Having regular traffic and visitors is important to a business blog and to business blog marketing. It is even more important to develop a loyal readership and return traffic. Does your blog offer content that would give visitors a reason to return? If not, you need to get to work.

1. Content is king: The three most important ways to develop your readership is to post interesting material, post regularly and to post often. Regular postings also brings back the search engine spiders frequently to index you site.
2. Write to your audience: Target readers who are likely to become customers and write about topics that they want to read about. Focus on developing an interested readership that is the same as you customer base.
3. Write with style: Keep it fresh and mix it with a little humor. Opinions and commentaries are great, they are entertaining and interesting. You need to take every opportunity to provide a good blog reader experience.
4. Easy to subscribe: Make it easy for visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed. Add prominent RSS subscription icons or button in a prominent location. If someone reads something they like, encourage them to subscribe.
5. Organization: Categorize your topics into logical topics and include a search box. Make it easy to find postings on subjects that interest them. Good organization entices people to read multiple postings.
6. Watch traffic statistics: Watch which topics and postings get the best response. This will give you quick feed back on what you readers are hungry for. Writing regularly about subjects your readers are looking for, will quickly grow your loyal reader base.

Eye tracking studies give web designers insight into what attracts the attention of visitors. This is very important in business web design. Once you have optimized your website to bring in traffic, following a few design rules can make sure you catch your reader’s attention. After all, most visitors make up their mind to stay of go in the first few seconds.

Results from the Nielsen Norman Group’s study show that the dominant reading pattern looks somewhat like an “F”. Web visitors begin in the upper left and sweep to the right. They then drop down the page a bit and do a shorter horizontal sweep and then they scan down the left side content.

From eye tracking studies we can establish 10 guidelines for web design.

1. Content / Images in the upper left quadrant are most likely to be seen
2. Right side content and content lower on the page is less likely to be seen.
3. Larger font headlines draw the eye.
4. Shorter paragraphs are read more than large blocks of text.
5. Smaller font body text is read and larger font body text is scanned.
6. Numbers are read as numerals, but skipped over as text.
7. Bigger images get more attention than smaller images.
8. Bulleted or numbered lists hold readers attention
9. Banner ads are ignored.
10. Fancy fonts and fancy words look like promotion and are ignored.

The last point was well illustrated with the U.S. Census Bureau’s homepage. In a study, 86% of users failed to the country’s current population which was presented in a large red font.

No matter how good and honest you or your company is; accusations of misconduct can quickly damage your online digital reputation. You may not be able to erase what has been said, but there are steps you can take to minimize the damage. The goal should be to push the damaging statements down in the organic search results and replace these with positive information.

1. Research: Look at the root cause of the online discussions and what can be done to bring the conversations to an end. The repair process can only start once the controversy ends.
2. Keywords: Settle on the targeted phrases. Keep the focus to one phrase or two at the most. This could be your name, company, brand or an event.
3. Identify: List out articles, websites and blogs that already exist that should be moved to displace the damaging stories.
4. Your Website: Add new material and fully optimize the primary website for the company, brand or celebrity. This is the one website that you completely control.
5. Link Popularity: Launch linking campaigns for the identified articles, blogs, etc that you want to be found. Use the keyword phrases in the link text for the best results.
6. Blogging and Press Releases: Launch one or more blogs where you can control the content. Use independent blog networks and have blogs written based on press release. Release traditional press releases through normal media channels.
7. Wikipedia: For people or companies with prominent reputations, this is a key resource. If an article exists add content and make changes. If none exists, consider starting a new topic.
8. YouTube and Flickr: Promote and publish videos and photos. Title them and tag them with your targeted keyword phrase.
9. Monitor and do damage control: Monitor the blogosphere for negative or disparaging remarks. Address these quickly and appropriately.
10. Measure results: Monitor the first 3 pages of the search results for Google, Yahoo and MSN. Record the positions of the articles you want to purge. You are successful when they no longer appear in the first 3 pages of results.

Having to watch and manage your online reputation is sometimes thought of as the dark side of Web 2.0. Reputation monitoring and management have become a way of life for celebrities, public officials, major companies and all sorts of web related businesses.

