The world of business is intertwined with conversations - the industry is talking, your customers are talking, your competitors are talking - you need to be a part of those conversations. If you don’t, your market will pass you by. If you stay silent, people will begin to look at you as uninventive, arrogant, or secretive. I will argue for the importance of these conversations and how you can enter in a positive way.

A conversation is authentic communication with the aim to build a relationship over time. The relationship involves give and take (shared linking and comments, for example), but also much more.

You need to be a part of the conversation

Your customers are asking to be a part of your company. They are actually demanding it. Your customers are no longer satisfied with seeing your brand - they want to see the people behind your brand.

If you cannot foster dialogue with your customers, how do you expect to retain them? You need a relationship now to both sell your product/service and to retain your customers.

In gratitude for you taking a genuine interest in them, your customers are more likely to be loyal to you, to spread positive word of mouth, and to give you insight on how to improve your product.

How do you enter the conversation?

The blog is your conversation. Here are some great tips on how to make your blog your most effective communication tool.

Be authentic

You need to care about the customer enough to take down some walls. Be clear, be honest, be real. Blogs are real time - if a post takes you an hour, it’s taking too long. You are crafting far beyond your authenticity. Customers value transparency. This means that you should admit when you make mistakes, be open if there are problems, talk about your successes, and make an effort to post regularly and with some passion.

Invite interaction

Your customers are knocking on your door to talk to you. And this does not mean they want to phone you up or complain. They might just want to know what’s new, what you think, why you are the leader in what you do, and that you care.

Blogs are a very easy tool. You have your comment box. Your customers will use it. And the media will also get involved here too. If you show them you know your stuff, it will pay off. Make sure to watch your comments - interact back online so others can see. At the same time, take it to the next level by sending off an email. Say thanks for the comment - get that conversation going to the next level. You never know when it will pay off for a big sale or a great article about you.

Trackbacks are your conversations too. It’s your way to jump into a conversation - you link to others in your topic, they link to you. Suddenly you have a web of knowledge.

How can you post to invite conversation?

- post relevant information, fairly often (it’s best to start posting a lot at first to attract the spiders and your biggest readers)
- offer some insight and opinion
- ask questions
- link to people who’ve talked on the same topic - supplement their arguments or go against them, either is fine
*linking out attracts linking in
- weigh your posts as a mix of short timely posts and longer more authoritative posts
- use your strongest key phrases in the titles of your articles
- although your content may revolve around your industry, leave self promotion to less than 25% of your posts

The best tip - write with energy and a passion for what you do.

Blogging for business overview
Part 1 - Why blog?
Part 2 - How to start blogging on the right foot
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Despite talking over at Corante about the new bookmark tool de.lirio.us, I have decided to start using del.icio.us again. I have been using Furl for a while now, but as more a shared computer reminder thing. Not really a bookmark sharing tool.

However, I’ve been finding that sometimes I just don’t have the energy to post on everything I find interesting. So, hence my return to del.icio.us.

So, subscribe to my del.icio.us feed.

So, I just submitted Blogaholics to Feedmap, a site that has a blogmap service to geo-code blogs. Once you supply your blog feed and lcoation, you can get a BlogMap that will pinpoint you on the map - nothing more sophisticated than any other mapping service.

However, BlogMap has a social networking compontent. You can browse blogs by location. For example, there are currently 16 blogs around Blogaholics including Darren Barefoot and Susannah from Buzz Marketing with Blogs. Another cool feature is the ability to subscribe to a local blogroll.

It’s a fun little tool. Go find who’s in your neighblog (love that).

So, you know you should have a blog but you don’t quite know how to set it up or how to make it an effective communication and SEO tool. Here are some great ideas to get you started:

1. Choose your categories as logical tags

If you use a blogging software such as Blogware, your categories are your tags. What is a tag? It’s a logical name for a category, post, or picture. Think of it as a filing system. It’s the way you tell yourself and others what you are talking about.

You can add tags to any post or category and your post will then come up in Technorati for that subject. For example, if your category is “Sunset photos” and somebody searches Technorati for “sunset photos,” they will find you. Your categories should be logical and should flow from what you know about how people find you when searching.

