Twitter is a wonderful business tool, not least because it’s free; all it will cost is your time (and if that’s in short supply, you can hire a social media marketer to manage it for you).

Used well, Twitter can provide good exposure for your business; but you can also damage your brand with social media marketing if you’re not careful, so it’s worth learning the biggest dos and don’ts before you start using Twitter.

Tip 1: Be yourself and be human

The beauty of Twitter is that it’s a huge global community of human beings (mostly; there are spammer accounts but they’re easy to spot, block and report). So do show your human side, especially when using your business account. Talk about things that matter to you: funny things your children say, recent achievements, your favourite band or TV show, and so on. Join in with conversations that interest you – be friendly, show emotion, and use smilies if you want to.

On the other hand, don’t be too human. Don’t share anything you wouldn’t share at a real-world business networking event; keep intimate health problems and controversial or potentially offensive opinions to yourself.

Tip 2: Watch how you write

Some people write well, others don’t – that’s true in all areas of life, not just on Twitter. You don’t need to be a bestselling novelist to use Twitter, but it helps if you have basic literacy skills (and if you use Twitter at the website instead of through a client, your Tweets will be spellchecked as you type anyway – which helps).

However good (or bad) your writing skills are, with Twitter’s 140-character limit you’ll need to be creative with your Tweets. Your Tweets need to be concise yet informative, and often you’ll be trying to squeeze in a URL too (URL shortening services like bit.ly and tinyurl.com are lifesavers).

One definite don’t is using text speak. Text speak is fine if you’re 13, but as a professional adult promoting your business you’re just going to look silly, and won’t communicate your messages efficiently – unless you’re targeting 13 year olds.

Tip 3: Share and share alike

If you have some good news – related to your business or your personal life – share it; everybody loves a good news story.

Do share links – to your website, your blog, your local news service, or anything else that interests your followers – this is a great way to get conversations going. But do remember to explain what the link’s about, or your followers will feel less inclined to click it. And don’t Tweet the same link over and over; people will quickly become bored and may stop following you.

Do retweet your friends’ links, too; they’ll be grateful, and so will your followers if the link is interesting and relevant. But here’s a very big ‘do’ – DO make sure you click the link and read the content before sharing it with your followers, or you could end up sharing a page that’s irrelevant or offensive, or which contradicts your usual position on the subject.

Tip 4: Be part of the community

Don’t treat Twitter as your personal billboard. It’s not: it’s a community, millions of members strong, and the community as a whole is not very tolerant of users who constantly advertise. Try to stick to the 80-20 rule when you use Twitter for business: no more than 20% of your Tweets should advertise or self-promote, and at least 80% should be non-promotional. If you can get the ratio down to 90-10 or 95-5, even better.

Listen to what people are saying, and join in. Twitter is a network of conversations, so it’s good practice to listen and respond to parts of those conversations that interest you; don’t just stand in the middle of the room with a megaphone, shouting “I’m fabulous! I’m selling widgets at 20% off this week!” Again – if you wouldn’t do it at a business networking event, don’t do it on Twitter.

Do retweet your friends’ requests for help (for example, charity appeals and sponsorship requests), and do introduce friends that are new to Twitter and could do with some followers. And again – do retweet useful, interesting links from people you follow, but always check links before sending.

Tip 5: Mind your language

Don’t use offensive language when representing your business on Twitter; even mild swearwords can put sensitive souls off following you (and besides – cursing in public is hardly professional).

Use Twitter to answer customer questions and solve their problems, by all means; many organisations use Twitter as a customer services tool very effectively. But never, ever use an impolite or impatient tone with a customer. On Twitter, everything you say is out there for everyone to see, so leave your followers with the best possible impression of your brand at all times… the Internet has a very long memory!

Finally – consider this a bonus tip, since it’s not really connected to any of the previous ones – try to enjoy yourself when you use Twitter. Try to embrace all that’s good about Twitter – the new friendships and business contacts you’ll make, the fun hashtags and trending topics, the strong community spirit – and before long you’ll be singing (or is that Tweeting?) Twitter’s praises to anyone who’ll listen.

It’s been a while since we looked at one of the Google Q&A webmaster videos that Matt Cutts does, but I found this recent one particularly interesting, considering the emphasis that has been put on freshness in search engines lately.

