Business Information for Entrepreneurs by an Entrepreneur

Without your constant effort to promote your small business blog and the help of search engines pointing to your blog, it is nothing more than a lonely online business diary. Much like the philosophical question, "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there...", the same goes for your small business blog; if you write a blog and no one is there to read it, did it really happen?

Keeping your blog updated is a crucial step in improving your website SEO. However, what blog promotion steps do you take to help improve your readership?

Here are 3 tested blogging tips to drive more traffic and boost your readership.

1. Feed Your RSS

   RSS is the acronym for Real Simple Syndication. RSS technology was developed around the turn of the century as a means to distribute online publication media. Using RSS your published content can be syndicated, or fed to readership programs, automatically.

   RSS is a free syndication tool. For absolutely no money, you can get your new small business blog posts in front of readers instantly. RSS works on many platforms that are able to receive the RSS format, such as email, subscriber applications, or right to a reader's desktop. Luckily, RSS is the most popular online publication syndication application, so putting RSS on your small business blog is a no-brainer.

   While RSS works for you to broadcast your newly published content, it doesn't make people subscribe to your small business blog. That is still your responsibility. As part of your small business blog strategy, establish how you will encourage readers to subscribe to your RSS feed. Offer the RSS icon on your website and every blog page. Promote RSS subscriptions through your other social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.

2. Ping Search Engines After Each Update

   While you can get a RSS feed to instantly broadcast and syndicate your new blog updates, it doesn't notify search engines about your new content. It is easy for people to think that major search engines like Google and Yahoo! are savvy about new website content the moment it happens. The truth is that while search engines of all sizes regularly send out crawlers or "bots" to scan for new website content, it doesn't happen every day.

   To get your new small business blog content available for search engine results quickly, you need to notify them with a "ping". Pinging search engines is an electronic means of getting their attention that something new is on your website. That way, they will know it is time to log your new content and get it ready to present it as results to web surfers.

   If your small business blog is already on a platform like Blogger, WordPress, or TypePad, their system will automatically ping search engines after every post. Otherwise, you will need to ping using third party tools such as:

   • Weblogs (weblogs.com)
   • Feed Ping (feedping.com)
   • King Ping (kingping.com)
   • Feed Shark (feedshark.brainbliss.com)
   • Pingates (pingates.com)

3. Using Shortened URLs

   If your small business has a Twitter account, you know a 140 character limitation prevents effectual linking to your website blog. But you've probably also noticed how other Twitter accounts easily post links to website pages using shortened or "snipped" links.

   Snipping your blog update URL is easy using a third party tool like the ones listed below. By doing so, you can take a link that is dozens of characters long and reduce it to about 10 or 12 letters and numbers. That way, you can easily include it in a quick update to Twitter and on any other social media platform.

   Here are a few of the popular snipping services:

   • Bit.ly - Helps you shorten and track your links for hits and number of clicks.
   • TinyURL.com - URLs that you shorten with this service never expire.
   • Ow.ly - This is a link shortener offered by Hootsuite.

   Note that there is a downfall for using shortened links. By using a third party service, you lose potential branding of your small business blog and website since the links do not contain any mention of your business name. However, the benefits of blog promotion on multiple social media sites far outweighs this disadvantage.

On any given workday, your small business creates numerous electronic files containing personally identifiable information on your customers and financial details of your company. Data security is one of the most important elements of any business.

These files may include text documents with communications between in-house staff and/or clients, spreadsheets with financial data, ticker data from credit card sales and even scans of important signed contracts or other documents. Is the way you store and share these files putting your small business in a data security risk?

It is easy for a small business owner to overlook and neglect file security in the day-to-day routines. However, data security of your files is important. Additionally, files that are shared either from a server location, sent by email or transmitted via the internet are also vulnerable to file sharing security risks.

What Are The Risks of Data Security?

Your small business faces many risks for neglecting data security of shared files. Here are just a few:

• Lost Files - If a file is saved either on a local "C:" drive or on a shared network server, it can get "lost" when no one remembers where they put it, can be lost track of due to multiple moving of files or is even inadvertently deleted by a user.
• Accidental Sharing of Sensitive Information - A data security event may occur when a file is placed on a shared network, where anyone in the company has access to it, but does not have the proper authority.
• Downloaded Viruses - Downloading other files with an attached malicious virus may expose your files to data security issues. Private data could even be obtained by hackers or even deletion through malicious virus code.
• Sent to Wrong Recipient - Data security is jeopardized when files are shared via email and could be inadvertently sent to the incorrect recipient.

