Business Logs

Helping companies communicate better

Three Conferences for Business Bloggers

The truth is: there are no bad conferences. Yes, I’ve been to my share of conferences that bored the bejeezuz out of me, but I’m a firm believer that you can take away something positive from every conference. It starts, of course, by choosing the right conference to attend.

I recommend these Blog Conferences specifically for business bloggers. If you’re just getting started in business blogging, attending one of these is a great way to get your feet wet- and, of course, for both beginners and pros, they offer valuable networking opportunities:

Blog World Expo

Why?:
As the world’s largest blog conference, this is the first one to look at. We’re talking hundreds of people, bloggers who have been doing this for years, as well as celebrity bloggers and devoted readers.

When & Where?:
This year (2009), the conference runs from October 15 to 17 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

How much?:
A full-access pass will cost you anywhere from $895 to $1195, depending on whether you register early enough. Also available are weekend passes ($395-$495), exhibits & parties passes ($175-$225), and exhibits only passes ($75-$100). Check out the Blog World Expo pricing page for more information and to register.

Web 2.0 Summit

Why?:
Don’t let the name throw you off, this blog conference is known to feature some of the best names in technology. It’s a little pricey, but is a great choice for anyone who’s serious about doing business online.

When & Where?:
This year (2009), the Web 2.0 Summit runs from October 20 to 22 at The Westin San Francisco Market Street in San Francisco, California.

How much?:
The standard price (if you purchase a spot from now until October 19) is $4195. After that (on site) it’s $4395. This includes access to all workshops, on site events, and breakfast and lunch for each day of the conference. For more information, visit the official Web 2.0 Summit pricing page.

BlogHer Business

Why?:
Women business bloggers (such as myself!) should seriously consider attending this one- and male business bloggers should, as well. This is a smaller conference (they’re keeping it to around 200 attendees), and focuses on the best practices of reaching women online.

When & Where?:
BlogHer Business 2010 happens on August 5th at the Hilton Hotel in New York.

How much?:
Current “earlybird pricing” (up to March 2010) is at $499 plus a $9.95 fee. This includes all meals, programming, and a cocktail reception. For more details and to register, visit their registration site.

How NOT to use Twitter: A Guide for Businesses

So, Twitter is huge. Millions of people, numbers of sign-ups off the charts, celebrities tweeting, talk of it killing blogging– it’s clear that if you want your company to have a good online presence, you’d better get on Twitter.

Most businesses not only understand this, but understand how to use Twitter to their advantage. Online marketplace Etsy, for example, regularly tweets about upcoming promotions and deals, and responds to customers right away via Twitter. Starbucks, the company from whom I purchased the coffee I’m drinking while writing this post, also uses Twitter wisely, responding almost immediately to their followers and posting information that any Starbucks customer would find interesting.

And then there are the businesses that get it wrong. I’m not naming anyone in particular, but you see these every day: Twitter business accounts that put up their logo, fill out their profile, then proceed to post nothing but junk. They may gain followers, but aren’t using Twitter to their full benefit. If you use Twitter for your business, here are some Do’s and Don’ts for you:

Do not post pure marketing tweets.
Something we see way too often: a page of a business’ tweets containing nothing but “We are the best! Visit us now at http://blahblah..” over and over again, in different wordings. Really, what’s the point? If someone is taking the time to read your tweet, offer them something useful. A discount code, perhaps, or a link to a special deal, if you want to promote a product.

Do sound like a real person.
People like talking to other people, not machines. If your Tweets don’t sound like a real person wrote them, you’re in danger of losing touch with your customers. And speaking of being in touch with your customers…

Do reply to tweets.
Whenever someone sends you an @reply, remember that there’s a real live person, possibly a customer or client, behind it. Don’t ignore these- and especially don’t ignore direct messages.

Do give your Twitter profile some personality.
Take the time to customize your business’ Twitter profile with a nice background and colors that reflect your company.

If you do use Twitter, do use Twitter.
That is, make it known to everyone that your business is on Twitter. Put a Twitter button on your website or blog, add a link to your email, put the URL on your business card and company brochure.

Do plan your strategy.
Read through Twitter’s official 101 for Business, have a look at their best practices, and develop a strategy for using Twitter to your business’ full advantage.

Finally, have fun with Twitter. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s also meant to be a fun and easy to use tool, which is why it’s become so popular.

Do you have tips for using Twitter for business?

Review: Contextual Partnership Plugin

The Contextual Partnership Plugin For WordPress Provides Free Advertising To Help Promote Your Blog & Get You Noticed…

If you’re looking for an effective solution to help get your blog noticed then the Contextual Partnership Plugin for WordPress bloggers could be well worth consideration. Perhaps the most attractive aspect is that there is no cost involved.

