July 27th, 2008
(www.businessandblogging.com) It’s been a lazy Sunday for me, relaxing and surfing the web. I found a few eclectic items for you to ponder over your own cup of coffee.
The first is a straight-forward help-guide from CNN of what to do When Bloggers Attack.
It’s good information for a business to be aware of Before you are a victim of attack - so you can Respond rather than React.
The second is also full of good observations, shared in a fun way by Michael Martine of Remarkablogger. Michael asks What Smurf are You on Your Blog? and gives you some advice on how to improve your blog if you are Vanity, Lazy, or even Brainy Smurf.
And if you’ve been a Lazy Smurf about enrolling in Teaching Sells, a program that help you learn more about creating a membership website, you might want to act soon. This article, Teaching Sells is Closing its Doors , explains that Teaching Sells will stop accepting members at the current price on July 31st. When it reopens for members after the first of the year, the cost will be considerably higher. So, read the info and make a definite decision this week about whether this is a good investment for you and your blog.
Another interesting find that will appeal to both your Brainy Smurf and Handy Smurf side is Web Video Marketing: Trends, Techniques and Tips . This audio post by Brian Clark of Copyblogger and Dave Kaminski of Web Video University share a lot of frank information about web videos, costs and how-tos.
That’s it for this week - hope you found something stimulating to go with your caffeine!!
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By Liz Fuller -- 0 comments
July 26th, 2008
(www.businessandblogging.com)
They say that location is everything in business.
It is true. A good location can make a business successful. A bad location can cause a business to fail.
Well, business blogging is no different.
There are a few places where your business blog’s URL should already be located. Here’s a short list of those locations:
- Your company’s business card
- Your company’s stationery
- Your company’s marketing materials
- Your company’s advertisements
- Your company’s press releases
- Your company’s catalog
Have you noticed a trend yet?
That’s right! This is a list of all the different means that your company already uses to communicate with current and prospective customers.
Adding your business blog’s URL to your current business communications will help to build your blog’s community. It will also make your company more accessible to your customers and potential customers.
Let’s face it, no one will read your business blog if you keep it a secret. Get the word out and you’ll find that your business blog’s community grows in no time.
So what about it?
Is your business blog’s URL in the right locations?
If your business blog is not in the right locations, then why isn’t it?
Image Source: Laura Spencer of WritingThoughts
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By Laura Spencer -- 5 comments
July 25th, 2008
(www.businessanblogging.com) Susan Gunelius of Brandcurve is getting ready to run a contest next week - and the prize is a t-shirt from CNN.com with one of their headlines emblazoned across the front!
I found this idea so intriguing - What a great offline way to advertise your online blog - by putting it on a t-shirt!
CNN also sells the t-shirts for $15.00 a piece which they say is at cost - no profit to them - they just get the free advertising.
With businesses like cafepress, any blog (or any business) can afford to sell custom t-shirts that advertise their blog.
As an experiment, I took a look at some of our recent headlines at Business and Blogging to see whether any of them would be good t-shirt material.
I came up with a few from recent weeks that are contenders, but not really up there with “Life is a Beach”:
Coffee Break
Blog is a Verb
Blog on the Run
and my favorite (written by Laura)
Does Your Teenager Twitter and Plurk?
What do you think? Would printing a quote from your blog increase readership, or at the very least give you a reason to start up a conversation?
What blog headline of yours would look good on a t-shirt????
Be sure to stop by Susan’s blog on the 28th to get a chance to win a CNN t-shirt, and while you’re waiting, read her interview with Andy Mitchell, VP of Interactive Marketing, CNN Worldwide.
photo credit: Lenore M. Edman, www.evilmadscientist.com
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By Liz Fuller -- 2 comments
July 24th, 2008
(www.businessandblogging.com)
Here at Business and Blogging we’ve always maintained that it’s important for a business blogger to respond to genuine comments (not spam) left on his or her blog.
Blogging is a conversation, and as such, it takes at least two to converse.
For a business blogger, being responsive on your blog has the added benefit of building good will.
