So, business blogging is becoming a mainstream marketing tool. That does not mean, however, that blogging comes easily or naturally for many companies, their owners and employees. Blogging, like any form of content, is a commitment of time and resources – namely, you have to know how to write (or have access to good writers) and you have to maintain your blogs with fresh, original and insightful new material on a regular basis.

This should not scare you away. It should, though, inspire you to learn the basics of business blogging before you turn your baby loose on the world. Planning out your blogging strategy first is a wise move, because it gives your blog a greater chance of success. Here are 10 tips for launching your business blog:

1. Identify your readers.

Before you start writing anything, make sure you understand who your target market is. This is also known as your “buyer persona”, which marketing guru David Meerman Scott defines as “…a distinct group of potential customers, an archetypal person whom you want your marketing to reach.” Basically, you want to tailor your topics to the groups of people who are most interested in your company. Otherwise, you’re missing the mark and losing out on potential leads and sales. To identify these buyer personas, there are 3 questions you should ask yourself–

Where do your customers come from?

What type of content will be useful to them?

Where do your customers hang out online?

2. Create social media accounts.

If you haven’t already done this, register accounts with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Start with these and expand later. This is important because you need places to post links to each new blog, so that your groups, fans, and followers can read them. Posting on social media also encourages people to subscribe to your RSS feed, another great way to promote your blog.

3. Establish your social media presence.

Lay the groundwork for later blog promotion by establishing relationships with your target markets. One of the best ways to do this is through social media. Now that you have accounts started, you can go in and join forums, listen to conversations and hear what people are saying about your industry. Add thoughtful and insightful comments whenever possible. Hire employees to do this if you don’t have time, but try to contribute every once in a while if you can.

4. Determine where to place your blog.

You can either put your blog on a page within your website or give it its own domain. Your choice depends largely on your goals. Do you want the blog to be part of your site, and linked to it directly? Or do you have plans to use your blog for other purposes, such as to earn revenue through ads or creating a secondary business from it?

A blog can help your website to rank higher, and it can also rank highly on its own. So, think about your long-term objectives when deciding where to place it.

5. Use the right keywords.

If you’re placing your business blog on a page within your site, most likely you’ll be using the same keywords for your blog that you are using for your site. If you’ve done good keyword research, then these are the keywords that reflect your business and are the search terms that people are using to find you. If your blog is separate, consider if any keyword changes need to be made. You may want to take your blog site in a different direction from your site. Again, this depends on your goals for your blog.

Incidentally, if your blog does have its own domain, you’ll want the domain name to be brandable, easy for consumers to recognize and search engine-friendly.

6. Choose a blogging platform.

You have options here. WordPress is the most popular blogging platform, but you can also check out Joomla, Blogger, TypePad and others.

7. Plan your posts.

Think about the direction you want your blog posts to go in. A good way to stay on track is to start with one main topic and draft a few blogs in advance. Post them on a regular schedule and you’ll have a supply of targeted blogs that add fresh content to your site and point back to your company each week. Coming up with topics can be a challenge, but there are a lot of helpful resources on the Web if you get stuck.

8. Network with influencers.

Once you’ve got your blog started, it’s a good idea to look around at other bloggers in your industry. See what they’re doing, what they have to say, and leave insightful comments on their blogs. This kind of web networking will help you establish relationships with these people, which in turn will prompt them to help spread the word about your blog and your company. This kind of free advertising is invaluable. It connects you to credible and respected individuals within the blogosphere and markets your business for you.

9. Promote your blog.

As mentioned earlier, offering a blog subscription through an RSS feed is an effective way to promote your blog. There are other ways to get the word out, as well. Write an optimized press release, submít articles to directories that link to your blog page, submit your blogs to social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon and Digg (or set up an account with Ping.fm and have it done automatically). Make sure that you link to your blogs in your social media posts.

10. Measure results.

If you’re going to take the time to blog for marketing purposes, you’ll want to know how well you’re doing, right? Since it relies primarily on the building of human relationships over time, blog ROI can be tricky to measure. But, you do have many tools at your disposal to help you determine how much or how little your blog is contributing to the bottom line.

Free online tools like Google Analytics and Google Alerts provide you with information about how your customers are finding you online, and can tell you a lot about your blog page, in particular. Facebook Insights is a way to track activity on your Facebook account. Other tools are available, so look into them.

Launching your business blog is, like any project, all about preparation. If you do your homework and lay a solid foundation, your blog will produce results. Keep in mind that blogging is a form of content marketing and, as such, is primarily about building relationships with customers. So, be patient, follow these tips, and watch your business grow!

