Saturday, August 23, 2008

Keeping Your Blog Market-Fresh

It is not enough to just write a blog. If you are taking the time to create a good and powerful blog- and if you want your blog to be a good marketing tool, you need to be doing this then you will want to make sure that you get something back for your investment. One good way to keep interest in your blog going – and to keep your blog a powerful marketing tool and not a time consuming hassle is to keep introducing fresh content.

Keep Your Blog Fresh
There are a few ways to keep your blog content interesting without a lot of hassle:

·Get new readers by getting other bloggers to link to your blog. Blogging creates community, so that if you link to others sites, they are also likely to link to yours. Feel free to contact other bloggers with similar interests and goals and see if they would be willing to offer a link.

·Update and vary content regularly. Schedule regular updates so that your blog does not get stale, but also introduce new content. If you have always offered fashion tips on your fashion designer blog, consider covering a fashion show. If you have always made personal comments, consider offering tips.

·Offer new features and sections. Offering new contests and new sections (such as a jobs section or a comments section) will make it clear that you are working to make your blog better. It will also make blogging more interesting for you, ensuring that you keep providing customers with great content.

·Blend your blog with other marketing efforts. Consider promoting your online contest through your blog, or link from your blog to your email, your web page, or your advertisements. Make your blog work with other marketing efforts and your blog will gain fresh contents with less hassle.

·Change the look. Changing the colours, layout and images of your blog from time to time helps keep reader interest and makes looking at your blog more interesting for you.

Make Your Blog Sizzle
Simply changing your blog content is not often enough. You also need to increase the interest ony our blog by creating more interesting content:

·Don’t be (too) afraid to get controversial. Although you will want to avoid offending customers by making too personal or off colour comments, making some thought-provoking comments is a good way to generate discussion – and interest. Make a comment about someone else’s comment or on the state of your industry. A healthy debate can help you.

·Keep it personal – and personable. Be wary of simply providing general and impersonal content on your blogs – that’s what other online writing is for. Do include some of your personality and interest in your blog and put your friendliest face forward to attract customers and readers.

·Consider what to do with older blog entries. Most blog entries are simply archived for a while. However, consider other uses. If your web host allows it, consider making older blog posts part of a booklet to sell or consider providing your old blogs as content on the Internet. In each case, link back to your blog so that readers can find your newest comments.

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