I have already talked about the importance of “About us / About the blogger” page in a blog. There is no doubt that this single page is as important as the “contact” page. And a lot of things (including your brand development) depends on a good presentation of the “About” page.

However, does every “about us” page seem too appealing to read!

A lot of blogs (and a lot of websites too), simply ignore the importance and potential of the page. They simply write a few paragraphs (often one or two lines) to briefly describe themselves and their business. Some people try to tell a story (a good way to engage the target readers) but this often ends in dull self promotion.

Here are some points that I believe is integral part of a great “about” page:

1. What is your reader expecting? A good “about” page, like all other pages, depends on the target readers of your blog or website. You must understand why and when a reader is seeking more information on you. For example, if you are selling something and the readers (prospective buyer) wants to know more about you before making a decision, your main aim would be to boost the trust factor in the buyer. You must present the content in a way that the reader can trust you as a genuine identity or as an authority who can guide him. Your experience or qualification may help the reader to overcome the dilemma that he or she is facing to make the final click.

2. What is your topic? If your topic is serious, it must be represented in the “about” page. However, if you are promoting a fun filled brand, things should be more fun oriented. There should be some differences between a designer’s “about” page and a Lawyer’s “about” page – isn’t it?

3. What does it tell other than the facts? How is it different from the “contact” or “testimonial” page!

4. Does it link to some important internal pages? If yes, why? (BTW, this is a good way to tell more about you in fewer words).

5. What else?

There are two types of people – the first set of people just wait for things to happen and the second set of people takes the active step to make that happen.

Why am I saying this when this blog is not on personal development or self improvement!

Today we understand the importance of social media marketing and networking to promote your business online. But in this situation what does most of the webmasters do?

Either they add some social bookmarking buttons in their website / blog or they move ahead and bookmark all their posts as soon as they are published. In both the cases, they simply wait for the visitors to promote their bog or posts in those social networks.

Can they take any active step in promoting their posts in social networks other than waiting?

Why don’t you become a power user of your targeted social networks?

You might be thinking that only a lucky few can become a power user as no one can predetermine which story would become a big hit in a particular social network. And if you cannot post popular topics, there are almost no chances of becoming a power user.

I agree. The power users are superstars of a social network who have the maximum number of super hit stories (links) in their profile. So, to become a power user, you must have great number of super hit stories in your profile too – at least the ratios should be good. (If you can often hit the front page of a social network, this will brand your profile as a power user.)

Is there any way to become a power user? Yes – there is:

If you visit any social network, you will find some websites are their darlings. Some websites or blogs rank high in popularity lists. It does not matter who submitted the story (sometimes even the quality of the post does not matter either), but the regular readers of those blogs or websites will push it up in the ranking.

Why don’t you take the opportunity and submit the story in that social network – before anybody else does! After some days, people will not remember which stories you submitted or how your profile became so good – the end result is just a good profile to envy.

BWT, a power user is a person who reaches the news before others – there is nothing wrong in playing the game.

We have talked a lot about online branding and overall brand development of you blog in last couple of posts. I am planning to stop it for the time being with this post.

We normally divide SEO in two sections – on-page SEO and off-page SEO. In the on-page SEO section we normally have code optimization, content optimization and navigation. And in the off-page SEO or SEM section we concentrate on link development, social media promotion, viral marketing etc.

We have already talked a lot about social media marketing, viral marketing etc in this blog. And we have already talked about link building.

However, webmasters often commit a basic mistake. They often take link building only as a SEO technique. It is true that incoming keyword rich links improve your search engine ranking. But if you want to develop a brand, you must think beyond SERP.

I would recommend you to start thinking about link building as a means for brand development by increasing your online visibility. The logic is simple; if your target audience can see your link or website’s name in different channels (content, video, image and even slide shows) on related or exact topic, it would definitely help you to develop a brand. And this also helps you in improving your ranking – naturally (the basic rule of getting links for SEO is getting them from related or exact topic pages). To add to this, I would also recommend you to get a link from a high traffic page even if it is a no-follow link or even if the link does not have any anchor text.

So, what about paid links?

This is an inevitable question that should follow the last paragraph. If you can erase the foot prints of a paid link, you can go for that. But what if you do not want to go this way? You can go for no-follow links or redirected links from pages that have heavy volume of your targeted traffic.

You can also think about getting similar links from websites that are ranking higher than you for your targeted keywords. You may soon start eating their visitors.

BTW, small changes make bigger impact – agree?

In my last post I was talking about the importance of developing social relationship with your customers. In this post I would like to elaborate on the concept of social relationship development.

Say for example, in a fine morning, you get a call from a bank representative! Do you really listen to what he or she is saying with your full attention! Perhaps you keep your lips tight not to divulge any sensitive personal information. You are busy in protecting you rather than concentrating on what he or she is telling. Even if you need that product, you focus to understand the authenticity of the person on the other end of the phone.