2. Subscribe to & read other blogs

Use an aggregator such as Bloglines or NewsGator to subscribe to other blogs and news sites that have RSS feeds - make sure to organize and prioritize your content into folders or hierarchies. Choose sites that have content relevant to your business or interests. You should also subscribe to the RSS feeds of key words or phrases such as your company name, your name, tags, or industry key words. You can do this using PubSub and Technorati.

Knowing your news is the first step to having an opinion on it, writing about it, and using it to make your business decisions.

3. Create your blogroll

It may seem like a simple thing, but telling someone you like their blog is as easy as adding them to your blogroll. If they do what I’ve suggested in point 2 above, they will know you’ve done this. So, they see you like their blog. They check you out. Maybe they like what you have to say. You both comment on each others’ blogs. They add you to their blogroll. And there you have a relationship. A blogroll is your way to connect with the “important” people in your industry - but it’s also a great way to share Google juice between friends. Remember, inbound links count in SEO strategies.

4. Plan your content choices

Who are you writing for? What can you talk about that offers useful insight? What do you have an opinion on?

Play to your strengths here. If you are interested in what you’re writing, it will show. You will have done point 2 and know what there is that is hot in your industry. Comment on it. Be argumentative if you wish. Opinion is good. Don’t forget what your blog is about - your categories should connect with what you talk about. If you write something and don’t know where to put it, it’s likely not the right blog for that post.

But set some limits. Remember, what you say will be read by many, including your customers, your investors, and your competition. So set some boundaries. Know what is proprietary and what is not. What is insight and what is heated opinion. Especially when it comes to your competitors - know how far you want to take this talk - some of your opinion here, especially negative comments, can be considered flaming.

One other little tidbit is to decide on your angle. Will you be the person who writes about all the new stuff happening in your industry? Or will you be the person who chooses carefully what to write, forms an opinion, and offers out a well thought blog post? You must choose what mix of bredth and depth suits you best.

Blogging for business overview
Part 1 - Why blog?

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Does technology save us time or make things more complicated? It depends on who you ask. Some people will argue that, for sure, the more technology, the easier life gets. Others will point to the stress caused from always being “connected.” In particular, there is a lot of disagreement about whether or not blogs actually save people time. Some people see it as a new way to become addicted to the online world, drawing you away from the “real.” I can see the temptation of this argument. But I think it really applies to only a very few.

Contrary to popular belief, I really strongly believe that blogging is a time saver. For all of you out there who ask me how I have time to blog, I should really ask you why you don’t think you have the time to do it. Especially if you are a business. Think about all the time you can save by reading your news via RSS feeds, organized into logical folders of importance. Or how much time you can save trying to keep tabs on where your industry is going and what your competitors are doing. Or even the time saved writing a blog post versus a press release. I am all for making life easier.

Now, I know that there will be a lot of you reading this thinking I am crazy. But it’s really all about how you organize it – you can say this for just about anything you do in life. You can organize your online habits much easier than you can your offline ones. There is no way you can tell if the information in today’s newspaper will be about you or your competitor. But online, its as easy as subscribing to the right feeds. You can draw news from specialized blogs and sites, and even subscribe to Technorati and PubSub feeds on keywords such as your company name or your industry. Easy as that. The news comes to you, not the other way around. At the beginning of the learning curve, blogging may take some time. You need to know how to find your news, have it coming in, and get into the vibe of posting (if you so choose). After that, it’s just easier.

Noah Brier points to some great sites all about making online life more simple – in effect, making your life more simple. Period. Lifehacker has an interesting section that uses surveys to see how people use technology to “get stuff done.” 43 Folders talks about productivity hints such as how to be productive with email. You can even read how RSS can save you time over at the Shifted Librarian.

Overall – don’t let the excitement of new technology take control of you. We all know how to organize our email and we can definitely do the same for RSS and blogging. Know what you need to know and read/write the rest when you have free time. It will not hurt you to miss a day or even a week. If there’s something important out there, it won’t be there for just one day. I strongly believe blogs to be an essential business tool and a great personal enrichment tool – so long as you be organized.

