What’s missing from the equation above? You guessed it: blog promotion.

Creating a glitch-free blog with informative content means next to nothing without attracting readers.

Start promoting your blog today with these five effective tips:

1. Involve influential industry bloggers.

By linking to popular blogs, you can gain the attention of both the influential blogger and his or her readers.

But your blog won’t be the only one to benefit. You’ll be giving the other blog a little link juice – and be paying them a compliment at the same time.

Try out a few of these ideas for leveraging other blogs:

• Create a post around an interesting concept published by an influential blogger: Be sure to attribute the information to the blogger and link to his or her post. And don’t forget to offer additional unique insight to make the post your own.
• Interview an influential blogger and turn it into a Q&A post: That blogger is sure to link to your post, and his or her readers are likely to visit your blog as a result. Side benefit: Including the insight of a thought leader will help position you as a thought leader as well.
• Create a list of influential blogs: Include popular blogs from your industry, and include a link, short description and even a screenshot. Online Marketing Blog has successfully done this with its BIGLIST of online marketing blogs. Publish a blog post each week highlighting one or two new blogs to promote the list and acquire another link to the list.

2. Promote your blog via social media.

If your organization already has a solid presence on Twitter, Facebook or other social media channel, leverage your followers or fans to promote your new blog.

For example, when a new post goes live, create a short tweet with a link back to the post – and provide the link on your Facebook fan page.

A few tips to keep in mind:

• Whenever possible (we know how quickly 140 characters can be used up!), include the blog name in tweets and other social media messages.
• Auto-feed new posts to your social media accounts with tools like FeedBurner. But if you choose this option, make sure your headlines are as compelling as possible for social media.
• Maximize promotional efforts by asking employees to add the blog URL to their signatures and personal social media accounts. Employees can also re-tweet posts that they find interesting.

3. Create “link-bait” posts and “sticky” headlines.

Creating compelling headlines or posts that resonate with social web users is another way to garner attention for your new blog.

Try some of these ideas:

• Write counter-intuitive posts – i.e, “The 10 Worst Online Marketing Ideas” or “The 5 Quickest Ways to Get Caught in the Spam Filter.”
• Incorporate celebrities into posts (if appropriate for your industry) – i.e., “Top 10 Celebrity Tweets of the Week”
• Leverage the sticky headline formula, “number + adjective + sticky message” – i.e., Lee’s recent post, “10 Must Read Tips to Start a Small Business Blog” (see image below)

4. Promote the blog on your corporate website.

It’s important to gain some valuable real estate on the homepage of your corporate site – particularly in the early stages of getting a new blog up and running. Create a button with a link to the blog to appear on the homepage, or at the least provide a link to the blog in the nav. The Otter Group does a good job of promoting its blog on the homepage of its corporate website (see image below).

In addition to the homepage, ensure the blog is included in the upper and right-hand nav on all website pages. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find your blog.

5. Promote the blog offline.

For all of the online channels available to promote your blog, there are just as many offline channels to leverage. Don’t limit yourself to the online world. Instead:

• Add your blog URL to business cards.
• Promote your blog at industry events.
• Get print publications to pick up blog posts.
• Use word of mouth to let customers and business partners know of the new blog.
• Include the blog URL in the boilerplate of press releases (and in online releases, too).

Of course, these five tips are just a few of many ways to promote and market business blogs. Whatever promotional efforts you choose, look for tactics that will help you reach business goals whether they are increasing awareness, garnering buzz in the media or driving additional website traffic.

What tactics have you used to promote your blog?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 5 Sure Fire Tactics to Promote a Business Blog | 50 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

This is a new small business, so considerations for what to do about a web site included: cost, functionality, flexibility, ease of maintenance and marketability. The web site needed to serve as both an online representation of the business, but without transactional functionality, as well as a host for landing pages used with email and PPC campaigns.

My recommendation for a low cost, easy to use and search engine friendly content mangagement system? Blog software.

What often happens when friends ask for advice regarding web marketing is that I’ll make some recommendations in a casual setting or email links to a few resources like this one on blog marketing tips, then a few weeks or months later, the conversation will turn to, “So, how is your blog or web site doing?”, and I find out that the site/blog was either not started at all, it was created in a way that blows away any chance of SEO or marketability outside of advertising or it was built using resources with no cost of entry but without the capabilities to scale if successful.

Something along those lines happend with my friend’s blog.

What was the issue? The blog was started using Blogger.com, which by itself is not a problem, but the blog address selected was: nameofstore.blogspot.com. This is understandable because it’s the default URL selection when you create a blog with Blogger.com.

However, picking a third party domain for the blog address violates one of the most important rules in sustainable blogging: Always host the blog address with a domain name you control. That means yourdomainname.com/blog or blog.yourdomainname.com or yourdomainnameblog.com.

Otherwise, you give up control. How so? What if the blog host goes down? Free services rarely provide support. Also, what if the service does not support the functionality you need? You can’t change their entire platform to suit your individual needs.

There are other reasons for keeping the blog address as part of your own domain name including the ability to change blog software services without having to change your blog address.

Of course there’s also a benefit for search engine optimization if you host the blog as a sub directory of your main company domain name such as yourdomainname.com/blog. Blogs are very linkable entities and other blogs tend to be enthusiastic about linking, so any links to your blog can be percieved as a vote of credibility to your main web site since the blog and the web site share the same domain name.

Now back to our tale of the small business blog. My friend had only made one post on the blogspot.com URL so nothing would be lost by moving to a dedicated domain name. My own experience with Online Marketing Blog was different. After blogging for nearly 2 years at a blogspot.com address, I decided to move to a dedicated domain name and Wordpress. It took some talented optimization and 6 months of aggressive promotion to recoup the linking footprint (100,000+ inbound links) that was lost. Of course, now our traffic is multiple times more than what it was.

What my friend decided to do was register a domain name and setup a hosting account. Since there was no main company web site to attach the blog to, this makes the most sense. Essentially, the blog became the company web site. With more and more businesses, this is becoming a very practical, cost effective and functionally efficient way to manage web site content: Using blog software as a content management system.

As my friend asked what to do next, writing everything down in a notebook, it became clear that there’s a litany of things you COULD do with setting up a blog. Even if we filtered it down to what one SHOULD do, the list was amazingly long. As someone new to the whole idea of blogging and this not being a formal consulting arrangement, I decided to create what I think, is a short list of what a small businesses CAN do when starting a blog.

1. Decide the purpose of the blog.

Do this before going out and registering a domain name or anything else. Is the blog going to serve as a journal for starting the business? Is it a search marketing tool? Is it to be used to demonstrate thought leadership and create credibility? Will it be a communication tool for customers? Will it also serve as the main company web site? Is the purpose some or all of the above?

I could elaborate on setting up each of these types of blogs if I ever decided to write that book, but for now, we’ll stick with a blog that serves as a company web site, hosts landing pages, serves as a small business resource and marketing tool.

2. Pick a URL.

If the purpose of the blog is to support company brand and audience, then the URL should be part of the company web site. Ideally, the blog hosting situation allows for a sub directory such as companysite.com/blog.  Otherwise, a sub-domain such as blog.companysite.com will work and you can can host the blog elsewhere, separate from the company web servers. IT will like that.

If the purpose of the blog is independent of the primary company brand, or messaging, then a dedicated domain name such as topicgoeshereblog.com might work better.

It’s tempting to use a keyword only domain name, but those keywords will not be a silver bullet for search engine rankings. A catchy, meaningul brand name for the blog will go much farther as content can always be optimized for search engine rankings.

3. Pick blog software.

In most cases, WordPress is the way to go. An inexpensive Linux platform hosting account that supports PHP and mySQL can be secured for $10-$20 per month. However, should the blog get really popular, expect to upgrade to support increased demand. It’s entirely worth it.

The blog software will need to be installed on the server that will host it and the database will also need to be set up. This is fairly straightforward, but in all honesty, it’s best to have someone that knows what they’re doing help. As an example, I do very little of the technical work on our blog and prefer to have a specialist (Thomas McMahon) take care of maintenance, adding plugins, design and functionality updates. We have outside programmers do any heavy lifting in the application development department.

Wordpress software is open source, ie free, so if you are code/technically savvy and you have the time to figure it out, it’s certainly doable. There is no one “right way” to setup a blog. There are literally hundreds of shades of gray.

It can cost a hundreds to thousand of dollars for a blog consultant to install, setup and customize the design of your blog. You’re not paying for the software, you’re paying for expertise that will save you MONTHS of time and allow you to get to market more quickly and efficiently.

4. Customize the blog.

After installation of the core blog software, there are a number of customization tasks.

First, the blog design should be modified to match your branding. If you don’t hire a consultant to do this, there are many free templates that can then be customized, but many of them require a link to the author at the bottom. Personally, I’m not a fan of those, but they are a low/no cost place to start. Design customization involves modifying the CSS, JavaScript, graphics and possibly a few database elements.

