Bomb explodes outside British embassy in Bahrain

A canister containing powerful explosive material blew apart the front of a minibus near the British Embassy in Bahrain's capital on Sunday, the Interior Ministry said. There were no injuries or other serious damage.

Interior Ministry spokesman Salah Salem described the material as "highly explosive" and said it was undergoing further analysis. Authorities gave no details on possible suspects, but security has been boosted sharply across Bahrain during annual Shiite Muslim religious ceremonies.

Bahrain's majority Shiites began an uprising in February seeking greater rights from the Gulf kingdom's Sunni rulers. Some apparent Sunni protesters have jeered or tossed stones at the Shiite religious processions in recent days.

Salem said the blast ripped away one of wheels from the minibus and shattered its windows in a public parking lot about 50 yards (meters) from the British Embassy in the capital, Manama.

It was not immediately clear whether the blast's proximity to the embassy was intentional. It comes less than a week after mobs in Iran's capital stormed the British Embassy and a residential compound for diplomatic staff, leading Britain to pull its diplomats from Iran and expel Iranian envoys from London.

Bahrain's rulers claim Iran has links to Shiite protesters in the strategic Gulf island nation, which is home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. Shiite leaders in Bahrain deny any connections to Tehran and an independent commission report into the unrest also found no evidence of ties.

At least 35 people have died in clashes and protest-related violence since February. Hundreds of people have been arrested, including prominent Shiite activists sentenced to life in prison.

On Sunday, a military court sentenced three sportsmen ? all Shiite employees of the Bahrain armed forces ? to one year each in prison on charges that included disobeying orders to stay away from demonstrations.

The defendants included medal-winning bodybuilder Tareq al-Fursani; Ali Said, a goalkeeper for the national football team, and Mohammed Hassan al-Dirazi, a member of Bahrain's basketball squad, said lawyer Mohsen al-Alawi, who was in court when the court martial sentences were given.

The trial of 61 other athletes and sports officials is scheduled for Jan. 4. They include handball, basketball and volleyball players along with referees and administrators for several sports.

The charges include illegal assembly and inciting hatred against Bahrain's Sunni monarchy.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45541086/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/

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Russia's ruling party wary as nation votes

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, left, signs autographs while visiting a shipbuilding plant in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, Dec. 2, 2011. (AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Yana Lapikova, Pool)

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, left, signs autographs while visiting a shipbuilding plant in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, Dec. 2, 2011. (AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Yana Lapikova, Pool)

An election commission official prepares a voting booth adorned with the coat of arms of the Russian state, left, and of the Smolensk region, right, at a polling station in the village of Kozlovka, 380 kilometers (236 miles) west of Moscow, Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. A parliamentary election will be held in Russia on Sunday. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

An election commission official prepares a voting booth adorned with the coat of arms of the Russian state, right, and of the Smolensk region, left, at a polling station in the village of Kozlovka, 380 kilometers (236 miles) west of Moscow, Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. A parliamentary election will be held in Russia on Sunday. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

An election commission official prepares a voting booth adorned with the coat of arms of the Russian state, right, and of the Smolensk region, left, at a polling station in the village of Kozlovka, 380 kilometers (236 miles) west of Moscow, Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. A parliamentary election will be held in Russia on Sunday. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

Russia's independent election monitor Golos (Voice) leader Lilya Shibanova speaks during a news conference in Moscow, Russia, Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. Shibanova was detained at a Moscow airport for 12 hours, a colleague said Saturday - the latest government pressure on a watchdog that has documented thousands of election law violations ahead of Sunday's parliamentary vote. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

(AP) ? Russians cast their ballots with muted enthusiasm in national parliament elections Sunday, a vote that opinion polls indicate could water down the strength of the country's dominant party.

In the far eastern regions along the Pacific Coast where voting began, initial turnout appeared desultory. Four hours after polls opened in the Kamchatka region, 16.5 percent of registered voters had cast ballots.

"It's very important to come to the polling stations and vote, but many say that it's useless," said Artysh Munzuk, a university student casting his ballot in the Pacific port of Vladivostok.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia party has signaled concern about polls showing it could receive only a bit more than half the votes. It has cracked down on an independent election monitor and warned of political instability.

