Author Archive for Chris McElroy

Is Your Business Blog Performing the way you would like it to?

If you believe everything that you read on the web, it’s possible to make millions of dollars with nothing but a blog and a passion.

Now, when you’re already in business, this thought quickly leads to others. The most notable of them is this: if bloggers can make money without a product to sell, what can a blog do for my business?

Managing a business blog can do a great deal for your business:

• A business blog enables you to communicate with your customers on a more personal level;
• A business blog will allow you to share details about your products and services, announce sales and let current and prospective customers get a feel for what your company has to offer;
• A business blog will enable you to get feedback from your customers in the form of surveys, comments and even posts that they make in their own blogs.

Unfortunately, blogging isn’t just about showing up at the keyboard. Many business blogs don’t perform as well as the companies hope that they will.

Does this mean that you shouldn’t keep a blog for your business? Not at all: it just means that you need to take advantage of services that will quickly bring your business blog up to its full potential.

By hiring a Professional Blog Management Company, you can be sure that your company blog contains the right mix of elements to get noticed. A blog content provider can work with you to include straight up text, photos or other images of your products or services, video, audio files and more in your blog.

More importantly, however, a blog content provider who has experience with search engine optimization can work with you to ensure that your company blog includes links to your business’ website – your home page as well as pages that are deeper in your site.

These links, coupled with an attention to keywords related to your products and services can work to promote your business.

When prospective customers are searching for products and services similar to those that you offer, a well-optimized company blog can help them to find you: not only will it lead them to your company, but also to the information that they need in order to understand the benefits of what your company has to offer.

You may be wondering how a blog content provider will be able to boost the performance of your company blog. You may be wondering how a service that is not connected directly with your company can effectively market your products and services.

The answer is simple: a professional blogger will work with you. He or she will take the time to learn more about your company, your products and services and your goals. Then, that information along with his or her blogging experience will come together.

As a result, your company will benefit from daily web marketing. Your company’s web presence will grow daily with additional pages of content and you’ll know that you are reaching out to a wider audience – one that you’ve been trying to reach on your own.

A blog content provider can ensure that your business blog is performing up to its full potential: your company blog will communicate clearly, stay focused and be noticed – by your current customers, the search engines and your best prospects.

Blogging on Free Hosts Like Blogger and WordPress A Bad Idea

This article is about blogging and why you should never blog on a free host like blogger.com or wordpress.com I am writing this to alert people out there who are building blogs on free blog hosts like blogger.com and wordpress.com.

Installing wordpress is free and gives you full control over your blog. There are other platforms like moveable type to choose from as well. Take a look around and find the platform you like or that best fits your blogging style. I’ve learned an expensive lesson and now will only build blogs on my own domain names.

The reason?

Lets start with blogger.com

They have a new out of control spam bot. Search the blogger help forums and you will find the horror stories. Legitimate blogs are being deleted, people are getting locked out of their blog until reviewed, and assumed to be a spammer because either the bot flagged the blog or someone clicked the little flag button at the top of all blogger blogs.

That and the fact that they have constant problems with the publishing getting stuck at 0%, slow load times, etc. it makes blogging through blogger.com a buggy experience at best and your content or reason for blogging is up to someone else’s interpretation of what is or is not legitimate.

I understand getting rid of splogs and spammers, but in blogger.com’s case the cure is worse than the disease. They were not always that way. I’ve been on blogger a long time and the service used to be good.

As far as wordpress.com they are just as bad. If the blog links to a website and looks as if it might be promoting people to go to that website they will suspend your account without warning and lock you out of all the content.

I’m not sure what they think blogs are for, but they seem to think they have a noble purpose in life and that they alone decide what is a “genuine blog” or not.

A “genuine blog” is one that is controlled by the individual who writes to it, not one that must adhere to someone else’s idea of what their blog should look like and what it should say.

If you blog on freehosts just be aware your content and your blog is in the hands of others who will decide for the world whether or not your blog should be seen by others.

I recommend all bloggers get their own domain names and install their own blogs. You probably have learned that using a freehost for your company’s website is bad for business so why put your company’s blog on a freehost?

The same goes for individuals. Blogs allow you to express yourself the way you want to express yourself. That is the beauty of blogging. Are you willing to sacrifice your individuality to conform to what blogger.com or wordpress.com thinks is a “genuine” way to express yourself?

Many times the person deciding your fate is someone who has never had any authority over other people and who think that now they have Godlike powers to decide the fate of content written by others. These are people who likely produce no content of value themselves and think they know what is best for the rest of the world.

Get your own domain name and install a blogging platform that fits your needs. It’s the best advice you will ever get about blogging.

You only own the blog if it is on your own domain name.

Everything else is just providing content for someone else.

What Does Your Blog Need in Order to Be Successful?

