Owner: Better Business Blogging URL:http://www.betterbusinessblogging.com Join Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2007 17:48:22 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Everything a business needs to set up, develop and market a successful business blog. Also available a free ecoure on Business Blogging Site statistics:Click here
Blogworld, SEO and Title tags 2007-11-23 16:05:38 I’ve mentioned a number of times how important title tags are and how useful they can be (and need to be) in different aspects of search engine optimisation for blogs. So I was glad to see that in one of the first sessions at the recent BlogWorld conference over in Las Vegas, that this subject was covered again by the speakers.
However, as I listened to extracts from the session, there was one element that I picked up and hadn’t considered that was mentioned by Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim, and it’s one I’d like to pass on here. But first a little background.
The title of the post (or Post Title
) appears at the top of each individual post on the blog, whereas the words which appear at the top of the browser window is the so called Title Tag. Hopefully, the image below will show the distinction between them.
Normally in blogs, there is a close relationship between the two elements because most blog software automatically creates a Title Tag from the title of Read more:SEO
Don’t use blogs for SEO! 2007-11-30 08:56:20 It is an absolute waste to set up a business blog with the sole intention of using it to enhance your Search Engine rankings. If you do, then you will not only be missing out on the important benefits that blogs offer but also jeopardising the success of your own, right from the word go.
“But I thought a business blog would help my rankings!”, I hear you cry. “Absolutely”, I reply, “it will, enormously so!”
But that’s not the point. Blogs enable you to do so much more, whether you are using them to communicate with your readers, build trust and connections with both customers and prospects alike, carry out market research or customer service, or indeed any of 101 different business uses that they can be put to. And that’s where your focus, effort and attention should be directed, not simply on helping your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO
) efforts!
If you do these things correctly and keep the content of your blog focused on what your targ
Planning versus spontaneity on your blog 2007-11-28 19:12:38 I’ve always been a big advocate of planning your posts on a business blog but I was asked recently whether I felt that this would have the effect of stifling the spontaneity and “authentic voice” that blogs are supposed to have.
For me, the answer is a categorical no. The issue, as I see it, stems from the belief that the two elements, planning and spontaneity, are diametrically opposed. They’re not - in fact, they sit very comfortably alongside each other. From a blogging perspective, it’s good to be able to find a balance between the two while, from a business perspective, planning is all important – not to stifle spontaneity and creativeness but to channel and focus it.
Think of it like a river
If I could use an analogy here, think of your business blog as a long winding river – a river flows in a clear overall direction and has a destination which it moves towards; sometimes it meanders off but ultimately rejoins the main flow of the river and continues back on t Read more:versus
Olympic and Corporate Blogging 2008-03-11 18:59:09 Before anything else, I’d like to apologise to those of you who follow the blog as I know many thousands of you do. As you will be only too aware, I have taken a sabbatical from this blog over the last month which should have been better announced and pre-anounced to you. I am, however, [...] Read more:Olympic
, Blogging
3 Key Blogging Questions: Question 2 2008-01-28 15:46:11 This is part of a 3 part mini-series looking at the planning phase of setting up and starting your business blog.
Each post will focus on one of the 3 key questions that you should have clear answers for as you set up your blog before you start to write it.
Question
2:Who are you writing for?
Unless [...] Read more:Blogging
Super Advocate - ‘A’ list Blogger - Bloke down the pub 2008-01-24 12:12:53 I read earlier this month an article in the Financial Times entitled Business urged to woo social network figures which was reporting on some of the findings in a report on social networking from Experian and Hitwise. In it, we are recommended to woo “super-advocates” that is to say influential members on social networking sites [...] Read more:Super
, Advocate
, Blogger
3 Key Blogging Questions: Question 1 2008-01-23 09:06:21 This is part of a 3 part mini-series looking at the planning phase of setting up and starting your business blog.
Each post will focus on one of the 3 key questions that you should have clear answers for as you set up your blog before you start to write it.
Question
1:What you do want to [...] Read more:Blogging
Blogs for Market Research and Focus Groups 2008-01-21 06:00:32 In a post called Using Blogs
as Communities for Research
and Development back in Sept 2006, I mentioned that one of the lesser known yet still ideal uses for business blogs is as a vehicle for conducting market research and product development. Why? Simply because your blog will create a community around itself containing exactly [...] Read more:Market
, Focus
, Groups
RSS, Blogs and Newsletters 2008-01-18 16:15:28 The RSS Feed is one of those key underlying technologies in a blog that can do a huge number of things for us and yet most of us, myself included, are still only scratching the surface with it.
Its main use is of course to give your readers a secure and immediate way of receiving your [...] Read more:Blogs
, Newsletters
Who owns YOUR social network? You? 2008-01-07 05:00:58 Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a number of enquiries from different social network
s, or rather from certain of their members, asking me to join their networks. Granted, many of these are automated - which amounts to spamming by the website owners in my view, but that’s another story - but this has [...]
Small Business Blogging 2007-12-31 12:00:03 It is great to see articles appear in major newspapers which extol the virtues of blogging and in particular business blogging. This is partly because it adds some additional (hopefully) useful information for companies looking at whether they are going to incorporate it into their own activities and partly because it is always hugely powerful [...] Read more:Blogging
, Small
, Business
, Small Business
Wishing you a Happy Christmas! 2007-12-24 06:52:02 Once again the time has come to put the keyboard to one side for a few days so this will be my last post before Christmas
and for a few days - family duties call! I will, however, be posting between Christmas and the New Year and planning my own blogging ahead in 2008 to [...] Read more:Wishing
, Happy
Google embraces blogs again 2007-12-19 08:10:37 To say that I’m not a fan of Blogger is probably understating things a bit - when it comes to business blogs, their system is certainly way down the list of blogging platforms that I’d choose or recommend.
