Archive for About Blogs

Better Business Blogs:
Correct Those Broken Links

business-blogsAre you keeping your business blog fresh? If you’re like me, and you’ve been blogging for a number of years, chances are some of your links may no longer work. This guest post, from Susan Boggs, offers tips for successful bloggers and blogs on how to find and correct broken links.

In a perfect world, we would always know exactly what the Big Search Engines want from us and our business blogs, always and without a doubt. We would engrave them into stone and follow them judiciously. Our blogs would rank high for our keywords, and life would be wonderful.

Ah, yes, nirvana.

Unfortunately, in this world we call the Internet, blogging is not always quite that simple. The good news?

Life is still wonderful. Read More→

Starting a New Blog?
6 Things a Business Blog Must Have

Are you starting a new blog? What should you include in your blog if you want to use it to attract clients?

I’ve been talking about how to start a blog in my recent series of posts. Your next step is to look at your design – content is king, but if your design stinks, visitors won’t get past the banner. They won’t stay, they won’t get to know you and they won’t subscribe to your blog. Read More→

How Do You Choose a Blog Platform?

WPPlatformChoiceHow do you choose a blog platform

In my last post, How to Start a Blog: 7 Steps BEFORE You Blog, I shared important information you want to consider before your first post, including signing up for a trial blog.

With so many great blog platforms available, including WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Ghost, Squarespace, Wix, Typepad, Weebly, etc., how do you know which is best for you?  This guest post, by Suzanne Bird-Harris, takes a look at the differences between two of the most popular blogging platforms to help you identify what factors to consider when choosing a platform.   Read More→

How to Start a Blog: 7 Steps BEFORE You Blog

Content-Marketing-with-Blogs-7-StepsHow do I start a blog

I hear it all the time:  smart professionals, who are great at what they do, don’t know how to start a business blog, and probably wouldn’t have time to blog even if they did start one.

Last fall Kris and I spent some time interviewing clients. We really wanted to know how we could best be of service.

What we learned is that while business continues to improve for our clients, and many are having tremendous success with their blogs, others had let their blog lag.  Sure, they had started blogging with great gusto – they put in a lot of time – but somewhere along the line got stuck, and never went back.

I hope this never happens to you. But if it does, or if you are considering starting a blog, please allow me to share this story…

Several years ago, I took up needle work, you know, cross-stitching designs on canvas with yarn. One day as I was completing a big canvas, I was listening to a motivational speaker.

All of a sudden, I heard these words:

Most people just start doing things without reading the instruction manual.”

Loud and clear. I looked down at my needle work and like a shock, it hit me. I’d been doing them all backwards.

Sure enough, a quick reference back to the user manual clearly showed that I was inserting the needle backwards, and not producing the right effect. I put down my work and never went back to that hobby ever again.

My point is that I see many professionals who are pretty smart at what they do, but they start blogging without reading any instructions at all. Later, when they get stuck, they complain about not having “enough time” to blog.

Read More→

5 Ways Blog Analytics Improve
Your Business Blog

Blog Analytics

How do you use your blog analytics? There are many easy-to-use blogging analytics tools out there, but the really successful bloggers know their results and tailor their blogs accordingly.

This is the fifth element in the CAST system for effective blog content:

Content (compelling)
Assets (free)
Social Media
Track

Here are the top five practices in business blog tracking, using analytic tools, and what to do to improve the performance of your blog so that you and your business blog get found, get known and get clients. Read More→

3 Reasons Why SEO and Content
Marketing Fit Together

SEO-and-Content-MarketingA Note from Patsi: This week’s guest post is about SEO and content marketing and it’s really important. Why? Because if you write your own blog, you may think that quality content is all you need to get found online and attract clients. It’s not.

I don’t care how good your writing is or how important you are as a thought leader in your field. Your blog needs good Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. But don’t let that scare you. Here’s what you need to know, from guest author Derek Iwasiuk.

For a long time, search engine optimization was all about tricks and tactics. People used to do anything as long as their sites rank at the top and they get the much needed traffic. Some of the techniques that website owners used to get to the top were totally unethical causing outcries from various quarters. This, however, has completely changed thanks to the updates made to the major search engines. If you inquire from any SEO company, they will tell you that nowadays, it is all about content marketing. Here are some of the reasons why you should invest in lots of content so as to rank high in search results.

  1. Content marketing fulfills SEO’s demands

On its part, SEO issues demands. There are lots of things that you need in order to succeed in search engine optimization. Be it links or any other, you need to make sure that you use the ones that will actually make your site to rank high. Content marketing on the other hand fulfills those demands. It is what you use to make sure that there is enough for professional SEO services. It therefore goes without saying that at the end of the day, the two are just one. Read More→

How a Product Funnel
Makes Blogging Profitable

Product-FunnelBuilding a product funnel on your blog is key to making all your hard work profitable.

As I explained in my previous post, a great product funnel provides your readers with an opportunity to get to know you, like you and trust you. You make compelling offers to your readers that they can receive from free to fee:

  • Some information for free, immediate download, no strings
  • Some information for an email address, which will prove you can be trusted to deliver good stuff and not abuse their email
  • Some valuable information worth paying for, even if it’s only a few dollars
  • Excellent products and services that deliver much more than expected, worth the price.

Read More→

Build a Product Funnel on Your Blog:
Make Your Content Marketing Profitable

FunnelAre you building a product funnel on your blog?

In my recent blog posts, I’ve been talking about ways to earn money blogging using two different methods:

  1. Sell products directly through your blog (or website)
  2. Sell products or services because of your blog, or indirectly

These are two key elements of a product funnel – a key internet marketing strategy that will help ensure that you are not leaving money on the table or missing opportunities to solidify the relationships your hard-earned content marketing efforts are creating. Read More→

How to Write Blog Posts: Awesome Graphic

Do you know how to write blog posts so that they actually get read? Some people think blogging is easy: Write it and it will be read. If you’ve ever written a blog post, you know that’s not true, and it’s hard to craft a post people will read. This infographic was created for Salesforce Canada and it says it all; it will help you put together a share-worthy post.

Click To Enlarge

Anatomy of a Blog Post

Via Salesforce

How to Make Money Blogging

Do you know how to make money blogging? Let me ask you this: Are you earning money because of your blog?  If so, your blog is a means of indirect sales.

As I talked about in my last post, there are two different methods you can earn money blogging:

  1. Directly
  2. Indirectly

How to Make Money Indirectly from a Business Blog

Read More→