• Wilderness Voyageurs
• We Know Words
• Cantaloupe
• Certain
• Circle City Tickets

People like and like to do business with those they trust and those who have integrity. Sharing ourselves and what we know is the best way to build a trusting relationship, and it doesn't hurt profits.

Question: What is the best way to start building links to our blogs?

Best practice: The best way to start building links to your blog is to begin participating in conversations in the blogosphere. The linking will then just happen naturally. Start by setting up a Google Alert for topics that relate to your organization and the topics you will be blogging on. This will give you a starting place to finding out what is happening in the blogosphere about your company and industry.

Once you know where to find content that relates to your industry you can start reading and commenting where appropriate. You can also follow up with a blog post that links to the original content you read. As you start to link out people will start to link back to you. The key is more content and more participation in the blogosphere.

Submit your blogging best practice via comment to this post or email to have it answered.

First there was junk mail in your home mail box and then there was spam (term for junk email). This is why it is important to not SPAM your blog. You might be saying how can I be spammy in my blog? Here are a few things you should do in your posts:

• Be relevant and authentic in your posts.

If someone arrives at your site via search, the content better have some useful information for the potential customer.  If it doesn't, your blog will sound like one of those rarely-read newsletters that accompany the monthly utility bills, and they'll move on with no compelling reason to learn more about you.

• Keep Content Format Clean.

Avoid using:

• All capital letters
• Multiple exclamation points
• Underlining things that aren’t links
• Highlighting text
• Excessive bolding
• Multiple font colors in the same post

Of course, the intention of the sender is to grab your attention with ALL THAT FANCY STUFF!!! But the truth is, if a company has to work that hard to make its content look enticing, then the content is probably not all that valuable.

Keep your content formatting clean, simple, and consistent. Images, hyperlinks, and some bolding here and there to call out key points are just fine. But if you spend more time formatting your content than you spend writing it, this is a red flag.

• Don’t Stuff Keywords.

The biggest problem with keyword stuffing is this: it is a huge turn-off to your blog visitors since it interferes with their ability to read your content.  The second problem is that overusing keyword phrases is a turn-off to search engines since it can be indicative of content spam.

There is a natural balance to using keyword phrases within your content, and it is in your best interest to stick with this balance. There isn’t necessarily a ratio you need to worry about – a simple way to check the balance is read your posts out loud and see if they sound natural.

Remember that it is the search engines job to deliver the most relevant content to the searcher. Follow these guidelines to optimize your content for the engines and ultimately the force that drives them - the searchers.

Marketing has been around since the beginning of time when cave man sold the wheel for the very first time. We have evolved over the years as marketers eventually using direct mailings to the masses. This marketing technique has lost credibility over the years and the response rate on average is only about 1%-5% open rate according to directmag.com. The problem for marketers is that people’s physical mailboxes are becoming cluttered with junk mail so people are no longer as receptive. It is also much more labor intensive for the recipient of the mail to follow through with the call to action because it requires them to take an extra step.

The evolution continued and the world of direct mail morphed into the world of email marketing. In the beginning you never knew what type of inappropriate junk email (SPAM) would reach your inbox. The industry has done a great job of policing themselves ensuring that companies are CAN-SPAM compliant. This has allowed mass emailing to be received as somewhat credible. However people’s email inboxes are started to become crowded and one of the largest hurdles to email marketing is that email delivery is dependent upon knowing the recipient’s email address.

So how can you reach out to a far greater amount of prospective customers?  Let those prospects find you through natural search.  Blogging with Compendium allows you to focus on desired keywords, bringing the most relevant searchers to your blog. Since these searchers are looking for your specific information, they are more likely to interact with your company.

I recently journeyed to the orient for two weeks to teach English, eat spicy food, and realize the potential of this fine country.  This experience left me with something more than a new posse of 3rd grade friends and a stomach full of Tums; it gave me a first hand look at the rise of a superpower. 

The city in discussion is Shanghai.  Anyone from a professor to a contractor can highlight the technical points of how the urban development plan is going to unfold, but you will never truly understand it until you see the massive skyscrapers being built as if they were going out of style.  The best way I can represent this to someone who has not traveled there is through this website: Shanghai Urban Development Exhibit.  This caption from the exhibit is one of the most amazing city displays I have ever seen.  The true nature of what is happening is outlined by this floor display.  I could go on and rave for days about this exhibit, but I'll divert you to this site as a deeper reference. Professional TravelGuide.

