ContentRobot

Let the shopping begin! ContentRobot offers these blogging books to give and to receive.

How To Use a Blog to Build Your Business: Blogging and Your Online and Offline Business (Paperback)
by Quick Easy Guides

Blogging (Paperback)
by Jill Walker Rettberg (Author)

Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging
by The editors of the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington (Foreword by)

Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read
by Scott McNulty

Entrepreneur Magazine has included our thoughts about blogging trends in their December issue!

What did we say? There are 3 ways to see it!

ONLINE

To see it online, it’s sorta cumbersome with their carousel plugin, but here’s how to see it in context:

1. Go to the URL: http://www.entrepreneur.com/hottrends/web.html
2. Click on the yellow arrow:
3. Scroll down to the 2nd paragraph titled: BLOGGING

THE MAGAZINE

1. Flip to page 68
2. Enjoy

RIGHT HERE

OK, here it is:

“In the blogosphere, the opportunity for entrepreneurs lies more in the implementation of blogs than in starting a blog-related business. “People are thirsty for knowledge and want their voices to be heard,” says Karen Jackie, a blogging expert and principal at ContentRobot.com, and starting a blog “is an easy way for small businesses to tell their story and [let customers join] the conversation.” Leveraging this powerful tool requires ongoing commitment, but blogging will become easier with evolving technology, multiauthor efforts and mergers with social networks. Says Jackie,“Blog-powered websites will phase out the lonely, static corporate website.”

Thanks, Entrepreneur Magazine for including us!

Blogs are great in attracting search engine indexing because they, by their very nature, are updated often with fresh, relevant content. Beyond implementing the excellent All in One SEO plugin, what else can you do to optimize your blog? Tag your posts.

What is a Tag?

Tagging allows you to add keywords to your posts. They can assist your readers to understand what the post is all about in a fine, diced up way. It also allows you to link your post to to other tag-driven sites, such as Delicious, Technorati, and Flickr.

As you can see, tags on your site can have two functions:

1. Tags can link to external sites (like Technorati) to display a collection of posts from around the web, all related to the tag. It’s similar to a “Yellow Pages” of information.
2. Tags can link to an internal page that lists all of the posts on your site related to that specific tag.

Tags can be linked in a bunch of places, such as:

• Within your text
• Within a list at the bottom of your post
• In your sidebar (in a Tag Cloud)
• On its own page

What About Categories?

Categories, which are often located in blog sidebars, are used illustrate topics. They should be used primarily for navigation and as a way to group content on your blog.

Tags vs Categories

• Categories can have long wordy names, but tags should be short (one, two, or at the most, three words).
• Categories generate a page of posts on your site, tags can generate a page of off-site posts on an off-site website.
• Categories don’t help search engines find information, but tags help search engines and tag directories catalog your site.
• Posts are usually in found in one to four categories, but a single post can list as many tags as you want.
• Categories help visitors find related information on your site, but tags help visitors find related information on your site (and on other sites).
• Categories provide broad grouping of posts describing your blog’s focus, but tags allow  micro-grouping of posts, which helps to narrow down the reader’s interest.
• Finally, an analogy might help. If you have a blog that discusses tools, you might create categories such as “bolts,” “nails,” and “screws.” And when you are writing about screws, you might tag the post with as “flathead,” “Philips,” “galvanized,” “half-inch,” etc. to describe features.

ContentRobot Recommends

Since WordPress 2.5.1, bloggers have had the ability to tag posts (and display them, too). We recommend that you don’t throw one technique for another, yet use tags and categories in conjunction with each other. Simply, use categories to help with your blog’s structure and use tags to provide meta-data for your content.

Thanks, Lorelle, for some great background information for this post.

No, we’re not depressed - ContentRobot took the next leap in our redesign!

What’s new?

• More Streamlined Copy - We could pare down our copy to focus more on how we can help and less about what blogging is (since lots more people are aware of it).
• Updated Navigation - We simplified the nav to reflect our main offerings: blogs and blog-powered websites, WordPress expertise) along with links to our portfolio and a “hire us” form.
• Home Page Features - Click on any button in the nav to reveal a succinct overview displaying what we are all about and a featured project.  Also, explore our themes & plugins, our new WeFixWP service, and (of course) our blog.
• Interior Pages - Within any feature, click on any link or project to see how we’ve designed our (converted) pages in blue.

What’s next?

• Review Every Page - Ensure that all copy has been reviewed and all pages converted to the “new blue.” Yes, that contact form is ugly still!
• The Blog - The poor blog needs to be integrated into our new look. But we are getting there!

