Sunday, October 12, 2008
The “B” word
By Mike Lake
It’s official. Every web site I write and design now comes with a blog. I tell my clients that for a variety of reasons, they need a blog. Then I get the look. It’s a combination of “A what?” and “I don’t have time.” and “I don’t know how to do that.” with the occasional “I don’t write.” Let me share with you some of the points I make that convince every one of them that writing a blog is essential to their business.
First, writing a blog positions you as a thought leader. Assuming you know how to promote it, your blog provides ideas that help people, and by doing so, demonstrates your knowledge in your particular specialty. (After reading this post for example, you might think I know something about the internet.) Again, however, you must… promote it. If your blog and all its brilliant prose sits on your server with no one but you and a few friends and relatives reading it, you’ll get little business value from it.
There are several ways to promote your blog. First make it prevalent on your site so that visitors will see it. You should also send out occasional emails to your list highlighting your recent posts with links back to the blog. There are also services that allow you to distribute your posts to a list simply and sometimes automatically. Feedblitz is one of the more popular services.
Second, it helps search. A lot. You’ve probably heard this: Search engines love sites with lots of pages, lots of good relavent content and lots of frequent changes. Well, blogs accomplish all of the above. A blog gives you the opportunity to create new pages of content that are relavent to your readers and your market. And it helps you create those pages MUCH easier than getting your programmer to create a new page on your site.
How do you become relavent? By thinking about what your clients ask you and also by looking on the web for questions being asked by the masses. Go to Google and type the type of service you provide followed by the word “forums” or “discussion”. For example, if you sell hardware, Google “Hardware forums”. Forums are on-line discussions usually started with a particular question or problem people are having. Look through these discussions and you should have lots of great topics to use a blog post subjects.
Here’s a tip: Use the phrase of your topic throughout your blog post so that it has the best chance of being picked up when someone searches using that phrase. For example, I should be using the phrase “writing good blog posts” or “Why create a blog on my web site” or “how to write a blog”. Those phrases, used sparingly throughout a post will draw search. Did I mention how to write a blog?
Third, creating a blog on your web site (did you catch how I used that phrase again?) helps you develop material for future use. A year of weekly blog posts could be a book. A month or two could be an eBook. Books position you as a world-class expert and eBooks can be used as add-on extras to your product or service, and can also be sold on-line. Consider the benefits of selling your eBook or physical book on line 24/7. Making money while you sleep is a wonderful concept!
And best of all, getting started is cheap and easy. Services such as Blogger, Typepad and WordPress can get you started within an hour or two. WordPress is even free if you host it on your server. Don’t know what that means? Then pay a couple bucks and go to WordPress.com and get started.
Creating a blog on your web site was never easier, cheaper and more benefitial. Happy bloggng!
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