Turn Up the Heat: Maximize Exposure to Your Australian Business by Blogging, All the While Building Good Will and Customer Loyalty    

As a business owner, you’re undoubtedly always looking for ways to get your products or services in front of your target audience. After all, if they can’t find you or your business, they can’t make a purchase. And, if they can’t make a purchase, you can’t make a profit.  

That’s why more and more business owners throughout Australia are turning to the Net to advertise, and in particular to blogs, to get their most important products and services in front of the eyes of their most qualified clientele.    

Inexpensive, But Highly Effective

Blogs cost relatively nothing (with free software readily accessible or web-based programs available for less than $5 a month) and can drive traffic to your company’s website, all the while establishing a dialogue between you and your clientele and helping you to build a relationship that prompts customer loyalty and purchases that positively impact your bottom-line for many, many years to come.  

That’s because companies that use blogs as marketing tools are finding that there is an endless stream of potential customers who want to know what your company’s blogger(s)   have to say and respond with comments to every posting made. Best of all, this marketing effort has a trickle-down effect, as these people often spread the message to others within their sphere of influence through other blogs, emails or instant messages.    

Choosing Your Blog Solution

If you want to get your blog started right away (and don’t boast an array of technical skills and know-how), you will want to look for a hosted blog solution, which is a web-based software program that allows you to get your blog up in running in a matter of minutes.  

Among the more popular hosted blogging solutions are:  

 www.wordpress.com 
 www.typepad.com 
 www.blogger.com   

Using one of these solutions, all your technical headaches are taken care of, as you can quickly choose a template you like, customize it with your company’s logo or color scheme and even have your very first “post” on your blog in no time.  

Additionally, you do not have to commit any technical resources to the blogging project and there is no cumbersome software to install (remember, these are web-based programs). Likewise, there is no programming to learn, for if you can type an email, you can write a productive blog post that will get your Australian business some serious attention – and fast!  

The financial investment required to use these or like services is reasonable and you may even find some for free.  

On the other hand, if your business boasts a solid technical department and the resources needed, you may benefit from purchasing an independent blog solution, for example, from Movable Type or pMachine software vendors, which provides you with a permanent license to install and use the software on your company’s servers.  

Installing and configuring the blog software can be cumbersome and time consuming and your technical department will need to rely on a variety of skills to get it all set up and running. In addition, you or the person responsible for creating your company’s blog posts will need to fully understand and be able to use HTML coding, the most complex Web page coding being done today.    

Determine Your Domain

Once you have chosen your blog solution, you will need to determine its domain.  

Start this process by checking out a few of the domain registration companies, such as GoDaddy, 1&1, and Dotster. They offer a wide range of services at varying prices, so make sure you do some research and some comparing before you make a purchase.  

You will want to check the availability for the domain name you want, which is free, and then register it for as long as ten years, in one-year increments.  

As you think of a domain name for your blog, avoid domain names slightly different from ones already in use, so visitors do not confuse your blog with another blog or another site.  

Also, stay away from anything too catchy, working to choose a blog domain name that closely mirrors your business name or even the products or services you provide. This will help your clientele find you, which is the name of the game.    

Getting Set Up

You can choose from templates if you are working from a hosted solution and then customize these, or, if you are using a solution that resides on your company’s servers (and not on the web), you can have your technical team create a look and feel that is just right for your target audience.  

Next, designate someone on your team to be the official blogger. Or, you may want to choose a handful of people to blog, allowing each person to blog about their unique specialty.    

Blog Success Secrets

You see, for your blog to be successful, you will need to add regular posts, with the net’s most successful blogs showcasing new blogs every day.  

Now, no need to panic here. A blog post only need be a few short paragraphs, written in a conversational tone (but this certainly doesn’t mean that typos or misspellings are acceptable, after all the blog represents your business).  

To keep it fresh, you may want to choose several people or, if you want to get to know your clientele better, start the process by doing all of your own posts. Once you get into the habit of doing this, you will find that it takes jut 15-30 minutes a day, and your return on this short time investment will be mind-boggling at best.    

Adding Keywords and Links

Last but not least, use keywords and catch-phrases that you think your target audience will type into the search engines when looking for your services and products and include links to your company’s website’s pages whenever possible. This will catapult your blog to new heights in the search engine returns, making sure customers throughout Australia and beyond can find you in a flash.          


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