We are excited with our new branding. Hope you like it, too!

Whoever you voted for on Tuesday, it was interesting to note how technology, and specifically, social media helped to send Barack Obama to the White House. The Obama team not only was committed to its 50 state strategy, but they really wanted to connect to individuals throughout the country.

The Website

With a well-designed website, they were able to successfully attract donors ready to give to the cause. You didn’t have deep pockets? They didn’t mind, five dollars was OK with them, making the era of the big donor irrelevent. And guess, what, they even have a surplus of funds to help with the next election - that’s astounding.

Other website observations:

• While you have to register for an account to make a comment, the blog actually allowed two-way communication.
• Tools for local organization were deep and wide, making grassroots gathering possible.
• An online store made it easy to purchase schwag and show your support on your back, your car, or anywhere you wanted.

Social Media

Where else could you find Obama online? Anywhere you might already be hanging out. He has a visible presence in these places: Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Twitter, Eventful, LinkedIn, and more. His campaign showed an obvious mastery of spreading the word via audio, video, and tweeting, phone text messages, and email. We especially liked the iPhone app!

In the end, Barack Obama made it possible to get involved in the process. The younger generation, who cut their teeth on tech, responded to his message and they came out in droves to vote for him. To be fair to print media, newspapers flew off the shelf the day after his victory.

It will be interesting to see what our first tweeting President will do with the new media during his term. Blog.on, Obama!

It’s been a long time since ContentRobot tooted our own horn, but we wanted to share with everyone what we’ve been busy working on lately.

Bite of the Best

Bite of the Best added a new feature - Bite of the Rest - that will allow them to showcase products that they haven’t necessarily reviewed but want to highlight. Readers can share what they think of these particular food items and ask questions directly to sponsors. With the addition of a whole lot more content, the theme was reformatted to display more item via excerpts throughout the site. BOTB was also treated to an upgrade (a leap from 2.2.1 to the new 2.6.3) and a bunch of newer plugins, such as Viper Video QuickTags and All in One SEO.

GrokDotCom

The GrokDotCom site features an entirely new design that is now more closely aligned with their FutureNow site. The blog now highlights their offerings better in the right sidebar and displays more content. The blog was upgraded from 2.5.1 to 2.6.3 (and they are happy to use the newer native Media Manager for writing posts). Their daily, weekly, and monthly newsletters also were re-skinned with the new “look.”

LinkShare Blog

ContentRobot launched a blog for this performance marketing solutions provider. While it sports a simple look (that is similar to the corporate site), the blog provides a way to connect with the LinkShare team. They are using it conjunction with Twitter and other social marketing tools, so we expect the blog to grow quickly and be a great help to their readers seeking information and assistance.

On the other side of the house, the WeFixWP team has been busy assisting these great clients:

• eMinutes and metrosnapshot each received Blog Audits that outlined specific action items for improving their blogs
• Advancing Women (and related sites) was migrated from a poor performing host to Media Temple
• Executive to Entrepreneur (e2e) Coaching was migrated from WordPress.com to being self-hosted at Media Temple
• Give Me My Remote was upgraded their WordPress version from 2.2.1 to 2.6.3 and got a bunch of newer plugins

This proved to be a great week for WordPress fans:

1. Sneak Peek of the Visual Design WordPress 2.7: We think it’s a great visual upgrade and can’t wait to see if it lives up to it’s promise! Will the WP community gets frustrated with all the interface updates they have endured in recent upgrades?
2. Automattic Acquires PollDaddy: Polling gets native for WP.COMers and a plugin is available for the rest of us. Matt Mullenweg said polling is big and we agree it’s a great way to easily add interactivity.

They say news comes in “threes” - so what’s next?

On a rainy Sunday morning, the ContentRobot team took the train south to check out WordCamp NY. Jonathan Dingman had the tough task of gathering the WP geeks into warm room in the Sun headquarters. Here’s what we experienced:

Keynote with Matt Mullenweg

Matt praises the State of the Word as “strong,” and he gave a bunch of usage/download stats that were just amazing. The room was a-buzz as they were happy to be part of this wave - we were, too!

