Some might argue, and rightfully so, that health is not a game. But Adam Bosworth is betting that people will be willing to play with their health with Keas. Bosworth, who launched Google Health at Google some years ago, initially thought that Keas would be a Mint for health. The problem though, was that users didn’t just want to store their health information. READ MORE
How are people finding your web site? Which key words are luring them there? What design elements might be turning them off? As Mashable’s Meghan Peters points out, Google Analytics makes it easy for anyone to track and analyze loads of data that can help improve a site’s performance. Here’s how to get started using it. READ MORE
“I can’t open the document you sent me!” This has been a frequent complaint by users of Microsoft Office 2003 and earlier word processing software since Microsoft launched Office 2007, and introduced the .docx format. “At the beginning of every semester, we hire new interns who are college students,” says Matt Brownell, editor at the Ictus Initiative, a marketing and public relations company that deals mostly with speakers, authors, and consultants, and uses Microsoft Office 2003. “They tend to have new laptops and they have the latest version of Office, and they send us résumés we can’t open.” Though Microsoft offers a free conversion program that users can download from its website, like many Office 2003 users, Brownell and his colleagues weren’t eager to use this solution. Instead, prospective interns were told to resubmit their résumés as .doc files. But Ictus had fewer choices when clients sent .docx files. And, Brownell discovered, the problem wasn’t limited to Microsoft Word. There were new .pptx files for PowerPoint and .xlsx files for Excel as well. “The other day, I assigned a project to an intern to have her produce a spreadsheet,” Brownell says. “It came as an .xlsx file. At that point, I finally gave in and downloaded the converter, but I wasn’t happy about it.” “I upgraded to Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac in 2008,” says Kimberly Hathaway, managing partner at Hathaway PR. “But what was this ‘X’ stuff? It was almost as if we shouldn’t have bothered upgrading.” Most high-tech clients have Office 2007, she notes — but they make up only about 10 percent of her business. “For the rest, you really don’t know who has the new Office and who doesn’t,” she says. “We do a lot of work with smaller regional publications, and they don’t have the newest version of Office.” One client, an attorney, is using an older version of WordPerfect, presenting another set of problems. “I don’t want my agency to appear antiquated,” Hathaway says. To her mind, sending .doc files to Office 2007 users risks sending that message. “If I see someone is using .docx, then I send a .docx file.” When in doubt, she sends a .doc file to avoid embarrassing anyone using the older version of Word. To make sure to always have files in the needed formats, the policy for her company is to save every document in three formats: .doc, .docx, and .pdf. “From one to three times a week, we have an issue when someone forgets and sends a .docx file, and we have to resend something in the older format,” she says. “It’s frustrating how much time and energy is spent on the stupid formatting.” Why Microsoft added the x To users like Hathaway and Brownell, the new format seems intended to cause irritation and force users to upgrade sooner to the newest software. “I think there was initial disbelief among users that it wasn’t at all backwards-compatible with the old version,” Brownell says. “We assumed it was a problem that would be fixed. If it was possible to create this new format, why couldn’t they make it backwards-compatible?” But creating a backwards compatible format might have been impossible, since with .docx, pptx, and .xlsx, the company was making a fundamental change in the way its files are created. The new file formats are based on Extensible Markup Language or XML, a widely recognized document standard. In fact, the move to .docx, .pptx, and .xlsx are part of a move to a more open standard of file formatting for Microsoft, allowing developers to more easily create applications that can access data within Word documents (for transfer to a webpage, for instance), and also to make it easier for other word processing software to open Word documents. Some claim that Microsoft made the move to compete with Open Document Format (.odf) files, an open source format that is popular, especially outside the United States. “Our software supports both .odf and .docx, and also .pdf files,” responds Gray Knowlton, group product manager of Office for developers at Microsoft. “The move we’ve made is to be more open and more transparent.” And XML-based files have other advantages he says. For one thing, they are more compressed than .doc files. “A Word document using the .docx format could be half or three quarters the size it would be as a .doc file,” he says. “That saves on hard drive space and bandwidth. Also, if you tried to open a corrupted file in a .doc format, Word simply couldn’t open it. A lot of data was lost that way. When you open a .docx file that’s corrupted, it will still open and you can see and use all the parts that aren’t corrupted.” Dan Gookin, author of Microsoft Word for Dummies (which comes in both 2003 and 2007 versions) agrees that, though it frustrates many users, the new format brings worthwhile benefits. “You can’t stick with old file formats forever,” he says. And, he adds, “Because it’s so flexible and upgradeable, I think they will stick with the .docx format for a long time to come.” Coping with .doc and .docx If .docx is here to stay, but most users still have Word 2003, what’s the best way to manage file format conflicts? Here are some strategies that may help, depending upon what version of Word you are using. If you use Word 2003: • Download the converter. The simplest way to cope with .docx and other XML-based files is to download Microsoft’s free converter. Once it’s installed, Office 2003 will open .doc, .xlsx, and .pptx files, with a few seconds’ pause for conversion.