Think that blogging can’t have an impact on small, local businesses? This story definitely contradicts that notion. Family-owned St. Paul Classic Cookie in St. Paul, Minnesota was close to closing its doors when owner Katie Novotny blogged an appeal to her loyal customers (read it here).

The result was an outpouring of support which saved the cookie business. This case study shows that blogging is great way to reach loyal local customers. Novotny also publishes press releases, news and menu items on the blog. Small, local businesses should take note of the St. Paul Classic Cookie blog, read it, and get ideas for connecting with their customers.

Ever wondered why having a blog can be an effective promotional tool? Problogger today released and interesting albeit unscientific survey about what sites generate the most traffic for blogs (answer: Google). Read more at Problogger.

If you have an established company blog, you probably have writer’s block from time to time. Today I want to share my favorite way to brainstorm new topics for your company blog.

If you’re using Google Analytics to track your web site traffic (and your blog traffic), you probably are aware that you can see what phrases people type in search engines to find your web site. This report can be found under Traffic Sources and is called Keywords.

To find great blog topic ideas, click on the Keywords report and show 500 results. Scroll to the bottom and look through the list. You’ll often find that people find your blog using phrases that are related to your blog or services, but you may not have written about these topics in your blog.

For example, one person found my blog in the last 30 days by typing in “landing page success rate.” I’ve touched on landing pages before, but never the concept of how to measure a landing page’s success rate. That’s a good candidate for a blog post.

Keep in mind that this trick works best with established blogs that receive decent traffic from search engines. Also note that if you’re not using Google Analytics, Hittail is another free service that can easily be installed on your blog to get keyword data.

Should a small business blog? That’s the question that Bill Slawski, Director of Search Marketing at KeyRelevance, Inc., has answered in a blog post over at Search Engine Land. On all points, Slawski hits the nail on the head. The many benefits of writing a small business blog are covered in Bill’s post, and I highly suggest reading it.

My experience with blogging has been extremely positive. I’ve maintained this blog since April 2005, and other than word-of-mouth advertising, I get more work from this blog than any other source.

By writing a blog, companies can communicate their experience in a practical and helpful way. They are able to share what they do with prospective clients in a way that goes beyond buzzword-laden marketing copy. If you’re thinking of starting a small business blog, I highly suggest reading Slawski’s article.

Looking for a good read on marketing? Ad Age has just the thing for you — its Power 150 media and marketing blogs. Included in the list are some of the more popular blogs (and personal favorites) like Duct Tape Marketing, the SEOmoz blog and GrokDotCom. Our friends at RKG even cracked the list with their blog.

Here are some others that I follow, and while these aren’t on the list, they should be because of the quality of the information they provide:

• Campaign Monitor Blog: This marketing blog primarily features e-mail marketing tips.
• Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog: Ecommerce blog covering usability, design and marketing.
• MarketingVOX: How did they miss this one? Features the latest online marketing news.
• Marketing Experiments blog: A more quantitative look at online marketing.
• Smiley Cat: Christian Watson’s Web Design Blog: Discusses topics in web design.

A recent article in PC World suggests that up to 80% of blogs contain offensive content. While the article discusses spam in the context of corporate internet browsing and reading offensive posts at work, a real issue for business bloggers is preventing spam on their corporate blogs.

If you have a blog, you’re probably aware of the attempts of spammers to place their content on your blog by submitting comments on different blog posts. They aren’t shy about submitting long, blatantly obvious spam comments. Case in point - since I enabled comments on my blog in late December 2006, spammers have attempted to submit almost 10,000 spam-ridden comments to my blog.

Of course, I don’t want these to appear in the blog, so I use the Akismet plugin for Wordpress to filter these out automatically. I moderate all comments that get past Akismet, allowing me to approve and display only those comments that are not spammy in nature.

If you have a corporate blog that isn’t protected by some sort of spam prevention method, your blog is probably already overrun with spam. Installing a spam filter can help you filter out comment spam and restore the true content of your blog.

So why should you block spam in your blog?

• Corporate firewalls and computer software often block sites with profanity and objectionable content. By filtering out comment spam, and by writing in a professional, business-like tone, you will ensure that your web site is accessible to a wide audience.
• Poor writing and comment spam make your blog look unprofessional. Stay on topic, keep content relevant and use professional language. Don’t make your readers wade through objectionable content to read comments from real readers.