Business Blogging Excellence

Register your own Domain Name

I cannot stress enough the importance of registering and maintaining your own domain name.  I just got a call from a client that had let a previous host register his domain name for him, and every year it has been a huge headache and far more expensive than it should be.

This year he finally is transferring it to his own oversight, but he waited until the last day and now it is stuck in limbo because he cannot access his email, which is tied to the domain (he should have used a different email that would not go down if the domain did.)

I know many people are not technical and they just want someone to take care of it for them, but this is kind of like letting someone else manage your telephone number.  It is better to just pay that bill on your own because your phone is too important.

You can register and manage your own domain name at www.outstandahosting.com - and you will get 100% control of either hosting it there or hosting it elsewhere.  So when you are no longer happy with your website host, they cannot hold you ransom - you just log into your domain management account and chance where it points.

Here are 5 tips to keep your domain safe.

1. Use One Account
   You may register a domain in one place, then find another place that is $1 per year less.  Don’t do it.  Just keep all your domains in the same place so you can manage them well.  Any price $10 per year or under is fair.
2. Never Use the Domain email
   If you use the domain email and the domain goes down, you are stuck because you cannot approve changes that come via email.  Set up a gmail account or use different emails in the different contact areas.
3. Register for Multiple Years
   Google likes to see that you register your domain for more than one year.  It is also easier to manage if you just pay for a few years up front, and will often save you a little money.
4. Multiple MX Records
   Your email gets forwarded to an email server by the MX Record.  You can have multiple MX Records as a failsafe for your email.  I have never seen an email host without at least two options.
5. A Record
   Your A record is where everything gets sent that is not otherwise specified.  In many cases, you only have to set up your A Record and your MX Record, and your hosts will take care of the rest.  Then if you later chance hosts, you just change these addresses - they cannot hold your domain hostage and overcharge you for changing.

I am writing this because it really is important that you take the 1/2 hour or so to understand it and do it yourself.  Even if it is a free add-on from your service provider, go straight to a registrar like www.outstandahosting.com and do it yourself.  Then things will just stay simple and you will never experience the frustration of transferring a domain.

Posted in Internet Marketing, Small Business, Tech | No Comments »

Why does every blogger need a Virtual Buzz Assistant?

Blogging is hard work.  The technology is not hard, but the daily commitment to creating quality content is hard work.

And it does not stop there.  If you produce great content but do not get your Blog linked to, talked about and visible, your excellent content will probably still go unnoticed.

Virtual Buzz Assistants are people that are certified in online buzz marketing and can help create buzz for a blog.

Virtual Buzz Assistants work just like other virtual assistants, but they have chosen to specialize in Internet marketing.  They work at building great relationships and they become experts in the tools that you can use to create more buzz and visibility.

Bloggers that want to be successful have to have a great niche, interesting content and they have to either spend a lot of time promoting the blog, or hire a Virtual Buzz Assistant to help them.  The assistant could be hired to keep fresh content on the blog, and this is especially important for businesses that may get busy and let their blog effort slip.  The assistant can also promote your blog by using the many tools available online to grow your audience.

Here are 5 ways a Virtual Buzz Assistant can help you on a monthly basis.

1. email people about your article - By emailing people to point out an interesting article on your blog to people that run similar blogs, you can generate links and more traffic.
2. Upload blog information into Blog Catalog and other blog directories, and link to people there.
3. Use micro-blogging solutions like Twitter or Tumblr to highlight your blog posts each week.
4. Social Bookmarks - Virtual Buzz Assistants can bookmark your blog posts to get them more inbound links and traffic.
5. Interview opportunities - Your Virtual Buzz Assistant can look for opportunities for you to be interviewed on other blogs or podcasts, and they can conduct interviews to add more interesting content for your blog.

These are just some of the areas that a Virtual Buzz Assistant can help you be a more successful blogger with less of your time going towards promotion.  To request a Virtual Buzz Assistant, click here.

Posted in Blog Traffic, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Small Business | No Comments »

The Truth About Being An Expert

Ron McDaniel from the Buzzoodle Blog pointed to an article yesterday on the making of an expert. To be a true expert, you must constantly learn, and always be a student. Sound strange? Not really. Times change, new things evolve, and you have to keep up. Also, you are never done learning. There are always ways to improve your knowledge and ability in something, and evolve it. As one person always told me, “The best teachers are also students.”

