Blogging is the Center of Social Media
It's time to throw away your website. Trash everything you've done so you can run straight out to get a shiny new blog!
Of course, we all know that isn't the way to handle switching to something new. In fact, I'm still in the process of migrating pages from my business website to my blog. The real question is: Why bother? What's in it for you and your business?
For starters, using a blog and keeping it up to date gives you a big boost with the search engines. One thing they look for is new content. Writing a new blog post once a week gives you that, and your blog can hold all the other pages from your site, too.
Imagine a regular website is a slide in the park. Everybody loves the slide, and kids always go down it once or twice. Now imagine one of those playground sets that has ladders to climb, bridges to run along, slides, and a fireman's pole. The kids use the slide once or twice, but they'll play on one of these playground sets for hours.
That's your blog.
Here's a quick how-to list for setting up your blog:
- Set up a Wordpress blog with a unique domain name. Go to Wordpress.org to download the latest version. Need hosting? I recommend www.usebluehost.com.
- Copy the pages from your website onto your blog. This is a good time to review your keywords, and be sure all the pages are linked to one another.
- Connect your blog to each of the social media sites you're using. This means every time you post to your blog, it gets advertised to your social media network.
- Upload plugins for SEO, author signatures and other applications that appeal to you. You definitely want Twitter Tools, Google Sitemap, an SEO Pack and Google Analytics. Over time, you'll see other plugins to add, but start small here. You can easily get overwhelmed playing with plugins.
- Make an editorial calendar for your blog: what will you write, and when will you write it? I suggest you visit www.problogger.net and get a copy of Darren Rowse's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. It's the best tool I know of for learning the ins and outs of maintaining a good blog.
- Start connecting to other sites. Find sites/blogs that are relevant to your business. When you find one that has good, relevant content, ask the owner if you can connect to it. It would be very unusual for anyone to say no. (This is also a good time to suggest a link from their site to yours.)
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