Only seven parties have been allowed to field candidates for parliament this year, while the most vocal opposition groups have been denied registration and barred from campaigning. Critics say the 7 percent threshold for winning seats is prohibitively high, effectively shutting out most minority views.

Still, the independent Levada Center polling agency released a survey late last month saying United Russia could get only about 53 percent of the vote, well down from its performance in 2007 that gave it an unassailable two-thirds majority in the State Duma, the elected lower house of parliament.

Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev made final appeals for the party Friday, the last day of campaigning, warning that a parliament made up of diverse political camps would be incapable of making decisions.

The view underlines Russian authorities' continuing discomfort with political pluralism and preference for top-down operation. As president in 2000-2008, Putin's autocratic leadership style won wide support among Russians exhausted by a decade of post-Soviet uncertainty.

But United Russia has become increasingly disliked, seen as stifling opposition, representing a corrupt bureaucracy and often called "the party of crooks and thieves." Putin needs the party to do well in the parliamentary election to pave the way for his return to the presidency in a vote now three months away.

With so much at stake, there are doubts about how honestly the election will be conducted. An interim report from an elections-monitoring mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe noted that "most parties have expressed a lack of trust in the fairness of the electoral process."

The websites of Ekho Moskvy, a prominent, independent-minded radio station, and Golos, the country's only independent election-monitoring group, were down on Sunday. Both claimed the failures were due to denial-of-service hacker attacks.

"The attack on the site on election day is obviously connected to attempts to interfere with publication of information about violations," Ekho Moskvy editor Alexey Venediktov said in a Twitter post.

Golos has come under strong pressure in the week leading up to the vote.

Golos' leader, Lilya Shibanova, was held at a Moscow airport for 12 hours upon her Friday return from Poland after refusing to give her laptop computer to security officers, said Golos' deputy director Grigory Melkonyants. On Friday, the group was fined the equivalent of $1,000 by a Moscow court for violating a law that prohibits publication of election opinion research for five days before a vote.

Putin last Sunday accused Western governments of trying to influence the election. Golos is funded by grants from the United States and Europe.

The group has compiled some 5,300 complaints of election-law violations ahead of the vote. Most are linked to United Russia. Roughly a third of the complainants ? mostly government employees and students ? say employers and professors are pressuring them to vote for the party.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-12-04-EU-Russia-Election/id-c3d511d0bfab41388f50f8723ed0db9f

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Russians vote in election test for Vladimir Putin (Reuters)

MOSCOW (Reuters) ? Vladimir Putin's ruling party could see its vast parliamentary majority cut back on Sunday in elections widely seen as a test of his popularity ahead of an expected return to the presidency early next year.

Voters turned out from the Pacific to the Baltic coasts in the world's biggest country where Putin restored central control and revived the economy in a 2000-2008 presidency. He remains by far the most popular politician in the country but there are signs Russians may be wearying of a cultivated strong man image.

Some voters expressed disgust with a parliamentary poll they said was likely to be rigged. Others said they backed the United Russia party of Putin, who has continued to exert influence as Prime Minister since yielding the presidency to Dmitry Medvedev under a constitution forbidding more than two consecutive terms.

"I support United Russia. I like Putin. He is the strong leader we need in our country," said Nikolai, a 33-year-old customs officer in Vladivostok, a port city of 600,000 people on the Pacific and the biggest city in Russia's Far East.

Some said they would vote for Just Russia or the Communists, who retain support largely among poorer sections of the population two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the advent of a free market system.

Polls show Putin's party is likely to win a majority but less than the 315 seats it currently has in the 450-seat lower house of parliament, known as the Duma.

"It is time for something to change so I am going to vote for the (nationalist party) LDPR. So far this seems the only party that can resist United Russia," 24-year-old event manager Yekaterina Makarova said in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.

If Putin's party gets less than two-thirds of seats, it would be stripped of its so called constitutional majority which allows it to change the constitution and even approve the impeachment of the president.

HACKING ATTACK

Opposition parties say the election is unfair because the authorities support United Russia with cash and television air time. They also predict vote rigging to boost United Russia.

The independent Ekho Moskvy radio station said its website had been shut down by hackers early on Sunday morning.

"It is obvious that the election day attack on the site is part of an attempt to prevent publishing information about violations," the station's editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov wrote on the radio's Twitter account.

