We’ve Moved, Please Follow!

May 12th, 2010

Hey everyone, thanks for coming by; I have a quick announcement to make:

I’ve moved the blogger tips podcast and website to a new location.

You can find the site at businessbloggertips.com, and there is a link at the top of the new site for the new podcast. You can also find the new podcast in iTunes as the Business Blogger Tips podcast

The podcast is broadcast from a new feed, but you’ll get the same archive library, and the same Business Blogger Tips each week.

I moved the site and feed to allow for a more independent development of the Business Blogger Tips brand and to give the tips a more appropriate home.

Please join me at the Business Blogger Tips podcast by visiting the official site at http://businessbloggertips.com and subscribing, following, and supporting with your comments and considerations.

Look for the new mustard-colored light bulb logo and I’ll look forward to seeing you on the other side.

Thanks again for listening!

—Cary Snowden

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Moving!

May 7th, 2010

Business Blogger Tips and the new Business Blogger Tips Podcast have moved to a new location!

If you are here for the first time, please visit the new site at http://businessbloggertips.com and be sure to connect with me over there.

If you are a regular visitor, please take a moment to jump to the new site and re-subscribe.

I have also moved the podcast to a new feed. If you are a subscriber, please subscribe to the new Business Blogger Tips Podcast.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but as things begin to take off I thought the community would be better served from a more appropriate domain.

Thanks for visiting!

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Four Ways To Engage With Your Niche

May 5th, 2010

As I discuss blogging with people throughout my day one of the questions that comes up regularly is ‘how do I start connecting online?’ This question usually comes up right after the light goes on and people realize that marketing on the Web is not simply about broadcasting in a one-way stream of outbound media, but rather about connecting with people in a new medium that provides plenty of ways to generate discussions and relationships.

Going back to basics, I rounded up four of the primary methods for getting involved with your online community and establishing yourself as a hub in your niche.

Read
Subscribe to three other blogs in your favorite niche and read them at least once each week. It’s easy to subscribe to a blog feed using a feed reader such as Google Reader, or simply bookmark your favorite places in your browser and set a reminder for a time to read. Reading other blogs in your niche will keep you up to speed on what others are talking about in your industry, and will help spark good ideas for you to blog about in your own.

Quote
Quoting other blogs is a great way to establish yourself as a hub in your niche, and to demonstrate your connection to the industry. Filter the content that you find on other blogs and quote the interesting parts for your own audience. Make sure you are adding to the conversation by including your own thoughts and assessments. Merely quoting another blog is simply not as engaging as offering an opinion or analysis of the quote. Explain why the quote seemed important or interesting to you, or how it touched your emotions, moved you to action, or caused a change.

Quoting is an important strategy for your blog, but is also important for your social media connections as well. Be sure to add some quotes to your Facebook and Twitter pages, too.

Link
Have you ever been driving around and suddenly found yourself at a dead end with no where to go but back toward where you came from? Frustrating, isn’t it? Without links to other relevant sites, your blog becomes something of a dead end; readers can see what you are up to, but have no place to go for more information or related articles.

Search engines measure your site, in part, by the number and quality of links you have to other destinations. Adding good quality links to your site is good practice both for your readers and for SEO, too.

Comment
Making comments on other blogs within your niche is an easy way to create valuable links back to your site, and to establish yourself as an active participant in your community. Make comments often, but work to make them relevant and thought provoking. The more thoughtful your comment, the more credibility you will gain among your community.

As you can imagine, reading, quoting, linking and commenting will increase your engagement with your niche, but it will also get your niche engaging with you. Reading and subscribing is noticed by bloggers and often rewarded with a higher level of interaction. Quoting is a basic form of flattery that will not go unnoticed and is often pointed out by other readers. Linking creates trackback links on other people’s blogs and adds to your SEO, and Comments not only allow for links back to your site, but provide a brandable connection within the audiences of other bloggers.

These four simple actions will help you get engaged with your niche and establish yourself as a hub in your community. Do them often!

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What Is A Blog?

