As a communications designer, I often coach clients on the value and methodology of small business blogging. I regularly advise on the benefits of inbound marketing, making sure to include plenty of reasons that do not directly relate to sales. On the back of those conversations, I am sharing a list of 5 non-monetary benefits that can be attained through blogging, social media and online marketing. The list is focused on small business bloggers, but the perks certainly apply in other situation as well.

1. Stay tuned-in to industry news, trends and pulse

As a small business blogger, you will be more aware of the news and trends in your industry. You’ll follow relevant news and blog sites so that you can flag up and respond to those updates on your own website. That practice of monitoring the news and trends will keep you more in tune with your industry. Through an active social media presence, you will know more than your competition about what is going on in your industry.

2. Maintain a bigger library of case studies

Men and women in sales love stories about how their products or services have helped out clients in need, or how they saved a major customer project. By using stories to sell products and services, sales people make a stronger connection with their own key audience. If you’re involved in sales — and which small business owners or bloggers are not? — then your online marketing efforts are bound to contribute to your case study library. You’ll always be looking for new posts and exciting stories to share on your small business blog; you can then use those same stories during a sales visit. That’s an inbound marketing win that pays offline dividends too.

3. Grow a business network more quickly

Business networking, especially for small businesses, is all about expanding our list of contacts. Online marketing, and especially inbound marketing, is a very productive way to network more effectively. Your small business blog, your Twitter account, and your other social media outlets give you an ever-growing way to contact and develop business relationships with your target market and audience. You don’t need to wait for the next meet-up or networking event. You can connect today on your blog by inviting comments from a potential customer.

4. Increase knowledge of specific online resources

The internet is a treasure trove of knowledge, information and best practices. You can find important “how to” advice, tips and resources about practically every industry. Through an active web presence and social media focus, you can develop an online library to sites that keep you ahead of your competition. You know the sites because you’re online and because you have them bookmarked (I use Delicious.com), you can quickly refer back to them as and when needed. Your inbound marketing campaign might also include sharing links to these resources through your blog and social media presence.

5. Be perceived as truly knowledgeable

Knowledge is power. By focusing your inbound marketing campaign around your blog — where you share ideas, news and guidance about your industry — you will develop a reputation as a knowledgeable person. Sure, it will take time, but that reputation will grow both online and offline as your key audiences come to rely on your social media presence as a valuable resource.

The benefits, all very attainable through online marketing, can provide great value to your business, even if they are not immediately connected with sales. Online marketing can deliver so much more than just sales — so be sure to demand much more of it.

Related Posts

• 5 tangible benefits I’ve achieved from blogging and social media

As a small business blogger who blogs on the topic of small business blogging, I am regularly on the look out for valuable blog posts about small business blogging. (How’s that for packing a first sentence with keywords? Ha-ha!) Honestly though, I appreciate that it can be difficult to filter through all the noise out there when looking for articles that cut to the heart of the matter and that offer real insight into the often-hyped topic of small business blogging.

To help sift through that virtual clutter, I thought I’d start sharing links to well-crafted, insight-led and on-point blog posts that demonstrate a solid understanding of this important inbound marketing topic. That’s my plan anyway. Consider my publication schedule updated. Keep reading to review my first batch.

Please note that these articles are not ranked in order of importance or anything like that. They approach the topic of small business blogging from unique angles and, therefore, should be read and considered in their own right.

1: Great Overview on Generating Inbound Links
32 white Hat Ways to Build Inbound Links by Corey Eridon on the Hubspot Blog.

2: Goal Setting for Successful Online Marketing
5 Resolutions for Digital Marketing Success in 2012 by Coreen Tossona of Philly Marketing Labs.

3: Insight into Understanding Your Audience’s Interests
5 Simple Ways to Discover What People Are Dying to Read Brad Smith of FixCourse.com.

4: Setting the Approach for Online Marketing
The Tao of Online Marketing by Brian Clark of CopyBlogger.

5: Listing Important Reasons for Small Business Blogging
12 Most Glaring Reasons Why Businesses Should Blog by Doug Rice on 12Most.com.

Of course, there are many more gems online that offer comprehensive, practical and sufficiently-detailed guidance on how small businesses can develop real value from inbound marketing. Why not let me know which ones you have found useful?

