Top 5 Tips You Need to Consider When Starting a Business Blog

Blogging is the commonest form of content marketing among online marketers. You can blog about anything under the sun provided you have good information that others will like to know about. You can blog for business, for entertainment and even for fun. Anyone can start a blog if they so decide. Following are some valuable tips you should consider if you want to start your own blog and be successful at it.

1. Choose the Right Hosting Platform

Your host platform matters a great deal if you want to manage a profitable blog. You can choose to blog on an independent website and pay for hosting it or you choose popular free website hosts like Blogger, Wix or WordPress. If you are just launching a blog, you must make hosting your top concern because aside the hosting fees you’ll have to pay if you are not using a free blogging platform, the blogging tools each host website makes available for your blogging activities are of immense importance for the success of your blog. They provide web security as well. This is hugely important because using insecure web host can seriously harm your blog. It is best therefore to use a web host that places a high priority on security particularly with servers that have security precautions like firewalls and routine website backups.

2. Set up Canonical URLs

Canonical URLs act like the “eyes” of search engines. They basically tell search engine algorithms which of your content pieces are most important and exactly what your post is about. Since you are likely to be blogging on the same niche, chances that you’ll be writing comparable content is very high. Because such content will be aiming for the same tagline, it is best to have a canonical URL for each piece. Therefore, setting up various URL types from scratch can be very useful for your blog. If however you are using a free-blogging platform like Blogger or WordPress, their in-house blogging tools will take care of most of your blogging requirements.

3. Use Visuals with Great Care

The use of visuals in a blog can be advantageous as well as disadvantageous. If you’re new to blogging, you need to take adequate care when using visuals in your content. It is not advisable to use just any images you come across online. If you do, you run the risk of infringing on copyrighted images. What is best to do is to strive to find websites that offer free photos and visuals. There, you’ll have unfettered access to high-quality images that you can use for free. Shutterstock or Pixabay are great places you can get free high-quality images you can safely use on your blog content. However, if you have the expertise and the right equipment, it is safer still to create your own images.

 

4. Closely Monitor the Performance of your Website

No matter how good your blog content is, if your blog website is not performing to par, your blog is not likely to get any traction. This is why you must monitor the performance of your website routinely. By thoroughly understanding how and where people access and use your website, it is easier for you to figure out whatever needs to be done on the site to enhance its performance. You’ll also be able to know what elements you need to add to the website for it to perform better. Try to avoid any guess work when taking vital decisions on your website. By using some great analytics tools like Google Analytics, you can find out exactly which are your most popular content and where your website visitors are coming from and much more. This tool also helps you to monitor visitor activity across your website, track customers and leads. The data generated by this tool enables you to determine what works well on your website and what needs fixing. Overall, you can always be in a better position to improve the general performance of your website if you monitor its performance well enough and with the right tools.

5. Invest in a Good Plagiarism Checker Tool

Plagiarism checker is one fine tool no serious blogger can afford to do without. With it, you can easily ascertain the originality of your content before posting it. This is hugely important because you can get penalized by search engines for posting duplicate content. Your blog content must be unique and original if you want to achieve great results with your blog. Most versions of plagiarism checkers operate quickly. That is one great advantage bloggers have if they use these checkers to quickly search the entire internet before posting content. If the checker Okays your content, you don’t have to worry about whether you plagiarized it or not even if per chance. All you need do as a blogger is, when you finish crafting your content, just upload the work to the software, and it will immediately run a complete plagiarism check on the material. This way, instead of re-reading your work and manually checking for plagiarism, you can save your precious time and effort by using plagiarism checker tool like Copyscape to help you out in a matter of seconds.
 
Wrapping Up

If you are new to blogging, use the foregoing tips faithfully. As you blog along, you’ll be able learn some more tactics/techniques along the way. Even if the niche you are blogging on is a bit saturated, you can get along fine and hold your own if you allow these tips to guide you. Make sure you post great content regularly and consistently when you get off your launch pad. With patience and determination, you too can become a blogging success with time.

Top 8 Awesome Email Marketing Tools for Small Businesses

Among digital marketers, email marketing is one of their most widely used digital marketing strategies. The reason is simple. Email is cost-efficient to use and with a very good ROI. In addition, it is typically a simple, clear, and efficient way to communicate with customers and prospective customers. You can only get these advantages from email marketing if your emails get to their recipients. On that score, there’s a lot you must do to ensure that your messages reach the right audience. It is only when they do you can expect to be able to turn your leads into customers efficiently. Therefore, to ensure your emails get to the recipients and as sent, you need the assistance of smart software and tools. These tools are designed to make your marketing easier by helping you to automate several tasks to increase your chances of success. Email marketing tools can help increase engagement with your emails and improve the chances of success with your email marketing strategies. This is why you must carefully choose the most efficient email marketing tools without sacrificing dependability and security. Online, there are numerous email marketing software solutions available for marketers to choose from. Many of these tools offer flexible capabilities/solutions that can be tailored to practically any market. Choosing the right email marketing tools for your email marketing strategy can have a significant impact on the success of your email marketing campaigns.

