Harlan Editorial

Back to square one: what is a blog, anyway? 

A friend, who remains anonymous –  but you know who you are! — mentioned that she needed remedial blog training. She was laughing, but seriously so. Jumping into this fast-moving river can scare even the warrior women amongst us away.

So, I googled and surfed a bit and found a solid, fundamental explanation of blogging.

Here ya go: it’s Darrell Zahorsky’s section on Small businesses in about.com. Look to the side of the article, “What a Blog Can Do for Your Small Business,” for a link to the “Anatomy of a blog.” Good info there. Also, scroll down the main page for his samples of well-done business blogs.

And THAT is one of the wonders of the Internet and the blog community: sharing this wealth of knowledge so we can all get a running start before we jump into that river. 

Tags: Blogging, Business blogs, Small Business by Judith
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Though the power of positioning may be in search engine optimization, the value resides in content. 

I haven’t optimized the Harlan blog yet. (That’s on purpose: I want to tackle the aspects of the blog one-by-one so we can all learn together.) But as I look further into small business blogs, I’m picking up more and more on search engine optimization. SEO has become a specialization in the field of Web development. It takes someone who has made a study of search engine algorithms and is hooked into info on any changes to them. It’s a detail-driven specialization.

Average SEO will get your name coming up on searches. Great SEO will get your name coming up high on the first page of a search. In my mind, great SEO is akin to buying the inside cover of a magazine versus letting the ad fall wherever it may. It’s worth the extra money and effort.

That said, I know I need to step away from the technical side of blog marketing for a bit. It’s easy for me, because I like a puzzle, to get drawn into the tech pieces, to add tag clouds and play with RSS feeds.

But it’s time to get back to what makes a blog valuable and popular. And that’s content.

Content is queen of Web 2.0. If you want clients and customers to come back to your site,

give them great content.

Free advice: Valuable content doesn’t just tell folks everything there is to know about your product. It gives them info, statistics, insight and links to the world around your product. For instance, if you sell organic shampoo, valuable content might include info about what goes into the major brands of non-organic shampoo and what those unpronounceable chemicals are. You might link to environmental sites with info on chemicals in the water system. In other words, follow the concerns of the organic shampoo customer, and provide rich content that they care about.

Tags: Business blogs, Free Advice, SEO by Judith
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Widgets put the fun into the functionality of a blog. 

I’ve been having fun with my small business blog today. Widgets — all those cool things you see in the sidebars of blogs — are seemingly in endless and in endlessly new supply.

I added one, a tag cloud, which you’ll see at your right. It’s much more fun than a prioritized list of categories, I think. (I left the categories in on the left, though, just to help slake the thirst and need of the more buttoned-down client. There’s bandwidth for all on the Web!)

I’ll put the calendar back up tomorrow. That’s a widget that used to live where the tag cloud is today. I moved a few of the other widgets around, lowered the search bar and raised the blogroll. Other widgets I’ve been exploring that might be appealing to you include links, contacts, forms, videos, photos, weather, and so much more! I bet you can find a widget to do almost anything you want for that sidebar of yours.

It’s easy to add one, too. It’s a matter of downloading it, uploading it onto your host, and clicking it to activate. It’s that easy in my software, Wordpress, anyway. And I don’t think it’s a gamble to bet that it’s easy in other blog software products, too. Most of the software is designed with non-techies in mind. That’s one of the aspects that makes blogging so enticing for content producers and small business entrepreneurs; it’s an end-run around the need for a full-time techie to be involved in the day-to-day upload process. Saves the techie budget for the big stuff.

Tags: Blogging, Functionality, Small Business by Judith
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If it’s not on the calendar, it’s not likely to happen. 

One of the biggest challenges to a blog is blogging. Yes, you read that right: the toughest part of a blog is taking time out to blog. As a small business, you’ve probably got a hundred tasks awaiting your personal touch at any minute of any business day. (I know I do.) And blogging adds another to that stack of to-do’s.

And that’s my challenge today, as I sit here on a Friday afternoon. It’s been a terrific week work-wise, which means that I’ve been working hard and steady, and I am ready to close up shop and kick back in my garden. Yet, I promised myself two blogs per week. That didn’t sound like a lot when I created my blog plan.

But it feels like a lot today.

