Looking for some ideas to simplify your content creation process?

What follows are 26 tips, from A-Z, to help you create optimal blog posts every time you sit down to write.

#1: Anatomically Correct

A blog post contains several areas that require our attention and care. Pamela Seiple refers to six parts of the anatomy of a lead-generating blog post:

• Eye-catching title
• In-text links to landing pages
• Sidebar/banner calls to action
• Social sharing buttons
• Call to action at the bottom
• Relevancy—making sure the post is relevant from top to bottom

Parts of the blog anatomy.

Example of more anatomical parts to include in your blog posts.

#2: Blogging Platform

By knowing the ins and outs of your blogging platform, you’ll ensure that your posts look as good as they can. Take the time to master the visual editor (or raw HTML, if you prefer) so that you know how to format a post, insert an image and embed a video or podcast.

Whether you’re working in platforms such as WordPress, Tumblr or Posterous, it’s good to stay up to date on the features and new versions.

If you’re not comfortable with the more technical aspects of blogging, try to find someone who can be a resource for you to answer questions as they arise.

WordPress' editor where you can toggle between visual and HTML editing functions.

#3: Categories

Whether your new blog post is a stand-alone article or part of a series you’re writing, it should fit into your blog categories as well as your overall corporate content strategy. Meaning that you want to stay on topic and have your posts fit into the categories you’ve established.

For example, HubSpot has nine categories on their blog. Posts are written to fit in with each of these categories. Writing about category topics such as analytics, blogging, email marketing, HubSpot TV, etc., allows both readers and writers to stay focused on what they can expect to see on HubSpot’s blog.

When you choose your categories, ask yourself, do they make sense, and do they fit into the objectives of my business? Having clearly defined blog categories will help you continue generating meaningful content and topics for your blog.

Write posts that fit into your categories.

#4: Description

Most search engines will use a maximum of 160 characters for your post description on their results pages. If you don’t create a meta-description (defined as a “…concise summary of your page’s content”), a search engine will often take the first 160 characters it finds on your page instead.

Note too, that when you create a meta-description that is fewer than 160 characters, you’ll see the full description in the search engine. Otherwise it will be cut off.

An example of a meta-description created within the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin in WordPress.

An example of how a post's description appears in Google search results with and without the meta-description.

#5: Editorial Calendar

Bloggers find editorial calendars helpful for scheduling and organizing topics for posts. Some people use their calendars to track more elaborate details.

Michele Linn suggests using specific tabs in a spreadsheet to track info for each post such as: post date, author, tentative title, keywords, categories, tags, call to action and status. She says “By tracking more than topic and date it will help to make sure the key elements you need for SEO, digital optimization and conversion are accounted for.”

Download a sample editorial calendar worksheet.

An example of a template for a master editorial calendar as shown by Michele Linn.

#6: Fine-Tune and Revise

Like other forms of writing, a blog post is rarely completed in one draft. Many writers find it helpful to take a post through several revisions and fine-tune the post as you go along. Check grammar, spelling and punctuation, and make certain that all of your links are working.

#7: Guidelines for Writing for Search Engines

By following a few tips and best practices, you can increase the chance that your blog post will be found by search engines—by Google in particular.

The State University of New York at Plattsburgh offers these helpful writing tips:

• Google likes text
• Google likes formatting
• Google likes freshness
• Google likes accessibility
• Google likes outbound hyperlinks
• Googlebot isn’t psychic, so remember to link your pages
• Google likes you to tell it where you are
• Google likes experts

#8: Headings

Joost de Valk offers some good suggestions regarding blog headings. He writes, “The heading structure of your pages is one of the very important aspects of on-page SEO. It defines which parts of your content are important, and how they’re interconnected. Because they have different goals, a single post needs another heading structure than your blog’s homepage or your category archives.”

He offers five basic principles about heading structure:

• The most important heading on the page should be the H1
• There is usually only one H1 on any page
• Subheadings should be H2s, sub-subheadings should be H3s, etc.
• Each heading should contain valuable keywords; if not, it’s a wasted heading
• For longer pieces of content, a heading is what helps a reader skip to the parts that he/she finds interesting

Headings should contain valuable keywords.

#9: Images

Blog posts are made up of more than words and headings.

Judy Dunn recommends five ways the right photo can increase readership and blog views:

• Convey the overall feeling or emotion of your post
• Illustrate a metaphor or analogy that is part of your main idea
• Evoke surprise or curiosity
• Complement your headline
• Make your reader smile

Judy points out too that readers are visual learners and images can help people take in and retain information better.

#10: Journalistic Approach

Bloggers can learn a lot from traditional journalists and the ways that they approach their news stories.

Mickie Kennedy offers five things that bloggers can learn from journalists:

• Get your facts straight
• Trust has to be earned
• Give credit to your sources
• The inverted pyramid works (basic overview in first paragraph and then delve into more details in subsequent paragraphs)
• Editing and proofreading are essential

As shown on Wikipedia.org

#11: Killer SEO and Blog Design

Cyrus Shepard makes an important case for having a beautiful blog. He says, “…the overall design of your site is the first thing visitors see and it significantly influences bounce rate, page views and conversions.”

Cyrus suggests that certain elements on the page will add to a blog’s success:

• Search box
• RSS feed
• Breadcrumbs (helping users navigate),
• Flat site architecture by minimizing the number of clicks it takes to reach your content
• Images
• Keep your best content above the fold
• Link to your best content
• Don’t overdo links
• Watch ad space
• Encourage comments
• Add sharing buttons
• Test the blog for speed
• Check your blog in different browsers
• Pick a powerhouse blogging platform (e.g., WordPress, Posterous, Tumblr)

For a resource that will help remind you of these killer SEO suggestions, check out Cyrus’ infographic, Blog Design for Killer Search Engine Optimization.

#12: Lists

Lists have become a very popular type of blog post.

Nate Riggs offers three types for bloggers to consider: brief, detailed and hybrid lists.

The brief list has little description but can entice readers to bookmark the post to use the list as a resource down the road or to share it across their own networks.

In a detailed list, each bullet is a complete thought and serves as a good way to communicate complex information.

The hybrid list combines the elements of short and detailed lists, often with descriptive narratives or explanations in paragraphs between the actual lists.

Nate’s post has a lot of useful information about lists as a powerful content marketing tactic and is a good example of a hybrid list.

#13: Metrics for Blogging

Magdalena Georgieva identifies five metrics to keep an eye on to know how your blogging is going: visitors, leads, subscribers, inbound links and social media shares.

As Magdalena says, “Measure the performance of your business blog regularly to identify weaknesses in the content you’re producing, what topics your audience truly cares about, and what blogging tactics work for you.”

When you find topics and approaches that work particularly well, try to replicate those efforts and be willing to let go of features that aren’t performing well. Magdalena recommends looking at your five most successful blog posts and asking, “What do they have in common?”

#14: Names, Titles and Bio

Not only are readers interested in the content in your blog post, they also want to know who wrote the post and their role at your organization.

Sometimes you’ll come across a thoroughly researched and well-written post only to find an attribution of “admin.” Even if the blog is only written by you and you’re the administrator of the blog, be sure to include your name, title and a way for readers to contact you.

#15: Original vs. Curated Content

The type of post you write can contain completely original content or can consist of content that you’ve curated.

Pamela Seiple addresses the issue of curated content and makes an important point when she says, “There’s a misconception among marketers that curated content is lazy and unoriginal, but we think it’s the complete opposite. It takes time and careful evaluation to create quality curated content and the result is oftentimes a very valuable piece of content that helps people seeking information on a given topic to cut through the clutter on the web and save time.”

The 26 tips series here on Social Media Examiner is an example of curated posts, pulling in the expertise of others who have written on the topic. As a curator of this kind of post, I love the journey of the research and find it especially rewarding to see the content pulled together in a way that hadn’t been previously available. Curated posts can be incredibly gratifying!

#16: Publish and Promote

Kristi Hines speaks about the publishing and promoting stages of creating a successful blog post. Kristi says that one thing you want to do during the publishing stage is to ensure that your post has some kind of call to action. “Think about what you want people to do once they’ve read the post….”

Promoting a blog post can involve a fair amount of thought and strategy, as you’ll see from Kristi’s approach. She has a different plan in place for “averagely awesome posts, awesome posts and killer awesome posts.”

What differs for the three types of posts is how many social networks she shares the posts with, whether she includes the post in her writing portfolio and whether it’s included in her custom RSS feed or utilizes blog commenting promotion and direct messaging partners in social media to see if they’ll help spread the word.

Kristi describes promotion as taking from a few minutes to a few hours, and recommends taking the time to build a good foundation before you expect to execute a successful blog promotion.

#17: Questions

What are you going to write about post after post, week after week, year after year? Sometimes thinking about content for your blog can seem daunting.

Lee Odden offers a great piece of advice: “One particularly effective way to get content ideas for blogging comes from reviewing web analytics for the kinds of questions people type into search engines like Google or Bing that deliver visitors.”

In one example, Lee said that he noticed that numerous visitors each month were typing in the question “What does a community manger do?” and search engines were sending them to one of his posts about that topic. He used it as an opportunity to explore other related questions about social community managers and providing content in the form of answers.

What questions are your web visitors asking before they arrive on your pages? How can you maximize your content to answer readers’ questions?

#18: Research

Well-researched blog posts can differentiate your content from your competitors’. Being known as a go-to source in your industry will help make your blog stand out. Where do you go to research posts?

I find that utilizing a variety of sources helps me gather the information I’m seeking.