The user question in this particular video says:

Some people are under the impression that blogs are good for SEO only if they’re updated frequently. How much does frequency play into PageRank for blogs & other dynamic sites? Isn’t the content more important than the simple # of posts per day/week?

Matt’s response is that it is indeed much more important to have quality content, but frequency can be a nice thing to have for the users.

Essentially, if you post more frequently, people have more of a reason to keep coming back. That can be good for page views. However, as Matt says…

“Whenever you’re thinking about search engines, it’s much, much, much more important to think about the quality of your content. For example, on my blog, I don’t post every day. Sometimes I don’t post every week. But I try to make sure that each post has something useful about it…”

Matt implies that you’ll be better off in terms of search, if you wait until you can deliver some value to a post, rather than just crank stuff out that isn’t that much different than stuff that’s already out there. This strategy is likely to attract a lot more links, he says.

Quality is always priority one, but I don’t think that’s to say that freshness doesn’t count. For example, as we looked at recently,

Google’s time filters (which are more readily available to searchers, courtesy of the recent redesign of the SERPs), not to mention the realtime results Google often displays, can add some benefit to providing fresh content. Brian Klais, General Manager and VP of Product Mangagement at Covario had a very interesting post at Search Engine Land looking at how the time filter may even help smaller brands get some visibility.

Of course Google has gone out of its way with Caffeine to increase the speed at which it indexes content so it can provide the freshest results possible.

Author: Chris Crum

Business blogging is a different kettle of fish to blogging for money and that, in turn, is entirely different to blogging socially. The type of blog you manage will determine the voice, design, and style of your blog as well as the efforts you’re likely to put into promoting it.

A business blog needs to be professional as well as appear it. Regular posting on topics that your readers will genuinely find interesting can promote you as an expert in your field. A blog can keep the line of communication between you and potential customers open. It enables you to post relevant, keyword rich postings that encourage new traffic and help build your client base.

It’s far from an exhaustive list but below are ten tips to remember when blogging for business:

1 – Set Your Goals Early

In just about every guide you ever read it says “set your goals”; it might be a cliché but it’s true. With a business blog your most likely goal is to incréase sales but other worthy goals can include:

• Communicating with your existing or potential clients
• Relaying company news
• Answering queries and questions
• Providing guides for current customers
• Providing a portal to everything useful related to your industry

The design of your site, type of content to include, whether or not to include ads, and numerous other decisions will be governed by the reason that you start blogging. The sooner you realize what it is that you want to achieve, the sooner you’ll achieve it.

2 – Use SEO Friendly URLs and SEO Plugins

WordPress is an invaluable SEO tool. It is a dedicated Content Management System but, more than that, it has a team of frighteningly dedicated users that create themes, plugins, widgets, and more and then provide them free of charge to other users. Among these tools are a great number of SEO related tools that can be used to determine your meta description and title tags.

A simple but potentially effective SEO fix is to change the format of permalinks or URLs so that they dispense with the default page id to be replaced with an easier to read and keyword optimized page URL. You can do this through the WordPress dashboard.

3 – Consider Your Media Placement

Adding photos and illustrations, logos, videos, and other forms of media are great for reader engagement, but you should consider each of your blog assets and place the most valuable and useful in the most prominent position. The quicker you can grab a reader’s attention, the more likely you will be to keep it for longer.

Certain themes allow you to easily embed video and slideshows into the sidebar of your blog and this can be a very useful tool to make your pages appear more attractive while relaying genuinely useful information.

4 – Consider Your Ad Placement

The primary target of a business blog is not usually to make money directly through the blog itself. Therefore, the placing of third party ads is not necessarily a good choice. However, you can add ads for your company or service as well as associate websites. You can even add banners to specific categories, tags, or pages in your blog. Don’t overdo the number of banner ads and other distracting advertisements though and try to keep the interface clean and professional.

5 – Offer Your Readers the Chance to Pass You Around

Add me, share this, retweet, and email this functions should be provided to your users. When you post something useful and one of your readers shares it, it has the potential to go viral and create a lot of exposure for your blog and therefore your website and your business. This works especially well with highly unique content and can be text, audio, video…

Some themes have these functionalities built into them, but do ensure that they’re enabled. Alternatively find a sidebar widget or a social bookmarking plug-in that offers the same features and install this. Many blog readers read a number of blogs regularly and by enabling them to add you to social bookmarking and social networking sites you may well develop a long term relationship with them while also letting them inform others of what you provide.

