These are the top 5 reasons people tell me they do not want to blog:

• I’m too busy to blog and just don’t have the time
• I don’t know how to blog
• I don’t know what I would say on my blog
• Blogging is a waste of time with low ROI
• I don’t want others to see what I’m doing

Most people don’t mention the fear of blogging, but we all know it’s there, so we should probably add it to the list too.

My job is to help my clients overcome some of these hurdles – some are technical or may be addressed with the right process or tools.  The tough part, however, is to actually get people to blog and do it well.

I stumbled upon this quote from Josh Hanagarne on CopyBlogger which pretty much sums things up:

… there is one secret ingredient to the great blog recipe. And that secret ingredient is you.

via The Secret Ingredient to an Irresistible Blog | Copyblogger.

The point is, no matter how much training or coaching we take, how many great tools and systems we have set up to make blogging easy and effective, if you’re not into it, it’s just not going to work.

For me, it’s about writing and sharing content that I find interesting.  It’s exciting to discover something new, see people visit my site and interact with them along the way.  Oh, and it drives a lot of business.

What do you think?  Just because someone doesn’t want to blog, should they exclude it from their internet marketing strategy?

If you are not speaking to a particular niche, you might find that although overall traffic volume is high, engagement is low.

Here are 5 tactics to drive more targeted search engine traffic:

1. Use a long-tail keyword strategy when creating your content.  Think about what someone might use to find your content in Google and incorporate those phrases into your content.  For a more scientific approach use a tool like Google Keyword Search Tool or Market Samurai.
2. Consistently add new content.  Google likes new content and if you publish on a frequent basis, Google tends to index your site more regularly because you’re seen as more relavent.  Set up Google Webmaster Tools to monitor the rate with which Google indexes your site.
3. Add images to your posts and optimize them so Google Images can index them.  This not only adds visual interest to your posts but provides the necessary information so people can find your images when searching on Google.
4. Comment on other blogs and link back to related pages within your blog.  Many people make the mistake of only linking back to their home page.  Take the extra 10 seconds to link to an individual post instead so that Google has the opportunity to index backlinks to multiple pages throughout your site.  Try to comment on blogs that have a high Google PageRank and Follow tags.  Again, Market Samurai can help find these blogs.
5. Leverage your content and RSS feed by submitting posts to Friendfeed, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Technorati and other leading blog indexing sites.  Google tends to rank results from these sites higher in search results, thus giving you and edge on the competition.

These aren’t all inclusive, but do you think these tactics would help drive more targeted search engine traffic to your blog?

Tagging your images for search engine optimization is a great tactic to drive more targeted traffic to your site.

If your site is being indexed by Google, chances are your images will be indexed as well. I suggest you sign up for Google Webmaster Tools (free) just to make sure Google know you want your images indexed.

First, I tend to only use one image per blog post, so the optimization settings are pretty simple and only take about 10 seconds.

Once you’ve inserted your image you want to set the Title, Alt and Description tags to include your keywords or at least some description that relates to the topic of your content. Some content publishing systems, like Wordpress, allow you to right-click and set the tags, but you might have to look at the HTML in some cases.

For example, if I’m blogging about “homemade fishing lures”, my optimized code would look like this:

<img src=”homemadefishinlures.png” title=”homemade fishing lures” alt=”homemade fishing lures” description=”homemade fishing lures”>

Easy right? Give it a shot and track your image related traffic in Google Analytics.

What do you think? Do you tag your images for search engine optimization?

This is my 100th post on this blog, so I thought it would be fitting to review my daily process.  Let’s start with my goals.

My blogging and social media goals:

1. Stay informed of the latest news, trends and topics within my niche
2. Connect with other marketers, customers, and folks I find interesting
3. Share my thoughts and those of others with my network
4. Deliver valuable content to build my network, engage my market and grow my business online

Daily blogging, social media, and market engagement process:

1. I use Google Reader to find the latest news and keep my finger on the pulse of what happening within my niche.  I subscribe to dozens of news sources, popular blogs and Google searches to find relevant articles, with which I can share, comment on, or use as inspiration for my next blog post. I usually check Google Reader 2-3 times a day for 5 minutes each and complete 1-2 actions as a result.
2. I use this blog as the main source for content creation and distribution.  Creating content on my own domain allows me to maintain full control.  Sure I post information on Facebook and Twitter, but anything with substantial content resides on my blog.  I publish new posts every 1-2 days.
3. I use the Wordpress ping.fm plugin to automatically share my blog RSS feed with Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, and a few other popular social media and bookmarking sites.  Again, this allows me to maintain control rather than setting up 3rd party sites to receive my RSS feed.  If I ever want to turn off my stream, I can control this from one central dashboard in ping.fm.  Not everything flows through ping.fm – only content that I want to share with my entire network.
4. My iPhone is my Internet Marketing Remote Control.  I can manage Twitter, check Google Reader, update Wordpress posts, reply to comments on my blog, check in with Facebook friends and fans, snap images and record & publish podcast episodes from my iPhone with the click of a button.  Of course, I can also use email and talk on the phone.
5. At night, I like to use Google Reader to answer questions on Twitter from people looking for help.  I have several dozen search queries set up and RSS feeds organized in Google Reader to make this simple.  Answering people’s questions on Twitter allows my to meet new people, learn something new, and share content I find helpful.

Keys to Success with Blogging and Social Media

The keys to successfull blogging and social media vary, depending on your particular situation.  Here are a few things I find helpful:

1. Write original content.  It’s OK to quote others, but the majority of your content should be original.
2. Find a frequency of engagement that suits you and be consistent.
3. Reply to comments, messages, and mentions quickly.
4. Write as if you were talking with your reader, but keep search engine optimization in mind.
5. Proactively promote your content by leveraging your RSS feed and providing links for people to find you.
6. Have a content creation strategy to help define what you will talk about and how that unfolds over time.

