All Entries Tagged With: "ghostwriting"

How Real Estate Blogging Should Be Done In A Down Economy

Real estate and mortgage companies are running scared, stopping their blogs, and cutting back on expenses. I understand. Things got rough out there, didn’t it? But why are you cutting your marketing budget when this is when you should be marketing your business the heaviest?

Did you know you can cut your marketing budget and still keep blogging daily? It’s true. And all you have to do is take a few partners.

Let’s say that you’re used to paying $400 per month for blogging (if you are then you probably have the wrong blog service provider). You’d think that by cutting that $400 expense out of your budget you’ll be saving money. In actuality, it will probably cost you money. How many of your phone calls come from people who read your blog? Have you asked? Chances are, if you are getting calls from your efforts online then your blog is playing a part in that. Why stop blogging?

Instead of cutting the expense out of your budget altogether, try partnering with complimentary businesses. You use a title company, right? Don’t you have a preferred mortgage lender? How about furniture rental companies? Moving companies? Real estate attorneys?

Think about all the relationships you have with complimentary services. Ask those companies if they’d be interested in partnering with you on a blog. If you took three partners (say, a title company, a mortgage broker, and a furniture rental company) and shared the expense for your blog then you’d only be paying $100 per month for the same service.

There are a couple of ways a blog partnership can benefit you as a real estate agent or broker. You can establish a mortgage and real estate blog, or something similar, and divide your posts up evenly between you and your partners, but that’s only partially effective. A second way to handle the blog partnership opportunity is to ask your partners to sponsor your blog. You promise then a banner ad on your blog in a highly visible location and one post per week with in-text links to their website to help them promote their service.

By taking sponsors this way you can stay in control of your blog and help out your business partners by having them pay you for their sponsorship, which you then turn and use to pay for your ghostwriting service. But don’t cut your blog out of your real estate marketing plan completely.

Does Your Business Really Need A Blog?

Blog Content Provider has maintained for a couple of years now that businesses of shapes and sizes would benefit from having a company blog. But is it really necessary? Yes, in today’s dog-eat-dog Internet marketing culture you gain a significant edge by having a company blog.

The following article shares five ways to improve your company blog. Where necessary, we will discuss our own differences with the author, but by and large, Terry Philpott has some good suggestions here:

5 Tips to Improve Your Business Blog

By Terry Philpott

Do you have a business blog that seems to absorb all your efforts and still doesn’t perform up to your expectations? Many folks start a blog with the desire to make money online but often are guilty of misdirecting their efforts leading to frustration and a lack of success.

It is best when starting out to draw up a plan for your blog. It doesn’t have to be elaborate but you want to know where it’s headed. Do you want your blog to serve a specific niche? Should it address certain topics and stay away from others? What keywords will your blog focus on the most? It’s important to know as much about what you want your blog to do as possible so that you can measure the results and keep the blog moving in the right direction.

If this sounds like you let’s consider 5 points you may need to re-focus on to improve your results.

• Learn to give your readers with what it is they want or need. Many bloggers focus primarily making money and neglect the readers. Remember without readers THERE IS NO BLOG. Listen to their comments; in fact encourage them to leave comments. By responding and acting upon their concerns or needs you are creating an environment ‘tailor made’ for them. It was their input that guided the creation of this environment to begin with.

Don’t be afraid to take a reader poll and asking your readers what they want you to address through your blog. Getting your readers to interact with you is an important step in achieving your goals through the blog.

• If you don’t have anything to say in a post then don’t post. Feeling compelled to post every day or even multiple times daily could lessen the quality of your content. Emphasize QUALITY over QUANTITY when posting to your blog. If you post good quality content your readers will be willing to wait a day for it as oppose to reading shallow and pointless ramblings. If this occurs too often you can kiss your readers good-bye and say hello to a decrease in your blog traffic.

At Blog Content Provider, we are advocate of posting every day. The more often you post to your blog, the more likely you are to get the attention of the search engines and get more pages indexed and ranked. That translates into more traffic and readers. If you have trouble coming up with topics for your blog then you probably need to consider hiring a ghostwriter.

• Be careful to not become ‘anchored’ to your blogging duties. A blog is born out of the passion the blogger has for the blogging material itself. By investing an over abundance of time to your blog you run the risk of burning out. Push back from time to time to re-energize. Fresh, invigorating, and insightful blog posts are what the readers want and it would be difficult to deliver this if you’re overworked.

Again, a blog ghostwriter or consultant can help keep you focused and on track.

