Apr 21
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 21, 2008
in Search Engine Roundtable
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Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Apr 21
Ratings Service Faceoff: Search Share Compared, June 2007 To March 2008
in Search Engine Land
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I’ve now compiled the latest
search
popularity stats from Hitwise, Compete,
comScore and
Nielsen Online. That means it’s time to put them all together
once again, to see
what a "panel" of ratings services agree on — and don’t agree on — in terms of
search engine popularity.

Click to continue reading…

Apr 21
Nielsen: Google Continues High But Others Rise In Share
in Search Engine Land
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March 2008

Continuing from previous search stats from Hitwise, Compete
and comScore,
Nielsen Online is
now
out (PDF file) with search engine share figures in
the United States for March 2008. Similar to Hitwise and comScore, Google
remains at a high but unlike some of the others, Microsoft and Yahoo come off
lows.

Click to continue reading…

Apr 21
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 21, 2008
in Search Engine Land
Comments Off

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • New Yahoo!
    Search Weather Report
    Yahoo! Search says it’s rolling out a new search update. The note we received
    in advance offers the standard language: the company will be "rolling out some
    changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. While we expect the
    update will be completed soon, as you know, throughout this process…
  • Microsoft -
    Three Weeks or Else!
    Since Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion, interesting times
    have been ours to enjoy here in the land of the search engines. On April 5
    2008, Steve Ballmer stepped up the game by giving Yahoo! 3 weeks to make a
    decision on the 44.6 billon dollar offer or…
  • Take Our
    2-Minute Survey, You Could Win a Ticket to SMX Advanced
    Last Thursday we posted asking you to take our Search Engine Land audience
    survey. Thanks to the more than 200 of you who took the time to help us out!
    For everyone else, this is a quick reminder that by taking the survey you will
    be entered in a drawing…
  • Google Opens
    Developer "Sandbox" For iGoogle
    iGoogle is one of the most interesting products at the search engine.
    Reportedly the fastest growing of Google’s offerings it’s a personal start
    page or dashboard, but with potential to evolve into something more. Today
    Google announced "a sandbox for developers that helps them build richer
    gadgets for iGoogle, which…
  • Google Named
    Top Global Brand — Again
    Millward Brown, a unit of mega ad agency WPP, has named Google the world’s top
    brand in its annual "Top 100 Most Powerful Brands" survey (report available
    here). The Guardian UK also covers the study. Millward Brown calculates the
    ranking based on corporate earnings, consumer survey data, projected future
    growth…
  • China Now
    Number One Internet Market, Surpassing US
    The Chinese Internet has surpassed the US in terms of overall users. According
    to BDA China (reported in USAToday) there are more than 220 million Chinese
    Internet users (17 percent of the population) compared with 216 in the US (71
    percent). This is simply a function of the huge scale…
  • Anecdotal
    Evidence Of AdWords Performance On Yahoo
    The AdWords Addict reports on the recent test of Google AdWords in Yahoo
    search results. Apparently changes were reflected equally quickly on both
    Google and Yahoo and performance on Yahoo (CTRs) was good, though no specifics
    are provided. Overall the convenience of managing both engines from a single
    interface is…
  • comScore
    Explains What Happened On Paid Click Decline But Great Google Earnings
    With two reports about Google’s paid clicks being down, comScore helped fuel a
    perception among financial analysts that Google might under-perform in Q1.
    However, Google’s earnings handily beat estimates and the stock saw a 20
    percent gain in a single day on Friday as investors were buoyed by Google’s
    results….
  • "Browser Search
    Engine" ChunkIt Launches
    On Friday ChunkIt launched in a private beta. ChunkIt is a search download
    that sits on top of existing results and enables users to preview them before
    clicking. Relevant "chunks" of content are called out in a separate pane that
    splits the screen between the engine and the ChunkIt page….
  • Google Gets
    Whois Answers In Search Results
    Looks like Google’s gained a new direct answer service, whois information for
    domains. Enter a query like whois searchengineland.com, and you’ll be told
    when the domain was registered and expires, along with a link to more
    information from the Domain Tools site. Here’s a screenshot:…

Search News From Around The Web:

Review Items

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Link Building

Local, Maps & Mobile

Paid Search & Contextual

Searching

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Social Media

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social
News Sharing Site:

Apr 21
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 21, 2008
in Search Engine Land
Comments Off

