In 19 Reasons You Should Blog And Not Just Tweet,  Adam gives his thoughts of this subject which I found to ring true.  It certainly puts in perspective how much time and effort one should be devoting to which activities, Tweeting or Blogging?  Here’s what Adam has to say on the subject and his first 4 reasons:

“Here’s why you should make a blog your home base and consider Twitter an outpost:

1.  Blogging demonstrates true commitment and passion to your industry that you really can’t fake long-term.  Most won’t be able to sustain it over long periods of time with frequency, but those who do so are rewarded in spades and stand out from the crowd.

2.  Old articles are valuable and still read years later, given infinite life by the engines.  Old Tweets live in archive purgatory where a majority will never be seen again.

3.  Remember, you’re essentially contributing to someone else’s network on Twitter – certainly there are returns, but make no mistake they profit from your attention.  I know you might not have a problem with that because you gain something too, but it’s good to be conscious of that fact.

4.  A compelling link in a blog entry will be clicked; links in Twitter are noise that in aggregate make up signal, but the reality is links in your stream aren’t the same as a post with a compelling link.”

For more, read the whole post at 19 Reasons You Should Blog And Not Just Tweet.

And let me know what you think.  Tweet? Or Blog?  And what’s the right mix?

Jon Morrow , Associate Editor of Copyblogger, who should know, shares with us this pearl of wisdom:

The Oldest Blogging Myth

“Content is king.”

Well, that is pretty discouraging to those of us who focus on producing or discovering great content.  But then Jon explains what, in our hearts, we already know.  In Why No One Links to Your Best Posts And What to Do About It , Jon points out that this is no longer even Web 2.0. It’s moved beyond that.  The era of social media has arrived and that means Friends: Facebook, FriendFeed, the Twitterati. If you want to be popular, you need to start getting hooked up with very popular friends/fellow bloggers.  Or , as he puts it:

“If you want links now, you need to be more than great. You need to be connected.

The Secret to Building a Popular Blog

Remember the saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know?”

Well, it’s kind of true. A mediocre writer that’s friends with every member of the Technorati 100 will become a popular blogger faster than a brilliant writer with no friends at all.

Why? Because bloggers link more often to their friends than anyone else. If you write a reasonably good piece of content that interests their audience, they’ll link to you, mainly because they like you.

The secret to building a popular blog isn’t just writing tons of brilliant content. It’s also having tons of well-connected friends.

How to Make Friends with Popular Bloggers

So… how are you supposed to make friends with all of these popular bloggers and get them to link to your best posts?

Traditional wisdom says you should link to their posts, hoping they’ll notice you and start reading your blog. Sometimes it works, but in my experience, you need to be a little more creative. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Write a guest post that gets lots of traffic and adoring comments
• Attend conferences that all of the “Who’s Who” of your niche go to and network your tail off
• Volunteer to “vote” for any posts that they’re pushing on social media sites like Digg, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon
• Email them an irresistible question, hoping to spark a discussion
• Leave lots of truly memorable comments
• Interview them in either a post or a podcast, making sure to ask lots of intelligent questions
• Join their private membership program (like Teaching Sells) and make lots of smart posts in the forums

Give and Ye Shall Receive

We’re not talking about anything new here. Really, it comes down to one of the oldest principles of persuasion: reciprocity.

Contrary to what many people think, A-list bloggers aren’t islands, separate and self-sufficient. They deal with problems and annoyances, just as much as anyone else. If you can help alleviate them, they’ll thank and remember you for it.

The key is finding ways that you can be genuinely useful to them. Make yourself relevant and then use that opportunity to start building a relationship.

Give it a few months, and then start pointing them to your best and most relevant content. They’ll probably link to you anytime you do anything interesting, bringing you lots of readers. They’ll also introduce you to other popular bloggers, giving you a chance to do more favors and expand your network.

It’s hard work, but it’s worth it. If you put as much effort into building relationships as you do writing great content, you’ll have a popular blog in no time.

And better yet, you’ll have made friends with some of the most interesting people on the web. That’s a reward in and of itself.”

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From Personal Branding Blog – Dan Schawbel

Why blog for your personal brand?

There are so many reasons why blogging is good for your personal brand. A blog allows you to position yourself as an expert in your field and blogs rank very high in Google because there’s fresh content, they are keyword rich and people link to them often.  Blogs allow you to build a community around a topic, network professionally, and hopefully make new friends.  A blog will help you become a more proficient writer, gain confidence in yourself and it will make you feel empowered to reach to the stars.  From a marketing standpoint, you can get your message out for free and command the attention of the media.  There’s also bloggers who make money with advertising and AdSense.

