Get a blog. Yeah, no kidding, right? If you go check out a bunch of e-commerce websites right now, you will see the majority of them don’t have blogs at all. That means no new content is being added to the site. That means Google isn’t indexing the site frequently. It also means that [...]
If your business blog isn’t supporting your business objectives, you gotta wonder why you’re bothering. But accomplishing that is not as easy as it sounds.
Or is it?
Next time you write a post for your business blog, and you really want to kick it in the head and get results, ask yourself these four power [...]
When you sound like a broken record about something, that’s what we call a niche.
I write about business blogs. A lot. But I realize that I’ve been running along with basic assumptions in place. I want to address those assumptions in this post. I’m going to make this post as basic an explanation [...]
I am no longer requiring RSS or email subscriptions in exchange for the How to Start a Business Blog ebook. It’s yours to freely download or even embed on your own site (at the bottom of this post). If you find it valuable, you will subscribe to my blog anyway. Valuable content is incentive enough. [...]
David Bullock gave a rockin’ presentation on business development.
Speak/Write the Process
Determine Outcome of every step
Set the Sequence
do the Process
Refine the Process
Rinse, Repeat
Flowcharting tools:
flowchart.com
simpleflowchart.com
gliffy.com
Your Major Marketing Channels
Your customers
Your List
Your Identity (offline, online, speaking, podcasts)
Your Successes
Internet
Offline
What Are They Saying…
About You
About your company
About your service
Feed readers: watch this video at Vidder: Is the Word Blog Holding Us Back?
Is the word “blog” holding us back?
It might be. The problem with “blog” and “blogging” is that these words are connected to a specific technology or tool. The tool itself is a means to an end. What is that end? I believe [...]
Don’t click that publish button!
Blogging seems so easy in some ways. Hey, you just splat something out onto the screen and click Publish, right?
No.
Hell, no.
Consider:
Did I just write something for my target audience?
Did I just write something they really want to hear?
Am I adding to my legacy? (in other words, am I [...]
Would you like to finally be able to understand and decide your options for starting a Web site for your business? That’s what I’m going to help you with in this article.
Trying to figure out what kind of Web site your business should have is tough. The choices are endless and the technology is [...]
Guest Blogger Week continues here on Remarkablogger, with Lidija aka Lid of BlogWell.
Good marketing, regardless of the vehicle that is used to push it out, is all about effective communications.
One of my favorite books is Ogilvy on Advertising (1983) by David Ogilvy. In it, he points out that in 1983 he was still using many [...]
This is a guest post by James Chartrand of Men with Pens, and is the first guest post for Guest Post Week here at Remarkablogger.
Setting up a blog for your business can produce phenomenal results. You can increase your client base, show off your work, boost your credibility and tell people more about your [...]
When I found out that my friend Rebecca Leaman was a paid blogger for the Wild Apricot Blog, I knew this would be a great way to bring to light how business blogging and paid blogging can be related and benefit each other. There are two reasons to know more about this: one, many bloggers [...]
Let’s face it: Ecommerce sites are boring.
And yet, the people running them are often the most knowledgeable, passionate people on the planet about the products they sell. Maybe it’s the drudgery of dealing with the ecommerce system. Maybe it’s because people carry around in their heads some old ideas about how things are “supposed to [...]
Hi, everyone. I Liz Strauss was kind enough to ask me to write a guest post for her while she’s away at SxSW. I thought you might enjoy it. Please do check out all of her wonderful posts. She is a blogosphere “must-subscribe” for me, and I highly recommend her to you.
Here it is: Do [...]
Your business blog sucks because…
It’s duct-taped and stapled onto your existing site with no thought to how to integrate blog and web site or an overall redesign
It’s on Blogger, which makes you look cheap and/or like a spammer and nobody likes Blogger’s commenting system
It’s on TypePad, which means it’s probably ugly and because it’s hosted [...]
February 28, 2008 – 7:28 am
Watch If You Can’t Blog It, Don’t Do It on YouTube.
If you were going to start a new business, what kind of business would it be?
Here’s the new litmus test: if you can’t blog it, don’t do it. Some businesses don’t have blogs and shouldn’t have blogs: oil companies, Blackwater, KBR, Halliburton, whatever. Evil = [...]
