Posts Tagged ‘HubSpot’
The Dirty Dozen Top 12 Social Media Mistakes to Avoid
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011There have been numerous posts written about the pitfalls of social media marketing (including helpful pieces from Online Social Networking, Sysomos, and one I wrote for HubSpot). But the list below is a summary of the most common mistakes based on both my client experience and research for this recent presentation:
Avoid these dirty dozen of the most common social media marketing mistakes and you’ll be well on your way making social media not just an effective vehicle for marketing and PR, but a productive tool across your organization.
Failing to LISTEN. Social media is about having a conversati0n with your prospects, not broadcasting to them. You can’t have a conversation without listening. Trying to treat social media like the old world of interruption-based advertising won’t work. It will backfire.
Assigning it to an intern. Your social media presence is, for many of the people you’re trying to reach, now the public face of your company. Your social media strategist is your public spokesperson. It takes business savvy and years of industry experience to do this well. It’s far easier to teach a subject matter expert in your company how to use social media tools than it is to try to magically impart product, company, industry and business knowledge to a social media intern.
Failing to plan. Social media efforts should be based on understanding of which tools to use (based on where your customers, partners and industry influencers congregate), who will be responsible for what tasks, what your objectives are, and how you will measure success. Otherwise, you’re flailing.
Using social media as a direct response vehicle. Except in rare cases (e.g., a restaurant tweeting out lunch specials to area businesses at late morning) social media is just not effective as a direct marketing / direct response tool. Particularly in the b2b world, your fans, followers and connections are looking for helpful information and interaction; blatant promotion is more likely to turn them away than to turn them into customers.
Trying to automate interaction. Conversations can’t be automated. Automated welcome DMs on Twitter and the like are obnoxious. While there are places for automation in social media (such as monitoring and automatically submitting blog posts to various social networking and bookmarking sites), it’s best used carefully and sparingly.
Expecting instant results. Social media success is based on content and trust. It takes time to build a critical mass of both. Search traffic to blogs increases over time as the blog establishes authority and amasses content. Followers, fans and connections increase as trust and dialog are developed. By all means, expect and measure results from social media. Just don’t have unrealistic expectations of achieving those results overnight.
Allocating insufficient time and resources. Some marketers (and even CFOs) mistakenly view social media as “free.” While it’s true you don’t have to pay a fee to put up a Facebook page or start tweeting, there is nothing free about successfully using social media to reach and engage with customers and prospects. It takes time and effort to create content, promote it, monitor social media conversations, and participate in dialog. Social media marketing requires adequate allocation of time and budget just like any other tactic; the specific line items are just different.
Sending mixed signals or messages. Virtually every organization that has employees is already participating in social media, whether “officially” or not. With three-quarters of Internet users now using social media, your employees are already out there. And just as almost everyone talks about work about work outside the workplace, most people will tweet or post about their employment from time to time as well. It’s critical to communicate your social media objectives and messages to employees, establish and communicate a social media policy, and train them in the proper business use of social networks. Proper training dramatically reduces the risk of an employee releasing sensitive information, inappropriate comments or just plain muddled messages (e.g. Kmart as the place for fashion, or Oracle as ideal for small business) to the market.
Being dishonest or misrepresenting the facts. As noted above, social media success requires building trust with your audience; nothing shatters that trust like being untruthful or even less than transparent in social media. The Walmart blogging scandal is a classic case study in what not to do, but the problem isn’t limited to big companies or to the b2c world. A blog represented as being by the CEO better contain the CEO’s words. Corporate Twitter accounts should reveal who’s behind them whenever possible. It’s far easier to just do the right thing from the start than to try to repair a damaged reputation later.
Failing to provide fresh, relevant and valued content. In less than two decades, we’ve gone from a world of information scarcity to information overload. To stand out and make an impact, your content needs to be both original and helpful to your audience. Traditional marketing materials (e.g. product brochures and case studies) are not content; they still have their place, but that is later in the sales cycle after a sales dialog has been established, not at the exploration and initial interest stage where much social media interaction occurs.
Being negative. On the Internet, your words live forever. There’s rarely any benefit from making enemies, and prospective customers respond far more positively to constructive information than to trash talk. That’s not to say of course that you can’t objectively describe a disappointment with a vendor or be a bit controversial at times, but personal attacks and derogatory statements about competitors are more likely to damage the source than the target.
Treating social media as a silo. Social media is, ultimately, a sophisticated communications tool; it’s utility extends far beyond marketing and PR to product development, HR, customer service and other groups. In the most advanced stage of social media adoption, companies truly integrate the use of social media across the organization. For those organizations in earlier stages, the key is to train your marketers and subject matter experts on the proper use of social media tools, not to treat social media as a distinct function separated from business knowledge or function.
9 Criteria for Selecting a Social Media Monitoring Tool
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011Social media monitoring tools are increasing essential for companies of all sizes as the explosion of social media content renders manual monitoring efforts hopeless. But how do you choose one? With almost 200 social monitoring tools (and new entrants still coming to market), available at a range of price levels from free to if-you-have-to-ask-you-can’t-afford-it, how does an organization select the right social monitoring tool for its needs?
Whether you’ve a selection team working on this or the entire project has been delegated to you, here are nine critical considerations to keep in mind as you review and evaluate your options.
