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Posts Tagged ‘blogging’

Regular Blogging and Its SEO Implications

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Last week I wrote a post on why it’s important to blog regularly. It’s important from a trust and relationship building perspective, but it also makes sense from a Search Engine Optimization perspective. I’m not qualified to write on SEO, but I know someone who is, and I did a shout out for a guest blog post.

@seowashdc, better known to some of you as Nancy Wigal of the Search Engine Academy of Washington DC, tells us all about why regular blogging is critical from an SEO perspective. She also gives us some tips on how to make our blogs more search engine friendly.

Take it away, Nancy!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and blogging help you build relationships with your prospects and clients. Here’s how you can quickly and easily incorporate some basic SEO techniques to attract the right target audience.

Before you embark on that relationship, SEO shows you what is important and critical to say to your target market.

Start by applying SEO to your blog posts with keyword research. If you don’t know the words and terms your prospects and customers use online, how can you show up in their search results? How do you discover the words they’re using? You can read competitor’s blogs, ask your sales force/marketing team what they’re hearing and reading, and you can also ask your customers directly. By engaging your clients, you’re also fostering a relationship with them – they know that you really care, since you asked them for help.

There are number of keyword tools you can use. Wordtracker is a great tool because it shows you the number of searches, provides a thesaurus function, does lateral thinking for any term you enter, and shows you the number of competing web pages for the keyword term you’re targeting.

You can also use Keyword Finder or Google Insights for Search. The point is, do some research and target the right keywords for your market.

So you have keywords. Great – what do you do with them? At this point, look at them and start brainstorming blog topics around them. Let’s say you have six great keyword terms. Five of them could be stand-alone blog posts. This is wonderful news, because you can now develop a series of blog posts around these terms. You can create good content and if you’ve developed the theme properly, build some buzz and anticipation with each post.

Next, SEO and blogging are great relationship partners because the search engines love fresh, updated, regular content. Since you’ve done your keyword research and carefully laid out your blog posting strategy, you’re now very well positioned to publish regular, high quality content posts to build a relationship with your target audience. How often should you post?

As part of your overall marketing campaign, build a project timeline and include a calendar of regular blog posts. It could be as often as four times each week, or twice. It’s up to you. The more regularly you post new content, the more often the search engine robots will visit your site and rank your posts. The bottom line is, the more the better. The search engines love new content.

Now, you’re ready to write those blog entries. Use your keyword term in the post headline, the first paragraph and sprinkled throughout the post in context. In general, you want a keyword density of 4 – 8% for every 400 words of content. It’s not that many times you need to use the keyword term. Be careful not to overuse the term, and feel free to use synonyms, since search engine algorithms recognize those as well.

Just keep everything in context and most of all, write high quality, informative, useful blog posts. Just to be very clear – you’re not writing the blog post for the search engines – you are writing for your target audience, but applying these SEO techniques will get your blog posts to come up higher in search engine results for the keyword term you selected.

Now you’re armed with some simple, but powerful SEO techniques to help your blog posts build a relationship with your target market for increased sales and profits. Happy hunting!

Thanks Nancy! Anyone have anything to add?

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Tags: blogging, Relationship building
Posted in social media | 4 Comments »

If You’re Going to Blog, Do It Regularly

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Blogging is an important part of social media. Blogging gives you space to express your thoughts and opinions. If you want to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field, blogging is an excellent way to do it. As much as I love Twitter, there are concepts that need more than 140 characters.

But blogging is also an important part of relationship building. If you like what the bloggers you follow say, you can link to their posts, comment on their blogs, tweet their content and link to their articles from your Facebook page. And that’s only scratching the surface of relationship building through blogging.

But we can’t build that relationship if you don’t post regularly.

No, regularly doesn’t have to mean every day. Even once a week keeps you enough on someone’s screen. But regular and on some predictable schedule is important.

An example. There is another blogger I want to build a relationship with. He’s a more successful speaker than I am, and he has several books published. He’s farther along my success path than I am. So I want to learn from him. And I want to build a relationship because who knows how we could help each other.

His posts are fantastic, and I comment on them every time they appear. Which isn’t a big time commitment for me because he posts less than once a month.

That’s very disappointing to me. I like his content. I learn something or get a good idea every time he posts. And I promote him through Twitter and my Facebook page. So he gets benefit from the relationship as well. But he doesn’t do it very often. Which runs the risk that I will forget about him and move on to another blogger.

Okay, I’m not saying that failing to build a relationship with me is terribly harmful to him. He’s more successful than I, and obviously something he’s doing is working. But if you are newer to the blogosphere and still building your reputation in the social media sphere, know that regularly updating your content is important.

It’s all part of the know, like and trust aspect of relationship building and effective networking.

And @seowashdc, if you are reading this, can you chime in the comments and tell us how important regular updates are from an SEO perspective? Or if you need more space than the comments, might you be willing to write a guest blog post on the topic?

