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Top 10 best ways to get social traction for your blog

Guest post by: Sally Witzky

Article Overview: Writing an effective blog post, especially when blogging for your business, takes time. But using a simple check list like this can help you build a great foundation so that you gain effectiveness -- yes, traction -- each time you write. Review these best tips, use them and then you'll quickly build effective blogging habits.

Top 10 best ways to get social traction for your blog

Writing effective blog posts that get you traction often is something that puzzles the small business owner. While it's not brain science, it does take a little time to get the hang of it. Once you get a system down for writing and editing, then it gets easier with time.

Here are our top 10 best ways for you to get more mileage out of your small business blog:

1. Write an effective blog title. Your blog's title is its billboard. It is what piques peoples interest enough to stop and read it. Don't be vague - blog titles are no place for story lines. If it takes people more than a glance to figure out if it has any relevance to them, then you'll lose your target audience. Quick.
2. Write with enough substance but not too long. Ideal blog posts are 350-500 words in length. They can be shorter or longer. If shorter, be sure you're covering your subject with enough detail. Sometimes posts that include photos or videos can be shorter as far as number of words is concerned. If longer, be sure you're making enough new points within the article that you won't lose your reader, or graphically break up the copy with photos, bullet points or numbers as we've done here.
3. Add a call-to-action. We usually prefer that the post is closed in some way, either with contact info to get more information or a next step for your reader. Don't just leave ‘em hanging, as if the post writer was lazy and left an unfinished piece. Your readers are looking for you to sum up your points in some way or lead them to the next step so they don't have to guess at your intention.
4. Review your keyword list. All blog owners should be working with a keyword list that includes 5 main key words or phrases that you want to really own in the search engines, along with other keywords that are relevant to your content and what your target audience is searching for. Revising your blog posts to ensure a proper density of your main key words as well as any ancillary key words or phrases is critical to your blog's success. Tip: If you do not have a keyword / keyphrase list, don't write another post until you create one! This is critical to your blogging success!
5. Ping your blog. Be sure to ping your blog each time you post new content. This helps the search engines to know to look for updated content on your blog. Technorati, the search engine designed for searching blogs, is still valuable as is using Weblogs.com.
6. Blog Communities. Taking the time to list your blog in popular blog directories not only helps you gain new followers by making your content appear elsewhere but increases your search engine rankings because these sites have more SEO power than your site by itself. One of my favorites is NetworkedBlogs, which integrates directly with Facebook. NetworkedBlogs keeps a ranking of the top blogs in each city based on local followers so it is particularly important for local businesses. Other blog directories we feel are a must are BlogCatalog, Blogged and MyBlogLog.
7. Blog post sharing. It is critical to make it easy not only for your readers to comment on your blog but also for them to share it. Popular sharing services such as ShareThis, which also provides results tracking, and TweetMeme make it very easy for others to share your posts with their audiences.
8. Outbound links. Can't tell you how many blog posts we see that utilize zero outbound links. Blog posts aren't book pages so don't treat them that way. The whole idea is that your post provides an interactive experience and a way for people to learn more about a company, product or service that you mention in your post. Plus, it's just common courtesy to refer out because that is exactly what you want others to do for you.
9. Write well and often. Ideally, you should be posting two to three times per week on your blog. More often if possible. Google, Yahoo and Bing tend to find your blog easier and more often when there is fresh content posted that includes your blog's main key words and phrases. Building repetitive use of keywords and phrases over several entries, plus creating a history or backlog of posts (duration length) aids your overall ranking.
10. Always add relevant photos, YouTube videos, SlideShare presentations or other graphics to make your posts more visually appealing.
    
    Tag you're it. Don't forget to take the time to include your category and post tags for each and every entry and be consistent with matching the tags to the post itself. This includes the custom title tags, meta description and meta keywords.

Effective blogging can take time but it's worth doing if you've made the commitment to your blog. If you have created guidelines for your blog's content, including your keyword list, then you can have guest bloggers add content if frequency of writing is a problem for you. If you own a small business, appoint several people to be part of a blogging team so that you as the business owner don't have to be responsible for creating all the content. Or sometimes you can find a virtual assistant or intern to help write and/or edit and post with the proper tagging sequences.

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Article Tags: blog, blog directories, blogging, effective blogging, how to blog, keyword list, keywords, outbound links, ping your blog, small business blog, small business owner, social media, social media traction, traction group



Related Forum Posts
Re: Quick Ways To Utilize SEO Effectively - I'm with Alan on this one Mary, article marketing, social bookmarking and blog commenting are great ways to achieve one way backlinks. So is forum posting, submitting your blog to blog catalogues and making good use of RSS feeds. Remember to include good quality content and start building a name for yourself and you'll be well on your way to generating loads of backlinks. Take care, Carol
Expeirmentation in Marketing - [quote="Ashish":3velc49x]Hi Samin, It's a very prominent question these days and I feel rather all the new ways of marketing these days are getting older very soon. Yes, SEO is a good tool but I also feel social net, blogging and using videos to market proofs to be handy. You can try your hands on them and ofcource you have to be careful, to make it successful you have to do it right by lot of experimentation. Hope it helps you.[/quote:3velc49x] Experimentation is definitely necessary and recognizing when you need to make adjustments to the ways you're promoting. I use social networking, social bookmarking, blogs and some videos. Still working on finding better ways to use videos. Shri
Re: How should i promote a new website? - [quote="Alan Mater":391s63q7] Submitting a website to the search engines is not the way to go about things. What you should do is get a link pointing to your site from another site. The search engines will naturally find your site and crawl it. This can be done by adding your site to link directories, blog commenting, rss submissions, article marketing, social bookmarking, etc. There's many ways to go about it, but that's all that needs done. Submitting a site to search engines will actually do more harm than good. Anelly, you've been given some great advice on how to promote your site. Article marketing, blog commenting, social bookmarking, forum posting, etc. are all great ways. Starting a blog and writing about your site and the product you're promoting is great as well. There's many offline strategies that work well, too.[/quote:391s63q7] Hi Alan, I completely agree with you. However, I don't remember where I saw this advice, but this guy recommended submitting to search engines ONLY ONCE, when your website is new and fresh, and never again! Didn't have time to try this, and I don't think is can do any harm, but only if you do it once. Backlinks are the only way to go.
On The Topic of Guest Bloggers - To have a guest blogger on your blog, you can: 1.) Write a post on your blog, seeking guest bloggers 2.) Let your blogging friends know (send them an email) 3.) Place a free ad in Craigslist 4.) Ask bloggers you know, and are in your niche 5.) Send a bulletin to your social networks There are other ways, these are but a few. Also you could simply create a page on your site dedicated solely to recruiting Guest Bloggers. Hope this helps in your efforts. Missy.
Re: Traffic! How do you get it? - It first starts with content. Creating highly valuable and helpful content that people will want to link to. This solves part of your second step, which is backlink building. Building backlinks is essential if you want traffic. Article marketing, blog commenting, social bookmarking, social networking, web 2.0, link-baiting, etc. are just some ways to build quality backlinks. And don't forget about keyword research. This should be done first and foremost to get the most benefit out of your content and backlink building strategies.


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