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • New Yahoo!
    Search Weather Report
    Yahoo! Search says it’s rolling out a new search update. The note we received
    in advance offers the standard language: the company will be "rolling out some
    changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. While we expect the
    update will be completed soon, as you know, throughout this process…
  • Microsoft -
    Three Weeks or Else!
    Since Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion, interesting times
    have been ours to enjoy here in the land of the search engines. On April 5
    2008, Steve Ballmer stepped up the game by giving Yahoo! 3 weeks to make a
    decision on the 44.6 billon dollar offer or…
  • Take Our
    2-Minute Survey, You Could Win a Ticket to SMX Advanced
    Last Thursday we posted asking you to take our Search Engine Land audience
    survey. Thanks to the more than 200 of you who took the time to help us out!
    For everyone else, this is a quick reminder that by taking the survey you will
    be entered in a drawing…
  • Google Opens
    Developer "Sandbox" For iGoogle
    iGoogle is one of the most interesting products at the search engine.
    Reportedly the fastest growing of Google’s offerings it’s a personal start
    page or dashboard, but with potential to evolve into something more. Today
    Google announced "a sandbox for developers that helps them build richer
    gadgets for iGoogle, which…
  • Google Named
    Top Global Brand — Again
    Millward Brown, a unit of mega ad agency WPP, has named Google the world’s top
    brand in its annual "Top 100 Most Powerful Brands" survey (report available
    here). The Guardian UK also covers the study. Millward Brown calculates the
    ranking based on corporate earnings, consumer survey data, projected future
    growth…
  • China Now
    Number One Internet Market, Surpassing US
    The Chinese Internet has surpassed the US in terms of overall users. According
    to BDA China (reported in USAToday) there are more than 220 million Chinese
    Internet users (17 percent of the population) compared with 216 in the US (71
    percent). This is simply a function of the huge scale…
  • Anecdotal
    Evidence Of AdWords Performance On Yahoo
    The AdWords Addict reports on the recent test of Google AdWords in Yahoo
    search results. Apparently changes were reflected equally quickly on both
    Google and Yahoo and performance on Yahoo (CTRs) was good, though no specifics
    are provided. Overall the convenience of managing both engines from a single
    interface is…
  • comScore
    Explains What Happened On Paid Click Decline But Great Google Earnings
    With two reports about Google’s paid clicks being down, comScore helped fuel a
    perception among financial analysts that Google might under-perform in Q1.
    However, Google’s earnings handily beat estimates and the stock saw a 20
    percent gain in a single day on Friday as investors were buoyed by Google’s
    results….
  • "Browser Search
    Engine" ChunkIt Launches
    On Friday ChunkIt launched in a private beta. ChunkIt is a search download
    that sits on top of existing results and enables users to preview them before
    clicking. Relevant "chunks" of content are called out in a separate pane that
    splits the screen between the engine and the ChunkIt page….
  • Google Gets
    Whois Answers In Search Results
    Looks like Google’s gained a new direct answer service, whois information for
    domains. Enter a query like whois searchengineland.com, and you’ll be told
    when the domain was registered and expires, along with a link to more
    information from the Domain Tools site. Here’s a screenshot:…

Search News From Around The Web:

Review Items

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Link Building

Local, Maps & Mobile

Paid Search & Contextual

Searching

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Social Media

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social
News Sharing Site:

Apr 21
New Yahoo! Search Weather Report
in Search Engine Land
Comments Off

Yahoo! Search says it’s rolling out a new search update. The note we received in advance offers the standard language: the company will be “rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. While we expect the update will be completed soon, as you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index.”

This update also fixes issues with the Yahoo! Site Explorer delete URL functionality.

There had been reports of a Yahoo! index update last week, and this update looks to be confirmation of those observed changes. Yahoo! recently introduced a new crawler as well. Yahoo! has been announcing updates via weather reports on their blog fairly often, most recently in March.

There’s more information on the latest update at the Yahoo Search Blog.

Apr 21
Microsoft - Three Weeks or Else!
in Search Engine Land
Comments Off

Since Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion, interesting times have been ours to enjoy here in the land of the search engines. On April 5 2008, Steve Ballmer stepped up the game by giving Yahoo! 3 weeks to make a decision on the 44.6 billon dollar offer or they’ll bypass the board and go directly to shareholders.

