Marshall Lebovits: Small Business Blog Interview

Today's interview comes from Marshall Lebovits. We featured his financial resources company last week and he is a great example of someone who is just starting out in this blogging phenomena.

"At the end of the day, I’m having fun and it has increased my awareness about this still relatively new medium for transmitting information."

Pajama Market: How has the blog impacted your company?

Marshall Lebovits: I’ve been blogging a little less than 90 days so the jury is still out on the real impact. As I have had no prior Internet presence of my own, it is nice to be able to tell clients and prospects that they can now find me and my “point of view” on the web. In the long run, I believe my blog will add to my credibility and increase a prospect’s comfort level with my credentials. The majority of my business is from referral so if my blog generates a few new clients, I would consider it icing on the cake.

PJ: What has the response been from your customers/clients?

ML: My clients and referral sources claim the information on my blog is helpful to their understanding of a financing issue or structure. Frankly, I think many of them are just curious about blogging and find a blog about business financing issues to be quite unique. I’ve searched the blogosphere and have found very few blogs on this subject. The blogs I have found on these issues have been a pure sales pitch or simply spam. I hope that as more people seek information on financing in the blogosphere that they will find my site to be informative and useful.

PJ: What types of things about your work day inspire you to write a post on your blog?

ML: I find that companies that apply for financing are often rejected for two reasons – they have either knocked on the wrong doors or they have told their “story” in the wrong way. I try to write about things I encounter in my work day that address those two reasons.

PJ: What have been the biggest surprises with your blog so far?

ML: First, the amount of traffic that was driven to my blog when I was “quoted” on the Small Business Blog for USA Today. Second, I’ve been very surprised that very few others are writing a quality blog on the financing issues that impact the majority of business in the United States.

PJ: What blogging program do you use for the blog? Did you create this blog yourself? How do you like the program?

ML: When I started blogging, I wasn’t sure about my interest level nor my ability to commit time to the endeavor. Thus, I chose Blogger simply because it was easy to use and free. I have spent a considerable amount of time learning how to manipulate the Blogger template – I’ve added categories via Technorati and Del.icio.us, installed Feedburner, an email subscription service and Haloscan along with a couple of other minor adjustments. The Blogger program seems to get the job done, but frankly I have no other basis for comparison.

PJ: Is there anything else you would like to share about your blogging experience?

ML: At the end of the day, I’m having fun and it has increased my awareness about this still relatively new medium for transmitting information.

My biggest concern was and remains whether or not I will succeed in attracting traffic by being a Blogger sub-domain rather than having my own URL. At the end of the day, I don’t want to be my only reader. I’ve done my best to follow much of the available advice including search engine registration, publishing quality content, using the right key words in the right spots and publicizing my site. I’m open to helpful suggestions.

Interesting concerns at the end of your interview Marshall. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the industry of getting websites to show up at the top of search engine results. The ability to do this is significant as any website at the very top of a search result is basically getting free advertising and, potentially, thousands of visitors as a result.

But Blogging is completely destroying this industry. All the old rules of SEO are flying out the door as blogs are dominating the three major components that search engines look for: 1) tons of content, 2) manually inserted tags, and 3) tons of links from other websites. The keywords on your website don't matter anymore. What matters are the keywords other websites use to link to you.

The moral is, don't worry too much about SEO when working on your blog. Focus on your niche marketplace, create valuable content for that audience, and the SEO will take care of itself. Good luck and good blogging.