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To Blog or Not to Blog… Blogging Made Easy (Part 2)

Guest post by: Lisa Murray

Article Overview: If you are publishing content on a blog, you need a strategy. Without one you are shooting at moving targets and missing opportunities to hit the triple jackpot of being visible, valued and visionary! John Batelle, creator of Wired magazine recently stated that for brands to stay relevant and develop a true online experience for their customers, they must master the art of content creation.

To Blog or Not to Blog… Blogging Made Easy (Part 2)

If you are publishing content on a blog, you need a strategy. Without one you are shooting at moving targets and missing opportunities to hit the triple jackpot of being visible, valued and visionary! John Batelle, creator of Wired magazine recently stated that for brands to stay relevant and develop a true online experience for their customers, they must master the art of content creation.

Here are a few tips to take the mystery out of blogging... whether you are a technophobe, unable to string a sentance together or just completely confused... ;-) successful blogging is possible!

• Blogging technology: If your website does not have its own inbuilt blogging system (many content management systems do) then it’s better to use Wordpress with your own domain name rather than other free software. You can use sites like Facebook or a Ning site as an alternative however you cannot use your own domain name and you lack control over your content – far from ideal!
• Content marketing strategy: It’s essential to have a clearly developed content marketing strategy… why, what, how… etc! Without a strategy you’ll waste a lot of time and resources.
• Valuable content: You should only blog if you have plenty of valuable content that your target audience would be interested in. Contrary to some of the advice out there, writing inane dribble about nothing won’t do you any favors in the search engines or elsewhere!
• Writing alternatives: It doesn’t matter if you can’t write – use audio / video / photos and put just a few words around each idea. Or, record your ideas and have someone transcribe and edit them.
• Developing connections: Get over the idea of ‘I don’t know what to write’ by talking to people about their challenges in the area your business serves. Write about the solutions to those challenges in a way that invites people to respect you and share your ideas with others.
• Meeting deadlines: invite other related professionals to ‘guest blog’ on your blog on a monthly basis – gives you more great content and they’ll probably promote your blog to their followers.
• Promoting your content: ensure you promote your blog posts in other social forums – ‘build it and they will come’ is generally only true in the movies!!! Your blog offers the core content, social media are the outposts that create visibility.

Want to develop an effective content management strategy for your business?

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Article Tags: blog, blogging, small business



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.
Re: Best Internet Marketing Strategy - I wanted to share more on the topic of Blogging and creating your own original content that you enjoy writing about. Here's a real example. My wife started her own little Web site a few years ago. It's a very simple, home made Web site she built all on her own. She had sort of a hobby of going into Dollar stores, purchasing a few inexpensive items for a buck or two. Then she would create something completely new (usually home decor) out of what she bought (often with the same value of creating something that was worth up to $15 or $20) if you bought it in other stores, but only using material she bought at a dollar store. So on this little Web site, she starts writing about her creations and take pictures of them etc. A few years ago, someone from an AOL Money and Finance Blog (called Wallet Pop) invited her to Blog for AOL. Today, she write for both the US AOL Blog and the Canadian AOL Blog as well as she continues with her hobby and keeping up her own Web site. The other Bloggers at AOL have nick-named her, "The Dollar Store Diva" and she often writes about budget decorating. What amazes me is that with no SEO and just her original content, she attracts huge volumes of traffic. She has done radio shows in Toronto (and nearly went to the US to do breakfast television) and most people would be so amazed to see the traffic spike she gets from Blogging. But once again, she is just writing about the stuff she loves to write about. She is having fun with creativity and she now has a huge following of readers and subscribers.Others are decorating their homes with her ideas and their doing it with next to no budget. If someone is creating a Web site or a Blog, the best thing you can do is try something original on your own, but make it something that you love to write about.
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.
Jen's Blog - Spam protection - Jen, I like the Blog and just posted a comment to one of your articles. From my experience you need to implement some sort of SPAM capture tools. i use them on my Blog and it's been a life saver as I'm getting hit by spam atleast 5 times a day. I use Wordpress and they have plugins like Captcha and SPAM Karma installed.


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