Click to continue reading…

Apr 21
SBM Unleashed: Link Building
in Search Engine Guide
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by David Wallace

Session Summary: Need links? Of course you do! In order to rank well and
successfully promote your online business, you need an effective link building
program as part of your over-all SEO strategy. Link guru
Debra O’Neil Mastaler, Owner of
Alliance Link walks attendees
through the world of links. Find out why search engines rely so heavily on
links, where to find links and why a good link can send sales through the roof.

In this session Debra is going to discuss why links are valuable, ranking
influences, tools to help you and some actual tactics. She provides an intro as
to how the Internet was birthed back to ARPANet. In the early nineties, search
engine were born. So the idea behind link popularity is a set of collective
minds linking to one another - co-citation.

When Google came along, they incorporated link popularity into their algorithm.
Links connect sites like the threads in a web. They also provide a way for
search spiders to find other sites. Link popularity therefore measures the
quality and quantity of links pointing to a web site or web page.

Anchor text is one of the most powerful components of link popularity as it
provides both users and search engines relevant contextual information about the
pages that are being linked to. Link relevancy relates to the text that surround
the link and is also important in link popularity. Linking out helps to classify
your site as to where it topically belongs.

Authority sites - what are they? Sites that rank well, are well known in a
niche, and have strong inbound links. She shows a tool called
TouchGraph which shows how a site fits
in a community by showing graphically which sites are linking to each other.
Getting links from authority sites is becoming one of the most important factors
in link building.

Factors to avoid in link building - control your rate of acquiring (not too
fast), avoid repetitive anchor text and don’t use the same tactic over and over
again. Because search engines are so against manual link building techniques,
perception is key when link building. She points out that reciprocal linking is
fine so long as it is somewhat relevant and it is not the only tactic one uses.

For optimal linking success, screen who you are linking to carefully, try to
place links in content areas (avoid navigational and sponsored areas) and
understand that all incoming links have value (e.g., low PR, nofollowed linked).
Remember that some will bring valuable traffic. She reminds us that redirected
links will not pass link popularity. Also she suggests using a 301 redirect as
opposed to a 302 when redirecting. Also be consistent in the way you link to
your pages (i.e., www or no www, home page, etc.)

Debra begins to show some of the free tools she uses to learn and implement link
building tactics. Resource sites include
Matt Cutts blog,
Search Engine Guide,
Search Engine Journal and
Search Engine Land. She also makes
reference to forums such as High Rankings, Webmaster World and Cre8asite to name
a few.

She mentions some free tools -

Now Debra is going to talk about actual link building tactics that work.
Everything still works but strategies using content generation work best long
term. When asked by a conference participant about cross linking, Debra says to
be very cautious in this. Linking tactics include authority links, directories,
article writing, link reclamation, credibility links, reciprocals, and link bait
to name a few and even Web 2.0 techniques such as social aggregation and social
bookmarking. She points out that journalists are using del.icio.us and Magnolia
to find resources to write stories.

Debra emphasizes that if she had limitless funds, she would place 99% of her
effort on obtaining authority links. Separate by media contacts and editorial
and commercial sources. Do whatever you can to get the links (i.e., beg, pay,
incentives). One way to find authorities is to locate top reviewers on sites
such as Amazon and Epinions. They most often have their own blogs and/or sites.

She next talks about directories. Ezilon.com
(a show sponsor) is a good one. Niche directories are especially beneficial.
Avoid AdSense riddled directories or site-wide links. Debra also points out that
DMOZ is a hot property once again and she has much success getting sites listed.
Directories of directories include
Directory Big Boards, ISEDB and
Blog Catalog.

She talks about article writing as a link building tactic. She recommends
writing longer versions for your own site and then sending out shorter versions
to article sites. And always include article bios.

Next she talks about content networks such as Squidoo, Helium and HubPages to
name a few. What is nice about them is that they are getting a lot of media
attention right now.

Guest blogging and guest writing is a great way to host content and acquire
links. Debra recommends staying out of the networks and look for individual
bloggers.

Link bait is content created and submitted to social news and bookmarking sites
for distribution. Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon and then niche sites such as Small
Business Brief.

============================

Note: These are raw notes taken while live-blogging sessions at the
Small Business Marketing
Unleashed conference in Houston, Texas. Please excuse any spelling or grammar
errors.