For example, while I can often find a lot of useful content via web-based searches, sometimes there’s nothing like a visit to the library or a bookstore where I often will discover a helpful book on the shelf that I wouldn’t have known existed if I hadn’t been standing there physically eyeballing them.

Oli Gardner makes a good case for using social media research for your blog posts. He suggests ten social media research strategies:

• StumbleUpon
• Infographics
• Twitter real-time searches
• Facebook events
• Experts who are using LinkedIn
• Uncovering quotes with Delicious
• Letting users tell you within the comments section of your blog and others
• Creating roundup mega-lists with Delicious and StumbleUpon
• Apps on Facebook
• Delicious and Google Marketplace
• YouTube and the UrbanDictionary

#19: Stand Out

When you’ve been blogging in a competitive marketplace for a while, chances are good that you’ll see other bloggers writing on topics similar to yours. It doesn’t mean that you have to stay away from the topic completely; rather you can use it as an opportunity to see what worked and didn’t work in their post and write yours in a way that will help you to stand out in the topic area.

By reading the comments on similar blog posts, you will get a great view of what questions and thoughts people had after reading the post and you can take a slightly different angle by making sure you cover those areas in your article.

#20: Title

How important is the title of your blog post? Simply put, very important!

Brian Clark writes that the title is the first, and perhaps only, impression you make on a prospective reader.

He says, “Without a headline or post title that turns a browser into a reader, the rest of your words may as well not even exist.

But a headline can do more than simply grab attention. A great headline can also communicate a full message to its intended audience, and it absolutely must lure the reader into your body text.”

An example of an eye-catching title from copyblogger.com.

#21: User-Centered Content

Possibly one of the worst mistakes a blog post can make is missing the mark of its readers, forgetting who they are and their needs and interests.

Georgy Cohen goes as far as to say that content can serve as customer service and that to be helpful, content should be user-focused (asking what our users’ problems and priorities are), communicated clearly and presented in succinct language.

#22: Valuable Content

In the perfect blogging world, creating valuable content would be at the top of every blogger’s list for their post objectives.

While our definitions about valuable content may vary, Ahava Leibtag has created a very helpful step-by-step checklist that reminds us to ask five questions:

• Can the user find the content
• Can the user read the content
• Can the user understand the content
• Will the user want to take action
• Will the user share the content

She suggests:

• Findable content includes: an H1 tag; at least two H2 tags; metadata including title, descriptors and keywords; links to other related content; alt tags for images.
• Readable content includes: an inverted-pyramid writing style, chunking, bullets, numbered lists, following the style guide.
• Understandable content includes: an appropriate content type (text, video), indication that you considered the users’ persona, context, respect for the users’ reading level, articulating an old idea in a new way.
• Actionable content includes: a call to action, a place to comment, an invitation to share, links to related content, a direct summary of what to do.
• Shareable content includes: something to provoke an emotional response, a reason to share, a request to share, an easy way to share, personalization.

Download the checklist for future reference.

Ahava Leibtag's Valuable Content Checklist.

#23: Word Count

How many words should you have in your blog post? Some blogs have set parameters for optimal length and put a value on whether a post is short or long.

Corey Eridon has an interesting perspective on word count and suggests that focusing on blog word count might not be as important as you think it is. “Some topics take 100 words to explain, some take 1,000, and that’s okay.”

Corey suggests that writers focus instead on whether posts are optimized for mobile, use effective formatting, communicate in a clear manner and that outlining the points you want to cover may ultimately be a better use of your time and energy.

If you’re restricted to shorter posts by the parameters set up in advance for your blog, then you could also follow Corey’s advice to link to longer-form content you’ve developed around the topic.

Bottom line: Don’t let the quantity of words dictate the quality of your post.

#24: (E)xcerpt

On the heels of our discussion about blog word count, a shorter blog post can also be an excerpt or summary of what readers will find in your longer-form content—e.g., eBook or white paper—but it needn’t be restricted to words.

You can also use an excerpt of the transcript or a brief description to demonstrate what information the users will learn if they watch your video or listen to your podcast.

Mike Stelzner provides great excerpts from his expert interviews on Social Media Examiner.

#25: Your Story

Readers like to get to know how writers tick and often appreciate hearing a few personal details and insights from the person who has taken them on a journey through a post. While business blogs shouldn’t be thought of as personal journal entries, you can tell your readers a little bit about how you operate.

For example, I stated above that writing curated posts like the 26 tips series here on Social Media Examiner is one of my favorite types of posts to write. (Truth be told, curated posts are also some of my favorite types to read.)

In the description of “research” above, I also shared how research is one of my favorite parts of blogging and how I enjoy researching both online and offline by doing the footwork of visiting libraries and bookstores in search of materials.

What parts of yourself are you willing and able to share with your readers?

#26: Zone for Writing

Ideas for blog posts come at all times—when you’re driving in your car, sitting at your desk, and yes, even in the middle of the night!

Chances are good though that the actual writing of the post will happen in multiple drafts and revisions, and depending on how you work, it may take place over a period of days.

What can be helpful is to create a time and place where you can get into the zone for writing and allow yourself to go with it, with as few interruptions as possible.

What do you think? How do you keep your blog posts consistent and dynamic? What tips would you add? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

You’ve come to the right place.

Facebook marketing, when done right, is an extremely powerful tool. It can increase your leads, attract highly targeted prospects and position you as a sought-after industry leader.

To reap these business-building benefits, the key is to develop daily habits.

The following list of six daily habits will keep you focused on what really matters when it comes to Facebook marketing: real fan engagement.

Refer back to these habits often to keep yourself on track as you work to create a vibrant community of raving fans who’ll happily spread the word about you and your products and services.

#1: Become addicted to solving problems

When you regularly solve problems and answer questions for your fans, you not only foster trust, but you also set yourself up as the go-to expert in your niche.

A surefire way to create engagement on your Facebook page is to regularly offer your expertise and insight. One great example of a master problem-solver is Facebook expert Mari Smith. Mari encourages her fans to ask questions on her Facebook page. Because she is quick to respond with valuable responses, she’s turned many Facebook fans into loyal followers and customers.

But she doesn’t stop there. Mari takes her support a step further by providing a resource center directly on her Facebook page. She continually keeps this resource link up to date and full of valuable information. As you can see in the image below, Mari has set up multiple info tabs including Changes, How To and Rules & Safety, all related to Facebook marketing.

By providing a resource center for her fans, Mari Smith is seen as the Facebook go-to source by tens of thousands of fans.

Take Action: Make it your mission to be the go-to source for your Facebook fans. What information related to your niche do your fans, prospects and clients want to know? To set yourself apart from your competition and keep your fans coming back for more, create a resource page as a custom link on your Facebook page. By doing so, you can provide updated, useful content to your growing audience on an ongoing basis.

#2: Talk to individual fans daily

I make it a habit to comment on other people’s posts 3-5 times each day. I do this because these comments are the real conversations that build relationships.

Taking a minute to comment on a fan’s vacation photos or adding my two cents to a peer’s recently posted video is my way of letting my fans and peers know that I genuinely am interested in what they are talking about online.

To check out what your fans are posting on their own pages or profiles, first check out which fans are posting on your page. When fans post on your page, you can click on their avatars and you will be taken to either their pages or profiles, depending on how your fans have posted on your page. You can then post on their pages (or if you are also a friend via their profiles, you can post on their profiles as well).

Here’s an example of me posting on a fan’s page, Life In Motion Chiropractic:

When you post on your fans' Facebook pages, it shows that you have a genuine interest in them.

Here are a few tips when commenting on fans’ posts:

• Use first names. When your fans know you are paying attention to them, they are much more likely to speak up and tell you what’s on their mind. Knowing what your fans are thinking is invaluable!
• Be yourself. Talk to others in the same style you would talk to a friend over dinner. Before you click send, read your post and make sure it really sounds like you.
• Be brief. If your post is too long, it will be overlooked easily. To get more people reading your post, get to the point faster.

Take Action: Make it a habit to spend at least 10 minutes a day reading posts from your fans and peers and leaving insightful comments on their profiles and pages. By stepping outside of your own Facebook page, and spending time on other pages and profiles, you let your fans and peers know that you truly do care about them.

#3: Track your Facebook activity

Although it may not be the most exciting task of your day, taking the time to check your Facebook activity is essential to growing your fan base and keeping your momentum going.

If you’re just starting out with tracking your activity and looking for a quick list of key metrics to track, consider tracking the following metrics on a weekly basis:

• # of total fans
• # of new Fans
• Fan growth from prior week
• # of unlikes
• # of weekly Actives
• Actives growth from prior week

You can find these metrics by checking out your Facebook Insights on your page. To get to your Insights, just go to your Facebook page and click “Edit Page” in the upper-right corner. From there you will see a list of links in the left column. You can click on “Insights” to get your page metrics.

Here's a snapshot from Facebook Insights of my page's metrics.

One other tracking tool that is extremely useful is EdgeRankChecker. This is an online tool that scores your overall page engagement activity. I use this tool to help me identify what score Facebook is likely giving my page in terms of EdgeRank. (Note: No-one knows the exact formula Facebook uses to assign an EdgeRank score; however, this tool is useful.)

The higher your EdgeRank score, the more likely it is to be visible on a fan's Top News Feed.

As seen in the screenshot below (for Outside the Cubicle), the tool also identifies the days of the week when you get the most engagement and the days when you have the least activity on your page. This is valuable information as you decide when to launch new promotions and post valuable content.

In the screenshot above, you can see the Facebook page received a high engagement score of 15.

Take Action: Create a Google Doc and track your Facebook activity on a weekly basis. By tracking your weekly metrics, you will soon see what’s working and what you might need to tweak, depending on the high and low metrics in your tracking document.

