Back in December of 2007, I decided that I wanted to try something new and fresh with my website. I was also getting tired of the standard websites with their uniform look and I didn’t really feel like I was getting any benefit from it. So, I did a bit of research and decided that I wanted to try a blogging platform and after a bit more research, I chose Wordpress.

Before I fully converted to the blog, I was receiving approximately 900 unique visitors each month.

• By January, one month after I converted, I was receiving 1300 unique visitors.
• By February it had grown to 2500 unique visitors
• In March, it had grown to 4000 unique visitors in the month.

That is four times the traffic I started with!

So, let’s look at the top five reasons why you need a blog (in my biased opinion, WordPress is the way to go so I will reference WP throughout this post but you could use any blogging platform to achieve these same benefits…):

1. Blogs are User-Friendly and Very Easy to Use

The upside to having blog software as opposed to a website is that it is very user-friendly. The blog uses a GUI, or a graphic-user interface, which means that that everything that you may need to do is laid out in simple to understand graphics. The blogging software also conforms to the standards of most other software programs. For example, the graphic icons you see in Microsoft Office programs are very similar to the graphics you’ll see inside of your blog.

The reason that this is so important is that YOU can update your OWN website and you don’t need to pay high prices in web design fees to do so! There is no messing around with HTML code, you can avoid having a dull, lifeless site that people only visit occasionally and instead, you can update it yourself and give people a reason to return again and again and again.

The other upside to this is that when you want something changed quickly, you can do so. You no longer have to wait on a web designer or a virtual assistant, you can just pop in to the dashboard and update the page you need to make changes to and click save and boom – you’re done!

Making regular posts is also easy to do. In a few, short clicks and then some keystrokes for the body of your post, you can have fresh, new content on your blog immediately. If you’re feeling particularly creative one day, you can write a series of posts and save them all to post on future dates. For me, I will write eight or nine blog entries at a time and save them to post one or two days apart. This is also useful if you are going on vacation. In February, my husband and I went to the Dominican for a vacation and before I left, I wrote blog entries to cover the week I was gone and just posted them in advance. On the days that I specified, my blog entries showed up on the blog!

2. Blogs Are Easy to Navigate

All blogs follow a fairly standard style of formatting and navigation. Although each template may look different, they all contain the same standard elements. When I visit a blog, I always know where to go to see Recent Posts. I also know that on the majority of blogs, I will be able to find a place to subscribe to the blogs feed. A feed is simply a syndication of your blog entries. That syndicated text is then sent out to your blog visitors feed readers and is sent out to the search engines, etc. This is part of the reason that blogging is so powerful in getting people to your site.

Have you ever visited a website where every menu has been different and each sidebar contained different text depending on where you were on the website? Those types of websites are confusing and they don’t lead the website visitor where they should be going. With blogging software, it remains standard and is always updating itself. When you make a change on one sidebar, it automatically updates on every other sidebar which eliminates any sort of confusion for your website visitors.

A great book I want to recommend is Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think.” Even if you don’t design websites, you want to read this book. A lot of the reasons that I love blogs are outlined in his usability section. He references making websites more functional by following his principles but what is so great is that a blog already conforms to many of his standards.

3. People Can Subscribe to Your Blog and Stay Current

Now, I want to explain what RSS is first. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. What it is is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts. People who are into blogging will use your RSS feed to do a few things:

• They may subscribe to receive a daily digest of new content. Think of how powerful this is in terms of keeping you in touch with your target market. If someone receives constant, updated messages from you, you are always in their line of sight and they will see what you are up to, new products or services you are launching and how much knowledge you have on your chosen subject.

• They may also add you to their feed reader. I have a program that I use called Feed Demon and this software program tracks all of the blogs I am interested in by capturing and updating the feed that comes from the blog. Each day I can open up this software program and have an instant summary of every blog I have subscribed to and I can review what it is people are talking about. This allows me to stay current without having a thousand bookmarks in my internet browser or trying to remember which blogs I liked to read. The same is true for your visitors. They want a quick, easy way to be reminded that you exist and that you are posting things that they want to know about.

Normal sites don’t do this for you unless you are putting out a monthly ezine that contains all of your business updates. By having the blog, you can nearly cut out the monthly ezine and just let the blog do the work for you!

