Business Blogs

AOL Buying Social Networking Site, and MyTypes plans one too?

This link below will take you to the recent news, and proves that Social networking is great for engagement marketing, and is all the craze that SEO was a few years ago, and yesterday. We think business social networking is also a category that is under served.

InternetNews Realtime IT News – AOL Buying Social Networking Site

Even without the big funding that major sites have, we have been focusing and growing our Social Networking site for bloggers and a blogging community as we call it. Last week, I started to hint that we are in the process of a launching a new exciting venture for the b2b, SEO, Search marketers, and B2b Marketing professionals. I never did say what it is that we are doing, but we had planned to let you know. And, here it is, we want to position our small but fast growing business social network, and position it for SEO professionals and B2B Marketing. We think it will be easy for us to position our business social networking site, just for the marketing, sales, SEO consultants, etc. This is not rocket science, and we did launch it last November.

The Wordpress blogging platform did not meet our business social networking needs, hence we launched with an open source platform, and have customized it greatly. You can visit this b2b, b2b marketing, SEO Consultants, and marketers of all sorts there. What’s nice about our platform is that it’s very democratic, the most recent people who are on our business social networking site show up on the front section. So the more people use it, the more exposure they get. We don’t mind certain people hanging out on the site all day. It’s just that they should have good content, or we will block them. It’s nice to have good spam control on our servers. So good job to AOL for making this strategic business social networking move. Here is a previous article our Blogging coach had written about social networks. We think Business social networks were just around the corner, as the space of LinkedIn, Plaxo, and Ryze were moving towards it, with the popularity of Facebook. These glorified contact management systems, did not want to be left behind.

Web 2.0 and You: Social Media Explained

Chances are you’ve heard the terms “web 2.0″, user-generated content, and social media networks being thrown around before, and you probably have a decent idea of what they mean (if not, check out my dictionary of blog related terms). However, you may not be sure how to use the social media networks for your business - to blogcast your brand, because blogging is the center of it all.

Think of your brand/business as a solar system - your blog is the sun, and the rest of the social media sites and applications as planets orbiting around it. You may have profiles on the other networks, videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr, and use social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and digg, but it all revolves around your blog (be sure to put links to your blog in all your profiles, but you already knew that, right?).

There are two main forms of social media that can be quite useful for bloggers - networking sites (Facebook, Myspace, Linked In) and bookmarking sites (Stumble Upon, Reddit, and my personal favorite, del.icio.us).

The networking sites are kind of self-explanatory; they are not that far removed from your actual network of friends, associates, and colleagues, except that they are virtual and you can see everyone else’s networks too. Besides the fact that it is simply convenient to have everyone’s profile info at your fingertips, these sites can also be useful when it comes to reconnecting with old colleagues and acquaintances, and for learning more about new friends. While you don’t need to maintain a presence on every social networking site on the web (you wouldn’t have time to do anything else!), it’s helpful to be involved in one or two that are popular in your business’s niche, e.g. fashion types with Iqons and anything music or entertainment related with Myspace.

Bookmarking sites are useful for bloggers in the both the promotional sense (having your content listed on the sites brings in readers) and in the personal sense - you can bookmark and tag your favorite sites and articles and access those bookmarks from anywhere, and if you work from multiple computers your bookmarks will be synched. I personally like to bookmark and tag any articles that would be good blog fodder, so bookmarking sites can help beat blogger’s block as well. Social bookmarking sites are also excellent tools because they enable you to check out what others in your niche are reading and what they thought of it. Popular forums can function in a similar fashion (be sure to put a link to your blog in your signature line!)

Last but not least, there is Technorati, the blog index that has become so much more. Technorati lets you see who has linked to your blog and how recently, what other sites they have linked to, who they have favorited, and so on. There’s also an authority ranking (how many sites have linked to a particular blog). It’s a good way to keep track of which bloggers are saying what, and how other bloggers are reacting to it.

