherman Hu @shermanhu
Paul Chaney @paulchaney

Remember, this doesn't even scratch the surface of the number of people I follow (2,401 at the moment) or the people who follow me (3,292) with whom I have daily conversations.

If you're new to twitter, you can't go wrong following any of these folks and learning from them: what they tweet, how they converse, how they add value, and how they promote.

Who are the top 10 tweeple you follow?

Related Post
TwiTip: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Twitter