Welcome to this edition of Core, an industry newsletter with news, nuggets, and information on best practices in business-to-business technology marketing and public relations. With it, we hope to share information vital to any organization looking to generate revenue and accelerate growth through intelligent strategy, messaging, branding, public relations and demand generation.


Odds are you have started a company blog, or you have started looking into it. Regardless of your experience with blogging, the following tips and tools can help you take the next steps once your blog is up on the Web.

The first step is to explore other blogs that cover similar topics. Comment on and spark conversations within other blogs, like media blogs, corporate blogs and those of potential customers. Doing so broadcasts yourself as a thought leader and helps lay the groundwork for becoming an authority in your market.

Keep in mind it takes time and commitment to build credibility in the blogosphere. Regular posts are important – as are maintaining any relationships you create. They give people who are interested in your blog a reason to keep coming back.

There are a number of different tools that allow you to search, link to and track blogs. These tools allow others to do the same to your blog, and can be beneficial when building relationships and credibility in the blogosphere. Here are four tools to consider...

Technorati – Blog and Social Media Tracking Website
Technorati, widely respected as an authority on the blogosphere, is a social media tracking website at its simplest. Technorati tracks and reports updates, such as new postings, for blogs and social media sites through a variety of methods.

Technorati measures the “authority” of a blog based on the number of times it has been linked to in the last six months. Essentially, it measures the number of bloggers who find the information relevant and have linked to the blog.

You can use Technorati to find other bloggers with similar interests, which may provide new ideas for your own blog, as well as information you can share with your readers.

Social Bookmarking Sites
Social bookmarking sites are another tool that readers use to share and bookmark anything they find online. They are similar to a Web browser’s bookmarking function combined with the social networking aspect of being able to share the bookmarks with the site’s users. These sites offer a button that members can insert into their blogs and Web pages, allowing readers to automatically bookmark an item or posting of interest. You may recognize a few of these common social bookmarking icons:

Del.icio.us , Digg , Reddit

If a page is bookmarked often enough, it can be featured in its category or on the social networking site’s homepage – significantly increasing visibility and potentially driving more traffic to your site.

Blogrolling
A third tool that connects you with other bloggers and helps drive traffic between blogs is called a blogroll. It is simply a list of links to blogs you respect, find interesting or believe are good resources for visitors. Think of it as a recommended reading list for people who like your posts. If you do not know how to create a blogroll with basic knowledge of HTML, the following sites can help you: Widgets, Blogrolling.com.

RSS allows you to syndicate your blog so anyone with the appropriate software or “feed reader” can be alerted when you update postings. RSS, and variants like Atom, are often built into blog hosting sites. For more information, check with your blog’s hosting site.

With these four tools in place, you are well on your way to promoting your blog.

So You’ve Created a Blog…Now What? was developed to help you make your blog interactive. If you have any questions, ask Arketi – we’re always glad to help.

Sincerely,

Arketi Group
core@arketi.com

P.S. Check out Arketi’s blog at b2bmarketingnews.blogspot.com for B2B marketing tips, news bites and updates on what’s happening at Arketi.

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