Yahoo today has released an invite-only beta service of their new Yahoo! 360 blogging service. It’s jam packed full of tons of tools. Here is just a taste: instant messaging, photo storage and sharing, Internet radio, moblogging, content access control, and much more.

Check out my post over at Get Real.

Kathleen Gilroy from ottergroup.com has a great visual on how to blog. For those of you new to blogging, I suggest you check it out. It outlines for you the process of how a blog is updated, how it “pings” servers and how the search engines and news aggregators then pick up your feed for others to read.

For those of you in my feed - sorry for the previous empty entry! Key slip. Ahem.

From i285.com we have this little snippet of info about Nostradamus predicting blogging (white, male blogging at that… ahem, not male here).

A time will come when many a boy Childs of the Caucasian persuasion

Can look into his own box of stained glass (assisted by the dark arts of the empire of the gates),

And speak to all the world through the pamphlet known as the weblohs, or blohs for short,

But yonder on the horizon lurks the peoples of myriad pigmentation and genital presentation, ready to start blohing

Blohing the truth and the lies far and wide

Um, yeah. But it is funny.

I will be guest blogging for Corante at Get Real this month. I just put up my first post: Cameraphones as Social Software. Keep posted over there - I will be blogging most days!

Of all the places to post an ad regarding SEO, we now have poster spam onVancouver street posts.

Is this really the best way to advertise for SEO?

Link thanks to Tim Bray.

During my presentation at IIMA, it became clear that many aspects of blogging that we begin to take for granted are actually not logical for the blogging novice. One such aspect is Trackbacks.

Now, I may pehaps be an exception - I never questioned the whole linking thing. I’ve always been an overlinker. But for most, trackbacks seem quite laborious - you have to spend all that extra time searching for and adding in relevant links. I personally dislike that each time I add in the link it refreshes me to the top of my text. I spend all that extra time scrolling back to my writing.

But, besides learning how to use them, trackbacks are an important feature to a successful blog. They are your conversation with the blogosphere.

As T.L. Pakii Pierce says so well, “Trackbacks are often misunderstood and so seldom used by new bloggers. Trackback is a powerful way to get content recognition from search bots crawling the rich blog link structures, it is a great way to alert others to your content as well as receive notice when other bloggers are referencing you. Trackbacks are a good way to get inbound links and generate FREE traffic. Trackbacks are definitely a powerful content promotion and distribution strategy. When used properly, Trackbacks can get you noticed and get you traffic.”

As a method to understanding, Kris Krug has pointed us to this video/audio session to understanding trackbacks.

Why blog? Because it’s easy. And it’s just about the easiest marketing tool out there.

1. One more tool in your toolbox

Not only is blogging one more tool you can add into your marketing mix, it also increases your efficiency overall. Think of it as one more way you have to stick out your hand and grab some customers. The more hands, the more customers.

As an online tool, I venture to say it is your strongest tool ever. Your brochure website is dead. It won’t work. If you update it daily, great. But why would you spend all that labourious time doing so? Blogging is the new content management system that offers easy access for everyone to do it. Blogging is powerful by its nature of easy, fast updates and by its interactivity - comments and trackbacks are your conversations.

Think of blogging as DIY PR - anyone can get right in there and vouch for your company! Unlike PR, blogging is not (and should never be!) flack! Blogging MUST be authentic. And perhaps the most powerful assertion for this new PR: people come TO your blogs because they want to hear what you have to say; your traditional PR is pushed out to people who most naturally block it.

2. Google Loves Blogs! SEO/SEM

SEO is guiding development so that your site comes up high in natural/organic search results. Google, for example, measures website ranks based on their PageRank system. This PageRank looks at the inbound and outbound links from a site as votes. The more votes that come in, the better your site must be. And the more votes that come in from sites that themselves have high PageRank gives you a better vote.

So, why are blogs good with Google? Because bloggers are very open with their linking - not with the usual focus of giving people good rankings, but just as a matter of course. Bloggers link to others who have talked on their topic or those who come up in the writing process. It’s a natural part of the writing. Blogs are conversations. Bloggers don’t often link to non-blogs.

