How Many Blogs Should You Build?
Compared to building websites, blogs are easier, cheaper and faster to build, but does this mean that you should have more than one?
My answer to this is “yes and no.”
A little bit of an ambiguous answer I know, but let me clear up the reasons for my answer …
If you’re an intermediate to advanced marketer who knows how to a) get traffic to your blog and b) monetize your blog by converting more of your visitors into paying customers, then I say you have a solid reason for diversifying into other niche markets and build more blogs – so long as you know how to manage all of them of course.
The problem really comes when you don’t know how to get traffic to your blog, you struggle with keeping it maintained, your blog posts are mediocre and even if people do land on your blog, they hit the back button in seconds … in other words, they escape your blog without even taking note of what you have to say.
This is when I argue that you should think twice before building more blogs unless of course, you really feel that you’re currently blogging in the wrong market, either because your target market are unresponsive to blogs or to finding information online generally or because you just don’t know enough about the subject matter to create an authority blog. Other than that, this is the strategy I would pursue to get more traffic and monetize your blog before building more of them:
- Post at least 3 times per week and make those blog posts informative. Infomative could include doing a quality review of a product that you are an affiliate for, giving tips on how to use a particular product and even doing a trackback to someone elses blog post.
- Ensure your ping list is up together so that you get the maximum benefit from publishing your blog posts.
- Comment on other people’s blogs – particularly those in your niche. I know my readers may be tiring of hearing this one, but it’s relevant and new bloggers still fail to recognize it as a credible means to getting traffic and links back to your site. If you read comments on other people’s blogs then you should be commenting because you already know the value.
- Tag your blog posts. Each time you make a post add your keywords as tags at the bottom of your post as well as to your WordPress pages. This feature is already built into the version 2.7.1 of WordPress and enables your posts to be indexed by services like technorati. Tags are not to be confused with categories and but, if you are using the Related Articles plugin, then tags provide a huge bonus to connecting your readers to similar articles you may have discussed on any give topic.
- Syndicate your posts. Once your post is pinged and tagged properly, you should syndicate your post, which will enable you to generate some immediate traffic. I used to recommend Web 2.0 Submitter, but this software is now only available to those who sign up to Blog Success. I can’t say I’m impressed and hope I still get my updates since I purchased this long before Blog Success existed.
There are a myriad of other strategies you can use to bring more traffic to your site but if you focus on these five and perform each task with due diligence and you’ll see your traffic stats increase in a matter of weeks.
Once you’ve perfected or at least use these strategies comfortably, you can apply them to any niche.
Blog Easy,
Technorati and What It Can Do For You
Techno Who!?
This is the response I usually get from my clients when I suggest that they need to link their blog to Technorati.
But, if you have a blog, or you are thinking of adding one to an existing website, Technorati, the largest blog search engine is definately a site you’ll want to romance with. This specialized search engine is devoted entirely to searching through blogs, and lately, it has started to seriously compete with search engine giants such as Google and Yahoo.
So, What Does Technorati Do?
Essentially, Technorati can index your blogs, whether they are about cooking, financing, engineering or entertainment. The name itself is based on a joining of the words technology and literati, the later referring to a group of critical intellectuals (I didn’t feature in the latter group!). By tagging Technorati throughout your post e.g. this post is about commercial financing, you’ll keep your posts at or near the top of the list at Technorati.
What is a Tag?
Tags are simple category names that enable people to categorize their posts, photos and videos so that it makes sense to your online visitors. Anyone with a blog can contribute to Technorati Tag pages and if your blog software supports categories and RSS/Atom feeds (like Movable Type, WordPress, TypePad, Blogware), all you need do is create your categories as usual and make sure you are publishing RSS/Atom feeds and your categories will be read as tags.
You then want to ensure that your blog software is configured to ping Technorati by ensuring it is listing in your “update services” if you are using WordPress so that as soon as you publish your blog post, Technorati will be pinged automatically.
I’m sure your next question is how can Technorati benefit my business?
At the most basic, you’ll find that Technorati is one more way to let the people looking for your service find you. When people search using Technorati, they are searching for information that has a personal bent to it, and has a presentation that they find easy to read. In other words, people who search Technorati are looking for good information, and if they can find you and you can provide that information they are looking for, you will be one giant step closer to getting a customer, client or subscriber.
Although Technocrati has been criticized for not taking into account the 56 million blogs on MySpace, you’ll find that it can still be quite useful to you and has some attractive search engine benefits particularly when you get ranked at or near the top.
Until next time,
Why You Need Regular Blog Posts
I know my clients must be fed up of hearing this, but I thought that if people understood just a little about how blogs work, it would encourage them to write more regular blog posts.
I took the view that if I just tell my daugther that she is not to do something or that she should do something, the response is often negative. If I explain to her why it’s in her best interest to do or not to do something, her response is always higher.
So, this is just a quick tip, but I hope you gain some value from it …
This is what happens when you blog:
Once you publish your blog, a ‘ping’ message is sent to the blog update services telling them that your site has been updated. Search engines like Google as well as RSS specific services like, Technorati, and Feedster periodically asks the Update Services – sometimes referred to as Aggregation Ping Servers - to let them know which sites have been updated. The search engine spiders can then visit your blog to find out if there is any relevant content and if there is, they will index your site.
But, you don’t have to rely on the Update Services to notify the search engines that you’ve updated your blog, just by adding fresh new content on a regular basis, you will attract the search engine spiders. Perhaps in a later post I’ll go through the nitty gritty of how this happens. For now, I want you to think of the pinging services like this …
Whenever you publish your blog post, a bell rings at a “messenger’s” house. The “messengers” job is simply to tell the regular callers (the search engines) who they should consider visiting on their next round. And, it could be YOU! 
Now I suppose you want to know how to ensure the Update Services are being pinged from your blog? Well first of all, ensure the “Allow Pings” is selected in the “discussion” tab on the right of your blog post writing area and then you need to go to “Options” and then “writing” sub tab to ensure you have a list of the most up-to-date ping or update services in that box. If not, click on one of the links above and find out more about where you can get a list of these.
Hope this quick tip was useful.
