Blogger's Block

One of the biggest causes of business owners neglecting to blog about their business is not knowing what to write about. Coming up with the subject matter is behind a lot of blogger's block. So what are some guidelines for topics for businesses to blog about?

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1. What's new? Do you have a new product, new sales manager, a new location? How about a new service you are offering your customers? Finally, you can offer a new price if you can't think of anything else new about your business.
2. How is your business unique? What do you offer that is different from the competition?
3. Write an article that uses your most important product or service as the “keyword” that appears in the title and is repeated in the first sentence. Do you sell sofas? Make sure that the word sofa appears in the title of your blog and first sentence of your blog, but also include synonyms such as furniture, couch, chairs, seating, etc.
4. What is happening in the news that has a tie-in with your product or service? Do you sell the iPhone 6? Apple's profits from the phone are in the headlines, so why shouldn't your business get some attention as well?

   

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5. What do your customers want or need, and how does your product or service fill their requirements?
6. Are there changes in your industry that could directly effect the decisions of your potential customers? If a rise in the interest rates would rule out the possibility of a client buying a property, wouldn't it be to the client's benefit to buy before the rate change goes into effect?

Communicating with your customers doesn't just have to be about writing. New photography or videos of your product or service may communicate better and faster than any article you could write. Make sure your visuals are amazing, and compel your clients to make a purchase.

Choosing a SEO title for your blog or website

Choosing a title for your blog or website to help your SEO

The first ten words that a search engine reads about your blog or website are in the title. The title appears on the tab of the browser window when your website page or blog page opens.

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It is not the same thing as the headline, which should appear at the top of your article in large bold letters, because you have applied the html command <h1> to your headline, which lets the search engine know that it, is a headline and the second most important words on your page.

<h1>Your Headline Should Be Tagged with a h1 tag</h1>

I have seen lots of beautiful websites and blogs, designed by skilled and gifted graphic designers, who have titled their blog or home page “home” “untitled” or “home page”.  Search engines pay more attention to the 5-10 words in the title than all the other words in the entire website or blog. What a waste to not bother to tell the search engine what topic is being discussed on the blog or website! The html code for the title of one of my photography websites reads like this

<title>Long Beach Photography Studio, business headshots and advertising</title>

The title tag should appear in the first 10 or 15 lines of code on your page, so open your website or blog page in html or source view and see what you have written between the title tags. How many important keywords appear in your title? Are those keywords the ones your customers are using to find you?

Notice in the title, the first thing mentioned is where I am located. I often also use the words “Los Angeles” or “LA” in my titles, because I am also trying to draw customers from the larger population base. However, Long Beach is an easier keyword to place high on a search engine for as it has a population of 500,000, compared to Los Angeles with 14,000,000.

http://www.DennisDavisPhotography.com

I did a search on the Google Keyword Tool and found that the number one search connected with what I do is “Long Beach Photography”. Not Long Beach Photographers, not headshots, portraits, etc. So those are the first three words in my title. I do not shoot weddings, family portraits or pets, all my customers are businesses needing advertising or company website photographs or corporate headshots, so that’s what I put in my title.

The title of your website or blog has to tell both people and search engines “you have found what you are looking for, this is the right place.” You have to do it in ten words or less. “My blog” or, “Home Page” “Blogging with Steve” is not going to cut it. Answer the questions who, what, where or why such as “Growing Corn in Colorado with Charles” which would give search engines something to chew on, or look at the title of my number one competition for this blog, “Social Media in SEO / Social Media today”. Note that the keywords Social Media was repeated in the title, and it is the number one site on Google for the topic of social media.

Another of my websites has a title tag that looks like this

http://www.DennisDavisPhotography.com

<title>Commercial Photographers In Los Angeles</title>

I started my SEO in the right place with this site, I started with the URL which has excellent keywords http://www.LosAngeles-Photo.com  As I am going after Los Angeles clients with this website, not Long Beach clients like my other one, I tried to make the title as short and to the point as possible, while creating an echo or repeat of the idea in the URL. If you can buy a URL with your primary keyword in it you are much farther ahead. However, even a wonderful URL like mine cannot overcome the effect of a website or blog with the title of “Home”.

