Second, if you write in a particular style about your product or service, that will further attract your audience. There are blogs who write in a casual conversational style, and others who write in vulgar language, still others who write as if they are the teacher and you are the student.  Whatever style you have, it goes without saying that your target audience will be attracted to your writing style as well.  This directly reflects on your own personality too.

The way you design your blog is also important in getting through to your audience. If your blog has a black background with little white lettering, or bright tan color with a good sized easy to read font in black, it will attract a certain audience who finds it comfortable to read in that format.

If your blog has way too many buttons, bells and whistles to click on, a visitor may become confused and surf elsewhere because it may appear to off topic for what they are searching for.

Always remember that the visitor is coming to your blog site to get information quickly in an easy to read format. They don’t intend on spending the whole day to read your blog. The attention span of web surfers are so short that it is important to get their attention right away and serve up the information or solution that they need.

Quite often, people will go to your blog site to get an answer to a problem quickly so they can get on with their lives. We live in such a fast paced world that our blogs need to adapt to this audience.

“Blog marketing is all about giving your visitors what they want, when they want it.”

Blogs are extensively used for Hollywood gossip. It seems like when an actor dates someone or breaks up with someone, the blog community is on it instantly and the stories of the hook up or break up are so vastly different from each other. It breaks down the credibility of blogging within this niche.

Blogs are also used by people who have a chip on their shoulder and want to blast some company or person because they don’t believe in what they are doing or goes against personal philosophy. Take a look at the “wiki-leaks” situation.

But still the same, I like blogs with a passion. Why? Because it allows anyone to become a publisher and communicate with the world. Prior to blogs, you as a small business person could not get enough information out to your customers or even potential customers with costing a fortune through TV, radio, or newspaper ad placement. Now, all you have to do is put up a blog site and you are immediately exposed to the world.

Would you believe our blog site here ranks as one of the top 500 visited sites in the country of Turkey? It’s true! Go to www.Alexa.com and plug in blogmarketingexperts.com and you will see the stats that prove that out. Now of course, as a local business in the USA, what could you think being one of the top blog sites in another country is going to do to help our business here in the United States? The advantage is in the world wide rankings! Yes, there is value for my local rank position being helped by how I rank in other countries.

If you were to search for blog marketing experts in Google’s search engine, you will find that we rank number one out of 71 million other sites with that keyword phrase!

Blogs have great value if you know how to exploit it to your advantage. Now referring to what was said earlier, blogs can be used for good or for bad. When you use a blog for your business and is for the benefit of your visitors, there is no better feeling you have in knowing that your blog is being read and helping others who are interested in your industry, product or service.

So now you know why I like to blog and will continue to blog into the far future. I will never stop. It helps my business, it helps others and is very satisfying to the soul!

1. You need to carefully plan out your marketing strategy
2. Use the social media. “Plug in” your blog to the social media sites that make sense to your business.
3. Join in the conversation. Comment on other blogs and make new online connections.
4. “Stand out in the crowd.” Have a unique angle or twist to how you present your product or service.
5. Create videos. Videos is only getting more popular on the internet and if you put out more videos, it will only lead to higher rankings to your blog.

We have a video that goes in detail what we mentioned above.

It’s just a matter of linking each platform with a plugin or hyper link to the blogs or social media sites you want to connect.

Let’s say you have a Facebook page and you have 300 followers there. Let’s also say you have 120 subscribers in your email list from people opting in to your blog newsletter. You could conceivably make a blog post and hook it up so your Facebook friends and blog newsletter also gets the same blog post content without you having to repeat the post to the other sites. So, you get the leverage of making one blog post and spreading it to your 300 Facebook followers and 120 email subscribers at the same time. Now it gets better. Each of your Facebook friends may have hundreds of friends of their own. So making one blog post actually can reach thousands within a very short amount of time….even hours! People who are copied on the email subscription are able to forward the blog post to still other people and their email lists could be forwarding it to even more people.

