Knowing the How’s and Why’s of Your Blog Posting Options

These days it seems like everyone has a blog.  Whether it’s an outlet to type out our inner musings of the world today or to let people into a part of our lives we would have difficulty discussing out loud, there is a never-ending number of reasons to start one.

If you own a small business, there are even more reasons to have one.  While there are a few that would argue as to whether blogs are still applicable with the surge of social media marketing platforms that have taken the world by storm, it’s believed by most that blogging can be an integral piece of your marketing plan.

In case you are still waiting to take the plunge into the web log world, some reasons to consider moving forward with your own blog are:

• They are a great way to develop better relationships with your current customers
• They will increase your SEO on sites like Google and Yelp.
• They can position your brand as a perceived industry leader, even if you are just starting out.

Types of blog posts: Articles on your own blog, mini articles on a microblog, and articles on other peoples’ blogs.

What is a Microblog?

Microblogging is a combination of blogging and instant messaging. It allows users to create short messages to share with an audience online.  Two common microblogging platforms are Twitter and Tumblr.

Benefits of Microblogging to consider:

• Your content will take less time to create.
• It’s easier to post more frequently.
• It’s perfect for disseminating urgent information to a large audience.
• Ease of access through mobile apps.

How and Why You Should Consider Guest Blogging

Guest Blogging is basically creating an article for a blog that is not your own.  It’s a way to share your knowledge with others while simultaneously increasing traffic to your blog. This also means you will need to plan on featuring posts from other bloggers in the future. Featuring guest posts will give your audience a new perspective on your industry as well as help freshen your content if you’ve gotten stuck in a rut.

To get started, first decide what benefits you are looking to get from the process of guest blogging. This will assist you in finding businesses you may be interested in creating content for and give you an idea of which guest bloggers would be good to invite to post on your site later.

Research is essential to guest blogging, begin by asking yourself some questions:

• Do the businesses you are looking at have a large number of active followers?
• Do these followers regularly participate by posting comments or sharing?
• Do these businesses also have a Facebook page and Twitter account where they share their blog posts?

Focus on finding bloggers within your niche and market industry. You should agree with what they have to say, their opinions should match your own. If they don’t this could lead to content issues later if their content doesn’t line up with your business, personality, or tone.

Be sure to promote your guest blog posts on your own social media accounts and on your own blog. This will bring more traffic back to your guest’s blog and their business.  It should become a habit to share your content, plus it’s a good way to say thank you to your host for publishing your guest post.

Overall, blogging in each form is a good way to widen your reach and bring more traffic to your own web presence.

Monitoring the social media marketing landscape is vital to your success. 

How to Fix a Website Suffering from Weak Social Engagement

Is social engagement on your website non-existent? Are the social elements of your website fumbling and fighting for breath? No one is actively participating or commenting on your articles, and no one is sharing your content. You are unsure what you can do to change that and breathe life in the social aspects of your website.

How to Revive a Dead Social Website

Do not worry. With a little planning, perseverance and the appropriate frame of mind, you can revive a dead social website. Below are 7 clear steps to revive a dead social website and make it a success again.

1. Do a Methodical Overhaul

Do every one of your internal links work? Is everything pointing where you would like it to point? Are your advertising and marketing tactics working to drive traffic to your site and social functions and elements? This procedure should be accomplished attentively and carefully with attention to detail.

Even one or two broken links can mean the difference in hundreds of site visitors. If you wish to revive a dead social website this is the first thing you need to check thoroughlyIf you don’t have the time or the inclination to check each page of your web site and verify your links are working and if you don’t wish to inspect all of your advertising and marketing efforts to make sure your links are working, then outsource it to a virtual administrator who pays careful attention to detail and proceed to # 2.

2. Participate in Appropriate Forums

Get active in forums which are connected with your particular niche market. Begin networking with others in your niche. Drive traffic to your site and interact with people on your site also. Be personable when you are making contacts on forums. Develop a profile, attempt to take part in conversations and be sure to put a link in your signature to bring traffic.

3. Get Active on Social Networking Sites

Much like you would take part in applicable industry forums, do the exact same thing with social networking sites. Be sure to place a link to your website every now and then in your posts. The more active you are and the more valuable others see your contributions, the more likely they are to visit your site and engage with you on your website.

Send out invitations virtually and by word of mouth. If you wish to obtain more action and life on your social website, then compel folks to drop in. You can lure them with special offers, contests or sweepstakes, just be sure you follow up once they’re at your web site.

5. Get Blog Happy

Blog all about it. Start causing positive controversy on your site. Blog about serious subjects. Incite a heated discussion. Post beneficial content that folks will link back to. Be sure to guest blog also, and include a link back to your social site.

