VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

Blogging Has Come a Long Way Baby!

In a recent article from eMarketer, 27.9 million US Internet users have a blog they update at least once per month, and they represent 14% of the Internet population. By 2013, 37.6 million users will update their blogs at least monthly.

"Blogs are now mainstream media," said Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati.  "You’re also seeing mainstream media coming in the other direction by adding blog content."

Even more importantly, eMarketer estimates that in 2009 96.6 million US Internet users will read a blog at least once per month. By 2013, 128.2 million people, or 58% of all US users, will do the same.

And blogs and email go hand in hand. At VerticalResponse we send our bi-monthly email newsletter with excerpts from the blog. Then we direct our users to the blog for more information and how-to's. It's been wildly successful.

If you don't know what a blog is or why your business needs one, you HAVE to read "What is a Blog and Why Should You Have One" to really understand what the benefits are for your business. Also check out our Blog category for all types of hints. You'll find a few nice winery blogs here.

How to Get People Commenting On Your Blog

I remember when I started our blog, people would email me instead of commenting on my posts. It inspired me to write the post Why Comment on a Blog? I really wanted to be open and let everyone see great comments from other readers and not have it be closed between two inboxes. There are a few good ways to get people commenting on your blog that we employ here at VR, check them out. 

1. Collect Email Addresses - Do you have enough people reading your blog? Use VerticalResponse's free opt-in form, it's just a few clicks if you use our integration with TypePad. Then as soon as you publish your post send an email marketing campaign to your list with a snippet of your new posts. Sometimes simply publishing your post won't drive traffic if your readers don't know about it or aren't subscribed via RSS.

2. Ask for The Comment!  - At the end of each blog post ask your readers to comment on something you wrote about.

3. Ask Your Friends to Comment - Sometimes people are shy but if they see others commenting they may chime in too! Get the ball rolling any way you can!

4. Write Some Good Content - Not everything you write is going to be Pulitzer worthy, however there are easy ways to see what people are excited about reading. We installed Google Analytics on our blog to see what people are most interested in, then I write more of that particular topic or in that particular fashion. For example, it was pretty clear that many of our readers liked things formatted so that it's easy to read but also a quick one. "5 Quick Things..." or "10 Ways to a Better...".

5. Write Often - Get your readers used to you publishing on a regular basis so that there is enough for them to read when they haven't been to your blog in a while. They may find something in the past few weeks that inspire them to comment.

6. Get Your Readers Riled Up! - From time to time be crazy and take a different stance. Write about something controversial to get them commenting or point to another blog and tell your readers how you feel about it. Then ask them how they feel!

Hope this helps!

What is a Blog & Why You Should Have One

I've talked a little about why a business should blog but since then we've experienced even more from the blog we publish so I thought we'd give more ideas.

What is a Blog?

Wikipedia has a great definition of a corporate blog:

"...a publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokespersons share their views. It is often used to announce new products and services (or the end of old products), to explain and clarify policies, or to react on public criticism on certain issues. It also allows a window to the company culture and is often treated more informally than traditional press releases...in some corporate blogs, all posts go through a review before they're posted. Some corporate blogs, but not all, allow comments to be made to the posts."

A blog is simply a website you publish in conjunction with your corporate website where you become the expert in your field and provide important information about your industry or your product/service that your readers or customers might find useful. It also provides a "voice" of the company as well as a way for your readers to comment back on what you provide. It works in conjunction with your company website

Blog providers: TypePad, WordPress, Blogger

Why Blog?

Search Engine Rankings

Backlinking - The more you link back to your corporate domain you could get ranked higher in the search engines. Search engines like "backlinks" (for now anyway). Make sure you link from keywords that are meaningful in your posts. For instance if one of your keywords is "red lipstick" then link back to a page on your site from that keyword.

Categories - Flag each post or "tag" them with a popular keyword(s) or categories for the search engines to key on as well. Notice the (s) above? Put your posts in multiple categories so they can have multiple tags. The more the merrier.

Customer Feedback

Polling - If you need a quick answer to questions, throw up a poll on your blog. Through polling we not only found that our users would attend events we throw, but Vizu, the polling provider we use actually tells us where in the world (on a Google map) these people actually are. Great for event planning.

