My, my how the tables have turned…

Throughout the day keep checking back as I’ll be posting highlights from LifeWork2.0

“Blogs give voices to regular people and faces to big corporations”

“The companies that will succeed in the next three to five years are those that embrace the power of Web2.0″

“Make your corporate site(s) a blog! (Refer to this site and www.pixelspreach.com for examples) The static website doesn’t get it. You’ll end up lagging behind if you don’t”

TOP 10 REASONS TO BLOG:

10. Because it’s fun. You have the opportunity to write to your passion. By blogging, I’m staying part of the conversation and being heard. Business today must be a conversation, not a monologue.

9. It opens new markets. The blogosphere is a powerful global marketing tool. It opens the young market (IMPORTANT!) For the 20somethings, trust comes from online exposure: it’s how they build trust.

8. It builds your network. Power comes not from your roledex, but from how many people link to you. Email is the new currency. Everyone needs to link to each other. Links are power and email addresses are currency.

7. Is it very inexpensive. Like writing emails, press releases, books, blogs are cost effective. Time spent into blog yields high return. Lets customers join conversations. Blog powered websites will phases out the lonely static, corporate website. Blog content changes constantly and it’s always being searched by Google and creates traffic.

6. It makes you famous. Blogs raise your visibility. Anything you write can and will be read by anyone in the world.

5. Because you’re in control. You’re able to make changes instantly on your own time for free! No middleman to deal with. Have it your way on your time. Regulate your hours; it’s always there.

4. Because it’s easy. Simple training, anyone can blog. Templates are available. How much is your time worth. Blogging is getting easier by the day. A new company: Kontain.com makes it WAY easy.

3. Helps you communicate with your customers. Blogs help you understand and interact with current market. Companies that maintain blogs are less likely to loose contact: shows they care and they are listening. Once people are interested in you they’re interested in helping you out: may not have money, but they have ideas. Customers become working partners. They’re free employees!

2. Because Google loves blogs. When you type in a term, Google puts the site with the most links pointing toward it at the top of the organic list. You want to be number one organically. Viewers trust someone that’s number one and not paying to be at the top. That means that bloggers are very powerful and influential. Online is where reputations are made now. Google is not a search engine; instead it’s a reputation management system.

1. You want to make money. Blogs help you sell products and services. Some bloggers have become bigger brands then the company that sells them. Their blogs are bigger than the company’s websites. Trust is now built more effectively online than offline. Start blogging today and become part of the conversation.

…more to follow.

Tomorrow I’m attending my first Lifework2.0 conference being held here in Franklin. I’m pretty excited about it. Randy Elrod & Spence Smith will be teaching on the following topics:

Blogging

Blogging 101
Where do you start?
Why Blog?
Why Should CEO’s, companies, churches, and artists blog?
Maximizing your brand through blogging.
Blogging Content
Advanced Blogging
The technical side and how to manage it.

Creating Traffic

Driving readers to your blog
How to keep readers coming back to your blog
Using You Tube and other video outlets
SEO  – How to maximize Search Engine Optimization without paying monthly for it.
Why Search Engine Optimization is a must

Social Networking and Micro Blogging

Using Twitter and FaceBook to build an online community
Social Networking as a marketing tool
Customized social networks
Creating an easy path for your readers to keep up with your daily life.

When: Dec 4, 2008 9am – 5pm / Where: Building 8, The Factory 230 Franklin Road Franklin, TN 37064 / What To Bring: Your Laptop / Cost: $250.00 / Seating is limited! Register HERE

About two years ago I decided to start a blog. It was called Utobia and it was home to rambleings and creative findings. It’s where creativity came out to play. I started it on Blogger as it was free at the time. I then changed over to Wordpress and launched Utobia2.0. Same blog, different look and back end mechanics. Shortly after that, I launched tobysturgill.com, a sad little portfolio website that housed my previous work and contact information.

I was never truly happy with my professional site. It was static, uninteresting and boring. Not a true reflection of me at all. Plus, I had no way of tracking traffic or seeing who was coming and going. Meanwhile, Utobia2.0 kept getting all the attention and momentum. In just a few short months, I had already gotten 1,000+ hits. Then it hit me… why not blend the two into one website. Far greater reach with the same amount of frequency. Imagine what that kind of exposure can do for business!

Enter the new tobysturgill.com. Staying with Wordpress as the back end, I snagged up a template from a third party designer, made some minor tweaks, called tech support three times in two hours (because I barely knew what I was doing) and by the end of the weekend I had this site up and running. Now my business is exposed to the daily traffic of my blog.

Professionally, there’s nothing wrong with using a blog-based platform for a website. It’s easy to update and virtually free. Stuffy, static web pages are a thing of the past. Sites that haven’t been updated for a few months run the risk of being out of date and irrelevant. If there’s something I’ve written that they like, then they post it on THEIR blog or site with (hopefully) a link back to me. New people then come to see my site and learn that they can hire me. Plus, Wordpress plugins make tracking and trafficing very easy.

It’s the same reason why Twitter is so important. Constant contact and communication. Micro-blogging, if you will.

I want to be an early adopter, but better yet, I want to be influencer. So that means not standing around and waiting for a majority to catch onto things. Is a blog-based website unconventional? Sure. Are a lot of people/businesses doing it? Not yet. Does that make it bad or any less professional? Absolutely not.