Category Archives: Blog

Business Blogging Tips: 5 More Topics to Blog About

Last Updated On August 13th, 2014Blog, , ,

businessbloggingLast time we discussed some potential topics for your new corporate blog. If you’ve already used those all up and still need some more ideas, here are 5 additional topics to write about on your business blog.

1. Announce a recent company achievement, news or event. Although you don’t want every blog to be only about your company, people look to you for the latest news and announcements about your business. If your company has recently been recognized for an achievement or some breaking news in your industry has just been released, make sure you’re blogging about it as soon as possible.

2. Show off your company’s employees. People want to interact with other people, not big corporations. Showcase your company’s team members on your social media networks and blog to help create better relationships with your current and potential customers. When people are able to see the faces behind your company, they’re more likely to put trust in you as well as become loyal customers and eventually advocates for your brand.

3. Post a relevant video and summarize it. If you find a useful how-to video, news story, or just an entertaining video that is relevant to your industry, post it to your blog and write a short description. If you post videos that you’ve created, it’s even better.

4. Review products. Did a new product just come out that is relevant to your industry? Do you think your customer/readers would be interested in knowing whether that product is a good one? Of course they would! Write a review for it and let them know whether it’s worthwhile. Putting yourself in your readers’ shoes helps give you a better understanding of what they’re interested in. The more you write about what they like, the more often they’ll return to read more and potentially purchase your product or service.

5. Invite a guest blogger. Bringing a fresh perspective to your blog will help it keep the interest of your readers. Ask your guest blogger to offer some insight on an important issue within the industry. Respond to the blog with your thoughts so your readers can see two points of view.

Business Blogging Tips: 5 Topics to Blog About

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So you’re thinking about starting a blog for your company, but you have absolutely no idea what to write about? Don’t worry; we all have this problem at some point. Here are 5 blog topics to get your creative juices flowing. After a few posts, you won’t even need this topic list, you’ll discover that blog topics are everywhere; you just need to know where to look.

1. Summarize an industry-related news story. At the end of your post, link to the original news story and say something like “read the full article here.”

2. Write a how-to post. How-to’s are one of the most popular blog entries. Make sure it’s related to your industry. Then people searching online for a how-to on a particular task will stumble across your blog, read your entry and hopefully read more entries or visit your website.

3. Answer a common customer support question. This will not only help your customers but it also shows them that you genuinely care. Potential customers will see this and instantly gain more trust in your business.

4. Highlight a product or service. If there’s a particular product or service you are promoting this month, feature it on your blog. Include a photo and let your readers know how this product or service makes their life easier, healthier, happier, more successful, etc.

5. Provide tips and tricks of the trade. Share some inside information on your industry with your readers. Giving them information they find interesting or useful but can’t get anywhere else is one way to get them to come back and read in the future.

Duplicate Google Listings

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Early this morning, we observed an interesting development in one of our clients’ Google listings.

Google Maps shows two different listings for the same business. In some cases they are almost completely different records, but in other cases the listings are nearly identical. The most common differences are found in the business’s address or phone number.

We’ve grouped these phenomena into two categories: alias duplicates and exact duplicates.

In the case of the alias duplicates, the authentic listing shows up exactly as it is supposed to—the contact information and content we provided appear as expected. However, another business listing can be found that contains identical contact information and content; the only noticeable difference is the business name.

To determine if the listing is an alias duplicate, copy the permalink to the listing (which can be found in the link box). Travel to this link instead of the link you’re already viewing. There will be a question mark (?) in front of the CID and then a number. This number is the unique content identifier used by Google. If they are the exact same number, you’ll be looking at the exact same record, but with two different faces. The results shown depend upon the user’s query. To establish which record is the primary record, remove every part of the URL after the CID number. Traveling to this link will bring you to the primary record, which is the most trustworthy listing. The other record is maintained by Google just in case someone is to directly search for that business by its content alone.

For example, if ABC Plumbing was the primary record and Powerhouse Plumbing was the alias duplicate, Powerhouse Plumbing would only be viewed if someone directly queried Powerhouse Plumbing, since all of the content in the record would yield results for ABC Plumbing. It’s for this reason that a primary record and its duplicate listing will never be seen in the same search results.

Unfortunately, there’s very little we can do about this anomaly, but comfort can be taken in the fact that the alias duplicate can only be found when a user searches for that business name directly—there’s no other way to find the duplicate listing. On top of this, any attempt to utilize the contact information will result in contact with the business in the primary record.

Exact duplicates are listings that closely match the business name and contact information, but have entirely different content. They also have different records, or CIDs. At first glance, it looks as though Google has failed to compress these accounts into a single listing. This could be due to the fact that the two records do not have overlapping categories, or much of any other comparable information for that matter.

In order to let Google know about these issues, take the following steps:

When you notice these records on an A-J Google Maps search, go to the bottom of the page. Click the link that reads “Report a problem,” note that the search results contain multiple listings for the same place, and then note that the two records are exact duplicates.