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Ten golden rules of blogging

Blogs are great when you have a real passion for writing something, whether it's for business or pleasure. And blogs are a great online marketing tool; the best will draw a large audience, and will boost your SEO activity.

Here are my 10 golden rules for blogging:

  • Be very clear of your aims and objectives for the blog.
  • Keep it simple and focused – try to avoid corporate speak or industry jargon – it's not just another website.
  • Be passionate and authoritative but with an element of fun. 
  • Update your blog regularly. On average I recommend twice weekly.
  • Create fresh, eye-catching content – originality is key – be passionate in what you want to say.
  • Be honest if your blog relates to your products and services.
  • Encourage conversation; invite and encourage fellow-bloggers to comment, and listen to what they have to say. Invite guests onto your blog.
  • Bloggers hate being sold to, so avoid using hard sell tactics.
  • Add inbound and outbound links to your site. The idea is to entice people to your website.
  • Socialise with other bloggers and encourage them to communicate your key messages.

3 ways to give your link building some oomph

Let’s face it, building good quality and relevant links to your website is an integral part of any SEO strategy. Link building should be a large part of your ongoing SEO tasks, and everyone has their own methods and places to go to get them.

It’s easy though, to run out of ideas once you’ve been building links for a few months and exhausted your regular resources.

Take a look at a few of our ideas to give you extra oomph in link building.

Social bookmarking
Social bookmaking sites such as del.icio.us, Simpy and Furl allow you to ‘bookmark’ web pages online. Google indexes each user’s bookmarks, and therefore any bookmarks for your site get picked up as inbound links. It’s quick, easy and effective, you can deep-link to pages in your site, and you control the anchor text.

Another great thing about social bookmarking is that when you post a bookmark, it will appear in the ‘latest bookmarks’ page. This will open it up to the rest of the networks users.

Industry blogs and forums
Get involved in all the industry forums and blogs that you possibly can. If possible add your site to the footer of your posts. Not only you can get involved in interesting industry discussions, increase your knowledge base, and grow your industry contacts, but it means building inbound links to your site as well.

“My industry is very niche; there isn’t an industry blog/forum.” Start one! However small your industry is, you’ll find you’re not the only person who wants to talk about it online. Starting your own blog/forum also allows you to have much greater control over the content.

Link baiting
Let the links come to you! Link baiting is all about attracting links the natural way. Add some good quality content to your site that someone will enjoy (or hate) enough to link to it. Write something that will generate interest from your users, or other industry websites. Whether it is a controversial theory, or giving something for (essentially) nothing, as long as it gets you noticed, you’ll more than likely get links.

This is much more difficult than it sounds. If you’re stuck for link baiting ideas, check out this article on the art of link baiting. It gives a comprehensive look at the different types of link bait.

Government engages silver surfers with social network

Early last week I was reading an article in Marketing Week and was delighted to see the breadth of organisations embracing the power of social networks, in particular the Government.

The Department for Work and Pensions is the latest organisation to welcome social networking. They will be trialing a new site on Wordpress.com with the Hansard Society as part of the Government’s Generation Experience Initiative, with the express aim of targeting the older generation.

The site http://generationxperience.wordpress.com will be linked to other social networks including MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. It will encourage discussion on every aspect of life, including work and pensions.

Age Concern and Help the Aged are among the groups invited to participate and create debate. Pensions Minister Mike O’Brien commented: “This site fills a gap in the market by providing an online forum for older people to get their views heard.”

Personally, I think social networks offer a fabulous way for ‘silvers surfers’ to voice their opinions. Though widely regarded as orientated towards young people, my belief is that social networking offers opportunities for all age groups, lifestyles and cultures. Most importantly, it brings everyone together online.  

From an online marketing perspective we’re seeing increased interest in social networking from businesses in the public and private sectors. Companies are keen to embrace online PR and create buzz through blogging and forums. I believe social networks provide a great channel to engage and build relationships with every age group.

The opinions expressed herein are the personal opinion of the author and are not intended as statements of fact and do not represent the view of Coastdigital Limited in any way