If you are a small business owner that has mixed feelings about the wonderful world of online marketing and even more hesitation about entering the social media realm, you’re definitely not alone. But being the business-savvy entrepreneur that you are, you probably know that this is the wave of the future and businesses that lack some form of online presence will be left in the dust. Consider putting a blog on your site; it’s easier than you might think. The top three reasons that small business owners avoid developing their online marketing plans and stay away from social media is lack of capital, lack of time, and lack of skills. This is where a blog will fit your needs perfectly—it is relatively cheap to incorporate into your site, requires very little time, and you do not need any special technical skills or writing expertise to use it. View this guide for tips on getting started with a blog and for best practices on maintaining it. What is most important to having a successful blog is to understand that it is like hosting a networking event on your site, around the clock. People can read what you’ve written, which should be entertaining and informative. They can also ... read more >>
|
 You’ve most likely heard of RSS feeds, but you might still be wondering exactly what they are. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” RSS itself is just the format for delivering regularly updated web content. Blog feeds allow readers to keep up with the newest info posted on different sites, and people “subscribe” to the feeds of their choice.
Enter the “Feedreader” For example, there are 25+ blogs out there that I enjoy reading on a regular basis. I want to keep up with them because they help keep me up date with all of the latest information in my niche. However, I don’t want to have to go out to the web and pull up each blog individually every day just to see whether they have been updated. The solution to this is to use a “feedreader” to see all of my favorite blogs’ latest content all in one place. Feedreaders allow you to access new content in two main ways: through the actual reader itself or via email updates. One of the most popular feedreaders and the one that I use is Google Reader. The Business Use Why is this important for marketing? Two reasons: 1—It’s a great way to stay current and educated on the things going on in your niche or market through ... read more >>
|
Have you ever had this scenario unfold? You’ve just created some amazing content, everyone that you’ve shown it to absolutely loves it and can’t wait to release it into the wild that is the web. You throw it on your micro-site, company website or blog and wait for the inevitable take off. After all the content is great and that’s all that matters right? Wrong. Great content won’t mean much if you don’t cover the basics for activation and sharing. Despite what you have been told, content is only king when it has been fertilized and nurtured. A farmer wouldn’t just throw seeds into the ground and just hope that they grow. Why would you do the same with your content?
1. Target a specific audience for activation. Not all content is the same. The content that will work on Digg will not necessarily thrive on Delicious. Why? Different audiences. Just like any medium you need to play to your base. Seeding effectively will be key here.
2. Build in sharing capabilities. Now make sure that those sharing capabilities adhere to both your audience AND work effectively. Cutting and pasting a url isn’t going to cut it anymore. People have built in sharing networks and audiences that ... read more >>
|
 How much attention do you pay to the headline of a blog post or other content you write?
I always think that the headline of a blog post, newspaper article, news release or other piece of written material is the most essential thing to pay attention to when you write that content. A compelling headline or title is usually how you’ll get the attention of people when they’re doing things like I do most days – scroll through a list of headlines of content in my RSS reader. I don’t see photos or other visual attractions, just words upon which I’ll make a rapid almost subconscious decision on whether to give the content the headline leads to any attention, or skip and continue scanning. As an example of making headline creation an art if not a science, look to the Huffington Post and what they do to write compelling headlines as reported by the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard university: From direct mail to web design, A/B testing is considered a gold standard of user research: Show one version to half your audience and another version to the other half; compare results, and adjust accordingly. Some very cool examples include Google’s obsessive testing of subtle design tweaks ...
read more >>
|
 Photo by the TruthAboutThe success of your blog, or any social media effort, depends on your willingness to solicit feedback and take corrective action when necessary. If you want to have a successful blog that supports your organization’s goals and adds value, improvement should be continuous. You need to pick the right hard data points, or metrics, that will help you harvest insights and improve your blog. Analyzing your blog content
First, you need to set overall goals for your blog and understand your audience. Next, you need to know the right metrics to use, and employ the proper tools to collect the data. Most important, you need a strategy—either for yourself or for a team—to gather insights from your metrics. Remember, it isn’t about the numbers alone. Avoid Analytophilia
Alexandra Samuel coined that phrase in a post on social media analytics and metrics about the greatest peril of social media: analytophilia. It's about obsessing on raw numbers and constantly checking the number of Twitter followers or retweets or Facebook insight clicks. She recommends that you don't go into your analytics or stats program without composing a specific question first. ...
|
I was approached recently by the owner of a popular blog using Wordpress software. This blog gets a lot of traffic on a regular basis but also has articles that reach the front page of Digg.com on a regular basis. For those of you not familiar with social media, this translates to very large traffic peaks. He wanted to know if there was anything he could do. As usual, Josh Can (and did) Help. 