How does this relate to blogging? Well, the exhibit itself has only indirect ties to blogging.  The direct relationship is in the promise of the exhibit.  Construction is already underway on achieving this dream, which is projected to account for almost 19 million inhabitants in the city; compare this to New York City's 8.25 million.  Furthermore, the need for businesses to advertise to all 19 million inhabitants will certainly increase proportionally to the population size.  How could a company in Shanghai or a company planning on being in Shanghai cope with this advertising need? Business owned blogs.

It is already too hard for individuals in countries such as China to maintain a personal blog due to the restrictions of the government.  The only way a company could utilize such a blog tool would be through a monitored and code-conforming administrative layer.  By meeting certain criteria for posts, a company can ensure that all content posted is pertinent and meets regulatory standards.

In a city such as Shanghai, it is important to establish a well known blog image and gain a significant market share before the initial boom.  Doing so would put that blog name in the mouths of almost 19 million people.  Ask any U.S citizen who uses the internet on a daily basis about which search engine they use and I guarantee that Google, Yahoo, or MSN are the top three choices.   The reason being? These companies have been around since the early years of the internet and maintain a prestigious brand image.  Model a business blog strategy off this example and that blog may become the front runner in the industry.

Some blogs that I found along the way in my research of China:

Shanghaiist
All Roads Lead to China
Technomic Asia

Check these sites out for more information on the developing nation.  You may be surprised at how fast this nation is growing.

Today, the Compendium blog posts are the third-highest source of natural search clicks, behind a Wikipedia link and a story that was published in Network World, Sapp said. But even more important, about 75% of Vontoo’s paid search terms now show up as first-page natural search results on Google, with many of them garnering the top three spots, he said.

Vontoo’s paid search costs are down 40%, and Sapp attributes about 5% to 10% of the decrease to the blogging, he said.

It is really quite amazing…considering only a few years ago for most of us it was Yahoo or bust when it came to search engines of choice.  But, Google made searching better…easier…cleaner  and well, cooler….so we switched.  Now I would say for most searches you could get equally relevant results with either service; but then Google also has all of the ad-ins that are so darn handy (Google Documents, Google Reader, iGoogle page, Gmail, GChat, Google Analytics…the list goes on).  So why would I go to two places instead of one?  I won’t…and most people won’t either. 

Stick with me on this quasi-parallel…so I really like Jay Leno --- yes, I have realized with the writer’s strike that he isn’t as funny without great writers; but I think he is great.  So I used to watch Channel 8 for the 11pm news, but then would have to change the channel to Channel 13 for Leno --- doesn’t seem like much work, right?  Well…I would often miss the first minutes of the monologue and decided one day to check out the other news channel --- guess what?  I liked it better and I didn’t have to change the channel…and now I am hooked.

Back to the focus --- as Chris Baggott often says -- brand doesn’t matter much in the world anymore and merely gets you a potential buyers consideration.   But it REALLY does NOT matter on the web (think Yahoo!, Dogpile, Friendster). Something better comes along…and it is as easy as typing a new address in the toolbar or searching to get where you want to go.  And finally to the point --- there are a few ways this relates to corporate blogging:

• If you believe brand doesn’t matter as much as it used to stop spending your marketing budget otherwise.  Take some of your print or billboard and put it towards SOME type of new media...just make sure you do the research and have a purpose behind your new media campaigns.
  
• So you think brand does matter still?  You’re wrong, but I will say the people behind the brand do matter…and I might just go to the more expensive grocery store because the deli manager is more helpful and friendly than the 17 year old kid at the superstore that could care less if I get the best cut.  Let your employees have a voice and show their passion--- through their own blog.
• Be found!  No one cares how much flash your site--- they care about you solving their problem (i.e. - I need a vacuum that is good for pet hair….Where is the best place to eat fish in Memphis, etc.).  If you can, be there on search results --- that's step one and blogging for SEO is a great way to get there (step two would be having an awesome web site that tells the whole story and provides interaction). 
• Go Organic.  Solve the problem, don’t sell (the sales adage – we don’t sell, we provide solutions).  You solve the problem by having the most relevant information; this information shows up on a search result in the organic (natural) section versus the PPC area that is rarely clicked on simply because it doesn’t provide relevant information.