What a Blog is
A blog is a section on your site. It can look just like your other pages. It has special features that other pages don’t usually have.

A blog is made up of individual “posts” which are short pieces on a topic with or without photos.

A blog can include all the normal blog features or just a few.

The most common are:

  • Categories list (very important)
  • Dates when posted (not always necessary)
  • Author of post (sometimes good if you get others to give you content to use)
  • Comment areas (a form on the site page which others can use)
  • Archived posts (older posts)
  • Posts by category (ability to only see these posts)

Why it is important to have a blog on a site
Some sites have a blog that comes from an outside service, such as Google’s free Blogger. Even though there are ways to make it look like it is on your site, it is actually on another server than where your site files live with your domain name.

Some Content Management Systems have built-in blogs. This means the blog is on the same server where your own site resides. When you have this set up, having a blog can be very beneficial.

A blog can increase your Search Engine Optimization by bringing traffic to your site. It can:

  • Easily add pages to your site
  • Allow you to add key terms, words and phrases to your site
  • Allow you to write about your field as an expert in it
  • Potentially get you followers
  • Have continuous activity on your site

In order to make this work, you will need to:

  • Post blog pieces as often as possible, no less than every two weeks, but it would be better once a week.
  • Write coherent pieces that do not need to be any bigger than 250-500 words.*
  • Write about your field in general, not just about your business.

Best strategy to write for your blog:

  • Write 3-5 posts at a time
  • Pick different dates in the blog system form to publish these posts. For instance, on one day you could write 5 short pieces that set up to publish over the next 2 weeks.
  • You can have posts about your latest endeavors in your business with or without photos.
  • You can have posts about others in your business. If so, best to make it businesses which are not in direct competition with you in the same geographical area.
  • Post from your mobile: You could be out and about somewhere and, if it makes sense for your business, post a photo with a short caption.

*To get a word count in MsWord:

  1. Put your words in a blank doc, make sure there are not returns above or below your words.
  2. Go to Tools>Word count
  3. Window pops up and shows you word and character count.

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