Business Blogging Tips & Tricks

Welcome to part 4 of the tips & tricks tutorials, this time it’s business blogging. We keep going on about blogging. There is a very sound reason for doing so: Search engines look for ‘new and relevant content’. A blog gives you the tools to add keywords to your website very inexpensively. Here’s some tips on business blogging:

There is no such thing as instant results or a sure thing in internet marketing. For that matter, we can expand that statement to all marketing. The most expensive TV commercials can (and often do) fail. Therefore, when looking to business blogging as a marketing tactic for your business, do so with the following basic understanding: business blogging is a long term process, not a short term solution.

Unlike other marketing methods, business blogging is the process of building a relationship with potential customers. When blogging, consider the following:

• People prefer to do business with people they know and like.
• Nobody likes to hear (or read) a slick sales pitch.
• Just because you say it doesn’t make it so.

As business owners it is hard to avoid the trap of self importance. When we attend chamber meetings and business networking events we spend our precious few seconds giving our elevator speech (which is almost always an abbreviated sales pitch). Because an elevator speech is geared toward educating folks about your products and services, they make for horrible business blog postings.

When blogging, you should focus on helping others. Keep your topic focused on your visitor and give them FREE information they can use to improve something. Do not try to write a single blog post on more than a single topic. Your first target audience member are the search engines; if you try to include too many topics, then the search engines will not know how to list your info.

Lastly, be personal. Business blogging is informal by nature: so do not try to write poetic master works. The biggest fear of business blogging is someone will judge your business based on a misspelled word or the incorrect use or a comma. Some may, but most will not. Unless, of course, your business is writing!

Does your website have a blog? If not, you need to think about getting one integrated. At oneweb we add blogs to existing sites every day. It can be a relatively cheap development add-on for your site and the gains from blogging can, and most likely will, pay for themselves many times over. Contact us today for some advice or a quote and get your blog out there.

The new Facebook News Feed: Love it or hate it?

Facebook users have had mixed reactions to the revamped News Feed the social network began rolling out Tuesday night. Instead of asking users to choose between ‘Top Stories’ and ‘Most Recent’ links, the new News Feed adjusts content based on the last time they checked it. Users who rarely log in, for instance, see top stories from their networks. More frequent users see recent content in chronological order. Facebook also changed the way photos are displayed in the News Feed, making them larger and more prominent.

The most drastic change to the News Feed concept is the addition of a news ticker. Above the chat column, users now see real-time updates from their networks. When they click items from the ticker, the content is brought up in a hover window and the user does not need to leave the page in order to interact with their updates.

Facebook’s News Feed now delivers top stories to you based on the last time you logged in. That way, if you haven’t logged in for a few days, you won’t miss important life events in your News Feed. Users can also adjust their News Feeds by marking or unmarking updates as ‘Top Stories’.

Recent opinions include: "I don’t need everyone to know what photos or comments I ‘Like’ and I don’t want to know that depth of other people’s communications, either" and

"I’ve been asking for a long time for a way to make sure I don’t miss the most important things in friend’s lives, especially those who don’t post often, while a long string of inanities from talkative friends scroll by"

We’d like to hear from more of you. Are you enjoying the latest changes or are you annoyed by them? As my mate Charlie always says "We Fear Change!"

Facebook Launches the Subscribe Button

Howdy Facebook Fans! I’m sure you’ve spotted it by now, Facebook’s intriguing new feature called the Subscribe Button. This new feature adds new flexibility to the Facebook news feed while adding important features popularized by Twitter and Google +. The new button adds another layer of complexity to an interface that already bewilders many non-geeks, but the promise of removing unimportant bits of information from their news feed has many Facebook users excited. Or does it?

Subscribing To Other Facebook Users

Facebook rolled out the new Subscribe Button with everyone subscribed to all updates from their friends. If users change nothing, their Facebook experience stays the same as before. However, they can edit the content received by managing their friends. Users can also change the update settings for a friend while visiting their friend’s Facebook page. Choices include life events, status updates, games, photos and important updates. These new choices make taming the Facebook news feed possible. With their news feed bridled, Facebook users may find renewed joy in the Facebook experience. No longer sifting through junk, users will see only updates from their friends that interest them. However, subscription content from non-friends will include all their public updates, with no filter options available. All good so far.