6 – Keep Quality Content Coming

Try to set yourself a regular schedule but remember that it can be broken and it can be added to when necessary. If news breaks, then post your commentary on it. If you intersperse product reviews and articles that relate to your business then try to schedule these. Make sure you post regularly, at the very least once a week, and spend some time getting involved in the community that builds up around your blog.

7 – Not Every Post Need Be an Advert

As long as you fill your blog with relevant, interesting, and well written posts then visitors will take the time to look around, read a few posts, and even clíck the ads to your site in order to see exactly what you have to offér. Not every single post needs to include multiple links to your website pages.

You can download plugins that further the likelihood of users reading more posts. Some add a list of related posts to the bottom of each entry while many themes provide the chance to show “most popular” and “most commented” posts to further direct the flow of traffic around your blog.

8 – Respond Where Responses are Expected or Deserved

Managing a blog is more than posting a missive of the week’s news every Friday. No matter how often you post you should spend some time interacting with the community that develops around your blog. Answer questions and queries, provide insight, and give a response where one is requested.

A business blog should always be professional, which means keeping posts and messages that are too personal away. Similarly, spam comments can prove extremely damaging for your SEO as well as the trust your readers place in your business. There’s decent spam settings in WordPress and you can further extend these.

9 – Stuck for Inspiration? Immerse Yourself in Web 2.0

More specifically read forums and blogs, wikis and news sites related to your industry. Look for those news stories, articles, and videos that you like the most and are relevant to your blog and write about them. Read the comments in your blog and look through your analytics to determine the pages that are most popular with readers.

Look at emerging keywords and news topics and try to act quickly. Slant the resulting article in favor of your business, if possible, and then post this to your blog too. There’s plenty of online portals and sites for news in your industry and you can use email updates, RSS readers, and browser or home page plugins to display them regularly and in an orderly and comprehensible way.

10 – Blogging is Great for Business But Business is Also Great for Business

Getting stuck into a blog and truly developing your blog community can be a great way to build traffic to your website and develop clients for your business. Reading related blogs and becoming an active member in social networks can help you find out what your readers want and deliver it frequently.

Blogging and Web 2.0 in general can quickly become addictive. It should be treated as a tool to assist in managing your online business, which means that you need to concentrate on the other aspects of your business. Outsource your blog development and content creation if necessary and enjoy the results.

Business blogging is a different kettle of fish to blogging for money and that, in turn, is entirely different to blogging socially. The type of blog you manage will determine the voice, design, and style of your blog as well as the efforts you’re likely to put into promoting it.

A business blog needs to be professional as well as appear it. Regular posting on topics that your readers will genuinely find interesting can promote you as an expert in your field. A blog can keep the line of communication between you and potential customers open. It enables you to post relevant, keyword rich postings that encourage new traffic and help increase your client base.

It’s far from an exhaustive list but below are ten tips to remember when blogging for business:

1 – Set Your Goals Early

In just about every guide you ever read it says “set your goals”; it might be a clich? but it’s true. With a business blog your most likely goal is to increase sales but other worthy goals can include:

* Communicating with your existing or potential clients.
* Relaying company news.
* Answering queries and questions.
* Providing guides for current customers.
* Providing a portal to everything useful related to your industry.

The design of your site, type of content to include, whether or not to include ads, and numerous other decisions will be governed by the reason that you start blogging. The sooner you realize what it is that you want to achieve, the sooner you’ll achieve it.

2 – Use SEO Friendly URLs And SEO Plugins

WordPress is an invaluable SEO tool. It is a dedicated Content Management System but, more than that, it has a team of frighteningly dedicated users that create themes, plugins, widgets, and more and then provide them for free of charge to other users. Among these tools are a great number of SEO related tools that can be used to determine your meta description and title tags.

A simple but potentially effective SEO fix is to change the format of permalinks or URLs so that they dispense with the default page id to be replaced with an easier to read and keyword optimized page URL. You can do this through the WordPress dashboard.

3 – Consider Your Media Placement

Adding photos and illustrations, logos, videos, and other forms of media are great for reader engagement but you should consider each of your blog assets and place the most valuable and useful in the most prominent position. The quicker you can grab a reader’s attention, the more likely you will be to keep it for longer.

Certain themes allow you to easily embed video and slideshows into the sidebar of your blog and this can be a very useful tool to make your pages appear more attractive while relaying genuinely useful information.