The second set of customization tasks involves plug-ins to improve the adminstration, front end functionality and the SEO friendliness of the blog. Thanks to Twitter and Thomas for this recommended minimum list of plug-ins:

• Redirection
• HeadSpace2
• Google XML sitemaps
• Gravity forms
• All In One SEO
• PostPost
• ACE WP Plug
• ComLuv
• Disqus
• Members only
• Cookies for comments
• Section widget
• Page order
• Related posts
• FeedSmith FeedBurner Plugin
• Sociable
• Askimet or WP-SpamFree
• Post Teaser

5. Create a content plan.

In concert with the purpose of the blog, it’s important to generate a basic editorial guideline for creating content. The easiest way to manage this is by creating categories for the kinds of content you plan on posting.

Before you create those categories, it’s a good idea to do some keyword research as the categories will become excellent repositories of related content. Why not make it even easier for search engines to understand and rank them?

Common keyword research tools include: WordTracker and Google. Paid keyword tools include WordStream.com and KeywordDiscovery.com

Once you identify which keyword phrases best represent the content you’ll be publishing, use them to name your content categories. Each time you make a blog post, that entry will be associated with one or more categories, creating a very search engine friendly repository of content.

Create an editorial calendar or schedule of posts to keep you on topic for your audience and true to the purpose of the blog. Leverage interactions with blog readers as well as your analytics to know if your content and keyword picks are productive or not.

6. Pick your blogging team.

In the case of most small businesses, the blogging team is a team of one. That’s fine, just be sure to document what’s working and what’s not so when the time comes, you can get your blogging team mate up to speed quickly.

Since blogger’s block (like writer’s block) can really dampen a good thing for a small business blog, go ahead and keep a good number of posts in draft mode. Add to them as you get new ideas and inspiration. Or facts and examples. That way, you’ll have a steady stream of blog posts ready to publish in advance. In fact, you can schedule blog posts in advance using WordPress.

7. Make it easy to share.

Blogging in a vaccum is inevitable blogging death. It’s essential that you solicit comments in your posts, respond to comments quickly, create and enforce a commenting policy. Being responsive is an essential part of attracting subscribers.

Don’t covet the comments either. Visit other blogs in your industry and write useful comments. Those bloggers may notice you and it can become something more, like an invite for a guest post, collaboration or simply a new online friend.

Make it easy for readers of your blog to save and share your content with sharing buttons or widgets. It pays to create accounts on the more popular services and develop social networks there. Your contacts on Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon and similar services will watch for your next post and vote for the good stuff, which can drive your content to be exposed on more popular areas of those web sites. More exposure can mean more traffic. The social bookmarks tool is handy for adding such functionality to any web page and Thomas offered several new blog promotion tips last week.

8.Get your social on.

RSS feeds come with blogs and it’s worth taking the time to make sure the RSS feed is readily available and obvious for people to subscribe. Submit your blog and RSS feed to our HUGE list of blog and RSS directories.

Set up social profiles on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as appropriate and automate the sharing of links from your blog posts to those services. In other words, you could use a service like TwitterFeed to publish your latest blog post to Twitter and Facebook automatically.

Be sure to publish your blog URL everywhere you publish your web site address.

9. Make static.

If you’re using the blog as a CMS for a small business web site, then make your static web pages such as those for About our Company, Product/Service pages, Contact Forms, etc. The blog can be customized to have a home page like any other web site as well. That way, visitors arriving on your site can see what they expect from a company selling products/services. At the same time, blogging creates a rich and frequent source of useful content that’s syndicated via RSS, promoted automatically to relevant social channels and leaves the door open for interaction via comments.

10. Measure. Test – Test. Measure.

It’s important that you set goals for the blog, a plan to execute tactics and most of all, measure progress. Most web site measurement is focused on web analytics and metrics specific to different types of marketing such as with email, SEO or PPC. Standard web analytics software such as Google Analytics will address the vast majority of your needs.

I would also recommend social media monitoring and analytics. Monitoring can be as simple as the RSS feed from search.twitter.com combined with the RSS feed from the results of a search on Google’s blog search. You could also use services like socialmention.com, trackur.com or more robust social media monitoring tools such as Techrigy SM2, ScoutLabs or Radian6.

Social monitoring tools will help you understand what your customers are saying about you on the social web as well as uncover new interaction opportiunities with influentials. Real time search means real time marketing and social monitoring can facilitate that. One example would be if a competitor Tweets a deal on a product. Your Twitter search on that competitor or product would create an alert. You could then decide to offer a deal at a lower price or some other counter offer.

Another example is if a customer complains about your company. Before others jump on the bandwagon, your social monitoring tools would alert you and you can then qualify and address the situation quickly.

As web analytics and social media monitoring tools become increasingly intertwined, you’ll be able to identify many other key metrics for the effect of your social participation on bottom line business goals.

There you go. Ten tips for starting a small business blog.

This was a long post and yet, it’s nowhere near a comprehensive guide to create a small business blog. Even though there is plenty of free blog software and advice available online, many companies would benefit from having professional help with a business blog.

The funny thing is, my friend will look at this post and say, “This is the SHORT list?”. Blogging can be simple to start, but no one said it wasn’t hard work.

If you’ve created a blog for your small business, what has your experience been? Did you do it yourself? Do you get expert help? Have you set up a small business web site using blog software? we’d love to hear about your experiences, challenges and successes.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Ten Must Read Tips to Start a Small Business Blog | 27 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

I’ll venture to guess that you could immediately name five to 10, if not many more. From Ford to Dell to Zappos to Best Buy, B2C social media winners – those organizations that caught on early and created a cult following of brand cheerleaders via the social web – are hard to miss.

But how about the B2B social media winners? I’m guessing these weren’t as easy to name.

And yet, there are just as many B2B organizations successfully conquering social media. While their stories might not be as well-known, we think these 5 B2B social media winners are doing a pretty doggone good job. Tell us if you agree.

1. American Express OPEN
American Express OPEN is the company’s division dedicated to helping small business owners succeed. It has based its marketing strategy around the social web, realizing that social media has become a priority for small business owners.

Since 2007, AMEX OPEN has relied on its OPEN Forum to provide business advice and insight. The social site includes a blog with frequently updated content, and a large collection of videos that users can rate and share via other social networking channels. In the site’s “Idea Hub,” forum members can network with one another and with industry experts, as well as customize topics to their specific interests.

The social site has been extremely successful, increasing unique visitors 525% over the past year – from 160,000 in December 2008 to nearly 1 million in December 2009.

2. HSBC
To target business entrepreneurs and provide them with an active forum to share and gain knowledge, HSBC has created The HSBC Business Network for both customers and non-customers.

It’s evident that the HSBC Business Network truly thrives on its members.

The site includes a network of blogs, and invites members to create their own blog to share their personal experiences with other entrepreneurs. Currently, the network is made up of 148 blogs from members.

The site’s homepage is populated with content from users: the most popular recent blog post, forum post and user profile.

3. Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising has been using social media as a vehicle to listen to, educate, support and market to their customers and potential customers since 2006. However, the past year has seen a distinct effort from Microsoft to reach customers through social web participation.

An adCenter Community site as well as blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook presence, videos, photos and social media coverage of industry events along with proactive listening and community manager participation have been instrumental for growing the adCenter community and providing customers with an opportunity to be involved with how Microsoft does business with them.

Here’s a white paper (pdf) by Mel Carson of Microsoft Advertising that documents their foray into social media as a B2B company. Great insights.

4. Archer
The social media strategy for Archer Technologies, provider of risk and compliance solutions, and a 2009 Forrester Groundswell Award winner for B2B social media, revolves around two components.

First, the Archer Community is an online social network that gives customers a forum to interact, share best practices and provide feedback to help drive Archer product development. The second component is the Archer Exchange (pictured above), an online marketplace that enables clients to download applications developed by other clients or by Archer.

The two social sites have been successful at driving website traffic and attracting new members: The Archer Community receives 20 new members, 4,000 unique visits and 400+ downloads every week, while the Archer Exchange boasts 17,000 unique visits, 90,000 page views and 1,200 downloads.

But the real benefit has been enhanced product development as a result of user feedback and sharing. Archer tells Forrester that its Archer Community directly helped form its Business Continuity Management, Mobile GRC and Data Feed Manager applications.

5. Cree
LED Manufacturer Cree is embracing social media to build awareness and promote the benefits of LED technology, rather than directly sell products.

At the center of its latest campaign, “LED Revolution,” is an interactive social website. On the site, visitors can submit their bad lighting photos (think bad 1980s office fluorescent lighting) to win LED recessed downlights. The site’s blog is posted to almost daily, and humorous videos encourage visitors to, “Break Your Fluorescent Shackles!”

Cree also leverages Facebook and Twitter in a push/pull approach for the website.

Hear from Ginny Skalski, Cree social media specialist — who happens to have a background in journalism and community management rather than marketing – in this video on the Social Media B2B blog.

Of course, these five B2B social media winners are only part of a much longer list of companies that are successfully interacting with customers, building brand awareness and driving traffic to their websites through the social web. What are your favorite B2B social media success stories?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 5 B2B Social Media Winners | 16 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

TopRank’s recent Blogging and SEO survey of in-house, agency and independent marketing, advertising and PR professionals revealed that 95% of respondents incorporate blogs as part of their online marketing mix. Nearly 88% have successfully increased measurable SEO objectives as a direct result of blogging.

