As a blog developer and website developer, I frequently participate in my clients’ discussions about their marketing strategies - especially their online marketing strategies. They rely on me to bring them up to speed with what is hot and what is not on the Internet. We prepare lists of “To Dos” for the upcoming year, and prioritize and schedule the tasks. 

Now that my clients have blogs and have built readership, they are looking to use their blogs to contribute to the bottom line. One way, of course, is to include advertising in their blogs. The big question is whether advertising in blogs is an effective use of corporate dollars for the advertisers they will target?

So let’s take a look at who is responding to advertising in blogs and for which products, so you can determine if that audience will appeal to your target advertisers. 

The most recent information I have I learned November 20, 2008, when I attended a webinar, Consumers and the Influence of Blogs: What it Means for Your Marketing Mix. The webinar was sponsored by BuzzLogic and presented with ClickZ and Jupiter Research. Barry Parr of Jupiter Research and Rob Crumpler of BuzzLogic were the presenters, and Kevin Ryan of Search Engine Strategies moderated.

Summary
Blog advertising leads to further action - especially for males age 35 and under making $75K and greater per year. Blog posts, comments and advertising influence their purchasing decisions. They find the blogs first via recommendations from friends, second through links from other blogs, and third from performing searches. They trust comments in blogs more than comments at social networking websites. About half of them will take action after seeing advertising on a blog. The top 7 business segments benefitting from their interest are:

1. Consumer Technology
2. Consumer Hardware and Software
3. Media and Entertainment
4. Games, Toys and Sporting Goods
5. Travel
6. Automotive
7. Health Products

Details…

Here’s some of the statistics reported by Mr. Parr and Mr. Crumpler. The sources were research studies, findings in their own daily work, and reports by third parties like Technorati.  Three groups of Internet users were referenced:

1. Online consumers (Internet users)
2. Blog readers
3. Multi-blog readers

The Statistics…

• The use of blogs from 2004 to 2008 has quadrupled
• 20% of online consumers read blogs more than 1 time per month. These consumers are the “multi-blog readers”
• 71% of multi-blog readers read more than 1 blog per session
• 45% of blog readers are males 35 and under making $75K and above
• 48% of multi-blog readers are males 35 and under making $75K and above

With regard to the purchasing cycle:

• 50% of blog readers and 62% of multi-blog readers use blogs to formulate an opinion about the product(s) they are looking to purchase.
• Multi-blog readers tend to trust comments on blogs more than comments at social networking websites
• 40% of blog readers took action after seeing advertising on a blog
• 50% of multi-blog readers took action after seeing advertising on a blog

 Are you in one of the top 7 product segments? Is this the audience your target advertisers want to reach? Are you trying to make a decision where to put your money - in social media arena? Hope this information helps your decision process.

Happy Blogging and Happy Thanksgiving!

Yes, you read correctly!  15 MILLION dollars… AND the blog was owned by a single person, John Wu. Mr. Wu’s Bankaholic.com sold to Bankrate.com for $12.4 million up front with $2.5 million to come over the next year or so…

I subscribe to Daily Blog Tips, and author Daniel Scocco mentioned a post by Patrick Gavin: Most Expensive WordPress Blog Ever Sold?

“I was looking at this deal and was thinking if this isn’t the highest price tag paid for a single WordPress blog than it must be the most profitable WP blog ever sold! A deal estimated at $15M, seemingly all organic search traffic (so no cost for the traffic, the site is highly ranked for many top banking terms, ie “CD Rates“), and one employee! Well done John Wu.”

UK-based BlogStorm blogger Patrick Altoft had this to say:

“Blogs have huge value, we all just need to wait until the world realises just how valuable they are and then there will be a lot of rich ex-bloggers around.”

I agree. Keep on blogging!!!

I just installed the latest version of WordPress - as a clean install - for a client. Well, let me tell you that the latest version (2.6) is not ready for prime time. The Permalinks - to me one of the most valuable features - do not work. If Adventures Online installed your blog, chances are the blog uses Permalinks. If you install WordPress 2.6, the links (your menu items and links within your posts) will no longer work.

A feature that has been added is the storage of “revisions”. Now, instead of having one record in your database for each page or post, you will have multiple records - and there is no toggle switch to shut this feature off. So, if you edit a post 5 times, you’ll have 5 records for that one post. It is a disgraceful waste of space, especially since there is no way from the admin to rollback to a revision. So WHY hold on to them? 