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Keywords and #Hashtags

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Search engines and social networking sites use keywords and #hashtags. Hashtags are keywords with the # pound sign in front of them, with no space between the symbol and the first letter of the word. Letter case is not important. When creating a website, blog article or posting a photo, it is keywords or hashtags that help other people know what kind of subject matter to expect.

I am currently researching and writing a blog about my niece’s real estate business in Eagle River, Alaska to promote her company website http://www.eagleriverhomes.com. So I was wondering which keywords to use to promote the site, as I needed to name my blog something good for SEO with the most important keywords in the name of the blog. I went to the Google Keyword Tool, and entered the words

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• Alaska Real Estate
• Buy Real Estate
• Sell Real Estate
• Realtor
• Buy house
• Buy home
• Sell house
• Sell home
• Eagle River Homes
• Eagle River Property
• Anchorage home
• Alaska Property

All of these are possible keywords to use in the title of the blog, as captions on the pictures of a website or blog, or as hashtags under a post, picture or blog article written like #Alaska #eagleriverhomes #anchoragehomes

However, I learned from the Google Keyword tool that the words homes and property get more than twice the traffic as the words real estate or realtor. Alaska homes gets more searches than Anchorage homes and Eagle River Homes written #EagleRiverHomes will bring more traffic on Google plus than without the # sign.

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So after a trip to Google Keyword Tool, I decided a good name for a blog promoting http://www.eagleriverhomes.com is Buying and Selling Alaska Homes, but I am going to try to see if Alaska Homes is available first. Shorter is always better.

When promoting a local or regional business, the most important keyword is often a city name. The larger the city, the more challenging it is to rank high on a search engine for that keyword. So always use both the suburb your business is located in, as well as the larger city name. To compete on Google for the keywords “Brooklyn Mexican Restaurants” or “Queens Italian Restaurants” is easier than competing for “New York Restaurant”. Both keywords need to appear somewhere on your blog or web page, but I recommend the smaller town name in the title, as the title is most important to the search engines.

So although I have a website http://www.LosAngeles-Photo.com and I try to get on the first page of search engines for the keywords “Los Angeles Corporate Photography” or Los Angeles Food Photographer”. However, as I am in Los Angeles County but live in Long Beach, I find that “Long Beach Headshots” and “Long Beach Food Photographers” are keywords that with effort I can get on the first page with spending about 3 hours a week promoting blog articles, photos and tweets with the correct keywords or #hashtags in the post. The same success with “Los Angeles Headshots” would take 5 times the effort.

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3 Top Fears about Blogging

3 Top Fears Standing in the Way of Writing a Business Blog

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Marketing in today’s business world looks much different than it did 30 years ago, when a TV commercial could reach everybody you wanted to talk to. Social Networking is where much of today’s market spends their time, as you can see from every person walking down the street tapping their phone. Blogs, tweets, video and photos make up much of the content people are looking at. So why haven’t you started writing a blog to promote your business? You know it would increase the traffic to your company website, so what’s stopping you?

#1 Fear: I cannot write well

A legitimate concern, but there are solutions you perhaps have not considered.

• If you cannot write well, perhaps you can speak a blog article. A speech-to-text software package such as dragon speaking naturally will convert your clearly pronounced words into type written articles. You will have to edit the text for mistakes; however it will get you 95% there.
• Hire a ghost writer. You are the expert in your business field, and you need to get the thoughts in your head on paper. If you hate writing, but can talk to someone who can write, you will get your blog written.
• Take a writing class. Writing for a class will give you practice, coaching and critiques, and can prepare you to write a successful blog by yourself.

#2 Fear: Who Would Want to Read What I Write?

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If you have run a business for more than 5 years, you are likely an expert in at least one or two areas. However, what you know how to write about may have little or nothing to do with your business or what you are trying to sell. No matter, your blog can still create traffic to your company website, which is the primary purpose you want to write a blog anyway, #SEO.