Does the same thing happen when a bank representative meets you in person! I don’t think so – the physical appearance of the salesman or salesgirl makes you somewhat assured. You feel more comfortable when he or she shows the identity card (it can be fake too but still it wins some trust). The end result is a better communication.

And once you buy something from that person, a social relationship is developed. If the service or the product is good, you do not have any problem in referring his or her name to another person. And if the product turns out to be of poor quality, you may do it more but in the negative sense.

Anyways, in mini websites, we try different things to win trust of the prospective customer. For example, we put our pictures and introduce us in the “about us” page and in the “contact us” page we provide our actual physical address. Some websites walk a few steps ahead and displays their office space (virtual tour via photographs or videos) with actual people. Some websites invite the customers to visit their office or workshop too.

All these things take the relationship beyond cyber space and breaks the primary communication barrier (when you had been busy understanding the authenticity of the caller from the bank). And now, if you can actually bring the customer in your workshop, this would take you a few steps ahead in relationship development. I have seen a lot of mini websites announce that they are participating in a specific event and take a proactive step to invite prospective and existing customers to their booth.

There you actually develop the social relationship even if the customer does not come to the booth. He or she is sure that you exist and you care.

We use different medium to communicate with an imaginary target market. We move in different social networks, move through the dark and clear avenues of viral and email marketing, employ black and white hat SEO techniques and anything and everything to get more visitors.

And then, we look for our conversion ratio, improve the existing structure and move forward to get more visitors.

Is there anything wrong in this common process? To some extent there is a big problem. What is that?

Ok, what do you do when a sale is closed? Let’s take a look at the common model:

You work hard to get a visitor in your blog or website and than work harder to convince him or her to buy the product or service. What next? You move ahead to get a new consumer and then follow the same process. There are enough fishes in the pond. But what is wrong?

In the process, you are not actually using the trust you have already won in the first consumer – to the most you are using it only for once. If you could keep in touch with that person, he or she could have bought the same product again from you (hopefully you have offered him good service). Even if he or she never needed the service or product again, they could refer you new customers. And these references have more potential to become a consumer than the first time visitor of your website. Don’t you think that you are wasting a huge market of potential customers!

This is especially true for mini web stores. They often need to fight with big websites and brand names for every sale. To do more business, you must invest some time on personal or social relationship development with the existing clients. And when things go really tough, these social relationships will pay. The big websites can take away anything from you but these relationships.

But what is social relationship?

Did you notice the new link in the header section of NBB?

We are pleased to announce the new marketplace at Net Business Blog.

We are pleased to hand it over to thousands of dedicated NBB readers.

What you can do here?

Contact prospective buyers or sellers who are interested to buy or sell premium or established websites or blogs. (This can be a great opportunity to get the best price for your web property.) You can participate in Premium domain name auction and classifieds – be a part of the really big domain buying and selling industry. To add to these, you can also advertise your services or products like domain hosting or templates or content etc.

What else?

The marketplace is still in the development phase. We want our readers to decide what they want. We are simply offering a platform for you to make more money by directly trading with the target market. Just tell us, what you want to have there – we are listening to you.

What else is there for you?

The early adopter’s advantage: a new community depends on early adopters to keep the board running. This is true. At the same time, the early adopters earn trust and brand value once the board is full of running visitors. And as this is almost a direct trading marketplace, you get exposure to real world where web properties really matter. And we hope that this place will soon be filled with serious webmasters and bloggers like you.

(We have something more for the early adopters… wait for the next update…).

If you want to earn some extra money, join our affiliate network and earn money by promoting this marketplace in your network.

What else? Join the marketplace and start real business.

If you missed my earlier posts of the series, here they are: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Post 8, Post 9, post 10, Post 11, post 12, post 13 and post 14. And here goes part 15:

In my last post I said “A good blog strikes a balance between personal life (social presence) and professional life“.

This is true for both the personal blogs and professional blogs. Just browse through the top 100 personal and professional blogs and you would get it. [However, a lot of those top blogs are multi blogger units. And it won't be wrong if I say that these multi blogger units are more like news agencies rather than a personal blog or a professional blog maintained by a single user. So, please exclude these multi blogger units from the list and take a look at blogs like problogger or copyblogger or sethgodin.]

In almost all these blogs they reveal some personal traits, habits and more importantly their associations. Why?

In the web, information or authenticity of the information does not depend on the content alone; especially in the blogging atmosphere, where you write regularly on your favorite topic. People want to know the person who is saying this.

