Quoting News in your Blog

Some blogs are just running excerpts from news articles. These are generally worthless for marketing and have negative SEO value. We’ve written about duplicate content before, so we won’t go into that here. But there are times when you want to use part of a news article in your posts.

The first issue is permission. You can use a certain amount of text under “fair use” but you can’t quote the entire article or a huge segment without reprint rights. Often reprint rights are accessible – you just contact the paper via their web site about reprint rights and specify your reason and that it’s for a business blog, etc.

However, under “fair use”, you could probably reasonably quote a couple of paragraphs without a problem. We’re not giving a professional rule of thumb or legal advice about the length of a quotation – fair use is vague in the law – intentionally – so they can go after people selectively rather than evenly. But personally this writer will quote a couple of paragraphs at a time without incident.

Assuming you’re going to do that, for maximum SEO (search engine optimization), quote the piece in the context of your own post, article, or blog entry – with at least 100-200 words before and after. Examples are [here], [here], and [here].

If there’s enough of a lead-in, the article will be more likely to get treated as unique by google, even with the quotation in it. That way you actually get seo value out of it. Plus, it’s bad form to just slap a quotation on your site with nothing else – because visitors see it as lowering the value of your site – there’s nothing there they couldn’t have gotten elsewhere. Best practice is put quotations in the context of you making your own set of points.

Originality is king. If you see something in the news you just have to use, write a short (less than 500 words) article that’s the article that *you* would have written for the NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, or whatever, and include the quotation section in the middle of it, at the appropriate point. It’s fine to even take an article in a completely different direction than the original writer, because that’s precisely the point – borrowing the quotation but using it in the context of your own purposes and direction. You don’t want to represent it out of context, but you’re entitled to do more than just mimic someone else’s article – again added value is what’s important – don’t make it a rip off of someone else’s piece, because then they just don’t need your site – they can go to the source. Remember, search engines make the big internet small.

Lastly, you could include just a link to another article, with a few comments, but that’s bad form. It sends people off site without good cause. Plus – just a link, by itself, can lower SEO (you’re giving away juice). Instead, put a link to the original article in the quotation source. Like this:

Mr. Elienberg wasn’t a Comcast employee, but a so-called independent contractor working for a separate company. This month, he sued both companies, for allegedly depriving him and other contractors of overtime pay and benefits by not considering them employees.The case highlights a perennial issue for employers that is gaining new prominence during the recession. Lawyers say employers are trying to avoid hiring full-time employees by tapping contractors, as workers seeking better pay and benefits turn to the courts. – [Wall Street Journal, Oct 19, 2009]

Besides, chances are the link is going to break at some point, when the source site overhauls their site, removes the article, or starts charging for it. Block quotes are nice, by the way: no need for quote marks or italics with a block quote, and it’s appropriate for quoting in extenso and for visually displaying the quotation in a more interesting way.

That’s it. Use quotations and links judiciously, be original, don’t duplicate other sites wholesale (it’s getting you nowhere and ruining your SEO), and don’t quote our of context, but do use visual styling, and do express your own ideas in your posts. Market Moose provides consulting on internet marketing strategy to small businesses.

What kinds of content do I need on my site?

You’re in luck – the same kind of content appeals to both human visitors and to search engines that send you human visitors, so this is easily answered. You need content that’s original or unique (never paste in other people’s content – search engines penalize for it, and your visitors will find it boring, besides the obvious copyright issues). You need content that’s relevant (to your industry or your locale). You need content that is updated frequently (e.g. blogging or treating your site much like a blog).

Do I really need to blog?

The short answer is ‘Yes’. There’s been a real change over the past 2-3 years in how web sites are treated by search engines, and that translates into a change in whether or not your site will ever get found in the first place. Like it or not, static sites (the old-fashioned business web site that rarely changes, however unique it may be) are getting almost completely marginalized by dynamic sites (sites with constantly updated content, like blogs). In short, anyone with 5min a day to update their site or blog can out-market nearly anyone else with a static web site that rarely changes.

