Is it possible that Google+ could overtake Facebook in terms of member size?  And if this were to occur, what does it mean for website owners who are already struggling to maintain a presence on multiple social media channels?

First, let’s look at the data. A recent Bloomberg/YouGov survey of adult internet users found that although the current number of adults on Google+ lags behind other second-tier social networking engines like LinkedIn, Twitter and Myspace, the number of adults who plan to join Google+ within the next year could cause the site to become the second largest social networking site within a few short months.

The survey also revealed a number of interesting facts about the demographics of Google+ users.  For example:

• Active engagement is high on the network.  Approximately 45% of members report reading content on the site once a day, which falls behind only Facebook (in the #1 spot with over 62% of members engaging daily).
• Google+ users tend to be young, male and educated, with higher rates in each of these criteria than on competing social networks.

To achieve this type of growth within the first month of a site’s debut is tremendous; especially considering how skeptical many social media insiders were of the site following Google’s failures with the Buzz and Wave projects.

But despite these initially promising numbers, there are some signals that Google’s growth might not be as rosy as surveys like this would have you believe.  Here’s why…

Engaging with multiple networks can lead to burnout.  There’s no doubt that the people who choose to be active with social networking commit a serious amount of time to maintaining their profiles and connecting with friends.  Add yet another social networking service to the mix, and this engagement gets spread even thinner.  As JR Raphael of PC World says:

“First, my virtual life is already overflowing with a surplus of social services. I get recommendations from friends and colleagues on Facebook. I get links all day on Twitter. My inbox oozes with references and referrals. The last thing I need is one more place to find endorsements and share suggestions.”

There are also plenty of concerns about information security and private data being shared or exploited inappropriately on the Google+ network.  This is because Google+ is more than just a social network – because the “likes” and “+1’s” generate by users on the site could play a role in which results are reported on your search engine results pages, the site is technically also a player in the social search field.

And while there are certainly instances where it might be useful to know if your friends approve of a particular restaurant in your area, there are also plenty of people who are wary of Google having access to that much of their personal data.

It’s worth keeping in mind that, in order to use the Google+ social network, participants must have an active, public Google profile.  Certainly, those who are used to sharing the intimate details of their lives on other sites like Facebook will have no qualms about forking over their personal information, but this development is giving plenty of web strategists – like Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media – pause:

“I see us willingly giving Google a complete blueprint of our personal and professional social connections. I see Google Profiles and Google Friend Connect being used to create one user/password to unlock your entire personal Internet. I see a Google Internet secured by a Google Social Network, a place where you either exist or you don’t, where you’re either competing or you’re not.”

Of course, at this point, any speculation about the future potential growth of the Google+ network is simply that – speculation.  For one, the site remains in it’s “by invitation only” phase, and even that has been shut down due to exceeded capacity, so no new members are being added at all right now.

It’s also important to remember that surveys have their limitations as a research tool.  For this specific survey, only 1,003 people were interviewed – an incredibly small sample size considering that Facebook has over 700 million users.  There is also no mention in the survey summary of how the participants were selected, though it stands to reason that people who are engaged early adopters of new social networking sites might also be more likely to volunteer their opinions about said services.

It’s also important to remember that any extrapolations made from these small sample sizes will have their own weaknesses.  Of the 9 million estimated people who plan to join the Google+ network in the next year, some may lose interest, while others may eventually decide against expanding their social networking profile.

But for the purposes of this article, let’s consider what would happen if Google+ did continue its current growth trajectory, siphoning away frustrated Facebook users and eventually overtaking the world’s current “super power” social network.

If this were to come to pass, website owners have two major concerns – maintaining active social networking profiles on multiple sites and optimizing their sites to take advantage of the power of social search.

The first of these concerns – balancing the time investment needed to participate in multiple social networks – can be addressed by identifying where the site’s target customers or “community” spends most of their time.  For example, if Google+ remains largely young and male, website owners targeting female demographics might have better luck investing time and effort into sites that cater more closely to these groups.

