Should You Start a Business Blog?

Why you should consider a small-business blog--and how you can start one

In just a few years, blogs have become a phenomenon. Every day, an estimated 175,000 new blogs and more than 1.6 million blog updates go online, according to Technorati, a blog tracking firm. As of late January 2007, Technorati was tracking 63.2 million blogs.
This explosive growth raises the question: Should your small business start a blog? I believe you should, if for no other reason than to take advantage of an effective marketing tool. In a recent survey of business technology marketing executives by research firm MarketingSherpa, blogs were voted the No. 4 tool for generating sales leads.
Like any other marketing tool, blogs are most effective when used properly. Here are some suggestions for successful blogging, plus some background for those who aren't familiar with blogs.

The Backstory on Blogs

The word "blog'' is derived from the term "web log.'' In essence, a blog is a web page or site that's part online journal--hence the term "log''--and part open forum. Some bloggers post new updates constantly; others write updates weekly, monthly or only occasionally.
In most cases, blog entries are short and might include photos or links. Sometimes blog readers can post their reactions to the blogger's entries. Other readers can then add their two cents to those comments, thereby continuing the dialogue.
The so-called blogosphere contains blogs on practically every conceivable topic. Some blogs exist on the website of an individual or business, while others are hosted on public blogging sites, like Blogger and Windows Live Spaces.

Why You Should Consider Blogging

Aside from generating new sales leads, blogging also offers the following potential benefits.
A blog allows your business to engage with current and potential customers in a direct, informal, no-pressure way. You can communicate the strengths of your product or service, the expertise of your top executives and the breadth of your company's experience in ways that traditional marketing and advertising don't allow. This can help engender a better understanding of your company as well as inspire customer loyalty.
Because of its collaborative nature, a blog can help you gain insight into customers' needs and interests. You can then use this information to develop new products or services or fine-tune existing ones.
A blog can make your company appear more "alive'' and approachable. A website promoting your products or services is an essential marketing tool. But a blog, in effect, gives your company a personal voice, which also can help boost customer loyalty.
Blogs cost little, if any, money. Some public blogging sites are free; others charge only nominal fees. Also, blogs are often extremely easy to set up and update, with virtually no training required.

How to Be a Successful Blogger

If you decide a blog makes sense for your business, here are some things you should keep in mind.
Start by setting goals, policies and tone. Decide what you want to accomplish with your blog and let those goals influence your content. For example, you may want to establish yourself as a "thought leader'' in your industry, boost your site's status in search engine results or differentiate your business from the competition. Also, if your blog will have multiple in-house authors, decide on basic ground rules, such as never trashing the competition. If possible, make a staff member the blog editor to check entries before they're posted for grammar, typos, tone and consistency.

Keep it relevant and personal. Blog readers want to know what you--or others in your company--think about the trends relevant to your industry. If you run a local real estate firm, your readers would likely want to know your thoughts on buying and selling trends in your area. Make your entries personal by speaking to readers directly. Tell them a story. Use an authoritative yet conversational and informal voice.

Make it useful. When you offer helpful tips and links to other resources on the web, your readers will be more inclined to tell others about your blog. For instance, have you read a new book that's relevant to your readers' interests? If so, write a short review of that book in your blog. If your blog is an information resource for your industry, other bloggers and website owners will want to link to it. And the more sites that link to your blog, the more likely it will show up near the top of search engine results.

Use relevant keywords throughout your blog. This is another way to boost your blog's chances of showing up at or near the top of search engine results.

Keep readers hungry. If your blog entries are clear, concise and compelling, readers will want to return again and again.

Use a soft sell. Don't use your blog to re-purpose press releases, brochures or other content originally created for marketing, PR or advertising. Readers can smell a blatant pitch a mile away.

Update often. Readers expect blogs to be refreshed regularly. If you update your blog once a month or less, you may not develop a devoted readership. Shorter, more frequent updates are preferable to longer, infrequent ones.