• Use Google Documents. Google Documents will open a .docx file through its online interface. It’s free, though you have to create a Google account.• Try Open Office. The current version of Open Office can open .docx files, and it’s free.• Hold off on buying Office 2007. With the release of Office 2010 scheduled for this summer, investing in Office 2007 makes little sense at this point. On the other hand, if you’re curious, you can download a free beta version of Office 2010 to play with. If you use Word 2007: • Set .doc as your default format. “The newer format is valuable, and I think everyone should switch to it eventually,” Gookin says. “But for now, you should configure Office 2007 to save files in .doc format by default. People with the newer version of Word can open the older format—and may not even notice the difference.”
Rich Internet applications are the cornerstone of Web 2.0, the next generation, truly interactive Internet. They go beyond first wave HTML applications to offer better interactivity, speedier and more satisfying user experiences that keep customers around longer, as well as a way to differentiate your brand on the Web. If your company’s core interaction with customers is online, rich Internet applications can prove worth the effort and expense. “Being able to differentiate the experience online is a huge win,” says Ron Rogowski, principal analyst with Forrester. New programming and design tools such as Ajax –which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML — and Adobe Flex, a set of technologies used to build cross platform applications with the widely-adopted Flash multimedia software, are facilitating the creation of these rich applications. And unlike desktop applications, rich Internet applications can put more computing power on the client and create a seamless interaction without requiring a software download or creating possible version control headaches in the future, as desktop applications do. Improving user experiences A better online experience means fewer abandoned shopping carts, more sales, and more business. Rugsale.com has a “shop together” function that replicates the experience of two people shopping in a store, where they can separately look at items and then show them to each other and talk about them later — albeit through browsers. Companies like Rugsale.com want to increase sales and minimize returns, so allowing people who will share a purchase to collaborate on that purchase online is a plus, Rogowski says. Companies don’t need to worry about the bandwidth needs of rich Internet applications: The majority of homes have broadband connections. According to Gartner, 60 percent of U.S. homes have broadband, and by 2012, it will be even more common, as 77 percent of households adopt it. And even those people who don’t have broadband at home likely have it at work, Rogowski says, so connection speed becomes less of a hurdle to the implementation of rich Internet applications. However, along with the flexibility of these new tools to improve user experience on your business website comes the chance of making design mistakes that end up frustrating your customers. “The root of the problem with building rich Internet applications is that designers try to do too much, making them more complex than they need to be,” Rogowski says. These design mistakes include hiding content and navigation, going overboard with animation motion, not offering helpful interactive cues, and making the applications too complex. What not to do with rich Internet Don’t make customers work to get to content. Interfaces should be designed to expose contextual details without cluttering the page or forcing users to lose the flow of what they’re doing. Don’t make it into a game, with customers having to search for navigational elements. “Some rich Internet applications go to the opposite extreme of forcing users to hunt for content and navigation that they might not even know is there,” Rogowski says. If users miss the navigational elements, you lose the benefits of your application. “Rich Internet applications help users stay engaged as they move smoothly through complex processes like projecting their net worth at retirement or configuring a luxury auto,” Rogowski says. Don’t go overboard with animation and motion. Development tools make it easy to incorporate animations onto webpages. They also can expose additional information on an item when a customer rolls the cursor over text or an image, bringing up a window that layers on top of the page, without having to refresh the whole page or open a new one. While animations can be used to create interest, if overused they can end up being distracting. Ditto motion. “Sometimes the movements associated with opening and closing this content can be distracting,” Rogowski says. When used correctly, motion can bring up just the information a customer is looking for, without requiring him to open a new page, and