It’s easy to start a blog. Not so easy to be successful. But what is success? Especially for a business blog?   Some of the measurable outcomes from business blogging include:

• Media attention
• Speaking requests
• Customer loyalty
• Inbound links to the blog
• Search engine ranking for the corporate site
• Corporate website traffic
• Leads/sales initiated
• Volume of blog traffic
• Technorati and other credible rankings
• Search engine ranking for the blog
• Increased company visibility within the industry
• Increased media coverage
• Improved customer loyalty
• Increased sales leads/revenue/new customers

And there are more depending on the purpose of the blog, whether it’s to create thought leadership, announce new products, offer SEO friendly content for a troublesome CMS or ecommerce platform, generate leads, support media relations initiatives or simply serve as a sounding board for ideas.  The true measure of success for a business blog is entirely predicated on its purpose.

Once defined, implemented and measurements are put in place, any business can create a successful blog. It’s simply a matter of time, resources and a willingness to try until “what works” reveals itself.   Here’s a more detailed exploration of this idea as well as a long list of considerations that companies need to be aware of when starting a company blog. If you’re into checklists, then be sure to read Stephan’s “Essential Checklist for Starting a Blog“.

Sometimes, writing blog entries via a web form just doesn’t work. That’s why I’m looking forward to Mariner Software’s new blogging client called WinJournal. The WinJournal name might be familiar since Mariner Software also created MacJournal.

Currently in beta testing mode, WinJournal offers journaling, blogging and podcasting in one application. The blogging capabilities work with all popular Windows blogging software including: MovableType, TypePad, Wordpress, Live Journal, Blogger and Windows Spaces. WinJournal also allows you to publish blog entries to a web server via FTP so it can be used as a web site editor as well. WinJournal can also be used to write entries stored locally.

Other options include: wiki style links, spell check, auto save, security/encryption, WYSIWYG text editor, calendar, multiple journals, labels, full screen mode and tabs. There is also a skins manager to change the look an feel of the WinJournal software. This is a good thing since the default skin under XP isn’t so good.

Other popular desktop blogging software includes: Qumana, Etco, MarsEdit, w.bloggar, BlogJet, Rocket Post 2 and Zoundry. Thomas has a short review on desktop and web based browsers at OMB.

Technorati launched a blog authority widget last month but now that Authority score is showing up next to blog search results and on a new and improved blog profile page. I’ve been paying a lot more attention to Technorati since Online Marketing Blog the top 100 Favorites list and made an appearance on the top 100 Popular blogs list recently.

Basically, the Authority score is based on the number of blogs linking to your blog within a certain period of time. I had someone ask me if they should start promoting their blog differently in order to up their “Authority” score. My recommendation is, don’t do anything that isn’t going to further the main goals of the blog. Getting on a list that can send you traffic and build credibility is nice, but if those visitors don’t respond well to your content, they’re just drive by traffic.

Can blogs be optimized for search marketing? Absolutely! Blogs are basically content management systems with additional functionality such as comments, trackbacks and RSS. In many ways, blogs are no different than web sites.

If a document can be optimized and that document gets indexed, categorized and ranked by any kind of search engine, it’s an opportunity for search marketing. As such, marketers should be aware of how document optimization within various channels can be used within the overall online marketing mix. Blogs are one of many platforms that benefit from optimization.

At a minimum, using blog software to manage certain kinds of content on a web site such as an online media room, to archive newsletters, post frequently asked questions and to provide product updates can make a site that is otherwise very search engine un-friendly, become a viable source of great rankings. This applies to both regular search engines as well as blog search engines. These are applications for a blog besides the common use as a platform to increase credibility and communicate a more personalized voice for a company.

Blogs are no silver bullet though and require working hard and smart - especially smart. However the payoff can be significant. To prove the point that blogs are effective tools for improving search engine visibility, I can offer that my own blog (Online Marketing Blog) receives the majority of it’s traffic from search engines.

Here are a few Google ranking examples of the top referring search phrases in the past month for Online Marketing Blog:

• “marketing blog“
• “online marketing“
• “rss button”
• “social bookmarks“

Even more niche phrases bring in quality search traffic such as:

• “blog optimization“
• “press release optimization”
• “social media optimization”

which are all services our search marketing agency provides. Of course the rules can change slightly over time, but here are a set of benefits I often find myself explaining to people wondering about the search engine optimization benefits of having a blog.

