For all those out there looking to the future of blogging, our new blog created for client, Hinchey Studios, might well be one to keep an eye on. Tom Hinchey and the Dudes are closely collaborating on a video blogging solution for businesses and non-profits alike and Tom wanted to upgrade his original website to something more ‘cutting edge’. That was obviously a blog. Now, as a video producer, what better way to show off his talents to prospective clients than with a video blog! So Tom’s posts are mainly going to take the form of video posts. One thing he wanted to highlight to prospective clients was what a video shoot entailed - many people think of a very busy, intrusive process, with stacks of lights and equipment and leads trailing everywhere. But it is not like that except in exceptional circumstances and by video posting about his client shoots he can allay any fears in potential new clients, and give his current clients some extra publicity at the same.

With the phenomenal popularity of YouTube it is clear to see that video is the most compelling content for a website or blog. A blog is really the ideal vehicle for a business, and especially for non-profits, to get their message to potential clients or donors. It is a perfect combination! So if you want to see how effective a video blog can be then the new Hinchey Studios blog would be a good example for you to take a look at.

Last week Tom Hinchey and I spent some time putting together a short video for a presentation, showing people that video blogging can be relatively easy, inexpensive, and fun! With just a few simple tips and tricks most people can video blog for themselves. And that is what blogging is about - being empowered to do your own marketing in an inexpensive, professional and effective way. What we want to do is provide businesses and non-profits with a high quality vehicle that will get them noticed, draw people in, and put them on the cutting edge of online marketing. Then it is up to them how much input they need from us in order to maintain the blog. This five minute video provides a foretaste of what we are planning in the near future. Part of the video blogging package that we will be providing is a more extensive ‘How to Shoot Quality Video for Video Blogs’ DVD, to give our clients all the help they need to maintain their own blogs. For anyone interested in improving their own home videos the DVD will also be available for ordering online through both our blogs in the new year.

Here’s a bit of fun Jasper & Tom Hinchey had today, creating a spoof E-Harmony ad to celebrate their meeting at the 3000 Club business networking group. The video was made for the 3000 Club Blog. We are currently working on a video blogging package together that we think will offer businesses and non-profits the cutting edge online marketing vehicle they need to attract that all important interest. They are currently working on a presentation for the package, the first showing of which will be next Wednesday (5th Nov) for the Philippine American Chamber of Commerce monthly meeting  at the Chinese Cultural Center in Phoenix, Arizona.

The 3000 Club Blog is now online - click here to check it out! This blog is going to be a truly excellent example for other businesses and non-profits to get an idea of just how powerful a marketing medium blogging can be. We very much designed the blog to open up aspects of the 3000 Club project that are hard to present in a traditional website format. The 3000 Club is a fairly new business networking club, the membership fees all going to support the food rescue and distribution work of the Feed My People Children’s Charity, and many new things are happening on an almost weekly basis. The blog gives members, and potential members alike, the opportunity to keep up with everything that is going on, and see in detail the kind of contribution that members are making to the Club, the charity, and to the business community.

The 3000 Club, like almost any non-profit, has a great story to tell and a blog is the perfect medium to tell that story. People will be able to tell their stories, of their involvement, at every stage of the food rescue and distribution process. Not only that, but we also wanted to offer business members a further opportunity to promote their businesses, not in an advertising way like they can on the website, but more how their experience of being a member of the 3000 Club has benefited them, both personally and professionally. That may consist of them talking of their experiences in hands-on volunteering at Nogales, or one of the foodbanks, or even just the friendships and business partnerships they have made as a result of becoming a member of the Club.

Ultimately, the aim of the blog is to inspire other businesses to get involved, helping themselves by expanding their business network, but at the same time helping to save and distribute millions of tons of fruit and vegetables that would otherwise by thrown away. Video is going to play a great part in the telling of that story. Video is probably the most powerful way to get that story seen. We are working closely with Tom Hinchey of Hinchey Studios to show everyone the power of using video in a blog, and how businesses and non-profits can very easily maintain a video blog for themselves. Combining the power of social media and video is the online marketing future. For us, The Dudes, we can’t think of a better example of how great a difference a blog and video can make in helping to tell that story and to help expand the awareness and participation in such a great group!
Click here to visit the blog.

