How do I create original content for all the pages on my website?

You mean I have to come up with my OWN content?

How many words do you want me to have on every page?

What am I supposed to write about?

How often should I blog?

Articles & Press Releases – I have to write those TOO?

Have you ever heard (or asked) these questions?

If you say no, YOU’RE LYING!

We’ve all ask at least one of these questions in our life of online marketing. These simple questions are often the symptom of a deeper disease: Writer’s Block.

Writers block is defined as “a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work.”

So what is your cure?

How do you come up with new content, creative ideas, and keyword-rich link-bait that will spread to the masses?

If you’ve been writing long enough, you’ll know that there really is no such thing as “original content”. If you’re new to the online marketing scene, let this be the first lesson – you DON’T have to create brand new ideas to be successful.

The Key Question:

Where then do we turn for ideas that work, ideas that move, ideas that persuade?

Brian Clark and team give the simple answer:

In short, we steal them.

The moment you free yourself from The Cult of Originality, you realize that “original” ideas do not come from within.

They are given to us, from without.

A writer should not look inside, but outside, at external sources, stories, events, and emotions.

“But where do I look?” you might ask.

Here’s a quick list:

• Product manuals
• literature
• interviews
• talk radio
• magazines
• newspapers
• television
• Twitter
• Google Trends
• movies
• Wikipedia
• and on and on and on

And here’s a quick step-by-step video:

VIDEO: How I Use StumbleUpon to Overcome Writer’s Block

The 6 Step Process To Avoid Writer’s Block with StumbleUpon

Step 1: Set up a StumbleUpon Account

Step 2: Add the StumbleUpon Toolbar to Your Firefox Brower

Step 3: Adjust Your Settings to Specific Topics

Step 4: Start Stumbling!

Step 5: Bookmark Specific Articles That You Can Re-Write

Step 6: Repeat This Process Whenever You Feel the “Writer’s Block Bug” Coming On

Have you ever used StumbleUpon in this way?

What secrets are you willing to share about your endeavors to overcome writer’s block?

Nate Moller works with companies who want to improve their online marketing strategy. His company builds wordpress websites and custom website designs at affordable prices. He’s worked with thousands of clients who see value in online marketing strategy and execution. Follow Nate on Twitter and become a fan of Moller Marketing on Facebook!

In fact, it was actually filmed in 2009; but the content is STILL applicable today.

I’ve worked with way too many clients lately who are determined to keep their blogspot blog even though they want me to build them a custom WordPress Website. In addition to that, they want to make sure their site gets to the top of Google right away.

Without being brutally honest with them and telling them they’re idiots, I decided to research out logical answers from others (and not just my own opinion).

Matt Cutts gives some great tips to help your website get crawled by Google.

What Matt Cutts said about WordPress Blogs

Most people want something from their blog…

The number one request I hear is ‘I want to do better in Google…’

WordPress automatically solves a ton of SEO issues. Instead of doing it yourself, you selected WordPress.

You’d be amazed at how many sites throw up a big blob of flash…

The beauty of WordPress is you don’t need to do a lot of stuff.

I use WordPress rather than Blogger, so I’m not going to say Google is the top, always use Google…

Are you interested in what Matt has to say about Google Page Rank? Here’s some of the key points:

What is Page Rank?

Page Rank: The number of people that link to you and how important those links are.

Page Rank is not just about getting as many links as you can; it’s about how important your links are – quality links.

Think about Page Rank at a very high level.

Matt also talks about content creation and keyword usage:

What Should You Write About?

If you don’t love something, don’t write about it…

Try to write often: if you write every day, if it’s something you really care about, you’re going to get a lot of practice writing, and you’re going to write good stuff…

Keywords & Keyword Research

I’m holding in my hand something that I’ve used all over the world. If you were going to Google and type in what these things are, what would YOU type?

Turn to the person next to you and compare notes.

What did you type into Google to find this?

Think about natural ways to use these keywords when you write. There’s no need to “stuff” keywords in blog posts to make them SEO friendly.

You don’t need to bold text – readers actually hate this.

My Conclusion

If you took the time to watch the entire video with Matt, you realized that he reveals a lot of good content that is still applicable today when it comes to SEO and Google metrics.

