Walking through the main lobby of our office building the past few days I've been passing the latest dropped-off stack of unwanted phone books. Following the same destiny as last year's delivery, they will probably wind up in the dumpster after someone finally gets tired of seeing the pile there.
I can't remember the last time I needed to use a phone book. If I need a phone number (which is rare because I don't call anyone when I can email them) I just Google the person/company's name and there is it, in a tenth of the time it used to take my fingers to do the walking. (That's an old phone book slogan, you kids wouldn't know about)
I haven't had to use the Yellow Pages either, and I haven't talked to anyone else who has. A few years back, using the phone book was my primary resource for finding a business, a service or a solution that I needed at that time. Now I just type what I'm in need of in the search bar and instantly have more responses to my question that I could ever need.
This is where your company's blog finds its purpose, and here's a real life example:
We just bought a used pop-up camper, and as anyone who has ever had any experience with an old camper knows, they have "issues." The pop-up roof will only crank open on one side, it's getting dark and the manual doesn't have any troubleshooting advice to offer. My daughter grabs the Ipad, types in "Jayco camper top wont go up" and a whole lot of other people have had the same problem (maybe that's not a good thing for us). After reading through a few search engine results, I had the information I needed and fixed the problem.
How this applies to your company's blog: The page I found was in a series of quick how-to-fix-yourself articles from a company that deals camper parts and service. I looked around and saw they were a great potential resource for more info and solutions in my future, so I bookmarked their site.
Hopefully my next issue will be just as easy to fix, and I'll go to this site first to look for an answer. If I need to order a part, and they have it I'll probably get it there. And when I'm at the campground and someone asks "how'd I fix that?" I'll recommend that company.
In conclusion, your blog can be much more effective (and a ton less expensive) than a yellow pages ad. And unlike when we used to use a phone book, I don't have to wait until next day's business hours!
Topics for Your Business Blog
Coming up with business blog topics once or twice can be challenging, let alone on a regular basis. Blog ideas can come from everywhere: internally, your own experiences in the business, maybe from an email with a question you had a solution for; and externally, maybe something new going on in your industry that caught your attention. Get into the habit of keeping a list; write down inspiring ideas as they hit you.
Want to know what to write about? For your blog to be successful, you need to listen and figure out what your customers want and what they're interested in. Write about subject matter that your customers would naturally lean towards.
Your business blog is NOT ABOUT you, your product or what you want. Save your salespitch for the rest of your website and let them find it when they're ready. Right now, you're just establishing a community where people are welcome to come learn about topics they're interested in, or find a solution to a problem they're having.
Once you've got visitors; make sure they know they're welcome here, just like the front lobby of your business or store. Encourage comments, ask for feedback, even ask for blog ideas so you can give them exactly what they want. Respond to all comments respectfully and be grateful that someone was interested enough in what you had to say to stop and write something back. A real live human being who actually cares in customer service is worth 10,000 automated robots, and your readers (also real live human beings) appreciate it.
Types of Posts - Business Blog Ideas
Any type of media will work; there are no formal rules or formats. You could present different how to articles, industry-related stories, best-of lists, interviews, editorials. Visuals, a cartoon, photos or video, are always great to draw interest. Make yourself and your blog memorable and worth coming back to.
Make sure you get some keywords in there somehow, but above all, be authentic; show everyone that you are not only an expert in your field, but a great person to do business with as well.
Your website has traffic, even some repeat visitors, but could have many more new and repeats if there was new stuff being added on a regular basis. People stop paying attention to your windows if you never change the display.
A business blog on your company's website is becoming a necessity. The more content you have on your site, the higher page rank in search engines, the more ground you reach, the more visitors you'll get to your site, and so on. Each blog post you add to your company blog is like another page to your site; load it up with keyword phrases, links, etc., no programming degree required. It's the company newsletter that used to cost you a few thousand to print and mail, only now instead of looking for readers, they're looking for you.
Starting a business blog is simple; take an idea and come up with a headline:
Your Company Needs a Business Blog
Make your headline catchy, but to the point to grab the attention of readers skimming through search results. Get a keyword phrase of two in there.
The Content
Remember, people get bored easily and will wander quick. Keep each blog post short (and sweet), about 200, no more than 500 words; and focus on one idea. If you can break up the topic into more than one idea, make it two separate posts or a series.
Use sub-headings to break up your content into smaller bites. If you can upload a stock photo, a chart, or even better, a photo of your own, get it in there - any kid would agree reading is more fun when there are pictures on the page. Lists are also a good to lighten the read and get your point across.