Comments - Moderating comments in general is a good idea because of spam commentors who just want to get their link on a well-trafficked blog. You will get many great comments either supporting or disagreeing with your POV. It's wonderful to get customer opinions on certain topics, but better yet, have them comment on each other's comments. It facilitates a really great dialog, plus you're on the pulse of how they feel about you.

Content

Selling vs. Not Selling - Avoid too much "shameless self-promotion" if you can, unless that's what you want your blog to be. People are less likely to link to your blog if it's more about you and less informational. So although a blog should be used as a marketing tool, it should be more information than marketing.

Search Engines - The more content you have on your blog about your specific topics, the more the search engines will pick up keywords on your blog. It's both a quantity/quality game.

PR

Establish Yourself as an Expert - Whenever our PR folks gets a request from a publication about a topic to write about, they consult the blog first to see if there's anything already there. This proves to be a great time saver. If they do find something, they forward the blog post to the publication writer. In some cases that's all the publication needs for a reference, in others it's used as an example of the types of topics we can be interviewed, quoted and published on.

Reusable Content - From time to time our PR folks will use our content as the idea for a story that a publisher might find interesting.

RSS

Use RSS to publish feeds of your last few blog posts strategically on your site. It can support what you sell if your readers think you're the industry expert. This can also drive traffic back to the blog so that your readers can get more information.

Try using email marketing to drive traffic directly to the blog giving your users helpful information. Then use Google Analytics on the blog to find out which posts most readers are interested in.

For good examples of blogs check "Blogs I Read" in the left column here.

One more very important thing, try to blog regularly since the search engines favor timely posts. I'd recommend no less than 2x a month. Write down topics you want to blog about as soon as you think about them (they don't have to be this long) then sit down and start typing. Get ahead of the game and do 3-4 at once!

Splog - What It Is and Why It's Bad.

Spam, it ain't just for email marketing anymore. Can you believe that companies pay to have people posting canned comments and creating fake blogs to get their name out there?

I guess I can, we've pretty much seen it all, haven't we? I've really been against creating fake blogs and posting about VerticalResponse on them (definition of splog). For a while we hired someone to post our white papers on sites and try to get our articles in ezines but it was turning out that they may have splogged a bit. I just think it's unethical. Some even outsource this task overseas for cheaper rates.

How can you tell if someone is splogging?

1. You visit a blog about healthy diets and you see a blog post from an email marketing company that is completely unrelated and clearly not written by the writer.
2. You just simply click on the about us on the blog and the default text comes up "Here's where you write about yourself."
3. Each post you see has pretty much the exact same copy with a line or two written just a bit differently.

It's pretty easy for those who are technical to automatically create blogs and fill them with content via RSS and ads. Affiliate programs have grown by leaps and bounds because of this. (We *try* to monitor our own affiliates.)

Why do companies splog? They get more exposure, have more inbound links, use tons of keywords and hopefully the search engines pick them up and rise them to the top.

I actually got this spam email this weekend:

Dear Janine
I am writing you today to introduce myself, and my company, #$%^Services. We've got a hot new service that enables your organization to take advantage of the latest phenomenon, youtube.com. We can take an existing television ad, or create one for you, and post it to youtube, metacafe.com, miro.com, weshow.com, knockatv.com,videomsn, aolvideo, yahoovideo and dozens of other rising stars in the internet video space. We offer dedicated staff to add laudatory comments, based upon customer, staff, and vendor comments, to blogs underneath these videos as well as create new blogs touting the features, advantages, and benefits of your solutions. These dedicated resources will also visit and post laudatory comments to industry specific web forums related to your organization.

Fake blogs and fake comments..hmmm.

I think we'll do the best we can by monitoring and go the old-fashioned route and have someone here at VR track what people are saying about us online. Then WE can post comments that tout our services or answer questions from within VR, not outsource it and give canned comments or splog. When you see someone posting a comment from VerticalResponse, it'll be an employee who works here and knows what to say.

I had to vent when I saw some of our competitors in this space stooping. I'm tired of this littering of the internet, aren't you?

