Business Logs

Helping companies communicate better

Business Blog Profile: Team JAPANiCAN Staff Blog

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This is my first business blog profile, but I hope to review specific business blogs every couple of weeks. Today, we’ll be looking at Team JAPANiCAN Staff Blog. This is the business blog of JAPANiCAN.com, a site that lets you book Japan hotels.

Good Qualities

The JAPANiCAN staff is doing a lot things right with their blog.

First, they use pictures liberally. I’ve written before that images can improve a blog so much and that’s especially true when you’re working in the travel niche. Nearly every post on JAPANiCAN’s blog has an image and many of them have more than one image.

Second, I like how JAPANiCAN adds a personal touch to their blog by including pictures of their staff. I’ve inserted their blog’s header at the top of this post and you can see that it has a small group picture of the staff. Also, each post has a link to the author of the post. The author pages have a short bio and picture of the author.

I think it’s great that the head of the staff actually writes blog entries. His name is Hiro Imaizumi and here is his profile.

By the way, I like that JAPANiCAN has multiple bloggers. Having multiple authors for your business blog is a great idea. More authors lets you have more blog posts and each author brings a different point of view, which gives your blog variety in topics and writing style.

Third, JAPANiCAN updates their blog pretty regularly. They started it about a year ago and have averaged about eight posts per month. Their posting frequency shows they are committed to their blog. They only have three posts for this month but hopefully they’ll turn that around and start posting more frequently like they did before.

Fourth, they have a good mixture of posts that just give information and posts that have both information and offers. I’ve written before about the importance of making offers but you don’t want to overdo it and make your blog look like a big sales pitch.

Recommendations

Here are some recommendations I would give to the JAPANiCAN staff about their blog.

On the home page of the site, I didn’t find a link to the blog. I would insert a link to the blog on the home page that’s easy to find.

I would place the links to the author profiles at a more prominent place.  A good spot is close to the blog post titles. This will get readers to click on the links and get to know the bloggers better.

The current blog URL is http://blog.japanican.com/en/staffblog/index.html. It would be cleaner to use the short URL http://blog.japanican.com/.

Finally, I recommend that the header be linked to the blog home page.

Great Video About Being More Productive for Business Bloggers

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Eben Pagan has some of the best productivity/time management content for small business owners especially those that do their work on the internet. Here’s a recent video he did. It has a lot of great advice. I don’t usually take notes while consuming content, but Eben’s video had such great content that I found myself pausing the video at important points and taking notes.

Here are the concepts I found useful.

Don’t Multitask; Instead, Focus

The best work schedule is filled with short work bursts of concentrated focus of about one hour. Studies have shown that this time period is about how long we are capable of staying focused on a task without needing a break or experiencing degradation in our ability to focus.

Multitasking is very bad for productivity. Very bad. Multitasking lowers your IQ more than marijuana! Therefore, we need work environments that keep distractions and interruptions at a minimum.

Avoiding multitasking means doing one thing and one thing only.  Adhering to this rule is very important since it’s so easy to get distracted while working online.

We have to learn how control our “monkey mind”. This terms refers to the times when our brain stops focusing and gets distracted with thoughts unrelated to the task at hand. Having short work periods of about one hour helps, but we still have to be disciplined to continually refocus our mind when it wanders.

Breaks are Good

Our bodies have a natural rhythm. We will have energy for about 90-120 minutes and then we’ll hit a lull. Anticipate this lull and don’t fight it.  It’s your body telling you to take a break.  Taking a short 10 minute break away from work to let the body rejuvenate itself. If you avoid these breaks, you’ll overwork and damage your body.

Overwork leads to missing out on the big picture. We lose who we are and why we got into the business world in the first place.

Set Yourself Up With a Great First Hour

The first hour of your day is the most important hour of the day. You yourself are the biggest leverage point in your business, so use that hour to take care of yourself. Focus on making yourself strong physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Eben’s sample first hour goes something like this:

  1. Drink one liter of water
  2. Exercise for 20-30 minutes
  3. Meditate for 5-10 minutes
  4. Eat a healthy meal
  5. Read for 5-10 minutes

Along with improving your productivity, this first hour will help you produce better work.  If you’re taking care of yourself, you’ll take care of your customers and business partners better.