DOWNLOAD: “Blogging Your Brand: A Complete Guide to Your Success!”

Click here to download

For complete table of contents go to Free 52 Page Complete Blogging Guide | Personal Branding Blog – Dan Schawbel.

All of us online are not only in Web 2.0 but in the increasingly powerful social networking era.  Static information still has a place but the tsunami of web use is in the social networking space.  So not only should you incorporate the sharing tools in your new work on the web, but you have the opportunity to go back and add a snippet of code to your static product pages which will make it become alive and interactive and more appealing to your users.

Duct Tape Marketing tells us how in Enhancing Social Funtions on Web Sites. So here’s the game plan:

“The web has become a terribly social place and that raises the expectation of most web site visitors. The ability to add content, comment, rate, review, interact and share information found when surfing the web has become standard fare.

By adding a few simple scripts and widgets you can easily add tremendous social functionality to any web page or blog. Giving your visitors, prospects and customers ways to share and amplify their voice is a great way to enhance their experience of your business online.

JS Kits – This is one of the dead simple easiest ways to add rating, navigation, polling, chat, reviewing and commenting to any web page. You simply copy a line of code and you are in business. Getting customer reviews and reader comments on web page, usually a blog function is great for static product pages.

Social Ad Units – Popular Media recently introduced something they call Influencer Ads. These banner ad type units allow you to place ads that contain an entire social media follow-up system. When someone clicks on an ad for your webinar, they can automatically post it to Facebook or send it to a friend with personalized follow-up. This is a great tool for contests and registration incentive campaigns. (You can see this in action here)

Meebo Me – This simple IM widget can be embedded on your site to allow visitors to initiate an IM chat instantly when they visit your site. This can be a great way to add customer feedback, help and interaction functionality.

Add to Any – These widget allows visitors to easily subscribe to RSS content, share, bookmark or email content using many of the commonly used services.”

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My point is, blogging can take as much or…almost… as little time as you want it to.  And if you aren’t doing it yet, perhaps you should take a look at the following:

Blogging for Business – Small Business Tips by One SEO Company has this to say about the basics of blogging and its benefit:

1) Blogs initiate dialog with web visitors

Blogs start a two-way traffic with web visitors. When you write about your products and services and write with authority, as though you are the master of your business and with in-depth knowledge about your products and services, you not only create awareness of the benefits and disadvantages about the product and service you deal in, you engage people’s attention. Your blog should also have a call to action, to make the readers of the blog interact with your website.

A call to action can mean asking them to leave comments, encouraging them to speak out. Comments left by the readers of blogs might include inquiries and leads that could lead to sales.

Blogs generate a prospective about your company. It silently speaks about the culture and vision of your company and even helps in building a brand image.

2) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Benefit of blogging

Blogs peppered with targeted keywords, keyword phrases and search terms related to your business puts blogs in plain sight whenever web visitors use related search terms. Instead of using long-tail keyword phrases, targeting niche keywords will help in attracting more qualified web traffic.

3) Blogs attract more links

Blog are meant to be informative and not advertisements. Informative quality, industry related articles that provide insight or a critical analysis of product and services you deal in helps you to get more links.

Links will get better search engine rankings for your website and will help in generating more traffic.

4) Fresh, original content for blogs

Fresh and original web content is the feed for search engine spiders. Websites that are updated frequently get crawled by the search engine spiders more often. Your website gets more authority and better search engine ranking.

By now, you should have enough reasons to being seriously considering blogging. For your interest and for the interest of getting more visitors to your website, blogging is the way to go. Don’t wait to begin blogging right away.

Start writing blogs, use targeted keywords and keyword phrases, generate qualified web traffic and get better search engine positioning and ranking. Fresh content and informative articles with SEO are best for search engine marketing.”

empathize with Obama and the vision he presented.  But how did he persuade them to do that?

Many of us, each for our own reasons, want to pull back the curtain and see for ourselves what made up the engine that drove the Obama machine? Was it just the power of the vision?  Unity in America?  Turning the page to a fresh, new day?  Was it the story of a man whose message perfectly married the mood of the country at the moment, as many pundits say is the driver of large election wins? Or was the win founded on extraordinary technical skills which were able to leverage the Net, reach out to where the people actually were and capture the attention of the country? What was the exact stagecraft ….or was it dreamcraft… or prowess in technology and communications that allowed Obama, a freshman senator to come came out of obscurity to capture this presidency with such commanding numbers?