Matt spells things out very clearly – if you’re blogging about family experiences, your favorite things to do on the weekends, or CATS – using a free hosted platform like Blogger is FINE.

However, if you want to be found and ranked for specific keyword phrases, if you’re a business that wants to have credibility – a HOSTED WORDPRESS account is the way to go – PERIOD.

What are your thoughts on Blogger.com, WordPress.com, Typepad.com, and other free blogging platforms?

Nate Moller works with businesses who want to improve their online business. For over five years, he’s worked with thousands of companies who are looking for answers in their online marketing journey. Follow Nate on Twitter and become a fan of Moller Marketing on Facebook!

I want to make millions blogging, wait BILLIONS!

Have you ever heard that statement?

Apparently, there are lots of people looking for ways to “make money online” – just look at the keyword research on the Google Keyword Tool results:

1,220,000 searches per month on average for the specific phrase “make money online” (and look at all the other long-tail phrases too).

Now THAT’S a niche worth pursuing, don’t you think? Ha!

I’ve worked with thousands of clients over the last five years helping them start an online business.

Of course, they all want to make money online; however, the ones that really do it follow this simple advice about success:

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. – Henry David Thoreau

But what does that really mean?

It means GET OFF YOUR BUTT and START WORKING!

Making Money Online Interview

From time to time I like to interview people that I respect, people that are in the process right now of making money online – some of them TONS of it.

I did a quick chat/email/twitter interview with some of my contacts the other day and ask this simple question:

If there was one thing you could tell a person who wants to “make money online” – what would it be?

Thanks to all the people in advance for their simple, direct, and straight forward answers.

Here’s the list of people who answered so you can browse conveniently:

• Darren Rowse
• Aaron Wall
• Ann Smarty
• Muhammad Saleem
• Mat Siltala
• Joanna Lord
• Alysson Fergison -
• Alan Bleiweiss
• Janet Meiners
• Ash Buckles
• Russ Page
• Collin Kartchner

Darren Rowse: take a long term view of it

most of the misconceptions and disappointment that I see have to do with unrealistic expectations

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Aaron Wall: I think focusing on those 3 words (and the mentality of them) will lead one to shark infested waters, where people who are willing to lie to them to make a buck will sell any dream they are dumb enough to buy, but without any intent to deliver on the promises in the sales letters.

Rather than looking for a universal or easy way to make money, a far better strategy is to look into ones own experiences and passions and see if there are any ways to leverage them to make the associated markets smoother. Focus on adding value and then some of the business stuff should fall into place. IMHO

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Ann Smarty: Work hard? Seriously I think you can achieve anything by simply taking effort. All you need is to know what you need and the desire to get it…

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Muhammad Saleem: What you’re passionate about isn’t necessarily profitable. Yes, it’s something nice we all say and we like to believe but it is simply not true, I learned that the hard way. Certain platforms for expression and certain verticals within those are profitable and others simply aren’t. Be passionate but be realistic…I thought some honesty would be good for a change, haha

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Mat Siltala: Find a un-exploited niche and be the authority on it through a blog. Focus on gaining readers and trust first.

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Joanna Lord: make sure you love the topic…you cant work your ass off at something that you grow bored of. money follows passion.

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Alysson Fergison: Don’t believe any claims of a “turnkey solution”. Making money online is no easier than making money offline & it often takes more work…time & dedication than any traditional job outside the home. Being able to work in your PJs at 3:00 am if you so choose is a nice perk.

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Alan Bleiweiss: follow your passion and your intuition. be willing to accept the emotional roller coaster. believe in the possible. yet just as important as all the rest, understand it takes dedication and near obsessive focus.

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Shana Albert: Get ready to work harder than you ever had before. Surround urself with ppl that have been there and succeeded…. learn what worked 4 them

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Janet Meiners: that, like anything else it’s a lot of consistent work & that most don’t make enough to quit their day jobs – they are just the ones you hear about… it’s totally realistic to make money online though (you should ask my friend Sheri who’d gone from 2500 a month to over $5k a month as of Dec & now I bet it’s $8k a month)

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Ash Buckles: Never believe what you read. Test everything. And don’t rely on any one product/vendor/offering.

