Posts Tagged ‘Business Blogging’
Proper Care and Feeding of a Blog
Monday, September 13th, 2010My daughter is hooked on those pet rescue shows on Animal Planet. What I’ve learned from my more occasional viewing is that despite the many joys of pet ownership, not everyone is cut out for it. By the same token, despite the many benefits of a business blog, not everyone should rush into it. Like owning a pet, writing a blog isn’t rocket science but does require a certain level of care and attention, lest the effort end up among the millions of abandoned, forgotten and neglected blogs littering the online landscape. Here are seven tips for a healthy blog and a happy blogger.
Post regularly. A healthy blog thrives on fresh content, at least once per week, more often if possible. If it’s difficult for you to maintain that schedule on your own, consider a group blog where several authors provide content, easing the load on each. A blog with fresh content looks vibrant; a blog with no posts for several months appears neglected or abandoned to the lonely back streets of the web.
Maintain your blog. Make sure sidebar links are current and working, and keep your plugins updated. A blog with obsolete (e.g. promoting an event that is already past) or dead links, buttons that don’t work, or features that don’t function looks scruffy and uncared for.
Moderate and respond to comments. The best blogs communicate with readers rather than just broadcasting to them. Encourage comments, and when you get thoughtful comments or questions, respond and keep the conversation going. But being social doesn’t mean permitting every comment to be posted; obvious link spam or other worthless input should be rejected like the annoying parasites who leave them.
Provide contact information. There will be times when someone (such as a prospect with a product or pricing question, or a journalist looking for the right expert to quote) needs to contact you directly rather than just posting a comment. You can post your email address, use a WordPress contact form plugin, or incorporate an interactive business card (see the upper-right of this blog for an example) on your blog. A blog without contact information is like a lost pet with no ID tag.
Link out. Blogging is a social activity. No matter what topic you write about, there are other smart, insightful bloggers addressing it as well. Link to other posts that support a point you’re making, provide additional information or present a different point of view. It’s helpful to your readers as well as to the bloggers you link to, and often leads to some “link love” coming back to your blog in return.
Acknowledge those who link to you. Links are good things; they drive direct traffic to your blog as well as helping improve your rank in the search engines. When someone is thoughtful enough to link to your blog, show your appreciation: leave a comment on their blog, link to their post from your blog or from Twitter, Digg their post, send them a quick note, do something to affirm the recognition. There are certain over-inflated egos in the worlds of SEO and online marketing who are very poor at this. To be successful in social media, act more like a friendly pooch than an aloof feline.
Be patient! The animals on Pet Stars didn’t learn to do those amazing tricks overnight, and you shouldn’t expect your blog to attract a massive audience right away either. Like pet training, growing the readership for a blog requires using the right techniques and takes some time.
By following these tips for the proper care and feeding of your blog you’ll increase your odds of blogging success. And you won’t need a visit from Victoria Stilwell.
Should a Blog be Part of Your Corporate Website or Stand on Its Own?
Monday, August 30th, 2010Okay, so you understand the benefits of business blogs, and you’re ready to make the commitment to developing and maintaining a blog for the long haul. The next question is: where should I put the blog?
There are five common options:
Free hosting on a blogging platform site. The URL would look something like mycompanyblog.wordpress.com or mycompanyblog.blogspot.com. This option should never be used for a corporate or business blog. Free blogging platforms are fine for hosting personal blogs where there is no justification for spending money and no expectation of generating any business leads, sales or income. For business however, such platforms are an unprofessional setting, offer limited functionality, and provide very little SEO benefit.
Hosting on a corporate website using the site’s CMS tool. Many corporate websites are built on content management system (CMS) platforms such as Joomla, Drupal or DotNetNuke. These and several other open source and commercial CMS platforms offer built-in blog creation functionality. The advantages of this approach are:
- • All SEO authority (via inbound links) accrues to your corporate website, because the blog is just another section of the site. This is valuable because blog posts are often more effective “link bait” than typical website copy (“About Us,” product/service descriptions, etc.).
