Most websites have blogs these days, but many of the blogs serve little purpose. Some blogs are orphaned, sitting empty for months at a time while others simply offer little useful information. When you are making your website building plans, you should consider integrating a blog into the larger project.
Create a Blogging Plan
A good blog doesn’t just happen overnight. Successful bloggers have a plan behind their posting. Few professional bloggers simply wake up and start posting. Instead they use a calendar to mark what they will post then. The most consistent blogs have repeated weekly posts, such as a news round-up or interesting facts gathered about the blog topic. This kind of consistency is vital to your website building plan and should be thought out before committing to a blog.
Draw in Readers with Blog Networking
Blog networking means going to other blogs about similar topics and commenting. Those comments should be substantive and should include links back to your blog. While you want to draw people from your main site, you also want to include people moving from blogging to your website. Considering blogging as part of your website building planning means adding blogging tasks to your daily or weekly marketing efforts.
Update on a Schedule
The length of time it takes a blog to become “orphaned” really depends on how often you were posting before. Some blogs have multiple posts per day, so going two to three days without posting can make the blog look staid. If you typically post two to three times a week, which really is the minimum to keep your blog growing, then going more than a week without posting will make people think you have abandoned your blog.
The key when you are planning for your website building and marketing is not to commit to blogging more often than you can handle. It is always better to have a bonus post during the week than a conspicuously absent one. Start blogging with only a few posts and then add to it if the blog becomes a bigger part of your corporate marketing campaign.
Open Communication with Other Bloggers
An easy way to connect with other bloggers is to link to their sites with comments from yours. If you find an interesting post on your site, link to it with some comments or a spin-off article. Then go to the original blog and post a trackback link in the comments section. People will be able to link to your article, drawing in traffic.
Also consider a blog carnival or guest blogging in your website building plans. Guest blogging means you offer for free a posting for another blogger to put up. The blogger would reciprocate by posting a link to your blog. With a blog carnival, you would ask other bloggers all to post on the same topic on a certain day and then create a listing post with links to everyone. The blogs all gather traffic from cross-posting this way.
Blogging isn’t necessary to website building success, but a solid blog can add a new dimension to your website.