I work as a commercial photographer, and my target audience is people that want pictures for their business or company website. My target audience is not other photographers, they are my competition. So why do I write the blog http://photographyseethelight.blogspot.com/ , which offers “how to” articles about creating better photography, buying lighting gear and starting a studio, how to light portraits, etc. I am training my competition how to do a better job! I write the blog to generate traffic to my websites http://www.DennisDavisPhotography.com and http://www.LosAngeles-Photo.com because the more traffic that comes to the site for whatever reason, the higher the site will place on search engines.

So if you do air conditioning repair, write a blog about that, even if it will teach your competitors how to do what you do, 99% of the people reading the blog will live in a different city, so they are competing from across the country, and there are enough air conditioner repairs to go around. Write about what you know, even if it is not what your customers want to read.

#3Fear: I am computer illiterate, and don’t know where to start

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Start by researching the most popular blogging sites such as wordpress.com, blog.com or www.blogger.com my personal favorite by Google. Pick a site that has blogging templates that look attractive and user friendly. Once you have chosen a site, sign up for a free blog site by giving them basic information like an email address and password.

After you have signed up for a blog site, sit down on a computer and write three to five paragraphs about something you like and are knowledgeable about. Go to your blog site, click on “new post” and copy and paste the text you just wrote in the field. Click on the “add photo” button, and upload a photo about the subject you wrote about. If you don’t have a photo you like well enough to add to your blog, call me at Dennis Davis Photography, http://www.DennisDavisPhotography.com and I will shoot all the images you need for your blog or company website. For a fee, you understand. Duh.

Once you have added one or two photos to your blog article, click publish, and you are done. However, now the real work begins, because promoting your blog article is a whole other job, and vital to SEO and getting traffic to your blog and company website.

Call Dennis Davis at 213-434-3344 for more information.

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#Hashtags in Social Networking

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The # sign, known as the pound sign or hash mark, is now a part of a rapidly growing trend. Popular on Twitter for some time, it is now everywhere on Instagram, common and beautiful on Google Plus, and was just put into practice with still a few bugs on Facebook in summer 2013.

Hashtags are just keywords that help people within your social community find each other and postings of similar interests. For example, if you were posting a photograph of yourself fishing on the pier in Santa Monica, you might write a title about your image such as “I hope I catch a #fish here in #SantaMonica Other people who fish can click on the #fish hash tag, and find your picture, along with hundreds of other fish related images. People who live in Santa Monica and think you are a sexy guy can click on the #SantaMonica hash tag and see other pictures that you have posted of yourself with that hash tag, and also pictures of some other better looking guys in Santa Monica that don’t smell like fish.

It doesn’t matter if it is upper or lower case, the #HasHTaGs work the same regardless of letter case. However, note that there cannot be a space after the # pound sign; the first letter must start with no space after the symbol. On many social networks, when you start typing a hashtag, the site tries to guess what you are writing, and offers several hashtags to choose from. It makes it faster and easier.

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So let’s say you want to promote your vegetarian restaurant in Hollywood called “Veggies Gone Wild”. How could you use #hashtags to promote your business and find more customers? Let’s say you posted a picture from one of your menu items, Blueberry Rice Pudding. In the caption of the photograph you can write Blueberry Rice Pudding #vegetarian #hollywood #desserts #veggiesgonewild #restaurants #restaurantshollywood #vegetarianrestaurants Normally I only write two – four keywords, and Twitter only allows 140 words per tweet, so you must pick your keywords carefully. Because that’s what #hashtags are, simply #keywords to help people find things on the web easier.

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When a news topic or idea is “trending” on Twitter, it normally means that a particular hashtag is getting a lot of traffic. If the new iPod 29 was just released, you might see hashtags trending such as #apple #iPods #iTunes #iPod29. If Brad Pitt was just with seen with a new tattoo of a butterfly on his arm, you might see trending hashtags of #bradpitt #bradpitttattoo #tattoos #celebritytattoos #celebrity #butterflytattoos and so forth. These hashtags allow people with similar interests to find one another and form an on-line community on the social network of their choice.

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