If you’re not yet blogging for your business, here’s a chance to get all the information you’ll need to set up and optimize your blog. It’s a charity auction for LLS, the Leukemia Society. You can read all the details on Denise’s BizTipsBlog.
It’s a cause that is close to Denise’s heart because her brother-in-law has an rare form of cancer. So you’ll get an excellent package of tutorials on blogging for a low price and all the money will go to help find a cure.
You don’t want to miss this class on Wednesday August 29,2007 – Our recent analysis of business blogs show that most are brandless or at least under-branded. That makes all of your marketing harder and far less effective.
Learn how to get good results by combining branding with your blog.
Join The Blog Squad and branding guru Ruth Klein for the first ever teleseminar on Branding AND Blogging: what many experts consider to be the new ‘success secret’ of smart professionals and entrepreneurs with online businesses.
There is no charge to attend.
Branding & Blogging: The new ‘success secret’ of today’s smart professionals
A complimentary teleseminar brought to you by The Blog Squad and Branding Guru Ruth Klein
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
5:00 p.m. ET (2:00 p.m. PT)
No charge!
Register here. You’ll get the dial-in number and information about how to listen live online via simulcast, if you prefer.
Please note: This is a preview class to our 4-session Branding and Blogging workshop with Ruth Klein in September, but we promise you’ll get plenty of information you can use, even if you aren’t going to the paid workshop. We’ll answer your questions and give you important content – no obligation. If you’ve been to our teleclasses before, you know we always over-deliver.
Thanks to John Hewitt for publishing a list of blogs for writers. There are many good blogs on his list, including this one, and a few I am not familiar as yet.
How many of these bloggers do you read?
There’s one seat left for our small coaching group that starts in August; tonight at midnight the early bird discount and bonus offer is off the table. This is an exclusive group for advanced business blogging strategies.
Denise and I will work with you to make sure you get the maximum results for your business blog, whatever your blog goals are.
This is a home-improvement, get-your-keyboard-dirty workshop, no slackers allowed. If you put in the time to improve your blog, you will see results. For info: visit www.theblogsquad.net/BBB.
I ran across this wise blog post last week over on Problogger, by a guest author Leo Babauta from Zen Habits: 4 Pillars of Writing Exceptional Blogs.
While there are many things that go into great blogs, content is THE most important. Denise and I are preparing for our advanced business blogging class coming up, and we outline 4 areas that are key to business blogs:
Content, Outreach, Design and Action. There’s a reason Content is first. You can’t have a good blog without great content.
Here are Babuta’s 4 Pillars of Writing Exceptional Blogs:
Pillar 1: Be extremely useful
Pillar 2: Write great headlines
Pillar 3: Make the post scannable
Pillar 4: Write in a plain, concise, common-sense style
The key is to focus on your readers and give them what they want. Your blog becomes more powerful if you omit the noise and leave the signal. Do this, and your reader will not only read the post, but will likely stick around long enough to become a long-term reader.
Actually, when you think about it, these four pillars stand for other writing tasks: articles, ezines, white papers – even sales copy and advertorials. Do you agree?
Usability expert Jakob Nielsen says write articles, not blog entries.
Writing in his latest Alertbox column, Jakob Nielsen says:
"Blog postings will always be commodity content: there’s a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else’s comments. Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they’re definitely easy to write. But they don’t build sustainable value." – Jakob Nielsen (July 9, 2007)
I was alerted to this information by Debbie Weil on her BlogWrite for CEOs blog. Debbie adds, "The best blogging strategy (the one that reaps the most rewards as far as establishing yourself as a thought leader) is to mix up your blog posts. Some should be short and reference another article / site / blog."
SUNDAY, JULY 8, SAN DIEGO
Our mentor, Tom Antion, is presenting his "infamous" Electronic Marketing ButtCamp
(where you learn to make bucks while sitting on your rear end in front
of your computer) July 8th in San Diego. This is the day before the
National Speakers Association convention.
Tom has done these extensive one day Internet camps all over the
world and he guarantees you a fantastic day that will open your eyes to
the Internet riches that await you.
In addition to being in Tom Antion’s mentor program,
we have attended two of these "buttcamps" and we get a ton of new,
do-able information that helps boost our business every time.
PLUS…
Graduates get to attend all future ButtCamps forever with no more registration fees.
Check out all the details for the San Diego ButtCamp. This one looks like the best one ever.
Denise and I will be there. We were honored to be asked by Tom to do the presentation on blogs.
We’d love to meet you there.
The Blog Squad are guests of Jerry Hart, Hart Creative Marketing, this week…
Build a Professional Blog That Gets More Traffic to Your Website and Turns Prospects Into Paying Clients…
with Jerry Hart, CEO of Hart Creative Marketing, Inc. featuring the Blog Squad (Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman)
Blogging and Beyond with The Blog Squad, Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D., and Denise Wakeman
With Guest Expert: Jim Turner, One By One Media
Thursday, May 10th 2007
3:00 p.m. PT (6 p.m. ET)
Bloggers for Hire: An Emerging Profession
The days of hiring a public relations firm and buying advertising are
going the way of the dinosaur for companies that want to get noticed
and make a splash. They are turning to business blogging, podcasting,
video and social media tools. But most companies don’t have the
resources or knowledge to use these tools.
A new industry of tech-savvy
professional bloggers and social media experts are meeting the need.
The Blog Squad interviews Jim Turner of One By One Media about the emerging trend of social media experts for hire.
Blogging and Beyond with The Blog Squad, Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D., and Denise Wakeman
With Guest Expert: Shirley Frazier, president Sweet Survival and SoloBusinessMarketing.com
Thursday, May 3rd 2007
3:00 p.m. PT (6 p.m. ET)
How to Use a Niche Blog to Corner Your Market
Why do some blogs take off right away, and others seem to languish
without traffic? What does the solo business professional need to know
in order to use the power of blogs and online marketing to get found
and get clients?
Blogs have quickly become a smart way to find people interested in a specialized niche,those customers often found way out in the long tail of marketing statistics.
The Blog Squad interviews Shirley Frazier, SoloBusinessMarketing.com and publisher of the wildy successful GiftBasketBusiness.com blog on how to find a niche that works and what you need to do to corner your niche market.
