Posts Tagged ‘Blogging’
10 Most Subscribed Search Marketing Blogs
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What are the best Search Engine Marketing blogs to follow? Which are the most popular? The chart above from Feed Compare shows a comparison of the RSS feed subscriber counts published by Feedburner for: Google Webmaster Central (red), Search Engine Land (blue), Search Engine Watch (green) and our very own Online Marketing Blog (purple).
As evidence of how successful a well executed business blog can be, TopRank’s Blog has about as many RSS subscribers as top industry publication Search Engine Watch (37,517/37,028). It’s a great position for an agency to have that kind of reach and also to be able to bring first hand, successful business blogging expertise to our consulting clients.
Blogs covering the search engine marketing industry, including our own Online Marketing Blog, started popping up around 2003 and we’ve been covering SEM blogs pretty well with our BIGLIST of SEO Blogs for the past 3 years or so. One of the dimensions worth considering when deciding which blogs to subscribe to is the social proof of how many others have subscribed to a particular blog. There are other factors at play obviously, like topic, writing style, frequency and level of engagement by other readers, but SEM blogs have been around long enough for the good ones to attract a noticeable following.
6 Tools For Better Blogging With An iPad
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Like many others, I recently purchased an iPad out of curiosity. While my intentions were of discovery, I quickly found some productivity gains with blogging.
The upside to blogging with an iPad is that it’s portable and you can easily log your thoughts on a screen that is a lot more convenient than typing into an iPhone or other smartphone. Also, there are a number of apps to make it fairly easy.
The downside is that even though typing is easier on a much larger screen, typing on a screen vs. a tactile keyboard still takes some getting used to, even if you’re an iPhone owner. I also found some issues with copy/paste and for web based tools, anything that uses Flash is a no-go.
Here are several tips and tools that you can use to become productive more quickly when blogging using an iPad. Each icon links to the app store and this post was written entirely on an iPad.
Smarter Ways to Get Content Ideas for B2B Blogs
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One of the most common challenges of business blogging is sourcing content. The range of things that can interrupt content creation are important obstacles to overcome because without content there is little reason for readers to return. Blogs are fairly easy to start and if you’ve been a reader of this blog, chances are pretty good that you have started your own blog (personal or for biz) at some point in time. Many of the companies TopRank Marketing consults with have either started business blogs and need help or want to start a new blog to advance a variety of business goals. In fact, in our blogging survey earlier this year, 95% of respondents indicated they incorporate blogs as part of their search engine optimization efforts. Many others use blogs for public relations, customer service, product support and recruiting.
Whatever the reason for starting a blog, long time content creation with B2B blogs requires creativity, social participation and a smart feedback loop. Here are a few specific ways to generate content ideas for business to business blogs:
How I Started Blogging. What’s Your Story?
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While today’s online media are abuzz with the latest and greatest social media tactics and tools, for many of us that have been around a little while, it was blogging that started our social media careers.
It’s funny to think that in 2002 a type of site called “blog” came up on my radar as a possible marketing tool. At the time, many blogs were personal diaries posted anonymously or by people with a little tech savvy and plenty of opinion. Writing personal thoughts on a public web site was absolutely the last thing I would ever consider doing. However, it was a curious thing and I started a few blogs anonymously to see what it was like. Unfortunately, the excercise was so foreign, poorly executed and without feedback, that I deleted them.
In mid 2003 I began looking for online content outside of forums and started reading several SEO blogs including Search Engine Blog (Peter Da Vanzo), Search Blog (John Battelle) and Search Engine Lowdown (Andy Beal). Interestingly, only Search Blog remains what it was.