1. Structured content - Blog software with category features allows the aggregation of content according to themes. This makes it easier to algorithmically categorize content. If you can make it easier for search engines to understand your content, you have a much better chance of ranking well on those topics.
2. Crawlable URLs - Most blog software offers uncomplicated URL structure, making it fairly easy for search engine spiders to find and crawl blog content.
3. Internal links - Blogs that post product or service related information can deep link anchor text to product information or purchase pages deep within the web site. This is very beneficial for ranking on long tail phrases.
4. Inbound link magnet - One of the biggest benefits, blogs link freely to each other - much more than web sites do. Blogs are also a significant source of many posts to social news and social media web sites. Text, audio and video are all easily supported for syndication by blogs. The more media available, the more likely it will attract incoming links. Additionally, there are many widgets and plugins that make it easy to share blog content, thus encouraging links and traffic.
5. RSS - Links to RSS feed urls that use the blog domain name will assist in building link popularity and when RSS content is syndicated or cited by other blogs, any embedded links will also assist in sending traffic.
6. Fresh content - Both readers and search engines reward fresh content with repeat visits. From a search engine perspective, that means your site can be crawled more frequently, allowing your new content to become searchable more quickly. Fresh content is also indicative of a more authoritative web site.
7. Active community - Comments and trackback features in blog software encourage interaction. An active blog community creates the kinds of citations or signals from other sites (annotated and contextually relevant links) that search engines tend to reward in the rankings. Loyal blog readers can boost a site’s visibility through advocacy on other blogs, in forums offline at conferences as well as on their own blogs and within the comments of your blog.
8. Non-Search traffic - I think the greatest benefit of having an active blog has little to do with improving your search engine rankings though. The best thing about blogs is that they allow you to generate substantial amounts of traffic via RSS and links that have NOTHING to do with search engines. My recommendation to marketers in 2007 is to pursue traffic alternatives to search engines as aggresively as their budgets and marketing programs will allow. The result will be incremental increases in site traffic with search engine referred traffic an added bonus, if not correspondingly enhanced.
9. Blog & RSS Directories - With a blog and corresponding RSS feed(s), your site can now benefit from visibility within blog and RSS search engines. Web sites without feeds (your competition maybe?) are not included in these kinds of directories and search engines.

Felllow BBC’er Stephan Spencer has also written extensively about optimizing blogs and using blogs as SEO tools.

So there you go. A basic list of practical reasons a blog can be beneficial as a site optimization tool and for improved web site traffic along with practical examples. What SEO benefits have you found from having and promoted a blog?

During the Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago recently, the managing editor of WebProNews Mike McDonald did a video interview with BBC bloggers Stephan Spencer and myself about the “participatory web”.

Public relations agencies are scrambling and sometimes floundering at their efforts to use social media to further client branding and marketing goals. Mike asks some great questions ranging from “how do you make money with the participatory web?”, “What things should you do and what do you need to watch out for?” and thoughts on things like pay per post.

Stephan does a much better job at pronouncing “participatory” than I do, He also provides some great examples on how to be transparent as well as the consequences for not doing so.

Being good BBC bloggers, both Stephan and I mention Business Blog Consulting, in unison no less! Be sure to give it a view.

On my own blog, I’ve written several times lately on how blogs can be effective tools for viral marketing campaigns. One can look no further than the One Red Paperclip promotion for an example of how these kinds of viral campaigns using blogs can work.

A recent viral campaign using a blog that is under way now is My Super Proposal. This is about a guy, “JP” that is trying to catch the attention of a major advertiser to foot the bill for a commercial where he’ll propose to his girlfriend during the Super Bowl. Doritos and the NFL.com are currently running such contests. He’s staying somewhat anonymous so as not to tip off his girlfriend.

A blogger and search marketing friend of mine, Joe Morin has connected with JP to help him promote the site and get media coverage. More about how that all started here.

The blog started out asking for donations big and small in order to raise $2+ million for a Super Bowl commercial, but those ads are now all sold out. He did manage to raise $74k though, which if not spent on a commercial, will be donated to a children’s hospital.

