Archive for blog marketing – Page 2

How to Become a #1 Expert with a Blog

Dr.CharlesParkerAre you #1? If you’re a doctor, lawyer, author, or consultant, you’d like your clients to believe they’ve come to the best professional around. It may be hard to make that claim. Unless, of course, you can stake out a niche online, and show that you’re a number one expert in your field with a blog.

Dr. Charles Parker, for example, is an excellent psychiatrist and certainly not the only one with years of experience treating people with ADHD – attention deficit disorders. But he is #1 in health care blogs for that specialty, according to ShareCare, a key site that ranks health care providers and links them up with people in need.

Dr. Parker’s blog is at CorePsych. I know him personally because I helped him get started blogging. I didn’t teach him everything, but I remember the day he called me from his office in Virginia, with questions. That initial phone call stands out because I was still in a fog, getting coffee at 5 a.m. in San Diego. He was on ET, of course, and ready to go. I don’t usually pick up the phone that early, but that day I did. Read More→

Your Business Blog: Should You Make Money with Sponsored Posts?

For-Hire-b y-Steve-Bremner-istockWant to make money with your business blog? There are a lot of different ways to use your blog to make money. One of the most common is soliciting blog sponsors who pay a set dollar amount monthly or yearly to write sponsored posts.

A sponsored blog post can be a paid opportunity for a guest author; sometimes a company will sponsor a post written by the blog author about their product or service. Your business blog can use these sponsored posts to provide a valuable service to your readers.

These sponsored blog posts must be on a topic that would be interesting to your blog’s reader base. The blog publisher can negotiate how much to charge for sponsored posts. And sometimes, the post is published free, but the blog owner gets a commission for any referral sales.

Here are some pros and cons when it comes to having sponsored blog posts on your business blog –

Pros:

  • Money! Of course, allowing sponsored posts or writing them yourself will generate revenue for your blog. You can set the cost per post for your blog, negotiated with the companies that you would like to have sponsor posts.
  • If you choose companies that you honestly think your readers would be interested in, you can create great relationships and introduce your readers to good companies that they really find beneficial.
  • Sponsored posts can add some variety to your blog posts and bring new readers. Bringing in new topics that are still related to your typical blog content can draw in people who might not ordinarily find your blog.

Cons: Read More→

Better Business Blogging: 7 Lessons from Liberace

LiberaceLiberace was well-known for his flamboyant lifestyle both on and off stage. During the 1950s-1970s he was the highest paid entertainer in the world. That’s pretty amazing considering he was a pianist. His career spanned five decades. I just saw the HBO film “Behind the Candelabra,” with an amazing performance by Michael Douglas in the starring role, with Matt Damon as his lover. (And, yes, these two actors do kiss in the movie!)

Why do you think Liberace was so popular? I loved the movie, and found myself strangely attracted to this character. I remember my stepmother gushing over Liberace and wondering why. I think it’s because we love drama, and we love it when people are excessive.

What can we learn from Liberace about better business blogging? Although he was a master at expressing himself through music, Las Vegas shows, records, TV, and concerts, he didn’t write. Had the Internet been around, however, he would have skillfully used it in the same way he employed public relations expertise to deny his homosexuality and project “family values.” Remember, this was a time where no one was openly gay.

How can you make your business blog a little more flamboyant or sexy? Here’s how you can take away some of Liberace’s style and wisdom and apply it to your business blog:

  1. Add color: Liberace began his career as a classical pianist. At the time, everyone wore black tuxedos and played black pianos. He saw that as boring. So he started wearing a lot of white… then he added glitter… and then he took costumes to an extreme and added furs. Does your business blog “wear black?” Dress it up appropriately, without being gawkish. Use compelling photos and images. Read More→

Business Blogging: How to Optimize Older Posts

Link-to-older-postsClearly, one of the most important things that you can do when it comes to a business blog is to share new content. But what about those older blog posts that are hanging out on your blog somewhere?

Why not make good use of older content? Make it easy for your blog readers to learn more about your solutions to their problems. This requires that you do more than just write an article from the heart. Yes, writing with passion is great, but as long as you’ve got readers on your blog, lead them to older posts.

For business blogging, you’ll need to become keyword-savvy, and use a plugin or two will help make it easy and automatic.

The screen-capture image at the top is a sample from Chip Scholz’ LeaderSnips blog showing how at the end of each post you can provide suggestions for related posts. It uses the YARPP plugin.

