Archive for the 'Business Blogging' Category Page 4 of 5



The Union of the Blog

So, which one of the following blogs?

Labor Union for Bloggers?

Not all bloggers are created equal and nor does a blog a blogger make.

The blogosphere as amorphous mass has always been problematic. You have political bloggers who consider themselves citizen journalists, business bloggers who consider themselves online marketers, people who simply want to write about themselves or a subject they enjoy, and then you have the poor sods who get to churn out stuff for blog networks at $5 per post.

There’s a bit of talk doing the rounds at the moment about starting a blogging union. If we’re to look at the four non-definitive blogging types I’ve just plucked out of my derriere then you’d think the citizen journalist blogger may prefer acceptance via a journalist’s union and business blogging types should be covered within their own business type if in-house or some other marketing umbrella if at an agency. People who witter inanely about their cats don’t count.

There’s only those poor souls who type their fingers to the bone for a pittance who have a claim for unionized blogging if you happen to do a bit of research into the history of why unions came about in the first place. The following quotes probably sum it up rather nicely:

Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America. John L. Lewis

Only a fool would try to deprive working men and working women of their right to join the union of their choice. Dwight D. Eisenhower

All that serves labor serves the nation. All that harms is treason. If a man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other. Abraham Lincoln

The labor movement means just this: It is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth. Wendell Phillips

I’ve got to be careful here as I do believe bloggers of all stripes should be able to form guilds and whatnot – even cat bloggers. But there’s more chance of the so-called A-list elite confirming and upholding their current status (snobbery if you prefer) if you aren’t careful. (Y’know, just like I’ve displayed in relation to cat bloggers.)

The only credible call to unionize can be made from those who work as bloggers for those who make money out of them directly.

Right, that’s me. Union regulations stipulate I gotta take a break after 40 minutes of mindless waffle.

Lindsay Patross: Business Blogging Basics

Lindasy Patross

Lindsay works in online community building, managing the corporate blog for Spreadshirt and the website. Read Lindsay’s full speaker bio.
Business blogging, whilst not always free is remarkably cheap. Big shout out to Wordpress being the best blogging platform know to man, woman or child.

Here we go with what blogs are and why you should have one. Blog is a type of Web site. It’s chronologically backwards content – the newest is generally first. If we’re taling categories in a blog on this particular blog you’re reading the categories are down the left hand side. You place posts within those categories.

Comments vs no comments. You can have either. It’s a great feedback channel but can also be a spam headache.

RSS feeds – your blog can be read in a feed reader such as Google Reader . (Here’s a list of other RSS readers.) You can read many blogs at one time. \Good for skimming. To subscribe to the Online Marketing: Innovations that Work blog’s feed just click on this RSS button in the left sidebar. Aggregate your chosen content and let it update and you see the updated sites when you login to your reader.

Q. IS there a time you wouldn’t want to use an RSS feed as you’d rather drive people directly to your site.

Vanity searching for Lindsay Patross. Copy the RSS link to your RSS reader and it will update if you’ve been mentioned. Ties into what Justin Seibert was saying about reputation management earlier. Follow the conversation whether it’s good or bad. You need to know what is being said about you online.

Blogs are a great method of interactive engagement. Word of mouth recommendations.

Why should business blog?

Share info with customers; get feedback from customers; industry information; interesting and fun facts; learn to use your own products differently; establish a brand for yourself or your company. Start a global microbrand!

Passive content. Good for SEO. Tell a story. Humanize! Check the Spreadshirt blog.

LIST OF DIFFERENT BUSINESS BLOG EXAMPLES.

Discretion can be the better part of valor in relation to what you put on your blog. Negative commenting. Be honest and respond to criticism.

SET UP A BLOG:

Here’s a blog software list.

Don’t forget google’s blogger which is free and easy to start with.

Don’t regurgitate. Add to the conversation, don’t repeat it.

lorelle.wordpress.com

Q. How do you get people to link to your blog?

A.Write good content.

Q. CEO of Whole Foods making remarks to drive competition’s price down.

A.Laws of business etiquette should apply to the Web. Better to be honest and transparent

Q.Should a blog be part of a site or separate?

A.It can be closely branded to your site or talk about completely different stuff.

Q.How long would it take for marketing staff to maintain a corporate blog?

A.It depends on the type of content you’re putting up If you just want to be informational put simple stuff up as and when.

Justin Seibert Interviewed in Pittsburgh Business Times

Last week saw our search marketing session speaker, Justin Seibert of Direct Online Marketing™ LLC, interviewed in the Pittsburgh Business Times for their “Five Minutes With:” feature. Alas, it’s only in their print edition so I have nothing for you to look at online, but seeming I’m such a decent chap I’ve typed the whole interview for your perusal:

Justin Seibert is president of Wheeling-based Direct Online Marketing™ LLC. The Internet marketing firm works throughout the tri-state area to get clients at the top of search engine listings and also placing advertisements online, as well as Web site design and blogging services. Seibert is slated to speak at a marketing conference on August 16th at Southpointe.

[PBT] We’ve seen some major company executives get into trouble recently with posting inappropriate comments on a blog. What strategy should they be taking instead?

[JS] “Some people haven’t been too smart about it. I think it really comes down to what are the rules of the Internet today. Before the rise of the Internet becoming so popular and so prevalent in everyday life, companies could just say they had their strategy and they would have their corporate-speak, and that was everything they said. The problem was, people were able to communicate with each other. A whole conversation started taking place away from the companies. One of the great powers of the blog is that you can talk with those people, you can become engaged in that conversation now. One of the problems people are having is they aren’t being transparent and honest.”