Related posts:

• Ideas of valuable content for small business blogs
• A Blogger’s Approach to SEO

Earlier this week, one of my clients had their WordPress site hacked. Alerted to the issue by my client, I began to investigate. Unable to access the admin side of the site, I quickly logged into the server via FTP. Within a few minutes, I discovered the hacked files and took steps to correct the problem. Once the site was restored, I visited the web host’s own site to chat with its tech support.

In an instant message window that many web hosts utilize these days, I asked the tech support chap if he could shed light on how or why the site was hacked. The tech support guy replied that his company does not offer that service; he had no useful information to share. That ended my interest in chatting with tech support.

A few days later the same site was hacked again, presumably by a different hacker as the hacked page content was different than previously. At that point, I picked up the phone, called my client and explained that it was time to pay more than one or two beers per month for web hosting.

Web server security is technical stuff

I’m a communications designer who can write some code. I certainly am well ahead of the general public when it comes to using a computer. But the level of technical knowledge required to keep a web server safe, online and free from hackers takes a great deal of specific, technical knowledge. Much more than I have. That sort of knowledge costs money to acquire, and companies must pay good salaries to maintain staff with that sort of knowledge.

The web hosts that offer monthly rates of $5.00 or less to keep a website online rely on volume sales. For less than a beer or two month, those web hosts rent us a bit of space on their web servers. Yet that’s where it stops. If they are only getting $5.00 per month from us, there nothing in it for them to care, much less help, when something goes wrong with our site.

Pay up front for safety and security

My own recommendation to clients is to spend the money up front to enjoy peace of mind later, the peace of mind that comes from knowing that skilled and well-educated people are there to help when required. Reliable, fast and perhaps most importantly, secure web hosting can be purchased for $20.00 per month and up. From a different angle, that’s like buying the tech support gal at least a beer every week. Since we’re buying her so many beers, she is bound to want to help us when something goes wrong.

Two recommendations

There are a number of reliable web hosts out there. I have this blog with UK-based host called Memset. My company intranet with is online thanks to WP Engine.

A few months ago a friend of mine picked up a new iPad.  He then tweeted me for my top iPad apps for both professional and personal use.  I was swamped with a number of work projects when my friend asked that question so I did not get back to him at the time.  (Yes, I know … bad form on Twitter and what kind of friend am I?)  Then recently, another friend picked up an iPad and asked me the same question.  Feeling the pressure to respond, I have finally produced my recommendations below.

1. Evernote

There are countless ways to use Evernote, and a quick search will certainly bring up some clever and useful ways.  For me, Evernote is where I store personal and business information that I need now and again, but that I don’t really know where else to store.  Professionally, I use Evernote to store a record of the static IP of my London office, the Pantone colors for lbdesign and the paper stock that we use for our business cards, among other data.  Personally, I use it to store a few of my favorite recipes, keep a record of ideas for blog posts, my IT wish list and more.  I always store my travel details on Evernote in case I lose the paper copies of tickets.

Evernote is online at evernote.com.

2. Zite

Zite is a great magazine app, and one that I use for reading both articles of both personal and professional interest.  When I downloaded the app, Zite asked me what topics were of interest and subsequently serves up news and blog posts from around the internet about my selected interests.  I can request more articles from a particular site or blogger; I can also drop a particular site.  The user-interface is easy-to-use and I like to be able to share content via Twitter and email.

Zite is online at zite.com.

3. Flipboard

Like Zite, Flipboard is a magazine app.  While different users will have their own approaches for using Flipboard, I use it to read through the RSS feeds from my Google Reader account.  Flipboard’s smooth transitions and beautiful presentational style are a massive improvement on Google Reader’s basic user interface.

More information about Flipboard is at flipboard.com.

4. Twitter

Initially a die-hard fan of Tweetdeck, I find the new(ish) Twitter app to be a much better user experience.  The fluidity of jumping from an individual tweet to a linked picture, post or video is much smoother in Twitter than it ever was in Tweetdeck.

Do we need a link to twitter.com?

5. AllRecipes

I discovered All Recipes through a friend who likes to cook more than I do.  What I really like about the app is that it makes it easy to locate the ingredients.  I use the iPad to find a recipe that sounds interesting, then take my iPhone to the store to buy the ingredients before returning home to use the iPad when I am cooking.