Not everyone agrees that comments are important. Hutch Carpenter, guest blogging at louisgray.com, has an entirely different theory.
In a guest post titled Bloggers’ Interactions With Readers Decrease With Prominence Hutch advances the theory that only beginning bloggers and intermediate bloggers respond to comments. According to the post, experienced bloggers do not interact.
Now admittedly Hutch is writing about professional bloggers - the bloggers whose business is their blog that we discussed on Tuesday.
However, business bloggers should take also take a look at the theory (if only to decide that it doesn’t apply to them) because we should take every opportunity to learn from the success of top bloggers.
In my opinion, a business that doesn’t respond to comments is missing out on many important business benefits of blogging.
What’s your take on comments? Are they important to business bloggers, or not?
Image Source: Laura Spencer of WritingThoughts
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By Laura Spencer -- 7 comments
July 23rd, 2008
Do you blog on your phone?
I am always on the lookout for easier ways to work blogging into my life and travel schedule. So when I heard about blogging on a mobile phone, my ears perked up.
I first became aware of mobile blogging when reviewing the Apple iPhone features. One of the free apps that can be downloaded with the iPhone is Blog It by TypePad. This tool allows you to write a blog post, add a picture and upload it to any blog supported by Movable Type, TypePad, Vox, LiveJournal, Blogger or Wordpress.
I have to say I was intrigued.
And it turns out that mobile blogging isn’t unique to the iPhone. TypePad bloggers can also blog on their Blackberry Pearl, Palm, Nokia, or any phone using Windows 5 or 6.
And while I’m intrigued, I’m not really sure I could get used to blogging on a phone.
- The screen is small
- The keyboard is smaller - I am a one-thumb texter afterall!!!
- I also spend time researching my posts on the web before I write them and I have trouble imagining how that would work
So, it seems to me that mobile blogging would work best for shorter, more personal, almost Twitter-like posts rather than longer articles.
But - I’m curious - have you blogged on a phone? If so, how was the experience? If not, why not?
Post a comment or drop me an email - maybe even from your phone!!
photo credit: m_ke2
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By Liz Fuller -- 5 comments
July 22nd, 2008
(www.businessandblogging.com)
Here at Business and Blogging we usually blog about how having a business blog can help your business by enhancing your marketing efforts, increasing communication with customers and potential customers, and allowing you to manage your reputation online.
I still think that’s the way that most businesses will use a business blog. For a select few, however, their blog is their business.
I was reminded of this fact recently when I read Lindsay Buroker’s guest post series, Turn Your Love Of Writing Into A Money Making Blog, over at b5media’s Home Biz Notes Blog.
(You can read the introduction, and part 1, and part 2 by clicking on the links.)
Lindsay has some good ideas and it will be interesting to see how her series develops. I know that I’ll be following it, and I hope that you will too.
In the meantime, I’ve started to wonder: how many Business and Blogging readers use their blogs specifically to make money rather than promote another business?
Do you use your blog for no other purpose than specifically to make money?
Or, perhaps you’ve tried to blog for money and failed.
Either way, I’d like to hear from you.
Leave a comment here or drop me an e-mail and share your experience.
Image Source: Laura Spencer at WritingThoughts.
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By Laura Spencer -- 2 comments
July 20th, 2008
(www.businessandblogging.com) It’s Sunday and it’s time for another coffee break.
Are you ready? Grab your coffee and let’s go!
Here’s what I have for you to read this week:
- The buzz about business blogging this week was the question: Do Blogs Work?, originally posed by Graham Strong. The discussion spread through the Internet like wildfire and wound up not only here on Business and Blogging, but also on James Chartrand’s Men With Pens, Kelly Erickson’s Maximum Customer Experience Blog, Yvonne Russell’s Grow Your Writing Business, and Deb Ng’s Freelance Writing Jobs.
