Writing blog posts can require a considerable amount of time and effort. All of that hard work can be pretty rewarding, but only if your posts are reaching their intended audience. Imagine all of your potential readers. Your content could be just what they are looking for. The trick is connecting these users to your blog, and search engines like Google are a big key to making this happen. Fellow bloggers, it’s time to rethink the way we blog.

Before you begin, you need to determine the keyword phrases that you want to focus on with this post. Ask yourself the question, “What are my potential readers going to search for in Google?” Come up with one to three terms (depending on the size of the post). Now, keeping these terms in mind, let’s talk search engine-friendly blog posts!

First up, and this is a big one, make sure that your target keywords are in the blog title. Google (and other search engines) do not look at web pages the same way people do. When search engines look at a site to index them, they are looking at the text on the page.

And most blogging platforms are built so that your page title (at the very top of your browser window) and page heading (the main header on the page) are among the first things that the search engines will see. And in general, search engines consider the terms to be more important the earlier they appear on a page. Editing your page heading should be as simple as filling in the post’s “Title” field. And most blogging platforms like WordPress have plugins that allow you to customize your page titles.

Next, get those keywords into the body text of the blog post. Repeat them several times throughout the post. Feel free to use your keyword phrases as many times as makes sense for the readability of the post. Try to naturally work the phrases in a few times. Just keep in mind that search engines are smart, and can detect when a word is unnecessarily being repeated again and again.

Also, blog posts are a great place to make use of incoming and outgoing links. As you are writing the post, you can link to other posts on your blog, or to related pages on your website. Then, once your post is live, you can link to it in the future from other posts or pages. This can be helpful because search engines generally assume that pages with incoming links are of a higher authority than those without. Whenever possible, use your target keywords as the actual link text (It’s like extra credit). Do this when the links will be useful to the reader. Remember that neither search engines or users will look favorably on a site that lacks relevant content.

Finally, don’t overlook the “Tagging” option. The vast majority of blogging platforms allow you to add “Tags” to your posts. Tags are an organizational tool to help people and search engines find what they are looking for. Use them to reflect the content represented in your post.

Remember that with search engine optimization (SEO), you are attempting to establish a page that is functional for both the search engines and the users. These tips and strategies could be great tools for you in your future blogging experiences. And remember that the absolute number one thing that people and search engines are looking for is good, old-fashioned, quality content.

In HEROweb’s new article about F-Commerce we discuss the benefits of implementing a Facebook Shop on your Facebook page. HEROweb even offers a Facebook shopping cart solution.

F-Commerce is part of Social Commerce, which is the use of social networks to increase user interaction and drive purchases.

To learn more about F-Commerce and whether or not you should implement a Facebook shop click here.

Our just-posted article looks at the benefits of advertising on Facebook versus PPC ads.

Both forums have benefits and drawbacks. This article outlines 5 benefits of Facebook advertising and 5 benefits of PPC advertising. They two are noticeably different, so before you commit to either one, take a look at some of the details and see which column your business would most benefit from.

Check out the article, “Should You Advertise on Facebook?” on the HeroWeb.com site and let us know what you think. If you have considered online advertising, what was your final decision?

We talk a lot about social media and its best uses. Obviously, how to use social media and leverage it to your business’s advantage is an important topic for most business owners. As awareness of social media grows, it can be tempting to forgo a traditional website in favor of the convenient–and free– social media profiles.

We just posted an article on Hero-Web about the pitfalls of choosing social media profiles instead of a traditional website.
We definitely that business owners should be visible on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and any other social network that your demographic populates, but those should never be your primary asset — they should promote and drive traffic to your primary asset, which is your website.

No matter what happens in the fickle world of social media and how the users interact with it. you always can control the appearance and the message of your website. No social media platform is going to give you that power.

There are some other drawbacks to using social media as well… for instance, while the majority of business owners say that social media did help them engage with their customer base, most said that it took much more time than they expected. Social media may not meet your expectations, so be realistic and go into it with your eyes open.

Read “Don’t Forgo A Website in Favor Of Social Media” on our articles page.

Ok. The title of this post is a little extreme. But as I prepare for my social media class tomorrow night, I keep on coming back to the idea that the small ecommerce site owner needs to share his or her passion in order to succeed.

As we look at our customers who stand out, a common theme is that they are able to convey their excitement and commitment to their work through their website as well as the other social channels in which they participate.

