the business of blogging

I’ve been taking a little heat lately for not updating this blog on a timely (read daily) basis.

For right now, however, this blog exists for the sole purpose of showing a potential client what a blog is, what routinely appears in the sidebar, what sorts of things you can include for content, etc.

I set up this blog so people could get a taste of what a blog is and what they can do for their own businesses. I wanted it to look like the same stublet I would deliver to them with my premium set-up service.

But I’ve already gone a couple steps beyond that, so perhaps you’re right and it’s time to just dive in to regular blogging again and start using this space to fill some of my clients’ other needs beyond the launch. Perhaps I should talk more about building traffic over time and balancing SEO and PPC. Or where and how else you can build traffic. Or what to do with it once it’s come to your pages.

LOL, perhaps it’s even time to revisit the “you can do it yourself” streaming video and podcasting advice I went bankrupt trying to promote in 2004. I think the market has finally caught up with that one, though the local area still has not.

Tell me what you think, and if I do it, what you would like to see me cover.

Posted under Blog benefits

I wish I could just fold my whole website into my blog. In my case though, the coding of the site itself (pure CSS layout) is part of my professional portfolio so I can’t.

But you probably could. And you probably should.

Blog is both a noun and a verb. Post is also used as both a noun and a verb in the blogosphere. That’s a bit of confusion that’s led a lot of people to think the mechanics behind blogging (the verb) and posting (the verb) are a lot harder than they really are. Such semantics don’t count with blogs (the noun) the same way they do for a post (the noun) on a website where the coding of a post (the noun) also makes up the structure of the website.

If you do know even a little bit of coding (specifically CSS or PHP), you can usually find and remove a little snippet of code from your blog’s main page and post templates that removes the automatic insertion of the date of the post. That, along with another tweak or two, makes your blog a full fledged and very robust content management system. Not too long ago, only enterprise sized companies could afford the powerful back-end programming that is a CMS.

Today, anyone can have a clearly and cleanly designed web home that consists of thousands of pages or posts of information. If you have the time to set it up and tweak it correctly yourself, you can have it all for free. If you don’t have that time, there are plenty of people (like me) who are happy to help.

So unless you need to show you control the technology behind your website, why let it weigh you down and take up one minute more of your time? With a blog you can update your content as quickly and easily as you can type an email. If typing is even a bit too much of a chore for you, you can also turn on your webcam (or microphone) and record a video, or audio, blog post.

You just concentrate on saying what you need to say as clearly and concisely as you can and both you and your readers will be happy.  The only people who are likely to care if your site is made up of webpages or blog posts are the IT people who helped build the engine you’re using to run it all, or the web designers who lost their jobs because of it.

Posted under Blog benefits, blog building

Blogs are websites. They are dynamically coded on the back end to allow anyone to grow their web business without touching that back end, even if that means adding 10,000 posts to their blog.

Busy business owners who have no desire to spend hours on the web can use blogs to keep in touch with current customers and attract new ones to their business in minutes. Posts that feature a specific product or service, comment on current news and how it affects potential buyers, remind people of a scheduled event, or just wish readers a happy holiday don’t have to take hours to write to be effective. In fact, when blogging, a simple, conversational style in a shorter format has proven to be far more effective than long, formal articles.

There’s also plenty of help available if your blog starts doing it’s job so well you need to devote every minute to running your business, not blogging. (Yes, that was a shameless plug).

This blog was set up to show you what I do when I set a blog up for you.  I include several posts that talk about specific features, functions and benefits that make my blog installations extra powerful search engine marketing vehicles as well as the kind of professional storefront you want your visitors to associate with your business.

Once we have your blog set up and you understand how to keep building on the base I’ll provide, you’re not done. Subscribe to my RSS feed to keep getting valuable information on how to turn your new blog into a tireless business generator.

Oh, and did you notice the one thing this - and all my posts are missing?

Posted under Blog benefits