All Entries in the "Blog Marketing" Category

Are You A Bloghead?

For those of you who haven’t yet started a Blog, you won’t understand. You weren’t there man! Just trying one Blog will get you hooked. Sure, you say you’re just experimenting with blogging.

Then soon, you are blogging everyday. You wake up trying to search around to see who has commented on your Blog. Then it gets to be a 3 or 4 blogpost a day habit, and you’re still saying, “I can quit anytime I want”.

Then you decide to try different types of Blog. You have your personal stash Blog, then a joke Blog, then another one on a different topic. Now when you aren’t doing your own Blogs, you getting into other people’s Blogs and commenting more and more.

You’re telling everyone how they should try Blog. Pushing Blog to kids. Google and Yahoo are telling you how much you can make dealing Blog. Then there you are the local Blog dealer.

On every corner of the search engine, selling Blog. Looking at your statistics to see how many people tried your Blog, how long they were blogged in, which blogposts they were doing. Now you are hooked for sure. People walk by you now, your friends, family, and you overhear them calling you a bloghead.

You’re hanging out with other blogheads, sharing Blog, linking your Blog to theirs, trying to hook more people on Blog. The blogposts have got you man. Nothing you can do but keep on blogging.

Even this article you are reading right now, you’re thinking of which of your Blogs you are going to post it on for other Blogheads to read. If you don’t have a Blog for this article, then you can start one all about being addicted to Blogging.

Google or Yahoo will front you the contextual stash to cut your Blog with, so just one more Blog won’t hurt you. Go ahead. Start another Blog.

Then you get so hooked on Blogging you start your own Blog about how to find more Blog. You get all the Blogheads to ping your new Blog search Blog. Oh, yeah man, the pings.  The pings are the best, man. You don’t know what it’s like to get pinged by the Blogs, man. It’s out of this world!

Next you start yet another Blog to teach others the best way to Blog. You become a Blog Connoisseur. A Blog Guru. A Blog Consultant. A Blog Expert.

You really know you’re a goner when you start to host Blogs. Your own Blog Party or commune. Yeah, that’s it, Blog Commune, like MySpace, but really my own space. That’s when you’re no longer just the local Blog Dealer, you are supplying the Blog Dealers. A bigshot now.

Hey, man I got this new thing here. An AutoBlog. Man, an AutoBlog is to blogging what the bong was to . . .well, you know. All you gotta do is log in and push a couple of buttons and you get more Blog!

Wow, man, you haven’t tried Blog yet? You really gotta get with the times, man. Blogging is the bomb.

Blog Marketers: Share Your Tips Now

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Why A Real Estate Agent Should Have A Blog

I’m amazed at the number of real estate agents who still don’t have a blog. This is the one tool I think every business owner should have, but a real estate agent especially.

I recently found an article that promised to discuss the benefits of real estate blogging. I was sorely disappointed.

To start with, the articles has no meat in it for about five paragraphs. Then, when you do find the substance, the author recommends a third-party website for blogging, quizzes, and polling. While that in and of itself isn’t bad, the community the author recommends is a second-rate site at best. If you’re going to take his advice and start a blog on a third-party site such as the one he suggests, you’d be better off going to one of these three as a real estate agent:

• Blogger
• WordPress
• ActiveRain

Both Blogger and WordPress.com offer free blog hosting for any niche. ActiveRain is a real estate community that offers free blog hosting for real estate professionals. But, honestly, a better solution than any of these three is to own your own domain name and to set up your real estate blog there. It’s much better to own the real estate than to rent it, even if renting for free. Don’t you agree?

Learn more about setting up your own real estate blog from a blog management professional now.

What’s The Most Important Aspect Of Blogging?

What’s most important when it comes to writing and marketing a business blog? Is it brand? Traffic? Design? Social media? SEO? Or none of the above?

Actually, it could be all of the above, but there is a deeper answer. When it comes to business blogging, there are a lot of factors to consider. But the most important aspect of your blog is your audience. Who are you writing for? Think about it for a minute and when you’ve defined your audience, write it down. Because that’s who you should write every blog post for.

Don’t write for the search engines. Yes, make sure your posts are SEOd, but don’t focus so heavily on SEO that your forget your human audience. Instead, write with your audience’s needs in mind and market your blog, write your blog, design your blog, and promote your blog with that audience in mind. It’s the most important thing about blogging.

What’s A ‘Bad Blog’ Anyway?

Spend any time at all online and you are sure to run into someone recommending that you start a blog for your business. Stick around any longer and you’ll encounter someone warning you not to start one if you are going to have a “bad one”. But what’s a bad blog? It’s almost never defined.

The implication is that if the content isn’t a pleasure to read then it’s a bad blog. But what is a pleasure for one person to read is not necessarily a pleasure for someone else. Have an interest in reading about badminton tips every day? No? Well, maybe someone else does.

But it isn’t all about the nature of the content either. You also have to consider blog design and the quality of the writing. Sure, you want your blog to be attractive. And, yes, you want the writing to be high quality writing. But understand that not every blog has to be of the same caliber as a blog on the A-list. If they all were then there’d be no A-list.

So what’s a bad blog? Let’s start by defining a good blog. A good blog is one that:

• Informs your readers about topics of interest within your niche
• Sets itself apart as unique from other blogs in the same niche
• Drives traffic to important landing pages on your website (the job of closing the sale is on those landing pages
• If your blog is a sales blog then it closes a decent percentage of sales or converts and adequate percentage of traffic to sales, or leads, or whatever your goal is
• Adds optimized content to your website often
• If an offsite blog, builds back links to your primary web property
• Gets people interested in your niche talking in the comments section
• Provides you with information about the needs of your target market

Not every good blog does every one of these, but a good blog should do many of them. It seems to reason then that a “bad blog” is one that doesn’t do any of these or that only does a few while neglecting the most important elements of a good blog. The problem is, a blog may have many different purposes or your standards for a good blog may not match what someone else’s idea of a good blog is. What every blog owner should refrain from doing is allowing your readers from defining what is “good” and what is “bad” based on whether or not they enjoy reading it. That’s not necessarily the judge of a good blog.