Want an example? Check out http://www.gutsandglorytennis.com

From the logo, to the messaging, to the blogging and social media communication, this business radiates a feeling of joy and excitement about tennis and tennis racquet stringing. The site owner is clearly an expert in his subject matter and he communicates with a sense of conviction, humor, and intelligence about his products and field of interest.

The lesson is: don’t hold back. Share with passion and conviction about the business that you love. Your enthusiasm is sure to rub off on your visitors and customers.

Social media, at its core, involves using technology to engage your customers and build relationships. Major social media platforms developed in the past several years, such as Facebook and Twitter, bring expanded opportunities for engagement and sharing your message. But social media is not about any one tool or platform, it is about developing a way of doing business that focuses on building rich relationships with your customers.

Social media works best for businesses that lend themselves toward community. So if you want to truly leverage the promise of social media, you might very well need to rethink your business, or how you do business, to see how you can create a community of passionate users where one may not have existed. A good start is to ask the question, “What is it that my typical customer is passionate about?” If you can’t answer the question, you have some work to do!

Not only do you need to embrace social media, you likely need to master it to have a successful online business in the year’s ahead. But the mastery does not involve going through the motions of having a generic Faccebook fan page, or scheduling daily automated Twitter posts. Mastery means becoming a great online communicator – whether it is through customer followup emails, e-newsletters, You Tube videos, posting LinkedIn answers, or just writing stellar copy on your website.

So what does it take for social media success?

1. You, as a small Ecommerce merchant, need to be able to understand, embrace, and execute, using the social media technologies that are developing around you. Investing some time to understand the current tools is key. And if you truly don’t like to put yourself out there and communicate with the public, you will need to find someone else who can represent you and your business with authenticity and passion.

2. You need a clearly defined community of users. If you don’t have a current community, you might have some work to do in redefining your business, or building your expertise, so people will want to pay attention to what you have to say. Defining a community can present some challenges for small Ecommerce site owners. If you sell office supply products, is there going to be a community of users out there who are passionate about what you are selling? If not, you might need to take a slight different approach such as developing a blog about office-place productivity or another related theme that will attract interest from your target audience.

3. Measure your success. Social media monitoring is a large topic. In a nutshell, you will likely want to set goals for number of followers, fans, or active blog readers. You will also want to use a tool like Google Analytics to correlate the traffic coming from your social media sites that results in purchases on your Ecommerce website. Ultimately, if you can’t figure out how to drive direct revenue, you will need to make some adjustments to your marketing plan.

Ways You Can Play

Here are a few of the more common social media tactics that are being used for building online engagement and how they can fit into building a community when you are starting from the ground floor.

1. Tweeting

Twitter (a form of microblogging) is great for getting communication out to your userbase. But if you don’t have a userbase, building one on Twitter can take a lot of work and is likely not the best place to start.

2. Blogging

If your long-term success is going to be based on your establishing expertise in your field, then a blog will likely be a cornerstone of that strategy. If you are just getting started, be sure to plan out a theme-based string of blog posts. Many bloggers do one or two posts and fizzle out. Be persistent and commit yourself to high-quality regular posts.

3. Facebook

Leveraging a Facebook following to drive traffic and generate orders is a proven formula for success. Some small businesses are successful in gaining a good number of Facebook fans – 500 or more – and get a resulting steady flow of traffic to their website. If you have thousands of fans and many are actively interested in what you have to share, you are in a great position to see some real revenue from the social media engagement. Getting the critical mass of fans is the hard part and can involve paying for Facebook ads, running creative promotions, and launching an all-out assault.

4. Facebook Application Shopping Carts

Every day new social Ecommerce platforms are being rolled out. Although it is a little early to see any with a proven record of success, consumer acceptance is on the way. Unless you have a large marketing budget or a strong urge to be bleeding edge, you probably don’t need to move your Ecommerce onto Facebook, but you do want to watch closely how the major players – Facebook, Amazon, Google, and a flurry of startups – are building social shopping applications.

5. Your Website

That is right, a good, old-fashioned website is at the core of most social media strategies. Remember to approach your website in the same way you approach your other social media venues. To the extent you can invite users to be a part of your online world and connect positively with them you are likely to keep them as a long-time customer. Don’t neglect to have all your hard-earned social media exposure accessible on your website.

