Business Blogging

Business blogging sounds like an oxymoron--especially if you think blogging is just a personal web log of your personal life. Read the rest of this entry »

We are going to talk about the time factor involved with the typical business blog and help you determine if you should consider starting one. Read the rest of this entry »

Adding supportive photos can enhance your article and help draw a better point.  For example:

Lets assume you are a photographer and you are writing an article that would bring expecting fathers to your message.  You write a story about a client who was seeking a gift for his wife that made her feel as beautiful having their third child as she was having their first.  In your story you write about the glow of beauty your client described every morning around his wife.  To enhance the story, you find a photo of a morning sunrise.

So how do you insert a photo into your blog article?

See this picture below, the red circle is around the “Add an Image” icon you click to start the process.

When you click on the icon above, you are presented with a popup dialogue box where you will be promoted to locate the picture file on your computer.  For formatting purposes, start with photos that are no wider than 500 pixels.

If the photo you are using resides on another website, then choose the “From URL” tab, otherwise, click on “Select Files” button.

If your browser does not support Active X, then your screen will not show the “Select Files” button.  In this case, click on the link to “Browser Uploader”.

Located the file (or files) on you hard drive and click on select.

At this point your photos will be uploaded to WordPress and added to a Gallery associated with your post.

Your next option will be the formatting of your photo in relation to your post text.

The next dialogue box gives you the option to left or right justify your photo, which will wrap your text around the photo OR None or Center.

Notice the size options, depended on your photo size, WordPress will try to size your photos.  Be sure your photo is NOT wider than 500 pixels, otherwise the photo will not lineup correctly on the website.

We suggest you experiment with captions and descriptions.

In the early 1960s, Professor Neil Borden at Harvard Business School identified a number of company performance actions that can influence the consumer decision to purchase goods or services. Borden suggested that all those actions of the company represented a “Marketing Mix”.

The four P’s of Marketing are:

• Product
• Pricing
• Placement
• Promotion

Internet marketing is just another way to market…right?  Well, sort of.  We can market using traditional means and experience success, but the internet, unlike any other medium, allows a more personal approach.

Anyone with a TV knows the name Billy Mays.  Infomercials use personality based marketing to build a relationship between the presenter and viewer.  The problem with TV is there is no long term search value to the personality of the presenter or presentation.  Using the internet, we can create a infomercial type discussion with long term search value.

We need four additional P’s:

• Personality
• Purpose
• Perspective
• Patterns

Personality as in a personal look at you. Your hobbies, believes, and personal experiences.  These become connection points to others like you.  All things being equal, people prefer to do business with people they like.

Purpose: Trying to get listed high enough for your industry keywords is very difficult.  Our purpose, then is to capture attention from prospects when they are NOT looking for business, but rather browsing the interest for entertainment, education, or encouragement.

Perspective should always be focused on the desires of your target customer.  If your target customer likes dogs, then writing about your love of dogs will build a relationship with the visitor.

Pattern could also be called strategy.  Since we are writing on topics of interest, not necessarily connected with business, we need some way of drawing readers over to our business website.  If we are targeting dog lovers, then we need to include a subtle hint how our love of dogs affect our business life.

Just imagine for a moment you spend less time with good paying customers and they love you and how you help them.  These evangelists then sing your praises to everyone they know, bringing more customers your way.  Sound good?

How?

Your best customers are those who get it, don’t struggle with the message and do everything you suggest (which works).  When something does go wrong, your best customers call you and you solve the problem.

Write down everything about this ideal customer.  Age, income, education, marital status, religious and political believes, hobbies, children, the type of house they live in, and everything else you can think of.  The more you can define, the easier it will be for you to write articles that appeals to the prefect prospect.

For example (extreem as it is), if your ideal customer is socially conservative but your written article is very liberal then your words will not echo with the target prospect.

Create one client profile at a time, otherwise you’ll confuse the language.  Client profiling includes building sample language and topics of interest.  Your blogging strategy should including creating an inventory of topics that are appealing to this perfect customer.

Write your client profile, then write two sample articles and ask a friend to give you feed back.  Does the articles speak to the client profile defined on the page?  The trick here is making sure your client profile is very detailed.  For example, if you only state you want to do business with people who have money, then when reviewing your article, your editor will not be able to give you constructive feedback.

When starting your blog site, be sure to limit the number of client profiles your are writing for.  Readers will get confused it the language is trying to speaking to too many different people all at once.

Happy Blogging!

For more information about how we can help you and your company build a lasting business blogging strategy, please call me at (503) 709-1454.  We want to earn your business.

Ed Bejarana Zenith Exhibits, Inc.

There is no right way or wrong way to write you blog articles.

This outline is just one suggestion on how to compose your blog publications, we suggest you talk with other business people and find out how they are creating blog articles.

