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Blogging for business. Katie Lee talks to Shaa Wasmund

6 September 2010 By Leave a Comment

When I’m not at home staring at the internet, I love nothing more than climbing onto stage to speak about the many benefits of blogging.

Blogging engages your customers, allowing you to gather useful insights and market research. It also improves SEO, benefits customer relations and allows you a base from which to engage with other social media.If you’re running an eCommerce site, you need a blog.

So when Shaa Wasmund asked me to pop into her Sharing the Secrets of Social Media conference at the Sheraton Park Lane on Friday, I was only too happy to oblige!

Katie Lee talks to Shaa Wasmund

Katie Lee talks blogging with Shaa Wasmund

It was a great day, with plenty of inspiring case studies from people who’ve experienced the benefits of social media first hand.

You can track some of the conversations over on Twitter via the SM4B hashtag.

Filed Under: Blog, Interviews, Katie's Blog, Talks and Training Tagged With: , ,

The growth of business blogging in the US

31 August 2010 By Leave a Comment

Still unsure about the future of blogging for your business? A recent survey by eMarketer.com shows a huge shift towards the social media practice in the US, with 43% of businesses expected to be blogging by 2012 — almost half the market.

While personal blogging has seen a decline thanks to micro-blogging sites like Twitter, business blogging has seen a surge in popularity. Businesses are embracing blogging as it can suit the needs of their customers who refuse to tweet and shun Facebook, whilst improving their customer service and Google page ranking.

It certainly helps that marketers and PRs identify blogging as the most effective way of spreading news of their products and services, in particular in creating and launching virals.

Considering how quickly the UK tends to follow the lead of our friends over the pond, we’re likely to see similar statistics over here.

So the question isn’t really whether you should blog, rather can you afford not to? If your competition is optimising their target market with a blog filled with high quality SEO content, can you really justify not doing the same? This is particularly relevant to SMEs, who are the leading the pack when it comes to blogging.

Don’t forget you can find out more about business blogging and see some great case studies on the Miramus “Why Your Business Needs a Blog” presentation [4:28, needs audio]

Related: Blogging and social media marketing. Original content is key to success

Find the rest of the report on eMarketer.com

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , ,

Blogging tools for Firefox

25 August 2010 By Leave a Comment

Far be it from us to harp on about the dork-haven of loveliness that is Dork Adore (we admit we’re biased, but it’s true) but since they’re building quite a healthy list of web tools for bloggers, we thought it only polite to draw your attention to it.

If you’re blogging for your business (or just blogging for the hell of it — we applaud that too), here are some Firefox add-ons, online resources and incredibly handy tools to keep you tapping at top speed.

Firefox Blogging add-ons

Running Firefox? Then you’ll love these handy addons to make your blogging life easier

Top five Firefox add-ons for bloggers.

Five more Firefox addons for bloggers, including a block for those time wasting sites, a Morning Coffee addon and a way to prettify your google reader

Five more Firefox add-ons for bloggers.

The very best blogging tools for web writers. Check out which Firefox addons we couldn’t live without. Contents may include a span-free blog content notepad, a CSS toolbar, a British dictionary to avoid those embarrassing typos and a quick and easy image editor.

Recommended Reading

Miramus presents Dork Adore: Lovely things for geeks Miramus doesn’t just create blogs for clients. Check out our latest.
Blogging and social media marketing. Why original content is key to success

Filed Under: Blog, Blogging Tools Tagged With: , ,

Blogging and social media marketing. Original content is key to success

17 August 2010 By Leave a Comment

If you need any further evidence that blogging should be a central part of your social media strategy, a handy new research report has shown just that.

A survey of 450 CEOs revealed that 85 percent of  respondents feel original content is critical to the success of their social media campaign.

Original content

If you’re trying to drive traffic to your site, a blog is not only excellent at natural SEO, it’s also a great way to bring in a new audience via both search and social bookmarking — not to mention traffic from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Blogging for SEO

If you’re just writing about the latest new products your company offers, you’re unlikely to see a huge increase in traffic or sales, but by producing something that is worth reading, you’re adding valuable content to your site that can be shared amongst online communities.

For more great ideas on how you can add valuable rich media to your site to increase traffic and sales, check out the case studies in the Miramus “Why Your Business Needs a Blog” presentation [4:28, needs audio]

Read full report on HubSpot [via Gold Coast Social Media]

Recommended Reading: Blogging for SEO. Improve your Google ranking with good content.

Filed Under: Blog, Katie's Blog Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Blogging for SEO. Improve your Google ranking with good content

4 August 2010 By Leave a Comment

Everyone’s talking about SEO these days. And while it’s started to sound like a dirty word for some web purists, there’s no shame in wanting people to be able to find your website when they run a search.

The key is to create content that’s actually worth reading. You can stack up the keywords, optimise the life out of your headers, merrily chuck in celebrity names and wave around as many search-friendly statements as you like, but if what you’re saying is ultimately pointless, you’re not really doing much to make that traffic stick.

The web is a weird and wonderful place. Make something marvellous, and people will love you for it — which is good news for your Google rankings, and even better news for your brand.

So, yes, you should be writing a post a day, engaging in social media, getting excited about social bookmarking and making free and easy with the outbound links, but most importantly of all, you should be feeding the internet with something tasty, filling and more-ish. Not something full of empty calories with a strong odour of spam.

What the SEO world has to say about blogging

Blogging for SEO
The Top 10 E-commerce Blogging Tips to Skyrocket Sales

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , ,
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