January 2, 2010 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Many large and small businesses alike have recently discovered the great advantages of blogging in maintaining good communication relationships with both employees and customers. It is obvious that for some people, blogs have become a means of sharing information and expertise at very advanced levels and this can only mean increased profit for the company. It is a common knowledge by now that small businesses profit the most from blogging. Why? Because a highly specific web page such as a blog, successfully substitutes an extensive online presence. Instead of a static page, you offer a very dynamic blog where feed-back is encouraged and various issues get tackled with.
Many Internet experts consider blogs a very informal, yet popular way of developing business contacts, since, the informational content receives a different approach than in the case of classic promotion sites. Business owners can definitely enjoy great recommendations from users, but there are also dissatisfied customers who could review the products or services unfavorably. You’ll have to be prepared to handle such situations with the utmost diplomacy in order to avoid a worsening of the situation. On the other hand, a business blog provides the opportunity to run market research and avoid hiring employees that don’t fit requirements.
Business blogs also function as the right tool to spread news to all the employees at once; this kind of blog application is usually preferred by larger companies who can reach the staff in a more comfortable way and on a daily basis. Statistics claim that blogging significantly contributes to team building and communication between the departments of the same company; hence, there has been an increased preference for blogging over newsletters. Nevertheless, we also have to mention the more difficult aspects of business blogging as well.
For instance, maintaining an updated blog requires quite a lot of time and work, it may even be necessary to have someone perform all the operations on a regular basis. Then, the e-commerce possibilities are fewer when it comes to using a blog over a regular site; you may find it very advantageous to start blogging when you just initiate your business online, but then, you may choose to use it in parallel with a regular promotion site, once things get to look brighter. If at the beginning you take advantage of the minimal costs required by a business blog, later you need to monitor efficiency first and foremost.
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December 25, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Every corporation today should be creating and maintaining a fresh and engaging blog – and they should be monitoring it, too. Creating your own content is important, but so is monitoring—and responding to—the conversations taking place about your brand on blogs and forums across the Web.
The biggest risk with blogs is a lack of relevant and timely publishing. If you don’t post timely, punchy, informative posts, your blog will not be read or be found by search engines. Your goal is not to obtain momentary awareness but to maintain relevancy over the long term for your target audience. You need to use buzz-monitoring tools to find out what customers are talking about—what interests them right now—and then use your blog to write about these subjects. This quest for prolonged relevancy and a deeper interaction with your customer is what a good business blog is all about.
It is no secret that trusted information sources, offline and online, are given greater credence by decision-makers than paid advertisements. People may be talking about your brand, your clients’ brands and your competitors as well. Are you listening and responding— and thereby demonstrating your commitment to the community that surrounds your business on the Web? Are you using monitoring tools to find and monitor all the blogs where people are talking about your brand, so you can engage in the conversation, post responses, and build relationships with them? Your own blog-publishing efforts and a blog-monitoring and commenting program must offer unique opportunities for a richer connection with key influencers.
Interacting with only the people who fully support your brand isn’t going to win any hearts and minds—nor make a lasting impact on branding and revenue. Use social media monitoring tools to find out who is talking about your brand, what they are saying, and what they like and dislike about your product. Understanding the key positive and negative voices discussing your brand will enable you to even better engage your fans, as well as to reach out to detractors to try to win them over. If you take a blogger’s criticism or suggestion and use it in creating a better product or service, not only will you have won that user over, you will have shown that you are taking your customers’ opinions to heart. Treat all of your blog-based interactions like a true relationship, with both sides giving and taking. You might gain valuable product, marketing, and segment knowledge from the interactions. Offer your key influencers special promotions or give them a say in product design or development. Remember, online interactions are a two-way street.
Use social media monitoring tools to find out which blogs and forums are hosting conversations about your brand. Take the time to know where your brand is being discussed and research the groups that are talking about it. Doing so gives you a better chance of relating to users and creating a relationship, rather than just talking at them in your own blog and when responding to their posts.
Take a close look at your business blog. Is it boring? Are the posts too infrequent? Does it speak to the conversations you’ve uncovered with social-media monitoring tools? Does it invite engagement by making it easy to post responses and to share posts via email and social networks? The person responsible for writing content for your blog should have full access to the social media monitoring data you uncover on a daily or weekly basis—so they can write posts that touch on those subjects. In addition, your social media marketing team should work hand-in-hand with your business blogger to promote posts with all the social-networking platforms, as well as to reach out to external bloggers to invite them to read and comment on your blog.