- • Your internal (or agency) staff, who may at different times write content for both the company blog and corporate website, have only one content creation tool to learn.
- • The blog has the same “look and feel” as the rest of the site, supporting corporate branding.
- • Whether viewing the blog or regular product/service content, visitors never leave your site.
- • Most CMS plaforms will easily accommodate multiple-author corporate blogs. They can also support multiple blogs (e.g. a widget industry blog and a widget maintenance blog)—though the common look/feel and top-level domain name make it difficult to clearly separate these.
The primary disadvantages of the CMS approach are that the blog is very clearly “the corporate blog”—it has no independence or personality of its own—and that CMS tools often lack the rich functionality and plugins that blogging platforms such as WordPress offer (e.g. subscribe to posts by email, quick polls, automatic XML sitemap maintenance, etc.).
Hosting on an existing corporate site using WordPress. This option assumes that your corporate website is built in something other than WordPress (e.g. on an open source, commercial or proprietary web CMS platform), and that you’ll be installing WordPress just to power the blog. This approach shares many of the advantages of using the underlying CMS to build the blog (SEO links, visitor are kept on the site, multi-author blogs are supported) and does away with some of the shortcomings: first, since the blog template is separate from the website template, it’s easy to give the blog its own personality, consistent with but separate from the rest of the corporate site. Second, unlike most CMS platforms, WordPress has an active developer community contributing special-purpose plugins to continually expand and enhance its functionality.
However, this approach has its own drawbacks. For one, it requires installation and setup of the WordPress blogging and MySQL database management software–not a terribly difficult task, but not one for technophobic to be sure. Where this really becomes complicated is in a multi-blog scenario (again, such as separate industry news and technical / how-to blogs), since each blog requires its own WordPress and MySQL installation. For another, functions that are often provided seamlessly by a dedicated WordPress host (see the separate blog and website hosting option below), such as nightly database backups and WordPress version upgrades, have to configured separately for a self-hosted WordPress installation. In other words, you’ll definitely need knowledgeable IT support for this option.
Hosting both a blog and website on WordPress. This is definitely an option to consider if you are just developing the website for a new organization or rebuilding the website for an existing enterprise. It offers all of the advantages of a WordPress blog while giving IT only a single platform to manage and users only a single CMS tool to learn. Though originally developed as a blogging platform, WordPress has evolved over the years into a respectably capable full CMS option for relatively small, simple websites–with or without a blog.
The downside is that WordPress isn’t suitable for large, complex websites or those requiring customer web application functionality, at least not without some highly involved development effort. For midsize to large enterprise sites, or even smaller company sites requiring specialized functionality, it’s often simpler to develop the non-blog portions of the website using another tool and treating the blog separately. Which brings us to the final option:
Separate blog and website hosting. With this alternative, a blog is treated completely separately from the main company website development platform, hosting arrangements and underlying technology. Regardless of how or where the main website is hosted, the blog is generally hosted with a dedicated WordPress host such as HostGator, Bluehost or JustHost. (Disclosure: I do use JustHost for my personal blog hosting, but I have absolutely no financial relationship with any of these companies.) The advantages of this approach are:
- • The blog can not only have its own “personality” separate from the corporate website, but even its own search-friendly domain name (e.g. widget-industry-news.com).
- • Related to the point above, your company can potentially get an extra spot on the first page of the search engines for specific core search terms. The search engines will generally display any specific website no more than twice (e.g. the home page and one interior page) on the first page of search results. Having a related blog with a separate top-level domain name gives you the opportunity to snare a third spot on the home page for certain search phrases very closely aligned with your business.
- • The blog can easily have its own look and feel, carrying over selected elements of corporate branding (e.g. colors, logo) without having exactly the same look and navigation structure.
- • There’s no burden on the corporate IT group. Setup is easy and maintenance is usually handled automatically by the host for a nominal annual fee. This frees your IT group to focus on more important things, and it means you don’t have to wait for or rely on IT to install new features, add authors, add new pages or perform pretty much any other function on the blog.
