EvoBloggito

How do You Find Your Blog Audience? You Don’t.

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Aug 12, 2009; Category: Blogging, Communication, Marketing, Search/SEO; Tags: Blogging, Communication; No Comments

That’s right: you don’t find your audience. They find you. Your job, as a blogger, is to make it easy for them to find you when they decide to look for information. It’s a simple formula, but it’s so easy to get off-track.

1. Identify your audience, or "Tribe" if you prefer. You’d be surprised how few bloggers even think about this. If you’re writing for one-legged ex-sailors with an unhealthy obsession with white whales, you will need to write differently than if your audience is primarily librarians who recommend books about sailors with an unhealthy obsession with white whales (also, these two groups will face different problems, I would guess).
2. Understand your audience’s needs, desires, and frustrations. Do NOT assume they are just like you: they aren’t, although you may have some things in common. Do some research. Find bloggers who are already engaging your audience and read their posts and, just as important, read the comments.
3. Once you understand who they are and what they need, share information that helps them solve a problem. Pick one problem per post. Another day, another problem, another blog post.

Worried you will run out of problems to help your audience solve? Don’t. Your audience will never run out of problems. Collectively, they have more problems, with more variations than you can possibly imagine. If you keep researching your audience (oh, did I forget to mention that’s an ongoing task?), and interact with them, you will discover new things you can help them with.

Their problems (it doesn’t have to be a big problem; it could be a small problem like "where can I find pipe tobacco locally?") are what send them to Google in search of solutions. If you have created a focused, frequently updated resource of information and search engine magnet by writing blog posts that address their questions and issues, they will find you.

Do Static, Set-it-and-Forget-it Websites Still Have Value?

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jul 14, 2009; Category: Marketing, Search/SEO, Zeitgeist; Tags: Local Search, Marketing, Zeitgeist; No Comments

It seems as though this question could be answered with a simple “yes” or “no” (I would argue “no”), but a conversation I had yesterday with Chris Madrid of New Mexico Community Capital’s IMPACT New Mexico program helped me understand two things: 1) that a static website can still have some value as an “online brochure.” and 2) how far we have to go in New Mexico in terms of businesses understanding not just “how” to leverage the web, but “why.”

Certainly I understand that for small businesses just starting up, a website may not be their first priority. In terms of cash flow and number of hours in a day, they may be at capacity in just getting their business on its feet. But businesses have to do some marketing. The problem is many business owners have little or no expertise in nor understanding of marketing. As a result, they end up with a yellow pages ad and a banner in front of their place of business. If they’re lucky and they have great products or services, they will get enough word-of-mouth to allow them to survive. Some kinds of businesses, like restaurants, can even thrive on that formula. For many (perhaps most) businesses, that’s not enough.

So what value does a static, seldom-if-ever-updated website still provide? Assuming someone knows the name of the company or the URL of their website, they can find their way to it (not likely Google will be much help in finding it by searching on anything other than the company name). To some customers, having even a static website adds credibility to the company as long as the information on the site is not obviously outdated (if things appear badly dated, however, it can have the opposite effect).

If a static website looks nice, is easy to navigate, and tells a coherent and compelling story about the company and it’s products or services, prospective customers who find their way there may, in fact, decide to do business with the company. This is the nearly two decades old “online brochure” model of online marketing. It’s better than no website, but it’s never worked great (not even in 1993, when I launched my first website) for one simple reason: it doesn’t attract much search traffic. Which means not many people ever see the website. It’s like buying a television ad that runs at 3 am.

This is a strategy that absolutely depends on driving people to your website by putting its URL on business cards, yellow pages ads, mentioning it on radio spots, etc. Those techniques, with rare exceptions, have never resulted in much traffic for business websites.

So, static websites, if kept at least marginally updated, are better than nothing. But that misses the point. Marketing, rather than a (sometimes expensive) frill, is an absolute necessity for almost all businesses: it’s what keeps the customers coming. The online marketing game isn’t about providing cred to the 5-6 people per week who see your online brochure. The online marketing game is about getting found online by the hundreds and thousands of local people searching online for local products and services offered by your company.

Fundamentally, search engines have changed the game by focusing on local search results. It used to be that in order to see local results, I had to type in “Santa Fe” after whatever I was looking for. No more. Search engines now deliver local results (if any) based on your IP address, which indicates your geographic location. This both takes advantage of and fuels a trend in the growing use of search engines in looking for local products and services. If your website is not a search engine magnet, you’re missing out on business. It’s that simple.

Static websites are rarely (if ever) search engine magnets, no matter what might be done to make them more search engine-friendly. Blogs and actively updated websites with content management systems often are, if done with search engine optimization in mind. So you tell me: do static websites still have value?

To Blog or Not to Blog: What Your Company Should Consider Before Jumping onto the Blogging Bandwagon

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jul 8, 2009; Category: Blogging, Business, Communication, Marketing, Search/SEO; Tags: Blogging, Marketing; One Comment

If you’re struggling with whether or not to launch a blog, you need to download and read this whitepaper.