AllRecipes is also browser-based at allrecipes.com.

6. 1Password

As an online designer, I spend a good portion of my day logging into and out of online accounts. Using 1Password allows me to do so in a safe and convenient manner.  It’s also great for securely storing personal information like bank account details, credit card numbers and the like.

Check out 1Password at agilebits.com/onepassword.

7. Pandora

Music, music, music. Does anything more need to be said?  I have been impressed with the growing library available on Pandora. It was rather limited in the early days, but the vast breadth and variety of what’s now available for free streaming is wonderful.

Pandora is online at pandora.com.

8. Fox Soccer

Regardless of your politics, if you are a soccer fan, then the Fox Soccer app is a must.  Great user interface, coverage of so many leagues in North America and Europe and plenty of videos.  I’ve not yet subscribed to watch full matches on the iPad but that certainly is on my to do list.

9. NetFlix

Never having subscribed to its DVD-by-post service, I came by NetFlix after its pricing and Kwikster fiasco. Yet for less than $10.00 per month, I can stream unlimited movies, documentaries and TV shows.  (Note: I may be wrong on the unlimited aspect; it’s certainly more than I can ever watch.)  The selection of content is not the greatest, the categorization is suspect, and the user-interface limited, but the convenience is what makes this app worth having.

Need the link?  Try netflix.com.

10. Penultimate

As a designer, I often find myself sketching an idea, web page or concept.  With a new Jot Pro stylus, I can rough-out a home page design over a meeting at my favorite local café and can email it to either the client or my colleague in London.  Another great feature is the ability to paste an image (either directly from the camera or via the saved photos) into a notebook and then draw over it.

More information about Penultimate is available at www.cocoabox.com.

There! I’ve done it. I’ve shared my list of some of my favorites iPad apps.  Of course there are others that I use and like, but I wanted to keep this list to 10.

So, which of your favorite apps did I leave out?

In an age where customers have unprecedented access to their favorite stores, businesses and organizations through social media, small companies and consultancies may struggle to find a practical way to gauge customer feedback through online channels. When it comes to online engagement over social media, the difficulty for smaller businesses is typically an issue of time. Small businesses and non-profits often do not have the resources to dedicate to maintaining an aggressive online marketing campaign across multiple social media sites. If those organizations already lack time to engage customers via social media, how can they possibly determine the mood and concerns of their customers?

To address that question – how do small businesses or charities gage customer concerns? – I’ve shared a few ideas below.

What are the industry bloggers saying?

Professional bloggers make a habit of keeping an ear to the ground to the concerns of industry leaders and customers alike. Subscribing to the RSS feeds of the key bloggers in an industry can be a quick way to get a handle on the pulse of the market.

What’s the buzz on Twitter?

Connecting with customers on Twitter, either through the company’s Twitter account or our own personal account, can be an efficient way to monitor customers’ focus, news or complaints. Scanning through our Twitter feed once or twice a day – even if it’s only before and after the business day – can be enough to give ourselves some insight into our customers’ wants.

Drop an email or two

Most people like to offer their two cents when given an opportunity to do so. Take the time to send a personal email to a few customers to ask for feedback about a new service, campaign or other offering. Be specific when posing questions. The responses that come back could provide the insight that we’ve been after.

Invite your customers out for coffee

Let’s not forget the value of a face-to-face measurement. Take a couple of your customers out for a coffee or beer once or twice a month. It’s less time-consuming than running a social media campaign, and while less comprehensive than a broad survey, can offer real insight into your customers worries and needs.

Related posts:

• Ideas of valuable content for small business blogs
• A Blogger’s Approach to SEO

Last week, Direct Air flew me south to Punta Gorda, Florida from Allentown, Pennsylvania for a week-long workation in the sun. Having previously flown with Direct Air, I was familiar with its offerings: cheap, no-frills flights to a variety of small airports on the East Coast and Midwest of the USA. I was also very familiar with its proclivity for delayed flight times. But, hey, it’s a round-trip airline ticket for a 1,200 mile journey for $100.00. I was happy to let the time-delay complaints go. I arrived at Punta Gorda just before 10:00 pm. I walked off the plane into the wonderfully warm and humid night air, eager to begin a slower-paced week in the sun.

