There’s a great new article over at the “Biz-Owners Blog” on consumer generated media and it’s impact on your small business marketing effectiveness. If you own a small business and are looking to execute a successful marketing strategy in the 21st Century marketplace you don’t want to miss this article. While you’re there you can find lots of supporting “how to” articles you can use to systemize and grow your business too.

I read an interesting article the other day by Pamela Parker over at the ClickZ Network. She interviewed Dick Costolo CEO of Feedburner who shared some interesting research on emerging trends in RSS advertising that have a direct impact on business bloggers. Whether you business blog to build relationships and trust with your target market, or you business blog to monetize through targeted contextual advertising, there are some valuable insights and trends that you should be aware of.

Out of the brief summary of findings that Dick shared with Pamela, there are several developing trends that will significantly impact your business blogging effectiveness no matter how you monetize your business blog. I’d like to I’d like to call your attention to three here.

Three developing trends that will significantly impact your business blogging effectiveness

1. Readers (and advertisers) want relevancy — so give it to them with a mix of longer posts mixed in with shorter ones

One of the challenges that advertising via RSS based on contextual targeting is that many bloggers predominantly publish short posts. With shorter posts there’s often not enough content to accurately align ads with content. Dick is saying that publisher feedback has revealed “people are paying much closer attention to the relevance of this particular ad to this specific post.”

Whether you’re looking for higher relevancy for ads you place on your blog, or looking to have people actually “stick” once they hit your business blog — the message is the same.

Be sure to mix longer/article-type posts with shorter “drive-by” posts.

When you do, you’ll not only get higher relevancy from contextual ads (including Google Ad Sense,) and enhanced stickiness for your target market. You’ll also get (more…)

Measuring the marketing impact of your business blog steps way outside the tracking of traffic trends, server logs, or even link tracking from your blog. A true analysis of the impact of your business blog requires an ongoing trend analysis that examines “conversations” in and around the blogosphere. This is the real research that will yield relevant information that can be used to not only measure the marketing impact of your business blog — but more importantly to guide the development of your marketing strategy.

With some very simple research you can discover:

• The wants, needs, and desires of your target market
• What type of language consumers are using related to your product, service, or industry
• Shifts beginning to take place in the marketplace
• Actions or miss-actions your competitors are taking

What you find with this research can direct your marketing strategies and creative approach. It may also reveal other terms and niche areas you should be monitoring and researching. With all the relevant info you find you’re likely to feel like a kid in a candy store.

How you can get started

Here are some simple ways you can get started measuring the (more…)

Business Owner’s Question: Should I have a business blog AND a newsletter? What are the advantages and disadvantages of having both?

Your Business Coaches’ Answer: Yes – we recommend having BOTH a blog and a newsletter – for a variety of reasons. But for the sake of brevity, here are just a few ideas to get your brain thinking creatively on the concept of using business blogs.

(more…)

Those of you who have been following our articles on business blogging or attended any of our business blogging TeleClinics know how we continuously focus on the social networking aspect of business blogs. (You’ll find a few of those articles on the power of social networking combined with blogging here.) The reason we’re so adamant about this being your main focus is because we know when you fully engage the social networking (or “Word of Mouth Marketing“) power of business blogs, you’ll always gain the longest lasting results possible with both people and search engines.

Well in the vein of Word or Mouth Marketing, social bookmarking is another leverage point for you to use in maximizing ther impact of your business blog. Social bookmarking is a wide ranging topic but one that’s well worth your time learning about if you want to be a business blogger who gets exponential results with every post you make.

I recently came across one of the best reviews of social bookmarking I’ve ever seen and have been meaning to post about it for a while now. (Wayyyy busy on some new product development. :))

Anyway… this free report on social bookmarking is the most totally comprehensive overview and education you can find.

Why you need to understand social bookmarking as a business blogger, even if you don’t use it!

The authors of this report say it best when they state the reason for such an extensive exploration of (and education in) social bookmarking:

… as long as those hyperlinks (or let’s call them plain old links) are managed, tagged, commented upon, and published onto the Web, they represent a user’s own personal library placed on public record, which – when aggregated with other personal libraries – allows for rich, social networking opportunities.

Why spill any ink (digital or not) in rewriting what someone else has already written about instead of just pointing at the original story and adding the merest of titles, descriptions and tags for future reference? More importantly, why not make these personal ‘link playlists’ available to oneself and to others from whatever browser or computer one happens to be using at the time?

Recognizing that this means links to your business blog, articles, or website can have a nearly limitless life and exponential international reach through social networks and social bookmarking sites — don’t you think that’s a good reason to at least understand how they work? (I ask rhetorically :))

The more you can understand how these social tools work, the more prepared you’ll be to use them pro actively.