Thousands of new blogs are started by companies and individuals each day. Yet getting a blog set-up, optimized, and launched are just the first steps. No one will know you have a blog to read, subscribe or link to unless you take an important next step: promotion. There are plenty of places you can promote and market a new blog:

• Add A Link – If it’s a company blog, or if it’s attached to another site, add a link to the blog from the main navigation on the parent website.
• Create A Badge – On the main website, add a badge to the homepage, or sidebar, that promotes the the blog. Images are a good way to catch a visitors attention.
• Email – Add a link to the blog in your email signature.
• Newsletter – Announce the blog in the company newsletter.
• Network – Announce the blog to your Twitter followers, Facebook fans, Linked in connections and any other social networks that you are apart of.
• Press Release – If you feel that the blog is important enough to support a press release, put one out.
• Submit – Submit the blog to blog & feed directories.
• Share – Share your blog with co-workers, friends and others in your network. You never know when they might promote it for you.
• Link – One way to get other bloggers to notice you is to link to them. Summarize someone else’s long blog post, expand upon someones shorter post, or just write your thoughts on a topic that someone else wrote about and link back to the original post.
• Give Away – If it’s a product blog, run a promotion on the blog giving away one of your products. Sometimes the value that can come out of giving something away can be more beneficial than all the items above.
• Guest Post – If there are other blogs in your industry, ask around and see if they’d allow you to guest post for them. In return, you’d get a link back to your blog in your profile, or post, on their site.
• Ask – Tap into the social networks within the industry you’re trying to reach and ask them what they’re interested in. Here’s an example of a post that did just that on Twitter for this blog. Show interest in the interest of your audience and they’ll pay more attention and share your content.

Probably the best promotion tactic is to create good content, post often and share. The more content a blog has, the greater the footprint it has on the web in terms of pages to appear in search results and to link to from other blogs/web sites. Work on creating a posting schedule and according to resources and reader interest, try to get one to five posts out a week.

“Build it and they will come” doesn’t work with web sites and it certainly doesn’t work with blogs. Promote relevant and useful content to create awareness and the quality of your information will propel your brand to a much larger audience.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Tips for Promoting New Blogs | 41 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The Best Pint of Abbot Ale, Ever

Blogs have been touted as effective tools for companies to publish content and demonstrate the conversational side of their corporate personality. Blogs have also long been promoted as a SEO tool. Despite plenty of optimism about blogging, there’s still a lot of mis-information, mis-perceptions and lack of awareness about effective, productive blogging for business.

Take This Blog SEO Survey: If you or your company publishes a blog, please take this quick poll looking into the perceived SEO benefits of blogging. Results will be published on Online Marketing Blog in the next week.  Like a fine pint of Abbot, this survey is smooth, to the point and might just put a smile on your face.

While researching questions for the above poll, I ran an informal #blogseo poll on Twitter yesterday which had 190+ responses within 45 minutes. Here’s a list of everyone that participated. There was an overwhelming interest in direct or indirect SEO benefits from blogging.

And why not? Search engines thrive on and reward web sites that publish content. Blogs are content management systems that make it easy for companies (or anyone) to publish that content. Publishing blog posts creates new web pages that can be linked to and therefore, discovered and ranked by search engines. The more blog posts and links from other sites, the greater the presence in the search results.

Whether blogs were started specifically for SEO or some other purpose, our #blogseo poll showed significant interest in SEO benefits.  Poll participants rated the importance of blogs as part of a SEO strategy between 1=low & 5=high. The average rating was a 4, but some rated blogs as SEO assets as low as 1.5. Here are a few (not all) of the comments Tweeted:

• @seowolf – It really depends on the campaign, the content availability etc. But, as a generalization, I’d say 3.
• @sjachille - 3 to 5 depends on the quality of content
• @SEOAware - it offers much more than seo benefits, so 4-5
• @mjdigital 3 – blogs are good because they are easy and quick to setup and use – but are only as good as their content
• @nathaneide - Depends upon your baseline. If you’re starting from scratch, it’s a 1.5. if you have your ducks in a row, it’s higher.
• @janetdmiller - if you can get one up and running AND keep it current. If not, don’t go down the blog path just for SEO. #blogseo

So it seems that blogs as SEO assets are only as good as their content and if you know what you’re doing. Personally, I agree with that and think that those that do not rate them higher in value for SEO may not be as familiar with the benefits they bring.

That leads to the next question: What SEO functions do blog(s) serve? Some of the most common blog SEO benefits include: Content creation, External and cross links, RSS syndication, Social bookmarking, Community building and Promotion.  Here ’s what our poll respondents had to say about how blogs help search engine rankings:

• @dericloh – community insights (content topics), content research / testing, conversation monitoring (voice of customer keywords)
• @Psychobel – relationship building from which SEO benefits accrue
• @seowolf – support for offline campaigns
• @mhillaert – drive people back to site with information sharing
• @janetdmiller – Crosslinking, new content for SEO, Twitter fodder, increase bot visits
• @mjdigital – quick turnover of content, community, auto sitemap/pings etc, quick indexing into Google Blogsearch

Obviously, the tactics used with a blog marketing effort should be based on some kind of goal. Some blogs are established to communicate with customers, some for prospective customers, some for the media and industry analysts and some for new hire candidates. No matter what the objective for a public, commercial blog, there’s almost always a need to “get the word out”.

Here are some of the blog SEO tactics and tips that were shared:

• @jachille - use custom fields to create custom META TAGS for optimal remote blogging with desktop apps http://bit.ly/8LwTW8
• @mjdigital - make your titles catchy so they stand out on SM sites, Twitter and bookmark lists
• @LexiConn_Inc - Using 301 redirects for SEO and Ecommerce http://bit.ly/SnG4L
• @goodseo - Urls should reflect the post’s title
• @seowolf - Keep in mind that your blogs are meant to be read by actual people, not the Search Engines, first and foremost
• @silvioporcellan - write periodically about other sites/tools in your industry and let the authors know about it
• @adamsherk - don’t let category and tag pages and the duplication that can come with them get out of control
• @SEOAware - (for beginner) crossmarket services pages with blog posts, optimizing for service location and location service
• @beebow - don’t shoot yourself in the foot by writing a kick ass post with a clever but totally irrelevant title
• @dericloh - Define goal > Insights > Learn > Test > Measure > Repeat
• @janetdmiller - Use SEO plugins in Wordpress. They help streamline content editing for SEO, ex: title tag, metas, etc
• @lisabuyer - Frequency and be first to report
• @aimclear - MAKE A BIG ASS LIST~!

Despite clear goals, there are often objectives to adding blogs as part of a digital marketing or PR strategy. Time and resources are the most common issues described by our #blogseo poll respondents. In fact, of all the questions asked, this was the most popular and received the most responses. Here are a few of the obstacles to implementing blogs:

• @mhillaert - Taking the time to write an article, not knowing how to write good content, not knowing what to write about.
• @mjdigital - effort required to maintain valuable content + time and cost of creating custom themes – need to be different
• @TheKenJones - Setting the “right tone” to give promotional marketing benefits (my side) without coming across as bigheaded (theirs)
• @adamsherk - large publishers are sometimes concerned with using various helpful WP plugins for fear of security, reliablility
• @dericloh - Legal issues, regulation, commitment, spam filter / moderation, ownership
• @PRBristolblog - Time & resource are a big barrier to implementing blogs. Need to show the benefits regarding online PR / customer service etc.
• @ericfransen - Client doesn’t have time to provide proper content. I can write all day… but I want client to give me a good start
• @mikemyatt - clients seem to struggle most with content development. Everyone wants a blog – nobody wants to own content creation
• @matt_mcgowan - editorial control
• @beebow - when a client’s industry is either way too niche or way too broad to consistently publish relevant blog posts
• @jfernandez - Fear that blogs are not “professional” and “appropriate for business”
• @seowolf - Waste of time and effort, “we’re a serious company, not some bloggers”, “our customers don’t read blogs”

As an experienced blogger of 6+ years, time management is an issue for everyone, so I don’t think it’s a unique problem to blogging. It’s more a matter of value and expertise. Without a focus and plan, it’s easy for “writer’s block”, a lack of confidence or impatience to kill a blog. On the flip side, developing a process for content creation, feedback to motivate contributors, editorial guidelines, promotion off the blog and measurement can make a blog become and stay successful with a very reasonable amount of effort.

Like any other organized marketing effort, once you identify objectives and develop a content strategy, the task of measuring success keeps the investment in time and resources accountable. A blog started as part of an online public relations effort might focus on how many citations of the blog there are by other blogs and mainstream media web sites. A blog for customers might emphasize comment counts, RSS subscribers and product inquiries. Measurement should tied to goals and you can’t “score” a goal if you don’t know how or what to measure.