#4: Change what’s not working and move on

When it comes to tracking your social media marketing activity, there’s a fine line between having patience and making changes when you’re not getting the results you’re after.

The key is to set a realistic goal and clearly identify its benchmarks and the length of time you are going to allow to get the desired results. If the time comes that you don’t reach your desired outcome, tweak your activity right away. The longer you wait, the more damage you’ll do.

For example, let’s say that for the past 30 days you’ve been asking questions a few times a week on your Facebook page and only two or three fans are leaving responses each time you post a new question. There could be a few different reasons for your low response rate. You might be asking questions that are not of interest to your fans. To fix this, you really want to pay attention to what grabs their attention and what topics your fans talk about the most.

Or perhaps your questions are too difficult or too time-consuming to answer. People move fast on Facebook and tend not to spend too much time in one place. There’s actually an art to asking questions on Facebook. The key is to ask questions that require little effort to answer. Questions that require just one-word responses tend to get the most engagement. Watch this short video to learn more about the art of asking questions on Facebook.

Overall, the important thing to remember is that when something isn’t working, don’t dwell on it. Change it and move on!

Take Action: Have you been procrastinating on making some necessary changes to your Facebook marketing strategy? Take the time to make the changes to ensure your page continues to grow and increase its engagement activity.

#5: Post fresh content

To get the most reach from your content, make sure that your content educates, entertains and empowers your fans. This will pique their interest and keep them coming back for more.

Also, publish everything you have in as many places as possible. What this means is that you want to get your content online, and you want it to be seen by as many potential prospects as possible. While Facebook is extremely powerful, don’t forget to spread your content out and use Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and of course, your blog.

You can also monitor what others are publishing. If you see something that would be valuable to your audience, publish that content (and make sure to give them credit for it!). Third-party publishing is a great way to continue to add value for your fans without having to create all the content.

To help you consistently publish content, I suggest that you create an editorial calendar. It might sound daunting, but it’s actually very simple. Here’s how you do it:

1. Create a six-month digital calendar. You can do this in Word or you can find digital calendars online. One of my favorite digital calendar sites is http://www.calendarsthatwork.com.
2. Decide how often you want to create content and in what form. Consider creating blog posts, video posts, articles, reports, podcasts or any other form of media you know your audience will like. Mix it up and deliver your content in many different formats to attract a wider reach of ideal clients.
3. Brainstorm content ideas related to your brand or niche. Again, think of what interests your clients the most. (Hint: Check out your competition’s content. This will help you decide what might be best for your audience.)
4. Create a calendar of content. Choose the specific dates you plan to post and list the topic of the content and the type of delivery. For example, in my own content calendar months ago, I added the following for a day in July: Blog post and Facebook update on “6 Daily Habits for Facebook Marketing Success.” It’s as easy as that!

Take Action: Stay diligent with your content calendar. After you create it, stick with it. The more disciplined you are in sticking to your content calendar, the more traction you will see with your audience.

#6: Spread the love

The old saying, “Give and you shall receive” is one of social media’s golden rules. By sharing other people’s valuable blog posts, useful articles, entertaining videos and other content, your audience will repay you tenfold.

Make sure to share the content from the influencers in your industry. This will help you build relationships with them and possibly create partnerships with them in the future.

But remember to also acknowledge your fans who consistently produce great blog posts. They may not be well-known experts (yet!), but it’s important to share their great content as well. You can create a fan for life if you take the time to share their great work with others.

Mike Stelzner says it best in his recent book, Launch. He writes, “Every time you share a great link to some relevant content, you’re giving two gifts: one to your base and the other to the person or company that created the content.”

Social Media Examiner is well-known for spreading the love on their Facebook page. Here they promote a great blog post from the popular site, Social Media Explorer.

Take Action: On a weekly basis, take the time to identify great third-party content and share it with your Facebook community. This goodwill gesture will go a long way with your fans and peers.

Now it’s your turn!

What do you think? Are there other habits that have brought you Facebook success? Share your thoughts and comments in the box below!

To help you take your blog to an entirely new level, here are 7 tips from the best-of-the-best in the blogging and social media arena. Every expert below has created a thriving blog with tens of thousands of subscribers who engage with their posts on a regular basis. If you want to know how to create and grow a successful blog, make sure to take notes (and take action)!

#1: Measure Your Blogging Success

“If you’re blogging for business, rather than blogging about your cat, baby, fashion addiction, or crush on Taylor Swift, you need to set some success metrics,” says Jay Baer, founder of Convince and Convert.

Without a statistical measure of your blogging progress, adding content to your blog on a regular basis can be an incredibly lonely proposition. Is anyone out there? Does anyone care?

However, within the business blogging arena there are a wide variety of potential metrics to gauge your momentum. It’s imperative that you select the most relevant ones that match with your blog’s purpose.

The first step in that process of course is to know why you’re blogging. This sounds simple, but it’s shocking how many bloggers aren’t clear on the core business rationale behind their blog initiative.

As I see it, you have 3 options:

• Blogging for Content
  This is the scenario where you are writing a blog with considerable emphasis on search optimization, attempting to drive traffic to the blog via strategic content creation and keyword inclusion. Your metric is search traffic.

• Blogging for Commerce
  Related to the first, but commerce-oriented blogs are more interested in conversion events than in traffic generation. Funneling traffic from the blog to some other web destination (typically a corporate site or lead form) is the primary objective. Here, your metrics are leads and conversions.

• Blogging for Community
  These blogs seek to build a consistent readership that interacts with the blogger(s) and advocates on behalf of the content on other social outposts.

Determine the main reason why your business has a blog and pick success metrics to match.

#2: Pursue Guest Blogging Opportunities

One of the best ways to get exposure for your blog is to blog for other people. Rich Brooks, president of Flyte New Media, offers some great advice to start building relationships for potential guest blogging opportunities.

“Find the influential bloggers in your related industries,” says Brooks, “and read their blogs. As appropriate, leave intelligent, thoughtful comments that further the conversation. This can drive traffic to your blog and may open up opportunities for guest blogging at their blog as they become aware of you through your brilliant insights. However, this must be a win-win for it to work. If you leave comments for completely selfish reasons, you can expect limited results.”

#3: Reframe How You Look at Business Blogging

“I often hear people complain that they don’t have time to write on their business blog or they don’t know what to write about,” says Denise Wakeman, founder of The Blog Squad. “Yet a blog is one of the best tools you can use to distribute your message across the web.”

One way to move away from this mode of thinking is to reframe how you look at blogging. It’s not about writing on a blog; it’s about taking advantage of a powerful marketing tool that works for you 24/7/365. Then, schedule writing time so it doesn’t slip through the cracks in the course of a busy day or week.

Here’s a 4-step process to get you started:

1.     Block out your writing time on a calendar.

2.     Plan your content in advance. Create an editorial calendar and plug in your topics 1 to 3 months in advance.

3.     For each of your blog categories, list a minimum of 5 topics you can cover related to your company, products and the solutions you provide.

4.     Pop them into your editorial calendar as prompts so you’re never at a loss for ideas when it’s time to create content.

#4: Add Keywords to Your Blog Titles and Posts

Rob Birgfeld of SmartBrief says keywords are the secret sauce to a successful business blog.

“It’s easy,” Birgfeld says, “to write blog posts on whatever topic springs to mind. But chances are your blog was created to help achieve business goals. In order to reach those goals, take data from your search engine marketing efforts and develop an editorial plan around your top-producing keywords.”

Gather your top 10-15 keywords or phrases and write blog posts specific to each one. Keep the content compelling, but be sure to sprinkle the selected keyword (and synonyms) throughout the post.

Most importantly, be sure to include those all-important keywords in the blog title and in the tags that you select. Not only will a keyword-driven blogging strategy help you build and plan out your editorial calendar, it will help you reach company goals via proven search engine marketing data. Thus providing you with something that’s hard to come by in social media: An easier sell to your CFO.

#5: Interview the Best in Your Industry

Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner, suggests, “Hire a videographer and go to the biggest trade show in your industry. Interview all the leading book authors and thought leaders.”

When you do this, you’ll end up with tons of content you can release on your blog over months. And chances are, when the big names see your video, they’ll share it with their fan base, driving new traffic to your site.

Here’s Mike Stelzner interviewing Scott Monty of Ford at Blog World 2010. This is a great example of attending the best events in the industry and connecting with the influencers.

#6: Create Persuasive Calls to Action

“You’ve got anecdotes, case studies, top-ten lists, provocative insights and more on your business blog. Hats off to you. That’s a huge achievement, particularly if you’ve been publishing a blog for a year or less. But what’s your call to action? And by that I mean, what step is a visitor prompted to take after landing on your blog?” says Debbie Weil, expert blogger and author of The Corporate Blogging Book.

What obvious callouts do you have to attract a visitor’s eye after he or she reads your latest blog post? Think about it. Your blog reader, if a first-time visitor, has most likely typed in a keyword phrase and ended up on your blog through search results.

Readers may not even know that it’s a blog. So you’ve got their attention, at least for a few seconds. This is your real-time moment to prompt your visitor to take the next step. If I sound all salesy here I don’t mean to. This is permission marketing 101. It’s offering something unanticipated but relevant at the exact moment your visitor is looking for it.

Here are a few ideas for persuasive calls to action from Debbie Weil’s Social Media Insights Blog:

• Download our white paper
• Join us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
• Ask us a question
• Download our e-book
• Sign up for our free webinar
• Request our toolkit
• Sign up for our e-newsletter
• Request a demo

#7: When it Comes to Video Blogging, Forget Acting

“I remember the first time I was on camera,” says David Garland, founder of The Rise to the Top and author of Smarter, Faster, Cheaper. “I was trying to be someone I wasn’t… with an awkward spray tan. (Stop laughing.)”

