All Entries Tagged With: "marketing"

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.

Should You Join The Blogosphere?

There are two types of blogs. The blogosphere blog and the commercial blog. Blogosphere blogs get the most attention, but make the least amount of money. There are, of course, the superstar blogs that fit into the blogosphere category – Problogger, ArsTechnica, Dosh Dosh … I could go on naming many more. But the great bulk of blogs that fall into the blogosphere category don’t make a dime. That doesn’t mean they’re bad blogs; they just aren’t making any money.

You know a blogosphere blog when you see one. They love to link out. The idea is to be “connected” to the broader web. To converse with other blog owners. To share. Touchy-feely, you know.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but not every blog has to be a blogosphere blog. Commercial blogs are different.

What Is A Commercial Blog?

A commercial blog’s primary purpose is to promote a business. It can be on the business’s website or on another website and link often to the business site it promotes. Either way is fine. But a commercial blog exists primarily as a promotional tool.

There are two types of commercial blogs: The strictly promotional blog and the social blog. The promotional blog is there just as a promotional tool. Nothing fancy. The social blog is a bit more than a simple promotional tool. It is more versatile and flexible. In many respects it resembles the blogosphere blog. The primary difference is that it’s not an engagement blog in the same manner than a blogosphere blog is; again, the social aspect of the blog is designed to be self promotional while providing maximum user benefit.

Which blog is right for you is largely determined by your goals. You can use any of the blogs for specific purposes related to marketing your business. But you always want to use your blog to drive traffic to certain parts of your website so that you can drive that visitor into your sales funnel. The goal of a commercial blog is always to gain a new customer.

Procrastination Kill A Business Blog

I love testimonials. While the following comment isn’t a direct testimonial for Blog Content Provider, it is a testimony to the power of a good business blog.

(Source) Procrastination kills business and success. I have wanted to start Prevential.com for more than 2 years and for some reason I waited. Now instead of competing with 200 business blogs, I’m competing with 2,000,000. I’m fighting a war with a pellet gun and it is my own fault for waiting. So, don’t make the same mistake as me.

Do you feel like you’re fighting a war with a pellet gun? You don’t have to. And if you’ve been thinking about starting a blog for marketing your business, the time is now. Don’t let anything be your excuse. The economy isn’t going to destroy your business, but not investing in your future right now may.

I believe a blog is one of the most powerful business marketing tools ever. To learn more about how you can make blogging work for you, consult with a blogging pro.

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.