4. Search Engines Love Them and They Are Content Managers

In fact, it’s so easy to build content on your blog that I have actually created info-products based on content I had blogged about over the past year. Info-products become simple to do because you aren’t creating fresh, new content each and every time. What you blog about could become an article which could turn into an e-book. Blogging gets you into the habit of writing and creating which then allows you to easily and effortlessly create info-products.

Your visitors will also love this because when they show up on your site looking for assistance in your chosen profession, they can find a whole archive of great content. Most of my blogging clients will archive their past newsletters or e-zines on their blogs so that their clients can read past issues without having to download PDFs or visit thirteen or fourteen different web pages.

Search engines love blogs for a number of reasons. Number one, they love the fact that fresh, new content is being posted all of the time. Even if you are only updating it once a week, you will still see the benefits from it. Each and every time you post something to your blog, the search engines are automatically pinged and if you have pinging software installed, which is free and simple to use, it’ll automatically ping the different services that should be pinged.

Number two, search engines love hyperlinks and trackbacks. Hyperlinks are links to other people’s websites, blog entries, audio files, etc. and track backs are special links from someone else’s blog entry that let the other person know you’ve blogged about him or her. It also posts YOUR entry on their site for other people to read. This is how blogging also becomes so viral.

5. They Become an Active Networking Source for Your Business

For me, I have met a number of brand new people through my blog. Some of these people became clients, others were just frequent readers that became friends and others asked me to collaborate with them on special projects. By having a blog, you can become a place where people visit to learn about what it is you are writing about but also so that they can meet you, get to know you and someday work with you. You can build a community and allow other people to meet through you which then allows people to talk about you and get your name out there.

If you think of standard networking, you think of people showing up to an event for about an hour, rushing through the crowds trying to get business cards and then leaving the event and never really having a true feeling of connection. I’m sure we’ve all experienced this. Blogging gives your interested parties a place to come to learn about you. They can start to see how you both would benefit from knowing each other and they will be more apt to approach you over time. This is a much more effective way to network and you don’t need to worry about your business card being thrown in the trash.

Another way that it becomes a networking tool is when you reach out to other people’s blogs. Once you start blogging, you will quickly realize that the whole world is blogging and there are many great things to be read. By visiting other people’s blogs and leaving comments on their posts, you will do two things: one, you will introduce yourself in a non-threatening or non-imposing way to someone you may not have wanted to just e-mail in the past and two, by showing that you have interest in that subject on their blog, you’ll gain interested visitors who share similar interests.

Erin Blaskie is the owner of Business Services ETC, The VA Coach and VA Matchmaker.  She services internet marketers, coaches, speakers and solopreneurs with their everyday operational needs which frees up their time to focus on the big picture.  She can be found at www.erinblaskie.com.

I have been following the conversation in the blogging world of “Google’s Embarrassing Mistake” started by Dylan Tweney.  It seems that he as well as others feel that the nofollow tag was a patch that failed the blogoshpere and in fact may have been a detriment to bloggers:

Worse, nofollow has another, more pernicious effect, which is that it reduces the value of legitimate comments. Here’s how:

Why should I bother entering a comment on your blog, after all? Well, I might comment because you’re my friend. But I might also want some tiny little reward for participating in a discussion, contributing to the content on your site, and generally enhancing the value of the conversational Web. That reward? PageRank, baby. But if your blog uses the nofollow tag, you’ve just eliminated that tiny little bit of reciprocity. Thanks, but no thanks. I’d rather just comment on my own blog. And maybe, if you’re lucky, I’ll link back to you.

Jeremy Zawodny makes his own statement about the Nofollow tag with the cavalier attitude of “Kill em all let God sort em out” with his statement:

Look. Linking is part of what makes the web work. If you’re actually concerned about every link you make being counted in some global database of site endorsements, you’re probably over-thinking just a bit. Life’s too short for that, ya know? Link and be linked to. Let the search engines sort it out.

This is actually decent advice that Jeremy discusses as stated by Nick Wilson at Performancing and I would have to agree.

Comment spam continues to be an ever increasing problem in the blogosphere, and there have yet to be any applications that are the end all solution.  Dylan does come up with a fairly simple solution to the problem in his step by step tutorial:

In fact, the solution to comment spam is simple. I’ve used it both on this blog, and on my haiku site. Here’s the step-by-step solution:

Step 1. Automatically moderate any comments that include hyperlinks.
Step 2. There is no step 2.

