Blogging To Build Buzz About Your Business

While blogs are now considered mainstream with more businesses using them to get their message out, just how are they building buzz online? The SES session "Blogging For Business" has the answers.

(Coverage of SES Chicago continues at WebProNews Videos. Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Jennifer Evans Laycock, Editor-in Chief, Search Engine Guide, said everyone is blogging. "The recession we are in make blogs essential." Blogs are cost efficient especially if you have a tight marketing budget.

Reasons for blogs:

Showcase your personality

Create a feedback cycle

Build a loyal community

Create an emotional investment

Increase your credibility


Laycock said," The value of your blog is the conversation that takes place in your comments."

Leave it open-ended and integrate media into your blog. Engage with your readers-comment back.

People don't trust ads but there is trust online with friends and strangers who have credibility.

Blogging is as effective as word-of-mouth.

Easy blog marketing:

Comment early (gets attention of other readers)

Frequent comments

Spread comments

Comment late (to get attention of the blogger)

Pitching a blogger

Use real language

Respect their time
Develop a friendship

"Whatever industry you're in, start building relationships now in the community because you may need to pitch something in the future," Laycock said.

Before pitching a blogger:

Address them by name

Make sure you have the correct personal email address

Spell check

Send individual emails

Be transparent

Familiarize yourself with their readers

Make sure your pitch is relevant to their readers

Proofread

Bill Balderaz, President and Founder of Webbed Marketing, said blogging is good for businesses that are fast, flexible, can be experimental, and are working with limited budgets.

Engage in customer conversations and respond to negative comments.

"Blogging is less expensive per impression and has measurement capability," Balderaz said.

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Obama Looks To Give Digital Economy A Shot In The Arm

Pledging to "renew our information superhighway," President-elect Barack Obama this month offered a broad outline of an economic stimulus plan that will likely include increased spending on broadband access and other IT initiatives.

The stimulus plan, which Obama detailed in bare-bones fashion during his weekly video address on Dec. 6, could lead to wider availability of broadband services, particularly in rural areas. It also may fund new computers for schools and technologies that can help reduce medical costs.

The plan's overall cost is expected to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, so the amount of money that will be made available for IT-related investments could be quite large.

James Gabberty, a professor at Pace University's Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems in New York, said it's hard to measure the impact of tech spending on productivity. There's no way to quantify, for instance, that "the growth of a nation's goods and services will be x if you spend y number of dollars on hardware, software and communications gear," he said.

But Robert Atkinson, who heads the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) in Washington, thinks tech investments will help stimulate the economy. While many traditional economists focus on projects such as building roads and bridges, "we need to expand our vision" to include IT, said Atkinson, who is working with federal agencies as a member of Obama's transition team.

In a paper published in October, the ITIF argued that IT investments produce outsized productivity gains. And in discussing a possible stimulus plan, the nonpartisan think thank said that the U.S. can't afford to focus only on a "consumption-based [effort] that leaves the nation with little to show after consumers spend the money and the economy gets back on track."

One step that the ITIF recommended to spur corporate technology buying is to allow companies to write off all such purchases for tax purposes during 2009.

Broadband expansion is likely to be a priority for Obama's administration. Although the U.S. currently has about 75 million broadband users, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ranks it only 15th out of 30 industrialized countries on broadband adoption. In his speech, Obama called the level of access in the U.S. "unacceptable."

Even now, only about two-thirds of Americans have a computer at home, according to the ITIF. Atkinson said the federal government could increase PC ownership through a program that subsidizes the cost of computers and Internet access. For less than $1 billion, the U.S. could help about 1.5 million households get online, he claimed.

Obama also said he wants to ensure that every hospital and doctor in the U.S. "is using cutting-edge technology and electronic medical records, so that we can cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes and help save billions of dollars each year."

The Arizona Telemedicine Program is employing technology to do just that. For instance, the program, which is funded by the state government and based at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson, created a teletrauma service that enables trauma specialists to assist medical facilities in remote areas. Using cameras, videoconferencing equipment and remote sensors, the specialists can examine a patient's injuries and view X-rays.

Dr. Ronald Weinstein, the program's director, said the telemedicine initiative has helped save lives and reduce costs -- in some cases by eliminating the need to fly patients to hospitals for specialized treatment.

Weinstein said he hopes Obama will continue to fund a telemonitoring program at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. As part of that program, cell phones are used to prompt patients to take medications or to deliver messages related to their individual medical needs. Cell phones, Weinstein said, are becoming "central to the delivery" of health care services.

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Nokia Readies HSDPA Dongle For Laptops

Nokia will ship a USB HSDPA 3G dongle early next year in a bid to grab a share of the growing laptop-oriented mobile broadband business.

To date, Nokia has left the modem market to others, allowing Chinese connectivity specialist Huawei to grab the lion's share of the business, which it's battling the likes of Sierra Wireless and Novatel Wireless for.

All three sell their products primarily to carriers for rebranding - Huawei is behind dongles offered by 3, BT and Vodafone, for instance; Sierra makes O2's USB Business Modem - and, according to Nokia hardware VP Tapio Markki, quoted by Reuters, that's what the Finnish phone giant hopes to do too.

Huawei deserves special mention for its Linux support. While all the main modem makers provide Linux drivers - or at least instructions on how to get their products working under the open source OS - Huawei has been the only vendor to fully engage with the emerging netbook market, and provide software for these machines' often idiosyncratic Linux distros.

A couple of years ago, Nokia attempted to get into the market for internal 3G modems, in a partnership with Intel. But the relationship was short-lived, and the two canned the project a year later.

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Alexa The Web Information

About Alexa Internet
Founded in April 1996, Alexa Internet grew out of a vision of Web navigation that is intelligent and constantly improving with the participation of its users. Along the way Alexa has developed an installed based of millions of toolbars, one of the largest Web crawls and an infrastructure to process and serve massive amounts of data.

For users of Alexa's Toolbar and web site this has resulted in products that have revolutionized Web navigation and intelligence. For developers this has resulted in a set of tools unprecedented in scope allowing whole new services to be created on the Alexa data and platform.

Alexa Products and Services
Alexa Toolbar
Alexa could not exist without the participation of the Alexa Toolbar community. Each member of the community, in addition to getting a useful tool, is giving back. Simply by using the toolbar each member contributes valuable information about the web, how it is used, what is important and what is not. This information is returned to the community as Related Links, Traffic Rankings and more.

Want to help? Install the Alexa Toolbar, and tell your friends. The more people use Alexa, the more useful it will be.

Alexa.com
Alexa's Web site is built on the notion that timely and relevant information is essential to a vital web experience.

Alexa Search and Browse - Alexa has taken search and browse to the next level and made it more complete, more relevant and more useful. Some key features include thumbnail images of sites and traffic information both of which help you to make quick decisions about which results are useful to you and which are not. Try Search and Browse.

Alexa Site Information - Alexa has built an unparalleled database of information about sites that includes statistics, related links and more. All of this information can be found on Alexa's Site Overview pages, Traffic Detail pages and Related Links pages. To access these pages, simply type the URL of any site into the Alexa Search box.

Alexa Top Sites - Alexa has lists of Top Sites available by country, language or in a category. You can download a CSV file of up to 100,000 global top sites that includes estimates of monthly visitors and pageviews.

Webmaster Services
Alexa has created a series of tools specifically for web site owners. These tools can help to drive traffic, make money, find broken links and more!

Alexa Web Services
In November 2005, Alexa released Alexa Web Information Service V 1.0 on the Amazon.com Web Services platform. Gain access to Alexa's processed information about the Web, including traffic details, related links and more.

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