potentially get distracted or lost. Don’t confuse customers with poor interactive cues. Make it clear which text or images are active, by coloring the text, or providing an icon that suggests a customer could delve deeper, so that customers don’t have to guess how to navigate. “Users should be able to quickly discern what’s clickable and what’s not,” says Rogowski. Don’t make applications too complex. Don’t try to cram too much onto the page. Companies often make the text too small, and therefore unreadable. “People would rather scroll than squint,” Rogowski says. How to use rich Internet effectively Rich Internet applications can be designed effectively by creating a “persona” that takes into account what the user will be doing on the site. Rich Internet applications don’t provide a lot of benefit if people can’t figure out how to use them. In addition, to get the most out of an investment in rich Internet applications, test the application with people who are actually going to use it. Don’t wait until the application is finished. Test it throughout the design process. For a small company that doesn’t have the budget for extensive usability testing, an option is to find a guinea pig at your local Starbucks. “Rather than exposing the complicated process, make it simple for your customers,” Rogowski says. By not giving good interactive cues, you defeat the purpose. “The simpler the interface, the more powerful the tool,” he says.
Water Filters Direct sells water filters for refrigerators, water softeners and reverse osmosis systems directly to businesses and consumers over the Internet at WaterFilters.net. Jamin Arvig, director of business development, tells how the company, started in 2002 in Zumbrota, Minn., increased the conversion rate for sales to online customers by 11 percent by deploying a custom search engine. Elizabeth Wasserman: Why did you decide to use custom search? Jamin Arvig: The search tools we had used in the past. .were okay during the stage we were in. We used tools that just did have limitations. They didn’t have customizable features for one. And, for two, they tended to get bogged down as our site grew. As we had more and more pages and we wanted to have more and more capabilities in the search, it became necessary to move to Google Custom Business Search Engine. I think it was cheaper too. It’s $100 a year. It provides great functionality some of which we haven’t gotten into yet. It gets more into the custom features and refinement capability with the search and Ajax and XML programming abilities. For now, we’ve taken advantage of their basic set, which is much better than anything else out here. Their basic set includes a search of a number of sites. So we can actually tie together our blog, forum and our main website, or other peripheral sites or even any other water filter resources on the Web. We can tie all of that together and if someone searches on our site, it shows search results from any of those pages. That’s very useful. It shows up as a very professional list of results. Wasserman: What does it help your customers do? Arvig: We have a very large number of products. We have thousands of products. We try to maintain a very organized site as it is, for those who are browsing. So if they are looking for a refrigerator water filter, we have an easy way that they can find it while browsing. But when you have that many products, it’s really nice to have a search option. People like to search. I don’t have the exact stats, but I believe it’s over 50 percent who choose to use the search box rather than go through the traditional browsing method. If you have a good search results format, they can very quickly find what they are looking for. At the size our website is now, we didn’t have a choice. We need a search. Wasserman: Were people having a hard time finding what they wanted in the past? Arvig: Yeah. We’ve always had some search so we did try different search engines. At first, when we didn’t have it, people had a lot of trouble and it just wasn’t practical. But even when we had a search engine that wasn’t a very good one, people were having trouble. We were overloading our last search engine, the results were not correct. Even employees were having trouble finding the right water filters. Wasserman: How did you set it up? Arvig: The set up didn’t require programming or CIO work. The way the set up is is very simple. Google lays it out so a monkey can do it. It’s got a step-by-step process. You need some technical background. It’s not like you need to know programming. It probably took a couple of hours – not a big investment. Wasserman: What have the results been? Arvig: We do use Google Analytics, which is a nice tool for monitoring results. We noticed there was a decrease of our bounce rate — when someone comes to your site and leaves right away that’s a bounce. Obviously we want to decrease that as much as possible. We credit a 4 percent bounce rate decrease from this custom search. Another thing we look for on Google Analytics for our website is the conversion rate. The conversion rate is, say 10,000 people come to WaterFiltes.net per day and we have a conversation rate of 10 percent, we would have 1,000 sales. Our conversation rate increased so that’s great. We credit the increase at 11 percent during that period following starting the custom search. It really does facilitate user friendliness, which is what we were going for. Our slogan is “Water filters made easy,” and we have to stand by that so we want to use the best tools possible.
