If you’re a blog author, you’ve probably contemplated what, why, and how you write.

It seems to me there are several different purposes for publishing a blog and depending upon the purpose you choose, the format and content of your blog will differ significantly from other blogs, even in the same specialized niche.

First, let me say that some blogs I’ve read seem to have no real purpose. The author might have decided, on the spur of the moment, to start blogging because he wanted to express his opinions to the world. But for what purpose?

There are blogs authored by web site owners that are used to drive traffic to the main web site and to “personalize” the owner by exposing his readers to his personality beyond what he is able to show on his site.

There are blogs that corporations set up specifically to allow their employees or a dedicated spokesman or team talk with prospects and customers in a more relaxed and one-on-one environment that blogging affords.

Some blogs are strictly personal journals. They are written without the thought or purpose of making money or driving traffic – they’re just an open forum for the writer to keep friends and interested readers informed of the author’s experiences, travels, preferences, moods, or quirks.

There are blogs created with the sole purpose of sending traffic elsewhere. These sites are filled with Adsense advertising (or similar). They present key word rich content in an effort to attract search engine interest and high rankings. The blogs earn a few cents on each visitor that clicks on one of these ads. Over time, and with heavy enough traffic, the clicks become a source of income for the blog owner.

There are news blogs in every industry. They are created for a number of purposes from making money via advertising to reporting on a particular industry or trade. The news blog can drive traffic and targeted customers to other “selling” sites.

Then there are instructional and educational blogs. They too can have different purposes including money-making, traffic generating (for a business), or simply to educate the reader and position the author as an authority.

Many blogs are filled with content that is mostly the author’s comments of other people’s content and thinking. These blogs are filled with links to many different sites and they seek to spread their presence around theInternet hoping to get as many backlinks and mentions as possible to aid their own site’s search engine popularity and ranking. Traffic can be monetized with advertising on site.

The difficulty I see with sites filled with links to other’s works is this:

1. Pages online come and go like the wind – they’re here one day and gone the next. You have no control over the other end of the link. So over time, your own blog’s archived pages may be filled with dead links. And these links can be very annoying to the reader and a sure sign that your site has not been updated in a long time.

2. What use are the archived pages if all they contain are links to other people’s work? As soon as someone is sent away on a link chase, they are bound not to return to the author’s blog site. Who wants that?

3. Stale news is not news at all. Yesterday’s news winds up in the trash as soon as news is made today. News means the information is worth headlining. But yesterdays headlines are no longer news and are always replaced.

4. Links drive traffic for only so long. People keep their interest in a writer’s comments until they get bored, or tired, or they want to get another perspective on an issue. Blog posts full of active links will soon start to decay and become as candidates needing replacements – they’ve outlasted their useful life.

Here’s my case for rich and educational content that stands alone and doesn’t rely on outside linking only:

1. Great, original, helpful content can be read today, tomorrow, and yesterday and still have the same useful benefit to the reader.

2. Content that stands alone or fits into a broader collection of similar topics makes excellent educational material for compilation in a book at a later time.

3. Content that is filled with keyword and industry niche phrases will be seen as having more credibility and authority than content which merely regurgitates what the author has read at other sites.

4. Because this content is instructional and educational, it has a much longer shelf life than content filled with links to current happenings. Remember, as soon as tomorrow comes, today’s news is no longer current or news.

5. By not sending readers away from the site, chances are much better that the viewer will stay longer, become more loyal to the blog, and trust the author to give the viewer what he has come for.

The bottom line seems to point back to the top of this post where we suggested that the blog author would do well to understand why he is blogging. Knowing that, the blog content and linking activities can be better implemented to fulfill the purpose of the site.

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One of the keys to selling products online is to somehow personalize your approach to the prospect.

Impersonal, sterile, boring sales letters and advertisements aren’t attractive and convincing.

They tend to put the prospect to sleep. Unless the prospect is already sold and anxious to buy one particular product, he will not pay much attention to generic and faceless advertising.

On the other hand, have you ever noticed how friendly people attract a crowd?

Their demeanor and friendliness are compelling! They act like magnets for most of us because we like being around upbeat and happy, gregarious people.

Friendly people practically force us to let down our guard, to trust them, to be at ease when in their presence.

So here’s the challenge: make the “voice” of your marketing message very personal and friendly.

Copywriters that can accomplish that feat will sell a lot of products.

They will draw prospects into their message. They will engage their readers because folks will be attracted by the style and language of the sales message.

I believe the popularity of the blogging craze has a lot to do with the fact that blogs are extremely personal.

The author displays his personality and hopefully his friendliness to the readers.

One of the difficulties of selling online is the fact that often a human face is not present anywhere in the sales process. We don’t talk to or interact with another real live body at all.

Sometimes we may get a glimpse of a business owner at the “about” page of a web site; but other than that, we complete the sales, financial transaction, and product delivery without ever confronting or being able to speak with another person.

By adding some personality and friendliness to your marketing message, you help to humanize and personalize an otherwise sterile buying experience.

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I have seen a smattering of Internet marketers voicing loud and sometimes passionate opinions that blogs are destroying the Internet. Why?

These blog naysayers suggest that blogs are too ubiquitous, they give every Tom, Dick, and Sally a public platform on which they push a certain agenda, try to sell in a saturated market, and criticize and condemn products they don’t like even when their reasons are suspect.

One fellow complained that blogs get into the search results too easily and because of the sheer numbers of blogs (he said “tens of millions”) the results are not returning what viewers are looking for.

You know what I think? If that’s what blogs are really doing . . . give me as many of them as I can handle!

