As a small business owner, you love your blog. Your blog is where your community goes to hear your insight, it’s where they learn more about you, and it’s where they put a human face on your logo.

Or, it would be all of those things if anyone was actually reading your blog. Unfortunately, they’re not. And this is a problem.

Growing a small business blog can often be more difficult than we’d like. But you can conquer it and growing a thriving, engaged community to complement your business. Below are ten tactics to help generate more discussion and eye-balls on your blog. I suggest picking several and doing them in combination.

1. Let people know how to engage: It sounds silly, but not everyone knows how to leave a comment on a blog, or how to subscribe or what actions they’re supposed to take to become part of your community. It is your job to tell them. Have a tutorial for how to leave a comment. Let them know how they can respond directly to other users. Have a comment policy on your site. All of these things give readers the information they need to engage responsibly. No one wants to look dumb. – 10 Ways To Grow Your Blog’s Community

Years ago, usability expert Jakob Nielsen developed the “Community Participation Pyramid,” which some observers now call the “90-9-1 Principle.” It states:

• 90 percent of web users are lurkers — read or observe, but don’t contribute;
• 9 percent of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time;
• 1 percent of users participates heavily and account for most contributions.

What are the implications of this trend as it pertains to content creators? It means that we have the opportunity to become centers of influence. Being a member of the “one-percenter” club means there are 99 percent of users that we have the ability to influence.

Perhaps the real promise of social media is not that everyone participates equally, but that those who constitute the “one percenters” have the opportunity to do so with fewer obstacles.

“There’s an explosion of new tools available to help lead the tribes we’re forming,” said Seth Godin in his book Tribes. “There are literally thousands of ways to coordinate and connect groups of people that just didn’t exist a generation ago. All of it is worthless if you don’t decide to lead.” – Social Media: Become a ‘One Percenter’

Over the past several months, I’ve been hearing a lot of clients say they’re ready for the next step in social media. Many marketers —probably most of you reading this post — have already established your initial social footprints and are ready to move on to the next phase of social media maturity. But as my colleague Sean Corcoran’s social maturity curve shows, the further along you move, the more people you need to involve to keep your social trains running — and that introduces more risk.

One of the most important ways marketers are avoiding problems as more colleagues start participating in social programs is to spearhead training programs in their companies.  My latest research explores the spectrum of these training programs, which ranges from casual all the way through formal certification. - It’s Time To Start Thinking About Social Media Training

Here are the top Internet strategy, marketing and technology links for the week of October 9, 2011… [Read more...]

I have always had an Apple computer, from the Apple IIe my father had when I was a kid to the new Macbook Pro that’s on its way to my door. While I’m an Apple fan, I don’t buy every product Apple releases or agree with everything they’ve done. I’ve always admired Apple, and especially Steve, for doing things differently, and, for more importantly, thinking about the needs of the user first — for building tools that free people to create.

I remember fondly that Apple IIe, on which I learned my first programming and gaming. It sat in my father’s office in the basement of our house in Michigan. It had two disk drives, two paddle joysticks and a monochrome green monitor. On it, my sisters and I played games like Pong, Zork & Moonpatrol. I remember learning how to program in BASIC and the little programs I’d write to do silly things like make ascii graphics.  The Apple IIe was easy enough for any of us to use and it made using a computer fun.

It’s maybe those first enjoyable moments on an Apple computer that led me to pursue a computer engineering degree. In college, I was the only one of our friends using a Mac.  Apple was basically being left for dead — it’s stock was at an all time low (something like $4). But Steve Jobs had come back to the company and there was hope.  And I thought that going to work at Apple would be awesome.

I never did go to work for Apple.  The web had become more popular while I was at college and it caught my attention as a new way to communicate and do business.  I went my own way, eventually starting the business that I’m happily running today.

Steve was an inspiration as someone who, not only thought different, but did different. He had big dreams and ideas, but he worked hard to see them come to fruition. He sought others opinions, but didn’t let them derail him. That’s what I aspire to. To have big ideas, and to have the courage and persistance to see them materialize.

When someone as amazing as Steve Jobs dies at age 56, we’re understandably saddened. It’s not only a reminder of our own mortality, but it’s a disappointment in all that could of been. Yet, all that Steve accomplished in those 56 years is an inspiration to change the world in our own way, however large or small that may be. As Steve so eloquently put it, “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

Thank you, Steve. For being such an amazing inspiration and living life on your own terms. You will be missed.

Small businesses advertising in their own local market often operate under the “big local lie.” It’s common to see small business owners who have tricked themselves into believing that they don’t need to advertise at all and can rely solely on referrals for lead generation and repeat sales.

These small businesses will quickly discover that relying on referrals alone will cause them to get stuck in a growth holding pattern.

Let’s look at six ways smart local businesses can get more leads. As you can see, it doesn’t take a big marketing budget for small businesses to increase new leads and get more referrals.

1. Focus on Lead Capture—Establish a standard process for your business to capture lead information during any interaction with a potential customer. Train employees on the process and emphasize its importance for future business growth. When you’re interested in direct responses, you need to ask the right questions. You need to gather useful information that allows you to make business decisions that add up to profits. Coupons, discounts and trials are effective offers for capturing lead information in person. Forms, white papers and demos are effective ways to engage with your website audience and capture useful information.
2. Use Local SEO—Establish a Web presence for your business and optimize your website. Tools like Google Places are essential for getting listed and found online. Use the Google keyword tool to research common phrases people use to find your product or service. Make sure your page titles use those key words, and write page copy with those key words. Also, find and engage with local, influential bloggers. Build a relationship with them, or even offer to write a guest blog post twice a month. It’s never too late to get involved in social media and use it as a mechanism to drive traffic to your website. Make sure you’re using lead magnets across your social properties to capture information. – 6 Lead Generation Strategies for Local Businesses

For building the kind of enduring client relationships necessary for long-term growth, nothing replaces face-to-face contact. But these days, you’re just as likely to be doing business across the world as down the street (just yesterday, I was Skyping from Boston with a client in Vancouver). Except for the most bedraggled of new consulting firm recruits, no one is on-site with clients 24-7. So how do you cultivate loyal, trusting — and lasting — client relationships when you can’t always pop in for a meeting or take them out to dinner? Here are five ways to do it.

1. Put in the upfront work. When you talk to an old friend on the phone, it can feel like you’ve never been apart. But that’s because you’ve already established a rapport: you can visualize what they’re doing, you know what their conversational pauses mean, and you can tell whether their laugh is genuine. It’s completely different for a stranger (or virtual stranger), where you have to guess and fill in the blanks. So make it part of your client development plan to spend a significant amount of time getting to know them upfront. To develop long-term relationships, budget much more face time in the first six months or year of your contract. – Keeping Your Clients Loyal, From Wherever You Are