Range of coverage. Virtually every social media monitoring tool worthy of the label covers the big social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter), social bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit) and content sharing sites (YouTube, Flickr). Many include at least the most popular blogs as well. The best also monitor message boards and forums, easy to overlook but critical particularly for niche b2b products and services. For example, a discussion of the latest developments in aerospace composites is probably more likely to happen on a niche engineering forum than on Facebook.
Frequency of alerts. News can travel extremely fast through social media. Even if it’s “only” a customer complaint, you don’t want it sitting out there unanswered for long. It’s imperative that your social media monitoring tool provides realtime or near realtime monitoring and alerting, so you can respond to critical items promptly. Certainly, not every comment requires an immediate reply, but when a customer or prospect has a question or issue, response time matters. And in social media, the whole world can see how fast (or not) your response time is.
Workflow capabilities. A blogger raises a question about your company’s financial outlook. A user is frustrated by a perceived malfunction in your product. A customer shares an idea for an enhancement. A highly favorable product review is published in an online journal. You may discover any of these events through social media monitoring, but in each case not is the response different but the respondent is too. The financial question needs to be directed to your CEO or CFO; the user issue to customer support; the enhancement idea to product management; and the product review to marketing. If there is any significant volume of social media commentary about your product, service or company, look for a social media monitoring tool that provides workflow tools that make it quick and easy to notify and direct the right person to take action on each new mention.
Value. Price is always a consideration of course, but in selecting a potentially critical business tool like social media monitoring (consider the cost of BP’s social media failure), the more important consideration is “value,” as in: does the tool do at least as good a job at meeting the specific social media needs of my company as competing tools, and is it priced similarly or lower than tools offering equivalent functionality? “Free” is always a popular price point, but in the world of social media tools (as in many other areas of life), you get what you pay for. There are several free social media monitoring tools that provide limited functionality but can serve as a starting point for small businesses; however, larger and more socially active organizations will quickly recognize a need for more sophisticated fee-based offerings.
Support and training. Even with advanced UI design, more sophisticated tools are fundamentally more challenging to use. Be sure to get clarity on what kind of training is offered upfront, how much personalized assistance is offered as part of the package, how to get questions answered and how robust the internal help system is for ongoing use.
Metrics and reporting. What kind of reporting capabilities does the tool provide? Your specific needs will of course vary based on company size, level of social media activity and your organization’s specific goals and objectives, but two critical roles of reporting for any organization are: 1) the ability to demonstrate progress/change over time (e.g. more website traffic driven by social media) and 2) actionable analytics (measures that enable you to determine whether you should do more a specific activity, do less, or do it differently).
Geographic/language coverage. Enterprises that do business globally need the ability to track social media mentions across borders and in multiple languages. Global monitoring capability adds cost and complexity to a tool, so don’t buy it if you don’t need it, but for multinational businesses, this is essential functionality.
Integration with other applications. Again, small companies with fairly simple programs don’t need to be too concerned with this, but companies with larger, more complex social media programs should investigate how their social media tools under consideration integrate with applications such as CRM systems (e.g. Salesforce.com), marketing automation tools and web analytics packages.
Monitoring beyond social media. Finally, organizations that actively target both traditional and social media may want to look at tools like Vocus, Cision and/or Sysomos which integrate PR and social media monitoring functions into a single platform. Social media isn’t an island and marketing / outreach efforts there should ideally be integrated with other programs, so in these environments, monitoring capabilities beyond social media become valuable.
Keeping these nine criteria in mind (or least those that pertain to the size and complexity of social media efforts in your organization) will help you make the right choice from among the broad array of social media monitoring tools on the market.
Best Twitter Guides, Tips and Tools of 2010
Monday, January 31st, 2011Twitter came of age in 2010, growing at a scorching pace—from 75 million users at the beginning of the year to more than 190 million by the end of December. Twitter is used (officially) in 65 of the Fortune 100 companies, 63% of small to midsized businesses, and nearly half of all B2B enterprises.
As adoption skyrockets, marketers are striving to optimize their use of the world’s most popular microblogging platform. And that leads to questions, like: What are the best ways to attract more (relevant) followers? What types of information are worth sharing, beyond blog posts? Which companies are really succeeding on Twitter, and how are they doing it? How can I get more retweets? What’s a Twitter chat, and how do I participate in one? Which are the most helpful third-party tools for Twitter?
Get the answers to these questions and more here in some of the best Twitter guides, tips and tools of the past year.
How to Get More Followers on Twitter
How to grow your Twitter following by iMedia Connection
***** 5 Stars
Based on research, Courtney Wiley reveals what type of content to tweet, when to tweet it, and the ideal frequency of tweeting to use in order to grow a Twitter following.
47 Twitter Power Users’ Secrets To Getting Many Followers by JobMob
A selection of the Twitterati share their advice—ranging from short snippets to fairly detailed guidelines—on how to grow your Twitter following. Robert Scobel, Dan Schawbel, Peter Shankman and many of the others are legit no doubt, though a few of the “power users” here are questionable. Still, lots of good advice.
Get More Twitter Followers by Treating Your Profile Like a Landing Page by Social Times
Darko Johnson shows how to apply the principles of effective landing page design to your Twitter profile in order to increase the likelihood that people who see your profile will choose to follow you.
