Entries Tagged 'money' ↓
November 5th, 2008 — goals, marketing, money, sales, web traffic
One of the biggest problems facing corporate bloggers is whether or not they can communicate effectively through their blog. There are a few steps that you can take to determine just how well you are reaching your audience, and it is not terribly difficult to come up with a plan on how to accomplish this. Let’s get started with the basics.
What do you hope to achieve through your corporate blog?
By focusing on the end result that you would like to have, you can better determine how to write your posts to reach that end. For example, let’s say that you want to increase consumer awareness of your company. This would mean that your posts would need to focus on community efforts that your company is hosting, more information about how your company operates as well as posts that give a more human side to your company.
If your goal is to sell products, you will need to work on a different approach. In order to effectively sell via a blog, you have to follow the basic tenets of copywriting, and find a way to incorporate them into a blog post. For example, you have to have a problem, discuss how that problem effects the consumer and then supply them with a resolution to that problem. This may sound difficult, but there is a way to work this into a blog post.
Let’s say that you sell auto parts and you are trying to increase your sales. One blog post that you could write could focus on the problems of dealing with salvage yards for parts. In this instance, it can be difficult to find parts that are in good condition. There is your problem. Now, you can elaborate on what bad auto parts can do to a vehicle, ie: discussing how this issue affects the consumer. Then, you can offer them a solution, ie: your auto parts that are in perfect working condition and come with a warranty.
This can easily be adapted to any industry, and as long as you are following the basic Problem/How it Affects Consumers/Solution formula, you should not have any problems writing effective blog posts that will sell product. But you can’t just stop there, you also need to focus on why a consumer should trust you. This can be accomplished through other means, such as testimonials, as well as by providing your readers with useful information, not too many sales pitches and a good rapport with you, the blogger.
If your goal is simply to get more visitors to your site and the blog will be used to feed them into your main site, you can take a different tactic. This will require finding interesting ways to induce people to visit your site, such as news that will integrate well with a specific division in your company. For example, let’s say that you run a sales training firm. You are trying to get new clients, and finding it difficult. Your blog could cover recent statistics about a drop in trained sales people, and that would feed into your training division. Again – problem and solution.
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October 12th, 2008 — Buildify, advertisment, audience, blog design, bloggers, blogosphere, engaging ideas, marketing, money, networking, promotion, seo
Good morning Sunday readers! Are you looking for some blogging tips to help out your blog or thinking of starting one? Check out our quick guide below to some great places for ideas and resources.
General:
Blogging Tips:
Promotion and Advertising:
SEO | Optimization:
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October 2nd, 2008 — advertisment, money, reputation, social bookmarking sites, web traffic
If you are not familiar with the site called StumbleUpon, it is a service that allows users to discover new sites. With the use of a toolbar (spyware free), users of StumbleUpon can find new sites that are related to their interests, or they can choose a random option. Millions of people are using StumbleUpon and it has caught the eye of many corporate bloggers as being a great new way to pick up readers.
This is a veritable minefield however in the blogging community. Many people swear by the service, others can’t stand it. While there are some flaw that are inherent with StumbleUpon, there are a few cases where it can actually be useful for your corporate blog. Let’s take a hard look at the pros and cons of StumbleUpon and whether or not it can help you.
First off, although advertising on StumbleUpon is incredibly cheap, and very targeted, few have found it to be effective. Basically, when you purchase a StumbleUpon ad, your blog will be automatically loaded for viewers that are interested in your niche. It sounds ideal, but this rarely works. In our testing we found that we did get the number of visitors promised, but none stayed for more than a few seconds.
Paying for targeted visitors that barely see your site is just not a good investment. There is a lot of controversy over StumbleUpon’s ads, and although they are economical, we have not found that they are effective for the majority of corporate blogs. If you are running a very special contest or offer you may have better results, but you really cannot rely on these ads to help build up a solid readership.
So, what about their organic services? These are the visitors that just happen upon your site and you don’t have to pay for them. This is a little hit or miss and again, it is really only effective for contests, special deals and controversial content that grabs a visitor immediately. While it is still important to get listed as a StumbleUpon site, you should not expect hordes of people to descend on your site as a result.
Overall, StumbleUpon is a great premise that should work, but it just doesn’t seem to for most corporate blogs. The review feature is also worrisome for many corporate blog owners. Get a bad review and that will stay up, in connection with your site, for any StumbleUpon user that happens to visit your site. If the reviews are good, this is great. If they are not, it is a whole other story.
