Harlan Editorial

I just signed up for the upcoming global teleseminar, and in my books this is a Do-Not-Miss opportunity, a chance to tune in on leading marketing and career gurus  – all free — and it’s coming up fast: Nov. 8. . 

What am I talking about? If you’re asking then you have not yet heard: there’s an all-day global teleseminar on Nov.8; it’s sponsored by A Brand You World, and features marketing leaders such as David Meerman Scott (New Rules of Marketing & PR; See what he says about the event on his site), also Richard Nelson Bolles (What Color is Your Parachute), John Jantsch (Duct Tape Marketing), and, as they say at the carnival, So Much More! Come one, come all!

This is one of those free and valuable Web events. I’ll be there. Check it out. I’m betting there’s something there for all small business owners on marketing in this new Web world.

Tags: Free Advice, Marketing Blogs, Small Business, Small business blogging by Judith
No Comments »

Don’t talk.

Bloggers are infamous for chattering too much and listening too little.

Use your blog to reverse the information flow: Give customers a place to tell you what they think instead of you telling the customer what you’re selling.

That’s my reason number 3 to have a blog. It can be a place to Listen.

Sound upside down? It is, but that’s the ultimate in a business blog, one that’s so successful that your customer is posting more on it than you are. And when you’ve engaged your customers to that extent, then they have a vested interest in keeping you in business. Can there be anything better than that?

Tags: Business blogs, Free Advice, How to blog, Small business blogging by Judith
No Comments »

In jumping from blog link to blog link yesterday (or was it the day before?) I came across this Behind the Buzz blog. I think the link started for me from David Meerman Scott’s blog.

The Sept 12 Behind the Buzz blog by Rachel Clarke is a terrific example of why NOT to astroturf. (Plant phony positive comments about your company under the guise of a concerned or interested consumer; see Wikipedia for more.) This blogger sniffed out the suspicious blog almost immediately.

And if I may digress here for a moment, in true blogger style, I used to find these same kinds of inauthentic essays from students back when I taught some English 101 classes at the community college. Writers look for the “signatures” of writers and of styles that are embedded in the writer’s language.

And Rachel, on the Behind the Buzz blog, is apparently a pro at finding those signatures.

Tags: Free Advice by Judith
2 Comments »

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
No Comments »

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
No Comments »

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
No Comments »