Blogging for Business
By Stephan Spencer,
Founder & President of Netconcepts,
Founder of InnSite
© 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Blogs
 Online journal, organized in reverse chronological order
 2.5 billion Google search results for “blog”
 3 types, according to Seth Godin
– News blogs, Writers blogs, “Our blogs”
 The community of bloggers = blogosphere
 Blogosphere is rich with interlinkages
– Bloggers always cite (and link to) their sources in their posts
– Links also appear in “blogrolls”, “trackbacks”, comments,
RSS
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Why Blog?
 Search engines (Google in particular) love blogs
 Bloggers think of you as “one of them”
– More links
– More favorable coverage in their blogs
 Journalists read blogs
 Readers get to know you
– Gives a more human face to your business than a traditional website
– Provides insight into your personality
– Builds trust and rapport
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Why Blog?
 Can position you as a “thought leader”
– Get invited to speak at conferences, author articles, etc.
– Builds your credibility
 Can get readers “hooked” and coming back for more,
thus further burning your brand into their minds
– Subscribed to your RSS feed
– Subscribed to your email ‘blogletter’ (e.g. FeedBlitz)
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
How My Blog Has Benefited Me
 Inquiries from prospects
 Speaking gigs and PR
– e.g. a blog entry was taken verbatim by DM News and
published
 Credibility & thought leadership status
– e.g. a recent client chose us over a competitor for online
marketing services partly because of my blog
– e.g. recruiting panelists for Thoughts Leaders Summits
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
How My Blog Has Benefited Me
 Upselling existing clients on additional services
 Links from popular bloggers, in posts and in blogrolls
– e.g. Robert Scoble of Microsoft
 Business development & relationship building w/ other
bloggers
– e.g. business referrals, speaking opportunities, etc.
 Search engine visibility
– e.g. #1 for “rss and seo”, top 10 for “blog optimization”
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
My Blog’s Traffic Trend
Pageviews:
Visitors:
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
What happened
on June 1,
2004?
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Unwritten Rules of Blogging
 Be transparent and honest
– Don’t plagiarize, hire a ghostwriter, misrepresent, etc.
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Allow the submission of comments & respond to them
Quote / link to your sources
Admit to your mistakes. Don’t try to erase them.
Disclose any conflicts of interest
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Encourage Bloggers to Link to You
 Offer a niche-specific blogroll, tool, How-To, or
compilation of news stories
 Post a scoop
 Expose a story as flawed or a fraud
 Be a contrarian about a story, product, or prominent
blogger’s opinion
 Be humorous. Good topics include a bizzare pic of your
subject, “10 things I hate about…”, and “You know
you’re a when…”
Source: Performancing
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Encourage Bloggers to Link to You
 Publish or commission some original research
 Creative-Commons-license photos you made of an
event you’re blogging about
 Make available for free a theme, plugin or piece of
software
 Start a “meme” that others can replicate and that links
back to you (e.g. buttons/stickers/tools for
bloggers/webmasters to post on their sites, contests,
quizzes, surveys, etc.)
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Encourage Bloggers to Link to You
 And of course…
Have an RSS Feed!
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
RSS
 Better than the Inbox
– Unspammable content delivery channel to individuals
– Viable replacement for enewsletters
 Web-wide Syndication
– Propagate deep links that drive traffic and “search engine
juice”
 “You should be fired if you do a marketing site without
an RSS feed.” - Robert Scoble, Microsoft
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com
Slashdot
headlines
syndicated
on
Nanodot.org
sspencer@netconcepts.com
The top result
was thanks to
syndication via
RSS
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
How subscribers follow RSS
 Web-based aggregator
– Bloglines (now owned by Ask Jeeves), My Yahoo!, MyMSN,
MyFeedster, etc.
 Installed application
– NewsGator (Outlook plug-in), Sage (Firefox plug-in), Pluck
(IE plug-in), FeedReader, etc.
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
RSS
 What will help subscribers keep their finger on the pulse
of your business/industry and compel webmasters to
disseminate to their visitors?
– News alerts, latest specials, clearance items, upcoming
events, new arrivals, new articles, new tools & resources,
search results, a book’s revision history, top 10 best sellers,
project management activities, forum/listserv posts, recently
added downloads, …
– For blogs: latest posts, latest posts by category, latest
comments per post, …
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Subscribe to
search results
on MSN Search
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Subscribe to
search results
on Yahoo! News
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Subscribe to
deals with online
retailers
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Subscribe to
articles
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Subscribe
to
podcasts
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Subscribe to
a feed
personalized
to you
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Podcasts
 “Time shifted Internet radio”
 Mainly for downloading MP3 audio clips, but video can
be podcasted as well
 Podcast-capable RSS reader automatically downloads
audio/video clips and syncs them to your MP3 player
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Vlogs
 Vlog = Video blog
 Posts video clips on blog and
in RSS feed
 Subscribe to vodcast feed
with iTunes or FireANT vlog
reader
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Moblogging
 Sign up for a free
Flickr.com account
 Email photos from
your cameraphone to
your blog
 Subject line becomes
the title; message
body becomes the
body of the blog post
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Tagging
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Folksonomy = collaborative categorization by users
Tags = keywords applied to content by users or authors
Pioneered by Flickr & Technorati
Tag clouds – an alternative nav & great for SEO
Swickis & buzzclouds – by Eurekster
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Search Engine & Blogs
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Google has become “the operating system of the Internet”
Rankings can be manipulated
“Implied endorsement” effect
Combination of on-page and off-page factors
On-page
– Body copy, title tags, headings, etc.
 Off-page
– Links act like votes. Votes weighted (e.g. A-list bloggers).
– Link text very important (“Google bombing”)
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
SEO & Your Blog
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Naming your blog (Think: keywords!)
Titling your posts (Think: keywords!)
Writing your post content (Think: keywords!)
Linking to your blog (Think: keywords in the link text!)
– Add a link to your blog from your main site
– Links to you from Trackbacks or Comments won’t help
 Tagging your posts (Think: keywords!)
– To Technorati tag pages and internal tag pages too
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
SEO & Your Blog
 Your domain name
 Your URLs
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Case Examples
 Positive buzz
– President Carter’s blog
– Somerville Gates
– Voltaic backpack
 Negative buzz
– Raging Cow
– Kryptonite
– Dan Rather
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
President Carter’s blog
 8 days of blogging during a trip to West Africa
 138,000 results for “carter west africa blog” in Google
 Blog was marketed via press releases, through partner
organization Web sites, and via the Google AdWords program
 “garnered significant increases in visits to our site, resulting in an
average quadruple our normal daily average. We have sustained
a significant increase in Web traffic since February 2004” - Carter
Center
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Somerville Gates
 “a micro sendup of the saffron
extravaganza in New York's Central
Park”
 $3.50 in art supplies
 Received over 4 million hits
 Invitation from Tufts University for
juried art show
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Voltaic Backpack
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Solar-powered backpack from a small start-up
Blogging friend Treehugger blogged about it
Then got picked up by CoolHunting
Then got picked up by Gizmodo
A flurry of orders ensued.
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
In Summary
Welcome to the “conversational Internet”
Join the conversation, or be on the outside of it
Become more real and human to your visitors
Reap the benefits in more PR, better search engine
rankings, and more bookings
 Don’t want to? You risk becoming the next Kryptonite
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CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Thank You!
 It’s time for some Q & A!
 Put “blogging” on the back of your business card and
leave it with me if you would like a copy of these
Powerpoint slides
CONFIDENTIAL © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com