The second concern is a little more difficult to address.  In the past, website owners simply needed to follow a set of defined recommendations called search engine optimization (SEO) in order to have their sites show up first when specific keywords are entered into a search engine.

However, the implementation of social search could make it more difficult to achieve these top rankings by giving preference to sites that the friends of a searcher have “+1’ed” using the Google+ toolset.  And although this idea is frustrating to many website owners who have invested heavily in SEO, it isn’t cause for alarm – just a slight adjustment in strategy.

Instead of writing for the search engines when it comes to building content for your website, you’re now writing for people – actual people who want to find and read good content, then share it with their friends.  Focus on building this great content now, and you’ll definitely see the rewards, whether or not the full potential of the Google+ social networking site and social search features are ever fully realized.

It is possible to get your site to the front page of Digg (and to get the massive flood of traffic that accompanies this feat), but you’re going to need to follow a very different set of strategies than what’s being repeated ad nauseum by the so-called SEO “gurus”.

But before we get started, we need to understand what Digg is, how it started and how it’s evolved over the past few years.  Basically, the site started out as a social bookmarking site – a place where people could share links they found interesting or learn about new stories that other users had highlighted.

It was also a very easy way for website owners to build up high PageRank backlinks to their own sites, improving their off-page search engine optimization.  Simply sign up for an account, drop in a few links and wait a few hours for the spiders to pick them up from this frequently-indexed site.

Of course, real Digg users have always been on to this scam – when you’re truly invested in a website, it’s pretty easy to tell who’s using the site naturally and who’s attempting to game the system for personal gain.  But in the last year, Digg has undergone a major site redesign that puts more of an emphasis of social interactions, devaluing these backlink spam tactics even more.

So let’s look at the new Digg…  Following a poorly received redesign in August 2010, the site has largely returned to its original roots as a content collector that allows users to either “vote up” or “vote down” a story.

As you can see, the homepage itself hasn’t changed much since its launch in 2004 – the site still features the stories with the most Diggs across a variety of categories, including Business, Entertainment, Gaming, Lifestyle and more.  And, as you can see, sponsored stories (a function that was added back in 2009) are still featured amongst these results.

However, where the new version of Digg has really expanded its capabilities is in terms of connections between users.  Similar to Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, Digg now allows users to expand their personal profiles and view a custom homepage where news articles from contacts are displayed.

This “My News” section becomes the homepage for users after they log in, which presents articles that have recently been submitted and promoted by the people the user is following. If a user hasn’t taken the time to connect to other Digg users, no articles will be displayed here.  From this screen, users can edit their own profiles, submit content or comment on the articles their connections have submitted.

So that’s Digg in a nutshell, but considering the site’s shift away from communal news sources and move towards increased social sharing, how can users benefit most from this service?  And how can they attain that highly coveted top spot on the Digg homepage?

Well, as you’ve probably guessed, the answer isn’t to create an account simply for the purpose of submitting every blog post you write without engaging the community in any way…  Instead, the key to earning traffic from Digg is to become an active part of the community.  Here’s how to do it:

Step #1 – Set up your own profile.

Which type of person would you be more likely to interact with?  Someone whose profile includes a picture, a full name and some fun, personable details, or someone who’s only personal information is his or her user name?  The reality is, if you want to get noticed on Digg, you’ve got to have your profile filled out, so if you’re new to the service, be sure to fill out the following fields:

• Full Name
• Picture
• Location
• About Yourself
• Gender
• Links

Step #2 – Connect with leaders in your niche.

The next key to getting noticed on Digg is to identify the major “movers and shakers” in your industry.  These people are the authority bloggers, the big names and the people with hundreds or thousands of friends and followers.

Generally, these people are pretty easy to find.  Heck – Digg may even suggest them to you using their new social tools, based on the words in your profile and the content you’ve submitted.  But if you don’t have any suggested connections, look through the articles in your niche that have been dug the most or have the most comments, and you’ll typically see a pattern that points to the most active users.

Step #3 – Interact with these Diggers.