Again, here’s the video. Check it out and let me know what you think.

How to Write Guest Posts That Actually Get Published

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In my last post, I talked about guest posts as a powerful marketing strategy for your business blog. But if you’ve never done a guest post, you may wonder if other bloggers will actually publish your content. So today I’ll cover some fundamental tips to increase the success of your posts.

Observe the Target Blog First

Before you write a guest post, you should observe your target blog, or the blog where you want your post to be published. Read the last 10 posts of blog. There are couple of reasons to take this preliminary step.

First, you don’t want to write about a topic that’s been recently covered. There’s a good chance your post will be rejected if your cover a recent topic.

Second, you want to make sure your post will fit well with the existing content. This means your guest post needs to be related to the same industry as your target blog. Consider the tone and style of the blogger. Is he writing in a formal voice that’s suited for academic journals? Or does he write in a more informal tone? Also, keep in mind the post length. On average, how long are the blogger’s posts?

Third, you want to understand where the blog’s readers are coming from. Check out the comments and see what kind of readers the blog has.

Fourth, you can generate ideas for a useful topic. As you read the blog, you’ll see that certain topics are not covered or are not covered with a lot of depth. You can create a guest post in those topics. Also, you might come up with a topic while reading the comment section. For example, you find a question there that wasn’t answered by the blogger. You can craft your guest post to answer that question.

Some bloggers write their guest post without checking out their target blogs. Don’t be like them. The best guest bloggers always check out their target blogs first. This allows them to tailor their posts to fit well on those blogs.

Write the Post

Once you’ve checked out your target blog, you should have some ideas for a guest post topic. Go through your ideas and pick the best one based on your expertise and how well the topic fits the target blog.

Don’t forget to include your bio and link. Also, be strategic with your link. You don’t have to link to your blog home page every time. Oftentimes, it’s a good idea to link to one of your blog posts especially if that blog post would be useful to the target blog’s audience.

For example, if I was writing a guest post for a link building blog, I would link to this post, 7 Types of Posts That Attract Links, instead of the home page.

Pitch Your Post

Once you’ve finished create your post, it’s time to send it to the blogger. I use a simple email template like this one:

Hi [name],

I’m a fan of your blog. I especially found [one of their recent posts] helpful.

I wrote a guest post that I think your readers would find interesting. The post is below my signature.

I know you’re probably busy, so I don’t need a quick response. If I haven’t received a response in the next 30 days, I’ll assume it’s okay to send the post to another blogger. Thanks for your time.

Your Signature

Bloggers are busy people, so I like to give them 30 days to give me a response. If you’re targeting a very popular blogger, you might want to give them more time since they get a lot of email.

Over to You

Do you have any tips for getting your guest posts published?

Why Writing Guest Posts is a Powerful Marketing Strategy for Bloggers

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Writing guest posts is a great way to promote your business blog. If you don’t know what guest posts are, it’s basically publishing content on other blogs. You write a post that fits the existing content of another blog. And in the post, you include a quick bio and link back to your own blog.

For example, I could write an article about business blogs and then ask the bloggers of this blog if they wouldn’t mind publishing it. At the end or the beginning of the post, I include this bio and link:

Dee Barizo writes about business blogging at BusinessLogs.com.

6 Reasons to Publish Guest Posts

Here are a couple reasons why guest posting is such a powerful promotion strategy.

Increase in Search Engine Traffic

If you want to get a lot of search traffic, you need to get links. Modern search engines like Google base a big chunk of their algorithms on links.

The best links to get are links in the middle of content. Content based links are much more effective than links on the sidebar or footer.

Also, it’s not enough to get links from just any site. Search engines look at the quality of the sites that link to you. With guest posting, you can target quality blogs to publish your guest posts.

High Quality Traffic

As long as you target blogs related to yours, you’ll get traffic that’s a perfect fit for your blog. Not only are the visitors from guest posts interested in your industry, they are predisposed to like you since they just read your great content.

This type of traffic is more likely to become customers than most other types of traffic.

High Success Rate

You may be wondering, does guest posting really work? Do bloggers allow other bloggers to post on their blog?