Don Tapscott, best selling author of Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital offers up one answer: “Obama is the first president of the Internet age. His application of social media and his understanding of the Net generation brought him to power.”

Some part of this has apparently been dissected in a newly released book, Barack, Inc.: Winning Business Lessons of the Obama Campaign by Barry Libert, Rick Faulk

Obama’s leveraging of technology reveals lessons we on the Net, or in business of any kind, can certainly learn from. And, certainly to some extent, this has to be true.  Obama’s teams’ mastery of the tools and viral energy of the Internet is what gained Obama 13 million email addresses, an army of volunteers, and small donors whom he could tap again and again to keep his coffers overflowing.  Here are the basics which you also can download it here (PDF).

Certainly we would repurpose these last two statements for our own ends, replacing “campaign goals” with your organization or website goals, and, instead of online advocacy, integrating your own call to action into every element.  With those two small changes Obama has created a roadmap that carry all of us on the Net out of obscurity and into the limelight.  We just have to execute it as well as his campaign did.

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Latin. Winnie Ille Pu.

So, given my predilection for the Pooh style of thinking it is somewhat of an oversight that I had not realized until now the relevance Pooh could hold for my professional life and for blogging in particularly, as few of us are more likable and filled with common sense than the Pooh

James Chartrand certainly set me straight on that.  He has written in Copyblogger, and outstanding blog, by the way The Winnie the Pooh Guide to Blogging:

“Sometimes, expert advice comes from where you least expect it. Winnie the Pooh himself will tell you he is a “bear of little brain,” but he also has an uncommon, clear-eyed wisdom.

You may have heard of The Tao of Pooh. But what about The Blog of Pooh?

Given that the happiness and feelings of his friends are Pooh’s chief concern (other than hunny, that is), he’d likely build a strong community as a blogger. Here are six social media lessons we can all learn from the lovable bear who’s stuffed with fluff.

Lesson 1: “You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”

Pooh rarely sat around. In most stories, he was heading out to visit his Good Friend Piglet or perhaps have a little spot of Something with Rabbit. He went to Owl to get advice and to Christopher Robin to get help.

Likewise, you need to get out of your corner and go to people if you want them to come back, read and comment on your blog. Tug on their sleeve. Tap on their shoulder. Pull on their hand. Whisper in their ear. Shout, if you have to. Otherwise, they may never realize your blog exists.

Lesson 2: “If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”

Pooh was a rather calm bear. Placid, even. He never got upset with anyone. He never demonstrated frustration or glucose-low grumpiness. He was patient to a fault, and simply kept restating what he had to say until someone finally listened.

When you blog, there will be times you feel like no one is listening to you, too. Other times, you’ll feel like readers missed the point completely. Be patient. People really do have fluff in their ears, so work on conveying your message more effectively in your comment section or write up a new post to clarify the concept.

Lesson 3: “You can’t help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn’t spell it right; but spelling isn’t everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn’t count.”

One of the reasons Pooh never got upset was because he knew what really mattered. Mistakes happened, and that was okay. Sometimes the group took the wrong path and got lost. That was okay too. The bigger picture was more important than the little hitches along the way.

Blogging means you need to be able to write well, but that doesn’t mean you have to be a crack copywriter. Don’t worry about a typo or two or messing up your grammar if it helps you get your point across. Your message is important, so worry about saying it well – not writing it perfectly.

Lesson 4: “It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like “What about lunch?””

Pooh knew one thing: complicated language and complex terms were confusing. Owl would talk over his head, and all Pooh wanted was a simple, easy solution to his problems. He’d listen to the fluffy explanations and then ask for clarification.

The problem is that your readers won’t bother asking you to clarify. If they find themselves facing words they don’t understand, jargon they find confusing or explanations that take too much time to absorb, they’ll just ignore you. Say what you have to say in conversational, simple language and be done with it.

Lesson 5: “I don’t see much sense in that,” said Rabbit. “No,” said Pooh humbly, “There isn’t. But there was going to be when I began it. It’s just that something happened to it along the way.”

Pooh never panicked when plans went astray. Life continually threw him curve balls and he never seemed surprised. Obstacles cropped up constantly, but that didn’t bother Pooh either. He expected adversity to happen. When it did, Pooh seemed almost pleased, as if he were greeting an old friend come to visit.

That calm acceptance of life would serve bloggers very well. When plans don’t work out, they just don’t – no big deal. You’ve come this far, and you can do it again, so there’s no point in getting stressed out until your seams split. Make a new plan and get on with it.

Lesson 6: “Always watch where you are going. Otherwise, you may step on a piece of the Forest that was left out by mistake.”

