Left-Brain Blogging for Right-Brain Marketers

Question: What do writers, holistic professionals and social entrepreneurs all have in common?

Answer: They tend to be right-brain dominant.



Scientists tell us that the left side of our brain is used for sequential thinking, speech, analysis and organised thought. The right side of the brain is used for creative thinking, global perspectives, imagination and innovation. After working for more than four decades within the creative industries, an additional seven years as a coach and consultant for holistic practitioners, and more recent work with social entrepreneurs, it is my observation that all of these people tend to think in abstract ideas -- typically associated with right-brain thinking. They are concept-driven people. They have a vision, usually driven by an emotion, and they work passionately -- often tirelessly -- to bring that vision down to earth.

The problem with this is that visions don't always translate well when a right-brained person is trying to communicate them to others. Making their visions understandable to others can be a major challenge for people who see and experience the world through the lens of abstractions, ideals and values. And making our visions understandable to others is what marketing is all about. This is one of the reasons (there are many others) why visionaries often find marketing to be a daunting task.

Why Blogging is Part of the New Marketing Paradigm

One of the most powerful forms of new paradigm marketing is blogging. Some people might wonder why I consider blogging to be a form of marketing, so let me explain my reasoning. I believe marketing is simply 'the act of communicating the message that we have something of value to share'. It's not about 'selling'; it's about communicating. Blogging is, in my opinion, the way new paradigm marketers 'sell without selling'. It is the way to express ideas, share information, give advice, establish trust AND engage in a dialogue with our audience.

It's my observation that many new bloggers mistakenly think blogging is an 'anything goes' activity. That might be fine if your only aim in blogging is to use it for personal creative expression, but if you want to use blogging as a marketing tool, you cannot use an 'anything goes' approach. Here are the three most common mistakes I see right-brained people make when they blog:

Blogging 'whenever they feel like it' rather than consistently and regularly
Blogging without an over-arching message or purpose
Blogging in a stream-of-consciousness manner (similar to the way they think)
Below, I'm going to look at each of these mistakes, and offer my own 'concrete' advice on how to turn them around, so your blogging can become an effective marketing tool.

The Value of Having a Regular Routine

In my experience, right-brained people tend to be driven by 'feelings'. This means they tend to eschew routines, preferring to engage in creative activity when 'they feel like it'. When they're not in the right mood for something, they simply don't do it. While they might think this practice brings authenticity to their work, it's my observation that it can often hinder them from getting projects done and from putting systems in place that can help build their enterprise.

The other common trait amongst creative, right-brained people is they tend to have a lot of plates spinning in the air at once. They seem to need a lot of stimulation to be happy, and thus say 'yes' to lots of projects. The end result is that they are spread too thin, and often forget to leave the 'me time' they need to do things like writing content for their blog. And because they don't have a commitment to a system of regular blogging, they don't bother to create time to do it.

If you wish to use blogging as a means of marketing you MUST build it into your regular business routine by assigning specific days on which you will WRITE and PUBLISH your articles. Make a schedule and commit to it. Don't overwhelm yourself with too much commitment. Commit to two blog posts a month to start and build up to one or two posts a week after you've gotten used to the regular practice.

Having a regular blogging routine helps grow your AUDIENCE. When people know your writing patterns, they will look for your posts and subscribe to your blog. If you don't show any consistency, your readers will feel no incentive to stay in touch with you. I have seen it personally in my own blogging. I recently changed my own blogging schedule to ensure I blog twice a week, and my readership has TRIPLED within the last 60 days. This has not only impacted my subscriber list, but it has also increased my book sales and my ReTweets on Twitter. Creating a routine is one small change that can make a huge difference.

The Value of Having a Message and Purpose

Many right-brained business owners will blog on somewhat aimless topics. Others think blogging is just about talking about their business. NEITHER is true. Your blog needs to have a clear, definable, over-arching purpose and message. For instance:

The over-arching purpose of one of my blogs is to provide insight and help in ethical marketing practice for social entrepreneurs.

The over-arching message of that same blog is that 'we can heal humanity and the planet by changing the way we sell'.
As such, EVERY article written either by me or guest contributors on my own blogs must address its over-arching purpose or the message (or both). Being consistent about your purpose and message helps grow your BRAND. You might think you are 'repeating' yourself but you won't be. Engage your right-brain thinking and look at all the creative ways you can send the same message using different words and different ideas.

For example, one of my clients is a poet with her first poetry book coming out next month. She's been struggling to figure out what to write about in her blogs, and how they can help build a reading audience for her books. So I suggested that she go through each of the poems in her book and identify the over-arching message in each one. Then, she can break that over-arching message into two or three different points. Each of these points can become a blog topic. If she does this for even just 10 poems, she'll have 20-30 topics. If she writes one blog post a week, this list will take her through the next six months of blogging. Imagine how combining this plan with a regular blogging practice will build both her audience and her brand (and over-arching) message. This will eventually pay out in book sales, especially as she brings more poetry books out over this coming year.

