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How to Blog Your Way to Business Success

Written by: Catherine Kaputa

Article Overview: Important tips on how a blog can help you grow your business

How to Blog Your Way to Business Success

Blogging Your Way to Business Success

By Catherine Kaputa


1. How can a blog improve a businesses' bottom line?

Blogs have evolved from geek venue to “instajournalist” log to cutting-edge business tool. Today, blogs are the ultimate branding and business generation tool for a business. The minute you print a brochure, it is out of date. Plus, production is expensive and distribution is expensive. A web log or blog is a powerful and inexpensive way to create awareness of your business among prospects and create a community of loyal brand fans, also known as customers.

2. How can a businessperson start a blog?

Blog companies like Blogger provide free startup software online to start your blog and will even host your blog for free. What can be better than that? Best of all, blogs are much easier to set up and use than setting up a website. You don’t need to know html code. Nor do you need to contact your web designer to add new information. You just focus on writing while the blog program dates and archives your entries and automatically produces a blog.

3. What is the best business content for a blog? (advice, sales notices, new product announcements, etc.)

People flock to blogs for fresh viewpoints and information not available on company and industry websites. To get people flocking to your website, try to be a news source and offer advice. If you attend an industry conference or are aware of new trends in your industry, use your blog to talk about what’s going on.

4. What are 3 tips for making your blog effective?

Tip 1. Link. Link. Link. Blogs are all about linking. Anything you read in the trade or business press that you find interesting for your business, chances are your clients and prospects will too. Blogs are a convenient way to send out all the articles you used to mail to customers and prospects. Just write a couple of sentences about the article and link to the original source so your blog’s readers can read the entire article.
Tip 2. Post frequently. Post at least once a week, or ideally two or three times a week. What’s cool about blogs for readers is getting updated on the latest postings through an RSS feed that “pings” you every time a blog you selected posts a new message. The more pings, the more people will think about your business.

Tip 3. Convey personality. People like blogs because they’re interesting and engaging. Use color, design, graphics and your writing style to create a “brand” personality that’s distinct from others and reflects who you are.

5. If you could only give one piece of advice to a business person considering starting a blog, what would it be and why?

Don’t use a blog to “sell” product. Use your website to sell your company’s products and services. Use your blog to “sell” your ideas and expertise on what’s happening in the industry such as new products and trends. This approach will get people thinking of you and your company when they do business anyway. But, most important, it will keep them tuning into your blog and telling others in the business about it because it’s not trying to sell them, it’s trying to tell them.

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Catherine Kaputa is a brand strategist and author of U R a BRAND! How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success (www.urabrand.com). She is founder of a brand consultancy that works with companies, products, and individuals (www.catherinekaputa.com). You can sign up for her entrepreneur newsletter at www.brandespresso.com and her self branding newsletter at www.selfbrand.com

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Related Forum Posts
Re: Best Internet Marketing Strategy - Hi David, I agree about the Blogosphere. You have a smaller group that Blog, but do so on the premise that they think they should, but have never really considered the purpose of their Blog. Then I think there are a few SEO or Internet Marketing types that see Blogging as just another link building strategy. But the largest group of Bloggers, tend to be people who enjoy writing and discussing their topics of interest. Blogging is good for link building, but the true Blogger is a breed apart from the rest. They want to dialog, to debate, to have feedback and they are very willing to link to other worthwhile conversations that are relevant to their topic. I agree with you. These group of Bloggers obviously are passionate about their writing and together, they create huge conversation trails interactive and travel from Blog to Blog. But the evidence is clear with this group that loves what they write about. With comments enabled on a Blog and having a Blog tuned to a specific purpose you already have the evidence of original Social Media.
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: Books for the Entrepreneur - Here's one of my most recent books The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success By Brian Tracy
Re: Alexa Ranking Goals - That's great GT! What method did you use to put up the Entrepreneur Blog Network in your Wordpress Blog? We're always looking for the easiest methods to help bloggers who are not techies get involved.
EvanCarmichael.com suggestion - Maybe I missed it but I would like to suggest that a Blog be created to support the Forum. The idea is that in the blog you put in snippets of some of the biggest conversations with a 'read more' link to the forum itself. Setting up the Blog and clipping some conversations onto it wouldn't take very long.


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