Don’t just follow the leaders you identified in Step #2 – actually engage with them.  Digg the content they submit and comment on the stories they share.  Make it a point to connect with them on other services, like Facebook and Twitter, and share the stories they submit on Digg on these other sites as well.  Get their attention and show them that you want to be an active part of the Digg community.

Step #4 – Write damn good content.

Admit it – you thought this article was going to be all frou-frou, “engage with your community” social networking speak…  But the truth is, it doesn’t matter who you’ve connected with or how many people are following your Digg submissions.  You aren’t going to make it to the front page of Digg if you only ever submit mediocre content that no one’s interested in.

Of course, you don’t have to be the next Shakespeare to get your content noticed on Digg.  In fact, writing good linkbait content is less about grammar and sentence structure and more about writing content that people actually want to read and share.

So what types of content tend to do well on Digg?  Consider writing and submitting any of the following options:

• Current events posts. Whenever there’s a major development online (like the launch of the Google+ network or the Panda SEO update), people want to read as much as they can about it.  They want to read different opinions and reactions, so if you can pick up on hot trends quickly and be the first one to submit an article on a new topic to Digg, you might be able to ride that initial wave of interest to the front page.
• List posts. There’s something magical about list posts (as an example, see “4 Tips for Pitching Guest Posts”) that make people want to read them and share them.  These posts can take a little longer to write, but that investment of time can pay off big if your article takes off on Digg.
• Controversial posts.  Don’t be needlessly inflammatory, but if you can write a well-reasoned controversial post that challenges accepted industry wisdom, you can bet that people will be falling all over themselves to promote your content on Digg.

Of course, none of these techniques are guaranteed to get you a front page article on Digg.  Web users can be fickle, and what works well one day might do nothing the next.  However, by making an effort to engage with the Digg community and regularly writing content that’s likely to be shared, you’ll get the biggest possible benefit from this unique traffic source.

For all its intimidation factors, guest posting is worth the risk for the exposure to new audiences, the new relationships with other bloggers, and the high-quality backlinks. So how can you pitch your posts and assure that they will be accepted as often as possible? Start by following these simple pieces of advice.

Know the blog

You need to have at least a surface-level familiarity with the blog you are pitching to. Make sure you have read the About page and a number of the recent posts. Notice whether or not other guest posts have appeared recently, and check for a page that describes how to present a guest post proposal.

If the blog has instructions on how to submit guest posts, and if the blog’s requirements contradict anything else you have read, always follow the blog’s specific requests. These tips are general guidelines, but many larger blogs are overwhelmed with guest post proposals, and the requests which don’t follow the blog’s requirements are easily discarded. Make it clear that you have done your research.

Be sure to choose the right blog to start submitting guest posts. Try starting with smaller blogs before targeting A-list bloggers, and be sure to listen to and learn from any feedback from editors or commenters.

Offer multiple ideas

When a blog does not specifically request a fully written post, it is best to offer post ideas instead. By providing two or three different ideas, you can be sure that you are spending time on the post which will get the best reception by the blog’s audience. You will also be able to incorporate any ideas or requests from the editor, instead of trying to add them in later.

When offering your ideas, flesh them out enough to be understood without being too wordy. Try offering article titles and one or two sentences describing what you would write about. Format the email so that the titles stand out – using a bulleted list or making the titles bold with the descriptions beneath.

Prove your mettle

If you are not sending a fully-written post, show the quality of your writing by sending links to your best work. Sending links to your blog helps, but showing other guest posts that you have written shows the blog that you are pitching to that you are experienced with guest posting. The social proof of seeing that other bloggers have trusted you to guest post on their sites can also help influence an editor to accept your work.

If you blog on a similar subject as the blog you are submitting a proposal to, you should point out your site as well. Also mention if you have specific expertise or another reason for being a good voice in your field. When other bloggers respect you as an authority or insider instead of a newcomer, you will have more meaningful connections which might even blossom into other partnerships.

Cut to the chase

Though this might seem like a lot of information to put into an initial contact, you should also make sure your first email is as short and streamlined as possible. Include a sentence or two of introduction stating that you would like to guest post, include your guest post ideas, and then add links to previously posted work. End with a simple thank you.

