Comments on: Some Assembly Required – Case Study

By: Advanced Business Blogging » Marketing With Blogs? Mindset, Blog Moves, and Monitoring That Help You Blog For Your Business

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 23:50:29 +0000

[...] I recently read and commented on a business blogging case study by Thom Singer over at ProBlogger. In that post Thom shared about his growth and experience blogging for his business over the last year. He’s been using Blogger up till now, and he mentioned three things in particular that I knew would be valuable for me to address in depth here for other business owners who are trying to market with business blogs. [...]

By: John-Paul Micek

John-Paul Micek — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 03:31:24 +0000

Darren / Thom … sorry about the super long link in there. I forgot to shorten it before adding my comment and just saw that.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 03:17:56 +0000

I also started on blogger and at the start of this year, I moved to my own domain. As John says there are a huge number of plugins you can get for WP. I don’t know if it makes a huge difference in terms of traffic and so on, but I think it definitely makes it look like you are more committed to the site.

By: John-Paul Micek

John-Paul Micek — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 18:03:42 +0000

Great to see another entrepreneur blogging for business the right way — to promote THEIR OWN products/services!

If you’re happy with what you’ve achieved so far on Blogger, you haven’t seen anything yet as far as SEO! And from the results we’ve seen with hundreds of business owners — I can say confidently that you’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to motivating people (in your target audience) to take action.

Although successfully marketing with business blogs is not necessarily dependent on a particular blogging software, having the right tools can be a big help. The WordPress community has developed more business/marketing friendly plugin modules than you can shake a stick at.( Check out some of the best for business blogging here: http://www.advancedbusinessblogging.com/archives/category/business-blogging-with-wordpress/.)

Fact is, when you see how much easier WordPress makes reaching all your marketing goals, you’ll be amazed. It makes business blogging with Blogger look like digging for gold with a steam shovel … and business blogging with WordPress like using a 30-ton Catapillar C9 track loader! :)

Moving from Blogger to WordPress is easier than most people think. You can do it yourself if you’re good with code and MySQL (http://justinsomnia.org/2005/03/moving-from-blogger-to-wordpress/). Or you can simply post a project over at http://www.scriptlance.com and find someone to do it for you in less than 48-hours. (We’ve had coaching clients find out source agents who moved their Blogger DB and comments to WordPress for less than $150.)

Once you have a WordPress business blog on your own domain there is an incredible amount of traffic tracking, data mining, and SEO optimization that you can do. All of which makes getting more traffic, higher rankings, and more subscribers much easier.

Oh, and as far as your comment on #1 … don’t get hung up on how many regular readers there are. From the looks of your target market, they’re like the majority of the public. If they’re doing a search and come across your content — more than likely they don’t even know that they’ve landed at a blog. Recent studies show that only 4% of internet surfers use RSS, and just a little more than that really understand blogs.

Marketing with business blogs is not primarily about regular readers. It’s about building your prospect list, making more sales, and creating more lifetime clients! When you keep those goals at the forefront, your business blogging becomes a lot more effective. :)

Aloha!

By: Thom Singer

Thom Singer — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 16:18:51 +0000

Thanks for the tips….I will check them out.

And keep those suggestions coming….I want to learn as much as I can!!

Thanks, Darren, for using my post…as I can already tell I will get some very useful advice from the readers of Problogger!!!

Have a great day.

thom

By: Leon

Leon — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 15:56:51 +0000

Amen to that brother! I've had pretty much the same experience on my blog. I haven't had nearly as much success as Mr. Singer, but I'm satisfied with the level so far.

By: John Hood

John Hood — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 15:44:16 +0000

As John said, Blogger can be customised with some great hacks. Why not also drop by http://consumingexperience.blogspot.com/

By: John Mayan

John Mayan — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 15:21:51 +0000

Blogger can be more flexible than you think. Conditional tags are very useful. http://blogfresh.blogspot.com is a great site for learning Blogger hacks. A good example of Blogger use with Adsense is Digital Inspiration:http://labnol.blogspot.com/. You can see my site too!