Today at Agency Entourage, we continued Social Media Examiner‘s latest blogging workshop, “Blogging Fundamentals For Business”, with Michael Stelzner.
Like I mentioned before, continuing education at Agency Entourage is the fundamental backbone to the success we achieve with our clients. We strive to consistently grow and improve as a top DFW social media agency! We’ll continue meeting together for the next couple weeks to continue the workshop and will summarize the highlights of each session.
SESSION 2: Building Your Blog For Growth
This session really spoke to those who may not currently have a blog and are starting from scratch. Stelzner addressed which blogging platform is best when you’re blogging for business.
“The grandaddy [of blog platforms] is Wordpress,” Stelzner said. “I highly recommend it.”
Wordpress currently hosts about 74 million blogs (!) and is 100% free. It is the definition of “sophisticated content management” and to top it all off, Google loves it! Wordpress blogs do well on the search engine results pages because Google sees Wordpress as a relevant, trustworthy site.
After choosing your platform, ask yourself, “Should my blog stand alone or be a part of my company site?” Stelzner recommends having your blog be a part of your site in case the platform you choose eventually becomes outdated or irrelevant and you can’t transfer your blog content to a new platform.
Now comes the fun part – design! Choosing a visually attractive theme for your blog is extremely important. Although Wordpress is a bit limited in the design area, they do offer many themes to choose from, many of which are free to use. It may also benefit you to have a memorable avatar or logo that is saturated throughout your blog. For example, Social Media Examiner‘s avatar, Scout, is strategically placed all over their site as well as in their videos.
In addition to choosing a theme, plugins, such as DISQUS comment system or All in One SEO, and widgets will help your blog get off on the right foot. Once your blog is up and running, take time each week or month to measure your results. Use Google Analytics or haveamint.com to check page views, subscriber growth, traffic sources, social shares and comments.
We’ll be continuing our Social Media Examiner lunch and learn series every Wednesday for the next couple weeks. If you’re interested in starting the course yourself, visit socialmediaexaminer.com.
