I Want to Talk About All the Things

When most beginners start blogging, all them blogging and social media gurus tell you that you gotta pick something. Nobody likes jacks- and janes-of-all-trades, so you need to pick something and specialize in it and build a community around that one topic you picked. It's easier that way. It's easier to attract a community. It's easier to position and present yourself. Besides, you can't be everything to everybody and you can't possibly do everything anyway. All those gurus forget to mention HOW HARD it is to pick. People are complicated and often have a variety of interests and passions, sometimes competing interests and passions. Other people just don't know what their passions are, or aren't sure among several different choices so they don't want to commit to one topic. Although clarity comes from engagement, not thought, as the great Marie Forleo says, at times it can take quite a bit of "engagement" for folks to figure out which passions and interests to spend their time on.

Therefore, I'm Going to Do All the Things

I'm just going to do all the things cause I want to do all the things and I'm going to be my own blogging and social media guru and make it work. I'm going to make it work because I think it's awesome and I think just about everything is awesome (except cockroaches, as they are not awesome). There's probably going to be a lot of app marketing, inbound marketing and content marketing in here as well because I know a lot about that stuff and I do it for a living so it's kind of hard not to have it seep into the rest of my life. After all, I have plenty of categories in my sidebar, which illustrate that I certainly love all the things and have already made previous attempts at doing all the things, even though I wouldn't have called any of those posts or categories attempts when I first created them. Never mind some of the stuff that I wrote about previously. Some of it I will iterate and bring it back and others I will not.

I'm Also Probably Going to Promote Apps Here as Well

I know! It makes me such a shrill to promote products or whatever on the blog or on the sidebar. But, first of all, it's part of my job. I love my job and I do love the apps that we create. Our apps cover all sorts of topics, and some of those topics I'm probably never going to talk about in depth on this blog. For example, our latest app is Inside Drones, which is about hobby drones, quadcopters, and how they're used in various industries. It features drones news and only drones news. so it won't ever have celebrity news or sports news or even topics more closely related like gadgets or tech news. I'm probably never ever going to talk about drones in a blog post. But, people are doing some pretty awesome things with drones, like this Drones Racing Championship that's happening next month. That just sounds darn cool. How do you not promote that and talk about that?

On a side note, I need to create my reading list for this website. I like to all sorts of books and I have plenty of favorites and recommendations, spanning all sorts of topics. You know what, if I like it I'm gonna promote it. Plain and simple. Marie Forleo does that with some of the guests she has on her show, and I've certainly bought the books and other products from some of her guests. One of my particular favorites is Sally Hogshead. Her research and ideas on fascination is just amazing.

This is the Moment I've Been Training For

I haven't blogged in SO LONG, and getting back into the swing of blogging daily or multiple times per day has been a difficult process for me. Just several years ago, I was writing 1800, 2400 words a day with no problem. I was writing blog posts for clients, blog posts for my own blog, blog posts for free for different organizations and much more. Nowadays, I can't find the motivation to do a single blog post, whether it's for myself or for work. I'm not sure what the problem is, but the only way to fix it is to sit down and write a 600-word blog post like I am doing now. Then do it again tomorrow, probably for work this time. And the do it again the next day, maybe two blog posts (one for work and one personally). I ought to get into the habit of creating great content anyway, as I need to do a lot of it over the coming months to deliver value to our users and creating opportunities for people to get to know our brand and, ultimately, download one or more of our apps.

I Need to Grow the Brand

I have about six months to get as many people as possible using Inside and its various apps. As long as it's not illegal or a method that's just acquiring bots or something, I can use just about any marketing method that works to get the job done. It's quite scary in fact. There's a lot at stake. My boss is putting a lot of faith in me to accomplish something great. I don't want to fail or to be perceived as someone who is bad at this job. I've done similar work previously, but not at this scale or this pace. Working with various apps also poses new challenges that I've never overcome before, although I am equipped with tools that I didn't have when I blogged and did social media marketing in the past.