4 – Consider Your Ad Placement

The primary target of a business blog is not usually to make money directly through the blog itself. Therefore, the placing of third party ads is not necessarily a good choice. However, you can add ads for your own company or service as well as partner websites. You can even add banners to specific categories, tags, or pages in your blog. Don’t overdo the number of banner ads and other distracting advertisements though and try to keep the interface clean and professional.

5 – Offer Your Readers The Chance To Pass You Around

Add me, share this, retweet, and email this functions should be provided to your users. When you post something useful and one of your readers shares it, it has the potential to go viral and create a lot of exposure for your blog and therefore your website and your business. This works especially well with highly unique content and can be text, audio, video…

Some themes have these functionalities built into them, but do ensure that they’re enabled. Alternatively find a sidebar widget or a social bookmarking plug-in that offers the same features and install this. Many blog readers read a number of blogs regularly and by enabling them to add you to social bookmarking and social networking sites you may well develop a long term relationship with them while also letting them inform others of what you offer.

6 – Keep Quality Content Coming

Try to set yourself a regular schedule but remember that it can be broken and it can be added to when necessary. If news breaks then post your own commentary on it. If you intersperse product reviews and articles that relate to your own business then try to schedule these. Make sure you post regularly, at the very least once a week, and spend some time getting involved in the community that builds up around your blog.

7 – Not Every Post Need Be An Advert

As long as you fill your blog with relevant, interesting, and well written posts then visitors will take the time to look around, read a few posts, and even click the ads to your own site in order to see exactly what you have to offer. Not every single post needs to include multiple links to your website pages.

You can download plugins that increase the likelihood of users reading more posts. Some add a list of related posts to the bottom of each entry while many themes provide the chance to show “most popular” and “most commented” posts to further direct the flow of traffic around your blog.

8 – Respond Where Responses Are Expected Or Deserved

Managing a blog is more than posting a missive of the week’s news every Friday. No matter how often you post you should spend some time interacting with the community that develops around your blog. Answer questions and queries, offer insight, and provide a response where one is requested.

A business blog should always be professional which means keeping posts and messages that are too personal away. Similarly, spam comments can prove extremely damaging for your SEO as well as the trust your readers place in your business. There’s decent spam settings in WordPress and you can further extend these.

9 – Stuck For Inspiration? Immerse Yourself In Web 2.0

More specifically read forums and blogs, wikis and news sites related to your own industry. Look for those news stories, articles, and videos that you like the most and are relevant to your blog and write about them. Read the comments in your own blog and look through your analytics to determine the pages that are most popular with readers.

Look at emerging keywords and news topics and try to act quickly. Slant the resulting article in favor of your business, if possible, and then post this to your blog too. There’s plenty of online portals and sites for news in your industry and you can use email updates, RSS readers, and browser or home page plug ins to display them regularly and in an orderly and comprehensible way.

10 – Blogging Is Great For Business But Business Is Also Great For Business

Getting stuck into a blog and truly developing your blog community can be a great way to build traffic to your website and develop clients for your business. Reading related blogs and becoming an active member in social networks can help you find out what your readers want and deliver it frequently.

Blogging and web 2.0 in general can quickly become addictive. It should be treated as a tool to assist in managing your online business which means that you need to concentrate on the other aspects of your business. Outsource your blog development and content creation if necessary and enjoy the results.

Author: Matt Jackson

Creating a “buzz” around products, services, businesses or an event is a requirement from all clients. There is no social media marketing wand that someone will wave and a target audience will automatically start coming to your site. And what works for one brand may not work for another.

The process of creating buzz doesn’t start from creating a Blog or creating a video, it’s a social media strategy that encompasses social media and word-of-mouth marketing. We have compiled a list of social media tools that companies use to build their social media marketing mixes.

1. Blogs

Blogs have become a great tool for social media marketing. First because, if optimized correctly, they can be used to drive traffic to a website. A good blog will help in creating internal links, fresh content, active community, or non-search engine traffic.

Examples of popular blogs where you can create your account are: WordPress, Blog.com, Bloggers.com, Typepad, etc.

2. Microblogging

Like blogs, microblogs propose huge opportunities for business endorsement. That is both through content consistency and good optimization. Two of the most used are Posterous and Twitter.

3. Online Video

The importance of online videos has rapidly increased during the last few years. To read more on this topic, have a look at our blog on The Growing Importance of Online Video. Popular video sharing websites include YouTube and Vimeo.

