Blogging for Business

BLOGGING

FOR

BUSINESS

PRESENTED BY DEBORAH SMITH

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AGENDA

What is a Blog?

Why Blog?

Types of Blogs?

Getting Started

10 Tips for a Successful Blog

Capturing Subscribers

Wordpress

Creating and Editing Your Blog

Wordpress Features and Favorite Tools

Your Roadmap

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WHAT IS A BLOG?

A Blog is a Website where You control the content

You Create the Content (written or video)

You Publish the Content to the Internet

Vocab: A Blog is the Website as a whole. Individual articles

are called “Posts.”

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WHY BLOG?

Attract leads, prospects, and opportunity without

actively selling

Gain Access to influential people in your industry

Connect and gain the trust of prospects and

customers

Gain tremendous ground in the search engines

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TYPES OF BLOGS

Business Blogs

• Blogs to help promote the business that owns them

Special Interest Blogs

• Mom Blogs

• Food Blogs

• Crafting Blogs

• Blogging Blogs

• Political Blogs

Many Special Interest Blogs are evolving into Entrepreneurial ventures.

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JERSEY BITES

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GETTING

STARTED

GC + OP – MM = GROWTH

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Great Content + Other People – Marketing Messages = Growth

TIPS FOR DEVELOPING A

SUCCESSFUL BLOG

Define Your Vision

Identify Your People

Purchase a Dot Com

Visit Other Blogs

Pick a Niche

Remember the Search Engines

Mix it Up

Learn to Write

Photos are Key

Be Consistent

Track Your Progress

Get Out There

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DEFINE YOUR BLOG’S

VISION

What do you want to achieve?

Why do you want it? What are your underlying

motivations?

Can Others rally around your vision?

What perceived problems are you addressing?

What are you lacking today?

What can keep you from accomplishing your

vision?

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IDENTIFY YOUR PEOPLE

Who do you know that

can help you with

content?

What other bloggers are

influencers in your

industry?

What can you offer

industry influencers to

get them involved?

These Lists Will Grow and Evolve Over Time as Your Learn More and Meet

More People.

PURCHASE A DOT.COM

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VISIT OTHER BLOGS: WHAT

ARE THEY DOING RIGHT,

WRONG? LEARN FROM THEM

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Casual fonts and

the informal

language they use

to spotlight the

features on the

site.

More “people-

speak” than

“marketing-speak”

Fun attention

getting photos

PICK A NICHE

Weave in a theme throughout your blog. Go deeper by

allowing your audience to see what’s behind the curtain.

Behind-the-scenes stories and footage invite the reader in

even more and will help you create content that stays true to

your theme.

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TITLE YOUR POSTS FOR

THE SEARCH ENGINES

Your Post Titles play a big

part in how the search

engines rank your posts.

Clever post titles may be

clever, but they won’t get

you anywhere on Google.

Use Google’s Keyword tool

to discover what people

are searching for and

name your posts with these

keywords in mind.

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LEARN TO WRITE

To be a good writer, you must be an even better editor.

Less is more when it comes to effective blogging.

Always take a second look for spelling and grammatical errors.

Enlist a family member or friend who is a good proof reader.

Blogging is conversational.

Your first paragraph needs to be compelling enough to get them to

continue reading.

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MIX IT UP

Content Ideas

Top 5 – 10 Lists

“Best of” lists

Seasonal suggestions

Contests

Book Reviews

Interviews

Product Reviews

Multi part series

Video

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PHOTOS / IMAGES ARE KEY

Photos on a blog are essential when you want to create a

feeling or experience for your readers.

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BE CONSISTENT

Pick a Day or Days for Your Blog Posts and Be Consistent

You readers will know when to expect an update from you and the

search engines will start to trust your blog. Your blog will gain

authority and your posts will start to rank higher and higher in the

search engines.

Create a Theme Day

• Tasty Tuesday

• Win it Wednesday

• Motivational Monday

• Foodie Things to Do Weekend Roundup

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GET OUT THERE

Trade Links with Other Bloggers

Guest Post on other Blogs

Pick a Charity or Organization You Can Partner With

Become a Monthly Contributor for a Trade Publication

Share Each Blog Post on Your Facebook Page, Twitter & LinkedIn

Tip: Make content sharing on your site as easy as possible for your readers. If they have to look around for the share features, they’ll likely skip sharing altogether.

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TRACK YOUR

PROGRESS

Install Google Analytics on your blog and study what

works.

What are your most popular blog posts?

What Keywords are people using that end up in

visits?

What days of the week are you getting the most

traffic?

If Monday is a popular day on your blog, be sure to

have something noteworthy and hopefully “social

bookmark”- worthy posted every Monday.