This Super Bowl Proposal blog has been covered by the likes of AdRants & AdJab already and there’s even an interview with “JP” over at the Nashville City Paper. NPR and USA Today should be running stories soon along with some buzz within the blog and search marketing communities such as this post on the Search Engine Watch blog.

Should JP pull this off, or even get close, it promises to be one of the more creative ways to use a blog for viral marketing and hopefully make a young lady very happy.

At the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York earlier this year, I had a chance to start doing an interview with super blogger, past TechTV host and organizer of the Gnomedex conference, Chris Pirillo. It was to be a video interview with my new Sony Cybershot, but I didn’t have very much memory left and the interview was cut short. I’ve since corrected the problem with a 4gb and another 2gb memory stick for almost 2 1/2 hours of decent quality video on two postage stamp sized chips.

Six months later I finally reconnected with Chris (which is amazing since we’re on IM) and was able to ask him a variety of questions ranging from social media to RSS. Here’s a snippet:

“In this interview, Chris talks about his TagJag project, web traffic from social media, favorite conferences, plans for Lockergnome 2.0, his upcoming wedding with fiancee Ponzi and fun quotes like: “Google is the internet”, “Email is dead” and “Let’s not blog about blogging about blogging about blogs anymore, okay?”.”

I can appreciate the enthusiasm for RSS, but I don’t think email is dead by a longshot. RSS to email at least. In fact, during dinner last night with “Mr. RSS” himself, Rok Hrastnik and I talked about RSS being too easy to use and that it can get to a point of information overload. The closest solution is the “river of news” concept, but how many good solutions are there for that?

If you would like all the Q/A with Chris Pirillo, here is the full interview.

Speaking of RSS, if you are at the DMA 06 conference this week, be sure to check out the blogs, RSS and podcasting session from 4:30-5:30, room 135 in the Moscone North building with Stephan Spencer, Amanda Watlington and myself.

Also, there is the RSS Roundtable meeting on Tuesday night sponsored by Pheedo, PRWeb, SimpleFeed and Silverpop downtown San Francisco which should be a good discussion.

A bit of ripe linkbait has been launched by Text Link Ads in the form of a “Blog Juice Calculator“. The tool takes into account 4 metrics when calculating a blog’s popularity: RSS subscribers (Bloglines only), Alexa traffic ranking, Technorati rank, and incoming links

Here’s how the BBC group fared:

http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com/ 6.3
http://www.bourland.com/ 1.3
http://www.flyteblog.com/ 3.8
http://radiantmarketinggroup.com/ 0.9
http://falkow.blogsite.com/ 2.4
http://www.businessblogconsulting.com 6.1
http://www.pheedo.info/ 3.1
http://hyku.com/ 2.1
http://blog.larixconsulting.com/blog 2.8
http://www.toprankblog.com 7.1
http://www.stephanspencer.com/ 5.8
http://www.intuitive.com/blog/ 6.6
http://www.onebyonemedia.com/ 2.4
http://www.danavan.net/weblog/ 4.3
http://www.thinkinghomebusiness.com/blog 3.1
http://www.debbieweil.com/ 3.2
http://wordbiz.com/.05
http://blogwrite.blogs.com/ 1.6
http://ensight.org/ 4.1

Is a tool like this useful? Even though mine did well, I’m not sure yet. I was expecting higher scores for BBC contributors all around.  TLA uses this kind of data to determine how much a link is worth on a web site or blog, so I guess in some ways it might be. I’m just not 100% convinved yet.

Blogs are increasingly competitive sources of information for users’ time online compared to mainstream media and many marketers and public relations practitioners persist at stumbling about the blogosphere like bulls in a china shop.

Since my own blog gets about 5-10 pitches per week on average, I think I have a pretty good idea of the variety of ways blogs in general are getting pitched these days. The verdict? Not good.

The emergence of such blogs as The Bad Pitch Blog which is updated a lot more frequently and far more popular than The Good Pitch Blog goes to show that there’s simply not enough attention paid to what constitutes a good pitch. And we all know what Rick thinks about a crappy pitch.

On the topic of blog relations, you hear a lot about being careful of pitching bloggers and that you shouldn’t pitch blogs the same way as you would a print journalist. That’s true for the most part, but there are also many similarities.

To help pros and flacks alike, here are a few of my own tips on pitching blogs which may help PR practitioners resonate more with the blogging community.

