Blogs Are a Great Marketing Resource

Blogs are a great online marketing resource, with the right preparation. Frequent blogging can create a voice for your company, communicate the value of the products or services you have to offer, and help boost search engine visibility. Blogging is a foundational base for investing in social media connections, and a way to position an organization as an expert in their respective field.

A blog can also serve as an excellent hub for customers to interact with or speak to you or your company. Blogging can be an awesome piece of marketing collateral to help build brand awareness, and drive prolonged customer commitments. Benefits aside, blogging is an obligation.

It requires a real commitment to client understanding. To be a successful blogger you must employing these six components:

Theme Voice Content Design SEO, for search engine optimization Outreach

Theme: When you're picking a theme, think of something that's bigger and better than your organization. Who would want to read a blog that's just about you or your company.

There needs to be a theme that embodies your value, your values, and have that be shown visibly to someone, so they really understand what the value of the content is about.

Voice: Who is going to write this blog?

Some organizations choose to have the creators write. Some blogs have many, many writers, sometimes clients become writers, and some company's choose to have just one person blog, but just decide what's going to work best for you.

Content: Content is king when it comes to social media, especially with blogging. So as you're thinking of content, look to your theme. Your theme is going to be a large enough cover to help decide what kind of posts you're going to include in there for your readers.

Think about content that's really going to give value to your customers. share links about great news articles that may help, educate, or empower their current and prospective customers.

Sometimes content could be things like an FAQ that customers ask all the time, and they become posted on the blog as a way to serve and support.

Design: The design is important to think about, because some blogs don't always live on a Web site. They may be on third-party sites, like blogger or WordPress.

The design should be done in a way so it still looks like your company's website, even when you click the blog link and leave your site. Colors should be similar, the logo should be included, and even things like social media widgets, like the Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube buttons; should be thoughtfully designed into the blog to become part of the overall strategy.

SEO; search engine optimization: When you are writing blog posts, take advantage of the opportunity to weave in your priority key phrases to help attract search engines. Blogs are the best SEO Tools, because they are full of key word rich content, the way blogs are construed should be clean, so search engines can read them easily, and when your content is powered with good key phrases in headlines, the content itself, and even links can multitask as a way to help get you a higher search engine ranking.

Outreach: If you build a blog, you want people to come. How are people going to find your blog?

Here are a few ideas. One easy thing to do is include a link to your blog in your e-mail signature,so as you're sending e-mails for business reasons, there's also a link to invite people to read your blog content. Add a link to the blog on your main Web site. There are also tools, like Twitter feed, that help automatically feeds your blog content into Twitter and Facebook.

You Should think about launching a press release. So think about different ways that you can help promote your blog, and get it out there, because if all of that content is going to be created, you certainly want people to read it.

When these six steps are used together, blogs become an online marketing asset to help serve customers better and can increase public relations potential and give you search and social media marketing visibility.

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Is a Blog Necessary for Author Marketing and Business Book Promotion?

Author marketing experts will answer "yes" to this question every time. A blog serves several important functions in the overall marketing campaign. It's not just a place where the writer - or the publicity agency, if the writer has hired one - will talk about the new book. It's also a place that can become very search engine friendly, if handled correctly, and lead readers to the connected website and into the sales process.

Whether it's business book promotion or widget sales, Google and the major search engines love to see fresh, relevant content on a website. (Although we differentiate between "website" and "blog," search engines do not.) Until blogs came into fashion, anyone with a website faced a quandary: How to keep putting content on a website that already has all the content it needs.

Blogging has solved that problem. In book promotion, the author or his or her publicity firm can make sure new posts are going up on an appropriate schedule. Because these posts aren't actual website pages - such as Home, About, Books, History, etc. - a wide variety of topics can be covered without sludging up the streamlined navigation of the main website.

Authors can write blog posts about their books, how and where they learned to write, the art of writing, the passion of writing, writing pitfalls, other books they've read and liked and just about anything else. What is the point of all this?