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Russ Page: Make sales. The most important thing you do before you invest hours and hours of time into marketing, design or copy, etc… is to make sure someone is willing to buy what you’re selling.

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Collin Kartchner: “Get in line, pal.”

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Conclusion

• You can make money online.
• It can be A LOT of money.
• It will take time to develop in most cases.
• It can be helpful to know the right people.
• Doing something you’re passionate about is helpful, but may not be the most profitable thing.
• “Turn-keys” and “Get-rich-quicks” are CRAP at best!
• Be ready to work hard!

Thanks to all those who participated in this interview. Your responses are greatly appreciated.

To me, the bottom line answer to making money online is simple:

Be ready to work, find something you’re interested in, and start making connections.

How are you making money online?

Nate Moller has been teaching clients how to start an online business for over five years. He’s worked with thousands of clients who are at “square one” of their online marketing journey and helped them see six figure results with their businesses online. Follow Nate on Twitter and stay tune for his free ebook about Building on Professional Website in One Hour or Less!

Or, hire someone to do this for you (see the end for my recommendation).

25 Ways to Get a Web Site or Blog Indexed by Google or Search Engines

1. Get a link from an established blog. You could email and ask a related blog or hit up your blogging friends. Some pay for this (although it’s frowned upon). Another way to do this legally is to offer to guest post on someone’s blog and link back to your site or blog with a keyword phrase.
2. Tell Google about your blog.
3. Tell Google blog search too.
4. Add your site to Google Webmaster Central
5. Add your blog to Yahoo Site Explorer
6. Create a lens about your blog on Squidoo. You can create more than one lens, one for each major keyword phrase.
7. Create an account on this blog community: MyBlogLog
8. BlogCatalog
9. Blogged
10. NetworkedBlogs
11. Get listed on blog search engine Technorati.
12. Register with sites that give the “value” of your blog: WebsiteOutlook,
13. StatBrain,
14. CubeStat,
15. WebTrafficAgents,
16. BuiltWith,
17. WhoIs,
18. QuarkBase,
19. URLfan
20. AboutTheDomain
21. Create a profile for your blog on social sites like Twitter. Some let you establish a profile and a custom link – use keyword phrases.
22. Get on Facebook then go to www.facebook.com/usernames and create a custom username for your site or blog. You can feed your blog onto your Facebook page. Do this on LinkedIn too.
23. Delicious will not only let you bookmark and share sites but again you can create a profile and custom URL. Plus you can link to your blog.
24. Sign up ChangeDetectionthat logs when your site changes (and essentially creates new content about your site).
25. Sites like pingler ping search engines when you change your blog.

I just found out that if you’re an author and your book is on Amazon.com you can create an author profile page where you can blog or feed your blog in automatically. The link goes to my author page.

This outsourcing company in India charges $6/hour. I sent them this list to market my new blog. CDBaby’s CEO used them all the time and had nothing but good to say about them! They have quite a selection of services.

I’d love to do a case study with a new blog – one that I did nothing and one that I followed these 25 tips. Then compare the numbers. Any volunteers?

Please share your tips for getting a new site or blog indexed in search engines.

“How do you keep blog comments from being considered as spam?”

For me its simple:  Figure out a way to add value to the conversation. You don’t always have to agree with the peoples points in which you are leaving comment on, and most of the time disagreeing gets the best discussions going.  Even if you think it was a GREAT ARTICLE, or you think they have a NICE SITE … don’t just leave the comment: “great article” or “nice site” and then link to your site.  You will get the BIG ASS delete button every time! I am even willing to overlook someone dropping keyword links into the name field if they have left, or added something of value to the conversation.  Tell me WHY it was a great article, or tell me exactly HOW it helped you out.

Here are some easy (I think) to understand tips for adding value to a conversation on a blog post, as well as ways to NOT look like comment spam:

1. Don’t just comment for link building purposes.
2. Don’t comment just because you think you will get “traffic” from the site.
3. Add value to the conversation by sharing YOUR thoughts an opinions of the subject.
4. Don’t just drop keyword links in your name.
5. Use your real name.
6. Make sure and READ the post (the entire post) and UNDERSTAND it BEFORE commenting.
7. You don’t always have to agree.
8. Read all the comments, get a feel for the direction and reply to other commenters as well.
9. Be yourself.
10. If you are going to drop a link, drop a relevant link that (again) adds to the conversation.
11. GO get a damn Gravtar already!

