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

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!

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!

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:

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!

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!

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!

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.

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:

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:

Questions are compelling and generate interest. Creating a blog title that poses a question is almost irresistible to most readers and a great way to stick out above the crowd and get noticed; while everyone seems to have something to tell, it is not often that we get asked.

When we are asked a question, it is hard to resist giving an answer, finding out why the question was asked in the first place, or learning the reason to an obvious answer.

Rewrite your next blog title in the form of a question. If the title of your post is going to be ‘Make Your Titles A Question‘, rewrite it as ‘Are You Using Questions To Generate Interest?’ By doing this you are turning a definitive instruction into a compelling reason to seek more information. The question on your reader’s lips will be ‘why should I use questions to generate interest?’, and they will be compelled to read more about it.

When you share your post to a social network like Facebook or Twitter, you have a limited space in which to describe your post. A question represents the shortest way to communicate the value proposition of your article while enticing your readers to investigate further. The next time you share an article to Facebook, or tweet a link to your blog, add a question to the comment and present the link as the answer.

If you have done it right, you should see an increase in interest to your blog from your social sites, and an increase in retweets and forwards.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

One of the best places to find a good video is on YouTube.

You can create your own video, of course, and post it to YouTube without too much trouble. You should give it a try; it’s actually quite fun and relatively easy if you have a few basic tools, including a webcam and some editing software. Most newer computers come with everything you need.

Finding a video on YouTube is pretty easy to do. Just visit YouTube.com and perform a search in the box at the top of the screen. You can search for anything such as a product or company name, an event, or keyword. Expect to get a lot of hits and to weed through a few videos before you find the perfect one.

If you are looking for a company video, you can usually find them posted to the company channel, which will feature a group of videos from the same company or sponsor.

Once you have located your video, there are a couple of options for sharing:

First, to include the video on a blog page, all you’ll have to do is copy the embed code from the YouTube page and paste it into your post. To do this, look to the right of the video and click on the box marked ‘embed’. This will open a drop-down section that allows you to select from a handful of options including whether or not to add a frame to the video, what color the frame should be (to match your site) and a size that will work best for your template.

Make the appropriate adjustments and simply copy the line of code in the ‘embed’ box. Paste this code into your blog post and you have now added a video. The video will play right on your site and your readers won’t have to leave your page.

The other way to easily share a YouTube video is to click the ‘Share’ tab just below the video. This tab will open a few options including one-click links to share to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

When you click a share link you will be given an opportunity to add a comment to the video that will appear with the link on your social network page. Easy!

Sharing video from your company is a great way to spread the word, and is a great way to get a corporate message out without having to repeat it yourself. This can open the doors to a more engaging conversation after your readers or friends have seen the video and have a visual background of your products or services.

If your company doesn’t have a video posted to YouTube, take the initiative and create one yourself. Be sure to get the usual permissions for copyrights and trademarks, and be sure to stick to the features and benefits of the product without extending your liability.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

What I want to talk about in this post is how to share the information we create or discover in a way that makes it compelling for others to read. After all; there is no sense in taking the effort to share if there is little chance that your recipient will take a look.

A few weeks ago I shared some insight into adding personalization to your posts in order to make them more compelling to our readers. The same rules apply when sharing a link, and especially when sharing by email.

We have learned from Twitter and Facebook that adding a brief descriptive introduction to our posts makes it more likely that others will participate. Whenever you share a link in Facebook, for instance, you are provided with a comment box in which to add your own comment. Twitter works the same way, allowing a very brief comment to be included so that others will know what the link is about. Incorporating these skills into our other communications is a great way to get our audience to engage with us, particularly in email.

I get forwarded emails all the time, and a good percentage of these are links to articles that my friends and associates want me to see. I appreciate them, but sometimes all I get is a single link, with no explanation or no lead in that tells me what I am getting into. I hate getting these…

Why? Well, for starters it creates some apprehension against even clicking on the link in the first place. After all, this is how a lot of phishing sites deliver their spam; an email with a lone link, lurking about in the off case I will just click it out of curiosity. I never do, and neither should you.

My point is this; without a brief introduction to the link you are now competing with spam emails for attention, and if you are like me you usually discard them without a second look. You don’t want that happening to your communications.

Another reason is that as the reader you are committing me to look at the link ‘cold’, which means you have missed an opportunity to influence my perspective on what I may be reading. By sharing your enthusiasm, sympathy, or excitement about an article you are linking to, your readers will instantly become more interested. And that makes for good business!

We are constantly barraged with information, and when it takes more than a second or two to process the ‘hows’, ‘whys’ and ‘whats’ of a message we often tune out or discard it. This happens whether you are on Twitter, reading an email, on the phone or speaking in person. The best way to get your audience to engage with you is to engage them first, and all it takes is a quick introduction of the information you want to share to turn it into a conversation.

Here’s my protocol for success, in the context of an email. Let’s assume you are forwarding a link to your blog post, or to an interesting article you have found on the Internet.

Make your subject line descriptive of the action you are taking, just like you would start a conversation in person: ‘Here’s an Interesting article for you to read’. But don’t stop there; add a descriptive line in the body of your message, ahead of the link. Something that conveys your feelings about the article whether you are excited, empathetic, or displeased. Something that connects your reader to the story and either makes it important to them or generates some interest: ‘I read this and thought you would be interested because you have had a similar experience’.

The more personal you can make it, the better.

The idea is two fold: 1) you are working to generate genuine interest, and 2) you’re trying to persuade or prepare your recipient’s perception. After all, you’re not just passing this along for no good reason; you have a communications objective whether it is to sell, persuade, or build friendship. To engage your audience you need to engage them first; Start the conversation with a compelling introduction.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

Adding images to your blog is easy. In popular blog platforms such as Wordpress there are tools that allow you to easily upload a small image into your blog. Once you have uploaded an image, you can also make some adjustments including the padding or spacing around the image so that your words don’t bump right into the image, and the justification so that you can position the image to the right, left, or center of your post.

Uploading the images is fairly easy. As a quick note, the most common and easily used images for your blog are .JPG, .PNG, and .GIF. JPG is the most preferred, and what is generally produced by most digital cameras and screen capture utilities.

What I find to be the hard part is in finding an appropriate image to include with your post. Just the right image can add volumes of context to your post. Funny or abstract images are my favorites, but there is certainly good reason to add clarifying images, or those that appeal to emotion.

There are plenty of places to look, but the first thing to be aware of is copyright laws. It is illegal to simply steal an image from another person’s website or library without permission. Doing so can get you into trouble, but there are several ways to avoid this problem.

The first is to pay for an image. This costs money, of course, but is a safe way to get high quality images for your blog. My favorite site for purchasing images is iStock.com.

Another way is to use your own photography. Most of us have digital cameras these days so it is relatively easy to plan ahead, take a break from your computer, and host your very own photo shoot. I have done this in a variety of ways and I’ve had a lot of fun doing it every time. Of course you don’t have to go to elaborate lengths to create the perfect photo; sometimes a simple picture of a flower in the back yard, a window reflecting the sky, or a fencepost will do.

When blogging for your business, stock photos of your company’s products and the ways they can be used are good images to include, and are often available from your company website.

Another great place to get photos is Flickr. Flickr.com is a great source of photos taken by regular people from all over the world. You’ll be amazed at the quality and breadth of the photos you can find on Flickr. A great search tool for finding photos on Flickr is called Compfight. Just go to compfight.com and perform a search for the image you are looking for. Compfight takes care to search only those photos that are labeled for public use, however you will still want to be sure you are using a photo that has been given a Creative Commons license, meaning it is open source and available for use without payment. Some restrictions may apply, so always double check.

Adding an image to your posts is a great way to spice up your content and give your readers a little extra fun to look at when they stop by your blog.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

I was impressed. I actually thought ‘certainly she can’t keep this up all day’, but then I realized that yes, she probably could; there is no shortage of things to say when you personalize, and no limit to the amount of interest you can generate when you add a personal touch.

Imagine you were standing there in line in front of me, and as you approached the clerk she paid you a compliment on the color of your shirt. You would instantly feel a personal bond and would be compelled to engage with her, perhaps thanking her for the compliment, or maybe telling her a short story about where you found it, or that it is also your spouse’s favorite, or that all your shirts are this color because you love it.

And so it goes for blogging. Adding a personal touch to your posts will not only help you bring interest and life to your stories, but it will help people identify with you on a more personal level, and will compel them to engage with you.

Creative writing is a challenge for most of us, but retelling a story can come quite naturally. I find that one of the best ways to blog is to simply retell a story in my own words. Personalize it, and give it my own personal perspective. When you find a story that is worth passing along, don’t simply retell the story word for word; reinvent the story from your own perspective. Give new insight, posit new theories, and offer extending ideas.

An easy way to do this is to insert yourself into the story. As I did in my opening story; you probably envisioned me standing in a grocery store line waiting for my turn, and probably have a mental image of what the clerk might have looked like. By telling you about my place in the story, you became connected and your mind engaged. At least I hope so…

The people around you are most interested in hearing what you think about a story, not necessarily in the story itself. It’s your personalization that really brings it home for your audience. The next time you post content to your blog, or to a social network like Facebook or Twitter, take care to add yourself to the story and watch how others get engaged with you.

Can you believe I record these things? Give it a listen and tell me what you think:

The most popular and easy way to add video to your site is to embed video from YouTube.com. It’s easy to do; simply find a favorite video on YouTube and copy the embed link you’ll find just to the right of the video. Clicking on the embed link opens a drop down menu of options you can select to change the way the video looks, including border colors and sizes.

For those of you using Wordpress, you’ll want to drop this bit of code into the HTML editing view in your post window. Change back to the visual WYSIWYG editor to add some content.