Author: Beth Hrusch

I have checked that Google Cache Toolbar is not working and showing 404 error, Does anyone found this problem??

checked google.com cache:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGLL_enIN368IN368&q=google+cache+toolbar+not+working&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

checked Yahoo.com cache:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fin.yahoo.com%2F%3Fp%3Dus

When I checked cached copy of any site with google toolbar I get “404 Not Found”

Screenshot:

Googlers: please check this, if it is globally or only on my side…

Thank You.

SM sites were intended to allow people to present a profile and keep in touch with interested parties. In essence a combination of email and webpage, they exploded in popularity with the sort of overnight success common to the Web. Of course users drive popularity, and where there are users, there is a captive audience – and businesses are always keen to adopt a potential audience.

Now Web writing and development resumes often need to include Social Media Networking experience, and businesses have their own Facebook pages. The Web is ever sensitive to the principles of competition and advertisement, so in the wake of this upsurge in popularity and usage come the techniques and principles of Social Media SEO.

Search engines rate all websites based on their internal criteria, and this increasingly includes Social Media pages such as Facebook. With that in mind, let’s consider five key ways you can apply SEO techniques to Facebook in order to drive interest.

Method 1 – Respect Your Audience

We’ve covered the power of individuality on the Web. While it is true the Web offers exceptional degrees of anonymity and collective activity, at the end of the day every user has his/her own judgments to make, and will make those judgments known via clicks and comments. There are websites solely devoted to expounding on peoples’ bad experiences, such as the popular Not Always Right. Rest assured that if you stick to sales pitches and infomercials, your work will be forgotten or derided quite quickly.

Instead, focus on promoting interesting, non-sales material on your Facebook page. Comment on interesting developments, or explain a personal angle from one of your employees that helps people connect with your organization. Some of the most profitable sites on the Web don’t make any major sales pitches, so take advantage of the chance to have a conversation and keep people interested.

Method 2 – Identify and Use Your Keywords

We’ve talked about keywords before, and they remain relevant still. Search engines are able to provide more precise listings based on effective keyword usage, and good placement in a search return is often dependent on how your keywords relate to user searches.

Keyword usage requires research. It isn’t a matter of simply plugging in all the buzzwords in every awkward conversation – this is a good way to get sites to blacklist or penalize you in their rankings. Take the time to really examine what key roles your business works toward, and then research the keyword usage of related activities. Pick out those keywords that seem most relevant, and then work them into your site as naturally as you can.

However, keyword use doesn’t always require focusing on the content and writing portions. Your Facebook profile includes an ‘about’ section. Putting your core keywords here is a good idea but keep it concise; more than two or three keywords risks diluting the impact of your message.

Method 3 – Remember Reciprocity

The interesting thing about your Facebook page is that your company website doesn’t host it – Facebook does. This puts your content in two distinct places on the Web, potentially doubling the coverage you can receive during Web searches. Take advantage of that by remembering to provide links from each site to the other. Your company homepage should be linked from your Facebook profile, and vice-versa. This will improve traffic to each site by bringing in visitors from the sister sites, and takes less than a minute to implement.

Method 4 – Harness Multiple Media

Broadband is common now. Perhaps it was still acceptable to lack significant video content in an online venture ten or even five years ago, but modern broadband connections cost customers less than the first dialup connections, and can channel extraordinary amounts of video and audio.

Given the social nature of Facebook, it’s an appropriate page to include ‘related’ content to your venture that isn’t strictly relevant in the normal sense. Consider a site focused on pet care and related products. Rather than tying in a sales video, post the latest adorable kitten video from one of the many cat websites on the Internet. Tag it with keywords related to your focus by all means, but the key here is to give people additional reasons to visit your site and help drive your numbers.

Method 5 – Learn From the Best

A writer once commented that every good story has already been written – what remains is for the good writer to borrow judiciously. If there is one thing the Internet is good for, it is copious amounts of free information. Take a look at popular Facebook sites and take notes on what they’re doing. You do not exist in a bubble, but rather a network of ideas and interactions. Consider adopting different approaches that others are making work, or putting your spin on them for even more success. Creativity drives much of the Web, so feel free to experiment.

Author
F. Cesario

Why are these links to your site important? They can can…

• bring potential customers to your site when they click on the link

• boost the number of visitors to your web site

• dramatically improve your search engine rankings

Even though there are software packages on the market that help automate the linking process, use them sparingly, if at all. The only way to succeed in linking strategies is (aside from creating useful content that will encourage inbound links) by manually creating the links. That’s a hard fact to swallow, given how I like to automate as much of my marketing as I can.

Here are the 10 most important inbound links you must have to your site:

1. Directory Links

Directories are indexes of online sites, typically organized by category. Links back to your site from directories like Yahoo Directory and DMOZ.org are very valuable. DMOZ.org is edited by human editors, and while it’s free, it may take awhile for your site to be added. Getting added to Yahoo’s Directory costs $299/year.

