Hill Library Blog - Blog Building

New small business blog: You're the Boss

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:05:00 -0500

You're the Boss, a new blog on The New York Times website, is setting out to be "the voice of small business." It aims to cover small business news and issues and provide an online meeting place for business owners. Visit the website to read entries from the experts--a professor of entrepreneurship, a real-life entrepreneur, a business reporter, and a personal finance advisor.

See and Be Seen on eCorpTV.com

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:36:00 -0500

Do you have a great business video that’s languishing on your company’s Web site? Consider uploading it to the recently launched video site eCorpTV.com, which calls itself the “YouTube for business.”

eCorpTV is free and totally dedicated to corporate videos. You can use it to share your own videos, check out what kind of videos other businesses in your industry are producing, or if you just get a kick out of product demonstrations (click to see water dispersible paper—wow!).

Yo, yo, yo, Tweeps!

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:07:00 -0500

Alas, our beloved blogger Matt is no longer Twittering on behalf of the Hill Library, but we remain captivated by this increasingly ubiquitous social networking tool.

Here are a few unique Twitter uses that caught our attention:

Restaurant Business’s annual “50 Great Ideas” article profiled the website Twitter Taste Live (TTL), which organizes monthly wine tastings. According to TTL, the site plans to expand to additional taste-related products, like craft beer, cigars, and spirits. Sounds delicious—sign me up!

Star Tribune’s personal finance columnist Kara McGuire is twittering every dime she spends in 2009. She is attempting to sate our “keeping up with the Joneses” curiosity by sharing her day-to-day spending habits. So far, she’s made some wise decisions with her coin: latte and seven-layer bar today; curry and spring rolls last week.

TeeVee lovers, this one is for you: TV Guide is tweeting about new episodes, reviews, and award nominations (Grey’s Anatomy returns to ABC tonight!).

If you’re using Twitter or another online avenue to promote your business, tell us about it in the comments.

Blog Building: Our Social Media and Networking Tactics

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:21:00 -0500

As a follow-up to Allen's recent run-down of our blog building experiment I wanted to drop a few quick notes about some of the specific social media tools we used, and talk a bit about some of the online networking tactics we employed. We are – as is readily apparent – novices in this field, so if this report doesn’t convince you to replicate our tactics directly, perhaps it’ll inspire you to go further with this than we have.

In any event, here’s what happened with social media and online networking…

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Blog Building: A Modest Success to BlogBuild Upon

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:17:00 -0500

A good three months ago, we set off on a course to build the readership of this blog. We talked about the methods we’d use to do so, and we set ourselves some goals to let us know if we were having any luck. And because we figure some of you may be trying to do something similar with your own blogs, we nervously decided we’d do the whole thing live and without a net, in front of all of you, so you could gain wisdom from our successes and failures. Why not?, we figured. After all, if it works, we’ll look like geniuses, and if it doesn’t work, then we’ll be exactly where we started, with only a few folks reading our blog to know we didn’t do so well.

So how did we do, and what should we do from here? For those of you interested in this kind of navel-gazing, follow the link for an update…

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Your Blog Can Beat LinkedIn at the Networking Game

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:44:00 -0500

Note: This is a guest post from Michael Benidt and Sheryl Kay, who are business researchers and technology trainers, and the authors of HiddenBusinessTreasures.com. They’re great friends of the Hill Library, and we’re thrilled to hear their take on online networking.

When it comes to building your business almost everything you’ve been told about the Internet is wrong. Want a couple of examples? How ‘bout these two widely accepted business building strategies:

Write a blog to grow your business

Join LinkedIn to grow your business relationships

Writing a blog will not grow your business. And, joining LinkedIn will not grow your business relationships.

Does that mean that writing a blog and joining LinkedIn have no value? Of course not. It’s just the way they really work is not the way you’d think.
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Blog Building: The potential networking value of Twitter

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:43:00 -0500

There’s a surprise contender in the social media portion of our blog building scheme. It’s a site you may have scoffed at before. I admit to having done so myself. It’s Twitter: the site that has users create an account and then post – in 140 characters or less – the minutia of what they’re doing at that very instant.

Why do I think it has value? Well, first it makes it easy to define your audience. Other social media sites that we’ve used (Small Business Brief, I’m looking at you), feel like pushing content out into a void. Who reads it? I don’t know. Probably no one, unless you’re an entrenched user of the site and are adept at creating posts that appeal to that specific audience. (I was going to give an example of an absurdly titled post on Small Business Brief that nonetheless ranks highly, but will defer to better judgment. Suffice it to say, that most businesses don’t have the time it takes to create the site-specific presence necessary to get folks to read anything they post, no matter how absurdly titled.)

Twitter is much more personal at the outset than other social media sites. You can follow individuals, which puts their posts in your Twitter inbox. When you request to follow a person, they get notification that you’re doing so and may follow you in return. There’s a connection. Who are the leaders in your industry? Are they on Twitter? In certain industries I’d bet they are. Reach out to them, follow them, make a connection with them.