Interesting content would be the best part. Do some homework; see if you can find out what people are looking for. Choose 2 to 3 keyword phrases to focus on and make sure you use them in the body of the article as well as the title. If you have more keywords than that, work them into your next post. (No, you're not done.)
Now Sustain it
For your business blog to have any success, pick a blogging schedule that you think you can handle – and then stick to it! If you think you can churn out a couple posts a week, go for it.
You can connect your company blog to your other social media, such as Twitter, Facebook business pages, Linkedin, etc to post automatically, which will further extend the reach of your word and draw traffic back to you. Add a link to your blog in your email signature, even on your business cards.
That's about it; keep it simple, maybe even have fun with it. The sooner you get started, the sooner you'll see the results!
So you've set up a business page for your company on Facebook, but it just looks like every other page there. Maybe you'd like to customize your Facebook page to be a little less generic looking.
Customizing Your Tabs
You're limited to 6 total tabs, and you can't change or remove the first two, "Wall" and "Info". As for the remaining 4, you can choose from a list of optional tabs like Discussions, Photo Albums, or tabs that feature your Twitter or Flickr pages, or you can make a tab with your own custom facebook page. To find these options, click on "Edit Page" right below your profile image, and this brings you into your Page Manager.
To add a "custom" tab, you'll need to get this FBML app and follow the instructions to install it in your account. Now go into your Page Manager and scroll down to find the FBML tab, then click "edit". You'll be brought to a form where you can give your new tab a custom name and add some HTML code. 
Don't get scared away yet; there are thousands of code bits and tips you can find in an online search, but here we're all for keeping it simple.
Pagetender's Facebook page features a "mini-version" of our company website which links back to Pagetender.com.
If you want to give it a try, here's what we did:
- Name the tab whatever you'd like in "Box Title."
- Take a screenshot of your company's Home page (or whatever you want) and upload the image to an online photo management site (we used Flickr.com)
- In Flickr, there's a button in the topright corner, "Share This", that has an option to "Grab the HTML" for your image.
Just copy that block of code and paste it into the body field of your Facebook FBML page.
- At the beginning of the code it reads "a href=http.www..."; delete everything between the quotation marks, and replace it with a copy/paste of your own website address out of your browser bar. This will make your custom Facebook page one big image shot of your company website, that fans in Facebook can click on and be brought right your site!
- One last thing, if you want you can make this "Custom" tab your "Home" page in Facebook. Go back to your "Wall" page and under "Edit Page"/ "Wall Settings" click on "Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else"; then choose the tab which you want new visitors to land on first. (People who are already fans of your page always see your "Wall" first.)
While Facebook doesn't make it easy, there are a few spots where there's room to add a little of your own touch to make your company stand out from the other 500 million blue-on-white pages.
Recently Facebook (finally) made available the feature to be able to change your Facebook username to something more meaningful. Up until this update, the URL of your profile or business/fan page looked something like this:
Not exactly memorable, and not something you want to have to write down or give to someone over the phone. Now you can choose your own "Vanity URL", like most other social media sites already offer:
Easier to pass along and easier to remember; much more personal and definitely looks better on a business card than the 22 digit code.
Changing your username in Facebook is actually pretty simple. Once you're logged in, just go to the Account tab in the top right corner and click on "Account Settings." (Or, just type "username" after the "facebook.com/" in the browser bar.)
Click on "Username" - "Change", and the window will expand something like this:
Facebook will give you some suggestions for a username, or you can type in your own idea in the text field. As of now, you can only use letters, numbers (A-Z, 0-9) and periods, no hyphens, slashes or underscores. You can use capital letters, but don't type in all caps, please.
Choose carefully! You can't change or edit your Facebook Username once you've created it; it's yours for good, no deposit, no return. Keeping it as your name or close to may be your best bet, and if it's for a business page, obviously the more professional the better. You can have a different Vanity URL for your personal page and each and every business page (if you have more than one).
Once you think you're ready, click "Check Availability" to see if any of the other 5 billion Facebook users on the planet might have already grabbed your choice already. If you want your business name, the sooner you get this done, the better!
If your first choice is taken, consider various combinations and click to see if they work, but again, choose carefully, because once it's set, it's set!
And now you can get your business cards reprinted with all your social media links just the way you want them.
For everyone who's asked "Do I have to blog?" here are a few of the best excuses not to:
1. I don't know how to blog.
It may have been a long time since those elementary school book reports, but don't worry, no one is going to grade you on grammar and punctuation. It can be something simple and informal; try to keep it somewhat professional and interesting.
