Business Blogger Tips
By Cary Snowden
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Podcast Description
The Business Blogger Tips Podcast is a brief tip delivered each week that will help you build and improve your business blog and online marketing. Tune in each week to hear a short tip from Cary Snowden about blogging for your business.
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CleanThe Importance of Backlinks | As usual, this post comes as a result of a friend asking a good question: "Is it smart to have external sites linking to your blog?" he asked. "Yes", I replied. And here is what I told him... When an external site links to your site, we call this a 'backlink'. Typically a backlink is an indication of a reference or an endorsement. As such, backlinks are a strong indicator of popularity. Popularity is one of the driving forces behind SEO, and so therefore backlinks are of extreme importance; the more you have, the better. Search engines are on a constant lookout for good content, and one of the ways they measure whether content is good is by how many people are referencing or endorsing the content. This is sort of a 'crowd-sourcing' strategy that assumes that if more people are referencing a specific article, that the article must be more relevant than articles that are otherwise being ignored. This is why 'going viral' is the pinnacle of SEO; the greater the number of people who are interested in your article, the more the article appears to be relevant. Search engines tally up the number of links they find to a given article, and use that number to gauge it's popularity or 'relevance'. To explain, let's say that you write and post an article about rain clouds, and it is a particularly good article with well-researched information and a few funny anecdotes that make it entertaining to read. You tell a few of your friends about it, and they like it enough to share it to their Facebook friends. They do this by including a link to your article on their Facebook page with a short note about how funny they think the article is. Search engines are starting to index Facebook content, so there is a good chance some of these initial links will be counted. Search engines will recognize that someone thought the article was worthwhile, and give your article a little boost in their ratings. Next, let's say that a few of the friends on Facebook are bloggers, and they decide to link to your article from their own articles on their own blogs. This becomes a powerful SEO popularity snowball where the more people who link to your article, the more popular your article becomes in the search engine rankings. This process acts very much like it does in high school if everyone is talking about your cool new shoes; as word gets around, more people are talking about your shoes, and more people want to see them. Eventually, the social authorities will recognize your shoes as the standard, and will reference them to everyone. Just like the search engines do to popular articles. A few quick rules of thumb: Backlinks from sites that are discussing your given topic are more valuable than backlinks from sites that are not related by topic. This means that the search engines will give more credit to your rain cloud article if the backlinks are coming from a weather site, than if the backlinks come from a cooking site. The most valuable backlinks are the ones that are organically grown. This means that if your backlinks are natural and genuine, they will be inherently more valuable than if you elect to artificially generate backlinks. Examples of artificial backlinking include paying a 'link farm' to post information about your article on a series of junk sites simply to get some links created. A best practice for stimulating backlink generation is to post comments on other relevant sites, and to include a link to your article in your comments. This method is so valuable that black hat proprietors have created bots to do this automatically. You no doubt have noticed this spam in your blog. Avoid using bots, and make sure to strategically place your comments on other relevant sites with thoughtful comments that add to the conversation. Your links are more likely to be approved when you are seen as a real contributor, and the backlinks will be stronger when made from legitimate, relevant sites. | 3/6/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanInterview On Blogging With Sheri Bell-Rehwoldt | I had the pleasure of being interviewed last week by Sheri Bell-Rehwoldt, who is an online marketing specialist and the driving force behind Creatives Marketing, an online marketing agency targeting small business creatives. Sheri hosts a regular online video interview program she calls 'Step Up'. Step Up is hosted on her SheriTV site and features online experts and professionals with great advice about how to market your business online. SheriTV is a great place to start your marketing with loads of free advice and opportunities to learn. Sheri interviewed me about blogging, of course, and I was pleased to learn that the episode has already received some comments and shares. Have a listen to the interview here (below) and on my podcast, or visit the interview on SheriTV for the full video experience. Talk to you soon! Don't forget to subscribe to my Business Blogger Tips Podcast on iTunes! | 2/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanA Simple Writing Structure For Your Post | For business bloggers who are just getting started and who don't have a formal writing background, writing an article can be a daunting task. I am often asked 'where do I begin?' by new bloggers who know what they want to say, but who aren't yet comfortable putting pencil to paper. So to speak. I find that it helps to have a structural template standing by for those times when I'm having trouble getting my thoughts out in an organized manner. A structural format is an organized grouping of sections in a template form that will help you write the appropriate components at the appropriate times in order to lead your reader through the story in a way that is comprehensible. When you write in an organized way, your readers will better understand your point and are more likely to engage in your call to action. The following structural template is a good one to get you started, and should help when you are stuck for what to write: Topic: Start with your topic and write it down in headline form. Each word capitalized. This will be the title of your post. Be sure to add a keyword or geographic location for SEO purposes. Introduction: Like introducing a friend at a party, set the reader's understanding of your topic by giving a brief description. Make it exciting and try to appeal to the emotional level of your readers; don't get technical at this point. Be aware of your reader's level of knowledge and be careful not to talk down to them or over simplify. At the same time, you want to keep it simple, short and interesting. Problem Statement: Create a sense of urgency or importance for your reader by discussing the typical problem you are addressing. This, of course, assumes that you are talking about a product feature or service point, and that it solves a particular problem. Explain the problem briefly so that your readers can connect with you around a common concern. Solution: Now present the solution as provided by your product or service. Be clear and concise, you'll be tempted to ramble on in this area, but this is the point at which you want to get straight to the point and keep it simple. Focus on the benefits to the customer, and avoid getting bogged down in technical detail. Details: Toward the end of your post it is appropriate to delve into a few technical details. Bear in mind that this is where you will probably lose some readers, so keep this as brief as possible, and extremely relevant. Use this section to explain how your product works, or how to use your product. Get into some detail, but keep it short. Summary: Wrap it up. Tie your solution to the problem and restate the solution in the shortest terms possible. Make a clean getaway and allow your readers to finish off on an up-beat. Call to action: Always present your readers with a next step. Invite them to contact you for more information at the very least, but try to make your call to action more compelling. Give them a reason to engage, or a link to another section of your blog for more information or a place to engage. There are, of course, as many ways to write a post as there are people. And there is really no 'right or wrong' way to do it. You could easily adopt a standard letter-writing structure, or a short-story format. However, when writing for a business purpose online, I find it helps to stick with a standard and basic structure, especially when getting started. If you would really just rather I read this post to you, subscribe to my weekly Business Blogger Tips Podcast on iTunes! | 8/26/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanLinking Your Billboard To Your Home | I was talking with a blogger last week about her site structure and she revealed that her blog was on a separate domain from her main website. Thinking this is quite common, I determined to spend a few minutes talking about the best ways to link these sites together. For starters, it's important to realize that this is not the optimal setup for a business site. If you have the choice, it will be better to build your site and your blog on the same domain. Nevertheless; if you have two separate domains, you are not too far off from an otherwise sound structure. You'll just have to think about it a little differently. Think of it this way: If you have your blog and business site on a single domain, your job is much like inviting people over to your house. There's only one place to get to, and they can browse around once they are there. There are different rooms in your house, each used for different activities, yet they are all under one roof and considered a single destination. So it's easy to have visitors go from one room to another once they have gone to the trouble to get there in the first place. If you have your blog on a separate domain, it's as if you have put a billboard out on the freeway. You've created an advertisement that helps lead people to your 'house', but because it's in a separate place, there needs to be some instruction or direction on how to get from the billboard to your house. In the case of our business blog, the best way to do this is with a link. Of course. So here are some rules of thumb and a few best practices you can put to work for you. First, think of your traffic flow and make a planned determination of where you want your visitors to go when they travel from your blog to your site. This can and should be multiple destinations. For instance you may want visitors to go to a catalog page if they are looking for a variety of product colors, or you may want them to go to a comparison page if you are showing off some features. You may have a support page where people can find answers to their questions about your business, or you may want them to have easy access to contact information. The important thing is to understand your destinations, and have a plan for when and why you should link to any given page. Link from every post in your blog to your home site. At least once, but to no more than about three pages, and not to the same page for more than one link in a given post. This is especially necessary if your blog is on a separate domain. Some bloggers take advantage of the ease and convenience of a blogroll to take care of links, but these are quickly regarded as 'static', and lose their effectiveness pretty quickly with regard to the search engines (which is not to say that it might be convenient for your readers, so don't abandon this practice all together). Here's an example: In a post containing between 250 to 500 words it is appropriate to have 2-5 links to your home site. Each of these links should be assigned to a different, but similar keyword or phrase in your post. It is appropriate to link different words to the same page, but in best practice you should avoid linking more than 2-3 times to the same page from any given post. Link from keywords and specific phrases. Don't link from phrases like 'click here', because those links will be ignored by the search engines when it comes to indexing your relevance in a search request (in other words; no one searches for the term 'click here', so don't use it). The most effective links on your blog will be those which are continuously embedded in your content, so link from every post to an appropriate page so that your customers, and the search engines, can get from your billboard to your house in as few steps as possible. If you would really just rather I read this post to you, subscribe to my weekly Business Blogger Tips Podcast on iTunes! | 8/5/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanInterview With Mario Armstrong of Sirius|XM Radio | I was featured today on The Mario Armstrong Show with Mario Armstrong talking about business blogging. We talked for a few minutes about small business and the importance of business blogging. Mario asked a few questions of me relating to how or why bloggers fail, and asked me to follow up after a short break with the answer to his question of why a business that already has a website should add a blog to the mix. Here's the interview; I look forward to following up with Mario again in the future. Here's my last interview with Mario. Don’t forget to subscribe to my weekly Business Blogger Tips Podcast on iTunes! | 7/27/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanMixing Business and Pleasure on Your Business Blog | Mixing our personal lives with our business objectives can add an element of personality to our business blog, but it can also detract from our business objectives. While adding personality to your blog is one of the best ways to generate charisma for your products, the question is how much of what is appropriate. As business bloggers, we know we should have a particular emphasis on our products and services, but that can make for a pretty sterile and impersonal blog. We also realize that our personality needs to extend to our social networks in a way that allows people to connect with us as a personal 'friend'. A human being. Nevertheless, it's important to keep things in a professional framework so that we don't sacrifice credibility or create barriers. I've been paying attention to a handful of bloggers and social media marketers and have assembled the following recommendations based on some widespread observations: 1. Subjects to avoid. There are just some things you shouldn't talk about in your blog, or even in your social networks. Avoid three specific subjects: religion, politics, and intimate relationships. There is no quicker way to divide or turn away your audience than to proselytize your faith, denounce a political position, or publicly share intimate pillow talk between a lover. Certainly there will always be supporters or adoring listeners-in, but rest assured there are an equal or greater number of people who are simply turned off. Keep this stuff for your personal accounts and avoid them like the plague for your online business presence. 2. Be personable, but not personal. When you are 'personable', you are allowing your own personality to shine through in your explanations of your products and descriptions of your services. Share your thoughts and experiences in light of your professional life, but be careful not to focus your message to a specific person or get too 'personal'. For instance, we'd love to hear how you have used that product to improve your own life, or that your business has you traveling in an exotic place. But we don't need to watch as you send personal messages to your 'sweet pookey pookums' or listen in on your public pillow talk with your lover; it's just not very professional. 3. Stay on message. It's easy to wander and suddenly find yourself taking about your car or your summer vacation. I just took mine and it's really been on my mind this week; the restaurants, the architecture, the people I met… But I digress. A business blog is not the place to dilute your objectives with peripheral information; start a personal blog for those things and keep your eye on the ball when writing about your products and services. 4. Widen your audience. In a considered sales process, your business blog represents an early-stage communications tool and should be targeting your widest audience possible. You are working on your business brand and digital reputation at this stage and shouldn't be too focused on a specific segment of your total audience. Think of your blog in the same light as a television commercial: there is the possibility that anyone could see it, so your message should be more universally appealing, emphasize branding, and more emotionally interesting rather than specific and technical. When you add personal pleasure to your content you'll find that you'll raise interest but for a far fewer number of people. So there you have it: Be careful when mixing your personal pleasure into your business blogging; it can make things more fun for you, but you may be limiting your reach and turning people away who might otherwise become your customer. Don’t forget to subscribe to my weekly Business Blogger Tips Podcast on iTunes! | 7/23/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanLink Formatting Dos and Don’ts | Linking is one of the most inherent components of the Internet, and a foundation in business blogging. A solid network of links will help strengthen your content and, when done right, will show the search engines that your content is rich and relevant. There are three kinds of links I want to address this week: 1. Incoming Links are the links that point to your site from other sites; 2. Outgoing Links are the links you create that lead to other sites; 3. Internal Links are the links you create that point to other pages on your site. Incoming links from other sites are a strong indication of your site's popularity, and help spread the word as well as improve your search rank. Obtaining incoming links has become an industry gold rush and there are many companies out there working to arrange link exchanges wherein 'they will provide a link to your page if you provide one to theirs'. Avoid these; they are not always relevant and Google warns against this practice saying 'It is not only the number of links you have pointing to your site that matters, but also the quality and relevance of those links.' The best ways to obtain quality incoming links is to: Publish great content that compels your readers to share; repost links to your social networks such as Facebook and Twitter; distribute news and announcements, including links, to appropriate news sites; and participate in relevant discussion forums that allow you to post your URLs. Outgoing links are also a 'quality first' endeavor. Think of these links as you do your personal reputation. Consider how the people you hang out with influence your own reputation; if you are hanging with a 'bad crowd' you'll be considered to be 'one of them' by other observers. If you hang with the science club and play with the chess club in your spare time, people might think you're smart. Your outgoing links are essentially 'the people you hang out with', and will influence your online reputation. When creating outgoing