Many blogging programs fail to be relevant and drive engagement because businesses bite off more than they can chew and then the blogging programs languishes due to lack of time. Start small and then grow the program from there. It doesn’t cost a lot to (a) write posts for your blog; (b) use free or inexpensive monitoring tools to stay abreast of conversations about your brand; and (c) participate in the Web-wide dialogue taking place about your brand. But it does take a lot time. Make sure to map out your objectives based on the available bandwidth of your marketing team.
The pitfalls are many: failing to post regularly on your corporate blog; posting only text and no photos, videos, or links; failing to create a cohesive voice on your corporate blog by allowing several people to post; and neglecting to use all the methods possible to drive traffic to your blog (SEO, SEM, social media networks, email campaigns, etc.). But it’s easy to avoid these pitfalls now that you know what they are. Following these simple rules will result in a blogging program that does what you want it to: drive customer engagement, build your brand and boost sales.
Sofia Sapojnikova
Vesta Digital
IntelBuilder Social Media Platform
http://www.vestadigital.com
December 18, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Operating a home business blog involves effectively completing numerous tasks if you have intentions of successfully marketing on the internet. The root of your success will be in the amount of blog traffic you can attract. Immediately behind this will be the amount of loyalty you can generate with the blog reader to continue to return to your site.Let’s review 5 straight forward and uncomplicated blogging tips you start using today to increase your traffic and keep your readers returning.Leave Comments on Other BlogsYou should already be visiting other blogs in your niche to get new ideas on topics and layout designs so become involve in their discussions. When appropriate leave comments that are useful and/or insightful for the other readers. In doing so leave a signature card that reflects a link back to your site. Over time if your comments are good enough people will visit your link to find out more about you and what you do.Post RegularlyPost to your site on a regular basis so your readers will know what to expect from you. The fresher the content you have on your blog the more often not only will readers visit but also search engines. You now are developing a stronger loyalty with the reader while also increasing your search engine ranking. All this will ultimately add up to more readers which add up to more income if that is of any interest to you!Elicit CommentsWhen blog posting do not be afraid to rattle cages or ruffle feathers with your readers. You want to ’stimulate’ your readers with entries that get them thinking which will compel them to comment. The more they comment the more involved in your blog posting they will become therefore the more likely they will continue to return.Respond to CommentsDo not leave your readers ‘hanging’ if they comment on something and you do not respond. This is not to say you need to respond on every comment but on only those that warrant a reply. The interactivity of a blog is what makes them so popular so do not kill this spirit by neglecting to reply when appropriate.Invite Guest BloggersBe open to inviting an occasional guest blogger to leave a post on your site. This will help to ’spice’ things up on your blog by injecting new ‘blood’ or perspective into it and will serve to increase the interest levels of your readers. It will also give you a new source of content and probably a much needed break from your blogging duties.A home business blog is a great platform for marketing on the internet provided certain tasks are routinely completed. The continual need to generate blog traffic is fundamental to your success as is nurturing the loyalty of the blog reader once they arrive. By implementing the 5 simple blogging tips we discussed above you should have no problem attracting and retaining all the traffic you will need to be successful online.
TJ Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina.
To learn more about successfully maintaining a Home Business Blog and to also receive a free instructional manual that teaches valuable niche research techniques simply visit:http://blogbrawn.com/
December 14, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
One very popular choice for a home-based Internet business is to become what is known as a blogger. Blogging involves setting up your own website and then filling it, day by day, with a chronological series of articles, reviews or diary style writings, which can generate cash via allowing companies to place advertisements on your site, or incorporating affiliate marketing on the blog.
Most blogs combine text with images, links to other blogs and web pages, and various other media in some way related to the blog’s topic or topics. Most blogs are interactive, allowing readers to make comments. The most common form of blog is the personal one; which is a form of ongoing diary or commentary by an individual. Some of these blogs can gain quite an extensive following, though it is rare that they will enter the mainstream and become truly popular.
