Archive for December, 2009
PR and Blogger Outreach: Practical Tips
Monday, December 21st, 2009Note: this is the second of two guest-posts from PR guru-ess Cece Salomon-Lee on how Web 2.0 has changed the practice of PR. The first covered macro issues; this piece focuses on how PR professionals can best approach bloggers. This post was originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog in September 2007.
In my first post on PR and blogging, I had discussed the macro issues impacting the quality of outreach—both traditional media and blogging. I’ve been thinking about this topic over the past few weeks realized that good blogger relationships is one part doing your research, one part old school PR and one part transparency.
In some cases, bloggers will provide you with rules when contacting them. Some of these rules are included below, while others may be more specific to the blogger’s interest, for example, CK’s Rules for PR folks.
Based on these three components, here are 8 Tips about Blogging Outreach:
1. Bloggers are not journalists: One mistake is believing that bloggers are like journalists but they’re not. Bloggers write because they are passionate about the topic. Journalists write as a job and part of that job is receiving tons of emails and calls from folks like me. Most bloggers don’t come from the traditional reporter background so treating them as such can backfire.
2. Read the blog first: Don’t assume that you know the content of the blog by the title. READ the blog, understand the tone. Is it serious or sarcastic? Informative or rants?
3. Develop a relationship: Don’t pitch, get “coverage” and then leave. It’s like getting ready for a hot first date and being taken to a McDonald’s for dinner. When you start corresponding with the blogger, maintain the relationship.
4. Be Transparent: Whether you’re commenting on a blog or contacting a blogger, be transparent about who you are and what your intentions are. And after Edelman’s recent blog fiascos (no link needed, just search on Edelman, blog fiasco and you’ll get thousands of results) and Comcast’s recent astroturfing incident, I wouldn’t recommend ghostwriting a blog on behalf of a client. Check out Lifehacker’s tips for commenting on blogs.
5. Customize your emails: If you’ve paid attention to points 1 and 2, then you’ll know how to write customized emails that appeal to the blogger. Be succinct and provide something of value. If I have to explain this more, then you need to take PR 101 all over again.
6. Grammar and spelling do count: If you’re read the person’s blog, you should be able to identify the blogger’s gender and correct spelling of his/her name. And having good grammar just demonstrates you can write English well. Check out B.L. Ochman’s recent post on this topic.
7. Don’t disregard the smaller bloggers: Never disregard a smaller blogger. You never know who will read and link to a story that can gain a life of its own.
8. Read Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel: This book provides a great overview of the role that blogging now has, especially for businesses and customer conversations. At least read the the section about “Blogging Wrong & Right.”
Regarding point 4, I believe that PR’s role on blog comments is still in its infancy. Though I believe that blog comments should be from those who are working within the industry or are experts, I envision more PR folks stepping in, necessitating a different set of rules to follow.
In the end, Naked Conversations captures the essence of blogs well:
“One simple rule for doing it is be real. If you are going to blog, be authentic. Keep your conversations naked. Let people know who you are and where you are coming from.”
Note: Cece Salomon-Lee is the author of the PRMeetsMarketing blog.
How to Choose a Marketing Agency (Ad Agency)
Monday, December 21st, 2009Selecting an advertising agency (aka a marketing agency or creative agency)—or, more to the point, the right agency—is a crucial decision for any company. Choosing wisely will lead to visible, positive results for your company. The wrong agency fit, conversely, will not only be a waste of money but also make your marketing life miserable. Too many companies take a haphazard approach to this critical decision; they may get lucky, or they may not. Based on years of experience on both the client and agency sides, here is a structured approach that should lead to the best decision.
Step 1: Develop a long list of agencies to evaluate. The best source in compiling this list is referrals from colleagues. Additional sources are the local Yellow Pages or Internet resources such as agencyfinder.com or All Advertising Agencies. Start with at least six agencies to investigate further, but no more than 12.
Step 2: Conduct your initial research. Use the internet to check out the agencies on your initial list and eliminate any obvious poor fits. Some agencies focus on specific industry niches, while others have a broader focus but are clearly more business-to-business (b2b) or business-to-consumer (b2c) oriented. Most agencies won’t work with two or more clients who are direct competitors, so if you see one of your closest competitors on an agency’s client/reference list, drop them from consideration. Make sure each agency includes the services you need among their core competencies. The goal in this step is reduce your initial list down to five to ten agencies for further consideration.
