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One of the best ways to market yourself or your company on the internet is to create and maintain a blog. Blogging creates many opportunities for your readers and yourself. There are few internet marketing techniques that furnish you with the flexibility of a blog. In this article, we’ll define what a blog is, the creation process, how to promote a blog and manage it successfully. This will give you a powerful tool that drives traffic to your website and promotes your business and makes you money. What is a blog? A blog or “web log” is just a simple website dedicated to a topic or closely related series of topics. A blog can be an independent URL, like yourblog.com, or it can be hosted by a blogging website such as Google’s blogger.com. There are also ways to embed a blog directly on your existing website either by creating one there or adding some simple html code to display your off-site content. For any blog, there are four main components. First is the main title. This describes what the blog is about and indicates to the reader what type of information they’ll find. Second is the “meat” of your blog. These are the dated and headlined posts. This is where you write updates and articles designed to attract readers and search engines. Third, there will be a comments section at the end of each post where readers can publish comments and interact with each other as well. Additionally, all blogs should have social sharing options that allow readers to share the information on their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking websites. Although most blogs are far more complex, every online web log will have these four parts. A blog must be informative and interesting, and must also be optimized for searchability in organic searches. How to setup a blog Remember, a blog is a website, or a part of a website. If you can write code, you will be able to write your own blogging application if you want to. However, there are usually two ways to create your own blog for the non-programmer. There are website creation software systems to make your blogs. These systems include WordPress, Joomla, and other CMS type applications. They provide a great deal of flexibility and the ability to build entire websites around your blogs. The second most common method is to use a blogging website like the afore-mentioned Blogger.com. This system allows you to setup and manage a blog with only a few clicks of the mouse. Blogging sites have a variety of themes, editing tools and social interaction options that are simple and effective. As we noted above, a blog must be targeted to a specific topic or category of closely related topics in order to be truly effective. As an example, our blog is about internet marketing, business development and website design. These are very inter-related concepts. It provides a forums for readers and entrepreneurs to share their thoughts, ask questions and is an ever-growing resource. A blog should not try to cover too many unrelated ideas. Stay targeted to the main purpose of your blog. If you want to blog about several unrelated topics, create more than one blog. You can even network and cross-link them. You’ll find that by maintaining your focus, the blog will be far more effective at capturing and keeping interest. How to manage a blog Arguably the most important aspect to a blog is how it is managed. Blogging is very different from other methods of marketing and content creation for several reasons. First, regular blog readers will expect and respond to consistent postings. Blogging cannot be sporadic if it is going to bring you results. Second, you will have to monitor and communicate with those of your readers who choose to interact with you and even each other. You may even receive requests by readers who wish to write a guest post. Be attentive and responsive. At a minimum, post at least once a week. You should be prepared to write eery day, however, in order for that blog to really take off and do what you want it to. When your blog grows in popularity, you’ll find that you will have to be on top of it on a daily basis. Your readers and commenters will have a constant desire for information and there will be many comments that must be addressed. Of course, once you reach a stage where your blog requires more than an hour a day of your attention, you’ll have reached a good level of successk. You won’t mind the workload. How to promote a blog and how it promotes you There are many who wonder how you go about promoting a blog. How do you attract readers? Always remember what has been mentioned above. A blog is simply a website. It’ll be crawled and indexed by Google, yahoo, Bing and other searche engines just like any other website. Further, the blog will get indexed by some special blogging search engines such as Technorati, ljseek and icerocket. This means that with your blog title, headlines and posts, always keep SEO in mind. next, just as with your website, build quality relevant back links to your blogs. You can do this by pursuing link exchanges as well as writing high-quality content that others will want to publish on their own blogs and websites. Another effective method for promoting your blog is to comment on others’ blogs. As the saying goes, “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, This allows everyone to exchange active back links. Don’t forget to use your social media. Tell everyone about your new blogs and posts they may find of interest. Ask them to comment and even write a guest post about something in their field of expertise. Keep in mind, provide your network with information of real value not just constant advertising. If you follow these guidelines, and other internet marketing tecniques too expansive for this article, you’ll see your blog views and comments increase and this will bleed over into any website you want to promote. It’s a good idea to embed the latest two or three posts on your site to keep its content growing and send visitors to the blog as well. Make your blog a source of quality content and your viewers will not only keep returning, linking to you and commenting, they’ll spread the word for you. So create a venue for sharing your ideas and information. Happy blogging! Find out more about how to make your company profitable online. Visit our website to learn how you can improve your search results, website traffic and increase profits. We can show you the way, either one on one or by giving you access to our website and blog visit our internet marketing and business promotion website today! To keep up with current SEO, internet marketing and business trends, come and be a part of our growing blog community. We offer a constant stream of useful content for you to improve the marketability and profitability of your business. We also welcome your input and questions. Please visit our blog and let us know how you are doing
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