ACADEMY FOR ONLINE BUSINESS

Blogs provide the opportunity to have links to various other sites, including yours. Think about what websites and blogs would be useful to your target market as these are the links you need to have.

 

Before starting your blog, you need to decide who you are writing it for – is it personal or is it for business, who will be your visitors as this is the person you need to focus your writing for.

 

If you think it is going to take a lot of time to maintain your blog, it doesn’t have to. We recommend clients spend 2 hours each week writing various articles. You can then use these to schedule blog posts in advance when using WordPress, so you could schedule a month of posts in advance if you want.

 

Another good thing about blogs is the facility to have comments for each post meaning you can interact with people. Something you can do is comment on other people’s blog sharing your expertise and also provides link back to your blog or website. So look for blogs who target the same people as you and leave comments where appropriate.

 

Something to remember is to use keywords you identified in website section in any post so that you can promote your business – people won’t mind.

 

It is recommended that you publish new content at least 2 – 3 times per week. However, weekly is perfectly acceptable but try to maintain the posting frequency. A good idea to free up some of the writing obligation is to allow guest posts. Speak with colleagues who you respect and ask if they want to raise their profile and write an article for you to include on your blog.

 

A blog is a brilliant tool to help with your SEO (search engine optimisation) as search engines love the style of blogging because it is content which is updated regularly – whereas traditional websites rarely get updated.

As a small business owner it is easy to become frozen in place trying to keep up with all the day-to-day tasks associated with running your business. You cant possibly be proficient in every skill required to effectively run your business so lot of time can be taken up with trying to perform even the "smallest" of tasks. Trying to learn how to do everything can literally take hours of your week away from you. Hours better spent on developing relationships with your prospects or clients, updating your web site content, creating new products, and just being there to respond to new enquiries. Unless you are willing to give up some control, the grind of trying to do everything in your business too often takes priority over the human approach to being there for your customers.

 

When looking for a company to outsource to, pick up a phone and call or send email enquiries to those that appear to have the skill set you require. Make sure your questions are addressed intelligently and at a level of understanding that you feel most comfortable with. Look for a company that is interested in what goals you are trying to achieve by outsourcing and how you like to work. The conversation should be an effective two-way open communication and you should come away with a feeling of trust and confidence. By weeding out any company that is vague in their explanations of how they can achieve what you want them to do and you should easily find the best company to work with for your business needs.

 

For everything you need to know to run a successful online business, you need the Online Business Builder System from Academy for Online Business.

 

Escape the 9-5 grind and get on your way to online freedom here:

To make any outsourcing relationship work effectively, the business owner must be able to step back and make an honest evaluation of his or her talents. We are not all created equal. We all have different strengths. One thing is certain; to ensure business success a business owner must cultivate the ability to delegate responsibility through the use of outsourcing. That's how a well-run, profit-pulling online business accomplishes its goals.

 

Today's businesses – large and small – gain immense benefits by finding other companies outside their own arena who possess the technological know how to analyse, plan, and implement target objectives.

 

In the case of the smaller business owner finding an outsourcing service to handle tasks such as marketing, diary management, bookkeeping, and word processing is one such effective strategic move.

 

For everything you need to know to run a successful online business, you need the Online Business Builder System from Academy for Online Business.

 

Escape the 9-5 grind and get on your way to online freedom here:

There are a number of blogging platforms that you can choose from and include:

 

Typepad – free and subscription options available and fairly easy to use

WordPress – open source platform which is very popular and allows you to download to your server and have a branded domain – e.g. www.yourwebsite.co.uk/blog

Blogger – free platform but not as sophisticated as Typepad or WordPress and has some limitations

 

We definitely recommend that everyone gets a blog – just make sure you post content regularly otherwise it is a waste of time.