There, that was a long winded answer, but hopefully that answers the question to the person who asked it, as well as gives some others out there who may have needed some help on the matter!  The sad thing though, is as I write this – I know some of you smarties out there are going to leave the comment: “nice article” Just don’t expect your comment to show up!

My Question was:  “Should businesses have a blog?  Why or why not?”

Using Twitter To Research Blogging

Here is the general summary of the Twitter answers above, and I will expand on each one.

1. A platform to be the expert – This is your industry, you have the opportunity to set the bar high. With a little research on places like Twitter, Yahoo Answers and other questions and answer websites, you can figure out what questions people are asking about your industry and provide them with (your) industry standard answers and insights. This is one of the best ways to add much needed content to your site, provide value, and become an expert online in your field. By the way, creating blog posts with this kind of information is one of the best ways to start blogging for those of you who are afraid to get your feet wet.
2. Give your company a personality – Be yourself. If you can come across as an individual who cares, rather then a corporation pushing a product or service it will serve you much better! Let potential customers get to know the person behind the company and trust will follow.
3. Search Engine Optimization – Think about how awesome it would be if you could create a piece of content, and have it indexed and ranking on Google (or other search engines) on the same day. If your website is providing enough value, and has enough trust, this is exactly what can happen. Having a blog gives you more of an opportunity to be found for additional keywords that you normally may not be going after. It is much easier to link to good content inside of blogs too, and we know how important people linking to us is. Blogs have many built in capabilities for sharing content too, which helps with the link building.
4. Help with staying relevant – Don’t just have a blog to have a blog because everyone else is doing it. The goal of your blog should be to help you company be more relevant from an information standpoint. Because, that is what people are looking for these days – news and information from individuals, companies, etc. Your blog is also one of the best facilitators for interacting with and embracing social networks, which in turn allow people to share your content. If you are using blogging platforms like WordPress for example, there are many plugins that make sharing your content and information with others easy. That alone helps you stay relevant, people who use these platforms to find information understand that your blog is an up to date relevant source of information.

These 4 reasons in some form or another really do sum up my feelings as to why online businesses need blogs. Of course there could be more advanced additional answers that might include… push viral content , syndicate videos, etc. But we need to take baby steps, and for now you I think that if you can both understand and start to implement the above 4 things, you will be setting out on the right path!

Blogging Tip List:

1. First of all, hopefully you are writing something that is interesting and relates to your reader.  Every now and then I post something that might just be funny, or not really related to the theme of any certain blog I’m writing on, but in most cases if you are in the industry of money management and your traffic visiting your site is hitting it via words related to money management, than by all means write about that topic instead of what you had for breakfast this morning.
2. Make use of your post title space in the best way possible.  Title space is valuable when looking at a
   

   SEO Blogging Checklist

   post for search engine optimization purposes.  Include target keywords in your post title and try to keep the title on target for the post you’ll be writing to not trick or throw your reader.

3. Make sure the bulk of the content of your post is unique and that you haven’t just copied it from another blog you post on, or from one of your website pages.  You need the content to be unique and you want to make sure you have a post that is long enough at the end of it.  In most cases you want to shoot for at least 300-400 words for a post as content is king.
4. Make sure to anchor up a few of your target keywords for the post in the content of your post.  Link these words to related pages on your website in an effort to improve your internal links.
5. Insert a picture or video and title those with related keywords so you have a chance at image search related to your blog post.  Mat is going to be speaking on this topic at SMX West in just a few weeks and will cover some great tips on image search, so don’t miss his session if you are interested.
6. Try to post on a regular basis.  If you are really looking to grow your readership than you’ll want to post at least 5 times a week (Monday – Friday).  You want to keep your reader coming back to read you again and again and if you only post twice a month that probably is not going to happen.

There you have it.

Best of luck blogging!

