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Marketing Your Blog: Headlines, Story IDs, Feed
Placement and Submissions ...
Creating an effective, successful business blog is a bit
more than merely typing up your thoughts and pushing the
“submit” button to have them appear online. You need to
think about your content, and also how to
make sure that the content can be seen by potential
readers. Marketing your blog is key. I’ll show you a few quick
and easy ways to establish your blog presence online...
Blog Headlines
When you blog, you should always give serious
thought to the headline. After all, many RSS
feeds will only pick up your headline for the
initial display, and people browsing your blog
won’t make it past a headline that leaves them
cold.
From a search engine perspective, the
keywords in a headline are “weighted” much
heavier than simple body text. So you should:
-
Keep your headlines snappy for your
readers (too-long headlines often lose a
reader’s interest)
-
Use keywords, but don’t overuse them –
this is the opportunity for you to use a
variety of terms that relate to your
specialty or your real estate niche as used
in that particular blog entry
-
Capture the eye of searchers who may
otherwise miss your primary keywords
-
Be bold – boring headlines never work
I recently did a blog on using custom stamps.
My title was: Snazzy Snail Mail: Direct
Marketing Tips for Real Estate Agents and Small
Business Owners. This title used a term
I don’t normally use “snail mail.” I used the
term because it differentiated this from an
“e-mail how to” and it also used alliteration
“snazzy snail” to capture the eye.
I go on alliteration kicks sometimes – and my
hit ratio on those stories tends to be a bit
higher than similar titles without the
repetitive leading letter. And, yes, I do pay
attention to these things. I want to be sure my
blogs are something that my readers need and/or
want to read. (Scary fact: Once you are a
regular blogger, you will watch these type of
things too)
I also made sure my target audience and
their business types were in that title… Real
Estate Agents (Real Estate) and Small Business
Owners (Small Business). Since this blog was
about a new way to dress up direct marketing
pieces, the headline needed to include the phrase
“direct marketing.”
Blog Story IDs
Aside from headlines, you will also want to
consider the filenames of your stories. Most
blogging platforms use a dynamic file naming
system. These will automatically assign a unique
number for each new blog entry as a filename.
A tremendous marketing advantages of Geeklog
as a blog engine is that the ability to reassign
these random numbers to something more useful.
Most of the other engines don’t permit this
renaming convention.
When you click on a blog entry to read the
entire entry, the URL changes to reflect the
story. If that story has “009874598” as your ID
number, then that’s what appears in your URL.
It would end with something like “….com/article.php?story=009874598”—which
doesn’t help your search engine optimization at
all.
If you are using Geeklog,
you can change that ID. Using the example from
above, I named my custom stamp story something
that describes the entry to get the added search
engine optimization of a keyword rich and
well-targeted name. For example, the URL for
this particular story is:
http://www.wickedblog.com/article.php?story=Direct-Mail-Marketing-on-a-Low-Budget.
Since the search engines weight words in the
URL heavily (as compared to body text and even
headlines), this is not an opportunity you will
want to miss. Do remember that your URL for each
blog entry must be unique. (Which is why many of
these blog engines won’t allow users to define
them.)
Blog Feed Placement
If you have your blog as part of your primary
site, but it’s not on your index page, you need
to use a feed to place the headlines in a block
on the index page. Ask your Webmaster to add
one. You will want to limit the number of
entries to prevent clutter and to keep your blog
entries looking fresh and new.
If your blog isn’t located on your primary
site, it’s still important that you use a feed
to showcase your blog entries and to keep
constantly updated information on your Website.
You may want to use a simple RSS feed (like I
do) or you may want to have a headline and
synopsis or headline and the first X number of
words of the entry showing on the index page.
Talk with your Web host or custom programmer
to find the solution that works best for you.
If you only plan to blog two or three times a
week, then I’d recommend you have five entries
showing, but you may want to offer monthly
archives on the index page as well. Personally,
I only show the most recent three of each of my
RSS feeds, which keeps me on my toes to keep my
online content fresh.
Where to Submit Blogs
There are literally thousands of blog
indexes, directories and lists these days. It
would be possible to make a full-time job of
submitting and writing your daily blog. As a
real estate professional, you also have a few
other daily responsibilities – so you want to be
sure you get the most for your blog with the
least investment of time and effort.
Once you make a dozen or so blog entries on
your new blog, you should submit it to a few
directories and indexes. I’ve collected a list
of ten here to get you started:
You should also “ping” the blog lists that
permit that functionality. In Geeklog, you can
enter the ping locations and then simply hit a
single button whenever you post a new blog.
Geeklog will then automatically “ping” each of
those on your list to say “Hey, lookie here, new
content for ya!” Many of the other blog engines
also offer an automated ping option. Look for
it.
Once you have your blog working and have
submitted to at least those venues listed above,
I recommend that you continue to submit to new
sites several times a week. It usually doesn’t
take more than a couple minutes, and it really
pays. [You can even write up on a cheat-sheet
(URL/description/category) and have your
assistant do the submissions for you!]
Blogs are usually well-spidered by Google, so
if you have to choose between submitting your
blog on a particular day or writing in your
blog…write. No question. But, my recommended
method of keeping this going is to submit to a
single new index or directory every time you
post to your blog. That’s a quick and painless
way to get regularly expanding coverage for your
blog.
You can Google “Blog
Submission Sites” for enough submission
options to keep you busy for several months.
Best wishes as you blog your way to business
success!
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