Here are some of the most important blog metrics cited in the #blogseo poll:

• @seowolf - The metrics really depend on the campaign. Generally, awareness indicators, the main site’s TrustRank.
• @silvioporcellan - on-site blog: position of articles for good keywords / off-site: links counted in WMT
• @dericloh - It depends on the business goal & objective for utilizing the blog (i.e. reduce customer support cost, voc, etc)
• @beebow - conversions, unique views, rank in SERPs #blogseo
• @mhillaert - number and quality of comments, statistics, ranking as leader in industry, retweets #blogseo
• @matt_mcgowan - conversions/engagement (time on site, subscriptions, comments, purchases, repeat visits), referrals, new visitors
• @ty_walker - When what you tell people to do actually works for them. Readers won’t be readers long if your material isn’t practical.
• @adamsherk - search referral traffic, inbound links, comments, engagement, social media sharing, RSS subscriptions
• @Mel66 - Subscribers, visits, comments, rankings, engagement (quality of comments)
• @ericfransen - Conversions, Engagements, Becoming your Industries Authoritative website #blogseo
• @mjdigital - community – subscriptions, comments, uptake, retweets etc A blog is nothing if no-one reads it + shares/acts on it
• @admrebak - obviously traffic to web page, bottom line, awareness, community growth, company image #blogseo

Companies that have started a blog often fall into comfortable schedules, since that’s the easiest way to manage tasks. Make checklists and processes and get people into predictable routines. However, staying competitive means staying current.

One way to stay current with blog SEO and blogging is to check out TopRank’s BIGLIST of search marketing blogs. What you read on other blogs should certainly be confirmed through your own testing and observations of social and web analytics.

That said, the bloggers from or poll shared a few of their favorite methods of staying current with blog SEO best practices:

• @mjdigital - reading seo blogs, following key SEO’s, analysing Google Analytics, seomoz
• @seowolf - RSS reader, using StumbleUpon topically, newsletters, Twitter and, occasionally, Facebook.
• @matt_mcgowan - events and keeping up on my reading #blogseo
• @michelleberdeal - Constantly listening to webinars & podcasts on this topic, reading blogs, researching, testing, measuring results
• @SEOAware - TONS of reading daily, research, experimenting, monitoring results, watching google, constant education
• @lisabuyer - Constant online reading and conferences
• @JDEbberly - I stay current with SEO practices by reading your (Online Marketing Blog) authoritative blog
• @beebow - read www.toprankblog.com attend conferences, regularly read posts by respected SEO/SEM/SMO bloggers. #sblogseo
• @aimclear - we do rigorous Daily Reading & Training to keep current, big http://bit.ly/6EOWmI
• @mhillaert -  authoritative blogs, networking, etc. Mostly blogs. #blogseo
• @janetdmiller - 1) Read blogs, 2) Attend conferences, 3) Discuss with others (twitter, etc.), 4) Test

Thank you to all the Tweet Poll #blogseo participants who you can easily find and follow on the #BlogSEO chat Twitter list.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | The Best Blog SEO Survey Ever | 25 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The myth of “Build it and they will come”.  Not many businesses that start blogs have the patience to create great content and wait for others to find that content all on their own as a linking strategy. Without clicking on a link or finding it on a search engine, how will others find your blog?   Content is King but only if you promote it.

Links from relevant, credible sources balanced with on-page keyword optimization make it easier for search engines to find, index and sort blog posts in search results. If there’s an expectation for a company blog to rank well in search results, be sure to consider some of the following link building tactics:

1. Create content worth linking to. No matter how many tactics you find here and elsewhere, there simply is no substitute for creating content that others may find useful. Take the time to look at blog posts that already rank well in search results and notice their structure, quantity of words and word placement.

2. Conduct backlink analysis on competing web sites or blogs – find out who is linking to competitor sites that are not linking to yours. Ask sites linking to multiple competitors to link to yours as well. If another web site or blog is already linking to multiple competitors, there is a chance they’ll link to your blog as well.

3. Make useful comments on other blogs that don’t have rel=nofollow. Comments should always be useful, but if you become aware of a topically relevant blog that does not discourage search engine spiders from crawling links in comments, it’s work spending the extra time to provide helpful insights a links to resources that you’ve published on your own blog.

4. Encourage social bookmarks & news submissions of your content using services without rel=nofollow. Show links to those services like Folkd, Spurl or Feedmarker in the blog post template code so they are visible for blog readers to use. Some social bookmarking services will make a copy of what you bookmark or a static web page of the bookmark including a do follow link back to the source (your blog).

5. Get listed on other blogger’s blogrolls.  It never hurts to ask another blog that you’re active with to see if they’d consider adding your blog to their blogroll or curated lists of blogs.

6. Guest write on other blogs and include a link to your blog in the bio. In the course of getting to know blogs that already rank well on the keyword phrases you’re targeting, you may notice that they often accept guest blog posts from others. Contact the blog owner and suggest a compelling post that would be first and foremost, valuable to their readers. If it makes sense editorially to link from within the guest post to your own blog, be sure to use relevant keywords as the link text.

7. Submit to blog & RSS directories. Many directory links have no follow links or are not visited by a large volume of people, but making sure your blog and RSS feed are included in niche categories and collections of blogs can be a positive signal to search engines as well as to long tail users. Many bloggers that aggregate large lists of topically specific blogs will cultivate blog directories as a easy way to find blogs on similar topics. If your blog isn’t on the niche list in those situations, you won’t be included.

8. Submit to regular web site directories like botw.org. While there are blog specific directories (BOTW has one of those as well) many don’t discern web sites from blogs. If a quality directory has a relevant category with other reputable web sites in it, then it makes sense for your blog to be among them as a useful information source.

9. Be sure to include your blog URL in profiles and bios on social media sites. While most social media sites that allow users to add links to their profiles add no follow to the links, there are many that do not. Public profile links on LinkedIn and YouTube channels for example, are good links. Rather than focus on registering with 300+ sites using Knowem, just make sure that of the social media profiles you do set up inlcude a link back to your blog.

10. Write testimonials for services and software that you use. They may publish with a link back to your blog.  Testimonials must be well written, genuine and specific in order to be useful for the service/product owner. Get at the essence of what’s great about the product or service and even add something unique. If you’ve written a review of the product/service on your blog, that can also get you a link from their press page.

11. Job listings should always have a link back to your blog. Blogs can be useful recruiting tools that help candidates understand the culture of your company. When purchasing job listings on other web sites, add a link to your blog. The listings may expire, but may also introduce your blog to candidates that write their own blog and decide to write about a listing with a permanent link to the hiring company blog.

12. Event listings should always have a link back to your blog. Blogs can be effective tools for promoting events and if you are listing your event with 3rd party services, a link back to your blog post with more details will be useful to readers that want to know more. That link can also be useful to search engines.

13. Contributions to non-profits often have a donor page with a link. These links are now very rare but you should contribute anyway.

14. Article syndication can still result in a few good links. Include your blog URL in the article bio. Take some of your best tips oriented blog posts and re-write them for specific industry verticals or applications. Then submit them to article repositories. When others re-use those articles, the bio link back to your blog can be picked up by readers and search engines.

15. Distribute press releases via a wire service with a link to your blog included. Our client, PRWeb, is a pioneer in providing competitive SEO value with press release distribution. Many blogs and some news web sites will re-publish your press release exactly as it was distributed, including good links back to your blog.  Journalists use News search to look up past press releases and research on stories, which presents an opportunity to be found and included.

16. Contribute Op Ed pieces to Mainstream Media web sites. Contribute a link to your blog of course.  If you suggest content to another web site such as a letter to the editor, why not keyword optimize the title? Why not include a link back to your blog where you’ve written many more articles on the same topic?

17. When you get media coverage (or placements) in online publications, be sure to ask the journalist for a link to your blog. Again, it never hurts to ask. Many publications have a policy not to link out from stories. Many leave it up to the journalist or their editor. If you don’t ask, you will never get the link.

18. Develop social networks and share especially useful content from your blog where relevant. Be useful to others and they will useful to you by promoting your content and attracting links. Don’t be gratuitous when sharing links to your own content, but when you have something particularly special and valuable that’s highly relevant to a particular network, then by all means, share it with them. Some are bloggers as well and may link to it from their own blogs as well as pass the link along to others.

19. Linkbait. Create or aggregate disparate content that provides value and is not easily found elsewhere. Promote it to those that would be interested and in a position to distribute to the right audience. Again, create useful content, but be thoughtful about packaging it in a way that makes it unique and is easy to pass along. Look at other blog posts in your topical category that have “gone hot” on social news sites and understand their structure, format and tone. Leverage what has worked for others in your own content to be promoted.

20. Sponsor content on web sites or newsletters archived to the web that allow you to include a link. It may be a nofollow link, but it may not.  Many newsletters sent via email are archived to the web or have landing pages on the web. Ask those newsletters if you can buy an ad or even contribute a short article.  The article credits should include a link to your blog.

21. Hire bloggers to write content for you. They’ll often cross-post it to their own blog with a link back to yours. Of course, you should be considerate and simply mention that this is ok, don’t ask them or require them to do it.

22. Run a contest that may involve others deciding to link back to your blog. This can be tricky, but Marketing Pilgrim does a great job of this with their SEM Scholarship Contest. Readers write blog posts and the first cut is based on which posts get the most traffic and presumably, links among other criteria.

23. Offer a widget, when posted to others’ web sites, includes a link back to a credits page for the widget on your blog. TopRank’s Thomas McMahon created a RSS buttons tool and it’s use by other blogs has resulted in over 322,000 inbound links.

