Syndicating Your Content

Many bloggers find it difficult to blog regularly. On the other hand, other bloggers find it easy to blog everyday.

As you are aware, for your blogging to be effective, you will need to add fresh content to your blog on a regular basis. This article presents five tips that you can use to make blogging easy.

• Write your blog content in advance, post date the post, and save it so that it’s ready to be posted at least three times a week. I tell my clients that if they blogged once a week I’d be thrilled. Take your most frequently asked questions (FAQ) and create a post for each one. By post dating your blog posts you can publish throughout the week without having to stop and write another post.
• Blog about a wide range of things that relate to your niche. Think about any information relating to your niche which your website visitors will be interested in seeing on your blog. Identify the sub-niches in your niche and write about those as well. You should never run out of ideas on what to blog about.
• Invite your blog visitors to leave some comments relating to your posts and your niche. This is an easy way of getting unique content on your website. The more interaction you allow on your blog, the more content you will have on your blog. I try to end each post with an invitation to join the conversation by commenting.
• Research and look for the key questions and issues that people in your niche are interested in, and provide information that addresses those questions on your blog. (A great use for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites.) Look in the relevant forums for the hot topics that people are asking, and provide answers to these questions on your blog. This will make your blog useful to your visitors because it will have information which your visitors are looking for. This gives you a wide range of topics that you can blog about.
• Check out YouTube for videos that support your message, or add value to what you do without competing. Sometimes others create videos that easily explain processes, strategies, and systems. They can be of great value to your blog, and … you don’t need to write the content. Of course, your own YouTube videos would be an ideal strategy for syndicating your content over a variety of media.

How do you come up with content for your blog? Join the conversation by commenting…..

Blogging has incited the curiosity of millions of people all over the world; it represents a great opportunity for those who create blogs and for those who use them. In the beginning blogging was seen as keeping personal diaries online, however, blogging is far more complex owing to the fact that every blog carries the touch of the owner’s imagination, interest and wit. The range of topics blogs deal with is incredibly wide: from politics and religion to sky diving and scuba diving. The next very important aspect after blog content is actually the interactive format of the pages that allows users to take action on the site by commenting. I liken it to “joining the conversation.”

In the early days of blogging around the mid-90s, people enjoyed the experience of belonging to the online community that went beyond all sorts of boundaries. This was the time when the very first combination of text, pictures and videos were included in a blog, as the most accurate way of reflecting one’s life. Sometimes, bloggers transmitted live images with the help of various portable devices, creating the so-called semi-automated blogging.

At that time, blogs were not individual pages, as they mainly functioned as components of larger websites; nevertheless, with the rapid development of technologies, it came into everyone’s power to create and support a personal independent blog. Successful blogging focuses on high quality content that makes any visitor return to the site and even take action on it.

Presently, you can find guides to creating successful blogs, since, many small business owners perceive the phenomenon as a great chance to promote products and services online. Blogs are presently part of the Internet marketing strategies anyone should use as included within online advertising campaigns; the great advantage of blogging is that it mainly targets potential customers, reducing the number of uninterested users. We could say that thanks to advertising and Internet marketing, blogging has actually become a very promising type of business.

So how do you get started? I’d suggest WordPress.com. It’s a free blogging site and you’ll quickly discover whether blogging is something you can use to leverage your business online. Sign up for access to Syndicating Your Content’s exclusive “members only” area (subscription box is to the right, at the top of the column) to view the WordPress.com video tutorial I created for you! Also, check out the Category section of Syndicating Your Content. There’s a lot of content on blogging on the site. Let me know what you think about blogging by commenting!

Blogging is taking off like a wildfire. People are blogging about just about anything you can think of. From the daily routine of their cat, to technology reviews, to politics.

Until the blogosphere sorts itself out and matures a bit more, it may be difficult to tell exactly how this new frontier of instant publishing can help you and your business grow. But don’t worry – you’ll start getting a flood of new ideas in the coming months.

For now, the most important thing you can do is develop the right mindset about business blogging. What you think about something, and how you strategize applying it in your business very often has more to do with success than the technology, tool, or resource itself.

With that in mind, here is the most important thing you can do. Keep your eye on people.

DO NOT get stuck on the “technology.” That’s what drove all the pie-in-the-sky dot.com dreamers into the financial abyss. It’s people and personal communication that matter most, and should always be a the center of all your thoughts, strategies, and actions.

Blogging is just a tool. But it’s a tool that can and should become a major support arm of your business. Why?

Because it exponentially multiplies the world’s oldest, most favored, and trusted form of information sharing — word of mouth.

Just ask yourself, whom do you trust the most to give you advice, recommendations, and information about opportunities, purchases, or choices? Someone you know and trust, right? Someone who you feel is just like you.

