Blogs That Mean Business
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1) The document discusses how to build an optimized blog for a business to increase traffic, share expertise, and build an online community in an affordable way. 2) It recommends choosing a domain, hosting, permalinks, and platform like Wordpress to build the blog and then using themes, plugins, and content strategy to attract visitors through search, RSS, and social media. 3) The content strategy involves researching keywords, filling pages with relevant content, and promoting the blog through current customers, RSS syndication, and social media while optimizing posts to be found on search engines.
Blogs That Mean Business
- 1. Blogs That Mean Business by Lisa Peyton
- 2. What I’ll be covering in this presentation: What: Discuss definition of a blog. Why: The business benefits of an optimized blog strategy. How: How to build an optimized blog. Content Strategy: Publishing optimized content. Attracting Visitors: Via Search, RSS, Social Media.
- 3. What is a blog? BLOG = WEBSITE Outdated Webster’s Definition - a web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer. Wikipedia - A blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Pages, posts, comments, images, videos, music, and audio or podcasts.
- 4. Why Blog for your business? Increases traffic to your website via search engines, inbound links, RSS, etc. Provides platform to dialog with your customers Share your knowledge and expertise Provides value-added services for customers, via events calendars, product reviews, photo-sharing, etc. Creates an online community Very affordable, most blogging platforms are free Easy content management system
- 5. How do you build an optimized blog? Location: Blog should live on your own domain NOT http://blog.yourbiz.com or http:yourbiz.wordpress.com URL: http://www.yourbiz.com/blog or blog.yourbiz.com Hosting: Best to use Linux OS instead of Windows OS on server. More stable and pretty permalinks.
- 6. How do you build an optimized blog? Permalinks: Clean URL structure. http://www.lisapeyton.com/category/blog-optimization/ vs. http://www.lisapeyton.com/category/?p=234 Platform: Wordpress or Moveable Type. Both are free, easy to install and widely supported. I have used Wordpress examples for this presentation.
- 7. How do you build an optimized blog? Themes Default Wordpress Install
- 8. How do you build an optimized blog? Themes 1000s of free customizable themes or templates available.
- 9. How do you build an optimized blog? Themes
- 10. How do you build an optimized blog? Plugins 1000s of modules adding functionality. Surveys, product reviews, ecommerce, reader polls, etc. Headspace, SEO plugin extraordinaire Google Analytics for Wordpress Google Sitemaps Generator for Wordpress Sociable, Easy social bookmarking tool for posts
- 11. What now? Content Strategy Research: Find out what your prospects are looking for and provide relevant content. Keyword research (Google AdWords Keyword Tool) is essential for an optimized blog. Categories: Fill pages, categories, titles, copy with relevant keywords. Compelling Content: Publish valuable content for your customers frequently and consistently.
- 12. What now? Attracting Visitors ‘ Build it and they will come’ motto DOES NOT APPLY! Current Customers: Promote blog to current client base. Offer valuable content that keeps them coming back. Monthly or weekly top 10 lists, etc. RSS Syndication: Use Feedburner’s tools to Publicize (PingShot, Email Subscriptions), Optimize (SmartFeed)and perhaps Monetize (AdSense) your feed.
- 13. What now? Attracting Visitors Social Media: Integrate your blog with Twitter (Twitterfeed, Hootsuite), Facebook, LinkedIn. Add your blog’s feed to your profile or page. Add a link to your social media profiles in the sidebar of your blog. Social Bookmarking: Share your published content via Reddit, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon etc. (Onlywire) Search Engines: Optimized posts are quickly indexed by Google, eventually providing targeted traffic to your blog/website.
- 14. Questions?
- 15. Resources/Tools http://ithemes.com/wordpress-versus-movable-type-the-smackdown-comparison/ Linux vs. Windows OS: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/196995 Onlywire Auto-synidcation Service - http://www.onlywire.com/ Twitterfeed - http://twitterfeed.com/ Hootsuite Twitter Tool - http://hootsuite.com Feedburner - www.feedburner.com/ Google Keyword Tool - https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
- 16. Wordpress Plugin Links Headspace - http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/ Google Analytics - http://yoast.com/wordpress/google-analytics/ Google Sitemap Generator - http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/ Sociable - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/