Using Your Blog to Define Yourself as an Expert Part 2 of 5

Last week, I wrote about using your website to establish yourself as an expert. Blogs are another tool to sharing information with your clients, prospects, and partners, supports that will differentiate you from the crowd.

What is Blogging?

Blog stands for WeB Log, a type of web content that is used for sharing informal updates. Generally, blogs have at least one poster who shares information about their prospective about  anything in the world. Blog posts will generally have dates and be sorted chronologically. However, because there isn’t an Internet-wide guide for blogging, this can be implemented differently by different websites.   

There are bloggers who blog about politics, bloggers who blog about what they ate, bloggers who blog about parenting, bloggers that blog about their business, and those that share about anything else you can imagine. Because there is often no cost to blog, many people star a blog for the fun of it and the quality can vary greatly.

The quality of your posts must  be worth reading. I don’t always have my editor read my blog posts because they don’t need to be as formal as other items. However, this special edition is more formal and even though I am using my blog it has still been edited.

Blogs should be updated often to be effective. This can be very hard. We all have a hundred things that we should do and deciding to make posting on a blog a priority is not easy. However, if we want people to come back to our blog to see what we have to say, then we need to make the time. Popular blogs can have many people visiting them in addition to using RSS   to send updates. For example you can use RSS for  a feed of content updates about the DDM blog.

Other ways that people find your blogs are through links on your website, search engines like Google, and blog search engines like Technorati. Social bookmarking sites like Digg and Del.icio.us help drive traffic to your blog.

You can build a blog on your own site with the help of a web developer or you can use a blog service like Blogger, Word Press, Thoughts.com and others.  You should look for a service that is easy to use. I like Blogger because it is free, easy, and reliable. Ideally your Blog should look more like your website than mine does, but I am trying to demonstrate the use of a third party blogging site. 

Blogging on these sites are focused on text and having a few  ictures and video. Picture blogging, video blogging and podcasts are valid tools to use as well. If you want to make the assertion that you are an expert on a given talk, how better to do it than to make Podcast?  That is, if you have the time.

Video blogging, or blogging by posting video s something that is becoming more and more popular. This is still primarily a social trend, but if you have things you want to show or topics that require more of a demonstration, then video blogging can be done.  

Podcasting refers to audio recordings that are done regularly. Many news agencies and some companies are using Podcasting. You can use RSS tosubscribe to Podcasts so that they are automatically downloaded for you. iTunes may be the best tool for this job.

Overall, blogging gives you a less formal tool to help you establish yourself as an expert. Come back next week for part III using email newsletters. 

Using Your Website to Define Yourself as an Expert Part 1 of 5

Websites have been popular for some time now. In the past, look wasn’t so polished or or you would be forced to spend millions of dollars to play with big boys. Now the tools of big business are available to everyone and more people know how to access the web and expect me from it. Shifting trends in the cost of having a website and in the use of web sites make them an ideal tool to define yourself as an expert.

There are two nearly universal things that a business/nonprofit website needs to do. The first is share promotional information about your organization and the second is to give potential clients the ability to act on that information. Now, you can do this in more than one way.

One way: Write about your project with self praise and bombastic rhetoric. This is the same way that TV commercials discuss being the BEST. This may work if you want to sell Orange Juice. This is not necessarily going to convince someone that you are the best at a specialized task.

Another way: Provide sales information but also provide value added information about your products, services, organization that give someone a way to see that you are an expert. Look at my site for an example: I have sales information on the site, but I also provide value added content like the Articles Section, FAQs and the Glossary.

The first thing to establish about your site is that adding value is not free consulting. A glossary-even a great one- does not replace the need for a computer trainer. But, if you like the definitions I write in my glossary, hopefully you will see me as a more of expert than you might have before.

Building a site that facilities meaningful content takes thought and preparation. First, you need to make sure you have content worth reading. There is nothing worse than underdeveloped content because this will make people think you are just full of hot air, not an expert. Second, you need do your best to make a clear line between value added content and content that is there to sell. The value added content is a much softer sell and people who want to learn more before they buy can do so. Third, make sure the ability to take a next step is easy to find,/ If a viewer cannot figure out how to contact you, then the viewer won’t even think you are an expert.

The content that you put up should be meet the needs of your clients and should match their needs and ability levels. It is also important to make sure that your content is well written and you probably should work with an editor to check this. Well written content will be found on the Internet because more and more search engines are finding relevancy by quality and readability.

As we continue this series, we will talk about technologies that will draw people to your site so they find your content.

Stay tuned next week for Part 2 – Blogging. If you want to be notified of the release of that article, consider adding an RSS feed of this site.

Projectors

In general we think of projectors as being tools for showing presentations or maybe for watching movies at the theater. If you walk through downtown Denver right now you can see that the sides of building are canvases for projecting all the products that anyone could ever want. Verizon and
Cricket Wireless both have a big presence. The floor of the Westin also has a a logo welcoming the DNCC delegates using a projector. I just find it interesting how we find new ways to use technologies.



Reply with any cool uses of projectors that you see around Denver or wherever you are reading this blog from.

OLPC

I got to use an OLPC! OLPC or One Laptop Per-Child is a plan to put low cost, low energy using, highly durable laptops in the hands of children all over the world. The OLPC machines are made to be incredibly durable and can use a crank rather than outlet power to run. When they came out the OLPC Foundation let people buy one and give one and they are still very limited but I got to see one that a kid in America had today in Denver! The OLPC is amazing because it shows us what we can do in making an effective low cost ($100) laptop that could be mass produced with the features that most people want if we look to innovative thinking and open source.

Go to the foundations website: http://laptopfoundation.org/index.shtml to find out more!

Qwest Gives 1%

Want to give money to your local schools just for paying your phone bill? Check out Qwest 1% for schoosl. http://www.qwest.com/onepercent/

If you a Qwest user see if this will work for you.

Comcast Ruling

The FCC ruling that Comcast was blocking Internet content to sites that were not favorable to Comcast is a big step forward to clear net neutrality legislation. Net neutrality is the concept that all data on the Internet should be allowed and should not be altered by Internet Service Providers. Comcast was acussed of limiting the connection speed to some sites that were not favorable to it. This is important because what is to stop Comcast from not letting me go to directtv.com to reseach their competitor or giving better access to people who use Comcast services.

The even bigger issue is the fear that services like Skype or TV services would be blocked or limited because they are direct competitors to many Internet Service Providers.

This is a positive ruling for the Internet using public.

For more information read this article.

SkypeOut

SkypeOut is Skype's VOIP to standard telephone service and today was the first time I had an opportunity to use it. I am happy to report that I paid only 21 cents a minute to call Canada and the call was very clear. In fact I would say the call was clearer than local calls on my cell phone.