Traffic.

Relevant content that is always being added to has a far better chance of attracting the search engines - and thereby visitors - than a static website that hasn't been updated for months or longer. Of course there's more to what is known as "search engine optimization" than just relevant, growing content, but this is a big part of it. Online promotion efforts also focus on elements such as the actual design, a reduced use of HTML, meta tags, post titles, navigation, text headings and the like.

Author marketing professionals typically have the resources to perform excellent design and optimization work for their clients. They also have the expertise to create the kind of website, to which the writer's blog readers will be sent, that has a powerful sales message, written and formatted in a way that has been proven to be effective.

So, does a writer need a blog when doing author marketing? The answer to that question today is like the answer a few years ago to the question, "Does a company need a website?" An author needs every tool he or she can get in order to win in the highly competitive book-sales market. This is why so many turn to professional book publicists who have taken many authors down the road to success and who understand the inner workings of the publicity game and the book industry itself.

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My Brain's Locked - What to Blog About When I'm New To This Marketing Thing?

Yup we've pretty much all been there. Who can forget those sweet, sweet moments where you spend hours, if not days, pondering what to blog about when you have no clue as to what makes compelling or useful content?

But fret not dear reader, as I fully intend on giving you the low down on exactly what it is that you need to do to create those awesome blog posts that will have hundreds and thousands of hungry readers clambering onto your website for a quick dose of your quirky writing.

Where You Can Uncover That Goldmine of Endless Possibilities on What to Blog About

When I say endless goldmine... I mean an endless expanse of topics to write about.

See most people tend to over complicate the subject matter of what to blog about on a daily basis when in fact, if they took the time to stop and think about what they already know, they would be very surprised at how their current knowledge base can be turned into multiple blog posts.

In other words, if you've been studying online marketing (well you should be if you want to have any form of success)... what's stopping you from turning what you just learned into an informative blog post for others to learn from?

Think back to attraction marketing: providing value to the marketplace remember?

You don't have to be an expert to be able to write a blog post on marketing strategies.

Why?

You just need to know a little bit more than the next person in order to be of value!

That's right. Just being that one, tiny step ahead of your prospect already puts you at a major advantage!

Think back to the last webinar that you attended. What did you get out of it?

More likely than not, you picked up on more than one useful golden nugget of information that you can turn into multiple blog posts.

So I Turn What I Already Know Into A Valuable, Informative Article... What Else Can I Blog About?

If you are still stuck on what to blog about, reviews are a great way to show your prospect's that you are up to date on the latest gadgets, programs, systems and software that make marketing a more easy and a time saving activity.

Trust me there are a lot of lazy people out there who would die to get their hands on something that will make their lives easier.

It's a goldmine in that:

1) There will always be lazy people who are actively searching for useful software 2) There will always be products created to satiate these lazy people.

Stay ahead of the game and review these products and services before they explode into the marketplace and your article will be a great reference as to whether that system or software is worth buying.

Not to mention if it's an affiliate product, you can earn a good side income from your review (just don't forget to put your affiliate link at the end of the blog post).

Go to amazon.com or clickbank.com and search for the newest products there.

The same can be said for MLM companies. Go to mlmrankings.com or npros.com and pick a company that you would like to review, do a little research about it (don't be a lazy bum now) and write a review on it.

Target this towards the people who are looking to join that company and you will get the best results that way.

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Successful Content Marketing - Avoiding Obstacles

Content marketing requires a great deal of effort if you are doing it properly. Remember, you get out of it what you put into it. Your online content marketing strategy is critical and streamlining it regularly helps you to succeed.

