Blogging... what's that like?

[iSign]

Yeah; sorry. No doubt sign-makers are bringing in new business in droves because they have a "Read Our Blog" component on their Web site.

Quick show of hands?

Or would time be better-spent dropping off a business card at businesses around town with awful/ineffective signage?

Whadaya think?

...how is this possible... you are entirely missing the point again Jim


...you must think you are in the "bring in droves" forum... I thought this was the "another drop in the bucket" forum...

I know what Jim... do you run & market your own sign business? show of hands? (one OR two hands will qualify)

 

[Joe Diaz]

I have found that when it comes to blogs, just like any other website, they are as limited or as successful as the content and work you put into it.

Jim may be right for some people. A blog may not be worthwhile for everyone. But just like anything else if you want people to see your blog, you have to promote it. And if the content is worthwhile the sky is the limit.

I feel like the lines are blurred and a blog is just a part of an overall online presence. A blog is really just a shortened word for web log. Technically anything can be in a blog and it can be integrated seamlessly into your website. It can work hand in hand with other social media too.

For people in our industry I think a blog is great for things like case studies, which I believe is an extremely powerful sales tool. You could use it to reach out to customers to address frequently asked questions. Like explaining to them the value of updating their image. Perhaps a blog is a great place to advertise sales or promotions happening at your shop if that is something you do.

I think the nice thing about a blogs, is that if you can force yourself to stay on top of it, you get in the habit of keeping your online presence up to date. And a blog is an extremely easy way to do that.

 

[Jim Doggett]

I am not out to pick a fight, iSign. I am merely sharing my experience as a marketing exec (coupla decades) and yes, running/marketing/meeting payroll of my own businesses, including one that's currently active.

Blogs seem a nice idea. When they got some traction in the beginning (media attention), being in the blogosphere seemed the end-all. But in the end, it's not really all that, in terms of a benefit to most businesses. Thus social media is now dominant, and at the end of very many TV ads. Twitter and Facebook dominate, albeit, for a small business, Twitter and Facebook are mostly ego-pages and read by family and friends. Definitely a drop-in-the-bucket, as you say. (Ocean actually) So how much time one invests in it is the difference between time well-spent and time wasted, IMO.

Better, I believe, for a small business trying to get noticed online is the Facebook Like feature. That'll get back-links and increase relevance with Google and Bing, both of which are weighting sites more and more on social media than keywords/content within the site itself, which is all a blog is.

It's my job to know this stuff, intimately -- and I am sharing it, freely (I think that's in the spirit of S101). I can apply vinyl and digital images, too, albeit, with many errors and roughly 4 times as long as it would take you to do it, if I was trying to go quickly :^)

We each have our strengths; and if marketing were not one of mine after two decades of doing it as a career, I'd have to be an idiot.

Maybe I am an idiot, or possibly not. Folks are free to decide that on their own.

 

[Jim Doggett]

For people in our industry I think a blog is great for things like case studies, which I believe is an extremely powerful sales tool.

Agreed. But case studies are not a blog, per se. They can fit within a blog engine, such as Wordpress. But they're not a traditional blog (Web article that's news-like and people comment on). They're content showing past work in a detailed way; also accrue some of the brand equity of the, hopefully, marquis client.

IMHO :^)

 

[Jim Doggett]

I think it must be somewhat of a good idea or businesses wouldn't have blogs. I figured it couldn't hurt and it might be fun-ish.

Beware "businesses doing it = good idea" SMU :^)

But sure, if it's fun-ish, then I'm in complete agreement. Doing what we want is the great luxury of having a successful business.

Plus it's easy. Log into your Web hosting account and have WordPress installed at [your URL]/blog/ It's easy and most Web hosts have a button you can push to do it.

The default look and feel of a WordPress site may be good enough. Or you can, with some light coding know-how, make it look more like your site, for a seamless feel / integration with your site-nav for easy get-back to contact / buy :^)

Or you can add an appropriate-looking theme, by searching "free theme" in the install plug-ins section of the WordPress Admin. And with a few weeks of playing around with it, you should have it down something you like and can add article to, with minimal frustrations along the way.

Or get with Joe Diaz and have it be everything you want, with no frustrations, plus effective stuff you hadn't thought of.

