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Badly Executed Small Business Marketing – Commenting On Blog Posts

Tara Jacobsen — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 18:04:34 +0000

Commenting on blog posts is one of the ways internet marketers recommend to use to get traffic to your website. Unfortunately most of these campaigns are badly executed small business marketing!

Let us start with WHY you want to comment on blog posts. There are any number of reasons but in general it is to:

(1) get a high comment on a popular blog so that people will follow your link and find your site
(2) to be SO insightful that everyone who reads your comment will be forced to visit your site
(3) get a backlink that has the correct keywords to increase your google rank or
(4) to post a comment so full of actual links to your site that you are spammer and will not be taken seriously and your comment may not be published

You will notice that two of the three of these require that a human see your comment and then follow a link back to your site. If you are paying someone who is in another country to post inane comments like “good post” or gibberish that makes no sense, this is just throwing money down the drain. We have a number of clients who spent good money to get “backlinks” this way. Unfortunately when checking the links, most were on “no follow” blogs so they were basically paying for nothing!

According to Wikipedia a no follow blog is

a value that can be assigned to the rel attribute of an HTML a element to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index.

What that means for us marketers is that google will not count that as a point in our favor so if we are not going to do commenting the right way our time is wasted!

Commenting On Popular Blogs

This one works well if you have the time to cruise popular blogs in your industry and are prepared to make insightful comments that ADD the conversation rather than just posting “first” on them. The reason this works well is that comments generally show from first to last and so anyone reading the post will get to see what you wrote and may click the link to get back to your site. The only thing to watch out for on this is one is to make sure you are early or late in the conversation, some popular blogs get HUNDREDS of comments and being in the middle of them will get you no love.

Posting Insightful Comments

This one works well and if used in conjunction with targeting industry leaders can increase both your traffic and networking efforts. So this is how it works, you take someone like Howie Jacobson, adwords genius, who writes a blog and has written a book about how to do adwords correctly. If you are in the online marketing field, he is a great one to comment on because people read his blog AND he answers his own comments. This way you could get a click back while increasing the chances that a big wig in your industry might notice you and possibly recommend you OR comment on YOUR blog!

So what is an insightful comment. I can tell you that is not determined by length! Just yesterday I wrote a post about real estate farm marketing (which is picking an area that a realtor would target) and got a really long considered comment about selling farms in the midwest. TOTAL disconnect and I did not approve the comment so that time was wasted for either the person commenting or whoever they hired to do this work. Make sure that you write a couple of sentences that are relevant to the conversation!

It is also about content! Here is a comment that came in on that same post, “Thanks for a great post. very informative. I totally agree with you, having is the right mindset is most important of all. I Have already shared this post with a few of my friends and they loved it. Thanks”. NOW, while I have plenty of posts that talk about mindset, this was not one of them. Had they taken two minutes more and found the right post to comment on, I would have approved it even though it was spammy. The grammar mistake was theirs not mine!

Commenting On Blogs for Keyword Targeted Backlinks

This one is a little technical and somewhat controversial. If your whole point of commenting is to get a keyword targeted backlink then you need to use a term like “Small Business Marketing” as your name rather than your REAL name (in this case I would want to use Small Business Marketing INSTEAD of my real name Tara Jacobsen).

If I did this on a blog that allowed follows then the google would attribute that keyword back to my blog! Unfortunately most blogs are no follow and additionally, some that are will not post comments from keywords, only people. If you are paying people to post comments, then make sure they are targeting “do follow blogs” and that they are using your keyword targeted names.

Commenting With Hyperlinks

One of the easiest ways to get labeled a spammer is to post a comment FULL of hyperlinks to your website. If it is an open comment blog it will get posted but it is impolite. If the blog author monitors their comments then they will, in most cases, not approve the comment. Either way, definitely not a best white-hat marketing practice!

So there you have it! My top commenting on blog posts marketing tips. If you have any further suggestions or comments please leave them below with your real name and no spam..:)

Blogging – When to post and when to just do it

Tara Jacobsen — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 17:50:17 +0000

Blogging is a GREAT lead generating tool and the best bloggers know that to increase traffic, all they have to do is post an article. That having been said, if you can not have a perfect blog posting schedule, do not miss an opportunity to get something out there!

I write blog posts about 2 times a week during normal times. This month I am writing 31 posts in 31 days so I have some good data to tell you about in regard to what a normal month looks like compared to a month where ridiculous amounts of blogging are happening every day!

The first Saturday of this month I posted and got 67 visits, last month when I did not post I got 24 visits. Weekends are usually terrible traffic days for me BUT by posting I more than doubled my traffic (Sunday was 63 and 40).

For the first full week of last month I had 377 visits and this month, posting every day, that number jumped to 743, a significant rise in traffic. Now, this is all organic traffic and I will have to stop my testing because I have started some paid campaigns which will skew the results, BUT just that little bit allows me to extrapolate that I can double my web hits just by posting every day.

So when is the best time to post to your blog?

In his article, The Best Time To Post, Socialnomics guru, Erik Qualman braves a train to tell us that these are some good blogging guidelines:

* Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are your best days
* Saturday is the worst day
* Holidays are slow traffic days (except commerce sites)
* 10 am â€“ 11:30 am and 1 â€“ 3:30 pm are best times to post
* Stagger posts based on time zones

I agree whole heartedly that these are the best times. I get the majority of my traffic on Tuesday through Thursday and find that both B2B and B2C blogs report this shift. It seems to me that business people are accessing information during working hours on weekdays and that employed people are accessing information during working hours on weekdays also!

I have to say that in a perfect world I DO like to get my post out by 9am Eastern Time so that I have time to bookmark it and have the majority of people in the United States available to see it all day. This practice seems to result in the most hits per post, not even taking into account the lifetime value on post that is sitting out there generating search engine traffic for me on an ongoing basis.

Okay, perfect world aside now! I am writing this post at 12:30 Eastern time and will still publish it today. I published one of my 31 posts at 4:30 in the afternoon and still got traffic, maybe not as much but there was still a response to my article. If you set a goal like posting every day or twice a week or every Tuesday, stuff will happen. Your client will call or your breakfast will catch on fire or some other calamity will happen. What I do not want you to do is give yourself such a tight time frame that if you miss it, you don’t post at all.

I have seen this happen with newsletters. Supposedly the best time to send a newsletter is Thursday morning. Clients will miss Thursday morning and then feel like they have to wait until the next Thursday morning to send it and then something happens, I am sure you see where I am going here.

Marketing done imperfectly still benefits your company! Getting a post out there is more important than waiting to have all the planets align just right and never posting anything.

How Can You Get More Blog Hits

Tara Jacobsen — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 00:02:31 +0000

Today’s post is about how to get more blog bits. I am on a roll to do 31 posts in 31 days if that gives you any hints!

So you have a blog and are ready for the flood of traffic that is inevitably going to beat down your internet door…right? Most people with a blog do not have a plan to post regularly, do not have a plan on what to post and get discouraged because they do not get many comments. Well, I have had a blog for quite a while now and can tell you that when you start out, no one comes. Then a trickle, then more and more until it does become fun to post because you know that people are reading.

Seth Godin wrote a book called “The Dip”, in which he talks about what it takes to find success and how you need to know ALL endeavors have a big dip in the road to success. His great example is a really tough kind of chemistry pre-med doctors have to take, most students fail that class and quit there. Seth’s thinking is that if you are not going to do EVERYTHING possible to get through that class, why even start medical school. Blogs are like that too.

You start off all happy and worried about what it looks like. You get your buttons in the right place and may even post a couple of times. BUT then life and work get in the way. You are thinking you will post weekly and wind up posting monthly or even further apart. You get worried that you haven’t posted enough and throw up something just to get the monkey off your back.