Assuming that readers must enjoy reading the blog presumes that the purpose of the blog is for readership, i.e. enjoyability. But simply having readers enjoying your content won’t necessarily lead to sales. You want your blog to make you money, right?

Of course, not all blogs are sales tools either. You can have a blog simply for SEO purposes. The point is this: Define the purpose of your blog and live up to that purpose. That’s really the only measure of blog quality. Don’t do that and you’ve got a bad blog.

The Primary Reason Your Business Needs A Blog

You’ve likely heard all the reasons your business needs a blog:

• Branding
• SEO
• Customer Service
• Being Sociable With Your Audience
• Creating Dialogue
• “Connecting” With People
• Facilitating Social Media Marketing
• Insert Reason Here

But the primary reason you need a blog is hardly ever mentioned. The best reason to start a blog today is because your competition has one.

Now I’m not suggesting that you start keeping up with the Jones’. Nor am I saying that you should be a be a follower. But the reason you should have a blog if your competition does is so that you remain competitive.

You see, a blog is one of the most dynamic SEO tools available. Any business with a blog has a distinct advantage over the competition in a number of ways. Here’s how a blog benefits any business that has one:

• Increases search engine saturation – the number of pages you have ranked in the search engines
• Boosts your link popularity – the number of inbound links to your website
• Gives you more content on your website, making your site more crawlable and more often crawled by the search engines

I could go on and on about the benefits of blogging, but what it all boils down to is a blog on your competition’s website gives them an edge in the search engines. If you don’t have one then you are at a disadvantage. If you have a blog and your competition doesn’t then you have the advantage. If you and your competition both have blogs then there is a more level playing field, except that the one who can better manage their blog could have a better advantage.

In business, it’s all about competition. A blog can give you an edge where before you didn’t have one. And that’s why you need a blog today.

Should You Use Free Article Content For Blogs?

Should you use free article content from article directories for your blog?

Before I answer, let me say that I have. I’ve gone to an article directory and used an article for my blog, but I don’t do it every day. And I’d suggest that you not do it every day either.

However, using free article content for your blog is not necessarily a bad idea. You can do it if you think the article will benefit your audience and it adds value to your blog. Don’t do it just because you want content on your blog.

Free articles are there for a reason. The article directories are there for a reason. But don’t just snag an article as filler content. That’s a sure way to ruin your reputation. Instead, only use an article if your audience can’t live without it. The article will not help you with SEO so don’t look for those kinds of benefits. It will help establish you as a person with good judgment if you do it correctly and choose articles that your audience appreciates. If you fail to do that then your audience will abandon you.

The Blog Writing One-Two Punch

I used to call a combination of blog writing and article writing for Internet marketers a powerful one-two punch. While it can still be a powerful marketing puglistic combination, I’ve discovered one that is even more powerful – the blog-Twitter punch.

Savvy Internet marketers have discovered that Twitter is one powerful traffic driving machine. But if you use Twitter for delivering the hard sell, it likely won’t do much for you. Twitterers who are successful at using Twitter to drive traffic to their blog then to their website are doing it by using Twitter as a reputation tool to draw followers to themselves then to drive those followers to their blog and website where they can close the sale. It’s powerful targeted marketing. Have you set up your Twitter account yet?

Why Your Site’s Bounce Rate Is Important For Rankings

Blogs are at a disadvantage in one regard: Traditionally, they have high bounce rates. That’s because readers generally read one post and they’re gone. This is especially true of subscribers.

But that may not matter in the long run even though bounce rates are important for ranking purposes. This isn’t proven, but I believe it’s true. Google has stated publicly that they measure traffic and rank websites based on traffic. But a high traffic site may not necessarily be of any value any more than a low traffic site with a low bounce rate. All things considered, a high traffic site with a high bounce rate may actually be holding a negative, not a positive.

Consider this: A site receives 100,000 daily visitors on a regular basis. 80% of those visitors are unique and 80% of those read one page and they’re gone, never to return. Would you want that? Or would you prefer to have 1,000 daily visitors of which 80% are loyal and return on a regular basis? I think we’d all rather have the latter, right?

Particularly if your site is a blog. You want readers coming back.

A loyal readership is much more valuable than high numbers of people that show up and leave. But I do believe that your site’s bounce rate may be an indicator of user value in the eyes of at least one search engine. Work on creating valuable content and your bounce rate will go down. You might even see a resulting increase in search ranking for some of your keywords.

Is Business Blogging Really That Different?

Is business blogging different from personal blogging? In a certain sense it is, but then in another sense it isn’t. It really depends on your goals as a blogger and as a business.

Most corporate blogs couldn’t get away with personalization. You have to maintain a business image and make sure all of your communications stays on track with your message. Everyone’s got to stick with the talking points.

A small business, however, can make their blog almost as personal as a personal blog. You still have to watch your p’s and q’s, but you can get a little personal. It won’t hurt you. To some extent, a corporate blogger may get away with it if done correctly.

But where a business blog and a personal blog go there separate ways is in the mission of the blog itself. A business blog is making marketing, making money, and increasing the size of your market share. You want your readers to become customers. And to do that you have to write it in such a way that you attract buyer-oriented readers. But you don’t want to push them away with strong sales pitches on every blog post. You want to draw your readers in with valuable content and get them to start a conversation about doing business with you. Is your blog doing that? Why not?