Using A Blog To Improve Your Business
Using Blog’s To Improve Your Business
Greetings everyone and welcome to this weeks newsletter. This week I am going to take a look at “Blog’s†and how they can help you in more ways than you can possibly imagine!
Blog’s were originally created as “Web Logs†– a place where anyone could post an online journal of their day-to-day life. People could then read the blog and leave a comment for the author to see and respond to.
Whilst Blog’s are still used for keeping online journals, they have also opened up a lot of possibilities for the online marketing community. More and more you will see online marketers using Blog`s, here are a few examples of what blog`s could be used for:
– Build up anticipation for a new product
– Get customer feedback on ideas before they go live
– Interact with customers using the comments section
– Use it as a central hub that links to the rest of their sites
I personally use this blog for all of the above and then some! You will probably have realized by now that I post a brand new newsletter to this blog every single week. I am often asked “Why do you direct me to your blog, why not just send us the newsletter via email?â€
Well there are a number of reasons for this and I am going to tell you about some of them in this article!
1. Every time I direct you to this blog I generate some earnings from Google adsense and other affiliate links. You will be able to see the adsense ads on the right of the page. I could also include some adsense blocks in each post that I make to increase my earnings even more, but that could be seen as adsense overkill 😉
2. Comments! This is the most important part of any blog; a blog can live or die by its comments sections. When reading any article, you get the chance to leave a comment for the author, and other readers to view. If a reader see’s someone else leave a comment that they agree or disagree with then they can respond to that comment with their own opinion. This then creates your own little “Mini community†within that blog; it’s like having a forum but without all of the Spam! The comments are also great for me (why do you think blog owners always ask you to leave a comment) as it brings self-updating content to the site. Every time a search engine visits your page and see’s a new comment, it is classed as brand new content and helps boost the chances of my site getting seen in search engine searches.
3. It’s easy! Running a blog is dead simple, it’s a lot easier for me to post my newsletters on a blog, rather than setting up a new site and publishing to it every week. Blog’s allow anyone to create their own pages, categories, links etc in minutes using the built in WYSIWYG editors. Adding a new post is as simple as pasting your text into a box and hitting the publish button.
Those are three of the main advantages of blog`s for me, there are many more but unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time to go over them in more detail. So here’s a quick brainstorm that will show you some of the benefits of your own blog:
– Easy to use
– Create own little community
– Display adverts with ease
– Great for search engines if updated regularly
– Use RSS feeds to add unique content to your other sites
– Central hub to link off to your other sites
– Central point of contact for your customers
– Get feedback from customers
– FREE!!
– A central source of valuable information (if using to publish newsletters)
– Visitors get a chance to plug their site in the comments section – triggers the “WIIFM†(what’s in it for me) factor
– No web design knowledge needed, blog`s use WYSIWYG editors
– Social proof, use comments to show readers what other people are thinking – confirm or question own beliefs
– Set up in minutes
– Post as little or as often as you like, when you like
– Fully customisable
As you can see that’s a very big list already and I’m sure there are other points that I have missed!
That’s about it for this week’s newsletter; I’ll put a few resources at the bottom of the page that will help you create your own blog. As always do feel free to leave me a comment, it will help me and it’s the easiest way I know of to get a free back link to your website!
Thanks,
Dan
Blog Resources:
WordPress
The engine behind my blog. WordPress is a free open source script that allows you to create and manage your own blog. WordPress can be installed in just a few seconds, or you may be able to install WordPress in your hosting control panel. (This depends on your host – contact them for more info)
Blogger
Very similar to wordpress but allows you to run your blog on their servers rather than your own. There is also an option to run your own-hosted version of Blogger but if you are looking to get a blog set up quickly the hosted version is free and could be good for you.
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A point that I was supposed to eleborate upon was using the Blogs RSS feed to generate self updating content for your other sites. I will hopefully look at this, along with RSS in more detail in my next newsletter.
Cheers,
Dan
Excellent advice as usual dan, just wish I could think of something to put in a blog
You could start to put your tips on a blog instead of publishing to your site (password protect the directory if it’s for paying customers only). Post your tips every day, then members could comment on the horses, price, profit…..loss etc. Maybe even submit some of their own tips. 🙂
Very good advice. Started a blog, 2 actaully in Jan 2007. It is slow going & hard work (know how to pick the subjects!!! lol), but they are both getting hits, & making a bit of money. Best thing I ever did!!