“Content marketing” might be a new buzzword, but it isn’t a new concept.

Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing unique, original content with the purpose of attracting attention from new customers or customer interactions.

Examples of content marketing include business blogs, web videos, screencasts, eBooks, articles written for online or offline publications, slideshows or presentations, and more. The key is that the content is unique, and it is targeted to your ideal customer.

Why should you add content marketing to your online marketing plan?

• Build trust and credibility
  By producing original content, you are demonstrating your company’s knowledge of the subject matter. Over time, this can build trust with prospects and customers. People want to justify that they are working with a knowledgable company.
• Improve your search engine ranking
  Search engines adore websites that produce original content. Adding unique content not only helps your company build trust with customers, it also can improve your search engine ranking.
• Demonstrate fresh thinking
  By regularly producing new content, you demonstrate that your company is keeping up with current trends. It shows that your company is a thought-leader.
• It will be shared with others
  If your content is helpful, it will be shared via email and on social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and aggregation tools. Social sharing increases your content’s reach, increasing your company’s awareness.

In the new economy, you risk losing market share if you don’t publish. Companies — and nonprofits too — need to understand that it’s not enough to simply do good work. Companies must also share their experiences and helpful information with others to earn new business.

Questions

1. How can your company leverage it’s website to produce original content?
2. Who is your target audience, and what types of content would engage them?
3. What content can your company’s employees contribute?
4. Does your company have a content marketing strategy?

I’ve written quite a bit about conversion rates on this blog, but the fact is that most people that visit an e-commerce web site have no intention of buying. They are window shopping. Optimizing your web site to increase your conversion rate is very important, but you can’t forget about optimizing for the 70-80% of people or more that are “window shoppers.”

The mistake that a lot of online retailers make is to not engage the vast majority of their visitors — the ones that don’t intend to buy.

Yes, you can entice a small percentage of these window shoppers to buy with offers like “buy one, get one,” coupons and free shipping, but what about the remaining lot?

The answer is engagement. If you can engage window shoppers, you can get them to continually interact with your company, and when they are ready to buy, your site will be top-of mind.

So how to you engage window shoppers? Here’s how.

Make your e-mail newsletter signup more visible

If you don’t have an e-mail newsletter, you really need to start one. Next, make sure your e-mail signup form is visible.

Many web sites have e-mail signup forms at the bottom of their sites. While that’s an acceptable place for the form, why not duplicate the form and place it higher up on the page where people can see it right away? By making the form more visible and writing a good call to action (like “Get sales and exclusive tips by signing up for our e-newsletter”), you’ll increase your subscriber rate.

This probably goes without saying, but you need to publish your e-mail newsletter regularly and pack it full of good content. Remember, it’s about keeping prospective customers engaged.

Write a blog (regularly)

No matter what you’re selling, you should publish a blog with RSS feed. Other than product inventory and pricing, the typical e-commerce site is rather static. By adding a blog, you’ll freshen the site by regularly adding content that complements the products you’re selling.

The goal in blogging is twofold. First, you want to generate some credibility for your company (see the next section on social media for some promotional tips). Second, you’re giving prospective customers some good information and keeping your company top-of-mind. Also, good search engine optimization is often a by-product of a well-written blog.

Engage in social media

Admittedly, social media isn’t for everyone. But if you, your marketing manager or other staff in your company are already using Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc., then you need to get them involved.

I won’t go into all of the options that social media offers (I may go into that in a future post), but for starters, you can create a discussion group on a Facebook Fan page. You can tweet latest blog posts, new products and sales on Twitter. You can make how-to videos for a You Tube channel and embed them in your blog. There are many more opportunities, so be creative.

In conclusion

Here are some questions for consideration within your company:

• How can my company test positioning of newsletter signup forms?
• Can I offer people in my company the opportunity to write blog posts to distribute the workload?
• Who in my organization can I tap to help brainstorm customer engagement ideas? (Don’t be afraid to ask entry-level employees for their advice!)
• How could I make a blog more visible?
• How can my company use social media in ways my competitors are not?

Last night, I live-tweeted the Refresh Richmond meeting on Twitter and wanted to share the notes from this talk here on the blog. The topic was “Pro Blogging: A Panel Discussion” with John and Sherry Petersik of ThisYoungHouse.com, Arnold Kim of MacRumors.com and Jeff Kelley of Capital Results and Tobacco Avenue.

If you want to read all of my notes, I’ve conveniently assembled them in a Twitter search for you. You can read the notes here.

