Even in our increasingly social online world, the blog continues to play an important role.  Blogs are one of the few online properties where you have full control over the message while still inviting reader participation.  However, the blogosphere is a cacophonous place.  If you don’t time your posts well you run the opposing risks of missing your audience entirely or of being drowned out by all the other online voices.
How Often to Post
Quality should be the key driver of frequency.  Even if you write infrequently, your readers will come back time and again so long as you always have …

A blog is an invaluable tool when dealing with a public relations crisis. With a blog you can correct errors and quash rumors, advance your company message, and deliver the facts ahead of the news cycle. Through fair and timely treatment your blog will show that you are concerned and responsive, and allow you to influence the lens through which others view the crisis.

It is important to focus on transparency, information sharing, honesty, and accountability. These four elements are essential to maintaining trust and credibility, whether you are a multinational aerospace company or a local coffee shop …

Some days I just can’t find things to write about - the day just seems meh.  And while I’d like to say the cause is grabbing a pair of horse’s blinders instead of my glasses, it’s just not true.

Thankfully there’s a website for just such occasions.

Mylifeisaverage.com

My Life is Average (which is conveniently abbreviated the same way as My Life is Awesome), is part of a not-insignificant trend of anonymous public micro-blogging sites.

And that right there is what I’ll talk about.

Most of this month I’ve been talking about blogs, specifically business blogs.  And there is good reason to do …

We have been writing about business blogs lately. We are focusing on using WordPress to produce branded business blogs or blog-sites, leveraging the inherit search engine optimization advantages WordPress provides.

I gave a presentation at the Partners In Success chapter of BNI on 3/17/10 on why blog for business and what MB/I brings to the table. Here’s the narrated version.

MB/I Presentation on Business Blogs
(9-minutes)

Are you already using a blog to market your business? Let us know how it’s working for you.

Are you interested on starting one? Attend our FREE webinar.

On Wednesday, March 31, I will be leading a 40-minute webinar on blogging.

Take a Tour of WordPress

For those of you who have not taken the leap into the world of blogging, we will spend the first 20-minutes touring the back-end of the world’s most popular blogging solution.  As part of this process you will see what goes into editing, scheduling, and publishing a blog entry as we ready the actual April 1 post for MB/I.

Get Some Tips on Content Creation

Scared of the time & brain-power commitment a successful blog requires? For the second half of the call, I will highlight …

Let’s face it, even if the economy is currently pulling out of the worst recession in 70 years, money remains tight and the independent entrepreneur needs to consider ways to reduce costs while retaining their brand image and placement.

So, what can a company do on a $2500 budget?

Invest in a custom blog

For $2500 you could have a fully functional and branded blog with custom features.

What does this price buy you?

• A persistent platform you can use again and again, whenever you have an announcement or other content.
• Custom blogs can build up traffic for your own domain, giving it ready-made …
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If you’re a business owner like me, you may have heard people tell you that you should be blogging. This is probably met with some healthy skepticism on your part, since blogging is for geeks, right? At first I thought the same thing. After all, I thought, I have a Web site. Why should I bother doing a blog? Who reads those blogs anyway?

The truth is that blogging is probably one of the most highly influential activities you can undertake to help your business. Best of all, it’s 100% free marketing once you set it up. Personally, I love “free”. …

It can be difficult to get a new blog off the ground.  A recent IBM report announced that 80% of the blogs they host never made it past the 5th post.  Other blogs, especially business blogs, often start with a flurry of activity only to peter off after a month or two.

If you want to keep your online presence from becoming one of these social media casualties, you need plan out how you will keep your blog alive.

Build Blogging into Your Calendar

When it comes to scheduling, you need to treat your blog just like you would any other formal project.  …

Purpose

At their heart Facebook, Forums, and Blogs are all about communication and community, but each focuses on a different area of where those to concepts intersect.

Forums: The main purpose of a forum is to create a sense of community.  Most forums require participants to become members.  Members are then allowed to participate in ongoing conversations and create new conversations of their own  In addition, most forums include some means of direct, private, unmonitored communication to foster direct communication among the members (and to company representatives).

Blogs: The main purpose of a blog is to serve as a …