Step 1: Assess the situation Wordpress is notorious for being a big server resource hog but there is little else out there that provides the kind of flexibility and extensibility on such an easy-to-use platform. I’m sure there are debates to be had but I’m a huge fan of Wordpress and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. In this case, the Wordpress core along with several essential but potentially resource-heavy plugins were causing the server to become unresponsive and, at times, crash for several minutes. This happened during short periods of intense traffic caused by the aforementioned temporary Digg.com front page position (called “the Digg effect”). I ran a simple website optimization test and found several things that needed to be corrected: - The site was creating close to . ...
read more >>
|
Your audience is your biggest asset, so take advantage of what they have to share with you. As a blogger with a readership, you’re in a fortunate position and can enlist in their help when you need them. Chances are, they’ll be eager to participate. 1. Ask the readers: If you’re looking for ideas, you can always run a column where you ask the readers a question and invite their answers in comments. You may even choose to expound upon one of the ideas written in a comment and make it a separate blog post (or series, if there are just so many great comments). At the same time, you may want to let the readers ask you a question. Don’t be afraid to share information about yourself and open up.
2. Utilize contact forms: Ensure that you launch your blog with a contact form so that your readers can contact you in some way. There are many plugins available that enable you to set up a simple contact form where your users can add questions and service providers can even send related pitches to your address. After you become an established blogger, you’ll likely be contacted by traditional media for quotes and you’ll likely even be asked to provide help on consulting for related ... read more >>
|
Blogging is, at the same time, all of these things: - fun, work, profitable, tedious, engaging, addictive, rewarding, draining, exciting, and demanding
There are definitely more positives to blogging than negatives for the right people. Some people cannot hack it after awhile. Others totally thrive on it. Among the latter group, many make great money doing it. No matter where you are with your blog right now, beginner or advanced, we all get tired, burnt out, and have need for inspiration from time to time. Sometimes the promise of more money, more traffic, and more success isn’t quite enough to get us through. During these times it’s nice to know a couple things: - You are not alone. All bloggers go through periods of ups and downs, like any business owner does, online or off. It’s nice to know we all need pretty much the same things to keep us going.
- Power in numbers. We are part of an historic time in human history and technology. In fact, bloggers are smack in the middle of the whole thing. You aren’t just trying to provide yourself with a living or part-time income. While that may be what you think ...
read more >>
|
Jay Baer let the cat out of the bag, so I might as well confess - I am a connector, and a life time one, too. Someone said on Twitter today that she wished people understood that the loudest ones are not necessarily those who are making stuff happen (I'm paraphrasing here). Many collect people, I learn about them - what they're looking for, what they're passionate about. From strangers to friends on trains (part of being Italian and trains never arriving on time), to discovering amazing talent among people in a room crowded with voices intent on networking. I don't have a very sophisticated method, I'm afraid. No big spreadsheets or ultra-tech tools, although the human brain is probably the most sophisticated of all systems. I just choose to observe, find out, and remember. Because I know a time will come when I'll be able to connect a dear friend with a resource, a business with a partner, an acquaintance with a job opportunity. What do I get out of it? Why do we need to get something beyond the being helpful part out of it? Connections is one of the topics here at Conversation Agent. I met Jason Falls when he noticed my first post on connection Katas. I still remember .. ... read more >>
|
Last night, Firefox 3.5 crashed and I finally had enough …. didn’t even bother to start it again, today. I’m finding Firefox as a browser, for whatever reason, is so unstable, has crashed so often, no matter how much Firefox is updated, it’s become fundamentally unusable for me, and this has been the case of multiple computers and operating systems. Google Chrome, which I haven’t used much, performs much, much better and is far more stable - and boy, is it fast. Plus Google Chrome is now releasing extensions - see The First Google Chrome Extensions: Block Ads, Check PageRank, and Use IE8 Accelerators in Read/Write Web including Page Rank for Chrome and Cleeki, an extension that delivers the functionality of IE8’s Accelerators to other browsers, a list that now includes Chrome. Fast …. means a lot now. This week (I call it a task because it’s not the kind of activity one wants to do often) updating some Web Analytics site tracking code across 180 profiles in WebTrends was cut down to 1/8th the time to do and with much less effort and mental fatigue. That means a lot to me …. THANKS GOOGLE CHROME!!!! You want to know what I care about? I care about not ... read more >>
|