For some reason, our personalities can sometimes change when on camera (something about that scary lens). What the audience craves is to see the real you. All the good stuff, quirks and everything else.

Try this. Invite someone over with whom you are VERY comfortable. Have him or her ask you a question and simply answer it. Then, have the person hold a camera and try it again. Rinse, wash and repeat until you feel comfortable. When you talk into the lens, picture that person. It will make all the difference.

Here's David Garland interviewing Mike Stelzner about the success of SocialMediaExaminer.com.

Want to Learn More About Blogging for Business?

If you’re not fully leveraging the power of blogging, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Most businesses are just now getting started with blogs.

There’s one easy way to take your blogging efforts to the next level. By attending the web’s largest online blogging conference, Blogging Success Summit 2011 you’ll become empowered to use blogs to gain more exposure, better engage customers and grow your business.

The great part is you’ll be learning from 23 blogging experts. Join Technorati’s CEO, Scott Monty, Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, Michael Stelzner and experts from McDonalds, Cisco, Southwest Airlines, Sony and Procter & Gamble as they reveal proven blogging tactics at Blogging Success Summit 2011.

It’s the web’s largest online blogging conference. Go here for a free sample and to learn more.

Now it’s your turn! Have you used any of these great blogging tips already? Do you plan to implement any into your blogging strategy right away? Share your thoughts and comments with us in the box below.

All photos from Shutterstock

There are a lot of obvious elements you need to include to make a blog reader-friendly: quality, compelling content, good navigation, a contact page, an about page, focus and clarity about the subject of the blog… and there’s a lot of not-so-obvious or overlooked things that can really help make a blog stand out if they’re implemented.

While I do have my own list of do’s and don’ts included, I decided to get input from other smart, savvy bloggers. I posted a request on LinkedIn Answers and received many great do’s and don’ts. I’ve grouped the tips into five categories: Planning, Content, Design, Marketing and Engagement.

#1: Planning Your Business Blog

Do: Know your “Big Why” – Why are you in business? What is your purpose and ultimate goal for serving others? Clarity about your purpose, your goals, your ideal client and how you transform people’s lives will help guide all the content on your business blog.

Do: Know what you mean when you say successful. Are you trying to get more sales? Develop relationships? Inform current customers? Having a specific goal for your blog will shape the rest of your strategy. From Cordelia Blake

Do: Keyword research before starting a blog. First, compile a list of keywords (and, more importantly, keyword phrases) you think your business should rank for. Then, go to Google Keyword tool and type in those phrases to find out how many actual searches are done per month. You would be surprised how different Google’s list may turn out from your own. Use the list Google suggests as your starting point. From Boris Mahovac

Use the Google Keyword Tool to find keywords that have a large number of searches.

Do: Define your target audience and develop a content strategy that they will find interesting, entertaining or informative. Don’t focus too closely on product. As a Twitter friend once said, “If you make dog food, don’t talk about dog food, talk about dogs.” From Heidi Cool

Do: Give it time. It takes a while to build real relationships. From Christopher Gronlund

Don’t: Hide the author of the blog. Make sure you have a real-live person behind the blog. Add his or her photo, name and role in the company. It’s OK to outsource to get help, but for the most authentic connection, have a real employee available to guide, answer questions and provide a true look inside the organization. Even if you only have a few people in your company, this is vitally important. From Phil Gerbyshak

#2: Your Blog Content

Do: Be real.

Don’t: Be stuffy, dull and pompous or use bizspeak jargon. A blog isn’t a lecture hall or a billboard (i.e., one-way or solely self-promotional communication), but is ideally a place for people who are hungry for good information to find you and start to see you as a reliable and trustworthy resource. From Caitlin Kelly

Do: Find an optimal posting schedule that works for you. The more you post on your blog, the more traffic you’ll attract. But more than frequency, focus on posting quality content consistently and constantly.

Do: Establish an editorial calendar that helps you plan for future articles and topics. Set reasonable deadlines. If you know you can’t publish daily, don’t establish that as your goal.

Don’t: Publish junk just to keep up with your calendar. It’s better to miss a post than to post gibberish. (Heidi Cool)

Do: Keep the Four E’s in mind when writing your blog posts: Educate, Entertain, Engage and Enrich. Mix it up to ensure your message is delivered in the way that your ideal reader wants to consume it.

Do: Create Scannable Content. People have different reading patterns on the web than they do on the printed page. They tend to scan down web pages rather than read every word. So give them what they want! Break up your content with shorter paragraphs, headings and bullets. Add images. Incorporate video. From Chris Cree

Do: Create compelling, keyword-rich titles that address your audience’s needs. From Rich Brooks

Do: Use a variety of post types. Some posts can be a quick paragraph, while others are a deep dive into an important issue. Posts can be based around a video, or based around text content. If you mix things up you’ll keep the blog interesting, expand your list of post ideas and fight the tendency for blogger burnout. From Kyle Deming

Don’t: Get too self-promotional. At least 80% of your content should focus on helping your audience. (Rich Brooks)

#3: Blog Design

Do: Blog on your own domain, period. It should also be under “yourdomain.com/blog” subdirectory rather than “blog.yourdomain.com”. This lends some of the search engine goodwill earned by your blog to your root domain. From Scott Allen. (Just about everyone made this recommendation.)

Do: Customize your templates and menus to make it easy for readers to explore page articles. Make good use of categories and tags. (Heidi Cool)

Do: Give your blog readers the tools to amplify your message to their own communities. Have retweet/tweet buttons, Facebook Like button, Digg, StumbleUpon and other relevant social sharing buttons on your blog posts. This falls under marketing and engagement as well. When designing your blog, make sure you include plugins and widgets that can support spreading your content far and wide.

Don’t: Hide author, contact, and subscription information. Make sure you have pages that are easy to find in the navigation so your reader can find out more about you and your company and can contact you with questions and feedback.

Make it easy for your audience to connect with you.

Do build an opt-in mailing list and autoresponder. Don’t rely solely on an RSS feed for your readers to get your blog updates. Most people do know what an RSS feed is; they do know how to opt in to get email. I see this mistake on 90% of the blogs I review. Check out Feedblitz, Feedburner and AWeber for email delivery of your blog content.

#4: Marketing Your Blog

Do: Build time into your schedule to market your blog. You’ve got to put some effort into steering people to your blog posts so that they actually find the great content you’re creating. (Chris Cree)

Do: Automate syndication of your blog posts to your social profiles. Make sure your posts are showing up on your Facebook page, Twitter stream and LinkedIn profile, at minimum.

Do: Find the right balance of keywords. Keywords are important for improving the ranking of your blog in search engines and for increasing visibility and readership. However, more is not always better. You want your blog post to read like a conversation you’re having with a person face to face. From Emily Madsen

Do: Repurpose your blog content in multiple formats and syndicate it on other content-sharing sites. Recreate your content in audio and video formats in order to leverage your time and extend your reach on the web.

#5: Engaging Your Audience

Do: Make time to respond to all of the comments you receive. A primary purpose for business blogging is to build a strong relationship with your audience. When you reply to their comments, your readers will appreciate your personal interest and this will build credibility and trust in your expertise. From Sydni Craig-Hart

Do: Spend as much time engaging as you do creating content. Some of that can be on your own blog replying to comments, but a substantial portion of it MUST be on other blogs in your industry. Competitors are a touchy situation—you really have to take it on a case-by-case basis. But for vendors, clients, industry associations, industry thought leaders/authors/speakers, you should definitely identify all of them and be engaging on a regular basis. (Scott Allen)

Don’t: Disable or heavily censor blog comments. Commenting is one of the best ways to engage and you may get called out if you filter out all negative comments. Use negative comments as an opportunity to respond graciously. (Kyle Deming)

Do: Have a clear plan in place for handling criticism and negative comments. Take the high road and respond to these comments carefully and politely. (Heidi Cool)

Don’t: Take for granted you know what your audience needs. Survey and ask them what three things they struggle with in their business. This one exercise could have you supplied with relevant blog posts for weeks. But also, you’ll be providing great information to your readers to keep them coming back for more. From Terri Brooks

Create simple surveys with SurveyMonkey.com.

Do: Be as authentic as you possibly can. People know when they’re being fed a party line or propaganda. We know when we’re being marketed at or PRed at. Be as real as the circumstances allow. From Erica Friedman

What would you add? Do you have some business blogging do’s and don’ts that are not covered here? Leave your comments and ideas in the box below.

However, what you get when you set up a WordPress blog can be pretty basic depending on the theme you choose. To make your new blog sing and work for you, it’s a good idea to install some key plugins.

Photo credit: Shutterstock.com

Plugins extend and expand the functionality of your WordPress blog. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of plugins you can add to your site to optimize it, customize it, add some bling, make it easy for your readers to navigate and so much more.

Which Plugins Should You Use?

When it comes to plugins, how do you choose which to add to your blog?

To come up with this list, I asked my Facebook fans for suggestions.

Popular plugins fall into a couple of categories: those that enhance your readers’ experience, and those behind the scenes that help you with blog management and optimization.

How to Install Plugins

For the sake of brevity, I picked a finite number to feature. I encourage you to post your favorites in the comments and collectively we can create a great resource of tried and tested plugins.

To install any of these plugins, log in to your WordPress admin dashboard, click on Plugins and then search by name (see figure below).

The Impressive Plugins

What follows are 24 WordPress plugins you should consider.