Now there is no guarantee that hundreds or thousands will pick up on the blog post unless the post has interest to the reader. There are many other factors of getting your blog post noticed by many people.

So the total connection of blogging to the world becomes more real.

Blogging from mobile devices are another hot trend today. More and more people are blogging from their compact computer tablets and even their smart phones. It is predicted that, with trillions of text messages going on in the world today, the smart phone and portable computer tablets will be the platform of choice for your audience to communicate with. So get used to making your websites and blogs “mobile friendly.”

One last big trend going on with blogging is in the female population. “Mommie” bloggers and blogs with topics of interest to females is on a dramatic rise. So pay attention to that market if you produce a product or service related to females.

48% of all bloggers believe that more and more people will be getting their main source of news and information through blogs.

So if you have a blog already started, keep your focus on the trends, both emerging and current. You will profit sooner than later if you do so.

Blog Header

The first thing you need to do is get a customer blog header designed. You can line up a blog designer from a referral from someone you know. If you don’t know of any graphics designer, you can go online and look for a “graphic designer” or “web designer.” You can also go to outsourcing sites like elance.com or odesk.com. You can make inquiry with the designers there who specialize in blog header design.

Blog Plugins

Next, you should add some plugins to make your blog function the way you want it to. Here is my favorite list of “must haves” regarding blog plugins.

1. All in one SEO
2. Contact form
3. Sitemap Generator
4. Related posts
5. Share this
6. WP backup
7. Feedburner
8. Analytics

Of course there are literally thousands of plugins you can add to your blog, but the point is, only add the plugins that you will actually use. Any plugins you don’t use, delete it off your blog administration panel. It takes up unnecessary space.

To get the downloads and details of these plugins, simply enter the names above in your search engine box and you will come up with many websites that you can download from.

Blogging has become an easy publishing platform that anyone can learn in a short amount of time.

In our next blog post, we will go over how to set up the general settings for your blog.

Domain Name

When starting a new blog, plan out what domain name you plan on using. The best domain name you could choose is your business name and also pair the business name with a prefix or suffix that describes what you do as a business.

Let’s say your business name is Awesome Cleaners, so if you are a neighborhood cleaners, a good domain name would be “awesomecleaners.com.” Let’s say your cleaning business is located in Phoenix, Arizona. In order to help get customers who live and do business near your physical location, you need a prefix or suffix such as: “phoenixawesomecleaners.com,” or “awesomecleanersphoenix.com.”

That is a very short lesson of how to choose the perfect domain name for your business.

Blog Hosting

The next thing is to line up webhosting services for your blog. You can choose some good quality hosting such as hostgator.com, hostmonster.com, fatcow.com, justhost.com, to name a few. Hosting your blog through these webhosting services average $4.00 per month.

Blog Software

The only blog software we use is WordPress. You can download this software for free at www.wordpress.org.

Installing Your New Blog

Once you get your domain name registered, go into your administration part of your domain account and “point the domain” to your webhost account. It usually takes about 5 minutes to accomplish this. You can contact your webhost support desk for assistance on how to do this.

When you purchase webhosting, make sure they have a feature called “fantastico.” With this function you can actually set up a wordpress blog software without even downloading anything from WordPress.org’s site. It is totally automatic. Again, in this case, you can contact your webhosting company and ask them for assistance to set the WordPress blog software up for you.

Once you get this software up and running and you have your blog up, you have some setting up to do. In our next blog post, we will go over the things you need in order to maximize the usefulness of your new blog.

We have come a long way since 10 years ago. With the advances in computer technology, the costs of  making a website has gone down dramatically to the point where a “non-techie” type of person can put up their own site for just hundreds of dollars, not thousands.

Also, we missed the boat over the years because putting up a website is not going to get you noticed by your customers unless you practice search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is the practice of inserting keywords in your site that is related to the words people enter in a search engine that brings up websites these people are looking for. In other words, just putting up a website is not going to get you noticed unless you do certain things to get it noticed.