Other kinds of blog are corporate or business blogs (used for the purposes of marketing or public relations) and genre blogs (focused exclusively on one particular topic be it politics, art, music, or some other niche). Blogging has exploded in popularity in recent years, and while anyone and everyone can set up blogs, many mainstream writers and journalists have also created their own blog sites.
There are many ways to make money via your blog, and that money can range from pocket money to a little more spending money per week and for some of the most wildly successful bloggers, a replacement for their full time job. This can happen as a result of advertising and affiliate marketing on your blog, from such sources as Google AdSense, Amazon Associates, various miscellaneous advertising or affiliate programs, and even private advertising sales or sponsorships.
There are even some sites out there that compensate bloggers directly for writing about their products or services or other websites. Of course, all the advertising, affiliate programs or indeed blogging in the world isn’t going to do you much good if no one is reading your blog (and thus clicking on those adverts) in the first place. So how can you get your little blog noticed out there on the World Wide Web?
Making sure your blog is well written and offers quality content is a good start. Ensure that the blog contains lots of links, to other articles, to other related sites, YouTube videos etc. Include pictures in your blog and be sure to add your blog to the lists of free blog directories such as Blog Catalog.
Feed your blog to Feedburner. This allows your readers to get email notifications when you have posted something new. If you write on other sites, including social networking sites, link to your blog at every opportunity. Create an email signature that links to your blog, thus ensuring that every person who receives an email from you has the opportunity to immediately visit your site. Comment on other people’s blogs so that the trackbacks will lead back to your own.
Learning to run a successful blog can seem to like an intimidating and overwhelming feat at first, but if you can master the art, it can be an effective way of generating extra income.
November 28, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
A home business blog is a great way to earn money especially if you focus on a subject you are passionate about. If your subject is popular enough you can actually get paid to blog but you will have to be committed to the task. The most popular blogs gain their notoriety from posting good quality content and on a frequent basis. This is the commitment we were referring to earlier.When you first create a blog some type of plan needs to be put in place as to how you will supply the content you will need on a regular basis. Your next step will be setting a strategy as to how you will attract readers to your blogging business. Great content will do you little good if nobody knows about it so assuming your content is excellent our next step is to promote it.Here are 3 highly effective ways of generating blog traffic.Frequent PostingThe absolute key to the success of any blog starts with the frequency of how often the content is updated. If your post are far and few in between your site will become ’stale’ not only to your visitors but also to the search engines. When any new information is posted to your blog search engines are ‘notified’ of it and come to scan it. The more frequent and relevant the content you post is, the higher your search ranking will be resulting in more new visitors to your site.Guest BloggingWith the quality of the information your site contains word will get out within your niche. In time you will have other bloggers visiting and proposing that you write some content for their site. When you write for another blog you can siphon traffic back to yours whereas the host blogger receives an ‘infusion’ of fresh content which pleases his or hers own subscribers as well. Everybody wins in a case like this.Commenting on Other BlogsAnother way to become ‘known’ within your niche and to increase your own blog traffic is by visiting and participating in discussions on other sites. This will be second nature to you since the niche you are participating in is one you are already familiar with. Your comments, when left, will prove to be ‘insightful’ to other participants who will likely follow you back to your site to read some more about what you post. Of course your comments need to be warranted and obviously of value to everyone for this to be effective.A home business blog can be both a lot of fun and very lucrative if you commit yourself to it. By picking the right topic and investing your efforts you can become one of the most popular blogs in your niche. At this point you can actually get paid to blog. To make your efforts easier however it is wise when you first create a blog to select a topic you are interested in. Pulling it all together you will want to generate plenty of traffic for your blogging business. By implementing any or all of the 3 techniques we spoke of above you should have little difficulty in gaining both readers and popularity within your niche.
TJ Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina.
To learn more about a Home Business Blog and to also receive a free instructional ebook that teaches valuable niche research techniques simply visit:http://blogbrawn.com/
November 27, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
What exactly is a “business blog?” Let me give you a simple answer to a simple question – it is a blog that talks about or describes a business! Now why on earth do you need a blog (of all things) to talk about your business? Think about it – what exactly is your website doing? Taking a walk? Doesn’t it offer information about your business? Does it not have enough space for you to say everything you need to say to your customers? Okay, this is how it used to work. There was a time when it was a great idea for companies or businesses to have their own websites. They could put in all the information about their businesses, and that was considered sufficient.