• At the very least, you’ll understand the power they hold in both a positive and potentially negative impact on your business.
• With an understanding of the technology you can monitor what your competitors are doing, and get involved if you see them establishing themselves as a primary source of expertise in your industry or niche.
• Social bookmarking is also an excellent Socratic business growth tool because you can monitor what your target market is looking at, and looking for

This social bookmarking report is nearly 30 pages when printed and covers the following topics:

- Introduction to social bookmarking
- A good look at the architecture of collaborative networks
- A very detailed look at tagging (how it works, how to do it, why you should consider it)
- How social networks are “glued” together
- Some detailed examples (using academia as the sample) of how it works together
- Lots of good reference sources for social networking and social bookmarking services

Although this report does relate a lot of the information on social bookmarking (and by extension, social networking) to the academic world, it’s still a tremendous resource for busy business owners.

You can choose to not use social bookmarking yourself or choose not to engage in social networking communities. That’s fine, we all only have 24-hours in each day. But to remain ignorant of these tools and the power they hold in the hands of the consumer is to set yourself up for trouble down the road.

Do yourself a favor. Take some time and read this report on social bookmarking now.

John-Paul Micek
The Click-and-Mortar Business Coach
Business Owners Coaching Club
http:/www.AdvancedBusinessBlogging.com

The © Copyright to all audio, video, images, and text are held by RPM Success Group Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Some recent blog stats from BlogPulse (an Intelliseek company) given in a press release reveal a dirty little secret about blogs and the blogosphere. It’s simple fact that’s critical for you to recognize and prepare yourself for if you’re going to be a successful business blogger.

The BlogPulse database is now tracking more than 10 million blogs. That’s a huge number and even more impressive when you realize that this number is up 700,000 from just two months ago!

That’s a real meaningful shift in the marketplace and great news for business bloggers for a number of reasons. The most important thing is that with these type of increases — developers will really start to see the business value in developing software for detailed blog analytics and RSS tracking. Something that serious business bloggers have been eagerly waiting for.

But what’s this dirty little secret buried in this report, and why is it so vital for your success with business blogging?

Well it’s not revealed in the press release itself, but rather in a post at the BlogPulse Blog Here’s the key quote related to blog activity that caught my attention:

According to our statistics, 31% are active within the last 30 days, 44% are active within the last 60 days and slightly more than half (51%) are active within the last 90 days. “Active” means a new post has been added.

Only one-third of these bloggers are posting on a monthly basis, and more than half have not posted in 90-days! That means they’re abandoned for all practical purposes. They might as well be a regular web site with that type of updating frequency. No relationship building with consumers, and certainly no benefits what-so-ever in search engine rankings.

Now as a reader of Advanced Business Blogging, you know how powerful business blogging can be for boosting your search engine rankings, online marketing, and relationship building with your clients and prospects. But what these statistics reveal is how unprepared so many bloggers are fro having a blogging strategy that lasts.

For personal bloggers, this is no big deal. But if you want to get the type of results that business blogging can generate for you then you’ve got to get serious and treat your blogging like any other operational arm of your business.

Measurable results demand a serious business blogging strategy

You would never offer a new service or product without some serious testing or training, would you? Of course not. As a successful business owner, you wouldn’t even start a new marketing campaign without investing in professional guidance, or at least market research. Your business blogging shouldn’t be any different.

You need a solid business blogging strategy before you end up like one of these statistics. And that would be a shame considering the impact that blogging can have on your business growth. Learn all you can about business blogging. Obviously AdvancedBusinessBlogging.com is a place to start learning how to business blog.

And there are many other resources for you to use in learning about blogging and the blogosphere. For instance, the book “Blog” by Hugh Hewitt gives a good overview as to why this new form of communication is so powerful and why you shouldn’t wait any longer to establish yourself as an expert in your niche.

But… when it comes time to get serious results as quickly as possible with as few costly mistakes as possible — that’s when you should consider putting some serious momentum on your side with the best professional coaching on business blogging you can get. If you’re serious about getting the type of results that business blogging can generate, the “How to Master Business Blogging” multi-media course is just the advantage you’re looking for.

John-Paul Micek
The Click-and-Mortar Business Coach
Business Owners Coaching Club
http:/www.AdvancedBusinessBlogging.com

The © Copyright to all audio, video, images, and text are held by RPM Success Group Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons License.

“Tagging” is currently all the rage among click-and-mortar business owners, business bloggers, and just about anyone else addicted to or immersed in digital content. If you’re not familiar with tagging or how it works, I came across an excellent article that helps explain the process in simple terms. You’ll also learn about the pros, cons, and some of the inevitable detours down the road for tagging.

With this introductory article on tagging you’ll have a better understanding of what tagging is and just how much time you should invest in it right now.

If you’re a digital info junky, you may not be able to resist jumping headlong into tagging (if you’re not already there.) BUT … if you’re a small business owners with limited time — you must test the waters and enter slowly.

How should you start tagging posts, images, and video?

I would never coach a busy business owner to avoid tagging altogether, that would be sticking your head in the sand. However, I also wouldn’t coach an owner to jump into tagging all their existing digital content either.