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Apr 21
Unleashed: The Joy of Analytics by Matt Bailey (Live Blogging)
in Search Engine Guide
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by Liana Evans

This session is going to look at the most important information you need for your website, and how most analytics packages don’t give you that information.  You have a digital creation on a server which has 2 goals.  First goal is to have the search engines find it and determine relevance rank.  Second goal is to persuade visitor to take action.

Machines are recording all of this.  Everything that is between us and what we want to know is a machines, so we buy analytics packages that give us chartagraphy and data.  They try to give you a broad overview of what’s going on in your website, but nothing specific. The only way you can get the right information about your business is to ask questions, because a lot gets lost in translation.

Concepts - Log File vs. Page “Tagging”.  The Log file on your server is very portable and another program can help read it.  With Tagging it’s a piece of javascript that monitors information that writes information to a different log file.

The log file lives on your server.  Page Tagging lives elsewhere.  Remember with log files, the data is still yours.  With page tagging - all that data is with them, so it’s tough to move the data from one program to another and keep the history.

High end analytics programs use page tagging.  Usually they tell you that log files are notoriously bad.  However if you use a browser w/o java script or search engine spiders will not be tracked by page tagging.  There will be no consistency between analytics packages.  In order for an analytics package to define data, it needs to follow a set rules.  The first place these programs get thrown off is the search bots.  So it’s really a case that no program is fully accurate.

So you need to really know what you are - log file or page tagging.  They both get the same kind of information.  Who came, when they came, how long they stayed and where they went.  Machines record both human visits and machine visits.

Accuracy - no such thing when it comes to web analytics.

What we can track is Trends.  As long as you use the same package to track the trends you can track trends accurately.  Using different packages every month to get the biggest number you are loosing data integrity.

Unique Visitors - can only be tracked by 2 methods.  Cookies (dropping on a browser) can be session and / or persistent.  Persistent cookies stay until you flush it from your system.

Visitor Session - The number of times visitors view your website (how many pages they saw while they were visiting).  Total visitor sessions made up by 2 groups:  1) visitors who visited me once 2) visitors who visited more than once.

Search Engine Referrals - The number of visitors generated by search engines.  Search Engine Referral Rate (%) = Search Engine Referrals / Unique Visitors generally if you don’t optimize generally you get a 12% referral rate of people finding you on your business name.

Exit / Bounce Rate - The number of users viewing a page and then leaving.

Conversion Rate - The number of visitors who make the intended actions.  You define what the conversion rate.  Additional Details:  Product Literature Downloads, Bookmarked Pages, Contact Forms / Emails / Information Requests, Order / Purchases.  Average conversion rate is about 1.8%.

Its easy to analyze if the visitor only had one thing to do and one way to do it (this is called a Macro action).  Most people don’t have this.  We all have hundreds of Micro Actions to take before doing the Macro Action.  Example of this is Amazon - Macro Actions is “Buy the Book”.  There are over 26 Micro Actions to get to that one Macro Actions, fortunately for Amazon the next steps are clearly defined.  Lead / Cart actions - see who got to the page, how many go to step 2, 3 .. etc. and who got to the end.  You start to see the holes of where you are loosing people.  These holes should be big red flags. 

Stats are not just about numbers.  It’s about finding out how to improve you website.

Pay Per Click Analytics
31% of companies do not track PPC at all.  41% only track click throughs.  72% of business are buying PPC and not tracking it.  Only 11% of advertisers were tracking detailed ROI analysis and this does not include tracking profit!

Hits are irrelevant.  Even though hits are a big number.  Its the rest of the information that’s important but not unless you add context, so you need to forget everything you know now.

The problem is we need much more Context.

Visitors who searched for:
Who entered at page:
Stayed on the site for
more than:
less than:

Analytics Pyramid:
Data (foundation of pyramid), Information (middle of pyramid), Knowledge (top of pyramid)

We need wisdom & understanding - no analytics package will give you it.  You need to provide it.  Unless you apply yourself into it won’t help.  10% should be spent on the package and 90% is spent on the person to what the data means.

Reporting or Analysis?
“Web analytics works best when measurement expectations are clearly defined in advance, no after the fact”… Mark Peterson

What is the ONE thing you want people to do on your site.  If they do not do that  - then what? 

Do I have Data Integrity?  You need to pick one program and stick with it to track your trends.

Goals:  You Define It!

