Brett’s Blog

OK - for those of you bored to death with my marketing pontifications, loyal readers of this blog only because of a dedicated friendship or a love of giving me a hard time via the comments, I got ya something:

Introducing VintageBrett.com, my all-new blog that has absolutely nothing to do with marketing, and everything else to do with anything else that crosses my mind.

Start here to find out all about it, and then make your way through the few posts I’ve got up there. I’m still getting the tone and feel of the blog down, but I think it will be a rather enjoyable conversation for us all.

Here’s an educational rant at Search Engine Land that provides a little food for thought. Are you guilty?

To me, this line sums up the real point: “The problem with this, of course, is that any time you do anything just for SEO purposes, you’ll almost always do it wrong.”

SEO is powerful, but providing valuable content and resources is much more powerful. Don’t let the allure of SEO suck you in to the point you suck.

A most excellent and insightful post at Canuckflack.

It never hit me how relevant and related your satisfaction of your paying “day” job is to your blogging habits. No comment as to where I sit in this list.

Here’s one I would add:

• The less busy you are at your paying job, the more likely new posts will start appearing during the lunch hour.

I haven’t written a post in almost a week, which is fairly rare for me. The fact is, I haven’t really had anything worth saying, or an urge to say it. I’ve got nothing to bring to the table. And for once, I think it’s better to say nothing than to say anything.

I am offering no value to you, the reader.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t always abide by these rules. I confess, I’ve occassionally posted some real crap over the past year just so I could just have something new up on Brett’s Blog. But I knew it was crap, and I bet you did, too. Sorry about that.

I’m hoping to provide value from here on out. Whether it’s a rant, an observation, a link to something else valuable, a stat, a question or a service, my goal is that each post has value. Obviously, you might not agree with me on what is and isn’t valuable, and we can figure that out along the way. But I have to at least personally think it’s valuable before it can be any value to you.

The principle obviously isn’t limited to blogging. Does your new product add value, or do you just need to launch something? Is your email newsletter adding value, or do you just need to get it out there cuz that’s what you do once a month? Is your time with your kids valuable to them (and you), or are you just clocking in so you feel better about yourself?

The point: Figure out how you can add value, find new ways of doing on a regular basis, and if it’s not valuable, don’t do it.

On January 19, 2007, I started this simple little blog with not much more than a hankering to blog, as you can see in this inaugural post. Since then, it’s no doubt become a highlight of life, as well as a highly addictive avenue of self-expression. Thanks to all of you who have made it as entertaining as it has been. With that being said, here are some interesting stats to date:

Total views: 40,702
Total posts: 295
Highest traffic ever: July 2, 2007 (704 views)
Total comments: 899
Total spam comments: 19,581
Avg. views per day (Jan. 2008): 206
Post with the most comments: Ron Paul: Can He Digg Out of this Hole? - 20 comments

Top Posts and Pages -

1. We All Work for a Sales and Marketing Company (2,931 views): Traffic to this site has mostly been driven by image searches for “geek,” so take it for what it’s worth.
2. 10 Marketing Tips for Gym Owners (1,539 views): This post has been one of the more controversial posts, along with its predessor, How Not to Run a Business. Basically, the gym I go to has gone through a lot turnover and issues, and these were my rants and solutions on the topic.
3. CarbEase, Dr. Harry Preuss and AdvoCare (1,093 views): This post had a clear motive: getting search traffic. When I worked at AdvoCare, an article in USA Today reviewed Dr. Preuss’ book, in which he mentions the AdvoCare product Carb-Ease. The problem is that it was listed as CarbEase (no hyphen) in the article, so the AdvoCare site wasn’t listed high in the search results. Knowing it would lead to search inquiries, I wrote a post to try to attract this search engine traffic. It worked pretty well, and still generates a good amount of views.
4. Who is Brett? (685 views): Good question. I guess it’s natural for readers to get a better idea of who they’re reading.
5. How Not to Run a Business (640 views): This was my original rant on the Ranch Health Club in Valley Ranch. For what it’s worth, they’ve gotten a lot better since then.

Top Referrers:

1. WordPress Dashboard (794): I’ve had scattered posts featured occassionally on the WordPress dashboard. 
2. Sphere.com Ann Coulter search (679): This is what accounts for July 2, 2007 gaining the most views in a day. Almost all of these clicks came on that one day.
3. WordPress Tag for Ranch Health Club (377):  This is pretty shocking. I’m surprised this many people are looking for The Ranch, and I’m surprised they still don’t have a web page to get some of this traffic.
4. Hee Haw Marketing (374): Here’s a great blog from an advertising expert in the Dallas area, and one of the first blogs I started reading. His account of a holiday experience at a local Kohl’s created quite a bit of buzz, and my reference to his experience gained these clicks from the trackback.
5. WordPress Tag for AdvoCare (211): Makes sense, since several posts refer to my old company and favorite nutritional supplements.

If you read lots of blogs, then you probably use some kind of aggregate service to receive all of your feeds in one place. And if you’ve done that for some time, you’ve probably noticed that all the posts get backed up like your inbox on vacation, and things can get out of hand pretty quickly.

That’s where I’m at right now, and rather than fix what I’ve currently got going there, I’m starting from scratch. I’m deleting all the blogs that, at least at one point, I was a big fan of, and I’m going to find them all over again.

I don’t know why, but something feels pretty good about deleting all of the mess and starting anew.

So, don’t know exactly why I shared that with you, but if you’ve got some tips on how best to keep up with your blog reading, do tell.

Just a quick note to thank you for owning at least one set of the 25,000 pairs of eyeballs that have taken a look at Brett’s Blog since its inception on January 19 of this year. Blogging has most definitely been way more fun, entertaining and educational than I thought it would be, so here’s to another 25k.

Thanks -

bd

You guessed it: I’m selling out.

OK, maybe that’s a little over the top. But I am planning on moving over to WordPress.org in the next month or two so I can start monetizing my efforts here (you can’t do it on WordPress.com). After all, one of the reasons I started this blog was to understand everything blogging offers for business, and most businesses are interested in making money.

I just read this excellent post by Scott, and I’ve picked up a thing or two at ProBlogger. But I want your tips and ideas. What suggestions and advice can you leave here in the comments on how to best make money with a blog? Anything you can think of for this blog specifically? Maybe you can even write your own post on your blog in response and just trackback to this post.

Let me hear from you.

I stumbled upon this great post at Decker Marketing.

Sam moderated a Web 2.0 panel recently and was kind enough to pass along his notes. Every one of them deserves your attention, but here are the quotes that really stick out to me:

1. 25% of Google search results is user generated content. If googling your company is one of the first steps a prospect before making a decision about you, how important is this stat?
2. Use any negative comments to your advantage. There is an opportunity in all negative comments. When people reject the idea of a corporate blog, they usually reject it for this reason. No one wants to unveil their dirty laundry (or facilitate a medium where even the clean laundry can get dirty). But that’s really not an accurate way to think about it. The way you deal with customer issues are much bigger opportunities than getting 5-star ratings from every visitor.
3. Have our PR firm find the A list or almost A list bloggers in our category.  Interview them for your blog.  They’ll likely reciprocate with links like “I was interviewed here”. This makes excellent sense. It leverages celebrity endorsement opportunities, it introduces you to the big dogs in your market, and it usually leads to them scratching your back in return. All you have to do is ask.

I’ve said it before, as have many others: Web 2.0 is opening up the entire business world to small business. However big you want your small business to be, you now have almost all the tools and almost all the opportunities that the big companies do. How are you using them? What if you just incorporated one “act of social media” - how would that affect your business?

Bloggers, let’s face it: blogging can be addictive.

But since most of us aren’t full-time bloggers, it’s hard to ignore it while we’re at the office for 8-10 hours a day. Think of everything your missing, all the comments you could be adding, and all the neat tactics to help increase your traffic. But if you succumb to blogging at work, there’s always the guilt of knowing you just the company’s money on meeting your own needs (and they are needs!).

Here’s a solution that allows you to keep it going throughout the day without the guilt:

• Everything you see these days about time management encourages you to work in chunks of time (30 minutes to 2 hours), and then reward yourself with a 10 -15 minute reward. Why not take your next 10 minute treasure and read a few posts and add a few comments? Just time yourself and stay disciplined to the length of the break.
• Do you eat lunch in your office? Shut the door and blog for the full hour while you’re scarfing down your turkey sandwich.
• Blog about your work issues. It might not be wise to use real names and projects, but we all encounter situations or lessons that we want to remember. At least jot down the main point and save it in your blog post drafts so you don’t lose the thought, then finish it later. In this way, though, it catalogs your on-the-job learning that most bosses would appreciate.

The key here is mixing your discipline with your rewards. Luckily, blogging doesn’t have to be time-consuming to be productive. And this should get you through the day so you don’t feel like you’ve missed out on so much. But like anything, you gotta keep it under control, or then you’ll be in big trouble at the office.

Let me know if you’ve got other tips.