How To Use Your Blog to Market Your Business

Have you just started blogging? Or have you been blogging for a while? As you may already know, a blog is an excellent tool to let the world know about your business or your product, to connect with potential customers and promote your expertise. But how can you maximize your blog's impact? Here are five tips to do just that:

- Blog Consistently. Many business owners get excited about blogging, post 3-6 times, and then promptly forget about the blog. I have seen many blogs that were started a year or two ago, have a grand total of five posts, and haven't been updated since sometime last year.

To get the desired effect (search engine and human traffic), you need to update your blog on a regular basis. Search engines love new content and keep coming back to index it. Potential customers also like new content; it's what keeps them coming back to read your blog.

- Use Your Blog For Branding. Your blog is an extension of your business, so make your blog have a look and feel that mirrors that of your business web site.

If your blog is hosted on the same domain as your web site, you should match the look and feel of your web site exactly. This will be more difficult to achieve if a third party provider hosts your blog. However, you should still aim to present the same brand image.

- Use Search Engine Optimization To Optimize Each Blog Post. The purpose of your blog is to get people who are in your target market to read your posts and enter your sphere of influence. Traffic from search engines does not cost any money, and it is a great way to get potential customers to your blog.

Treat each one of your blog posts as a separate file to be optimized for search engines. Use a keyword research tool to find phrases that are related to the main subject of the post, and weave them into the content of the post.

- Have A Special Offer On Your Blog. Do you offer a free special report? Do you offer a mini course as a bonus for new newsletter subscribers? Add the offer to your blog. This will transform people from casual surfers who just happened to find your blog to newsletter subscribers.

- Share Information About Your Events, Products and Seminars. You might think that everyone has already heard about your upcoming teleclass on life and work balance or your e-book about achieving financial success. Not so! The person reading your blog might be hearing about you for the very first time, so they have no idea about your teleseminars or products unless you specifically tell them.

Avoid overselling, as it will dramatically reduce the number of your blog readers. Do, however, let your blog readers know about your seminars and products. If you don't tell them, nobody will.

A blog is an excellent tool to generate additional web site traffic, get new newsletter subscribers and sell more products. Use your blog to introduce potential customers to your business.

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Be Smart With Your Blogging And Get Free Traffic

Once you really start scaling out your new internet marketing empire, one of the first major obstacles you are going to have to cross is what I refer to as the "Content Crisis". Everyone that I know, without fail who has built a successful series of small niche sites has at one time or another had to stretch a bit to add new, informative and entertaining bit of information to their website or blog. We all just hit a wall - it's really that simple. If you cover a particular topic thirteen ways from Wednesday - at some point, topic burnout sets in. Thankfully, the very basic dynamic nature of the web is your best friend, and you can set your site up to simply piggyback off of others within your niche when it gets a little bit sleepy..:-) Let's take a quick look at 2 of them.

1)RSS. Everyone who publishes online has some degree of knowledge (or should!) of RSS - which in our non technical parlance will simply refer to Real Simple Syndication. Essentially RSS, from a publisher's standpoint, simply allows you to aggregate and collect information from around the web in small chunks, usually in the form of headlines and small snippets of content, which you can publish on your site, and will update for you automatically as the originators of the content add more items. Essentially, your site will be augmented with free information and content, published by other people which keeps YOUR site updated with a free flow of good information, AND benefits the other publishers as well as their content is effectively syndicated around the web, extending their reach and circle of influence. A win/win for both parties, and your readers too!

2)Blog comments. Many smart marketers have been using this method for years, and it amazes me how many people I consult with are OBLIVIOUS to this great source of entertaining and interactive content you can enjoy on autopilot. A good blog has an engaged audience. An engaged audience wants to be heard. And the ability to comment, allows them to be. They will interact with YOUR content, with each other, and with industry news. The buzzword going forward in the online marketing space is undoubtedly COMMUNITY. Strong communities make for strong sites, and even stronger bank statements..:-) If you are running ANY form of advertising on your site, do not even consider turning "comments" off on a blog install. Yes it is a pain in the butt to manage. Yes you will get SOME spam, but thankfully not much due to great anti-spam plugins readily available to you for free. But NOTHING kills a conversation quicker than a monologue. Your blog comments are a great source of organic traffic from the search engines and social n etworks, as well as a compelling force in keeping your one time visitors coming back often, interested, engaged and entertained! Good luck and don't forget to ask questions if you have them..:-)

Are you a Guru Groupie? Enough! It's Time For You to STEP up & stake your OWN claim!

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