Moderation of any and all comments does pose somewhat of a problem in the fast world of the blogosphere.  I have moderation of comments on my own blog when a hyperlink is placed in the comment, but the problem is when I am not in front of the computer making sure comments are moderated in real time.  I could miss out on a great conversation if after 2 days I finally get around to allowing a comment. 

One thing about the discussion is certain, comment spam for the future is here to stay.

One of the great things about this blog is that Rick gets pitched by lots of people and we tend to get some good scoops. Dave Frankland zapped this nice tidbit over to Rick today about Richard Edelman’s keynote at Syndicate 2006. Here’s the really interesting thing … the link to the PRWeek story yielded this:

Edelman keynote at Syndicate touches upon industry changes
NEW YORK: Edelman CEO Richard Edelman, facing an audience at the 2006 Syndicate Conference in New York City that has traditionally been hostile to PR professionals, launched into a discussion of how blogs and other new media are changing the business.
From the PRWeek website … that’s all folks.

Oh man. Man oh man. Edelman, I think, gets the blogosphere, but PRWeek doesn’t. Check out his own blog post on his keynote. He also links to David Weinberger’s live blogging of the keynote (I love live conference blogging … it’s fun, it’s exciting, and it helps get the great messages and quotable quotes out there as soon as the speaker has said them), which I have yet to pour over … but I am looking forward to reading asap.

In Richard Edelman’s post and the snippets I read in the PRWeek article (because Dave forwarded it to Rick), it’s clear the PR folks have to change tactics to adapt to the new communications and media realities. I’m not saying that bloggers are all powerful, what I’m saying is that bloggers can get a message out fast. That message can be good or bad. Things like PRWeek (and other publications) blocking off content behind the walled garden of subscribers only, yeah that doesn’t fly. It especially doesn’t fly when the article blocked is about a luminary of PR talking about how PR professionals have to adapt to the new blogosphere reality. Sheesh. I hope they open this article up to the world, because Edelman really says great stuff.

Let’s take how he described, and apologized for, Robert Scoble’s recent experience with PR people:

Microsoft employee and blogger Robert Scoble, who was scheduled to interview Edelman for the keynote, has experienced a family emergency, which he wrote about on his blog. Despite broadcasting his tragedy, he noted in a follow-up post that he was still receiving PR pitches since he wrote about his family’s situation.

Scoble could not attend, but, sent a question asking why PR people, who presumably value his opinion enough to have read his blog, were still sending him product pitches while he was facing tragedy.

“On behalf the PR field, I apologize to Robert for the misbehavior and tell you that there is a better way,” Edelman said.

[snip]

“A lot of PR people regard blogs as another form of the mainstream media to be pitched,” Edelman said. “Our methodology has traditionally been to throw out 1,000 flowers and one might bloom. That’s not the way to interact with the blogosphere.”

That’s good, that’s smart. Robert, though, really hits the nail on the head:

But, in today’s world of search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Technorati, Feedster, and others, it just isn’t good to be clued out. —Scoble

Edelman also “gets” how blogger love to get sneak peaks at stuff … oh do we love it.

“Our great triumphs are persuading clients to show beta versions of products to bloggers months in advance of actual product launch,” Edelman said. “By the time we started talking to the MSM [mainstream media], we had some momentum.”

That’s totally it. I’ve been apart of a few beta tests recently (Ether for example) where after the beta period (and bloggers are among the testers), we were asked for our feedback and if we wished to be included in press materials. Smart, very smart. Hey, we’re interested in your opinion and would you like to be included in stuff to get you some attention. Hmm, umm, yes!

Richard Edelman knows that the PR world is changing. PR folks can’t just spin and massage the message any more. They have to deal with citizen journalists, bloggers, and just plain everyone. It’s going to take a while before blogger stop getting e-mail pitches out of the blue, but here’s to hoping.

Tags: Richard Edelman, Syndicate Conference, Robert Scoble, PR

A lot of small business owners are interested in blogging, but they afraid of starting a blog for fear of not knowing what to write about.

Often, when we’re consulting with a client on their blog we create a “recommended reading list.” It’s usually a combination of blogs from the client’s industry, similar industries, and a “usual suspects” list of blogs on blogging, like Business Blog Consulting (or my own blog, dammit!)

