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4 Most Common Blogging Mistakes Made by Small Businesses

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Everywhere you turn it seems like everyone is talking about how important blogging is for small business (and big business) websites. That is true; blogging is good for SEO since adding new posts keeps the website fresh, and more content means that you can get more long tail traffic; blogging is also good for establishing and maintaining good relationship with your customers, and for building your brand. The reasons pro are all good. The cons – there aren’t any. Unless you’re doing it wrong.

The only thing worse than not having a blog on your business website is to attempt to blog without really understanding how it should be done. And that’s the mistake many small businesses make. Are you among them? Before you start defending yourself saying “hey, I’m doing everything by the book, I’m doing my research, I’m interlinking my posts…” – we aren’t talking here about the technical aspect of blogging, and the mistakes listed below are so common that you may not even realize that they shouldn’t be done, since many others are doing them.

Are you talking about yourself a lot?

This is by far the most common one. Without even realizing it, many businesses are creating blog posts that are about them – and not about their customers. Of course, the customers probably do want to know a bit more about the people behind the brand, but that doesn’t involve the topics such as their pets, the fight with the kindergarten teacher, the plumbing issues – would you be telling them about that face to face? No? Then don’t write about these things on your business blog either.

Are you paying too much or too little attention to your post titles?

Crafting a good post title is what often makes a difference between whether people will read your post or not. A good title lets them know what the post is about, and invites them to click on it and read the rest at the same time. If you aren’t paying attention to your titles, you may as well be creating the most engaging content in the post itself – there’s a very good chance that no one will know about it.

On the other hand, if you have mastered the art of crafting the catchy titles that provide a great click through rate, but you aren’t delivering in the content, your visitors will probably feel tricked – and then you can forget about having them leave their email address, or calling for a free consultation. You haven’t delivered the first chance you had, why should they bother with you further.

Are you too much or too little of a perfectionist about your content?

You should be neither. You should be aware of the fact that your content will be seen and read by the people who are very important to your business – your potential customers, so do your best to make it worth them while. But don’t go overboard and polish it over and over again, so that it takes you two weeks to finish one article. Keep in mind that it will probably never be perfect – but it needs to be good enough.

Are you not showing that you value the content you’ve created?

If you don’t care about your content enough to promote it yourself, then why would your readers care to do it? If you don’t think that comments on your posts are worth reading and responding to, then your readers will feel the same. You have to be the first one to show that your latest post is really useful/entertaining/engaging – you are the one person who shouldn’t forget about that piece.

This post was written ba Andrew Handley, from http://www.midislandcollision.com/. If you recognize yourself in one or more of these points, then it’s time to stop and re-think your blogging strategy. Then go back and re-do all the posts on your blog – some of them will probably scream: Delete!




Twitter Dos and Don’ts

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Useful Tips for Twitter

These days it seems that you can’t escape stories about the latest social networking phenomenon, Twitter.  With all the hype and celebrity endorsements, lots of people are asking “how do I use Twitter?”.

There are plenty of sites out there that will tell you how to use Twitter, but not so many to warn you of the pitfalls.If you take a minute to learn from this list of handy Twitter tips then you’ll be Twittering away with the best of them.

DO watch what you say.Unless your updates are protected, anyone can see what you are currently Tweeting.Bear in mind the story of the girl who managed to Tweet her way out of a job because a hiring manager read her thoughts on the position she interviewed for.

DON’T use Twitter for a chat client.  No one wants to their screen full of irrelevant Tweets from a conversation they’re forced to eavesdrop on.

DO remember to retweet other people.  This can be a good way to build up a following of likeminded Twitterers.

DON’T endlessly try to sell things.Okay, we get it – you have your own blog.Twitter is by no means one way traffic – tweet back!

DO follow people back, but….

DON’T be offended if someone doesn’t follow you back.Users with tens of thousands of followers are unlikely to see your Tweet through the hundreds of other tweets anyway.

DO try to be funny, entertaining, informative and creative with your tweets.

DON’T auto-DM.This is the Twitter equivalent of spam and a faceless “hi – thanks for following” is impersonal and can be off-putting.

DO use it to ask other people for help.Once you have built up a reasonable following you’ll find it easy to find answers to your questions in no time.

DON’T twit anything if your message is going to exceed 140 characters.  Spreading a message over multiple tweets is just going to confuse and irritate your followers.

These handy hints should be enough to get you started.  If you are likely to spend a significant proportion of your online time on Twitter then there are plenty of guides on the net telling you how to use Twitter effectively.

SEO Your Blog Post With These 3 Simple Tips

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For many blog owners, they fail to capitalize on search engine traffic because they have no clue as to how to go about optimizing their blogs. Failing to bring in targeted traffic is one reason many bloggers stop trying to make money with affiliate programs and find the next scheme to jump into.

If they understood how easy it was to SEO optimize their blog post, they just might get the free organic traffic they need to be successful. All it takes is just three simple steps. By following these easy steps, you can increase visitors and be the difference in a blog that creates the owner virtually no income or one that becomes a great source of additional income.

Follow this advice to optimize every blog post you write and start taking advantage of free targeted Internet users.

For starters, you should make absolutely sure that your article addresses are SEO friendly. If you use a free blog service like BlogSpot, this is done automatically and cannot be changed. If you’re a WordPress user, then set your permalinks so that the code produces SEO friendly url’s when you create a blog entry.

The way you do this in WordPress is to click on the Permalinks tab, and check the button along side the Custom field. Next you’ll put a percentage sign followed by the words Postname. {Immediately after the words postname, Now} put another percent symbol. This makes sure your blog will have SEO friendly post.

The most important tip on SEO optimizing your blog is to put the keyword in the Title of your blog. Let’s say you’re blogging about to make fast money, then use these keywords in the Title of your blog and your blog post. What you don’t want to do is put unrelated keywords in your Title. Using the keywords in the Title, then you’ll rank higher than if you name the blog something that does not tell the search engine what your blogs about.

The next requirement is to use your keywords in your Post’s title. If you’re trying to lure people to read your post about ebay to make money at home, then your keywords need to be in your post title. Forget about using non relevant titles like How I Make Money With Auctions. If you do this, the search engines will have trouble determining what your post is about and you won’t attract the right kind of traffic. If you’re using Adsense to monetize your blog, this is a very important tip to get targeted traffic for high paying keywords.

Implementing these 3 simple tips will go a long ways in letting the Search Engines know what subject your blog post is about. By making it easy easy for them to understand what your post is about, they’ll rank your post higher in their listings.

Now the only thing you’ll need is to build links to your blog and blog post. But alas, there isn’t enough room here to go ito the details of link building. Get used to optimizing your blog and blog post before tackling the chore of building links to your site.

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