Business Blog Advice

by Courtland Bovee

Millions of blogs fight for readership online (over 75 million by some counts), with thousands more being created every day. Making yours stand above the rest may seem like a daunting task, but here are ten suggestions for making your blog posts stand out from the crowd.

1. Write each post title so it grabs the reader’s attention. It is the first thing someone reads, and it should get your reader’s attention right away. Your title should both pique the reader’s interest and be informative. Do not write “Business Writing Advice”; instead, say “The Best-Kept Secret to Reducing Your Business Writing Worries.” Longer titles have the advantage of describing in detail what your post is about; 8-12 words are a good range.

2. Keep sentences short and clear. A little goes a long way. Readers are busy people and they will not spend hours detangling complex syntax or sifting through blocks of text. Also, use strong language. Start a new paragraph every few sentences, and limit each post to 250 words, if possible. If you cannot write it in under 250 words, split it into two entries.

3. Break up the text. Use numbered lists, bullet points, and subheadings to make your posts easy to scan. Lots of white space on the page is a good thing-it allows your reader to take mental breaks and let the knowledge soak in. In addition, with the inevitable clutter of banner ads and side text, this technique puts some distance between your writing and all those distractions.

4. Keep current. No one wants to read old news. Your job is to stay up-to-date so your readers do not have to themselves. Read newspapers. Scour the web for references. For example, if you write a blog about business communication, subscribe to Google News Alerts using keywords related to the field, such as blogs, podcasting, instant messaging, business letters, memos, and business reports, so you will always be well informed. Posting items from last month or last year will lose your reader’s interest faster than you can say “Enron.”

5. Be bold. Timidity is an easy path to anonymity. Do not be afraid to create and state your opinions. Of course, there are some situations in which objectivity rules-but you have to give people a reason to read this blog by you and not by the person next door.

6. Be accurate. If you make a statement, be prepared to back it up. Know what your sources are and quote them accurately. Misinformation spreads like wildfire online; do not be the spark that sets it off or the wind that fans it.

7. Contribute to the conversation. Links are great-but then what? Do not just post links to the same tired sites, offer your reader something new. Contribute to the conversation. Your goal is to be the site to which everyone else is linking-so you had better have something worth writing about.

8. Stay focused. Once you have defined the theme of your blog, stick to it. A blog about piggy banks has no business posting about the latest innovation in alternative energy. Such a deviance will only confuse your reader and chip away at your virtual authority.

9. Use key words liberally. Keywords are, well, key. Harness your blog’s search engine potential by dousing your title and post with effective keywords that will help interested parties find your page in the vast, muddled blogosphere. This is one of the most important elements of getting your blog read-go at it with gusto.

10. Be consistent. Keep a schedule and stick to it. Post frequently-at least several times per week if you want to increase your potential of attracting new readers. Let your blog languish for weeks without updates and your audience will move on to fresher ground.

Maintaining an informative blog that people want to read takes hard work and good writing skills. Find what makes your writing unique-and flaunt it for all it is worth.

About The Author
Courtland L. Bovee, one of America’s leading instructors in clear and effective communication, co-authors several leading college-level texts with John V. Thill, a prominent communications consultant and current Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Global Communication Strategies. Their website, Business Communication Headline News, the #1 business communication site on the web, is at http://www.businesscommunicationheadlinenews.com

More helpful tips on writing a blog

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by Anna Berk

Blogs have become quite popular within recent 2-3 years. As of September 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 106 million blogs. More and more people nowadays start the blog on a stand alone domain name. Blogs help people to express themselves, it is a perfect tool to start personal on-line diary or professional blog related to any subject.

Apparently blogs are one of the easiest ways to create a website. With WordPress preinstalled, it literally takes a few moments to have a professional looking site up and running and available for millions of visitors from all round the world.

Creating a blog on WordPress does not demand any technical experience or knowledge from you. A great number of design templates will help you to customize your blog and make it to look attractive and professional.

WordPress allows you to post blog content online, thus there is no need use FTP connection from your web hosting provider.

As well it allows you to update your blog content from any place of the world by just loginging to blog admin area which will look like http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/. All you need is to remember your admin login and password. WordPresss automatically updates the order of the posts, archiving older posts by post date and moves the most recent posts to the top of your blog index page.

When you set up stand alone blog on paid web hosting it has more chances to be well indexed and crawled by search engines, since stand alone blog has individual URL and can obtain Google page rank. It is necessary to choose the right keywords in the post title and body.