Eventually, I Want to Revolutionize App Marketing

Small tangent, but there's an inbound marketing concept called The Buyer's Journey. It's the journey that every buyer goes through as they make their decision regarding their purchase. I think app marketing is completely focused on the decision stage and just getting the person the app. There's nothing really in the app industry on moving someone through a buyer's journey and working with a potential user to become an actual user. There's not a whole lot on ensuring actual users are happy users and doing things to turn them into fans and promoters of the app. The emphasis is so much on just increasing users and getting new users. I want to change app marketing by demonstrating that focusing on the awareness and consideration stages of the journey, you can still increase users while also having happier users who use your product more often and will do the work to get others involved. I suspect that by rushing potential users to the decision, or only presenting the decision, that folks who are still in the awareness and consideration states will ultimately delete or stop using the app because the app didn't meet their needs or solve their problems after all.

To Do That, I Need to Make This Moment Count First

I can talk about changing app marketing and what I don't like about it and what I could possibly do working at an app to provide a better experience to users when they consider, download and use apps. However, I need to accomplish a few things at work over the next few months. If I do that, while I talk about app marketing, inbound marketing, and whatever else comes to mind, then incredible things will happen.

I've spend several years blogging, several years learning how to do inbound marketing and content marketing, and I even started my own business to provide those exact services. All of that, I think was the training and the practice for this year and these next six months. I need to step up to the plate, take a few swings and hit a few home runs in the process.

How to Ensure Originality in Your Content Marketing

Every Thursday, I will republish my best articles from Technorati.com. Since Technorati redesigned its website and is under new managements, tens of thousands of articles that were previously published on the site are no longer available. I have been given explicit permission to republish my work on my own website. If your biggest content marketing challenge is creating original content, then you're not alone. Almost 70% of B2B marketers said this was their biggest challenge, according to a B2B marketing trends survey from content curation platform Curata. The next two biggest challenges for B2B marketers were having the time to do it (65%) and finding high quality content (43%) to drive a content curation strategy.

As the use and importance of content marketing continues to rise, there's added pressure on content creators to come up with new and original content regularly. Duplicate content isn't cool, but creating original content can be a challenge when you are covering some of the same topics over and over again. So, just how do you ensure originality in your content marketing without resorting to copying or running out of ideas? Here are a few ways to do that:

1. Involve More People in Your Content Marketing Process - If you have only one person writing for your blog, then creating original content is going to be a huge challenge. One person can only do so much. When it comes to your business blog, allow employees from sales and customer service to contribute as well. These folks have insight into customer questions and pain point, and can offer something incredibly valuable to the blog, something that your original blogger could have missed. For other forms of content marketing, involve a team or maybe outsource a project or two to a content marketing firm. A fresh perspective could be all it takes to get the original content you've been craving.
2. Don't Rely So Much on Copyscape - Too many people think Copyscape is the magic wand to finding original content and to banishing those plagiarists. However, Copyscape is not a silver bullet. First of all, simply rewriting something into your own words doesn't absolve the crime of plagiarism. Think of this as putting someone's book or academic report into your own words, and then putting your name on it without giving credit to the original author. The ideas aren't your own, and without proper citation, even the rewrite is still plagiarism despite passing Copyscape. Second, there are things that ought to be cited and be verbatim in content, such as a quote, a definition, a set of statistics, a phone number, and a book title. This is where human judgement comes in, as rewriting these things may make your content less powerful, not more. Third, Google hates duplicate content, but an entire article that's copied and pasted is very different from including a quote or an excerpt of someone's book or blog post. Original content is much more than having unique text. It's about having unique ideas while being able to give credit where credit is due.
3. Conduct Your Own Research - A great way to be original is to conduct your own research with a survey or analysis of data, and then to report the findings. This method may take a while, but the goal is to find something new and to have a lot to write about, more than just a single blog post or white paper.
4. Update/Repackage Current Content - No one says that once you publish something, that's it. Get more mileage from your content by updating the information, or repackaging the content. For example, if you've written 20 blog posts about anti-virus software, then take those 20 posts and turn it into a guide or an eBook about anti-virus software. You can make this original by adding an author page and an introduction in the beginning, a description of your company at the end, and updating any statistics you used in the posts. Okay, you've technically copied yourself, but you own that content. No one's going to ding you for that.

Social Marketing Tactics Balance Customer Attraction, Retention

Every Thursday, I will republish my best articles from Technorati.com. Since Technorati redesigned its website and is under new managements, tens of thousands of articles that were previously published on the site are no longer available. I have been given explicit permission to republish my work on my own website. Websites, blogs, and social media marketing strike the best balance between customer attraction and retention, according to an October 2012 survey from Constant Contact. In its survey of over 1,000 small businesses, the small business marketing firm also found that the tactics least effective at striking the balance were daily deals and online ads. This balance is critical as small businesses need to use their marketing dollars wisely, and if certain tactics can do both, then that's better for the business.