Independent election watchdog Golos said it was excluded from several polling booths in the Siberian Tomsk region, according to Interfax news agency. Moscow prosecutors launched an investigation last week into Golos' activities after lawmakers objected to its Western financing.

Supporters say the former-KGB spy saved Russia during his presidency from the chaos of the immediate post-Soviet era and supplied the longest and steepest economic expansion in a generation. He also used military force to crush a rebellion in the southern Muslim region of Chechnya that tested the fabric of a federation spanning 9,000 Km (5,600 miles).

Russian customs officers held the director of an independent election watchdog for 12 hours at a Moscow airport on Saturday. The United States said it was concerned by "a pattern of harassment" against the watchdog.

PUTIN'S PARTY

Putin remains by far Russia's most popular politician and the 59-year old leader is the ultimate arbiter between the clans which control the world's biggest energy producer.

But his party has had to fight against opponents who have branded it as a collection "swindlers and thieves" and a growing sense of unease among voters at Putin's grip on power.

"I shall not vote. I shall cross out all the parties on the list and write: 'Down with the party of swindlers and thieves,'" said Nikolai Markovtsev, an independent deputy in the Vladivostok city legislature On the Pacific seaboard.

"These are not elections: this is sacrilege," he said, adding that the biggest liberal opposition bloc had been barred from the vote by the authorities.

Opponents say Putin has crafted a brittle political system which excludes independent voices and that Russians are growing tired of Putin's cultivated tough man image.

An outburst of boos and whistling at Putin by fans at a Moscow martial arts fight and a sharp fall in opinion poll ratings during the election campaign had raised concerns Putin may be losing his renowned political touch.

Putin is almost certain to win the March 4 presidential election but signs of disenchantment are extremely worrying for the Kremlin's political managers. Putin's self-portrayal as the anchor of Russian stability hinges on his popularity.

In an attempt to reinvigorate his party, which President Medvedev is leading into the election as part of a job swap announced in September, Putin has sent his closest allies to lead United Russia in some of Russia's 83 regions.

Russians in the Far East region braved temperatures as low as minus 41 degrees Celsius (minus 42 Fahrenheit) to vote eight hours before polls opened in Moscow.

Chukchi reindeer herders living across the Bering Sea from Alaska voted in late November as did some oil workers on rigs pumping the lifeblood of Russia's $1.9 trillion economy, with their ballots taken out by helicopter to be counted.

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)

($1 = 30.8947 Russian roubles)

(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/russia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111204/wl_nm/us_russia_election

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House Republicans step up anti-regulation effort (AP)

WASHINGTON ? House Republicans have launched their most ambitious, pro-business effort yet to rein in Obama administration regulators, triggering a furious debate over the value of new rules for clean air, workplace safety, children's toys and many other categories.

The House was set to vote Friday on the second of two anti-regulation bills, legislation that would impose potentially stifling procedures on federal regulators. Republicans argue that avoiding expensive new regulations would aid businesses in hiring workers, while Democrats counter that Americans' health and safety would be jeopardized.

The White House budget office didn't wait for the vote to announce that if the bill passed Congress, senior administration advisers would recommend a veto.

At this point, the Republican effort is mainly a 2012 campaign issue because the Democratic-run Senate has not passed any of the anti-regulation bills the House has approved this year.

Until now, Republicans have focused on derailing specific proposed rules, many of them from the Environmental Protection Agency. The latest effort, however, would curtail regulators ? and their proposed rules ? across the entire federal government.

The bill considered Friday, the Regulatory Accountability Act, would require numerous steps before new rules could be issued. Regulators would have to consider the legal authority for the rule, the nature and significance of the problem, any reasonable alternatives, and potential costs and benefits of the alternatives.

Federal courts would have an expanded role and the government would have a tougher legal standard to meet for a proposed rule to be affirmed.

OMB Watch, an advocacy organization that tracks federal regulations, said if the bill already had been law, the government would not have been able to issue a finding that greenhouse gases endangered public health. The group said it would have been more difficult to withstand court challenges to findings that a popular weed killer was dangerous. It would have been tougher to defend statements about the health impact of too much salt. And the government would have had to weaken a strong rule on lead in gasoline.

Still to come, probably next week, is a bill that would make it far easier for Congress to kill regulations.

