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What is it?

Technorati (from the words ‘technology‘ and ’literati‘) is a blog directory with a search engine. It’s most useful feature is that it allows you to search for blogs on the topics of interest to you. And they are given a ranking or rating. You can browse the top 100 blogs or browse by category, and there are also links to the most popular posts that day. If you set up a profile you can organise your favourites, or simply subscribe to them using a Feed Reader like Google Reader.

It was originally the place for real-time search of blogs, but now Google and others are in the frame there. Now, Technorati appears to have changed focus to being a blog itself and takes new writers on board. So this is an opportunity to share your message.

The Technorati Authority of a blog is based on the number of blogs linking to it over the previous 6 months. It has enormous reach, as you can see from the stats below:

Do you need it?

Having your Business Blog listed with Technorati offers the potential to get you more traffic.

Get your blog on Technorati

To get your blog listed, you need to get an account with them (easily done) and ‘claim your blog’. To verify that you are the owner of the blog, Technorati ask you to place a piece of code in a blog post, like this:

2EY4WD35VWQV

They then verify the site, though this can take some time.

So what can a Business Blog do for you? How can it return the cost in setting it up and the on-going investment in time in updating it? Does it suit your business? 

Here’s a 10 point guide to your own part of the blogosphere.

Why blog for business?

1.  A Blog offers you the opportunity to show how much you know (though not to sound like a know-all..)! It presents you with a platform where you can establish yourself as an authority in your field. 

Would you prefer to do business with someone you don’t know and aren’t sure how much they know about what they’re doing? Or with someone who has a personality and seems to know what they’re talking about?

2.  ‘Content is king’: The old adage rides again. One of the key benefits of a Business Blog is in the SEO. The regular content updates on your site (via posts to your blog) attracts the search engines. The more frequently you post, the more frequently you will be crawled by the bots (search engines). It offers you the opportunity for more keyword placement, allows you to interlink your pages as you link back to your own pages and other posts. All of which will drive more traffic to your site.

‘Sharing is caring’: (we’re full of pithy aphorisms today). As people come to your blog and it becomes popular, you will get people linking back to it from other sites as they share your content, thereby getting ‘deep links’ back to your site. All good SEO.

3.  A blog allows you to share information with your customers and prospects and others interested in the same area and it can act as a channel for news updates relating to your business. 

4.  It also gives you the chance to interact with your customers and prospects. You can ask questions and receive feedback via the comment forms on your blog. You can ask questions, perhaps about new products, and answer questions. Your customers and potential customers can engage with you in an informal way. They are then more likely to do business with you subsequently.

 How do I set it up?

5.  WordPress is a wonderful blogging platform.

WordPress

This is an open-source software (ie. free) which can be installed very easily. The software is easy to use with a user-friendly CMS (customer management system) and comes out-of-the-box with all the blogging functionality you need – posts structure, tags, categories, comment forms etc. You can use categories to organise your posts. So, if a visitor is interested in a particular topic, they can view posts by Category. You can also use Tags to give a more granular way to search through your posts. Comments can be moderated, with options for different levels, so that you might moderate the first comment of a visitor and let the others through automatically, or you may choose to moderate all comments. So no nasty or spammy type comments.

Plug-ins are available to control spam, optimise for search engines (SEO) and sharing buttons, aswell as many others. Sharing buttons are important to allow your content to be linked to across the blogosphere, this will bring you more traffic as time goes on.

6.  For SEO benefits, it is important to have your blog hosted on your own website. You can quickly set up a blog on wordpress.com or blogger.com, but these will not bring traffic to your own website. 

How to I blog successfully?

7.  The success of any blog depends on the goals starting out. First of all decide what your content will relate to and determine who your target audience is. Your business blog should keep to topics which are of interest to your target audience and are within your realm of expertise.

8.  The blog must be regular. Some blogs start off well, but after a few months, the posts taper off and the benefits are lost. Start how you mean to continue and decide how often you are going to post, and stick to it. It should be scheduled as an activity, and not something to be done when you have a few minutes free (because you never will have!). The posts do not have to be done by one person, as long as the person writing is in a position of knowledge on the topic.

8.  Use keywords in your blog titles to increase your SEO. Each post has it’s own web page and URL and these are known as permalinks and do not change. So, having a keyword in the URL of the post is beneficial for SEO and as people link to the post, the link remains in place and will not change as time goes on. This is important for search engines, as they don’t like to have pages indexed that subsequently have broken links.

9.  Make it easy for visitors to subscribe to your blog. Have a RSS feed option and an option to subscribe by email. FeedBurner is a free service which allows blog subscriptions by email and is easy to place on your site.

10.  Write in an engaging way and keep it short and snappy. Structure your posts so that the reader can see at first glance what it’s about. (No-one wants to see what you had for breakfast or what you thought about it.)

• keep sentences short
• use headings 
• use bullet points
• use active verbs
• ask questions and look for feedback
• highlight key words and phrases
• link to relevant sources or other posts
• have personality!

Thinking of outsourcing your Blog?

If you’re thinking of outsourcing your blog, then beware. A blog is not likely to be successful if the person writing it is not close to the subject matter and it will quickly become evident.