December 17, 2007 – 12:26 pm
Juan Tornoe tells the story of how his blog ranked higher than CNN for a search term and how amazing amounts of traffic ended up at his blog, where they followed a link through to CNN. The traffic permanently boosted his normal traffic from that point on.
“Under blog posts, I was pleasantly surprised to see [...]
December 8, 2007 – 10:56 am
Secret to a Successful Business Blog:
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There is a problem with business blogs. The content and the approach to business blogging seems to fall into two categories: overselling and underselling. What you want is to sell without selling at all.
It can be done, but before we talk about how, let’s make sure we understand the problem.
Overselling
The overselling business blog is [...]
November 14, 2007 – 8:28 am
It’s vitally important to be where your customers are, but how, exactly, do you do that? Here are four actionable suggestions:
1. Forums
Probably the most powerful online method to put yourself in front of your customers and hang out where they hang out is to participate fully in one or two popular forums for your niche. [...]
4 Places to be Where Your Customers Are:
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November 12, 2007 – 6:59 am
If a group of golf instructors sat around discussing golf swing techniques and equipment with each other, instead of going out and teaching people how to master golf, how long do you think they would stay in business?
Exactly.
Let me tell you a short little story. Freelance Folder is one of the sites I subscribe [...]
Be Where Your Customers Are:
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Play in Popup |
Download
November 8, 2007 – 2:32 am
Take My Poll
Choose the most important reason why you blog.
I’m trying to get a sense of the numbers and proportions of bloggers who blog for different reasons, and how those groups break down among my own readers and elsewhere. If you can’t see the poll in your reader, click here to respond to it. Feel [...]
November 1, 2007 – 5:54 am
Note: This is a guest post by Cyndee Haydon, a Realtor who is a great example of Gateway Blogging in her niche. Even as the real estate market slows, she’s doing great! I invited her to write a guest post on her experience to show what happens when you do business blogging right and employ [...]
October 28, 2007 – 10:57 am
I was cleaning house today and you know how stuff gets stuck in the cushions of your couch? Most people find potato chips, fuzz, and pennies. Not me. I found some old blog posts! They do have a little fuzz on them, but they’re still worth sharing!
Do You Suffer from Blog Fatigue? 4 Strategies to [...]
October 24, 2007 – 10:20 pm
I really wanted to discuss with you the results of my Business Blogging poll from last week, but it needs more votes! If you haven’t voted yet, please do. If you have already voted, then I thank you and humbly request that you bring the poll to someone else’s attention so they can vote, too.
Here’s [...]
October 24, 2007 – 4:17 am
Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Why the bleep is a blogging consultant telling you not to do all the usual things pro bloggers advise in order to become an expert blogger?
Because it’s probably not your job.
If you run a business (freelance, micro-ISV, small biz, Fortune 500, whatever), then your goal is to do that — [...]
October 18, 2007 – 5:49 am
Gateway blogging is a term I created that helps to frame business blogging activities so that the blog supports the business, and not the other way around.
October 17, 2007 – 12:19 pm
I write a lot about how blogging helps businesses of all stripes and sizes, but now I want to hear from you. How has blogging helped your business? Take the poll below, but also you can tell me in your own words in the comments below or write a post on your own blog and link back to this post. After a week or so, I’m going to take a look at the responses and collect some of them together into a summary post.
October 16, 2007 – 1:00 pm
What are the differences between a so-called “normal” website and a business blog? Are there real advantages to a business blog that a normal website can’t give you? The video covers the following:
- Characteristics of static websites and blogs
- Blogs, search engine optimization, and people finding you
- Blogging is about the conversation, normal websites are about one-way marketing
October 5, 2007 – 5:43 am
Business blog posts generally fall into one of 10 types. When you’re trying to write for your business blog and you feel a little stuck (or if you’re new to business blogging), you can just pick one of these 10 types of business blog posts to use as a guide.
August 27, 2007 – 7:05 am
In this last part of the How to Start a Business Blog series, I discuss whether or not to allow comments on your business blog and if you do allow comments, what should be included in your comment policy.
August 23, 2007 – 7:02 am
If your company was hit with a crisis, how would you blog through it? Do you have a business blog crisis management plan? Learn how to set one up.