4. Photosharing

Social media is all about sharing! Therefore, there are numerous platforms that allow photo sharing with your friends. Some of them are: Flickr.com, Memeo.com, and Photobucket.com.

5. Podcasting

Podcasting is part of the new media tools that are offered to both promote your brand and your products/services. Check out Blip.fm or RadioPodcast.fr.

6. Presentation Sharing

Another great way to put your brand’s name in the spotlight is by offering presentations on topics of interest for your audience on presentation sharing websites. They are increasingly gaining in popularity nowadays. Some of them are: SlideShare.net, MyPlick.com, Scribd.com, or AuthorSTREAM.com.

7. Social Networks: Applications, Fan Pages, Groups, and Personalities

Social networks are the place to present and promote yourself as well as to keep in touch with your targeted audience. You can read a list of the most popular on our blog on our blog on Top Social Media Network Sites!

8. Crowd Sourcing/Voting

Crowdsourcing is an effective model because it can be used for developing programs, marketing efforts, research, and education. For example Dell has used Crowdsourcing as a distributed problem-solving and production model and has reduced costs and increased their efficiency. Also look at the Grand Challenge for FNIH to see a crowd sourcing campaign.

9. Bookmarking/Tagging

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Examples of popular social bookmarking websites: delicious.com, Digg, Diigo, Fark, Mixx, MyBlogLog, Newsvine, Propeller, Reddit, Slashdot.org, StumbleUpon, Yahoo!, and Buzz.

10. Discussion Boards and Forums

Online forums are a great way to market your products/services and interact with other professionals or your audience. Engaging your audience in your niche forum can bring high value to your site and brand too.

11. Content Aggregation

Content aggregation offers you the chance to bring all news and feeds around your online community accounts in one place. Some say this is the future of social media. Emerging content aggregation websites: Bloglines, FriendFeed, Lifestream.fm, Lijit.

12. Brand Monitoring

Social media is also offering a variety of tools that help businesses understand the positioning of their brand. Popular examples are: Buzzlogic, Radian6, or ReputationDefender.

13. Ratings and Reviews

The best way to find out where your website stands or how your brand is perceived by others is through ratings and reviews. See Yelp, or GetSatisfaction.

14. Widgets

For those who are trying to promote their own brands, they can create personalized badges, using interesting widgets on Facebook, Twitter, and other networks or by simply using WidgetBox or SpringWidgets.

15. Wikis

Wikis are our online encyclopedia. A short list of wikis: Wikipedia.org, Citizendium.org, AboutUs.org, Pbwiki(PBworks.com), or Wetpaint.com.

Along with all the new ways of publishing your content on networking sites, it is important to publish your articles on publishing sites like EzineArticles, eHow, Google Docs (docs.google.com), IdeaMarketers, Yahoo Articles Group (groups.yahoo.com) and submit your press releases on important specialized sites like i-Newswire, PR.com, PressReleasePoint, and PRLog.org.

Social Media Marketing can be very confusing at times. There are lots of networks and channels to choose from. Creating a presence on all the channels is very time consuming and randomly choosing a network is not a good social media strategy. Companies are struggling to understand what social media marketing mix they should use to make their brand successful in the online world.

We suggest it is important to identify which channels are suitable for your business depending on your target audience. Businesses must plan a step-by-step onlíne marketing strategy and brainstorm ideas with their onlíne marketing agency that will work for their products/service.

When it comes to social media, no one “gets it” as well as Twitter. According to Econsultancy, as of Jan 2010, Twitter has 75 million user accounts, with about 15 million of that total being active users. See “20+ Mind-Blowing Social Media Statistics Revisited”. That’s a lot of people sending a lot of Tweets. This micro-blogging service makes it easy for small businesses and entrepreneurs to stay in touch with those who choose to follow them, and stay updated on new products, services, specíal offers, industry news and more. It’s a win-win for both the Tweeter, and their followers.

When it comes to using Twitter, there’s a right way and a wrong way to use it. Your messages must be kept short, under 140 characters, and they need to be helpful or informative. Don’t carry on about what you ate for breakfast, or the fact that you just brushed your teeth. People will unfollow you faster than they can hit the button, even if you do have good oral habits.

I’ve been using Twitter for a long time now and here’s what I’ve found works best when participating in this close knit community of few words.

