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Holly’s got a problem.

Actually she’s got a lot more than one, she’ll readily admit…But this one involves her email inbox.

She gets emails from businesses every day wanting to work with her. Only most of those businesses aren’t right for her blog, or are offering things she isn’t interested in reviewing or endorsing.

Not wanting to burn any bridges with any brands, she replies, “Thanks, but I’m not interested. Good luck with your promotion!!”

But wait…

What if Holly could make money simply by referring those companies to Business 2 Blogger??!!

Today, we’re proud to announce the Business 2 Blogger Affiliate Program…

Jay Cooney
@JayB2B @Biz2Blogger

Business2Blogger had a nice little New Year’s surprise on Friday… being mentioned in Mashable’s great article entitled “How to Launch a Social Ambassador Campaign“. B2B was described as being a company that had begun to develop ways to facilitate “the process of finding, managing and maintaining the “talent””.

Hope you’ll help us get the word out about this by tweeting, retweeting, Facebooking and Blogging about it… the more brands learn about what we’re doing here, the more they’ll want to work with you!

Happy New Year, all!!

2011 is coming to a close- that means that a lot of changes will come about, with new challenges, adventures, and opportunities. Forget resolutions to start a diet or to clean more around the house. Instead, focus on resolutions for your blog! I was wondering what most people’s resolutions were for their blog this year, so I threw the question out on Twitter. Though various types of bloggers responded, there was one common theme.

While a handful of people answered with having more time to blog, the most common one was getting their blog posts organized. This is crucial to keeping a consistent schedule. While your platform and design are important (very important!) to the success of your blog, an editorial calendar can be essential to your blog’s success.

An editorial calendar does not have to be something fancy, nor does it have to be a plugin or electronic. You can use a paper calendar, an app on your phone, or even a list on a piece of paper. For more details on various ways to organize your blog’s content, check out our post on building an editorial calendar. One of these options is sure to be right for you and help you to create the ultimate blog for 2012.

The best approach to do this successfully is to pick a day each week- or month if you’re really ambitious- to be your planning day. Spend about a half hour to an hour sketching out blog post topics, series ideas, and a general schedule for when you want to post which information. Since you are the only one who sees your calendar, you are not set in stone. Plenty of events or topics may crop up throughout your scheduled time, so feel free to be flexible! As a bonus, if you write some of the posts ahead of time, you have content you can post if you’re running behind.

How do you plan for your blog? 

After an enlightening conversation yesterday with a local restauranteur, I came away amazed at the difficulty and expense endured by restaurant owners and managers when it comes to simply staying alive. Thousands of dollars spent monthly on restaurant advertising – thrift ads, coupons, fliers. And the attitude that if they don’t do it, they perish.

I explained to this gentleman that his best advertiser was the person who left his restaurant and went to 10 of their local friends to rave about their experience, and he heartily agreed…word of mouth is king. So why was he not hiring writers to come in, experience his restaurant, and advertise for him?

His answer?

I wouldn’t know where to look for them, even if I could afford to hire them.

Yep, one of those exciting moments for a geek like me.

Business2Blogger is an fantastic vehicle for restaurant advertising. Why? Because using Bloggers to promote your restaurant is an extremely inexpensive and effective way to create a local buzz around your local eatery! Don’t forget, B2B has a Blogger database of well over 6500 writers across the US, so finding you Bloggers in most major US Cites, Canada, the UK and Australia is a piece of cake.

How could my new friend use Business2Blogger?

• He runs his eat-and-write opportunity on The Job Board.
• Offer Bloggers a free meal (and maybe one for their date?) in return for a written review of your restaurant on their Blog,
• And ask them to promote it on Facebook and Twitter!
• The Blogger leaves and tells all their local friends all about their meal.
• So what did that cost my friend? The wholesale cost of the food they ate?

How shall we describe this restaurant marketing tactic to people? Feed-a-Blogger? Eat-and-Write? We have had people promote restaurants in this way in the past, and our Bloggers always get excited about reviewing a new local dining spot!

Is it just me that believes this to be a no-brainer?!

Or maybe I’m just hungry…

Are you a Blogger that has restaurant contacts? Send them to B2B!!

Questions: More Info Here, or Contact Us.