Water Filters Direct sells water filters for refrigerators, water softeners and reverse osmosis systems directly to businesses and consumers over the Internet at WaterFilters.net. Jamin Arvig, director of business development, tells how the company, started in 2002 in Zumbrota, Minn., increased the conversion rate for sales to online customers by 11 percent by deploying a custom search engine. Elizabeth Wasserman: Why did you decide to use custom search? Jamin Arvig: The search tools we had used in the past. .were okay during the stage we were in. We used tools that just did have limitations. They didn’t have customizable features for one. And, for two, they tended to get bogged down as our site grew. As we had more and more pages and we wanted to have more and more capabilities in the search, it became necessary to move to Google Custom Business Search Engine. I think it was cheaper too. It’s $100 a year. It provides great functionality some of which we haven’t gotten into yet. It gets more into the custom features and refinement capability with the search and Ajax and XML programming abilities. For now, we’ve taken advantage of their basic set, which is much better than anything else out here. Their basic set includes a search of a number of sites. So we can actually tie together our blog, forum and our main website, or other peripheral sites or even any other water filter resources on the Web. We can tie all of that together and if someone searches on our site, it shows search results from any of those pages. That’s very useful. It shows up as a very professional list of results. Wasserman: What does it help your customers do? Arvig: We have a very large number of products. We have thousands of products. We try to maintain a very organized site as it is, for those who are browsing. So if they are looking for a refrigerator water filter, we have an easy way that they can find it while browsing. But when you have that many products, it’s really nice to have a search option. People like to search. I don’t have the exact stats, but I believe it’s over 50 percent who choose to use the search box rather than go through the traditional browsing method. If you have a good search results format, they can very quickly find what they are looking for. At the size our website is now, we didn’t have a choice. We need a search. Wasserman: Were people having a hard time finding what they wanted in the past? Arvig: Yeah. We’ve always had some search so we did try different search engines. At first, when we didn’t have it, people had a lot of trouble and it just wasn’t practical. But even when we had a search engine that wasn’t a very good one, people were having trouble. We were overloading our last search engine, the results were not correct. Even employees were having trouble finding the right water filters. Wasserman: How did you set it up? Arvig: The set up didn’t require programming or CIO work. The way the set up is is very simple. Google lays it out so a monkey can do it. It’s got a step-by-step process. You need some technical background. It’s not like you need to know programming. It probably took a couple of hours – not a big investment. Wasserman: What have the results been? Arvig: We do use Google Analytics, which is a nice tool for monitoring results. We noticed there was a decrease of our bounce rate — when someone comes to your site and leaves right away that’s a bounce. Obviously we want to decrease that as much as possible. We credit a 4 percent bounce rate decrease from this custom search. Another thing we look for on Google Analytics for our website is the conversion rate. The conversion rate is, say 10,000 people come to WaterFiltes.net per day and we have a conversation rate of 10 percent, we would have 1,000 sales. Our conversation rate increased so that’s great. We credit the increase at 11 percent during that period following starting the custom search. It really does facilitate user friendliness, which is what we were going for. Our slogan is “Water filters made easy,” and we have to stand by that so we want to use the best tools possible.
