blogs4businesses.com

For Diggnation and Twitterers everywhere, last week was a time to rejoice. Digg launched the DiggBar to rave reviews that claimed it exponentially simplified the task of submitting new stories and comments (excuse the slight exaggeration). By all accounts, it was the greatest thing since sliced bread (and the overused cliché). Popular technology news blog TechCrunch featured the story “DiggBar Keeps All Digg Homepage Traffic on Digg,” applauding the “brilliant move by Digg” and suggesting the Twitter crowd already loves it.

There are two disturbing realities to TechCrunch’s praise. First, they are correct: It is a smart move by Digg, but at the expense of all sites that are now linked with the short Digg URL. You see, Digg now cleverly and unobtrusively wraps all content of other sites within an iFrame, keeping viewers on Digg.com as opposed to the source of the original content. Without getting too technical, Digg is essentially cheating its way to increased traffic and ad revenue by keeping any content linked with the DiggBar and the short Digg URL within the Digg domain. As a consequence, the source link is replaced with the short Digg URL, which kills the Google ranking of the source site (no link juice) and passes on all the credit to Digg. Secondly, without this knowledge, many will be quick to adopt what is a convenient method of linking stories, as TechCrunch alludes. With the explosive growth of Twitter, this is a dangerous proposition: The spread of the short Digg URL could cause a decline in original source content links everywhere. All the while, Digg profits from the associated surge in traffic and ranking.

Additionally, what TechCrunch fails to mention is that the DiggBar also controls meta tags, filling in the meta description and keywords for the linked site with the default meta keywords “Digg, Digg.com, news, images, videos, vote, content.” Ultimately, this hurts the source site’s SEO, although meta tags aren’t as important for search engine optimization as they once were.

Seems a bit wrong, no? That’s because it is. Popular technology pundit John Gruber, writer of Daring Fireball, shares the sentiment and created a special version of his site for DiggBar users which offers some harsher words for Digg.

Boycott the DiggBar by doing the following:

1. Whenever you come across the DiggBar, promptly disable the toolbar by clicking the down arrow next to the large “X” on the right and activate “Always hide the toolbar.”

2. Whenever in need of a short URL, use one that employs the proper 301 redirect. Fortunately, there are a number of URL shortening services, namely bit.ly, tinyurl, is.gd, and piurl. My current favorite is is.gd which offers the shortest URLs I’ve seen for those in need of the extra characters for tweeting purposes. There happens to be a fantastic Firefox add-on that places its bookmark icon in your toolbar. It will shorten the URL of the page you’re currently viewing and place it on the clipboard so that you won’t have to navigate away from the page of interest. You can paste it wherever you’d like afterward.

3.  If you come across a short Digg URL, expand it to the source URL and if you need to shorten it, use one of the shortening services above.  This sounds like a pain but really it takes about five seconds.

4. If you are owner of a site, break out of the iFrame using JavaScript.

We target specific businesses who are already on an upward trajectory. We just help them reach critical mass and go viral.

“But who in the world is growing these days?” you ask. Simple: craft breweries. Inexpensive gourmet eateries. (I love it! I’m a food writer!)

Don’t believe me? Articles abound on the craft beer growth phenomenon. This AP report references Mount Carmel Brewing Company in Cincinnati, who just starting selling 6-packs in January 2009. When it was time to restock their stores, they were shocked to find that their brews had all been bought up. They project 3,000 barrels in 2010, up from 1,000 last year.

Andy Crouch’s popular Beerscribe blog summarized a 5 percent increase in craft beer sales and a general downtrending for macrobrewers in 2008.

As for food—if it wasn’t wildly apparent from Top Chef’s ratings, America is taking comfort in gourmet during this time of economic hardship. But they’re making it as frugal as possible, cooking at home and indulging in small, inexpensive treats like Whoopie or Moon Pies and, yes, craft beer.

Who is poised for growth locally? My bet is places like Gourmet Frank’s, an upscale Chicago-style hot dog hawker set to open in Indianapolis’ Broad Ripple in about two weeks (the original location is in Palo Alto, CA, but I’ve intercepted a manager who said this one won’t be quite the same). And, of course, Brugge Brasserie, which gets so packed on weekends (even at 10 p.m.!) they’ve started sending downstairs diners to the newly built upstairs bar to dine.

The biggest problem for businesses like these right now are not necessarily attracting local customers (although social media will certainly speed that up for Frank’s) but raising awareness in ways other than regular marketing and advertising campaigns. Print media are losing market share and readers by the boatload as consumers flock to the Web to research and find goods and services.

If Brugge Brasserie wants to penetrate the national market—raise awareness and distribution—a space-spanning, SEO-amping, connection-making campaign involving a blog integrated with meaningful updates, Twitter, and Facebook is the way to do it. That goes for any of the small businesses on this page.

About the project

This 12-year-old mom and pop coffee shop in the heart of Broad Ripple Village, Indianapolis, sees a diverse crowd of regulars. In a town full of transient Starbucks drinkers, that’s a marketable commodity.

Owner William Powell had signed up for a blogging program that concentrated on keywords to optimize search engine results. He had begun to feature his regular customers in posts. But Powell, like many busy business owners, rarely had time to blog regularly.

Now that we’re in charge of content, our goal is to capture and channel the shop’s character. Creating a new page spotlighting the shop’s exhibiting artists is one way we’ll achieve that.

Another is the blog’s new “Weather Willy Wednesdays” campaign to make Powell’s previously coffee-shop-bound weather forecasts an interactive draw for coffee drinkers. Regulars know–Powell uses Weather.com’s “weather in motion” map to predict conditions, and he’s usually right on the money. But if he’s wrong more times than not in a month, blog readers will know when he’ll give away free drip coffee at a particular time of day. They’ll also get to see his predictions online via embedded video. It’s also likely something that local weather affiliates might cover, once we’ve developed a following.

The key to achieving regular blog readers, however, will be consistent, on-target posts for local coffee drinkers. And we’re here to deliver.