Showing posts with label Business Blogging. Show all posts

Promote your business blog

This post is in conjunction to a series of posts concerning using a blog as your business website. For information on the related posts, visit the links below.

Gadgets to add to your business blogger blog.

Your Business Blog- Header Image

Customizing your business blog

Starting a Blog "Website" for your business

Use a Blog for Your Business Site

Extra Items to Add to Your Business Blog

Once you have your site up and running, it is time to promote it and let the world know that your site exists. Here are some tip to help promote your new blog website.

Start off by getting a domain name. . I recommend GoDaddy. Domain name registration is easy and cheap to do with GoDaddy. They will show you how to point your domain name to your blog . Check out the prices there too!

20 ways to promote your business blog website.

Make sure that your domain name is relevant to your business. The easier it is to remember, the more likely people will be to use it.
Add your Domain name to everything. Get new business cards and stationary if you need to. It will be worth the investment.
Promote your newsletter. You can do this simply by placing a reminder on invoices or have a sign-up sheet at your place of business.
Advertise locally. You may need to spend a little to do this. Consider your local paper, programs for productions or sporting events, and local sponsorships.
Internet advertising. Google, MSN, and Yahoo are good places to start. You can narrow the target views to your local area.
Mention your website to your local affiliations. This includes Chambers of Commerce and clubs.
Invent a contest that has people visit your site to find results or to sign up.
Give something away on your site. Coupons and "deals of the week" are both good examples.
Write a press release and send it to all local media members.
Write an article and submit it to papers or local websites and blogs.
If you have been published or have gotten publicity, get permission from the publisher to post a copy of it on your site.
Start a list of people who would like to receive e-mails when you post coupons and specials.
Be sure to list your website on listings such as telephone directories.
Submit your site to Google Local and Yahoo local.
Host a website launch celebration or party.
Have a reason why people would want to visit your site. For instance, allow people to submit photographs or artwork to your site.
Invite a local figure to be a guest blogger.
Make sure that your site's domain name is on everything that has your business' name.
Put your domain name on your business window, door and/or wall in large print.
Use e-mail addresses for you and your employees that contain the domain name in it. Also, add it the the signature of all outgoing e-mails.

Extra Items to Add to Your Business Blog

I have been posting a series of blog posts that are focused around using a blog as your business website.

Gadgets to add to your business blogger blog.

Your Business Blog- Header Image

Customizing your business blog

Starting a Blog "Website" for your business

Use a Blog for Your Business Site

In this post, I will give you five extra touches that you can add to your blog to make it look like a website for your business.

1. Remove the Nav bar. The nav bar ins the bar at the top of your blog page. It is intended to be a navigation tool between Blogger blogs. Keeping it will make your blog look like a blog. Removing it will make your blog appear more like a website.
In order to remove it you need to go to the html link on your layout tab. Do a search (control +F most browsers) for </b:skin>

Paste the following code right before the </b:skin>.
</b:skin>.#navbar-iframe { height:0px; visibility:hidden; display:none}

2. Make a Newsletter.
There are sites that can help you. Feedblitz.
and Feedburner are two popular services to check out. Once you sign up, they do all the work. All you need to do is add their widget to your site. You can set your preferences for the newsletter to go out daily, weekly etc. And, it can be done for free. When visitors sign up via your site, they will receive your newsletters which contain your posts.

3. Add a text or html with links Gadget to the bottom of your page that has essential links. You can easily model this after any professional website. Visit a few and see what they have at the bottom of their pages to get ideas

4. Visit a map service such as Mapquest and get the code to add directions to your physical business.

5. Add something local, such as a weather gadget. You can get this by using Blogger in Draft , go to your layouts tab, and add a gadget. Do a search for weather. There are currently 118 gadgets for weather so you may want to specify your location. Other sources for weather gadgets may be from your local TV station or Weather.com< There are many more items that you can add to your blog to make it look like a website. The key is to not add too many as they may take away from your message or slow your load time down.

Gadgets to add to your busines blogger blog.

This post is in conjunction with a series of posts concerning using a blog as a business website.

The gadgets that you add to your blog should be information and promotional.
Informational gadgets should give the visitor the information that the reader wants to know about your business, you and your products. Promotional should promote your business, you and your products. Sticking to these guidelines will help you stay focused in your efforts.

Normally, I do my blogger work using my regular blogger dashboard. The older version of blogger seems to get along better with Firefox. I get fewer, if any, error messages. Using blogger in draft becomes frustrating when you get the error messages and have to deal with a Blogger Group, and only a Blogger Group in an attempt to get help, which is rare.

Once you have signed in, access blogger in draft . Go to your layouts tab and then page elements.
If you click on "add a gadget" you will see a plethora of gadgets to choose from. There are way too many to mention here.

The Gadgets that best promote and/or inform include;

Basics

	Blog List Nice idea if you or co workers have a blog. You can do specialty departments. This list allows you to add snippets of information.

