Use a Blog to Grow Your Business

Do you think you can use a blog to grow your business? You bet you can!

I have had a blog for a couple of years now, and I was just as apprehensive as the next person when I began. It can be pretty hard to put yourself out there where everyone can see “the real you” warts and all. For all those folks that are sitting back worrying about what they will blog about, whether or not anyone will read what they write or any one of the other dozens of reasons to put off getting started, I would say to you “just do it”. I have rarely ever heard someone say that they regretted starting a blog. And I think you will find that you actually love it once you bite the bullet and begin the process. Plus it’s pretty cool to be able to provide valuable content for folks looking for answers to their questions and solutions to their problems.

Setting Up Your Blog

You can do it yourself if that’s what you want to do. But if you are not familiar with this process, I would encourage you to run right over to fiverr and hire someone for $5.00 (yes you heard me right $5.00) to set it up for you. There are a number of folks that will set up your blog and install some of the most popular plugins (tools) at the same time all for one $5.00 payment.

First Steps  

Get your domain name.

There are a couple of things you will need to do before you can set up your blog. First of all, you will need to decide on a domain name and purchase it. I buy my domains from GoDaddy.com.  Once you are on their site, you will see a search bar where you can check to see if your name is available. You might find that it’s not available in a .com, but you can get your name in a .net domain.  At this point, you will have to decide just how important a .com domain is to you.  The choice is yours.

At times you may be able to “tweak” the name you had in mind to get that .com.  This is what I had to do. My real estate company is “Innovative Property Solutions”, and that name was taken in the com and .net domains. What I found after checking out this site was that it didn’t look like an active website.

The way I solved this problem was to buy the name: InnovativePropertySolutionsLouisville.com. This actually was a better way for me to go at that time, since I only buy property in Louisville and the surrounding area.  I just checked again right before writing this article, and the company has apparently now put the domain up for sale for $500.

Set up a hosting account.

I have had two different companies host my sites, and I can tell you from personal experience the difference between the two companies was huge. I use Hostgator now, and I love them. You can reach someone pretty much anytime you need to speak with them which is something you can’t say about all of the hosting companies.

You can set up an account at Hostgator.com to host multiple websites or blogs for under $10.00 per month.

Next

Once you have your domain name and your hosting company set up, it’s time to set up your blog through your hosting account; you need to get the framework up and running. My recommendation is that you do the really smart thing and pay someone $5.00 to do it for you over at fiverr. That is of course, unless you are one of those geeks that know how to do it in 30 minutes or less.

Fiverr Is Fabulous

I love fiverr! If you aren’t familiar with this site, you need to check it out. You can get almost anything done for $5.00.  Some of the ways I have used them are for in the past were for:

• Video and audio editing
• EBook covers
• Design Services
• Logos
• SEO
• Fixing problems with my Wordpress site
• Video intros

I have also used them for fun things like Professor Puppet who is actually a stand- up comedian. He will make you a funny custom video for just about any occasion. He will also sing happy birthday to folks if you happen to be getting one for someone’s birthday. If you haven’t seen him in action, you should definitely check him out.

Speak Your Mind

Now you have your blog set up, and it’s time to write your first post. I would write kind of a “letter of introduction” to your intended audience and tell them this is your first post on your brand new blog. It might go something like this:

Hello. I am Robin Smith, and I want to welcome you to my blog and my very first post. I have been a real estate investor for about 10 years, and I love teaching other people how they too can live the life of their dreams through real estate ………

You get the idea. If you have an existing company, you can say that you have added a blog to your site or just link your blog back to your existing site which will drive traffic back to that site.

You need to post at least twice a week; three times a week is even better in that first year if you can pull it off. In the beginning, I would also recommend that you write a few evergreen posts to have on hand for those times when you are really busy and don’t have as much time to write.

Final Thoughts…

Here is what I believe is the most important thing to remember; you want this to be fun so you have to pick something that you are passionate about when you are blogging. Choose an area where you have some expertise, and a subject you love to tell others about and just dive in.

Spend some times on other blogs and forums to get an idea of what people are talking about. I often come up with ideas for my blog posts from forums. After a while, you will find that the process comes quite naturally, and it gives you one more creative outlet. After all, that’s what most all entrepreneurs are; creative thinkers and problem solvers.

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