When stand alone blog is indexed and crawled the chances of blog monetization are preety good. Having a high page rank you may sell text links, banners that will allow you to make profit and pay for the web hosting services.

WordPress also allows your blog visitors to leave comments and in this way interact with the author of the blog, that is one of the most important parts of the blogging process.

Despite of the fact that there are some excellent services that offer free blog hosting services, more and more bloggers prefer to use paid blog hosting. And certainly there are several reasons for this.

When you sign up for a paid web hosting services to create your stand alone blog on a separate domain name you get reliability and some guarantees, such as uptime guarantee. You get in most cases perfect professional and responsive technical support that will help you to answer questions and resolve technical issues when you need this help. This is of great importance if you are newbie and this is your first time setting up blog on WordPress.

Generally for Blog hosting Linux web hosting services are more preferrable. Since Linux web hosting is cheaper and more reliable. However this is you who decide!

About the Author

Do you really need perfect reliable web hosting services for your blog on a stand alone domain name? Then Eskhosting.com is right for you. Eskhosting offers ideal custom web hosting plans, blog hosting on WordPress, 24/7 technical support via live chat, e-mail and toll free number, 100% uptime, instant activation of your web hosting account.

Related articles:

• Using Free Blog Templates
• How Does Blog Hosting Work?
• Why I Love WordPress for Blogging

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by Brandon Cornett
A company blog can help you expand your company’s presence online, which in turn can help you attract new customers and generate business via the Internet.

That sounds great. But how do company blogs work? And more importantly, how can you use your company’s blog to achieve the best possible results?

The Company Blog Defined

Company blogs are exactly what they sound like — blogs operated by companies. By itself, a blog is simply a content-management system that allows you to quickly and easily publish content onto the web (usually in reverse chronological format). But when a company truly embraces the blog it can become much more than a simple software tool.

The biggest appeal of blogs is that they allow for easy web publishing. In fact, anyone who can create a Word document or a basic email message is technically qualified to operate a blog. It really is that simple.

This is the primary reason why company blogs have become so popular lately. Among other benefits, a company blog allows one person to perform the jobs of two people. In the past, it often took two people to get new content onto the company’s website — a writer and a webmaster. But with a blog, it only takes one person — the company blogger!

How to Start a Company Blog

If you’re new to the world of blogging, I strongly recommend paying someone to help you create your company’s blog. First of all, it will save you a lot of headache and hassle.

For instance, I could install, launch and customize for one of my clients in a day. I do it all the time, so it’s just something I’m intimately familiar with. But if one of my clients tried to launch a company blog on their own, it would probably take days or weeks — not to mention a lot of trial-and-error headache.

It’s not that my clients are inept … they just don’t have the experience going through the process of blog setup. Save yourself the hassle — pay a blog expert a small fee to do it for you!

Choosing a Blogging Program

Once you have somebody identified to help you set up your company blog the right way, you will want to choose a blog program. I won’t go into this too heavily because I’ve outlined the process in my Business Blogging Bible. Just know that it’s a necessary step before you go any further.

I recommend giving WordPress, Blogger and TypePad a trial run. Those are the three most popular blog programs used by most companies, and they all work well for company blogging purposes. I use Blogger and WordPress exclusively, and while they both have their own “personalities,” I would recommend either program without hesitation.

Writing Content for Your Company Blog

So now you have a blog program installed on your web host, you have familiarized yourself with the basic workings of the program, and you are ready to start publishing content onto your company blog.

Excellent! But where do you begin?

First, I would make sure you have three things for your company blog — a designated blogger, a basic blog strategy on paper, and an initial content plan to help you get started. You can follow the hyperlinks for more about each of those ingredients, so I won’t belabor the point here.

Blogging Expectations

The last thing I want to touch on is the expectation you should have for your company blog. In time, a company blog can help you achieve many goals at the same time. A company blog can help you increase your search engine rankings, your traffic levels, and your web-driven business as a whole.

But it takes time to get there … especially for a small business that does not have the “built-in” audience of a larger corporation. When Bill Marriott started his blog, for example, he had an instant audience (and plenty of media coverage). But things will be different for “Joe’s Landscaping Company.”

The point is, blogging takes a consistent effort — just like any other form of marketing communications. You need to publish useful content to your company blog on a regular basis. If you do, you’ll eventually start to enjoy the benefits outlined in this article. Just don’t expect these things right off the bat. It takes time and persistence.

