Blog Resource

This article by Simon Clarke really sums up what effective blogging is all about. Many of us do one or two of these, but when you follow all 10 steps, your blog begins to take authority and demands instant respect.

A weblog can be a powerful resource for a coach. Many coaches have achieved significant exposure over the web with their own Blogs, not to mention the extensive professional networking opportunities that the ‘Blogosphere’ can provide.

So if you want to Blog, what do you need to consider? Here are IQ’s top ten tips to assist you launch into the Blogosphere:

1. Niche It

When considering your Blog’s content, make sure you are considering what your niche will seek. If you are planning to develop a Blog to increase your profile, your content will reflect how you position yourself to your prospects. Therefore, write content that matters to them.

2. Search It

Enable search mechanisms in your Blog. Most Blog platforms provide these as easy-to-install widgets at no cost. This function will allow your readers to quickly find content they are after, thus improving the efficiency in which your message will be delivered.

3. Link It

Link your Blog to your personal profile and website (if you have one). Most platforms will provide a Bio page where you can include your qualifications, experience, personal interests and other relevant information. This is a good opportunity to introduce yourself from an up-close position, allowing your readers to identify themselves with their ‘prospective coach’ (include a professionally-looking photo in your bio).

4. Contact It

Make sure you allow your readers to contact you. Some Blog use email links, other use forms – either way, ensure your readers can get to you (and do so without having to spend several minutes looking for your email address or telephone number within your Blog pages).

5. Categorize It

Create meaningful and concise categories to organise your content. If you are serious about Blogging, soon you will have plenty of content which will need to be well-organised to attract readers. Good categories will likely generate a good first impression from your Blog’s potential readers.

6. Domain It

Register a domain name and direct it to your Blog. It is a low investment which can generate an excellent level of return, and also reinforce your brand. Furthermore, it adds a professional touch to your page.

7. Disseminate It

Register your Blog in as many directories and registries as you can. Get your blog out there so people can find your content. You can start by creating a Feedburner account to distribute your feeds (and also take advantage of their automated email notifications, amongst several other tools) and then claiming your Blog at Technorati. Then look for other registries such as Google Blog Search and Blog Top Sites to multiply your presence on the web.

8. Syndicate It

Publish your posts at news syndication sites such as Digg. These websites represent a large margin of the Internet’s web traffic and if your posts prove to be appealing, it could direct more traffic to your Blog than anything else.

9. Network It

Develop relationships with other Bloggers who have the same client profile as you have. Reciprocal links, cross-promotions, and many other web-marketing strategies can help you leverage your content and increase your exposure over the web.

10. IQ It

The most important aspect of all is the quality of your content. Writing superb content will get your Blog on top. Conversely, writing poor content will slowly kill your efforts to create a professional Blog and attract prospects to your business. And if your Blog has great content to offer, it could become one of Coach IQ Coaching Club’s recommended resources!

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Simon Clarke has over 15 years of experience as a writer, entrepreneur and business specialist. He is also the founder and Director of the Life Coaching Institute and the Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors: both industry leading training providers in Australia and overseas.

Just wrote a short blurb on my other blog that deals with online marketing.

An eyetracking study has been done that followed how people actually view your website. The images posted are more than just eyeopening. They show you how to layout a website and in what order for real, human, visitors.

Most of the “rules” about writing for ezines and newsletters apply to writing posts for your blog, but there are some important differences. Keep these 10 tips in mind and you’ll be publishing great blog content that attracts prospects and clients in your niche market.

1. Write with the reader in mind. Remember WIIFM? It’s marketing jargon for What’s In It For Me? That’s what you should be keeping in mind. Your reader will read your post looking for what’s in it for them.

2. Make it valuable and worthwhile. Don’t waste people’s time. If you don’t have anything to say, no problem, plenty other people do. So share their articles, do an interview, review a book.

3. Proof-read for typos and glaring grammatical errors. You wouldn’t go out of the house with dirty hair or missing a sock, so why would you publish spelling mistakes? Respect your readers by polishing up your stuff.

4. Keep it short and simple, sweetie. (KISS). Most people are scanners. You may have a lot to say and think it interesting, and it may be. But people are reading online and out of time. Get to the point quickly. Publishing short posts more frequently is a better format than publishing lengthy articles every few weeks.

5. Keep it lively, make it snappy and snazzy. Even if you aren’t a natural born writer, you can write for your blog. Just write like you’re speaking to your friend…or to yourself! Remember though, get to the point quickly. Keep in mind the journalist’s rule of 5 W’s in the first paragraph: who, what, why, when and where.

6. Link often. This builds credibility and positions you as an expert in your field. People don’t have time to know what others are doing, you should tell them. Linking to other blogs and websites also helps you build a network of associates who will in turn link to your blog.

7. Use keywords often. This will help you stay on purpose, and the search engines will love your blog. Your rankings will go up. This is one of the reasons we have you write out your purpose statements before beginning your blog. The clearer you are about your purpose, the more consistently you will deliver messages that are on target. And the more often your keywords show up, the better your search engine results.

8. Write clearly (short sentences, only one concept per sentence). No double speak or jargon; no more than one idea in one sentence- don’t make your readers have to think about your meaning. Spoon feed them. Use commas and dashes liberally.

9. Write like you talk. It’s okay to use common expressions from speech.

Examples:

Go figure.

