• Learn the benefits of using blogging as a marketing and pr tool.
• Find out how having a blog can land you more customers.
• Experience first hand how using a blog will help you keep your clients more loyal to your company and better informed about pertinent issues.
• Plus network with other Bloggers and business owners and enjoy a FREE lunch.

Join Russell Fair, Internet marketing strategist and web strategist for a half day of internet marketing fun. Learn the inside tips, tricks and techniques that multi-millionaire bloggers use to promote their blogs and get rich. Find out why companies are turning to blogs as their primary marketing tool and understand how they are increasing their online lead generation every day. Also, learn how creating digital content such as videos, white-papers and e-books can create a lifetime of passive income.

Russell Fair will be available after lunch, from 1:00 PM until 5:00 PM to answer questions as well as assist any interested participants in setting up a blog for their business.

RSVP below by October, 6th.

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How is that you may ask? Well, I read a report called Tips for Successful Business Blogs
Where they reported some characteristics of successful business blogs. The data was gathered from “selected blogs from Adobe, Marqui, Microsoft and Stonyfield Farm among others.

After doing all the interviews, the research team identified five factors for success.
• Culture: If a company has particular cultural traits worth revealing or a bad reputation it wants to repudiate, blogging can be an attractive option.
• Transparency: Critical to establishing credibility and trust with an audience. People want to see an honest portrayal of a company.
• Time: It takes a lot of time to set up, research and write a quality blog. Companies need to identify a person who has the time or whose schedule is freed up to make the time.
• Dialog: A company’s ability and willingness to engage in dialog with their customer base about topics that the customer base is interested in is critical to its blogging success.
• Entertaining writing style and personalization: A blogger’s writing style and how much they are willing to reveal about their life, experience and opinions brings human interest to a blog, helps build a personal connection with readers and will keep people reading.”

All of these things contribute to building rapport with your customers. If your customers get a sense of the culture of your business, and they like it, they will feel more comfortable buying from you. If they sense transparency they will have a greater trust in your company, if they know that you or someone at your company cares enough about them, to invest the time, in well researched information on your blog, they will appreciate it and be more emotionally invested in your business. If they engage in a dialog with your company regularly, they will not only have a better understanding and sense of ownership in your company, but will be more likely to spread the word about your company. And finally if they are entertained by your blog, they are more likely to visit it frequently, which is surly better than if they did not.

ho qualifies for a business blog? Every company, big or small, public or private is a good candidate for a blog. In fact, many large companies are now turning to blogging as a key marketing initiative and are investing more into their blogs. In addition to the benefits listed above, a blog is also a great way to drive more traffic to your company website. For more information about starting your business’ blog, contact RF Web Studio or your web developer.

Using state of the art web publishing tools, you will be posting like a pro in the first hour. With absolutely no need for software or advanced computer skills. We will cover:

• Blogging for beginners, a ten step program to launching a successful blog
• Using WordPress, posting, and categorizing information effectively
• Submitting to social networks that will promote your blog to millions of people
• Adding viral content to your blog that will attract loads of traffic
• Setting up plug ins and customizing your blog for maximum effectiveness

Since we have some work to do to get your blog set up registration deadline is April, 2nd. Register here. If you have questions please email russ @ rfwebstudio [.] com

Wow, what a great use of two hours of my day. Even as a self proclaimed blog advocate and SEO/SEM expert, I must say that I learned quite a bit. Here were some of the key points that I found most valuable:

• Balance your blogging life: spend 1/3 of your time posting on your blog, 1/3 reading other blogs, and 1/3 commenting!
• Never use a subdomain of a blogging platform as your URL, buy a domain and install it. (I told you so!)
• Funny and Enticing Titles work best.
• Posting weekly is “the norm.”

Some of this I already knew, but sometimes it helps my clients to hear it from other people.

I must admit that these guys seem to have a really good grasp of the benefits of business blogging as well as how it will help with your company’s website SEO. If you are interested, HubSpot is doing another webinar on Social Media Marketing, April 9, 2-3PM EST

Most of the time my post are inspired by something that I have learned, or something that has happened to me. I typically spend time researching the topic before posting. In many cases, I do not have “inspiring” events, take place every day. So then what is appropriate? In my opinion, two to three times a week is just about right. Of course there is no magic formula, so don’t feel bad if you don’t post on this schedule.

The frequency of your posts may not be as significant as how much you contribute to the blogoshpere. This statement may be confusing but let me explain. If you 100% of your “blogging” time posting to your blog, you are likely neglecting reading some other blogs, and quite possibly not commenting and or promoting your blog. I heard today in a webinar presented by HubSpot that you should spend equal time, reading, posting and commenting to keep your blogging time balanced.

So, with that, I am going to quit posting and start commenting on some of my favorite blogs.

Learn to the basics of blogging from Russell Fair, Owner of RF Web Studio. If you are a professional, product expert, or just someone with great ideas, you should market them. There are thousands of people every day looking for the answers that you have. Advanced workshops covering topics such as podcasting, SEO and SEM, E-Commerce and Email Opt-In Capturing, will be available if you would like to take your blog to the next level of professionalism. Please register no later than March 31st.

What you will get:

• Your very own blog, installed on your own domain name or as part of your website.
• The ability to post content to it from any computer, without any software.
• A basic knowledge of how to promote your blog in the Blogosphere
• Lunch

In addition to having my sidekick Brent Brooks from the Blankstage there helping out, we will also have two graduates from the last blogging workshop in attendance available as mentors.

First take a look at a few articles written by some other bloggers.

How To Write Great Blog Content – The Pillar Article

Blog Pulling Power – Creating Flagship Content

How to Create Cornerstone Content That Google Loves

Now spend a few minutes brainstorming a list of two or three pillar articles you can write for your blog. When writing these articles, it is important to remember that people will be reading these for years to some, so try not to make them too time specific.

Part Two: Working in WordPress

You can access your WordPress administration panel by typing yourdomain.com/wp-admin into any internet browser. Once you enter your username and password, you will see your dashboard. This will be home base for the most part. Also notice a row of links that start with “dashboard, write, manage…” These links are the different things you can do within your blog back end. Be careful what you do because once you change it back here it is live on the web and anyone can see it. First lets click the “Write” tab. You will notice that a second set of tabs appears, “write post” and “write page” stay on write post for now. Lets take a moment to copy and paste the outline for one of our pillar articles here. We will be visiting it again soon, so if it is not finished thats okay. Make sure you title it appropriately. Notice three buttons below the main content editor, “Save and Continue Editing,” “Save,” and “Publish” If you click “Publish” your article will go live immediately. If you use “Save”, it will be saved as a draft and not published.

We will go over the rest of the editor screen later, but the part you will use most is the content editor, so make sure you are comfortable doing the above steps.

Sign Up Now a $1200 value for only $250

In the “how to Blog” workshop we will cover:

Domain buying and setup (brief), hosting and database setup (brief), WordPress installation (brief), Posting Articles, Creating Pages, Search Engine Optimizing your pages, What an RSS Feed is and how to use it, marketing your blog to Google, Yahoo and the search engines as well as popular Blog Engines and more.

“Sophisticated Blogger” an advanced workshop we will cover some more intermediate concepts including:

FTP, Plug-in and Widgets, Customizing Plug-ins, Using Contact Forms and Auto Responders, Increasing traffic to your site, and much more.

Sign Up for Both and save $100