Do you really need to blog? You do something like it, if you want your site to become and stay popular and draw significant business traffic. Most corporations, though they usually can’t seriously outblog a private individual, have realized this:

• General Motors’ Blog: http://fastlane.gmblogs.com
• Delta’s Blog: http://blog.delta.com
• Kodak’s Blog: http://1000words.kodak.com
• Boeing’s Blog: http://boeingblogs.com/randy
• Adobe’s Blog: http://blogs.adobe.com
• Google’s Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com
• Dell’s Blog: http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell
• Southwest Airlines’ Blog: http://www.blogsouthwest.com/blogsw
• Marriott’s Blog: http://www.blogs.marriott.com
• Quicken Loans’ Blog: https://www.quickenloans.com

Why Blog?

In the olden days (2-3 years ago, by internet standards), we all rushed to build web sites of the static variety. They had the usual things – a Contact page, an FAQ, an order form…

These days, static sites are getting wiped off the search engine rankings by sites with dynamic content – sites that are updated frequently – most especially, blogs.

The XSite blogging tool is one that anyone can use with no special knowledge. If you can write an e-mail, you can write a blog post. The hurdle is not how, it’s the will to do it. The keys to the will in this case are several:

First: you have to accept the fact that the old days are gone, and putting up an internet billboard and just waiting for people to come to you is like fishing in your backyard swimming pool. Invest and hope nets very few fish. In other words, you can make no progress, unless you accept that the world really has changed. Has changed. Past tense. If you cannot get past this point, you will be stuck, like Willy Loman, in Death of a Salesman, relying on a handshake in an era that has long since gone by. The hunger, the craving for fresh content has made static sites seem like reading the same newspaper every morning at breakfast – it just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Second: you have to accept the fact that other people truly are making hay with dynamic content – with blogs. This amounts to accepting that, by providing consistently fresh content, people elsewhere are driving business traffic and drawing in new customers. In other words, you must not dismiss as irrelevant the news that quite ordinary people (almost exclusively ordinary people) are using the internet to effectively market and grow their businesses. If you maintain disbelief here, you cannot hope to use the internet effectively yourself. While this may be comforting, because it demands no further activity, and it may compel you to throw money at experts like ourselves, and hope that’s enough, you’re not truly committed to marketing your business, beyond dropping flyers from a helicopter into the internet. The returns will be commensurate with the strategy.

Third: you must accept that blogging was invented so that people with no technical knowledge or background, and no skill in web building, could post content as easily as writing an e-mail. In other words, you have to resign yourself to the fact that it’s stoltifyingly easy. If you maintain the myth that internet marketing is for experts, you will certainly alleviate yourself of any felt responsibility for marketing your business, and you will also alleviate your prospects of any interest in your marketing efforts. They will find those enterprising persons in point two (above) who have no more knowledge or skill or talent or expertise than you, but only have slightly more courage and clarity. They will find those with the will.

Yes, we’re being quite frank, here. That’s one of the keys to our success. We’ll tell you the truth, when others demur. We’ll be straight with you, where others offer you Camelot for the price of swamp land, and sell you swamp land at Camelot prices. One of the reasons we have loyal clients is our willingness to push back, to say the hard thing, to nudge you into the next phase in your marketing success. Your XSite is a tool that can help.

Finally: if you have truly accepted the reality of the situation, you must make a decision about whether your business is worth the five minutes a day it will take you to maintain an interesting blog. If not, then you must accept the results of the first three points:

• a marketing strategy from internet past, not internet present
• a marketing strategy that discourages today’s hottest sources of prospects
• a marketing strategy that is less than ordinary, and requires no ongoing effort

On the other hand, if you are willing to update your marketing strategy, willing to attract the prospects you aren’t currently attracting, and willing to spend 5min/day or so being fairly ordinary to accomplish these, then blogging can become the beating heart of a business marketing plan (and the XSite can help here) that is able to unlock a host of marketing tools, like:

• powerful social networking
• effective e-mail marketing
• enhanced search engine results

It’s largely up to you. We can design and build your XSite, using the engine provided, and we can help with your branding, style, content, navigation, lead capture, search engine optimization, and more.

