From the Desk of Janet Barclay

This past week I had the pleasure of participating in A Brand New You, a global telesummit on personal branding. I apologize for not posting any information about this conference, because it was excellent, and free of charge, thanks to the generosity of the Conference Calls Unlimited and the speakers, however, recordings of the 24 calls will be available from the website soon (also at no charge).

One of the sessions which I attended was How to Write a Great Business Blog with Debbie Weil.

I was pleased to learn that there are things I’m doing effectively:

• post personal news on occasion
• avoid politics
• post at least once a week
• use your name so your blog will come up first if someone Googles your name (at the moment, one item comes up before my blog, which is not about me, but my blog is second, and there’s only one other item on the first page that is not about me)
• publish an ezine as well as a blog to reach different audience

I also learned some things that I can work on (which is good, because otherwise it wouldn’t have been a good use of my time):

• "package" what I write, i.e. top ten lists, 7 tips on a topic, etc. with a synopsis at the top - creating a well defined resource that other bloggers will link to
• include at least one link in every post
• use specific and colourful titles that will attract both readers and search engine traffic
• occasionally email the link to an entry to someone and ask them to post a comment
• clearly post a comments policy

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, I encourage you to visit A Brand New You and listen to the podcast once it is available.