Add some content. This is really the gist of my tip this week; video alone is not enough to satisfy the search engines’ hunger for written content. While video is fun for us humans, it doesn’t leave much for the search engines to index; search engines can’t watch and understand videos. So no matter how many you have on your site, the search engines will pass you by if you are not including the written word.

So even though you have added a great video to your blog, it’s important to add content, too.

Next time you add a video to your blog, take just a few extra minutes to add a description of the video underneath. Give a quick explanation of what your readers will see in the video, add your thoughts or opinion about the video, and make sure to use a handful of keywords.

You only need a paragraph or two to give the search engines enough to go on, and the mix of video and written content will assure that the search engines are as happy as your readers.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

The report surveyed 259 marketing professionals and asked them where they plan to spend their time and money in the coming year. A full 72 percent mentioned social networks as part of their marketing plans. Importantly, social networking was the number one position for marketers. Online newsletters and blogs are listed as second, with 63 percent saying they are engaged with these types of marketing tools. Another interesting result of the survey is that the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh positions of the report were strictly content, in the form of white papers, articles, case studies and online video.

The reason I was surprised that newsletters and blogs are tied for second is that blogs can be used as a newsletter, effectively killing two birds with one stone. I think it is both important and telling, too, that the positions just below ‘Blog’ are specifically content, all of which can be distributed via a blog (supporting my long-time stance that a blog is the foundation of any online marketing campaign).

There’s no doubt that a newsletter is a great way to stay in touch with your audience, and there are certainly reasons to use a newsletter. However if you are already a blogger, you may not have known that you are already on the way to hosting an newsletter. There are two ways to deal with this, and both help you leverage the concept of a newsletter or broadcast to deliver your blog content to your audience, and to attract them back to your site for more information.

The first way is probably already built into your blog, especially if you are using a ListPipe solution, or the popular Wordpress software. It’s called ‘RSS’, and it’s a built-in way for people to subscribe to your content. RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication‘, and it’s a web standard that most browsers support automatically. When a visitor comes to your site they have an ability to subscribe to your RSS feed, and can receive content from you in their own browsers every time they post.

If you are using a ListPipe or Wordpress solution for your blog, simply type the word ‘/feed’ after your URL in your browser, and you’ll be asked to subscribe. Using this simple technique will allow you, and your readers, to receive an automatic update whenever you post new content.

Another way to deliver your blog content to your readers is to use a subscription service such a Google’s Feedburner. Feedburner is a free blog service that offers a subscription management tool. All you have to do is start a Google Feedburner account, and then direct people to your Feedburner subscription form to capture their email address. Whenever you post content to your blog, Feedburner will automatically email your readers with your article right in the email.

With Feedburner you also have a number of tools that allow you to manage your subscribers including adding and deleting them. Don’t worry about the management headache; Feedburner handles unsubscribes for you with a handy link at the bottom of every email they send on your behalf.

So if you are a blogger already, you are already ahead of the crowd when it comes to delivering an newsletter, you just need to make a few adjustments and let your readers know.Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

Marketing online is a relentless pursuit, and even the tiniest of breaks can literally break the chain.

In particular, when blogging you risk loosing the attention of the search engines if you stop posting great content on a regular schedule. Your social networks, too, depend on your constant attention in order to maintain a top-of-mind presence in the minds of your followers.

In my experience, most bloggers start off with strong intentions and then begin to wear out after three to four weeks of posting. Now is the time to pull ahead of the crowd and reinvigorate your online efforts. Here’s a few quick tips to keep your blog alive and your networks growing:

1. Create a schedule for yourself. Make a note in your calendar and set aside a specific time to organize, write and post to your blog. Also, make sure to set aside a specific time each day to check in on your social networks and to repost a few items. Set a calendar reminder and stick to it.

2. Organize your effort. Posting to a blog is a complex task and requires at least a little bit of planning for even the best of us. Take a moment to establish a plan for your weekly posting routine. Identify a process that suits you and practice following the steps each week. For instance; set a timeline, and make a list of items to check off for each post. Your items might include ‘Brainstorming’, ‘Defining a Topic’, ‘Research’, ‘Writing a Draft’, ‘Editing’, and ‘Posting Live’. Whatever your routine; get it down on paper and follow it each week.

3. Keep in Mind. Through your week you will be inspired by new ideas and topics to write about. Be prepared to recognize these moments and have some tools on hand for capturing your fresh ideas. Make a note on your phone, or keep a pencil and paper handy. Train yourself to recognize new ideas and to capture them for later blogging.

4. Don’t Cheat. It is tempting to cheat a week or two and procrastinate, especially at this time of year when the sky is a little extra grey, and the cabin fever starts setting in. As we all know, this is the first step to failure, and the first opportunity for our competition to get the upper hand. Don’t let them have it! Stay true to your plan and work hard to meet your schedule. As soon as you let yourself slip, it gets a little harder to get back on the saddle, and before you know it all is lost and you are starting over.

Take a few moments to reset your commitment to blogging and social marketing, and you’ll be glad you did as you pull ahead.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

It seems that all we hear about at this time of year is ‘goal setting’, but most of us rarely pause to consider what goal setting is, and how it relates to our online marketing plan.

Whether you are concentrating on social media, your marketing blog, or a good old fashioned email marketing campaign, it helps to understand the difference between Tasks, Goals, and Objectives. Let’s break ‘em down with a quick analogy:

When playing a sport, for instance ‘football’, your objective is to ‘win the game’. This is your overarching reason for all the effort and sacrifice you invest. While playing football, you win by making goals. Simple enough; you achieve your objective by setting and reaching goals. A goal can be scoring a point, or a goal can be to post to your blog on a regular frequency.

Finally, goals are made by executing tasks. A task in football might be to count to ‘three alligators‘, run ten steps and turn around to catch a ball. In your business a task is the smallest increment of work that helps you achieve your goal. In this case it might be ‘writing a post’.

Your Strategy is the plan you assemble to organize and complete your tasks and goals in order to achieve your objectives.

So as you contemplate your social media strategy, first outline your objective by asking yourself ‘What do I want to accomplish with all my effort?’. It may be a specific financial objective for your business. Next, determine the goals you need to set in place that drive your progress toward your objective. Goals are shorter term, and you need to have several if not many of them.

Tasks are the basic components of your goals; the actual ‘doing’ that gets the job done. Many tasks comprise a goal, and many goals comprise an objective.

Note that the most important aspect of Tasks, Goals, and Objectives is that they are all specifically defined, measurable, and timed. Like a three legged chair; without these three elements, you do not have an achievable task, goal or objective.

Of course you can always save yourself the time of performing many tasks by signing up for a ListPipe account. ListPipe provides regular customized content to your Wordpress blog to give you a leg up in your online marketing effort. We’ll do all the research and writing for you, and all at a very affordable price. Check out http://listpipe.com for more information.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

We have spent a good deal of time discussing social media networks like Facebook and Twitter; it seems these have been all the rage this last year and for good reason. However I don’t see these networks carrying the excitement throughout 2010. I agree these will remain important facets of our online marketing, and they will continue to be an important way to reach a close circle of friends and followers with your message.

Facebook and Twitter have achieved staple status and aren’t going away any time soon, but the early adopter wave is over and the laggards are now catching on. I see these as must-have commodities toward the end of 2010, but not the primary differentiators they were for 2009.

Facebook remains as the king of social networking, and new business tools being developed will help businesses take advantage of groups, pages and fans. Watch as Facebook evolves into a more mature business tool in 2010 as professional users give this environment the credibility it deserves as a powerful business forum.

Twitter is a great place to make quick announcements, but watch this space continue to evolve as a research platform where an instant pulse can be taken for messaging campaigns and streetwise advice.

I remain convinced that blogging will again shine through as the king of online marketing. Content is King of search results and there’s just no better way to present frequent, relevant content on the internet.

There are a lot of people blogging out there, but many have yet to find their groove, and most are still trying to capture an audience. Blogging is the perfect mix of story-telling, presentation, discussion and debate. For those that can concentrate on their niche and present content that is interesting, engaging, and optimized for search engines indexing, you’re blog will be the primary differentiator that sets up the reason to use Facebook and Twitter for your 2010 online marketing.

As always, your basic plan should be founded on a regular blog with featurettes and announcements going out as often as possible to your Facebook and Twitter audience.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

With more and more marketers blogging these days, it’s getting harder and harder to make a splash in an otherwise crowded marketplace. But that shouldn’t stop you from having a plan to blog about your business in the coming new year.

With search engines concentrating evermore on organic writing, high frequency and relevant keywords, the notion that ‘Content is King‘ should be the foundation of your marketing strategy for 2010.

Here is my quick list of reminders and tips to make your blog really stick out:

Organic Writing: Search engines are looking for original content. When you write on your blog, Facebook page or Twitter, your content is being scoured by the search engines and compared to other relevant content. When your content is deemed to be unique, you are awarded a higher organic status than with content that is copied or reproduced, and placed higher in the search results for your given topic.

Ways to make your content more unique, and more organic, include adding localization, personalizing information such as your contact address and phone number, putting the story into your own words, and allowing your own personality to shine through in the content.

Frequency. You have heard me talk about the importance of frequency before; basically the more you post, the more popular you will be in the search engines. This is a good time of year to establish a new goal to step up your frequency, and to expand your posting ritual beyond your blog to Facebook and Twitter. You should be posting once per week at a minimum, and more if you can. For serious marketers, I recommend posting twice per week with a daily post to both Facebook and Twitter.

Relevant Keywords. This, too, seems to be an overworked mantra. However, including relevant keywords in your content is the single most important way to let the search engines know where to include you in search results. The start of a new year is a perfect time to make a list and check it twice; revisit your keywords by doing a little research on what your customers are searching for, and physically write them at the top of your writing template. Review them often and include a selection from the list in every post.

