In case you are new to our world a blog challenge let me explain. Across the internet there is a wonderful group of people that blog on a regular basis. One of these particular people put together a “challenge” to post one blog post each day for thirty days in a row. Thus the original name of “30 Day Blog Challenge”

In this particular one you got to “sign up” and join the community. Jeanette Cates, the organizer of this little shindig, set up a wonderful site where everyone participating can post their bios, links to their sites, a picture of themselves, etc.

This allowed us to “get to know each other”. Also part of the challenge was to check out the other bloggers. Go to their sites, read their posts and share your thoughts.

This made for a huge community of people all learning and growing together.

30 days ago I wrote a post (my first for the challenge) about the fact that I did not blog. I explained how I believe in blogs and blogging and how we even teach blogging as part of our business. But that my partner was “the blogger” in our business.

30 days later I can now say (with this post) that I have met the challenge and this is my 30th post in 30 days.

Here is what I have learned:

1. I can write (Not to bad sometimes even )
2. I do actually know this stuff (I knew I did, I just wasn’t so sure I could get it “on paper”)
3. People can be very generous (I have “met” some WONDERFUL, generous people in the last 30 days)
4. I can write a blog post, find a picture, re-size the picture, publish the blog post and tweet about it in under 15 minutes if I am down to the wire…
5. And last but not least….30 days in a row of blogging is HARD, but…do-able….(I was not so sure about that when we started)

Would I do it again? Sure, I had a good time.

Should you do one…Definitly!

It is a wonderful learning experience.

Yesterday I saw a statement that made me think. It said “If you can’t think of 50 blog post topics in your industry within a few minutes, you might be in the wrong industry.”

That really made me think…

I have to admit I had many a day of writers block in the last 30 days. But when it came right down to it I was able to come up with the topics (sometimes the actual content eluded me but…).

I can now proudly say I have made it to the end. I posted 30 blog posts in 30 days.

I will be on the look out for the next “Challenge” and I will not hesitate to join. Will YOU be with me?

You get told to write a blog post, post it to your blog, submit it to Ezine Articles, create a video and submit that to YouTube, convert it to a Powerpoint and submit THAT to SlideShare. Then you need to share ALL of it to all the social media outlets.

And that is just the tip of the iceburg…

But every time you hear these things you think the same thing. I know you do, because I think the same thing too…

“I don’t have time for all of that! I have WORK to do!”

I understand completely. After all, someone has to actually do the work. Someone has to help all the customers that you get from all this marketing effort you are putting in.

Well there is a new tool available that will help save you time and still re-purpose your content.

It is a WordPress plugin that Ezine Articles has developed. And (the best part..) it is even free.

If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog site you can install this plugin. It will not work with WordPress.com because they won’t let you upload plugins to their hosted version.

So why is this plugin so great?

Because you are already logging into your blog to post articles (right…?). Normally you have to login to your blog and post the article, add your bells and whistles and publish it. Then you have to go over to EzineArticles.com and login and post it again. Choose a category, add the resource box, enter the keywords, all again for the second time.

But with this plugin you only do it once. You only log in once.

It links in to the EzineArticles.com account you already have. It lets you pick a category, enter keywords, and even choose one of your pre-done Ezine Articles Resource Boxes. Or it will let you do a custom one for that specific article. Then you can even validate the article right there to see if it passes their basic test. Then you click the submit button and it is posted to EzineArticles.com for them to review, just like if you were going to go and login and post it separately.

Now…you finish adding in your blog bells and whistles and click the publish button on the blog.

And now you have posted to your blog AND to EzineArticles.com and only spent a minute or two extra over how long it would have taken you to post that article to your blog.

Now you have done 2 things to market your business today and you can happily move on to the rest of your To-Do list for the day.

This plugin might only save you 10 minutes (if you are really quick on other sites), but that is 10 minutes each time you post a blog post/article. If you post everyday like you do (right…?) that is 60 hours a year!

One little free plugin saving you 10 minutes each day earns you 60 hours a year in time saved. AND you are posting to two places at once.

What could be better than that?

Well, its not as hard as you might think. One of the first things that I suggest is to brainstorm out ideas around your topic. You can do this on paper at first. I personally like to use mind mapping software to do this as it puts everything in one cluster of ideas I can go back to and review when I need to find ideas to talk about.

First, write down your main topic around your business. Then just start letting ideas fly out. Don’t over complicate it, just start writing out one or two word ideas of things people ask you about related to your business. Here is an example:

Let’s say you are a landscaper. Landscaping is your main topic.

Heres a few quick ideas to brainstorm:

Tree care
Shrub care
when to reseed
Why reseeding is important
How often to water
How to keep bugs off my flowers

Thats just a quick list done in about 5 seconds. Write down as many topics as possible like this. Give yourself about 20 minutes to do this. Ask your coworkers or partners to help with ideas. In no time at all you’ll have a dozen or so topics to write about ready to go.