24. Review other blogs and offer a badge for those that get included. We’ve done this with BIGLIST and it has resulted in over 64,000 inbound links. Focus on quality and be consistent. Also offer a version of the badge that does not include a link for those that want to display the “blog flare” but don’t or can’t link to it. You should include your logo on the badge for improved brand awarness whether there’s a link or not.

25. Create an exceptionally useful tool. Others will link to it simply because it is useful. (See step 1) TopRank created a Social Bookmarking Tool several years ago and still has over 50,000 links as a result.

Bonus tip: When others link to you, THANK THEM!  Building good will is one of the most underrated marketing skills online. Be genuine, thoughtful and courteous. Also be SMART and driven to get links where it makes sense.

What linking tactics for blogs have you found to be most effective? What challenges are you facing in attracting other sites to link to your blog?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 25 Link Building Tactics to Improve Blog Search Engine Rankings | 122 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

1. Talk about something other than yourself. Too many corporate marketers make the mistake of creating blogs as purely another mechanism to talk about their products and services. While increased sales and improved brand visibility may be two fundamental goals of a corporate blog, there are more effective ways for achieving those goals that just pushing product.

The most successful corporate blogs leverage product and service information with relevant industry news, human interest pieces, case studies and other useful information. That balance is what keeps readers coming back time and again.

PC manufacturer Lenovo successfully mixes product information with posts about business, design and technology on its 8 different corporate blogs. For example, its .Roaring Mouse blog, a resource for small businesses, offers insight on topics such as the use of social media in small business, outsourcing tips and small business statistics. The .Roaring Mouse blog puts itself in readers’ shoes to provide the most useful, relevant and timely information—whether or not that involves Lenovo-specific product information.

2. Keep your blog focused. Whatever message you chose to deliver, stick with it. Unfortunately, some corporate blogs lack a clear message and include posts on topics all across the board. Because goals were never defined, these blogs have a difficult time gaining readership.

Blogs gain strong, consistent followings by giving readers the information they want and expect to find. A reader might visit a shoe retailer’s blog expecting to find information on the latest shoes styles and celebrity fashion news. If the readers have to sift through information on travel, home décor, and health & fitness in order to find what they’re looking for, they may not return.

For example, the GM FastLane Blog successfully sticks to its unique niche. The blog’s goal is clear: to provide readers with information needed to purchase and maintain their vehicles. The blog achieves its goal by posting company news and announcements, along with important current issues such as concept cars, alternative energy, climate change and fuel efficiency.

3. Give your blog a distinct personality. Whether you choose to feature just one blogger or multiple bloggers, let the blogger’s voice come through in the posts. Without a distinct personality, your blog will be just like every other faceless corporate blog.

Let your readers see behind the corporate and marketing jargon, and instead discover the real people behind your organization.

Look to Johnson & Johnson’s JNJ BTW blog as an example. From the tagline “Our People and Perspectives” to the author bio page and use of blogger photos, the JNJ BTW blog humanizes the corporate brand for customers. Individual authors write about the topics that best suit their expertise and interest, letting their own voice come through.

4. Have some fun. Another effective method for letting a corporate blog stand out from the rest is to infuse some humor and excitement. Granted, this technique may not be appropriate for all corporate brands. But if you’re able to, consider creating a blog that can be light-hearted, relaxed and at-times funny. It’s just another way to humanize and personalize the brand for customers.

The Southwest Airlines Nuts About Southwest blog is a prime example. Southwest employees blog about their company and the airline industry in general, but do so in a casual, humorous way. The blog also includes fun, behind-the-scenes videos, produced by the employees themselves. Its latest poll asks readers to guess the Halloween costume of CEO Gary Kelly. The choices? “Gary” Potter, Larry Bird, Ben Franklin, Statue of Liberty or Julia Child.

5. Provide readers with something they can’t get anywhere else. Use a corporate blog to announce company breaking news or highlight original research in order to make the blog truly unique. Assuming the information is interesting and useful, readers will keep coming back for more. The simply can’t get it anywhere else. Plus, your customers can form a close connection with your brand because they feel as if they’re gaining an inside look or exclusive information.

The Editors blog from BBC gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at the daily happenings in BBC newsrooms. BBC News editors share their dilemmas and issues, as well as dissect news stories to provide readers with even more in-depth coverage.

For example, in a recent post, editor Mike Rudin candidly discusses being sent a video accusing him of “producing a ‘hit piece’ about 9/11” after filming the documentary “The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 – The Truth Behind the Third Tower.” He explains to readers his response and thoughts about the video, as well as provides additional details about the making of the documentary.

The blogging technique seems to be working: Rudin’s post received more than 5,000 comments from readers!

How do you ensure your corporate blog stands out from the rest?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 5 Tips for Making a Corporate Blog Stand Out | 25 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

During the MIMA Summit last week, the importance of a content marketing strategy was the topic of a session presented by Rachel Lovinger of Razorfish.

For this week’s 5 Tips post, I’ve translated some of Rachel’s valuable points into actionable steps for creating an effective content marketing strategy.

1. Discover
In a nutshell, do your homework:

• Research competitors’ content. Whether you’re launching a blog, website or email campaign, determine what information is already out there and how it’s presented. How can you distinguish yourself?
• Concept your voice based on audience and type of content. If you’re providing quick tips and human interest pieces for consumers, your content voice will likely be more conversational. Are you offering in-depth, research-driven articles for a B2B audience? Your voice should be reflect that.
• Define the clear goals and message of your content. By failing to do so, you’ll have a difficult time building a solid readership. You also risk confusing the readers you do attract.

2. Design
Step 2 is all about planning—making sure all the “i’s” have been dotted and the “t’s” have been crossed:

• Determine responsibilities. Before deploying a content marketing plan, ensure that you’ve outlined who will be the keeper of the content. If you aren’t able to hire a dedicated resource, it’s essential to appoint someone to incorporate content maintenance into his or her current responsibilities. Content maintenance could also entail tasking each employee to contribute one piece of content per month.
• Organize content. Is your content logically located on your site in a central place? Is it easy to search for a particular topic? If your readers have a difficult time navigating through your site to find useful content, they’re not likely to stick around for very long.

3. Build
With Steps 1 and 2 complete, you’re ready to start putting the wheels in motion:

• Plan a style guide. Include as much information as possible regarding everything from tone and voice to target word count. Provide best practices for optimizing content and writing checklists.
• Create a copy deck. A copy deck is essentially a roadmap for your content pages, including text, graphics, advertising and links. It can be developed in stages, starting with writing a few paragraphs to describe the content.

4. Deploy
With the first 3 steps in place, a content marketing strategy is finally ready for deployment:

• Maintain. It’s crucial to have a plan in place to continuously update content. Outdated content will quickly turn readers away. Plus, a stagnant site won’t do you any favors when it comes to search engines.
• Monitor. Leverage analytics tools to gauge what worked best and what failed. Look for patterns in the most popular types of content—i.e., checklists, charts, case studies. You can analyze virtually any variable, from optimal article length to most popular type of headline.

5. Adjust
The final step to creating an effective content marketing strategy is ongoing:

• Respond. No content marketing strategy is perfect. Based on analytics reports, continuously tweak your content efforts to maximize results.

What steps would you add to create an effective content marketing strategy?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 5 Tips for Creating an Effective Content Marketing Strategy | 20 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

But before you pop open the bottle of champagne, consider one more piece of the puzzle: blog subscribers. You’ve made an RSS feed available, but no one seems to be subscribing.

In order for a blog to generate links and traffic over the long term, you must devise a strategy to acquire an active group of passionate and engaged readers. Use these 5 basic tips as a starting point for gaining blog subscribers:

1. Make it easy and obvious for readers to subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed. You can achieve this by:

• Allowing one-click subscriptions

• Offering email subscription for the large percentage of readers who may not be familiar with RSS

• Using auto-discovery tags so the RSS icon will appear on the side of the address bar of most browsers

• Displaying the RSS icon where readers will see it (above the fold, on every blog page and at the bottom of every post)

• Including text with the RSS icon for readers not familiar with RSS (for example, “Subscribe Now!”)

2. Take advantage of feed directories. With feed directories, you won’t see hundreds of new blog subscribers to your RSS feed immediately. But you will reach the portion of readers who use these directories to find and subscribe to new feeds. Find a list of submission URLs for RSS directories that you can submit your feed to.

3. Leverage all available resources. If you have an existing blog, newsletter, forum or social media following, you may have an easy time convincing that audience to subscribe to your new blog’s RSS feed. Plus, if they truly enjoy your content, they may recommend your RSS feed to others. If you don’t have a ready-made audience to rely on, identify a related blog to leverage. Work out an agreement where you’ll promote his or her blog on yours, and vice versa.

4. Think outside the box. Offer an interactive quiz or poll on your blog to entice and entertain readers, but require them to become blog subscribers in order to participate. Or, run a contest that requires a subscription, and create a badge for the winner to be placed on his or her site and link back to your blog. Have some fun and draw added attention to your RSS feed icon by incorporating an animated image.

5. Write often and write well. Don’t underestimate the power of quality content. Without relevant, timely and entertaining content, your readers have no incentive to subscribe to your blog RSS feed. Also, publish frequently and consistently—not just for search ranking purposes, but also so potential blog subscribers know your site is active.

