Archive for March, 2006

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Public Speaking Tips

Tuesday, March 21st, 2006

I stumbled across 10 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Next Speaking Opportunity by Amanda G. Watlington as I prepare for my business blogging seminar on Friday. It’s filled with good information on maximizing your presentation.

I’ll be speaking at the annual conference for NAPO: the National Association of Professional Organizers. If you are a NAPO-certified professional organizer and you’re planning on coming to the annual conference in Boston check out my seminar on How to Plan, Build and Promote a Business Blog for Better Marketing. It’s at 8:00am on Friday morning, so get a good night’s sleep.

Rich Brooks
Business Blog Consultant

Tags: | | |

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Entrepreneur & Small Business, flyte news, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »


Technorati for Business Bloggers

Monday, March 20th, 2006

I know, I know, I already created this Technorati table of contents over at Business Blog Consulting. However, I wanted to have a copy on this blog as well, and I knew I’d be more likely to update it here.

This list is a good start for any one who’s interested in driving more traffic to their blog and finding like minded business bloggers. I’ve even included a couple of how-to movies.

If you have any Technorati specific questions or issues leave a comment below, and I’ll try and add them to this list.

Rich Brooks
Business Blog Consulting

Tags: | | |

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Web Marketing | 8 Comments »


Free Small Business Magazine from BusinessWeek

Saturday, March 18th, 2006

BusinessWeek SmallBiz, a magazine published by–wait for it–BusinessWeek, is available for free to businesses with less than 300 employees.

Just send an email to
with your title, company name, and number of employees.

Rich Brooks
SBO

Tags: | |

Posted in Entrepreneur & Small Business | No Comments »


Are You a Bad Client?

Friday, March 17th, 2006

I week or so ago I abandoned a post about firing a client. Although I thought it was an interesting topic, I just couldn’t figure out how to write about it in a productive way. It’s something every entrepreneur and small business owner has to deal with: the client you don’t want.

The other day I discovered a funny post by Benjamin Pfeiffer called "What to do If You’re the SEO Client Nobody Wants." Although this is obviously about SEO clients, there were a few items in there that rang true for Web designers as well. Especially:

#3: Unrealistic expectations for rankings in the search engines [or from your Web site.]

#13: Your SEO [or Web designer] has to report to more than 3 people all at the same time. [This is extremely frustrating as the more people that are involved with design, the more impossible it is to find a middle ground. What looks elegant and clean to one person looks sparse and unimaginative to another.]

#14: You want something in a writing about a refund and a guarantee. [Why is it that people want a guarantee from their Web site designer or SEO expert? Do they ask for a guarantee from the print shop that their tri-folds will bring in 50 new leads? Do they want a refund from their hair stylist if they don't get at least 3 phone numbers when they hit the bars that night?]

Every business and industry has their own client frustrations. What’s yours?

Rich Brooks
Maine Web Site Design

Tags: | |

Posted in Business Philosophy, Search Engine Marketing, Web Design & Development | No Comments »


The Four Pillars of Web Marketing

Thursday, March 16th, 2006

Last Wednesday evening I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff, a.k.a. The Blog Squad. This was part of their ongoing teleseries called Conversations with Experts, episode #42. (All Douglas Adams fans should know how important this number is.)

Denise and Patsi were generous enough to share the final recording of the interview with me, and to let me "do anything I want with the audio" of their show. At first I tried a mash up with the Beatles White Album, but ultimately I decided to add an intro and an exit and post it to our woefully underutilized podcast: flytecast: web strategies for small business.

If you want to have a little "Rich Brooks on the Go", you can subscribe to the flytecast at the iTunes music store.

If you want to try before you buy (even though it’s free,) you can listen here to The Four Pillars of Web Marketing: Conversations with Experts. (mp3, 72.9MB). Hey, I know it’s a big file. I had a lot to say.

Rich Brooks
Big Talker

Tags: | |

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Email Marketing, flyte news, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »


Email Subscriber Base: Does Size Matter?

Wednesday, March 15th, 2006

Yes, but maybe not in the way you might think.

Chris Baggott says "Bigger Isn’t Always Better in E-mail Marketing" and quotes a new survey that smaller lists experience better open rates and better click through rates.

It seems lists of 100 – 1,000 experience the best click-through rates in the study. What to do if you’re just too damn popular? Segmentation. Just like a amoeba, when you get to a certain size, it may be time to split.

