PortlandBusinessCommunity.com is designed to help you, the small business owner/operator, gain more internet visibility while helping other business people.  We have a TON of new features that are hidden behind the scenes that you can take advantage of (for FREE).

Add a picture to all your posts automatically. We use your image from Gravatar.com.  Gravatar is a free service.  Create an account at www.gravatar.com, use the same eMail address you have associated with your account here on Portland, upload a great picture (preferably of yourself), and VOLA!  Your photo will now be included with all your posts.

Add a standard tag to all your eMails automatically.  With our recent update, we now include your biography with every post and on your author page.  Make sure and keep it short and to the point (no sales pitch).  to add a link in your biography, you need to add a little HTML code.  Here is the format.  Let’s say your company web address is xyz.com, you will add the following code to your biography where you want the link to appear.

<a href=”http://www.xyz.com”>www.xyz.com</a>

Example of how your biography might look with the above address:

The <a href=”http://www.xyz.com”>XYZ.com</a> company has been serving the Portland Metro marketing since 1997.  You can reach me by phone if you have any questions: (123) 456-7890

You no longer need to add your signature block to your postings because the system will automatically add your biography.

Please note, Bear and I monitor and moderate the content on this site.  If your biography gets to sales pitchy or too long, you will hear from us.

Optimal length is between 200 and 400 characters.

What is business blogging?  A conversation.

If your business is struggling with the current economic conditions, then you are probably looking for ways to find more customers.  You probably know cold calling is an effective marketing strategy, but you also know with cold calls come LOTS of rejection.  Think of business blogging as a version of cold calling where the person receiving the message never hangs up in anger.

I originally started help my customers setup their own blog site, but found the work load of writing daily to be too great for most people.  So Bear and I started this blog/ business help site.

You are welcome to register for membership (it is FREE here on PortlandBusinessCommunity.com).  Write your article, that uses strong keywords to build a connection between you and your prospective customer or articles that help other business people.  In either case, people reading your words will want to learn more about you and your business.  Also, the search engines will see the links in your article to your business website and the robot (spiders) will follow the link to your site.

In today’s market place Internet visibility is a necessity.  Your website alone will not be as effective as your website along with business blogging in this web site.

For more information about how to use blogging in your business, post a request for help here online and eMail Bear or me.

Happy Blogging,

Ed Bejarana
Zenith Exhibits, Inc.

Good Morning All,

Thank you all for helping build a great site.  For those of you who have published, PortlandBusinessCommunity.com has more visibility on Google because of your efforts.  All those who participate on this website and provide links back to your company website ALSO gain more visibility on Google, Yahoo and MSN (oh ya, now BING too!)

Save the first Tuesday in September for our first networking / business blogging meeting.  This FREE event will be your chance to meet other business people in the area, learn more about how to use this website to increase your internet visibility and possible make a few new contacts.  Stay tuned for more information!

Happy blogging.

Ed Bejarana
Co-Founder, PortlandBusinessCommunity.com, LLC
Zenith Exhibits, Inc.