There was standing room only in the meeting space, and for good reason. The panel gave some good insights for those looking to blog for a living (or just a little extra cash). Here are my takeaways:

Writing a blog gives you credibility

Sherry Petersik spoke about how the ThisYoungHouse.com blog has helped them expand into new ventures like offering both “quickie decorating chat” and “major decorating makeovers.” Their experience renovating and redecorating their home has attracted readers to ask them for advice, which they gladly offer for a fee.

You can monetize a blog not only through ad revenue, affiliate marketing and ad networks — your experience and results can open other doors (like consulting).

Arnold Kim is one smart guy

Not only did Arnold Kim write MacRumors.com’s content management system from scratch, he was also a physician before quitting to focus on MacRumors.com. Talk about a hard decision to quit your day job…

Multiple revenue streams is the key to success

If you think you can slap some Google Adsense ads on your site and make money, think again. All four panelists are using multiple revenue streams to make money from their blogs, including Google Adsense, affiliate relationships, ad networks like AdBrite and private ad sales.

Blogging is SEO

I chuckled when someone in the crowd asked the panelists if they do any “formal SEO.” None of the panelists did, of course, and Jeff Kelley offered up the common-sense approach (which the other panelists echoed) of writing good, regular content. Other blogs will link to yours, and you’ll get exposure. Want to get more blog readers? Offer solid content and publish it on a regular basis.

Blogging for a living is hard work

Not only does Sherry Petersik blog twice per day, but she takes photos, brainstorms blog ideas, offers 1-1 advice to readers, and answers tons of e-mail.

If you’re interested in following other events or my nuggets of wisdom on work and life, follow me on Twitter.

Update — Feb. 20: There’s a very interesting blog post at Copyblogger called “Why You Can’t Make Money Blogging” that details the inability to make money from many blogs and offers this advice for making money with a blog: “Provide value. Solve actual problems. Uncover what’s bugging people and fix it for them.”

I couldn’t resist posting a link to an exhaustive blog post from fellow Virginian Robin from Interactive Insights Group. Her blog post is a superlist of what NOT to do in social media. Given that most people — especially in the corporate and business realm — are relatively new to social media, it’s a great read.

Ok, I’ll start by saying that this isn’t easy. It’s not for the lazy. It’s not easy money. It takes a lot of effort, but you can do it. It’s making money from a blog. So how is it done?

Here’s a quick primer on how an individual can make money from a blog (note that if you’ve got a company, you’re probably wanting to generate leads, which requires a slightly different formula).

Step 1: Pick a topic to blog about

When thinking about ideas for a blog site, think no further than your interests. If you’re a mom, you may want to blog about the trials and tribulations of having kids. If you like to manage the family finances, maybe you write about how to buy things “on the cheap.”

The key here is to pick something you’re passionate about. When I write this blog about internet marketing issues, I write about something I’m passionate about, so I never run out of ideas and never sour on the thought of having to write something. If you think there’s easy money in a blog, you’re wrong, and you’ll need dedication. It helps to really enjoy what you’ll be writing about, and either be very knowledgeable about the topic or willing to research it and share your findings.

Step 2: Create your blog.

While you can sign up for a WordPress or Blogger blog for free, more computer-savvy users will want to purchase a hosting account and a domain name. I recommend Hostican for hosting because they give you an easy program called Fantastico that installs a WordPress blog on your web site in just a few clicks. You can literally be writing on your blog 10 minutes after buying your hosting account.

Since you’re looking to make some cash, the hosted option is better because you have the flexibility down the road to hire someone to customize the blog for maximum revenue (or you can learn how to do this yourself if so inclined).

Step 3: Write.

Write, write, write. You need to generate some content on the blog. Jot down on a piece of paper at least 20 blog post ideas, then schedule them out so you’re posting 1-3 times per week. After about 3-4 months, you’ll have enough content to start making some money.

Step 4: Offer an e-mail newsletter.

Start building an e-mail list of loyal readers so you can market to them later. Place an e-mail signup box on your web site so if people like your blog, they can sign up. Send them posts by e-mail (see Feedburner) at first, and later you’ll use this list to blast money-making offers with the posts.

Step 5: Join affiliate programs.

Online retailers offer affiliate programs that let you put their advertising on your web site and you get a commission when people click and buy from the merchant. You can’t just sign up for any affiliate program, you need to apply to programs that closely pertain to the content on your web site.

You can join these affiliate networks for free for access to thousands of merchants:

Commission Junction
Linkshare
ShareASale.com

When you have a stable of merchants to advertise, don’t just put their ad banners on your web site. Find interesting ways to work their products into your blog posts, and link the products to their web sites with your affiliate link. You can even review products on your blog and link to them with your affiliate link, or just get paid to review products (see ReviewMe.com). Just remember it’s not all about making money, you also want to provide good, interesting content about your topic. A good application of this is the See Jack Shop blog, which discusses men’s fashion trends.