Bad news just plain travels faster than good news. A bad online reputation can negatively affect sales, customer relations, brand names, employee retention, friendships and even families. With over 70% of the population online today and well over 90% of businesses making use of the Internet, a good online reputation is crucial for business.

Today, reputation management is becoming important to even the average person. 40% of the companies responding to a survey replied that they always or sometimes used Google or another search engine to research or learn more about a prospective hire. This means managing your own digital reputation is becoming increasingly important for those seeking key positions.

Managing your online reputation has 3 levels. Hopefully, you won’t need to move beyond the first level.

1. Monitoring the blogosphere: Set-up tracking systems to notify as soon as a posting is made anywhere about yourself, your company or your brand name. If you were going to use only a single tool, then Google Alerts word be the most comprehensive. See more monitoring tools.
2. Responding to criticism - damage control: Once you detect a problem. It is important to determine the best response (if any) to minimize the damage or perhaps turn around some one who is a foe into an advocate. See more on responding to criticism.
3. Reputation repair: Once damage is done there is a process you need to follow to repair and restore your reputation. Since you can’t remove what was written (in some cases it is possible) you have to use a campaign of positive PR that focuses on your targeted keyword (usually your name) to dilute and push the negative comments deeper into the search results. (This is the subject of my next posting).

OK, you are monitoring the blogosphere and someone has just slammed your company or your brand in a blog. How do you handle this? In short, diplomatically, honestly and helpfully. There are no hard and fast rules, but here are five guidelines to follow.

1. Wait and Watch: Take a little time to watch and gauge the reaction. Jumping in and confronting the situation can take someone‘s comments who is just blowing off steam and create a major controversy. If no one is paying attention or commenting, it may be best to let the person vent and then die out on its own. Bloggers quickly move on to new stories that grab their attention.
2. Avoid Rebuttals: A negative review of your product should not bring a strong response. Refuting or directly attacking the blogger will bring others to their defense and inflame the situation. Don’t try and take a strong position and intimidate or bully the blogger.
3. Be concerned and helpful: You are entering as a guest on a blog so show respect; you will likely get respect in return. Avoid sarcasm and try to be genuine and helpful. A negative review should be treated as constructive criticism. Offer to help resolve the issue and listen to the complaints. How you handle the situation can convert a foe into a friend.
4. Be Impartial. Stay away from opinions and arguments. Use objective information and if possible, third party data and statistics to show your point. Links to sites other than your own can be good convincers.
5. Follow Thru: If you make promises and commitments, follow thru on what you have promised.

The key in dealing with situations in blog marketing is to listen and respond honestly in a helpful manner. This can go a long way in diffusing an explosive situation.

What are people saying about you? Is your business being talked about on blogs? What is being said? Is this something you need to address before it gets out of control? Monitoring the blogosphere has become a cost of being a part of the Internet world that we live in today.

In blog marketing businesses need to be proactive about managing their digital reputation. In addition to monitoring what is beings said about your company and its brands, it’s necessary to know what’s being said about your competitors. This can put you ahead and potentially into new opportunities.

You can track what is being said yourself, but that takes time. You can hire another company, but that takes more money. Monitoring blog conversations can be done using tools available on the internet whether you choose to do this yourself or hire someone else.

Here are some Great Blog monitoring tools;

1. Monitor News feeds with Yahoo News or Google News.
2. Search blog results only using Google Blog search.
3. Technorati has many advanced blog search capabilities.
4. Be emailed alerts anytime your company name or brand name is detected by Google on the Internet with Google Alerts. This alert can be set to by source type (blogs, web, news, all, etc).
5. Search forums or create alerts with boardtracker.com
6. Monitor blog conversations and which other blogs link to this conversation with BlogPulse conversation tracker.
7. Watch trends in how often your company name or brand is used with blogpulse.com trend tool.

By combining several of these tools, you can get a good idea of who is talking about you, your company or your competition.

Web 2.0 and blogging is changing our world on how we do business. Your online reputation or digital reputation is your credibility in cyberspace. Businesses today need to monitor what is being said about them not only on the Internet, but also out in the blogosphere.

Digital reputations can be made or lost quickly. Disgruntled customers have access to online publishing tools equipped with RSS and can quickly spread their story. Just as powerfully, good stories of extraordinary customer service can quickly build a positive digital reputation.

