Blogging is a great way for business owners to not only share knowledge on their field of expertise to the World Wide Web for free, but to subtly sell the business at the same time. Blogging allows individuals to engage in an online conversation without the hard sell. Use the below as a guide on how to blog successfully.
I already know something very unique about every single person who is reading this article. No, I’m not channeling David Blaine, I just know each and every one of you is an expert on at least one topic in his or her field. I also know that you have a massive audience via the world wide web that is eager to hear what you have to say.
Regardless of your profession, you have information that we need and that’s what makes it valuable. Let’s use a dentist or dental hygienist as an example. They know how to keep our teeth healthy and pearly white. If they provided that information free of charge, wouldn’t you read it? I know I would, especially with that lolly jar sitting outside my office. And what if you were in the market for a new home and a real estate agent gave you free tips on how to negotiate when buying it? I bet many new homebuyers would be first in line to gobble that information up. I could go on and on with other examples.
The point is, everyone has valuable information to share with the public and the internet has provided a vehicle to get your message out to the masses quickly and effectively. That vehicle is called a blog—or web log or online journal for the non-techies out there—and it is a web page where you can publish content for others to read and comment on. Blogs are easy to use and you can set one up absolutely free. Isn’t the internet great? My blogging site of choice is www.blogger.com and I like it for two reasons. First, it’s very user-friendly and perfect for the beginner blogger. And, most importantly, it’s owned by a company you may have heard of called Google!
Why should you care that it’s owned by Google? Great question, readers! As I touched on earlier, a blog is a web page and a web page can be ranked by search engines such as Google. In fact, blogs are very popular with the search engines because they like content-heavy web pages and blogs are simply loaded with content. So if you are looking to increase your overall presence on the largest search engine in the world, why not use the blogging tool that they own?
Still not sure what you should write about? “If you provide value, they will come.” Ok, so Kevin Costner I am not, but the message is still the same. Give high value content in your blog posts and you will begin to gain a following. And the exciting part is people will come back again and again as they will have become addicted to your content.
Ok, but where are the new customers and repeat business going to come from? I thought you’d never ask! Once you have people reading your blog and gaining value, you can softly sell your products or services without offending your audience. So my philosophy is to provide value first, sell second. My world is internet marketing, so I might write a post in my blog about how to rank high in Google and then my next post might be an invitation to one of my workshops. And they won’t be put off by my self promotion because I sell rarely and provide value often.
Any final words? I will leave you with the two most important things to remember when creating content in blogs. First, what words are people searching for on Google where you’d love to have your blog appear at the top of the search page? Use those words over and over again when writing in your blog. Search engines evaluate frequency when determining where to rank web pages on their site. Finally, always remember to hurl your URL! That simply means to provide a link on your blog to your main website so people can easily go there for more information about you or your company.
—Corey Perlman is the author of the number one Amazon.com bestseller eBoot Camp: Proven Internet Marketing Techniques to Grow Your Business. Find out more at www.ebootcampbook.com
Great Resources for your Blog
- Feedburner: This is a free service that allows you to create an opt-in box on your blog. When people subscribe, they can read your blog in a web portal, news reader or even in their email. It’s a way to push your blog out to your customer.
- Technorati: This is a blog search engine and a great place to find new and exciting blogs. You can also ping your blog or claim your blog to become part of Technorati’s community.
- Google AdSense: When your blog becomes popular, you can start making money by allowing Google to place ads on it. It’s really easy to set up and Google does the majority of the work for you.
- Aweber: With this tool, you can easily create an opt-in box for your blog to collect a reader’s name and email address. It also allows you to set up an auto-responder where you can pre-populate email messages to go out once a person has subscribed to your blog. There is a fee for this service but it’s worth every penny!
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