Once you have this done. You can even batch write your articles. Just start writing about each of the topics you just came up with. Nothing says you can’t write a ton of articles all in one sitting. If you do this right, you could end up with 20 or 30 articles ready to be loaded in to your blog in a couple of hours.

If your creative juices are flowing, just keep writing. If you come up with a couple of things to say about one topic, go ahead and write 2-3 articles based around the same topic. Just keep writing as long as you have ideas coming out.

If you don’t have time to write everything at once, that’s ok. Now you have a list to come back to every time you need to think of a new blog topic to write about.

I like to have a running list of topics that I add to all the time. This way when I sit down to write and I don’t have something come up off the top of my head, I can always go back to my mind map and see what I have on the list. This way I don’t forget about any ideas I come up with and I always have a list of things I can talk about each and every time I need to write up a new blog post.

There are crafts and home repair project not to mention auto repair projects that you can learn to do yourself relatively easily if you put your mind to it.

But as you might notice if you look around a bit this is not a blog about auto repair. (In fact we outsource that little chore quite happily). This blog and our business in fact is about marketing.

All kinds of marketing, online and offline and everything in between as my partner is prone to saying. We gear our training towards small business and entrepreneurs with a bit more advanced stuff thrown in to keep things lively.

We essentially teach do-it-yourself marketing. But this isn’t even completely what I was talking about in the title of this post.

What I am talking about is actually having control of things yourself, especially in marketing your company. Sometimes we tend to take the easy way out when we are starting something new. If there is a click a button and it magically works 100% for free way to do something we are all right on board.

And let me tell those of you who do not know this that we DEFINITELY teach about free tools and automation. But sometimes there are things that you should not cut corners on.

This was brought to glaring reality this week by a little hiccup over at WordPress.com.

If you aren’t aware, WordPress.com is a 100% free version of WordPress blogging software that they host for you where you can have your own blog without spending a single dime. Simply fill in about 5 blanks and wa-la you have a blog.

This is wonderful….on the surface. (And it is better than having no blog at all…) Until they have a little hiccup in their programming, which you have absolutely no control over. And that is what happened this week.

Headlines all over the internet read “WordPress.com goes down and takes millions of blogs with it!”

For awhile yesterday millions of blogs ceased to exist all due to a small programming issue. Now when the dust settled all was restored to normal and it was only down for about an hour.

But a couple of lessons are to be learned from this little incident.

• Back up often, back up early and back up often.
  If something had happened and they were gone then all of those blogs, all of those hours of typing and uploading and making things just right would have been gone in a flash. And there isn’t a single thing that anyone would have been able to do about it.

• Consider a self-hosted blog.
  I understand that servers fail all the time and having your own self-hosted blog will not guarantee that you are safe. But…you have a lot more control of the situation and you can back things up a lot more thoroughly when they are 100% in your control. (As long as you also learn lesson #1 from above…)

Also by learning to create your blog, upload and install plugins, upload and install themes, back things up when needed (often) and everything else involved with having a blog then you have a better understanding of the entire process.

You will know what you are looking for when you are ready to hire someone to do these tasks for you. You will know how to ask for what you want in the correct words that get you the end result you are looking for. So now as a business person you are more confident in your ability to run your business.

You are prepared to ask for help or hire help, but you know that if push came to shove you could do-it-yourself and be no worse for the wear.

So, the moral of today’s story is…..Have you backed up your blog this week?

I still hear it from most business owners… “I don’t get it. I don’t have that much to say. I don’t want to do that. It’s just too much work”

Well, if you want to get your name out there more. Get more prospects. Get more customers and provide better customer service to your existing customers, then a blog is the easiest way to do all these and more.

So, why is it that blogs are so powerful and why should you have one? Let me count the ways!

Blog posts are like pages on your website.
When you build a static website, you have a number of pages that are all static. They don’t change much. Once search engines have got them in the index, there isn’t anything else for them to find. This doesn’t make them come back and re-index your website.

Blogs on the other hand are dynamic meaning you are adding new content all the time to them. Even if it’s only once a week, within one year your blog has 52 pages of food for the search engines. The more you post, the more the search engines learn to come back and re-index your site more often.

Would you rather have 10 pages of stuff that Google can find or 52 pages of stuff for Google to find?
The more you have out there, the more likely Google will raise your rankings.

Blogs provide communication with customers and prospects.
Blogs aren’t generally just advertisements for your stuff. You should have a bit more personality and feeling with your posts. Generally they are more first person. Like you’re telling a story or talking to someone in a conversation.

This adds a more personal feel to the post. Prospects and customers alike will feel more in tune with who you are and feel like they know you more. People buy from people, not companies. Your blog posts can give you a huge relationship with your readers even if you’ve never met them.

The more you tell, the more you sell. You just need to talk to them, not just pitch them your wears.

Blogs provide a way for better customer service.
By posting articles on how to use your products better, you can help cut down customer service. You can even create simple little videos demonstrating your product in use. The more you share how much they can do with your product or new ways to use the product they haven’t thought of before, you’ll help your customers get involved with the product and use it more.