Because the things you post to Twitter are smaller and – by definition – very specific to what you’re doing, it’s easy (almost addictive) to become invested in the site. Plus, it’s fun.

Who knows if Twitter will actually work for us in our blog building mission? We’ll start off cautiously, trying to get the lay of the land. Because the site is so personal in nature, I don’t want to hard sell anything. But I’m optimistic about it. Want to join us? Follow us at http://twitter.com/jjhill_library.

(Note: Also, Twitter can be less professional. For example, see our tweet about Hill blogger Allen, and his baby born Tuesday!)

How to Be an Online Spy, and Use What You Find for Sales Success

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:11:00 -0500

People do business with people they like and trust. But in a world where attention spans are short and making a great first impression is imperative, how do you build repartee’ with a new prospect or client?

Note: This is a guest post from online marketing research expert Sam Richter, who also happens to be my former boss. Mr. Richter left the President’s office here at the Hill Library in January to focus on his new book, Take the Cold out of Cold Calling. Here’s a post from Sam’s camp on researching people online…

According to Sam Richter, author of the top-selling book Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling, you start to build relationships by understanding what’s important to the other person, their likes and dislikes, and by sharing relevant stories. The good news is with the Internet, it’s easy to find information on people you’ve never met, as long as you know where and how to look.

In a business world where information is power (or if you’d just like to learn a little more about your neighbor), these Web sites offer insights into people, their background, and their interests.

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Blog Building: Blog Participation

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:39:00 -0500

This is part four of our blog building series, wherein we enact various strategies to get our blog read by more people – and pass the things we’ve learned on to you.

In reading through online materials relating to increasing blog traffic, one theme in particular recurred over and over again: participate/network/comment on other blogs.

21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic from seomoz says this:

Participate at Related Forums & Blogs
Whatever industry or niche you're in, there are bloggers, forums and an online community that's already active. Depending on the specificity of your focus, you may need to think one or two levels broader than your own content to find a large community, but with the size of the participatory web today, even the highly specialized content areas receive attention.

Making Your Blog Content Discoverable from Vanessa Fox offers:

Join communities you’re interested in, comment on other blogs, jump into conversations and let others know your site is out there. If they’re interested in what you have to say, they’ll check out your site and link to you if it’s relevant to their readers.

The Secret to Building a Popular Blog from doshdosh notes:

…I’d just like to emphasize that the networking really starts with that first act of unconditional giving. That first sign of genuine interest in the other person or his/her work. The most effective way of networking is to offer something of real value for the intended party, without requesting something in return (at least not immediately). Let’s take comments as an example. Instead of just promoting yourself in your comment, write words which initiate a conversation between you and the blogger.

So that’s what we’ll do. We’ll try to initiate a conversation between us and a bunch of bloggers. But which ones?

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Information Overload -- Bring It On!

Wed, 28 May 2008 11:22:00 -0500

Note: If I were a librarian stuck on a desert island with access to only two Web sites (hey, you never know), DocuTicker and ResourceShelf would most likely be the ones. These two sites - which are actually prolific blogs - aggregate hundreds and thousands of online research reports and online tools, respectively. We asked Senior Editor Shirl Kennedy how she keeps up with the best and newest on the Internet – and here is her enlightening response.

Maybe I am just wired differently from other people, but I do not suffer from information overload.

I revel in it.

As editor of DocuTicker and ResourceShelf, I have to keep up with new resources and reports not just on a daily basis, but throughout the day. Every day. A weblog is a voracious beast that must be fed continually. Two weblogs...well, you get the idea.

From time to time, someone asks me where I find all the stuff I post on ResourceShelf and, especially, DocuTicker. And I always answer, "Finding stuff isn't a problem. Finding time to deal with it all...that is a challenge."

The first step is coming to terms with the fact that you can't keep up with it...and stop losing sleep over the possibility that you will miss something important. Yep, you will...from time to time.

The world will not end.
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Blog Building: Incorporating Guest Bloggers

Thu, 22 May 2008 18:29:00 -0500

Of the many tactics that can be employed to drive traffic to an emerging blog, there’s one in particular that must seem appealing to the people who are charged with churning out relevant and useful posts every day: incorporating the occasional guest blogger.

Sort of like when Johnny Carson would have a guest host on The Tonight Show every Friday: it was nice to know that Johnny would be back in his usual spot again the next week, but at the same time, it was a refreshing breath to have someone else take the host chair for a turn or two. And when it comes to blogging, there can be benefits for both the host blog and the guest blogger.

As for us, we’re hopeful that a post from an occasional guest blogger will allow us to build an association with --- and possibly receive a link from? --- other more established, popular and respected blogs. We’ll seek guest posts from bloggers who should have some overlap with the audience we serve, so we’ll simultaneously aim to continue providing our readers with useful information and to win over some readers from among the dedicated crowds following our guest bloggers. We think our readers will also be well served by being introduced to a new voice, and perhaps a new blog to add to their own feeds.