Pooh never rushed about the Hundred Acre Wood. He always moved from place to place slowly, carefully and conscientiously. And do you know what? Pooh got everything done in due time. His progress moved forward nicely.

Online, time skews badly and many bloggers end up living by the second instead of taking each day as it comes. Progress seems to be an immediate all-or-nothing game. But remember that if you aren’t watching where you’re going and just rushing about, you may miss out on something rather important.

These six lessons from the Silly Old Bear are just the beginning of Pooh’s wisdom for bloggers. Can you think of any other lessons from Pooh that could apply to the virtual world?”

Well, I hadn’t thought of them before but I’m certainly going to start thinking now.  How about you?

So, here goes:

Career News & Job Search

All Top Career News:  a cornucopia of career news, articles, tips by hundreds of bloggers.

Job Mob: has some insightful articles and good tips.

Entrepreneurship

How To Change The World: Guy Kawasaki, is a pretty down to earth guy, but he is actually world famous as a tech entrepreneur, evangelist, author, speaker and blogger. He gets it, big time, and he shares his insights generously.

Toilet Paper Entrepreneur: If you can get beyond the initial toilet paper analogy, which is humorous, if a little indelicate, Mike Michalowicz offers good advice and tips for new entrepreneurs.

About Entrepreneurs: Scott Allen’s practical guide for entrepreneurs.

Planning Startups Stories, the very seasoned and successful Tim Berry’s blog, sharing his insights on starting your business.

Bootstrap Me: about bootstrapping, small business, entrepreneurs, start up.

Escape From Cubicle Nation: a favorite and one which will start you thinking about how to move on.

Marketing

Duct Tape Marketing: John Jantsch has to be at or close to the top when it comes to marketing.

Seth Godin’s Blog: marketing guru has insightful things to say about all things marketing

Winning the Web: internet marketing strategy and other very insightful tips on running a blog.

Social Networking

How To Change The World: Guy Kawasaki, from time to time, has more social networking how to information in one blog than others do all year.  Yes, I know I mentioned Kawasaki under entrepreneurs, which he definitely is, but he is an uber successful guy, who wears many hats, so I thought I’d mention him again in this context.

ChrisBrogan: one of the most popular social networking bloggers, sharing many moments of his life with you and informed tips on how to raise your social networking IQ.

Tech
TechCrunch: Tech news for those in the know.

Silicon Alley Insider if you like to keep up with gossip and goings on in Silicon  Valley

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Image via Wikipedia

Is your blog a business or a hobby?  If it’s intended to be a business then, aside from the inspiration, discipline and writing skills required for good content….the key driver of any blog…your blog, “under the hood”, will be about numbers. Business is about numbers and every business has a key set of numbers which tells a good manager how the business is doing. You should have a means to track them.

As mentioned before, my website has been on the Net since 1996 and I track my numbers at least once a day. In the beginning there were not so many good ways to do that, aside from looking at your raw weblog.  Now, there are any number of sophisticated and robust analytical tools available.  You should try them and pick one or more which will give you a clear idea of you website or blog business and the direction it is headed. Aside from that mysterious inspiration which allows some people to succeed where others only aspire, there is no more important driver of success that tracking, understanding and responding immediately to the numbers which make up your business: volume of visitors, page views, time on the site, ad or product revenue. A seasoned manager ,who’s been in the same business for a bit, could run that business by looking at those numbers each day. You should let those numbers whisper in your ear each morning and chart your course from there.  Here are some tools to get you started:

20 Analytics Tools For Blogs | Online Marketing Blog by Lee Odden:

“There are a lot of data points that can be meaningful for tracking blog effectiveness. That is, tracking what happens when visitors arrive at and engage with your blog content. It really comes down to the purpose of your blog. Metrics for a blog that’s focused on making a web site more search engine friendly by adding crawlable content and attracting links is quite different than a blog that’s meant to build thought leadership or brand credibility.

Many of the metrics tools used for blogs are also used for basic web site analytics. That makes sense because many blog initiatives do not have the same kind of budget as web site marketing programs do. Therefore, the analytics employed tend to be low(er) or no cost.

Regardless of the purpose, I’ve assembled a list below of the various tools we use, or have tested to report onsite blog metrics. Pick the service or tool you like the most from the list below or something new for your unique purpose and please share in the comments. The list is in no particular order.

