Here are five critical factors to help you harness the power of your blog and attract more readers:

1. Make sure each post focuses on your subject of authority and is optimized with relevant keywords. Do it properly and Google could index your post within sixty minutes!
2. Syndicate summaries of each post to your Twitter and Facebook accounts to reach more people, driving them back to your blog and to your website.
3. Design your blog so it’s comfortable to read and reflects your company’s corporate culture.
4. Add photos and videos to your post for variety and to enhance reader interest.
5. Personalize your blog by including photos of the writers. While the blog may reflect your company, it is written by people for people.

How To Have An Incredible 2012

As we wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday season, we’re aware of a number of challenges that can easily stop your journey to profitability. There’s still a war going on, a volatile economy, unstable gas prices, high unemployment and an election coming up.

We trust that you’ll face these issues head-on, letting your employees, customers and clients know that you stand for nothing short of delivering excellence in everything you do. If you do that, you’ll have an incredible 2012.

Want to know more about having an outrageous and incredible 2012? Want to know more about how to jump beyond your competitors with memorable, cutting-edge marketing? Contact us. We can help you get there … faster than ever.

Herman Cain Selling A Tax Plan Like Pizza:
If nothing else, Herman Cain will be remembered for 9-9-9 and reminding us of the importance of having a memorable slogan and that the most attractive pricing for all products ends in a nine, not a five.

Netflix Underestimates The Fury Of The Consumer:
Subscribers lashed out at Netflix’s 60 percent price hike and a series of bungled marketing attempts to spin off its DVD division. The fury has resulted in over 800,000 subscriber cancellations with more expected. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said, “We became a symbol of the evil, greedy corporation.”

Buy 100 Shares of Groupon: Half Off Within The Next 24 Hours:
Groupon’s widely publicized IPO was introduced at a valuation price much lower than originally planned. One could say they are discounting the price in order for people to buy it.

Will Anyone Miss The NBA?
With parts of the schedule already cancelled, is the complete season in peril? The toll on the local restaurant, hospitality and retail sectors already hurting in this economy, are disastrous. Like other professional sports leagues that have experienced similar lockouts, all will eventually be resolved and the loving relationship between the team and its fans will return to normal – like nothing ever happened.

1. Increase the number of new customers or clients
2. Increase the purchase frequency of current customers or clients
3. Encourage upselling opportunities to increase the average sale
4. Encourage large group sales

Select the best approach to increasing your sales by starting with a focused plan – and then watch your sales zoom.

The baseball movie Moneyball, based on Michael Lewis’s book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, details the issues facing the Oakland A’s – a major league baseball team that has a low budget and at the same time needs to field a championship level team in order to remain competitive and profitable.

It’s a situation that many businesses in every single category face today: how do you compete against those companies that have larger budgets allocated for advertising and for recruiting the best talent?

Moneyball is also about challenging the status quo by introducing innovative systems aimed at developing a winning and profitable infrastructure when the talent market is thin and there’s an attraction to work for the “big boys.” When this occurs, the questions arise:

1. Where do you recruit new staff?
2. How do you successfully compete in the talent market against bigger companies?
3. How do you ensure you’re getting the best return from those who are working for you?

While these questions are challenging, the answers just aren’t clear cut, as many companies attempt to build and maintain a championship level team of people.

Billy Beane, the GM of the Oakland A’s realized that to find good people, he had to turn the old system of recruiting upside down and look for “hidden gems.”

Beane recognized that by hiring players that had a higher percentage of getting on base, rather than hiring the multi-million dollar home-run sluggers, he could field a highly competitive team.

How does this apply to you? While we’re not advocating you become as statistically oriented as noted in Moneyball, maybe there’s something to this?

If you want to be more profitable, what performance statistics should you be tracking? Do you know for example, which people in your company attribute most to growth?

Simply, how do you measure specific talent performances that are tied to profitability?

Moneyball is a reminder that there is a way to overcome the odds and field a championship level team that can compete with the best.

Moneyball is a lesson to turn things upside-down and inside-out and analyze the performance of your complete team.

And finally, Moneyball is a lesson that implores us to not settle with tradition, but to seek out new ways to win … and find those “hidden gems.”

Here are 15 topics to write about that will encourage your fans to stay connected to you – all without discounting your product.

1. Talk about how and where your products are made.
2. Feature a special product of the day/week… and what makes it special.
3. Give your company’s philosophy on environment. How does your company participate in recycling?
4. Talk about your company’s participation in local charities.
5. Feature an employee of the week or month and why is he/she featured?
6. Talk about employee facts: how many hired, average age, experience, schooling, interests and hobbies.
7. Talk about how and why you got started in the business. What are you most passionate about? What drives you to success?
8. Facebook Fridays: Enjoy a meet-up event with other Facebook Fans every Friday.
9. Facebook Fans exclusive events and promotions.
10. Ask fans for suggestions.
11. Ask fans to vote on their favorite products.
12. Market research. How many live 5 minutes away? How many 30 minutes.
13. Market research. What do you think we’re best known for?
14. New product introduction and launches.
15. Host a Facebook bounce-back event with a neighboring retailer.

While many great online tools are available, the most successful companies are well grounded in traditional marketing. These businesses understand that to win the game, a company must excel inside before it can excel outside. Companies such as Nordstrom have followed this template perfectly for years.

With six months to go, where is your company focusing its efforts? On the hopes that a social media miracle will supply instant profits or on pushing the internal operations of your company up a notch?

Automatic “Thank You” Notes:

Look Who’s Secretly Talking: Search out those tweeting about your company that you’re not aware of because they’re not replying back to you, at  www.BackTweets.com.

Network and Lead Generation: Network and Lead Generation: To find prospects by their occupation in a specific geographic location, as listed on their Twitter bio, visit Google and type the following in the search field: intext: “bio * occupation” intext:”location * State” site:twitter.com — specifying both the occupation and the state.

For example, to find attorneys in Texas, type the following into Google’s search field: intext: “bio * attorney” intext:”location * Texas” site:twitter.com — and Google searches Twitter profiles that have “attorney” in the Bio field and “Texas” in the Location field. Also do a separate search with the State abbreviated.

It’s always nice to see an article on the importance that design plays in an ad’s attention getting factor, it’s readability and it’s overall success.  So even though I didn’t write this, I’m passing it along.  This describes how we look at all projects whether they are an ad, a mailer, an email or a package.  You need to hook a reader’s/customer’s  attention and lead them through to your intended conclusion. Otherwise, they are gone or worse – confused!  Also of note in this article – please remember that white space is your friend. No need to fill every inch of space with are or words.  Happy reading:   B2B Article