- James Lewin, writing at Podcasting New Media Update, covers a topic that I’ve also been thinking about recently: The Industry Standard On Why Podcasting Is Failing. Earlier this year it seemed like everywhere I looked I read predictions about how all blogs would need to add podcasts to stay competitive. James’s post explains why that didn’t happen.
- This is the weekend of the BlogHer conference in San Francisco, so naturally there’s been a lot of talk on the Internet about the conference. One post on the topic that I found interesting was from Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb, who asked the question: BlogHer: Who Are Your Favorite Women Bloggers?
- Over at Visionary Blogging, Easton Ellsworth continues to examine blogging allies (traits and characteristics that make your blog better). What is Easton’s latest blogging ally? Hope! Read all about it in Easton’s post, Business Blog Ally #3: How to Develop Hope.
Have you found some interesting posts about business blogging this week? Why not share them?
Send Liz or me an e-mail. If we agree that your suggestions are noteworthy, then we may feature them in a future coffee break along with note crediting you for the find and a link to your blog.
Image Source: www.sxc.hu
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By Laura Spencer -- 5 comments
July 19th, 2008
(www.businessandblogging.com) Are you familiar with the Pareto Principle?
Perhaps you’ve heard of it as the 80/20 rule.
Basically, this principle states that you get about 80 % of your business from about 20% of your customers.
Success in blogging is often measured by the ability to connect with readers. One measure of that is the number of comments that a post generates. So, I was curious as to whether the Pareto principle held true for blogging - in other words - do 20% of the posts generate 80% of the comments?
I took a quick look at the stats from our blog and calculated that during May and June, the top 20% of our posts generated approximately 70% of our comments. Not quite 80% but then, we’re dealing with a pretty small sample. If I reviewed the entire year, I might find the results closer to 80%.
The more important point is - why? What’s unique about those posts that they sparked a connection with the reader that was compelling enough for them to write a comment?
And if we can identify that trait, whether it was topic, style, headline, photo, time of day or day of week the post was published, then perhaps we can consciously repeat it - and increase the connection with our readers.
What about your blog? Are a few posts driving most of your comments? What’s special about those? What is it telling you about your readers and what they want to hear?
Feel free to comment below!!!
photo credit: Eliazar
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By Liz Fuller -- 2 comments
July 18th, 2008
How long does it take to write a blog post??
Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fit the time available for it.
In other words, if you have two hours for writing a blog post, then you will spend time
- surfing the web for ideas
- researching background material on the idea
- reading what others have said in the past about the idea
- looking for a unique angle that hasn’t been used before
- writing a lengthy article about the idea
- editing the article
- previewing the article
- editing the article again
- previewing the article again
- including links of other relevant posts
- testing all of the links
- selecting an appropriate picture to illustrate the idea
- crediting the photographer for creating the picture
- previewing the post one last time
- publishing the post
- viewing the final site to ensure it all looks good
and writing a blog post will take two hours!
On the other hand, if you only have a few minutes to post you might just:
- come up with an idea off the top of your head
- write a few paragraphs or even a list of bullet points
- or maybe ask your readers a provocative question and let them fill in the blanks
- and hit the Publish button!
and writing a blog post will only take a few minutes!
So - what do you think? Does work take longer simply because you have more time for it? Do you get just as much done when you have less time to do it?
Is the key to productivity - really having way too much to do????
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By Liz Fuller -- 0 comments
July 18th, 2008
(www.businessandblogging.com) Well, I’m sure you’ve heard it before:
If anything can go wrong - it will!
I’m here to tell you that this law holds true even for blogging while traveling on business.
It’s quite possible that:
- the hotel Lan connection will be defective
- the business meetings will over-run
- you’ll be invited to an unexpected business dinner
- you’ll experience tummy upset from a combination of jet lag and rich food…..
………and you’ll miss your opportunity to post
To avoid disruption when things unexpectedly go wrong, it’s possible to:
- pre-schedule a blog post
- ask a guest to write a blog post for you
- let your readers know that you may have trouble blogging that week
and if all that fails, you can always write a post about the experience!!
photo credit: zaniele
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By Liz Fuller -- 0 comments
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