What tactics do you think are most effective for gaining subscribers to your blog?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 5 Tips for Gaining Subscribers to Your Blog | 13 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Many companies are without confidence in how to use communication tools like blogs or Twitter and this presentation can serve as a good starting point for those tactics as well as for creating a social media strategy. There was good feedback at the event and I’ll do my best to turn it into a slidecast in the future.

I should mention for those that have a good feel for the basics of social media or SEO, TopRank has partnered with the Direct Marketing Association to offer a 2 day intensive workshop on social media strategy, tactics and SEO called “Social Media Smarts“.   We focus on building a social media roadmap for participants as well as understanding various social media marketing tools and how SEO fits into the social media marketing mix.  The next workshop is in New York, December 1 & 2 so be sure to check out the Social Media Smarts site and get signed up.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Making the Case for Social Media: A Roadmap | 10 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Developing affinity with a group of readers who will actually take the time to link, comment and share your material requires a commitment of both resources and creativity – this is common knowledge.

But all other things being equal, you can and should give yourself an extra advantage by developing a unique brand for your blog. This is beyond being organized and having a plan, this is about standing out in a world of infinite choice.

With that in mind, here are 7 ways to help develop a unique brand for that shiny new blog you’ve just built, or give fresh life to your current site. Ideally, you could incorporate all of these:

1. Develop a post archetype

Develop a compelling post archetype that people respond favorably to and continue to feed your content into it. It can be something as simple as using a certain type of image, post heading, graphic, etc. – just something which makes your posts stand out on their own in an RSS reader as content a-la-carte. Your posts looking nice here is a key factor to getting them to spread between RSS users/early adopters who may never visit your actual blog, but are happy to do things like share content in Google Reader. You want everyone using tools like Reader to click the share button with every post, and they’re likely to do so with posts that stand out format-wise, as long as the content tells the same story of quality.

2. Create a simple or unique design

Most bloggers tend to over-complicate their blog designs. Complexity in web design is standard and expected. Simplicity is a thing of beauty. If you’re more daring, develop a unique design that takes a chance and pushes the limits, it’s a good way to get noticed. Breaking expectation with design/presentation of content is a huge strategy in and of itself.

3. Refine your writing quality and style

The single best way to create a blog with a unique brand is to have writing quality and style which is distinctive, emotive or in some way compelling. Writing is the heart of your blog’s brand, and has the power to transcend all other factors – the importance of this can’t be overstated. This is a long-term process of refinement and as you delve deeply into themes, concepts and topics it will become more defined and known. Some bloggers have become so good at this, loyal readers could pick their writing out of a lineup.

4. Find a way to view your topic from a fresh angle or different lens

As long as there is interest in a niche, it can never be too crowded for fresh thinking. Even within the most popular topics, the ways established sites cover ideas is relatively predictable. New sites can use this to their advantage simply by not covering ideas in the same way. A fresh angle or different viewpoint on a familiar topic may prove the most compelling choice of all. Remember, while there are many fans of popular sites, there are also plenty of dissenters just waiting to give voice to something different. Speak to them and they will spread your content more aggressively than even the biggest fans of the established players.

5. Focus on a unique topic, or intersection of topics

There’s really no topic that’s too specific or unique, in fact, the more offbeat, the better. There’s an audience for it, and if not you can make one (bearing you don’t go off the deep end and it’s too esoteric). The key is simply that you can deliver on the thesis consistently and with quality. If you can’t develop a truly unique topic don’t worry, this may not be possible. Another approach is to find a intersection of complementary topics. Music and inspiration, marketing and sociology, personal development and fitness, search and social media – you get the idea. This is compelling because in time it will form a unique community, and the content genres and mixing of audiences will play off each other to make something more interesting than the separate pieces.

6. Create a better signal to noise ratio

It’s common to publish frequently for the sake of publishing – but the real opportunity is to make your site known for signal and kill the noise. Becoming known as a site with a high degree of signal is how you will build up a silent army of users active in the social web who share your content every time. If you deliver on this long enough, the world will become conditioned to anticipate quality from you, and your content will be shared each time you hit publish.

7. Focus on achieving consistency

Quite possibly one of the most difficult hurtles to get over for developing a successful, unique blog is being consistent. Blogs that deliver high quality material on a consistent basis get noticed. Out of more than 133 million blogs created since 2002, only 76,000 of them (less than 1%!) have a Technorati ranking of 50 or higher – something that is a result of consistency. In other words, being consistent is a unique element of your blog’s brand in and of itself as most fail to achieve this basic, yet essential quality.

Conclusion

The popularity of web publishing is something which only continues to increase, and with it the battle for attention of readers daily heats up. Becoming an outlier in some regard is the element that will put you on the path with the best chance at large-scale success. This is actually not just important for those new to web publishing. In crowded marketplaces with many choices, a strong brand is more than a way to gain a following, it’s protection against unpredictable externalities. Finding a way to develop a unique brand for your blog is worth spending as much time on as anything else in your blogging roadmap.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 7 Ways To Develop A Unique Brand For Your Blog | 30 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Since bloggers often read other blogs, I’m counting on Online Marketing Blog readers to take this quick poll to identify what the most common goals for business blogging are. There should be enough options to address whatever purpose you have for your blog. You can pick up to 3 choices.

A bit of Online Marketing Blog trivia: This is our 51st poll!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Poll: How Do You Measure Business Blogging Success? | 14 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

[Note from Lee: I edited some of these so any of these that are bad would be my fault. The good Haikus are all Dana and Ashley.]

Search Engine Optimization

Social Media

Blog Marketing

Online PR

Email Marketing

Feel free to share your own Haiku or any other search-inspired poetry, and keep the creative juices flowing!

[Photo credits go to: shapeshift, TahoeSunsets, Juliana S. ]

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 5 Internet Marketing Haikus from TopRank | 8 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Brian is a fantastic writer and marketer, recovering attorney and someone that over 50,000 people have decided to subscribe to at copyblogger.com - one of the most popular blogs on the internet.  Brian has a lot of what people want: knowledge, talent and success.  Read on to tap into some of that Copyblogger goodness.

How did you go from being a lawyer to an internet entrepreneur?

Easy… I hated practicing law and I was fascinated by the Internet. The transition was extreme I suppose, but I always had a thing for writing, so I started creating online content over a decade ago. Now it’s just part of me.  

How much does SEO play into your blog marketing efforts with copyblogger.com and the other sites you work with?

Well, it’s absolutely vital and yet absolute optimization never happens too soon for us. I’m a firm believer in building trusted authority sites, and sometimes that means foregoing the best keyword optimization in order to attract more links and subscribers. Once you have that trust (with people and Google) it’s easy to dive in and optimize certain pages or sections of a site.

What are the most common mistakes you see people make that get in the way of blogs or web sites from having better search visibility?

I think it goes back to my last answer… Obsessing over the perfect keywords in your title before you have any readers or any links is backwards these days. Google wants to rank trusted brands highly, and creating a brand goes way beyond keyword research and placement. 

How important is genuinely good writing to having a successful blog?

It depends both on the audience and the author. In some areas being a great writer will put you ahead of the pack. In others, people are more interested in what you have to share with them, warts and all. But how you say things will always matter, whether you’re considered a “great writer” or not. That’s where copywriting skills come in.

Do you see links and buzz worthy content as a cart before the horse situation? ie, in order to get those links, you need to have something worth linking to.

The content and the value has to be there first. People think this is about “gaming” or whatever. Some people think having any strategy at all is “gaming,” and that’s fine for them. To me, it’s about solid value and solid strategy… both are necessary to achieve online marketing goals. 

If you were limited to 2 or 3 things blog owners should always do to optimize and promote their blogs, what would they be? ie, what are 2 or 3 of your best blog optimization/marketing tips?

Well, it’s been said over and over, but I can’t say anything new. It’s about a unique voice, unique value, and working to make a connection with the audience. It’s not easy, but those who truly work at it will succeed.

What are some of your most effective tactics for writing blog post headlines?

It boils down to making a relevant and compelling promise… one that your target reader can’t refuse–and then fulfilling that promise with your content. If you’ll forgive a link, I’ve written a ton about headlines. 

What do you think are the most important success measurements for a corporate blog, a content blog, a personal blog? (RSS Subscribers, web traffic, repeat web traffic, advertising rev, consulting)

It really depends on your revenue model, but frankly, my answer remains the same regardless–subscribers. It can be email (and in most niches, it still should be) or RSS, but getting people to “raise their hand” and pay attention to you on a regular basis is golden.

What resources can you recommend for keeping current with blogging, monetization and internet marketing?

Well, for starters, you. Also, a lot of really great stuff is being shared on Twitter these days if you follow relevant folks. And I suppose we manage a decent tip or two over at Copyblogger.

Here’s the best advice I can give on this… learn from everyone. Study marketers you hate as well as marketers you agree with. Don’t close your mind to anything and you’ll come out with a more well-rounded toolbox of tactics and strategies for online marketing. 

 Thanks Brian!

Check out Brian on the web at: Copyblogger, Teaching Sells, DIY Themes and on Twitter

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | The Copyblogger Files – Interview with Brian Clark | 12 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Here are five tips for successful business blog optimization benefits in the long run:

1. Find a practical purpose for starting a blog. There are many reasons why companies would benefit from starting and publishing a blog. Some might use blog software as a content management system for an online newsroom or to archive newsletters to the web. 