While using StumbleUpon has some benefits, it is certainly not the most reliable means of attracting new readers to your corporate blog. With the right niche and targeting this can change, but for the average corporate blog owner, it is just not worth the trouble. This may change as StumbleUpon grows and evolves, but for now, your efforts are probably best spent elsewhere.
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September 22nd, 2008 — audience, comments, money, revenue, statistics, web traffic
Is this thing on? If you are starting to feel like you are blogging to an empty room, or your posts are accompanied by the sound of crickets, it’s time to start focusing on whether or not you are reaching your audience. There are a number of methods that can be used to determine whether you are getting hits, but this does not provide the true picture. When it comes to reaching your audience, this pays off in terms of new site visitors, more sales and better word of mouth. So, how you can tell if you are reaching your audience? How can you improve your blog to accomplish this? Let’s take a look at some great techniques.
1. Measure by sales.
One of the best tests to see if you are reaching your audience is to create a test post. For this example, we’re going to use a corporate blog that has an online store that sells cordless phones. The test post is going to cover the differences between phones with 5.8 mhz, and 3.0 mhz. Inside the post is a link to discount cordless phones with the appropriate link title.
Float a post like this out there and monitor the reaction. If you move a couple products, you’re starting to get there. If nothing happens, you need to figure out what is going wrong.
2. Measure by reader participation.
When you create an emotional connection with your readers, they can’t help but want to communicate with you. Are you getting more emails after certain blog posts, or more comments? Figure out which kind of posts evoke the most response from your readers and then stick with the format that works. It will make a big difference in how you reach your audience.
3. Measure by traffic.
While you can’t use this all the time, traffic spikes can help you determine how well certain posts do and what may be wrong with others. For example, let’s say that you do a post on the top ten reasons why cordless phones are useful. You put it up and notice that you have a lot of traffic coming from Digg or Reddit. This means that one of your readers thought enough of the post to submit it to these sites and that it is garnering attention.
If you don’t have analytics softaware installed on your blog, you need to add this right away. You can use this software to find out where your visitors are coming from as well as which posts perform better than others. Once you have this down, you can begin focusing on what your readers want to read.
When it comes down to it that is the whole point of this exercise. To reach your audience, you have to give them something that they want to read. To do that, you’ve got to do a little testing to see what will work and what will not. Once you know, you will start to see a big change in the amount of traffic you get and the amount of reader participation.
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September 16th, 2008 — advertisment, goals, marketing, money, networking, planning, platform, promotion, public relations, social bookmarking sites, web traffic
If you are completely new to blogging, you may find that you have a lot of questions and at times, it can be hard to find the answers. We’ve compiled the most common issues facing new corporate bloggers and supplied the answers to these problems below.
1. Is this going to make my company more profitable?
Yes and no. It is important that you go into corporate blogging with the right mindset. Yes, it can be a very powerful means of promotion, but it’s going to take a lot of time and success will not happen overnight. The main reason that most companies get into corporate blogging is not to increase sales directly, but to improve their search engine rankings. Often, the result of a better ranking is more sales, but you should not view your corporate blog as a mythical tool that will rake in millions of dollars in sales.
2. What blogging platform should I use?
This is a tougher question because the answer is a bit nebulous. Everyone is going to have their preference, but overall, the most powerful and customizable platform has to be Wordpress. You’ll have two main options with Wordpress. First, you can set up an account on Wordpress.com, where they will host and install your blog for you, or you can download a free copy at Wordpress.org and install it on your own server.
For those that don’t have a lot of experience, the hosted version works quite well, despite its limitations. For those that need more options with plugins and configuration, installing it at the server level is the best option.
3. How do I promote my blog?
Once again, there is no set answer to this question, but there are several techniques that can be used successfully. First, you’ve got to make your blog easy to find on your own corporate site. Next, you’ll need to start promoting it in two different ways, directly and indirectly.
Direct promotion involves submitting your blog posts to social bookmarking and networking sites. Indirect promotion involves leaving comments on other blogs and leaving a link to your own blog inside. This should be used in moderation and your comments should always be related to the post and not blatant promotional attempts.
