Netconcepts President Stephan Spencer has some key advice for Technorati to counteract the challenge from its new blog search engine rival: Google.
Continue reading »DM News blog
DM News is a well-respected trade magazine for direct, online, and database marketers. Their blog provides their journalists with a place to record observations, to opine, to let their hair down and to write more informally and about more obscure topics. Not everything warrants coverage in print, but some things definitely warrant a blog mention. The DM News Blog gives readers a much better sense for the people behind DM News, who they are, and what interests them. In other words, it’s an inside view into the DM News newsroom.
Of course, as a group blog, the blogging system supports multiple authors. It includes an RSS feed. Since DM News’ staffers go to plenty of conferences and trade shows, it’s not surprising that they blog frequently about what is happening at these shows; therefore a separate subcategory is dedicated to each of the major shows that DM News attends.
DM News, welcome to the blogosphere! Glad that Netconcepts could help you get there.
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Visit The Site: DM News Blog
Further Reading: DM News
DesignTalk
HomeVisions is a brand of DMSI (Direct Marketing Services Inc.). If you are not familiar with HomeVisions, you might be familiar with some of DMSI’s other brands, including Montgomery Wards.
DesignTalk is a retail blog that strives to educate and add value on the topic of interior design and home decor. The blog is chock full of creative ideas and tips for home decorating organized in many ways, including by room and by application. The blog encourages you to ask a question which could be answered as a blog post, as well as posting a comment. The blog includes a newsletter and, of course, an RSS feed.
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Visit The Site: DesignTalk
RSS, Blogs & Search Marketing
Search Engine Strategies — Chicago, IL
This session explores how search engines are dealing with blog and feed (RSS/Atom) content and why providing such syndicated content can drive new search-related traffic.
Moderator:
Danny Sullivan, Editor, SearchEngineWatch.com
Speakers:
Dick Costolo, CEO, FeedBurner
Nan Dawkins, Partner, RedBoots Consulting
Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts, LLC
Amanda Watlington, Ph.D., APR, Searching for Profit
RSS and Blogs in Search Marketing
Blogs and RSS feeds may sound like a lot of nerdy buzzwords, but President of Netconcepts Stephan Spencer wades in with his thoughts for webpronews.com, particularly when it comes to driving search engines to one’s site. It’s all about personalizing the content they receive he says.
Continue reading »Blogging Builds Brands
Blogging is one of the hottest trends on the net. A blog (short for “web log”) is a web-based diary where the author can ruminate on whatever strikes his or her fancy. The blogger may share photos, poetry, political views, gossip, industry trends, business advice, or the latest on their personal life. By definition, blogs are organized in reverse chronological order. Many are updated daily. They can have one or multiple authors, such as a community blog.
Continue reading »Steve Spangler blog
Our client Steve Spangler is quite the renaissance man. In addition to being the CEO of a catalog company, he is also a toy inventor, an Emmy award winning television personality, a magician, an educator and a certified professional speaker. Just the sort of person you’d want blogging and podcasting.
The audio podcasts featured on Steve’s blog are targeted towards science teachers and include interviews with leading educators and monologues from Steve with helpful teaching tips. The video podcasts, targeted towards both teachers and parents, are some of the most amazing experiments you have ever seen. From exploding pumpkins to flying potatoes and erupting soda bottles, each episode is a hoot!
Functionality on the blog includes email subscriptions to posts and comments, buttons for readers to submit the post to Digg or del.icio.us, tag clouds and tag pages, RSS feeds, a audio podcast player built right into the blog, and more. Read the case study to learn more about this project and some of the results, including the fact that over 13% of their online sales can be attributed to Steve’s blog. The company’s products, which include science toys and experiment kits, are worked into the blog in a very soft sell way, so the blog doesn’t seem like a shill for the ecommerce shop.
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Visit The Site: Steve Spangler Science
For Further Reading: Testimonial, Case Study and Steve Spangler Portfolio
RSS, Blogs, And Search Marketing
Search Engine Strategies — San Jose, CA
This session explores how search engines are dealing with blog and webfeed (RSS/Atom) content and why providing such syndicated content can drive new search-related traffic.
SEO, Blogs and RSS Feeds: A Magical Combination
The major search engines – Google, in particular – seem to love blogs, which are the personal or professional diaries that number in the millions online. Search engines favor blogs because …
Continue reading »How blogging has paid off
I was recently interviewed by a journalist on business blogging and its benefits. He wanted to know specifically what it’s done for me to have a blog. Here’s what I told him:
- I’ve gotten inquiries from prospects who found Netconcepts through my blog.
- My blog helps me get speaking gigs and PR. In fact, I recently got one of my blog entries taken verbatim by a well-respected US magazine — DM News — and published as an article.
- It builds credibility and establishes me as a thought leader in the eyes of prospects and clients. For example, one of our recent clients choose us over a competitor for online marketing services partly because of my blog.
- It’s helped upsell existing clients on additional services, as many of them are regularly reading my blog. For example, some of our clients are going to start a blog and use us for blog design, blog consulting, etc.
- I’ve gotten links from popular bloggers, like Robert Scoble of Microsoft. It’s much more difficult to get a mention from Scoble (or other prominent bloggers) if you’re not a blogger. Scoble’s blog, called Scobleizer, is one of the most well-linked blogs on the Internet. Some bloggers have even included me on their blogroll, like Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing Blog (Thanks, Toby!)
- It’s helped me with recruiting panelists for Thoughts Leaders Summits that I organized and moderated for MarketingProfs. For example, the lineup of panelists for one of the recent summits included Internet marketing gurus: Seth Godin, Doc Searls, Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, and Debbie Weil. My blog played a role in establishing my credibility with them and getting them to respond to my “cold call” email message.
- Blogs are also great for SEO (search engine optimization). Links are important to the search engines, and the blogosphere is richly interlinked with bloggers linking so much to each other. Blogs are also rich in content, which search engines also like. If I blog about RSS and SEO (which I have), for example, next thing I know I’m #1 in Google for [rss and seo].
- I’ve also built some great business relationships with other respected bloggers. They have referred business to me, shared speaking opportunities with me, etc.
I had yet another experience with that last item, just today in fact. I’m speaking at the Frost & Sullivan Sales and Marketing East conference in Boston, and a fellow blogger from a competing SEO firm who was sitting at the table I was facilitating earlier today on blogging very kindly publicly commended my blog to the rest of the group for its content and thought leadership. (Thanks Stephen!) There’s a guy who understands the benefits of coopetition (rather than competition)!
The journalist also wanted to know how my blog’s traffic had grown over time. Here are the charts I shared with him showing the growth trends in pageviews and visitors:
Pageviews:
Visitors:
A pretty respectable trend, I’d say. If you’re curious what the actual numbers are, I will give you a hint and say that the both charts measure into the tens of thousands of visitors per month. Hopefully the trend will continue.
One thing I really need to do to keep the numbers heading northward is to blog more frequently. I’m sure traffic growth will accelerate once I do. I just need to buckle down! I guess I’ll just sleep less… (sigh). You other bloggers out there know what I’m saying here, don’t you! More often than we’d like, it’s the wee hours when we’re blogging.
How might a blog pay off for you? For some general ideas, read this article of mine, on blogging, published in last month’s issue of Multichannel Merchant magazine.