As I eased my way into the next morning, I heard talk from neighbors of where I was staying that Direct Air had canceled a number of flights and routes to different locations. Concerned about the return leg home of my trip, I surfed the net looking for updates. A visit to the Direct Air website offered no mentions of the route closures. News sites mentioned troubles at the Myrtle Beach Airport, but nothing about the route between Florida and Pennsylvania. It was only three days later that I received a vaguely-worded and less than professional email from Direct Air, advising me that it was suspending flights until 15th May 2012.

While I accustomed to Direct Air’s reputation for delayed flights, I was shocked by its horrendous communication during its financial demise. In considering Direct Air’s plight, I have several ideas on how Direct Air could have communicated more effectively with its customers, at little cost. Online communication, particularly via social media, when done properly, is not so difficult to achieve and is often inexpensive to implement. So, how could have Direct Air better served the travelers it left stranded?

Provide more timely and more detailed updates on its website

Direct Air was very slow to utilize its number one online communication tool: its website. News websites were circulating with hints and rumors of Direct Air’s troubles, yet it was not until Wednesday or Thursday of last week that Direct Air acknowledged anything on its own website. That’s a big miss when it comes to effective online communication.

Use Twitter to provide real-time updates

Direct Air must know something about online communication as they have a Twitter account. The account was set up on 19th September 2011 and since opening its account, Direct Air has sent 61 tweets. So they knew how to use the service, even if they were not proficient at it. Given Twitter’s ability to distribute information at lightening speed, it would have been very helpful for customers had Direct Air used the social media site to communicate news and information.

Share information on Facebook

Direct Air could have taken advantage of the biggest social media site in the world by posting news and updates on its Facebook page. Yet it did not. Huge fail in social media marketing terms.

Given the emails a sense of accountability

When the emails from Direct Air did eventually arrive, they were so insincere and unapologetic that they were more likely to cause offense than to be of any real value to customers. No mention of apology or acknowledgment of the troubles that Direct Air had caused to its customers. To add insult to injury, the email was signed “Very Truly Yours, Direct Air”. Really?!? Really?!? Direct Air should have sent the email from a real person, from someone in senior management who was responsible for making the decisions that were currently effecting its customers.

Communicate with the media

As Direct Air’s customers were eager for any sort of news or information, it would have behooved Direct Air to spend at least a few minutes communicating news and information with local media outlets. The video clip below goes a long to offer insight into how wide Direct Air was of the mark on this one.

Be real, be sincere and be apologetic

As the owner of my own small business, I understand that staying afloat in this economy is tough. I don’t begrudge Direct Air for going under. What I find particularly appalling is its lack of sincerity and openness when dealing with customers. No company officials or spoke people to answer questions. No one taking phone calls at the company’s phone. No meaningful website updates or tweets. Just silence.

In an age of amazing capabilities in online communication, Direct Air totally missed the ball on this. Direct Air, in what might be its final act, failed to capitalize on the strengths of social media to share news and information about its demise in a timely and useful way. Customers are certainly dialed into social media – had Direct Air used those avenues of communication, it might have been able to reduce the stress, anger and frustration by which its customers will surely remember it.

A few more shots of London for your viewing pleasure:

• London in February 2012
• Around London Town (Part I)
• Around London Town (Part II)

If you like to see more, you’re in luck. I’ve posted photos from previous trips to London on my site:

• Around London Town (Part I)
• Around London Town (Part II)

This blog post could just have easily been entitled “Why Everyone Should Listen to Sean Blanda at Least Twice.” Allow me to explain why.

In October 2011, I attended WordCamp Philly, in Philadelphia, PA. In addition to learning a lot from Dave Konopka (@davekonopka) and Pete Schuster (@pete_schuster), I attended a presentation by Sean Blanda (@seanblanda) about connecting a WordPress blog with Facebook as a tool to increase readership, conversations and the like. Sean Blanda runs the tech news website, Technically Philly and is an engaging and clear speaker.