Business blogs can be tricky creatures. While it seems like blogging should be pretty straightforward, there are a lot of nuances to building a successful business blog that your potential clients can actually find. Read More→

Top 4 SEO Tips for Small Business Blogs on a Shoestring Budget

Shoestring-Budget-SEOThe Search Engine Optimization landscape has changed dramatically over the last couple of years. One of the side-effects of these changes has been the fact that many low-cost SEO tactics have lost their effectiveness and power.

Consequently, a lot of small businesses and professionals today are struggling to achieve their SEO goals on a restricted budget. After all, for small companies, hiring an expensive agency is often not feasible. Having said that, there are still a lot of smart yet pocket-friendly SEO tips that businesses can implement on a shoestring budget.

Here are 4 top SEO tips for small businesses on a shoestring budget:

Contribute to High Authority Blogs in Your Niche

Aim your energies at quality blogs. This will help you to develop referral traffic, cultivate thought leadership, and garner authoritative and quality links. Of course, you’ll only be able to do that if you generate remarkable content that offers actionable information.Here are a few strategies that can help you identify quality blogs:

a) Create an account on platforms like myblogguest, etc. These platforms create a meeting point for bloggers and blog owners looking for guest blogs, so you can easily identify quality opportunities.

b) Download the Google Chrome PR plugin. It will let you see the PageRank of every blog you visit instantly. While PR is not the sole indicator of a blog’s quality, PR 2+ blogs that show regular updates and host quality posts, can be good prospects.

c) Run a Google search for potential high authority blogs by using the niche areas you want to blog about with the keyword “guest blogs”. For example, let’s you want to write posts about e-cigarettes, your search query could be “E-cigarette guest blogs”, “quit smoking guest blogs”, etc.

Publish Quality Content on Blogs by Content Curating and Accumulating Content

Content curation is the act of collecting, discovering and offering digital content that surrounds some specific subject matter.Content is the most effective SEO tool there can be, if used right. But, the major problem that a large number of business owners or bloggers face is the lack of quality blog content. Luckily, there are gazillion resources available that can be used to generate interesting content ideas.That’s where content curation comes in. Simply put, content curation involves:

a) Researching and putting together top blogs on a subject.

b) Quoting important paragraphs from the blogs, and giving them proper citations and credit.

c) Adding your own spin, or interpretation to what’s already been published.

Conduct Competitive Link Analysis Using Free Tools

One of the things that helps your website rank higher is the number of links from other reliable and reputable website that link back to your website. There are two ways you can do this, either get someone to do it for you or do it on your own.

Look for websites that are linking back to your competitor’s website. You may use Open Site Explorer, to do this. With OSE’s free services, you may not be able to get all the data, but you’ll still be able to gather information to get started with your own link building activities.If you can stretch your budget a little, you may as well opt for paid membership for detailed information about your competitors link-building activities. There are lot’s of tools like, SEOSpyGlass, Majestic SEO, etc, that you can use.

Use External Proficiency and Expertise Tactically

Before engaging in a complete retainer based relationship with an agency, seek out the following kind of arrangements:

a) Monthly consultancy: Some SEO agencies or consultants do sell hourly consultations, which is a very smart way to garner some useful insights for a lesser fee.

b) DIY SEO audits: You may use free tools like Seoptimer, WooRank, Goingup, etc to do a review/audit for your website, so that you can identify the areas that need improvement. Then hire contractors and assign them specific tasks suggested by the tool, and implement the changes that require minimal technical expertise in-house.

c) Use free SEO tools to keep track of your performance: Free versions of tools like Ranking Checker by SEOmoz.com, SEO Analyzer by Sitening.com or SEO for Firefox by SEOBook.com, can all be of great help.

When it comes to budgeting, you have to make a choice between investing time or money. For small businesses, these cost-effective SEO tips make a lot of sense, however, if you adopt them you have to be prepared for some time investment, especially if you plan to implement all of them in-house. Good Luck!

Emma-Julie Fox writes for Pitstop Media Inc, a Vancouver company that provides SEO services to businesses across North America. If you would like to invite the author to write on your blog too please contact www.pitstopmedia.com.

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Better Blog Writing: Attract Clients,
Make Sure Your Posts Get Read!

Blog-Attraction-NetworksYou want to Engage your Blog Readers and encourage them to subscribe to your blog and become regular visitors. Ideally, you want to attract a large number of hungry customers who are interested in partaking of this written food for the soul, but how can you rise above the constant online buzz to attract attention to your blog post?