I hope you have enjoyed my tutorial on company blogs and blogging. If you have any questions about blogging for business reasons, or if you need help setting up a blog for your own company, please don’t hesitate to contact me through my Internet marketing website.

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Your guide to the world of free blog templates as a design strategy for your blog. An overview of blog themes and templates, how they work, where to find them and more.

Free blog templates can save you a lot of time and energy when designing your blog. In this tutorial we will take a closer look at blog template designs and how you might use them. But first, let’s start with a basic definition:

Web Templates Defined

The template concept actually started long before blogs came onto the scene. I’ve been involved with website development for nearly a decade now, and as long as I can remember there have been website templates available to simplify the design process.

Basically, a website template is a pre-built website that you can make your own. You can do this by customizing the template, adding your own logo, your own content, your own images, etc.

The primary advantage of using a website template is that they save the designer a tremendous amount of time. Instead of coding a website from the “ground up,” the designer starts with a pre-built “shell” and customizes it to his or her liking (or to the client’s liking).

Blog Templates Explained

In much the same way, a blog template is basically a design “shell” that you can apply to your blog (and the customize the design template as you see fit). But there’s one key difference between templates for websites and those for blogs — the blog templates are unique to a certain type of blogging program.

Each type of blogging program (such as Blogger and WordPress) functions in a unique way, as far as the structure and function of the blog. So a WordPress template will not work with Blogger, nor will a Blogger template work with WordPress.

If you’re running a WordPress blog, you will need to use WordPress templates exclusively (with WordPress, these templates are known as WordPress “themes”). If you’re using Blogger, you will need to stick with templates designed specifically for Blogger. If you’re using TypePad … well, you get the idea.

Where to Find Free Blog Templates

I’ll only cover the two most popular blogging programs here (WordPress and Blogger), because otherwise this article could go on endlessly. Let’s start with WordPress templates (which are also referred to as “WordPress themes”).

You can download free WordPress templates from many places. The most popular place is the official WordPress themes page, located at the following address:

http://themes.wordpress.net

There are hundreds of free templates for WordPress within the site listed above. You can use the “Test Run” link to see how each blog template / theme would actually look and function. You can also download each template for free.

Here’s the thing about the WordPress themes found on this site. Most of them have a line in the footer area that credits the theme / template designer. It’s usually a link to the creator’s website as well. That’s understandable, and you should leave this credit in place. But some of the people who create blog templates will insert several additional links as well, usually to the websites of their clients or other sites they own.

For example, the bottom of your WordPress theme might say something like this:

“This theme created by Blog Design Guy, and is sponsored by cheap Viagra and premium wood blinds.”

In the example above, the Design Guy link would likely be the actual template designer. The other two links would be to his client website, or other websites he owns. So essentially, this person is offering “free” WordPress themes that are really designed to increase the link popularity (and search engine ranking) of multiple websites.

Personally, I find this lame. I fully understand (and respect) the need to cite the designer and link to his or her site. After all, they created the WordPress template for people to use free of charge. But I think spamming up the templates with multiple links is silly. I recommend you avoid using WordPress templates / themes that employ this tactic. Stick with the ones that only link to the designer’s site.

Other places to find WordPress blog templates / themes:

• www.wpthemespot.com
• www.topwpthemes.com
• www.justskins.com
• www.templatemonster.com

Moving on to Blogger Templates

Blogger (www.Blogger.com) is another popular blogging program, and here too you have many options for choosing free blog templates for your own use.

When you set up your Blogger account, you will have to choose a blog template to use initially. Keep in mind that this template can be easily changed later on, so don’t think you’re “married” to it by any means.

Here’s the weird thing about Blogger (at least the last time I used it): When you first sign up for a blog account with them, you will only see a handful of blog templates … but after creating your free blog account you will have access to additional templates for Blogger.

As with WordPress templates, there are also plenty of other places to find free blog templates to use with Blogger. In many cases, the templates you find at third-party websites (outside of Blogger’s domain) are of better quality than the free blog templates offered by Blogger.

With that said, here’s where you can find plenty of template options you can freely download for your Blogger blog:

• www.blogger-templates.blogspot.com
• www.blogspottemplates.blogspot.com
• www.mashable.com/2007/09/13/blogger-templates/

Conclusion + Questions

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial on free blog templates as a design approach for your blog. If you any questions about using a blog design template or anything else related to this article, leave me a comment below and I’ll respond here for the benefit of all readers.

Good luck with your blog design and template customization! 

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