According to the developers the plugin is designed to;

    Drive more targeted visitors to your blog (or blogs) by strategically linking your blog to and from other bloggers participating in the network. The exact method used to achieve this remains confidential but apparently it’s not a basic reciprocal link exchange – nor the more common 3 way linking arrangement often seen between bloggers.

    Enhance the user experience for your blog visitors by providing them with links to other high quality blogs for further information on subjects of interest (and it can do this without you actually loosing the visitor which is a great feature).

    Indirectly increase your search engine rankings by building highly relevant incoming links to your blog for keyword terms you define, related to your own niche market.

Not a bad indirect benefit at all.

To better understand how the network works, first you need to know what a “contextual link” actually is. A contextual link is simply a link “within content” of a blog post and “within context” of specific keyword terms in that post. For example the term “dog training” found within a blog post becomes a link out to another blog (related to “dog training”) within the network. Contextual Links are found all over the internet – bloggers interlink their own pages contextually, there are paid advertising programs that allow you to place contextual advertising links and earn per click, and bloggers naturally link out to other websites they find useful “contextually” as well.

This is the key to the “Contextual Partnership”. When you install and setup the WordPress Plugin, you’re asked to provide the URL’s you wish to advertise on other partners blogs, and the keyword terms you want those blogs to use to link back to your own. When a match is found within the network for the keyword terms you provide (and assuming it meets with the Contextual Partnership’s strategic linking methodology), a link back to your blog is assigned, and your account has a credit removed.
The amount of credits your account holds appears to be directly related to the number of links you’re providing to other partners in the network for the keyword terms they themselves are looking to use to advertise. Apparently for every link you provide for another partner, you earn 1 credit. That 1 credit is then “cashed in” to assign a link back to your own blog from other partners whenever a match is found for your own keyword terms. So if you already have 100 posts in your blog, and each of those pages finds a match to provide a link to another partner, then technically you could receive 100 incoming links to your blog as soon as you’ve been approved to participate in the partnership. You also continually earn more points and incoming links as you continue to blog and add more posts just like you usually do.

That’s the basic overview and you’ll find more specific information on the plugin website including details of many features not mentioned here (like the ability to select specifically which blog posts you want to include – or nor include in the network)…

http://www.contextualpartnership.com

Uptake by the blogger community seems to have been extremely good and this new service looks to become very popular. In the first two weeks of launch the partnership already had over 54,000 individual places to place links throughout the network, and within the first 4 weeks over 10,000 advertising links had been allocated between network partners. This is most likely a result to how easy it is to actually setup the plugin and participate – it literally takes 5 minutes to install and setup – although approval can take anywhere from 24-72 hours depending on the moderation queue as only high quality blogs are accepted to participate to keep out the splogs and spammers.
This seems to be one of those services worth giving a shot for a few months, and by the looks of things the developers have some exciting new features in the pipeline to make things even more effective for partners in the future.

You can find out full details and download the plugin below…

http://www.contextualpartnership.com

Or alternatively you can download the plugin directly from WordPress…
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contextual-partnership-link-exchange-plugin/

How Has Blogging Affected Your Business?

Some folks run blogs as a business in itself, usually by monetizing their blogs through various advertising setups. However, many entrepreneurs and corporate folk use blogs as part of their business, usually as a marketing tool, and as a means of connecting to customers around the world.

I know a few folks who market their products solely through social networks and blogs. One good way to market small retail items like fancy jewelry, trinkets and gift items, for instance, is by taking snapshots of these, posting a few sentences as a short description, and offering the items for sale online. Sure, you can try selling on eBay and you will probably get more inquiries (not to mention an easy way to close deals). But running blog features on your products for sale would definitely add to the personality of your business.

How has blogging affected your business? If you don’t run blogs as your business in itself, you probably run a blog for a variety of reasons. Maybe it’s a personal blog, and the discussions about your work or business are an offshoot of your sharing professional experiences along with personal reflections. Or maybe you have the habit of searching for online reviews about your products, and responding on the comment threads when you feel you need to clear up a few things.

Then there’s also the negative aspect of blogging and new media. Have you ever caught employees slacking off during office hours, and writing on their blogs, tweeting, watching videos or connecting to social network friends? Time spent otherwise being productive are being channeled to personal online activities, and this results in decreased efficiency.

Maybe you yourself have experienced focusing on social media too much that you forget your other duties in the workplace or the business. Do you find yourself increasingly enamored with your blog, Twitter, or just about any social media application that you are fond of using? Are you focusing too much on online clients? How about clients and customers whom you are supposed to service face-to-face?

