I’ve been blogging now for about 2 years, and I’m amazed at the amount of traffic that I get from my blog and the number of people who tell me that they first heard about me from my blog instead of my website. The word blog is derived from the term “web log”, or an online diary or journal. If the HBO series “Sex and the City” were being filmed today, Carrie Bradshaw would be a blogger as well as a columnist, I think. Why? As she experiences her revelations about life, love, and relationships, she could post them to her blog for the world to see and comment upon.

Blogging has opened website creation to almost everyone, as it takes very little know-how to get a blog up and running. In fact, many service business owners are using a blog platform as their primary website, with some of them creating static pages as you would find on a traditional website, while others are using the platform as a blog and are posting updates regularly.

There are several advantages to using blogs instead of ezines or traditional websites:

1. Search engines love blogs. The strategy that seems to be attractive to search engines today is regularly updated content. I can log-in to my blog at the beginning of a day and submit a post. Within 24 hours I’ll get a notification from my Google alerts account that Google has indexed that post.

2. Content can be distributed quickly. If you instruct your visitors to subscribe to your blog via updating services like Bloglines or Feedblitz, they’ll be notified within hours of any new posts on your blog.

3. Little web programming knowledge is required. Once your blog is set up, it’s simply a matter of logging into your account, typing the info for your post, adding graphics or photos as needed, and publishing your post to your blog.

4. Reader feedback. Your readers can give you comments and feedback about your posts almost immediately after you log an entry. Blogs are a great way to engage your audience.

Are ezines and traditional websites dead? No, because people consume information differently. Some are auditory learners and prefer to hear the info (great audience for podcasting, an audio form of blogging), some prefer to receive updates as they are published (blog readers), while others like a stable, stationary medium to which they can refer when they’re ready (readers who archive ezines or bookmark web pages).

How do you begin to blog? Here are 10 simple steps you can follow:

1. Blogging platform. The easiest way to get started is to use the free service found at Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. The ability to customize your blog is limited with the free services, so I urge my clients to subscribe to Typepad.com, which will host your blog for you on their servers, or purchase a hosting account where WordPress can be installed. The downloadable version of WordPress is located at Wordpress.org and is free of charge if you need to install Wordpress yourself on your hosting account. I use Typepad for my blog, so many of my examples will relate exclusively to blogs hosted on that platform.

2. Name. What do you want to call your blog? Blog names tend to be attention-getting and off-beat. However, for service businesses, I encourage my clients to use keywords important to their business when naming their blog. You will also want to acquire the .com version of your blog’s name or your blog’s name with the word “blog” attached as your blog URL. After you have set up your blog, your blog provider can give you more info about how to map your domain to your blog. (Note: You don’t want to simply forward your blog to your domain name, as that impacts the URLs of your individual blog pages).

3. Look and Layout. How many columns do you want to display? Do you want links to static pages? What colors do you want to use? How about a signup box for a free giveaway? Should you use one of the templates provided or have something custom designed? Do you want your blog archives displayed? Do you want to be the only author or do you want to permit others to make posts, as well? There are many questions you’ll be asked in the startup phase about the look of your blog. A Typepad blog permits you to change your mind about your layout at a later date. The best way to determine the look of your blog is to look at the layout of other blogs and determine what appeals to you.

4. Widgets. There are a number of widgets, or add-on programs, that you can incorporate into your blog. Check your blog software’s site for more info about what features you’d like add to your blog. At a minimum you’ll want to give visitors a couple of ways in which they can receive blog updates through various updaters, or feeder services, as mentioned earlier.

5. Comments. The newest sp*am making its rounds online is comment sp*am. Don’t these guys have anything better to do? Set your comments to moderated, which means that you have to approve any comments to your blog before the post goes live. You’ll save yourself a great many headaches and time by choosing to moderate the comments.
Once you’ve gotten this far, you should have a basic blog established and are ready to begin to blog.

6. Blog content. The time has arrived — your blog is ready to accept posts. What do you write about? You can post content rich articles of interest to your target market, comment on a current event, answer questions from your visitors, present a before and after case study outlining how your business helped someone, etc. Keep your eyes and ears open for information relevant to your audience. I use my blog to bring forth info that doesn’t fit well into my newsletter format or something that arises between newsletter issues. I post my ezine content to my blog, as well.

7. Posting frequency. Blogs are just like gardens — they need watering regularly and require some care and attention. For maximum effectiveness, you need to post several times a week to your blog. I try and post 4 times per week in my blog — 2 posts are items I run across or comment upon as noteworthy in the moment, and the latter 2 are the contents of my ezine posted over 2 days. And, respond to reader’s comments when they arrive — blogs provide a great forum for ongoing discussions.

