Here are some actions that will point you in the right direction:

• BLOGS ARE NOT ADVERTISING. Skip the sales copy. People buy from friends, so make a friend first and they will figure out what your business is.

• While you want to interest the search engines in your content, always write for your target audience. The search engines will reward you when you write user friendly content. The search engines have teams of people working on eliminating poor quality content from the search results.

• Don’t write short blog posts unless there is some very special reason. Use 500 words as a minimum, no maximum. However, if you get over 1,000 words, start thinking about a series of posts vs. one long post. It is likely more readable to have reasonable sized posts. It is also better for search purposes to have several blogs a week vs. one long one.

• In most cases, blog posts are written in an informal tone of voice. Use first person; just like you’re talking to a friend. Blogs can be opinions and expressions of your viewpoint, not dry “corporate speak” that has been sanitized by the compliance department, the legal department and the communications director. As needed write blogger guidelines.

• Everything written needs to be user focused, not client focused. Think of blogging as part of your public relations program not the advertising department.

• Incorporate the keywords for your business. If keyword research has not been done, get it done right away. Don’t use any keyword excessively, as search engines may perceive that as spamming.

• If possible stick to one topic per post.

• Use title case for headlines and sub-headlines like this: Vitamins Will Make you Healthy not VITAMINS WILL MAKE YOU HEALTHY

• Write clearly: would someone who knows nothing about this subject understand the post?

• One idea per sentence.

• No jargon that they won’t understand. Define acronyms with the first use.

Draw the Audience in With a Strong Headline

Look at a newspaper to see how to write a headline. The H1 tag (headline) that appears at the beginning of the post. Use the major keywords as close to the beginning of the headline as possible. Limited in length to 65 characters for Google (85 for Yahoo).

Samples of Strong Headlines

• Want More Sales than you can Handle?

• Stop Bleeding in two Quick Steps a Child Could Learn

• Is Cell Phone Radiation for Real?

• This Popular Medication Can Increase Your Heart Attack Risk

• The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Retirement Planning

• The Shocking Truth About Processed Meats

Let us know if you have any other successful actions with your blogging.

Doug Hay

We have a great bookstore in my town — the kind of place you picture in your mind when you think of a great independent bookshop.

It’s perfect for browsing, with lots of comfy chairs to relax in. The books are displayed enticingly. There’s a little coffee shop so you can relax with an espresso. They get your favorite writers to come in for readings, so there’s always a sense of event and excitement.

Read more...

Why? According to research conducted by several companies, most shoppers, whether they buy online or in stores, research their purchase on the Internet prior to buying. And if they don’t easily find your company online, their business will go elsewhere.

How Many of Your Potential Customers Will Research Online Prior to Making a Purchasing Decision?

According to the results of a September 2010 survey conducted by Pew Internet and American Life Project, 58% of Americans now report that they perform online research concerning the products and services they are considering purchasing. This applies even if they eventually make their purchase in a brick-and-mortar retail store.

“Many Americans begin their purchasing experience by doing online research to compare prices, quality, and the reviews of other shoppers,” said Jim Jansen, Senior Fellow at the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and author of a new report about online product research. “Even if they end up making their purchase in a store, they start their fact-finding and decision-making on the internet.” (http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Online-Product-Research.aspx)

When it comes to online purchases – i.e. not in stores – that number jumps to a whopping 94%, according to a survey conducted by Compete.

http://blog.compete.com/2010/02/22/online-shopper-intelligence-study-released/

So, if you are not visible on the Internet and you depend on in-store purchases, 58% of your potential customers will be lost to the competition – the guys that have good online presence. If your sales are primarily online, you lose a 94% of your potential business.

Does It Matter If My Company is On Page One of Google Search Results?

When researching a product online, potential customers don’t go meandering through page after page of their Google search engine results. Although it’s beneficial to get anywhere on page one, the higher you are, the more people will click on your business.

According to Optify:

• The click thru rate for being #1 on page one is 36.4%.

• For #2 on page one, the percentage is 12.5%

• For #3 on page one, the click thru rate is 9.5%

And it goes down from there. At #10 of page one, for example, the click thru rate is 2.2%.

http://www.optify.net/guides/organic-click-through-rate-curve?page=3

Although 36.4% is excellent, even 9.5% (for being #3 on page one) is nothing to sneeze at – that’s nearly one in ten of the people searching your keywords clicking through to your site.

How Long Does it Take to Get on Page One of Google Search Results?

It can take a while to get to page one of the search engines. It depends on a number of factors – including what page you were on when you began doing your SEO activities, which SEO activities you do, and how much of them, and a few other things. It could take weeks, it could take months.

But the payoff could be extraordinary – a potential 94% increase for online businesses, and 58% for those selling in retail stores.