You can even do simple FAQ posts that are tips on ways to help them even more and answer their most common questions.

Now this is just the tip of the iceberg on why you should be using blogs in your business. It doesn’t matter what type of business you have, blogs are an easy way to get more customers, increase your customer service and get a lot more traffic to your website.

Do you have a blog? How often do you post? Do you not have a blog? Tell us why not, what is stopping you?

When building a blog there are typically 9 major areas that all blogs fall into: business, culture, community, politics, religion, science, travel, online diaries, and gossip. Again, when looking at these categories you will see how many blogs will cross into multiple areas at different times depending on the topic of the most recent post. Even business blogs can have gossip or politics or even religion depending on the voice of the person creating the blog and also depending on the business the blog is for.

When you are considering setting up your blog another thing to consider is the program or software you will use to create it. Most blogging software tends to have links to other blogs created with the same software easily available to other users. WordPress blogs tend to have links to other wordpress blogs and blogger blogs tend to have links to other blogger blogs built right into them. This is the same for social networking types of blogging platforms. Sites like Livejournal and MySpace allow users to surf from blog to blog based on friend links and similar content.

Blogs can be more than just articles that you type up and post to the internet. There are also photo or video blogs. In these blogs the information is usually conveyed using pictures or videos. With a video blog the blogger might record themselves talking about the topic that day or maybe record an event that is occurring that they want to share with the world. They then take that video and post it to their blog and make it available for everyone to watch.

While most blogs are created by a company or an individual there are blogs that allow many people to participate in providing information. Some that are gaining in popularity are geographic blogs. These blogs focus on information pertaining to a specific region of the world, may it be a country, a state, a city or one neighborhood. Then everything on the blog would be directly related to that specific area.

So you see, blogs can be as unique as the people that create them. It is best to determine the purpose of your blog before you get started and consider what you hope to accomplish by having one and therefore what the best platform will be for your particular type of blog. But you also want to remember not to get too caught up in the planning. A blog in your head does you no good at all. Part of the point of blogging in the first place is to get your information out onto the internet where the world can see it. With a little bit of planning and preparation you will be able to get started on your blog very easily.

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If you are going to create a blog you will need some tips to help you create a blog that is popular and gets visitors coming back day after day to see what you have posted. This is true whether you are creating a personal blog or a business blog.

Here’s how to help make your blog more popular for your visitors:

1. Think about who will be visiting

When you are creating your posts consider who will be reading them or viewing the pictures or watching the videos. Even if you are posting personal information you should still think about what your readers will want to hear rather than what you want to tell them.

Consider the fact that even though you might be writing about an even that occurred to you, the point behind writing it is so that others will read about it. If you didn’t want others to read about it then there would be no reason to post it to the internet. Most of us just want to be heard, to have a voice in the day to day events that surround us. So when you are writing your posts, consider the readers. Remember, they were not there when the event happened or they haven’t been in the 100 meetings you have been in to determine what your new product will be. So you need to include details and information that they will need in order to understand your message fully.

2. Avoid having to link to the dictionary in order for your readers to understand your blog.

Remember, most people who are on the internet will scan something before they decide they are going to stop and read it fully. Your blog is not the place for you to provide complete details on the genetic makeup of a new species of snail you just discovered. Your blog would be the place to announce your discovery and maybe offer your readers a free download of the scientific particulars. Try not to use some highly technical and highfalutin words. For the post itself it is better to stick with simple facts and short posts.

If you have more detailed information you want to offer include it as a download that someone who wants it can look at. But it is better not to bore the other readers who are not really interested in all of the gory details just yet.

3. A Picture speaks a thousand words

We have all heard this saying a thousand times. But the reason is, it’s true. Sometimes a picture can tell the entire story. And sometimes a story is just not complete without an illustration. Pictures also tend to stand out and catch the eye of a casual browser. Something as simple as a picture on the page can determine whether a reader stops and reads the article you took the time to write or they click a link and move on to another page.

4. Have more than just text

No matter your writing style sometimes people need more than just text to keep them interested. As much as possible you should make your blog interactive. This is easy to do by adding videos or audios to your blog or by having reports people can download. If you have a blog that will be visited by children or their parents consider adding coloring pages or workbook style pages they can print.

Also be sure to allow comment on your blog. This allows your readers to interact with you. They can tell you what they like and even what they don’t. This allows you to gear your information towards your readers even more. Who knows, you might even gain some friends just by making them feel at home in your blog.

5. Provide value to your readers

It is your blog and you are free to write anything you want to say to the world, still, your readers are more likely to come back again and again if they find information that benefits them in some way, even occasionally.

While we all need goofy entertainment sometimes, there are many places that specialize in providing it. What most people are looking for is value and information that can help them in some way. Even a personal blog can give a researcher information about the family or tell grandma what the kids want for Christmas. These things are valuable to the reader and will keep them coming back.

By thinking of these tips when you are creating your blog posts and the overall makeup of your blog in general you will be able to keep your readers engaged and coming back for more. This ultimately is the goal of any online site.

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