Blogging is Smart Business

My take on blogging: Blogging is smart for businesses and individuals alike. Blogging significantly increases the volume of communication and interaction with prospective customers, vendors, and other potentially meaningful contacts. Blogs make it easy for someone to connect with the blogger and begin a dialog.

Blogs are also easy on the blogger, with easy to setup blog sites, and easy to update blogging tools. Yes, it’s hard to carve out the time to make a habit of blogging, whether it be for personal reasons or for your business, but it’s worth doing it if you can stick to it. If you need help getting started or want to outsource the startup and upkeep there are companies that do that. (pssst. we can do that.)

Millions of people are blogging and many millions more are online, giving you great opportunities to earn new customers. Eventually someone is going to post things about your business and their experience in dealing with it. May as well get out there in cyber-public and gain a little more control over your destiny.

If you don’t fully get it yet just look at the various online initiatives the strongest brands have underway right now and you’ll see that they’re spending heavily to remain relevant in this rapidly evolving marketplace. All businesses of the future will have an online presence that will need to be tended to just like the office or store or shop.

ProBlogger

Darren Rowse’ story is worth knowing about if you dream of one day leaving the daily grind of working for someone else and instead start your day by simply logging onto your blogging machine.

At the start of 2002 Darren didn’t know much of anything about blogs or blogging, but an article he had read about blogging changed the trajectory of his life. Within 24 hours of reading that potent article he had started his first Blog - a personal blog where issues of Pop Culture, Spirituality and Blogging are explored. He has since started many other blogs including the one that caught my attention, ProBlogger.

Today Darren blogs for a living. That’s right, he doesn’t commute to work. He writes for a living and doesn’t have to mess around with publishers, printing, book signings (yet), and all the other garbage that used to be associated with writing for a living.

I’m new to his ProBlogger site, but I plan on picking his brain and learning from his experiences as much as possible. His mission with ProBlogger is to: help bloggers add income streams to their blogs.

Way to go Darren! Blog on!

Excellent Advice on Creating a Hot Blog

I ran across an excellent guide to building a successful blog on eLance and thought I’d pass it along. Of course, I fall into that category of not “practicing what I preach”. Blog on.

Tips for Successful Blogging

Some of the best tips include:

• Determine why you’re blogging and who you want to read your blog.
• Schedule the days you’re going to post to your blog and stick to it.
• Be personal. Let people know who you are and what you’re about. Be real.
• Pay attention to what other bloggers are saying and feel free to elaborate or argue a different point of view and link to the post and blog you’re writing about.

The above tips were written with the help of a post on eLance by  Chris Bennett, a Search Engine Optimization expert and owner of 97th Floor.