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Sarah Worsham / Oct 28, 2008

Business Blogging Startup Guide

bloggingjezatkinson 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

Sarah Worsham / Oct 20, 2008

Increasing Pageviews per Visitor

As we’ve been discussing, sometimes businesses get caught up in the need to increase traffic to their website. This “traffic” often equates to the number of visitors to a website or the number of total pageviews. But, as Traffikd discusses, there often is an opportunity to increase the time on the site and the number of pageviews per visitor. This obviously will increase the number of total pageviews, but it also means that visitors are spending more time on your site – which gives you more time to sell to them.

For bloggers and social media marketers, the desire to increase numbers of unique visitors to a site often overshadows an effort to increase the average number of pageviews per visitor… In reality, the blogger and the designer do have some influence on visitors in terms of encouraging extended visits, and even a small increase in average pageviews per visitor can result in significant gains in overall pageviews. – Traffikd – Increasing Pageviews Per Visitor

Sarah Worsham / Sep 22, 2008

Internet Business Strategy – What is the Current Situation?

situationargenberg Before beginning to strategize, you need to create goals for your business. In order to create goals you need a solid grasp of your current situation on the Internet (your current web presence). To get an idea of your current internet situation take a look at:

Website – Ideally your website is the hub of your Internet presence with customer-centric design and content.

Analytics – How well is your website performing? Basic statistics such as page views, visits and uniques are useful. But more importantly, how many leads and conversions are you getting? Where is your traffic coming from? How useable is your website? Are people getting frustrated?
Usability – Can visitors find what they are looking for on your website? Is it easy to use? What could be improved?
Content – Great content provides your customers with the information they need to succeed. Creating content should be a continual process. What content do your customers want to see? What expertise can you provide?
Design – Your website needs to be easy to use (usability), but also should be eye-catching and professional. Are the fonts need to be easy to read and does the layout should draw visitors into your message?

Community & Brand Reputation– Your customers are talking about you both online and offline. Find where your customers are and join the conversation to get key insights into improving your business.

Blog – If you have a blog, what feedback have your readers given you? What are other bloggers saying? Who has linked to your blog and what have they said?
Forum / Discussion Boards – If you don’t have discussion boards on your website, find places where your customers frequent. Listen to concerns and join the conversation with suggestions for improvement.
Social Networks – Your customers are probably on social networks already (if they aren’t they probably will be soon). Find social networks where your customers frequent and see what they are saying. Join the social networks to give them an opportunity to connect.
Reviews – Have there been any reviews of your products and services? What can be improved?

Search Engines – Many potential customers will find your website through search engines so it is important to understand how search engines currently crawl and index your site.

Keywords – What keywords do the search engines see on your site? Where does your site rank for various keywords? It can be helpful to pick the top 100 to monitor at first. There are a number of free tools available to help (Google Webmaster tools, Rank Checker for Firefox, SEO Quake for Firefox and Internet Explorer).
Indexed Pages – How many pages on your website (and blog) do the search engines include in their indices? (SEO Quake and Website Grader can help).
Incoming Links – How many other sites are linking to your website? What are they linking to? What are they saying? (SEO Quake and Website Grader).
Outgoing Links – What other websites are you linking to? (Google Webmaster tools, SEO Quake).
Cache – What pages are the search engines displaying in their results? What do they have saved that may be old content? (Google Webmaster Tools).

Marketing – What is your company trying to say to customers and potential customers? What are the current marketing messages your company is using? What is the status of any advertising or sales campaigns? What is the return on investment (ROI) of any campaigns?

Advertising – It is important to understand how any advertising is impacting your bottom line and helping to reach your goals. Besides budgets, clicks, and impressions, it is important to measure leads, conversions, or sales – what return you are getting on your investment (ROI).
Competitors – Who are your competitors? What are their web presences? What marketing and advertising are they doing? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What opportunities and threats exist?

There is quite a bit of information to gather, but once you have it you’ll be able to get a good overview of what your current Internet presence is. You should be able to find opportunities to improve and be able to formulate some business goals. As you can see, Internet business strategy merges into traditional business strategy by using the Internet to collect information and feedback and to further business goals. Next we’ll talk about vision and goals.

(photo by argenberg @ Flickr CC)

Technorati Tags: internet business strategy, internet strategy, internet strategic planning, internet strategic plan, internet strategy consulting, internet business consulting

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