Bloggers (well-known and not so well-known) are prime influencers in your market. Although a blogger may not use your product or service, he or she may track influential trends, companies and events. Get on a blogger’s radar — and follow a few simple rules — and you can easily build a relationship and garner some favorable press.

So how do you win the ear of influential bloggers in your market? I put this question to Mary Sullivan of SHIFT Communications, a PR firm with offices in Boston, San Francisco and New York.

Sullivan is a senior account executive with the firm and the only PR person whose emails land in my Gmail Priority Inbox — which is saying a lot. I receive dozens of pitches each week, all of which end up in the “everything else” part of my inbox, which is basically the “delete without reading” section.

(Priority Inbox is Gmail’s relatively new tool that sorts your emails, separating the most important from the rest, based on your usage patterns. It’s what has motivated me to provide quality, targeted content — but that’s another post!)

According to Sullivan, your messages have to be targeted and genuine to get a blogger’s attention — as most of us are great BS detectors and can spot a “dash and blast” email a mile away. Sullivan recommends that you use whatever tools you have to customize each message to each individual blogger.

Yes, this means you actually have to get to know individual bloggers.

Because individual pitches take more time, Sullivan makes sure she’s cultivating the right bloggers. In deciding whom to pitch, she reads each blogger’s most recent posts and selects (or not) based on what she sees.

When she finds a blogger she wants to engage, her account team follows the blogger’s posts and looks for opportunities to comment and add value. Over time, she and the blogger develop a mutually beneficial relationship: She adds value to the blog by engaging in conversation, providing information, and even (indirectly) generating blog topic ideas. In return, the blogger learns more about the products or services Sullivan promotes and may choose to write about them.

Sullivan prefers Twitter, blogs and LinkedIn as relationship building tools for her B2B clients over Facebook.

What methods have you tried to win the attention of bloggers? What’s worked and what hasn’t? Leave your comment below.

Full disclosure: Neither Mary Sullivan or SHIFT Communications asked me to write this article nor was I paid to do so. Eloqua is SHIFT’s client. I have written and Tweeted about Eloqua’s content in the past because I think they produce content that’s relevant and helpful to marketers. (Especially loved their Wikipedia Grande Guide.)

One of the big mistakes I see companies make with Web content is using the wrong font size and color.

I’m referring specifically to fonts that are small, a very light color, reversed out, or placed on a tinted background — as these screen shots show. (Note: I randomly chose these examples by doing a search for “mission statement customer service.”)

An example of small, gray type

An example of colored type on a tinted background

An example of reversed out type

What’s the problem with using these types of font sizes and colors?

They lower reader comprehension. In plain English, it means that people have a hard time reading your message.

The late Colin Wheildon did groundbreaking research into which typefaces and page layouts reduce or improve reader comprehension with regard to print. This research, which you can find in the book, Type and Layout: Are You Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes, also applies to the Web.

Wheildon proved, for example, that text printed in black received a 70% level of comprehension and that a muted color (such as grey) received only a 10% level of comprehension.

Wheildon also tested comprehension with regard to printing text on colored backgrounds. He ran a number of tests using different colors and tints, but generally, results proved that the lighter the background tint and the darker the type (e.g. black), the higher the level of comprehension.

As stated in the book, “designers often claim that reversed out type . . . grabs readers’ attention and forces them to read the text.” Wheildon’s research showed the exact opposite. “When type was reversed, comprehension levels plummeted.”

Text printed black on white had a 70% comprehension level. White text printed on black had a zero level of comprehension. In fact, 80% of study participants said that reversed out type “vibrated . . . which made the lines of type seem to move and merge into one another.” (Reminds me of motion sickness — ugh!)

What does all this research mean? It means that if people can’t read or comprehend your message, they won’t understand what you’re offering. In effect, you’re making it twice as hard for people to take the next step in the buying process.

I’m not saying that your Web pages should be devoid of graphical elements or that you should never use color or reversed out text. What I am saying is that you should consider formatting your pages to make them easy to read:

• Use white backgrounds and black text to significantly improve reader comprehension.
• Use a font size of 9 or above — Remember, not everyone knows how to adjust font size using browser tools.
• Increase “leading” — Leading refers to the space between lines of type. A little more leading makes things easier to read. As you can see right here, the leading in these bullet points is less than the leading in the paragraphs above. Which is a little easier to read?
• Avoid large blocks of text — Reading text online is exhausting and hard on the eyes. Make it easy for people to skim by breaking up large blocks of text into smaller chunks. Sub-heads, bullets, bolding and smaller paragraphs improve readability.

Edmond Arnold, the father of newspaper design, said to “start with good typography — the kind that best suits the reader.” What works best for print also works best for the Web.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree and why?

I first came across San Jose Plumbing when I was part of a Twitter Follow Friday. I tweeted about their social media approach, they featured my tweet on their Facebook page, and soon after Carol Stephen, the voice behind San Jose Plumbing, and I connected by phone.

San Jose Plumbing got on my radar because of the content being posted: lots of relevant how-to stuff.

Owner and plumber Robie Dobkins started the business in 2007, focusing on commercial properties and re-piping services. Like many small business owners, Dobkins soon realized he would rather focus on his trade than tweets. As his business grew, he hired Carol Stephen of Your Social Media Works to manage his company’s Facebook and Twitter accounts and to develop a social media marketing strategy.

