If you are new to Create Business Growth, this is how we close out our week. With our “Who Said That?,” we give some link love to other blogs and regular websites that we feel you may find interesting. We do continue our “Daily Quote” on Saturday and Sunday.

Andy Beard wrote about “WordPress SEO – Siloing vs Massive Ball Linking With Tags” and notes some key factors about SEO that should be helpful to anyone in the beginning stages of Search Engine Optimization: Many people wonder if there are certain things that carry more weight in Search Engine Optimization and if there are certain things that you should not do in SEO. Andy covers a few of these plus much more in this long, yet very informative, post.

J. David Macor wrote about “Getting Your Readers to Stick.” He has a nice list of 7 things to do to help your readers stick. By the way, THANK YOU READERS! Without readers, our blog, like any blog, would not be worth having.

Since I’m a member of Fast Pitch Networking, I like to feature a couple of blogs every Friday from Fast Pitch. If you are not a member of Fast Pitch Networking, I highly recommend that you take this tour and consider at least creating a FREE profile. However, I think the paid ones are well worth the money. The two blogs that I have chosen this week are listed below…

“Jazz Up Your Blog or Website with Video Broadcasting Online: Some Cool Webcam Tools” by Josh Dorkin at TimeforBlogging.com. The post covers some cool webcam tools including Live Web Broadcasting and Scheduled/On-Demand Broadcasting Tools.

Speaking of tools, we have been using GoToMeeting for months now. It’s fantastic for doing Web Based Training whether one-on-one which we do mostly or doing some larger scale Webinars like our upcoming “Webinar Wednesday” that you’ll hear more about soon. Anyway, you may want to check this out and see if it will work in your business. It has been fantastic for ours:

Michael Stankard, at Getfoundnow.com, has a nice post “Website Analytics: Hits – Page Views – Unique Visits Explained.” If you are doing anything online, you need to be evaluating stats. We look at Unique Visits often. Our blog is really still a baby at about six weeks old as far as us really doing something with it. We are pleased that we are averaging about 300 Unique Visitors a day in the early stages. You can see this in the chart below covering our unique visitors over the last 7 days:

The Digerrati Life has a post from May 31st “Become a Millionaire in 10 Steps Flat” which you may enjoy especially the list within the post… The Millionaire’s 10 Mandates. There are a lot of great tips out of the 10 listed, but # 2 is one that I want to make special note of “Make Some Money by doing something you like to do.” If you are in a job you hate, whether self-employed or working for someone else, you need to re-evaluate why you are still doing it.

I just came across “Retargeting.com.” This link takes you to a cool short flash based commercial. If nothing else, you should enjoy the animation. Don’t forget to have your speakers on and the volume at an acceptable level.

In case you missed the interview with Nate Whitehill, be sure to check out this post on our site.

I want to close the week by highlighting something other than business. Patrick Schaber, aka The Lonely Marketer, posted “My New Definition of Courage.”

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I think it’s against most of our nature to voice opinions that others will disagree with isn’t it? As a general trait of humanity, we want our ideas to be accepted by others. This can be a big concern for many bloggers especially business bloggers who don’t want to spark controversy and create a PR mess by taking too much of a stance in their postings.

But sometimes it pays to disagree. In a post on Marketing Hipster titled Seth Godin Disagrees with Me! the very funny Cord Silverstein writes that he is excited as a little school girl about the fact that not only did one of his heroes, marketing Guru Seth Goodin, mention him on his blog, he completely disagreed with him!

Public Disagreements and Business Blogging

Exciting blogging is all about sharing your opinions and personal experiences. If it were a section in the newspaper, blogging would be the op-ed section. Many business clients that I speak with are terrified about sharing opinions on their blogs to the point that their posts amount to little more than just bland articles. But where do you draw the line between well received and ticking people off with your opinions?

Nate and I discussed this topic in our conversation last week where he brought up some very good points about controversy. Nate says that as a newer blogger, he feels that it is wise to not go out of your way to spark controversy if you are running a professional blog. He’s not suggesting that bloggers should hold back on voicing your opinions, but rather not be so overly opinionated that they turn off readers.

Finding the Sweet Spot

Whenever you share opinions, someone is bound to disagree. But approaching topic in a way that is too vanilla can take the fun and excitement right out of blogging. There is a fine line between controversy and healthy debate. Nate says that he likes to write about topics where people have a difference of opinion because it insights lively conversation that allows him and his readers to gain new perspectives on topics. The trick is finding that sweet spot.

There is no magic formula for finding that sweet spot, but I think what it all boils down to is ego. Coming across as the be-all end-all of information distribution and challenging everyone who doesn’t share your opinion is probably not an effective blogging method for most. You probably know someone like that in your life. These kinds of people manage to get into lots of heated debates where they adamantly defend their position without any intention of changing it. Others, like Nate may put an idea out there that may be controversial but genuinely want to hear various opinions to broaden their perspective.

Almost every successful blogger I’ve talked with says that if you want to become successful at blogging, you’ve got to be willing to put yourself and your opinions out there. Don’t be afraid to spark some healthy debate as Cord points out, a disagreement can have positive results in the blogosphere.

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. Alexander Graham Bell

Rather than write a few sentences as I usually do, I simply want to encourage you to think about this quote and re-read it a couple of times.