So, just how can small businesses better use websites, blogs, and social media better? What can be done so that customer attraction and retention rates improve by using these tactics, and using them more effectively? Here's how to master these tactics to do just that:

Blog and Post Regularly

Obviously, if you're only blogging and tweeting once a month, you can't expect these tactics to attract and retain customers. You're not doing it enough for anyone to notice. With social media, you should be posting/tweeting/updating at least once a day. With blogging, you should be publishing at least one post per week. With your website, you should work on adding more pages to it at least once a month. When you are employing your tactics often enough (but not so often that you overwhelm people or that your quality suffers), people will take notice of what you are doing and what you have to say. Only then, will you be able to attract and to retain customers.

Create Content with Your Customers in Mind

If all you're talking about is your company's products/services, this award you won, this event you attended, and how great your company is, then these tactics won't retain and attract as many customers as you want. The reason is that your customers don't care about any of those things. They really don't. They care about whatever problem they have and how to solve it. They care about working with a brand that knows what it's doing. They care about spending their money on a solution that will work. Since that's what they care about, that's what you need to talk about in your website, blog, or social media update. Talk about their problems and pain points, and how to solve them. Talk about your industry, where its going, and offer best practices for doing X and Y in your industry. Talk about solutions that work, and what customers ought to spend on such solutions (Yes, be the brand that reveals the number). These people will thank you for it by becoming a customer and encouraging others to become customers.

Connect the Three

Do not operate your website, blog, and social media in three separate silos! Connect the three of them with links as well as a comprehensive strategy. For example, your blog should be easily accessibly through your website, preferably through its own link in the header navigation bar. This is a mistake many small businesses make, as they either aren't connected at all or the only link is in the footer navigation bar. An extra step you can take is to include your blog feed right on the home page, so visitors can also peruse specific articles. Social media should be as accessible from your website, and your blog should include social sharing buttons with each post. On the flip side, use social media to promote your blog posts and your webpages.

As for a comprehensive strategy, think about the strengths of each tactic individually and consider how to use them in a marketing campaign, for example. If you have a new fill-in-the-blank that you want to generate buzz about, use all three to their strengths to generate that buzz. With your blog, do a post that reveals just a piece of the fill-in-the-blank, including a call to action to download, or to register, or to buy, or whatever the proper action is. Your website should have a new page dedicated to the fill-in-the-blank, which can easily be shared on social media or promoted on the home page. Your blog post should also include a link to this page. Social media should be used to drive traffic to both pages, with an even smaller piece revealed to entice clicks.

Keep in mind that, "we have a new fill-in-the-blank! Click here to check it out," is neither enticing, nor revealing. It doesn't give any reason to check it out. This is an example of the talking about yourself problem that we discussed. It emphasizes you and the new thing too much without showcasing what's in it for the visitor or customers.

How to Choose an Online Marketing Firm

This is one of those posts that got rejected by a client because of "overall writing style". I have no idea what this means. I've posted a comment on the client's profile to see if I can receive additional clarification and information on this rejection reasoning. Hopefully, I'll get a response in a few days (Zerys needs to approve the comment. Once that's done, the client will see it and respond, ideally). How do clients expect people to improve with feedback like this? If you don't like the darn article, just tell me that it sucks. If you didn't like the writing style, then tell me what you would have liked to see, or what you didn't like about the writing style. Since the client rejected the article, it's mine now and I'm going to publish it here. Nearly every business needs help with online marketing to some extent. Since it's hard to get by without engaging in some form of online marketing, there are tons of companies out there ready to offer services and to provide this solution or that solution for your Internet marketing woes. How do you sort through all these companies and pick the one that can best meet your needs and deliver the best results? Here's how to choose an online marketing firm that's right for your business:

Know What You Want to Achieve

Before starting any research, know exactly what you want to achieve with the help of an online marketing firm. Knowing what you want to achieve increases the chances of success. If you don't have set goals that you can communicate to a potential partner, then it will be difficult to determine if they've really helped you or if they are doing what needs to be done to improve your online marketing.

