People often ask me 'What is a Blog'?

What are blogs? The term is short for web-log, and the original blogs were online journals and web reports such as live updates from journalists embedded with the military.

A blog is just a really simple website. The charm of a blog is that if you can send email you can blog. All you do is log-in, type a title and a short article (called a blog post) and push ‘Publish’ and your blog automatically adds the new blog post at the top of the page and pushes the older blog posts lower down the page.

Blogs have 3 main business benefits.
1. The search engines love blogs. Lots of words, frequently updates and bloggers often link to each other. Words+Links=Search Engine Success.

2. People subscribe to blogs to get an electronic notification every time you update the blog. The updates come to a cell phone or your computer through RSS feeds (a technical sounding term, but this is just a tool to facilitate blog subscriptions called Really Simple Syndication).
3. Blogs are more conversational than websites, you can allow a bit of personality to shine through a company blog or a CEO blog.

To see a few of my favorite marketing blogs, please have a look at our list of the Top 10 Internet Marketing Blogs on the TenGoldenRules.com website.


Flickr Photo Credit francescopozzi

Part 2: Suffering From Blogger’s Block?

I thought it would be helpful to provide a post about some next steps for your blog writing journey. Before I do that though, check out Part 1 of this post; you will find this post is a beneficial supplement.

So you now have some blog ideas and a plan in place – but then you ask yourself – in what format do I put down all of my thoughts? Here are a couple of the best ways to format/structure your posts:

Lists. Creating your blog posts around a “list” format makes the information that much more digestible for the reader. You want to make sure you don’t lose your reader a few sentences into your post. Lists make it less overwhelming for the many on-the-go readers.

Segmented Paragraphs. Not every post you write is going to be short and sweet or able to be chopped up in a list format. A great way to write a longer post but still keep a reader’s attention is by putting each of the points you are illustrating under “headings”. Take a look at how this post has two separate thoughts broken up by preceding bold headings. The concept of this is that readers’ eyes will scan “headings” and skip to the section they are most interested in without abandoning your post altogether.

Think about some of your favorite posts and how they were formatted. What did you enjoy most about them? What about them enticed you to keep reading until the very end?

Suffering from Blogger’s Block?

Do you ever sit down to write a blog post, fresh out of ideas and scratching your head until that light bulb turns on? Or are you planning to start a blog but not really sure what to write about? It happens to all of us at some point, so don’t feel like you are alone. Here are some tips to get those blog writing gears going:

1. Set goals for yourself. Although this may seem like the obvious, it is easily overlooked. Why begin a blog writing expedition without an end game?
2. Do some planning. As part 2 to setting your goals, plan out your blog posts for the next week or month – whichever goal you set for yourself. The focus of this exercise is preparation.
3. Research. There are many sites out there that aid in curing writer’s block. Bookmark these sites to reference in those times of need.
4. Read! The more you read the more your brain muscles will flex. Reading will expose you to different writing styles and topics. Go ahead and set a goal for yourself with this as well – start a bit ambitious, such as reading a book a week, so you have plenty to strive for.

So, don’t get stressed or flustered. Even putting one of these tips into effect will result in blog writing improvements. Take a stand - combat writer’s block by proactively taking advantage of those days that flourish with ideas; and most importantly have fun!

Blogging: A Workout for the Brain

A regular workout routine is recommended for a healthy lifestyle. Though, sometimes we forget that working out is not only for the body but also for the mind. Have you flexed your brain lately?

When we blog, we don’t usually think of what is happening in the background but blogging affects us in many different ways. Beyond producing helpful content and connecting with great people, it is believed that blogging helps improve our cognitive learning skills. As we challenge ourselves with these interactions our brains are “flexing” and becoming stronger. Taking it a step further, the more involved we are with reading and responding to comments, the further our writing evolves and improves. Engaging through blogging also facilitates an environment in which we are able to expand our opinions and open our minds on different topics. As a result, many times we are exposed to a perspective we may never have thought of.

So let’s continue to produce great content and connect with others while getting that ever so important workout!

Best Practices for Corporate Blogs and The Three E's of Social Media

I often answer questions from business people who are hesitant to start blogging due to fears about comments on their blog that they can't control and negative reaction to their content.

First of all, you can set your blog to moderate comments and approve them before they go live. We LOVE to get comments (please comment below!) but we do not publish comments that don't 'comment' on the blog and are merely promoting an agenda.

If your organization is sensitive to the messages being posted in blogs , you will need a policy for internal folks who have access to your blog. Set up a review and approval process before blog posts can go live. This removes the risk of something unacceptable being posted.

So what content should go on your blog?









I recently coined a strategic approach to Social Media Messaging called The Three E's of Social Media.

Educate. Show your customers how to do things. Answer their questions. Be helpful. This can only build your credibility and build links to the posts which will improve search engine results!

Engage. Engage customers in a 2 way dialogue. Ask them questions. Run polls. Offer special contests and delight them with surprises for visiting the blog such as chances to win or links to free stuff.

Entertain. A blog (and all social media) should be social. Put a smile on their face. Shoot a funny video prior to the holidays. Shoot a video of your senior executive team doing karaoke. Post outtakes from your commercial shoot or a podcast or video cast.

How to OWN a SERP

Recently a client asked me why we are recommending they create a blog, a Wikipedia page, a Google Knol, and a YouTube channel with videos. They couldn't understand what one had to do with the other. We often refer to the combination of these tactics as Reputation Management. And while we find it essential to control as much of the search engine results page (SERP) for a client for messaging reasons, we also like the fact that it just plain allows an opportunity to own as much of the real estate on a SERP as possible.

But since most search engines only allow up to 2 links from a single domain, you must create optimized presence in a variety of domains in order to do that. With strategic website choices (like those I mentioned above) and appropriate tagging and optimization, a client can achieve many slots in a SERP, even for competitive phrases. If done well, a client can potentially own all 10 first page results.