If you are a business blogger and are looking for great SEO content for your blog, consider a subscription to ListPipe; in just a few short minutes you can get us started writing original, personalized content for your blog that is search engine optimized and linked to your primary website from relevant keywords. Take a look at http://listpipe.com

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

Keywords are the terms and phrases in your posts that are most relevant to your topic. For instance if you are posting in your blog about a healthy food product, then your keywords will of course be the product name. But don’t stop there; keywords will also include the product category, the product ingredients, and can also include the ways you can use the product.

Your ultimate objective with keywords is to make a connection between your content and the terms your customers are searching for. While many customers search for generalized terms, some search for very specific terms. When you stick with the generalized terms on your site, you are competing with a million other sites for those terms. However, when you make your terms more specific, you reduce the number of competitors and open the door for more attention, albeit from a smaller crowd.

The wisdom follows that you would like to get more interest from a smaller, more focused set of customers than from a very small portion of a larger but less focused set. Would you rather be fishing with a big net in the ocean, or a small net in a barrel chock full of exactly the fish you like?

Let’s talk about a few ways you can optimize your keywords…

Keyword modifiers can help distinguish your product from a competitor’s, or can help refine your search for a more specific term. For instance you may add the word ‘chewable’ or ‘drink’ to your product name to help distinguish its specific product type. Adding words like ‘healthy’ or ‘natural’ can help refine search results for people looking for specific categories.

Modifiers are intended to make your keywords more specific, and thereby reduce the number of competing terms.

Associative Keywords are keywords that are related to your keywords, but that may not be precisely related to your product. For instance if you are selling a healthy food, you will want to add keywords that relate to proper digestion or good nutrition. These types of words will come naturally in your discussion, but it helps to be aware of them so that you can concentrate on using them in slightly more density than you might otherwise.

As you contemplate your keywords, don’t forget to consider misspellings or alternate spellings. If your keywords are hard to spell, or have a common alternative, intermingle these in your post to help the search engines identify your content with what your type-challenged customers may be entering into the search window.

Finally, remember to use localization terms with your keywords. The search engines are including localization tags in all their search results, meaning that it matters where you are from and where you are selling. Localized search results are relatively new and many users are only just catching on; this is a great way to get ahead of the curve and take advantage of local searches for your product. To add localization to your keywords, simply add the name of your city, state, and zip to your keywords.

Keep your keywords in mind as you write in your blog, on Facebook and Twitter. Optimize everything you write so that as the search engines index content from these sources, they know exactly how to match you up with the customers searching for your products.

Looking for a great way to start a business blog? Check out our new Business Blog Content Service from ListPipe; We’ll get you started with a blog and even write the content for you, every week!

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

Here’s a quick rundown of the SEO.com top ten from the ListPipe perspective: (For more information about the SEO.com top ten article, visit the Utah Valley Business Blog, or head straight over to SEO.com.)

1. Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – ListPipe is all about ‘organic content’, in fact we just released a new feature that allows us to deliver unique articles to a wider range of customers within a specific category. If you are a franchise organization or a corporate group with a large number of sales representatives and distributors, ListPipe can help you achieve an organic profile across your entire organization while delivering individually customized content for each participant.

2. Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn – Each ListPipe article includes a sharing tag for one-click sharing of your customized content into your social accounts. Most of our users are Facebook and Twitter users, and we have made it easy for them to share content from their blog to a wider group of people through their social networks. We also include with each ListPipe account an informative online training experience that teaches the basics of sharing content into social media networks like Facebook and Twitter.

3. Keyword Research – Our custom content is chock full of keywords that we have researched for you. Keyword research can eat up a lot of valuable time, but we recognize (as does SEO.com) that it is critical for any online marketing strategy. Get yourself a ListPipe account, and we’ll take care of this tedious task for you!

4. Video Marketing – Like SEO.com, we saw this one coming; and for this reason each ListPipe account hosted on our servers includes an easy to use plugin that allows you to add your own video content to your blog. In addition, an increasing number of our posts include video content from your proprietary sources as well as from popular video sites such as YouTube.

5. Online Public Relations – Because we are working with the corporate umbrella for many of our blog networks, we have direct access to news and announcements that we republish into your blog so that you can repost to your social networks with the confidence that any readers will be able to find their way back to you with customized links and contact information designed to lead readers to your door.

6. Link Building – This is one of the primary reasons we invented ListPipe, and remains one of our cornerstone strategies. Every ListPipe post includes a strong linking strategy designed to direct traffic to your main site as well as lend Authority to your site from the keywords and phrases we are linking from.

7. Blogging – Need we say more? ListPipe is a blog content service; we publish content each week into your blog for you so you can focus on the important aspects of selling your business. And for you eager bloggers, we provide full administrative access to your Wordpress blog so that you can add supplemental content and keep your readers informed at a more intimate level.

8. Conversion Web Design – Our articles and the keyword linking strategy we employ is designed to lead visitors to your blog directly to your site for more information. Links, encouraging language, and a ready-built Contact Me page direct your readers back to you every time.

9. Paid Search Marketing – We don’t offer Pay-per-click advertising services; we’re all about the organic content side. If you are interested in adding PPC to your blog marketing effort, we recommend SEO.com, the original publishers of this awesome top ten list.

10. Email Marketing – Communication is what blogging is all about, and for this reason we occasionally publish your email address within a post to help your readers find you. More importantly, we include with your blog a full-featured Contact Form that allows you to collect leads right from your blog. When a visitor contacts you with their email address from your Contact Form, add them to your marketing list and keep them informed!

ListPipe provides professional blogging services for sales and marketing organizations who want to increase their presence in search engine results. Contact ListPipe for more information.

Thanks to SEO.com for providing this great top ten list.

A conversion goal is basically a step in your sales process. Specifically, it is the ‘next step’ that you want your customers to take when they visit your site or complete a previous step.

As we talk through this, remember that a conversion goal and a sales process is not necessarily tied to the sale of a product; we could easily be talking about supplying a service, generating a membership, or asking for simple participation. In this context, your ’sales process’ is the collection of steps you want your visitors to complete, and a ‘conversion goal’ is a milestone of that process. Bare in mind, too, that a conversion goal can be the completion of a single step such as the visitation of a specific page, or the completion of the entire process such as a sale or a signature.

In a nutshell, a conversion goal is the specific task you can measure that demonstrates when you have achieved success. The easiest way to come up with your conversion goals is to ask yourself ‘What do I want my visitors to do when they come to my page?’

Examples of conversion goals can include any of the following:

• Completing a form
• Making a payment
• Forwarding information
• Subscribing
• Leaving a comment

Note that on a website the measurement of a conversion goal is in loading a specific page. For instance if your conversion goal is to complete a form, the measurement of that goal may be the loading of a ‘Thank You’ page that is triggered when the visitor hits the submit button. In this way you are measuring the results of an action that confirm the action.

When it comes to blogging, you’ll want to think through your conversion goals each time you write. Ask yourself how your subject is going to support your conversion goal, and how you can direct your readers to complete it. In this way you can support your conversion goals with links, calls-to-action, and supporting information.

Every post should contain some form of direction toward your conversion goals, and you should be focused on measuring them for success.

Oh, by the way: Subscribe to my blog (in the upper right corner) to receive these weekly tips via email, and look for me on Facebook and Twitter.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

Social Media Marking

So in this basic definition of Social Media marketing we have defined three basic elements: Assets, Social Networking Tools, and Fans.

Let’s take a look at these, and think about using them all together to encompass the opportunity to engage and interact.

First are your assets. Assets in this case include everything you want to market, from the tangible (your website) to the intangible (your personality) and everything in between. As you perform your social media marketing, be aware of your assets, what type of asset they are, and when it is best to market them.

For instance, when you are meeting with someone in person for the first time, you are working at a very emotional level, which is the best time to focus on your personality. Focus on getting to know the person and remember to be genuine. Once you get to know a person, or have time to engage with people online you can focus more on driving traffic to your website to learn more details about your products and services.

Second is your social networking tools. The three I most commonly address are your blog, Facebook, and Twitter. These are of course the most common and most important tools, but don’t forget that your social networking tools including business networks like LinkedIn, and even entertainment networks like YouTube.

Start with your blog by posting original content that is relevant to your cause, and then repost and engage your audience with that content on Facebook and Twitter. Make sure your connections on LinkedIn know what your business is doing, and have some fun creating interactive content on YouTube. Even Facebook allows you to create video now, and it’s a fun way to get your fans involved and to generate interest with creative communications.

And Third is are your fans. Fans are everyone from family and friends to employees, channel partners distributors and customers. Everyone is a potential fan, so watch for opportunities to interact and engage with them. Primarily, look for opportunities to include the people you meet in all your social media networks. Whenever you meet someone in person, ask them for a card or information so you can follow up, and invite them to participate with you in your social networks.

I often get invitations the next day from people I meet at an event. I was a little uncomfortable with this at first because I wanted to maintain a private network of close friends, but I soon learned that I could create a robust network of friends and business associates, and that people in either category could participate with me in the other; in other words; you never know where that next opportunity will come from, so work to capture them all.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

This isn’t to say that your original post isn’t interesting on it’s own. But I’ve been doing a few experiments and reading around on this subject lately and there are two distinct ways I have discovered for building interest and gaining clicks.

One I’ll call ‘The Introduction‘, and the other ‘The Tease‘.