And don’t consider setting up a fake blog to promote your business. These ‘flogs‘ (fake blogs) will only serve to undermine your reputation when you get found out – which you probably will. They are akin to ‘infomercials‘ and ‘advertorials’.

See examples of Business Blogs in the Irish Blog Awards Shortlist for 2010.

It’s getting closer to real-time. Google now has a real-time feed from Twitter showing a scrolling feed as people are tweeting on the given search term.

Even Blog postings are indexed practially straight away. Our post on ‘deep links’ was indexed within an hour and displayed in Google’s search results:

How fast is your new content being indexed?

Business Blogs are increasingly being seen by many businesses as a useful way of engaging with viewers. They can be an effective way of informing site visitors/customers, and of developing relationships. At it’s simplest, a blog can be used for the company’s PR, to post regular updates on what’s newsworthy within the company. Alternatively, it can be used to inform viewers, and show that the business is an industry leader, by regular posts on what’s happening in that particular sector.  A blog can illustrate that the business is an expert in the field by showing that it is up to date with innovations and conditions relating to the business.

But a business blog is not appropriate for every business. However, one new business I’ve seen lately where it is relevant is feelgoodscarves.ie.  This recently launched web site is an online shop, but one with a difference. The products are hats and scarves, and the target market are people who are experiencing hair loss, generally due to either alopecia or cancer therapy. The target audience is also female. This is a sensitive issue and potential customers would  benefit from a personal relationship – one which can offer perhaps some empathy, advice, information and sharing. To this end, the woman behind the site, Catherine O’Sullivan, has created her own blog. The blog is accessed from the shopping site, but is hosted on Blogger.

A blog such as this allows shows the personal face behind the business, and allows a relationship to be developed. The comments allow viewers give feedback, both on products and on their personal experiences, the sharing of which is relevant on this particular shopping site.

The other advantage of a business blog, for any business, is in terms of search engine rankings. A regularly, and relevantly, updated blog will be picked up by search engines and will score more highly in organic search results returned than a similar site without a blog.  Search engines like to have new, relevant, content to index. They love blogs!

Of course, the critical thing in making a business blog successful is to keep it current. Regular posting is essential. After that, relevance and good writing are required to keep an audience engaged.

For excellent resources about starting a Business Blog, visit Mark White’s Business Blog.

When you write a post to your blog, it has a permalink assigned to it, so that it can be found – a permanent link. This is the URL which links directly to the blog post. The unchanging nature of the link means that your blog post can be referenced by other blogs, articles and shared, at any time.

However, the way these permalinks are constructed is critical if you want your posts to be found by search engines.

Many blog posts will have a default structure which lists the URL as something like this:

     www.productsgalore.com/?p=99

and this will be your 99th blog post.

This is entirely uninteresting for search engines – and not many people want to know more about the number ’99!

So, customising your permalink is critical if you want to be found. The most useful format for most people will probably involve using the Category, and perhaps, Tag, with the post name. The category will give the search engines something relevant to use to index the post. The tag can further refine it.

If your blog is news oriented, then a date and post name based permalink might be more appropriate.

However, if your post belongs to more than one category, then it is the catetory which was created first that will be used. This is the one with the lowest Category Id no. If the post belongs to a parent and child category, then both will be displayed, parent first, then child.

To increase your SEO, have relevant keywords in your post title. This gives the search engines more to index.

If you have a long descriptive title, which will look too long and clumsy for a URL, then use a post slug. WordPress offers this means of shortening the post name to a name you want to appear in the URL. For instance, the title of this post has been shortened to ‘enhance-blog-searchability’.

For WordPress blogs, this customising can easily be done on the Settings panel, as part of the Admin functions, using variables. See the WordPress Codex for a list of the possible variables.

Once, the format is set, try not to change as you wil lose those that have linked to you and search engines are then not indexing you correctly.

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In response to the current water shortages, Dun laoghaire Rathdown County Council are using a Blog to inform residents and businesses about the status of water supply interruptions. The blog, called dlremergencyupdates, is being used to convey up to the minute information about where water has been cut off, and when it is anticipated to be back on.

The council have been quick to see the usefulness of a blog as a means of letting people know what’s happening to their water (well they can probably tell the water’s off when they turn the tap on!). Regular updates are being posted. The blog is hosted on Blogspot, one of the most popular blogging platform and there’s a link to the blog from the Council’s main web site.

Blogging

A blog can be set up on a site like Blogspot in a matter of minutes. The advantage is that it can be updated easily, the posts are immediate (in real-time), no technical knowledge is required and the cost is zero!

Well done DLRCoCo!

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New Year’s Eve Fireworks at the London Eye

Video content can be easily added to your Blog by using YouTube. The video can be hosted on YouTube, that is, it actually resides on their servers. The advantage of this is two-fold, firstly, you are not using your own storage space, and secondly, you are not responsible for the content. The latter is important with reference to data protection and intellectual property ownership.

For example, here we can add the video for the sparkling firework display held over the London Eye on New Year’s Eve.

With WordPress 2.9 video can be embedded from a number of sources (including YouTube, Flickr, Google Video etc), by merely typing the URL in the post (on it’s own line and without hyperlinking).

It was like snowing stars!

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