It’s one thing to start a company blog. It’s something else entirely to get people to visit. Driving traffic to your small business’ corporate blog takes equal parts old-fashioned marketing and contemporary Web tools. It’s a mix of common sense practices like printing a blog’s URL on company business cards with search engine optimization and blog software plug-ins to come up with the right formula to motivate people to visit, according to corporate bloggers and blog marketing experts. Whatever methods you use, aim for quality, not quantity, says Tac Anderson, a Web 2.0 expert and blogger at the LaserJet business unit of HP in Boise, Idaho. Using lots of Web-based bells and whistles can dramatically increase traffic. But if people don’t make return visits, or all that traffic doesn’t lead to more customers, better bonds with suppliers or other measures of success, it doesn’t mean much. Old school marketing methods No matter what your company’s blog is about or who writes it, start with the basics to spread the word that it’s there: Include the blog’s name and URL on printed materials such business cards, letterhead and brochures. Include it in employees’ email signatures, and prominently display it on the company’s website, either on the front page or another suitable location. MobileDataforce, a 45-person Boise, Idaho, maker of software for mobile devices, has a link to a blog written by CEO Kevin Benedict on the front page of the company’s website. On a recent trip to Australia, Benedict was walking down the street in Sydney and someone called his name “because she’d read my blog and recognized my picture,” he says. Encourage whoever writes the blog to network offline to promote it. At HP, Anderson is frequently invited to speak about Web 2.0 and social media at technology conferences, and uses the occasions to talk to people about his blogs. “Even if they don’t meet you personally, if they just hear you speak, they feel a little more connected, and they’ll be more likely to become regular readers,” Anderson says. Network online. too. Become a frequent visitor of blogs that cover similar topics or industries. Leave comments on those blogs and e-mail the authors. Include those blogs in the list of blogs, or blogroll, on your own blog. MobileDataforce’s software is used on rugged hand-held PCs, so Benedict links his blog to blogs at distributors and manufacturers of that gear. “You get more eyes, and Google ranks you higher if you have connections with other popular sites,” he explains. Search engine optimization and other tools Professional blog marketers suggest using a different bag of tricks to drive traffic to the websites, including: Search engine optimization (SEO) — An entire industry has developed around the science of placing frequently searched words and phrases into the text of blog posts so they’ll appear high in search-engine rankings and get more traffic as a result. Search engine optimization specialists such as Gary Pool, proprietor of White Rose Productions in Portland, Ore., swears by SEO software such as: Niche Bot, a subscription-based software tool that bloggers use to search for commonly used words or phrases. SEO Book, a regularly updated e-book with a variety of SEO tools. Word Tracker, another SEO tool that offers a free trial version. Plugins — Pool prefers to create blogs in WordPress because of the bounty of available plug-in software including: Add Meta Tags, which automatically selects keywords in blog posts that will get picked up by search engines. Share This, software that adds a button to the bottom of every blog post making it easier to subscribe it to a viewer’s RSS news reader. XML Sitemaps, software that produces a sitemap of a blog that makes it easier for Google, Yahoo, and MSN to search a blog. Blog directories — Pool also suggests that companies submit their blogs to blog directories for specific states, industries, or professions. If you use SEO keywords to drive traffic, don’t dwell on the details to the extent that you forget the big picture. If your blog is so crowded with key words people can’t find what they are looking for, you’ve defeated the purpose of bringing them to the blog in the first place, Pool says. And don’t forget to have fun with it. “If it’s personal, people will keep coming back. It doesn’t have to be heavy handed,” he says. In the end, content is still king. Present interesting information visitors want to read, and you never know where it will lead. At MobileDataforce, Benedict had given up ever getting an order from a large New Zealand company that initially expressed interest then stopped returning emails and phone calls. But they didn’t stop reading his blog. After six months of silence they called. “Their employees read my blog every week and they were ready to buy,” Benedict says. The blog “is an ongoing communication with customers that we don’t even know we have.”
