Business Blogging Mistakes–Are You Guilty?

Blogging Bad Habits, they are easy to fall into, believe me!

It seems that these days pretty much every business these days has a blog, but that doesn’t mean everyone is doing it the right way, If you’ve just decided to start a new blog for your business or you have been blogging for a long time, I have some tips that you may find interesting.

Something u may find interesting as well:  7 Blunders to avoid when starting your own blog in 2012

HubSpot “has found that companies that blog generate 55% more website visitors, 97% more inbound links, and have 434% more indexed pages than companies that don’t. Even if you’re posting once a week, you may not have leveraged the full power of content creation for your small business brand”.

1. Not Posting Consistently

Having a great idea for a blog is one thing, spending 1-2 days a week putting together lengthy articles is another, it is time consuming, but keep in mind it can be very rewarding.  Before you launch your blog, decide how often you'll be able to blog, keep it fresh, you will want people to have a reason to come back to read what you have posted. A good idea is to write a few articles ahead of time so you have backup postings for the times when the kids got ya busy, or the husband/wife wants your attention. I get into more detail about this in my article: Small Business Blog, Where to Begin Pt.2

2. Thinking Your Blog Is A Good Promotional Tool
Your blog shouldn’t be a Billboard! think about you, when you read blogs, if your looking for some useful information on a topic, you don’t want to be flooded with advertisements, post articles that reflect what you like, that’s related to your specific business, Have fun with it, sure you can advertise your business but do it in a tactful way, for example, I Run a computer consulting company, I like to blog about helpful items related to the internet or computers, I can offer this resource to my customers, present and potential as a useful source of information, this gives me a link to my potential clients, but doesn’t make them feel like I am pushing my services at them.

3. Not Interacting With Your Readers
your blog isn't a static web page, its not a simple press release, its actually a great way for you to interact with your customers and potential clients, you will get comments and questions to your blog postings, be sure to respond to these in a complete and polite way, be informative and offer help, these tips will help you gain a interactive platform that people will enjoy returning to and contributing to. If you want to encourage this, be sure to make it easy for your readers to comment on your posting, For example I have a easy form at the bottom of all my posts, that you can respond to. (Shameless Request:  feel free!!)

4.Not Listening To your Readers
Not sure what kind of content appeals to your audience the most? It’s not a mystery: Your blog analytics can provide valuable insight into what types of posts are resonating with readers.

By failing to pay attention to analytics, you’re ignoring valuable information that can take your blog to the next level. Continually track the responses to each blog post. Tinker with different topics, titles and types of posts. Which posts generate the most activity (comments, shares, likes)? Increase the frequency of the most popular.

Also Checkout:
How To Get Traffic From Reddit Without Getting Blacklisted!

Related articles

• Tips on Blog commenting
• Blogging for More Business and More Exposure
• Tips You Ought To Know About Business Blogging

Vine: Twitter’s New App for Adding Six-Second Videos to Your Tweets

Tweeting Video!

They say a photo is worth a thousand words and a video is worth a lot more. By that math, six seconds of video should be worth a whole lot more than 140 characters of text or a Tweet.

And that seems to be the point of Vine, an app launched by Twitter today that allows you to add short video Clips to your tweets. The app, which as of now is  available only for the iPhone, is really simple to use and works a lot like Instagram. (Many have been calling it the Instagram of video.)

Sign in with your Twitter account or via email, hit the video camera button and press down on the viewfinder to record video. Release your finger and the recording stops, so you can easily move to record something else, but you only have six seconds of space (or tape).

Watch your video and then share it with others on the service. There are options to then share it on Twitter and Facebook too.

The Twitter tie-in is the big one though. When you tweet from Vine it embeds your looped video — or what looks like an animated GIF — right in your tweet.

New Technology Community on G+

I am putting together a online community of friends that enjoy technology, web stuff, and just hangining out Old School Geek Style! :)  Feel free to visit us here: Technology Today and join the fun!

Thanks!!

Rich

5 Great Tips to Getting Back-links

Here are 5 Effective Ways to Built organic backlinks quickly. Apart from writing quality content and promoting it through social media, it’s necessary to have some quality backlinks to your blog. After the recent search algorithm changes by Google, many blogs are punished for several reasons. To stay safe and ahead of your competitors, it’s necessary to take some action and building organic backlinks will surely help.

This article is written after getting inspired from a video by Matt Cutts, the head of Google SPAM Team. He clearly mentioned some good points on how to build organic backlinks.

WHAT ARE ORGANIC BACKLINKS ?

There are thousands of ways to build links to your blog and none of them are equal to “Organic Backlinks”. In simple words, organic backlinks can be explained as the links that are naturally constructed, which usually happens when you focus on high quality and unique content.