Knowing your goals also makes your research much more purposeful. If you need help with social media, for example, then you want to research online marketing firms who have had success in helping clients with their social media marketing. You also want to find companies who do a good job managing their own social media efforts as well (if they can't keep their own profiles updated, how will they treat yours). It's okay to ask for samples if a company doesn't have them readily available on their website or for download. Sometimes, a company won't want to put too many details about their clients on the web for the entire world (including their competition) to see.

Strong Support

Once you find a couple of online marketing firms that could work for you, contact them and see how long it takes to get back to you. Does the firm engage in an ongoing conversation, or do they just reply to your original email? This is an indicator of the personal service and attention you will receive from the company, and if they are willing to be helpful and to learn about your business. If they go straight for the sale, or if it takes a few days just to get any sort of response, then you know that firm isn't worth your time and money. However, if they offer pointers and explain how certain online marketing tactics would help you achieve your goals, then it's a better fit.

Experience in Your Industry

This isn't crucial for every business, but would be important to those in very niche or technical industries i.e. healthcare, financial services, technology. It also might be a good factor to use to narrow down your list of online marketing firms. Experience in your industry can be incredibly helpful because these agencies can take less time to get things done simply because time isn't needed to do additional research, to source an expert, and to learn about the industry. Their services are more expedient and will reflect a strong understanding of your industry. The company already has the information to execute a campaign and/or to offer services that can reach your target audience.

Don't Be Cheap, and Don't Pick the Cheapest

Sure, you can pay $5 an article or $20 a month for SEO services, but this doesn't necessarily mean that you'll receive the best online marketing services out there. There are too many stories out there of people who took this route, only to get hurt by Google's Panda and Penguin updates and are still struggling to reclaim their former glory. Yes, know your budget and stick to it as much as possible, but also make sure that your budget is competitive. With online marketing, you get what you pay for. If you're not wiling to pay for it, then you risk having the junior staff assigned to account or pushing away quality talent that would be worth those few extra dollars.

Choosing an online marketing firm isn't easy. There are so many to choose from, each offering different services and pitching a different solution to your needs. To choose the one that's best for you, know what you want to achieve and find a firm who's willing to learn what you want to achieve and to provide the solution that does that. If you can find a company that's worked in your industry and has a good price, then all the better.

I Passed My Inbound Marketing Certification Test!

Even though I'm moving away from the inbound marketing/content marketing business, I started my inbound marketing certification from HubSpot way back in April. It's a program where you watch a series of nine webinars, or classes, on the various topics. Once you finish the classes, you can then take the test for the certification. I've finally completed the classes and took the test today. I'm excited to say that I passed, and part of my reward is that cool little badge to the right there. It's one of my several successes of the week.

Other Success Stories of the Week

Opportunity International

Last night, I attended a neat little networking event with Opportunity International and the Young Ambassadors for Opportunity St. Louis chapter. The chapter is new, and the organization is about economic empowerment and providing micro-loans, both of which I am all about. I do like that the organization also works on building savings and providing insurance, instead of just funding loans and getting people to start businesses. Sometimes, getting the loan and having the successful business isn't enough because factors outside of the control of the owner can cause the business to fail.

Since the chapter was new, part of the point of the event was to have some sort of a meet-and-greet and to do something to build awareness for the chapter and the organization. When we think of micro-lending organizations, we think of Kiva.org and the Grameen Bank. However, Opportunity International was one of the first organizations to work on this issue, and it's great to encounter an organization that's actually working on some of the issues featured in Half the Sky. Up until now, it seems like these groups existed by were located somewhere other than St. Louis.

Speaking of the which, what's also great is that this chapter and this organization are going to partner with me on showing a screening of the Half of Sky documentary (of course, it would be a screening of the economic empowerment section). It turns out that Opportunity International is a partner organization of the Half the Sky movement, so this upcoming screening should be a huge hit.

Although, part of the success of last night was the peppermint patty cocktail, which was absolutely delicious. It had brownie batter vodka, peppermint schnapps, something else, and the glass was lined with chocolate sauce. The drink was absolutely amazing. Since the event was at Cafe Napoli, I recommend asking for the peppermint patty cocktail the next time you visit.

Amazing Pizza!

