Now, this is actually a good question that comes straight from the comments section.

User Digital Images asked, “How do you set up a business blog for your boss?”

Again, a great idea that deserves to be fully examined.  Of course, your mileage will vary on this point, but here’s a simple plan for you to try and get a job blogging with your current employer.

1. Analyze your company. Do you have a lot of new products?  Do you market mainly to consumers or businesses?  Is there a good reason to disseminate lots of new information in a relatively rapid schedule?

2. Gather your findings. If you market mainly to consumers, and have a lot of new products and events to discuss, then you may have a blog-worthy concept. Can you run ads?  Are you likely to draw readers?  These are all things to consider in packaging your analysis.

3. Present them to your boss. It’s always good to have all this written down on a hard copy somewhere in case some corporate power-junkie decides they want to take credit for YOUR hard work and genius.  But what you’re going to do here is take an extremely new idea (in most corporate power-circles blogging is a concept often believed reserved for college kids and people with nothing better to do all day than talk about their cats at length) and show people how it will work.  Consider things like advertising revenue through Google Adsense or similar, the intangible value of “getting the word out” in a relatively inexpensive fashion, cross-promotion opportunities to fuel readership (see, we put our blog web address on the box of every product.  So when they buy stuff, they have or blog site, and go to it to learn more about stuff they can buy.), and so on.

The key thing here is to make this look like an idea that will either bring in money outright or save money, and if you can reduce it down to those terms, chances are pretty fair you’ll land yourself a full-time corporate blogging job, even in this lousy economy.

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A strange distinction, I know, but it’s one worth thinking about.  If you’ve been considering adding onto your small business, or have been considering a way to expand your blog outward, maybe you should look into becoming a corporate partner.

Now, I’m not suggesting selling out. But what I AM proposing is that a blog can be an excellent tool for the rapid dissemination of information across a wide space to a very, VERY focused audience.  This is exactly the same principle that your advertising works on, except this time, you’re not going to a middleman like Google or Project Wonderful or something similar.

What I’m suggesting is that, if you own a small business (or conversely, know someone who does) consider using your blog as a way to promote that small business.  Not shilling, of course, no one would suggest such a thing.  But rather, disseminating ideas through it.  New products.  Upcoming events.  Previews of coming attractions, as it were.  You can scarcely go wrong with that sort of thing–people want to know what’s around the corner and you can tell them things they didn’t otherwise know.

And of course, if you do it for other people, you can always accept payment for services rendered.  Access to a readership is a very important item, after all.  Just another something to consider in your quest for blogging fame and fortune!

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Now that caught your eye, didn’t it?  Sure it did.  And why wouldn’t it?  I mean, I just handed you your dream concept on a silver plate, didn’t I? Your blog, literally everywhere.

So how do you achieve this concept?  Well, it’s an idea you may want to consider.  You’re going to use two basic principles to take a shot at huge name recognition.  Those principles:

1. People love free stuff.

2. Cafepress will put your name and logo on ANYTHING.

And that’s the idea.  Put your name and logo on some stuff and give it away.  Now, I understand that not everybody’s got the kind of cash required for such a venture, but the good part about this plan is that it’s scalable.  You can start small or you can go huge, and you have loads of options.

For instance, let’s take a look at this idea:  Create fifty bumper stickers for about a hundred bucks.  Put them in envelopes and mail them out at random.  Announce to your local newspaper that fifty lucky people will be receiving free bumper stickers as part of your (insert random celebratory event here) celebration.

With any luck, you’ll get a newspaper ad for your blog for less than a hundred and fifty bucks if I’ve done the math right.  Plus, fifty people will hear about your blog, and if they actually USE the bumper stickers, you’ve got plenty of word of mouth advertising gratis.  Got fifteen hundred bucks to blow?  Up that to five HUNDRED bumper stickers.

Think outside the box, and who knows how far you’ll get?

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Public events are a fantastic way to promote anything; tons of people are around and looking for things to do. If they just so happen to catch you waving a single page pamphlet in the corner of their eye, they may grab it and look further into it. Of course, there’s always the possibility that they’ll crumple it up and throw it in the trash.

To prevent your flyers from becoming litter, you need to work on what you put on your flyer. Don’t just put the URL of your website and expect a response; use the flyer to promote your contest, unique content, etc. For example, if I wanted to advertise Sly Visions, I’d put our slogan and a few tips on how to become a successful blogger, followed by a “Want more? Visit us on the web.”

