So often, we want to focus on writing great content in order to grow our blogs. But we can sometimes forget why social media works so well; because it connects people....
For many businesses, social media can seem to be this mysterious black box that they don't really understand. But a recent conversation with my friend Tim Jackson reminded me that social media really isn't as mysterious as many companies think....
Blogging for business is huge these days. When done well, it's a great tactic for engaging your visitors, facilitating conversation with your audience, attracting links, and getting more pages to rank in the search engines for relevant terms. But there are some key functionality areas you need to address when incorporating a blog with your main website....
Do you do any link building planning? Planning as in mapping out locations you want to get links from and developing strategies around upcoming events? If you're not, you may want to take a look at what one company has done to capitalize on anticipation. The goodwill, media attention and inbound links they generated from one small commercial is priceless and worth it's weight in gold....
One thing I love about blogging is that it gives a small business the ability to quickly and easily build awareness for itself online. This is exactly what Amrita Chandra is doing to get the word out about her Toronto-based art gallery, Tinku Gallery.
If you use Twitter, then you might have heard of a new microblogging site called Plurk. Both services are alike in that they are both microblogging sites, in the same way that a Jeep and Ferrari are alike because they both have four wheels. But just as Twitter holds potential for you to grow your business, so does Plurk.
Perhaps the most important area of a business blog, is its content. How you position your blog's content can greatly determine how successful it will be, and this is a lesson that hasn't been lost on Newcastle Square Realty.
Online, reputation is everything. It drives you professionally, personally and algorithmically. Have a good reputation and your efforts will be rewarded through growth and customer loyalty. Develop a bad one and you'll spend precious time and resources trying to recover lost market share. While it's impossible to monitor every venue open to public opinion, you can work to protect your reputation by registering your known brand/name with as many social media, forums, and discussion sites as you can, especially the popular ones in your niche....
Can you tell someone how many visitors your blog gets every day? Do you know how many people access your blog via a feed on a daily basis? If so, great, but that's only the surface of understanding your blog's traffic.
Think all you have to do is create great content, and readers will beat a path to your blogging front door? Think again. One of the best ways to grow your blog, is by participating on other social sites.
Sphinn is a social site for search and interactive marketers. It's designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others. If you're an Internet marketer with a blog you will quickly understand that the referrals your get from Sphinn are very often more qualified than ones from Digg or Reddit....
While plug-ins for the WordPress blogging platform are in abundant supply, I try not to depend on too many of them due to the fact that I don't want to have to worry about them breaking every time a new version of WordPress is released. That being said, there are four plug-ins as well as one adjustment (or hack) to the post template itself that I feel are essential in order to have a great WordPress experience. ...
Thanks to the lowering cost of technology, it's now possible for any small business owner to create and share videos with current and potential customers online, for less than $200. This also gives small business owners several exciting new options for growing their businesses.
This week's site clinic focuses on a relatively young blog, BeFitAndStrong.com. Blog owner Curtis Penner is doing many things very well, and I'd like to take some time to point those out as well as suggest a few improvements he can make to better reach his goals. As much as we learn from our own (and other people's) mistakes, we can also learn a lot when we see something done well....
Whether you're Barack Obama or the Associated Press, this week has been about cleaning out the proverbial skeletons in the closet. Obama launched a website called Fight the Smears (.com) in which he debunks and clarifies false rumors about himself and his family. The Associated Press is bringing legal action against bloggers for using too much of the AP's content in their blogs. Also, ClevelandSEO.com points to The Karcher Group as a good case study for domain name changes; The Karcher Group has been blogging in detail the trials and tribulations associated with transferring their domain name to TKG.com....
This weekend I was reminded of how quickly ideas can generate buzz and discussion on social media sites when a blog post I wrote immediately sparked conversation on my blog as well as two other social sites.
I have lost count on how many times I have heard business owners say "I know I need to be blogging/on Facebook/MySpace/Twitter, but what I don't know is how to get started?' When I ask how they KNOW that they need to be using these tools, I am answered with either a blank stare, or a 'well everyone else is using them!'
I've read a lot of posts lately tearing down the public relations industry for what a poor job they do when pitching bloggers. I've also read (and written) quite a few posts about what a terrible job companies do relating to bloggers and having conversations with them. While there's no doubt companies and PR firms have a long way to go, a blast from my past reminded me that bloggers need to share some responsibility in all this.
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