From Inc.com:

1. A weblog is a two-way conversation, not a top-down communication medium.

2. It takes time to blog, maybe more than you’re willing to devote.

3. Find out what others are saying about you and your business.

4. Yes, you do need to be able to write.

Not a bad start. Read the rest.

(Hat tip: Radiant Marketing)

Annoying web sites. Something I can sink my teeth into.

E-Commerce News has obtained a soon-to-be-released survey on what people hate about web sites. Top pet peeves:

• Pop-up advertising
• Registration log-on pages
• Software installation (especially without obtaining the user’s permission)
• Slow-loading pages

Those cover a lot of territory, but I must list a few of my own web site pet peeves:

• “About” and “Contact” information are difficult to find
• Created-in-the-80s-looking sites. (I can’t link to examples because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.
• Broken links
• Sites where music plays upon page loading
• Counter-intuitive navigation

See Web Pages That Suck

Here’s a quick, do-it-yourself method to determine how people are finding your site. A traffic meter is a must-have. Site Meter offers a free web counter that tracks visitors, but I recommend their Standard service at $6.95 per month. With this service, you will have access to search word terms that led visitors to your site and which terms are the most popular.

Signing up for Site Meter may not be necessary if you have the ability to measure site traffic through your current hosting service or blog platform.

Update (7/29): From Inc.com:

Be sure to know your keywords.

Blogs can help customers find your business when they are searching on Google or other sites. Therefore, it’s important to know: What words do customers most often use to find you via the search engines? What words show up in competitor or industry blogs on a regular basis that help place them high in Google’s index? Knowing which words to drop into your posts on a regular basis will help boost your search rankings. “Small businesses get more search engine benefit from blogs than larger businesses,” Campbell says. After all, your marketing budget probably is a fraction of what GE will spend this year. Writing frequently and dropping keywords into your posts to help boost your search standings can go a long way for a business owner on a tight marketing budget. But don’t overdo it. Readers will see right through any obvious attempts at self-promotion.

Forbes names the blogs that matter in its Best of the Web feature. Very intriguing…

I’m biased in favor of blogs as home pages on business web sites, so I asked Stone Creek Coffee marketing director, Tom Pionek, why his company chose to place the blog on the front page of the site:

Hello La Shawn,

Thank you for mentioning us in your blog and taking the time to look at our site.

Regarding the location, we decided to place the blog on the front page simply because we wanted the freshest content to be in the most visible area possible. So, we created the area on the front page to list the two latest posts and then created a link to the full blog inside the site.

I hope this helps, please let me know if you have any follow up questions.

Thanks!

Tom

Previous post: Stone Creek Coffee Roasters

Marketer Lisa Ghisolf joined the blogging revolution when she added a blog to her firm’s web site, Gizmo Design, Inc. Although blogs should be customer-focused, such isn’t the only benefit of blogs:

While Ghisolf hasn’t received many replies to her blog entries, which tend to focus on design and marketing tips, the blog is helping potential customers find her. “It was almost immediately indexed in Google. Because I was writing about so many subjects, it got a lot of attention,” she said.

And that’s not to be underestimated. According to blogging experts, one factor fueling the latest push into business blogs is the realization that search engines are paying attention to them–even if few others take the time to read them. (Source)

Ideally, good business blogs will generate reader feedback, but as long as you’re updating often, search engines will reward you with curious visitors, who may turn into satisfied and repeat customers.

Last week I wrote that blogs should be the home page of a business web site because it’s the best place for customers to find the latest information about the business.

A company called Stone Creek Coffee Roasters placed its blog on the front page. Marketing director Tom Pionek says his company uses the blog to announce events and solicit customer feedback. He added:

For us, the thing is that we’re not a very large company as compared to, say, Starbucks….and the blog lets us speak to people, our customers. It lends a real sort of hands-on feel to our company voice.

I’m going to e-mail Pionek to find out why Stone Creek Coffee decided to use a blog as the home page. Stay tuned.

The rest of the article is about blogs and customer interaction and includes quotes from a blog consultant and company employees. The big question is whether businesses can tap into the power of the blogs. The answer is yes, of course, as long as they understand the new technology and why blogs became so popular in a short span of time. The personal nature and openness of blogs are major reasons why blogs caught on so fast, and businesses must be willing to embrace these qualities.

(Hat tip: Radiant Marketing)

So you’ve decided to create a blog for your business web site and don’t know which platform to use. Wayne Hurlbert of Blog Business World links to a useful comparison chart.

The blogosphere has grown large enough to justify having its own search engines dedicated to mining the prolific output of blogs of all topics and genres, and not just engines like Technorati. The new medium has become so pervasive so quickly, traditional media, the corporate world, and fortune-hunters of all stripes will spend years trying to catch up.

Business Week has the story:

No, if you’re looking for today’s buzz, the first place to click is a Web log search engine such as Technorati, Feedster, or Blogdigger. By picking up the latest posts, minute by minute, from some 12 million blogs, these sites showcase an ever-changing mosaic of what is on the world’s mind.

TRAFFIC DRIVER. From politicos to ad execs and plaintiff’s lawyers, lots of people are hungry for just that.

Now a surge of traffic to blog search sites has raised expectations that giants Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft’s MSN may soon plunge into blog search.

Blogs would give them yet another vehicle for the search-based ads they sell. Just as vital, blog search promises to be a big traffic driver as more surfers — some 40,000 to 50,000 a day — take up blogging.

CRAWLING ALONG. The time looks ripe. Industry incumbents appear vulnerable as they struggle to sort through the avalanche of new data pouring into their servers. Adam Hertz, Technorati’s chief engineer, says the company handles 850,000 daily blog postings, up 70% in three months. Adding servers is a snap, Hertz says. But revamping systems to digest all the data “is like changing a flat tire on a moving car.”

What all this portends for search engines like Google and Yahoo! and for businesses in general is anyone’s guess.

Tags: technorati, search engines, and technology.

Americans use search engines more often than telephone books to find information, according to a new study by icrossing, a search engine marketing agency. The study examines why people use search engines and which ones are used the most.

Search engines are the vehicles that drive web traffic. According to the Search Engine Guide, a definitive source for search engine information, between 78 - 84 percent of all web site traffic comes from search engines. Business owners must learn to harness the power of online searches to attract visitors and potential buyers. Static web pages aren’t enough. You need a blog. Why?

Search engines love blogs.

Stay tuned for more Search Engine Madness.

(Hat tip: Lexblog)