The Web Authority

Mind you I have learned these from experience both from long-term personal blogging and ghost blogging; here are five things you definitely DO NOT want to do on your blog.

1. Never talk about real-world customers. Never if you change their names and circumstances. They will see themselves in your blog post and be angry. Don’t risk the bad blood.
2. Never trash competitors or a product. Blog posts are forever, you can do a review and present pros and cons, but trashing is simply crossing that line of providing information. Being vindictive in a blog post can get you sued. Don’t waste time doing it, vent to your friends.
3. Don’t stray from your main topic. If you are blogging for business stay tuned to that topic and your readership. If you start offering toe nail care tips when you should be talking about Internet marketing you will definitely turn off your readers. You can digress once or twice but get in the habit of digressing and readers will chop you.
4. Don’t make your blog post a dissertation. Shorter is better, but not too short. My guideline is about 250 words on one thread. Need more space, break the thought up into parts.
5. Don’t get hung up on comments or lack thereof. People do read your blog. If you are not getting comments or feed subscribers this does not mean that people are not reading. Still only 7% of all readers will be getting your news via feed technology. Just a few will choose to get your blog posts by email if you have this set up on Feedburner and your blog. Most will actually bookmark your blog’s home page and visit using a browser.

I’m sure I have more deadly blog crashers, but this post is getting long so that’ll be another post. :0)

Ever go to a social networking site and see a new “friend” who has literally thousands of connections? How about at Twitter how do people get this number of people to follow them and find this many people to follow? How can you get this kind of activity on Twitter?

If you’re new to Twitter, start first by searching for people in your field, search on a keyword phrase like Internet marketing, or even just search on your family name. Twitter will return a slew of people who match your category and then click in to just follow as many as possible. You can always delete someone later so initially you are after volume. You will be amazed at how many people in return will choose to follow you.

Then as someone follows you, visit their page to see who they follow and select the people that you want to follow too. It’s that easy. After a while you will find that there are some people who seem to post on Twitter every five minutes. You can select following from your own Twitter sidebar and just block them.

You’ll find that when people first start with Twitter they will write every little thing that they are doing and after a while will settle down. Those that don’t just block them unless you really want to know what they ate for lunch.

What I like about Twitter is the ability to watch literally hundreds of mini blogs in a moment. I pick up interesting tidbits, cool applications, and new blogs all the time. I use Twitter to promote my own blog and to watch what others think are important. I’ve even used Twitter Feed to add my blog posts automatically to Twitter and Twitter applications to bring my Twitter posts automatically to my own blog sidebar. Twitter is just a new version of social media and one that you can put to use for your website and business. The possibilities are endless. If your family and colleagues are on Twitter, you’ll have more the friend and social aspect and you can even make your posts private and available only to them. Twitter is just a cool new way to connect.

Some of the ways you could use Twitter for business are to post new products and links, if you’re a real estate agent post your new listings on Twitter, if you have an ebook you can offer tidbits and link to your purchase page, if you are monetizing your blog point to your blog. Think of what you could do with Twitter to put it to work for you pointing others to your content and online services.

My Twitter ID is McCordWeb, add me to your Twitter panel and I’ll follow you.

Click my post title to read what Darren at ProBlogger feels are the five emerging blog trends from his point of view. His blog is a good read and one that I routinely follow, but his is a focus for professional bloggers. So here is my list of blogging trends for clients to consider (not professional bloggers).

Trends in site and design that you should consider implementing as you set up your own business blog:

1. Slick magazine portal page style blogs are the rage right now versus the typical one or two column blog layout. Here’s an example of that style to consider: http://www.problogger.net/ Notice the use of multiple columns and blocks of content and advertising.
2. Multiple writers on one blog. Routinely we have two writers on five day a week blogs, but now we’re seeing blogs that we work on have more guest bloggers or staff writers post occasionally on the blog and all are listed on the mast head as writers. You can take this approach too. We’ll help you get started.
3. Multi-content blogs. Now on this point, I disagree with Darren at ProBlogger. All we do is focused on search engines. You will fragment your message, your search engine authority when you start blogging on many different topics on one blog. This may be fine for some “magazine” style blogsites, but for the typical client to stay on topic is very important. You do not want a pest control blog to be blogging about shoes or how to find coupons to buy a PDA! You need to stay on pest control and service topics. To do otherwise is to chase away your readers.
4. Soft monetizing of sites. Yes, blogs are moving to include advertising, but for the typical client the only ads you should have on your blog are those pointing to your products and services. I do not know of many people who are really racking in the cash from monetizing their blog. Additionally ads can be distracting and can affect the “look” of the blog. What would work is small ads for your own products, white papers, and coupons for your services.
5. Integration with other media. Yes, this is a new trend and one you can certainly leverage for your own blog. Introduce a Twitter feed, headlines, and other widgets in the sidebar of your blog site. Connect in new ways with your readers and provide ability for them to interact with you. Get signed up for Google’s Friend Connect as an easy way to implement these new widgets and features without programming skills.

The world of blogging IS changing but not all of ProBlogger’s recommendations are effective for business blog owners. If you need professional writing services for your business blog, consider us first.

“What to do, what to do… update LinkedIn or Facebook? Yikes, I haven’t even looked at my MySpace site in a month.” The busy professional has a hard time finding time to keep social networking sites up-to-date and they really only work for you when you are actively “working the network”.

This is why I recommend selecting just one social networking site and then sticking with it. For my age group and profession the social networking site of choice is LinkedIn. Most of my clients are there and this is the site that I get the most requests from to add new friends.

College kids and the younger professionals are using Facebook a lot and nearly no one is using MySpace anymore, unless you are a band. The ebb and flow of the popularity of social networking sites makes it hard to choose one and stick with it.

The reason I like LinkedIn is that the set up time was quick and that I do not have to invest a lot of time in maintaining or updating the site. Social networking is not for everyone and some people will simply have more time than others to manage their sites. Others will see no benefit to investing even a millisecond on sites like LinkedIn or Facebook. For me, this is why I like Twitter so much. Twitter is part blog and part social network. Although there isn’t the friend interaction on Twitter, unless you have social friends there, the ability to see what is happening with others in your field in regards to sites they are watching, new information they feel is important, and the speed in which information is shared, is what makes this flavor of social networking popular for the busy professional. Who doesn’t have one nanosecond to write 140 words about what they are doing right now”?

You can follow me in Twitter from the Twitter Feed bar just to the right in my blog’s sidebar. My Twitter ID is McCordWeb. See you there!

Web authority is valuable for any business which wants to position themselves as an authority in their field. Building web authority can not only be good for establishing yourself in your clients’ and prospects’ eyes as their resident expert and “go-to” resource, but can be hugely beneficial for improving organic search engine placement.

Web authority is gained on the web from quality content, depth of content on a topic, age of your website, number of pages your website contains, and number of links from outside sources pointing to the content. Web authority is certainly not gained overnight, but many things can be done to your website which will help to immediately create an authority factor.

One of the best ways to build web authority is to blog on your selected business topic. If you don’t want to blog, hire a professional to blog for you, but BLOG! Blogging builds content for your website fast and if the content is good can help to immediately start you on the path to building your authority on a specific topic or narrow range of topics. You’ll get the fastest and best results if you start out blogging five days week, but at the minimum of at least three days a week. If your budget won’t allow you to hire a blog writer indefinitely for blog post five days a week, invest in two months worth of blogging and then cut back to three days a week at the end of two months.

Blogging adds content easily to your website and search engines consider each blog post as if it were a single and new HTML page addition to your website when your blog is filed on your web hosting server under your domain name.

If web authority is important to you stay away from off-site blogging. Use WordPress and have it installed on your own web hosting account using your own domain name in your blog. You can’t get any web authority benefits when you blog at BlogSpot or at Typepad for your website.

In our next few post we’ll discuss other opportunities for building authority such as feature articles for syndication and whitepapers so make sure to come back tomorrow for more information on building your own web authority.