Business Logs

Which companies are doing great things with business blogs and which should you benchmark as you develop your own business blog?  I’m going to point you in the direction of two companies whose business blogs you should be reading.

First up — Nuts About Southwest from Southwest Airlines

The Nuts About Southwest blog from Southwest Airlines has been a blog to watch for years.  It’s written by Southwest Airlines employees who are given the freedom to write posts with their own voices and telling their own stories.  I’d recap what the blog is all about here, but you really need to read the About page on the Nuts About Southwest blog to truly understand what makes this blog stand out from the crowd and really connect with readers.

And second — Zappos Blogs

Zappos is another example of a company that does great things with its business blogs.  Zappos operates a number of business blogs, but the two you need to check out first are the main Zappos blog and the Zappos CEO and COO blog.  Even though the former Zappos CEO has left the company, his posts during his tenure (pre-May 2010) demonstrate a company executive who actually “gets” social media.

What business blogs do you read to benchmark as you develop your own?  Leave a comment and share your opinion.

All images, pictures, drawings, and so on are owned by the person who originally created them and are protected under copyright laws in the United States.

Therefore, if you’re a U.S. business or using images on your blog owned by an individual from the United States, then you need to either have permission to use that image or pay to use that image.  Alternately, that image needs to hold a copyright license that allows you to use it on your blog without paying a royalty or asking permission.

That’s a lot to consider.  How do you find images to use on your business blog without violating copyright laws and without having to pay or ask for permission all the time? Read More

An important part of email marketing is getting permission to send marketing emails to someone before you hit the send key.  That means, you need a way to get people to opt-in to receive your marketing emails.  Whether you send a newsletter or promotional offer, you still need people to opt-in before you can send information that might be deemed solicitous via email.  You also need to provide an easy way for them to opt-out of receiving emails from you later.

With that in mind, you can use your business blog as a tool to collect email addresses.  But proceed with caution!  You don’t want the process of obtaining opt-in email addresses to damage the user experience on your business blog.  Remember, successful social media marketing stems from the removal of the gateways to content sharing and conversations.  The last thing you want to do is insist that people provide their email addresses and opt into receiving email messages from you in order to view your shareworthy content.  That content should be freely accessible without barriers.

Therefore, your goal in collecting opt-in email addresses through your business blog is to make the process not seem disruptive.  Here are 5 easy ways to do it: Read More

I often write about cool websites built on WordPress.org that you’d never know are built on a blogging application in the BusinessLogs WordPress for Business Websites series.

Today, I’m going to point you in the direction of 10 websites that are built on WordPress.org that will surprise you.  These sites come from large corporations, political organizations, universities, celebrities and more.

If you’re not sold on what the free WordPress.org blogging application can do for your business blog and website, click through to see some of these examples.  (Note: these are in no particular order.)

1. MTVU

This site is owned by MTV and uses a WordPress magazine theme to draw attention to a wide variety of articles. Read More

It’s easy to create a blog, publish a few posts, and think you’ve got a great business blog.  But guess what?  A successful business blog requires a lot more work than that.  The social web does not operate like the Field of Dreams, and if you build it, they will not necessarily come.

Building a successful business blog takes commitment, persistence and patience.  Most importantly, there are a few fundamentals that you need to make sure you address if you want your business blog to thrive in the long term.

Five of the most important fundamentals are described below to help you take your business blog to the next level of success: Read More

Recently, I published a call for submissions from businesses that use WordPress to create their business websites asking them to participate in the WordPress for Business Websites series here on BusinessLogs.

The purpose of this series is to show all the amazing things businesses can do with WordPress.org.  Suffice it to say, WordPress.org lets you create much more than a blog!

You can submit your WordPress site for inclusion in the WordPress for Business Websites series by following the link and leaving a comment with your URL in this post.

Today’s WordPress for Business Websites featured business is Small Farm Design.

As Craig Kistler of Small Farm Design explained in his submission: Read More

An important part of building a business blog is the commenting feature that turns your blog posts into active, engaging, and ongoing conversations.  However, it can be challenging and time consuming for visitors to your business blog to follow those conversations because they have to manually return to a specific post periodically to check for new comments, not knowing if they’ll find new comments when they get there or not.

Fortunately, business blogs built using WordPress.org can make it extremely easy to keep up with ongoing conversations on blog posts with the Subscribe to Comments plugin.

In simplest terms, this WordPress plugin is a must-have for business blogs.  One of the most amazing parts of blogging as a marketing tool is the ability it gives you to create a community around your blog and build relationships with the members of that community.  Comments turn your blog into a two-way conversation, and the Subcribe to Comments WordPress plugin makes it easy for that conversation to continue.

Here’s how it works: Read More

If you’ve been wondering whether or not your business should be on Twitter, then a new report from ROI Research and Performics (via eMarketer) can help you put some hard numbers to word-of-mouth marketing via Twitter.

According to the April 2010 study:

• 33% of Twitter users talk about companies or products at least once a week.
• 32% of Twitter users make recommendations about companies or products at least once a week.
• 30% of Twitter users ask for recommendations about companies or products at least once a week.

But that’s not all this study reveals.  Nearly 1 out of every 2 Twitter users recommend, talk about, or make a purchase from a company that they have connected with on Twitter.  Check out the breakdown below: Read More

Monday brought big news for Splashpress Media when it was announced that Splashpress acquired Deb Ng’s highly popular blog network for freelance writers, Freelance Writing Jobs.

I’m happy to share the news that I’ll be taking over the helm at Freelance Writing Jobs as the managing editor.  I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to follow in Deb’s footsteps.  She has built an amazing community at Freelance Writing Jobs, many of whom I know well having worked with them and interacted with them over the years across the social Web.

I’m confident that Splashpress Media will keep the spirit of Freelance Writing Jobs going in the way the audience has grown to expect from the brand, but I’m equally excited to see how the community will evolve as part of the phenomenal Splashpress Media publishing network.

Freelance Writing Jobs has helped to launch many freelance writing businesses as the comments on Deb’s post announcing the sale to Splashpress Media clearly demonstrate.  I won’t be taking over Deb’s duties at the site until July 1st, but in the meantime, take a moment to visit Freelance Writing Jobs, and poke around to see what the site has to offer.  I’d imagine it will get a facelift when it moves into the Splashpress Media family, but the content and community will remain the same.

This week, I received a complimentary copy of Facebook Marketing: Designing Your Next Marketing Campaign by Justin R. Levy to read and review.  This is an updated, 2010 version of Levy’s original Facebook Marketing, published by a division of Pearson Education.

Let me start by saying this is not a how-to book.  You won’t find page after page of screenshots walking you through the specific steps you should take to create a Facebook page, Facebook group, or Facebook profile.  Instead, this is very much a why book.  It clearly and concisely explains why businesses should be using Facebook to market their products, services, and brands to the social web community on a site where consumers are already spending time.

Here is the chapter run-down: Read More