Blogging Your Way to Success

Agenda

• Why Blog?• Blogging Best Practices• A Quick Tutorial• Social Media Integration

WHY BLOG?

What Says Wordpress?

• Express yourself• No waiting on your webmaster• Be "findable" on the search engines• Dialogue with your customers

– Customers share their comments, feedback, ideas, and concerns

• Leadership through blogging• Showcase photo and image galleries• It’s fun *Source: Wordpress

Blogging for Business

• For company leaders to communicate directly with customers

• For employees to communicate with customers• To reinforce your brand• To produce organizational transparency• To keep customers updated on product issues• To serve as a channel to the public in a crisis• To report to a constituent audience on the

company’s positions• To establish yourself as a subject matter expert*Holtz & Demopolis: Blogging For Business

Get More Visitors

Get More Links

Get Indexed

Company Blogs

• Company blogs include:– Delta Airlines– Dell– Yahoo!– Boeing– EDS– General Motors– IBM– Johnson & Johnson– Microsoft– Salesforce.com– Sprint

Changing Hands

House of Sparky

Just Roughin’ It

Atomic Comics

Valley PR Blog

CEO Blogs

• CEO blogs include:– J. Willard Marriott Jr., CEO, Marriott International– Michael M. Crow, President, Arizona State University– Marc Cuban, HDNET & Dallas Mavericks– Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman, General Motors Corporation– Kevin Lynch, Chief Software Architect, Macromedia– Justin Rattner, CTO, Intel– Bob Parsons, President, godaddy.com– Jonathan Schwartz, COO, Sun Microsystems– Mike Critelli, Executive Chairman, Pitney Bowes– David Neeleman, Chairman, JetBlue Airways

Michael Dell

Mark Cuban

A QUICK TUTORIAL

Tools for Blogging

• WordPress• Moveable Type• Type Pad• Blogger.com• Live Journal• …and about 1,000 others

WordPress

• The most popular blogging tool• Simple to use• Free• Hosted or application

– www.wordpress.com– www.wordpress.org

A Word About Design

• Built-in Templates– Hosted version has more than 60

flexible designs• Custom Design

– Use templates– Have your web designer build it

• Function Over Form

New Post

Linking Text

Categories

Upload Image

Link to Image

BLOGGING BEST PRACTICES

Keys to Better Blogging

• Headlines are Important– Short Catchy Headlines– Use Key Words

• Keep it Simple– Single Topic Posts

• Keep it Short– Two to three paragraphs

• Have an Opinion– Be a “Thought-Leader” (Have a take, do not suck!)– Offer Advice/Best Practices

• Links• Photos

Headlines

• Facebook Music Rumors• Google Says It’s Making Reader More Fun• Impress names Luth VP• What Sold me on Twitter• Yahoo Answers To Go Mobile• Google’s Share of U.S. Online Ads Hits 40

Percent• Plaxo + LinkedIn + iPhone = Brilliant

*All Headlines from TechCrunch

Links

Photos/Images

Trackbacks

• An acknowledgment sent via a network signal

• Facilitates communication between blogs• Helps grow your audience

Tags

• Search optimization– Internal– External

• Use only a few on each post

• Helps people find your post

PROMOTING YOUR BLOG

The Basics

• Tell everyone you know!• Add link to blog from web site• Include a link to your blog in your e-

mail signature• Put your blog address on your

business card• Announce the launch of your blog in

customer communications– eNewsletters, eBlasts, Store flyers, etc.

RSS Feeds

• Feedburner– RSS feed– e-mail option

Free Blog Listings

• Technorati• Google Blog Search• Bloglisting.net• Icerocket• Mybloglog• Alltop• Buzzerhut

Viral Tactics

• Blogroll– Reciprocal Links

• Comments– Always register and include email AND

blog address– Get a “gravatar”

• http://en.gravatar.com/

Piggybacking

• Read lots of blogs• Write a post on your blog about

something you’ve read– Link to it in your post– Trackback to it

Social Integration

• Linkedin– WordPress module included

• Facebook– Third Party Applications

• Social RSS

• MySpace

Tweet Tweet

Get Social

• Bookmark posts on Delicious• Stumble posts on StumbleUpon• Post a teaser on Linkedin status• Use Sharethis or similar tool• Digg it

Questions?