My college roommate never knew how he was doing in his mechanical engineering class.  He would tell us that asking the TA about his grade was a waste of time;  she would only tell him in a heavy Asian accent that ‘He do failr’ which, when analyzed, could mean he was either doing fair or he completely failed. He said it was easier to not ask and hope for the best.

This little anecdote dovetails into your site’s performance, sorta.  The nastiest word that can be used in web professional circles is four letters and begins with an S.  Slow, as in ‘Cool site and all but way too slow’ is just about the harshest critique you can sling at a web colleague because it sums up all the things most of us are powerless to control.  There is rarely just one thing that is slowing down your website. Sometimes it is the database query times, but you tighten those up and now it looks like the images are too large.  So you optimize them only to find that html requests are timing out because of high cpu usage on the machine which you track down to ImageMagic which needs to be recompiled to fix a memory leak which you do but now your queries are running slow again.  Sometimes it feels easier to not ask, ignore the problem, and hope for the best.

But no, Yahoo has to come around and make a firefox plugin that gives your site a clear, easy to read, hard to ignore, at times overly critical grade for your site’s performance.  YSlow is modeled off of a list of Best Practices that Yahoo put out on where to speed up your website.  Seriously this is a really great tool to break down, isolate and identify hot spots in your sites load performance, which is the largest component to the appearance of a slow web site.  Try it out on your site and see what it says.  Just don’t take the grade too seriously.

P.S. for Sazbean, I like to think that F means Fantastic! ( and that I have some more work to do)

Some of the key questions this webinar will answer:

• How do online consumers discover blogs and navigate between them?
• Who is the key blog audience, and what does this audience look like as a set of consumers?
• How do blogs factor in to online consumers’ purchase decisions?
• What influence do blogs hold over online consumers?
• What kind of opportunity do blogs represent for advertisers?

More information about the webinar and registration is available here.

Presented by Search Engine Strategies, Search Engine Watch and Click Z Network.

GroupSwim is offering a free webinar on how to use social collaboration to improve project results on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 1pm EST.  Details and registration are here.

GroupSwim, which we covered here, is an unique intelligent community product which ties together traditional board and forum functionality with semantic search, tagging, ranking and expertise so that important information is easy to find.

You’ve set up a blog for your business and started writing.  Now, how do you get readers?

1. Content, Content and more Content - Did I mention content?  The only way to attract and keep readers is with great content.
2. Share - You started a business because you have some specialized expertise.  Share that expertise with your readers.  They will respect your efforts and look to you for advise.
3. Consistency - Readers need to know that there’s a reason to check back from time to time.  Choose a posting schedule and try to stick with it.  Ideally, you should be posting at least once a week.
4. Stay on Target - While straying off the path occasionally is ok, readers generally expect you to post on a certain subject matter (whatever your expertise is).  You may want to keep a personal blog for other posts (remember you’re representing your business).
5. Listen & Respond - Encourage readers to interact with you through comments and email.  Listen to what they say and respond intelligently.  Your blog should be a place to have a conversation with your customers.
6. Be Helpful - Related to #5, anywhere you see a question you can answer, answer it.  Help people out with problems and concerns, not just on your blog, but anywhere you see people post their issues.  If it’s something you can write about on your blog, you’ll also help out others who may have the same problem.
7. Market - Add links to your blog on your website, your business card, your brochures, your email signature, and anywhere else you can.  You’ll need to let customers know that you have a blog.
8. Be Social - Join social networks and socialize with the members.  Most social networks will also allow you to link to your website and blog.  Some will even automatically import posts from your RSS feed.
9. Blogosphere - Read other industry blogs and comment on their posts.  Link to posts you think your readers would be interested on.  Write opinions about posts on your own blog.
10. Keywords & SEO - Don’t go overboard trying to get keywords into your posts, but do take good SEO practices into account.  Knowing the keywords you want to target can help you incorporate them into your posts.
11. Patience - It takes time to grow a readership on a blog.  It can take over a year to get a decent following, so don’t expect your blog to take off right away.  It takes a regular commitment to great content and a lot of patience.

Do you have a business blog?  What tips can you share for getting readers?

If you liked this article, consider subscribing to this blog via email or RSS.  Also, consider subscribing to have our free weekly newsletter sent to your email inbox.

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Technorati Tags: blogging, blog, business blogging, business blog, blogging strategy, internet marketing, marketing

You have to stop thinking like a marketer, an advertiser and a communicator and start thinking like a publisher. Create information your consumers want, and they will share it, this is the idea behind creating the World Wide Rave content. “On the web, you are what you publish.” - Online Marketing Blog - The New Rules of Marketing & PR

Sound familiar?  Customer-centric design is about creating a site that works for your readers/customers.  Content is one of the most important aspects of a successful online presence.  Branding is now influenced by everything that is said and done by your company online (and said about you).