HOW TO BUILT ORGANIC BACKLINKS ?

Here are 5+ sure fire tips that help to built organic backlinks to your blog.

1. CONTROVERSIES

Indulging in a Controversy will easily get attention, highlighting things on the negative side will be a bonus for you, these things often have greater followers. You need to follow-up regularly and have to be in touch with trending topics, watch blog postings from people you find interesting, you can also keep abreast of the latest news. Words have such a great power and believe me, with a single blog post you can grab the attention of the whole media. Play it safe or otherwise you may face some legal issues.

2. EXPERIMENTS

Experimenting on things will depend on your interest and passion to achieve something. Not everyone can do experiments as it needs lot of time and patience. So, if you are good at something, then try to experiment on things and publish posts like How-to guides on your blog, give your readers something usefull that's related to your niche, or expertise. This is how unique content can be built and organic backlinks will flow to your article, sometimes for years.

3. FREEBIES

Using a feebie to get subscribers and backlinks is an old yet powerful strategy. You cannot get backlinks immediately, but over time you can get some quality backlinks. This depends on the quality and type of freebie you are providing. If its a regular one, like a free PSD template or a free theme then there wont be much use. Try to work on creative things and give them away for free.

4. COMMUNITIES

Lets consider some blogs in the WordPress niche. There are quite popular and useful blogs on WordPress that help to make the most out of your WordPress blog. Whenever they write an article or list out some resources, links to the articles on other blogs will be included. This purely depends on the author of the article and so its necessary to establish some connections with fellow bloggers.

5. VIDEO BLOGGING

Many have the talent to create useful videos yet don’t try it. Consistent exposure can be gained through video blogging and if you need a sort of inspiration to start with, then you can check TheNewBoston (http://thenewboston.org/tutorials.php). That guy got good programming skills and he is sharing some knowledge through his videos. Make videos and your articles will be linked on many blogs.

BONUS TIP

Forum Participation also helps to get some backlinks. I like to use this method most, I get to enjoy a topic that interests me and help others with my knowledge. All you have to do is help others by providing some useful answers for questions in sections you have knowledge on. And important thing is don’t SPAM posts with single word answers, it may result in a ban.

OVER TO YOU

That’s it from my side and if I have missed any important one, let me know through comments. If you don’t agree with any of these methods or want some proofs on how they work, lets start the discussion now.

Please check out our other blog postings:

7 Blunders to avoid when starting your own blog in 2012

and our 2 Part Series:

Small Business Blog, where to begin.

7 Blunders to avoid when starting your own blog in 2015

To continue the series: “Blog writing from a Old School Internet Geek” We will be covering the 7 blunders to avoid when starting your own blog in 2012, this can also apply if you’re going to be making significant changes to a blog your already posting for.  One thing you should always remember is to keep the purpose of you blog clear and in your mind when you’re writing your posts. If your blog is a personal blog, where your readership is limited, this article may not apply to you; feel free to read on though!  If you’re interested in someday monetizing your blog, read on we have some great information for you!

1.       Making your Blog All About You

So I’ve been getting feedback from my last post’s and it’s been called to my attention that I blunder in this way quite often, after this confession I will be trying to focus on the topics and not myself J, Remember your blog is not an online journal, even though sometimes it can feel like it’s the best place to just share it all, be careful what you write, especially if someday you want to make some money with your blog.

Your target audience is not readers that are interested in your personal life, they are reading to gain information, and learn things on a specific topic, be sure to write for your readers, find topics to write about that will bring your readers back, keep in mind that even though you are writing the blog, it only exists because of your readers, keep them in mind always!

2. Writing About Every Topic Under The Sun

Even though you have many interesting items that you would like to write about, you want to focus on a niche, pick a broad niche like, technology, marketing, business etc. as you get more fluent in your blogging, you can get more specific and narrow your niche down further, try making a list of 20 possible posts you could write on your blog, you might find that you will run out of topics faster than you think, on the other hand finding a new topic with potential might surprise you.

3.       Confusing Your First Time Visitors

When a visitor comes to your site it will only take a few seconds before they form an opinion about what you’re offering, so you want to make this first impression as favorable as you can, keep in mind your visitors are looking for this information:

• What is your blog about
• Who are you
•  What’s in it for them

If your visitor can find this information quickly, and they like what they read, then you can rest assured they will stick around to see what else you have to say, on the other hand, if they have to search through a bunch of unrelated stuff, a bunch of Google ads, or unrelated content, they will browse on, and on this note, remember when choosing a name for your blog, use something that’s creative and catchy, something your visitors will remember, also choose your tag-line carefully, all these things will help your branding immensely

4.       Not Paying Enough Attention to Your “About Me” Page

I cannot express this point enough, from experience I can tell you, this is a very frequented page on any blog, once your visitors have decided to stick around, they will head for your “about me” page, they will want to know what feeds the engine, who’s writing what they are reading, let them know who you are, don’t get into your whole life, but share what’s brought you to here, share some things that make you a good resource for your niche, let them know what you can do for them as readers, this is your change to personalize your page.

