Last Friday was the official launch of “The Brent and Brandi Show” – a collaborative online talkshow/podcast I am doing with Brandi Pierce, a website and branding specialist located in Seattle, Washington.  I met Brandi online on Biznik.com, a social networking website that is gaining popularity.  Brandi came up with the idea of a co-hosted podcast and was looking for the right co-host to help out.  Somehow I stuck out to Brandi and the invatation came my way.

Brandi first floated the idea to me in December and since then we have been working on putting the show together.  To actually have our first episode up is quite a treat!  What has been particularly interesting is the fact that we are located at extreme polar opposite ends of the country, so working through a 3 hour time difference via phone and email can sometimes get confusing.  But it makes for a nice East/West or even North/South contrast that makes things more interesting than if we were in the same location.

Our first show was on blogging for business – yep, it’s a business oriented talkshow that focuses on how to improve your business results via online marketing.  We already have growing list of guests for the show and a stockpile of information to share.  I hope you will join us live or check out our recorded shows after the fact as they become available.

The show is scheduled for every other Friday at 4pm PST and 1pm EST.  It is being broadcast on Talkshoe.com.

So, you’re still thinking this whole blogging thing is silly? Yet you want your website to rank well and bring a lot of visitors to your website?

If these two statements apply to you, then truth be told, you’d be silly not to consider a blog.

Think of it this way – if you have an average sized website, say 10 content pages, then you have 10 pages that have a chance of being ranked in the search engines. Now, it is difficult for any page to effectively be optimized for more than a few keyword phrases – 3 is reasonable, although some would argue that even that number is high. That give us 10 pages and 30 keyword phrases. Now, add in the fact that the search engines like active websites, so if your site is static (only updated once every year or two), then your site is not keeping the search engine bots interested.

Now, let’s take those 10 static pages and 30 keyword phrases and add in a blog that you update only once a week with a new post. This adds 52 new pages over the course of a year and 156 keyword phrases that can populate the search engines. Plus, as an actively updated blog, the search engines will be eager to visit it on a regular basis and quick list any new content that you post. When you launch a new product, service, sale, coupon, marketing campaign, promotion, job listing, new office location, event or other news worthy item, your blog post about it will show up immediately in the search engines for searchers to find it. If your site has been static for a year, and you update the site to reflect a special sale coming up next week, it might not make it to the search engines in time – whereas, it may only take an hour for the blog to get listed.

Blogs are a “force multiplier”, to borrow a military term. Use all the artillery available to help you succeed with your business online.

I saw an interesting article appear on MarketingSherpa.com’s website about blogging.  Since I’m finally getting my blog juices flowing, it was good to be reminded of the benefits involved.  Basically, MarketingSherpa ran a pole of 4,000 corporate bloggers to find out what the biggest advantages to their blogs was.  Here is the breakdown in order of biggest advantage first:

1. Improving web presence through search and news feeds (SEO)
2. Creating thought leadership
3. Creating a channel to new audiences/customers
4. Establishing interaction/communication with customers
5. Generating new leads
6. Creating visibility to journalists

I can attest to search engine presence of blogs.  I have run searches in Google and picked up very recent postings from this blog shown there – and I’m only really just getting started with it.

The article also went on to cite three factors that contribute to the success of a blog:

1. Genuine content
2. Regular updates
3. Focus / Purpose

Finding a niche market, or a niche within your market to blog about was also cited in the MarketingSherpa article as a way to find success with blogging.  This can be difficult as there is bloggers everywhere writing about everything – my industry is filled with tons of website and SEO bloggers, so I’m still finding my niche.  I say dive in and just start doing it and over time you’ll settle into your groove.  At the very least, it will help clarify what you know and what you need to know better, and possibly bring you more business in the process.