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5 Keys to Successful Business Blogging

admin — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 16:10:21 +0000

5 Keys to Successful Business Blogging

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

One of the most difficult things to learn as a small business owner using the internet for inbound marketing is how to create good content. Business blog content has to walk the fine line between being the same old advertising spiel and still being useful for marketing purposes. Here are 5 ways to ensure that your business blog will enhance your business.

Optimize Your Content. Every post you write needs to be optimized. That’s right…every post. Start off by determining how successful your content is. How many people read your post and how long did they stay on your page? How did they get to your post? Did they comment on it? Use this data as you create future posts. It can help you discover what kinds of content people found interesting. Finding out where they came from can help you discover what other kinds of information interests them as well. This information can be invaluable as you determine what kind of content you will create for your business blog.
Engage Your Readers. When you readers are engaged in your content, they will react. They will leave their own comments and then direct others to your posts via Twitter, Facebook, or their own blogs. You need people to react because their actions vis-à-vis your posts will dramatically increase the number of people who are exposed to your blog. If the 20 people who read your post simply read it and then click on to the next site they want to visit, you’ve reached 20 people. But if each of those 20 people then tell 20 more people about what you’ve written, you’ve reached exponentially more than that!
Balance Your Content. This is where things get tricky. You need to find a good balance between content that brings readers to your site and content that results in sales. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula to help you do this. You need to find the balance that works for your website and your readers using the metrics discussed in #1.
Find Your Own Style. Even if the extent of your writing experience is limited to a high school term paper, you probably still have style rules ingrained in your head. Forget them. Find your own style that works for you and for your readers. That may mean sticking primarily to bulleted content. On the other hand, it may mean using long, flowing prose. But throwing out style rules doesn’t give you license to be sloppy. Typos, bad grammar, and abhorrent spelling make you look unprofessional, not hip. Find your own style, but keep the quality of your writing top-notch.
Toot Your Own Horn. If you’re not going to toot your own horn, then it simply isn’t going to get tooted. When you publish your content, don’t stop by simply publishing on your blog. Post it to your Twitter and Facebook accounts, too. Talk about it among your social network in real life. When visitors comment on your stories, comment back. This can take some doing since you’ll be getting comments on multiple sites, but people will be more apt to come back if they feel like you care what they have to say.

Engage your readers, balance your content between information that drives sales and information that attracts readers, find your own style, optimize your content, and talk about what you’re doing. These are 5 steps to successful business blogging. And while they might take some getting used to, especially if you’re already familiar with traditional marketing strategies, they will pay off in the end with increased sales and customer loyalty. Make them work for you and watch your business grow by leaps and bounds!

5 Brand-Building Secrets Through Blogging

admin — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 14:17:17 +0000

5 Brand-Building Secrets Through Blogging

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Technorati.com recently completed its 2008 State of the Blogosphere report, which contains some interesting information about the correlation between blogs and brand building. The report shows that bloggers are interested in talking about brands. So if you’re looking for ways to build your brand, make friends with some bloggers!

Blogging is, at its heart, a place for people to share information about themselves and about their lives. If people have good experiences, they blog about them. If they have bad experiences, they blog about those, too. This includes experiences with businesses both online and in real life. If bloggers encounter a product or service that they find phenomenal, they’ll blog about it. Same goes for products or services that they find abysmal. In fact, nearly 80% of bloggers talk about brands and/or products that they love or hate, and 37% of them do so on a frequent basis. Many businesses have taken advantage of this publicity. In fact, one-third of all bloggers have been asked to act as brand advocates.

This may seem silly given that anyone can maintain a blog. Why should internet users trust a blog over any other source of information? Why are bloggers any more credible that anyone else? The truth is that bloggers primarily look to blogs for information rather than to other sources. In fact, 49% of bloggers believe that blogs are just as reliable as mainstream media for getting information.

The point here is that blogs are a great resource to explore when you’re trying to build your brand. Here are 5 things to keep in mind regarding blogs and brand-building.

1. Blogs are Credible. Some marketers are concerned about the possibility of having their brand show up on a blog because they’re afraid that the blog might not be credible. Rest assured that, although they are often informal, blogs are often seen as legitimate sources of good information. In fact, many large corporations include blog-mentions among the press included on their websites.