Consider sharing the duties. Blogging requires a time commitment. Sharing the blogging duties with others in your company can take the pressure off. Plus, multiple voices can make a blog more interesting.

Stick to it. If you decide to start a blog, make a commitment to keep it going. An abandoned blog won't give readers a favorable impression of your company.

Be prepared to evangelize. Because blogging is still relatively new, some stakeholders in your company may be unconvinced of its potential return on investment. Explain how a blog might help your business. Provide examples of blogs you admire and, if possible, how those blogs translated into sales leads, better customer relations or other benefits.

Consult with trusted advisers. Before embarking on any new marketing initiative, it's always a good idea to consult with those whose opinion you trust. Do you know a business owner with a business-oriented blog? If so, ask what impact the blog has had on their business. Also ask your in-house or contract marketing expert for input on your blog's goals, content or tone. Finally, talk to your webmaster, site designer or other web-savvy adviser. Should you add a blog to your small-business website or create one on a separate, public site? What keywords would they recommend using?

Something to Say

Ultimately, a blog can be a highly effective and low-cost marketing tool for differentiating your business from the competition and encouraging customer loyalty. All that's required to be a successful small business blogger is planning, creativity, commitment and, most importantly, something worth saying.

Using Google to Promote Your Business

Here's how you can use your favorite search engine's cool tools to market your online business.

If you're not already advertising with Google, it's time to get cracking! With more than 81.9 million unique visitors each month, Google.com is a huge source of potential traffic for your business. Google has a wide variety of services, tools, labs and advertising avenues that every online entrepreneur should know about--yet many people are unaware that Google is much more than "just" a search engine. So let's take a look at some of the key resources you can use to promote your online business.

Get Your Website Ranked

1. Web Search: Just showing up in your potential customers' search results is the easiest way to use Google for free advertising. To show up in the first page or two of results, you'll need to optimize your website to achieve the highest ranking possible. You may already be aware that you need to spend some time getting the right keywords on your website and increasing your "link popularity." But you might not have known that Google looks at the first block of text it encounters on your web page and uses that for the few lines displayed about your site on search result pages. So if you want to get listed and also catch the eye of your customers, make your first paragraph of text count: To be most effective, it should be roughly 300 words with about 8 percent of them being keywords.

2. Sitemaps: Google's spiders constantly index web pages, and it's impossible to predict accurately when they'll visit your site. If you've paid attention to optimizing your site for search, then they will crawl your pages. However, you can't be sure that they've indexed all your web pages--they might index just part of your site during a single visit. And since they start at the top of a page and work down, they might not even index the entire page before moving on!

One thing you can do to increase the likelihood of your entire site getting "spidered" is to submit your site to Google Sitemaps. After submitting your site, Google creates and stores an XML file that allows for instant updates and indexing whenever your site's content changes. This is like having your own data cable running from your computer directly to Google!
3. AdSense: AdSense is one of the two kinds of advertising avenues Google offers. The ads generated through AdSense are third-party ads that sit on your website. The program is free for you to use and you make money each time someone clicks on an ad and moves off your site. In other words, these ads entice your visitors away from your site (bad thing), but you're compensated each time that happens (good thing).
Google matches the ads to your site by finding similarities in the keywords of each. The good news is, you can set a filter to prevent your competitors' ads from appearing on your website, and you can customize the appearance of the ads so their background color is the same as your site's, making them look more like informative content than sales pitches.
Try testing Google AdSense on your site to see if it negatively affects your traffic and sales. If it doesn't, then you've just found a new revenue stream. How much will you earn? That depends partly on how much the advertisers are paying Google for the keywords and partly on how many people click through the ads on your site. But realistically, you could earn anywhere between $0.03 and $15.00 per click--and as much as several hundred dollars a day if you have a well-optimized site that draws lots of targeted traffic.
4. AdWords: The second of Google's advertising opportunities is AdWords. These are ads that you create to promote your business and that Google places on other sites for you. There are three main places you'll see AdWord ads:
On the right side of the page next to Google's "organic" search results
On other sites as AdSense ads
Alongside your e-mail messages in Gmail
When you create your AdWord ads, you're in control of how much they cost. You decide how much you're willing to pay for specific keywords in your ads, and each time your ad is clicked, you pay that amount. The amount ranges from a minimum of $0.05 to a maximum of $100, and you can set a daily budget that won't be exceeded.
Google uses the keywords you chose to help them place your ads on sites that have content relevant to yours, so you can be assured the traffic you're paying for is highly targeted. AdWords reach 80 percent of internet users, and you can define their target region and language. If you're wary about using AdWords because of the possibility of your ads appearing on sites that don't convert to sales for you, you can apply a "negative filter" when creating your ad to exclude specific sites.
As with AdSense ads, it's a good idea to test whether your advertising investment is making money for you. If the click-through traffic isn't converting to sales, if your traffic drops off, or if a particular keyword is not drawing the traffic--and sales--you'd hoped for, it's time to rework your ads.