Segmentation - the principle that “people aren’t cows”  we don’t move in herds, they move randomly.  Segment on what they are looking for..

Red Shirt Phenomenon!
Crew of 430 on Star Trek.  59 total death on the 5 years.  Red shirts had 72.8% of deaths (43 deaths).  Now that’s just numbers… what can we do with that number?

Lets dig in.  If you beam down on the planet, 57.5% of the time you die if you go down with Capt. Kirk.  However if Capt. Kirk meets an alien woman, the rate of survival rate increased to 84%. 

Another Example:
Segmentation is different than what brings the person into your site.  Example:  User types in “digital camera” and came in on that, but they are thinking about megapixels, brands, price, size, etc.  Someone types in MP3 - but they are also thinking of ipod, flash drive, cost, gigs, etc.  The thing now to realize is that the conversion rate for each of these is different because the segmentation is different.  Get rid of “overall conversion rate” for a site.  Segment on the phrase!  Then segment further!  But just by segmenting on a first few intial keywords can help you understand if users are finding what they are looking for.

3 C’s of Analytics
Context, Comparison, & Contrast.
Context of what people are looking for, who’s coming, where they are coming for.
Then do a comparison & contrast.  What’s different, what’s the same.  Don’t care about the industry average or competitor.  Your segments tell you more about you!

Numbers without context are just number.  More data points give more context. 

Building the context.  You need to look at the stats (time on site, pages viewed, conversions, goals), but look at it by Segment (blogs, keywords, referrals). 

6 Initial Reports - by Segment
1.  Conversion Rate
2.  Top keyword “groups” from Search Engines
3.  Top Referring URL’s
4.  Content Popularity
5.  Clink Density / Overlay
6.  Bounce Rate

If your analytics can’t do segmentation, dump it and get one that can.  Matt says, he can guarantee this will pay for itself in 3 months, if you find one that can segmentation.  Forrester survey showed that companies had an 900-1200% ROI increase by investing in an analyst.

You need to get a value on the cost of the lead.  If you don’t attach the value, you don’t know what the “R” is.  You need to attach a value to actions taken on your website.

1.  Start with a Question
2.  Segment by Verticals & Acquisition Method
3.  Measure each Segment
4.  Compare the Results
5.  Put the Result in context
6.  Focus on Business Value

The worst thing you can do is have this information and not do anything.  Use this information.

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Apr 21
Unleashed: Blogging for Businesss
in Search Engine Guide
Comments Off

by Diane Aull

Mack opened with the example of Stormhoek (a winery). They were looking for a way to reach out to bloggers, and came up with the idea of giving 100 bloggers each a bottle of wine. They had some stipulations: must be a blogger in certain locations, must have been blogging for a certain period of time, etc. Didn’t require them to blog about the wine.

The result was that bloggers not only started talking about the wine, but blogging about how great it was to be included in the conversation. What was interesting was even bloggers who didn’t get the wine were blogging about how great it was for bloggers to be included in the conversation.

In less than 12 months, sales doubled.

So they started thinking about what to do for the next year. They decided to sponsor 100 “geek dinners” (meetups of bloggers at various conferences).

By the end of the next year, sales were up fivefold, and the increase has continued as they have continued to engage bloggers.

It’s all about engaging in conversations with your customers. If you don’t do it, someone else will.

You need to be aware of what bloggers are saying about you. Google Blog Search is one way — search on your company name or on terms that are of interest to you and subscribe to the search results either via email or RSS. Any time a blogger posts something including those phrases, you’ll know about it.

Tweetscan does pretty much the same thing for Twitter. These two things are a quick way to see what’s being said about you online.

That allows you to respond, if necessary. Say thank you, correct an error, join in the conversation.

Should you blog?

  1. Why do you want to blog? Are you trying to push marketing, or do you want to engage in a conversation with your customers?
  2. Do you have the staff to blog? It will take some serious time and manpower to do it right. You can still monitor and engage bloggers even if you don’t have the staff to blog yourself.
  3. Do you have the time to blog? Same consideration as above. You can’t start it up for a couple of weeks, then dump it for awhile because things get busy, then expect to be able to come right back to it. You have to make a consistent time commitment.
  4. Can you accept comments? You will get feedback, and you have to not only accept it, but encourage it. Some people may leave comments you might not like, but you have to give them the leeway to do that. Trying to shut them down will not work.