6.  The Endless Opportunities for Online Engagement

There is no limit to creative ways that you can build your online communities and establish your expertise. You can host webinars, post YouTube videos, utilize a service like Slideshare to upload presentations, or even create an Iphone app. If you have a B2B (business-to-business) model, Facebook might not  be the place where you will connect with your users. You might need to work a little harder to develop online learning opportunities for your user base and connect through different channels.

The success of each of these tactics hinges on building a critical mass of engaged users. And therein lies the rub. A big-name brand like Coca Cola, or  even a smaller name brand, like Leatherman, with their 16,000 Facebook fans, can leverage their army of followers in powerful ways. If you have 20 fans on Facebook, your ROI will be limited until you can successfully build your base.

Developing the Social Media Mindset

Social Media is not about the tools – like Facebook and Twitter – it is a mind set. And, if you are not willing to embrace that mindset in the years ahead, you will have an increasingly challenging time finding success in the online arena. But if you are willing and able to jump in fully with your online engagement, you will be able to build a corp of dedicated users as well as your own platform for success.

If you’re like many small business owners, getting in good with Google is all that matters. However, that other search engine, Bing, has a new new Business Portal, that could change your perceptions a bit. The new portal, at www.bing.com/businessportal, replaces Bing’s old Local Listings Center. If you have an existing listing on Bing, you will be able to access it. If not, now’s the time to create one.

Our new article called “Bing’s New Business Portal,” just posted on HEROweb.com looks at some of the useful and unique features that even Google’s business center doesn’t offer, such as social media contact fields, more business specialties and categories, free mobile websites, and QR codes that can be used to include coupon codes and other info.

Check it out, and find out some new ways that you can promote your business…for free.

Writing a press release is a classy way to sing your own praises. It lets people know what’s going on with your business and can have a positive impact on your search engine rankings. To spark your creativity, here is a list of 40 potential topics for a press release.
1.    Changes to shipping rates / free shipping offers
2.    Set straight common myths
3.    Hosting a contest, sweepstakes or promotion
4.    Hosting a seminar, teleseminar or webinar
5.    Important company anniversary (10 years in business)
6.    Merger or acquisition
7.    Opening a new office/moving locations (for those with brick-and-mortar stores)
8.    Providing free consultations or a free sample
9.    Receiving an award (your business, you personally, or even a staff member)
10.    Speaking at a conference or event
11.    Starting a sibling company
12.    Your company is sponsoring any kind of event
13.    Your company’s contributions to the community.
14.    New product or service
15.    You’ve added significant staff (either large numbers, specific important individuals or positions)
16.    New certifications and credentials achieved by your staff
17.    You’re offering a discount on your products or services for a special reason
18.    Announcing a media appearance
19.    Announcing holiday-related sales and events
20.    Announcing that you’re available to speak on particular subjects of interest
21.    Partnering with another business or organization
22.    Sponsoring an event or team
23.    Establishing a scholarship
24.    Offering internship program with local schools
25.    Working with or making a contribution to a charity.
26.    Fund-raising or other events for the local community.
27.    Taking major steps to go “green”
28.    Celebrating an important milestone (1000th customer for example)
29.    Hiring a new executive or changing ownership of the company
30.    Your business is being restructured (such as going from sole proprietorship to a partnership)
31.    Being recognized for an accomplishment
32.    Your customers’ success stories.
33.    New research findings related to your service or product
34.    Unusual products or services that you offer.
35.    Changing the company name
36.    Changing the prices of your products or services (decreases, of course)
37.    Changing the way your products are made
38.    New Website or major development to existing site
39.    Tips, lists or feature story (Top 10 Valentine Gifts, Turn your Tired Lawn into a Suburban Paradise)
40.    Your products have been upgraded or changed in some way

Recently we posted about how to blog when you’re not a writer.

First things first, though. If you are an ecommerce site owner, how do you know if it makes sense for you to throw your hat into the blogging ring in the first place?

In short, we think every business should consider blogging. There is always something that can be said about your industry, products, or niche that somebody else can’t say as well or with as much authority as you can. However, there are a few requirements and if you don’t meet them, you should reconsider blogging, or the blog may do more harm than good.

The main things for a small business owner to consider before beginning a blog are:

1. Blogging does take a strong level of commitment. It doesn’t mean you have to give up or start all over if a few weeks go by between posts, but it is best to commit to a regular schedule of posting and responding to any comments that you get. Most successful blogs have at least a few posts a week.

