Sanders Media

One thing you’ll see a lot of on most blogs is a badge or two. On the web, a badge refers to a graphic that is used to promote an issue or product. 

You’ll see two badges on this site. Each blog post has one that allows you to bookmark the entry at sites like Del.icio.us, Reddit, Technorati and others. There is another one on my About page that links to my LinkedIn profile. If you read my other two blogs, empireofgeek.com and jonathansanders.net, you’ll see me promoting the EFF, or Electronic Frontier Foundation, with web badges.

Web badges allow you to help promote things that are important to you. On the flip side, creating badges for customers to put on their sites is a great way to promote your brand. If people like your product, they will absolutely want to promote you. It is a very easy way to advertise, and it costs almost nothing. 

This is a great question. Many of my clients tell me they want a blog, but don’t really understand what it is, or why they want it. 

First, let me define the term “blog”. It is a place on a website that is continually updated with new, relevant content, and it often contains pictures, video, links, etc. An important aspect of a blog is “pinging”. This is what makes it a blog versus a static page. Pinging is where you link to a service that notifies the search engines that you have new content.

A website has many uses, but I’ll highlight two. One use is as a brochure. You directly lead people to the site, and you don’t rely on people to “find” you on Google. The second is just the opposite. You want people to find your site. You rely on leads from search engines for business.

This second use is where blogging may be very helpful. By maintaining a regularly updated blog, you are telling Google and Yahoo you have new fresh content. This drives up page ranking, and increases the leads you receive from search engines.

When telling your webmaster you want to setup a blog, make sure you understand exactly what you’re asking for. This will help you to know what you really want to accomplish.

One aspect of Web 2.0 that has been most useful are “tags”. By tagging posts or pictures, you can make them easy to access. All you need to do is think of how people might search for your content, and then add a tag. Multiple tags are helpful, although I wouldn’t go overboard. 

If I write an article about the newest iPhone, I would give it these tags: iphone, apple, 3g, at&t. This way, when someone enters a search for iphone or apple iphone, they will find that article easily.

By tagging accurately, you can enable quick and useful searches. This helps in two ways. 

1. You can promote certain articles by tagging with specific words or phrases.
2. People are able to find what they’re looking for quickly. If people find useful information quickly, they’ll come back to your site often.