Try to talk individually to each of your potential readers, and explain to them what your mission statement is and what you do specifically. Don’t discriminate on who to approach, even if they don’t fit your ideal demographic.

Make sure that it is legal to pass out flyers at the event you’re going to, and take a friend with you. This ensures that your organization doesn’t look like a one-man act. Try wearing identical clothes if you can. Anything that makes you look more “official” is the goal.

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The following is a list of 9 things that are missing from your blog and they are the 9 things that are stopping your blog from being successful.

Just to make it easy I have split them up over the next 3 posts so you can make sure you check your blog for each of them. So here are the first 3 :

SEO Plugins - Yes, believe it or not you need at least one and possible a couple of these plugins to get the job done. At the very least you should be using the All-in-One SEO plugin on your blog. Search engines change all the time, unless you are an SEO guru you are not going to keep up. Let a plugin do it for you.

Good Content - You are lazy, we all are at times. We all go out to our favorite sources and repurpose content to make it our own - don’t. Once you are tempted to go the lazy route it becomes easier and easier to make that your normal way of finding content. Instead plan your content out in advance, at least three or four posts in advance so that you are being original and fresh. Your readers will enjoy it more and believe it or not so will you.

A Unique Look - Not everyone can afford to buy a premium theme, I understand that, but if you are going to use a free theme, spend a little money on getting it adapted or having an original logo created for it. You would be amazed at what $50 on eLance will get you.

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By now you are probably aware of the power of Twitter, especially for driving traffic to your blog. While posting a link to your latest blog post is a good way to drive traffic, having other people post the link for you is an even better way.

After all if you are the only one posting the link it can seem at best like self-promotion (which it is) or at worst, spam. The commentwitter plugin for Wordpress provides your readers/commenters the option to send out their comment as a tweet right from your blog, along with a link back to the post.  This makes it very easy for them to leave a comment and promote your blog at the same time.

Making things easy is a great way to get people to do them. No one wants to go through multiple steps to achieve something. Commenters and readers are used to the Digg,Stumbleupon etc links at the bottom of posts, this is just another one of those.

How would this plugin impact your blog readers?

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Is your blog the only part of your Social Media activity or are you completing the circle?  Just writing a blog and submitting it to search engines in the hope of attracting readers is well, just that, hope. There has to be more to it than that.

Using Social Media tools such as Twitter, Delicious, Facebook & LinkedIn to promote your blog is all a part of the process.

The circle can look something like this:

• Write a post.
• Tweet about it with a link on Twitter - use a URL Shortening service like Tweetburner’s Twurl so that you can track how many people click on the link.
• Use tools like Networked Blogs on Facebook to promote your blog, and the share a link feature on your Facebook page to share your content, it will be automatically thumbnailed by Facebook and posted to your Profile page.
• Submit the post to Delicious, Digg or other social bookmarking sites.
• Make sure that if you are on LinkedIn your blog posts are being pulled through to your profile page, and update your status with the shortened link to your post. Its actually a good idea to use a different shortened link so that you can see where you get most traffic from.

The benefit of posting these links around the web is that not only does it drive traffic to your site but because they are inbound links, it helps your blog rise in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s).

Make sure that you close the circle and increase the traffic to your site.

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In yesterdays post I talked about the basics to consider when setting up for a video blog post from home.  Today we are going to look at actually getting your video onto your blog and then promoting it.

Assuming you have used some or all of the tips from yesterdays post and are now satisfied you have got a reasonable video entry for your blog the next step is to edit it.  Whether you are a Mac or PC user, if you bought your machine in the last 18months you already have the editing software on your machine - free! On a Mac it is iVideo, on a PC it is Windows Movie Maker. Now neither of these are going to give you a big budget summer blockbuster feel but they will allow you to do some of the basics and will certainly allow you to edit out those unfortunate bloopers ( you can save those for another blog post).

Having made a few edits and saved the file. You are now faced with the challenge of getting your video onto your blog. Even though your blog editor probably allows you to upload the video file directly to your blog storage I wouldn’t recommend this. Video is, by its nature a disk hungry beast, if you are using a free hosting service you most certainly don’t have the capacity to load videos.  Besides why use your bandwidth when you can use someone elses?

Youtube, Vimeo, Viddler, Crackle and others are all great video hosting services. Each have their limitations but any or all of them will allow you to host your video, present you with a link or embed code to place in your blog entry and run your video for you.

If you really want to get the word out about your Video consider using TubeMogul.com which will actually distribute your videos to all the popular video hosting sites for you and even provide stats about the views your videos receive, even better their basic service is free.

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