Where it all begins
Blog is derived from the term “web log”.
It is an online journal with a series of posts written in the style appropriate to the target audience.
According to Blogpulse.com, there are now over 166 million active blogs online. Many of these are authored by nutcases that feel compelled to share their every inane and disturbing thought with the world, but increasingly organisations (both profit and non-profit) are capitalising on blogs as a route to market.
For who
• Everyone
Benefits
Blogging , for me, is where your social media activity should begin. It is the most universally beneficial of all forms of social media, will provide you with a crash course in the fundamentals of internet marketing and impact the way you do just about everything else online. More specifically:
Content is king – You’ve already learnt all about the importance of this in the Content Marketing and SEO sections. Well this all applies to the blog just as it does to the rest of the website. In fact, about 70% of our website traffic comes through our blogs!
Link bait – Blogs are very linkable – they provide regularly updated content and combine information with personality. A cracking combo for attracting links.
Personality – A blog is the perfect vehicle for conveying not only the personality of the business but also the personalities of the individuals that make up that business. If you check out
www.smemarketing.com/blogs you will see how we’ve taken this to the extreme. Each blog has a design, style and tone that is unique to the person behind it.
Expertise – this is kinda boring but soooo important! The process of sitting down, putting finger to keyboard and producing content that you are happy to have the world to see will force you to become more informed, more interesting, more expert!
Other social media platforms – there is an awful lot of empty noise on Twitter, Facebook, etc. If you consistently blog about the exciting, groundbreaking or just plain ridiculous things that are happening in your industry, you will become part of the minority that actually have something to say worth hearing!
Ensure your blog lives on your site – By incorporating your blog into your site rather than using an external platform like tumblr, blogger or WordPress.com, you will not only benefit from the direct traffic but also any links pointing to the blog. To clarify, this means having your blog on mysite.com/blog rather than mysiteblog.com.
Unique – When you blog about top stories, be aware that you are just one of thousands. You need to make yours stand out. Decide on a USP and play to it! If you check out mine
(http://www.smemarketing.com/author/dan) you’ll see mine is a traditional business take on internet marketing as I embrace my technical inadequacies.
Guest blogging – If there is someone in your industry that is considered a bit of a guru, why not ask if they would like to post of your blog? It will flatter their ego, help develop a relationship and make your blog more interesting. Likewise ask other prominent bloggers in your market if they would like you to guest blog on theirs. Just make sure they agree to you sticking a link on the post back to yours for that magic link juice!
Use images and videos – blogs are great for conveying personality but only if they have personality to convey! You need lots of stuff going on - links to external resources, funny images, thought provoking videos, strong Calls To Action*. There are tons of great images and videos (think Flickr and YouTube) in the public domain, so make full use of it!
Keep it real – talk using language the reader can understand and never over-sell yourself. Real experts don’t have to.
Learn very basic HTML – you don’t need to understand HTML to blog but by getting to grips with the 10-20 most basic commands you will be able to really bring your posts to life. Seriously, it’s well worth doing and easier than you think. Have a play with it here - http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_primary.asp
Speed – When something big is going on in your industry, you need to get your piece of the action while it’s hot. The days where our blogs have hit peak traffic has been when we’ve spotted an exciting development in internet marketing and thrown a blog post up within minutes to cater for the thousands of people that will be making related searches that day.
Internal linking –when you blog you want to ensure there are links in your post that encourage people to navigate to other pages on your site so they don’t just bounce back to the SERPs!
Measure, measure, measure – as with your website, you need to keep an eye on your Google Analytics. How many new visitors are you getting each day? Which posts are attracting the most traffic? Why might that be and can you write more information around the subject? What is the bounce rate and what can you do to reduce it?
Comments – when you first start it is probably best to disable the comments functionality, as blogs with comment boxes but without comments look a little sad. However, once your traffic is more respectable then definitely allow them. Just make sure you always respond. For quiet patches why not encourage friends and family to read your blog and comment. People hate being the first so this can really help build momentum.
Write title tags with searchers in mind – the single most important factor in determining the ability of your post to generate traffic from the Search Engines will be its title, so think about what your target audience is likely to be searching!
Each post you write may only get an average of 10 visitors a month, but if you write one a week then in one year your blog content will be bringing an additional (thinks for a moment) 520 unique visitors every month! Get a couple of colleagues on the case too and within a couple of years you’re going to have more traffic than you know what to do with!!
Blogging Actions
Blog is derived from the term “web log”.
It is an online journal with a series of posts written in the style appropriate to the target audience.
According to Blogpulse.com, there are now over 166 million active blogs online. Many of these are authored by nutcases that feel compelled to share their every inane and disturbing thought with the world, but increasingly organisations (both profit and non-profit) are capitalising on blogs as a route to market.