Step 6: Offer private ad sales on your blog.

Add a link to your blog called “Advertise” where you put information on how companies can advertise on your blog. Since these aren’t affiliate relationships, you set the price for advertising. Be reasonable. You may not want to mention rates on your site — you may instead want to offer a contact form so you can have a conversation with prospective advertisers. Speaking to advertisers over the phone is a lot better than over email because you can negotiate a rate. This also gives your advertisers an opportunity to offer suggestions for your blog. Charge a monthly fee, and if you start a Paypal Pro account, you can accept recurring payments from advertisers.

Step 7: Build traffic.

As you continue to generate solid, helpful content, you’ll naturally move up the search engine rankings for your topic. You’ll then need to familiarize yourself with social networks.

If you’re not on Facebook, start a profile and add the Simplaris Blogcast application to your profile so you can publish your blog posts on Facebook. The more “friends” you have, the more traffic you’ll get from Facebook. If your blog is relevant to the 18-35 age group, you might want to consider paying to advertise on Facebook. Put a Facebook badge on every page of your blog so readers can “friend” you. Yes, folks, “friend” is now a verb.

Next, start a Twitter account.Each time you post a new blog post, post it on Twitter (“tweet it” — yes, I know). You can also add the Twitter app to Facebook so your tweet automatically appears in your Facebook status. Put a Twitter badge on every page of your blog so people can “follow” you on Twitter, and reciprocate by “following” them.

There are many more niche social networks out there, and more than I could talk about here, but do the research and be active. The more effort you expend about learning how to use these media to your advantage, the more traffic your blog will get.

Don’t forget to network with other bloggers that write about similar topics. E-mail them and ask to post a “guest post” on their blog and offer them the opportunity to do that on your site. This cross-pollination will help you get traffic to your blog (as long as you have a brief bio and link to your blog in the guest post).

# # #

Have I scared you away from making money blogging? I hope not. If you can survive these seven steps, there’s a good chance that you’ll be making some significant cash. Maybe not $10k per month, yet, but prolonged blogging and networking can lead to speaking engagements, PR opportunities and more. Maybe you’ll even have time to write a book about the process. The sky’s the limit. Now go do it.

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.

Stuntdubl has a mention today of a great article on how to launch a blog. The article lists 21 tips for launching a successful blog and is a great primer for new bloggers. Lots of companies launch blogs thinking that it will instantly get them ranked highly on search engines, but this article brings to light the work required to run a successful blog.

My best advice for budding bloggers is to pick a topic you’re passionate about and just write. Offer good, authoritative content that others find useful. If your content is good enough, others will find you.

Count yet another large corporation among the blogging ranks. Dell launched its business blog in early July, and it’s an interesting case study in how businesses should/should not blog.

Thumbs up to the Dell design team for the blog. It is well-structured and has some features that readers will frequently use on the blog sidebar. Readers can see most viewed posts, posts with the most comments and a suggestion box feature. It also includes blog staples like categories, an archive and a blogroll.

The most impressive feature is the suggestion box. Clicking this link reveals a link that allows you, the reader, to suggest a topic. Many business bloggers suffer from writer’s block, and what’s a better way to get ideas for content than to ask your reader?

On the flip side, the contributors to the blog don’t do the best job of relating to the customer. Read the Dell and The Better Business Bureau post from the VP of Corporate Communications, and you’ll read just that — corporate communications.

Dell really opens itself up to criticism when its Director of Global eCommerce blogs about the new homepage. You’re certainly going to get negative feedback when you ask the blogosphere open-ended questions like “So, tell me, what you think of the home page of Dell.com?” If the Director would have instead posted to the blog that he was looking for some Dell customers to answer some basic questions about the new homepage design and allowed them to contact him, he would have gotten better results. He could then have posted the outcome of that exercise in a more brand-friendly way.

An early post to the blog entitled “Real People are Here and We’re Listening” directly reacts to what other bloggers had said about the Dell blog. As a customer, this probably isn’t helpful to you or something you want to read. As a reader, you expect real people to be listening, so Dell doesn’t need to come out and tell you that. Instead, Dell would have been better-served to read other bloggers’ reactions and make improvements. As the content improves, readers will know you are listening.

Dell has also done some video blogging as evidenced by the Dell Store Opens its Doors in Dallas post, which features a Sales Director at Dell talking about a new mall store in Dallas. While I applaud Dell for video blogging and testing that technology, the content of this video was only mildly interesting to those in the Dallas area. Viewers had to endure the dialog about how the store is “an extension of the direct model” and other jargon-filled conversation. A tour of the store would have been nice, but without the sales pitches and business jargon.