TypePad Webinar Q & A

I know it's been a long time in the making, but here is the Q&A that we didn't get to from the TypePad Webinar - Small Business Blogging 101, a few weeks back. Our guest Michael Sippey the VP and General Manager of TypePad was kind enough to answer many of the questions below. Happy reading it's a long one!

Q. Would a blog be a better substitute for this?  I edit a quarterly national newsletter, the Planning Commissioners Journal. Over the past 10 years, we've emailed draft articles submitted to us for publication to about 700 people who have signed up.
Janine:  I think a blog is perfect for you especially if you want to encourage comments from your readers. We’ve replaced our own newsletter and send just a “teaser” from our blog posts in an email to our recipients letting them know the blog has been updated. It’s worked out great!

Q. Why should I use TypePad instead of wordpress.org that is free?
Michael: One of the key differences between TypePad and free services is the customer support that we provide.  Our support reps answer questions seven days a week, year round, and help our customers with questions about how to set up their blog and make the most of their TypePad account.  TypePad also has a world-class feature set that you won’t find on free services, including the ability to place third party content (like the Vertical Response Opt-In Widget) on your blog.

Q. Can you talk more on how to submit blog to search engines?
Michael:  Sure!  It’s actually simple with TypePad:  Six Apart publishes the “Six Apart Update Stream” which automatically sends your blog posts to the major blog search engines, including Google and Technorati. This ensures that those engines index your posts.  Additionally, you can have your blog automatically send updates to services from Yahoo and FeedBurner, which in turn are used by other search engines to learn about new blog posts. And this is all in addition to the normal crawling that Google and other search engines will do of your site and your blog.

Q. Assuming 2 to 3 simple posts a week, what is the average time investment?
Janine: I’m doing about that many, but some of those aren’t necessarily “simple”. I invest about a few hours a week in doing them. If it’s just a 10-liner rant or piece of info, you’ll spend a lot less time.

Q. Can I add RSS as part of the blog?
Michael:  Absolutely.  By default, TypePad will publish RSS feeds of your blog, and even automatically create an iTunes compatible podcast feed if you include an audio file in your post.  Additionally, TypePad integrates with third party feed publishing service FeedBurner, which can give you statistics on the readership of your feed, as well as help you insert advertising and provide other value added services for your RSS feed.

TypePad also includes a feature that lets you display headlines from other RSS feeds on the sidebar of your blog. Customers today use this to show off headlines from their favorite news services, or even from another one of their own blogs.

Q. Can you explain the different account levels of TypePad?
Michael:  Basic is a great way to get started with TypePad.  For $4.95 a month you get a Six Apart-hosted blog with access to our professionally designed templates and themes, full access to TypePad Widgets (including the Vertical Response Opt-in form Widget), and customer support. 

The Plus level ($8.95 per month) gives you all of that plus the ability to host up to three blogs on your TypePad account, and the ability to customize your blog’s design with your own banner image and preferences for colors, fonts, borders, etc., all without needing to know a single bit of HTML.

A Pro account ($14.95 per month) gives you everything at the Plus level, plus the ability to host a virtually unlimited number of blogs, as well as have multiple contributors (or “guest authors”) on your blogs. Additionally, you can use TypePad’s “Advanced Template” language (similar to HTML) to get pixel level control over your blog’s look and feel.

Q: If my URL is registered with GoDaddy, how do I point that to my TypePad blog?
Michael: At the Plus and Pro levels, you can use our “domain mapping” feature to have your domain point to your TypePad blog, for a seamless experience for your customers.  Many of our customers use GoDaddy, and have a domain like “blog.company.com” pointed to their TypePad blog. 

You can learn all about our domain mapping feature by visiting our searchable Knowledge Base at and searching for “domain mapping.”

Q:  Can you provide links on your blog for Affiliate Sales...i.e. links to Amazon? 
Michael:  Absolutely.  In fact, one of the key differences between TypePad and some free hosted services is that we don’t put any restrictions on the type of content you put on your blog.  We have customers that use Amazon affiliate links and the aStore feature of Amazon to host entire shopping experiences on their TypePad blogs.  And thousands of our customers have discovered other ways to make money from their blogs, whether it’s online advertising from Google, Tip Jars from PayPal or affiliate programs from some of TypePad’s Widget partners.