8. Blog traffic. In the same way that you publicize your website URL on everything that you do, you can similarly publicize your blog. Submitting your blogs to blog directories is another way to get traffic. A very comprehensive list of blog directories, RSS Top 55 has been compiled by Robin Good. Searching out blogs that appeal to your target market and making comments to those posts will also drive traffic to your blog. Another trick is to post your blog on social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, and del.icio.us.

9. Measure the results. Some blog programs, like Typepad, have built-in statistics so you can view details of your blog traffic. Some of the feed/updater programs have built-in statistics as well, or you can install a metrics program as an add-on to your blog. Review your statistics regularly to determine how much traffic your blog generates.

10. Rinse and repeat. Don’t let the novelty of blogging wear off. Blogging is effective only if you continue your blogging efforts regularly over a long period of time. I know of several individuals who have gotten book deals from their blog and radio and TV interviews as well. Just think — your blog might be your ticket to fame!

Every service business can benefit from blog technology. Few other marketing strategies provide the quick immediacy that blogging provides.

By Donna Gunter

I was recently having breakfast with a good friend of mine who is in management with a large Brick and Mortar Company and the topic of Press Releases came up in our conversation. My friend questioned the real value of this medium and pointed out that Press Releases, while certainly apart of his company’s communication strategy seemed to have little impact or value on their business as a whole and were rarely picked up by major news publications. Well, in my last online press release campaign, I can honestly say we did not receive an enthusiastic call from the Business editor of USA Today or the New York Times or even the Grand Forks Herald for that matter!

However, this recent Press Release campaign did result in a top 5 listing for one of my keywords in Google, multiple top 20 listings, strong placement in Yahoo and Google News, many new quality in-bound links and a significant increase in our overall web visibility. The campaign proved to be a roaring success in driving quality traffic and gaining great exposure for our site, even though we were largely ignored by all of the mainstream news publications. So, how did we do it?

Before I outline the key steps we took in our own online PR endeavors, let’s first review the key benefits of an optimized Press Release campaign:

  • High Quality One-Way Links to Your Website
A well-constructed Press Release campaign can result in multiple in-bound links from various sources such as industry-related websites, news and media sites, many of which have a decent Google Page Rank. Given that our business was launching a new website, we literally went from zero exposure to hundreds of one-way links and listings within a couple days.

  • Top Listings in the News Search Engines
An optimized press release may see top placement in many key news engines such as Google News, MSN News and Yahoo News potentially resulting in a steady stream of traffic for up to a period of 30 days. To put it into perspective, Google and Yahoo News have the largest Internet News Audience in the world, even bigger than CNN or the BBC.

  • Improved Natural Search Results for Particular Keywords
As mentioned earlier, a recent Press Release Campaign of ours resulted in a top 5 listing for one of our keywords in Google as well as multiple top 20 listings all in matter of a two week period.

  • Increased Web Visibility
For new web companies, Press Releases can be a very effective and low cost means of increasing the sheer number of web listings and overall exposure.

  • Enhanced Brand Awareness
Optimized Press Releases through useful media portals like Prweb.com and Pr.com can significantly increase the brand awareness and recognition for both new and existing web businesses.

  • Promotion in a Rapidly Growing Medium
Statistics have revealed that more than 70% of Americans actually read their news online, so press releases are certainly a part of an increasingly popular news medium.

  • Low Cost Means for Increasing Exposure and Web Visibility
As mentioned, there are a number of key PR distribution portals such as Prweb.com that provide a great vehicle for syndicating your releases to thousands of news outlets as well as optimizing it for the Search Engines. I would highly recommend spending at least a couple hundred dollars to take advantage of a few SEO tools offered there.

  • Quality Exposure to Industry Specific Editors
I include this last benefit as an added bonus since your press release might be deemed very newsworthy and subsequently picked up by multiple editors and news channels. However, I must emphasize the number of editor calls or inquiries certainly should not be the primary measure of success for your Online Press Release campaigns.

So, the big question here is how do you actually optimize the Press Release in order to achieve some of the results we experienced in previous campaigns. Let me roll back the curtain and show you the basic formula we employed.

1. Targeted Keyword Research and Selection
Before even commencing with drafting your online Press Release, it is imperative to conduct some thorough keyword research for your targeted audience and subject matter through such tools as wordtracker.com and keyworddiscovery.com. It is ideal to select targeted keywords that have the greatest degree of volume with the fewest competitors that will also make the most sense in the context of your Press Release. Again, it is important to marry relevant and newsworthy content with good SEO practices.

I would recommend narrowing your keyword selection to approximately two to three words for your Press Release with a primary keyword and a couple secondary words. You will lose SEO potency by trying to incorporate too many keywords into one 500-800 word Press Release.

