So shocked at the news of Whitney Houston’s passing last weekend, that after my sister broke the news to me, I didn’t want to speak to anyone about it, couldn’t listen to her music, watch video clips, nothing.  

It was as though I was in denial of the event, and then today … the texts and phone calls started … “are you not watching Whitney Houston’s funeral?”  My response was simply “no, I can’t.”  

Anyway, I was compelled to leave the book I was reading and started watching from the first few minutes of Kevin Costner’s speech and I’m so glad I did.

First of all, it gave me an opportunity to shed the tears I’d suppressed all week and I’m telling you, cry I did!  Fortunately, I was the only one in the room and so I didn’t need to hold back.  Second, that was some message by Pastor Marvin Winans on priorities.  I especially loved what he said about Church not being for those who can’t get a gig elsewhere.  So funny.  But third, there were some significant moments that cautioned me about why it’s important that we guard our own hearts:

• Kevin Costner talked about Whitney Houston’s self doubts.  I mean, you would think that if you had Whitney’s voice, Whitney’s figure, the looks and that lovely “cocoa coloured” skin that you would never be in any doubt about your abilities, right?  Well Whitney did have those doubts.  She was never sure if she was good enough and often asked “could I do better?”  As I sat on my sofa, I asked God, “what self doubts do I have that’s holding me back from being all that you created me to be.” One speaker said something like, “everyone has their demon but when you’re having to battle it out in the limelight of the public, it makes it harder.”  The issue with the media and those we allow to speak into our lives is that intentionally or unintentionally, people say things that often endorses our own self doubt, making the belief seem more real.  Simple but not easy solution … cut ties with those who constantly criticise you and tear you down.  And again, not easy, but if you are in the limelight, just don’t read the papers!  Finally tell yourself, “It’s not right, but it’s okay, I’m gonna make it anyway …”
   
• Patricia Houston, Whitney’s manager and sister-in-law who graciously and sweetly referred to Whitney as her sister, says Whitney had “a charmed and beautiful life, a life sometimes misundertood, even by herself.” She talks of Whitney’s giving and forgiving nature: “Even when she was tired or a bit lost, she gave.”  She also spoke about how Whitney’s kindness and giving nature sometimes caused others to think she had an ulterior motive, but Whitney still gave anyway.  

  People who think like this always have their own issues, usually of rejection and having to give to get something in return.  So when someone is nice to them and tries to help, they have a hard time distinguishing between those who are genuine and those with motive.  If you’ve been there (and I have), time to decide, “It’s not right but it’s okay …”  And then move on!  Choose not to withhold being kind because you might just be understood.  You will end up making a mistake and withholding at a time when someone (even those who misunderstand you) really need your support.  It takes courage to do that but it means that you remain true to who you really are. 

• Finally, whatever you think about Whitney Houston and her drug addiction and whatever else she may have done wrong, she stepped out and did something that most of her critics never have.  Though filled with self doubt, fear and even her own insecurities, she pursued her passion and never hid her talent under a bushel. 

  Whitney wasn’t glamourous when she started out.  Her afro was almost as big as mine was back then and I would even say that she was “Plain Jane.”  But she started.  And even when people thought she was a failure and she wasn’t at her best, she made a decision to finish what she’d started amidst her critics getting their claws out because they knew they would have a story that would sell.  

  Drugs or no drugs, Bobby Brown or no Bobby Brown, Whitney Houston achieved more in her 48 short years of life than most of her critics will ever achieve in a lifetime that might span 80 years.  So how about you?  Are you waiting for the critics to shut up before you pursue your passion.  My suggestion is don’t wait because there will always be critics but there will also always be the Aretha Franklins, the Kevin Costners, the Clive Davis’, all of whom recognised the greatness in Whitney Houston and stood by her even when she failed.  I can assure you, God’s less disappointed with Whitney Houston for having run her race, despite ruining her life with drugs (He can fix that!) than He is her critics who through fear won’t pursue their passion but instead sit on the sidelines directing everyone else on how to live their lives.  

