Blogging +Social Media is smart and cost effective.
Need a reason to blog? Consider these.
There are hundreds of millions of blogs in existence, ranging from the truly mundane and grammatically challenged (the "i am feeling sad 2day" variety) to the highly entertaining and/or informative.
It feels like only yesterday that Evan Williams (founder of blogger.com) coined the term, "blogger" Today, the blogosphere is doubling between once and twice a year, There are over one million blog posts daily. It's not too late for you. The timing is perfect to. catch the next growth wave.
Blogs - internet shorthand for weblogs - started out as online diaries, but they have rapidly evolved into much more than that. These days, they are essential to the optimum promotion of your website. Why?
BLOGS OFFER YOUR BUSINESS REAL BENEFITS
1. Content
The more frequently you post on a blog, the more content your blog has. This increases the chance that your blog will be found when people type in keyword phrases related to your business. If someone is searching for tips on how to clean their house using organic cleaners, you want a LOT of blog posts about organic cleaning on your site that sells organic cleaning products. Then, when someone types in a phrase like "vinegar for cleaning", your blog post on the subject is likely to come up in the search engine results.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Google, Bing, Yahoo and all search engines scan your website to determine how relevant it is to someone searching for information about a particular subject. They search for related phrases to determine relevancy.
If your site is about positive discipline or positive classroom management, for instance, and you have an article about giving timeouts, and rewards vs. punishments, the search engines would see the phrases "giving timeouts" and "rewards vs. punishments" and determine that your site was indeed relevant to the subject of positive discipline. Then it would rank your site higher for that phrase than another site which has no related written material on it.
3. Make Friends and Future Customers
When you blog, you let future customers get to know you, your philosophy and your expertise. It's just about impossible to blog without showing your personality - and that's good. People like to do business with people that they feel they know personally - and a blog gives a personality to both you and your business.
4. Mixes Well With Social Media
Blogs interact perfectly with social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. On social media sites, you can build up a big following, but you can only write a couple of sentences per tweet or status update. To really communicate, you need to tweet/posts links that lead back to your site and your useful blog posts.
Your timing is perfect for growth. InsideFacebook.com's estimates that the social network is adding 700,000 new users per day. Twitter has grown at record rates. According to "gigatweet" tool , Twitter is at 6 billion tweets and os growing by the second.
5. Encourages People to "Advertise" for You, for Free.
When you write a useful blog post, people will tweet about it, put links on Facebook, link back to your site from their website, etc. Nobody is going to do that for a plain old website with an "about me" and "our products" page; however, they will link to blog posts on your site that contain helpful information. This is the benefit of being an active contributor to a social media community.
Every time that you write a new blog post, make sure to let your followers/Facebook Friends/Linkedin Connections know, and the word will be spread. The more you give away, the more you receive, basically. And every time somebody tweets links to your site, they advertise your brand for you and introduce you to all of THEIR followers, all of whom are also potential customers.
Social Media Golden Rule: Link, Tweet, Connect to their useful, helpful, and entertaining content, too. Better yet, be the first to read, recommend, and comment kindly about someone's article or resource.
Even if they don't reciprocate; you still win.
If you think this article can also benefit others, please Retweet it, include link on your FaceBook.
Margaret Ross, speaker and writer, grows and encourages people in business and in their lives. Ross is CEO of the Kamaron Institute, a leading management consulting, training, and market research communications firm. Margaret is the editor of Kamaron PI, the Positive Impact blog, host of Telly award winning Success Class and is a regularly featured guest on America’s top radio shows
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