Elements of a successful blog

  1. Content: Extremely important. Look at it from the reader’s point of view. Tie your content in to what your readers are looking for. Example of Kodak’s A Thousand Words blog — it focuses not on Kodak cameras, but on taking better pictures.
  2. Posting Schedule: You will eventually find out some days of the week (generally, the middle of the week) will be better than others. Find out what days are best for you, and try to have new content coming up on those days.
  3. Comments: It’s okay to moderate comments, but you need to moderate as quickly as possible. Make a habit of replying, especially when someone asks a question. Drop regular commenters and email thanking them for their participation, and comment on their blogs in turn. They’re helping you create content, and you need to show some appreciation for that.
  4. Sidebar elements: Consider having all your contact information there. Wal*Mart has a “checkout the authors” section with pictures of the people who write on their blog. Have a picture of yourself and a link to your bio to help people get to know who you are. Recent visitors, recent comments, subscription links. For subscription links, offer plenty of options. Include a blogroll: links to blogs you interact with, blogs you know your readers are reading, not just your own stuff (example of Dell’s blog that doesn’t blogroll to anything Dell-related). Keep the focus on your reader and what they want to know/see.

Measuring the ROI of Blogging

Traffic and subscribers: You need to look at both of these together to get a true picture of your readership. For instance, traffic might be flat, but subscribers is growing. That might mean people are finding you through search or other means, and immediately subscribing (so they’re reading through an RSS feed and not showing up on your actual site traffic).

Links: Technorati will show you how many blogs are linking to you in the past six months. See which posts get the most links and try to figure out why. You want things to increase, but it’s important to know why they’re increasing.

Comments: Probably more important than either traffic or links. If the number of comments per post is going up, this is a sign of an engaged audience. You can see which posts get the most comments — these are topics your readers are interested in.

Grow your blog by leaving it.

The point is to interact with your visitors in their space: comment on their blogs, follow them on Twitter, link to them on FaceBook. Use social media tools in the same way (and for the same reason) as your readers do.

It’s a reciprocal thing. You leave thoughtful intelligent comments on their blogs, and they’ll eventually come back and leave comments on yours. Don’t wait for them to come to you — you go out and find them.

You don’t have to blog to engage bloggers.

He gave the example of Chris Thik and his Movie Marketing Madness blog. Someone from Universal Studios was monitoring the blog space and saw Chris had been writing about the Miami Vice movie already, so contacted him and gave him a half-hour of time to talk more about the movie. Chris thought it was so cool and posted about it — and within a day or so, at least 20 bloggers had picked up on it, all talking about how smart/cool it was for this PR person to be monitoring the blogosphere and be willing to engage the blogger.

It’s still pretty rare that it happens, enough so that it stands out in the minds of bloggers and attracts much positive attention. So even if you don’t have a blog, engage bloggers who are talking to your audience already.

Why blogging really matters

Mack had dozens, maybe hundreds of people he’s met only online, so he set himself a goal to attend more conferences to get to know people in person. It was an amazing experience. People will go halfway around the world to meet people who are technically “strangers” (in that they’ve never met face to face before).

The affinity people have for the best bloggers just has to translate into something for the businesses they blog for.

The real value of blogging is that it allows people to connect with other people.

Points to remember

It’s not about the tools, it’s about the conversations and connections that the tools facilitate.

The conversation monetizes itself. Tim Jackson from Masi Bicycles says he’s doubled the sales of his brand in a year, almost entirely on the strength of the community that’s evolved around his personal blog. He only advertises a tiny bit, and it’s not even a corporate blog directly promoting the brand, yet it’s had a huge impact on sales.

Join your community. Don’t worry so much about promoting yourself. Focus on becoming an active part of the community.

Q&A

What blogging platform do you recommend? Mack uses Blogger, and has found a lot of ways to tweak it. He knows a lot of people are fond of WordPress, and if he had to do it all over again, he’d probably go with WordPress, but he’s happy with Blogger.

What to do if you don’t think you have something interesting to say? Should you try to answer questions, drive links back to pages, what? You have something interesting to say. It’s just a matter of finding out what that is. You can promote yourself if you do it in the context of providing the information your readers are looking for. If you’ve been getting questions via email, try answering some of those online.

What about having a blog as part of your “regular” website? Mack doesn’t think it’s necessary to have a separate blog site, but you can if you want. Either way should work well.