- • Authors can write blog posts, add comments, install or update plugins, and perform virtually any other function on the blog from any Internet connection. This may or not be true for your corporate website, depending on the platform used and security settings. In large companies (and many midsized organizations as well), a VPN connection or other software is often needed for corporate site editing access.
- • Separate hosting supports both a single blog with multiple authors and multi-blog scenarios. Managing multiple external blogs will increase costs (though many hosts offer discounts for multi-site hosting packages) but also provide more opportunity for search presence (e.g. in addition to your corporate site, you may own blogs like widget-industry-news.com, widget-maintenance-tips.com, etc.).
Disadvantages:
- • You’ll incur extra hosting and domain name registration fees, generally running $80-120 per year per blog. That’s not a huge outlay, but something to consider.
- • Your SEO authority will be split, with one set of links pointing to your corporate website and a different set pointing to your blog.
In the final analysis, there is no single perfect answer for all organizations to the question posed in the title of this post. There are benefits and drawbacks to each approach. The best advice is: consider the specifics of your situation and relative advantages and disadvantages of each approach before deciding on the optimal hosting arrangement for your blog.
Other helpful information on this topic:
Location? Location? Location? by SEO Inc Blog
Business Blog: separate domain or on your website by Better Business Blogging
Blog: On Site vs. Off Site – SEO Advantages by WebProWorld (forum)
Best Business Blogging Tips and Guides of 2010 (So Far), Part 1
Thursday, August 5th, 2010Stumped for new blog post topic ideas? Struggling to increase blog traffic? Want more comments? Higher search position? Better results from social media? Younger looking skin in just three days?
Can’t help you with that last goal, but excluding that one you’ve come to the right place. Learn how to make your blog the center of your social media efforts, build traffic, write great posts and more here in some of the best tips, tactics and guidance for blogging of 2010 so far.
100+ SMB Blogging Ideas to Kick Start 2010 by Small Business Trends
Running low on inspiration? Muse taking a break? Lisa Barone offers 100 topic ideas to kick start your blog posts, divided into various categories such as Go Social, Highlight Your Customers and Get Personal.
How to Never Run Out of Blog Topics to Write About by Internet Marketing for Business Owners
If, somehow, you’re still scratching your head for blog topics after reading Lisa’s list, Jarom Adair supplies about 30 more ideas here, from tips and survey follow-ups to customer testimonials and scaring your readers with horror stories of business decisions gone wrong.
Ten Must Read Tips to Start a Small Business Blog by TopRank Online Marketing Blog
Lee Odden writes that “there’s a litany of things you COULD do with setting up a blog. Even if…filtered it down to what one SHOULD do, the list (is) amazingly long.” So, in the interest of helping out new business owners (or business owners new to marketing on the web) without overwhelming them, Lee “decided to create…a short list of what a small businesses CAN do when starting a blog.”
Marketing Your Blog: 10 Essential Tips You Should Know by Hongkiat
To make your blog stand out from the crowd, Edward Khoo provides 10 tips including using controversy (carefully), simplifying the subscription process and this gem: “Create different profiles for each social media site. On LinkedIn, you want to be all about business. On Facebook, show a little of your personality – the carbon-based life form behind the blog. On Twitter, shine the spotlight on your blog. Each profile should be designed to show a different facet of you and your expertise.”
Blogging Tips: How to Promote and Publicize by Spin Sucks
Gini Dietrich lays out a six-step, eight-minute process to use social media to promote blog posts. Some of the tools take a bit of time to set up initially, but it’s a quick process from there on out.
SEO’s Magic Bullet by PR 20/20
Based on the top ranking factors for SEO, Keith Moehring explains how one key tool, still overlooked by many companies, may be the silver bullet for SEO success.
7 Days to Turn Your Blog Into a Social Media Hub – Day 1: Defining Your Hub by Danny Brown
Danny Brown explains why your blog belongs at the center of your social media efforts (just as it’s positioned in the web presence optimization model) and how to use it to keep all of your social media marketing efforts aligned.