(The danger is that we will reveal some of the sources that we’re constantly borrowing from, and our readers will go directly to those blogs instead of relying on ours, but we flatter ourselves that the added value of our charming, witty and relevant commentary will keep a grip on most of you. Please?)

And if we’re handing over the reins to another well-qualified business information blogger, it means it won’t be necessary for us to find a way to offer insightful implications for your business on the latest news story about companies paying their employees to quit.

So in the coming weeks, look for the occasional guest post here on the Hill Library Blog. We hope you’ll appreciate the new voice as much as we’ll appreciate the day off.

Blog Building: Notes from the (Social Media) Field

Thu, 08 May 2008 15:04:00 -0500

Sphinn hates me. And Small Business Brief doesn’t work.

I’m trying not to take this as a sign of impending doom in regard to the social media portion of our blog building strategy, but, well, impending doom is hard to discount.

Anyway, as you know, both of these sites are places to submit articles or blog posts and have them viewed by their respective communities. Sphinn is focused on online marketing. Small Business Brief is focused on small business.

In the last week, I’ve submitted two seemingly relevant blog posts to Sphinn, and they show up for a while, but then disappear. I suspect foul play, and grow more paranoid by the day. Emails to the contact page have gone unanswered. I’m sure editors on this site delete posts that they don’t see as relevant, so maybe I’ll take this protracted silence as constructive criticism and be ever more vigilant in keeping to the online search and marketing focus. That’s only fair, I guess.

I’ve also tried to submit blog entries to Small Business Brief, but their submit tool keeps giving me errors. It seems to have something to do with our blog url, but I can’t figure out what. I can’t even find a contact page on this site to ask someone about it.

I’ve wasted at least an hour posting, or trying to post, to these sites. We’ll chalk it up to education and hope that once we’ve got the hang of this social media thing, the time commitment will be lessened going forward.

I have done some work with our delicious and StumbleUpon accounts, so check us out there. I’ll keep trying at Sphinn and Small Business Brief, but might also look around for other alternatives. Anybody use any article submission sites that they’d care to recommend?

Blog Building: Using Social Media Sites to Increase Blog Traffic

Thu, 01 May 2008 16:29:00 -0500

First, a confession: I’m intimidated by the words “social media sites.” The idea that I have in my head of these things is of a complex system involving lots of time spent putting comments out there, and lots of time spent figuring out how to interact on these sites.

You know what, though? I don’t think it’s as hard as I think.

We’ll get to why I now think that, but first some background.

Social media sites – in general – let you post links, Web site descriptions, blog entries, opinions, news stories, and pretty much anything else onto a site where other people can see what you’ve posted. These postings can be things you’ve created or just things you’ve noticed online. Other people see what you’ve posted, and can choose to visit those sites/news stories/videos/whatever and then post those posts on their own account if they like what they see. If it works, it’s a kind of domino effect. Your post leads to some people looking at whatever you posted about, and maybe some of those people post about it themselves. A bunch more people see those new posts, and maybe they post it themselves, too. As more people post, more people see, and it all gets snowballed. If the original post was one of your blog entries, each of those new social media posts means more traffic to your blog. Make sense?

Here are the big social media sites:
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Blog Building - Blog Directories

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:19:00 -0500

Basic link building for blogs, or so we’ve been told by those who know about such things, begins with getting your blog listed in some of the various blog directories available throughout the Web.

As the name implies, blog directories are giant lists of blogs. But these sites place user-submitted blogs into categories, making it easier to find blogs of a certain topic.

The directories are used by people seeking blogs that discuss a specific topic, or blogs that engage a specialized community or user group. Including your blog in a directory can also help with search engine optimization, making it more likely that a casual Google searcher will find a post on your blog that has just the answer they’ve been seeking. Perhaps the biggest and most popular blog directory is Technorati.

But in order to build readership and increase exposure to your blog, there are several other blog directories to consider, and we’ll gradually be adding our blog to some of these others as well.

Click the ‘More” link for some additional considerations…

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Blog Building: What's the Big Idea?

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:34:00 -0500

A modified age-old Zen mondo: If Matt writes an excellent blog post in the forest, and no one zooms in using Google Earth to view the forest and read the blog post, has Matt really written an excellent blog post?

Matt has, of course, written many an excellent blog post, blog posts that contain useful information to help small business owners craft better-informed business strategies. And so what we’d like to do is make more business owners and entrepreneurs aware of the information that is out there. That’s what is driving the blog building plan introduced in an earlier post.

What can be done to draw attention to our particular offbeat brand of business resource blogging in a marketplace saturated with options? Let’s assume, if this little experiment is to be at all helpful to our small business audience, that we don’t have the budget, dedicated time, or specialized expertise to do anything revolutionary in terms of marketing. Rather, how much can we accomplish by combing through various suggestions for building a popular blog and leaning on the advice of wiser ones who have gone before us?

In this post, we’d like to outline the major tactics we’ll use in our attempt to increase traffic, and some goals we’ve set for ourselves in determining what success we have. Click the 'More' link to read all about it…

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