20 ways to increase the number of your followers on Twitter by Web SEO Analytics
Wisely warning against the use of automated programs or techniques, Vasilis Vryniotis offers 20 “white hat” best practices for increasing your Twitter following naturally, such as promoting your Twitter handle in online and offline locations (your blog, website, email signature and business cards), adding yourself to Twitter directories, and perhaps most important: mentioning and thanking the people who help you.
Why 150 Followers Is All You Really Need by TwiTip
Then again, do you really need more followers? Srinivas Rao uses the theory of Dunbar’s Number to argue that 150 followers is all one needs on Twitter. The author makes an intriguing case, but I’m not sure I buy it (particularly given that he follows over 1,300 people on Twitter).
How to Do Lots of Other Things on Twitter
16 bitchin’ commands and shortcuts for Twitter by eConsultancy
Want to quickly see the last tweet from a particular Twitterer? Or the most recent tweets mentioning that person? How about performing advanced searches on Twitter, like exact match, either/or, hyper-local (with x miles of…), or find questions you can answer? Chris Lake shows you how to do all of this and much more with these helpful Twitter shortcuts.
40 useful things you can share on Twitter besides blog posts by Social Media Today
Frequent best-of contributor Adam Vincenzini contends that “the more unusual and varied your stream is, the better—both for you and your followers.” And with that in mind, he lists more than three dozen types of items you can share on Twitter other that stuff from your RSS stream, such as a new app or tool (with a quick tweet review), an interesting hashtag or discussion, an interesting/relevant YouTube video or a link to a Twitter list you think is worth following.
7 Really Cool Things About the New Twitter by Social Media Today
Tia Peterson praises seven features of the new Twitter interface (such as the “Recently Listed” box, easy DM replies, and ability to send a tweet from any page) but also cites three areas that still need improvement.
How Many Times Do You Tweet Your Blog Post? by Ask Aaron Lee
Most bloggers tweet each of their posts only once. How many times should a post be tweeted? In this post, Aaron Lee and Guy Kawasaki recommend an ideal frequency, backed up with some highly logical reasoning. Spock would approve.
How Twitter increased my blog’s traffic by 300% in one week by MackCollier.com
Ever wonder exactly what impact Twitter can have on blog traffic? Mack Collier details an experiment he ran and shares the nitty gritty numbers and percentages, as well as the process he used, concluding “even if you only have 100 followers, you can still leverage Twitter as a tool to build your blog IF you are active on Twitter. Active interacting with others, engaging in conversations, and linking to valuable content.”
13 Twitter Tips for Increasing Engagement by Sazbean
Sarah Worsham lists helpful tips for increasing engagement and growing your following on Twitter, such as sharing and retweeting, asking questions, attending tweetups and using Twitter directories to find people in your industry.
Twitter success stories: Explaining the ROI of Twitter by {grow}
As Mark Schaefer explains, “There are MANY benefits to Twitter besides direct sales. You might gain information, competitive intelligence, insight, a new supplier or partner, publicity, brand awareness, an idea, customer insights, and yes, even a potential customer. And while all of these are great, most are intangible and difficult to display in an Excel spreadsheet! So why keep trying to do it?…When benefits are difficult to quantify, the best way to explain the value is through a story.”
8 Ways to Not Get ReTweeted by HubSpot Blog
Dan Zarrella uses extensive HubSpot research to show that practices like talking about yourself, dumbing down the readability of your tweets, eschewing links, and repeating the same things everyone else is saying are great ways to avoid being retweeted.
26 Twitter Tips for Enhancing Your Tweets by Social Media Examiner
***** 5 Stars
Debbie Hemley provides a highly creative A-Z list of practical tips for maximizing the business impact of your tweets, from Answers and Behind-the-Scenes info to utilizing YouTube and a Zippy Writing Style.
4 Rules for Marketing on Twitter by Practical eCommerce
Paul Chaney reveals the “unwritten” rules for earning influence on Twitter, for example: “Don’t Follow Just to Pitch. A distasteful trend has developed among newer Twitter users. For example, people are following me and when I respond in kind, their first tweets are frequently to pitch me on a website they want me to visit or a service they provide…If you want a formula for how marketing via Twitter and other social networks should work, it’s this: Connect > Converse > Convert.”
Calculating and Improving Your Twitter Click-through-Rate by SEOmoz
The brilliant but oblivious Rand Fishkin illustrates how to calculate your Twitter click-through rate (CTR) and notes some findings from his own experience: shorter tweets and those that are on-topic (whatever your primary topic is) tend to get retweeted more frequently. Somewhat surprisingly, Klout scores appear to have little correlation with retweet rates.
Twitter Dictionary | 35 Twitter Abbreviations by Bit Rebels
Primarily for Twitter newbies, Diana Adams defines nearly three dozen common Twitter / texting abbreviations such as DM (direct message), IRL (in real life) and Gr8 (self-explanatory).
Typecasting Twitter: 7 Top Uses by iMedia Connection
Noting that “Twenty nine percent, one in every three tweets yields some kind of reaction—comments, re-tweets or clicks. Ten percent prompt a reply to the original tweet. These are direct marketing nirvana numbers,” Daniel Flamberg dissects research to isolate the seven most common uses of Twitter.
