Blogs act as a link between a business and its customers. They are especially helpful with increasing traffic to a business’s web site. Here are some ways you can increase traffic to your site via a blog.

• Write relevant content that matches the readers’ interest. It is essential to always keep in mind what information your target audience is looking for. The relevancy of blog posts with reader’s interest is important as it will attract them to read it. They might even refer it to others. Search engines favor blogs that have user relevant content.

• Make titles appealing. Having catchy titles to posts help in attracting both readers as well as search engines. Always write articles that can pull people to read the post, and include important keywords if possible.

• Use the right keywords. Undertake keyword research to find the most appropriate keywords and effectively place them in the posts. Highlight the keywords to attract the readers’ attention.

• Post regularly and often. It helps in retaining the interest of the visitors if you post often. Readers like to be welcomed with a new entry! To keep readers as well as search engines updated about new posts, make use of RSS Feeds.

• Allow for easy commenting. Comments are the best way to get feedback and thus may provide some vital information on areas that a business needs to improve upon. Make sure that readers are able to comment on the posts easily.

Here are the top five rules to consider when designing your blog:

1. Simplicity – Be very careful to not overload your blog with tons of plugins, widgets, etc. Going overboard with these will make your blog look cluttered & distract your readers. Choose features wisely and keep it to a minimum.

2. Choosing the Right Color Scheme – Make sure to pick a color scheme that matches your current site design and/or logo. You don’t want to have a blog that looks completely different from your website. Keep it consistent.

3. Easy Navigation – Make sure that your page links in the navigation are in a noticeable/obvious place (across the lower part of the header or in the sidebars). You do not want to have your readers searching for the links.

4. Easy to Classify – Within the first seconds of visiting your blog, the reader should be able to identify what your blog is about. This can be done by having a prominent headline/tagline and by including a small description that is visible when the reader lands on the blog.

5. Include a RSS feed – These days, more and more people are taking advantage of feeds. Make sure to include links to the RSS feed throughout the blog in locations that will grab the readers attention. Ex: tazsol.com/blog – In the right hand sidebar, you will see how we do this by allowing our readers to subscribe to our feed. Each time a new blog post is added, the reader that has subscribed is notified.

Open Source Software
It uses open source software, which means that it can be used free of cost. It is built on PHP and MySQL, which again reiterates it being open source and also means that it can be fully customized to fit your needs.

User Friendly
You don’t have to be experienced with any kind of coding to use WordPress. With its easy to use dashboard you can add articles and post entries within seconds.

Themes Support
There are prebulit templates abound in the internet today, which means thousands of custom made WordPress sites. These provide a shell for you to choose from Plugins which extend functionality.

Plugins
WordPress plugins allow you to do just about anything that you want and have the ability to be installed in a matter of moments.

Standards Compliant
WordPress is one software that follows all the web standards and keeps your blog or website compliant to all the rules that have to be followed.

SEO Friendly
Search Engines definitely have to be kept in mind when building a website. WordPress uses different functions which allow it to be search engine friendly. For example, sending pings to other sites, making categories, tagging your posts, use of h1/h2 tags etc.

Continue to use your blog as a marketing tactic, but offer up these condensed snippets in microblog format and you’ll be capturing market share from your competition as most are still not using micro-blogging.

Some of your target readers would prefer to read a 1,000-word article. Others just want the one or two key points in that article. With micro-blogging, you’re capturing both kinds of audiences – and potential customers.

The great thing about micro-blogging is that it can be done from anywhere in the world. Simply send in a text message and your post is instantly live. This beats spending three hours trying to format the post in WordPress or Blogger on your tiny BlackBerry screen!  Yes you can blog from your phone as well, but it’s much easier to send in a 200 character message versus a 500 word post.

For the rest of the universe that wants to get some FREE traffic quickly, listen closey.   The quickest way to generate traffic is to start a blog, and start posting.  Exactly what I’m doing here.   If you could see the traffic this blog gets you’d be amazed.  On average we receive 300-700 visits a day — just to our blog.  Blog Marketing is the way to go!