2. I don't have any time to blog.
Getting started is always the hardest part of any new endeavor: quitting smoking, going to the gym and blogging. While finding the time (literally and mentally) seems impossible at first, once it becomes part of your routine you won't even miss what you used to be doing when you could have been blogging and promoting your business. And try to keep it regular, shoot for once a week, so when readers like what you have to say, they'll want to check back and see what you'll have next.
3. I don't have anything to write about.
It can't be all that hard to think of any subject matter when you're sitting in front of a machine connected to the internet - where you can type in any word that comes to mind, and you are returned with a hundred million search result topics - times infinity. There must be something out there you could talk about, and depending what topic you typed in your search, you'll have an idea from the number of search engine results how many others out there are interested in the same topic.
4. I tried it once but I didn't notice anything different.
That's like saying I went to the gym once, but didn't lose any weight. One of the best reasons to blog is that it's the perfect way to keep adding fresh and relevant content to your website without major technical modifications; search engines reward you with a better rankings for not having the same-old stale, out-of-date pages. Plus, think about it, if your site never has anything new on it, why would anyone ever come back to it? New customers are great, but regular customers are even better!
5. No one's going to find my blog anyway, let alone read it.
"Why should I blog - If I can't even find my homepage in Google, how will anyone ever get to the blog page?" Remember, search engines are indexing ALL your pages individually, not just as one site. And even better, every blog article you post gets treated as its own page in the search engines; not just as one blog page. That means each and every blog you write has the chance of being found by people who are looking for info on that subject...AND if they like what you have to say, they'll check out the rest of your website...AND if they see that you add new, updated content on a regular basis, they just might keep coming back to see what else you have to offer!
...But, with all these new leads and new customers you have from the FREE advertising you got just for doing a little homework, you may run out out of reasons not to blog!
We moved our office in April. It was not a good experience! Our phone and internet service was down for 8 days because a provider sold us a product that wasn't available in our area. We had to start over with another company. A real nightmare for an Inbound Marketing company. We were able to post a note on our website so folks would understand why the phone went unanswered. We also filed a change of address with the USPS so we would get our mail. Did you know that there is a change of address for your website if you change your domain or page URL? This can be risky if you've built links and worked to get your pages ranked.
A website URL change of address is called a 301 redirect. A 301 notifies the search engines that the website page has "permanently moved". It is the only type of redirect that is search engine friendly. It maps the old URL to a new URL. A 301 can be done at the site level if you've changed your domain or at the page level if you have restructured your pages. If you don't use a 301, the search engines and potential visitors may get a "page not found" message instead of your web page when they try to visit.
Another use for a 301 redirect is to let the search engines know that http://yourdomain.com and http://www.yourdomain.com are the same website. To the search engines they are unique addresses and therefore different sites. This will cause your analytic data to be inaccurate. There is a simple way to check to see if you have one in place. Enter http://yourdomain.com in a browser. If you have a redirect in place you should see the address change to http://www.yourdomain.com as your page is displayed. There are resources on the internet that will help you check your 301 or create one if you don't. Simply Google 301 redirect or contact your website host if you are not able to create one yourself.
HubSpot User Tip: If you are a HubSpot user and your site is on HubSpot's CMS, your 301 redirects are created automatically. Each time you change the name of a page, the CMS creates a record. To see these records, go to the settings area of your portal and click on URL Mapping. DO NOT CHANGE these records unless you understand the ramifications of doing so.
For about the past 10 years, the primary language for the internet as we know it has been HTML 4.0. Still a work in progress, the newest update to Hyper Text Markup Language, HTML 5, is being designed to singlehandedly handle what HTML4 could only do with added-on third party software, such as Adobe Flash.
HTML 5 promises more flexibility for developers which means more functionality for users, and more interoperability between browsers (Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, Windows Explorer) and devices (phones, computers, Ipads - anything that can connect to the web). Webpages will load faster and can be indexed and searched more efficiently with HTML5's updated source code tags and element structure. For SEO, cleaner code is great news!
Probably the most notable of HTML 5 benefits would have to be its ability to embed audio and video files without having to rely on third party plug-ins (Quicktime, Windows Media Player, Flash). Up until now, you need to have at least one of these on your computer (or device) to view any sites with any video or animation. (You may not know it, but it's in there.) Most mobile devices can't handle the extra software, so sites that look fine on your computer will not work the same on your smartphone. Some phones claim they are Flash compatible, but at the expense of constant crashing and at least half its battery life!