Q: Do your products support Mac users?
Michael: Yes.  TypePad is an entirely web-based service, which means there’s no complicated software to download or install.  You can use TypePad with Safari on the Mac, though we recommend Firefox for the best user experience.
Janine: I use a Mac with TypePad for the VerticalResponse blog on Firefox.

Q. Can you talk more about the marketing of your blog and VR?
Janine:  First of all our TypePad Opt-in form Widget is pretty slick. You take about 5 minutes creating your form in VerticalResponse and at the end we ask you if you want to export your Opt-in form to your TypePad Blog. You’re prompted to log into your TypePad account and then you’ll simply click a link and your opt-in form will instantly appear on your blog. Anyone who signs up using the form will automatically go into your VerticalResponse account for you to email to.

Q. What do small business bloggers do about privacy-related issues, copyright etc., particularly if anyone is allowed to respond to a post?
Michael:  I assume you’re talking about issues with visitors including content in comments that they don’t have the rights to post…  Generally we don’t see a lot of that type of infringing activity on TypePad blogs (especially from commenters), but TypePad’s tools make it easy to either (a) require a comment be approved by you before it appears on your blog, or (b) quickly remove it from your blog after the fact.

Q. Doesn't the e-Fax example highlight some of the danger of blogging? How do you suggest that companies work to help control negative information while keeping the 'actual conversation' nature of the blog intact? 
Michael:  Ah, yes, it does.  But here’s where I think eFax fell down on the job.  First, this kind of post would be a great opportunity for an eFax customer service representative to comment on and either (a) apologize for the service they gave or (b) explain just what happened and offer to make it right.  Additionally, if eFax had a blog of their own I’m sure they’d be hearing about these kinds of problems directly, and wouldn’t have customers complaining about it on their own blogs.  Finally, never underestimate the fundamentals:  first execute on a service that people find valuable, useful and easy to use.

Q. Does it ever make sense to have your blog and your website separate -- so they can better maintain somewhat separate identities?
Janine: I believe so. The VerticalResponse blog is separate from the company site because it does have a separate identity and we want to keep it that way. However, you can get to the blog easily from the site. In addition, the tone of the blog is a bit more relaxed and “chatty” vs. the site.

Q. How do you suggest using a blog for a small financial services company?
Michael:  Without knowing your specific business it’s hard to comment, but I would assume that part of what makes you a great small financial services company is your combination of expertise and customer relationships.  So use your blog to highlight both! Use your blog to give away some of your expertise, to reinforce your value proposition to your existing clients, and to attract new ones.  And you can also use your blog to highlight success stories of some of your clients.  Tell stories about how you’ve helped them plan for their future, or earn above market returns, or how much they love coming in to the office to meet with your advisors.  Tell the story of your business!

Q. How easy is it to integrate the TypePad blog page onto existing websites?
Michael:  We have a good number of customers that integrate the reader experience of their blog with their website. TypePad’s domain mapping feature makes it easy to point a subdomain of your blog (like blog.company.com) to your TypePad blog, and you can use TypePad’s design features to make your blog look similar to, or just like your website.

Q. How long is the 15% discount good for?
Michael:  If you use the code VRWEBINAR when you register, the discount is good for the life of your subscription!

Q. How much attention should you pay to seeding your posts with key words in titles, headings and general content?
Michael: Think of your blog title posts like subject lines in email:  you want them to be relevant to what you’re writing about, and maybe even warrant a bit of attention to encourage readers to read the entire post.  As for seeding your entries itself with keywords, I would instead focus on writing about what comes naturally to you, and let the “keywords” take care of themselves.

Q:  I'm using my blog to generate content that will be included in a future book. Is there a way to easily export my blog content as text?
Michael:  Absolutely! TypePad’s export feature lets you get your blog entries (and even comments and TrackBacks) out of the system in a plain text format that you can then import into a word processor, or even use to migrate to another blogging tool if need be.  There are also new companies like Blurb who will automatically import your blog content to help you self-publish a book.

Q. How much blogging is TOO much?  Can you update too often or have too many blogs within your site (if you cover different content with different blogs)?
Michael: Different blogs within your site covering different types of content can be a great way to help your readers / customers self-select the type of information they want to be reading. But be careful about getting too segmented – if you’re not committed to keeping those blogs updated, you can end up with phantom blogs that don’t have a life anymore. As for how much is too much?  Think about it as a reader – how much would you want to read about your topic of interest or small business?

