While it’s relatively easy to set up a blog and start writing on it there are a few basic blogging guidelines that will help enhance your blog, make it easier for your readers to use and keep you on the right side of the law.

Basic blogging guidelines 

DO:

Use pictures and videos on your blog. Images help liven up a page of text and videos can explain complex ideas easily. Do make sure you have permission to use the images/videos though – use your own images, source them from free-to-use sites or purchase them from a stock photography site.

Use tags and categories to organise your blog. Create several topic categories for your posts and add additional tags to further define what each post is about to help readers find relevant content.

Break up your blog posts with headings, sub headings, paragraphs, bullet points and numbered lists. A block of plain text can be hard to read; a well formatted post is much more attractive.

Ask for feedback and respond to comments promptly. Finishing your blog post with an open question can encourage readers to leave comments but if you don’t respond they won’t bother in future.

Use plain English. Unless you are writing specifically for a defined market, you want as many people as possible to access your posts, so write in a straightforward style and avoid jargon. If you do need to use jargon include an explanation of its meaning.

Respect your readers. Being controversial is fine, but you never know who will read your blog, so don’t voice any opinions you would not be prepared to say in public.

Update your blog regularly. If you post once in a blue moon you might as well not bother. Give yourself a schedule – once a week, once a month – and stick to it.

Advertise your blog. Include a link on your email signature, in forum posts, on your business card. Comment on other blogs and leave your URL in the info box.

DON’T:

Break any laws. This is especially important if you use a host for your blog such as WordPress.com or Blogger. Make sure you read and understand their terms and conditions so you don’t breach them. Even if you host your own blog you still need to be aware of the risk of breaking defamation laws – so don’t write anything you can’t prove is true, especially about people or companies.

Use other people’s content without their permission. This applies to the written word as well as imagery. By all means draw on other people’s ideas but always use your own words. Always give credit where it’s due, whether it’s by quoting another blog or using a Creative Commons image.

Post rubbish. Make sure you post quality content and you actually believe any opinions you post. Your blog is a reflection of you, so make sure it’s a good one!

Start fights. While controversy can be a good thing, don’t be deliberately shocking just to stir up a reaction. This applies to comments as well as posts – if someone responds negatively to your post, acknowledge their opinion and then let it go.

Be too wordy.  Blog posts don’t have to be long – 300-600 words is fine. Don’t use eight words where one would do the job just as well, and don’t search the dictionary for the longest, most obscure words either!

Make personal attacks. Internet forums often have the rule “attack the post, not the poster”, meaning you can disagree with the contents of a thread but don’t make it personal – and the same rule applies to blogs. If you’re writing about a problem you had with a company, keep it objective and report the facts only. Don’t make rude or personal remarks about individuals.

For more help with blogging give the team at HodgesNet a call today on 01793 608777. 

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Blogging is great for business as it raises your profile, helps your search engine ranking and positions you as an expert in your field. It does take time to do though – and when you’re busy running a business it can be difficult to find that time. However, when you plan your blog posts and schedule them into your calendar, it’s a lot easier to keep it regularly updated.

The first thing you need to decide when planning your blog posts is how often you want to blog. Some people blog once a month, some blog once a week – one person I know blogs five times a day! However often you choose to blog you need to be consistent, so think about what feels comfortable for you. For most people, blogging once a week is sufficient to achieve their blogging objectives. Once you’ve decided how often you want to blog, open up a spreadsheet and write the dates down the first column. So if you decide to blog once a week on a Tuesday, add the dates of the next 12 Tuesdays to the spreadsheet.

The next stage is to generate some titles for your blog posts. Think of three or four topics you can blog on – just general areas at this point. For example, if you’re a personal trainer you might blog about exercise, nutrition and healthy living. From those base topics you should be able to come up with lots of sub topics – for example, recipes for healthy meals, specific exercises to strengthen the legs, the importance of vitamins in your diet etc. You might find mind mapping a useful tool here. Try to come up with 12 different sub topics – each of these will form the basis for a blog post.

Variety is important when it comes to blogging, so once you’ve come up with the titles think about the best way to “present” each post. There are lots of different methods you can use in your blog – videos, case studies, step by step guides, photo posts, reviews, etc. Try to come up with at least three or four different styles of post that you feel comfortable creating.

So now you have 3 or 4 core topics, a list of 12 titles and several different blog styles. Add these to your spreadsheet, mixing up the core topics and styles to give your blog plenty of variety. This will give you a blogging schedule for the next three months. Now you need to schedule time into your calendar to create each post. You should need no more than an hour each week, or you may prefer to block out an afternoon each month and create 4 posts at once. Alternatively, if you really don’t have the time you could employ a professional blogger to write them for you.