1) Regular Postings: Now I’m not saying you need to post every day, although that would be nice. You do need to make an appearance on a regular basis. It’s like school – you need to show up to pass. Be a contributor that your followers get to really know and look forward to your Tweets. If you’re the type of person who needs to plan ahead, you can always use a service that allows you to schedule tweets in advance, such as Socialoomph.com

2) Retweet: If you see Tweets posted by other users that you think your followers would like, then retweet them. It only takes one click, and you’ll also be creating goodwill with other Twitter users at the same time. If you’d like, you can add a personal thought or comment before sending it. Also, make it easy for others to retweet your posts by adding RT buttons to your website or blog. It’s easy with the TweetMeme Retweet Button.

3) Be Helpful: Keep in mind Twitter is a form of social Media, so social interaction is key. It’s not all about you. Whenever a chance arises to answer a question, participate in a survey, or help solve a problem, do so. In this way you’re participating in the community. This also will help your brand and image when others know they can count on you for support or feedback.

4) Don’t Be A Follow CopyCat: Don’t follow everybody who follows you. This is probably my biggest pet peeve when it comes to Twitter. So many people turn this feature on to auto follow those who follow them. Why would you want to do this? I’d prefer that those I follow are people and topics I’ve hand-selected that interest me, and not a mish-mash of followers who may be ranting about things I have no interest in. Be selective in who you follow or your Twitter stream could quickly fill up with junk or spam. For quality people to follow, see – FollowOnTwitterLists.com.

5) What to Tweet: Make sure that the tweets you post are helpful and/or informative. Late breaking news pertaining to your industry, as well as any specials or sales you may have going on are always good topics. If you find something you think your followers would like, especially if it’s free or a bargain, share the love. Plus, if your tweets are good, it will encourage others to retweet them. For ideas see – ArtBizBlog.com

6) Comment: Particpate in the community by commenting on other people’s tweets. If you can answer a question, do so. It doesn’t hurt and people really will appreciate it when you take the time to comment on what they have to say. It lets them know that others are actually listening to what they have to say in the “Twitterverse”.

7) Say Thank You: When someone takes the time to retweet one of your tweets, make sure to reply to them with a “thank you”. Manners rule online as well as off, and they’ll like the fact that you noticed the retweet and took the time to show some gratitude. It may even inspire them to retweet more of your tweets in the future.

Be Personal: Again, I don’t need to know what you ate for dinner, but every now and then you should show your human side with a creative thought, quote, or other statement. Let people know you’re “real” and not just a lean mean business machine. You want to tread lightly in this area. Too personal is overkill, but a little can help in establishing a connection with your followers.

9) Post Pictures/Video: Remember, Twitter is not just for text. It’s easy to post short videos, and pictures too. It’s nice to mix it up a little and share content in other formats as well. Here are some resources – Video Sharing Websites for Twitter.

10) Talk About More Than Yourself: It’s not all about you, so please don’t make all your tweets one big marketing message, such as only tweeting about your latest press release, blog posting, or article that was published. No one will want to follow you if you’re one big commercial. Yes, some of this is fine in moderation, but you need to walk a fine line and mix it up with other helpful, interesting topics.

Now it’s time to start putting these tips into action. Social media is all about participating and listening to what others have to say. It’s all about creating and sharing information and becoming part of the community. If you approach Twitter in this fashion, you’ll not only have a lot more fun, but your followers will like and respect you – and if that doesn’t strengthen your brand, nothing will.

Author: Merle’s Mission Blog

Are you thinking about launching your business blog? You’re not alone. A recent study by GuideWireGroup revealed that approximately 89 percent of businesses polled use blogs as a way to communicate with their customers. In another survey, Burson-Marsteller found that 15% of Fortune 500 companies have blogs. A successful business blog can generate tens of thousands of dollars in revenue each year, with figures for large corporations typically much higher.

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

LinkedIn is often discussed as a powerful social networking tool, particularly for business professionals, employers, and jobseekers. What is not discussed as frequently is the site’s ability to simply drive traffic to your site. We talked to entrepreneur Lewis Howes (who claims that LinkedIn is one of the top traffic sources to his blogs) about how powerful LinkedIn can be for driving traffic.
We asked Howes why he thinks people don’t generally associate LinkedIn with driving traffic like they would with other social networks like Facebook or Twitter. “Their perception of LinkedIn is of a resume, or a way to get a job, but they don’t see all of the powerful tools within LinkedIn that allow you to drive traffic back to your site,” he tells WebProNews.