There are two basic goals for blogging:

1. Building more inbound links to your company website.
2. Present you and your ideas to a wider audience.

We suggest you:

• Write articles that are 250 words (+/- 25 words)
• Format your article into four or five paragraphs
• Construct paragraphs that have three to five sentences
• Write interesting titles that are less than 12 words long
• Keep your article focused on a single topic
• Use the most appropriate category from those available
• Add tags that further classify or categorize your article

In your first paragraph, state your thesis.

The middle paragraphs should support your thesis, be easy to read, and use few filler words (e.g. and, the, where-with-all, etc.).

You last paragraph needs to state a conclusion.  If possible make your conclusion action centered.  For example, if your article is on a decision made by the City Council, then conclude with an action challenge to make you voice heard at the next council meeting.

Always sign your document and add a link back to your company website.  Where ever possible, use keyword rich text and the achor for your link.  For example:

Affordable Website Hosting

.vs

BusinessBlogging.net

Be sure to add text to the “Excerpt” field located below your main article window.  The Excerpt text is used on the home page as the lead in for your blog articles.

Also, make sure you have updated your user profile with your company’s webaddress, because each article will show your name as a link back to your website.

Write articles that your target customer finds interesting.  For example, if you know your best customer’s love dogs, then write about your dog.  When presented with two options, your prospect will choose the service provider they like the best (when all else is equal).  Social marketing is being socialable.  Give the world a window view into your soul.

Happy Blogging!

Should you wish to get more help building your business blogging strategy or writing blog articles, contact Ed Bejarana at (503) 709-1454.  Editorial assitance is only $25 per article.

While there is no published formula for How To optimize your web page, we are going to give you a basic page organization structure to serve as a starting point.

Always remember, CONTENT IF KING.  There are no gimmicks, tricks, or content formula that will work to give you a guaranteed first page ranking.  Be wary of ANYONE who tries to sell you a first page ranking–it can not be done.

Organizing Information

Before looking at pictures, column layouts, or even keywords; define who your target customer is.

Pick a page topic.  Keep the topic scope of your page narrow.  Don’t try to say everything on one page.

Break the topic into three major categories.

Divide each Major Category into three sub-categories.

Spell out keywords for each of the category and sub-category fields.  Here is an sample outline:

1. Major Category 1
   1. SubCat A1
   2. SubCat A2
   3. SubCat A3
2. Major Category 2
   1. SubCat B1
   2. SubCat B2
   3. SubCat B3
3. Major Category 3
   1. SubCat C1
   2. SubCat C2
   3. SubCat C3

While it is not necessary for your page to follow this outline format verbatim, building your content in this fashion will give you the very best starting point for organizing your page.

The Major Category should become a page heading tag (H1 or H2 tag).

Sub-Category keywords should be used smartly in a short paragraph.  It feasible, use bullet points, but be sure to support the bullet points with action driving text.  Use your target customer profile as the foundation for picking the right words and language you use.

Supporting The Message – Multiple Senses

Until we can add scratch and sniff web pages, we are left with sight and sound.  Useing these two sense we need to set the right emotional hook.  Website visitors will read very little of your page so use pictures as supporting cast members for your website’s message.

Pick photos that complement your written message.

Ask For Feedback

Do not trust that once you build your webpage that it is perfect.  Do not get so attached to page content that you become defensive when your trusted advisors suggest alterations.

Look to the Small Business Development Center, trusted industry experts and even other business owners to give you constructive feedback.

Measure Everything

Do not settle for visitors and page reads stats.  How long did visitors stay on your site, which links did they click and how often, what type of web browser do your visitors use and what size population center does your visitors originate?

Business leaders have have sought a balance between online shopping and offline selling. For many businesses, the disconnected, non-human feeling eStore is not compatible. However, the pure social nature of blogs are too loose and sometimes too revealing for professional services and high value products. Read the rest of this entry »

The new Business Blogger often starts by writing very detailed sales pitches.  Think “long winded elevator speech” and you are getting close to the most common mistake.

Business blogs gain preferential treatment by the search engines.  If the content of your article is not focused and well crafted, then the preferential treatment will be the cold shoulder.

Starting at the beginning, ask the question why do search engines care if your blog article (or website) is listed?  The more users who use the search engine, the more advertiser revenue they will collect.  If Google sent their users to web sites that did not meet the searchers’ needs, then the searcher would stop using Google.

Business card data or quick elevator speeches usually fail to gain positive search engine listings because they are too broad in topic scope.  Your business certainly does a lot, but don’t try to write about everything you do in a single article.

Single Topic Focus

The more specific the better.  For exampling, writing about printing is too broad.  Writing on tri-fold brochure printing is much better.

