5 Small Business Blogging Myths—BUSTED! from Xavier Media®

As a small business owner, you're always looking for ways to drive more traffic to your website and grow your customer base. You've heard a lot of great things about blogging, but you've also heard a lot of myths that are making you think twice about investing your time and effort. The blogging myths you hear may be true for some, but not for all.Below are my top five busted blogging myths that I hope will persuade you to start one for your small business.

Blogging Myth 1: No one reads blogs

Seriously? Wipe this thought out of your mind right now! According to eBizMBA.com, Huffington Post has 54 million visitors each month, TMZ has 19 million visitors each month, and Mashable has 10 million visitors each month. Fine—your small business blog may not have that many visitors in a month, or even in a year, but people read blogs, especially when they're searching for specific topics.

Let's say you own a small business that sells beauty products. You start a blog about beauty tips, product reviews, and fashion trends. Emily wants to know what liquid foundation works best with her oily skin. She stumbles across your blog in her search results that compares foundations with skin types, loves the information you've provided, and continues to look through your blog. Not only do you have a new reader, but you also have a new reader who'll keep coming back for more.

Blogging Myth 2: If you build it, they will come

I probably made it seem that way with what I just said about people searching for information on a certain topic, but this isn't entirely true. You need to advertise your blog to attract readers, too. Add a link to your blog from your company website, include a link in your email signature, announce your blog and include the most recent posts in your company newsletter, and use social networking to let people know about it. Tweet your blog posts. Add links on your Facebook. Submit posts to Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. If you build your small business blog, your readers will come—but only if you tell them about it first.

Blogging Myth 3: You need to be a professional writer if you want to blog

Although I have a degree in writing, I certainly know that you don't have to be a professional to start a blog. You should at least know the basics about grammar and spelling, but it's what you know that makes you an expert in your field. One of the greatest tips I've ever gotten, and it's something that a lot of writers will tell you, is that you should write the same way you speak.

When I took Writing for the Web in college, we created a blog as a group activity (as well as having to maintain our own personal blogs). Each post revolved around classroom projects, and the goal was to persuade students to major in writing. Next, we created a fictional character, Jonas Lenfield—we even created a Facebook page for him—whom we imagined would read our blog and wrote every post as if we were talking to him. Writing as if you're talking to just one person makes the reader experience more personal and intimate.

Blogging Myth 4: Traffic measures your blog's success

As senior copywriter for my company, I know there are fewer people looking for ablog about credit card processingand more people looking for blogs about current events, celebrity gossip, and tech news. But it's not how much traffic our blog gets that measures its success. As a small business owner, if you can convert some of your readers into customers, then consider your blog a success.

Blogging Myth 5: You have to post every day in order to have a successful blog

There are a few things wrong with the above statement. First: Do you really have the time to write a new blog post for every day of the year? Ninety percent of my job is writing, and I don't even have enough time to write a blog post every day. Unless you have a team of writers like at Huffington Post or Mashable, then no one will expect a post every day. Two to three new posts a week will suffice. Second: As a small business owner, do you really have enough content to write a new blog post for every day of the year? I know I don't. Third: Quality is better than quantity. No one wants to read a shoddy blog post, but everyone loves something that will benefit them.

Share Your Small Business Blogging Myths and Expertise

What blogging myths do you find daunting? How long have you been blogging for your small business? How do you measure the success of your blog? What advice do you have for start-up businesses and bloggers who are weary of the myths?

5 Small Business Blogging Myths—BUSTED!fromXavier Media®

Common spam comment words from Xavier Media®

We've all got comments in our blog(s) with weird syntax and grammar, but are people really that weird or is it just another spambot?The spam bots are of course trying their very best to avoid getting caught in the spam filters most blogs use so they try to use words that are uncommon in normal spam comments. This action is causing the grammar to look extremely weird (not like something a real human would write) and also the selection of words used in the comment is uncommon for normal people. I mean how often do a real human write something like"your writing style has been surprised me" or"I savor, result in I found exactly what I used to be taking a look for".