The Importance of Structure

This point has to do with the WAY many right-brained people write. Unfortunately, I have found that many people with the most beautiful vision cannot present their ideas in a structured way, either in conversation or in writing. This is very frustrating for them, because they cannot understand why other people cannot see what they are seeing. This is a BIG issue, and requires a lot more advice than I can put into a single blog article, but here are a few small tips that can help right-brained thinkers communicate their ideas more effectively in their blog articles:

STRUCTURE POINT 1: Identify Your Message

Before you start writing, identity ONE major message or point you intend to communicate in the article. Too many right-brained bloggers write in a free-spirited fashion, using lots of colourful or poetic language, but not really leading the reader anywhere. Unfortunately, this does nothing to help grow your audience, your brand or your business. It also doesn't give anything of value to your readers.

STRUCTURE POINT 2: Put Your Message in Your Title

Many right-brained bloggers write really colourful titles for their blog posts that don't tell the reader what the article is about. This renders your blog post completely ineffective as a marketing tool. If people cannot get a clear idea of what your article is about when they see it on Google, Twitter or Facebook, they won't click the link. And if no one clicks, no one is reading.

Whittle down your message into a title for your blog. Try to make it no longer than 60 characters long (because that's all that many search engines can accommodate).

STRUCTURE POINT 3: Stick to the Message

Right-brained people are FULL of ideas. The problem with this is that they tend to express these ideas whenever they come to them. While this is a vital part of the creative mind, it can come across as meandering and aimless if it is in a blog article. Just because an idea comes to you does NOT mean it needs to be in your article unless it adds something substantial to the point you're trying to make. Also, if you randomly toss in a new idea without developing it (a common thing I see in right-brained articles) it should be taken out of the article as it weakens the message. If you feel you have 'lots of other things' you want to say, write those ideas down for future articles.

STRUCTURE POINT 4: Use a 3-Part Structure

The 'rule' for writing an effective blog post is really no different from writing a good essay or delivering a good presentation:

Start by saying what you're going to say (and why you're going to say it)
Say what you're going to say
Summarise what you just said (and why it is important)
Using this structure can help you gain focus as you write your article. It also helps your readers decide, from the very start, whether or not they wish to continue reading. At the end of the article, they will be able to evaluate whether or not they got what you promised to deliver. If they decide they got something valuable from reading your article, they are likely to return to your blog another day. If people cannot evaluate what they got from reading your article, it means you have not expressed that value clearly enough in your structure.

The Future Will Be Full of Right-Brained Marketers

I believe we have entered an era where more and more right-brained thinkers are entering the entrepreneurial world, and especially the realm of social enterprise. It's my desire to support these value-driven business owners to become powerful communicators through new paradigm marketing platforms, such as blogging and social media.

While some of these tips I've offered today might present a learning curve for many a right-brained thinker, be assured that we are all in a social learning curve as we collectively create the new business and marketing paradigm. Work to learn how to bring your left-brain into play but never, ever abandon your creative vision, your global perception and your values.

All those beautiful right-brain qualities you have are the VERY things that will bring us into the new paradigm in the coming decades -- where both right and left brain thinkers become 'whole brain marketers' able to communicate ideas that express a richer, deeper vision of the world in which we live.

LYNN SERAFINN, MAED, CPCC is a certified, award-winning coach, teacher, marketer, social media expert, radio host, speaker and author of the number one bestseller The 7 Graces of Marketing: How to Heal Humanity and the Planet by Changing the Way We Sell and Tweep-e-licious! 158 Twitter Tips & Strategies for Writers, Social Entrepreneurs & Changemakers Who Want to Market their Business Ethically.

She is listed in the Top 20 of the Top Marketing Authors on Twitter by Social Media Magazine and was a finalist for the prestigious Brit Writers Awards. She also received the eLit Book Awards Silver Medal in Humanitarian and Ecological Social Affairs, as well as the Bronze Medal in Business and Sales.

Lynn's eclectic approach to marketing incorporates her vast professional experience in the music industry and the educational sector along with more than two decades of study and practice of the spirituality of India. Her innovative marketing campaigns have produced a long list of bestselling non-fiction authors through her company Spirit Authors

Blogging and SEO Working for You

Google's freshness update has created a surge in business website blogging. The update has affected a large percentage of search results, giving companies a real reason to integrate their blog page into their main website. The update has meant that the first few pages of search results are usually populated with blogs and articles that relate to that specific term; more so than business websites (not including long-tail keyword or local searches).

As an example, if you were interested in buying an iPhone and searched for an exact term 'iPhone' (short-term keyword), the first page of results will be filled with blogs, reviews, news articles and message forum posts relating to that topic. Conversely, if a search is made for 'buying an iPhone' (long-tail keyword) or 'mobile phone shops in London' (local keyword), the result pages will be populated with business websites.



This article will cover two related topics: how to improve your website's SEO with blogging and how to improve your blog's SEO.