Sometimes the hardest part of blogging is making the decision to do it. That can be especially true for companies, where it may be necessary to get buy-in from several stakeholders across multiple departments in multiple layers of management. While this whitepaper is written primarily for people in companies with multiple layers of management, people in small companies, and individuals who are considering blogging will find plenty of information that applies to them.

“I was surprised at the amount of useful information in such a quick read. When I reached the end, I was ready for more.”

Marcie Davis
www.davisinnovates.com | www.workinglikedogs.com

I don’t think every company should have a blog. If the conditions are right, the benefits can be enormous. If the right conditions don’t exist, or can’t be brought into existence, blogging can be a big waste of time. This whitepaper helps you evaluate your situation so you can make an intelligent decision for your company (and your career).

It also offers some "getting started" advice, helping you avoid the I-wish-I’d-known-that-when-I-started syndrome that affects most bloggers within their first 6 months.

An excerpt:

Download To Blog or Not to Blog, and pass it around to everyone in your company (or outside your company) who has anything to do with an existing or potential blog. And feedback is greatly appreciated!

Jumping on the Blogging Bandwagon, or Not

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jul 4, 2009; Category: Blogging, Marketing, Search/SEO; Tags: Blogging, Local Search, SEO; No Comments

Bandwagons are lots of fun to jump onto: there are usually a lot of upbeat, excited people already there. Many of them are convinced the bandwagon is taking them to a lovely, special place where their dreams will be fulfilled. And possibly they will be. The problem is, when people are in a state of expectant dream fulfillment, they talk as if they’ve found the "one true answer." And if it’s the one true answer, everyone should be on the bandwagon, right?

We think you need a better basis for making a decision to blog or not. We believe there are questions people in companies can ask themselves, the answers to which may indicate whether or not blogging will help them achieve their goals. Blogging can enable people (and the companies they work for) to do great things that they would not have imagined before they started blogging. It can also be a complete waste of time, money, and effort. There is no ideal company profile by industry, size, or geographic location that indicates the likelihood of successful blogging. In every case, that likelihood rests with an individual’s (and their company’s) ability and desire to have a successful blog. Blogging is not for everyone or for every company.

Make no mistake: we are blogging enthusiasts. We believe blogging creates opportunities for businesses that no other form of communication can provide. We also believe effective blogging can be learned, but only if circumstances support learning.

We’re writing a white paper (it will be available on EvoBloggito) to help you determine if those circumstances exist in your company and if blogging is likely to benefit you and your company. There is no "passing score" for the number of questions checked. It’s up to you to determine both the answers and their bearing on your decision of whether or not to launch a company blog.

If you decide to blog, the whitepaper will also offer some guidance and suggestions to help you get started on the right foot. Because getting started is the biggest step you’ll take.

Handling Duplicate Content with the Canonical Tag

Author: Guest Author; Published: Jul 1, 2009; Category: Design/Development, Guest Post, Search/SEO; Tags: Design/Development, Google; 2 Comments

Note: This is a GUEST POST by Edward Kung, owner of Seedin Web Development, a company in Vancouver, British Columbia, which provides complete web development solutions.

One of the biggest problems faced by search engines is duplicate content on the internet. Usually the content belongs to the same website but is placed on the different web pages. So when search engines perform a search they come up with 10 different pages with different URLs but the same content. SEO companies have also been plagued by the same problem.

Recently major search engines like Google and Yahoo! have come up with a new way to deal with the issue of duplicate content: the canonical tag. The canonical tag is the latest tool in the fight against the duplicate content on the internet.

How to Use the Canonical Tag

The canonical tag is applied to the URLs of the web pages that hold duplicate content. Since they are to be included in the head each of the duplicate pages, you will be simply adding the preferred version of a URL. You actually instruct the search engines that the URLs in question should direct to the preferred URL designated in the canonical tag.

The canonical tag is included in the desired web page’s head section, specifying the preferred URL in the following format:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.xyz.com/aboutus.html" />

The tag can only be used on pages that reside on a single site. The pages may be in subdomains as well as sub folders. You can use either absolute or relative links, but search engines strongly recommend that you use absolute links to eliminate chances of errors.

The tag is transitive in nature. For an instance, if URL X marks Y as canonical, and Y in turn marks Z as canonical, Z will be treated as canonical for both X and Y. For example: If test1.xyz.com points to canonical URL test2.xyz.com and test2.xyz.com points to canonical URL final.xyz.com. Then final.xyz.com would be treated as canonical for both test1.xyz.com and test2.xyz.com.

By using the canonical tag, all the links to all the URLs with duplicate content are simply consolidated into one URL which has been specified as canonical. This URL will be considered as a "strong hint" by search engines. The canonical tag will help search engines like Google with the task of identifying duplicate URLs.

Search engines will also understand that duplicate URLs with canonical tags are all actually referring to the URL that you want the visitors to see. Such URLs are known as canonical URLs.