Well, I think I’ll be adding Pajama Market to my usual suspects. It’s a combination of “Small Business Blogs of the Day” and interviews with those small business bloggers. And yes, the “Web site of the Day” concept is sooo 1997, but for small business owners interested in blogging, this is a valuable resource.

Recent featured blogs include Green Cine Daily, featuring movie reviews from a DVD rental company, Wool Winders, a knitting blog from a knitting store, and The Tap Room, a blog from a London pub. How’s that for variety?

If I have one complaint (and apparently I do) it’s the dearth of categories. Currently there are only four: Blogging Info, Personal, Small Business Blog Interview and Small Business Blog of the Day. It would be great if there were some categories that covered the type of businesses, such as “Retail”, “Service Industry”, and so on. As small businesses fall of the home page they tend to disappear.

Still, if you’re a small business owner and you think there’s nothing for you to blog about, be sure to check out Pajama Market first.

If you are already blogging your small business, well maybe you should submit your blog for consideration!

eMarketer reports on a study by Harris Interactive, and sponsored by Makovsky + Company called the “2006 State of Corporate Blogging”.

“The study found that only a small minority of top executives are convinced that corporate blogging is growing in credibility either as a communications medium, brand-building technique or a sales or lead generation tool.”

Only 20% of the executives surveyed report monitoring blogs for mentions of their own company and only 30% reported understanding what an “internet blog” is. This spells a significant opportunity to educate corporate America on the pros and cons as well as the threats and opportunities of blogging for business.

The list of benefits for business blogging is pretty long, but the results of this study show that business blog consultants need to do a much better job of not only evangelizing blogging for corporate America, but providing case studies and practical examples that demonstrate these benefits. Nothing gets a CEO more interested than bottom line numbers.
Details at eMarketer.

An interesting video from the Museum of Media History forecasting a potential fate for the Fourth Estate, culminating in the New York Times going offline in the year 2014. I’m all for citizen journalism, Google, Amazon, affiliate revenue sharing, social networking and Moore’s Law; but mix them all together and it could turn out rather icky.

I think they got it wrong about Googlezon though. I think the merged company will be named Amazoogle.

My two-part article for Marketing Profs titled Ten Tips to Help Your Blog Soar in the Search Engines, was published a couple weeks ago. If you are a premium subscriber, you may have already read it; if not, here’s a brief overview of the secrets to SEO success contained within…

1. Customize your title tags with keywords
2. Rewrite your URLs for link gain
3. Tag clouds and tag pages are your twin secret weapons
4. Link to related posts
5. Create a Top 10 Posts list, regardless of posting age, and offer links to these
6. Lose “permalink” and “click here” from your linking vocabulary and instead link with keyword-rich anchor text
7. Create sticky posts to gain keyword prominence on category or tag pages
8. Use heading tags to reinforce your keyword theme
9. Guide the search engines to your key points with bold, strong or emphasis tags within the body of the post
10. Multiple author blogs need author pages and the links to their sites need to be cleverly done to maximize SEO benefit to them

The complete article is around 3000 words and goes into much more detail, including suggested WordPress plugins and specific PHP code to insert into your blog. Sign up to MarketingProfs to read the full article, or access most of the information on my blog optimization tag page.

Have you heard about that great conference you wish you could have been a part of but found that it was sold out or had already passed?  Eric Weaver of BrandDialogue.com was that person.  He decided to make a full list of the Web 2.0 or Marketing 2.0 conferences taking place in 2006.  Eric notes:

NOTE: These are conferences from May 15 to December 31, and related specifically to Web 2.0 and new marketing concepts. A lot of good ones have already come and gone. Got any corrections, clue-ins to existing conference lists, or notices of additional events that are Web 2.0-related? Drop me a line at eric @ this URL.

Go and check out the list and maybe we’ll see you at that next event!

Tags: blogging conferences, web 2.0, marketing 2.0

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Two of the best sessions at this week’s Mesh Conference in Toronto were the ones related to Web 2.0 and VC money. Don’t know which inspired me more, Paul Kedrosky’s or Rick Segal’s. Mark Evans of the National Post condensed his thoughts in his article published today (which he lobbied to get pulled out from behind the “walled garden” of subscription only). Here are some excerpts from his article:

There is, however, some evidence the environment is changing. For one, Web 2.0 entrepreneurs don’t need large amounts of money because they can use free open-source software, and low-cost hardware and network bandwidth to develop and distribute a new Web-based service.

