| |
Archive for the ‘Blogging for Small Business’ Category
Friday, July 1st, 2011
When it comes to blogging, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy. There are as many ways to do it as there are companies with a message to send. The key is to find the method that works for you. With that in mind, here are 4 viable blog strategies that work. All you have to do is give them a go.
- SEO Blogging – With SEO blogging, the idea is to produce content that gains search engine traction. This type of blogging has a bad name in some circles. They call it splogging (spam blogging), but it works. You set up a domain name with your primary keyword in it and target that keyword plus several more that are related. You can put your SEO blog on the back end of a domain that you want to increase traffic for or put it on a separate domain and use it to build links. Either way, the main target is search engines.
- Social Blogging – If SEO blogging is a low-level form of blogging, social blogging is a step up. Your main aim is to increase your community’s size. You try to spark lively debate in the comments section of your blog and promote your blog through as many social media channels as you can. This may include but is not limited to BlogCatalog, Facebook, Twitter, niche social sites, and a myriad of social bookmarking communities. You’ll also want to reach out to other bloggers within your niche and establish a dialogue with them as well.
- Branded Blogging – Branded blogging is corporate, or commercial, blogging at its finest. You are not so much concerned with SEO or social media as you are with building your brand. However, you do use SEO and social media to help you reach your branding goals.
- Hybrid Blogging – Hybrid blogging takes one or more of the aforementioned strategies and merges them. It is the best, and the highest level, type of blogging there is. It also has the potential to be the most effective blog marketing around.
Tags: blog marketing, blogging, Branding, commercial blogging, SEO, Social Media
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 4 Comments »
Sunday, May 8th, 2011
One of the things that you’ll hear often among professional Internet marketers and SEOs is that you should blog every day. The reason you hear this advice is because they want to sell you their services. Obviously, if you blog every day, then that will cost you more in ghostwriting services than if you blog once a week. But is it really necessary that you blog every day?
The rule of thumb is this: You should blog as often as you can. The search engines crawl your website every time you update it. It follows to reason, then, that the more often you update your website the more often your website will be crawled.
Using the logic of those SEOs who try to sell you on everyday blogging, you should update your blog ten times a day. Can you afford that?
For everything you do in your business, there is a cost-benefit analysis. Can you afford it financially? Can you afford to spend the time doing it yourself? What are the benefits to doing it the way you are planning to do it?
In answer to the question “Should you blog every day?,” the answer is, “If you can afford it.” If it makes sense for your business, then do it.
You should blog as often as you can. If you can blog every day yourself because you have the time to devote to that task, then you should. If you can’t find the time to manage your own blog, then hire a professional ghostwriting service to do it for you. If that means blogging three times a week versus every day because that’s what you can afford, take that up with the service you are hiring.
However often you blog, you should have a blog that markets your business well.
Tags: blog ghostwriting, blog marketing, blogging, small business
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 5 Comments »
Friday, April 22nd, 2011
If you add a blog to your company website, there are 3 very distinct SEO benefits that you gain from doing this. Of course, you only get these benefits if your blog and if you blog in the right manner.
Here are those 3 benefits:
- Fresh Content – Every time you write a blog post, you add fresh content to your website. This invites the search engine spiders back to your site to crawl it. Each time your website is crawled is another chance to rise in the rankings for your keywords.
- Increased Search Engine Rankings – Not only do you have more opportunities to rank with each blog post, but each blog post can rank according to its own merits. Every blog post is considered a separate web page by the search engines. As such, each blog post can rank for a separate keyword phrase.
- Linkbuilding – Because you can link to your website pages from your blog, you can drive up those pages in search engine rankings using powerful link anchor text.
There are other benefits to blogging, but these are three of the biggest SEO benefits. Needless to say, the more often you blog, the more likely you are to realize these benefits. And if you create blog posts around your important keywords, you’re also more likely to realize these benefits.
Do you have a company blog? If not, why not?
Tags: blogging, keywords, linkbuilding, search engine rankings, SEO
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Thursday, December 2nd, 2010
An op-ed at The New York Times Online encourages content providers – like Small Business Mavericks – to stop allowing anonymous comments. At the heart of the argument is the belief that anonymity increases unjust, immoral, or crass behavior. But does it?
