Leveraging Your Blog's Effectiveness with SEO

Every web site, including yours, relies heavily on search engine results to bring new potential customers to the site. With the heavy competition out there for search engine results, you need all the help you can get. Search Engine Optimization on the site itself is a good start, but having a blog hosted on a blog-specific service like blogger.com can add new dimensions to your search engine success.

Did you know that Blogger.com is owned by Google? That simple fact means that Google works hard to get its hosted blogs listed high on its search results. You can use this synergy to help your own web site get better search engine exposure.

It's not hard to do, but does require some knowledge of how search engines catalog blogs in their databases. It also requires careful planning to match your business to search terms your potential customers are likely to use.

The easiest way to do this, and the most effective, is to hire a professional to build and maintain a blog for your business. I can help you build an effective blog for your business and keep it updated on a regular basis. The cost for this is surprisingly low, and the benefits are huge. Read the other articles in this blog to learn more ways a blog can help build your business.

Creative use of SEO within your blog, from the blog's basic design to its content, is the key to leading potential clients and customers to your main website. Once visitors are on your website, it can do its job of generating leads and customer visits to your location.

Email Me to discuss how a blog can enhance your marketing strategy. There's no charge for an initial consultation. Visit the links on this blog, too, to see samples of my content creation capabilities.

Use Your Blog to Keep Customers Updated & More

A regularly updated, well-written blog can be your best tool for informing your customers and clients about the latest news about your business. Unlike your primary website, your blog can be quickly updated whenever you want to share information with your patrons.

Whether it's a sale, the arrival of new products, or a seasonal news item, a blog makes it easy. Best of all, you'll also benefit from updated search engine listings and can customize your news items to get the very best response.

Add to that the ease of implementing RSS feeds on a blog, letting your customers and clients get news about your business automatically, and it's easy to see how a blog that is constantly updated can be a very effective business tool.

Even better, your blog can be an effective way to lead potential customers and clients to your website, which should always be at the core of your Internet marketing strategy. Effective use of SEO within your blog can also improve your search engine results page rankings.

For most small businesses, a blog is by far the most effective social media marketing tool available.

Email Me to discuss how your business can have an effective blog up and running now. I can help you set up your blog, populate it with search engine friendly content and update it on a frequent, regular basis. For a small investment, you can add a powerful marketing tool to your web presence.

The Economics of Social Media Failure

There are hundreds of social media companies out there trying to get your small business's social media work. They show up at your industry conferences and make all sorts of promises to get you to sign up for a social media contract. A typical contract to provide two blog posts a week for your blog, including posting, will run you about $500/month, or even more. That buys you eight blog entries, usually running between 300-350 words. Each blog entry ends up costing you about $64. So, what do you get for your money?

• Your blog article is written by a pool writer for 4 cents a word. The writer may or may not know anything about your industry, and will quickly search for other articles on the same topic, then essentially rewrite that article. The writer gets about $12-15 for writing your post. That comes to about $100 per month. That leaves $400/per month.
• An editor assigns your blog to one of the writers in the company's writing pool. It's rare that the same writer writes all of your blog posts. Usually, it's whoever grabs the assignment. After the writer sends the post to the editor, he or she makes minor changes. That's it. Neither the writer or editor necessarily has any knowledge of your business. The editor typically spends about 15 minutes on your blog post, and earns an average of $15/hr. For your eight posts, that comes to about $30 per month. That leaves $370 from your $500.
• Someone at the social media company, also earning about $15/hr., then posts the article to your blog. That takes, maybe, about another 10 minutes per post, adding up to about $20 per month. Now, there's $350 left from your orginal $500.
• The $350/ month goes to the management of the social media company, who really have nothing to do with your blog articles. It's a nice profit for them. The benefit to you isn't so obvious.

So, the bottom line for you is that you get two blog articles a week, written by someone who very likely doesn't know a thing about your industry or business. Odds are that a different writer writes your articles each week. Then, it's hastily edited and posted on your blog. You may or may not get a chance to review it. Quite frankly, you're not getting your money's worth, to put it kindly.

That's why 8 out of 10 small businesses that sign up with these typical social media outfits for a year never renew their contract. They didn't get what they paid for, so why should they renew. The social media outlet will just sell the same song and dance to other small businesses at the next trade show or conference. And the cycle will repeat itself.

On the other hand, you could contract with a local professional writer who has top-notch skills and knows your industry and how to write social media content that actually works to promote your business. The cost? About half of what you're paying that social media company for their poor performance. With a professional writer, you get unique content, tailored to your specific needs and full of useful SEO phrases and information that gives your potential customers a great impression of your business. Which sounds better to you?

Email Me for an free, no-obligation evaluation of your current social media content. Check out the sample content I've written for local businesses at the links in the column to the left. Go with proven strategies, excellent writing, and a focus on your business.

Why Your Social Media Campaigns Aren't Working

If your Twin Cities business has an ongoing social media campaign but you're not seeing the results you expected or were promised, you're not alone. Using social media to benefit your business isn't easy. In fact, it's very difficult. These days, it seems as though everyone who knows how to use a web browser and Facebook is hanging out their shingle as a social media specialist. The reality is that most social media specialists haven't a clue what they're doing.

I've been creating content for small business websites since 1995, and have seen many trends come and go. Social media is just one of those trends. While it can be very useful to small businesses, it can also be completely useless if it's done incorrectly. In this blog, I'll be helping small businesses of all types to understand how social media campaigns do and don't work, and why applying part of your marketing budget to a failing strategy can cause more harm than good. Here are some of the reasons small business social media efforts fail:

• Poor Concept - Social media works for small businesses differently, depending on the nature of the business. A hardware store or service business needs a completely different social media campaign than a restaurant or entertainment venue. Getting the concept right is the first step toward success. Getting it wrong is the first step toward wasting your social media budget.
• Misdirection - Far too many social media campaigns miss the point. You've spend large amounts of money developing a website that brings business to your door. If your social media campaign doesn't lead people to your website, you're wasting that resource. For success, all social media campaigns should have one primary goal: Bringing visitors to your carefully-designed website, so it can do its job.
• Poor Quality of Content - If your social media content, on blogs, networking sites, and other social media outlets is of poor quality, that directly affects the results. There are a number of social media companies who want to sign you up for a contract that will supply content. Did you know that their writers are being paid just a few cents per word? Their writers are not professional writers and often produce content that is incorrect or is poorly written and full of errors.
• Lack of Continuity - Using a typical social media content provider almost always means that every posting produced is written by a different person, and edited very little. What that means is that your social media content doesn't speak with a consistent voice and lacks continuity from posting to posting.
• Poor SEO Efforts - Effective Search Engine Optimization is crucial to the success of any social media campaign. Since the entire point of social media is to attract and drive people to your website, effective SEO in your social media content is absolutely essential. Sadly, SEO efforts from most social media providers are limited and ineffective.

Effective Social Media is Customized Social Media

Social media content, created by a professional writer specifically for your type of business and targeted directly to your potential customers is social media that works. A campaign by such a professional will eliminate all of the issues listed above, and your professional social media provider will understand your business and your goals.

If your current social media campaign doesn't seem to be paying it's way, Email Me for a free, no-obligation review of your current social media efforts. After getting some information from you, I'll review all of your social media outlets and report back to you, with suggestions. See the links in the left column for examples of my website and blog content work. Let me show you how your social media efforts can do the job you expect them to do.