Blogging Is Not for Everyone In Business…Or Is It?

By: Alice Coaxum

Have you ever thought that blogging  is just not for you? You wouldn’t be alone in this train of thought if you have, but you’d be mistaken. Never trying your hand at blogging,  you would be passing up a tremendous opportunity to spread valuable information to your readers, the same readers who would be interested in the kind of  products or services that you’re offering.

I can certainly understand why some are reluctant to get involved with blogging regularly or at all. For some, writing ranks as high on their list of fun things to do as getting a root canal. Some cringe at the very thought of writing.  But even if writing blog posts isn’t your cup of tea, there is no need for you to pass up on using this ultra powerful online tool. A blog can be one of your greatest assets.

Don’t allow yourself to feel like it’s going to take up all of your time or that it won’t be worth the effort. It doesn’t even matter if you aren’t naturally good at writing. Many times we can hype ourselves up about the supposed bad points of a certain task so that we give up before we ever try.

Alternative ways to get content:

Keep in mind that for those who are pressed for time or for those who love writing as much as falling down the stairs or stepping on a rusty nail, there are other ways to get good content for you blog. If you dislike all of the researching and narrowing down of facts and points a topic that it takes to create a good article, don’t have to get your hands dirty so to speak.

You can always outsource. This just means that you’ll find someone else who will give you the content that you need for your blog. There are several ways that you can accomplish this.

You can hunt for good writers on different freelance writing websites and on writer forums too. If hiring a ghostwriter is just to big for your budget right now, you will probably want to consider purchasing high quality private label rights content, also known as PLR, to use on your blog.

If you go the PLR route, all you have to do to personalize your  PLR articles is to read it and add your own touch to it, by adding your opinion, adding facts, statistics, quotes or editing them as you see fit by removing or switching around the content. You can easily take PLR articles and make them as unique as they’d be if you’d written them yourself. Or you could just copy and paste directly to your blog, the choice is yours. I suggest personalizing because it makes the content unique to you. You can put a spin on it that someone else might not ever think of.

If you are friends with another blogger and you like the way the write, you could ask  them to do a guest post on your blog where you’ll display their name as the author as well as a link back to their own blog. While you may lose some of your traffic to their blog, it can be a quick and pain-free way to get content.

When push comes to shove and you have no content you can go to an article directory and grab a free reprint article. You’ll get great content written by an expert author, depending on who the author is and it will cost you nothing. However you may not change a single word and part of your blog traffic will go to whatever links the author is promoting in their bio box, which you also have to display unchanged.

Maintaining a blog is great for a beginning business owners  as well as for business owners  who are more established. A blog is an important tool that can get you REAL RESULTS.

I want to write my own posts:

If you are having trouble writing your own posts and it’s something that you really want to do there is an easy way that you can do this. Try picking out four or five main points about the topic that you’d like to cover. You could open up a text document, Word or whatever you prefer to use, to create an outline and your rough draft . Research each main point.

Underneath of each main point, you would write a paragraph of about four or five sentences that brings out details about and explains each main point. Combine these main points together in one blog post. If you have more than five main points that you really want to highlight, you could create a series of blog posts.

For example, if you are writing a blog post about trying to lose weight, some of your main points might be:

• How obesity hurts the body.
• Why it’s important to eat healthy.
• Why many dieters fail.
• What to do when you feel like giving up.
• Why it’s best if you can include a fitness plan in your weight loss journey.

You would then expound on those points, which in turn give your reader something of value if they were trying to lose weight. You could create one informative blog post with these five points or even turn each of these points into separate blog posts by creating  outlines with four or five main points that break down and teach about each of these points.

You might even add something personal from your own dieting struggles like, “I used to have a tough time making healthy choices until I decided that my health was worth fighting for.” You could then share a little bit of your journey and some of the things that helped you.

If your business promotes fitness, weight loss or health products it would be appropriate to add a link within the post because you’d be providing quality to your readers and those who enjoy the post would probably be interesting in learning more about or purchasing products or services like the ones you are promoting.

Blogging can also help you to build your list if you display an optin box, somewhere easily visible. So in a nutshell, blogging can be great for your business, helping your to expand your readers, list and customer base.

Blogging Tips:

Don’t put too much into one post, unless your teaching your audience something and it all flows well in one post, stretch it out over several posts so you don’t give them to much to chew on at once. While there are some who love long posts, many just don’t have the attention span or time for it.

You may be serving your readers a 5 course gourmet meal when what they are really looking for is something quick that they can gobble.  It really depends on the type of readers that you are trying to attract so this is a hard rule but merely a suggestion as I write long and short posts for my own blog depending on what points I’m trying to get across.

Your post should be informative, entertaining and to the point and not just go on and on just for the sake of having a high word count.

Blogging isn’t for those who just want to add a bunch of affiliate links in every post without giving quality content to your readers. If your blog isn’t  helpful or entertaining those links will probably go ignored and you’d be better off using pay per click ads or some other type of advertising method. Your readers need to have a reason to follow your blog. What’s in it for them? What do you bring to the table, that they need?

What you want to do when you first get started blogging or even if you’ve been blogging for a bit is to share your posts with others .  Tweet, Like, Pin your posts on social media websites and ask your readers to do the same.

If you’re thinking of starting a self hosted blog, get started today at Wahms Online Hosting where you can get affordable web hosting and easily add WordPress, the preferred blogging platform, to your website.

To your success,

Alice Coaxum

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