To find out more about the professional blogging service we offer give us a call on 01793 608777!

Blogging about your business has many outcomes, but at its heart it’s a subtle form of advertising – with benefits. Blogging about your businesses is also gaining popularity because it can establish a business’ credibility, raise their profile and set the business owner up as an expert in their field.

Through blogging, you can create a valuable platform where you can demonstrate readily your experience, expertise, knowledge and talents.  Blogging also gives you a more effective way of presenting your business to the world and, most importantly, to your customers or clients.

Aside from enhancing your business’ reputation online, you can also use blogging to build the web presence of your business. Blogging gives you something to talk about on social media, and if you blog regularly it will positively affect your search engine rankings – because Google in particular loves websites that are frequently updated with fresh content. Blogging also gives you plenty of material to use in newsletters or on article sites.

Many people read blogs nowadays – in fact, research has found that 80% of web users look at blogs and social media sites regularly (i.e. at least once a week). If you post regularly, not only will prospective clients and customers be kept informed about the latest news and products you offer, but you can create a buzz about your business too. Often readers of your blog will also pass on the links to their friends, colleagues, and family members via Twitter, Facebook and the other social media platforms, which will introduce your blog to a wider audience.

Why would you want people to share links to your blog? Well, more readers and subscribers means increased traffic to your website – which can result in more customers, more sales and more profit. See why I said blogging was just a subtle form of advertising?

And the best news is you don’t have to be an expert blogger or even a talented writer to use blogging as a marketing tool for your business. Simply knowing the basics of blogging will help you on the way to success. When you start blogging have a look at the blogs of your competitors and other businesses in the same industry. You may be surprised to find out that not all business owners write their own blogs – some seek the help of expert bloggers to do the job for them …

If you’d like to find out more about blogging about your business or would like one of our expert team to blog on your behalf, give us a call on 01793 608777 or fill in the form on the right and we’ll get back to you for a no obligation chat over coffee about how we could help. 

Image: Kookkai_nak / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

One of the biggest mistakes people make when they start a blog is to post a few times, then lose the enthusiasm and abandon it. If you think about your blog as being the shop window for your business, then having an out of date blog is probably worse than having no blog at all; it’s as bad as leaving out of date stock in the window, or not doing the dusting! But at HodgesNet we understand that sometimes you just get into a rut and can’t think of anything to write about, so here are a few suggestions that we hope will inspire you and get you writing again!

5 ideas for your business blog

Demonstrate your knowledge of your industry
The best blog posts are those that offer something new to the reader, so set yourself up as an expert in your field and pass on your knowledge of your industry in easy to understand, bitesize posts. Think about what you know, and share it freely. For example, an accountant could offer tax tips, information on the pros and cons of registering as a limited company, a list of expenses businesses can claim, a guide to filling in your tax return and so on.

New products and services
If you’re launching a new product or service make sure you blog about it! You can write about the benefits it will bring customers, what’s unique about it or even do your own review!

Recent developments in your company
There are many reasons to blog and one of them is to reveal the company behind the website. If there’s something interesting going on in your business, like a new member of staff, an office move or you’ve been shortlisted for a business award, share your news.

Testimonials
Have you had a really good experience with a supplier recently? Tell the world about it! Make sure you link to the supplier’s website and you never know, they may return the favour!

News stories
If there’s a relevant story in the news paste in the details (and make sure you link back to the source of the story) and then add your own comments on how it will affect your industry or customers.

Visual blogs
Mix up the text with a few pictures and videos. You could post photos of your working day, or make a video of something going on in the office. You can even simply talk to the camera … people always like to see the face behind the words!

What do you think makes a good blog post? Let us know what you like blogging about, or if there have been any outstanding topics you’ve read about recently!

At HodgesNet we love researching and writing blog posts for our clients, so if you find the inspiration has dried up completely or you just don’t have the time to dedicate to blogging, why not consider letting us do it on your behalf? Give us a call on  +44(0)8432 894 402 if you’d like to find out more.

I heard a really interesting story the other day about something called The Garbo Effect. No, it’s nothing to do with Greta Garbo, and the effect isn’t encouraging the paparazzi to chase you by being enigmatically unavailable. This is about a different Garbo altogether – a WWII double agent.

The story of The Garbo Effect

Spaniard Juan Pujol Garcia wanted to play his part in the downfall of the Nazis, so he approached the British and applied to be a spy. They turned him down, so instead he went to the Germans, who welcomed him with open arms – not knowing that he was about to double-cross them.