Step 3: Develop your request for proposal (RFP). This step in actually somewhat controversial, as there are “experts” out there who will tell you not to use an RFP, but rather to utilize a request for information (RFI), which is largely more a semantical difference than a substantive one; the goal is to collect some specific information from each of the agencies on your list, whatever you want to call this. Other sources will tell you that agencies hate RFPs, when what they really mean is that agencies hate poorly-crafted RFPs; following the outline How to Write an Ad Agency RFP will help avoid this outcome.
In developing your RFP, remember that you are seeking to establish a business relationship with a marketing agency, so 1) respect their time, and 2) don’t just ask questions, but also give the agency enough information about your industry, your company, and your specific needs to determine if there is a fit from their perspective.
Have all of the individuals on your internal selection team sign off on the RFP before sending it out; there is nothing more frustrating, for you or the agencies involved, than to go through the entire RFP process only to have to do it over – because a key individual on your end wasn’t consulted, you didn’t ask the right questions, you didn’t have the objective(s) identified properly, or due to some other avoidable circumstance.
Step 4. Call each agency on your list. Introduce yourself and your company, and tell them you’d like to include them in your RFP process. This step serves three purposes: first, it allows any agency which doesn’t want to respond to your RFP, for any reason, to opt out of the process right away. Second, it enables you to speak directly to an appropriate individual at the agency and begin establishing a rapport. Third, it assures that you will be sending your RFP to the right person at the agency. You should tell this person how many agencies will be receiving the RFP. You don’t have to volunteer the specific names of the other agencies you’ll be contacting, but should provide this information if asked.
Step 5: Send out the RFPs to the agencies who have agreed to participate. Make yourself available to answer their (inevitable) questions, and let them know that you are available for this. If you have included any out-of-town agencies on your list, be aware that they may expect at least partial reimbursement for their travel expenses if you invite them to give a presentation; get agreement from your internal selection team (specifically those with expense approval authority) beforehand as to how you will handle this.
Step 6: Evaluate the RFP responses, eliminating those agencies which are less than an excellent fit for your needs, in order to get down to your short list of finalists (at least two, but certainly no more than five). In evaluating the responses, ask questions such as: are you comfortable with their experience, size and resources? With their approach to your challenge(s) and objective(s)? Are you confident that your account will be large enough to be important to them? Are you impressed by the quality and tone of their creative work?
And of course, call their references. Specifically, ask about their satisfaction with their agency relationship. Does the agency consistently meet specified timelines? Do they adhere to their quoted prices? Are they easy/pleasant to work with? What results have been achieved?
Step 7. Arrange for presentations from each of your finalist agencies. Ideally, unless you are able to eliminate an agency from consideration after the first presentation, you should schedule two presentations with each agency: one at your facility (to give their personnel some impression of your offices, people and work environment) and a second at their agency, including a tour.
At this step you and your evaluation team will have the opportunity to share with the agency representatives more information about your industry, your company, and your unique strengths, challenges and goals. Each agency has the opportunity to tell you more about their capabilities, approach and practices. While the facts are certainly important, the most critical criterion at this point is chemistry: are you comfortable with the agency’s team, and are they people you look forward to working with and entrusting with your company’s promotional activities?
Step 8. Finally, after reviewing the RFP responses and meeting with your finalist agencies, it’s time to make your final selection. Regardless of the titles involved, your internal selection team should agree to discuss the merits of the competing agencies as peers in a freewheeling discussion. In a perfect world, you would all agree on which agency was the clear winner; in the real world, compromise will likely be necessary on someone’s part, and the final decision may not be yours. That’s why the freewheeling discussion component is critical; if one individual (e.g. your CEO or CMO) ultimately makes the final decision, at least all of the facts and opinions of the team have been aired.
As the last step, you need to inform each of the finalist agencies of your decision. Because the rejections are tougher, I recommend getting these out of the way first. Call each agency and let them know of your decision and, in a positive manner, the reasoning behind it. Follow up with an email thanking them for their participation in your process, praising their strengths, and again briefly stating your rationale for the final selection. Then, call the winning agency and give them the good news.
Best of luck with your agency selection process!
How to Suck at Twitter (And Still Appear Successful)
Sunday, December 20th, 2009This post was originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog in December 2009.