Your business website's SEO can be improved by a blog in the following ways:

Fresh Content

A blog page will provide your site with fresh content. When search engines crawl your website they will notice the frequent updates and new URLs and recognise that this is updated content. The freshness update mentioned earlier will be taken in to consideration when ranking is determined.

New Keywords Targeted

Blogs are a great way of adding additional keywords to your website. When another website links to your blog using these keywords, link juice is passed along with it. This helps your site rank for these keywords and adds to the list of keywords you were already targeting.

Enhancing Niche Authority

Blogging about your particular niche builds authority. A blog that gives useful tips and instructions to visitors helps acquire expert status. If a potential customer has a choice between two businesses, they are more likely to choose the one that demonstrates in-depth knowledge through their blog than the one that doesn't.

Going Social

Blog posts are easily shared on social media. This brings in social signals that assist your website's search engine rankings. Sharing your own content on social networking platforms increases interaction with users and enhances word-of-mouth marketing.

Internal Linking

Blogs allow you to build internal links into your main website and this passes link authority to your homepage and inner pages. Links can be made from your products/services pages to any relevant blog post and posts can be linked to one another if the subject matter is related. If you have downloadable PDFs or a subscription form on your site, a call-to-action on a blog post that links to these landing pages will not only encourage interaction and increase conversions, but also pass on link juice. Your blog posts could also receive links from other authoritative pages, which would pass authority with them. Internal linking also allows you to use anchor text associated with your chosen keywords. External websites are likely to link to your page with generic anchor text such as 'click here' or 'read more', but having internal anchor text that you control allows you to use targeted anchor text when linking your pages.

SEO and Images

It is important to SEO any images on your blog. This can be done by the use of the image alt text attribute and correct file naming conventions. The images will then be found via the Google image search and can drive an increased volume of traffic to your website.

Natural Linking

Well written and informative blog posts will generate links naturally. Asking other websites to link to your blog might seem a little pushy, but if people, groups or businesses find your blogs insightful and helpful they are likely to create links under their own steam.

Trust Building

Some visitors to your website will know exactly what they want and will immediately engage with your services or products. This means you will require a website that is simple to navigate and quick to convert. Most visitors, on the other hand, may be a little sceptical about your expertise and will want to be convinced before they do business with you. Having a blog on your website is an excellent way to build up trust. By sharing professional experiences or case studies and offering information on your niche topics you can become more personal and instil a degree of confidence. As the content on your blog grows, trust will be established with your visitors, which will increase traffic, popularity and enhance your websites SEO.

Below I have listed some points that should be considered in order to ensure that your blog is targeting the right users on the web:

Blog Hosted as a Sub Domain

By hosting your blog as a sub domain of your main site and not as a separate domain or subdirectory ensures you will reap the best SEO benefits. It is best practise to host your blog with a web address similar to 'blog.yourwebsite.com'. This will mean that you have only one site to maintain and the link juice that your blog attracts will benefit the main website as well.

Trending Keywords

Research trending keywords with Google Trends or any other keyword research tool available on the internet and write a blog about the latest trending subjects in your particular niche.

Insert Keywords

Insert keywords into your blog article in a manner that makes sense and reads correctly. Ensure that you have used correct spelling and grammar. Search engines are very clever determining user-experience and reward blogs that are written with the human user in mind rather than for search engine ranking.

Blog titles should contain the target keyword and be no longer than 70 characters. The title is usually incorporated into the blogs URL and is good for the blog's SEO.

Integrating Social Media

Visitors to your blog are more likely to share your post if social share buttons are clearly visible. Providing social share buttons not only improves usability, but also helps to strengthen the social signals from your site. This in turn, as mentioned earlier, improves your blog's SEO and result page rankings.

Interaction on your Blog

Interaction on your blog can be enhanced by asking questions and inviting opinion at the end. Examples of this could include; What do you think? or Have you experienced this? If your blog is comparing two different items or strategies, ask your visitors which one they prefer. When you are sharing your post on a social media site, ask a question that is related to your blog. Answer any comments that left on your blog and encourage debate. Seek out blogs and forums in your niche and post comments saying that you have blogged on similar subjects. All this will encourage interaction with visitors to your site and signal frequent use to the search engine crawlers.

Driving traffic to your website by using a blog is the most natural form of search engine optimisation. All major search engines will reward a website that has an informative and interactive blog page and you'll soon see your website rise up through the rankings. Schedule a little time each week to write good quality blog pages and post frequently, about two or three times a week if time allows. Make the blog consistent and relevant to your niche market and watch your fan base and rankings grow.

How Do I Blog? Tips For Creating And Maintaining A Powerful Money-Making Company Or Personal Blog

Creating and maintaining a blog is one of the best ways to market yourself or your company on the internet. Blogging provides a wealth of opportunities for both yourself and your readers.

