Here are 5 great ways to help optimize and improve your website, and inspire new visitors to become repeat visitors:

1: Track your Internal Search Results

One of the easiest ways to gain insight into your blog and improve it is to track your internal search results. You can easily do this using Google Analytics, (learn how to track this), or use this cool WordPress plugin. It’s very important to identify your top searched keywords - it helps you identify what’s popular with your visitors (write more content relating to these), and also, just as importantly, what visitors are failing to find on your blog (look for keyword searches that have zero results and create a post about them - as long as you can make it relevant to your blog). The more relevant internal search results the user finds, then the more chances of them signing up to your feed and coming back for more!

2: Reduce the Bounce Rate of your Articles

The best way to stop someone from leaving immediately after reading your blog articles (i.e. bouncing) is to expose them to as much of your blog’s great content as possible, or by getting them to sign up to your feed. And what is the best way to do this? Immediately after the visitor is done reading the blog entry they arrived at (and remember, most visitors don’t arrive at your homepage - they get deep linked in from search engines or other blogs), at the bottom of the article place prominent text links to subscribe and links to read related content.

3: Survey and Learn from Your Website Visitors

What’s another great way to improve your blog? This one is simple, yet many blog owners don’t do it - you need gain feedback from your visitors! Simply sign up for a free survey tool (like 4Q) and get to know your visitors better. It allows you to ask your visitors questions in the form of a non-obtrusive pop-up survey.

4: Build a Community into your Blog

Want to get as many repeat visits as possible, without having to rely on RSS feeds to pull visitors back? Then build a community for your blog, and engage not only yourself with your readers, but allow your readers to engage with each other. This is particularly a great idea if you are niche blogger and you have a small but captive audience. There are a number of ways to create this community for your blog - the basic way is to setup and install MyBlogLog or BuddyPress as a widget on your blog. The more advanced way to build a community is to create a social network around your blog using Ning or KickApps. Both of these are free and allow you to fully customize, brand and create your own community, and use your own blog feed as a main ingredient of the community. Win-win situation for you and your readers!

5: Setup Goals and Begin Testing to Improve Them

Lastly, one of the most important things to remember for blogging success is to set goals and try and beat them. And for blogs, your goal is likely to get as many readers as possible. But be more specific and actionable. For example set a weekly goal for new readers, i.e. 100 new subscribers per week. Then, test elements of your website (using Google Website Optimizer) to try and improve your subscribers and reach your goals.

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A new global study of social media use reveals that the U.S. severely lags behind Asian and South American countries in participation rates.

Consumers in the U.S. and Western Europe are more likely to be passive social-media participants — sharing videos and reading blogs — while those in emerging markets often create content through blogging, social networks and video and photo sharing sites.

“By and large, in the U.S. we’re a country of voyeurs,” said David Cohen, U.S. director of digital communications at Universal McCann, which conducted the study. “We love to watch and consume content created by others, but there’s a fairly small group that are doing that creation — unlike China, which is a country of creators.”

A little over 60 percent of Internet users in the U.S. said they read blogs, but just 26 percent had created one, compared to over 70 percent of Internet users who blog in South Korea and China.

Consumers in Asian countries are also much more likely to read blogs: 92 percent of South Koreans read them. In China, 88 percent read blogs.

A similar dynamic is underway in video sharing. Consumers in the U.S. have taken to video sites like YouTube in droves, but not many actively participate.

About a quarter of U.S. Internet users have uploaded a video to a site like YouTube. In the Brazil, 68 percent have done so. India, China, Mexico and the Philippines all boast video-sharing participation rates topping 50 percent. The results are similar for photo-sharing, where a little under half of U.S. consumers have uploaded photos, far behind rates in South American and Asian markets.

A divergence can also be seen in social networking. The study finds that social networking is still growing worldwide, but is reaching a “saturation point” in the U.S., while countries like the Philippines, Brazil and Mexico more avidly use it.

Despite the popularity of U.S. networks Facebook and MySpace, other countries dwarf the U.S. in joining social networks. The Philippines, Hungary, Poland and Mexico all boast participation rates over 75 percent, while just 43 percent have joined social networks in the U.S.

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Half of online businesses plan to add “Web 2.0″ online capabilities to their sites in six months.

Over 93 percent intend to do so within the year, according to a Scene7 study of retailers, manufacturers, agencies, and high-tech companies that sell products or services online, reports MarketingCharts.