How to Participate in a Twitter Chat Session like #BlogChat or #AgChat by ag – a colorful adventure
For those who haven’t participated in a Twitter chat session before, Janice Person provides clear, step-by-step instructions for getting setup, using controls, and keeping up with the stream of conversation.
3 Absolutely Cool Twitter Search Tricks to Help You Save Money! by Sexy Social Media
In this helpful but brief post, Annie Wallace shares three clever Twitter search tricks you may not be aware of.
Best of 2010: 14 Ways Every Business Should Be Using Twitter by Inkling Media
Ken Mueller lists 14 practices businesses can adopt to optimize their benefit from Twitter, such as providing customer service, promoting events and monitoring competitors.
Twitter Tools
20 Top Twitter Monitoring and Analytics Tools by Pamorama
Pam Dyer serves up brief reviews of more useful Twitter tools including Twitscoop (trend-monitoring), TweetBuzzer (identifies popular brands on Twitter), Twitter Analyzer (kind of like Google Analytics for Twitter) and Tweeps (get stats that help you decide who to follow—or not—and find people you’d like to have following you).
How to Add a Tweet Button Anywhere by SitePoint
While there are several easy avenues to placing a Tweet button on a blog, Alyssa Gregory supplies simple instructions for adding Tweet buttons in other venues like emails, PDFs and Facebook pages.
11 Websites to Schedule Your Tweets Online for Free by TwiTip
Young Yang reviews free tools for scheduling tweets, like FutureTweets, HootSuite and SocialOomph. It’s important to remember that Twitter is a social platform, so your followers will expect interaction; if you’re busted relying too heavily on automated or pre-scheduled tweets, you will lose followers. However, these tools can be very helpful if used strategically and sparingly.
Type in any three words or phrases and compare how often each is tweeted about.
5 Best Twitter Tools For Smarter Blogging by Smedio
Sridhar Ramunajam provides quick reviews of five helpful Twitter tools including dlvr.it for auto-publishing blog content to Twitter and TweetStats, which provides stats about your account (e.g., tweets per hour, tweets per month, tweet timeline) in graphical format.
Six Benefits to Using Twitter.com Instead of an App by TwiTip
Shannon Albert makes the case for using Twitter itself rather than a third-party app (e.g., HootSuite or TweetDeck) for interacting on Twitter: it’s faster, has no limits on Tweets per hour and lets you see other users’ custom backgrounds among other advantages.
Twitter Stats
All You Need to Know About Twitter in 2010 [Infographic] by Mediabistro
Lauren Dugan presents an infographic from Flowtown that reviews Twitter highlights of 2010, from Bill Gates setting up a Twitter account in January through celebrity digital death at year end.
Related Post
50 (of the) Best Twitter Guides, Stats, Tips and Tools of 2010 (So Far)
Best Business Blogging Guides and Tips of 2010
Monday, January 3rd, 2011How can you improve your blog’s position in search engines? Grow your audience? Effectively generate content contributions from subject matter experts in your organization? Produce more stylish and readable content? Find free, high-quality images to add visual appeal to your posts? Avoid common mistakes that can cost you traffic and goodwill?
Discover the answers to all of these questions and more here in the final selection of the best guides and tips for business blogging from the past year.
Blogging Guides, Tips and Techniques
The Step-by-Step Guide to Guest Blogging by 2 Create a Website
One key way to spread the fame of your own blog is to guest post on others; you reach a new audience, hopefully pick up some new fans, and get valuable backlinks to your blog. Here, Ann Smarty contributes a guest post on best practices in guest posting, from planning your approach and brainstorming topics to following through by responding to comments.
5 Reasons Why You Should Respond to Every Comment by Daily Blog Tips
In another guest post, Pat Flynn details five benefits of actively responding to comments on your blog, such as the fact that doing so encourages more comments: “People don’t leave comments just so they can be left unread. By replying, you’re not only letting people know that you’re actively involved in reading the comments, but you’re encouraging them to come back and comment again later.”
7 Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts for Maximum Exposure by Quick Online Tips
In yet another guest post, Jonathan Beebe offers seven common (e.g., promote via Twitter and Facebook) and not-so-obvious (e.g., use automated social bookmarking tools like IMAutomater and Shareaholic tips for increasing traffic to your blog.
How To Optimise Your WordPress Ping List by Pimp My WordPress
A colossal list of more than 120 sites to add to your ping list for automatic notification each time you publish a new post.
Best practices for a killer corporate blog by iMedia Connection
Sarah Hofstetter offers 25 outstanding tips for developing, maintaining and promoting a successful corporate blog, from creating an editorial calendar and incorporating visuals to setting up email distribution and tracking actionable metrics.
Blogs are Becoming the New Front Door for Prospects: Is Yours Open? by MarketingSherpa
Sean Donahue notes that, “If you’re still on the fence about the importance of a company blog, consider this trend: Many B2B marketers report that their team’s blog — not the company homepage — is now the most popular entry point for online visitors,” then provides tips for maximizing company blog success.
Why Host a Blog on Your Corporate Website? by ClickZ
The smart and prolific Mark Jackson supplies five compelling reasons for adding a blog to a company website, both subjective (a blog gives you the opportunity to demonstrate thought leadership) and objective (blogs are much more effective than typical commercial website content at attracting unsolicited links).
What’s Up, Blog? Seven Ways to Revive a Neglected B2B Blog by MLT Creative
Acknowledging that “Blogging is hard work. You must consistently create relevant compelling content,” Martine Hunter presents seven tactics for re-engaging with a neglected blog, including refreshing old blog posts, turning news releases into blog articles, and enlisting guest bloggers to lighten the workload.
How I Achieved Blogging Success In 30 Days by bizchickblogs
In you guessed it–another guest post–Wayne Howard describes his method for quickly building the following for a new blog, using tactics such as Facebook postings, the BloggerLuv community, Twitter, LinkedIn and contests.
Inciting Insight: How to make thought leaders think by The Communicator
Peter Schram offers a “recipe” for designing a thought leadership program within an organization to create a steady stream of fresh and compelling content, such as priming the pump: “Ideas are usually generated incrementally. This means that the more ‘inspiration’ that a thought leader is exposed to, the more valuable and insightful their ‘Big Ideas’ will be.”
35 Ways to Market Your Blog by Junta42
The brilliant Joe Pulizzi shares his list of 35 “common and some uncommon” methods for promoting a blog, from putting your blog URL on your business cards and leveraging Twitter hashtags to showcasing employees and using the blog as your customer FAQ.
Is blog marketing dead or just growing up? The naked (conversation) facts by conversionation
J-P De Clerck reports that less than half of companies have blogs, despite the fact that “blogs are real social media hubs and cornerstones of inbound marketing.” Furthermore, many of the companies that do blog don’t do it well; nearly three-quarters of all corporate blog posts don’t reflect the company’s message. Given that more than half of all Internet users in the U.S. read blogs, and the figure is expected to rise to 60% in the next four years, J-P notes that corporate blogging, far from being “dead,” is an area of growing importance and opportunity.
How to Make an Awesome Corporate Blog by Entrepreneur Magazine
Bianca Male shares tactics for corporate blog success (such as “Your content should go beyond your company…contribute to the discussion of topics that readers are interested in, by talking about trends in the industry and having thought leaders offer their take, for example”) and links to some noteworthy examples, closing with “If you can’t commit to focusing on fresh, interesting content, avoiding all direct marketing ploys, (and) getting creative and moving beyond boring company info…just don’t do it.”
10 Proven Blog Marketing Tactics You Can Use Today by The Future Buzz
Adam Singer provides 10 valuable tips for effective blogs, including investing in a custom design, connecting with the social web “power users” in your segment, and even making enemies (the kind that will debate you blog-to-blog).
What Can You Learn from 7 Awesome Corporate Blogs? by KISSmetrics
Cameron Chapman highlights winning corporate blogs (such as The Facebook Blog), discusses the key features and provides takeaways from each (e.g., “having a huge blogging team that includes employees from throughout your organization makes your blog much more engaging for users. Your CEO should be blogging, but so should your interns”), and concludes with a brief guide to starting a corporate blog.
9 Awesome Ways to Market a Business Blog by HubSpot Blog
Kipp Bodnar details nine techniques for increasing traffic to a company blog, like including your blog URL on business cards and in corporate email signatures, name-dropping media editors and other influencers, and checking out content networks in your niche (content syndication and aggregation sites such as Social Media Informer in the social media space).
Tim Gunn’s Top 5 Tips for More Stylish Content by Copyblogger
Erika Napoletano channels fashion authority Tim Gunn to provide style tips for bloggers, such as “SEO is not the new black” (“you don’t have to optimize every piece of content you create) and “conversation never goes out of style” (embrace comments).
Get High Resolution Photos And Edit For Free by Trailblaze Social Media With Josh
Joshua Lyons reveals his favorite source for free photos and his favorite free online tool for editing them.
Five Key Ingredients for a Successful Corporate Blog by Sysomos
Mark Evans offers five commonsense, but not always adhered to, recommendations for corporate blogging success, starting with the need for quality content: “Content that provides insight, perspective and information. At its core, a corporate blog has to give its readers information they can use to increase their knowledge, learn new things or receive insight.”
Ten Blogging Mistakes I Learned in Year One by Nectar
Josh Wade shares 10 common blogging mistakes to avoid, like misspelling someone’s name when you highlight them in post (oops!), picking fights, trying to be everywhere rather than focusing, and being a conformist.
8 Incredibly Simple Ways to Get More People to Read Your Content by Copyblogger
Pamela Wilson suggests that “writing less and styling your text so it’s easy to read” is key to attracting greater blog readership, and offers corresponding tips for doing so effectively such as breaking up blocks of copy using subheads, bulleted lists and numbers.
Blog SEO
11 Must Do SEO Tips for WordPress by Better Blog Building
An excellent list of SEO tips for WordPress blogs, including using (optimized) images, installing key plugins like All In One SEO Pack and Google XML Sitemaps Generator, and linking within your posts to relevant older posts.
6 Ways to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines by Social Media Examiner
Jim Lodico offers six helpful tips for improving your blog’s position in search engine results. While the tactics themselves are mostly common knowledge, the value of this post is in the tools Jim recommends (such as SEOCentro’s Meta Tag Analyzer for optimizing meta tags).
7 Ways to Create Blog Content That Attracts More Back Links by Digital Labz
Links are critical both for SEO purposes and attracting direct traffic–but they don’t appear magically. This post provides proven strategies for naturally attracting more backlinks to your blog posts, such as capitalizing on current events, making big lists (think “101 Tips” rather than “10 Tips”) and creating an infographic.
Link Building Tips for Personal Blogs by SEOmoz
Links are SEO fuel, and in this post SEO guru Rand Fishkin helpfully advises bloggers on which link-building tactics to avoid (generic directories, link buying) as well as dozen technigues to use such as niche blog listing sites, answering questions in online forums and social sharing in order to improve your blog’s rank in search.
And Finally…
90 Tips To Make Your Blog Rock by Jeff Bullas
And as if all of ideas above aren’t enough to keep you busy for the next year, Jeff Bullas offers 90 more including writing about industry trends, highlighting customer successes, writing a series of “how to” posts and then turning those into short videos, turn the results of surveys or polls into blog posts and more.
Related Posts
Best Business Blogging Tips and Guides of 2010 (So Far), Part 1
Best Business Blogging Tips and Guides of 2010 (So Far), Part 2
http://blog.2createawebsite.com/2010/06/14/the-step-by-step-guide-to-guest-blogging-part-1/
One key way to spread the fame of your own blog is to guest post on others; you reach a new audience, hopefully pick up some
new fans, and get valuable backlinks to your blog. Here, Ann Smarty contributes a guest post on best practices in guest
posting, from planning your approach and brainstorming topics to following through by responding to comments.
5 Reasons Why You Should Respond to Every Comment by Daily Blog Tips
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/5-reasons-why-you-should-respond-to-every-comment/
In another guest post, Pat Flynn details five benefits of actively responding to comments on your blog, such as the fact that
doing so encourages more comments: “People don’t leave comments just so they can be left unread. By replying, you’re not only
letting people know that you’re actively involved in reading the comments, but you’re encouraging them to come back and
comment again later.”
7 Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts for Maximum Exposure by Quick Online Tips
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2010/06/promote-blog-posts/
In yet another [italics] guest post, Jonathan Beebe offers seven obvious (e.g., promote via Twitter and Facebook) and not-so-
obvious (e.g., use automated social bookmarking tools like IMAutomater [http://www.imautomator.com/] and Shareaholic
[http://www.shareaholic.com/]) tips for increasing traffic to your blog.
How To Optimise Your WordPress Ping List by Pimp My WordPress
http://www.pimpmywordpress.com/wordpress-tutorials/optimise-wordpress-ping-list
A colossal list of more than 120 sites to add to your ping list for automatic notification each time you publish a new post.
Best practices for a killer corporate blog by iMedia Connection
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/27253.asp
Sarah Hofstetter offers 25 outstanding tips for developing, maintaining and promoting a successful corporate blog, from
creating an editorial calendar and incorporating visuals to setting up email distribution and tracking actionable metrics.
Blogs are Becoming the New Front Door for Prospects: Is Yours Open? by MarketingSherpa
http://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/business-to-business/the-importance-of-b2b-blogs/
Sean Donahue notes that, “If you’re still on the fence about the importance of a company blog, consider this trend: Many B2B
marketers report that their team’s blog — not the company homepage — is now the most popular entry point for online visitors,”
then provides tips for maximizing company blog success.
Why Host a Blog on Your Corporate Website? by ClickZ
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1727984/why-host-blog-your-corporate-website
The smart and prolific Mark Jackson [http://webbiquity.com/?s=Mark+Jackson] supplies five compelling reasons for adding a blog
to a company website, both subjective (a blog gives you the opportunity to demonstrate thought leadership) and objective
(blogs are much more effective than typical commercial website content at attracting unsolicited links).
What’s Up, Blog? Seven Ways to Revive a Neglected B2B Blog by MLT Creative
http://www.mltcreative.com/blog/bid/37259/What-s-Up-Blog-Seven-Ways-to-Revive-a-Neglected-B2B-Blog
Acknowledging that “Blogging is hard work. You must consistently create relevant compelling content,” Martine Hunter presents
seven tactics for re-engaging with a neglected blog, including refreshing old blog psots, turning news releases into blog
articles, and enlisting guest bloggers to lighten the workload.
How I Achieved Blogging Success In 30 Days by bizchickblogs
http://www.bizchickblogs.com/2010/09/blogging-success.html
In you guessed it–another guest post–Wayne Howard describes his method for quickly building the following for a new blog,
using tactics such as Facebook postings, the BloggerLuv [http://www.bloggerluv.com/] community, Twitter, LinkedIn and
contests.
Inciting Insight: How to make thought leaders think by The Communicator
http://communicationsunlimited.ca/blog/2010/09/08/inciting-insight
Peter Schram offers a “recipe” for designing a thought leadership program within an organization to create a steady stream of
fresh and compelling content, such as priming the pump: “Ideas are usually generated incrementally. This means that the more
‘inspiration’ that a thought leader is exposed to, the more valuable and insightful their ‘Big Ideas’ will be.”