Think about the last movie trailer you saw on TV or at the cinema while you were waiting for the feature to start. An interesting clip swaths the screen that frames the story and piques your interest, followed by an alluring sequence that stops short of the big payoff. The premise is interesting to you, and you are intrigued by the possible scenarios that might play out from what you just saw; Will they get their man? Is he a good guy or a bad guy? Will she find out the truth? By the time the roll is finished you lean to your date and whisper ‘We’ve gotta see that one!’

What you have just experienced is a well-crafted introduction, and a big fat tease all rolled into one tantalizing taste of what may come. Years of refinement and research have gone into the creation of the common movie trailer to make sure you are interested in the premise, and wanting some answers. If you could buy tickets right now you probably would.

Enter the re-post: Reposting is when you transfer content from your blog to your social network, for instance Facebook or Twitter. Your intention is to share an excerpt from the article and get people to click back to your blog to read the rest of the story.

For the untrained reposter, it is simply enough to restate the title of the post and to include a picture. But you’ll need an edge to get past the onslaught of posts and tweets that face our social associates. Use the movie trailer formula for the best results.

Whenever you blog, repost the content twice to each of your social networks; this will let them know that you are excited about the information.

Make sure the first one introduces the subject of the post. I have found that writing in the form of a question is the best way to get attention and to set up the intro. For instance if you have posted an article about the nutrition of applesauce, you might write a short introduction in the form of a tantalizing question: “Does an Apple A Day Really Keep The Doctor Away?”

Your readers will be compelled to find out, and are more likely to click through when there is something to find out.

In your followup repost, take an excerpt from the article and give your readers a small taste of the story. Make sure it is compelling and that it generates more questions than it answers. For instance you might write “My doctor says that an apple is one of only three fruits he recommends…” In this case you want your readers to be interested in the rest of the story.

Of course the most important thing is to include a link back to your original article.

Practice makes perfect, and don’t be afraid to experiment with the types of questions and excerpts you post. It will take a while to get the hang of it, but as long as you stay with the proven movie trailer formula it is sure to pay off.

If you haven’t started a blog yet, check out ListPipe for SEO blogging.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

I have have first-hand experience working with David and can attest to his uncanny ability to connect with people; he reached the Facebook maximum limit of 5,000 friends within a few months of starting his account. The amazing thing about David and his many connections is that they are all personal; he can identify each of his friends and in most cases can describe where they work and how they met.

David is a remarkable networker. He is also a very successful businessman, and he credits his success to his connections. In fact, during his keynote he stated emphatically that it’s not ‘What’ you know, but ‘Who’ you know. David says this, too, from a position of authority; he was Sr. VP of General Counsel for Novell for over 15 years and is currently CEO of Fusion-io, an up and coming storage technology company that Wall Street thinks will be bigger than IBM.

So tonight I wanted to share a few tips I’ve learned from David and other successful online networkers.

1. Use Facebook and Twitter: The two most successful online networking environments are Facebook and Twitter by a long shot. There are other tools to use online, and it’s OK to use them, too. But if you are not on Facebook and Twitter, you are missing the boat. They are both free, and if you haven’t gotten on already; get started right now.

2. Be diligent: You’re going to have to work at it, so plan on spending at least 15 minutes a day in your online environment making connections, organizing, and expanding. Successful entrepreneurs I have spoken to spend anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours on social networking. Log in once during the morning hours, and once again later in the afternoon for maximum exposure without spending too much time all at once.

3. Concentrate on connections: Make it a goal to expand your connections. There are a number of ways to do this, but primarily you want to look for people you know and connect to them first, then start making connections with friends of your friends. David makes it a point to collect business cards at every event he attends, and he tries to connect with those people within a day or two. It is not only an impressive tactic, but very effective in creating an ever-expanding circle of valuable connections.

4. Share pertinent content. Let your circle of connections know what you are doing, but be sure to concentrate on what really matters; Let them know of your progress, success, announcements or experiences that are interesting and engaging. Ask your friends for help when it comes to hiring, making plans, or looking for information. Always share your blog posts.

5. Be careful about your opinions: If you are using your connections to build success, remember that when you pick a side you are probably offending about half of your audience at any given time. It’s a good idea to avoid discussions about politics or religion. No matter how neutral you are trying to be, someone will get ruffled.

Building a network of contacts is a rewarding and important facet of your ability to succeed. Some say ‘critical‘. It takes some work and effort, but I couldn’t agree more with David when he says “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know“.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

The links in your content are very much like your personal social connections; They are a reflection of your site personality and an indication of how well you are connected. ‘Authority’ works much the same way as a popularity contest; when you hang out with the most popular kid in school, some of that popularity rubs off on you. If you play it cool, you can build on that popularity-by-association to create your own independent popularity.

Because links are so important, it is important to know how to create good links. Here are a few tips:

1. Link Volume: The number of links you create in a given blog post is important. If you maintain a ratio of about one link per hundred words you will be at a maximum recommended density. Any more, and you risk being seen as a spammer. Any fewer and you are not taking full advantage of your linking opportunity.

2. Words to Link: Concentrate your linking on keywords and phrases, but don’t link more than once from the same word or phrase within the same post. Don’t be afraid to link from multiple words, but make sure they are a searchable phrase. You don’t want to link from phrases such as ‘Contact Us’ or ‘Click Here For More Info’ because there is no SEO value in these phrases and you are wasting potential authority.

3. Placement: Provide links from the keywords in the most convenient places to better serve your readers. At the top of your article, in the first sentence is a great place to provide a link because it is convenient, and is most likely to be reproduced in excerpts.

4. Tagging: Tagging your links is the process of providing the content that appears when you hover over a link in a blog. This content is important to the search engines and provides an opportunity to clarify your keyword. Always add tags to your links, and juice them up with keyword modifiers such as your geographic location, your business name, or an additional keyword. For example, if you are linking the word ‘guitar’ you might tag it as ‘Fender guitar in Chicago’.

5. Destinations: To impart authority from your links to a specific page, you will of course want to link to that page as often as you can. However it does make some good sense to mix it up a bit and direct links to various places around your site as are relevant. It is also a good idea to link outward to other relevant sites; don’t just link to yourself, link to other sites that can add to the value of your reader’s experience. Link to research, supporting comments, or additional resources that add value and relevancy to your content.

6. Finally, make sure you test your links after you have posted. Dead links will count against you, both with readers and search engines. Simply visit your live article and check through the links you have created. If you find a problem, fix it right away.

Links are a critical foundation to blogging, and an important aspect of your search engine marketing. Make sure you are adding good quality links to your content for optimal organic growth.

If you are a small business, ListPipe can provide SEO marketing tools that take the work out of blog marketing.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

There are three basic ways to add media content to your site.

One: You can embed content from a video site like YouTube.com. YouTube in particular has made it extremely easy to share a video to your blog by providing embed code right there on the same page with the video. All you have to do is copy the embed code and paste it into your blog. Add a few written comments about the video and you have a sticky post that will capture search engine attention and give your readers something to watch. Pretty easy.

Two: You can create your own videos to post. This, of course, is a little more complicated, but can be worth the effort because you are posting your own unique content that cannot be found anywhere else. This is a great way to share video of an event that you attended or interview that you have conducted. Making your own video will require that you have a few tools, and a little know how. You’ll need a camera and video editing software. Most newer computers come with the basic tools to edit and post a video. Facebook has a video posting option right in their online account options, and YouTube is a great place to post your videos for sharing around.

Three: For those of you who are camera shy, audio podcasting is another great way to add unique content to your site. It’s not as exciting as video, but it doesn’t always have to be; the podcast industry is going strong with audio content that attracts millions of subscribers. One of the best ways to use an audio podcast is for an interview. An advantage of doing an audio podcast is that you don’t even have to be in the same room to complete the interview. I prefer to do my interviews over the phone using Skype and Sound Recorder, which gives me a podcast-ready file as soon as I am finished with the call.

Regardless of the type of media you include with your posts, adding an additional level of interaction for your readers make your content more interesting and provides a greater opportunity for viral sharing.

A few ideas to consider when posting video or audio content to your site:

1. Keep it short and simple. A long podcast starts to really drag on when you have things to do or get distracted. If you produce your own media, try to keep it to 10 minutes or less.
2. Keep it clean. We’ve all encountered tasteless jokes or less than upstanding content on the Internet. These kinds of things are dangerous in a business setting and are sure to offend someone. Your best bet is to keep your content family friendly.
3. Watch for copyrighted material if you are republishing from another source. YouTube and some of the other popular video sharing resources are a safe play. Be careful of sharing private videos or videos that are owned by a corporate entity. Always ask permission when in question, and get a response in writing.
4. If you are creating your own content, make sure you add your own brand and present a call-to-action at the tail end of your presentation. Direct your visitors to a website where they can followup with you, and keep in mind that others may share your video, so you always want to provide a way home for friends of friends.

Spice up your blog with a video from YouTube to get started; it’s pretty easy. Once you get the hang of it, branch out into creating your own videos or audio podcasts. Your readers will appreciate you for it.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

1. On your Mac… you will need Garageband. Most new Macs come with it.
2. Get Skype for free at http://skype.com
3. Purchase a package of Call Out minutes from Skype; enough to cover the time you will be podcasting.
4. Purchase Call Recorder for Skype from Ecamm at http://www.ecamm.com/mac/callrecorder/
5. Get a set of USB headphones from your local Best Buy. I recommend Logitech’s Clearchat Pro USB for a good mix of quality and cost.
6. Hook it all up and you are ready to record your first podcast.
7. Write a script so that you don’t ramble, keep it tight, and as short as possible.
8. Give your interviewee a call, and explain that you are about to record a podcast.
9. Explain the interview to your candidate so there are no surprises, get them ready, wait a few seconds for an edit break, and begin the interview.
10. When complete, thank your candidate, and let them know when you anticipate having the podcast up and live.
11. Locate the recorded file, and drop it into a new Podcast in your Garageband.
12. Add a stinger soundbite to the start and finish, add a recorded intro, and then Export the file.
13. Make sure you have the Audio Player plugin installed on your Wordpress blog.
14. Save the file to your Audio folder in your Wordpress folder on your server.
15. Create a new post and reference the new file.