The House on Thursday passed the first of the three bills in this latest anti-regulation effort. It would give more weight to the impact of federal regulations on small businesses, whose owners can be a powerful political force and are being courted by both parties.

The bill went to the Senate on a 263-159 vote.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/uscongress/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111202/ap_on_go_co/us_republicans_regulations

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Prosecutor seeks Sudan defense minister arrest (AP)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands ? The International Criminal Court prosecutor sought an arrest warrant Friday for Sudan's defense minister on crimes against humanity and war crimes charges for allegedly helping orchestrate atrocities in Darfur.

The request brings to three the number of senior Sudanese leaders ? including President Omar al-Bashir ? accused of crimes in Darfur.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo said in a filing to judges that Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein is among those who "bear greatest criminal responsibility" for atrocities in the Sudanese region from August 2003 to March 2004.

At the time, Hussein was interior minister and the Sudan government's special representative in Darfur.

He is accused of overseeing a state-sponsored plan to attack villages in western Darfur. Prosecutors say government troops would surround the villages, air force planes would bomb them and then soldiers, including janjaweed militia fighters, would descend on the ruins, raping and killing those who survived the initial aerial onslaught.

A panel of judges will study evidence filed by Moreno-Ocampo before deciding whether to issue a warrant.

The court already has indicted al-Bashir on genocide charges along with another of his government ministers and a commander of the janjaweed militia for their alleged roles in widespread attacks on civilians in Darfur.

None of those suspects has been arrested by the court, which has no police force, and al-Bashir has refused to surrender himself or anybody else to the court.

Since his indictment, al-Bashir has repeatedly traveled to friendly nations without being arrested.

Moreno-Ocampo said he made public the arrest warrant request for Hussein to put the case back in the spotlight.

In a statement, his office said the request aims "to encourage further public focus on government of the Sudan policy and actions, and promote cooperation in taking action to arrest Mr. Hussein and the 3 other individuals subject to ICC warrants."

Prosecutors also have indicted two rebels for allegedly leading an attack on an African Union peacekeeper compound in Darfur. Judges dismissed similar charges against another rebel for lack of evidence. All three of the rebels surrendered voluntarily to the Hague-based court last year.

Darfur was plunged into turmoil in 2003, when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, whom they accused of discrimination.

The Khartoum government is accused of retaliating by unleashing Arab militias on civilians ? a charge the government denies. The U.N. estimates 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have been displaced in the conflict.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111202/ap_on_re_eu/eu_international_court_darfur

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Big day for stocks, Dow ends day back above 12,000

Msnbc.com staff and news services

Stocks rocketed Wednesday after the Federal Reserve said it was joining other major central banks in injecting more money into the global financial system.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 12,000 for the first time Since Nov. 15.

According to preliminary calculations, the Dow ended trading 490.05 higher, or 4.24 percent, to 12,045.68. The S&P 500 rose 51.77, or 4.31 percent, to 1,246.96. The Nasdaq was finished 104.83 higer, or 4.17 percent, to 2,620.34.

The move by the central banks of of Europe, the U.S., Britain, Canada, Japan and Switzerland is intended to keep credit freely available around the world. Lending has tightened as the eurozone?s financial crisis has dragged on.

China also reduced bank reserve levels to release money for lending.

"The central banks of the world have resolved that there will not be a liquidity shortage," said David Kotok, chairman and chief investment officer of Cumberland Advisors, told the Associated Press. "And they have learned their lessons from 2008. They don't want to take small steps and do anything incrementally, but make a big bold move that is credible."

Borrowing rates for European nations have skyrocketed on concerns that the European debt crisis has engulfed nations such as Italy which are too big to bail out. Borrowing rates for Italy, Spain and others have soared.

Banks need dollars to fund their daily operations. Their access has dried up as U.S. money market funds reduced their lending to European banks.

However, the New York Times reported, the move by the central banks underscored the depth of the problem.

?The markets are breathing a sigh of relief,? said Stanley A. Nabi, chief strategist for the Silvercrest Asset Management Group.

But the coordinated action also signaled that the problem had reached a crisis point, he said, and that the central banks recognized there was a ?lot of danger? in letting the current situation continue.

In other financial news, stocks great day happens despite Standard & Poor's Ratings Services lowered its credit ratings for many of the world's largest financial institutions on Tuesday, including the biggest banks in the U.S.