35 Ways to Market Your Blog by Junta42
http://blog.junta42.com/content_marketing_blog/2010/09/ways-to-market-your-blog.html
The brilliant Joe Pulizzi [http://webbiquity.com/?s=Joe+Pulizzi] shares his list of 35 “common and some uncommon” methods for
promoting a blog, from putting your blog URL on your business cards and leveraging Twitter hashtags to showcasing employees
and using the blog as your customer FAQ.
Is blog marketing dead or just growing up? The naked (conversation) facts by conversionation
http://www.conversionation.net/blog/bid/46187/Is-blog-marketing-dead-or-just-growing-up-The-naked-conversation-facts
J-P De Clerck reports that less than half of companies have blogs, despite the fact that “blogs are real social media hubs and
cornerstones of inbound marketing.” Furthermore, many of the companies that do blog don’t do it well; nearly three-quarters of
all corporate blog posts don’t reflect the company’s message. Given that more than half of all Internet users in the U.S. read
blogs, and thr figure is expected to rise to 60% in the next four years, J-P notes that corporate blogging, far from being
“dead,” is an area of growing importance and opportunity.
How to Make an Awesome Corporate Blog by Entrepreneur Magazine
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/217393
Bianca Male shares tactics for corporate blog success (such as “Your content should go beyond your company…contribute to the
discussion of topics that readers are interested in, by talking about trends in the industry and having thought leaders offer
their take, for example”) and links to some noteworthy examples, closing with “If you can’t commit to focusing on fresh,
interesting content, avoiding all direct marketing ploys, (and) getting creative and moving beyond boring company info…just
don’t do it.”
10 Proven Blog Marketing Tactics You Can Use Today by The Future Buzz
http://thefuturebuzz.com/2010/10/04/blog-marketing-tactics/
Adam Singer provides 10 valuable tips for effective blogs, including investing in a custom design, connecting with the social
web “power users” in your segment, and even making enemies (the kind that will debate you blog-to-blog).
What Can You Learn from 7 Awesome Corporate Blogs? by KISSmetrics
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/7-awesome-corporate-blogs/
Cameron Chapman highlights winning corporate blogs (such as The Facebook Blog [http://blog.facebook.com/]), discusses the key
features and provides takeaways from each (e.g., “aving a huge blogging team that includes employees from throughout your
organization makes your blog much more engaging for users. Your CEO should be blogging, but so should your interns”), and
concludes with a brief guide to starting a corporate blog.
9 Awesome Ways to Market a Business Blog by HubSpot Blog
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/6788/9-Awesome-Ways-to-Market-a-Business-Blog.aspx
Kipp Bodnar [http://webbiquity.com/?s=Kipp+Bodnar] details nine techniques for increasing traffic to a company blog, like
including your blog URL on business cards and in corporate email signatures, name-dropping media editors and other
influencers, and checking out content networks in your niche (content syndication and aggregation sites such as Social Media
Informer [http://www.socialmediainformer.com] in the social media space).
11 Must Do SEO Tips for WordPress by Better Blog Building
http://betterblogbuilding.com/10-must-do-seo-tips-for-wordpress/
An excellent list of SEO tips for WordPress blogs, including using (optimized) images, installing key plugins like All In One
SEO Pack and Google XML Sitemaps Generator, and linking within your posts to relevant older posts.
6 Ways to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines by Social Media Examiner
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/6-ways-to-optimize-your-blog-for-search-engines/
Jim Lodico offers six helpful tips for improving your blog’s postion in search engine results. While the tactics themselves
are mostly common knowledge, the value of this post is in the tools Jim recommends (such as SEOCentro’s Meta Tag Analyzer
[http://www.seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/metatag-analyzer.html] for optimizing meta tags).
Tim Gunn’s Top 5 Tips for More Stylish Content by Copyblogger
http://www.copyblogger.com/tim-gunn/
Erika Napoletano channels fashion authority Tim Gunn [http://www.fabsugar.com/10-Fashion-Essentials-According-Tim-Gunn-763661]
to provide style tips for bloggers, such as SEO is not the new black (“you don’t have to optimize every piece of content you
create) and conversation never goes out of style (embrace comments).
Get High Resolution Photos And Edit For Free by Trailblaze Social Media With Josh
http://joshuajlyons.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/get-high-resolution-photos-and-edit-for-free/
Joshua Lyons reveals his favorite source for free photos and his favorite free online tool for editing them.
Five Key Ingredients for a Successful Corporate Blog by Sysomos
http://blog.sysomos.com/2010/11/03/five-key-ingredients-for-a-successful-corporate-blog/
Mark Evans offers five commonsense, but not always adhered to, recommendations for corporate blogging success, starting with
the need for quality content: “Content that provides insight, perspective and information. At its core, a corporate blog has
to give its readers information they can use to increase their knowledge, learn new things or receive insight.”
7 Ways to Create Blog Content That Attracts More Back Links by Digital Labz
http://digitallabz.com/blogs/7-ways-to-create-blog-content-that-attracts-more-back-links.html
Links are critical both for SEO purposes and attracting direct traffic–but they don’t appear magically. This post provides
proven strategies for naturally attracting more backlinks to your blog posts, such as capitalizing on current events, making
big lists (think “101 Tips” rather than “10 Tips”) and creating an infographic.
