BlogWritingCourse

Small business owners are constantly competing in an overwhelming market of corporate collateral.  Their competitive edge is often the personal touch they are able to offer vs. the aloof persona of a chain or large corporation.  The website of a small business owner can be a strong tool for making connections with potential and current clients or customers – - especially those who like having personal relationships with their community service organizations or retailers.  It can be an even more powerful tool if you use a blog on your website to draw traffic, and to create a sense of community between your customers and you.

The first thing to be sure of is your target audience.  Who are you trying to reach with your blog?  Are you trying to create a line of communication between you and your current customers, or are you trying to grow your business and get the word out to a wider audience.  Or maybe you are trying to do both.  Knowing your audience helps you create better content for your blog posts, and makes sure that you have goals for them.

The next thing to focus on is providing quality content.  If you aren’t a natural writer, find someone else within your company, or even hire someone to write your blog.  No one will visit your blog if it is poorly written, and doesn’t contain useful information.  Use your blog to go in-depth about your field of expertise – - this is the time to pull out all the stops and write something that people will be eager to visit your website for.  Good writing draws traffic, and traffic increases business.

Another priority for a small business blog should be keeping it updated.  An up-to-date blog is a sign of an engaged retailer – - one that focuses on customers, and knows them well.  The worst thing a business can do with its website is create it, and then forget about it.  This says to potential buyers that you don’t make your customers and their needs a priority.  By writing consistent, current blog posts, your website visitors know that you are interested in them, and willing to go the extra mile to meet their needs.

Lastly, you should learn how to promote your blog.  You can start by inserting your blog address into newsletters, business cards, bulk mailings, and anything that you use for printed advertisement.  But to go a step further, it is important to learn how to promote your website and blog online.  Online marketing opens the door to expanding your business beyond your local venue.  Many small businesses have become large companies just by knowing how to market themselves across the world wide web.  By understanding search engine optimization, keywords, and content strategies, you can go a long way toward bringing in traffic for your blog, and ultimately for your business.

To learn more about blogging, and how it can benefit your small business, you can sign up today for one of our introductory blogging courses.  Our free online Get Ready To Blog course will introduce you to the basics of blogging terminology, platforms, and promotion.  This course will fully prepare you for our eight-week instructor led course, Blogging 101.  This course will guide you every step of the way through setting up your first blog, designing it, writing your first posts, and growing your readership.  Blogging your small business can be a key aspect of your small business marketing strategy, and we are here to help you get started.

Until next time,

So you have your first blog up and running.  You’ve written several posts, and you might have even gotten a comment or two.  So how do you know that things are going the way they are supposed to?  Is there a magic blogging fairy that lets you know that you are on track, and that your blog traffic is growing?  Well, yes and no.

Although there may or may not be magic wands and pink tutus involved, there are definitely some magical fairy-like tools out there that can help you keep up with the facts and figures of your blog on a daily basis.  Tools such as Statcounter and Google Analytics can seem almost supernatural in their ability to help you understand who your readers are and how they are interacting with your content.

I was quite a novice to web tracking software before I began my blog.  I’ll never forget the feeling of awe that came over me when I realized that I could actually see a virtual “map” of where my visitors were from.  In the first few weeks of monitoring my blog, I saw that I had readers all the way from Punxsutawney, PA to Dublin, Ireland, and many places in between.  That was incredibly cool, but not terribly useful.  I soon realized that it was much more helpful to find out not where they were physically when they dropped by my blog, but virtually.  What sites had sent them my way?  And why did they choose to click on over?

By understanding the “why” behind your traffic, you can begin to tweak your strategy, and appeal to your demographic.  This is very similar to any advertising strategy.  Take the candy company Mars, Inc. for instance.  For years they had marketed their popular M&M confection to children everywhere with their popular slogan, “Melts in Your Mouth, Not In Your Hands.”  Their TV commercials were filled with doe-eyed cuties holding out their hands after chowing down on some of the multicolored treats, to prove that they hadn’t gotten a handful of melty chocolate goo in the process.  But Mars got wise to something after several years of this advertising.  The fact was, that the majority of M&M connoisseurs weren’t actually kids, after all.  Adults were the true core of their market share for the candy.  So naturally, along with this new wisdom came a completely different marketing strategy – - the M&M guys.  These characters were aimed at entertaining the more grown-up set with their tongue-in-cheek humor.  And it has worked incredibly well for Mars, Inc.

It is that ability to take information, and make it work for you that sets you apart as an advertiser – - and as a blogger.  Knowing the stats of your blog is interesting, (and sometimes discouraging!), but it is what you do with those stats that will help you grow your blog audience.  And for most bloggers, that is what it’s all about!

If you are interested in blogging, but just haven’t been sure where to start, you should definitely sign up for our free blogging course that will give you an introduction and a foundation to the world of blogging.  Once you are familiar with the vocabulary and background of blogging, though, you will want to take our Blogging 101 course.  This subscription based course is taught by a successful seasoned blogger who will guide you through all of the steps of designing and setting up your blog, writing quality content, and growing your audience.

Until next time,

So we are smack dab in the middle of the information age.  Some might say that we are drowning in information.  No one company, organization, or individual has control over how information is dispersed…we are living in an information free-for-all.  So why not get in on it??

Blogs provide an easy outlet for content creation.  You have something to say?  Say it in a blog.  Do you have access to interesting data or information on a specific subject?  Why not blog about it?  Have a business that you would like to promote?  A blog is a cost-effective way to advertise, and also to share your vision with your current and future customers.  What about personal updates?  Families are finding blogs to be the perfect venue for keeping friends and family abreast of all that is going on in their lives.  It is also a great way to share pics and videos.

If you use the internet on a regular basis, chances are you are getting at least some portion of your information from a blog.  Interestingly, sometimes blogs are even the preferred medium for info.  Whereas the monopoly of daily newspapers gave way to up-to-the-minute news web sites years ago, even those have had to take a backseat to immediate news from the front lines – - bloggers who see the stories up close and tell about them first hand.  Company marketers and advertisers have lost their influence compared to multiple product review bloggers who can make or break a new mp3 player or a new restaurant in town.  These user-based reviews tend to have much more impact on the consumer than the biased descriptions written by distributors.  And blogging can have an incredible impact.  Grass root movements have been known to blossom overnight after one well-written blog post.

Now is the time to be part of the information age in a real way.  Bloggers have the opportunity to express themselves, to promote themselves or their causes, and to deliver information like never before.  We all want to be heard.  We want to matter.  And starting a blog is such a simple way to get in on the action.  If you are new to the world of blogging, you would probably want to take our free introductory blogging course, Get Ready To Blog.  Once you understand what blogging is all about, it is time to build your blog, and grow your readership.  Our subscription based course, Blogging 101 is designed to help you write a blog that others will want to read.

There is no better time to get in on the blogging revolution!  Sign up today!

Until next time,