If a particular topic gets more attention, shares, hits,

come up with more articles on the topic. 20

CAPTURE

SUBSCRIBERS

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Can you offer a white paper or

some other valuable

information in exchange for

Name and Email Addresses?

BLOG SEARCH

ENGINES

Bloglines

BlogScope

Technorati: the most popular blog search engines, provides current information on both popular searches and tags used to categorize blog postings.

Blogging Communities

BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog

Category Specific Blog Communities:

Foodbuzz

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Register Your Blog on:

SYNDICATION

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RSS: www.JerseyBites.com/feed

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BLOGGING PLATFORMS

Wordpress

Joomla

Blogspot (blogger)

Drupal

Typepad

Tumblr

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WORDPRESS.COM BENEFITS

It’s free and much easier to setup

Everything is taken care of: setup, upgrades, spam, backups, security, etc.

Your blog is on hundreds of servers, so it’s highly unlikely it will go down due to traffic

Your posts are backed up automatically

You get extra traffic from blogs of the day and tags

Your login is secure (SSL) so no one can get into your account if you use wifi

WordPress.com Cons

They provide 100+ themes (and adding more every day) which you can modify and edit the CSS, but you cannot run a custom theme

You can’t hack the PHP code behind your blog*

You can’t upload plugins

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WORDPRESS.ORG BENEFITS

Ability to customize themes

Ability to upload plugins

Complete control to change code if you’re technically minded

WordPress.org Cons

You need a good web host, which generally costs $7-12 a month

Requires more technical knowledge to set up and run

You’re responsible for stopping spam

You have to handle backups

You must upgrade the software manually when a new version comes out

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PLUGINS ARE POWERFUL

Wordpress plugins can make your blog function in some

pretty cool ways.

Some of the Plugins I use:

• Wp-reCAPTCHA

• Log In Lock Down

• All in One SEO Pack

• Embed Iframe

• Evermore

• Google XML Sitemap

• Linked Within

• Print Friendly and PDF

• Share This

• Wordpress Database Backup

• Wordpress Google Calendar

• WPtouch Pro

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LINKED WITHIN

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ON THE PAGE

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Google

Calendar

LinkedIn &

Twitter

Widget

Search Box

Email

Subscription

Product

for Sale

Contact Form

Multiple

Pages

THE WORDPRESS DASHBOARD

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CREATING A POST

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Title Your

Post

Insert

Image

Text Body

Select or

Create

Categories

Assign Tags

Save, Preview, Publish

CATEGORIES

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Add

categories

and sub-

categories

TAGS

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WIDGETS

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Text Widget

Allows you to

add HTML

Snippets

Drag and Drop Widgets

to Sidebar

COMMENTS

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IMPORT YOUR BLOG

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URL’S THAT ARE

SEARCH FRIENDLY

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MONETIZING YOUR

BLOG

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Adding a Service

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Banner Advertising

Sponsored Content

Sponsored Giveaways

Branch Out

RECOMMENDED TOOLS

Wordpress.com with several plugins

Feedblitz.com: Email Subscription for Blogs

Aweber.com: Email Service Provider

PrintFriendly: Plugin allows for “print friendly” version of post

Twitter: Great for Sharing Blog Content

Facebook: Great for Sharing Blog Content

Google Analytics: Study What is Working, What Keyword are bringing you visitors, and more

Flickr: Store photos on Flickr for uploading to WP

Picasa: Edit photos to make them look their best

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AVOIDING NEWBIE MISTAKES

Auto-loading Music

Don’t Get Hacked and Be Sure to Backup Regularly

No Dark backgrounds with Light text

Say No to too much sidebar clutter

Accidental plagiarism (even with photos)

• U.S. Copyright Office bluntly says: “Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.”

Using “click here” instead of keyword phrases for links.

Source: http://www.bloggingbasics101.com

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YOUR ROADMAP

And Remember the Three P’s of Blogging

Passion, Persistence, and Patience 43

1. Purchase and Read Launch by Michael Stelzner

2. Research Other Blogs in Your Industry

3. Map out Your Vision

4. Identify The People Who Can Assist

5. Create a Content Calendar

6. Create a List of Plugins or Widgets

7. Develop a Design Concept

8. Have Blog Developed and Uploaded to Web Host

9. Start Blogging and syndicating to Social Accounts

QUESTIONS?

Deborah Smith, Social Media Consulting

Foxtrot Media, LLC.

info@DeborahLSmith.com

Reach me @ Twitter.com/JerseyBites or @DeborahLSmith

Facebook.com/SocialMedia4Business

LinkedIn.com/in/DeborahLeeSmith

www.DeborahLSmith.com

www.JerseyBites.com

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