Q. I already use TypePad; can I get the discount if I upgrade to the Pro level?
Michael: Thanks for participating in the webinar!  Email me directly and I’ll help you out. 

Q. I am currently evaluating two blog platforms for a small business platform -- TypePad and SquareSpace. Would love to hear reasons why I would choose TypePad over SquareSpace? What sets you apart from them?
Michael:  SquareSpace has a great product, and I’d love to hear what you think about it.  At Six Apart, we focus on building great, easy to use blogging tools that can help you build a powerful blog and a professional presence online, without overwhelming you with complicated concepts.  We’re proud that TypePad’s in use by business bloggers like Janine Popick, popular bloggers like Cute Overload and Celebrity Babies, and journalists/commentators like Andrew Sullivan and the staff of Wired Magazine.

Q. I have disabled the archives on my blog - is this a mistake?  How can I get you to critique my blog?
Michael:  I would definitely re-enable archives on your blog if your tool supports them; it will create that “permanent record” of entries, and enable future customers to find you through search engines. And if you’d like some feedback on your blog, feel free to email me directly.

Q. If we want to create our own blog network (like HuffPost), is that fairly easy with TypePad? 
Michael: We have some customers that have used our tools in combination with tools from companies like FeedBurner to create blog networks similar to HuffPost.  Check out what Business 2.0 is doing at blogs.business2.com as an example.  And we are looking at building more “blog network” tools into TypePad directly.

Q: Is it easy to transfer an existing blog on a different system to TypePad?
Michael:  Yes!  Six Apart led the way in defining standards for import and export of blog content, and TypePad supports import and export.  To learn more, visit our Knowledge Base at support.typepad.com and search for “import.”

Q. I'm still confused about the difference between, Vox, Moveable Type and TypePad. Would you go over this briefly?
Michael:  I know it seems complicated!  We have four products that are meant for different types of bloggers and different ways of blogging. 

• Movable Type is something you can install on your own server
• TypePad is built for professionals and passionate bloggers looking to build an audience and communicate with the world and we host for you
• LiveJournal and Vox are built for individuals looking to communicate with friends and family and we also host them for you.

You can learn more about all of the products by visiting our site.

Q. Is there a way of finding what people in your industry are blogging?
Michael:  Start with the blog search engines and query for key terms that would help you find sites similar to yours. Technorati , Google Blog Search, and Ask Blog Search are great tools for this.  Once you find a few, it’s likely that they’ll be linking to other blogs that cover similar topics.

Q. Is there document storage capability with TypePad?  How can I store a PDF document on my blog?
Michael:  You can upload PDF documents, Microsoft Office documents, images, audio files, video files – any type of document at all – and include a link to that document in your blog post. TypePad makes it easy to upload those documents and the system will automatically build a link for you.

Q. Is there any way to track who is looking at my Blog? Could I use Google Analytics, for example? 
Michael:  TypePad includes basic visitor statistics functionality right out of the box.  But if you’re interested in more complete analytics, you can use Google Analytics on your blog without any problems.  (Note that this isn’t the case for some of the free services out there.)  You can simply copy and paste the Analytics tracking JavaScript code into your blog templates (if you’re using Advanced Templates) or insert it as an item in one of your TypeLists.

Q. Can you explain how you could set up a URL of blog.mydomain.com?
Michael: TypePad supports “domain mapping” which will allow you to point blog.mydomain.com to your TypePad blog.  You can learn all about the process by visiting our Knowledge Base and searching for “domain mapping.”  We have several articles there that will walk you through the process.

Q. It sounds like the businesses are really using the blogs as a twist on a newsletter, or a forum. What is the advantage of a blog over a forum or a newsletter?
Michael: Newsletters and blogs can work well side by side; a newsletter has the opportunity to be customized to the recipient, whereas a blog is typically a more “public” conversation. One of the differences between blogs and newsletters is that newsletters, as with all messages, are almost by definition ephemeral – they get written, they get delivered, they get read, and then they disappear.  Blog entries, on the other hand, have a permanent home on the web, where they can be discovered through search and links for weeks, months and years to come.