May 3rd, 2010

With the blogosphere growing every minute, and the number of blogs in the hundreds of millions, I am occasionally startled to hear someone from an audience or meeting ask ‘what is a blog?’ More often, still, I get a lot of people asking me what the difference is between a blog and a website.

Perhaps as a testament to the remaining opportunity on the Web Frontier, us bloggers have to remind ourselves that even though we have made some incredible leaps and bounds over the past ten years, the industry is still young and there are still a lot of people at the earliest stages of learning about blogs.

In the spirit of revisiting a simple-yet-elegant look at answering the question ‘What is a Blog’, I hereby submit this wonderful video from Common Craft, the people who help us understand things in simple terms:

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Using How-to’s And Case Studies To Generate Interest

April 28th, 2010

I was presenting at a meeting today when a gentleman asked me how he could get more traffic and interaction on his site. He proceeded to tell me how he had a complex network of technology performing every task he could imagine, from retweeting his post link to automatically posting to his Facebook page, and creating updates on his home page through a sidebar widget. He had all his ducks in a row.

Except for content.

He knew the technical steps for getting a blog set up and ready to perform, but as he turned to content, he found himself at a loss. He is posting regularly, but recognizes that his content is less than interesting and, not being a professional writer, he’s having trouble priming the pump.

For this week’s tip I thought I would share with you two of the most interesting and engaging ways to generate content for your blog; How-to’s and Case Studies.

What makes these easy to look to for a starting point is that they are based on your own experience. And what makes these valuable, if you do it right, is that they involve solving problems or sharing experiences; both of which are interesting to other people. If you don’t believe me; turn on your TV and see how many reality shows are based on exactly this. We love to see how other people do it.

Let’s talk about ‘How-to’s’:

There are lots of people out there wondering how to do whatever it is that you do for your business. Whether you are selling a product, selling a service, or selling a dream; there’s a how-to to talk about. It can be how to sell the product or service, or how to use the product or service, or how to share the dream. And you don’t necessarily have to be an expert to be the teacher; you can share your learning experience, too. Just turn your ‘here’s how to do it’ article into a ‘here’s how I learned how to do it’ article.

Make your how-to into an actionable list of tasks, or better yet a video, and you have a golden ticket to generating interest.

How to write a How-to article?

  1. Simply perform the task, and make a note of every step along the way.
  2. Write the steps in outline format and make a comment, explain details, or share a tip on a best practice for each step.
  3. Wrap up with the reason why someone might want to do what you are explaining and viola; you have a How-to article!

Case studies are also a great way to formulate a quick story that can generate a lot of interest.

A case study is a kind of ‘how-to’ story that involves a personal experience.

Write often about how people use your product or service. Doing this requires nothing more than interacting with your customers or even your team members. You’ll notice that I started this tip out with an experience that I had with a gentleman that I encountered as part of a regular day. When I had the experience I literally made a quick note on my phone and then presented the idea to you in the form of this post.

Putting things in this context helps others understand how to use your product or service, and brings an element of human experience to your insight. Give a specific example of how a specific customer used your product or service. Get specific about the problems that were solved, the steps of the process that were taken by the customer, and how the project or experience turned out for you and/or your customer.

You have these experiences every day, and you should write them as often as you can. Think of it as a sort of FAQ and testimonial all wrapped up unto one short article. Include photos of the process, the person, or the product.

Make a plan to incorporate a how-to into your business blog, and embellish it with case studies of how your customers relate to your products or services. Who knows; you may just be the next Betty Crocker or Norm Abram; both got their start as ‘How-to’ articles!

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Building Momentum With Your Corporate Blog

April 21st, 2010

Experienced marketers know that much of the cost in getting ‘up to speed’ with any campaign is in building ‘momentum‘. Momentum is defined in physics as the quantity of motion of a moving body, measured as a product of its mass and velocity. Basically, for us marketers, ‘momentum’ means a campaign’s size and speed, measured by it’s ability to move forward with less and less effort.