Probably the largest video collection site on the web, YouTube, already supports HTML 5, so you can watch without Flash. With HTML 5, video/sound/animation/interactive graphics can all be on your site, with no dependency on other software and no limitations on the receiving end: it's all right there in the code. Which brings us back to SEO: if search engines can read it, it can be optimized - unlike Flash!
But don't worry about going through the trouble of having your site rewritten from scratch; HTML5 is also backwards compatible. And although most web browsers are already becoming HTML 5 compliant, it's still a ways away from becoming the new standard.
In your online travels you've probably heard about or seen the new Facebook "Like" button, or the more professional-sounding version, "Recommend" button. Not seemingly much of a big deal at first, "Like" was a replacement for "Become a Fan of..." - good for Facebook Business pages to gain popularity from other users only within Facebook. The new Like Button breaks out of the Facebook realm, allowing all that traffic to head right to your site.
You don't have to be signed up on Facebook to add a Like button on your website. It is very simple to do, and Facebook provides a generator on their Facebook Social Plugins page that allows you to create and customize your own button (shown at right). You can easily copy/paste the button code on the page or pages where you think it would work best.
If you're not logged into Facebook, the button on your page looks like this:
When someone who is logged into facebook, the button on your page will look like this:
Facebook pages aren't indexed in search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo, so all these new links won't help your rankings in search engine page results. But as Facebook continues to grow at ludicrous speed, even if you're not signed up, you probably know a few dozen people who are, who know a few thousand, and so on.
That's hundreds of thousands of potential Facebook walls that could have a link to your website for all their friends and relatives to click on and visit your business:
See one in action on our homepage, www.Pagetender.com...and if this was helpful at all, please give it a click!
I recently attended a presentation "From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: Social Media and the Church" given by Pastor Keith Anderson, pastor of Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Woburn, MA. Pastor Keith is a dynamic speaker and, being a social media devotee, I really enjoyed it. I am not sure that the majority of the crowd was sold on the concept, however.
The Q&A segment began with a question I have heard over and over from companies who are not sold on social media either. The question relates to whether social media is too time consuming and if it will distract people from other work that needs doing. People who do not see the value in social media seem to see it as a "guilty pleasure" and a waste of otherwise productive time.
What benefits can be derived by the use of social media by organizations, be they companies or religious organizations? Community building with Facebook and Linkedin Groups comes go mind. Outreach is another. Surely education too. So why do people consider it a waste of time? I really think it comes down to resistance to change.
In the context of the church, parishioners are used to the Pastor coming to visit when they are sick, and the hard copy newsletter mailed monthly as the primary means of communication. They rely on signs posted in town, vacation bible school, a preschool, or word of mouth to bring in new members. I am a Christian and when I was a child there was no need for the church to reach out to my family. We went to church every Sunday and Sunday school was something everyone did. Contact with a priest or pastor outside of church meant someone was in need of comfort or in trouble. Times have changed. Just as companies are having to change from tradition marketing to Inbound Marketing to reach prospects, I believe that the church needs to use new technologies to reach out as well.
The majority of people in the US use the Internet, email, and social media sites to get information and stay connected to the things they care about. Google is now a verb, not just a company or search engine. Churches (religious organizations of all faiths) in the US are experiencing declining attendance and financial pressures. Why not use social media to reach out and build communities outside the scope of their church building or physical community? Why not use the Internet technologies such as email newsletters to cut mailing costs? Why not use social media to reach out to teens who consider themselves too cool to attend service on Sunday or the busy family two-income family who doesn't attend services each week because they are overwhelmed with responsibilities and demands on their time. Why not reach out every day in some small way instead of waiting for the sabbath. Why not?
A question asked of Pastor Keith may explain some of the reluctance. Will parishioners feel that they need not come to services and will they stop contributing to the church? His church added a Paypal button for people to contribute on line by the way; great idea. What I wanted to say to these people was that change has happened and is happening and it won't be stopped. The real danger, in my opinion, is that the church may NOT embrace new ways to reach people, build communities, and shore up their bottom lines. They may use the fact that that not everyone wants to use computers and social media to justify ignoring it. Of course we need to mail newsletters to those without computers and reach out to them in traditional ways. Social media will not replace Pastoral visits to the sick and needy. It doesn't have to be an either-or situation.
I have already met with my Pastor to discuss Pastor Keith's presentation which she also attended. Visit the link to Pastor Keith's blog about and take a look at his slides. Perhaps you should forward the link to your church council or governing body. Become a Fan of his congregation on Facebook to learn more. Thanks to forward thinking Pastors and congregations willing to lead the way perhaps the church as we know it will not only continue, it just may thrive.