Blogging – What’s it All About? 

Everyone has heard about blogs and bloggers, but how much do you really know about blogging? Are you blogging at all? Do you know how to write an effective blog? Do you know the benefits blogs can bring to your marketing? Do you know the best places to post your blogs, or how often? There is so little known about such a common topic that could really benefit your business.

 Why Should You Blog?

Blogging is a brilliant tool that should definitely be used as part of your online marketing strategy. Not only is it a great avenue for getting people connected to you, it’s also a simple and effective way to direct them to your website. By posting frequently you also raise your online profile, which is great for public awareness of your company and your SEO. One of the most immediately enjoyable things about blogging, though, is getting people to comment and seeing discussions start. This again draws attention to the blog and back to your company, especially if you do it well and consistently.

 What Should You Write About?

There are several elements involved in writing blogs, everywhere from topic and content to tone and style. Blogs are an excellent place to connect with people, so I always keep my causal and personable. I like to cover current events as well as professional and personal topics. By varying what you write about, you are virtually unrestricted with new topics. It also presents a well rounded blog site, and keeps your readers interested. If you only ever blogged about politics, only die hard political fans will remain interested in your posts. And don’t shy away from controversial topics – they are great for starting conversation!

 What Should a Blog Include?

You blog should always include some thoughts by yourself, and usually that involves an opinion or a story – or both. It’s good to get people involved and get comments and discussions going. One of the best ways to do this is to have questions at the end which either invite people to share or provoke them to action in some other way (like asking for advice). Keep a positive or humorous tone about it – nobody wants a downer. So if you have a negative story to share, like a horrible experience, be sure to put a twist on it so people can sympathise without getting depressed!

How Often Should You Post?

Some people only post once a week, other people post several times a day. The once a week people generally tend to be conservative business people who are afraid of flooding their site. The multiple times a day bloggers tend to be social bloggers. I prefer to be more in the middle of the road and post once a day. This keeps SEO up, gives my readers something to look forward to each day, and increases my online profile. You can post as often or as rarely as you like, but I would say a minimum of two to three times per week, and preferably every day. Every once in a while you could do two blogs in a day.

Social networking is all the latest rage in marketing today. And for a good reason, too. It’s an extremely effective tool which, if you use it well, can really help your business. If you aren’t familiar with the term “social networking,” it refers to online communities and groups such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ecademy, MySpace and so on. It’s a place where people share business and social news, incite discussions, increase their contacts and raise their online presence.

By virtue of being online you are able to make thousands of connections in a fraction of the time it would take to meet that many people in person. You are more likely to make contacts across the country and around the world that you could without an online presence. This gives you an even larger network, which means more people are forwarding your details to people who could use your services, etc. This also means that you have a wealth of information at your fingertips for other business services that you could utilise for your company (or your life!).

Another brilliant aspect of social networking is the multiplication of your information. So for example, if I post information about my online business services on Twitter, I have just over 30,000 people following me who will see it. And if even 1% of those people ReTweet me (re-post that information), then I have another 3000 postings about my business for the one I put up. And those 3000 postings are going out to all the people following the person who ReTweeted me. This means that one little post about my business is now reaching 100,000-200,000+ people. This is the power and the magic of social networking. And to answer your suspicions, yes I have gotten not only great contacts but also new business from sites like Twitter and Facebook.

A final and hugely important element of social networking is that it builds your online presence. This is very important to any business as the world today is online. People are more likely to go to the Internet before to look for businesses than they are to go out driving around. Since social networking includes various posts, blogs and listings, it vastly increases your SEO margin and makes you more likely to get noticed out of the sea of businesses. Also, each site can be used to point contacts back to your website to promote your business.

Free ways to drive traffic to your website. An informative video which gives lots of different ideas to get people on to your website – for free!