Post Often

I mean post at least twice a week if not more. I KNOW, you are not good at writing, do not know what to write about and worry that no one is reading them, BUT until you get a good number of posts under your belt you will not get better.

Set a schedule and keep it. I pledged to write 31 posts in 31 days so I WILL write a post today, one tomorrow and one the day after. Unless I break all my fingers, there is no reason why I cannot get them done. Generally I post at least two to three times a week.

Write About All Different Kinds Of Things

Last month I had traffic from search engines on 806 different keywords. 708 of those had only one hit. This is called the long tail of search. Chris Anderson wrote “The Long Tail” years ago, in which he discussed the fact that most of Amazon’s sales come from books that only sell one copy per month. This translates to the fact that I could never imagine when I am writing posts that people would search for “are email newsletters good for business in 2010″ BUT since I have written about email newsletters and business a lot, google served up my site as something that might interest them.

Learn To Do Keyword Marketing

Write your post and then figure out what good keywords are for the topic you picked. I wrote a whole post about “How To Write A Blog Post That Will Rank In Google” that you can check out if you are interested in that kind of thing.

Bookmark Your Blog Posts

Make sure that you are submitting each post to Stumble Upon, Reddit, Digg, Delicious and Google Bookmarks at the least. This is a free way to get more traffic coming to your site to read your posts.

Add Your Posts To Facebook and Twitter

I get a lot of free traffic from these social media sites also. You may not believe it but I like Twitter even more than Facebook for getting the word out about what I have written! There are computers all over the internet who are searching Twitter to find great content and I make sure to give it to them.

Quite Worrying That No One Comments

I get between 2,000 and 3,000 hits a month and I only get about 10 real comments a month. Now I am sure that there are ways that I could train my gang to comment more (asking them to comment comes to mind) but I do not care if they comment! I care if I am getting more traffic to my site this month than last month AND that I am converting that traffic to sales. That is something to get worked up over, not that no one talks to you.

Make Your Blog About Something You Like

This one is huge for me! I work with all sorts of people who are looking for a hot niche. They want to know what will get them big money fast. Let me tell you, if you pick a niche you know nothing about you will struggle to write about that topic. If you pick something because it is popular, not only will it be hard to write about BUT you will have a lot of competition. Now, don’t get me wrong, I write about marketing which is a HIGHLY competitive market BUT I LOVE IT! I can generate a post without having to do research. I can write a post in about 15 minutes if I have to. Liking your topic can make all the difference in your success.

If you are a small business owner who struggles to do their blogging, we can help! Check out our small business marketing services page for more information.

Blogging Success Stories for Small Biz

Tara Jacobsen — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:24:08 +0000

Blogging success can sometimes be hard to judge and having goals is vital to knowing whether you are doing well or just spinning your wheels.

When you are blogging (or for that matter doing any marketing that takes time away from your real work), you MUST know what you are trying to accomplish. Here are sone of the results that you can measure to see if you are succeeding….

Blogging success indicators

Posting regularly – this is a biggie! I find that small business owners often want immediate results from their blogs. They feel that throwing up a couple of posts should bring a flood of visitors and traffic to their door. This is not going to happen. Blogging is a get rich slow kind of gig where you build up content and a following over time.
Getting readers – it would be lovely if you started writing and then people just magically found you. Well this part is going to take work also. Make sure that you list your web address on all of your outgoing emails, have links from your social media and association pages and tell everyone you know what great information you have on there. One of my best suggestions is to follow that up by bookmarking every post on places like Digg, Stumble Upon, Propeller and others. These give you back links and can generate real human traffic.
Make it easy for people to sign up and receive your blog posts automatically. I have never found anything as good as the free service Feedburner by Google for this. When you offer this to your readers, basically they are going to get an email or an update to their reader every time you post something. WOW!
KNOW what your readers want to hear about. When you get comments on your blog posts, make a note that that post sparked interest. Do a Survey Monkey to find out what is top of mind for your readers. Check your Google Analytics to see what keywords people are using to get to your site and write more about those topics!
Write about current topics of interest. You can go to the front page of Twitter and see topics are trending OR use search.google.com to search your industry and see what other people are finding interesting now.