There are a lot of great b2b marketers and social media contributors worth following on Twitter, like Ardath Albee, Mark Schaefer, Eric Fletcher, Jennifer Kane and Rob Rose to name just a few. These are people who definitely do not suck at Twitter. They are intelligent, discerning, helpful and social. All have respectable, even impressive, but not gargantuan numbers of followers.
But there is a different group of tweeters out there as well, a group whose members often have immense numbers of followers, though they seem to add little value, socially or intellectually. Yet these individuals often have immense numbers of followers—20,00, 30,00, even 50,ooo or more. They aren’t celebrities. How do they do it? After careful observation and analysis of the practices of these twerks, here are some of the secrets of those who suck at Twitter, yet appear highly successful.
Twitter Name
Never use your real name. It’s boring (plus it makes it too easy for the feds to track you down). Incorporate your spammy promise into your name, using something like @BigMoneyOnline. You can even cleverly insert special characters to create a handle like @WebCa$hMachine.
Twitter Bio
Leave it blank. Just because this is social media doesn’t mean you have actually share anything about yourself. Besides, leaving your bio blank adds an air of mystery!
If you feel compelled to put something there, make it as spammy and sales-y as possible. Here’s an example of an actual bio, only slightly retouched to protect the identity:
MLM, Internet Marketing, Cashflow, Twitter Automation. Just click the link above! = 40,000+ followers
(Are you barfing yet?)
Web Link
Point your link to an obnoxious “buy now” page. Make sure it is filled with lots of CAPITAL LETTERS and exclamation points!!! Be sure to include terms like “exclusive,” “limited time offer,” “secret,” and “free bonuses.” Hit your visitors hard. Remember, your goal is to convince the gullible that they can have better health, lose weight, or best of all, make big money working from home, without any real effort on their part.
Twitter Avatar
Don’t use your real face (again, makes it too easy for the authorities). The default Twitter bird is always a safe choice. Or, get creative and reflect the junk you’re trying to sell: use dollar signs, a sexy man/woman photo, or a cleavage shot.
Another tactic is to keep people guessing; if your “real” name is John, use a female photo, and use a male underwear model if it’s something like “Christine.”
Twitter Background
Again, make sure this sells your “promise.” Popular options include piles of cash, skinny models, fancy cars, yachts, or a photo of someone who looks kind of like you standing in front of some one else’s mansion.
Okay, that covers all of the header and background considerations, so let’s see how that all works together. Here’s an actual example from someone who sucks at Twitter, with only identifying information obscured:
Note the complete lack of a web link or bio and the use of the default Twitter background and avatar. Yet with only 3 tweets (all of which were sales pitches with a link back to the account owner’s spammy website), this person has almost 50,000 followers! How do they do it? Two more areas to get right:
Automate Everything
Hey, just because they call it “social” media doesn’t mean you have to actually interact with anyone, right? Use a tool like SocialOomph to create automated tweets, so you don’t have to actually read what all those other boring people are tweeting. Create an automated message to welcome new followers, because after all, people love getting spammy, untargeted, impersonal DMs. Make it blatantly self-promotional, somelike “Thanks for following. I’d love to help you! Buy my crap at [link].”
There are also automated tools to help you find new followers. They randomly follow a whole bunch of the people, then as soon as those folks follow you back, the tools automatically unfollow them and start over with a new group. Sure, you’ll pick mostly spam bots and low-activity accounts, but you’re bound to catch a few suckers in there as well! Especially with your impressively large number of followers.
Finally, there are your tweets themselves. There are several possible strategies here. One is to tweet nothing at all—remain mysterious! But that won’t help you sell your garbage, so a second, better approach is to tweet the same spammy sales message over and over.
Note how this account combines several of the recommendations above. The default background and avatar are used, there’s no bio or link, the tweets are no more than broadcast sales messages, and, as the tweet times indicate, the tweets are automated:
Almost 1,000 followers—not bad! Many more-socially-active small businesses haven’t hit that threshold yet.
A final tweet strategy is to mix slight variations of your pushy sales message with banal, tired and trite quotes from people like Zig Ziglar and Albert Einstein. I see this approach employed quite frequently. Is there a website out there somewhere, maybe called cheesyquotes.com, that collects these for people?
Whatever you do, don’t engage in conversations. That’s time wasted that could be spent fleecing the ignorant! And don’t ever retweet anything; who cares what other people have to say? If you absolutely must interact, make sure you tweets are absolutely worthless to anyone other than the recipient, such as “@imafool2 LOL! ROTFL!!” or “@takemycash Oh sure. Not!” And if you feel compelled to occasionally pass another’s tweet along, retweet only links that point back to your spammy sales site.