#1: Audio player:

A simple mp3 player for all your audio needs. You can customize the player’s color scheme to match your blog theme, have it automatically show track information from the encoded ID3 tags and more.

#2: Viper’s Video Quicktags

Super-easy way to add videos from YouTube and other video sharing platforms to your posts.

#3: Photo Dropper

Lets you easily find and add creative commons licensed photos to your posts from Flickr. You can watch a quick tutorial here about how Photo Dropper works.

#4: Sexy bookmarks

Nice visual graphics that encourage your reader to share your posts (as seen on this site). You can select from dozens of social sites, though I recommend keeping it to 5-7 popular sites so you don’t overwhelm your readers.

Make it easy for your readers to share your content.

#5: FBLikebutton

Allows you to configure and display the Facebook Like button before and/or after each post and/or page. If you want to increase your visibility on Facebook, this is a required plugin.

#6: Tweetmeme Retweet button

It’s ubiquitous now. The TweetMeme Retweet button is the de facto standard in retweeting – used by some of the biggest websites in the world. It increases your reach across the web.

#7: Disqus comment system

A service and tool for web comments and discussions. Disqus makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community. (Used on this site.)

#8: CommentLuv

In addition to Disqus, CommentLuv is a very popular commenting plugin. When installed, it visits the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieves a selection of their last blog posts, tweets or Digg submissions that they can choose from to include at the bottom of their comment when they click Submit. This has been proven to increase click-throughs and is a great tool for increasing community engagement.

Comment Luv rewards commenters with a link back to their blog.

#9: Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site. This encourages readers to go deeper into your content.

Based on post titles, content, tags, and categories, YARRP creates a list of related posts.

#10 & 11: Contact Form 7 and cformsII

You want your readers to contact you about one thing or another: for support, to post questions, to request info about your services, etc. I found that the basic WordPress contact form was not flexible enough. Contact Form 7 and cformsII both have features that allow you to create and manage multiple forms on your site. Both are simple to customize and you can direct the responses to be sent to any email address for management. You can see an example of a cformsII form here.

#12: Twitter Tools

A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. Show your tweets in your sidebar and post tweets from your WordPress admin.

Twitter Tools automates the connection between your blog and your twitter account.

#13: WordPress Editorial Calendar

The Editorial Calendar makes it possible to see all your posts and drag and drop them to manage your blog. It’s a great tool for planning and organizing your posts.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4BnQZsgtZc

#14: All in one SEO

This one is on just about everyone’s list. Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog.

#15: SEO Scribe (monthly fee)

This tool was mentioned several times by folks on my Facebook page. It is the brainchild of Brian Clark (Copyblogger). As stated on the website, “Scribe is a search engine optimization software service that analyzes the content of web pages, blog posts, online press releases, or any other web content … then reports back and tells you how to tweak your content to get better search engine rankings and more traffic, all while maintaining quality reader-focused copy.”

#16 & 17: Widget Context and Widget Logic

Both of these plugins give you flexibility and control to choose on what pages your sidebar widgets show up. This is helpful if you create sales and landing pages on your domain and do not want sidebar content distracting the visitor.

Widget Context gives you the option to choose what pages you want a widget to be visible.

#18: WP Touch

Automatically transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme when viewed from iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm mobile devices (used on this site).

#19: WP Mobile

Shows an interface designed for a mobile device when visitors come to your site on a mobile device. Mobile browsers are automatically detected; the list of mobile browsers can be customized on the settings page.

#20: WordPress Database Backup

On-demand backup of your WordPress database. You’ve got to back up your blog on a regular basis or you risk losing everything. Do it monthly at a minimum, more frequently if you post a lot. Enough said.

#21: Google Analytics

It should go without saying that you need to know what’s happening on your blog: how many visitors, page views, referral sources, exit pages.

#22, 23 & 24: Subscription

I also strongly recommend adding an email subscription widget to your blog. The top three in my opinion are Feedblitz (fee), Feedburner (free) and AWeber (fee).

Each of these subscriptions offers a variety of features from basic (Feedburner) to a complete customized newsletter-style delivery system for your blog content (Feedblitz). Technically these are not plugins. WordPress defines widget as “independent sections of content that can be placed into any widgetized area provided by your theme (commonly called sidebars).” Each of these email delivery options requires you to have an account and then you configure subscription form HTML to paste in the sidebar of your blog (it’s not hard, really).

A word of caution. When you’re building your blog, try not to go too crazy with the plugins and widgets. Think about what you want your blog to do for your business and install the plugins that support your goals. That being said, you may also want to test various plugins to find the ones that suit you best. They’re easy to install, activate and deactivate if you decide they’re not right for you.

Now it’s your turn. Do you use any of these plugins? If so, how are they working? Did I miss any of your favorites? Leave a comment in the box below.

I interviewed Ekaterina Walter, a social media strategist at Intel to better understand how the company is using Facebook.

For the last two years, Ekaterina has been part of Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence.  In addition to developing social media policy for their 80,000 employees, the center is also responsible for strategy, training and monitoring.  Ekaterina manages Intel’s Facebook page.

During this interview, you’ll gain insight into how large corporations manage their social media activities and discover some of the innovative ways that Intel is using Facebook.

Mike: Let’s talk about Intel’s Facebook page.  You have more than 115,000 fans on your page.  Would you share whom you’re targeting and how Intel is using Facebook?

Ekaterina: We created a Facebook page to provide a place for folks to talk about technology and, of course, Intel products.  The people that were immediately interested in dialoguing with us were the tech-setters—the ones building their own systems.  These were tech “geeks” in the best sense of the word.

Most of our growth is organic.  In the beginning, it was about 3% to 4% a month.  Then we decided to get more serious about engaging, posting more interesting content, answering questions and just posting more often.

We started seeing about a 10% to 12% monthly growth.  This shows you how important the right type of engagement is for growing a fan base.

Intel's Facebook page contains fun videos and engaging discussion.

Now we’re exploring ways to bring more of a mainstream audience to our page and add content that will keep them interested and be a little bit less techie.

Mike: You were experiencing a 10% to 12% growth once you started implementing some of these tactics and strategies.  You mean your numbers of fans were growing by that much?

Ekaterina: Absolutely, yes.

Mike: In the beginning, you were targeting tech-setters or “geeks.”  Were you trying to target the people working inside of the IT centers in corporations, or were these the people at home just building their own computers?  Whom do you think you were going after in the beginning?

Ekaterina: Quite honestly, if you look back 20 or 30 years ago, we have been talking to folks in computer clubs. It has not only been folks who work for bigger companies who are now bigger customers that we sell the ingredients to, but also folks who do their own build – smaller mom-and-pop shops that build a system and then sell it.  And then there’s the totally 100% geeks who sit in their basement and build their servers, build desktop systems and build laptops, etc.

Knowing that tech-setters are setting a trend and really being considered more as unofficial experts in the field, they’ve always worked for us as the number-one audience to go after.

As times change and we embraced social media, instead of going to computer clubs and reaching 20, 30 or 50 people at a time, we could reach thousands and thousands of people on Facebook. And by using other tools like Twitter and blogging, etc., we’re looking at reaching more of a mainstream audience.

Mike: Let’s talk about your Facebook wall strategy. Can you share a little bit about what kinds of content you post on your wall and how the brand has benefitted from what you’ve been doing?

Ekaterina: Nowadays it’s all about news feed optimization.  It’s almost becoming the equivalent of SEO for Facebook.

For those folks who are not really familiar, news feeds display the most popular stories on Facebook. According to Facebook, 0.02% of stories actually make it to the news feed, which is rather scary if you look at it as a marketer.

You want to be seen and heard. However, if your status updates are not getting into people’s news feeds, you might just as well not send them.

There’s a unique amplification effect that Facebook has, where if your friends see it, their friends might also see it, especially if you comment or engage on the brand’s wall.  Or if you “like” a brand, it’s also being seen by all of your friends.

Basically, you want your fans to see it, but more importantly, you want them to engage with you. Because of the news feed algorithm and the engagement they call fan growth, the higher the engagement with you (which are likes, comments, etc.), the more likely it is that your page will be picked up by the Facebook algorithm and make it into the news feed.

We try to keep all content interesting and fresh.  Way back, I asked our fans, “What do you want to see on our wall?  What kinds of updates do you want to see?”

They told us they want to stay on top of technical news.  They want to be the first to know about Intel products that are coming out and what we were up to in general.

They also liked the fact that they can chat with their fellow geeks and ask them for all kinds of advice about how build their own system.

It is important to learn our fans’ likes and dislikes.  Either it’s based on their reactions to particular posts or the polls that we run.  We alter our content strategy accordingly.

Another thing is we monitor engagement spikes and track “aha” moments. Sometimes you would be surprised at what type of content your fans respond most to.

Intel shows a fun side with holiday wishes.

The other thing is we try to be human by sending best wishes to our fans during holidays or asking them what their favorite holiday tradition is, which is quite often no different from how you would talk to your friends. That garners a lot of engagement and positive comments. Something like saying a simple “thank you” when they pay you a compliment or tell you how much they love your product is also extremely important. It’s anything that encourages and continues the dialogue.

Our organic monthly growth more than tripled ever since we really looked at our Facebook engagement strategy seriously, so we’re definitely reaping the benefits and helping continue that two-way dialogue.

Mike: If you had to give one or two of your best engagement tips, what would they be?

Ekaterina: It’s all about trial and error and learning what works for your audience.  An important thing to remember is that what works for some might not necessarily be the right thing for you, so you really need to try to play with it.

My favorite tip is to NOT automate your content.  At first we said, “We have several blogs that have awesome information that we’re providing.  Why don’t we just tie it to our Facebook page and feed that as an automated status update?  Then in between we’ll throw in some customized updates.”