Blogs are distinct from forums in that blogs give the author a bit more control over the topic and tone of conversations.  A business or an individual has a stronger voice on a blog (since the posts are primary and comments are secondary) vs. a free wheeling discussion on a forum.

Q. We use VR for SalesForce. Can the web-to-lead code be placed in a blog, like it is on our website, so our subscribers are captured directly in SF?
Michael:  Absolutely.  With TypePad You can include your web-to-lead capture code in the sidebar of your blog using our “Notes TypeList” feature, or if you are using our Advanced Templates you can also integrate it directly into your blog’s templates.

Q. What about an internal blog? We'd like to start there - how would we set that up so only our employees can view?
Michael: You can do that on TypePad using our password protection feature, where all of your employees would share the same username and password to gain access to the blog.  Another option is for you to install Movable Type, which is our product that is used by thousands of our customers for internal collaboration “behind the firewall.”  You can learn more about Movable Type on our site.

Q. What does RSS stand for?
Michael: RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary” depending on whom you ask.  (The debate over what it stands for is a long, involved and terribly boring story…you really want to avoid that.  Trust me.)  But simply put, RSS is a “web feed” format that is typically used by blogs, news sites and podcasts to distribute updates to “feed readers” or “aggregators” like My Yahoo, Bloglines, Google Desktop, iTunes and other similar services.  Many consumers are using RSS to keep up with the latest headlines, their favorite podcasts and their top blogs.

Q. What should a company consider initially posting about on their blog?
Michael: Well, it depends on your company and what business you’re in, but here are some starter ideas:

• Profiles / interviews with your staff, your customers or your partners
• The latest product or service news
• Commentary on related industry news
• Notes on upcoming events or conferences your company will be at

Q. What was the discount code again?
Michael: When you register at TypePad, enter the Referral Code of “VRWEBINAR” and you can receive 15% off of your lifetime subscription.

Q. Will the presentation be available?
Janine: Check out the recorded presentation and download the PDF files . Scroll down to "Past Webinars" and you will see it listed there!

Webinar Invite - Small Business Blogging 101

We're pretty lucky here at VerticalResponse! Michael Sippey, THE General Manager of TypePad is coming over to do a webinar for our users! I'm a big fan of his. You can't miss this one.

Presenters:

Michael Sippey, THE GM of TypePad
Raj Jambotkar - Product Manager, VerticalResponse

Wednesday, January 24, 11 am PST

Small Business Blogging 101

• The basics of what blogs are and why you should care
• Why small businesses should be blogging
• Tips about how to get started with blogs
• Resources for where to learn more
• How VerticalResponse and TypePad integrate for blogging
• Benefits VR can bring to blogging
• Case Study on the VR blog

Ever been interested in blogging but don't know where to start? Already blogging and want some new ideas? This is a FREE webinar so sign up for it today!

Book for Blogging - Naked Conversations

I just read a book our web producer gave me called Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. He said it was a great book to read especially since I blog. Here's my quick take on the book.

The good stuff?

Great for beginners or before beginners. If you're wondering what your business will get out of a blog or you're not sure what to say or where to begin, this book gives you a ton of reasons through case studies and a bit of history. I like the way they refer to blogging as 2-way marketing, I like the tips on "Doing it Right". Priceless, wish I had this before my trial period.

I've gone to the Business Blog Summit and a lot of what I got at the conference is in the book. (It's a great conference by the way.) The book talks a lot about the good and the bad stories about business blogging. These guys are into it, they know it, very passionate about blogging and the effects it has on businesses both large and small.

My only knocks?

They go a bit overboard slamming PR, email marketing, TV and other forms of advertising in lieu of blogging. And it's not just because I run an email and direct mail marketing company. They pretty much disagree with the Diva Marketing blogger Toby Bloomberg. She believes blogging is a form of marketing or belongs in a marketing department. I strongly agree with Toby. It has to be a part of an overall marketing strategy. Here at VR we cross-promote our own marketing activities:

• We hire a great PR agency to pitch our story, and they constantly send the media to the blog. It's actually a great tool for them to use when they pitch our story.
• Previously we would include our entire newsletter in a bi-weekly email. Now we've replaced it with a snippet from the blog and send people directly to the blog. How do get people to it?  EMAIL.