LinkedIn has announced that it is now being integrated into Microsoft Outlook, in one of the numerous convergences of social media and email that are increasingly taking place.

“Anytime you can increase the size of your network on LinkedIn, it will give you the opportunity to distribute your content to more people, therefore driving more traffic back to your site,” says Howes. “The Outlook integration is a way to connect more with your current LinkedIn contacts, and also help you grow you network as well.”

In some ways, LinkedIn traffic may even be more valuable than traffic from other social networks and sites. This is simply due to the generally professional nature of LinkedIn itself.

“You need to take into consideration that LinkedIn has the highest average household income per user over any other social networking site (even NYTimes.com and BusinessWeek.com readers),” Howes tells us. “That being said, these are business decision makers you are targeting with your traffic from LinkedIn. The network is for real, and it will only continue to grow in time as there are currently 60 million professionals.”

Now consider that LinkedIn could be one of your top traffic sources if you put enough effort into cultivating it as such. On a scale of 1-10, Howes says he’d rank it as a 7 or 8 on importance level for using it. “For me it is always one of the top 5 referring sites that drives traffic to my blogs,” he says.

Howes went through ten steps in a post at ProBlogger.net. While the post is geared at driving traffic to your blog, you may find the advice helpful for other types of sites. In summary (he goes into much more detail about each of these in the post), the ten steps are:

1. Complete your profile.
2. Increase you connections.
3. Customize your website links.
4. Answer questions.
5. Update your status.
6. Join niche groups.
7. Post comments in groups.
8. Add RSS feeds to groups.
9. Create a group.
10. Add the blog application to your profile.

Now that LinkedIn can be integrated into Microsoft Outlook, I would suggest looking at getting that set up as well (steps here), if you want to get serious about including LinkedIn in your traffic strategy.

Of course there are plenty of other ways to use LinkedIn as a tool to increase the success of your business. As Howes lists, you can sell products, find new clients/employees, generate leads, receive funding, obtain sponsorships, sell tickets to events, as get press coverage to name a few.

We all make New Year’s resolutions – some are personal, some are business or professional in nature. Even if we don’t actually make New Year’s resolutions, we engage in formal and informal “planning” as we look ahead to the new year.

If you operate a website, you’re probably aware that your website operations are now highly regulated. And the pace of legal regulations continues to accelerate.

Which means that you face an increasing risk of legal liability.

So, it’s a good idea to give your website a legal check-up and to update your site before it’s too late.

General Issue Checklist

The general checklist below covers issues that are not new issues which arose in 2009. These issues have been around for a while, but some may be new to you, particularly if your website or marketing activities changed recently.

• Copyright Notice. These are the basic elements of a copyright notice: the word “copyright” or copyright symbol (c in a circle) followed by the year of first publication followed by the name of the copyright owner followed by “All rights reserved worldwide.” Here’s an example taken from my digicontracts.com website: Copyright 1996-2010 Digital Contracts, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.

• Blogs. If you’ve recently added a blog to your site, or if your site is a blog site, it’s possible that a visitor could post infringing materials (e.g. text, video links, images). Under the strict principles of copyright law, you’d be a copyright infringer even if you were unaware of the posting. Your liability could be significant. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides a “safe harbor” from liability provided you publish a DMCA notice and register with the Copyright Office.

• Collection, Use and Sharing of Personal Information. Your marketing activities determine the categories of personal information you collect, how you use it, and how you share it. As you evolve your marketing practices over time, it’s easy to forget that your Privacy Policy should reflect your actual practices regarding personal information. This is one area in which most online marketers are the most vulnerable to legal liability. So, review carefully your present and anticipated future marketing activities that include personal information and update your Privacy Policy accordingly.

• Data Security. Technology and security practices are in a continual state of evolution. You’re required to implement and maintain “reasonable and appropriate” data security measures, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). If your site does not actually implement up-to-date measures, you should update them immediately.

• Service Providers. Do your outsourced service providers – hosting, SEO, website development, etc. – have access to the internals of your website server and your databases that archive personal information? If so, according to the FTC, you need to enter into simple confidentiality agreements with these service providers.

• Human Intervention in Online Contracting. Two 2008 cases highlighted the fact that human intervention in online contracting may be a recipe for creating unenforceable agreements. The recipe for enforceable online agreements is well settled, but if you add intervention by your employees into the acceptance process, your online agreement may end up becoming unenforceable.

