Business Blogging

Most Marketing Programs Work

This is a myth put forth by some marketing consultants and debunked in the book “Marketing Myths that are Killing Business”, by Clancy & Shulman.  Truth is it is hard to tell if a marketing program is working.  Well, that is until the internet and business blogging.

Enter Google Analytics

When we blog for business, we keep our topic focused.  That topic gets good initial visibility on the search engines and using the FREE Google Analytics software, we can measure the effectiveness of the posting.  If people are digesting your content AND visiting another page on your company website, then your business blog marketing strategy is working…  However, if the phone does not ring then one might conclude that the effort failed.

Business Blogs Gather Traffic

Your website makes the case for people to call.

• Use your blog to capture keyword focused search engine visibility
• Provide value to the reader in the form of knowledge they can use
• leave the selling to your other Web Pages

All to often we, as business owners / operators, panic when we see lots of web traffic but not phone calls.  This is a business matrix.  Find the most common page visitors read next, after your business blog posting.  Have a trusted friend read the second page and ask them this question:

What, if any, action are you inspired to take?

If the answer is none, then you have found the failure in your marketing program.  Modify the page and repeat the process.  In business, we improve that which we measure.  Use Google Analytics to measure your marketing effort and keep adjusting until your phone starts to ring.

There is no such thing as instant results or a sure thing in internet marketing.  For that matter, we can expand that statement to all marketing.  The most expensive TV commercials can (and often do) fail.  Therefore, when looking to business blogging as a marketing tactic for your business, do so with the following basic understanding: business blogging is a long term process, not a short term solution.

Unlike other marketing methods, business blogging is the process of building a relationship with potential customers.  When blogging, consider the following:

1. People prefer to do business with people they know and like.
2. Nobody likes to hear (or read) a slick sales pitch.
3. Just because you say it doesn’t make it so.

As business owners it is hard to avoid the trap of self importance.  When we attend chamber meetings and business networking events we spend our precious few seconds giving our elevator speech (which is almost always an abbreviated sales pitch).  Because an elevator speech is geared toward educating folks about your products and services, they make for horrible business blog postings.

When blogging, you should focus on helping others.  Keep your topic focused on your visitor and give them FREE information they can use to improve something.

Do not try to write a single blog post on more than a single topic.  Your first target audience member are the search engines; if you try to include too many topics, then the search engines will not know how to list your info.

Lastly, be personal.  Business blogging is informal by nature: so do not try to write poetic master works.  The biggest fear of business blogging is someone will judge your business based on a mis-spelled word or the incorrect use or a comma.  Some may, but most will not.  Unless, of course, your business is writing!

Ed Bejarana Zenith Exhibits, Inc.

Get a FREE business blog site at PDXchat.com

Business blogging increases search engine visibility through keyword focus in a text based presentation.

So how does a small business use their blog to find new customers?

A typical mistake is to write about your great deal, product features and benefits, or all the money one can save.  Those are called sales pitches.  American consumers do not like a sales pitch.

Write about your customers, your passions, your history in your profession, ways your product improves lives, your charitable efforts, and your feelings.  Yes feelings.

All things being equal, people prefer to do business with people they know and like.  Keep it professional and avoid any topics you wouldn’t discuss at a Chamber of Commerce meeting in a mixed crowd.  Writing about your feelings is not writing a diary, rather your feelings as they pertain to your chosen profession.

Your blog can be a product announcement, so long as you say so right up front.  Mixing press releases, product announcements, research and development progress with personal growth in your business will help give your readers some insight they can not find anywhere else.

Unlike all other forms of print media, your business blog is an informal marketing medium where you can lower your guard and speak from your heart.  When you, you’ll find the comments and feedback you receive will go a long ways towards increase customer connections and higher search engine rankings.

Ed Zenith Exhibits, Inc.

Get a FREE business blog site at PDXchat.com

WordPress is a powerful personal publishing platform, and it comes with a great set of features designed to make your experience as a publisher on the Internet as easy, pleasant and appealing as possible. We are proud to offer you a freely distributed, standards-compliant, fast, light and free personal publishing platform, with sensible default settings and features, and an extremely customizable core.

Contents

• 1 License and Platform
• 2 Managing and Administering the Weblog
• 3 Publicizing Your Work
• 4 Customizing the Design
• 5 Creating Content
• 6 Archives and Search
• 7 Discussion and Comments
• 8 Creating and Managing a Blogroll

License and Platform

• License : WordPress is licensed under the GPL.

