Personal blogs are different in intent than business blogs. Prospects and clients are reading your business blog postings and forming an opinion of you. There’s probably no room for politics or religion in your business blog, unless your business (or association) is about those topics.

Write About Something You’re Passionate About
That may sound obvious, but focus on your prospects’ and clients’ problems and interests as well. While a blog on Spider-Man and Halo 2 might garner me some readers, they’re probably not the most likely prospects for my business. (I’m not saying my clients might not enjoy the occasional graphic novel or XBox game, just it’s not their defining characteristic.)

I define my best prospects as small business owners, professionals and associations that want to leverage the power of the Web to build their business. These are people who are looking for advice and help on email marketing, search engine optimization, and building a Web site that works.

Thus, I write almost extensively on these topics. Any new tools that I see that can help a client succeed on the Web I’ll write about.

[By the way, do you notice how I link all the important words above?
They all go to specific pages on my Web site that address these issues.
Since linked words, or "anchor text," are often considered more
important or relevant by many top search engines, I'm hoping that this
will improve the ranking of the specific pages I've linked to in
regards to these keywords.]

What are your prospects and clients most interested in? What problems do they face? They will probably search on these topics at Google or Yahoo; if you’ve blogged on these issues there’s a good chance that they will find you…depending of course on

• how popular your blog is,
• how long it’s been around,
• how many people link to it, and
• how focused a posting is on a topic they are interested in.

Yesterday (1/25/05) I noted that Google had most recently visited my site on the 23rd. Today I notice that they were also there on the 24th. It seems–from this very small sampling–that they may be visiting just about every day now, and my blogs are appearing about 2 days after I post them.

Sweet! I’ll keep checking…

Rich Brooks
Portland Web site Designer and Internet Marketer

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts 62% of online Americans do not know what a blog is. That’s a little surprising, as the number would obviously drop if you took into consideration all Americans.

On the other hand, the same survey said blog readership shot up 58% in 2004. Are you ready to take advantage of that information?

I’m guessing that "blog" will invade our lexicon the way the Macarena invaded our dance halls. Except it will be around longer.

Blog should definitely be in the top 10 words Googled this year, and will probably appear in the top 10 for news stories as well. Every day in the Wall St. Journal, or Business Week, or Entrepreneur magazine I see more articles about blogging.

I can’t believe I jumped on the bandwagon so late. Then again, in college I asked someone what the point of email was when we all had phones.

I’ve come a long way, baby.

Blogs are one of the simplest, cost-effective Web tools I’ve ever seen that puts the power of the Web in the hands of the Web site owner, not necessarily the Web developer. At flyte we promote the idea of building Web sites that build businesses, and a blog is a great addition to any entrepreneur’s toolbox.

Today (1/25/05) I Googled "flyte blog" to see the last time Google visited my blog and it was 1/23/05. The more frequently you update your site/blog, the more often the search engines will visit to gather new info. (Or so I believe.)

I’ll keep an eye on this to see if I just got lucky with a recent Google indexing, or if I’m correct about the visitations.

Rich Brooks
Portland, Maine Web Developer and Blogger

Over the past few days I’ve really been checking out my blog stats. They’re not earth-shattering.

19.54 visitors per day (I’m probably 5 of them.)
56 users so far today (9:40pm Friday night as I type this–yes, I do have a life, thank you very much. In fact tomorrow night I’m dressing up as Sid Vicious and going to a "Sexy Seventies" party at Bubba’s Sulky Lounge.)

Still, if I’m averaging 19 and a half visitors, and the last few days 40 – 50, then maybe I’m picking up steam.

Mr. Burns, your campaign seems to have the momentum of a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular?

–Lisa Simpson

Actually, it’s not out of pure narcissism that I’m checking out my stats. They’re fascinating. The stats don’t go too deep, but they do tell you what pages are being requested and the link people used to find you, aka the "referring address."

Many links come from other pages in my blog, but about half come from Google or other search engines. I can also see that sometimes the Google isn’t my Google; for example Google.ca or Google.co.uk or even Google.nl. At Google.nl you can "Het web doorzoeken" or "Zoeken in pagina’s in het Nederlands."

What’s more interesting is that for any search engine link I can determine what the search was for. "Spoofing Email."  "Graphic Design Resumés." "ADHD organizational software."

By clicking on a search engine link I can even determine where my blog ranks for a given search. I’m first for "verizon blocks email." I’m second for "Search Engine F.A.Q." That’s just crazy.

It’s also interesting.

Recently, my most requested page is on Email Spoofing. Maybe that’s a good idea for a newsletter or part of a seminar that I could put on. Also, someone found me by searching on Search Engine F.A.Q. I came up 2nd in that particular search. Maybe I should write an e-course on that. (Or maybe I should wait to see if anyone else does that search.)

In short, it gives me some insight into what people are interested in. Sometimes these people might even be in the market for a Web site or some Web marketing from a Web development firm in Portland, ME.

In case you don’t know, incoming links help improve your rank at many search engines, including Google. Also, the words in the incoming link–aka your "anchor text"–are important to your rank for a given search. So maybe since I just created another link [above] to my search engine f.a.q. page, I’ll be #1 next time I check.

I plan on talking more about the power of blog links in a later post. But it’s getting late, and I’ve got Bubba’s tomorrow.

Rich Brooks
Blogging Entrepreneur

Today there was an article in the Wall St. Journal about blogging; specifically, are there any rules or ethics bloggers should be following. What? You don’t read the Journal? But I thought you ran a business? Well, for at least today (1/21/05), the WSJ put this article in it’s free section…so check it out.

Although I didn’t really learn much new from this article, it’s just a long list of blogging articles I’ve seen recently. I can’t believe it took me so long to realize the benefits blogging could have for one’s business.

I had a meeting with a friend of mine yesterday about his upcoming Web site and I floated the idea of a blog. We got so excited talking about the possibilities and how it could help him we almost started yelling. (I’m passionate about this Web thing.)

Over the next few blogs (next week) I’m going to try and make a stronger case that most of my clients (and non-clients) would do well by themselves if they started a business-related blog.

Have a good weekend…and Go PATS!!

Rich Brooks
Blogger