Matt Blancarte dot Com Design - Business - Two Cents

I am reading a great book right now called “smartups” by Rob Ryan. This is a must-read book if you are involved in a start up, and you can check his website here.

What’s at the core?

I am covering an interesting concept related to identifying what a firm really “does.” Finding new perspective like this can be the catalyst for new ideas to strengthen your business, whether it is large or small. Have you asked yourself what a company like Gatorade really does, and what their core competency is?

Most people might reply to that question with a statement like, “They create a liquid and sell it to consumers who are thirsty.” Is this all that is really going on though? Aren’t consumers telling themselves something different? After all, we have all seen the intense commercials, we have all seen the superhuman athletes drink large quantities while waiting on the sidelines and…

I am going to beginning a new tradition here for the blog. Every sunday, I will be linking to five blogs that I really enjoyed reading. Feel free to put a link in the comments if you feel like I missed a really good post that you found for yourself.

• Nate Whitehill asks about what motivates people to blog. If you give him a 250-word response, he will link you! PR5 links are always a good thing. ^_-
• Josh Mullineaux Talks about his experiences while leaving his day-job as a Personal Banker at Chase. Definitely an interesting read with some solid advice.
• Darren Rowse gives some great advice. He says that taking the time to thank your veteran readers is a great marketing tool for your blog. It is all part of his “31 Day Project” series. Check it out.
• Sam Breadstone poses the question, “Are link trains going to hurt my blog?”…

Now that I have ten posts (this being the eleventh), I am going to start marketing my blog. I am not quite big enough yet, and I haven’t built myself a reputation or quite enough credibility to go out claiming my blog is GREAT… so what can I do? Well, I am going to figure out who my readers are, and then begin to network myself within the niche(s). Here are four ways that I will be marketing, and improving my blog in August:

1. Encourage Personal Networking and Link Building
   • I can do this is several ways. I can begin searching out the readers and incoming traffic, and leave comments.
   • I can also begin reviewing people’s blogs and posts, while giving them a link. This will encourage them to perhaps read my blog, and better yet, link back to me.
   • Begin having conversations with other bloggers at my level, and hopefully more experienced and…