2. Strategic Keyword Placement in the Press Release
It is essential to include your main keyword(s) in the title of the Press Release as well as in the first or second paragraphs of the body. I would recommend optimizing the first 250 words of your press release and then include the keywords in strategic and relevant spots throughout the remainder of the body.

It is also recommended to maintain a keyword density of approximately 3-5% for the main keyword and 1-2% for secondary keywords. (Keyword Density refers to the percentage of words on a web page that match a specified set of keywords) I must emphasize here though that while it is important to be aware of your keyword density, it should not come at the expense of relevant and high quality content. That will ultimately defeat the purpose and desired result of your PR campaign.

3. The Effective Use of Anchor Text
Creating Anchor Text (keyword-rich links) with your targeted keyword(s) will provide valuable optimization and relevant back-links to your respective landing page.

4. Relevant and Optimized Website Content
The use of targeted keywords in your Press Release will only have real value if you also include those same words with reasonable keyword density on your landing page. Make sure to include the keywords in the H1 Header Tag as well as strategically placed in the first 250 words or so of the landing page.

5. Tagging Strategies
Finally I have experienced great value in incorporating Technorati Keyword Tags as well as popular Social Bookmark tags such as Del.icio.us and Digg at the end of the Press Release. Those visitors that like the Press Release and choose to click on a technorati tag or a social bookmark tag provide high quality trackbacks or back links that will ultimately enhance your site’s link popularity.

In summary, I believe an optimized Press Release using some of the above strategies can be an excellent marketing channel with a good viral effect and great SEO potential long-term. I would highly recommend making the small investment through popular PR distribution sites such as Prweb.com, Prleap.com and Pr.com in order to maximize the potential for yielding top keyword listings, high quality back links and great long-term exposure for your business.

I should note that while the optimization of your Press Release is paramount, it is essential to provide a newsworthy and journalistic feel to the release as well. Great content combined with skillful optimization will yield the best results for your PR campaigns.

By Craig Cannings 

In case you’ve missed it, the Web has changed; it seems like just yesterday it was good enough to take all your brochures and advertising collaterals and convert them to digital format, add a little search engine optimization, throw-in a little PHP programming and bingo, you’ve got a website. And if you wanted to show how cutting edge your company was, maybe you’d add a little dash of Flash animation, or some royalty free music. Well here’s a bulletin from the frontlines, that isn’t going to cut-it in the new multimedia Web-business environment.

Almost daily I receive emails from people asking me to review their websites and tell them why they can’t convert visitors to customers even when they are attracting significant numbers of visitors on a regular basis to their sites.

The answer is both simple and complex: simple, because these websites fail to communicate the company’s message in a meaningful manner to their visitors, which means no dialog is opened, and without a dialog, no business can be done; and complex, because the implementation of the solution requires a new way of thinking about communicating with your audience using sophisticated presentation techniques that put a higher premium on creativity than they do on facts, figures and old-school direct marketing tactics.

If you are looking for a mantra to begin any new website initiative or to correct an existing website disaster: Think Audience Not Customers.

New Words For A New Web-Business Environment
In the past while I’ve run across three newly coined words or phrases (Communitainment, Branded Entertainment, and Snack-o-tainment) that attempt to capture the fundamental change that has taken place among Web-user expectations.

All of the new terms have two things in common: one, they require the marketer to think of website visitors as an audience and not as customers; and two, they all require the marketer to use entertainment techniques as the basis for delivering content.

Communication + Entertainment + Community
The Piper Jaffray Internet Media and Marketing research team recently released a report entitled ‘The User Revolution’ in which Safa Rashtchy coined the concept of ‘Communitainment,’ a blending of the words communication and entertainment. Rashtchy uses the term to denote the “melding of communication, community, and entertainment,” as a new formula for implementing the delivery of marketing content.

The report points out that “Video ads will be the driver of the next major growth in brand advertising” with the Web being “the leading medium at work and the second leading medium at home behind television.”

For any business that thought they could conduct business as usual, this should be a wake-up call. The Web has changed: the market is no longer content to be informed, they must be seduced, and you are not going to seduce them with key-word density and biz-speak.

Contrary to popular belief you can deliver a marketing message faster, more powerfully, and with better recall using creative video presentations than you can with a page of text. Now no one is saying you shouldn’t have text on your site, but your copy better be damn interesting and well written if you expect anyone to actually read it.