It did not work.  To make it work, you need a good editorial calendar and editorial strategy.  At times, we would have several updates a day and some days we didn’t have any updates.  It was difficult to coordinate this many bloggers.  In some instances, we would have updates that would be hidden just because there were six in a row.

The other bad thing about automated content is the fact that the news feed doesn’t really pick it up.  So it’s not making it to people’s news feeds.  That is very important to remember.

First of all, when the update is customized, people comment on it much more.

The other thing is you can ask questions. You can post an announcement, post videos and ask people, “What do you think?” It really motivates them to be engaged and to answer. If you don’t ask, they would probably comment, but the engagement is not going to be as big.

Videos are a regular part of Intel's Facebook wall strategy.

There is another one of my favorites that I notice not a lot of people know about. Video is your secret weapon. I know everybody says that; however, not only do news feed algorithms prefer media like video and photos and favor them, there is another feature that has just been announced the end of last year, and for some reason it was just really quiet and not a lot of people picked it up.

If you upload a raw video file, not just linked from YouTube but uploaded on Facebook, and your fans share it with their friends, when somebody who’s not a fan or liker of your Facebook page actually watches the video, there is a sweet little thing—a button that pops up on the upper-left corner of the video that invites you to basically like the page, or in the old terms, to become a fan of the page. That is the fastest way for folks to just click on it and become a fan.

It’s a really outstanding call to action, and so I do encourage folks to upload raw files versus just linking to YouTube, which is the easiest thing to do. However, it’s not as effective for your engagement strategy.

Mike: You have a cool little tab called “Tech Therapy” currently on your Facebook page starring Dr. Lemmy Halpman.  These are really cool little videos, funny little videos actually, of people in technology therapy sessions.  Share a little on the strategy behind these videos.

Ekaterina: This program was originally created in Australia.   We decided to feature them on our main Facebook page.

Dr. Lemmy Halpman discusses dysfunctional relationships between patients and their PCs in funny videos.

Lemmy Halpman came about by the Australian team.  It has been popular.

The concept is to talk to people about what makes their computing great and what blockages are in the way of their attaining that true computing happiness.  It shows the benefits of how many things you can do differently.  Faster processing power and less wait, etc., are among them.

Mike: You’re a big brand, so why come up with videos like that?  What’s the underlying strategy?

Ekaterina: In a fun and easy way it tells a story of people’s pain points and tells a story of a product.  It really marries what your needs might be with what the product has to offer.  It’s more of a demand-generation type of program and strategy, but I think in a very subtle way where you don’t just say, “Here’s a system.  Go buy it.”

Mike: Talk to me about contests.  Do you run them only on Facebook?  Do you have Twitter components?  How have your contests and promotions helped your brand?

Intel runs regular contests on its Facebook page.

Ekaterina: We do promote through Twitter, but we try not to really think short-term.  We try to integrate in our current properties.  Every time we drive folks to a property, we want them to stay, and we want that property to exist long-term so we continue building investment into that.  Of course we do struggle with the fragmentation, but we’re working on solving it.

Contests are great at increasing buzz.  Every time we run one, the traffic to the page and our viewership probably increases 500%.

Mike: How do you drive people to learn about your contests on Facebook?

Ekaterina: The wall is effective because we do have a highly engaged audience, and Twitter has been effective.

Mike: Let’s talk about inside Intel.  How are you organized when it comes to social media?  Is it all managed through your Center of Excellence or do you have different units doing their own thing?

Ekaterina: We started with a lot of grassroots.  We’ve been doing social media for years.  We started with blogs way back in 2004.  We started to learn from the grassroots and tried to understand the social media space better.

A few years ago our corporate marketing VP said it was time we got organized and educated on social media.  We shifted some of our budget into digital.  After the social media guidelines, we created the Digital IQ training program that educated over 5,000 of our marketing employees on social media.

We created a university-like program that’s been going on for the past couple of years.  Then we decided we really need a function that would help enable the rest of the company.  That’s how our central team, the Social Media Center of Excellence, came to exist.

Mike: What would be the one single piece of advice you would give one of your peers who’s at a corporation that’s just now getting underway with social media marketing?

Ekaterina: You want to tell them so much, that one is hard.

If I’d say one thing, it’s don’t let the opportunity to engage with your customers slip by just because you’re afraid of potential negative reactions or comments.

I actually talked to Doug Frisbie, a Toyota national marketing manager, when he took over right before their crisis.  He said, “The price of inactivity is greater than the risks of anything we’d be doing in social media,” and it is absolutely true.

Mike: That’s a really solid piece of advice. If people want to learn more about what Intel is doing with social media, where should they go?

Ekaterina: There’s Facebook.com/intel, Twitter.com/intel, YourTube.com/intel, then, of course, Intel.com.  Our blog is at Blogs.intel.com.

Mike: I want to thank you so much for taking some time out today and sharing a lot of your great insight with us.  You were spectacular.

Ekaterina: Thank you so much for having me, Mike. It was great fun.

Listen to the full interview below to learn how Intel manages its Twitter accounts, monitors social media and mobile marketing.

What do you think about Intel’s Facebook page and general social media activities? Leave your comment below.

During this interview, you’ll gain some great social media insight, discover some key mistakes businesses make, and learn which corporations are excelling with social media.

Mike: In your book, you made the following statement: “We are forever students of new media. We should never strive to master something that evolves much faster than our ability to grasp its lessons.”

Can you elaborate on what you meant?

Brian: Yes. We can’t rest on our laurels based on the successes of others, because this medium, the processes, the techniques, the cultures of social networks are evolving quickly.  So applying templates to them or assuming confidence in past experiences don’t last long enough for them to be promising for the future.

Mike: What you’re really saying is that you should constantly make sure you are experimenting and studying what others are doing to ensure that you’re on the edge?

Brian: Yes, but not just on the edge.  You must be able to bring what’s on the edge back to the center. In the process, you actually contribute to the evolution of the industry.

Mike: I know you’re a big advocate of blogging for business. Can you give us some of the biggest mistakes you see corporate bloggers making and why you think they’re making them?

Brian: The biggest mistake I see is they’re not blogging. The secondary mistake is that they’re using blogs as just extensions of every other push medium they have in operation today, whether that’s a marketing sheet or a website.

A lot of times I’ll read corporate blogs and they’re very self-serving or they’re very shallow, or they’re just done because you’re told you need to do it and you’re supposed to introduce or inject passion into it.

If you look at some of the blogs like 37signals, their blog ultimately became a book in terms of the lessons they share there. It’s just a value-added resource. You go there as a destination so that you can learn, and you can walk away with direction and empowerment and inspiration.

Mike: Let’s talk about a big company or two that you feel are doing social media right. What are they doing?

Brian: One is Starbucks because they’re experimenting. It goes back to the part where we were discussing being a student of new media.

You see what they’re doing on Facebook and Twitter. They’re absolutely engaging. They’re rhythmic. They have a programming or editorial calendar in place and every day there is something new. There are comments, questions, and polls. There are things that are offered in terms of incentives or rewards.

But they’re also doing things that show they’re trying to actively grow by going to where people are specifically. For example, Starbucks did something very interesting with a company called Klout that didn’t get much fanfare, but it’s really interesting in terms of what’s to come in social media.

Klout is a service that allows you to identify influencers on Twitter. Influencers are people who can move the needle around certain topics. Starbucks decided to test it.

They went to Klout to find all of the influencers around coffee, those people who have the ability to drive activity.

They went out and rewarded all those influencers with free samples of their Pike’s Peak coffee. What better way to reward somebody for their level of influence that they’ve attained and maybe earn some relationships in the process, or at least attention?

Mike: In addition to Starbucks, can you talk about one other well-known company that you think is doing social media well?

Brian: Dell.  Here’s one of the reasons I find them to be so fascinating. This again is a lesson that is taught in the book. There is a whole chapter about this idea.

One of the things that works against any champion of social media is the culture of the company. But really where the potential of social media is realized is in your ability to learn from engagement and adapt accordingly, and to introduce or evolve new products and services that are more meaningful to the communities or the marketplaces where you’re trying to earn greater market- and mindshare.

Dell has demonstrated that their organizational culture gets it. It’s from the bottom up, it’s from the outside in, and it’s from the top down. Michael Dell believes in this so much that he spends weekends and evenings working with his teams to figure out ways they could be more relevant. Plus, the team gets motivated by it.

One such example that I don’t necessarily see or read about is how they attack issues that are basically emerging problems. Dell says, “Let’s monitor for things that are about to go wrong or that are just going wrong now and nip them in the bud.  We pay attention to driver issues or hardware issues as one, two, three, four, or five people start to mention these issues. The minute it hits a certain point, we put a team on it, find a fix, and introduce the solution to the marketplace before it becomes a real problem, before it makes blogs, before it makes the press.”

Mike: What are your views about Facebook fan pages? How important do you think they are today and how important will they be two years from now?

Brian: I was speaking at a conference recently and said something that turned out to spark a massive debate afterwards. That was, “By this time next year, brands will be spending more time on their Facebook brand pages than they will be on Twitter.”

That just sent everybody into a riot. Twitter is beloved. Twitter really puts the “me” in social media, because we bring a little bit of ourselves to that. Even though we do so with Facebook, there is something a little bit special or personal with Twitter.

Twitter has even said this. It’s less of a social network than an interest or themed network where individuals are forming relationships around context or interests.

The Facebook fan page, or the “brand page” as I call it, is a hub that can guide and drive experiences, but also can define them. By “define,” I mean it’s one thing to have interactions on the wall. It’s one thing to respond to comments. It’s another thing to be able to customize those tabs.