• Platform : PHP (v4.3 or newer) and MySQL(v4 or newer) are required.

Managing and Administering the Weblog Locally Installed WordPress is designed to be installed on your own web server, or shared hosting account, which gives you complete control over the weblog. Unlike third-party hosted services, you can be sure of being able to access and modify everything related to your weblog, in case you need to. This also means that you can install WordPress on your desktop or home computer, or even on an Intranet. Portable Core You can choose to have the tree of wordpress related files, which form the back-end of your publicly displayed weblog, be in the same directory as the weblog or in a different directory. For example, if you want your weblog at http://example.com (public_html – the public “root” of your webserver or hosting account) and you want to store the wordpress related files and directory tree in http://example.com/wordpress (public_html/wordpress), you can! UTC friendly WordPress allows you to define your time as an offset from Universal Coordinated Time (UTC), so that all the time-related elements stored in the database are stored as GMT values, which is a universal standard. Among other things, this helps you display the correct time on your weblog, even if your host server is located in a different time zone. User management WordPress uses user-levels to control user-access to different features, so you can restrict the ability of individual users to create or modify content in your weblog, by changing their user-level. User profiles Each user on your weblog can define a profile, with details such as their email address, instant messaging aliases etc, if they want to. Users can also control the way in which their details are displayed on the weblog. Easy installation and upgrade WordPress’ famous 5 minute install can’t be beaten for simplicity and ease of use. Upgrading your weblog to the latest version of WordPress is easy, too, and it should take less time than the installation! Dynamic page generation No rebuilding of all your pages each time you update your weblog, or any aspect of it. All pages are generated using the database and the templates each time a page from your weblog is requested by a viewer. This means that updating your weblog, or its design is as fast as possible, and required server storage space usage is minimal. Internationalization and Localization You can now create a weblog that is localized to your choice, and delivered in a language of your choice. The gettext method is used to translate and localize WordPress to the fullest extent.

Publicizing Your Work Feeds The RSS 1.0 (aka RDF), RSS 2.0 and ATOM specifications are fully supported by WordPress, and what’s more, just about any page on your weblog has an associated feed that your readers can subscribe to – there’s a feed for the latest posts, for categories, comments, well, like we said earlier, for anything you want. The more options your readers have to keep track of different sections of your weblog, the easier it is for you to spread the word around the world. WordPress also fully supports RSS 2.0 with enclosures, so adding mp3 files (such as podcasts) to your RSS feeds is a snap. Cruft-free Permalinks The URLs for all the pages in your weblog can be made to conform to a standard, cruft-free system, and all the links are structured, sensible, and understandable to human and machines, and that includes search engines. Clean URLs are essential for search engine optimization and an improved user experience. Inter-blog Communication In an increasingly connected world, WordPress comes ready for PingBack and TrackBack, two very useful ways of connecting to other weblogs, and to enable them to do the same.

Customizing the Design Template Driven Design WordPress uses templates to generate the pages dynamically. You can control the presentation of content by editing the templates using the Template Editor tool and the Template Tags Template and File Editor Every installation of WordPress comes with a file editor you can use to edit your templates and other WordPress related files, right in your browser without having to worry about downloading and uploading the files in order to edit them. Template Tags Template tags make it easier to design the content and information displayed on your weblog. You don’t need to be a PHP whiz to design your weblog. Themes You can skin your weblog using readily available themes, or styles. You can also create and share your own themes. Plugins Plugins extend the core functionality of your weblog. A large number of user-developed plugins are already available and can be used to do virtually anything you want to, with your blog.

Creating Content Password protection So you want to share something with some people, but not everyone? Easy, protect the article in question with a password. Post Slug If you are using clean PermaLinks on your website, you can define the link to an individual post by using a post-slug. Post to the future You can write a post today and have it appear on the weblog at a future date, automatically. Multi paged posts If your post is too long, cut it up into pages, so your readers don’t have to scroll to the end of the world. File/picture uploading You can upload pictures or files, and link to them or display them in your articles. You have the option of creating thumbnails of pictures when you upload them. Categories Organize your posts into categories, and sub-categories, and sub-sub categories… Emoticons WordPress is smart enough to convert character smileys, like “:)” into the graphical image counterparts. Save Drafts Save your unfinished articles, improve them later, publish when you’re done. Previewing Posts Before you press the “Publish” button, you can look at the preview for the article you just wrote to check if everything is the way you want it. In fact, you can do that at any time, since the preview is “live”. Desktop Tools You don’t have to use a browser to update your weblog, you can use any desktop blogging tool that supports the MetaWeblog or Blogger API. Blog by email You can send your posts as an email and have them appear on the weblog. Bookmarklets Add the “Press It!” bookmarklet provided by WordPress to your browser and you have a shortcut to create an article with a link to the page currently displayed on your browser! Sidebar If you don’t like a bookmarklet, use our friendly browser sidebar, which can be used in a similar fashion. Formatting Think of WordPress as something that makes your words smoother, and your pages more appealing. WordPress ships with text-formatting plugins that clean up your content and add typographic goodness to your articles.