I can’t tell you how many times last week the question – where to host a company blog? – came up in my conversations with potential clients.  Besides being free, I really don’t see what the draw is to Blogger, Typepad, WordPress or any of the free hosted blogging sites.  If you already own a website, and have hosting space somewhere, then getting a blog set up on your own server is just as free.  I use the free WordPress blogging software for all of my blogs (including this one) and love it.  You can completely customize it and make it look exactly like your existing website.

Most owners of major businesses that I have talked to just don’t understand the reasons (or benefits) for having a blog hosted on their own site, and that is why the explore the only options they have heard of.  I hope to better explain some of those reasons here with this post, and provide the insight you may need to make better corporate choices – or convince the people that may be making it harder on your to make a decision.

Get Educated

Having a blog hosted on your own server under your own domain is going to have more benefits then anything a free one could provide.  There are several reasons for this, but the main benefit you will see from a self hosted blog is the search engine love it will bring.  If you are running a blog that is faithfully updated, and sharing good information that people are actually looking for (value) then the search engines will keep coming back to your site more often to get an updated index of your entire site. You are giving them reasons to keep coming back and getting that fresh cache of your site.

Think about it this way – Lets say you have identified 10 competitors (real competitiors) that you found on Google, and you think will be hard to compete against.  Now out of those 10 competitors only 2 of them have blogs that are self-hosted (on their own domain).  The other 8 have no blogs at all, no updated content and no reason for the search engines to keep coming back to them.  If you have a blog that is regularly updated then it will be much easier to compete against those other 8.  SO by doing that you already have eliminated 80% of your competition.  That leaves you needing to do a better job at blogging and providing information then the other two that do blog.  I have also seen from most major company blogs that they are not updating very often – maybe a few times a month, and all they are posting about is boring press or official stuff that should never be on a blog.  If that is the case with these other two blogs, then it is going to be very easy to compete…

IF YOU DO IT RIGHT

If you could find a way to update your blog about 5 times a week (at the least) then you will have elimiated most of the competition and you will (in time) become a trusted source if not the most trusted source depending on your niche.  It also depends on the content you provide, and I am hoping and assuming you will be providing good content – remember my post the other day about blogging ideas for a boring industry.

The Nuts and Bolts Of It:

short version -

• bad – mynextpicnic.blogspot.com, mynextpicnic.wordpress.com
• good – mynextpicnic.com/blog

long version -

Let me spell it out for you.  If you have a site selling picnic baskets and are thinking about setting up a blog on a free blogging site, your URL will be (I am just using these as examples only) picnicbaskets.blogspot.com or picnicbaskets.wordpress.com (and so on) and any marketing you do of that blog will be providing more trust and love for the blogspot or wordpress domain – and believe me – they don’t need anymore love then they already are getting from the search engines.  If you are wanting to set it up right – Lets say your domain name is mynextpicnic.com it would be best to create a directory (not subdomain – my preference) called “blog” so it would look like this – mynextpicnic.com/blog (not blog.mynextpicnic.com) – By doing this, you are hosting the blog on your own site, and any marketing you do for you blog, or any of your content that go hot on social networks will be credited to you and not the other free hosted blogging services.  Setting up the directory is just my presonal preference, but even setting up the blog under a sub domain would do more for you then a free hosted blog somewhere else.  I have run a few of my own tests that show I can gain additional brand rankings for directories easier then additional rankings and spots for sub-domains.

More Links

With all the (blah blah blah) talk about no more buying links, you still need links to rank well, so how are you going to get more?  Here’s an idea – If you are pushing good content and stories that could go viral, and do well on social networks – you will get links.  You will get people talking about your stories, and linking to you as reference.  So – how much better for your company is it going to be if the links are pointing to YOUR domain, and NOT the free hosted blog domains?  It is going to make all the difference in world when it comes to traffic, bounce rate, return visitors, rank etc. and the most important thing here – making more sales.

Thoughts?

If you find yourself in what you think is a boring industry you need to take a step back and start thinking about your industry as a whole – everything that surrounds it.  What are people talking about inside with your industry?  What kinds of questions are they asking?  What are your personal thoughts about your industry?  You started your business so you must have some passion about it, and that is what you need to make the foundation of your blog.  Blogs need to be personal rather then all straight up professional.  You need to share your personal insights on the topics that are surrounding your industry and make people trust you as a source and want to keep coming back.

