Weblogs, otherwise known as Blogs are an effective method of promoting your talent, building brand and building online brand. Blogs are everywhere; countless companies and individuals have a blog that they attend to on a regular basis. My question is do users know the possibilities that a Blog can provide? Do these users understand the financial power they have at their fingertips? If they don't then this is an article for them because I am going to provide a sampling of the tactics that can make blogs into moneymakers.

Introduction

Blogs have been around a while but in my opinion, they were made popular by the breaking stories that were released faster than the largest news agencies. This quick movement from blog post to headliner was a result of mainstream blog headliners such as News.Google.com and Feedster who specialize in highlighting the latest up to the minute blog posts. This rapidly spidered medium provided the casual Internet user with a vehicle that could launch them from obscurity to front page news simply by writing an article and clicking ‘post'. For example, the story about the 15 year old who wrote that he was hired by Google (yes it was a prank) was a great example of the power that the common Internet user had; before you could say G-whiz, there was international incredulity that Google would hire someone so young and the corporate giant was forced to publicly debunk the story. Now this wasn't necessarily all a result of a single blog posting, however, I can attest that when we posted our blog article on the story our web traffic spiked dramatically!

Getting Blogs to Work For You

Here are the various ways that a blog can be used to promote your business and the benefits of each:

Strut Your Stuff
It is well known that today's consumer likes to get educated on any product or service they want to buy. One of the best ways to reassure these potential customers that you are the business for them is to provide an open door into the professional knowledge that you have to offer them.

For example, say you were the proprietor of a human resources consulting business on the never-ending quest for more clientele. Try creating a blog where you explain the intricacies of your industry based on your vast experience/knowledge. Write often and make sure that each of your posts are polished and exude the quality of information that you would want to read yourself. When your prospects find a blog on your website that exudes confidence and provides useful articles written in plain English you will find your visitor retention increase and your sales will be close behind.

1. Hang it Out for All To See
   Blogs offer another beautiful advantage in that they can be promoted separately from your website. Say what? Let us pretend you already have top search engine rankings for your website and traffic is coming in by the tens of thousands. You are already in a great spot and you are to be congratulated for your hard work and enviable SEO prowess; but why not promote your business on another level that could further increase your exposure?! This additional promotion can be accomplished simply by submitting your blog's RSS (“really simple syndication” – RSS definition ) feed to the countless blog aggregators that are positively dying for you to enrich their databases. To find the sites to submit your website to just search in Google for the phrase “ submit your blog ” and you will be inundated with websites that may be willing to accept your blog.
   
   Once you have submitted your blog to a number of these directories you will be happy to know that every posting you make on your blog will be available within their databases. You just have to love free advertising!

2. Optimize Your Articles
   Whenever you create a new blog posting you can optimize it by considering the following:
   
   a) The title of your post should be catchy and use keywords that have a high search volume. Use some our recommended keyword research tools to find out which phrases will provide the most benefit.
   
   b) Ensure that each posting links to your website in some way either through your byline or from within the text. If possible, you can take this a step further and link to your website's home page using the keyphrase you are trying to attain top rankings for; this will build relevant link popularity and drive up rankings. For example, if you are trying to get a top search engine result for “human resources consulting” then you should try to link to the home page from within your post using that phrase.
   
   c) If you have previous blog postings that would provide further background to your readers, it is extremely beneficial to provide a link to each one within your posting. After all, by providing these links you are increasing the value of your articles.

3. Archives are the Bomb
   After your post has retreated from the front page of your blog it is diligently archived by your blogging program. As this archive grows with content relevant to your service/product offering it will continue to build the credibility of your website and further your search engine rankings. Remember, with search engines like Google credibility equals a higher PageRank which ultimately lends itself to higher search engine rankings.

4. Track Your Stardom
   A site like FeedBurner offers free tracking options for your syndication feed which will allow you to see just how many readers you have and the blog posts that are the most popular. Armed with this information you can get a better idea of the topics that appear to get the most attention and refocus to cater to that audience.

Don't Underestimate Your Blog!

This is only a smattering of the methods for promoting and ultimately making money from your blog. Here are some additional sites that will give you the low down on some more blog promotion methods:

•  Blogger Help: Promoting Your Blog

•  ProBlogger Blog Tips

•  Top 10 Tips on Promoting Your Blog

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