Why do you blog? Do you blog to promote your business? Do you blog to support a product or a service? Does your blog have a narrow or broad focus?

Some people blog for personal reasons: they blog to promote a cause like the importance of cancer research. Some people blog to promote affiliate programs or to share their knowledge about a topic.

Others blog to promote their home business, to  differentiate themselves from the competition or to let people know more about the products and services that their company has to offer.

Regardless of why you blog, regardless of whether your blog is focused on one element of one service or around a network of products and services, you’ll find that your blog needs one thing in order to be successful; good, unique, original content.

Without regularly updated content, your readers will not have a reason to keep coming back to your blog. Without regularly updated content, your readers won’t be learning anything new from your blog.

At that point, no matter why you are blogging, you’ll start to realize that you are not accomplishing the goals that you set for your blog.

There are plenty of companies that will tell you what to do to find blog content. They will tell you that, in order to have a successful blog, all you need to do is visit article directories and repost content that’s relevant to your blog.

The problem is that, when you do this, you’re still not offering your readers anything new.

The next group will tell you that, rather than visiting article directories you should look into purchasing private label rights for content. Private label rights content can be eBooks or articles that can be broken down, sold, relabeled with your name or title or that can be rewritten: when you buy the rights, you can use the information.

In theory, private label rights content is only a good investment if you purchase it as a framework, an inspiration for creating something new. Many people however, use the private label rights content as it is.

They too, however, do not offer readers of their blogs anything new.

Even if everyone rewrote the content in the PLR articles they purchased, it would still not be original content. Think about it. 100 people buy the same article and each rewrites it a little.

Do you think that each of the 100 articles will be significantly different from the others?

Plus, when your readers find only the same information they find elsewhere, you’ll quickly find that they don’t keep coming back to your blog. The only way to hang onto your readers is to offer them fresh relevant content.

In order to provide the fresh relevant content that your readers are looking for, you have two options: write the content yourself or hire someone who will be able to write it for you.

While blogging enables everyone to be a writer, there will be times when you find yourself at a loss for words or too busy to contribute to your own blog.

These are the times when you will benefit the most from having a content writer. Your content writer can create articles of the length you specify, using your topics and keywords and provide you with content that is yours and yours alone.

If you’re looking for fresh content on a regular basis, there is an additional option. Rather than hiring a content writer to provide an article or series of articles,  you could hire a blog content provider who will manage your blog, optimize it for search engines and readers and create fresh content daily.

The right blog content provider can work with you to create a blog that meets or exceeds all of your goals whether you’re writing to promote a cause or a business. With fresh, relevant content each and every day, your blog’s readers will have a reason to come back again and again.

Why Should I Hire A Professional Blogger?

Whether you’ve been marketing your business on the web for years or you are just starting out and recognize that web marketing will greatly contribute to your business success, there’s one thing that’s key to keeping your company name on people’s minds; keeping a blog going daily.

With a blog, you’ll be able to keep fresh content on your website which adds values for site visitors and draws in the search engine spiders.

What many business owners find – those whose companies are well-established as well as those who are just starting out – is that it takes time to keep a website up to date.

They also find that keeping a blog can take a chunk of time out of their day, time that could be used for any number of other activities from taking client calls to checking on production to making sure that the bills are getting paid.

Often, despite their best intentions, business owners give up on posting to their blog whether they just give it up all at once or let their posts trickle off slowly.

All of a sudden, even though you know that you should keep a blog for your business, you’ll find that it slips off of your priority list and on to your list of things to do. And then you’ll find that it slips to that part of the list where things just stay either forever or until everything else on the list is something .

There’s a good way of avoiding the problem, however: hire a professional blogger to write the blog for your business.

Why would you hire a professional blogger? Well, to begin with, when you’re working with someone who operates a business dedicated to blogging that is staffed by trained bloggers, you’ll know that the person writing your blog knows the tips, tools and techniques that will draw attention to your blog. Not only will you be able to benefit from the blogger’s experience, but you won’t have to spend time learning the techniques or writing the posts.

While those are, in themselves, great benefits, the list doesn’t stop there. When you contract with a blogging company, you’ll know what you’re getting.

If you hire a blogger who will post to your blog daily, you can be sure that there will be fresh content added to your site each day. If you hire someone to post five times a week, you’ll have five posts each week. A professional blogger makes a commitment to you, a commitment that the job will be done.

As a result, you get all of the benefits that come with having a blog for your business – increased site traffic, incoming links to your website and a relationship with current and prospective customers – without any of the hassle.

You don’t have to worry about days without posts, coming up with content or staying on top of all of the latest tips and tools that bloggers use to get their work noticed. In no time, you’ll find yourself reaping the rewards of a well-written blog.

Hire a blogger for your business blog here.