But times have changed. We are now citizens of the 21st century and we need to stretch ourselves to meet the demands of living in modern times! These days, websites have become common. It seems like every person, place or thing owns a website! And what’s more, websites are getting more and more interesting. They are competing more and more aggressively to get the attention of the customer or the potential customer. Businesses have invented many ways to grab the attention of their customers and draw them to their own websites. That’s where the business blog comes in.
For the business, it’s a great idea to own a blog, irrespective of whether you own a website or not! It does not cost any money to write a blog. Furthermore, businesses have discovered that the more you write about your business, the better chances you have of other people reading what you have written. And once you have grabbed the attention and interest of a reader this way, you can lure him to your website where you can give him more information and reasons for him to buy your product or service. That is why companies put up a business blog whenever possible. It is a great marketing technique and a great way to draw potential customers to your website.
Like everything else, a business blog also needs regular maintenance. You need to keep it updated regularly and make sure that your blog does not just carry outdated content. Make sure that it carries the most recent information about your company or business. By providing relevant details, news items and upcoming events at your business, you will be able to kindle the reader’s interest and keep the user from going away to a different website or blog!
What else can you put in your business blog? Well, you can add a lot of things to make it more interesting to your readers or visitors. You can post photographs, messages, feedback from customers, videos, product specifications, prices, and almost anything else that you can think of. The important things to do is to keep as many blogs as possible so that more people will get to read them. That, in turn, will drive more visitors to your website, and that, ultimately, will bring you more customers and more money!
Business blog is very helpful if you own a small business. For more information on business blog please visit the provided link.
November 24, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Business Blogging Ideas â Use the News!
Business bloggers frequently run out of ideas. While contemplating this point, it seemed a good idea to write about ârunning out of ideas.â
In every case, blog operators and website owners have covered all the ground and written about every service topic, feature, advantage or attribute. Coming up with new articles or topics just seems impossible. At every site though, âthe show must go on!â Your readers want fresh material. The search engines want fresh material, too.
How best to do this? Utilizing local events or information important or of interest to your city can not only make your product/service features relevant, but can be used in such a way as to attract local internet reader traffic.
The landing page of your local television news website might provide all the idea information you need at the start of each day. Topics such as utility rate hikes, road construction, subdivision approvals, crime rate news, local business news â all might be configured into a relevant local story for you. If properly constructed â particularly in your article header â your piece will be configured to appear as a result for web users researching local stories. It just takes a little creativity.
Is there anything in the news that is useful today? Look at your leading news providerâs page or newspaper front page and for each local story, assess:
Local Impact:
Local events always impact a neighborhood or city area. Assessing what that impact is and acknowledging the importance of the event is a good first step to using a story to keep your company and product in the consumerâs mind. Issues such as sales tax changes, new restaurant openings, and school issues â are relevant to your readers as you share the same community.
Understanding what is important to your community is also understanding what is important to your customers. Posting articles about it confirms your commitment to be part of that community. Because âpeople buy from peopleâ no matter what the product or service, showing understanding  and your concern for these issues is important in making future local sales.
Customer Impact:
Issues such as sales tax changes have an immediate impact on your customer base and on the community directly. Tax rate increases drive overall consumption levels lower. What does this mean to you and your customers? How can they plan for this? What are some good ideas to prepare?
Crime stories also change a neighborhoodâs behavior patterns. Neighbors might be (or should be) replacing locks, initiating âwatchâ program or taking some other actions that might impact your customers. Even consistent traffic problems can present an opportunity. If you sell the new auto navigation systems or deal in tires, you can certainly compose a post that notes these events and acknowledge the effect on local customers.
Not only can you prepare useful information about these events, you are in a position to comment on the local news blogs as well. This puts you out in front when others read your comments. Just remember to use a keyword or a geography name in the title of your comment. Something like Dayton Tires lets the user know that you provide tires in the Dayton, OH area.
Opportunities:
It requires a bit more creativity to identify an opportunity and turn it into a âpositiveâ on your website. As most news is âbad news,â discovering opportunities for you or your customers is a little more difficult.  How could customers take advantage of the current news event you are writing about? Orâ¦how could they avoid negative impacts? All of these issues are opportunities for you to present your site as the âgo toâ page for local business impact. Sometimes, just posting something positive about a negative story is reassuring to your community.