 

[Joe Diaz]

LOL. Didn't realize we were speaking of only "traditional blogs". Well if that's the case, then my advice to signmeup is to not create a "traditional blog".

 

[mikefine]

You might consider using your Facebook page as your blog. You can post more detailed information like articles using the NOTES feature. So it basically works the same as a blog.

I am also blogging on posterous.com. It is really easy to use. You just send an email to the website, and that email becomes your blog post.

I am personally still on the fence about all this social media stuff. It would be great for sign businesses, if it really worked. But it is a lot of work and effort.

But it seems that some businesses, with niche markets, have done quite well with it.

 

[Kevin-shopVOX]

I think your website should be on a blogging platform such as Wordpress or joomla. The reason it is a valuable tool is that the search engines eat them up. The most important thing to Google is what? Relevance. When you do a search for something using google they make it a priority to deliver a result relevant to your search or else you wouldn't use them. They way they find that is through their spiders that crawl the web and archive info. That information is prioritized in relevance, uniqueness, and how new it is. ( more than that but that's the gist) A CMS based site like wordpress allows you to easily add content on a daily basis. As long as it's about signs and graphics and is done often enough google will favor that over sites that don't.
Furthermore the core structure of the site allows you to target local area, services and products. You create a post and all it has to be is a few sentences long, about a new job titling it with keywords about product and area. Do the same with the post content and you are basically fueling local businesses to find you first. Be specific in the surrounding area or towns, zip codes you cater too. Don't just put signs, banner etc. Those are too broad as you compete against the globe.

Plus wordpress has free/economical themes that present your business well. I say the site you are investigating is well worth your time and effort to learn and promote.

 

[signmeup]

LOL. Didn't realize we were speaking of only "traditional blogs". Well if that's the case, then my advice to signmeup is to not create a "traditional blog".

What's a "traditional blog"?

 

[Jim Doggett]

What's a "traditional blog"?

Weblog, shortened to blog / bloggers / blogging.

Here's the wiki on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

 

[signswi]

Good blogging is incredibly difficult, a well done post should take you multiple hours to write, edit and format. I do consulting for several professional bloggers and it's not a simple ordeal.

However, as just something to drive business and keep your site fresh, expect maybe 2-4 hours on a post and many many hours of learning how to write well for the internet audience.

Also I'm not sure why you'd say a case study "isn't a blog post", it certainly can be. It's a pretty good way for a business blog to build authority in the niche space. Blogs, like all social media, exist (in a business sense) to flesh out your brand (build authority, build trust, respond to crisis, show empathy, hit all the marketing psych tricks ("one of us"), etc.) and to provide a stream for your conversion funnels (but do NOT use them as direct mass messaging sales tools, that doesn't work in this space).

The one piece of advice I would give is don't start up a company blog unless you're dedicated to the concept and have a concrete actionable reason for doing so. Aimless blogs just dilute your brand and make you look unprofessional or half-hearted. Same goes for Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, etc.

 

[Jim Doggett]

Also I'm not sure why you'd say a case study "isn't a blog post", it certainly can be.

No argument. But typically it's a page like any page, on a Web site. (Example: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/)

A blog post, typically, is ordered by the date the article (weblog) is added. It can be anything, including a case study. But would a peach -- i.e., Home Depot has problem X, and Our Sign Shop, Inc. came to the rescue with solution Y -- be something you want listed under "Case Studies / Home Depot" or aging daily in "November 2010" or whenever?

I'd say create a Case Studies section if case studies is what folks want to present to visitors -- and order it by Quality/Priority and not by pub-date!!!! You can use a blog engine, i.e. WordPress, etc. But make it a page and not a blog post!!!

IMHO :^)

 

[Joe Diaz]

Here is a nice example of a way to do a blog: http://imaginationcorporation.com/journal/

It is case study-ish yet still in chronological order. But as a potential client, this would be good content to see. It's also helpful to the rest of us in this industry to see blogs like this too, not just customers. Again. It's all about creating an online presence.

 

[signswi]

No argument. But typically it's a page like any page, on a Web site. (Example: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/)

A blog post, typically, is ordered by the date the article (weblog) is added. It can be anything, including a case study. But would a peach -- i.e., Home Depot has problem X, and Our Sign Shop, Inc. came to the rescue with solution Y -- be something you want listed under "Case Studies / Home Depot" or aging daily in "November 2010" or whenever?