Other blog applications include: aggregating industry news, publishing ongoing product development information, improving customer relations, building thought leadership or improving onlne marketing and sales.  Identifying a specific business goal that can be facilitated by the creation, publishing and promotion of blog content should be the first step.

Whether the goal is to better connect with existing customers and reduce support costs or to attract more media coverage to improve indusry reputation, there should be a specific business goal for the blog. SEO can be used to further that objective through improved search visibility. 

2. Optimize templates initially and content on an ongoing basis.  As dynamically generated web sites, blogs take information stored to a database and push that information through templates which generate the web pages or blog posts we read in a web browser. 

Optimization of a blog at the template level will pass on benefits to all pages of the blog. For example, the use of blog post titles in the URLs rather than an id number. Or posting distinct title tags separate from the on page titles. 
 
Blog content optimization means leveraging a keyword glossary to allow company bloggers to make informed choices about what phrases to use in titles, categories, body copy, anchor text links, tags, image alt text and others. This is an activity that often gets diluted if there isn’t a quality assurance effort, oversight editorially or persistent attention to SEO.

3. Plan editorial and source content. Unlike traditional publications, blogs do not typically have editorial calendars but why not?  Use categories as an indication for the topics the blog should be posting about. Category keywords should support the business goals defined in the blog’s objectives.

Here are some simple steps for managing blog content, long term:  Create a keyword glossary, much like you would for a website SEO project. Identify an editorial guide as well as post types and key topics. Assign a blog champion, someone that “owns” the success/failure of the blog. The blog champion will provide content and editorial oversight as well as recruit other contributors.  

The blog champion performs another important function, feedback to the contributors. This goes beyond a simple “thank you” but may also include reporting on the number of comments on posts contributed, inbound links, increases in RSS subscribers and mentions of the blog post on other blogs. Providing individual as well as overall feedback to contributors helps them see what impact their efforts are making.

4. Socialize.

Blogs are a big part of what makes up social media, so it’s important that bloggers are social for a successful blogging effort. A few of the ways blogs can be social include:

• Comments – be sure to respond to commments on your blog quickly
• Links out to other blogs – Blog software like Wordpress will notify the blog owner when others link in. Besides providing readers a link to a useful resource, getting the attention of a prominent and/or influential blogger by linking to them can result in being mentioned in a post with a link back.
• Trackbacks are the mutual link exchange that can happen when one blog links to another.
• Widgets and polls/surveys can be effective social tools for a blog, because they allow interaction and direct feedback. 
• Reading and commenting on other blogs is very important for the success of a blog to connect with other influential information sources on your topic. Bloggers are also more keen to network with each other than they are with non-bloggers.
• Social networking tools like Facebook and communication tools like Twitter can be effectively used to socialize a blog by crowdsourcing the network for content as well as a channel for promoting new content. Recognizing contributors and aggregating resources is a win for everyone.

5. Measure and promote blog success – In order for a blogging effort of any kind to be successful, there needs to be an objective. Ideally an objective that helps reach a particular business goal. Once that goal for the blog is indentified, it’s important to take a benchmark measurement to understand where you are starting from.

Monitoring mentions of the blog in real time with basic tools like Google Alerts and TweetBeep can be effective discovery tools in finding fans of your blog. Trackur is a low cost social media monitoring tool that can be quite helpful. More robust monitoring tools such as BuzzLogic, Techrigy or Radian6 can be helpful for monitoring multiple social media channels.

Discovering trending of keywords within blogs or services like Twitter can present opportunistic content marketing situations. If a term is observed as becoming increasingly popular, the blog conducting the monitoring can choose to create more content and engage in link building to encourage high ranking for those terms.

Besides monitoring, it’s important measure the specific goals set out for the blog using web analytics.

As the data and success metrics are collected, be sure to package the information for reporting upstream in the organization. ROI on social media marketing efforts, including blogging, can be challenging. However, if the blog is attracting any kind of popular keyword phrase traffic from organic search, it can be compared to the costs to achieve those same positions and visitors with pay per click. The resulting comparison should offer an estimated a dollar value of organic search traffic.

Another valuation method for blogs is when the blog facilitates media coverage, including other blogs.  If a company hires a public relations firm to conduct blogger and media relations, it costs money and that investment can be boiled down to a value per pickup.  If publishing content on the blog results in being cited, linked or mentioned by a popular blog or publication, it should be tracked and a dollar value assigned.  Such ROI associations from blogging can vary depending on the purpose of the blog ranging from lowering customer service costs to saving recruiter fees for attracting new employees. 

The other type of reporting that is important for the longevity of a blog and the ongoing optimization effort is feedback to those that make it happen. A blog SEO effort cannot be successful if there is no one to write posts. Therefore, it’s important to keep contributors motivated by keeping them informed on the progress of the blog in reaching overall goals as well as the effect ofo their individual contributions.

Wrap up:

For a successful business blogging effort that leverages search engine optimization, it’s important that the blog serves a functional purpose intented to help the business reach a particular goal. SEO is involved in order to extend the reach and “discoverability” of the blog. 

Blog optimization is both a one time event with the templates but is also an ongoing process involving keyword glossaries that help determine post level keyword usage, internal anchor text and off site anchor text.  Running out of ideas and people to contribute to the blog can mean certain death, so be creative with content sourcing and formats. Listen to what blog readers respond to and give feedback on to guide editorial.

Blog software offers many social features. Use them! Grow a network that leverages the blog as resource and as a way to recognize contributors.  Monitor real time content opportunities as well as blog analytics so you can offer the kind of feedback that motivates continued contributions both from the C-Suite in the form of funding and from the B-Suite in the form of content and comments.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | 5 Tips for Successful Blog Optimization | 49 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Blogging Becomes Mainstream – eMarketer article by Senior Analyst Paul Verna, “Blogging has become so pervasive and influential that the lines between blogging and the mainstream media have disappeared.” Data from a survey run by Technorati and Decipher.

Why Pharma Fears Social Networking – Not all indusries are keen on blogging and this article from BrandWeek explains the push behind the Pharmaceutical industry to get on board with social media.

RSS Adoption at 11% and it May Be Peaking, Forrester Says – Steve Rubel points out a Forrester report that indicates a strong growth rate of RSS adoption to date, but the future of RSS going mainstream doesn’t look as optimistic.

Blogwell: How Big Companies Use Social Media – If you’re at a big company looking for other examples of large company social media case studies and experiences, then this event October 28, 2008 from 1-5 pm at the San Jose Convention Center is for you. Companies include: Cisco, UPS, Wells Fargo, Intel, Home Depot, Graco, Walmart and many others. TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog is a sponsor of this event and will be publishing an interview with many of the speakers at this event soon.

Network Solutions Solutions Stars Video Conference – Blogging isn’t just for big companies. October, 29, 2008 – 1 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. EST. is the launch of a new series of videos and live discussions featuring 32 of the world’s leading business and marketing experts ranging from Guy Kawasaki to Chris Brogan and even TopRank Marketing, offering small business owners and entrepreneurs insight into how the Internet can benefit their business.

Social Media Strategies – There’s another event in San Francisco Oct 29-30 that brings together an impressive collection of social media marketing experts of which, many will be discussing the place of blogs in a social media strategy. TopRank Marketing is a sponsor of this event and will be posting interviews with speakers in the next week.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Corporate Blogging Trends, Insights and Events | 8 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

At the MIMA Summit (Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association) this afternoon, I attended a session discussing the pros and cons, along with the challenges a corporate blogger must overcome to represent the company and still make a connection with the blogging community.

Valeria Maltoni is a blogger at Conversation Agent and Director of Marketing Communications for SunGard. Valeria kicked off the session with a discussion around how an organization can get started with social media and a company blog.

As a business and marketing professional, we are tasked to find different ways to make a profit, find new customers, and build the company brand.

In today’s Web 2.0 world, there’s a community out there filled with customers, special interests groups and business partners just waiting to be heard.

Take a quick inventory of your online assets, most websites today offer users stagnant content with no potential for interaction.

So, why create a corporate blog?
-     To learn what your customers want
-     Give your business a face online
-     Bring the conversation inside the company

A company blog opens the door to listen and understand what your customers are saying. A company blog is a platform to provider visitors fresh content and interact with community members.

There is however, a fine line between company and community the corporate blogger must walk. The challenge is providing an open communication channel to engage the community while keeping in alignment with the corporation’s legal, brand, and business standards.

We all wear many hats in our professional lives and the corporate blogger is no exception.

To be successful, a corporate blogger must be the:
-    Communicator (editor)
-    Facilitator (community builder)
-    Negotiator (marketer)

Additionally, a good corporate blogger has attributes that contribute to success, and must be an active listener, an advocate for the company and an ambassador to the community.

Trust is key in building a social media community. To build trust, you must be open in your objectives and transparent within your communications.

How can a corporate blog be humanly authentic?
-    The organization must know itself
-    There must be internal & external alignment
-    Create a platform and culture of passion
-    By all means… always be honest

Each interaction with the blog has the potential to be direct, relevant and memorable for the community members.