 

Find below some of the best email marketing tools you can choose from to boost your email marketing campaigns.

1. Mailchimp Tool

Mailchimp is a very popular email marketing platform among marketers. It is a very sophisticated platform with fantastic features like drag-and-drop email editor, email notifications, contact segmentation into subgroups, and simple analytics monitoring. Mailchimp is popular with marketers because it has a free plan that enables users to deliver up to 12,000 emails to almost 2,000 recipients regularly. It also offers premium monthly subscriptions for marketers who can afford the fees. One main advantage of Mailchimp is that it enables marketers to configure delivery times depending on time zones and geolocation-based segmentation. In addition to that, marketers can readily integrate Mailchimp with Content Management Systems like Wix and WordPress as well as eCommerce platforms like Shopify, and a variety of other platforms to increase its effectiveness.

2. Benchmark Tool

Benchmark’s email marketing tool is free and comes with a robust marketing package. Benchmark’s email solution is ideal for ambitious email marketing campaigns. This tool provides some complex capabilities like Google Analytics tracking, social network integration, and heat mapping all for free. In addition and if you so desire, you can get a convenient drag and drop builder, minimal automation, and reporting capabilities with Benchmark tool.

3. ActiveCampaign Tool

ActiveCampaign tool boasts of a CRM option and live chats in addition to email marketing. It is a great tool that marketers find helpful to find relevant prospects using tools like lead scoring. This is made possible by integrating a CRM into their marketing operations. You can also use the system to add interactive content to your emails, thereby allowing your audience to have varied experiences depending on your segmentation. ActiveCampaign’s template designer is quite user-friendly and easily adaptable. However, you must be ready to pay subscription fees to take full advantage of ActiveCampaign tool.

4. ClickFunnels Tool

ClickFunnels is an email marketing program that is built around sales and marketing funnels. With ClickFunnels software, marketers can develop an automated succession of landing pages, autoresponders, emails, and webinars. They can do all these even without needing to know how to code. ClickFunnels allows businesses to design whole sales and marketing funnels. The main advantage of this is that the tool brings together automated advertising & distribution solutions all in one place. It provides you the tools and methods to market, distribute, and send messages over the internet. A higher grade version of ClickFunnels tool requires subscription fees to put into operation. Platinum version subscribers can contact customers by focused emails, social networks, text messages, and computer notifications at any moment and from anywhere.

5. MailerLite Tool

MailerLite tool helps marketers to personalize and automate their emails to connect with their customers. MailerLite is quite unique marketing software which stands out for its clear, attractive user interface and responsive customer care. You can easily connect MailerLite to other online programs that allow you to exchange information, simplify workflows, and improve your overall user experience. The tool comes with three editors to help marketers build dynamic and engaging campaigns. If you want to create sophisticated marketing processes, MailerLite is the tool you need. With it, you can use triggers to send emails or change custom fields regularly when interacting with your customers.

6. Instapage Tool

Instapage tool includes most of the things marketers need to create and optimize high-converting landing pages. The tool is handy to provide solutions that help to reduce cost-per-click and increase return on ad expenditure. With Instapage, you can develop appropriate mobile-responsive landing pages and interactions without using a developer. The tool makes it easier to increase visitor engagement and conversion rates by creating distinctive landing page encounters for each advertisement and target audience. A major advantage of Instapage tool is that it has a unique AdMaps function feature. This feature allows you to view your ad campaigns and link ads to suitable post-click web pages all in one location.

7. ConvertKit Tool

ConvertKit is a powerful email marketing tool that is really quite suitable for expert bloggers, content writers, and digital entrepreneurs. The tool is not only powerful, it is quite simple to use. Its most distinctive aspect is that it lets marketers give content and rewards to anyone who signs up for their email newsletters. The tool has simple auto-responders that let marketers generate drip emails using its emailing platform. ConvertKit allows you to send personalized messages to your segmented audience which help to enhance conversions. The tool allows marketers to create and execute email campaigns smoothly and provides them the ability to automate tasks and create customer marketing channels. When compared to other email marketing tools on the market, ConvertKit is really affordable but you can only have access to most of its fine features though, by paid subscription only.

8. GetResponse Tool

GetResponse is a great email marketing tool which is quite suitable for small business marketing. Online marketers use it extensively to create strong, simple emails within one easy-to-use interface. You can effectively use it for landing page optimization, conversion channels, and email automation. GetResponse is also very handy if you want to customize your email subject headings using your recipients’ personal information like the recipient’s identity, birth date, and postal code. If you simply pick this while composing your email subject line, it will be applied to all the contacts you’re emailing with the help of their email IDs. You can easily make email lists with GetResponse in an incredibly simple way.