Blogging News

Mac Mcintosh asked:


For the past few years, you’ve heard so much about blogging that you’re reluctantly concluding that now might be the time to join the parade. Yes, blogs do have a place in the IT marketers’ arsenal, but only under the right circumstances.

Blog Basics

A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world. Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.

In simple terms, a blog is a web page made up of short, frequently updated articles, or “posts,” arranged chronologically like a journal. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what’s new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not.

Since blogs were launched, almost five years ago, they reshaped the web, impacted politics, shook up journalism, and enabled millions of people to connect with others and have a voice on the Web.

Should You Blog or Shouldn’t You

The reason you probably know the definition of “blog” is that blog readership is high among IT professionals like you. In August 2006, IT information-search company KnowledgeStorm surveyed 4,500 of its registered users, who are typically IT professionals. Of those surveyed, 80 percent said they read blogs, including 18 percent who read them daily and 33 percent who read them weekly. Keep in mind the percent of IT professionals that read blogs is dramatically higher the overall percentage.

While there are millions of blogs online, including my own B2B Marketing Blog, consider that Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that only 39 percent of Internet users read them. Before you decide to enhance your brand image and awareness with a blog, make sure your target audience is among the 39 percent of Internet users who read them.

I recommend considering blogging if and only if your audience is reading them and if you need a venue to demonstrate your expertise (branding) or are looking for additional ways to move up in the SERPs (awareness).

If you’re more concerned with driving leads and sales, pass on blogging for now. There are plenty of marketing tactics that will have a more direct impact on your bottom line.

If you decide you need to establish your expertise by blogging and sharing what you know about subjects related to your products and services, then keep these six blogging tips in mind:

• Often, techies write blogs for technical decision makers. However, some of the most effective business blogs are written by management personnel for business decision makers.

• Regardless of your editorial focus, the best-read blogs avoid hype and self-congratulatory content. Instead, they focus on content useful to their intended readers.

• To create awareness about your company, products and services, keep in mind that blogs tend to be favored in the Web’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), especially if it’s optimized to your industry’s keywords. Optimizing your blog can go a long way toward helping your company be found by prospects actively searching for what you sell.

• To gain and maintain readers, you need to keep your blog fresh. You’ll need someone who has the expertise, writing skills and time to frequently post new blog content. How frequently? According to a research study by public relations firm Porter Novelli and market analytics company Cymfony Inc., only 24 percent of bloggers post once a week or less (I belong to this camp). Some 39 percent of bloggers post several times a week and 37 percent post daily or multiple times a day. I recommend that you plan to post new content to your blog weekly to start. You can always turn up the frequency later, once you’re sure you have the ability to keep up the pace.

• If you’re looking for links from the blog to your Web site to boost your Web site’s search engine results, host it on a different server than where your Web site is hosted. Search using a phrase like “blog hosting” on Google or your favorite search engine to find a number of inexpensive blog hosting options.

• To move potential customers through the awareness, inquiry, consideration, and purchasing cycle using your blog you must relate all of your blog topics back to your services or products, to articles within your site, and other sales lead generation tools.



Caffeinated Content for WordPress

When it comes to increasing your blog reader base and driving more traffic to your posts, there are few platforms more effective than Twitter. Twitter is an excellent tool for connecting with your readers and building a rapport. All businesses should use Twitter as a part of their marketing and branding strategy. For bloggers, knowing how to use Twitter effectively can lead to unbeatable exposure. Here are 5 steps any blogger can take to get his posts to go viral on Twitter.

1. Increase Your Followers

Obviously it’s going to be challenging to get your tweeted posts seen by a lot of people if there are only 20 people following you. Your first strategy should be to increase the number of people that are following you. The easiest way to do this is to follow lots of new people. Newbies tend to follow you right back. You can also look up the target keywords in your niche and follow the people who are talking about those keywords on Twitter. It’s particularly helpful to find the users who have a big following in your niche and then try to get them to follow you because they are the ones that will help your content go viral. Avoid following too many people who don’t follow you back because this can make your account look spammy and give you a bad image. Make sure the number of followers you have and the number of people you follow are about the same or at least not drastically different.

2. Become an Expert in Your Niche

Be consistent with your tweets. Regularly link to interesting articles that you think would be of interest to your followers and provide them with value every time. By regularly linking to informative articles in your niche, your followers will begin to look to you as a great source of information. This is an effective way to build your brand and it will pave the way for you to tweet your own posts. Your followers will be expecting valuable content since you have already positioned yourself as an expert in your niche.