Garcia – given the codename Arabel by the Germans, pretended he was travelling around Britain acquiring secret information. In reality he was actually based in Lisbon and for two years he sent the Nazis misinformation about shipping movements, which was based on watching news reels in the cinema and reading the British press at the library. For some reason the Germans were convinced that he was sending them genuine information, and over time he built up an imaginary unit of agents supposedly based all over Britain. He even billed the Germans for “travel expenses”, basing his costs on a copy of a British railway guide found in the library.

In 1942 Garcia went back to the British government and again requested to be a spy. By now British intelligence had become aware that someone was passing false information to the Germans, because they’d seen them diverted from duties to track down a fabricated convoy that Garcia had told them about. They took him on, under the spymaster Mr Grey, and he became a double agent.

For the rest of the war Garcia – or Garbo, to give him his British codename – continued to feed information to the Nazis. Often it was actually accurate, but delivered too late for a German response. Garcia used lots of tactics to delay the delivery of information, but one of his favourite methods was to write a letter about forthcoming action, have it postmarked before the event but send it a few days later. Rather than suspect they were being tricked, the Germans believed the letter had been delayed in the post, and because the information in it was accurate they were even more eager to believe everything Garcia told them. On another occasion the Germans requested information about V1 flying bomb attacks. Garcia could find no way to avoid giving them the right data, so instead he was “arrested” by the British and released a few days later – too late to give the Germans the information they needed.

At the end of the war Garcia received an MBE from the British government. He was also awarded the Iron Cross, for the Germans never did find out he was a double agent.

It’s a fascinating story, I’m sure you’ll agree. But why are we telling you it here, on an internet marketing blog? The reason is you can use the Garbo Effect to good effect on your own blog … and no one will ever know you’re doing it… Plus you will understand when you write something, how a competitor then posts something the same as you but back dates it so it looks like they said it first.

Here’s how it works. You find out who your competitors are, and make sure you keep a close eye on what they’re blogging about. Then you blog about the same topics, but date your post a day or two before theirs – so it looks like you knew about the story first!

Using RSS Feeds to keep up with your competitors

So step one is to follow their blog posts, and the easiest way to do that is to sign up to their RSS Feed. If you’re not sure what that is, look out for the orange RSS symbol next time you’re browsing the web. Click it, and you’ll be asked if you want to subscribe to the RSS feed for whatever site you’re on. The RSS feed pulls through all new content from that site and delivers it to you instantly in a variety of ways. One of the easiest ways is to have it delivered to you by email, which means you’ll get an email every time the site is updated. You can also set up a free account with an RSS Reader service, such as Google Reader (web-based) or FeedDemon (downloadable). This is really useful if you want to follow lots of blogs, because you’ll see all the recent posts in one place.

Using the Garbo Effect

Once you’ve signed up to some RSS feeds, keep an eye on them and pick your stories carefully. You can’t use The Garbo Effect all the time, because people will soon notice that you and your competitors always blog about the same things, at the same time. Look out for stories that are especially interesting or relevant or important to your industry. Read your competitors’ views, do your research too but write your blog posts in your own words. This is very important – you don’t want to be accused of plagiarism, and duplicated posts don’t rank well with the search engines anyway. If there are quotes from official sources feel free to copy those – but do link to the original source.

The last step is simply to post your article – but then choose if you want to change the date so it looks like it was posted a day or two earlier than your competitor’s post.

If you use this trick to try and show you were first, those that subscribe to your RSS feed may pick up on this and it could backfire. We’ve spotted at least one competitor of ours doing this with our blogs… and we’ve caught them out because we subscribe to their RSS feeds. It’s actually a compliment as we are obviously blogging good content.

We blog our own content as and when we see the news and never backdate anything. We want to be 100% up front and real with you.

You decide if this will work for you or not

An Important Update on how Google Ranks
the Authority of Your Website

Google always likes to keep Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) companies like us, on our toes when it comes to changes to their algorythm.

Over the past week or so, updates and been finalised to enhance the way in which authority is given for websites.

There have been some minor tweaks that do not affect any of the websites that we manage or run SEO campaigns for, and none of the changes have affected current rankings.

However, there are two things that will affect things moving forward – for everyone. These will have more of an impact on SEO than they did before:

1. The first is is the impact of regularly updated content, such as a blog or news page. This has always been seen as a good thing for a website to have, but this will now be playing a more important role in your search engine rankings.
2. The second is the importance of having social network buttons on your site, such as a Facebook Like button, Twitter retweet button and a Google +1 button (just like the ones at the top and bottom of this page). These buttons, when pressed, are now seen more of a vote of authority to the site.