Come on, it’s time to get passionate about life, believe in yourself and get off the sidelines!

Watch Whitney Houston in action as she sings “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay.”  I love her footwork! 

Oh boy … this is the new dilemma of too many online marketers today. They want their website to sell for them but, there are 101 website promotion strategies to consider and everyone has the “best suggestion” that will send them a flood of traffic to their site.

There is one problem though …

You can’t utilize all 101 ways … if you try, you’re going to crash and burn and your site won’t do any selling for you.

Bear with me, I’m going to rant, but I’m also going to give you some sweet tips so you get more traffic to your site! Fair? Okay, read on with your eyes WIDE open!

If you’ve been on the Internet for any length of time, you’ll remember the “blogging and pinging,” the “tagging and pinging,” “trackbacks,” “pingpacks,” etc for getting traffic to your blog. Whilst these strategies are not obselete, you could literally add 101 new ways to market and promote your blog or website nowadays and by marketing and promoting, I mean getting noticed so you get lots of “targeted” traffic to your site.

But, here’s problem number 2 …

Blog Promotion And Website Promotion Strategies Seems To Have Been Lost In All The Noise Of Social Media, Video Blogging, Podcasting, More Sophisticated Blog Designs Etc, and New Bloggers In Particular Fail To Give Their Site A Solid Foundation

Now, I am not saying that these methods should be ignored but if as a business owner you are going to build authority with your site, if you want to be known as the expert in your field, and if you want to attract new business and sell more products and services, you are going to have to get one thing right …

… You are going to have to learn “how” to produce good quality content!

You are also going to have to know the best practices of sharing your content on the social media sites listed above rather than just being a casual visitor and, your site should become the hub that people can visit after they’ve seen your content on the various content sharing sites.

Whilst I appreciate that us mentors have been promoting the “sack your designer” thing, there is a fine line between knowing all that there is to know about website building and making your site sell for you!

Creating Content should be your number one priority

It’s about going back to the principles outlined in Timothy Ferriss’ Four Hour Work Week’ … You have to strengthen your strengths and where at all possible, outsource the rest.  Therefore, if you’re great at creating content but not so great on distributing or promoting that content, outsource it.

I learnt how to build WordPress blogs out of pure frustration with the rubbish I was being presented in terms of what many designers considered a marketing website.  Now I am able to make money building blogs and consult with entrepreneurs, independent professionals and small business owners, for the most part, there are tell-tale signs as to who will create a successful business online and who will struggle to get any recognition.

The success stories come from those like Gavin Ingham who is willing to focus on content marketing and those who struggle tend to focus too much on website design … and not just any old website design, the worst one …

DIY web design!

In other words, they want to be able to do it all themselves no matter how in depth the coding and whether they even know anything about HTML or PHP.

Yes, your site design is important, but if you don’t publish good quality content on your site, no matter how pretty it is, no matter how much time you spend sprucing it up, no one will even know your site exists.

Basically, you gotta walk before you can run and many of the things that bloggers and content marketers think they “need” right now, will do nothing to help them attract traffic even if they spent thousands of dollars per month on pay-per-click advertising.

Let’s face it, what are people going to see when they visit your site …

“Welcome to my new site?”

I personally didn’t even try to monetize my blog until I was blogging for months but that was out of personal choice but you can’t have five articles on your site and expect to attract ten new clients or, make a shed load of money with AdSense or from affiliate marketing or sell your products and services.  You do however need to give people good solid content to encourage trust from your readers before they will even consider buying from you or, hiring your services.

Anyway, less of my rant, here are my Top Ten Tips for getting more traffic to your site “quick time.” And, I’m not even going to mention that you should not be spending hours designing when you should be promoting …

In terms of ease, here they are:

Tip #1: If you are using WordPress, ensure your ping services are set up correctly and up to date BEFORE you even write your first blog post and, ensure your very first article or blog post says more than “welcome.” Give the spiders enough “flies” to get their attention and your human visitors a reason to want to return even if your site only has one article on it.

You will find the list of ping services in WordPress 3.3 by going to “settings” and then “writing.”  If pinging is a new term to you but you want to understand more about how it works, see this great article about pinging to get top search engine rankings.

Tip #2: Set up your permalinks so the search engine spiders recognise you. The default permalink set by WordPress (http://www.yourdomain.com/?p=123) will do very little for your search engine ranking if anything at all. The search engines don’t understand what “?p=123″ means and is useless for enabling anyone to find your keyword loaded blog posts.

I personally use the custom permalink structure /%postname%/ although I have seen very successful bloggers such as Pro Blogger using the date and name based structure.

Tip #3: Write keyword specific articles. I know this might sound obvious but it’s amazing how many times I harp on about this and then I visit people’s sites and it has no structure, no keywords and then they ask why their site isn’t being indexed by the search engines.

This is where I could go off on the deep end again about ignoring basic search engine optimization techniques in favor of social marketing, podcasting, video marketing etc. Whichever method you use, you’re going to have to learn some basic SEO and apply it to your articles as well as the content you distribute via custom media sites such as video sharing sites … period!

In particular, you want the keyword in the title of your article, preferably in the first sentence and throughout the article without making it look like spam – i.e. you don’t want to write your keyword every other sentence. You want the keywords to appear as natural as possible and, if you can anchor text a couple of your keywords, all the better.

If it would appear unnatural to your readers by having the keywords in the title and first line of your articles, use the All In One SEO Pack plugin for WordPress. Just type that into Google and you’ll find it.

Tip #4: Give People the option to be updated via RSS. RSS in my view has been neglected somewhat and yet, it’s a great way to spread the word about your new content. If you’re using WordPress to promote your content, your RSS feed is created automatically which will allow RSS publishers to syndicate or distribute your content.

RSS makes your content easy to find by the search engines which means that it will be easier for them to index therefore easier for your content pages to get ranked.

However, because RSS feeds are automatically created on most blog platforms, it can be ignored as a powerful means to get your message out to your target market. So, ensure you have a link for people to sign up to your RSS feed on every page of your site, pereferably with an icon to draw people’s eyes to it so they can sign up to receive automatic updates.

The best places to put your RSS link is in the header, sidebar or under the header … basically where it will be automatically displayed on every page.

Tip #5: Submit your blog to blog directories. Blog directories are orgainzed into categories and are much like web directories or ezine directories where you can go to find sites that relate to your particular interest. Signing up to them is usually quick (less than 5 minutes) and more importantly it’s free to list with most directories.

Listing your blog in blog directories will also help your site get higher rankings with the search engines, because your blog link will be added to more websites which will result in more sites linking back to yours.

For the top 55 RSS and feed directories, check out Robin Good’s site at http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Tip #6: Comment on other people’s blogs. If you use something like Comment Kahuna, this makes it easier for you to find blogs that you can comment on as well as find blogs that don’t utilize the “no follow” tag.  This will enable you to build some quality backlinks to your blog.

If you leave a comment, make it worthwhile. Always ask yourself “how” you want people to react when they read your comment.

This should be a lesson to those who rant on other people’s blogs without providing any substance to their rant and certainly without offering an alternative. Other readers will just think you’re full of sour grapes and won’t want to come near your blog even if you have the best product or service on the market.

Tip #7: Provide good quality product testimonials. If you’ve recently purchased a product and you have a genuine testimonial to give, send it to the product owner because you never know where your testimonial might end up.

I admit, this wasn’t a deliberate strategy to get incoming links to my site, but I know that some of my comments have ended up on good authority sites and, one occasion one of my readers told me that he had found the link to my site from a testimonail that I had written about a new membership site software that was being promoted. I didn’t even know the testimonial was on the site.

If you do give testimonials, ensure they say more than “great product.” Tell the owner of the product how it has saved you time, money, effort or how and why this is the solution you’d been waiting for.

