B2B Marketing Blog, Web 2.0 Social Media, Business Blogging Tools, Micromarkets and Interactive PR

How can you attract more traffic to your blog? Generate more comments? Increase the effectiveness of guest-posting opportunities? Find free and legal images to add to your blog posts? Crank out posts more quickly? Make money from your blog?

Discover the answers to these questions and others here in the first set of the best posts about business blogging so far this year.

27 Blogging Secrets to Power Your Community by Community and Social Media

Chris Brogan shares more than two dozen tips for attracting more blog traffic, divided into three categories: Starter Moves (e.g. use an intriguing title, start with a question); Technical Stuff (e.g. clean layout, proper permalink structure); and The Bonus Round (e.g. share your posts using social media platforms, link to other blogs often).

10 ways to increase the number of blog comments by How to Make My Blog

Marko Saric offers tips for making your blog more interactive and conversational by generating more comments, such as asking questions, thanking your commenters, and commenting on other blogs.

Increase the Effectiveness of Your Next Guest Post with a Landing Page by ProBlogger

In this guest post, Jade Craven recommends using a landing page to draw traffic to your own blog through guest posts on other blogs. She identifies three types of landing pages, outlines three steps for creating a killer landing page, and shows two ways to get attention for the page. Another noteworthy post on ProBlogger is 11 Tips for Getting Your Comments Noticed on a Popular Blog, in which Darren Rowse offers tips for getting your comments noticed and driving traffic back to your blog such as being the early bird, disagreeing with the post, asking a question, or using humor.

How To Find The Best Free Image/Photo/Graphics Downloads For Your Blog Posts by Smackdown!

In this extensive post, Michael VanDeMar first explains why finding non-copyrighted images is important, then explains how to find free images through government websites or Creative Commons licenses.

Can Blogs Help Drive Purchasing Decisions? by Social Media Today

Crystal King reports that a Forrester survey from the second quarter of 2008 found that only 16% of readers of company blogs trusted them. She notes, however, that more recent research indicates that both readership of and trust in blogs is increasing. Another survey in late 2008 conducted by JupiterResearch/BuzzLogic stated that “50 percent of frequent blog readers say they have taken an action after reading a blog.” Crytal emphasizes the importance of building up trust with corporate blog readers, and concludes "Bottom line, if your company isn’t blogging, it probably needs to be."

5 Ways Your Blog Can Make Money by Conversation Marketing

The inimitable Ian Lurie details five ways—well really four, since "steal & cheat" is, as he notes, not an advisable long-term strategy—to profit from blogging. The most promising? Using it to build your business, though as Ian notes, "It's not easy. It takes a long time. But it works, beautifully. I have yet to see someone who writes insightful, thoughtful stuff 1-2 times a week fail at it."

Ten Ways to Crank Out Killer Posts in Ten Minutes or Less by Remarkablogger

Michael Martine presents tactics for quickly knocking out quality blog posts, such as answering questions from readers, reporting the results of a reader poll, or writing about the coolest person you've met recently.

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