Form:
To take advantage of local impact stories, title your page or post using the name of the event. Use something like âI-85 Closureâ or âMinneapolis School Bondâ in the article title and refer to it again within the body content. Folks looking for more information on these topics may see your page and pay a visit. And once there, you have an opportunity to provide value and build your local reputation. Search engines can also see that your piece is somewhat relevant to the I-85 closure and when users search for information about it, they may be presented with a link to your page.
Use the News!
By focusing on current events that are obstacles to achieving any of these objectives, customers will see you as their advocate; your reputation will be enhanced and you will enjoy the fruits of being a leader in your community.
For more blogging tips or tips to improve your page display rank on major search engines, please visit Denver SEO Consultants home page!
Spending eight years in software development really inspires creativity – especially for things other than software development. Thus, I embarked on my new underground career as a humorist. Now.. if others think I am funny, I am in good shape.
Sports in general and college football in particular inspire tremendous and irrational passions for one’s team. This is where the fun starts. Teams that make their bowl reservations in August are selling them for pennies on the dollar in November.
So read on and let me know what you think! If you want more, please visit my website at http://firstworst.com
November 24, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
Operating a business blog can attract new customers and establish your organization as an industry leader. Still, going about this can be a difficult and time consuming endeavor. To compete for new business, most organizations are now operating a business blog page.
That business blogs attract viewers and customers is a well known fact. SEO Consultants have been assisting organizations for years in building this new type of sales tool. Setting up the blog is not a hugely time-consuming or even expensive endeavor. Still, blogging takes time and can require a significant on-going investment. Composing and creating valuable content is not an easy task and to run through the exercise day after day can leave the author worn out and out of ideas. Still, the concept of ‘valuable content’ is central to attracting and re-attracting viewers to the business site. So when things get difficult and ideas are hard to come by, companies frequently ask “how much blogging is necessary?” Posting at least once every day is a difficulty that most successful business bloggers overcome. Generating enough fresh new ideas is a challenge, but if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. So… overcoming the challenges of creating new content each day or multiple times each day is a very important part of a successful blog traffic strategy. New and valuable content must be posted regularly – preferably daily – if you want to compete at the top of your niche for readers.There are two main types of blog readers: Initial visitors, and Repeat readers.Initial visitors may be attracted by a blog post you made on another site, or because your site showed up as a result on a search engine. Once there, they must receive value and be at least entertained by the content you present. Otherwise, they will be much less likely to become repeat visitors. Repeat visitors are ones that have some assurance that the time taken to revisit your site will not be wasted. Repeat visitors may also be members of the niche community that may be searching for new ideas themselves.So how do you use a blog to attract both types of visitors? There really are only two elements to improve traffic and search engine placement with a business blog.
Yup… it just isn’t any more complex than that… just two areas upon which to focus. (These are big task areas though!)Creating Value:
Provide something useful or a guideline that will be helpful to your readers. Thinking of your reader as a customer, he or she won’t invest time with you unless there is something they can get out of the relationship. And… understanding that creating value is a time-consuming effort, the author must schedule in time to prepare good material. Telling People:
Once your content is created and posted, what then? Well….don’t just stand there, tell someone! This is why it is important that you reach out via a blog or social network to let people know they can receive some value by visiting your page. Social marketing such as Facebook and Twitter can help attract readers if you let viewers know there is new and valuable material posted on your site.There are numerous tactics one can while visiting other blogs within the niche, but suffice it to say that you need to be a part of your community and share your knowledge and expertise. A comment on another’s blog that shows insight and wit will attract readers over to your site. And once they are there, they should receive a unique bit of content or value. There is no substitute for visiting other blog pages in your niche. This brings us back to how much new information and blog activity is necessary to attract readers. There is of course no short answer to this. A good rule of thumb is though, to post every day and comment every day. Your level of success will be somewhat dependent on the competition you have in your niche and the size of your potential audience. There is however, no substitute for being active in terms of posting and commenting. And this takes time.Blogging allows you to actively put your message out for the community, but the community must be invited to read it. If the message isn’t valuable or if the community doesn’t know the value is there, you are missing huge opportunities to attract readers and ultimately, buyers.
