Saturday, August 23, 2008

Build the Benefits of Your Blog

Blogging has many benefits, among them more publicity for your business, more hits for your company web site, and a better public image. However, these benefits will not automatically come to every blogger. You must work in order to build these advantages in your blog.

Step One: Make your blog a better publicity machine.
If you want to make your blog a publicity boosting machine, you will have to make sure that you work at making your blog a marketing tool rather than a personal expression:

·Offer something for the media. Offering free articles that web users can reprint elsewhere and offering media kits can help make it easier for the media and other online users to generate publicity.

·Add pictures and ads to your blog that can promote your company. Small banner ads or promotions can let readers know what you are offering without bogging down your blog withsales copy.

·Do not be afraid to enthuse about your company. You can easily talk about your business without sounding like an annoying salesperson. For example, note the challenges you faced to start a new project or service in your business – this will help sell the new division or service without sounding too pushy.

Step Two: Create more hits
Some experts claim that many new blogs are created each second of the day. The sheer number of blogs makes it unlikely that others will find you unless you encourage hits:

·Link from your website to your blog for easy access. Also, include your blog’s address on your business cards and letterhead, along with your email address and your web site address.

·Offer incentives for reading. Whether it is a blog-readers-only contest with a great prize or a free ebook for blog readers, offering incentives is a great way to generate hits – and to please customers. Plus, you will get a sense from the responses how many readers you have.

·Write and speak about your blog. Whether you are writing an article or giving a speech, you can mention your company blog as a place to get more information about your business.

·Offer a newsletter. Many blog writers offer a newsletter to readers. This newsletter lets readers know when an update has been added – and ensures that the blog stays fresh in readers’ minds. It can also be a good way to keep track of how many readers a blog has and can be a good way to add more value added content.

·Offer an RSS feed of your blog. Most blog software today does this, and it allows your blog to be “syndicated” in other online areas and often to cell phones, increasing your exposure and creating more readers.

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