I was looking up some general information on the benefits of small business blogging, and came across this post that gave some great statistics.

Small Business Trends explained the statistics in the following way.

Small businesses that blog have:

• 55% more visitors to their website.
• 97% more links to their website which is a primary factor in where your website shows up in search results. (Want a higher ranking, get quality links to your site).
• 434% more indexed pages – this is the number of pages that show up in search engines. Just because you have a site doesn’t guarantee it is being indexed (findable). Just because some of your pages are in search engines doesn’t mean all of your pages are.

Here’s the general idea:

It would appear that business blogging is potentially a great avenue to invest in. However, I agree with Small Business Trends that business blogging isn’t for everyone, especially those who are new to the social media arena. Here are some questions to ask yourself before beginning a blog:

1. Do you know your audience? Who are you writing to, and what do they need to know?

2. How often should you post? Do you know your industry blogging standards?

3. How will you generate content? Will you have the time to devote to writing blog posts?

If you’re unsure of the answers to any of these questions, perhaps you should consider hiring a consultant to get your social media efforts underway. (note: shameless plug)

On November 6th, I’ll be working with Terri from Creative Blog Solutions for a Social Media Soiree, where small businesses and non-profits can come learn more about different social media platforms as they apply to best business practices.

One of the best parts about this venture is the social media marketing campaign surrounding the promotion of this event!

Terri is very active on several social networks and the marketing campaign is consistent and integrated across various platforms, a perfect demonstration of social media marketing.

For example, once you register for the event, you can post the event information on Facebook, while still on the registration page. This function is enabled through Facebook Connect.

Additionally, we’re using the hashtag #socialmediasoiree on Twitter,  so as we’re promoting the event, we’ll be able to link to pre-existing conversation about the event on Twitter through the hashtag. Terri also added the hashtag to Twubs, a Twitter hashtag aggregator that creates groups from the hashtag and keeps track of the conversation on an external site from Twitter. Twubs is great for aggregating data from previous Twitter conversations. While you can conduct searches on Twitter for these hashtags, Twubs may be an easier tool to see the information.

I’m working on getting the Twubs conversation embedded into my Web site, so you’ll have to come back and check it out when I get it up on the site, or we can discuss at the event on November 6th!

I’m currently blogging in several locations. As such, I’m planning on beginning a new series on Sundays on this blog to let you know where I’ve been posting in the previous week.

Community Marketing Blog

Semantic Web: An Intro

Shoe Girls

Fractures, Feet and Crocks, Oh my!

Bloggers Block

Major League Baseball Tryouts

You know what really grinds my gears? Twitter Followers.

Musings

If this arm were a GPS, it would be *my* GPS. It’s just that broken.

The Blog-off contest at Community Marketing Blog ended on the 30th of May.

Over the course of the two week competition, I ended up posting 3 times. These posts ranged in scope. One covered mobile advertising (or ‘app’vertising). It discussed the recent trends in the mobile marketing industry and how companies can increase brand awareness through effective mobile applications.

The second post talked about journalism in the social media era. I talked about how traditional journalism is being replaced by citizen journalism and how I thought this was a good thing in terms of marketing and branding campaigns. Citizen journalism increases transparency and strength of message from influencer bloggers.

My third post talked about the importance of digital monitoring due to digital WOM (word of mouth). It also touched on how companies must understand their online digital conversation before they engage their customers online.

I learned a lot from this competition. I’m proud of the conversation that was generated in the comments as well as how many people read the posts!

In my next post, I’ll talk about some of the ‘blogger best practices’ and my strategy for the competition.

Also, I’ll write a post and let you know who the winners of the contest are. If I am picked to be a permanent writer to the blog, I’ll have a press release with my bio sent out to 1+ million people on Linked-In and other prominent industry blogs. It will be very exciting.

A couple of months ago, I came across Wordle, a word cloud generator. Word clouds create images using words (profound, I know). The larger the word indicates the more times it has been used throughout a particular area of text.

Wordle has a variety of options that allow for the creation of beautiful, unique word clouds. For example, users can cut and paste a section of text or use a URL to generate the text of their cloud. Colors, fonts and direction of text are other options that may be used.

I think the best element of this program is that it looks at the entire text to create the tag cloud. This function differs from most blog tag clouds because typically tag clouds only generate from the ‘tags’ of a blog post, not the entirety of the text within the post itself.

I told myself that I would use Wordle on my blog a number of times to visually represent what I write about. Admittedly, I went a little overboard and created three Wordle tag clouds this time. I hope you can see why!

I may also make a word cloud for one of my favorite songs or poems and update this post later. I’d love to see links to your Wordles, or if you know of another word/tag generator, please comment below!  Thanks! Now, without further adieu:

All images created by the Wordle.net web application are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Notice: This blog is not politically affiliated. This blog post does not support nor condone the political initiatives of any political party. This post is using the Web 2.0 features of the present administration as a positive case study of new media use.

Now that stakeholders have the opportunity to engage with one another on the Digital WoM forefront, it is the responsibility of the company to react to what the stakeholders are saying.

It is important to note that by “react” I don’t mean ‘talk back to’ or ‘defend your company’ to these stakeholders. By “react” I mean be cognizant of the stakeholder’s concerns and allow these concerns to be an element of future decision making.

Take for example, the Obama Administration. Obama understood that his stakeholders wanted an increased voice in the government. His campaign acknowledged this desire and encouraged individuals to add their own unique perspective on his campaign platforms through the submission of user generated content (UGC) on social media platforms.

Following his election into office, he established a White House blog that allowed for users to submit their opinions. He promised that the government would increase communication, transparency and participation. So far, the Administration has sought to uphold this goal, despite a few set backs.

My point? If the obsolete, stagnant and Mezosoic-esque government (see fig. 1.1) can acknowledge the needs of its stakeholders and respect the voice of its public, why can’t you learn about the platforms and their implications for your company?

Fig. 1.1