Just think about your friend – you know a lot of things about him or her. And this information opens up more avenues to communicate. The same understandings would take a lot of time to develop on the web as the speaker or writer is not visible to the reader. An image of the author is not enough to bridge the gap. And at the same time, the image is important too – every little bit counts.

And the faith is not generated in one or two posts – this is a continuous effort. Once you develop the trust factor in your target audience, they would listen to you and communicate with you more freely- even when you are writing on an irrelevant topic (don’t do it often – you may loose your traffic).

Go ahead and introduce your social self. But if you are running a professional blog – only introduce the relevant elements – something that would enhance or identify your brand.

If you missed my earlier posts of the series, here they are: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Post 8, Post 9, post 10, Post 11, post 12 and post 13. And here goes part 14:

We often say, to become a successful blogger you must introduce your social presence to the blog. At the same time, I would like to say that though I said ?must’ in the last sentence, this is not mandatory – you can find your own way to replace the social issue. For example, you can introduce your online presence (in different social networks or forums) to replace your social identity. And often all those small little spaces, develop into a complete and comprehensive brand.

A lot of people think that, in professional blogging, there is no place to showcase the personal life. And thus, they often loose the touch of life in the blog – something that have the potential to make things more informal and sometimes more lively.

Here, I am not talking abut corporate blogging at all. Corporate blogging is quite different from real life or personal blogging or professional blogging. In a corporate blogging atmosphere, the blog almost runs as an information spreading hub of the company. This acts as a public relation outlet for the company. However, in other blogs, this is not the problem – irrespective of professional blog or personal blog.

The statement is simple – “A good blog strikes a balance between personal life (social presence) and professional life”.

Let’s think in this line:

What do you do when you get to know some important information from someone or some news source? You look for the authenticity of the information – sometimes you cross check it with other sources that you believe. Especially, if you received this information for the first time from that source there are high chances that you would cross check it! Now, once that source wins a position in your Good Book, next time you may not cross check the authenticity of that news.

More interestingly, sometimes the social position of the person adds to the authenticity of the information. For example, think about a physics professor – if he or she says something on latest technology, you are less likely to crosscheck the information. To add to this, even if he or she tells you something about religion, the information would carry some sort of authority even though there is hardly any relation between physics and religion.

But why I am telling all these? Wait for the next post:

So, I am back into action with tips on online brand identity development for your blog. If you missed my earlier posts of the series, here they are: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Post 8, Post 9, post 10, Post 11 and post 12. And here goes part 13:

In my last post, I was talking about using social media to reach people who don’t use social media in other words that post focuses on why and how you can communicate with your prospective target market who are yet to use social media to find an online solution.

However, does this apply to every website or blog. Lol – as I always say, no rule is universal. Before you invest on such an initiative, try to find out how your target market is reaching the solution. Maybe they are using a search engine to find a solution or may be they are not sure that they can avail the solution online.

If your target audience is using a search engine to find the solution online, you better invest on improving your search engine ranking for targeted keywords. The return on investment would be very high – and this also helps in online branding. It works as if a recommendation from Google or Yahoo (other popular brands).

But what if your target audience does not know that they can avail the solution online! In that situation, social media marketing can be a cost effective way to promote your blog, website or business in the target market. Here the existing users would spread the words when someone in their circle will be looking for a solution. However, it is very tough to measure the return on investment.

Going for offline promotion of your product is very effective but it takes a lot of money, time and effort. Can you afford that?

The success of a blog depends on conversation or engagement with the target audience. It is important if you want to develop a community around your blog. There is no doubt about that. And there are no specific rules that you can follow to start a conversation with your target audience. Don’t take me wrong – it depends on your topic and type of existing visitor.However, a lot of people think that conversation equals to number of comments you have received in a specific post or the number of average comments you receive per post. Ok, this is direct conversation. But what about the vast sector of your visitors who do not comment although they have read the post and thinks about your point! How well you are to engage them with your content?

BTW, normally conversation depends on your writing style and content designing (i.e. how you structure the content) and the topic itself.

Finding different medium to communicate with the target audience:

A conversation is not necessarily verbal (when you communicate with your friend over certain topics, only 35% is done verbally and the rest depends on other non-verbal communication channels like body language). When someone is not commenting on your blog, find other ways to communicate with him or her – let them speak. For example, if you are active in Twitter, start a discussion there and promote your post. The same rule applies to other social networks where you are active. I believe that blog comments are not everything as far as conversation is concerned.

Treat your blog post as an IDEA that you have developed and now go ahead in every possible direction to talk about it. Carry this with you everywhere you go. Let people know about it (even your IM status message or email signatures can be a good way to start a verbal or nonverbal communication).

However, there are certain patterns followed by successful bloggers, that you can think about to improve your conversation skills.

Darren has published a good post (collaborative) on the topic (what a great link bait!). You can take a look at that post. But, you must find your own way.