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Agents of Revenue = TURKEYS of Talk

November 26, 2008 By IRB Writer Leave a Comment
Wedsneday 1:14

Wedsneday 1:14

Today, at 1:14 PM Eastern Standard Time the Agents of Revenue show, featuring myself, Scott Pooler and John “ColderICE” Lawson will air on Talkshoe

Todays topic is timely and in the spirit of the Holidays…

We will review the year that has passed and highlight the best and worst TURKEYS in ecommerce.  Now, if you are like me, you look forward to a nice Turkey every November.  I love a warm and juicy bird on the table at Thanksgiving… But John Lawson may have a different view of what the Turkeys of eCommerce have been up to in 2008…

So tune in, or listen on i-tunes our talkshoe talk show broadcast is automatically converted to a podcast for listening at your leisure.  If you like the show, please leave a review on either Talkshoe or i-Tunes – Or Both.

And… HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

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WordPress as a CMS? Small Business Websites that Work – Case Study – Raleigh Fence Contractors LLC

October 19, 2008 By IRB Writer 4 Comments

How do small business websites benefit by using WordPress as a CMS?

We can site many examples of success but one case of a new business with a brand new website is particularly interesting. The story is unusual but not uncommon and as in many small business stories, it can only be covered with multiple chapters of information.

The client is Keith Bloemendaal and his company is Raleigh Fence Contractors LLC.
We have written about this client before primarily over on our sister blog: All Business Auctions, we followed up on a small business website project we started last May but due to some client delays did not go live until late July 2008.

If you want to refresh your memory of the process involved with this project, please check these posts.

Successful Small Business Blog Website

Successful Small Business Blog Website

Since our last article(s) about Raleigh Fence Contractors, much has happened. The site has only been up for about 3 months but it is drawing traffic organically and has a Google page rank of 3. During the first month online Keith experimented with Google Adwords, spending approximately 1 dollar for each hit Adwords sent the site. Keith figures in the same time period (first month) he collection 2800 additional hits organically due to his blog article writing. That’s a $2800 payback on the investment of building this website in the first month.

Additionally, and more importantly, while competing in a very tight marketplace for Google page placement, Raleigh Fence Contractors started life as a website on about the 15th page of search results. In less than 3 months with regular blog posting and relevant content, Raleigh Fence Contractors, LLC has rocketed its website up in the search placement on Google to number 4 of 817,000 results for the term “Raleigh Fence”.

Raleigh Fence on Google

Raleigh Fence on Google

Keith Bloemendaal has added to the success of this small business website by actively learning the techniques and tricks of social marketing. Through his consistent efforts at adding to the conversation and with some luck, Keith has had the following outside articles written about him and his Website/blog.

We are proud of the Raleigh Fence Contractors development at iBusinessLogic.com, maybe not as proud as Keith Bloemendaal but satisfied none the less. It is always great to see a client follow your advice and follow through to find success with a Small Business on the Internet.

Filed Under: Social Media Optimization Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Why not use a Free blog Like Blogger?

October 14, 2008 By IRB Writer 1 Comment
Free Blogger

Free Blogger

This is often a question asked by people who are new to the idea of blogging for business.

It seems so simple, easy 123 steps to setup and host a new blog on a free platform like Google’s Blogger.com.

While it may be easy to get started, and Blogger has many fine features, this is not the wisest course of action for any business oriented or serious blog. The reasons are many including:

  • A Blogger blog will not be tied to an existing website other than with direct links. The content generated in a blogger blog or WordPress.com blog or any other external blog platform will not add value to the main website of your company.
  • Dependency – As a business you must be independent of other companies when it comes to storing and presenting your data. Depending on Google or Automatic (providers of WordPress.com) to store and approve of your content can be risky.
  • Portability – Exporting the data discussed above is a primary concern, blogger does not make this easy, or even possible for most.

To follow up on the last point, please review the instructions from the Blogger website regarding backing up or exporting the data from a Blogger blog here:

How do I create a backup of my entire blog?

Blogger does not have an export or download function. However, you can use the following instructions to create a single file with all your posts which you may publish and then copy to your own computer for use as desired.

Note: If you intend to continue using your blog, please save a copy of your existing template in a file on your computer as you will need to have it at hand after this process is completed.