Monitor Google--and Your Site's Google Ranking--With Other Tools

We shouldn't always take a company's word for it when it comes to what they offer. It's wise to get a second opinion or look to the experts to see what the buzz is about a company's products. Using Google is no different, and there are a large number of ways to discover who's saying what about Google's products. There are also a lot of people who provide tools and services that supplement Google's, and these, too, are worth knowing about.
Let's look at a few examples:
1. GoogleAdvisor.org: This is a blog that focuses on AdSense, AdWords and PageRank strategies. (PageRank is the Google tool you can use to gain an instant sense of your website's importance--you're assigned a rank from 0 to 10 based on how many other sites link to you and how "important" they are.) For information, tips, tricks and strategies related to Google, this site is a good first stop.
2. GoogleRankings.com: This site gives you a free tool for checking your keywords. You can enter your site's URL and get a report about your keyword density. You can then check how highly Google ranks your site for each of those keywords.
3. GoogleGuide.com: This site offers guides for both novice and experienced users. Experienced users can find out more about creating a website, including tips on PageRank, getting listed and advertising revenue.
Now that you have all the information you need to promote your business with Google, remember Google's philosophy: "Focus on the user, and all else will follow." Every step of your business should be about solving a problem for your customer. Google's services and tools will help you achieve that.

8 Ways to Keep Your Homebased Business Running Smoothly

If you're well on your way to homebased business success, these management tips will help you stay on top of your game.

Leaving corporate America to run a homebased business is the ideal situation for many people: There's no boss breathing down your neck, no boring meetings to attend and no 45-minute drives in rush hour traffic. Working from home can be a rewarding experience, but it's easy to forget the basic rules of running a successful business when it's 10 hours of just you, your computer and the distractions of home.

Structure your day. The problem a lot of homebased business owners have is that they no longer have a boss standing over them making sure they get their work done, or a tangible start and end of each workday. It's easy to let time slip by as you head to the refrigerator, catch a few minutes of TV, or dive into a project first thing in the morning, neglecting the other tasks you need to perform to keep your business running smoothly.Create a structure that mimics what you had in the workplace. Structure your day so you have a start and finish time, with certain hours set aside for specific activities. A general rule is to spend the first hour of the day prospecting for new clients. Send your emails, write your letters and make your phone calls first thing so you don't forget to do it later.

Use Outlook or some sort of contact management software to serve as a visual reminder of what you need to accomplish that day. Live and die by your to-do-list. Try to have everything crossed off by the end of the day. Even my own children know that if they want me to do something for them during working hours, they have to put it on my to-do-list or it will never get done

Stay connected. Carry an organizer wherever you go. If you're still using a day planner or similar dinosaur, consider upgrading to a Blackberry or other high-tech gadget. You don't need to go crazy and spend a lot of money, but invest wisely in something that will hold everything you need and allow you to instantly access it on the go. Another good idea is to not keep all of your information in one location, such as the hard drive of your home computer. Keep your data hosted on a virtual exchange server so you can access it anywhere that has an Internet connection. A big misconception about homebased business owners is that they stay at home all day, everyday. And as you know, that's just not always true.