The key idea to remember is that the social networks are a community - you have to participate, learn the mores, and in some cases, follow the rules (for example, many forums have certain codes of conduct and behavior, so check out the regulations before you jump in and post). Even if you’re a natural rebel, you have to learn the rules before you can break them. Like any other community, virtual or not, you have to learn to listen as well as speak.

Posted by: Blogging Coach

I think it’s worth repeating this other blog I wrote on the subject of reputation management and staying positive.  So please do read it, you will learn something on the subject of SEO and reputation management too:-):

MyTypes & Vipin Singh, Reputation Management of Mytypes.com and Vipin Singh

March 13th, 2008 at 01:24 pm by Admin in MyTypes

It’s kind of sad that I am blogging to knock off the top 6 blog results when people search for MyTypes.com. This is being done, because someone malicious goes out and spreads lies about me Vipin Singh and MyTypes.com our company. I am not going to take part in the negative nature, boy do I feel the urge to do it though. I could totally destroy his reputation, be just telling people the truth about his behaviors and lies. If he was telling the truth, I wouldn’t care as much. It’s that he is going above and beyond, lieing, and making stupid/nasty claims. The dumb thing is the more he writes negative malicious comments, the less likely I am to pay him. So words to the wise, don’t write negative stuff about people who owe you money. They will not be motivated to pay you. It’s only children that whine and say negative stuff, and the negative energy they sent them selves. Regardless, I am bothered enough, and will deal with it, by knocking him off the top 10.

So why should I care, mainly because his lies end up as #6 on search results pages. I guess, I taught him something about SEO, which he has learned. I can’t reward his dumb behavior by paying him before we pay any of our other company debts. We are super excited of paying debt to 5 different parties, and making a huge dent in our debt. Things are going really well here, and we are excited about the future prospects of MyTypes.com.

Reputation Management is starting to become a big part of SEO, and blogging. We started to see this trend a few years ago, but didn’t care to talk about it in our SEO blogs or do any kind of work on it. So in reputation management, and in staying positive, we just have to remember, that we can’t get caught in people’s negative energy. About a year and 3 months ago, someone said malicious things about us, on his websites. He is a notorious web and SEO person, we stayed positive and actually got clients out of it. I plan to chalk this experience up again as way to help me grow professionally.

For reputation management, when writing blogs to SEO yourself, I recommend staying above the negative chatter. Also, use the name of your company a couple of times, or your name a couple of times. The title of the post will help to create a Search Engine Friendly URL, which is one of the most important SEO factors. We have been making the connection and leading to b2b and business to business marketing from an SEO perspective. And, also in the process of creating a small business resource center as well as business social networking site. We are currently working on the branding and design lay outs. Here is our SEO blog from the Blog Templates and blogging coach section, where I write every day. But, you already knew that:-).

Photoshop vs. Illustrator, the Alt ego of web designers

Photoshop vs. Illustrator

Which one is better for web designers, I am sure comes up a lot. Read the above resource, of the two amazing tools, it’s a great explanation. I have had web designers and technical people answer this question for me, but after reading that source, it finally makes sense. A lot of you maybe web designers trying to learn about SEO, others maybe marketing people. I am not a web designer, I work with our tech web designer Keith all the time. He takes care of all our tech issues, and I have been asking him for the last few days the difference between Photoshop and Illustrator. I love design, and I am thinking about getting in to web design, to develop some pages for our b2b marketplace and business social networking site. It’s funny, I have been wanting to get in to some sort of a web programming or something technical. And it’s clear to me, I am going to get in to Illustrator and maybe Photoshop later, for web design and blog templates for Wordpress Themes. I am excited about my first project being a real one for our b2b social networking. So what does all of this have to do with SEO, well web designers need to learn SEO and employ that in their web design and technical Meta Tags etc.