Link Building Tips for Personal Blogs by SEOmoz
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-tips-for-personal-blogs
Links are SEO fuel, and in this post SEO guru Rand Fishkin helpfully advises bloggers on which link-building tactics to avoid
(generic directories, link buying) as well as dozen technigues to use such as niche blog listing sites, answering questions in
online forums and social sharing in order to improve your blog’s rank in search.
Ten Blogging Mistakes I Learned in Year One by Nectar
http://drinknectar.com/2010/11/24/ten-blogging-mistakes-i-learned-in-year-one/
Josh Wade shares 10 common blogging mistakes to avoid, like misspelling someone’s name when you highlight them in post (oops),
picking fights, trying to be everywhere rather than focusing, and being a conformist.
8 Incredibly Simple Ways to Get More People to Read Your Content by Copyblogger
http://www.copyblogger.com/scannable-content/
Pamela Wilson suggests that “writing less and styling your text so it’s easy to read” is key to attracting greater blog
readership, and offers corresponding tips for doing so effectively such as breaking up blocks of copy using subheads, bulleted
lists and numbers.
90 Tips To Make Your Blog Rock by Jeff Bullas
http://www.jeffbullas.com/2010/12/02/90-tips-to-make-your-blog-rock/
And as if all of ideas above aren’t enough to keep you busy for the next year, Jeff Bullas offers 90 more including writing
about industry trends, highlighting customer successes, writing a series of “how to” posts and then turning those into short
videos, turn the results of surveys or polls into blog posts and more.
Best Business Blogging Tips and Guides of 2010 (So Far), Part 2
Monday, October 18th, 2010How can you craft more compelling blog headlines? Which SEO tools should be part of every blogger’s arsenal? What characteristics do successful bloggers share? How can you get more links to your blog? Continually come up with fresh and interesting topics? Avoid dumb mistakes that even smart bloggers make?
Find the answers to those questions and others here in more of the best guides to business blogging of 2010 so far.
10 SEO Tools Every Blogger Must Use by Daily SEO Tip
Anil Gupta provides mini-reviews of 10 useful SEO tools for bloggers, from the popular (e.g., Google Analytics) to the lesser-known (e.g., Ranks.nl keyword density tool and Sitening.com SEO Analyzer).
Blog Optimization, Post Title SEO & Deadeye Targeting by aimClear
Marty Weintraub explains, with his customary depth and real-world illustration, how to use keyword research to craft blog post titles that draw both human readers and high organic search position.
The 8 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers by Copyblogger
Want to join the ranks of highly successful bloggers? Of course you do, or you wouldn’t be reading this. Annabel Candy details eight traits to cultivate for blogging success, such as being concise, focused and persistent.
Meaningful Metrics for B2B Blogging by Proteus B2B Marketing
The prolific Galen De Young first clarifies which commonly used metrics aren’t particularly important (and why), then does a deep dive into several more valuable ways to measure the impact of a corporate blog, including analysis of total site traffic driven by your blog, your blog’s impact on search traffic, and visit quality.
Top 10 Blog Directories by SEO Wizardry
***** 5 Stars
Pete Hollier lists the top ten blog directories for listings that will generate both direct traffic and valuable backlinks.
The 5 Old Blogging Rules Killing Your Readership by Outspoken Media
The highly linkable Lisa Barone showcases five “old rules” for blogging success that no longer apply, and recommends new ones to replace them. Example: “Old Rule: Good Bloggers Keep Posts Short…Instead of insight, opinion and commentary, we got copycat stories and blogging for blogging’s sake. It was riveting. Only not. New Rule: Size doesn’t matter, the content does.”
Smart Professionals with Dumb Blogs by Writing on the Web
Patsi Krakoff presents a list of common “dumb” mistakes made by otherwise smart bloggers (long sentences, overuse of “we,” vague terms) along with recommendations for writing better posts.
17 Easy Steps to Brilliant Blog Posts by Copyblogger
Lamenting the lack of a “succinct summary all in one place” of the most valuable guidelines for bloggers, Jill Chivers proceeds to offer her own excellent summary of four key factors in writing a compelling post, eight ideas for more interesting content and five things to check before publishing.
4 Business Blogging Best Practices by HubSpot Blog
Noting that “Great business blogs have to walk a fine line: they have to create value for current and prospective customers while at the same time supporting a strategy that provides business growth,” Kipp Bodnar advises business bloggers to think like publishers, consider SEO and provide a clear connection to the corporate website among other practices.
7 ways to get more link love by iMedia Connection
Garrett French offers seven tips for getting relevant links to your content, such as constantly looking for ways to link to your peers first: “Link lavishly, and it will return to you in time.” Hey, it worked for him here.
50 Ways To Optimize Your Blog by jeffbullas.com
Jeff Bullas presents 50 tips to increase your blog’s readership, like asking questions of your readers, using StumbleUpon and AllTop, thoughtfully commenting on other blogs (with a link back to your own) and tweeting each of your new posts at least twice.
100 Sources of Blogging Inspiration by Ink Rebels
Diana Adams compiles an outstanding list of “though starters” to help break through blogger writing block, including writing a follow-up to an earlier post, lessons learned from an event you’ve attended, a book review, a case study, or if all else fails—inviting another blogger you’re socially connected with to write a guest post.
