Blog marketing can be very complicated for someone who has never Blogged before. If you plan to enter the small business blog marketing, you want a blog first and see what what it entails. Blogging requires dedication and patience. You must update your blog regularly to keep their readers interested. This will keep them returning for more and see what is, if anything, new you have to relay.
Blog marketing for small business is all about current, or up-to-date news about your business. It is certainly an excellent tool to use to bring your business to the attention of others. However, you must be patient because it can be a long process that requires a fair amount of attention to detail. Just because you have a blog does not mean that someone will find it and read about your business, you need to make your business blog known. If you have a website for your business, you can refer to your blog on the website, therefore, those already knowing about your site will be able to access your blog also.
Blog marketing for small businesses is something that, being relatively simple, anyone can do. Having a blog and keeping up to date with the latest information is not difficult. It is more a case of consistency than anything.
How does one begin this marketing blog for small businesses?
Marketing a blog is more or less the same way that a website is marketed. Keywords and content are the main thing here. It can be you that writes the content, if you are so inclined, or pay someone to write for you. This part is entirely up to you. However, you want to be sure that the content is relevant, actually worth reading and that your target audience will want to read, if you want them returning. You also want to become familiar with SEO, search engine optimization. SEO will help you optimize your blog to get a better ranking in search engines.
After choosing keywords and published relevant content on your blog, you’re ready to start making it known on the internet. Link exchanges are important for your small business marketing blog and exchanging links with similar sites that are relevant to yours, but not in direct competition, is a good way to get noticed.
You can pay some directories to list your blog URL in their directory under the specific category that it falls under. However, many directories have special guidelines you must follow in order to be approved for inclusion, this is fairly straight forward, provided you don’t try to have your blog included for a category it is not best suited to.
Another important thing to remember when you’re in a small business marketing blog, is that if someone leaves you a comment on the blog, you should respond, acknowledging their interest. You can also comment on other blogs that are relevant to yours, leaving a link to your blog too. This will bring visitors to your blog, and you should begin to see an increase in traffic.

Bloggers Checklist
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009Below are some of the crucial items you should have on your Blog. Take a look at this list and your Blog and see how you measure up. I can tell you that I did it myself and I had to create an action plan to fix my own Blog.
You see, just because I know what needs to be done doesn’t mean I always have time to implement it myself.
It is like the shoe cobbler’s children going to school with their shoes falling apart. I am so busy helping clients, I don’t have time to work on my own things.
The same may be true for you. You are so busy but you know you want to, actually you need to, Blog. So you start it and don’t necessarily have everything in place.
That’s OK. The key is to find out where you are lacking and create an action plan so you can take steps towards getting everything in place,
So, here is your checklist. Do you have:
A strategy in place? Do you know why are you Blogging? What are you hoping to accomplish? Do you know how often you have to Blog, what types of posts you need in order to accomplish your objective?
A posting schedule? Ideally you should have at least 2 new posts a week, and up to 5. Less than 2 is too little, and over 5 is often too much (unless you are a great writer and have lots of news and information to share, so you aren’t
just writing fluff).
A comment policy? Do you moderate? If so, how long does it take to approve comments.
An ‘About Us’ section? Since Blogging is about connecting, sharing information and creating dialog to form relationships, you need to be sure to tell people who you are and what you are all about. Including contact
information is a good idea
A Blogroll? Be sure to include NON company links. Point your readers to sites/blogs that you think THEY would be interested in reading. Yes, you can add your website, but please mix in some non-company sites as well to show people you are truly interested in being a resource for them.
RSS subscriber buttons? Give your readers a way to subscribe to your Blog, via a feed reader. Feedburner is a quick and easy way to get this done.
Photos, graphs or charts to create visual interest.
Videos to engage users.
Personality and opinions so people feel they are really hearing your voice and not just some regurgitated industry news.
Links back to relevant pages on your website.
A custom header graphic that doesn’t take up too much space but shows that your Blog is uniquely yours and not just some out of the box Blog platform that has no customization. Some people choose to have their header match the look and feel of their main site.
So go check out your Blog right now and see how you measure up.
About the Author:
Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com. Since 1998 Jennifer’s expertise in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue. Jennifer has written a
downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Check out “Blogging For Dollars” for more Blogging tips and advice.
http://www.searchenginewebpromotion.com/home/a/
Tags: approve comments, contact information, creating dialog, information to share, posting schedule, sharing information, subscriber buttons
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