They too often don’t think about SEO until after a marketing or advertising executive tells them that they can’t see their own website on Google. This is too common of a theme, this is where our SEO blog templates are such as great tool for web designers. Use our base and SEO guide to make sure your Wordpress Themes are SEO’ed. Also as a tip for today, don’t forget about Alt Tags, they are great tool for SEOing your site, but you have to use proper keywords in your Alt Tags. Alt tags, as most designers know, are used to describe pictures or images, even text especially within links. But web designers in my opinion often don’t link enough for SEO, and especially good web designers don’t use proper keywords for SEOing their site. Why is that? Could be that designers as a whole have Alt egos? I think so, designers and probably web designers on the lesser end are a unique bunch. I have said for years, that good or great web designers are harder to find, than actually technical people. I am probably suited to be a web designer more than I want to admit. And, that my friends is not speaking highly of my personality traits, which proves the Alt Ego scenario?

As a bonus for you, I am going to include another blog below today. Especially, as I had to go off topic from our usual b2b and marketplace topics of such as things as Barter, and online businesses, and tying them to SEO. I had to get to the basics of web design, and actually designer alt ego’s. Enclosed is a blog by our previous blogging coach, can I repeat we miss her great writing. I added the photos, just to add more color, photos Jazz up your blog as usual. I only wish I could write as well, enjoy:

Long Tail Searches and SEO

You’ve probably heard the phrase “long tail” before, especially in regard to business and marketing. Essentially, the long tail is the tail end of a demand curve - there may be lots of people who buy the latest #1 single, but there are many more people buying all sorts of different, obscure albums - the total number of the people buying the varied music is much greater than the people buying the #1 hit. The long tail is part of the reason why companies like Amazon are so successful - they offer tons of different niche items. The inter-connectedness and global scope of the web has made the long tail and catering to niche markets a viable business strategy.

However, the long tail is also relevant to SEO. Very significant percentage of searches are “long tail searches”, that consist longer, more specific queries that naturally tend to yield fewer results. For instance, if you’re looking for a newly built condo in Chicago’s South Loop neighborhood, wouldn’t you type “Chicago condominiums South Loop real estate new construction” or something similar into the search box? After, you’re much likely to find what you’re looking for that way than by just using “Chicago real estate”. Long tail searchers are looking for something very specific. This post on Search Engine Watch’s blog has excellent visuals illustrating long tail searches.

So how does this apply to your blog? Think about your niche and your own unique skills and characteristics. Narrow down your keywords - instead of only using “Chicago real estate agent”, make sure to write about the particular neighborhoods and types of properties you specialize in, for example. Or if you’re any kind of retailer (chances are if you’re an online retailer, you’re already very familiar with niche markets and the long tail), write constant posts about your products. Try to create the most detailed descriptions possible, and aim to be your readers’ source for the latest information about new products in your niche.

Targeting the long tail may end up benefiting you more in the long run - after all, long tail searchers tend to be looking for very specific information, and if you fit into their desired niche, they are that much more likely to bookmark your blog and/or become clients or customers someday.

**A little note from this best of all SEO Consultants blogging here, Moi the main writer here, Vipin Singh. Just kidding, I am the only one blogging here who works as a SEO Consultant right, therefore, I am I give my self all this great credit for my failures as well:-). Long tail kewyord phrases are also a great tool for SEO each individual keyword within the phrases. For example if we SEO for the Keyword “Silver Cross Rings“, we end up SEOing each keyword, “Silver” and “Cross” and “Rings”. And, we end up SEOing for each combination of keywords such as Silver Cross, Silver Rings, Cross Rings, Cross Ring. Don’t forget that all the major keywords which include our focus keywords such as “Silver Jewelry”, they benefit because the word “Silver” is being used in our “Silver Cross Rings“. Does this makes sense, I don’t think it’s too complicated, but most people don’t think of this Long tail SEO stuff. That is why so many Long tail keyword searches are used very often by all smart SEO Consultants, especially yours truly. This also includes writing contextually when blogging, and linking to appropriate keywords. We have done the same with our Barter, B2b marketing, and Online Marketplace for B2b and small business marketing strategies. As long as the topics are all related, go ahead and use them together.