Blogging to Drive Business: Create and Maintain Valuable Customer Connections (Que Biz-Tech Series)
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Use Blogging to Supercharge Sales, Customer Loyalty, Innovation, and Profits“To connect with today’s buyer, you need to stop pushing your message out and start pulling your customers in. And there is no better tool for this than the blog! Blogging to Drive Business is an essential guide for any business wishing to use a blog to attract a steady stream of inbound opportunities.”—Paul Dunay, Global Managing Director of Services and Social Marketing, Avaya Inc.Blogging can help you deepen customer loyalty, reach new customers, gain indispensable feedback, and drive more sales. This no-nonsense guide shows how to craft a business blog that does all that, and more—building your business and increasing your profits. Top e-marketers and business bloggers Eric Butow and Rebecca Bollwitt help you define clear goals, generate the right content with the right tools, attract visitors, build communities, and avoid costly mistakes. They draw on their own extensive experience, as well as the work of innovators from companies such as Intel, Wal-Mart, Google, HP, and BusinessWeek. Whatever your role in the business, you’ll learn how to:• Launch a blog that truly represents the best of your business• Create a comprehensive, long-term blogging strategy• Staff your blogging initiative• Integrate blogs with other offline and online marketing programs• Use your blog to drive customers and prospects to the business• Push up-to-the-minute information to customers via RSS• Build a thriving online community—and learn from what it tells you• Manage comments (and decide whether to have them)• Utilize podcasts, vlogs, microblogging, and other new techniques• Gain business value from hot new Web 3.0 technologies, including widgets, mashups, personal agents, and the Semantic Web
Introduction 1How This Book Is Organized 2Conventions Used in This Book 3Web Pages 3Special Elements 3There’s More Online 41 Why Are Blogs So Important? 5Media Growth Is in One Area: Online 6Get the Message Out 6Blog Popularity 8Hello,World! 8Promote Products and Services 10Reach People 12Keep Pushing Content 13Drive People to the Blog 13Crowdsourcing 13Case Studies: Intel and Adidas 15Intel Inside Scoop Blog 15Adidas Soccer MySpace Blog 17Summary 212 Leveraging Your Blog with Marketing Tools 23Online Marketing 24Web Site 24E-Mail Marketing 24More Work… and Potential Solutions 25Offline Marketing 29Pushing Information via RSS 31Getting Customers to Subscribe 33Taking Care of Your Readers 33Case Studies 34City of Arvada 34The Sacramento Bee 36Summary 383 Creating a Blogging Strategy 39Blogging Platforms 40WordPress.com 40TypePad 42Vox 44Blogger 44LiveJournal 45Blog Software 46Finding the Blog Best for Your Business 49Vlogs 49Photoblogs 50Podcast Blogs 51Tumblelogs 52Microblogs 53Moblogs 55Combining Blogs with Other Networking Sites 56MySpace 56Facebook 57LinkedIn 58Twitter 59Case Studies 60BusinessWeek 60KCBS Radio, San Francisco 62Summary 644 Blogging Responsibly 65Listen to Your Audience 66Two-Way Discussions 66Listening by Sharing 67Tools to Help You Listen 69Comments and Responding to Them 74Comment Forms 74When to Moderate Comments 74Negative Feedback Can Help You Grow 76Dealing with Negative Feedback 77Case Study: Molson Coors Brewing Company 78Summary 815 Finding Topics to Write About 83Writing Blogs for the Wider World 84Creating an Industry Resource Blog 84Create an Online Community 86Case Study: Canucks Fan Zone 88Creating an Internal Blog (or Blogs) for Your Company 90Keep People Informed 90Internal Blogs for Project Management 91Product Blog (External) 92Summary 946 Who Will Write the Blog? 95Writing from Within a Company 96Identifying Authors 96Client Services and Tech Support 99Authentic Content 101Hiring a Blogger 102Tips for Hiring a Blogger 102Hiring a Blogger from Your Industry 103Create a Blogging Position 104Case Study: Linda Bustos: An Elastic Blog from Elastic Path 107Summary 1107 Getting Eyeballs to Your Blog 111Writing Effectively 112Editing for Word Count and Brevity 112Be Human 114Be Readable 115Design 116Reading Blogs Helps You Write Blogs 117Commenting: More than Leaving a Calling Card 117Blogger Outreach 118Linking Out to Get Incoming Links 119Search Engine Optimization 120Blogrolls 120Linking to Other Blog Posts 121Write Interesting Content 122Highlight Industry Players 122Company Profiles 124Case Study: Vancouver Opera 125Being Searchable 126Check Your Current Rank 127Clean URLs 128Keywords and Tags 128Promotion 129Social Media Networks 129Announcing Your Blog Launch to OtherCommunities 129Target Your Newsletter Members 130Press Releases 130Summary 1318 Getting Interactive with Multimedia Blogging 133Offering Multiple Forms of Content 134Content for All 134Private or Members-Only Content 141Podcasting 142Screencasts 146Case Study: Blendtec 147Summary 1509 Taking Advantage of Web 3.0 Blogs 151An Overview of Web 3.0 Technologies 153Wikipedia 154APIs and Widgets 155Mash It Up! 156Integrating Semantic Technologies 158Make Agents Work for Your Blog 159Case Study: UrbanSpoon.com 160Summary 162A Important Blogging Sites 163Technorati 164News Aggregators 164Podcatchers 166Ping Search Engines 167Want to Advertise on Blogs? 167Getting More Blog Traffic 169Software as a Service Product 171Index 175