What I like about Stephen’s approach is that she’s emphasized research over content creation. She searches the web for interesting links and adds a San Jose Plumbing twist — keeping the content fresh and interesting.

For example, I love this Facebook post, with an accompanying video, about how to change a shower head. (Video posted below.)

Thanks to Stephen’s efforts, San Jose Plumbing’s Facebook page and Twitter account (@sanjoseplumbing) are a watering hole for contractors, businesses and clients. It’s a source of information on plumbing, household maintenance and repair, and company news. Throughout, Stephen’s sense of humor keeps it light and fun.

Their unique approach has won them many Facebook “likes” and Twitter followers, and they were especially excited when renovation and repair expert Bob Vila (@BobVila) started following them on Twitter.

San Jose Plumbing’s Facebook post caught my attention because I need a new shower head and couldn’t figure out how to remove the old one. Secret tip: use a towel!

I attended the SEMNE meeting last night that featured Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting. Eric talked about the ramifications of Google’s Panda Update.

You can read the various points he made. (The link goes to the Twitter search results for the hashtag #semne — if you can’t see anything, just go to Twitter and use #semne in your search.)

Suffice to say, the key takeaway is this: Unique content written by people for people AND NOT SEARCH ENGINES is key. What is unique content? It’s content that:

1. Isn’t a rehash of crap that already exists.

2. Isn’t stuffed full of keywords.

3. Answers people’s questions — whether they’re making a purchase decision or writing a paper.

Google is getting much smarter (and I think with Larry Page back in the CEO seat, we’ll be seeing even more changes like the Panda Update as Google refines its core product: search). All kinds of things, from social media signals to whether people have blocked a site using the Google Chrome extension, now play into how a site ranks.

What all this means for B2B is that your content must be fresh, clean, and unique. According to Enge, Google’s Panda algorithm is going to become much, much smarter and pretty soon it’s going to be knocking smaller crappy sites off the top positions for many of the same reasons that it bumped off eHow.com and Ezinearticles.com. (As my clients know, I have never advocated adding spammy, half-baked articles to sites like these for SEO or marketing purposes).

Jill Whalen is forever saying that content that’s good for people is good for search engines. Write great content — or get someone like me to write it for you — and you won’t ever need to worry about things like the Panda Update. You’ll also increase conversions and sales.

I read an article in a newsletter recently that stated marketers should ensure their most important message appears at the top of a Web page as Google cuts off search results after a short number of words.

I know for a fact that search engine bots “read” and cache all of the information on a page because I’ve seen my own “bottom of the page” content in the SERPs.

However, things change all the time, so I checked this dubious fact with my good friend Jill Whalen, founder of High Rankings. Here’s Jill’s response verbatim:

Wow, that’s straight out of the 1995 SEO handbook. There are no rules when it comes to the search engines in terms of number of words or [their] placement on the page. Whatever is best for people is typically best for search engines since they’re looking for the best pages for their users (the searchers).

There you have it! To see how Google does view your page, you can do the following exercise:

1. Run a search for your company name. Your company should be #1. (If not, call me!) Click the “Cached” link on your listing.

2. This brings you to Google’s “Snapshot” of your page. Here you can see when Google last crawled your site — always handy information to have. Click the “Text-Only Version” link in the top right corner.

3. This brings you to a new page that shows you how Google’s bot sees your page. You should see lots of yummy text for the bot to crawl — and index.

Seeing this page should make it very clear why copy that’s good for people (your prospects and customers) is also good for search engines.

Don’t see any text or you want to create more of it? You can call me about that, too. I write damned good optimized Web content that shows up in search engines and that gets your prospects to call you.

I’ve spent a lot of time of late adding followers to clients’ Twitter accounts and RSS feeds to Google Reader. (Be sure to read my post about why Google Reader should be your BFF in terms of managing the content tsunami we’re all dealing with.)

Here’s what I’ve learned from doing this somewhat tedious but important work: For companies actively participating on social media platforms and who want to help people follow their brands, social icon placement needs to be standardized much the same way Website navigation is now standard.

(I’m purposely not covering those companies who lack a social presence but place icons in the hope that people will tweet / Like their content. That’s a whole other article.)

In short, social media icons need to be part of a site’s universal navigational structure AND they need to be placed at the top of each page on the site.

Why?

1. Due to search, people don’t always come to a site via the home page. If your icons are placed only on the home page (or worse, on your PR page or “Contact Us” page or some other obscure place), no one will find them.

2. If I’m a prospect, I may want to learn more about a company by passively following via Facebook or Twitter. Making it so that social icons are easily found makes it easier for people to follow you and begin the engagement process.

3. For people like me who are helping clients build their online brand / presence, following industry influencers, players, journalists, etc. is important. I want to be able to go to a site, find those icons and get back out. I don’t want to have to scroll up and down a page hunting for tiny icons.

Once I realized the importance of where social icons are placed on a page, I moved mine from the middle of my site’s sidebar to the header.

(Also note that my phone number is at the top of every page. This makes it easy for people using smart phones to call me — all they have to do is touch my phone number, which appears as a link on a smart phone. No searching around my site for a “Contact Me” page. It’s little things like this that make your brand / Website “people friendly.” Trust me.)

You can also do a “Social” tab the way Food Processing does. I like how this organization created a drop down menu that shows links to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Click on each link and you get taken directly to the social page. Easy!

What do you think? Take my Twtpoll or leave your comments below.