So, after you do all this, HOW do you get more business from a blog? Well people buy my products almost every day from my blog, which they find because of my quality content and posting. SOOO that tells you e-commerce is a great thing to consider for your blog AND…

I wrote a post about My Top Ten Tips for How To Get Paid Speaking gigs. A woman named Maria Todd commented and I wrote back in the comment section to thank her. The next night I was at an event and woman had a golf shirt on with Ask Maria Todd embroidered on it! We talked for at least a half an hour on ways to generate more speaking engagements, what pricing models work and whether we are pro NSA or not. Now I am SURE that I will get at least a couple more speaking events from her suggestions which always lead to more money in my pockets!

Difference Between Small Business Websites Versus WordPress Blogs

Tara Jacobsen — Tue, 18 May 2010 16:09:06 +0000

I spend A LOT of time trying to explain small business websites versus wordpress blogs to people. There are some major differences that matter to your web success so here is the difference for the final time!

I have been involved in making websites and blogs for over a decade now and have watched the progression from pure HTML sites to Flash to database driven sites. I have seen SEO (search engine optimization) change over the years also. When we started, a website was basically a fancy brochure with lots of obscure copy about solutions driven results and client acquisition matrix. In fact we used to play buzzword bingo the terms were so ludicrous.

Fast forward ten years and the internet has changed. Putting up a website with your brochure on it only works AFTER someone has made a buying decision and is researching your company. While they are searching they want Information – information with a capital I! They also want to be able to do a search on Google or Bing or Yahoo and find knowledge, not your sales pitch but active information about the topic that they are researching which you may know the answers to.

I have to tell you, about 4 years ago I thought blogs were silly! Who wants to talk about what they ate for breakfast or how many times they put the dog out (some of the same arguments people give me about Twitter, but that is different post on this same theme). Today I cannot see why anyone would want a website unless they were doing a big ecommerce launch or had to have layers of security because they dealt with people’s confidential information.

So what are the main differences between websites and blogs?

Blogs have feeds, websites do not Part 1 – I got a voicemail from a client last night who had an urgent event she needed to post on her website. She is a new client and her blog is not set up yet so I had to tell her the bad news, if we put that info on her website, it could be four to six weeks before google comes back to spider that information…sigh. If we had a blog done for her, we could post that information and it would PUSH it out to the search engines today. Search engines are hungry to make the latest information available and so are glad to have new items every day.
Blogs have feeds, websites do not Part 2 –

Because blogs have a process to notify everyone when something is posted you can have an email sent out automatically by using Feedburner which is free and owned by google, you have the post automatically tell your Facebook page through Networked blogs, you can have Twitter post it automatically with TwitterFeed or Hootsuite. You can combine feeds from different places like we did on www.twitter.com/tweetinghomes, allowing all kinds of realtors to post their blog posts automatically.