Free advice and lessons learned: Before beginning a small business blog, write some blog times into your calendar. Actually put them in as appointments. And guard them against intrusion. It’s important, for Search Engine Optimization as well as for your conversation with your clients, to upload new, fresh blogs regularly.

Without a blog appointment, I can assure you that your blogging will keep being shunted aside for other, deadline-driven tasks. And you’ll find yourself staying late in your office on a fine, sunny, Friday afternoon and wondering, am I really whining about being too successful?

Tags: Free Advice, SEO, Small business blogging by Judith
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Here’s a quick way to sign in to Technorati, making sure that I claim my blog on Technorati begins to establish it there.

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/b2rhhdzru8” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a><a

A quick way to sign in suggested by Technorati is to post a comment on your site, include the link above, and then delete it.

I decided to leave it in, so you can see it; it’s a great sample of blog search sign-ups.

Tags: SEO by Judith
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Subscribing is possible, despite browser glitches. 

I love RSS Feeds and have a few set up on my browser, so I was appalled to learn that the RSS Subscribe button on my blog here was not working for everyone. (This is more of that golden opportunity for you to “learn from Judith’s mistakes” that I promised from the beginning.)

The RSS button works for some. Seems to work on Firefox, on some Internet Explorers, not others. It was one of those glitches that’s hard to track down because it’s inconsistent. So I went to the source: the guy that created the theme I’m using on this blog, Antbag. AKA Anthony.

Turns out, he’s not just a cool designer; he’s a very helpful guy. You can tune into our conversation on his blog (entries beginning Aug. 14). One terrific thing about blogging is that you hook up with some wonderful virtual colleagues along the blog trail. And Anthony’s one of the cool ones.

Free advice: In case you haven’t used it yet, RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) is a quick way to keep track of your favorite blog updates. I don’t have time, and I suspect most entrepreneurs don’t, to make daily visits to all of the sites that inform me on news, online marketing, Web PR, blog controversies, et al. Feeds allow you to scan the summaries or headlines and decide if you want to go for the whole article.

Back to my subscribe button journey: it works for me in Internet Explorer 7 but not on version 6; I upgraded to test that out. If it’s not working for you and you’re in no mood to fool around with upgrades and tests, here’s a workaround: copy this URL into your RSS feeds “add” window: http://blog.harlaneditorial.com/feed .  Also, either post a blog here or email me if you’re having trouble with that button. We will overcome!

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to work on the problem on my end to fix the doggone thing.

I also added a blog to my blogroll. Check out Marti’s Business Energetix blog. Insightful stuff.

Tags: Business blogs, Free Advice, RSS feeds by Judith
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Here’s a best practice I can already share: As you start building your site, build with relevant tags. 

I’m breaking away from my focus on the why’s and what-for’s of blogging for small businesses — all things I believe you have to be certain of before starting a blog — to look at one the tools of blogs: tags. You just can’t blog for long without a bit of insight into tags.

At first, I have to admit, I thought tags were just a formality. A nicety. Even an extra. But, oh, they are so not extra. Tags are the signposts of the blogosphere. Tags are some of the prime markers that search engines look for as they roam the Web seeking info for the customer who has just typed in keywords for your business and pushed the search button.

They’re your blog’s metatags, keywords that identify the content on your blog. To me as a content producer, the big difference between blog tags and Website metatags is simply where I put them. On a Website, I’ll have a list of keywords (metatags) that sit in the html code on every page that I want a search engine to land on. In my blog, those metatags are upfront as well as in the code. You’ll find them at the end of my entries.

And when you post a comment, you’ll see a list of categories to check off. These are your tags; by checking which ones apply, you’re flagging down the search engines. Oh, here’s another point: on my blog, the categories are also the tags.

Just for fun, check out Technorati, one of the biggest blog search engines of the moment. There’s a cool tag cloud on the right. You can tell immediately which tags are getting the most clicks; they’re the ones in bold and bigger than the rest. And then go to Del.icio.us to see how they list their top tags.

The next step is to do a bit of research to determine which tags in your field are coming up most often. Very simply, you want to have those tags on your site so you come up, too. The first thing I noticed is that my inclination to put blogging as a primary tag on my site was not so well-thought-out. Blog and blogs came up more heavily for me than blogging. So, I’ll be switching out my blogging tags to blog. But I’m also rethinking that one: do I need a blog tag on a blog? I’m also noticing that customers are typing in content producer more often when searching for professionals in my field than online content.