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Tags: blogging, Relationship building, reputation
Posted in social media | 5 Comments »

Lessons Learned from @wilw and His Book Just a Geek

Monday, January 18th, 2010

This seems to be my year to find insight in the most unlikely books.

Over the weekend, I read Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton (@wilw).

Wow! That was a lot of links in one paragraph.

Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled blog post. What does a book by an ex-Star Trek actor have to do with networking? Glad you asked!

One of the things he talks about in his book is his blogging. At the time, he was going through a very rough patch. His acting career was going nowhere, and he was trying to prove to himself and others that leaving Star Trek hadn’t been a huge mistake.

This “Prove to the World that Leaving Star Trek Wasn’t a Huge Mistake” side of him wanted to make his blog sound like everything was great, even when it wasn’t. He included a few examples of those posts. They were funny. But they didn’t ring quite right.

Every so often, something would happen, and the real Wil Wheaton would show up in the blog. He’d write frankly about things that weren’t going so well.

Which posts do you think had the most reads and responses? Yep, the honest ones.

Which is an excellent reminder for those of us who network. The temptation is there when people ask, “How’s it going?” to say, “Oh, great.” Even when it’s not. But there’s nothing wrong with showing a little honest vulnerability. No, I’m not suggesting you go around with a dark cloud and “Everything sucks” attitude. But sometimes we want to help the underdog. Showing a bit of vulnerability can motivate us to help more.

Think of it this way. If you tell us “business is great!” we might think, “Okay, he doesn’t need any help or referrals.” But telling us, “I’ve got some potentials brewing, but I’m not quite where I want to be” sends the clear message that we can help you get the rest of the way.

A lot of networking is working with, not against, human inclinations. We love to help others who aren’t doing so well. It makes us feel good, and it lets us think, “Whew! Someone else’s life isn’t perfect either!”

So work with us, not against us. Let us see you as someone who needs and is deserving of a little help. We’ll work harder on your behalf, which is what you want, right?

Not bad for a book by an ex-Star Trek actor. By the way, if you haven’t read it (or his blog), do so. Wil Wheaton is easily one of the funniest guys I’ve ever read. And he gives us some life lessons as an added bonus. Pretty good deal, I think.

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Tags: blogging, communication, Networking, Relationship building
Posted in Networking | 1 Comment »

How Not To Be a Social Media Expert

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

As 2009 drew to a close, I read a lot of tweets and articles on the growing number of social media “experts” cropping up. (By the way, a quick disclosure. While I do blog and coach people on the effective use of social media, I do not consider or market myself as an “expert.” I’m still learning, and I expect to continue learning for a long time.)

This topic even come up yesterday when I was meeting with a prospect, and we talked about some of the red flags I mention below. Obviously people have a lot of questions and concerns about how to hire someone to help them with social media.

So how do you check someone’s credentials? Last year, I had the opportunity to do some checking on a contact who said he worked with clients on social media, and I thought the story was worth sharing.

Before we met, I did some basic research on him. (We’ll call him Bob, not his real name.) I didn’t know too much at the time about social media, but even I recognized some red flags. I started with his website and subscribed to his blog. I liked some of what he was saying, and I started to post a comment to one of his posts. Huh? His blog was locked? I had to be a member of his site to comment? And I couldn’t find a way to register as a member. It was odd enough that I asked him about during our meeting.

And I didn’t like his answer. He was a fairly new blogger, and he was facing the new-blog-with-no-comments syndrome. (Yes, being new to blogging and marketing himself as a social media expert was another red flag.) His approach to dealing with the lack of comments was to lock them until the blog became more established.

Call me crazy, but I think he was setting himself up with a vicious cycle. Lock until the blog becomes established. But since it’s locked, no one can comment, so how will be know when it’s “safe” to unlock the blog?

I’m still facing the same situation with my blog. More than half of my posts are bare of comments. But I’m not worrying about it. As I continue to blog and promote my blog, the comments will come. Until then I have a couple of loyal followers who comment often enough that not every blog has “0 Comments.”

So far, not impressed with this so-called social media expert. But I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. So after I joined Twitter, I tracked down his handle and started following him. Wait. A “social media expert” who never tweets? Well, okay, maybe he’s a Facebook kind of guy? I track him down on Facebook and friend him. Hmm. As soon as he accepts, I get the message “Bob is new to Facebook. Why don’t you suggest some friends for him.”

Did I mention that he never followed me back on Twitter?

It’s a sad story, but all too common in the social media community. Lots of people want to cash in on the new phenomena, but they don’t use the tools themselves.

Before you hire a “social media expert,” check them out. If they don’t use the tools themselves, how do you expect them to help you use them?

Anyone want to share more red flags to watch for? I’d love to see some comments on this post.

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Tags: blogging, Relationship building, social media
Posted in social media | 3 Comments »

Review: Evernote

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Sometimes you don’t know you need something until you stumble across it.