This is definitely worth the read if you're in your infancy of deciding on what, why, when and how to do a blog. Just know that a blog can't replace all of your marketing. And it brought back a few good ideas for me to think about when I write.

Driving Traffic to Your Blog

I blog twice per week, sometimes more. I'd like to get as many people as possible reading and commenting on the VR blog each time I post, but realistically, all of you are busy running businesses. I know, I am too. So how do you get people to visit your blog?

I'll use VerticalResponse as the example. We offer a few ways users can learn about our new posts.

1. Visitors can sign up using FeedBurner - They can sign up to get automatically notified immediately when there is a new post.

2. Visitors can sign up using an opt-in Form - Use the form code VerticalResponse or another provider outputs and place it on your blog. Then you'll be able to collect your addresses and email to them at your leisure. (This will be an integrated feature for VR, look for it to be introduced as a Typepad widget soon!)

3. RSS - Users can use RSS to get a live updated feed of a blog. I use Pheeder, but there are many readers on the market.

4. Mass Email Marketing - You've collected email addresses for many years outside of your blog and want to drive these people to it. This works wonders for us here at VR since most of our email addresses sign up through a different mechanism.

In our case 99% of our users are on our list in-house. Furthermore most of our small businesses are not using RSS, at least not yet. So what can we do? Email is a wonderful tool we use to notify you all every two weeks to check out our new posts. The result? We get more than 10 TIMES the amount of traffic to the blog.

So there is a real need for using email marketing to announce you have new blog posts. People like to get information in many different ways so make sure you offer as many as possible.

How do you drive traffic? Feel free to comment!

Polling on the VR Blog

I was looking through the TypePad Widget Gallery and stumbled upon a Polling Widget by Vizu. I installed it here on the VR blog just to the left, scroll down. I would LOVE it if you could take ONE second of your time and tell us what day of the week you send your email marketing campaigns on.  When you click, you'll see what days rate, and what days don't. After the poll is done, I promise to publish the results and blog about them.

Cool? Take the poll!!!

5 Reasons on Why You Should Blog for Your Business

I went to the Business Blogging Summit last year in San Francisco, and boy did I get religion. In my mind, blogging was for people to basically publish a personal diary, not for business.

Wow was I wrong. Business blogging is exploding. After this conference I set out to do a test. Without disrupting anyone in the company, my "pet project" was to launch a blog and make it successful. I talked to a few friends, Dave Pell, who has been blogging for years, and his wife Gina, CEO of Splendora, who blogs on her site regularly. They are crazy about it as am I now. I got some great pointers.

I set up my Typepad account and off I went. It's about $12/month and no engineering needed. Perfect.

What did I learn? A lot. Here are some reasons why I've found that blogging for business not only works, but is necessary.

1. The Voice of the Business - Do you really know what the leader of the company you do business with is thinking? What they go through? What is important to them? What type of person they are? Do you usually have the ability to tap into their expertise? What's going on in the company? More often than not you never get this type of insight. And hey, some CEO's don't want to put themselves out there for people to publicly chat with. I get it – It's a lot of work. But if you want your voice to be that of the company, there's no better way than a blog.

2. Comment Consolidation - What a time-saver. If one of your readers has a question, chances are others have it too. What better way to answer it than in one place where everyone can see and hopefully benefit.

3. Customer Interaction - Not only do I love to interact with our own users but when they comment and others start to comment on the comment, it's the best thing for everyone. This is exactly what any blogger would want.  I don't have all the answers, so I try to encourage customer experts to comment and pitch in on ideas. What might work great in one industry, might actually do well in others.

4. Traffic Driver - We get about 160+ visitors to the blog a day. When when we combine it with our email marketing newsletter we get thousands. It also drives traffic from the search engines as another source, and gets picked up by other blogs that find the posts interesting.

5. RSS Feeds - Some people like to get their information with RSS feeds. It's easy with a blog, they'll sign up for your feed and get it realtime right in their reader.

That's the experience we've had here with blogs and it's only getting better. I'll blog about a "how-to" coming up, so stay tuned. Got any experiences of your own you'd like to share? Comment and prove me right!