Why a Blog Improves Social Media for B2B by My Venture Pad
Still not convinced that a blog should be the center of your social media strategy? The brilliant Ardath Albee lays out a dozen more reasons to make it so, such as “The Internet moves fast. Publishing a new article once a month on your website isn’t enough to keep up a consistent dialogue.” “Blogs are a kind of ‘natural nurturing’ – the more often you touch your prospects, the more your ideas are top of mind for them. (hence, your company)” and “Blogs allow comments longer than 140 characters.”
Submit Your Blog to 50+ Free Blog Directories by Kittu K
Links are vital to SEO success, and one way to accelerate link-building for a blog is to use this helpful list of 50+ free blog diretories sorted by PageRank.
5 Sure Fire Tactics to Promote a Business Blog by TopRank Online Marketing Blog
Michelle Bowles provides some high-impact tactics to build traffic for a business blog, somewhat similar to the recommendations for successfully launching a new blog presented here a while back.
12 ways to Increase comments on your Blog by Technshare
A dozen great tips for generating more comments on your blog, from do-following comment links and thanking commentors to asking for feedback and moderating comments promptly.
Search Optimization Tips for Bloggers by SEO Wizardry
Pete Hollier offers tips for search optimizing a blog, some of which also apply to standard websites (keyword research) and some unique to blogs (using SEO plugins).
Social Media Strategy? Think Like a Reporter
Monday, July 12th, 2010Recent surveys have shown that while businesses are embracing social media in droves, many are doing so without any real strategy in place. Without a strategy, there may be no clear ownership, or definition of success, or measurement, or integration with other marketing and PR efforts—all of which can lead eventually to wasted time and effort, abandoned blogs and Facebook pages, and even the erroneous conclusion that social media doesn’t work for us.
Yet developing such a strategy can be challenging; where does one start? Most of us have, through the classroom, TV shows or somewhere in life, learned about the reporter’s questions: who, what, when, where and why. Just as these questions are critical to solid journalism, so they can be invaluable to social media strategy development.
Who: the first who question is who will be in charge of social media efforts? Responsibility should be placed as high as possible—with the CEO ideally (think Tony Hsieh, or Jonathan Schwartz before the sale to Oracle). If not possible, then responsibility should rest with an executive in marketing, PR, product management or customer service. If absolutely necessary, this leadership can be outsourced, but only as part of a close long-term relationship. Who else will be involved? In all but the smallest companies, there are often multiple individuals tweeting, networking and even contributing to the company blog. In these situations, it’s imperative to have a social media policy in place, encourage subject matter experts (SME’s) to share their unique knowledge, and remember that everyone who participates is acting as a public face for the company—social media isn’t a job for an intern.
What: what type of information will you use to attract a social media following? In b2c, contests, games, apps and coupons are popular content. In the b2b world, thought leadership content is key, but this can take different forms depending on your resources and style: blogs are the most common media, but video, podcasting, online presentations and articles are other ways to share information and education with prospects. What also refers to subject matter—in b2b, that usually means reporting on research, offering a unique perspective on industry developments, solving problems, providing how-to guides, or presenting other information that is of value to your audience and positions your people as the experts.
When: how often will you write new blog posts? Tweet? Update your company’s Facebook page? The answers will be different depending on your company’s resources, the amount of content you have to work with, the number of employees involved in your social media efforts, the specific social media tool and other factors. In general, more is better, and most companies could probably benefit from greater social media activity, not less. There is a risk of over-doing things, particularly on Twitter, but as long as your focus is on adding value rather than self-promotion, few followers are likely to complain. Most companies find that the amount of time they need to devote to social media, particularly to engagement, starts out modestly and increases over time as their blog readership, Twitter following, Facebook fan base and other groups grow.