Think of the momentum you build in starting your car from a dead stop, and where the costs are: When the light turns green you step on the gas a little harder than normal, and expend extra effort as the engine pulls against the weight of the car and everything in it. Eventually, you begin to take advantage of your momentum and can ease your foot off the gas pedal a little bit while still maintaining your speed. The effort you expended up front is now realized as optimization and efficiency.

It works much the same way with online marketing and SEO; much of your effort is expended up front, and as your momentum increases you’ll be able to take advantage of the fruits of social marketing and viral growth.

Here are three rules of thumb for building and maintaining momentum with your corporate blog:

1. Consistent Frequency

Create a schedule and stick to it! Establishing a consistent publishing schedule helps set reader expectation and establishes trust for your followers. Consistency in your publishing frequency will also build your SEO credibility and literally teaches the search engines to index your site more often.

2. Consistent Theme

As a corporate blogger, you are hopefully compelled to ‘stick to the knitting‘ as Lee Iacocca puts it. What he meant by that is to keep your focus on a single, narrow subject. Corporate bloggers have less of a problem with this than casual bloggers, but it goes a long way to keep your focus on a specific target, and not to vary with the subject of your content. Make your plan up front, refine it to the simplest form and keep your theme consistent. In this way you will define your target market by refining your theme to only what is interesting to the people you want to reach. You’ll also reduce the attrition you would otherwise find if your posts float from one subject to another. Like a favorite radio station, your audience wants to tune in to hear what they have come to expect. A change of format will obviously disrupt your momentum.

3. Constant Interaction

As with my car analogy, you have to expend some extra effort up front, but you can’t just take your foot off the gas once you get up to speed; you have to keep feeding the engine to maintain your momentum.

Interacting with your audience is critical for building and maintaining momentum. Everything from responding to comments to reaching out with announcements, invitations, and requests. An important form of engagement includes extending the reach of your posts by republishing to Facebook, Twitter and sites like Digg and Stumbleupon. Engage your audience so that they have a connection with you, and make every effort to invite people to join you.

You have to keep inviting people. As most marketers know, you will only convert between one and two percent of the people you approach, which means you have to approach a lot of people. Social media has changed the rules a little bit, and now you can expect that in some cases as word of mouth begins to roll around that you will get adoption from more people with less effort, but the effort needs to remain constant.

As you continue to develop your corporate blog, consider a plan to build your momentum. Make sure to build consistency in your publishing schedule and your theme so that your readers and the search engines know what to expect, and never let off the gas when it comes to engaging your audience.

Don’t forget to subscribe to my weekly Business Blogger Tips Podcast on iTunes!

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How To Add Credibility With Excerpts, Quotes and Statistics

April 14th, 2010

Adding credibility to your corporate blog post is a simple thing to do and goes a long way to help your reader understand and confirm your claims. You just need to know what to avoid and look to the right sources.

Adding credibility to your blog is essential when you are new on the market and need to bolster your claim or support your value statement. Large companies who have well established track records can support their own claims. For the rest of us; we need to look to third-party testimony to add credibility and assure our audience that we know what we’re talking about.

The idea of adding credibility with excerpts, quotes and statistics has been around for a long time. You see this all the time in more traditional media like TV, radio and print. You’ll no doubt remember watching a late night TV commercial with a familiar celebrity extolling the virtues of a new exercise machine or remarkable new insurance plan. And you probably remember that 4-out-of-5 dentists recommend a specific kind of toothpaste, or that 9-out-of-10 doctors recommend a particular pill to cure your headache.

Adding quotes to your blog post can go a long way to demonstrate to your readers that you are credible, especially when the quotes are from a reliable source. But remember that one person’s reliable source is another person’s quack. You’ll need to pay special attention to your audience and understand their level of understanding and the level of product sophistication. You won’t want to quote the baker down the street to support the safety of that new nuclear power plant, and it doesn’t do you any good to quote the guy who claims to have been probed by alien visitors. Practice some scrutiny when looking for quotes and make sure they are relevant to the subject and from a reliable, well respected source.