My advice to Dell? Use the blog as a channel for feedback — but not the only source of feedback. Be very careful of your tone and the content of the blog in general. Customers don’t want to hear business jargon like the first three paragraphs of the “Dell and The Better Business Bureau” post — they want to hear how to use Dell products to enhance their computing experiences. Offer the customers ways to use their Dell products in ways they hadn’t thought of and include some how-to advice.

After attending a recent business blogging seminar, I realized that most business managers really want to build a business case for blogging. After all, blogging takes time away from other business activities and requires a good amount of effort, so wouldn’t it be helpful to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of a business blog?

When I’ve pitched business blogs in the past, the client nearly always asked what the benefits of a blog were. The reasons to maintain a business blog include creating a sense of community with your customers, getting feedback from your customers, generating fresh content for your web site, building company credibility and improving search engine visibility, just to name a few. That was always good enough for the client. I’ve never been asked to specify the ROI of a business blog. Eventually, someone will ask, though.

But is there a way to calculate a return on investment of a business blog? I turned to the web, thinking that someone had already answered the question. What I found out is that other attempts to calculate business blog ROI had been somewhat futile.

After some thought, I decided that it would be possible to calculate the monetary value of a business blog by applying ecommerce metrics. Treating your business blog as a sales channel allows you to quantify the monetary return.

Most internet retailers religiously follow many site metrics, including conversion rate (buyers/visitors) and revenue per visit (revenue/site visits). The higher these metrics, the more effective the site is at generating revenue. The same metrics can be applied to a business blog.

I’m making the broad assumption that your business blog follows sound blog effectiveness principles — you have a good web analytics solution in place, you provide links in your blog to products/services on your web site and you provide a way for customers to contact you directly from the blog.

If all of this is true, you can relate revenue back to your blog. Through path analysis, you can find out what pages customers visited. If the path included a look at your blog and later a purchase or a successful completion of a contact form, you can relate the revenue generated to the blog. For a service provider like me, I have the contact form tagged in such a way that I can distinguish blog contacts from regular web site contacts. If a contact becomes a client, the fees get associated to the blog or to the site (or to paid search, offline advertising, other online advertising, etc.).

	actual revenue	% of revenue
Referrals
Face-to-face networking
Offline advertising
Search engines
Contacts from blog

Examining your web analytics will reveal how many visitors read the blog during the given time period, and this number is used to calculate your revenue per visit. The number of purchases or leads resulting from a path through the blog is used to calculate your conversion rate.

What you’ve now got is an apples-to-apples comparison between the blog and the web site. That’s not all, however. There are other benefits of the blog that are a bit less scientific, including search engine visibility. You can calculate the increase in traffic as a result of having the business blog by analyzing the referring sources of your traffic. You can make the assumption that a majority of visitors that find your business blog through search engines might not have otherwise found your site.

For those business managers who need a business case to blog, I hope this helps. I welcome your feedback if you have other ideas.

Business blogging is starting to take hold, so I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about some practical tips for great blog design. Designing an effective blog is critical to the success of your web site since a blog will attract search engine traffic to your site, and it could likely be the first interaction people have with your company. With that in mind, here are some practical tips to make your blog as effective as possible.

Have an objective. Whether you maintain a blog as a search engine optimization tool, a channel to promote sales and promotions or communicate with your customers, you need to make sure that your blog is designed with an objective in mind. The objective for my blog is to establish credibility with potential clients and to share knowledge with others in the industry. This objective keeps me focused on what to write about, how to write and who my target audience is.

Your blog design should have the same design as your web site. It’s usually appropriate to design your blog to look like the rest of your web site. This serves two purposes. First, you reassure readers that the blog content is coming from your company. Second, it gives the reader a chance to explore other sections of your web site after they are finished reading your blog. Many web searchers will find your blog first, and if your blog looks like your web site and contains the same top navigation and footer as your site, it gives them a chance to further interact with you or your company.

Write for your audience. While writing isn’t design-related, it certainly plays a large role in the effectiveness of your blog. Make sure that you use language that’s appropriate to your audience. A non-technical blog shouldn’t be written with a lot of technical jargon. Personally, I like to maintain a conversational but intelligent tone, and I think my audience respects that.

Remember, you maintain a blog because you have something to say. If you’re an expert in your field, make sure you provide the appropriate background for your reader. On this web site effectiveness blog, I assume that my readers are site managers, designers, and small business owners. They may have heard of some of the concepts I blog about, but my blog attempts to shed light on why it’s important and how they can use these concepts to their advantage.

