CT Biz Blogs

If you have a business, you might want to keep your eye on Judy’s book

Judy’s Book is a site where people can post reviews and commentary about businesses, products, and services, all organized by geographical area.

You need to be aware of it because, even if you don’t blog or use the internet much, you can’t forget that there are plenty of people who do. And there are plenty more who will in the future. (more…)

My colleague Valorie Luther has been busy! She’s been arranging a 1/2 day conference on new media, to be held in Stamford, CT on June 13th, from 2 - 6 pm. The site for the conference is now up and it looks pretty sharp. I will be there, helping out at the conference. This is a shameless plug for it, because even if I weren’t part of it, I believe I’d be signing up. It’s got some interesting participants and demos, and the price is $300, which is pretty decent, I think.

You can read all about it and even register on the Business Smart Tools Conference website.

“Anybody know how we get an RSS feed for this blog?”

That was a comment left on a post just a few hours ago. Don’t look for it, though. It’s been nuked because it was spam.

How did I know it was spam? It sounds good, doesn’t it? And it was left on a post about RSS.

Well, here are a few things that tipped me off:

1. Lack of a real name
   While that alone isn’t enough to indicate a spammer, it’s one clue. Especially when the name is the name of a popular medication that lots of people would like to get without a prescription. D’oh! But sometimes, as in this case, it’s not quite that obvious, so I wouldn’t nuke a comment based just on not having a real person’s name.
2. Links to a dubious looking web site (more…)

Liz Strauss, over at Successful Blog has put together a New Blogger Page which lists some of her posts of particular usefulness to new bloggers. (But guess what? It’s really a resource for all but the most experienced blogger. And even they can use a refresher course now and then.)

Blogging is not something you can learn in a day, but this page is a good starting point for exploring the wonderful world of blogging.

She’s got articles on blog basics such as commenting, a link to her blog checklist (this is one of the ones that’s especially applicable to every blogger), and some of her “great finds” such as a link to the Tlog Blogging Tip Series. This is a step-by-step list of blogging basics. I’m going over it now to see what I’ve been missing.

New bloggers, you need to check these out!

And as a bonus, here’s the link to a compilation of my basic blogging tips: Blogs - what, why, & how.

The short answer: yes and no.

The longer answer:

It depends. It depends on what you blog, how you blog, and what other people blog about you.

This post is inspired by an article in the Boston Globe, “Blogs ‘essential’ to a good career.“

The article makes some good points about the positive side of blogging. Blogging can indeed be good for your career, if you do it right.

While the article focuses mainly on the impact of blogging for a career, I think point #5 is especially important for small businesses:

5. Blogging makes self-employment easier.

You can’t make it on your own unless you’re good at selling yourself. One of the most cost-effective and efficient ways of marketing yourself is with a blog. When someone searches for your product or service, make sure your blog comes up first.

Curt Rosengren, a career coach, periodically Googles ‘’career passion” — words he thinks are most important to his business — just to make sure his blog comes up high on the list. He estimates that his blog generates at least half of his coaching business.

A bunch of bloggers have weighed in with their opinions on the article.

(more…)

After reading my entries on RSS (listed at the end of this post), a friend decided to try Google reader, to subscribe to this blog. Yay!

But she asked me a great question that made me realize I wasn’t clear enough on at least one point: She asked if subscribing via Google Reader meant that she needed a Gmail account, or if she’d get the posts in her regular email account.

I think there might be two confusing points here. One might be my comments about how, with RSS, the posts “come to you.” To a lot of folks, that means email.

And to add to that confusion, Google does have an email service, and when I log onto the Reader, it asks me to enter my email and password.

Ok, Google, that’s confusing as heck to people new to RSS! (more…)

When I was growing up, we had a house with 2 great fireplaces. They were designed with special vents that returned more heat to the room, rather than losing it all up the flue.

Because my dad worked as a builder, we always had a lot of odd pieces of wood — bits of 2×4s that were left over from a construction site. He used those in the fire, as well as the wood from our land.

Now, I like a nice fire. I like to sit and watch the dancing flames, and see how the embers glow. But my father’s fires were not like that — they were mini-infernos. The fireplace got so hot it was impossible to sit near it, and what you mostly saw was a solid wall of flames.

But to get a fire like that, my dad didn’t have time to watch it — it seemed like all he had time to do was keep feeding the fire. The minute a piece of wood was added — WHOMP — the fire consumed it and it wanted more. Next piece — WHOMP — again — WHOMP.

What does this have to do with blogging, you may be wondering?

Well, that’s what I think of blogging for traffic only. It’s like how my father had to work to keep the fire going full-blast.

It was exciting to see my stat numbers skyrocket when I was linked to by Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion. That lead to a chain reaction of other bloggers linking to me, and my traffic increased.

Suddenly, my perspective started to shift. “They’re watching,” I started thinking. “They’re waiting. What am I going to write about next?” I felt like I had to keep feeding post after post to my blog, without enjoying the process.

Luckily, I realized quickly that my blog is not about getting a lot of traffic. I’ll never be an “A-list” blogger and that’s fine by me.

That’s why I’ve been busy thinking about blogging goals, strategy, and tactics. It’s an ongoing evolution, which is why blogging is so great — it’s much easier to evolve a blog than a static website.

I’ll share my thoughts here, and I hope you’ll add yours. But I probably won’t be posting daily. That’s fine by me and I hope it’s fine by you, too.

If you’re writing a post where you quote someone else, one neat stylistic trick to use is the “block quote.” This will format the quote in a way that separates it from your normal text and makes it clearer that you’re quoting what someone else said.

In WordPress 2.0, that’s done by using the indent button on the text editor.

I’ve created a little flash demo to show how that’s done: How to use a block quote.

Even if you don’t use WordPress, many blogging applications have block quotes. Check out the demo and then explore your posting interface, and you’ll probably find the button.

From the Wikipedia entry on Strategy

A strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal, as differentiated from tactics or immediate actions with resources at hand.

I’m writing this post not because I’m an expert at blogging strategy, but because that’s what I’m exploring, myself, these days. My focus has always been more on the technical aspects of blogging. That’s the fun part, for me.

However, it’s about time I did some thinking about my blogging strategy. And you can’t have a strategy without a goal.

We’re all blogging for a reason. For most business blogs, the purpose is marketing for our business or ourselves. This is a good reason for having a blog; there’s nothing wrong with marketing. But I think you need to go further than that — you need to ask yourself: “What is it I want people to do as a result of reading or visiting my blog?”

That’s the real goal of the blog, and the goal is what drives the strategy.

I’ve been re-reading Seth Godin’s free ebook “Knock Knock,” which he published a while back. Sometimes these things have to be read, allowed to percolate in the brain for a while, and then re-read. Knock Knock is actually not about blogs, but about web site strategy. But since blogs are a type of web site, it’s a good read for anyone using blogs to market their products, services, or ideas.

“Knock, knock” is what people are doing when they come to your blog — knocking on your door. What you need to know is, how will you answer that door? On page 35, Godin says:

Here are the three questions you must answer about every single page you build:

1. Who’s here?
2. What do you want them to do?
3. How can you instantly tell a persuasive story to get them to do #2?

I think that determining a strategy starts with deciding on what your answers are to those three questions.

I went on a stealth mini-vacation, but I’m back. Tomorrow I’ll be posting about working on a blogging strategy.