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To Blog or Not to Blog

Written by: Max Kalles

Article Overview: Blogging is a great way to promote your business on the internet. But, make sure you know what's involved before you start.

To Blog or Not to Blog

Most SMEs understand the importance of an internet presence and using the net to attract and convert customers. Blogging does both of these very well. Many entrepreneurs have used blogs to make their businesses successful and a few of them are now better known for and make more money from their blogs than from their businesses.

No wonder many of us are considering blogs. But why do so many leave it at that, just a consideration. The answers are varied, but consistent among them is that blogging takes far more effort than is apparent. For proof, look no further than the blogscape littered by blogs, begun in earnest and abandoned after two or three posts.

To start getting a better idea of what is involved in blogging, you need to stop thinking that writing a blog is blogging. A periodic instalment for your blog is one small part of the whole blogging process. Instead of thinking of blogging as maintaining a journal, think of it as maintaining relationships within a community.

Right away you will begin to understand that this is not something you can do whenever the mood strikes, or once a month, or once a week, but probably needs almost daily attention. Just like any community, things will regularly and rapidly change in your blogging community and, any time away is like spending time on a desert island – when you return, you will be out of touch.

If you manage to get over the time commitment thing, you are ready to consider more of the how-tos of blogging. Among other things, participating in a blogging community means regularly reading and responding to other blogs, researching your blog posts and participating in related forums and other media (YouTube, Facebook, etc.) where pertinent discourses might be happening.

Blogging can quickly consume more time than you are ready to commit and time management is a definite asset. With persistence, something valuable to say and a little luck, the payoff for your blogging efforts can be huge – just ask all those bloggers who started as entrepreneurs.

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Article Tags: blog, blog community, blogging



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: 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.
Blog Marketing Anyone? - Hi Kevin I suppose you could use the same SEO principles on a Blog as you can for a website but the more content you have within your Blog, the better rankings/traffic you would receive. Would you have time to write a full length article with tips in it every day or second day to get the article count rolling over every week? I would also like to know if anyone has had any experiences with marketing blogs and the traffic they received.


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