Today the Duct Tape Marketing Blog Channel added 14 new blogs on specific small business topics bringing the total to 22. The collective brainpower coming from this blog network will make it the place to go for small business information.

Some of the blogs on the channel are authored by well known small business folks, some are written by people you may not be familiar with, but have much to say.

And now the list of blogs:
• Duct Tape Marketing
• Business Life
• Dan Janal’s PR Leads
• The Idea Department
• Customers Count
• Word Wealth
• Selling To Big Companies
• Design Matters
• Business Blogging Confidential
• The Buzz Saw
• In Your Own Backyard
• Help People Choose You
• Ethics in Business
• People Management
• The Small Biz Wiz
• Referrals for Life
• Internet Innovations
• Nailing Customers (with CRM)
• Your Trusted Selling Brand
• MEDIA 2.0
• Personal Fame Blog
• Small Biz Reads

Mack Collier at the Viral Garden has taken the Alexa data and come up with a top 25 marketing blogs list. Some you’ve heard of, some, I suspect, you have not. I find these types of lists to be a good way to find some really good new (to me at least) blogs.

The obsessive compulsive blog stats person might be interested in a free service called MyBlogLog

MyBlogLog logs the clicking activity of your blog visitors and graphically displays which links are the most popular with your visitors by hovering over the link. This can fall under the heading of “stupid blog tricks,” but the service also allows you to post a sidebar widget that lists your most popular links.

This tool does add to the richness of your content.

Interesting post from Heather Green at Business Week regarding advertising in RSS feeds. She interviews Feedburner’s Dick Costello who is discovering that contextual ads in RSS feeds don’t do as well as ads simply focused on the demographic of the reader.

This turns the typical ad model (blog about cameras gets ads about camera gear) on its ear a bit, but I think may make ads in RSS feeds a little more intersting.

It does make sense when you think about it. A blog viewer who comes to blog by way of search is, at the moment, focused on finding very specific information, including ads that relate to that information.

An RSS reader or subscriber may read the feed out of habit and be more open to reading and responding to an ad that hits other subjects.

A new service set to launch next week called 3Bubbles allows bloggers to add a chat function to each post as a way to extend the conversation with readers. This looks like an interesting way to really make blogs conversations.

Here is another great Firefox extension that allows you to interact with the web pages you visit. It’s called Hyperwords. Hyperwords allows you to highlight the text on any web page and then choose from an automatic menu to search, look up reference sites, map, tag, check definitions, translate, email or blog about the page

Last week TypePad had well documented service issues and outages caused by in part by their attempts to keep pace with the enormous growth of blogging. Today, WordPress (probably the largest benefactor of the TypePad blues) launched a much awaited 2.0 upgrade.

But, if you tried to grab your copy you were greeted with this message all day long.
“Switching servers, please check back in about a half hour. Thanks! — Matt”

I’m not picking on either service, they are both wonderful success stories, I just don’t know if anyone can really handle the adoption rate of blogging. There’s certainly room for others to play!

Georgia Patrick, one of the Duct Tape Marketing Channel contributors, has a great thread going, titled – All I Want For Christmas is a Blog Gone Bad. The post is about some media coverage titled “When Blogs Go Bad.” The discussion centers on the very good outcome that can be had when your blog receives what some might see as negative attention.

Take a look and add your good/bad blog stories.

Great new extension for Firefox users allows you to blog a site directly from your browswer. The extension seems to work flawlessly with TypePad, WordPress and MovableType blogs. Easy to use and easy to set-up

Performancing for Firefox

My good friend and fellow Duct Tape Marketing Blog Channeler Zane Safrit, CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited, has a wonderfully thoughtful personal blog post that follows an interview he conducted with a Communications major at Northeastern University on the subject of blogging.

The student was writing an essay on blogs and Zane is one of the most articulate and passionate bloggers I know – you should to get to know him.

Google added an RSS reader to their growing list of blog related tools and this could be good news for your blog.

No, I don’t really think that the world needs another RSS reader (unless you are really into GMail and this syncs right into that)

What it may mean, however, is that you now have a way to get your feed indexed by Google and into their Blog Search tool. Getting you feed indexed by Google isn’t really that hard, but if you subscribe to your RSS feed via the new Google Reader, I assume they have to crawl your feed in order to deliver the results to you, their loyal client.

This appears to work very much like adding your feed to a MyYahoo page.

Feedburner has quickly become many a bloggers tool of choice for easily amping up the power of the blog’s feed.

Two recent additions to the Feedburner toolbox suggest they don’t plan to sit around and watch the blog world go by.

PingShot allows publishers who burn their feed through Feedburner to automatically ping a growing number of RSS and blog directories every time they post.

FeedBlitz allows publishers to add email to the ways readers can subscribe. With only 4-6% of surfers out there really taping into RSS at the moment, email is still a great way to communicate.