Marketing departments use PR to build the traditional reputation for a company and its brands. The blogosphere adds a new dimension to business marketing. These new tools greatly increase the speed in building or destroying a brand.

Internet marketing and blog marketing strategies should include monitoring the Blogosphere and Internet for what is being said about your company, your brands and your competitors. This is one of the costs of doing business in today’s world, especially if you are a public facing company where image is an important asset.

Protect Your Online Reputation

1. Set up strategies to monitor blogosphere and the Internet using Google Alerts and Technorati. Or you can use paid services to do this monitoring for you.
2. Create an optimized website and blog that will allow you to rise above any negative buzz that may be said.
3. Have a plan in advance on how you will react to negative comments or events.

Should every business blog? The answer is a clear yes… as long as they have something to contribute of value. Good blog marketing is about delivering interesting and useful content to the blogosphere. Blogging without adding value is just adding noise to an already busy Internet. This noise hurts actually hurts a company’s marketing effort.

So what should a business blog about? First, you need to identify who you are trying to reach. This is you targeted audience. This could be customers, employees, shareholders or maybe a particular market segment.

Once you have identified your audience, then figure out what they are interested in reading about that is closely aligned with your product or service. Blogging should never focus on advertising, but should supply interesting information. As an example, if you are a Real Estate Appraiser, you may blog about housing value trends in your area as a resource to buyers and sellers. If you are a book printer, you may blog about how to go about publishing a book as an aid to would be authors.

Having a content plan is important step in launching a blog. It insures that you will connect with your targeted audience and develop a readership that builds. Building a readership will also build your business.

The wrong keywords bring lookers; the right ones bring willing buyers. Choosing the right keywords will bring targeted traffic. They look for the product or service that satisfies their need. The number of words in a keyword phrase is an important part of your keyword strategies.

Keyword Psychology
Is it better to focus on phrases of one or two words? Should you choose phrases with three to five words? It really depends on your goals. First we need to look at the psychology behind how people search.

When people use one or two words they are researching. They are trying to learn and understand a subject. In this phase they are not ready or likely to buy something. If your goal is to educate, then one or two word phrases should be your focus.

When people use three to five words they are in a buying mode. They will use more specific terms, frequently with manufacturers’ names or model numbers. If your goal is to sell, then your focus should be on three to five word phrases.

How Words do People Actually Use?
In 2007, I have looked at two separate studies by oneStat.com and rankstat.com on how many words people use when they search, both with very similar results. Below are the average numbers of words being typed in by searchers.

1. one word 14.4%
2. two words 30.1%
3. three words 27.1%
4. four words 15.6%
5. five words 7.3%
6. Over five words 5.5%

This means about 44% of the searches are from people using 1-2 word phrases and 56% use phrases of 3 or more words. We don’t recommend phrases of over 5 words because the search volume for any one phrase is so low.

OK, you are starting up a business and you want to create a logo. Where do you start? What makes up a great logo? Your business logo design is a key part of your branding and makes your business memorable. There are six aspects to a really great logo design.

1. Simple / Scalable
2. Emotional Appeal
3. Unique
4. Relevant
5. Shows action
6. Color / Contrast

Simple and scalable: Your logo should be easily recognizable at a very small size on a business card or at a very large size on a vehicle graphic. This means communicating a single idea and not using complex pictures and concepts. Complex designs hide your message.

Emotional appeal: Your logo is part of your branding strategy. This means communicating at an unconscious emotional level. Communicate positive emotions such as trust, joy, safety, status or protection.

Unique: Be different from your competition. If you are in real estate, avoid a picture of a house or roof because that is what so many others do. Your logo needs to make your business stand out and be remembered.

Relevant: Your logo design should symbolize your business and create a positive first impression. Concentrate on an abstract image to represent the feel of your company’s business. Shapes, curves and symmetry can convey meaning.

Show action: This draws in your visitor’s attention. By adding in a partially turned key, shapes or textures a logo can be made to show action. Think of the Nike Swoosh to illustrate running shoes.

Color and Contrast: A great logo must be easily seen and attract attention. Your choice of colors communicates emotion and is an important part of your message. Contrast can be created using colors, texture and use of white space.

A great logo design is a key part of your marketing and branding strategy. This will be a foundation that you will build on for many years.