Business Logs

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Business Blogging

5 Web Analytics Tools to Track Your Business Blog Performance

It’s essential that you take the time to track the performance of your business blog to ensure your audience is growing and your content is actually being seen.  Fortunately, there are a number of free and paid Web analytics tools that can help you track traffic, referrers, top performing content, keywords, underperforming content, user paths, and more.

Stay tuned to BusinessLogs for a post later this week that will help you learn what to track!  In the meantime, take a look at the five Web analytics tools listed below to begin researching in order to find the best tool to help you meet your business blogging goals and budget.

1. Google Analytics

I use Google Analytics for my blogs for a couple of reasons.  First, the statistics provided are fairly comprehensive and second, it’s free.  That’s a combination that’s hard to beat. [Read more…] about 5 Web Analytics Tools to Track Your Business Blog Performance

How to Find Bloggers to Write Your Business Blog

If you decide that hiring a professional blogger to write your business blog is the right choice for you and your company, then you need to put together a job posting and publish it on sites where bloggers search for job opportunities.

For example, be sure to include a list of requirements in your blogging job posting such as:

  • How often the blog should be updated.
  • If the blogger needs to monitor and respond to comments.
  • If the blogger is expected to promote the blog and drive traffic to the blog.
  • If the blogger is expected to include images in posts.
  • If the blogger is expected to research and come up with blog post topics or if topics will be provided by you.

Each of these requirements affects the amount of time it takes a blogger to write a post, which means they also affect the rates bloggers are likely to charge.  It’s also important that you ask applicants to provide samples of their blog post writing and links to their work online as well as their social Web profiles so you can learn more about their skills and experience. [Read more…] about How to Find Bloggers to Write Your Business Blog

Is the Right Person Writing Your Business Blog?

Who is writing your business blog?  If it’s not the right person, you won’t get the results you want and need from your blog.  That’s because no two people are alike on the social Web and different bloggers have a wide variety of skills, experience, and natural aptitude for conversing on the social Web, particularly via a business blog.

There are three primary options for choosing a business blogger:

  1. Write your business blog yourself.
  2. Enlist an employee to write your business blog.
  3. Hire a professional blogger to write your business blog.

Each of the options above has pros and cons.

First, there is no one who knows your business, customers, and goals better than you do, but finding time to write great content doesn’t come easily to everyone.

Second, employees can be great bloggers, particularly if they’re familiar with the social Web and are vocal advocates of your brand and business.  However, you have to monitor your employees’ conversations and behaviors online to ensure they adequately represent your business and brand and don’t disclose any proprietary information.  [Read more…] about Is the Right Person Writing Your Business Blog?

Call for Business Submissions

Does your business Web site run on WordPress or another blogging application?  I highly recommend using WordPress, not just for business blogging, but for your entire business Web site.  I use it for mine (see the image to the left), and I’d like to start a new series here on BusinessLogs that highlights businesses that use WordPress or another blogging application to create their Web sites.

I’m looking for business sites that look like Web sites, not like blogs, on the home page at least (of course, a blog can be attached to the site, and it should be).  The goal of the series is to not only show how flexible blogging applications like WordPress are, but also to show how great a business Web site can look when it’s built on WordPress (or another blogging application).

Plus, really cool submissions might even be featured in my upcoming book coming out in 2011, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to WordPress”, but the first priority is sharing the great work businesses are doing in leveraging blogging platforms to create awesome Web sites here on BusinessLogs.

To submit your business site for consideration in the series, just leave a comment on this post with your site’s URL. Chosen submissions will appear in a future blog post with screenshots of your site and links back to your site.

Note that the series won’t critique sites but rather provide an overview of the cool things site owners are doing with WordPress, etc. to build their businesses and brands.

Feel free to share this request with your own audiences via Twitter, Facebook, your business blog, etc.!  Let’s find some really great business sites built on WordPress, etc. to highlight here on BusinessLogs!