6. Give

Increase the offerings. Usually all it takes is a little incentive to get folks encouraged again. If your social website is gulping for air, put some vitality in it by supplying a few fantastic freebies or a fresh and new feature that will provide more life to the website.

7. Be Consistent In Everything You Undertake

Be consistent about getting involved and keeping the dialog going. Social websites die a slow death when individuals stop talking to one another. Many people may still drop by the site; yet, if they’re solely reading and not engaging with others then the silence is quite deadening and little by little the traffic to your site will trickle away.

Give them a little something to be enthused about. Give them something to talk about by getting involved and keeping the interaction ball rolling. Little by little the discussions will pick up and you ‘ll have a social website that no longer requires CPR or life support.

Source: https://www.powerhomebiz.com/internet-marketing/web-marketing/fix-website-suffering-weak-social-engagement.htm

Posting Your Blog Content on Facebook

Having a corporate blog is an important digital marketing strategy. It helps with SEO, gives your customers and clients important information, helps educate new customers and clients, and is a great platform to talk about what you do and how you do it.

Undoubtedly you spend a fair amount of time curating the content for your blog. You come up with ideas, write the content, optimize it for your website, and more. After it’s written, you want to make sure that people actually read it.

One of the best ways to get your blog content out there is to post it on your social media channels. Facebook is an especially powerful tool for posting your blog content and having people read and share it.

There are a few tactics that you can use to your advantage when you post your blog content on Facebook. Here are the ones that work the best:

Share your blog on Facebook

 First thing is first, you should share your blog on your corporate Facebook account fairly soon after publishing it on your website. This ensures that the content is timely and lets people know that you published a new blog.

As an added bonus, sharing your blog on Facebook is totally free and it has the potential to spread far and wide. Encourage people to share it. Share it with your friends and business associates. The more eyes that see your blog post on Facebook, the better.

Boost the blog post on Facebook

Using Facebook’s boosting options is a great way to get your blog content to the right people. When you boost a post, you choose who it goes to and can see how many people it can reach with a certain budget.

You can choose to pay per click, per 1000 impressions, or per engagement. This allows you to customize your boosted blog post to garner the action you want from your readers. Boosted posts can not only help ensure that your current customers and clients see your new blog content, they can also help new people see your blog and learn about what you do.

Use great headlines

When you post a blog on Facebook, the headline is one of the first things people see. In fact, almost 80% of people never even make it past the headline. Because of this, you want a powerful headline that encourages people to click into and read the whole blog post.

Keep the headlines short and to the point. Tell readers exactly what they should expect to get out of the blog. If there are any important or eye-catching numbers or facts, those can be great to incorporate into the headline.

Imaging matters

When you publish a blog post on Facebook, it is important to add an eye-catching image to make the link stand out in the newsfeed. Stock images are okay, but images that you take or create are better.

Whatever you choose to use, make sure all the images are high-contrast and colorful. That helps them pop in the hectic and crowded space of someone’s Facebook newsfeed.

Write top-notch copy

While there are some tricks and tactics that can help your blog get attention on Facebook, nothing can beat solid copy. You can have the best headline and imaging and people still may not click on your blog post due to weak or uninspiring Facebook ad or post copy.

Those 140 or so characters that you write to describe the blog post in the Facebook post or Facebook ad are vitally important to getting people to read your blog. Make the copy stand out.

Use testimonials, ask questions, give a solution to common problems, use a clear call to action, appeal to people’s emotions. You need to capture people’s attention with your copy to get them to read your blog.

Facebook can be a powerful tool in promoting your blog content if you want to learn more about how to make it work for you, check out my done-for-you system.

Want More Social Media Traffic? Follow this 6-Step Blog Content Distribu...

What do you do with your blog post once you've created it?  This short video will give you some great ideas of how to split your content and make the most of it.

How to Republish Existing Content Without Getting Penalised

If you regularly spend money on content for your website copy or blog posts, you understand how frustrating it can be to see this content come and go. A few weeks after you post a new blog that you spent good money on, it may no longer hold any value to your website.

When good content goes unnoticed, it’s tempting to want to reuse it in some manner. Unfortunately, a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners go about this in the wrong way and get penalised by search engines. This can dramatically decrease your search engine rankings.

So, does this mean that you can’t use existing content? No, you’re able to republish content, as long as you go about it in the right way. Use the following suggestions to republish your existing content without getting penalised.

Correctly Letting Search Engines Know About Your Duplicate Content

First, you need to make sure that you’re letting search engines know that this new post is duplicate content. The way to do this is to include a canonical URL. Syndication of articles is a major business. If you spend any time on news aggregator websites, then you’ve seen syndicated content that’s posted on multiple news sites.