I went to the WordPress forum to see what “I” was doing wrong and why these things were happening. I am very discouraged to learn that the attitude of the developer (Otto) responding to the questions (for these two items) was incredulous. Obviously, a person who has no real-life experience - with computer systems nor life in general.

So I am discouraged. After praising WordPress as the only blog tool to be using since 2003, and encouraging all of my clients to invest their time and money in it, they release a version that acutally breaks your blog, wastes a lot of space, and they don’t really care.

 I am hoping that they will listen to the multitudes of persons writing in the forum. 

Don’t upgrade to 2.6 just yet. 2.6.1 is suppose to have fixes for the Permalinks. I don’t know if it will address the storing of “revisions”.

I’ll let you know when I know more.

Duplicate content can be damaging to your website, especially if your site is a lesser-known site to the search engines. When a search engine finds content that it believes it has seen before, how does it figure out which site gets credit for being the originator?

Generally speaking, this is what happens.

1. The most popular site gets the credit.
   Popular can be defined as:
   • The site that has more inbound links
   • The site that has more traffic
   • The site that is known to the search engine (i.e. CNN, Dell, Motley Fool)
   • The site that has the highest PageRank

2. The less-popular site is presumed to have done the copying.
   • In the best scenario, the page that contains the duplication is excluded from the search engine’s index (catalog of web pages).
   • In the worst scenario, the entire website is excluded from the search engine’s index.

Remember that the search engines use programs to determine the authenticity (and rank) of a website. As a blogger, it is your job to convince the programs that your site is worth ranking well. Here’s some tips for writing in your blog that will help the programs understand that you offer fresh, original content.

• Do: Paraphrase or quote small sections of articles, giving credit to the author and linking to the source of the original article.
• Do: Offer your opinion and discuss the content of the article. Search engines are looking for original content and your thoughtful discussion qualifies.
• Don’t: Copy an entire article to your blog even if you give credit to the author and source.

• Do: File your blog post under ONE and only ONE category. Yes, the programs can become confused when you file your post under more than one category. Even the “Archives” can confuse the search engines. Consider asking your webmaster to add rel="nofollow" to the Archives’ links or a robot statement to the Archives’ pages.
• Don’t: File your blog post under multiple categories.

• Do: Work hard at connecting with professionals in your industry who will want to link to your blog - and encourage them to link to specific blog posts. (See my suggestions for best-in-class Inbound Links.)

Okay, now that I have shared this information, I need to go through my blog and make the changes that I have suggested here.

Happy Blogging!

Edit (1/2 hour later): Okay, all posts listed under one category only.

Part 1 of Blogging, at Your Website or a Public Site? suggested a number ways to drive traffic to your website.

An important reason for establishing a blog is to create buzz about you and your company. Creating buzz increases traffic. Increased traffic makes the search engines take notice, oftentimes resulting in more listings and higher ranked listings on the search engines results pages (SERPs). Higher rankings in the SERPs lead to increased traffic…and the cycle of positive energy flows.

Blogs drive traffic to the Source.
Establishing a blog at a public blogging site enables you to create buzz about your company and get your target audience interested in learning more. Your target audience returns to the source of the buzz - the public blogging site - to learn more, resulting in increased traffic for the public blogging site. You’re thinking, but they’ll click through to my website. Maybe, maybe not…If the information they want resides at the public blogging site, why click through? If they do click through to your website, they have already contributed to increasing the traffic on the public blogging site. This pits your website against the public blogging site for listings in the search engines, and, the public blogging site will almost always have higher ranked listings due to the traffic it accumulates from all the other blogs. If the keywords (search terms) exist in abundance at your website and not so much at the public blogging website, you have a better chance of rising in the SERPs.

Writing in a blog takes thought and effort.
What categories will you define? What information will you post in each category? What keywords will you use? How frequently will you post? Experts suggest that you write in your blog as often as you can; from several times a day to once per week. (Read Tips for Adding Entries to Your Blog for suggestions on how to write your entries in order to positively impact your website’s listings in the search engines.)

Recommendation
If you are going to put in the effort to maintain a blog, to think of entries that will create buzz about you and your company, do it at your own website so that your website is the source, your target audience returns to your website, and the traffic for your website increases.

Public Blogging Websites are Good for Practicing.
For the bloggers that I know, the greatest challenge has been developing the habit of writing in their blogs with consistent frequency. Given that, I recommend to new bloggers that they first establish a blog at a public blogging website in order to create the habit. Once the habit of writing in their blogs is established, then create a blog at their own website.

Happy blogging!