If no one comments on your business blog, is it successful? It’s sort of like the old question, “if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?” One of the key ways to turn blog readers into blog buyers of your product or service is to engage with your reader through comments. Here are seven ways to encourage your readers to respond to your blog articles: 1. Ask!  - This is the [...]

  A blog is an excellent tool to have on a business website for a number of reasons. When you add content on a regular basis, your website receives a boost in search engine rankings. And if the information you provide readers is useful, you are regarded as a trusted source to do business with. To make that happen, your blog must convert those readers into leads for your business. Here are a few ways [...]

If you want to grow the audience for your business blog, you’ve got to get your content out infront of your readers. That means posting links to your articles on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. It’s also important to include social share bars or icons like the Google +1 button on your blog. Getting your articles promoted on social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon will also help drive traffic to [...]

A blog can be an effective marketing tool for your company. But the only way to know if your blog is achieving its goals is to measure its performance. Then, you can see what’s working and what’s not, and make adjustments. One of the first things to look at is traffic. For instance, if you have Google Analytics installed on your blog, you’ll be able to keep track of quite a few statistics including: Total [...]

Adding a blog to your marketing mix is a smart strategy for any size business. Writing articles on a regular basis will help your website’s search engine ranking. And a blog gives you credibility with your audience by establishing you as a thought leader in your industry. In order to make your blog a successful marketing tool, it should include the following components: 1. Get creative with your blog theme. Devise a theme that appeals [...]

I got this in email form from WordPress (with a one click link to easily post to my blog). What a fantastic example of how to make Internet marketing fun and easy to understand. Great use of  humor to deliver important customer info- no matter what your product/service, how well do you score in that department?! The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level [...]

If you spend a lot of time blogging for your business, make sure you find ways to repurpose the content so you get the most mileage out of your efforts. The more visible your content is on the Internet, the better chance you’ll have to attract more traffic to your web site, more leads, and more opportunities for your business. The other reason it’s important to leverage your blog content is that people learn in [...]

One of the challenges in creating a blog for your business is coming up with creative ideas for a title for each post. The title has to spark enough interest to get someone to read your blog. Eight out of ten people read headline copy, but only two out of the ten will read the rest.  A compelling title entices those two people to continue reading the rest of your blog. Here are 7 ideas [...]

This is so cool! Expect a phone blog from me very soon! It’s happened to all of us. The night starts off innocently enough with a little gin and tonic, maybe a mojito, then next thing you know you’re doing tequila shots with the bartender and the girl from Brazil and you find yourself thinking it would be a treMENdous idea to call up your ex and see how they’re doin … Read More via WordPress.com News

I’ve been a WordPress fan and user for years. The beauty of WordPress is that you can start blogging risk free (WordPress has a free blogging platform) and see if it works for you. It’s a great way to test blogging out and see if you enjoy it and can do it consistently. If you decide you enjoy it, then you will probably want to upgrade to the paid version of WordPress and integrate it directly into [...]