1. Be relevant. It seems so simple and obvious, yet it is the biggest mistake made when pitching bloggers. Look at the categories of the blog and look at previous blog posts. Is your pitch REALLY relevant for the blog? With a lot of the pitches we get, you can tell there’s been no attempt to look any further than the title of the blog. For example, on my own blog I get pitches about things like online advertising or creative interactive advertising campaigns ala Adrants and a quick look at the categories or previous blog posts reveals that the blog clearly does not cover advertising.
2. Personalize. Getting an email pitch with no personal reference at all, or just a press release and no message is a sure trip to the trash folder. Even more annoying is when there is an attempt to personalize, but it’s copy/paste and the fonts are completely different between the template text being used and the “personalized” content, which often ends up not being very accurate anyway. Take the time to research the blog, make comments and get involved. Be honest about who you are in the comments and provide thoughtful insight that is of value and relevant to the blog post.
3. Make it easy. Time and time again, I get pitches with one sentence and then the full press release copied into the email or worse, attached as a MS Word doc. This can be very annoying and shows there has been very little effort made. Most bloggers don’t write 600 word stories in response to a press release. They are far more prone to link to a press release. So provide a summary of the release in the email, and a link to the full version of the press release hosted elsewhere. Some bloggers might just copy and paste your summary, add some commentary and a link to the full release you’ve provided. Remember, popular bloggers are very busy. Make it easy for them to blog your story.
4. Schwag is good. I’ll admit it. I don’t mind getting books sent to me to review. In almost all cases I will at least mention the book in a post if it’s relevant to the topics we cover. I know one thing is for sure, if a search engine or company sent us schwag, we would absolutely post a photo of it along with some honest commentary. Does it suck or is it cool? People want to know!
5. Be persistent. Don’t be offended or give up if a blogger doesn’t take your story the first time. Be courteous and smart about repeat attempts though. Watch to see if they really do pick up on your story before sending another pitch. Of course, this is not a problem if you actually read their blog.

Here are a number of additional resources on blogger relations and pitching bloggers:

• Pitching Blogs - PRSA
• Blogs, Public Relations and PR Practices - Podcast with Andy Wibbels and Rick Bruner
• How to chat up writers - WebProNews
• How to get bloggers to write about your product - Dave Taylor
• Blogs and Public Relations - Online Marketing Blog
• Press Release Optimization and Blogger Relations - SES San Jose (includes Sally Falkow)
• 7 Tips on Pitching Bloggers - Influential Interactive Marketing
• Tips for PR Workers from the Journalists that Hate Them - Valleywag
• What Journalists Hate in PR People - India PR Blog
• Blogger Relations, Two Tips - Media Guerilla
• Pitch.Me Del.icio.usly - Steve Rubel
• Barging into the Blogger’s Circle - Washington Post
• What Reporters Hate About PR People - David Maister
• Building a Bridge Between PR and the Blogosphere - Blog Forward
• Finding Bloggers in Your Market - Blog Forward
• Blogger Relations for Click.TV - Shel Holtz
• How to suck up to a blogger - Guy Kawasaki
• Top ten things you can do to get blogged - TechCrunch
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective Blog PR - FusionBrand
• Pitching bloggers - Andy Lark
• Pitching Blogs - NewPR Wiki

In case you’ll be attending the DMA06 conference in San Francisco later this month, be sure to check out the session on Blogs, RSS and Podcasting with Dr. Amanda Watlington, BBC co-contributor Stephan Spencer and myself where I will be presenting on using blogs for public relations.

A new blog/RSS advertising option has launched this week from the folks at Text Link Ads called Feedvertising, which is a service that allows you to monetize your RSS feeds with ads. Text Link Ads will sell the ads for you, or as is the case with my blog, I combine links to my an affiliate program with Marketing Sherpa along with a few ads sold by Text Link Ads.

Not only is Feedvertising a potential source of revenue for blogs, but it’s also a clever way to cross promote other areas of your blog, company web site or other web sites that you publish.

Here is a tutorial on Feedvertising over at Tubetorial that explains how it works or you can check out the Feedvertising web site.

Co-founder of Text Link ads Andy Hagans took a few minutes to answer a few questions about Feedvertising for me. Basically Andy says Feedvertising is a way to give RSS feed publishers a lot more control over ads and the market is still very new.

