Instead of discussing blogs and relationships, which is the usual way a blog speech goes, he talks about the real blog secrets.  The blog secrets are that they can be optimized for seo and get great, targeted traffic that can be converted into real sales leads.  Blog ROI is high – but only if you know the blog secrets.

Ron is a Social Media Speaker that has spent years teaching employees and companies about how to use social media tools to drive real business results.  Blogs are a key component of this strategy, but it also includes the typical social media sites which can help pump more visitors into the top of the sales funnel.

Finding the most bells and whistles in a business blogging software solution will probably only confuse the issue around your goal.

There are only a few Business Blogging goals worth considering.

1. Sales – Business Blogging Software in the hands of a good writer or group of writers can actually directly result in sales for some kinds of products.
2. Leads – Lead Generation with Blogs is very possible if you know how to customize blogging software to be a lead generation engine.
3. Relationships – If your goal is to create a better relationship between your business and your customers, business blogging is an important part.
4. SEO – Business Blogs enhance search engine results and generate more traffic to your main website.
5. Expertise – If you want to position your C level executives as industry experts, a business blog along with speaking and webinars is essential.

The hard thing here is you cannot just say yes.

Instead, you must pick one as your primary goal.  If you try to do all five business blogging goals, you will fail.

That does not mean that all these things cannot happen – but by focusing on one as the primary goal you are going to drastically change the Corporate Blogging Software you choose.

For example, building an expert blog is much more like building an typical blog.  You really do not need custom business blogging software to set up an expert blog.  However, if you want to generate sales, leads and get SEO results you need to work with someone that understands how these things happen and have a custom business blogging solution that meets your needs.  These people usually understand SEO, Affiliate Sales and Squeeze pages so that you can combine these strategies and get the business blogging results you want.  And it will usually get a great ROI over time.

First, I am not going to leave you in suspense.  Both.

Why?  Twitter is fast.  Everyone should be using twitter and anyone serious about online leads and sales should also be blogging.

Twitter will help you get quick boosts of traffic.  Your business blog will help you get better SEO ranking.

This is kind of like asking if you Ford should advertise in magazines or on TV.  If you have the resources, both is the obvious answer.

You may not know it, but you can automate twitter to automatically update when you have a new blog post.  This puts Twitter on autopilot and helps you leverage your time to be effective in both mediums.

What should ambassador programs contain?

• Document detailing goals.
• Instructions on what to do if you find negative comments.
• Examples of great brand ambassador activities.
• Documented great stories to repeat.
• Contests and recognition for people that are making a difference.
• Tools that make promotion easy, such as a employee brand ambassador blog.

Brand Ambassador Programs are a great way to get more out of your employees, customers and the part of the public that is passionate about your product.

1. Blog with an Employee Ambassador Blog
2. Build a Squidoo Lens
3. Public Speaking
4. Hubpages Hub
5. Twitter, Twitter, Twitter
6. Gather.com
7. Wordpress.com
8. Delicious.com
9. Stumbleupon.com
10. Digg.com
11. eZineArticles.com
12. Blogger.com
13. Tumblr.com
14. MyBlogLog.com
15. BlogCatalog.com
16. FiendFeed.com
17. FaceBook.com
18. LinkedIn.com
19. Furl.net
20. MyLinkVault.com

A brand ambassador that picks 2-3 things off of this list each week and does something with them will be very valuable at creating brand awareness and website traffic.

Here is a list of purposes for blogging

1. Sales and Lead Generation
2. Brand Awareness
3. Search Engine Results
4. Brand Protection
5. Writing Practice
6. Personal Branding
7. Get Feedback from Customers
8. Let people know how your kittens are doing
9. Email List Building
10. Publish product development news
11. Connect with affiliates
12. Anchor your other social media marketing activities

The purpose of blogging is as diverse as the people that write blogs.

I feel very lucky to be working on the Employee Ambassador program now.  Consider these factors.

1. Employee Ambassador is designed to be 100% goal oriented – and the goal is customer acquisition.
2. Accountability – Reports clearly show if progress is being made or not.
3. Employee Ambassador blogs are a great way to do lead generation in down times (nights, weekends) to utilize your time best.
4. Employee Ambassador is cheap lead generation.  You are not paying per lead or per click.
5. People are looking for your product or service today.  If you are not one of the first results in Google for their search, then you are not being found.  Opportunities are lost every day.

We actually go through a live demo of how many opportunities you think you are failing to get every day.  It is fasinating to see how this changes the perspective of people about customer acquisition on the web.  Request a demo today.

Employee Blogs are a great strategy for any business to grow its online footprint.

More information on the web means more people find you.

You could hire writers to produce the information or you can use employee bloggers.

Your employee blog strategy should consider the following:

• Only allow blogging for employees that have computer access – you do not want to require employees to go to the public library and blog for you.
• Monitor employee blogs for quality, appropriateness and frequency.
• Give people the option to opt into the program, then reward employees that make an effort and produce good content for you.
• Hold contests to get everyone to think about things they can write.
• Have an annual Academy Awards ceremony for your employee bloggers.
  • Best Employee Blog Post Award
  • Most Popular Employee Blog Post Award
  • Most Employee Blog Posts Award
  • Most Comments on an Employee Blog Post Award
  • Highest Number of Weeks with New Post Award

These are just some ideas for you to consider in your employee blog strategy.

1. Write Blog Posts – Blog ROI is great because blog posts are content, indexed by search engines that can keep generating content far into the future.
2. Public Speaking – Any time you get up and give a good, informative presentation about the company you are being a great brand ambassador.
3. Twitter – A Brand Ambassador should both monitor twitter and participate on Twitter.  Just don’t spend all day doing it.
4. LinkedIn - A Brand Ambassador must have a professional profile posted on LinkedIn.
5. Word of Mouth – A good brand ambassador looks for opportunities to tell great stories and jump start word of mouth.
6. Social Bookmarks – A brand ambassador will take the time to use one or more social bookmarking sites to link to good articles in your corporate blog.
7. StumbleUpon – Brand Ambassadors that understand the importance of traffic will use stumbleupon to call attention to the company website, company blog and any positive news about the company.
8. Networking – A good brand ambassador gets the importance of having a strong network for them and for their company.  Brand Ambassadors build their network before they need it.
9. FaceBook – Brand Ambassadors look for opportunities to connect to people.  Facebook is one such opportunity.
10. Follow Up – Great Brand Ambassadors will follow up with people, either via email or phone, to keep the company fresh in the minds of their network.

Wrap these things up into one person, and you will get some good results.  Build a team of brand ambassadors and you will quickly own your space.  Brand Ambassadors can accomplish things that an advertising budget cannot.  Authentic conversations and authentic content.

While it is a blog engine that drives the employee ambassador system, it is actually on online advertising strategy.

If you were to go to Google and pay for adwords, your ad would show up on the right and you could pay per click.

With Employee Ambassador, we help you target free search engine ranking on the left.  This has more credibility in the eyes of a searcher and gets more clicks.  Then when people click on your site, your ad offer appears on the right of your page.

Your offer could be a free white paper download, a product you are selling or any other type of conversion you want to design.  They key is that Employee Ambassador gets your targeted audience to the site in a highly credible way and then you are advertising in the side.

While traffic is not always high, it is targeted.  This means your visitors are far more likely to click on your offer because they are interested in what you have to say and what you are advertising.