Rich Brooks
Reaching Critical Mass

Tags: | |

Posted in Email Marketing, Web Marketing | 4 Comments »


Comment Spam Won

Wednesday, March 15th, 2006

Over the past week I’ve gotten about 15 – 20 pieces of comment spam attached to this blog.

Comment spam is when a person (or a bot) leaves a comment on your blog for the sole purpose of driving traffic and PageRank to their own site or blog. (When you leave a comment, you are usually able to create a link to your site or blog; this can help your search engine rank and attract more traffic to your site.)

Sometimes it’s subtle, where the commenter praises how great your blog is but adds nothing to the conversation. I treat these on a case-by-case basis. If I feel the praise is sincere (which is tough, because I fall somewhere between cynical and paranoid) I leave the comment as is. If I feel the comment is there solely to drive traffic to another blog I’ll sometimes keep the post but delete the URL. After all, if your true goal is to tell me that you like my stuff, who cares if you siphon some PageRank from me?

Other times, like this past week, it’s not so subtle. About 10 of the posts were from MP3 music download sites that weren’t commenting on my posts at all. I delete them out the moment the email comes in and warns me about them.

However, this weekend I was away and some of these leech posts were hanging around for a few days. You may wonder why I get so pissed about this, but imagine if someone posted advertisements all over your retail store or office for another business or even a competitor. Do you think your customers would be impressed with how you run your business? Do you think it would reflect well on you? I see this as a bad case of broken windows.

Over at Business Blog Consulting, which is run on WordPress, we have a comment spam filter which seems to be working well. I’ve only gotten one piece of comment spam there in the past few months since we made the switch away from TypePad.

Unfortunately, here at TypePad, my only choices are:

  • allow all comments (you can always delete them)
  • moderate comments (you must approve them before they go live)
  • request or require a TypeKey account.

It would be great if they acquired a good comment and trackback filtering service, rather than companies that allow you to upload camera phone pictures to your blog, but that’s probably not as sexy.

Ultimately, the comment spammers won and now I’m moderating comments on my blog. That means that as people leave comments, I need to OK them before they go live. Not exactly the way I wanted my public "conversation" to run.

Hopefully this will not have an adverse affect on people commenting on my blog, but will keep the spammers from making my blog their bitch.

Oops! Did I say that out loud?

Rich Brooks
Fed Up

Tags: | | |

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing | 12 Comments »


Time to Buy Shredder Futures

Tuesday, March 14th, 2006

I was away for a few days, so I’m catching up on some things in my email.

If you’re not feeling paranoid enough this Monday morning, check out The Torn-Up Credit Card Application.

Then go buy a shredder. Or, invest in a company that makes shredders.

Thanks, Réal, for the heads up.

Rich Brooks
Shred This

Tags: | |

Posted in Off Topic | 3 Comments »


SEO Copywriting

Tuesday, March 14th, 2006

Can you write Web copy that can work for both search engines and your site visitors?

Dan Skeen says yes, you can strike a balance in a great article, SEO Copywriting: Does ‘Search Friendly’ Mean ‘Human Readable’?

In the article he gives advice on how to write a good page title and how to link good keywords into phrases.

Rich Brooks
Maine SEO

Tags: | |

Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Web Copywriting, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »


Business Blogging Rules

Thursday, March 9th, 2006

The other night, over a plate of potato nachos and a couple of tall brown ales, I was discussing a friend/client’s real estate blog. I asked if she had started putting her agency’s featured listings up as new posts.

She told me that a number of real estate bloggers told her that this was not the way to do things; that a real estate blog was to establish your expertise and credibility. Posting new listings was crass.

Ummmm…excuse me?

Who are we "blogging experts" to tell anyone what the rules are to business blogging? That’s the most delicious part of blogging, that there are no rules. There may be some lessons we’ve learned through trial and error, but there are no rules.

Blogging, especially business blogging, is so new, that I can’t imagine that there are any hard and fast rules on how to do things right. In fact, if people are telling you that you’re breaking any type of blogging rules, that probably means you’re doing things right. I mean, isn’t blogging about breaking the rules?

Any good entrepreneur is going to make mistakes, and hopefully they’ll suffer more failures than successes. Great ballplayers don’t bat over .500. Great entrepreneurs and business bloggers don’t either.

Go out there and break some rules.

Rich Brooks
We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Rules

Tags: | |

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Business Philosophy, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »