(Continued
from Part 1)
Five Example Blogs with a Purpose
3. Horseback Riding Tours
Bayard Fox of Equitours Worldwide Riding Vacations has
a unique way of using his blog. After one of his horseback
riding vacations, he writes an online journal, complete
with pictures, and posts them to his new blog.
The guests who attend his vacations can visit his blog
and link to it, and then tell their friends and family
members to visit to read more about their recent vacation.
These vacations are in very exotic places, like Africa,
India, and Uruguay. In other words, reading about them
and seeing the pictures certainly makes you want to
take a riding tour as well.
Why do people want to visit his blog? If you had taken
a horseback riding tour in Africa, wouldn't you want
to visit a site that had pictures of your trip, as well
as a journal that documented the whole thing? Wouldn't
you want to link to it?
What good does this do for Bayard and his company? It's
obviously a perk for his customers, and we always want
to take care of our customers. Plus, as the site gets
more exposure in the search engines, more and more people
will visit, outside of his existing customers.
His existing customers will pass along the link to friends
and family members, and he'll pick up new customers
that way. He'll gradually build link popularity from
the blog as time goes on.
Tip: Be sure to link to additional pages of your site
from your blog posts, so potential customers can read
more information about products or services you mention
on your blog. Use absolute links with keyword phrases
in the link text. On your product pages, link back to
the blog. In Bayard's case, he would be linking to each
riding tour's page.
If you have a newsletter, promote your blog through
the newsletter. Be creative! Ask your customers to post
their opinions about a new product line in the blog.
Offer a 10% discount to those who post.
In Bayard's case, he could mention a recent riding tour,
and give
the URL of the blog where newsletter readers could see
the
pictures and journal entries.
4. Threadwatch
For this category of "blogs with a purpose," I wanted
to list a blog that serves a purpose similar to that
of an online forum.
Numerous ones come to mind, but none more appropriate
or effective than Threadwatch.
Nick, the owner, takes great pride in his site, and
it shows. What makes it different from other blogs of
the same sort is that Nick has added a "twist." Here's
Nick's concept:
"Finding the signal amongst the noise of internet marketing
media takes too much of what we all value most: TIME.
Threadwatch.org cuts through the chatter and produces
a clear signal for the time starved professional Internet
Marketer."
In other words, he distills information from other forums
and posts that he feels are the best and most useful
posts. Rather than your having to sort through mountains
of information yourself, go to Threadwatch and let Nick
do it for you.
What's in it for the visitor? You don't have to run
all over forum land to learn SEO and Internet marketing
information. It's all consolidated in one handy place:
Threadwatch.
What's in it for Nick? He's has an extremely popular
site now with a very loyal following. His link popularity
is excellent, and I'm sure his visibility is as well.
Congratulations, Nick!
Tip: Can you follow in Nick's footsteps and add a twist
to a popular concept? Look how well it's worked for
Nick!
5. Cup of Sunshine
In the final example, the entire website is a blog.
This website is for a coffee house in Abbotsford, BC,
Canada, which also sells antiques. They didn't want
to have to learn HTML to post to their site. They wanted
something easy and non-technical.
So, their SEO set them up with a simple blog in about
an hour. Now, they have a Web presence and can even
sell their antiques online.
The blog is loaded with character, as you can see. They'll
certainly have a lot of fun adding to it as time goes
on.
The purpose of the blog is to be a website!
Now is the time for you to be creative.
Here are your goals for your "blog with a purpose":
* You need a reason for your buying audience to visit
your blog.
* Your blog needs to be special to your audience in
some way.
* Is your blog bookmarkable, and will people want to
link to it?
Any business can set up a blog. Making your blog a "blog
with a purpose" takes it a step beyond normal blogs.
It gives it purpose and meaning. It gives it power.
Give it a try, and good luck!
Let me know if you have a successful blog with a purpose.
It's helpful to see examples of real sites who have
succeeded in setting up effective blogs. I'll write
another article using your examples.
robin@searchengineworkshops.com
Robin
Nobles conducts live SEO workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/)
in locations across North America. She also teaches
online SEO training (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com/).
Localized SEO training is now being offered through
the Search Engine Academy. (http://www.searchengineacademy.com/). |