4. Is corporate blogging worth the effort?
Absolutely, but only if you are willing to spend extra time promoting your blog. If not, then it is a waste of your time. A good corporate blog will take a few months to catch on and you’ve got to be willing to take the time to really work on creating great posts and promoting them. Success is not going to happen instantly, and it will take work. However, you can see a big difference in your main site’s traffic and in public opinion when you really work on your blog.
Corporate blogging is not for everyone. If you’re interested in getting started, it is best to remember that it will take a lot of time and effort. For those willing to make that sacrifice, success is just around the corner.
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September 1st, 2008 — blog design, content, goals, money, networking, public relations
Every week, new corporate blogs spring into existence, but many are doomed to fail from the start. How can you be assured that your blog is going to be a success? Follow in the footsteps of the leaders and learn from their mistakes! There are three main secrets to successful corporate blogging, that any business owner can implement. They are easy to follow and you’ll be able to start seeing the benefits right away.
1. Be Original.
This can be broken down into three main sub categories: Design, Content and Promotion. Let’s look at the first one, design. There are thousands upon thousands of free themes out there for most blogging platforms. That doesn’t mean that you should be using one. When you’re running a corporate blog, you don’t want to have the same theme as some crazy teenager that’s a little bit emo and a whole lot desperate. It gives the wrong impression. Spend the money to have a theme designed for you that is original.
Next, let’s look at content. Sure, it’s easy to lift content or use snippets of other articles that have already been published. But why would anyone want to read that? You’ve got to put yourself in your reader’s shoes. You may be busy and a blog post may be the last thing on your mind, but you’ve got to take that time to write an original post. It will pay off. Lastly, promotion. You’ve got to find an original way to get your site noticed. This means using social networking, PPC ads and having a great campaign that will get the attention of readers.
2. Be Prolific.
The best blogs are the ones that publish every day, and in many cases, more than once a day. Frequent publishing has many benefits. First, you’re giving your readers an excuse to come back more than once and to visit every single day. Second, you’re building more opportunities for search engine indexing. The best corporate bloggers take the time to really knuckle down and commit to producing lots of original content every single day. It does pay off.
3. Be social.
Today’s online world is social and if you’re not taking part, you’re missing out. Encourage comments on your blog, talk to your readers, not at them. There are many little ways that you can be social on your blog. We’re not saying drop that veneer of professionalism, but you’ve got to find a way to reach out to them. Remember their names, use social networking sites, leave comments on other blogs. These are just a few ways that you can be social and increase your readership.
If you’re not comfortable commenting on another blog, mention one of their more interesting posts. Chances are they’ll be thankful for the publicity and they’ll return the favor. This is an easy way to build up your blog’s readership and make some great contacts in the blogging world. Corporate blogging is a great tool, especially when it is utilized the right way.
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August 21st, 2008 — advertisment, blog design, money, planning, revenue
Many companies don’t consider the fact that they could actually make money from their blogs. The popularity of online advertising has made it easy to include ads from all over the world, and Google Ads in particular make it very easy to target your readers with advertisements that they will be interested in. While it can be very fruitful to include ads on your corporate blog, there are a few considerations you should be aware of before you take that step.
1. Always make sure that you can filter the ads.
The main problem with banner networks is that some of the ads are highly inappropriate for certain audiences. You may not want your company associated with the latest ads for male enhancement – and this happens a lot. It is vital to choose an ad service that will allow you to filter out the type of advertising that you do not want. Be advised however that these filters do not always work. You may need to add actual sites to a list to make sure that their ads do not appear on your site. It is best to monitor the ads that appear on your site as much as possible to avoid getting stuck with reader complaints and a bad public image.
2. Beware your competitors.
The popularity of online advertising means that it is highly likely that your competitors are using it. You don’t want to promote their sites, but if you are using PPC ads that are keyword based, the chances of this happening are very high. Make sure that you collect the URL’s for all of your competitors and then choose a PPC service that will allow you to block ads from that domain. You don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot by promoting another company. This is a frequent problem that affects companies in many different sectors.
3. Do the ads enhance your site or take away from the content?
The whole point of having a corporate blog is to get people to read it. Are the ads going to make them leave your site? While extra revenue is nice, is it worth the risk that your readers are going to click on the ads and as such, leave your blog? This is a consideration that should be weighed heavily before moving forward. Secondly, it is important to make sure that your ads do not diminish your content or make it look badly. Work on ad placement that integrates well with your blog design, and is not terribly prominent.