Time Sensitive

Since blogs are news type communication mediums, take advantage of it.  Write articles that have a sense of now.  For example, writing about your staff is not time sensitive; writing about the person you just hired is time sensitive.

Informative

Your readers are giving you their time.  Respect it. Give the reader value for their visit.  Sales pitches are not informative, no matter how sweet the offer.  The information value is very low.  Make offers on static web pages, write about benefits on your blog site.  For example, write about the benefits of using a content management system for your company web site, rather than the new deal your company has on web site design.

Ed Bejarana BusinessBloging.net a division of Zenith Exhibits, Inc.

Zenith Exhibits, Inc. specializes in face-to-face and internet based marketing.  Exhibiting on the trade show floor or in the worlds largest trade show, the itnernet, we are you marketing solutions provider.

Writing for search engine visibility is more of an experiment than an exercise in following clearly laid out instructions. While there are hundreds of books and several thousand industry recognized “experts” who can describe search engine optimization (SEO) in great detail, the truth still remains that search engine visibility depends on the content.

Search engine companies make their money from advertisers purchasing ad space and keyword combinations. Using a bidding process not unlike the traditional auction system, advertisers state how much they are willing to pay every time someone clicks on a link to their website. This process is known as “Pay Per Click” advertising and companies worldwide invest billions for premium placements.

However, to keep the searchers coming to their website, the search engine must give you (the searcher) what you are looking for and do so in as few searches as possible. Because advertisers have a tendency to exaggerate what they do, ALL search engines provide a mechanism to evaluate your website for themselves.

When performing a search, our goal is to improve your listing in the organic search results.  These listings are left of the paid lists and below the sponsored links (sometimes listed).  The order of website listings is a closely guarded secret and every search engine does it slightly different.  High valued sites are measured by content, the stronger and more relevant the better.  The essential goal of the search engine is to make sure you are what you write.

Armed with the above knowledge, you are better able to write your articles to maximize your viability in the organic search results. If content is king, then the better (or more interesting) your article (or page for that matter) are, the higher your Organic Search listing will be.

How then do you know what to write about?

We discussed the Keyword selection process in a previous page and in our examples we used babysitting as a search phrase. Bringing back our sample image, we see that there were over 6,400 searches last month for the keyword phrase “babysitting tips”. Here is another view of that keyword list, scrolled a bit further down under the section titled similar keywords:

We see a whole new view of possible topics, but we also see other words google associates with babysitting tips. This is important knowledge, because now, in addition to knowing how many people are searching for these new keywords, we also know how important google is going to consider our text to be if we includes these new words in our “babysitting tips” article or page.

For example, here is one way we could start our article:

My babysitting tip for this week is use a nanny cam and stipulate right up front in your home child care contract that you will use hidden cameras to ensure your child is being cared for appropriately.

By itself the above sentence is ok, but it will NOT get you listed on Google. We have, however, established the tone for Google to measure the rest of our article against. Because “babysitting tip”, “nanny” and “home child care” are associated words in Google’s index, having them together in the first sentence in a smooth clearly written manner will give us good footing for establishing our keyword dominance. The key concept here is “smooth clearly written manner”. No obvious stuffing or contrived use of keywords allowed.

The next 400 to 800 words MUST support the first sentence, and ONLY the first sentence. Don’t introduce more keyword topics further down in your article. Keeping your topic “singularly focused” is critical! I can not stress this enough, but when content is king the content must stand alone without the aid of “other” interesting points.

How do you know when you are done?

Done is an unobjectionable statement. If you reference our article structure page where you can get an idea of how many words your article could contain. However, done is up to you and your READERS! Here is where the experiment concept comes into play.

You’ve got to try different things to know what does or doesn’t work. Write your babysitting article (if you are a baby sitter) and then track the article on Google. If it appears on google under your target keywords, then chances are VERY high that people will read what you wrote. In our example, there were more than a million searches for nanny in July, if just one half of one percent of those people searching for “nanny” click over to your article you will have 5,000 readers. In the world of blogging, 5,000 readers is HUGE!

If Google doesn’t list your article for your targeted keyword, then try again. Keep trying until you DO get listed for your keyword.

Now, in the blog world, your article will life on the first page of google for only a short period of time and that is determined by the number of new articles written on that particular topic. The good news is google with FOREVER more index your article for that keyword phrase, but unless you keep writing on the topic, newer articles written as well or better than your will take the top spots. Here-in lies our next lesson:

Borrow styles from proven success

Before you start writing babysitting tips, do a search on google and read the landing pages for the top three organic search listings. If the top three are advertisements for things, then write and experiment, if the top three listings are blog articles, then try to improve on the writing style. Get the idea yet?

Your business depends on web traffic. While you can’t plagiarize material, you can copy or emulate writing styles. Find what works and do it better.