This means entrepreneurs can take an idea and create a business without worrying about whether they can get financed. This is a healthier approach because the start-ups that are successful in attracting customers and generating revenue have better leverage when they decide to pursue venture capital to jump-start growth.

At the same time, some VCs have started to realize they need to behave differently if they want to play in the Web 2.0 world. They need to be more aggressive, they need to take more risk and they need to accept the reality that financial success could come from a variety of small investments rather than a few large opportunities.

[snip]

It appears VCs could have an easier time discovering new Web 2.0 start-ups if the enthusiasm and energy of the entrepreneurs who gathered at the mesh conference is any indication. Some of the companies to watch are DabbleDB, iUpload.com, Freshbooks.com, B5Media, Bubbleshare.com, EndlessEurope.com and Octopz.com.

This is an new and exciting time for Canadian Tech. More sharp people are getting their ideas out and some forward-thinking VCs are getting in on the game.

Tags: Canadian tech, VC funding, Paul Kedrosky, Rick Segal

Owning your own brand new car is tough for some people.  It’s even tougher if you want to own a luxury vehicle.  Then they introduced leasing cars as an option.  The vehicles became more affordable through leasing, but of course in the end, you had to turn the vehicle back into the dealer and all of the money paid monthly went with it. 

Now we have blog leasing.  The people at the Blog Spot Network are leasing blogs to businesses for $499.00 per year.  They go on to say: 

Leasing a Blog Spot Business Blog couldn’t be easier or more affordable. Our interest is more in finding great businesses or expert authors for the blogs. Further, we have great interest in utilizing the power of the built out network in whole, for the benefit of all.

You can lease any of the blog spot business industry blogs listed below for one full year for only $499.00 and not a penny more. You don’t have to know any tech stuff, we build out the blog for you, host the blog, provide tech service, and more.

I suppose it had to happen in order to allow businesses into the game.  I’m not sure whether this is a viable business plan for the people at Blog Spot Network, but it would be interesting to see the numbers behind their traffic for these "properties".

Tags: blog leasing; Blog Spot Network

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JupiterResearch has published a new report, “RSS Comes of Age” that finds 63 percent of large companies planning to syndicate content via RSS by the end of this year. This growth is surprising in contrast to the low “perceived” adoption rate of RSS.

“The primary challenge to greater adoption is a lack of experience with RSS and resources to deploy it,” said David Schatsky, President of JupiterKagan. “However, recent offerings from e-mail service providers (ESP) and RSS service providers are lowering the barrier for feed management, deployment and measurement.”

Reading this summary reminds me of the research report offered by Yahoo and Ipsos Insight (pdf):

“27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start pages (e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN) without knowing that RSS is the enabling technology.”

So perhaps this explains the use of “percieved” in reference to adoption rates? Many users of RSS don’t realize they are. Regardless, RSS is a fantastic tool for communication and marketing and is one of the most distinguishing features of a blog.

Mack Collier at the Viral Garden has taken the Alexa data and come up with a top 25 marketing blogs list. Some you’ve heard of, some, I suspect, you have not. I find these types of lists to be a good way to find some really good new (to me at least) blogs.

Today, for the first time in over a year, there’s a new post on Bloglet’s home page.

Bloglet began as a hobby of mine to help manage the random blogs I’d read on a daily basis. This was back when words like “blog” and “rss” had yet to enter most people’s vocabulary.

Now “blogs” are being mentioned on the Daily Show, but Bloglet still remains a hobby. It’s obvious that I don’t have the time to turn this hobby into something that offers a fair level of service to users.

Bloglet, for those of you who don’t know, was an early free service that allowed visitors to subscribe to email versions of your post. The service was always a bit spotty, and I remember on several occasions having to log into Bloglet and resetting my account after realizing that it had been a week since I received my last update.

If you’re still using Bloglet, Feedblitz is offering a Bloglet-to-Feedblitz converter of all of your subscribers, which is now promoted on the Bloglet home page.

Other options include Feedburner and AWeber.

Any business still relying on Bloglet needs to convert their subscribers sooner rather than later, as Bloglet says they may be phasing out the site entirely over the next few weeks.