3. Promote Your Blog

Don’t expect people to find your Twitter page and click on your link. Make the most of Twitter by tweeting your own posts! Treat your tweets as if they were your headline. Make them attention-grabbing and interesting so more people click through. Try posting the same tweet twice at different times of day to make sure you reach all your readers who didn’t see your first tweet. When you post a tweet multiple times, make sure to delete the first tweet so you don’t look like a spammer.

4. Write Interesting Articles for Your Blog

This might sound obvious but sometimes the more obsessed people get with promoting their blog and social networking, the less they pay attention to writing posts of good quality on a consistent basis. When you are just writing to fill up your blog, it shows. Make sure your posts are very informative, well-written, and that they provide unique information your readers won’t be able to find elsewhere.

5. Make It Easy for Your Followers to Re-Tweet Your Articles

After you’ve done all of the above, you have to leave it to your followers to do the rest. To make it easier for your followers to repost your tweets, add a “tweet this” link at the bottom of your tweets. How do you do it? Simply go to http://addthis.com/ and place the bookmarking plugin in your html.

If you aren’t already using Twitter, you’re missing an immense opportunity to give your website/blog good exposure. If you’re looking for a strategy to increase subscribers, traffic to your site, and a loyal reader base, Twitter is an indispensable tool that should play a prominent role in your master plan.

When planning your trade show marketing \, one of the important things to consider is the series of handouts you will make available to your booth visitors. Full color printed materials are by far your best bet when it comes to trade show handouts. But how do you maximize the impact of such a traditional item?

You’ve spent significant money on staff training, beautiful graphics, and a professionally designed display. The traffic is pouring through your booth. But will they still remember you tomorrow?

Let’s face it, you only have two chances to make your message stick with your booth visitors: your follow-up strategy, and your handouts. Will your handouts make it past the waste basket? Are they an integral part of your follow-up strategy?

Let’s be clear here. We’re not talking about handing out **** things like cds, yoyos, ball caps, t-shirts, or beer mugs. Those things have their place, but this is not it. Right now we’re talking about getting a piece of product literature into the hands of your prospects and hoping it doesn’t get chucked into the garbage can just outside the exhibition hall.

** Why product literature?

Product literature is always the “go to” handout because printed pieces of paper or card stock are cheap. And done correctly they can be more effective, have more staying power, and certainly communicate more about your actual product than things like hats or pens.

So what makes a memorable piece of product literature — one that a prospective customer will keep? Here are a few suggestions.

** Don’t be cheap when it comes to graphic design

A cheap one colour flier may save you money in the short run, but it is much more likely to be pitched into the waste basket. On the other hand, you probably don’t need an expensive multi-page brochure. The first one is “underkill”, and the second is “overkill”. Do an attractive, simple advertising piece that has catchy graphics and a clear statement of “the pitch”.

** Use full colour and use striking photographs

Create a striking headline and don’t just do a description of the product. Create a “benefit-rich” statement that focuses on some significant customer-oriented benefit of your product.

For example, you can create a headline that says “Powerful Front End Loaders from Mega Loaders”, or you can say, “Get the Job Done in Record Time for Half the Price.” Which one would you look at?

** Content matters – make a substantial offer

By content we mean the pitch…the offer. Create an offer they cannot discard or ignore. Give something substantial away if they fill in an inquiry form. Or tie your offer in with your website. Create a valuable special offer they can only access online. Put it in the form of a “valuable coupon”, something like this:

“Get $40 off your next purchase when your register on line.”

This encourages your prospects to keep the handout, and also encourages them to respond by going to your website and having another close look at your special offer. What could be better? An automatic followup strategy.

** Give them something they will keep

Often a business card is the best. Everybody keeps business cards. Often we keep them long after the person has left the company or the company has ceased to exist. Most of us have a little (or big) pile of business cards. And some of us have a drawer full of them. A few of us even have them carefully sorted in a Rolodex.

Make your business card stand out from the crowd. Spend a little extra and do it in full color. Put a photo of your product on it, or use a striking photo that illustrates the benefits of your product. This says “credibility” — “this company is for real”.

In other words, business cards — especially full color cards — are good. You might even consider a “double whammy” full color perforated post card / business card combination. The 3.5″ x 6″ (or whatever) postcard contains a coupon type offer, and the attached (perforated) business card can be neatly torn off and kept in your pile, drawer, or Rolodex.

Remember to make your printed handouts memorable, creative, and substantial and enough people will keep them to pay you back many times over for the bit of extra cost involved.