This year, Mullenweg concentrated on meeting as many users as possible at various WordCamps all over the world and spreading the open source gospel. Some quick facts from Matt:

• Automattic wants to evolve WordPress toward the FireFox model of updating, stats, and usage
• Sees plugins as a free market of features that allows them to adopt core functionality in a democratic way
• Average plugins per blog was 5 - our clients tend to hover around 10
• WordPress 2.7 is coming in November and has a totally customizable dashboard/interface
• Improving comments were on Automattic’s top-of-mind, especially with comment threading coming and the integration of their recent purchase of IntenseDebate
• An integrated library of themes and plugins with a promise of one-click updates on the way
• Looking forward to easier implementation of rich media - audio/video, etc.
• Sees the blog as a one-stop place that brings together all different modalities, such a tumblr log, Flickr pix, Twitter stream, Facebook, and more

Making it into the Big Leagues with Aaron Brazell

Aaron focused on atracting big audiences with marketing, message, and branding. Stuff we especially liked from his discussion:

• 90% of your users are new and come from search engines
• Your marketing activities that will keep them coming back
• Create content that is relevant and consistant
• Determine who your audience is, what they want, and keep giving them it
• Word of mouth will shape your brand, so your interactions with your customer will define it - not you
• Develop a pattern of deliverables from web site, print materials, blog writing, etc. that enforces your brand
• Participate on others’ blogs and develop a repore with other bloggers
• Grow your audience via newsletters and RSS feeds

Running a Blog Network with Jeremy Clark

Young Jeremy is responsible for a global, multi-lingual site that holds lots of challenges. Tho his discussion was a bit more technical than some of the audience would have liked, he was entertaining and had some great points to make.

• Keeping the overall design simple, so it can be easily integrated any blog in the network
• Decide on what the core features are and stick to your guns
• Focus on security by upgrading (especially to stay ahead of the hackers)
• Learn how subversion can help the upgrade process go quicker and easier

We enjoyed our day at WordCamp despite the lack of WiFi at the event. The food was awesome and we had fun meeting a variety of fellow bloggers.

ContentRobot had the pleasure of meeting Lorelle VanFossen at BlogWorld Expo last month. She chatted with us about her involvement in WordPress and Woopra - it was really great to meet her.  Then, she whipped out her video camera and asked us “how has WordPress changed your lives?

She showed the resulting video at WordCamp Portland and a very-tired ContentRobot made the cut! Here’s the YouTube version … or click over to her site to watch the Viddler version and read more about the project. Watch the whole thing or skip ahead to the 7:40ish mark to see us.

Thanks, Lorelle, for letting us be a part of your video and all you do for the WordPress community.

ContentRobot has always said that business blogs are easy to start, but hard to keep going for the long haul. Mostly, biz bloggers get writer’s block, feel like they’ve said all they need to say, or just run out of ideas.

SEO Optimize recently posted 50 Blog Post Ideas for Business Blogging, and this handy list will help you find inspiration for that next story.

We especially liked these 10 angles:

1. Envision the future of your industry by extrapolating the current developments
How does the current economic crisis effect your industry? What does it mean for your customers, partners, clients? Then expound.

5. Review a publication dealing with your industry
Go to your favorite online bookstore (Amazon or Barnes & Noble are great choices) and do a search on related books. ContentRobot, for example, features blogging books for both summer and holiday reading.

6. Make a list of the top myths in your industry and debunk them
What do people say that just isn’t true? Write about what is incorrect and use industry stats and facts to back it up.

22. Identify leaders in your area and ask them to guest post on your blog or write for their blog instead
Connecting with bigwigs is a great way to create credibility for your blog - even just having a conversation with any of them can re-energize your writing.

23. Show what went wrong in your company, why and how you dealt with it, learning from mistakes is very helpful for others
While it’s tough to promote bad news (and you might want to hide from it), you’ll find that sharing best practices can make you look like a hero rather than a goat.

31.Take a big brand (or several) and use it as an example for best practices vs mistakes
Compare how Coke or IBM, for example, handled something similar in their recent past. What did you learn from them? How does it help your company and your clients?

39.Take a common issue many people care about and explain how it relates to your business
Social networking tools, particularly Twitter, is a popular trend in the online world. Can you explain to your readers how to get involved with these tools?

47. Check Digg, StumbleUpon or Technorati to find out what’s most popular right now and find a new angle to it
Plug into these resources to see what others are talking about, then add to the conversation.

48. Engage in a discussion on a forum and reprint on your blog
The best way to get ideas is to help others. If you find that you are part of a great thread on another site, share it!

49. Ask people on Twitter a question and blog the best replies
Nothing like the power of the people to help you to see new angles and get inspired. The Twittersphere is always happy to help, just make sure you help in kind.

The common thread here - be engaged and you’ll engage others! Blog.on biz bloggers!