There you have it. Follow this guidance and you too can abuse the entire concept of social media, annoy others, build up a huge following despite the complete lack of value you provide, and no doubt, make big money working from home.
PR and Blogger Outreach: Macro Issues
Sunday, December 20th, 2009Note: This post was originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog in August 2007, but has withstood the test of time very well. This was the first of two guest-posts from PR guru-ess Cece Salomon-Lee on how Web 2.0 has changed the practice of PR and how PR professionals can best take advantage of blogging and other social media.
When Tom asked me to contribute an article about PR and blogging outreach, I was both flattered and yet apprehensive at the same time. I mean, I admit it. I’ve been guilty of sending inappropriate pitches to reporters—and in the age of growing blogosphere influence and shrinking print staffs—bloggers as well.
But as I thought about this further, I realized that this is more than how to pitch bloggers versus traditional media. It goes to how today’s generation of PR practitioners are being trained—or maybe not trained—to communicate effectively with media, and by extension bloggers. It goes to the core skills of what being a GOOD PR person is or isn’t. And it may also be applicable to how PR agencies staff accounts.
I’ve had discussions with my colleagues about this over the years. In order to address how one should pitch a blogger, we first have to look at what is changing in our industry that may be impacting PR practitioners and in a round about way, answer the question of how to pitch a blogger. Note—I focus on agencies because the majority of PR is still done by agencies.
1) Multigenerational Workforce
I think that there is a huge generational gap happening right now. At no other time in our history have there been so many generations in the workforce: Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y/Millenials. Each generation has their own set of objectives, working styles and more. This is leading to a culture clash in many agencies where you have entrenched practitioners (typically Generation X or Baby Boomers) dealing with an influx of Gen Y and Millennials.
The next generation of practitioners come into the workplace expecting to be promoted every six months. They believe that they know everything without recognizing the value of senior counsel. And are oftentimes “arrogant” and don’t realize that they can’t do everything and should request help. Valley PR Blog put it well in a posting on “Feeding the ‘Burger King’ Generation”: They require lots of praise, are quick to judge, often take criticism too personally and, as an Internet-reared consumer culture, have to have things “their way.”
The issue isn’t “how we should be more accommodating” to this generation, but rather how does an organization recognize the multiple generations and work together to address them. Each generation must understand the pros and cons of each other to minimize these issues.
Otherwise, the industry may inadvertently be promoting individuals before they have the appropriate skills, which continues the cycle to the next generation.
2) Focus on Results, Not Quality
I consider myself “old-school” PR, receiving the majority of my training during the dot com boom and bust. During my “generation,” minor grammatical errors were scrutinized and higher ups weren’t afraid to rake you over the coals for mistakes. We were taught to thoroughly research reporter beats and magazines before pitching. I know, I know. It’s the still the case now, but I think there has been a shift in how this is done.
I think poor habits are being tolerated as long as the team can get the results. And in the fast, busy pace of an agency, people frankly don’t have the time to check everything that exits the doors. You get:
- Attention to detail is being replaced with just get the email out. Grammar and spelling be damn.
- If the reporter or magazine seems tangentially related, then don’t worry about taking time to research beats, past stories and magazine focus as long as you have the volume of pitches out there.
- Though results are still important, I believe that the “quality” of results is being sacrificed for quantity of numbers that may have some or none of your company’s messages.
3) Agency Structure Promotes Billings, Not Client Service
The quality is further exacerbated by how agencies staff accounts based on account size and billings. In order to remain profitable, each account person must fill all of their billable hours in a month. However, the way an agency staffs an account—minimally with a director, account manager and one junior member—oftentimes necessitates, in an ideal situation, a person be on 3-4 accounts in order to fill those hours. Honestly, this can balloon up to 5-6 accounts, if not more!
And in my experience, an account typically requires media relations (I’ll include blog relations in this for now), strategy, and than awards/speaking opportunities. Now multiply this by three or four different accounts, technologies, client expectations, managers, as well as new business—it’s very tough to keep the level of quality for all the accounts.
I personally advocate more focused teams (smaller) that spend a majority of their time on 2-3 accounts. I think we would see less stress, increased knowledge of a clients technology, and deeper relationships with media/bloggers who cover that company. Is this viable? I don’t know and would love to hear from PR practitioners out there.