Bank of America Corp. and its main subsidiaries are among the institutions whose ratings fell at least one notch Tuesday, along with Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo & Co.

CNBC's Sue Herera discusses the market's big day on the NBC Nightly News.

Related: Today?s market movers

?

Source: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/30/9122119-big-day-for-stocks-dow-ends-day-back-above-12000

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Invasive ants wave white flag in New Zealand

Not all invasive species must be fought back using electrified barriers, natural enemies imported from afar, campaigns to turn them into food, or other, often pricey means.

Instead, it appears that in some unusual cases organisms that have flourished unwanted outside their native range simply retreat on their own.

Researchers in New Zealand have watched this happen to colonies of Argentine ants, Linepithema humile, a non-native species first spotted in the country in 1990. [ Gallery: Invasive Species ]

A natural invader
These ants have traits that appear to set them up for success as an invasive, including an omnivorous diet, a lack of pickiness about nesting sites, a lack of conflict amongst themselves, a high reproductive capacity thanks to multiple queens in a colony, and an affinity for living near humans, according to Meghan Cooling, a study researcher and graduate student at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.

The Argentine ants live at high densities that allow them to push out native ant species, but unlike the invasive fire ants in the United States, they don't sting, according to Cooling.

"What makes them so annoying is the extremely high population densities they can reach, so that they just take over a garden or yard and make sitting outside very unenjoyable. They also invade people's homes and cupboards in search of food, particularly sweet things," Cooling wrote in an email to LiveScience. "They can be a serious problem for agriculture as well, because they tend and protect hemipteran pests [also called true bugs], such as aphids and scales insects, which can lead to outbreaks of these pests."

In 2002, the cost of controlling them was projected to climb to roughly $52 million per year once the ants had established themselves throughout their predicted range.

Invasive species are frequently the targets of elaborate and sometimes expensive efforts to eradicate them, or at least reduce their numbers. For example, an electrified barrier has been installed to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes; researchers are turning to European weevils to control invasive garlic mustard in North America; and lionfish in the Caribbean, likely aquarium escapees, are the subject of a cookbook.

Vanishing ants
However, in 2011, Cooling and her colleagues checked on 150 locations where ant populations were spotted between 1990 and 2008. They found that 60 of these had vanished and more than 30 of the remaining sites had only small, low-density populations remaining, according to Cooling.

So why appear to thrive, then disappear? Argentine ant populations have shown low genetic diversity before, so the researchers suggest that inbreeding may have left them vulnerable to disease.

Other invasive populations, like the yellow crazy ant in the Seychelles and the giant African land snail, have declined or collapsed, however, few studies have documented this phenomenon, according to Cooling.

In places where Argentine ants lived in high density, the researchers found few, if any, other ant species. But other species were abundant around small, remnant Argentine ant populations. It appears that other ant communities are recovering after large populations of Argentine ants decline, the researchers write in an article published Nov. 29 in the journal Biology Letters.

An invasive's future
Looking at climate in these regions, they found that the Argentine ants seemed to last longer in regions with higher temperatures. While work overseas has indicated that rainfall can affect the ants' persistence, the relationship in New Zealand remains unclear, according to Cooling.

Climate change appears to give the ants something of a reprieve. From projections created by climate modeling, the researchers found ant populations in part of the country could be expected to stick around a few years longer before disappearing.?

"Given the local presence of this invasive species for short durations of 10?20 years, and the apparent recovery of the resident communities after their collapse, it seems that the long-term ecological or evolutionary effects of Argentine ants in New Zealand may not be as dire as first feared," they write.

You can follow LiveSciencesenior writer Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45485356/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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'Tea At Five': Charles Busch Plays Katharine Hepburn On Stage

Trouser wearing, Spencer Tracy-loving legend of the screen Katharine Hepburn died in 2003. But tonight, actor Charles Busch will play the actress in the one-woman show, "Tea at Five."

"Tea at Five," written by Matthew Lombardo, first premiered in 2002, starring actress Kate Mulgrew. The show, which is based on Hepburn's autobiographical book, "Me: Stories of My Life," takes place in two acts, first in 1938 and then in 1983. Both take place at Hepburn's home in Connecticut, with Hepburn looking back on her life on the stage and screen.