I can’t help but agree with the underlying belief. If people were forced to make their comments public, then they would go to greater lengths to ensure they don’t say anything that embarrasses themselves or others. There would be fewer inflammatory remarks in forums and on blogs.
But, what about privacy advocates’ argument that everyone deserves anonymity under freedom of speech laws? Does that argument hold water?
I think what the world is struggling with right now is the cross-section between an individual’s right to speak freely and have their privacy protected and a publisher’s right to make decisions about what it will allow on its own domains. We’ve dealt with issues of this nature before in the real world. It’s akin to a book store chain such as Barnes & Noble discriminating between types of free speech that occur on its premises. After all, the business has its own reputation to protect.
The NYT article discusses several examples of online publishers who have opted to moderate posts in hopes of curtailing flame wars and other comment undesirables. As for Small Business Mavericks, we rarely allow anonymous comments. When we do, it’s because the commenter has provided a positive, helpful comment – not spam or something inflammatory. We hope other publishers will follow suit.
Tags: anonymity, online publishing, privacy
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
Technorati recently released its annual State of the Blogosphere report. I’ll let the report speak for itself, but I’ll risk ruining it for you by summarizing the report’s conclusions:
- Bloggers engage in social media more than they did last year
- Mobile blogging is up
- The influence of mom bloggers is the highest it’s ever been
- Bloggers plan on blogging more
- Professional bloggers blog more than they did last year
- Bloggers believe most people will get most of their news from online sources in five years
There are some fascinating findings in this year’s State of the Blogosphere report. That mom bloggers is on the rise is just one of them. Nevertheless, allow me to say “Welcome to the blogosphere, Mom!”
I’m not being facetious. Mom bloggers can see their blogs as much a business entity as anyone else. And one of the striking things about the report is the overwhelming number of bloggers who see their blog as a business or a part of their business (57% own a business and a blog related to it; 31% see their blog as their business).
Well, Mom, you can feel free to let your blog be your business. You don’t have to settle for being a part of the “hobbyist” category. Here are some tips to help you mom bloggers discover your hidden niche and capitalize on it.
- Narrow down your passions to one or two things. You can write about other topics, but these one or two passions – along with 3-5 interests – should make up 75% of your blogging.
- Learn how to conduct keyword research related to your niche (passions).
- Read other blogs related to your passions and interests. Read them daily and interact with them.
- Once a month, check to see what your most popular posts are. Write about those topics a little more often.
- Research affiliate programs related to your passions and interests and join some. Don’t overdo it. Pick 2-5 affiliate products or services that you can really get behind and put links and banners in your sidebar and link to them in your blog posts.
- Pay attention to blog design. This is becoming more and more important for keeping visitors coming back to your blog over and over again.
- Get a standalone domain name, not a blog on a free host.
- Blog every day.
- Make every blog post interesting. If that means cutting back on how often you blog then go to an every other day posting schedule. But blog as often as you can.
Even mom bloggers can make money on their blogs if they learn to promote them through social media and SEO. Go ahead, Mom! Make a business of your blog. And welcome to the blogosphere.
Tags: blogosphere, business, mom bloggers
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010
Doug Caverly gives a good defense of blogging a la social media. I particularly liked this paragraph, which pretty much sums it up in a nutshell:
I think I would go so far as to say that from a business perspective, blogging is probably more critical than it has ever been, and social media is largely responsible. This is not because people are engaging less with social networks. It’s because they’re engaging more, and social networks open the doors for blog content to find its way to relevant audiences like never before.
As Doug points out, a good number of tweets you find on any given day contain links to blog content. They may or may not illicit a response, but the small number that do are important.
The lesson here is that it doesn’t matter how often content is retweeted or responded to. What matters is what kind of content is retweeted or responded to and the depth and power of that content. Like anything in life, the largest impact typically comes from a small minority of content creators. But overall, the content that is getting out and getting attention is good content that deserves it. It is traveling far and wide because of social media.
Social media is just one more reason to be blogging today. If you are doing business online and you are looking for attention then you should be blogging and promoting your blog through social media. If you’ve been contemplating whether or not to start a blog, stop thinking about it and do it.
Tags: blogging, Social Media
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | No Comments »
Monday, August 30th, 2010
I’ve got to hand it to Bill Slawski. He writes about search engine patents and the gems he uncovers are fabulous. This morning he wrote about a Google patent that establishes an algorithm for helping searchers find blogs about a particular topic.