2. Press Releases

If you’re writing press releases, make sure they are optimized for keywords that someone would use to find a business like yours and include links back to your site, as well. Once written, you can have your press release distributed through a service like PRWeb.com, which will create links from high traffic news sites back to your site.

3. Article Directories

Writing and distributing articles through high traffic article directories, like EzineArticles. com, is a great way to get valuable inbound links from a high traffic site. By crafting an effective resource box at the close of your article, you can drive traffic back to your site!

4. Social Bookmarking

Similar to web browser bookmarks, social bookmarking sites store individual pages (bookmarks) online and allows users to tag (with keywords), organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources as well as share them with others. If you bookmark your content on these sites (like Digg.com, Reddit.com, Del.icio.us. com), you get a link from the service. By producing content that your readers love and then bookmark to their friends, the link increases in SEO value.

5. Blog Comments

To find blog posts on which to comment, you can use blog-specific search engines like Google Blog Search. Make sure these are blogs read by your target market, not your colleagues. Brand yourself by always using the same name and remember to link back to your site. Always leave a comment that adds to the conversation that’s happening within the comments.

6. Social Media

Now, Google also indexes your Twitter updates and your social networking profiles. Add that to Web 2.0 hubsites like Scribd or HubPage and you’ve got the option of creating many, many inbound links in a very short period of time.

7. Blog/Podcast Syndication

Submitting the RSS feed of your blog and podcast to syndication services will give you a link back to your site. In some cases, each time you publish a new blog post, the post itself will also get a link.

8. Video Syndication

YouTube is one of the most visited sites online, and the number of sites that syndicate videos is growing each day. These sites often allow you to link to your site either in your video’s description or on your profile page, or both.

9. .EDU and .GOV Links

Search engines place a great deal of credibility in government and education web sites, and the links carry a great deal of weight. Frankly, it isn’t easy to get inbound links from these sites.

10. Internal Links

Remember, if you have more than one web site, or a web site and a blog, be sure and link one to the other. You can do this by linking one article to other related articles, or link to categories or archives of information.

Creating a sound inbound linking strategy is a key component of your search engine optimization efforts. Try a few of the strategies listed above and see how your traffic and rankings grow.

Author
Donna Gunter

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Remember when Google was just a search engine? We often still think about it that way, yet we are frequently reminded of the breadth of product offerings and ultimately the power the company possesses. Power, or energy rather, is actually something Google could end up selling in the future.

Google recently applied for approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the right to purchase and monetize energy, just like the utility companies you are already familiar with do. Google has said that its actions had more to do with the enormous amount of energy it consumes itself (consider all of the machinery and equipment it takes to keep a company like Google running at its current pace on a daily basis).

Questions have been raised however, about if Google could actually end up functioning as a utility. From the sounds of it, the company isn’t exactly ruling it out.

Jeffrey Marlow with the New York Times asked Google’s “Green Energy Czar” Bill Weihl if the company views its work on alternative energy as a money-making component. In his response, Weihl noted that some of Google’s initiatives come from Google.org (the company’s philanthropic arm), and said:

The reason Google.org is not just a foundation is that lots of people believe that if you want to have a big impact at scale on the world, then you need to go beyond what a 501(c)3 can do, which is to make charitable grants, so you need the ability to invest in companies, to do engineering projects, to do things that might at some point actually make money.

We’d be delighted if some of this stuff actually made money, obviously; it is not our goal to not make money. All else being equal, we’d like to make as much money as we can, but the principal goal is to have a big impact for good.

Google says its goal is to make renewable energy cheaper than coal. Coal is said to be the source of about half of the electricity consumed in the US. Google is looking at concentrated solar thermal, enhanced geothermal, and wind energies.

Yahoo has partnered with Ben Silverman’s production company Electus, in which Electus will develop and produce premium content for Yahoo and its advertisers.

The partnership is aimed at driving creativity in online programming. Electus will develop a number of original video concepts for Yahoo in partnership with advertisers. The specific types of projects were not announced.

Ben-Silverman

“Content creators and producers are looking for more direct relationships with their audiences and advertising partners, and this partnership will allow advertisers to have fresh ideas matched with premium experiences that enable their messages to be delivered directly to their consumers,” said Ben Silverman, CEO of Electus.

“Yahoo! is the ideal partner for this initiative; not only do they have the audience reach and a deep understanding of what consumers want, but they have a long history of successful custom campaigns that deliver for all partners involved. And this deal moves them even further along that path.”

Electus said the partnership with Yahoo is the first of a number it plans on announcing in the coming months.

“Yahoo! is bringing together the worlds of entertainment and advertising to build differentiated experiences that help redefine branded entertainment,” said Joanne Bradford, senior vice president of North America revenue and market development at Yahoo!