I focused on the macro issues that impact how PR practitioners relate to bloggers. In a second posting, I’ll look at some tangible tips for approaching bloggers.
Note: Cece Salomon-Lee is the author of the PRMeetsMarketing blog. The thoughts expressed in this posting are not representative of ON24 and are the personal views of the author.
Best of 2008: Blogging for Business
Sunday, December 20th, 2009Originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog between September 2008 and September 2009.
15 Rules for Business Bloggers by Conversation Marketing
The brilliant and often very funny Ian Lurie offers up his list of “rules” for writing a successful business blog, such as “Take the B.S. test. Can you come up with three things to write that won’t include one shred of marketing B.S. about your organization? If you can’t, give it up” and “Learn grammar. You’re representing your business. You’d better be able to write a complete sentence.” (Yeah, seems obvious, but you’d be amazed…)
Rockstar blogger Darren Rowse provides an excellent set of tips on getting links from other bloggers, among them: being relevant, presenting an angle, and supplying helpful resources. A couple of other noteworthy posts from Darren’s blog: in AppLoop – Make Your Blog into an iPhone App, he explains how to turn any RSS feed into an iPhone app (which you can even charge for if you like); and in Characteristics of Traffic Generating Posts, he details factors that can make blog posts go viral, such as being controversial, writing about people, having a social media angle, and inviting reader participation through questions or “little challenges.”
Blog Project: 30 Traffic Generation Tips by Daily Blog Tips
Daniel Scocco invited 30 bloggers to provide a key traffic-building tip and posts the list here, including recommendations from Sridhar Katakam: ” Keep track of blogs and leave comments on them. A good way to keep the conversation going is to install a MyBlogLog widget and visit the blog of people visiting your site,” Andrew Timberlake: “A great tip for generating traffic is off-line by including your url in all your off-line liturature from business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, adverts through in-store signage if applicable. I even have our website on my vehicle,” and Mark Alves: ” Participate in Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers where you can demonstrate your expertise, get associated with relevant keywords and put your URL out there.”
Content Marketing: How do you write to entertain readers? by Writing On The Web
The remarkable Patsi Krakoff presents eight tips for writing blog posts that stand out by both informing and entertaining readers, such as: telling a story; revealing a mistake you made and the lessons learned; or hardest but most valuable of all, rising above cliches and providing a higher level of current thinking.
5 Simple, Effective Tactics to Promote a New Website by SEOptimise
Glen Allsopp reveals four websites critical to helping launch a new blog, plus the critical practice of commenting on other blogs to help spread the fame of your new site. As Glen notes, commenting generally drives only a small amount of direct traffic, but helps establish a relationship with the blogger that can lead to links and other benefits down the road.
How To Launch A Successful Blog In The First 90 Days by Influential Marketing Blog
Rohit Bhargava provides a list of tasks for new bloggers to focus on in the first three months of the blog, broken down into discrete time periods—for example, days 1-15 (find a good name, match your blog name and URL), days 15-30 (establish your blog “brand,” get it listed in the major blog directories), and days 30-60 (reach out to other bloggers).
5 Ways To Optimize Your Blog and Capture More Repeat Visitors by ProBlogger
Rich Page recommends practices like tracking your internal search results (to help determine what topics are most important to your readers), surveying your readers, and building an online community into your site in order to increase repeat visits. All good ideas, though you’ll need fairly substantial traffic to begin with for these techniques to be practical. A more broadly helpful post from this blog is 7 Steps to Better Business Blogging guest contributor Ann Handley of MarketingProfs. Among Ann’s quick tips: be “scan friendly” by using bullet points, link to other blog posts on the same topic, and engage your readers in conversation by responding to comments.
The Lazy Blogger’s Guide to Finding Great Post Images by Copyblogger
This guest post from the brilliant Sonia Simone provides both thoughtful guidance on how to choose relevant images for your blog posts and links to a couple of her favorite sources for free or cheap yet high-quality images.
5 Sources for Free and Legal Images by The Blog Herald
Copyright expert Jonathan Bailey offers detailed reviews of five services, such as Photo Dropper and Zemanta, that “will not cost you a dime to use and, if used correctly, can let you fill up your blog posts with as many images as your heart desires.” Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but the primary benefit of all of them is that they simplify the licensing requirements for using free, high-quality images.
