By Corey Perlman
October 14, 2008
I already know something very unique about every single person who is reading this article. No, I’m not channeling David Blaine or spending too much time watching reruns of Mind Freak. I just know each and every one of you is an expert on at least one topic in his or her field. I also know that you have a massive audience via the World Wide Web that is eager to hear what you have to say. Regardless of your profession, you have information that we need and that’s what makes it valuable. Let’s use a dentist or dental hygienist as an example. They know how to keep our teeth healthy and pearly white. If they provided that information free of charge, wouldn’t you read it? I know I would - especially with that candy jar sitting outside of my office. What if you were in the market for a new home and a real estate agent gave you free tips on how to negotiate when buying a new home? I bet many new home buyers would be first in line to gobble that information up. And I could go on and on with other examples.
The point is everyone has valuable information to share with the public and the Internet has provided a vehicle to get your message out to the masses quickly and effectively. That vehicle is called a blog (or web log or online journal for us non-techies out there) and it is a web page where you can publish content for others to read and comment on. Blogs are easy to use and you can set one up absolutely free. My blogging site of choice is www.blogger.com and I like it for two reasons. First, it’s very user friendly and perfect for the beginner blogger. And most importantly, it’s owned by a company you may have heard of called Google.
Why should you care that it’s owned by Google?
As I touched on earlier, a blog is a web page and a web page can be ranked in search engines such as Google. In fact, blogs are very popular with the search engines because they like content heavy web pages and blogs are simply loaded with content. So if you are looking to increase your overall presence on the largest search engine in the world, why not use the blogging tool that they own.
If you’re still not sure what to write about, then remember,”If you provide value, they will come.” Give high value content in your blog posts and you will begin to gain a following. And the exciting part is people will come back again and again as they will have become addicted to your content.
Where do the new customers and repeat business come from?
Once you have people reading your blog and gaining value, you can softly sell your products or services without offending your audience. So my philosophy is provide value first, sell second. My world is Internet marketing, so I might write a post in my blog about how to rank high in Google and then my next post might be an invitation to one of my workshops. And they won’t be put off by my self promotion because I sell rarely and provide value often.
How do you get started?
I will leave you with the two most important things to remember when creating content in blogs. First, what words are people searching for on Google that you’d love to have your blog appear at the top of the search results page? Use those words over and over again when writing in your blog. Search engines evaluate frequency when determining where to rank web pages on their site. Finally, always remember to Hurl Your URL! That simply means to provide a link on your blog to your main Web site so people can easily go there for more information about you or your company.
Corey Perlman helps businesses learn strategies to dominate the search engines and drive traffic to their Web sites. His book, eBoot Camp, will be available in January 2009. Contact Corey at [email protected] or visit http://www.theebootcamp.com.