It’s one thing to start a company blog. It’s something else entirely to get people to visit. Driving traffic to your small business’ corporate blog takes equal parts old-fashioned marketing and contemporary Web tools. It’s a mix of common sense practices like printing a blog’s URL on company business cards with search engine optimization and blog software plug-ins to come up with the right formula to motivate people to visit, according to corporate bloggers and blog marketing experts. Whatever methods you use, aim for quality, not quantity, says Tac Anderson, a Web 2.0 expert and blogger at the LaserJet business unit of HP in Boise, Idaho. Using lots of Web-based bells and whistles can dramatically increase traffic. But if people don’t make return visits, or all that traffic doesn’t lead to more customers, better bonds with suppliers or other measures of success, it doesn’t mean much. Old school marketing methods No matter what your company’s blog is about or who writes it, start with the basics to spread the word that it’s there: Include the blog’s name and URL on printed materials such business cards, letterhead and brochures. Include it in employees’ email signatures, and prominently display it on the company’s website, either on the front page or another suitable location. MobileDataforce, a 45-person Boise, Idaho, maker of software for mobile devices, has a link to a blog written by CEO Kevin Benedict on the front page of the company’s website. On a recent trip to Australia, Benedict was walking down the street in Sydney and someone called his name “because she’d read my blog and recognized my picture,” he says. Encourage whoever writes the blog to network offline to promote it. At HP, Anderson is frequently invited to speak about Web 2.0 and social media at technology conferences, and uses the occasions to talk to people about his blogs. “Even if they don’t meet you personally, if they just hear you speak, they feel a little more connected, and they’ll be more likely to become regular readers,” Anderson says. Network online. too. Become a frequent visitor of blogs that cover similar topics or industries. Leave comments on those blogs and e-mail the authors. Include those blogs in the list of blogs, or blogroll, on your own blog. MobileDataforce’s software is used on rugged hand-held PCs, so Benedict links his blog to blogs at distributors and manufacturers of that gear. “You get more eyes, and Google ranks you higher if you have connections with other popular sites,” he explains. Search engine optimization and other tools Professional blog marketers suggest using a different bag of tricks to drive traffic to the websites, including: Search engine optimization (SEO) — An entire industry has developed around the science of placing frequently searched words and phrases into the text of blog posts so they’ll appear high in search-engine rankings and get more traffic as a result. Search engine optimization specialists such as Gary Pool, proprietor of White Rose Productions in Portland, Ore., swears by SEO software such as: Niche Bot, a subscription-based software tool that bloggers use to search for commonly used words or phrases. SEO Book, a regularly updated e-book with a variety of SEO tools. Word Tracker, another SEO tool that offers a free trial version. Plugins — Pool prefers to create blogs in WordPress because of the bounty of available plug-in software including: Add Meta Tags, which automatically selects keywords in blog posts that will get picked up by search engines. Share This, software that adds a button to the bottom of every blog post making it easier to subscribe it to a viewer’s RSS news reader. XML Sitemaps, software that produces a sitemap of a blog that makes it easier for Google, Yahoo, and MSN to search a blog. Blog directories — Pool also suggests that companies submit their blogs to blog directories for specific states, industries, or professions. If you use SEO keywords to drive traffic, don’t dwell on the details to the extent that you forget the big picture. If your blog is so crowded with key words people can’t find what they are looking for, you’ve defeated the purpose of bringing them to the blog in the first place, Pool says. And don’t forget to have fun with it. “If it’s personal, people will keep coming back. It doesn’t have to be heavy handed,” he says. In the end, content is still king. Present interesting information visitors want to read, and you never know where it will lead. At MobileDataforce, Benedict had given up ever getting an order from a large New Zealand company that initially expressed interest then stopped returning emails and phone calls. But they didn’t stop reading his blog. After six months of silence they called. “Their employees read my blog every week and they were ready to buy,” Benedict says. The blog “is an ongoing communication with customers that we don’t even know we have.”