Where to find the questions that people are asking?

1. Yahoo Answers – Let me give a little rant about Yahoo Answers first – I hate the way Yahoo runs this social community or program because they ban good users, and seem to let idiots run wild.  Did you know that you could get your answered chosen as the best answer months after your account has been banned? ok – end rant -  The way Yahoo run this community is good for you to take advantage of, because you can be the one that provides good answers for the questions asked in your industry – just provide them on your blog and not Yahoo’s site!  Let me give you an example of how you could use this to find great content topics for your blog.  Lets say your industry is eye surgery, and IMO that is a pretty boring industry (in regards to finding things to blog about anyway) – Here is what you do, go to Yahoo Answers and search for “eye surgery” and you will get a huge list of questions asked – see picture:
   

   Yahoo Answers For Research

   You see from this list of results I highlighted what I feel would be great questions to answer on a blog if you are a professional.  In this “boring” industry I would rather get my information from a professional source, so if you own a lasik surgery center, and have a website – these are some amazing things you can blog about, and you are making it personal by adding your touch and professional opinion to it.  This was the first page of results of almost 9000 and you are only seeing half of the page in this image.  You can imagine how many more amazing questions you will find that you can answer on your own site now.  These are real questions that real people are asking, and would be a great start for a blog.

2. Google Blog Search – A great place to find what other people in your industry are blogging about.  So if you feel you are in a boring industry then just do a quick search on Google Blog Search and get a whole new list of post ideas.  Now for another boring industry – If you are in the quilting industry you can do a Google Blog Search for “quilting” and get this: (see picture below) over 400k of sites to go through and see what they are blogging about – and learn how you can do it better.  You got an arrow pointing at number of sites, latest blog posts (so you see current stuff) and then just the regular list of blogs that come back.  Google Blog Search is all blogs too, so if you can get some good ideas in a boring industry this way – then I don’t know how else to help ya!
3. Google Alerts – Set up a Google Alert to let you know (instantly) what people are talking about in your industry, then provide your own insights and share your personal opinions.  Lets go back to the lasik surgery industry.  If you are wanting to get all the latest and greatest ideas getting indexed from Google on the lasik surgery industry all you have to do is create some simple alerts like so:  Google will email them to you, or send them right to a feed.  This is a great way to stay on top of anything in your indsutry, and you will probably get some pretty good blog post ideas out of it as well!

Now that you have all this info:

Hopefully this gives you some better ideas for finding topics to blog about in a boring industry.  I have never been able to not find blogging ideas for people no matter how boring they think their industry is.  What I have outlined above should prove that point.  My main suggestion for getting your blog going with this new found information would be to make sure that you still are doing everything you can to make it personal and connect with your readers.  You need to let them in, and give them reasons to trust your writings – if you can accomplish that, you will be the proud author of a popular blog that people keep coming back to!

One more thing – if you have any other suggestions to add to this list, that would be great if you commented here on this post! I really love hearing from other bloggers, and learning all sorts of techniques. I know that I am not the authority on blogging, but I feel what I have shared above is a great site!

If you wanna redeem yourself, and figure out where you may have gone wrong, then keep reading.  I honestly did not want to post about this today, but after reading a post talking about only 16% of consumers trusting corporate blogs it got me thinking, and it got me a little irritated.

Why Blog?

I love blogging, and I know I am not the best at it, but in my posts, I am always trying to provide useful information that gets people to act, and engage (besides just informing).  I try to provide information that is real and can help people make choices about what they are looking for (no matter what it is).  I have other blogs that I run then just this Internet marketing blog here, I have other corporate blogs that do well.  I have had many people, on many occasions tell my sales guys that it is because of the information on the blog that they went ahead an made the purchase.  That’s all I need to hear to keep blogging.

Why Do People Fail At Blogging?

I think the reason that only 16% of people trust corporate blogs is because only a small percentage of corporate blogs are doing it correctly.  I have spoken to many of these corporate types that have told me they tried blogging, but it just didn’t work for them.  I try to dig a little deeper to find out what they were really doing with the blog, and come up with a reason why I think it failed.  Most of the time these big corporate types (IMO) have no clue about social media, and the only thing they have heard about related to social media is that MySpace is a place where child molesters hang out.