If you are considering launching a corporate blog, first:
-    Add listening to your ‘to-do list’ (understand the conversation before jumping in)
-    Do a sanity check on content (can you produce content outside of marketing collateral)
-    Align behind the effort internally (you will need internal support to be successful)

Many companies considering launching a corporate blog have probably asked the question: What is the worst that could happen?

Reality is; social media and blogging opens the door for customer feedback and opinions (both positive and negative). As a company, you need to identify and prepare your responses before diving in. Keep in mind that the most vocal customers are the ones who care enough to tell you how you’re doing.

Valarie offered advice for organizations considering social media and a corporate blog:
1.    Hire great people and get out of their way (give permission to represent the company)
2.    Learn to celebrate the right things (launch is just the beginning)
3.    Read that press release as a reporter would (content first)
4.    Join a conversation already happening and contribute
5.    Think humans first, technology second
6.    Be prepared to address questions, in some cases fast (this is crucial in online time)
7.    Give customers options to receive information how they want it (RSS, widgets = pull)
8.    Provide customers a way to vote on your upcoming promotion
9.    Get to know your customers
10.    Start with beliefs (living and breathing reasons why)
11.    Tell stories that transmit your beliefs
12.    Surprise customers (in a good way), show appreciation

Empower the community you’ve created. If you are asking questions and receiving feedback from your readers, be sure to moderate and post user comments AND your responses.

As a corporate blogger, avoid:
-    Getting defensive
-    Being negative
-    Posting spam

Community is a balancing act and is uncharted territory. The challenge is finding the delicate balance between company and community.

Valeria wrapped up the session giving us the bottom line: blogging is about creating a personal connection with the community.

If you are considering adding blog marketing to your marketing mix, what are some of the challenges or concerns you are facing internally within your organization?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Corporate Bloggers: Angels or Demons? | 5 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

I wonder how many people reading this blog right now work for a company that:

1) Doesn’t have a blog
2) Has a blog but it’s on life support
3) Is considering blogging but not sure where to start
4) Has been blogging for a while, but wants to make it to the next level

Well, I’ve got some really good news.  On the heels of the OMMA New York conference Sept 18-19 comes Blog World Expo in Las Vegas Sept 20-21. What better place to have the world’s largest conference dedicated to blogging than the city that never sleeps because most of the active bloggers I know don’t sleep either.

TopRank has been tasked to source speakers and moderate a panel at Blog World Expo on “Search Engine Optimization and New Media”. We have an impressive panel with Michael Gray aka graywolf, Brian Clark of Copyblogger.com and Stephen Spencer of Netconcepts. An impressive lineup on it’s own, these marketing and blogging pros will be joined by a stellar group of speakers on all aspects of blogging. This is a must-attend event for social media and online marketing types.

Here are the session details:

Search Engine Optimization, SEM & New Media
Executive Track
Saturday, Sept. 20, 2008
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Room 232
Las Vegas Convention Center

Unlike most other sessions that focus on presentations, this panel will be all about Q/A and discussion.

There will be representatives from the biggest and best known brands that blog at this event including: Southwest Airlines, SixApart, Walmart, Nielsen, Intel, U.S. Army, Yahoo, Comcast, AdRants, Kodak, Dell, Ford, Cisco and many more. Here’s the speakers list.

I’m really looking forward to the session with Michael, Brian and Stephen as well as connecting with a ton of other like minded blogging types including:

Stephanie Agresta, Lisa Barone, David Berkowitz, Rohit Bhargava, Toby Bloomberg, Susan Bratton, Michael Brito, Chris Brogan, Rich Brooks, Rick Calvert, Valerie Combs, Paul Chaney, Jason Falls, Steve Hall, Tris Hussey, Guy Kawasaki, Jim Kukral, Scott Monty, Elisa Camahort Page, Steve Rubel, Muhammad Saleem, Jeremy Schoemaker, Robert Scoble, Brian Solis, Dave Taylor, Robyn Tippins, Denise Wakeman, Des Walsh, Kristie Wells and even more new people I haven’t met yet.

This will be my first time attending Blog World Expo and I can tell by the content lineup, speakers, sponsors and the past attendees I’ve talked to, that it’s going to be one heck of an event. I’ll be doing some blogging during the event, so be sure to watch for a series of posts.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Still Trying to Figure Out a Blog for Your Business? Blog World Expo | 13 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

One point I would make is that companies are wasting their long term time when setting up blogs purely for SEO purposes. It’s short term thinking and over time, results in difficulties with keeping momentum, new ideas and content. How do I know? Been there and done that, many times.

It’s far more realistic to implement blogs for specific purposes such as product communications, online newsroom, thought leader/strategy, customer support/communications, news, branding, advice/tips, aggregation of content in specific topics and many more. Regardless of the purpose, each blog implementation and ongoing management should have an intentional SEO effort.

Our session at SES San Jose on Blogs and Feeds included Amanda Watlington who gave a litany of advice and insights on strategic considerations for blogging ranging from goals to content sourcing to URL. She also offered an impressive list of specific tactics for optimizing both blogs and feeds. Amanda has been presenting on this topic at SES since the session was first implemented 3-4 years ago.

Chris Boggs gave advice on linking from blogs with examples of why not to link to press releases since they can get removed and not linking to other types of content because of archiving and lack of proper redirection.

Daron Babin made an argument based on his personal experience with the new WebmasterRadio.FM site on why it might be better in some cases not to use a blog platform, but to use a custom CMS (content management system) that publishes feeds. He offered numerous ranking examples and technical details of how the publishing platform automates many SEO friendly features of the web site.

My presentation on blog SEO focused on the value and opportunity with links specific to blogs and also offered 3 case studies.

In 2007 there were approximately 70 million blogs tracked by Technorati and this year they post 112 million, although there are likely far more than that. Out of all those blogs, 100 million have less than 20 inbound links. 400,000 blogs have more than 20 links and the top 2,600 blogs have over 1,000 inbound links.

Think about that. To be one of the top 1% of all blogs according to Technorati, it takes (among other things) 1,000 inbound links. That’s a number any competent search marketer could achieve in a reasonable amount of time provided there’s good content to work with. It represents a good illustration of the opportunity for SEOs to leverage blogs as a compliment to search engine optimization programs.

The first case study I presented concerned a Senior Housing Development Company, that wanted to provide an informal communications channel to address topics of interest to their target market and also to motivate a shift in thinking of their industry from “old folks homes” to “senior communities, senior living”.

Tactics included updating their blog and optimizing with keywords as well as leveraging categories to offer an online newsroom to archive optimized press releases both chronologically and by keyword-rich category.

Results included the blog becoming a top 5 source of referring traffic to corporate site, a huge increase in keyword rankings and a 500% increase in unique visitors.

The second blog SEO case study involved an online book and games retailer that wanted to tap into the passionate communities of games and puzzle enthusiasts online.

The tactical approach involved creating robust online game content include taking old style carnival games and having them made into Flash games to be played on the blog itself. A presence was created on Facebook as well as social media promotion efforts on StumbleUpon, Digg and bookmarking sites. Also, Twitter data was mined for users talking about games, puzzles, learning etc and followed to create a channel for promoting the latest games posted to the blog.

Results for the online puzzles site included a doubling of unique visitors from organic search, a quintupling of monthly traffic and more than qunitupling of page views to well over 400,000 per month. Now the site not only sells books and games but monetizes content/traffic with contextual advertising.

The third blog SEO case study involved our own blog, Online Marketing Blog. Our strategy was to transition a news blog into a unique content destination that would demonstrate TopRank’s thought leadership on topics ranging from Push and Pull Public Relations to Digital Asset Optimization. Increasing awareness in the search, PR and direct marketing industries as well as with prospective clients were specific, long term objectives.

Tactics for Online Marketing Blog include a regular schedule of unique content: industry and SEM agency insights, interviews, conference coverage, surveys, blog reviews and blog tools, photos & video.

Results include being ranked in the Technorati 100 (#31 favorite out of 100 million + blogs) and in top 15 on the AdAge Power150 list of top marketing blogs. However, the more meaningful results according to objectives include media coverage in influential publications:

Additionally, our blog ranks in Google on many, difficult keyword phrases such as “online marketing” #2, over 13,000 RSS subscribers and about 80k monthly web visitors. However, the most meaningful results are that we get daily advertising requests, weekly requests from the media, weekly requests to speak at conferences and daily new business requests.

Blogging alone can be a long term productive marketing channel. Blogging, optimizing and promoting great content delivers a far greater competitive advantage.

Other blogs covering or mentioning this session include:

• Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Engine Journal
• Web Mama Blog
• Erik Cunningham
• Simarprit
• StoresOnline

Be sure to check out all of TopRank’s coverage of SES San Jose as well as the SES San Jose photos on Flickr.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Blog SEO Tips from SES San Jose | 9 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

There are a variety of tactics including social bookmark links, icons, multi-purpose buttons, browser add-ons, bookmarklets, other tools and scripts that can used to encourage visitors to promote content. The question is, how are people using them?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Are content owners adding in social buttons because they provide value to their users? Or are they just taking up space and virtually ignored?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Reader Poll: How Do You Interact With Social Boomarks? | 17 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com