How to Blog – How to Find Topics to Blog About

One struggle that many bloggers experience is deciding what to blog about.  Unfortunately this often is the number one thing that causes a blog to fail.  This post will hopefully help you with some ideas on what to blog about and how to find topics to blog about.

One thing that we suggest is that you sit down and make a list topics that are relevant to your market and that you feel your prospects and clients would be interested in.  This list will help you greatly as you begin to formulate blog posts.

Once you have your list of topics we suggest that you do a little bit of keyword research to determine how popular your topic is with people that are searching for information.  You can use tools like Word Tracker or Google Adwords Tool for this.  This will help you determine if there is a large enough audience for the topics you are writing on.  We suggest that you look for a minimum of 2,000 searches a month.

The next step is to take your list of topics and come up with some blog posts around them.  The following is a list of potential blog post topics you can use around your list:

• How to or Tutorial Posts
• Top 10 Lists
• Resources
• FAQ Posts
• Announcements and Events
• Review current news on your topic

Once you have your list and know that you are working with viable key words you can begin to formulate some ideas for blog posts.  If you get stuck on finding ideas you can also visit some great resources for finding content:

Niche Specific Forums – If there are forums that your prospects and clients visit these are great places to look for popular discussions and questions and write a blog post on it.

Question and Answer Sites – There are several sites online that are set up for people to ask and answer questions – these are great places to get ideas.  LinkedIn has LinkedIn Answers and then there is also Yahoo Answers.

Digg – Digg is a great resource to see what people are talking about and then formulate a blog idea from that

AllTop – AllTop does a great job of gathering some of the top news stories and information on several topics.

This information should give you a start on determining what to write on your blog.

Share on Facebook

This week’s Fan Spotlight is Brent Jones

Brent Jones is a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker with a very specific niche in the market.  Brent specializes in Mid Century Modern properties and has a ton of knowledge in this area, both regarding the real estate and the furniture of this era.

If you are looking for great information on Mid Century Modern properties, architecture and more along with information on Art Deco, International and Usonian styles as well as the current top of the line LEED constructed Modern Contemporary Architecture that has been built in recent years you can visit Brent’s Blog ( Mid Century Modern Blog ) or his website to see some of the great properties listed ( Mid Century Modern Real Estate )

You can also get tons of updates and notices of some great cultural events on MODCOHO’s Facebook Fan Page for Mid Century Modern Homes

Thank you Brent for being a previous fan of the week!!

If you are interested in being included in our Facebook Fan Spotlight and having information on you and your business shared all you have to do is connect with us on Facebook and be sure to stop by and say hi and share relevant information we share with those that you know.  We select a Fan of the week every week and then feature that fan the following week in the Facebook Fan Spotlight

Share on Facebook

Blog Comments

This week we are focusing on Blogs and providing information around blogs.  Today’s topic is Blog Comments.  This post will cover what Blog Comments are, Why they are good, How to Comment on other blogs to increase your traffic and dealing with the irrelevant or spam blog comments.

What are Blog Comments?

A blog comment is a comment that appears after a blog post on your blog.  Typically the comment is related directly to the content of the post.  Blog comments provide an opportunity for dialogue with your readers.  Allowing Blog Comments on your site can allow you to improve your connection with those that follow you and also can help you with customer service by providing a place for comments and questions to be asked.

Why are Blog Comments Good?

Typically when your blog is new you will not have a lot of comments.  As you develop your blog more and add more content and start to provide relevant information on your topic you will start to get the attention of others that are reading your blog.  When you can encourage those that read your blog to comment and interact with you this helps strengthen your creditibility and reach.  Typically the more comments you have the more others will want to read the post and share the information.

What about Spam and Unrelated Comments?

Although blog comments are great and something that we want, comments that are spam and those that are unrelated we want to keep to bare minimum or eliminate.  Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there that make comments on blogs for the sole purpose of creating more links to their site.  These type of comments are typically only done for the purpose of creating a link back to their site.

There are ways to help minimize these types of comments.  One way is to set-up your blog to manually approve comments so that these types of comments are not automatically posted to your blog.  Other ways to minimize this is if you are using a self-hosted WordPress blog certain plugins can be used to help with this.  Here are a few of these plugins:

Spam Free WordPress

Bad Behaviour

Commenting on Other Blogs

Commenting on other blogs is a great way to share your expertise, provide input and encouragement to other bloggers and also helps increase your blog’s popularity.  You can use Google to search for blogs related to your topic or niche and then read the blog and if there is a post that you can provide meaningful comments to please do so. 