New features likely to undergo the greatest growth (i.e., the biggest jump from current use to planned implementation) are mobile commerce (m-commerce), URL/widget sharing, and personalized messaging, the survey found.

Planned implementation of m-commerce was cited by nearly 25 percent of respondents, whereas just 5 percent now offer it.

Among new features, the following were rated the most effective…

* Alternate Views: 41%
* Zoom: 36%
* Personalized Stores (My Account, Profile, Favorites): 29%
* Microsites: 29%
* 360 spin: 28%

360-degree spin, considered one of the most highly effective features (about 28 percent say so), is the most underutilized (roughly 13 percent say they offer it).

Other popular features planned for 2008 are User Ratings, Rankings and Comments (36 percent), Videos - Merchandising, Advertising and Demonstration (35 percent), and Blogs (34 percent).

Most companies surveyed said they evaluate the effectiveness of new functionality by measuring conversion rates and clicks/usage, but more than 40 percent reported qualitative feedback and revenue to be important indicators as well.

“With online commerce growth rates predicted to decline, companies that continue investing to differentiate themselves and deliver compelling user experiences can gain market share over their competition,” said Doug Mack, vice-president of consumer and hosted solutions at Adobe.

“Rich and innovative applications enable businesses to further engage customers with more personal and compelling online experiences, which can ultimately increase conversions and revenues.”

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It struck me that technology has enabled us to get really good at “telling and selling”, but who is in charge of listening and responding?

Marketing people do the “telling” and sales people do the “selling”. But those are both outbound, one way, activities. Sales people will certainly respond to a lead or expression of interest, but that isn’t a conversation.

Technology and the Internet has enabled us to quickly update our accounts, find information, and buy things online. Companies can target their advertising using keyword search programs and deep web analytics tools. Call Centers have sophisticated voice menus designed to vector you to an automated answer or self service. How do you talk to a human and engage in a conversation?


Who at your company is in charge of listening and responding? Most companies have a big marketing department staffed with talented people who are experts at “crafting a message” or designing a campaign to target a very specific audience. They really aren’t looking to engage with the customer, and in most cases aren’t trained to do it.

Blogs are a great way to engage in a conversation, what Robert Scoble calls Naked Conversations in his book. Blogs are personal…they are written by a real person, not a marketing department. Blogs encourage dialog, questions, and candid answers. I get email from blog readers everyday asking questions, challenging assumptions, offering advice, and asking for help finding the right person at Microsoft. There are over 4,000 employee bloggers at Microsoft from every group and from every geography in the world. These are employees from engineering, customer support, product strategy, and yes, sales and marketing. We put a personal face on Microsoft and do our best to engage all of you in a conversation.

How does it work at your company? Who is in charge of listening and responding? Do employees at your company blog? Believe it or not, there are still many companies that prohibit employee blogging due to legal risks or because they are nervous employees will say the wrong thing. If you trust your sales and customer support people to talk to customers, and you trust marketing people to talk to the press, is it such a big leap to trust them to engage in a conversation on a blog? Think about it…and join the conversation.

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Blogs, Wikis, Forums Sway Consumer Opinion, Research Shows, an article written by Laurie Sullivan for TechWeb, notes the following:

The growing phenomenon of consumer-generated content has become disruptive to online businesses, but many are studying the reviews, finding ways to use the content to their advantage, the (JupiterResearch) report says.
The research found 77 percent of online shoppers read consumer product reviews and ratings. Viewers were found to be increasingly loyal to the stores that featured product feedback. Another survey determined that 22 percent of online consumers who posted feedback on forums tend to purchase more online.
Content created through the voice of the consumer is reinventing advertising. “It’s shifting the power away from Madison Avenue and into consumers’ hands,” said Neil Sequeira, principal at General Catalysts Partners, a one billion dollar early stage venture capital firm. “Users create content they are passionate about. If there’s a surfboard you love, why not create some content around it.”
And more sites are popping up to populate the fields. Launched late Sunday, Wiki.com joins a list of do-it-yourself sites like Jotspot and Wikia that allow anyone to add and edit content on a specific topic. Wiki.com CEO John Gotts said consumers can register for a sub-domain on the site, while granting permission to others either to add or edit content.

