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.

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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.

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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.

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  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.

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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.

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Social Media and the impact on SEO

In times past, search engine optimization (aka SEO) and social media wouldn't have been used in the same sentence. After all, search engine optimization comprises techniques designed to help boost one's search engine rank placement and social media sites, like Facebook, allow you to connect with your friends or customers in a "social" way.

However, recent changes by both Google and Bing make it clear that these major search engines are looking to social media sites as a way to validate the quality of the content found on websites. Those that make the grade are being rewarded with improved search engine rankings… even in "regular" search.

While there are some differences in the way Google and Bing are using information from social media sites to adjust their indexes, there are many similarities. The search engines are looking at the "authority" of the account holder and placing more importance on any links posted on sites like Twitter and Facebook.

While the links themselves may be "no follow" links, that isn't stopping the search engines from adjusting the indexes and increasing the search engine rank placement for the web pages they point to. In fact, some have said that it appears as though "retweets" are the new form of linkbuilding.

Both Google and Bing are looking at the frequency that a particular link is posted (or re-posted) on the social media sites and are also paying attention to who is doing the posting. If your links are being posted by an individual or business that is considered to be an authority by the search engines, the associated web page may see a boost in its search engine ranking.

This development validates what many marketing experts have believed for more than a year now;  Social media's importance is growing  in the eyes of the search engines and this trend will likely continue. It's well known that Google places a premium on relevant content and quality sites and pages so it should come as no surprise that they are tracking the number of people who liked your content well enough to share it with others.

Those who would like to take advantage of these new search engine trends are encouraged to make it as easy as possible for others to share their content or the links they contain. Adding a "retweet" function to your website or blog, for example, can dramatically increase the likelihood that your content will be shared by your visitors via Twitter.

If you would like to lear more about Social Media SEO you can request our FREE Report by clicking on the image below:

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10 Common Blog Terms to Know

Here is a list of 10 Common Blog Terms that you should know when you start using blogging to gain exposure for your business and drive traffic to your site while you connect with your current customers and prospects.

Article – Article and blog "post" are frequently both used. An article is a single post on a blog.

Blogosphere – This refers to the collective community of all blogs and bloggers on the Internet.  If you want to search for other blogs on the internet.  Technorati is a great site to search for blogs of interest.

Directory – A blog directory is a website that lists blogs, usually ranking them by their popularity and ordering them by subject or category. One way to help generate traffic to your blog is to add it to blog directories.  You can add to Technorati.

Feed – This is a news feed used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it in RSS reader or via e-mail.

Hyperlink – Used synonymously with the word "link", this is clickable content within a web page that takes the user to another page, website, or within part of the same page. The text that comprises the hyperlink is referred to as the "anchor text".

Keyword(s) or Key phrase(s) – When you write your blog you should think about the topics that are important and relevant to the audience you are trying to reach.  When you create content around these topics which are your keywords or key word phrases you are more likely to have your content show up to those that are searching for you.

Nofollow – This describes a link that has an attribute which prevents the link from being crawled by search engines.  Since building links to your content is important to getting found in search engines you want to be sure that your links no not have the nofollow attribute.

RSS – Short for Really Simple Syndication, a means by which users can subscribe to a feed, a blog feed for instance. Because content is published in a frequent basis subscribing makes it easier for users to follow content and updates.

Subscribe – It is important that your content is seen by your target market and that once they reach your blog they come back when you have new content.  Getting visitors back to see your new content is to get them to subscribe either via RSS feeds or email.

Comments – One great feature of blogs is that you can solicit comments from your readers in response to your blog post.  Comments can help grew your blog and increase the readership.  It is suggested that you allow your readers to comment on your blog and monitoring these comments and being sure to respond to them if need be.

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We have been building a lot of websites for Real Estate agents lately that are geared to capture the prospects attention and provide them all of the resources they need.  We typically build these sites on the WordPress platform for these reasons:

• Easy for the end user to update
• Great for SEO
• Several Options available
• Great Tools that you can add

Some of the top tools we have been adding to Real Estate Sites lately are listed here:

Walk Score Plugin: This is a great plugin for adding Walk Score Neighborhood maps into your site.  The Walk Score of a property is becoming more important to several home buyers as they are looking to cut down on their commutes to local amenities.

Local Market Explorer: This is a very robust plugin that lets you add information from Zillow, Education.com, Walk Score and Yelp as well as local classes from TechStreet and local content from Nile Guide.  You can even integrate IDX/MLS information in with this plugin depending on what IDX provider you are using.

Mortgage Loan Calculator: This is a handy tool to help provide your buyers an idea of what they can afford when shopping for a home.

There are several other tools and options that can be added to make your Real Estate site a robust prospecting tool.

If you are interested in a consultation to see what SourceOne Technologies can do to help you grow your Real Estsate business with an interactive web site please complete the form below.

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Online Marketing to keep your Pipeline Full

photo credit: saturn ♄

Having a pipeline of potential clients is critical for any business in order to survive.  Unfortunately, however activities to fill the pipeline often are put on the back burner until they become urgent to generate that next sale.

Here are a few things that businesses can do on a regular basis with online marketing in order to continue to keep that pipeline full and have a steady stream of customers waiting to do business with you:

• Write a regular blog with content that your target market can use
• Build an email list and communicate regularly with your list so that they are aware of any upcoming specials and promotions
• Establish a presence on Facebook and interact with your target market
• Establish a presence on Twitter and connect regularly with target market as well as listen for opportunities
• Write articles and distribute them online to obtain exposure for your business
• If appropriate host a web or teleconference to connect with your prospects
• Share information on social networks that is valuable to your target market – this will help you be seen as an expert in the industry

Always keep in mind that it is critical to keep your pipeline full of new sales prospects in order to have a successful thriving business.  The above activities are just a handful of things you can do on a regular basis to help fill that pipeline.

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photo credit: Open Kitchen España

Are People Finding your Blog? 

Blogs are wonderful tools to showcase your information and stay in contact with your prospects and clients.  They are also great for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes.  Blogs are also one of the first aspects we suggest for our clients as the hub of any Social Media/Social Networking Activities.  But now that you have a blog is it being seen?

There are several ways to ensure that your blog is being seen, however today we are just going to focus on syndication.  Syndication is basically making your content available and see in other places on the web.

In order to syndicate your blog you will want to send your blog’s RSS feed to multiple websites at one time.  This will help increase the exposure for your blog.  If you look on the address line of your browser in the upper right hand corner you should see the icon for your blog’s RSS feed, if you click on this you will be able to obtain your RSS feed.  Typically this will look like:  http://www.sitename.com/feed

Once you have this you can go to one of the sites on the web that allow you to submit RSS feeds and add the feed to your Blog so that it will be found.  Here are a handful to start with:

Feed Shark – will submit your RSS feed to several sites

FeedAgg.com – will submit your feed to its directory and gain more visitors

FeedListing – Another great place to submit your RSS feed

Blogdigger – Submit your feed here

RSSAggregator – Free RSS Directory & RSS News Aggregator

RSS Feed News – A FREE RSS News site where you can also add your feed

Bloglines – this is a great place to get your blog listed for some local traffic

Blogged – another great place to submit your blog and find others to read and follow

Blogville  – another great resource to submit your blog

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