Today at Agency Entourage, we came together to begin Social Media Examiner‘s latest blogging workshop, “Blogging Fundamentals For Business”, with Michael Stelzner. Stelzner is the founder and CEO of Social Media Examiner, author of the books Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition and Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged, the popular Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

Continuing education at Agency Entourage is the fundamental backbone to the success we achieve with our clients. We wouldn’t get very far if we solely depended on our own personal knowledge to help us continue improving as a DFW social media agency! We’ll be meeting together to continue the workshop over the next few weeks and will be bringing you some of the highlights of what we learn from each session.

SESSION 1: Setting a Course for Blogging Success

First off, Stelzner presented a handful of current blog statistics; did you know there are 181 million+ blogs as of December 2011? This astounding number really makes you think, “How will I ever find my place in the blogging industry?” But Stelzner addresses those doubts throughout the presentation.

• Replace your other advertising
• Drive natural curious traffic to your website
• Generate grass roots leads interested by your topics
• Eliminate the middle men that own your traffic

Still skeptical that you can stand out among 181+ million other blogs? Determine your goals and ask yourself, “Why do I want to blog?” Most blogs fail because there is no clear objective or because it begins to come off narcissistic. In other words, the blog tends to be so full of obvious marketing techniques and sales pitches for your business that your readers begin to tune out and distrust your expertise.

So how you do avoid failure? Stelzner says a timeless strategy for blogging is to meet the desires of people by helping them solve their problems at no cost.

“Great content minus marketing messages equals GROWTH,” Stelzner said.

We’re excited to continue learning from Stelzner and Social Media Examiner. If you’re interested in starting the course yourself, it will be available until July 20 on socialmediaexaminer.com