5.       Writing Like Your High School English Teacher

What your visitors see in the first few seconds will keep them reading further, but your writing style and passion, will keep them coming back.  You don’t have to write a college essay, be yourself and don’t be afraid to learn from some A list bloggers who deliver with style. 

Headlines: Every bloggers dream is seeing their posts shared across Social media Channels, think about the articles you read, generally you see a headline that sparks your interest and you click
to read, headlines that arouse curiosity, make your reader curious, make them just HAVE to click.

Intro: Keep in mind, once you get your reader to click your headline, you’ll have to keep them interested, your reader is only skimming at this point, start with a story, a shocking statement, or a intriguing question, however you go about it get to your point quickly it will only take seconds to lose your reader.

Close: When you have finished sharing your important information, be sure to have a clear call for attention, tell your reader what they should do, should they leave a comment (Like I’m going to ask you to do at the end of this article), should they buy something, or maybe they should look for part 2 of your information, which is a great way to bring your readers back for more!

  6.  Not Embracing Social Media

So the saying goes, “If you build it they will come”, not true for bloggers, you need to be out there promoting your blog, if your serious about monetizing your blog you will need to be active on as many Social Media sites as you can.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn are just a few, if you feel overwhelmed by using all of these at the same time, just start with one, once your all set up move to another and get that one set up, be sure to utilize the various options they give you for linking your profile to your blog, this is extremely important, as it lets your visitors share amongst their contacts what your offering. Word of mouth is an invaluable resource when it comes to promoting your blog

   7.       Ignoring Other Bloggers

Be sure to subscribe to as many blogs related to your niche as you feel comfortable, this will allow you to get the latest news and information related to your topic, participate in forums, and blog posts, this will help you develop relationships with various resources, you’ll get others to link to your blog, and you will have resources of information not otherwise available to you, you might even make a few friends along the way, and you might have fun while promoting your blog!!

Catch me here +Rich Armstrong 

So as we close on this posting, I would like to ask you share some of your blunders, and how you were able to fix them, I’m also interested in hearing any hints or tips related to what I have posted here, that may help our visitors promote their own blogs.  Thanks for reading!

Watch for our next issue "5 Great Tips to Getting Back-links" we will offer awesome tips and tricks to getting others to link to your blog!

Small Business Blog, Where to Begin Pt.2

Small Business Blog, Where to begin Pt.2

 This is part 2 in my Mini Series “Launching a Small Business Blog” part of my series titled “Blog writing from a Old School Internet Geek”

Ok, where do I start? Let’s jump right into what I’ve recently learned about ROI (Return on Investment), How to measure it and using my blogs feed to provide content to my users.

6. ROI, So in thinking about things, I was concerned about my ROI, I mean if you think about it, Starting a blog takes considerable time and effort, and honestly I’ve noticed you can get very little return on your investment.  So I figure one of the best ways to figure out how people are finding you on the internet, is ask them directly, don’t be afraid to ask your visitors.

Another great tool I have found is Google Analytics and Google Alerts , they will provide you with a ton of information about your visitors, and where they are coming from, as well as the path they take on your site, its actually fun to see the results of your hard work, I love seeing the changes in traffic depending on what I post and when I post it.

I also set up a RSS feed, this provides a convenient way for my visitors to get updates when I post new stuff. Here is Wikipedia’stake on a RSS Feed, I have also set up an email list to offer updates to my blog, I figure this is a great way for me to build a mailing list of Opt-In people.

7. Be prepared!!  So again in thinking, I think another important thing to consider is Real Life, things happen and sometimes I won’t be able to sit in front of my computer for a hour every other day to write my blog, so keep at least 5-10 postings made up in advance, this will take the pressure off, and allow you some time to develop more topics, here is a great site if you have a shortage of topics to use: 31 blog post ideas. 

8. Hit the bricks, now I think it’s time to jump in the forums, visit the sites that are related to my niche, and get some exposure, to me this is some cool stuff, because my blog tech4000 is about offering goodies related to tech support I love to help people so I am visiting the help boards, offering help and building trust on the discussion boards, this takes time I can see, but is a invaluable resource!  You will drive amazing traffic to your site this way.

9. Reach Out!!  I think it will be a great asset to my blog if I can contact people that are influential in my niche, email is a great tool to use to contact people that share the same interest, I am going to try and set up interviews with people that can add content to my blog postings, and give me added input, if your one of those people, please feel free to contact me rarmstrong@tech4000.us I am always open to any help I can get.

