I had a meeting with a client yesterday who was getting very discouraged because he hadn’t yet received any comments on his blog. His discouragement meant that he wasn’t blogging as often as he should because he wasn’t seeing the value in it. Unfortunately, this sporadic blogging can lead to a downward spiral which will lead to a self-fulfilling failure. While blogging at first can feel like you’re talking to yourself, patience and dedication almost always pay off.
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Oct
25
2010
14 Basic Blog Measurements
Once you’ve started blogging, you want to know how you’re doing, especially if you haven’t had much interaction (yet). Starting to blog can be frustrating since there’s not much feedback right away. Like other marketing efforts, blogging will be more successful if you measure results to see what’s working (and what’s not). Here are 14 basic blog measurements to help you get an idea of how your blog is doing… Most of these statistics are available in Google Analytics.
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Oct
22
2010
Building Relationships by Commenting
Commenting on blogs, posts, videos, and others types of content is a great way to build relationships, not only with the content producers, but also others who see the content. However, treating comments as link bait (commenting just to get people to click on your link), can have just the opposite effect. Such comments can actually hurt you in the long run (plus most blogs and websites have do-not-follow rules for links in comments). Build successful relationships via comments with these tactics…
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Oct
20
2010
4 Simple Ways to Generate Blog Topics
Figuring out what to write can be a major roadblock for any writer. Add the stresses of running a business on top of trying to write and blogging can seem unsurmountable. Just by listening and doing a little research, you can find a treasure trove of blogging topics. Here are some ways to brainstorm topics for your blog…
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Oct
19
2010
Klout Adds Facebook to Influence Measurement
Klout recently added Facebook into its influence measurement (which previously was looking mostly at Twitter). Even after recalculating my Klout score from time to time, it didn’t move from my initial score until I added in my Facebook profile. The Facebook integration still doesn’t look at any fan pages (just your profile), but does provide some useful information. After my previous review, my complaint about Klout using only bit.ly’s data for clicks on links is still an issue — if you don’t happen to use bit.ly to shorten your links, Klout has no data about them, and this may negatively affect your influence score. Let’s look at what information the Facebook integration has added….
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Oct
18
2010
13 Twitter Tips for Increasing Engagement
A major frustration for people trying out Twitter for the first time is figuring out how to get anyone to respond. They set up their Twitter account, tweet a few times and wonder why no one responds. While tweets are public unless you protect them, they probably won’t be seen by anyone unless they’re following you, they do a search for something you mention or you’re on a list. Here are some tips for increasing the engagement on your Twitter profile and getting people to listen to you…
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Oct
14
2010
Choosing a Personal Brand vs. a Business Brand
How to brand yourself is a question vital to any business. Branding drives marketing, product development and everything customer-facing. As a small business, branding takes on more personal meaning — should you brand your business as your name (personal brand) or as a business name? It’s a big decision since it really can affect the future growth of your company. But it’s also not a clear cut decision since there are advantages and disadvantages either way.
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Oct
13
2010
A Quick Way to Add a Calendar of Events to Your Blog or Website
Keeping a calendar of events updated can be a real pain. There are all sorts of plugins and widgets that let you add one to your site, but they often require duplicate entry and can be difficult to maintain. If you use Google Calendar for your personal or business calendars (and even if you don’t), adding a calendar of events to your blog or website (and maintaining it!) is fairly easy. Here’s how…
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Oct
12
2010
WordStream Helps Advertisers Generate More Qualified Traffic with New Tools
Most PPC (pay-per-click) software is focused on helping advertisers manage bids on keywords, WordStream’s new AdWords Quality Score Management Tools are designed to boost quality scores in Google AdWords campaigns while driving costs down. These tools are now incorporated into WordStream’s flagship PPC product and should make it much easier for AdWords advertisers to develop more cost-efficient and effective campaigns.
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Oct
11
2010
The Most Effective Time to Tweet
I crunched some numbers on my Twitter account to see what the most effective time is to tweet (at least for me). I took a look at the number of clicks on tweets by what time of day and what day of the week for a 2 month time period (August and September) and then averaged them to remove discrepancies due to the number of tweets. Tweets included links to articles by others, my own blog posts, a few promotions and retweets. I took out a couple of retweets that had huge click numbers since I had retweeted a very influential person and clicks were most likely due to their influence. I tweet about a fairly wide range of topics, but the results are interesting….
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