It sounds like a lot of steps, but it’s not that hard. I can typically create a podcast from scratch in less than an hour unless there is a lot of research or special circumstances.

Here’s the rundown on a couple tips and tricks for any website copy that deals with copyrights or registered trademarks as well as for product or brand names that have special characters or that are hard to spell:

Let’s start with the trademark symbol. You have seen this on nearly every product brand, and it is always included in copywriting to ensure that legal ownership of the brand is established. While it is a good idea to include a trademark symbol in your copy, it is a terrible idea, and completely unnecessary to trademark every instance of the term. Over-use of the trademark symbol (™) or registered trademark symbol (®) in your copy will render it cumbersome and your readers will give up sooner than they might otherwise.

The other problem with using these symbols is that practically no one uses them in their search terms. By tacking these symbols to every use of your product name or brand you are limiting the relevancy between your posted content and the actual terms people are using to search for your site.

I recently found a web page containing only three paragraphs of copy with 20 trademark symbols scattered throughout. I found the page very difficult to read and quickly became distracted by all the clutter.

The solution is to trademark only the first instance of any product or brand name on any given page. By doing this you establish the legal ownership of the trademark and leave the successive instances free and clear for easy readability.

Another common problem I see is the use of special characters. You may have an umlaut or circumflex character with a line or dots over the top of a letter, or cedilla in your term with a small tail hanging down like in the word ‘façade’ (with a tail on the ‘c’). In these cases you may be tempted to incorporate the unique character for the sake of your brand, but be aware that almost no one will use it in their search, and the simple addition of a strange character can change the searchability of a word.

Like the solution for trademarks, use the special character in the first incidence of the word, and then use a more common spelling for all subsequent uses of the term.

Next lets quickly explore a brand-relate SEO tip for words that are hard to spell: When writing about a product or brand name, make a point to notice whether it is easy to misspell. Words don’t need to be hard to misspell, for instance some defy common practice by simply re-ordering letters that are more commonly used in a specific order.

Take for instance words that are spelled with ‘ea’ like ‘read’ or ‘instead’. A unique brand that uses the reverse of this (as in ‘AE’) may find that a lot of people are misspelling the term in their Google searches. This is an important consideration.

The solution: You may actually want to incorporate misspellings of your own terms to help capture additional search traffic, or to ensure that people who accidentally get it wrong are still able to find you. I don’t recommend misspelling your primary brands on your home page, but you may do well to miss one or two at the bottom of an occasional blog post.

It is true that in many cases the search engines will recognize a misspelling and direct traffic to the appropriate place, however you also need to consider that competitors may understand this tactic, also, and may be optimizing their copy to take advantage.

To find out if people are searching for misspellings of your brand, go to the Google Keywords Tool and do some research on misspellings. You will certainly be surprised at the number of searches that occur for misspelled words.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

So for those of you who would like to get started on a new blog; here is my recommended plan for getting started:

1. Determine Your Direction.

This is an obvious first step, and is essential to work out before you go any further. Basically; what are you going to blog about. Write your idea for content down on a plan document, and get specific. It may not be enough to say you are going to blog about ‘humanitarianism’, you may need to get specific and identify what type of humanitarian you want to be in your blog, or define a specific direction you would like to go with ‘humanitarianism’ such as ‘children in Africa’. Be specific and define a direction for your blog.

2. Define An Objective.

Next you will want to supplement your Direction with an objective. In this phase of your plan you are defining why you are blogging. Do you want people to join your cause? Do you want people to donate to your foundation? Do you want people to purchase a product from your site? There are a million and one reasons why you might be blogging, and there are certainly no wrong answers. The important point is that you define your reason so that your effort has purpose, and so that you can measure your success against an objective.

3. Decide On Your Imagery.

Time to spice up your site and create a personality. Do you want your site to be stale and corporate? Do you want to be flowery and ethereal? Are you trying to match another site or are you branding with an established image? Spend some time working on the graphics of your site. Take into consideration how you want to be perceived and work to support that perception with graphics that will present you as serious, fun, or part of a greater movement. This is a great time to add your own personality and to develop a brand around the content you will post.

4. Line Up Some Keywords.

As you begin to blog, you will want to focus on your Direction and Objectives. Now is a good time to do some initial research and determine the keywords you will want to include in your content to communicate to the search engines, and your readers, about your relevancy. It is a good idea to include at least a few keywords in every post you make on your blog, and to concentrate those keywords around your plan. Go to Google’s keywords tool and do some research. Find at least three keywords to begin with, but don’t be shy about making a list of between 10 and 15. More than 15 or so will be too difficult to manage; let your natural organic discussion incorporate peripheral keywords that will naturally slip into the conversation.

5. Where To Host?

Right about the time you are ready to implement your new blog you are going to be faced with the decision of where to put it. You can establish a free blog at Wordpress.com or blogger.com, or you can download software from Wordpress.org and create your own blog on your own server. You will also want to determine whether you want to host on your own domain, or whether the free sites offer an adequate URL for your objectives. I prefer hosting my blogs on my own domains, and my favorite place to do this is at Bluehost.com. Bluehost provides excellent hosting services and allows you to obtain a domain name for free as part of your sign up. If you are testing the water with a new initiative, you may want to go with one of the free sites to start, but move as early as you can to your own domain before you establish roots.

6. When To Post?

As part of your plan you will want to determine a schedule of when to post. Again, there are no wrong answers here; you can post once a year, or once an hour. The more frequently you post, the more often the search engines will visit your site and index your content. For a basic Search Engine Optimization, I recommend posting at least once each week. More frequently will be beneficial for your SEO. I wouldn’t go any less frequently if you are serious about your marketing. If you are establishing a family blog or have an objective that does not require a lot of participation, it won’t really matter how often you post.

I have a demonstration blog set up at demoblog.listpipe.com that shows what a typical blog looks like, and includes a handful of videos to show how to blog, post, and manage your content. Go check it out.

Finally, I’d like to plug our ListPipe service. ListPipe is a blog service that provides all the components of a marketing blog including regular custom content, written just for you. With ListPipe you have an easy sign up process and a complete blog that you can add to and control. It’s a great way to get started with your business blog and an excellent way to extend your online marketing.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

You need to maintain a minimum frequency with your content in order to keep the search engines interested in your site, and there are times when information overload can become a hindrance to your objectives. Let’s take a look at a few areas where frequency is an important factor:

First, let’s look at blogging. To understand why frequency is important to your blog you’ll need to understand how the search engines work when it comes to indexing your content. Search engines provide a service based around a product. The service is a search tool, and the product is a page of results. Search engines know that you want results that are current, and so they strive to deliver content that is as new as possible.

Here’s where frequency comes in: Each time you post to your blog, the search engines regard the information as ‘current’. It doesn’t take long in today’s information environment to become ‘yesterday’s news’, so it’s important to keep feeding the machine (so to speak).

You can literally train the search engines to visit your site regularly and often by the frequency of your posts. The more frequently you post, the more often the search engines will visit your page and index your content. If your site remains stagnant, the search engines determine not to waste valuable search time looking at your site and they will schedule their checkups less often. This will hurt you when you finally do have some news to post, and the search engines don’t pick it up right away, and by the time they do; it is ‘old news’.

My recommendation for blogging is to post to your blog once each week at a minimum.

If you are using Facebook as a way to remain connected and to market or announce your business opportunities, there are some guidelines to follow here, too.

Posting too frequently will have a tendency to drown out your more important messages, while posting too infrequently will allow your friends and associates to slip away and loose contact.

For Facebook, I recommend posting at least once per day, but no more than three. I also recommend that you make as many comments on your friend’s posts as possible. Check in to your Facebook account once in the morning, once at noon, and once in the evening. Make a few comments each time you check in, but don’t get in the habit of wasting too much time: Facebook is a great tool, but it can be a real productivity killer and wastes a lot of time if you don’t manage it well.

For Twitter users; you are in the fast lane. Twitter posts go by at a mile per second and you’ll find that your posts are gone almost as soon as they go up. It would be easy to spend a lot of time on Twitter, and there are those who would argue that the time would be well spent. However, we can’t all be on Twitter all day long.

My recommendation to get the most out of Twitter is to check in and monitor during your first hour of the day, and to check in again at the end of the day for a short while (monitor for about 30 minutes). These are the busiest times of the day and are a great time to connect and chat with Followers, and the best time to get your posts in front of more people.

With Twitter you’ll want to post and repost a few times during a 30-minute period. This will ensure that the most people see the post in their feed. Retweeting other messages is a great way to get a conversation going, and a good way to catch the attention of other readers. Start your sessions by engaging with other posters, and then post your own message while people are watching. Ask for retweets, and share the love.

It is easy to get caught up in your posting, and there is a real potential to waste a lot of time doing it. Keep your eye on the ball, make sure you are posting with a purpose (even if it is just to entertain or stay in touch), and schedule yourself so that time doesn’t get away from you. Bare in mind, too, that these are just recommendations for when it comes to promoting your business; there are plenty of reasons to post more frequently, and even more for slowing down a little.

The point here is to have a plan and to make a regular habit that achieves your objective to appeal to the search engines without wasting time, or turning people off.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

Why Facebook?
Facebook is the most widely used social network on the planet with over 300 million active users. It is just remarkable how many people are using Facebook to connect with friends and share their message. By this virtue alone, Facebook is a great place to share your personal and business message. Hopefully you are already among us.

