What value does this offer to your business? +1 recommendations from people you know influence your search results, so including +1 buttons on the pages of your Web site has a direct impact on how your site ranks for keywords related to your business for people who know people who use the buttons on your site.

1. Facebook’s Like Button
2. Twitter’s Tweet Button
3. LinkedIn’s Share Button
4. The Digg Button
5. The Post to Google Buzz Button

Which one(s) should you use? It won’t hurt to use all of them, but we recommend that you add Facebook’s Like button and Twitter’s Tweet button at a minimum. If you work primarily in the B2B market or seek referrals from professionals (such as a client of ours who works in the B2C market but is often referred by doctors and attorneys), you should also consider LinkedIn’s Share button. Digg and Google Buzz are less popular.

Keep in mind: if you’re looking for people to share your content (and you should be), you need to be creating content to be shared. This is where blogging comes in.

Update, 6/6/2011: Google has released code to insert their +1 button in your site, which we recommend adding along with Facebook and Twitter at a minimum. Learn more here.

A blog (a blend of the term web log) is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.

Notice the careful language, including terms such as “most,” “commonly,” and “usually.” It would be nice if there was a simple answer to the question, “what is a blog?” Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), blogs come in all shapes and sizes. There is no simple answer.

As an inbound marketer, what do I like to see in a blog? Here are a few things:

1. It is updated on a regular basis (the more often, the better)
2. It offers easy methods of sharing content
3. The freshest content is front-and-center with popular content also promoted
4. Readers are invited to participate (comment)
5. It provides at least one method of subscribing to updates (a “feed” and perhaps email notifications)

How about you? Have anything to add?

Why? Let’s explore a few reasons:

1. Blogging increases the number of visitors to your site

In 2009, HubSpot, a producer of Internet marketing software, conducted a study of 1,531 of their customers. The study showed that the customers that blogged were receiving 55% more Web site visitors than those who did not.

2. Blogging increases the number of inbound links

Inbound links signal to search engines that your site has authority, which improves your search engine ranking. In the same study, HubSpot discovered that customers who blog received 97% more inbound links.

3. Blogging increases the number of indexed pages for your site

Blogging increases the number of pages on your site (since each blog post is a new page), which, in turn, increases the number of pages that search engines index. In fact, the study above showed that customers that blogged had 434% more indexed pages than those that did not. The number of indexed pages is important because each indexed page increases your chance of appearing in a search results page.

4. Blogging results in leads, which result in customer acquisitions

Ultimately, it’s all about acquiring customers. If a marketing channel doesn’t lead to conversions, it doesn’t matter what the other statistics say, it is not worth the time and money. According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound Marketing Report, 46% of businesses with blogs have acquired a customer from that channel, making it the best social media channel as far as customer acquisition is concerned (and considering only the raw percentages). If you’re selling primarily to consumers, that number is 57%, which puts it in second place to Facebook, at 68%.

So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to get started blogging. If you need a hand, give us a call toll-free and with no obligation. Or, check back here in a few days for tips on getting started with blogging.

The beauty of +1’s is their relevance—you get the right recommendations (because they come from people who matter to you), at the right time (when you are actually looking for information about that topic) and in the right format (your search results).

How does this impact businesses and non-profits? As Kipp Bodnar states in his HubSpot Blog post about +1, this new feature demonstrates that Google is rewarding social businesses (and non-profit organizations). The more you harness blogging and social media to connect to your customers and prospects, the better a chance you have of getting found on Google. As Kipp puts it:

The days of obsessing over keyword rank are over. Instead, make your business social and create relevant information that will help to attract +1s and influence who decides to visit your site from search engine results pages. Blogging and sharing content on social media has never been more important. In a world that is being built on personal recommendations, it is critical that your business becomes social through remarkable content.

It is important to note that the +1 feature is just now beginning to roll out. Google has promised that Web publishers will in the future be able to add +1 buttons to their Web sites to enable visitors to recommend content after leaving the search results page.

For more information about Google +1, watch the video below and/or visit Google’s +1 Button page.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Update, 6/6/2011: Google has released code to insert their +1 button in your site. Learn more here.

How should you treat your best customers?

Thank you for your patience as we make the change in telephone service.

Netwalker Internet Services is changing our phone number, effective immediately. The (207) 998-8179 and old toll-free number will no longer work.

Our new phone number is:
(207) 514-7830

Please update your address book immediately. We have changed from a local telephone service provider to the Vonage voice-over-Internet-protocol service, which means that other Vonage customers may now call us toll-free from their Vonage lines. We will soon be adding a standard toll-free number (for non-Vonage customers) and will notify you of the new toll-free number once it is available.

Thank you for your business.

God bless,
Nate LaClaire, Owner

Below is additional information regarding this new service.

First, we block mail using realtime blackhole lists (RBLs). These messages are blocked at the transmission level and are never fully received, so they cannot be quarantined.

Second, we pass mail through the MIQ Antispam/Antivirus engine. If it is blocked as a virus, it is deleted and not quarantined. If it is blocked as spam, it is placed into quarantine for 3 days.

Once per day each email user will receive a Quarantine Digest email containing any new mail that was placed in quarantine since the last digest. If there were no messages quarantined, a digest will not be received. The user can view the message, release the message to their Inbox, or release and report the message as “not spam” to the MailFoundry antispam team for further review.

Users may also access their quarantines on-demand via a web interface or via RSS.

Ham – All mail considered clean by the system. The stuff you want.

Spam – (aka UCE) Unsolicited mail.

Virus – Message that contain a virus.

RBL – A message from a server that is listed on the Remote Block List.

RPDNS – (Reverse Path DNS) Mail from a domain that does not have the appropriate Mail eXchange or A records in DNS to send a response back to.

RFC – Messages that are blocked due to improper formatting of the message.

RP Sanity – A message that is blocked due to the sending server having an invalid DNS record such as 127.0.0.1 (aka localhost).

Size Ext – Messages that are blocked by the specified Size limits.