We take clients by the hand and help them navigate most of the points he covers.  There are two points however, that each blogger needs to figure out how to handle on their own.  The first is content. We all know, Content is King, and I have a feeling that scares some people away from the idea of blogging. Let me reassure you, if you are running a business, or your part of the business, you have content. It may just be too familiar to you, since you deal with it every day.  What is common place for you is information that your clients are probably searching for. If you install and maintain pools, talk about pool chemicals, pool maintenance, or opening the pool for the season.  If you are in a creative industry, talk about a creative challenge and how you met it, talk about seasonal displays, talk about choosing the right color scheme. You get the idea. Keep track of the questions your customers ask you and use a few posts to answer the questions.

Lee talks about creating themes for different days of the week, and that can be helpful for some bloggers with a tendency for writers block.  Your themes will depend on your business. His suggestions included Social Monday, and Rant Thursday, among others. Keep an eye on your industry news, and set aside topics that correspond to your theme days, then when it is time to write, you have information at your fingertips. Even better, assign different people to different themes, and have them write a few posts that you can then schedule for publication in the future.  That way, if everyone gets busy for a little while, you have content at the ready to get you over the busy times.

The last point in Lee’s list is the Who.  Not the band, but who is behind the blog. One way to highlight the Who is to append information about the author at the end of the post.  Also, make it a point to discover your ‘voice’ when writing.  This takes time and practice, but you will know when you find it and it will actually make it easier for you to write sincere posts.  Your readers will be able to tell, too, and will respond to the real person behind the business.

Have you found your voice? How have you been able to tap the content around you for informative posts? Let us know in the comments, and happy blogging!

The Who behind this post is Regina Sillitti, Project Coordinator for Dinkum Interactive. She has worked in programming, design, business analysis and quality assurance. Her background in design and data processing give her a unique perspective on client – tech translation. You can reach her at regina@dinkuminteractive.com.

Photo Credits:

• http://www.sxc.hu/photo/770472
• http://www.sxc.hu/photo/418215

Regina Sillitti is Project Coordinator for Dinkum Interactive. She has worked in programming, design, business analysis and quality assurance. Her background in design and data processing give her a unique perspective on client - tech translation. You can reach her at regina@dinkuminteractive.com, or find her on Twitter, @ReginaSillitti.

The webinar was well done, and complete in half an hour.  This was great for busy professionals. Most of the information validated what I know about press releases, such as:

• Include the company name in the title
• Include keywords in the title
• Include links in the body of the press release
• Make those links appropriate to the anchor text
• Link to more pages than the home page
• Have a link appear early in the press release
• Have an “about us” section at the end

There was one tidbit of information that was new to me and will probably be of interest to our clients with blogs. When you distribute a press release, rewrite the information in the release as a blog post.  Use the same information, but make it more conversational, in the style of your blog. Then include a link in the press release back to the blog post.

Since the SEO goal of distributing a press release is to bring visitors back to your site, this is a great idea!  It also allows you to leverage that newsworthy item into more fresh content for your site, another SEO win!

Originally Hubspot was planning to offer a similar webinar on a weekly basis.  They have since reconsidered, and will offer these on a monthly basis. I plan to sit in when I can, and pick up more tips to share and put to use for our clients.

Regina Sillitti is Project Coordinator for Dinkum Interactive.  She has worked in programming,  design, business analysis and quality assurance. Her background in design and data processing give her a unique perspective on client – tech translation. You can reach her at regina@dinkuminteractive.com.

Regina Sillitti is Project Coordinator for Dinkum Interactive. She has worked in programming, design, business analysis and quality assurance. Her background in design and data processing give her a unique perspective on client - tech translation. You can reach her at regina@dinkuminteractive.com, or find her on Twitter, @ReginaSillitti.

Google doesn’t employ a full time blogger for any subject, people get paid to do their job and part of that job sometimes includes a blog.  If it works for Google, why doesn’t it work for the rest of us?

One thing that Karen said that hit home was that if the blog feels like a homework assignment that you will tend to put off, then maybe blogging isn’t for you.  It becomes one more task in a crowded week and the tone of the blog will show that.  If you are uninspired, how can you inspire your readers?

She then went on to say that blogging can be fun and whimsical at times.  Small companies especially can post about the culture of the company, like “Donut Friday” or other humorous topics and include pictures.  Other times, the posts will be longer and more focused on a topic of interest to your industry and community. Posting about news items works as well.  If someone is making a presentation somewhere, announce it on the blog.  If the company wins an award, let people know about it on the blog.  If you are changing business direction, or have a PR issue that develops, discuss it in a post or two. Invite your community to weigh in on these topics.

On the Google blogs, there are also many writers. No blog is owned by just one employee.  There are established guidelines and best practices that they follow, and someone who thinks like an editor who manages the whole thing.  There is no one with sole editing responsibilities.  Suggestions are made along the way on a topic or a post that is circulated internally prior to posting, but each author is responsible for their own posts.

At Dinkum, we understand the SEO benefits of blogging.  We know the value of building a community and keeping our community informed and engaged, and we teach that to our clients as well. It was good to hear Karen Wikre from Google expound on some of this information, and also that Google follows the same guidelines and principles in their blogging campaigns that we consider important.

How is blogging working out at your company? Have you run into the “blogging as homework” dilemma? And Rick, how about Donut Fridays?

Regina Sillitti is Project Coordinator for Dinkum Interactive.  She has worked in programming,  design, business analysis and quality assurance. Her background in design and data processing give her a unique perspective on client – tech translation. You can reach her at regina@dinkuminteractive.com.

Kelly Dunning is a Sales Consultant for Dinkum Interactive. With 10 years experience in sales and marketing, she keeps Dinkum’s new accounts, and Rick, in tip-top shape.