A brand new, very tasty pizza place opened up down the street from me the other day. It's called Papa Murphy's, and they make the pizza in front of you and then you take it home and put it in the oven. We tried it today and it's absolutely fantastic pizza! I ate the gourmet vegetarian, which included neat toppings like zucchini and artichoke hearts, and the entire thing was yummy. Fortunately, I have a whole bunch of coupons, so next time I can get their Hawaiian pizza, or their smores pizza for dessert, or their normal vegetarian pizza (the gourmet one has creamy garlic sauce instead of normal tomato sauce, and has a different combination of vegetables on it). I'm excited about it, and especially like the idea that you can buy it and you don't have to eat it right away.

It's Friday

It's always a success if you can make it until the end of the week without dying, or having a total meltdown, or losing everything you have. Cheers to that! I'm going to spend my night playing a little bit of Wii, reading a little bit of book, playing with the kitty, and perhaps getting some work done. There's always fun work to be done.

What Do I Do with This Inbound Marketing Stuff?

It stresses me out that I don't have much idea of what to do with all this inbound marketing, business blogging, and content marketing knowledge. The best I have is that I can apply it to online media and publishing, but that's about it. For some reason, I feel like I should do something more with it besides applying it to something else. It's still interesting and important stuff, so I want to keep up with the topic without just passively consuming it or reading up about it. I want to apply it in ways besides improving my business.

Consulting Work?

I could turn most of Stirring Media's current services into consulting work. I think there's less competition for things like inbound marketing consulting and content marketing consulting, versus being a marketing agency or providing those services. I also think that I would make a very good consultant. One of the most frustrating things about the work I was doing previously (and now, to an extent. I still need to make an income as I build the online publishing portion) is that consulting isn't in the contract so I usually felt somewhat constrained when providing services. One clients only posts 250-350 word posts. Even if I do give them 600-800 word posts, they cut out half of it and post a 300-word version. I could say something if I were a consultant, but would saying something mean anything if I just provide the service? They're not paying me to listen to me, and even if they did listen to me, would they tell their other contributors to double the size of their posts? I really don't know if they'd change, even though the change would make my service more effective and their blog better. As an agency, you can't really be an agency of change unless a client hires you to be an agent of change and to create strategy as well as content. However, if you're not hired to do that, it's then a hassle to get some money's worth out of the information. You don't want to do too much consulting for free.

There is the Stirring Standard

I started this site a while ago as a publication that sources most of its content from business blogs. The point was the give great business blogs a platform for their content, a way to have the good stuff rise above the rest. It would also be one more way to get found online and to set some standards for what's considered good content. This is something that needs to happen soon as more and more folks jump into content marketing, so we're all starting to just drown each other out and to make it harder for our target audience to find our content. Also, this site would have been a way to give businesses and their stories a little more legitimacy while building back links. I believe businesses have good stories to tell and can offer something valuable and beneficial to people. I think businesses can go beyond selling a product or service, much more than was possible or necessary than years past. People don't want to be sold to anymore. Anyway, still don't know what to do with the site. Not sure if I would pursue the business blog idea.

At least with consulting idea, I have an additional source of income that I could utilize right now. I also wouldn't need to delete so many pages from the website. I could simply rewrite most of them, so I would only take a temporary hit to SEO instead of a permanent one (it would be permanent because the pages would be gone, and it would probably leave broken links strewn across my website, which would also hurt). I better add this to the revenue model, and then send all my homework to my business coach.

Online Marketing and Promotion isn't Outbound Marketing!

Think About Engaging People Instead of Just Getting in Front of Them

At this point in the evolution of marketing, most folks understand that outbound marketing techniques such as print advertising, direct mail, cold calling, and radio/TV exposure don't work as well as they used. The investment doesn't offer the return that it used to, and consumers are better than ever at tuning out marketing messages and skipping the commercials.

It seems that even though advertising in the newspaper or through direct mail is going out of style, businesses aren't coming to the conclusion that it isn't these specific media that are going out of style, it's the concept of interrupting and pushing marketing messages that no longer works. Because some fail to understand this, these people are simply applying the concept to online marketing and promotion, thinking that the change is in the medium and not in the strategy (although, you could argue that both are changing).

Online Marketing and Promotion isn't Outbound Marketing

Online marketing and promotion doesn't work that way. If you get tons of traffic to your website, this doesn't necessarily translate to tons of people who will buy your product or service right then and there. If you write enough press releases, push enough social media updates, and buy enough pay-per-click advertising, this doesn't necessarily mean that the traffic will get will convert on your website. If you write wonderful sales copy and ask on every single page to contact you about a purchase, this doesn't necessarily mean that everyone will be convinced to buy right then and there. Online marketing and promotion isn't shouting on the Internet, it's doing things that are worth talking about and sharing.

