Your Blog is The Hub of Your Online Empire
(By Guest Blogger, D’vorah Lansky)
Your blog is not just where people go for content; it’s where they go to connect with you. With your blog, you build community, you build credibility, and you create interaction. Your blog can house your audios, your videos, and your articles. Your blog can also serve as a membership site, your online store and your Web radio or TV show!
Blogging is a big, exciting, and mysterious subject, a mysterious subject that I hope to shine the light on for you. Today’s blog is also considered to be the new Web site, allowing you to easily have complete access to and control of your site along with a Web presence where people can learn about you, your interests, and your expertise.
Traditionally, a blog means Web log. It is similar to an online diary where a person can go and post his or her thoughts and get people to comment and create conversations. But today’s blog is much, much more than that, and most Internet marketers use the blog platform as their Web site. It is still called the blog because it is housed, for example, on the WordPress platform.
A blog creates a platform for you to speak from, which allows you to become known as an expert in your field. Your blog is a place where you can showcase products, share your thoughts, and build community. If you are part of a team or company or you are taking an online course, you might want to have a blog so you have a central location with easy access to training materials. If you are passionate about baking and you want to share that passion with others, you can put your recipes or sneak-peeks of recipes on your blog, thus encouraging people to buy your book
Here are several examples of how a blog might be utilized.
- A membership site
- A training center
- A community center
- A list-building platform to collect potential clients’ names
- A showcase for featured products
Blog Versus Traditional Web Site
Traditional Web sites require a high level of expertise and knowledge of HTML coding. They typically require a significant financial investment and when anything needs to be changed, we need to pay our Web designer to make the changes for us. Unlike a traditional Web site, a blog allows you to have complete control over your content without having to pay a Web developer.
A WordPress blog looks very much like a traditional Web site, is very user friendly and it’s a snap to add or change content. You simply click a button to get into the dashboard area where you are able to post an article, change a picture, or add an audio or a video as easily as it would be to create something in a Word document. It really is that easy and it gives you a lot of flexibility. Whenever you want to make a change to your blog, just log in, make the changes, click save, and the changes are instantly active on the site.
The other major reason to use a blog platform, aside from the ease of use and control you have of your site, is that search engines love blogs. With the blog platform you are adding content on a regular basis, and that is what search engines look for: fresh new content for their audience.
To establish your blog as an authority site and to keep your viewers coming back regularly, it is recommended that you post new content at least once a week, ideally more often than that.
You can encourage your readers to comment on your blog posts and begin an online conversation with them. You can also send out a tweet on Twitter and let people know that you just posted an article on a given topic and that you’d value their feedback. Include a link to that actual post and that will allow you to get traffic to your site.
You can set your blog up so that when people arrive to your site, they will either land on a page that has your newest posts on a variety of topics or you can create what they call a static page, which gives it more of a traditional Web site look that is not constantly changing. By creating a static page, your posts won’t show up on the main page but they will show up on a page that you designate as the blog page.
Your home page can have written content, images, or even a video. You ultimately want it to be an inviting place so that your viewers want to stay and explore.
Do you have a blog? Have you taken Kim’s new course on the ABCs of Blogging (Attract, Build your list, Connect with your target audience)?
I welcome your questions and comments on the topic of blogging and encourage you to scroll down and leave a comment.
As part of the Blog Tour that Kim and I are participating in, you will earn points for each comment as well as for each of the blog tour articles that you tweet using the hashtag #blogworldtour. Thank you again Kim, for having me as a guest blogger this week!
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If you enjoyed this article, I invite you to receive a free chapter of my book at www.ConnectCommunicateProfit.com
I’d love to hear your comments and questions and look forward to getting to know you.
All the best,
Dvorah
D’vorah Lansky
Relationship Marketing Wizard | Author | Speaker | Educator
Tags: Benefits of blogging, Dvorah Lansky