Few internet marketing strategies afford you with the flexibility of your own blog. In this article, we'll explore exactly what a blog is, how to create one, promote one, and manage a blog so that it drives traffic to your website and helps promote your business and make you money online.



What is a blog?

In reality, a blog or "web log" is nothing more than a very simple website dedicated to a topic or closely related set of topics. A blog can stand alone as an independent URL, such as yourblog.com, or it can be hosted by a blogging website such as Google's blogger.com or you might embed a blog directly on your own website.

A blog generally consists of a few basic parts. The main blog title, which describes what the blog is about and tells viewers the general topics they'll find there. The blog will also have multiple posts or small articles that are dated and feature the bi-line of the author. Finally, the blog will feature a comments section where readers can post comments on a blog entry and interact with each other as well. Additionally, most blogs will have social sharing mechanisms where readers can share the information on their Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social networking accounts.

A blog can be more complex than this, but in essence, what has been described above is the core of every online web log you will come across. Blogs should be informative and interesting, as well as optimized for search engine traffic.

How do you create a blog?

As stated above, a blog is a website, or a part of a website. If you are a programmer, you can easily write your own blogging scripts. However, there are generally two types of blog creation and maintenance options for the average internet user.

First, you can use blogging or website creation software to make your blogs. These systems include WordPress, Joomla, and other CMS type systems. These allow a great deal of flexibility and give you the ability to create entire websites around your blogs.

The second most common method is to use a pre-existing blogging application like the afore-mentioned Blogger.com. This website will allow you to build and maintain your own blog with only a very few clicks of your mouse. They provide themes, editing tools and social interaction that is very simple and very effective.

As mentioned earlier, a blog should be focused on a specific topic or category of topics to be effective. For example, our blog is about internet marketing, business development and website design. Very inter-related topics. It allows users and other entrepreneurs to share their thoughts, ask questions and gives them an ongoing resource.

A blog should not ramble and cover multiple unrelated topics. Stay focused on what your blog is about. If you want to blog about several unrelated topics, create more than one blog. You can even network and cross-link them. Just try to keep each blog focused on its intended purpose. You'll find it is a lot more effective at capturing and keeping interest.

How do I manage my blog?

Probably the most important thing about a blog is the way you manage it. Blogging is unlike all other forms of marketing and content creation due to several factors. First, blog readers come to expect and will respond to consistent postings. You can't treat your blog as a once in a while activity.

Second, because of the interactive nature of a blog, you will have to monitor and interact with those of your readers who comment. You may even get requests for guest bloggers. You must be attentive and responsive.

Write at least once per week, if not more. If and when your blog begins to grow in popularity, you'll find that you will have to be on top of it on a daily basis. There will be a constant desire for new information as well as many comments to be addressed. Of course, if you get to a point where your blog requires more than an hour a day of your attention, you will be glad to do the work.

How to promote your blog and use it to promote you

Many people wonder how you promote a blog. How do you get readers? Keep in mind what we've already mentioned. A blog is nothing more than a small website. It's going to be indexed by Google, yahoo and Bing like any other website. Further, it will get indexed by some special blogging search engines as well. So the first thing to think about with your blog and all the posts you write is SEO.

Second, just like a website, begin to build back links to your blogs. You can do this by actively pursuing link exchanges as well as writing good quality content that others will want to syndicate to their own blogs and websites.

Another great way to promote your blog is to comment on others' blogs. It's like that old saying about writing letters, "You've got to write them to get them." Become a contributor to other people's blogs and they in turn may contribute to yours, thus allowing you all to exchange active links.

Finally, use social networks. Let people know about your new blogs and about posts they may find interesting. Ask them to comment or even write a guest post about a topic on which they're knowledgeable. Just keep in mind, you want to provide this network with real valuable information, not just a constant stream of self-promotion.

If you do all this, and some other internet marketing strategies too numerous for this article, you will not only see your blog visits and comments increase, but this will almost automatically do the same for a website you want to promote via this blog. You can even embed the latest one or two blog posts on your site to keep its content growing and send visitors back and forth. Provide your blog readers with quality valuable content and they'll not only keep coming back, link to you and comment, they'll tell others about you. So go out there and create a place for sharing your thoughts and information. And if you want, let us know about it!

Advice to Consider Before Starting a Blog

The planet we reside in today is fully various as opposed to ten years ago, right now people are always on the internet, which makes having a presence on the web that far more appealing for business to possess. Should you wish to develop a web-based presence by means of blogging then the information from this article must aid.

If you'd like to become a great writer, it is critical that you are an excellent reader. Take the time to really read what you write about, and enjoy it. Once you can read it from a visitor's point of view, you'll have the ability to get a better understanding of any modifications which you need to make for your writing style.

Be sure to employ tags in your blog posts inside a cautious manner. A misplaced tag on your internet site might be as damaging for the readership as a good tag is valuable. You have to do your investigation and place tags in an intelligent and thoughtful approach to boost your blogging endeavors.