Blogs have LOTS of content to index – Every time I write a post there is a chance it will make it to the front page of google. I have written over 200 posts about small business marketing, entrepreneur marketing, realtor marketing, time managements, website design and more. Each of those posts stands alone as something that google may be interested in ranking well.
Blogs have webpages too – I can guarantee you that some of my clients do not know that my small business marketing website Marketing Artfully is a blog. They saw a blog 3 or 4 years ago and do not know how far they have come. I have a contact us page, sales pages, product pages, policies and procedures pages, and events. Basically everything a website has along with about 200 mini sites built in because of the blog posts I have written.
Blog posts are easy to share – EVERY time I write a blog post I bookmark it. Bookmarking is pushing those buttons that say share or tell a friend which allow you send your post to Digg or Delicious or Propeller. These bookmarking sites rank REALLY well and drive actual traffic to your website. Adding them to the bottom of blog pages is super easy which brings me to…
Blogs are easy to use and update – Blogs look like MS Word on the back end. They have great content management tools like the Thesis Theme for WordPress which we use for all of our clients. They also have plugins and widgets that do almost anything you want. When I wanted a calendar for my site it took about 10 minutes to research the right one, upload it to my blog, activate it and start using it. No development time and no cost (we use Calender by Kieran O’shea). I have been in many marketing meetings with developers when we wanted to add something like that to a website. Just the time to do the specifications would have exceeded 10 minutes let alone the development time which could run to days or weeks with the associated costs.
Blogs do not all have to look boring BUT having bells and whistles costs more and can take more time for upkeep. I changed the Thesis Skin on this site to something snazzier than just a plain Thesis theme with cool graphics. While I am happy about the look, it added about 15 to 20 minutes to the time it takes to write blog posts because of the special formatting of photos needed and how it is not just super easy peasy anymore. That having been said, if you absolutely want a custom look to your blog, it can be bought for a price!
Humans do not care or understand whether your site is website or a blog – I have a client (and friend) who I have worked with for YEARS. We talked a couple of times about building a blog but her husband had his heart set on a website. It is finally up, over 6 months later and has 5 pages which include a contact us page and an about us page…sigh. Your prospects DO NOT CARE what technology your website is built on. They care about 3 things only – do they like you, do they trust you, do you know what you are doing.

So there you have it, my best information about the difference between websites and blogs. I am sure some of you have different opinions that I do and would be happy to publish them in the comments if you want to let me know. If you are a small business owner who would like to learn more about getting a blog for your business, please email me at support (at) marketingartfully.com and I will have someone give you a jingle!

There are links in this article to free small business marketing tools as well as affiliate links. If you would like to avoid my getting paid for referring you to them, please type the website addresses in your browser bar manually.

Arbitrary Small Business Marketing Goals Part Two

Tara Jacobsen — Mon, 03 May 2010 12:45:18 +0000

These arbitrary small business marketing goals are part of continuing series about how Small Business Marketing Goals Make A Huge Difference. Read at your own risk, they coud make you do something!

Social Networking or Social Media

If I get one more email that tells me that they can get 10,000 in 15 minutes I am going to scream! The best way to grow a marketing channel that will respond to your offers and listen to what you say is to grow it slowly and patiently.

Having a gagillion person list when you sell weight loss is silly. Most of the people will disregard what you are sending or unfriend or unfollow you. Having built a list of ladies primarily, who are concerned about their weight or appearance and who are looking for help…that is priceless to the marketer who is focused on the weight loss niche.

If you want numbers to shoot for…follow 50 people a day on Twitter (some will follow you back), friend 10 a day on Facebook and get as many connections as you can on LinkedIn. Hit Plaxo just for fun and then establish a presence only on the hundreds (or maybe thousands) of other sites out there.

Then, this is the hardest. Post every day. I post every weekday which says that I am interested in my account, providing great info to my friends and followers and are not using it as purely a spam-engine to sell them something.

Blogging for Business

Having a blog is harder work than having a website. A website takes a little time once and then fades into obscurity. A blog wants to be fed which in turn calls the search engines and also can help populate a bunch of your social networking.

If you do not have a blog start one today. WordPress.com has free ones and we sell business blogs that work. Start writing. If you are new, one post a week is a great way to start. It will take you what feels like forever but soon it will become a habit and will seem less hard. Also you will get in the groove of finding out what your readers like which takes me to part two of blogging…

If you have a blog, look at your stats and see what is generating traffic and write more about that. You KNOW google is sending people to your blog for that keyword phrase and will be reinforcing their faith in your site to provide great content on that topic!

If you have a blog, and you get more hits on the day you post, what would happen if yoiu committed to posting one more day a week? I get up to 10 times more traffic on the days that I post than on just normal days.

Last but not least, bookmark your posts. Get the little button at the bottom that says share and share on StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicios, Google, Yahoo and more. Set up your accounts once and then you can just fly through posting easily!