I’m pretty well organized. When I come up with an idea, I write it down, usually in my iPhone. Until recently, I was using either the Notes program that came with the phone or Action Lists for iPhone. Notes works pretty well, but I admit, I forget to look there sometimes. I check Action Lists religiously throughout the day, but it’s really a task manager, not an idea manager. I found I had to keep things very short, and sometimes I’d go back later and have no idea what I had been intending.

Then Evernote crossed my path in a tweet. It’s a dedicated note-taking application that can be used and synchronized with a number of different platforms. Of course, there’s a version for the iPhone. And Windows, Mac, Blackberry, Palm Pre and others.

Now I can make a note on the iPhone and sync it to my computer. So I have it exactly where I need it. Mostly, I use it to make notes of future blog posts and ideas for my book. If I am writing on my computer, I pull up Evernote on the computer. If I am on the go, I pull it up on my phone.

But that’s not all! It also can be used as a web-clipper. If I see a website I want to review later, I can clip it, and the text will show up on my phone the next time I sync. That allows me to easily review content when I don’t have a good connection to the Internet, or if I’m just impatient and don’t want to wait for a web page to load.

If you need to keep track of ideas (speakers, authors, bloggers, etc), and you need access to your content in multiple places, I highly recommend checking out Evernote. Did I mention that it’s free? There’s a paid version, but I haven’t needed it yet.

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Tags: blogging, iPhone, task management, time management
Posted in Time and Task Management | Comments Off

Aggregation and Push

Friday, September 25th, 2009

Yes, these are legal between consenting adults in the state of Virginia.

Seriously, keeping up with social media can absorb your entire life if you let it. So you need to control it rather than letting it control you. A good way to do this is keeping your media in as few places as possible (aggregation) and having things sent to you instead of you having to go get them (push).

Let’s start with aggregation. Remember my recent post on Google Reader? Reader collects all the blogs you are reading and allows you to go to one place to read them, saving you from having to go from website to website to keep up. That saves a lot of time. And Google Reader highlights blogs with current entries, so you don’t have to worry about who has updated yet and who hasn’t. That’s almost, but not quite, push.

Now let’s look at a program that aggregates AND pushes. Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck allows you to keep track of Twitter, Facebook and MySpace all through one program. It keeps each account in a separate column. When someone tweets, it shows up. And when someone updates their status or posts a link on Facebook, that shows up as well. That’s the aggregation, and the program would be great if that’s all it did. But, as long as you have the program running on your computer, you will get pop-up notifications when a new post arrives. You can even group your contacts, so when one of your best friend posts something, you’ll get a different pop-up notification than when Great Aunt Martha posts a picture on her Facebook page of you when you were three years old.

This was very useful to me a couple of nights ago. I’m subscribed to Swagbucks, where I can get free stuff. Swagbucks posts codes to various places, including Twitter. Enter the code, and you get a Swagbuck. Wednesday night, they tweeted that later in the evening, they were going to be posting a code that was good for only 10 minutes. I got it because Tweetdeck “pushed” that post to me. Without Tweetdeck, I probably would have missed it.

And that’s how I keep up. I have most of my social media content aggregated in Google Reader and Tweetdeck. And Tweetdeck pushes stuff to me so I know exactly when something pops up.

Anyone else have any good ways to keep track?

Gotta go. Tweetdeck just told me a friend updated their Facebook page. I need to see what’s up.

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Tags: blogging, networking on the go, social media, time management
Posted in social media | 2 Comments »

Review: Word Press Mobile for iPhone

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Good networkers are often on the go. But we frequently have time between meetings to do some work. Mobile devices make that easier. So much nicer to pull out the phone while filling a few minutes between meetings than messing with a laptop.

Let me start my series of posts about mobile networking with a review of Word Press mobile for the iPhone. I have written several blog posts on the go with it, and so far I like it. (Yes, I wrote this post using it at Panera, waiting for a client.)

I can create a new post, even adding tags and categories. Categories are synced from the website, but tags aren’t, which is a bit of a pain. As my list of tags grows, it will be hard to remember which ones I use.

I can write and save directly to the phone, so I don’t need an active connection. Great. When I am camping in a couple of weeks with no cell signal, I can still write if the mood strikes me. But I kind of hope it won’t.

One of the nicest features is the ability to review and accept comments. Since there are days when I leave the house early in the morning and don’t get back until late, I am glad I can monitor the discussion around my posts on the go. It would be even nicer if the program pushed comments to the phone so I knew about them in real time. Right now I do have to remember to open the program and check. Maybe in the next version.

It does not support the iPhone landscape keyboard, but that’s a non issue with me. I almost never use it.

Syncing a post to the web, even over Edge, is fast. This post took about 15 seconds to upload on Edge.

Pros:
ability to create posts off-line
Ease of use
Quick learning curve
Ability to monitor comments

Cons
No use of landscape keyboard
No pushing of comments
No saved tags

Overall, I give it a solid 4 out of 5.

What? No iPhone? There is a beta version for you Blackberry users. If any of you want to test it and write a guest review post, I’d be happy to publish it. Just let me know.

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Tags: blogging, iPhone, networking on the go
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Posts Tagged ‘blogging’

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