Hi Phil
My blog is
http://www.carvillonmarketing.com it's where I share my marketing tips, news, advice and views. You'll find lots of marketing stuff on here - a real range of material. So, here's my advice for blogging:
1) keep your posts relatively short. Having researched blogging to a great degree - then 500-800 words seems to be a good benchmark.
2) keep your posts varied. Have some posts that are very factual - drawing on information that will help the users. Make some light and humorous so that the user understands that whilst you know your stuff, you're not taking life too seriously. And they get an insight to your personality. Make some posts a little controversial or challenging the user - to stimulate conversation.
3) Always watch your spellings. Poor spelling really does hinder credibility.
4) Use images in a post to break up the text and add some relevant interest. Check out
www.flickr.com or
www.istockphoto.com or
www.fotolia.co.uk for some cheap yet very good quality shots.
5) Create interesting headings. The piece of advice I came across advised that you should write the headline imagining that the user won't even see the article. So the headline has to grab attention and tell the story.
6) Use keywords where you can - in headers and throughout the content of the article.
7) keep it going. Stick to a tight publishing schedule. Blogging pays off over time - it's a marathon rather than a sprint and it takes time to build up relevant and optimised content. I set my schedule to publish 3 times a week.
8) Insert a call to action such as Subscribe to Blog on the site so that users can easily subscribe. I use
www.feedblitz.com but there are many others
www.feedburner.com is popular too.
9) Claim your blog on Technorati - Google Blogsearch and Technorati are the two main ways that people search for blogs. That way others can find your blog.
10) Promote links to your blog on your website and in email footers, businesscards and other off and online relevant marketing materials.
11) Get your blog noticed by publishing links on social media vehicles such as Twitter, Facebook, Linked In (all social spaces relevant to your industry).
12) Try and provide one piece of practical 'how to' advice in each blog post. That way the user will learn that you are always going to provide something useful.
13) Don't focus your posts around selling your products - users will switch off to this. What you should be focusing on is positioning yourself as someone, or a business, that is able to share advice, news, information which will prove useful to your readers. Remember, people aren't that interested in what you do - but more of what you can do for them!
Happy blogging...