When you do comment on blogs be sure to provide comments with substance and not the ones that you are trying to prevent on your blog.  One other thing you need to be sure to do when you comment on your blog is to add your website to create a link back to your site (back-link).  When you do create a link back to your site please be sure to leave your Keywords, for example if you want people to find you by the term Mid Century Modern Homes, be sure to make sure your blog is tied to those terms on your comment.

Remember comments are important for your blog.  You need to cultivate good comments, leave good comments and also ensure your blog is monitored to help eliminate bad comments.

Share on Facebook

How to Blog – Blogging 101

Blogs or weblogs used to be mostly for personal use, like a journal or a diary only this one is online. These days however, blogs have also become a tool for many businesses. It has become a means to reach out to their present and potential clients especially since people are now technology-savvy, they prefer the convenience of searching and learning more about a certain business's products and services within a few clicks.

Whether your company or your business is only starting up or has been ongoing for a while but with no online marketing strategy, a blog would be a great way to start introducing it to your target market and gaining clients.

But, how to blog? Is it as easy as getting just a blank piece of paper and writing down your article? Well, not necessarily. Knowing how to blog has a significant role  on how effective your blog would be and end-result that it can give you and your business.

Below is a list of things to keep in mind about how to start your blog:

1. Know your niche and stick to it – whether for personal or business use, research about your topic, and then sticking to your niche topics can bring you more traffic and more clients. If you're business is about real estate, post real estate related topics, products, and services, if you are into food and beverage, anything related about food, beverage, restaurants, even health, can be included in your blog.

2. Choose your blog name, URL address, design and platform -  now that you have come to a decision on your topics — although this would be easy if you are blogging for business — it is now time to think of your blog name and URL, both usually your company's name since it is the one you're marketing. After all these, choosing where you want to place your blog is the next most important thing if you are just starting how to blog. There are a lot of blog platforms available today, both free and paid, that can accommodate personal and business blogging. Some of the most popular blogging websites are WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, and LiveJournal. Depending on your style, choose the ones that best suit your business' needs, which one is easier to navigate, the design that is easy and not to heavy on the eyes, these may seem insignificant but it is as important as the contents if you are just learning how to blog.

3. Regularly post content – posting articles and content on your blog is the bread and butter of your blog site.  This is what people would be looking for when they visit your blog. Make sure that you post within your niche and you post regularly. If you can't post daily, you can write several articles per day and just schedule each post to be published in the next days.

4. Publish and promote your blog – so, you are now starting to get the hang of how to blog, it's time to broadcast it to the world and let everyone know about your business — your products and services. How? Start with your existing clients and friends, let them know that they can now be updated about your business through your blog, it is a good idea to send out  emails or newsletters. If you have social media accounts like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, post your blog site there too, you can also post feeds of your articles to bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon to get your blog out there.

The 4 notes above are just the general things that can help you start a blog, once you have created your blog, you will have to work on your content, target, gain and maintain your traffic/visitors. So, knowing how to blog is just the beginning of your blogging experience, keeping it alive and getting traffic is an ongoing process.

Share on Facebook

  Increase Your Website Traffic with These Steps

One question we hear a lot is, “What can I do to get more traffic to my website?” this is a great question!!!  This question is one that we can offer a few suggestions for.

Website traffic generation is a complex process and it often not accomplished by one single action.  There are several things however that you as a website owner can do to help generate traffic to your website.

One key factor of website traffic is content, a lot of relevant content, both on your site and off.  This is where as a website owner you can take steps to help increase your traffic.  The lists below are some things you can do to directly increase your website traffic with content:

1. Blog – if you don’t have a blog already then we suggest that you establish one.  Blogs have become very popular and they are a great way for you to share information quickly and often with the audience you are trying to reach with your site.  Posting relevant information on your Blog will entice visitors to stop back often as well as it will give Google and the other search engines new content to index and include in the search directory.

2. Write Articles –  writing articles is a great way to create more content and have it out on the Internet for people to find you.  When you right an article be sure to use the keywords that you would like people to be searching on to find you and always included a link back to your website.  When you provide your link to your site don’t just include your website name or click here – include something like Denver Fitness Trainer and create the link using your keywords. 

3. Comment on Blogs in your Industry – There are several Blogs online that you can search for and make relevant comments on the content with a link back to your site, again make sure you use your keywords in your link.  When you make the comments be sure to provide depth to your comments and not just the, great post comment. 