Where: which social media sites and tools will you use? There’s no question that blogs (which usually mean WordPress), Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have emerged as the “big four” social media venues. According to recent research, these are used by 70% or more of those active in social media (no other single tool was used by more than half of respondents). Twitter is probably the closest thing to a universal social media tool for business, while Facebook is huge in b2c, and LinkedIn is indispensable on the b2b side. These are the tools to start with, but by no means should a social media strategy be limited to these: depending again on talent, resources, corporate personality etc., other tools to take into account include YouTube and Vimeo (video sharing); SlideShare (presentations); social bookmarking sites like Digg, delicious and Propeller; online forums (there are specific forums for almost any industry); Ning (for creating your own community or finding others to engage with); PitchEngine (social PR); and social profile sites like VisualCV and PeoplePond, just to name a few.
Why: possibly the most important question of all. What is your company aiming to accomplish through social media? What are your goals? How will you measure them? There are at least a hundred ways to measure social media success and more than a hundred tools for monitoring them. While measuring social media ROI is difficult to do with any precision, it’s important to use what measures you can to help gauge the impact and continually improve your efforts.
Crafting a social media strategy is vital to achieving success and avoiding wasted efforts. It’s a challenging exercise, but one that can made easier by thinking differently—such as like a reporter.
Looking Back at 100: Top 10 Posts on the Webbiquity Blog (So Far)
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010Hard to believe that this blog, officially launched just a few months ago, has already surpassed 100 posts. But here we are! Thank you for reading, and without further ado, below are the 10 most-viewed posts on this blog to date. Some of the entries are surprising, but life can be like that. These are the posts that readers have “voted” as the best by their traffic so far.
10. How to Write an Ad Agency RFP
This one surprised me. Small companies don’t bother with agency RFPs (nor should they) and even mid-sized companies use them less today than in the past. But if your company wants to use an RFP process to help in selecting a marketing agency, this post will help you craft one that meets your needs without driving the responding agencies crazy.
9. Social Media is Simpler Than You Think
A post that explains why “social media marketing is simpler than you’ve probably been led to believe. At its core, social media is not about doing new things, but about doing things you’ve always done as a business person differently.”
8. (Almost) 100 (of the) Best Social Media Marketing Blog Posts and Articles of 2009
A bookmarkable collection of some of the best thinking about social media last year, grouped into specific topic areas such as “Social Media Measurement and ROI,” “Social Media Statistics and Research” and “Social Media Marketing Strategy, Tactics and Best Practices.”
7. What is Webbiquity? How to Be Everywhere Online
The inaugural post on Webbiquity explains the concept of web presence optimization—how websites, blogs, SEM, SEO, interactive PR, content marketing, social networking, reputation management and social media can work together to make a company or individual omnipresent online for their targeted description or value statement.
6. How to Write an Effective Business Blog
A Blogging 101 type article for anyone who wants to get started blogging on the right foot, and avoid the missteps and false starts common in the blogosphere.
5. Five Big Shifts in Social Media Marketing
How social media is a reflection of and response to broader shifts in the market and culture that make it increasingly difficult (and irrelevant) to try to buy attention, but critical to earn it. For example, brands no longer control their messages—their customers do. But social media provides marketers with the tools to monitor, participate in and help shape the conversations.
4. The One Effective Use of Facebook for B2B Marketing
Given the dominance of Facebook on the social media landscape, it’s not surprising that this most is among the four most-read pieces on this blog. It’s a bit surprising however that it didn’t stir up more controversy; maybe I’m right about this?
3. Best Social Media Stats and Market Research of 2009
It’s heartening to know that as a data junky, I’m not alone. Wondering how the demographics of Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook users compare? Which social networking site 80% of companies plan to use a primary recruiting tool this year? What percentage of consumers and b2b buyers read blogs? You’ll find those answers and more here.
2. How to Choose a Marketing Agency (Ad Agency)
I’m really surprised by this one. As with the how-to-write-an-RFP post noted earlier, this outlines a solid, traditional process for mid-sized companies but overkill for small firms.
Drumroll please…#1 with nearly 3X as many visits as #10 above is…
1. 11 Myths of Social Media Marketing
Social media is only for the young, it’s free, we can hire an intern to do it, and eight other myths destroyed. Well, at least some were destroyed; others sparked disagreement in the comments.
Now on the next 100 posts!
