How to do a blog for business...
Case Study 1 by Toby Bloomberg
Diva Marketing Blog (http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com/)
Tim Jackson started Macy Bike's Blog. High end Italian bikes. No budget. The brand wasn't selling. He was hired as PR. Keeping the pace of the blog is a big challenge. Time consuming. Full story at http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com/bloggerstories/2006/05/1_your_name_tim.html
Case Study 2 by
Business blogging boot camps; 6-10 people; introduce them to the topics in the morning and build blog in the afternoon; provide them technical support in the afternoon.
"Our father's who art in heaven" book about father's that have passed on. Author needed blog to sell copies of the book.
Author was skeptical. Did not think it was going to work. It has worked so he hired a student from the local community college to maintain the site. He was happy that it came up with high results in Google.
Case Study 3 - "Know your bones" by Yvonne DiVita
How to make the blog work for your book? Question asked of client. How much time really are you going to have to produce content? She didn't post frequently. (http://www.marketingtowomenonline.com/)
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When doing a blog you have to understand that you often have to have a conversation so you need to be able to make a committment to do that.
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Case Study 4 by Heathers Sanders
verycommerce.com
Moved from html site to blog because search engines weren't finding their site. They moved to blog and kept comments available. Comments were not used so they removed them.
Case Study 5 (online organic material diaper service)
Create a context for the product being sold. "Calm university approach" - voice. Bring community and philosophy to parenting. Created blog "business" plan and content creation schedule (from daily to bi-weekly). "If I had to write everyday I wouldn't be a good writer." Users have option of using comments, but prefer to email instead.
Case Study 6 (Barkley Advertising)
Lee Dungarees asked them to do online marketing campaign.
Did blog to coincide with commercial campaign involving giant woman stepping on building. Success? Unclear.
Case Study 7
http://www.sumofmyparts.org/blog/blogher.htm
People don't like fake identities. People want sited resources. From linguist perspective, how do we build, maintain and manipulate identity?
***Hansen Consulting - manufacturing clients. Clients request blogs but they don't know why or how to do one.
***Don't start a blog if something is going wrong. Develop positive relationship with users then when something goes wrong. When it goes wrong tell them as fast and honestly as possible.
***Over communicate.
***Character blogs - i.e. online welding supply company. "Carmen Electrode"
***Help decision makers manage risk. Have them write down what they believe are worse-case scenarios and then build in plans to address these concerns. Also often has staff create internal blogs for purpose of example; so they can understand how it works and what can come of it.
***Who's your market? What do they want? Know them well enough to know what questions you should ask them. When they give feedback they will feel more committed to you.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Friday, July 28, 2006
BlogHer Session 3 - Audience Building
useful
entertaining
timely
focus content
you cannot write about everything; you will not find or keep an audience
you also will have difficulty in maintaing the site
Post frequently, but not at the expense of quality
use images and photographs
write well
consider headlines, post size
poll, top 10 lists, contents, how-to's, interviews, controversial topics
**Missed a bunch of info. had to take care of some business.**
San-serif is better for small blocks of text.
Serif is better for longer blocks of text.
What's up with all the food blogs? Fascinating.
Conclusion:
* be useful
* focus
* Engage your community
* Tune your site
* Promote your feed
* Create a blog you will be proud of
Technorati: BlogHer 2006
entertaining
timely
focus content
you cannot write about everything; you will not find or keep an audience
you also will have difficulty in maintaing the site
Post frequently, but not at the expense of quality
use images and photographs
write well
consider headlines, post size
poll, top 10 lists, contents, how-to's, interviews, controversial topics
**Missed a bunch of info. had to take care of some business.**
San-serif is better for small blocks of text.
Serif is better for longer blocks of text.
What's up with all the food blogs? Fascinating.
Conclusion:
* be useful
* focus
* Engage your community
* Tune your site
* Promote your feed
* Create a blog you will be proud of
Technorati: BlogHer 2006
BlogHer Session 3 - Ten types of Web writing
How do you write for the web?
You have to be more conversational with blogging. When writing for a newspaper or magazine you want to tell the story. PUll them in right away. Personalize it. Get your voice in there. Differentiate your voice and the voice of the industry.
There is a web tool that can score the readability of your website.
Who is your audience? What level of readability do they want? Where are you reaching them in the process? Are they getting your from a search page? Or is it because someone told them about your site so they are visiting.
1. Readers
2. Presentation
3. Word choice
4. Conversations
************************
Different mindset
************************
5. Headlines
6. Attribution
7. Link blogging
8. Essay blogging
9. Question and answer
10. Reviews and how-to's
Media Slaves
Is writing for the web an art or science?
1. Readers
How effective a writer are you? Some of your audience know. So ask.
* Own it
* Ask for feedback
* Listen
* Does feedback match behavior?
* Feedback in perspective
* Evolve
* Learn
2. Presentation
* Even the best prose can be lost on the internets. That's wy presentation or "layout" or "user interface" is essential to good writing.
* Navigation
* Headlines and subheadlines
3. Word Choice
* clarity
* professionalism
* voice
* punctuation
* ...
See copyblogger
4. Comments
Don't open comments if you are not looking for a conversation.
4. Headlines
* clarity
* professionalism
* voice
Search algorithms
- they look at h1, h2, etc. then body text; headline is generally in an 'hX'
- have your title's match the url, you'll get better results
Elise Bower is an expert on this topic from the technical side. See her blog.
You don't just want traffic, you want the right traffic.
Often bloggers are disregarded because they do not attribute their sources. Check out Electronic Frontier Foundation because they have lots of info on this topic.
A link by itself it not interesting. Often your commentary on the quote is what peaks someone's interest.
Danah Boyd will be at the conference tomorrow.
Mommybloggers has a great example of a Q&A strategy to bring authentic voice to a blog.
Technorati: BlogHer 2006
You have to be more conversational with blogging. When writing for a newspaper or magazine you want to tell the story. PUll them in right away. Personalize it. Get your voice in there. Differentiate your voice and the voice of the industry.
There is a web tool that can score the readability of your website.
Who is your audience? What level of readability do they want? Where are you reaching them in the process? Are they getting your from a search page? Or is it because someone told them about your site so they are visiting.
1. Readers
2. Presentation
3. Word choice
4. Conversations
************************
Different mindset
************************
5. Headlines
6. Attribution
7. Link blogging
8. Essay blogging
9. Question and answer
10. Reviews and how-to's
Media Slaves
Is writing for the web an art or science?
1. Readers
How effective a writer are you? Some of your audience know. So ask.
* Own it
* Ask for feedback
* Listen
* Does feedback match behavior?
* Feedback in perspective
* Evolve
* Learn
2. Presentation
* Even the best prose can be lost on the internets. That's wy presentation or "layout" or "user interface" is essential to good writing.
* Navigation
* Headlines and subheadlines
3. Word Choice
* clarity
* professionalism
* voice
* punctuation
* ...
See copyblogger
4. Comments
Don't open comments if you are not looking for a conversation.
4. Headlines
* clarity
* professionalism
* voice
Search algorithms
- they look at h1, h2, etc. then body text; headline is generally in an 'hX'
- have your title's match the url, you'll get better results
Elise Bower is an expert on this topic from the technical side. See her blog.
You don't just want traffic, you want the right traffic.
Often bloggers are disregarded because they do not attribute their sources. Check out Electronic Frontier Foundation because they have lots of info on this topic.
A link by itself it not interesting. Often your commentary on the quote is what peaks someone's interest.
Danah Boyd will be at the conference tomorrow.
Mommybloggers has a great example of a Q&A strategy to bring authentic voice to a blog.
Technorati: BlogHer 2006
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