Local Marketing

This is a new field that is growing because of the capabilities of the GPS Phones and the growth of online marketing for local businesses. If you are not on there yet make sure you hit gowalla.com, foursquare.com, google and yahoo local.

Even if you are a work from homer or online business, set up your stuff!

There you have it! If you do a couple of these things your business will grow, if you do them all you should be able to count on getting more leads and increasing your revenue much faster!

Blogging How to find something to write about everyday

Tara Jacobsen — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:36:15 +0000

How to find something to write about when you are blogging is the number one question I get from our clients. Here are my Top 10 Ways To Find Something To Write About!

So what is the best way to overcome this almost daily bout of writers block and get some content up there on the interwebs? Here are my Top 10 Kick Me In The Pants and Make Me Write Something For Goodness Sakes ideas…

Top 10 Ways To Find Something To Write About

Subscribe to newsletters – oftentimes all it takes to get me writing a blog post is to read something I like or hate by another writer. Now do not get me wrong, I never copy and always give attributions BUT I can jump off that idea and start a post of my own!
Subscribe to feed readers – I use iGoogle to keep track of my favorite bloggers (do not worry Seth, you are always top left). Just seeing a title can give me an idea.
Subscribe to google alerts – use the power of google to send you a digest of what has been written about the previous day.
Check out twitter trending topics – if people are talking about it, it must be in vogue, jump on that bandwagon and get a great keyworded post out there.
Check out what people are talking about on Facebook – I have to tell you, between Twitter and Facebook, I have found some of my most recent, favorite things to use!
Ask your friends and followers online what they are interested in – you can just ask outright on social networks or get a surveymonkey.com going and laser target it.
Pick a theme for the month – with a theme everything becomes easier, your research, your writing and ranking for that keyword in google.
Listen to humans – when you go out and talk to humans, many times they will all ask you the same questions. Pay attention to what they are and “answer” them on your blog!
FAVORITE – Dink around! Give yourself permission to spend a day or even an hour dinking around on the interwebs. It is really easy to get so focused that you are not learning or growing.
FAVORITE – Check your google analytics Right there in the keywords people used to get to your website through google is a list of topics that they are interested in and which you have to be ranking somewhat high on google.

So, enough already! Get over your writers block and try some of these out for more than five minutes and I bet you will get your creative juices flowing again.

Writing Blog Posts Do Good Grammar and Spelling Matter

Tara Jacobsen — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:54:14 +0000

Do good grammar and spelling matter when you are writing blog posts? There are people out there just waiting for you to mess up. Stop letting them intimidate you.

So, I was reading one of my favorite bloggers the other day and he talked about fears that bloggers have including using incorrect grammar and spelling. This fear seemed to be crippling their work and stopping them from hitting the publish button. Do not let this happen to you!

Fear of being judged

If you are worried about being judged for your commas, punctuation and spelling, there is a good chance you are terrified that someone will not like your ideas. Here is something that should make you feel better (or worse) – I guarantee you that everyone will not like your blog. There I said it.

If you are writing great content then there are going to be people who disagree with what you are saying. There are grammar police out there right now circling to tell me how wrong I am about this post!

This comment on a blog post epitomizes what I think is the worst of grammar policing.

It is an anonymous comment by someone who obviously takes great joy in pointing out that there is a misspelling. Nothing about the great article, the author’s take on the content or anything else, just blatant criticism. NOW, because that was on a popular blog with LOTS of other comments NOT related to spelling, I am sure that the writer will sleep tonight. BUT I know that there are beginning and even seasoned bloggers out there who spend more time worrying about typos and grammar than they do about getting great words strung together. Which leads me to…

Do lots of content and do not worry about details

I write blog posts every day. Sometimes I do not read them before I hit publish because I am running behind BUT I like to post daily so I am trading perfection for getting information out there. I make sure that I have great content and BELIEVE me, someone will email me back with my spelling, grammar or mathematical errors.