Yes, it’s true, you can actually spell the word “blog” with your hands. Here’s the photo to prove it.

Careful, using this ‘gang symbol’ in the wrong neighborhood could get you shot!

BtoB Magazine and Marqui are hosting a webcast May 18th on blogging for business - practical recommendations and strategic advice. The online event promises to inform you on:

• how blogging can impact your business - from a strategic perspective
• understand the spectrum of blogging activities you can engage in - based on your profile
• practical advice tailored to your company’s readiness and needs

Speakers include Shel Israel (co-author, with Robert Scoble, of the book Naked Conversations); PR professional Lynann Bradbury, Waggener Edstrom’s Sr. Vice President; and Marqui’s business blogging expert Michael O’Connor Clarke.

You can register here.

Alright, this is a pretty interesting idea, even if it’s not (on the surface, at least) about blogging: Microsoft is endeavoring to increase the installed base of its MSN Search Toolbar by sponsoring a detective game called “The Kitty Caper”.

I was invited to participate from someone I don’t know (oddly enough, and they sent me the email from a Google Gmail address, of all places) but here’s how the invitation to join the case begins:

“Do you have the detective skills of a bloodhound and the cunning of a fox?

“Your friend, Brandon, thinks you’ll love solving the mystery of ‘The Kitty Caper’.

“Solve ‘The Kitty Caper’!

“Below is your first clue: a memo from the Police Commissioner in charge of the case. If you’re stuck, why not ask a friend for help?

“Unpuzzle the puzzle with the new MSN Search Toolbar

“You’ll need the new MSN Search Toolbar to play the game. So, if you haven’t done so already, make sure you download it now. A nifty detective tool, the MSN Search Toolbar lets you search not just the web but emails and documents, in fact all your PC files - all from the one place. You’ll be clueless without it! So to crack the case, download it now.”

Then you visit the site and learn that…

“On a stormy night in the town of Bottomley, a sinister plot to separate a forgetful dowager from her furry companion unfolds… Using your wit, intellect and trusty MSN Search Toolbar, explore the various environments in the game, pick up clues, challenge alibis and discover who stole my lady’s moggy? Was it the long-suffering Butler whodunit? Perhaps it was the avaricious son? Is the daughter everything she’s cracked up to be? And, just what has a very large carrot got to do with it all?”

Very cool idea. Anyone actually pursuing the “case”?

You can learn more about it at The Kitty Caper Game.

It was only a matter of time. Just as employers have clauses in their HR documentation about drug and alcohol use, it appears that blogs may soon join the ranks of contraband in the halls of some corporations.

According to an article in ABC NewsOnline, Australia, the authors of a new book “Uses of Blogs” have a detailed chapter on blogging and the law which highlight the wishes of some employers to ban blogging in the workplace. This is common sense -don’t blog on personal time. However, the lines could, and will, quickly blur as to how far this extends into the personal lives of employees.

“Employers are now considering including specific blogging provisions in employment contracts,” the authors write in Uses of Blogs, a book to be published later this year.

While I’m not an attorney, I’m projecting that the real enforceability of a no-blogging clause in an employment will be vetted in court after someone’s fired for a breach of contract.

Would anyone say, “sorry, I have to decline your offer as working for your company would keep me from blogging.” We’ll see…

RSS ad specialist Pheedo together with SilverPop, iUpload and PRWeb, are hosting a dinner roundtable on the topic of RSS advertising. Details here. This follows on a similar event they hosted earlier this month in San Francisco.

The Web Marketing Association’s call for entries in the 2006 WebAwards is underway and there is a new category this year for blogs. WebAwards is made up of volunteer Internet marketing, online advertising, PR, and web site design professionals and has been evaluating web sites since 1997. The deadline for entries is May 31 and winners will be announced September 20th, 2006.

To see the kinds of prominent agencies and corporations that are involved, take a look at the list of WebAward winners from 2005.

If you and/or your clients have a great blog, visit the WebAward.org site and enter. It could be a great online and offline promotion opportunity.

Are you curious about RSS industry benchmark metrics and RSS marketing best practices? Would you like to compare your RSS marketing results with those of your peers? Then you will be interested in the 2006 RSS Marketing Survey being conducted by MarketingStudies.net.

