Small Biz Blog Wiz - Easy, Affordable and Productive Blogging for Small Businesses

Should You Start a Business Blog? Hell Yeah!

Sone great points, courtesy of Entrepreneur.com, that make the case for starting a business blog.

Link: Should You Start a Business Blog? - Entrepreneur.com - MSNBC.com

A blog allows your business to engage with current and potential customers in a direct, informal, no-pressure way. You can communicate the strengths of your product or service, the expertise of your top executives and the breadth of your company's experience in ways that traditional marketing and advertising don't allow. This can help engender a better understanding of your company as well as inspire customer loyalty.

Because of its collaborative nature, a blog can help you gain insight into customers' needs and interests. You can then use this information to develop new products or services or fine-tune existing ones.

A blog can make your company appear more "alive'' and approachable. A website promoting your products or services is an essential marketing tool. But a blog, in effect, gives your company a personal voice, which also can help boost customer loyalty.

Blogs cost little, if any, money. Some public blogging sites are free; others charge only nominal fees. Also, blogs are often extremely easy to set up and update, with virtually no training required.

My Link Blog Goes Live

Yipeeee! My brand spankin' new link blog is up and running, ready for you to enjoy. You can visit it daily, subscribe to the RSS feed or just check it out on the left-hand sidebar of this site. Either way, be sure not to miss the wealth of business blogging info available at your fingertips through my wonderful new link blog.

Is Your Stuff Safe?

Are your business files safe from thieves, fire, and other disaster? Do you have your most important business documents, spreadsheets, files and data secured at an off-site location so you can actually sleep at night? If not, you better better wake up early tomorrow and consider some of the backup solutions from a few of the providers available. Shit happens. Make sure your stuff is safe.

Link: Off Site Data Storage

"Not that you won't want to save your files to your own computer as extra insurance, but the feeling of knowing all your long, hard hours of work are safely stored somewhere after you do experience a major computer failure can not only save your sanity, but your life."

Blogging Peak? Not Quite.

Gartner is predicting that blogging will peak in 2007. Surely, the growth of blogs will slow but calling a peak is a bit premature. The good news is that splogs - spam blogs - will be on the decrease and quality content will be on the increase as influential, dynamic, well-written blogs rise to the top. Also, what the peak prediction completely misses is that there are millions of people who have not even thought about starting a blog yet. Hundreds of thousands of small business owners in America alone, and millions of people worldwide, are just beginning to think about starting a blog. So will the growth slow? It has to. Does that mean a long-term peak for blogging? Not quite.

Still not sure that blogging has growth potential? Check out the graphic below - a few more knitters and this whole blogging thing will really take off!

Link: Blogging to Peak in 2007 Says Gartner:

"...those who love it are committed to keeping it up, while others have gotten bored and moved on."

5 Mistakes to Avoid in Small Biz Web Design

Five common sense, easy-to-follow tips for avoiding simple yet costly mistakes when building a small business web site. Heads up - mistakes #1 and #4 can be fatal to your business.

Link: Jondi Gumz,: Spruce up that Web site - - - November 10, 2006.

"1. Hard to find information: Your site must be easy to navigate, and there should be easy and multiple ways to contact you.

4. Too complex: Keep things clean and simple."

Free Business Web Sites for All

Microsoft is offering businesses a free web site and web-based software suite. Right now the service is just in testing mode, known as beta. But on November 15 the service goes live and will offer small businesses a free, easy way to build their online presence. Microsoft assumes it can tap into the non-techie business owners who currently don't have web sites, which is a fair and reasonable assumption (the same one I operate under!). The quote below from the story summarizes the typical web site purchasing process for many small businesses. It is exactly what I seek to correct.

Link: A Web Site to Call Your Own - New York Times

"For nontechnical people, it’s all an expensive headache. No wonder half of all small businesses don’t even have Web sites."

Small Biz Meets Web 2.0

A growing number of small businesses are realizing that it pays to incorporate blogging, social network sites and other new Web tools into their marketing and sales aresenal.

Link: Small firms market with networking sites, blogs

"The deal is that it gives you an opportunity to talk every day about your business, which your Web page doesn't," she said.

How Can Business Blogs Increase Sales?

Business blogs can help attract and retain customers, but only if blog satisfies the need that your potential clients are trying to fill.

Link: Business Blogs And Customer Connectivity

"By becoming a trusted source for information in an informal atmosphere, a business blog can help move a customer to action through a level of trust you have built through your blog."

Zen and the Art of Blogging

Do you "get" blogging yet? If not, enlightment may be just around the corner. And it could mean great news for your business and your life. I especially like Stowe's 5 principles of blogging - absolutely accurate and very well said.

Link: The Sudden School of Zen: The Essence of Business Blogging

And in every niche in every industry or interest, there are people who are looking for advice on the entire spectrum of human experience. And if you have an interest in claiming a place in some industry as a knowledgeable expert, a blog can be the single best way to help others and, as a consequence, be in a position to sought out as an expert guide.

Web Tool Review: Diigo

Diigo is a social bookmarking site which goes live to the public today. I have been privately testing the service for a few days. Here are my thoughts...

First, let's define the term "social bookmarking." Social bookmarking is, essentially, shared lists of user-generated bookmarks or favorites. Typically, the bookmarks are organized using tags for categorization purposes. Notes can be added to help explain and opine on the bookmarks. The "social" element is where the fun starts. Discovering new sites and web resources that have been pre-screened and recommended by other users invariably leads to a treasure trove of quality links. Also, most tags and users pages can be subscribed to via RSS so you can stay up-to-date on the topics and people of interest.

With that out of the way, let's dive in to Diigo. Diigo is a competitor to del.icio.us, not the first social bookmarking service, but clearly the one that blazed a new path in the industry. Diigo sells itself as a del.icio.us-like service, albeit easier to use with more functionality and features. Diigo allows users to highlight web pages (its actually more of an underscore) and add "sticky notes" for reference later. The sticky notes feature is similar to the del.icio.us notes feature, but the highlight feature actually saves the highlighted portion of the page along with the link to your Diigo page. This is a cool feature that allows you to capture the portion of the page you're particularly interested in and save it to Diigo. As you can see from the image below, Diigo saves the tagged link but also saves the highlighted text from the page you bookmarked - very nice.

You can post to Diigo via a handy bookmarklet or a browser toolbar. I think the toolbar is a bit presumptuous considering the newness factor of Diigo but it is a quick and easy way to save links and pages as you surf the web. The bookmarklet worked fine for me, allowing me to post to Diigo without leaving the page I'm saving, and I would recommend it to anyone trying the service. You can also easily blog the links and bookmarks you find using the Diigo interface. I found this to be one of the most useful features of the site. Configuration took less than 2 minutes and posting to my blog via Diigo was easy and enjoyable - the exact opposite of the same experience using del.icio.us. I have been a del.icio.us fan for over 2 years and it amazes me that they still fail to have a simple "post to my blog" feature. Diigo does and they've done a great job with it.

Another great Diigo feature is the myriad of actions you can take from their drop-down menu within the site, allowing users to mark links as private, read/undread, etc. This is a very convenient service that could save users a lot of time when working with their Diigo bookmarks.

Small business owners not already using a social bookmarking service (which means most small business owners) should give Diigo a try. The company has spent the time developing quality, easy-to-use features, a clear and pleasing interface and what appears to be a compelling offering. It may not send folks streaming for the exits at del.icio.us, but it should be a top-contender in the social bookmarking niche, opening up this web phenomenon to scores of new users.

*Now, if they could just get the "Import del.icio.us links" tool to work...!