Biz Blogging Best Practices by Gather Your Crowd

Cassandra Rae & Cherie Del Carlo

Hi there ~

I am at Chrystal Bougon’s Lunch & Learn on How to Bring More Bliss to Your Blog featuring the fabulous ladies of Gather Your Crowd.  Woohoo!

Congratulations to Carla who just welcomed her second baby into her family.  We miss you and totally understand that your place is at home for today.  That’s so cool how we got to Skype you in for the presentation.  You are one dedicated lady!

Here are my notes from the presentation:

Social media is word of mouth on steroids!

What’s in a brand?

1. Your name
2. Your identity
3. Engage with peeps

Cherie showed us her infographic, which is a really big picture that shows all of their on-line presences and how they tie together.  It’s really cool to see on one page with your entire on-line plan is.  Your overall social media plan can feel overwhelming, but to narrow it down to one page makes it feel so manageable.

Carry your brand across all profiles {i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.} so graphically they look the same

Why should you blog?

• Share your passion – the web is dying for original content!
• Let yourself shine!
• Connect with people
• Marketing through relationships

You do not have to be an excellent writer.  As long as you’re funny, you can blog!

Your blog posts do not have to be long.  A good length for a blog post is 500 words.

You can also use your blog for:

• Microblogging like Twitter
• Share videos
• Post Photos

Search Engine Optimization tips:

1. Buy your domain for 2 years or more
2. Add privacy policy/terms of use
3. Use target key words in your title, url, filenames
4. Sprinkle in your key words in your articles {like 5 or 6}
5. Use good meta-tags {high level description of your blog that you drop in behind the scenes}
6. Post frequently
7. Hyperlink to other sites when you blog about them
8. Use tags
9. Use reputable host provider for fast page upload

Give people the incentive to take action.

To keep you organized create a graph that includes:

• All the places you exist on-line
• Schedule of publishing
• Takes on your topic

Think like your reader.  2 questions to answer:

1. Who do you want to read your blog?
2. Who’s reading your blog?

Set up an RSS feed reader and watch blogs you like.  Blog a response to someone else’s blog post and include a link to it to inspire the connection.

Acknowledge peeps who comment on your blog!

Create a mission statement for your blog.  What is your mantra? How does it tie in to your personality?

Schedule your blog post for high peak hours.  Don’t post on Friday night at 7pm!  Weekday mornings in between 7am and 9am are very popular hours – everyone’s checking email :~)  If you’re writing at a non-peak hour, then schedule it to publish during a high peak hour.

Your categories should show what your blog/business is about.

Syndicate your blog posts.  One wordpress plugin Gather Your Crowd likes is “links alpha”.  Keep in mind that every platform is different with different crowds.  Use them accordingly.  When posting on Twitter and deciding whether to push it through to Facebook, then ask yourself, “Does this make sense on Facebook?”  My favorite way to syndicate blog posts to Facebook is the app Networked Blogs.  *LOVE IT*

People want to connect, help out, and win stuff.  Woohoo!  Run a contest to encourage virality.  Virality is not a science.  It’s an art.

There’s a human side to your backlinks – create meaningful relationships through thoughtful comments :~)

Listen to your peeps.  What are they saying about you? Answer! Answer! Answer!

There’s no such thing as bad PR.

Clyde Learner with ITComputing just told me about WPTouch – a plugin that changes the view for peeps checking out your blog on an iPhone.  He also told me about bit.ly and how you can monitor how many peeps are clicking through your links.  You can also share your link straight to Twitter.  Suh-weet!

Gather Your Crowd can help you build a custom Facebook landing page.  Woohoo!  This is so important to do, folks.  And Facebook does not make it easy.  Hire Gather Your Crowd to do it for you.

Welp, that’s it from today’s presentation.  Leave me a comment to let me know your favorite tip or share a new one with all of us.

Rock it out, Peeps ~
Cassandra

Coach Cassandra Rae, founder & life coach
SimplyFearless.com
408.730.5546

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