When you make comments on other blogs, really get into the content you are talking about in the current discussion going on with those blogs. Darren says too many bloggers are lazy and simply “copy and paste” other blog content and never take the time to share quality feedback and contribution to other blogs.

Make a real effort to give back to the conversations and in turn you will get more people going to visit your site.

How do you get to know your audience? Simple, get yourself in front of you potential audience that you are catering to.  The most obvious and easiest way is to join online groups, forums and comment on other industry related blogs. This is how to engage immediately with your core audience. Remember that these people will gravitate towards you if you have something of value to offer.

When entering a forum or established group in your industry, kindly introduce yourself and start participating in meaningful “conversation.” There will be a lot of discussion threads so make sure you only pick the ones where you have some expertise or something meaningful to contribute to. You will gladly be accepted into the “group” if you prove yourself as helpful and friendly.

Forums and groups have a way when you registered as a user, to enter your URL back to your blog site or any site you want people to return to when click on your name to get further information on you. This is how the long term benefit comes back to you.

In the end, the object is for you to reach out online to your targeted audience in order to gain readership to your blog.

What is a relationship? It is developing trust and gaining favorable reputation with your customers. This takes time. No one wants a “relationship” thrust upon them in a short time. Japanese businessmen have a ritual where they have to know you for quite a long time before they will do business with you. They have inner patience to “give and take” within this relationship and make it in their best interests to do business with you. It is not because they got “burned” from some unscrupulous business scammer, rather, it just makes sense that they feel comfortable doing business with you after judging from your actions that likely to prove you are worthy to do business with.

It makes good sense to keep your blog content consistent to “prove” to your visitors that you are real and have value to offer them. If you sell at all, it comes down to how people buy. They buy from people they “like, know & trust.” It has been written in many creditable sales books that the relationship is the key to successful selling.

So, when blogging, keep this principle in mind. You should take the time to lay out consistent and relevent content that you know your visitors will appreciate and use. Don’t waste your time, and their time, in content that has no value. Also, keep asking your visitors and customers what they want to see in your blog. Let them have a “voice” in what they want to see from you. I guarantee that you cannot second guess your customers  on what they want from you. Asking what they want in content, what kind of additional service or product your business can provide, will be very important to your business.

Your blog’s sole purpose is truly a collaboration between your business and your customer.

Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, My Space and most notably, blogs, answer this inner need for us to relate to others with similar interests or passions. When this congregation of people come together for the purpose of belonging, a true ”community” is formed.

Now, it is the social media owner’s responsibility to keep that bond with the community. Bloggers are the best example of being the “leaders” of the community. The visitors that come to these sites are very loyal to these sites because of the passion that the blog owner evokes with the community.

From a business standpoint, blogs lead the customer base, who are the “community” of the business. Say you own a restaurant in your local area that has the most delicious  food and people just talk about day and night. They are raving “fans” of your restaurant and are literally “free” billboards advertising your establishment every single day.

Once you build community, you have built a foundation of a successful business that will last for years to come.

Remember this when you start your business blog. It can affect the success of your business more than you are aware. Building community = recurring profits.

I have several blog clients that maintain their blog on an inconsistent basis, which in the long run, hurts your blog. You need to get on a schedule, even if it is once a week, to add a post. You really should post to your blog no less than two posts a week. This will give enough notifications to the search engines that your blog is still active. Search engines tend to “visit” your blog more often if you make changes to your blog more often. This is key if you want to move up the search engine ranking for your blog.

There are several different philosophies of making comments to other blogs. The reason we make comments to other blogs is twofold. First, it is to generate one way links back to your blog, and consequently add “juice” to get higher rankings with the search engines. Second, it helps grow your reputation and participation in the blogosphere. Since you have chosen to enter the world wide web community, you might as well get connected with other like minded people.

How important is it to have “one way” links? When we say one way links, we mean some other website or blog that has a link to your site. You do not have a link back out to their site. Now search engine giant, “Google” sets the rules for favorable page rank and this is one of them. In a nutshell, the more backlinks you have to your blog or website without you linking back out to them is going to get you ranked far higher than “crosslinks” or links that goes out and in from the same sites. The reasoning behind this is that the more sites linking to your site signals to “Google” that your site is truly an “authority” site. In other words, a site that is a valuable reference to people who want a relevant search to find an answer or solution to. 

If you link back out to those same sites, “Google” will suspect that you made an “agreement” with those sites to swap links and values those less. Actually, consider one way links to your site as a complement to you that you have valuable content to be shared with others.

So, when making comments to other blogs or websites, contribute something of value to the reader. You don’t want too short a comment with saying, “come to my blog” in it. Make it relevant and your comment will be looked at and visitors will click through your comment to go to your blog or website to read more about your valuable content.

In our next post, we are going to cover over something controversial…making comments on “unrelated niche” websites.

If you position your business in front of your target audience, you can’t help but be successful. But you must give real, valuable content. It must resonate with the audience you are serving. It sounds simple but so many businesses try to over analyze the “message.” To second guess your market is fatal. Try, instead to be real and develop your content that reflects your values, your personality and what you truly feel that your customers are going to consume and implement.

Once you have a fan club, you then get feedback from them on what they want. The old sales/marketing adage, find out what your “hungry market” wants and give it to them has never been truer.

Your blog should concentrate on reaching out and recruiting more people to your fan base. This is ongoing job. Keep this up and you will be more than profitable in the long run.

Yes, if you represent outstanding customer service, or are the only business that practices “going green” philosophy, these are all causes to boost your marketing efforts. Not only is a blog good for positioning your business favorable with the search engines, you can also attract tons of visitors that share your view of how you do business. Not many businesses are aware of the power they have to take their marketing to the next level by using this one small aspect of marketing.

The first thing to do is to research what the buying public is focusing their attention to. Is it that they want an honest business that does not “bait and switch” their customers after a seemingly straight forward advertisement is presented? Is it that they only patronize a business that carries “green” or organic products? These are things you should be paying attention to.

Whatever the mindset of your target audience is focused on, get you and your business infront of them right now!

There is one additional benefit of being the “expert” in blogging….you build credibility. When you throw up a blog, any blog, you attract a common bond with your visitors. You will resonate with a relationship that builds from the first post they read.

The objective of a business blog should address a particular problem that your customers have. Your business provides a solution to their problem with a product or service it sells. In order to build confidence with your customers, giving them “free” content in the form of valuable information keeps your customers loyal to you because they perceive you as the solution.

In order to successfully gain more sales from your business blog, you should give the reason why customers should do business with you. Bring out the best in what you offer in service, your expertise, and your unique way of delivering your service or product. What differentiates your product or service from your competitors?

With all this displayed within your blog, you gain credibility, which is something so valuable, you couldn’t pay enough to get this through any other marketing channel.

The old adage still applies. People buy from whom they “know, like, and trust.” What better way to get people to trust you than with a business blog.