If you think about it, FBML, that language that you’re able to use to customize these tabs, allows you to do some really fascinating things. Not too many people understand that you can actually install Google Analytics on a tab in Facebook so you can start to measure the activity—almost like you can with your website analytics, to get intelligence necessary to improve the experiences.

So, Facebook is probably, in my opinion, one of the most underutilized networks out there from a programming standpoint and from an engagement standpoint. I’m bullish on it, if you can’t tell.

Mike: I honestly do believe that’s where it’s at right now. I actually tweeted recently, “I can’t believe I’m actually enjoying Facebook more than Twitter.” I almost had to cringe when I said it.

Speaking of Facebook, on our fan page, we posted that I was going to be doing this interview and asked our fans to chime in with their questions. Mari Smith asked, “What is your daily routine and what tools do you use to keep on top of everything?”

Brian: I call it the attention dashboard. Facebook is like an attention hub. I’ve created an attention dashboard that pulls in content from all different types of sources across multiple networks into one place based on keywords of interest tied to levels of influence so I can at least get the skinny on certain things.

Mike: Is this a custom thing, or do you use a public tool?

Brian: It’s a custom thing.

Mike: You’re going to have to release that as a product.

Brian: I released part of it as a product with the help of Christopher Peri. It’s a product called FriendFilter. It added this level of intelligence to surfacing the people who are following you on Twitter, for example, but only showing you the ones who might be of interest to you so that you could consider following them back.

Mike: So the attention dashboard is how you keep up on the hottest and latest trends in the industry and that’s how you decide to write content for your blog? Is that correct?

Brian: No, that’s how I stay smart. I write on the things that move me at an emotional or intellectual level, or if there is something incredibly important that I need to share with people, to get them to move in a particular direction.

Mike: Where do you see social media headed in the next few years? Give me the mile-high view.

Brian: About a year ago, I talked about the idea of syndication and aggregation, meaning that we were going to be subjected to multiple networks to which we’d have to pay attention, as well as mobile networks to which we would also have to pay attention using other devices.

At some point, all of these things are going to have to aggregate in some way, shape or form, where we could have a strategic presence. Look at services like Check.in, where you can immediately broadcast your presence. Let’s say I show up at the Westin Hotel in San Francisco—I would use a service like Check.in to broadcast or syndicate my presence to Foursquare, Gowalla, etc.

Those are all temporary bandages to address a bigger issue. That is, how are you going to manage your strategic presence online? And also, how are you going to stay connected to those who matter to you without having to be across multiple networks at the same time?

What the future holds, I believe, is this idea of semantic intelligence and filtering that are going to allow a lot of this to work for you without you having to do everything manually.

We see tastes of this on the horizon even now with companies like my6sense. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that company. You run your Twitter feed through it, and through that, it’s able to learn how you interact with the feed. As it learns more about you—and this learning is very rapid—it only feeds you the tweets, or at least at the top-line tweets, it feels would be most appropriate for you regardless of when they were published, earlier today or at the moment.

It learns and it gets better as you interact with it. If you follow thousands of people, imagine how wonderful it would work for you over time. Imagine applying that same technology across multiple networks into one stream or into one river of relevance, if you will.

Mike: Brian, where can folks learn more about you?

Brian: They can learn more about me at BrianSolis.com, on Facebook, Twitter which is @BrianSolis, or they can pick up the book Engage!, which is hopefully at a bookstore near them or definitely on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

Mike: Brian, I just want to thank you very much for taking time out of your day. You’ve been a great fountain of knowledge. I’m looking forward to seeing some great things from you.

Brian: Thanks so much. I do really appreciate it. Congratulations on all your success as well.

Listen to the rest of this interview below…

What do you think about Brian Solis and his recommendations? Leave your comments below.

But how do you make it all work together? You want to reach potential clients and establish your authority online, but what’s your plan?

This article delivers five foolproof steps to get you on your way to finding, formulating and distributing content that will get you noticed. Content could include your own blog posts or links to others people’s work posted on your social networks.

#1: Find Your Target Audience.

The first step in social media planning is largely the first step in identifying your brand—determine who you are and who your customers are.

What unique aspect of your product or service attracts your target population?

Are you a veteran business coach who works with small entrepreneurs? A grandmother and knitter who likes to teach others how to create gifts?

You’ll need to determine what your readers want to know from you, what their likes and dislikes are and where they congregate.

You’ll also need to find the right tone. The “social” in social media requires a conversational approach, but you still need to speak your clients’ language.

Be sure you know the lingo and style that your clients are comfortable with and where they talk to each other—on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs or on social bookmarking sites.

Write out a basic profile for your most common type of client or customer. How would you classify them in terms of education, hobbies, tech-savviness and time spent engaging in social networking?

#2: Solve Readers’ Most Important Problems.

Become a reporter/editor.

Sharing information on social media is essentially about becoming a reporter/editor for those who take part in your industry or your passion for your product or service. As a newspaper editor asks herself, so must you: “What do the readers really want to know?”

Most newspaper editors today have to admit that what readers want is tomorrow’s news yesterday. So be timely. Your clients have specific issues that need solving, whether they’re about your product or service or their own business struggles that you can help untangle.

Pick the right sources.

Research will be a big part of your social media planning, so make sure your sources are on the cutting edge of your topic.

You’ll also want to provide analysis to help guide your readers’ absorption of the information you provide. Most readers today—of any format—don’t feel they have the time to connect all the dots, so tell them why the information you’re sharing is relevant to them.

Do the work for them by writing on point, underscoring the impacts and keeping the content valuable. You’ll be rewarded with clients, followers and fans who trust your information and know you won’t waste their time.

Sit down now and write a list of burning questions the people you would like to have as fans and followers are asking. Later, you will conduct regular research to keep this list current. For now, the most pressing questions that are top of mind should form the initial core of the topics for your editorial plan.

#3: Decide How You’ll Fulfill the Content.

Who will regularly do the information-gathering, writing and distribution for your content? Is it you? Or maybe you have staff that can do it. Before you can determine volume and frequency, you’ll want to figure out what your business can reasonably deliver.

One thing to keep in mind: whatever schedule you set for yourself or your staff will no doubt require more time than you think, especially in the beginning. Getting started with social media content has a learning curve, so be prepared for the extra time needed to get comfortable with the process.

According to the recent 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, most business owners can maintain a very respectable social media presence in six hours a week, including research and production time.

#4: Create Your Plan.

Now it’s time to create a plan. You can use a number of different methods to help you build your content strategy.

Mind-mapping

Try mind-mapping for higher level development. If you have some themes that you would like to explore in intricate ways, mind-mapping helps you flesh out the many angles around any given idea. It can also help you plan how you would like the components of your social media plan to interact. Freemind, XMind and Mindjet are all popular mind-mapping programs.

Editorial calendar

The greatest time-saver and strategic tool in your content-planning arsenal is an editorial calendar. One option is this Google docs-based social media calendar to lay out your content by date and topic. This gives you an easy-to-follow look at the formats you use and what part of your theme you want to deliver during a given day or week:

Using an editorial calendar helps you bring clarity and purpose to your content—on a committed schedule. Never underestimate the power of a deadline!

Keywords

You can also add keywords to your calendar, so you know which words you should be including in your content about a given theme. Google AdWords and Wordtracker both offer free tools to help you find the most valuable keywords for your subject.

Content cycles

A great deal of the content we respond to, whether by creating our own posts about it or directing readers to what someone else has said, happens as breaking news. As you chart your content, be sure to leave space for news from others.

Some content planners create a formula centered on blog posts: Monday for best-of lists; Tuesday for product/media reviews; Wednesday for personal experience stories; Thursday for an editorial on a controversial topic; and Friday for fun, freewheeling commentary or guest posts.

Interviews make great content as well, and because they happen less frequently, you can target individuals for monthly, bimonthly or quarterly rotation. And don’t forget about video! Share clips from the interviews you conduct or vlog your how-to article on a given week, rather than writing it. Now you’ve added YouTube as another platform to post your content.

More great content ideas are found in these Social Media Examiner articles: “5 Easy Steps to Creating Reusable Social Media” and “4 Steps to Driving Faster Sales with Social Media Content.”

#5: Schedule Your Content

To schedule your content, consider what formats you will be sending and how often. Applications such as TweetDeck, HootSuite and SocialOomph will let you simultaneously post to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others.

Platforms like HootSuite allow you to schedule your tweets for future dates. When you type your post into the left-top field, you can use the calendar button to choose your release date.

But a strong word of caution here. Automating posts, when done carefully, is an effective way of pushing content when you can’t be there to do it yourself. But consider the following:

• Twitter and Facebook both have applications that will push to the other when you post to one, so know if you have set that up.
• Whatever Facebook RSS app you use to pull your blog posts to your profile or fan page may also be given permission to update automatically.
• If given the proper permissions, HootSuite and TweetDeck (and others) can push content automatically, without you scheduling it, so they may also tweet a new blog post, for instance, when you’ve already done so using another app.

All of these various permissions can lead to an embarrassing loop of repeat tweets and/or Facebook status updates if you’re not careful. Consider going manual until you understand exactly which permissions you have opted into for each platform.

Quality Over Quantity

You don’t have to post every day to create an effective presence with your social media. Find the frequency that makes sense for your business and go with that. Remember, quality must always trump quantity. If you can’t maintain the quality level of your content at the rate you’re trying for, reduce the frequency until you can.

Whew! Seems a lot to do, right? Well, the beauty of content planning is that it will create its own cycle. Use responses and questions you get to one area of content to begin planning your approach to deepen understanding on a given topic or to explore another.