links, consider these three guidelines: always link to sites that are relevant, or in other words are talking about the same things you are, or are extending the same conversation or providing related reference material. Linking to a site that is not relevant to yours is like shouting 'peanut butter' in the middle of a conversation about waterskiing - it is distracting and disruptive, and will be seen as negative by your readers and the search engines; try to link to credible sites that are ranked higher than you are. For instance this might be an article about hyperlinks in Wikipedia, or a link to an article about link exchanges on an established news site such as CNN.com. Always work to link to sites that will improve your online reputation and lend more credibility back to you, either by their established presence or by their page rank; link to other sites from relevant keywords. This will help your readers understand the purpose for the link, and gives the search engines a starting point to measure relevance. Internal links are a great way to strengthen your content. Any time you can relate one post to another it's a good idea. Linking from a new article to a previous post that provides additional background will give your readers a more comprehensive experience while they are on your site, and gives the search engines a network of links to substantiate relevance within your content. Internal links are one of the big reasons it's important to understand how to come up with differing topics while staying on focus; the more you can connect your content, the stronger it will be for your readers and the search engines. Finally, I want to discuss a few technical tips for creating links on your business blog. I have come up with the following guidelines that will help you get more mileage out of your links: 'Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number' says the Google Webmaster Guidelines. | 6/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBusiness Blogging and ROI | One of the big questions I seem to get constantly from bloggers is how to measure the Return On Investments made into building and maintaining a business blog. To be sure; the costs are many. While you can certainly startup a business blog for as li... | 6/15/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanIncluding Links In Your Communications | In a recent survey of business blog users, only 20 percent of respondents reported linking or referencing blog posts from their customer service reminders (such as newsletters). This leaves some room for improvement, and highlights a competitive advantage you can be leveraging to get more traffic to your business blog. It also demonstrate to your customers that you have a comprehensive vision for your online communications. Customers are willing to go to the web for more information from your newsletter at a rate of about 15 percent. This means you can expect roughly 15 percent of your newsletter readers to visit your blog for more information. That's a significant number, and should grow over time as you continue to refine the way you reference your posts in your newsletters. In your next newsletter or business communication, select a few posts in your blog history to reference, and provide a link back to them (if it is an electronic newsletter). Reference the link with an invitation to visit your blog for more details about your news, and save a few important tidbits for only those who are enticed to click through. For example, if you are introducing a new product in your newsletter, reveal and explain the highlight features and benefits, but hold out a few secondary features for discussion on your blog and be sure to explain that your readers can learn more by clicking through. In the same survey I referenced earlier, just over 70 percent of business bloggers reported using excerpts or information from their blogs in their marketing communications. This is a great idea, but you'll want to be careful not to simply copy and paste wholesale content. Work to maintain a specialization between your newsletters and blog posts; use newsletters for your formal news and announcements, and keep your blog on a more personable level. Think of your blog as the place to go for 'the scoop', more information or the rest of the story. Avoid reproducing duplicate content from one side to the other or your audience will discredit the value of participating in one or the other. The bottom line is that your newsletter should have at least a link or two back to your blog to help drive traffic, build awareness and generate interest in looking to your business blog for company information. | 6/2/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanSubmitting Your Blog To Search Engines | As part of the set up and promotion of your business blog, you'll want to optimize the way you get the attention of the search engines. One of the most efficient ways of doing this is to submit your blog to them. Most search engines are designed to crawl the web and look for new sites and new information to add to their index. Only after this process occurs can a site or page be found in a Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Waiting for the search engines to find you can take weeks or even months, and in the meantime you have lost valuable equity in your SEO; longevity is a factor in your page rank. It makes good sense to go to them as early as possible rather than wait for them to find you. Most search engines have a way for you to submit your site to them. Like organizing an open house and sending out invitations to all your new neighbors, submitting your site to search engines is a great way to get your site on the SERPs, faster. The first step is to create a quick plan for which sites to start with. You'll be surprised to find out how many search engines there are on the Web. We get comfortable using our favorite, but it's important to know that there are hundreds of search engines serving niche communities, and it's worthwhile to target the right ones for submission. Start with the Top Three search engines, which currently are Google (86.3%), Yahoo (5.3%), and Bing (3.13%). With these three you have literally covered over 90 percent of the search market (94.73 to be exact). If you are serving the Chinese or Japanese community, be sure to add Baidu (3.03%) to your list. (The links in this paragraph are to the respective submit pages.) There are hundreds more search engines to which you can submit, however from here it becomes an issue of using your time effectively. Search engines below the top three will be serving less than 1 percent of the total market. For search engines below the top three, I recommend focusing on the top two or three that specifically serve your niche. Learn a little about your audience and determine which search engine they are using most. A search for the term 'submit to search engine' will help you find the right place to start for any particular search engine, but note that some search engines don't accept submissions and rely more on your organic links to find you. Regardless of how many you continue to add, being sure to get the top three is your most important step. Getting the top three will help you get indexed with the others as your links cascade through the Search Engine Result Pages, and as your network of external links grows. Don't forget to subscribe to my weekly Business Blogger Tips Podcast on iTunes! | 5/27/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanInterview With Mario Armstrong | I just got off the phone with Mario Armstrong, who you may know from his appearances on CNN, NPR and his own tech talk radio program on Sirius XM radio. Mario is a digital lifestyle expert and really knows his stuff when it comes to small business marketing online. Second only to the virtual hug, my favorite part of our call was when Mario affirmed that a 'blog is the hub' of any social media effort and an essential part of your online presence. I had a chance to ask him a few questions about business blogging, social media and mobile access, and we talked about the importance these elements play in the role of a small business. Mario, of course, offers a handful of social sites he recommends for building your business brand online, and some good tidbits on the importance of marketing your small business with a blog and social media. My appreciation to Mario Armstrong for taking some time out to talk to me. Thanks Mario! I want to share our conversation with you, so here it is (my weekly tip will still arrive on Wednesday, as usual)... Don't forget to subscribe to my weekly Business Blogger Tips Podcast on iTunes! | 5/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanComing Up With Differing Topics While Staying On Focus | You've heard me say in the past that it is important to stick to the knitting, and what I meant by that is that you need to keep your business blog focused on a specific content area; avoid swinging to disparate subjects. Maintaining focus helps you maintain your audience and trains the search engines to comprehend your keywords. So the question comes up; how do I write a variety of interesting posts about my product or service without repeating myself all the time, and without straying too far away from my area of expertise? As a business blogger, your objective certainly has something to do with your product, service, or organization. And every product or service has four primary attributes: Product, Value, Benefits and features. Each of these four categories represent wellsprings of content for your blog. Let's take a moment to define each category separately: Product In the Product category you are writing specifically about your product. This includes basic descriptions and announcements about the product itself, and can include news, testimonials, and usage. Explain your product and describe how it is used. This is a good category to put ideas about discussing new or future products, roadmaps and planning. Value In the Value category you are addressing how your product or service adds meaning to your customer's life. This is where you are connecting with your audience at the emotional level and capturing their attention. Use language that appeals to an emotional want for your product. For example if you are selling a 'door', you would discuss the beauty the door can add to a room, making it more inviting for your guests and showing off the elegance and warmth of your home. Think of the ways your product answers the customer question 'why would I want one?' Note that the Value category addresses why a 'want' is more of a 'need'. Benefit In the Benefit category you are addressing the customer's question of 'What does it do for me?' In this context you are presenting the ways it improves your customers' life. A door, for instance, allows you to walk between rooms, and also allows you to close off a room for restricted access. It also provides security to protect valuables, or can be used to add privacy when needed. Notice that none of these have anything to do with the door itself, but what it does for me. Discussing the benefits of your product makes for terrific short posts that can really connect with your customer. Feature In the Feature category we're answering the question 'how does it do it?' In this case we are describing specific details of our product, and getting a little technical. In my door analogy we're talking about the hinges, the door knob, the design, and the color. Features are specific, and make for an interesting technical post about your product and how it works. Feature articles are not very emotional and address a customer's need toward the end of a purchase cycle, so keep these short and try to tie them into a benefit when you can. For example, I might describe the hinges as being made of stainless steel (the feature) and add that this will prevent them from rusting (the benefit). Take a few minutes to brainstorm content in these areas and write them down for future posts. Every company has a product that creates value by providing benefits, and benefits are the result of how features are used. Understanding these categories is helpful in organizing your blog topics in a way that allows you to add variety to your posts without straying too far away from your main objectives. Don't forget to subscribe to my weekly Business Blogger Tips Podcast on iTunes! | 5/19/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanFive Things To Do With Your Next Blog Post | As we all know, blogging is a great way to establish your business presence on the Web. It is also a strong foundation for your social marketing. What we often forget is that we still have to do some work to get the word out; every time we post. While blogging for your business is a surefire way to get indexed in the search engines, what we really want is an audience to read our news and announcements. And for that we have to add a little elbow grease. There are a million and one things to do to get the word out about your new post, and I could go on for quite a while about them. For now, I want to start off with a basic list of five things you should be doing every time you post to your blog: 1. Share with your Facebook. You knew I was going to say this, but it really has become one of the primary ways to get the word out on the Web. Facebook has become a standard platform for establishing a brand and a launch pad for extending your posts to a share-friendly audience. There are nearly 500 million people on Facebook, more people than most entire countries. I recommend using an add-on in your Firefox or Chrome browser to share to Facebook, or at lease a plugin on your blog that provides share-links to Facebook. If not, you can share your blog post by simply copying the post URL and pasting it into the status update field on your Facebook page. Make sure you make an introductory comment, and don't forget to make an explicit request to your friends to check it out. 2. Share to Twitter. Twice. Sharing with Twitter is another good way to get the word out, especially if you have a good following. Regardless, sharing on Twitter will establish an external link to your site that will be indexed by the search engines and adds to your SEO. I recommend creating a Twitter post that frames your post title in the form of a question, ask for 'retweets', and post a second time an hour or two later, or in the morning, with a revised comment. 3. Post to StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is one of the most effective places to repost your blog; there are nearly 10 million people using StumbleUpon on a daily basis. StumbleUpon allows you to add your post to their system where it gets distributed to members who are looking for specific topics. Think of adding your post to StumbleUpon in the same way as running an ad on a radio station; people who listen to that station will hear your ad and respond with interest. There are add-ons for Firefox and Chrome for an easy way to Stumble your post, but it's not hard at all to visit StumbleUpon.com and add your post by hand. Make sure your post includes a link to your Home page for maximum SEO benefit from StumbleUpon. 4. Publish to Digg. Digg is similar to StumbleUpon in the sense that it is a place where you can republish your post, however it works a little differently; Digg is essentially a popularity contest. When readers see your post they have an opportunity to 'Digg' it. A Digg is a vote, and the more votes your article gets, the closer it gets to the top of the Digg website. As you can imagine, a popular article gets more and more exposure as it climbs the ranks at Digg (being seen by more and more people). If you happen to have a hot article, you can garner a lot of visits to your site, and increase your exposure to a new audience. At the very least, Digg provides a good SEO link back to your site if you have been careful to include a link to your Home page within your post. Post your article directly to Digg.com, or use an add-on for your browser that allows you to Digg articles with a single click. 5. Share with five friends via email. Share your post with five of your most influential friends via email. Provide a personalize introduction explaining your objective to grow your audience and ask them to forward it to their associates. This is basically a request for an endorsement and can be a powerful way to get your message to friends of friends. Email is not dead, | 5/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanFour Ways To Engage With Your Niche | As I discuss blogging with people throughout my day one of the questions that comes up regularly is 'how do I start connecting online?' This question usually comes up right after the light goes on and people realize that marketing on the Web is not simply about broadcasting in a one-way stream of outbound media, but rather about connecting with people in a new medium that provides plenty of ways to generate discussions and relationships. Going back to basics, I rounded up four of the primary methods for getting involved with your online community and establishing yourself as a hub in your niche. Read Subscribe to three other blogs in your favorite niche and read them at least once each week. It's easy to subscribe to a blog feed using a feed reader such as Google Reader, or simply bookmark your favorite places in your browser and set a reminder for a time to read. Reading other blogs in your niche will keep you up to speed on what others are talking about in your industry, and will help spark good ideas for you to blog about in your own. Quote Quoting other blogs is a great way to establish yourself as a hub in your niche, and to demonstrate your connection to the industry. Filter the content that you find on other blogs and quote the interesting parts for your own audience. Make sure you are adding to the conversation by including your own thoughts and assessments. Merely quoting another blog is simply not as engaging as offering an opinion or analysis of the quote. Explain why the quote seemed important or interesting to you, or how it touched your emotions, moved you to action, or caused a change. Quoting is an important strategy for your blog, but is also important for your social media connections as well. Be sure to add some quotes to your Facebook and Twitter pages, too. Link Have you ever been driving around and suddenly found yourself at a dead end with no where to go but back toward where you came from? Frustrating, isn't it? Without links to other relevant sites, your blog becomes something of a dead end; readers can see what you are up to, but have no place to go for more information or related articles. Search engines measure your site, in part, by the number and quality of links you have to other destinations. Adding good quality links to your site is good practice both for your readers and for SEO, too. Comment Making comments on other blogs within your niche is an easy way to create valuable links back to your site, and to establish yourself as an active participant in your community. Make comments often, but work to make them relevant and thought provoking. The more thoughtful your comment, the more credibility you will gain among your community. As you can imagine, reading, quoting, linking and commenting will increase your engagement with your niche, but it will also get your niche engaging with you. Reading and subscribing is noticed by bloggers and often rewarded with a higher level of interaction. Quoting