No good things go off without a hitch, right?  At least that is what we are telling ourselves over here!

We have discovered a problem in creating Blog Profiles on our new job board this morning.  Upon creating your blog profile, you will likely see this message:

You have a non-active profile in our database.

Our developer is working on this right now!  Our hopes are that there  might be a setting he can click to activate those profiles.  (Thinking positive, thinking positive…)

Here is a work around that you are welcome to use:

Log in to your Account:

http://jobs.business2blogger.com/users/index.cfm

Click on My Blog “Resume”

Create a second profile and delete the first (non-active) one by clicking on the Create New Profile button.

Your second profile should save correctly and you can delete the first one.

Unfortunately, this problem didn’t come up in our testing so we are hoping to fix it super fast!  You are also welcome to wait until we have a solution from our developer.  We will update you as soon as we know something more!

Thanks so much for your patience!

Dearest Business2Blogger Bloggers.

It’s been a long road.

But that road has finally brought us to a place where Brands and Bloggers can meet… effortlessly.

Blogger Outreach. Social Media Matchmaking. Whatever you want to call it, B2B today announce the long awaited improved format for bringing you together with brands that need your voices.  Today we leave all Blogger Email issues behind, and introduce to you to a new Business2Blogger.

B2B is now a “Job Board”. With a twist. Businesses will be able to post their jobs for you to view at any time. Each Job runs for 10 days on the Board, and you sign up for the ones that are a great fit for your blog. The business views your submissions, and decided which of the bloggers they want to work with.

So what makes this special? Unique?

Blogger Accounts – Each Blogger with have their own account, and you can create profiles for up to 3 of your Blogs. That means you will be able to decide which of your Blogs to submit for each Job!

One-Click Submission – Due to the new Blogger account system, it is incredibly easy to submit for a job. No more filling out a form for each job. Whew!

Real-time Stats – We now link in directly to several Blog metrics (Like Twitter, Alexa and Klout) to pull your scores in for you. Now as you improve your blog, your Job submissions will automatically reflect it!

Job Agents – Either hook directly into our RSS feed, or get email alerts of jobs that you are interested in. Now you’ll be notified immediately if a Job listing fits your blog, or if there is a Blogger event near you!

Here’s what you will need to do:

1. Go to http://Business2Blogger.com (you’ll notice that it’s all new!)
2. Create your new blogger account.
3. IMPORTANT!!  —->  Create your blog profile(s).
4. Check out the Job Board, and submit for whichever Jobs suit your Blog!
5. To set up a Job Agent, log in to your account, click on “Job Agents”, and follow the instructions. Now you’ll never miss an opportunity.

We hope you love our changes.

Jay, Shauna and Holly

Business2Blogger.com

One of the best things about having your own blog is that it is YOURS. Your content, your thoughts, your direction. It is all about your vision, your ideas, and your concepts. However, we all have things we are not used to or comfortable doing on our own, even if we want to tackle these projects. Luckily, there are some awesome ebooks out there that help us take control of our own blogs.

Design:

The DIY Blog Critique from Melissa of Mom Comm is a great resource for any blogger. We all want to share our thoughts and views with the world, but it can be tough to ensure that our blog is giving off the desired vibe. Luckily, Melissa takes you through a 43-point inspection ensuring you are not making any huge blog design blunders. You can read a more detailed overview here

Technical:

Many people start their blogging careers on the blogger platform. However, as their blogging careers progress, they prefer to own their content and not risk any loss with publishing it on a different platform. In addition, WordPress offers so many options that aren’t possible on blogger. So, many bloggers transfer to WordPress. As someone who has done hundreds of these, I can tell you how involved the process can be. Luckily, Sharon has put together an ebook walking you through it so you can do it yourself! Check out her How to Move from Blogger to WordPress ebook now. Bonus? You can download a preview for free.

Marketing:

Looking to market your blog? There’s an awesome FREE resource called DIY Marketing SEO and Copywriting Ebook. It’s a collection of great tips and articles to take your blog to the next level. We all have brilliance to share; it’s the creativity and attention to marketing that ensures everyone sees it. Check out this awesome free guide today.

What are some of your favorite ebooks? Share links if you have them!