How Often Should You Blog?

Blogging is currently a very hot trend.  It cannot be ignored if you are doing any sort of marketing on the Internet. Well written blog posts create valuable content that show your expertise. An active blog shows that you are current in your industry. Daily posting proves that your site is important to the search engines and the public.

Blog Fresh Content

The biggest reason blogging is hot right now is that it ranks very well with search engines. But let's not ignore the truth that blogging is just a great way to get information out and connect with people. The Internet has put a severe hurting on printed materials and one of the reasons is because that something is published on the Internet instantly.  With RSS feeds, Facebook and Twitter sharing, hundreds, thousands, even MILLIONS of people could actually be aware of your content in a matter of moments.  It becomes obvious that it is important to have well written articles at this point, since the information is available so quickly and by so many people.

Blog Tightly Focused Content

While it's possible that a huge number of people will have immediate access to your content—and some will delayed access as people check-in to their Facebook, Twitter, and email accounts—not all these people will be eager to read your content. Especially if it doesn't catch them right away.  You want to make sure that when people come looking for your material later, it is tightly focused and available to be found through search engines.  The tighter the focus of the article, the more likely it will be to score well.  Stick to a few terms that are important and complimentary to your topic at hand, especially when optimizing for search engines.

Interaction With Readers / Customers

Remember the reason you are writing is for your audience.  You are giving them information, even if that information is only for their entertainment purposes—let's call that gossip or daydreaming. Daily blogging will help build up that rapport with your readers, even if they never reach out to communicate directly with you, they are still accessing your content. Give them something of value—in the form of information or their guilty pleasures, there are certainly A LOT of sites out there doing that on a daily basis—and they will be more inclined to come back, read through your content, and SHARE your content with their friends.  Make them laugh and you have them right where you want them.

Blog to Keep Them Coming Back for More

Remember, you have to entice your readers with fresh content, that is tightly focused and appeals to your target audience.  When these conditions are met, your site will spread through social sharing and find value in search engines that will allow the content to be relevant and valuable even past the immediate moment of sharing.

Blogging: New to Blogging? Learn the Language

According to Wikipedia, blogging has been around since 1997 and people started using blogs globally in 1999. If you are new to blogging, learning the language and familiarizing yourself with terms bloggers commonly use may take the mystery out of setting up your first Internet marketing blog.

  • Blog
    Blog is short for weblog and is similar to an online journal. Basically, it is a website where the owner of the blog can make regular entries and visitors can post their comments. Blog postings may be comments, photos or videos and may be organized by date, by topic, by subject, or in any way that makes sense for you and your readers. They are usually displayed with the most recent postings at the top of the page.
  • Post
    Every entry in the blog is called a post and each post usually has a title and content, as well as other parts. The content may be text, images, links, and videos. Every post has a publication timestamp, and most also have categories, tags and comments. The latest post is displayed first so the reader will see the latest public speaking news first.
  • Categories and tags
    Categories and tags organize posts and make it easier for the reader to find information within the blog. While categories are like topics, tags are more like keywords.
  • Comments
    Blogs usually let visitors post comments about the posts. This gives readers the opportunity to interact with the writer of the blog and enter into an online discussion, which others readers may join.
  • Permalinks
    Permalinks are user-friendly URLs. Permalinks, a WordPress term, make it easier for search engines such as Google and Yahoo to catalog blog posts. Each post on a blog has a unique ID and permalinks provide a way to link directly to a post. A formatted link, a permalink usually has some form of the title in the link. For example, a post with the title Everything You Wanted to Know about Public Speaking might have the permalink myblog.com/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-public-speaking.
  • Theme
    The design and layout you select for your blog is called a theme. Since the content of your blog is usually separate from the theme, you can change the layout of your blog at any time without having to worry about the content being affected.
  • RSS
    RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. RSS and feeds are a way to distribute the content of your blog so that people can subscribe to it. This means people do not actually have to visit your blog regularly to see what you've added. They can subscribe and have new content delivered to them by email or through a feed reader.
  • Page
    When blogging, it's important that you understand the difference between a web page and a post. While posts depend on having timestamps, web pages do not. Web pages are not displayed in chronological order and they do not have categories or tags. A web page only has a title and content (for example, About Me or Contact Us). The number of pages on your site remains relatively static, whereas new posts are added every day or so. Pages have static content, while posts have dynamic content