Why Video?
Obviously, video is a very personal medium that allows your friends and associates to see you deliver your message. While it removes much of the anonymous nature of Internet communications, it also opens the door for a more personal touch and allows people to see that you are genuine about your message. And it can be fun, too!

How?
It’s pretty easy; you simply go to your Facebook page and click the ‘Video’ icon just below your status update window where you normally type a new message to your friends.

Clicking the video icon will expand a window that presents two options; you can either record directly from your webcam attached to your computer, or you can upload a video that you recorded with your handi-cam or iphone, or whatever.

Selecting the webcam video will expand the screen and open a small permissions box asking for permission to access your video camera. Once you provide permission, the window will open a video stream and you’ll probably see yourself right there on your Facebook page.

Don’t be alarmed; we’re not recording yet and no-one can see you. You’ll want to straighten your hair and fix your collar before selecting the red ‘Record’ button at the bottom of the video screen; once you do this, you are recording. So be ready.

When you are finished recording your message, click the ‘Stop’ button (now in the place of the record button) and you are finished. You now have the ability to review the video, delete the video, or share the video with your Facebook friends. Easy!

Here’s a quick video I made of the process:

Note that there are a couple things you will want to do to prepare…

For starters, if you plan to record from a webcam, you’ll obviously need one attached to your computer. Many laptops and monitors have them built right in these days, or you can always purchase one to add to your desktop. They start around $30 and go up to about $300. The cheap ones are plenty good for doing an occasional Facebook video.

You’ll also want to have a basic script of your message so you don’t waste a lot of time trying to think of your next item. You’ll also want to do a double check on your background to make sure you are not revealing anything in your home or office that you don’t want to be broadcast publicly, and you’ll want to send the kids outside and turn off your cell phone so an accidental interruption doesn’t ruin the perfect take.

Finally; get out and give it a try. Just say ‘hello’ to your friends to get started. Create a outline of what you’d like to accomplish and make a plan to share a message on a regular schedule. Before you know it, you’ll be a star. At least on your own Facebook page.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

Google knows where you are searching from by matching your IP address to a local router registry. If you are using an iPhone or Blackberry, the nearest cellular tower or your GPS will deliver the information Google needs to give you localized results.

Let’s review a few ways you can take advantage of localization to help your online marketing:

1. For starters, we can let Google know where we are located in our blog content. Whenever you mention your home town, state or zip code on your blog, Google will index this information and cross reference it with the keywords you are using. Next time someone searches for a ‘haircut’ in ‘90210′, Google will include results that it can find with that specific information. So make sure you occasionally include your city, state, and especially zip code.

2. Another great way to take advantage of localization is to specifically modify your keywords with your city or state. If your keyword is ‘haircut’, start writing it as ‘Los Angeles haircut’. Clarify your location by occasionally writing ‘California haircut’, or get clever with ways to insert your zip code by writing a sentence like ‘find a haircut in the 90210 zip code area’. Notice in this sentence I have added a keyword phrase (find a haircut) and associated it with my zip code (90210) and clarified by actually writing the words ‘zip code’ in the sentence. Google will eat this up.

Occasionally I like to extend my local area of coverage by using the names of cities near me, or by including the name of my county or local landmarks; ‘Don’t forget to visit Disneyland while you’re in the Orange County area’.

3. Differentiation. One of biggest reasons you will want to include localization in your content is to differentiate yourself from other providers of your product or service. If you are writing about ‘haircuts’ as often as another blogger in New York City, there is little to differentiate your content from each other. Localization allows you to create unique content and to reduce the number of people you are competing with on the web. Rather than compete with haircut shops across the nation, you now have the ability to reduce your competition to only those shops in your geographic region. And most of them haven’t caught on to localization, so now is the time to take advantage and lay down some tracks.

You may be saying to yourself: ‘That’s great, but I have a product that can be sold nationally or internationally. That’s great; you can still take advantage of localization. Think of it as a way to start and home and expand. What I mean is this: because localization is such a great way to differentiate your content from others not the web, you can start by localizing your content for your own city, and then progressively begin to include the names of places that you want to grow your market.

Don’t try to take the whole world at once; focus on specific areas of opportunity, for instance a specific metropolitan area or maybe a specific region if your product is popular to a particular culture. ‘Haircuts’ are pretty universal, but perhaps you sell snow machines and can leave Florida out of your geographic strategy. You get the picture.

So there you have it; a few tips on localization. Note that this is a relatively new opportunity, and not many people have caught on to this. Get started right away and start modifying those keywords with your local city and state.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

First, lets talk about the search engines. Search engines love fresh, unique content, and the best way to attract them is to produce unique custom content. But there is not always time to create your own stories, so we often reproduce or repurpose stories we find on the internet. An example of this may be in reposting a news story.

Reposting a story verbatim is a bad thing for a number of reasons, primarily because search engines hate duplicate content. Reproducing a news story verbatim is particularly bad for you because the search engines will most likely find the story at the news site first, and then give you a bad mark for copying it.

Instead of just copying and pasting the news story, try rewriting it or summarizing it in your own words. Add your own perspective and commentary, and try to offer a new view of the circumstances. In this way you are personalizing the story, and giving the search engines something unique to add to their index.

The next group to worry about is your friends and people you socialize with online. Personalizing a story adds your own personality and provides your friends and associates with a different perspective. It’s a great way to add interest, and to continuously build upon your personal brand and online personality. Your friends already watch the news, so they may have already heard the story you are discussing online. What they don’t have is your personal perspective, and therein lies the interest, and your opportunity to create connections online.

So next time you are looking for something to write about in your blog or social networks, find a story that is interesting to you on a company site, news site, or competitive blog and rewrite the story in your own words. Make sure that you don’t simply rephrase what the originator posted, but rather add your own commentary, opinions and perspective.

In this way you will create great custom content for search engines, and interesting posts for your readers.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

If you are marketing from a website, the more links there are pointing to your website, the more popular it appears to be to the search engines. Think of this as a kind of ‘popularity contest’.

The search engines rely on popularity to help determine how valuable your site is to potential searchers. Although this is not the only criteria the search engines use, this is an important factor in your overall online marketing approach.

It goes like this: search engines are delivering a product to their customers, and that product is search results. The search engines know that you are looking for the most relevant sites possible, and they know, too, that people who find sites to be particularly relevant, they like to link to them. Search engines track the number of links there are to any given website, and use this information to help determine where to place the site in the search rankings to give their customers the most relevant sites to choose from. A site that has more links is deemed more valuable to searchers, and is therefore given a higher priority than a site that has fewer links.

To be clear; this is not the ONLY way a search engine grades a site, and there are certainly cases where more links gets trumped by some other data point. Nevertheless; links are important and it makes sense to build as many quality links as you can.

So, how to build links? There are a couple ways to get you started:

1. Make comments on blogs. Find blogs that discuss your market topic and get involved. Make comments on their posts as often as you can. Most blog sites will allow you to add your URL to the comment. If they don’t, move on. When you do make comments, make sure they are thoughtful and that they contribute to the conversation; you don’t want to be seen as an annoyance.
2. Get involved in forum discussions. Forums are a great place to get involved with other birds of a feather, and allow you to make successive comments. In most cases, you can include your URL in each of your comments. Again, make sure you are contributing to the conversation and building your credibility with valid comments. Don’t get into arguments, and try to avoid being critical of other people in the forum. Basically: Play nice in the sandbox.
3. Post news to free news sites. Whenever you post content to your blog, make sure you are taking advantage of opportunities to repost your content. There are a number of free sites out there that allow you to post your news and articles. For news, simply do a search for ‘Free News Posting‘ to find a list of sites that allow you to post for free. For regular articles, use sites like StumbleUpon.com, Digg.com, Delicious.com and even Facebook and Twitter.

Note that all of these sites are free. All it takes is a little elbow grease and your site will begin to shine.

A final point: Make sure you choose your sites carefully. As a popularity contest, your reputation is built on the reputation of the sites from which you are linked. The more popular the site, the better. Like being a good friend of the most popular kid in school, you get some of the credibility from the leading sites. Conversely, links from bad sites known for spam or suspicious practices will tend to hurt your site. So be selective.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

First: Define your topic: What are you planning to market, blog, or discuss? Create a niche for yourself and try to stay within its boundaries. Chose a topic and write it down. Be specific, and actionable; for example you might write ‘How humanitarianism is helping children in Africa‘. Now you have something to look to whenever you are at a loss for what to write about. This is a simple first step to your overall plan and an essential element of your focus.

Second: Find keywords. Keywords are the cornerstone of your search engine marketing. Search engines like to know what you are talking about, and they look for keyword terms to help establish your topic and to create relevancy for you in the search indexes. Whenever you search for something in Google, you are using keywords. Start with the terms you know your customers will use to find you when they perform a web search.

You can find additional keywords by using an online keyword tool. I recommend http://google.com/keywords. In this tool, simply type in a keyword that you are aware of, and Google will give you a useful list of related keywords that you can use to build your content with relevancy. Don’t forget to look below the first list for ‘related’ keywords that will help you extend your content.

Third: Analyze your competition. Go to competing websites and see what they are doing. Read their content and learn the lingo, discover keywords, and look for hot topics. Now you have a flavor for what is going on in the industry around you, and a better perspective on how your topic is being positioned by your competition.

Fourth: Get Involved. Seek out relevant sites and start participating with them. This can even be a competitive site, but should be a community site or forum. Twitter and Facebook offer great places to start, but seek out independent blogs or even product sites, and get involved.

Getting involved means making comments and entering discussions. Many sites provide a place to make comments, and most will give you the opportunity to link back to your own site. This is a perfect opportunity to create a link from a relevant site, but you have to work for it, and that means participating with valuable input. Your involvement will produce new ideas to write about, and gives you a ground-level understanding of what others are thinking and saying about your topic.