TopRank Best List of RSS Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog and Feed by TopRank Online Marketing Blog
An outstanding list of blog directories, RSS and ping sites to help spread the fame of your blog. There are a few dead links in here and a few service with strange terms of use, but most of these links are active and useful.
Networking 101 – Building Relationships with Bloggers by Blogsessive
Alina Popescu provides an invaluable roadmap for establishing relationships, starting with commenting on their blog and actively participating in the conversation, through connecting on social media sites, linking, contacting directly, and writing guest posts. As she notes, “It (building relationships with other bloggers) doesn’t work like magic! Networking takes time and effort. Ongoing effort!” But the payoff can be well worth it, in terms of new relationships, higher blog traffic and increased exposure for you and your blog.
4 Quick and Simple Ways to Increase Page Views on Your Blog by Problogger
A short but helpful post from Skellie with some quick and easy ways to make your blog stickier. (“End with related posts” is one example, and a practice that’s always been used with this “Best Of” series.) The prolific guest-blogger also contributed 10 Innovative Blog Business Models—a post detailing 10 methods beyond the obvious (AdWords) to monetize a blog, such as selling educational courses, eBooks, premium content, consulting services (hmm, that sounds familiar) and digital products.
Do You Show Appreciation to Your Favorite Bloggers? by Blogsessive
Alex Cristache provides an outstanding list of ways to show appreciation to your favorite bloggers (many of which can benefit you as well) like commenting, linking back, and blogrolling.
7 Strategies to Invite More People Into Your Audience by Problogger
Social media rockstar Chris Brogan details several strategies to not just grow your blog audience, but also attract the right kind of readers (these do not include getting on the first page of Digg). Among the recommendations: express, and be willing to defend, strong opinions; anticipate the needs of specific audience segments you’d like to attract, then address those needs; and spread links to your blog and RSS feed far and wide.
How to Use Yahoo Answers for your Social Media Campaign by Primary Affect
Vince Blackham explains how to use Yahoo Answers as a source of both inspiration and content for blog posts when you are struggling for fresh ideas.
50 Blog Post Ideas for Business Blogging by SEOptimise
If you can’t find inspiration on Yahoo (see link above), try one of the many helpful blog post topic ideas on this outstanding list, such as “Make a list of the top myths in your industry and debunk them;” “Analyze the current climate in your industry and explain the ramifications;” “Create a list of indispensable software or web tools for your job;” or “Collect the best blog postings in your niche and compile a best of-list” (hmm, that sounds familiar too).
The Ten Commandments of Blogging by Blogsessive
A thoughtful set of “commandments” for blog success, including “Be helpful,” “Never steal,” and “Be good and be proud: If you’re good at what you’re doing, there’s no point in not letting people know it…a good sense of modesty is helpful, but don’t confuse being modest with being shy.” Also a great complementary post to the Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging previously published here.
Hello, My Name Is… by Smarter Than Your Average Blog
Choosing a name that’s relevant yet clever is a big part of creating a successful blog (advice I clearly could have used back in 2005). Writer Steph Auteri outlines several strategies, tools and examples to help in selecting a “totally rad” blog name.
5 Ways to Re-Purpose Content for Blog SEO by TopRank Online Marketing Blog
Search guru Lee Odden offers several ideas for re-using content to get the maximum return on your effort and investment, such as turning PowerPoint presentations into blog posts and rewriting press releases in language that’s actually interesting.
Is Writing Great Content Enough to Build a Successful Blog? by ProBlogger
Blogger Darren Rowse makes the case that while writing useful and unique content is essential to blogging success, it isn’t enough. So what is? Read this post to find Darren’s list of “right” answers (such as interacting with readers and using basic SEO tactics) as well as the “real” answers (which include building trust with your readers, luck, and “mojo” among others).
Business Blogging Tips from a Business Blogger by HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog
Mike Volpe interviews Leigh Anne Wallace of The B2B Lead blog about blog naming, thought leadership, reusing blog posts to get the maximum mileage out of them, and other topics.
SEO Plugins for WordPress Part II by Graywolf’s SEO Blog
SEO guru Michael Gray provides an extensive list of WordPress plugins for functions like generating a sitemap, adding custom messages to an RSS feed, creating 301 redirects, backing up your blog, adding Twitter functionality, adding a “subscribe to comments” feature and more.
