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Blogging to Drive Business: Create and Maintain Valuable Customer Connections
- By Eric Butow, Rebecca Bollwitt
- Published Jan 7, 2010 by Que.
- Copyright 2010
- Pages: 192
- Edition: 1st
- eBook (Watermarked)
- ISBN-10: 0-7897-4758-8
- ISBN-13: 978-0-7897-4758-7
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Product Author Bios
Eric Butow is CEO of Butow Communications Group (BCG), a Web design and online marketing firm in Jackson, California. Eric has written a wide variety of computing books since 2000, and his latest titles include User Interface Design for Mere Mortals, How to Succeed in Business Using LinkedIn, as well as custom For Dummies titles for F5 Networks and Hewlett-Packard. When Eric isn’t writing or running his business, you’ll catch him reading and enjoying the weather of the Sierra foothills.
Rebecca Bollwitt is the co-founder of sixty4media, which specializes in WordPress design and development as well as social media consulting in Vancouver, British Columbia. Rebecca has been blogging since 2004 on Miss604.com, and podcasting about music and hockey since 2005.Miss604.com was voted “Best Vancouver Blog” of 2009 in The Georgia Straight and in 2008, she was listed within the top ten “Most Influential in Canadian Social Media” by Profectio.com. She has organized social media conferences and charity fundraisers, including Blogathon Vancouver, Twestival Local, and the Best of 604 Awards.
Use Blogging to Supercharge Sales, Customer Loyalty, Innovation, and Profits
“To connect with today’s buyer, you need to stop pushing your message out and start pulling your customers in. And there is no better tool for this than the blog! Blogging to Drive Business is an essential guide for any business wishing to use a blog to attract a steady stream of inbound opportunities.”
–Paul Dunay, Global Managing Director of Services and Social Marketing, Avaya Inc.
Blogging can help you deepen customer loyalty, reach new customers, gain indispensable feedback, and drive more sales. This no-nonsense guide shows how to craft a business blog that does all that, and more–building your business and increasing your profits. Top e-marketers and business bloggers Eric Butow and Rebecca Bollwitt help you define clear goals, generate the right content with the right tools, attract visitors, build communities, and avoid costly mistakes. They draw on their own extensive experience, as well as the work of innovators from companies such as Intel, Wal-Mart, Google, HP, and BusinessWeek. Whatever your role in the business, you’ll learn how to:
• Launch a blog that truly represents the best of your business
• Create a comprehensive, long-term blogging strategy
• Staff your blogging initiative
• Integrate blogs with other offline and online marketing programs
• Use your blog to drive customers and prospects to the business
• Push up-to-the-minute information to customers via RSS
• Build a thriving online community–and learn from what it tells you
• Manage comments (and decide whether to have them)
• Utilize podcasts, vlogs, microblogging, and other new techniques
• Gain business value from hot new Web 3.0 technologies, including widgets, mashups, personal agents, and the Semantic Web
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
How This Book Is Organized 2
Conventions Used in This Book 3
Web Pages 3
Special Elements 3
There’s More Online 4
1 Why Are Blogs So Important? 5
Media Growth Is in One Area: Online 6
Get the Message Out 6
Blog Popularity 8
Hello,World! 8
Promote Products and Services 10
Reach People 12
Keep Pushing Content 13
Drive People to the Blog 13
Crowdsourcing 13
Case Studies: Intel and Adidas 15
Intel Inside Scoop Blog 15
Adidas Soccer MySpace Blog 17
Summary 21
2 Leveraging Your Blog with Marketing Tools 23
Online Marketing 24
Web Site 24
E-Mail Marketing 24
More Work… and Potential Solutions 25
Offline Marketing 29
Pushing Information via RSS 31
Getting Customers to Subscribe 33
Taking Care of Your Readers 33
Case Studies 34
City of Arvada 34
The Sacramento Bee 36
Summary 38
3 Creating a Blogging Strategy 39
Blogging Platforms 40
WordPress.com 40
TypePad 42
Vox 44
Blogger 44
LiveJournal 45
Blog Software 46
Finding the Blog Best for Your Business 49
Vlogs 49
Photoblogs 50
Podcast Blogs 51
Tumblelogs 52
Microblogs 53
Moblogs 55
Combining Blogs with Other Networking Sites 56
MySpace 56
Facebook 57
LinkedIn 58
Twitter 59
Case Studies 60
BusinessWeek 60
KCBS Radio, San Francisco 62
Summary 64
4 Blogging Responsibly 65
Listen to Your Audience 66
Two-Way Discussions 66
Listening by Sharing 67
Tools to Help You Listen 69
Comments and Responding to Them 74
Comment Forms 74
When to Moderate Comments 74
Negative Feedback Can Help You Grow 76
Dealing with Negative Feedback 77
Case Study: Molson Coors Brewing Company 78
Summary 81
5 Finding Topics to Write About 83
Writing Blogs for the Wider World 84
Creating an Industry Resource Blog 84
Create an Online Community 86
Case Study: Canucks Fan Zone 88
Creating an Internal Blog (or Blogs) for Your Company 90
Keep People Informed 90
Internal Blogs for Project Management 91
Product Blog (External) 92
Summary 94
6 Who Will Write the Blog? 95
Writing from Within a Company 96
Identifying Authors 96
Client Services and Tech Support 99
Authentic Content 101
Hiring a Blogger 102
Tips for Hiring a Blogger 102
Hiring a Blogger from Your Industry 103
Create a Blogging Position 104
Case Study: Linda Bustos: An Elastic Blog from Elastic Path 107
Summary 110
7 Getting Eyeballs to Your Blog 111
Writing Effectively 112
Editing for Word Count and Brevity 112
Be Human 114
Be Readable 115
Design 116
Reading Blogs Helps You Write Blogs 117
Commenting: More than Leaving a Calling Card 117
Blogger Outreach 118
Linking Out to Get Incoming Links 119
Search Engine Optimization 120
Blogrolls 120
Linking to Other Blog Posts 121
Write Interesting Content 122
Highlight Industry Players 122
Company Profiles 124
Case Study: Vancouver Opera 125
Being Searchable 126
Check Your Current Rank 127
Clean URLs 128
Keywords and Tags 128
Promotion 129
Social Media Networks 129
Announcing Your Blog Launch to Other
Communities 129
Target Your Newsletter Members 130
Press Releases 130
Summary 131
8 Getting Interactive with Multimedia Blogging 133
Offering Multiple Forms of Content 134
Content for All 134
Private or Members-Only Content 141
Podcasting 142
Screencasts 146
Case Study: Blendtec 147
Summary 150
9 Taking Advantage of Web 3.0 Blogs 151
An Overview of Web 3.0 Technologies 153
Wikipedia 154
APIs and Widgets 155
Mash It Up! 156
Integrating Semantic Technologies 158
Make Agents Work for Your Blog 159
Case Study: UrbanSpoon.com 160
Summary 162
A Important Blogging Sites 163
Technorati 164
News Aggregators 164
Podcatchers 166
Ping Search Engines 167
Want to Advertise on Blogs? 167
Getting More Blog Traffic 169
Software as a Service Product 171
Index 175
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