How to Promote File Security

Set up a File Sharing Policy
Your first step should be to discuss with your IT manager and heads of all departments how you will share files between each other and to outside sources. Describe when sharing is permitted and when it should be forbidden. Be sure you share the policy with all your employees so they are fully aware of the file security issues.

Set Up Standard File Saving Procedures
As part of your written business processes, you should determine how shared files will be stored. Be aware of the risks of certain procedures such as:

Stored on local drive - If a file is saved on a local hard drive on a laptop or desktop computer, what happens if the drive crashes? Or if the individual no longer can access the drive, can the file be retrieved?

Stored on shared drive - If you set up a network server for file storage, it is a great way to assure backup and recovery. However, who should have access to certain files? Where exactly will they be stored?

Set Up Standard File Folder System
If you do set up a shared server file system, be sure you design a proper and published file structure method. Make it clear that certain files should be stored in certain main and sub folders for departments such as accounting, or marketing. And be sure you set up proper viewing access to folders so those who have no need to see client data do not get to those files.

Classify Your Documents
You can set up a classification system to ensure data security of your most sensitive documents. Your most classified documents might be stored on a shared file that limited access. Or you might have your IT set up a completely different server for "eyes only" individuals.

Set up Proper Users
When you or your IT staff set up user accounts and permissions, be sure you keep track of who has access to what. Also, set up a policy on whether remote users on home or personal laptop computers should access your small business network. That could expose your system to further risks and should be considered heavily.

File security can be maintained with the proper policies in place. Be sure you think through how your small business files will be shared and how you will ensure data security within your electronic system.

Creating a small business website or blog and publishing a few articles is only the beginning of the job. While the completion of a great-looking website is worthy of a celebration, there is plenty more to do in order to ensure your website or blog attracts and keeps your desired online audience.

To help website owners make more sense of the visits they get, a list of statistical information is available. But the collected statistics and data are meaningless if you don't know what they mean. These statistics can easily be presented using web analytics tools found either from your web host or from a third-party web analytics company. The data presented on web analytical tools can help you make more sense of your website visitors by learning how and what to keep track of, and make better decisions of the content you post.

Making Sense of Web Analytics Terms

If you don't know what the terms presented in your web analytics tool mean, you can't make decisions on how to improve. Here are the most common and helpful terms you'll find.

Hits vs. Visits
Probably the most often-asked question is "how many people see my small business website?" There is statistical data to help answer this question, but the terms and data vary significantly.

• Hits - Many website owners like to advertise how many "hits" a website gets. However, a 'hit' is counted whenever a file is downloaded from the viewer. A single page may have multiple files, including the HTML coding file, a css file, photos, graphics, and other images that make up the entire content of the webpage. Each one of these files counts as a 'hit'. You can see how a single page view can register several hits, making this data unreliable in evaluating true page view counts.
• Visits - Any time a webpage is accessed, it registers a 'visit'. However, the same individual can access the same web page multiple times, and it can be counted again and again.

• Unique Visitors - This data tells a more reliable story of how many different individuals access a specific webpage. A web counter tool will store a cookie file on the computer of each individual who visits a website. That way, whenever the individual returns to the site, the counter knows it has already been logged.

  However, be aware that many savvy internet surfers will at times clear their cookie files from their browser, or even use multiple browsers to access your site. That means the cookie has no effect on counting the visitor as unique, and can skew the results.

• Return Visitors - Along with the importance of counting Unique Visitors, you should also keep track of Return Visitors. That cookie will help your counter let you know how many visitors come back more than once.

Page Views
This data is helpful particularly for blogs. It will tell you which specific blog pages get the most views, and lets you know what kind of content is more likely to elicit views and responses.

Entry Pages
The data found here tells you where your visitors enter your site. Do most come in right at your home page? Or do they find content based on searches? (See Referrers below)

Exit Pages
Likewise, you may want to know where your visitors leave your website. Do you have a lot of exits on your checkout page? Perhaps that is an indicator that it needs to be revamped.

Referrers
You may want to know where your visitors come from. This will let you know what specific website and page a visitor came from, usually by following a link. This may tell you how many visitors come from search engine results, or from your link sharing strategy. If you market your website on other sites, this can be invaluable as to how effective your paid online marketing is doing.

Keywords/Phrases
This data is usually presented when the referrer is a search engine. You may have agonized over choosing the keywords and phrases for your website's SEO. However, this helpful data will let you know what exact and specific words and phrases your visitors used to find your website and its content.