Here’s the formula to achieve the same success:

Step 1:  Open up Googles Keyword Selector Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Step 2: Type in some different search phrases for the potential blog title.  For example:  If your blog entry was going to be on holiday cooking, type in holiday cooking.  The more generic the better

Step 3: Quickly analyze the phrases. Look for ones that have moderate competition and good traffic

Step 4: Use the keyword in your blog title, and several times in your blog entry.  Example, one of the phrases we found with Googles tool is “cooking holidays”  A good title would be:  Cooking Holidays Can Be Tough — 5 Tips To Avoid The Stress.

Step 5:  Load up some good tags with different phrases that describe your entry. For example:  holiday cooking, cooking holiday, cooking holidays, cook for the holidays.  These are essentially keywords people are searching for to find your post

Step 6: Make sure you have the All in One SEO Pack installed.  This allows you to add keywords, a title tag and a description tab.  These should also contain your main keyword — Cooking Holidays, and some others (like the tags you used)

Step 7: Publish the post

Step 8: Go to Social Marker and submit your post to EVERY social bookmarking site using your tags.

Step 9: Post a link to your post on ALL your social marketing sites.

Step 10: Watch the traffic role in!

You can’t beat blog marketing, I’m telling you, this is where it’s at!

But before you begin typing frantically about what you ate for lunch that gave you indigestion or how outraged you were when your spouse didn’t use a coaster on the authentic-wood side table, please heed my suggestions. It is imperative that you not only write these blogs or articles, but that you write to win over your audience. If there weren’t rules, work would simply be too much fun.

First, you must do your research. Whether you are writing about how perfect your service or product is for your audience or blogging a review about the movie you watched last night, you must know what you are talking about. If you’re bluffing, your readers will catch on and, most likely, will not return to read any more of your posts.

But take this lightly. Your research-paper writing days are probably long gone with the memories of college. Take five minutes. Maybe ten. Check out what other experts are writing about the subject, and gather multiple points of view. To establish yourself as an expert, you must be able to not only defend your theories and thoughts, but make a case for why your theories and thoughts are the best.

Remember: it’s okay to use other experts’ words, but you MUST directly attribute them in your writing.

Second, include hard facts. Your article or blog does not have to read as if it could make the front page of the Wall Street Journal. In fact, I advise against that (I’ll mention that in a second). But you do need to include a foundation for whatever you are presenting to your reader. If you’re writing about bubblegum flavors, mention bubblegum was invented in 1928 – and it was pink! Quirky, fun and something I’m sure everyone has wondered at least once in their life.

In short, no one really wants to read your babbles and coos. Maybe your mother, maybe not. Give your readers something they can take with them.

Third, write with your own voice. Let your audience hear you when they read your words. Throw in a “gnarly” or a bit of sarcasm – however your thoughts flow through your mind. (Advice: keep it clean). Again, if people want to read flat, no-attitude compositions, they’ll grab a newspaper. This is your chance to show your audience that not only do you know what you’re talking about, but you can keep their attention while you’re talking about it too. If you can master this, they’ll keep coming back.

Finally, in all things you do – especially writing articles and blogs – give your audience a call to action. They’ve read what you had to say, loved it and want more. But if they don’t know where to go from here, they’ll find someone else who guides them. Always include your Web site and e-mail addresses, Facebook and Twitter links and any other destinations that will keep them connecting with you over and over. This is the key: keep your audience depending on you. You depend on them.

Yes, we’ve all heard of blogs, but do you truly understand how to utilize a blog,  the frequency of posting or what plug-ins  you should be using for maximum marketing impact?

You don’t need to have one blog, we encourage you to have three!  A company blog, a personal blog for the key executives and a general market commentary blog.

The key to blogging is consistent posting with relevant information.   97% of blogs have 1 or less postings each week.   That leaves a great opportunity for you to shine in the other 3%!