I find out that they used their blog as a place to share the company press releases, official statements or policies, and looked at me with a clueless stare when I asked them if their blog was optimized for social media.  All of this equals a fail in my book, especially when they have given up on their corporate blog that hey have been running for only two months, and have a total of 4-6 posts.  That will never cut it my friends.

One of my buddies, Nate Moller from Moller Marketing, who teaches people how to start an online business, recently had the chance to interview Shoemoney (a huge name in the blogging community) and asked him if people running a corporate blog should be personal or professional (ie; press, official news etc) and he said they should 100% be personal and leave all the press release BS out.  People don’t know how to connect with sites that aren’t personal, and that don’t provide real information that can help them make decisions, and act.

Tips for Running A Successful Corporate Blog:

1. Be personal – This is the most important step, and without doing this – everything else you do on your blog will be a failure.  Let your readers get to know you, and the people behind the company.  They want to trust you, so help them trust.  The most trustworthy online referral method is getting an email from people you know, 77% in fact – so this should be an eye opener how important trusting an individual is, and the only way you will gain trust is by being personal.
2. Know your target audience - Don’t create a blog thinking you are going to appeal to everyone in the world.  Understand what your industry and niche is, and write for those people and not the masses.  If you keep your writing niche specific and direct to your audience, your blog will experience HUGE success.
3. Provide useful information that gives people reason to act – If you are just throwing up posts because you know Google likes content, then again you have just failed.  If you are paying to things like your web analytics, then you know what people are looking for, and this can give you a better idea of what to blog about.  If you go and look at any article site, or Yahoo Answers (as example) you will see the questions that real consumers are asking.  All you need to do is to be the one that provides that information.
4. Be honest – If you are sharing testimonials, and reviews then make sure they are real and from real people who have used your services.  My father-in-law bought something from one of my websites a while ago and the question he made to me was; “Are all those testimonials real?”  He thought they were, and felt good about my business, but he stated that most he reads seem made up and fake.  I think people can usually sniff that kind of stuff out.
5. Speak whats on your mind - Be open with your readers.  You are never going to make 100% of the people happy 100% of the time, and you just have to learn to deal with that.  Many of my greatest posts that got the most people linking to them, brought the most traffic, and the ones that rank the best are those that had a little controversy associated with them.  You also need to learn to grow thick skin, especially if you start writing stuff that is good enough and worthy to show up on the bigger social networks like Digg.  NO matter what, there will always be someone that wants to argue with you, they get off on that, so just get ready and don’t let it effect you!
6. Be consistent – You are not going to be able to gain readers, or trust if you are not constantly giving people reasons to come back to your blog and read more.  If you are posting everyday, and people know they can come back to you for reliable, useful information, and that you will have new posts, then that is a GOOD thing, and you have not failed.  When you do it for this reason, it has a positive effect with the search engines.  If they have reasons to keep coming back to your content everyday because you are adding, and they want to make sure they have the latest index of your site, that too is a GOOD thing.  Just make sure you are doing it for the right reasons.
7. Give them information they can act on – If you know what people are looking for in your industry, and you provide them that exact information they are looking for, then give them options based on what you offer, they will act on those options.  They are already invested on your site (and hopefully trust you by now) and will more then likely purchase from you once all their research is done.
8. Be real - You can have fun with your posts, and provide information while making people smile.  All of your posts don’t have to be exactly related to your site and business.  Once you figure out the balance, this will boost your blogs credibility times ten!

In conclusion

There are many other things that could be on this list, but I feel these are the most important for now.  Remember, I did not intend on writing this post, I just felt like I needed to (for my sake).  Don’t be a two post chump and give up on your corporate blog that easily.  There is power in blogging and getting the right information in front of the right people.

Bloggers need to start thinking differently if they want to be noticed.  I don’t have any problem with link bait (I preach it), and doing what you can to be picked up by sites like Digg, but blogging, and having a corporate blog goes far beyond the hopes of one of your stories making the FP of Digg.  Think about your customers, and what kind of information they are looking for.  If you can be the blog that provides them with what they are looking for, and gain their trust – it will be a great day for you, and your company!