10 Social Media Errors to Avoid
Using social media to grow your community and promote your brand is a must for community expansion, especially if you run a blog or business site. However, sometimes we slip and our efforts backfire. Perhaps it’s been months since you first registered and you’re still not gaining any followers. Or you seem to attract the wrong kind of followers. Or you deleted that TMI tweet AFTER someone else has already seen it (and trust me, they have). So what do you do? Social media channels …
On Updating Your Business Blog
I’ve often heard the advice that you should update your business blog everyday, at least twice a day. Seriously? But what if you don’t have anything to talk about? Daily updates are only advisable if several significant changes or events in your business happen frequently and regularly. Otherwise, it’s not necessary to post as often. After all, your number of posts will not always guarantee a greater audience. What you do need to remember is that two critical factors are needed in order to expand your readership and client base. These are consistency and exposure. Consistency Although daily posts aren’t required, …
What Makes An Effective Newsletter?
Does your blog come with a little ‘extra’ for your readers in the form of an email newsletter? How does that newsletter work for you — does it bring in more leads, more engagement with your audience, more people clamoring for your product? Or do you simply slave away at a subscription that makes its way from the inbox to the trash bin in 0.02 seconds flat? If your blog has its own newsletter, make sure you maximize its purpose. Otherwise, it’s nothing but online …
Does Length Matter?
This will always be one of those blogging questions that will never get resolved: does post length matter? Post length has always been a bone of contention amongst bloggers — some prefer long posts (2,000 words or more), some stick to 500 to 1,000 words, and some prefer the spontaneity of 140 characters. But regardless of preference, is there an ideal length for a blog post? The answer is a resounding no. There are plenty of considerations to be made when deciding how long your posts should be. In fact, you can vary their individual lengths according to what you need to say (this is especially important for those new to blogging). Content There are topics that take 100 words, some call for 2,000, …
Student Blogging: Not Just Kids’ Play
Young students today are intuitively adapted to technology, and many educational systems have long integrated the use of the Internet in their curriculum. Some of the online references that students use for research are blogs, which may also spark an interest in budding creative writers and journalists in the classroom. For safety reasons, it’s more advisable to introduce blogging to students in their early teens. Although many children ages 12 and below are already attuned to the use of the Internet and social media, and there are…
Banish Generic Calls To Action From Your Campaign NOW!
The title sounds cheesy, right? But it tells you exactly what you’re going to do. This is one of the fundamental elements of a marketing and advertising campaign, both on- and offline. After you’ve made your pitch about your service or product, the next logical step is to invite your audience to do something about it. This is your Call To Action (CTA). Image source: freepik.com If you visit any website that offers special…
5 Ways To Stay Motivated In Blogging
If you’ve decided to blog, chances are you’ve begun on a high note, especially if you’ve been inspired by the idea of putting your thoughts online for everyone to see. But a few weeks or months into blogging, the love affair falters. You will run out of words to say, ideas to brew, and you will begin to slow down. You might even ask yourself “What’s the point in all of this?” especially if you’re not gaining an audience as fast as you wish you would. Relax, it’s inevitable. You are not a machine. I’ve also been there several times. But instead of merely giving up, there are ways to get back into…
Decision Paradox and Your Niche
Chances are you’ve already heard of numerous bits of advice on how to find your blogging niche. But unless you are single-mindedly driven to pursue and discuss one topic, it’s hard to decide on exactly what your blog will be about. The common refrain you’ll hear is, “Figure out what you love to do,” as basis for establishing your blog niche. So what will you do if you have several interests that you love equally? What if you’re good at something else? What if you wish to pursue other topics altogether…
What Makes SEO-Friendly Quality Blog Content?
You’ve heard it thousands of times: QUALITY OVER QUANTITY. While for some, it’s still debatable, the fact remains that quality content is the reason why your audience will come to you AND stay. Quantity can be attractive, but minus substance, it makes more for forgettable material that results in high bounce rates for your site. Quantity-driven content may work for low-value sites that publish several posts within the week, or even within the day. But not you. Although you’re posting regularly on a consistent schedule, you also want your readers coming in to refer to your …
How to Repurpose Old Posts Into Quality Content for Your Blog
Some days, your well of ideas runs dry and no matter how you try to find inspiration, you can’t somehow come up with meaningful, interesting, and new quality blog content. So instead of creating, why not recycle your older content into something fresh? There are several discussions on the pros and cons of using older content for your blog. Regardless of what critics may argue against it, as long as your material and the ideas behind it can still be relevant to your current audience, it’s fine to draw from old posts. The trick is in how you do it so you don’t sound redundant. If you decide to take a long, hard look at your older posts, you might also experience some cringeworthy…