[PBT] How many companies have been affected by this?

[JS]“Wal-mart got bashed a couple of months ago because they had a couple of average joes (who were paid to blog positively about Wal-Mart). There wouldn’t be anything wrong with that….if you’re upfront about it. (Readers) might not like it, but you’re not going to get bashed for it. And instead, for getting flogs – fake blogs – they just got hammered for it. Honesty and lack of transparency are really the two biggest pitfalls.”

[PBT] What does your company do to help companies increase their online presence?

[JS] “We’re about search engine visibility. We make sure that if someone is searching – whether it’s a product or a service – we make sure they show up. We can make sure they show up all over the world.”

My Engagement Quotient is Bigger than Your Engagement Quotient

I’ve never quite been able to work out why certain bloggers hate the idea of metrics so much. My gut reaction is to dismiss anything that denigrates customers to a spreadsheet of facts and figures. But, I’m also intrigued as to why people do what on a site and the extrapolation of said data.

I’m personally obsessed with my Tinbasher referrals – especially those for “how to get rid of the wife” (fifth one down). I’m also obsessed with where people are coming from, how long they’re stopping for and whether they’ve had a worthwhile experience. When you pour more than your fair share of blood, sweat and tears into something, you like to know whether it’s worth the extra plasma or a salt tablet.

With blogs you get a response from those who really are engaged in your content. And there is no finer feeling. The content I care about or take most time over is the content I am most pleased to get feedback on. And the stuff that I throw up there without a moment’s thought I monetize at roughly 0.23 cents per click through. ;-)

But, just to clarify, it’s a b2b/b2c blog that generates leads. Adsense I experiment with on a few posts and it happens to pay my cable bill.

And I suppose I answer my own question with regards to the measurement of metrics here. If you care about what you’re selling and your business – you know, if you really invest more than money in it, then you will care about every single aspect of its growth and development and will use every single tool available – like your own child. If you’re just in it for the money then you’re just in it for the money. Customer service is an opportunity cost as opposed to genuine feedback and blogging is something you let your PR department babysit – like a red-headed stepchild.

So, I find it rather interesting, that one of the companies who has kindly provided us with a speaker, WebTrends, has just announced a new analytics add-on that measures engagement score:

ANALYTICS FIRM WEBTRENDS HAS A new patented add-on that lets marketers set specific values for each of their Web pages and then calculate an on-the-fly engagement score for each specific visitor.

“Conceptually, it’s brilliant,” said Jim Sterne, founding president of the Web Analytics Association. “Not only is this on the money, this is the money.

“Time on site tells you how long someone was on your site,” Sterne added, “but they might have been on the phone, or they might have been angry or distracted. The deeper they go into your site, the more engaged they are. Now you can see where they come in and where they go and assign a weight to each page.”

Sterne gave the example of a conference Web site that might assign different scores to key pages such as the agenda and the registration. Rather than having to go through a specific user’s path and interpret its meaning, the WebTrends Score tells you who is most engaged.

An engagement score add-on that you could use to measure sign-ups on a conference site?

How come we didn’t get the chance to beta test it?

Truly Dumb Online Ideas #7,645: Human Generated Blog Spam

If you were a shy child and spent more than your fair share of time in a dreamworld of your own fabrication, I can imagine your mother may have spoken worriedly to her friends or devised the odd scheme to help you make more friends.

Then, as a business owner, you’re expected to go out and network so you can make connections and influence people.

Blogging and other forms of social media are a great way to network without having to press too much flesh. One of the first things you have to do is float around commenting on other blogs. It’s imperative that you manage to engage other bloggers within a related niche with how truly smart you really are.

But be prepared for it to take a little bit of time and effort to build the blogger/commenter dynamic. Especially with bloggers who are creaking under the weight of their own legend.

However, whenever you read a blog post and feel compelled to comment because you’ve been moved sufficiently to write one, you can be fairly rest-assured that the blogger will respond if your comment manages to move them sufficiently too.

New bloggers get so excited that they’ll almost invite you to dinner over any old comment. (Remember this when you’re five years down the line and jaded beyond recognition.)

Blog comments spam is the bane of many a blogger. We have more than a few methods and plug-ins set to stun in order to weed out this unpleasantness. No blogger worth their salt would be seen allowing a spam comment for a nanosecond.

So, to have somebody come along and offer a human blog-spamming service is one of the more ridiculous things I’ve heard in quite a while. It’s well worth reading Darren Rowse’s take on the whole sorry idea and the comments that follow.

The logistics of somebody being able to write 1,000 worthwhile comments on various blogs in a three-day timespan for a mere $239.99 are beyond comprehension. It’s also beyond stupid.

The kind of damage this blog commenting guy could do to his own business is quite frightening. He might be coming from the ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity school’, but I’m afraid I don’t always subscribe to that.

How do you ride out a storm if you haven’t built anything to ride on?

So, with all that in mind, I hope I haven’t frightened anybody off the idea of starting a blog. They aren’t difficult and can be awfully rewarding, both intrinsically and extrinsically. You just need to spend a bit of time so that you’re sure in your mind that it’s right for you.

That’s why it’s interesting seeing the mix of online marketing methods we have in store for anyone attending Online Marketing: Innovations That Work. You’ll get to find out whether blogging, mobile marketing, search marketing, and paid search advertising will fit into your online marketing mix and how best to measure their effectiveness. You’ll also be able to work out how to make them all play nicely together.

You’ll even be able to find out how to combat the sort bad publicity the blog comment spam guy is currently experiencing should you ever do something a bit silly.

Then again, if you listen attentively in the first place it should never come to that.