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20
Steps to Creating
a Successful
Blog for Your Band
Part
One of Two
by
Lance
Trebesch,
TicketPrinting.com, Added
December 2007
Back to The
Academy
Blogs
prove to be a tricky field to conquer, especially when it comes to gaining an
initial reader-base. However, once you
get that reader base, great potential for increasing your online reputation is
created. Successful blogs keep their
status by following these 20 rules from the start and throughout their blog’s
lifetime.
- Focus the topic.
Thousands of different blogs exist on the web. Only the well-established ones can post
general news and see success. Instead,
focus your blog around a niche. The
more narrow the subject, the more likely you will get a steady reader
base.
- Search similar blogs and subscribe. Because there are so many blogs on the
internet, chances are somebody somewhere will also be talking about
your subject. Find these sites
and subscribe to them so you get instant updates. The best action to take is to read up on
these blogs and know what they talk about regularly.
- Create business relationships. By helping out someone else and their
blog in some way, they will in return help you and your blog out. One good example is devising a list of online
radio stations you can submit your music
to and give them the list so they can use it for their benefit as
well. By becoming business friends,
you can promote each other by talking about one another’s webpage, music,
blog, etc.
- Make quality content. Just writing a blog is not enough. You have to make sure what you are
writing is good content. No one
will comment or read your blog if the content seems worthless and poorly
written. Also, write
grammatically. Misspellings are one
of the most painful things to witness in blogs.
- Work on the title. The
title is a necessity. The first
thing people look at and what makes them read your blog is the title. Titles that hint of content with lists
and bullets also draw people in due to the pleasing layout and more white space
of lists. If the title perks their
interest, they will click on your blog to continue reading. Take the time to think about an
interesting title and log which titles draw more readers.
- Submit to directories. After creating a good content-and-keyword-rich
blog, submit it to different directories.
Top Blog Area and BlogFlux are two good sites to submit
blogs to according to category of blog.
Another option is to write just one blog for an established blogging site in
the rock music industry and tell them why they should feature your blog on
their site. If they choose to put
the blog on their site, you will see greatly increased traffic.
- Get a friend to submit your blog to Digg,
StumbleUpon, Technorati, Netscape, and Reddit. These search sites generate a ton of
traffic to your site if viewed frequently (or “digged,” “thumbs up”
“favored,” etc). However, people
view down on you if you constantly submit your own content to these sites,
so instead, make a buddy submit your blogs, videos, or podcasts to these
sites one or two times a week.
Eventually, your good content will make it to the homepage of these
content-search sites, generating an unimaginable amount of traffic to your
blog.
- Ping every site. Some submission
sites allow you to ‘ping’ them, which
means they get an automatic update when you post a new blog. This is good so they always have your
latest posts in their records. These
sites also allow you to put in key tag terms. By inputting a tag term, your blog will pop
up if someone searches for the term you used. For instance, if you are writing about electric guitar comparisons (tag
terms) and the searcher inserts “compare guitars,” your blog will show as
a result. You must utilize pings
and tags to increase your blog popularity.
- Write regularly and stand out. The only way to gain a steady reader
base is if you write a blog regularly.
The best blogs update their content daily or sometimes several
times a day. As an upcoming artist,
though, weekly will suffice if you write on a consistent day around the
same time every week. In addition,
you need to stand out from other bloggers.
Write properly, but use your
personality. Personality keeps
the blog interesting and keeps readers coming back. In addition, the readers like to be
treated as humans, so drop the business lingo. Blogs are for entertainment, so engage
your audience. Write for them.
- Host your blog on your website domain. Using a different
host for your blog not only
confuses your readers, but also reduces the amount of quality traffic to
your site. The only smart way to host
a blog is through your own website.
If readers like what they read, or you mention something about your
music in the blog, they can easily navigate to your website to find out
more information. Creating a blog
serves the purpose of promoting your music online, which you can only do
if you reader can easily access your website from your blog.
This is
the end of part one of the two part series to creating a successful blog. Part two goes into more detail on how to
promote your blog and see additional success in the first weeks and months of
your blog.
Read Part Two.
By Lance
Trebesch
lance@ticketprinting.com
http://www.TicketPrinting.com
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