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Wednesday, November 5, 2008

4 Essential Tips for Writing a Great Blog

Out of the many free tools we offer for your MerchantCircle listing, one of the most important is the blog feature. If you don't already know, a blog is essentially a web log, or public journal, that can be found and read over the internet. While writing this blog and a personal one over the last two years, I've found out a lot about what works and what doesn't. Here are four essential and important tips on having a successful blog that will bring you new customers.

1. Write Often - It's important to write and post as often as you can, which search engines love. Many people make the mistake of writing one or two blog posts, lose interest, and never write another. Put it this way: the more you write, the more material you have floating around the web, thus more chances that someone will find that material and click through to your MerchantCircle listing.

2. Write Early - Be ahead of the curve. If you can think of a topic, or are the first person to write about a subject before everyone else starts writing about it, then your blog post will come up at or near the top of search engine results. This traffic will bring your blog and listing more credibility with the search engines and more visitors.

3. Write Pertinent Titles - It's not always the best to write a witty, intriguing title. Go with a title that spells out exactly what you're writing about. Think about what a customer might enter into a search engine box, and write a post with a title of those exact words. Make it easy for customers to find you. While a spelled out title may seem bland, that doesn't mean your writing has to be. Once the customer finds your blog post, you still have to make sure they stay there by having an informative, interesting, or humorous blog.

4. Write to Link - While writing your posts, make sure you link relevant articles. This essentially means that someone reading your blog post can click on certain words that you've left a link for and it will take you to a new article or blog posts that's relevant to what you're writing about. For instance, if you click on the word link in the first sentence, it will take you to a Wikipedia page that explains what a link is. Also, comment on other people's blogs, if it's relevant, and leave a link to the relevant blog post you wrote. This can bring you added traffic and loyal readers.

By following these four rules, you can drive traffic to your site quickly and effectively. Getting the same people to visit your blog regularly can be hard, but if the stated goal is attracting NEW customers, then you're only as good as your next, well-titled blog post.

Happy Blogging,
Kevin
Community Relations

5 comments:

  1. This is a Great Article. The Keys are all there and really I love to write, so, I wanted to say thank you for the tips and give you Kudos.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Another major part of blog writing for your business is to keep focused and targed to build your reputation in your field of business. You are establishing your companies identy,

    Howard Larson
    Larson & Associates
    Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
    Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
    847-991-0488
    larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
    http://www.geocities.com/larsonassoc1979/1
    http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
    http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

    ReplyDelete
  3. Love your article--I have a question... I am not sure what you mean by "Write Often." When I create my blog in Merchant Circle do I just keep going back into the same blog and just hit "edit" and add more text? Or do I need to post another blog (a new blog)?
    Thanks for your help!

    Michelle
    Zilliant Innovations Inc.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey Michelle,

    You should write a completely new blog. If you read the MerchantCircle Corporate blog, you'll see that I write a new blog post almost every day. Sometimes it's hard to come up with a new topic, but a lot of times you get ideas in random places. Keep a notepad on you so that you can jot down your ideas. I get a lot of ideas while going to bed and I jot them down on a pad by my nightstand.

    Good luck!
    Kevin

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great advice Kevin! I enjoy reading your blogs and tips.

    ReplyDelete