Avoid sending attachments unless they are specifically requested. Most people, including bloggers, view any attachments from unknown senders with suspicion, and might go as far as ignoring your email when they saw it had an attachment.

Though you might be anxious about the idea of guest posting, start by just writing a proposal. Once you know that a subject is right for a particular blog, you can write your post with that blog and its audience in mind. Plus, nothing speeds up writing like a deadline! By taking a baby-step approach to writing guest posts, you can get your posts done with less anxiety and more success.

The most comprehensive free analytics package is Google Analytics, and it’s easy to set up, too! Follow along to set up analytics on your site and start learning more about your visitors.

Create a Google Account

Contrary to popular belief, you do not need a gmail address to create a Google Account. Just click Create a Google Account and you can use your existing email address along with a password. Of course, if you have an existing Google Account (including with a gmail address), just sign in with that account.

You will also need to add your country, time zone, and phone number during the process – just keep following the prompts.

Add Site Information

You also need to add information about the first website you would like to track analytics for. When your account is set up, you can add more sites. You don’t need to add much more information than just the URL, but make sure it’s a URL that you own: in later steps, you will need to add a piece of code to your site for Google to track.

Accept Terms

Read and accept Google’s terms and conditions, and consider sharing your data. Data sharing is not required, but all the shared data goes to make Google’s new benchmarking service better. You can change whether your data is shared or not through your account settings.

Add the Tracking Code

After you have agreed to terms and conditions and finished creating your account, you are given a block of JavaScript code to copy and paste into your website. Use the “New Tracking Code (ga.js)” – the legacy code is created for users of an older version of Google Analytics. Copy the entire block of code.

If you do not have access to your website’s files, email the code and instructions to your webmaster and ignore the next paragraph.

If you do have access to your files, you need to make sure the code is pasted in the source code near the end of each page, just before the </body> tag. This tag should not appear as text to anyone who is visiting your site. The best way to do this, especially if you use WordPress or another CMS, is to add the code to the footer file (usually named footer.php or something similar). Make sure your file is saved and uploaded successfully to the server.

Make sure it’s working

Once your file is live on the server, it’s only a matter of time before your Google Analytics homepage detects the files. When it does, the website status in the Status column will change from “Tracking Unknown” to “Waiting for Data” or “Receiving Data.”

If you want to make sure all of your pages have the Google Analytics code installed correctly, you can use the third-party service created by EpikOne at http://www.SiteScanGA.com. After signing up with your email address, you will receive a report showing how many pages your site has and how many of them have the correct Google Analytics code.

Wait for Results

After you have installed Google Analytics, it might take a little while for your first data points to appear. It will probably take a week or a month before you start seeing data trends. It is easier to do in-depth analysis after you have already established a baseline behavior of your users, so don’t change too much right after you install analytics. It is important to check on your analytics periodically, and more often if you are actively trying to change your site’s search engine ranking, starting a new advertising campaign, or otherwise trying to solicit more traffic. As you make changes, seasons change, and other outside influences vary, you can watch how each change impacts your traffic and change your website accordingly.

Though this only scratches the surface of what you can do with analytics, now that you have them set up, you can experiment for yourself!

Create great content

Some content is spread more easily within the StumbleUpon community than others. Infographics, photos, and interesting articles are popular. Don’t expect a sales page to go viral. Find creative ways to make your subject interesting to a wider audience. Tutorials, in-depth guides, and other informative articles or videos are great for some users, and wacky news articles or stories are enjoyed by others. Often, though not always, content that has gone viral on Facebook or Digg will also be successful on StumbleUpon.

Make sure your page and your website is appealing and easy to understand for the first-time visitor. Though this is always a best-practice, stumblers are poised and ready to click Stumble again and be directed to yet another interesting page. Yours needs to stand out and be noticed.