There are many opportunities for good content online:

• Information about your products and services
• Customer service frequently asked questions
• Discussion boards
• A company blog for continued education of your customers
• Interaction with your customers
• Social media
• Commenting on other blogs and websites
• Podcasts
• Videos
• Photos

Keep in mind that content online doesn’t always mean formally written articles for your website.  Content can be more informal with blogs and social media.  Content is also interaction with customers on social networks and discussion boards.

What content do you provide for your customers?

(photo by mandj98 @ Flickr CC)

Technorati Tags: content, content strategy, pr, public relations, customer-centric, internet marketing, marketing

It took thousands of years before people who had no useful skills realized they could earn money by wearing nice clothes and designing deceptive brochures.
-The Joy of Work by Scott Adams

If the corporate world ran as Scott Adams described it to me (and I’m still convinced it does), the Marketing Department would have to be the most social group in every company.  A place where ‘people’ people engage in study groups discussing how their company’s products can make your life fulfilled.  This is where social got is legs, where the idea of a conversation with the customer was invented.  This is where the consumer is king and their voices are heard.  At least, that’s what the marketing textbooks say.

So why do I get the impression that few people, myself very much included, really understand what Social Media Marketing is all about?  Thankfully Ajit Jaokar has an article that has started me on the journey of understanding by framing some of the things I know I don’t understand.  I will admit, it took me a couple reads to absorb what Ajit is saying here, but it was worth the effort to get my head around it and to see things from his perspective.  Here are some of my takeaways

• Social Media Marketing is not the same thing as Social Media Advertising.  The latter is placing ads for the social community while the former is starting a conversation with that community and seeing where it is going.  SMM can and will have a SMA element, but SMM is far more ambitious and advanced.
• You can’t translate traditional ideas like CPM into Social Media Marketing, they just don’t apply.  You need to find new metrics to judge when you are succeeding and when you are missing your targets.
• The idea that someone could sit on the sidelines and monitor all the little feeds of information in a social graph for a brand, even potentially alter the conversation’s direction, is wicked cool.  I wonder how close some of the huge brands like Coke or Nike or Apple are getting to doing just this kind of work.
• A brand can serve the conversation by giving it focus.  Three ideas for this are listed as ‘Information’, ‘entertainment’, and ’cause’.  I’ve seen all three of these methods used in social advertising and never realized it at the time.
• You could do some amazing things with the right data and a rapid response cycle.  Just imagining the short side potential of keeping advertising tied to Social Media’s latest feedback would be enormously effective.  Every ad would hit the right message, every campaign would be topical and fresh.  I’m sure there would be times when this would backfire, but the upside is enormous.

Google has announced that it will now begin including scanned documents in its search results - a feat that requires an immense amount of processing power and advanced image recognition technology. Unlike standard text documents, scanned files don’t contain any text data that Google’s spiders can index. Instead, Google has employed Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, converting photos of words into digital text files. - TechCrunch - Google Now Indexes Scanned Documents

The implications of this on search engine optimization (SEO) are fairly huge.  In order for PDFs to be indexed by google, they had to be saved in text format (instead of image format), which counted out millions of older documents and documents from sources not aware of this caveat.  There is a wealth of information online in the form of scientific papers and technical documents that could not previously be included in search results.

For business owners, stop worrying about whether documents on your website will be included in search results.  Instead, shift your concerns to more important issues such as content, usability and increasing sales.

Once you have your business blog set up, what should you write? We mentioned briefly in the Business Blogging Startup Guide that you should write about anything your customers would want to know, but what is that exactly?

Showcase Your Expertise

One of the easiest ways to get started is to write about what you know.  Try to get tidbits of information out of your head and to your customers in short easy-to-understand posts.  Come up with subjects that your customers would be interested in and then break them into smaller topics that you can cover in a series of posts.  Write posts for whatever topics and subjects you mention on your business website, taking the time to explain them more thoroughly.

Tap Into Customer Support Requests

Both product and service companies get customer support requests.  Take a look at what your customers are asking and cover issues on your blog.  If there is a larger problem that affects your customers, address it frankly in your blog.  Covering problems will help your customers help themselves.  More importantly, you’ll let them know that you’re listening so they’ll be more likely to let you know when there is a problem.

Review Sales Info & Quotes

By taking a look at your sales information and quotes, you can find out what your customers are interested in purchasing right now.  You can cover topics regarding those products and services to help customers make informed choices (just don’t sound like an advertisement).

Look for Hidden Gems

In all your sales information and other business statistics you probably have some hidden gems that would be of interest to your customers and to the industry.  Maybe you also belong to an industry association that provides industry statistics you can summarize for your customers.  Look for information that your customers may not be able to find elsewhere.

Have an Opinion

Take a look at industry trade sites and other blogs to see what’s going on.  Feel free to choose topics and post your viewpoint on your blog.  Blogging is about having a conversation and being able to easily find many different viewpoints on any one issue.