2. Blog Discussions are Natural. If a brand or product makes an impact on a blogger, he or she will probably mention it on a blog. Some companies even ask bloggers to review products and introduce new products. Many bloggers already include ads on their blogs, so they will probably be happy to include information about your product or service as well, given that they find it worth mentioning.

3. Bloggers are Bright. As a whole, bloggers are both educated and affluent. In fact, 75% of bloggers also graduated from college and 42% have attended at least some graduate school. More than half of them are part of a household than brings in over $75,000. These are good people to know from a marketing standpoint. They’re savvy and they have a lot of money to spend. These are people you want on your team.

4. Bloggers Read Other Blogs. Bloggers get most of their information from other bloggers; so if you want to get noticed, you need to make sure that you become visible on a blog. Keep in mind that, not only do bloggers read other blogs regularly, bloggers also use blogs as their primary source of information about brands and products. This is obviously a great way to make yourself visible and to attract the attention of potential customers.

5. Your Competitors are Doing It! Since so many companies are already asking bloggers to act as brand advocates, chances are that your competitors are already among those taking advantage of blogs as brand builders. Do yourself a favor and start using blogs to build your brand or you could find yourself out in the cold!

If your image of a blogger is a pimply-faced teenager sitting in his basement writing about his latest conspiracy theory, you need to update your perceptions. Bloggers are a bright group who look to each for information. Use them in your brand-building efforts and you’ll see results!

7 Top Tips for Writing Blog Articles

admin — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:12:22 +0000

7 Top Tips for Writing Blog Articles

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

SEO experts know that one of the best ways to promote your business is to blog. Unfortunately, many business owners are under the impression that blogging takes a lot of time, or they have seen too many bloggers who start out with gusto only to abandon their blogs two or three months later. While both concerns are legitimate, there’s no reason to let them keep you from starting your own blog. After all, business blogging is a great way to build a following and shorten the sales process.

Rare is the sales blogger who settles in a quiet room with a pencil and a pad of paper to write down his most profound ideas. Instead, most bloggers spend their time reading other blogs and interacting with others within their market niche. All this interaction makes it easier, not harder, to blog. Once you’re in tune with what everyone else is thinking and writing, coming up with your own material is a breeze.

Here are 7 ways to quickly generate your own content.

1. Interviews. Find an expert in your market niche and see if she is willing to be interviewed via email. Read other interviews to glean interesting and timely questions, and then ask her those. Most experts are willing to be interviewed because they get some exposure out of the deal, too. And the whole process only takes about 15 minutes.

2. Guest Bloggers. Hunt down an expert in your field who has expertise in an area you lack and ask him to write an article for your blog. Not only will you increase your following by attracting your guest blogger’s base, but you’ll end up ranking higher for keywords that wouldn’t normally generate a lot of traffic for you.

3. Rewrite. Read some of your old blog posts and find one whose lesson remains applicable to your situation today. You probably have additional insight now, so share that with your readers. Link to the old post and add your new insights. Thirty minutes later you have a new article!

4. Have a Contest. This provides a bonus post because you not only have to post information about the contest, but you also have to tell everyone who the winner was.

5. Ask a Good Question. A good question can ignite great conversation. Use Twitter to help build a following for your blog if you don’t already have one. The great conversation generated by your question will ensure that your readers will stick around. Everyone likes to be asked for their opinion. Let your readers share theirs.

6. Use Lists. Lists are great article-writing tools because people are automatically attracted to bulleted or numbered content. Because it’s easier to read and digest, readers are more likely to slow down for listed material than they are for material that’s written in multiple paragraphs. If you’ve found a list that you like on someone else’s blog, repost it on your blog using only the bulleted phrases and add a link to the original. Change the title of your post, of course, but always link back to the source.

7. Aggregator Blogging. Scan blogs within your market niche to find articles that you think would interest your readers. Publish one or two paragraphs from each article, link to the original, and add a sentence or two of your own to tell readers what you did or didn’t find helpful about the article. This is also a great way to start good conversations and build networks with other bloggers.

Don’t forgo the opportunity to build links, network, and shorten the time it takes to make a sale simply because you think that business blogging is too time-consuming. Use what’s already around you to make the process quick and painless, and you’ll see what a difference it will make for your business.