Request Stumbles

If you are targeting StumbleUpon, include a Stumble badge above or below your posts to encourage users to submit the page to StumbleUpon. Though many stumblers use browser toolbars, an icon helps a user to stumble a page without navigating away or using their toolbar. You could even write a post educating your audience about StumbleUpon, encouraging your existing fans to bolster your ratings as they join a site they might not have known about.

Use StumbleUpon

To engage with users who have similar interests to you, start using StumbleUpon yourself. As a user, you can follow and interact with other users who are interested in subjects related to your site or niche. You can even suggest specific sites to individuals.

However, be cautious in your use of any social media site. Get to know the culture of the site by interacting with other users respectfully. Don’t be too pushy – just engage with the community and bring up your own content when it is appropriate or relevant.

Keep your content accessible

With mobile apps for Android, iPhone, and iPad along with toolbars for a number of different browsers, StumbleUpon will present your site to people using a number of platforms. Make sure your site can be viewed by many different kinds of devices to benefit from the audiences surfing StumbleUpon on their phones or tablets.

Paid Discovery

StumbleUpon also offers an advertising method for site owners to display their page directly to people using StumbleUpon. Instead of displaying a text or banner ad, paid discovery adds your page to the stream that users are clicking through, looking for sites, posts, and images they enjoy. Targeted visitors will go straight to your page, ready to enjoy whatever they are looking at. Find out more on the StumbleUpon Paid Discovery page.

Shorten URLs

If you Tweet about your page, chances are you use a URL shortening service. Use the su.pr URL shortener to both display your page and add a StumbleUpon frame, encouraging users to click the thumbs-up. Use one social media site to bolster the adoption of another.

Track Stumbles

It is much easier to keep something growing once it has started to go viral. Keep track of which of your articles are going viral on StumbleUpon or other sites. Encourage further engagement by promoting the same content on other social media networks, and by further publicizing the success of your page, encouraging even more people to find out about it and share it on their favorite social media network.

You can even point out the most-Stumbled sites using a StumbleUpon widget on your own site. Showing which pages are popular will encourage more people to visit the best pages on your site. Stumblers will be especially interested to check and see if they agree with the votes of others.

Do you use StumbleUpon? Which of your posts have gotten the most attention from Stumblers? Do you have any other advice to add?

Create a Fan Page

First things first, create a page for your business. Make sure you have a few photos and a logo on hand, and choose the appropriate categories related to your business. When creating the page, try to fill out all the information right off the bat, so you don’t have to come back to it later. Some things, like a vanity URL, can only be created when you have enough fans, but start with what you know.

Make the Page Engaging

Once the basic information about your page is filled out, try experimenting with adding apps, creating a landing page, or having fun with your images. Try looking up “great Facebook business pages” for inspiration, because a number of blogs have done different roundups pointing out a number of unique features. Remember, make your business unique instead of feeling like you need to have the exact same features that other company pages do. You can always change it later!

Advertise the Page to Your Fans

Once you’ve created the page, it’s time to start getting some Likes. Ask your coworkers, family, friends, or loyal customers for the first likes directly, so that you at least have a few. If you have a newsletter, make an announcement about the new Facebook page and solicit Likes and design suggestions.

Once you have established a small fanbase, add a Facebook widget to your website. This can give social proof to new visitors while enabling anyone to Like your page without even leaving your website.

Start Conversations

As people join your fanbase, it’s time to let them know that you’re listening. In your account settings, you can switch to using Facebook as your page, which means that your comments will display the company name and profile picture instead of your personal picture.

Once people have become a fan, they rarely return to your company’s fan page. Instead, you need to depend on getting stories in their News Feed to help them make more of a connection with your company. Facebook’s algorithm determining what appears in a particular user’s News Feed incorporates how popular a post itself is (likes and comments), as well as how often that user interacts with a particular organization’s posts and page. So the more interaction you can encourage, the better!

Try posting surveys, questions, links, or announcements. Request likes and comments directly by saying something like “I can’t wait for summer. Like this if you agree!” or asking a question like “I can’t wait to jump in the pool. What is your favorite summer activity?” Post links to your blog or other relevant information – and if you post a link and ask a question at the same time, you can get even more exposure.