Be careful about what you say; be participatory, and not angry or aggressive. Even if this is a competitive site, remember that you will gain credibility if you participate with new information and valuable insight that adds to the conversation and helps others.

To recap: Start your own SEO research by doing these four simple tasks:

1. Define your topic (be sure to write it down)
2. Find relevant keywords using google.com/keywords
3. Analyze your competition by visiting their sites regularly
4. Find relevant sites and participate in the community discussion via Facebook and Twitter

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

We all know Content is King, so this is a big issue and needs to be resolved for our online social marketing to take off and become effective.

Services such as my own ListPipe help by writing great content for you, and then personalizing it so that you can have ownership over the resulting snowball as the content rolls out to your friends and friends of friends.

When developing your own online content, look to sources in three areas:

1. Company or Corporate Website.

There are plenty of stories, news items, and lists of product features on your corporate website to create a story from. Simply pick a product that you like and write a short story about a single component, for instance a single feature or benefit.

One of the reasons we get writer’s block is because there are too many options. I learned this lesson when I used to tell my daughter to clean her room; on some occasions there was so much for her to do that she simply didn’t know where to begin. The job becomes easy once we learn to break it down into bite sized chunks; work on the shoes first, then move to pants, and then shirts, etc. Choose a single feature or benefit, and start from there. No need to do more, just stop at the one item if that’s all you can do.

2. Relevant News Sites.

Look to news sites that cover similar topics as your own, and then give your own opinion about the industry news. You should have a handful of related websites in your browser bookmarks, and you should be browsing them occasionally to see what others in the industry are saying. Frequently you will come across a new story that sparks your interest or raises your motivation to comment. Perfect! Copy a portion of the story and write a paragraph about your thoughts or opinion on the excerpt.

3. Listen to Your Community.

Watch your Facebook or Twitter accounts to see what others are saying about your products or marketplace. Again, this is a great opportunity to formulate an opinion and write about it. Better still, look for opportunities to clarify your friends’ statements or opinions with your own research; referencing other websites and adding research to a social story is a great way to create content and a great way to build credibility for yourself as a researcher-in-the-know. Post it to your blog, and then announce it back to your Facebook or Twitter community.

Finally; one of the barriers to writing is feeling overwhelmed by a false expectation. Particularly with volume; many start an article feeling a need to write a 1200-word article with research, references and footnotes like we learned (and hated) in school. This is not necessary. Shoot for articles between 250 and 300 words. This is three or four paragraphs, or about half a page of writing. Most of us speak this many words in less than a minute of conversation. Next time you are on the phone with a friend, make a note of any comments you feel might make great content for your next post.

In summary; look to your company website, relevant news sites, and your social network for great ideas to write about.

Hate to read? Listen to this week’s podcast social media marketing tip of the week right here…

Here they are, with a few ‘extras’ attached. You can download my presentation as a PDF if you prefer to just look at the pictures.

I took a few minutes to re-record the presentation in a shorter 30-minute version, and uploaded it to YouTube in four parts. I have embedded them at the bottom of this post. Or simply go watch Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 on YouTube.

(Updated…)

If you want to watch the actual presentation video, I captured a terrible recording with my handy-cam and inserted the slides for better viewing in this Social Media QuickTime Presentation. It’s not pretty, but does capture the flavor of a live event. It is a remarkable 55 minutes long; why didn’t anyone stop me!?!

Here are the YouTube videos:

Don’t forget to make comments and spread the word through your own social media communities!

Thank you, —Cary

I like to describe ‘Organic’ marketing with an analogy; I describe it like growing a garden. You prepare the ground, plant some seeds, and tend to them with water and nutrients. You continue to do this for a while until things start to grow and produce results. Harvesting is a carefully planned event, and usually doesn’t happen until lots of work and waiting has been done.

The analogy works because, Like a garden, ‘organic’ marketing takes time. It also builds equity that can be leveraged later, much like the produce from your garden.

‘Pay Per Click’ advertising is when you buy clicks on the internet through a provider such as Google. You pay Google a budget amount, create an ad and define some keywords. Google places your ad in appropriate places on the Web. Google depletes your account as people click on your ad. Google provides your ad in places where it will be most likely to be of interest.

The best thing about pay per click advertising is that you can often see immediate results. The bad thing is that you are not building any equity, and as soon as your budget runs out, your ad is gone.

The best practice is to begin an organic campaign right away in tandem with a PPC campaign. This can be in the form of a blog, or a news page on your website. While doing this, start your pay per click campaign simultaneously to give yourself an instant boost.

The pay per click will help fill the gap and get you a spike in activity while you slowly ramp up your organic content. Think of this like going to the store to buy enough food to hold you over until your garden starts producing.

As your organic campaign gains speed, you can reduce the amount of money you are spending on the pay per click marketing. Eventually, you should be able to rely more on the equity you have built, and less on the paid placement.

I explain in a little more detail in the following podcast:

Sharing your content with friends and family is the first step in getting the word out that you have new content to read on your blog. This also gives your friends and family an opportunity to support you by posting comments and reposting to their friends.

If you haven’t started a Facebook account, there is no time like the present to get moving. You won’t want to be the last one aboard, and I think we are down to the final ten. If you are one of them, click here to get started with Facebook.

Why do you need a Facebook account? Facebook is a great way to stay connected. You’ll connect with friends and family, reconnect with old buddies, and meet new acquaintances. Most importantly, Facebook is a great way to remain in touch with a larger group than you otherwise could manage. Sharing your blog content with your greater audience of friends is a great way to spread the word, get good feedback, and even test the waters among people who will give you some encouragement.

How to share on your Facebook account? It’s easy, and it’s free. All you need to do is get an account; just visit http://facebook.com and complete a quick form. Look for a few friendly names and you can be up and running in just a couple of minutes. Now all you have to do is ’share’ your content. Sharing is fairly easy, and can be as difficult as copying the URL for your post and copying it to your Facebook account (not really THAT hard), or installing a plugin to provide a simple button that will automatically publish your post to your Facebook account.

A couple of Wordpress plugins that I really like for sharing include Social Bookmarking Reloaded and Add To Any. I like Social Bookmarking Reloaded because it is easy, and allows you to select the specific icons you want to show on your posts. Add to Any is my current favorite because it reads your reader’s browser history and automatically displays the icons they use the most. It also includes an email forwarding option, which is a great idea.

When should you share your posts with your Facebook friends? Every time you have new content on your blog. Plain and simple. Social media marketing is easy to do, but requires diligence in order to be effective. Get in the habit of sharing your posts as often as you create them. Your Facebook friends will become regular followers in no time.

Using FireFox? Use Facebook toolbar to make it even easier to post your blogs to Facebook. I use this toolbar every day and have grown to depend on it because it is so convenient; I can post to Facebook, stay in touch, or make some comments without the hassle. It saves me time and keeps me in the loop.

I talked about Facebook in this week’s tech call with Paul Jensen. Here’s an excerpt:

Every time we post new content, our customers receive an email notification announcing the availability of the new content, including a complete review of the article, graphics, and links to the user’s blog.

I am pleased to announce that we have added the new social marketing tips with every notification as a reminder to perform four basic steps with the arrival of your new content. For those of you not participating in ListPipe, you can easily perform these steps with your own blog content.

So, when you have new content, take a minute to get the word out in four easy steps…

1. Visit your new post and share it to your Facebook page; Just click the Facebook Share button at the bottom of the article.
2. Tweet your post to your followers on Twitter; copy the URL to the new article and paste it into your Twitter post field with a comment.
3. Post your new article to Stumbleupon; Click the StumbleUpon Share button at the bottom of the article and complete the StumbleUpon profile.
4. Email the new article to four friends; Simply copy the URL for the article and paste it into an email with a short, personal invitation to read it.

Do this every time you receive or post a new article in order to grow your opportunities in social media marketing!

1. Research
2. Creative writing
3. Linking

Before we get into those, let’s talk about ‘why’.

Keywords are basically the anchor text of your article that help readers, and search engines, determine your relevance. In terms of ‘relevance’, there are no wrong answers; you are not trying to be relevant to a common standard. Rather, you are trying to be relevant to your own chosen topic.

For instance; If you are writing about ‘humanitarianism’, you will want your keywords to be relevant to the subject of ‘humanitarianism’. Relevant terms could be ‘philanthropy’ or ‘charity’. Conversely, you will want to avoid a concentration of key words that are not relevant such as ‘Brittany Spears’ or ‘horseback riding’. Unless, of course, your humanitarianism involves giving a horse to Brittany, but you get the picture.

It all has to do with ‘relevance’. Relevance is how closely related your keywords are to the subject you most want to be indexed for in the search engines. As the search engines scour your post for relevant keywords, they will choose the predominant topics and use those to index your article. In this way, a reader can find you when they search for ‘humanitarianism’ in a search engine. The key for you is in making the relevant keywords within your article easy to identify. The easier it is for a search engine to determine the keywords in your article, the more prominent you will be in the search results for your given topic.

Research

One of the most daunting tasks in effective blogging is in finding the most appropriate keywords. It’s not that hard, but does take a little ‘know-how’.

The first steps in your research are to determine the subject of your article, to outline topics, and to write down your assumed keywords. Assuming keywords is easy; just imagine what your audience might type into a search engine in hopes of finding your specific article.

Next, you’ll want to conduct some scientific research to confirm your choices, or to find viable alternatives.

A great tool for this task is found at http://google.com/keywords . The keyword research tool at Google is as good as any, and takes advantage of Googles remarkable collection of data. Once you enter your assumed keyword idea in their form, and get past the annoying-but-necessary captcha, you’ll be presented with a spreadsheet of data that now requires some study.