For who
• Everyone
Benefits
Blogging , for me, is where your social media activity should begin. It is the most universally beneficial of all forms of social media, will provide you with a crash course in the fundamentals of internet marketing and impact the way you do just about everything else online. More specifically:
Content is king – You’ve already learnt all about the importance of this in the Content Marketing and SEO sections. Well this all applies to the blog just as it does to the rest of the website. In fact, about 70% of our website traffic comes through our blogs!
Link bait – Blogs are very linkable – they provide regularly updated content and combine information with personality. A cracking combo for attracting links.
Personality – A blog is the perfect vehicle for conveying not only the personality of the business but also the personalities of the individuals that make up that business. If you check out
www.smemarketing.com/blogs you will see how we’ve taken this to the extreme. Each blog has a design, style and tone that is unique to the person behind it.
Expertise – this is kinda boring but soooo important! The process of sitting down, putting finger to keyboard and producing content that you are happy to have the world to see will force you to become more informed, more interesting, more expert!
Other social media platforms – there is an awful lot of empty noise on Twitter, Facebook, etc. If you consistently blog about the exciting, groundbreaking or just plain ridiculous things that are happening in your industry, you will become part of the minority that actually have something to say worth hearing!
WordPress blogs
WordPress is the most popular blogging software online (in addition to also accounting for 14% of all websites!) and for good reason. If you are getting started with your first WordPress blog then visit http://wordpress.org/download/ where you can find a full installation guide that will walk you through the process. Have a crack in order to familiarise yourself with the basics but at some point you’ll probably have to pass it over to your web developer/designer to give it a polished and professional look.Tip top tips for blogging
Sorry, there are far too many pointers here, I know. We just really love our blogging!Ensure your blog lives on your site – By incorporating your blog into your site rather than using an external platform like tumblr, blogger or WordPress.com, you will not only benefit from the direct traffic but also any links pointing to the blog. To clarify, this means having your blog on mysite.com/blog rather than mysiteblog.com.
Unique – When you blog about top stories, be aware that you are just one of thousands. You need to make yours stand out. Decide on a USP and play to it! If you check out mine
(http://www.smemarketing.com/author/dan) you’ll see mine is a traditional business take on internet marketing as I embrace my technical inadequacies.
Guest blogging – If there is someone in your industry that is considered a bit of a guru, why not ask if they would like to post of your blog? It will flatter their ego, help develop a relationship and make your blog more interesting. Likewise ask other prominent bloggers in your market if they would like you to guest blog on theirs. Just make sure they agree to you sticking a link on the post back to yours for that magic link juice!
Use images and videos – blogs are great for conveying personality but only if they have personality to convey! You need lots of stuff going on - links to external resources, funny images, thought provoking videos, strong Calls To Action*. There are tons of great images and videos (think Flickr and YouTube) in the public domain, so make full use of it!
Keep it real – talk using language the reader can understand and never over-sell yourself. Real experts don’t have to.
Learn very basic HTML – you don’t need to understand HTML to blog but by getting to grips with the 10-20 most basic commands you will be able to really bring your posts to life. Seriously, it’s well worth doing and easier than you think. Have a play with it here - http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_primary.asp
Speed – When something big is going on in your industry, you need to get your piece of the action while it’s hot. The days where our blogs have hit peak traffic has been when we’ve spotted an exciting development in internet marketing and thrown a blog post up within minutes to cater for the thousands of people that will be making related searches that day.
Internal linking –when you blog you want to ensure there are links in your post that encourage people to navigate to other pages on your site so they don’t just bounce back to the SERPs!
Measure, measure, measure – as with your website, you need to keep an eye on your Google Analytics. How many new visitors are you getting each day? Which posts are attracting the most traffic? Why might that be and can you write more information around the subject? What is the bounce rate and what can you do to reduce it?
Comments – when you first start it is probably best to disable the comments functionality, as blogs with comment boxes but without comments look a little sad. However, once your traffic is more respectable then definitely allow them. Just make sure you always respond. For quiet patches why not encourage friends and family to read your blog and comment. People hate being the first so this can really help build momentum.
Write title tags with searchers in mind – the single most important factor in determining the ability of your post to generate traffic from the Search Engines will be its title, so think about what your target audience is likely to be searching!
Each post you write may only get an average of 10 visitors a month, but if you write one a week then in one year your blog content will be bringing an additional (thinks for a moment) 520 unique visitors every month! Get a couple of colleagues on the case too and within a couple of years you’re going to have more traffic than you know what to do with!!
Blogging Actions
-
Set up a WordPress blog and incorporate it into your website. You can either have a blog specific style or keep it consistent with
the rest of the site.
-
Use the great instructional videos at WordPress TV to help you get to grips with the basics - http://wordpress.tv/category/how-to/
-
Be realistic with how often you think you will blog because this is all about momentum. If you go crazy for two months and then slow right down (as
most do) it will look like you’ve lost interest. And if you’re not interested then why should anyone else be?! If you think you can do it once a
week, commit to once a fortnight and then never miss a date.
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