Debbie Laskey's Blog

Welcome to Debbie Laskey's insights and commentary about BRANDING, MARKETING, LEADERSHIP, SOCIAL MEDIA, EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT, and CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES. Debbie has worked in high-tech, the Consumer Marketing Department at Disneyland Paris in France, nonprofits, and insurance. Expertise includes strategic planning, brand development, marketing plans and audits, competitive positioning, websites, communications, public relations, employee engagement, customer experiences, and social media marketing.

Showing posts with label blog strategy. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 5, 2026

Let's Celebrate Blogger Day with Eric Jacobson!

Since 1999, each year on August 5th, Blogger Day is observed. A blog, a shortening of the word "weblog," is an informational website published on the Internet that consists of story-like text entries typically displayed in reverse chronological order.

According to Holidays Calendar, "Although blogs originally started out as the work of individuals, they have increasingly been used by organizations, universities, and media outlets to distribute information. Today, there are over 600 million blogs published among the 1.9-plus billion websites that currently exist on the Internet. Over two million blog posts are published every day. In the United States alone, there are over 32.7 million bloggers; and it's been estimated that approximately 80 percent of all Internet users read blogs."

To celebrate Blogger Day, I'd like to welcome a leadership expert back to my blog who I met many years ago when we collaborated with MicroMentor. Eric Jacobson, based in Kansas City, Missouri, has three decades of experience in successfully leading employees and teams through periods of revenue growth, new product development, and re-engineering. He is an experienced mentor and coach and holds an MBA Degree from Keller Graduate School. His passion is helping individuals to become effective leaders at work, within organizations, and wherever they are called upon to lead and inspire. Eric's writings about leadership and management appear regularly on his blog, and he's been a valued contributor here on my blog in Q&A-format posts and as a participant in my many leadership series since 2009.

QUESTION: You share inspiring book reviews about leadership on your Blog. How do you decide which books to review?

ERIC JACOBSON: I choose books with content I believe will help my blog's readers to become better leaders. Ideally, books with immediately actionable techniques, processes, and practices. I choose books as well that I believe would be good ones for leaders to share with their employees striving for broader leadership opportunities. Fortunately, there are plenty of new books each year about leadership, in fact, I featured 48 on my blog during 2025.

QUESTION: What are the three most common themes that appear on your Blog?

ERIC JACOBSON: Here are the three:

(1) Servant leadership.

(2) Communication – particularly listening skills.

(3) Team Building and Workplace Culture.

QUESTION: Author Stephen King has said his secret for writing is to set aside time to write every day. What are some of your writing secrets?

ERIC JACOBSON: I set aside time to write each week, but not every day. Beyond that, I read a lot of news sites to spot business and workplace trends that I think would be good for my blog. Plus, I rely on various public relations firms and book publishers who send me advance copies of books for my review and consideration to feature on my blog. For those books, I seek out authors who are willing to add additional insights about their books, such as why they authored the book, most pertinent tips, and critical takeaways for leaders.

QUESTION: Which is your favorite post on your Blog, and why? (Link will be provided at end.)

ERIC JACOBSON: Wow, that's a tough choice to make, because so many leadership books I've featured have offered so many tips for leaders. However, if I have to choose only one, it would be my "New Year's Resolution" post that I feature toward the end of each year. It's a quick-read list of 70 ways to become a better leader and encourages readers to select a few from the list and resolve to become better in the new year. I like this post because the list includes tips and techniques from many of my blog posts - and all are actionable for both new and seasoned leaders.

(Note: This particular post has inspired me to write several related posts - see link of most recent one at end.)

QUESTION: How has blogging changed and/or evolved over the years? (Fun fact, we’ve both been blogging since 2009.)

ERIC JACOBSON: From what I've read, there are more blogs than a decade ago – business and personal. So, blogs aren't dead even though there are more ways to share content via social media channels, such as TikTok, Instagram, articles on LinkedIn, etc. Furthermore, blogging remains highly relevant in 2026, serving as a key tool for SEO, digital marketing, audience engagement, and long-term content strategy, especially when combined with AI and social media. Businesses that maintain high-quality blogs see measurable benefits, including more lead growth for companies that blog regularly compared to those that don't.

Tuesday, August 5, 2025

What Will You Read Today on Blogger Day?

Do you know today's significance? If you're reading this blog and/or write your own, then you probably know that today is Blogger Day.

Friday, September 27, 2024

Let's Celebrate International SEO Day!

Do you know what today is? If you answered International SEO Day, then you're correct! On this day, digital marketers, web developers, and businesses worldwide recognize the power of SEO and its impact on the digital age. And on September 27, 1998, the Google search engine was launched.

According to Wikipedia, "Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as natural or organic results) rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. Unpaid traffic may originate from different kinds of searches, including image search, video search, academic search, news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, the computer-programmed algorithms that dictate search engine behavior, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines, and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. SEO is performed because a website will receive more visitors from a search engine when websites rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP). These visitors can then potentially be converted into customers."

To recognize the importance of SEO, I recently had a discussion with Lisa Sicard who's based in Maine, who I met on Twitter/X. Highlights follow a brief introduction. Lisa has over 25 years of experience and loves helping others with social media, blogging, and content marketing. She specializes in helping small businesses and bloggers to thrive and succeed online. She wrote a book, How to Tweet and Thrive on Twitter in 2020; and her blog was nominated as One of the Best Internet Marketing Blogs by Infinity Blog Awards in 2019, and also one of the Best Top Marketing Blogs in 2015 and 2016 by Fit Small Business.

QUESTION: Since you've been blogging for over a decade, what are your three best blogging tips?

LISA SICARD: Here are my three tips:

(1) Mastering SEO can make or break your blog. Start with thorough keyword and topic research before you write. This ensures that you're creating content people actually search for.

(2) Many bloggers miss out on the power of internal linking. Make sure to link your posts to each other. This not only helps with SEO, but it also keeps readers on your site longer.

(3) Lastly, your blog isn't a "set it and forget it" project. Update your posts every six months with fresh stats and new info. This keeps your content relevant and boosts your SEO rankings. Keep these tips in mind, and your blog will thrive.

Monday, August 5, 2024

Let's Celebrate Blogger Day!

Do you know today's significance? If you're reading this blog and/or write your own, then you probably know that today is Blogger Day.

According to Holidays Calendar, "Although blogs originally started out as the work of individuals, they have increasingly been used by organizations, universities, and media outlets to distribute information. Today, there are over 600 million blogs published among the 1.9-plus billion websites that currently exist on the Internet. Over 2 million blog posts are published every day. In the United States alone, there are over 32.7 million bloggers; and it's been estimated that approximately 80 percent of all Internet users read blogs."

So, to celebrate Blogger Day, I'd like to share my top ten favorite bloggers (in no particular order) who post regularly on their blogs - if you're not already familiar, check them out!

SHEP HYKEN - customer experience expert

https://hyken.com/topic/sheps-articles/

JIM JOSEPH - brand marketing expert

https://www.jimjoseph.com/new-blog

TIM CALKINS - brand marketing expert

https://timcalkins.com/

SUSAN FRIESEN / EVISION MEDIA - marketing expert

https://evisionmedia.ca/resources/blog/

BJ BUENO / CULT BRANDING - marketing expert

https://cultbranding.com/ceo/

MICHAEL MCKINNEY - leadership expert

https://www.leadershipnow.com/leadingblog/index.html