Remember, most companies on Facebook display a more casual, fun-loving side. Though you don’t want to alienate your fans if they expect more of a corporate persona, consider relaxing your communication style while still being respectful.

Talk Back

Facebook has become a powerful tool for customer service, which requires two-way conversation. Make sure that you are monitoring the activity on your Facebook page, and ready to answer questions, compliments, or complaints. Saying a simple “Thank You” is a nice touch if someone is just dropping by to say they like your products or services.

Complaints are more tricky to address, but try to make it clear that you respect your customer’s experiences and that you are willing to fix it or change something in the future. Stay personal, professional and sincere – sarcasm or jokes are bad ways to respond to problems anyway, and especially online where no one can hear how you are saying something.

Also, if you don’t know how to answer a question or complaint, leave a comment anyway letting someone know that you are following up and finding out an answer. Otherwise, even if you are working on it, your customers might feel like they are being left waiting.

Just Try It

You don’t have to use Facebook perfectly to start using it for your business. You will inevitably learn more as you continue to use it, but for now you should just give it a shot!

The Hello Bar is being used by a number of well-known bloggers and internet marketers, and they are seeing significant results. DIYThemes reported getting 1,180 additional newsletter subscribers in just one month, and others have used it to advertise books, products, and new blog posts.

How does it work? It gets noticed.

Short and Sweet

The Hello Bar can only hold about a Tweet’s worth of text, which only wraps on the smallest window size. A single line of text is generally unthreatening, and can be read in a few seconds without the friction that larger blocks of text have. Inevitably, some people will still ignore the Hello Bar, but they are becoming common on more and more websites.

A Little Nudge

The Hello Bar can also be gently disruptive. Website owners can select whether the Hello Bar appears instantaneously, or if it should appear after a few seconds, wiggling the page just enough to get noticed. Though this can be surprising to users, it is also very effective for attracting attention and doesn’t impede reading or interacting with the rest of the page.

Call-to-action

An immediate call-to-action gives users a very simple choice: either they can visit the link or they can continue reading the current page with minimal disruption. Though the bar can be hidden with a click, most users will simply ignore the minor intrusion and continue interacting with the page as they would have before.

Maximizing return

When using the Hello Bar, some calls-to-action are still better than others – just because you are using a new service doesn’t mean you can skimp on your copywriting! Pro accounts can do A/B testing with their Hello Bar headlines, but you can do your own headline testing with free accounts by changing the content every few weeks.

One recommendation is to offer something tangible in the Hello Bar, like a whitepaper or an ebook, instead of just telling your readers how to get free updates. Offering an email course or ebook is a great way to interest people in your newsletter even without the Hello Bar!

Landing pages

You also need to be careful where your link is sending your readers. If they aren’t greeted with something resembling what they were promised, chances are they will simply turn tails and leave. Instead, you need to have a tested, ready-to-work landing page to receive your readers. This is another chance for A/B testing to be sure that you are maximizing your conversion rate.

The Cost

Another great part about the Hello Bar: its price. The free Hello Bar can be customized with text, colors and fonts, and a free account can actually create 3 unique Hello Bars for different pages or sites and update them using Twitter.

For only $25 each month, the Hello Bar can be personalized even more, removing the Hello Bar branding and allowing for A/B split testing and advanced statistics. The Hello Bar can even receive updates via either Twitter or RSS.

Thankfully, we’ve distilled a number of subjects down to just 25 books that every blogger should read, in alphabetical order. Check out the comments to see which ones we’ve missed, or add your favorite!

Blogging for Business: Everything You Need to Know and Why You Should Care by Shel Holtz and Ted Demopoulos

A lighthearted look at business blogs, both internal and external, with plenty of advice for the technologically-challenged.

Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene M. Schwartz

Advertising strategies to set you apart from the pack and master successful copywriting and marketing.

Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, and Webinars (and more) that Engage Customers and Ignite your Business by Ann Handley & C.C. Chapman

Most of these books are for more than just blogs, but this one in particular: if you’re creating any kind of online content, you need to make it right.