Busch is a highly celebrated actor, writer and female impersonator. He wrote and appeared in the films "Die, Mommie, Die!" and "Psycho Beach Party," and was also the subject of a documentary, "The Lady In Question is Charles Busch."

The show will go up for one night only on November 28 at the Lucille Lortel Theater in NYC and will be directed by Rob Ruggiero, with proceeds going to The Ali Forney Center, which provides housing for homeless LGBT youth.

Tickets are priced at $40, $60, or $150 and can be purchased online.

See a previous version of "Tea at Five," starring Karen Howell as Hepburn:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/28/katharine-hepburn-tea-at-five-charles-busch_n_1116158.html

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Essential Business Blog Marketing Tips with SEO & Social Media ...

optimize socialize business bloggingBlogs are often rated one of the top content marketing tactics for attracting and engaging customers and eMarketer has reported blogs reach over 50% of the internet audience. But many companies fail to combine two of the most important tools for boosting relevant traffic and reach: Optimization for search engines and for social media.

Most marketers and bloggers understand the basics of a good business blog and the notion of search engine optimization but often focus more on keywords than the customers that are actually searching.? Adding keywords to blog posts is a common SEO tactic but developing a blog content plan around both search keywords and social topics that represent what customers care about can result in content that is inherently more search, social and customer media friendly.

The Business of Optimizing Social Media

Social Media Optimization involves optimizing social content for topics of interest to both the brand and the communities they seek to engage. SMO also focuses on the ability for social communities to share links and media they find interesting.? Links to content shared on social networks and media sites can drive direct traffic to blog content and serve as a signal that search engines use for ranking blog web pages.

Essentially, socialized and optimized blog content can drive traffic through search and those visitors can share that content through social channels, driving even more traffic. Social sharing can also impact better search visibility, providing ?more relevant visitors that are actively looking.

Search and Social Media Friendly

As Internet marketers have emphasized making websites search engine friendly over the past 10 years, the importance of making websites and blogs social media friendly is also important. Great blog content isn?t really great until it?s consumed and shared, so consider how your customers find information online that is most likely to inspire them to do what you want them to do.

A Better Business Blog Strategy

To get more out of the opportunity to improve online discovery of business blog content, here are a few key questions to ask for an ?Optimize and Socialize? blog strategy:

  • Who is the blog intended to influence? Prospects, customers, employees, industry analysts, reporters, bloggers.
  • What content will your blog offer that will meet target audience needs?
  • How will addressing those customer needs and telling the brand story manifest as a blog content plan?
  • What search keywords and social topics are relevant to your target audience?
  • Where does your blog content fit in the customer lifecycle of communication with the brand?
  • If the blog content is properly optimized and socialized, how will it influence (directly or indirectly) measurable business outcomes?

Interest In Your Blog Is Related to Your Blog?s Interest in Readers

One of the reasons business blogs fail as being optimized and socialized, is that their content tends to be very brand-centric. Most business blog posts talk about the brand, it?s products and services without a lot of consideration for customer perspectives and language.

A self-centered business blogging?approach tends to push ideas out, hoping to get a reaction in the form of search engine rankings, fans, friends and followers.? Many SEO centric blogs share these characteristics.

The problem with a mostly brand content focus is that there usually isn?t as much sharing, engagement or direct influence on business outcomes because the content is all about the brand, vs. empathizing with customers and the language customers use.

To Be Great, Your Business Blog Must Participate

Conversely, a search and social optimized business blog develops and participates in social communities online, offline, internally and externally. To do that, blog editors need to figure out where the great ideas and stories are in the company.

All this said, it?s not enough simply to have an optimized and socialized blog content plan that aligns brand solutions and ideas with those of your target audience.?To tap into a high quality stream of customer-centric content ideas for your business blog, it?s essential to engage relevant social communities. Ask them questions, crowdsource content ideas, give those who participate recognition and repeat.

By shining a light on the awesome within your community, you?ll provide the fuel of positive reinforcement to motivate fans and customers to partake in both content creation and promotion.

Walk the talk by telling your brand stories and those of your community. Lead by example and your community will start to tell your stories for you. And so will their friends, and their friends? friends. That?s the benefit of optimizing your business blog beyond search to include social media, networks and communities.

A version of this post was originally published on my ClickZ Social Media Smarts column.

Source: http://www.toprankblog.com/2011/11/optimize-socialize-business-blogging/

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