It does go without saying that your testimonials should be genuine and not fabricated. You could get people emailing you for an update on how you’re getting on with the product and your integrity is in knowing that you can provide honest feedback even if you are no longer using the product for good reasons.

Tip #8: Add an opt-in box to your blog. This is very similar to tip number 4 but you want to be able to capture names and addresses of your visitors so that you can keep them updated with great information, new products etc.  Avoid pitching in every email you send and remember that email marketing is content marketing.  Email is just another means of publishing your content.

My personal recommendation for email broadcasts and database management is Aweber although I know some Internet Marketers are combining thier RSS subscriptions with their database subscriptions via Feedblitz which is Feedburner’s email newsletter management system.

Tip #9: Subscribe to Social Bookmarking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, etc.

Joining and participating in (the operative word being participate) in social networking is certainly a way of networking to build relationship as well as getting some free traffic and backlinks to your blog. One word of caution with social networking sites is that it can become a full time job making them work for you if you don’t focus on what is important … content distribution and relationship building.

My suggestion is that you sign up to one or two social media sites, get some results and then sign up to another two until you’re familiar with them. You have to decide whether you will go wide or deep and it’s my view that spreading yourself too thinly across all the social networking platforms won’t get you nearly as much benefit as really working a few.

Tip #10: Add podcasts and videos. Like social networking, podcasts and video blogging will get you free traffic and some bonus backlinks. If you feel this is a techie’s strategy for promoting your blog content, let me clear that myth up …

“It has never been easier to add audio and video to your blogs.”

The quickest and easiest way to get started is to open an account with Audio Acrobat. You can record both video and audio there and then add the recordings along with the players to your blog. They also provide free training on a regular basis so you don’t have to feel as though you’re tackling this method of blog content creation in isolation.

In conclusion … I hope you’ve gained some insight from this post about how to promote your site’s content and just by being diligent in implementing the first five strategies will keep the traffic coming on a consistent basis but more importantly, these strategies will make your content sell.

To Your Online Business Success!

I talk a lot about being authentic, and having been a licensed personality practitioner with Insights, I understand some of the psychology behind the two faces – the face you wear around the house or when no one is looking, and the face you put on for work and public display.

I’m also however pleased to say that my profile showed that my personality changed very little between home and away … in other words, what you see is what you get!  And, you either like me or you don’t and I’ve learnt to be comfortable with either one – “love me, love me not.”

In truth though, if you wear a mask, you cannot maintain wearing that mask forever.  At some point, good or bad, the real you will emerge and either those you’ve been fooling will love the real you or, they won’t like who you really are.

What Happens When You’re Not Being Yourself?

I hope my business partner won’t mind, but I want to use this story to illustrate my point.

I had to liaise with one of our customers a few weeks ago and coming from Iran, my colleague briefed me on how I should liaise with the customer since they’re very serious in the petrochemical industry. Now, I’ve worked as a manager in the Insurance industry, dealing with fatalities at times and I hope I know by now when I should be serious and when I can be a little lighthearted but, being new to the industry, when speaking with the client, I was acting the part of being all serious and sober!  

When I got off the phone my partner said “I didn’t mean that serious!”  So I replied, “what do you mean?”  Apparently, I came across as almost rude!  I was shocked to say the least since I was trying really hard to be nice and serious at the same time.  Anyway, as she was briefing me on how I should approach the client in future, the hand gesture took over as she said “no matter, just be yourself.”  

Well all I can say is, “Thank you Shirin Etemadi!”  

“I’m much better when I can be myself!”

The truth is, my business partner didn’t like my mask!  And I’m actually quite pleased because it confirmed she likes me!  The real me! 

And remember I said earlier that my personality changes very little between my home life (less conscious persona or behaviour) to public or work life (conscious persona or behaviour).  So basically, when I was on the telephone to the client for those few short minutes, I felt as thought I was being squeezed in a vice!  I was under pressure to be the person I wasn’t and I’m so very grateful to Shirin for releasing the vice!  

But that aside, the power of great communication lies in being genuine and authentic – the same essential requirements for building great and lasting relationships.  

So the next time you’re communicating with someone, inside or outside the home, ask yourself … Am I being authentic and am I being genuine?  In my view anything less is hard work and as well as tiring and it will take you off in a direction you never intended going with people you probably don’t like and who don’t really like you.

I’m daring you to start being real.

How often have you seen fishermen fishing near the edge of the sea?  I’m not talking about hobbyists now, I’m talking deep sea fishermen.

They know that if they want to catch either the big fish or a lot of fish, they have to go out into the deep.

Likewise, if you want to catch the big fish, valuable clients, you have to go deeper.

But here’s the rub … it’s sometimes rough out in the deep, and it might mean getting your feet wet and yes, for the ladies, we might even get our faces wet and end up with running mascara.  But it’s where the big fish are.  

Going into the deep requires that you have a different mindset (anyone can paddle), that you have the right equipment, that you know how to navigate the sea in all weathers and you understand the terrain.  But a real deep sea fisherman, knowing what his catch will be worth, is willing to go out into the rough.  

Before he embarks on his fishing trip, he’s already made his mind up about why he’s going and what he intends to catch.  He also knows that even if he doesn’t catch a big one today …

where there are big fish, there are also plenty of smaller ones.  

So now where do you want to fish?

If you’re happy with your catch of one and two at a time, then keep fishing near the edge.  However, if you want more and bigger, you’re going to have to navigate further and go deeper. 

Question to self over the past couple days, “Trish, did you think big enough in 2011.”

The truthful answer to self, “No!”

Question to self, “Trish, why not?”

Answer to self, “There were so many things going on.”

I mean wow!  Isn’t there always something going on?  What a poor excuse for not thinking bigger!

Determine to Focus on Your Vision

I am not one for making New Years Resolutions – they’re usually dead by around January 10th anyway – but I do believe in vision and I believe …

the bigger the vision, and the more intensity you place on the vision, the easier the how of accomplishing it becomes.

When we have negative thoughts, they’re still visions.  When we worry, they are visions and we gravitate toward those things we think about.

So here’s sobering thought for the close of 2011 … decide that for the next 21 days, rather than worry or complain, you’ll focus on your big vision – the one you’re about to write if you don’t already have one.  

If this isn’t something you’re used to doing, don’t write a 10 page essay … you’ll lose the essence of what you want to accomplish.

Create Your Vision Cards

Just get an A5 sheet of paper and write 3 things you want to accomplish in 2012.  Write it, draw it and then visualise yourself in it, using it, on it (if a holiday for example), wearing it … whatever.  Make every element of it detailed and bold and if you can’t draw it, copy it from a magazine or book or get an image from the mighty Google.

Now, why am I suggesting you draw and visualise your goal?  

Because I want the two of you to get acquainted of course! 

If you draw it rather than just look at a picture, you’ll get more intimate with your vision and, it will become more real to you.  By drawing it, you also personalise it and therefore own it.

If you want to be even more creative, draw your goals on business size cards, laminate them and put them on your keychain.  Now you have a constant reminder of what you intend to accomplish and more opportunities to focus on your dreams rather than the stumbling blocks.  

Rock on into 2012 … I’m off to create my vision cards with my family!

Is Content Marketing the New “In Thing?”

In 2002 after convincing my husband that I really did want to be a stay at home mum (and wife) and start my own coaching business, the hardest part was finding someone who would build a website for me at a reasonable price … It was difficult!

After scouring the web for what seemed like months, I finally came across Ken Evoy’s, SiteSell (I know some of you heard the story before so I won’t spin it again ).

Wading through the 601 page manual gave me a view of marketing that has remained with me to this day, despite the fact that I no longer use the SiteSell software to build sites.

The focus of that 601 page ebook was on building a business through quality content.

No matter how I’ve focused on other elements of marketing, I keep coming back to the SiteSell process of CTPM – CONTENT > TRAFFIC > PRESELL > MONETIZATION.

Why?  It simply just works.

There really would be no need for people to manipulate the search engines, using black hat strategies and begging for links if they would just publish great content that other people want to read and are willing to share.

What really frustrates me are people who want traffic before they create any content and who want to make money before they’ve even warmed up their prospects (presell).  As Alex Mandossian put it, this is like asking a girl to marry you before you’ve even gone on your first date.  Or in my own words, you’re a stalker!

So, you want to know how to stop being a stalker and get some dates?

Build a relationship with your prospects first.  Give them a reason to like you, believe in you and therefore, to trust you.

People Don’t Want A Blog, They  Want New Business

You have to consider what your target market really want and the mistake I made for  years was promote my blog building services until I woke up and realized that my target market don’t want a blog (even if they think they do).  What they want is more business so, they can make more money.  Whilst it’s not my thing to jump on the bandwagon of “make money online,” I can totally understand why even the illegitimate sellers will get floods of people to their site to buy whatever it is they’re selling …

… People want what the product can do for them, not the actual product or service.

For too long I focused on a blog marketing strategy but what I’ve come to realise is that businesses need a content marketing strategy which they can combine with social media (including blogging) to deliver their content to their target market through as many online mediums as possible.

As Paul Colligan would say “I’ve Seen You Out There,” and a good content marketing strategy not only gets you out there, it gets people reading and gets people coming back to your site for more.  That “more” could ultimately be the purchasing of your product or, the hiring of your services.

In my next post, I’m going to focus more on what content marketing is, for my small business clients, but for now, my aim to get you thinking about whether your focus is on blogs and blogging or, are you focusing on firing your best content at your target market … everywhere.

When it comes to marketing with content online, the question is, should you go deep or wide?

I seem to be having this conversation with clients a lot recently especially when it comes to whether their new topic will fit into their existing site.

Now, there is no absolute right or wrong answer on this, but in terms of market reach, my experiences and observations over the years have not led me to deviate from the fact that you need to stick with a theme for your site if you want to attract the best clients,

You also have to remember that reach is defined by the user and not you, the supplier of the goods and services.

Therefore, your first question when deciding whether to go deep or wide should be, “who do I want to reach, and to what extent?”

Once you have decided the who and the intensity of your focus in that market, it should lead you to decide whether to apply laser focused (deep) marketing or more of a scattered (wide) marketing approach.

An example of laser focused marketing would be building a theme based site around a primary keyword term and then creating useful content that you know your target market want and can use and then distribute that content online to all the content sharing sites where you know your target market hang out.  The other plus of being purposefully directional with your marketing is that if you have chosen your keywords correctly, your target audience will find you via the organic listings in the search engines.

Contrast this to television advertising …

Television networks have a wide reach because unless there is a specific targeted channel such as the food network (deep), television networks have to serve different tastes, a little at a time, over a wide network of channels.

Content marketing on the other hand allows you to go both deep and wide at the same time and, by theming your site you can attract a very specific group of people to your business at less cost and with less marketing effort.

Alex Mandossian, my mentor used to say, “people ask me how big is your list … I tell them, they should ask, how responsive is my list.”

Playing the numbers game in marketing isn’t wrong, but it’s not necessarily effective and I’d rather go for quality (go deep) over quantity (going wide) every time.

Until next time,

Whose voice or personality does your website or blog really have?

I’ve visited some sites of people I personally know and have been bored out of my skull when reading their articles.  Sorry to be so blunt, but, I call a spade a spade!  The embarrassing thing is though, I felt the same way about my own blog some years ago.

I’d read the posts on my site and think how different they were from my Christian Women’s website and then one day, it dawned on me what the issue was … I was being “me” on Women of Influence but, on my own blog, I was trying to be all business like … acting like a pro!   I mean please!

I come from the corporate world of leadership and management and I couldn’t care less if you were one of the clerical staff or the chief exec … Trish was Trish!  So where I was going putting on the boring business undertones on my blog, I really don’t know.

Now if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking though, stop!

You can speak your readers language which, should be the language of your target market and readers ( as in terminology etc), but in my personal view, you should never try imitate somebody else’s voice.  And I’m sorry, if you do this, it makes you a fake.

You might feel that doing this will get you more readers but even if you change your voice, you’re going to turn off someone … someone out there is still going to dislike you.

So, in my humble opinion, just be you.

Take the view that you weren’t meant to serve everyone and therefore, put your energy into helping those who will like you for who you are (the real you) and build those relationships.

Take a look at your last five articles or blog posts and ask yourself if they really reflect you, your business and the products and services you offer.  If not, it’s time to inject some authenticity into your strategic plans and give your site a personality makeover … and then watch as it attracts more readers like bees to honey.

Until next time,

We often automatically say “yes” when what we really mean to say is “no.”

Why is that?

I believe it’s all about conditioning.  So many of us have heard the word “no” so many times when we’ve asked our parents for something that the word has negative connotations.  

However, I think it’s good to be able to say “no” with confidence and not feel guilty about our decision or feeling we’re depriving the other party of something they came to expect.  If you say yes when what you really mean is no, who’s going to feel the negative consequences then?  You!  Every time you do the task, you’ll feel you’re not
prepared, not ready, not equipped and then the resentment comes in whether from you, your family with whom you’re now spending less time with or, the person to whom you said yes, when you should have said no!

Knowing When To Say No Is Key

Yes, there are times when we’ll be asked to do things we don’t like, but we know we have to or should do it, but I believe that too many times, our response is impulsive and our yeses lead us to compromise, lead us away from our goals and dreams and force us into a false sense of security.  

Remember that when you’re saying “yes” when you really mean “no”, you’re not being true to yourself and if you can’t be true to yourself, what face are you really presenting to other people?

Blog vs. a website … which one should I have?

This is a recurring question I get asked again and again and, it really is a valid question … one I asked before setting up my own blogs.

First of all, I need to make this ultra clear …a blog IS a website.

In fact, I want to take that a stage further and say that blogs are “dynamic” websites. You can have pages on a blog and, with some of the great blog software on the market today, it can sometimes be difficult to tell some blogs and websites.

The software you can download for free from WordPress.org for example, was always considered blog software.  However, it has become a powerful Content Management System (CMS) and more and more people are building their sites using the software even if they don’t want to blog.

What is a Blog?

For those of you who may not know what a blog is, it’s short for web log, and is a frequently updated website consisting of blog posts, or entries (more often than not, dated entries) that are arranged in reverse chronological order. So when a reader comes to your site, they see your most recent article (often called posts), first.

The advantage of WordPress as a CMS is that it allows you to publish content such as written text, audio and video and have it online within minutes, unlike traditional static websites which can take hours to update and cost you each time – unless you’re familiar with building or editing html sites.

What Are The Time Factors?

About two years ago, I decided to put up a new website for one of my new services. I was using a template (something I rarely do) and, it came with very clear step-by-step instructions. Now, I hit some snags, which I eventually resolved, but the one thing I had to do which drove me crazy was sit at my PC for hours writing content for the site since I couldn’t upload it to the server without ensuring all the pages were complete.

And to me, this is the one of the biggest “plusses” of using a content management system such WordPress … you get the site up, write your first post (I always recommend 5 to start with though) and you are ready to do business online and invite the search engines to come visit your site.  I do also suggest you complete your About, Services and Contact pages too since people are naturally curious and will want to know more about you.

This brings me to another Big plus of having a blog …

Optimizing Your Site For The Search Engines is Much Easier With a Blog

Each time you publish a blog post, you do what is called “pinging” the update services. In other words, you automatically notify the search engines (sometimes indirectly) that there is new content on your site so “come and take a look!” This gives the search engines occasion to come and visit your site to index it’s new content. So, another benefit is that blogs tend to be indexed much more often than traditional static websites and, blogs show up 10 times more often in organic searches than static websites do.