What prompted you to develop this tool?

Advertising via RSS is a small but emerging market. We took a look at existing products and didn’t see anything that was very impressive, from a blogger or advertiser standpoint: pricing was often confusing and inefficient; the ads were often graphical or JavaScript-based, resulting in banner-blindness; and finally, most systems left bloggers without any control over what ads ended up in their feed.

We developed Feedvertising with the idea that bloggers should be able to monetize their RSS feeds while maintaining complete control; i.e., they can manually add their own ads or promotions, or sell space through the TLA system, or do a combination of both.

What kind of earning potential is there for advertisers and what’s the business model for Text Link Ads with this tool?

The business model for TLA is to help monetize those feeds where the blogger chooses to do so through the TLA system. We think the earning potential is great, as reaching the influencers who use RSS is a very important marketing objective for companies who are trying to gain mindshare among early adopters or bloggers. Right now we are testing the price points, so the exact numbers will probably change over time.

What do you think of the RSS advertising market? What are some innovative uses of RSS where advertising might be most productive? ie, advertising on a blog feed is one thing, advertising on a new product RSS feed is another.

Again, this market is pretty immature, but so are all marketing channels in the beginning. Our goal is to stay innovative as this channel evolves and expands. As long as we stay commited to delivering value to both bloggers and advertisers, the feature set should move naturally with that.

What kinds of blogs are best suited for this kind of advertising? What kind of traffic should a blog/RSS feed be getting in terms of hits or subscribers before it makes sense to advertise?

Without getting into numbers, it really comes down to advertiser demand. If your blog has a smaller number of RSS subscribers, but those subscribers are mostly business executives (or any other valuable audience segment), there is still going to be demand from the advertising side.

That said, we think Feedvertising is a great product for ANY blog, even a new one or one with small readership; at the very least, you can use Feedvertising to cross-promote your own feature pages, or other sites.

There are other great reviews of Feedvertising at TechCrunch and Problogger.

Onalytica has published the results of their analysis on the most influential authorities on “blog marketing”. The top 20 influential sites/blogs include:

• New York Times
• Josh Hallett - hyku
• Seth Godin
• Steve Rubel - Micropersuasion
• Businessweek
• ClickZ
• Wired
• Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman - Next Level Biz Tips
• WebProNews
• Danny Sullivan - Search Engine Watch
• Fast Company
• Lee Odden - Top Rank Results
• Marketing Sherpa
• Darren Rowse - Problogger
• AllBusiness.com
• Hugh Mac Leod - Gaping Void
• Jeff Jarvis - Buzz Machine
• Ben McConnel and Jackie Huba - Church of the Customer
• Mitch Joel - Twist Image
• Steve Hall - Adrants

Business Blog Consulting alumni Steve Rubel was listed and I’m happy to report current contributor Josh Hallett of hyku and my own company TopRank were listed as well.

The analysis focuses on influence and popularity showing that the most popular authorities are not necessarily the most influential. Popularity was measured by the number of referrers and influence was measure by the authority of the referrers.

Limiting the measure of popularity to link referrers seems a bit simplistic. Traffic would appear to be a logical factor as well.

In the previous analysis on the most influential authorities on “business blogs” (full report pdf), Business Blog Consulting was listed as the fourth most influential sandwiched between BusinessWeek and CNN.

FeedBlitz, the popular RSS to email service with over 50,000 active feeds has recently taken on financing and is also hiring. I took the opportunity to check up with Phil Hollows, founder of FeedBlitz to get an idea of how FeedBlitz has evolved as a blog marketing tool and what he has in store.

“As I look at the RSS to mail market today, one of the core strategic decisions I have to take is deciding what we’re not going to do, because the realm of possibilities is so large. It boils down to this. Our mission is messaging using RSS and related technologies to underpin what we deliver. And our philosophy is to make your messaging work with whatever services you want to use. So you will see us enabling greater and simpler integration with third party services, instead of adding features or services that are already successful and prevalent in the broader market. We will stay focused, in other words. We’ll also make it easy for third parties to integrate FeedBlitz into their sites and services. “

The insights offered in the interview range from how FeedBlitz got started, to how it was marketed to become the top RSS to email service, as well as some interesting ideas on how to use RSS as a marketing vehicle. Hollows also gives these three tips for blog owners that are users or considering use of RSS to email tools:

1) Why not? You’ll get 10-50% circulation boost, push content delivery, better SERP placement, gain lead information, develop metrics, all automatically.

