Tag Archives: blogging

4 Top Benefits Of Blogging for Business

We are already on record as pointing out that if you want to raise your visibility and get in touch with your audience, it’s a good idea to blog.  It does take a little chunk of time out of your day, but it’s probably no more than you should spend on marketing, anyway.  Also,  I’ve seen many outstanding blogs….most notably by Guy Kawasaki… that are all photos and captions.  But then Kawasaki goes to really interesting places like a battle ship or Red Square.  And if he photographs something ordinary like a tech company office, you can rest assured it is no ordinary office but an incredibly creative, way out there, in a class of its own, office.

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.”

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How Obama Did It – Lessons for Bloggers and Webmasters

We’re just starting to learn how Obama did it.  So many citizens and particularly youth, identify and

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).

Obama lessons

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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6 Steps To Better Blogging – Lessons From The Pooh

I must confess I love Winnie the Pooh.  Always have.  I even read it and was known to quote it, on occasion in

Jack Ass

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?

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