By checking the spam comments we've got in this blog we found some common words used by spammers and also some common comments used by spammers. If you get comments that look exactly like the comments we've listed below and if you get comments with the words we've listed here it's spam even if you want to think you have an engaged reader of your blog.

Some common words in blog spam comments:

• write-up, write up and writeup
• internet-site
• whereby
• wonderful understand
• mastered
• excellent read
• obliged

Some common spam comments:

• Hello, I would like to subscribe for this website to obtain most recent updates, so where can i do it please help out.
• Thanks for the article !
• May I perhaps repost this to 1 of my own sites for this subject
• Thank you for this enlightening blog article I personally like it
• Great blog post. Thanks for posting this
• This internet site is wonderful. I have mastered lots of things from here
• Normally I don't read article on blogs
• Your article rocks as well as being a legitimate wonderful understand!

Some people seem to be using software generating comments on the blogs and they sometimes forgot to replace some prefilled values before they start posting. For example sometimes we see comments with links called"Fill in the link you want to promote in this field"

Common spam comment wordsfromXavier Media®

Siri Threatens Local SEO from Xavier Media®

Have you ever heard about Vlingo Virtual Assistant for android or Siri for Iphone?If not, then I would suggest you to dedicate some time and learn a few more things about these virtual assistants. If you wonder “Why?” that’s because they might change the way SEO and local marketing works.
At first sight, Siri and Vlingo Virtual Assistant might look like normal voice recognition software. These virtual assistants give you the opportunity to give verbal instructions, write short messages and other cool stuff. Even if that’s true, how can they affect local marketing and especially SEO?
Well, let’s go deeper than the surface and let’s examine how these applications will change the way local marketing works. The truth behind these virtual assistants is that they can operate a wide scale of actions such as making a search query and presenting you the results.
Let’s see what I mean. Let’s say that you are in need of a dentist. You can tell Siri “Find me a dentist”. Siri will then provide you a list of all the available dentists near your location automatically. If you need a gas station, then you make a request to Siri. “find me a gas station” and Siri will present you the most relative results, near your area. That way, you will avoid the process of making a search query directly to Google and the other search engines that present organic and paid results.
How Siri’s Algorithm works
There’s little knowledge regarding the algorithm of Siri. Just like in all search engines, Siri has a secret algorithm that gathers the information and then process it to you. SEO experts are sure that Siri gathers info from sites like Google Places, Bing and Yelp.
Local Businesses should keep in mind that iPhone is one of the best selling products of Apple. It’s almost certain that iPhone users will gradually start using Siri, so it’s a good opportunity to start optimizing your site for mobiles.
Let’s take a quick look at some features of your website that will make Siri and the other virtual assistants more accessible to your site.

1. Integrate a mobile version for your site. If you can’t afford to pay for a web design company, then you can buy a mobile ready theme. If you use Content Management Systems such as WordPress or Drupal, then you’ll find a wide variety of mobile themes in the market.
2. Improve your SEO. Place your address, local phone on the homepage of your site.
3. It’s not a lie that Flash or Ajax can harm your SEO. The same goes for SEO for mobiles. Creating non readable content in flash files, Ajax code or in PDFs, will place your site at a major disadvantage.

Improve your Web Presence.

We aren’t sure where Siri draws all the information, but it’s imperative to enhance your web presence as much as possible. Above we mentioned that Siri takes into consideration signals from Google Places, Bing and Yelp. Here is a list from some of the sites that Siri gathers information.

• Foursquare
• Retailmenot
• Citysearch
• Superpages
• Yellow Pages
• Google Places
• Yahoo Local
• Bing Local
• Yelp
• Grubhub
• Open Table
• Urbanspoon

In order to specify which of the above work for you, measure your competition and register your site with the above services.
Conclusion
It’s early to say that Siri and the other virtual assistants will mean the end of Local SEO or the end of Google or Bing, but mobile popularity and Siri is growing fast every day, so local business should start to adopt the new technologies. The businesses that will adapt to the new scene will be the ones that understand their clients better and will be able to gain from them. By starting to optimize your sites for the future, you will definitely manage to engage them.

Siri Threatens Local SEOfromXavier Media®