From there, we can advise you on how to make that 5min/day really count for your business. If you want to reach the next step after launching a site you can be proud of, blogging is an important starting place. Remember:

A business that isn’t growing, is dying.

A business that isn’t marketing, is shrinking, not growing.

and lastly:

You Mean You’re Not Blogging?

You’re throwing opportunities away. According to Digital Inspiration, Blogs rate higher on Google than Newspapers or Magazines.

Site Owners – the World has Spun

2-3 years ago (forever, in internet time), it was enough to have a few pages about your company. If you had a web site at all, the novelty of it might send you some leads.

What’s changed?

Marketing, for one thing. People aren’t interested in hearing about you. That’s right, I said it. People are interested in what they’re interested in. What the internet, specifically the web, has done, is to cut out most of the traditional middle man opportunities. People have direct access to an unthinkable vast database of pretty much whatever they’re interested in. You either pitch to that, or you’re pitching to the wind. Web sites that go on and on about my company, myself, my favorite color, are too narcissistic for a web 2.0 marketing environment. They won’t just fade away, they’ll plummet in terms of rankings, leads, and attention. Sure, you can pull off a temporary boost with a gimmick or two tucked behind your code, but Google is getting smarter, and it’s web crawlers are reading your site just like a human would, moreso every day, and reacting to the bullshit and the fancy tricks just as much as to the content.

The other thing that’s changed is that no one gives a hoot about static web sites anymore. Again, yes, I said it. No one cares about our 5-page treatise that never changes. If we want static data, we’ll get it on an mp3 and listen to it in the car, or from a keychain-sized pocket device. The words, “I won’t blog. I just won’t.” are the death knell of small business sites that intend to have any effect these days. It’s all about dynamic content. And not cut and paste content you rip off from elsewhere – besides sending your google rank plummeting, it’ll just bore your prospects off to your competitors. What people want, like it or not, wish it away or not, is something that’s going to take work from you: they want original, relevant, frequently-updated content. And what does Google want? Same damned thing. Like it or not.

So don’t spend 16 hours this weekend hanging flyers, at 1% rate of return. Spend 5min/day, every day, keeping your blog current. A little dab’ll do ya, as they say. It really just takes 5minutes. This post is 10minutes, and already you’re getting bored. So I’ll sum it up. It’s not the amount of work that matters, or that you really care about. It’s the kind of work. If you’re still basically pissing in the wind with yesterday’s marketing techniques, because you don’t want that newfangled crap, face it – you’re old – like I am. And the only cure isn’t more cowbell – it’s an updated. Get a new hair cut from the barber, by a different kind of shirt than you normally wear, try some uncooked meat for dinner (or a deep fried eggroll, if you’re a sushi nut), and think outside the box that is your web site,  your marketing plan, and the self-imposed limits you’ve placed on your business growth. If you want traffic from outside the box, leads from outside the lines, qualified visitors from beyond your “about us” page, then you’re going to have to change the way you work, when it comes to your marketing. You’ll have to settle for spending less money, less time, and you’ll have to learn a new thing.

Now if that doesn’t piss you off enough to get started, leave a comment here, and I’ll try to accomodate you. We at Market Moose believe in telling you the truth, even when it hurts. You and I are like our businesses: if we’re not growing, we’re dying. And frankly, I don’t know about you, but I’m not going out without a swift kick in the arse of the world, even if it’s online instead of meandering around the Woolworths.

Oh, and one last thing. Yeah, I know I was born with a circuit board in my mouth. But that’s no excuse. If you can read this, and you write a reasonably comprehensible e-mail, you’ve got the basic tools you need to market your business for years to come. So don’t piss and moan about not having gone back to school for this. Marketing can be fun, frankly, once you get past the curmudgeonly resistance that comes with the onset of years. So take a pill from me – contact me if you want some help kicking it off – meanwhile, it’s your 5minutes to think about your business growth. How are you spending it today?