Archives and Search Archiving After you’ve been blogging for an extended period of time, what matters is how well your posts are organized, and for that, WordPress provides you with several ready made options to display the archives of your blog, containing all the old posts. You can choose from yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, category-wise or author-wise archives, and easily link to the archive pages from the main page (or any other page) of your blog, using a template tag to generate the links to these archive pages. Since WordPress generates pages dynamically, all these archive pages come at no additional space-cost to your server. Searching WordPress has a functional built-in search tool, which allows visitors to your blog to search for terms they are interested in, and the search-hilite plugin that ships with WordPress can highlight their search terms, so it is even easier for them to find what they were searching for. In addition to this, the plugin also does the same for someone who arrives at your blog by clicking at a search result in a search engine, such as google. All in all, searching is fun, with WordPress.

Discussion and Comments Community Building WP is not the YMCA, but it does help build communities around weblogs, through the use of comments, trackbacks and pingbacks, helping you keep in touch with the audience and fostering friendship Allowed html tags Not everyone is evil, but keep those who are in check by limiting which html tags are kosher on your weblog. The default html tags allowed by WordPress are a sane choice to let people use html in their comments, without compromising the safety of your data or server. Moderation For the control freak in all of us, WordPress provides an array of moderation options. You can moderate

• all comments before they appear on the blog
• comments with specific words in them
• comments posted from specific IP addresses
• comments containing more than some specified number of links.

All these moderation options keep spammers and vandals in check. Notification WordPress can keep you in the loop by sending you an email each time there is a new comment or a comment awaiting moderation.

Creating and Managing a Blogroll Blogroll The blogroll is where you link to the blogs you read frequently – a friendly way of acknowledging the good blogs out there. WordPress’ built-in Links Manager allows you to add and manage links effortlessly Bookmarklet The effortlessness begins with a neat bookmarklet that you can add to the bookmarks or favourites in your browser. Adding a link to an interesting blog or website is as simple as clicking on the bookmark or favourite when you visit the blog or website the next time! Categorizing The links in your blogroll can be categorized and neatly organized Importing If you already have a list o’ links as an OPML file, you can import it to your WordPress blog. For those coming from other blogging tools, this means that you can import your blogroll from Blogrolling.com and never use a third-party service to manage your blogroll, again. Exporting Did we say you can also export an OPML file with your list o’ links? Displaying As with everything else, you get some neat template tags that enable you to display your blogroll the way you like – in alphabetical order, ranking order, the order in which they were updated – you get the idea

Since blogging become the activity dujure, people like me have been trying to mold the technology into a business tool.  Too often I see business people trying to blog about social activities or, worse yet, blogging direct sales pitches—both of which are doomed for failure.

My feeling is the problem with business blogging is the term blogging.  Since a blog, more often than not, is viewed as an online diary/chit-chat arena; business people struggle to find the relevancy for inclusion in their marketing effort.

I have coached a few hundred clients now how to use blog technology to educate their consumer base, providing “how to” based info to capture “Long Tail” traffic, but many still struggle to gain traction using the medium because, I think, the word BLOG.  So, we are creating a new word.

Business blogging is most effective as an education platform.  Take Web and Educate and we get WEDUCATE.

Weducate – the process of writing search engine optimized articles that help consumers solve challenges they face with the goal of providing overwhelming evidence that you are the service provider with the knowledge to service their needs.

When we weducate our consumers, we do so absent of any direct sales pitch.  While we are free to include targeted advertisements in the footer and sidebar areas of our weducation article, the article itself should be devoid of any sales-based call to action.

I am often asked, “What fonts can I use on my website?”

