Blog Wisely

If you've already started to blog or are thinking about it, there are a number of things you can do to be increase your success and the size of your audience.

* Know your audience. The main point of a blog is usually to show yourself as an expert to the sorts of people you want to attract to doing business with you. Figure out what they want to know, understand their pain, and provide the solutions.

* Pick a topic and stay with it. If you've created a blog for travel agents, because they are your target audience, then write what they would be interested in. Focus your niche carefully, so that you remain relevant to your stated purpose.

* Be relatively current. Blogging takes effort - you need to stay on top of things in order to be known as the source of good information. That said, understanding your audience and where they get their information from is important. If you're blogging for super-geeks, you had better be tied into the most current information available. If you're blogging for "joe schmoe," you might be repeating something your own colleagues have known for months but it will seem like great wisdom to your audience.

* Be consistent. Pick a reasonable schedule for posting that you can adhere to and then be religious about it. Its easy to slip into the mode of getting to it when you get to it - but with more and more businesses blogging, you don't want to lose your audience to a competitor.

* Communicate well. Don't fall into the habit of being casual with your blog - write at the level of understanding and professionalism that your audience would expect. Don't forget to spell check!

* Think in key phrases. A blog, published to your own web site, is a wonderful way to build search engine rankings - each new posting, if loaded with key phrases, is the perfect search engine spider food! If you post regularly, all that new relevant content will get catalogued, leading back to your site. Take advantage of it with rich key phrases in the content and titles of your posts.

* Have personality. Let your voice shine through - it will make the blog more interesting to people who read it regularly.

* Promote it everywhere. Syndicate your blog through an RSS feed, and use tools like Feedburner.com to put a link to your current postings in the bottom of your discussion forum entries, if you network like that. Make sure visitors to your site, and your current clients know about your blog. And, encourage them to tell others about it.

* Have fun. If it becomes hard work, a miserable task, then let it go. Blogging isn't for everyone and requires a lot of effort to be a relevant part of your business marketing strategy. It takes time, as with everything, to build an audience and convert that audience to sales, but if you follow these guidelines, it can be a great way to stay in front of your prospects.

(c) Eileen Parzek, 2005

Eileen Parzek is an award winning graphic designer and writer providing digital and print graphic design and web design services. Always found at the intersection of information, creativity and technology, her business, Business Design Studio (www.businessdesignstudio.com) helps small businesses make a big impression, increase their reach and grow.

May be republished with full bio and credit link to http://www.businessdesignstudio.com
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