Being involved in blogs and other social media can be a great way to establish your identity online, and perhaps build up your authority in your field. Sometimes, it does have negative effects, too. How has blogging affected your business? Are your experiences all positive? If not, then do you have a plan for better harnessing the benefits of social media to your business?

Turn Your Freelancing Activities Into a Small Business

There’s a fine line between freelancing and running a small business. For one, a freelance professional almost always works on projects by himself, relying on his own resources, skills and marketing abilities to keep the business running forward and servicing clients’ needs. During times when orders pile up, though, you might find it difficult to keep on servicing clients yourself. You sometimes pass on projects to friends and fellow professionals. Before you know it, you’ve hired extra hands to keep things running smoothly. You’ve effectively expanded your freelancing profession into a small business.

Most freelancers’ work habits lean toward a preference for less work rather than more work. This might make sense to a professional who values his time and creativity. Therefore, freelancers could be focusing on a few select clients, in order for quality to be kept at par with his and the clients’ expectations. But for a small business, more clients means more money. If you feel you are ready to expand, then you would have to either make some changes in your working habits, or your work setup.

Outsource some of the work. An increasing trend in online work these days is outsourcing. If you are in the business of designing websites, then perhaps you can partner with programmers and coders who can convert your raw PSD layouts into CSS-based themes for popular content management systems like WordPress. If your main line of work involves writing, then perhaps you can subcontract some work to able writers, and then just edit and proofread their work. Or maybe you hate to do administrative tasks like client support, scheduling and other such things that can be tedious to the creative professional. You can outsource these activities to a virtual assistant.

Partner with fellow professionals. There are a handful of freelance professionals out there who might not be as good with marketing their service as you. One mutually beneficial thing you can do is share the load–and the monetary benefits–with them. For instance, I’m not a designer myself. My forte is in developing and marketing blogs and web applications. Knowing this limitation, I have partnered with several colleagues whom I pass on design work to. We split the load. Clients are happy. My designer friends are happy. I’m happy, with the thought that I don’t have to force myself to do work I’m not an expert at.

Some freelancers are perhaps allergic to the idea of turning their profession into a small business. For some, the concept of having to invest time, money and effort into a startup might be disheartening. To some, it’s the idea of sharing the benefits with other people that might lead to reservations. But before you turn down the idea altogether, try to think of the benefits. Try to think of how you can reap the rewards. Sure, a startup might be more difficult to manage than a simple freelancing gig. But it’s potentially more rewarding.

Review: Logical Media

Logical Media is one of the innovative services that pay for ad placement within blogs. Do you have a blog and are you seeking a way to make additional money from the blog? Are you seeking a way to offset other programs with the use of ads? Through the registration with Logical Media, the blogger can have access to well-designed and functional ads, which are placed within the blog, earning the blogger money each time that a visitor to the blog decides to click on one of these ads.

As one of the top fifty affiliate networks in Website Magazine, Logical Media has reached a standard of customer service that many affiliate sites are simply unable to attain. Through the use of excellent placed ads, customer service and daily updates throughout the ads which are placed on the website, there are many reasons that you should consider Logical Media for marketing that can begin to earn you money from the moment you begin using the program.

With the added incentive that bloggers are equipped with, to earn twenty five dollars for signing up for the service, the blogger can begin to make money right away. With many other services, it seems that you are waiting weeks and even months for money to accrue within the account. However, with the instant twenty five dollars, just for signing up – you can begin to see an immediate profit!

With an easy to set-up and user-friendly interface, you can be up and running within a matter of minutes. Through the information which is provided and targeted keywords, ads will be developed that will be suited to your blog, your readers and your genre.

There are many other services which are offered to bloggers, in addition to the paid ad placement that can be taken advantage of throughout the blog. Through the use of valuable referral programs, in which the referrer can earn up to five percent through each referral and the real-time reports which the blogger will have access to, there are many ways that the blogger can learn to better the site – All while getting paid!

There are very few other paid ad placement companies that offer a high sign-up bonus. With the twenty five dollars that is offered to new customers you can begin to see your account move upward, through each click which is made on the ads placed within the blog. Are you seeking a program that enables you to track these movements in real time, while making real money? If this is the kind of program that you think would work for you, consider Logical Media, as the services offered are one of the many reasons more bloggers are choosing the company.

When it is time to get paid, bloggers always get paid on time, and the right amount. Through the use of intricate bookkeeping, bloggers are kept happy with accurate payments, regular payments and a variety of methods which are used to complete payments to bloggers that have signed up for the program. A reliable way to monetize your blog, more and more bloggers are choosing Logical Media.