Here’s the good news. Guest posting is part of the blogging culture regardless of the niche. Most bloggers allow guest posts on their blog. As long as you create quality content, you have a great chance of success.

Bloggers want content. They understand the pressure of keeping their blog constantly updated with new posts. So, you’re helping them out by providing free quality content.

Networking

In the offline business world, networking is one of the fundamentals to success. The same is true online since the web has become just a big social network with the popularity of social media tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

The old saying is true, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Guest posting allows you to build your network in an effective way since you’re providing value to your fellow bloggers. They will remember your helpfulness and be willing to help you in the future.

Reputation

As you guest post on quality blogs, your reputation and credibility will improve. People in your target audience will realize that you’re well connected to other bloggers. They’ll see that you’re a valuable part of the online community in your industry. They’ll respect your expertise.

Easy to Do

Guest posting is easy to do. You don’t need special marketing skills. All you need is the ability to write quality content. After you create the content, you simply contact bloggers and ask them to publish your content.

Tune In to My Next Post

In my next post, I’ll share step by step tips on how to actually get your content published on other blogs. Feel free to subscribe to our RSS feed so you don’t miss this next post.

The Advantages of Writing Longer Posts for Your Business Blog

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About a week ago, a business blogger came to me wondering why she wasn’t getting more traffic. She had just started her blog three months ago. She said she checked out a successful blog in her industry and was publishing posts similar to the posts on that blog.

I checked out the successful blog she was talking about. It was a three year old blog with mostly short posts. The posts were usually less than 100 words and included one picture.

I told her this blog gets a lot of traffic not so much because of its content but because it got started earlier when there wasn’t a lot of competition in the “blogosphere”, or blogging world. Sure, the content wasn’t low quality but today you need to have higher quality content to generate a lot of traffic.

Today, the posts that attract links and traffic are usually longer posts. When I say “longer posts”, I mean content that is at least 400 words. And oftentimes the longer, the better.

Longer posts get more links because they have higher perceived value. The successful blogs less than two years old all seem to have long posts as the bulk of their content.

Still, many bloggers are trying to build an audience with short posts. This trend allows allows bloggers who write longer, more in-depth posts to stand out from the crowd and earn the attention of more readers. There is much more competition today in the blogosphere. Anything that allows you to differentiate your blog should be considered.

Also, long posts are usually more unique than short posts. Short posts tend to just be commentary of an interesting link. These type of posts are not very unique. They are easy to emulate and many people are already publishing these short, commentary link posts.

Even if your style is to write short posts, I would at least try mixing in a longer post 1-3 times a month.

How long is your average post?

Don’t Forget to Make Offers on Your Business Blog

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John Reese has a great thing to say about increasing your bottom line. He writes:

I recently had a great discussion with one of the top Internet marketers in the world, and someone who is a very close friend… Frank Kern. In this discussion I asked Frank this question…

“In your opinion, what’s the one major thing entrepreneurs should be doing right now?”

And his answer was simple… “Make offers.”

Making Offers and Business Blogging

This is a great tip for business bloggers as long as you don’t overdo it. After some time of publishing content and promoting your blog, you should have a good amount of visitors checking out your blog. This is a great time to start making offers. Here are a couple ways to do this.

First, you can talk about your products every couple of posts. You might say some interesting things about one of your products every 4-5 posts. Again, don’t over do this and turn your blog into just a sales pitch. Continue providing free valuable content about your industry. This encourages people who are not ready to buy to keep coming back to your blog. Oftentimes these people will buy later on after repeated exposure to your brand. Also, even if they never buy, they may tell their friends about your blog and your company.

Second, try giving your blog readers a discount. Create a promo code that is time sensitive. This would reward your readers that are keeping up with your blog and make them feel special.

Third, at the end of each of your longer posts (400+ words), have a small ad about one of your products. Or instead of a small ad, you can have a small paragraph about the product with a link to the product page.

Fourth, whenever you release a new product, make sure to blog about it.

The reason making offers works is because you’re being intentional in increasing sales. Many people need a little push to support your business before they actually buy something from you.

A blog helps you make offers effectively since blog readers will often perceive you and your company as an integral part of their life. Your blog will put a face to your company and you’ll become like an online friend to them.

And who are people more likely to buy from, a friend or a stranger?