2. Sit down with a piece of paper and brainstorm as many ideas as you can for topics that you think would make for interesting short blog posts. Is it at least 10 topics? That’s enough for a nice start. If your reason for blogging is to help generate interest and revenue on your site, think about possible blog posts that tie into your products.

3. Do you feel comfortable writing? The blog posts don’t have to be Pulitzer Prize material, and the more casual nature of blogging means that the tone can be more conversational, along the lines of how you might speak to someone in person about your products. (See our previous post about how to blog if you don’t consider yourself a writer. There are some options for people who really don’t want to write.) Writing takes a little practice, so don’t give up if you have never done it before. We recommend putting up several practice posts before you announce your blog to the world.

4. Identify the audience you will be addressing in your blog. Is it other businesses or thought leaders in your field? Established customers? Potential customers? You need to do a little soul-searching and decide whether you think there will be an audience for what you want to talk about.

5. Are you prepared to respond to comments? Some feedback you get may be positive, and some may be negative. You may be asked to deal with an irate customer who is publicly venting. It takes some tact to deal with these eventualities, but blogging is a conversational medium so you want to be prepared to take part in the conversation.

If you can’t reasonably answer these questions yet, your energy might best be used to grow your business and focus your marketing in other ways. If you do have positive answers to these questions, a blog can be a crucial and important part of your strategy and we encourage you to get started.

If you are unsure how to take the first step, we recommending setting up a free blog at http://www.wordpress.com and using one of your blog post ideas to pen your first post.

When you launch your blog, let us know. We would be happy to check it out!

Look at any article about marketing yourself on the internet and one of the first options that will be suggested is to create a business blog.

The central idea of a blog is to write something, right? But what if you don’t consider yourself a writer? That can lead to anxiety of having to do something on a regular basis (it’s recommended that blogs be updated weekly) that you really don’t want to do, coupled with the anxiety of knowing that there’s a huge marketing avenue that you’re ignoring if you don’t do it. Even people who think they are a fairly good writer can be inhibited by the idea of posting something online for the whole world to see. After all, if you wanted to be a writer you wouldn’t have gone into small business ownership, right? So what’s a concerned business owner to do?

The first thing is to know that there are options! The internet is based on content. Content of many types: words, video and images. Words are just about all that a search engine can see (a search engine can’t “see” a picture, just the title and other word tags that the image is given), so being able to create content that is related to your products and services–whether that means traditional blog posts, videos, pictures or podcasts, for instance–is an important thing to do as a small business owner.

Common obstacles of business owners who don’t blog are:
1. That they don’t have the time
2. They don’t like writing or don’t think they are good at it
3. They don’t know what to write about.

Begin by telling yourself that you will create a list—nothing but topics—of 20 things related to your business that you would like people to know more about. Beneath these topics, use bullet points to add in some brief details. Flesh the bullet points out with simple sentences and you’re off to a great start. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and it doesn’t have to be long. One benefit of the “just do it” approach is that in time, you will become less apprehensive about writing and will get better at it simply through the act of practicing, like anything else.

If you really aren’t able or have no interest in writing blog posts yourself, take this list to someone on your staff who understands the voice of your business and who your customers are. If they are receptive to blogging, ask them to devote 30 minutes to an hour each week to flesh out the outline you have provided and post them to the blog. If employees simply can not be spared to do this job, freelance writers are easy to find, and will be skilled in creating content, especially if you give them an outline.

Are you more of a talker than a writer? You can talk about your products all day long to anyone who will listen? Try voice recognition software to enable you to “speak” your blog posts rather than writing them. Ask a friend or employee to proof read the posts before they go on the blog. Why not explore podcasting and video blogging? There are many tools that make it easy. If you have an iPhone, the “cinch” app is a free and easy way to create and share audio, text and photo updates using your iPhone. Using a simple interface, you can make and automatically broadcast your “cinches” through Facebook, Twitter and more.

Are you the picture taking type? Take lots of photos of your products or services in action and write captions to accompany each one. The picture does most of the work for you. Many people who don’t enjoy writing are successful with video blogs or podcasts. It’s also possible to aggregate other people’s information on a blog, but this most likely would require some commentary from you in order to be successful.

The important thing to take away is that if you feel that blogging would help your business, there are ways that it can be accomplished that still leave you time for your business. It isn’t going to happen magically and you may need to push yourself a little bit when you don’t feel like doing it, but the pay off can be big.