Having ads on your corporate blog is a bit of a double edged sword. When used properly they can create extra revenue. However, you should always weigh the premise of a two cent click versus a potential sale. If your ads are harming your business, there is just no point in having them. If you do go with advertising, make sure that it is professional and that you do not rely too heavily on it.
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July 17th, 2008 — audience, audio, engaging ideas, money, public relations, video
When it comes to corporate blogs, many people think of just the standard blogging format and they are afraid to break out of the box. However, there are quite a few options that will help bring your blog to life and may even make it easier to get your message across. If you’ve been interested in starting a blog but you’re worried that you can’t get your message across in print, these options might appeal to you.
1. Audio Blogging –
Audio blogging is very similar to podcasting, or simply recording short bits of conversations or your own thoughts an uploading them to your website. This works very well if you have trouble writing down your thoughts but you are a very gifted public speaker. You’ll be engaging your audience on a different level and it will feel even more personable than a static blog.
Audio blogging can be a lot of fun and for a busy executive, it might be easier simply to record a brief snippet on the way to work, instead of having to sit down and type something in. The main downside with audio blogging is that it can be a bit expensive at times, especially if your blog becomes popular. You’ll need to pay for bandwidth as well as more storage space since audio files are quite a bit bigger than text files.
2. Video Blogging –
This is an area that has not been explored enough when it comes to corporate blogging. This is a very great way to get the point across that your company has a human face since that is what your viewers will be seeing. It’s a lot easier to build a relationship with your viewers since they will be able to see as well as hear you.
Video blogging will cost a little more than audio blogging in terms of storage and bandwidth, but for many companies, it is well worth the extra expense. You can look at your video blog as a mini television show that is designed to showcase your company. This is a very effective means of communication with your audience.
Keep in mind that no matter what format you pick, your audio or video files should be about 5 to 10 minutes in length. Special occasions may call for longer files, but this is a good guideline to follow.
If you aren’t sure which format will work for your company, you may want to try a mix to see which one gets the best response from your audience. This is a great way to see what is really on their minds and what they truly like. Hiring a blog management company is also recommended since it can take a lot more resources to produce a video or audio blog than it does to produce a simple text blog. These professionals can make it easier to get your point across quickly and effectively. Give audio or video blogging a try and see what it can do for your company today.
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July 10th, 2008 — advertisment, audience, blog design, money, search engine, social bookmarking sites
Once you’re ready to set up your own corporate blog, you’ll need to figure out what your audience is since this will determine how you write your blog. If you already have a set group of customers that you feel will be reading your blog, you’re already pretty much set. However, if you want to reach out to a new audience, there are a few things that you will have to do first.
1. What is your demographic?
This is actually quite important when it comes to writing your blog. A younger crowd is going to want to see a blog that is more fun and integrated with social networking features, while an older crowd may feel more comfortable with a more staid blog. It will really depend, but these are some wide guidelines to help you. If you don’t know your demographic, it’s best to shoot for the middle of the road when it comes to style and the types of features that you offer on your blog.
2. How do you plan to find new readers?
Once you know your demographic, this will determine how you go about attracting new readers to your blog. For those under 35, promoting your blog on social bookmarking sites such as Digg will deliver your audience to you. However, these readers are very savvy and don’t appreciate over commercialized posts. You’ll need to learn how to walk that fine line between that and getting your message across.
Other readers can be reached through a PPC ad campaign targeting keywords that are well suited to your blog. This is a little expensive and most companies prefer not to have to spend money to promote their blog, but this is a good method. A secondary choice would be to release a press release detailing what your new blog will be doing.
3. The third option is just to let your readers discover you through search engines.
This will take the longest amount of time when it comes to building up your readership and it is a bit hit or miss. You’ll need to be very patient if you’re trying to grow your blog using only this method and you may never have the results you’re looking for.
The best bet is to combine all of these marketing tools into one to help you target your key audience. Once you’ve done that, word of mount will help you continue to grow your blog. Remember that you’ll need to keep writing compelling content if you want your audience to stick with you. A blog management company can assist you in writing posts that will get attention and they are also very useful when it comes to promoting your blog and handling the every day tasks that are associated with it. If you don’t have a lot of time to devote to building your blog’s audience, this is a very good solution that works well for most companies, big or small.
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