Business blogs are a fine balance between a blogger passionate about the topics they post on and a desire to make money online. It is important to remember you always need to put your reader’s FIRST. Introducing any aspect of your marketing strategy should be secondary to this.

• Conduct a blog search for sites that offer content related to yours. By visiting these sites you can pick up new ideas not only for your content but also for the blog layout itself. Also don’t be afraid to participate at these blogs by leaving a comment when appropriate. Leaving a comment that is useful, humorous, or insightful will catch the eyes of other participants. With a link back to your site in your signature file you can usually expect an increase in your blog traffic. Once again however your comments should appropriate!

We encourage bloggers to subscribe to a good number of RSS feeds from other blogs in their industry. Our ghostwriters subscribe to the influential blogs in the industries that they cover and will use trackback techniques and other blog writing tactics to draw attention to your blog. If you’re going to write your own blog then you should get familiar with these types of strategies as well.

• In addition to a blog search find forums and other online communities that contain niches within related to your blogging theme. Once again your participation and interaction at these sites can help you boost your blog traffic. This should be part of your overall marketing strategy due to the strength of networking.

Focusing on building relationships and building links is the way to keep your blog balanced between quality content and social media marketing.

Although a business blog is established for the purpose of making money online it is essential to remember the readers come first. They arrived at your site for the content not the merchandise. Your primary responsibility is to supply good quality content whether it’s informative, humorous, or insightful. Always set aside your blog marketing efforts until your readers needs have been met first.

We do not focus on making money. We focus on delivering quality content that will attract readers and deliver that traffic to your website where you will close the sale. It is important to think about your blog as a marketing tool and not a sales vehicle.

T.J Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina. For more information on succeeding in blog marketing and to receive a free guide that demonstrates how to find both profitable markets and products visit: http://blogbrawn.com

Sales is an important part of any business, but our experience has shown that most blogs are better equipped to be marketing tools, not sales tools. That’s why we take a long-term approach to blogging and not a short-term sell it now approach.

For more information on blog ghostwriting services that deliver targeted traffic, visit Blog Content Provider today.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Terry_Philpott

Run A Business? Why Not Start A Local News Blog?

Seth Godin is a genius. He thinks like I do.

A couple of weeks ago he wrote a blog post encouraging real estate agents to start a local newspaper online. Then he went on to say that anyone in any kind of business could do it. Of course, I’ve been saying the same thing for over a year now.

Seth’s idea is a good one. It’s really a community blog. We’ve got clients that run something similar in their communities. You can too. In fact, there are several ways that you can tap into your local market to gain more influence and to attract more customers. Here are a few ideas for you to ponder:

• Live in a tourist town? Start a blog telling tourists about places they can visit in your local area. Don’t just stick to the well known places. Also share ideas about out of the way places that most people don’t know about. A good example of this is the Gettysburg Pennsylvania Blog. Make sure that your readers know that you sponsor the blog and that you provide a link back to your business site.
• Sponsor a local charity blog. Approach a charity that you support and and ask them if they have a blog. If not, offer to sponsor the blog. Dedicate someone to write the blog daily or ask if the charity has someone who can do it. Either way, you can place your business logo on the blog as the sponsor. If neither your business nor the charity have someone who can write the blog, hire a ghostwriter to write it for you. Just make sure everyone in the community knows that your business sponsors the blog.
• Support a local little league or children’s organization. This is great if you have a child that plays baseball, soccer, or is in Cub Scouts. Check to see if the team has a blog. If not, start one and blog about the games during the season. Link back to your business website as the sponsor of the blog.
• Partner with a professional association in your area. If there are several other businesses in your area that target the same, or complimentary, market, start a joint blog and make sure a link back to your website is included in the sidebar or on the About page. Of course, the other partners will get a link too, but this type of blog shows that there is good will among your peers and you could see additional traffic from it (not to mention an inbound link or two)
• Write an activity blog. Join a local social club that is centered around a certain activity (ie racquetball, chess, Friday night card games, movie watching) and write about the group’s activities. Link back to your site as the sponsor

That’s only 5 ideas. I’m sure I could think of more (and so can you). These types of blog are called indirect marketing blogs. They appeal to a certain audience that might be segmented into your overall market. You build good will with your community by sponsoring these types of blogs and that’s great for PR, plus you never know what kind of business might come your way. On some of these blogs you could even sell advertising that pays for the expense and maintenance of the blog or the ghostwriting fees.

Can A Blog Content Service Make You Money?