Organize your family time. Once your professional life is organized, you may need to consider organizing your personal life. Maybe you noticed right away, or maybe it's just becoming apparent, that you tend to work around the schedule of your family members. This is especially true if you have children. A lot of people, especially young moms, decide that they're going to quit their jobs in corporate America and work from home in order to care for their children and save on daycare expenses. But in reality, if you're serious about running a homebased business and earning a decent income, you're going to have to make arrangements for childcare in or outside the home. Otherwise it becomes too distracting. Consider hiring a babysitter so you're guaranteed five to six solid hours to get your work done

Motivate yourself. Sit down and set some goals for yourself. You no longer have quarterly reviews or progress reports, so it's important to keep track of whether or not you're making progress in your business. It's one thing to set small goals like completing your to-do-list--you also have to set goals to motivate yourself to succeed. Hopefully by now you're making as much, if not more, money at your homebased business than you were at your former job. If you aren't, begin by setting a goal to bring in the same amount of income you were, and slowly raise the bar to increase your income by a couple of thousand a month. Once you've met a goal, make time to reward yourself by doing something fun, which brings us to the next tip.

Take time out for good behavior. It's not uncommon to find yourself working 60- to 70-hour weeks. But the good thing is, if you want to sneak out and see a movie at two in the afternoon, nobody's going to tell you not to do it. You have that freedom and flexibility as a home business owner. It can be tempting to work all the time when you start seeing how successful your business has become, but know when to relax. You've already established a smooth-running business. Take a break every now and then so you don't get burned out.

Be a Jack-of-all-trades. There are a lot of roles you play as a homebased business owner: You're the CEO, president, secretary, office manager and tech support. Learn the basic skills of running an office, including how to troubleshoot some rudimentary technical problems. You don't need to become an expert, but make sure you have a basic understanding of tech support issues, bookkeeping, etc. Otherwise it will become too expensive to have to pay someone to do everything for you

Network. Network with other homebased business owners in either a formal or informal setting. This is a good way to find service providers, leads and potential clients. Surrounding yourself with people who also work from home will give you the support you need, and refer you to people who can help you grow your business.

Consider moving out of your home. For a lot of people, working from home is a launching pad. In the beginning, many business owners work from home in order to keep overhead low. If you have more than one person with different roles working from your home office, you should ideally be working in separate rooms. It can be difficult having two people work side by side, even if those two people are spouses and love each other very much. It's distracting for anyone to have someone three feet away from you talking on the phone. Be prepared for expansion. At the point when your business becomes so successful that you cannot efficiently work close together, start considering moving your office outside the home.

Hot New Ways to Market Online

Last year more than a billion people went online, more than 250 billion searches were done, and total online sales accounted for over $170 billion (Forrester). More people than ever are turning to the internet to find--and buy--the products they need.

This year, resolve to get your business off to a great start and make more money in 2006. To do that, here are the top three sure-fire strategies you need to boost your profits this year!

Strategy #1: Know How to Beat the Search Engines and Drive Free Traffic to Your Site The key to getting your business name to pop up in search engines is to use sound online marketing principles, rather than trying to manipulate the search engines with tons of keywords and inflated link popularity. That means you should:

Provide useful information, valuable content and links that are related to your business.
Make your domain names and page titles relevant to your business and keywords.
Solicit links from (and link to) sites with good reputations, traffic and Google PageRanks.
Keep your content current and image tags appropriate--don't make them long, repetitive or off-topic. (Image tags are the small bits of text that describe your image files. You can't see them on your web page, but the search engines read them in your source code.)

As long as your links are designed to enhance the value of your site's content or to increase your credibility and authority,then your site will continue to see good rankings on Google.

Strategy #2: Take Advantage of Brand-New Profit-Making Opportunities with Pay-per-Click Advertising There have been some big changes in pay-per-click (PPC) search engines recently, and more and more people are starting to realize exactly how profitable they can be.