Emerging Issue Checklist

The emerging issue checklist below covers issues that were new in 2009 or experienced relatively significant new developments in 2009.

• Keyword-Triggered Ads. The issue is familiar: Whether pay-per-click advertisers should be permitted to use keywords that are also competitor’s trademarks for purposes of triggering the advertisers’ ads on a search results page. This issue continued to be hotly litigated in 2009 without ultimate resolution due to a split among various Circuit Courts of Appeals. However, a 2nd Circuit ruling in 2009 narrowed the split in favor of trademark owners. Congress may resolve the split with specific legislation in 2010.

• Behavioral Ads. Behavioral ads are highly relevant to consumers because they are based on consumers’ online behavior, including data tracked regarding sites visited, length of visits, content read, and searches made. In February 2009, the FTC issued a staff report entitled “Self-Regulatory Principles For Online Behavioral Advertising”. This report set out certain principles for purposes of protecting consumer privacy. Later, Google issued a notice that “interest-based” advertising utilized in its AdSense program required a modification to the Privacy Policies of all participants in the AdSense program. Look for congressional action on behavioral advertising in 2010.

• Red Flag Identity Theft Policy. 2009 saw deadlines for establishing a Red Flag Identity Theft Policy come and go. Extensions of the deadline were ordered by the FTC due to confusion over the scope of the regulations and who is covered. The current deadline is June 1, 2010. In simple terms, if your registered users make periodic payments payable as monthly or quarterly installments, or if you extend credít so that payment is made after receipt of the product or service, you’re covered by the regulations, and you should implement a policy.

• False Advertising. In July 2009, the Attorney General for New York reached a settlement with a cosmetic surgery company over the company’s fake positive consumer reviews on the Web. The company ordered its employees to pose as customers and to write flattering reviews. The Company agreed to pay $300,000 in penalties.

• FTC Guides. Concerned over false advertising on the Web (including the type of behavior discussed in the False Advertising point above), the FTC issued new Guides explaining how they will interpret existing law regarding endorsements and testimonials used in online advertising. If you recruit affiliates, resellers, or bloggers to promote your offering, you’d be classified as an “Advertiser” under the Guides, and if you’re recruited as an affiliate, reseller, or blogger to pitch the products of others, you’d be classified as an “Endorser” under the Guides. In simple terms, Advertisers are required to provide guidance and training to their Endorsers regarding the Guides or face liability. Endorsers are required to disclose material connections with their sponsoring Advertisers including receipt of compensation of any kind. Drafting and posting a Disclosure Policy is the key to compliance for Endorsers in order to avoid a fine of up to $11,000.

What to do if You’re Developing a New Website

If you’re developing a new website (or heaven forbid, if you have an existing website that has yet to incorporate website compliance documents), your website should incorporate some combination of the following documents:

• FTC Guides Disclosure Policy,
• Legal Page,
• Terms of Use,
• DMCA Registration Form,
• Privacy Policy,
• Service Provider Privacy-Security Agreement,
• Customer Agreement (click-wrapped SaaS, Membership, Subscription, Account Agreement), and
• Red Flag Identity Theft Policy.

Conclusion

The checklists in this article are not exhaustive; however, they should be a good start to a comprehensive legal check-up for your website as you move into 2010.

It’s not the “wild, wild west” atmosphere on the Web anymore. Legal compliance is essential if you want to avoid liability in a highly regulated environment.

This article is provided for educational and informative purposes only. This information does not constitute legal advice, and should not be construed as such.

Companies that have consistently updated blog content with back links to their main company site and it’s interior web pages will always perform much better in the search engines.

So, why don’t most companies have a blog?

The answer lies in one simple word:

CONSISTENCY

That’s right. You need to regularly and constantly post to the blog — and how many business owners have the time for that?

That’s the beauty of our Blog Marketing service.

We not only setup and design TWO blogs, but our professional writers also consistently write and post new content to those blogs on your behalf. Every time we post, we also promote the new blog entries in social bookmarking sites like Digg and others.

So you’re getting all the benefits of a frequently updated and promoted blog — from one of the top and most professional marketing companies on the web — and without having to worry about doing any of the work!

Take a look for yourself:

… get a blog for your company and make the search engines fall in love with YOUR site.