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20 Things to Blog About

Guest post by: Gihan Perera

Article Overview: Blogging has so many advantages for business owners that it's a pity so few of them do it. One of the reasons is that some people think every blog post has to be a long, polished article. But that doesn't have to be the case. Blogging is really, really important now, not only because people will visit your blog directly, but because your blog can be embedded easily into other places, such as on-line communities, Facebook pages, and even iPhone apps. So if you're not blogging yet, I hope this article convinces you that it's easy to do.

20 Things to Blog About

Blogging has so many advantages for business owners that it's a pity so few of them do it. One of the reasons is that some people think every blog post has to be a long, polished article. But that doesn't have to be the case.

Blogging is really, really important now, not only because people will visit your blog directly, but because your blog can be embedded easily into other places, such as on-line communities, Facebook pages, and even iPhone apps. So if you're not blogging yet, I hope this article convinces you that it's easy to do.

Here are 20 things to blog about.

1. Report on current affairs and news: One of the easiest and most obvious options: Simply link to an on-line news story, and add a paragraph or two of your commentary to it.
2. Summarise the latest research: Take some in-depth research from your area of expertise, and summarise it in a form that's relevant and meaningful to your market.
3. Share stories from your life: Speakers are always finding ways to work in anecdotes from their life into their presentations. There's no reason you can't do the same thing with your blog.
4. Rant!: Express an opinion! You don't have to be rude and obnoxious, but your blog is the place where your personality comes through. So be direct, forthright and don't sit on the fence.
5. Review a book you've read: If you've read a good book recently, write a brief book review on your blog. Again, your purpose is to help your blog readers, so they can decide whether or not to read the book themselves.
6. Promote a product or service: If you regularly publish high-value content, your blog readers won't mind the occasional promotional blog post. In fact, they almost expect it. If you can tie in the promotional stuff to some content (for example, a high-content blog post that ends with a link to the product), so much the better.
7. Announce something new: Use your blog to make announcements - whether they are new products, new services, new staff joining your team, success stories from a client, and so on.
8. Refer to other experts in the field: Everything you write doesn't have to be original content. In fact, it's quite common for bloggers to refer to other Web site - and in particular, to other bloggers. It's a great way to provide value to your readers, and also encourages other Web sites to link back to you.
9. Copy other people's material: In some cases, you can even use other people's material directly, without having to link to it. Of course, this only applies if you have explicit permission to do so!
10. Profile a client or customer: Use your blog to write a profile, case study or success story about a client or customer. You could even ask them to answer, say, three questions, and post this as an interview on your blog.
11. Share a positive testimonial: When clients say nice things about you, get their permission to use that as a testimonial, and then post it to your blog. Again, as long as you don't do this all the time, your blog readers won't mind this occasional self-promotion.
12. Record an audio clip: Some people find it easier to record audio than to write. I don't - I find it much easier to write than to record. But I know some people who think nothing of pulling out a voice recorder, iPod or iPhone and recording a brief audio clip, which they can then publish to their blog. It doesn't have to be CD quality, either - as long as it's not scratchy or difficult to understand.
13. Record a video clip: The next step is video, and again I know some people who find it a breeze to record a video clip of themselves, with a short, sharp message they can then publish to their blog.
14. Insert a YouTube video: You don't even have to record the video clip yourself. YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler and other video-sharing sites make it easy for you to embed their video clips into your blog.
15. Recommend a Web site: Find a Web site you like, that your readers might find useful as well? Write a brief review of it on your blog, along with a link to the site.
16. Answer a frequently asked question: I bet your e-mail program's "Sent Mail" folder has some gems of information you've shared with somebody, in answer to a question they asked you. Why limit this to just one person? Many of these answers you write could easily apply to lots of people, with a bit of editing to hide confidential details and put it in context. This is great source material for blog posts.
17. Jot down a half-formed idea: Blog posts don't have to be long, structured articles - as you would do for a newsletter, magazine or even an article on your Web site. It's OK to just jot down a few notes, as long as they make sense.
18. Publish your podcast posts: You might have a podcast that people subscribe to, so they receive your episodes automatically. To reach even more people, publish each episode on your blog as well, so that non-subscribers (to the podcast) can stumble across it.
19. Share a PowerPoint presentation: Create a message as a PowerPoint presentation, and then use SlideShare.net to publish it to the Internet. You can then embed this into a blog post, just as you would do with a YouTube video.
20. Announce a coming event: Use your blog to announce your coming events. You probably promote them everywhere else as well - such as your Web site, your e-mail newsletter, your Twitter feed, etc. - so why not post them on your blog as well.

Whew - that's just for starters!

There are many other things you could blog about, but these 20 should give you enough for starters.

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Article Tags: blogging, business owners, internet marketing, online communities



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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