is a basic form of flattery that will not go unnoticed and is often pointed out by other readers. Linking creates trackback links on other people's blogs and adds to your SEO, and Comments not only allow for links back to your site, but provide a brandable connection within the audiences of other bloggers. These four simple actions will help you get engaged with your niche and establish yourself as a hub in your community. Do them often! | 5/5/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanUsing How-to’s And Case Studies To Generate Interest | I was presenting at a meeting today when a gentleman asked me how he could get more traffic and interaction on his site. He proceeded to tell me how he had a complex network of technology performing every task he could imagine, from retweeting his post link to automatically posting to his Facebook page, and creating updates on his home page through a sidebar widget. He had all his ducks in a row. Except for content. He knew the technical steps for getting a blog set up and ready to perform, but as he turned to content, he found himself at a loss. He is posting regularly, but recognizes that his content is less than interesting and, not being a professional writer, he's having trouble priming the pump. For this week's tip I thought I would share with you two of the most interesting and engaging ways to generate content for your blog; How-to's and Case Studies. What makes these easy to look to for a starting point is that they are based on your own experience. And what makes these valuable, if you do it right, is that they involve solving problems or sharing experiences; both of which are interesting to other people. If you don't believe me; turn on your TV and see how many reality shows are based on exactly this. We love to see how other people do it. Let's talk about 'How-to's': There are lots of people out there wondering how to do whatever it is that you do for your business. Whether you are selling a product, selling a service, or selling a dream; there's a how-to to talk about. It can be how to sell the product or service, or how to use the product or service, or how to share the dream. And you don't necessarily have to be an expert to be the teacher; you can share your learning experience, too. Just turn your 'here's how to do it' article into a 'here's how I learned how to do it' article. Make your how-to into an actionable list of tasks, or better yet a video, and you have a golden ticket to generating interest. How to write a How-to article? Simply perform the task, and make a note of every step along the way. Write the steps in outline format and make a comment, explain details, or share a tip on a best practice for each step. Wrap up with the reason why someone might want to do what you are explaining and viola; you have a How-to article! Case studies are also a great way to formulate a quick story that can generate a lot of interest. A case study is a kind of 'how-to' story that involves a personal experience. Write often about how people use your product or service. Doing this requires nothing more than interacting with your customers or even your team members. You'll notice that I started this tip out with an experience that I had with a gentleman that I encountered as part of a regular day. When I had the experience I literally made a quick note on my phone and then presented the idea to you in the form of this post. Putting things in this context helps others understand how to use your product or service, and brings an element of human experience to your insight. Give a specific example of how a specific customer used your product or service. Get specific about the problems that were solved, the steps of the process that were taken by the customer, and how the project or experience turned out for you and/or your customer. You have these experiences every day, and you should write them as often as you can. Think of it as a sort of FAQ and testimonial all wrapped up unto one short article. Include photos of the process, the person, or the product. Make a plan to incorporate a how-to into your business blog, and embellish it with case studies of how your customers relate to your products or services. Who knows; you may just be the next Betty Crocker or Norm Abram; both got their start as 'How-to' articles! | 4/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBuilding Momentum With Your Corporate Blog | Experienced marketers know that much of the cost in getting 'up to speed' with any campaign is in building 'momentum'. Momentum is defined in physics as the quantity of motion of a moving body, measured as a product of its mass and velocity. Basically, for us marketers, 'momentum' means a campaign's size and speed, measured by it's ability to move forward with less and less effort. Think of the momentum you build in starting your car from a dead stop, and where the costs are: When the light turns green you step on the gas a little harder than normal, and expend extra effort as the engine pulls against the weight of the car and everything in it. Eventually, you begin to take advantage of your momentum and can ease your foot off the gas pedal a little bit while still maintaining your speed. The effort you expended up front is now realized as optimization and efficiency. It works much the same way with online marketing and SEO; much of your effort is expended up front, and as your momentum increases you'll be able to take advantage of the fruits of social marketing and viral growth. Here are three rules of thumb for building and maintaining momentum with your corporate blog: 1. Consistent Frequency Create a schedule and stick to it! Establishing a consistent publishing schedule helps set reader expectation and establishes trust for your followers. Consistency in your publishing frequency will also build your SEO credibility and literally teaches the search engines to index your site more often. 2. Consistent Theme As a corporate blogger, you are hopefully compelled to 'stick to the knitting' as Lee Iacocca puts it. What he meant by that is to keep your focus on a single, narrow subject. Corporate bloggers have less of a problem with this than casual bloggers, but it goes a long way to keep your focus on a specific target, and not to vary with the subject of your content. Make your plan up front, refine it to the simplest form and keep your theme consistent. In this way you will define your target market by refining your theme to only what is interesting to the people you want to reach. You'll also reduce the attrition you would otherwise find if your posts float from one subject to another. Like a favorite radio station, your audience wants to tune in to hear what they have come to expect. A change of format will obviously disrupt your momentum. 3. Constant Interaction As with my car analogy, you have to expend some extra effort up front, but you can't just take your foot off the gas once you get up to speed; you have to keep feeding the engine to maintain your momentum. Interacting with your audience is critical for building and maintaining momentum. Everything from responding to comments to reaching out with announcements, invitations, and requests. An important form of engagement includes extending the reach of your posts by republishing to Facebook, Twitter and sites like Digg and Stumbleupon. Engage your audience so that they have a connection with you, and make every effort to invite people to join you. You have to keep inviting people. As most marketers know, you will only convert between one and two percent of the people you approach, which means you have to approach a lot of people. Social media has changed the rules a little bit, and now you can expect that in some cases as word of mouth begins to roll around that you will get adoption from more people with less effort, but the effort needs to remain constant. As you continue to develop your corporate blog, consider a plan to build your momentum. Make sure to build consistency in your publishing schedule and your theme so that your readers and the search engines know what to expect, and never let off the gas when it comes to engaging your audience. Don't forget to subscribe to my weekly Business Blogger Tips Podcast on iTunes! | 4/21/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanHow To Add Credibility With Excerpts, Quotes and Statistics | Adding credibility to your corporate blog post is a simple thing to do and goes a long way to help your reader understand and confirm your claims. You just need to know what to avoid and look to the right sources. Adding credibility to your blog is essential when you are new on the market and need to bolster your claim or support your value statement. Large companies who have well established track records can support their own claims. For the rest of us; we need to look to third-party testimony to add credibility and assure our audience that we know what we're talking about. The idea of adding credibility with excerpts, quotes and statistics has been around for a long time. You see this all the time in more traditional media like TV, radio and print. You'll no doubt remember watching a late night TV commercial with a familiar celebrity extolling the virtues of a new exercise machine or remarkable new insurance plan. And you probably remember that 4-out-of-5 dentists recommend a specific kind of toothpaste, or that 9-out-of-10 doctors recommend a particular pill to cure your headache. Adding quotes to your blog post can go a long way to demonstrate to your readers that you are credible, especially when the quotes are from a reliable source. But remember that one person's reliable source is another person's quack. You'll need to pay special attention to your audience and understand their level of understanding and the level of product sophistication. You won't want to quote the baker down the street to support the safety of that new nuclear power plant, and it doesn't do you any good to quote the guy who claims to have been probed by alien visitors. Practice some scrutiny when looking for quotes and make sure they are relevant to the subject and from a reliable, well respected source. Including an excerpt is also a great way to add some credibility to your claim. The rule of thumb here is similar; mind the credibility of the source and watch for quackery. Excerpting an encyclopedia entry or research article is an excellent addition to your blog, so long as you are sure to maintain the original context and include enough to assure your readers that you are not cherry-picking. Statistics are also a great help when you are communicating efficacy or adoption or some other measurable metric. As with the others, the source of your material will ultimately come under scrutiny, so it makes sense to include statistics from scrupulous sources such as colleges and university studies, or studies performed by established research firms who have a reputation to protect. With each of these methods, watch for the pitfalls of adding someone else's words to support your own; when we include excerpts, quotes or statistics we open the door to logical fallacies, and these can work against you if they are not understood. Building a 'straw man', 'begging the question' or hopping on the bandwagon are the more common logical fallacies that crop up in marketing efforts that can erode credibility in the long run. It makes good sense to understand logical fallacies as you begin to add supporting information to your blog. Finally, I'd be remiss not to add a quick note about permissions. For the most part, including an excerpt, quote or research results in your blog are absolutely permissible so long as you include a source reference and include content that is agreeable to your position. In some cases you will run into information that is licensed or that requires permission before use. In these cases, be sure to apply for permission in the appropriate manner; doing so will increase your credibility and work to instill confidence in your readership. Building credibility often requires the inclusion of a third-party voice to assure your readers that they can trust your information. Adding excerpts, quotes and statistics is a great way to build credibility and establish trust. Just be careful to vet your sources, | 4/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanHow Does Getting Local Help You Differentiate? | Localization is one of the most important aspects of corporate blogging, and not for just one reason; there are many advantages to getting local with your content. The first, and not always the most obvious, is to appeal to the search engines for localized search results. With the advent of mobile devices and their proliferation into the hands of consumers everywhere, search engines have been quick to respond with search results based on location. When you search for a 'haircut', Google is literally taking your specific location into consideration with the assumption that you are looking for a haircut somewhere close to where you happen to be. Some mobile devices offer GPS location to search engines to give an exact position, but most are simply identifying your general location from the receivers, routers and other hardware through which your device is communicating. Companies that blog with specific content about geo-location will gain a better chance of showing up in localized search results. Geo-targeted content is critical in today's search engine marketing. Another important reason to get local with your content is to generate a connection with your local customers. While it's always important to talk about the value your products and services can provide, it's also a great idea to take some time out to talk about the local sports team, culture, landmarks and current events. This brings an element of personalization to your posts, and helps your local audience connect with you in a more personal way; everyone loves where they live and has a connection to other people in their community; emphasize this in your posts and let your audience know that you are one of them. As a corporate blogger, your challenge will be to make your discussion relevant to your business objectives; when you talk about the local sports team or a current event, be sure to establish a connection between your business and the topic, lest your customers see you as rambling or wandering. Finally, another important reason to get local with your content is for differentiation. Remember that you are competing with others online to market your type of product or service, and talking about them specifically will not differentiate you enough to stand out. Adding localization helps you target your product to a smaller marketable niche, and gives your content a uniquely searchable profile. For instance, If I perform a generic search for 'weight loss' I get over 92 million search results that match this term. When I localize for 'weight loss Topeka', I reduce my competition down to 230,000; a mere fraction of the overall competition. You'll find this same dramatic effect for almost any search term. The easiest way to add localization to your blog post is to modify your keywords with the name of your city, your nearest large city, and even the names of some surrounding cities, communities or even developments. Search engines also look for street addresses, zip codes and state names, so make sure to include your full contact information in the occasional post. Adding user-friendly content about your local community happenings is a great way create unique content that will differentiate you from your competition while helping you connect with your local community. Just remember to keep it relevant to your business objectives. | 4/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanAre You Limiting Access? | I met a new service provider over the phone last week. After a few days working with my new contact over email, delivering documents and exchanging questions and answers, there came a time when I was ready to add him to my address book. I didn't have him on the phone with me when it occurred to me to add him, but I knew I had a few emails from him and I had already been to his website, so I was certain I had the information I needed. My first step was to find an email from him where I was sure I could find his number in his signature. Sure enough, there it was, but I couldn't click to copy it because it was embedded in a nicely formatted image. Sure, it looked nice, but I couldn't access the information and couldn't copy it directly into my address book. I use an electronic address book on my computer, and like anyone using Apple Mail or Outlook, I have the ability to right-click on an address to easily add it to my address book. Not in this case, I was forced to retype all his contact information. As a second attempt, I visited his website to see if I could access or copy any information from there. Nope, same problem; there in the footer of his website was the same nicely formatted image featuring his contact information nicely embedded into a graphic featuring a beautiful sunset. Useless. Like many businesses, I do most of my communications over the phone or on my computer, and with over 50 percent of Americans online these days, so are most consumers. So it makes sense that I would take a moment to think about how my contacts may be trying to reach me. In my business, I am in contact with a fairly limited number of people, but I want them all to have direct access to me, so I make sure to include an electronic copy of my name, business, email and phone number. This makes it easy for them to add me to their electronic address books, and to synch this information with their smart phones; right where I want to be when they think about calling me. The same advantage can be taken on your blog; make sure you are providing a way to contact you that is appropriate, and accessible. Many businesses and consumers are looking to your site to quickly find or copy information they need in order to better work with you, if your contact information is hidden, or inaccessible (for instance embedded in an image so that it is not independently copy-able), then you are adding another roadblock for your customers and adding barriers to getting connected. There are reasons you may want to make information inaccessible, and in those cases embedding information in an image is appropriate. For instance if you post your email or phone number online in a normal format you may be susceptible to scrapers; robots that look for this type of information to glean and export to spammers. For most blogs and online marketing sites, I recommend using a contact form that automatically emails contact information to you, where you can then respond with private information in an email or followup call. For bloggers, a contact form is an easy addition to your site and a great way to make sure you are accessible without divulging private information to the Web. Either way, it is important to remember that your blog has a purpose, and that is to engage your audience. Once you determine what level of accessibility you want to provide to your customers, make sure you are providing easy ways for them to get in touch with you. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 3/31/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanDo Your Posts Have Charisma? | I was watching an online drum lesson the other day (I still aspire to be a rock star, someday…), and in the lesson the instructor was addressing showmanship. He gave two examples while playing the same beat. First, he tapped out a traditional beat without moving around. He made sure to emphasize that he was uninvolved by rolling his eyes and appearing as bored as he could be. The result was that the beat he played didn't sound very interesting or fun. After a brief pause to explain the importance of charisma in his delivery, he played the same beat again, but this time added some 'charisma'; he bobbed his head to the beat, swung his arms a little more wildly, and moved his body as if he were dancing. Wow! What a difference it made. Suddenly the same boring beat he had played before came alive. It was somehow more danceable, enticing and engaging. I literally found myself dancing along as I watched. There was no difference between the beats he played, but yet the second version was so much more exciting. Adding a little charisma to your blogs and posts can have the same effect; dress up your story with a little charisma. The dictionary defines charisma as a 'compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others'. Perfect! This is exactly what your blog needs to stand out in the crowd, and just what your message needs to get through the clutter. Adding charisma is easier than you think; all it takes is some personal excitement and a little extra spice. Let your audience know that you are personally excited about the product or service you are talking about, and express your self in fantastic, exciting terms! Get a little loud, and let your readers know that you are jumping up and down with enthusiasm, and that you can't wait for them to try your suggestions. I can't wait for you to try this; It really works! Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 3/25/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanAre You Using Questions To Generate Interest? | One of the leading strategies for building interest in your content is to use a question as your title or headline. Questions are compelling and generate interest. Creating a blog title that poses a question is almost irresistible to most readers and a great way to stick out above the crowd and get noticed; while everyone seems to have something to tell, it is not often that we get asked. When we are asked a question, it is hard to resist giving an answer, finding out why the question was asked in the first place, or learning the reason to an obvious answer. Rewrite your next blog title in the form of a question. If the title of your post is going to be 'Make Your Titles A Question', rewrite it as 'Are You Using Questions To Generate Interest?' By doing this you are turning a definitive instruction into a compelling reason to seek more information. The question on your reader's lips will be 'why should I use questions to generate interest?', and they will be compelled to read more about it. When you share your post to a social network like Facebook or Twitter, you have a limited space in which to describe your post. A question represents the shortest way to communicate the value proposition of your article while enticing your readers to investigate further. The next time you share an article to Facebook, or tweet a link to your blog, add a question to the comment and present the link as the answer. If you have done it right, you should see an increase in interest to your blog from your social sites, and an increase in retweets and forwards. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 3/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanSharing a Video | Everyone knows that video is a great way to get attention, spread the word, or keep your reader's interest. A while ago I talked about wrapping your video in great content to give the search engines something to find. We also talked about adding value to your posts with video, but we didn't address how to find a great video and how to share it. One of the best places to find a good video is on YouTube. You can create your own video, of course, and post it to YouTube without too much trouble. You should give it a try; it's actually quite fun and relatively easy if you have a few basic tools, including a webcam and some editing software. Most newer computers come with everything you need. Finding a video on YouTube is pretty easy to do. Just visit YouTube.com and perform a search in the box at the top of the screen. You can search for anything such as a product or company name, an event, or keyword. Expect to get a lot of hits and to weed through a few videos before you find the perfect one. If you are looking for a company video, you can usually find them posted to the company channel, which will feature a group of videos from the same company or sponsor. Once you have located your video, there are a couple of options for sharing: First, to include the video on a blog page, all you'll have to do is copy the embed code from the YouTube page and paste it into your post. To do this, look to the right of the video and click on the box marked 'embed'. This will open a drop-down section that allows you to select from a handful of options including whether or not to add a frame to the video, what color the frame should be (to match your site) and a size that will work best for your template. Make the appropriate adjustments and simply copy the line of code in the 'embed' box. Paste this code into your blog post and you have now added a video. The video will play right on your site and your readers won't have to leave your page. The other way to easily share a YouTube video is to click the 'Share' tab just below the video. This tab will open a few options including one-click links to share to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. When you click a share link you will be given an opportunity to add a comment to the video that will appear with the link on your social network page. Easy! Sharing video from your company is a great way to spread the word, and is a great way to get a corporate message out without having to repeat it yourself. This can open the doors to a more engaging conversation after your readers or friends have seen the video and have a visual background of your products or services. If your company doesn't have a video posted to YouTube, take the initiative and create one yourself. Be sure to get the usual permissions for copyrights and trademarks, and be sure to stick to the features and benefits of the product without extending your liability. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 3/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanPassing Along Ideas | Passing along ideas is what the Web is all about. When you post information to the Web, or discover something of interest that someone else has posted, you want to share it, tell your friends, and get the word out. You see this all the time with articles, of course, but it works well for events, discounts and all things funny or clever. What I want to talk about in this post is how to share the information we create or discover in a way that makes it compelling for others to read. After all; there is no sense in taking the effort to share if there is little chance that your recipient will take a look. A few weeks ago I shared some insight into adding personalization to your posts in order to make them more compelling to our readers. The same rules apply when sharing a link, and especially when sharing by email. We have learned from Twitter and Facebook that adding a brief descriptive introduction to our posts makes it more likely that others will participate. Whenever you share a link in Facebook, for instance, you are provided with a comment box in which to add your own comment. Twitter works the same way, allowing a very brief comment to be included so that others will know what the link is about. Incorporating these skills into our other communications is a great way to get our audience to engage with us, particularly in email. I get forwarded emails all the time, and a good percentage of these are links to articles that my friends and associates want me to see. I appreciate them, but sometimes all I get is a single link, with no explanation or no lead in that tells me what I am getting into. I hate getting these... Why? Well, for starters it creates some apprehension against even clicking on the link in the first place. After all, this is how a lot of phishing sites deliver their spam; an email with a lone link, lurking about in the off case I will just click it out of curiosity. I never do, and neither should you. My point is this; without a brief introduction to the link you are now competing with spam emails for attention, and if you are like me you usually discard them without a second look. You don't want that happening to your communications. Another reason is that as the reader you are committing me to look at the link 'cold', which means you have missed an opportunity to influence my perspective on what I may be reading. By sharing your enthusiasm, sympathy, or excitement about an article you are linking to, your readers will instantly become more interested. And that makes for good business! We are constantly barraged with information, and when it takes more than a second or two to process the 'hows', 'whys' and 'whats' of a message we often tune out or discard it. This happens whether you are on Twitter, reading an email, on the phone or speaking in person. The best way to get your audience to engage with you is to engage them first, and all it takes is a quick introduction of the information you want to share to turn it into a conversation. Here's my protocol for success, in the context of an email. Let's assume you are forwarding a link to your blog post, or to an interesting article you have found on the Internet. Make your subject line descriptive of the action you are taking, just like you would start a conversation in person: 'Here's an Interesting article for you to read'. But don't stop there; add a descriptive line in the body of your message, ahead of the link. Something that conveys your feelings about the article whether you are excited, empathetic, or displeased. Something that connects your reader to the story and either makes it important to them or generates some interest: 'I read this and thought you would be interested because you have had a similar experience'. The more personal you can make it, the better. The idea is two fold: 1) you are working to generate genuine interest, and 2) you're trying to persuade or prepare your recipient's perception. | 3/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanAdding Images to Spice Up Your Post | A picture is worth a thousand words, and while I usually emphasize writing good content so that your blogs are indexed by the search engines, adding some visual spice is always a great idea. Adding images to your blog is easy. In popular blog platforms such as Wordpress there are tools that allow you to easily upload a small image into your blog. Once you have uploaded an image, you can also make some adjustments including the padding or spacing around the image so that your words don't bump right into the image, and the justification so that you can position the image to the right, left, or center of your post. Uploading the images is fairly easy. As a quick note, the most common and easily used images for your blog are .JPG, .PNG, and .GIF. JPG is the most preferred, and what is generally produced by most digital cameras and screen capture utilities. What I find to be the hard part is in finding an appropriate image to include with your post. Just the right image can add volumes of context to your post. Funny or abstract images are my favorites, but there is certainly good reason to add clarifying images, or those that appeal to emotion. There are plenty of places to look, but the first thing to be aware of is copyright laws. It is illegal to simply steal an image from another person's website or library without permission. Doing so can get you into trouble, but there are several ways to avoid this problem. The first is to pay for an image. This costs money, of course, but is a safe way to get high quality images for your blog. My favorite site for purchasing images is iStock.com. Another way is to use your own photography. Most of us have digital cameras these days so it is relatively easy to plan ahead, take a break from your computer, and host your very own photo shoot. I have done this in a variety of ways and I've had a lot of fun doing it every time. Of course you don't have to go to elaborate lengths to create the perfect photo; sometimes a simple picture of a flower in the back yard, a window reflecting the sky, or a fencepost will do. When blogging for your business, stock photos of your company's products and the ways they can be used are good images to include, and are often available from your company website. Another great place to get photos is Flickr. Flickr.com is a great source of photos taken by regular people from all over the world. You'll be amazed at the quality and breadth of the photos you can find on Flickr. A great search tool for finding photos on Flickr is called Compfight. Just go to compfight.com and perform a search for the image you are looking for. Compfight takes care to search only those photos that are labeled for public use, however you will still want to be sure you are using a photo that has been given a Creative Commons license, meaning it is open source and available for use without payment. Some restrictions may apply, so always double check. Adding an image to your posts is a great way to spice up your content and give your readers a little extra fun to look at when they stop by your blog. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 2/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanPersonalize Your Post | I was in the grocery store the other day watching people in front of me edge their way toward the cashier. As each person presented their handful of items to the clerk in the express lane, the clerk would offer a short and friendly personal greeting. 'How are you today', 'That's a lovely sweater you're wearing', 'The bananas look good, don't they?'. Each time a person approached her, she renewed her smile and made it sound fresh. I was impressed. I actually thought 'certainly she can't keep this up all day', but then I realized that yes, she probably could; there is no shortage of things to say when you personalize, and no limit to the amount of interest you can generate when you add a personal touch. Imagine you were standing there in line in front of me, and as you approached the clerk she paid you a compliment on the color of your shirt. You would instantly feel a personal bond and would be compelled to engage with her, perhaps thanking her for the compliment, or maybe telling her a short story about where you found it, or that it is also your spouse's favorite, or that all your shirts are this color because you love it. And so it goes for blogging. Adding a personal touch to your posts will not only help you bring interest and life to your stories, but it will help people identify with you on a more personal level, and will compel them to engage with you. Creative writing is a challenge for most of us, but retelling a story can come quite naturally. I find that one of the best ways to blog is to simply retell a story in my own words. Personalize it, and give it my own personal perspective. When you find a story that is worth passing along, don't simply retell the story word for word; reinvent the story from your own perspective. Give new insight, posit new theories, and offer extending ideas. An easy way to do this is to insert yourself into the story. As I did in my opening story; you probably envisioned me standing in a grocery store line waiting for my turn, and probably have a mental image of what the clerk might have looked like. By telling you about my place in the story, you became connected and your mind engaged. At least I hope so... The people around you are most interested in hearing what you think about a story, not necessarily in the story itself. It's your personalization that really brings it home for your audience. The next time you post content to your blog, or to a social network like Facebook or Twitter, take care to add yourself to the story and watch how others get engaged with you. Can you believe I record these things? Give it a listen and tell me what you think: | 2/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanWrap Your Video In Content | A popular thing to do these days is to add video to your blog. This is a great idea because it adds some visual flair to your site and gives your readers a good reason to stick around. Especially if the video is interesting, funny, or noteworthy. The most popular and easy way to add video to your site is to embed video from YouTube.com. It's easy to do; simply find a favorite video on YouTube and copy the embed link you'll find just to the right of the video. Clicking on the embed link opens a drop down menu of options you can select to change the way the video looks, including border colors and sizes. For those of you using Wordpress, you'll want to drop this bit of code into the HTML editing view in your post window. Change back to the visual WYSIWYG editor to add some content. Add some content. This is really the gist of my tip this week; video alone is not enough to satisfy the search engines' hunger for written content. While video is fun for us humans, it doesn't leave much for the search engines to index; search engines can't watch and understand videos. So no matter how many you have on your site, the search engines will pass you by if you are not including the written word. So even though you have added a great video to your blog, it's important to add content, too. Next time you add a video to your blog, take just a few extra minutes to add a description of the video underneath. Give a quick explanation of what your readers will see in the video, add your thoughts or opinion about the video, and make sure to use a handful of keywords. You only need a paragraph or two to give the search engines enough to go on, and the mix of video and written content will assure that the search engines are as happy as your readers. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 2/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBlog Your Newsletter | I was reading the annual Content Marketing Spending Survey by Junta42 and was surprised that the list of content products users plan to take advantage of has Enewsletters and Blogs at a dead heat for second place. If you hadn't guessed, first place is occupied by 'Social Media' including Twitter and Facebook. The report surveyed 259 marketing professionals and asked them where they plan to spend their time and money in the coming year. A full 72 percent mentioned social networks as part of their marketing plans. Importantly, social networking was the number one position for marketers. Online newsletters and blogs are listed as second, with 63 percent saying they are engaged with these types of marketing tools. Another interesting result of the survey is that the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh positions of the report were strictly content, in the form of white papers, articles, case studies and online video. The reason I was surprised that newsletters and blogs are tied for second is that blogs can be used as a newsletter, effectively killing two birds with one stone. I think it is both important and telling, too, that the positions just below 'Blog' are specifically content, all of which can be distributed via a blog (supporting my long-time stance that a blog is the foundation of any online marketing campaign). There's no doubt that a newsletter is a great way to stay in touch with your audience, and there are certainly reasons to use a newsletter. However if you are already a blogger, you may not have known that you are already on the way to hosting an newsletter. There are two ways to deal with this, and both help you leverage the concept of a newsletter or broadcast to deliver your blog content to your audience, and to attract them back to your site for more information. The first way is probably already built into your blog, especially if you are using a ListPipe solution, or the popular Wordpress software. It's called 'RSS', and it's a built-in way for people to subscribe to your content. RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication', and it's a web standard that most browsers support automatically. When a visitor comes to your site they have an ability to subscribe to your RSS feed, and can receive content from you in their own browsers every time they post. If you are using a ListPipe or Wordpress solution for your blog, simply type the word '/feed' after your URL in your browser, and you'll be asked to subscribe. Using this simple technique will allow you, and your readers, to receive an automatic update whenever you post new content. Another way to deliver your blog content to your readers is to use a subscription service such a Google's Feedburner. Feedburner is a free blog service that offers a subscription management tool. All you have to do is start a Google Feedburner account, and then direct people to your Feedburner subscription form to capture their email address. Whenever you post content to your blog, Feedburner will automatically email your readers with your article right in the email. With Feedburner you also have a number of tools that allow you to manage your subscribers including adding and deleting them. Don't worry about the management headache; Feedburner handles unsubscribes for you with a handy link at the bottom of every email they send on your behalf. So if you are a blogger already, you are already ahead of the crowd when it comes to delivering an newsletter, you just need to make a few adjustments and let your readers know.Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 2/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanSticking With It | As we move into the second month of the year and our New Year's Resolutions begin to fade into our busy schedules and habitual routines, it may be time for a quick reminder to keep it up! Marketing online is a relentless pursuit, and even the tiniest of breaks can literally break the chain. In particular, when blogging you risk loosing the attention of the search engines if you stop posting great content on a regular schedule. Your social networks, too, depend on your constant attention in order to maintain a top-of-mind presence in the minds of your followers. In my experience, most bloggers start off with strong intentions and then begin to wear out after three to four weeks of posting. Now is the time to pull ahead of the crowd and reinvigorate your online efforts. Here's a few quick tips to keep your blog alive and your networks growing: 1. Create a schedule for yourself. Make a note in your calendar and set aside a specific time to organize, write and post to your blog. Also, make sure to set aside a specific time each day to check in on your social networks and to repost a few items. Set a calendar reminder and stick to it. 2. Organize your effort. Posting to a blog is a complex task and requires at least a little bit of planning for even the best of us. Take a moment to establish a plan for your weekly posting routine. Identify a process that suits you and practice following the steps each week. For instance; set a timeline, and make a list of items to check off for each post. Your items might include 'Brainstorming', 'Defining a Topic', 'Research', 'Writing a Draft', 'Editing', and 'Posting Live'. Whatever your routine; get it down on paper and follow it each week. 3. Keep in Mind. Through your week you will be inspired by new ideas and topics to write about. Be prepared to recognize these moments and have some tools on hand for capturing your fresh ideas. Make a note on your phone, or keep a pencil and paper handy. Train yourself to recognize new ideas and to capture them for later blogging. 4. Don't Cheat. It is tempting to cheat a week or two and procrastinate, especially at this time of year when the sky is a little extra grey, and the cabin fever starts setting in. As we all know, this is the first step to failure, and the first opportunity for our competition to get the upper hand. Don't let them have it! Stay true to your plan and work hard to meet your schedule. As soon as you let yourself slip, it gets a little harder to get back on the saddle, and before you know it all is lost and you are starting over. Take a few moments to reset your commitment to blogging and social marketing, and you'll be glad you did as you pull ahead. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 1/27/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanTasks, Goals and Objectives: Understanding the Structure of your Plan | It's the new year and you are hitting the ground running with your online marketing plans. While everyone else is talking about what to plan for, I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about the structure of your plan. It seems that all we hear about at this time of year is 'goal setting', but most of us rarely pause to consider what goal setting is, and how it relates to our online marketing plan. Whether you are concentrating on social media, your marketing blog, or a good old fashioned email marketing campaign, it helps to understand the difference between Tasks, Goals, and Objectives. Let's break 'em down with a quick analogy: When playing a sport, for instance 'football', your objective is to 'win the game'. This is your overarching reason for all the effort and sacrifice you invest. While playing football, you win by making goals. Simple enough; you achieve your objective by setting and reaching goals. A goal can be scoring a point, or a goal can be to post to your blog on a regular frequency. Finally, goals are made by executing tasks. A task in football might be to count to 'three alligators', run ten steps and turn around to catch a ball. In your business a task is the smallest increment of work that helps you achieve your goal. In this case it might be 'writing a post'. Your Strategy is the plan you assemble to organize and complete your tasks and goals in order to achieve your objectives. So as you contemplate your social media strategy, first outline your objective by asking yourself 'What do I want to accomplish with all my effort?'. It may be a specific financial objective for your business. Next, determine the goals you need to set in place that drive your progress toward your objective. Goals are shorter term, and you need to have several if not many of them. Tasks are the basic components of your goals; the actual 'doing' that gets the job done. Many tasks comprise a goal, and many goals comprise an objective. Note that the most important aspect of Tasks, Goals, and Objectives is that they are all specifically defined, measurable, and timed. Like a three legged chair; without these three elements, you do not have an achievable task, goal or objective. Of course you can always save yourself the time of performing many tasks by signing up for a ListPipe account. ListPipe provides regular customized content to your Wordpress blog to give you a leg up in your online marketing effort. We'll do all the research and writing for you, and all at a very affordable price. Check out http://listpipe.com for more information. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 1/6/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanOnline Marketing in 2010; Content is King | A few weeks ago SEO.com posted a review of the top ten Internet marketing strategies for 2009 and it got me thinking about what we might be planning for 2010. We have spent a good deal of time discussing social media networks like Facebook and Twitter; it seems these have been all the rage this last year and for good reason. However I don't see these networks carrying the excitement throughout 2010. I agree these will remain important facets of our online marketing, and they will continue to be an important way to reach a close circle of friends and followers with your message. Facebook and Twitter have achieved staple status and aren't going away any time soon, but the early adopter wave is over and the laggards are now catching on. I see these as must-have commodities toward the end of 2010, but not the primary differentiators they were for 2009. Facebook remains as the king of social networking, and new business tools being developed will help businesses take advantage of groups, pages and fans. Watch as Facebook evolves into a more mature business tool in 2010 as professional users give this environment the credibility it deserves as a powerful business forum. Twitter is a great place to make quick announcements, but watch this space continue to evolve as a research platform where an instant pulse can be taken for messaging campaigns and streetwise advice. I remain convinced that blogging will again shine through as the king of online marketing. Content is King of search results and there's just no better way to present frequent, relevant content on the internet. There are a lot of people blogging out there, but many have yet to find their groove, and most are still trying to capture an audience. Blogging is the perfect mix of story-telling, presentation, discussion and debate. For those that can concentrate on their niche and present content that is interesting, engaging, and optimized for search engines indexing, you're blog will be the primary differentiator that sets up the reason to use Facebook and Twitter for your 2010 online marketing. As always, your basic plan should be founded on a regular blog with featurettes and announcements going out as often as possible to your Facebook and Twitter audience. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 12/30/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanDifferentiation; Getting Noticed in a Crowded Marketplace | As the year comes to a close, I wanted to spend a moment looking forward with a few ideas to add to your strategy. With more and more marketers blogging these days, it's getting harder and harder to make a splash in an otherwise crowded marketplace. But that shouldn't stop you from having a plan to blog about your business in the coming new year. With search engines concentrating evermore on organic writing, high frequency and relevant keywords, the notion that 'Content is King' should be the foundation of your marketing strategy for 2010. Here is my quick list of reminders and tips to make your blog really stick out: Organic Writing: Search engines are looking for original content. When you write on your blog, Facebook page or Twitter, your content is being scoured by the search engines and compared to other relevant content. When your content is deemed to be unique, you are awarded a higher organic status than with content that is copied or reproduced, and placed higher in the search results for your given topic. Ways to make your content more unique, and more organic, include adding localization, personalizing information such as your contact address and phone number, putting the story into your own words, and allowing your own personality to shine through in the content. Frequency. You have heard me talk about the importance of frequency before; basically the more you post, the more popular you will be in the search engines. This is a good time of year to establish a new goal to step up your frequency, and to expand your posting ritual beyond your blog to Facebook and Twitter. You should be posting once per week at a minimum, and more if you can. For serious marketers, I recommend posting twice per week with a daily post to both Facebook and Twitter. Relevant Keywords. This, too, seems to be an overworked mantra. However, including relevant keywords in your content is the single most important way to let the search engines know where to include you in search results. The start of a new year is a perfect time to make a list and check it twice; revisit your keywords by doing a little research on what your customers are searching for, and physically write them at the top of your writing template. Review them often and include a selection from the list in every post. If you are a business blogger and are looking for great SEO content for your blog, consider a subscription to ListPipe; in just a few short minutes you can get us started writing original, personalized content for your blog that is search engine optimized and linked to your primary website from relevant keywords. Take a look at http://listpipe.com Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 12/23/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanOptimizing Your Keywords | Working with keywords has always been important, but now that Twitter and Facebook are being indexed by search engines, it's even more important to watch what you are saying, and to optimize for the best possible result. Keywords are the terms and phrases in your posts that are most relevant to your topic. For instance if you are posting in your blog about a healthy food product, then your keywords will of course be the product name. But don't stop there; keywords will also include the product category, the product ingredients, and can also include the ways you can use the product. Your ultimate objective with keywords is to make a connection between your content and the terms your customers are searching for. While many customers search for generalized terms, some search for very specific terms. When you stick with the generalized terms on your site, you are competing with a million other sites for those terms. However, when you make your terms more specific, you reduce the number of competitors and open the door for more attention, albeit from a smaller crowd. The wisdom follows that you would like to get more interest from a smaller, more focused set of customers than from a very small portion of a larger but less focused set. Would you rather be fishing with a big net in the ocean, or a small net in a barrel chock full of exactly the fish you like? Let's talk about a few ways you can optimize your keywords... Keyword modifiers can help distinguish your product from a competitor's, or can help refine your search for a more specific term. For instance you may add the word 'chewable' or 'drink' to your product name to help distinguish its specific product type. Adding words like 'healthy' or 'natural' can help refine search results for people looking for specific categories. Modifiers are intended to make your keywords more specific, and thereby reduce the number of competing terms. Associative Keywords are keywords that are related to your keywords, but that may not be precisely related to your product. For instance if you are selling a healthy food, you will want to add keywords that relate to proper digestion or good nutrition. These types of words will come naturally in your discussion, but it helps to be aware of them so that you can concentrate on using them in slightly more density than you might otherwise. As you contemplate your keywords, don't forget to consider misspellings or alternate spellings. If your keywords are hard to spell, or have a common alternative, intermingle these in your post to help the search engines identify your content with what your type-challenged customers may be entering into the search window. Finally, remember to use localization terms with your keywords. The search engines are including localization tags in all their search results, meaning that it matters where you are from and where you are selling. Localized search results are relatively new and many users are only just catching on; this is a great way to get ahead of the curve and take advantage of local searches for your product. To add localization to your keywords, simply add the name of your city, state, and zip to your keywords. Keep your keywords in mind as you write in your blog, on Facebook and Twitter. Optimize everything you write so that as the search engines index content from these sources, they know exactly how to match you up with the customers searching for your products. Looking for a great way to start a business blog? Check out our new Business Blog Content Service from ListPipe; We'll get you started with a blog and even write the content for you, every week! Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 12/16/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanThinking Through Your Conversion Goals | For any marketing website, conversion goals are the single most important feature, so understanding what conversion goals are is the first step in building an effective web marketing campaign. A conversion goal is basically a step in your sales process. Specifically, it is the 'next step' that you want your customers to take when they visit your site or complete a previous step. As we talk through this, remember that a conversion goal and a sales process is not necessarily tied to the sale of a product; we could easily be talking about supplying a service, generating a membership, or asking for simple participation. In this context, your 'sales process' is the collection of steps you want your visitors to complete, and a 'conversion goal' is a milestone of that process. Bear in mind, too, that a conversion goal can be the completion of a single step such as the visitation of a specific page, or the completion of the entire process such as a sale or a signature. In a nutshell, a conversion goal is the specific task you can measure that demonstrates when you have achieved success. The easiest way to come up with your conversion goals is to ask yourself 'What do I want my visitors to do when they come to my page?' Examples of conversion goals can include any of the following: Completing a form Making a payment Forwarding information Subscribing Leaving a comment Note that on a website the measurement of a conversion goal is in loading a specific page. For instance if your conversion goal is to complete a form, the measurement of that goal may be the loading of a 'Thank You' page that is triggered when the visitor hits the submit button. In this way you are measuring the results of an action that confirm the action. When it comes to blogging, you'll want to think through your conversion goals each time you write. Ask yourself how your subject is going to support your conversion goal, and how you can direct your readers to complete it. In this way you can support your conversion goals with links, calls-to-action, and supporting information. Every post should contain some form of direction toward your conversion goals, and you should be focused on measuring them for success. Oh, by the way: Subscribe to my blog (in the upper right corner) to receive these weekly tips via email, and look for me on Facebook and Twitter. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 12/2/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanEncompassing The Opportunity | Social Media Marking is all about marketing your tangible and intangible assets through social networking tools. You do this by engaging and interacting with your fans. So in this basic definition of Social Media marketing we have defined three basic elements: Assets, Social Networking Tools, and Fans. Let's take a look at these, and think about using them all together to encompass the opportunity to engage and interact. First are your assets. Assets in this case include everything you want to market, from the tangible (your website) to the intangible (your personality) and everything in between. As you perform your social media marketing, be aware of your assets, what type of asset they are, and when it is best to market them. For instance, when you are meeting with someone in person for the first time, you are working at a very emotional level, which is the best time to focus on your personality. Focus on getting to know the person and remember to be genuine. Once you get to know a person, or have time to engage with people online you can focus more on driving traffic to your website to learn more details about your products and services. Second is your social networking tools. The three I most commonly address are your blog, Facebook, and Twitter. These are of course the most common and most important tools, but don't forget that your social networking tools including business networks like LinkedIn, and even entertainment networks like YouTube. Start with your blog by posting original content that is relevant to your cause, and then repost and engage your audience with that content on Facebook and Twitter. Make sure your connections on LinkedIn know what your business is doing, and have some fun creating interactive content on YouTube. Even Facebook allows you to create video now, and it's a fun way to get your fans involved and to generate interest with creative communications. And Third is are your fans. Fans are everyone from family and friends to employees, channel partners distributors and customers. Everyone is a potential fan, so watch for opportunities to interact and engage with them. Primarily, look for opportunities to include the people you meet in all your social media networks. Whenever you meet someone in person, ask them for a card or information so you can follow up, and invite them to participate with you in your social networks. I often get invitations the next day from people I meet at an event. I was a little uncomfortable with this at first because I wanted to maintain a private network of close friends, but I soon learned that I could create a robust network of friends and business associates, and that people in either category could participate with me in the other; in other words; you never know where that next opportunity will come from, so work to capture them all. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 11/25/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanGenerating Clicks From Your Social Networks | As you repost your blog content to your social networks, one of your big concerns should be getting traffic to visit your site. One of the best ways to encourage the people in your social networks to click through or even share your content is to add interest. Spice it up a bit. This isn't to say that your original post isn't interesting on it's own. But I've been doing a few experiments and reading around on this subject lately and there are two distinct ways I have discovered for building interest and gaining clicks. One I'll call 'The Introduction', and the other 'The Tease'. Think about the last movie trailer you saw on TV or at the cinema while you were waiting for the feature to start. An interesting clip swaths the screen that frames the story and piques your interest, followed by an alluring sequence that stops short of the big payoff. The premise is interesting to you, and you are intrigued by the possible scenarios that might play out from what you just saw; Will they get their man? Is he a good guy or a bad guy? Will she find out the truth? By the time the roll is finished you lean to your date and whisper 'We've gotta see that one!' What you have just experienced is a well-crafted introduction, and a big fat tease all rolled into one tantalizing taste of what may come. Years of refinement and research have gone into the creation of the common movie trailer to make sure you are interested in the premise, and wanting some answers. If you could buy tickets right now you probably would. Enter the re-post: Reposting is when you transfer content from your blog to your social network, for instance Facebook or Twitter. Your intention is to share an excerpt from the article and get people to click back to your blog to read the rest of the story. For the untrained reposter, it is simply enough to restate the title of the post and to include a picture. But you'll need an edge to get past the onslaught of posts and tweets that face our social associates. Use the movie trailer formula for the best results. Whenever you blog, repost the content twice to each of your social networks; this will let them know that you are excited about the information. Make sure the first one introduces the subject of the post. I have found that writing in the form of a question is the best way to get attention and to set up the intro. For instance if you have posted an article about the nutrition of applesauce, you might write a short introduction in the form of a tantalizing question: "Does an Apple A Day Really Keep The Doctor Away?" Your readers will be compelled to find out, and are more likely to click through when there is something to find out. In your followup repost, take an excerpt from the article and give your readers a small taste of the story. Make sure it is compelling and that it generates more questions than it answers. For instance you might write "My doctor says that an apple is one of only three fruits he recommends…" In this case you want your readers to be interested in the rest of the story. Of course the most important thing is to include a link back to your original article. Practice makes perfect, and don't be afraid to experiment with the types of questions and excerpts you post. It will take a while to get the hang of it, but as long as you stay with the proven movie trailer formula it is sure to pay off. If you haven't started a blog yet, check out ListPipe for SEO blogging. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 11/18/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBuilding Your Social Network | I was at the Utah Social Media Awards last week and had the chance to listen to David Bradford give the keynote address on his experience and expertise in making connections in social media marketplaces. I have have first-hand experience working with David and can attest to his uncanny ability to connect with people; he reached the Facebook maximum limit of 5,000 friends within a few months of starting his account. The amazing thing about David and his many connections is that they are all personal; he can identify each of his friends and in most cases can describe where they work and how they met. David is a remarkable networker. He is also a very successful businessman, and he credits his success to his connections. In fact, during his keynote he stated emphatically that it's not 'What' you know, but 'Who' you know. David says this, too, from a position of authority; he was Sr. VP of General Counsel for Novell for over 15 years and is currently CEO of Fusion-io, an up and coming storage technology company that Wall Street thinks will be bigger than IBM. So tonight I wanted to share a few tips I've learned from David and other successful online networkers. 1. Use Facebook and Twitter: The two most successful online networking environments are Facebook and Twitter by a long shot. There are other tools to use online, and it's OK to use them, too. But if you are not on Facebook and Twitter, you are missing the boat. They are both free, and if you haven't gotten on already; get started right now. 2. Be diligent: You're going to have to work at it, so plan on spending at least 15 minutes a day in your online environment making connections, organizing, and expanding. Successful entrepreneurs I have spoken to spend anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours on social networking. Log in once during the morning hours, and once again later in the afternoon for maximum exposure without spending too much time all at once. 3. Concentrate on connections: Make it a goal to expand your connections. There are a number of ways to do this, but primarily you want to look for people you know and connect to them first, then start making connections with friends of your friends. David makes it a point to collect business cards at every event he attends, and he tries to connect with those people within a day or two. It is not only an impressive tactic, but very effective in creating an ever-expanding circle of valuable connections. 4. Share pertinent content. Let your circle of connections know what you are doing, but be sure to concentrate on what really matters; Let them know of your progress, success, announcements or experiences that are interesting and engaging. Ask your friends for help when it comes to hiring, making plans, or looking for information. Always share your blog posts. 5. Be careful about your opinions: If you are using your connections to build success, remember that when you pick a side you are probably offending about half of your audience at any given time. It's a good idea to avoid discussions about politics or religion. No matter how neutral you are trying to be, someone will get ruffled. Building a network of contacts is a rewarding and important facet of your ability to succeed. Some say 'critical'. It takes some work and effort, but I couldn't agree more with David when he says "It's not what you know, it's who you know". Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 11/11/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanCreating Good Links | Linking is an important and effective SEO technique that allows you to explicitly associate keywords with a specific page on your site. By creating links you are directing both your readers, and the search engines, to the pages you deem most relevant to your keywords. Linking is the best way to direct your readers to your conversion objective, and a great way to share what SEO experts call 'authority'. The links in your content are very much like your personal social connections; They are a reflection of your site personality and an indication of how well you are connected. 'Authority' works much the same way as a popularity contest; when you hang out with the most popular kid in school, some of that popularity rubs off on you. If you play it cool, you can build on that popularity-by-association to create your own independent popularity. Because links are so important, it is important to know how to create good links. Here are a few tips: 1. Link Volume: The number of links you create in a given blog post is important. If you maintain a ratio of about one link per hundred words you will be at a maximum recommended density. Any more, and you risk being seen as a spammer. Any fewer and you are not taking full advantage of your linking opportunity. 2. Words to Link: Concentrate your linking on keywords and phrases, but don't link more than once from the same word or phrase within the same post. Don't be afraid to link from multiple words, but make sure they are a searchable phrase. You don't want to link from phrases such as 'Contact Us' or 'Click Here For More Info' because there is no SEO value in these phrases and you are wasting potential authority. 3. Placement: Provide links from the keywords in the most convenient places to better serve your readers. At the top of your article, in the first sentence is a great place to provide a link because it is convenient, and is most likely to be reproduced in excerpts. 4. Tagging: Tagging your links is the process of providing the content that appears when you hover over a link in a blog. This content is important to the search engines and provides an opportunity to clarify your keyword. Always add tags to your links, and juice them up with keyword modifiers such as your geographic location, your business name, or an additional keyword. For example, if you are linking the word 'guitar' you might tag it as 'Fender guitar in Chicago'. 5. Destinations: To impart authority from your links to a specific page, you will of course want to link to that page as often as you can. However it does make some good sense to mix it up a bit and direct links to various places around your site as are relevant. It is also a good idea to link outward to other relevant sites; don't just link to yourself, link to other sites that can add to the value of your reader's experience. Link to research, supporting comments, or additional resources that add value and relevancy to your content. 6. Finally, make sure you test your links after you have posted. Dead links will count against you, both with readers and search engines. Simply visit your live article and check through the links you have created. If you find a problem, fix it right away. Links are a critical foundation to blogging, and an important aspect of your search engine marketing. Make sure you are adding good quality links to your content for optimal organic growth. If you are a small business, ListPipe can provide SEO marketing tools that take the work out of blog marketing. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 11/4/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanAdding Value with Videos and Podcasts | Video can help build traffic to your site, as can podcasts. Whenever you add interesting content to a blog posting, you are adding value for your readers and giving them a more compelling reason to share your content. You also give them more reason to stick around and find more things on your site. There are three basic ways to add media content to your site. One: You can embed content from a video site like YouTube.com. YouTube in particular has made it extremely easy to share a video to your blog by providing embed code right there on the same page with the video. All you have to do is copy the embed code and paste it into your blog. Add a few written comments about the video and you have a sticky post that will capture search engine attention and give your readers something to watch. Pretty easy. Two: You can create your own videos to post. This, of course, is a little more complicated, but can be worth the effort because you are posting your own unique content that cannot be found anywhere else. This is a great way to share video of an event that you attended or interview that you have conducted. Making your own video will require that you have a few tools, and a little know how. You'll need a camera and video editing software. Most newer computers come with the basic tools to edit and post a video. Facebook has a video posting option right in their online account options, and YouTube is a great place to post your videos for sharing around. Three: For those of you who are camera shy, audio podcasting is another great way to add unique content to your site. It's not as exciting as video, but it doesn't always have to be; the podcast industry is going strong with audio content that attracts millions of subscribers. One of the best ways to use an audio podcast is for an interview. An advantage of doing an audio podcast is that you don't even have to be in the same room to complete the interview. I prefer to do my interviews over the phone using Skype and Sound Recorder, which gives me a podcast-ready file as soon as I am finished with the call. Regardless of the type of media you include with your posts, adding an additional level of interaction for your readers make your content more interesting and provides a greater opportunity for viral sharing. A few ideas to consider when posting video or audio content to your site: Keep it short and simple. A long podcast starts to really drag on when you have things to do or get distracted. If you produce your own media, try to keep it to 10 minutes or less. Keep it clean. We've all encountered tasteless jokes or less than upstanding content on the Internet. These kinds of things are dangerous in a business setting and are sure to offend someone. Your best bet is to keep your content family friendly. Watch for copyrighted material if you are republishing from another source. YouTube and some of the other popular video sharing resources are a safe play. Be careful of sharing private videos or videos that are owned by a corporate entity. Always ask permission when in question, and get a response in writing. If you are creating your own content, make sure you add your own brand and present a call-to-action at the tail end of your presentation. Direct your visitors to a website where they can followup with you, and keep in mind that others may share your video, so you always want to provide a way home for friends of friends. Spice up your blog with a video from YouTube to get started; it's pretty easy. Once you get the hang of it, branch out into creating your own videos or audio podcasts. Your readers will appreciate you for it. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 10/28/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanLegal Symbols and Special Characters: Readability and SEO | I was doing some copywriting research this last week and ran across a site that is making a lot of mistakes with their use of trademark and registered trademark symbols, as well as using special characters in their brand name. They are also missing a great opportunity to take advantage of common search engine mistakes to help bring people to their site. Here's the rundown on a couple tips and tricks for any website copy that deals with copyrights or registered trademarks as well as for product or brand names that have special characters or that are hard to spell: Let's start with the trademark symbol. You have seen this on nearly every product brand, and it is always included in copywriting to ensure that legal ownership of the brand is established. While it is a good idea to include a trademark symbol in your copy, it is a terrible idea, and completely unnecessary to trademark every instance of the term. Over-use of the trademark symbol (™) or registered trademark symbol (®) in your copy will render it cumbersome and your readers will give up sooner than they might otherwise. The other problem with using these symbols is that practically no one uses them in their search terms. By tacking these symbols to every use of your product name or brand you are limiting the relevancy between your posted content and the actual terms people are using to search for your site. I recently found a web page containing only three paragraphs of copy with 20 trademark symbols scattered throughout. I found the page very difficult to read and quickly became distracted by all the clutter. The solution is to trademark only the first instance of any product or brand name on any given page. By doing this you establish the legal ownership of the trademark and leave the successive instances free and clear for easy readability. Another common problem I see is the use of special characters. You may have an umlaut or circumflex character with a line or dots over the top of a letter, or cedilla in your term with a small tail hanging down like in the word 'façade' (with a tail on the 'c'). In these cases you may be tempted to incorporate the unique character for the sake of your brand, but be aware that almost no one will use it in their search, and the simple addition of a strange character can change the searchability of a word. Like the solution for trademarks, use the special character in the first incidence of the word, and then use a more common spelling for all subsequent uses of the term. Next lets quickly explore a brand-relate SEO tip for words that are hard to spell: When writing about a product or brand name, make a point to notice whether it is easy to misspell. Words don't need to be hard to misspell, for instance some defy common practice by simply re-ordering letters that are more commonly used in a specific order. Take for instance words that are spelled with 'ea' like 'read' or 'instead'. A unique brand that uses the reverse of this (as in 'AE') may find that a lot of people are misspelling the term in their Google searches. This is an important consideration. The solution: You may actually want to incorporate misspellings of your own terms to help capture additional search traffic, or to ensure that people who accidentally get it wrong are still able to find you. I don't recommend misspelling your primary brands on your home page, but you may do well to miss one or two at the bottom of an occasional blog post. It is true that in many cases the search engines will recognize a misspelling and direct traffic to the appropriate place, however you also need to consider that competitors may understand this tactic, also, and may be optimizing their copy to take advantage. To find out if people are searching for misspellings of your brand, go to the Google Keywords Tool and do some research on misspellings. You will certainly be surprised at the number of searches that occur for misspelled words. | 10/21/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanPlanning A Blog | Many people I work with know that they want a blog, but haven't the slightest idea how to get started. Even seasoned veterans need a plan to build a successful blog presence on the Web. So for those of you who would like to get started on a new blog; here is my recommended plan for getting started: 1. Determine Your Direction. This is an obvious first step, and is essential to work out before you go any further. Basically; what are you going to blog about. Write your idea for content down on a plan document, and get specific. It may not be enough to say you are going to blog about 'humanitarianism', you may need to get specific and identify what type of humanitarian you want to be in your blog, or define a specific direction you would like to go with 'humanitarianism' such as 'children in Africa'. Be specific and define a direction for your blog. 2. Define An Objective. Next you will want to supplement your Direction with an objective. In this phase of your plan you are defining why you are blogging. Do you want people to join your cause? Do you want people to donate to your foundation? Do you want people to purchase a product from your site? There are a million and one reasons why you might be blogging, and there are certainly no wrong answers. The important point is that you define your reason so that your effort has purpose, and so that you can measure your success against an objective. 3. Decide On Your Imagery. Time to spice up your site and create a personality. Do you want your site to be stale and corporate? Do you want to be flowery and ethereal? Are you trying to match another site or are you branding with an established image? Spend some time working on the graphics of your site. Take into consideration how you want to be perceived and work to support that perception with graphics that will present you as serious, fun, or part of a greater movement. This is a great time to add your own personality and to develop a brand around the content you will post. 4. Line Up Some Keywords. As you begin to blog, you will want to focus on your Direction and Objectives. Now is a good time to do some initial research and determine the keywords you will want to include in your content to communicate to the search engines, and your readers, about your relevancy. It is a good idea to include at least a few keywords in every post you make on your blog, and to concentrate those keywords around your plan. Go to Google's keywords tool and do some research. Find at least three keywords to begin with, but don't be shy about making a list of between 10 and 15. More than 15 or so will be too difficult to manage; let your natural organic discussion incorporate peripheral keywords that will naturally slip into the conversation. 5. Where To Host? Right about the time you are ready to implement your new blog you are going to be faced with the decision of where to put it. You can establish a free blog at Wordpress.com or blogger.com, or you can download software from Wordpress.org and create your own blog on your own server. You will also want to determine whether you want to host on your own domain, or whether the free sites offer an adequate URL for your objectives. I prefer hosting my blogs on my own domains, and my favorite place to do this is at Bluehost.com. Bluehost provides excellent hosting services and allows you to obtain a domain name for free as part of your sign up. If you are testing the water with a new initiative, you may want to go with one of the free sites to start, but move as early as you can to your own domain before you establish roots. 6. When To Post? As part of your plan you will want to determine a schedule of when to post. Again, there are no wrong answers here; you can post once a year, or once an hour. The more frequently you post, the more often the search engines will visit your site and index your content. For a basic Search Engine Optimization, | 10/14/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanFrequency, SEO, and Wasting Time | How often should I be posting new content to the Web in order to maintain my search engine optimization, while providing enough information without being too annoying? This is a good question because there is definitely a line in either direction. You need to maintain a minimum frequency with your content in order to keep the search engines interested in your site, and there are times when information overload can become a hindrance to your objectives. Let's take a look at a few areas where frequency is an important factor: First, let's look at blogging. To understand why frequency is important to your blog you'll need to understand how the search engines work when it comes to indexing your content. Search engines provide a service based around a product. The service is a search tool, and the product is a page of results. Search engines know that you want results that are current, and so they strive to deliver content that is as new as possible. Here's where frequency comes in: Each time you post to your blog, the search engines regard the information as 'current'. It doesn't take long in today's information environment to become 'yesterday's news', so it's important to keep feeding the machine (so to speak). You can literally train the search engines to visit your site regularly and often by the frequency of your posts. The more frequently you post, the more often the search engines will visit your page and index your content. If your site remains stagnant, the search engines determine not to waste valuable search time looking at your site and they will schedule their checkups less often. This will hurt you when you finally do have some news to post, and the search engines don't pick it up right away, and by the time they do; it is 'old news'. My recommendation for blogging is to post to your blog once each week at a minimum. If you are using Facebook as a way to remain connected and to market or announce your business opportunities, there are some guidelines to follow here, too. Posting too frequently will have a tendency to drown out your more important messages, while posting too infrequently will allow your friends and associates to slip away and loose contact. For Facebook, I recommend posting at least once per day, but no more than three. I also recommend that you make as many comments on your friend's posts as possible. Check in to your Facebook account once in the morning, once at noon, and once in the evening. Make a few comments each time you check in, but don't get in the habit of wasting too much time: Facebook is a great tool, but it can be a real productivity killer and wastes a lot of time if you don't manage it well. For Twitter users; you are in the fast lane. Twitter posts go by at a mile per second and you'll find that your posts are gone almost as soon as they go up. It would be easy to spend a lot of time on Twitter, and there are those who would argue that the time would be well spent. However, we can't all be on Twitter all day long. My recommendation to get the most out of Twitter is to check in and monitor during your first hour of the day, and to check in again at the end of the day for a short while (monitor for about 30 minutes). These are the busiest times of the day and are a great time to connect and chat with Followers, and the best time to get your posts in front of more people. With Twitter you'll want to post and repost a few times during a 30-minute period. This will ensure that the most people see the post in their feed. Retweeting other messages is a great way to get a conversation going, and a good way to catch the attention of other readers. Start your sessions by engaging with other posters, and then post your own message while people are watching. Ask for retweets, and share the love. It is easy to get caught up in your posting, and there is a real potential to waste a lot of time doing it. Keep your eye on the ball, | 9/30/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanUsing Facebook Video | This week I talk about Facebook Video. It's a relatively new tool that is easy to use and provides a great way to create a personal video that can be shared and commented via Facebook. Why Facebook? Facebook is the most widely used social network on the planet with over 300 million active users. It is just remarkable how many people are using Facebook to connect with friends and share their message. By this virtue alone, Facebook is a great place to share your personal and business message. Hopefully you are already among us. Why Video? Obviously, video is a very personal medium that allows your friends and associates to see you deliver your message. While it removes much of the anonymous nature of Internet communications, it also opens the door for a more personal touch and allows people to see that you are genuine about your message. And it can be fun, too! How? It's pretty easy; you simply go to your Facebook page and click the 'Video' icon just below your status update window where you normally type a new message to your friends. Clicking the video icon will expand a window that presents two options; you can either record directly from your webcam attached to your computer, or you can upload a video that you recorded with your handi-cam or iphone, or whatever. Selecting the webcam video will expand the screen and open a small permissions box asking for permission to access your video camera. Once you provide permission, the window will open a video stream and you'll probably see yourself right there on your Facebook page. Don't be alarmed; we're not recording yet and no-one can see you. You'll want to straighten your hair and fix your collar before selecting the red 'Record' button at the bottom of the video screen; once you do this, you are recording. So be ready. When you are finished recording your message, click the 'Stop' button (now in the place of the record button) and you are finished. You now have the ability to review the video, delete the video, or share the video with your Facebook friends. Easy! Here's a quick video I made of the process: Note that there are a couple things you will want to do to prepare… For starters, if you plan to record from a webcam, you'll obviously need one attached to your computer. Many laptops and monitors have them built right in these days, or you can always purchase one to add to your desktop. They start around $30 and go up to about $300. The cheap ones are plenty good for doing an occasional Facebook video. You'll also want to have a basic script of your message so you don't waste a lot of time trying to think of your next item. You'll also want to do a double check on your background to make sure you are not revealing anything in your home or office that you don't want to be broadcast publicly, and you'll want to send the kids outside and turn off your cell phone so an accidental interruption doesn't ruin the perfect take. Finally; get out and give it a try. Just say 'hello' to your friends to get started. Create a outline of what you'd like to accomplish and make a plan to share a message on a regular schedule. Before you know it, you'll be a star. At least on your own Facebook page. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 9/23/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanLocalizing Your Content | In April of this year, Google announced on their GoogleBlog that they had become more 'local'. In a nutshell, this means that the search engine is now more aware of where you are, geographically, when you search. This is a great benefit for us as search users because it means when we search for a 'haircut' or 'bakery', that the search engine will return a list of locations that are physically near to me. Google knows where you are searching from by matching your IP address to a local router registry. If you are using an iPhone or Blackberry, the nearest cellular tower or your GPS will deliver the information Google needs to give you localized results. Let's review a few ways you can take advantage of localization to help your online marketing: 1. For starters, we can let Google know where we are located in our blog content. Whenever you mention your home town, state or zip code on your blog, Google will index this information and cross reference it with the keywords you are using. Next time someone searches for a 'haircut' in '90210', Google will include results that it can find with that specific information. So make sure you occasionally include your city, state, and especially zip code. 2. Another great way to take advantage of localization is to specifically modify your keywords with your city or state. If your keyword is 'haircut', start writing it as 'Los Angeles haircut'. Clarify your location by occasionally writing 'California haircut', or get clever with ways to insert your zip code by writing a sentence like 'find a haircut in the 90210 zip code area'. Notice in this sentence I have added a keyword phrase (find a haircut) and associated it with my zip code (90210) and clarified by actually writing the words 'zip code' in the sentence. Google will eat this up. Occasionally I like to extend my local area of coverage by using the names of cities near me, or by including the name of my county or local landmarks; 'Don't forget to visit Disneyland while you're in the Orange County area'. 3. Differentiation. One of biggest reasons you will want to include localization in your content is to differentiate yourself from other providers of your product or service. If you are writing about 'haircuts' as often as another blogger in New York City, there is little to differentiate your content from each other. Localization allows you to create unique content and to reduce the number of people you are competing with on the web. Rather than compete with haircut shops across the nation, you now have the ability to reduce your competition to only those shops in your geographic region. And most of them haven't caught on to localization, so now is the time to take advantage and lay down some tracks. You may be saying to yourself: 'That's great, but I have a product that can be sold nationally or internationally. That's great; you can still take advantage of localization. Think of it as a way to start and home and expand. What I mean is this: because localization is such a great way to differentiate your content from others not the web, you can start by localizing your content for your own city, and then progressively begin to include the names of places that you want to grow your market. Don't try to take the whole world at once; focus on specific areas of opportunity, for instance a specific metropolitan area or maybe a specific region if your product is popular to a particular culture. 'Haircuts' are pretty universal, but perhaps you sell snow machines and can leave Florida out of your geographic strategy. You get the picture. So there you have it; a few tips on localization. Note that this is a relatively new opportunity, and not many people have caught on to this. Get started right away and start modifying those keywords with your local city and state. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 9/16/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanContent Personalization | One of the best ways to engage your audience, and also to attract the search engines, is to personalize your content. Make it different, and add some of your own personality to make the story interesting. First, lets talk about the search engines. Search engines love fresh, unique content, and the best way to attract them is to produce unique custom content. But there is not always time to create your own stories, so we often reproduce or repurpose stories we find on the internet. An example of this may be in reposting a news story. Reposting a story verbatim is a bad thing for a number of reasons, primarily because search engines hate duplicate content. Reproducing a news story verbatim is particularly bad for you because the search engines will most likely find the story at the news site first, and then give you a bad mark for copying it. Instead of just copying and pasting the news story, try rewriting it or summarizing it in your own words. Add your own perspective and commentary, and try to offer a new view of the circumstances. In this way you are personalizing the story, and giving the search engines something unique to add to their index. The next group to worry about is your friends and people you socialize with online. Personalizing a story adds your own personality and provides your friends and associates with a different perspective. It's a great way to add interest, and to continuously build upon your personal brand and online personality. Your friends already watch the news, so they may have already heard the story you are discussing online. What they don't have is your personal perspective, and therein lies the interest, and your opportunity to create connections online. So next time you are looking for something to write about in your blog or social networks, find a story that is interesting to you on a company site, news site, or competitive blog and rewrite the story in your own words. Make sure that you don't simply rephrase what the originator posted, but rather add your own commentary, opinions and perspective. In this way you will create great custom content for search engines, and interesting posts for your readers. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 9/9/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBuilding Links For SEO | You have probably heard that having links pointed back to your website is good for your search engine optimization. This is very true. If you are marketing from a website, the more links there are pointing to your website, the more popular it appears to be to the search engines. Think of this as a kind of 'popularity contest'. The search engines rely on popularity to help determine how valuable your site is to potential searchers. Although this is not the only criteria the search engines use, this is an important factor in your overall online marketing approach. It goes like this: search engines are delivering a product to their customers, and that product is search results. The search engines know that you are looking for the most relevant sites possible, and they know, too, that people who find sites to be particularly relevant, they like to link to them. Search engines track the number of links there are to any given website, and use this information to help determine where to place the site in the search rankings to give their customers the most relevant sites to choose from. A site that has more links is deemed more valuable to searchers, and is therefore given a higher priority than a site that has fewer links. To be clear; this is not the ONLY way a search engine grades a site, and there are certainly cases where more links gets trumped by some other data point. Nevertheless; links are important and it makes sense to build as many quality links as you can. So, how to build links? There are a couple ways to get you started: Make comments on blogs. Find blogs that discuss your market topic and get involved. Make comments on their posts as often as you can. Most blog sites will allow you to add your URL to the comment. If they don't, move on. When you do make comments, make sure they are thoughtful and that they contribute to the conversation; you don't want to be seen as an annoyance. Get involved in forum discussions. Forums are a great place to get involved with other birds of a feather, and allow you to make successive comments. In most cases, you can include your URL in each of your comments. Again, make sure you are contributing to the conversation and building your credibility with valid comments. Don't get into arguments, and try to avoid being critical of other people in the forum. Basically: Play nice in the sandbox. Post news to free news sites. Whenever you post content to your blog, make sure you are taking advantage of opportunities to repost your content. There are a number of free sites out there that allow you to post your news and articles. For news, simply do a search for 'Free News Posting' to find a list of sites that allow you to post for free. For regular articles, use sites like StumbleUpon.com, Digg.com, Delicious.com and even Facebook and Twitter. Note that all of these sites are free. All it takes is a little elbow grease and your site will begin to shine. A final point: Make sure you choose your sites carefully. As a popularity contest, your reputation is built on the reputation of the sites from which you are linked. The more popular the site, the better. Like being a good friend of the most popular kid in school, you get some of the credibility from the leading sites. Conversely, links from bad sites known for spam or suspicious practices will tend to hurt your site. So be selective. Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 9/2/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanFour Basic Steps For Doing Your SEO Research | Here are four basic steps you can perform to conduct some basic research for your online marketing campaign. First: Define your topic: What are you planning to market, blog, or discuss? Create a niche for yourself and try to stay within its boundaries. Chose a topic and write it down. Be specific, and actionable; for example you might write 'How humanitarianism is helping children in Africa'. Now you have something to look to whenever you are at a loss for what to write about. This is a simple first step to your overall plan and an essential element of your focus. Second: Find keywords. Keywords are the cornerstone of your search engine marketing. Search engines like to know what you are talking about, and they look for keyword terms to help establish your topic and to create relevancy for you in the search indexes. Whenever you search for something in Google, you are using keywords. Start with the terms you know your customers will use to find you when they perform a web search. You can find additional keywords by using an online keyword tool. I recommend http://google.com/keywords. In this tool, simply type in a keyword that you are aware of, and Google will give you a useful list of related keywords that you can use to build your content with relevancy. Don't forget to look below the first list for 'related' keywords that will help you extend your content. Third: Analyze your competition. Go to competing websites and see what they are doing. Read their content and learn the lingo, discover keywords, and look for hot topics. Now you have a flavor for what is going on in the industry around you, and a better perspective on how your topic is being positioned by your competition. Fourth: Get Involved. Seek out relevant sites and start participating with them. This can even be a competitive site, but should be a community site or forum. Twitter and Facebook offer great places to start, but seek out independent blogs or even product sites, and get involved. Getting involved means making comments and entering discussions. Many sites provide a place to make comments, and most will give you the opportunity to link back to your own site. This is a perfect opportunity to create a link from a relevant site, but you have to work for it, and that means participating with valuable input. Your involvement will produce new ideas to write about, and gives you a ground-level understanding of what others are thinking and saying about your topic. Be careful about what you say; be participatory, and not angry or aggressive. Even if this is a competitive site, remember that you will gain credibility if you participate with new information and valuable insight that adds to the conversation and helps others. To recap: Start your own SEO research by doing these four simple tasks: Define your topic (be sure to write it down) Find relevant keywords using google.com/keywords Analyze your competition by visiting their sites regularly Find relevant sites and participate in the community discussion via Facebook and Twitter Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post: | 8/27/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanFinding Topics To Write About | One of the hardest thing for most of us to do is to find something to write about. If you are not a natural or practiced writer, this can be the primary debilitating moment of your online marketing. Like me, you may get frustrated after staring at a blank screen for hours with no creative output. We all know Content is King, so this is a big issue and needs to be resolved for our online social marketing to take off and become effective. Services such as my own ListPipe help by writing great content for you, and then personalizing it so that you can have ownership over the resulting snowball as the content rolls out to your friends and friends of friends. When developing your own online content, look to sources in three areas: 1. Company or Corporate Website. There are plenty of stories, news items, and lists of product features on your corporate website to create a story from. Simply pick a product that you like and write a short story about a single component, for instance a single feature or benefit. One of the reasons we get writer's block is because there are too many options. I learned this lesson when I used to tell my daughter to clean her room; on some occasions there was so much for her to do that she simply didn't know where to begin. The job becomes easy once we learn to break it down into bite sized chunks; work on the shoes first, then move to pants, and then shirts, etc. Choose a single feature or benefit, and start from there. No need to do more, just stop at the one item if that's all you can do. 2. Relevant News Sites. Look to news sites that cover similar topics as your own, and then give your own opinion about the industry news. You should have a handful of related websites in your browser bookmarks, and you should be browsing them occasionally to see what others in the industry are saying. Frequently you will come across a new story that sparks your interest or raises your motivation to comment. Perfect! Copy a portion of the story and write a paragraph about your thoughts or opinion on the excerpt. 3. Listen to Your Community. Watch your Facebook or Twitter accounts to see what others are saying about your products or marketplace. Again, this is a great opportunity to formulate an opinion and write about it. Better still, look for opportunities to clarify your friends' statements or opinions with your own research; referencing other websites and adding research to a social story is a great way to create content and a great way to build credibility for yourself as a researcher-in-the-know. Post it to your blog, and then announce it back to your Facebook or Twitter community. Finally; one of the barriers to writing is feeling overwhelmed by a false expectation. Particularly with volume; many start an article feeling a need to write a 1200-word article with research, references and footnotes like we learned (and hated) in school. This is not necessary. Shoot for articles between 250 and 300 words. This is three or four paragraphs, or about half a page of writing. Most of us speak this many words in less than a minute of conversation. Next time you are on the phone with a friend, make a note of any comments you feel might make great content for your next post. In summary; look to your company website, relevant news sites, and your social network for great ideas to write about. Hate to read? Listen to this week's podcast social media marketing tip of the week right here... | 8/17/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanOrganic Marketing vs Pay Per Click Advertising: Effort vs Cost. | 'Organic' is a term used to describe marketing that you do yourself. The kind of content that grows as you work with it. I like to describe 'Organic' marketing with an analogy; I describe it like growing a garden. You prepare the ground, plant some seeds, and tend to them with water and nutrients. You continue to do this for a while until things start to grow and produce results. Harvesting is a carefully planned event, and usually doesn't happen until lots of work and waiting has been done. The analogy works because, Like a garden, 'organic' marketing takes time. It also builds equity that can be leveraged later, much like the produce from your garden. 'Pay Per Click' advertising is when you buy clicks on the internet through a provider such as Google. You pay Google a budget amount, create an ad and define some keywords. Google places your ad in appropriate places on the Web. Google depletes your account as people click on your ad. Google provides your ad in places where it will be most likely to be of interest. The best thing about pay per click advertising is that you can often see immediate results. The bad thing is that you are not building any equity, and as soon as your budget runs out, your ad is gone. The best practice is to begin an organic campaign right away in tandem with a PPC campaign. This can be in the form of a blog, or a news page on your website. While doing this, start your pay per click campaign simultaneously to give yourself an instant boost. The pay per click will help fill the gap and get you a spike in activity while you slowly ramp up your organic content. Think of this like going to the store to buy enough food to hold you over until your garden starts producing. As your organic campaign gains speed, you can reduce the amount of money you are spending on the pay per click marketing. Eventually, you should be able to rely more on the equity you have built, and less on the paid placement. I explain in a little more detail in the following podcast: | 8/7/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanSpreading The Word With Facebook | A Facebook account is one of the most valuable tools you can use as a corporate blogger. Sharing your content with friends and family is the first step in getting the word out that you have new content to read on your blog. This also gives your friends and family an opportunity to support you by posting comments and reposting to their friends. If you haven't started a Facebook account, there is no time like the present to get moving. You won't want to be the last one aboard, and I think we are down to the final ten. If you are one of them, click here to get started with Facebook. Why do you need a Facebook account? Facebook is a great way to stay connected. You'll connect with friends and family, reconnect with old buddies, and meet new acquaintances. Most importantly, Facebook is a great way to remain in touch with a larger group than you otherwise could manage. Sharing your blog content with your greater audience of friends is a great way to spread the word, get good feedback, and even test the waters among people who will give you some encouragement. How to share on your Facebook account? It's easy, and it's free. All you need to do is get an account; just visit http://facebook.com and complete a quick form. Look for a few friendly names and you can be up and running in just a couple of minutes. Now all you have to do is 'share' your content. Sharing is fairly easy, and can be as difficult as copying the URL for your post and copying it to your Facebook account (not really THAT hard), or installing a plugin to provide a simple button that will automatically publish your post to your Facebook account. A couple of Wordpress plugins that I really like for sharing include Social Bookmarking Reloaded and Add To Any. I like Social Bookmarking Reloaded because it is easy, and allows you to select the specific icons you want to show on your posts. Add to Any is my current favorite because it reads your reader's browser history and automatically displays the icons they use the most. It also includes an email forwarding option, which is a great idea. When should you share your posts with your Facebook friends? Every time you have new content on your blog. Plain and simple. Social media marketing is easy to do, but requires diligence in order to be effective. Get in the habit of sharing your posts as often as you create them. Your Facebook friends will become regular followers in no time. Using FireFox? Use Facebook toolbar to make it even easier to post your blogs to Facebook. I use this toolbar every day and have grown to depend on it because it is so convenient; I can post to Facebook, stay in touch, or make some comments without the hassle. It saves me time and keeps me in the loop. I talked about Facebook in this week's tech call with Paul Jensen. Here's an excerpt: | 7/8/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanDealing With Keywords; A Quick Tutorial | The concept of working with 'keywords' in your blog content can seem overwhelming and difficult for beginners, but is really not that hard. There are three basic steps to incorporating keywords into your content: Research Creative writing Linking Before we get into those, let's talk about 'why'. Keywords are basically the anchor text of your article that help readers, and search engines, determine your relevance. In terms of 'relevance', there are no wrong answers; you are not trying to be relevant to a common standard. Rather, you are trying to be relevant to your own chosen topic. For instance; If you are writing about 'humanitarianism', you will want your keywords to be relevant to the subject of 'humanitarianism'. Relevant terms could be 'philanthropy' or 'charity'. Conversely, you will want to avoid a concentration of key words that are not relevant such as 'Brittany Spears' or 'horseback riding'. Unless, of course, your humanitarianism involves giving a horse to Brittany, but you get the picture. It all has to do with 'relevance'. Relevance is how closely related your keywords are to the subject you most want to be indexed for in the search engines. As the search engines scour your post for relevant keywords, they will choose the predominant topics and use those to index your article. In this way, a reader can find you when they search for 'humanitarianism' in a search engine. The key for you is in making the relevant keywords within your article easy to identify. The easier it is for a search engine to determine the keywords in your article, the more prominent you will be in the search results for your given topic. Research One of the most daunting tasks in effective blogging is in finding the most appropriate keywords. It's not that hard, but does take a little 'know-how'. The first steps in your research are to determine the subject of your article, to outline topics, and to write down your assumed keywords. Assuming keywords is easy; just imagine what your audience might type into a search engine in hopes of finding your specific article. Next, you'll want to conduct some scientific research to confirm your choices, or to find viable alternatives. A great tool for this task is found at http://google.com/keywords . The keyword research tool at Google is as good as any, and takes advantage of Googles remarkable collection of data. Once you enter your assumed keyword idea in their form, and get past the annoying-but-necessary captcha, you'll be presented with a spreadsheet of data that now requires some study. Listed in order of relevance, with the most relevant term at the top, you will see a list of related terms with information about how much competition there is for the term, and how many local searches and global searches have been conducted on the term in the last month. Your job now is to find keyword alternatives that have a good balance of competition vs hits. The higher the competition value, the more the keyword is used in other blogs and the lower the chances are for you to stick out among the crowd. High competition keywords are tempting because of the high number of hits they usually receive. However you may do better by selecting a low competition term and shooting for a greater piece of a smaller pie. You don't necessarily need to avoid high competition terms, so long as you are working in the lower competition ones, too. Note that further down in the spreadsheet you will find a list of alternative terms that may help in your creative writing exercise. Creative Writing Perhaps the most difficult step in your effort to incorporate keywords, creative writing now requires that you come up with a story, and develop the ability to include terms in an appropriate density. You'll want to include as many as 10 percent keywords to your SEO copywritng. Tricky, but over time it becomes second nature. Ten percent may be a bit too much for some articles, | 6/29/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 50 Episodes |
Customer Reviews
Simple tips for all types of businesses in a brief sound bite.
Clear, usually concise, and easy to follow directions on how to blog for any business. The advice given stays in style. Thank you for helping with my blog all these months!
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