  1. Log into your Blogger account, then switch into template-editing mode.
  2. Make a copy of your current template; you will be replacing your Blogger template with the single page template in Step 3, but you probably don’t want to lose your original template.
  3. Replace your Blogger template with the following (note: you must remove the indentation from the following lines when pasting into your Blogger template):

    <Blogger>
    AUTHOR: <$BlogItemAuthor$>
    DATE: <$BlogItemDateTime$>
    -----
    BODY:
    <$BlogItemBody$>
    --------
    </Blogger>

    Optional: If you are using our commenting system, you can choose to export comments along with the posts. If you want to do this, add the following code to your template, just above the</Blogger> tag:

    <BlogItemCommentsEnabled>
    <BlogItemComments>
    COMMENT-AUTHOR:<$BlogCommentAuthor$>
    COMMENT-DATE:<$BlogCommentDateTime$>
    COMMENT-BODY:<$BlogCommentBody$> singulair and ulcerative colitits
    --------
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    </BlogItemComments>
    </BlogItemCommentsEnabled>

  4. In Settings | Publishing change your Blog Filename to a different filename; this will prevent you from overwriting your main index file. Make a note of your current Blog Filename so you can restore the setting after finishing. [Note: This only applies to users publishing via FTP. Free BlogSpot users will need to overwrite their existing blog page, but it will be replaced as soon as the blog is republished with the original template.]
  5. In Settings | Formatting, set your blog to display all of your posts on the main index page. There is no explicit setting for this; instead, you should change the number of days displayed on your front page (Show N days’ posts on main page) higher than the number of days that you have been blogging.
  6. In Settings | Formatting set Date/Time Format to the formatMM/DD/YYYY HH:MM:SS AM|PM. (Note: the format will not look like this in the menu; instead it will be the current time, formatted.) Make a note of your current setting so you can restore it after finishing.
  7. Also in Settings | Formatting set Convert Line Breaks to No.
  8. In Settings | Archiving, set Archive Frequency to No Archive. This will prevent your archives from being overwritten with the new template.
  9. Republish your blog; you will end up with a single file with all of your posts, formatted using the above template, at the location specified in your Settings. Open this file in your web browser and save the file to your local hard drive.
  10. Restore the previous settings (Blog filename, archive frequency, timestamp, etc.) in your blog and replace the temporary template with your saved copy. Publish the blog and view the page to check that everything is correct.
Filed Under: Social Media Optimization Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Scott Pooler to Speak about eBay at Product Sellers Seminar

September 14, 2008 By IRB Writer Leave a Comment

speaker-125x125-pss.jpg

Product Sellers Seminar
Location: http://www.productsellersseminar.com/

Description: Product Sellers Seminar
Start Time:

16:00
Date: 2008-09-17
End Time: 17:00

See our calendar in the sidebar for other dates of events coming soon…

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The ART of Link Baiting

August 9, 2008 By IRB Writer 2 Comments
Link Bait

Link Bait

Link Baiting – Oh, it sounds somewhat sinister…

The term just reeks of something less than ethical yet it is one of the best tactics new and seasoned bloggers alike can use to build up the page rank and visibility of a blog.

What is link baiting?

Our friend and client, Keith Bloemendaal, has just given the world a perfect example on his newly finished blog website Raleigh Fence Contractors LLC.

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Raleigh Fence

Keith’s latest post is titled Friday Blog Link.

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In this post Keith mentions he plans on using this tactic every Friday, what tactic you say? Link Baiting is the artful and somewhat creative method of bringing attention to yourself and your blog by linking to respected blogs and bloggers. When writing a link bait article the intention is to be complimentary to peers in your niche and o slightly out of your niche in an effort to get these same bloggers to either write about or link to you and your blog in return.

In his article Keith has linked to no less than 6 blogs and bloggers he respects and he continues the link parade with no less than 7 additional links to other pages and articles within sites owned by these bloggers.

See the example paragraph below

Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger, Chris Brogan, Connie Benson

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, and numerous SEO and marketing blogs, I always keep a close eye on my mentor, and close friend Scott Pooler and his writings on iBusinessLogic and Trading Assistant Journal core the divx online

. I want to focus every week on Fridays to the blogs I read and discover. We will cover many topics over the coming weeks, this week we will focus on a home improvement blog I subscribe to called Helpful Advice for Home Construction Improvement:

For a guy who is relatively new to the blogging world, I must say that Keith never ceases to amaze me with the grasp he has on social networking. This link bait article of his was done with style and with real respect for the people he is hoping will return the link love he has extended.

Obviously in my case it has worked – this article is my way to return the favor to Keith and the Raleigh Fence Contractors Blog. I am sure I will not be the only one returning the favor.

This is really the point… exchanging links is a primary goal for most bloggers, this endeavor is something traditional website owners do not have as much of a grasp upon. Without inbound links to your site, from relevant sites, you will not climb in page rank. Search engines love to find new links and they love you more if those links end up on your site somewhere.

The best part of link baiting within blogs is it is almost completely automatic. This is because when you place a link to a blog on your blog, the blog platform (WordPress, Movable Type, Blogger etc) automatically sends a message to the other blog called a trackback. This informs the other blog you are mentioning them in your blog. That’s how I found out Keith had mentioned me in his blog, from a trackback. In essence, it is really bait… You send out the link bait into the blogosphere and just sit back and wait for the fish to come back and read what you said about them.

So go ahead, Link Bait Away… Its really not sinister or rude… Just a way to say hello… look at me, I like your blog, do you like mine?

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