Whether you have had your online marketing strategy in place for a very long time or it is rather new to your business, it is important to look at it with a critical eye and to recognize when and where you can improve upon what you already have and learn how to recognize and avoid obstacles that can create kinks in your strategy. The following are some of the most common obstacles that business owners encounter:

Constantly coming up with new, fresh topics: It certainly isn't the easiest thing in the universe to constantly come up with new topics about which to write, especially if you write frequently and on a regular basis. There are several ways in which you can approach the writing and coming up with new topics. First of all, it is very important that you pay attention to what other people are discussing online. This is a representation of the topics that interest people in your target audience. Of course, this doesn't mean that you should copy exactly what other people are saying. You need to take the concepts and use words that are uniquely yours. Another excellent way to come up with fresh topics is through your discussions online with your readers. In many cases, they will tell you what they want to read about, whether by directly suggesting topics or by more indirect means, such as through some other aspect of the back-and forth interactions that are hopefully occurring among your readers. If you are able to do it, planning your content topics well in advance is a great way to never be at a loss. That sort of organization often takes the stress out of the writing. If you come to regard writing as fun, you will be inclined to want to do it more. Organizing your content effectively: A critical part of your online marketing success is your organizational ability. If you are not capable of being organized and efficient, you won't be able to really make a go of successfully marketing your content online. The first thing that you should do (and there are really no exceptions to this rule) is to use an editorial calendar. It is probable that your calendar may not look exactly the same as someone else's calendar; however, the concept of using some sort of calendar is a critical one to the success of your business. It is extraordinarily important that you know exactly what you are writing and when you are writing it. Without a calendar, you are inviting chaos into your professional life and that is the last thing that you want or need. If you don't want to create your calendar from scratch, there are several downloadable calendar templates from which you can choose. Additionally, there are many articles online that will explain which components you should have in your calendar. Help is only a click away. Maintain your writing focus: When it comes to writing content (whether it is online or print content), being productive is at the top of the priority list for all writers. You have been armed with online tools that no doubt help you to become productive and stay productive. If you feel that your current online tools are working for you and they allow you to stay organized and efficient, that is great. However, if you aren't so satisfied with what you are using, you should be aware of the fact that you have other options when it comes to the mechanics of the writing. There are tools for you to use that will allow you to store your writing ideas online so that you can pull them up whenever you need them (a kind of indexing system) and there are also tools that will allow you to "talk" through your ideas by using an auditory function and thus avoiding being faced with a "blank page." Compartmentalizing the various aspects of your content: Depending on your own professional needs, compartmentalizing the various aspects of your content may be advantageous for your ultimate success. If that is the case, there are certain aspects of what you are writing that you can try to identify early on and thus avoid issues at a later point in time. First of all, it is essential that you keep a close watch on your workflow. If possible, you should try to identify where your bottlenecks might be and make sure that your process takes into consideration the possibility of those particular issues. Creating a well-organized and intelligent repository: As a writer, you are probably well aware of the fact that ideas can come from so many different people, places and things. You can become inspired out of nowhere, which is wonderful! However, it is important to understand that if you don't hold onto those ideas, you will lose them, which means that you are allowing some potentially incredible topics to slip through your fingers. What a waste that would be. You can create a file for ideas and store them or you can use any number of online tools that have been created specifically for that purpose. Streamlining your process: After you have written your content and your next step is syndicating it to your various social media channels and groups within those channels, you can easily automate either some or all of the process. The more you can syndicate, the more you will have time to work on other valuable aspects of your business. Because of the volume of available content online, the sooner you get your content to your readers (as well as getting the content to as many readers as possible), the more you and your business will start to hold the position of top of mind for your readers.

Conclusion

"Content Is King" but once you are ready to share your wonderful content with other people, it is important for you to recognize the potential of obstacles that can get in the way of your success and do everything possible to get around them. You start with excellent-quality writing and reach the finish line in the most effective and most direct way possible. As was already discussed, you can draw inspiration from many different places. It is just a matter of what you do with that inspiration. If your communication technique is good enough, you won't encounter obstacles that will stop you from doing what you want and need to do.

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