Letting Other Facebook Users Subscribe

Users can now allow non-friends to subscribe to their public status updates. Any posts, photos or other content that they deliberately mark “Public” will appear on subscribers’ walls. Users follow others like they do with Twitter or Google +. To allow Facebook users the option to subscribe to their updates, users must edit their profile and then click the “Subscribers” link under their photo. By clicking the Edit Button, users can turn the new subscriber function on and off. They can also decide whether to allow comments on their public updates.

Benefits Of The Subscribe Button

If you always wanted to get rid of all the junk in your Facebook news feed, than the unveiling of the new Facebook Subscribe Button will make your day. In the past, the only way to stop the endless parade of junk updates was to un-friend the worst offenders. Now users can keep their friends without fear because they can choose to see only the content that interests them. The Subscribe Button also expands opportunities for all Facebook users because they can now share information with the Facebook community without allowing them access to their wall as a Friend. Similarly, the community now benefits from other users’ public information, even when they are not friends.

Analysis

Analysts / Haters will eagerly watch how the social public receives the Facebook Subscribe Button. The extra button and the new Twitter and Google + behavior may be enough to make users abandon those two competing networks to focus only on Facebook. Others may think the added feature layer complicates a software platform that already does enough singing and dancing. People alienated by the Subscribe Button may find refuge in the simpler worlds of Twitter and Google + but, as usual, Facebook holds an ace in its hand that helps guarantee the success of the new button: users must opt in. If they do not choose to use the Subscribe Button, they do nothing and their Facebook world will stay the same. Simple, yet brilliant!

Google’s ‘Plus’ Social Networking Opens to the Public

Internet search giant Google has thrown open its recently launched social networking service, ‘Google Plus’, to everyone.
The company said anyone can now sign up for Google Plus and connect with people they care about. Earlier, the service was available only through invitation as part of trial runs.

"For the past 12 weeks, we have been in field trials… We are nowhere near done, but with the improvements we have made so far, we are ready to move from field trials to beta and introduce our 100th feature: open sign-up. This way anyone can visit google.com/+, join the project and connect with the people they care about"

Google unveiled ‘Google Plus’ in late June as part of efforts to garner a share of the lucrative social networking space that has so far been dominated by Mark Zuckerberg-led Facebook, which has about 750 million users worldwide. The company also announced several new and improved features in the service’s ‘Hangout’ video feature and said it has applied some of its search magic to the network as well. Google Plus’s ‘Hangout’ conferencing feature, which lets users video chat with multiple people at a time, will now be available on all phones running on Google’s Android operating system — more specifically, users that own smartphones with front-facing cameras. The Hangout feature currently works with phones running Version 2.3 (Gingerbread) of Google’s Android system. The company also said support for Apple devices will be made available soon.

Additionally, Google is also introducing “Hangouts on Air”, which allows a user to make public broadcasts, as well as allows users to view broadcasts as spectators.

The search function, now accessible from the Google+ search box, will return results that includes content from the social network and the web.

Why Use Social Media?

Here is Part 3 of our Science of Social Media Blogs. Reasons to use Social Media in marketing your business:

• Quick and easy to start. You could launch a Facebook page today or get a blog going in a few days.
• Low cost. You can get started in social media and blogging for very little money. They are among the most cost-effective methods of reaching your audience.
• Instant interactivity. Both blogs and social media can give you nearly instant market feedback – good or bad. We get all kinds of feedback through the comments on our blog; people also leave reviews and other comments for us on Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media channels.
• It’s all about the Search Engines. Surveys indicate that 90% or more of people begin their purchasing process in search engines. Blogs and social media make it more likely that your prospects will find you online when they search.
• Inbound marketing. If you read our blog, you know that we’re big fans of inbound marketing at oneweb. Outbound marketing is telemarketing, direct mail, cold email blasts, TV and print ads – all the things that buyers tend to block out more and more. Social media and blogs are essential inbound marketing tools.
• First mover advantage. For blogs and social media, there is an advantage to moving first. If you don’t jump into the conversation, your competitors will (if they have not already) and then you’re fighting an uphill battle to become influential in these online conversations. Start now to claim that first-mover advantage.

oneweb are here to help you grow your business online. You want to get into blogging? You want to get social media working for you? You need a professional team working on your search engine optimisation? Contact us.

The web is so fast moving that nobody can stand still, let alone wait to get involved. Get in touch with us today, tell us your ideas, describe your vision and we will let you know how you CAN acheive it.

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Anne Hawley, annehawley.co.uk, @swimbabyswimuk