MindTouch co-founder and COO Aaron Fulkerson said a team of engineers put together Wiki.com’s backend in about 48 hours, from the time Gotts signed the contract, to taking the site live.
“Company names and verticals are being registered at wiki.com for people to air their opinion about a specific topic or product,” Fulkerson said. “When I do a search on Google for company XYZ, and suddenly in the top ten results are opinions from user-generated content sites that can sway my opinion of the company.”
Wiki.com runs on a service oriented distributed architecture (SODA), technology developed by MindTouch, a San Deigo wiki-software and hardware startup founded by former Microsoft employees. The company in July launched the first commercial open-source wiki based on open standards.
Sam Rogoway no longer reads product reviews. Instead, he spends time researching topics on wikis and social networks. So last week, the entertainment lawyer launched the travel wiki site Tripmates Inc., along with co-founder Emily Dahlberg.
“The days of reading some review from an expert is dwindling because people want to obtain their information from other users,” Rogoway said. “If the social network is built around the topic, travel or cars for example, you can link to the person’s profile who wrote the review to see if their likes and dislikes are similar to yours,” Rogoway said.
JupiterResearch analyst Diane Clarkson wrote in a report that recommendations from family and friends are among online travel researchers’ most used resources, but lifestyle descriptions of content contributors are important, too.
Not all agree that blogs, wikis and forums are the most important communication tools, ever. JupiterResearch advertising analyst Emily Riley said word of mouth, defined as online conversations, between two people that know each other is the most trustworthy method to gain information, but “it’s losing trust because many strangers are entering the conversation,” she said. “Word of mouth online, when it’s within a company’s Web site, is considered more trustworthy than considered on a random blog.”

For more, see the source article.

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In Blogs and Podcasts among Top Tech Marketing Tools, the following was noted:

According to business technology marketing executives surveyed by MarketingSherpa, blogs and podcasts are the fourth and fifth most popular tools cited, respectively, reports Podcasting News (via Micro Persuasion).

Some 35 percent of software and ASP marketers rated their corporate blog as very effective, as did 33 percent of technology services firms, but only 19 percent of hardware companies said so. that a corporate blog was effective.

Some 22 percent of software marketers consider podcasts “very effective” lead-generation tools. Free trials were cited most by the surveyed marketers, followed by webcasts and white papers.

Want to more detail, sign up for MarketingSherpa’s free webinar: New Business Technology Marketing — Practical Benchmark Data for 2006 to be held on Thursday August 10th at 3-4pm ET/12-1pm PT.

By attending this webinar you can find out what 1,900 B-to-B marketers in software, hardware, and technology services industries revealed about what works for lead generation; plus, you’ll receive a 13-page PowerPoint Presentation featuring 10 new data charts that you can share with your colleagues.

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The following was noted by Jackie Huba in Why don’t CEOs blog?:

Only one CEO in the Fortune 500 blogs: Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems.

He says: “My No. 1 job is to be a communicator. I don’t understand how a CEO would not blog if committed to open communication.”

If CEOs blogged, they would save considerable time on hundreds of weekly emails that ask roughly the same types of questions. That’s part of Debbie Weil’s thesis in The Corporate Blogging Book. “Why not do it more efficiently?” she writes. “Instead of a one-to-one message, why not a communication from one to many thousands?” She describes the pro’s and con’s of corporate blogging with plenty o’ pointers on how to do it well and not screw up. I read an early copy of the book and it’s excellent.

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The BusinessPundit weblog references an article, Would You, Could You, Should You Blog?, that does an excellent job at explaining what weblogs are all about.  The article, which is targeted to professional services organizations, (particularly accounting and law firms), discusses why professional service firms should “blog,” provides a number of good blog examples, links to several of the top blogging tools and finally has links to some of the top accounting, legal and tax-related blogs on the internet.

There’s too many links to mention here, so check out this article for all the details.

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Here are several excerpts from a recent MarketingProfs article, How to Make the Community Your Marketing Partner:

Faster and more efficient communication means that ideas are exchanged more quickly than ever before within communities. Thoughts are exchanged, styles are developed, trends are created… all at an ever-accelerating pace. Attempting to guess from afar what the current trends and preferences are for your hyper-connected customers is a crapshoot at best, and a total waste of time at worst.

So, at this point, you have a choice: You can continue using the same marketing methods you have always used to reach your customers, or you can try something revolutionary. You can join them. You can stop trying to guess what your customers are talking about, and instead join their communities and talk to them directly.