We always recommend to our business clients that they use images in their blog posts. Not only does it make it much more interesting for the reader, it makes the whole blog much more attractive and enticing, much more likely to encourage the casual browser to stay and explore deeper. However, images are also extremely effective SEO tools as well.
 
The two places you need to optimize for the search engines when it comes to images are the image file name and the alt tags. The file name is a great opportunity to use one or two relevant keywords. Instead of naming your image “pic1.jpg”, name it something useful. For example, I named the image for this post “blog_seo_tips.jpg” -  3 good keywords that could be picked up by the search engines. You can further enhance the SEO by filling in the alt=”*” tags in the html view - for example, “How images in blogs enhance SEO”. ALT tags are the things that describe the image, showing up as text as you mouse over the image itself. Search engines look for subject relevant text and these are two additional places where you can get those keywords found.

Images should always be relevant to the subject and should be used at at least medium size if not large. Thumbnail images should be avoided as they just don’t look right in the blog post, and large images are more likely to be perceived as important to the post’s textual content. It probably sounds obvious but you should also make sure that you use good quality images. Badly framed or blurry images will create a poor impression of your blog and by implication, your business. Also, always place the image at the top and center justify for large images, left justify for smaller images which will let the text flow around the right edge of the image. It is important to be consistent so that your blog has a uniform and professional look.

Finally, if you can, vary your images with the odd video. Find something relevant on YouTube - they are easy to embed into your blog and, although you don’t get to use alt tags with them, it does make it a more varied and interesting experience for your readers - and that, afterall is the most important aspect of any blog, business or otherwise!

Non-profits should catch on to the power of blogging. I did a quick look through some of the non-profits linked through our Local First Arizona site just to see how many were using blogs and was very surprised to find that that very few did. Even the couple of non-profit organisations that did have a blog hadn’t made the best use of them. Neither of those had posted for several months. 

I cannot think of a non-profit that doesn’t have a great story to tell. Most are actively involved on a daily basis in helping other people, or animals, or the environment. Those daily activities and pictures, and in many cases videos, would make great content, content that would not only be of great interest to readers but also would be a hugely valuable tool for encouraging donations.
One organisation has been utilising social media to great affect and would be a great place for any non-profit looking at social media marketing for their own organisation to see how it should be done, is Social Media for Social Change - www.sm4sc.com

“We’re utilizing the communal nature of the Internet, which can cause a YouTube video or blog post to reach millions, to raise money for crucially important charities and help fix real-world problems,” said founder Gradon Tripp. At their inaugural event at the Harvard Club in Boston earlier this month they raised over $20,000 for Jane Doe Inc., a Boston non-profit dedicated to ending domestic violence and sexual assault.

So, come on non-profits - with the economy as it is it is going to get harder to find donors. Make the most of your website marketing and get your story out there in a blog. Us ‘dudes’ can show you how - give us a call!

One thing the Dudes have always tried to do is look toward the future. Blogging is the next step in the evolution of business marketing and is just on the verge of really getting going in terms of general uptake. Blogs will soon become a prerequisite in most business marketing tool boxes, as websites are now.

But we have been looking further forward still and we firmly are of the belief that video will be the future of blogging. You only have to look at the success of YouTube to see how effective video can be, especially in regard to viral marketing, which is a large element in what makes social media marketing so successful. In terms of video made purely for use on the web, it has become much easier and cheaper to produce, either with camcorders or, increasingly, cellphones. It has also become much easier to edit video as PCs, Macs, and laptops have all become so much more powerful and editing software becoming more readily available as well as cheaper.

The Dudes are getting together with one of our 3000 Club friends, Tom Hinchey of Hinchey Studios LLC, Video Creations [www.hincheystudios.com] to put together a video that teaches businesses how to effectively use videos in their websites and blogs. The aim is to combine our respective areas of expertise to show how businesses can simply and cheaply create video content that will greatly improve the effectiveness of their online marketing. The video will include tips on shooting, lighting, editing, sound, equipment, and adding captions, as well as how to incorporate your finished creation into your website and blog. Precise details are yet to be decided, but we shall probably offer the video as a DVD and/or download at a price of under $10.
If you think such a video would be of interest to you, please feel free to register your interest via the email address above.