Don’t even go there…

Now, I ask you…

Gotta love it…

(And, remember the age group of your readers…)

10. Use a clear headline, and don’t be afraid to make bold statements (but don’t mislead people either). Make it snazzy and use key words. Example: Ex-Techno-Weenie Masters HTML Code

BONUS: After you write a post and BEFORE you hit the save button

Use this checklist to ask yourself a few questions as you are reading through for typos and grammar:

• Is the topic clear to someone who only reads the headline?
• Does the lead paragraph tell who and what the story is about and why the reader should care about it?
• Is the angle you’ve used likely to seem newsworthy?
• Would someone who knows absolutely nothing about this topic understand this post?
• Is the post free of jargon?
• Is it written in journalistic style and does it make an effort to be objective?
• Have you peppered the headline and the post with keywords and phrases that will be attractive to search engines?
• Did you remember to ask your readers a question at the end, or something to stimulate readers to comment?
• Did you remember to write with the reader in mind, always keeping in mind WIIFT? (What’s in It for Them?)

Patsi Krakoff of Customized Newsletter Services, and Denise Wakeman of Next Level Partnership, have teamed up to create blogging classes and marketing services for independent professionals. You can read and subscribe to their blogs at http://www.coachezines.com, http://www.bizbooknuggets.com and http://www.biztipsblog.com

If You Have A Blog But Not A Lot Of Time, Here Are 5 Tips To Help
by: Lynette Chandler

1. Start a Community Blog. A community blog is just that, a community of like-minded people who contribute to a blog. One of the obvious advantages to this type of blog is that you don’t need to spend a lot of time posting yourself to be part of an active blog. If you have a community of three or more people and you each post at least twice a week then you will have a pretty active blog. Be sure to use an RSS feed and have all contributors post the feed on their sites to get the benefit of each sites visitors.

2. Hire a team of bloggers. Newspapers have contributors, blogs can too. If you’ve ever used writers to do articles and content for you , they can do the same type of thing with a blog. Many of the most successful blogs are already doing this. The combination of group promotion effort, regular updates and pinging can help bring in traffic quickly. One thing to note here is blogs are a somewhat social tool. Some very popular niche blogs are not all that visible in the search engines, yet they get a lot of traffic because people recommend them and they become a sort of buzz hub. Search engines do not always pick up on this but they do eventually. This is why group blogging can be very powerful because you’re leveraging the power of not one (your) influence group but several people’s influence group. If you do pay your bloggers, you can always offset this cost by displaying Adsense ads. Many popular blogs earn a good amount in Adsense, that they make a nice profit even after paying their bloggers team. After a while it becomes a passive income stream.

3. Recycle Content. By taking previously published articles, interviews or even audio and breaking it up into blog sized pieces you can recycle old content and make it new again! You can break up long pieces into a bunch of segments and have a series going for, say, a week or so. Then you won’t have to worry about coming up with new content for a week!

4. Include audio. For some of us, it’s much easier to speak than to write. So, mix up your blog. Carry a small portable MP3 recorder or blog by phone. What a convenient way for moms who are running around all day , busing the kids where they need to go , doing errands , and whatever else needs to be done. Maybe you’re stuck in traffic, or waiting for the kids to get out piano class or school. An idea or thought strikes and you think “Oh I need to share that on my blog” so, pick up your phone (assuming you have a cell phone - and many of us do), dial a number, say what’s on your mind, save it and you’re done. Your blog is published. If you’re using Blogger, you can do this for free through AudioBlog. It involves calling a long distance number, but most cell phone plans don’t charge extra for long distance anyway so you’re not incurring any extra cost.

If you’re using another blog publishing tool like WordPress, Movable Type or TypePad, then you’ll need a service like AudioBlogger.com. This one is a paid service but it’s only $4.95 a month and it gives you more options like a nice flash player, statistics and even video that make it worth while.

5. Automating Your Blog. One of the things I love about using Wordpress as a publishing tool is that it offers a forward blog entry option that saves me tons of time. By using this tool you can blog ahead of time and have your entries posted on the day and time you choose. So let’s say you have a week’s worth of posts ready to go. You don’t have to come back each day and post, instead you write everything up in one day and schedule a new post out 24 hrs after the next. This will save you time!

Let’s face it. There will be times we have a ton to say and times we have little or nothing to share. Instead of having multiple entries one day and nothing over the next few days, by using forward entry you can blog everyday of the week. Or rather you blog once and the blog publishing tool does the job automatically the rest of the week. You can even forward blog for weeks and months ahead of time.

Note: Blogger users unfortunately cannot do this because Blogger publishes all entries regardless what you date it immediately.

Affectionately nicknamed Tech Diva by her peers, Lynette Chandler regularly dispenses blogging and RSS help to countless business owners. Visit http://www.BloggingStarterPack.com to learn more about blogging and get a copy of her video free.

So you’ve started a blog, and now its time to get the word out there. But where? How? Does it cost?

To answer that question, you can spend many sleepless nights Googling and reading, trying to make sense of the online blogging world. What do words like RSS, Feeds, XML, pinging, wordpess and other geek-speak mean?

We hope to answer some of these questions through articles and blog entries we at The Blog Resource share with you through this blog.

Getting started promoting your blog? Start by submitting your site here first. Make sure you follow our submission and promotion tips to ensure your blog gets listed.

To your success!

- Ed Loveless
Webmaster of TheBlogResource