It’s one thing to start a company blog. It’s something else entirely to get people to visit. Driving traffic to your small business’ corporate blog takes equal parts old-fashioned marketing and contemporary Web tools. It’s a mix of common sense practices like printing a blog’s URL on company business cards with search engine optimization and blog software plug-ins to come up with the right formula to motivate people to visit, according to corporate bloggers and blog marketing experts. Whatever methods you use, aim for quality, not quantity, says Tac Anderson, a Web 2.0 expert and blogger at the LaserJet business unit of HP in Boise, Idaho. Using lots of Web-based bells and whistles can dramatically increase traffic. But if people don’t make return visits, or all that traffic doesn’t lead to more customers, better bonds with suppliers or other measures of success, it doesn’t mean much. Old school marketing methods No matter what your company’s blog is about or who writes it, start with the basics to spread the word that it’s there: Include the blog’s name and URL on printed materials such business cards, letterhead and brochures. Include it in employees’ email signatures, and prominently display it on the company’s website, either on the front page or another suitable location. MobileDataforce, a 45-person Boise, Idaho, maker of software for mobile devices, has a link to a blog written by CEO Kevin Benedict on the front page of the company’s website. On a recent trip to Australia, Benedict was walking down the street in Sydney and someone called his name “because she’d read my blog and recognized my picture,” he says. Encourage whoever writes the blog to network offline to promote it. At HP, Anderson is frequently invited to speak about Web 2.0 and social media at technology conferences, and uses the occasions to talk to people about his blogs. “Even if they don’t meet you personally, if they just hear you speak, they feel a little more connected, and they’ll be more likely to become regular readers,” Anderson says. Network online. too. Become a frequent visitor of blogs that cover similar topics or industries. Leave comments on those blogs and e-mail the authors. Include those blogs in the list of blogs, or blogroll, on your own blog. MobileDataforce’s software is used on rugged hand-held PCs, so Benedict links his blog to blogs at distributors and manufacturers of that gear. “You get more eyes, and Google ranks you higher if you have connections with other popular sites,” he explains. Search engine optimization and other tools Professional blog marketers suggest using a different bag of tricks to drive traffic to the websites, including: Search engine optimization (SEO) — An entire industry has developed around the science of placing frequently searched words and phrases into the text of blog posts so they’ll appear high in search-engine rankings and get more traffic as a result. Search engine optimization specialists such as Gary Pool, proprietor of White Rose Productions in Portland, Ore., swears by SEO software such as: Niche Bot, a subscription-based software tool that bloggers use to search for commonly used words or phrases. SEO Book, a regularly updated e-book with a variety of SEO tools. Word Tracker, another SEO tool that offers a free trial version. Plugins — Pool prefers to create blogs in WordPress because of the bounty of available plug-in software including: Add Meta Tags, which automatically selects keywords in blog posts that will get picked up by search engines. Share This, software that adds a button to the bottom of every blog post making it easier to subscribe it to a viewer’s RSS news reader. XML Sitemaps, software that produces a sitemap of a blog that makes it easier for Google, Yahoo, and MSN to search a blog. Blog directories — Pool also suggests that companies submit their blogs to blog directories for specific states, industries, or professions. If you use SEO keywords to drive traffic, don’t dwell on the details to the extent that you forget the big picture. If your blog is so crowded with key words people can’t find what they are looking for, you’ve defeated the purpose of bringing them to the blog in the first place, Pool says. And don’t forget to have fun with it. “If it’s personal, people will keep coming back. It doesn’t have to be heavy handed,” he says. In the end, content is still king. Present interesting information visitors want to read, and you never know where it will lead. At MobileDataforce, Benedict had given up ever getting an order from a large New Zealand company that initially expressed interest then stopped returning emails and phone calls. But they didn’t stop reading his blog. After six months of silence they called. “Their employees read my blog every week and they were ready to buy,” Benedict says. The blog “is an ongoing communication with customers that we don’t even know we have.”