However, when it comes to their owner Google
, then as part of their foray into the world of [...]
Comments - BBB Quick Guides 2008-03-14 16:18:17 One of the key characteristics of a blog is the ability for people to comment on what you have posted – there are some people who will even argue that it is not really a blog without them! Having this capability gives the blog its interactive element, opens up the opportunities for communications and can [...] Read more:Comments
, Quick
, Guides
3 Key Blogging Questions: Question 3 2008-03-20 17:30:47 This is part of a 3 part mini-series looking at the planning phase of setting up and starting your business blog.
Each post will focus on one of the 3 key questions that you should have clear answers for as you set up your blog before you start to write it.
Question
3:What do you want to [...] Read more:Blogging
Optimising your Blog for your Readers 2008-03-25 16:58:33 This is the first of a 3 part series looking at blog optimisation. When people talk about how to optimise blogs, they are generally referring to Search Engine Optimisation – while this is important, and something I’ll be looking at in depth in part 2 of the series, it’s only part of what we should [...]
Corporate blogging guidelines and transparency 2008-03-27 17:50:13 Earlier this month, I wrote briefly about company blogging policy as part of my commentary on a piece covering the Blogging Guidelines issued by the IOC ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
Yesterday, I read a news story by Anne Broache at CNet News.com entitled Corporate employee blogs: Lawsuits waiting to happen? which looked at some legal [...]
Separate blog or blog on my own website? 2008-04-25 17:00:30 Judging by the search terms that people use to find Better Business Blogging, a topic which seems to be a constant issue for people looking at setting up their own business blog is how and where to locate their blog. Primarily, should it be as part of their own website
or should it be on [...]
Optimizing your Blog for Search Engines 2008-05-19 17:00:07 Warning - Long Post (even for me!)
Remember that when it comes to “Optimising your blog”, looking at the factors which will be picked up by the Search
Engines is only one part of the equation. You also need to consider optimising the blog for your readers and for your business objectives - creating a blog [...]
It’s good to link … 2008-05-16 15:03:31 Linking is part and parcel of blogging … and it’s an important part of it as well. The blogosphere thrives on links & connections and those blogs which create those outbound links will tend to thrive with it.
Put simply, linking out is good – good for your blog and good for your business.
As you link [...]
Which companies can particularly benefit from blogs? 2008-06-26 03:36:22 While there is a growing recognition of the pivotal role that social media can play in business marketing and the key role of a business blogs at the very centre of that activity, I still get the feeling that some companies often wonder whether they could also benefit
from this or if it’s just for [...]
Buzz Marketing and the Law 2008-06-23 04:29:19 Marketing Week ran a front page item a couple of week’s back which focused on buzz marketing - the question they asked was whether the new EU Law is likely to spell “The end for Buzz Marketing
?” So what is it all about and are these bleak prophecies really warranted?
According to Marketing Week, Buzz Marketing [...] Read more:Marketing
Optimizing your Blog for your Business 2008-07-15 09:57:09 The 3rd part of the series and a lot of what I have been talking about in the first two posts on Optimising your blog for Search Engines and Optimising your Blog for your Readers, will be relevant here. In fact, it probably all is. Generally, when it comes to our businesses, our online “relationships” [...] Read more:Business
10 Key things to do before starting a Business Blog 2008-07-11 18:00:15 1. STOP!!
Before you rush in and publish your first post on your new blog, stop. That’s right, stop, hang fire, wait, take a chill pill, or whatever phrase you care to use. First, let’s do a little bit of thinking and, heaven forbid, planning before we rush over to the nearest free blog site to [...] Read more:Business
, things
No blog is an island 2008-07-08 07:09:37 I’d love to be able to describe a blog as an all powerful “magic wand” which will single-handedly solve all your marketing woes. Unfortunately, in spite of what some over eager blogging enthusiasts might have us believe, it’s simply not the case. What blogs are, however, are excellent tools which sit perfectly at the centre [...]
RSS needs a good PR agent 2008-07-22 17:54:40 To most, RSS is not going to appear to be the most exciting tool in the social media box - it’s not coming out in video any time soon, can’t rival podcasts in the audio department, doesn’t seem to interact with anything and, all in all, comes across like someone who’d prefer to sit in [...]
17 types of posts to strengthen your business blog 2008-07-18 11:44:58 One of the key worries that businesses have as they start to develop their blog is what to write about and how best to communicate their messages across to their readers. Effectively, what sort of posts
they should write. Well, posts can take many shapes and forms according to the author’s inclination and the readers’ [...] Read more:types
, business blog
Why on earth do you link to your blog? 2008-07-17 18:00:40 No, I really do mean it, why do you link to your blog?
I’m thinking here of the people on business or social networking sites who insist on blindly linking to their blog (as well as their website) from their profile because they have been given a space to do so. Great if you have a [...]
12 Tools I use for Blogging (and for business) 2008-08-11 17:30:10 Not so much blogging tools, but rather tools I use in the course of blogging, if you see what I mean! Anyway, here are 12 tools that I find massively useful in and around my blog.
1. Feedburner
One of the blogging tools I would recommend unreservedly. While I may not visit the site every day, [...] Read more:Tools
, Blogging
Online media guidelines from an unexpected source 2008-09-03 08:49:01 Although perhaps influenced by watching the wonderful “Yes Minister” in the 1980’s, my image of the British Civil Service conjures up an image of leather armchairs, men only clubs and political machinations. It would not have been where I would have first thought to look for a set of nicely concise guidelines about “online participation” [...] Read more:media
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