2) Customize your emails to match your branding and messaging, and enable subscriber tracking metrics to measure your activity and effectiveness.

3) Don’t wait. It’s fundamentally free, takes only a minute or so to set up, just do it.

FeedBlitz also offers a blog/RSS search site called, FeedAdvisor which recommends feeds based on subscription patterns. Information about the new features coming up with FeedBlitz as well as the positions they are hiring for are posted on their blog.  The full interview is over at Online Marketing Blog.

The news is out on the Blogbeat.net site and the FeedBurner blog of the blogbeat acquisition by FeedBurner. On the blogbeat site a comic newspaper “They Daily Analytic” headline reads, “FeedBurner Invasion! Planet blogbeat acquired by FeedBurner Overlords”.

Blogbeat functionality will be incorporated into FeedBurner’s StandardStats service and integration will be complete during fourth quarter 2006. Current blogbeat customers will get a refund as the new service is free. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The addition of blogbeat technology should further enhance FeedBurner’s lead as a RSS resource for bloggers or will it? The reviews I’ve read about blogbeat haven’t been that great. I did a trial a while back and went back to the trusty analytics package I’ve been using for years. Integration into the FeedBurner control panel would be convenient though.

Marketing Sherpa is at it again with their third annual blog awards and this year they’ve added more categories including one for podcasting. Here are this year’s categories:

B-to-B marketing, Search marketing, Affiliate marketing, Email marketing, PR, Advertising, Marketing to a specific, consumer demographic (ie. women, kids), Blogging or podcasting as a marketing tactic, Viral, word of mouth, buzz, social marketing, Small business marketing, Non-English language blogs on marketing, General (multiple topic) marketing, Other specific niche topic related to marketing.Nominations were taken last week and this week there is voting until this Friday. Voting criteria include: Personality, Usefulness & content value, Usability & design and Would you revisit?. For some reason, and I’m not sure why, there are quite a few well known blogs that were not included.

Of course several Business Blog Consulting contributors have been nominated including:

• B.L. Ochman for best PR blog
• John Jantsch for best small business marketing blog
• Dana Vanden Heuvel for best btob marketing blog
• Toby Bloomberg for best blog on general marketing
• Wayne Hurlbert for best blog on general marketing
• Top Rank for best blog on search marketing.

You can vote for all or some of the blogs by rating them. Cast your vote today.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As blogs continue to mature as marketing tools, there are an increasing number of “blog optimization” articles and posts appearing. Stephan has written some excellent posts here at BBC on optimizing blogs that have made a world of difference for this blog. It is however, surprising how many of the other blog marketing and optimization resources neglect the importance of inbound links.

To think that researching and placing keywords in the “right places” alone with improve a blog’s traffic is only part of the story. Blogs are simply web sites with special features. Getting web sites to rank well and to engage more traffic involves a large number of variables. The same rules apply to blogs. The difference is that there are unique linking opportunities with blogs that are not common with web sites. These include:

• Trackbacks
• Social book marks
• Guest blogging
• Comments
• Tagging
• Blogroll links

There are also methods to gain links with blogs just as you would a web site:

• Backlink analysis on competing web sites or blogs
• Directories
• Article syndication
• Profiles and bios
• Non-profit contributions
• Press releases
• Testimonials
• Job listings
• Interviews
• Social book marks
• Media coverage
• Buying web sites
• Buying links
• Forums
• Viral marketing - linkbait
• And many more

Not all of these are applicable to blogs, job listings for example, but many are.

As an example, check out the #1 rankings on Google and Yahoo for Online Marketing Blog on the phrase, “marketing blog”.

Another example is Business Blog Consulting with a #1 position on Google and #4 on Yahoo for “business blogging”.

These rankings involve more than just good on-page optimization - they include attention to inbound links. So as you work on getting all of your keyword phrases in all the right places of your blog, understand that on-page optimization is only part of the job. Links can make a night and day difference for your search engine positioning as well as traffic.

For several useful blog marketing tools check out: RSS Buttons, Social Bookmark Tool, Blog Directory List, Article on Blog Optimization.