For more information and assistance about setting up your business blog or using the internet to attract traffic and customers, please visit the SEO Consultants of Denver blog page.
Spending eight years in software development really inspires creativity – especially for things other than software development.
Thus I embarked on a career as an SEO Specialist assisting small and mid sized businesses utilize the internet to attract more sales and increase revenues.
For more information, please visit the SEO Consultants of Denver home page. Provide your contact information via the “Contact Us” tab and we will be with you very soon!
November 19, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment
There is a lot of buzz about blogging software in the news these days, as well as stories about steroids. What do they have to do with one another? We will see in a moment! Blogs come in three basic types, though there are no rules or standards to follow, just general categories. Types of blogs 1.Cat blogs 2.Community blogs 3.Business blogs A cat blog describes the type of blog you might have just because you want to have one. It could be about cats, travel, your family, or anything else that is of interest to you personally. Cat blogs are not intended to make any money, they are like an advanced personal journal. Community blogs are there to communicate to groups such as teams, schools or businesses. Announcements, schedules or plans can be given to everyone at the same time, which is a lot better than a phone tree! People can check in at work, or from school, or at home at their own convenience. Business blogs are those that are intended to make money. Often business blogs are used in conjunction with a regular web site as a way of providing fresh, up to date information relevant to the business. Business blogs can also be a sort of hybrid of a traditional web site and a new media blog. This means that the better blogging software has features that enable the blogger to add advertisements, affiliate links, images, navigation tabs, videos, audio recordings, podcasts, and just about anything else you can imagine. This is the part about steroids Imagine if you could have a business blog that was like an athlete on steroids, without the bad side effects! You would be miles ahead of your competition and hopefully more profitable with less effort. There are numerous steroids you can put your blog on without getting into any black hat trouble. Black hat means underhanded, sneaky methods of trying to trick the search engines into liking your site or blog. It is a futile game of cat and mouse and should be avoided. Some of the ways you can put your blog on steroids is by efficient search engine optimization of your posts ( just as with a web site), using podcasts, video and encouraging reader participation through comments. The comments are a great way to gather in-bound links from many sources, which will help your blog to gain page rank. Here is the best part What if you could automatically send your posts to many reputable blogs and web sites with the click of your mouse? That would get your post out there instantly, people could add it to their RSS feed and add it to their favorite list or send it to their friends. Imagine how quickly word of your great content would spread through the community of like-minded readers. People who are interested in what you offer would be much more easily connected and very quickly. My own business blog has provided me with a massive amount of information relative to my interests. I can see what people are interested in, what they read, how long they read it, where they came from and all kinds of useful data. This blog is a good example of how quickly you can get good page ranking and be indexed by Google. The problem with feeding all those social networks takes a lot of time because you must manually submit each post to every single network. Somebody figured out a way to do this automatically and ethically, and the search engines just love it! Maybe everybody already knows about how this works, but none of my colleagues seem to have any idea. I have no idea how the blogging software works, but I do know that it works! When I make a post I get a report of where it has been sent. If I check in at Technorati, for example, I can see instantly what is going on with my post. This seemingly small ability of the blogging software is just like putting a blog on steroids because the performance is dramatically enhanced. Of course, you need to have good content and integrity in your intentions in order to succeed in your online business. There is no magic bullet or hidden secrets, just a lot of honest, hard work to provide a useful service that meets the needs of people. As you build your community, the effects just continue to grow and one thing leads to the next. It is well worth your time to investigate this blogging software to put your business on steroids. Have you ever wondered, How do I start blogging?
Randy Hough lives and works in the Upper Valley of Vermont. He has been a master plastic injection mold maker for 30 years, a youth pastor for many years and has traveled and studied extensively in Europe. He also has 8 lively children who have taught him more than anything else. He has a Family Health site and a manufacturing site.
Find out how to make money by blogging, it is actually fun!
The next generation of the Web is here and it is called Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is the use of new technologies and old technologies combined to create the ultimate user experience of a media: direct interaction. Are you an expert on a subject? Write about it on Wikipedia. Have a great idea for a movie? Don’t wait for the movie studios, make your movie and publish it on YouTube so the masses can watch. Before making a webpage involved knowing code, now anybody can create a mySpace page or a blog in few minutes which is customized to their personality. Web 2.0 encourages people to take action and create the media that they want to see. Every subject matter how small can have a network in Web 2.0 and if doesn’t exist now you are free to create it.