Now, you can put up a blog site yourself with simple easy to set up blog software, and turn it into your main website. The advantages of doing this is in using the blog function of attracting search engines. Blog software by it’s very nature in the coding automatically sets up an RSS feed that search engines “crawl” on a daily basis. In other words, when you make a blog post or any other change to your site, you are simultaneously “knocking on the door” of the search engines and alerting them of your change. Every time the search engines visit your site, it helps get your blog site rank higher with the search engine.

A great way of reducing costs while gaining the advantage of attracting search engines is starting up your business website with blog software. Blog themes and custom blog theme designers are able to make a blog look like a very expensive HTML site that you would normally pay thousands for.

So, when thinking of revamping your site or even replacing your website, think of using a blog platform to put your site on and utilize the functions of a blog at the same time.

In our next post, we will go over how to start a blog site and turning it into a full blown site that looks and feels like a regular HTML site.

A blog makes it possible to spread your information over multiple channels of media simultaneously and can be a very effective way of getting the word out in promoting your business. Enjoy the video below.

What you write in your blog post is carefully read by most your readers and will either attract or repel readers. For the people who do visit your blog and are attracted to your content, you have made the first step in presenting yourself as an authority in your niche.

Think about it for a moment. When you used to read the newspaper in your hometown, you subscribed to it eventually because you found it to be a valid authority for your news. They built credibility with you because you believed what news was presented by them. This is the power of the printed word.

Newspapers are a one way communication between the publisher and the reader. Either the reader is “turned on” or “turned off.” Blogs, on the other hand is a two way communication between the blogger and the reader. The blog presents information and the reader has the ability to respond in the form of a comment or subscribe to a newsletter that the blog may offer.

So, when writing your next blog post, remember that you are a real life publisher and the readers are counting on you to provide credible information that they can use or think about. When writing your blog post, make sure you do some research and offer information that is useful to your readers. The more valuable content that you write, the more visitors, readers, and customers you will attract.

You are the authority they are looking up to. Take your role in providing information seriously and you will have a very successful blog.

Smart business people know that they have to spend more time on “money making” activity within their store. They know they have to have a business blog in conjunction with all the marketing efforts they do in store. But blog posting can be a tedius chore and can take a lot of time away from making sales.

Blogs are a marketing device that works along with other marketing channels. Blogging is all about branding and educating their customers and getting feedback from them so that the business can improve on the product or service it provides.

In our opinion, you should outsource blog posting if:

1. You are serious about using social media to generate new customers
2. If you don’t have time to post yourself to the blog on a regular basis
3. If you believe that blogging contributes to raising revenues in your business
4. If you believe that your customers are semi active online

Whatever you decide, just take note of the process in which you blog and make a training manual to give a step by step guide to give to your outsourcer.

We, at Blog Marketing Experts truly believes in blogs and how it is necessary for you to have one in order to better connect with your audience. Starting one now can go a long way into the future regarding helping your customers to be more informed about your business and your industry.

Here are 5 ways to get visitors to interact with your blog:

1. Invite visitors to make comments on your blog posts
2. Insert an opt in box on your blog to solicit subscribers
3. Hold contests for a 30 day period to make comments on your blog in order for them to have a chance to win a prize
4. Offer a limited time coupon on your blog that will allow visitors to get a steep discount on some item in your store
5. Insert a multiple choice poll on your blog sidebar that takes votes for a compelling question your customers would be interested in voting for

Of course there are many more ways to get visitors to interact with your blog, but these appear to be the most common one’s used in many blogs today.

The object is to get people to do something that they can be interested in on your blog while have some fun. Interacting with a blog should not be so hard. If you can be creative, I am sure you would come up with at least 5 more things that help make it an interactive experience.

If you post information daily, even if it is useful information, if there is no other feature in your blog other than getting information, you will lose your audience.

