Archive of Blogging Posts

Why 27?

Because, after hours and hours of searching, and using Google Alerts for months, that is how many worthwhile articles I have found regarding Blogging ROI so far. I’m sure there are more out there, and I hope that if you know of an additional resource that you will provide that as a comment to this post.

Why have I looked so hard for resources about this topic? Because getting marketers and C-level executives to put corporate blogging on the front burner is so darn difficult.

One of my favorite things about the Search community is that they are not only smart but also pretty darn witty. After reading 20 blog posts in a row about Twitter (or whatever the latest topic is) it can be very refreshing to read something that just makes you laugh out loud.

I have gathered 22, of what are in my opinion, Hi-larious posts from bloggers in the search community (and a few randoms as well) to make you laugh. Here are the links along with some evidence of their funniness:

Lists of Funny

While there are many reasons why businesses who start blogging end up failing, in most cases it has nothing to do with the expertise and intelligence of the individual or team responsible for it. If your blog is not receiving comments, subscribers or traffic, you need to think about why this is the case.

Best practices for post formatting, compelling titles, linking and writing structure only get you so far in the process. When all else is said and done, if your blog is not living up to expectations, you can usually pinpoint 1 of 2 issues:

I started using BloggingZoom.com (BZ) about a month ago after reading a post on Sphinn about how Courtney Tuttle had started a great new social community for bloggers, and how BZ encourages users to submit their own articles in addition to other people’s articles (very contrary to how users behave on other social media sites like Digg).  I can’t find that thread I followed on Sphinn, but here is a blog post on Jennylens.com that makes the same assertion.

Just a quickie for readers of our blog - if you haven’t already read this post by Courtney Tuttle, “This Worst Post In The Universe“, it is a must read. 

If you like sharp headaches and blurry eyes. 

Or, if you want excellent advice on what not to do when blogging. 

And if you want a quick laugh.

For beginning bloggers it is very worthwhile if you can make it through the whole post…

The answer: NoFollow Free WordPress Plugin

This plug-in, developed by Michele Marcucci, is a great solution to the problem of giving good commenters with relevant comments (and links) some “link juice” while preventing spammers from taking advantage of it.

Here are some of the features of the plugin:

• Remove No Follow from: Author Link, Registered Authors Link, Comment Text Links, and/or Registered Comment Text Links
• Customize a prerequisite number of comments needed before no follow will be removed
• Blocked words that will never have no follow removed (to prevent spamming)

I just responded to a B2B Search Marketing Survey from Business.com and thought I’d share two of the responses I submitted (just in case they don’t make their way into the white paper that is going to be distributed to Business.com clients, prospects and B2B advertisers starting the last week of October):

Question:
What Advice Would You Give to B2B Pay Per Click Advertisers to Maximize Their ROI?

Answer:
In the end it all comes down to the landing page experience. While keyword selection, adding tail keyword terms, developing ad copy that resonates (and testing that ad copy over and over), and bidding strategies are all important, it is the experience that a user has on the first page a user sees that has the highest impact.

(…and you haven’t even had a sip of your morning coffee)

One of the intimidating factors businesses face when engaging in a social media strategy is the potential for negative press and/or the differing opinions that arise in relation to an expertise or strategy. Buzzing through the social media networks last Friday, I happened to see Hubspot’s Website Grader hitting Sphinn, specifically in reference to an article, “Why Website Grader is a Bad Idea“. Since KoMarketing Associates has worked with Hubspot on a joint strategy with one of our clients, I am aware of their products/web applications and naturally, the story caught my eye. Whether or not you agree with either party, the discussion shows why the people over at Hubspot are intelligent online marketers and what you can learn from the situation, particularly when your company, website or opinion is challenged with adversity online.

The folks at Closed Loop Marketing have a comprehensive post on optimization techniques for your blog strategy, covering everything from feed optimization to blog structure to posting techniques. While these recommendations all provide excellent opportunities for enhancing the user experience and getting visibility in relevant communities and locations, would-be bloggers need to consider how search engines like Google and Yahoo will react when they reach the blog and how their blog content will be crawled, understood and indexed.

Why won’t our clients blog more? I feel like I’m banging my head against a wall sometimes.

Corporate blogging is good. Very good.

Manage your brand, put a human face to your company, show them you’re smart, engage in conversations, get market feedback, add good content to your site, improve SEO rankings, use a voice that you can’t/don’t want to use on your website, keep things fresh, more, more, more…

But, clients, why won’t you blog? I mean, blog more? Blog more strategically? Believe in blogging?

Some of you do (yeah!).