The answer isn’t always very easy.  It depends.  Web sites are rendered by using fonts that are installed on the visitor’s computer.  While font selection in artwork can be anything, selectable text on the web page is limited to which font family you use.  Here is a link to a great site that estimates the installation based on the most commonly used fonts.

When choosing a font for your new website, you are best to pick a couple different fonts.  One as the primary and a couple of the most commonly used as backups.  When programming your website, we can tell the visitor’s web browser, we prefer to use font A, but if you don’t have font A, then go a head and use font B or C.

Full combined font survey results

Sometimes the best marketing strategy is to give readers tips for how to chose the right service provider.  Your tips should include things to look for, ask for or ways to negotiate better deals.  In reality, your motivation is to highlight how much service “you” provide as compared to your competition: however,  you are not allowed to talk about yourself.

A tips and Tricks article does not follow the business blogging outline (i.e. state a thesis, support the idea, etc.), but instead your tip article will give several micro statements in the form of instructions.  For example, let’s assume you are writing some tips on how to buy the right kitchen appliance.  Your article might be phrases as such:

Don’t ask the appliance sales guy which washer he likes best, ask him to show you the consumer reports write up on three of his best washers.  Take note of his reaction, those who use pressure based sales techniques will commit to asking his boss for the reports while showing you his top seller.  The company who believes in service will have those reports with him, or in very close proximity.

Article length should around 300 words and be broken up into no more than five or six paragraphs.  The idea is to brings visitors to your web site based on micro-chunks of knowledge.  If your article is too long, reading it will feel daunting.

Limit the number of tips you write to three or four at most.  Too many tips and your keyword performance will suffer.

Using our example above, you don’t need to highlight your companies focus on providing consumer reports to anyone who asks, it is implied in the fact that you wrote the tip.

Happy Blogging

On the internet today, your focus should be spent providing single topic focused content on a regular basis (i.e. new information every week). Your website should be designed to present information in both date order as well as categorized navigation. Read the rest of this entry »

Pay Per Click Advertising is the fastest way to get new traffic to your website, but it requires lots of forethought in the ad creation.

Understanding the Limitations

Besides the punctuation limitations found in the Google Adwords help section, here are field size restrictions you must take into account when building your ad.

Headline:  25 characters Description line 1:  35 characters Description line 2:  35 characters Display URL :  35 characters (must be a valid looking address) Destination URL:  Any length necessary

Before getting starting, keep the following thoughts in mind as you create your first ad.

1. Don’t Rush!
   1. Rushing leads to unplanned action and unplanned action has no measurement system by which improvements can be made.
   2. Rushing also leads to poor keyword selection.  The goal is NOT maximum clicks, it is getting the maximum value for each click.  Less is more, fewer, more qualified leads will out pace thousands of unqualified leads
2. Plan Each Word
   1. You don’t have a lot of space.  Reader will be skimming, so abbreviations are acceptable, but they must be obvious.
   2. Focus on your target audience.  Don’t shoot for everyone, because you will be paying for clicks that will immediately bounce away.
3. Create multiple (competing) ads
   1. Your great slogan may be a legend in your own mind!  Run multiple ad versions for the same (limited) keyword set so you can see which ads work best.

Use Google’s Keyword tool to help you find the best keyword options for your desired ad.  Don’t write your ad to random keywords; find the right keywords for your perfect ad.

Using the Google Keyword tool to try and create your ad will lead to an expensive failure.  Decide what you are selling, write copy using the character restrictions above, and then find the best keywords to support the ad copy you created.

Websites are mission critical in today’s business because 88% of all American Internet users “Use a search engine to find information.” (Pew Internet – April 2009)  WordPress based sites are search engine friendly and can be setup to automatically fill in the necessary meta data fields.  Plus WordPress uses a ping feature to alert the search engines on new or updated information on your website.

The most important reason to switch to WordPress

You can add, change or remove information with out having to hire a web programmer.  You also don’t need any expensive software, you need only your web browser and an internet connection.

WordPress is not limited to a certain number of pages or posts.  You can write a separate page for each of your products and services.  Individual pages or posts for your services improve your search engine visibility because there is more information on a single topic on your page or post.  Since search engines read your content and evaluate the page value for their searchers, have a single topic per page means your content will be scored higher.  A higher content score translates into a higher search engine position.

WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are thousands of people all over the world working on it.  Writing new code, improving the technology and making new tools that help your visitors find you easier.  The best part, is WordPress is FREE.

Click here to read more about WordPress.