Bidding on your best keywords and securing top results in the search engines is probably the easiest and fastest way to drive potential customers to your site. To get a number-one ranking in pay-per-click advertising, all you have to do is bid more on your keywords than the #2 bidder.

there were a ton of changes across the industry, with each of the "big players" offering new and exciting ways for you to succeed. Let's look at each in detail.

1. Google AdWords: Two of the most useful features Google AdWords added are:
The ability to include or exclude specific sites from your campaign. Google already tries to keep your ads from appearing on competitors' pages, but there are plenty of unsavory websites out there that you don't want to be unwittingly associated with.

Different pricing for having ads on search sites and content sites. Search ads get more eyeballs on them, but content ads are on sites that are more relevant to your customers and generally have a higher click-through rate.

2. Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions(formerly Overture): Overture, the previous industry leader, has been revamped and streamlined. In an effort to unify their brand, Overture was renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions. Their next move was to simplify their entire sign-up process--formerly one of their customers' biggest complaints.

Yahoo! has also made some changes to their program that should be welcomed by small businesses and online entrepreneurs: the deposit has been lowered from $50 to $5, and the monthly minimum of $20 has been scrapped, so even the tiniest internet business can get in on the action. This brings them into line with Google's pricing.

Things are looking up for the new Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions Even though Google's AdWords seems to drive more traffic, advertisers point to better conversion rates in some markets for Yahoo!, especially younger demographics. Try testing your pay-per-click campaign on both services to see which results in higher profits for your business!

3. The Challengers: Although Google and Yahoo! are the clear industry leaders, it can still pay to look at the smaller service providers. Although the traffic isn't as heavy on these sites, it's far easier and cheaper to get #1 rankings on these up-and-comers. Depending on how competitive your market is, you may want to test pay-per-click advertising with:

MIVA (formerly FindWhat): www.miva.com

Lycos InSite:http://insite.lycos.com

IndustryBrains:www.industrybrains.com

Kanoodle:www.kanoodle.com

LookSmart:http://search.looksmart.com

BrainFox:www.brainfox.com

Enhance (formerly ah-ha.com): www.enhance.com

SearchFeed:www.searchfeed.com

Search123:www.search123.com

ePilot:www.epilot.com

Quigo AdSonar:www.quigo.com

Remember that new advancements in pay-per-click advertising are developed every day--so pay attention to the industry headlines! For example, MIVA, one of the smaller providers listed above, is now offering pay-per-click advertising in e-mail format. MIVA Mail allows pay-per-click ads in newsletters and HTML e-mail communications. Watch for the bigger players to follow soon.

Strategy #3: The Hottest Online Marketing Strategy was the "blog explosion" on the internet. The number of blogs more than doubled between June and December, and will double again this year.

Blogs (short for "weblogs") are a simple way for anyone to post new content in an easy-to-read website format with the newest information always on top.

Blogs are absurdly easy to start and even easier to maintain. Some even let you post with your e-mail--just sit down, write a letter, mail it to your blog address, and you're done. It's so easy that some people post a dozen times a day.

But how can a blog benefit your business? Your blog can boost your ranking in the search engines, increase your traffic, and improve your credibility--all of which will ultimately lead to more sales!

Search engines love the content-rich element of blogs. If you blog about a specific subject, like your industry or hobby, people interested in that topic will visit your blog and read it often. With a well-written blog, it's easy to establish your credibility by demonstrating your expertise in your subject area. Over time you'll develop relationships with your visitors--which ultimately lead to more customers. Links to your sales site and product pages are a natural fit here, too.

Final Thoughts 2007 is shaping up to be another record-setting year for online business, with 200 million more customers, 20 percent more sales, and more exciting developments that'll undoubtedly change the way we do business on the internet.

Just remember: All it takes is one successful technique to start seeing real growth in your sales and profits in 2007. Don't think you have to do everything at once! Choose one strategy, implement it, and start making money from it today--then move on to the next strategy.

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