Once you’ve mastered blogging, we encourage you to jump on the micro-blogging bandwagon.  Micro-blogging is posting shorter posts, typically under 200 characters.  Twitter has mastered this concept and is among our favorite sites to be leveraging in 2009.   Twitter allows you to post short “tweets”  of 140 characters or less.    You can update your audience on your personal life — for example Michael is currently enjoying some time his twins or on the business side of things — Michael is currently working on his new book, check out the link here.   The great thing about twitter is that you can link twitter with various other social networking web sites.  So one post or “tweet”  to twitter, and you’ve just updated ten other social accounts instantly.  

Not logged into your computer to make the post?  Send a text message and your status will be updated automatically!

Twitter is one trend that you cannot ignore.  It’s still relatively new enough to start gathering a following and taking that market share away from your competition!  Get on twitter and become the expert in your field, you’ll have thousands of followers in no time!  

Key Resources:

·         Twitter.com

·         Wordpress.org

·         Blogpress.com

·         Typepad.com

Yes, we’ve all heard of blogs, but do you truly understand how to utilize a blog,  the frequency of posting or what plug-ins  you should be using for maximum marketing impact?

You don’t need to have one blog, we encourage you to have three!  A company blog, a personal blog for the key executives and a general market commentary blog.

The key to blogging is consistent posting with relevant information.   97% of blogs have 1 or less postings each week.   That leaves a great opportunity for you to shine in the other 3%!

Once you’ve mastered blogging, we encourage you to jump on the micro-blogging bandwagon.  Micro-blogging is posting shorter posts, typically under 200 characters.  Twitter has mastered this concept and is among our favorite sites to be leveraging in 2009.   Twitter allows you to post short “tweets”  of 140 characters or less.    You can update your audience on your personal life — for example Michael is currently enjoying some time his twins or on the business side of things — Michael is currently working on his new book, check out the link here.   The great thing about twitter is that you can link twitter with various other social networking web sites.  So one post or “tweet”  to twitter, and you’ve just updated ten other social accounts instantly.  

Not logged into your computer to make the post?  Send a text message and your status will be updated automatically!

Twitter is one trend that you cannot ignore.  It’s still relatively new enough to start gathering a following and taking that market share away from your competition!  Get on twitter and become the expert in your field, you’ll have thousands of followers in no time!  

Key Resources:

·         Twitter.com

·         Wordpress.org

·         Blogpress.com

·         Typepad.com

Exposure to a new audience – Guest blogging opens you up to a whole new audience of potential customers.  Those who haven’t come across your blog may be reading the blog you are guest posting on, so they’ll get a chance to read your writing and follow links to your site.

Backlinks – Guest bloggers are usually allowed to include a short bio that contains a link to their site.  This can help you to create backlinks, which make it easier for potential customers and the search engine spiders to find your site.

Improved credibility – If another blogger thinks your information is good enough to post on their blog, people may begin to see you as an expert in your field.  This improved credibility can result in more traffic to your site and increased inquiries from potential customers.

If you don’t feel like writing a guest blog post for someone else’s blog, send us an e-mail.  Our bloggers can develop a high quality post that you can use to reap the benefits of guest blogging.

Backlinks – Blog owners who host blog carnivals link back to the sites of the original content authors.  This can give you good quality backlinks that the search engine spiders can use to find your blog.

Exposure – You may get 1,000 visitors to your site each day, but what will happen if your content is published and linked to on a site that gets 100,000 visitors per day?  Some of those visitors may click on backlinks to your site, giving you new readers and additional opportunities for revenue generation.

Publicity – If you participate in a well-known blog carnival, other bloggers or even print journalists may pick up some of your information for their own publications.  This can generate free publicity for your business.

Enhanced Credibility – Anyone can start up a free blog on Wordpress or blogger.  However, having other blog owners deem your content worthy of inclusion in their blog carnivals shows readers that you truly offer quality information.  This enhanced credibility can help people to trust you more and put your business in a more positive light.