10. And last but not least, issue a press release, make sure its web optimized, let the world know your now online and ready to do business, try services like Pitch Engine and How to Write Social Media Press Releases – By Brian Solis.

So that about covers my ideas on starting a Small Business Blog, Hope this helps someone, heck hope it helps me!! J  Thanks for your attention, be sure to follow my progress and follow my series: “Blog writing from a Old School Internet Geek” where in the next release I will cover the Rules to starting a blog in 2012 and not breaking the 7 New Blundersand Mistakes I have.

Small Business Blog, where to begin.

        So as I explained in “Blog writing from a Old School Internet Geek”, I wanted to share my journey building a good blog, I have decided to build a Technology small business blog around my small consulting business, what I have come up with here are some factors I think are important in building a successful small business blog, I have 9 or 10 Ideas so I will break this section into 2 separate blog postings, I will link to all of them at the end for easy access.

1. First decision in the creation of my small business blog was deciding what type of customers I am looking for and where do they come from, I also wanted to make sure I can provide content that will help them, also important is finding out where they hang out when online, sites or related content, maybe forums and even chat rooms.

2. Another important decision I needed to make was deciding if I wanted to have my blog be part of my business website like www.tech4000.us or did I  want it to have its own address like www.freesupportforums.com I had to take into consideration a few things, I think I want to eventually make my blog its own business and maybe sell some advertising there, also I figured that if I keep them eparate it will be easier when trying to rank on the search engines.

3. Next thing I considered was my domain name, and keyword choices I might want to use when targeting a niche, a great tool I found was Google Keywords, a great keyword suggestion tool you can use to research a keyword that you might want to use when listing your site, also keep in mind, if your small business blog is going to have video then you might also want to use a resource like the YouTube Keyword Tool  pick keywords that rank high the google search engine. When choosing a good domain name, you will want it to be brandable, and recognizable with respect to your business, you’ll want it to have potential in the various search engines, and most important, that it sets you apart from the competition and is as short in characters as possible.

4. The next decision for me was a fun one, choosing my Blogging Platform and Theme, I have always loved using Joomla for my platform, you can choose whatever you like, if you’re a novice to the blogging world, you might want to start at Blogger, the theme of your small business blog should be directly related to your niche, take for example, with a technology blog, I wouldn't want to have a summer theme, or use pink and blue, I believe this is the best part of the process, so when setting up your small business blog take your time on this step.

5. Next thing I decided to do was setup my Social media accounts, I will list the few that I used, there are other options, browse around and choose the ones you think will help, or match your Niche, I decided to keep my personal social media accounts separate from my business, depending on your Niche you can decide to do either, Google+ and Facebook will allow you to create business pages, so you can separate them.

                 Google+

                 Facebook

                 Twitter

                 YouTube

                 Linkedin

Sofar this is where I am at in launching a blog, I have focused on launching a Small Business blog, this seemed to me to be the best choice since I will be applying these ideas to my blog at www.tech4000.us, you can apply this setup to any type of blog with little modification.I would love to hear any other ideas you might have that can help anyone get started in launching a small business blog.

I have posted Part 2 in this Mini Series “Launching a Small Business Blog” part of my series titled “Blog writing from a Old School Internet Geek” 

We will be covering topics like, Measuring your ROI, Drafting posts, and press releases, as well as Google Adwords, Google Adsense and more.

Blog writing from a Old School Internet Geek

So I am learning to write a good article for my blog, those of you who have been following my blog over the years probably know I need help in this department, many times I find great topics and just link to them, never putting much thought into content, I would love to develop good original content for my blog, so I decided to do some research and find some resources on writing good articles, what I have found has disturbed me.

I stumbled across a great blogger Darren Rowse, actually I accidently happened by a post on ProBlogger  titled How to write great blog content, I have linked this article HERE, after getting stuck for a hour reading this and other articles by this author I learned Ive been doing it all wrong, I come from the Old School internet, been out here for about 15 years, there wasn't even color on the internet when I started, the most important things for me was the almighty Hit Counter and trading links with as many webmasters as possible, yeah I said webmaster, oh I remember the days of Back-links and Link Exchanges.

Things on the internet have changed my friends, really changed, I realize that all of my past knowledge and experience over the last 15 years, cant help me now, its like starting all over again, what a scary thought, maybe I better just leave all the blogging to the younger generation!

I going to try my hand at creating all original articles for tech4000, really put forth the effort to share my thoughts and ideas, i will be posting updates to this journey frequently here, so be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed or follow this blog, I would love any feedback I can get, I can use all the help I can get :)RichThis is the article that started it all: Darren Rowse - How to write great blog content http://www.problogger.net/how-to-write-great-blog-content

Part 2: Small Business Blog, Where to begin.