The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right by Debbie Weil

If your company is ready to start a corporate blog, try out this book as a first primer to truly connect with customers.

Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk

Take charge of your passion, turn it into a business, and grow it with social media.

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug

Start thinking about your website the way that your users think about your website.

The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information by Richard A. Lanham

What do people pay attention to? How can you get more attention from people by making your work easier to consume and understand?

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber

If you are striking out on your own as a business owner, figure out how to solve the problems outlined in this book before you run into them yourself.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

Seldom has one simple, practical book met such acclaim, but millions now swear by the productivity practices in Getting Things Done.

Hot Text: Web Writing That Works! by Jonathan and Lisa Price

If you just want to get down to writing without worrying how it will turn out, learn how to write for the web.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

You need to understand how people think before trying to communicate with them or sell them anything.

Method Marketing: How to make a fortune by getting inside the heads of your customers by Dension Hatch

A great lesson in direct marketing, with a number of examples of things that worked and things that didn’t.

Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel

Blogs connect with customers directly and constantly – take advantage of that and leverage it for your own blog and business.

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz

Your blog, your business, and your success is built on relationships, so keep getting to know people and leveraging the power of networking.

Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy

The basics of advertising from the best in the business. Old, but still valuable.

On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser

This basic book on writing is a classic that has stood the test of time.

Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business by DL Byron and Steve Broback

A practical book to prepare you for your first business blog, complete with case studies.

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin

Get ready to stand out and be noticed.

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett

This book isn’t just about creating a blog or monetizing it – it walks you all the way through the process.

Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service by Ken Blanchard, Sheldon Bowles and Harvey Mackay

Common sense customer service presented in a parable of a company that isn’t satisfied by just having satisfied customers.

The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life by Richard Florida

Bloggers are changing the world – and so are people in a wide range of creative endeavors.

Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas by Edward De Bono

Brainstorm your best ideas yet by learning the best way to think creatively.

A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Young

Another book on creativity and idea generation for copywriters and marketers.

Twitter Power 2.0: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time by Joel Comm and Anthony Robbins

Using Twitter to build relationships, have conversations, and grow your business.

Write It Right: The Ground Rules for Self-Editing Like the Pros by Dawn Josephson and Lauren Hidden

Often, one of the hardest things about blogging is being the only person responsible for your content. This includes writing well as well as touching up grammatical mistakes.

Think of any more book suggestions? Add them in the comments:

Write interesting content
The best bloggers always create interesting, high quality content to share with their audience and only want to link to the best content from other bloggers. Spending time on your blog posts will pay off as your reputation for doing great work starts to go up.

When writing, don’t forget to encourage your audience to interact with your post, especially if it’s one of your best ones. When a post is spread on Twitter or Facebook, and when it has a number of comments, the social credibility goes up and another blogger will be more likely to continue spreading it.

Write about others
Who doesn’t like to see what others are saying about them? Mention the bloggers who have influenced you in the past, and make recommendations to your own audience about other bloggers to follow. Offer congratulations on birthdays or blogging anniversaries.

You can also request an interview to really get the attention of a blogger. Many don’t have time for interviews, but many will respond graciously, especially if you have interesting or unique questions. Try using different formats, including asking for written answers, setting up a time to Skype, and sending the questions ahead of time.

Write for others
Guest posting has come into vogue in the blogosphere, and that’s because it works. Saving a fellow blogger some work in exchange for links and access to a new audience is a win-win situation. Start writing your best work, and then offer to guest post on blogs you admire or appreciate.

Remember, what’s interesting for one person or audience isn’t always interesting for another. Writing a successful guest post can be a dance – you need to be heard and understood by two different audiences, attracting new readers while staying true to your old ones. Make sure that you write about a subject that is engaging for your audience both from your own blog and the blog where you are guest posting.

Build a relationship
Every relationship starts a different way, so be prepared whenever you have the opportunity to start a relationship with another blogger. Try starting with peers or other bloggers with similar sizes of blogs. Take a moment to say “hi” on Twitter or at a conference, and keep following up and being memorable. Build both strong relationships and meaningful acquaintances, and keep in touch.