Whilst these two changes do not necessarily increase your rankings for a specific keyword, they do help raise the profile of your website in Googles eyes, and therefore will be beneficial in your overall ranking and authority in the search engines.

Talk to your web team today about this update, request them to add a blog and the social networking buttons to your website. Failing this, if we can help, please get in touch with the office on 08432 894 402 or use the contact form on the top right hand side of this page.

Please also check out our Social Media and Professional Blogging Packages here.

You may have heard about blogging and how using keywords can be a really useful tool to boost your website in the search engines. That’s because when someone searches for a phrase – known as a “keyword”, though it may be more than just one word – the search engine looks through its directory of web pages and pulls out all those pages (and blog posts count as pages) that feature the keyword. It ranks those pages according to a number of factors and then displays the results to you. However, it’s important to understand how to use keywords in blogs, because it’s easy to get this wrong.

One of the factors Google uses is the number of occurrences of the keyword within the page.

In the old days, the calculation was simple – the more times the keyword was used, the more relevant Google thought the article must be and the higher it would display that page in its rankings. However, people got wise to that and would start spamming their web pages with lots and lots of keywords that were regularly searched for but quite often they actually had no relevance to the subject matter! So now Google still looks for keywords within the article – but it’s much fussier about how many times a keyword is used, and also where the keyword is used.

How to use keywords in blogs

When you want to optimise your website for search engines, the trick of  how to use keywords in blogs is to choose one highly relevant keyword and use it strategically. Keywords act as signifiers to the content of the post, so choose a phrase that people are likely to search for that sums up what your post is about.

You then need to use your keyword in specific places within the blog post to let Google know what your post is about. The first two places to include your keyword are:

• The URL of the page (so your URL for the post might be www.mywebsite.co.uk/blog/keyword)
• The page title

You can actually set up most blogging platforms to automatically use the title of the blog post as the URL.

Next you need to think about where to use your keyword within the content of the post. Don’t overdo it … use it maybe three or four times within the body of the post. If you spam your post with the keyword Google will know, and you’ll actually lose out when your page is ranked.

Somewhere in your post, place an H2 header that includes your keywords.

Blogging is a fantastic way to drive traffic to your website but sometimes the inspiration runs dry – and an outdated blog is almost worse than not having a blog at all. Variety is definitely the spice of life when it comes to blogging – here are some great ideas to get you blogging creatively.

Case studies

Have you completed an interesting project recently? Case studies can make really interesting blog posts – not only do they demonstrate your knowledge but they involve issues that potential customers can relate to. So long as your client is happy for you to mention them, write about the problem your client had and the steps you took to solve it. Include a link to your client’s website, and then you both get to benefit from increased traffic, as your readers are bound to want to find out more about the businesses you work with.

Q&A time

Start making a note of the questions that customers ask you about your products and services. Every one of those questions can form the basis of a blog post – and if one customer asked it, the answer is bound to be relevant to other people. Alternatively, ask around at networking meetings and find out what misconceptions people have about your industry –and then address them via your blog.

Photo Stories

Photo stories are really easy to create, and are especially useful if you run a hands-on type of business. Simply take half a dozen photos during your working day and post them on the blog. You don’t even have to add captions, because people will read their own story from the pictures. For example, you could take photos of a building project in progress; baking and decorating a wedding cake; beauty therapy session; plumbing in a washing machine; or changing the wheel on a car. I’m sure there are lots of photos you could take to show off your business!

Write a series of posts around one topic

Demonstrate your expertise in a series of posts that will keep your readers coming back for more. Think of a topic, brainstorm the issues around it and then post once a week on that topic. Here are some examples to get you thinking:

• A step by step guide to dog grooming
• How to build a website in 4 weeks
• What to do in the garden, month by month
• A recipe every week, using seasonal produce
• A six part guide to understanding the legal aid system
• Weekly SEO tips

Talk to the camera

Video blogs – or vlogs – are really easy to make and you don’t need any expensive equipment – your web cam or the video camera on most mobile phones will do the job. Think about a topic you are knowledgeable about, make some notes, turn the camera on and just talk! Don’t worry about making mistakes – once you get going you’ll probably find it quite easy to just speak your thoughts – and you can always edit the film at the end (just Google for “free video editing software”). You could even use a whiteboard to help illustrate your ideas – have a look at the video we made to see how simple yet effective a vlog can be!

If you haven’t yet discovered how effective blogging is as a marketing tool, and would like to know more, call the team on +44(0)8432 894 402 or use our contact form.