Personal Branding & Blogging Blueprint Part 2

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Blogging has become one of the most important marketing strategies you can implement online. Your personally branded blog will become the central hub of all your online activities.

All of your action on the social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, will be meant to create initial relationships and drive people back to your blog where relationships can be deepened.

This is also where you brand yourself as a leader using the “YOU inc.” model by putting yourself first before any product, service or company you represent. This is one of the basic principles of attraction marketing which is fast becoming the new standard for serious internet/network marketers and online entrepreneurs alike.

Go back and check out Part 1 in the series if you haven’t created your own personally branded blog yet and follow the steps to get started:

Personal Branding & Blogging Blueprint Part 1

If you have any questions (or suggestions), feel free to contact me using the contact form on this blog.

Now, assuming you have already created your own personally branded Wordpress blog, let’s review some content creation strategies as well as some ways to optimize your content on the search engines. I also what to share some resources and plug-ins to help your blog stand out from the pack.

Content

When you are first getting started, it is essential to have a content creation strategy in place to keep you focused on consistently delivering information which is highly valuable to your readers. Once your niche is clearly defined, some basic strategies you can implement immediately are as follows:

• Reviews

This could be a book, a program, a website, a person, a place, as long as it relates to your niche. The possibilities are endless.

You can even monetize the review by recommending an affiliate product and/or service which means you get a commission if your reader decides to purchase whatever it is you are recommending.

• Solve a Problem/Address a Need

This really comes down to getting into the mind of your client/customer and understanding the concept of VALUE. Simply put, in this context, value can be defined as information that will improve the quality of your readers lives, be that in business or life in general.

Understanding your customer means knowing their needs, wants and desires as well as their fears. Once you can identify what is they want and/or need, the content you can create is designed to deliver solutions.

• Interviews

If you already know an authority figure in your niche or when you network with other professionals that have a high level of credibility in your industry, ask them to do an interview.

You can do this as a article, a video or even a podcast. The focus of the interview can be on either or both of the above content categories.

As you get more comfortable with your content creation, you can combine both a review and problem solving in the same piece.

These are strategies which have been time tested and proven effective. You can easily come up with topics to write about by brainstorming ideas. I personally like to use a whiteboard to come up with content for articles, blog posts and videos.

Brainstorming

Write out a list of the people you are targeting as well as topics that would pertain to their needs specifically. You want to be clear that the content you’re creating is in alignment with the needs, wants and desires of the target audience within your niche.

Once you come up with the topic, write out a few lines of text that describe the value and the benefits the viewer will receive from engaging with your content.

This is a great way to get the creativity flowing while clearly identifying the value of the content you’ll be delivering.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

The benefit of using the internet is LEVERAGE! The best content is no good if it cannot be found. You want to make sure you optimize the content so the search engines can find your piece and give it a high ranking.

Visibility is what we are after and using keywords in both the title, body and tags of your work is an important strategy to maximize the number of eyeballs (and ears if you use audio and video) that find your stuff.

Keywords are not always used in the title as there are a number of ad copy strategies you can use to make your piece get noticed in the first place, but this is a bit more advanced and a topic we will surely cover in the near future. My goal is to get you thinking like an internet marketer and understand the relationship between the words you use and how they result in ranking your work on the major search engines such as Google and to a lesser extent, Yahoo and MSN.

There are a number of tools you can use both FREE and paid, that will help you identify Keywords which get a decent amount of monthly traffic but without a ton of competition. This significantly increases your chances of getting a high search engine ranking. In this article, I am not going to go into detail about how to use these tools as I will save actual tutorials for later posts, but I would like to make you aware of a few that you can experiment with on your own.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal (FREE)

http://www.nichebotclassic.com (FREE)

http://fredricschwartz.com/MicroNicheFinder (PAID) This is the one I use to uncover GOLD-NUGGETS to propel you to the top of Google!

You also want to make sure you have SEO plug-ins installed on your blog in order to optimize your content. Here’s a bunch you may want to install:

• All in One SEO Pack-Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog.

• SEO Friendly Images-Automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results.

• SEO Smart Links-provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more.

• SEO Title Tag-Search engine optimize your blog’s title tags. Create a customized title tag for any post, static page, category page, UltimateTagWarrior tag page – indeed, any URL!

• Google XML Sitemaps-This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.

Mix It Up! Video, Audio, Graphics and Screenshots!

In order to keep your content both interesting and engaging to your reader, you need to use all of the above to make your blog and your content stand out.

Video is by far one of the most engaging mediums you can use to promote your personal brand and offer a TON of value at the same time. This can also include tutorials using screen capture software such as Camtasia.

Video blog posts allow your reader to connect with you at a more personal level. You can also get an HD camera these days for under $200 such as the Flip which I personally use and highly recommend:

A few quick video tips when you first get started is to be conscious of the background and use objects and elements that support your personal branding.

Also, you want to make sure you are in an environment with good lighting so people can see your face very clearly.

Eye contact with the camera and ultimately your viewer is also important as that conveys a sense of authenticity.

A couple of good video plug-ins you can install for your blog are as follows:

• Simple Video Embedder-Easily embed video within your posts.

• Viper’s Video Quicktags-Easily embed videos from various video websites such as YouTube, DailyMotion, and Vimeo into your posts.

Audio

If you want to add some music, a podcast, an audio tutorial or an interview to one of your posts, you’ll need an mp3 player plug-in installed in order to do so.

What makes this so cool is that your readers can also download the mp3 file onto their computer or even an ipod to take your content on the go.

A great mp3 player plug-in you can install is:

• WPaudio-Play mp3s and podcasts in your posts by converting links and tags into a simple, customizable audio player.

Graphics

A picture says a thousand words. That old cliché rings true, especially on your blog. Rich graphics add VALUE to your posts and make them stand out by giving your work character.

I love the use of graphics and use the following sites to source pics either for FREE or as little as $1 per picture.

http://www.picapp.com Jazz up your blog, at no cost with millions of premium, relevant, fresh and legal images to choose from.

http://www.flickr.com The best online photo management and sharing application in the world by Yahoo can also be a great resource for your blog. Chances are if you contact the content owner and ask permission and offer to give him/her credit for the pic, they’d be more than happy to oblige.

http://www.istockphoto.com iStockphoto is the internet’s original member-generated image and design community. Get easy, affordable inspiration with millions of safe, royalty-free photographs, vector illustrations, video footage, audio tracks and Flash files. Pics as low as $1 is a steal.

Note: You do NOT want to use graphics without proper authorization, so make sure you have permission and are legally allowed to use them.

Screen Shots

Screen shots are great as they allow you to create image files of whatever is on your web browser to share with your readers.

If you’re using Firefox as a web browser (if you’re not I highly suggest you switch), you have the ability to add-on extensions to give your browser some highly powerful functionality.

There are a number of good ones you can install as follows which I’ve tried and all seem to do a satisfactory job:

• Screengrab

• Fireshot

• Screenshot Pimp

If you need help with any of the steps above, feel free to leave a comment below. Your input is important and can influence future content. There are a number of video tutorials that can be created covering some of this content, so let me know your thoughts.

Also, please share this information with your followers and friends on Twitter and Facebook. I would greatly appreciate a submission to Digg as well. Feel free to use any of the buttons below to submit to your favorite social networks.

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You May Find These Posts Of Interest

• December 5, 2009 -- Personal Branding & Blogging Blueprint Part 1 (9)
• September 24, 2009 -- Twitter As A Marketing Tool, Part 1: How To Build An Army Of Loyal Followers! (4)
• February 24, 2010 -- An Inside Look At Global Resorts Network (2)

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