Look for chances to interact with bloggers face-to-face or in real-time. Conferences, meet-ups, and even book-signings can be a great opportunity to help you stand out from the crowd. But those events can also be overwhelming for a blogger, so get their attention in a positive, helpful way.

Make them angry
This is not a recommended way to get talked about, but bloggers will often rant about things or people who make them angry, sometimes by name. Technically, you might get a backlink out of it, but you won’t get the type of press that will keep visitors on your site.

Create something useful
Bloggers can be very outspoken about problems they have, and if they’re outspoken about the problem, they’ll usually be outspoken about the solution too. If you have created a tool or approach that would be helpful for a blogger you follow, don’t be shy. Share it with them.

Speak up
Remember, you can spend a lot of time laying the foundation, but sometimes you just need to start the conversation. Introduce yourself and a recent, great blog post. After all, the worst that anyone could say would be no! Just make sure that you’re courteous, and if you don’t get a response, take a break. Worse than being unknown is being seen as pushy or annoying.

Are there any ways that you get your blog noticed by other bloggers? When do you attract the most backlinks from other bloggers? What recommendations would you make to bloggers trying to build a relationship with you?

Search engines love fresh content first and foremost. Your blog is an asset because it continually posts content that is highly relevant to your audience. But you need to make sure you’re always posting about what is on your audience’s mind.

A number of HTML elements can affect your blog’s on-page SEO, so don’t forget to put some thought into your title tags, image attributes, and Meta descriptions. You also need to make sure that the rest of your content is underscoring what your attributes and descriptions say.

That’s where keyword research comes in: it can help you create better, more targeted content, and help make sure you have the right keywords in your meta tags.

How do you do keyword research? If you are like most bloggers, you simply start writing something that you think relates to what you do. But what if that’s not what your future readers are looking for, and you miss out on traffic and attention because you wrote an article about “how to make a chocolate donut” instead of “chocolate donut recipes”?

How do you change? Do you have to start guessing word combinations? Of course not! Instead, check out some great keyword research tools that will give you the titles of your next blog posts.

Here are some keyword research tools to start with:
• Keyword Discovery – provides tutorial videos that show you how to use this tool.
• Wordtracker – specializes in providing related words and long-tail keyword phrases. Also includes a free trial of software.
• WordStream – simple to try out, but subscription-based.
• Google AdWords Keyword Tool – the more competition there is for a keyword, the more you know people are searching for it.
• Google Insights for Search – allows you to see data from specific locations and time ranges.

These tools tend to be pretty simple: enter the keyword, and it will return a number of related search terms that people are using right now, as well as how many people are searching for each word or phrase. Start checking out a couple of their free trials and see if they give you any good ideas for new blog posts. Free trials will also let you see if any of the tools work well enough to be worth a subscription fee.

To decide what keyword to start with, imagine that you were trying to find your business, but you didn’t know the name of it. Or ask your customers what they would search for if they had to find your business website and couldn’t use the name. This could reveal interesting word combinations, especially if your customers don’t know the right jargon or industry terminology to describe your business precisely.

Don’t forget to pay attention to the long-tail keywords, or keyword phrases that are longer than three or four words, as well. Though long-tail keywords are less common, they also have less competition. And when writing a blog, you have room to fit in a number of long-tail keywords without having them clumped together and seeming unnatural.

Long-tail keywords are also important because you know that the user is looking for something specific. If you can attract their attention and provide what they need, you’ve found a loyal fan or a buying customer. Long-tail keywords tend to convert much better than short, simple keywords.

Most importantly, make sure that you are using your blog (and all the keywords in it) to explain what your company actually does. Don’t be afraid to use casual language, because people are going to be searching the way they speak, and their terminology probably won’t be perfect. But if you can understand each other, you’re a lot closer to making a sale.

How much does keyword research affect your blog posts? Is your blog a major source of search engine traffic? What is holding it back? Add your comments and check out the advice of others below!