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Blog for your Business

Written by: Ken Wisnefski

Article Overview: Blogs offer a great opportunity to connect with the masses. Blogging will familiarize the public with your business and make them aware of your areas of expertise. The following offers suggestions on how to incorporate and construct a blog into your business.

Blog for your Business

It was thought the Internet would be utilized for easy access to a multitude of information virtually at our fingertips. This supposition did come to fruition, but the expanse of its employment was richly underestimated. The Internet has been resourced for not only its wealth of knowledge, but communication, and especially in relation to business, its commerce. Businesses of all shapes, sizes, and industries have graced the face of the Internet; and the enterprise is only greatly expanding.

Businesses looking to broaden the availability of their products and services have made them accessible to consumers on the Web. It is a smart move to make in the age of information, where one does not have to leave their house to 'shop around' for nearly anything. The layout, design, usability, and content are all aspects of a business' Web page. We would like to discuss the advantageous nature of instilling a blog as an addition to an already established Web address. Blogs are formatted in a forum-like way in order for users to communicate. The most popular blogs will pose the visitor with topics that are highly geared towards stimulating opinion and conversation. In relation to business, blogs are a fantastic way to generate consumer interest and feedback.

Previously, a 'frequently asked question' page on a site offered a way to let the owner's of the site relay the sentiment, "We know that our visitors are out there and here are some useful tips and answers to questions and concerns that you may have." This element reassures the visitor that the business does in fact take note of their existence and the consumers are taken in consideration. Blogs relate an equal sentiment, but are more dynamic in nature. A blog can be posted once a week, once a day, or several times a day. In many ways, blogs can take the shape of a web site, but be more interactive. Blogs can serve as a means to directly communicate often with your on-going and potential consumers, and for them to communicate with one another as well.

Thanks to the Internet, any person with an idea for a service or product can establish a business with a computer and access to the Web. This is great for the economy, but bad for businesses vying for the allegiance of loyal and returning consumers. This creates a sense of urgency screaming, "How am I going to convey a sense of distinction from the next person offering my product and services?" Blogs may be an immediate answer to the question. If our word seems not as convincing, maybe the word of the captain of a multimillion dollar company will serve better. The marketing implications attached to blogs are enormous. The customer is a business' most valued asset. Depending on the size of your business, it may be difficult to facilitate a sense of individualized rapport with consumers. There are ways such as mailing lists, emails, and phone calls (maybe not a fantastic idea) to let the consumer know, "You are thinking about them," but as of late, nothing seems to be more economical, has the ability of proliferation, or involves so many consumers than blogs.

If you are going to make the decision to create a blog for your business, do it with full force! One of the drawbacks of having a blog is that you will lose all of the advantages if it is neglected. Be prepared to blog regularly with information on your company, products and services, and links to resources that are both fun and informative. Blogs are an excellent way to transcend the impersonal feel of the business-to-customer relationship and create a gregarious and personable connotation to your business fostered by the consumers. World travels super-fast on the Web, the potential for word-of-mouth marketing is extraordinary; if your blog is a success, it will create a surge of traffic to your site.


Tips for Marketing Your Blog--



- Choose a stand alone domain name

- Install customizable blog software

- Incorporate video and podcasts

- Distribute a press release announcing the blog

- Encourage feedback and reviews

- Research the effectiveness of other blogs of your industry

- POST REGULARLY

- RESPOND TO BLOG COMMENTS

- Incorporate resourceful and fun links in your blog

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  B is for Blogging
  Blogging The Easy Way Is More Than A Trend

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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: 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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