Alphablogs

Here – have a free report on business blogging.

Among other things, this report lists mistakes business bloggers make:

1. They don’t get their own domain name for their blog.
2. They use the blogging platform’s preset defaults.
3. They don’t read other blogs.
4. They blog a sales and marketing campaign.
5. They don’t allow comments or trackbacks.
6. They don’t leave comments and trackbacks on other blogs.
7. They don’t create a blogroll.
8. They don’t submit their blogs to blog directories.
9. They don’t ping any/enough news aggregators.
10. They don’t post often enough.
11. They blog like corporate CEOs.

Don’t understand some of the terms? Read the report – or ask us.

Now I’d like to tell you how I found this because it’s a great example of how Web 2.0 works.

Remember last week? I stumbled into Hawaii Online Advertising’s social media article.

“Stumbled” is a good word – I think I found that blog via Stumbleupon, one of my favourite social media sites. Here’s my account, in case you have a few days minutes to look at my collection of links and friends there.

HOA’s article prompted me to write an article here – Being social. A few people mentioned in the article left a comment, one of them Jeremiah Owyang.

On his blog, Web Strategy, Jeremiah has a link to his Twitter account. Twitter is my other all-time favourite social media site (here’s my account). In 140 words or less, Twitterers post about what’s important to them right now, anything from “I think I’m going to have a beer now” to late-breaking news to links to interesting web sites – there’s no limit to the topics. It’s like a fast-paced free-for-all forum – except you only get to see the posts of your friends, the people you “follow”. So I decided to follow Jeremiah.

This morning, Jeremiah twittered about a free web-based seminar he and Seth Godin are giving this coming Friday, Using social media to grow your business. I happened to have the time, so I signed up.

Now this seminar is run by My Venturepad, an online community for business owners and managers. On My Venturepad’s collection of blogs, Bud Bilanich’s article on blogging for business stood out – and that’s who linked to the flyte.biz blogging report we started out with.

It’s a bit of a Hansel and Gretel story, isn’t it? All those social media crumbs led me to something really yummy – and it certainly wasn’t the witch’s house.

A little confused about all of this long, winding tail? Let me give you the short version:

• Stumbleupon led to Hawaii Online Marketing’s article on social media
• HOA’s article on social media led me to write an article here on Alphablogs, “Being Social”
• “Being Social” led us to Jeremiah Owyang
• Because Jeremiah advertised his Twitter account on his blog, I started following him on Twitter
• Jeremiah twittered about an event
• I signed up for the event
• I explored the web site attached to the event
• I found an interesting article on business blogging on that web site
• That article led to the free business blogging report
• … and that led to this post here.

(Image by Alan Hoyle)