On a tight budget?

Then a blog is something you should definitely consider.

Blogs are cheaper to build than static websites and even if you get your neighbor to build you a site for free, you will still need a budget to maintain the site and keep the site updated. Also, there is no “pinging” feature with static websites so you have to do much more of what is called “on page” and “off page” search engine optimization than is necessary with a blog if you want your site to show up in the natural search engine results.

And don’t think just because you paid thousands of dollars or worst thousands of UK pounds (real money!! Sorry my US friends) to have a website built that you’re going to get people flocking to your site.

In fact, I’m going to dare say that most designers have no clue whatsoever about search engine optimization. Their strategy is to make your site look good … “build it and they will come.” And, I’m not exaggerating here … I had my first designer tell me this! But, I’m not using that example as a generalization … just do a Google search for web designers and take a look at their offerings and you’ll find that most of them will sell you on “look good” rather than “get found.”

One more benefit (though there are many more) before I “bust” some myths … Bloggers establish credibility much faster than static website owners because blogs by their very nature build a stronger and more vibrant knowledge base and community. Sure you can do this by adding articles to your static site but it comes down to cost again and in my view, “findability”. Finding articles on a blog is usually much easier than navigating your way through a static website because of the additional navigation features such as post categories and date archives found in any decent blog software.

Publishing New Content

With a blog, you log into your back office, write your blog post and click the “publish” button and your content will be published  on the world wide web ready for anyone who cares to read it and, you can categorize your posts making it easier for people to find your content both online and, find the relevant information faster in event that they perform a search on your site.

With a static website, you have to open up your editor, such as Front Page or Dreamweaver, write the article (and, I’m not even going to cover the potential complexities of adding videos or audio), update the page properties before uploading that page to your site using FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software. Once you’ve done all of that, you have to “wait” until the search engines do their rounds again, visiting your site to get it indexed. This could take months, depending on the strategies that you employ.

I have had one of my clients blogs indexed within 36 hours and all she did was posted about 10 blog posts which were mainly snippets from her book. The crazy thing was that the posts were not even properly optimized but, her blog got the attention of the search engines.

Now for some myths about blogs and blogging:

1. Blogging takes too much time. What!! Do you know how much time it takes to properly maintain a website!? If you’re building a business then the act of blogging or article writing, if you prefer not to think about the term blog, should be an important aspect of your marketing.  So spending 2-4 hours each week researching and writing blog posts should be seen as a plus, not a negative. That is not to say you have to post so often … I don’t, but I had to in the early days to build my credibility.
2. Blogs are fads and will die away soon. Boy … you would have thought these proponents would have cried off by now. But, let’s forget about them … just take a look at the direction the online world is taking and you will see that it makes sense to have a blog EVEN if you decide to build websites too (and, I do encourage both … more on that later) because blogs make podcasting, videocasting and social networking a lot easier, even if you are non technical.
3. No one reads blogs anyway. This is what some of speakers and coaches used to tell me when I told them I was building a site for my services. Now, I will tell you what I would tell them if they were to give me that same “cookie cutter” answer today … “No one reads YOUR blog!”  If this is you it’s time to spice it up. Give your blog a voice (some good quality content), not a corporate makeover! Humans work in corporations so even if you’re targeting them, they have a sense of humor, they don’t all have MBA’s and use long “unarticulaterable” words (like this one I just made up) and, they want information they can use. So save the Guardian style editorial for your press releases but give them great tips in your blog articles.

I could go on, but I hope I’ve given you enough information to make an informed decision on whether you should have a blog or a website.

As a side-note, this site is built using WordPress and the StudioPress Genesis Theme Framework.  I can make it look more like a blog (which I prefer) or, I can have it look completely like a static website.  However, the look and feel you choose for your site should be very much dependent on your clients and prospects and their expectations.