The foundation of the Internet, as far as I’m concerned, is the free and open exchange of information.

What platform fits that definition better than any others? Blogging!

Is there a better, simpler, more direct way for a journalist, business owner, or passionate nicher to offer information directly to the public and seek to get relevant information in return (through comments) than by blogging? If so, please tell me what it is.

If the proliferation of blogs is causing skewed search engine results, then it would seem likely that they are becoming the most important kind of content producers that are giving the search engines exactly what they are looking for.

If blogs are giving products unbiased and objective reviews and scrutiny, then let’s have more of them.

If blogs are too successful at selling products and saturating markets, then every entrepreneur has the charge to get blogging and share in the wealth!

I’ve posted before about the advantages of maintaining a blog. They are many and very powerful.

With ease of setup, the low cost of maintaining a blog, the opportunity to generate revenue on site, and the possibility for eventual search engine listings at the top of the results page, blogs are an inexpensive, easy, and effective way to maintain a web presence and profit at the same time.

If the collective threat of the blogging community is really the muscle flexing of the Evil Empire, then move over Darth Vader, I’m defecting!

I’m not sure that the blogging craze can last forever; surely there will be other cutting edge platforms that arise to steal the Internet limelight in the future. Technology has a way of changing the landscape very quickly.

But the principles of free speech, open access, information sharing, quick feedback, deep niche specialization, and the ability to generate revenue are really the foundation of blogging.

I see these principles as enduring. Until a better venue or tool is found, blogging will continue to be relevant and important!

May the blog force be with you . . .

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The owner of a solo digital information business is the perfect candidate for a targeted niche blog authored by the business owner and directed to support and advertise the business and the product.

Remember that the solo business owner is generally an independent, a free spirited thinker, one who prefers to do business alone without the constraints of employees, physical overhead, or management induced policies and rules.

This is exactly the profile of a successful blogger: one that is not shy about forming his own biases and opinions based on his life experiences and then publishing and sharing his knowledge and ideas with other like-minded nichers that hunger for the same type of information.

The blog format lends itself nicely to the busy schedule and limited time available to the solo operator.

He can log into his blog creation software online at any time, day or night, home or away and create his post, publish it, and be done with the task in a matter of minutes if he keeps the posts brief.

The blog can be served up as an “area” or page on the owner’s business web site, or it can be hosted as either a sub-domain of the business site or an altogether detached and autonomous site with its own URL.

The blog of a business owner can have a number of purposes, all of which lend themselves nicely to complementing or supplementing the regular offerings of the business, whether they be products or services.

The business owner / blog author can target all these web site and traffic advantages as the purpose or reason for his blog:

1. Answer reader’s questions in the niche as an “expert” or niche authority,
2. Drive traffic to the main web site upon blog post recommendations,
3. Suggest products or services that the business sells and link to their descriptions or direct sales pages,
4. Mention business events, news, product releases, special sales, etc. within the daily posts,
5. Carry advertising for the business in its banners, display ads, text linking, etc.
6. Carry affiliate sales links in the blog content as a further revenue stream,
7. Give “how to” information about the business product uses, services, policies, or the specific niche the business deals in,
8. Can generate feedback and comments from readers as the source of new product and service ideas for the business,
9. Help to humanize the business and and expose the personality of the owner so that the prospects will trust and have more confidence in the business,
10. Can be a means of giving special incentives, discounts, coupons, etc to the blog readers as a marketing strategy to sell more niche products of the main business.

I’m sure there are other advantages that I haven’t mentioned. With the ease, speed, and usefulness of today’s blogs, small solo info business owners would do well to get blogging as soon as possible!

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Blogs, like most every other type of Internet web site, gain value, grow, and even thrive when they are heavily viewed.

The more traffic a blog receives, the greater the chances for continued relevance and possible revenue generation.

Of course, money and income don’t drive most blogs.

Typically bloggers are content with having their own soapbox to publish their opinions and feelings to the world (or at least those who care to visit.)

Bloggers are also finding that most search engines seem to like blogs. Why?

Blogs are based on frequent updating of relevant and key word rich content.

They are niche specific, often include contextual links, and are open to further content in the form of suggestions or comments that are published along with each post.

Here is a strategy for bloggers to try that will increase traffic to the blog because it displays information being sought by search engine users.

First, visit WordTracker, the Overture search term suggestion tool, Good Keywords, or other web sites or software that generates lists of words based on the searches done on them recently in your blog’s same niche.

Make a list of the specific search terms found, the more specific the better.

Terms like “golf” or “weddings” are too broad in most cases. Look for multi-word phrases that are specific but still get at least 100 or so searches.

Others have called these “long tail keyword phrases.”

For each term or phrase, think of questions that searchers may have that relate to the niche.

You can draw on your own experience by recalling some of the questions your blog audience has asked you.

Now put those same brief questions in quotes and use them as a series of blog post titles, one per posting.

The content of the post becomes your expert opinion and researched answer to the question posed in the title.

This process is no different than fielding a question given by a reader in the comments of your blog.

This idea, of course, is to anticipate the specific questions that web users are posing to the search engines and query sites (like Ask Jeeves, Answers.com, etc.)

You might even include a short summary description of the answer (the blog content) in the “description” area of your meta tags for the installment.

Now publish the blog post everywhere possible. Include it in the RSS distribution channels of your blog so it is picked up by relevant sources.

Over time, there will be a good chance that the search engines will pick up your question and answer blog post page and serve it up high on the results of any searches that ask the same question.

This method should drive additional web traffic to your blog and help your site become more relevant in your chosen niche and in the eyes of the search enginges.

Let me know how this strategy works for you!

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