On the rise today are blog content services that promise to deliver great results for your business. Can such a service make you money or is blogging a do-it-yourself activity?

First, you must decide what you want your blog to do. Are you capable of writing your own blog? Not everyone is. Some people are not confident of their writing skills. You may not have the time to write your blog. Some of Blog Content Provider’s best customers started out writing their blogs every day. Now they hardly touch them.

If you commit yourself to a blog then you should make sure that it is written to every day. This is where a blog content service can very beneficial. You can still write to your blog any time you want. But a blog content service can ensure that you have content on your website every day and that the content is optimized for search engine traffic. This will ensure that you have two of the most important elements on your blog content: optimization and fresh daily content.

What Do You Do If There’s A Problem With Your Blog?

If you have a problem with the way that your blog is being written, what should you do? Well, you could just let it sit and do nothing but why would you do that to your business? Instead, contact Blog Content Provider as soon as you recognize the problem and let us know. A phone call also works. Tell us specifically what your issue is and we’ll see if we can fix it. The most common problems we find with our blog ghostwriting services include:

• Too many keywords being targeted
• Not enough keywords being targeted
• Targeting the wrong keywords
• Broken links
• Substandard writing
• WordPress theme not optimized correctly
• Promoting the wrong pages on your website

While we find that we have few issues with most of our clients, there are times when a particular blogger isn’t working out. If we know of a problem then we can address it quickly and fix it. The ones we don’t know about we can’t fix. So let us know if you have an issue and we’ll be happy to address it. Our goal here to serve your blog ghostwriting needs and provide you with excellent blogging services.

Sage Advice On Company Blogging From Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts has offered advice on commercial blogging in at least a couple of places. While I’m not a disciple of Matt (and I don’t necessarily recommend that anyone else be either), he does offer some good advice in this area. Consider:

• Don’t make hard promises
• Don’t trash talk the competition
• Don’t post when you’re angry
• When just starting out, proceed with caution
• Learn what matters and what doesn’t
• Don’t clam up over mistakes

This is all very good advice. And now, for the elaboration:

No hard promises - The future is bright. We know that. You’re improving, you’ve got great plans, but you can’t predict the future. An earthquake could shatter your building and you could lose all your research. Executives may decide to change midstream. Changes in the business climate could cause your company to modify plans. There’s nothing wrong with making tentative statements like “We plan to …” and “This should …” When in doubt, don’t make hard-and-fast statements that customers, suppliers, and partners will come to rely on. They will make decisions based on what you say publicly.

Keep the trash talk out of it - If your brand can’t stand on its own then you’re in trouble. No need to tear down the competition. But honest and fair comparisons are OK.

Don’t post when you’re angry – Sometimes people take cheap shots or get their facts wrong. If you feel you need to respond publicly to a situation, don’t do it when you’re angry. Let the anger subside. Or write the post you want to write and don’t post it. Let it sit for 24 hours then take another look at it.

Ramp up slowly. The best time, it seems, to make a big mistake is when you first start out. If blogging is new to you, don’t jump in with the controversial stuff first. Go into it slowly and work your way up to the hard stuff. Establish your voice and make sure your communications won’t be misunderstood.

Learn what matters. Some things are so trivial you’ll wonder later why you thought it mattered. Figure it out before you make a fool of yourself.

Allow for mistakes. You’re only human. Even if you’re the CEO of a multi-national corporation, you still have blood and bones. Mistakes happen. Don’t let it get to you. Overcome them gracefully.

Matt Cutts got it right on this one. This is sage advice that is applicable to small company bloggers as well as corporate bloggers. Even ghostwriters like us.

Use Your Blog To Generate Leads

Sometimes it helps to have someone else say it. I recently found a great article on blogging and use your blog to generate leads. This coincides with an earlier blog post I wrote on the same subject.

This is an article by David Hugh that confirms our own philosophy regarding blogging and sales:

How to Use Blogs – Blogging to Generate Leads For Your Home Business – Network Marketing?

By David Hugh

Blogs can be a terrific source for leads for your home business &/or mlm business. Here is how you could do that. First of all, you can add a sign up form on the side bar of your blog to collect the name and email address of your blog visitor. You could offer a free report or ebook or something of value in exchange for their contact information. Maybe your upline or the company you are an mlm distributor for has something for you to give away also.

The key point is you are trying to collect names for further follow-up and you can use your blog as a way to accomplish that. You would need an autoresponder too. This gives you a chance to deliver the free information you promised.

