Saturday, January 3, 2009

Posting To Your Blog With Relevance And Voice

By Don Bethune

Content and style is everything. Blogging can be a home based internet business that will make money online. Do you follow politics or current events? Your readers expect summaries as issues occur so they can share their feedback. During the last election cycle, blogs often provided information ahead of traditional news sources. Your readers depend on you for insight and information they canat find elsewhere.

Timely, relevant summaries should make up the majority of your content. Style separates you from blogs following similar issues. Ideally, you want readers to follow posts through affiliate marketing programs, rss feeds or portable devices. Short updates at regular intervals build confidence in your ability to keep readers informed.

During Hurricane season, weather blogs compile information from various sources into a format the average reader can understand. Weather blogs stay ahead of typical news cycles and issue informed updates as data comes in. Raw data from National Agencies needs to be interpreted fit readeras expectations. Weather based websites often provide raw data from various reporting agencies for bloggers to compile.

Often times these weather websites link to a number of blogs which are specialized based on the writers are of expertise. These can range from topics of natural disasters to simple storm tracking or daily weather predictions. Again, this information is presented as soon as is possible for you to post it. People wish to know immediately of changes in weather within their area. Particularly during events like Hurricanes, you readers may live outside the area, but still wish to stay up to date on information as it happens.

During periods of increased activity, weather blogs update hourly in order to address reader feedback. Hurricane Gustav resulted in tens of thousands of reader posts on a variety of tropical weather blogs and news sites. Curiosity is a powerful motivator. Blogs about extreme weather phenomena draws readers from outside affected areas and outside the country they occur in.

Technical blogs offer information as it comes in from outside sources. Blogs that follow finances updated during the business day. Personal social networking blogs update as events occur in the user's own life, or when the blogger wishes to know their reader's thoughts on a particular topic.

Content and style relevant to the readeras preferences are what keeps readers engaged. Affiliate marketing programs can be lucrative but may distract readers if links are randomly inserted into posts. Readers expect you to keep them informed. Adding links to opportunities catering to your readeras interest benefits both of you.

If you do choose to offer affiliate marketing information, such as personal business opportunities, keep these links in one place where you readers may choose to access it. If your voice consists of staying on topic, continue to stay on topic. If you readers seem to enjoy that you stray off topic, again, attempt to be consistent. It is your personal voice and the relevance of the information you offer that will keep the readers engaged, and ultimately cause them to become regular visitors. - 15431

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