Blogs are fantastic for SEO because they are fresh (search engine spiders love fresh content!) and they are a great way to naturally include keywords into your site’s content without adding unnecessary pages that can destroy the intuitiveness of your site’s navigation.

While there is much that can be said on this subject -- here are 5 Tips for Blogging for SEO (plus one bonus tip.)

Remember that really pithy comment you made at that networking event last year? No? How about that extremely eloquent speel that marketing guy (what was his name?) gave at the chamber luncheon 6 months ago? Don't recall that one either? 

Here's the thing: what we say offline at networking events or in conversations with friends and clients alike is often fleeting. We may make a gaffe -- or say something we wish we hadn't -- but there's no permanent record following us and our business around.

Which brings us to the internet.  Anyone who's spent more than five minutes on the world wide web can attest to "sticky" nature of online content. Beyond the archiving that goes on,  it is possible for a word we say, or an image we share to go "viral" in ways we didn't imagine and sometimes didn't ask for.  The things we do online really can last forever.

The social media bandwagon is filling up. The doubts about "is social media just a fad?" have faded as businesses large and small collectively come to the conclusion that there is a need to take advantage of the marketing and the customer communication opportunities that social media offers. However, just as ad and marketing agencies struggle with the ethical dilemmas of social media marketing, the independent business owner also has important choices to make concerning how to use social media in their business. This is particularily true for businesses where the personality of the business owner plays a large role in the business itself (e.g; doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, designers, consulants of all types...)

A Line in the Sand

For individuals who are the "public face" of their business -- social media can be especially fraught with the possibility of potential missteps. One important question you should ask yourself as you incorporate social media into your business model is how important is your individual personality to promoting your business and garnering new customs?

A B2B Case-Study of Social Media Marketing Success:

By ImpactWeather's Fred Rogers

During the summer of 2009, I started lobbying my boss, the president of the company, on the idea that we would really benefit from committing ourselves to a streamlined social media strategy.  We're a Houston-based international weather monitoring and notification company that also specializes in business continuity.  In other words, 100% B2B.  Not a stitch of consumer-targeted material leaves our office and genuinely qualified prospects are rarer than you can imagine, despite the tremendous benefits our clients reap from our services . . . so obviously a social media strategy was a crazy use of marketing hours and dollars.  Which is exactly what he thought.He was even afraid that engaging in such an endeavor might actually harm our extremely conservative and trust-based brand instead of helping it or, at the very least, yield marginal results.

So on my own time I undertook to prove him wrong (Just on this  one issue.  He’s a really great guy and the best boss I’ve ever had.  No.  Really.) The first thing I did was the first thing I always do when I start something new: I realized that I needed help in order to become an expert.