Allow users to search your blog. Since blogs typically have hundreds of posts, it’s a good idea to allow people to search past posts. If a reader comes to your blog and finds a recent post interesting, they may want to search old posts for more information. By allowing users to search your blog, you are engaging them and making your content as accessible to them as possible. Make sure your blog design includes the search box in a visible spot on the page so people can find it.

Include information about you or your company. When people read blogs, they may question the credibility of the author. Giving the reader access to more information about the person or company maintaining the blog is helpful to establish the required amount of credibility. You can include more information about yourself or your company through a link to another page or a short blurb about you, and you’ll want to locate this on a sidebar or secondary spot on the page. It’s best to include this on every page of your blog since readers may find a particular post on your blog without visiting the main blog homepage.

Choose color carefully. My design philosophy is “less is more,” and I prefer a simple design with appropriate splashes of color when needed. I typically like to use black text on a white background as this is easiest on the blog readers’ eyes. There are certainly valid reasons to using colored backgrounds and colored text, but make sure that there’s enough contrast between the two so the reader can easily read your content. Use color to highlight areas that you want readers to see but don’t distract them from the content.

Don’t just write — link. When writing your blog posts, link to content that’s relevant to what you are blogging about. You may want to link to a page on your site but outside of your blog that discusses a particular product or service, or you may want to link to a related blog post. For search engine optimization and usability purposes, it’s best to link phrases in your blog post to other pages on your site that relate to what you are writing about. Don’t overdo it, though‚Äîyou want to make sure your site is easily readable.

Include or link to a contact form. Depending on the objective of your blog, it is usually appropriate to link to or include a contact form on a secondary part of your blog design. Usually this would be the sidebar area or the bottom of the page depending on your blog design. Ideally you should try to put contact info in the same proximity on the page to content that the user finds relevant.

Have separate pages for single posts and archives. While the homepage of your blog is meant to show users a few recent posts, you shouldn’t include all of your blog posts on the homepage. Ideally, the title that you write for a post should link to a page containing the entire contents of that blog post, including comments if you allow users to write them. Additionally, most blogging applications will organize your content into archives, typically by month. You should link to your archives on every page of your blog so readers can find them and search engines can index them.

Blog commenting — friend or foe? Some blogs allow readers to leave comments on their posts, while others don’t allow readers to comment. While each argument carries merit, the ability for users to leave comments is not appropriate for some blogs. If you do decide to include comments in your blog design, they should come at the end of each blog post. Make sure you have a good comment spam prevention system installed.

Include an RSS feed. While RSS is not a mainstream content delivery method to most internet users, it is gaining popularity. Readers can view your content in an RSS reader or aggregator. When readers read your blog via RSS, they don’t actually visit your web site, so putting links in your blog posts become increasingly important. Another RSS best practice is to configure your blogging application to include some information about you or your company in each blog post. A short blurb can automatically be added to your blog post in some of the more common blogging applications.

Wrapping it up

Some practical thought about who will read your blog and how they will find your blog will give you some ideas about the most effective blog design. Remember to keep the objective in mind, and write, write, write!

Small businesses take note — did you know that only 5.8% of the Fortune 500 are blogging?

By utilizing a blog now, you will gain loyal customers and better search engine rankings. There is an opportunity to take advantage of blogging as a marketing technique before the “big guys” catch on, and using these practical tips for a better blog design will help you build an effective online marketing tool that will attract new customers and keep existing customers engaged.

Quite a few friends and family members have asked me recently about blogs. I just created a baseball blog for my uncle (he’s a huge Washington Nationals fan). Besides being fun if you’re a subject matter expert, blogs can help your business get found by search engines. The premise is that a blog produces fresh and orginal content, which search engines like. Blogs are often updated frequently, so search engines “learn” to visit the blog site more frequently for content.

The Ecommerce Times just published a piece on blogs, and it’s an interesting read if you’re unfamiliar with how blogging can benefit your business. Read the article for more information.

Take this search engine marketing blog, for instance. I’m a search engine marketing and ecommerce web design guru, but no one will know unless I can prove that I have a pulse on the industry and can share my own commentary and successes. Blogs are a way to build credibility and exposure.

If you’d like to establish a blog of your own, there are a few platforms you can use. There are some free systems out there that will host your blog for you. They are Blogger (which I use) and TypePad.

You can also install software on an existing server, which costs a little bit of money (less than $100) and extra time. The most popular software for existing servers is Movable Type and WordPress.

Blogging isn’t for everyone and doesn’t benefit every business, but for those with good information to share, it can make a lot of sense. If you’d like to learn more, contact me and we’ll discuss it.