Fremtidstrender, Oslo, 03. juni

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May 8, 2010 By 1 Comment


I‘ll be speaking in Oslo on June 3 at a conference about future trends and challenges for Nordic businesses.

If you’re in Oslo and are interested in coming along, you can register with Positiv.no.

The program is available (pdf) here.

The conference is in Norwegian.

Jeg kommer til å snakke om: Nye medier- Fremtidens krav til bruk av nye medier

  • Hvordan pÃ¥virker sosiale medier vÃ¥r kommunikasjon?
  • Hvordan skape bedre kunderelasjoner ved hjelp av Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook og andre sosiale medier?
  • Hvordan kommunisere bedre online med dine kunder og ansatte?
  • Hvilke faktorer vil bli viktige ved bruk av nettkommunikasjon i tiden fremover?
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10 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Corporate Blog

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March 30, 2010 By 28 Comments

Like you, I want to drive traffic to my website. Not just trickles: I want stacks and stacks of visitors! And then some.

Here are ten of the things that I do to generate traffic; maybe they can help you as you seek to drive oodles of traffic to your own site:

1. Blog with WordPress

Ever since I made the switch from ExpressionEngine to WordPress and Chris Pearson’s Thesis Theme (no affiliate link) I’ve seen my traffic rise and rise. Sure, it was a bit messy shifting blogging tool, and I lost a year’s worth of posts, but I learned my lesson and now make weekly backups. And I definitely don’t regret changing.

traffic

Still after more traffic?

WordPress is an easy blog system to use. There are stacks of plugins to help you do whatever you want with your installation and since the Scribe WP plugin (no affiliate) for optimised copywriting appeared on the scene I’m even happier. I’ve seen my site perform better in Google and that’s brought in traffic. A massive 600 percent more traffic than when I used ExpressionEngine.

If you don’t take my word for it, the Top 100 bloggers can’t be wrong.

2. Blog Often

Google seems to like it if you blog regularly. Of course, people come only back regularly if they like what you’re doing, but I’ve also started seeing my posts turn up higher than they “should” in Google since I increased from 2-3 posts a week compared with 4-5 times.

Although it can be tough to write four or five posts a week I find that a bit of forward thinking, a bit of planning, a bit of inspiration from other people and some occasional hasty scribbling seems to keep things ticking over.
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Business Blogs RIP?

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March 2, 2010 By 7 Comments

Mark W. Schaefer's Grow is a MUST for marcom bloggers

Mark W. Schaefer’s post yesterday – New report suggests corporate blogging may be at saturation point– really bugged me. In a good way! Actually, the apparent demise of business blogging has been on my mind ever since, during dog walks and working out at the gym, and I’ve been struggling to find the best way to respond.

In the end I decided to abandon a hefty second comment on Mark’s blog and continue the conversation here.

The Back Story

If you haven’t got time to go back and read Mark’s post (and you should really go back and read it!), he notes that Fortune 500 companies seem to have got their head around Twitter, but really aren’t pushing business blogs to the next level.

Mark wonders if corporate blogs are falling by the wayside because companies struggle “to be responsive and authentic” when they have to get everything reviewed by the legal department.

He then posts some great questions – that I’m now going to answer:

A Blog-to-Blog Interview

Mark Schaefer: What is the role of a blog in the corporate communications structure?

Jon Buscall: I think business blogs are incredibly important to corporate communications. First and foremost, businesses should be listening to blogs! There’s been so much talk of brand monitoring with Twitter that the conversation about blogs has dropped away.

Blogs are still incredibly important to corporations because bloggers still write about what’s going on. 140 words on Twitter doesn’t give you the whole story.

Chris Brogan’s got a great post on Growing Bigger Ears. Corporates need to do that and remember that the blogosphere is still where conversations are taking place.

Blogs are also significant because they offer corporations a great way of showing who they really are, instead of just telling us.

Here in Sweden SaltÃ¥ Kvarn’s business blog shows that they really are passionate people that care about ecological food rather than just trying to brand this with advertising. I love that about them.

But business blogs aren’t just about showing who we are or what we can do; they’re incredibly important for crisis management. Sure, you can achieve similar results with Twitter and Facebook Pages, but the structure of a blog allows you more space to respond effectively.

After Southwest Airline’s handling of the “Kevin Smith debacle“, I would have got them to make much more use of their blog than they did. They could have used it to apologise, laugh at themselves for being such idiots with some cool content, and worked hard to make up some of the ground they lost. Still, the fact they had a blog allowed them to tell their side of the story. Every business needs that kind of channel.

Mark Schaefer: What are the benefits versus the cost of approvals and the time needed from executives to sponsor the work?
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Filed Under: blogging, communication strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Online Communications Consulting

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February 28, 2010 By 4 Comments

If you’re not getting the right message across to the people that matter – whether it’s customers, potential clients or colleagues – you might want to take a look at the way you’re communicating.

Communication is a massive part of daily business, but what with the rapid pace at which things are changing online, you might be missing the opportunity to communicate effectively with the people that matter if you aren’t making the most out of the tools that are available online.

Blogs

I’m a massive believer in the value business blogs can bring to your strategic communications.

Over the years, I’ve witnessed firsthand how they can:

  • generate regular traffic to your website
  • improve how you perform in Google search results because they’re pretty much SEO-friendly – straight out of the box
  • help show customers who you and what you do
  • give you a channel that’s easily helps you publish and promote text, video and pictures
  • enable you to communicate directly with customers through comments
  • make crisis management easier

If you’re looking to find out more about business blogging as a communications strategy, please download my free ebook.

Also, check out my 10 Essential Posts for Business Bloggers or Six Must Haves for Business Bloggers
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Is Your Business Social?

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February 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

smug fellow

Are you smug about your social media efforts?

With all the talk of social media in recent months a lot of companies have jumped on the social media bandwagon in an attempt to kick their online marketing and communications into the twenty-first century.

Maybe your business is like this?

You know: you’ve got a Facebook Fan Page, a Twitter account; you’re maybe posting pictures to Flickr, and monitoring realtime streams for mentions of your brand.

Trouble is: Just having the gear, doesn’t make you the belle of the ball. The tools per se don’t make you social: it’s what you do with them.

Successful online marketing with social media is about your mindset, and the communications strategy you use!

10 Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Business

Do you:

  • never answer questions on Twitter just to be helpful?
  • forget to respond to comments on your Facebook Fan Page the same day they’re posted?
  • find yourself erasing the comments that don’t make you look good?
  • conveniently forget to be honest when you mess up in public?
  • police every move your people make on social media?
  • always – bottom line – focus on selling more stuff
  • jump in with social media tools before thinking about your communication goals and desired outcomes?
  • forget to measure success and failure and fail to learn from it?
  • feel insecure when promoting other people’s services and products online?
  • never bother to look for new and emerging channels ?

Bonus Question?

  • Do you think you’ve got social media totally nailed?

So what about you?

If you’re answering YES to lots of these, you might want to think again about your online marketing and communications strategy.

Maybe you’re missing the point. Or maybe you’re not quite seeing the return on investment (ROI) you thought you’d be getting once your business went social.

Go on: take another look at your online marketing and how you’re using tools like Facebook, corporate blogs, Twitter and so on. Is your business really social ?

Image:FlickrCC

Filed Under: communication strategy, marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,