12 Common Blogging Mistakes To Avoid by Search Engine People
SEO blogger Jeff Quipp supplies an excellent list of common mistakes to avoid, mostly pertaining to readability, such as failing to use subheads, bullets or relevant images, and making blog posts too long (more than 800 words—this post happens to be roughly 650 words BTW).
301 Redirect Plugin for WordPress … for Non-Technical Bloggers by Search Engine People
Another piece from Jeff Quipp, this time a concise, helpful post on how to install and use a 301 redirect plugin for WordPress that lets you maximize the benefit of topical posts.
Who Do Rockstar Bloggers Host With? by Who Is Hosting This.com
One factor to consider when selecting a blogging platform is, where are the most popular blogs hosted? The answers may surprise you. Excluding Gawker’s sweatshop blogs, web host Media Temple comes out on top. And, despite HubSpot’s preference for WordPress over Blogger, it turns out that 8 of the top 100 blogs are hosted on BlogSpot, while none are hosted at WordPress.com.
Examining The Internet’s Top Blogs: What We Can Learn From Their Success by SEOmoz
Speaking of the top blogs, Danny Dover provides some fascinating research here on various attributes of the world’s most popular blogs. For example, while two-thirds of the top 100 blogs are self-owned (i.e., not corporate), only 20% are written by a single author. In terms of subject are, more than half of the 100 leading blogs are focused on technology; green blogs account for 1%, but marketing and PR as a topic doesn’t even make the list.
Top Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog by ProfitBlogger
Freelance blogger Praval Singh has compiled a well-researched and nicely laid out list of ten high-traffic blog directories. Beyond the obvious sites like Technorati and Weblogs, there are some interesting choices here.
A nip and a tuck: Five fast makeover tips for your blog by Smarter Than Your Average Blog
InfoWorld editor Uyen Phan offers five simple tips for making blog posts more appealing, such as using lists, bullets and multimedia.
Top 10 RSS Promotion Tips by SiteProNews
Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, provides 10 tips for maximizing exposure to your RSS feeds, including registering with RSS feed directories, linking to your feed, and using auto-discovery.
How to get your Blog Traffic to Convert in 5 Easy Steps by Search Engine People
Blogger Jennifer Osborne gives simple yet effective tips for converting blog traffic into leads or sales, such as including an “About Us” section and using the loop strategy when writing blog posts.
Finding A Home For Your Work: The Best Blogging Platform For You by Smarter Than Your Average Blog
Writer Steph Auteri presents the pros and cons of the leading blog platforms (Blogger, WordPress, TypePad and Movable Type) as well as alternatives MySpace and LiveJournal.
Blogger’s to do checklist before hitting the publish button by Search Engine Marketing Consultant
“How many times have we hit publish on a blog and then realized we forgot to do something crucial, whether it is changing post slugs or a crucial spell check?” Online advertising guru-ess Jennifer Slegg asks then answers this question with a list of crucial pre-publishing items to check, such as correct spelling, links and tags.
101 Ways to Monetize Your Blog Without Irritating Your Readers by Inside CRM
For independent bloggers, the editors of Inside CRM offer up an extensive categorized list of blog monetization links, ideas and programs, from merchandising, various types of advertising, and affiliate programs (all of which are respectable, if incorporated in a professional manner) to sponsored posts (a more questionable approach).
Blogging Tactics for 2008 by Ask Enquiro
Writing that “The Online Marketing Blog recently ran a poll asking readers which SEO tactic they plan on using most in 2008 and the winner with 25% of the vote was Blogging. This doesn’t surprise me because blogging is an excellent way to manage PR, offer technical support as well as interact with users,” Manoj Jasra provides six helpful tactics for improving SEO results for blog including interlinking of top posts and establishing relationships with other bloggers.
And finally, three excellent blogging for business posts just for WordPress users:
4 Tips For Your WordPress Strategy by Search Engine Guide
Another useful post from Manoj Jasra, this brief piece shows some of his favorite tips, tricks and plug-ins for use in setting up WordPress blogs.
Optimizing WordPress Page Titles, Post Titles and Page Slugs by Graywolf’s SEO Blog
SEO guru Michael Gray provides step-by-step instructions for search-optimizing posts in WordPress.
10 Unusual & Original WordPress Themes by Mashable
Sean P. Aune showcases ten WordPress themes that go beyond standard 2- and 3-column formats with design elements like large banners, Flickr integration, 4-column layouts, Ajax, tag clouds and more.