It is amazing to see how many businesses, and non-profits as well, say “we have a blog”, and when you go to look at that blog you find that it consists of a generic Blogger template with the last post written several months ago. When I talk to business groups about what we do I often liken the differences between a regular website and a blog thusly: a blog is like a shop window - it is a static display with little opportunity to interact with it and find out more. A blog is more like an Expo or networking event whereby you can get into a conversation with visitors, let them find out about you and your business/products, and more easily share that information with others.

A blog which hasn’t been posted on regularly and which has not had any input in terms of design beyond choosing a basic template is, to the visitor, like the experience portrayed in the picture above - like visiting a shop with nothing on the shelves. Is that the kind of experience and impression you want your customers or clients to go away with when visiting your blog? Do you think they are going to come back again? Do you think they are likely to tell their friends?

This is more like the impression you want your customers and clients to have when they visit your blog. An experience whereby they can go from stand to stand (or post to post) and find out something new and interesting every time - where if they want to find out more about a particular exhibit (topic) they can ask questions directly to the person there (you) - something that might be of use to them or, if not to them, something they would definately tell a friend about, and where to find it. Is that not more the experience and impression you want your customers to have at your business blog? Of course it is! That is why we at Dude Blog your Business are here - to provide you with an Expo experience for your business blog. Please feel free to call Jasper Blake for more details.

There is no doubt that a blog is greatly enhanced when you get participation through the comments section. Although you, as the business owner, are trying to demonstrate your knowledge and authority through the blog, readers insights, questions and conversations greatly add to that depth of knowledge. It also goes to increasing a sense of community where people will be much more likely to return and join in that conversation because their input is valued.

There are a number of ways that you can encourage that participation by what you write in your posts. One way is to ask! Simple eh? But how many bloggers do it? At the end of your post you just add a sentence that says something like “If anyone has a different opinion on the matter we’d love to hear from you” or “If anyone knows of other …” etc. Most importantly you should always make the time to answer a comment when you receive one, otherwise you risk missing out on that conversation.

When you do reply, be sure to reply with more than just a generic “thank you for making a good point”. Reply with depth and with something that moves the conversation along. If another person replies to a comment, don’t feel obliged as the blogger to join in the conversation. Sometimes it is better to let the conversation run and, maybe, join in if you have something pertinent to say. If you get a lot of comments on your posts this can be a great way to let the readers lead the conversation rather than you having to answer each and every comment. But it is something you need to closely monitor.

We always try to encourage owners of business blogs to stay positive with both their blog posts and their comments. It sets the tone for the readers and while a negative reader comment can sometimes be useful, in that the business owner can be seen to overcome it, it should always be answered in an equally positive manner. In the end, conversations are what makes blogs so powerful for businesses. It is the next best thing to a face-to-face networking event. Make the most of your conversations!

We strongly believe that business owners should post on their own blogs, as I have said before. But this also means that business owners need to keep on top of their own Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as well - unless they want to pay an SEO company to do it for them. Few do. Part of what we offer is the tuition that businesses require to maintain their own blogs. How quickly a business can do this will depend on their overall knowledge of blogging and the amount of time they have to put towards blog posting and maintenance.

Some of our clients chose to ease themselves into maintaining their own blogs and purchase a package whereby we post on the blog for a certain period of time and manage their SEO for them as they get used to how it all works. And there is a lot to learn! One thing businesses need to be aware of is that Google is constantly updating and improving the algorithms it uses to rank websites. What works well in one instance might not work as well a few months later. We certainly try to teach clients all the main SEO techniques, and how to utilise their key words to best advantage as part of our posting/maintenance packages but, once they cut loose on their own they will need to keep up with the changing practices.

The one thing both Dave and I love about the internet is that everything is available for free, and SEO advice is certainly no exception. Just type in the words “free SEO advice” into your search bar and you will come up with no end of blogs and websites that will give you all the latest tips and tricks. Just don’t be tempted by some of the SEO cheats out there - they’ll come back to bite you in the end. Keep it real, find a reliable SEO-tips blog or two, read them regularly and follow their advice - you’ll be fine.