It also gives you the opportunity to follow up and present more useful information. This is called relationship building and is an essential part of building a successful mlm business and converting some of your subscribers into distributors. It has been said a person has to hear about something up to 11 times before they act on it.

So now you have the basics down about how you do it. Let’s go back and talk some more about blogging. You can successfully use your blog to talk about your home business &/or mlm business as well as other topics related to MLM as an industry, internet marketing, and other things related to home business and work at home.

Incorporating a strategy of offering free training and information is a great way to generate leads from your blog and the traffic you get to it. This is a very soft sell approach to giving first and receiving later.

Getting traffic to a blog is for another training article, but suffice it to say that you will need traffic. That means promoting your blog with every free, nearly free, and paid advertising method you can come up with and afford.

Generally setting up a Blogger.com is the fastest and easiest way to get a blog up and running. It is owned by Google and is very user friendly. For a little more comprehensive blogging platform look at setting up a hosting account and using WordPress. It offers many plugins that are very search engine friendly and make adding social bookmarking to your articles easy as well.

Because of the many benefits of blogging you should get one started and use it to generate leads and to build a mailing list for future new distributors as well. In addition, you may want to obtain an Autoresponder to automate your business via email marketing to bring your business to greater heights.

David Hugh is an expert internet marketer and writes on various topics of work from home business & home-based business. To get your secrets & tips for work from home business, visit: http://www.workfromhomessecret.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Hugh

Blogging is a good form of lead generation because it’s about building relationships. You don’t have to make every single blog post a knock-down world-changing event. The idea is to use it to build relationships with your target market and customers. Effective bloggers are consistent with their message and provide a place for people to go to build community and learn about a particular subject they are interested in. If you don’t have the time to write your blog yourself, you can always hire a ghostwriter. But it’s essential that you have a tool that helps you generate leads.

The E-book On Blogging – Get One FREE

Businesses of all shapes and sizes are starting to wake up to blogging. Everyone seems to understand that they need a blog to remain competitive, but few people know how to go about it. If you are thinking about starting a blog for your business, the blog marketing e-book Small Business Blogging Essentials: How To Use Your Blog As A Marketing Tool is for you.

Small Business Blogging Essentials: How To Use Your Blog As A Marketing Tool was written by Blog Content Provider’s operation manager, Allen Taylor, and Caroline Melberg, owner of Melberg Marketing. In this book, the two of them share their insights into blog writing and marketing and include essential knowledge for the small business owner who wants to get down the basics before moving on to the hard stuff.

Allen Taylor has written thousands of blog posts. Prior to working with Blog Content Provider he was stationed in Iraq as a National Guard officer for 11 months and spent 18 months in military uniform as a full-time National Guard officer when his unit was activated for service in August 2004. Prior to that he was a newspaper editor and freelance writer. He’s also got several years of sales experience to back it up.

Caroline Melberg adds her years of experience as a blue chip marketing maven and delights in bringing her Fortune 500 knowledge to bear for small businesses. Their partnership in this book is absolute asset to any small business owner looking to get the most out of 21st century marketing.

Small Business Blogging Essentials: How To Use Your Blog As A Marketing Tool covers such important blogging topics as:

• The different types of blogs available to small business owners
• Whether or not you should write your own blog
• If you use a ghostwriter for your blog, how should you choose the one that is right for you?
• Detailed information about the benefits of blogging
• And you’ll also get necessary information on social bookmarking, directories, SEO, and other useful methods of marketing your blog

Small Business Blogging Essentials: How To Use Your Blog As A Marketing Tool is only $19.95. But if you order a blog from Blog Content Provider then you’ll get a full refund. This is the best starting place for information on blogging for anyone who still doesn’t know what a blog is or is unsure as to what a blog can do for your business.

Blogging For Dollars: Come Join Our Team

Come grow with Blog Content Provider. We are always looking for good blog writers. If you write a personal blog that isn’t making you any money, we will teach you valuable SEO skills that will help you make your personal blog better – and you’ll get paid a guaranteed amount every month for your faithful writing ability. We seek the following skills:

• Ability to communicate clearly in the written word
• SEO knowledge is helpful, but we do train
• Previous writing experience is a plus but not required
• Experience working with WordPress.org will be in your favor
• Must be willing to learn and conform to our standards

This is commercial blogging. Creativity is a plus, but the technical aspects of blogging and SEO are emphasized. If you think you have the skills and want to learn and grow with a fast moving company with plenty of opportunity for growth and advancement, Blog Content Provider just may be for you.