• 103bees – Free web stats (ad supported) up to 100k visits per month, then it’s $9
• Enquisite – Free, extremely detailed web stats
• Hittail – Provides suggested topics for your blog by keywords used in referral traffic
• Crazy Egg – Provides overlay, list and heat map web stats
• RobotReplay – Lets you record visitor actions on your site and play them back
• Clicky – Web stats plus feed and Feedburner stats
• Google Analytics – Web stats, not really the best for blogs but it’s free
• StatCounter – Free web stats
• Co.mments – Track comment threads starting on your blog and follow them elsewhere in a feed
• Blog Tracker – Free from IceRocket but limited functionality
• Performancing Metrics – Basic is Free, or $3.99 to $16.99 per month for more features
• Site Meter – Basic Free and Premium versions $6.95 and up
• Mint – Popular web stats with bloggers for $30 per site
• MyBlogLog – Basic blog visitor stats and social networking. Free and paid versions.
• Feedburner Stats – StandardStats Free, TotalStats $4.99/mo
• WordPress Stats – Free basic blog stats plugin for WordPress blogs
• Google Analytics and Feedburner Stats – Free plugin for WordPress blogs
• eXTReMe Tracking – Free web stats with a paid version for $4.50 per month
• Web Stat – Many web stats features for $5/mo
• TraceWatch – Free but you need access to your server which should be running PHP/MySQL

What are your favorite analytics tools for blogs?”

If this was helpful to you or you have other tool to recommend, please write.  We welcome your comments and hope you will share your knowledge.

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Like most bloggers, I have what Chris Brogan calls “listening posts”. I read dozens of entrepreneur and business blogs daily. And although I don’t think I’m any slouch when it comes to following blogs I have to admit some of the top bloggers “listen to” or scan hundreds, some even thousands of blogs. (No, I don’t know how they do it and maintain a normal life on the side, but if I ever make it to that point, I’ll share the secret with you.)

For now I want to share with you what I think are some of the best or most valuable blogs for an entrepreneur or small business person or blogger to read. I mention “daily” because business feedback on the daily state of things… the economy, the business climate… is a bit like Vitamin C: it can’t be stored up, you have to have a dose every day. And I wanted to create the traditional top 10 list, but, many blogs I read I think only occasionally deserve to be top ranked and others aren’t always as completely on topic.

As Scott Allen in Scott’s Entrepreneurs Blog points out in blogs by famous entrepreneurs: “Entertaining and informative though they are, they tend to be mostly about that entrepreneur’s business and whatever other topics they find interesting. His Top 10 Most Practical Blogs For Entrepreneurs list sticks to blogs that are more generally relevant and practical for entrepreneurs.”
Allen and I share one favorite among favorite blogs by famous entreprenurs and that is Seth Godin. I would also include Guy Kawazaki’s How To Change The World. I am a huge fan of Kawazaki and Seth Godin as well. But they are not always totally relevant for a daily dose so I reluctantly left them out.

• Small Business Trends – Anita Campbell looks at the latest trends affecting small businesses and entrepreneurs. Always valuable information.
• Duct Tape Marketing – John Jantsch is a pro, delivering excellent small business marketing tips.
• The Entrepreneurial Mind – Jeff Cornwall, Director of the Belmont University Center for Entrepreneurship, discusses trends and their impact on small business owners and entrepreneurs.
• Bootstrap Me – is by Shawn A. Hessinger. Anita Campbell, Small Business Trends former Executive Editor, Creative Weblogging Inc. says “Shawn’s a great blogger. He provides timely, useful and actionable advice. He’s honest, and wears his experiences on his sleeves. Bootstrapping is hard for any entrepreneur – but Shawn’s there to help.”
• Chris Brogan – Chris deals with social media business strategy and more. Does this blog belong in an entrepreneur blog list?  I think so.  As Chris himself says: “There are more and more people feeling pressure from the economic downturn who are turning their web design shops, their writing consultancies, and their extra agency cycles into a social media practice.”
• KD Paine’s Pr Measurement Blog – news, techniqes and development in measuring social media, public relations, public affaiars, media relations, blogs. You don’t know how well you’re doing unless your measuring it.
• Up and Running:Tim Berry, one of the most savvy business advisors around with a long, successful record to prove it.
• Ladies Who Launch - Victoria Colligan,founder of Ladies Who Launch offers tips, strategies and tactics to reach your goals. These stories usually hit  home and some are by guys as well. Phil Ives, chief technology officer of the site discusses websites, social networking and other tech topics.

  All of these would be helpful websites to put in your Google or other reader so you can just glance at the topics and get an idea whether you’d like to explore them further or not. Developing a system to check your “listening” posts and making it a habit will help you not only have “grist for the mill” for further thought, to comment on in a blog, but to manage you own business as well.

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