Start by tagging new content as you produce it. Test by implementing tagging in incremental steps with different types of content. Track your results and let measurable results prove the worthiness of tagging — not the hype.

There are a lot of bugs that need to be worked out of the filtering software for tags, and overly aggressive internet marketers and spammers may crash the system before it even gets going. Let’s hope not though. Tagging has the potential to be the salvation of busy business owners as we attempt to sift through the ever expanding mass of digital data available on the net and our own hard drives.

Be prudent in the amount of time you and your company team dedicate to tagging before it proves itself. If you get started systemizing the tagging of new digital content in small steps you can’t go wrong. If tagging takes off, you’re already started and just have to ramp up your efforts. If it fizzles out, your downside is protected because you didn’t go whole-hog retroactively tagging all your digital content.

If you’d like to learn more about tagging, check out this introductory article on tagging here.

John-Paul Micek
The Click-and-Mortar Business Coach
Business Owners Coaching Club
http:/www.AdvancedBusinessBlogging.com

The © Copyright to all audio, video, images, and text are held by RPM Success Group Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons License.

A new category of software tools has emerged that uses search engine technology to find and organize consumer-posted thoughts and opinions contained in blogs and posts. These tools are here to help you as a small business owner and serious business blogger to help you keep an eye on what’s being said about you and your company.

But business owners should realize that these tools are not just for monitoring buzz about you. These powerful tools that pull together all types of customized dynamic web information (including blogs and podcasts) can give you very valuable insight which you can use to:

Develop new and more effective marketing campaigns.

Create new products that the marketplace is asking for (or that consumers don’t yet know they want, but would gobble up by the thousands if made available.)

Monitor and research competitors to see what they’re up to, where they’re making headway, and where they might be in trouble.

The marketplace of the new millennium is moving at light speed. As a small business owner and a business blogger you’ve got to move with it if you’re going to maximize your growth and profitability. It’s not only interesting to see where the marketplace is moving and how today’s consumer is gaining more and more control — it’s a requirement for you to keep up with it if you want to thrive! Having the right tools at your disposal is a BIG help. Read more about blog scanning tools in this article.

John-Paul Micek
The Click-and-Mortar Business Coach
Business Owners Coaching Club

The © Copyright to all audio, video, images, and text are held by RPM Success Group Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons License.

I’ve been struggling over the last few months on how I should alter my business blogging style. I’ve primarily been more of a “scribe,” writing longer how-to articles and series. But that takes quite a bit of time and can get on your nerves some weeks. (That’s why there was a sort of “lull” in my posting frequency over the last week or two. ) In sharing a bit of the personal journey I’ve been on lately, I’m sure you’ll take away insights that will help you with your own business blogging development.

My struggle in the past has been my obsession with sharing tons of actionable information. I’m passionate about business ownership. And helping other small business owners restructure their companies so they enjoy the same quality of lifestyle Deb and I have created for ourselves is one of my main focuses. So the my thought of what I incorrectly perceived as “just slapping up some links” was in my mind short changing our clients and subscribers.

But I must emphasize — that was MY incorrect perception.

I find link references from people I trust a great time saver. Deb and I are busy business owners, running our real estate investment company here in Hawaii, and RPM Success Group Inc. (where we’re constantly creating and managing new products/services to help small business owners boost their growth.) So having help from other bloggers who have similar interests, but a different way of surfing the net is a tremendous asset.

(This is especially if I want to make my way out of the office to the beach. Here’s what Lanikai beach looks like on a weekday.)

Anyway … back to work. The bottom line is that having these trusted blogs to refer to is like having (more…)

In scooting around this morning doing some research on business podcasting I came across a link reference from Lee over at the Common Craft blog. He references a new article from Wired magazine that highlights some interesting moves being made by Infinity Broadcasting, and here’s how you can join in to benefit.

Infinity with over 180 stations across the nation, is stepping into the business die of podcasting full force. They’re going to be taking one of their LA stations and converting it to 100% listener-submitted content. The station will be renamed KYOURadio. You can read the full article at over at Wired Magazine.

Here’s how to join in and benefit with your business podcast

As a business podcaster you should submit your digital audio files for broadcast consideration by way of the KYOURadio.com web site. It’s quick and easy to do! I just went through the process and it took under 15-minutes. If you have some podcasts already published, you can register and upload the audio file from the podcast you’d like to submit for consideration just as quickly.

I think this is brilliant idea, and incorporating advertising right from the start will obviously allow Infinity to monetize this right from the start. Something to keep an eye on. If this is even mildly successful, it will provide a great case study for others to follow and expand on.

John-Paul Micek
The Click-and-Mortar Business Coach
Business Owners Coaching Club
http:/www.AdvancedBusinessBlogging.com

The © Copyright to all audio, video, images, and text are held by RPM Success Group Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons License.