4. Establish a Social Presence – Social Media/Social Networking has become a very important factor in driving traffic to websites.  We suggest that you have a presence on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to start with.  There are several others that we suggest as well but start here.  Begin to connect with others and comment and share relevant information.  Be sure not to always be pitching your products or services – remember it is social so the idea is to build connections.  This will help encourage others to find out more about you and start visiting your website and blog.  For Facebook we suggest that you have a personal account for building personal connections, but use a Facebook page to brand your business.

There are many other things you can do to start driving more traffic to your website, but if you start with these 4 things you will be on a great start.

Share on Facebook

This week’s Fan Spotlight is Sharon Prager-Wortham

Sharon Prager-Wortham is the owner of Custom Made Fitness. Sharon is a Personal Trainer that offers so much more.  When you work with Sharon she looks at the whole person and develops a plan with will help you reach your health and fitness goals with a combination of personal training and health and wellness consulting.

You can find out more about Sharon and Custom Made Fitness by either going to her website; Custom Made Fitness – your Denver Personal Fitness Trainer or by visitng her Facebook Fan Page for Custom Made Fitness.

Thank you Sharon for being a previous fan of the week!!

If you are interested in being included in our Facebook Fan Spotlight and having information on you and your business shared all you have to do is connect with us on Facebook and be sure to stop by and say hi and share relevant information we share with those that you know.  We select a Fan of the week every week and then feature that fan the following week in the Facebook Fan Spotlight

Share on Facebook

Setting up a Facebook fan page can get rather complicated these days.  There are so many different add-on's and gadgets it can get a bit confusing.  In this post we will examine all the different bells and whistles you can add to make your page fun.

You know the basics of setting up your page.  You add your logo, some basic information, your website.  But now Facebook allows business pages to have apps.  There are hundreds of apps now that you can add to your page.  You can do some simple things like have a welcome page inticing people to like your page.  Or more complicated items like RSS feeds to e-commerce to exclusive promotions to coupons to contests.  Anything you could possible want to do on a Facebook and probably some things you've never even thought of.

Coupons and exclusive promotions are great ways not only to get more visitors to your page but also it is an incentive to get them to actually purchase.  Plus it will allow you to track just how effective your Facebook page really is. 

Contests are also a great way to get people involved in your page.  You can offer free merchandise or discounts as a prize.  However these can get very complicated to monitor.  The apps will help you monitor and select a winner. 

You can find these apps generally simple by Googling Facebook business page apps.  However, a word of caution.  Make sure you select apps that have good reviews and clear instructions.  Remember these apps are not made by Facebook, but by third party developers. 

SourceOne Technologies has a lot of experience and expertise with Facebook pages and applications that can make them a success.  We would be happy to assist you in creating a Facebook page that will achieve the goals you are after.. 

Facebook apps, when installed properly, can make your Facebook page an interactive hub for your clients.  It can also lead to more sales and revenue without you even leaving your desk.

Share on Facebook

We will be adding a new feature where we will spotlight one of our Facebook fans each week – typically this will be a previous Fan of the Week Winner.  In this spot light we will share a little bit of information about our Fan of the Week and their business. 

This week’s Fan Spotlight is Angela Martinez

Angela Martinez is the owner of StoryTelling Fun,  a wonderful company that all parents and teachers and others that work with children should know about.  StoryTelling Fun creates felt story sets, many that are based on popular children’s books or other educational topics.

You can find out more about StoryTelling Fun by either going to the website @: www.storytellingfun.com or visiting the Facebook Page for StoryTelling Fun

Share on Facebook

A LinkedIn Tidbit

LinkedIn is a great Social Network to include in your overall Social Media strategy, especially if you work with professionals and do business to business transactions.

Here is a quick video that LinkedIn released this year on how you can use the LinkedIn Signal feature for your networking and research on LinkedIn :

This is just one way you can use LinkedIn as part of your social networking and social media strategy.

Share on Facebook

Google has been working on giving itself an update lately and now the update has made its way to YouTube.  The redesign focuses more on channels and also integrating YouTube with Google+ a bit closer.  

The overall functionality of YouTube hasn’t changed, but it is definitely a new look.  When you hit your homepage you will see a feed of videos from your Facebook and Google+ network that have been shared.  You will also see a list of Channels that YouTube suggests.

Those that create and upload videos will also be provided with new Channel templates to help them brand their videos and improve how they are seen by their fans.

If you are ready to learn more about the new YouTube you can check out YouTube’s Help page

One thing we noticed about the new design of YouTube is it looks like there may be an underlying goal to capture additional viewers away from television.  The new Channel design makes watching YouTube videos a little more like watching tv and even adds Channel surfing features.

Here is a great overview on the changes from YouTube:

Share on Facebook