How to Add a Canonical URL

If search engines had to penalize every site that uses syndicated content, then news sites would have trouble staying at the top of the search engine rankings. The solution is the canonical URL. Adding this little bit of code is easy. You simply add a link tag in the <head> section of your HTML. The full code would look something like this:

<link rel=“canonical” href=“http://example.com/post” />

Adding the canonical link lets search engines know that the content they’re crawling is a duplicate of another URL. The URL that is included in the link tag is the URL of the original post. This link tag must be placed on every page where you plan on republishing your content.

Additional Tips for Using Canonical URLs

Make sure that you don’t edit the content that you’re republishing. If you notice grammar mistakes or other small errors, you can fix them, but don’t edit major parts of your article. Otherwise, the search engines will still count the pages as two separate posts.

The canonical URL link should never be used as a form of black-hat SEO. It should only be used in its proper context. This will defeat the purpose of using the canonical URL in the first place.

You should also include an actual link at the beginning or end of the duplicate content that links back to the original source. This will be beneficial if you are syndicating your content for use on other sites. Each time the content is republished, you’re adding another back link to your site.

Republishing content is a useful way to get more value out of the content that you pay for. Spending money on the creation of original content can be a major part of your marketing budget. Most people can only pay for so many articles per month. Instead of letting these articles go to waste after they’ve outlived their usefulness, consider using a canonical URL to republish them.

You can republish your content on a separate website that you own or allow other sites to republish the content—as long as they correctly use the canonical URL link.

If you have old content that you would like to republish, make sure that you’re going about it in the right way. Along with these suggestions, there are other ways to boost your marketing potential. If you’d like some additional internet marketing tips, then click on this lick to learn more about my done-for-you system.

Blogging - The Ultimate List Of Blog Post Ideas

Increase Your Online Exposure Without Increasing Your Budget

When you’re first starting out, every dollar that you spend on online marketing matters. You likely have multiple goals. You want to gain website traffic, increase your social media followers, and build your online reputation.

All these goals can be achieved with good marketing strategies. But, you might be able to speed up the process by increasing your online exposure. With brand recognition, it becomes easier to gain traction and get your foot through the door of your target market.

I’ll give you a few simple tips that you can use to increase your online exposure without having to increase your marketing budget. 

Use Consistent Branding

If you want people to recognize your brand, you need to be consistent with your branding. This means using the same logo on your website and social media profiles. Anywhere that your logo or business branding appears, you should use the exact same image.

You want to ensure that people realize that your website and your social media profiles are one and the same. They aren’t two separate individuals or businesses.

So, your YouTube profile, Facebook profile, Twitter, and other platforms should all use the same profile image and it should include the same branding that appears on your website.

Gain More Social Media Followers

Once your branding is in place, you should focus on gaining more social media followers. It doesn’t cost a dime to share content on social media. Monday through Friday, you should post at least twice per day on each of your social media accounts.

This means that you’ll be posting at least 10 times per week. But, you don’t need to worry about creating 10 original posts. 8 of these posts will come from other sources, such as industry-leading blogs and news sites.

Also, become active on social media. Interact with your followers. Share personal stories. Engage your audience and join communities. This all helps you gain followers without having to pay for marketing.

Start Creating High-Quality Blog Posts

Sharing content on social media should help you gain followers. It’s difficult at first, but once you pass 100 followers, it’ll become easier. Then, start creating high-quality blog posts.

You’ll already have a schedule in place for sharing 8 pieces of curated content on social media. For the remaining 2 posts, share links to your original content. The followers that you’ve gained will share these posts, increasing your online exposure without requiring any additional spending. 

Write Guest Blog Posts for Other Sites

After you get the hang of writing quality blog posts for your own website, start submitting guest blog posts to other sites. Look for websites that get a lot of traffic. Getting a guest blog posted on one of these sites will increase your online presence and help you establish yourself as a voice of authority.

Share Your Opinion with Everyone

The final step for increasing your online exposure without increasing your budget is to share your opinion with everyone. What I mean by this is that you need to comment on blog posts, comment on social media posts, answer questions on Q&A websites, and become active on relevant forums.

Blog and forum commenting can help you earn backlinks, increasing your search engine rankings. Commenting on social media or answering questions on Q&A websites can help you get noticed. These steps build backlinks, increase recognition, and could help you gain more followers.

You can increase your online exposure without spending additional money. It all starts with consistent branding. Then, focus on social media. Once you gain followers, start generating quality content and sharing it.

Use these tips to start increasing your online exposure. If you’d like to have access to even more powerful marketing tips, as well as a way to generate conversion-ready Internet marketing prospects each month, click here to learn about my done-for-you system.