Including an excerpt is also a great way to add some credibility to your claim. The rule of thumb here is similar; mind the credibility of the source and watch for quackery. Excerpting an encyclopedia entry or research article is an excellent addition to your blog, so long as you are sure to maintain the original context and include enough to assure your readers that you are not cherry-picking.

Statistics are also a great help when you are communicating efficacy or adoption or some other measurable metric. As with the others, the source of your material will ultimately come under scrutiny, so it makes sense to include statistics from scrupulous sources such as colleges and university studies, or studies performed by established research firms who have a reputation to protect.

With each of these methods, watch for the pitfalls of adding someone else’s words to support your own; when we include excerpts, quotes or statistics we open the door to logical fallacies, and these can work against you if they are not understood. Building a ’straw man’, ‘begging the question’ or hopping on the bandwagon are the more common logical fallacies that crop up in marketing efforts that can erode credibility in the long run. It makes good sense to understand logical fallacies as you begin to add supporting information to your blog.

Finally, I’d be remiss not to add a quick note about permissions. For the most part, including an excerpt, quote or research results in your blog are absolutely permissible so long as you include a source reference and include content that is agreeable to your position. In some cases you will run into information that is licensed or that requires permission before use. In these cases, be sure to apply for permission in the appropriate manner; doing so will increase your credibility and work to instill confidence in your readership.

Building credibility often requires the inclusion of a third-party voice to assure your readers that they can trust your information. Adding excerpts, quotes and statistics is a great way to build credibility and establish trust. Just be careful to vet your sources, avoid logical fallacies be honest with the information you include. Misusing supportive information can backfire, and recovery from failure is always harder than doing it right from the start.

Don’t forget to subscribe to my weekly Business Blogger Tips Podcast on iTunes!

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How Does Getting Local Help You Differentiate?

April 7th, 2010

Localization is one of the most important aspects of corporate blogging, and not for just one reason; there are many advantages to getting local with your content.

The first, and not always the most obvious, is to appeal to the search engines for localized search results. With the advent of mobile devices and their proliferation into the hands of consumers everywhere, search engines have been quick to respond with search results based on location.

When you search for a ‘haircut’, Google is literally taking your specific location into consideration with the assumption that you are looking for a haircut somewhere close to where you happen to be. Some mobile devices offer GPS location to search engines to give an exact position, but most are simply identifying your general location from the receivers, routers and  other hardware through which your device is communicating.

Companies that blog with specific content about geo-location will gain a better chance of showing up in localized search results. Geo-targeted content is critical in today’s search engine marketing.

Another important reason to get local with your content is to generate a connection with your local customers. While it’s always important to talk about the value your products and services can provide, it’s also a great idea to take some time out to talk about the local sports team, culture, landmarks and current events.

This brings an element of personalization to your posts, and helps your local audience connect with you in a more personal way; everyone loves where they live and has a connection to other people in their community; emphasize this in your posts and let your audience know that you are one of them. As a corporate blogger, your challenge will be to make your discussion relevant to your business objectives; when you talk about the local sports team or a current event, be sure to establish a connection between your business and the topic, lest your customers see you as rambling or wandering.

Finally, another important reason to get local with your content is for differentiation. Remember that you are competing with others online to market your type of product or service, and talking about them specifically will not differentiate you enough to stand out. Adding localization helps you target your product to a smaller marketable niche, and gives your content a uniquely searchable profile.

For instance, If I perform a generic search for ‘weight loss‘ I get over 92 million search results that match this term. When I localize for ‘weight loss Topeka‘, I reduce my competition down to 230,000; a mere fraction of the overall competition. You’ll find this same dramatic effect for almost any search term.

The easiest way to add localization to your blog post is to modify your keywords with the name of your city, your nearest large city, and even the names of some surrounding cities, communities or even developments. Search engines also look for street addresses, zip codes and state names, so make sure to include your full contact information in the occasional post.

Adding user-friendly content about your local community happenings is a great way create unique content that will differentiate you from your competition while helping you connect with your local community.