That type of trust comes from personal communication, social interaction, and the joining together of like-minded individuals. Blogging simply magnifies and expands that sense of community and more personalized communication, and then expands the reach across the entire world!

Link trust; with respect, positioning, and word-of-mouth and you have the makings of a powerful marketing arm that can initiate an ever-growing stream of highly targeted prospects.

Remember, it’s the relationships that matter most. Keep your eye on that fact, and you’ll always have the right mindset for business blogging that’s a benefit for you and your readers.

So are you blogging yet? Please share your comments and/or stories by commenting below.

Join me tomorrow, July 25th, in my online classroom and learn about finding content and marketing your business with YouTube.

As I talk about blogs and blogs marketing, I’m often asked about the different strategies you can use to find something to post about. One of my favorites is YouTube. I’ve spoken to groups about using Linkedin as a marketing tool and found really great videos to support my talk at YouTube.

Tomorrow I’ll show you how to search YouTube and grab the code you need to post video to your website. I’m also here to answer your YouTube questions. So grab a beverage of your choice, pull up the conference room, put your feet up and let’s cross the digital divide together.

I’m inviting you to Cross The Digital Divide with me tomorrow at 3pm Pacific / 6pm Eastern to chat in my online classroom  about You Tube.

I look forward to sharing with you, and answering your questions about how you can promote your business online. If you’d like to ask a question prior to our webinar, feel free to contact me directly.

Ok, another new word, scraping.  I was notified that I had comments awaiting moderation. These comments showed a small portion of my original post, including a link back to my blog.  Usually I check the website address for the comment to see if it’s legit and found that these types of comments were on a useless blog.  I couldn’t figure it out….until today.

I have made it a practice not to approve comments that don’t really add to the blog, that are blatantly bogus. I subscribe to a ton of blogs and I found this post, "One Sure Way To Stop Scrapers From Earning Off Your Blog", from Blog Content Provider.com to explain it well.

Let me know what you think by commenting below.

Goggle’s Blog Directory – This is the link I’d check first.

List of Directories

Blog Catalog

Blog Digger

Bloglines

Blog Universe

Are you twittering yet? It’s one more social networking tool you can use to raise your online visibility.

Social networking is a great way to build your online sphere of influence. Traversing the blogosphere, posting comments on blogs your read and using tools like Twitter and MyBlogLog will give you added exposure to other small business owners. Here’s a link to a great resource for using Twitter.

If you are Twittering, how are you using Twitter in your online business? Please share by commenting!!

Small Business Webinar Series on Blogs and Blogging

 Monday, March 24th 3pm PT – 6pm ET

• Want to know where to submit your blog?
• Want to learn how to share your blog content?
• Would you like to be recognized as an expert in your industry?

If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, blogging is for you. Magic In Blogging will host a small business webinar on blogs and blog marketing. Whether you go the full route of having a blog site as your main site, like Magic In Blogging, or if you add a blog to your existing site, there’s no doubt that blogging will drive more traffic to your site.

Don’t miss this webinar! Participate from the comfort of your office with only an internet connection and speakers. What are you waiting for? Sign up now, learn about blogging and bring more traffic to your site.

Small Business Webinar Series on Blogs and Blogging

 Monday, March 10th 6pm PT – 9pm ET

• Do you want more traffic to your website?
• Do you want to improve your search engine rankings?
• Would you like to be recognized as an expert in your industry?

If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, blogging is for you. Magic In Blogging will host a small business webinar on blogs and blog marketing. Whether you go the full route of having a blog site as your main site, like Magic In Blogging, or if you add a blog to your existing site, there’s no doubt that blogging will drive more traffic to your site.

I know, you’re asking, “how’s blogging going to help me?” Those are the questions this webinar will answer for you.

• What is blogging?
• How will it help my business?
• What do I have to do?
• Do I need any special programming skills?

Don’t miss this webinar! Participate from the comfort of your office with only an internet connection and speakers. What are you waiting for? Sign up now, learn about blogging and bring more traffic to your site.

This is a great community to belong to if you are blogging. It’s also a great networking site for solopreneurs.

We need all the help we can get online. Belonging to these "social networking" communities helps your online business in so many ways. You can list the blogs you author, offer a profile widget, as well as a recent readers widget. Both widget allow you to share your online information with your readers.

Best of all, MyBlogLog offers tracking for your blog. I’ve just reviewed the stats for North San Diego Business@Large and am impressed with what I see. You can track where your readers came from, what they looked at, and what they clicked on. It’s another fabulous tool to use for your blog. Not only can we network online, building our communities, and tracking our activity.

If you have a blog, you need to join today. Let me know what you think by commenting below!