Adding a blog to your site will allow you to publish plenty of valuable, relevant content that attracts links and gives you search engine visibility. Blogs are also a great tool to engage your customers and build your reputation as an expert.

Following are three useful posting tips to maximize your readers’ exposure to your brand:

1. Link to older posts:

As you write new blog posts, you will notice that you often have to reference topics that you have already covered in other blog posts. This is a great opportunity to link to those posts to add context to your new content, and at the same time encourage your readers to click and visit other parts of your blog.

These links will generate additional page views per visitor, increasing your readers’ exposure to your brand. More exposure means better conversion rates (more subscriptions, more sales, etc.). I always make it a point to link to at least three older posts, if possible.

2. Link to other blogs:

When you link to other blogs, the trackback feature supported by most blog platforms will generate a link to your site in the ‘comments’ section of the page that you have linked to.

This is a great opportunity to get the attention of readers from other blogs, who may see your trackback and click to your site.

Try to find quality (high authority) blogs related to your topic that you can link to to emphasize your points, and make sure that the other blog is accepting trackbacks (some bloggers deactivate the trackback feature).

3. Always end your posts with a clear call to action:

Ask your readers to bookmark your post or subscribe to your feed. In good old fashion selling this is called “asking for the order”.

If you look at the end of this post (and other posts in this blog) you will see those two calls to action in a way that comes across as friendly and firm, but not pushy.

Normally, if somebody has read all the way through the end of your post, it’s because they found your post interesting. These readers will be in a very receptive frame of mind and will follow your calls to action most of the time: just give them a gentle nudge… .

This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 1:22 am and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.