Just remember to keep it relevant to your business objectives.

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Are You Limiting Access?

March 31st, 2010

I met a new service provider over the phone last week. After a few days working with my new contact over email, delivering documents and exchanging questions and answers, there came a time when I was ready to add him to my address book.

I didn’t have him on the phone with me when it occurred to me to add him, but I knew I had a few emails from him and I had already been to his website, so I was certain I had the information I needed.

My first step was to find an email from him where I was sure I could find his number in his signature. Sure enough, there it was, but I couldn’t click to copy it because it was embedded in a nicely formatted image. Sure, it looked nice, but I couldn’t access the information and couldn’t copy it directly into my address book. I use an electronic address book on my computer, and like anyone using Apple Mail or Outlook, I have the ability to right-click on an address to easily add it to my address book. Not in this case, I was forced to retype all his contact information.

As a second attempt, I visited his website to see if I could access or copy any information from there. Nope, same problem; there in the footer of his website was the same nicely formatted image featuring his contact information nicely embedded into a graphic featuring a beautiful sunset. Useless.

Like many businesses, I do most of my communications over the phone or on my computer, and with over 50 percent of Americans online these days, so are most consumers. So it makes sense that I would take a moment to think about how my contacts may be trying to reach me.

In my business, I am in contact with a fairly limited number of people, but I want them all to have direct access to me, so I make sure to include an electronic copy of my name, business, email and phone number. This makes it easy for them to add me to their electronic address books, and to synch this information with their smart phones; right where I want to be when they think about calling me.

The same advantage can be taken on your blog; make sure you are providing a way to contact you that is appropriate, and accessible. Many businesses and consumers are looking to your site to quickly find or copy information they need in order to better work with you, if your contact information is hidden, or inaccessible (for instance embedded in an image so that it is not independently copy-able), then you are adding another roadblock for your customers and adding barriers to getting connected.

There are reasons you may want to make information inaccessible, and in those cases embedding information in an image is appropriate. For instance if you post your email or phone number online in a normal format you may be susceptible to scrapers; robots that look for this type of information to glean and export to spammers.

For most blogs and online marketing sites, I recommend using a contact form that automatically emails contact information to you, where you can then respond with private information in an email or followup call. For bloggers, a contact form is an easy addition to your site and a great way to make sure you are accessible without divulging private information to the Web.

Either way, it is important to remember that your blog has a purpose, and that is to engage your audience. Once you determine what level of accessibility you want to provide to your customers, make sure you are providing easy ways for them to get in touch with you.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

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Do Your Posts Have Charisma?

March 25th, 2010

charismaI was watching an online drum lesson the other day (I still aspire to be a rock star, someday…), and in the lesson the instructor was addressing showmanship. He gave two examples while playing the same beat. First, he tapped out a traditional beat without moving around. He made sure to emphasize that he was uninvolved by rolling his eyes and appearing as bored as he could be.

The result was that the beat he played didn’t sound very interesting or fun.

After a brief pause to explain the importance of charisma in his delivery, he played the same beat again, but this time added some ‘charisma’; he bobbed his head to the beat, swung his arms a little more wildly, and moved his body as if he were dancing.

Wow! What a difference it made. Suddenly the same boring beat he had played before came alive. It was somehow more danceable, enticing and engaging. I literally found myself dancing along as I watched.

There was no difference between the beats he played, but yet the second version was so much more exciting. Adding a little charisma to your blogs and posts can have the same effect; dress up your story with a little charisma.

The dictionary defines charisma as a ‘compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others‘. Perfect! This is exactly what your blog needs to stand out in the crowd, and just what your message needs to get through the clutter.

Adding charisma is easier than you think; all it takes is some personal excitement and a little extra spice. Let your audience know that you are personally excited about the product or service you are talking about, and express your self in fantastic, exciting terms! Get a little loud, and let your readers know that you are jumping up and down with enthusiasm, and that you can’t wait for them to try your suggestions.

I can’t wait for you to try this; It really works!

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

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