Sound scary? Good, because at first it will be. But the good news is that when you join consumers in their space, you begin to understand them. You begin to understand what their wants and needs are, and you begin to “speak their language.” Perhaps just as important, they begin to understand you.

Here are some of the tools that your customers are already using to communicate online, and how you can incorporate them into your marketing plan:

Monitor Blogs

… A lot of people are talking on a lot of blogs. Using a blog search tool such as Technorati can tell you within seconds what bloggers are saying about your company. And what bloggers are saying about your company will be honest and unfiltered. Some bloggers may be critical of your company, others may be downright offensive.

Monitoring blogs and answering issues that your customers raise on their blogs might be the most affective form of marketing available to companies today.

Start a blog

After you have begun to monitor and reply to issues your customers have raised on blogs, you will likely soon want to start your own blog. Do so as soon as possible.

Simply put, starting a blog gives you a level of credibility with your community, because it shows them that you are attempting to communicate with them in their space and using the same tools that they use. Start your own blog, with a service such as Blogger or TypePad.

Check out MySpace

How many times have you heard a company say that they are “targeting the MySpace crowd”? MySpace is the hot social-networking site of the moment, populated by primarily 20-somethings. Music artists and bands have found MySpace to be a great avenue for promoting their music. The site boasts over 80 million members, and is the fifth most popular Web site on the Internet.

MySpace can be a very valuable weapon in your marketing arsenal, but only if you give its users a reason to interact with you in their space. Make sure that your marketing efforts are done WITH MySpace users, and that you do not market TO them.

Tap consumer-generated media sites

Today’s consumer can very easily post their own photos or even videos on the Web. YouTube and Flickr are very popular video and picture hosting Web sites. Both sites allow you to freely distribute your own videos and pictures, as well as view and comment on media that has been posted by other community members.

As with blogs, you can search both sites and see whether any videos or pictures have been posted that relate to your company or their products. You can also view comments that community members have left for each entry. Also, YouTube videos and Flickr photos can be easily shared on blogs, message boards, and social networking sites such as MySpace, which adds a viral element.

Conclusions

Consumers are more resistant to traditional forms of marketing than ever before. But if you can find new and exciting ways to reach your customers while giving value back to the community, your customers will not only listen to your message but also help you spread that message to other members of their community.

The tools listed above will help you convert customers into marketing partners for your message.

For much more detail on all of this, check out the complete source article.

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In Relationship Marketing: Business Blogs Are The Key, the following is noted:

Relationship marketing. You’ve often heard the term used, but were never really certain what it meant.

It does sound kind of touchy feely, doesn’t it?

Really all it means, however, is building good long term customer relations through interpersonal communication.

To turn your present marketing system into relationship marketing, you have to change your outlook somewhat. Traditionally, marketers have located their target market segments, presented their offer, and made the sales. It’s always been a single step process.

Relationship marketing looks at customers and clients over a longer term.

Relationship marketing is based on the idea that people prefer to do business with people who they know and like. After all, it’s easier to buy from a friend, than from someone you’ve never heard of before. It’s a matter of building trust.

The focus is on a multi-step marketing system, built on conversation between the blogger and reader, that works for the lifetime of the customer.

It’s said that people need to hear an offer at least seven times before they buy. That concept certainly works against the single step marketing method.

That is where a business blog can be really helpful. A reader can be reached seven times with ease, and many more times besides, through the blogging interaction.

As you write your daily blog entries, your readers get to know you and your business on a more personal level. Your blog begins that all important relationship with your prospects and current customers. You have started a blogging conversation.

As they read about your daily business activities, your problem solving ideas, your business advice, and your various products, they begin to think of themselves as a part of the company.

In fact, they are!

The prospective buyers for your products and services begin to turn into long term customers over time. Since they already know about you and your organization, it naturally follows that they will buy from you.

Your existing customers will remain loyal to your business, through the regular personal contact of your blog. Your customers will not only stay loyal, but they will often bring tons of valuable referral business to your company. Happy customers are your best marketing friends.

They will become customer brand evangelists for your business and its products and services.

By creating a business blog, you can develop strong bonds with your existing and future customers. Instead of treating them as numbers, you have formed a long term relationship with them.

By means of the interaction created by the blog, you have helped them become part of the business process. They are not simply customers or consumers, but an integral part of the company. Their purchases, of your products and services, are a natural response to your blog entries.

It is certainly not a one step sales system!

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