Creating and Promoting a Blog

Host | 15 July 2005 |

In the last year or so, "Blogging" has taken the online world by storm. It seems like everybody has a blog or is at least talking about blogs. However, almost every single article written about blogs lacks the information necessary to create and promote a blog to benefit your business. This is what I hope to provide with this article.

Why Should I Blog?
Most people have no interest in starting a blog. I think this is because they aren’t aware of the impact a blog can have on their business.

Blogs have an almost uncanny ability to generate tons of incoming links, because other webmasters discover and like the content, then start linking to it. This, in turn, is why blogs rank so well at the search engines. They have constant incoming links being added.

Blogs also have the ability to generate thousands of visitors each day. This is because as your content gets picked up and posted around the web, people naturally flock to it because it’s current and usually of value to them.

Lastly, Blogs are probably the single best way in history to keep yourself in front of your prospective guests. If you post good valuable content to your blog even a couple of times each week, your visitors will come back, sometimes daily, to see postings. Everybody knows, the more you’re in front of the audience you want to market to, the more they’ll buy. The posts don’t have to be 500 word articles either; they can be a couple of paragraphs if you wish. The key to success here is to be consistent.

Creating a Blog
There are so many different types of blogging software that I won’t have room to highlight them all here. I will, however, point out the three most popular types in use today. The first two examples will need to be hosted on a server so there will be some setup and installation time involved. The last example, Blogger.com, is a totally free solution which is hosted at Google. You can literally have a blog up and going in less than an hour with Blogger.

Moveable Type is the most robust blogging software on the market. With prices starting at $69.95, it’s also one of the more expensive pieces of blogging software available. One of the biggest benefits of Movable Type is that each blog posting creates a separate page, which means better search engine saturation and link reputation for your site.

Wordpress is free, open-source blogging software that has many features you wouldn’t expect from a free piece of software. Some features include themes, comment spam protection, and password protected options for posting.

Blogger is free blogging software owned by Google. Where Movable Type and Wordpress need to be hosted on your server, Blogger is hosted for free at Google. Blogger is recommended for beginning bloggers because of its ease of use and ease of setup. Blogger breaks the setup of the blog down into three easy steps, so you shouldn’t have any problem getting your blog up and going in less than 30 minutes.

Promoting Your Blog

Now that your blog is setup and going, you’ll want to promote it to get that all important visibility and recognition, which will generate lots of incoming links and traffic to your blog.

Here is one secret about a blog that most people don’t know. With each post you make to your blog, the blogging software sends a request to search engines telling them that you have a new post. This brings the search engines racing to your blog to gather the new content. This part of your promotion is taken care of automatically.

The second thing you’ll want to do is submit your new blog to the Blog directories: www.popdex.com, www.blogdex.net, www.daypop.com, and www.technorati.com. These directories will get your blog some much needed visibility and should build some incoming links as well.

If you’re posting good quality content regularly to your blog, you may also consider participating in a news, or RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed. Most blogging software will offer this option. If your content is of value, this technique can literally explode traffic and links to your blog. Webmasters all over the world use RSS feeds on their sites to automate content building. If a webmaster finds your blog posting feeds of value, he’ll put the feed on his site and every single post you make to your blog will be displayed on his site. This also means that for every post you make, you’ll get a free link back to your blog. Now, imagine the possibilities if 50 webmasters all started posting your feed on their sites! This happens all the time and is how some brands have built national recognition in a matter of days.

Promote your blog even more by adding your blog URL to your e-mail signature and using it on business cards and print advertising.

Hopefully you now feel a little more confident about what it takes to start and promote a blog. It’s easy to do, and, with a little bit of work, has the potential to revolutionize your business. We see so much potential from this technology, in fact, that Blizzard will soon start offering a blog service to clients. Give our Sales Department a call or e-mail if you’d like to be added to a list of interested clients who will be the first to enjoy the service once it’s available. If you are already a Promotion client, contact your Account Manager to discuss this service.