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For the last couple of years, blogging has been all the rage online. But did you know that a blog is just a type of website that is updated periodically, with the most recent content on the top of the page? There is nothing particularly complicated or technical about a blog. The term blog is actually short for web-log, meaning an online journal or “log”. According to Technorati, there were approximately 112 million blogs in 2007, up from about 4.8 million in 2004. That means blogging has grown exponentially in the last several years, and there are probably at least 150 million blogs by now. I’m not sure anyone is really counting anymore… They’re everywhere! It’s important to realize that a blog can be formatted to look like a traditional website. So, if a journal format does not make sense for your small business, don’t worry, on any good blogging platform such as Wordpress, you can quite easily change the appearance and layout of your blog. Blogs have several key advantages over regular websites, when it comes to effectiveness for your business. First, blogs are very easy to update and add fresh content to, and since Google and other search engines will rank you higher if you have fresh content, using a blog will get you ranked higher! Second, the search engines believe that blogs generally have more interesting, specific, and timely information on a given topic, so they rank them higher for this reason too. Blogs also are typically written in conversational tone, which means you don’t have to spend a lot of time polishing your content… you can just talk to your audience freely. So, with blogs, they are set up in such a way as to save you the business owner or writer a lot of time, and the entire concept of blogging encourages the writer to be more conversational, and therefore more efficient, in creating content for the Internet. And finally, there are many great, free blogging platforms out there, meaning that you do not have to spend a bunch of money on web design to have a great online presence! 1. To create a blog for your business, you will first need to register a domain name with a registrar and get hosting for your site. You can do this at a site like GoDaddy. 2. Next, choose a free blogging platform like Wordpress or Blogger. I have had great success with the Wordpress platform and can recommend it from personal experience. Make sure you use the ORG version of Wordpress, not the COM version. They are both free, but the ORG version is much more robust and flexible. Whichever platform you choose, it is the framework that your blog will be created on. 3. Now you’ll want to download the files from Wordpress (there are super easy instructions on the Wordpress website about how to do this). Then, take these same files and upload them into your hosting account at GoDaddy, Host Gator, or wherever you have your site hosted. And, if you get stuck on this, GoDaddy’s staff will help you for free – just give their customer service number a call! 4. You can then make any kind of personalized changes that you’d like, including choosing and installing a theme for your blog. For Wordpress, there are tons of great looking and free themes out there if you just Google the term “Wordpress theme”. Also, if you are willing to pay in the neighborhood of $20 or $30 for a particularly nice theme, you can find some great ones at sites like ThemeForest and iThemes. If you’re new to blogging, make sure you download a theme that has some instructions from the theme author. Ideally, they would even provide a support forum or an email address where you can ask questions if you get stuck. Most of the premium themes that you might pay $20 or $30 for have such a service, so you should be in good hands. 5. To make your first blog post, you will want to go to YOURDOMAINNAME/wp-admin (on Wordpress). This will take you to the page called “Dashboard” where you can log in and do anything you want to your blog. This is where you will create new pages, add new blog posts, add new features like calendars or opt in boxes for collecting email addresses, adding photos or videos, and an incredible number and variety of other possible features. On the left side of the Dashboard, under “Posts”, click on “Add New” and you can enter in a title and content for your first post! When you are ready to start flexing your blogging muscles and really tweaking your theme to specifically fit your business or purpose, keep in mind that you can search Google and YouTube for text and video answers to most of your questions. So many people are blogging now that I have found literally all possible questions I have asked have already been answered by someone in either a support forum or a YouTube video. This in and of itself is reason enough to use a popular platform like Wordpress. You’ll never be without support, and it’s free! That’s it, you have now set up a blog and made your first post. With great free tools like Wordpress, it really couldn’t be easier to have a professional online presence that is always updated with fresh content, and therefore very attractive and visible to the search engines like Google.
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