We’ve seen many companies make the mistake of dropping their SEO actions prior to the pay off.  For example, they started out on page 27 (virtual, no pun intended, invisibility), and are now on page three. That’s progress! And just a short distance from the mother lode. If you keep doing whatever created that jump from page 27 to page three, you will reach page one.

More often than not, these companies never pick up the SEO again. Why? Their situation never really improves. They go back to doing the same stuff they were doing before their SEO efforts and, if that were enough in the first place, they never would have wanted to get their SEO going in the first place.

More often than not, they will often lose that page three position and, when they do start again, they might be starting all over again. Maybe not from page 27, but they will almost always drop down from page three.

So, if times are tough, by all means get your salesmen to sharpen their skills, look for marketing and PR actions that are not showing any results whatsoever, and find other ways to tighten your belt. But don’t miss the opportunity to increase your business by continuing your quest for page one of Google – that’s where potential customers are looking and, if you’re there, and have a good website and a good product, you’ll get their business.

• The importance of social media in general has become more accepted by business and is increasingly important role in many company’s marketing and sales campaigns.

• The number of likes and page activity can boost search engine rankings and results (most notably on Google, Bing and Yahoo).

• An optimized fan page will also receive a higher ranking in Facebook.

• Increased page activity can boost sales.

• The expanded capabilities of fan pages now extends to iFrames, inclusion of websites and ecommerce.

Read the full article...

(The Social Graf) The social media ROI discussion is heating up with a spate of new research drawing connections between social media, brand perceptions, and purchase behavior. That includes a new study released earlier this week by Knowledge Networks and MediaPost's very own Center for Media Research, showing that the number of Americans who say their brand consumption choices are influenced by social media has increased substantially in the last year.

According to the second wave of the KN-CMR study, titled "The Faces of Social Media," 38 million U.S. adults ages 18-80 (or 12% of the total population) say they discover new products and brands or refer to social media before making purchase decisions. That's up 14% from 33.3 million just six months ago.

This includes 23.1 million who say they discover new brands or products through social media, up 22% from 18.9 million in 2010, and 22.5 million who use social media to learn about unfamiliar brands or products, up 9% from 20.6 million last year.

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But should any company or blog use only one technique to get more clients?

Does Dirk Nowitski refuse to drive to the rim because his 20-foot jumper is so smooth? (For those who don’t follow basketball, the answer to that question is no.)

Of course not.

Everyone knows that diversifying is the way to succeed in business and in life.

So how should a blogging business owner diversify?

Read the full article...

After digesting what our panel had to say in response to questions along with some excellent speakers, I came to realize the bottom line to social media boils down to these stable data:

1. Any process that allows communication to easily start and flow is very beneficial.

2. A marketing or PR activity that can easily build an audience is very much needed and wanted.

3. In my view, the major benefit that a social marketing campaign provide is that it builds relationships. It is so much easier to sell someone that you have a relationship with.

Social Media Marketing

So my new and improved offering for the definition of social media marketing is:

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IS THE SYSTEMATIC PROCESS OF BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS WHICH LEADS TO SALES.

I invite your thoughts.

(From Copyblogger) Where do you begin? I wondered that as a fresh-faced, new copywriter, staring at the blank page and a phone that wouldn’t ring. There was so much information online — and I didn’t know where to start.

Today I offer you the guide I wish I’d had back then: an A to Z of the absolute essentials of copywriting — plus a good bit of further reading for each.

If you tackle just one of these principles every day, you could conceivably master the basics of copywriting and content marketing in less than a month.

Even if you’re a seasoned pro, don’t skip this list. It’s always good to revisit the fundamentals now and then.

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1.) A Personal Facebook Account

"Why does Facebook require I set-up my business account through my PERSONAL account!" --this is one of the big complaints I get from clients and workshop attendees -- and believe me, I understand the frustration. Still, this is the way it is and has always been with Facebook.

Think of your personal credentials as your "badge" that you swipe every time you enter through the virtual gates of Facebook. Facebook's Terms of Service require that you use your real name & info -- and your use of the features of the site (Fan Pages included,) are dependent on your agreeing to abide by Facebook's rules & regs. Everything you create (photos, groups, Fan Pages,) are done by YOU, the real person.

Now, that does not mean that users of a business fan page will be able to access your personal info, be your friend, or even know it was you that created the page.

To sum it up -- like it or not, you will need to have a personal profile in order to create a fan page for your business. We've heard of people creating "fake" profiles in order to set up biz pages -- but not only is this a violation of the TOS, but, it also robs you of the ability to quickly navigate between your personal profile & the administration of your fan page.

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To do that you need an analytics program. There are lots of them out there -- some free and some expensive. Google's free service, Google Analytics, has always been good and it is getting better with its custom reports tab that has some new filters. 

You can even transition over from custom reports that you have created before.  Using this new platform, customizing reports just got a whole lot easier.

Get  the full scoop from the horse's mouth...