This presentation provides the basics for starting a blog, marketing a blog and using Wordpress. Brought to you by the founder of JerseyBites.com, a collaborative Food Blog in New Jersey. If you would like to use this presentation please contact me for permission.

1. BLOGGING
FOR
BUSINESS
PRESENTED BY DEBORAH SMITH
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2. AGENDA
What is a Blog?
Why Blog?
Types of Blogs?
Getting Started
10 Tips for a Successful Blog
Capturing Subscribers
Wordpress
Creating and Editing Your Blog
Wordpress Features and Favorite Tools
Your Roadmap
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3. WHAT IS A BLOG?
A Blog is a Website where You control the content
You Create the Content (written or video)
You Publish the Content to the Internet
Vocab: A Blog is the Website as a whole. Individual articles
are called “Posts.”
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4. WHY BLOG?
Attract leads, prospects, and opportunity without
actively selling
Gain Access to influential people in your industry
Connect and gain the trust of prospects and
customers
Gain tremendous ground in the search engines
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5. TYPES OF BLOGS
Business Blogs
• Blogs to help promote the
business that owns them
Special Interest Blogs
• Mom Blogs
• Food Blogs
• Crafting Blogs
• Blogging Blogs
• Political Blogs
Many Special Interest Blogs are
evolving into Entrepreneurial
ventures.
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6. JERSEY BITES
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7. GETTING
STARTED
GC + OP – MM = GROWTH
Great Content + Other People – Marketing Messages = Growth
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8. TIPS FOR DEVELOPING A
SUCCESSFUL BLOG
Define Your Vision
Identify Your People
Purchase a Dot Com
Visit Other Blogs
Pick a Niche
Remember the Search Engines
Mix it Up
Learn to Write
Photos are Key
Be Consistent
Track Your Progress
Get Out There
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9. DEFINE YOUR BLOG’S
VISION
What do you want to achieve?
Why do you want it? What are your underlying
motivations?
Can Others rally around your vision?
What perceived problems are you addressing?
What are you lacking today?
What can keep you from accomplishing your
vision?
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10. IDENTIFY YOUR PEOPLE
Who do you know that
can help you with
content?
What other bloggers are
influencers in your
industry?
What can you offer
industry influencers to
get them involved?
These Lists Will Grow and Evolve Over Time as Your Learn More and Meet
More People.
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11. PURCHASE A DOT.COM
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12. VISIT OTHER BLOGS: WHAT
ARE THEY DOING RIGHT,
WRONG? LEARN FROM THEM
Casual fonts and
the informal
language they use
to spotlight the
features on the
site.
More “people-
speak” than
“marketing-speak”
Fun attention
getting photos
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13. PICK A NICHE
Weave in a theme throughout your blog. Go deeper by
allowing your audience to see what’s behind the curtain.
Behind-the-scenes stories and footage invite the reader in
even more and will help you create content that stays true to
your theme.
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14. TITLE YOUR POSTS FOR
THE SEARCH ENGINES
Your Post Titles play a big
part in how the search
engines rank your posts.
Clever post titles may be
clever, but they won’t get
you anywhere on Google.
Use Google’s Keyword tool
to discover what people
are searching for and
name your posts with these
keywords in mind.
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15. LEARN TO WRITE
To be a good writer, you must be an even better editor.
Less is more when it comes to effective blogging.
Always take a second look for spelling and grammatical errors.
Enlist a family member or friend who is a good proof reader.
Blogging is conversational.
Your first paragraph needs to be compelling enough to get them to
continue reading.
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16. MIX IT UP
Content Ideas
Top 5 – 10 Lists
“Best of” lists
Seasonal
suggestions
Contests
Book Reviews
Interviews
Product Reviews
Multi part series
Video
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17. PHOTOS / IMAGES ARE KEY
Photos on a blog are essential when you want to create a
feeling or experience for your readers.
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18. BE CONSISTENT
Pick a Day or Days for Your Blog Posts and Be Consistent
You readers will know when to expect an update from you and the
search engines will start to trust your blog. Your blog will gain
authority and your posts will start to rank higher and higher in the
search engines.
Create a Theme Day
• Tasty Tuesday
• Win it Wednesday
• Motivational Monday
• Foodie Things to Do Weekend Roundup
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19. GET OUT THERE
Trade Links with Other Bloggers
Guest Post on other Blogs
Pick a Charity or Organization You
Can Partner With
Become a Monthly Contributor for a
Trade Publication
Share Each Blog Post on Your
Facebook Page, Twitter & LinkedIn
Tip: Make content sharing on your site
as easy as possible for your readers. If
they have to look around for the share
features, they’ll likely skip sharing
altogether.
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20. TRACK YOUR
PROGRESS
Install Google Analytics on your blog and study what
works.
What are your most popular blog posts?
What Keywords are people using that end up in
visits?
What days of the week are you getting the most
traffic?
If Monday is a popular day on your blog, be sure to
have something noteworthy and hopefully “social
bookmark”- worthy posted every Monday.
If a particular topic gets more attention, shares, hits,
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come up with more articles on the topic.