Thousands of inbound links isn't all that it takes to rank high on search engines. For example, one our previous clients has over 900 inbound links. However, you can't find it on the first three pages of search results when searching for the service they provide. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, the client didn't believe blogging was good for SEO, and only wanted inbound links, and failed to understand that the two work together. Second, they primarily wanted inbound links to their homepage using their brand name as the anchor text. Third, since the main way they wanted inbound links was through guest blogging, this meant that every single guest post had some sort of marketing message to it, as it had to mention the brand and include a link to the home page. It's obvious from this client's requests and strategy that they didn't care about providing value to potential customers or doing anything to engage people. They simply cared about getting in front of people and pushing a marketing message.

Instead, the client should have thought about what they could do to be valuable to their potential customers, to educate them about their service, and what they could do to outshine their competition. Inbound links should have been on the backburner, because if they did things that were valuable, that educated, and that outshined the rest, the inbound links wouldn't have been any problem. When it came to those guest posts, they should have wanted content that positioned them as an industry expert, that offered great insight on current events, and that offered great advice about using their service and its broader context.

Inbound Marketing Pulls People In and Engages

"Either write something worth reading, or do something worth writing." - Benjamin Franklin

Good online marketing and promotion means creating content worth reading, or creating content that's worth it for others to share and to write about. It's not about marketing messages and making sales; it's about being valuable and positioning yourself as a trusted resource to potential customers. Stop broadcasting and talking about yourself! Draw people in by doing something or writing something interesting because, for your information, your company and your products/services are not interesting.

Related Links:

How to Improve Your Website's User Experience

Getting Found is Only Half the Story

How to Blog: Why Business Blogging is Great for SEO

February Inbound Marketing News Roundup

It's almost the end of a short month, but that doesn't mean fewer things have happened in inbound marketing. There are always changes, new tools, and new thoughts to learn about. Here's a roundup of the most important, and the most informative, inbound marketing news from the past month: The Shift of Inbound Marketing in 2013 - Powered by Search - This isn't another prediction article, which is good because it's kind of late for prediction articles. Inbound marketing and SEO are changing, so it's a matter of changing with it. Primarily, it all has to do with strategy and aligning what you do with business goals, instead of doing it because it's supposed to be good or make you look good. One of the coolest things about this article is that it covers things you shouldn't do in 2013, as some tactics no longer work or don't work as well as they used to.

Inbound Marketing and the New 6-Step Purchase Loop - Impact Branding and Design - Apparently, it's not a purchase or buying funnel anymore. It's a purchase loop, and it's weirder than the purchase funnel. However, this new loop recognizes how complicated the buying process actually is, and better reflects the many decisions a potential buyer can make, and the many ways a consumer could come to a purchasing decision.

8 Big Marketing Campaign Mistakes to Stop Making Now - HubSpot - Marketing campaigns are no longer commercials and direct mail around a new product, but dedicated online marketing around a new lead generation offer. Or, it's marketing with a specific message to generate leads and to close sales. The point is, there's a lot more to a marketing campaign then a decade goals, meaning there are a lot more things that need to be write in order for it to be a success.

What It Costs Not to Implement Inbound Marketing - Business2Community - If you have already implemented inbound marketing, then you know how beneficial it's been to you and what you would lose if you stopped doing inbound marketing. However, if you haven't yet implemented inbound marketing, then this article illustrates the volume of money and leads you are losing each month. The potential is immense.

List of Business/Small Business Blogs that Accept Guest Posts - Guest Blogging Tactics - Even though we don't offer guest posting services, we still think guest posting is a great inbound marketing tactic (if you have the time and resources to do it right). This blog post is a great resource, as its already done some of the legwork in finding excellent website that accept guest posts. Bookmark this immediately.

Colons in Page Titles: A New Ranking Factor? - Gordon Campbell - Colons can be very handy in blog post titles. Using them correctly allows you to create a title that's short, but simple and direct. Colons also make it easier to start your blog title with a keyword, but I don't think the colon itself is a new ranking factor. Colons are usually part of good blog post titles that rank well for their keywords, and colons that are used correctly indicate a good author offering good content. However, the author of this article thinks that colons themselves can be a ranking factor, so perhaps it's something up for debate or something that Google will clarify in a few weeks.