Note that this is different than Google’s ordinary search algorithm, which helps users find individual blog posts about a particular topic.
If you are a searcher, for instance, looking for blogs specifically about small business marketing then you might go to Google’s blog search – not the home page search – and type in “small business marketing”. Then you’ll hit the button labeled “Search Blogs”. You’ll get a list of blogs that regularly write about small business marketing as opposed to random blogs that sometimes write posts about small business marketing. You’ll find the blogs, not individual blog posts.
This has huge potential for marketers. If you want to develop an audience for your particular niche then it helps to know how the search engines rank blogs that target niches. By learning the criteria search engines look for to determine blog rankings you stand a better chance of having your blog rank highly in the search engine’s blog search feature.
Thanks, Bill. That was a really useful post.
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Thursday, August 26th, 2010
All over the blogosphere for the last couple of days I’ve seen the same thing over and over again. Bloggers are upset about a Philadelphia decree to start charging bloggers $300 for the privilege of running their online business. Does this mean that there will be fewer blog start ups in Philadelphia?
Of course, cities have been requiring business licenses for a long time. It’s only now that business licenses for online businesses have become news. And for the record, Philadelphia isn’t the only city requiring licenses for online businesses. Boston, L.A. and the District of Columbia do as well.
But it’s unclear whether the Philadelphia business license would apply to small businesses who use a blog to promote their off line business. What is clear is that if your blog runs ads then it qualifies as a business. And that $300, for clarification, is a one-time fee – not an annual tax. Does that make a difference?
I don’t think the license fee will slow down the number of blog start ups. It’s a relatively small fee and even a modestly profitable blog can earn that back within a year. Since the licensing requirement is a lifetime fee, that makes it pretty darn affordable. There is just one thing that you should consider when you start to do business online – just as you would when starting your off line business. Make sure you meet all your legal requirements. Otherwise, you could land in hot water.
Tags: blogging, small business
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | No Comments »
Monday, August 23rd, 2010
Matt McGee does it again.
Just when you thought everyone you know would be starting a blog soon, statistics show otherwise. Only 1/3 of U.S. companies have a blog. And only 43% will have one by 2010. These estimates are from a report by eMarketer.
But even more startling are the growth of business blogs in the past five years and Matt McGee’s bold, bold statement:
I won’t provide consultation services to companies that don’t blog.
That’s a pretty strong statement. If a small business Internet marketing consultant won’t provide consulting services to businesses that don’t blog, doesn’t that say something about how important these little marketing tools are? It should.
In 2007 only 16% of U.S. businesses had a blog. Now, just three years later, a little more than twice that many do. But it makes you wonder why more businesses aren’t blogging when the benefits are so clear. There is probably no online marketing tool that delivers as much targeted search traffic as fast and that can achieve greater search engine rankings so well. But I guess not everyone knows that.
Tags: blogging, small business
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Saturday, July 31st, 2010
If you run a local business then you might be tempted to write a marketing blog just like everyone else does, but is that the right approach? It might not be. But I wouldn’t say that categorically.
There are times when, as a business, you might want to do something a little more out of the ordinary – like write a blog that is a community-oriented, community-driven hyperlocal blog. The big question is, Why?
Think about your audience for a minute. Let’s say that you are a service business that can only deliver its service from a storefront. You can’t do it online, in other words. Therefore, your customer base – your target market, if you will – is inherently local. Why not target local geographic keywords, in addition to your niche keywords, to attract your local audience.
Suppose, for example, you run a local body shop. You work on automobiles. You could write a blog that keeps tabs of local accidents – in Minneapolis-St. Paul, for instance. If you could get photos and video footage of local automobile accidents, or run accident reports picked up from the local police and fire departments, and comment on those then that might be something people would read. Instead of promoting your business, you promote safe driving. Be sure to put your business logo all over the blog and let people know you are the primary sponsor. You could even sell advertising to other businesses related to auto body work such as auto mechanics and auto parts stores.
I think the idea of hyperlocal blogging is almost here. It’s just a matter of time before it takes off like a rocket. And it could be sooner rather than later.
Tags: blogging, local business
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | No Comments »
|
|
|
|
| |
|
