This document provides guidance on using blogs and social media for business purposes. It begins by explaining what blogs are and why they are useful for businesses to share information, expertise, and build relationships with customers. It then provides tips for getting started with a business blog, including identifying the audience, choosing a platform, emphasizing keywords, and integrating social media. The document also offers best practices for writing blog content, such as being unique, useful, and a thought leader while focusing on the target audience. It stresses the importance of consistency, scheduling, and social media integration to get the most value from business blogging.

1. FORWARD PROGRESS Growing your business beyond the VISION Top 10 Reasons to use Blogs and Twitter (and more) for New Business

3. Trained and Coached over 40,000 in Social Network Skills – over 35 countries

4. Over 30 years in Business Coaching, Consulting and Training

5. Call Center, Internet, eMarketing, Event Management,

6. Lead Generation, Web Seminars, eLearning, eSelling

7. Over Two Billion Dollars Sales, over 100 Million Leads, Helped Thousands of People using Internet Based Lead

10. A blog can be used to directly promote products, services and events.

11. A blog can assist in promoting company vision and developments.

13. A blog can give customers information on how to use products, services and how to buy.

15. Getting Started Identify your audience. A basic precept of any business is just as essential with your blog. It's critical to pinpoint your audience and, in the process, decide what you're going to say that will make them read what you write.

16. Getting Started Decide where your blog should live Next up is determining where to locate your blog. There are numerous software packages that let you add a blog section to an existing Web site. A more automated and perhaps easier option is a blog hosting site (with a link from your Web site bringing visitors over). www.WordPress.com is a great site to set-up your blog.

18. Ask Questions

19. Be Open Ended

20. Interact with comments left

21. Be humble

22. Be gracious

23. ‘Reward’ Comments

24. Make it Easy to Comment

26. Getting Started Socially Connected Integrate consistently with your Keywords, into your Social Network sites. You need to get everything working together!

27. Getting Started Socially Connected Integrate consistently with your Keywords, into your Social Network sites. You need to get everything working together!

28. Getting Started Socially Connected Integrate consistently with your Keywords, into your Social Network sites. You need to get everything working together!

29. Getting Started Socially Connected

30. Let’s Get Social – Get Read Facebook Go Direct – OR Ping.FM Hootsuite

32. Set feed url

33. Prepend all of your tweets

34. Set frequency of postingshttp://hootsuite.com

36. Shorten URL’s

37. Not as Fancyhttp://hootsuite.com

38. Getting Found Through The Web Use a Share Button on Each Post A “Share Button” allows visitors to share your information on multiple networks and through email http://www.addtoany.com/buttons/for/wordpress_com

39. Results SEOEM Effect Study your website, content and target and list an effective set of keywords that are “Relevant” to your objective. This how people would search for your target!

40. Results Watch your traffic closely Monitor the amount and quality of the traffic you receive. If things seem slow or stagnant, don't be afraid to vary your themes or subjects to boost interest. But don't stray too far from your business or expertise.

42. Measure which posts receive the highest reader count.

44. Writing Content Be Unique and Useful For a blog to be successful your content needs to be useful and unique to your readers. Start with the customer or prospect - find out what they want and give it to them. Perhaps the best advice on developing useful content is to research your readership (or potential readership).

45. Writing Content They Are Hungry for Knowledge Writing for your target DOES NOT mean writing about the products and services you sell them Write about the things they want to learn about

46. Remember Variety is the Key!

47. Writing Content Be the Thought Leader Should establish as a thought leader When starting put time into your plan and posts This will reflect your reputation

48. Writing Content Researching Survey customers, look a lot at other blogs on a topic (especially the comments section to see what types of questions people are asking) and particularly look hard in forums and discussion groups on topics where there is usually a lot of question asking going on. As you do this you’ll begin to put your finger on what people are wanting and what you might be able to provide to meet these needs.

49. Writing Content Search for Blogs

51. Other blogs

52. Keep a list

54. Ask your readers/friends

55. Great speech’s

57. Writing Content Distinguish yourself Do some analysis on what sort of content other bloggers in your industry are producing. In most niches you’ll find that sites are all presenting very similar information in pretty much the same voice, tone and style. You can either replicate what they are doing and try to do it better OR you can distinguish yourself in someway from what others are doing.

59. 500 words (or shorter!)

60. Lists are OK (just not too many)

61. 1 idea per post

64. Link like crazy

65. Write less

66. 250 Words is enough

67. Make Headlines snappy

68. Write with passion

69. Litter the post with keywords

70. Include Bullet point lists

71. Edit your post

72. Make your posts easy to scan

73. Be consistent with your style

74. Create a system

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