Try writing out of your personal experiences. Write openly about items you understand about and write your feelings about them without fearing getting wrong. It tends to be a big mistake to copy from specialists than to discover from your personal errors. Your personal experience is the most valuable blogging asset that you just have.

Steer clear of losing handle of the blog by obtaining your personal domain name as well as your personal hosting account. Whenever you use free hosting, you will have trouble getting excellent search engine rankings, and also you will need to abide from the rules of the host. Should you have your personal domain name as well as your personal hosting account, you will possess a lot more freedom in regards for the content you'll be able to post, and also you won't run the danger that your data will all disappear in the event the host goes under!

When you're attempting to select a subject which will be the basis of the blog, you ought to make certain that you're thinking about your topic. You can't expect to keep a blog whose subject doesn't interest you in anyway. Choosing a topic that you really like increases the opportunity that you'll stick with continually updating your blog, which will generate new readers.

Use videos to expand the content of one's blog. Some hosting internet sites will let you to location them inside your blog. If that's not an alternative for you personally, create links to videos that you have posted on YouTube, or an additional, related site. Numerous people respond well to this type of visual stimulation.

Make your writing along with the subjects that you write about tempt your reader. You always want to leave them wanting far more, and hunting forward for your next post. Should you are able to accomplish this 90% of the time, you'll have numerous people coming back to check your blog typically.

Take time to read over your blog. This step tends to be ignored rather usually. You might have to be the first reader. Whenever you've some free time, attempt reading a few of your older posts. It can genuinely assist you to see what you'll be able to do to increase with your posts in the future.

In order to effectively run a blog, you'll need ideas. That will help you get these ideas you must visit forums other forums and blogs. Also, plenty of the time the people who comment in your blog are great at producing new info that you just may possibly never have believed about prior to. To be relevant in today's blogging globe, you have to continually come up with fresh material that people want.

Whenever you decide to begin a blog, be particular that the topic is something which you uncover engaging and that ignites your want to share with others. Writing the content of your blog will take several hours every week. You need to become certain that you just have a passion for the subject.

When setting up a blog the most crucial element is identifying the purpose from the blog. Do you need to post your inventive writing? Or, maybe you want to blog as a method of speaking out about a subject that interests you. Promotion of a business is an additional typical reason to blog. Being aware of your purpose can help you determine what type of blog to set up and will reveal the audience you happen to be hoping to capture. Both, are vital components of an excellent blog.

Aim to make use of a photo gallery inside your blog. People enjoy to have a look at images. Due to this fact, a photo gallery is a fantastic addition that you can make on your blog. If you're a Flickr user, then think about downloading the Flickr Photo Album plug-in that is certainly used in WordPress.

Try and link to other related blog posts across the internet to enhance your viewership. The much more interconnected your blog site becomes the higher opportunity there's that an individual surfing the web will stumble across your blog. Therefore, it's vitally essential that you just link your blog to related blogs.

Try and get rid of white spaces among the components of your blog. This will preserve your blog searching concise and qualified. Similarly, your blog will likely be less difficult to read once you format it within this manner. This can be a easy step which will make your blog much more accessible for your readers.

Your blog updates must incorporate links to other sections of the site and previous blog posts when relevant. These links can help readers to better understand your blog updates, while introducing them towards the wealth of content accessible on your website. Moreover, interlinking your internet site in this way is an effective search engine optimization approach that may enhance your search rank.

Hopefully you now possess a much better grasp of blogging and just how it can help you on the planet we live in nowadays. Just bear in mind to usually be on the look out for new details about blogging as this world is modifying at a fast pace which makes maintaining up together with the most recent trends and pieces of details beneficial.

How To Build an Empire With Blog

This is what I hear a lot of; how Do I Blog? When you first start out creating a blog, it's hard to imagine that it can become an Empire. Most of us have these dreams of running an Empire blog, but with so many obstacles to go through, over and under and around. One would believe that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Dreams keep us alive and keep us going and striving for what we want. A strong desire to achieve and a hatred for failure keeps us piercing forward to grab trophy reward.



Running a blog can be a satisfying experience especially if it's a blog that teaches. But before we can go about teaching we need to figure out just how to build it and what platform were going to be on. Let's look at a few things that we need to discuss in order to build our Empire blog.

Domain Registration
Most people would like to have a blog that has a dot com name rather than the name of the actual provider i.e., WordPress, Blog, etc. This is where domain name registration comes in at, you simply register a domain for about $12 bucks a year and reroute (DNS) that domain name to your hosting company. For those that don't know what (DNS) is; Domain Name System is the way the distributed naming system for computers and services. It translates IP Addresses with domain names.

Website Hosting
You can actually run a blog from an entirely free service and never have to worry about hosting your blog. However, it's a sense of professionalism and trust in blogs that are hosted with their own dot com name and running from an independently hosted servicer. I would recommend getting a hosting company to host your blog, one that is friendly for your blogging platform. If this is not your area of expertise, there are video tutorials that will help you through the process step-by-step.