Meaning + Sharing + Experience
The idea of ‘Communitainment’ provides a conceptual framework for creating Web-video presentations that work: your business communication must convey meaning through a focused presentation that uses all the various techniques available to the savvy Web-producer; your audience must see enough value in the presentation that they are willing to contact others in their colleague-community and share it; and lastly, the delivery of the message must create a memorable entertaining experience associated with the product or service provided.

Branded Entertainment
Leta Baker writes in her ‘Adobe Magazine’ article ‘Creative Persuasion: The Rise of Branded Entertainment’ about her concept of using entertaining online video presentations as a means of effectively creating brand awareness.

What Baker is talking about is video that doesn’t hit you over the head with a hard-sell sales pitch or bore you to death with meaningless platitudes, but rather presents entertaining short programs that companies can attach their brand to so viewers gain a memorable positive impression of your company. This is a long-term strategy that takes into account the reality that not every genuine prospect that comes to your website is ready to buy your product at that moment but might, when and if they remember who you are, when they are ready to buy.

There are many ways to implement this ‘branded entertainment’ concept and they all don’t have to be completely devoid of salesmanship. The Apple iPod commercials are an example of what I would call ‘branded entertainment,’ even if Leta Baker would object. Unlike most commercials that people race to avoid, the iPod commercials are actually anticipated: people want to know what Apple is going to come up with next, and the result: iPod has the lion’s share of the MP3 player market.

The Apple Macintosh commercials are another form of ‘branded entertainment’ that involves a sales pitch. Here we have an ongoing campaign with well-developed characters that the audience has gotten to know over the length of the campaign. The audience looks forward to what these characters are going to do next. This does not mean that every PC owner is going to run out and buy a Mac, but over time Apple is getting people to recognize their product as an alternative.

Because the commercials are entertaining, people are listening and waiting for the next installment of the campaign. Audiences are getting the message and that is all any good marketing campaign can achieve.

And here is the big hurdle for many small businesses: good marketing requires patience and should be aimed at opening a dialog, not just making a quick sale.

Most website sales pitches are like bad ‘pick-up’ lines: crude and ineffective; an audience needs to be wooed with tender loving care before you can expect to see any results. If you’re not willing to invest the time and creativity in opening a dialog with your audience, you can forget about using the Internet as a marketing tool.

Snack-o-tainment: Fast Food Entertainment
The term ‘Snack-o-tainment’ was used by Nancy Miller in her ‘Wired’ magazine article ‘Manifesto for a New Age” in which she equates consumption of new media to societies addiction to fast food. If the audience is addicted to entertaining media, we as marketers must feed that addiction.

It wasn’t that long ago that the biggest objection to online video was it took too long to load; now we see it compared to fast food. The fact is video can deliver a meaningful message in the quickest possible way because it conveys content using the full arsenal of communication tools.

We can look to television for a blueprint of how to deliver these bite-sized morsels of corporately nutritious, entertaining, marketing manna.

The thirty-second commercial is an example of just how much memorable content can be crammed into a short period of time if a little entertaining creativity is added to the mix. And unlike television, there is no costly premium associated with time on the Internet, so content can be as long or short as the message requires.

A campaign based on this formula can come complete with plot-lines, character development, and signature music all designed to deliver your marketing message in an entertaining way that will not only get stuck in your audience’s memory, but will be anticipated by that same audience. The famous ‘Taster’s Choice’ soap opera style campaign of years ago was one of the best examples of combining entertainment with a commercial message.

Even the lowly jingle can be resurrected to provide some ’sit-up and take notice’ to an otherwise mundane presentation. You would be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t know the recipe for MacDonald’s Big Mac, based on their fabulously successful commercials, even though they haven’t been aired in years. In fact MacDonald’s current roster of commercials are so forgettable that you wonder why they haven’t brought the old standby back to life.

Another bit of delicious marketing entertainment was the series of Chili’s Restaurant commercials featuring various singers interpreting their ‘Baby Back Ribs’ jingle, which provided far more entertainment in thirty seconds than a full CD of Britney Spears. More importantly that infectious ‘baby back ribs’ song has become deeply rooted in the public’s subconscious, and when the inevitable question comes up, ‘where are we going to eat?’ that jingle starts playing in our heads. If you want to be successful, learn from what works.

Can You Afford To Wait
If your business is expanding as fast as it can with an ever-growing list of customers and continuously increasing profits, then perhaps you can afford to ignore the changes taking place, and the expectations of your audience. But if things could be better, and if you yearn to improve your Web-marketing, then you have to adjust to new ways of delivering content.

You can’t let out-dated thinking get in your way. There is a difference between twenty year’s experience, and one year’s experience repeated twenty times. There is no point in continuing to repeat old methods that no longer work.

You know things have changed so get ready to deliver your content in a way that will allow your company to become the next great Web success story.

By Jerry Bader