As mentioned before, your blog is like the daily newspaper that gets delivered to your door and is meant for consumption by the reader. But if you are to get people on your email list or to come by to visit your store, you need to keep it interesting. You will find that blogs are very beneficial to your business.

Here is a real simple trick. Go to the largest search engine in the world, Google. Type in Google Trends. You will find the top 20 most popular searches in the world. Better yet, go to Google’s hot trends link here

This will show the most recent top 20 searches in real time, usually statistics no later than two minutes ago. When you get hold of these trends, compose a blog post that mentions one of these trends and tie it into your content of the day. This is most effective way to get a spike of visitor traffic to your blog in the same day! You are simply capturing the tremendous wave of internet traffic that is currently interested in reading about.

It is so simple and easy to implement, that you could literally kick yourself for not doing it sooner!

Let’s say you mention the topic of a famous Hollywood actor that is in trouble with the law. Of course, you will have no problem finding that topic on the trends site! Once you found the actual actor’s name, mention that in your new blog post along with how your product or service is like the solution to the problem that the actor is searching for. Using this analogy to bring a point in about your product is the most effective way of getting attention to your blog and to your product at the same time.

Just thing of the late night talk shows for a moment. They all have a monologue at the beginning of the show talking about current events because they know it will capture the audience attention and keep them glued to the rest of the show. This is the same example on how you can use the trick of mentioning current events or popular trends to attract attention to your marketing message

Buyer beware when outsourcing your search engine optimization chores. You could compare these services out there and you would find no standard price point for these services. You could be charged hundreds to thousands in advance with hundreds and thousands per month after that. What you need to be aware of is what are these companies really doing for your company? Exactly what are they doing on your behalf?

The most common services offered is maximizing your keywords inside the coding of your website. Then setting up a Google Map or Google Places page. Thirdly, they would outsource the task of generating backlinks to your site and lastly, they would spend you money for you on Google adwords to buy ad space on the first page of main keywords you are trying to rank for. This last method is by far the most expensive method to use and the SEO company marks this category up the most.

When looking for outsourcing your SEO, make sure you have a working knowledge of what these companies do in the categories mentioned above. If you have to read a “Dummies” gook on SEO, buy it! Not necessarily for doing it yourself, but knowing what tips and tricks are used to get your site found online is very helpful when you want to negotiate the services you want to hire the SEO company for.

You could read up and be very familiar with SEO methods within a week. When you come across knowing the terms about SEO when negotiating with an SEO company, it will go a long way to get the best pricing.

Check out the video below that explains what kind of things get you great search engine optimization.

Now this is not to say this the end all be all of sports competition. It is just the most popular sport that gets our attention on this day, Superbowl Sunday, February 6.

But something you should be aware of regarding all the attention to this sport. Since I will safely assume that the word Superbowl will be on the top 10 of search engine searches on this day, you can capitlize on this by sending a heck of a lot of traffic to your blog site just with the mention of the search keyword, Superbowl.

If you can somehow tie in a promotion at your business with Superbowl, such as a Superbowl raffle, a contest, or a discount, you will be guaranteed a lot of views to your site.

This is key to marketing all year ’round. Plan out all the holidays, the national and worldwide events for the year, and plan out promotions attached to these events. You will be guaranteed of a high spike of traffic to your blog if you start up promotions around these events. It is not rocket science that you should tie in promotions and marketing efforts with these events, but it is helps to be reminded about them!

Here are several resources for keeping track of holidays and events.

The link below lists the national holidays in the USA

http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/

The link below lists “unconventional” events that we recongnize

http://www.onlineorganizing.com/CalendarYear.asp

The link beow lists holidays around the world

http://aglobalworld.com/holidays-around-the-world/

Wherever your are located in the world, promoting your business and your blog is the same. Make sure you plan ahead and tie in key holidays and events with your business. It makes for more connection with your local communites too.