I'd say create a Case Studies section if case studies is what folks want to present to visitors -- and order it by Quality/Priority and not by pub-date!!!! You can use a blog engine, i.e. WordPress, etc. But make it a page and not a blog post!!!

IMHO :^)

There's always the compromise of a blog which doesn't show dates, that's popular in business blogging. Additionally you can follow the Yoast formula and "promote" (convert & 301 redirect) really hot blog posts to pages as they age.

 

[Jim Doggett]

Hi Joe,

Not trying to be a contrarian, but I am not seeing the benefit of aging a meaningful and hard-to-make work example by dating it in a blog-format. It may be tired, old information to us. But to the visitor, it's all new. Let it wow them -- and feel as fresh and relevant as possible.

Case Studies belong in case studies. Then if you're doing other cool stuff all the time and want a chronological listing so the terminally bored can read about your exploits, do what the biggest sign company on the planet is doing:

http://yescosigns.wordpress.com/

Then handle case studies like case studies:

http://www.yesco.com/case-studies.html

I see no value whatsoever in burying it by creation date within a blog format. That's counter-productive to the extreme.

Simple as that.

 

[signswi]

The main theory is that dated content causes more frequent crawls by search spiders. Debateable, but modern blogging platforms allow you to category sort and tag post content to allow for multiple display scenarios.

So you post your latest case study to your blog and categorize it as a case study, and it shows up both on your main blog feed and on the part of your site which lists case studies*. Simplified example but the point is to increase crawls and build internal linking.



*Call the wordpress loop, specify the category ID and exclude all others, show the post archive for that id or however you want to do it. Could also just do it in a dropdown menu, have the menu return the titles of all posts in a category. Many ways to skin this cat. Getting a bit specific and off OP question though .

 

[Jim Doggett]

The main theory is that dated content causes more frequent crawls by search spiders.

You can handle that with sitemaps. No biggy, and it lets Google et al know about change frequency. You'll be crawled and then ordered as one of the lucky millions and millions of folks with a Web site loaded up with words and pictures. Yeehaw.

And unless you have high traffic already, little you do locally is going to get you high ranking on organic search results. You need weighted back-links on highly relevant sites external to your site. Spend heavy on Google AdWords. Be the talk of the town in social media land. Blog = high relevance / better rank is simply quixotic thinking.

Do it if it's fun, and you're proud and want to delight your family and friends, and maybe get your best and most loyal (already) customers posting flattering comments .. which sure, adds cred when the terminally bored read your many pages of random thoughts and past exploits. Or get to everyone who visits by having client quotes above the fold on your home page.

Burying stuff in a dated fashion (blog format) is nearly worthless, from a business growing standpoint. It's an ego page(s), which is fine. It ain't a business growing tool; those reside elsewhere -- hopefully upfront and center.

IMO

 

[Jim Doggett]

Simple test:

1. Spend months creating the blog to end all blogs, with a beautifully-written wrapper around all your best keywords, have compelling photos, add video -- win a design award!!!

2. Spend 20 minutes adding your company to Google Local (Maps)

Track which puts more in the cash register. My bet is on item 2.

 

[iSign]

and once the 20 minutes are spent... you can sit on your ass for life & just be a forum contrarian picking fights, because you got Jim's magic 20 minute bullet under your belt!

 

[signswi]

You can handle that with sitemaps.

The debate is irrelevant to sitemaps and a separate issue (seriously who doesn't use sitemaps? If you're on WordPress install Wordpress SEO by Yoast and hook it up!), there's a debate within the SEO community that the algo's have a factor which looks at frequency of content change and pushing out new pages (blog posts) as opposed to revising content on pages (a big list of case studies or whatever) has benefit. In any case, we're way beyond the scope of this OP topic.

Burying

That's why you call the content in a variety of ways and use heavy internal linking. You also use pretty urls and a permalink structure that doesn't suck (on wordpress I like /%postname%/ or /%category%/%postname%/ ) so that your cross-linking and various treatments won't appear as a blog post unless you want them to. Again, we're getting beyond the OP scope.





As for Google Places if a business owner isn't on that yet what the hell are they doing all day. Jim if you want to talk localized SEO that's kind of another topic all together I'm not sure this thread is a great place for backlink or geo xml map discussion.