Marketing Technology Blog

One of the projects I’m working on right now is a great ebook for folks who attend my Blog Indiana session on Blogging for SEO! It’s only 12 days from the event, so be sure to register and be there. Attendees will get the guide for free. After the event, I’ll be posting the book on my blog for $99!

The book will cover all platforms and options – with comprehensive instructions to enable anyone to leverage blogging for business through great search engine optimization. Included in the ebook are the following chapters:

1. Understanding Search
2. Keyword Analysis
3. Why Blogging Works
4. Selecting Your Domain
5. Selecting Your Platform
6. Designing Your Blog
7. Extending Your Blog
8. Selecting Your Categories
9. Registering with Search
10. Getting on the Map
11. Robots and Sitemap
12. Communicating with Search Engines
13. Writing Post Titles
14. Customizing Post Slugs
15. Meta Data Enhancements
16. Writing for Blogs
17. User Generated Content
18. Guest Blogging
19. Promoting Your Blog
20. Generating Backlinks
21. Syndicating Your Blog
22. Social Media Integration
23. Monitoring Search
24. Turning Visitors into Customers
25. Re-igniting Old Content

Don’t miss out on Blog Indiana! Order your tickets today – it’s going to be the best blogging event in the Midwest and I believe it will rival many of the national and international events.

This isn’t your typical learning seminar where you sit and listen, maybe take notes, or fall asleep. Web Camp 2.0 is not aptly tagged “Get Your Hands Dirty” for nothing! You will experience a learning series like you have never experienced before. This interactive edition of Web Camp will allow you to learn-by-doing. Think more along the lines of High School chemistry vs. English lecture; test driving a car vs. reading about it; petting zoo vs. the regular zoo.

You will have the opportunity to learn from the professionals of Indiana’s longest standing Web services firm while experiencing first-hand the things you are learning. By the end of the series, you will acquire a better understanding of how to make your Web investment dollars work for you.

So dig in, put your work gloves on, and Get Your Hands Dirty at Web Camp 2.0!

When: Starts Friday June 5th
Where: 1st Floor Training Room, 11460 N. Meridian, Carmel, IN 46032
Time: 8:30 AM – 10:30 AM
Cost: $150/person for the whole series

• Competitive Analysis Friday, June 5th
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Friday, June 12th
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Friday, June 19th
• Designing & Writing for the Web Friday, June 26th
• Content Management Systems & Application Development Friday, July 10th
• Analytics/Right Team & Strategy for the Web Friday, July 17th

Register Here!

Space is limited to 10 Companies with no more than 2 people per company.

A new U.S. president. A global financial crisis. Some are predicting the worst of times. But we think it’s a time to regroup, re-evaluate and then to dream. Dream big. Because the world of ideas has never mattered more. Behind the headlines, innovation and invention are alive and flourishing. And it’s here that the key to a better future will be found.

At the Smaller Indiana, Bigger Ideas Conference we will be hotfoot in pursuit of that future as it is being invented in our home state. We’re assembling an incredible lineup of speakers who live and work in Indiana, and whose ideas and ingenuity will challenge, enlighten and inspire. June 24th at the The Athenæum Theatre.

Congratulations to Smaller Indiana founder Pat Coyle and Coyle Media on putting together such a great event – the first of many to push ideation and inspiration here in Indiana.

The site is beautiful – designed by the team at Kristian Andersen and Associates. Your very own Marketing Technology Blog is a sponsor of the site – so my readers benefit as well! When you register for the event, enter discount code dougkarr for a $35 discount. Register Now – there are only a few hundred seats!

Tonight I had a great time at Confluence, an Indianapolis networking event, where we reunited a team to speak on the Do’s and Don’ts of Corporate Blogging. I was joined by fellow industry professionals Rhoda Israelov, Rodger Johnson, Kyle Lacy and Kevin Hood.

There were minor differences in agreement over command and control of a corporate blog, but I believe all of us overwhelmingly agreed that blogging, as a medium, is becoming a strategy that’s every bit as important (and perhaps more profitable) than office email. Those are my words – not those of the panel.

Host Erik Deckers closed off the conversation with a question:

What’s the one key piece of advice that everyone should remember when starting their corporate blog?

Closing the panel out, I agreed with the others that it all starts with great keyword research, fantastic content, writing about your customers, and being honest and transparent. All of the responses were first rate, so I took the opportunity to close with simply reminding everyone that there needs to be a visible, simple path to engagement on the blog.

I can’t tell you how many times I visit a blog and am interested in meeting the blogger behind it, or even buying the product or service, but there’s nothing obvious on the page that points me in the right direction. Every business blog should have a name, contact form, phone number, address – as well as a few well-designed calls to action that afford the opportunity to register and get in touch with the company.

There’s even some unconfirmed discussions on the web that Google even picks up on sites that list their postal address on their site. With Google targeting trust more and more, it makes sense that a site with a valid street address may be trusted above one without.