Business Blogging for Health Professionals

Welcome!

Welcome to my blogsite for the Business Blogging for Professionals book series, which started with the book Business Blogging for Health Professionals Using TypePad™. The blog (below this entry) is not a sales Website for the book - you can find that at http://www.southwindpress.com/bbfhp2.html. My next book, Business Blogging for Professionals, covers professionals and information workers more generally and includes instructions for WordPress and Blogger in addition to TypePad.

This blog is intended as a valuable resource for professionals who want insights into how to use the most modern technologies to advance their careers and enhance their reputations.  I will be posting continual updates as I learn more myself about business blogging and as things change in the Blogosphere. I'm committed to providing a new post containing useful how-to information on a roughly a weekly basis (if not more often!).

Blogging health professional: Are you going in the wrong direction?

I must apologize for not posting in over 10 days, but I stumbled onto something interesting, and wanted to make sure it wasn't a fluke before I brought it to your attention.

I use WebPosition 4 to track how my rankings are doing on my preferred keywords at each of the four most popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, Windows Live Search and Ask, in that order). My blog's signature phrase, "future of health IT", is the one I've talked about on occasions when I reported my rankings.  As of yesterday, I was celebrating my first couple of days on page 1 on Google. That's below the fold, so 80% of Google's visitors entering that phrase wouldn't have seen the link, but page 1 is two orders of magnitude better than page 2. Reason to celebrate, right?

Meanwhile, though, my second most favorite search phrase, "healthcare scenario planning", went through the roof. Well, there's no way to go beyond number one, I admit, so that's hyperbole. There's good cause for hyperbole, though - my blog has entries in positions 1 through 5, and has held them there since Monday.

That's an achievement. I've locked down "page one, above the fold" on the most popular search engine. I have a great presence on Yahoo, the second most popular, with results number 1 and 2. I'm on page 2 on Windows Live and Ask, but that's nowhere near as important as Google and Yahoo.  Between the two of them, I'm reaching about three quarters of online search.

Now that's optimization for you! I shouldn't get too proud, though - the results vary hour by hour. I checked just now, and someone just bumped me out of positions 4 and 5. You can check for yourself and see how I'm doing by visiting this link.

What is the lesson I should get from this? I'm a faint voice in the conversation on the future of health IT. I enjoy my participation and will continue. But I rule in healthcare scenario planning. Now the job is twofold: to stay on top, and to parlay that knowledge into something truly useful - maybe even monetization.

Google Hot Trends

If it is critical for your blog to be in touch with the latest topics of interest to Web surfers, you may be interested in a new feature the Google Trends Labs have released. Google Hot Trends shows you the 100 most popular queries from the preceding 24 hours or so.

Not surprisingly, this morning many of the most popular queries relate to the magnitude 4.5 earthquake that occurred this morning. Google Hot Trends also tells me that the peak was two hours ago and that the vast bulk of the queries are coming from southern California.

I am struggling to find a use for this applicable to healthcare bloggers, but it's a cool feature and I had to tell you about it.

I'm sure I'll think of a way to tie it in with Search Engine Optimization. Someday. ;-)

Business Blogging SEO, Phase II, Part 5

Today we'll look at my SiteMeter stats and see how my search engine optimization (SEO) effort is going. Bottom line: it's moving along nicely, but it's time to punch it up another notch. We'll talk about how I'm going to do that. These new tasks will mark the start of another phase.

Diva Marketing Blog - Marketing blogs and corporate social media strategies for innovative companies

Ever wondered about the wisdom of using interviews in your blog as a way of getting more voices in the conversation that your blog should become? Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing has some encouragement for you a post from a day or two ago in her Diva Marketing Blog called Let Someone Else Lead The Conversation.  It's great advice and she has a number of examples that will give you ideas on how to get started. Toby's bottom line:

Lessons Learned: An interview series is a terrific win-win-win content tactic. Your community wins. Your interviewee wins and You win too.

After following the links in her story, I couldn't agree more. I think I'll give it a try - you should too!

The Entrepreneurial MD - Will procrastination be the death of your entrepreneurial venture?

From Philippa Kinnealy, the Entrepreneurial MD, an alarming question for entrepreneurial healthcare practitioners (and entrepreneurs of all stripes, for that matter): Will procrastination be the death of your entrepreneurial venture?.

A thought-provoking blog article from Psychology Today caught my eye late last week. It spoke to one of the most common observations I have made about why we struggle to succeed in accomplishing our goals or fulfilling our dreams.

We procrastinate!

Why?

To find out the answer, visit Philippa's blog and read her post. Not later, now!

Search Engine Optimization for Bloggers: The story so far

The past couple of months, I've been running a series in this blog on how to do Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I've been asked to put all the links in one place for ease of access. I'll be posting another status update later this week.

The first four posts are about my initial research into SEO. Lots of good info and advice, but no risk on my part.

Search engine optimization for bloggers

Search engine optimization for bloggers Part 2

Search engine optimization for bloggers Part 3

Search engine optimization for bloggers Part 4 - the end of the beginning...

At this point, the live "without a net" optimization of my FutureHIT blog begins. The remaining posts show how SEO is done and the results of the optimization. It's ongoing, but the results so far have been very encouraging.

Business Blogging SEO, Phase 2, Part 1: my baseline stats & WebPosition's suggestions

Business Blogging SEO, Phase II, Part 2

Business Blogging SEO, Phase II, Part 3

Business Blogging SEO, Phase II, Part 4

Enjoy!

A Shout-Out to The Blog Squad on Branding by Blogging

The question I'm asking myself today is, Where has the Blog Squad been all my (blogging) life? I give people advice on business blogging, but a lot of my advice is about the mechanics of building a presence on the Web and optimizing a business blog for search engines. This is a sideline for me, a labor of love rather than a money-making venture. I don't spend nearly as much time as I should looking at what else is out there in the way of good business advice for professionals looking to use blogging as a marketing tool. Excuses, excuses...

I talk in my book about the importance of branding, and though I think the advice I give is pretty good, I'm not a branding expert. That's where the blog Squad folks really shine. Are you interested in building a personal brand as part of your professional identity, as well you should be? Then you, dear reader, should do as I am going to be doing over the next few days, and read a bunch of the posts at the Blog Squad's blog, http://www.buildabetterblog.com.

Business blogging on the road: TypePad accepts posts via email

You may have heard of "moblogging", short for mobile blogging. It means sending posts to your blog from your cell phone, PDA, Web mail, anything and everything you use to send emails. TypePad gives you a secret address you can use to post entries. This is my first test of the mechanism - if you see it, it works!

Post by Email must be set up by visiting the TypePad Control Panel, choosing the Profile tab, then Mobile Settings. It took me under 2 minutes to get set up. If it works - which it did, if you can see this - it will make posting easier than ever.

********************************************************** Electronic Mail is not secure, may not be read every day, and should not be used for urgent or sensitive issues.

Business Blogging SEO, Phase II, Part 4

Major progress! As you can see from the chart and table below, I'm well on my way to becoming rich and famous! (Not!) Seriously, the degree of improvement surprised even me, and I am a hopeless optimist when it comes to things technological.

Business Blogging SEO, Phase II, Part 3

So far, this search engine optimization effort has been a huge success. For example:

Future of Health IT 30-day Moving Average of Page Views

June 2 was the day I did my first changes to the blog to make it more visible to search engines. I wish I could claim to be a genius in doing this, but all I'm doing is following the consensus advice I've obtained from SEO gurus and in particular from WebPosition 4's analysis of what I was doing wrong. Let's see what else we can do to make my blog famous.