WyzGuys Tech Talk

Some of you are bound to have noticed a distinct uptick in the amount of blogging we have been doing lately.  My goal is to have one article to share every day.  I am accomplishing this by writing my blog articles in Windows Live Writer.  I write several of them at the same time, up to a week’s worth, and saving them as drafts, and then publish one a day in the morning.  I have also installed a couple of plug-ins to Live Writer that allow me to automatically post an update to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter automatically whenever I publish a new article.  This is why some of you have been seeing so many Facebook and LinkedIn updates from me lately.

Pamela Muldoon, a local web marketing expert, blogger and host at Content Marketing 360 Radio Show, has a LinkedIn group by the same name.  She recently posted an discussion that shared “A Simple Plan For Developing An Effective Blog Strategy.”  This article is a great, quick read, and full of useful ideas to help you put together a blogging strategy that will work for you.  I am quoting part of the article below.

• Educate yourself – Stay up to date on what’s happening in your industry by reading other blogs and participating in forums. Spend some of your time in non-related fields too, as you can often pick up on ideas and factors that may affect your area of expertise.
• Balance social media and SEO – In some circles, these two areas might seem opposed to each other, but savvy businesses are learning how to marry the two. Open accounts on multiple social media platforms, start your blog, and implement SEO strategies. Getting up and running will take some time, so you might want to appoint one employee to manage social media and then monitor it as you proceed.
• Share – Consider sharing just your best blogs on your social media accounts, or all of your posts. The blog strategy you take will depend on your goals for your blog.
• Share back – Since external links are highly coveted in social media, and you’ll likely want others to link to your blog, share the love first by selectively linking to blogs you like or joint business ventures.
• Bedazzle your blog – Don’t overlook opportunities to boost your ROI for your blog strategy by using images in every post, tagging your posts with relevant text and using keywords.
• Get involved – The more you’re involved in social media, the more exposure you’ll get. Start following a few other blogs in the industry, and comment on something that interests you. This process will start some conversations, and you may even build relationships within the industry that lead to a guest blog post, a joint venture or links.

These are the important essentials to an effective blogging and web marketing strategy for your business.  As it happens, this is pretty much how we do it in our business, and what we teach in our Community Education classes on this subject.  We are beginning to work these strategic elements into our work with our web design and hosting clients.  If you have more questions, or need a hand getting started, we would be delighted to take your call or answer an email.