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small business

Today’s guest post is from Carol Wilson, a writer for BusinessInsuranceQuotes.org. She contributes articles about a variety of marketing, business, stock market, small business topics and can be contacted at: wilson.carol24 @ gmail.com. As part of our continuing series on how to build your small business blog, today Carol looks at the benefits of using guest posts on your small business blog.

In today’s tech-heavy society, nearly every aspect of our lives is intimately involved with the internet. Businesses rely on the web for their mass marketing campaigns, gaining a worldwide audience, and selling or distributing their product and services. Many small and large businesses alike use blogs to create attention for their offerings and to position themselves as experts within their area. A small business blog, as with any blog, can be tricky to maintain. Gaining any amount of popularity online takes a lot of work and a considerable amount of research. Bloggers must understand who their target audience is, develop a reliable blogging schedule, craft quality content, deliver something new and interesting to their readers, and create beautiful and clear web design for their site. One essential trick to creating a successful blog is inviting quality guest posts from capable writers within your blogging genre.

Gain a Wider Exposure

One of the most basic benefits of publishing guest posts on your small business’ blog is gaining more traffic to your blog. By allowing established guest bloggers to publish on your site, you will attract members of that blogger’s regular audience to your blog. The guest blogger will promote their guest post on their usual social media outlets as well as their own blog, providing you with free and effortless promotion. Furthermore, guest posting often works both ways. If you allow a guest blogger to write a feature for your blog, you will likely be permitted or asked to write a feature for their blog. This allows you to promote your business’ blog on that blogger’s site, too. Readers of your guest posts will picture you as an expert on your area of interest and may seek further information from you about your products and services. More traffic means more customers and more customers means more profit.

Become an Authority

By featuring guest posts that are written by educated and knowledgeable individuals in your area of business, readers will see your blog as the authoritative voice on that subject. Within any industry, being seen as an authority within your area of business is a positive thing for sales. A business’ reputation plays heavily into how successful it is. By creating and publishing quality content on your business’ blog, customers and visitors will begin to trust your word on that subject. Furthermore, featuring guest bloggers on your blog will demonstrate a willingness to explore different points of view. This openness displays a forward-thinking business standpoint and is viewed positively by visitors and consumers. Use guest bloggers to build your professional repertoire and position yourself as an expert in your area.

Beef Up Your Blog

Guest posts also provide a great way to beef up your blog and mix up the content a little bit. One of the most difficult aspects of blogging in general is coming up with interesting and unique content each and every week. Guest posting gives your blog a new and exciting voice. Even the slightest change like this can revive a tired blog and engage new readers. Let your guest contributors do some of the work for you for a bit. Let others come up with unique and entertaining topics that relate to your business. If you find yourself stuck in a rut, try featuring a series of guest posts on various topics. Of course, be wary of the guest articles you do publish. Be sure to find posts that are well written and intimately related to your area of business. Featuring an interesting post by a guest blogger that is unique and well written, but completely unrelated to your blog is pointless. Find posts that are useful, informative, and interesting. Spicing things up in your blog can help bring readers back for more and will keep you inspired for your own writing.



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Looking at the Local, Social, Mobile Web

you-are-here-thumb.pngMat Honan in Wired Magazine took a long look at the local, social, mobile web in a piece called I Am Here: One Man’s Experiment With the Location-Aware Lifestyle. Money quote? “That old saw about how someday you’ll walk past a Starbucks and your phone will receive a digital coupon for half off on a Frappuccino? Yeah, that can happen now.”

The key takeaways:

  1. Privacy will limit growth of the mobile web. When a Wired contributing editor is freaked out by how close to home – literally as well as figuratively – these tools can bring stalkers, weirdos and the generally annoying, expect your customers to feel the same.
  2. Mobile-enabled search will be a big deal. Just because users of mobile apps – even Wired users – have concerns about stalkers finding them doesn’t mean they don’t want to find you. As Honan notes, “By trusting an app (iWant) that showed me nearby dining options, I discovered an Iraqi joint in my neighborhood that I’d somehow neglected. Thanks to an app (GasBag) that displayed gas stations with current prices, I was able to find the cheapest petrol no matter where I drove.”

    So, one local business gained a new customer, while the effects of mobile on price transparency (also see this presentation on price transparency), probably cost some of those gas stations.

    I had a similar experience recently, when I needed a place for a lunch meeting close to a colleague’s office. One location-aware Google Map search on my (awesome) BlackBerry Bold, followed by a quick scan of reviews and I had the makings of a successful lunch.

  3. Mobile web etiquette doesn’t exist yet. This shares much with the aforementioned stalkers, weirdos and generally annoying from point 1, but adds twist that you may want these folks to find you. Just not all the time.

My biggest knock on the story is its lack of depth into how common these tools are among potential customers. I suspect it’s because hard numbers are tough to come by. But when you consider there are 3.5 billion GSM users out there; that location-aware devices like the iPhone, Curve, Bold, Storm and LG Dare dominate the sales charts; and that Gartner sees location sensing as a key trend for 2009, you can expect usage to grow among your customers.

Read the article. You’ll gain useful perspective on what’s already here. And what’s coming.


Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the mobile, social, local web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today. Or subscribe via email.

And while you’re at it, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.

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As we’re winding down the last days of the year, it’s useful to look back and see what mattered most during the last 12 months. According to you, Big thinkers, here are the best posts of 2008.

Internet Marketing and E-commerce

Lots of you looked for answers to online marketing, internet strategy and e-commerce questions. These three posts generated more traffic and comments than any others in this category:

Twitter

You all know how important Twitter is to our business here at thinks. So it’s no surprise that you enjoyed these posts about Twitter:

Web Analytics and Testing

Of course, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Here are the top web analytics and testing posts from 2008:

Hosting

And, you can’t manage or measure your online business if you don’t have a web site. These 3 popular posts explained different ways to get one.

Customer Service

Many times, the web is just the first step in engaging your customers. This story showed another way to do it:

Bonus content

Finally, while these posts didn’t always get the most traffic, other metrics (low bounce rate, low exit rate, high subscription rate), suggest you really liked them. So, for those of you who missed them the first time through, here are the most engaging posts of 2008:

Enjoy!


Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the mobile, social, local web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today. Or subscribe via email.

Oh. And while you’re at it, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.

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Why the backyard web will change your business for the better (Guide to Small Business E-Commerce Strategy)

December 4, 2008 E-commerce

The mobile web is very much here. Two recent examples show why that matters to you.

Read the full article →

Blogging is dead. What are you going to do about it?

November 11, 2008 Blogging

Whoever said blogging is dead is a great person to take business from. Here’s how you can.

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One reason you don’t want to be Bill Gates

June 30, 2008 Strategy

As Bill Gates steps down, many will look at his success. His greatest failure might be more instructive.

Read the full article →