Effective Blogging

I'm currently going through Charles Heflin's 20/20 course on social media. Heflin is widely recognized as the most influential voice in social networking today. He concentrates on the practices that are long lasting and will be effective today, tomorrow, and next year, not just the expedient things that give you better page rank today.

Like Ceballos and Fong in my last post, Heflin is alerting the social networking community that Google is fixing to become the dominant force in social networking and is studying the field carefully. It will be relatively easy for Google to tell when posts that you are linking back to from social media sites are filled with content or just linking farms to tout your own material. If this is all you are doing with social media, then prepare to be slapped very soon!

Heflin says that three elements must be present in every blog post and syndicated article in order to be read and followed consistently. It must be educational, entertaining and enlightening. He feels it is better to concentrate on writing truly amazing content then in posting every day with mediocre fare. Great advice!

20/20 will teach you which social media properties you need to pay attention to most and build up with content, not just links. The 20/20 classroom shows you why, what and how of social networking.

One way to change things up (this is me talking, not necessarily Charles) is to use a content management company to create content for you. When you employ professional writers you are getting the benefit of people who know how to research and write effectively. You're also getting an outside team with email addresses other than your own to backlink the posts that are going on your blogs for you. Soon, that may become a critical distinction in whether or not your backlinks are going to rank.

I'm at the formative stages of building a content management team. Take a look at www.myblogbuilders.com for an idea of what we are doing, and contact me if you are interested in knowing more. We don't have one standard price list at this point, but we are happy to give you a quote for your particular set of content needs.

Liz Nichols