I have personally seen a corporate blog take a corporate site up from page 3 on key phrases to page 1 in little more than two months. It is a powerful SEO tool.

3. Creating conversations
* With your customers
* With your competitors
* With your partners/investors
* With the media

People are talking about you and your industry. You need to be a part of the conversation before it outruns your company and you get lost in the dust and before your customers get fed up with your monologues. I will talk more about this in another post later.

4. Industry Insight

By listening to the conversations you will see new opportunities, be able to let your customers lead your development, spot the trends (the stronger the trend, the more you will see it coming up in blogs), and perspective. What you hear on the news or read in the paper is, unfortunately, quite restrictive. Blogs give you the perspective of opinion and you will notice time and again bloggers who have researched the topic historically for insight.

The process of blogging is your strongest research method.

5. Reputation capital

Being real, relevant, and authentic ups your reputation capital more than any PR spin could ever do.

Caveat: do not blog only for the sake of marketing & sales
Don.t set up a blog if all you want is another way to get customers. It acts as an effective marketing tool, but it won.t work unless your focus is on communication, relationships and authenticity.

This is Part 1 of the Blogging for Business series. The overview is available here.

Read more: Part 2 - How to start off on the right foot
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The subscription list I have over at Bloglines is growing at an ever increasing rate. Last night at IIMA I showed everyone how I had my feeds organized, how Bloglines worked, and gave some brief advice on how to organize and prioritize your day to keep up with the pace of the news.

After some reflection, I thought it might be useful to share all my feeds with everyone. For those interested in blogging, take a look into the folders labelled “Blogging” and “Marketing” for some good resources to add to your own news aggregator. If you are a blogger and are not on my list and want to be, post your comment. I am always looking to add more feeds.

Here are my Bloglines feeds.
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Why should you have a blog?

1. One more tool in your toolbox
* Dialogue not monologue
2. Google Loves Blogs! SEO/SEM
3. Creating conversations
* With your customers
* With your competitors
* With your partners/investors
* With the media
4. Industry Insight
5. Reputation capital

Caveat: do not blog only for the sake of marketing & sales

How to get started

1. Choose your categories . tags, Technorati
2. Subscribe to & read other blogs . RSS
3. Create your blogroll . link to your friends and colleagues
4. Plan your content choices
5. Set some guidelines
6. Monitor the blogosphere - PubSub, Feedster

Enter the conversation

1. Relationship building
2. Authenticity
3. Customer interaction
4. Trackbacks and comments
5. Posting tips
*link to sources & competitors
*title phrases
*be authentic and interactive

How to get results
1. Syndication and RSS
2. Promote your blog
3. Follow the posting tips
* authenticity * linking * shared knowledge * key phrases
4. Comment on other blogs
5. Watch your trackbacks
6. Submit your URL to directories
7. Have good features
8. Link to yourself
9. Avoid link exchanges!

What you can achieve:
1. strong SEO results
2. differentiation
3. leadership
4. more traffic
5. customer interaction and loyalty
6. new business, if done right!

Continued…
Part 1 - Why should you have a blog?
Part 2 - How to start blogging on the right foot

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I spoke tonight at the IIMA on how blogging is emerging as the new tool for online marketing, and, well, for business in general. I am a bit of a fanatic for the power that a blog can bring to businesses large or small, so it was a great experience for me to be able to share some of my opinions and ideas. I met some really great people and got to explore some good new frontiers with my fellow panelists and with the attendees as well.

I have to say that the commentary at the event was superior - I was very impressed with the caliber of responses and with how people responded to the usefulness of blogs. I am very excited by the number of people I saw leaving the series with aims to start their own blogs. Some wanted to communicate with customers, some to build their name, some to get that great Google juice.

So, here is how it goes. I am going to post up my presentation tonight. I will probably link to the presentations of Tris and Roland tomorrow with some insight on what they had to say. Every couple of days or so I will revisit the topics in my presentation one by one with more of what was said in my presentation verbally, as well as a ton of my notes that never made it quite as far as the actual presentation. I hope to be able to offer some useful solutions to individuals and businesses especially who want to start to blog and don’t quite know where to start.

If you have any special requests on topics, please feel free to email me or post a comment.

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