I hope you find this helpful as you continue to define or improve your process for blogging and engaging your market online through social media.

Any thoughts?  What tools and process do you follow to increase your efficiency and effectiveness?

So, in my discussions there are three main lessons I reinforced with my clients:

1) Start small. It’s not necessary to write every day and your posts don’t need to be very long. Find your voice over time and see blogging as a journey.

2) Get over your fear. People may agree or disagree with what you have to say, but if you’re honest it’s unlikely that people will criticize you. Of course, depending on the subject and tone of your post this may vary. The point is, if you’re new to blogging don’t be afraid to get started and put your ideas out there. You may learn something in the process and meet new people as well.

3) Be optimistic and keep a postive mental attitude. I hear so many excuses why people don’t want to blog. For me it’s about helping others and reinforcing the learning I’ve had in my journey. No one likes a complainer so, look on the bright side and people are more likely to continue reading your blog and engage with you along the way.

That’s it – something to chew on for a couple days.

What do you think? Are these lessons you can relate to?

You may already have a good collection of content on your blog and it may just be a matter of repurposing that content and creating an ebook, an audio recording or a series of videos to package together into a cohesive product that readers can download for a fee.

… the biggest monetizing problem people face if they have a great relationship with their readers is they don’t know how to sell them something without turning them off.

via Lesson #10: Have Something to Sell (without losing your readers) | Copyblogger.

My goal this week is to brainstorm a few ideas for a product, identify content that I can repurpose, research my website visitor statistics for clues and put together a product I can have available for sale by Sunday night.  I expect it will be a good mix of text, audio and video.

Have you created a product for sale on your site?  How is that going?  Any advice for folks just getting started with there first product?

Listen or Download

Four advantages of Google Reader

1. Ability to track your industry by subscribing to popular blogs or RSS feeds that contain the latest news, trends and product information
2. Ability to share information with your social network via share button, shared custom Google Reader RSS feed or email link
3. Ability to save searches from Twitter to easily identify opportunity to engage with people asking for help on topics you understand
4. Ability to track mentions of you, your company, your brand or your products and service so you can jump in the conversation early and often.

How do you use Google Reader?  What other online tools do you use to accomplish these or similar tasks?

In other words, if you don’t have a blog, you’re missing out on perhaps the most powerful online marketing tool we have available today, regardless of whether you are focused on dominating one particular niche, or entering multiple small niches, or helping clients with their online marketing, or all of these things.

via My Notes From The Ed Dale Internet Marketing Seminar – Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak.

Yaro is correct, blogs provide serious marketing power.  They equal the playing field in many respects and provide a platform for individuals to compete with the big boys.  What’s more, search engines love blogs and if optimized, blogs can deliver website traffic much more readily than other forms of non-paid traffic.

What’s remarkable is that so many business owners still do not have a blog or if they have one they don’t post anything.  This blows my mind.  Some would rather pay for traffic I suppose – and don’t get me wrong there’s nothing wrong with that.  Paid traffic makes sense in some cases, but blogging almost always makes sense for a business.

Blogging really helps accomplish several things.

1. Blogging is a way to express your knowledge, demonstrate your skills and share information with your market
2. Blogging is a great way to grow your network
3. Blogging forces you to stay ahead of the curve within your industry
4. Blogging is a great strategy to drive search engine optimization
5. Blogging is a great way to control your content rather than posting independent thoughts across 3rd party sites

And yet, blogging is not “easy.”  It takes time, thought, and planning to do it well.  But once you map out a your content distribution strategy and even fill out a blogging editorial calendar it can be quite rewarding, both personally and for your business.

Corporate Facebook Pages

Customers who became a fan of DG on Facebook ended up being more loyal. Although they spent the same amount of money per visit, the frequency of their visits to DG increased. On an empirical scale, fans visited DG 20% more often then non-fans.

Fans were more likely to recommend DG to friends and had an average Net Promoter Score of 75, as compared to 53% for Facebook users who were not fans, and 66% for customers not on Facebook.

Fans had a higher emotional attachment to DG, 3.4 on a scale of 4, as compared to 3.0 for other customers.

via Report: Facebook Pages Create More Loyal Customers.

Personally, I have found Facebook Pages to be a great source for attracting prospects and engaging current customers.  My Page has under 100 fans, yet in two months this has translated into 4 new customers.

In my experience, the best Pages have a consistent flow of content ~ maybe one new post a day.  With so much activity flying by on Facebook these days, anything less frequent will be completely missed and could potentially hurt the brand.  Customers like consistency and if the sign up as a fan they are relying on your brand to deliver.

How’s your company Facebook Page doing?  Are fans engaging with your company on Facebook?

Publishing online video has vastly improved over the years and for a minimal investment you can easily shoot, upload and share video on the fly.  The two biggest barriers I most often see are 1) fear of criticism and 2) assumption that video takes a long time to produce.

I’ll admit, shooting video takes some nerve.  My advice is to practice.  If you need to, shoot a video everyday for 30 days and then start publishing.  This will give you the chance to become familiar with the tools and find your voice or individual level of comfort.

In terms of time required – true video can take longer than simply typing out a new blog post.  However, that doesn’t need to be the case if you’re willing to sacrifice perfection for efficiency.  You can easily shoot and post video right within Youtube or use a tool such as Seesmic.

So, what’s your experience been shooting video and what’s the reaction you’re getting from others?