Both of these new services integrate smoothly into the Feedburner interface and tracking mechanism.

Next Tuesday, October 4th, 11 am Pacific (Noon M, 1pm C, 2pm E) I will
be interviewed on a free teleseminar hosted by Steven Van Yoder, author
of Get Slightly Famous, on the – The Basics of Business Blogging (and why every business should have a blog)

Here are some of the things we will discuss on the call:
– An easy-to-grasp explanation of blogs and blogging
– The benefits of blogs over e-mail newsletters
– How to cost-effectively start and maintain your own blog
– How to brand your blog with great writing, audio, and video
– How to use your blog as a new income generator

Blogging has become an integral part of my marketing and is responsible
for generating significant revenue, leads, PR, awards and even a book
deal! Maybe it’s time to learn how to harness this powerful tool.

Click Here To Register

I know we have been singing the praises of the new ping service called Pingoat but I recently discovered they have added another very useful service.

Fill out a simple form and Pingoat will create (and even FTP to your site)an XML Google sitemap. See for yourself.

No surprise here – only wondering what took them so long.

The interface is typically Google and the results are a bit odd but hey, it’s Google.

Google Blog Search

Using the word "mainstream" when it comes to blogs is now, so last
year.
But, based on the frequent questions I receive from readers,
effectively employing a blog as a marketing tool is still a bit of a
mystery to most.

Many of my readers ask some variation of this question: "Should I be using a blog, an ezine, email or RSS?" And my answer: YES

Here’s my take.

By itself, a blog is probably not enough (unless you are Tom Peters or the like.)

Small businesses should take the power of a blog and combine it with
an email distribution list and weekly or monthly ezine newsletter.
When you employ all three you get the biggest bang for your marketing
effort.

A couple reasons why you still need to email delivery.

• RSS is not yet the content delivery method of choice for the average person
• Email content is pushed out to readers as a reminder that you are there – RSS doesn’t allow this same control
• Capturing email addresses allows you to market your readers over and over again

In many cases, someone will visit your blog or web site and like
what they see but get pulled away by some other distraction, never to
return to your blog again. If you capture that same person’s email and
permission to send further communication, you turn that visit into a
lead.

If
you are posting to your blog like you should (3-5/wk minimum) then you
should have plenty of content to repurpose into a newsletter. Pull out
your best posts and expand on them or do a round-up of your blog posts.
You will find that your readers will gravitate towards their reading
method of choice – RSS or email.
I love blogs, I love RSS delivery. But, don’t short your marketing
efforts. Make your message available in as many forms as possible –
that’s how you create marketing momentum.

RSS is a wonderful thing as it allows us to easily distribute content. On the other hand, it allows slime balls to rip content off at will. Sites are cropping up like mushrooms that do nothing more than scrape the feeds of blogs, press release distributors and article publishers to repurpose this information, often as their very own, on a blog.

These sites have no user value as they are often written by robots and don’t make much sense to the human eye. They do however, generate some cheap search engine traffic and AdSense clickthroughs for the owners.

I guess these folks figure that since you publish an RSS feed, it’s
not really stealing. These are the same people that would reason,
"since you left your door unlocked I thought it was okay to take your
new big screen."

Here is a Scam Blog
(no follow tag used) that appears to take every single one of its posts
from other blogs – word for word – and gives no credit. You will notice
also that there is no person to contact regarding the blog and even the
comments sections are monitored so that no one can post a cautionary
comment.
One way to locate these types of blogs is to do an exact search on the
title of your blog posts and see what comes up.

Now, what to do about it.Some have proposed putting really
nasty copyright notes in your XML file that will be written when
someone or something merely republishes your RSS feed.

Something like:

"This content is copyright Bill Blogbucket and if you are
reading it on someone else’s site then they simply ripped it off and
are violating every known copyright law in the free world. The fact
that you are reading this makes you a criminal too."

There, that ought to keep the scammers away.

The problem I have with this any other form of policing is that it
sort of defeats the purpose of RSS. I want people to read what I write,
I want people to use what I write, I want people to aggregate what I
write and I know that some may rip me off along the way. To me, I don’t
have to be happy about it, but it’s part of the price of admission.

There are a host of other solutions, such a making people register
to view or publish your RSS feed or setting your RSS to show only
headlines. The problem I have with any of these fixes is that they make
it harder for legitimate users to get the content. I don’t think the
trade-off is worth it.

When I can find the guilty party I send them a note imploring them to stop at once and leave it at that.

I choose to view it as a compliment I guess. I wouldn’t dream of
doing it myself but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it either.

I believe these folks will rot in hell someday, so that’s good enough for me!

On the other hand, these scam artists may someday pose such a
problem for the search engines that they may be forced to view RSS
feeds, good and bad, in a different light than they currently do – that
may be a really bad thing.