Listed in order of relevance, with the most relevant term at the top, you will see a list of related terms with information about how much competition there is for the term, and how many local searches and global searches have been conducted on the term in the last month.

Your job now is to find keyword alternatives that have a good balance of competition vs hits. The higher the competition value, the more the keyword is used in other blogs and the lower the chances are for you to stick out among the crowd. High competition keywords are tempting because of the high number of hits they usually receive. However you may do better by selecting a low competition term and shooting for a greater piece of a smaller pie. You don’t necessarily need to avoid high competition terms, so long as you are working in the lower competition ones, too.

Note that further down in the spreadsheet you will find a list of alternative terms that may help in your creative writing exercise.

Creative Writing

Perhaps the most difficult step in your effort to incorporate keywords, creative writing now requires that you come up with a story, and develop the ability to include terms in an appropriate density. You’ll want to include as many as 10 percent keywords to your SEO copywritng. Tricky, but over time it becomes second nature. Ten percent may be a bit too much for some articles, so shoot for a minimum of five percent.

It is also important to maintain ‘human readability’. The search engines understand language, grammar, and punctuation, so you will want to pay attention to these important aspects of writing to avoid appearing as spam and receiving an index penalty. Write your article in natural language, and use keywords as often as you can without creating lists or appearing to be blatant.

Be sure to modify your keywords with localization as well as with descriptive terms. There are two ways to modify your keywords;

1. With a descriptive modifier, so that if our primary keyword is ‘humanitarian’, we can say ‘humanitarian relief’ to make it a stronger keyword phrase.
2. With a localization such as ‘Miami Humanitarian’, which helps the search engines localize my search index for people within the Miami area searching for the term ‘humanitarian’.

Localization has become one of the most important aspects of keyword usage because of the mobile revolution, where people search from a mobile device to find local products and services. The search engines have responded with more localized search results and listings. You can take advantage of this simply by adding the name of your town in front of a keyword.

Keyword Linking

Finally, be sure to link your keywords to appropriate pages around your site, or to an appropriate page on your home site. A few rules of thumb to consider include:

Don’t link excessively. In a 300-word article it is appropriate to link 3-4 keywords. More and you will appear to be spamming, and will dilute the authority you are giving to each keyword. (Authority is a measurement of strength based on the relevance of the article.)

Don’t link a specific keyword more than once; no need to waste authority on the same keyword. Keep it simple for the search engines to follow, and don’t waste their time by leading them to the same place from the same keyword multiple times.

Use alternate tags to add information to your links. This is a great way to help the search engines understand more clearly your terms and their specific modifiers.

I talked about keywords in this week’s tech call with Paul Jensen. Here’s an excerpt if you’re the listening type:

When a new customer signs up for a blog using our automated system for any of our vertical categories (including dentistry and real estate), our system will automatically create an About page, and a Contact Us page. Both pages are fully editable, of course, and can be modified by the user simply by loging into the blog control panel and making any necessary adjustments.

Square Compass created a new Simple Contact plugin for Wordpress expressly for the new feature. The new plugin provides a simple way to add a contact form to your Wordpress blog. The no-frills contact form will be available in the Wordpress plugins library soon. I’ll keep you posted.

As for the new Pages feature in ListPipe, users now have the ability to capture more search engine attention with an automatically customized About page. The About page includes a short, custom paragraph about you based on your input during the registration process. Though simple, the About Us content is designed to give search engines a customized glance at who you are, and provides a more mature position for your ListPipe site.

The Contact Us page is also customized, and includes an automated form that allows your visitors to contact you by completing a simple contact form. The form is customized to deliver the feedback directly to your email address, and includes a Captcha for security, and error checking to help assure you do not get spammed. The form is optimized to ensure, also, that your visitors provide you with at least one method of contact, and warns them if they do not complete the comments field.

We are excited to announce this new feature, and thrilled that we now have a complete solution for those who use ListPipe to capture business leads through Internet marketing.

Links tell the search engines where you want them to go, and where to apply ‘authority’, or the page’s popularity. Think of your next blog post as ‘the most popular kid in school’, and your links as that person’s ‘favorite friends list’. The ‘friends’ gain a little bit of credibility for being on the list. You get the picture.

Links also help your visitors know where to go for next steps and more information. Your links are literally a calling card for where to go next from the page. As such, make sure your links are made from the most relevant keywords on the page, and make sure those keywords are relevant to their destination. The more relevant the link, the more ‘authority’ the link provides to its destination.

In a good sized article of about 300 words or so, you can afford to place about 2-3 links without appearing to be an abuser. Too many links on a page and the search engines will we wary of your intentions; better to err to the minimum. One or two extremely well placed links will concentrate the page’s authority on the destination pages. Too many and you risk diluting your effort.

As a general rule, only link to an outside page from the same keyword once. No need diluting your authority on multiple links to the same page. There is an exception that has the ability to help; linking to the same destination is not a problem if you are linking from several different keywords. However, make sure the keywords are highly relevant to each other, otherwise you will be diluting your authority yet again and wasting valuable linkage.

Providing alternate tags is another important element. An alternate tag is the text you see when you hover over a link for a second and a little note appears to explain the link. Search engines eat these up, providing you with a second opportunity to clarify your intentions for the link. This is a good opportunity to incorporate localization. For instance, if your keyword is ‘haircut’, a good alternate tag would be ‘Miami haircut’ if you happen to be a salon in South Florida. This alternate tagging strategy will help the search engines associate you with localized searches, which are ever more important with all these iPhones and Blackberries floating around (search engines know where you are, and deliver relevant search results based on your location).

Don’t have a blog to post all these links to? No problem; you can gain authority by creating links in your comments on other relevant blog sites. Most blogs that accept comments will also allow you to tag your comment with a link back to your page. Sort of a repayment for adding a good comment. Make sure you post genuine comments, and only comment on sites that are relevant to your own site. If you are selling haircuts on your site, you won’t get much authority from a site that sells ice cream.

Finally, remember that ‘Content is King‘, and that links are an important element of content. Links help establish your post as more than just a ‘dead end’, and the search engines hate dead ends.

I talked about linking in this week’s tech call with Paul Jensen. Here’s an excerpt. It’s about five minutes; let me know what you think.

When posting to a blog, frequency is often a leading factor. Post length is not as critical, but there are some guidelines.

Writing as few as 50-100 words is adequate. That’s about one or two paragraphs. An article of this length is easy enough to produce without racking your brain for something good to produce, and provides enough juice for the search engines while being short enough to keep your human audience reading.

A perfectly sized post will be about 300 words. This is a good amount of info to provide for SEO, and is just enough for a quick read by your friends. Articles that approach 600 words are too much and risk getting truncated by the search engines, or not finished by humans who loose interest at the 300-400 mark. (interest isn’t fair; usually it’s that we don’t have a lot of time to absorb your wordy story.

Listen to the Corporate Blogger Tips Podcast of this post:

A few weeks ago, Google confirmed this in an article titled Google Becomes More Local. The article was not about Google’s plans to open local shops across the country, it was about Google’s understanding that when we search for products and services, we usually want them in the geographic area from which we are searching.

Apple, too, recently revealed that they will support geolocation services in their new iPhone 3.0 software. Geolocation services will allow you to search from your iPhone and receive results based on your current location. Imagine standing on a city corner and searching for ’sushi’ and getting step-by-step directions to the nearest location for lunch. Pretty cool, and very powerful.

To take advantage of these new technologies, and to attract local search traffic to your site, you need to be incorporating geo-tagging and geo-centric keywords. One of the easiest ways to do this is to include the name of your city or town as a modifier for keywords in your articles. For instance, instead of simply stating that you are a ’sushi restaurant’, you might mention that you are an ‘Provo sushi restaurant‘. Using the name of your city helps the search engines understand your location, and is a good way to help capture a typical keyword search.

It helps to understand what your customers may be looking for when they type in a keyword string in a search engine. knowing they may be looking for your service in your town, or even local surrounding cities, will help you attract local customers to your site.

ListPipe articles always include geo-tagging. Our articles are linked using a combination of city names and keywords to help search engines better judge the type of service our customers are providing to a geographic area.

Note that there were a few technical snafus in the podcast, and I didn’t realize the mic was on the computer, and not in the headphones, resulting in some fan noise.

The next one will be better.

If you are posting a typical article of about 250-300 words, you should be including at least 2-3 links, but not more than 4-5. Links can and should lead to one of three places:

1. Your Home page;
2. Another post on your site;
3. Another site altogether (but make sure it is relevant).

I have a quick video that will show you how to add a link in your Wordpress blog.

Don’t go crazy with your links; just a couple for each post, and remember that linking to an outside site is a good thing. Just make sure the new link opens in a new window, and that the target site is relevant to your content.

Here’s how I create links in my blog:

1. Open two tabs in your browser, one for the blog editing window, and one for the ‘public’ side of your blog;
2. Write your article and get it ready to publish in the editing window. Before publishing…
3. Find a keyword in your new post that you want to link, highlight and copy it;
4. Now, Go to the public blog site (in your other tab) and perform a ‘Search’ for your keyword;
5. You should get a couple articles from your blog in the search results. Select from the list of resulting articles and click the headline;
6. Copy the URL from the browser window and move back to your editing window;
7. With your keyword still highlighted, click the ‘link’ icon at the top of your editing window and past in the URL;
8. Complete the process by identifying a ‘Target’ (open in Same if on your site, open in New if another), and add a Title. Don’t worry about ‘Class’ right now;
9. Hit ’save’, and treat yourself to a donut. Don’t forget to post your new blog article before you head out.