The single most important component to your editorial planning should be your ability to absorb new information and create valuable content from it.

What do you think?  Have you employed any of these ideas? Have a few of your own to share?  Please comment in the box below…

But first, there’s a big myth (and it may be your roadblock) that needs attention.

The Myth:  I Have No Time to Blog

Every now and then I poll my blog readers and ask about their challenges with blogging. Without fail, most people say that their number-one challenge is that they don’t have time to write on their blog.  Frankly, I think that is a false problem because you make time for what’s important.

I suggest reframing the challenge from “I don’t have time to write on my blog” to “I make time to market my business.”  In the context of your business, blogging is a marketing tool.

A business blog is one of the best tools you can use for extending your online visibility because it’s the dynamic hub of your business on the web. The content you create can be leveraged in many ways that will work for you 24 hours a day, so making time needs to be a key part of your marketing plan.

I propose you devote a minimum of 30 minutes per day focusing on your blog marketing activities.

It’s not really that much time when you think about it, especially for the return you can get from consistent effort. Yet I know there are other social marketing tasks competing for your attention. Just keep in mind that the content you create on your blog can be syndicated and leveraged on other platforms as well.

So how do you make time? I’ll state the obvious: you’ve got to schedule it.  That’s how I advise my clients and it’s how I manage my blogging time.  Following are six tips for how you can efficiently tackle your blogging tasks.

#1: Create an Editorial Calendar

There are two steps to creating an editorial calendar. First is to assign your blogging to time slots when you know your creative juices are flowing, when you typically feel inspired and productive.  For me, that’s usually in the morning.

To build a body of content that is quickly indexed by the search engines, I suggest writing on your blog two to three times a week at minimum.  So block that time off—for example: Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 9:00 to 9:30 am is blogging time.  That’s the time you spend writing.

Need some inspiration? Check out the article on 13 Ideas to Inspire Your Blog Content. Maybe once a week, spend an additional 15 minutes and write a longer, more detailed blog post.

Next, two days a week, spend 30 minutes reading other blogs in your industry and leaving comments where appropriate when you have something of value to add.  Not only does that help give you more visibility and more exposure, it also can drive traffic back to your own blog.  It positions you as being active and brings you to the attention of other people who you might not have known before.

#2: Plug in the Types of Posts and Topics You’re Going to Write About

This will make your blogging time more efficient because you don’t have to spend precious time trying to figure out what to write every time you’re scheduled to write.

Make a list of categories that are of interest to your audience. Take a look at your categories and make a list of 5 to 10 subtopics that relate to each category.

If you have 10 primary categories and 5 subtopics for each category, you have 50 blog posts at your fingertips. You can add another layer to your planning by assigning each topic to a style of post:

• How-to
• Top 10 List
• Opinion
• Case Study
• Q&A
• Interview

Finally, assign each subtopic idea to a date on your editorial calendar and you’ve got four months of blog post ideas so you’re not facing a blank page. Of course this system serves only as a guide. There’s nothing stopping you from being spontaneous when a current event or hot topic in your business must be addressed with a blog post.

#3: Keep a Running List of Blog Topics

The more you blog, the more ideas you get. Everything you do, every conversation you have, every book, article or blog you read, becomes fodder for your own blog posts.

I have a long list of ideas and links that I find and want to share. Most of them will never become blog posts, but if I’m stuck or uninspired, I’ve got my list to prompt me.

#4: Write Several Blog Posts at One Time

Many bloggers use this time management strategy. Maybe you really do only have one hour a week to focus on your blog. If that’s the case, grab your laptop, head to your favorite coffee house and pump out a series of blog posts.

Queue articles up to publish over the course of a week or two.  All blogging software I’m aware of has the option to schedule your blog posts.

#5:  Find Guest Bloggers to Help You Out With Content

Occasionally if you’re pressed for time, find someone to help.  Depending on the purpose and goals of your blog, a great feature to add is the voice of others in your industry. Perhaps once a month you showcase the ideas of other members of your team, your vendors, your colleagues and thought leaders in your industry.

If you’re a solo blogger, a great service out there for finding guest bloggers is Blogger LinkUp.  Submit a request of what you’re looking for, and people who write on that topic can contact you and provide blog content for you.  You can indicate whether you want original material or will accept content that has been previously published.

#6: Interview Experts

Finally, another great way of creating content quickly is doing interviews.  This could be a weekly or monthly feature that you plug into your editorial calendar.

Identify 12 to 20 industry leaders who’ve written books on your subject. Prepare a written interview with five to seven questions and invite them to respond, then post the interview on your blog. Not all of them are going to take the time to respond, but some will.

Tell them what’s in it for them… Exposure to your audience and links back to their blog, website or book. I don’t know of any authors who don’t want more readers and more visibility for their book! What’s in it for you? Content you don’t have to create that positions you as a credible expert and trusted filter of the best information for your readers.

Don’t forget to plug the interview posts into your calendar – either weekly or monthly depending on the posting schedule you’ve created.

This is a sample model that may or may not work for your business and schedule. You need to develop a schedule that works for you so you can maintain an active blog.

Posting two to three times per week keeps your blog fresh and relevant. Investing a couple of hours a week on creating content that works for you 24/7 will pay off in more traffic, more leads and more opportunities for your business.

These are a few ways to save time and be more efficient with your blogging time. I know there are many more and would love to hear how you manage your blogging time.

What’s your top tip for managing your blog writing so it doesn’t suck up too much of your time?  Share your comments in the box below.

No matter how great your product, service or business is, if your prospective customer can’t find you on the web, it’s like you don’t exist.

As you know, anyone who has access to the Internet (at last count, there were 1.8 billion people), uses it to find solutions to their problems.

Here’s a three-step formula to get you started creating a visible presence on the web, resulting in more opportunities for your business: leads, prospects, sales, media queries, speaking gigs and joint ventures.

#1: Use Your Blog to Set the Stage

A blog is your foundation and starting point for strategically getting your message out to the world.  If you don’t have a blog yet, the place to start your planning and preparation is this article: Top 10 Easy Steps to Starting a Business Blog.

Using your blog as your hub, or home base, not only provides a presence on the web where you can go deep and intimate with your prospects and customers, it’s also a money-saving tool.  A blog is far less expensive to build, design and maintain than a traditional static website that may cost thousands of dollars.

Your blog is where you have the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise, expose your personality and give your audience the chance to get to know, like and finally trust you as you share valuable, useful content that makes their lives better.

Keep in mind that a blog is a search engine magnet. When you post consistently and constantly, the search engines tend to index your content more frequently. Using keywords relevant to what your target audience is looking for gives your content a good chance of being in the top results in searches. You become visible and findable on the web.

To target your message and/or campaign, publish a series of posts directly related to the topic you’re promoting. Whether it’s your new book, a service or a product, post content for several weeks prior to the launch date of your promotion.

If you don’t have a specific promotion, create an editorial calendar and frequently post on the prime topic and/or keywords for which you want to be found. For example, if you have a book being published, start seeding your blog with excerpts and snippets about the launch date, book signings and other events and news.

#2: Next, Use Facebook Strategically

There really shouldn’t be a lot of debate about this. With nearly half a billion users, you’ve got to have a presence on Facebook. As a business, that means you must have a page.

From a visibility perspective, this is essential because the content you post on your page gets indexed by the search engines. (If you’re not convinced your business should be on Facebook, read this article.)

At bare minimum, syndicate your blog content to your page using the Notes application.  This app pulls your blog content to your page wall and ensures your deeper content is front and center for people who land on your page and aren’t familiar with your blog. This one tactic will drive many qualified prospects back to your home base.

Use the Notes app to pull your blog feed to your Facebook page.

But that is just the minimum. The true value of Facebook is the relationships you build that create the desire of your “fans” to take the step and click through to your content.

Make sure you’re constantly growing your page by reminding people to join. Ask and answer questions with your keywords, send updates and let people know what you’re up to between promotions.  The more active your page, the more visible it is because every action taken by a member of your page is posted on his or her own profile with a link back to your page.

#3: Do Not Ignore Twitter

With 40 million Twitter updates every day, you want to make sure your message is on the popular microblogging platform as well. Tweets are showing up in real-time search results and with tools like http://search.twitter.com and Twitter management clients like TweetDeck and HootSuite that enable you to search and follow keywords, it’s critical to have your content show up when your ideal client does a search.

Use plug-ins (Twitter Tools on WordPress) or automation services like twitterfeed and SocialOomph to make sure your blog posts and announcements about your programs are being fed to your Twitter stream on an ongoing basis. Ideally, this should be no more than 20% of your Twitter activity.

You do need to spend some time every week on Twitter, in real time, responding, replying and sharing great resources (that support your objectives). It’s a smart practice to follow your own keywords in a dedicated search column (on HootSuite for example) so you can quickly respond to comments and queries related to your products and services.

Set up columns in HootSuite with each of your keywords searches so you don’t miss opportunities to connect.

This isn’t rocket science but many entrepreneurs, service professionals and small and large businesses don’t integrate these tactics in their marketing plans or they are reluctant to spend the time to build their visibility. A social media marketing industry report recently revealed businesses that spend 10-20 hours a week actively working on a visibility strategy see the most rewards in terms of opportunity—whatever that looks like for your business. Those who work consistently to build an online presence will be profitable.

These are a few tactics you can quickly implement to start building your visibility on the web. Once these are in place, add one or two new tactics every week and soon you’ll be hearing people say, “I see you everywhere!”

This is really just the tip of the iceberg. There are many ways to build visibility on the web.

Have you tried any of these tactics? What are your top tips?  Please comment in the box below.