Tags are just the snow dusting the top of the iceberg when it comes to optimizing your site. But here’s a best practice I can already share: As you start building your site, build with relevant tags.

Later, when I get around to search engine optimization (that SEO you hear so much about), I’ll look into this subject in more depth. (I have to keep reminding myself that this is a work-in-progress, and stopping myself from jumping ahead.) When it’s time, I’ll be calling on some of my SEO expert pals to fill me in on that end of it. It’s a subject that can be as complex as you’re ready to take it. Or, IMHO, need to take it.

Tags: Blogging, Business blogs, SEO by Judith
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Small business blogs are conversations and relationship builders, part of social media. And that’s different from old millennium Websites. 

You’d think the toughest part of getting a blog up would be the software, the techie side. But that’s the easy part. And fun to puzzle out. (I realize I may be somewhat alone in this enjoyment of the techie world, but stay with me on this.) The hard part is rethinking what the Web is and can be. Blogs are not Websites.

Blogs are ever-changing.

Most small business Websites that I’ve seen are static presentations of the business — online brochures that include the mission statement, the product descriptions, the seminar listings, the contact information, and such things that would also go well in a hardcopy brochure. Mine still is. After all, we’re just trying to tell people what our businesses offer and customers can contact us to learn more.

Blogs are conversations, and blogs build relationships.

They’re two-way communication, and even if no one ever talks back to you, the place you have to come from on your blog is a place of open communication and informal conversation.

That idea of ‘open communication’ brings up a whole discussion of transparency and expectations in the world of social media (which includes blogs). We can get into that at a much later date, but for now, I’m focusing on the relationship aspect of my blog.While my Website is my formal presentation of my business, my blog is my personal contact with you. (Hi there; how’s it going?)

I get to know people and people get to know me on blogs. It would seem that since I’ve been a writer all of my life, this would be easy, but it’s a riskier position even for me. It’s more exposed, less protected by the formality of journalism or of a corporate persona.

And here’s a stop that I’ve already discovered. If you can’t open the window into your world and your business thoughts, then blogging’s not for you. I had to think this one through before I slapped my photo up on the Web and invited everyone in to watch, join me in my struggles, and learn with me as I build my small business blog.

But isn’t that how it is in non-Web relationships? We meet over lunch, chat about our latest business challenges and share insights. Sometimes I help pals wrestling with PR issues; other times pals help me in my battle with corporate accounting. And along the way, we build a web of relationships.

Tags: Blogging, Small Business by Judith
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The essential stumbling block I had to get over: blogging is not another word for ranting. 

Let me update you, first, on how I got to this point, — blog site up, ready to develop.  It was a long road from print media journalist and Web content creator to blogger. I overcame lots of preconceived judgments and low expectations of the world of blogging along the way.

Since I’m primarily a journalist, I started with research. I googled and yahoo-searched, clicked on links and then on links again, found more links and clicked there until I wasn’t even sure where I was in the universe of blogsites. I was looking for thought leaders in the online marketing industry.

Because Blogging is Marketing, or else why would IBM, McDonald’s and Hillary Clinton invest in it?

It’s not pajama-clad, midnight rants, though there is a lot of this, for sure. In fact, there are thousands of bloggers throwing their voices out into the blogosphere void for no apparent reason. Some are rants; some are personal, some just for fun, and many with much more intimate information about themselves than I’ll ever want to know.

But I was searching for online marketing leaders and following those links. And I found several blogs written by thought leaders.

These are the sites that I go back to again and again to check in on what blog marketing is all about. Their sites are both sales sites for their companies and content-rich sites for those of us searching for insight. You think people like David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR, are giving away the store because when you visit his site and Susan Getgood’s or John Jantsch’s site, you find rich content.

And that’s the first lesson of blogging. It’s all about content. Readers come to your site not just to learn about your latest workshop, but to learn something about your subject. Give them content. Let them inside the store. Share.

And business will follow. (Example: I bought David Meerman Scott’s New Rules book after seeing it on his blog.)

PS – (Can you put a PS in a blog?) My thanks to everyone who responded and, yes, please do not be embarrassed about just lurking (and learning!); when you want to respond, click on comment below or go to register in the right-hand column. You can sign in either way. (Requiring sign-ins helps me control spammers.)

Tags: Blogging, Online Content by Judith
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