After two weeks soaking up the Hawaiian sun on holiday (and yes, it was delightful), it was hard for me to remember the Internet, let alone worry about blogging, but once you start focusing on business communications, it’s impossible to completely let go.

As a result, when we started hearing so much about the international Merrie Monarch hula festival taking place on the Big Island while we were there, I started to learn quite a bit about hula, not as dance, but as a communications channel, as a method by which the Hawaiians transmit their own oral history and culture, as a way of telling stories.

Hmm… blogging’s all about inventing and creating communications channels too, isn’t it, and the best bloggers are storytellers who are focused on the culture of technology, business and society just as much as on the specifics of their story.

And so…

The Surprising Similarities Between Blogging and Hula Dancing

I hope you enjoy it!

Here’s a truism about corporate blogging: generally, nobody cares about your widgets. What people do care about is stuff related to your widgets – cool things you can do with them, related lifestyles, corresponding industry issues, etc. This is where it gets a bit trickier. Should you be deadly serious? Can you have a bit of fun??

The cleverest tack I’ve seen lately is one taken by the Ethics Crisis blog. It’s the marketing companion to a business called SRF Global Translations. (The blog appears to be the company’s Web site, as well.)

SRF is a family-run business established in 1976 that provides “mindful, nuanced, professional multilanguage translations” of unglamorous materials like corporate codes of ethics and compliance documents.

Not the kind of widgets that make you say “cool” but certainly a very useful service.

So what’s the blog about? Well, there are sections for serious discussions of global ethics. But the fun part is an Ethics Confession page where you can type in — anonymously — the most unethical thing you’ve ever done at work (“we’re not talking about taking home the office pencils,” the blog advises).

After you’ve submitted your 250-word anecdote, readers vote on how egregious your actions were… More

There’s a new kid on the block for searching blogs by the name of Sphere.

It sports a clean and simple interface, and from my brief experience, is lightening fast. (Yes, I said it: a fast blog search.)

The default results appear to be relevancy (as opposed to recency) but that can be quickly changed. All search results pages offer an RSS button to subscribe. As a nice feature, when you click on it you have the option of seven different chicklets, including Yahoo and Bloglines among others.

On the search results page you also choose from “Featured Blogs (beta)” or “Related Media.” The featured blogs link takes you to a page of related, featured blogs along with the option of suggesting a resource.

Related media takes you to a page with books, news, photos and podcasts related to your search.

Sphere also offers a few additional tools from their Tools page including a search widget for TypePad.

As blogs continue to mature as marketing tools, there are an increasing number of “blog optimization” articles and posts appearing. Stephan has written some excellent posts here at BBC on optimizing blogs that have made a world of difference for this blog. It is however, surprising how many of the other blog marketing and optimization resources neglect the importance of inbound links.

To think that researching and placing keywords in the “right places” alone with improve a blog’s traffic is only part of the story. Blogs are simply web sites with special features. Getting web sites to rank well and to engage more traffic involves a large number of variables. The same rules apply to blogs. The difference is that there are unique linking opportunities with blogs that are not common with web sites. These include:

• Trackbacks
• Social book marks
• Guest blogging
• Comments
• Tagging
• Blogroll links

There are also methods to gain links with blogs just as you would a web site:

• Backlink analysis on competing web sites or blogs
• Directories
• Article syndication
• Profiles and bios
• Non-profit contributions
• Press releases
• Testimonials
• Job listings
• Interviews
• Social book marks
• Media coverage
• Buying web sites
• Buying links
• Forums
• Viral marketing – linkbait
• And many more

Not all of these are applicable to blogs, job listings for example, but many are.

As an example, check out the #1 rankings on Google and Yahoo for Online Marketing Blog on the phrase, “marketing blog”.

Another example is Business Blog Consulting with a #1 position on Google and #4 on Yahoo for “business blogging”.

These rankings involve more than just good on-page optimization – they include attention to inbound links. So as you work on getting all of your keyword phrases in all the right places of your blog, understand that on-page optimization is only part of the job. Links can make a night and day difference for your search engine positioning as well as traffic.

For several useful blog marketing tools check out: RSS Buttons, Social Bookmark Tool, Blog Directory List, Article on Blog Optimization.