Free Platforms Like WordPress
Again I can see you asking; how do I blog? Well, there are a few free blogging platforms on the Internet like blogger, Tumblr, blog, Jux, WordPress, Posterous Spaces and Weebly. Some are better than others and to pick one is usually a matter of your personal preference. However, I've used a couple of them and would most definitely recommend WordPress because of its versatility and functionality. There are a few sites that are offering video tutorials that tells you everything you need to know about WordPress from set up, themes, plug-ins, affiliate marketing and much, so I wouldn't worry to much about knowing what to do here.

Use Headlines Effectively
Imagine writing the best article you ever wrote in your life, only to have absolutely no one read it. Most of us never really think that the title is that important. We usually relate the title to something that has to do with the article and by far, that is the way to go. However, you need to make it compelling enough for your reader so that they will actually click on it to engage in your article. Before you formulate your headline, do a keyword search to find out how many competing websites are targeting those keywords; you can use phrase like "How Do I Blog?" Try to look for fewer websites that are actually targeted your phrase. If you have 900 million websites targeting a particular keyword or phrase, it's extremely hard if not impossible, being new at blogging that you're actually going to move up to the top of any search engine.

Have a Great Blog Design
When you first design your website, try to make an appealing website because you want people to not only read your content but indulge in the appearance of your website as well. I've been to some websites that look horrible and it doesn't take me long to move on to another website. Most websites that are disgusting in appearance only holes a person's interest for three seconds or so. Not a lot of time to read any content so you get the drift at this point don't you?

Leverage Social Media
Social media is a very big deal these days, just look at the young kids walking around with their cell phones crossing the street looking down and never look up. Most of them are texting or chatting on Facebook or some other social network media. When you start targeting Facebook and other social network media such as Pin, Tweeter, LinkedIn and others. Try not to just overwhelm them with all sorts of marketing. Remember, most of these people are your friends and family and they going to simply ignore your post. A post here and there of interest will get them moving along the way, and it will also get them to like your website and start promoting it on their wall.

Identify Your Niche
Discover what your interest are and what you would enjoy writing about. This is nothing worse than having to write about something you can't stand. If you choose a topic that you don't enjoy, you're not going to write very much, and as a matter of fact, you're going to fizzle out in about three months. A blog is nothing more than a diary and needs continuous updates. For some of us, we were little kids and we had a little diary that every day we would write something in it. Well, your blog is nothing more than just that. Except for, you can choose to write things in it every day or every week but whatever schedule you put yourself on, make sure it's consistent.

Keyword Research
Now that you found your passion it's time for you to do some Keyword Research. There's really no point in writing without targeting keywords that people are not searching on. Use a search engine like Google and target a particular word. Google has a keyword tool that you can use to target particular words or phrases. These will tell you just how many people are searching on those keywords. From there, you need to determine how many websites actually have those keywords. It's not very hard to do from this point all you need to do is put your keyword or phrase in quotes and that will tell you just how many websites actually have those keywords. Find keywords that average around 50,000 searches per month which is a little over 1600 searches a day on that particular keyword. If you only get 10% traffic to your website, that's 166 potential customers per day; that's a great start.

Link Building
No links, no visibility. It's great to write good content and wish that everyone will just find it. But the truth is, you must have authority websites link to your site in order for your reading to find you. The way to go about doing this is to find yourself some good article directories and start writing to become an expert in your niche. You can also use other blog sites that do not restrict the links and link back to your own website or article. To find yourself high ranking article websites just type in Google "high ranking article directories" and it should come back with a list of the top 50 article directories. This will give you a good starter as you sort your order by page ranking so that you know which ones rank at the top. Pick yourself a good starting point like let's say, five ranking. Anybody under five you will just ignore and use any authority website that has a ranking of five or above.

Blog Comment
This may not seem like a big deal but blog comments go a long way to link back to your website. If you align yourself with a good high ranking blog that permits you to enter your signature as a blog link back to your site, then you're in business. As you become more of an expert on that blog, people will start to follow those links right back to your site. Not only that, the search engines will also follow those links and you will get a higher ranking on the search engines. So every chance you get try to increase your blog comments.

List Building
A Weber seems to be the big honcho an email responding services. I believe they cost around $19 a month or something along those lines. However, an email list is extremely crucial to your blog. There's nothing better than having an email list of subscribers that are interested in exactly what you have to offer. Once you become an authority in your area, your subscribers are interested in what you have to say and the offers you make to them. Now, don't always put out something that cost them money you have to give them good free stuff as well. The problem here is setting up an auto responder that has substance. Again, you can't just spew all out junk, you generally have to offer something of value, like let's say a free e-book or some educational information that has to do with your blog.

Ping
Pinging Servers actually promote your blog; they create list of a variety of blogs that have new material. Blog search engines can provide fresh results very quickly by polling only the newly-updated blogs. WordPress actually comes with a ping service as a default. However, there are tons more that you can actually load to your WordPress blog and have it ping every time your blog has been updated.