	Subscription Links Let your readers easily subscribe to your blog with popular feed readers
	Search Box ( Search over your blog, your blogroll, and everything you've linked to.
	Poll Survey your visitors by adding a poll to your blog. You can ask potential clients what they would like to learn about or see.

	Link List Add a collection of your favorite sites, blogs, or web pages. You can use it to link to different associates or departments.
	Picture Add a picture from your computer or from somewhere else on the web. Great for promoting a product or building location of your business.

	Text Add some words to your blog - like a welcome message - with our rich text editor.
	HTML/JavaScript Add third-party functionality or other code to your blog. This is useful if you are going to add something like a link to a professional organization or badge.
	Feed Add content from an RSS or Atom feed to your blog. So easy to do and acts like a subscription RSS newsletter from another site.
	Labels Show all the labels of posts in your blog. I prefer this to Archive as labels look less 'bloggy'.



	Profile Display information about yourself or your business.
	Blog Archive Display links to older posts. Useful if you will be doing a "how to" or similar blog.
	Page Header Probably Already added Display your blog's title and description.

Many of these items allow you to use your imagination to use them in a different way that best meets your need. Take a look at them and they may help spark an idea.

Customizing your business blog

This is the third post in a series about using a blog as a website for your small business. In the last post, I showed you how to set the blog up. Now I'll show you how to customize it to look less like a blog and more like a website.

Log on to Blogger and click on "settings"

Title- what will show on the top of your site. You can put an image or logo here when you adjust the layout. For now, simply add your business name.

Description- Think in terms of what you would like a search result for your blog or business to say. Often this is what gets read anyway.

Desription	500 Characters Max.
Add your blog to our listings?	A Listed blog may be linked to from Blogger.com, such as the Blogger home page, Blogger Play, and Next Blog. If you select "No" your blog will not appear in these places, but it will still be available on the Internet. This blog will still be displayed on your profile unless you hide it. Edit displayed blogs.
Let search engines find your blog?	If you select "Yes" we will include your blog in Google Blog Search and ping Weblogs.com. If you select "No", everyone can still view your blog but search engines will be instructed not to crawl it.
Show Quick Editing on your Blog?	When you're logged in to Blogger, edit your posts from your blog with one click.
Show Email Post links?	Email Post links let your visitors easily email posts from your blog to their friends.
Adult Content?	If Yes is selected, viewers of your blog will see a warning message and will be asked to confirm that they want to proceed to your blog.

Global Settings (Applies to all of your blogs.)

Show Compose Mode for all your blogs?	Adds a Compose mode to your Post Editor. (Also sometimes known as a wysiwyg editor.)
Enable transliteration?	in Learn more Adds a button to the toolbar for converting words from English to the selected language. (You may later change the language in the Post Editor). Your transliteration corrections will be saved to help Google improve this tool. See Privacy Policy for details.

Complete the rest of the page to look something like this but, for your blog.

Click on "Comments" tab.

Using comments will make your blog look like a blog. Be sure to disable comments by clinking in the "Hide" radio button.
Hide

Click on the Layout Tab

You want to remove anything that makes your blog look like a blog.
Click on the "blog archive" and the "about me" links and you can remove them. This is all replaceable at any time.

Lastly, click on "fonts and colors"

This is where you can customize things to your liking. I would suggest sticking with 2 kinds of fonts and no more. Also, to remove the border, simply click on the border color that resembles the background.

You can further customize through the html link on your layouts tab. This is something that is a bit more advance. You should probably get used to posting and writing before you move on.

Use a Blog for Your Business Site

Yes, it's true.
A blog isn't just for online journaling any more.
Thanks to some creative folks with an eye for looking outside the box, you can make a blog appear to be a website for your business.

Why does your business need a site?

In case you have not noticed, it's the new millennium which comes with new technology. A website today for a business is what advertising in the phonebook and newspaper was a decade ago. Your business needs a website because;

To give potential customers a general feeling about what your business is doing.
Promote your business
Sell items
Personalize yourself and your business
Tell the world that you are in business
Let people know that your business keeps up with the times

Choose one or more of the preceding reasons and add a few more. It all adds up the the current necessity of a website, just as it is a necessity to have a phone number. You don't have to sell anything from your site but, wow, what a way to promote.

Why use a blog for your website?

Here is a really good reason. A blog gives you the opportunity to have your site hosted for free.

Other reasons to use a blog:

A blog can be really easy to set up
A blog can be really easy to maintain
You don't have to purchase expensive software
You don't have to pay anyone to set up a website.
Easy to integrate with your e-mail and other services.

A blog is an ideal way to go if your business is just starting out or is small. If you have a large business, you probably have some sort of marketing team and can afford a website that can host a lot of traffic and do more for you.

I'll be writing more posts on how to set up your business blog. But, it is something that you should consider if you are just starting out or have a small business.