A true expert knows both theory from all their textbook learning, etc., and application.  That is where all that practice and work in the nitty-gritty come in.  Who would you trust more, a surgeon who read a bunch of books on surgery for 10 years, but never did it, or someone who has read and performed operations for the same time?

Long story short there is no shortcut to being an expert. I have seen a lot of schemes where there are “instructional videos” and such to make you a pro on something.  Not going to happen.  Knowledge, experience, and true dedication makes you a true professional.  You have to do it for years, and people can instantly spot a true pro from someone green a mile away.

Posted in Being an Expert, Small Business | No Comments »

Exceeding Expectations

This 4th of July exceeded my expectations. My family and I watched a spectacular fireworks show. It had all the great things you would expect to see, and it outdid the city’s fireworks from years before, and lasted longer, to boot. Here’s the thing, though: they weren’t the city’s fireworks. These were from a guy two houses down from my parents. The man has a license for creating and shooting off his own fireworks, and has done so professionally for years. A display of this caliber was definitely beyond the expected. If someone were to tell you to watch the fireworks of some random guy in the neighborhood or the city’s, you would probably choose the city’s, assuming it would be the best. This man proved me wrong.

This got me thinking about small businesses as well. How many small businesses release great products that are never tried because the assumption is that the bigger company’s version is better? Sometimes it is really worth looking into the small companies. You may just find a gem.

Posted in Buzz, Marketing, Small Business | No Comments »

Keeping It Simple

How many times have you seen this?  A company gets ready to roll out a new product or service that starts out as one great idea, and slowy evolves into a multi-featured giant nightmare by adding new components over and over through the course of time.  This is the “that’s good, but wouldn’t it be great if we added this?” syndrome better known as feature creep.  A few things added to improve on the main goal may be okay, but it is best to stay on target and keep things simple.  Unless your product is supposed to be an all-in-one swiss army knife of products, take a step back and go to the basics.  This means making sure your product delivers on its original promise and goals, and retains its definition.

Posted in Small Business | 2 Comments »

Gaining Focus Through Solid Foundation

Working on a project can take quite some time. During that time it may be easy to lose focus on the main goal. Ideas change, things restructure, and you may find yourself with an end product that is nothing like the original plan.

This is why it is important to have good planning from the start. Always start with the basics. Even if you “think” you know what they are, really think about them and write them down. Think about your goals and any other basics you need, then look at your project and see if it is meeting them.

Sometimes we get caught up in trivial details and lose site of our core. Whenever you feel lost in a project, or feel it is going off track, recenter it and look back to your basics. All of your answers are right there. This is the key from turning something like great, focused, marketing piece, to a 9 month project that is an amalgamated mess.

Posted in Marketing, Small Business | No Comments »

Thinking Too Hard

It happens all too often in both social life and business: we take the harder, more complicated route to the finish line when the obvious, simpler solution was right in front of our faces.

We at Buzzoodle went through this a while back regarding one of our sites.  Originally, we planned on this great site with lots of features.  I began work on the page and we ran into snags here and there while spent a lot of time (and headache) working on it.  It wasn’t until recently that the answer to our problems was simple: a Blog.  It has all the functions we needed and was much faster and easier to integrate.  The real kicker is that the level of quality is the same and may even generate even more traffic.

It is easy to get carried away and plan a big, complex project while envisioning some amazing product.  Take a step back from a moment first and weigh your options.  Is this really the way we should go?  Can we do this simpler without any sacrifice to quality?  Is is as, or possibly even more effective than our original plan?

Don’t let the hype of your own product/service ideas cloud your judgement and cause you to make hasty decisions.  A better solution may be right under your nose.

Posted in Small Business | No Comments »

Whistle While You Work

Companies go to great lengths to keep their customers happy, but what about their employees? Is your company doing anything to keep employees happy? There are several reasons why you should make sure your employees enjoy their job:

• If they like their job, they are that much more motivated to higher quality products/services.
• They are more likely to create positive buzz for your company. It’s much better to have an employee tell their friends about a good work day rather than how lousy everyone has been at work. Let them advocate your business for you.
• More likely to stay with the company.
• Attract other candidates to work for your company.

