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SEO Consultants of Denver Blog Post for October 30, 2009

The Art of Blog Construction – Using the Blog as Your Main Business Page III

Yesterday we discussed several key elements in developing your communications strategy.  The main principles were that a good communications strategy should establish:

• Credibility
• Leadership
• Depth of knowledge
• Confidence

Fortunately, you don’t have to cover each of these areas with a single blog entry.  Each entry however, should at least cover one of the above objectives.

Getting organized is central to the effort.  As it is important to establish a blogging schedule and to stick to it, coming up with new material is a common challenge.  But…freshly updated and useful content is highly favored by search engines and consistently produced, valuable content will result in favorable presentation on the search engine results.

So how do you set up your business blogging process so that produces results without taking what little time you have left?  Again, get organized, set a plan and follow it.  We will cover some content basics in tomorrow’s post, but for now, here are some elementary guidelines:

• Schedule your topics in advance
• Post once per day at least
• Write an appropriate length piece – enough to carry value
• Research new ideas
• Participate!

Scheduling:
The four essential guidelines can provide a topic framework for you as you come up with ideas for the week.  Use one day each week to talk about one thing that makes your business more credible or resourceful, followed the next day by a story of leadership in the industry, etc.  This can make your scheduling job easier.  If you ask these questions about your organization on a regular basis, it can also help identify organizational problem areas, so the benefits to this process extend far beyond your business page. 

Themes for a given week also work well.  A plumbing company might pass along seasonal tips for keeping home systems running well during a change of seasons.  Holiday themes can also be applied.  Your creativity will guide this process, but it requires effort.  And after a long week at work, it is difficult to get creative.  Still… keep at it!

Posting:
It really does help to post at least once per day.  This can be daunting given the other tasks you face each week, but your blog is your continuing story to the business community.  It is worth taking the time to tell. To make it a bit easier, just take a few moments at the end of each week to write a list of topics for the following week.   On Fridays perhaps, focus on the most interesting question you received or read about during the week.   It also helps to pre-write material for posting during a given week as actually getting into the writing portion of the process is frequently the most difficult.  If you can produce a week’s worth of material before lunch on Fridays, you are set for the next week.

Weekend posting is also useful – especially if you need to communicate sale information.  We’ll cover a couple other techniques using email and social bookmarking in a later post, but posting information on weekends can be helpful.  Using social media to attract weekend

Appropriate Length:
SEO Consultants of Denver frequently receives questions regarding how much material to include in a post.  Opinions vary on this, so the best response is “enough to make the post valuable.”  You do want to fully explain your points, but a posting of several pages typed on MS Word is probably too much.  Besides, as a blogger, you are somewhat in the entertainment industry and don’t want to overwhelm or lose your readers.  Still, too short and it is difficult to communicate much value. 

A good rule of thumb is to make a key point with your posting, using up to three or four, easily explainable supporting arguments.  This presents your point with some back-up information and helps in making a credibility statement. 

Research New Ideas:
As it is easy to forget good ideas, keep a notebook!  Don’t let these ideas get away!

Of course the biggest challenge is constantly coming up with new ideas.  This is why it is very important to stay tuned in to what is going on in your industry.  We all receive newsletters and email notices, but because we are time-challenged, few of us read them.  These can be a ready-made source of new ideas, though, so at least skim over the stuff you get in your inbox before hitting the ‘delete’ key. 

Listening to customers is probably the best way to come up with and research new ideas.  There are standard questions you should be asking your customers anyway, like:

• How did you find me?
• How has my service/product helped you recently?
• Do you have any suggestions for improvement?

This seems like an unnecessary and obvious point to cover, but we’ll throw it out there anyway… Listening to customers is probably the best way to not only keep them customers, but to glean valuable information for your communication strategy.  Listen carefully to their story as the way they interact with your company can provide insight to the value that prospective customers would find important.

Participate in Your Community
Participation counts!  From the classroom to the street, those that speak up receive the attention. 

Once you have endeavored to post material, don’t just leave it sit there on the internet!  Invite others to read it!  One can do this simply by participating in the blog community within the industry or community.  Many cities and areas have bulletin board sites where you can post your ideas and leave your website/blog URL.  A witty or supportive comment can inspire other readers to click over to your pages. 

Blogging and leaving comments on other sites also builds back-link strength.  As the search robots hit other pages, they will read the links to your page and that is beneficial to your standing with the search engines. 

So keep at it!  Implementing your communications strategy can indeed be time consuming, but you are the best spokesperson for your company and organization. 

Next time, we will discuss specific points of content that will help turn readers into buyers!  Check back soon!