The Art Of Blogging

The Art of Blogging
By Brinsley May

Blogging first originated in the 1990's where it provided a very useful medium for people to add a comment to a subject or product. Since then it has expanded and evolved enormously into a community where whole blogs are created for one item with running pages of commentary. This has been great for the marketing industry that have utilised this tool to best effect by advertising their products through this open window of opportunity to get their products noticed. The potential for this free online advertising is just being realised and many businesses have yet to catch on.

So why should you start a blog for your business and how can it improve sales?

Firstly, let me say this is by far the easiest way for getting your products and services on the net. If you have a computer and can point and click you can start advertising yourself, business and its benefits as much as you want. The ready made templates provided by Blogger look professional and when you add pictures (this is real easy) you have an excellent product selling site.

Blogging can be useful for people to leave real life experiences of their association with your products and this can be to your advantage. When other people view your blog and they can see favourable comments about your services, this can lead to further business. In fact people can set up their own blog and comment and compare your product with similar products. This is very handy for the consumer when making his mind up on what to buy. You can also do the same with your own product and give a true and honest opinion on your services or product against your competitors.

The most beautiful point about Blogging is it is FREE!! I love things that are free and this can be very important to young business entrepreneurs who are just starting up in business. In fact, Blogging can be a full time business for some companies once they have learn about keywords and Search Engine Optimisation. This can be a very profitable business just on its own as blogs which attract a lot of interest and traffic can be sold on for very large sums.

Having a presence on the internet gives you and you're business massive amounts of credibility. You are seen as an expert in what ever your business is about even if you haven't written the articles yourself. Article writers located at different websites such as elance.com can be very reasonable and produce excellent articles for you and your business. This can save you time and effort especially if you are extremely busy setting your business up. Once you have your articles in place and you develop your readership there is a good chance that you can be notified by other businesses in order to place advertising on your blog page. This is a very good earner and makes your blog look even more professional.

So, you have a blog which you are very proud of but how can you get people to visit your pages. Good question and here I hope to provide some of the answers.

1. Email your existing customers with any new offers and direct them to your site. If the people you are emailing do not have an interest in your product, i.e. they are cold you can send a courtesy email with a signature block with your blogsite address attached. This looks very professional and is a good way of directing people to your blog.

2. On your blog page leave a sign in form for the latest information on your services. You can then email your customers without being accused of spamming. Some businesses are using a double opt in to ensure that the person has not been contacted by mistake!

3. By joining approaching other similar businesses and setting up a blog network –A network of blogs can quickly increase your page rankings with Google, Yahoo and MSN. Consumers find credibility and convenience in clicking one link to several real bloggers about a single subject. Clearly, more bloggers are better than one.

4. By using RSS. RSS is the fastest growing technology on the Internet today. As such, having RSS feeds to your blog is definitely another means of generating awareness for your readership base. Having a variety of feeds can add interest to your blog site.