When readers let me know about mistakes nicely AND actually have read my work, I LOVE IT! Thank you so much for helping. When they leave ugly, mean-spirited comments like the one above, I fix my work, delete the comment which does not add value to the conversation and hope they never want to hire me!

If you are blogging for your business, the goal should be to talk as much as possible. One PERFECT post that has been agonized over, written, rewritten, sent to the proof reader, reworked and THEN published will not get you as much traffic or interest as ten articles with great content and a couple of mistakes.

Search engines and humans are voracious. They need new content all the time and if you are providing consistent, wonderful words and thoughts you will win!

Writing Great Blog Posts Strike While The Words Are Hot

Tara Jacobsen — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:29:21 +0000

Writing great blog posts can be a joy or a drudge. Since I have vowed to write a post a day, the challenge is to write great content on topics that interest my readers without wanting to commit hari kari.

When I tell my small business blogging clients that they should aim for a post or two a week, many wonder what they will possibly have to talk about. If you would like to find out how often to post to your small business blog, check out my past article.

So how can you write great blog posts day in and day out? I have to admit that some days I do not jump out of bed with tons of good content rolling around in my head about small business and entrepreneur marketing. There I said it. That having been said, I have been blogging about small business marketing for quite a few years and the topic never bores me!

Additionally, I like the challenge of ranking well for keywords that I would have to pay money for over on google because I am frugal (cheap may be a better word). I DO pay for things that matter like technology and training BUT I have a hard time paying day in and day out for something that I can achieve organically.

So how do you make sure your blog posts have great content when you are not inspired? Here are some of my tricks for finding topics and generating great content…

Strike when the words are hot – today is a good blogging day. This is the third post I have written and I am heading out to the interwebs to make some free pages that will link back to my Marketing Artfully HUB site! I wrote my post for today, one for Friday and this one that will come out tomorrow. NO, I am not such a prolific writer every day, but when the words and ideas are flowing, I try to make the most of them!
Read interesting stuff by other people – my post for later in the week came from an idea I had while reading another bloggers post. Because I am a fun gal, I made sure to link back to her blog at the end of it AND had a great time writing it.
Check out your google analytics – see which keywords people are coming to site from and write more about those topics. This is a fun one because you can do internal linking back to old posts that could use some google love!
Do some keyword research – find out what other topics people are looking for that will meld with your blog. Sometimes just seeing new keywords can spark a blog post or two.

Well there you have it. That is how I get the great content for my blog. If you would like to learn more about keyword research and blogging, check out our Do It Yourself Small Business Marketing product, you will be glad you did!

Duplicate Content for Small Business Owners and MLMs

Tara Jacobsen — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:45:34 +0000

As some of you may know, I do internet and offline marketing for small business owners BUT I also do A LOT of research into hard core internet marketing since many of the techniques I learn from those guys translate into something that my small business owners, entrepreneurs and realtors can use!

The other day I was reading about duplicate content on adwords websites and how that effects the rankings and the amount those advertisers get paid. That made me think long and hard about my small business owners who work for companies that offer “websites” and “shopping carts” for them to use to market their business.

If you have a Tupperware website (or candle or jewelry or weight loss) site that your company provides, there is a good chance that it has duplicate content on it! While it is great that your company provides an ecommerce or marketing solution for you, the chances of you ranking for that search term when there are thousands of the same sites out there is incredibly slim.

So what can you do? If you have some money to invest in your business you can have a blog like the one we did for Rae Ann over at Green Cleaning Products. She isn’t competing with all of the other people who represent her company anymore, instead she is representing herself and green cleaning products, with Wow Green simply as a product. Additionally, she DOES rank on the first page for Green Cleaning Products Denver which is one of search terms we targeted for her!

So what if you are just getting started? You could use free websites or blogs to set yourself apart from the crowd! Each time you leave a breadcrumb around the internet that is different from your company website, you increase the chance of someone finding you and possibly following that back to buy!

If you would like to learn about using free websites to market and are in the Denver area next week, consider coming to our Free Website Marketing Workshop (the sites are free the workshop isn’t…:)