Business Blog as Base of Operations for Online Marketing

Lately I’ve taken to describing business blogs as a company’s base of operations for online marketing activities.

All Roads Should Lead to Your Business Blog
Most companies - 99.9% - consider their basic website to be the base of operations for their web presence. All roads lead to the website’s Home page. The Home page URL is what’s plastered all over business cards, stationary, brochures, and promotional materials. Inbound links (which are usually in short supply) point to the Home page.

But is this strategy still correct? Not necessarily. Today, customers want to evaluate companies differently. They’re interested in personality, values, and authenticity.…

Get More Blog Traffic with Adgitize - Guest Post by Ken Brown

I’m happy to have a guest post today from Ken Brown, creator and developer of Adgitize, a service he describes as “World Class Advertising on a Blogger’s Budget”. I met Ken recently and was very impressed with his practical outlook, straightforward approach, understanding of bloggers, and command of the facts. In the world of online advertising, where the norm is so often over promise and under deliver, it’s refreshing to work with someone who simply tells it like it is. I’ve decided to give Adgitize a try. In the following post, Ken explains his program - how does it sound…

7 Critical Questions New Bloggers Do Ask

The other day I detailed critical questions new bloggers fail to ask. Now here are seven questions I almost always hear, and they are good ones.

1. How much will a blog cost? The “hard costs” for blogging technology are low, depending largely on the platform you select and the complexity of your design and programming requirements. The “soft costs” of writing and marketing your blog are whatever you want them to be. Blogging can chew up a lot of employee time, but it doesn’t have to.

2. What platform should I use? All other things being equal, I recommend WordPress. It’s incredibly robust,…

5 Critical Questions New Bloggers Fail to Ask

When a business decides to blog, they’re bubbling with questions. But quite often, very important issues aren’t on their radar at all. When consulting, these are the 5 questions I wish I heard more often.

1. What is my blogging objective? You’ve got to see the forest before you can see the trees. Clients frequently get hung up on technology questions and tactical issues such as how to handle negative comments. Before you can tackle those problems you must have an idea of what you want to achieve with your blog. More clients? More loyal clients? Thought leadership? SEO, pure and simple?…

Look before You Leap with Your Business Blog

Although my business is All About Action, I counsel clients to be very methodical about laying out their business blogging strategy. Without proper planning, your business blog can cause problems. With proper planning, your blog can be a smashing success. Here are some things to consider.

What are you trying to accomplish with your blog? Stronger customer relationships? Better customer service? Technical support? Branding? Something else? You can have multiple objectives, but without a clear sense of purpose, your blog will never have the focus necessary to attract regular readers.

Who are you writing for? Customers? Peers? Both? Neither? Again, you can write for multiple…

Are You Losing Touch with Your Customers?

If you are, start an executive blog. When a company is young, owners and top leaders do it all, including and especially bringing in the customers. But as a company grows, owners and leaders are pulled in a thousand directions. When you’re busy developing strategy, running operations, and putting out fires, there’s not much time for taking customers to lunch, listening to their ideas, and asking for their evaluation of how your company is doing.

And yet, understanding customers and building solid customer relationships are probably what made your business successful in the first place. If you lose touch with customers -…

What’s the Best Way to Handle Blog Categories?

Blog categories can be a valuable resource for your readers. When I visit a blog, the first thing I check out is the categories - well constructed categories provide a fast and accurate snapshot of what the blog is all about.

With that in mind, I’ve been trying to upgrade my own category list to make it more reader-friendly. That’s entailed the following -

1. Reducing the number of categories. After 200+ posts, I had accumulated lots of categories with only one or two posts. What at the time seemed like a fertile field for future posts turned out to be a dead…

Use WordPress for Your Company Web Site

Transitioning from Blogger to WordPress would have been impossible for me without the help of Lara Kulpa, an incredibly talented WordPress developer I met through my blogging friend Liz Strauss. (Thank you, Liz!)

Lara and I are teaming up to help companies build Web sites and/or blogs in WordPress. From my point of view as a sales and marketing strategist, I can see enormous sales and marketing value in the WordPress approach. For a look at the technical benefits of WordPress, here are insights from Lara.

Interview with Lara Kulpa, Anubis Marketing.

1. How long have you been working with WordPress?
I discovered it back…

43 Reasons to Start a Business Blog

1. Your competitors aren’t blogging …
2. Yet.
3. Talk directly to customers.
4. Give customers a way to talk directly to you.
5. Improve the organic search performance of your Web site …
6. Big time.
7. Generate leads.
8. Earn referrals.
9. Build customer confidence by showcasing your expertise.
10.Build customer confidence by being genuine.
11. Build customer confidence by listening and responding.
12. Build customer confidence by being complete.
13. Keep customers informed.
14. Keep customers longer.
15. Keep customers coming back.
16. Build morale by asking employees to contribute.
17. Build morale by asking employees to innovate.
18. Blogs are another option for customer support …
19. Often a better one than phone or…

Starting Up–Web Site, Blog, or Both?

When entreprenuers are preparing to launch, creating a conventional Web site is standard procedure. In some cases, it shouldn’t be. A blog might be a better option. Why?

1. Cost. Creating a conventional Web site is expensive. Costs range from around $500-$5000 for a decent site, depending on the number of pages, graphics, and programming complexity. Hard costs for a blog start as low as zero. For a new business, owners should think long and hard whether a Web site is the best use of funds.

2. Flexibility. Web site content tends to be somewhat fixed. But like a new business, blogs evolve.…

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