The Internet may be constantly chirping with activity, but that doesn’t mean that all content is worthy of users’ attention in the same manner. According to Neilson.com, there were 181 million blogs around the world at the end of 2011. (In 2006, there were 36 million in existence.)

Don’t let these numbers put you off; it doesn’t mean that all of these blogs are in your niche or that they are producing the same quality content that you are putting out in the blogosphere. If you’re in business, you already know you have competition and that you need to focus on what you offer that is better or different if you are going to attract a customer’s attention or find the best talent.

Your first priority should be to write a high-quality blog content that will help your readers in some way.

First, capture a reader’s interest with a compelling headline. One technique is to appeal to the reader’s fear that they may miss out on something important by failing to read your post. Use compelling words to effectively to draw in your audience by giving them a taste of what your post will be about, and make sure that you deliver the content as promised. Read More→

When Should You Start a New Business Blog?

Blog-Social-Media-by-StuartMilesWhen should you start a new business blog?

Let’s face it, publishing frequently on a business blog is time consuming. Depending on how swift your writing and blogging skills are, it can take you 1-2 hours to publish a post of 350-500 words, including the writing, editing, linking, adding an image, and updating social sites. And you’ll need to do that two times a week, or more.

I usually advise my clients that a blog for your business should focus on communicating the solutions to the problems you solve. That’s pretty clear and direct. While a business may have many products and service offerings, and maybe several different buyer personas, it generally provides unique solutions to customers’ problems. Read More→

Is Your Business Blog Sexy?
4 Simple Ways to Get More Blog Readers

Like-Love-by-stuart-milesWhen it comes to business blogging, many professionals forget that there is more to it than getting information out on the page. The appeal of business blogs and sites has a lot to do with readers’ impressions.

How can you make your business blog visually appealing, even sexy? Blog formatting is key; in fact, it makes the difference between readers scanning and leaving, and staying to read. Here are four simple ways you can jazz up your site and get more blog readers:

  1. Add images –I have run across many business blogs that are nothing but pages and pages of text. While the information they provide may be valuable, it’s not very visually appealing. Try to add images to your blog posts to increase the appeal of your posts. Smaller images can easily be found for free on sites like Freedigitalphotos.com or you can pay a small amount for access to larger sized stock photos. By providing your blog post with a relevant image you can increase the number of readers and also grab the image search queries for your blog post topic. Read More→

Oscar Wilde: Advice on Better Blogging

OscarWildeYou know that your blog is a key part of your search strategy, but do you know how to get the most out of it?  What would Oscar Wilde advise for better blogging?

Thousands of blog guides exist, but do they really help or just cloud the issue further?

This is what you need to know when it comes writing to a better blog, one that’s really readable.

  • There’s no such thing as ‘blog style.’ However, the easier it is to read the better. Break it up, make it easy for the reader. That means short, sharp paragraphs and the same with sentences. If a paragraph is more than five lines, you’ve gone too far.
  • People don’t want to read blogs. At least, not ones that have no value. Put your point across early on, and they’ll read the rest of it.
  • The key to achieving a better blog, whether you measure that by how many people read it, share it on social media, or comment on it, is to make everything as clear and as simple as possible.

Cut It Out

Oscar Wilde once said that you should never use a long word if there is a short one available that means the same thing. Read More→

Tips for Better Blog Outreach and Blog Marketing

helpfultipsHow can you make the most of your blog marketing and outreach? Here are some helpful tips so that your business blog attracts more readers, and you get found, get known, and get clients.

Small business owners know that a well-formulated blog with consistently fresh content can improve brand image, customer interaction and overall revenue. Blogs are so powerful, in fact, that their Web pages are prime real estate for outside companies that are hoping to improve page rank of their own.

In fact, a key tactic for SEO ranking is the practice of guest blogging with links back to the author’s site.

Back linking programs are becoming a standard operation of business blogs in all industries and of all sizes. The pro for blog owners is quality content written by someone else. The obvious benefit to outside companies is the ability to add a link to increase their own online credibility.

But such practices are not without peril. If you are thinking about allowing other writers in your blogging space, but unsure of how to maintain creative control and authority, follow these steps for the best outcomes in back linking and blogger outreach programs:

  • Agree to terms upfront. You put a lot of time and effort into ensuring that your blog accurately represents you and your brand image. Though an outside company may have good intentions, it does not have your vision or know your blogging goals. Take the time to explain who your audience is, what types of posts do well with readers and what topics are completely off limits. If your blog is about B2B technology, make sure outside bloggers do not send you posts about B2C topics. Come up with a regular deadline and a workflow. Read More→