Ask Your Customers

This is an easy one.  Just ask your customers what they’d like to know more about.  Sometimes it won’t be a direct question about what to blog but a conversation you’ve had recently at a conference or networking event.  If one person asks a question there are probably others who are interested in the answer.

Have a Conversation

Encourage your customers to comment on your posts.  Listen to their opinions and answer them honestly.  Ask for input with leading questions on your posts.  Take a look at other blogs to see what people are saying about your company and address it on your blog.  Having a blog is a great opportunity to connect with your customers.

Have a business blog?  Where do you get writing ideas from?

If you liked this article, consider subscribing to this blog via email or RSS. Also, consider subscribing to have our free weekly newsletter sent to your email inbox.

(photo by hummyhummy @ Flickr CC)

Technorati Tags: blogging, blog, business+blog, business blog, blogging strategy, internet marketing, marketing

Now that is a headline. It’s bold. It’s confident. Its not true, but who cares? If you read this far than it did its job, hooking you the reader in through my digital storefront and into my shop to peruse my wares. That is what marketing does and that is why it still matters.

Steve Yegge starts us off right with his 2007 OSCON Keynote entitled ‘How to Ignore Marketing and Become Irrelevant in Two Easy Steps’

Marketing is the difference maker for me when evaluating a software project as being a Technical Success instead of a full out Success. It is not enough that people can use your web service because that is only a Technical Success. They have to prefer to use your service over the competition, prefer to use your application over the way they worked before, prefer to buy your new product over your old product because marketing has made it attractive for your customers to do so.

Advertisers and paying customers are more interested in the market leader than the technical leader.  Alex Kniess wrote a good piece on Scott Bedbury called ‘ Five ways a junior Employee can be a Change Agent’.  Its really a simple Marketing primer that applies to technology just as much as Advertising (his original audience).  With brands like Starbucks and Nike under his belt, it is a ridicious understatement to call Scott a subject expert. I like #3 ‘Make everything a pitch’ because marketing is like any learned behavior, it gets better with practice.  Also, you want to get your bad pitches out of the way early on on unimportant things.

We must remember that, like Steve mentions in his talk, marketing is a powerful way to create persistant pointers to ideas or concepts or things.  With a little effort, you can control where that pointer is directed.  If you don’t, your customers will for you.

Once you’ve decided to start blogging for your business, all the little steps may become overwhelming, so we’ve created this guide to get you started.

Blogging Software/Platform

First you need to decide where you’re going to blog - what software or website you’re going to use.  Having the blog hosted by another company makes things very easy.  Best of all, some of the best options are free, WordPress and Blogger.  We use WordPress for all of our blogs, so I highly recommend it.  The hosted version at WordPress.com has a full set of features, and with spending just a little bit extra, $25 per year, you can customize the theme and the domain name.  Whatever blogging platform you chose, make sure you are comfortable with it and it can grow as your blog grows.

Domain Name

The domain name, or URL, for your blog is almost as important as the one for your business website.  By leveraging your existing domain name (the one for your website), you can make it easier for people to find your blog. It also allows the content on your blog to count towards the search engine optimization (SEO) of your website.  How?  Let’s say your website domain name is mycompany.com.  Use a blog domain name of something like blog.mycompany.com (see how it uses your domain name for the last part?).  This is a bit trickier than using the default domain names that many blogging sites give you (mycompany.blogger.com), but pays off in the long run.

What to Write

Now that you have your blog all set up.  What to write?  Write whatever you think your customers would be interested in.  Showcase your expertise.  Try to help your customers by getting knowledge out of your head and onto your blog.  Worried about losing competitive advantage?  Actually by showcasing what you know and your willingness to help, you have a much bigger competitive advantage than keeping it all in your head.

How to Write

Writing for a blog is a bit different than other types of writing.  Posts should be relatively short and to the point.  Using headings or bullet points to highlight your major points make the posts easier to read.  Titles should be catchy (think newspaper headlines).  Adding images to break up the text of your posts makes the blog more visually appealing.  Use a personable voice so readers find you approachable and encourage readers to voice their own opinions in comments.

Getting Readers

Add your blog link to your email, your website, your business cards, and anything else you send out to customers.  Join social networks which target your intended audience and interact with the community.  Once you’ve got a feel for the community, start adding comments to other posts and posting your own articles and blog posts.  Also use social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter where you can syndicate content right from your blog.  Use services like Feedburner to syndicate content from your blog onto your other websites.  Getting readers takes a bit of effort and time, so we’ll go into more detail in a future post.

Be Patient

Getting readers can take time.  Even blogs that are popular today took quite a bit of time to get that way (usually a year or more).  You need to committ to posting regularly for a long period of time to see results.   This also includes marketing your blog through the means discussed in Getting Readers above.  Luckily, once you do get some readers, you should start to see your efforts quickly multiply as they tell others.

(photo by jez.atkinson @ Flickr CC)

Technorati Tags: blogging, blog, business+blog, business blog, blogging strategy, internet marketing, marketing