It’s one thing to start a company blog. It’s something else entirely to get people to visit. Driving traffic to your small business’ corporate blog takes equal parts old-fashioned marketing and contemporary Web tools. It’s a mix of common sense practices like printing a blog’s URL on company business cards with search engine optimization and blog software plug-ins to come up with the right formula to motivate people to visit, according to corporate bloggers and blog marketing experts. Whatever methods you use, aim for quality, not quantity, says Tac Anderson, a Web 2.0 expert and blogger at the LaserJet business unit of HP in Boise, Idaho. Using lots of Web-based bells and whistles can dramatically increase traffic. But if people don’t make return visits, or all that traffic doesn’t lead to more customers, better bonds with suppliers or other measures of success, it doesn’t mean much. Old school marketing methods No matter what your company’s blog is about or who writes it, start with the basics to spread the word that it’s there: Include the blog’s name and URL on printed materials such business cards, letterhead and brochures. Include it in employees’ email signatures, and prominently display it on the company’s website, either on the front page or another suitable location. MobileDataforce, a 45-person Boise, Idaho, maker of software for mobile devices, has a link to a blog written by CEO Kevin Benedict on the front page of the company’s website. On a recent trip to Australia, Benedict was walking down the street in Sydney and someone called his name “because she’d read my blog and recognized my picture,” he says. Encourage whoever writes the blog to network offline to promote it. At HP, Anderson is frequently invited to speak about Web 2.0 and social media at technology conferences, and uses the occasions to talk to people about his blogs. “Even if they don’t meet you personally, if they just hear you speak, they feel a little more connected, and they’ll be more likely to become regular readers,” Anderson says. Network online. too. Become a frequent visitor of blogs that cover similar topics or industries. Leave comments on those blogs and e-mail the authors. Include those blogs in the list of blogs, or blogroll, on your own blog. MobileDataforce’s software is used on rugged hand-held PCs, so Benedict links his blog to blogs at distributors and manufacturers of that gear. “You get more eyes, and Google ranks you higher if you have connections with other popular sites,” he explains. Search engine optimization and other tools Professional blog marketers suggest using a different bag of tricks to drive traffic to the websites, including: Search engine optimization (SEO) — An entire industry has developed around the science of placing frequently searched words and phrases into the text of blog posts so they’ll appear high in search-engine rankings and get more traffic as a result. Search engine optimization specialists such as Gary Pool, proprietor of White Rose Productions in Portland, Ore., swears by SEO software such as: Niche Bot, a subscription-based software tool that bloggers use to search for commonly used words or phrases. SEO Book, a regularly updated e-book with a variety of SEO tools. Word Tracker, another SEO tool that offers a free trial version. Plugins — Pool prefers to create blogs in WordPress because of the bounty of available plug-in software including: Add Meta Tags, which automatically selects keywords in blog posts that will get picked up by search engines. Share This, software that adds a button to the bottom of every blog post making it easier to subscribe it to a viewer’s RSS news reader. XML Sitemaps, software that produces a sitemap of a blog that makes it easier for Google, Yahoo, and MSN to search a blog. Blog directories — Pool also suggests that companies submit their blogs to blog directories for specific states, industries, or professions. If you use SEO keywords to drive traffic, don’t dwell on the details to the extent that you forget the big picture. If your blog is so crowded with key words people can’t find what they are looking for, you’ve defeated the purpose of bringing them to the blog in the first place, Pool says. And don’t forget to have fun with it. “If it’s personal, people will keep coming back. It doesn’t have to be heavy handed,” he says. In the end, content is still king. Present interesting information visitors want to read, and you never know where it will lead. At MobileDataforce, Benedict had given up ever getting an order from a large New Zealand company that initially expressed interest then stopped returning emails and phone calls. But they didn’t stop reading his blog. After six months of silence they called. “Their employees read my blog every week and they were ready to buy,” Benedict says. The blog “is an ongoing communication with customers that we don’t even know we have.”
