By Beth Graddon-Hodgson

In last week’s post about writing headlines we touched a little bit upon keyword usage and the tools that are available to determine the right terms to incorporate. Relevant keywords must appear in your blog content as well as in your headlines in order to fare well with search engine results. To use them, you’ve got to learn how to determine what relevant keywords are with regards to your blog and each individual topic you choose to focus on. The term SEO tends to scare many new bloggers, but it’s not necessary to get all technical in order to get the right results. (more…)

I started to write a post about pitching bloggers, but then I found an excellent piece by Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.net. Why reinvent the wheel? Although this was written in 2007, the advice is still 100% sound. I’ve included the first paragraph and a link to the rest of the article. Read the comments too – they’re a treasure trove of information as well!

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How to Pitch to Bloggers – 21 Tips

One of the challenges that many bloggers face once they become established and grow a profile in their niche is that they become the target of ‘pitches’ – or people emailing to ask them to do ’stuff’.

These ‘pitches’ can be on any number of fronts including:

• announcing new products/services in the hope of being linked to or reviewed
• link exchanges
• asking for permission to use content
• exploring potential partnerships
• suggesting links to posts on other blogs
• story ideas
• asking for guest posts
• asking questions
• request for an interview

The list goes on. Some bloggers get ‘pitched to’ hundreds of times each week (some get hundreds per day!) and so if you’re looking to approach a blogger with some kind of pitch it is worth thinking carefully about how you do it.

Read the full article at Problogger.net

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by Beth Graddon-Hodgson

For some businesses, choosing a topic isn’t quite as easy. It’s always important to write with your target demographic in mind, but with a business that caters to a broad range of people like a catch-all online retail website; who are they and what do they care about? There are a number of questions that you can ask yourself when establishing a blog for your business. They are the ones that I go through to hone in on a specific topic area for a client who can go in any direction with their blog. (more…)

When starting a blog for your business the first thing you need is a topic. Obvious, perhaps, though you’d be surprised to learn the number of people who don’t think establishing a topic is essential. There’s a belief that if you just start writing, people will come. That might be true when writing a personal blog, but it doesn’t apply in business.

With a business blog, you need to ATTRACT your audience. With a personal blog, you’ve already got people who have a vested interest in what you’ve got to say. Just because you work in a specific industry and have knowledge of your craft doesn’t mean you’ve got a voice that people want to listen to just for the sake of it. You’ve got to give them something to lure them in and keep them coming back. That all begins with picking the right topic. (more…)

Thank you to professional writer and blogger Beth Graddon-Hodgson for giving us the insider info on how pro bloggers work…and how to pay them. Check out her website or follow Beth on Twitter

As many companies jump on the blogging bandwagon, they’re faced with one major dilemma as they wonder “what the heck do we pay these people?” The problem is that there are companies and independent writers who have set standards that go to two extremes – those who accept bottom dollar rates just to get the business, and those who gouge their clients for all that they’re worth. With this in mind, most companies have the wrong idea about reasonable payment. (more…)