To Blog or Not to Blog that is the Question

Here is an interesting observation, most people that blog also tweet… however most of the people on Twitter do not blog. Not blogging is costing them traffic… and ultimately money. Don’t get me wrong here, Twitter and Facebook are great places and they are key components of your overall marketing campaign. However blogging is where “it is at,” so to speak. Your blog is really your key to consistent traffic and long term benefits for your business.

To help illustrate this, I am going to give you ten reasons as to why you need to blog if you seriously want business.

Reason 1: True commitment to your industry is shown through blogging, and so is your passion for what it is you are doing. Passion is what grabs peoples’ attention and gets them involved. I know that sending a “tweet” is much easier than sitting and coming up with a 500 word post. But if you really care about what it is you are doing you will invest that time and get that blog post created.

Reason 2: Articles/blog posts are valuable no matter how old they are. Thanks to the internet, you can write something today that is pertinent and five years from now when someone is searching for something related to your post… they will still get to read your post. This means that they will still be able to get to your site and read everything else you have done in that area.

Reason 3: The links in your blog posts will get clicked and provide value to your reader. Value that will then make them invest in what you are doing also known as buying what it is you have to sell. The links on Twitter are really just noise. Yes they help… but not as much as the great link in a great blog post.

Reason 4: You want to be the end product that everyone is linking to and sending traffic to. Yes it is great to click the links and go to other websites and help out those people… isn’t it better for you though if people are taking your link and getting you traffic? That isn’t going to happen on Facebook or Twitter.

Reason 5: Blogging gives you complete control and ownership of everything that you put in your blog. Control is important when you are trying to build a business and establish a solid customer base.

Reason 6: You want to show your followers/readers that you are more than just a sample size serving of the real thing. Hosting a blog says a lot about who you are and how important your business is.

Reason 7: Blogging allows you to add value to your site, on an incremental and continual basis which is important for traffic, links and sales. You are in the business to make money, not just be a cute brief on a page.

Reason 8: A blog will provide you with full analytics. This is important, these analytics will tell you what people are clicking on within your blog, what posts are of interest and how they got to your site. These are vital pieces of information when it comes to marketing.

Reason 9: Blogging allows your followers multiple ways to keep up to date on what you are saying or offering, such as RSS feeds, emails, and onsite info.

Reason 10: Blogging doesn’t limit you to a number of characters you are allowed to use. While 140 can be plenty to deliver a point… many times it is not enough to be effective.

Neil Bartlett is the founder of MyIMCoach.com. My IM Coach provides aspiring Internet Marketers with Tips and Techniques for getting started and/or improving their marketing skills. To learn more INSTANTLY grab his FREE report “How To Make It Online”

Should You Guest Blog?

Plan and simple, yes you want to guest blog, but you want to be picky about the sites you are guest blogging on. I say this because you want to make sure your blogging on a site that is actually going to help you get target traffic to your site. You don’t want to waste time and energy creating a blog post on say SEO (which is your specialty) on a blog that is dedicated to preserving Barbie. The point of guest blogging is that it is a win win for the webmaster and the guest blogger.

I am sure that you are not really interested in what guest blogging does for the webmaster at this point. You want to know what it is in it for you. That is the focus on this post. So here we go, the first benefit of guest blogging is that you get instant exposure to your blog. Let’s say that you just launched a new site that you are really excited about and you know offers great benefit to visitors. You want traffic now, not in a few weeks or months. Find an authority site or other site that is reputable in your niche, contact the webmaster and offer to guest blog for them. You blog post will offer informative content and a plug about you and your website.

The second benefit is that exposure you gain. If you don’t have a business that you are trying to promote, but skills you want to offer to hire… guest blogging can help you there as well. When you guest blog on a site, as I said above, you get to do a little blurb about you and what you do, and from there you can direct people to a place where they can learn more about you.

The third benefit and reason as to why you should try to guest blog is that you get a link back to your blog. We have talked in the past about how important back linking is. This is a great way to increase your rankings with links from reputable sites.

Notice that I have mentioned reputable sites. You want to look for sites that have a good ranking, because you know that they are getting traffic. You also know that they are getting crawled by the spiders on a routine basis and that what they say on that website is trusted by people in the niche you are addressing. You don’t want to waste your time blogging on a site that isn’t getting more traffic then you currently are, or worse yet, they are not getting traffic at all.

There are a few rules that you need to keep in mind in regards to your posts. You want to make sure that your post fits into the category of blog you are posting on. Remember, Barbie isn’t going to care much on how to SEO optimize. The blog post that you create must be original and unique. You can’t post an article that you wrote and posted elsewhere.

Also, we are talking about your reputation so you really want to post only articles that you have written. If you are going to farm out the blog posts writing then make sure that you have proofed what is said in the article. The last thing in the world you want to do is make yourself look bad or the website you are guest blogging on.

Finally, when you guest blog if you are going to use a link in your post, it must be a link that is related to the website you are writing for. You should NOT use your own affiliate links. This is just poor taste and not only will the webmaster kick you to the curb, it will get around in the industry that “type” of person you are and you will have a hard time getting another guest blogging spot.

Neil Bartlett is the founder of MyIMCoach.com. My IM Coach provides aspiring Internet Marketers with Tips and Techniques for getting started and/or improving their marketing skills. To learn more INSTANTLY grab his FREE report “How To Make It Online”

Reasons You Should Use Wordpress to Blog

The first reason and the most important reason is simply freedom. One thing that I hate in life is if I feel like I’m really being limited by something. I like to be able to do all the things that I want to do and be able to think outside the box and get creative.

You have the freedom to do so much with your blog and you just have so many different ways to customize your blog. From the way that you run your blog, to the way that you make your blog look to all of the different plugins that you can use to get more traffic, automate and do just about anything that you can think of to improve your blogging experience.

There are just so many different Wordpress themes that you can pick from. I literally looked at hundreds and hundreds of different themes before I choose the one that I want. Then after you pick the theme, you can do so much to customize and change anything that you don’t like about the theme.

Another reason why I like Wordpress is yes it can seem pretty complex when you start out, but that is because it gives you so many options. Once you learn how to use it, it gets way easier. The best way to learn how to use Wordpress is to look at video tutorials.

You can find tutorials on Wordpress, but you can also search the web and find video tutorials on how to do certain activities on Wordpress. Video tutorials are great because you can actually see what a person is doing, step-by-step and visually see things.

It seems really daunting because there are so many things to utilize and so many different links to click on. The best way is to just learn what you need to use first.

Well, that sounds obvious, but some people will try to learn every feature, right from the start. You might not need or use all of the features, so just learn what you are going to use. I use a lot of features on Wordpress, but I still don’t use them all. I just use the ones that I need.

Wordpress is well worth the extra time that you will put into learning it. You get the freedom to do just about anything that you want. If you aren’t using Wordpress, I would definitely check it out for yourself.