Social Bookmark Links

Social bookmarks are great services that offer bookmark sharing. The service is merely save the bookmark and share that as a resource. There are some services that allow for treating of bookmarks and this helps to get the word out.

AdSense and ClickBank Ads
Although when you first start your blog it's usually not a good idea to plaster a ton of advertisements all around it. Most readers get sick and tired of a tone of advertisements anyway. However, you may want to at least look into Google AdSense as a way of getting paid for allowing advertisements on your website when your traffic starts to grow to maybe 5000 users a day. Now, click bank is something that you could use in your current articles. So when you first start up and write an article about something; let's say, electronics. You may want to pick a particular electronic and then link to your affiliate link which goes to ClickBank so that when your reader clicks on that to get more information and they purchase a product you received some type of commission.

Learn About Marketing
Anyone can put up a blog, but not everyone knows how to market it. This is key and this is the truth, you need to learn how to market your blog. There are a lot of things to learn and a lot of phrases you hear on the Internet about search engine optimization, keyword marketing, article marketing, lead generation and much more. All of these terms are pertinent to the growth of your blog and you need to know something about them. Granted, a lot of these things can be extremely overwhelming but you should have a fairly decent grasp on each of them. Especially if you're going to be running the blog by yourself.

Fix Broken Pages
Go through each and every one of your pages to check for broken links. Broken links can definitely send a bad signal to the search engines and that would be catastrophic. What you can do is look at your web hosting reports. These reports have pages that people have visited, search engine keywords used, linked pages and also your error reporting; broken links. This would be a great place to start because sometimes, you can miss links easily. If you find that there is a page or something that is not working correctly you can always put in a refresh page to send them to a root directory or somewhere else that's not broken.

Spam
Don't forget about protecting your blog. Although we'd love to think that everybody on the Internet is about business and finding good content and enjoying your website. Unfortunately, that's not the case and there are some serious head cases out there. When we generally create our blog we concentrate so much on the look of it and its content along with the marketing, which we sometimes forget that spammers are out there looking to post hideous links. Make sure you have a reputable spam filter that will catch most of the reply Post that are inappropriate for your blog.

In my first week that my blog was up and running, someone already tried to spam my website with a link that went to an inappropriate site. The comment was something like, this is a very nice website with a link to their inappropriate site. The best way to defeat this is to not permit replies to be automatically posted so that you can check out the post for appropriateness before approving.

Blacklist
Blacklist are another useful tool to help control bad words in your replies. This is another area we need to perk up on and learn all about the word you do not want on your blog. There are several services that already use an array of blacklist terms and variations of foul words. You can get them from places like Google and Facebook along with a number of other large organizations that deal with this type of stuff on a regular basis. It would be a good idea to learn from their experience.

21 Benefits of Blogging and 22 Blogging Tips

Combine "web" with "log" and you get "blog." It's a funny word, but serious business.

This post is about blogging for business - with a purpose. We have a lot to cover, so we'll knock it out as efficiently as possible with a series of lists.

We'll get right to it.
Who should read this post?
Non - blogger - You've never had a blog and you need to fix that now.
Unfulfilled blogger - You blogged for a bit. Magic never struck.
Beginning blogger - You blog, but don't really know what you're doing.
Regular blogger - You'll pick up tips from a fellow blogger.
Expert blogger - You could steal the good stuff for your blog.
None of the above - You have nothing better to do, but to read about blogging.
21 benefits of blogging with purpose.

Connect with customers - A blog is a practical and powerful way to share useful, relevant information with customers.
Connect with partners - Blogging allows you to connect and team up with influencers and leaders who can be instrumental in building your business.
Generate traffic - A strategically planned blog, with carefully chosen keywords in play, will show up in search and drive traffic to your landing pages.
Establish authority - Your business blog is the hub of your content marketing efforts where you share your expertise.
Win business - 60% of businesses who blog acquire more customers, says HubSpot.
Inspire your social media - If you're using social media effectively, you're sharing your blog posts regularly and taking advantage of the magical amplification of social networks.
Increase reach - Your blog will be shared and find new eyeballs daily.
Grow your email database - Your blog should inspire people to opt into your email newsletter list. Also, your email feeds traffic to your blog.
Give your company a voice - A blog is your pulpit, your publication, your journal - the place where you talk about whatever you choose, however you choose.
Humanize your company - That voice needs personality. Great bloggers are genuine. Your personality comes into play, that is, if you aim to make real connections.
Exchange ideas - Blogs obliterate the wall that once stood between a company and its customers. You encourage interaction, comments and feedback. You create a conversation.
Get (and stay) customer focused - By blogging, you'll learn how to speak in your customers' terms, perpetually improve this vital skill and grow more in touch with your audience's wants and needs.
Inspires content and productivity - Blogging is hard work. You need processes. Commitment. Consistency. You'll need to step up - and you'll be rewarded for doing so.
Increase focus - A subtle addendum to the point above, blogging consistently forces you to define who you are trying to reach and why.