Please, bloggers and any other form of Internet marketer, have the
decency to give credit where credit is due. And, stop spending your
money on those software programs that promise to create thousands of
high quality content pages for you in minutes and just do the work.

And on that note: Darren Rowse at ProBlogger is the source for some of this rant and good source of information on all things blogish.

And some other thoughts on Blog rip-off and blog content copyright

• Creative Commons
• Marketing Sherpa
• Read/Write Web

I recently completed a survey of small businesses over at Duct Tape Marketing that I think sheds some light on the impact of blogging as a small business marketing tool

It seems that the recent hype surrounding blogs and blogging has made the average small business marketer aware of blogs to the point that many have even dipped their toe in the blog water. What’s not so clear is the benefit many of these bloggers are receiving.

75 percent of the respondents shared that they indeed knew what a blog was. Another 46 percent admitted that they regularly visited from 1-5 blogs weekly. 13 percent stated that they visited more than 20 blogs per week.

However, of this same group, only 37 percent actually published a blog and, of those that did not currently publish a blog, 57 percent claimed they had no plans to in the near future.

It occurs to me that many small business marketers still don’t get the real power of blogs as an integrated marketing tool.

Adding to this claim is the discovery that 27 percent of those that
do blog post less than once a month. Given this fact it is no wonder
that 36 percent of the respondents also claimed that their blogging
activity had done “nothing� for them in terms of marketing.

A telling fact came to light however when considering only those who
said they posted to their blog anywhere from 3 times a week to once a
day. In this group the marketing benefits soared. 39 percent claimed
that search engine traffic grew, 18 percent stated that leads were
generated and 11 percent could attribute sales activity directly to
their blog. Another key point made repeatedly by this group in open
ended responses was the fact that their “expert status� in a chosen
industry was enhanced.

The benefits of blogging are immense and those that get that, and take advantage of it, will win long term.

While the marketing benefits of blogging may be questioned in some
circles it is clear that those who approach marketing as a serious
business building tool and commit to blogging on a regular basis seem
to gain the most from this technology.

Source: Survey results were based on responses from 488 small business owners who responded via email.

When noted offline direct mail copywriter and author Bob Bly launched his blog about 6 months ago, I felt that business blogging had indeed tipped (A nod to Malcolm Gladwell’s popular book, the Tipping Point).

Now, even the most cynical holdouts have more proof that blogs mean business. Forbes.com recently released the annual "Best of the Web" issue and the feature story was titled "Blogs That Matter."

From the Forbes article: In this Summer 2005 edition of Forbes.com Best of The Web, our editors have trained their sights on the rapidly expanding world of blogs, collectively known as the "blogosphere."

Editors from Forbes spanned the blogosphere and unearthed 6-10 favorite picks in 20 categories ranging from Art and Literary Blogs, to Small Business, Marketing, Shopping and Music Blogs. Each blog was given a brief review and a quick what’s best and worst about the blog blurb. The collective list, totaling 100 blogs, is a virtual road map of the established blogging landscape. Without a doubt, there are omissions of deserving blogs in every category but, as a tool to advance the spread of business blogging, they have done the blog world a good deed.

Blogging longevity and previous blog notoriety seemed to score high marks in the selection process as a scan of the winners turned up many very established blogs. But, every category also seemed to possess one or two little-known titles. (At least little-known to me)

A scan of winners in the technology category, for instance, gives us a list that likely already appears in many a blogger’s RSS reader, mixed with one or two new finds.

• Slashdot
• BoingBoing
• Engadget   
• Gizmodo   
• Kuro5hin       
• Lifehacker       
• O’Reilly Network       
• Think Secret

       
The Forbes name carries with it some major credibility for the world of blogging and I, for one, can attest to the fact that this type of mainstream media exposure for business blogs is advancing the form and function of blogging at an increasingly rapid pace.

I get this question several times a week these days so I thought I would address it here.

The answer to this question is part advice, part marketing 101 soapbox speech.

So, what will a blog do for your business?

In most cases, little to nothing.

Now, before you fire off an email to ask if I’ve gone crazy, read on.

Most business folks will approach blogging like they approach every other form of marketing. Put up a blog, make a few entries and wonder why it didn’t work.

Blogs are not THE marketing tool, they are simply another marketing tool, but a very powerful one if used correctly.

Using a blog correctly for most small businesses means these things at a minimum

• Post almost daily – keep at it for months
• Answer the questions your clients ask you in your posts
• Promote the heck out of your blog online and offline
• Build a network of users and connectors around your blog
• Read and participate in other blogs almost daily
• Integrate your blog into your web site, ezine and marketing materials
• Update the non-post elements of your blog frequently

If you’ve read this far then maybe you have come to the conclusion that a blog can be a powerful part of your marketing mix and know that I unflinchingly recommend a blog for every business but, like all marketing strategies, unless you commit to using it long term to build momentum, it will be just another distraction.