For fun. You were bored?  Why are you blogging? I hope you are telling your story. I hope you are adding relevant and interesting information. What is your blogging schedule? Daily is great! I love blogs where I can find new information each and every day. We are working with a group of soon to be new bloggers this morning and I’d love to give them some helpful tips and information. What are your favorite blog topics, ideas, and success stories? Please share yours here!

One of my favorite bloggers is Seth Godin.

Blog posts should be short and to the point? We don’t want to land on a blog and spend three hours of reading content. One to two paragraphs are great, maybe a couple bullet points or a numbered list. Make it quick and easy to read, understand the message, and form an opinion. 

In a blog, you to tell your story. A blog is a great place for you to have an opinion. You can do product reviews; you can talk about different services. Talk about your friends, talk about business people that you network with. The key is to keep it short.  When people are surfing online, the attention span, the amount of time that you have once they reach your site and decide to stay on your site is very short. So make sure that you keep it interesting, keep it short, sweet and to the point, so that people can quickly and easily find what they need, be entertained, inspired, or educated, and then move on to what they would like to find next.

What is one of your favorite blog posts that you have come across?

*From Blogging Explained CD

This is a guest post by Tom Harris, Your Marketing Coach. Tom helps entrepreneurs and small businesses develop and execute marketing plans. He specializes in website usability and effectiveness.

If you have a business website, the information in it is free to whoever wants to come read it. Maybe you have a blog, and everyone in the world can read your blog posts for free. But it bothers you that you never know WHO is reading your site content or your blog posts. If you did know, then you could market to them. And you certainly want to build up your email list.

So, you have this great idea – you’ll come up with a document containing a generous amount of detailed, valuable and really useful information (an e-book, a whitepaper, a whatever), and you’ll give it away for free to promote yourself and your business, BUT you’ll ask for a person’s email address in exchange for letting them download the information. How logical – they get the information, you get to add a new contact to your email list. Good trade, right? Why wouldn’t everyone want to take you up on this offer? I mean, you’re just asking for their email address, not their name and phone number and detailed driving directions to their house!

Well, a number of studies suggest that merely asking for someone’s email address will result in about half as many downloads as not asking for any information at all. And don’t even think about asking for MORE than an email address, as many companies still do.

How good an idea is it to say, “OK, I’ll give you something, but you gotta give me something first.”?
Here’s the big question: Which would you rather have – (a) a number of email addresses that you can send unsolicited/unwanted messages to, or (b) twice that many people who now have your information in their hands? If you think the most important thing is to simply “get your name and message out there”, then consider making the information really, totally free.

Recent polls at InSights show that about half the people in the room at a local networking event have at least heard of twitter. The other half laugh at the word. You have to admit, at first it sounds kind of silly. For the purpose of this discussion, let’s start with what twitter is:

Now that you’ve seen the video, here are my top five tips to using twitter.

1. Identify the reasons you are going to twitter, once you have a goal, you can work out a twitter plan, otherwise you might use all of your time surfing and playing, without getting closer to your purpose
Are you hoping to connect with friends and family?
Do you want to promote your brand or blog?
Do you want to meet new people?
Use it for netwokring?
Keep tabs on your brand, image, or company?

All of the above, and more, are great reasons and uses for twitter.

2. Tweet
Jump in with both feet. You will build a great twitter network through your activity. If you post interesting things, people will be inclined to follow you. Share useful information, fun facts, and add some of your personality. That’s what it’s all about! Give people a reason to follow you. Be interesting, not overly shamlessly self promoting.

3. Follow other Twitter users. Follow people because of their interesing posts. Target conversations near you if you are looking to grow in your geographic area. Expand your reach if you have a futher reaching goal.

4. Reply, Retweet, and have those conversations!
Reach out, share information, and let others know that you find them interesting. Asking questions is a great way to get some answers! Respond to others. Use the reply feature or the @username to have those two sided conversations.

5. Practice restraint and Twitter Etiquitte
Avoid spam. Promote content that is interesting. Don’t bring in the band and banners declaring yourself the next best thing since sliced bread. Insert your personality, interests, and yes promote yourself, but do it in balance with everything else. Share other’s links and information. Be the person in the party that listens as well as they talk.

I could go on and on, but would love your opinion. What is your best advice for the next Twitter user?

We had a day full of networking opportunities and meetings at InSights today, and in Ann Arbor as we attended the ACE ‘09 Entrepreneur event, then travelled back to Brighton to wrap up the day with a Toastmasters meeting. I overheard a conversation from a woman who was wondering when she would have time to get any work done. Interesting question, considering I have the same dilemma. So, here we are late at night and I am writing a blog post, twittering, and updating my facebook account. Where does the balance come in to the in person social activites that are so important for growing our contact spheres? Does anyone have any advice on their strategy and how to keep it all simple?

Last May (2008) we had an opportunity to do an online radio interview with Kathy Eubanks via telephone. It was a pretty cool experience. Has anyone ever been interviewed for a show? Answering questions and sounding like you know what you are talking about can be a bit intimidating when you are on the spot. As a follow up to the radio interview, at our InSights Toastmasters meeting we tried an interview format for table topics. It was a new experience for most of the members at the meeting. We think differently when we are generating our own thoughts as opposed to answering someone else’s questions.

I’d like to as you, if someone were to interview you about your business, what questions would you like them to ask? What is the most important thing that someone know about your business? What is something you would like another business person to answer? How can we utilize the power of the interview, and perhaps add some content to our blogs? Consider how you could get your message across, and create new opportunity through this type of publicity?

Of course, for your listening enjoyment:
Blog Talk Radio Interview with Kathy Eubanks May 8, 2008