From the survey sponsor:

“Participate in the 2006 RSS Marketing Survey, conducted by MarketingStudies.net and aiming to research the RSS marketing landscape, to receive a free copy of the full 2006 RSS Marketing Survey Report, bringing you top RSS marketing best practices and metrics to compare your RSS marketing practices with those of your peers, to improve your RSS marketing results.”

Respondents will get a copy of the overview report including metrics and best practices.

MarketingStudies.net is run by RSS Marketing guru, Rok Hrastnik, who is the author of “Unleashing the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS“. He also publishes a free report, “The Business Case for RSS“.

Rok and I did an interview in March 2005 on using integrated online PR, blogs and RSS for improved results in search engines. After re-listening to that interview, it’s amazing how much can change in a year. At the time, using Technorati tags and social bookmarks was pretty new. Now they are pretty standard fare from the smorgasboard of tactics for blog link building.

If you’re attending the ACCM conference next week in Chicago, you can see Rok Hrastnik in action duing a a session called, “RSS What marketers need to know“. At the same conference, I’ll be speaking on the “15 Sizzling Hot Search Ideas for Merchants” session.

For anyone involved with using RSS for marketing, then be sure to take the 2006 RSS Marketing Survey. There’s an opportunity to share your case study which may be included in Rok’s next book and your experience with RSS may help further this channel for marketing and communication.

The article Defending yourself against the blogs from Multichannel Merchant (May issue) offers some good advice to merchants on how to more effectively manage their brand in the blogosphere.

The article opens with a story of how Greenpeace successfully pressured Gorton’s parent company Nissui to pull out of the whaling business by inciting a blogstorm against Gorton’s. I feel so ‘out of it’ — reading the article was the first I’d heard of this and Gorton’s, & Gorton’s Fresh Seafood are clients of mine! (well, not mine personally, but of my web dev / SEO agency Netconcepts)

Also included in the article are some comments (from yours truly!) on how to enter the blogosphere effectively:

1. Create a “safe haven” for employees to experiment with blogging. Set up a private blog on your intranet or extranet, or start a blog that’s password-protected. Then offer access to that test to a selected audience. Your inexperienced bloggers will feel more comfortable knowing that all your customers and competitors are not watching their every move.
2. Decide on a permanent home for your blog. The Web address you choose should be one that you will be happy with for years to come. Remember that it will become difficult to switch blog services if you allow the service’s name to be part of your URL. Ehobbies.blogs.com, backcountryblog.blogspot.com, and sethgodin.typepad.com are all examples of blogs that are forever wedded to their blog platform, for better or for worse. If they switch platforms, all the links they’ve earned will be unavailable to their new blog. Links are the lifeblood of your search engine visibility, so the significance of this cannot be overstated.
3. Select a scalable, flexible, and user-friendly blog platform. There are so many solutions to choose from! Some are hosted services, such as TypePad, Blogger, and WordPress.com. Some are software packages that you install on your Web server, such as WordPress, Drupal, or Movable Type. You can pore over comparison charts (such as the one at www.ojr.org/ojr/images/blog_software_comparison.cfm), though I suggest you simply go with WordPress (the software package, not to be confused with the hosted service at WordPress.com). WordPress is free, so the price is right. It’s highly configurable, since it’s open source, and it has a plethora of free, useful plug-ins written for it.
4. Decide on a posting schedule. Try to post at least three times a week. Allow several hours per week for this. I typically spend two to three hours a week blogging. Don’t hire a ghostwriter for your blog, or you’ll get slammed by bloggers for lack of transparency (an unwritten rule in the blogosphere). As far as retaining readers, recency is more important than frequency. A couple weeks of inactivity makes the reader feel like nobody’s home. Conversely, having the latest post be only a day old makes the blog appear “fresh.”
5. Build relationships with respected bloggers. Not only will they be more likely to link to you, but they will also offer advice and bolster your street cred. Posting thoughtful comments on their blogs is only the first step. Attend blogger conferences such as BlogOn and Blog Business Summit and meet bloggers in person. Keep the dialogue going through e-mail and through phone or Skype conversations. Become an evangelist, and you will really get them on your side.

You may also want to check out on my own blog the unabridged version of my ecommerce blog tips that I had sent to the Multichannel Merchant journalist. It further expounds on the five tips.