What is a Comments Policy?

A Comments Policy is a statement defining your policy regarding comments on your blog and informs the reader of what you will allow on your blog, what you will not allow, and what they are allowed to do. It is a form of “responsibility statement” to clearly define each party’s rights and responsibilities.

Why Is a Comments Policy Needed?

Interaction by commenting is a key ingredient to any blog, but a solid set of ground rules will manage the expectations of all parties. Continually generating content, developing ideas and interacting with other community members can be time consuming, so having a Comment Policy in place will:

• Save Time
• Maintain Relevancy
• Preserve Quality
• Encourage Interaction

The goal of any business blog is to develop relationships with prospects and peers, so allowing readers to behave badly reflects poorly on both the commenter and the business. Personal attacks, irrelevant content and embedded links are just a few behaviors that will make any reader question the professionalism of the business in question. Lastly, it’s rare that comment signatures like “Buy Viagra” or “Hawaii Condos” are relevant to any post.

Creating a Comments Policy

Comments Policies will vary with every blog and situation; it’s up to each business to decide what’s acceptable. While requiring some thought, this should not be difficult; most blog commenting policies touch on:

• Control over Content and Comments
• Ability to Edit, Sensor, Delete Comments
• Use of Language
• Comment Spam

My experience has been that most businesses and individuals are thrilled to receive any comments at all and that they think that a formal policy would inhibit reader interaction; this is not the case. Lorelle Van Fossen in Does Your Blog Have a Comments Policy? makes the point that while a Comments Policy governs the way in which comments are handled on a blog, it is not a license to freely edit, censor or delete comments. Furthermore, it  simply makes public the rights and remedies a blog reserves to address comments that do not meet established ground rules.

Does Dinkum Have a Comments Policy?

No, we don’t. But that may change sometime soon.

For all the reasons previously mentioned, I feel that it’s something that we must consider. Our goal is to help small and medium sized businesses market their companies online; a big part of that is providing valuable, relevant content and an interactive forum where ideas can be shared. Having a Comment Policy will help us achieve this.

I will follow up this post in the near future to highlight the steps in our Comments Policy development process.

In the meantime, have you developed a comment policy for your personal or business blog? If so, how did you do it? We’d like to know…

Bill Rowland

Rick is on the road again. On July 15, he will present “How Effective is Your Online Marketing Strategy” at Chamber University.  The presentation will be at the Mainline Chamber of Commerce in the Conference Center, 175 Strafford Avenue, Suite 130 in Wayne, PA from 3:30PM until 6PM.

Most people know that Internet Marketing is more that putting up a website. Many have not considered Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn as part of their Internet Marketing Strategy.  With 8 of 10 Americans now online, Social Media is crucial to your success.

Rick wants to help you “get it”. He will pace the presentation to meet the knowledge and skills of the attendees. You will walk out of this presentation with a much clearer idea of how to integrate important social media platforms into your Internet Marketing Strategy. And you already know that Rick presents will energy and passion, so what are you waiting for? The presentation is open to anyone with an interest in improving their Internet Marketing Strategy, so check it out!

Regina

Regina Sillitti is Project Coordinator for Dinkum Interactive. She has worked in programming, design, business analysis and quality assurance. Her background in design and data processing give her a unique perspective on client - tech translation. You can reach her at regina@dinkuminteractive.com, or find her on Twitter, @ReginaSillitti.

I will excerpt a few methods that I think are doable for the typical blogging small business.

Localize Your Blog. One surefire way to reach a larger audience is to target a local market and correspondingly reach out to the local audience in its original language. This means translating your blog and making it geo-specific. Gizmodo is a good example. Check out the little country flags under the logo. Localization allows you to cover topics which major industry blogs will inevitably fail to cover. This allows you to be comprehensive as a brand.

Not just countries, think regions, state or even city specific. Find the niche that you can own.

Participate in a Social Community. Niche social communities like forums or social networking/news websites are not only a good way to get targeted traffic but an efficient way to brand yourself. Pick a couple of social communities and when you are not blogging, spend time on them to network and establish connections.

This will be a subject of future posts. For now I will drop these factoids on you. Did you know that myspace now has more traffic that Google? How about YouTube having 2x the traffic as Google? Can you see a trend here? Social networking sites are doubling every 6 months.

Optimize For Social Media. Social Media optimization can work in two ways for your blog. The first way focuses on allowing your readers to communicate and interact with each other and yourself away from your blog through channels like Twitter or Facebook. Open up accounts in social websites which your audience might frequent and connect them to your blog. The other method involves marketing your blog through social media communities. To do this, pick a community that is relevant to your site, befriend the influencers and disseminate your content.

Bring in New Writers. New writers = new voices and more consistent posting.

Exactly what we are doing here at the Dinkum blog.

Make Your Blog Mobile. Some readers like to access blogs through mobile devices like PDAs or cellphones so making your blog mobile may help you to reach more people. It’s not too far fetched to imagine someone reading your blog article on a PDA and then showing it or sending it to a couple of friends. Here’s an excellent guide on how to make your blog mobile-friendly.

I am already implementing this for some clients. There is a nice plugin that optimizes web access from the iPhone.

Start Doing Video/Podcasts. Video blogging is an easy way to get some extra traffic, because you’ll allow your blog content to reach a whole new audience. Social video websites like Youtube, Dailymotion and Metacafe are high traffic venues which can bring you not only sales conversions but new readers.

This doesn’t have to a big production. Even one will help. One client had a terrific VHS tape of an interview on local TV. We converted it to mpeg4 and upload to YouTube where it sends a steady stream of visitors to the blog.

Implement these tips and your traffic will go up, guaranteed.