21. CAPTURE
SUBSCRIBERS
Can you offer a white paper or
some other valuable
information in exchange for
Name and Email Addresses?
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22. BLOG SEARCH
ENGINES
Register Your Blog on:
Bloglines
BlogScope
Technorati: the most popular blog
search engines, provides current
information on both popular
searches and tags used to
categorize blog postings.
Blogging Communities
BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog
Category Specific Blog
Communities:
Foodbuzz
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23. SYNDICATION
RSS: www.JerseyBites.com/feed
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24. 24

25. BLOGGING PLATFORMS
Wordpress
Joomla
Blogspot (blogger)
Drupal
Typepad
Tumblr
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26. WORDPRESS.COM BENEFITS
It’s free and much easier to setup
Everything is taken care of: setup, upgrades, spam, backups, security, etc.
Your blog is on hundreds of servers, so it’s highly unlikely it will go down due
to traffic
Your posts are backed up automatically
You get extra traffic from blogs of the day and tags
Your login is secure (SSL) so no one can get into your account if you use wifi
WordPress.com Cons
They provide 100+ themes (and adding more every day) which you can modify
and edit the CSS, but you cannot run a custom theme
You can’t hack the PHP code behind your blog*
You can’t upload plugins
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27. WORDPRESS.ORG BENEFITS
Ability to customize themes
Ability to upload plugins
Complete control to change code if you’re technically minded
WordPress.org Cons
You need a good web host, which generally costs $7-12 a month
Requires more technical knowledge to set up and run
You’re responsible for stopping spam
You have to handle backups
You must upgrade the software manually when a new version comes
out
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28. PLUGINS ARE POWERFUL
Wordpress plugins can make your blog function in some
pretty cool ways.
Some of the Plugins I use:
• Wp-reCAPTCHA
• Log In Lock Down
• All in One SEO Pack
• Embed Iframe
• Evermore
• Google XML Sitemap
• Linked Within
• Print Friendly and PDF
• Share This
• Wordpress Database Backup
• Wordpress Google Calendar
• WPtouch Pro
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29. LINKED WITHIN
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30. ON THE PAGE Contact Form
Email
Multiple Subscription
Pages
Google
Calendar
Product
for Sale
LinkedIn &
Twitter
Widget
Search Box
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31. THE WORDPRESS DASHBOARD
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32. CREATING A POST
Save, Preview, Publish
Title Your
Post
Insert
Image
Text Body
Select or
Create
Categories
Assign Tags
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33. CATEGORIES
Add
categories
and sub-
categories
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34. TAGS
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35. WIDGETS
Drag and Drop Widgets
to Sidebar
Text Widget
Allows you to
add HTML
Snippets
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36. COMMENTS
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37. IMPORT YOUR BLOG
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38. URL’S THAT ARE
SEARCH FRIENDLY
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39. MONETIZING YOUR
BLOG
Adding a Service
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40. Branch Out
Banner Advertising
Sponsored Content
Sponsored Giveaways
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41. RECOMMENDED TOOLS
Wordpress.com with several plugins
Feedblitz.com: Email Subscription for Blogs
Aweber.com: Email Service Provider
PrintFriendly: Plugin allows for “print friendly” version of
post
Twitter: Great for Sharing Blog Content
Facebook: Great for Sharing Blog Content
Google Analytics: Study What is Working, What Keyword are
bringing you visitors, and more
Flickr: Store photos on Flickr for uploading to WP
Picasa: Edit photos to make them look their best
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42. AVOIDING NEWBIE MISTAKES
Auto-loading Music
Don’t Get Hacked and Be Sure to Backup
Regularly
No Dark backgrounds with Light text
Say No to too much sidebar clutter
Accidental plagiarism (even with photos)
• U.S. Copyright Office bluntly says:
“Acknowledging the source of the
copyrighted material does not substitute for
obtaining permission.”
Using “click here” instead of keyword
phrases for links.
Source: http://www.bloggingbasics101.com
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43. YOUR ROADMAP
1. Purchase and Read Launch by Michael Stelzner
2. Research Other Blogs in Your Industry
3. Map out Your Vision
4. Identify The People Who Can Assist
5. Create a Content Calendar
6. Create a List of Plugins or Widgets
7. Develop a Design Concept
8. Have Blog Developed and Uploaded to Web Host
9. Start Blogging and syndicating to Social Accounts
And Remember the Three P’s of Blogging
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Passion, Persistence, and Patience

44. QUESTIONS?
Deborah Smith, Social Media Consulting
Foxtrot Media, LLC.
info@DeborahLSmith.com
Reach me @ Twitter.com/JerseyBites or @DeborahLSmith
Facebook.com/SocialMedia4Business
LinkedIn.com/in/DeborahLeeSmith
www.DeborahLSmith.com
www.JerseyBites.com
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