Generate publicity - As I mentioned, business bloggers establish authority. Stick with it and demonstrate you know your niche and you'll get asked for interviews frequently.
Invite outsiders in - While business blogger should refrain from being relentlessly promotional, the blog is an appropriate forum for delivering insight into your company, its values, and people.
Get strategic - You'll get in the habit of closely examining the site's analytics and gather all kinds of insights about what does and doesn't appeal to your audience. Your marketing will get more strategic by day.
Learn - We'll get a bit warm and fuzzy now, but there's no denying you are going to learn a lot about yourself and the world around you. It comes with being a writer.
Get inspired - The research, the conversation, the experience... it's inspiring. Trust me on this: a switch gets turned on and it's impossible to turn off.
Have fun - Perhaps not everyone will agree blogging is fun, but I believe every great blogger gets into it and enjoys the ride.
Make millions - Maybe, maybe not. However, business blogging with purpose works. Every post is a long - term asset. Learn how to blog and you'll lower your marketing costs and increase sales.
Let's look at how to do it.

22 tips for blogging with purpose.

I have to give a shout out here to my man, mentor, friend, Marcus Sheridan, a.k.a. The Sales Lion. No one understands and teaches the practice of blogging quite like Marcus. I won't be replicating his great post, "50 Qualities of the Best Business Blogs in the World" here, but I did draw these ideas from it (and encourage you to check it out).

Answer questions - Listen closely to questions prospects and customers ask and answer every one of them in your posts.
Teach, don't preach - Avoid making your blog a heavy handed attempt to advertise your products. Adopt an educator's mentality and you'll win your reader's trust.
Converse - Ask questions of your readers, encourage feedback, counterpoints and criticism. Respond to comments as promptly as possible in an effort to exchange ideas.
Create a blogging culture - Invite everyone in your company and its constituents to contribute ideas and participate in the blog.
Use images - Take advantage of the appeal of photos, illustrations, charts and infographics to increase your stopping power and make the posts more attractive.
Make it easy on the eyes - Use short paragraphs, line breaks, white space, subheads and lists to make your posts look inviting.
Be transparent - Write with uncompromising integrity and don't be afraid to address real issues, problems, challenges, and yes, prices. Don't avoid the tough questions. Tackle them.
Remove internal barriers - There's no place in blogging for corporate red tape. Get permission in advance to write openly and honestly.
Don't back down - Some readers (or co - workers) don't love what you have to say? Say it anyway. It's not a popularity contest.
Be consistent - The number one reasons blogs fail is they are neglected. Set a schedule and stick to it. Make the time to post often. No excuses.
Nix the fluff - Your posts can be short or long. Just don't babble your way through them. Serve meat and go easy on the gravy.

Recognize others - Congratulate, write about and recognize customers, employees, partners, industry influencers and even competitors. Being generous will only help. You'll enjoy reciprocity.
Optimize - Research and use the keyword phrases that will increase your search engine rankings. Install plugins to assist you with SEO.
Write passionately - Make your passion pulse through your prose. Tap into your reader's emotions.
Tell stories - Learn how to become a master storyteller. Observe how the best bloggers unravel plots and develop characters.
Include customers - Drop the secrecy and anonymity. Cite real customers, real challenges and real solutions.
Invest seriously - Blogging only burns time and money when it's a low priority. Invest in the tools you need and put the best writers and designers on your blog.
Market and sell - Don't write ads and press releases disguised as blog posts, but do include a call to action and guide your readers along the path to discovering your solutions.
Stay tuned - Follow your industry daily and stay on top of what your peers are saying.
Encourage sharing - Don't forget to offer social media buttons to make it easy for readers to share and email your content.
Promote your blog - Promoting a post can (and probably should) take more time than writing it. Write teasers for your content and promote it across social networks and all potential touch points.
Have fun - Never be stiff, formal, or jam useless jargon into your posts. You have the stage. Relax. Be entertaining. Allow yourself to have fun with the writing
Business blogs are a major challenge.

Blogs are the hardest channel for business to keep updated - and to really nail.

Passle, makers of a blogging shortcut service of sorts, recently studied 525 businesses and reviewed their performance across blogs, company news pages, Twitter and Facebook. Their study, "The State of Business Blogging 2013," reported:

75% of companies don't update their websites in any way.
Only 20% have a blog and over one - third of them are inactive.
1 in 8 companies have an active blog.
Ouch. Please understand...

Business blogs should/can/will grow your business.

57% of companies with a blog have acquired a customer from their blog.
61% of U.S. online consumers have made a purchase based on recommendations from a blog.
Blogs attract repeat visitors who continue to come back to the website for fresh content.
­Blogging allows you to team up with people who already have an audience, which is an instantaneous way to attract readers.
The figures above are conservative. Blogging gets more important everyday. Start now.