How can you keep employees satisfied? The obvious one is having employees who enjoy their field, but there are some simple, little things you can do help keep them motivated:

1. First, and foremost, thank them. When they do good work, tell them! People like being recognized for their hard efforts. It doesn’t have to be anything to complicated, just a simple, “you did a really nice job on that”, or so will do.
2. The employee is a valuable part of the team. By letting them know this, they will feel much more motivated to do well. Let them feel like a significant part of the team. It’s human nature to want to feel like you have purpose and value.
3. Newsletters showing efforts and accomplishments of individuals. Just another way of show you care.

There are other ways of generating moral as well. In another company I worked for they tried their best to keep employees happy by having barbeques, newsletters, awards, and more. There are many ways to create a positive environment for your employees. If you want to improve the quality of your products/services, and your company, your employees are a great way to start.

Posted in Small Business | No Comments »

Creating Employee Advocates

An advocate is someone that tells others about the benefits of using something and encourages others to use the product or service.

Wouldn’t it be great if you had 10 people out their strongly advocating you?

If you are looking for advocates among people you do not know well, then you have a lot of hard work in front of you. However, there is another group that many small and mid-sized businesses overlook: Employees.

If your current work culture says employees work a set time limit on a set of tasks, and does not take into consideration the extended network of people each employee knows, you are missing out on a huge opportunity.

Employees in the right environment and with the right encouragement will create buzz and word of mouth for their organization. They need to understand that buzz is everyone’s responsibility and they have to have success stories and good information that will help them create buzz more easily. This phenomenon is called Employee Evangelism.

Some key strategies that can help you begin an employee evangelism movement in your organization are:

• Let people know how and why you want to do it, and how it will benefit them.
• Create a Buzz Guide that spells out the do’s and don’ts of creating buzz.
• Publish and distribute success stories, company information and interesting trivia to employees and customers. Encourage them to share it.
• Publicly recognize employees that create buzz.
• Encourage reporting of buzz efforts.
• Set a goal of a minimum number of buzz attempts each week.
• Encourage employees to become experts in a given field.

If you do those things, and also give your advocates clear examples and instructions on buzz tools, you will find your business growing quickly. Some examples of buzz tools are:

• Blogging
• Podcasts
• News sites where you can post news, such as www.digg.com
• email follow-ups with stale connections
• Build a Squidoo lens
• Bookmark company pages with social bookmark tools like del.icio.us
• Hand out coupons to people they know

There are 100’s of variations of this kind of buzz creating opportunity. The most important thing to remember is that one or two of these things occasionally is not going to do much. If you successfully build a culture of buzz and a culture where every employee feels like they are responsible for the success of the organization, then you will be able to sustain the buzz effort and eventually hit a crucial mass where you have customers lining up for what you have to offer.

The best part of this whole thing is that this technique costs less than traditional marketing and advertising and word of mouth is shown to be one of the most effective and influential mediums to get your message out to potential customers. It is well worth the extra effort, and in a relatively short period of time it will be paying off.

Posted in Buzz, Internet Marketing, Small Business | No Comments »

Blogging Helps

Last night I went to a Jump Start Event locally and ran into the CMO of Jump Start, Thom Ruhe.  When he found out who I was, he said he reads my Buzzoodle Blog all the time. It is wonderful to meet people who read your blog before they ever meet you in person, and this happens all the time to me.

I suppose it happens to book authors every day.  But how often does it happen to business owners?  Frequently if you blog and do a good job.

When you are writing a blog post, you frequently do it out of habit, and you do not think about the readers.  You should, because they are reading what you write and deciding on the level of relationship they will have with you.

What are your readers options?

• Read one article and leave
• Read and explore the blog for useful stuff that appeals to them
• Subcribe to your RSS feed
• Subscribe to an email newsletter or updates
• Link to you for their website or blog
• Contact you
• Bookmark you - (see bar at end of post)
• Refer to your work in an article, publication, etc.
• Comment or trackback to your post

The more you blog and the higher the quality of your posts, the more this will happen.  It is also important for generating more traffic, which is more people to make these kinds of decisions.

Posted in Blog Traffic, Small Business | No Comments »