Chris Brogan on Taking Blogging/Social Media to the Next Level

Chris Brogan shares some 8 great insights here on how to leverage social media (in this context, he was talking about blogging):

7+1 Free Or Cheap Effective Ways To Promote Your Brand Online

This is a really great resource by Dumb Little Man: 7 Free or Cheap Ways to Effectively Promote Your Business Online. I especially enjoy the fact that it provides brand and business owners tips on “where to start” as well as links to helpful resources. I’ll certainly be coming back to this resource again and again!

I highly recommend checking out all the great insights and tips on how to leverage:

6 Tips To A Better Business Blog

Here are 6 helpful tips to having a better business blog, “6 Tips for Customizing Your Small Business Blog” via Mashable:

1. Install some top blog plugins
   Concentrate on the kinds of plugins that focus on search engine optimization (SEO), making the blog load faster, and making it easy for others to share blog posts via email, Twitter (Twitter), and other social networks.
2. Integrate social media links and buttons
   Don’t be afraid to integrate Facebook (Facebook) and Twitter on a business blog. It’s a standard practice and will help drive new visitors to your blog. Social media buttons make it easy for customers to tweet out your work, while adding links to the company’s Twitter and YouTube (YouTube) accounts will help bolster their numbers and improve their ranking in search.
3. Focus on simple designs, not bells and whistles
   The focus of a blog should be on the content, not on widgets or sidebars or flashy designs. It’s better to have a very simple design template than a complex one if you want to convert readers into customers.
4. Do show effort in the design, though
   A corporate blog is also a chance to show off a human element of the company and to be creative. Just using the standard template is usually lazy and most readers will know it. Don’t be afraid to experiment.
5. Have your blog on your own web domain
   Most companies have their blogs at blog.companyurl.com. It’s generally considered unprofessional for a company to have a blog hosted on WordPress.com or Typepad (TypePad).com, so always have your blog somewhere on your company’s website.
6. Don’t hide your “about” information
   Assume that your average reader has never heard about your company. If you have that in mind, you want to be sure they can quickly find out more about you. Either have a paragraph at the top or on the side describing the company, or make the “About” page very prominent.

9 Things You Must Do When Designing Your Blog!

(Image credit: Tutorial 9)

I was led via Twitter to this great post by Tutorial9: 9 Things You Can’t Forget When Designing A Blog. Really, really great stuff… and with very helpful links to further resources on the “how to’s”.

1. Design a Favicon
2. Subtly use gradients, textures, shadows & single pixel lines
3. Use Icons for navigation
4. Leave ample Whitespace
5. Design using Alignment grids
6. Choose appropriate Typography
7. Choose/Decide on what to Emphasise
8. Have Styling Lists & Blockquotes
9. Separate Comments from Trackbacks

The Power Of Pull – Steve Rubel

Steve Rubel blogs about the power of pull marketing (The Power of Pull), especially in light of the way social media and the internet is changing consumer behaviours today. Essentially, Steve makes the case for stronger pull marketing, compared to the traditional strategies of push marketing… and gives three ideas on how to achieve that:

Discovering CopyBlogger

I just discovered (I know, I’m slow) CopyBlogger.

I really haven’t had the luxury of delving further into his work yet, but here are the few I’ve started with. More thoughts as I plow through…

• The Authority Rules report: The 10 Rock Solid Elements of Effective Online Marketing (Free PDF!)
• Copywriting 101
• Viral Copy – Viral Marketing with Blogs (loads of great PDF reports for offline consumption!)
• How to Create Cornerstone Content That Google Loves

Common Craft: Knowledge In Plain English

I just discovered this awesome little company called: Common Craft. In their own words, their product is “explanation”. They create these awesome, short little videos that explain a variety of topics in simple terms. These videos can be viewed for free here – but may be purchased for educational and training use. They also offer custom video production, which I assume will be in their signature style.

Here are a few great samples (I’m showcasing their Social Media and Web videos, since those were the ones that led me to them – videos after the jump):