During his talk at WordCamp Philly, Sean walked through the simple, yet slightly technical steps of integrating Facebook’s Open Graph tags into the WordPress templates of the Technically Philly news site. I won’t repeat everything that Sean said, but what I want to highlight are two of about four steps that Sean took to improve the return he was getting on Facebook:

1. He stopped using plugins or other automated services to push his blog content to Facebook. Instead, he took the extra time to manually add a link or note to Facebook.
2. Sean also added a number of tags from Facebook’s Open Graph to the header files of Technically Philly’s WordPress templates. The Open Graph tags help Facebook learn about the content on the Technically Philly site.

I was impressed with the numbers that Sean related to the audience during his talk. In the course of only five months, with what sounded like only one or two days of coding (by his own admission, Sean is not a developer; he is a journalist), Sean was able to grow the number of Technically Philly Facebook fans by more than 250%, adding 7 to 10 new fans per day.

Inspired by Sean’s suggestions, I decided to apply these two techniques on my own blog, chickenmonkeydog.com. Up to that point, I had not been overly focused on Facebook as a means to promote chickenmonkeydog. I felt like this gave me a few new and practical steps to try.

Unfortunately, life and a busy work schedule intervened.

In early January 2012, I noticed that Sean would be speaking at an upcoming Philly WordPress Meetup. As Sean is a dynamic and entertaining speaker, I was up for hearing his presentation again. I wanted to be a good student and go into the presentation prepared. A few days prior the WordPress meetup, I started organically adding blog posts from chickenmonkeydog to Facebook. By the second time that I was in the audience to hear a Sean Blanda presentation, I had been manually posting on Facebook for about five days.

During that second presentation, I was glad to hear that Technically Philly’s Facebook numbers had continued to climb. When Sean began to cover how to review Facebook’s insights, I took a moment to check out the same for chickenmonkeydog.

Wow! In only the few short days since I had begun to organically add my posts to Facebook, I had seen that the number of people talking about chickenmonkeydog on Facebook had more than tripled. Our reach had more than doubled as well!

As the evening came to a close, I took a moment to thank Sean in person. I confessed that it was the second time that I had seen him deliver this particular presentation and that I was now a convert. He had shown me the light!

In the days that followed, I took the time to learn more about Open Graph (OG) and implement a number of OG tags on chickenmonkeydog.com. Not only did the OG tags help Facebook pull the right thumbnail image into each of our daily posts, it also seemed to help grow our reach even further. By the end of January, we had quadrupled our reach from December. The best stat of all is that we grew our Facebook fan numbers by more than 10%!

Let me slow down just a minute to point out that our fan and reach numbers are still very small. Yet, the fact that I was able to achieve quantifiable growth in a very short time is promising indeed. I shall continue to follow the practices that I learned and will be sure, at some point, to report back on our progress.

The end of January is upon us already. In just a few short weeks, one-twelfth of the year has passed. With now more than four weeks of the new year behind us now, we should be able to get a read on how the year is shaping up. As a follow-up article to my previously published tips for successful blogging, let’s check in on our own blogging strategy and inbound marketing efforts in 2012.

Do we now have a plan in place?

Have we worked up a detailed online marketing plan that clearly sets out specific steps and a establishes a publication schedule for our small business blog? If not, let’s set a short deadline and ask a colleague, mentor or friend to hold us to this deadline.

Is our timetable proving practical?

Are we spending enough time on our blogging efforts? Are we spending too much time? As small business owners, we need to appreciate the demands of our work days to ensure that we give our online marketing efforts sufficient time and energy. Failure to do so could certainly cause our blogging efforts to deliver fewer returns that we might expect.

Have we noticed any returns on our blogging efforts yet?

While it is definitely too early to expect a significant upswing in traffic or sales to measure, we should notice at least some change or have picked up a few anecdotes as a result of our blogging: a new commentor, a new contact on LinkedIn or Twitter or an email response to one or more of our posts.

Do we have a method to tracking anecdotes?

How are we saving the little stories that give flavor and dimension to our web statistics? Are we using Google Docs? Maybe a spreadsheet on our local network server (so our colleagues can also access it)? Are we actively sharing and promoting that document internally as a way to help build enthusiasm around our blogging campaign?

Are we keeping online marketing a priority for our small business?

Have our inbound marketing efforts slipped down the pecking order? As small business owners, it’s easy to get bogged down or distracted by the day-to-day operations of running our company. Yet for our inbound marketing campaign, we need to dedicate ongoing and focused attention to our blog.