What is a blog?
The term “blog” is a combination of web + log, or diary. This is first and foremost the place where people can write their memories, thoughts, ideas, feelings and save them as their own personal diary. What makes a blog different from a traditional journal is that it instantly published is updated frequently and allows for user feedback via comments and syndication through RSS feeds. Popular blogs can draw hundreds of thousands of readers. Business blog can also achieve a wide audience whereas the goals and uses of a business blog are much different from a social one.
What is a business blog?
A Business blog, is a very powerful tool which enables a firm to extend its communication level with certain segments of its target audience. The firm’s business blog is the place to communicate the “underground” materials from the firm’s headquarters – information which will usually not be put on the company’s website and only those who know people can know about it. The business blog allows its readers to access company information such as R&D, development and more giving readers a special insider perspective. Whether it is new ideas, developments, beta versions or sometimes personal posts by leading personnel like a CTO or R&D manager, or sometimes a simple as pictures from a company outing, blogs create a regular returning readership when written well.
The Goal of a Business Blog
The goal of a Business blog is to inform and connect with specific segments of target audience – whether potential clients, distributors, partners or potential employees. Business blogs are routinely used for PR by other sources greatly expanding a company’s marketability. Business blogs which offer industry wide information can help a company become more respectable and an authority, no matter what size of the market the company controls.
A great example of a business blog is the one used by Magic Software Enterprises, at www.magicsoftwareblogs.com. They offer hints and tips for making their products more useful. Plus the blog is well read by their software users who leave feedback and create positive free word of mouth advertising.
Another example, but quite different is blog at www.discount-engagement-rings.com. This blog is written by a company called Diamodns-USA however its content is much more general than helpful advice for buying a diamond but is loaded with fun and interesting fact and stories about diamonds & jewelry. This is a great example of an industry leading blog because of its style and wide ranging content.
The benefits of Blogging:
1. Blogs are the perfect public relations tool. Their personal nature gives you and your organization a unique voice online – a voice heard by the people who matter – your customers and clients, other bloggers and the media.
2. Blogs help to position you and your company as experts and leaders in your industry.
3. Blogs act as instant-feedback mechanisms. They allow readers to respond to your posts via the comments section or link to them on their own blogs which are read by other people who might be interested in what your business has to offer. These features provide near real-time feedback on ideas, opinions and issues that affect them, or highlight and address new or existing problems.
4. Their simplicity and addictive nature allow you to share more of your knowledge more often. Blogs are about sharing what you know, think and believe on an ongoing basis.
5. Search engines index your blog posts more often because of more frequently updated content. Your ongoing blog and knowledge sharing shows up in the search results, making it easier for your customers and prospects to find you.
6. You can have many conversations with many people at once – something nearly impossible in the brick and mortar world.
7. They’re automatic buzz-machines. Go ahead and try it. Blog about something new – a new product or service launch, an improvement to an existing product, or a newly appointed manager. See how fast the news spreads throughout the blogosphere.
8. They’re self promotional due to their RSS feeds being aggregated across the net almost instantly.
9. Feedback. You can track your RSS subscribes with tracking software and start to identify marketing trends and new markets.
10. Companies who blog are considered early adopters, thought leaders and “in”. Blogging is “cool” therefore companies who blog are “cool” and “up to date”..
But the most important thing to remember when blogging is that you’re not a speaker talking to an audience, you are sharing and interacting. You are one more voice to be heard and how powerful that voice is depends on how much interacting you do.
Readers of blogs make comments and other readers reply to those comments. Bloggers will commonly take posts from other blogs as ideas for new posts. A blog is more than an online journal it is an interactive communication platform. When done properly blogs can create authority, respectability, and marketing leverage for your company over the competition.
As Web Marketing Experts we advise companies and corporations on how to properly use blogs and blog tools like RSS feeds, web advertising, and videos as part of the holistic web marketing strategy. To learn more about corporate or business blogs visit http://www.compucall-usa.com or email info@compucall.co.il.
Ariel Rosen is a content and video producer for Compucall Web Marketing. He has helped many companies set up and maintain business blogs, produced countless hours of video and lectures about writing for SEO and the web.
